Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘Fuck off home to Mummy,’ Grant Burch told Ross Wilcox, ‘while you still can.’ (A dirty opener, that. Everyone knows about Ross Wilcox’s mum.)

  Ross Wilcox gobbed at Grant Burch’s feet. ‘Make me fuck off.’

  Grant Burch looked at the gob on his trainers. ‘You’re gonna be cleaning that off with your fucking tongue, Piss Flaps.’

  ‘Make me.’

  ‘Don’t make shit, it comes natural.’

  ‘Really original line, that, Burch.’

  Hate smells of burnt dead fireworks.

  At school, scraps are ace fun. We all scream ‘SCRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPP’ and rush to the epicentre. Mr Carver or Mr Whitlock wades in, tossing aside members of the audience. But this morning’s scrap was more cold blooded. My own body flinched under the punches, automatically, like how your leg hoists itself when you’re watching a high-jumper on TV. Grant Burch body-tackled Ross Wilcox low and fast.

  Ross Wilcox got in a weak punch, but had to squirm sideways to not get toppled.

  Grant Burch clawed at Ross Wilcox’s throat. ‘Cunt!’

  Ross Wilcox clawed at Grant Burch’s throat. ‘Cunt yerself!’

  Ross Wilcox punched Grant Burch’s head. That hurt.

  Grant Burch got Ross Wilcox in a headlock. That really hurt.

  Ross Wilcox was swung one way, swung the other, but Grant Burch couldn’t deck him so he punched Ross Wilcox’s face. Ross Wilcox managed to twist his hand up and sink his fingers into Grant Burch’s face.

  Grant Burch shoved Ross Wilcox and booted him in the ribs.

  Straight away they head-butted each other, like rams.

  They grapple-wrapped each other, garking through clenched teeth.

  A crimson streak’d appeared from Grant Burch’s nose. It smeared Ross Wilcox’s face.

  Ross Wilcox tried to trip Grant Burch.

  Grant Burch counter-tripped Ross Wilcox.

  Ross Wilcox counter-counter-tripped Grant Burch.

  By now, they’d three-legged themselves to the lip of the embankment.

  ‘Watch it!’ Gary Drake shouted. ‘You’re right at the edge!’

  Knotted round each other, they teetered, clutched, swayed.

  Over they went.

  At the foot of the embankment, Ross Wilcox’d already got to his feet. Grant Burch was half sat up, cradling his right hand in his left and squinting with agony. Shit, I thought. Blood and soil clotted Grant Burch’s face.

  ‘Aw,’ mocked Ross Wilcox. ‘Had enough, now, have we?’

  ‘My wrist’s bust,’ Grant Burch grimaced, ‘yer fuckin’ wanker!’

  Ross Wilcox flobbed, dead casual. ‘Looks to me like you’ve lost, then, ain’t yer?’

  ‘I’ve not fuckin’ lost, yer fuckin’ wanker, it’s a fuckin’ draw!’

  Ross Wilcox grinned up at Gary Drake and Wayne Nashend. ‘Grant Piss Flaps Burch calls this a “draw”! Well, let’s carry on with round two, then, shall we, eh? Settle this “draw”, shall we, eh?’

  Grant Burch’s only hope was to turn his defeat into an accident. ‘Oh, sure, Wilcox, yeah, with a bust wrist, ’course I will.’

  ‘Want me to bust yer other wrist, then, do yer?’

  ‘Oh, that’d be rock hard of yer!’ Grant Burch managed to get up. ‘Phelps! We’re leaving!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, off yer go. Home to Mummy.’

  Grant Burch didn’t risk saying, At least I’ve got one. Instead, he glared up at his frozen, pale servant. ‘PHELPS! I just told yer, yer deaf-aid, WE’RE LEAVING!’

  Philip Phelps jerked into life and slid down the embankment on his arse. But Ross Wilcox blocked his path. ‘Don’t you get tired of that pillock ordering you about, Phil? He doesn’t own yer. You can tell him to fuck off. What’s he going to do?’

  Grant Burch yelled, ‘PHELPS! I ain’t tellin’ yer again!’

  Phelps thought about it for a moment, I’m sure. But then he dodged round Ross Wilcox and jogged off after his master. With his good hand, Grant Burch flashed Ross Wilcox a ‘V’ over his shoulder.

  ‘Oy!’ Ross Wilcox picked up a clod of earth. ‘Forgot yer breakfast, yer bumboys!’

  Grant Burch must’ve ordered Phelps not to turn round.

  The soil-bomb’s trajectory looked perfect.

  It was. It exploded on the back of Phelps’s neck.

