The Chalk Man

by C. J. Tudor

  —

  It turned out Dad had gone for a walk the night the reverend was attacked, but he only walked as far as The Bull. Fat Gav’s dad vouched for the fact he was there, drinking whiskey. (My dad didn’t drink often, but when he did he never drank beer like other dads, only whiskey.) Fat Gav’s dad had spoken to him, but he was busy that night and, besides, Fat Gav’s dad said, “You know when a punter just wants some time on their own.” Still, he had been thinking about not serving my dad any more when he left, just before closing.

  Dad couldn’t remember much after that, but he did remember sitting down to get some fresh air, on one of the benches in the churchyard, which was on the way back home. Someone had seen him there at around midnight. Mum told the police Dad got back about 1 a.m. The police couldn’t say for sure when Reverend Martin was attacked, but they believed it was sometime between midnight and three in the morning.

  They probably didn’t have enough to charge Dad, but it was all they needed—what with the fight and the threats against Mum—to get him down to the police station and question him some more. Maybe they would have even kept him there, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Halloran.

  He walked into the police station the next day to tell them that he had seen my dad asleep on a bench in the churchyard that night. Worried about leaving him there, he had woken him and helped him to walk home, just to the gate. This was between midnight and one. It had taken them a good forty minutes (even though it was only a ten-minute walk) because Dad was in such a state.

  And no, Mr. Halloran told the police, my dad did not have any blood on him, and he was not angry or violent. He was just drunk and a little emotional.

  That pretty much cleared my dad. Unfortunately, it also led to questions about what Mr. Halloran was doing wandering around the churchyard at that time of night, and that’s how everyone found out about Waltzer Girl.

  2016

  We think we want answers. But what we really want are the right answers. Human nature. We ask questions that we hope will give us the truth we want to hear. The problem is, you can’t choose your truths. Truth has a habit of simply being the truth. The only real choice you have is whether to believe it or not.

  “You stole Sean Cooper’s bike?” I say to Gav.

  “I knew he often left it out on the driveway at night. He thought he was such a big man no one would dare take it. So I did. Just to piss him off.” He pauses. “I never thought he’d go into the river to try and get it. Never thought he’d end up drowning.”

  No, I think. But everyone knew how much Sean loved that bike. It must have crossed Fat Gav’s mind that stealing it could only end in trouble.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask.

  Gav blows out a ring of smoke. “I saw what he did to you. In the playground that day.”

  The admission is like a punch in my guts. Thirty years ago, and my cheeks still burn with shame at the memory. The rough tarmac rubbing my knees. The stale, sweaty taste in my mouth.

  “I was in the park,” he says. “I saw it all happening, and I didn’t do a thing. I just stood there. Then I saw Mr. Halloran run over, so I told myself it was all right. But it wasn’t all right.”

  “There was nothing you could have done,” I say. “They’d have just turned on you.”

  “I should still have tried. Friends are everything. Remember? That’s what I always said. But when it came to it, I let you down. I let Sean get away with it. Like everyone did. These days, he’d end up in jail for something like that. Back then, we were all so scared of him.” He looks at me fiercely. “He wasn’t just a bully. He was a fucking psychopath.”

  He’s right. About some of it. I’m not sure Sean Cooper was a psychopath. A sadist, certainly. Most kids are, to some extent. But maybe he would have been different when he got older. I think about what Mr. Halloran had said at the graveyard:

  He never got the chance to change.

  “You’ve gone quiet,” Gav says.

  I drag harder on the cigarette. The nicotine hit makes my ears hum.

  “The night after Sean died, someone drew a chalk man on my driveway. A drowning chalk man. Like some kind of message.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “So who, then?”

  Gav grinds his cigarette out on the bench. “Who knows? Who cares? The fucking chalk men. It’s all anyone remembers about that summer. More people give a shit about some stupid drawings than the people who got hurt.”

  It’s true. But the two were irrevocably intertwined. Chicken and egg. Which came first. The chalk men or the killing?

