Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘It’s all right.’ Debby Crombie shuffled her lavender dress on and hugged Tom Yew like a mother. ‘Darling, you’re trembling! Put some clothes on. It’s all right now.’

  ‘Debs, I’m sorry.’ His voice was crumpled. ‘Must’ve scared you.’

  She spread his shirt over his shoulders. ‘What was it, Tom?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, like hell it was nothing. Tell me!’

  ‘I was on the Coventry. There was enemy fire…’

  ‘Go on. Go on.’

  Tom Yew clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.

  ‘Go on, Tom!’

  ‘No more, Debs. It was too…too fucking real.’

  ‘But Tom. I love you. I want to know.’

  ‘Yeah, and I love you too much to tell you and that’s that. C’mon on. Let’s get back to the village. Before some kid sees us.’

  Cauliflowers grew in neat rows between pointy ridges. I was halfway across when the planes came roaring, demolishing the sky over the Severn Valley. Tornados fly over our school several times a day, so I was ready to cover my ears with my hands. But I wasn’t ready for three Hawker Harrier Jump Jets, close enough to the ground to hit with a cricket ball. The slam of noise was incredible! I bent into a tight ball and peeped out. The Harriers curved before they smashed into the Malverns, just, and flew off towards Birmingham, screaming under Soviet radar height. When World War III comes, it’ll be MiGs stationed in Warsaw or East Germany screaming under NATO radar. Dropping bombs on people like us. On English cities, towns and villages like Worcester, Malvern and Black Swan Green.

  Dresden, the Blitz and Nagasaki.

  I stayed curled up till the roar of the Harriers finally sank under the hum of distant cars and nearby trees. The earth’s a door, if you press your ear against it. Mrs Thatcher was on TV yesterday talking to a bunch of schoolkids about cruise missiles. ‘The only way to stop a playground bully,’ she said, as sure of her truth as the blue of her eyes, ‘is to show to the bully that if he thumps you, then you can jolly well thump him back a lot harder!’

  But the threat of being thumped back never stopped Ross Wilcox and Grant Burch scrapping, did it?

  I brushed straw and dirt off me, and carried on walking till I came to an old-style bath tub in the corner of the next field. From all the hoofed-up mud, I guessed it was used as a feeding trough. In the tub a giant fertilizer bag was covering something. Curious, I pulled the fertilizer bag away.

  Here was the dirt-smeared corpse of a boy my age.

  This corpse then sat up and lunged at my throat.

  ‘AHSES TO ASHES!’ it gibbered. ‘DUST TO DUST!’

  One whole minute later, Dean Moran was still pissing his pants. ‘Should o’ seen yer face!’ he wheezed through his laughter. ‘Should o’ seen it!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, yet again. ‘Congratulations. You’re a genius.’

  ‘Looked like you cacked yer cacks!’

  ‘Yeah, Moran. You got me really well. Okay.’

  ‘Best April Fool I ever done!’

  ‘So why did you bugger off? I thought we were s’posed to be looking for the tunnel together?’

  Moran calmed down. ‘Ah, y’know…’

  ‘No. I don’t. Thought we had a deal.’

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you up,’ Moran said, awkwardly.

  This is about his dad, said Unborn Twin.

  Moran’d saved me from Gary Drake, so I let it go. ‘So are you still on for it? The tunnel? Or are you going to sneak off again on a solo run?’

  ‘I waited here for yer to catch us up, didn’t I?’

  The unused field had a scrubby rise hiding its far side. ‘You’ll never guess who I saw back there,’ I began telling Moran.

  Moran answered, ‘Dawn Madden, on a tractor.’

  Oh. ‘You saw her too?’

  ‘Flamin’ nutcase, is that girl. Made me climb up her tractor.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yeah! Made me arm-wrestle her. My Danish for her knife.’

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘I did! She’s only a girl! But then she took my Danish anyway. Told me to bugger off her stepfather’s land or she’d get him to turn his shotgun on me. Flamin’ nutcase, that girl.’

  Say if you hunt for Christmas presents in mid-December, find what you’re hoping to get, but then on Christmas Day there’s no sign of it in your pillowcase. That’s how I felt. ‘Well, I saw something better than Dawn Madden on a tractor, any day of the week.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Tom Yew and Debby Crombie.’

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ Moran’s got toothy gaps. ‘She got her tits out?’

