Black Chalk (19 page)

‘Me? My age? What I'm doing? Holidays?' I lined up the questions, hoping for more time. At nineteen, she was already going into her second year of university, while I was seven years older and I hadn't even finished school.

‘Let's start with the one question…' She played with her lower lip as she considered the questions. ‘Alright: what are you doing?'

‘Now? In life?'

‘In life,' she said and looked at me, expecting an answer.

‘Well, it's complicated. Things happened when I was at school. I was a good student and all, but sometimes you just need to leave. So I worked on ships for a while, and then I moved to France.' I saw her perk up on the mention of France. ‘And now I'm going to start a bridging course so I can go to university,' I said. From the way she reacted, I thought I'd done well.

When I went to the bar to get us a second round, the barman and I looked at Leona. She was studying a wooden beam on the ceiling. For my part, I looked at the line that muscles and bones drew around her bare collar-bone.

‘First date?' he asked.

‘Yeah.' I turned towards him. ‘She's a nice girl.'

‘Is it going well?'

‘I don't know.' I pinched the bridge of my nose. From the way he raised his eyebrows, I knew he understood my plight.

‘You can have a bottle of wine for the price of two large glasses, if you want. If you need.'

Leona was delighted.

‘Nathan and the barman,' she said. ‘That could be the title of a poem.'

‘How would it go?'

‘Nathan and the barman, let me think.' She hummed as she thought. She took a sip of wine and started: ‘Red as Jacob's creek, The finger pointed, And the bar whispered, Here's a bottle don't be meek.'

I laughed. ‘It rhymes,' I said.

‘Yes.' She paused. ‘Do you like it?'

I studied her face. ‘I like it,' I said.

She smiled. Her hands were gripping the edge of the cushion by her thighs. When she shrugged, her whole body seemed to fold together, and I wanted to kiss the tip of her nose.

‘Can you draw me something?' she asked, her smile growing playful.

‘Draw?'

‘I made up a poem. It's only fair.'

‘Alright.'

I tore a page out of my notebook and squinted.

‘Look over there,' I said.

She followed my direction. ‘Are you drawing me?' She tried to look serious.

I hushed her and donned an engrossed expression. Without doubling back, I let my pen find the lines I'd identified earlier that day. I added what they missed, the small tilt at the end of her nose, the wide eyes and the marked eyebrows, the sharp arch of throat and jaw.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘You see, I told you, you are very good. You're an artist. You were just being modest.'

I'd had enough wine to laugh, and I liked the look she gave me as she spoke.

‘Do you paint?' she asked.

‘A little.'

‘Can you paint me?'

I laughed and let my hand drift next to hers, skin touching skin. Her hand didn't move one way or the other, and I started to hope – it was a gentle bond, that contact, steady and comfortable. Our hands stayed touching until she mentioned the Ashes and, with a sudden surge of excitement, I needed both my hands to tell her that my batting efforts were worthy of the English team's.

‘It's not to the good balls that I got out. No. It was to high full tosses or double bouncers, when I bent low, played a perfect straight drive, and held the pose as I heard the death rattle.'

She laughed along with me.

‘But at least I could go back to my father and tell him all about the beauty of my shot. That I'd been bowled was a minor detail.'

‘My father played too,' she said.

I waited for her to say more, perhaps that he was a batsman or a bowler, but she pursed her lips, as though she were caught in a recollection. A girl who'd grown up in the Oxfordshire countryside and who liked cricket enough to bring it up – a good thing could only go so far. I couldn't expect her to ask me whether I knew how to bowl a slider.

‘The problem with my father was that he was Hornsbury's star batsman. A hard act to follow…' I trailed off.

Her face had changed, as if she were fighting a cramp. Puzzled, I thought back over what I'd said.

‘Are you alright?' I asked.

She nodded tightly. ‘Just remembered something,' she let out.

‘Well, I guess I won't talk about cricket then.' I smiled broadly. ‘That's all I thought about when I was a kid. That and girls.' She didn't smile. I felt like I'd poked a long needle in her thigh, and that I was pumping blood out with every one of my jokes. ‘But now I haven't watched a game for eight years. Proof that men can change!'

