Black Chalk

by Albert Alla

  I’ve endured a lot in my years. The weakest of punches leaves me with a bruise that never fades. This will change today. Nothing will be the same when I’m done with them. I know I’m young to die, but I feel so old old old. I could be seventy.

  People will wonder why. They’ll wonder for eternity. The ones who don’t get it are as guilty as the ones who will die today.

  Reading it, I imagined his voice trembling in anger, his fist clenching with every point he made, his rapid tones smoothening his logic. And to that, I had to add more, for I knew him better than most. A prolonged squint, his hand running over his face, his gaze jerking towards the door, and anguish dripping from every third word.

  Three

  My mother was taking me home. To my house of thirteen years, its weathered stone façade, its two wonky floors, its sloping garden. Every time she’d visited me in hospital, I’d known that she hadn’t spent a night with three strangers and a rotating staff. No, she’d spent her nights next to my father on her king-sized bed, where I used to nestle after a nightmare. Next to the books she meant to read, piled under her bedside table, spilling to the doorsill. I’d thought of the smell of that room, her cooking, my father coming home late. These were brief thoughts – images, flashes – operating under the surface, but they’d made me long for my own sheets, for my dog, for home. In hospital, I hadn’t been my normal self. I’d realised it: it’d started with the wound, draining me of all will, and it’d carried on when doctors, my mother, the inspector took every one of my decisions upon themselves. I’d become passive, but I hadn’t worried about it, for, whenever I’d thought of home, I’d imagined myself flowing into my old mould and emerging a good man. Even the calendar agreed with me: March, that great time of change.

  Yet, I felt it as soon as I walked into the dim vestibule, when my mother’s voice was ringing through the house, the familiar echoes meeting me by the umbrella stand. Home had changed. It came across subtly. The light was duller than the warm glow of my memories. I walked in expectant, apprehensive.

  ‘We’re home!’ my mother shouted.

  Further into the house, past the coat rack, Sloppy was struggling to stand on his legs. His stiff legs still straightening, he turned to smell my knee, and, content he’d done his job, settled back into his blankets. I bent over to kiss the greying fur on his head.

  ‘James, come down! Your brother’s home!’

  My fingertips grazed the wall’s rough stone, stopping at a well-worn crevice just as my father walked through the living room’s French windows, a stack of wood in his arms.

  ‘Dad!’

  It took him a second to adjust to the light. When he saw me, he put the wood down and came towards me, stopping to brush his hands on his trousers as he cleared his throat. That simple gesture made me nostalgic. Before he had time to recover his voice, I hugged him and held hard onto his chest. I was a few inches taller than him, but my head resting on the side of his shoulder, smelling his old leather jacket, I felt small.

  A hug from my father was a precious thing. He’d never been an affectionate man. When he got me into cricket or squash, two sports he excelled at, he spent a few hours introducing me to the basic technique and then entrusted me to coaches. Every now and again, he’d see me in the nets and tell me to keep my head still, or he’d play a match just as I was practising next door, and if we happened to take a break at the same time, he’d tell me to force myself back to the T after every shot. I always followed his advice.

  He let go of me when my mother walked into the room.

  ‘Where’s James?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s upstairs, playing video games.’

  ‘I’ll get him,’ he said and climbed the stairs.

  I wanted more and I realised that it wasn’t possible. His reasonable tones carried down the stairs. My brother had really started to get into video games just as I was losing interest in them. At first, he’d played the ones I’d spent all of my savings on. Strategy games in which I’d strived to conquer the world and the universe, or racing games in which I’d gone round and round to shave milliseconds off my time. But in the last year, he’d started buying his own games: first-person shooters mostly. Last I’d seen him play, he was hopping around and hacking at people, a crowbar in hand.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ my mother asked me. ‘Sit down, I’ll put the kettle on.’ She pointed at the sofa. A cup of tea in the living room; coming home wasn’t the loud bang I’d hoped for.

