Black Swan Green (32 page)

The song had got louder by its third encore. Perhaps kids thought,
If I chicken out of this, I’ll be the next Jason Taylor
. Or perhaps mass gang-ups just have a will of their own that swallows up resistance. Maybe gang-ups’re as old as hunters in caves. Gang-ups need blood as fuel.

The changing-room door slammed open.

The song instantly insisted it’d never existed.

The door bounced off the rubber door-stop on the wall and hit Mr McNamara in the face.

Forty-plus boys nervously corking in laughter is still quite loud.

‘I’d call you a pack of
pigs
,’ Mr McNamara shrieked, ‘but that’d be an insult to farmyard animals!’

‘Ooo
oooooo
!’ vibrated from the walls.

Some fury is scary, some fury is ridiculous.

I felt sorry for Mr McNamara. He’s me, in a way.

‘Which of you’ – McNamara bit back the words that’d lose him his job – ‘
toe-rags
have the
guts
to insult me face to face? Right now?’

Long, mocking, silent seconds.

‘Go on! Sing it. Go on. SING IT!’ That shout must’ve
torn
his throat. Sure there was anger in it, but I recognized despair, too. Forty more years of
this
. McNamara glared round his tormentors, searching for a new strategy. ‘You!’

To my utter horror ‘You!’ was Me.

McNamara must’ve recognized me as the kid trodden into the mud. He figured I’d be the likeliest to grass. ‘
Names
.’

I shrank as the Devil turned eighty eyes on me.

There’s this iron rule. It says,
You don’t get people into trouble by naming them, even if they deserve it
. Teachers don’t understand this rule.

McNamara folded his arms. ‘I’m
waiting
.’

My voice was a tiny spider’s. ‘I didn’t see, sir.’

‘I said, “
Names
”!’ McNamara’s fingers’d balled into a fist and his arm was twitching. He was on the very
edge
of belting me one. But then all light drained from the room, like a solar eclipse.

Mr Nixon, our headmaster, materialized in the doorway.

‘Mr McNamara, is this child your main offender, your chief suspect, or a recalcitrant informer?’

(In ten seconds I’d be sandwich spread or relatively free.)

‘He,’ Mr McNamara swallowed hard, not sure if his teaching career was minutes away from amputation, ‘says he “didn’t see”, Headmaster.’

‘There are none so blind, Mr McNamara.’ Mr Nixon advanced a few steps, hands hidden behind his back. Boys shrank against the benches. ‘One minute ago I was speaking on the telephone to a colleague in Droitwich. Abruptly, I was obliged to apologize, and terminate the conversation. Now. Who can guess the reason?’ (Every kid in the room stared
very
hard at the dirty floor. Even Mr McNamara. Mr Nixon’s stare’d’ve vaporized you if you met it.) ‘I ended my conversation owing to the
infantile braying
coming from this room. Literally, I could
no longer hear myself think
. Now. I am not concerned about the identity of the ringleader. I do not care who roared, who hummed, who remained mute. What I
care
about is that Mr McNamara, a guest in our school, will report to his peers – with just cause – that
I
am the headmaster of a zoo of hooligans. For this affront to my reputation, I shall punish
every one of you
.’ Mr Nixon lifted his chin one quarter-inch. We flinched. ‘“Please, Mr Nixon!
I
didn’t join in! It’s not
fair
if you punish
me
!”’ He dared anyone to agree but nobody was stupid enough. ‘Oh, but I am not paid my stratos
pheric
salary to be
fair
. I am paid my stratospheric salary to uphold standards. Standards which
you
,’ he knitted his hands together and cracked the knuckles, sickeningly, ‘just trampled into the
dirt
. In a more enlightened age, a sound thrashing would have taught you a sense of decorum. But, as our masters at Westminster have deprived us of this tool, other more onerous techniques must be found.’ Mr Nixon reached the door. ‘The Old Gym. A quarter past twelve. Latecomers will receive a week’s detention. Absentees will be expelled. That is all.’

Old school dinners’ve been replaced this September by a cafeteria. A sign saying
RITZ CAFETERIA OPERATED BY KWALITY KWISINE
is bolted over the dining room door, though the reek of vinegar and frying hits you in the cloakrooms. Under the writing’s a smiley pig in a chef’s hat carrying a platter of sausages. The menu’s chips, beans, hamburgers, sausages and fried egg. Pudding’s ice cream with tinned pears or ice cream with tinned peaches. To drink there’s fizzless Pepsi, sicky orange or warmish water. Last week Clive Pike found half a millipede in his hamburger, still wriggling. Even worse, he never found the other half.

