The Black Halo (60 page)

And they watched him with fear but they did not try to stop him. It was almost as if his eyes were closed. Then the door shut behind him and they were left alone.

There was a silence and no one looked at his neighbour. It was as if a dreadful death had fallen over the ceilidh house and they were all suspended in their individuality, like statues of
Pharaoh.

Finally Shonachan spoke, ‘Who is it this time?’ he said. No one answered. All they knew was that it was one of them. And for a moment they felt mortal and cold in front of the fire
as if death were at their breasts. Like stony effigies they sat there.

Pat went out into the night. The stars were twinkling and the ground was hard. He walked as if in a trance. There was no sound to be heard and the earth like an enchanted stone rang under his
feet. How brilliant the sky was, so many stars like a huge city, each one answering the other in a brave bright language.

And then he saw them. They were coming from his left, the men in hard hats walking slowly. And they were carrying a coffin. He waited for them to come. The coffin was open and he could see the
face. The funeral party walked slowly: it did not even stop at the stream. The stream was crossed, with the coffin. Pat’s trousers were wet: he could feel the water making them heavy. They
made their way towards the cemetery, taking short cuts, and all the time he could see the face in the coffin.

They laid the coffin down. There was a prayer, and after a while he turned back, walking again through the stream, opened the door of the ceilidh house, and entered. This was his sorrow and his
triumph. They were all silent looking at him. They noticed the wet trousers and knew that it happened again. His eyes travelled over them like a light as if he were saying, I know you, I have power
over you. But he did not speak and they did not ask any questions. They were vexed in their mortal individualism around the sociable fire. Death had come into the room. Each looked at Pat and
thought, Is it me, is it me? But Pat gave no sign. He never did. He never passed his final judgment.

And the ceilidh broke up and they all went home.

Pat loved being a postman. He loved bringing letters to people who hadn’t heard from their sons or daughters for years before. What a surprise, what a joy! He would never like to live
anywhere else than where he lived. Why, when he was on his rounds, the birds would be singing in the sky, the stones glittered, the sun shone, red and brilliant. No one saw the world as he did
carrying his bag around the village. The dew glittered, the trees bore their blossoms, and in the bag were the signs of hope, communications from the whole wide world. And now and again he would
stop at a house and have a cup of tea and narrate the gossip that he had picked up. No, he could not live anywhere else. He had been to other villages but this was his favourite. He had never
married, so attractive was his work and his life. Apart of course from that other shadow.

And if he were to marry would he gaze down one morning at the pillow beside his own and see death imprinted on the face of his wife? And perhaps one day he would even see his own face in the
coffin. How could one know?

He walked on. A bare tree was reflected in the loch. In the summer its berries were like open wounds. Oh, how beautiful the day was, even though he carried his mysterious knowledge around with
him. And that too was power, was it not? Of a sort. He knew, he knew . . .

John Smith took the letter from him and thought, I wonder if it’s me. He studied Pat’s face, but it was open and cheerful as usual. It can’t be me then,
thought John Smith. Otherwise how could he be so cheerful. Maybe I should propitiate him, ask him in for a cup of tea. On the other hand, he suddenly hated him. Why should he have been given that
power? It was wrong, it was unhealthy, and it wasn’t as if he was intelligent. And he glanced at his letter. It was about the croft, he could tell that right away.

Cum watched him from the roof of the incomplete house where he perched like a cockerel. Maybe I’ll never finish it. That stone is in my breast. I may have injured myself. I may be dying at
this very moment. Who knows? But I do know that the others look down on me, I know that. But if I don’t finish this house what will my wife say? He hammered, and made no sign that he had seen
Pat. He completely ignored him. He wouldn’t speak to him. You are not going to tell me when I’m going to die, my friend. I have my rights too.

