Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  Dawn Madden touched Ross Wilcox’s arm.

  Wilcox slapped her hand off and turned away.

  Hurt Dawn Madden said something to Wilcox.

  Wilcox snapped, ‘Yes it is the end of the world, yer dozy cow!’

  You just don’t talk to Dawn Madden like that. She looked away for a moment, scalded. Then she gave Wilcox a crushing whack on the eye. Just watching, me and Dean jumped.

  ‘Ouch!’ said Dean, delighted.

  Ross Wilcox sort of crumpled in shock.

  ‘I warned yer, yer knob-head!’ Dawn Madden was fangs and claws and screaming fury. ‘I warned yer! Yer can find yerself a real dozy cow!’

  Ross Wilcox’s hesitant fingers went to his pounded eye.

  ‘I’m chuckin’ yer!’ Dawn Madden turned and walked.

  Ross Wilcox cried after her, ‘DAWN!’, like a man in a film.

  Dawn Madden turned round, fired Wilcox a twenty-thousand-volt ‘Fuck off!’ Then the crowds swallowed her up.

  ‘That’ll be one doozy of a shiner,’ Dean remarked, ‘will that.’

  Wilcox looked at us and his wallet in my pocket shrieked at its master to rescue it, but he didn’t even see us. He ran after his ex-girlfriend for a few frantic paces. Stopped. Turned. Checked his eye, for blood, I s’pose. Turned. Then a black hole between a Captain Ecstatic’s Zero Gravity Dome and the Win-A-Smurf stall sucked Ross Wilcox in.

  ‘Oh, my heart’s bleedin’.’ Dean sighed, happily. ‘Gospel. Let’s go find Kelly. I promised we’d look after Maxine for a bit.’

  Passing the SCORE-LESS-THAN-20-WITH-3-DARTS-AND-PICK-ANY-PRIZE! darts stall someone called out, ‘Oy! Oy, Deaf-aid!’ It was Alan Wall. ‘Remember me? And my Uncle Clem?’

  ‘’Course I do. What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Who d’you think runs fairs?’

  ‘Gypsies?’

  ‘Mercy Watts’s people own all of this. Have for years.’

  Dean was pretty impressed.

  ‘This is Dean and his little sister Maxine.’

  Alan Wall just nodded at Dean. Clem Ostler solemnly presented Maxine with a shiny windmill. Dean told her, ‘Say thank you, then.’ Maxine did, and blew on her windmill. Alan Wall asked, ‘Fancy yerself as a bit of an Eric Bristow, then, eh?’

  ‘Mr One-hundred-and-eighty,’ said Dean, ‘that’s what they call me.’ He slid two 10ps from his pocket over the counter. ‘One for me, one for Jace.’

  But Clem Ostler slid the coins back. ‘Never refuse a gift off of a gypsy, boys. Or yer balls’ll shrivel up. Ain’t jokin’. Drop off, in the worst cases.’

  Dean got an 8 on his first throw, a 10 on his second. His third throw blew it with a double 16. I was just about to take my throw when a voice stopped me. ‘Aw, looking after baby sister, are we?’

  Gary Drake, with Ant Little and Darren Croome.

  Moran sort of flinched. Maxine sort of wilted.

  Stick your darts, urged Unborn Twin, into their eyeballs.

  ‘Yeah. We are. What the fuck is it to you?’

  Gary Drake wasn’t expecting that. (Words are what you fight with but what you fight about is whether or not you’re afraid of them.) ‘Go on, then.’ Gary Drake recovered quick. ‘Throw. Amaze us.’

  If I threw it’d look like I was obeying him. If I didn’t I’d just look like a total wally. All I could do was try to blank Gary Drake out. My strategy was to aim at treble 20 so carefully that I’d end up missing a fraction and getting a 1 or 5. My first dart got a 5. Quickly, before Gary Drake could put me off, I threw again and got a double 5.

  My last dart was a clean 1.

  Clem Ostler did a fairground shout. ‘A winner!’

  ‘Oh, right!’ Ant Little jeered. ‘A born winner!’

  ‘Born laughing-stock.’ Darren Croome snorted his sinuses clear.

  ‘You lot had five goes yerselves earlier,’ Clem Ostler told him. ‘Cacked it up every single time, didn’t yer?’

  Gary Drake didn’t quite dare tell a man who worked in a fair to piss off. Fairground worker laws aren’t quite the same.

  ‘You choose the prize, Max,’ I told Dean’s sister. ‘If you want.’

  Maxine looked at Dean. Dean nodded back. ‘If Jace says so.’

  ‘Shame you can’t win any friends here, Taylor.’ Gary Drake couldn’t walk off without the last insult.