  ‘Well—’

  The chain of gossip laid itself out link by link. I’d tell Moran. Moran’d tell his sister Kelly. Kelly’d tell Pete Redmarley’s sister Ruth. Ruth Redmarley’d tell Pete Redmarley. Pete Redmarley’d tell Nick Yew. Nick Yew’d tell Tom Yew. Tom Yew’d come round to my house this evening on his Suzuki 150cc, tie me in a sack, and drown me in the lake in the woods.

  ‘“Well” what?’

  ‘Actually, they just snogged.’

  ‘Should’ve sticked around, yer should’ve.’ Moran performed his tongue-up-his-nostril trick. ‘Might’ve seen a bit o’ crump.’

  Bluebells swarmed in pools of light where the sun got through the trees. The air smelt of them. Wild garlic smelt of toasted phlegm. Blackbirds sang like they’d die if they didn’t. Birdsong’s the thoughts of a wood. Beautiful, it was, but boys aren’t allowed to say ‘beautiful’ ’cause it’s the gayest word going. The bridlepath narrowed to single file. I let Moran go ahead as a body shield. (I didn’t read Warlord for all those years without learning something about survival techniques.) So when Moran suddenly stopped I walked smack into him.

  Moran had his finger on his lip. Here was a pruney man in a turquoise smock, about twenty paces up the bridlepath. The pruney man gazed up from the bottom of a well of brightness and buzzing that, we saw, was made of bees.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Moran.

  Praying, I nearly said. ‘No idea.’

  ‘A wild hive,’ Moran whispered, ‘above him. On that oak. See it?’

  I didn’t. ‘Is he a beekeeper, d’you reckon?’

  Moran didn’t answer at first. The bee man didn’t have a beekeeper’s mask, though bees coated his smock and face. Just watching made my skin itch and twitch. His scalp’d been shaved and had sort of socket-scars. His torn shoes were more like slippers. ‘Dunno. Think we can get past him?’

  ‘S’pose,’ I remembered a horror film about bees, ‘they swarm?’

  This half-path snaked off the bridlepath right where we were. Moran and I both had the same idea. Moran went first, which isn’t as brave as it looks when the danger’s behind you. And after a couple of twists and turns he spun around, anxious, and hissed, ‘Listen!’

  Bees? Footsteps? Growing louder?

  Definitely!

  We ran for our lives, crashing through wave after wave of waxy leaves and clawed holly. The rooty ground rocked and tilted and rose and fell.

  In a boggy pocket smothered by drapes of ivy and mistletoe, me and Moran collapsed, too knackered to take another step. I didn’t like it there. A strangler’d take someone there to strangle and bury, it was that sort of edgy hollow. Me and Moran listened for sounds of pursuit. It’s hard to hold your breath when you’ve got a stitch.

  But the bees weren’t following us. Neither was the bee man.

  Maybe it’d just been the wood, scaring us for its own amusement.

  Moran snorted the phlegm back from his nose and swallowed it. ‘Reckon we lost him.’

  ‘Reckon so. But where’s the bridlepath gone?’

  Squeezing through a missing slat in a mossy fence, we found ourselves at the bottom of a lumpy lawn. Molehills mounded up here and there. A big, silent mansion with turrety things watched us from the top of the slope. A peardrop sun dissolved in a sloped pond. Superheated flies grand-prixed over the wa
ter. Trees at the height of their blossom bubbled dark cream by a rotted bandstand. On a sort of terrace running round the mansion were jugs of lemon and orange squash just left there, on trestle tables. As we watched, the breeze flicked over a leaning tower of paper cups. Some bowled across the lawn in our direction. Not a soul moved.

  Not a soul.

  ‘God,’ I said to Moran, ‘I’d die for a cup of that squash.’

  ‘Me too. Must be a spring fête or somethin’.’

  ‘Yeah, but where’re all the people?’ My mouth was salty and crusted as crisps. ‘It can’t’ve started yet. Let’s just go and help ourselves. If someone sees us we can act like we were going to pay. It’ll only be two pence or five pence.’

  Moran didn’t like the plan either. ‘Okay.’

  But we were so parched. ‘Come on, then.’

  Druggy pom-pom bees hovered in the lavender.

  ‘Quiet, ain’t it?’ Moran’s murmur was too loud.

  ‘Yeah.’ Where were the fête stalls? The spinning wheel to win Pomagne? The eggshell-in-sand-tray treasure hunt? The lob-the-pingpong-ball-into-the-wineglass stall?

  Up close, the mansion windows showed us nothing but ourselves in the mirrored garden. The jug of orange squash had ants drowning so Moran held the paper cups while I poured the lemon. The jug weighed a ton and its ice cubes clinked. It freezed my hands. There’re tons of stories where bad things happen to strangers who help themselves to food and drink.

  ‘Cheers.’ Moran and I pretended to clink our cups before we drank.

  The squash turned my mouth cold and wet as December and my body went, Ah.

  The mansion cracked its sides open and men and women spilt through the doors after their own babble. Already our escape route was being cut off. Most of the mansion were dressed in turquoise smocks, same as the bee man. Some crunched-up ones were being pushed in wheelchairs by nurses in nurse uniforms. Others moved by themselves, but jerkily, like broken robots.

  With a shudder of horror, I got it.

  ‘Little Malvern Loonybin!’ I hissed at Moran.

  But Moran wasn’t next to me. I just glimpsed him, across the lawn, as he squeezed back through the missing slat. Maybe he thought I was right behind him, or maybe he’d left me in the lurch. But if I tried to scarper and got caught, it’d mean we’d nicked the squash. Mum and Dad’d be told I was a thief. Even if I didn’t get caught, they might send men with dogs after us.

  So I had no choice. I had to stay to find someone to pay.

  ‘Augustin Moans has run away!’ A nurse with broomy hair ran slap bang into me. ‘The soup was piping hot, but he couldn’t be found!’

  ‘Are you talking about,’ I swallowed, ‘the man in the woods? The man with the bees? He’s over there,’ I gestured in the right direction, ‘back on the bridlepath. I can show you if you want.’

  ‘Augustin Moans!’ Now she looked at me properly. ‘How could you?’

  ‘No, you’re mistaking me for someone else. My’ (Hangman stopped me saying ‘name’) ‘I’m called Jason.’

  ‘Do you think I’m one of the crazy ones? I know exactly who you are! You, who ran off on your infantile quest, the very day after our wedding! For that idiot Ganache! For a playground promise! You swore you’d loved me! But then you hear an owl hoot in the firs so off you go, leaving me with child and – and – and—’

  I backed off. ‘I can pay for the squash, if…’

  ‘No you don’t! Look!’ This nightmarish nurse clasped my arm, tight. ‘Consequences!’ The woman shoved her wrist in my face. ‘Consequences!’ Hideous scars, really hideous scars, criss-crossed the veins. ‘Is this love? Is this cherish, honour and obey?’ Her words spattered spittle on my face so I shut my eyes and looked away. ‘What – gave – you – the right – to inflict this – on anyone?’

  ‘Rosemary!’ Another nurse walked up. ‘Rosemary! I’ve told you about borrowing our uniforms a hundred times if I’ve told you once, haven’t I?’ She had a reassuring Scottish accent. ‘Haven’t I?’ She gave me a calm nod. ‘He’s a bit young for you, Rosemary, and I doubt he’s on our official guest list.’

  ‘And I’ve told you,’ Rosemary snapped, ‘ten thousand times if I’ve told you never. My name is Yvonne! I am Yvonne de Galais!’ This real live lunatic of Little Malvern Towers turned back to me. ‘Listen to me.’ Rosemary’s breath was Dettol and lamb. ‘There’s no such thing as something! Why? Because everything’s already turning into something else!’

  ‘Come on now,’ the real nurse coaxed Rosemary like you’d coax a scared horse. ‘Let the laddie loose now, shall we? Or shall we have to call the big fellas? Shall we, Rosemary?’

  I don’t know what I expected to happen next, but it wasn’t this. Up wells a wail from inside Rosemary, cracking her jaw open, wider and louder than any human cry I’ve ever heard ever, rising like a police siren, but much slower and so much sadder. Instantly, every nutter, nurse and doctor on the lawn stands still, turned into statues. Rosemary’s wail climbs blastier, scorchier, lonelier. People’ll be hearing it a mile away, two miles most like. Who is she howling for? For Grant Burch and his broken wrist. For Mr Castle’s wife and her huddled Nerves. For Moran’s dad on his poison bender. For that borstal kid Badger fed to his dogs. For Squelch, who came out of his mum too soon. For the bluebells the summer’ll demolish. And even if you’d torn through massy brambles, clawed loose crumbly bricks and’d clambered into the lost tunnel, in that booming hollowness, deep beneath the Malvern Hills, even there, for sure, this tail-chasing wail’d find you, absolutely, even there.

