The Black Halo (46 page)

‘All that rubbish that happened long ago, what is that to you? You don’t go out and meet people, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re living in the past.’

And then she had started going to Bingo and he and his father had been left in peace, till she came home at night and then she would start again. ‘I met the headmaster’s wife and she
wouldn’t speak to me. Who does she think she is? Just because I used to work in the school canteen she thinks she won’t speak to me. I can tell her that I did a good day’s work
with the best of them instead of sitting on my bum as she does, drinking coffee all day. I had to work for my living and I’ll have you know that. I didn’t sit in my room all day reading
about the past. Tell me, what are you going to do about the car? Are you going to trade it in or not? That’s what I want to know and that’s what you’ve got to tell me.’

And her voice droned on and on and his father would look at Trill as if he was begging forgiveness for bringing his mother into the house in the first place. And Mr Trill would sit with his
father as if he was his companion for he preferred to be with him than to be out playing with the rough boys who were always going on about sex and how long their things were.

That was at the beginning before he was sent to boarding school, but even then Mr Trill liked to haul out his big books from his father’s shelves and try to read them.

‘Why don’t you get a proper big house?’ his mother would say to his father. ‘You’ve been in this house for years. I thought when we got married we would have a
bigger house but no, not you. You just want to stay in this old house till they put you in a box and I’m ashamed in front of all the other teachers’ wives. Why have they all got bigger
houses than you? And why don’t you put in for the headmaster’s job? You’ve as much right to it as anyone else, isn’t that true? You’ve worked hard enough. You slave
there every night and no one can speak to you.’

And the voice would continue, the beak would clack and the two, father and son, would huddle together in the study. And sometimes his father would tell him stories such as the one about Orpheus
and Eurydice, and Mr Trill would listen with bated breath. What a tragic beautiful story, that lady moving about Hades in white while Orpheus played his lyre to the cruel god.

And there he was . . . For Mr Trill had wandered till he came to a sunny glade in which there were flowers growing and trees like the rowans that he had seen in the country when he and his
father had gone for runs in the car. The berries were blood-red too and the tree leaned over Orpheus with all its pliant branches, and he was idly strumming his lyre.

No longer could Mr Trill see the soldiers, talking to each other, it was as if they had receded into the mist and left him alone in the sunlight with the singer. His heart nearly burst with joy
as he thought of his father telling him that famous story when he was a child, allowing him to enter that golden kingdom for a while, evading his mother’s sharp beak.

And here he was beside the singer in Hades, on a sunny hill with a river flowing past, black and complex as if it were a telephone talking endlessly to itself.

Orpheus, the sad singer, who had been so badly treated by Pluto, here he was in the . . . no, in the spirit, and Mr Trill could ask him questions, and talk to him. How astonishing that was, when
he remembered the cutting voice of his mother who thought that history was finished with, and whose whole concern was whether a certain painting matched the paper on the wall, and who didn’t
believe in the existence of heroes like Orpheus. No, on the contrary, she thought that all history was a dream, that everybody had his weakness which she would find out in order to bring him down
to the level of everybody else, including her own. She would pick holes in him, who did he think he was anyway? She wouldn’t like to see anyone putting on airs and graces in her presence. For
she was as good as Trill’s father any day, and don’t let either of them forget that fact or think they were any different just because she had worked in a canteen. She knew the world
just the same and knew what people were like and she was more practical than his father in spite of all his degrees. Let them both put that in their pipes and smoke it . . . And Mr Trill stood and
watched Orpheus who was idly strumming on his lyre till the latter turned towards him a head which streamed with golden hair. How girlish the face looked, how white the skin. Mr Trill felt
uncomfortable in the presence of the singer.

‘I suppose you’re another newcomer and you want to hear the story as well,’ said Orpheus petulantly. ‘Everyone wants to hear my story. It’s part of the tour. Well,
I suppose we might as well get it over with . . . What do you know of it already? Some of them know a little and some a lot. And then there are all those old fat sweaty woman who go on and on
saying, “Poor boy, poor boy.” If only they knew how ugly I thought they were . . . ’

Over his naked legs lay his lyre which he was strumming and Mr Trill said, ‘I know that your lyre was so entrancing that the stones and the beasts followed you. Isn’t that
right?’

