Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  Once a Maggot, mocked Unborn Twin, always a Maggot.

  Points behind my eyes ached with the coming rain.

  Friday’d come round, sure. But the moment I get home, the weekend’ll begin to die and Monday’ll creep nearer, minute by minute. Then it’ll be back to five more days like today, worse than today, far worse than today.

  Hang yourself.

  ‘Lucky for you,’ a girl’s voice said, and I nearly fell fifteen feet to a nest of fractured bones, ‘I’m not a teacher on patrol, Taylor.’

  I peered down at Holly Deblin peering up. ‘S’pose so.’

  ‘What’re you doing out of class?’

  ‘Kempsey sent me to get his whistle.’ I clambered down. Holly Deblin’s only a girl but she’s as tall as me. She throws the javelin farther than anyone. ‘He’s doing the bus queues today. Are you feeling better?’

  ‘Just needed to lie down for a bit. How about you? Giving you a hard time, aren’t they? Wilcox, Drake and Brose and them.’

  No point denying it, but admitting it made it realer.

  ‘They’re dickheads, Taylor.’

  Darkness in the Old Gym smoothed away Holly Deblin’s edges.

  ‘Yeah.’ They are dickheads, but how does that help me?

  Was it then that I heard the first tappings of rain?

  ‘You’re not a maggot. Don’t let dickheads decide what you are.’

  Past the clock where bad kids’re made to stand, past the secretary’s office where form captains fetch the registers, past the storeroom, a long passageway leads to the staffroom. My footsteps got slower as I got nearer. Its steel door was half open today. Low chairs, I saw. Mr Whitlock’s black wellingtons. Cigarette smoke billowed out like fog in Jack the Ripper’s London. But just this side of the door, there’s a hive of cubby-holes where the more important teachers’ve got their own desks.

  ‘Yes?’ Mr Dunwoody blinked at me, dragonishly. A going-brown chrysanthemum leant over his shoulder. The art teacher’s scarlet book was called Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. ‘As the title suggests,’ Mr Dunwoody saw the book’d caught my attention, ‘it’s about the history of opticians. What are you about?’

  ‘Mr Kempsey asked me to come and get his whistle, sir.’

  ‘As in, “Whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad”?’

  ‘I s’pose so, sir. He told me it’s on his desk. On a paper of interest.’

  ‘Or perhaps,’ Mr Dunwoody stuck a Vick’s nasal inhaler up his large red nose and took an almighty sniff, ‘Mr Kempsey’s getting out of teaching while his ticker is not yet dicky. Off to Snowdonia, to herd sheep? With Shep, his border collie? “Oh Give Me a Cot in the Land of the Mountains”? Could this be why he sent you for his whistle?’

  ‘I think he’s just doing the bus queues, sir.’

  ‘End cell. Under the tender gaze of the Holy Lamb.’ Mr Dunwoody got back to Story of the Eye without another word.

  I walked down the empty hive. Desks come to resemble their owners, the way dogs do. Mr Inkberrow’s desk’s all neat stacks and piles. Mr Whitlock’s is grubby with seed-trays and copies of Sporting Life. Mr Kempsey’s cubby-hole has a leather chair, an anglepoise reading lamp like my dad’s and a picture of Jesus holding a lantern by an ivy door. On his desk was Plain Prayers for a Complicated World, Roget’s Thesaurus (Dean Moran’s dad calls it ‘Roger’s Brontosaurus’), Delius: As I knew him. Mr Kempsey’s whistle was exactly where he’d told me. Under the whistle was a thin stack of Xeroxes of Xeroxes. I folded the top Xerox up and slipped it into my blazer pocket. Just because.

  ‘Hunting for a needle in the ocean?’ Mr Dunwoody’s head appeared round his partition. ‘As the Asiatics might say? In lieu of a haystack?’

  I thought he’d seen me nick the sheet. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pearls before swine? Or a whistle on a desk?’

  I dangled the whistle at Mr Dunwoody. ‘Just found it, sir…’

  ‘Wherefore dalliest thou? With the speed of a wingèd monkey, convey it presently to its rightful owner. Huzzah!’

  First-years were playing conkers in the queue for the Black Swan Green bus. In Miss Throckmorton’s I was skill at conkers. Us third-years can’t play conkers, though, ’cause it’s too gay. It’s maimball or nothing. But at least the conkers was something to watch. Wilcox’d made it risky even to talk to Jason Maggot, School Stutterkid. After Mr Kempsey’d herded the Birtsmorton lot on to their bus, he blew his whistle for the Black Swan Green kids. I wonder if he meant for me to take that sheet. When you decide Mr Kempsey’s all right, he acts like a prat. When you decide Mr Kempsey’s a prat, he acts all right.

