The Black Halo (48 page)

Thus, as they strolled along in the gentle evening light after the play or concert was over, Mr Trill existed in a mild radiance of the mind and spirit, feeling himself superior to all those men
who for some reason which he could never understand were involved in passionate quarrels with their sweethearts or wives. Sometimes he would read in a newspaper that a girl had stabbed her lover in
a jealous rage and he couldn’t understand how this should be. Why did secretaries sob all day in offices when their boy friends had spoken a casual cruel word to them? Why did some of them
kill themselves, or send vicious rancorous letters which dripped with poison and anger? Mr Trill himself didn’t live in that world nor did, he was sure, Grace.

And so all was tranquil and peaceful and Grace was always equable and mild till her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. At first Grace had been prostrated and Mr Trill had sent some flowers.
He had asked if there was anything he could do but she had told him that there wasn’t, that it was really the sort of situation that he wasn’t equipped to deal with: and he had blessed
her perspicacity and thoughtfulness. Thus he did not learn anything about the mechanics of dying: he remained ignorant of the irrational guilt which Grace felt at actions done and left undone, he
did not see her wandering about the house picking up a handkerchief of her mother’s and then dropping it as if it were electrified. He did not see her sitting in church weeping while the
coffin was being borne on the shoulders of four men to the waiting hearse. All these things had passed without his knowing them, nor did he see her on the sofa at night, her jotters abandoned at
her side, while she shook with sobs or stared dully into space, knowing that there are things in this world which cannot be corrected.

The weeks passed and then they went out for the first time after her mother’s death, to a concert given by members of the Cairo Conservatoire. As they sat in the second row watching the
Egyptian conductor enter, and with a stern military gaze around the orchestra, invite them to a typically stormy Beethoven piece, Mr Trill knew that matters would never be the same again. He sensed
that Grace’s easy-going amiable nature had vanished and that contained within her was a storm of her own. Thus as the violinists rested their bows, though the trumpets sounded, he felt a
chill in his bones as one sometimes does at the beginning of autumn: for Grace was silent and had refused the chocolates he had offered her. After the concert she invited him to her house but he
refused to go as he said it was rather late and he still had some translations of Ovid to mark.

‘So,’ she said pulling on her gloves, as they stared at the empty cups in the restaurant, ‘what are we going to do?’

‘To do?’ Mr Trill echoed, though he knew perfectly well what she meant. For a moment he was reminded of the story of Echo and Narcissus, how Echo had fallen in love with Narcissus
but he had scorned her and she had faded away bodilessly into the depths of the wood while Narcissus sickened and died for love of his own ailing reflection.

‘So are we getting married or not?’

‘Getting married?’ Mr Trill repeated.

‘Yes, getting married. Are we or are we not getting married?’ Her voice which had once been mild and amiable had suddenly grown harsh like the voice of a seagull that screams along
the shore.

‘I . . . ’ began Mr Trill.

And then she had begun. It had not occurred to Mr Trill that this woman who had been in the past so tranquil should so suddenly become violent and stormy, bitter poisonous words pouring out of
her mouth.

‘Well, are we or aren’t we? I have been going out with you now for ten years and you have never mentioned marriage once. It is true that you couldn’t very well do so while my
mother lived but now that she is dead I don’t see why we shouldn’t discuss it.’

Mr Trill thought it was rather indelicate of her to speak of her recently dead mother at such a moment and especially in a public restaurant but all he did was take his pipe out of his mouth,
empty its grey ash into the ashtray and put the pipe back again into his pocket.

‘Naturally,’ she was saying, ‘I believed that after ten years we could get married. Why else would I have gone out with you for such a long time? There were others I could have
gone with but I chose to stay with you because I understood or thought I understood that marriage was in your mind, though we didn’t discuss it. But now I want to know one way or the other
especially as I deliberately protected you from the ugliness of death because I knew that you are not interested in such matters.’ Her eyes which had been so mild were blazing with temper and
it was almost as if he were seeing a woman transformed into a demon in front of his eyes. Such must once Medea have been like when tormented by her love for Jason, and a pleasurable feeling
trembled within him.