  It’d been a risky fight for Ross Wilcox, but it’d gone brilliantly. Burch’s scalp makes Wilcox the hardest kid in the second year. He’ll get invited to be a member of Spooks, most like. He settled on his throne on the Hollow Log. Ant Little said, ‘I knew you’d have Grant Burch, Ross!’

  ‘Me too,’ said Darren Croome. ‘We was saying, on our way here.’

  Ant Little got out a packet of Number Sixes. ‘Smoke?’

  Ross Wilcox swiped the entire pack.

  Ant Little looked pleased. ‘Where’d yer get yer ear-stud put in, Ross?’

  ‘Did it myself. Needle, candle to sterilize it. Hurts like shit but it’s a piece o’ piss.’

  Gary Drake stabbed a Swan Vesta against the bark to light it.

  ‘You two…’ Wayne Nashend squinted down at Dean Moran and me. ‘You was here with Burch, wasn’t yer?’

  ‘I didn’t even know about the scrap,’ Dean Moran protested. ‘I’m off to White Leaved Oak, me. To stay with my gran.’

  ‘Walking?’ Ant Little squinted. ‘White Leaved Oak’s over the Malverns. It’ll take ages. Why doesn’t yer old man drive yer?’

  Moran looked awkward. ‘He’s ill.’

  ‘He’s on another of his benders,’ Wayne Nashend said, ‘ain’t he?’

  Moran looked down.

  ‘Then why can’t yer mum drive yer?’

  ‘Can’t leave my dad, can she?’

  ‘What about you,’ Gary Drake speaks snakishly, ‘President Jason Taylor of the Grant Burch Arse-Slurpers Association. What are you doing here?’

  You can’t just say, ‘I’m out for a walk,’ ’cause walks are gay.

  ‘Yee-HAAAAAR!’ Squelch straddled a limb of the Hollow Log like a horse and whipped his own bum with a whippy stick. ‘Gonna kick dat boy’s ass to da middle o’ next week!’

  ‘You,’ Darren Croome flobbed, ‘should be in Little Malvern Loonybin, Squelch.’

  ‘Well, Taylor?’ Ross Wilcox isn’t so easily distracted.

  I spat out my flavourless Juicy Fruit, desperate for a way out. Hangman was gripping the root of my tongue and every letter in the alphabet was a stammer-letter.

  ‘He’s coming to my nan’s too,’ said Dean Moran.

  ‘You didn’t tell us that, Taylor,’ accused Ant Little, ‘not before Ross kicked the shit out of that wankstain Burch.’

  I managed to say, ‘You didn’t ask, Little.’

  ‘Me and Taylor were meeting here.’ Moran began heading off. ‘That was the plan all along. He’s comin’ to my nan’s too. C’mon, Jason, better be off now.’

  The Christmas tree plantation was dark as eclipses and whiffed of bleach. Armies of them in endless rows and files. Flies, titchy as commas, got into our eyes and nostrils. I should’ve thanked Moran for the lifeline he’d thrown me back by the Hollow Log, but that would’ve meant admitting how badly I’d needed it. Instead, I told him about the Dobermanns. But it wasn’t news to Moran. ‘Oh, Kit Harris? I knows ’im all right. Divorced the same woman, three times. She must need her bloomin’ head examinin’. Kit Harris loves one thing only and that’s them dogs. He’s a teacher, believe it or not.’

  ‘A teacher? But he’s a psycho.’

  ‘Yep. At a borstal, out Pershore way. His nickname’s “Badger”, ’cause o’ that streak o’ white hair. Not that anyone calls him that to his face. Once one o’ the borstal kids took a dump on the bonnet of his car. Guess how Badger found out who done it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Squeezing bamboo needles up every kid’s fingernails, one by one, till someone grassed on the kid who done it.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘God’s honest, that is. My sister Ke
lly told me. Discipline’s tougher at borstals, that’s why they’re borstals. At first, Badger tried to get the kid who done it expelled. But the headmaster of the borstal wouldn’t do it, ’cause if yer get expelled from a borstal that means automatic prison. So a few weeks later, Badger organized a wide-game on Bredon Hill. At night.’

  ‘What’s a wide-game?’

  ‘Like an army game, a war game. They do ’em in the Scouts too. One side has to capture the other side’s flag, stuff like that. So anyway, the next morning, the kid who’d crapped on Badger’s car’d disappeared.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Exactly! The headmaster told Interpol and that, the kid’d run away during the wide-game. Happens all the time at borstals. Kelly got to the bottom of it, though. But you have to swear on your own grave you’ll never tell anyone.’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘On yer own grave.’

  ‘On my own grave.’

