Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  ‘Jason!’ barked Mr Kempsey.

  ‘Oh.’ Yes, I was in a silo of shit. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Mr Nixon asked you a question.’

  ‘Yes. Dad was sacked on Goose Fair day. Uh…some weeks ago.’

  ‘A misfortune.’ Mr Nixon has a vivisector’s eyes. ‘But misfortunes are commonplace, Taylor, and relative. Look at the misfortune Nick Yew has endured this year. Or Ross Wilcox. How is destroying your class-mate’s property going to help your father?’

  ‘It won’t, sir.’ The bad-kid’s chair was so low Mr Nixon might just as well saw off its legs completely. ‘Destroying Brose’s calculator hasn’t got a thing to do with my dad getting sacked, sir.’

  ‘Then what,’ Mr Nixon reangled his head, ‘was it to do with?’

  Do it until it’s undoable.

  ‘Brose’s “popularity lessons”, sir.’

  Mr Nixon looked at Mr Kempsey for an explanation.

  ‘Neal Brose?’ Mr Kempsey cleared his throat, at a loss. ‘“Popularity lessons”?’

  ‘Brose’ (Hangman blocked ‘Neal’ but that was okay) ‘ordered me, Floyd Chaceley, Nicholas Briar and Clive Pike to pay him a pound a week for popularity lessons. I said no. So he got Wayne Nashend and Ant Little to show me what’ll happen if I don’t get more “popularity”.’

  ‘What manner,’ Mr Nixon’s voice hardened, a good sign, ‘of persuasion do you claim these boys employed?’

  There was no need to exaggerate. ‘Monday they emptied my bag down the stairs by the chemistry lab. Tuesday I got pelted with clumps of soil in Mr Carver’s PE lesson. In the cloakroom this morning Brose and Little and Wayne Nashend told me that I’ll get my face kicked in on my way home tonight.’

  ‘You’re saying,’ Mr Kempsey’s temperature rose nicely, ‘that Neal Brose is running some sort of extortion racket? Under my very nose?’

  ‘Does “extortion” mean’ (I knew perfectly well) ‘beating someone up if they don’t give you money, sir?’

  Mr Kempsey thought the sun, moon and stars shone out of Neal Brose’s arse. ‘That would be one definition.’ All the teachers do. ‘Do you have evidence for this?’

  ‘What sort of evidence’ (Let guile be your ally) ‘do you have in mind, sir?’ Things were running enough in my favour for me to add, with a straight face, ‘Hidden microphones?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘If we interview Chaceley and Pike and Briar,’ Mr Nixon took over, ‘will they confirm your story?’

  ‘It depends on who they’re most afraid of, sir. You or Brose.’

  ‘I promise you, Taylor, they will be most afraid of me.’

  ‘Casting aspersions on a boy’s character is a very serious act, Taylor.’ Mr Kempsey wasn’t yet convinced.

  ‘I’m glad to hear you say so, sir.’

  ‘What I am not glad about,’ Mr Nixon wasn’t letting an interrogation get pally, ‘is that you brought this matter to my attention, not by knocking on my door and telling me, but by destroying the property of your alleged persecutor.’

  That ‘alleged’ warned me the jury was still out.

  ‘Involving a teacher means you’re a grass, sir.’

  ‘Not involving a teacher means you’re an ass, Taylor.’

  Maggot’d’ve buckled under the unfairness of it all.

  ‘I hadn’t thought this far ahead.’ Just find what’s true, hold it up and take the consequences without whining. ‘I had to show Brose I’m not afraid of him. That’s all I thought of.’