  Gav says, “You’re the only person who knows, Ed.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “I know.” He sighs. “Have you ever done anything so bad you can’t tell even your closest friends?”

  I stub my own cigarette down to the flattened filter. “I’m sure most people have.”

  “You know what someone once told me? Secrets are like arseholes. We all have them. It’s just that some are dirtier than others.”

  “Nice mental image.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckles. “What a pile of shit.”

  —

  It’s late afternoon before I make it back home. I let myself in, walk into the kitchen and immediately frown at the unpleasant odor of cat litter. I peer into the plastic tray. There don’t appear to be any deposits. Which might be fortunate or worrying, depending on what level of evil Mittens is operating at today. I make a mental note to check my slippers before I put them on.

  The bourbon sits, temptingly, on the kitchen worktop, but instead (clear head and all that) I grab a beer from the fridge and walk upstairs. I linger for a moment by Chloe’s room. I can’t hear anything from inside but I can feel a faint vibration through the floorboards, which probably means she has her headphones on and is listening to music. Good.

  I tiptoe into my own room and close the door. Then I place my beer on the bedside table, crouch down and push aside the chest of drawers by the window. It’s heavy and it scrapes across the old floorboards a little, but I’m not too worried about the noise. When Chloe listens to music she likes to listen to it at eardrum-bursting volume. A minor earthquake could pass her by unnoticed.

  I take out an old screwdriver I keep in my underwear drawer and use it to prise up the floorboards. Four of them. More than when I was child. I have more to hide now.

  I remove one of the two boxes wedged into the cavity, lift the lid and stare at the contents. I take out the smallest item and carefully unwrap the tissue paper. Inside is a single gold hoop earring. Not real gold; a cheap piece of costume jewelry, slightly tarnished now. I hold it in my hand for a moment, letting the metal warm in my palm. The first thing I took from her, I think. The day it all began, at the fairground.

  I understand how Gav must feel. If he hadn’t stolen Sean Cooper’s bike, then he might still be alive. One small act of childish stupidity that resulted in a terrible tragedy. Not that Gav could have foreseen how it would end. Neither could I. But still, a strange feeling washes over me. A sense of discomfort. Not guilt, exactly. Its twin. Responsibility. For all of it.

  I’m sure Chloe would tell me that this is because I’m the sort of insular, self-obsessed man who takes everything on himself and believes that the world revolves around him. That’s true, to an extent. Being solitary can lead to introspection. On the other hand, maybe I haven’t given enough time to introspection, or thinking about the past. I wrap the earring carefully back up and replace it in the box.

  Maybe it’s time to take a ride all the way back down good old memory lane. Except, this is not a sun-dappled stroll along a path of fond recollections. This particular route is dark, overgrown with tangled knots of lies and secrets, and full of hidden potholes.

  And along the way, there are chalk men.

  1986

  “We can’t choose who we fall in love with.”

  That’s what Mr. Halloran told me.

  I suppose he was right. Love isn’t a choice. It�
��s a compulsion. I know that now. But perhaps, sometimes, you should choose. Or, at least, choose not to fall in love. Fight it, take yourself away from it. If Mr. Halloran had chosen not to fall in love with Waltzer Girl, everything might have been different.

  This was after he had left school for good, when I sneaked out and rode my bike across town to see him in his little cottage. A cold day. The sky iron gray and as hard and unyielding as a block of concrete. Occasionally, it would drib and drab a bit of drizzle here and there. Too despondent to even rain properly.

  Mr. Halloran had been made to resign. There hadn’t been an announcement. I think they just hoped he would go quietly. But of course, we all knew he was leaving, and we all knew why.