  Three rows from the front’s too girly a seat for a third-year boy, but sitting near Wilcox’s squad at the back’d’ve been asking for it. Middle-ranking kids trooped past the spare seat next to me. Robin South, Gavin Coley, Lee Biggs didn’t even look at me. Oswald Wyre shot a ‘Maggot!’ at me. Across the playground a bunch of kids by the bike sheds’d turned to puppet shadows in the mist.

  ‘Christ!’ Dean Moran sat by me. ‘What a day!’

  ‘All right, Dean.’ I felt miserable I felt so grateful.

  ‘Tell yer what, Jace, that Murcot’s a bloody nutter! In woodwork just now, right, a plane flew over and what does Murcot yell at the top of his lungs? “Hit the deck, boys! It’s the goddam Jerries!” Honest to God, we all had to get down on our hands and knees! D’yer reckon he’s going senile?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Norman Bates the driver started the engine and our bus moved off. Dawn Madden, Andrea Bozard and some other girls started singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. By the time the bus got to Welland Cross, fog was closing in thick.

  ‘I was going to invite yer over this Saturday,’ said Moran. ‘Dad got a video recorder off this bloke in a pub in Tewkesbury.’

  Despite my problems, I was impressed. ‘VHS or Betamax?’

  ‘Betamax, of course! VHS’s going extinct. Problem is, when we got the video out of its box yesterday, half its insides was missing.’

  ‘What did your dad do?’

  ‘Drove straight over to Tewkesbury to have it out with the bloke who’d sold it him. Problem is, the man’d vanished.’

  ‘Could anyone at the pub help?’

  ‘No. The pub’d vanished an’ all.’

  ‘Vanished? How can a pub vanish?’

  ‘Sign in the window. “We have ceased trading”. Padlocks on the doors and windows. FOR SALE sign. That’s how a pub vanishes.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  Some trailers were parked in the Danemoor Farm lay-by, despite the hill of gravel left there to ward off gypsies. They hadn’t been there this morning. But this morning belonged to a different age.

  ‘Come over on Saturday anyway, if yer want. Mum’ll cook yer lunch. It’ll be a right laugh.’

  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had to be got through first. ‘Thanks.’

  Ross Wilcox and his lot’d streamed off the bus first without even a glance at me. I crossed the village green thinking the worst of this turd of a day was over.

  ‘Where d’you think you’re going, Maggot?’ Ross Wilcox, under the oak tree with Gary Drake, Ant Little, Wayne Nashend and Darren Croome. They’d’ve loved me to make a run for it. I didn’t. Planet Earth’d shrunk to a bubble five paces wide.

  ‘Home,’ I said.

  Wilcox flobbed. ‘Ain’t yer go-go-go-going to t-t-talk to us?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Well, yer ain’t goin’ to yer poncy fuckin’ home down poncy fuckin’ Kingfisher Meadows yet, yer poncy fuckin’ maggot.’

  I let Wilcox make the next move.

  He didn’t. It came from behind. Wayne Nashend pinned me in a full nelson. My Adidas bag was ripped out of my hand. No point in shouting ‘That’s my bag!’ We all knew that. The crucial thing was to not cry.

  ‘Where’s yer bumfluff, Taylor?’ Ant Little peered at my upper lip. ‘Ain’t yer got any bumfluff left?’

  ‘I shaved it off.’


  ‘“I shaved it off”’ Gary Drake mimicked me. ‘That s’posed to impress us?’

  ‘There’s this joke going round, Taylor,’ said Wilcox. ‘Have yer heard it? “D’yer know Jason Taylor?”’

  ‘“N-n-n-o,”’ replied Gary Drake. ‘“B-b-but I t-trod in s-s-some once!”’

  ‘Yer’re a laughing-stock, Taylor,’ spat Ant Little. ‘A piss-flaps toss-pot laughing-stock!’

  ‘Going to the pictures with your mummy!’ said Gary Drake. ‘You don’t deserve to live. We should hang you from this tree.’

  ‘Say somethin’, then,’ Ross Wilcox came right up close, ‘Maggot.’

  ‘Your breath smells really bad, Ross.’

  ‘What?’ Wilcox’s face arseholed up. ‘WHAT?’

  I’d shocked myself, too. But there was no going back. ‘I’m not trying to be insulting, honest. But your breath reeks. Like a bag of ham. Nobody tells you ’cause they’re scared of you. But you should clean your teeth more often or eat mints ’cause it’s chronic.’

