Black Chalk

by Yates, Christopher J.

  Front quad was glistening with morning dew.

  Perhaps it was like exercising a muscle, you had to work that muscle so hard that you damaged its cells. And then, as it repaired itself, the muscle would grow. The muscle would come back larger and stronger, ready for heavier lifting.

  XLIV(ii) Dee approached Chad from behind, unannounced but gently, as he rounded a corner of front quad. She took up his arm and held it in hers as if clinging to a mast.

  ‘Hey, Dee,’ said Chad.

  ‘How was your date?’

  ‘You English would probably say something like, slightly disappointing.’

  ‘Oh dear. That bad?’

  ‘She didn’t show. No one in the house is speaking to me. And I just spent fifteen minutes being bawled out by Lord Greyskull. Oh, and if I put another foot wrong . . .’

  ‘Oops. Maybe not ideal to be playing a game of wrong feet then.’

  ‘I’ll just have to get smart. Hey, maybe you and I should form an alliance.’

  Dee laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ll consider your offer very carefully, Chad.’

  And then a silence fell between them as Dee rested her head on Chad’s shoulder. Her hair smelled of woodland and vanilla and they walked on slowly through the cold stone passage out onto back quad where the vast tree was now pimpled with green buds and the flags were swaying like fishtails. Then, with a squeeze of his arm, Dee said, ‘You know you have absolutely no reason to be embarrassed, Chad.’

  ‘Really? Because I have this weird little itch that tells me you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s funny though, there’s also a small part of me that doesn’t care any more.’

  ‘Good,’ Dee said, and she squeezed him again. ‘But all the stuff you said in the Great Hall yesterday – don’t worry, I’m not planning to remind you of everything – but there’s just one thing, Chad, one question I have to ask you.’ She tilted her head to look up at him. ‘Why didn’t you just tell us you grew up on a pig farm?’

  ‘The others knew,’ said Chad. ‘I guess it must have come up before I met you, Dee.’

  ‘No,’ said Dee, ‘I asked everyone. And Jolyon knew. But of course Jolyon knew. The others thought you were brought up in New York City.’

  ‘Dee for detective,’ Chad smiled. And then he paused, he felt the press of the new feeling in his chest. ‘I don’t know, Dee,’ he said, ‘I’m ashamed of a whole bunch of things. I guess that once it has a hold of you it’s like shame has the freedom to roam. If I think it through logically, I can’t think of any good reason I wouldn’t tell my best friends I grew up on a pig farm.’ He paused and tried to work it out again for the thousandth time. ‘The thing is, it’s as if there’s another creature inside here who refuses to explain anything he does. Does that even make any sense?’

  Dee pushed her head further into the crook between Chad’s shoulder and neck. ‘Of course it does, Chad,’ she said. She let out her breath with another expansive huff and clinging tighter now to Chad, she said, ‘We’re all ashamed of too many silly little things. I used to be ashamed I didn’t have a father. I knew my mother had died when I was three. But my father? Who knows? Maybe he was dead too, or maybe he was alive but just didn’t want me. Maybe there was something wrong with me that made him leave.

  ‘When I was little, when I was scared of the dark in my bedroom at night, sometimes I would count up to a hundred. And if nothing bad happened before I got all the way there, I’d tell myself everything was OK, I was safe from the monsters. But to make this work, I had to offer something in return, like a sacrifice. Very smallsacrifices. If I didn’t get told off at school or hit by a foster-parent, I had to cut my hand with a penknife or stab my arm with a compass. And then, when I was eleven, I thought up this way bigger deal than anything I’d come up with before. I decided I’d write five hundred poems, I was always good at poetry at school when I was little. So this deal was with God, I was daring Him to exist, daring Him to let me go through with it. Anyway, I made a wish that, before I got to the five-hundredth poem, my father would find me. But I had to put something on the line. So I made this threat . . . Well, you know what that was, I don’t need to say it out loud.’ Dee was quiet for a while and then quickly she rubbed Chad’s forearm as if it needed warming. ‘So there you go,’ she said, ‘that’s one of my very best secrets. And I think you deserve to hold on to it in return for so many of yours.’

