Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  I felt sorry for Mr McNamara. He’s me, in a way.

  ‘Which of you’ – McNamara bit back the words that’d lose him his job – ‘toe-rags have the guts to insult me face to face? Right now?’

  Long, mocking, silent seconds.

  ‘Go on! Sing it. Go on. SING IT!’ That shout must’ve torn his throat. Sure there was anger in it, but I recognized despair, too. Forty more years of this. McNamara glared round his tormentors, searching for a new strategy. ‘You!’

  To my utter horror ‘You!’ was Me.

  McNamara must’ve recognized me as the kid trodden into the mud. He figured I’d be the likeliest to grass. ‘Names.’

  I shrank as the Devil turned eighty eyes on me.

  There’s this iron rule. It says, You don’t get people into trouble by naming them, even if they deserve it. Teachers don’t understand this rule.

  McNamara folded his arms. ‘I’m waiting.’

  My voice was a tiny spider’s. ‘I didn’t see, sir.’

  ‘I said, “Names”!’ McNamara’s fingers’d balled into a fist and his arm was twitching. He was on the very edge of belting me one. But then all light drained from the room, like a solar eclipse.

  Mr Nixon, our headmaster, materialized in the doorway.

  ‘Mr McNamara, is this child your main offender, your chief suspect, or a recalcitrant informer?’

  (In ten seconds I’d be sandwich spread or relatively free.)

  ‘He,’ Mr McNamara swallowed hard, not sure if his teaching career was minutes away from amputation, ‘says he “didn’t see”, Headmaster.’

  ‘There are none so blind, Mr McNamara.’ Mr Nixon advanced a few steps, hands hidden behind his back. Boys shrank against the benches. ‘One minute ago I was speaking on the telephone to a colleague in Droitwich. Abruptly, I was obliged to apologize, and terminate the conversation. Now. Who can guess the reason?’ (Every kid in the room stared very hard at the dirty floor. Even Mr McNamara. Mr Nixon’s stare’d’ve vaporized you if you met it.) ‘I ended my conversation owing to the infantile braying coming from this room. Literally, I could no longer hear myself think. Now. I am not concerned about the identity of the ringleader. I do not care who roared, who hummed, who remained mute. What I care about is that Mr McNamara, a guest in our school, will report to his peers – with just cause – that I am the headmaster of a zoo of hooligans. For this affront to my reputation, I shall punish every one of you.’ Mr Nixon lifted his chin one quarter-inch. We flinched. ‘“Please, Mr Nixon! I didn’t join in! It’s not fair if you punish me!”’ He dared anyone to agree but nobody was stupid enough. ‘Oh, but I am not paid my stratospheric salary to be fair. I am paid my stratospheric salary to uphold standards. Standards which you,’ he knitted his hands together and cracked the knuckles, sickeningly, ‘just trampled into the dirt. In a more enlightened age, a sound thrashing would have taught you a sense of decorum. But, as our masters at Westminster have deprived us of this tool, other more onerous techniques must be found.’ Mr Nixon reached the door. ‘The Old Gym. A quarter past twelve. Latecomers will receive a week’s detention. Absentees will be expelled. That is all.’

  Old school dinners’ve been replaced this September by a cafeteria. A sign saying RITZ CAFETERIA OPERATED BY KWALITY KWISINE is bolted over the dining room door, though the reek of vinegar and frying hits you in the cloakrooms. Under the writing’s a smiley pig in a chef’s hat carrying a platter of sausages. The menu’s chips, beans, hamburgers, sausages and fried egg. Pudding’s ice cream with tinned pears or ice cream with tinned peaches. To drink there’s fizzless Pepsi, sicky orange or warmish water. Last week Clive Pike found half a millipede in his hamburger, still wriggling. Even worse, he never found the other half.

  As I queued up, people kept glancing at me. A pair of first-years weren’t trying too hard not to laugh. Everyone’s heard it’s Get Taylor Day. Even dinner ladies witched at me from behind the shiny counters. Something was going on. I didn’t know what till I sat down with my tray next to Dean Moran on the lepers’ table.

  ‘Um…someone’s put some stickers on your back, Jace.’

  As I took off my blazer an earthquake of laughter rocked the Ritz Cafeteria. Ten sticky labels’d been put on my back. On each was written MAGGOT in a different pen by a different hand. I just stopped myself running out. That’d make their victory even more perfect. As the earthquake calmed down, I peeled off the stickers and tore them to shreds under the table.

