Black Chalk

Oh, perfect, Chad says. Christ, that’s perfect, Jolyon, just how you trained me to take my tea. Jolyon my guide, my mentor. Chad smiles as if he has just said something enormously droll.

LXXV(v) As well as carrying mugs into the living room, I bring something else with me, something that caught my eye among the wreckage spread across the kitchen floor. I have to put the mugs down at Chad’s feet. And then I unfold it, round and white, made of delicate lace. I spread the tablecloth over the square of green felt that lies on the coffee table and place our tea on top.

How very civilised, Chad says. We both stare at the tablecloth, then reach for our mugs at the same time. We blow at our drinks and take small noisy sips of the too-hot tea.

Chad, will you answer me one question? I ask.

Anything, he says. I mean, sure, you deserve that much at least.

Why did Dee go along with everything? I understand why you did it. But why Dee?

Chad stares at me, a trace of bitterness returns to his eyes. Go along with it? he says. Dee didn’t know half the stuff that was going on. I came up with everything. Dee even fell in love with your story, she wasn’t lying to you about that. But she’s my wife, Jolyon, she loves me. And I’ve done very well in life, very well, and I’ve looked after her for years. When I told her I was coming here, when I explained it all to her, I suggested we might need some kind of an umpire. That if things got really bad between us, we would need someone else around, someone who understood what was going on. And she always felt guilty about what happened at Pitt between you and me. As if she should have stepped in earlier.

And then, when she still wasn’t sure, I told her I was scared. I said to her I was trying to protect us both, you and me. That you were in no fit state to survive if Game Soc got hold of you. I had it all worked out, I said. She trusted me. She’s my wife.

And then, once we got here, I didn’t even tell her half the stuff I was doing. She was busy sinking down comfortably into your words and I was moving around your apartment, thinking up what to do next. I didn’t tell her about your whisky and pills, how much I was increasing them. And she was even worried about you, she wanted us to find a way to make you stop, or cut down at least. She didn’t know, she didn’t see me washing your glasses, drawing new black lines that crept higher and higher every few days. And while the two of you were meeting in the park at night she had no idea what I was doing in here.

Chad looks briefly victorious again. But then his smile drops. He picks up his attaché case and places it on the coffee table. And Dee didn’t know about this, he says, snapping open the latches. I feel really bad about this, Jolyon. Chad reaches into his case and pulls out a large book as thick as a wedding album, red leatherette. He places it between us on the coffee table. He hangs his head low but then looks up at me. And then came my final assault on you, the five hundredth poem, he says. Dee did a great job, don’t you think? She didn’t want to write it, not at first. But I told her you needed some kind of a jolt to help you remember where you’d left her book. Everything went down precisely as I planned it.

I pick up Dee’s book from the table and start to flick through its pages covered in red ink until I pass poem four hundred and ninety-nine. The rest of the pages are blank. Suddenly I realise something. I look up sharply at Chad. So Dee never finished reading my story? I say.

Me neither, Chad says. Well, you stopped going for your walks after you thought you’d lost Dee’s book. And I thought I’d done enough by then, it didn’t matter to me any more. Anyway, we all know how your story ends. Mark jumps and you leave Pitt, Chad says. And we’re all just as much to blame as each other.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and then takes a sip from his mug. Chad doesn’t see me looking up and breathing out hard, offering my silent prayer of thanks.

I slap my hands on my thighs. You know what I feel like right now? I say to Chad. I feel like going for a walk. Let’s blow off the cobwebs. Would you like to take a walk with me?

A walk? Chad says. You mean one of your medicinal strolls? Shouldn’t I stay here and rewrite your life for you? he says.

LXXV(vi) We turn left out of the building toward the park.

Chad’s hands are pushed deep in his pockets. So how much do you know about what happened with my father? Chad asks.

The cancer story, you mean? Your mother told me everything, I think.

Chad sighs. The one thing in the world I wouldn’t do, he says. Unbelievable.

Your mother wants to meet you, Chad, I say. Without your father there, you don’t have to see him. She said she’d come to the city, or anywhere you want. She’s waiting by the phone every day. Five past twelve, she said to call then and she’ll answer, your father won’t ever know.