Black Chalk (11 page)

‘Because essentially I’m a cunt,’ said Jack. ‘Which is, to be fair to me, partly genetic. I come from a long line of utter cunts. And I suppose I have to admit, a little sheepishly, that I really quite enjoy being a cunt. Also it’s the fault of my upbringing. Hippy bullshit parents, the sort who turn all conservative once they near forty. Whereupon they decide to dissolve the commune. All four of them.’

‘You were brought up by four parents in a commune?’ Cassie looked doubtful.

‘It’s true,’ said Jack. ‘Now bear in mind that with four parents there exist mathematically six possible coupling combinations. And I know for a fact that five of those combinations took place. It’s complicated but if you ever want me to draw you a diagram…’

‘Everyone fucked everyone,’ Mark called out from the floor. ‘He likes to make the ins and outs sound more complicated than they were, he thinks it sounds more exotic. But essentially what Jack’s saying is everyone fucked everyone in every way possible, apart from his two dads. And if you get him drunk enough, he’ll admit he even has his suspicions about that.’ Mark tilted his drink to his mouth. ‘And this is how one ends up with the emotional wrecking ball we all know and love as Jack Thomson, no P in Thomson.’

‘Parents are too easy to blame,’ said Cassie. ‘And four parents might be called modest by some standards.’ The room fell silent as Cassie, looking down, turned the tip of her cigarette slowly against the edge of the ashtray. Its ash now in a neat cone, she resumed smoking again.

Chad felt bad for Cassie but also a little jealous. He had fantasised often about being an orphan, adopted as a baby. Not the pig farmer’s son but the secret child of an intellectual, a philandering writer, or a scientist who had died in an experiment gone wrong. It wasn’t unknown riches that had been concealed from him in Chad’s fantasies. He just wanted an explanation for why he was so different from his own family. At the very least he dreamed that one day his mother might tell him she had had an affair, the pig farmer wasn’t really his father, their obvious physical resemblance was nothing but wild coincidence. Anything but
that
man’s son.

Everyone else in the room was the product of divorced parents and Chad felt envious even of this. The exoticism of their broken homes, their splintered pasts. They had reasons to be interesting while he had excuses to be dull.

And then Cassie lifted her eyes, a cunning look spreading over her face. ‘They say if you blow smoke in a man’s face it means you fancy him,’ she said. She sucked on the turquoise cigarette and sent its smoke in a line of quick quivering rings toward Jack’s face. ‘Do you think that’s true, Jackie-oh?’ she said.

Jack affected a cough and waved his hand to break up the smoke. ‘Then if you shit in his hair it must be true love,’ he said. ‘So anyway, how’s the latest grand opus of Pitt’s most bohemian poetess coming along?’

‘Like pistons,’ said Cassie. ‘Fast as wild rutting stallions.’

‘And how many little verses are you up to now?’

‘Who’s counting?’

Jack now played his startled look. ‘Well, you are apparently, Cassie. Or so I’ve been reliably informed. Unless you’ve been telling lies to make yourself sound more interesting?’

Cassie wrinkled her nose, a thin nose and freckled. ‘I’m not interested in interesting,’ she said.

‘So is it true,’ said Jack, ‘that when you’ve written five hundred poems, you’re going to kill yourself?’

‘If I said yes, would it give you a big old hard-on?’

‘I’m just trying to separate the truth from the student bullshit. There’s so much of it round here you have to watch where you step. But then you are studying English Lit, so it pretty much goes with the territory.’ Jack waited to be challenged on this point but no challenge was issued. ‘So about this suicide pact with the Muses…’

‘Just go right ahead and erect yourself, Jackie-oh,’ said Cassie. She tried to sound indifferent but there was a trace of defeat in her voice.

‘I’ll take that as a yes then. And taking the Roman numerals into consideration, we came up a special nickname for you. We’re going to call you Dee. Dee for five hundred, Dee for death.’

Chad shrank inside. He didn’t want this girl to think he had been part of a group talking in secret about her, discussing rumours, concocting names.

‘I love it,’ said Dee, clapping. ‘Yes, Dee it is, you have my absolute approval. And meanwhile I’m going to call you Jackie-oh, Jackie-oh. Like Jackie Onassis. You’ve got her far-apart eyes and also that whiff of bringing tragedy to all those round you. And when I get back to my room I’m going to write a poem all about you, Jackie-oh, my first ever limerick.’