  ‘Kelly was in Rhydd’s when Badger comes in. This was three weeks after the kid’d disappeared, okay? So. Badger buys bread and stuff. Badger’s just leaving, when Mr Rhydd asks him, “What about your Pedigree Chum for your dogs, Mr Harris?” Badger just says, “My boys’re on a diet, Mr Rhydd.” Dead evil, like that. “My boys’re on a diet.” Then when he’s gone, Kelly overhears Mr Rhydd telling Pete Redmarley’s old biddy that Badger hadn’t bought his usual cans of Pedigree Chum for three weeks.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said, not quite getting it.

  ‘Yer don’t need to be Brain of Britain to work out what Badger’s Dobermanns was eating for those three weeks, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Badger was feeding his dogs the missing kid!’

  ‘Jesus,’ I actually shivered, ‘Christ.’

  ‘So if all Badger did was put the shits up yer,’ Moran slapped my shoulder, ‘yer got off lightly.’

  A farty ditch’d flooded the bridlepath and we both took a running jump. My superior athletic powers got me over. Moran soaked one foot up to his ankle.

  ‘So where were you on yer way to, then, Jace?’

  (Hangman blocked ‘Nowhere’.) ‘Just out. For a doss.’

  Moran’s trainer squished. ‘Must be heading somewhere.’

  ‘Well,’ I confessed, ‘I’ve heard the bridlepath might lead to a tunnel, through the Malverns. Thought I might go and take a butcher’s.’

  ‘The tunnel?’ Moran stopped and sort of slapped my arm in disbelief. ‘That’s where I’m going!’

  ‘What happened to staying with your nan in White Leaved Oak?’

  ‘I’m going there by rediscovering the lost tunnel, see? The one the Romans built to invade Hereford.’

  ‘Romans? Tunnels?’

  ‘How else could they kick out the blinkin’ Vikings? Done my research, I have, see. Got a torch and a roll of string, and everything. Three tunnels go through the Malverns. One’s the British Rail one for the train to Hereford. It’s haunted by an engineer in orange overalls with a black stripe where the train ran over him. The second tunnel’s a Ministry of Defence tunnel.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A tunnel the Ministry of Defence dug for a nuclear bomb shelter. The entrance is in the garden centre at Woolworths in Great Malvern. Gospel. One of the garden centre walls is a fake wall what hides a vault door, like in a bank. When the four-minute warning goes off, the Ministry of Defence lot at the RSRE’ll be ferried up to Woolies by the military police. Councillors from Malvern Council’ll be allowed in, so will Woolworths’ manager and assistant manager. Then the military police – who’ve kept out all the panicking shoppers with their guns – they’ll be allowed in. They’ll grab one or two of the prettier shop assistants for breeding. Which rules my sister out, don’t it? Then that door’ll close and all of us’ll get blown to Kingdom Come.’

  ‘Kelly didn’t tell you all this, did she?’

  ‘Nah, the bloke my dad buys horse shit off of for the garden, his mate’s the barman at the RSRE.’

  It must be true then. ‘Jesus.’

  In a drift of khaki pine needles I saw antlers, like Herne the Hunter’s. But it was only a branch. ‘S’pose we may as well join forces,’ I said. ‘Hunting the third tunnel. The lost one.’

  ‘But,’ Moran kicked a pine cone but missed, ‘who’ll do the interview with the Malvern Gazetteer?’

  I booted a pine cone way up the gloomy path. ‘Both of us.’

  Run across a field of daisies at warp speed but keep your eyes on the ground. It’s ace. Petalled stars and dandelion comets streak the green universe. Moran and I got to the barn at the far side, dizzy with intergalactic travel. I was laughing more than Moran ’cause Moran’s dry trainer wasn’t dry any more, it was glistening in cow shit. Bales of straw made a ramp up to the griddly barn roof, so up we climbed. The cockerel tree you can see from my bedroom wasn’t running left to right now, it was running right to left. ‘Skill place for a machine-gun nest, this barn,’ I said, displaying my military expertise.

  Moran squidged off his shitty trainer and lay back.

  I lay back, too. The rusty iron was warm as a hotty.

  ‘This is the life,’ sighed Moran, after a bit.

  ‘You can say that again,’ I said, after a bit.

  ‘This is the life,’ said Moran, straight off.

  I knew he would. ‘That’s so original.’

  Sheep and lambs were bleating, fields behind us.

  A tractor was chuntering, fields ahead.

  ‘Does your old man ever get pissed?’ Moran asked.

  If I said yes I’d be lying, but if I said no it’d look gay. ‘He has a drink or two, when my Uncle Brian visits.’

  ‘Not a drink or two. I mean does he get so fucking plastered he…he can hardly speak?’

  ‘No.’

  That No turned the three feet between into three miles.

