Black Swan Green (16 page)

It was Julia’s turn to do the dishes but we’ve become sort of allies in the last couple of weeks so I dried for her. My sister’s not totally revolting all the time. She even spoke a bit about her boyfriend Ewan while we did the dishes. His mum’s in the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. She’s the percussionist and gets to crash the cymbals and play the thundery kettle drums, which sounds an ace laugh. But Hangman’s been giving me a hard time since Mum and Dad’s last barney when Mum smashed the plate. So I let Julia do most of the talking. The war’s become the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing at night, so it’s nice to hear about something else. Evening sunshine flooded the valley floor between our garden and the Malverns.

The tulips are black plum, emulsion white and yolky gold.

Mum and Dad must’ve called a weird peacefire while we’d been in the kitchen ’cause after the washing-up they sat at the table and seemed to be talking normally about the day and stuff. Julia’d asked if they’d like a cup of coffee and Dad’d said, ‘That’d be lovely, darling’ and Mum said, ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ I told myself I’d misread the signs completely when I got back from school, and my gut-knot unworried itself a bit looser. Dad was telling Mum a funny story about how his boss Craig Salt’d let Dad’s trainee Danny Lawlor drive Craig Salt’s DeLorean sports car round a go-karting track on a team-building weekend. So instead of sloping off upstairs I went into the living room to watch
Tomorrow’s World
on TV.

That’s how I heard Mum launch her ambush. ‘By the way, Michael. Why did you take out a second mortgage with NatWest for five thousand pounds in January?’

Five
thousand
pounds! Our house only cost twenty-two!

In the future, according to
Tomorrow’s World
, cars will drive themselves along strips implanted in roads. We’ll just punch in our destination. There’ll never be another traffic accident again.

‘Been sifting through my accounts, have we?’

‘If I
had
n’t looked at the finances, I’d still be in a state of pristine ignorance, wouldn’t I?’

‘So. You just went into my office and helped yourself.’

Dad
, I thought,
Dad! Don’t say that to her
.

‘Are you
honestly
,’ Mum’s voice turned quivery, ‘telling me –
me
, Michael,
me
– that I’m not allowed into your office? That your filing cabinets are out of bounds for
me
as well as the children? Are you?’

Dad said nothing.

‘Call me old fashioned, but I think a wife who discovers her husband is in hock to the tune of five thousand pounds is entitled to some pretty bloody straight answers.’

I felt sick, cold and old.

‘And where,’ Dad finally said, ‘did this sudden interest in accountancy spring from?’

‘Why have you remortgaged our house?’

The
Tomorrow’s World
presenter was gluing himself to the ceiling of the studio. ‘
British brains dream up a chemical bond stronger than gravity!
’ The presenter grinned. ‘
You can bet your
life
on it!
’

‘Right. Then I’ll
tell
you why, shall I?’

‘I do wish you would.’

‘Rescheduling.’

‘Are you trying,’ Mum did a half-laugh, ‘to dazzle me with jargon?’

‘It’s not jargon. It’s rescheduling.
Please
don’t go all hysterical on me because—’

‘How am I
supposed
to respond, Michael? Using
our house
as security! Then the money gets paid out in tidy parcels to God knows where. Or is it to God knows who?’

‘What,’ Dad went quiet as death, ‘do you mean by that?’

‘I
politely
ask you
what
is going on,’ Mum’d backed off from some sort of brink, ‘and all I get is evasion. Can
you
tell me what I’m supposed to think? Please? Because I don’t understand what’s—’

‘
Exactly
, Helena! Thank
you
! You just put your finger on it! You
don’t
understand! I took out the loan because
there was a shortfall
! I
know
money is for
the little people
to sort out, but as you may have noticed while you did your Sherlock Holmes act this afternoon, we’ve got
thumping
great ruddy mortgage payments to keep up on the
first
mortgage! Insurance premiums on all this junk you insist on buying! Utility bills! Your blessed kitchen and your new Royal ruddy Doulton dinner service – that we’ll use to impress your sister and Brian twice a year at most – to pay for! Your car to be replaced whenever its ashtray’s gone out of fashion! And now,
now
, you’ve decided life isn’t worth living without…new adventures in landscape gardening!’

