Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘That’s right. Same as Julia. A-levels just around the corner.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And do you, er, enjoy it?’

  ‘The Cathedral School? Or the A-levels?’

  ‘Er…’ Mum did a smiley shrug. ‘The school.’

  ‘It’s a bit set in its ways. But I wouldn’t knock it. Too much.’

  ‘A lot to be said for tradition. Far too easy to throw the bath water out with the baby.’

  ‘I’d agree with you wholeheartedly, Mrs Taylor.’

  ‘Right. Well.’ Mum glanced at the ceiling. ‘Julia’s just getting her things together. Perhaps I could offer you a tea or coffee?’

  ‘That’s very kind, Mrs Taylor,’ Ewan’s excuse was seamless, ‘but my mother’s birthday dinners run to military precision. If she suspects me of dawdling, it’ll be the execution squad at dawn.’

  ‘Oh, I can sympathize with her! Julia’s brother won’t grace the dinner table until everything’s stone cold. Drives me to distraction. But I do hope you’ll eat with us one of these evenings. Julia’s father’s dying to meet you.’ (News to me.)

  ‘I’m afraid I’d make a dreadful nuisance of myself.’

  ‘Not at all!’

  ‘I might – I’m a vegetarian, you see.’

  ‘That’s a jolly good excuse to get out the cookery books and try something adventurous. You’ll promise to share a meal with us soon?’

  (Dad calls vegetarians ‘The Nut Cutlet Brigade’.)

  Ewan did a polite smile that wasn’t exactly a Yes.

  ‘Well. Jolly good. I’ll just…pop up and check that Julia knows you’re here. Will you be okay waiting here, just for a minute or two?’

  Ewan inspected the family photos above the telephone. (The Baby Jason one makes me cringe but my parents won’t take it down.) I inspected Ewan, the mysterious being who actually chooses to spend free time with Julia. He even spends money on necklaces and LPs and stuff like that for her. Why?

  Ewan didn’t look surprised as I came downstairs. ‘Jason, right?’

  ‘No. I’m The Thing.’

  ‘She only calls you that when she’s really angry with you.’

  ‘Yeah, like every minute of every hour of every day.’

  ‘Not true. Promise you. And God, you should’ve heard what she called me when she spent the whole morning in the hairdresser’s,’ Ewan pulled this funny guilty face, ‘and I didn’t even notice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I repeated it verbatim,’ Ewan lowered his voice, ‘chunks of plaster would come crashing down from the ceiling, in shock. The wallpaper would unpeel itself. A pretty grim first impression that would make on your parents, don’t you think? Very sorry, but some things must remain veiled in secrecy.’

  Must be ace being Ewan. Being able to talk like that. I could think of much worse kids to have as a brother-in-law. ‘Can I sit in your MG?’

  Ewan glanced at his chunky Sekonda (with metal strap). ‘Why not?’

  ‘So, do you like it?’

  Suede steering wheel. Ox-blood leather, walnut and chrome finishings. Gear-stick knob snug in my palm. Sleek lowness, the tilt and hug of the squelky seats. Ghostly glow on the dashboard when Ewan put the key in the ignition. Needles afloat in gauges. Tarry-smelling hood muffling out the wind. An incredible song filled the car from four hidden speakers. (‘“Heaven”,’ Ewan told me, breezy but proud. ‘Talking Heads. David Byrne’s a genius.’ I just nodded, still taking it all in.) Bitter orange scent from a crystally air-freshener. CND sticker next to the tax disc. God, if I had a car like Ewan’s MG, I’d get out of Black Swan Green faster than a Super Étendard. Far away from Mum and Dad and their three-, four- and five-star arguments. Far from school and Ross Wilcox and Gary Drake and Neal Brose and Mr Carver. Dawn Madden could come with me, but nobody else. I’d do an Evel Knievel off the White Cliffs of Dover, over the English Channel, over the spotless stainless sunrise. We’d land on the Normandy beaches, drive south, lie about our ages and work in vineyards or ski chalets. My poems’d get published by Faber & Faber with a sketch of me on the cover. Every fashion photographer in Europe’d want to shoot Dawn. My school’d boast about us in their prospectus but I’d never, ever, ever come back to muddy Worcestershire.

  ‘Do you a swap,’ I told Ewan. ‘My Big Trak for your MG. You can program in up to twenty commands.’

  Ewan pretended to agonize over this tempting offer. ‘Not sure if I could navigate the Worcester one-way system, even on a Big Trak.’ His breath smelt of spearmint Tic-Tacs and I caught a whiff of Old Spice. ‘Sorry.’

