Black Swan Green (27 page)

‘Right.’

He did a comedy finger-point at his
GREENLAND SUPERMARKETS
badge and a James Bond voice. ‘The name’s Lawlor…Danny Lawlor. Mike – your da…my boss, did I forget to mention? – sent me up to say he’s really sorry but he’s still being detained. The Emperor’s dropped by, unannounced.’

‘The Emperor?’

‘Emperor Craig Salt of Greenland. Best not say I called him that. Your
da
’s boss is Craig Salt. So all the managers are having to look after him in the manner to which he has become accustomed. So, Mike’s suggesting how’s about you and me go in search of the ultimate fish and chip shop?’

‘Now?’

‘Unless you’ve got a hot dinner date?’

‘No…’

‘Grand altogether. We’ll get you back in time for
Chariots of Fire
. Ah yes, my informants tell me everything. One mo, just let me unpin this absurd name badge…I’m a man, me, not a self-adhesive strip of letters embossed on a Dymo label printer…’

‘Don’t lean too far out!’ Danny and I watched the jellyfish below our feet dangling off the end of the sea wall. ‘If Michael Taylor’s sole male heir winds up in the drink, my career prospects will most surely join him.’

Sunlight on waves is drowsy tinsel.

‘You’d be okay if you fell in on the harbour side.’ I sculpted my Mr Whippy with my tongue. ‘You could scramble on to one of the fishing boats. But if you fell on the sea side, you might get sucked under.’

‘Let’s not,’ Danny rolled up his shirtsleeves, ‘put your theory to the test.’

‘The ice cream’s great, thanks. I’ve never had one with two Flakes in it. Did you pay extra?’

‘No. Your man on the stall’s a fellow Corkonian. We look after our own. Ah, but isn’t this the life, now, eh? Downright sadistic of Greenland to be holding their training conferences in a spot like this.’

‘What does “sadistic” mean?’

‘Unnecessarily cruel.’

‘Why’ (I’d noticed Danny likes questions) ‘is this sea wall called the “Cobb”? Is it just in Lyme Regis?’

‘Even my omniscience has its blind spots, young Jason.’

(If Dad doesn’t know the answer to a question, he spends ten sentences persuading himself that he
does
know.)

On the beach, well-behaved waves zipped and unzipped themselves. Mums rinsed off kids’ feet with buckets. Dads folded deckchairs and issued instructions.

‘Danny, do you know anyone in the IRA?’

‘You ask that just because I’m Irish?’

I nodded.

‘Well, Jason,
no
. Sorry to disappoint you. The Provos are busier up in Northern Ireland, the top bit. But back in Cork I do live in a turf hut with a leprechaun called Mick in my potato plot.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

Danny held up a peaceful palm. ‘Accuracy on matters Irish is not the forte of the English. Truth is, we’re the friendliest people you’d wish to meet. Even north of the border. We just gun each other down occasionally, that’s all.’

Ice-cream drips snailed down the cone.

I don’t even know what I don’t know.

‘Will you look at those kites now! We didn’t have them when
I
was a kid!’ Danny was gazing at a couple of stunt kites with snaky ribbony tails. ‘Aren’t they something?’

We had to squint ’cause of the sun.

The tails doodlelooped red on blue, erasing themselves as they flew.

‘
They
,’ I agreed, ‘are
epic
.’

‘What’s Dad like to work for?’

The waitress at Cap’n Scallywag’s Fish’n’Chip Emporium arrived with our food. Danny leant back to let the tray land. ‘Michael Taylor, let me see. Well regarded…fair, thorough…doesn’t suffer fools gladly…he’s put in a good word or two for
me
at timely moments, for which I’m eternally grateful…that do you?’

‘Sure.’ I doused my fish with ketchup from a tomato-shaped squirter. Funny to hear Dad discussed as Michael Taylor. Along the promenade, strings of boiled-fruit lights lit up.

‘Looks like you’re enjoying that.’

‘I
love
fish and chips. Thanks.’

‘Your da’s paying.’ Danny’d ordered scampi, bread and a side salad to build a sandwich. ‘Remember to thank him.’ He turned to the first waitress and asked for a can of 7-Up. A second waitress hurried over with it and asked if the food was okay.

‘Oh,’ said Danny, ‘glorious.’

She sort of leaned at Danny, like he was a log fire. ‘Would your brother like anything to drink too?’

Danny winked at me.

‘Tango’ (pleasure from being mistaken for Danny’s brother wasn’t quite wrecked by Hangman not letting me say the ‘seven’ in 7-Up). ‘Please.’