  If boredom had a smell, it’d be the stationery storeroom. Dust, paper, warm pipes, all day, all winter. Blank exercise books on metal shelves. Piles of To Kill a Mockingbird, of Romeo and Juliet, of Moonfleet. The storeroom’s also an isolation cell in drawn-out cases like mine. Apart from a square of frosted glass in the door, the only light’s a brown bulb. Mr Kempsey’d told me, curtly, to get on with my homework till I was sent for, but for once I was up to date. A poem inside kicked my belly. Since I was in so much shit already, I nicked a nice exercise book with stiff covers off a shelf to write in. But after the first line I realized it wasn’t a poem. More of a…what? A confession, I s’pose. It began, and on it went. When the bell went for morning break I found I’d filled three sides. Fitting words together makes time go through narrower pipes but faster. Shadows passed the frosted-glass window as teachers rushed to the staffroom to smoke and drink coffee. Joking, moaning shadows. Nobody came into the storeroom to get me. The entire third year’d be talking about what I’d done in metalwork, I knew. The whole school. People say your ears burn when people’s talking about you, but I get a hum in the cellar of my stomach. Jason Taylor, he didn’t, Jason Taylor, he did, oh my God really he grassed who off? Writing buries this hum. The bell went for the end of break and the shadows passed by in the other direction. Still nobody came. In the outside world Mr Nixon’d be summoning my parents. He wouldn’t have much luck till tonight. Dad’d gone to Oxford to meet ‘contacts’ about a new job. Even Dad’s reel-to-reel answering machine’s been sent back to Greenland. Through the wall the school Xerox machine was droning, droning, droning.

  A twitch of fear lunged when the door open but I trampled it dead. It was just a pair of second-year squirts, sent to get a pile of Cider with Rosie. (We read it last year too. One scene gave every boy in the classroom boners you could actually hear growing.) ‘Is it true, Taylor?’ The larger squirt addressed me like I was still in my Maggot period.

  ‘What the fuck is that,’ I replied, after a pause, ‘to you?’

  I managed to say it so evilly the second-year spilt his books. The smaller squirt spilt his books too as he bent down to help.

  I clapped, dead slow.

  ‘What appals me, 3KM,’ Mr Kempsey’s nickname may be ‘Polly’ but he’s dangerous when he’s this angry, ‘is that these acts of intimidation have been going on for weeks. Weeks.’

  3KM hid behind a funeral silence.

  ‘WEEKS!’

  3KM jumped.

  ‘And not one of you thought to come to me! I feel sickened. Sickened and scared. Yes, scared. In five years you’re going to have the vote! You are supposed to be the elite, 3KM. What kind of citizens are you going to make? What kind of police officers? Teachers? Lawyers? Judges? “I knew it was wrong but it wasn’t my business, sir.” “Better to let someone else blow the whistle, sir.” “I was afraid if I said anything, I’d be next, sir.” Well, if this spinelessness is the future of British society, heaven help us.’

  I, Jason Taylor, am a grass.

  ‘Now I strongly disapprove of how Taylor brought this woeful business to my attention, but at least he did. Less impressive are Chaceley, Pike and Briar, who only spoke up under duress. What is to your collective shame is that it took Taylor’s rash act this morning to force events to a head.’

  Every kid in front’d turned round to look at me, but it was Gary Drake I went for. ‘What is it, Gary?’ (Hangman’d handed me a free pass for the afternoon. I sometimes think Hangman wants to come to one of Mrs de Roo’s ‘working accommodations’, too.) ‘Don’t you know what I look like after three years?’

  The eyes switched to Gary Drake. Then to Mr Kempsey. Our form teacher should have opened fire on me for talking while he was talking. But he didn’t. ‘Well, Drake?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Feigned incomprehension is the last resort of the fool, Drake.’

  Gary Drake actually looked awkward. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’re doing it again, Drake.’

  Gary Drake nicely stamped on. Wayne Nashend and Ant Little suspended. Chances are, Mr Nixon’s going to expel Neal Brose.

  Now they’ll really want to kick my face in.

  Neal Brose normally sits up front in English, slap bang in the middle. Go on, said Unborn Twin, take the bastard’s seat. You owe it him. So I did. David Ockeridge, who sits next to Neal Brose, chose a seat farther back. But Clive Pike, of all people, put his bag next to me. ‘Anyone sitting here?’ Clive Pike’s breath smells of cheese’n’onion Outer Sp
acers, but who cares?

  I made a Go ahead face.

  Miss Lippetts shot me a look as we chanted, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Lippetts.’ So swift and crafty it was almost not there, but it was. ‘Sit down, 3KM. Pencil cases out, please. Today, we’ll exercise our supple young minds on a composition, on this theme…’ As we got our stuff out, Miss Lippetts wrote on the board.

  A SECRET.

  The slap and slide of chalk’s a reassuring sound.

  ‘Tamsin, do me the honour, please.’

  Tamsin Murrell read, ‘“A secret”, miss.’

  ‘Thank you. But what is a secret?’

