Black Chalk (14 page)

Emilia, meanwhile, was just about getting by. While random consequences only occasionally found their best target among the other five, Emilia seemed to possess a dearth of such luck. Everything seemed designed to attack her sense of decency, even though most of the consequences were supposed to be humorous. One dare that especially shamed her had been dreamt up by Jack, a creature that had to be scrawled on the walls as graffiti, a creature to which Jack gave the name
Cocktopus
. Cocktopus had the body of an octopus but each of its eight tentacles took the form of a penis. This consequence required Emilia to be caught on three occasions graffitiing cocktopi in public. One night several girls saw her as she drew her numerous phalli in pink Magic Marker over the washbasins in the toilets nearest the bar. Dee was the only person able to observe and verify on this occasion and she did so through a crack in the door of one of the stalls. Emilia was next seen by male and female students alike when she scratched a large cocktopus into the plaster by the payphone near the junior common room and then by an old lady as she spray-painted her third cocktopus onto the side of a bus shelter. On the final occasion Emilia fled the scene while the old lady shouted out for the police. She ran all the way back to Pitt, gripped by her sense of shame and fear of arrest. And although the other players assured her the police didn’t use sketch artists or issue wanted posters in the case of reported graffiti, for some time Emilia wore a hat and a scarf wrapped all the way up to her nose whenever she left the safe confines of Pitt.

Mark was trying hard to hold on to his sense of calm but something was building inside him. Every week he finished with at least a single consequence, sometimes two or three. The rolls of the dice were against him, the cards in his hand often weak. Frequently the other players would look on as he strove to appear untroubled at the end of another dare. Asking questions at the end of lectures that implied a stunning level of ignorance. Eating his dinner in the refectory with a pair of fine lacquered chopsticks for a week (one night it was soup). Cheering on Pitt’s rugby team dressed in the same kit as the players, star-jumping on the sidelines as if he thought he might be called up in an emergency. (Mark weighed one hundred and forty pounds and possessed the sporting prowess of the average physicist.) Having to be seen in public with a pink G-string peeking over the top of his jeans …

But yes, it was fun. And none of them seemed for even a moment to consider that, for the Game to end, they would have to subject one another to greater and greater humiliations. It couldn’t remain light-hearted forever.

Because, ultimately, what would be the point in a game without losers?

*   *   *

XXVI(ii)
   They were thigh to thigh on the panelled seats, halfway through Hilary term. The bar was crowded and the smoke looped slowly where it bathed in the uplights.

Dee had recently abandoned her coloured cigarettes and instead contributed to the bar-room fug with an antique corncob pipe. Her dark hair was drawn back and tied with old lace, her tobacco scented with cherries. She looked like Olive Oyl stolen away for the night with Popeye’s pipe. ‘Jack is back,’ she said, with a sarcastic sense of drama.

Jack and Mark had only just arrived, followed not far behind by two boys carrying beers and with cigarettes pinched at the corners of their mouths. Jamie and Nick. Smoke was billowing into their faces as they approached and they had to toss their heads this way and that to prevent their eyes from tearing.

‘Jolyon, mate,’ said Jamie. He slapped Jolyon enthusiastically on the back.

‘Did you check it out as I suggested?’ said Jolyon.

‘I did, mate. And you were only right on the button.’

‘What did I tell you?’

‘Seriously, mate,’ said Jamie. He winked and pulled his cigarette far from his mouth, deep in the V of his fingers. ‘I owe you one.’

‘And Mr Nick,’ said Jolyon. He half turned and reached over his shoulder to shake hands with the second boy. ‘I have that book for you, remember? Just come to my room and if I’m not there let yourself in. I usually leave the door unlocked. Third shelf down.’

‘You’re a gentleman, sir,’ said Nick.

‘Listen, mate,’ said Jamie. ‘Little dicky bird tells me there’s some kind of a game being organised and you might be the man to ask. And Nick and me just wanted to say count us in if at all poss.’

‘And which little dicky bird told you this?’ said Jolyon.

‘Steady on,’ said Jamie, sucking hard on his cigarette and whipping it away in his V. ‘Grapevine, mate, nudge nudge. Man has to protect his sources and so on et cetera.’

‘It’s odd, that’s all. You’re the second person to ask me and I have no idea where this came from. But if you ever want to come round for some poker, I’d love to host.’

