Black Chalk

by Albert Alla

  ‘Darling,’ Mrs Baker said to her daughter absentmindedly before her voice caught and trailed on the ‘ing’. My mother turned around.

  ‘Amanda.’

  ‘Liz.’

  Something had to have happened between them, I thought, for them to speak so carefully. Mrs Baker smiled awkwardly at me, and all of a sudden I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. Her smile breaking down into a grimace, she addressed me:

  ‘How are you, Nate?’

  ‘Fine. I’m fine.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  She stood behind us as silence weighed in. And then she talked to her daughter:

  ‘We’ve forgotten the bread. Come.’

  ‘Do you want me to hold our spot in the queue?’ her daughter said.

  ‘No, come and help me choose some nice bread for Dad.’

  I watched them walk away: Mrs Baker steadily pushing the trolley, her daughter skipping every third step. When we left the supermarket, they still hadn’t come back.

  As we drove home, I thought of Amanda Baker’s expression. She’d been so kind to me over the years – she always had a box of Coco Pops in a cupboard just in case I came over. If I couldn’t face her, if I couldn’t spend time with my mother, then it was clear, I had to leave. Another continent, another country, another language – some faraway corner of the world, where it took fifty deaths before an event made the news, some mountain inhabited by goat herders and a hermit in a cave, a long beach parading as an island. Turning up the music, I tapped my fingers along to its beat, and recalled Jeffrey’s sister, the freedom with which she’d moved. Compared to her, I’d lost something. But I wouldn’t despair. I could get it back.

  Over the next month, until my eighteenth birthday, I made and unmade plans. Using my mother’s computer, I found a website advertising for fruit pickers in Dorset from May to October. The money wasn’t good but they offered cheap accommodation, cheap food. Five months up pear trees meant a year living on the cheap in India, or better, in Thailand. But money wasn’t necessarily an issue: on my eighteenth birthday, I’d finally come into my grandfather’s money, the three thousand pounds he’d left me. Not much, but enough to leave England and find my feet in a different country. I remembered a friend of my father who’d come over for dinner seven months earlier, and who’d talked about the money his son was making teaching English in Korea.

  ‘Four hundred pounds a week and his flat’s paid for,’ he’d said. For half of my bank account, I could go to Korea and look for a job – a year there and I’d be rich. But the only thing I knew of Korea was a movie I’d watched once: men chopping each other’s fingers off in the name of some arcane game. I didn’t want to be in perpetual exile. I needed a place where I could fit in. In my imagination, I was spending my days working an easy job, my evenings surrounded by friends, my nights in the arms of a pretty girl, and I was buying everyone drinks. Korea wasn’t that place.

  As my eighteenth birthday neared, I grew restless. It was that night or never: sneak out one evening, or remain forever a Hornsbury boy. What I needed to do was to move, to see places. A week before my birthday, while I was at the local library, I browsed through their career stand. I ignored all the jobs that required a degree – they were what I’d expected I’d end up doing, but my situation had changed. Now I needed to find myself something, anything. Amidst all the leaflets, I found two that could take me overseas. One for the armed forces, but I put it down straightaway. I’d done guns, and I wasn’t going to do them again. And another for merchant ships: toiling away at sea, visiting the next port. Picking fruits, working on a ship, teaching English, there were things I could do.

  I kept on thinking until the morning of my birthday, when, packing my bags, hiding them in a cupboard, I told myself that I’d leave that night and work out the next step on the fly. What mattered most was that my mother didn’t know I was leaving until I’d left.

  ***

  After I put away my bag, when I was alone in the house, someone rang the bell. I didn’t recognise him when I opened the door, but then I saw the big square glasses, the same glasses he’d scrutinised me through as if every one of my words were a lie, I saw the jeans and jumper he was wearing to trick me, and I wished I’d left the latch on the door.

  ‘Hello, Nate. Can I come in?’

  ‘My mother’s not here.’ I stayed in his path.

