Black Chalk

‘My jeans are soaked through,’ said David. ‘I should go back to my room and change.’

‘No, I’ll lend you a pair of trousers,’ said Jack. ‘The others will wait outside. We’ll go into my room and you can change there.’

‘Only if you’re sure I’ll be quite safe alone with you and my trousers down, Jack,’ said David.

Jack clenched his teeth. ‘You’re incorrigible, David,’ he said.

David winked. ‘Oh, but you have no idea, Jack,’ he said.

L(iv) David was in a fresh pair of jeans and had been offered the room’s only armchair. Jolyon mixed drinks in the plastic cups they had bought and apologised to David for Jack’s disgraceful lack of glassware.

Tallest refused the offer of a drink and took the chair next to Jack’s desk. He sat there in silence for almost three hours. The rest of them settled on the floor with their drinks, or on top of Jack’s bed, and the night chatter started. They spoke about bullies they had known at school, Noam Chomsky’s opposition to the Gulf War, The Female Eunuch, anorexia versus bulimia, football, The Selfish Gene, British seaside holidays, Orwell, early twentieth-century imperialism . . . And then at two in the morning, Kirs finished and several joints having circled the room, Jolyon initiated the final stage.

The armchair in which David was sitting was next to Jack’s bookcase. Jolyon and Dee acted out a short debate over the meaning of the word metonymy and then Jolyon pointed to the bookcase. A thick red copy of The Chambers Dictionary was on the top shelf, at the bottom of a pile of history textbooks.

‘David, pass me the dictionary so I can prove the supposed English Literature student utterly wrong.’

David tried to pull out the dictionary from the base of the pile but the pile threatened to topple. He groaned and stood up and removed the stack of history texts. Something behind the books caught his eye. ‘My goodness,’ said David. ‘What’s this I see here, Mr Jack Thomson?’

Jack pretended not to hear and stared at Chad. But Chad only smiled.

David picked something up. ‘My oh my oh my,’ he said. He held the thing close to his glasses and then grinned excitedly before revealing his discovery to the room.

It was a picture frame, an expensive frame, thick wood stained with a black lacquer. They had all seen the picture before, of course, but pretended now to see it as if for the first time. The photo had been taken in Jolyon’s room one night, early on in their first term, several months earlier. Jack was in the photo, a cigarette slanting from the corner of his mouth. Red drunken eyes. In his right hand he was holding up and displaying for the camera his half-finished drink. His left arm meanwhile was around someone’s shoulder, a fellow reveller. David’s shoulder. David too was waving his drink for the camera.

‘Well, I barely even remember this being taken,’ said David. ‘But then I suppose we do both look a little, shall we say, ebriose.’ David moved his nose closer to the picture, screwed up his eyes as his spectacles almost bumped with the glass in the frame. ‘Oh, now it’s coming back to me, my sole invite to one of your parties,’ he said. ‘But the way I remember it, wasn’t it Dee with the camera? And also I was under the impression that it was Dee’s camera, not your camera, Jack.’

‘You’re quite right, David,’ said Dee, ‘it was my camera. But Jack asked me for a copy of that photo when I showed him the pictures.’

David turned gently pink. ‘How very, very funny,’ he said. ‘And there was I thinking Jack not-so-secretly despised me.’

‘What other photos does he have hidden up there?’ said Chad.

David put the picture frame down on the seat of his armchair and shifted piles of books to peer behind them. ‘There don’t seem to be any more photos up here,’ he announced. ‘Jack, where are your other photos?’ he asked.

Jack gulped. ‘I don’t have any other photos,’ he said. He waved a hand dismissively. ‘I look terrible in every photo I’ve ever seen. That’s the only picture of me in which I look even half good.’

David picked up the frame again, held it at arm’s length, and stared hard at the photo then Jack. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, Jack, but you don’t look so terribly good in this photo. And neither do I. We are both undoubtedly the worse for several Hemingways.’

‘Then let’s take another one,’ said Dee. ‘A better one this time. Properly composed.’

‘You have your camera?’ said David.

‘Of course,’ said Dee, with enormous glee. ‘I take it everywhere, don’t I, Chad?’

‘She never leaves home without it,’ said Chad.

‘And you’ll make a copy for me as well this time,’ said David.

‘Absolutely,’ said Dee. ‘As many as you want.’ She turned to Jack. ‘Come on then, Jack, assume the position,’ she said.

Jack moved slowly. David detected nothing but everyone else in the room could see it. The struggle for dignity, the urge to flee. Behind David’s shoulder, Jack glared until Dee was ready to take the picture and Jolyon challenged him with a look.