Black Swan Green (8 page)

‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel!’ cried Aunt Alice.

‘Jason won a splendid dictionary,’ said Mum, ‘didn’t you, Jason?’

Alex the Git fired his sarcasm below adult radar. ‘
I
’d really like to hear your poem, Jason.’

‘Can’t. Don’t have my exercise book.’

‘What a pity.’

‘The
Malvern Gazetteer
printed the winning entries,’ said Mum. ‘Alongside Jason’s mug-shot, in fact! We can dig it out after dinner.’

(Even the memory was a torture. They sent a photographer to school and made me pose in the library reading a book like a complete gaylord.)

‘Poets,’ Uncle Brian smacked his lips, ‘so I’ve heard tell, catch naughty diseases from Parisian ladies of ill repute and die in draughty gavottes by the Seine. Quite a career plan, eh, Mike?’

‘Wonderful prawns, Helena,’ Aunt Alice said.

Dad said, ‘Frozen, from Greenland in Worcester.’

‘
Fresh
, Michael. From the fishmonger’s.’

‘Oh. Didn’t know there were still any fishmongers left.’

Alex dug up the poetry prize again. ‘At least tell us what your poem was about, Jason. The blossoms of spring? Or was it a love poem?’

‘Can’t see you getting much out of it, Alex,’ said Julia. ‘Jason’s work lacks the subtlety and maturity of
The Scorpions
.’

Hugo spluttered, to niggle Alex. And to tell me whose side he was on. I could’ve kissed Julia out of sheer gratitude. Almost.

‘Wasn’t
that
funny,’ Alex muttered at Hugo.

‘Don’t sulk, Alex. It ruins your good looks.’

‘
Boys
,’ warned Aunt Alice.

The posh gravy boat was passed around the table. Between my creamed potatoes and my miniature Yorkshire puds I created a Mediterranean of gravy. Gibraltar was the tip of a carrot. ‘Dig in!’ said Mum.

Aunt Alice was the first to say, ‘Divine chops, Helena.’

Uncle Brian did a crap Italian accent. ‘Dey melt-a in da mouth!’

Nigel grinned adoringly at his dad.

‘The secret’s in the marinade,’ Mum said to Aunt Alice. ‘I’ll let you have the recipe afterwards.’

‘Oh, but Helena, I’m not leaving without it!’

‘A smidgen more wine, Michael?’ Uncle Brian topped up Dad’s glass (from the second bottle) before Dad could answer, then his own. ‘Don’t mind if I do, Michael, thanks. Here’s looking at you, kid! So Helena, I see your mobile pagoda hasn’t gone up to the great Oriental junkyard in the sky yet?’

Mum put on her polite puzzled face.

‘Your
Datsun
, Helena! If you weren’t such a wonderful cook it’d be difficult to forgive you for breaking the First Law of Automobiles. Don’t trust a Jap or the tat he churns out. The Germans’ve got the right idea for once. Seen the new Volkswagen adverts? There’s this pint-sized Nip, running round trying to find the new VW Golf, then it drops from the ceiling and flattens him!
Wet
myself first time I saw it, didn’t I, Alice?’

‘Isn’t your camera,’ Julia wiped her mouth with her napkin, ‘a Nikon, Uncle Brian?’

Hugo said, ‘Nothing wrong with Japanese hi-fi technology, either.’

‘Or computer chips,’ added Nigel.

So I said, ‘Their motorbikes are pretty classic as well.’

Uncle Brian did this disbelieving shrug. ‘Precisely my point, boys and girls! Japs’ll take everyone else’s technology, shrink it down to their own size, and then sell it back to the rest of the world, right, Mike? Mike? You’re with me on
this
one, at least? What do you expect from the only Axis power that never apologized for the war! They got away with it. Scot-free.’

‘Two hundred thousand civilians killed by atom bombs,’ said Julia, ‘and two million more, incinerated by fire-bombs, is hardly what
I
would call “scot-free”.’

‘But the
fact
of the matter is’ (Uncle Brian doesn’t hear what he doesn’t want to) ‘the Japs are
still
fighting the war. They own Wall Street. London’s next. Walking from the Barbican to my office, you’d need…twenty pairs of hands to count all the Fu Manchu look-alikes you pass by. Listen to this, Helena. My secretary bought herself one of those…whateverthehelltheycall’ems…y’know, those motorised rickshaws…a Honda Civic. That’s it. A turd-brown Honda Civic. She drove it out of the showroom and at the very first roundabout – I jest not – it’s exhaust dropped – clean –
off
. There’s your reason why they’re so competitive. They make tat. See? Can’t have it all in this life. Not without picking up a nasty fungal infection, anyway, eh, Mike?’

‘Pass me the condiments, please, Julia,’ Dad said to Julia.

Hugo and I caught each other’s eye and for one moment we were alone in a roomful of waxworks.

‘My Datsun,’ Mum offered some braised celery to Aunt Alice who made a
no thanks
gesture, ‘passed its MOT with flying colours last week.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Uncle Brain sniffed, ‘you got it MOT-ed at the very same place that sold you your mobile pagoda in the first place?’

‘Why ever shouldn’t I?’

‘Ah, Helena.’ Uncle Brian shook his head.

