Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘I’m a patient man.’ Samuel Swinyard stood feet planted apart. ‘Patient and tol’rant. I’m a farmer, I’m proud of it, an’ farmers ain’t people to get a bee in their bonnets about nothin’.’ (A rash of good-humoured mutterings broke out.) ‘I ain’t sayin’ I’d be objectin’ to a perm’nant campment’n all for gypsies if they was pure gypsies. My dad Abe used to employ a few pure gypsies come harvest-time. When they put their minds to it they was hard ’nough workers. Dark as niggers, teeth strong as horses’, their people’d wintered’n all in the Chilterns since the flood. Had to keep an eye on ’em. Slipp’ry as the Devil they could be. Like in the war and they all dressed up as women or buggered off to Ireland to avoid goin’ off to Normandy. But at least with pure gypsies yer knew what they was an’ where you stood. Now why I’m on this stage tonight is, most of these characters driftin’ round callin’ ’emselves gypsies’re chancers an’ bankrupts an’ crim’nals who wouldn’t know a pure gypsy if one flew up his’ (Isaac Pye shouted ‘Arse, Sam, arse!’ and a giant fart of laughter erupted from the back of the hall) ‘nose, Isaac Pye, nose! Beatniks an’ hippies an’ tinkers’n all who tag ’emselves “gypsies” so they can qualify for handouts! Unedyercated scroungers after “Social Security”. Oooh, it’s all flush-toilet campsites’n all they’re wantin’ now! Social workers flappin’ round at their every beck and call! Why don’t I call myself a gypsy and get all this loot’n all for free, eh? Beats workin’ for a livin’! ’Cause if I wanted to—’

  The fire alarm blared out.

  Samuel Swinyard frowned, annoyed. Not scared, ’cause there’s no such thing as a real fire alarm, only fire drills. We had one at school just last week. We had to walk out of French in an orderly fashion and line up in the playground. Mr Whitlock stormed round yelling, ‘Burnt to toast! The lot of you! TOAST! Deformed, for life!’ Mr Carver made a megaphone with his hands and shouted, ‘At least Nicholas Briar won’t be on his own any more!’

  But the village hall alarm went on, and on, and on.

  People round us began saying ‘Ridiculous!’ and ‘Can’t some Einstein turn the bloody thing off?’ Gwendolin Bendincks said something to Mr Castle, who cupped his ear to say What? Gwendolin Bendincks repeated it. What? A few people’d stood up now and were looking round, anxiously.

  Fifty shouts exploded at the back. ‘FIRE!’

  The village hall was instantly a tipping churn of panic.

  Boiling hollers and fried shrieks swarmed over our heads. Chairs went flying and actually bounced. ‘Gypsies’ve gone and torched the place!’ Then the lights went out. ‘Get out! Get out!’ In that awful darkness Dad’d pulled me into him (the zip of his coat gouged my nose) like I was a baby. We stayed put right there, right in the middle of the row. I could smell his under-arm deodorant. A shoe whacked my shin. One flickery emergency light came on. By its glow I saw Mrs Rhydd hammering on the fire exit. ‘Locked! The ruddy thing’s locked!’ Wilcox’s dad was breaststroking people out of his way. ‘Smash the windows! Smash the sodding windows!’ Only Kit Harris was calm. He contemplated the crowd like a hermit contemplating some quiet forest. Colette Turbot’s mum screamed as a string of whopping pearls unstringed themselves and bounced under hundreds of feet. ‘You’re crushing my hand!’ Walls of villagers skittled over, down, around, over. A headless crowd’s the most dangerous animal.

  ‘It’s all right, Jason!’ Dad was squeezing me so tight I could hardly breathe. ‘I’ve got you!’

  Dean Moran’s place is actually two tumbly cottages knocked together and it’s so old it’s still got an outside bog. Pissing into the next-door field’s fresher so I usually do that. Today I got off the school bus with Dean at Drugger’s End with him ’cause we were going to play on his Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k. But Dean’s sister Kelly’d sat on the tape recorder that morning so we couldn’t load any games. Kelly does the Pick’n’Mix at Woolworths in Malvern and what Kelly sits on isn’t ever the same again. So Dean suggested we customize Operation in his bedroom. Dean’s bedroom wall’s papered with posters of West Bromwich Albion. West Brom’re always getting relegated, but Dean and his dad’ve always supported West Brom and that’s that. Operation’s this game where you take out bones from a patient’s body. If you touch the sides with the tweezers his nose-buzzer buzzes and you don’t collect your surgeon’s fee. We tried to rewire Operation with a giant battery so you’d get electrocuted if you touched the sides. We killed Operation and the patient for ever, but Dean says he got bored of it yonks ago. Outside we made a crazy golf course with planks, pipes and old horseshoes from the choked orchard where Dean’s garden stops. Evil frilly toadstools’d broken out of the rotted stump. A moon-grey cat watched us from the roof of the outdoors bog. We found two clubs but couldn’t find a single ball, not even in the bottomless shed. We did find a broken loom and the bones of a motorbike. ‘How about,’ suggested Dean, ‘we have a looksy down our well?’