  Mr. Halloran had visited Waltzer Girl in hospital as she recovered. He carried on visiting her after she came out. They would meet for coffee or at the park. I guess they must have been pretty secretive about it, because no one had seen them, or perhaps they had and didn’t realize. Waltzer Girl had changed her hair. She had dyed it lighter, almost blond. I wasn’t sure why. I thought her hair was pretty before. But maybe she just felt she needed to change it because she had changed. Sometimes she walked with a stick now. Sometimes with a limp. I guess if anyone did see them, they probably just thought that Mr. Halloran was being nice. Back then, he was still a hero.

  That all turned on its head pretty fast when people found out that Waltzer Girl had been going to his cottage in the evenings and he had been sneaking around to her house when her mum was out. That was why he was making his way back past the churchyard that night.

  Then the shit really hit the fan, because Waltzer Girl was only seventeen and Mr. Halloran was over thirty and a teacher. People stopped calling him a hero and started calling him a pervert and a pedo. Parents went up to the school to talk angrily to the head. Even though he hadn’t officially, or legally, done anything wrong, she had no choice but to ask him to go. It was the school’s reputation and the “safety” of the children.

  Stories started to spread about how Mr. Halloran would drop erasers so he could look up the girls’ skirts in class, or how he would hang around at PE, staring at girls’ legs, or how, in the canteen once, he had touched one of the girls serving on the boob when she went to clear his table.

  None of it was true, but rumors are like germs. They spread and multiply almost in a breath and, before you know it, everyone is contaminated.

  I’d like to say I stuck up for Mr. Halloran and defended his name in front of the other kids. But that’s not true. I was twelve, and this was school. I laughed at the jokes about him and didn’t say a word when people called him names or spread another outrageous tale.

  I never told them that I didn’t believe them. That Mr. Halloran was good. Because he had saved Waltzer Girl’s life, and saved my dad, too. I couldn’t tell them about the beautiful pictures he painted, or the day he rescued me from Sean Cooper, or how he helped me understand that you should hold on to things that were special. Hold on really tight.

  I guess that’s why I went round to see him that day. As well as having to resign from his job, he had to leave the cottage. It was rented out by the school and the new teacher, his replacement, would be moving in.

  I still felt a bit scared and awkward when I propped my bike outside and knocked on the door. It took a while for Mr. Halloran to open it. I was just wondering whether I should leave, or if he was out, even though his car was parked on the street outside, when the door swung open and Mr. Halloran was standing there.

  He looked different somehow. He had always been thin, but now he looked gaunt. His skin, if humanly possible, was even paler. His hair was loose and he wore jeans and a dark T-shirt that showed off his sinewy arms, the only color in them the blue of his veins, startlingly bright through the translucent skin. That day, he really did look like some kind of strange, inhuman creature. Like the Chalk Man.

  “Hi, Eddie.”

  “Hello, Mr. Halloran.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  A good question, because now I was here, I actually had no idea.

  “Do your mum and dad know you’re here?”

  “Well, no.”

  He gave a small frown, then he stepped outside and looked around. I didn’t really get why at the time. Later, I would understand—with all the accusations flying around, the last thing he wanted was to be seen inviting a young boy into his cottage. I think he might even have been on the verge of turning me away, but then he looked at me and his voice softened: “Come on in, Eddie. Would you like a drink? Squash or milk?”

  I didn’t really, but it seemed rude to say no, so I said, “Erm, milk would be cool.”

  “Okay.”

  I followed Mr. Halloran into the small kitchen.

  “Sit down.”

  I sat on one of the wobbly pine chairs. The worktops in the kitchen were stacked with boxes; most of the living room, too.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked, which was a stupid question, because I already knew he was.

  “Yes,” Mr. Halloran said, taking some milk out of the fridge and checking the date before searching the boxes for a glass. “I’m going to stay with my sister in Cornwall.”

  “Oh. I thought your sister was dead.”

  “I have another sister, an older one. She’s called Kirsty.”

  “Oh.”

  Mr. Halloran brought the milk over. “Is everything okay, Eddie?”

  “I, erm, I wanted to thank you, for what you did for my dad.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I just told the truth.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t have to and if you hadn’t…”

  I let the sentence trail off. This was awful. More awful than I thought it would be. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to go, and yet I felt I couldn’t.

