Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  But I had nothing to lose. The shaver tickled. On a scale of 0 to 10, 3.

  The shaver hurt a bit, too. On a scale of 0 to 10, 11 4.

  I panickily examined the results. My face did look different, but it’d be hard to put your finger on how, exactly.

  I ran my finger along where my fuzz’d been.

  Not even cold milk was so smooth.

  I accidentally flicked open the blade cover. Dad’s gritty stubble and my almost invisible fur snowed together on to the white porcelain sink.

  Lying on my chest, my front ribs sank into my back.

  Thirsty now, I needed a glass of water.

  I got a glass of water. Water in Lyme Regis tastes of paper. I couldn’t get to sleep on my side. My bladder’d ballooned.

  I took a long piss, wondering if girls’d like me more if I had more scars. (All I’ve got is a nick on my thumb where I was bitten by my cousin Nigel’s guinea pig when I was nine. My cousin Hugo said the guinea pig had myxomatosis and I’d die, in foaming agony, thinking I was a rabbit. I believed him. I even wrote a will. The scar’s nearly gone now but it bled like shook-up cherryade at the time.)

  Lying on my back, my back ribs pressed into my chest.

  Too hot, I took my pyjama top off.

  Too cool, I put my pyjama top on.

  The cinema’d be emptying after Chariots of Fire now. The lady with the torch’d be going up and down the aisles putting popcorn cones and Fruit Gum boxes and empty Malteser bags into a bin bag. Sally from Blackburn and her new boyfriend’d be stepping outside, saying what a great film it’d been, though they’d’ve been snogging and stroking each other all the way through. Sally’s boyfriend’d be saying, ‘Let’s go to a disco.’ Sally’d answer, ‘No. Let’s go to the camper van. The others won’t be back for a while.’

  That song by UB40 called ‘One In Ten’ thumped up through the bones of Hotel Excalibur.

  The moon’d dissolved my eyelids.

  Time’d turned to treacle.

  ‘Oh sod soddity sod it and sod Craig sodding Salt too, the sodding sod!’

  Dad’d fallen over the carpet.

  I didn’t let him know he’d woken me for two reasons: (a) I wasn’t ready to forgive him; (b) he was banging into things like a comedy drunk and pub fumes wafted off him and if he was going to bollock me for using his shaver, tomorrow morning’d be better. Dean Moran’s right. Seeing your Dad pissed’s dead disturbing.

  Dad made his way to the bathroom like he was in zero gravity. I heard him undo his zip. He tried to piss quietly on to the porcelain.

  Piss drummed on the bathroom floor.

  A wavery second later it chundered into the bog.

  The piss lasted forty-three seconds. (My record’s fifty-two.)

  He pulled out loads of bog paper to mop up the spillage.

  Then Dad switched on the shower and got in.

  Maybe a minute passed before I heard a ripping noise, a dozen plastic pings, a thump and a growly Sod it!

  I opened my eyes a slit and nearly yelled in fright.

  The bathroom door’d opened by itself. Dad stood with his head in a turban of shampoo wielding a broken shower-rail. Stark raving nuddy, he was, but right where my sack-and-acorn is, Dad’s got this wobbling chunky length of oxtail. Just hanging there!

  His pubes’re as thick as a buffalo’s beard! (I’ve only got nine.)

  The grossest sight I ever saw.

  Dad’s snorey skonks and flobberglobbers’re impossible to sleep through. No wonder my parents don’t sleep in the same bedroom. The shock of seeing Dad’s thing’s dying down now. A bit. But will I just wake up one morning and find that rope between my legs? It horrifies me to think that about fourteen years ago the spermatozoon that turned into me shot out of that.

  Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine? I’ve never even ejaculated, apart from in a dream of Dawn Madden. Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intricate loops? What’s she doing right now? What’s her name?

  Too much to think about.

  I s’pose Dad’ll have a hangover tomorrow morning.

  Today morning.

  Chances of us flying my kite on the beach at the crack of dawn?

  Big fat zero.

  ‘The wind blows north,’ Dad had to shout, ‘from Normandy, over the Channel, smacks into these cliffs and ally-oop, a thermal updraught! Perfect for kites!’

  ‘Perfect!’ I shouted too.

  ‘Breathe this air in deep, Jason! Good for your hayfever! Sea air’s chock full of ozone!’

  Dad hogged the kite spool so I took another warm jam doughnut.

  ‘Tonic for the troops, eh?’