Jack stared at the ceiling. ‘Nothing rhymes with Jackie-oh,’ he said.

‘Ralph Macchio,’ Mark called out from the floor. ‘The kid from
Karate Kid
.’

‘No, no,’ said Dee. She twisted her fingers creatively in front of her. ‘The first line would read something like …
A boy who was surly and blunt
.’

Jolyon rapped his knuckles on his bedside table. ‘Well, I for one could listen to this all night long. And I know Jack could keep going possibly forever. But right now we need to talk about the Game,’ he said.

*   *   *

XXI
   Early on in my morning routine I find a cup on my breakfast plate and a matchstick inside the cup. It takes me a few minutes but then I decipher the new mnemonic.

Cup: tea. Matchstick: fire: fire escape!

And so in the morning I eat breakfast perched on the giddying slats of my fire escape. I feel like a tourist enjoying a fine vacation breakfast, a rare meal eaten with a warm sigh and unhurried eagerness for the day.

My neighbour across the street is also breakfasting on his fire escape. He has a sunlounger in which he sits, sockless, filling in the crossword and dabbing his finger to pick up the crumbs of his croissant. And then it comes back to me – this was part of my routine three years ago, before I shut my curtains and blinds. We used to acknowledge each other whenever we were outside at the same time. He notices me looking across and tilts his head as if pleasantly surprised to see me. And then he raises his cup.

I return the gesture, smiling, and my neighbour goes back to his crossword. I feel a new kind of strength flowing into my chest.

And then my mood changes. While sitting there it comes to me that last night I dreamed of the six of us. I don’t think I have dreamed of us together for many years now.

Dreams can be so crude and unforgiving, they blur the subtleties of why and wherefore, the complexities of cause and effect. In last night’s dream everything becomes entirely my fault. Blame points its finger squarely at me in the form of a single blunt metaphor. In the dream I have a gun, I am defending myself, I pull the trigger. Game over.

And I wake up, as I do every morning of every day, seeing their faces again.

Victim. Victim’s mother.

I feel her arms around me. I see the tears running down her face as she thanks me, as she tells me what a good friend I have been. And I accept her gratitude, I keep the truth to myself.

And the guilt overwhelms me. It tightens its grip. The guilt is a knot that will never come undone.

*   *   *

XXII(i)
   At the end of their discussion of the Game Soc proposal, Emilia wondered whether it would be better to wait a while before beginning to play. Chad disagreed but tried to keep from his voice any resentment, although he felt like a child on Christmas morning told he had to wait until lunchtime for the opening of gifts. He was only at Pitt for a year, he explained, so they should begin right away. But it was their first term in Oxford, Emilia countered, and she wanted a chance to enjoy everything university life had to offer. So they called for a show of hands. And although Jolyon sided with Chad, the two of them lost the group’s first ever vote.

*   *   *

XXII(ii)
   They met Tallest and Middle and Shortest in a small cafe where the breakfasts were cheap and greasy and came with good chips. Jolyon and Chad and Jack went along. Chad felt like a general parleying battle terms.

They ate as they negotiated, Jolyon and Tallest doing most of the talking.

Tallest began by apologising. Game Soc had one further condition, it was remiss of him not to have mentioned it earlier. They required control over one consequence, Game Soc would choose the penalty for losing on a single occasion. But they would announce it later on, at the appropriate moment. Tallest assured them this required nothing illegal of them and it was nothing beyond the rules or spirit of their game.

Jolyon turned to his partners. Jack shrugged and Chad nodded.

Otherwise, there was little that proved controversial. Tallest was happy with the examples of consequences they had presented him, most of the darker ones having been suggested by Jack. And he accepted that not all them could be drawn up in advance, only those who survived would devise the later tests. The fittest or luckiest, bravest or most skilful, were those who should make the Game tougher with each passing round.