  ‘I don’t need many.’

  ‘Many?’ His sarcasm’s thick as toilet bleach. ‘Any.’

  ‘No, I’ve got enough.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ snided Ant Little, ‘like who exactly? Apart from Moron Bum-chum?’

  If your words’re true, they’re armed. ‘No one you’d know.’

  ‘Y-y-yeah, T-t-t-Taylor,’ Gary Drake resorted to a stutter joke, ‘that’s ’cause your m-m-m-mates are all in your f-f-f-fuckin’ head!’

  Ant Little and Darren Croome dutifully snorked.

  If I got into a scrap with Gary Drake I’d probably lose it.

  If I retreated I’d lose too.

  But sometimes an outside force just shows up. ‘A kid who does speed-wankin’ contests,’ Alan Wall looked sort of sideways at Gary Drake, ‘in Strensham’s barn up the bridleway ain’t got no business labelin’ anyone “bum-chum”. Don’t yer think?’

  All of us, even Maxine, stared at Gary Drake.

  ‘You,’ Gary Drake shot back, ‘whoever you are, are so full of shit!’

  Skinny Clem Ostler cackled like a fat old woman.

  ‘“Full of shit”?’ Alan Wall was only one year older than us, but he could beat Gary Drake into a Gary Drake omelette. ‘Come here and say that.’

  ‘You were seeing things! I’ve never been to Strensham’s barn!’

  ‘Oh, yer dead right these yots’ve been seein’ things!’ Alan Wall tapped his temples. ‘I seen you an’ that lanky git from Birtsmorton one evenin’ two weeks ago, sittin’ in the hay-loft above the Herefordshire milkers—’

  ‘We were drunk! It was just for a laugh! I’m not listening,’ Gary Drake backed off, ‘to some fucking gyppo—’

  Alan Wall leapt over the stall. Before his feet hit the turf Gary Drake’d fled. ‘You two his mates?’ Alan Wall advanced on Ant Little and Darren Croome. ‘Are yer?’

  Ant Little and Darren Croome stepped back, like you’d back away from a trotting leopard. ‘Not specially…’

  ‘The cuddly ET?’ Maxine stood on her tiptoes and pointed. ‘Can I have the cuddly ET?’

  ‘My dad,’ said Clem Ostler, ‘called himself “Red Rex” in prizefightin’ circles. Weren’t redhaired, weren’t polit’cal, he just liked the sound of it. Red Rex was the Goose Fair’s fighter. The bones o’ more than forty years ago, this’d be. Things was rougher an’ leaner back then. My family’d follow Mercy Watts’s old man gaff-catchin’ round the Vale of Evesham, down the Severn Valley, tradin’ horses with other Romanies an’ farmers an’ breeders an’ that. Usually a bit o’ money floatin’ round the fairs, so the men’d feel flush ’nough for a punt or two on a fight. A nearby barn’d be found, lookouts posted for gavvas if we couldn’t pay ’em off, an’ my dad’d challenge all comers. Dad weren’t the beefiest of his six brothers, but that was why, see, men’d bet stupid vonga, wads of it, on deckin’ him or on gettin’ first blood. Dad weren’t much to look at. But I’m tellin’ yer, Red Rex soaked up punches like a boulder! Slipp’rier than shit through a goose. No gloves in them days, mind! Bare-knuckle fightin’, it were. My first memories was of watchin’ Dad fight. These days those prizefighters’d be professional heavyweights or riot police or somethin’, but times was diff’rent. Now, one winter’ (fresh screams from the Flying Teacups ride drowned Clem Ostler out for a moment) ‘one winter, word reached us ’bout this gigantic Welsh bastard. Monster of a man, serious, six foot eight, six nine, from Anglesey. That was his name’n all. Say “Anglesey” that year, an’ everyone’d know who yer meant. Fightin’ his way east, they said, rakin’ it in, just by smashin’ prizefighters’ skulls to eggshells. One blacksmith, name of McMahon, in Cheshire, died afte
r half a round with Anglesey. ’Nother needed iron plates put in his skull, three or four climbed into the ring fit men an’ were carried out cripples for life. Anglesey’d been mouthin’ on how he’d hunt down Red Rex at the Goose Fair, right here, in Black Swan Green. Pulp him, skin him, string him up, smoke him, sell him to the pig farmers. Sure ’nough, when we got to our old atchin’-sen down Pig Lane, Anglesey’s people was there. Wouldn’t budge till after the fight. Twenty guineas was the prize money! Last man standin’d scoop the lot. Unheard of, back then, that sort o’ money.’

  ‘What did yer dad do?’ asked Dean.

