Black Swan Green (38 page)

I’d been thinking how gypsies
wanted
the rest of us to be gross, so the grossness of what they’re not acts as a stencil for what they are. ‘Some people let their pets sleep
on
their bed, sure, but—’

‘’Nother thing.’ Bax spat into the fire. ‘
Gorgio
s don’t just marry one girl and stick with her, not nowadays. They’ll get divorced quick as changin’ cars, despite their fancy weddin’ vows.’ (Tuts and nods all round the fire, ’cept for the whittler. By now I’d guessed he was deaf or dumb.) ‘Like that butcher in Worcester who divorced Becky Smith when she got too saggy.’

‘Gorgios’ll rut
anythin
’, married or no, livin’ or no,’ Clem Ostler went on. ‘Dogs on heat. Anywhere, any time, in cars, down alleys, in skips,
anywhere
. And they call
us
“anti-social”.’

Everyone chose the same moment to look at me.

‘Please,’ I had nothing to lose, ‘has anyone seen my school bag?’

‘“A school bag”, is it now?’ Tyre Man sort of teased. ‘“A school bag”?’

‘Oh, put the boy out of his misery,’ muttered Knife Grinder.

Tyre Man lifted up my Adidas bag. ‘A bag like this?’ (I choked down an
Oh
of relief.) ‘Yer welcome to it, Stuttery! Books never taught a man to mong or ducker.’ A circle of hands passed the bag to me.

Thanks
, blurted out Maggot. ‘Thanks.’

‘Fritz ain’t too picky ’bout what he brings back.’ Tyre Man whistled. The wolf who’d robbed me lolloped out of the dark. ‘My brother’s juk, ain’t yer, Fritz? Stayin’ with me till he’s let out of his lodgings in Kiddyminster. Greyhound legs, collie brains, ain’t yer, Fritz? I’ll miss yer. Drop Fritz over a gate an’ he’ll get yer a fat old pheasant or a hare without you settin’ foot past that farmer’s “No Trespassin’” sign. Won’t yer, Fritz, eh?’

The whittling kid stood up. Everyone round the fire watched.

He tossed me a heavy lump. I caught it.

The lump was rubber, once part of a tractor tyre, maybe. He’d carved it into a head the size of a grapefruit. Sort of voodooish, but amazing. A gallery like my mum’s would snap it up, I reckon. Its eyes’re spacey and sockety. Its mouth’s this gaping scar. Its nostrils’re flared, like a terrified horse’s. If fear was a thing and not a feeling, it’d be this head.

‘Jimmy,’ Alan Wall studied it, ‘yer best ever.’

Jimmy the Whittler made a pleased noise.

‘Quite an honour,’ the woman told me. ‘Jimmy don’t make them for every gorgio who falls into our camp, yer know.’

‘Thanks,’ I told Jimmy. ‘I’ll keep it.’

Jimmy hid behind his mop of hair.

‘Is it
him
, Jimmy?’ Clem Ostler meant me. ‘When he came a-tumblin’ down? This is what he looked like when he fell?’

But Jimmy’d walked off behind the trailer.

I looked at Knife Grinder. ‘Can I go?’

Knife Grinder held up his palms. ‘Y’ain’t a prisoner.’

‘But you just tell
them
,’ Alan Wall pointed towards the village, ‘we ain’t all the thieves an’ that they say we are.’

‘The boy could preach till he’s purple,’ the daughter told him. ‘They’d not believe him. They’d not
want
to believe him.’

The gypsies turn to me, as if Jason Taylor is the ambassador of the land of brick houses and mesh fences and estate agents. ‘They’re scared of you. They don’t understand you, you’re right. If they could just…Or…It’d be a start if they could just sit here. Get warm, round your fire, and just listen to you. That’d be a start.’

The fire spat fat sparks up at pines lining the quarry, up at the moon.

‘Know what fire is?’ Knife Grinder’s cough’s a dying man’s cough. ‘Fire’s the sun, unwindin’ itself out o’ the wood.’

That
ace
song ‘Olive’s Salami’ by Elvis Costello and the Attractions drowned out whatever Dean yelled at me, so I yelled back, ‘
What
was that?’ Dean yelled back, ‘Can’t
hear
a word yer sayin’!’ but then the fairground man tapped him on his shoulder for his 10p. That’s when I saw a matt square on the scratched rink, right by my dodgem.

The matt square was a wallet. I’d’ve handed it in to the fairground man but it flipped open to show a photo of Ross Wilcox and Dawn Madden. Posed like John Travolta and Olivia Neutron-Bomb on the
Grease
poster. (Instead of sunny America, mind, it was a cloudy back garden down Wellington Gardens.)

