The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  The little brown dog which was called Maggie lay slavishly at his feet.

  He said, I don’t know why the Scots have taken to me. See this jersey. It’s got Scotland written on it. The Scots look like their own, not like the English. They have taken me to their hearts. Only I went to this hotel in the village here and they told me they had no rooms which was funny because the manager of another hotel in Connel phoned up to tell them to keep a room for me.

  You and your wife are very kind. Do you think it’s because I’m such a good poet? I look on you as your son. Maybe you should adopt me.

  (And he laughed. His laugh was easy and unaffected and in a way innocent. His teeth shone white in his tanned face.)

  When I die, he said, I shall have a statue in Scotland like Rabbie Burns had. That’s what the Scots think about me. All the way round Britain I’ve been interviewed by the press, and I’ve been on radio, and TV. I was on Granada television and Grampian and Yorkshire. Only they ask you such stupid questions, like what I’m doing walking. They could have seen that in the press.

  I sent a letter to Maggie Thatcher – she’s not as pretty as my Maggie here – saying that Scotland should be given its independence. She answered me very politely and wished me good luck in America. I’m going to America in the autumn to raise money. There’s a man going to meet me at the airport. I’m world-famous, did you know that?

  I read that poem you wrote on the exiles. It’s the words, I think, I think I feel like that too. I’ve got two kids, a daughter and a son. My daughter has a child, though she’s not married. Still, there’s this Scotsman who’s got an eye on her. I wouldn’t wonder if he was a millionaire in a few years. He sells things, you know, articles. I phoned to the woman next door to ask about my kids since we don’t have a phone but she wasn’t in so I didn’t phone again: I forgot. When I’m home my kids tell me, isn’t it time you were away again, dad? That’s the way they are, always joking.

  (He smoked incessantly and ate little: but drank much coffee. The dog chewed at its lead. We gave it some cat food which it ate ravenously. At one time our cat came into the room, stared at the dog with its hair standing on end, and then went into our bedroom where it sleeps on the bed. The tiny brown dog whimpered.)

  What’s that mountain called? (said Tommy, looking out the kitchen window.) I’ll call it Tommy’s mountain. That’s what I’ll call it. Imagine if I went up there with a brush and whitewash and wrote my name on it.

  I don’t like aristocrats much though I met one or two. I’m going to meet the Duke of Sutherland. Aristocrats don’t do much for the country. I can tell an aristocrat in two minutes. It’s the way they speak.

  Now you’re a poet, Iain. Do you think I’ll be a poet too? Tell me the truth now. Do you think it sounds too confident? Maybe people don’t like it if you sound too confident. There’s a book in these tapes. Maybe you could edit them for me. There’s a great book in them. I’ll call it The Thoughts of Tommy.

  Now what would you say if someone asked you what I was like? Fascinating, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say I was a fascinating man? He’s seen the world, that one, wouldn’t you say?

  Glasgow people I don’t like. You don’t need to be foul mouthed. It doesn’t cost anything to have good manners. They don’t have a worse life than me and I’m good-mannered.

  But it’s really strange how the Scots took to me. See, I didn’t say Scotch. I must be like one of them, they must think of me as one of their own. At first they didn’t like me but when they read about my interviews they knew I was internationally famous. See what I mean?

  Actually I feel quite cold in the morning till the coffee warms me up. I collapsed in Wales, you know. The doctor told me to rest for a month but I was on the road next day.

  The thing is I get drenched a lot, and once I was walking through a snowstorm. Listen, you can hear it on the tape. That’s the sound of the wind there. I speak to Maggie on the tape, and I say, Maggie, I wish this snow would stop. Sometimes I shout out, snow, snow go away. And sometimes it does. Seagulls, you know, are the spirits of the dead, that’s well known. But it’s lucky to see one. I saw one last night on my way to your house so this is going to be my lucky day.

  When I went to prison my wife left me. That was the worst. That’s why I wonder whether I can manage. I’ll phone you tonight when I get to the Edinburgh Festival. I’m going to be on the Edinburgh Festival. I’m going to see the Director when I get there. He told me to call in. I haven’t heard from him lately, being on my travels, you understand.