  While the kettle was boiling, my brother stole down the stairs and stood in front of me, fidgeting.

  ‘Hello, Nate. Welcome back.’

  ‘Were you playing something?’

  ‘I’m trying to get through the silo level in difficult. I’m at the machine gun boss.’ His head jerked towards the stairs.

  ‘Okay…’

  He stayed silent.

  ‘Do you want to play cricket in the garden later?’ I said.

  ‘It’s cold… But okay.’

  As he turned and ran back up the stairs, I told myself that at least there was still cricket. My mother walked my way from the kitchen, vapour swirling from my favourite mug. She handed it to me and sat on an armchair.

  ‘If you go outside, you must be careful. If you run into anyone, don’t answer any questions. There was a tall thin guy, grey hair, who tried your room a few times while you were in hospital. I had to have the police talk to him. He was lurking around the other day. But,’ she added as she leaned back into the sofa, ‘you should be safe in the garden. Go and play, enjoy yourself. You’re home now!’

  ***

  The house spilled over into the garage. Entering the space that nominally should have held two cars, I fought my way through half-empty cardboard boxes, around a ping-pong table, to reach the set of metal stumps that James and I had been using regularly not eight months before. Dusting it off, I looked for an old wrinkled shoebox, and found it inside the drawer of a chest we’d taken from my grandmother’s house. I checked inside: there were still three taped tennis balls in good condition. A cricket bat and the stumps in one hand, the box in the other, I weaved my way back outside, the stumps crashing into metal, wood and cardboard until I emerged into the garden with a smile on my face.

  ‘James!’ I yelled.

  Setting the wickets against the gate we used as a virtual wicketkeeper, I crouched down, bat in hand, and faced an imaginary delivery. The ball swung through the air, starting down the legside, coming back into my body. A stride forward, I met it with the full face of my bat, dispatching it all along the ground towards the bushes for four.

  ‘James!’

  My breath left a mark in the air as I shouted my brother’s name. He was coming through the French doors, still putting his jacket on. I was minutes away from the feel of a ball on my bat, from the joy of a good shot. I smiled.

  I reached into the shoebox and pulled a ball out. Cocking my wrist, I took two steps, and let my right arm whistle past my right ear and hit my left pocket. Two thin lines of pain spread from the hole in my stomach, and I winced. My brother was in front of me.

  ‘Sorry, Mum was being annoying.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She wanted me to move my stuff from the computer.’

  ‘Ah… So what’s going on with Mum and Dad?’ I said.

  ‘They’re being weird… Mum started crying so they stopped fighting, but now that she’s happy, Dad…’

  ‘Is he giving her the silent treatment?’

  ‘I guess.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Alright, it’s cold, let’s play. Bowling might be a little painful for me. You start bowling, I’ll bat.’

  He gave me a suspicious look, but took the shoebox from my hand and walked up to the bowling crease. His left arm raised, his jacket stretched, the ball dipped through the grey, while I waited with my bat held high.

  We used to play for hours. This time, we played for fifteen minutes and I was exhausted.

  ***

  My moth
er spent her afternoon in the kitchen kneading dough, dicing pumpkin and caramelising raisins, until the house was filled with the smell of all my favourite dishes. She called us to the table, a bead of sweat forming on her forehead, her apron smeared with flour and chocolate. Munching cumin seeds, soups suggesting saffron, curries seeped in ginger, oranges dipped in chocolate, the flavours tickled my palate. I could smell more ingredients than I could name, and I could taste more than I could smell. I pictured birthdays, Christmases, family, friends and girlfriends.

  ‘You have your A-levels a few months away. You have to think about it.’

  ‘But not now, I’ve just come back.’ I felt immediately frustrated by the topic, even though it was the first time she’d brought it up.

  ‘If I talk about it tomorrow, you’re not going to like it either. Let’s resolve it now that it’s in the open.’

  ‘Mum!’ I looked at James for support but he was looking down at his plate. ‘I’m enjoying my dinner, and now you’re ruining it.’