Ross Wilcox’s wallet was
stuffed
with notes. There
had
to be fifty quid in there. This was serious. More money than I’ve ever had. Putting the wallet between my knees, I looked round to check nobody’d seen. Dean was yelling whatever it was at Floyd Chaceley now. None of the kids in the queue was paying me any attention.

The prosecution (a) pointed out it wasn’t my money and (b) considered the
panic
Ross Wilcox’d feel when he discovers he’s lost all this money. The defence produced (a) the dissected mouse head in my pencil case, (b) the drawings of me eating my dick on blackboards and (c) the never-ending
Hey, Maggot? How’s the s-s-s-ssssssspeech therapy going, Maggot?

The judge arrived at his verdict in seconds. I stuffed Ross Wilcox’s wallet in my pocket. I’d count my new fortune later.

The dodgem man waved at his slave in a booth, who pulled a lever, and every kid in the bumper rink went
At last!
Sparks blossomed off the tops of the poles as the dodgem cars wheezed into electric life and Elvis Costello turned into Spandau Ballet and dazzling oranges, lemons and limes lit up. Moran banged me a beaut from the side, howling like the Green Goblin decking Spiderman. I twisted my wheel to get him back, but I bumped Clive Pike instead. Clive Pike tried to get
me
back and it went on like that, swerving, eddying and ramming for five minutes of heaven.
Just
as the power died and every kid in the bumper rink went
Not al
ready
!
a Wonderwoman dodgem bashed into me. ‘Oops.’ Holly Deblin, at its wheel, laughed. ‘I’ll get you back for that,’ I called to her. ‘Oh,’ Holly Deblin shouted back, ‘poor me.’ Wilcox’s wallet was snug against my thigh. Bumper cars’re ace, just
ace
.

‘Yer
know
why yer barred!’ By the out-gate, the fairground man was snarling at Ross Wilcox by the in-gate. With him was Dawn Madden in lizard jeans and a furry neck thing. She crumpled a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint into her bitter-cherry mouth. ‘So
drop
the “
What’ve
I
done?
” bollocks!’

‘It’s
got
to be on the rink!’ Ross Wilcox in despair was a glorious sight. ‘It’s
got
to be!’

‘If yer jump from car to car stuff’s
gonna
fall out! Not that
I
give a toss if yer ’lectricute yerself but I
do
give a toss about my licence!’

‘Just let us
look
!’ Dawn Madden tried. ‘His dad’ll
murder
him!’

‘Oh, and I
care
, do I?’

‘Thirty seconds!’ Wilcox was hysterical. ‘That’s all I’m askin’!’

‘An’ I’m
tellin
’ yer I ain’t fannyin’ about fer the likes o’
you
when I got a business to run!’

The fairground man’s slave’d counted in another bunch of kids by now. His master clanged the gate shut, missing Wilcox’s fingers by a tenth of a second. ‘Whoops!’ Black Swan Green’s hardest third-year looked round for allies in his hour of need. There was nobody he knew. The Goose Fair brings people from Tewkesbury and Malvern and Pershore, from
miles
around.

Dawn Madden touched Ross Wilcox’s arm.

Wilcox slapped her hand off and turned away.

Hurt Dawn Madden said something to Wilcox.

Wilcox snapped, ‘Yes it
is
the end of the world, yer dozy cow!’

You just don’t talk to Dawn Madden like that. She looked away for a moment, scalded. Then she gave Wilcox a crushing whack on the eye. Just watching, me and Dean jumped.

‘
Ouch!
’ said Dean, delighted.

Ross Wilcox sort of crumpled in shock.

‘I
warned
yer, yer knob-head!’ Dawn Madden was fangs and claws and screaming fury. ‘I
warned
yer! Yer can find yerself a
real
dozy cow!’

Ross Wilcox’s hesitant fingers went to his pounded eye.

‘I’m
chuckin
’ yer!’ Dawn Madden turned and walked.

Ross Wilcox cried after her, ‘DAWN!’, like a man in a film.

Dawn Madden turned round, fired Wilcox a twenty-thousand-volt ‘
Fuck off!
’ Then the crowds swallowed her up.

‘That’ll be one
doozy
of a shiner,’ Dean remarked, ‘will that.’

Wilcox looked at us and his wallet in my pocket shrieked at its master to rescue it, but he didn’t even see us. He ran after his ex-girlfriend for a few frantic paces. Stopped. Turned. Checked his eye, for blood, I s’pose. Turned. Then a black hole between a Captain Ecstatic’s Zero Gravity Dome and the Win-A-Smurf stall sucked Ross Wilcox in.

‘Oh, my heart’s bleedin’.’ Dean sighed, happily. ‘Gospel. Let’s go find Kelly. I promised we’d look after Maxine for a bit.’

