Black Chalk

No, I say, he’s just a driver. I don’t own a car.

This last piece of information appears to amuse the farmer greatly. I suppose you want to come in, he says. I can’t give you much time. There’s work won’t be doing itself.

He turns and steps inside. The screen door clatters behind him.

XLV(ii)Chad’s mom has given me freshly baked cookies for the ride home, warm pucks cloudy in their wax paper bag.

She comes outside to wish me farewell. The farmer has been feeding his animals. I see him emerge from the large shed behind the farmhouse.

The driver turns off his music as I climb into the car. I wind down a window to wave to Chad’s mother as we crunch down the drive.

Did you get what you came for? the driver asks me.

Yes, I tell him, I think so.

XLVI

XLVI(i) Emilia was becoming tired of Jolyon’s room. The year’s first bright days called out to her from beyond his windowpanes, fields beyond the towers and the spires of the city. It was predicted to be unseasonably warm the following day, so she proposed they should play the next round of the Game somewhere with grass. They could pack a picnic blanket, there would be fruit and sandwiches.

The others acquiesced although Jack took great pleasure in bemoaning the effort required. He also voiced bemusement over the fact that Emilia not only owned a picnic blanket but had brought it with her to Pitt.

Emilia was also the only owner of a bike among the remaining five. The others had to borrow, Jolyon’s requests quickly rustling up another four bikes, fellow students jumping to the task like footmen.

Away they pedalled, Emilia in front, her bare legs turning in the sunshine. She wore a silk scarf dotted with spirals and daisies and her hair was tied back. Chad had to pedal hard to keep up with her, those buttermilk legs going around and around. After the incident in Great Hall, however, he felt awkward enough to stay several bike lengths back.

Jolyon, Jack and Dee formed the peloton far behind. They motivated each other with talk of how good the cigarette would taste at the end of the journey, the wine in the sunlight.

Emilia was a natural leader of expeditions, every half-mile or so she would coast, standing tall on her pedals and glancing back at the others while shielding her eyes from the sun. It looked as though she were saluting the stragglers, proud of her brave troops. While she and Chad waited, she would busily consult a map for which there appeared to be designed in her rucksack a specific map pocket. When finally the cursing peloton arrived she would exhort them to continue with lines like ‘Come on now, the wine won’t stay chilled forever’ or ‘Last one there gets the funny-shaped strawberries’.

Seven or eight miles beyond the city they reached a large ornamental gate, the entrance to a grand old palace. And then after the cigarettes were lit, Jack found something further to bemoan. A sign listing entrance fees.

‘I’m not paying to support the upkeep of a fetid symbol of the fucking aristocracy.’

‘Jack, it’s one of the most beautiful houses in Britain,’ said Emilia.

‘Not to me it’s not. A tower block full of working-class families, that’s beautiful. Not this overwrought wedding cake.’

Emilia looked to Jolyon for some help, the sway he had over Jack, but Jolyon only shrugged.

‘I don’t mind paying,’ said Chad. ‘I’ll pay for you, Jack.’

‘Of course the American doesn’t mind,’ said Jack. ‘It’s not your utter corruption of a democracy, is it? No, Americans are always pleased to swan over here then pour their dollars into this kind of shit. The quaint symbols of an institution they themselves rejected more than two centuries ago.’

Emilia became businesslike. ‘Middle is meeting us here,’ she said. ‘Up by the house.’ She consulted her watch. ‘And we’re late because . . . well, we’re late and he’ll be there already.’

‘I signed up for a field and some wine, that’s all,’ said Jack. ‘Not to spit on the graves of the working class. Look at this village.’ He pointed to the cottages and inns and terraces behind them. ‘Now look at the grounds of this fucking monstrosity. It must be ten times the size of the entire village. All for one family. And I bet they only built the village to house the staff they needed to run that place.’