The Black Halo (39 page)

I went up to Frothy who still had his back to me and said,

‘Please, sir.’

He turned on me a face bereft of all expression, a totally empty face, and one which was deathly pale.

It was as if he didn’t recognise me.

‘Please, sir,’ I said again.

Then it was as if his face assumed expression, became firm and set, knowledge returned to the eyes, and he said,

‘Oh, it’s you, Turner.’

‘Yes, sir, please, sir.’ And I handed him the Beecham’s Powders and he took them and waved away the change which I offered from my sweaty hand. It seemed to me at that moment
that he was not like a teacher at all, and that his lips were trembling.

I nearly said to him that the ring was lying on the floor and that if he wanted me to I would retrieve it for him but I didn’t say anything. I moved away from him, as from something
irretrievably stricken, and ran with the light steps of youth to my next class. I suppose he must have bent down to get the ring, for no one found it later, but I didn’t see him doing it.

I was trembling with excitement all through the next class which was Latin, and where I wrote down a long list of irregular verbs. After the period was over I told the others my story. They
would hardly believe me, and my news ran through the whole school: the engagement had been broken off. That, I was told, was the significance of the thrown ring. In any case pupils later noticed
the abstraction and bad temper of the two protagonists. What a story – a broken romance, a romance that was finally over. And so it proved. They were never seen together again. And never
again did Frothy send anyone for Beecham’s Powders, as far as I know.

Some hope that he had nourished finally died that day and he became fiercer and fiercer. No, he did not love us any longer, he hated us, he was determined that we would learn about algebra and
geometry, not for our own sakes but for his own. The number of passes increased and, as they did so, so we grew to hate him more and more. Then as I climbed the school, shedding my shorts and
wearing trousers, I forgot about him, for we now had a different teacher.

Today I opened the paper and read that Frothy had died in an old people’s home in the town where he had taught. I had heard vague stories about him, that he had become odder and odder, his
rages more and more incoherent, the pupils uncontrollable and hostile. No one however dared to be unruly in Miss Simpson’s class. I thought of him sitting in a chill breeze outside the old
people’s home, shadows shaped like parallelograms at his feet while his hands trembled under a red blanket. I often wondered what the quarrel had been about but I never found out. I despised
myself for the horrid little squirt that I had been and decided to go to his funeral.

It was a fine summer’s day again, and there were only a very few people there, not even Miss Simpson, whom I would certainly have recognised even after all those years. I had hoped that
there might have been a representation from the school but there wasn’t. The only person I met there whom I knew was Soupy who had been in the same class and was now a reporter on the local
paper. As the coffin was being lowered into the ground I said to him,

‘Tragic, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. Then he glanced at me in a peculiar way and said, ‘It was you who found the ring on the floor, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That was the day they broke off the engagement. I heard you handed it to him and he burst out crying. He had sent you for a tonic or something, isn’t that right?’

‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘He didn’t burst out crying.’ And I was suddenly angry with Soupy for getting all the facts wrong.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said catching up with me. ‘Do you know that he had a stroke the year before he was due to retire. Miss Simpson never went to see him. She’s
still quite fit, I saw her the other day. She was striding along the front looking like a boxer. She wore tweeds and had a dog with her. Are you coming for a drink?’

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got time.’ And I left him.

The chemist’s I had bought the Beecham’s Powders from was no longer there. In its place was a grocer’s shop.

It seemed to me that the best thing about geometry was it never lied to you, which is why I myself am a mathematics teacher as well. It has nothing to do with pain or loss. Its refuge is always
secure and without mythology.

He wore a ghostly white moustache and looked like a major in the First World War which is exactly what he had been. On our way to school – he being close to retiring age
– he would tell me stories about the First World War and the Second World War, for he had been in both. As we were passing the chemist’s shop he would be describing Passchendaele,
walking along, stiff and erect, his eyes glittering behind his glasses.

‘And there I was crouched in this trench, with my water bottle empty. I had somehow or another survived. All my good boys were dead, some of them up to their chests in mud. The Jerries had
got hold of our plans of attack, you see. What was I to do? I had to wait till night, that was clear. When the sun was just going down I crawled along the trench and then across No Man’s
Land. I met a Jerry and the struggle was fast and furious. I am afraid I had to use the bayonet. But the worst was not over yet, for one of my sentries fired on me. But I eventually managed to give
him the password. After that I was all right.’

He would pause and then as we passed the ironmonger’s he would start on another story. He taught chemistry in the school and instead of telling his pupils about solutions or whatever they
do in chemistry, he would spend his time talking about the Marne or the Somme. He spoke more about the First World War than about the Second.

Once at a school party there was a quarrel between him and the Head of the English Department, who also had been in the First World War and believed that he had won it. He questioned a statement
which Morrison had made. It was, I think, a question of a date, and they grew more and more angry, and wouldn’t speak to each other after that for a year or more. As I quite liked both of
them, it was difficult to know whose side to take.

The headmaster didn’t know what to do with him, for parents came to the school continually to complain about his lessons, which as I have said consisted mostly of accounts of his
adventures in France and Flanders. The extraordinary thing was that he never repeated a story: all his tales were realistic and detailed and one could almost believe that they had happened. Either
these things had been experienced by him or they formed part of a huge mythology of legends which he had memorised, but that had happened to others. I was then Deputy Head of the school and it was
my duty to see the parents and listen to their complaints.

‘He will soon be retiring,’ I would tell them soothingly, ‘and he has been a good teacher in his time.’ And they would answer, ‘That’s all very well but our
children’s education is being ruined. When are you going to speak to him?’ I did in fact try to speak to him a few times but before I could start he was telling me another of his
stories and I found, somehow or another, that there was no way in which I could introduce my complaint to him.