  The well’s covered by a dustbin lid under a stack of bricks to stop Dean’s sister Maxine falling in. We took the bricks off, one by one. ‘Yer can hear a drownin’ girl’s voice, some nights when there’s no wind an’ no moon.’

  ‘Yeah, sure you do, Dean.’

  ‘Swear on me nan’s grave! A little girl drowned in this well. Her petticoats an’ that pulled her under before they could rescue her.’

  This was all too detailed to be bullshit. ‘When?’

  Dean dumped the last brick. ‘Olden times.’

  We peered down. Our heads were tombed in the quiverless mirror. Hush of a tomb, and as chilly.

  ‘How deep does it go?’

  ‘Dunno.’ The well elastics words down, then catapults echoes up. ‘One time me and Kelly tied a fishing lead to a line and lowered it down, right, and after fifty metres it were still goin’ down.’

  Just the thought of falling down sent my balls ferreting up.

  Damp October dusk gathered round the well.

  ‘Mama!’ A kitteny voice blasted us away. ‘I CAN’T SWIM!’

  Shat myself. I shat myself.

  Mr Moran had hysterics.

  ‘Dad!’ Dean groaned.

  ‘Sorry, lads, couldn’t resist it!’ Mr Moran wiped his eyes. ‘Just came out to plant next year’s daffodillies, heard what you were talking about, and I could not resist!’

  ‘Well, I don’t half wish,’ Dean replaced the lid, ‘you had of!’

  Dean’s dad set up ping-pong by balancing a wall of spine-up books across the kitchen table. Our bats were Ladybird books. (Mine was The Elves and the Shoemaker and Dean played with Rumpelstiltskin. Right spazzers we must’ve looked, specially Mr Moran, who played cradling a can of Dr Pepper. (Dr Pepper’s fizzy Benylin.) Brill laugh it was, mind. More fun than my portable TV, any day. Dean’s little sister Maxine kept score. The whole family call her Mini Max. We played Winner Stays On. Dean’s mum got home from the old folk’s home where she works, on the Malvern Road. She just took one look at us, said, ‘Frank Moran,’ and lit a fire that smelt of dry roasted peanuts. My dad says real fires are more faff than they’re worth, but Dean’s dad says in a Tavish McTavish voice, ‘Neeever buy ye a hoose wi’oot a chimberly pot.’ Mrs Moran pinned her hair back with a knitting needle and thrashed me, 21–7, but instead of staying on Mrs Moran read aloud from the Malvern Gazetteer: BURNT CRUMPETS UNLEASH ANARCHY AT VILLAGE HALL! ‘“Black Swan Green villagers learnt you can have smoke without fire on Wednesday. The inaugural meeting of the Village Camp Crisis Committee, set up by residents to fight a proposed gypsy site in Hakes Lane, Black Swan Green, was interrupted by a fire alarm which triggered a frantic stampede…” Well, dearie, dearie me.’ (The article itself wasn’t funny but Mrs Moran read it in this yokel news-voice that made us pee ourselves.) ‘“Emergency services rushed to the scene, only to discover the alarm had been triggered by smoke from a toaster. Four people were treated for injuries caused by the stampede. Eyewitness Gerald Castle, of Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green—” That’s your neighbour, ain’t it, Jason? “—told the Gazette
er, ‘It’s a minor miracle nobody was maimed for life.’” Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t be laughin’. It’s not funny at all, really. Did you actually see this stampede, Jason?’

  ‘Yes, Dad took me. The village hall was packed. Weren’t you there?’

  Mr Moran’d gone sort of stony. ‘Sam Swinyard came sniffin’ round for my signature but I politely declined him.’ The conversation’d taken a wrong turn. ‘Impressed by the level of debate, were you?’

  ‘People were pretty much against the camp.’

  ‘Oh, doubtless they were! Folks’ll do bugger-all while the unions their grandfathers died for get dismantled by that creature in Downing Street! But once they smell a threat to their house prices they’re up in arms faster’n any revolutionary!’

