Black Swan Green (42 page)

‘
I
don’t know! A black one. So what’re
we
getting for Christmas?’

‘Tube of Smarties.’ Dusty family joke. ‘Actually, I haven’t looked.’

‘
Right
! You
always
go on prezzie hunts.’

‘Honest, I haven’t. Record tokens and book tokens, most like. I haven’t asked for anything. ’Cause of…y’know, Dad’s job. And they haven’t asked me. Anyway, who used to play your Christmas LPs in
November
and make me stand sentry in case they came back from shopping?’

‘Remember that time you didn’t? They caught me and Kate dressed in Mum’s old wedding gear dancing to “Knowing Me, Knowing You”. Speaking of which, has the accept-no-imitations Black Swan Green Grand Christmas Village Hall Disco already come and gone?’

‘Starts in about an hour.’

‘Going with anyone?’

‘Dean Moran’s going. A few kids from my class.’

‘Oy! I told you about
my
love-life.’

Talking about girls with Julia’s still pretty new. ‘That’s ’cause you
have
a love-life. I
did
sort of fancy this one girl, but she’s…’ (
helping the love of her life learn to walk with a plastic leg
) ‘…she’s not interested.’

‘Her loss. Poor you.’

‘Odd thing is, I saw her at school last week, and, it’s weird, but…’

‘Your crush had evaporated?’

‘Yeah. Into thin air. How does
that
happen?’

‘Ah, search me, little brother. Search Aristophanes. Search Dante. Search Shakespeare. Search Burt Bacharach.’

‘Actually, I might not even go to the disco.’

‘Why not?’

Because I got Ant Little and Wayne Nashend suspended and Neal Brose expelled today and chances are they’ll be there
.

‘I’m not feeling that Christmassy this year.’

‘Nonsense! Go! Shoes, not trainers.
Polish
them. Those black jeans we bought you in Regent’s Arcade. And that V-neck mustard sweater, if it’s clean. Plain white T-shirt underneath. Logos are naff. Nothing pastel, nothing sporty.
Definitely
not that
yucko
piano tie.
Tiny
bit of Dad’s Givenchy round your gills. Not Brut. Brut’s as sexy as Fairy Liquid. Nick some of Mum’s mousse and stick your fringe up a bit so you don’t look like a cub. Dance your socks off, and may the bluebird of happiness fly up your nose.’

‘Okay.’
Brose and Little and Nashend’ll win if I don’t
. ‘Bossy.’

‘What use is an unbossy lawyer? Look, there’s a queue for the phone. Tell Mum I called. Say I’ll keep checking the message board this evening. Till late.’

The bruising cold wind shoved me along, every step bringing the class grass nearer to Brose, Nashend and Little. Past Miss Throckmorton’s, the village hall floated in the arctic dark, a lit-up ark. Its windows were stained disco colours. Michael Fish said the area of low pressure moving over the British Isles is coming from the Urals. The Urals’re the USSR’s Colorado Rockies. Intercontinental missile silos and fall-out shelters’re sunk deep in the roots of the mountains. There’re research cities so secret they’ve got no names and don’t appear on maps. Strange to think of a Red Army sentry on a barbed-wire watchtower shivering in this very same icy wind. Oxygen he’d breathed out might be oxygen I breathed in.

Julia’d spun out that conversation to distract me from something.

Pluto Noak, Gilbert Swinyard and Pete Redmarley stood in the hallway. I’m really not their favourite person since they chucked me out of Spooks the day after they let me in. They don’t pick on me, they just act like I don’t exist. Which is normally fine. But tonight this even older kid was with them. Stubbly, grim, brown leather jacket, All Blacks rugby shirt. Pluto Noak tapped him and pointed at me. A flock of girls behind me blocked off my escape route but the rugby kid’d already ploughed right up to me. ‘
This
is him?’

‘Aye!’ Pluto Noak caught up. ‘That’s him.’

The hallway went very quiet.

‘News for
you
.’ He gripped my coat so tight seams ripped. He throbbed with loathing. ‘
You
picked on the wrong kid today,’ his front teeth didn’t part as he spoke, only his lips twitched, ‘you knobless, gobless, gutless, spineless, brainless, arseless, dickless, shitless, witless, pissless, bollockless piece of—’

‘Josh,’ Pluto Noak clutched the kid’s arm, ‘Josh!
This
ain’t Neal Brose. This is
Taylor
.’

