Black Swan Green

by David Mitchell

  Words like ‘beautiful’ you can’t use with boys you can with girls.

  ‘“#9dream”. John Lennon. Walls and Bridges LP, 1974.’

  ‘If that’s s’posed to impress me, it really does.’

  ‘My brother works at Revolver Records. His LP collection stretches to Mars and back. So how d’you know about this little hidey-hole?’

  ‘This back room? Used to come to youth club here, to play table tennis. I thought it’d be locked tonight. But I was wrong, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Holly Deblin’s hands slid under my jumper. Years of hearing Julia and Kate Alfrick talk about wandering hands warned me off doing the same. Then Holly Deblin sort of shivered. I thought she might be cold, but she sort of giggled.

  ‘What?’ I was scared I’d done something wrong. ‘What?’

  ‘Neal Brose’s face, in metalwork, this morning.’

  ‘Oh. That. This morning’s one big blur. The whole day is.’

  ‘Gary Drake got him off the drill, right, and pointed at what you were doing. Brose didn’t get it at first. That thing you were annihilating in the vice was actually his calculator. Then, then, he got it. He’s a smarmy bastard but he’s not stupid. He saw what’d happen next, and next, and next. He knew he was stuffed. Right at that moment, he knew.’

  I toyed with Holly Deblin’s clacky beads.

  She said, ‘I was pretty surprised, too.’

  I didn’t hurry her.

  ‘I mean, I liked you, Taylor, but I thought you were…’ She didn’t want to say anything that might hurt my feelings.

  ‘A human punchbag?’

  Holly Deblin propped her chin on my chest. ‘Yeah.’ Her chin dug in a bit. ‘What happened, Taylor? To you, I mean.’

  ‘Stuff.’ Her calling me ‘Taylor’ feels closer than ‘Jason’. I’m still too shy to call her anything. ‘The year. Look, I don’t want to talk about Neal Brose. Another time?’ I slipped off this woven band she wore round her wrist and slipped it over mine.

  ‘Thief. Get your own top-of-the-range fashion accessories.’

  ‘I am doing. This one’s the first in my collection.’

  Holly Deblin gripped my slightly big ears in her fingers and thumbs and steered my mouth to hers. Our third kiss lasted the whole of ‘Planet Earth’ by Duran Duran. Holly Deblin guided my hand to where it could feel her fourteen-year-old heart beating against its palm.

  ‘Hello, Jason.’ The lounge, lit by the Christmas tree lights and the gas fire, reminded me of Santa’s grotto. The TV was off. Dad was just sitting there, so far as I could see, in the Fruit Gum dark. But the tone of his voice told me he knew all about Neal Brose and the wafered Casio. ‘Enjoy the disco?’

  ‘Not bad.’ (He didn’t care about the disco.) ‘How was Oxford?’

  ‘Oxford was Oxford. Jason, we need to have a little chat.’

  I hung up my black parka on the coat-stand knowing I was a condemned man. ‘A little chat’ means I sit down and Dad lays into me, but Holly Deblin must’ve rewired my head. ‘Dad, can I start?’

  ‘All right.’ Dad looked calm, but volcanoes are calm just before they blow half a mountain away. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’ve got two things to tell you. Big things, really.’

  ‘I can guess what one is. You had an exciting day at school, by all accounts.’

  ‘That’s one of them, yes.’

  ‘Mr Kempsey telephoned earlier. About that expelled boy.’

  ‘Neal Brose. Yeah. I…I’ll pay for a new calculator.’

  ‘No need.’ Dad was too drained to throw an eppy. ‘I’ll post his father a cheque in the morning. He telephoned too. Neal Brose’s father, I mean. He apologized to me, actually.’ (That surprised me.) ‘Asked me to forget the calculator. I’ll send the cheque anyway. If he chooses not to cash it, that’s his look out. But I think it’ll draw a line under the affair.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘Your mother might want to put in her sixpence ha’penny, but…’ Dad shrugged. ‘Mr Kempsey told me some bullying’s been going on. I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could tell us about it, but I can hardly get angry with you for that. Can I?’

  Now I remembered Julia’s phone call. ‘Is Mum home?’

  ‘Mum’s…’ Dad’s eyes went uneasy. ‘…staying at Agnes’s tonight.’

  ‘In Cheltenham?’ (That didn’t make sense. Mum never stays at anyone’s ’cept Aunt Alice’s.)

  ‘There was a private view that went on late.’

  ‘She didn’t mention it at breakfast.’

  ‘What’s the second thing you wanted to tell me?’