As I queued up, people kept glancing at me. A pair of first-years weren’t trying too hard not to laugh. Everyone’s heard it’s Get Taylor Day. Even dinner ladies witched at me from behind the shiny counters. Something was going on. I didn’t know what till I sat down with my tray next to Dean Moran on the lepers’ table.

‘Um…someone’s put some stickers on your back, Jace.’

As I took off my blazer an earthquake of laughter rocked the Ritz Cafeteria. Ten sticky labels’d been put on my back. On each was written
MAGGOT
in a different pen by a different hand. I
just
stopped myself running out. That’d make their victory even more perfect. As the earthquake calmed down, I peeled off the stickers and tore them to shreds under the table.

‘Ignore the wankers,’ Dean Moran told me. A fat chip slapped his cheek. ‘Funny!’ he shouted in the direction it’d flown from.

‘Yeah,’ Ant Little called from Wilcox’s table, ‘we thought so.’ Three or four more were lobbed over. Miss Ronkswood came into the hall, stopping the chip bombardment.

‘Hey…’ Unlike me, Dean Moran’s able to ignore stuff. ‘Heard the news?’

Miserably, I picked specks of dried-on food off my fork. ‘What?’

‘Debby Crombie.’

‘What about Debby Crombie?’

‘She’s only in the club, ain’t she?’

‘Netball?’

‘
The
club!’ Dean hissed. ‘Preggers!’

‘Pregnant? Debby Crombie? A baby?’

‘Keep yer voice down! Looks that way. Tracy Swinyard’s best mates with the secretary at Upton doctors. They went on the piss at the Black Swan two nights ago. After a drink or five she told Tracy Swinyard to cross her heart and hope to die, and told her. Tracy Swinyard told my sister. Kelly told me at breakfast this morning. Made me swear not to tell on our nan’s grave.’

(Moran’s nan’s grave’s
littered
with shredded oaths.)

‘Who’s the father?’

‘Don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. Debby Crombie ain’t been out with no one since Tom Yew, has she?’

‘But Tom Yew was killed back in June.’

‘Aye, but he were in Black Swan Green in April, weren’t he? On leave. Must’ve pumped his tadpoles up her back then.’

‘So Debby Crombie’s baby’s dad’s dead, even before it’s born?’

‘Cryin’ shame or what? Isaac Pye said he’d get an abortion if he was her, but Dawn Madden’s mum said abortion’s murder. Anyhow, Debby Crombie told the doctor she’s havin’ the baby, no matter what. The Yews’ll help raise it, Kelly reckons. Bring Tom back to life, in a way, I s’pose.’

These jokes the world plays, they’re not funny at all.

I’ve never heard anything
, said Unborn Twin,
so hilarious
.

I bolted my egg and chips to get to the Old Gym by 12.15.

Most of our school was built in the last thirty years, but one part’s an old grammar school from Victorian times and the Old Gym’s in that. It’s not used much. Tiles get blown off on stormy days. One missed Lucy Sneads by inches last January, but no one’s been killed yet. One first-year kid
did
die in the Old Gym, though. Bullied so badly, he hanged himself with his tie. Up where the gym ropes hang down. Pete Redmarley
swears
he saw the kid hanging there, one stormy afternoon, three years ago, not quite dead. The kid’s head flip-flopped ’cause of his snapped neck and his feet spasmed, twenty feet off the ground. Pale as chalk, he was, ’cept for the red welt where his tie’d burnt. But his
eyes
were watching Pete Redmarley. Pete Redmarley never’s set foot in the Old Gym since. Not once.

So anyway, our form and 3GL were waiting in the Quad. I’d sort of attached myself to Christopher Twyford, Neal Brose and David Ockeridge, talking about
Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry
was on TV on Saturday. There’s this scene where Clint Eastwood doesn’t know if he has a bullet left in his gun to shoot the baddie.

‘Yeah,’ I chipped in, ‘that bit was
epic
.’

Christopher Twyford and David Ockeridge’s stare said,
Who gives a toss what
you
think?

‘
No
one,’ Neal Brose told me, ‘says “epic” any more, Taylor.’