  Yes, she left me when I went to prison. She stays with a dosser now. She came back to me for a while but when I went on my travels she left me. I have a lovely grandchild but she doesn’t come to see him. People are selfish, you know.

  (He took off his socks showed us one of his toes which was bruised and blue.)

  That slows me down. I hope it’s not gangrene. But I don’t think it is. I have faith in God. At the beginning I lost my faith but then it came back again. I believe in Heaven and Hell. I’ve been through hell and I don’t want it to come back again.

  I really don’t know why the Scots have taken to me. When I go to America I’ll wear a kilt, that’s how much I like the Scots. It’s my poetry, you see the Scots appreciate poets. That’s the thing about a poet, he’s got to travel, he can’t stay around all the time, he’s got to see the world. See, I sometimes pay for my keep with a poem.

  I met this woman in Inverness, and she wanted me to settle down with her and her two kids. She stays in a caravan, two lovely kids she’s got. See that dog lead, she gave me that, it’s got their names on it. From Anne and Christopher and Helen, that’s their names. But I’m going to America, I can’t settle down. I don’t want to let anyone down.

  (We gave him some Hawaiian shirts which I had bought in Australia but wouldn’t subsequently wear and he danced in front of the mirror with one of them on.)

  Lovely they are. I think Tommy will be a Hollywood star. When I get to America I’ll go to Hollywood, my Highland poems and I’m sure they’ll give me something to do. My Highland poems go down well with everybody. They’ve my masterpieces. You see, Burns was one for the ladies, excuse me, Mrs Iain. The strays in my poem are the ladies. That poem was put in a newspaper. The editor told me, I’ll put that in my newspaper, I was in his office at the time, but I haven’t seen a copy. He said he would post it to my home address.

  Iain, you’ve got plenty of time, you could edit my tapes. No, you wouldn’t lose them. I haven’t got much time myself, you see. Do you want to hear what I put on the tape last night when you went to bed?

  Iain and his wife have gone to bed. It’s twelve fifteen. I feel very tired and I want to lay down my pen. Good night, world.

  That’s what I put on the tape. I don’t sleep very well. And I don’t eat much. One meal a day, that’s what I have. Maggie gets scraps. But she’s lovely, isn’t she? Maggie and I are great friends, aren’t we, Maggie? I carried her all the way. You look at her paws, you’ll see there’s nothing wrong with them. That’s because I carried her.

  Prison was terrible. It was the lack of freedom, you see. But I’ve won through, haven’t I? I’ve been very lucky. God has been on Tommy’s side. I believe in God now though at one time I didn’t. I used to steal, you know, to get food. I used to be a real rascal.

  Orkney now I didn’t like, but Mull I did. Mull is a paradise, I swear it’s a paradise. What’s that place, Gervaig, sorry, Dervaig, that’s beautiful. I met this girl in a bar there and she signed one of my poems. With love to Rabbie Burns, it says. She’s a student, lovely she is. But I’ll tell you something, when I ask women if they can remember their first kiss, they can’t remember.

  You could come with me to America, Mrs Iain. Iain would come as a chauffeur. What do you think of that, Iain?

  (He had an indescribable charm which flashed and lit up his whole face when he smiled. His face looked like the face of a Red Indian seen on a totem pole.)

  Feel th
e weight of my bag? I washed my socks, you see, and they’re still drying, that’s why it’s so heavy. I walked twelve thousand miles and I raised twelve thousand pounds for this boy who has to be sent to America for an operation. People have been so kind to me, you wouldn’t believe it. I have never been attacked or anything. But the Scots . . . they look after their own. They should have home rule. I wrote to Mrs Thatcher about it, telling her to leave Ireland to the Irish. There should be peace in the world. Some of the Irish are nice but they don’t like the English. When I was reading my poems do you think I should have put on a Scottish accent? I thought of it but then I thought it wouldn’t be good-mannered. The Scots have been good to me and bought my poems. I’m internationally famous, you see.