‘There was an angel, you know, at Mons and I saw it. It was early morning and we were going over the top and we saw this figure with white wings bending over us from the sky. I thought it
must have been an effect of the sun but it wasn’t that. It was as if it was blessing us. We had our bayonets out and the light was flashing from them. I was in charge of a company at the
time, the colonel – Colonel Wilson – having been killed.’

This time I was so interested that I said to him, ‘Are you quite sure that it was an angel? After all the rays of the sun streaming down, and you I presume being in an excited frame of
mind . . . ?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t that. It was definitely an angel. I am quite sure of that. I could actually see its eyes.’ And he turned to me. ‘They were so
compassionate, you have no idea what they looked like. You could never forget them.’

In those days we had lines and the pupils would assemble in the quadrangle in front of the main door, and Morrison loved the little military drill so much that we gave him the duty most of the
time. He would make them dress, keeping two paces between the files, and they would march into the school in an orderly manner.

A young bearded teacher called Cummings, who was always bringing educational books into the staff-room, didn’t like this militarism at all. One day he said to me, ‘He’s
teaching them to be soldiers. He should be stopped.’

‘How old are you?’ I asked him.

‘Twenty-two. What’s that to do with it?’

‘Twenty-two,’ I said. ‘Run along and teach your pupils French.’

He didn’t like it but I didn’t want to explain to him why his age was so important. Still, I couldn’t find a way of speaking to Morrison without offending him.

‘You’ll just have to come straight out with it,’ my wife said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘What else can you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

I was very conscious of the fact that I was fifteen years younger than Morrison.

One day I said to him, ‘How do you see your pupils?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘How do you see them?’ I repeated.

‘See them?’ he said. And then, ‘They are too young to fight, yet, but I see them as ready for it. Soon they will be taken.’

‘Taken?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just as we were taken.’

After a silence he said, ‘One or two of them would make good officers. It’s the gas that’s the worst.’

‘Have you told them about the gas?’ I said, seizing on a tenuous connection between the First World War and chemistry.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it was horrifying.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘explain to them about the gas. Why don’t you do that?’

‘We never used it,’ he said. ‘The Jerries tried to use it but the wind was against them.’ However he promised that he would explain about the gas. I was happy that I had
found a method of getting him to teach something of his subject and tried to think of other connections. But I couldn’t think of any more.

One day he came to see me and said, ‘A parent called on me today.’

‘Called on you?’ I said angrily. ‘He should have come through me.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘He came directly to me. He complained that I was an inefficient teacher. Do you think I’m an inefficient teacher?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I have to warn them, you see,’ he said earnestly. ‘But I suppose I had better teach them chemistry after all.’

From that time onwards, he became more and more melancholy and lost-looking. He drifted through the corridors with his white ghostly moustache, as if he was looking for a battle to take part in.
Then he stopped coming to the staff-room and stayed in his classroom all the time. There were another three months to go to his retirement and if he carried on this way I knew that he would fade
away and die. Parents ceased to come and see me about him, but I was worried.

One day I called the best chemistry student in the school – Harrison – to my room and I said,

‘How is Mr Morrison these days?’

Harrison paused a moment,

‘He’s very absent minded, sir,’ he said at last. We looked at each other meaningfully, he tall and handsome in his blue uniform with the gold braid at the cuffs of his jacket.
I fancied for a terrible moment that I saw a ghostly white moustache flowering at his lips.

‘I see,’ I said, fiddling with a pen which was lying on top of the red blotting paper which in turn was stained with drops of ink, like flak.

‘How are you managing, the members of the class, I mean?’ I said.

‘We’ll be all right, sir,’ said Harrison. Though nothing had been said between us he knew what I was talking about.

‘I’ll leave you to deal with it, then,’ I said.

The following day Morrison came gleefully to see me.

‘An extraordinary thing happened to me,’ he said. ‘Do you know that boy Harrison? He is very brilliant of course and will certainly go to university. He asked me about the
First World War. He was very interested. I think he will make a good officer.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘He has a very fine mind. His questions were very searching.’

‘I see,’ I said, doodling furiously.

‘I cannot disguise the fact that I was unhappy there for a while. I was thinking, “Here they are and I am not able to warn them of what is going to happen to them.” You see, no
one told us then there would be two World Wars. I was in Sixth year when the First World War broke out and I was studying chemistry just like Harrison. They told us that we would be home for
Christmas. Then after I came back from the war I did chemistry in university. I forgot about the war, and then the Second one came along. By that time I was teaching here, as you know.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘In the First World War everyone was so young. We were so ignorant. No one told us anything. We were very enthusiastic, you see. You recollect of course that there hadn’t been a
really big war since the Napoleonic War. Of course there had been the Boer War and the Crimean War but these were side issues.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘You were in the Second World War yourself,’ he said, ‘so you will know.’

But as I had been in the Air Force that didn’t in his opinion count. And yet I too had seen scarves of flame like those of students streaming from ’planes as they exploded in the
sky. I felt the responsibility of my job intensely. Though I was so much younger I felt as if I was the older of the two. I felt protective towards him as if it was I who was the officer and he the
young starry-eyed recruit.

After Harrison had asked him his questions Morrison was quite happy again and could return to the First World War with a clear conscience. Then one day a parent came to see me. It was in fact
Major Beith, a red-faced man with a fierce moustache who had been an officer in the Second World War.

‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ he asked me. ‘My son isn’t learning any chemistry. Have you seen his report card? It’s bloody awful.’