‘
Voice
, Michael. The kids’ll hear.’

‘That never seems to worry
you
.’

‘Now
you’re
getting hysterical.’

‘Right. “Hysterical”. Fine. You
asked
for a suggestion,
Helena
, so
here we go
. I suggest that
you
spend
your
waking life in meetings, more
bloody
meetings, get blamed for staff shortages, for stock leakages, for disappointing balance sheets. I suggest
you
bugger up
your
back clocking up twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand road miles
per
year! Then,
then
, you are welcome to call me hysterical.
Until
then, I’d be
grateful
if you didn’t give
me
the third bloody degree on how
I
choose to juggle
your
bills. That’s
my
suggestion.’

Dad stomped upstairs.

He’s slamming his filing-cabinet drawers.

Mum hasn’t left the dining room. I hope to
God
she isn’t crying.

Wish
Tomorrow’s World
would open up and swallow me.

War’s an auction where whoever can pay most in damage and still be standing wins. The news is bad. Brian Hanrahan said the landing at San Carlos Bay was the bloodiest day for the Royal Navy since the Second World War. The hills blocked our radar so we didn’t see the warplanes coming till they were right on top of us. The clear morning was a gift to the Argentinians. They attacked the main ships, not the troop transporters, ’cause once the task force is sunk, our land forces’ll be easy to pick off. HMS
Ardent
was sunk. HMS
Brilliant
is crippled. HMS
Antrim
and HMS
Argonaut
are out of the war for good. TV’s been showing the same pictures, all day. An enemy Mirage III-E sharks through a skyful of Sea Cats and Sea Wolfs and Sea Slugs. Water spouts kerboom in the bay. Black smoke pours from the hull of the
Ardent
. For the first time we saw the Falkland Islands themselves. Treeless, houseless, hedgeless, no colours bar greys and greens. Julia said it’s like the Hebrides and she’s right. (We went to Mull three years ago for the rainiest holiday in Taylor history, but the best one. Me and Dad played Subbuteo the entire week. I was Liverpool, he was Nottingham Forest.) Brian Hanrahan reported that only our Sea Harriers’ counter-attack prevented an outright catastrophe. He described an enemy plane downed by a Harrier, cartwheeling right over his head till it crashed into the sea.

HMS
Coventry
wasn’t in the report.

God knows who’s winning and who’s losing now. There’s a rumour the Soviet Union’s feeding the Argentinians satellite pictures of our fleet, which is why they always know where to find us. (Brezhnev’s dying or dead so nobody knows what’s going on in the Kremlin.) Neal Brose said if
that
’s true then Ronald Reagan’ll
have
to get involved ’cause of the NATO alliance. Then World War Three might start.

The
Daily Mail
listed all the lies the junta are telling their people. It made me livid. John Nott, our Minister of Defence, would never lie to
us
. Julia asked how I
knew
we weren’t being lied to? ‘We’re British,’ I told her. ‘Why
would
the government lie?’ Julia replied that it was to assure us that our wonderful war is going swimmingly when in fact it’s going down the toilet. ‘But,’ went my answer, ‘we’re not being lied to.’ Julia said that’s exactly what Argentinian people’ll be saying right now.

Right now. That’s what freaks me. I dip my fountain pen into a pot of ink, and a Wessex helicopter crashes into a glacier on South Georgia. I line up my protractor on an angle in my maths book and a Sidewinder missile locks on to a Mirage III. I draw a circle with my compass and a Welsh Guard stands up in a patch of burning gorse and gets a bullet through his eye.

How can the world just go on, as if none of this is happening?

