Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  Three horses, I made out. One tossed its head, one snorted, one stared at me. I hurried on. If a bridlepath goes through a farmyard it can’t be private but farmyards definitely don’t feel public. I’m afraid of hearing Trespasser! I’m going to give you a prosecutin’ you’ll never forget! (I used to think trespassing was about Heaven and Hell, because of the Lord’s Prayer.)

  So anyway, over the next gate was this medium-sized field. A John Deere tractor was ploughing it into slimy furrows. Seagulls hovered behind the plough, plucking easy fat worms. I hid till the tractor was headed away from the bridlepath.

  Then I began legging it across, like an SAS agent.

  ‘TAYLOR!’

  I’d got noosed before I’d even reached a sprint.

  Dawn Madden sat in the cockpit of an ancient tractor, whittling a stick. She wore a bomber jacket and mud-starred Doc Martens with red laces.

  I steadied my breath. ‘All right’ (I meant to call her ‘Madden’ ’cause she’d called me ‘Taylor’) ‘Dawn.’

  ‘Where’s,’ her knife shaved stringy loops of wood, ‘the fire?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Dawn Madden mimicked my Huh? ‘Why’re you running?’

  Her oil-black hair’s sort of punky. She must use gel. I’d love to gel her gel in for her. ‘I like to run. Sometimes. Just because.’

  ‘Oh, aye? And what brings you so far up the bridlepath, then?’

  ‘No reason. I’m just out. For a doss.’

  ‘Then,’ she pointed to the bonnet of the tractor, ‘you can doss there.’

  I badly wanted to obey her. ‘Why?’ I badly didn’t want to obey her.

  Her lipstick was Fruit Gum redcurrant. ‘’Cause I’m telling you to.’

  ‘So,’ I scrambled up the front tyre, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘I do live here, y’know.’

  The wet bonnet of the tractor made my arse wet. ‘That farmhouse? Back there?’

  Dawn Madden unzipped her bomber jacket. ‘That farmhouse. Back there.’ Her crucifix was chunky and black like a Goth’s and nestled between her subtle breasts.

  ‘Thought you lived in that house by the pub.’

  ‘Used to. Too noisy. And Isaac Pye, the landlord, he’s a total slimeball. Not that he,’ Dawn Madden nodded at the tractor ploughing the field, ‘is much of an improvement.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Official stepfather. That house is his house. Don’t you know anything, Taylor? Mum and I live there now. They got married last year.’

  Actually now I remembered. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Brains of a bull.’ She peered at me round an invisible curtain. ‘Not only the brains, judging by the racket they make some nights.’ Stewy air stroked Dawn Madden’s milk-chocolate throat.

  ‘Are those ponies in the stable yours?’

  ‘Have a good snoop round, did we?’

  Her stepfather’s tractor was heading back this way.

  ‘I only looked into the stable. Honest.’

  She got back to her knife and stick. ‘Horses cost a fortune to keep.’ Whittle, whittle, whittle. ‘That man’s letting the riding school keep them there while they’re doing some rebuilding. Anything else you want to know?’

  Oh, five hundred things. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘An arrow.’

  ‘What do you want an arrow for?’

  ‘To go with my bow.’

  ‘What do you want a bow and arrow for?’

  ‘What-what-what, what-what-what-what?’ (For one horrifying moment I thought she was taking the piss out of my stammer but I think it was more general.) ‘All questions with you, ain’t it, Taylor? My bow and arrow’s to hunt boys and kill them. The world’s better off without them. Spurty scum, that’s what little boys are made of.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Can I see your knife?’

  Dawn Madden tossed her knife, right at me. It was sheer fluke that it was the blade’s handle that hit my rib and not its fang.

  ‘Madden!’

  Her stare said What? Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey.

  ‘That could’ve stuck right into me!’

  Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey. ‘Oh, poor Taylor.’

  The clackering tractor reached us and began a slow turn. Dawn Madden’s stepfather beamed hate-rays my way. Rusty earth sluiced round the blades of the plough.

  Dawn Madden did a spazzo yokel voice at the tractor. ‘“Made o’ moy flesh an’ blood or not, young missy, we’re going to have more respect in this ’ouse or you’ll be out on your bony arse an’ don’t you go thinkin’ Oi’m bluffin’ yer ’cause I never bluff no one!”’

