Black Swan Green (15 page)

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 water. 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
some
thing! Why? Because
every
thing’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.

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 the 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…’

‘Oh, I get it.
Harper’s Bazaar
do a special on rockeries so of course
we
have to have one too.’

‘Kate’s got a nice rockery,’ Julia said, neutrally. ‘With heathers.’

‘Lucky old Kate.’ Dad put his glasses on to study the magazine. ‘Very nice, Helena, but they’ve used real Italian marble here.’

Mum’s ‘That’s right’ meant
And I’m having marble too
.

‘Do you have any
inkling
of how much marble costs?’

‘More than an inkling. I called a landscape gardener in Kidderminster.’

‘Why should
I
shell out money,’ Dad tossed the magazine on the floor, ‘for a pile of rocks?’

Mum normally backs down at this point, but not today. ‘So it’s all right for you to spend six hundred pounds on a golf-club membership you hardly
ever
use, but it
isn’t
all right for me to improve our property?’

‘The golf course,’ Dad tried not to shout, ‘as I’ve
tried
to tell you, over and over and over and over, is where deals get cut. Including key promotions. I may not like it, you may not like it, but there it is. And Craig Salt does not play his golf on public links.’

‘Don’t wave your fork at me, Michael.’

Dad didn’t put his fork down. ‘I
am
the breadwinner in this family, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to spend at least a portion of my salary however the hell I see fit.’

My mashed potatoes’d gone cold.

‘So in effect,’ Mum folded her napkin, ‘you’re telling me to stick to jam-making and leave the grown-up decisions to the one in the trousers?’

Dad rolled his eyes. (I’d get
killed
for doing that.) ‘Save the female libber stuff for your Women’s Institute friends, Helena. I’m asking you nicely. I’ve had a very long day.’

‘Patronize your underlings in your supermarkets as much as you want, Michael.’ Mum noisily stacked the plates and took them to the kitchen hatch. ‘But don’t try it at home. I’m asking you nicely.
I’ve
had a very long day.’ She went into the kitchen.

Dad stared at her empty chair. ‘So, Jason, how was school?’

My stomach granny-knotted up. Hangman blocked ‘Not so bad’.

‘Jason?’ Dad’s voice went hot and red. ‘I asked you how school was.’

‘Fine, thanks.’ (Today’d been crap. Mr Kempsey bollocked me for cake crumbs in my music book and Mr Carver’d told me I was as ‘useful as a spastic’ at hockey.)

We heard Mum scrape plates into the kitchen bin.

Knife on china, a whooshy thud.

‘Excellent,’ said Dad. ‘How about you, Julia?’

Before my sister could say a word a plate smashed on the kitchen floor. Dad jumped out of his seat. ‘Helena?’ His breeziness’d gone.

Mum’s answer was to slam the back door.

Dad jumped up and went after her.

Rooks crawked round St Gabriel’s steeple.

Julia blew out her cheeks. ‘Three stars?’

Miserably, I held up four fingers.

‘Just a rocky patch, Jace.’ Julia’s got this brave smile. ‘That’s all. Most marriages have them. Really. Don’t worry.’