  I smiled back. It’s epic being up at the crack of dawn. A red setter raced ghost-dogs through the bellyflopping waves on the shore. Shale pooed from the cliffs off towards Charmouth. Mucky clouds lidded the sunrise but today was bags windier and better for kite-flying.

  Dad shouted something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The kite! Its background blends into the clouds! Looks like it’s just the dragon flying up there! What a beaut you picked! I’ve worked out how to do a double loop!’ Dad had that smile you never see in photos. ‘She rules the skies!’ He edged a bit closer so he didn’t have to shout so much. ‘When I was your age, my dad’d take me out on Morecambe Bay of an afternoon – Grange-over-Sands – and we’d fly kites there. Made ’em ourselves in those days…Bamboo, wallpaper, string and milk-bottle tops for the tail…’

  ‘Will you show me’ (Hangman blocked ‘some time’) ‘one day?’

  ‘Course I will. Hey! Know how to send a kite-telegram?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Righto, hold her for a moment…’ Dad passed me the spool and got a Biro from his anorak. Then he got the square of gold paper from his cigarettes. He didn’t have anything to rest on so I knelt by him like a squire being knighted so he could rest on my back. ‘What message shall we send up?’

  ‘“Mum and Julia, Wish You Were Here”.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ Dad pressed hard so I felt the Biro trace each letter through my clothes and on to my back. ‘Up you get.’ Then Dad twizzled the gold paper round the kite string like a sandwich-bag fastener. ‘Wobble the line. That’s it. Up and down.’

  The telegram started sliding up the kite-string, against gravity. Pretty soon it was out of sight. But you knew the message’d get there.

  ‘Lytoceras fimbriatum.’

  I blinked at Dad, not knowing what on earth he’d said. We stepped apart to let the wheezy fossil-shop owner lug a signboard outside.

  ‘Lytoceras fimbriatum.’ Dad nodded at the spiral fossil in my hand. ‘Its Latin name. Ammonite family. You can tell by these close tight ribs it’s got, with these extra-fat ones every so often…’

  ‘You’re right!’ I checked the tiny writing on the shelf. ‘Ly-to-ce-ras—’

  ‘Fimbriatum. Fancy me being right.’

  ‘Since when did you know about fossils and Latin names?’

  ‘My dad was a bit of a rock-hound. He used to let me catalogue his specimens. But only if I learnt them properly. I’ve forgotten most of them now, of course, but my dad’s Lytoceras was enormous. It’s stuck in my memory.’

  ‘What’s a rock-hound?’

  ‘Amateur geologist. Most holidays, he’d find an excuse to go off fossil-hunting with a little hammer he kept. I think I’ve still got it somewhere. Some of the fossils he got in Cyprus and India are in Lancaster Museum, last time I looked.’

  ‘I never knew.’ The fossil fitted into my cupped hands. ‘Is it rare?’

  ‘Not especially. That one’s a nice one, though.’

  ‘How old is it?’

  ‘Hundred and fifty million years? A whippersnapper among ammonites, really. What say we buy it for you?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘Your first fossil, then. An educational so
uvenir.’

  Do spirals end? Or just get so tiny your eyes can’t follow any more?

  Seagulls strutted in the dustbins outside Cap’n Scallywag’s. I was walking along still staring into my ammonite when an elbow swung out of nowhere and knocked my head backwards on its hinge.

  ‘Jason!’ snapped Dad. ‘Look where you’re going!’

  My nose gonged with pain. I wanted to sneeze but couldn’t.

  The jogger rubbed his arm. ‘No permanent damage, Mike. The Red Cross chopper can stay on its helipad.’

  ‘Craig! Good God!’

  ‘Out for my morning fix, Mike. This human bumper car’s your handiwork, I take it?’

  ‘Right first time, Craig. That’s Jason, my youngest.’

  The only Craig Dad knows is Craig Salt. This tanned man matched what I’d heard. ‘If I’d been a truck, young fella-me-lad,’ he told me, ‘you’d be a pancake.’

  ‘Trucks aren’t allowed down here.’ My crushed nose made my voice honk. ‘It’s just for pedestrians.’

  ‘Jason,’ the Dad out here and the Dad in the fossil shop just weren’t the same person, ‘apologize to Mr Salt! If you’d tripped him you could’ve caused a serious injury.’

  Kick the wazzock’s shins, said Unborn Twin.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Salt.’ Wazzock.

  ‘I’ll forgive you, Jason, thousands wouldn’t. What’s this? Bit of a fossil-collector, are we? May I?’ Craig Salt just took my ammonite. ‘Nice little trilobite, that. Bit of worm damage on this side. But not too bad.’