‘Yes, that’s perfectly right,’ said Orpheus tossing his hair carelessly. ‘They did that. In those days I was certainly a good singer . . . And then I married
Eurydice.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mr Trill who was horrified to feel some doubt in his mind that this was really Orpheus for he didn’t look at all like the singer as he had imagined
him.

‘Oh, it was nothing wrong with Eurydice,’ said Orpheus. ‘No man could have had a better wife. She was compassionate, kind, a good listener, a companion, and I loved her to
excess.’ He paused and Trill said,

‘Why then do you blame her? You seem to me to blame her.’

‘Blame her? No I don’t blame her. There is nothing I can blame her for. If my friends visited me she was hospitable to them, and some of them were not all that reputable. Her love
was flawless, perfect, there was no other woman like her. She was faithful, adoring, practical. If I wished to compose she would leave me alone, if I didn’t she would talk to me. I never ever
saw her angry. Would you believe that was possible; and yet I can tell you it was true. And at times I thought if she died that I would be helpless, without anchor, without rudder. If I came in
drunk in the early hours of the morning she was always there waiting for me, but she never harangued me . . . And then she was bitten by the snake and she died.’

‘And so,’ said Mr Trill, ‘you went to Hades to save her and bring her back to the world again.’

‘That is what I intended to do,’ said Orpheus. ‘I played to Pluto in that land of minerals, I charmed even Cerberus himself. I crossed with Charon in his boat and brought my
lyre to the country of the dead. And Pluto said to me, ‘Now you can take her with you provided you do not look back.’ Such perfection she had had, such restfulness, such repose. And she
looked at me with such trust and complete love. How can I describe it to you or to anyone else? She stretched out her arms towards me with such longing. At that moment even the darkness seemed
clear and piercing.’

‘Well,’ said Mr Trill, ‘what happened? You were told not to look back and yet you did. Isn’t that right?’

Orpheus seemed not to hear him but to be as it were listening to a voice deep within himself. ‘So much I thought of in that moment. Never before had I played so harmoniously, so finely, as
when I was going in search of Eurydice, when I didn’t have Eurydice at all. Do you understand that? It was as if my whole soul had become part Hades, part Elysium, it was as if I needed
Hades. And for the first time ever I thought about my singing and my poetry, for never before had I thought of it. It had been as natural to me as the wind in the trees. I had not suffered any
sorrow. It was as if at that moment I suffered an agony greater than any I had ever suffered, as if I had to cross over into the shadows, and become self-conscious. And that self-consciousness was
necessary to me. Everything seemed to happen in that moment.’

‘What? What seemed to happen?’ said Mr Trill. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I knew I didn’t want Eurydice back.’

‘What?’

‘That’s true. I didn’t wish her back. If you can understand this, her perfection was too great for me, it damaged my poetry. Do you know what I did then? I placed my art, the
development of my art, before my love for Eurydice. I needed to suffer, it was in my nature to suffer. If I had brought Eurydice back, I myself would have died, I myself would have gone to
Hades.’

Mr Trill gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

‘It was strange to see them with their bony hands pleading with me to save Eurydice: but what did they know of art?’

Orpheus crossed his naked legs disturbingly, and continued, ‘I had to suffer all that there was to suffer, know all there was to know. That was my destiny. And my destiny was unavoidable.
From the very first moment that I had sung and played, I knew that my fate was to continue with my chosen art. And in Hades I felt that my power was greater than it had ever been, and that I needed
a perpetual Hades. I needed an unending search for Eurydice. And all that happened in a single moment, as we stared at each other across the space of Hades, in that dimness of iron and ghosts. How
can one ever describe that gaze? And let me tell you something else, the most bitter part of all, Eurydice knew what was happening, what had happened, and she agreed with me. She loved me so much
that she agreed with me. She did not complain nor make any other sign of entreaty. Does that not in itself tell of her perfection? How could I ever have deserved her?’