She rose, nodding curtly at the bathroom. I'd done something, and now she was going to leave without saying goodbye. It had to be the cricket chat. But she'd looked interested. Hard to read a woman, I consoled myself. A minute later, she walked out of the bathroom, her arms swinging freely, the colour back in her face.

‘So tell me about France,' she said as she sat down.

France fascinated her. She wanted to know why I'd moved there, what my first job was, whether the mountain glare hurt my eyes, the reasons behind my Antibes boss's barbed comments, how I'd felt when she'd been fired.

‘How can you care about people when you move so much?' she asked, leaning towards me, genuinely interested in my answer.

I answered her questions as best I could, watering down my justified cynicism to match her rosier vision of the country.

Her lips clasped into a pensive pout.

‘Do you smoke? Everyone smokes there.'

‘I tried but I don't like it.'

‘Me neither,' she smiled and I felt like I'd passed a test. ‘Ah well, you'll have to tell more another day. Do you speak French?'

The question made me chuckle. ‘Well, I tried. Most locals didn't speak any English, so I had to.' I thought back to my first few attempts at French slang and smiled. ‘Do you speak French?'

‘Tu es un peu myst
é
rieux,' she said, sounding delighted.

‘Oui, il faut bien.'

She seemed happy in French. If sometimes she emphasised the wrong vowel, I liked the charm she lent the words. For the first time, I was seeing her a little self-conscious. Looking at her smile even more than before, I felt like I had a say in where we were going.

‘Allons prendre une glace,' I said.

We never made it to the ice cream shop. My laces having come undone, I kneeled and she didn't wait. I stared at her arse, the cloth of her dress fondling a cheek at a time, until I caught up to her. At the corner of Temple Street and Cowley Road, I grabbed her arm and she turned towards me, her eyes large with seriousness and curiosity. This time, I pushed my fears aside and our noses brushed and our eyes stared at each other's mouths. I paused. From above, I saw her bite her lower lip, teeth breaking the arc, and I desired them more. Her hands laced around my shoulders; my fingers rode down the wave of her back. I would have waited and built on that last ounce of doubt, but she crossed the gap, and my tongue tickled her upper lip. My world narrowed to the softness of her cheeks, the strand of hair following the line of her nose, her lips, sometimes dry, sometimes wet, and to my suddenly sensitive cock, twitching every time her stomach came too close to mine. For a nineteen-year-old, she knew what she was doing.

We must have stood there, next to one of Oxford's busiest roads, clogging the pavement as lips met lips, and hands bundled flesh, for close to ten minutes. When it got too much, I held out my hand and she took it. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew we had to go somewhere, or my balls would ache all night. My own room wasn't far, but my parents were home. As we crossed the Cherwell, I remembered sneaking into the Botanic Gardens when I was fourteen. We walked down Rose Lane and into the rose garden by the day entrance.

‘I love white roses,' she said.

‘Follow me.'

There were two cameras fixed to the residential building overseeing the gardens. I took her straight through their beam, out of their sight, and stopped by the shed abutting the main door. With my fingers, I mimed what we had to do. I went first, raising myself onto the shed's low roof, and, crouching down, I helped her up. Peering over the garden's wall, I saw that the bench was still there. I scrambled over the wall and lowered myself onto it first, and then helped her down. I looked at her dress, at the bench, at the wall.

‘You might…' I mimicked a tear.

‘It's only a dress,' she beamed, her voice growing louder.

‘Shh… Security does rounds here and…' I pointed at three dark buildings giving onto the gardens.

Again, I took her hand, and on the little memory I had of the place, I made my way towards some dense shrubs next to Rose Lane. Action sharpened my focus, and the damp warmth of her fingers elated me. Skipping over a flower bed, we slipped behind waist-high ferns, and found an enclave of clear earth between the wall and the ferns.