Mrs Thatcher
frazzled
this twerpy prat in a bow tie on BBC1 this evening. He was saying sinking the
General Belgrano
outside the Total Exclusion Zone was morally and legally wrong. (Actually we sank the
Belgrano
some days ago but the papers’ve just got hold of the pictures and since the
Sheffield
we’ve got
zero
sympathy for the Argie bastards.) Mrs Thatcher fixed her stained-glass blue eyes on that pillock and pointed out that the enemy cruiser’d been zigzagging in and out of the zone all day. She said something like, ‘The fathers and mothers of our country did not elect me the Prime Minister of this country to gamble with the lives of their sons over questions of legal niceties. Must I remind you that
we
are a country at
war
?’ The whole studio cheered and the whole country cheered too, I reckon, ’cept for Michael Foot and Red Ken Livingstone and Anthony Wedgwood Benn and all those Loony Lefties. Mrs Thatcher’s bloody
ace
. She’s
so
strong,
so
calm,
so
sure. Loads more use than the Queen, who hasn’t said a dickie-bird since the war began. Some countries like Spain are saying we shouldn’t’ve fired on the
Belgrano
, but the only reason so many Argies drowned was that the other ships in its convoy scarpered off instead of saving their own men. Our Royal Navy’d
never ever ever
leave Britons to drown like that. And anyway, when you join the army or navy in
any
country, you’re paid to risk your life. Like Tom Yew. Now Galtieri is trying to get
us
back to the negotiating table, but Maggie’s told him the only thing
she
’ll discuss is the United Nations’ Resolution 502. Argentina’s unconditional withdrawal from British soil. Some Argie diplomat in New York, still harping on about the
Belgrano
being outside the zone, said Britain no longer rules the waves, it just waives the rules. The
Daily Mail
says it’s typical of a tinpot Latin paper-pusher to make stupid quips about life and death. The
Daily Mail
says the Argies should’ve thought about the consequences
before
they stuck their poxy blue-and-white flag on our sovereign colony. The
Daily Mail
’s dead right. The
Daily Mail
says that Leopoldo Galtieri only invaded the Falklands to distract attention from all his own people he’s tortured, murdered and pushed out of helicopters over the sea. The
Daily Mail
’s dead right again. The
Daily Mail
says Galtieri’s brand of patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The
Daily Mail
’s as right as Margaret Thatcher. All England’s turned into a dynamo. People are queuing up outside hospitals to donate blood. Mr Whitlock spent most of our biology lesson saying how
certain
patriotic young men cycled to Worcester hospital to give blood. (Everyone knows he was talking about Gilbert Swinyard and Pete Redmarley.) They were told by a nurse that they’re too young. So Mr Whitlock’s writing to Michael Spicer, our Member of Parliament, to complain that the children of England are being denied the right to contribute to the war effort. His letter’s already in the
Malvern Gazetteer
.

Nick Yew is a school hero ’cause of Tom. Nick said the
Sheffield
was just an unlucky fluke. Our anti-missile systems’ll be modified to knock out the Exocets from now on. So we should be getting our islands back pretty soon. The
Sun
’s paying £100 for the best anti-Argie joke. I can’t do jokes, but I’m keeping a scrapbook about the war. I’m cutting out stuff from the newspapers and magazines. Neal Brose is keeping one too. He reckons it’ll be worth a fortune twenty or thirty years from now when the Falklands War has turned into history. But all this excitement’ll
never
turn dusty and brown in archives and libraries. No way. People’ll remember
everything
about the Falklands till the end of the world.

Mum was at the dining-room table surrounded by bank papers when I got back from school. Dad’s fireproof document box was out and open. Through the kitchen hatch I asked if she’d had a good day.

‘Not a “good day” exactly,’ Mum didn’t take her eyes off her calculator, ‘but it’s certainly been a real revelation.’

‘That’s good,’ I said, doubting it. I got a couple of Digestives and a glass of Ribena. Julia’d snaffled all the Jaffa Cakes ’cause she’s at home all day revising for her A-levels. Greedy moo. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Skateboarding.’

I should’ve just gone upstairs. ‘What’s for dinner?’

‘Toad.’

One unsarky answer to one simple question, that’s all I wanted. ‘Doesn’t Dad usually do all the bank statements and stuff?’

‘Yes.’ Mum finally looked at me. ‘Isn’t your lucky old father in for a pleasant surprise when he comes home?’ Something vicious’d got into her voice. It pulled the knot in my guts
so
tight I still can’t loosen it.

Wish it
had
been toad for dinner, not tinned carrots, baked beans and Heinz meatballs in gravy. A plate of browny orange. Mum
can
cook real food, when relatives visit, say. She’s on a work-to-rule till she gets her rockery, I reckon. Dad said it was ‘utterly delicious’. His sarcasm didn’t bother with camoflauge. Neither did Mum’s. ‘I
am
glad you think so.’ (What Mum and Dad say to each other’s half a world away from what they mean, these days. Ordinary polite words shouldn’t be so toxic but they can be.) That was all they said, just about, for the entire meal. Pudding was apple sponge. The syrup trail from my spoon was the path of our marines. To forget the atmosphere, I bravely led our lads yomping over custard snow to ultimate victory in Port Stanley.