  This moment’d taken twelve months to whoosh here.

  ‘Go on, Jason. I doubt it’s as bad as you think.’

  Oh yes it is. ‘I was out’ (Hangman stopped ‘skating’) ‘er…last January, when the pond in the woods froze over. Messing about with some other kids. I had Granddad’s watch on. His Omega—’ (Hangman blocked ‘Seamaster’.) Saying this in reality was more dreamlike than the dozen bad dreams I’ve had about saying it. ‘The watch he bought when he was in the’ (God, now I couldn’t say ‘navy’) ‘stationed in Aden. But, I fell over’ – I couldn’t turn back now – ‘and smashed it to pieces. Honest, I’ve spent all year trying to find a new one. But the only one I heard about cost around nine hundred pounds. And I don’t have that much money. Obviously.’

  Dad’s face hadn’t twitched. Not one muscle.

  ‘I’m really sorry. I was an idiot to take it out.’

  Any second that calm’d crack and Dad’d annihilate me.

  ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter.’ (But grown-ups often say exactly that exactly when it matters most.) ‘It was only a watch. Nobody got hurt, not like that poor Ross Wilcox lad. Nobody died. Be more careful with fragile things in the future, that’s all. Is there anything left of the watch?’

  ‘Only the strap and the casing, really.’

  ‘Hang on to those. Some craftsmen might be able to graft parts of another Seamaster into Granddad’s. You never know. When you’re running thousand-acre nature reserves in the Loire Valley.’

  ‘So you’re not going to…do anything? To me, I mean.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘You’ve put yourself through the mill already.’

  I’d never dared hope it’d go this well. ‘You were going to tell me something big too, Dad.’

  Dad swallowed. ‘You did a lovely job of decorating the tree.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Dad took a sip of his coffee, and grimaced. ‘I forgot to put in the Nutrasweet. Would you mind getting it for me from the kitchen, love?’

  ‘Love’? Dad hasn’t called me that in aeons. ‘Sure.’ I went into the kitchen. It was freezing in there. Relief’d made gravity a bit weaker. I got Dad’s Nutrasweet, a teaspoon and a saucer and went back to the lounge.

  ‘Thanks. Sit down again.’

  Dad clicked a tiny capsule into his whirlpool of Nescafé, stirred it in, and picked up the cup and saucer. ‘Sometimes…’ The awkwardness after his ‘sometimes’ grew, and grew, and grew. ‘Sometimes, you can love two people in different ways at the same time.’ Just speaking, I saw, was a superhuman effort. ‘Do you understand?’

  I shook my head. Dad’s eyes might’ve given me a clue, but now he’s staring down at his coffee. He’s leaning forward. His elbows are resting on the coffee table. ‘Your mother and I…’ Dad’s voice’s gone horrible, like some shite actor in some shite TV soap. ‘Your mother and I…’ Dad’s trembling. Dad doesn’t tremble! The cup and saucer begin to clatter so he has to put them down, but he’s hiding his eyes. ‘Your mother and I…’

  January Man

  ‘Apparently, he even took out loans for her!’

  Guess who Gwendolin Bendincks was talking about?

  ‘Loans?’ Mrs Rhydd actually squealed. ‘Loans?’

  Why should I scurry off in shame? I’ve done nothing wrong. Was it my fault they hadn’t noticed me, browsing through Smash Hits behind a pyramid of Pedigree Chum c
ans?

  ‘Loans. To the tune of twenty – thousand – pounds.’

  ‘You could buy a small house with that! What does she need twenty thousand pounds for?’

  ‘Polly Nurton says she has an office equipment firm or some-such in Oxford which supplies Greenland – the supermarkets, that is, not the country. Now isn’t that a cosy little arrangement?’

  Mrs Rhydd didn’t get it.

  ‘Mrs Rhydd, he works for Greenland as an area manager. Well, he did. He was sacked two months ago, as you know. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn there’s a connection between that and this whole…carry-on. Polly Nurton isn’t one to beat around the bush, as you know. She said what respectable organization wants an adulterer at the wheel? Doubtless he got her the contract with Greenland years ago, back when their…liaison began.’

  ‘You mean they’ve been…for some time?’

  ‘Oh yes! They committed their first…indiscretion years ago. He confessed to Helena at the time and swore to cut her off. Helena forgave him. For the sake of the family. One would. I mean’ (people tend to whisper the word in case it brings them bad luck) ‘“divorce”. It’s a drastic step. Perhaps they didn’t meet in the intervening years, perhaps they did. Polly Nurton didn’t say and I’m no snoop. But once a lemon meringue’s cut, no amount of tears can make it whole.’