This kid Josh glared at Pluto Noak. ‘This isn’t Neal Brose?’

‘No. Taylor.’

Leaning against the door of the bogs, Pete Redmarley flicked a Minstrel into the air, and caught it in his mouth.

‘
This
,’ Josh glared at Pete Redmarley, ‘is
that
Taylor?’

Pete Redmarley crunched his Minstrel. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘
You
’re the Taylor,’ Josh let go of my coat, ‘who grassed on those little midget Kray twins who were squeezing
my
brother for money?’

‘Who’s,’ my voice cracked, ‘who’s your brother?’

‘Floyd Chaceley.’

Mild Floyd Chaceley has one holy
ghost
of a big brother.

‘Then I’m
that
Taylor, yeah.’

‘Well.’ Josh patted my coat smooth. ‘Well done
you
,
That
Taylor. But if any one of
you
lot,’ everyone in the hallway shrank under his evil eye, ‘
knows
this Brose or Little or Nashend, tell ’em I’m
here
. Tell ’em I’m waiting,
now
. Tell ’em I want
words
.’

Inside the village hall proper, a few kids were already dancing to ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. Most of the boys’d drifted to one side, too cool to dance. Most of the girls’d drifted to the other, too cool to dance too. Discos’re tricky. You look a total wally if you dance too early but after one crucial song tips the disco over, you look a sad saddo if you don’t. Dean was talking to Floyd Chaceley by the hatch where they sell sweets and cans of drink. ‘Just met your brother,’ I told him. ‘Jesus. Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of
him
.’

‘Stepbrother.’ Thanks to me, Floyd’d spent the morning in Nixon’s office giving evidence against Neal Brose. For all I knew Floyd hated me. ‘Yeah, he’s all right. Should’ve seen him earlier. Threatening to set Brose’s
house
on fire.’

I envied Floyd, having already squared the day with his mum and dad.

‘Don’t reckon Nashend or Little’ll be showing up tonight, neither.’ Dean appeared by my side and offered me his Curly-Wurly to bite a bit off of. Floyd bought me a Pepsi. ‘
Look
at Andrea Bozard!’ Dean pointed at the same girl who used to pretend to be a pony at Miss Throckmorton’s and make nests using acorns as eggs. ‘In that ra-ra skirt.’

Floyd asked, ‘What about her?’

‘
Lush?
’ Dean did a panting-doggy face. ‘Or what?’

‘Frigging In The Rigging’ by the Sex Pistols came on and the Upton Punks pogoed up the front. Oswald Wyre’s older brother Steve head-butted the wall so Philip Phelps’s dad drove him to Worcester Hospital in case he fell into a coma. But it got some of the boys dancing (sort of) so next the DJ put on ‘Prince Charming’ by Adam and the Ants. ‘Prince Charming’ has this special dance that Adam Ant does in the video. You all line up and make an X with your wrists in the air as you pace along to the music. But everyone wanted to be Adam Ant, who does it one step ahead of his pack, so the line got faster and faster up and down the village hall till kids were virtually sprinting. Next was ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)’ by Fun Boy Three. It’s undanceable to, unless you’re Squelch. Maybe Squelch heard a secret rhythm nobody else heard.

Robin South called out, ‘Squelch, yer spazzer!’

Squelch didn’t even notice nobody else was dancing.

Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think
you
are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the
secret
that’s using
you
? S’pose lunatics mould their doctors, more than doctors mould their lunatics?

In the bogs was Gary Drake.

Once I’d’ve frozen, but not after a day like today.

‘All right?’ Gary Drake said. Once he’d’ve sneered a comment about me not being able to find my dick. But suddenly I’m popular enough for Gary Drake to give an ‘All right?’

December cold streamed in through the window.

The boredest tilt of my head told Gary Drake,
Yeah
.

Cigarette butts bobbed in the yellow river of steaming piss.