  ‘It’s not a trilobite. It’s a Ly-to—’ (Hangman blocked ‘Lytoceras’ in mid-word.) ‘It’s a type of ammonite, isn’t it, Dad?’

  Dad wasn’t meeting my eyes. ‘If Mr Salt’s sure, Jason—’

  ‘Mr Salt,’ Craig Salt plopped my ammonite back, ‘is sure.’

  Dad just had this weedy smile.

  ‘If anyone’s sold you this fossil as anything but a trilobite, sue ’em. Your dad and I know a good lawyer, eh, Mike? Well. Must clock up another mile or two before breakfast. Then it’s back to Poole. See if my family have sunk my yacht yet.’

  ‘Wow, have you got a yacht, Mr Salt?’

  Craig Salt’d scented my sarcasm but couldn’t act on it.

  I stared back, innocent, defiant and surprised at myself.

  ‘Only a forty-footer!’ Dad said it like the man-of-the-sea he isn’t. ‘Craig, the trainees were saying what a pleasure it was yesterday to—’

  ‘Ah, yes, Mike. Knew there was something else. Would’ve been unprofessional of me to bring it up in front of the Great White Hopes at the hotel, Mike, but we need to talk urgently about Gloucester. Last quarter’s accounts are making me mucho depressedo. Swindon’s going straight down the bloody toilet as far as I can see.’

  ‘Absolutely, Craig. I’ve got some new concepts for in-store promotions we can kick about in the long grass and—’

  ‘It’s arse-kicking we need, not grass-kicking. Expect a call from me on Wednesday.’

  ‘Looking forward to it, Craig. I’ll be in the Oxford office.’

  ‘I know where all my area managers are. Be more careful, Jason, or you’ll cause someone an injury. Yourself, perhaps. Until Wednesday, Mike.’

  Dad and I watched Craig Salt jog down the promenade.

  ‘What say,’ Dad’s jolliness was forced and feeble, ‘we get ourselves that bacon sandwich?’

  But I couldn’t speak to Dad.

  ‘Hungry?’ Dad put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Jason?’

  I nearly biffed his hand away and flung my shitty ‘trilobite’ into the shitty sea.

  Nearly.

  ‘So while I’m neck-deep in shipping notices, stock inventories, mailing lists and artistic temperaments,’ Mum adjusted the mirror to perfect her lipstick, ‘you get to swan around Cheltenham all morning like Lord Muck! All right for some, eh?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Mum’s Datsun Cherry smells of Mint Imperials.

  ‘Ah, you’ll have a whale of a time! Now, Agnes says Chariots of Fire starts at twenty-five to two, so grab yourself a sausage roll or something for lunch, and get back to the gallery by…’ Mum checked her watch. ‘…a quarter past one.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We got out of the Datsun. ‘Morning, Helena!’ A crew-cut man marched by to where a van was docking into a delivery bay. ‘Proper scorcher we’re in for, today’s forecast says.’

  ‘About time we had a bit of summer. Alan, this is my son, Jason.’

  I got a crooked grin and a jokey salute. Dad wouldn’t like Alan.

  ‘Being as you’re sort of on holiday, Jason, why don’t I…’ From her purse Mum unfolded a crisp five-pound note.

  ‘Thanks!’ I don’t know why they’re being so generous at the moment. ‘That’s as much as Dad gave me in Lyme Regis!’

  ‘Silly me – I meant to give you a ten…’

  Back went the fiver and out came a tenner! That made £28.70.

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  I’d need every last penny.

  ‘Antique shops?’ The woman in Tourist Information began memorizing my features in case a robbery was reported later. ‘Why do you want antique shops? The best bargains are in the charity shops.’

  ‘It’s my mum’s birthday,’ I lied. ‘She likes vases.’

  ‘Oh. For Mum? Oh! Isn’t Mum lucky having you as a son?’

  ‘Uh…’ She made me nervous. ‘…thanks.’