‘Superb,’ said Jamie. He sucked and whipped and blew. And then he patted Jolyon on the shoulder. ‘Must dash,’ he said, indicating a blonde girl with a motion of his head.

Jolyon waited for Jamie and Nick to filter away through the crowd, watching them depart over his shoulder. And then he turned quickly to the table. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he said. ‘And Jamie wasn’t the second person to ask me, he was the fourth fucking person.’

Around the table there were shrugs and lips turned in and brows furrowed and the itch of discomfort. And also there was fear, or something not far from fear.

‘No idea,’ said Jack, who then felt it a grave mistake to have spoken first.

Jolyon prodded his finger at Jack. ‘Secrecy is the whole fucking point. Anyone here doesn’t understand that, they should walk away now. Jamie and earlier Rory and yesterday two second-year rugger-buggers who I’ve never even laid eyes on before. And when I find out who the fuck –’

‘Don’t blame me,’ said Jack. ‘Why are you pointing at me? I didn’t do anything.’

‘And the
Pitt Pendulum
a few days ago ran that ridiculous bullshit in
Rumourist
about us all being a sect and me being some kind of Jim Jones figure.’

‘That was just supposed to be a joke, Jolyon,’ said Emilia.

Jolyon ran his hands through his hair and locked his fingers on top of his head. His body rocked back and forth with disappointment.

Chad leaned forward and looked at each of them in turn. ‘The Game is closed to outsiders,’ he said. ‘Maybe we didn’t discuss this forcefully enough but we’re all agreed, right? The Game becomes public knowledge and there is no game.’

Everyone but Jolyon nodded in agreement. Jolyon had slumped back in his seat and his face was turned to the ceiling.

Chad stood up and clapped his friend on the back. ‘I’m going to the bar,’ he said. ‘You ready for another drink, Jolyon?’

‘All right,’ said Jolyon, sucking his lips to his teeth. ‘But it’s not your round. It’s fucking Jack’s fucking round.’

‘I’m getting these,’ said Chad.

*   *   *

XXVI(iii)
   Gradually the sense of deceit in the midst of them subsided. Jolyon’s cloud dissipated and he drifted back into the conversation when it moved on to politics. He told them about the famous politician who’d had a Nazi swastika tattoo quietly removed a few years earlier. It was one of those well-known secrets, Jolyon told them, although nobody else at the table seemed to have heard the rumour before. Jolyon said he had a friend who worked at one of the tabloids. The friend had told him the newspapers were sitting on the story, hoping the politician would make a run for leadership. And if so, all would be revealed.

Then Jack told a story about a boy at his school who had tattooed himself while locked up in borstal. He had wanted the tattoo to honour his girlfriend Nadia and had done it himself with a pin, a pot of ink and a mirror. The mirror had been the root of the later problem. Now on his forearm, inside a big red heart, there was inked not the name
Nadia
but
Aidan
.

They laughed and drank and Dee said she didn’t believe a word of it, Jackie-oh, but it was a good enough story in any case.

Emilia stretched her arms and yawned.

‘Oh no, it’s infectious,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve caught his disease, Markolepsy,’ he said pointing. ‘This is serious, Emilia, you’re turning into a Markoleptic.’

Emilia tried hard not to smile. ‘No, I’m just bored,’ she said. ‘Oh, only a little,’ she added, ‘nothing to do with any of you. I just feel a bit trapped here.’

‘Then let’s finish these and go to my room,’ said Jolyon.

‘It’s not the bar,’ said Emilia. ‘We don’t
do
anything any more, just the stupid game all the time.’

Chad was about to protest but then Mark blinked hard and rapped his knuckles on the side of his head. ‘I’ve just had a brilliant idea,’ he said. ‘You want a change of scene, Emilia? Then you all have to come down to London Friday night for my birthday. I don’t know why I was planning on spending it in this place. We can stay the whole weekend at my mother’s house. I can’t believe I only just thought of it. Look, my sister’s living with my dad for a bit, small family falling-out, so her bedroom’s free. And then there’s the study, which you can take, Dee. You’ll love my mother’s study, it’s full of old books by dead people. And I’ll find sleeping bags for you two.’ Mark pointed at Jack and Chad. ‘There’s plenty of room in my bedroom.’

‘Then what about Emilia and Jolyon?’ said Jack.

