Read Online Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates - Free Book Online Page A

when I finished my essay yesterday, I found him slumped over his desk in the library. It was midnight, he had nothing but a few torn-up attempts. His tutorial’s today, the guy was panicking. So I lent him mine.’
    ‘Even though he’s a total frickin cock?’
    ‘It seemed like the right thing to do,’ said Jolyon.
    ‘You mean you felt bad for him?’ said Chad.
    Jolyon looked even more confused than before. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ he said.
    Chad snorted. ‘Never mind,’ he said. He dropped the essay on Jolyon’s desk and took the chair next to the coffee table.
    Jolyon tore the Gorbachev article from the newspaper, placed it to one side and then turned his attention to Chad. ‘Now then, would you like me to make you some breakfast?’ he said.
    Chad looked around the room. There was a toaster and an electric kettle. ‘You mean a piece of toast?’ he said.
    ‘No,’ said Jolyon, ‘a real breakfast.’
    Chad was doubtful. ‘Sure then,’ he said, ‘go for it.’
    Jolyon grinned and turned on the kettle. He went to his desk, opened a drawer and removed two eggs and a tablecloth. Chad watched in silence as Jolyon smoothed the tablecloth over the coffee table. Round and white, made of delicate lace.
    ‘How do you take your tea?’ said Jolyon.
    ‘How do I what?’ said Chad. ‘Take? In a cup? What does that mean?’
    ‘Milk? Sugar? Please don’t say lemon.’
    ‘I’ve never had tea in my life,’ said Chad.
    ‘Good,’ said Jolyon. ‘Then you take it the same way as me. Strong, no sugar, just a thimbleful of milk. Excellent.’
    When the kettle boiled, Jolyon poured two-thirds of its water into a glazed brown teapot that he took from beneath the coffee table. He then removed the lid of the kettle and lowered the eggs inside with a soup ladle. Returning the lid to the kettle, he looked at his watch. Then Jolyon went back to his desk and from the same drawer as the eggs, found two thick slices of white bread and lowered them into the toaster.
    He started to describe something he had recently finished reading. Jolyon made everything that interested him sound so wonderful. Chad said he’d love to read the book as well, so Jolyon went to his shelves, took out the book and handed it to Chad. And then he said, ‘Please keep it if you like it.’ Jolyon looked at his watch. ‘Five minutes exactly,’ he said. With a pair of tongs he fished two tea bags from the pot then covered it with a padded tea cosy embroidered with bright bluebells and leaves. Then he started the toast. ‘He was an alcoholic,’ said Jolyon. ‘All of the best American writers were.’
    Chad looked at the book and felt ashamed that he had not heard of Raymond Carver. He read the back cover. It described Carver as one of the greats of American literature and here was an Englishman lending the book to him. Chad flicked through the pages, reading the names of the stories at the top of the pages, titles that were simple yet rich.
    Jolyon was sitting by the kettle, staring at his watch. ‘Nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds,’ he announced, and then working fast he removed the eggs from the kettle with the soup ladle. He put the eggs in a cereal bowl and took them over to a cupboard door while he started to call out names. ‘Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck.’ He opened the door, behind it was a mirror over a small washbowl. ‘Hemingway, obviously. Hemingway was king of the writer drunks.’ He put the eggs beneath the cold faucet and let the water run over them. ‘Cheever and Carver. Truman Capote.’
    Jolyon lifted the eggs from the water. He rolled them in the washbowl to loosen the shells and peeled each one quickly and skilfully, first removing a strip of shell from the middle of each egg as if whipping a belt from a pair of pants, then easing off their fragile hemispheres of shell. ‘You go back a bit further and you’ve got Poe and Melville.’
    As Jolyon finished the peeling, the toaster went chunk . He