The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

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 Kitten

  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 t
he 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.

  She took in more coal and filled all her buckets. She hoovered the house and dusted the furniture and the pictures. She stood for a long while gazing at a photograph of her mother who was wearing a white blouse and black skirt: the face was very determined and there was a big brooch at the throat. Her hate for her had disappeaed and she could almost begin to understand her. After all, who wanted to be old, to be a nuisance? Who wasn’t frightened of being put in a home?

  She herself might end up in a home when she grew old and weak. But that, she hoped, would not be for a few years yet since she was only fifty-four. Her whole life, she realised, had been meaningless and without substance; she might as well not have been born. She had hardly any memories to recall, except ones of childish deprivation.

  One night when she had come home from a school dance she had found her mother crouched in a corner of the living-room. ‘Whore,’ she had shouted. Her father took her into the kitchen and said: ‘Your mother is not well. You had better sleep in the spare bedroom.’ It had been a full moon that night too.

  She stood at the door watching the clothes balloon from the line. She found it a special pleasure to watch them as if they were sails of different colours. But the pegs had them fixed and no matter how much they might have wanted to float all over the countryside they couldn’t do so. They flapped and swelled and sometimes on calm days they hung like motionless pictures, flat and rectangular in an airy art gallery. She had given away most of her mother’s clothes to that Red Cross woman who had called shortly after her mother’s death.

  The kitten didn’t come that afternoon either. It was odd how even thinking of it gave her something to do, a possible future. But it was as it had always been in the past; the future was in the waiting. No, she would not go in search of it, she was too proud for that, its coming would have to be a voluntary one. They said that, more than dogs, cats chose their owners.

  It was they who decided whether to come and stay with you. Maybe if Raymond had been really serious about her he would have come and stayed with herself and her mother. And now he was married to a girl in Glasgow much younger than himself. All her boyfriends had been frightened away by her mother. She could be very dour, strong-willed, and savage in her hates.

  She often thought of that day when she had tried to run away. Actually there had been nothing at all wrong with her mother – she had faked what looked on the surface like a heart attack. She could see the train turning the corner when her mother ran out screaming. She should have stayed till her mother was out of the house, at church perhaps, before making her effort to escape. It was odd that she had made the attempt when there was a chance of her mother catching her.

  That night she looked out again but there was no sign of the kitten and the moon was still bright and clear. There was the last fragrance of roses in the air. Soon it would be harvest time, with its sharp stubbly forsaken fields.

  The next day there was a high wind and she felt that it was lucky that she had brought the washing in. The windows shook in their wooden frames and a fence billowed and swelled. Buzzards were tossed about the sky. The grass swayed to one side in the power of the wind.

  I’m frightened, she thought, Lord knows what will happen. She didn’t know much about repairing doors or fences and suddenly the house felt vulnerable and helpless. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon that she saw the kitten. It was moving stealthily through the garden, now and again caught by a draught of wind that ruffled its fur. She opened the scullery door even though the wind was rushing through. ‘Come in, you stupid beast,’ she shouted. She heard the banging of the windows, and the linoleum on the kitchen floor lifted like a blue wave.

  And then the kitten was at the door, bedraggled and drenched, for suddenly it had started to rain furiously. She watched it enter and then shut the door behind it against the force of the wind. The kitten went over to the saucer and lapped the milk and then looked up at her. Cautiously she bent and tried to touch, it but it struck out with its needly paw. Its eyes were wild and cold and inhuman.

  But she knew that it would return. Whenever it was in trouble it would return. And then gradually it would come more and more often. Eventually it would grow fat and never leave the house at all. It would stop its sudden flurries and rushes and settle down in a basket. It might have memories of past encounters with other animals but these would fade. And in fact it would sense that wild kittens were its enemies.

  ‘I shall call you Safety,’ she said in a wheedling voice, that she hardly recognised as her own. It was really very beautiful, so black and so groomed. Its eyes like pieces of jewellery gazed at her.

  She was suddenly surprised to find herself crying. What was she crying for? She couldn’t understand it. And all the time she was crying the kitten was staring at her unwinkingly. If she touched it it would attack her as if it hated her. It would strike with its needle-sharp claws. She wiped her eyes and got a ball of wool. ‘Pretty Safety,’ she said, ‘pretty Safety.’ It watched the swaying ball with disarming intensity, its head held on one side.

  The Parade

  The night before their son’s passing-out parade they stayed in a hotel not far from the air base where the ceremony would take place.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ she asked. Gerald didn’t answer. These days when he did talk it was mostly about money, about the decreasing value of his pension; or was abrupt and ironical when she bought a new hat as every woman had to do now and again.

  ‘If you happened to have a cat you could swing it in here,’ she commented as the two of them eased their way into the small hotel bedroom which they had entered at midday after their long train journey. Outside the window she could see the two Dobermann pinschers,
long-legged and somehow obscenely naked, which the landlady had mentioned.

  Trevor had sent them a photograph of his flight, all sixty of them, sitting with peaked caps like visors, their hands resting in regulation fashion on their knees. After his history of untidy bedrooms and raucous music, he seemed settled happy and proud. Gerald had not looked at the photograph. Her own memory of 1940 was one of young scarved pilots and bright blue skies. At least she had made him put on his best suit for the occasion and he really looked quite smart. She had saved up to buy a new costume for herself: it was made of red velvet.

  Saving on taxis they took the bus out to the base and she herself talked for a while to a harassed-looking woman who told her that her son had wanted to leave in the fourth week and only a prolonged phone call from his older brother had made him stay on: ‘And now,’ she said proudly, ‘he is passing out.’ It seemed as if she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. There was also a man from Dorset who told the two of them that he himself had served, of course, in the Navy, and that he had enjoyed it very much. Leaning over to Gerald, he said, ‘My father was a sailor, you know. He was hardly ever at home, and so I decided that I would treat my own sons right.’ Gerald didn’t answer: Norma thought that as he stood there speechlessly in the cold he seemed to be like someone who had suffered a stroke. She saw him smiling ironically as the Welsh woman gabbled on about the benefits of service life. ‘At least you know where they are,’ she said in her sing-song voice. ‘And they learn discipline, don’t they?’ Her Welsh husband told the bus driver that they were all there to join up. The driver laughed, but not a great deal; it was possible that he had heard the feeble joke many times before from nervous parents.

  When they arrived at the base, they were all ushered into a room where coffee was served, and they were handed a programme by a young pale airman who looked too frightened to speak. He called Norma, ‘Ma’am’ and Gerald, ‘Sir’. She saw through the window a plane lying out on the field, and the flat panorama of the English countryside. They sat at their table drinking their coffee, and not saying very much. She examined carefully the clothes the other women were wearing and concluded that her red velvet costume made her seventh in the league but that her rings came twenty-sixth. Gerald on the other hand came quite high in the ranks she had made in her mind, as he had, naturally, a handsome appearance which seemed to conceal the inexpensiveness of his suit. A grey-haired sergeant came in and told them about the morning’s programme. In a short while they would re-enter the bus and be taken to the seats at the edge of the square where the parade would take place. He said, introducing himself, ‘I’m the one who’s been polishing your boys’ boots.’ All the parents laughed. It was like being in school again. Gerald was flexing his leg under the table and was, as usual, silent. She thought, not for the first time, that it was a great strain being married to him. She glanced at the programme: everything had been timed to the minute.