Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  The talk’d shifted, for some reason, to the worst way to die.

  ‘Gettin’ bit by a green mamba,’ Gilbert Swinyard reckoned. ‘Deadliest snake in the world. Yer organs burst so yer piss mixes with yer blood. Agony.’

  ‘Agony, sure,’ sniffed Grant Burch, ‘but you’re dead pretty quick. Havin’ yer skin unpeeled off yer like a sock, that’s worse. Apache Indians do that to yer. The best ones can make it last the whole night.’

  Pete Redmarley said he’d heard of this Vietcong execution. ‘They strips yer, ties yer up, then rams Philadelphia cheese up yer jax. Then they locks yer in a coffin with a pipe goin’ in. Then they send starving rats down the pipe. The rats eats through the cheese, then carry on chewin’, into you.’

  Everyone looked at Tom Yew for the answer. ‘I get this dream.’ He took a drag on his cigarette that lasted an age. ‘I’m with the last bunch of survivors, after an atomic war. We’re walking up a motorway. No cars, just weeds. Every time I look behind me, there’re fewer of us. One by one, you see, the radiation’s getting them.’ He glanced at his brother Nick, then over the frozen lake. ‘It’s not that I’ll die that bothers me. It’s that I’ll be the last one.’

  Nobody said a lot for a bit.

  Ross Wilcox swivelled our way. He took a drag on his cigarette that lasted an age, the poser. ‘If it wasn’t for Winston Churchill you lot’d all be speakin’ German now.’

  Sure, like Ross Wilcox would’ve evaded capture and headed a resistance cell. I was dying to tell that prat that actually, if the Japanese hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor, America’d never’ve come into the war, Britain’d’ve been starved into surrender and Winston Churchill’d’ve been executed as a war criminal. But I knew I couldn’t. There were swarms of stammer-words in there and Hangman’s bloody merciless this January. So I said I was busting for a waz, stood up and went down the path to the village a bit. Gary Drake shouted, ‘Hey, Taylor! Shake your dong more than twice, you’re playing with it!’, which got fat laughs from Neal Brose and Ross Wilcox. I flashed them a V-sign over my shoulder. That stuff about shaking your dong’s a craze at the moment. There’s no one I can trust to ask what it means.

  Trees’re always a relief, after people. Gary Drake and Ross Wilcox might’ve been slagging me off, but the fainter the voices became, the less I wanted to go back. I loathed myself for not putting Ross Wilcox in his place about speaking German, but it’d’ve been death to’ve started stammering back there. The cladding of frost on thorny branches was thawing and fat drops drip-drip-dripping. It soothed me, a bit. In little pits where the sun couldn’t reach there was still some gravelly snow left, but not enough to make a snowball. (Nero used to kill his guests by making them eat glass food, just for a laugh.) A robin, I saw, a woodpecker, a magpie, a blackbird and far off I think I heard a nightingale, though I’m not sure you get them in January. Then, where the faint path from the House in the Woods meets the main path to the lake, I heard a boy, gasping for breath, pounding this way. Between a pair of wishbone pines I squeezed myself out of sight. Phelps dashed by, clutching his master’s peanut Yorkie and a can of Tizer. (Rhydd’s must be out of Top Deck.) Behind the pines a possible path led up the slant. I know all the paths in this part of the woods, I thought. But not this one. Pete Redmarley and Grant Burch’d start up British Bulldogs again when Tom Yew left. That wasn’t much of a reason to go back. Just to see where the path might go, I followed it.

  There’s only one house in the woods so that’s what we call it, the House in the Woods. An old woman was s’posed to live there, but I didn’t know her name and I’d never seen her. The house’s got four windows and a chimney, same as a little kid’s drawing of a house. A brick wall as tall as me surrounds it and wild bushes grow higher. Our war games in the woods steered clear of the building. Not ’cause there’re any ghost stories about it or anything. It’s just that part of the woods isn’t good.

  But this morning the house looked so hunkered down and locked up, I doubted anyone was still living there. Plus, my bladder was about to split, and that makes you less cautious. So I peed up against the frosted wall. I’d just finished signing my autograph in steamy yellow when a rusty gate opened up with a tiny shriek and there stood a sour aunt from black-and-white times. Just standing there, staring at me.

  My pee ran dry.