  ‘No prizefighter can turn an’ run an’ no gypsy can either. Reputation’s everythin’. My uncles clubbed round for the stake money, but Dad weren’t havin’ it. Instead, he arranged with Anglesey to gamble every last stick we owned. Everythin’! Trailer – our home, remember? – the Crown Derby, the beds, the dogs, the fleas on the dogs, the lot. Lose that fight an’ we’d be on our arses. Nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, nothin’ to eat.’

  I asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Anglesey couldn’t resist it! Floorin’ Red Rex and cleanin’ him out! The night o’ the fight the barn was packed. Gypsies’d come from Dorset, Kent, half of Wales. What a fight that was! Tellin’ yer. What a fight. Bax an’ us older ’uns, we still remember it, blow by blow. Dad an’ Anglesey pounded each other to jam. Them clowns yer get boxin’ on the telly, with their gloves an’ their doctors an’ their referees, they’d’ve run screamin’ from the punishment Anglesey an’ Dad dealt each other. Bits hangin’ off Dad, there was. He could hardly see. But I’m tellin’ yer. Dad gave as good as he got. Floor o’ that barn was redder’n a slaughterhouse. Right at the end, the punches’d stopped. It was all they could do just to stand. At last, Dad swayed up to Anglesey, raised his left hand ’cause his right was so busted, and did this…’ Clem Ostler placed his forefinger between my eyes and pushed me, so gently I hardly felt it. ‘Down that Welsh juk went! Like a tree. Wham! That was the state they was in. Dad quit fightin’ that night. He had to. Too badly busted up. Took his vonga an’ bought a carnival ride. By an’ by he became the Goose Fair’s chief Toberman, so he did all right. Last time we spoke was down Chepstow way, in the crocus-tan, in hospital. Just a couple o’ days b’fore he died. Lungs’d flooded out so bad he kept coughin’ up bits. So I asked Dad, why’d he done it? Why’d he bet his family’s trailer instead o’ just money?’

  Dean and I stared back, waiting for the answer.

  ‘“Son, if I’d just been fightin’ for the vonga, for the money,” he told me, “that Welsh bastard’d’ve beat me.” Fightin’ just for money weren’t enough. Dad knew it. Only by fightin’ for everythin’ he loved, see, me, my mum, his family, our home, the lot, only then could Dad take the pain. So yer see what that says? Yer see what I’m sayin’?’

  The sea of people washed me and Dean up outside the Black Swan, where Mr Broadwas and two pissed wurzels with black teeth and a grinning disease were perched on three stone mushrooms. Dean looked at his dad’s cup a bit nervously.

  ‘Coffee, son!’ Dean’s dad held his cup so Dean could see in it. ‘From my flask! Good an’ hot, for a night like this.’ He turned to Mr Broadwas. ‘The missus’s got him well trained.’

  ‘Good,’ Mr Broadwas speaks as slowly as plants, ‘for both of you.’

  ‘So how long,’ Isaac Pye pushed by, lugging a crate of beers from a van, ‘we staying on the wagon this time, then, Frank Moran?’

  ‘Ain’t gettin’ off of it.’ Dean’s dad didn’t smile back.

  ‘Leopards changing their spots, is it?’

  ‘I ain’t talkin’ ’bout spots, Isaac Pye. Talkin’ about drink. For them as’re all well and good with alcohol, alcohol’s all well and good. But for me, it’s an illness. Doctor just told me what I already knowed. Ain’t had a drop since April.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Since April, this time, is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Dean’s dad scowled at the publican. ‘April.’

  ‘If yer say so,’ Isaac Pye edged past into his pub, ‘if yer say so. But yer can’t bring beverages from outside on to my premises.’

  ‘No fear of that, Isaac Pye!’ Dean’s dad yelled, as if the louder he yelled it, the truer it’d be. ‘No fear of that!’

  Halls of mirrors’re usually crummy affairs with only Fattypuffs and Thinifers mirrors. But these mirrors melted you to self-mutants. Spotlights brightened and blackened the room. I was alone. Alone as you can be, that is, in a hall of mirrors. I got out Wilcox’s wallet to count the money, but decided to wait till I was somewhere safer. ‘Maxine?’ I called out. ‘You here?’

  I left to carry on the search, but as I moved an African tribesman with a neck giraffed by iron rings waded towards me from the depths of the first mirror. His ears were droopy and dripping. It was a dreamish sight. Can a person change, asked the tribesman, into another person?

  ‘You’re right. That’s the question.’

  I thought I heard a scuffle.

  ‘Maxine? Come out, Maxine! This isn’t funny!’