  ‘Ignore the wankers,’ Dean Moran told me. A fat chip slapped his cheek. ‘Funny!’ he shouted in the direction it’d flown from.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ant Little called from Wilcox’s table, ‘we thought so.’ Three or four more were lobbed over. Miss Ronkswood came into the hall, stopping the chip bombardment.

  ‘Hey…’ Unlike me, Dean Moran’s able to ignore stuff. ‘Heard the news?’

  Miserably, I picked specks of dried-on food off my fork. ‘What?’

  ‘Debby Crombie.’

  ‘What about Debby Crombie?’

  ‘She’s only in the club, ain’t she?’

  ‘Netball?’

  ‘The club!’ Dean hissed. ‘Preggers!’

  ‘Pregnant? Debby Crombie? A baby?’

  ‘Keep yer voice down! Looks that way. Tracy Swinyard’s best mates with the secretary at Upton doctors. They went on the piss at the Black Swan two nights ago. After a drink or five she told Tracy Swinyard to cross her heart and hope to die, and told her. Tracy Swinyard told my sister. Kelly told me at breakfast this morning. Made me swear not to tell on our nan’s grave.’

  (Moran’s nan’s grave’s littered with shredded oaths.)

  ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘Don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. Debby Crombie ain’t been out with no one since Tom Yew, has she?’

  ‘But Tom Yew was killed back in June.’

  ‘Aye, but he were in Black Swan Green in April, weren’t he? On leave. Must’ve pumped his tadpoles up her back then.’

  ‘So Debby Crombie’s baby’s dad’s dead, even before it’s born?’

  ‘Cryin’ shame or what? Isaac Pye said he’d get an abortion if he was her, but Dawn Madden’s mum said abortion’s murder. Anyhow, Debby Crombie told the doctor she’s havin’ the baby, no matter what. The Yews’ll help raise it, Kelly reckons. Bring Tom back to life, in a way, I s’pose.’

  These jokes the world plays, they’re not funny at all.

  I’ve never heard anything, said Unborn Twin, so hilarious.

  I bolted my egg and chips to get to the Old Gym by 12.15.

  Most of our school was built in the last thirty years, but one part’s an old grammar school from Victorian times and the Old Gym’s in that. It’s not used much. Tiles get blown off on stormy days. One missed Lucy Sneads by inches last January, but no one’s been killed yet. One first-year kid did die in the Old Gym, though. Bullied so badly, he hanged himself with his tie. Up where the gym ropes hang down. Pete Redmarley swears he saw the kid hanging there, one stormy afternoon, three years ago, not quite dead. The kid’s head flip-flopped ’cause of his snapped neck and his feet spasmed, twenty feet off the ground. Pale as chalk, he was, ’cept for the red welt where his tie’d burnt. But his eyes were watching Pete Redmarley. Pete Redmarley never’s set foot in the Old Gym since. Not once.

  So anyway, our form and 3GL were waiting in the Quad. I’d sort of attached myself to Christopher Twyford, Neal Brose and David Ockeridge, talking about Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry was on TV on Saturday. There’s this scene where Clint Eastwood doesn’t know if he has a bullet left in his gun to shoot the baddie.

  ‘Yeah,’ I chipped in, ‘that bit was epic.’

  Christopher Twyford and David Ockeridge’s stare said, Who gives a toss what you think?

  ‘No one,’ Neal Brose told me, ‘says “epic” any more, Taylor.’

  Mr Nixon, Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch walked across the Quad. A major bollocking was coming. Inside, seats’d been arranged in exam rows. 3KM sat on the left, 3GL on t
he right. ‘Does anyone,’ Mr Nixon began, ‘believe he shouldn’t be here?’ Our headmaster may as well’ve said, ‘Does anyone wish to shoot their own knee-caps?’ Nobody fell for it. Miss Glynch spoke mainly to 3GL. ‘You’ve let your teachers down, you’ve let your school down, and you’ve let yourself down…’ Mr Kempsey did us after. ‘I do not recall, in twenty-six years of teaching, feeling this sickened. You have behaved like a pack of hooligans…’

  This took till 12.30.

  Grimy windows rectangled misty gloom.

  The exact colour of boredom.

  ‘You shall remain in your seats,’ announced Mr Nixon, ‘until the one o’clock bell. You will not move. You will not speak. “But, sir! What if I need the lavatory?” Humiliate yourself, as you sought to humiliate a member of my staff. You will fetch a mop after the bell. Your detention shall be repeated every lunch-time this week.’ (Nobody dared groan.) ‘“But, sir! What is the point of this static punishment?” The point is that the victimization of the few – or even the one – by the many has no place in our school.’