  Rocks

  Nobody can believe it.

  The newspapers weren’t allowed to say which of our warships’d been hit at first, ’cause of the Official Secrets Act. But now it’s on BBC and ITV. HMS Sheffield. An Exocet missile from a Super Étendard smashed into the frigate and ‘caused an unconfirmed number of serious explosions’. Mum, Dad, Julia and me all sat in the living room together (for the first time in ages), watching the box in silence. There was no film of a battle. Just a mucky photo of the ship belching smoke while Brian Hanrahan described how survivors were rescued by HMS Arrow or Sea King helicopters. The Sheffield hasn’t sunk yet but in the South Atlantic winter it’s just a matter of time. Forty of our men are still missing, and at least that many’re badly burnt. We keep thinking about Tom Yew on HMS Coventry. Terrible to admit it, but everyone in Black Swan Green felt relief that it was only the Sheffield. This is horrible. Till today, the Falklands’s been like the World Cup. Argentina’s got a strong football team, but in army terms they’re only a corned-beef republic. Just watching the task force leave Plymouth and Portsmouth three weeks ago it was obvious, Great Britain was going to thrash them. Brass bands on the quayside and women waving and a hundred thousand yachts and honkers and arcs of water from the fire-ships. We had the HMS Hermes, HMS Invincible, HMS Illustrious, the SAS, the SBS. Pumas, Rapiers, Sidewinders, Lynxes, Sea Skuas, Tigerfish torpedoes, Admiral Sandy Woodward. The Argie ships are tubs named after Spanish generals with stupid moustaches. Alexander Haig couldn’t admit it in public in case the Soviet Union sided with Argentina, but even Ronald Reagan was on our side.

  But now, we might actually lose.

  Our Foreign Office’ve been trying to restart negotiations, but the junta are telling us to get stuffed. We’ll run out of ships before they run out of Exocets. That’s what they’re gambling on. Who’s to say they’re wrong? Outside Leopoldo Galtieri’s palace in Buenos Aires, thousands of people are chanting, ‘We feel your greatness!’ over and over. The noise is stopping me sleeping. Galtieri stands on the balcony and breathes it in. Some young men jeered at our cameras. ‘Give up! Go home! England is sick! England is dying! History says the Malvinas are Argentina’s!’

  ‘Pack of hyenas,’ Dad remarked. ‘The British’d show a bit of decorum. People have been killed, for heaven’s sake! That’s the difference between us. Will you just look at them!’

  Dad went to bed. He’s sleeping in the spare room at t
he moment, ’cause of his back, though Mum told me it’s ’cause he tosses and turns so much. It’s probably both. They had a right barney this evening, actually over the dinner table. With me and Julia both there.

  ‘I’ve been thinking—’ Mum began.

  ‘Steady now,’ Dad interrupted, jokily, like he used to.

  ‘—now’s rather a good time to build that rockery.’

  ‘That whattery?’

  ‘The rockery, Michael.’

  ‘You’ve already got your shiny new Lorenzo Hussingtree kitchen.’ Dad used his Be reasonable voice. ‘Why do you need a mound of dirt with rocks on?’

  ‘Nobody’s talking about a mound of dirt. Rockeries are made of rocks. And a water feature, I was thinking of.’

  ‘What,’ Dad did a fake laugh, ‘is a “water feature” when it’s at home?’

  ‘An ornamental pond. A fountain or miniature cascade, perhaps.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dad made a Fancy that noise.

  ‘We’ve been talking about doing something with that scrap of ground by the roses for years, Michael.’

  ‘You might have. I haven’t.’

  ‘No, we discussed it before Christmas. You said, “Next year maybe.” Like the year before, and the year before. Besides, you said yourself how nice Brian’s rockery looks.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last autumn. And Alice said, “A rockery would look enchanting in your back garden,” and you agreed.’

  ‘Your mother,’ Dad said to Julia, ‘is a human Dictaphone.’

  Julia refused to be enlisted.

  Dad took a gulp of water. ‘Whatever I said to Alice, I didn’t mean it. I was being polite.’

  ‘Pity you can’t extend the same courtesy to your wife.’

  Julia and me looked at each other.

  ‘What sort of scale,’ Dad piled peas on his fork, wearily, ‘do we have in mind? A life-sized model of the Lake District?’

  Mum reached for a magazine on the dresser. ‘Something like this…’