  Chad tilted his head so his temple was resting on the top of Dee’s skull. ‘Did you ever try finding him, isn’t there anything you can do?’

  ‘Oh yes, we orphans have rights these days, not like poor Oliver,’ said Dee. ‘Apparently my mother refused to say anything. No one knew if she was seeing anyone at the time she got pregnant. All I can do now is wait.’

  Staircase six was just a short way across a cobbled rise. They felt the press of the stones through the soles of their shoes. Dee’s head rocked on Chad’s shoulder and a loose hair made him want to sneeze but he didn’t brush it away.

  He opened the door and gestured, after you. Dee went in and they climbed up through the creaks to the room at the top.

  XLV(i) Four hours on the road and we find the place without taking any wrong turns. My driver pulls onto the unpaved drive.

  It is not a long driveway and the house is modest. Especially modest when you consider the acres of land all around. Two floors, gable-fronted, fifteen yards of porch. The wooden siding is cedar clapboard painted grey with no trim.

  Soon after we pull up, before I have a chance to get out of the car, the front doors open. Wooden door, screen door. The screen clatters shut on its springs.

  The man who comes out of the house is in overalls and an old flannel shirt. He wears a frayed cap that displays on its brow the Ford logo, florid swan, blue pond. And he carries a shotgun. But the way he handles it, knuckles pink and loose, the gun is not threatening but simply a presence, a yard of potential. He stops and stands on the wooden steps that descend from the porch. And then he spits.

  This is perfect, this is just how I imagined it. I want to clap my hands with glee but decide against any sudden movements.

  I open the passenger door and step out slowly. The sunlight gently stirs the pig-shit in the air. Palms showing, I raise my hands to my chest the way Jack used to do a hundred times a day. And then the brightness makes me shield my eyes.

  Are you Mr Mason?

  Who wants to know? the farmer replies.

  A friend of your son, I say.

  You English? the farmer says.

  That’s right, I say. We went to college together.

  And your friend in the car there? the farmer says. He go to Pitt too?

  No, I say, he’s just a driver. I don’t own a car.

  This last piece of information appears to amuse the farmer greatly. I suppose you want to come in, he says. I can’t give you much time. There’s work won’t be doing itself.

  He turns and steps inside. The screen door clatters behind him.

  XLV(ii) Chad’s mom has given me freshly baked cookies for the ride home, warm pucks cloudy in their wax paper bag.

  She comes outside to wish me farewell. The farmer has been feeding his animals. I see him emerge from the large shed behind the farmhouse.

  The driver turns off his music as I climb into the car. I wind down a window to wave to Chad’s mother as we crunch down the drive.

  Did you get what you came for? the driver asks me.

  Yes, I tell him, I think so.

  XLVI(i) Emilia was becoming tired of Jolyon’s room. The year’s first bright days called out to her from beyond his windowpanes, fields beyond the towers and the spires of the city. It was predicted to be unseasonably warm the following day, so she proposed they should play the next round of the Game somewhere with grass. They could pack a picnic blanket, there would be fruit and sandwiches.

  The others acquiesced although Jack took great pleasure in bemoaning the effort required. He also voiced bemusement over the fact that Emilia not only owned a
picnic blanket but had brought it with her to Pitt.

  Emilia was also the only owner of a bike among the remaining five. The others had to borrow, Jolyon’s requests quickly rustling up another four bikes, fellow students jumping to the task like footmen.

  Away they pedalled, Emilia in front, her bare legs turning in the sunshine. She wore a silk scarf dotted with spirals and daisies and her hair was tied back. Chad had to pedal hard to keep up with her, those buttermilk legs going around and around. After the incident in Great Hall, however, he felt awkward enough to stay several bike lengths back.

  Jolyon, Jack and Dee formed the peloton far behind. They motivated each other with talk of how good the cigarette would taste at the end of the journey, the wine in the sunlight.

  Emilia was a natural leader of expeditions, every half-mile or so she would coast, standing tall on her pedals and glancing back at the others while shielding her eyes from the sun. It looked as though she were saluting the stragglers, proud of her brave troops. While she and Chad waited, she would busily consult a map for which there appeared to be designed in her rucksack a specific map pocket. When finally the cursing peloton arrived she would exhort them to continue with lines like ‘Come on now, the wine won’t stay chilled forever’ or ‘Last one there gets the funny-shaped strawberries’.