  ‘According to my files, you’re eighteen today. She doesn’t have to be here.’

  ‘I thought you already had my statement,’ I said, a burly edge to my words. I wanted to shut the door in his face, and watch him amble back to his car, blood dripping from his nose.

  ‘I’m not here to take your statement, Nate. I just want to talk to you.’ He waited for my response, but I stayed silent, blocking his path. ‘Your case is closed. Whatever you tell me now, I promise, I won’t reopen it.’

  I studied him, his plea so different to the questions he’d asked me in hospital, and I believed him.

  ‘We can speak here.’ I waved at the porch.

  He nodded and took a step back.

  ‘Would you mind coming out? I can’t see you with the light.’

  I closed the door behind me, and leaned back on one of the stone pillars.

  ‘My case is closed?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you know it?’ he asked. ‘You’re a national hero.’ I winced. ‘You don’t like that word?’ he said.

  Fighting a grimace, I shook my head.

  ‘You know what, Nate. All the people you’ll meet, they’ll know you as the one who tried to save the others. It doesn’t matter that you failed. You’re the only one who tried, and when something’s as big as that, well, we’ll latch on to any bit of goodness, you see?’

  I avoided his gaze.

  ‘Of course, you don’t,’ he continued, growing agitated. ‘But me, I was there. I saw that classroom when there were still dead bodies in it. Dead bodies!’ His words drew me, and I couldn’t avoid looking at him anymore. ‘Your friends, dead, dying, I saw them all. I went to speak to all the mothers. And I interviewed everyone. I spoke to them, I listened to their stories, I tried to make sense of it. Me, Nate, I know you’re not a hero. I’ve seen your type before: you try to flee but inside you’re all guilt. With me, you don’t have to pretend.’

  He looked at me expectantly. I could feel it deep down my throat – he had me in his grasp.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked in a small voice.

  ‘I want your story, the whole of it. Not your mother standing between us, whispering in your ear. Of course, I know what she did, how she leaked all that information! But now, it’s just the two of us, Nate, man to man. Remember, I stood in that classroom, I had blood on my shoes. And I know that you didn’t tell me everything. I need to know what you know. Not for my job. For myself.’ He pulled at his jumper and I understood him: he’d come to me a civilian.

  I looked at his ponderous forehead, more creased than I’d ever seen, at the rim of his glasses pushing his thick eyebrows into his waving brow, and I tried to reach for a memory, but I found a dark pit, and I shook my head, slowly at first. As I pictured telling him more, dread rose and my shake became more resolute, until I had my jaw clenched, and I finally spoke through gritted teeth:

  ‘I told you everything.’

  His head dropped for a second, and then it rose again, his eyes suddenly full of intent. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed hard.

  ‘You didn’t and we both know it. But tomorrow, next month, or in ten years, you’ll want to, and you won’t find another person like me. And I promise you something: I’ll still want to listen. So when you finally man up, come and find me.’

  He let go of my shoulder, and studied me, a mournful look on his face. He took his keys out, and let them dangle from his fingers.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ I said.

  ‘So you are,’ he nodded.

  ‘I won’t come back.’

  ‘I’ll still be here,’ he said, and he extended a hand. I sho
ok it, and he left.

  ***

  To the few people present, we were celebrating my birthday. To me, we were celebrating my departure. I spent the first hour of the party gliding in between guests, thinking of how I should break the news.

  Her son already tugging at one hand, my aunt put down her flute so that her daughter could grab the other. Pulled from both sides, she listened to my descriptions of television studios.

  ‘But what did you think of them?’

  ‘What, the lights?’

  ‘No, Chris and Mary.’

  ‘Ah.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘They seemed nice enough. Didn’t you watch the show?’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t there.’ She looked down at her daughter: ‘What?’

