Black Chalk

by Albert Alla

  ‘Nice place,’ he said. ‘Your stuff?’

  I shook my head:

  ‘It came furnished.’

  ‘Leona,’ he called, ‘did you help him decorate?’

  She turned around and grinned at him.

  ‘No, no, it was all here, except for your grandma’s paintings.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Give me five minutes and I’ll be with you,’ she said. ‘I’m not good with knives.’

  She turned around, and it was once again just the two of us.

  ‘So you’re in town just for the day?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, how come?’

  ‘I had to pick up some stuff.’

  He looked around the room as if he were casting for something more interesting.

  ‘Have you seen Mum and Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you going to see them?’

  ‘Mum said she has a lecture until three.’ He spoke slowly, with plenty of careless pauses. ‘If I’m still here, I might say hello.’

  He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke here?’ he asked me.

  ‘Well, I don’t mind, but it’s not my place, you see…’

  He looked at me, smoke rising to the ceiling.

  ‘It might leave a smell,’ I said. He looked at me still. Leona was chopping cucumbers, her back to us. ‘It’d be better if you went outside.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said, and he left the flat, a trail of smoke following him.

  When he closed the door, I felt the same burst of anger I used to feel when he’d pretend he’d nicked the ball onto his legs, and that he therefore wasn’t out. I turned towards Leona like I’d turned towards my mother, wanting her to be both witness and jury. She looked so cheerful that I ignored her sympathy:

  ‘Oh, come on, I’m trying,’ I said.

  ‘You are, I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘It’s not like he’s making it easy.’

  ‘He’s shy around you.’

  ‘Forgiveness and all that, does that mean I’m meant to have him smoke up the place?’ I asked.

  She left her chopping board and shuffled towards me until she was close enough that I couldn’t take in both her eyes and her mouth at once.

  ‘Try to talk to him. Go see him outside now.’

  ‘You saw him,’ I said. ‘He’s not going to say anything to me.’

  ‘Talk first then. Tell him things.’

  I yanked my head back. My body followed and I could see the whole of her:

  ‘Like what? I haven’t seen you for eight years, sorry, but now I think we ought to act like nothing happened.’

  ‘Don’t make fun!’ she said, hurt.

  ‘I’m not.’

  She stepped closer – there was the bedroom wall to my back – and her nose was brushing my lips.

  ‘Don’t think, just open up.’

  ‘Open up,’ I repeated with a mocking smile. The irony of it! Open up…

  ‘Yes, open up first. You’ll see. Come on, go and see him.’ She ushered me towards the door. ‘When you come back, lunch will be ready.’

  Open up. It was the first time she put it into words and it cut straight to the heart of my worries: immediately, I understood that it was what she wanted from me, and that it was what Amanda and common sense forbade me.

  James was on the street, looking decidedly dodgy, as if the years he’d spent making Oxford his own had rubbed away with London and his drugs. I thought of Leona’s Russian philosopher, and I tried to clear my mind, to embrace forgiveness.

  ‘Leona’s almost finished,’ I told him. ‘She told me to keep you company for a few minutes. She likes being alone in the kitchen, you know?’

  He took another puff of his cigarette. Another minute, and it’d be finished.

  ‘She’s special, Leona,’ I said. ‘Always trying to help everyone, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She came to most of our gigs.’ He trailed off, and looked at a car driving past.

  I sensed an opening:

  ‘Are you still in a band?’

  He turned to me and shook his head.

  ‘Oh, actually, I am in one,’ he corrected. ‘But I haven’t seen the guys for a couple of months.’

  ‘What are you called?’ I said.

  ‘Gabriel’s Drones, I think. That or Suffolk Stoneheads. Can’t remember what we agreed on.’

  I laughed but he didn’t seem to find it funny. He studied the cigarette butt in his fingers, twisting it this way and that, before he flicked it towards a gutter. We went upstairs. I didn’t speak much after that. Leona managed the conversation well enough: a laugh, a serious look, even an admonishment, James accepted them all. I did the dishes.