  ‘God! Sorry!’ I zipped up my fly, expecting an utter bollocking. Mum’d flay any kid she found pissing against our fence alive, then feed his body to the compost bin. Including me. ‘I didn’t know anyone was living…here.’

  The sour aunt carried on looking at me.

  Pee dribbles blotted my underpants.

  ‘My brother and I were born in this house,’ she said, finally. Her throat was saggy like a lizard’s. ‘We have no intention of moving away.’

  ‘Oh…’ I still wasn’t sure if she was about to open fire on me. ‘Good.’

  ‘How noisy you youngsters are!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It was very careless of you to wake my brother.’

  My mouth’d glued up. ‘It wasn’t me making all the noise. Honestly.’

  ‘There are days,’ the sour aunt never blinked, ‘when my brother loves youngsters. But on days like these, my oh my, you give him the furies.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ll be sorrier,’ she looked disgusted, ‘if my brother gets a hold of you.’

  Quiet things were too loud and loud things couldn’t be heard.

  ‘Is he…uh, around? Now? Your brother, I mean?’

  ‘His room’s just as he left it.’

  ‘Is he ill?’

  She acted like she hadn’t heard me.

  ‘I’ve got to go home now.’

  ‘You’ll be sorrier,’ she did that spitty chomp old people do to not dribble, ‘when the ice cracks.’

  ‘The ice? On the lake? It’s as solid as anything.’

  ‘You always say so. Ralph Bredon said so.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Ralph Bredon. The butcher’s boy.’

  It didn’t feel at all right. ‘I’ve got to go home now.’

  Lunch at 9 Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green, Worcestershire, was Findus ham’n’cheese Crispy Pancakes, crinkle-cut oven chips and sprouts. Sprouts taste of fresh puke but Mum said I had to eat five without making a song and dance about it, or there’d be no butterscotch Angel Delight for pudding. Mum says she won’t let the dining table be used as a venue for ‘adolescent discontent’. Before Christmas I asked what not liking the taste of sprouts had to do with ‘adolescent discontent’. Mum warned me to stop being a Clever Little Schoolboy. I should’ve shut up but I pointed out that Dad never makes her eat melon (which she hates) and Mum never makes Dad eat garlic (which he hates). She went ape and sent me to my room. When Dad got back I got a lecture about arrogance.

  No pocket money that week, either.

  So anyway, this lunch-time I cut my sprouts up into tiny pieces and glolloped tomato ketchup over them. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Jason?’

  ‘If you drown, what happens to your body?’

  Julia rolled her eyes like Jesus on his cross.

  ‘Bit of a morbid topic for the dinner table.’ Dad chewed his forkful of crispy pancake. ‘Why do you ask?’

  It was best not to mention the frozen-up pond. ‘Well, in this book Arctic Adventure these two brothers Hal and Roger Hunt’re being chased by a baddie called Kaggs who falls into the—’

  Dad held up his hand to say Enough! ‘Well, in my opinion, Mr Kaggs gets eaten by fish. Picked clean.’

  ‘Do they have piranhas in the Arctic?’

  ‘Fish’ll eat anything once it’s soft enough. Mind you, if he fell into the Thames, his body’d wash up before long. The Thames always gives up its dead, the Thames does.’

  My misdirection was complete. ‘How about if he fell through ice, into a lake, say? What’d happen to him then? Would he sort of stay…deep frozen?’

  ‘Thing,’ Julia mewle
d, ‘is being grotesque while we’re eating, Mum.’

  Mum rolled up her napkin. ‘Lorenzo Hussingtree’s has a new range of tiles in, Michael.’ (My abortion of a sister flashed me a victorious grin.) ‘Michael?’

  ‘Yes, Helena?’

  ‘I thought we could drop by Lorenzo Hussingtree’s showroom on our way to Worcester. New tiles. They’re exquisite.’

  ‘No doubt Lorenzo Hussingtree charges exquisite prices, to match?’

  ‘We’re having workmen in anyway, so why not make a proper job of it? The kitchen’s getting embarrassing.’

  ‘Helena, why—’

  Julia sees arguments coming even before Mum and Dad sometimes. ‘Can I get down now?’

  ‘Darling,’ Mum looked really hurt, ‘it’s butterscotch Angel Delight.’

  ‘Yummy, but could I have mine tonight? Got to get back to Robert Peel and the Enlightened Whigs. Anyway, Thing has ruined my appetite.’

  ‘Pigging on Cadbury’s Roses with Kate Alfrick,’ I counter-attacked, ‘is what’s ruined your appetite.’

