The Black Halo (63 page)

‘Is your seed not growing yet?’ I ask my next-door neighbour.

‘No,’ he says, ‘it is going to be a hard year. How is your mother?’

‘Not well,’ I say, ‘she lives in a world of her own.’

He smiles, but says nothing. He was ten years old when I left this place with my bag on my shoulder. That day the birds were singing from the hedges and they each had one green eye and one
blue.

I begin to draw my mother to see if her reason will come back to her. I see her as a path that has been overgrown with weeds. Her apron is a red phantom which one can hardly see and the chickens
to which she threw meal have big ferocious beaks. Nevertheless, she does take an interest in what I am doing, though she cannot stay still, and her eyes are beginning to focus.

One day – the happiest of my life – she speaks to me again and recognises me. ‘You are my son,’ she says, ‘and you left me. Why did you leave me?’ I try to
tell her, but I cannot. The necessity for it is beyond her understanding, and this is the worst of all to bear.

That night before she goes to bed she says, ‘Good night, my son,’ and in the middle of the night she tucks the blanket about me to keep me warm. I feel that she is watching over me
and I sleep better than I have done for many years. In the morning I am happy and wake up as the light pours through the windows. She is sitting by my bed with a shawl wrapped round her.

‘Mother,’ I cry, ‘I am here. I have come back.’ The windows change their shape as I say it. But she doesn’t answer me. She is dead. She is a statue. She is solid
and changeless. All that day I kneel in front of her, staring into her unchanging face.

In the evening one of her eyes becomes green and the other blue. I take my bag in my hand and leave the house. The birds are singing in the hedges and a man is walking through a ploughed field.
I do not turn back and wave. The houses are turning into cardboard and the violins are stuck to their walls. I feel sticky stuff on my clothes, my hands and my face. I carry the village with me,
stamped all over my body, and take it with me, roof, door, bird, branch, pails of water. I cross the Atlantic with it.

‘Welcome,’ they say, ‘but what have you got there?’

‘It is a nest,’ I say, ‘and a coffin.’

‘Or, to put it another way, a coffin and a nest.’

I tell you what it is. I sit here night after night and he sits there night after night. In that chair opposite me. The two of us. I’m eighty years old and he’s
eighty-four. And that’s what we do, we sit and think. I’ll tell you what I sit and think about. I sit and think, I wish I had married someone else, that is what I think about.

And he thinks the same. I know he does. Though he doesn’t say anything or at least much. Though I don’t say much either. We have nothing to say: we have run out of conversation.
That’s what we’ve done. I look at his mouth and it’s moving. But most of the time he’s not speaking. I don’t love him. I don’t know what love is. I thought once
I knew what love was. I thought it was something to do with being together for ever. I really thought that. Now I know that it’s not that. At least it’s not that, whatever else it is.
We do not speak to each other
.

He smokes a pipe sometimes and his mouth moves. He is like a cartoon. I used to read the papers and I used to see cartoons in them but now I don’t read the papers at all. I don’t
read anything. Nor does he. Not even the sports pages though he once told me, no, more than once, he told me that he used to be a great footballer, ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he
would say. ‘What wing?’ I would say, and he would smile gently as if I were an idiot. ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he would say. But now he doesn’t go down any
wing. He’s even given up the tomato plants. And he imagines he’s Napoleon. It’s because of that film he says. There were red squares of soldiers in it. He sits in his chair as if
he’s Napoleon, and he says things to me in French though I don’t know French and he doesn’t know French. He prefers Napoleon to his tomato plants. He sits in his chair, his legs
spread apart, and he thinks about winning Waterloo. I think he’s mad. He must be, mustn’t he? Sometimes he will look up and say ‘Josephine’, the one word
‘Josephine’, and the only work he ever did was in a distillery. Napoleon never worked in a distillery. I am sure that never happened. He’s a comedian really. He sits there
dreaming about Napoleon and sometimes he goes out and examines the ground to see if it’s wet, if his cavalry will be all right. He kneels down and studies the ground and then he sits and
puffs at his pipe and he goes and takes a pair of binoculars and he studies the landscape. I never thought he was Napoleon when I married him. I just said
I do
. Nor did he. I used to give
him his sandwiches in a box when he went to work and he just took them in those days. I don’t think he ever asked for wine. Now he thinks the world has mistreated him, and he wants an empire.
Still they do say they need something when they retire. The only thing is, he’s been retired for twenty years or maybe fifteen. He came home one day and he put his sandwich box on the table
and he said, ‘I’m retired’ (that was in the days when we spoke to each other) and I said, ‘I know that.’ And he went and looked after his tomato plants. In those days
he also loved the cat and was tender to his tomato plants. Now we no longer have a cat. We don’t even have a tortoise. One day, the day he stopped speaking to me, he said, ‘I’ve
been hard done by. Life has done badly by me.’ And he didn’t say anything else. I think it was five o’clock on our clock that day, the 25th of March it would have been, or maybe
the 26th.