  Julia tapped on my window with an amused Oy! in her eyes. I realized my annoying sister’s a woman. Dark lipstick, Julia had on, and a necklace of bluish pearls that’d belonged to our grandma. I wound down the window. Julia peered in at Ewan, then me, then Ewan. ‘You’re late.’

  Ewan turned Talking Heads down. ‘I’m late?’

  That smile’s nothing to do with me.

  Were Mum and Dad like this, once upon a time?

  Our dining room sort of juddered like a silent bomb’d gone off. Me, Mum and Julia froze as Radio 4 told us which ship’d been sunk. HMS Coventry’d been anchored at her usual station north of Pebble Island with the frigate HMS Broadsword. At approximately 1400 hours a pair of enemy Skyhawks came flying in at deck level out of nowhere. The Coventry launched her Sea Darts, but missed, allowing the Skyhawks to drop four of their 1,000-pound bombs at point-blank range. One fell astern, but the other three tore into the ship’s port side. All three detonated deep within the ship, knocking out the power systems. The fire control crews were soon overwhelmed, and in a matter of minutes the Coventry was listing badly to port. Sea Kings and Wessex helicopters flew over from San Carlos to get the men out of the freezing water. Unhurt men were transferred to the field tents. More serious cases were flown to the hospital ships.

  I don’t remember what the news moved on to after.

  ‘Nineteen out of how many?’ Mum spoke through her fingers.

  I knew the answer ’cause of my scrapbook. ‘About three hundred.’

  Julia calculated, ‘Better than ninety per cent chance that Tom’s okay, then.’

  Mum’d gone pale. ‘His poor mother! She must be having kittens.’

  I thought aloud, ‘Poor Debby Crombie, too.’

  Mum didn’t know. ‘What’s Debby Crombie got to do with anything?’

  Julia told her, ‘Debby’s Tom’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mum. ‘Oh.’

  War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it’s a lottery.

  The school bus still hadn’t come at a quarter past eight. Birdsong strafed and morsed from the oak on the village green. Upstairs curtains at the Black Swan twitched open and I think I glimpsed Isaac Pye in a kite of sunshine, giving us all the evil eye. There was no sign of Nick Yew yet, but he’s always one of the last to arrive ’cause he walks all the way from Hake’s Lane.

  ‘My old bid tried to call Mrs Yew,’ John Tookey said, ‘but her phone was busy. Non-stop.’

  ‘Half the village was trying to get through,’ Dawn Madden told him. ‘That’d be why nobody could.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘The lines’d’ve got jammed.’

  But Dawn Madden didn’t even acknowledge I’d spoken.

  ‘Boomy boom-boom,’ chanted Squelch, ‘boomer-ker-boomer BOOM!’

  ‘Shut yer neck, Squelch,’ Ross Wilcox snapped, ‘or I’ll shut it for yer.’

  ‘Don’t pick on Squelch,’ Dawn Madden told Ross Wilcox. ‘Ain’t his fault he’s soft in the head.’

  ‘Shut yer neck, Squelch,’ Squelch twitched, ‘or I’ll shut it for yer.’

  ‘Tom’ll be okay,’ Grant Burch said. ‘We’d’ve heard if he weren’t.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Philip Phelps. ‘We’d’ve heard if he weren’t.’

  ‘Is there an echo round here?’ grunted Ross Wilcox. ‘How would you two know, anyway?’

  ‘How I’d know is that the instant the Yews know,’ Grant Burch flobb
ed, ‘through Navy channels, they’d phone my old man ’cause Tom’s old man and my old man grew up together. That’s how I know.’

  ‘Sure, Burch,’ Wilcox mocked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Grant Burch’s wrist was still in plaster so he couldn’t do much about Wilcox’s sarcasm. But Grant Burch remembers stuff. ‘I am sure.’

  ‘Hey!’ Gavin Coley pointed. ‘Look!’

  Gilbert Swinyard and Pete Redmarley appeared in the far distance, way over the crossroads.

  ‘Must’ve gone down Hake’s Lane,’ guessed Keith Broadwas, ‘dead early. To the Yews’ place. To make sure Tom’s okay.’

  We saw that Gilbert Swinyard and Pete Redmarley were almost running.

  I tested Why isn’t Nick with them? but Hangman blocked ‘Nick’.

  ‘How come,’ Darren Croome said, ‘Nick ain’t with them?’