  ‘Frank,’ Mrs Moran said, like a handbrake.

  ‘I ain’t ashamed of Jason knowing I’ve got gypsy blood in my veins! My grandfather was one, Jason, see. That’s why we didn’t go to the meeting. Gypsies ain’t angels but they ain’t devils neither. No more an’ no less than farmers or postmen or landlords, anyhow. Folks ought to just leave ’em be.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded.

  ‘Nattering won’t get supper on the table.’ Mrs Moran got up. Mr Moran got out his Word Puzzler’s Weekly. Word Puzzler’s Weekly’s got ladies in bikinis on the cover but nothing nudier inside. Maxine, Dean and I put the Ladybird books away till the smell of gammon and mushrooms filled the small kitchen. I helped Dean lay the table to postpone going home. The Morans’ cutlery drawer isn’t scientifically divided like ours. It’s all higgledy-piggledy. ‘You’ll be stayin’ for a bite, Jason?’ Dean’s mum peeled potatoes. ‘Mi’lady Kelly phoned me at work. They’re all off for pie and chips after work ’cause it’s somebody’s birthday, so we’ve got room for one more.’

  ‘Go on,’ urged Dean’s dad. ‘Ring your Mum on our jellybone.’

  ‘Better not.’ Actually I’d’ve loved to stay, but Mum throws an eppy if I don’t book meals at other kids’ houses weeks in advance. Dad goes all policeman-like too, as if the offence is too serious to merely get cross at. Dad eats dinner in Oxford more often than he eats at home these days, mind. ‘Thanks for having me.’

  Dusk’d sucked mist from the ground. The clocks’re going back next weekend. Mum’d be home from Cheltenham soon but I wasn’t in any hurry. So I went the long way via Mr Rhydd’s shop. Less chance of running across Ross Wilcox’s lot if I avoided the mouth of Wellington Gardens, I thought. But just as I passed the lychgate of St Gabriel’s, kids’ shouts spilt out of Colette Turbot’s garden. Not good.

  Not good at all. Up ahead were Ross Wilcox himself, Gary Drake and ten or fifteen kids. Older kids, too, like Pete Redmarley and the Tookey Brothers. War’d broken out. Conkers for bullets, crab apples and windfallen pears for heavy artillery. Spare ammo was carried in pouches made of turned-up sweaters. A stray acorn whistled by my ear. Once I’d’ve just picked the side with the most popular kids on and joined in but ‘once’ isn’t now. Chances are the cry’d go up, ‘G-g-g-get T-t-t-tttaylor!’ and both armies’d turn their fire on me. If I tried to leg it, there’d be a fox hunt through the village with Wilcox as the huntmaster and me as the fox.

  So I slipped into the ivy-choked bus shelter before anyone spotted me. The buses to Malvern and Upton and Tewkesbury once stopped here, but they’ve mostly been cancelled now ’cause of cuts. Snoggers and graffitiers’ve taken it over. Fruit bounced past the doorway. I realized I’d just trapped myself. Pete Redmarley’s army were falling back this way with Gary Drake and Ross Wilcox’s lot war-crying after them. I peered out. A cooking apple exploded spectacularly on Squelch’s head, ten feet away. In seconds the defenders’d draw level and I’d be found hiding. Being found hiding’s worse than just being found.

  Squelch rubbed apple from his eye, then looked at me.

  Shit scared he’d give me away, I put my finger on my lip.

  Squelch’s gurn turned to a grin. He put his finger on his lip.

  I darted out of the shelter, across the Malvern Road. I had no time to find a path so I just jumped into the denseness. Holly. Just my luck. I sank down through prickly leaves. My neck and bum got scratched but scratches don’t hurt like humilation hurts. Miracle of miracles, no one trumpeted out my name. The battle spilt this way and that, so close to my hiding place I heard Simon Sinton mumble instructions to himself. The bus shelter I’d left twenty seconds ago was requisitioned as a bunker.

  ‘That hurt, Croome, you tosser!’

  ‘Oh, did it hurt, poor little Robin South? I’m so sorry!’

  ‘C’mon, you lot! Show ’em who this village belongs to!’

  ‘Kill ’em! Massacre ’em! Dump ’em in a pit! Bury ’em!’

  Pete Redmarley’s forces rallied. The battle stayed vicious but stalemated. The air thickened with missiles and the cries of the hit. Wayne Nashend foraged for ammo just feet from my hiding place. It looked like the war’d spilled into the woods. My only way out was deeper in.