  ‘So where did the Terry’s Chocolate Orange go, Thing?’

  ‘Julia,’ Mum sighed, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t call Jason that. You’ve only got one brother.’

  Julia said, ‘One too many,’ and got up.

  Dad remembered something. ‘Have either of you been into my office?’

  ‘Not me, Dad.’ Julia hovered in the doorway, scenting blood. ‘Must’ve been my honest, charming, obedient, younger sibling.’

  How did he know?

  ‘It’s a simple enough question.’ Dad had hard evidence. The only adult I know who bluffs kids is Mr Nixon, our headmaster.

  The pencil! When Dean Moran rang the doorbell I must’ve left the pencil in the sharpener. Damn Moron. ‘Your phone was ringing for yonks, like four or five minutes, honestly, so—’

  ‘What’s the rule,’ Dad didn’t care, ‘about not going into my office?’

  ‘But I thought it might be an emergency so I picked it up and there was’ – Hangman blocked ‘someone’ – ‘a person on the other end but—’

  ‘I believe,’ now Dad’s palm said HALT!, ‘I just asked you a question.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘What question did I just ask you?’

  ‘“What’s the rule about not going into my office?”’

  ‘So I did.’ Dad’s a pair of scissors at times. Snip snip snip snip. ‘Now, why don’t you answer this question?’

  Then Julia did a strange move. ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘I don’t see anyone laughing.’

  ‘No, Dad, on Boxing Day when you and Mum took Thing to Worcester, the phone in your office went. Honestly, it went on for aeons. I couldn’t concentrate on my revision. The more I told myself it wasn’t a desperate ambulanceman or something, the likelier it seemed it was. In the end it was driving me crazy. I had no choice. I said “Hello” but the person on the other end didn’t say anything. So I hung up, in case it was a pervert.’

  Dad’d gone quiet but the danger wasn’t past.

  ‘That was just like me,’ I ventured. ‘But I didn’t hang up straight away ’cause I thought maybe they couldn’t hear me. Was there a baby in the background, Julia?’

  ‘Okay, you two, enough of the private eye bizz. If some joker is making nuisance calls then I don’t want either of you answering, no matter what. If it happens again, just unplug the socket. Understand?’

  Mum was just sitting there. It didn’t feel at all right.

  Dad’s ‘DID YOU HEAR ME?’ was like a brick through a window. Julia and me jumped. ‘Yes, Dad.’

  Mum, me and Dad ate our butterscotch Angel Delight without a word. I didn’t dare even look at my parents. I couldn’t ask to get down early too ’cause Julia’d already used that card. Why I was in the doghouse was clear enough, but God knows why Mum and Dad were giving each other the silent treatment. After the last spoonful of Angel Delight Dad said, ‘Lovely, Helena, thank you. Jason and I’ll do the washing-up, won’t we, Jason?’

  Mum just made this nothing-sound and went upstairs.

  Dad washed up humming a nothing-song. I put the dirty dishes in the hatch, then went into the kitchen to dry. I should’ve just shut up, but I thought I could make the day turn safely normal if I just said the right thing. ‘Do you get’ (Hangman loves giving me grief over this word) ‘nightingales in January, Dad? I might’ve heard one this morning. In the woods.’

  Dad was Brillo-padding a pan. ‘How should I know?’

  I pushed on. Usually Dad likes talking about nature and stuff. ‘But that bird at Granddad’s hospice. You said it was a nightingale.’

  ‘Huh. Fancy you remembering that.’ Dad stared over the back lawn at the icicles on the summer house. Then this noise came out of Dad like he’d entered the World’s Miserablest Man of 1982 Competition. ‘Just concentrate on those glasses, Jason, before you drop one.’ He switched on Radio 2 for the weather forecast, then began cutting up the 1981 Highway Code with scissors. Dad bought the updated 1982 Highway Code the day it came out. Tonight most of the British Isles will see temperatures plunging well below zero. Motorists in Scotland and the North should be careful of black ice on the roads, and the Midlands should anticipate widespread patches of freezing fog.

  Up in my room I played the Game of Life but being two players at once is no fun. Julia’s friend Kate Alfrick called for Julia to revise. But they were just gossiping about who’s going out with who in the sixth form, and playing singles by the Police. My billion problems kept bobbing up like corpses in a flooded city. Mum and Dad at lunch. Hangman colonizing the alphabet. At this rate I’m going to have to learn sign language. Gary Drake and Ross Wilcox. They’ve never exactly been my best mates but today they’d ganged up against me. Neal Brose was in on it too. Last, the sour aunt in the woods worried me. How come?