‘I . . . ’ he began but before he could say any more she had risen to her feet and said, ‘I know you now. You are afraid of marriage, of the world. All you want to do is sit in
your corner with your books. As long as you have your stinking pipe and can discuss a concert or a play with me that is all you want. Naturally. I’m thirty-five years old and now I
find,’ and here she burst into tears though the restaurant was full of people ‘now I find that you don’t care.’ Mr Trill looked around him with trepidation. Why, she was
just like his mother, making a scene in public. She had the same unreasonableness. Could she not have waited till they had left the restaurant at least? But she didn’t wait and she continued
through her tears,

‘All that time I was deceiving myself. I thought that when my mother died . . . But no. Not you. Not once have you made any single gesture or shown any tenderness. Anyone else would have
demanded that he help with the funeral arrangements. But not you. You simply agreed with what I told you. Go back to your landlady then if you like her so much.’

This last statement astonished Mr Trill who had never thought of his landlady as other than his landlady, and who ate so little that he was hardly in the dining-room for more than ten minutes at
a time gulping his food while his landlady who, he thought, knew nothing about his personal life brooded darkly about him and hoarded up the crumbs of information that he ignorantly gave her. What
was Grace implying and why had she changed so much? It was as if he were listening to his mother again as she shouted at his helpless father who was trying to hide in his study.

‘Please, Grace,’ he said, ‘can we not . . . ?’

‘No, we can not. And don’t “please” me. I have asked you a question and you have given me your answer and that’s it.’ All the time she was saying these words
her pleading eyes were gazing at him as if belying the sentences that she was uttering and he saw her as she would be, a woman whom marriage had forever passed by. Nevertheless though he recognised
this with his mind he didn’t feel anything, nor had he any desire to touch her or comfort her. It was as if there was a cold glacial being at his heart like a tiny snowman who was gazing at
this woman, and seeing her as having no connection at all with himself. And it occurred to him how extraordinary it was that one should have feelings, that one should laugh and cry, that one should
be shaken by rage or jealousy. He felt fumblingly for his pipe but then left it where it was.

Then she left the restaurant, her white shawl round her shoulders, and he remained sitting where he was. At that moment he felt desolate as if something valuable were leaving him forever but at
the same time he still made no effort to pursue her. After a very long time he got up and walked slowly home. The streets were yellow with light, the scholarly lampposts with their bent backs
leaned over the pavement as if studying it, and Mr Trill trudged to his lodgings. He was tormented by an absence, for never again, he felt, would he be able to discuss concerts and plays with
anyone in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity. Never again would he have his evenings to look forward to. His landlady would ask him if he was going out and he would have to answer that he
wasn’t, and then her little eyes would glitter and she would begin to dig down into his life with her little wicked spade to find out why he no longer left the house on a Friday night as he
had used to do. He would be naked to the world, without armour. But he gritted his teeth and walked on not even pausing to consider whether he should phone Grace in order to find out if she had
arrived safely. He vaguely thought that she might kill herself but dismissed the thought immediately. That would not at all be like Grace. That night he lay in his bed sleepless and it was as if
the room began to close round him, as if some grief, hitherto invisible, was drawing closer to him, ensconcing itself among his Greek and Latin books and casting a sad light over his jotters.

Grace never married, and continued with her teaching, her temper becoming more bitter and enraged. She still lived alone, as far as Mr Trill knew, in the house from which her mother had departed
and among those yellow lights that seethed about the streets.