  ‘True, Mrs Bendincks. So very true.’

  ‘But Polly does know this much. When her business foundered last year – shortly after her husband’d upped sticks and left her with their baby – doubtless having scented something rotten in the state of Sweden, as it were – she turned to her former beau.’

  ‘The brass neck!’

  ‘Last January, this was. Polly said she had some sort of a breakdown. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But she made nuisance calls to his house at all hours, that sort of carry-on. So, he borrowed a hill of money without so much as breathing a word to his own wife, using her family home as collateral.’

  ‘Your heart goes out to poor Mrs Taylor, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, exactly! She didn’t know a dicky bird until she went through his bank statements. What a way to learn your own home is in hock! Can you imagine how duped you’d feel? How betrayed? Ironic thing is, Helena’s gallery in Cheltenham has people queuing round the block – Home and Country are doing a feature on it next month.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ steamed Mrs Rhydd, ‘she’s behaved no better than a common strump—’

  Mrs Rhydd sort of puffer-fished as she caught sight of me. I put down Smash Hits and walked up to the counter. I’m getting lots of practice at acting like nothing’s wrong.

  ‘Hello! Jason, isn’t it?’ Gwendolin Bendincks switched on her smile at full beam. ‘You won’t remember a wrinkly like me, but we met at the vicarage, last summer.’

  ‘I remember you.’

  ‘I bet he says that to all the girls!’ (Mrs Rhydd had the decency to look mortified.) ‘So the weatherman says we’re in for a good dumping of snow tonight. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Sledging, igloo-building, snowball fights.’

  ‘How are’ – Mrs Rhydd fiddled with a price gun – ‘things, my pet? You’re moving out today, aren’t you?’

  ‘The removal men’re loading up the heavy stuff now. Mum, my sister, Kate Alfrick and Mum’s boss are packing the last bits and pieces, so they told me to go off for a couple of hours to—’ (Hangman blocked ‘say goodbye’.)

  ‘“To bid Black Swan Green au revoir”.’ Gwendolin Bendincks jumped in with a knowing smile. ‘You’ll visit us soon, won’t you? Cheltenham’s hardly the ends of the earth, is it?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘You’re putting a jolly brave face on it, Jason,’ she clasped her hands like she’d trapped a grasshopper, ‘but I want to say, if Francis – the vicar, I mean – and I can be any help whatsoever, our door’s always open. Will you tell your mother that?’

  ‘Sure.’ I know a well you can drown yourself in. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Hullo, Blue,’ Mr Rhydd came from the back. ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘One quarter of Rhubarb and Custards, and one of crystallized ginger.’ Crystallized ginger makes my gums sweat but Mum loves it. ‘Please.’

  ‘Right you are, Blue.’ Mr Rhydd climbed his ladder to the jars.

  ‘Cheltenham’s divine.’ Gwendolin Bendincks got back to work on me. ‘Old spa towns have such character. Is it a large place your mother’s renting, Jason?’

  ‘Haven’t seen it yet.’

  ‘And your father’s going to be based in Oxford?’ (I nodded.) ‘No luck with a new job, yet, I hear?’ (I shook my head.) ‘Firms only just back from the Christmas hols, that’s why. Still, Oxford’s hardly the ends of the earth, is it, Mrs Rhydd? Be going up to see Dad soon, will we?’

  ‘We…haven’t talked about it much, yet.’

  ‘One thing at a time, very wise. But you’ll be looking forward to a brand-new school! Like I always say. A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.’ (Bollocks. I’ve never met the Yorkshire Ripper, but he wouldn’t be a friend.) ‘So, is your old house in Kingfisher Meadows officially on the market yet?’

  ‘Soon, I s’pose.’

  ‘Reason I ask is, our vicarage moved to a bungalow on the Upton road, but that was only a “stopgap”. Tell Mum to have her agent give Francis a tinkle before it’s advertised anywhere. Mum’d rather do business with a friend than with some outsider she wouldn’t know from Adam. Remember those ghastly Crommelynck characters who foisted themselves on to us? So you’ll tell her? Promise me, Jason? Scout’s honour?’

  ‘Sure, I promise.’ In about forty years. ‘Scout’s honour.’

  ‘Right you are, Blue,’ said Mr Rhydd, twirling the bags closed.

  ‘Thanks…’ I fished in my pockets for money.