  Seven or eight miles beyond the city they reached a large ornamental gate, the entrance to a grand old palace. And then after the cigarettes were lit, Jack found something further to bemoan. A sign listing entrance fees.

  ‘I’m not paying to support the upkeep of a fetid symbol of the fucking aristocracy.’

  ‘Jack, it’s one of the most beautiful houses in Britain,’ said Emilia.

  ‘Not to me it’s not. A tower block full of working-class families, that’s beautiful. Not this overwrought wedding cake.’

  Emilia looked to Jolyon for some help, the sway he had over Jack, but Jolyon only shrugged.

  ‘I don’t mind paying,’ said Chad. ‘I’ll pay for you, Jack.’

  ‘Of course the American doesn’t mind,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not your utter corruption of a democracy, is it? No, Americans are always pleased to swan over here then pour their dollars into this kind of shit. The quaint symbols of an institution they themselves rejected more than two centuries ago.’

  Emilia became businesslike. ‘Middle is meeting us here,’ she said. ‘Up by the house.’ She consulted her watch. ‘And we’re late because . . . well, we’re late and he’ll be there already.’

  ‘I signed up for a field and some wine, that’s all,’ said Jack. ‘Not to spit on the graves of the working class. Look at this village.’ He pointed to the cottages and inns and terraces behind them. ‘Now look at the grounds of this fucking monstrosity. It must be ten times the size of the entire village. All for one family. And I bet they only built the village to house the staff they needed to run that place.’

  ‘Come on, Jack,’ said Dee. ‘You’re right, but come on. Look,’ she pointed to the admission sign, ‘it costs less to go into the grounds only, we don’t have to do the whole house tour thing. Chad can pay for your ticket and you can buy him a pint later on.’

  Jolyon lay his arm across Jack’s shoulder and led him slowly toward the gate. ‘It’s a good compromise, Jack,’ he said. ‘And we can piss in their lake when we’re done.’

  As they walked toward the entrance, Emilia in front and Chad nearby, the peloton formed again. The brooding young turks, their smoke around them like dust.

  Chad handed over his money, two for grounds only, and waited for Jack. He would have liked to have gone into the house. Chad had never been inside a palace before.

  XLVI(ii) Emilia and Chad crossed an arched stone bridge over a lake that Jack had chosen as his line in the sand. He and Jolyon and Dee lay on the picnic blanket by the water’s edge, into the wine already.

  Emilia told Chad some of the history of the place as they walked, the rush of her voice outpacing any awkwardness there might have been. A rapid history repeating. Dukes and scandals and heroes, scandals and heroes and dukes.

  Atop a gentle rise sat the vast palace, an ornamented pile unsure if it was castle or palace or Roman temple. Gilded and pillared and with towers and balustrades.

  Emilia’s tale was hovering on the brink of the twentieth century, a loveless marriage, the fortune returned to the bankrupt family. And it was then that she began to cry. Chad turned and she snuffled back tears, wiped her cheeks and apologised.

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ said Chad.

  ‘I just wanted us to do something fun together,’ said Emilia. ‘We used to have fun, didn’t we?’

  ‘We still do.’

  ‘You might be in love with this game, Chad, but I’m not. I hate it.’

  ‘Then why don’t you just leave?’

  ‘And when would I see everyone? We’ve lost Mark already. You’d all be off in secret, no visitors allowed.’

  ‘You mean when would you see Jolyon,’ said Chad.

  ‘No, Chad, I don’t mean just Jolyon. I mean all of you. Even Jack. Though I could quite happily punch him in the bloody face today.’

  They could see Middle now, he was sitting on a bench staring vaguely toward them. Emilia waved but Middle didn’t respond.

  ‘Don’t tell the others I cried,’ said Emilia. ‘Specially not Jack.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Chad.