  She flinched, holding her eyes closed for a second. When she opened them, I saw they’d become moist. I was surprised. I’d thought that she would push on regardless of what I said, but seeing her on the brink of tears, I tried to master my frustration.

  ‘But yes,’ I said, ‘now that it’s in the open, we might as well get it over with.’

  My voice came out harsher than I intended. She took an instant to assess me, before she spoke in a tentative tone:

  ‘Everyone understands that you might not want to go back to school, and that it’s a bit late to go to a new school. So your principal’s put together a study package for you, and a few teachers have even volunteered to come here and help you in the evenings.’

  I mumbled that it could work, surprised by the strength of my reaction. Finishing school had always been a given. Turning to my father, I asked him whether he was going to training this Thursday. I saw him nod at my mother, as if to tell her she’d said enough. For a second, I thought he understood me.

  ‘No,’ he said. That single word cut me down. ‘Three reasons. First is that I have a heavy workload at the moment, Nate. I’ve had to take clients in Dorset, and that involves a lot of travelling, mainly on Thursdays… The second is that you need to rest. And the third is that the season’s still a long way off.’

  It was a little further into the conversation, after my mother had quizzed my brother over his homework, and after my father had complimented my mother over the food, that she turned to me and told me that journalists had been calling her, asking whether they could interview me. She’d already made a decision. Asking me was just good manners. But then I heard it, as she talked of how often the media had tried getting in touch with me, with her, with anyone in the family. There it was, the tentativeness in her voice. Tentativeness! More pronounced than when she’d discussed school – she didn’t want me talking to the media. No, she wanted me safe, so why was she asking me? And I saw it, like a door opening onto a long corridor, the distance, the perspective, and above all, her great fears, the way she’d hammered them into the ground, until she could help me, save me. Yes, the hardness in her face as she’d forced me to watch television, the coldness by the side of my bed, symptoms of channelled emotions, tunnel vision. And I’d told her to fuck off! But before I could feel shame, I felt anger – she’d lied to me, lied, lied, lied; it was all a great falsehood – and that anger was more satisfying than any glimpse of compassion. I shut the door, and the corridor narrowed. My mother was speaking: there were some who were calling from magazines, but others wanted to record interviews for their television programmes. My mind leaped on the distinction: the thought of a journalist, pen in hand, notebook at the ready, asking me what had happened, while trying to trick me, repulsed me, while the thought of a television interview brought back the few memories I had of such things: relaxed hosts leaning back on their sofas, smiling and joking, their hair settled in improbable waves. There was a deep sense of the unknown, of a world I could explore.

  I listened to my mother intently, my eyes wandering nonchalantly to hide my interest and make her say more. Then, my mouth pursed in caution, I told her I could try one or two.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘No, I want to.’

  ‘It’ll be hard.’

  ‘Mum! I want to,’ I said.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  ‘Alright,’ she said, ‘let’s try it, but you let me know if there’s a problem. Will you do that?’

  ***

  The next day, I sat at my desk unable to focus. The large folder sat intact next to my pencil case, yellow and purple plastic sheets separating bundles of stapled paper, elastic bands and cardboard binding the whole thing together. My name was printed on a label pasted three-quarters of the way up, adorned with my lip-licking principal’s ornate signature and a sentence in which every word was capitalised but of which I could only make out the first two: Get Well. I was meant to spend the day working but whenever I felt a pang of guilt and tried to bring my mind back to physics, history and maths, my thoughts slipped over the folder and narrowed on another idea: my principal’s writing was as bad as a doctor’s because it gave him doctoresque authority; A Room with a View ended as it did because Forster couldn’t think of a proper ending; elastic bands more than doubled in resistance when they were doubled over. After an hour at my desk, guilt gave way to boredom, and I roamed the empty house.

