Black Chalk (36 page)

Chad covers his eyes, I hear him sniff. And I want to tell him what really happened to Mark, I want to help him. But how can I tell Chad now? What if he were to use it against me? His body shakes gently between the arms of the chair.

Chad takes one long last sniff and then looks at me again. Let me tell you about some of the other things I got sent, Jolyon, he says. I have boxes full of this stuff back home in England, more press clippings, magazine stories, books … One time it was a story about a drinking club in Poland, all these tough guys who got together to down bottles of vodka and play games. One night, after a particularly vigorous session, things got a little out of control. They ended up cutting off each other’s hands with axes. Or another time I’d tear open the envelope and pull out an eighteenth-century essay about gentlemen gangs who roamed the streets of London slashing and stabbing and gouging out eyes. Pamphlets produced by fringe groups about American high-school shootings and video games, a long investigative piece about a secret collegiate society at Yale, another one about the Bilderberg Group, an entire book on the history of Russian roulette. And all of these things were covered in notes, every time in the same green pen. Notes or phrases that were circled, whole paragraphs underlined. Anything about games, about rules and punishments, consequences, conspiracies, secret societies.

Oh, I tried not opening the letters. But somehow I couldn’t make myself destroy them. The idea that I was a part of all this, something so big, something … it was grotesque, it was ludicrous even. But at the same time I was fascinated. The secrecy, the hidden gears, it felt like a drug. Some nights I’d go to where I’d hidden the letters and open whole stacks in one go. And then I’d spend all night reading them over and over and over.

Chad looks up at the ceiling as if he can see the words of those letters hanging over his head. And you really knew nothing about any of this at all? he says. Chad slumps back in his chair looking suddenly exhausted.

No, nothing, I say. I am looking at Chad for a sign, a tell. Is this the truth or is he just trying to scare me? I can’t imagine the Chad of fourteen years ago making up such a story and telling it with so much conviction. But how much has he changed? He looks tired and uncertain, he looks like a younger Chad wearing an ill-fitting disguise. His muscles seem foolish now, a thin and worthless shield. I feel the whisky surging inside me, the pills whirling away. I remember my story and my mind pushes Chad away. He belongs somewhere else, this all belongs somewhere else, somewhere later.

I swing my legs off the sofa and face him. Well, thank you for coming, Chad, I say. But as you can see, I’m really quite busy here.

Chad looks confused. That’s all you have to say, Jolyon? You’re really quite busy?

I have a lot of work on, I say. My head swims, the room lurches. Would you mind seeing yourself out? I say.

Chad looks spurned. Sure then, Jolyon, he says, getting to his feet. Sure, I can tell how busy you are. He turns and leaves the room. A few moments later I hear him call out, Thursday, Jolyon, two thirty!

The front door clicks shut.

*   *   *

LXIII(iii)
   Am I afraid that I might become trapped in a game I never wanted to play? I don’t know. And I don’t have the time to be scared of ghost stories. I don’t even have the time to consider whether I believe in the existence of ghosts.

Perhaps Chad wanted to scare me. Maybe he made it all up. But anyway, I have my own reasons to fear Game Soc. More specifically, I have my own reasons to fear one particular member of their threesome. But we’ll come to that soon enough.

No, I don’t have time to consider either the present or the future. Because now the moment, fourteen years ago, has arrived.

The reckoning. An elegant solution. My endgame with Mark.

*   *   *

LXIV(i)
   His head didn’t hurt. No, his head didn’t hurt him at all.

Jolyon could feel each grain of wood as he hammered his fists against Mark’s door, could sense his weight gathering at the soles of his feet. When the door opened, Mark’s face was bright, his lips dry and parted. ‘Jolyon, good to see you,’ said Mark. ‘Can’t imagine what could bring you so urgently to my door.’

‘You
really
want to beat me?’ said Jolyon. ‘You want to win so much you’d hurt Emilia just to get at me? OK then, Mark, just remember whose choice it was to raise the stakes. Come on then, let’s play.’

Jolyon turned and started to leave but Mark stayed where he was. ‘I don’t have to do anything, Joe. Nothing that comes out of your mouth ever again.’

Jolyon stopped at the edge of the stairs. ‘No, but you’ll like this game, Mark.’ he said. ‘The odds are stacked in your favour.’ The words were written inside him, Jolyon only had to move his lips. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t have a thousand pounds to give you right now. But I will, one day. And I’ll give you back your thousand pounds plus another thousand if you can beat me today. Plus, I’ll admit you were right all along. You’ll enjoy that even more than the money.’