‘I just told you,’ said Mark, speaking slowly in a monotone as if to the village idiot. ‘My … sister’s … away.’ It sounded to Chad like the slow toll of church bells at a funeral. ‘Her … bedroom’s … free.’ Mark picked up the pace again. ‘So Em and Jolyon can take her bed.’

Chad’s head began to swarm and he felt the space between the six of them fog over, the sense of displacement thicker than the bar-room smoke.

Jack was squealing, demanding to know why he hadn’t been told about this new relationship, his outraged pitch carrying vaguely over the haze.

Chad looked at Jolyon’s face. Their eyes met. Jolyon’s eyes fell.

Jack’s fist began to pound the table with mock fury, the fullest pints overrunning their lips.

Emilia’s face, Dee’s face, Jack’s face … All eyes on Chad now. And then Mark’s fingers were clicking in front of his eyes, snap snap snap.

‘Snap out of it, Chad.’

‘I said you must have known about this, Chad,’ said Jack.

A trickle of beer ran over the table’s edge and splashed near his toes. ‘No, no, I didn’t,’ said Chad. He swallowed, trying to hold his stomach down, trying to loosen the knot in his gut. They were all looking at him, so he pretended to appear amused or happy and maybe it worked. Soon everyone was looking at Jolyon and Emilia.

They locked fingers, their hands resting between them on the seat of the bench.

*   *   *

XXVI(iv)
   When Chad walked back home to the house beneath the river that night he tried to hide his tears from passers-by. He had a Mets cap he kept in his pocket for rain emergencies. He didn’t like to look too American in this city but he wore the cap now, its peak pulled down low.

His thoughts were like a moth trapped in a lampshade, a furious beating and burning of wings, the singed creature finally falling away exhausted. And then, after a moment’s calm away from the blaze, another bout of furious activity. And then another and another, each more feeble and futile than the last.

He cleared his eyes and his thoughts for long enough to ask himself a question. What would have been worse, rejection or this?

What would have been worse, rejection or this?

The house was empty. When he closed the door to his room he picked up the chair by his desk and smashed it against the wall. He grabbed objects from his desk one by one – the ring binders, the desk tidy, the coffee cup with its pool of dark dregs – and pitched them at the framed print of an English rural idyll hanging on the wall. The glass over the picture smashed spectacularly.

It seemed a good time to stop.

What would have been worse, rejection or this?

What would have been worse, rejection or this?

Chad pulled out the drawers beneath his wardrobe and threw them to the floor so they would land upside down. He stamped and stamped and the wood split and then splintered. And when he finished, he looked around quickly for something else to destroy.

*   *   *

XXVI(v)
   He was awoken by a pressing of fingers against his shoulder, the sound of his name. When Chad opened his eyes, Jolyon took several steps back from the bed. ‘One of your housemates let me in,’ he said.

‘Which one?’ said Chad.

‘She had way too much energy.’

‘Mitzy,’ said Chad.

‘Brunette,’ said Jolyon.

‘No, that’s Jenna. You think that’s energy you should meet Mitzy.’

Jolyon looked around the room. ‘What happened in here?’

‘You ever hear of a twister?’

‘Like in
The Wizard of Oz
? I thought they only occurred outdoors.’

‘Shows you how much you understand about extreme weather conditions in this
frickin
country then.’

Jolyon looked down at his feet and then quickly back at Chad. ‘That’s actually really unfair of you,’ he said. ‘It once rained for nearly two whole days in Tunbridge Wells.’

Chad snorted and Jolyon smiled. It was enough.

‘I meant to tell you first, Chad.’

‘Sure you did.’

‘Mark only knew … Usually Emilia would remember to lock the door whenever we were alone. But then one time … So Mark walked into the room and … That’s the only reason he found out before anyone else. Before you I mean.’

‘Why so secretive? Everyone’s blissfully happy for you.’

‘You are?’

‘Sure I am.’

Jolyon was looking down at his feet again. ‘Emilia thought that you … She said sometimes she sees you and … I don’t know.’

‘Then Emilia’s crazy, all right?’

‘You’re right,’ said Jolyon, ‘she is.’ He nodded. ‘Come on then, we’re going for a pint. We’ll head off to London tomorrow – I’m sure the others can amuse themselves for a day. Get your clothes on, I’m buying.’

Chad lifted the covers high enough to peer at himself underneath. ‘I seem to have all my clothes…’