  It takes everyone a bit of time to get going after lunch.

  ‘Well, say, is a secret a thing you can see? Touch?’

  Avril Bredon put her hand up.

  ‘Avril?’

  ‘A secret’s a piece of information that not everybody knows.’

  ‘Good. A piece of information that not everyone knows. Information about…who? You? Somebody else? Something? All of these?’

  After a gap, a few kids murmured, ‘All of these.’

  ‘Yes, I’d say so too. But ask yourselves this. Is a secret a secret if it isn’t true?’

  That was a tight knot of a question. Miss Lippetts wrote,

  MISS LIPPETTS IS NANCY REAGAN.

  Most of the girls laughed.

  ‘If I asked you to stay behind after class, waited till we were alone and then whispered, in all seriousness, this statement, would you go, “No! Really! Wow! What a secret!” Duncan?’

  Duncan Priest had his hand up. ‘I’d phone Little Malvern Loonybin, miss. Book you a room with a nice mattress. On all the walls.’ Duncan Priest’s small fan club laughed. ‘That’s not a secret, miss! It’s just the gibberish of an utter nutter.’

  ‘A pithy and rhyming assessment, thank you. As Duncan says, so-called “secrets” that are palpably false cannot be considered secrets. If enough people believed I was Nancy Reagan, that might cause me problems, but we still couldn’t really think of it as a “secret”, could we? More of a mass delusion. Can anyone tell me what a mass delusion is? Alastair?’

  ‘I heard loads of Americans think Elvis Presley is still alive.’

  ‘Fine example. However, I’m now going to let you in on a secret about myself which is true. It’s a touch embarrassing, so please don’t spread it around at break-time…’

  MISS LIPPETTS IS AN AXE-MURDERER.

  Now half the boys laughed too.

  ‘Shhh! I buried my victims under the M50. So there’s no evidence. No suspicion. But is this secret still a secret? If it’s one that nobody, and I mean nobody, has the faintest suspicion about?’

  An interested silence played itself out.

  ‘Yes…’ muttered a few kids as a few kids muttered, ‘No…’

  ‘You’d know, miss.’ Clive Pike raised his hand. ‘If you really were an axe-murderer. So you can’t say nobody knows it.’

  ‘Not if Miss was a schizophrenic axe-murderer,’ Duncan Priest told him. ‘Who never remembers the crimes she commits. She might just…turn, like that, chop you to bits for forgetting your homework, whack splurt splatter, flush the remains down the sewers, black out, then wake up again as mild-mannered Miss Lippetts, English teacher, go, “Gosh, blood on my clothes again? How odd that this keeps happening whenever there’s a full moon. Oh well. Into the washing machine.” Then it would be a secret nobody knew, right?’

  ‘Delicious imagery, Duncan, thank you. But imagine all the murders to have ever occurred in the Severn Valley, since, say, Roman times. All those victims, all those murderers, dead and turned to dust. Can those violent acts, which no one, remember, has thought about for a thousand years, also be called “secrets”? Holly?’

  ‘Not secrets, miss,’ said Holly Deblin. ‘Just…lost information.’

  ‘Sure. So can we agree, a secret needs a human agency to know it, or at least write it down? A holder. A keeper. Emma Ramping! What are you whispering to Abigail?’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘Stand up, please, Emma.’

  Worried, lanky Emma Ramping stood up.

  ‘I’m conducting a lesson here. What are you telling Abigail?’

  Emma Ramping hid behind a very sorry face.

  ‘Is it a piece of information that not everybody knows?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Speak up, Emma, so the groundlings can hear you!’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Aha. So you were confiding a secret to Abigail?’

  Emma Ramping reluctantly nodded.

  ‘How topical. Well, why not share this secret with us? Now. In a nice loud voice.’

  Emma Ramping began blushing, miserably.

  ‘I’ll do you a deal, Emma. I’ll let you off the hook if you just explain why you’re happy sharing your secret with Abigail, but not the rest of us.’

  ‘Because…I don’t want everyone to know, miss.’

  ‘Emma is telling us something about secrets, 3KM. Thank you, Emma, be seated and sin no more. How do you kill a secret?’

  Leon Cutler stuck up his hand. ‘Tell people.’

  ‘Yes, Leon. But how many people? Emma told Abigail her secret, but that didn’t kill it, did it? How many people have to be in the know before the secret’s an ex-secret?’