Shonachan didn’t see him, for he was working away from the village, but Squashy watched him from the wall where he sat like an owl thinking about Egypt. His hands were red and glassy in
the cold. Pat waved to him but he made no acknowledgement. You bugger, he thought, you’re like a vulture, you perch on the bones of men. Was it his own bell-like moustached face that Pat had
seen in the coffin? Should he shout to Pat and ask him? But he didn’t, he had too much pride. After all, what was Pat but an incomer from another village, and there were stories . . . In fact
he had been in many villages, that was a fact. He rested on his sticks like a wounded proud Pharaoh.

It might be me, thought his sister. And to tell the truth she didn’t care. No one knew what it was like living with her brother with his mocking ways. It seemed to the outside world as if
he coped well with his ailment but she knew he didn’t. He was always complaining about little things. There wasn’t enough salt in his porridge, not enough sugar in his tea. She
wouldn’t be unhappy if suddenly . . .

And Pat passed on less cheerfully. Something glacial, something frosty, had entered the air. Was it going to happen again as it had happened before? Some cold air was blowing towards him.

He humped his bag over his shoulder. What a glorious quiet frosty morning, so clear, so calm. Such a holy day. But he knew that face in the coffin and the knowledge was his grief and his pride.
Some tried to bribe him, others not. Some had bribed him to tell, if they thought they would inherit money.

‘Please tell me, Pat, is it Jim? The old monster. He’s so mean.’ And Pat would remain tight-lipped except that twice, twice only, he had released himself from his burden and
the man had died. But was it destiny that had killed him or the revelation? Who could tell? And so Pat was like a crow traversing the countryside.

No, they will not drive me out, not again. One fine morning, as fine as any he had known, they were waiting for him. Cum, Shonachan, John Smith. The three of them.

They were standing in front of a gate through which he must pass on his round. They were frowning and hostile.

He tried to pass but they stood in his way.

Cum spoke first. ‘Who is it?’ he said.

Pat said, ‘I can’t tell. I am not supposed to tell. You know that.’

‘You had better tell,’ said Shonachan. For a man usually so calm he was aggressive. He wasn’t smoking as many cigarettes as he had done.

‘You’d better tell,’ said John Smith.

But, no, he would not tell. He had made this mistake before and he would not do it again. No, he would not do it again. It was his secret. And the very telling might be the death blow.

‘If you don’t tell,’ said Shonachan, ‘you will have to leave and that’s the end of it. We will not have you in the village.’ The phantom taste of cigarettes
bothered him.

So this was it happening again. It always happened. Always. And up to now he had never learnt. No one wanted a death-dealer in their village.

He stared at Cum, the bag over his shoulder. His red face shone in the day from the effort of carrying his letters and parcels.

Now he must make a new effort. He did not wish to leave. Not again. It was too late. He was getting old and he wanted to stay where he was. But to give birth to the monster, that was bad, for he
knew that it might be the monster that killed.

The three of them stood in front of him: Shonachan with his slightly greying hair, John Smith like a civil servant, with his clever eyes, Cum, huge as the side of a house in his
fisherman’s jersey. It was a moment of tremendous silence.

He laid his bag down gently on the ground. If he told, what would happen? Would they attack him, would they drive him out just the same into the other villages. But he did not wish to go. All
that was over for him. He would face them out this time, it was his own life that he was saving.

He thought for a long time and then he pointed at Cum, and he saw Cum’s face disintegrating in front of him. ‘You forced me to tell,’ he shouted. Cum seemed to fall apart like
the house he had never completed. His face quivered like a child’s.

And then amazingly he saw the other two withdrawing from Cum, as if in horror, and turning ever so slightly towards himself.

The moment passed, he was safe.

The hostility had left the faces of Shonachan and John Smith. Indeed it was as if the three of them, these two and Pat himself, formed a new ring.

And they watched as Cum stumbled away from them like a wounded sheep.

‘It’s terrible,’ said Shonachan, searching for his cigarettes.

‘Awful,’ said John Smith. And then to Pat, ‘You saw him?’

‘Yes,’ said Pat, ‘as clearly as I see you.’ Much more clearly than anyone had seen the Pharaoh’s mummy.

And yet and yet . . . In the service of death itself what could one do? To defend oneself? Knowing all of them . . .