  Mr. Halloran sighed. “Eddie, all of this, it has nothing to do with your dad or you. I intended to leave soon anyway.”

  “Because of Waltzer Girl?”

  “You mean Elisa?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I nodded. Sipped my milk. It tasted a bit off.

  “We think a fresh start might be best, for both of us.”

  “So she’s coming with you, to Cornwall?”

  “Eventually. I hope.”

  “People are saying bad things about you.”

  “I know. They’re not true.”

  “I know.”

  But he must have felt I needed some more convincing, because he continued: “Elisa is a very special girl, Eddie. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I just wanted to help her, to be a friend.”

  “So why couldn’t you just be her friend?”

  “When you’re older, you’ll understand better. We can’t choose who we fall in love with, who will make us happy.”

  But he didn’t look happy. Not like people in love were supposed to. He looked sad and sort of lost.

  —

  I cycled home, feeling confused and a little lost myself. Winter was creeping in and, at barely three o’clock in the afternoon, the day was losing substance and dissolving into a dusty twilight.

  Everything felt cold and bleak and hopelessly changed. Our gang had been torn apart. Nicky was living with her mum in Bournemouth. Mickey had his new, unpleasant mates. I still hung out with Hoppo and Fat Gav, but it wasn’t the same. A group of three brought its own problems. I had always thought of Hoppo as my best mate, but sometimes, now, when I went round to call for him, he was already out with Fat Gav. That brought a different feeling: resentment.

  Mum and Dad were different, too. Since the attack on Reverend Martin, the protests around Mum’s work had died down. “Like cutting the head off the beast,” Dad said. But while Mum was more relaxed, Dad seemed sharper and on edge. Maybe the whole police thing had shaken him, or maybe it was something else. He was forgetful and irritable. Sometimes I would catch him sitting in a chair, staring into space, as if he was just waiting for something but didn’t know what.

  That waiting feeling seemed to hang over the who
le of Anderbury. Everything seemed somehow on hold. The police had still not charged anyone with the attack on Reverend Martin, so perhaps suspicion was part of it: looking, wondering if someone you knew could be capable of such a thing.

  The leaves curled and crinkled and eventually lost their fragile grip on the trees. A feeling of withering and dying seemed to pervade everything. Nothing felt fresh or colorful or innocent anymore. Like the whole town had been temporarily suspended in its own dusty time capsule.

  Of course, as it turned out, we were waiting. And when the girl’s pale hand beckoned from a careless fall of crumpled leaves, it felt as though the whole town let out a long, stagnant breath. Because it had happened. The worst had finally come.

  2016

  I wake early the next morning. Or rather, I finally give up on sleep after hours of tossing and turning, broken only by half-remembered dreams.

  In one of them Mr. Halloran is riding the Waltzers with Waltzer Girl. I’m pretty sure it’s Waltzer Girl, because of her clothes, even though she is missing her head. It rests on Mr. Halloran’s lap and it screams every time the fairground worker, who I realize is Sean Cooper, spins them round and round.

  “Scream if you want to go faster, Shitfaces. I said, SCREAM!”

  I haul myself from bed, shaken and distinctly unrested. Then I throw on some clothes and pad downstairs. I presume Chloe is still asleep, so I kill time, making coffee, reading and smoking two cigarettes outside the back door. Then, when the clock slips past nine and the hour seems just about respectable, I pick up the phone and call Hoppo.

  His mum answers.

  “Hello, Mrs. Hopkins. Is David there?”

  “Who is this?”

  Her voice is tremulous and frail. A marked contrast to my own mum’s clipped, precise tones. Hoppo’s mum has dementia. Like my dad, except Dad’s Alzheimer’s started earlier and progressed faster.

  It’s the reason why Hoppo still lives in the same house where he grew up. To care for his mum. We sometimes joke that the pair of us, two grown men, have never left home. It’s a slightly bitter joke.