  Wished there was a crack to slip through and leave all this stuff behind. Next week I’m thirteen but thirteen looks way worse than twelve. Julia moans non-stop about being eighteen but eighteen’s epic, from where I’m standing. No official bedtime, twice my pocket money, and for Julia’s eighteenth she went to Tanya’s Night Club in Worcester with her thousand and one friends. Tanya’s’s got the only xenon disco laser light in Europe! How ace is that?

  Dad drove off up Kingfisher Meadows, alone.

  Mum must still be in her room. She’s there more and more recently.

  To cheer myself up I put on my granddad’s Omega. Dad called me into his office on Boxing Day and said he had something very important to give me, from my grandfather. Dad’d been keeping it till I was mature enough to look after it myself. It was a watch. An Omega Seamaster de Ville. Granddad bought it off a real live Arab in a port called Aden in 1949. Aden’s in Arabia and once it was British. He’d worn it every day of his life, even the moment he died. That fact makes the Omega more special, not scary. The Omega’s face is silver and wide as a 50p but as thin as a tiddlywink. ‘A sign of an excellent watch,’ Dad said, grave as grave, ‘is its thinness. Not like these plastic tubs teenagers strap to their wrist these days to strut about in.’

  Where I hid my Omega is a work of genius and second in security only to my OXO tin under the loose floorboard. Using a Stanley knife I hollowed out a crappy-looking book called Woodcraft for Boys. Woodcraft for Boys’s on my shelf between real books. Julia often snoops in my room, but she’s never discovered this hiding place. I’d know ’cause I keep a ½ p coin balanced on it at the back. Plus, if Julia’d found it she’d’ve copied my ace idea for sure. I’ve checked her bookshelf for false spines and there aren’t any.

  Outside I heard an unfamiliar car. A sky-blue VW Jetta was crawling along the kerb, as if its driver was searching for a house number. At the end of our cul-de-sac the driver, a woman, did a three-point turn, stalled once, and drove off up Kingfisher Meadows. I should’ve memorized the number plate in case it’s on Police 999.

  Granddad was the last grandparent to die, and the only one I have any memorie
s of. Not many. Chalking roads for my Corgi cars down his garden path. Watching Thunderbirds at his bungalow in Grange-over-Sands and drinking pop called Dandelion and Burdock.

  I wound the stopped Omega up and set the time to a fraction after three.

  Unborn Twin murmured, Go to the lake.

  The stump of an elm guards a bottleneck in the path through the woods. Sat on the stump was Squelch. Squelch’s real name’s Mervyn Hill but one time we were changing for PE, he pulled down his trousers and we saw he had a nappy on. About nine, he’d’ve been. Grant Burch started the Squelch nickname and it’s been years since anyone’s called him Mervyn. It’s easier to change your eyeballs than to change your nickname.

  So anyway, Squelch was stroking something furry and moon-grey in the crook of his elbow. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’

  ‘All right, Squelch. What you got there, then?’

  Squelch’s got stained teeth. ‘Ain’t showin’!’

  ‘Go on. You can show us.’

  Squelch mumbled, ‘KitKat.’

  ‘A KitKat? A chocolate bar?’

  Squelch showed me the head of a sleeping kitten. ‘Kitty cat! Finders keepers, losers weepers.’

  ‘Wow. A cat. Where’d you find her?’

  ‘By the lake. Crack o’dawn, b’fore anyone else got to the lake. I hided her while we did British Bulldogs. Hided her in a box.’

  ‘Why didn’t you show it to anyone?’

  ‘Burch and Swinyard and Redmarley and them bastards’d’ve tooked her away’s why! Finders keepers, losers weepers. I hided her. Now I come back.’

  You never know with Squelch. ‘She’s quiet, isn’t she?’

  Squelch just petted her.

  ‘Could I hold her, Merv?’

  ‘If you don’t breathe a word to no one,’ Squelch eyed me dubiously, ‘you can stroke her. But take them gloves off. They’re nobbly.’

  So I took off my goalie gloves and reached out to touch the kitten.

  Squelch lobbed the kitten at me. ‘It’s yours now!’