  My parents’ room drew me first: I ran my hand over stacks of sweaters, shirts and trousers, looking for a bulge, a rustle, or any sign of the hidden. When I found an unopened box of condoms in my father’s bedside table, I decided that I’d had enough and moved on to my brother’s room. The smell emanating from the heaps of dirty clothes almost had me out before I could find the three A4 colour prints he’d hidden between his mattress and his bed base. I looked at the first: a blonde in the sun, ruffled hair framing her soft eyes, a chequered shirt ripped to show a nipple, her hand playing between her legs. With a jolt, I realised that my brother was almost thirteen. While the pictures had me excited, the thought of my little brother ogling them made me uncomfortable, and putting the photos back exactly from where I’d taken them, I left the room.

  Bookshelves lined the lengths of the upstairs corridor and the back wall of the living room. Books had always drawn me to them. Starting in the better lit room, I perused the titles, largely non-fiction, that had made the bigger and darker downstairs bookshelves their own: William James’ drunken jottings heralded a host of historical psychological titles, their bindings frail with age, before they gave way to Napoleon and nineteenth-century Europe. One late nineteenth-century travel narrative set in the Pacific caught my attention, but its part-patchy and part-grandiose language made me put it down before I could sit on the sofa. Coming to a collection of existential essays in French, German and English, I decided that I preferred fiction and walked upstairs.

  My eyes found their way to a familiar sequence of worlds. Graham Greene’s spies in smoky rooms, from the heat of Havana, to the humidity of Saigon; strolling down broad empty streets, a thousand eyes following my back. Joseph Conrad’s gut-wrenching dilemmas, choosing between stern and bow in a sea of grey; I drifted down a brown river past logs bloated with meaning. At the end of the shelf lay Hemingway. I picked up A Farewell to Arms, and descended into the living room, my body slumped across the cold leather of the sofa. Soon, I was in wartime Italy and Catherine Barkley was straddling me, her face inches from mine, her blonde hair a curtain shielding me from the outside world. As the days passed, I kept on choosing books set in faraway destinations. At home, a man was bound, but in those distant places, a man could do things, and, more and more, the urge to do something was building inside of me.

  I look back at those youthful readings with an ironic smile. To my dreams of the Italian front, Mexican provinces, and the Congo, I’d like to add the crusts of dust and dirt the road piled beneath my runny nose
. I’d like to add corrupt border officials asking for bribes with a smile and a gun. And I’d like to add the hours I spent crouched over a Turkish toilet in the Sudan, as all the water in the Nile poured straight through me.

  In those moments, my thoughts wandered back to the comforts of Hornsbury: the old sofas, the working chimney, the safe food, and, with a frown, I told myself how lucky I was to have seen so much of the world.

  ***

  From the moment my mother told me she’d booked me in for my first interview, scheduled four days after I came out of hospital, I stopped telling myself that the hours I’d spent each day at my desk were in any way fruitful. Three pages of laboured notes didn’t count as an achievement. And I started to picture myself walking on a sharp ridge: on the one side was home, its slow way of doing things, A-levels, and a scree that I needed to clear; the other side was hazy, but I was sure that it hid waterfalls, palaces, harems. The world of television belonged to the haze.

  In the car on the way over, I tried to think of the glamour ahead, to piece a picture together from the few times I’d watched morning shows.

  ‘What sort of questions are they going to ask me?’ I asked my mother, when we were at a traffic light on the outskirts of London.

  She glanced at me, her hand toying with the gear stick.

  ‘They’ll want to know about your experience. What you felt, what you saw, things like that,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to go. I can call them now and cancel.’

  ‘No, I want to go.’

  The light turned green and her attention was back on the road. A little unease marred my excitement. I could feel her wanting to cancel and I wasn’t going to give her an excuse. I kept on smiling excitedly. Half an hour later, we were there.

  Four lanes of asphalt separated a broad span of concrete from a broad sweep of bricks. A tower loomed over the studio’s revolving doors. I looked around the spacious lobby in awe: this was where it all happened. Three minutes after giving the receptionist my name, a girl who looked about my age but who had to be older, introduced herself with a wide but short-lived smile: