Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘Hello, Jason.’ The woman Dad’d rather spend the rest of his life with than Mum looked at me like I had a gun pointed at her. ‘I’m Cynthia.’

  ‘Hi. I’m Jason.’ This was very, very, very weird. Neither of us tried to shake hands. In the back of her car was a BABY ON BOARD sticker. ‘You’ve got a baby?’

  ‘Well, Milly’s more of a toddler now.’ If you just heard her voice next to Mum’s you’d say Mum’s posher. ‘Camilla. Milly. Milly’s father – my ex-husband – we’re already…I mean, he’s not on the scene. As they say.’

  ‘Right.’

  Dad watched his future wife and his only son from his ex-garage.

  ‘Well.’ Cynthia smiled unhappily. ‘Come and visit whenever you want, Jason. Trains go to Oxford from Cheltenham, direct.’ Cynthia’s voice is less than half the volume of Mum’s. ‘Your dad would like you to. He really would. So would I. It’s a big old house we’re in. There’s a stream at the end of the garden. You could even have your—’ (she was about to say ‘your own bedroom’.) ‘Well, you’re welcome, any time.’

  All I could do was nod.

  ‘Whenever it suits.’ Cynthia looked at Dad.

  ‘So how—’ I began, suddenly scared of having nothing to say.

  ‘If you—’ she began in the same second.

  ‘After you—’

  ‘No, after you. Really. You go ahead.’

  ‘How long’ (no grown-up’s ever made me go first) ‘have you known Dad?’ I’d meant the question to sound breezy but it came out all Gestapo.

  ‘Since we were growing up,’ Cynthia was working hard to iron out any extra meanings, ‘in Derbyshire.’

  Longer than Mum, then. If Dad’d married this Cynthia in the first place, instead of Mum, and if they’d had a son, would it have been me? Or a totally different kid? Or a kid who’s half me?

  All those Unborn Twins’re a numbing prospect.

  I got to the lake in the woods and remembered the game of British Bulldogs we’d played here when the lake froze last January. Twenty or thirty kids, skimming and shrieking, all over the shop. Tom Yew’d interrupted the game, scrambling down the path I’d just taken, on his Suzuki. He’d sat on the exact same bench I was sat on remembering him. Now Tom Yew’s in a cemetery on a treeless hill on a bunch of islands we’d never even heard of last January. What’s left of Tom Yew’s Suzuki’s being picked apart to repair other Suzukis. The world won’t leave things be. It’s always injecting endings into beginnings. Leaves tweezer themselves from these weeping willows. Leaves fall into the lake and dissolve into slime. Where’s the sense in that? Mum and Dad fell in love, had Julia, had me. They fall out of love, Julia moves off to Edinburgh, Mum to Cheltenham and Dad to Oxford with Cynthia. The world never stops unmaking what the world never stops making.

  But who says the world has to make sense?

  In my dream a fishing float’d appeared in the water, orange on glossy dark, just a few feet out. Holding the rod was Squelch, sat on the other end of my bench. This dream-Squelch was so realistic in every detail, even his smell, I realized I must be awake. ‘Oh. All right, Mervyn? God, I was dreaming about…’

  ‘Wakey wakey stiffy shakey.’

  ‘…something. Been here long?’

  ‘Wakey wakey stiffy shakey.’

  My Casio said I’d only been asleep for ten minutes. ‘Must’ve…’

  ‘It’ll snow soon. It’ll stick an’ all. School bus’ll get stuck.’

  My joints clunked as I stretched. ‘Aren’t you watching Moonraker?’ My joints unclunked.

  Squelch gave me this tragic look like I was the certified village idiot. ‘Ain’t no TV here. I’m fishin’, I am. Come to see the swan.’

  ‘Black Swan Green hasn’t got any swans. That’s the village joke.’

  ‘Crotch rot.’ Squelch shoved one hand down his pants and gave his grollies a good scratching. ‘Crotch rot.’

  A robin landed on the holly bush, as if posing for a Christmas card.

  ‘So…what’s the biggest thing you’ve caught in this lake, Merv?’

  ‘Ain’t never caught bugger all. Not down this end. I fishes up the narrer end, up by the island, don’t I?’

  ‘So what’s the biggest thing you’ve caught up the narrow end?’

  ‘Ain’t never caught bugger all up the narrer end, neither.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Squelch gave me a lidded look. ‘Got a big fat tench one time. Roasted the bugger on a stick, in our garden. His eyes was the tastiest bit. Last spring, that were. Or the spring before. Or the spring before that.’

