Black Chalk

by Albert Alla

  ‘James is nice,’ she said.

  ‘In a way. What was it you were saying about forgiveness?’

  ‘Forgiveness?’ She became serious. ‘It’s not something you do once and forget. No, it’s a state of being. You see’ – she put her hand on my heart – ‘when you stop thinking, when you stop judging, you embrace everything, and forgiveness embraces you.’

  ‘Like a kind sort of love?’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ she said, looking delighted. ‘That’s forgiveness. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  I went quiet for a minute. Then I asked her whether that was what she felt towards my brother.

  ‘Of course. He doesn’t deserve anything less, don’t you think?’

  ‘He hurt people,’ I said.

  ‘He hurt himself more. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is him today.’

  I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it. I admired her then, and yet I wished it had come out of her naturally, rather than out of that black book, its white symbol, and the foreign name on its cover.

  Five. The way I couldn’t tell her certain things. Like the time she’d talked about skiing, and I wanted to tell her of my first time off-piste, when her brother had taken me between two trees for a short chute, but we’d ended up in a flat bowl, and had to trek two hundred yards through two feet of fresh powder. Or later, on the train back from London, when she asked me what I thought the problem was with my brother, and I skirted around my departure, unable to tell her exactly why I’d had to leave. Or this dream, of her brother and Eric, which I had to deal with by myself.

  I imagined myself waking her up and telling her everything, and for a second I had my hand on her shoulder, ready to shake her awake, but then I seethed, forgot my list, and I went to the little bedroom. There, I pulled out a sheet of paper, and I started drawing a spaceship.

  ***

  For the rest of our first month together, Leona spent four nights a week at mine. The first few days, she rang the bell before she entered, but soon she learned to let herself in. It first happened when one of my course’s group meetings lasted until the library closed. I came home to find her sleeping on the couch, curled up into a ball, a light blanket thrown over her, and a lukewarm curry in a pot. As it happened again, I learned to recognise the sound of the first door opening, her steps skimming the stairs, her key clattering on the edge of the lock, sliding in with a quick rattle, and the door’s late creak while it swung open. She would walk in and tell me about a funny customer, unrequited love between two of her colleagues, or the French lady she’d served, and how much she was looking forward to starting classes again in late September.

  When she spent the night, I had much time to watch her sleep: the early hours, when she lay very still and nothing moved but her chest; the four o’clock toilet run; and then the agitated slump, when I kept on thinking that she’d wake up, but when, in fact, I could breathe in her ear, poke her ribs, only to see her change side and sleep some more. On good nights, the ones when food and sex came together, I slept six, seven hours. One night, I managed nine. On other nights, when we had a drink too many, or when a little rust seeped into my sleep, I had to leave my bed by five in the morning, or risk the caprices of memories and dreams. Then, I went to the little bedroom, and I drew or pretended to draw. And I always made sure I was back in bed by eight, for Leona liked me next to her when she woke up.

  On one occasion, after a big night with Mike the South African, after Leona had convinced both of us that we had to drink a pint and a shot for every one of her half-pints, I worked on my spaceship from three until eight in the morning. I was convinced of it: with my design, NASA could send astronauts to Mars in under a month, and that was a reasonable timeframe for trained professionals. Minutes after I snuck back into bed, Leona opened her eyes and, in her quiet morning voice, asked me why I hadn’t been in bed around six.

  ‘I was drawing,’ I said.

  ‘At six in the morning?’

  I had to lie, but I turned my head away so she wouldn’t see it.

  ‘I don’t need to sleep much.’

  After that day, she started to refer to the little bedroom as my studio, and she never entered it without asking my permission first.

  ***

  Three days after we visited my brother, my mother dropped in for tea while Leona was at work. A conference poster rolled up under one arm, her laptop in her other hand, she put her things down on the coffee table, and studied her surroundings. I unfurled her poster and looked at its pictures of brains, its stylised experimental designs.

  ‘You look smug.’ My mother looked at me with a smile.