  Birds detonated out of the oak without warning and we jumped but didn’t laugh about it. Incredible to see, it was. Countless hundreds of birds, orbiting the village green once, elasticking longer, twice, winging shorter, three times, then, as if obeying an order, vanishing inside the tree again.

  ‘Maybe,’ Dawn Madden guessed, ‘Nixon’s given Nick permission not to come to school today. Considering, like.’

  It was a reasonable guess, but now we could see the looks on Swinyard’s and Redmarley’s faces.

  ‘Oh…’ Grant Burch muttered. ‘Fuck, no.’

  ‘By now,’ Mr Nixon coughed to clear his throat, ‘you are all doubtless aware that Thomas Yew, an old boy of our school, has, in the last twenty-four hours, been killed in the conflict over the Falkland Islands.’ (Our headmaster was right, we all knew. Norman Bates the school bus driver had Radio Wyvern on and Tom Yew’s name was on that.) ‘Thomas was not the most studious boy ever to grace the classrooms of our school, nor the most obedient. Indeed, my register of crimes and punishments informs me I was obliged to administer the slipper on no less than four occasions. But neither Thomas nor myself are’ (bleak silence) ‘were’ (another one) ‘the type of man to bear a grudge. When the Royal Navy’s recruitment officer approached me for a character reference regarding Thomas, I felt able to recommend this spirited young man, unreservedly and unconditionally. Thomas returned the courtesy some months later, by inviting my wife and myself to his passing-out ceremony in Portsmouth. Rarely have’ (a flutter of amazement that anyone’d ever married Mr Nixon swept round the hall. One glare from Mr Nixon and the flutter dropped dead.) ‘rarely have I accepted an invitation to an official function with such pleasure, and such personal pride. Thomas had clearly flourished under military discipline. He had matured into a worthy ambassador for our school and a credit to Her Majesty’s forces. This is why the grief I feel this morning, upon learning of his death’ (surely that wasn’t a crack in Nixon’s voice?) ‘aboard HMS Coventry is as bitter as it is heartfelt. The mood of depression both in the staffroom and in this hall tells me that this grief is shared by all of us.’ (Mr Nixon took off his glasses and for a moment he looked not like an SS commandant but just somebody’s tired dad.) ‘I will be sending a telegram of condolence to Thomas’s family after assembly, on behalf of the school. I hope that those of you who are close to the Yews will lend them your support. Life can inflict few cruelties – perhaps no cruelty – more acute than the death of a son – or brother. However, I also hope that you will give Thomas’s family sufficient space in which to grieve.’ (A few of the third-year girls were weeping now. Mr Nixon looked in their direction, but he’d turned his death ray off. He said nothing for five, ten, fifteen seconds. A bit of shuffling started. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty seconds. I intercepted a look from Miss Ronkswood to Miss Wyche that said, Is he okay? Miss Wyche shrugged, very slightly.) ‘I hope,’ Mr Nixon finally went on, ‘that, as you consider Thomas’s sacrifice, you will think about the consequences of violence, be it military or emotional. I hope you will note who initiates violence, who conducts the violence, and who must pay the price of violence. Wars do not simply appear from nowhere. Wars come, over a long period of time, and believe me, there is always plenty of blame to be shared out between all those who failed to prevent its bloody arrival. I also hope you will consider what is truly precious in your own lives, and what is merely…flim-flam…grandstanding…froth…posturing…egotism.’ Our headmaster looked spent. ‘That is all.’ Mr Nixon nodded at Mr Kempsey at the piano. Mr Kempsey told us to turn to the hymn that goes, Oh hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea. We all stood up and sang it for Tom Yew.

  Normal assemblies have mile-high messages carved into them like Helping People Is Good, or Even Dimmest Dimmers Can Succeed If They Never Give Up. But I’m not sure if even the teachers were sure what Mr Nixon meant this morning.