  When he left us, she gave me her understanding look. It was almost appreciative, certainly condescending.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I said. ‘It’s not my fault!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Spare me the rubbish about taking him in my heart!’

  Her eyes went moist, and my anger was gone.

  ‘Don’t…’ I put my hand out but she didn’t take it. My fingers hung in the air for a second. Then I blotted the tears off her cheeks.

  ‘It’s just…’ she sobbed, and I hugged her. ‘It’s just that you could… Sometimes… just a little… open up.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake…’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Not often, but sometimes I want to …’ she hesitated, ‘… know more.’

  ‘I’m a quiet bloke,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ***

  One morning at her parents’ house, after I’d spent three hours trying to go back to sleep, I got up quietly and found Amanda busy in the kitchen. When she saw me, she pulled out a fruit salad she’d already made me.

  ‘I found you some raspberries this morning. I hope you like raspberries.’ Her proud smile waned as she searched my face. ‘You look tired, Nate. That mattress is too small for the two of you. I need to speak to David. Leona needs a double bed now.’

  While she spoke, I made myself a pot of coffee, and thought of how I could get her talking.

  ‘That’d be nice,’ I answered. With a deep breath, I decided to ask her outright: ‘What you were telling me the other day, you know, about Leona not liking to talk about Jeffrey, don’t you think that’s changed now? That was a long time ago.’

  She frowned and clasped her hands together.

  ‘Nate, that was a very hard time for us. Jeffrey… well, you knew him. He was my son. My only son, and there’s not a day I don’t think of him…’ She brought her hands to her heart, and blinked hard. ‘But everyone grieves their own way, don’t they?’

  She studied me and her expression became all kindness.

  ‘Oh, Nate, it’s not hurting you, is it? But we have to respect everyone, don’t we? And Leona, she’s put the whole episode behind her. That’s how she dealt with it, and look at her, isn’t she a beautiful girl? So we have to help her, don’t we?’ She shook her head as if she were coming out of a daze, and smiled in her no-nonsense way. ‘You know what you need? Vitamins. I’ll make you some fresh juice. You like beetroot?’

  ***

  There were two women in my life, and I could only keep them away from each other for so long. If it had to happen, I wanted it to be over lunch. It would be more manageable that way: my father would be at work, my mother would only have an hour to spare. And something could always come up: a last-minute appointment, an emergency phone call.

  A waft of cookies came from the High Street side of the Covered Market. I waited for Leona in the same aisle in which I’d first asked her out, by the café’s sign, in its flaking reds and blues. An old man was bundling tulips in the flower shop. When she came out, folding her apron into her bag, she smiled too – that broad smile that grew until I could see nothing else.

  I spoke, I laughed, she smiled. Smiled as we talked, s
miled as we rode our bikes, past Exeter and Jesus, and Balliol and St John’s, and all the other saints that crowded around the Banbury Road, past the renovated neo-gothic façades and the 1960s concrete blocks they’d tried to conceal behind them. We were in front of the house, and I hadn’t found a way to put the lunch off.

  Too late: my mother had come out to greet us. I noticed make-up around her eyes for the first time since I’d come back. Leona extended a hand.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ my mother said. ‘I guess you were only small. You came once or twice with your mother to pick your brother up.’

  ‘She doesn’t have the best of memories,’ I said.

  ‘No, I remember,’ Leona said.

  As we walked in, Leona wandered down the corridor, her eyes on the family pictures above my grandmother’s cabinet. With a sign, I took my mother aside.

  ‘Don’t mention Jeffrey…’

  I laid a hand on the wool of her brown jumper: my palm, my fingers seemed too large, too strong for her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said. When I let go of her, she added softly: ‘That must be hard for you.’

  I winced and turned away.

  Lunch was already on the kitchen table: a salad bowl full of greens, a closed pot letting out a hint of steam, poppy seeds lining the bread basket, all neatly arranged in the middle of three place settings.