  Her knife’s handle was warm and sticky from her grip. The blade was sharp enough to hack off a limb. ‘Nice knife.’

  Dawn Madden asked, ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘Picky.’ Dawn Madden unpeeled a squashed Danish pastry from a paper bag. ‘Won’t turn your snout up at a bit of this, though, right?’ The girl tore a bit off and waved it at me.

  Its icing glistened. ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘Here, Taylor! Here, doggy! Come! Good boy!’

  I crawled over the bonnet towards her, on all fours. Not doggily, but carefully, in case she swatted me into the nettles. You never know with Dawn Madden. As she leant towards me I saw the bumplets of her nipples. No bra. My hand moved towards her.

  ‘Paws down! In your teeth, doggy!’

  She fed me like that. Arrow to mouth.

  Lemony icing, cinnamony dough, raisins sweet and sharp.

  Dawn Madden ate too. I saw the cud pulp on her tongue. Closer now, on her crucifix I saw a skinny Jesus. Jesus’d be warmed by her body. Lucky guy. Pretty soon the Danish was all gone. Delicately, she spiked the cherry on the tip of her arrow. Delicately, I lifted it off with my teeth.

  The sun went in.

  ‘Taylor!’ Dawn Madden peered at her arrow’s tip. Her voice went furious. ‘You stole my cherry!’

  It stuck in my throat. ‘You…gave it me.’

  ‘You stole my fucking cherry and now you’ve got to pay for it!’

  ‘Dawn, you—’

  ‘Since when’ve you been allowed to call me Dawn?’

  The same game, a different game, or no game?

  She pricked my Adam’s apple with her arrow. Dawn Madden leaned in so close I could smell the sugar on her breath. ‘Do I look like I’m joking, Jason Taylor?’

  That arrow was really sharp. I probably could’ve swatted it off before she could puncture my windpipe. Probably. But it wasn’t that simple. For one thing, I had a boner as big as a Dobermann.

  ‘You’ve got to pay for what you’ve taken. That’s the law.’

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Then think hard, Taylor. How else can you pay me?’

  ‘I—’ One dimple. Tiny hairs velvet the groove above her lip. Imp’s nose. Petalled lips. Hook smile. A reflected pair of me looking out from her bad-doe eyes. ‘I…I’ve got a pack of fruit Polos in my pocket. But they’re all glued together. You’d have to smash them with a rock.’

  A spell broke. The arrow fell from my throat.

  Dawn Madden climbed back into the tractor’s driving seat, bored.

  ‘What?’

  Her answer was this disgusted gaze like I’d turned into a pair of flares on a reject rack in Tewkesbury Market.

  I wanted the arrow back, now. ‘What?’

  ‘If you’re not off our land by the time I count to twenty,’ Dawn Madden crumpled a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint into her beautiful mouth, ‘I’ll tell my stepfather you groped me. If you’re not off by the time I count to thirty, I’ll tell him you,’ her tongue licked the word, ‘touched me up. Swear to God.’

  ‘But I never touched you!’

  ‘My stepfather keeps a shotgun above the kitchen dresser. He might mistake you for a wickle fwuffy wabbit, Taylor. One – two – three—’

  The bridlepath wand
ered into this once-upon-a-time orchard. Brittle thistles and fluffy grass’d grown elbow high so you waded rather than walked. I was still thinking about Dawn Madden. I didn’t understand. She must sort of fancy me. She wouldn’t’ve given her only Danish pastry to just any kid who happened along. And I sure as hell fancied Dawn Madden. Fancying girls’s dangerous, though. Not dangerous, but not simple. It can be dangerous. Kids at school rip the piss out of you, at first. ‘Ooh, a baby’s on its way,’ they say, if they see you holding hands in the corridor. Boys who fancy the girl might pick a scrap with you to show her she’s going out with a squirt. Then, once you’re an official couple like Lee Biggs and Michelle Tirley, you’ve got to endure her friends writing both your initials plus ‘4 EVER’ in arrowed hearts all over their rough books. Teachers join in. When Mr Whitlock was doing hermaphroditic reproduction in worms last term, he called one worm ‘Worm Lee’ and the other ‘Worm Michelle’. Us boys thought it was a bit funny but the girls screamed with laughter like the TV audience on Happy Days. ’Cept for Michelle Tirley herself, who turned beetroot, hid her face in her hands and wept. Mr Whitlock took the piss out of her for that, too.

  There’re gaps between me and Dawn Madden. Kingfisher Meadows’s the poshest estate in Black Swan Green, most kids reckon. Her stepfather’s farmhouse is the opposite of posh. I’m in 2KM, the top class at school. She’s in 2LP, second from bottom. These gaps aren’t easy to ignore. There are rules.

  Then there’s sexual intercourse. You don’t do it in biology till the third year. A diagram in a textbook of an erect penis in a vagina is one thing, but actually doing it, that’s another. The only actual vagina I’ve seen was on a greasy photo Neal Brose charged us 5p to look at. It was a baby kangaroo-prawn in its mother’s hairy pouch. I almost vommed up my Mars Bar and Outer Spacers.

  I’ve never even kissed anyone.

  Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey.

  A conker tree’d erupted out of the earth and’d flexed out millions of strong arms and strong legs. Someone’d hung a tyre-swing off one bough. The tyre spun gently as the Earth spun under it. Rainwater’d pooled inside but I tipped it out and had a go. Weightlessness orbiting Alpha Centauri’d be best, but weightlessness on a swing isn’t bad. If Moran’d been there too it’d’ve been an ace laugh. After a bit I shimmied up the frayed rope to

  see how climbable the tree was. Once you were up, it was dead climbable. I even found the ruins of a tree house. Donkey’s yonks’d gone by since it’d seen active service, mind. Higher up, I crawled along a branch and peered out of the green bell. You could see for miles. Back towards Black Swan Green, Dawn Madden’s farm silos, a spiral staircase of smoke, the Christmas tree plantation, St Gabriel’s spire and its two nearly-as-tall redwoods.

  With my Swiss Army knife I carved this in the ribbly bark.

  The sap on my blade smelt green. Miss Throckmorton used to tell us that people who carve things on trees are the wickedest sorts of vandals ’cause they’re not only making graffiti, they’re hurting living beings too. Miss Throckmorton might be right but she can’t’ve ever been a thirteen-year-old boy who met a girl like Dawn Madden. One day, I thought, I’ll bring her up to show her this. I’d do my first kiss with her. Right here. She’d touch me. Right here.

  Round the other side of the conker tree, I looked at what lay up the bridlepath. A lane snaking to Marl Bank and Castlemorton, fields, more fields, a glimpse of an old grey turret rising above the firs. Line of pylons. You could pick out details on the Malvern Hills now. Sun flashed off cars on the Wells Road. Termite-sized walkers crossing Perserverance Hill. Underneath, somewhere, ran the third tunnel. I ate my block of Wensleydale and broken Jacobs crackers, wishing I’d brought some water. I climbed back to the tyre-swing rope and was just about to shimmy down when I heard a man’s voice and a woman’s voice.

  ‘See?’ Tom Yew, I recognized straight off. ‘Told you it was just a bit farther.’

  ‘Yeah, Tom,’ answered the woman, ‘about twenty times.’

  ‘You said you wanted somewhere private.’

  ‘I didn’t mean halfway to Wales.’ Now I saw Debby Crombie. Debby Crombie I’ve never spoken to, but Tom Yew’s Nick Yew’s older brother, on leave from the Royal Navy. I could’ve just called out ‘Hi!’ and come down the rope and it’d’ve been fine. But being invisible was fun. I retreated back along the bough to a fork in the trunk and waited till they’d gone.

  But they didn’t go. ‘This is it.’ Tom Yew stopped right by the swing. ‘The Yew Boys’ Very Own Horse Chestnut Tree.’

  ‘Won’t there be ants and bees and things here?’

  ‘It’s called “nature”, Debs. You get it a lot in the countryside.’

  Debby Crombie unspread a rug in a dell between two roots.

  Even now I could’ve (should’ve) let them know I was there.

  I tried to. But before I’d worked out an excuse without a stammer-word, Tom Yew and Debby Crombie’d lain down on the rug and started snogging. His fingers undid the buttons up her lavender dress, one at a time, from her knees to her sunburnt neck.

  If I said anything now, I’d be dead meat.

  The conker tree swished, creaked and rocked.

  Debby Crombie stuck her finger into Tom Yew’s fly and murmured, ‘Hello, sailor.’ That made them giggle so much they had to stop snogging. Tom Yew reached for his backpack, got out two bottles of beer, and flipped off their caps with his Swiss Army knife. (Mine’s red. His is black.)

  They clinked bottles. Tom Yew said, ‘Here’s to…’

  ‘…me, gorgeous me.’

  ‘Me, wonderful me.’

  ‘I said it first.’

  ‘Okay. You.’

  They swigged their brown beery sunshine.

  ‘And,’ Debby Crombie added, seriously, ‘a safe tour of duty.’

  ‘’Course it’s safe, Debs! Five months cruising round the Adriatic, the Aegean, the Suez and the Gulf? Worst that’ll happen to me is sunburn.’

  ‘Ah, but once you’re on board the Coventry,’ Debby Crombie pouted, or pretended to, ‘you’ll forget all about your pining sweetheart back in boring old Worcestershire. You’ll go out on the razz in Athens and pick up VD from some floozy Greek temptress called…’

  ‘Called what?’

  ‘…Iannos.’

  ‘“Iannos” is a boy’s name. It’s Greek for “John”.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’d only find that out after he’d filled you full of ouzo and strapped you to his bed frame.’

  Tom Yew lay back grinning and looked up straight at me.

  Thank God he wasn’t looking at what he was looking at. Cobras can spot prey move from half a mile away. But if you don’t move a muscle, they can’t see you, even from five feet. It was that that saved me this afternoon.

  ‘Used to climb this very tree, y’know, when Nick was a wee nipper. One summer, we built a tree house. Wonder if it’s still up there…’

  Debby Crombie was already stroking his groin. ‘Nothing wee about this nipper, Thomas William Yew.’ Debby Crombie unpeeled Tom Yew’s Harley Davidson T-shirt and flung it away. His back’s glazed and muscly like Action Man’s. He’s got a blue swordfish tattooed on one shoulder.

  She squirmed out of her unbuttoned lavender dress.

  If Dawn Madden’s breasts were a pair of Danishes, Debby Crombie’s got two Space Hoppers. Each armed with a gribbly nipple. Tom Yew kissed them in turn and his saliva glistened in the April sun. I know watching was wrong but I couldn’t not. Tom Yew slipped off her red panties and stroked the cressy hair there.

  ‘If you want me to stop, Madam Crombie, you have to say now.’

  ‘Oooh, Master Yew,’ she croodled, ‘don’t you dare.’

  Tom Yew got on her and sort of jiggled there and she gasped like he was giving her a Chinese burn and wrapped her legs round him, froggily. Now he moved up and down, Man-from-Atlantisly. His silver chain jiggled on his neck.

  Now her grubby soles met like they were praying.

  Now his skin w
as glazed in roast pork sweat.

  Now she made a noise like a tortured Moomintroll.

  Now Tom Yew’s body jerkjerked judderily jackknifed and a noise like a ripping cable tore out of him. Once more, like he’d been booted in the balls.

  Her fingernails’d sunk salmony welts into his arse.

  Debby Crombie’s mouth made a perfect O.

  A chime from St Gabriel’s for one o’clock, or maybe two, eddied this far. Moran the Deserter’d be miles up the bridlepath by now. My only hope was if he got his leg caught in a rusty badger trap. He’d beg me to go and get help. I’d say, ‘Well, Moran, why don’t I think about it?’

  Debby Crombie and Tom Yew still hadn’t unglued themselves. She was just drowsing, but Tom Yew was snoring. A Red Admiral fluttered on to the small of his back to drink from the puddle of sweat there.

  I felt hungry and nervy and sick and jealous and sluggy and shamed and many things. Not proud and not pleased and not like I ever wanted to do that. The noises they’d made weren’t quite human. The breeze lullabied the conker tree and the conker tree lullabied me.

  ‘GaaaAAA!’ Tom Yew shouted. ‘FAAAAAAAAA!’

  Debby Crombie shrieked too. Her eyes were open and white.

  He’d jumped off her and’d fallen on to his side.

  ‘Tom! Tom! It’s okay it’s okay it’s OKAY!’

  ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.’

  ‘Darling! It’s Debs! It’s okay! It’s a nightmare! Only a nightmare!’

  Nuddy sunbaked Tom Yew shut his scared eyes, nodded that he understood, crouched against a tentacle-root and gripped his throat. That shout must’ve torn his vocal cords.