Read Online The Black Halo by Iain Crichton Smith - Free Book Online

with her dress. I held the bottle of milk in my hand as I said, ‘Another fine morning.’ She said it was.
    I continued, ‘I’ve been thinking about what your mother said when I was at your house.’
    She looked at me without speaking.
    ‘About marriage and so on,’ I said. ‘It’s true that people need money before they marry nowadays.’ I just wanted to talk to her and didn’t really know what I
was talking about. Cool mornings, how I love you before the sun rises demanding decisions. ‘One needs a house,’ I went on. ‘It must be even worse now, more expensive. Furniture
and so on. When are you thinking of getting married?’
    ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘We aren’t even engaged.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I thought . . . But still, it won’t be long, a girl like you.’ I thought I could see the cool wheels of her mind turning in the still early morning.
After what seemed a long while she suddenly said in a hard cold voice, ‘There’s a suite I saw in the town. It’s a red suite. Two chairs and a sofa. I’ve never seen one like
it anywhere. That’s what I would like to get.’
    ‘A suite,’ I said.
    ‘I saw it in the window of a shop in the town,’ she said. Dead ahead of her the sun was red and strong in the sky. A suite of clouds overhead.
    ‘How much does it cost?’ I asked.
    ‘Two hundred pounds,’ she said. And then she added, ‘I must be going or I’ll be late.’ And she set off at her brisk pace, her lovely cool body moving so freely. In
the early cool morning. Towards the red sun. A suite at two hundred pounds. Why had she mentioned that? I considered it and as I was considering it the hermit rode past on his bicycle on his way to
the shop for his messages. At least that was what I assumed. It was the first time I had seen him close to. He rode past me, his eyes fixed straight ahead, looking neither to right nor to left.
Janet had turned her head to look at him but he hadn’t looked at her. He was sitting upright on his bicycle, the belt of rope around him. Coming out of the red sun he looked like Death in his
dark dirty clothes. His face looked tanned and unlined. Was the brown complexion from the sun or was it that he was naturally dark-skinned? He was like a man I had once seen who cleaned chimneys
and had a small black dog running after him as he rode along on his bicycle. And he looked so contented, so silent, so harmonious. As if he was happy enough to rest in his silence. His coat was
very long, almost touching his shoes. ‘How do you live?’ I spoke to him in a whisper. He never bought whisky or beer, just bread and cheese and butter and so on. Maybe he was a monk or
a holy man. He hadn’t looked at Janet at all. He was much stronger than me.
    I returned slowly to my house, the bottle of milk in my hand, thinking about the red suite which Janet had seen in the shop window and whose like was not to be found anywhere. Her voice had
sounded hard and greedy as she spoke. Even in the dew of the early morning which hung on flowers with its silver bells wobbling there was greed and hardness.
    The hermit passed out of my sight on his way to the shop with his piece of paper in his pocket.
    15
    On the Friday night I went to visit Dougie as I often did. Sometimes we played chess and sometimes we just sat and talked. I had forgotten that his brother and wife were home
on their annual summer holiday from Edinburgh but when I did go in, there they both were.
    ‘Come in, come in,’ said Dougie. His house is the largest in the village and with its large windows gives a wide panoramic view of the sea. His brother Edward and his sister-in-law
Lorna got to their feet from the sofa on which they had been sitting as I entered. Edward is a commander of some sort in the Navy and is a silent perceptive tall darkish man who bears about with
him the easy manner that is common to successful people. His wife on the other hand looks a bit neurotic and stringy and restless. She