  An ambulance siren’s wail bagatelled through the bare wood.

  ‘Somebody dying,’ I asked Squelch, ‘d’you reckon?’

  ‘Debby Crombie off to hospital. Her babby’s poppin’ out.’

  Rooks craw…craw…crawed, like old people who’ve forgotten why they’ve come upstairs. ‘I’m leaving Black Swan Green today.’

  ‘See yer.’

  ‘You probably won’t.’

  Squelch lifted one leg and out flubberdubbered a fart so loud the robin on the holly flew off in fright.

  The orange float sat motionless in the water.

  ‘Do you remember that kitten you found, Merv, last year, frozen stiff?’

  ‘Don’t like Kit-Kats. Only Crème Eggs and Twixes.’

  The orange float sat motionless in the water.

  ‘Want these Rhubarb and Custards?’

  ‘Nope.’ Squelch stuffed the bag into his coat pocket. ‘Not partick’ly.’

  Whatever it was swooped so low, so close, over our heads, I could’ve brushed it with my fingertips if shock hadn’t curled me up on the bench. I didn’t see it for what it was at first. A glider…My brain grappled with the shape of the thing, a Concorde…a mutant angel falling to earth…

  A swan slid down its slope of air to meet its reflection.

  A swan’s reflection slid up its slope of lake to meet the swan.

  Just before impact, the giant bird splayed open its wings and its webby feet pedaloed cartoonishly. It hung there, then crashed in a belly-flop of water. Ducks heckled the swan, but a swan only notices what it wishes to. She bent and unbent her neck exactly like Dad does after a very long drive.

  If swans weren’t real myths’d make them up.

  I uncurled myself from panic position. Squelch hadn’t even flinched.

  The orange float bobbed on the riplets and cross-riplets.

  ‘Sorry, Mervyn,’ I told Squelch. ‘You were right.’

  You’re never sure where Squelch is looking.

  The wild bushes that’d muffled the House in the Woods’d been sawn back to size. Naked white branches lay in a neat pile on a lawn not used to the light. The front door stood half open and a power tool was being used inside. It fell quiet. Nottingham Forest were playing West Bromich Albion on a paint-spattered tranny. Loud hammering broke out.

  The garden path’d been hacked clear. ‘Hello?’

  More hammering.

  ‘Hello?’

  Down the hall, a builder my dad’s age but musclier had a sledgehammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. ‘Help you with anything, son?’

  ‘I…don’t want to, uh…bother you.’

  The builder made a Hang on a mo gesture and switched off the radio.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Nah worries. Cloughie’s mob are flamin’ stuffin’ us. It’s damagin’ me ears.’ His accent could’ve come from another planet. ‘I could use a breather anyhow. Puttin’ in damp courses is a killer. I must be stark raving mad doin’ it meself.’ He sat on the bottom stair, opened his Thermos flask and poured some coffee. ‘What can I do for you, anyhow?’

  ‘There’s…does an old woman live here?’

  ‘Me mother-in-law? Mrs Gretton?’

  ‘Quite old. Black clothes. White hair.’

  ‘That’s her. The grandmother from the Addams Family.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘She’s moved into our granny flat, jus
t across the way. You know her, do you?’

  ‘I’ (Hangman choked ‘know’) ‘expect this’ll sound weird, but one year ago, I hurt my ankle. When the lake in the woods froze over. It was late. I sort of hobbled up to here from the lake, and knocked on her door—’

  ‘So that was you?’ The builder’s face lit up with surprise. ‘She fixed you up with a whatchamagooey, a poultice, right?’

  ‘That’s right. It really worked.’

  ‘I’ll say it works! She did me wrist a couple of years back. Miraculous, it was. But the wife and I were sure she’d made you up.’

  ‘Made me up?’

  ‘Even before her stroke, she was a little…away with the fairies, like. We thought you were one of her,’ he did a horror-film voice, ‘drowned boys, like, from the lake.’

  ‘Oh. Well. She’d fallen asleep by the time I left—’

  ‘Just like her, that is! Bet she locked you in, an’ all?’

  ‘Actually, she did, so I never thanked her for fixing my ankle.’

  ‘Tell her now, if you want.’ The builder sort of vaccuumed up his coffee so it didn’t burn his lips. ‘No guarantees she’ll remember you, or speak, but she’s having quite a good day. See that yellow building, out the back, just through them trees? That’s us.’

  ‘But…I thought this place was…miles from anywhere.’

  ‘Here? Nah! Just between Pig Lane and the quarry. Where the gypsies camp in the autumn. This whole wood’s only a few acres, y’know. Two or three footy pitches, tops. Hardly Amazonia. Hardly Sherwood Forest.’

  ‘There’s this kid, Ross Wilcox, in the village. He was one of those kids on the ice, last year, when you found me, just outside your house…’

  Very old faces go muppety and sexless and their skin goes see-through.

  A thermostat clicked on and a heater starting humming.

  ‘There, there,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘there, there…’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone this. Not even Dean, my best mate.’

  The yellow room smelt of crumpets, crypts and carpet.

  ‘At the Goose Fair last November, I found Wilcox’s wallet. With loads of money in it. I mean, loads. I knew it was his ’cause it had his photo. You’ve got to understand that Wilcox was picking on me, all last year. A lot of it was…pretty evil stuff. Sadistic. So I kept it.’

  ‘So it goes,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘so it goes…’

  ‘Wilcox was frantic. But the money was his dad’s and his dad’s a total psycho. ’Cause he was so scared about that, Wilcox had a bust-up with his girlfriend. ’Cause of that, his girlfriend got off with Grant Burch. ’Cause of that, Ross Wilcox nicked Grant Burch’s motorbike. Well, his brother’s. Tore off on it, skidded at the crossroads. Lost’ – this could only be whispered – ‘half his leg. His leg. You see? It’s my fault. If I’d just…given him back his wallet, he’d be walking. Hobbling up to your old house over there on a sprained ankle last year was bad enough. But Ross Wilcox…his leg stops at this…stump.’

  ‘Time for bed,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘time for bed…’

  The window had a view of the yard and the house where Joe the builder lives with his family. A crocodilish dog waddled by, holding a giant red bra in its grinny mouth.

  ‘Ziggy! Ziggy!’ A puffing, angry giantess ran after. ‘Get back ’ere!’

  ‘Ziggy! Ziggy!’ Two little kids ran after the giantess. ‘Get back ’ere!’

  Was there a sharp Mrs Gretton inside the senile Mrs Gretton, listening to me, judging me?

  ‘I sometimes want to stick a javelin through my temples, just so I can stop thinking about how guilty I am. But then I think, well, if Wilcox hadn’t been such a git, I would’ve handed it over. If it was anyone else’s, ’cept Neal Brose maybe, it’d’ve been like, “Hey, you idiot, you dropped this.” Like a shot. So…it’s Wilcox’s fault too, isn’t it? And if consequences of consequences of consequences of what you do’re your fault too, you’d never leave your house, right? So Ross Wilcox losing his leg isn’t my fault. But it is. But it isn’t. But it is.’

  ‘Full up to here,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘full up to here…’

  The giantess’d got one end of her bra. Ziggy’d got the other.

  The two little kids shrieked with bliss.

  I hadn’t stammered once, the whole time I’d been talking to Mrs Gretton. S’pose it isn’t Hangman who causes it? S’pose it’s the other person? The other person’s expectations. S’pose that’s why I can read aloud in an empty room, perfectly, or to a horse, or a dog, or myself? (Or Mrs Gretton, who might’ve been listening to a voice but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.) S’pose there’s a time fuse lit when it’s a human listening, like a stick of Tom and Jerry dynamite? S’pose if you don’t get the word out before this fuse is burnt away, a couple of seconds, say, the dynamite goes off? S’pose what triggers the stammer’s the stress of hearing that fuse going ssssssss? S’pose you could make that fuse infinitely long, so that the dynamite’d never go off? How?

  By honestly not caring how long the other person’ll have to wait for me. Two seconds? Two minutes? No, two years. Sitting in Mrs Gretton’s yellow room it seemed so obvious. If I can reach this state of not caring, Hangman’ll remove his finger from my lips.

  A thermostat clicked off and a heater stopped humming.

  ‘Took for ever,’ Mrs Gretton murmured, ‘took for ever.’

  Joe the builder knocked at the door frame. ‘Getting on okay?’

  A black-and-white photo of a submarine in an icy port hung by my coat. The crew all stood on deck, saluting. Old photographs always go with old people. I zipped up my black parka. ‘That’s her brother, Lou,’ said Joe. ‘Front row, far right.’ Joe placed his chipped fingernail by a face. ‘That’s him.’ Lou was little more than a shadow cast by a nose.