  ‘No.’ Moran’d shut his eyes. ‘Don’t look the type, your dad.’

  ‘But yours doesn’t, either. He’s really friendly and funny…’

  An aeroplane glinted, mercury bright in the dark high blue.

  ‘Maxine calls it like this, she calls it “Daddy’s going dark”. She’s right. He goes dark. He starts…y’know, on a few cans, and gets loud and makes shite jokes we have to laugh at. Shouts and stuff. The neighbours bang on the wall to complain. Dad bangs back, calls ’em all the names under the sun…then he locks himself in his room but he’s got bottles in there. We hear them smash. One by one. Then he sleeps it off. Then afterwards, when he’s all so sorry, it’s all, “Oh, I’m never touchin’ the stuff again…” That’s almost worse…Tell you what it’s like, it’s like this whiny shitty nasty weepy man who isn’t my dad takes my dad over for however long the bender lasts, but only I – and Mum and Kelly and Sally and Max – know that it isn’t him. The rest of the world doesn’t know that, see. They just say, Frank Moran showing his true colours, that is. But it ain’t.’ Moran twisted his head at me. ‘But it is. But it ain’t. But it is. But it ain’t. Oh, how am I s’posed to know?’

  A painful minute went by.

  Green is made of yellow and blue, nothing else, but when you look at green, where’ve the yellow and the blue gone? Somehow this is to do with Moran’s dad. Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything. But too many things’d’ve gone wrong if I’d tried to say this to Moran.

  Moran sniffed, ‘Fancy a nice, cool bottle of Woodpecker?’

  ‘Cider? You’ve brought cider?’

  ‘No. My dad drunk ’em all. But,’ Moran fumbled in his bag, ‘I’ve got a can of Irn Bru.’

  Irn Bru’s fizzy liquid bubblegum, but I said, ‘Sure,’ ’cause I hadn’t brought any drink myself and Irn Bru’s better than nothing. I’d imagined I could drink from fresh springs but the only water I’d seen so far was that farty ditch.

  The Irn Bru exploded in Moran’s hand like a grenade. ‘Shit!’

  ‘Watch out with that Irn Bru. It’ll be all shaken up.’

  ‘You don’t flamin’ say so!’ Moran gave
me first swig, as he licked his hand clean. In return, I gave him some Cadbury’s Caramel. It’d oozed out of its wrapper, but we picked off the bits of pocket fluff and it tasted okay. I got a hayfever attack and sneezed ten or twenty times into a nuggety hanky.

  A vapour trail gashed the sky.

  But the sky healed itself. Without fuss.

  CRAAAAAAWWWKKK!

  I’d slid halfway down the curve of the barn roof, clattering between dreaming and waking, before I got my balance back.

  Three monster crows sat in a row, where Moran had last been.

  Of Moran there was no sign.

  The crows’ beaks were daggers. Their oily eyes had cruel plans.

  ‘Piss off!’

  Crows know when they’re a match for you.

  St Gabriel’s bell rang eleven or twelve times, the crows made me too uneasy to keep count. Tiny darts of water hit my face and neck. The weather had turned while I’d been sleeping. The Malverns’d disappeared behind wings of rain, beating just fields away. The crows parascended up and off.

  Moran wasn’t inside the barn, either. Obviously he’d decided not to share the front page of the Malvern Gazetteer. What a traitor! But if he wanted to play Scott of the Antarctic versus Amundsen the Norwegian, that was fine by me. Moran’s never beaten me at anything in his life.

  The barn smelt of armpits, hay and piss.

  Rain began its blitz, tranging bullets off the roof and strafing the puddles round the barn. (Serve Moran the Deserter right if he got a drenching and caught pneumonia.) Rain erased the twentieth century. Rain turned the world to whites and greys.

  Over the sleeping giant of the Malvern Hills, a double rainbow linked the Worcestershire Beacon with the British Camp. Ancient Britons got massacred by the Romans there. The melony sun dripped steamy brightness. I set off at a fast yomp, jogging fifty, walking fifty. I decided, if I passed Moran, I wouldn’t say a word to him. Cut the traitor dead. The wet turf squeaked beneath my trainers. I climbed a shaky gate and crossed a paddock with jumps for horses made from police cones and stripey poles. Past the paddock was a farmyard. Two silage towers shone like Victorian Apollo spacecraft. Trombone flowers snaked up trellises and a flaky sign read, HORSE MANURE FOR SALE. A cocky rooster eyed its hens. Rain-soggy sheets and white pillowcases hung on a washing line. Frilly panties and bras too. A mossy track disappeared over the rise, towards the main road to Malvern. Passing a stable, I peered into the hot, manure-reeky dark.