And Mr Trill recognised that unalterable selfishness of the artist, that shield and armour which not even human feeling can pierce and he mourned Eurydice, and her implacable generosity. And he
heard Orpheus’ voice as if in a dream.

‘And so I emerged into the upper world, and the stones were whiter than they had ever been and the trees were greener. And I wandered among the dead of this world, the perverted, the
fallen. There is no den or hovel that I have not visited, there is no practice that I have not attempted. And all my songs have been elegies for Eurydice for she is the perfection that I have not
attained. She had to die before I could possess her, and every song is a fresh attempt on her virginity, an interrogation of her love. Her love,’ he added hopelessly as if he did not know
what the word meant.

‘And I was determined that I wouldn’t remarry. And so, well, I turned to others for my satisfaction, not women, if you get me. But they had their revenge on me in the end.’

‘What others?’ Mr Trill was about to say when he saw Orpheus’s melting eyes resting on him and it was for a moment as if he was lost in a mist of desire, languid and faint.
Those white legs, those girlish hands and neck . . .

‘I . . . ’ said Trill, ‘I . . . ’ It was as if he had entered a world which was dazzling yet corrupt, attractive yet unnatural, a total Hades of the spirit, in which
Eurydice flowered poignantly among metals of a fierce flawed lustre. So this had been the reality of the story, this selfish passionate substance. For art to flourish, the human being must die,
must stretch out its hands unavailingly, must accept death that another life be created, another music be made. Was there truth nowhere? Was every narrative ambiguous? Had the classic world been a
deception?

‘I . . . ’ said Trill again and got to his feet and ran away as fast as possible on his short stumpy legs, away from Orpheus who, as if he had already forgotten him, went back to his
strumming again.

What a narrow escape, thought Trill, there had never been anything like that in Eastborough Grammar, though in the boarding school it had been different. But what was happening to his knowledge
of the classics? It was as if everyone was determined to tell him the opposite of what he wished to hear and know about.

At that very moment Trill heard a voice saying, ‘Hullo, old chap,’ and he looked and there, standing in front of him, was Harris. Here among the shades, Harris whom he had hated so
much.

‘Well, well, well, so this is Rosy,’ said Harris, his flushed moustached face gazing down at him. ‘I often wondered what had happened to you. Little Rosy whose head I used to
plunge in the basin.’

‘I’m going to run away,’ thought Trill feeling a trembling in his legs. I’m going to disgrace myself and run away. But he didn’t. He stayed where he was, in the
swirling mist.

‘It’s all right,’ said Harris. ‘I’m not going to touch you. As a matter of fact I’d be glad of someone to talk to. It gets boring down here and I never seem
to meet anyone I know.’

But Trill was seeing in front of him the faces of boys distorted with cruelty: he heard their laughter and felt again the cold harsh water on his face.

‘Ah, those were good days,’ said Harris amiably. ‘Do you remember old Horace with his Latin and Greek? Silly old duffer. Never did me any good, that’s for
sure.’

‘What did you do then?’ said Trill tremblingly.

‘Oh, I went into business. No need for Latin or Greek there, I can tell you. Did quite well.’

And his face faded and solidified, grew and withered.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Trill in a high squeaking voice. ‘I don’t believe you. You were always cruel and a liar. I don’t believe that you did well at all.
I believe that you were a – commercial traveller. That was all you were fit for. I hated you.’

‘Yes, I suppose you did. I suppose you did but we’re both grown men now. We don’t need to keep up that feud.’

‘We do, we do,’ shrilled Trill daringly. ‘Of course we do. Do you know that I had nightmares about you? Why did you torture me so much? I didn’t do anything to
you.’

‘Well, old boy, you looked so helpless, that was all, and it passed the time. God, those essays we did, and those rules. Lights out at ten. It was just that you were one of nature’s
losers, old boy, that’s all. All you were interested in was handing in your comps all present and correct.’

‘But I didn’t do anything to you and you used to put my head in the basin and tie up my bedclothes. Why did you do that?’