  ‘So this is where you grew up?’ Leona asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said, embarrassed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  My mother gave me a sharp glance.

  ‘In Hornsbury, Leona,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ Leona’s brow aimed at the cupboards above the kitchen counters or at the crown moulding, I couldn’t be sure. She pivoted on the balls of her feet and took the whole of the room in. ‘Mrs Dillingham?’

  ‘Liz, please, dear.’

  ‘Liz, can I help with anything?’

  ‘Thank you, dear, but it’s all ready. Here, sit, sit. Let’s eat while it’s still hot.’

  My mother took the seat at the head of the table, and gestured Leona to her left. With a serving spoon, she reached into the pot until we were all served, each with a slice of bread resting against our split-peas mash. Leona held her fork in hand, with a merry, hopeful expression, waiting for my mother, mirroring her movements. Their forks swooped, gathered and rose an instant from each other.

  ‘Nate tells me you’re at university,’ my mother said to Leona. ‘What are you studying?’

  ‘French. I just finished my first year.’

  ‘She’s very good,’ I hastened to add.

  My mother glanced at me, a fleeting acknowledgement, and then turned her green eyes towards Leona.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  Leona’s cheeks creased with the smile she was keeping back. ‘I absolutely love it,’ she said, and she gave way to her happiness.

  It made her vulnerable, to show so much so quickly. My mother was nodding, thoughts lengthening her long face. I imagined her in her college office: Leona, her student, formulating answers on the spot, and my mother, the tutor, nudging Leona closer to the right answer with every question.

  ‘That’s important. What do you want to do with it?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’ Leona’s voice went small with the possibilities. ‘I was thinking of the Foreign Office. But I’d also like to live in France for a few years. Maybe I can do both.’ And then her voice perked up: ‘But I’ll get an idea when the time comes.’

  ‘That’s wise,’ my mother said. ‘It’s good to know your options, but it’s even more important to know that things won’t stay the way they are today.’

  Leona, in her own way, was passing my mother’s test. Sitting back, eating more than the two of them combined, I watched my mother’s questions run out and Leona’s start – career choices, life in academia, women in science, she was probing into my mother’s secret world, the one she’d kept hidden behind stacks of dry papers and the decorum of obligations.

  ‘Are you interested in academia?’

  ‘I like teaching,’ Leona answered.

  ‘If you like teaching, become a teacher. To be a professor, you have to like research.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Leona stopped to think for a moment. ‘But you have students, you said, in your lab.’

  ‘That’s in the sciences,’ my mother started, and she was telling Leona about the humanities and the loneliness of theses, the toil of publishing, the importance of tagging on to a school of thought, and Leona was agreeing, commenting, exploring.

  It was five to two and my mother wouldn’t let Leona help her clean up.

  ‘You go back to work, I’ll tidy up. It’s nothing, I said. Go! Nate will help me, won’t you, Nate?’

  I walked Leona out, all the way to her bike, sensing her excitement. She grabbed the bike’s handle and let it go just as quickly.

  ‘Oh, Nathan, thank you.’ She looked over at the house, as if to judge whether her voice would carry. ‘After all I heard, I thought she was amazing, Nathan…’ she started, and she went thoughtful:

  ‘She looks like an important woman,’ she finally said.

  Despite myself, I breathed in, proud. My mother’s calmness, the evenness in her voice, yes, Leona was right. A soothing breeze carried a leaf into the spokes of Leona’s front wheel.

  ‘You know,’ Leona said, ‘I wish Mum had been a bit more demanding when we were little. Like with the piano. I just wish I’d stuck to it.’

  I chuckled: ‘I wish my mother had left me alone.’

  Leona looked at me seriously:

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know, I was just joking.’

  Reproach marred the remnants of her joy.

  ‘It must have been hard for her,’ she said. ‘You know. Your brother was getting high and you were overseas, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I grabbed her hips and brought her to me until all I could see was the line of her neck. In the moment it took to make her think about something else, I knew that I ought to give her all that she asked for.