  I finished my glass. She crouched down to the level of her children, shooting me the odd encouraging smile while I rattled my memories for titbits she wouldn’t have seen. I didn’t know whether they were only pretending to be together for the cameras – my mind had been on other things. I spoke about the cameras, the green room, while she juggled her children and her nephew, until I felt the courage to point at my empty glass and move away.

  There was too much room for the children to run and scream between the three groups people had flocked towards: my friends around a sofa, my grandparents talking to James and my mother, and my father speaking to his sister and her family. A champagne bottle in hand, I strolled past my grandparents and joined my friends. All four were giggling, squeezed together on a small sofa. I perched myself on the coffee table and, facing them, brandished the bottle.

  ‘Yes, please!’

  ‘Here, here.’

  ‘Leave the bottle, will you?’

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked, downing my flute.

  ‘Nothing,’ Beth said, her response muted. She seemed embarrassed when I looked at her.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  She pointed her chin towards my aunt.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She just spilled her drink over your cousin.’

  My aunt was waving a hand manically in her husband’s direction while addressing my father. Clearly more used to his sister than me, my father left her with a smooth smile and made for the kitchen. Here was my father alone in the kitchen, I thought. It was time to act.

  ‘Finish the bottle. I’ll go see if there’s more,’ I told my friends. My father was pulling ice out of a bag onto a cutting board.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’ I asked him.

  His head turned my way for a second.

  ‘You are speaking to me.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘We are alone. What is it?’

  ‘I’m leaving tonight,’ I said, looking at the floor.

  He put down the ice hammer, assembled the ice he’d just crushed, and, cupping it in his hand, transferred it to a bowl. Then he turned to face me.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m leaving. I’m not coming back. Tonight, I’ll go to Oxford with my friends for my birthday. And then I’ll leave.’

  ‘How?’ he asked, ever practical.

  ‘Does it matter? I’d rather not say.’

  He wiped his hands on a kitchen cloth and came close. He hadn’t stood so close to me since I’d come home. He held his hands behind his back, in his heavy thoughts pose, the weight of his arms counterbalancing the rest of his frame.

  ‘Your mother will want to know why. Have you talked to her?’

  ‘No, Dad, I don’t want to,’ I said. The thought of facing my mother and seeing her break down was off-limits. Keeping my voice firm, as though I’d given what I was saying much thought, I spoke on: ‘I thought you could do it. She’ll understand better if it comes from you.’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘And when should I tell her that you’re coming back?’

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bundle of documents.

  ‘My passport’s got three years on it. That’s my birth certificate, my driving licence, and I’ve made copies.’

  His head rose to take in the documents, and his hand made as if to touch them, but his arm dropped before he reached my passport. He leaned back against the sink.

  ‘She would want to hear it from you.’

  The champagne was making me harsher than I wanted to be.

  ‘No, I can’t. Tell her yourself. But promise me you won’t until tomorrow night. Do you promise?’ I looked directly into him, almost violently.

  ‘Yes, Nate, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what you should tell her. Say it’s got nothing to do with her,’ I said, grabbing his arm and releasing it instantly. My shoulders slumped. ‘There’s nothing for me here. And it’s not my fault either,’ my voice rose on the last syllable, as if I were asking a question.

  ‘I won’t tell her anything. You’re an adult now.’ Jerkily, he grabbed me and brought me closer into a hug. ‘That might just break her. Go and spend the evening with her. Be nice, like old times.’

  I left him and stumbled into the living room. Fighting the tension building around my shoulders, I walked towards my mother and grinned.

  ***

  Late that evening, as the coach pulled out of Gloucester Green, I didn’t think of the friends I’d lied to. They would enjoy their night out in Oxford without me. No, to avoid the inspector’s challenge, my thoughts were circling around my mother’s opened mouth when I sneaked into her conversation, the crow’s feet around her eyes when I praised her in front of my father’s parents. Her broadening smiles, her fingers shyly tapping my arm, her spontaneous laughter – she’d looked happy and it was all because I’d lied to her. Still, I hoped that she would cling to these memories while I was abroad, that she’d know I didn’t meant to hurt her, that I appreciated what she’d done for me. That she wouldn’t ask herself why I’d spoken to my father and not to her. I closed my eyes. The coach drove over Magdalen Bridge, past the John Radcliffe, out of Oxfordshire.

