The Black Halo (77 page)

‘I wonder why my bed is wet,’ Miss Leggat would say.

‘That is because you have wet it yourself,’ said Christine.

‘Not at all, not at all, that woman must have been in my bed,’ and she pointed to the occupant of the next bed who was staring into space.

‘Make sure that you do your homework. How else will you get on in the world?’

Christine sang as she moved about the ward.

Miss Campbell called her by the name Helen and thought that she was her daughter.

‘When are you going to take me out of here?’ she would say.

‘It won’t be long now,’ said Christine.

Miss Leggat talked regularly to her mother who had been dead for twenty years.

‘I am sorry,’ she would say, ‘I’ll come in when I’ve finished playing.’

Her face became dreamy and lost and she would speak to her dolls.

‘I don’t know my own name,’ Christine would say to herself, but she was happy for she liked working with old people. Her own mother had died when she herself was fifteen and
she was now eighteen. She had died of cancer. Her father had wept for a whole day and then had gone fishing as he had done in the past. But what was worst of all he had begun to drink heavily.

‘God is a bugger,’ he would say. ‘What else is there to do?’

‘Is that not my taxi now?’ said Mrs Simmons but it was actually a taxi to take the nurses to the dance.

They left her with no handbag standing beside the door, crying gently.

‘If I stay here long I shall go off my head,’ said Christine to herself as she emptied a bedpan while the sun poured in through the windows.

‘My child is due any day now,’ said Mrs Ross. ‘He will be a big bouncing boy. I just know it.’

Her daughters never visited her, and she would sing Scottish songs when it came into her head. Sometimes she would whisper a lullaby very low.

‘Is this what we are going to come to?’ said Christine to herself for she did not want to go home especially as her father was drinking so heavily. She remembered the day her mother
had been buried. The young minister had worn a black cloak, and she had seen the sheep nuzzling at the bushes not far from the graveyard. The other fishermen had been there in their black clothes,
standing solidly on the earth, after the swaying motion of their boats. The coffin had descended among a hum of bees. A black head had lifted itself from the bushes.

‘I will now take your name,’ said Miss Leggat opening an imaginary register.

Christine nearly said Helen but caught herself in time.

‘Christine,’ she said. If only that taxi would come. But then taxis were black as hearses.

‘And what are you going to be when you grow up?’ said Miss Leggat brightly.

‘I shall be a nurse,’ said Christine.

‘A nurse. That’s very good. That’s very good indeed. But will you like a hospital?’

Her father stumbled in the door and went straight to the bathroom and vomited. There were scales of fish on his hands.

The sea heaved about her, and through one of the waves she could see her mother’s face twisted in pain.

‘Helen,’ said Miss Campbell, ‘I wish you would come in earlier. And what was that I found in your room last night?’

‘It was nothing at all,’ she nearly screamed. ‘And anyway it isn’t your business.’

She looked around her, frightened that she might actually have spoken.

‘Is there anything wrong?’ said Sister Hogg. ‘You should go out more. Why don’t you go to a dance?’

‘I met your mother at a dance,’ said her father tearfully, ‘She was wearing a yellow dress. We danced the Highland Schottische.’

His vomit was as yellow as the sun and he writhed in her arms as she tried to put him to bed.

The leaves became greener and greener and she saw the sheep through the window of the ward.

Miss Leggat was dying and said, ‘Now you make sure that you pass all your examinations. I have done my best for you. Your English is good but your Arithmetic is weak.’

‘Please don’t leave me,’ Christine pleaded in silence. ‘I’ll do the physical jerks.’ And she did them but when she looked at the bed Miss Leggat’s eyes
were blank, and her mouth had fallen open.

‘It was only to be expected,’ said Sister Hogg. ‘Your colour isn’t good.’

Christine thought she was referring to the crayons but didn’t say anything.

‘If only the taxi would come,’ but the taxi never came.

‘If only the child would be born,’ but the grey haired woman stared proudly at her belly and nothing happened.

The floor of the ward swayed, as if it were the sea, and the sheep looked in at the window.