Passing the
SCORE-LESS-THAN-20-WITH-3-DARTS-AND-PICK-ANY-PRIZE!
darts stall someone called out, ‘Oy!
Oy, Deaf-aid!
’ It was Alan Wall. ‘Remember
me
? And my Uncle Clem?’

‘’Course I do. What’re you doing here?’

‘Who d’you
think
runs fairs?’

‘Gypsies?’

‘Mercy Watts’s people own
all
of this. Have for years.’

Dean was pretty impressed.

‘This is Dean and his little sister Maxine.’

Alan Wall just nodded at Dean. Clem Ostler solemnly presented Maxine with a shiny windmill. Dean told her, ‘Say
thank you
, then.’ Maxine did, and blew on her windmill. Alan Wall asked, ‘Fancy yerself as a bit of an Eric Bristow, then, eh?’

‘Mr One-hundred-and-eighty,’ said Dean, ‘that’s what they call me.’ He slid two 10ps from his pocket over the counter. ‘One for me, one for Jace.’

But Clem Ostler slid the coins back. ‘Never refuse a gift off of a gypsy, boys. Or yer balls’ll shrivel up. Ain’t jokin’. Drop off, in the worst cases.’

Dean got an 8 on his first throw, a 10 on his second. His third throw blew it with a double 16. I was
just
about to take my throw when a voice stopped me. ‘Aw, looking after baby sister, are we?’

Gary Drake, with Ant Little and Darren Croome.

Moran sort of flinched. Maxine sort of wilted.

Stick your darts
, urged Unborn Twin,
into their eyeballs
.

‘Yeah. We are. What the
fuck
is it to you?’

Gary Drake wasn’t expecting that. (Words are
what
you fight with but what you fight
about
is whether or not you’re afraid of them.) ‘Go on, then.’ Gary Drake recovered quick. ‘Throw. Amaze us.’

If I threw it’d look like I was obeying him. If I didn’t I’d just look like a total wally. All I could do was try to blank Gary Drake out. My strategy was to aim at treble 20
so
carefully that I’d end up missing a fraction and getting a 1 or 5. My first dart got a 5. Quickly, before Gary Drake could put me off, I threw again and got a double 5.

My last dart was a clean 1.

Clem Ostler did a fairground shout. ‘A winner!’

‘Oh, right!’ Ant Little jeered. ‘A
born
winner!’

‘Born
laughing-stock
.’ Darren Croome snorted his sinuses clear.

‘
You
lot had
five
goes yerselves earlier,’ Clem Ostler told him. ‘Cacked it up every single time, didn’t yer?’

Gary Drake didn’t quite dare tell a man who worked in a fair to piss off. Fairground worker laws aren’t quite the same.

‘You choose the prize, Max,’ I told Dean’s sister. ‘If you want.’

Maxine looked at Dean. Dean nodded back. ‘If Jace says so.’

‘Shame you can’t win any
friends
here, Taylor.’ Gary Drake couldn’t walk off without the last insult.

‘I don’t need many.’

‘Many?’ His sarcasm’s thick as toilet bleach. ‘
Any
.’

‘No, I’ve got enough.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ snided Ant Little, ‘like
who
exactly? Apart from Moron Bum-chum?’

If your words’re true, they’re armed. ‘No one you’d know.’

‘Y-y-yeah, T-t-t-Taylor,’ Gary Drake resorted to a stutter joke, ‘that’s ’cause
your
m-m-m-mates are all in your f-f-f-fuckin’ head!’

Ant Little and Darren Croome dutifully snorked.

If I got into a scrap with Gary Drake I’d probably lose it.

If I retreated I’d lose too.

But sometimes an outside force just shows up. ‘A kid who does
speed-wankin
’ contests,’ Alan Wall looked sort of sideways at Gary Drake, ‘in Strensham’s barn up the bridleway ain’t got no business labelin’
anyone
“bum-chum”. Don’t yer think?’

All of us, even Maxine, stared at Gary Drake.

‘
You
,’ Gary Drake shot back, ‘
whoever
you are, are
so
full of shit!’

Skinny Clem Ostler cackled like a fat old woman.

‘“Full of shit”?’ Alan Wall was only one year older than us, but
he
could beat Gary Drake into a Gary Drake omelette. ‘Come here and say that.’

‘You were
seeing
things! I’ve never
been
to Strensham’s barn!’

‘Oh, yer dead
right
these
yots
’ve been seein’ things!’ Alan Wall tapped his temples. ‘I seen
you
an’ that lanky git from Birtsmorton one evenin’ two weeks ago, sittin’ in the hay-loft above the Herefordshire milkers—’

‘We were
drunk
! It was just for a
laugh
!
I
’m not listening,’ Gary Drake backed off, ‘to some fucking
gyp
po—’

Alan Wall leapt over the stall. Before his feet hit the turf Gary Drake’d fled. ‘You two his mates?’ Alan Wall advanced on Ant Little and Darren Croome. ‘Are yer?’

