The Black Halo (54 page)

‘Alone was, shepherd, harming noman. My lovely sheep. Ate them.’

‘But,’ said Mr Trill, ‘that is not . . . ’

‘Got them . . . Ate.’ The giant licked his lips as if he felt blood on them.

‘Cheated me. Said name Noman.’ His dead eye turned towards Trill, a waste circle.

And Mr Trill had a vision. Inside the cave the quick intelligence of Ulysses searched lithely, seized on the stick, grew an eye, liquid, smart, Mediterranean, put out the other savage eye, and
blazed afresh as with the sharp vision of a fierce dedication to survival.

It was the new blue eye of the Mediterranean, European, scientific, piercing, single, egotistical.

‘My sheep, lovely sheep,’ said the pastoral giant. ‘Killed them. Noman spoke. Lonely. His voice echoed.’

The massive hands had left Mr Trill’s arm and they flapped about in the mist like grey claws, extinct, searching.

‘Felt for them. Threw stones. Heard them falling in the water. Laughed at me.’ He stopped as if he were listening to the laughter coming out of the darkness, echoing from all
directions. ‘Noman, noman, noman,’ said the laughter. And that was what it was, thought Mr Trill, it was the laughter of Noman, the new Noman, the interchangeable Noman, the schemer who
would survive, the nameless one, eternal salesman of the new moving world. Where Noman went no flowers grew but around the ancient giant there was a solid shadow, a place of ancient songs and
foliage.

‘Noman,’ said the mouth. ‘Talker. Little man. Mouth always going. Speaking. Took sheep away.’

The long sharp stick hissed through his eye and he was blundering about on the headland where the wind howled, the wind of his own land, dear to him, now blind, unseen. The sound of the wind was
like the music of strings, singing about the lonely land, while Ulysses headed for the cities, devious, a blue eel.

‘Noman,’ sighed the giant. ‘Cheated me. Caught him eating sheep. Ate the little men. Eye put out. Alone. Shouted Noman. Noman came. Noman didn’t come.’ He
floundered about in the dead branches of language, puzzled, blundering, ‘Noman didn’t come, went on in ship. Noman came, of own people. Laughed. All laughed. Noman laughed. Every man
laughed. Own people laughed. Brothers, sisters laughed. Noman laughed, laughter everywhere.’

And Mr Trill heard the laughter coming from all directions, thousands and thousands of little distinct laughters blending into one huge laughter as if like the sun on the Mediterranean the world
was a bowl of sunny laughter. And through it moved Ulysses, a thin whip of survival, heading for his island, his mind ticking ceaselessly like a bomb, an infection returning home.

Laughter everywhere, the ironic laughter of the whole world, echoing Noman, the sea and the rocks laughing, as little Noman flourished his flag and the sails filled, and the sea waited, laughing
ceaselessly. In the centre of the laughter was little vain Noman on whom the joke was as much as on the stranded giant, lost among his vast woolly sheep.

‘Alone was,’ said the giant with the words like pebbles in his throat. ‘Night and day the same. Eye bandaged, people about me. “Who?” they said.
“Noman,” I said. And they laughed. Eye throbbed. Pain everywhere. In plain, on hills. Nothing seen.’

Tenderly Mr Trill touched the giant’s arm. The monster sighed as if pleased. His vast blind head nodded in the air above, searching.

Mr Trill saw them all in their tribes, in the caves, huddled together, their sheep about them. The sun rose, the sun set, day after day: darkness came down, darkness dispersed. The fields were
white, then black. Still they huddled together, rose in the morning, then tended their sheep.

Then Noman came. The island was seen by a new eye, a quick moving eye that investigated advantages, positions, vegetation, food. It moved about the island seeking to use it, falling now here,
now there, like a torch, powerful and shining. It did not hear the music of the island, the antique tune that the wind made, had made for century after century. It was a famished restless eye that
would not cease moving till death came. It did not see the antique heavy settled figures.