  ‘Do I?’ I said, putting the poster down. ‘The course is interesting, I guess. And I like this place.’

  She gazed around the living room, her eyes fastening on a bunch of wild flowers Leona had picked on one of her walks.

  ‘Have you met someone?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’ I picked up the poster again and pretended to delve into it.

  ‘Oh! What’s she like?’

  ‘She’s nice. Just a girl, I guess.’

  My mother looked at me for a second, her lips silently reaching for words, but then, seeing my averted eyes, she pointed at the poster and started explaining her student’s experiment. When I told Leona that my mother had worked out I’d met someone, she told me that after all she’d heard about her, she wanted to meet her.

  ‘I didn’t talk about her, did I?’

  ‘No, but James did.’

  ‘He’s been fighting with her,’ I said.

  ‘She sounded…’ she looked for the right word ‘…formidable.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess she is. She used to be anyway.’

  ‘Well, I’d love to meet her! And you must meet my parents. It didn’t work out last time, but when you have less work, they want to meet you.’

  With those words, I realised she hadn’t told them who I was, but I didn’t pick up on it. Ever since I’d mentioned Jeffrey on the train, I’d been careful to keep our common past from the surface. Sometimes, when work made me particularly stressed and I was yearning for my fifth cup of coffee, I told myself I had to bring it up, but whenever an opportunity presented itself, I shied away, both glad and frustrated that I’d avoided it.

  Two days after my mother came to see me, I went to have dinner with both of my parents. It was a hot night, and for once my father had left his sports jacket in his room. In his tieless shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, he looked like he was enjoying the summer.

  ‘Liz tells me you have a girlfriend. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and I attacked my mother’s staple dish, a potato gratin, with more vigour than usual.

  ‘Who is she?’

  My father’s eyes were looking directly into mine, his eating hand lying still, waiting for my answer.

  ‘Leona.’

  ‘Leona who?’

  I cringed inside, but I spoke on because I didn’t want to mark a pause.

  ‘Baker. Leona Baker.’

  My mother’s fork clattered on her plate.

  ‘Leona Baker,’ she said. ‘Which Baker? Jeffrey’s sister?’

  My eyes looking anywhere but at my mother, I said in a small voice:

  ‘Is it that bad?’

  I heard her gulping some water.

  ‘No, no, of course not. But Jeffrey’s sister…’ She closed her eyes. ‘It’s just that there are so many other girls out there. Couldn’t you have chosen someone else?’

  ‘Maybe. But it just happened. I didn’t know who she was when it happened. And then…’

  ‘Oh, Nate. It’s just going to make it more difficult. Can you—’

  My father interrupted her:

  ‘Liz, you told me yourself, everyone copes differently. Let him cope how he wants to cope.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, seeing an opening. ‘How did others cope?’

  ‘Your mother knows better. Tell him, Liz.’

  My mother looked shaken, but with e
very word, she seemed to regain her colour. She told me about some of my classmates. Harry who’d moved to Australia as soon as he finished university, and who was doing very well, according to his mother. Worked in the mines near Perth, and he had a surfboard strapped to his Landcruiser. Beth who had gone to spend a year in Africa, and had come back five years later with a black girlfriend – long-limbed with a queenly profile. They were still together and I laughed, for I’d been right all along, and Jeffrey had nothing to blame himself about: it’s hard for a man to compete with a woman. My mother smiled with me, and then she averted her eyes. It was about John, who’d become so depressed he’d tried, and failed, to take his own life twice. Cheerful daring John who’d terrorised and delighted the teachers with his pranks. He’d changed, I guessed. Everyone had changed.

  ‘He hasn’t done anything like that for years now, thank God. But it was too much for his parents. They split up last year,’ she said.

  And there was Josh, who’d gone to Cambridge, got a first, and found a job in the City, or Jeremy who was now working for the Foreign Office.

  ‘Like nothing happened,’ she said, and she looked at my father. ‘Very different, aren’t they?’

