Black Chalk

He found work in a factory that manufactured shrink-wrap labels, plastic sleeves for bottles, cans, aerosols . . . For nine hours a day he stood by a whirring conveyor belt onto which a cutting machine disgorged labels. After every hundred a buzzer went off and Jolyon had to scoop up the sleeves and pile them neatly together. But often there was a great build-up of friction and the sleeves would fight against his hands.

Once successfully gathered each stack had to be wrapped in a rubber band and placed in a cardboard box. When a box became full it had to be closed and taped shut. But the buzzer never stopped buzzing, so Jolyon had to learn to do this fast while still managing to gather and bind and fight with the static.

But once he mastered it, Jolyon felt soothed by the work. Rituals of repetition, a routine interrupted only by small and periodic challenges. And the rattling of the machines made conversation impossible and this soothed him as well.

When he wasn’t working he read law books. Not because he had decided to return to Pitt but simply because law books were the only unread books he owned. And soon they started to comfort Jolyon just as the monotonous work of the factory comforted him.

Most of all he liked to read legal judgments. Jolyon enjoyed submitting to the opinions of appellate judges and law lords, men and women of learning and experience. He let their conclusions rain down on him like the warm spray from a shower head. He felt like a gatherer of truth, a piecer-together of fact from little fragments. You could find truth in order just as you might properly build a life that way.

Ten months after he had left Pitt he wrote a letter to inform the college he had decided not to return. Wiseman phoned a few days later. At first he tried to talk Jolyon around but Jolyon wouldn’t budge. Jolyon told Sir Ralph about his job at the factory but mentioned that he still enjoyed reading law books. He could hear the regret in Wiseman’s voice when he wished him well and said goodbye.

An hour later the phone rang again. Again it was Wiseman. He had pulled a few strings, if Jolyon was still interested in the law there was a legal newspaper in London looking for a junior writer. The job was his if he wanted it.

Jolyon acquiesced. Yes, he wanted to be told what to do now. How he wished he had had a Wiseman all along.

He moved to London, to a small flat in the Elephant and Castle where he lived alone. He was good at his job but remained distant from his colleagues.

And so it was in London, surrounded by the heartbeats of millions, that loneliness first became Jolyon’s routine. Loneliness was the machine noise that cocooned him from life. And loneliness was not so bad.

LXXIII

LXXIII(i) I sit on the kitchen floor unable to get the image out of my head, picturing her all alone, her body not yet found. My darling Dee lying there, little blue doll rumpled and folded away. She looks discarded, carelessly left there for later, legs like stuffed cloth bent beneath her. My little blue doll, her wide stiff eyes, her ocean-coloured skin.

And I could have saved her. I could have . . .

Suddenly I pull a salad bowl out from the debris all around me. I retch. I puke violently, copiously.

LXXIII(ii) The intercom buzzes. Two thirty.

Happy birthday, Jolyon, Chad says when I open the door. He is carrying a black leather attaché case.

I say nothing. I turn and do my best to walk in a straight line. I want to get this thing over with. Perhaps I even want to lose, who knows what I’m thinking. Maybe I don’t care about Game Soc, they can do what they like with me.

I have your present, Chad says. Would you like it now or later?

I keep moving forward. In the living room, I collapse onto the sofa and Chad takes the same chair he took three days ago. Already we seem to have fallen into a routine.

Chad lowers the attaché case beside him on the floor. He is dressed in the colours of flame, the crisp blue denim of four days ago and today an orange polo. Chad’s boots imply a certain rough and tumble. Old and nicely scuffed as if an artist has burnished them just so.

And Chad’s whole life in England begins to form before me. A home in Belgravia, Chelsea lunchtimes and horse riding in Hyde Park at the weekend. Weekdays in Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels.

I look hard at Chad, feeling like a child. Chad has grown and I have stayed still. No, I have stagnated, I have regressed. How did you find me, Chad? I say.

Come on, Jolyon, Chad says, it wasn’t exactly hard. You worked on a major newspaper.

My pieces appeared under a different name, I say.

I know, Chad says, you used your wife’s surname. He looks at his watch and then he says, I guess we have the whole afternoon, right? No need to hurry. So don’t you want to hear about my adventures as a tourist in New York these past few days? You know, I grew up only a hundred and fifty miles north of here and yet until this trip I’d been here only once. And that was years ago when I was just a kid.