‘Helen,’ said Mrs Campbell.

Is she really dead, thought Christine.

‘She kept the register beautifully and she was so lonely. She had no one but her pupils all her days.’

She dreamed that the taxi came for Mrs Simmons and that she found her handbag. She dreamed that a child crawled about the floor of the ward and was taught Arithmetic by Miss Leggat. She dreamed
that Helen came to see Mrs Campbell.

Sister Hogg kept asking her if she was well.

Miss Leggat sat up in her coffin and marked the register among a dense hum of bees.

When she herself looked in the mirror she thought that her hair was turning grey. The chairs by the side of the beds became branches. There is something I have to do, she thought, but I
don’t know what it is. The sockets of the old women were as pink as the legs of seagulls; and they hardly ever slept.

At visiting time she sat by the side of Mrs Campbell’s bed and told her that she had come to see her. Her name was Helen and she was sorry for having been out every night.

‘I am glad you came,’ said Mrs Campbell, ‘someone is stealing my money.’

Sister Hogg told her to come with her for a while and led her out of the ward.

‘I think you should take a holiday,’ she said.

‘I would do that,’ said Christine, ‘if it weren’t for the sheep. And anyway I have to wait for the baby.’

‘What baby?’

‘Mrs Ross’s baby, of course.’ It was odd how pink Sister Hogg’s sockets were.

‘I see.’

‘And Miss Leggat is going to teach him Arithmetic. I shall go on holiday when the taxi comes.’

‘What taxi?’

‘The hearse,’ she said. ‘There will be lots of flowers.’

Sister Hogg took her hand in hers and looked deep in her eyes. Her own eyes were frightened to death.

‘Come,’ she said.

How sunlit the corridor was, and her hand in her mother’s hand was warm and trusting.

They walked together to another room in which Miss Leggat, young and beautiful and clad in white was marking a register.

Christine sat down obediently in a chair.

‘My name is Helen,’ she said, ‘and my father drinks all the time.’ She added, ‘When the taxi comes don’t forget to let me know.’

Miss Leggat opened a drawer and a baby came out pink as a seagull’s leg. It howled and howled and howled, and all around it the bees hummed and the birds sang.

The first time she saw the kitten it was at the railway line and she was frightened the train would run over it. It was small and entirely black, and it crouched with
unblinking eyes staring at her. She knew that there would be a train in fifteen minutes or so and she walked along the railway track towards the kitten, which was still waiting. She pretended not
to look at it as she plodded along in her wellingtons. Then quite suddenly she bent and scooped it up in her arms. It dug its claws into her but she didn’t release it. She lifted it till it
was lying against her breast. She had decided to take it home.

As she was walking through the long wet grass to the house she felt it struggling and told herself, ‘The only reason I am taking it is because it may be killed by the train or some other
animal.’ But she wasn’t sure that that was the real reason. If her mother were still alive she wouldn’t have wanted a kitten in the house. She disliked cats and dogs, indeed all
animals. She herself had once brought a kitten home after being given it by a fellow pupil but her mother had made her give it back that same night. Her mother had died two years ago, after an
illness impatiently borne.

When she arrived at the house she opened the back door which led into the kitchen and then shut it quickly behind her. She laid the kitten down and it raced round the chairs as if it were mad.
She went to the cupboard and filled a saucer with milk and laid it on the floor. The kitten was crouched in a corner watching her steadily. ‘Puss, puss,’ she said but it didn’t
move. It didn’t go near the milk. She thought she would leave it in the kitchen and went into the living-room pulling the door shut behind her. She took out the paper and began to read it,
all the time thinking about the kitten.

She read a story about a bachelor son who had killed his mother with an axe. When she herself was twenty-six she had tried to run away from home, from her own mother. She had somehow sensed that
it was her last chance to do so. As she was making her way to the train with her case her mother who was shouting after her seemed to stagger and fall. She had run back over the autumn leaves, case
in hand, thinking that she had killed her. She had helped her into the house, given her some brandy, and revived her. That was her last attempt at escaping.