Actually he looks stupid in that hat and that coat. Anyone would in the twentieth century.

I on the other hand spend most of my time making pictures with shells. I make a picture of a woman who has wings and who flies about in the sky and below her there is a man who looks like a
prince and he is riding through a forest. The winged woman also has a cooker. I find it odd that she should have a cooker but there it is, why shouldn’t she have a cooker if she wants to, I
always say. On the TV everyone says, ‘I always say’, and then they have a cup of tea. At the most dramatic moments. And then I see him sitting opposite me in his Napoleon’s coat
and I think we are on TV. Sometimes I almost say that. But then I realise that we aren’t speaking since we have nothing to speak about and I don’t say anything. I don’t even wash
his coat for him.

In any case, how has he been hard done by? He married me, didn’t he? I have given him the best years of my life. I have washed, scrubbed, cooked, slaved for him, and I have made sandwiches
for him to put in his tin box every day. The same box.

And our children have gone away and they never came back. He used to say it was because of me, I say it’s because of him. Who would want Napoleon for a father and anyway Napoleon
didn’t spend his time looking after tomato plants, though he doesn’t do that now. He writes despatches which he gives to the milkman. He writes things like ‘Tell Soult he must
bring up another five divisions. Touty sweet.’ And the milkman looks at the despatches and then he looks at me and then I give him the money for the week’s milk. He is actually a very
understanding milkman.

The fact that he wears a white coat is neither here nor there. Nothing is either here or there.

And sometimes he will have forgotten that the day before he asked for five divisions, and he broods, and he writes ‘Please change the whole educational system of France. It is not just.
And please get me a new sandwich box.’

He is really an unusual man. And I loved him once. I loved him when he was an ordinary man and when he would keep up an ordinary conversation when he would tell me what had happened at the
distillery that day, though nothing much ever happened. Nothing serious. Nothing funny either. It was a very quiet distillery, and the whisky was made without trouble. Maybe it’s because he
left the distillery that he feels like Napoleon. And he changed the chair too. He wanted a bigger chair so that he could watch the army manoeuvres in the living-room and yet have enough room for
the TV-set and the fridge. It’s very hard living with a man who believes that there is an army next to the fridge. But I think that’s because he imagines Napoleon in Russia,
that’s why he wants something cold. And on days when Napoleon is in Russia he puts on extra clothes and he wants plenty of meat in the fridge. The reason for that I think is that the meat is
supposed to be dead French soldiers.

He is not mad really. He’s just living in a dream. Maybe he could have been Napoleon if he hadn’t been born at 26 Sheffield Terrace. It’s not easy being Napoleon if
you’re born in a council house. The funny thing is that he never notices the aerial. How could there be an aerial or even a TV-set in Napoleon’s time, but he doesn’t notice that.
Little things like that escape him, though in other ways he’s very shrewd. In small ways. Like for instance he will remember and he’ll say to the milkman, ‘You didn’t bring
me these five divisions yesterday. Where the hell did you get to? Spain will kill me.’ And there will be a clank of bottles and the milkman will walk away. That makes him really angry.
Negligence of any kind. Inefficiency. He’ll get up and shout after him, ‘How the hell am I going to keep an empire together with idiots like you about? Eh? Tell me that, my fine
friend.’ Mr Merriman thinks he is Joan of Arc. That causes a lot of difficulty with dresses though not as much as you would imagine since she wore men’s armour anyway. I dread the day
Wellington will move in. I fear for my china.