Noman was a stranger on the island, but it was as if it belonged to him, as if its politics were his, as if its future belonged to him. The sharp unjaded salesman seized on all things on the
island as a woman picks up and adores her own dear ornaments, which are hers alone, which tell who she is. It is her house, every corner, every cranny, every little china figure. So the island was
to Noman, for Noman was no man. He was the little figure lost in eternity but determined that eternity should echo with his mind.

‘Noman,’ came the voice out of the mist. And the huge stones fell into the water and beside the boat there was the thick darkness that not even Noman could illuminate. Though the
rigging might hum, the darkness would always follow the ship like a stain, and no sunlight would ever darken it.

‘Sorry,’ said Mr Trill over and over.

‘Name Sorry?’ said the giant.

‘No, name Trill, but sorry sorry.’

The giant gazed blankly down, among the thickets of language, a lost head. It sighed as if the words were painful to it, like the stick that it remembered, the sharp burning stick that hissed
about its once serene ring.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Mr Trill, ‘most sorry.’

The craggy head lowered and sighed among the mist.

‘It is Noman that caused it,’ thought Mr Trill. And it seemed to him that he had been given a tremendous revelation, so huge that he could hardly grasp it, as he could not grasp the
grey giant who was so helpless beside him. The physical was manoeuvred by the mental, the body was guided by the mind. The headlands, ancient with music, surrendered to the intelligence. Ulysses
was the blue sharp quick Mediterranean eel.

‘Alone,’ said the giant. And its voice echoed in the greyness.

‘Alone.’

It bent its head down over Mr Trill as if seeking, and then with the same sigh, as if it had smelt from him, as well, the betrayals of civilisation, turned away, and blundered off like a big sad
dog into the mist.

Mr Trill stood behind the lectern and made his last speech.

‘There have been many changes since I came to this school. I would like to think that in the early days the influence of the Roman and Greek traditions was very strong but now all that has
gone. In the old days we wore gowns but now hardly anyone wears a gown. I remember Mr Mason who taught history. He used to mark three hundred exercises a week. He was a man devoted to his studies,
a true Roman. Sometimes I think that it wasn’t Octavius who won at all but Mark Antony and that he brought Cleopatra to Rome: but I have only thought this in more recent times.

‘I have been very happy here on the whole. My greatest delight was when some pupil or other came to me and asked me the meaning of the words in a poem, but that, I regret to say, was in my
early career. However all is not yet lost and we pass the torch on to the young who will, we hope, keep it alight. As I stand here behind this lectern I feel I am only saying
au revoir
,
not goodbye. The dead are always with us though we may sometimes forget that. A school is not a building, it is a communion of the living and the dead. Have we not added our tiny stone to the cairn
that is perpetually being built? My father was a classics master as I am and he passed down his tradition to me. My mother . . . ’ And here Mr Trill paused but didn’t finish the
sentence.

‘I know that on days like these it is traditionally the case that we tell jokes. But I feel in too sombre a mood to tell jokes. For I see every day the barbarians approaching more and more
closely to the walls.’ And here he looked directly into the eyes of the headmaster. ‘I see our traditions dying, discipline being eroded day after day. Is it our fault? Is it the fault
of society? Who knows? Is it the treason of the clerks? I remember when I came here first the headmaster told me, “You must never sit down when you are teaching. How can a man teach well when
he is sitting down?” I have never forgotten his words and I have always obeyed them. For when you sit down you begin to grow lazy, and laziness is our enemy. Laziness and despair. I have
never despaired. In spite of everything I have always kept in front of me the example of the Romans, people like Brutus and Cato. For how can we live unless we have great exemplars to sustain
us?

‘I remember many years ago there was a boy in this school and he couldn’t pass his Latin which he needed for getting into university. I spent my intervals and free periods teaching
him. And he managed to pass after all, he managed to get into university. But what did he do when he got there? He started to drink and go out at nights instead of attending to his studies and the
next I heard of him he was working as a conductor on the buses. At times like these one feels that there is no point in going on. But there
is
a point in going on. It is a struggle which
must be renewed every day, and we must not fail the generations, though it is true it seems to me that the earlier generations were the most mature and the most hardworking. There is a
responsibility on us all, that is why we become teachers in the first place. I could never imagine myself as other than a teacher.’