  ‘A brother?’ That was familiar. ‘Mrs Gretton talked about how I mustn’t wake her brother.’

  ‘What, just now?’

  ‘No, last January.’

  ‘Not much hope of waking Lou. German destroyer sank his sub in 1941, off the Orkneys. She,’ Joe nodded back at Mrs Gretton, ‘never really got over it, poor love.’

  ‘God. Must’ve been terrible.’

  ‘War.’ Joe said it like it answered most questions. ‘War.’

  The young submariner was sinking into blank white.

  Through Lou’s eyes, mind, we’re the ones sinking.

  ‘I should be off.’

  ‘Rightio. And I’ve got a damp course to get back to.’

  The path back to the House in the Woods crunched underfoot. I picked up a perfect pine cone. Coming-soon snow’d shuttered up the sky. ‘Where are you from, Joe?’

  ‘Me? Can you not tell from how I speak?’

  ‘I know it’s not Worcestershire, but—’

  He turned his accent up to its maximum. ‘“I’m a Brummie, our kid.”’

  ‘A Brummie?’

  ‘Aye. If you’re from Brum, you’re a Brummie. Brum’s Birmingham.’

  ‘So that’s what a Brummie is.’

  ‘Another of life’s great mysteries,’ Joe waved goodbye with a pair of storky pliers, ‘unveiled.’

  ‘DEAD!’

  Or that’s what it sounded like. But who’d shout that word in a wood, and why? Had it been ‘Dave’? Or ‘Dad’? Just where the faint path from the House in the Woods meets the path to the lake, footsteps came pounding my way. Between a pair of wishbone pines I squeezed myself out of sight.

  The word arrowed through the trees, much nearer. ‘DEAD!’

  Seconds later Grant Burch flew by at full pelt. He wasn’t the shouter. Terror’d turned him pale. Who could’ve scared Grant Burch like that? Ross Wilcox’s dad the mechanic? Or Pluto Noak? He’d gone before I could even think of asking him.

  ‘YOU’RE DEAD, BURCH!’

  Philip Phelps crashed round the bend, just twenty paces after Grant Burch. Not any Philip Phelps I’ve ever seen, mind. This Philip Phelps was cracked and crimson with a pure rage t
hat’d only be calmed by Grant Burch’s broken body limp in its claws.

  ‘DEEEAAAAAAD!!!’

  Philip Phelps’s got bigger in the last few months. I’d never noticed till I saw him roar by my hiding place.

  Soon the boys and the fury were swallowed up by the wood.

  How Grant Burch pushed docile Philip Phelps over the edge, I’ll never learn. That was the last time I’ll ever clap eyes on them.

  The world’s a headmaster who works on your faults. I don’t mean in a mystical or a Jesus way. More how you’ll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that’s wrong with us, if we’re too selfish or too Yes, Sir, No, Sir Three Bags Full, Sir or too anything, that’s a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault for ever, or one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step, and think Hey, life isn’t such a shit-house after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.

  There are always more.

  My OXO tin’s hidden under a loose floorboard where my bed was. I got it out for the final time and sat on my window sill. If the ravens leave the Tower of London the tower’ll fall, Miss Throckmorton told us. This OXO tin is the secret raven of 9 Kingfisher Meadows, Black Swan Green, Worcestershire. (The house won’t actually fall but a new family’ll move in and a new kid’ll claim this room as his own and never, once, think about me. Just as I’ve never once thought about who was here before us.) In the Second World War this same OXO tin went to Singapore and back with my granddad. I used to press my ear against it and listen for Chinese rickshaw pullers or Japanese Zeros or a monsoon puffing away a village on stilts. Its lid’s so tight it guffs when you open it. Granddad kept letters in it, and loose tobacco. Inside it now there’s an ammonite called Lytoceras fimbriatum, a geologist’s little hammer that used to be Dad’s, the sponge bit of my only ever cigarette, Le Grand Meaulnes in French (with Madame Crommelynck’s Christmas card from a mountain town in Patagonia not in The Times Atlas of the World, signed Mme. Crommelynck and Her Butler), Jimmy Carter’s concrete nose, a face carved out of tyre rubber, a woven wristband I nicked off the first girl I ever kissed, and the remains of an Omega Seamaster my granddad bought in Aden before I was born. Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.