Anyway that’s why we don’t speak. Sometimes he doesn’t even recognise me and he calls me Antoinette and he throws things at me. I don’t know what to do, really I
don’t. I’m at my wits’ end. It would be cruel to send for a doctor. I don’t hate him that much. I think maybe I should tell him I’m leaving but where can you go when
you’re eighty years old, though he is four years younger than me; I would have to get a home help: he doesn’t think of things like that. One day he said to me, ‘I don’t need
you. I don’t need anyone. My star is here.’ And he pointed at his old woollen jacket which had a large hole in it. Sometimes I can hardly keep myself from laughing when I’m doing
my shells. Who could? Unless one was an angel?

And then sometimes I think, Maybe he’s trying it on. And I watch out to see if I can trap him in anything, but I haven’t yet. His despatches are very orderly. He sends me orders
like, ‘I want the steak underdone today. And the wine at a moderate temperature.’ And I make the beefburgers and coffee as usual.

Yesterday he suddenly said, ‘I remember you. I used to know you, when we were young. There were woods. I associate you with woods. With autumn woods.’ And then his face became
slightly blue. I thought he was going to fall, coming out of his dream. But no. He said, ‘It was outside Paris and I met you in a room with mirrors. I loved you once before my destiny became
my sorrow.’ These were exactly his words, I think. He never used to talk like that. He would mostly grunt and say, ‘What happened to the salt?’ But now he doesn’t say
anything as simple as that. No indeed. Not at all.

Sometimes he draws up a chair and dictates notes to me. He says things like, ‘We attack the distillery at dawn. Junot will create a diversion on the left and then Soult will strike at the
right while I punch through the centre.’

He was never in a war in his life. He was kept out because of his asthma and his ulcer. And he never had a horse in his life. All he had was his sandwich box. And now he wants a coronet on it.
Imagine, a coronet on a sandwich box. Will this never end? Ever? Will it? I suffer. It is I who put up with this for he never leaves the house, he is too busy organising the French educational
service and the Church. ‘We will have pink robes for the nuns,’ he says. ‘That will teach them the power of the flesh which they
abominate
,’ and he shouts across
the fence at Joan of Arc and says, ‘You’re an impostor, sir. Joan of Arc didn’t have a moustache.’ I don’t know what I shall do. He is sitting there so calm now, so
calm with his stick in his hand like a sceptre. I think he has fallen asleep. Let me put your crown right, child. It’s fallen all to one side. I could never stand untidiness. Let me pick up
your stick, its fallen from your hand. We are doomed to be together. We are doomed to say to the milkman, ‘Bring up your five divisions’, for morning after morning. We are doomed to
comment on Joan of Arc’s moustache. We are together for ever. Poor Napoleon. Poor lover of mine met long ago in the autumn woods before they became your empire. Poor dreamer.

And yet . . . what a game . . . maybe I should try on your crown just for one moment, just for a short moment. And take your stick just for a moment, just for a short short moment. Before you
wake up. And maybe I’ll tell the milkman, We want ten divisions today. Ten not five. Maybe that would be the best idea, to get it finished with, once and for all. Ten instead of five.

And don’t forget the cannon.

On that Christmas Day she was the only customer in the hotel for lunch. ‘I shall take the turkey soup,’ she said. The dining-room was very large and she sat at her
table as if she was on a desert island. Above her head were green streamers and green hats and in the middle of the dining-room there was a green tree.

Somewhere in Asia the peasants were digging.

The fact is, she thought, I’ll never see him again. He is irretrievably dead. The pain was inside her like a jagged star.

There was this particular peasant with a bald head and when he was finished digging he went home to his family and played the guitar. It might have been China or Korea but when his mouth moved
she didn’t understand what he was saying. To think, she mused, that there were all these peasants in the world, and all these languages.

She drank her turkey soup and watched the two waitresses talking, their arms folded.

She had watched him die for three weeks. His pain was intolerable. After that there were the papers to be checked. One day she had left the house with a case and gone to the hotel in which she
now was.