Once Jolyon could see Game Soc were happy with their proposal he mentioned, almost in passing, that they would begin playing at the start of second term. There followed a moment’s silence and Middle looked as if he was about to say something but winced suddenly in pain, looking down at his leg on the side Shortest was sitting. Then Middle folded his arms tight and kept quiet. Tallest was smiling as if unaware of anything happening next to him. The timing was not ideal, he suggested, was there any possibility of beginning as soon as possible? But Jolyon stood firm, a vote had been taken, there was nothing more could be done. Democracy had spoken. Tallest raised his eyebrows but gestured for Jolyon to continue.

They would play every Sunday and expected to finish maybe by the end of second term. Or almost certainly by the end of third. Not that there would be any limit to the end of the Game. It was last man standing.

No one back then could have imagined how much longer it would take.

*   *   *

XXII(iii)
   While Game Soc had grudgingly accepted a delay to the beginning of the Game, they had however insisted that deposits be handed over a week to the day after the breakfast meeting.

A thousand pounds was only a little less than each of them, apart from Chad, received each term in student grants. And they had already paid battels to Pitt, which accounted for a large proportion of their available funds.

It was Jolyon who came up with the solution. He had noticed that the local banks were eager for Oxford students to open accounts with them. Some of them offered financial rewards and all of them offered overdraft facilities. So around the city each of them traipsed opening new accounts anywhere they could. And then around they went again, withdrawing the daily limit from various cashpoints in the city, an overdraft carousel.

Chad, meanwhile, had some money saved he could use. He had worked the whole summer long, a tedious data entry job for Susan Leonard’s alumni database. He thought that he would use his savings to travel around Europe during spring break and then perhaps in the summer before returning to the States. Although in the end, of course, he never made it as far as the summer at Pitt.

Tallest arrived at Jolyon’s room at the prearranged time. He had with him a brown leather briefcase. A small piece of blue tape was stuck above its brass buckle.

‘Minor repair required,’ he responded, when Jolyon questioned him about it.

‘Or maybe you don’t want us to know your initials,’ said Jolyon, to which Tallest replied with a respectful nod.

‘Since the topic has been raised,’ said Tallest, ‘please allow me to suggest that none of you try surreptitiously to find out anything about us, about Game Soc. We’ve already laid down the rules, so maybe it’s too late to insist, but perhaps you could consider this friendly advice. Let’s just say it’s a matter of etiquette. You’re all intelligent and inquisitive people. But curiosity and cats and so on.’ Tallest shrugged as if to say that none of this really needed saying. ‘Anyway, let’s move swiftly on to the important stuff, the real reason we’re here,’ he continued, patting his briefcase. ‘Money.’

‘But first we want some assurances,’ said Chad. ‘How do we know this isn’t some kind of scam? What if you disappear with our cash?’

‘I can give no such assurances,’ said Tallest. ‘It’s a matter of take it or leave it, I’m afraid. All I can offer you is this…’ He opened the briefcase, lifted it head high and then flipped it quickly upside down. Down onto the floorboards there fell ten bundles of money tied up with red ribbon. ‘I opted for five-pound notes,’ said Tallest. ‘I thought it might drive home the point rather better.’

No one said anything, they only stared at the money.

‘Your turn now,’ said Tallest, holding out his hand.

Jack started to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. ‘You hold him down, Chad, and I’ll do him in with the ashtray.’

‘Yes, but then you’d all have to share,’ said Tallest. ‘And that wouldn’t be half as much fun.’ He bent down and threw one of the bundles to each of them in turn. ‘Just so you can ascertain whether it’s real or not,’ he said.

They each held the money for a moment as if it were something fragile. Jack riffled his bundle and whistled. And then quickly, but Jolyon first of all, they dropped the money limply into their laps as if it held no particular interest to them.

Jolyon lit a cigarette, everyone seemed to be waiting for him. And then he tossed the money nonchalantly back, reached into his pocket and removed an envelope. Crossing the room, he handed it to Tallest who, without opening or inspecting it, dropped the envelope into his briefcase. ‘Good. One down, five to go,’ he said.

One by one they approached him, each returning Tallest’s money and then handing him their own thousand pounds. Jack had folded his money tightly into an empty cigarette pack. ‘Careful, this stuff will kill you,’ he said.

‘Most amusing,’ said Tallest. ‘You know, all of my favourite tragedies feature the character of a good fool.’ He removed the roll of twenties and sniffed at it disapprovingly before dropping it into his briefcase.