Black Chalk Read Online Free PDF Page B

seeing on the end of my cock.’
    Jolyon and Chad already knew which girl Jack was referring to without having to follow his eyes.
    Jolyon sighed. ‘ Jah-aaaack .’
    ‘What?’ said Jack, turning to see two disapproving faces. He bunched his shoulders and held out his palms. ‘Don’t you dare judge me. You think it. I just say it.’
    The cliques and cabals were already forming at Pitt. In each case there was a central core around which the groups formed, a heart dense enough to begin the accretion of human mass. Often a group would take shape around a shared interest such as rowing or rugby or studying Beowulf in its original Anglo-Saxon. Or a clique might orbit around qualities such as money or beauty or pretension. But Chad couldn’t describe his own group’s defining feature. He felt it peculiar that he could label every other clique but his own. Perhaps Jolyon was the only thing that defined them. They were all the sort of people Jolyon liked – the normal ones at Pitt, Jolyon would have said.
    They had met Jack a few days earlier and the customary introduction had included the information that Jack was studying history. A couple of mathematicians arm in arm had passed them by where they stood in the shadow of the college tower. She in severe skirt, he in severe sweater. Michaelmas term wasn’t even yet under way and already they had found love. Jack began to joke about how he imagined mathematicians might have sex, nasally reciting the instructions for the missionary position in terms of computer subroutines such as, ‘Thirty, insert penis. Forty, withdraw penis. Fifty, go to thirty.’ And when he finished the skit he said, ‘Because I have every right to judge, of course. Historians have always been known as the sex bombs of higher education. Maybe that should be our motto – historians, the scholars who put the stud into study.’
    Jolyon thought self-mockery was perhaps the best of Jack’s redeeming features. At least while laughing at the world Jack knew himself to be very much a cog in the grand comedy of life. And Jack was always happy to exaggerate his own flaws and shortcomings if he thought his own distortion might entertain those around him.
    Now the three of them were standing together in the crowded university examination halls, students chattering, stirring the air with excitement and dispute. Around the edges of the hall were arranged a number of stalls side by side.
    ‘Oh please, we just have to go and speak to those laughing boys!’ said Jack.
    They were at the Freshers’ Fair, an event run to showcase for the new students the diverse multitude of thrilling societies they could join – newspapers to write for, sports clubs to join, debating groups to conquer. There were societies for aspiring actors, tiddlywinks players, communists, morris dancers, Francophiles, genealogists, knitters, hunt saboteurs, homosexuals, lesbians, chocoholics … There actually existed an agricultural society offering students the opportunity to plough for the university. Jack, being interested only in approaching stalls representing the sorts of societies he would never join, had asked them how one could possibly plough for the university. Did the university require farmhands? Was there a university flock and did they supply wool to the radical knitters three stalls down? Did they own an abattoir? Could a cash-strapped student earn extra money slaughtering ungulates for his university?
    It was really very simple, they responded, pitying Jack with their looks and tone. Regional and national ploughing contests took place and if you proved yourself a good enough plougher then you could plough for the university.
    Ploughing contests. Of course! Jack had slapped his head, apologised for his ignorance and made his exit.
    The nomenclature of each society invariably concluded with the word Soc . So there was Drama Soc, Footy Soc, Tennis Soc and Weather Soc. Psi Soc was stationed in one corner, and not far away, their