  Wilcox let a moment drag by.

  A sharp double-slap crushed my jaw.

  ‘Oh, and you’re saying yer not scared of me?’

  Pain is a good focuser. ‘It could be halitosis. The chemist in Upton could give you something for it, if it is.’

  ‘I could kick your head in, you dickless twat!’

  ‘Yeah, you could. All five of you.’

  ‘On my fuckin’ own!’

  ‘I’m not doubting it. I saw you fight Grant Burch, remember.’

  The school bus was still by the Black Swan. Norman Bates sometimes gives a bundle to Isaac Pye and Isaac Pye gives Norman Bates a brown envelope. Not that I was expecting any help.

  ‘This – oily – spacko – maggot’ – Ross Wilcox jabbed my chest with each word – ‘needs – a – GRUNDY!’ A grundy’s where a bunch of kids yank you up, hard, by your underpants. Your feet leave the ground and the crotch of your pants is forced up your bum-crack so your balls and dick get crushed.

  So a grundying’s exactly what I got.

  But grundies’re only fun if the victim squeals and tries to fight. I steadied myself on Ant Little’s head and sort of rode it out. Grundies humiliate rather than hurt. My attackers pretended to find it funny, but it was heavy, unrewarding work. Wilcox and Nashend trampolined me up and down. My pants just burnt my crotch rather than split me in two. I was dropped on to the soaking grass.

  ‘That,’ promised Ross Wilcox, panting, ‘is just for starters.’

  ‘Maaaaaaggot!’ Gary Drake sang out of the mist by the Black Swan. ‘Where’s your bag?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Wayne Nashend booted my arse as I got up. ‘Better find it.’

  I sort of hobbled towards Gary Drake, my bumbone smarting.

  The school bus revved up. Its gears cranked.

  Grinning this sadistic grin, Gary Drake swung my Adidas bag.

  Now I saw what was coming and broke into a run.

  Tracing a perfect arc, my Adidas bag landed on the roof of the bus.

  The bus jerked into motion, off to the crossroads by Mr Rhydd’s.

  Changing course, I sprinted through the long wet grass, prayed the bag’d slide off.

  Laughter acker-ack-acked after me, like machine guns.

  One ½ p of luck rolled my way. A combine harvester’d made a slow traffic jam from Malvern Wells. I managed to reach the school bus while it waited at the crossroads by Mr Rhydd’s shop.

  ‘What,’ snarled Norman Bates as the door opened, ‘d’you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘Some boys,’ I fought for breath, ‘chucked my bag on the roof.’

  The kids still on the bus lit up with excitement.

  ‘What roof?’

  ‘The roof of your bus.’

  Norman Bates gave me a look like I’d shat in his bap. But he swung down, nearly knocking me over, marched to the end of the bus, climbed up the back-end monkey ladder, grabbed my Adidas bag, lobbed it at me, and climbed back down to the road. ‘Yer mates’re a bunch o’ wankers, Sunbeam.’

  ‘They’re not my mates.’

  ‘Then why let ’em push you around?’

  ‘I don’t let them. There’s five of them. Ten of them. More.’

  Norman Bates sniffed. ‘But only one King Turd. Right?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘One’ll do. What yer need is one of these little beauties.’ A lethal Bowie knife suddenly rotated in front of my eyes. ‘Sneak up on King Turd,’ Norman Bates’s voice softened, ‘and slice – his – tendons. One slit, two slit, tickle him under there. If he fucks around with you after that, just puncture the tyres on his wheelchair.’ Norman Bates’s knife disappeared into thin air. ‘Army and Navy Surplus Stores. Best tenner you’ll ever spend.’

  ‘But if I sliced Wilcox’s tendons, I’d get sent to borstal.’

  ‘Well, wakey fucking wakey, Sunbeam! Life’s a borstal!’

  Knife Grinder

  Autumn’s fungusy, berries’re manky, leaves’re rusting, Vs of long-distance birds’re crossing the sky, evenings’re smoky, nights’re cold. Autumn’s nearly dead. I hadn’t even noticed it was ill.

  ‘I’m back!’ Every afternoon I yell it, just in case Mum or Dad’d come home early from Cheltenham or Oxford or wherever.

  Not that there’s ever a reply.