  Our head then left. Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch had books to mark. Only their scratching pens, kids’ stomachs, flies entombed in the strip-lights and distant cries of free kids ruckled the silence. The unfriendly clock’s second hand shuddered, shuddered, shuddered, shuddered. That clock was more than likely the last thing in the world the kid who hanged himself saw.

  Thanks to these detentions, Ross Wilcox won’t get me in the next few lunch-times. Any normal kid’d be nervous if they’d got two classes of boys sentenced to a week of detention. Might Mr Nixon be banking on us doing his job punishing the ringleaders ourselves? I sneaked a glance at Ross Wilcox.

  Ross Wilcox must’ve been staring at me. He flashed me a fuck you V and mouthed, ‘Maggot.’

  ‘“I got the conch—” Jack turned fiercely. “You shut up!”’ Shit. The word ‘circle’ was coming up. ‘“Piggy wilted. Ralph took the conch from him and looked round the—”’ Desperately, I used the Trip Method, where you set up the stammer letter (‘s’) but sort of trip over it into the vowel to get the word out. ‘Sss-ircle of boys.’ Cased in sweat now, I glanced at Mr Monk, our student teacher for English. Miss Lippetts never makes me read aloud but Miss Lippetts’d gone to the staffroom. Obviously she hadn’t told Mr Monk about our arrangement.

  ‘Good.’ Patience strained Mr Monk’s voice. ‘Go on.’

  ‘“We’ve got to have special people for looking after the fire.”’ (S-consonant words’re easier than S-vowel words, I don’t know why.) ‘“Any day there”,’ I swallowed, ‘“there m-may be a ship out there” – he waved his arm at the taut wire of the horizon – “and if we have a signal going they’ll come and take us off.”’ (Hangman let me say ‘signal’ like a superior boxer lets the loser land a punch or two, for fun.) ‘“And another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that’s a meeting. The sssame up here as down there.” They—’, Oh shit shit shit. Now I couldn’t say ‘assented’. Normally it’s only words beginning with S. ‘Erm…’

  ‘“Assented,”’ said Mr Monk, surprised a kid in the top form couldn’t read such a simple word.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to try to repeat it, like Mr Monk expected. ‘Piggy opened his mouth to ssspeak, caught Jack’s eye and shut it again.’ There’s no way I was hiding my stammer now. Hangman knew he was on to a major victory. I’d just had to use the Punch Method again for ‘speak’. Using brute force to punch the word out’s a last resort ’cause your face goes spaz. And if Hangman punches back harder the word gets stuck and that’s when you turn into the classic stuttering flid. ‘Jack held out his hands for the conch and,’ suffocating in plastic, ‘ssstood up, holding the delicate thing carefully in his’ – my earlobes buzzed with stress – ‘sssooty hands. “I agree with Ralph. We’ve got to have these rules and obey them. After all, we’re not – we’re not—” Sorry, sir…’ I had no choice. ‘What’s that word?’

  ‘“Savages”?’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’ (Wished I had the guts to press my two Ball Pentels against my eyeballs and head-slam the desk. Anything to get away.) ‘“We’re English; and the English are best at everything.” Er…“Ssso we’ve got to do the right things.”’

  Miss Lippetts walked in and saw what’d happened. ‘Thank you, Jason.’

  No ‘How come he gets off so lightly?’ rippled round the class.

  ‘Please, miss?’ Gary Drake stuck up his hand.

  ‘Gary?’

  ‘This part’s brill. Honest, I’m on the edge of my seat. Mind if I read?’

  ‘Glad you’re enjoying it, Gary. Go ahead.’

  Gary Drake cleared his throat. ‘“Ralph – I’ll split up the choir – my hunters, that is – into groups, and we’ll be responsible for keeping the fire going—”’ Gary Drake read with exaggerated polish, just to contrast with how he read next. ‘This generosssity brought a ssss-SSS-patter—’ (He got me. Boys were sniggering. Girls were looking round at me. My head burst into flames of shame.) ‘– of applause from the boys, s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-so—’

  ‘Gary Drake!’

  He was all innocent. ‘Miss?’

  Kids turned round to stare at Gary Drake, then me. Is Taylor the School Stutterer going to cry? A label’d been stuck on me that I’ll never peel off.

  ‘Do you believe you are being amusing, Gary Drake?’

