Black Chalk

Dee holds her hand to her heart and smiles gratefully. Yes, cynical reader, this is indeed my chosen method of seduction. But I didn’t lie to Dee. I love her poems, they remind me of puzzle boxes, as if you could slide around their pieces and discover something beautiful inside.And they’re much less dark than I’d have expected, I say.

Dee looks surprised. How much did you read?

I worked my way back, maybe the last fifty or so.

Ah, my later work, Dee laughs. If it’s dark you’re looking for, just wait until you make it all the way back to my teenage years.

We laugh together in the gathering dusk.

The fireflies will soon be out, I say.

Dee lies back on the picnic blanket. Let’s watch them together every night, she says.

I lie back on the blanket as well and the city holds us snug in its sleepy hollow. Soon the evening show begins. Blink flash blink flash. We breathe in deeply, our chests rising and falling in unison. Bright strings, orange threads.

And with Dee by my side, nothing bad can befall me.

LII

LII(i)‘What?’ said Mark. ‘Come on, Jolyon, you’re a liberal socialist pacifist, you’re not going to punch me,’ he said. ‘What’s up anyway?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’

‘Your eyes are all red, Jolyon. Have you been crying or just not getting enough shut-eye? And you’re late, by the way. We’ve already missed the nine o’clock on M’Naghten Rules. And you could do with a lecture on insanity.’

‘What did you do with my essays?’

‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ said Mark, shrugging.

‘There were three essays in a red folder on my desk and I know I put them there and . . .’ Jolyon halted, resenting himself for explaining.

‘Oh, now I see,’ said Mark. ‘You lost something and you think I’m to blame.’ His fingers began to drum at his chin. ‘And you say you know where you put them.’ Mark looked fresh, showered and rested. ‘Isn’t this like the time we had to delay the game because you couldn’t find the cards in your room? Hours later Emilia went to the fridge and hey presto, there they were, next to your milk.’

Jolyon glanced away and sucked his lips. And then he ran back to the top of staircase six.

LII(ii) The fridge, shared between eight rooms, was in the corridor. And there they were, underneath his butter.

At first it seemed obvious to him that Mark had moved the essays. But then another alternative jumped into his mind. He remembered finishing the third essay and becoming hungry. He went to the fridge . . . Did he have the essays in his hand? He could picture them in his hand but imagination wasn’t the same as memory. And it had been so hard to concentrate on the last essay because his mind had been running over and over the break-up with Emilia, her coldness, the cast on her leg covered in messages and drawings. He had asked her if he should write something, a get well, and she had said no. No, Jolyon, just go. And he felt so guilty. And maybe the essays had been in his hand when he went to the fridge. And maybe . . .

No, it was Mark, of course it was Mark.

Emilia had been in tears at the end. But he should have been the one in tears, he was in the wrong, he was losing her for what he had done. He loved her, he should never have gone along with the miners’ strike speech idea, he should have stood up for what was right. And he could imagine the feel of the essays in one hand, reaching for bread and butter, needing two hands.

No no no.

Jolyon was so tired. He had been awake all night long, had already rewritten two of the essays. But at least now he did not need to rewrite the third. And the way Emilia had looked at him when he left the room, Jolyon had seen in her eyes all the happiness that could have been his. And now that he had lost that happiness, he was slipping down beneath the light. And he wasn’t sure he would ever find it again.

Jolyon dropped the essays on his desk. Of course it had been Mark, of course it had, hadn’t it? He set the alarm to wake him for his tutorial at twelve. But he didn’t get any sleep.

LII(iii) Chad crossed the drawbridge to Pitt. In fact it was a flagstone path across a thin lawn but Chad liked to imagine it as a drawbridge. Pitt was a castle, his place of strength. He wondered if he should try someone’s room. Jolyon would be at his lectures. Should he go and see Emilia?

He decided to walk around the college and gather his strength. Yes, he would go to see Emilia and apologise. Perhaps he would even tell her it was all his fault.

And then he saw Dee, reading, sitting on her favourite patch of grass by the ancient tree in the gardens. Her legs were crossed and she was wearing cut-offs and a cardigan. A man’s cardigan, large and grey. The cuffs were frayed and there were holes just above them through which she had hooked her hands.