  Four

  It’s been eight years since the shooting. Four months since I came back to England and sat in my mother’s little attic room to record what made me leave. And now, I’m balancing on an exercise ball in the spare bedroom of my Cowley flat, struggling to impose sense on the paths my life has taken. It’s the knowledge that this journey is coming to an end that is once again driving me to the soft clicks and clacks of my keyboard, to the saccadic travel of a cursor over a blank document.

  Every minute of my life has been a step across a mountainous landscape. Whenever I reach a pass, as I have just done, I turn back and look at the ground I’ve covered. In some places, I see my footsteps clearly etched into the snow, and I recall exactly my fears, my desires: how afraid I was of slipping towards the drop to my left, how I aimed for a knoll ahead, focusing all I had until I reached it. In others, my path has gone faint, perhaps because of a shadow thrown across it, or perhaps because I was walking on rocks. But in the majority of places, I can’t see where I’ve been. My memories lie below an incline, in a damp hollow, or they hide behind a peak, and if I remember that a section was tricky, I still can’t use my vantage point to see the land around it, the rocks perched above a tight turn, the crumbling cliff hidden underneath wild flowers.

  From pass to pass, different sections of my life come into my line of sight, so that, when I ask myself how I got to where I am, I look back at the landscape, and think that, of course, it all had to do with that particularly treacherous stretch the sun is shining on at the moment. A stretch I can see now that I’m a few miles further down the road. And yet, six months ago, I was on the other side of the range, tracing my steps down a ridge which then seemed crucial, but has now become irrelevant. I’m forever looking back, and yet, what’s behind me is forever changing.

  Reaching this pass, I look at the charred stone ahead, and smell the coldness of the wind behind the drop. My legs burn as hard as my fears, forcing me to stop and contemplate what I’ve done. But, even if I give in to these impulses, I know that whatever
I’m going to remember over the next four days is only part of the story.

  This room around me hasn’t changed much since I turned it into my studio. Thinking it’d be good for my back, I haven’t swapped the exercise ball for a chair. The five sketches I’ve made since I took it up just about cover the walls, and the tiny window fogs up minutes after I lock the door. Besides two virgin canvases hiding a small stack of sleep-deprived doodles, there’s nothing but this desk and my computer around me, but the room feels jammed full.

  ***

  For five years, I drifted. Problems arose, and then they were gone. Anger and love washed off with the rains. And I drifted on, refreshed.

  I left England in that time-proven way: as cheap labour on a cargo ship. My first was a black beast going by the name of Hunter. She was a thirty-year-old matriarch, lumbering into ports, her prow held high, staring down any who thought she was too slow to crisscross the tropics.

  Aboard, my Conradesque ideas of life and honour on the ocean survived the best part of a year, despite the months I spent chipping rust and washing dishes. If anything, that sort of work fitted well with my desire to stop thinking. I woke up sore, ready to gaze at the horizon and dream of cannon balls crashing into ancient frigates, worked hard and finished the day exhausted, yet satisfied.

  We stopped in ports for a few days at a time, during which I pulled out my notepad, and made sketches where others were taking pictures. Being idle didn’t suit me and my duties were considerably lighter when we were dry, so that after a few days on land, I’d yearn to be back at sea. It was during a prolonged break in Vancouver, while our ship underwent minor repairs, that I received my mother’s first email. I’d fished it out of the junk folder.

  Subject line: test.

  Body: Nate, this is a test. Tell me if you’ve received it. I’m still new to emails. Beth has been very kind. She’s given me your address, and then she’s set up this one. I’ll send you more news once I hear back from you, Love, Mum.