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I saw him as clearly as I see you.’

The land around them became fresh and beautiful again. Shonachan saw it through the smoke of his cigarette. For Pat it was his joy and his triumph resurrected. No one would ever again drive him
from it. He had done with his exile.

And in front of him as it were he saw Cum like the Pharaoh travelling through the sky like a god, huge and eternal, while John Smith was writing. Thank you for yours of the 14th inst. I have to
tell you that after due consideration and much thought I have come to the conclusion that . . . The pen hung over the page. His clever eyes would never tire. But above him travelled the heavy,
wounded, puzzled Pharaoh, his unfinished pyramid below him in the desert.

1

It was a bleak windy evening when they arrived at the hotel, situated by itself at the roadside with the bare moor behind and around it, he the artist and she the wife. At
first they weren’t sure whether the hotel was open, since it was still cold January, but in fact it was, and when through driving rain they ran to the door and pressed the bell a tall
youngish man in tweeds appeared and told them that they could have bed and breakfast. They took the cases in from the car in silence and signed the register while the tweeded man who they thought
was the owner agreed that the weather was grim, and, yes, he could provide them with a drink and, yes, they could have dinner.

They went into the lounge where there was a paraffin heater, black leather seats, and on the walls a number of landscapes which the artist glanced at with some contempt, for he himself painted
in the modern style, that is to say, abstractly. They sat in silence staring at the heater: there was no one but themselves in the lounge.

Sheila the wife didn’t speak: she knew that the holiday had been a disaster but she was unwilling to take the blame. Her husband looked at her now and again as if about to say something
and then changed his mind. Even after the stormy crossing on the boat her blonde hair was carefully combed, her suit impeccable. He looked out of the window at the sea which was still tempestuous
and restless, white waves foaming round the rocks.

They sipped their whiskies and sat in silence. Who would have thought that she would have turned out to be so religious and intolerant and dark? It was a part of her nature that hadn’t
shown clearly in Edinburgh. And as for himself, he hadn’t realised that such places existed, such intolerant boring dull places where time oozed like treacle, where people would sit for hours
staring into the fire, where the fear of death was everywhere, where life had been pared to the minimum, where his red velvet jacket blazed out of the grey monochrome like a scarlet sin. His head
still felt as if it had been flayed.

‘It was a bit of a disaster,’ he said frankly, turning towards her.

‘I thought you would say that,’ she answered, and turned away again.

To tell the truth she had been frightened by the sight of her own true nature, concealed for so long in Edinburgh. And yet it was her nature and it had to be reckoned with.

‘All those elders and ministers,’ he said, ‘those endless graces. I couldn’t even show them my paintings. Imagine that. They thought they were idols and the work of the
devil, they really thought that.’ He truly didn’t understand them, not at all. His own upbringing - free and sophisticated - hadn’t prepared him for that darkness, that
constriction.

‘I felt,’ he said, ‘as if someone was squeezing me slowly to death.’

‘I was brought up there,’ she said, sipping her whisky very carefully as if she were already thinking of giving it up, and all this after a fortnight.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realised . . . ’ And then he stopped.

‘Hadn’t realised what?’

‘How much of you belongs to that island. How you accepted it all, how clearly you are one of them.’

‘I hadn’t realised it myself,’ she said. Of course they had only been married six months but even so, not to have known . . .

‘But do you not see,’ she insisted, ‘that in a way they are right?’

‘Right!’

‘Their lives are ordered,’ she said. ‘They have order.’

So that was what she was looking for. Order. Certainly he couldn’t give her that, not that sort of order. That sort of death.

‘I felt so secure,’ she said. ‘All the time I felt so secure.’

After your chaotic life, she meant. After your terrifying disorder.

‘They know where they are going,’ she said. ‘Where we are all going.’

Her blonde composed head turned towards him passionately. ‘Don’t you see? They are preparing. They are readying themselves.’

‘For death,’ he answered, seeing so clearly the black shawls around the breasts like black shields, the wind stropping the bare windy moor.