  The more we talked about the others and their turnabouts, their failures, their unnatural rectitude, the more we, the Dillinghams, felt like a normal family. I’d gone away for a while, James had done a lot of drugs, my parents had nearly split up, but all in all, we were alright.

  My mother kept on speaking: Eric’s mother had moved to New Zealand, and she’d stopped answering her emails months after she’d arrived. And Jayvanti’s family had moved to India at the end of the 1999–2000 school year, but they were back in England now. ‘That’s what Charlotte told me anyway. Do you remember Charlotte?’

  When I said I ought to go home, my mother escorted me out. She walked with me all the way to Banbury Road.

  ‘Leona…’ she started. We took a few more steps. ‘Do you think that Leona is a wise choice?’ she said, her voice taking on her tutorial tones.

  ‘I didn’t choose her because she’s Jeffrey’s sister, Mum. She’s just really nice.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. We crossed a road and she started again:

  ‘With her, will you be able to leave what happened behind?’

  ‘I’ve done that already, Mum. It’s been eight years.’

  She nodded again, and walked silently with me for a few minutes. Then she grabbed my arm, and said she was going to go back home.

  ‘Give your mother a hug. You’ve grown so much. Not my little boy anymore.’ She reached up and flicked a strand of my hair into place. Then she turned back.

  ***

  Three days before our one-month anniversary, I bought a bottle of Cava and put it in the Cowley flat fridge.

  ‘Champagne!’ Leona said, when she found it.

  I put my brush down and came out of the smaller bedroom, the room Leona had labelled my studio.

  ‘You bought champagne! What for?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘For our first month.’

  ‘But we said we’d only get champagne for nos quatre mois.’

  ‘It’s not champagne, it’s Cava.’

  She studied the label and smiled. But then a worried expression came over her face.

  ‘Oh no, we have to keep it for some other occasion.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought we’d go to my house for dinner that night.’

  I could hear it in her words, I could see it in her frown – this time, there was no point in changing the topic. So, as though I’d yearned to see her parents all along, I told her that I could skip class for one night. There was an uneasy lump stopping me from smiling fully. It stayed with me as the date approached – the Bakers were nice people, I knew, but I hadn’t spoken to them since Jeffrey had died, and I could feel it deep inside: that had changed everything. To them, I was the one who’d seen him last. To me, I was the one who’d failed their darling, my best friend.

  The day before our one-month anniversary, when we were sitting on the sofa, her head on my lap, my hand in her hair, I asked her whether her mother knew who I was.

  ‘Yes, I told her.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘That you were funny, good-looking, that you were called Nathan, that you were doing a bridging course. Everything!’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Tell her my full name, Leona. Please.’

  The next day, hours before the dinner, we spoke on the phone and I asked her the same question.

  ‘Don’t worry, she knows.’

  ‘Leona,’ I said, enunciating every syllable, ‘let me know when you’ve told her.’

  ‘Yes, yes, she knows.’

  ‘You’re at home now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’ She sounded cornered.

  ‘Then do it now, and let me know what she says.’

  Forty-five minutes later, I received a text: Done. Come at 7, x.

  ***

  Amanda Baker was a young mother. She was twenty-two when she had Jeffrey, twenty-seven when I first met her, and thirty-one when I came across her bare-breasted in the Churchill Street sunroom. I pretended not to stare, but I still see her reclining, wearing only a bikini bottom, the rest of her body offered to my lust. She saw me through half-opened eyelids, she asked me how I was, and she went back to the sun.

  I loved her breasts. They were still big with milk, sitting on her ribcage with a life of their own. They seemed to spread every time she breathed out, to perk up every time she breathed in. I don’t know which I liked best. All I know is that I wanted to touch them, to put my mouth on their broad nipples. I imagined them dangling in front of my wagging tongue, and I blushed. For almost a year, until I came across my first Playboy, I stole glances at her breasts, clad in a simple t-shirt, blouse, white button-up shirt, in the grey-blue shirt that fitted her so well, or underneath a winter jacket, and I remembered them as I’d once seen them in the sunroom.