  Back inside, my mother was wiping the table. The sink was clean, the dishwasher was purring, the salt and pepper shakers were back on their shelves.

  ‘Let me do that, Mum.’

  She pushed a cluster of breadcrumbs into the hollow of her hand, and, leaving the sponge on the table so I could feel like I’d contributed, she opened the kitchen window to feed her summer birds.

  ‘She’s a nice girl,’ she said.

  I wiped the table waiting for the rest. She washed her hands.

  ‘That’s all?’ I said.

  She dried her hands, and hung the tea towel on the oven handle.

  ‘Lovely girl. Such a sweet smile… Yes, she is nice. And it looks like she’s got her head on her shoulders. When a girl’s as pretty as that, I don’t imagine that’s something you think about. But believe me, Nate, that’s the most important thing.’ She closed her eyes and frowned. ‘Can’t do anything about her family.’ Her face smoothening out, she gave me a sad smile. ‘I’m happy for you.’

  It was buried in the words, but I could hear the same warning that Amanda had given me twice. Coming from both of them, it was easier to dismiss – it was a mother’s protective instinct, not a real insight into Leona’s character. My doubts, our mothers’ doubts, it wasn’t my job to put them above Leona’s wishes.

  ***

  I laid the last of my fears aside on a day that had all that I loved her for. I’d waited for her on a bench in Christchurch Meadow. For the first time that summer, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Between me and the water, there was the path, its stream of amblers, and a dozen little ducklings circling their mother. Then there was the sun glittering on patches of the river, and a cry of ‘Catch it!’ coming from the Queens sports ground beyond the water.

  I didn’t need to look to know that it was her sitting next to me. She put her hand in mine.

 
‘It’s been three months,’ she said, a gentle glee in her voice.

  I smiled.

  ‘One more month and it’s nos quatre mois,’ she said.

  ‘We should celebrate.’ I looked at her.

  ‘No, that’s just for nos quatre mois.’ She smiled at the river.

  ‘We have to do something,’ I said, but I liked where we were.

  We watched a punt struggling upriver, a young man in shorts and a boat hat dropping his pole to the deep bottom, bending to his knees to push the punt a few yards, while two girls sat in the back, nibbling on jammed-up scones.

  ‘Let’s go punting,’ I said.

  We stood up.

  ‘Can you come up with a poem?’ I asked her. ‘A punting poem?’

  We spent the rest of the afternoon between our punt and the banks of the Cherwell. An afternoon in the sun, my fingers stroking her forearms, my hand sliding over the fabric of her dress, and above all, her perpetual smile – not the one she had in pictures, but the one she had in bed, when her mouth approached mine, when her upper lip lifted above her gum, when her teeth looked small, her eyes became long, and her pupils shone.

  I took a picture of her, at the back of the punt, dripping pole sliding between her fingers, her eyes on the river ahead. And, despite the focus on her face, she couldn’t hide the smile she’d had for me a second before.

  Later, when clouds appeared and the sun quietened, we walked to the George Street cinema, turning into Cornmarket from the High Street. We pushed our way through a Saturday crowd: teenagers in twos and tens, a busker singing ‘Hallelujah!’ to the sky, couples drifting in and out of chain stores.

  Halfway down, in between the two music outlets, my eyes passed over a man and a young girl. I looked at the man again. A large forehead, a ponderous walk, thick square glasses, and underneath these glasses, dark eyes darting left, darting right, over me, at me. They stopped for a second, his eyes in mine, and then they were looking at something ahead. For that second, I felt like I’d been thrown into a gigantic copper pot on a slow boil, filled to the brim with eight years of fears. I remembered when he’d come to my house to taunt me, and I remembered his challenge. Oh, I knew what he’d wanted to do: poke the folds of my brain with his dirty fingers, so that he could show everyone else how much tar I’d concealed.