Mr Nixon, Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch walked across the Quad. A major bollocking was coming. Inside, seats’d been arranged in exam rows. 3KM sat on the left, 3GL on the right. ‘Does anyone,’ Mr Nixon began, ‘believe he shouldn’t be here?’ Our headmaster may as well’ve said, ‘Does anyone wish to shoot their own knee-caps?’ Nobody fell for it. Miss Glynch spoke mainly to 3GL. ‘You’ve let your teachers down, you’ve let your school down, and you’ve let yourself down…’ Mr Kempsey did us after. ‘I do not recall, in twenty-six years of teaching, feeling this
sickened
. You have behaved like a pack of hooligans…’

This took till 12.30.

Grimy windows rectangled misty gloom.

The exact colour of boredom.

‘You shall remain in your seats,’ announced Mr Nixon, ‘until the one o’clock bell. You will not move. You will not speak. “But, sir! What if I need the lavatory?” Humiliate yourself, as you sought to humiliate a member of my staff. You will fetch a mop
after
the bell. Your detention shall be repeated every lunch-time this week.’ (Nobody dared groan.) ‘“But, sir! What is the
point
of this static punishment?” The point
is
that the victimization of the few – or even the one – by the many has no place in our school.’

Our head then left. Mr Kempsey and Miss Glynch had books to mark. Only their scratching pens, kids’ stomachs, flies entombed in the strip-lights and distant cries of free kids ruckled the silence. The unfriendly clock’s second hand shuddered,
shuddered
, shuddered,
shuddered
. That clock was more than likely the last thing in the world the kid who hanged himself saw.

Thanks to these detentions, Ross Wilcox won’t get me in the next few lunch-times. Any normal kid’d be nervous if they’d got two classes of boys sentenced to a week of detention. Might Mr Nixon be banking on us doing his job punishing the ringleaders ourselves? I sneaked a glance at Ross Wilcox.

Ross Wilcox must’ve been staring at me. He flashed me a
fuck you
V and mouthed, ‘
Maggot
.’

‘“I
got the conch—” Jack turned fiercely. “You shut up
!”’ Shit. The word ‘circle’ was coming up. ‘“
Piggy wilted. Ralph took the conch from him and looked round the
—”’ Desperately, I used the Trip Method, where you set up the stammer letter (‘s’) but sort of trip over it into the vowel to get the word out. ‘Sss-
ircle of boys
.’ Cased in sweat now, I glanced at Mr Monk, our student teacher for English. Miss Lippetts
never
makes me read aloud but Miss Lippetts’d gone to the staffroom. Obviously she hadn’t told Mr Monk about our arrangement.

‘Good.’ Patience strained Mr Monk’s voice. ‘Go on.’

‘“
We’ve got to have special people for looking after the fire
.”’ (S-consonant words’re easier than S-vowel words, I don’t know why.) ‘“
Any day there
”,’ I swallowed, ‘“
there m-may be a ship out there” – he waved his arm at the taut wire of the horizon – “and if we have a signal going they’ll come and take us off
.”’ (Hangman let me say ‘signal’ like a superior boxer lets the loser land a punch or two, for fun.) ‘“
And another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that’s a meeting. The sssame up here as down there.” They
—’, Oh shit shit shit. Now I couldn’t say ‘assented’. Normally it’s only words
beginning
with S. ‘Erm…’

‘“Assented,”’ said Mr Monk, surprised a kid in the top form couldn’t read such a simple word.

I wasn’t stupid enough to try to repeat it, like Mr Monk expected. ‘
Piggy opened his mouth to ssspeak, caught Jack’s eye and shut it again
.’ There’s no
way
I was hiding my stammer now. Hangman knew he was on to a major victory. I’d just had to use the Punch Method
again
for ‘speak’. Using brute force to punch the word out’s a last resort ’cause your face goes spaz. And if Hangman punches back harder the word gets stuck and
that’s
when you turn into the classic stuttering flid. ‘
Jack held out his hands for the conch and
,’ suffocating in plastic, ‘
ssstood up, holding the delicate thing carefully in his
’ – my earlobes
buzzed
with stress – ‘
sssooty hands. “I agree with Ralph. We’ve got to have these rules and obey them. After all, we’re not – we’re not
—” Sorry, sir…’ I had no choice. ‘What’s that word?’