What should I say to Dee? That I have been too busy with my own words to look for hers? How many forms of guilt can I juggle at once? I want to reach out and stroke the dark silk of her hair. Don’t worry, Dee, I say. I’m going to find your poems. I’m going to find them, I say.
It’s too late, Jolyon. It’s too late. Dee’s eyes dart down. She is holding an envelope creased in her folded arms. She notices me looking and reaches out slowly, the letter trembling, and hands it to me. Don’t open it until you get back to your apartment, she says. Please, one last promise, Jolyon. I don’t want you to read it in public.
I promise, I say, taking the envelope, my name written on its front in red ink. Please, Dee, just one last chance. Let me try.
She forces a smile. It’s too late. It’s not your fault, Jolyon, but it is too late, Dee says, wrapping her arms around her body. And please don’t follow me. You won’t see me again, she says, looking down at the ground.
Dee, please, no, I say. Dee, what is it?
She turns and she hurries away.
LXXI(vii) The posters taunt me as I stumble home. Stapled to trees, beneath missing cats. Large reward.
I fall into my apartment and steady myself on the kitchen counter. I tear open the letter.
LXXI(viii) Oh, Jolyon, I hope I’m not too harsh to you in the park, I don’t want to be harsh. And please, I don’t want you to feel guilty. Perhaps I have been downplaying how hard I’ve been finding life for the past several years. Your story is so important, I didn’t want to distract you with the petty ins and outs of my own obscure existence.
Don’t blame yourself, Jolyon. I had fourteen years to right myself. And the failure is mine, all mine.
Please would you find it in your heart to hold on to the second page of this letter? And then, if you ever find it, if anyone ever finds it, you can paste it straight into my book. I would like that very much.
It makes me enormously happy to think that you might do one final thing for me.
It’s true, I never really deserved a saviour. I am so very, very sorry.
Dee x
LXXI(ix) While I read the note, I feel the grain of the second sheet of paper against my fingertips. Thicker, heavier, like a piece of old parchment.
Already I know what this is. The words don’t matter. But I let Dee’s note drop to the floor anyway.
The first thing I see, the first mark on the page, is a large and ornate initial decorated with scrollwork and vines. A stamp in red ink. My gift to her.
D (Black Chalk)
(i)
Six boys one day went running through the woods
inventing games while twisting through the leaves
Exhausted found a copse of old burned trees
and settled there to tally up the score
while feeling in their pockets for
the black chalk
(ii)
Aloft six clouds converged in breaking light
and flocks of angels grouped to form a list
debated who on earth was worthiest
But night had fallen when at last on high
they scrawled those names across the sky
in black chalk
(iii)
Six fledgling soldiers told to notch their guns
to keep engraved a note of every kill
were raising up their flag upon a hill
Then finding that the slate was deep within
they trembled as they filled it in
with black chalk
(iv)
And when soon comes the melancholy time
for you to speak of love, do not deceive
No love was earned and what did I achieve?
So draft upon the basalt tomb what was, what might have been
it is my final wish that you should write it in
black chalk
LXXI(x) Oh, Dee, no. Please, Dee, no. No no no.
LXXII
LXXII Jolyon left Pitt and moved home to his mother’s house in Sussex. For the first month he spent most of his time sitting listlessly in his bedroom. But then he decided to look for a job, something to distract him before guilt sucked him under.
He found work in a factory that manufactured shrink-wrap labels, plastic sleeves for bottles, cans, aerosols . . . For nine hours a day he stood by a whirring conveyor belt onto which a cutting machine disgorged labels. After every hundred a buzzer went off and Jolyon had to scoop up the sleeves and pile them neatly together. But often there was a great build-up of friction and the sleeves would fight against his hands.
Once successfully gathered each stack had to be wrapped in a rubber band and placed in a cardboard box. When a box became full it had to be closed and taped shut. But the buzzer never stopped buzzing, so Jolyon had to learn to do this fast while still managing to gather and bind and fight with the static.
But once he mastered it, Jolyon felt soothed by the work. Rituals of repetition, a routine interrupted only by small and periodic challenges. And the rattling of the machines made conversation impossible and this soothed him as well.
When he wasn’t working he read law books. Not because he had decided to return to Pitt but simply because law books were the only unread books he owned. And soon they started to comfort Jolyon just as the monotonous work of the factory comforted him.
Most of all he liked to read legal judgments. Jolyon enjoyed submitting to the opinions of appellate judges and law lords, men and women of learning and experience. He let their conclusions rain down on him like the warm spray from a shower head. He felt like a gatherer of truth, a piecer-together of fact from little fragments. You could find truth in order just as you might properly build a life that way.
Ten months after he had left Pitt he wrote a letter to inform the college he had decided not to return. Wiseman phoned a few days later. At first he tried to talk Jolyon around but Jolyon wouldn’t budge. Jolyon told Sir Ralph about his job at the factory but mentioned that he still enjoyed reading law books. He could hear the regret in Wiseman’s voice when he wished him well and said goodbye.
An hour later the phone rang again. Again it was Wiseman. He had pulled a few strings, if Jolyon was still interested in the law there was a legal newspaper in London looking for a junior writer. The job was his if he wanted it.
Jolyon acquiesced. Yes, he wanted to be told what to do now. How he wished he had had a Wiseman all along.
He moved to London, to a small flat in the Elephant and Castle where he lived alone. He was good at his job but remained distant from his colleagues.
And so it was in London, surrounded by the heartbeats of millions, that loneliness first became Jolyon’s routine. Loneliness was the machine noise that cocooned him from life. And loneliness was not so bad.
LXXIII
LXXIII(i) I sit on the kitchen floor unable to get the image out of my head, picturing her all alone, her body not yet found. My darling Dee lying there, little blue doll rumpled and folded away. She looks discarded, carelessly left there for later, legs like stuffed cloth bent beneath her. My little blue doll, her wide stiff eyes, her ocean-coloured skin.
And I could have saved her. I could have . . .
Suddenly I pull a salad bowl out from the debris all around me. I retch. I puke violently, copiously.
LXXIII(ii) The intercom buzzes. Two thirty.
Happy birthday, Jolyon, Chad says when I open the door. He is carrying a black leather attaché case.
I say nothing. I turn and do my best to walk in a straight line. I want to get this thing over with. Perhaps I even want to lose, who knows what I’m thinking. Maybe I don’t care about Game Soc, they can do what they like with me.