  They continued in silence. Middle seemed not to notice them until they were close enough to startle him and his stare dissolved upon them with a twitch. ‘Right then,’ he said, ‘well, I only came along because there’s something very important I need to say to you.’ Middle stood up and straightened his jacket, as if Emilia and Chad were a large crowd and he had to give a speech. ‘Here’s the thing then,’ he said. ‘I’m quitting, so, yes, I’m leaving right now.’ Middle closed his eyes as if he might be imagining palm trees and the purest blue skies. ‘I’ll let them know myself, Tallest and Shortest, don’t worry. Long-distance phone call,’ he smiled. ‘They can try to do whatever they like with me. But that’s it as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Right,’ said Chad, looking at Emilia uncertainly.

  ‘I wanted to tell you in person,’ said Middle, and then he snorted. ‘Well, actually, I always wanted to take a tour of the house,’ he said. ‘It has quite the history, you know.’

  ‘Emilia was just telling me the same thing,’ said Chad.

  Middle beamed generously at Emilia. ‘Well, this is goodbye then,’ he said. He started to head toward the house but then, hesitating, turned back to face them. ‘Actually, there was something else I came here to say.’ He looked around suspiciously. ‘I know you wonder who we are – Game Soc, I mean. But that’s really missing the point. The point, the thing that actually matters, is what we represent. And I don’t have an answer for that.’

  ‘Very enlightening,’ said Chad, ‘thanks for the riddle.’

  Middle’s head twitched like a bird of prey. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘so it’s possible that you might be told certain things. And I don’t mean things about Game Soc but something larger than that. Much larger. But I don’t know if it’s all just ghost stories. So what am I supposed to do? Perhaps it’s just meant to scare me into carrying on.’

  Middle swallowed hard and looked off to the side. ‘It’s a little like Pascal’s Wager, I think. Blaise Pascal suggested that, when it comes to the existence of God, the only rational way to behave is to believe in His existence. He said we are all playing a game, a coin is being thrown and will land heads or tails, existence or non-existence of God, and we have no choice but to play. We must place a wager because we’re engaged in the game whether we like it or not. And the rational choice has to be belief. Because if you win, you win everything. Heaven, eternal life, infinite happiness. And if you lose, you lose nothing, you are the same quality of dead as the atheist.’ Middle began to look tired, as if this speech were an essay he had been writing all night. ‘And the thing is, y
ou could frame the argument just the same way for belief in Hell of course.’

  Middle put his hands in his pockets and hugged his elbows to his side. ‘If one of them comes to you,’ he said, ‘if one of them tells you certain things, you might decide the only rational behaviour is to believe them. Because to act any other way is too great a risk.’ And then he became almost enthusiastic. ‘But here’s my take on Pascal’s Wager.’ Yes, it’s a wager. But the thing with wagers is that the true gambler, the purest player of the game, isn’t playing to win. The true gambler plays for the thrill, the sheer ecstasy of taking part. And the purest thrill comes not from the idea of winning but from the fear of defeat, from there being something real and valuable on the line. If there’s nothing to lose, then where’s the thrill? The true gambler does the opposite.’ Middle was gesturing with his fingers, letting them flutter here and there. ‘Yes, the purest lover of the game bets the other way, he goes entirely against the grain. Doesn’t he, Chad?’

  Chad gave Emilia a confused look. ‘OK, well, that was fascinating, Middle,’ he said, turning. ‘I’m now feeling highly educated. And we’re both so pleased you came.’ He tried to sound sarcastic but felt as if he were caught suddenly in a spotlight.

  Middle looked thrilled now. ‘Chad, you understand every word I just said. But Emilia . . . oh, Emilia, you’re too good for this game. Listen, the only one of you who is safe right now is Mark because he’s out. Get out clean, get out early, because the longer you stay in the more dangerous things become. Run away just as soon as you can. Unless you’re a true gambler that is, unless you actually thrill for the rough stuff.’

  ‘So what about you?’ said Chad. ‘Are you getting out early enough?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Middle. ‘Like I say, it depends where the truth lies. Maybe not. But I just don’t have the stomach for this any more. Good luck,’ he said. And then Middle turned and started to make his way toward the house. He looked to Chad very much like an old man from behind. The abundance of wool in his jacket and pants, the hunching of his shoulders, heavy press of the years.