  In the second mirror was a gelatinous cube. All face, no body, just twiggy limbs waving at its corners. By puffing out my cheeks I nearly doubled its size. No, answered the cube. You can only change superficial features. An Inside You must stay unaltered to change the Outside You. To change Inside You you’d need an Even More Inside You, who’d need an Inside the Even More Inside You to change it. And on and on. You with me?

  ‘I’m with you.’

  An invisible bird brushed my ear.

  ‘Maxine? This isn’t funny, Maxine.’

  In the third mirror was Maggot. My waist and legs got squidged into a tail. My chest and head flared up into a big shimmering glob. Don’t listen to them. Ross Wilcox and Gary Drake and Neal Brose pick on us because you don’t blend in. If you had the right hair and clothes and spoke the right way and hung out with the right people, things’d be fine. Popularity’s about following weather forecasts.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what you looked like.’

  Mirror four held Upside-down Jason Taylor. What good’s Maggot ever done you? At Miss Throckmorton’s I used to imagine people in the southern hemisphere walking round like this. A jerk of my leg moved my mirror arm. Flap my arm, my mirror leg flapped. How about an Outside You, suggested Upside-down Me, who is your Inside You too? A One You? If people like your One You, great. If they don’t, tough. Trying to win approval for your Outside You is a drag, Jason. That’s what makes you weak. It’s boring.

  ‘Boring.’ I agreed with Upside-down Me. ‘Boring. Boring.’

  ‘I’m not bored!’ A furry ET leapt out at me.

  I experienced a cardiac arrest in the hall of mirrors.

  ‘Loonies talk to themselves.’ Maxine frowned. ‘Are you a loony?’

  Kelly Moran chatted to Debby Crombie by the toffee apple stall. As, surely, the richest kid in the Three Counties, I bought one for me, Dean and Maxine. Biting into toffee-armoured apples requires technique. Your teeth bounce off. Bash the hard toffee against your fangs, that’s the only way. Then sink your incisors in to prise off the crust of toffee.

  Debby Crombie looks like she’s got a rugby ball up her jumper. The whole village knows she’s pregnant with Tom Yew’s baby. ‘That ET’s never real,’ she said to Maxine, ‘is it?’

  ‘It is real,’ said Maxine. ‘It’s name’s Geoffrey.’

  ‘Geoffrey the ET. Stylish.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Bit o’ news to warm the cockles of yer hearts.’ Kelly turned to Dean and me. ‘Angela Bullock heard from Dawn Madden herself that she’s not only chucked your old mate Loverboy Wilcox—’

  Dean clucked. ‘We saw ’em have a massive barney earlier!’

  ‘But listen, this is even better,’ a squeak of pleasure escaped Kelly, ‘Wilcox’s lost his wallet, right, with hundreds of quid in it!’

  (A mile-long neon Chinese dragon wove through the Goose Fair and bit my jeans pocket. Luckily, no one else saw it.)


  ‘Hundreds of quid?’ Dean gaped, literally. ‘Where’d he lose it?’

  ‘Here! Now! In the Goose Fair! Of course, Diana Turbot couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, so half the village’re truffling round looking for it right now. Probably been found already. But who’s goin’ to hand all that money back to an arsey turd like Ross Wilcox?’

  ‘Half of Black Swan Green,’ Dean answered, ‘is in his gang.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they like him.’

  ‘How come’ (my voice felt wobbly) ‘Wilcox was walking about with hundreds of pounds on him?’

  ‘Well, isn’t that a tale o’ woe! Apparently your mate Ross was at his old man’s garage after school when this car pulls up, right. Knock, knock, it’s the Inland Revenue. Gordon Wilcox’s years behind on his tax. Last time they visited he chased ’em off with a blow-torch, but this time they’d brought a copper from Upton. But before they can knock on his office, right, Gordon Wilcox whips open the safe and hands Wilcox Junior everythin’ in it to spirit off home. Out of sight, out of accounts, like. Big mistake! Wilcox hung on to it, didn’t he? Thought he’d impress his girlfriend with, shall we say, eh, Debs, the thickness of his wad? Maybe he meant to siphon a bit off. Maybe he didn’t. We’ll never know, ’cause it’s vanished.’

  ‘So what’s Wilcox doin’ now?’

  ‘He was sat smoking in the bus shack, last Angela Bullock heard.’

  ‘Must be shittin’ bricks,’ said Debby Crombie. ‘Gordon Wilcox’s sick in the head. Vicious.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ I’d never spoken to Debby Crombie till tonight. ‘“Vicious”?’

  ‘You do know,’ Kelly jumped in, ‘why Ross Wilcox’s mum left?’

  She realized her son was pure evil? ‘Why?’

  ‘She lost a strip of postage stamps.’