  ‘Lucky, lucky Mum! I have a son as lovely as you, too.’ She flashed me a photo of a fat baby. ‘Twenty-six years ago, this, but he’s still as adorable! Pips doesn’t always remember my birthday, mind, but he’s got a heart of gold. That’s what counts, at the end of the day. Father was a waste of space, sorry to say. Pips hated the pig as much as I did. The men’ (she made a just-swallowed-bleach face) ‘just fire out their snot, roll over and that’s it, goodnight. The men don’t grow sons, feed them with their own milk, wipe their botties, powder their,’ she cooed at me but the bird of prey was back in her eyes, ‘little snails. A father will always turn on his son in the end. Only room for one cock-of-the-walk in any farmyard, thank you very much. But I showed Pippin’s father the door when Pips turned ten. Yvette was fifteen. Yvette says Pippin’s old enough to be living on his own, now, but that miss has forgotten who’s the mother and who’s the daughter since she got a pay-in-instalments wedding ring on her finger. Yvette forgets it’s thanks to me that that little Jezebel from Colwall didn’t get her sharp little claws into Pippin. Seduce him into some entanglement. Yvette’s still thick as thieves with that’ – the foamy lady nodded at the empty doorway – ‘clot. Her father. The pig. The dolt. Who else put the idea into her head? Poking her pointy beak into where Pips keeps our little pick-me-ups? A mother needs a little pick-me-up occasionally, my pet. God made us mothers but He didn’t make it easy for us to stay on top of things. Pips understands. Pips says, “Let’s call these pills yours, Mum. They’re our secret, but say, if anyone asks, they’re yours.” Pippin’s not so nicely spoken as you, my pet, but his heart’s twenty-four-carat. But do you know what Yvette did to our pick-me-ups? Turned up uninvited one afternoon and without so much as a by your leave, she flushed them down the lavvy! My, Pippin turned the air blue when he got home and found out! Hit the roof! It was “my effing stock” this, “my effing stock” that! Never seen the boy in such a state! Went round to Yvette’s and, well, did he put her pointy beak out of joint!’ Her face clouded. ‘Yvette called the coppers. Shopped her own brother! He’d only biffed that froglet of a husband of hers a little bit! But Pips just disappeared after that. Days on end now, neither hide nor hair. All I want is a phone call from my son, my pet. Just to tell me he’s looking after himself proper. Some nasty types keep knocking our door down. The police are just as bad. “Where’s the effing gear this? Where’s the effing money that? Where’s your son gone you effing old bitch?” Oh, filthy language, they’ve got. But even if I had heard from Pips, I’d rather die than breathe a word…’ />
  I opened my mouth to remind her about the antique shops.

  She shuddered out a sigh. ‘I’d rather die…’

  ‘So, uh, could you give me a map of Cheltenham with the antique shops marked on it?’

  ‘No, pet. I don’t work here. Ask that lady behind the desk.’

  The first antique shop was called George Pines, out on a ring road, wedged between a betting shop and an off-licence. Cheltenham’s s’posed to be posh but posh towns’ve got dodgy areas too. You cross a boomy rusting footbridge to get there. George Pines wasn’t what you have in mind when you think ‘antique shop’. The doors and windows had grilles. A note was Sellotaped to the (locked) door saying, BACK IN 15 MINS but the ink’d gone ghostly and the paper’d faded. A notice said, BEST RATES FOR HOUSE CLEARANCES. Through the grimy window it was all ugly big sideboards you get in grandparents’ bungalows. No clocks, no watches.

  George Pines was long gone.

  As I was walking back over the footbridge these two kids came towards me. They looked my own age but they’d got red-laced Docs. One wore a Quadrophenia T-shirt, the other an RAF T-shirt. Their footsteps boomed in time, left-right left-right. If you look kids in the eye it means you reckon you’re as hard as they are. I was carrying a fortune in cash so I kept my eyes sideways and down, on the fumey river of loud trucks and slow tankers flowing underneath us. But as the two Mods approached, I knew they wouldn’t go into single file to let me by. So I had to squeeze myself against the sun-hot railing.

  ‘Got a light?’ grunted the taller one at me.

  I swallowed. ‘Me?’

  ‘Nah, I’m talkin’ to Princess fuckin’ Diana.’

  ‘No.’ I gripped the rail tight. ‘Sorry.’

  The other Mod grunted, ‘Poof.’

  After the nuclear war, kids like them’ll rule what’s left. It’ll be hell.

  Most of the morning’d gone before I found the second antique shop. An arch led into a cobbled square called Hythloday Mews. Wails of far-off babies spiralled round Hythloday Mews. Lacy curtains blew over window boxes. A sleek black Porsche lay waiting for its master. Sunflowers watched me from their warm wall. Here was the sign, HOUSE OF GILES. The dazzling outside hid the inside. The door was propped open by a droopy pygmy with a sign round his neck saying, YES, WE’RE OPEN! Inside smelt of brown paper and wax. Cool as stones in streams. Murky cabinets of medals, of glasses, of swords. A Welsh dresser bigger than my bedroom hid the deepest quarter from sight. From here, a scratchy noise started up. The noise unfogged itself into radio cricket.