  Tom Yew’s death killed the thrill of the war. There was no way to get his body back to Worcestershire so he’s been buried out there, on those rocky islands still being fought over. Nothing’s got back to normal yet. Make-believe grief is fun. But when someone really dies, there’s just this horrible draggingness. Wars go on for months, or years. Vietnam did. Who says this won’t be one of them? The Argentinians’ve got 30,000 men on the Falklands, all in dug-in positions. We’ve got just 6,000 trying to scramble out of our bridgehead. Two of our only three Chinook helicopters were lost when the Atlantic Conveyor was sunk, so our soldiers’re having to advance towards Port Stanley on foot. Surely even Luxembourg’s got more than three decent helicopters? There’s rumours of the Argentinian navy breaking out of its ports and cutting off our sea-lines to Ascension Island. We’re running out of petrol, too. (Like the armed forces of Great Britain just add up to this crap family saloon car.) Mount Kent, Two Sisters, Tumbledown Mountain. The names’re friendly but the terrain isn’t. Brian Hanrahan says the only cover for the marines are giant boulders. Our helicopters can’t give air cover ’cause of the mist, snow, hail, gales. Like Dartmoor, he said, in midwinter. Our paras can’t dig foxholes ’cause the ground’s too hard and some’ve even been crippled with trench-foot. (My granddad once said how his dad’d got trench-foot in Passchendaele in 1916.) East Falkland’s one massive minefield. The beaches, the bridges, the gulleys, everywhere. At night, enemy snipers call for starshell so the landscape’s lit dazzling like fridge-light. Bullets rain down. The Argentinians are using ammunition, one expert says, like they’ve got an unlimited supply. Plus, our men can’t just bomb the buildings or we’d end up killing the same civilians we’re s’posed to be saving. And there’s not that many of them. General Galtieri knows the winter’s on his side. From the balcony of his palace, he said Argentina will fight until the very last man, dead or alive.

  Nick Yew hasn’t come back to school. Dean Moran saw him in Mr Rhydd’s shop buying a box of eggs and Fairy Liquid, but Moran didn’t know what to say. Moran said Nick’s face was dead.

  Last week the Malvern Gazetteer had Tom Yew on its front page. He was smiling and saluting at the camera in his ensign’s uniform. I pasted it in my scrapbook. I’m running out of pages.

  When I got home on Monday there were about ten lumps of granite blocking the driveway, plus five sacks labelled CRUSHED SHELL FILLER. Plus a giant turtle shell that turned out to be a pre-cast fibreglass pond lining. Mr Castle was on a pair of stepladders clipping his hedge, which divides his front garden from ours. ‘Dad’s recreating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, is he?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I hope he’s got a JCB stashed away in his garage.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Over a ton of rock you’ve got there. Nobody’s going to be shifting that little lot on a wheelbarrow. Cracked the tarmac something chronic, too, they have.’ Mr Castle smiled and winced at the same time. ‘I was here, watching the men dump it.’

  Mum got home twenty minutes later, absolutely apeshit. I was watching the war on TV, so across the hallway I heard her phone up the landscapers. ‘You were supposed to bring the rocks tomorrow! You were supposed to lay them in the garden! Not just dump the things in the middle
of our drive! A “mix-up”? A “mix-up”? No. I’m calling it criminal stupidity! Where are we supposed to park?’ The call ended with Mum shrieking the words ‘instructing my solicitors!’ and hanging up.

  When Dad came home at gone seven o’clock he didn’t mention the rocks on the driveway. Not a word. But the way he said nothing was masterly. Mum didn’t mention the rocks either, so we had a stand-off. You could hear the strain in the room, like the squeak of cables. Mum boasts to visitors and relatives how, no matter what, we sit round as a family to share an evening meal. She’d’ve done us all a favour if she’d given this tradition a night off. Julia did her best to spin out a story about today’s World Affairs A-level paper (she’d got all the questions she’d revised for) and Mum and Dad paid polite attention, but I sort of felt the rocks outside, waiting to be referred to.

  Mum served up the treacle tart and vanilla ice cream.

  ‘I don’t want to be accused of nagging, Helena,’ Dad began, ‘but I was wondering when I might be able to park my car in my garage?’

  ‘The workmen will be putting the rockery in place tomorrow. There was a misunderstanding about delivery times. They’ll be finished by tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Ah, good. It’s just our insurance policy clearly states we’re covered for off-road parking only, so if—’

  ‘Tomorrow, Michael.’

  ‘That’s fantastic. This is a lovely treacle tart, by the way. Is it from Greenland?’

  ‘Sainsbury’s.’

  Our spoons scraped on our dishes.

  ‘I don’t want to be accused of interfering, Helena—’

  (Mum’s nostrils actually went stiff, like a cartoon bull.)

  ‘—but I hope you haven’t actually paid these people, yet?’

  ‘No. I’ve paid a deposit.’

  ‘A deposit. I see. I only ask because you do hear horror stories about people handing over quite large sums of money to cowboys in these fly-by-night businesses. Then before you can even phone a lawyer, the director’s done a Ronnie Biggs off to Costa del Chips or wherever. And the poor old customer never gets to see a single penny of his hard-earned money again. Distressing, how these con-men can swindle the gullible.’