Mark looked uncertain. ‘What’s the trick?’ he said.

‘There’s no trick,’ said Jolyon. ‘You win, you get two thousand pounds. I’ll use next year’s grant or I’ll work through the summer. You have my word and you know I’ll keep it.’ Mark shrugged. ‘But if I win,’ Jolyon continued, ‘you call off this vendetta. Double or nothing. And it’s a game of physics, Mark. A game of gravity and acceleration.’

‘OK then, I’m listening, Jolyon. But if this is a trick –’

‘If it’s a trick, Mark, if at any time you call the trick, you can pull out and you win, I give you my word. But you pull out for any other reason, you lose. Sound fair?’

‘Fine, Jolyon, go ahead and tell me your game.’

Jolyon laughed through his nose. ‘It’s simple, like I told you, a game of physics,’ he said. ‘Tell me, the equation – the square root of two d over g – what does that describe?’

Mark spoke hesitantly even though he found the question childishly simple. ‘The time … the, um, time, t, taken for an object to fall … to fall the distance d.’

‘And how tall would you say the college tower is? Loser’s Leap?’

‘Maybe eighty feet,’ said Mark, beginning to warm to the task.

‘Feet, Mark, feet?’ said Jolyon, sounding like a scolding professor. ‘Come now,
Marcus
, did I not state this was a game of physics?’

Mark sighed heavily. ‘Twenty-five metres,’ he said sharply.

‘And therefore the value of t is…?’

‘Twice twenty-five is fifty. Gravity is nine-point-eight. Divide them, about five-point-one. The square root of five-point-one is … approximately two and a quarter.’

‘So that means it would take about two and a quarter seconds for an object falling from the college tower – Christine Balfour for example – to hit the ground, correct?’

‘Correct,’ said Mark.

‘Good, so here’s the game,’ said Jolyon. ‘I say I won’t hit the ground for ten seconds when I jump off the tower. No, let’s have some real fun, let’s make it twenty.’

Mark snorted. ‘Jolyon, you’re being ridiculous.’

‘So you’re taking the position that I’ll hit the ground before twenty seconds elapse.’

‘
Obviously
you’re not going to jump off a tower, Jolyon.’

‘If that’s the case, you win. Two thousand pounds. Come on then, Mark.’

Jolyon started to skip down the stairs, Mark calling out after him, ‘This is stupid, what’s the trick, Jolyon?’

The old stairs creaked and groaned. ‘I already told you, Mark, there’s no trick. And if there is. And you call it. You win.’

*   *   *

LXIV(ii)
   As Jolyon crossed back quad he glanced up through the darkness at Loser’s Leap. It looked like a rook in a chess problem. He didn’t need to turn, he could sense Mark at his back, the mounting discomfort, here was a problem to which he had no solution.

Back quad, front quad, the chapel. And it was just as Jack had said, a set of stairs leading up to the organ loft, a small window. As Jolyon climbed through the window, he heard Mark reach the top of the stairs. ‘Just how far are you planning to take this, Jolyon?’

There was a thin space between the roof of Great Hall and its parapet wall. Jolyon jumped down. ‘All the way, Mark,’ he called out, ‘all the way. How about you?’

Jolyon made his way toward the tower. The roof was steep but there was a crust of dry lichen on the tiles that made the climb easier. And then from the apex of Great Hall, Jolyon heaved himself onto the tower roof.

Mark rested his hands on his knees after he pulled himself up there. They were both out of breath and Mark looked even more confused than before. ‘OK then,’ he said, ‘so what now?’

Jolyon crossed to the other side of the roof and faced out onto back quad. He leaned over the edge, the parapet wall queasily short where he stood, and saw beneath him the flagpole stripped for the night. It was a warm evening and in the pale light breaking from the windows he could make out a small group of people smoking and drinking on the grass below. ‘Good,’ thought Jolyon. And then he called out over his shoulder, ‘Did we say ten seconds, or did we say twenty, Mark?’

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Mark. ‘OK, you said twenty. But it doesn’t matter, you’re not actually going through with it, we both know that.’

‘Twenty it is then.’

‘What’s the point of this, Jolyon?’