  Now, Iain, you’ve got everything you want. You always smile, don’t you? A lovely wife and a nice house. You’re contented. Doesn’t he smile all the time, Mrs Iain?

  Me, I’ve to travel but that’s the way I am. I am a poet, you see, and poets have to keep walking. They’re exiles, as you wrote in that poem, Iain. I liked the poem. It was the words, I think. Isn’t it the words that make the poem, in your opinion, Iain? I would say it’s the words that make the poem. I don’t have education but I understand about poetry. It’s your feelings. Sometimes poems come to me and I write dozens of them. All them feelings, you understand.

  Do you think I could have another cup of coffee? It looks dry today but you can’t tell, can you? I’m making for Edinburgh. You’ll see me being interviewed on TV, you watch out for me, and you can say to your friends, That’s my mate, Tommy there. I’m famous you see, they’ll put up a statue to me when I die. In Scotland, that’s where I would like it to be.

  He was a great one for the lassies, Rabbie Burns, excuse me, Mrs Iain. This woman in Newcastle wanted me to stay with her but I said I couldn’t. The poet has to be on his own. Solitude, that’s what the poets want, Iain, excuse me, Mrs Iain.

  I talk to my dog when I’m walking. There’s no one else to talk to. A poet is a philosopher. And I talk philosophy to Maggie here. I carry her, you see. I don’t let her walk.

  (He adjusted his blue bag and put his tape recorder and his tapes in it, and the two pairs of socks and the two shirts we had given him. The shirts had a wild romantic look.)

  Have to be going now, he said.

  He turned at the door and kissed my wife. I’m not going to kiss you, Iain. I’ll phone when I get to Edinburgh. I won’t let you down.

  But before I go I’ll just visit my friend in the tea shop. She would never forgive me if I went past without calling.

  (It was a dry day but there were black rainclouds piling up in the east.)

  I never ask for lifts, he said. I always walk. It wouldn’t be right to ask for lifts. It would be cheating.

  The Whale’s Way

  His special period was Old English: and it looked as if he would be made redundant in the next round of cuts. ‘Death by a thousand cuts,’ was the macabre joke at the university.

  Celia of course spoke of his redundancy as if it were his fault. ‘You were never a good lecturer anyway,’ she would say. ‘You mumbled. No one could understand what you were talking about.’

  Actually many years ago she had taken his class. And now the Head of Department was a frighteningly young man who had been born in South Africa.

  ‘Vernon, it’s possible you might be thinking of . . . ’ the young man had said over coffee in the Staff Club. ‘You know how things are.’

  ‘You should fight,’ Celia would say. ‘What are you thinking of doing with yourself?’

  She buttoned up her coat and went to meet her two friends, who were lecturers’ wives.

  ‘Though I don’t know why I do it. They’ll be laughing at me.’

  Vernon had the terrible idea that she would leave him, she had a hard pitiless mind though she had done nothing with it. She was also considerably younger than him: and they had no children.

  He was feeling more and more his own isolation both at home and at the university, where no one casually knocked at the door to discuss his subject with him, as they had done in the past. The other thing was that he was not published: he was too scrupulous.

  ‘You used to stare at the ceiling when you lectured,’ Celia would say in friendlier days. ‘All that stuff about Beowulf. But you had a sort of passion. I give you that. That’s probably why I married you.’5 I. Crichton-S vol 2 397-708

  She herself was English and belonged to a talented family: two of her own brothers were lecturers: he had never liked either of them, he had felt inferior in their company. They were glib entrepreneurs. Also they had a lot of in-jokes which he didn’t understand.

  He stared at the window through the falling snow, after Celia had left. He imagined it falling over the North Sea, random, complex, desolate.

  He didn’t understand why he should be made redundant. Some of the people in the Department travelled abroad, to America and even to the Far East, in search of students. Naturally he hadn’t been asked to go. It was all a business now. ‘You could have taken me if you had been asked,’ Celia would say. Their quarrels were now very frequent. She screamed at him like a seagull over a waste of waves. The whale’s way. He was like a stranded whale on a beach, that was being beaten to death.