  ‘No, no. On the house today.’ Mr Rhydd’s face is a swollen wreck, but a face and its look can be totally different. ‘Leaving present.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How,’ sang Gwendolin Bendincks, ‘about that!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Rhydd said flatly, ‘how about that.’

  ‘Best of British.’ Mr Rhydd closed my fingers around the paper bags. ‘And ta very much.’

  Black Swan Green’s the Village of the Dead today ’cause Moonraker’s on TV. Roger Moore’s last James Bond film, they’re saying. Our TV’s in the back of the removal truck. I’d’ve gone to Dean’s to watch it normally, but he and his dad’re walking to White-Leaved Oak to see his gran, over Chase End way. My feet took me out towards the lake in the woods. Mr Rhydd was kind to give me the Rhubarbs and Custards for free, but today they tasted acidic and glassy. I spat mine out.

  Woods in winter’re brittle places.

  Your mind flits from twig to twig.

  Dad came to pick up the rest of his stuff yesterday. Mum’d left it in black vinyl bags in the garage ’cause she needs all the suitcases. Her and Julia were at the gallery in Cheltenham. I was sat on a packing chest watching Happy Days on my portable TV. (Until Hugo told me that Happy Days is set in the 1950s, I thought it was about America now.) An unfamiliar engine pulled up our driveway. Through the living-room window I saw this sky-blue VW Jetta. Dad got out of the passenger side.

  I hadn’t seen Dad since the night I kissed Holly Deblin, when he told me him and Mum were splitting up. Two whole weeks ago. We’d sort of spoken on the phone at Aunt Alice’s on Christmas Day, but that was horrible, horrible, horrible. What was I s’posed to say? ‘Thanks for the Advanced Meccano set and the Jean Michel Jarre LP’? (That’s what I did say.) Mum and Dad didn’t speak to each other, and Mum didn’t ask me what he’d said.

  When I saw the sky-blue VW Jetta, Maggot hissed, Scarper! Hide!

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Oh!’ Dad’s expression was a mountaineer’s, the moment his rope snaps. ‘Jason. I didn’t expect you to—’ Dad’d been going to say ‘to be at home’ but he changed his sentence. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I heard the car.’ Obviously. ‘Mum’
s at work.’ Dad knew that.

  ‘She left some things for me. I’ve just come to pick them up.’

  ‘Yeah. She said.’

  A moon-grey cat strolled into the garage and settled down on a cushion of potatoes.

  ‘So…’ Dad said. ‘How’s Julia?’

  Dad meant Does Julia hate me? But not even Julia could answer that. ‘She’s…fine.’

  ‘Good. Good. Say hi from me.’

  ‘Okay.’ Tell her yourself, why don’t you? ‘How was Christmas?’

  ‘Oh…fine. Quiet.’ Dad looked at the pyramid of bin-bags. ‘Horrendous. For obvious reasons. Yours?’

  ‘Mine was horrendous too. Are you growing a beard, Dad?’

  ‘No, I just haven’t…maybe I will. I don’t know. Are the Richmond relatives all well?’

  ‘Aunt Alice’s as you’d expect, all clucky ’cause of…y’know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Alex just played on his BBC computer. Hugo’s smarmy as ever. Nigel’s doing quadratic equations for fun. Uncle Brian…’ Finishing the sentence about Uncle Brian was hard work.

  ‘…got drunk as a lord and prattled on about me?’

  ‘Dad, is Uncle Brian an idiot?’

  ‘He can act like one.’ Something’s unknotted in Dad. He looks hollow and unhappy but he’s definitely more peaceful. ‘But how someone acts isn’t what they are. Not necessarily. Best not to be too judgemental. Maybe there’s stuff going on you don’t know about. You know?’

  I do know.

  The horriblest part was, being friendly to Dad makes me feel disloyal to Mum. However much they say ‘We both still love you’ you do have to choose. Words like ‘maintenance’ and ‘best interests’ don’t leave you alone. A figure sat in the sky-blue Jetta. ‘Is…’ I didn’t know what to call her.

  ‘Cynthia drove me over, yes. She’d like to say hello, if…’ (a mad organist thumped my panic chords) ‘…if you’d like to.’ A pleading note bent Dad’s voice. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Okay.’ I didn’t want to. ‘Okay.’

  Outside the cave of the garage, rain fell so lightly it wasn’t even falling. Before I’d got to the Jetta, Cynthia’d got out. She’s not a big-boobed bimbo or an evil-eyed witch. She’s frumpier than Mum, any day, and mousier. Brown hair in a bob, brown eyes. She doesn’t look a thing like a stepmother. Which is what she’ll be, by and by.