The first waitress fetched me one. ‘Here on holiday?’

‘Business.’ Danny breathed mystery into this dull word. ‘Business.’

More customers came in and the waitresses went.

Danny did this funny look. ‘We should make a double act.’

Happy frying noises spat in Cap’n Scallywag’s kitchen.

‘One Step Beyond’ by Madness came on.

‘Have you got’ (I chickened out of saying ‘a girlfriend’) ‘any brothers and sisters?’

‘That depends,’ Danny never hurries his mouthfuls, ‘on your mode of accountancy. I grew up in an orphanage.’

God
. ‘Like Dr Barnardo’s?’

‘A Catholic equivalent, with more Jesus in the diet. Not enough to cause any lasting damage.’

I chewed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Danny’d handled this a billion times. ‘I’m not embarrassed about it. Why should you be?’

‘So’ – Julia or Mum’d’ve politely changed the subject – ‘did something bad happen to your mum and dad?’

‘Only each other. Pass us the ketchup. They’re still alive and rocking – not together – as far as I know, but, well, hey. A few experiments with foster parents did not end happily. I was what’s known as a “feisty child”. In the end the state agreed I was best off with the Jesuit Brothers.’

‘Who’re they?’

‘The Jesuits? A venerable religious order. Monks.’

‘
Monks
?’

‘Real live monks. They ran the orphanage. Oh, you had your usual quota of humourless bigots, but a fair share of
fierce
good educators. Lots of us got through university on scholarships alone. We were fed, clothed, cared for. Santy visited, come Christmas. Parties every birthday.
Clover
compared to growing up in a shanty town in Bangladesh or Mombasa or Lima or five hundred other locations I could name. We learned how to improvise, how to look out for ourselves, what not to take for granted. All handy business skills. Why mope around going, like, “Woe is me!”?’

‘Don’t you ever want to meet your real parents?’

‘Not a lad to beat around the bush, are you?’ Danny folded his arms behind his head. ‘Parents. Irish law’s a little murky on this one, but my biological mother’s people live up in Sligo. They own a posh hotel or some such. One time, I’d’ve been around your age, I took it into my head to run off to find her. I got as far as Limerick bus station.’

‘What happened there?’

‘Thunder, lightning, hailstones, fireballs. Biggest storm in years. My connecting bus was held up by a collapsed bridge. When the sun came out again, so did my sense of reality. So I scuttled back to the Jesuits.’

‘Did you get into trouble?’

‘The Jesuits ran an orphanage, not a prison camp.’

‘So…that was that?’

‘Yup. For now.’ Danny balanced his fork on his thumb. ‘What we – orphans, I mean – miss, or lack, or want, or need, are photographs of people who look like you. That never goes away. One fine day, I’ll make it up to Sligo to see if I can take some. With a telephoto lens, if my nerve gives out. But these great big life…“issues”…won’t be hurried. Ripeness, young Jason, is all. Scampi butty?’

‘No thanks.’ While Danny’d been talking, a decision’d made itself. ‘Will you help me buy one of those stunt kites?’

Greenland trainees’d colonized the whole lounge of the Hotel Excalibur. They’d changed out of their suits into herring-bone trousers and baggy shirts. As Danny and I walked in, they smirked our way. I knew why. Looking after their boss’s son was a creep’s job. One called out, ‘Daniel the Spaniel!’ and grinned the exact grin Ross Wilcox’s got. ‘Coming to inspect the nocturnal birds of Dorset?’

‘Wiggsy,’ Danny lobbed back, ‘you’re a drunken sot and a reprobate and you cheat at squash. Why would anyone want to be seen
dead
in public with yourself?’

The guy looked delighted.

‘Want to say hello,’ Danny turned to me, ‘to the Young Greenlanders?’

That’d be
hell
. ‘Is it okay if I just go upstairs and wait for Dad there?’

‘Don’t blame you in the least. I’ll tell him where you are.’ Then Danny shook hands with me, like I was a colleague. ‘Thanks for your company. See you in the morning?’

‘Sure.’

‘Enjoy your film.’

I got the key and bounded upstairs instead of waiting for the lift. In my head I listened to the Vangelis music for
Chariots of Fire
to flush away Wiggsy and the Greenlanders. Not Danny, though. Danny’s ace.