While she was reading the paper she could hear the kitten scratching against the outside door. After a while it quietened down. She slowly opened the door and saw it lapping the milk. When it
heard her it turned and looked at her and then went back to drinking, its eyes slant and inscrutable. She opened the door into the scullery and it ran through behind her into a corner where there
was an old jacket. She decided to make tea for herself and put on the kettle. For some time after her mother had died she would put out two cups but now she always remembered only to put out one.
She drank her tea slowly and all the time the kitten on the other side of the door was quiet.

Strangely enough, she missed her mother even though it seemed as though she had hated her most of her life. But though she realised that she had no love left for her, her death had almost broken
her. She hadn’t realised that emptiness was worse than hate. When she used to go for the messages her mother would say, ‘What took you so long? I thought something had happened to
you.’ Now she watched a lot of TV though she didn’t particularly care for any of the programmes. After so many years of enforced isolation no one came to see her.

In the morning she left the outer door open when she went for the coal and the kitten ran out, disappearing quickly through the garden under the bird house and into the long grass which led down
to the railway line. She didn’t know what it lived on. She thought that probably it wouldn’t come back. No one much had ever liked her and it wasn’t surprising that the kitten
didn’t either. She sometimes felt that she exuded an odour of complete negativity. ‘I think you want to put me into a home,’ her mother would say. ‘But I won’t
go.’

In actual fact she had never considered putting her mother into a home. She now thought that the reason she hadn’t done so was because she had a sixth sense of what loneliness would mean.
She even used her mother to keep away from people and also to avoid tasks which she didn’t want to do. She had in fact exploited her mother as much as her mother had exploited her. For
instance the minister had wondered whether she would like to play the organ in the church but she had made the excuse that she couldn’t leave her mother. In the same manner she had managed to
evade serving on committees. Many people admired her for her sacrifice but that didn’t mean they liked her.

She wondered what might have happened if she had escaped that day. She had intended to take the train to Glasgow and find a job there, but the odd thing was that afterwards when she replaced her
clothes in the wardrobe she found that she hadn’t taken a toothbrush or a nightdress. Perhaps she hadn’t really meant to go at all. Perhaps she had been waiting for her mother to stop
her. She tried to imagine herself serving in a shop in Glasgow. But the thought didn’t feel very detailed or real.

That day she had ham and potatoes and tinned pineapples for her dinner and all the time she was wondering if the kitten would come back. Its wild eyes had disturbed her, and yet she was afraid
that it would be killed. It belonged to a world that she could hardly envisage, hedgerows, ditches, deep, thick bracken. What things preyed on kittens? Perhaps stoats, weasels, big birds. She saw
it eeling through the greenery, stalking birds, mice, voles. She shivered thinking of the darkness of its surroundings, of the secret scurryings, of the broken slummy places among which it might
move. Its adventures frightened and yet attracted her.

In the afternoon a letter came addressed to her mother. She stared at it in amazement and after crying a little put it into the waste-paper basket. It was about some furniture or other. She
stared out of the window at the people passing along the road, some of them glancing in but not able to see her. There was Cathie and Mary, and Jimmy who worked at the quarry. At night many of the
villagers would go to the local hotel for a drink. The kitten definitely wouldn’t come back. It had taken one look at her and decided that it didn’t like her. Its eyes were too wild and
free and too piercing. In a strange sort of way she didn’t want it to come back.

She read a book and prepared for early bed. She had switched on the electric blanket and couldn’t help but compare her own comfort with the wet spaces through which the kitten might be
compelled to wander. Before she went to bed she opened the door which led from the kitchen and looked out but she couldn’t see the kitten. There was a moon high in the sky, very bright, like
a brilliant barren stone. She snuggled into her bed and was soon asleep. She didn’t dream at all.

In the morning she had another look out but the kitten was not to be seen and she determined to forget about it: for all she knew it might now be dead. Nevertheless she put some milk on the
saucer. That day she washed her clothes and hung them out on the line to dry. There were still some roses in bloom but most of their petals were lying on the ground.