  ‘Enough,’ Duncan Priest said, ‘to get you sent to the electric chair, miss. For being an axe-murderer, I mean.’

  ‘Who can reconstruct Duncan’s glorious wit into a general principle? How many people does it take to kill a secret? David?’

  ‘As many,’ David Ockeridge thought about it, ‘as it takes, miss.’

  ‘As it takes to do what? Avril?’

  ‘As it takes to change,’ Avril Bredon frowned, ‘whatever it is the secret’s about. Miss.’

  ‘Solid reasoning, 3KM. Maybe the future is in safe hands, after all. If Emma told us what she told Abigail, that secret would be dead. If my murders are exposed in the Malvern Gazetteer, I’m…well, dead, if Duncan’s on the jury, anyway. The scale is different, but the principle is the same. Now, my next question is the one that truly intrigues me because I’m not sure what the answer is. Which secrets should be made public? And which shouldn’t?’

  That question had no quick takers.

  For the fiftieth or hundredth time that day I thought of Ross Wilcox.

  ‘Who can tell me what this word means?’

  ETHICS

  Chalk mist falls in the wakes of words.

  I’d looked ‘ethics’ up once. It crops up in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant books. It means morality. Mark Badbury already had his hand up.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘The answer’s in what you just said, miss. Ethics is to do with what you should and shouldn’t do.’

  ‘Very smart answer, Mark. In Socrates’ Greece they would have considered you a fine rhetorician. Is it ethical to get every secret out in the open?’

  Duncan Priest cleared his throat. ‘Seems pretty ethical to get your secret out in the open, miss. To stop innocent schoolkids being chopped up.’

  ‘Spot on, Duncan. But would you spill the beans on this one?’

  BATMAN’S REAL NAME IS BRUCE WAYNE

  Most of the boys in the class let out murmurs of admiration.

  ‘If this secret gets out, what is every master criminal in the world going to do? Christopher?’

  ‘Blow Bruce Wayne’s mansion to smithereens, miss.’ Christopher Twyford sighed. ‘No more Caped Crusader.’

  ‘Which would be a loss to society at large, yes? So sometimes it’s ethical not to reveal a secret. Nicholas?’

  ‘Like the Official Secrets Act.’ Nicholas Briar usually doesn’t say a word in class. ‘When the Falklands War was on.’

  ‘Just so, Nicholas. Loose lips sink ships. Now. Think about your own secrets.’ (The connection between Ross Wilcox’s wallet and his lost leg. My grandfather’s smashed-up Omega Seamaster. Madame Crommelynck.) ‘How quiet it has suddenly become. Right, are all your
secrets of the “Yes, I Should Tell” or “No, I shouldn’t Tell” varieties? Or is there a third category that, ethically speaking, is not so clear cut? Personal secrets that don’t affect anyone else? Trivial ones? Complex ones, with uncertain consequences if you tell them?’

  Mumbled Yeses, growing in strength.

  Miss Lippetts got a fresh stick from a box of chalk. ‘You acquire more of these ambiguous secrets as you age, 3KM. Not less. Get used to them. Who can guess why I’m writing this word…’

  REPUTATION

  ‘Jason?’

  3KM turned into a radiotelescope aimed at the class grass.

  ‘Reputation is what gets damaged, miss, once a secret’s out. Your reputation as a teacher’d be shot to bits, if it’s proved you are an axe-murderer. Bruce Wayne’s reputation as this wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Mr Nobody’d be done for. It’s like Neal Brose, too, isn’t it?’ (If I can grind a solar-powered calculator to bits then stuff this rule that I should be ashamed for grassing on a kid and getting him expelled. In fact stuff all rules.) ‘He had quite a secret going, didn’t he? Wayne Nashend knew, Anthony Little knew. A few others.’ Gary Drake, over to my left, stared straight ahead. ‘But once his secret is out, his reputation as this…’

  To everyone’s surprise, Miss Lippetts suggested, ‘Golden boy?’

  ‘Golden boy. Excellent term, Miss Lippetts.’ (For the first time in God knows how long I earnt some class laughs.) ‘That reputation’s wrecked. His reputation with kids as this…hard-knock you don’t mess with is wrecked too. Without a reputation to hide his secret behind, Neal Brose is…totally…completely…’