‘Do The Locomotion’ got all the girls doing this choo-choo dance in a snaky line. Then there was ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ that’s got a sort of rowing-boat dance to it. It’s not a dance for boys. ‘House Of Fun’ by Madness is, though. ‘House Of Fun’ is about buying condoms but the BBC didn’t ban it soon enough ’cause the BBC only spot secret meanings weeks after the dimmest duh-brain in Duffershire’s got it. Squelch did this electrocuted dance that more kids copied to take the piss at first but actually it worked. (There’s a Squelch hiding in all great inventors.) Then ‘Once In A Lifetime’ by Talking Heads came on.
That
was
the
crucial song that made it more bonzoish not to dance than to dance, so now me and Dean and Floyd did. The DJ switched the strobe light on. Only for short bursts, ’cause strobes make your brain blow up. Dancing’s like walking down a busy high street or millions of other things. You’re absolutely fine as long as you don’t think about it. During the strobe storm, through a stormy night forest of necks and arms, I saw Holly Deblin. Holly Deblin’s got a sort of Indian goddess dance, swaying but sort of flicking her hands. Holly Deblin
might
’ve seen me through her stormy night forest, ’cause she
might
’ve smiled. (
Might
isn’t as good as
did
but it’s miles better than
didn’t
.) Next was ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer. John Tookey showed off this new New York craze called break-dancing but went spinning out of control into a group of girls who toppled like skittles. He had to be rescued by his mates from stabbing female heels. During Bryan Ferry’s ‘Jealous Guy’ Lee Biggs got off with Angela Bullock. They snogged in the corner and Duncan Priest stood right by them and did his imitation of a cow giving birth. But the laughs were envious too. Angela Bullock wears black bras.
Then
, during ‘To Cut A Long Story Short’ by Spandau Ballet, Alastair Nurton got off with Tracey Impney, this giant Goth from Brotheridge Green. Gary Numan and Tubeway Army’s ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ came on and Colin Pole and Mark Badbury did this glazed-robot dance. ‘This song’s
ace
!’ Dean yelled in my ear. ‘It’s so
futuristic
. Gary Numan’s got a friend named “Five”! Is that brill or
what
?’ Dancing’s a brain the dancers’re only cells of. Dancers think
they
’re in charge but they’re obeying ancient orders. ‘Three Times A Lady’ by the Commodores cleared the floor ’cept for boyfriends and girlfriends who smooched, enjoying being looked at, and snoggers who just snogged and forgot they were being looked at. Second choices were going for the third choices now. Paul White got off with Lucy Sneads. Next on was ‘Come On Eileen’ by Dexys Midnight Runners. A disco’s a zoo too. Some of the animals’re wilder than they are by day, some funnier, some posier, some shyer, some sexier. Holly Deblin’d obviously gone home.

‘I thought you’d gone home.’

An
EXIT
sign glowed alien-green in the dark.

‘
I
thought
you
’d gone home.’

The disco vibrated the plywood floor. Behind the stage there’s this narrow back room stacked with stacks of chairs. It’s got a sort of big shelf too, ten foot up and as wide as the back room. The table-tennis table-tops’re kept up there and I know where the ladder’s hidden.

‘No. I was just dancing with Dean Moran.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Holly Deblin did this funny jealous voice. ‘What’s Dean Moran got that I haven’t? Is he a good
kisser
?’

‘
Moran?
That’s re
volting
!’

‘Revolting’ was the last word I ever spoke as someone who’d never kissed a girl. I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips
know
what to do, just like sea anemones know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Teacups. Oxygen the girl breathes out, you breathe in.

But your teeth can clunk, something chronic.

‘Whoops,’ Holly Deblin drew back, ‘sorry!’

‘That’s okay. I can glue them back in.’

Holly Deblin twizzled my moussed hair. The skin round her neck’s the softest thing I’ve
ever
stroked. And she let me. That’s the amazing bit. She
let
me. Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic-Tacs. My cousin Hugo reckons he’s kissed
thirty
girls (and not only kissed) and he’s probably up to fifty by now, but you can only have one first one.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I nicked some mistletoe. Look.’

‘It’s all squashy and—’

During my second ever kiss Holly Deblin’s tongue visited my mouth, like a shy vole. You’d think that’d be disgustingsville too but it’s wet and secret and mine wanted to visit hers back so I let it.
That
kiss ended ’cause I’d forgotten to breathe. ‘This song,’ I was actually panting, ‘that’s on right now. Sort of hippyish, but it’s
beautiful
.’

Words like ‘beautiful’ you can’t use with boys you can with girls.

‘“#9dream”. John Lennon.
Walls and Bridges
LP, 1974.’

‘If that’s s’posed to impress me, it
really
does.’