  ‘Sorry, miss.’ Gary Drake smiled without smiling. ‘Must’ve picked up a nasty stutter from somewhere…’

  Christopher Twyford and Leon Cutler shook with stifled laughter.

  ‘You two can shut up!’ They did. Miss Lippetts’s no idiot. Sending Gary Drake to Mr Nixon’d’ve turned his joke into today’s main headline. If it isn’t already. ‘That is despicably, fatuously, ignorantly weak of you, Gary Drake.’ The rest of the words on page forty-one of Lord of the Flies swarmed off the page and buried my face in bees.

  Seventh and eighth periods were music with Mr Kempsey, our form teacher. Alastair Nurton’d taken my usual seat next to Mark Badbury so without a word I sat with Carl Norrest, Lord of Lepers. Nicholas Briar and Floyd Chaceley’ve been lepers together so long they’re almost married. Mr Kempsey was still furious with us for the McNamara affair. After we’d chanted, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Kempsey,’ he just wanged us our exercise books like Oddjob throwing his hat in Goldfinger. ‘I quite fail to see what is “good” about this afternoon, when you have rubbished the founding principle of the comprehensive school. Namely, that the putative crème de la crème impart their enrichening essence to the milkier orders. Avril Bredon, distribute the textbooks. Chapter three. It is Ludwig van Beethoven’s turn to be hanged, drawn and quartered.’ (We don’t actually make music in music. All we’ve done this term is copy out chunks from Lives of the Great Composers. While we’re doing this, Mr Kempsey unlocks the record player and puts on an LP of that week’s composer. The poshest voice on earth introduces that composer’s greatest hits.) ‘Remember,’ warned Mr Kempsey, ‘to rewrite the biography in your own words.’ Teachers’re always using that ‘in your own words’. I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It’s their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put then back together more shonkily? How’re you s’posed to say capelmeister if you can’t say capelmeister?

  Nobody messes about much in Mr Kempsey’s class, but today the mood was like somebody’d died. The only minor distraction was Holly Deblin, the new girl, asking if she could go to the sickbay for a bit. Mr Kempsey just pointed at the door and mouthed, ‘Go.’ Third-year girls’re allowed to go to the sickbay or toilets much more freely than boys. Duncan Priest says it’s to do with periods. Periods’re pretty mysterious. Girls don’t talk about them when boys’re around. Boys don’t joke about them much, in case we give away how little we know.

  Beethoven going deaf was the high point of his chapter in Lives of the Great Composers. Composers spent half their lives walking across Germany to work for different archbishops and archdukes. The other half must’ve been lost in ch
urch. (Bach’s choirboys used his original manuscripts to wrap their sandwiches in for years after he’d died. That’s the only other thing I’ve learnt in music this term.) I polished Beethoven off in forty minutes, long before the rest of the class.

  Moonlight Sonata, the poshest voice on earth told us, is one of the best-loved pieces in any pianist’s repertoire. Composed in 1782, the sonata evokes the moon over calm, peaceful waters after the passing of a storm.

  A poem nagged as moonlight Sonata played. Its title’s ‘Souvenirs’. Wished I could’ve netted the lines in my rough book, but I daredn’t, not in class, not on a day like today. (And now it’s all gone ’cept for ‘Sunlight on waves, drowsy tinsel’. Don’t write it down and you’re doomed.)

  ‘Jason Taylor.’ Mr Kempsey’d noticed my attention’d left the textbook. ‘An errand for you.’

  School corridors’re sort of sinister during classtime. The noisiest spaces’re now the silentest. Like a neutron bomb’s vaporized human life but left all the buildings standing. These drowned voices you hear aren’t coming from classrooms, but through the partitions between life and death. The shortest route to the staffroom was the Quad, but I took the longer way, via the Old Gym. Teachers’ errands’re in-between times where no one can hassle you, like Free Parking in Monopoly. I wanted to spin this space out. My feet clomped over the same worn boards boys did somersaults on before they went off to the First World War to be gassed. Stacked chairs block off one wall of the Old Gym, but the other wall’s got a wooden frame you can climb. For some reason, I wanted to peer out through the window at the top. It was a minor risk. If I heard footsteps I’d just jump down.

  Once you’re up there, mind, it’s higher than it looks.

  Years of muck’d greyed the glass.

  The afternoon’d turned to heavy grey.

  Too heavy and too grey to not turn into rain. Moonlight Sonata orbited out past the tenth planet. Rooks huddled on a drainpipe, watching the school buses lumber into the big front yard. Bolshy, bored and bargey, those rooks, like the Upton Punks hanging out by their war memorial.