Black Chalk (24 page)

‘Why does he bother pretending?' Eric says.

‘He likes you, he's like that.'

‘That's even worse.'

And I look at Jeffrey's back the same way Eric does: with the sort of hate that burns through raw flesh.

I heard another nasal grunt, and I held my eyes open until the freshness in the air had stung me to tears. From Leona's blurry shape came an uneven snore, chipping away at my calm with every snort. A girl who snored. Irritated by my lack of sleep, I made a list of all the things I didn't like about her.

One. That she'd asked me whether I snored before we'd spent our first night together, but that she'd neglected to tell me it happened to greater mortals.

Two. The way she looked at me sometimes, as if there were a zip starting just above my solar plexus that stretched all the way to my balls, and she was the only one who knew about it.

She squirmed under the sheets, and I stopped my list for a second to watch her. An arm first, she turned onto her side, a new snort followed by a precarious silence.

Three. The time I took her on my morning walk, and we came across the lady with the black hat in Holywell Cemetery. She was, as she'd been every morning of my walk, standing with her hat in hand, her head bent over a grave that stood two yards behind Kenneth Grahame's. Everything she wore was black, from her shoes to her turtleneck. Black long sleeves and black tights covered every inch of wrinkled skin but that of her hands and face. That skin was spotty but smooth, glossy around her eyes. At five past ten, as she always did without ever looking at her watch, she put her hat back on her head and left the cemetery through the church gate.

Leona scampered towards the grave, squinted and then nodded thoughtfully. She came back to me and told me the most recent name was from 1985.

‘And she's here every day?' she asked.

‘All of last week.'

‘Do you know where she goes after here?'

I shook my head, and she grabbed my hand. It was her who started it. I was reticent at first, but she seemed so interested that I fell into her game. We found the woman turning into Jowett Walk. For her frail frame, she walked at a good pace. As fast as a loving couple. Her back only a fraction less bent than it had been over the grave, she went past the King's Arms, crossed to the Bodleian side, and stopped at the café in front of Balliol. Leona pulled me inside behind the old lady, who'd taken her hat into her hands.

‘English Breakfast, buttered toast?' the waiter asked her.

‘Thank you, Sam,' she said in a voice half her age.

‘I'll bring it out.'

‘Thank you, Sam.'

She turned her back to the counter, and walking right past us without seeming to see us, she went to the café's terrace. While Leona ordered us a pot of green tea, and eyed the café's scones, I observed the old woman: she pulled out an aluminium chair and settled down. Seated, there was something haughty about the way she scanned over her fellow customers. When she finished her inspection, she pursed her lips, reached inside her bag and pulled out a notebook. Leona and I peered at it once we were closer, on a table of our own, a few yards away from the old lady's. Its burgundy leather had cracks splitting it front and back. Even though there was no chance the lady with the black hat would have heard us, Leona leaned close to whisper. 1985, she said. It was possible.

The old lady's face remained very still, her eyes brittle as she focused on the notebook. She took a finger to her mouth, licked it, and lowered it to a page. After ten minutes, Leona suddenly squirmed in her chair.

‘Where do you normally go after the cemetery?' she said.

‘The Parks, but wait…'

I held a hand up, still watching the old woman.

‘Let's go now. There's rain coming,' she said.

‘Wait.'

The old lady sipped her tea one last time, stood up slowly, the chair catching on the terrace's asphalt. Her white hands brushed crumbs off her black dress. She grabbed her bag and left. We watched her, between mouthfuls of scone, cream and jam, until she came to the bus stop outside Sainsbury's.

‘She forgot her notebook,' Leona said.

It was spread open on the table, and I couldn't see the old lady anymore. I stood up.

‘Don't!'

Leona tried to pull me down by my shirt. She asked me to sit down, to leave the notebook alone, but I pushed her hand aside. It was her idea, I told her and I went to look it over. A dull and dirty white page flickered with the breeze. There was nothing written on it, nothing written anywhere in the notebook. But in between two pages, there was a lump. It was a bright magazine: a beautiful blonde with two necklaces and a black frock, her face too airbrushed to be real; and headlines about the rich and famous, about a new sex position. I held it up to Leona, challenging her with it, and then I went to give the notebook and its content to the waiter.

‘What did you have to do that for?' she asked me, but I could have asked her the same.

By the time we reached the Parks, we were talking about something else, but I felt it for the rest of the day. And I remembered it as I made my list: you can't start something like that and not finish it.

She stirred, and she was lying on her back again, her breathing thickening and catching halfway up her throat. More fodder for my list.

Four. Her Russian philosopher and the time she spent talking about him. There was something wrong with it but I couldn't quite work out what that was.

Like on the bus ride from my brother's place to Leicester Square, when images from the day mingled with thoughts from the past. She was looking out of the window. I grabbed her hand, put it on my thigh, and covered her cold fingertips with my palm. Breaking out of her reverie, she smiled at me.

‘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 every 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.