At the back of the room he could see the table laden with cakes and tea and it reminded him that his mother had once served in a school canteen before she had married his father. Again he was
about to say something about her but refrained.

‘I often used to think about those teachers who left the school. What happened to them? They went out into the great wide world but what happened to them after that? Did they disappear
from human view? No, they did not. Their work lies here and also in the hands of those who work and teach and turn lathes in the furthest corners of the earth. Perhaps even there our work is
remembered, over the whole world. In some steaming jungle, on some ship or other, in an office, in the furthest east, perhaps our words and our instructions are still remembered. That is what I
think, and that is my faith.

‘But do not forget that civilisation is thin and fragile, that the barbarians are always beating at the gates, and we must be the guardians and the watchers, sentries at our posts as even
Socrates was. As long as we exist perhaps night won’t fall.

‘When I came here first the pupils wore school uniform. Now they don’t. These little things are significant, though some may not think so. When you think about it every little thing
is significant. It is the addition of the little things that make up the quality of a civilisation, and a school too is part of civilisation, and is a leader and keeper of that civilisation.

‘My name is Trill, as you know, and on the whole I am an insignificant man. But I am the guardian of the works of men more significant than me. I am the casket for their works and their
teachings and so I become significant. And the same is true of all of us. When I come into the room I am not just Mr Trill, I am Vergil and Homer as well. This, when you think of it, is a great
honour. Of course in the tenor of my life I have done some petty things, perhaps to some of you. I may even have argued about the peg on which my coat was hung, but nevertheless beyond and behind
all this I am the guardian of the best minds of the ages. Isn’t that a frightening responsibility? Sometimes, as you know, children will almost break our hearts because they do not seem to be
listening to what we have to say to them. But in the end we shall prevail because that is what we must do, there is no alternative. There were times when I didn’t feel like coming to school
in the mornings and some of you may have felt the same yourselves. But I came just the same because every minute counts.

‘I had this sense of urgency as if it had been left to me to save the souls of our younger generation. Was that, do you think, egotism or pride? Perhaps it was. So, before I leave, I wish
to say to you that we must have this urgency. I know that many pupils used to laugh at me and say, “There is Mr Trill again, rushing along the corridor with his book open in front of
him.” But why did I do that? It was because I did not wish to waste a minute, for the battle is continually around us. Sometimes its sound is muted by the concerns of the day, but don’t
believe that it isn’t there and that many people don’t live and die in that battle. It too has its victims and its victors. It too has its flags and its cohorts and its generals. I was
never one of the generals, I would have described myself as a corporal or even a standard bearer. But that didn’t bother me. The only thing that bothered me was, Will I be found at my post?
Will I be a watchman?

‘And that is the final message that I would like to leave with you. We must do what we can the best we can. Nobody can ask any more from us.’

The speech ended to prolonged applause. However, though Mr Trill didn’t hear them, there were criticisms. Morgan the Geography teacher for instance said,

‘One would think he was Julius Caesar or Hannibal the way he talked. Everyone knows that he had no time for the dimwits, and these are the real test after all. He was lucky to have had the
best of it. Coffee, Miss Scott?’ He shook his hair back boyishly as he always did and Miss Scott said, ‘Tea for me, Mr Morgan. I thought you knew that.’

During the brief meal the teachers talked about inflation, pay, bad pupils, shortage of accommodation, marks. Finally Mr Trill was left alone. When most of the teachers had left after saying
goodbye to him, he himself slipped out. He walked along the empty corridors which the cleaners had already washed. His feet echoed with a hollow sound and it seemed to him that he was young again
in that place which he had for so long inhabited. Voices returned to him from the dead, gowns rustled, the walls were clean and new again. He stood at the main door, pausing a moment before
shutting it. Then he pulled the great ring of the handle behind him. As he walked across the playground it was as if he was dizzily coming into the world again, about to scream like a child which
has just been born. He descended the steps and waited for the cars to pass. Then he crossed the road and went home to his lodgings.