  The wood invited me on, curtain after curtain, like sleep. Ferns stroked my forehead and picked my pockets. Nobody knows you’re here, murmured the trees, anchoring down for the winter.

  Picked-on kids act invisible to reduce the chances of being noticed and picked on. Stammerers act invisible to reduce the chances of being made to say something we can’t. Kids whose parents argue act invisible in case we trigger another skirmish. The Triple Invisible Boy, that’s Jason Taylor. Even I don’t see the real Jason Taylor much these days, ’cept for when we’re writing a poem, or occasionally in a mirror, or just before sleep. But he comes out in woods. Ankley branches, knuckly roots, paths that only might be, earthworks by badgers or Romans, a pond that’ll ice over come January, a wooden cigar box nailed behind the ear of a secret sycamore where we once planned a tree house, birdstuffedtwigsnapped silence, toothy bracken, and places you can’t find if you’re not alone. Time in woods’s older than time in clocks, and truer. Ghosts of Might Be run riot in woods, and stationery shops and messes of stars. Woods don’t bother with fences or borders. Woods are fences and borders. Don’t be afraid. You see better in the dark. I’d love to work with trees. Druids don’t exist nowadays, but foresters do. A forester in France. What tree cares if you can’t spit your words out?

  This druid feeling I get in woods’s so thrilling it makes me want to crap, so I dug a hole with a flat stone inside a clump of mitten-leafed shrubs. I pulled down my cacks and squatted. It’s ace shitting outside like a caveman. Let go, thud, subtle crinkle on dry leaves. Squatted craps come out smoother than craps in bogs. Crap’s peatier and steamier in open air, too. (My one fear is bluebottles flying up my arsehole and laying eggs in my lower intestine. Larvae’d hatch and get to my brain. My cousin Hugo told me it actually happened to an American kid called Akron Ohio.) ‘Am I normal,’ I said aloud just to hear my voice, ‘talking to myself in a wood like this?’ A bird so near it might’ve perched on a curl of my ear musicked a flute in a jar. I quivered to own such an unownable thing. If I could’ve climbed into that moment, that jar, and never ever left, I would’ve done. But my squatting calves were aching, so I moved. The unownable bird took fright and vanished down its tunnel of twigs and nows.

  I’d just wiped my arse with mitten-leaves when this massive dog, big as a bear, this brown-and-white wolf, padded out of the murky bracken.

  I thought I was going to die.

  But the wolf calmly picked up my Adidas bag in its teeth and trotted off down the path.

  Only a dog, trembled Maggot, it’s gone, it’s okay, we’re safe.

  A dead man’s groan unwound itself from deep inside me. Six exercise books including Mr Whitlock’s plus three textbooks. Gone! What’d I say to the teachers? ‘I can’t hand in my homework, sir. A dog ran off with it.’ Mr Nixon’d bring back the cane just to punish my lack of originality.

  Far too late I jumped up to give chase, but my snake-clasp belt twanged undone, my trousers unhoiked and I flew head over arse like
Laurel and Hardy. Leaf mould in my underpants, a twig up my nose.

  Nothing for it but follow the way the dog might’ve gone, scanning the clotted woods for patches of trotting white. Whitlock’s sarcasm’d be everlasting. Mrs Coscombe’s fury’d be hot as ovens. Mr Inkberrow’s disbelief’d be as unbendy as his blackboard ruler. Shit, shit, shit. First every kid labels me as a tragic case, now half the teachers’ll think I’m a waste of space. ‘What were you doing traipsing through the woods at that hour?’

  An owl? Here was a bent glade I knew from when us village kids used to fight war games in the woods. Pretty seriously we took it, with prisoners of war, ceasefires, flags one side had to steal (footy socks on a stick) and rules of combat that were half tag, half judo. More sophisticated than those Passchendaeles back on the Malvern Road, anyhow. When field marshals picked their men I was snapped up ’cause I was an ace dodger and tree-climber. Those war games were ace. Sport at school isn’t the same. Sport doesn’t let you be someone you’re not. War games’re extinct now. Us lot were the last ones. Apart from the lake where people walk dogs, every season chokes up more and more paths in the woods. Ways in’ve been wired off or walled up by brambles and farmers. Things get dense and thorny if they’re left on their own. People’re getting edgy about kids running around after dark like we used to. A newspaper boy called Carl Bridgewater was murdered not long ago, in Gloucestershire. Gloucestershire’s only next door. The police found his body in a wood like this.