I was changing out of my school uniform when this
dream
of a silver MG cruised down Kingfisher Meadows. Into our driveway it swung, and parked under my bedroom window. Rain’d been spitting all afternoon so the hood was up. My first view of my sister’s boyfriend, then, was via aerial surveillance. I’d expected Ewan to look sort of Prince Edwardish, but he’s got exploding red hair, sooty freckles and a bouncy walk. He wore a peach shirt under a baggy indigo jumper, black drainpipes, one of those studded belts that sags loose off your hips, and winkle-pickers with white tube socks, which everyone’s wearing recently. I yelled up to Julia’s attic that Ewan was here. Thumps thumped, a bottle was knocked over and Julia muttered, ‘
Bugger
.’ (What
is
it that girls
do
before they go out? Julia takes
aeons
to get ready. Dean Moran says his’re just the same.) Then she yelled, ‘MUM! Will you get it?’ Mum was already hurrying down the hall. I took up my sniper’s-nest position on the landing.

‘Ewan, I presume!’ Mum used the voice she uses to put nervous people at ease. ‘A pleasure to meet you, at long last.’

Ewan didn’t look at all nervous. ‘Real pleasure to meet you too, Mrs Taylor.’ His voice was poshish but not as posh as Mum’s put-on posh.

‘Julia’s told us oodles about you.’

‘Oh dear.’ Ewan has a froggy smile. ‘That’s torn it.’

‘Oh, no no no,’ Mum laughed like confetti, ‘it’s all good.’

‘She’s told me “oodles” about you, too.’

‘Good, good. Well. Jolly good. Won’t you step inside while milady’s finishing her…well, while she’s finishing.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So,’ Mum closed the door, ‘Julia tells us you’re at the Cathedral School? Upper sixth?’

‘That’s right. Same as Julia. A-levels just around the corner.’

‘Yes, yes. And do you, er, enjoy it?’

‘The Cathedral School? Or the A-levels?’

‘Er…’ Mum did a smiley shrug. ‘The school.’

‘It’s a bit set in its ways. But I wouldn’t knock it. Too much.’

‘A lot to be said for tradition. Far too easy to throw the bath water out with the baby.’

‘I’d agree with you wholeheartedly, Mrs Taylor.’

‘Right. Well.’ Mum glanced at the ceiling. ‘Julia’s just getting her things together. Perhaps I could offer you a tea or coffee?’

‘That’s very kind, Mrs Taylor,’ Ewan’s excuse was seamless, ‘but my mother’s birthday dinners run to military precision. If she suspects me of dawdling, it’ll be the execution squad at dawn.’

‘Oh, I can sympathize with her! Julia’s brother won’t grace the dinner table until everything’s stone cold. Drives me to distraction. But I
do
hope you’ll eat with us one of these evenings. Julia’s father’s dying to meet you.’ (News to me.)

‘I’m afraid I’d make a dreadful nuisance of myself.’

‘Not at all!’

‘I might – I’m a vegetarian, you see.’

‘That’s a jolly good excuse to get out the cookery books and try something adventurous. You’ll promise to share a meal with us soon?’

(Dad calls vegetarians ‘The Nut Cutlet Brigade’.)

Ewan did a polite smile that wasn’t exactly a
Yes
.

‘Well. Jolly good. I’ll just…pop up and check that Julia knows you’re here. Will you be okay waiting here, just for a minute or two?’

Ewan inspected the family photos above the telephone. (The Baby Jason one makes me
cringe
but my parents won’t take it down.) I inspected Ewan, the mysterious being who actually
chooses
to spend free time with Julia. He even spends money on necklaces and LPs and stuff like that for her. Why?

Ewan didn’t look surprised as I came downstairs. ‘Jason, right?’

‘No. I’m
The Thing
.’

‘She only calls you that when she’s
really
angry with you.’

‘Yeah, like every minute of every hour of every day.’

‘Not true. Promise you. And God, you should’ve heard what she called
me
when she spent the whole morning in the hairdresser’s,’ Ewan pulled this funny guilty face, ‘and I didn’t even notice.’