  I remember David, her husband, flattening her breasts against his chest once, and me, little me, not listening to what Jeffrey had to tell me, but asking myself whether she felt any pain. Years later, when I first kissed a girl, I brought her to me in that same embrace. And an instant before our lips touched, I asked myself whether I was hurting her breasts.

  Three or four times, Amanda told me how shy and quiet I’d been when I first came to their house. I must have been five. ‘But one day, I was making raspberry jam, and you came into the kitchen all wide-eyed. I asked you what you wanted, and you just stayed there, all quiet, looking at me stirring my jam.’ She laughed her slow laugh. ‘So I went to the fridge, and I took out a jar of blackberry jam I’d made the previous night. When I turned around, you didn’t know what to look at: the jam in my hand, or the one on the stove. I opened the jar, and I waved you closer. Smell it, I said, smell it. And your eyes! “Do you want some?” I said, and your eyes went even bigger. Half your face, they were. You were very cute, tall as that, you were.’ She chuckled. ‘You couldn’t say yes, you were so shy. So I handed you a big spoonful. You took it with both hands, you did, and you were all serious, licking every last bit off the spoon. Then you handed it back to me, and I said “Do you want more?”, and you nodded, and I said “Do you want more?”, and this time you spoke. You said “Yes, please”.’

  Amanda was a stay-at-home mother. For a few years, while David was persisting with his flower shop, she worked behind the counter in the afternoons. But then, as his organic restaurant took off, she went back to minding house and children. When I was six, I asked my mother why she wasn’t at home more.

  ‘Jeffrey’s mum is always at home,’ I said.

  ‘But Jeffrey’s mum doesn’t work. Mummy works.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because working is important.’

  ‘But Jeffrey’s mum doesn’t work!’

  ‘Of course, she works. She cleans, she makes meals. Who makes you food when you go to see Jeff
rey?’

  ‘You do that too. I don’t want you to work! I want you to be like her.’

  For many years afterwards, before administrative duties forced her back into her office, my mother came home in the afternoons, and, keeping an eye on James and me, she worked in the corner room until dinner time.

  Even though we had a bigger house, a bigger garden, and a ping-pong table, Jeffrey and I still spent most of our time at his house. There was something about the place and it wasn’t just his mother. Something about its age: an old farmhouse that Oxford had swallowed as it grew. Everything in it seemed right. The mattress on the floor, which we could easily stand upright to play Lego. The high yellow-brick wall at the back, around which we must have invented fifty games. The apple tree in the corner and its waist-high branches, which we could use to climb the wall and retrieve the ball. The sunroom to play Uno in winter. And the plastic table in the garden, when we were older and we had to talk girls and cricket over a ginger ale.

  When I rang the bell for the first time since Jeffrey’s death, Leona greeted me in her green summer dress, the one which left her tanned shoulders bare, a handful of silver bracelets tinging from her wrist to the heel of her palm. She kissed me on the porch, took my hand, and dragged me into the house. I listened to her with one ear – her sixteen-year-old sister was spending the night at her boyfriend’s – while I looked around. At first, nothing seemed to have changed: there were still the dog’s basket, shelves crammed full of multi-coloured books, magazines, pamphlets, and a door-less cabinet full of shoes, with four pairs of wellies overspilling on its side. But then, some details stood out: there never used to be a fish bowl on that console in the living room; that blue sofa was new, yes, it’d replaced that patched-up orange divan I’d found so disquieting; and that Labrador sniffing my leg wasn’t Robyn.

  ‘Come!’ Leona said. ‘Mum’s in the kitchen, Dad’s outside. Let’s go say hi.’

  Amanda Baker was busy chopping an onion, her back turned to me. With that first glimpse, I asked myself whether I should call her Amanda, as I used to, or Mrs Baker. She turned around and wiped her hands on her apron. There were obvious signs of age: wrinkles around her mouth, the pink in her skin gone grey, a stone around her waist. Yet, she was the woman I’d known: thick blonde hair stood an inch above her skull; the curves of my boyish fantasies had become bigger. I didn’t know why, but that made them more comforting.