For a long time Mr Trill wandered about, after his meeting with Dido, confused in his thoughts and wondering if all his work on earth had been wasted, for he remembered with
pleasure not unmixed with pain – especially in his latter years – the time he had spent in teaching. Some pupils he recalled with affection, some with dislike, but in general he was
highly pleased – or had been until now – with his sojourn on earth, and with the work he had done there. And it was while thinking these thoughts that he came through the mist on a
rugged hill and saw a man rolling a huge stone up it, his cheeks bloated, his teeth gritted. Whenever the man pushed the stone up the slope with great effort it rolled down again to the bottom, as
if it were an animated being with a will of its own.

Why does he not stop, why does he keep on doing it? thought Mr Trill, as he watched in silence the man who hadn’t noticed him. And of course he knew perfectly well who it was, it was
Sisyphus.

And he knew also why he was doing it, it was because he had been condemned by the gods to do it. Why else would a man spend all his days and nights pushing a big boulder up a hill when it always
rolled back relentlessly again? The gods, thought Mr Trill, the gods are our destiny. It is they who decide what we must do, and who keep us at it.

And yet he didn’t wish to accept this reasoning. Was it the gods who had decided what he must do with his own life, what in fact he had done with it? Was it the gods who had decided what
his father and mother must be like? Was it the gods who had decided that he must be born of such a mother and such a father, and that because of them he must do what he had done? Was the whole
world, then, a huge machine, a huge boulder, dumb and bare, to which no one could appeal?

And, after all, had that not been the case with Achilles? Had he not been told that after killing Hector he was doomed, and had he not done it in spite of that?

And was it the gods who had decided that on a certain day he should arrive at Mrs Begg’s house, lay his case down on the mat, press the bell, and that he would, after her acceptance, stay
in her house for thirty years? Had all that been decided by the gods? Ah, Mrs Begg, were you too an instrument of the gods, with your pride in your house, your incessant scourings and washings,
your ear for scandal, your meanness with fire in winter, and even with sugar during all seasons? Was there some god that decided that you and I should meet and perhaps made you think after my break
with Grace that I should perhaps get married to you even if you had a moustache? Was it a god that guided me to Eastborough Grammar School on that day when my heart beat so strongly and I entered
those alien gates and I laid my briefcase down for the first time in the staff-room and I hung up my coat for the first time on its predestined nail and I read the notices on the notice-board.

Is that so, thought Mr Trill as he watched Sisyphus make another effort with the stone. The mist gathered around him and there was Sisyphus in the midst of it pushing and moaning and grunting
and then just when it appeared that the stone had reached the top it fell down again: and Sisyphus would stare at it for a long time and instead of giving up would summon all his energy and push
and heave and grunt again while the muscles of his jaws stood out and his arms strained and his back bent into an arc and the brute stone without consciousness would almost grinningly confront him.
How sick surely he must grow of that stone, without perfume, without grace, how he must hate and curse it. But, no, Mr Trill did not hear a word of anger, it was as if anger had been drained away
over the centuries, as if long ago Sisyphus had forgotten the reason for anger, knowing that the stone would not hear him, nor the gods forgive him. How strange, thought Mr Trill, as he sat and
watched him, how futile and odd. And as he watched he thought of the vanity of his own life. First of all there had been the quarrels with his parents – perhaps fated to meet each other
– then there had been his sufferings in boarding school, then there had been his years of teaching, and in the middle of these his break with Grace.

Had it all been like the stone and Sisyphus then? Certainly, perhaps, the last years had been, though not the middle ones. In the last years it seemed that he had lost his love for his work, it
seemed that the teachings of the classics had fallen heavy from his lips. But before that it had been different.

The horror of it all, this Sisyphus and the stone! And then Mr Trill did a strange thing. He leapt down from where he was and began to help Sisyphus to push the boulder. Side by side they
pushed, side by side they puffed and panted, and almost they had reached the top. Next time, thought Mr Trill, surely next time will do it. Nor was he afraid that he would be attacked for what he
was doing. All he thought of was that he could not bear to see this useless toil. We will do it next time, we really will, he told the silent Sisyphus: and then you can stop your work and you will
be happy.

This time a really big push will do it.