We were on the ground kissing, and she was pushing me down, and there was a rock poking me between the ribs, and it was gone, and her hips were grinding through denim and cotton, and my hands were soft and my hands were tight. They explored, groped, scratched, caressed, and I was delighted with everything they found. I reached for a condom inside my jacket and struggled with the buttons of my jeans, while she looked on as if she were caught in a dream. While I fumbled, she sat on my thighs, cutting off the circulation to my legs, a hazy smile on her lips, a crackly silence in the air. And then I had the condom on, and she lined her hips with mine as if there hadn't been an interruption. Such flow, I thought. She still had her underwear on, but I ripped the elastic and it felt right. As she bore down on me, I felt a certain resistance, as though I hadn't positioned myself right. I tried again and the same thing happened. The third time, she laid one hand on my chest, the other on my cock, and pushed, and pushed, until she was down and her pupils were dilated. The fingers on my chest were clawing through my t-shirt.

I could hear something, maybe a voice, maybe someone singing, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the feel of her sliding up and down. ‘There's a bit of noise coming from that wall.' This time I could make out the words: it was a voice and there was also the beam of a torchlight. I pulled Leona against me and hushed in her ear. She kept moving her hips.

‘Look at you, checking everything tonight. What did the missus slip in your tea?' a gruffer voice said.

I could hear their footsteps on the other side of the ferns, and I could feel Leona's flesh parting around mine. I tried to force her hips still, but she was too strong for me. Light reflected off their jackets and pierced through the leaves. I held my breath and covered her groans with my hand. Wet and hard, her tongue dug into my palm. I looked through a gap in the leaves, and for a second, I was looking right into the grey eyes of a bald man. He had a boxer's broken nose. And then he'd moved towards me, into the ferns, and I couldn't see him anymore.

Just as I was racking up excuses – deny or appeal for privacy, I'd choose on the spot – a chorus of boastful voices drowned the sound of their shuffling steps. They were all speaking, laughing, shouting at the same time, but what was important was that they were on the other side of the wall.

‘Oh mate, you've got no idea!' one boasted loud enough that I could hear him.

‘Not after what Cecilia told everyone about your little… habits,' a different voice, with something like a German accent, shouted back so strongly that his words drowned out our wet slurps and slaps, and the ensuing laughter overpowered the security men's chuckle. I was certain that that boxer of a security guard had seen me, but now both groups were moving away from us, one further into the gardens, the other along the road, and I relaxed. The ground felt soft and we were proud and we giggled. Although I stayed in her for a while, it was no longer about the sex.

Later, as we had our clothes back on, as we lay with our backs to the soil's dew, and I had my jacket over us, I noticed her tearing petals out of a white rose. Every time she flicked one onto the ground, she brought the flower close and inhaled deeply. Propped on my elbows, I looked at my crotch. I lay down and stared at a gap between the clouds.

‘Was it your…' I asked.

She nudged her head between my arm and chest. I gathered her closer and felt glad she hadn't told me. I would have fretted and she would have obliged my worries. Instead, she kissed my neck, I burrowed my nose into her hair, and I wanted to laugh in awe. At that moment, I felt like I could say anything, like I didn't need to say anything.

***

That night, I had my best sleep since my return: seven solid, dreamless hours. In the morning, I spurted half-formed plans as water broke over my back and sheathed my body. But thoughts of Leona kept on surfacing, wiping away my best designs and leaving me with a contented, perplexed smile. Her stifled moans as the warmth of her breath condensed against my palm, the shape of her straightened arm when she sat and rested her hand by her thigh, the few rebellious hairs stroking my forehead as she pressed on me, the tempo and steadiness of her voice as she told me about her sister, and her quivering upper lip as the security guards walked away from our hiding place. There were doubts too but they didn't stick. So that by the time I walked down to the kitchen, my emotions had settled and I felt as though nothing could move me from my high: life back home was taking a good turn.

My mother walked into the kitchen and started making herself a cup of tea, while I was sitting on the knotted kitchen table, halfway through my porridge.

‘I'm making you one too,' she said. Her hand stopped inside a bag of loose leaves, and she looked at me. ‘Do you want one?'