  Sometimes he would look out of the window of his university room at the quadrangle. He would watch the leaves blowing in desolate rings and circles, and the students strolling through them, long-haired, in jeans. Circular autumn: the circular seasons and the circular students. It was a pagan godless world. Did they know he was being made redundant?

  Redundant. What a word. As if it was being withdrawn from circulation like a flawed coin: leaving a space where he had been.

  What was he going to do about money? Celia would say relentlessly. My pension will be made up, he had answered. After all, he was fifty-five (Celia was forty-two). He wondered sometimes if she had been seeing other men when he was working at the university: there had been periods of jealousy but he had never found any evidence. At sherry parties she was always bright and witty: he had been proud of her for he himself had no small talk.

  The desolate world he had studied, of battles, fights, exile, wanderings, had there been redundancy there? Of course there had been. Poets wrote of deserted halls, of festivities which had suddenly ceased, of silent harps. And that was how he felt. Abandoned. Stricken.

  It had been a cosy would which he had inhabited in the university while it lasted. He loved the students, and they realised it, though he had never been able to communicate with them outside his subject. And of course they weren’t all that fond of the subject anyway, they had considered it a pedantic compulsion which was rather unfair. The language stood up in front of them like a field of thorns. But sometimes on gifted days he felt he had given them a hint of its resonance, of its concept of endurance. Endure, endure, if nothing can be changed. Endure the violence of battle. Stand there till you are cut down. Once he had said (he thought wittily) to them, it prepares you for the Thatcherite world.

  He knew Celia would leave him. She was the child of a more clear-headed world than his own. And anyway she wouldn’t be able to take her wounded husband to see the family. She had put up with him long enough. He knew she could be merciless, and loved status: as time passed she would become even more bitter because of her desperation. She would have to make the leap soon. Perhaps without his knowing it she was making the leap even now.

  The snow was very thick, its complex flakes drifting hypnotically before his eyes. He thought he should switch on the second bar of the electric fire but decided against it. The bar that was on looked red and raw like a newly opened wound.

  As a matter of fact there had been a number of suicides already. People had settled into a nest and had been asked to leave it. It was too hard for them to start again, it was impossible.

  He and Celia slept in different rooms now. He didn’t get to sleep till he had read for a long while. Had he been betrayed by his subj
ect? Should he have read something else, explored some other field? But sometimes he was comforted by these wanderers, seafarers, exiles.

  Endure, endure, endure to the end. The monster is searching for you in your lighted house. The mouth and claws are seeking for weakness in your walls. The bodies dripping blood are lying in the snow. Night falls and you are waiting for the monster. He is heaving his malicious body along, he has come out of the depths: he is crusted with seaweed. He will drag you down to the bottom of the sea where you must fight for your life.

  And what, my friend, will you do then? Will you put up your pension like a shield?

  Power seeps away from you: and respect. You will be always on the edge of things, listening. No one will pay any attention to you: your words aren’t backed by even a tiny measure of power. If you have a lot of power you can afford clichés. If you haven’t you must be witty.

  He knew that Celia would leave him. She was like the bird that would set off in spring over the waste of waters. It was not her style to stay with the wounded. She was not one for the long haul of endurance. Already he could sense the inattention in her, as if she was feeling the stirring of her last spring. She must launch herself out soon, or die. It was quite natural really.

  If he had the energy he would launch out and leave his bereaved furniture as well. But he didn’t have the energy. The university had been his lord: without his lord he was doomed, disorientated. Without that steady walk to his room every morning. And the new lord obviously had no time for him. The new lord was brisk and competent, an entrepreneur, salesman. The new lord had the indefinable quality of hope. He himself had lived too long in the castle, listening to the seductive harp music.

  In a short time she would leave him, she would walk into the snow with her case (though before that she would have found someone to replace him). His philosophy of endurance had been overtaken by events. There were stirrings around him, wings were being tested. The philosophy of endurance did not itself endure.