  Our house is bags emptier with Julia gone. Her and Mum drove up to Edinburgh two weekends ago. (Julia passed her driving test. First time, of course.) She’d spent the second half of the summer with Ewan’s family in the Norfolk Broads, so you’d think I’d’ve had time to get used to sisterlessness. But it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and not-being-used-right-now hats and coats, their belongingnesses. Can’t believe I miss my sister this much, but I do. Mum and Julia left first thing ’cause Scotland’s a day away by car. Dad and me waved her off. Mum’s Datsun’d turned into Kingfisher Meadows, when it stopped. Julia jumped out, opened the boot, ferreted through her box of records and ran back up the drive. She thrust her Abbey Road LP into my hands. ‘Look after this for me, Jace. It’ll only get scratched if I take it to halls.’ She hugged me.

  I still smelt Julia’s hair lacquer, even after the car’d gone.

  The pressure cooker sat on the cooker, leaked stewing-steak fumes. (Mum starts it off in the morning so it cooks all day.) I made a grapefruit Quash and risked scoffing the last Penguin biscuit ’cause there was nothing else in the tin but Ginger Nuts and Lemon Puffs. I went upstairs to change out of my school uniform. Waiting in my room was the first of the three surprises.

  A TV. Sitting on my desk. It hadn’t been there this morning. FERGUSON MONOCHROME PORTABLE TELEVISION, said its badge. MADE IN ENGLAND. (Dad says if we don’t buy British all the jobs’ll go to Europe.) Brand-new shine, brand-new smell. An office envelope with my name on it stood propped up. (Dad’d written my name in 2H pencil so the envelope can be reused.) Inside was a file card, written in green Biro.

  Why? I was pleased, for sure. In 3KM only Clive Pike and Neal Brose’ve got TVs in their bedrooms. But why now? My birthday isn’t till January. Dad never gives things like this for no reason, not just out of the blue. I switched the TV on, lay on my bed and watched Space Sentinels and Take Hart. Watching TV on your bed shouldn’t be odd, but it somehow is. Like eating oxtail soup in the bath.

  TV deadens worrying about school, a bit. Dean was ill today so the seat on the school bus next to me was empty. Ross Wilcox took it, acting all matey to remind me we’re not. Wilcox kept on at me to get out my pencil case. ‘G-g-go on, l-l-l-lend us yer p-p-protractor, T-t-taylor, honest, I want to do m-my m-m-m-maths homework.’ (I don’t stammer that badly. Mrs de Roo says we’re making real progress.) ‘Got a sh-sh-sharpener, T-t-taylor?’

  ‘No’, I kept saying, flat and bored. ‘No.’ The other day he got hold of Floyd Chaceley’s pencil case in the maths room and tipped its contents into the Quad.

  ‘What d’yer mean, n-n-no? What d’yer do when yo
ur p-p-pencils get b-b-blunt?’ Question after needling question, that’s the Wilcox Method. Answer, and he’ll twist your reply so that it seems only a total twat could’ve said what you just said. Don’t answer, and it’s like you’re admitting it’s okay for Wilcox to be ripping into you. ‘S-s-so d-d-d-do girls find your s-s-s-stutter s-s-s-sexy, T-t-taylor?’ Oswald Wyre and Ant Little do this jackal laughter like their master’s all six Monty Pythons rolled into one comedy thug. Wilcox’s power is that you think it’s not him speaking but public opinion judging you through him. ‘B-b-b-bet it m-m-m-makes ’em fizz in their p-p-p-p-per-per-pah-pah-pi-pi-poo-poo-poo-panties!’

  Two rows in front, Squelch suddenly vommed back up a party-sized tube of Smarties he’d wolfed to win a go on Ant Little’s Space Invaders calculator. A tide of multi-coloured vomit advancing up the aisle was enough to distract Wilcox. I got off at Drugger’s End and went round the back of the village hall and over the Glebe, alone. It takes a while. Over by St Gabriel’s some way-too-early fireworks streaked spoon silver against the Etch-a-Sketch grey sky. Someone’s older brother must’ve bought them from Mr Rhydd’s. I was still too poisoned by Wilcox to pick the last watery blackberries of 1982.

  Was it the same poison that spoilt Dad’s incredible present? John Craven’s Newsround was about the Mary Rose. The Mary Rose was Henry VIII’s flagship that sank in a storm four centuries ago. It was lifted out of the sea bottom recently. All England was watching. But the silty, drippy, turdy timbers lugged up by the floating cranes look nothing like the shining galleon in the paintings. People’re now saying the money should’ve been spent on hospital beds.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Chilly day,’ rasped an old man in a tweed cap. ‘Nip in the air.’ The man was today’s second surprise. His suit had no obvious colour. He had no obvious colour, come to that. I’d put on the the door chain ’cause Dad says not even Black Swan Green’s safe from perverts and maniacs. The chain amused the old man. ‘Crown jewels you’ve got stashed away in there, then, is it, eh?’