The alarm radio said 7:15 but no sign of Dad yet.
Chariots of Fire
began at 7:30, said the poster. I’d memorized the route to the cinema to impress Dad. Seven twenty-five came. Dad doesn’t forget appointments. He’d be coming. We’d miss the adverts and Coming Soons, but a lady with a torch’d show us our seats for the film. Seven twenty-eight. Should I go downstairs and remind him? I decided not to, in case we missed each other. Then it’d all be my fault for not sticking to the plan. Seven thirty. We’d have to spend some time working out who was who but the film’d still be watchable. At 7:35 Dad’s footsteps came thumping down the corridor outside. ‘Right!’ he’d burst in. ‘Off we go!’

The footsteps thumped past our door. They didn’t come back.

The eggy daffodils on the wallpaper’d fossilized to slag-heap grey as the day ended. I hadn’t turned on the light. Witchy laughter leaked into the room and music welled up from pubs all around Lyme Regis. TV’d’ve been pretty good ’cause it was Saturday night but Dad’d’ve felt guiltier if he’d found me in silence. I wondered what Sally from the amusement arcade’d be doing now. Being kissed. A boy’d be stroking those soft bare inches between her jeans and her top. Someone like Gary Drake or Neal Brose or Duncan Priest. My memory was vague so to pass the time I made her up. I sculpted Sally’s breasts like Debby Crombie’s. I gave her Kate Alfrick’s hair, silking round her naked throat. I gave her a face transplant from Dawn Madden, not forgetting Dawn Madden’s sadistic eyes. Mademoiselle Crommelynck’s
slightly
upturned nose. Debbie Harry’s raspberry-cream lips.

Sally, the lost Pick’n’Mix girl.

If Dad guessed I was trying to make him feel guilty, that’d give him the excuse to not let me. So after nine o’clock, I switched on the reading lamp and read
Watership Down
. Up to the bit where Bigwig faces up to General Woundwort. Moths kept tapping on the window. Insects crawled over the glass like skaters on ice. A key turned in the lock and Dad tripped into the room. ‘Ah, Jason,
here
you are.’

Where
else’
d I be?
I dared myself to not reply to Dad.

He didn’t notice I was sulking. ‘
Chariots of Speed
’ll have to take a rain-check.’ Dad’s voice was far too loud for the room. ‘Craig Salt turned up halfway through my seminar.’

‘Danny Lawlor told me,’ I said.

‘Craig Salt’s yacht’s over in Poole so he drove over to address the troops. Couldn’t just swan off to the local flea-pit with you, I’m afraid.’

‘Right,’ I said, in Mum’s flattest voice.

‘Danny and you had dinner, right?’

‘Right.’

‘The world of work’s about these kinds of sacrifices. Craig Salt’s taking us managers out to some
place
somewhere near Charmouth, so you’ll probably be asleep by the time I—’ Dad saw my kite, propped up against the radiator. ‘What’s this you’ve been spending your money on?’

Dad always picks fault with what I buy. If it isn’t tat from Taiwan, I paid far too much for something I’ll only use twice. If he can’t see a problem he’ll make one up, like that time I bought BMX transfers for my bike and he made a
massive
drama out of getting out insurance forms and altering the ‘Description’ box. It’s
so
unfair.
I
don’t criticize how he spends
his
money.

‘A kite.’

‘So I
see
…’Dad’d already slid my kite out of its wrapper. ‘What a beaut! Did Danny help you choose it?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t
want
to be pleased he was pleased. ‘A bit.’

‘Fancy you buying yourself a kite.’ Dad peered down its spine. ‘Hey, let’s get up at the crack of dawn. We’ll try it out down on the beach! Just you and me, right? Before all the little tourists stake out every square inch, right?’

‘Right, Dad.’

‘Crack of dawn!’

I cleaned my teeth without mercy.

Mum and Dad can be as ratty or sarcastic or angry as they want to me, but if I ever show a
flicker
of being pissed off then they act like I’ve murdered babies. I
hate
them for that. But I hate
my
guts for never standing up to Dad like Julia does. So I hate
their
guts for making me hate
my
guts. Kids can never complain about unfairness ’cause everyone knows kids
always
complain about that. ‘Life
isn’t
fair, Jason, and the sooner you learn that, the better.’ So there. That’s that sorted. It’s fine for Mum and Dad to scrunch up any promise they make to
me
and flush it down the bog, and why?

Because life
isn’t
fair, Jason.

My eyes fell on Dad’s electric shaver box.

I got the shaver out, just because. Snug as an unswitched-on light sabre.

Plug it in
, whispered Unborn Twin from the corners of the bathroom.
Dare you
.