Ant Little and Darren Croome stepped back, like you’d back away from a trotting leopard. ‘Not specially…’

‘The cuddly ET?’ Maxine stood on her tiptoes and pointed. ‘Can I have the cuddly ET?’

‘My dad,’ said Clem Ostler, ‘called himself “Red Rex” in prizefightin’ circles. Weren’t redhaired, weren’t polit’cal, he just liked the sound of it. Red Rex was the Goose Fair’s fighter. The bones o’ more than forty years ago, this’d be. Things was rougher an’ leaner back then. My family’d follow Mercy Watts’s old man gaff-catchin’ round the Vale of Evesham, down the Severn Valley, tradin’ horses with other Romanies an’ farmers an’ breeders an’ that. Usually a bit o’ money floatin’ round the fairs, so the men’d feel flush ’nough for a punt or two on a fight. A nearby barn’d be found, lookouts posted for
gavvas
if we couldn’t pay ’em off, an’ my dad’d challenge all comers. Dad weren’t the beefiest of his six brothers, but that was why, see, men’d bet
stupid
vonga,
wads
of it, on deckin’ him or on gettin’ first blood. Dad weren’t much to look at. But I’m tellin’ yer, Red Rex soaked up punches like a
boulder
! Slipp’rier than shit through a goose. No gloves in them days, mind! Bare-knuckle fightin’, it were. My first memories was of watchin’ Dad fight. These days those prizefighters’d be professional heavyweights or riot police or somethin’, but times was diff’rent. Now, one winter’ (fresh screams from the Flying Teacups ride drowned Clem Ostler out for a moment) ‘one winter, word reached us ’bout this gig
an
tic Welsh bastard. Monster of a man, serious, six foot eight, six nine, from Anglesey. That was his name’n all. Say “Anglesey” that year, an’ everyone’d know who yer meant. Fightin’ his way east, they said,
rakin
’ it in, just by smashin’ prizefighters’ skulls to eggshells. One blacksmith, name of McMahon, in Cheshire,
died
after half a round with Anglesey. ’Nother needed iron plates put in his skull, three or four climbed into the ring fit men an’ were carried out cripples for life. Anglesey’d been mouthin’ on how he’d hunt down Red Rex at the Goose Fair, right here, in Black Swan Green. Pulp him, skin him, string him up, smoke him, sell him to the pig farmers. Sure ’nough, when we got to our old atchin’-sen down Pig Lane, Anglesey’s people was there. Wouldn’t budge till after the fight.
Twenty
guineas was the prize money! Last man standin’d scoop the lot. Unheard of, back then, that sort o’ money.’

‘What did yer dad do?’ asked Dean.

‘No prizefighter can turn an’ run an’ no gypsy can either. Reputation’s everythin’. My uncles clubbed round for the stake money, but Dad weren’t havin’ it. Instead, he arranged with Anglesey to gamble every last stick we owned.
Everythin’!
Trailer –
our home
, remember? – the Crown Derby, the beds, the dogs, the fleas on the dogs, the
lot
. Lose that fight an’ we’d be on our arses. Nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, nothin’ to eat.’

I asked, ‘What happened?’

‘Anglesey couldn’t resist it! Floorin’ Red Rex
and
cleanin’ him out! The night o’ the fight the barn was packed. Gypsies’d come from Dorset, Kent, half of Wales. What a fight that was! Tellin’ yer.
What
a fight. Bax an’ us older ’uns, we still remember it, blow by blow. Dad an’ Anglesey pounded each other to jam. Them clowns yer get boxin’ on the telly, with their
gloves
an’ their
doctors
an’ their
referees
, they’d’ve run
screamin
’ from the punishment Anglesey an’ Dad dealt each other. Bits hangin’ off Dad, there was. He could hardly
see
. But I’m tellin’ yer. Dad gave as good as he got. Floor o’ that barn was redder’n a
slaughterhouse
. Right at the end, the punches’d stopped. It was all they could do just to
stand
. At last, Dad swayed up to Anglesey, raised his left hand ’cause his right was so busted, and did this…’ Clem Ostler placed his forefinger between my eyes and pushed me, so gently I hardly felt it. ‘
Down
that Welsh juk went! Like a tree. Wham!
That
was the state they was in. Dad quit fightin’ that night. He had to. Too badly busted up. Took his vonga an’ bought a carnival ride. By an’ by he became the Goose Fair’s chief Toberman, so he did all right. Last time we spoke was down Chepstow way, in the crocus-tan, in hospital. Just a couple o’ days b’fore he died. Lungs’d flooded out so bad he kept coughin’ up bits. So I asked Dad, why’d he done it? Why’d he bet his family’s trailer instead o’ just money?’