Jolyon spoke slowly, a broad spacing between solemn words. ‘Do you agree to the game, Mark?’

‘Fine then, Jolyon,’ said Mark, rubbing his face in his hands, ‘go ahead.’

‘Excellent,’ said Jolyon. He put one of his feet up on the short wall, leaned against his knee and gazed out like a tourist. The tower wall had been constructed as decorative battlements and Jolyon tapped the taller block beside him. ‘Do you know what these higher parts are called?’ he said, but Mark didn’t reply. ‘The taller parts of battlements are called merlons and these lower parts of the wall, the gaps, they’re the crenels.’ The crenels were only shin-high. Jolyon lifted his other foot so they were now both on the wall. He stood there rocking precariously on the balls of his feet as he breathed deeply into the night. ‘What do you think, Mark? Twenty-five metres from the top of the merlon, or from down here on the crenel?’

‘Jolyon, I know you think you can walk on fucking water but not even you believe you can fly. So just tell me the trick and let’s get down from here.’

‘I told you, Mark, there’s no trick,’ said Jolyon. ‘And I don’t need to fly in order to beat you. In fact, I don’t even need to jump. Because you’re going to pull out before it goes that far. You see, all I need to do is call out your name as I fall. Two and a quarter seconds, you said? That should be plenty of time.’ Jolyon looked at his watch – ‘
Maaaa-aaaaa-rk
–’ moving his head to its tick. ‘So even if you can live with my death on your conscience, there are plenty of witnesses down there. And when the police arrive and hear whose name I was calling out … and then someone’s bound to tell them about the excerpts from my diary being posted round college. Even if no one has actually seen you doing it, I’m sure there’ll be something forensics can find.’ Jolyon pulled out a cigarette, lit it and blew. ‘However, if at any point you want me not to jump, just say the word, Mark. Oh, which means you lose the game, remember. We did agree that if either one of us pulls out, it’s a forfeit.’

Mark started to laugh. ‘Brilliant, Jolyon,’ he said, ‘I mean, that’s really very impressive. Except for one thing. Your grand plan to defeat me is based entirely on a false assumption. That I somehow believe you might jump.’

Jolyon looked out past the rooftops of Pitt and rested his hand on the merlon beside him. He could see all of the towers and domes of the city glowing yellow beneath the soothing black of the sky. And his head didn’t hurt. No, his head didn’t hurt him at all. He flicked his cigarette out into the night and it whirled away like a dying Catherine wheel before diving into the light. Then Jolyon lifted his arms above him and placed his palms together, a high prayer, a tall steeple. Slowly he lifted his foot and shifted it forward, held it out over the void. ‘Velocity equals gravity multiplied by time. So what’s my speed when I hit the ground, Mark? Let’s do it in miles per hour, just for fun.’

Mark was quiet a while. And then, uneasily, he said, ‘Just a fraction shy of fifty miles per hour.’

‘A fraction shy? Let’s round it up, friends shouldn’t argue over trifling amounts, don’t you agree, Mark?’ He took a loud, sharp breath. ‘Fifty should be fast enough,’ said Jolyon.

And then he stepped down into the night.

They were laughing hard on the lawn below and they didn’t hear Mark’s panicked cry as Jolyon’s weight began to pull him down, as his foot dropped beneath the edge of the tower. And his head didn’t hurt him at all.

*   *   *

LXV(i)
   No, it can’t be done. I can’t go on telling you what took place that night as if it were only a story, the climax to some distant thriller. My confession must come from the heart, there is no literary distance I can put between me and what happened back then. Because I live with it in the here and now. Not on the page. I live with it every second of every day.

First person. Singular. Me.

*   *   *

LXV(ii)
   Here is the worst of my guilt. He tried to save me. Mark tried to stop me from falling to my death.

Perhaps he believed I
would
shout his name. But this doesn’t matter. No, he called out to me – Jolyon, no! All I had wanted was for him to believe I would go through with it, for Mark to surrender.

From where he was standing, he couldn’t have seen the flagpole beneath my hovering foot – Jolyon, no! – daring him, trying to convince him I was mad enough to go through with it. And who knows, perhaps I was. But at that moment, I was only trying to plant my foot on a flagpole. So Mark ran at me, he leapt, he tried to save me. And then two things happened at once. My foot landed on its target, and Mark, with a lunging dive, caught hold of my trailing leg. And as he grabbed hold of me, Mark knocked me off balance.