Black Chalk

Chad looks up at the ceiling as if he can see the words of those letters hanging over his head. And you really knew nothing about any of this at all? he says. Chad slumps back in his chair looking suddenly exhausted.

No, nothing, I say. I am looking at Chad for a sign, a tell. Is this the truth or is he just trying to scare me? I can’t imagine the Chad of fourteen years ago making up such a story and telling it with so much conviction. But how much has he changed? He looks tired and uncertain, he looks like a younger Chad wearing an ill-fitting disguise. His muscles seem foolish now, a thin and worthless shield. I feel the whisky surging inside me, the pills whirling away. I remember my story and my mind pushes Chad away. He belongs somewhere else, this all belongs somewhere else, somewhere later.

I swing my legs off the sofa and face him. Well, thank you for coming, Chad, I say. But as you can see, I’m really quite busy here.

Chad looks confused. That’s all you have to say, Jolyon? You’re really quite busy?

I have a lot of work on, I say. My head swims, the room lurches. Would you mind seeing yourself out? I say.

Chad looks spurned. Sure then, Jolyon, he says, getting to his feet. Sure, I can tell how busy you are. He turns and leaves the room. A few moments later I hear him call out, Thursday, Jolyon, two thirty!

The front door clicks shut.

LXIII(iii) Am I afraid that I might become trapped in a game I never wanted to play? I don’t know. And I don’t have the time to be scared of ghost stories. I don’t even have the time to consider whether I believe in the existence of ghosts.

Perhaps Chad wanted to scare me. Maybe he made it all up. But anyway, I have my own reasons to fear Game Soc. More specifically, I have my own reasons to fear one particular member of their threesome. But we’ll come to that soon enough.

No, I don’t have time to consider either the present or the future. Because now the moment, fourteen years ago, has arrived.

The reckoning. An elegant solution. My endgame with Mark.

LXIV

LXIV(i) His head didn’t hurt. No, his head didn’t hurt him at all.

Jolyon could feel each grain of wood as he hammered his fists against Mark’s door, could sense his weight gathering at the soles of his feet. When the door opened, Mark’s face was bright, his lips dry and parted. ‘Jolyon, good to see you,’ said Mark. ‘Can’t imagine what could bring you so urgently to my door.’

‘You really want to beat me?’ said Jolyon. ‘You want to win so much you’d hurt Emilia just to get at me? OK then, Mark, just remember whose choice it was to raise the stakes. Come on then, let’s play.’

Jolyon turned and started to leave but Mark stayed where he was. ‘I don’t have to do anything, Joe. Nothing that comes out of your mouth ever again.’

Jolyon stopped at the edge of the stairs. ‘No, but you’ll like this game, Mark.’ he said. ‘The odds are stacked in your favour.’ The words were written inside him, Jolyon only had to move his lips. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t have a thousand pounds to give you right now. But I will, one day. And I’ll give you back your thousand pounds plus another thousand if you can beat me today. Plus, I’ll admit you were right all along. You’ll enjoy that even more than the money.’

Mark looked uncertain. ‘What’s the trick?’ he said.

‘There’s no trick,’ said Jolyon. ‘You win, you get two thousand pounds. I’ll use next year’s grant or I’ll work through the summer. You have my word and you know I’ll keep it.’ Mark shrugged. ‘But if I win,’ Jolyon continued, ‘you call off this vendetta. Double or nothing. And it’s a game of physics, Mark. A game of gravity and acceleration.’

‘OK then, I’m listening, Jolyon. But if this is a trick –’

‘If it’s a trick, Mark, if at any time you call the trick, you can pull out and you win, I give you my word. But you pull out for any other reason, you lose. Sound fair?’

‘Fine, Jolyon, go ahead and tell me your game.’

Jolyon laughed through his nose. ‘It’s simple, like I told you, a game of physics,’ he said. ‘Tell me, the equation – the square root of two d over g – what does that describe?’

Mark spoke hesitantly even though he found the question childishly simple. ‘The time . . . the, um, time, t, taken for an object to fall . . . to fall the distance d.’

‘And how tall would you say the college tower is? Loser’s Leap?’

‘Maybe eighty feet,’ said Mark, beginning to warm to the task.

‘Feet, Mark, feet?’ said Jolyon, sounding like a scolding professor. ‘Come now, Marcus, did I not state this was a game of physics?’

Mark sighed heavily. ‘Twenty-five metres,’ he said sharply.

‘And therefore the value of t is . . . ?’

‘Twice twenty-five is fifty. Gravity is nine-point-eight. Divide them, about five-point-one. The square root of five-point-one is . . . approximately two and a quarter.’

‘So that means it would take about two and a quarter seconds for an object falling from the college tower – Christine Balfour for example – to hit the ground, correct?’

‘Correct,’ said Mark.