‘I’m not quite seeing your point, Brian.’

‘Helena, Helena, Helena.’

Hugo asked for ‘just a sliver’ of Baked Alaska, so Mum cut him a wodge as big as Dad’s. ‘You’re a growing lad, for heaven’s sakes!’ (I filed the tactic away for future use.) ‘Dig in, everyone, before the ice cream melts.’

After the first spoonful, Aunt Alice said, ‘Out of this world!’

Dad said, ‘Very nice, Helena.’

‘Mike,’ Uncle Brian said, ‘you’re not going to let this bottle languish here half drunk now, are you?’ He tipped a fat glug into Dad’s glass, then his own, then raised his glass to my sister. ‘“Here’s looking at you, kid!” But I’m still at a loss to understand why a young lady of your obvious talents shouldn’t be aiming for the Big Two. At Richmond Prep, I jest not, it’s Oxford this and Cambridge that, morning, noon and night, isn’t it, Alex?’

Alex raised his head ten degrees for a quarter-second to say yes.

‘Morning, noon and night,’ said Hugo, dead seriously.

‘Our careers adviser,’ Julia spooned a dribble of ice cream before it got to the tablecloth, ‘Mr Williams, has a friend in the radical bar in London, who says that if I want to specialize in environmental law then Edinburgh or Durham are really the places to—’

‘Then I’m
sorry
,’ Uncle Brian judo-chopped the air, ‘sorry, sorry, sorry, but Mr Williams – a closet Welshman, doubtless – Mr
Williams
should be tarred, feathered, tied to a mule and sent back to Haverfordwest! It’s not
what
you learn at university, it’s’ Uncle Brian was steamy red now ‘it’s
who you network with
!
Only
at Oxbridge can you network with tomorrow’s elite! I jest not, with the right college tie I’d’ve got made partner ten years ago! Mike…Helena! Surely you’re not going to stand idly by while your first-born squanders herself at the University of Nowhereshire?’

Annoyance darkened Julia’s face.

(I usually retreat to somewhere safe at this point.)

Mum said, ‘Edinburgh and Durham have good reputations.’

‘Doubtless, doubtless, but
what you’ve got to remember
is,’ Uncle Brian was now almost shrieking, ‘“Are they the
best
on the market?” and the
answer
is “Are they
heck
!” Blimey O’Riley, this,
this
, is
precisely
the problem with comprehensive schools. Fabulous for little Jack and Jill Mediocrity, but do they push the brightest and ablest? Do they
heck
! For those teaching unions, “brighter” and “abler” are dirty words.’

Aunt Alice put her hand on Brian’s arm. ‘Brian, I think—’

‘I refuse to be “Brianned” when our only niece’s
future
is at stake! If my concern makes me a snob, then bugger it and ’scuse my French, I’ll
be
the bloodiest snob I
know
and wear that badge with pride! Why
anyone
with the brains for Oxbridge would set their sights on Jockland is simply
beyond
my
understanding
.’ Uncle Brian emptied his glass in one urgent swallow. ‘Unless perhaps—’ My uncle’s face turned from outraged to pervy in three seconds. ‘Ah, yes – unless there’s a young Scottish stallion with a hairy sporran you’re not confessing to anyone about, Julia, eh? Eh, Mike, eh? Eh, Helena? Thought of that, eh?’

‘
Brian
—’

‘Don’t worry, Aunt Alice.’ Julia smiled. ‘Uncle Brian knows I’d rather be involved in a multiple car crash than discuss my private life with him. I intend to study law in Edinburgh, and all the Brian Lambs of tomorrow will have to do their networking without me.’

I
’d’ve
never
got away with saying that,
ever
.

Hugo raised his glass to her. ‘Well
said
, Julia!’

‘Ah,’ Uncle Brian did a sort of punctured laugh, ‘you’ll probably go far in the legal game, young lady, even if you
do
insist on a second-class university. You’ve got the art of the
non-secateur
off pat.’

‘Fabulous to earn your stamp of approval, Uncle Brian.’

A cow of an awkward pause mooed.

‘Hurrah!’ Uncle Brian scoffed. ‘She insists on the last word.’

‘You’ve got a strand of celery stuck to your chin, Uncle Brian.’

The coldest place in our house is the downstairs bog. In winter your bum freezes to the seat. Julia’d said goodbye to the Lambs and’d gone to Kate Alfrick’s to do some history revision. Uncle Brian had gone up to the spare room ‘to rest his eyes’. Alex’d gone to the bathroom for the third time since he’d arrived. Each time he took over twenty minutes. Don’t know
what
he was finding to do in there. Dad was showing Hugo and Nigel his new Minolta. Mum and Aunt Alice were having a stroll round the windy garden. In the mirror above the washbasin I was scanning my face for signs of Hugo. Could I turn myself into him by sheer will-power? Cell by cell. Ross Wilcox is doing it. At primary school he was a thicko nobody, but now he smokes with older kids like Gilbert Swinyard and Pete Redmarley and people’re calling him ‘Ross’ instead of ‘Wilcox’. So there must be a way.

I’d sat down and done a good clean crap when I heard voices getting louder. Eavesdropping’s wrong, I know, but it was hardly
my
fault if Mum and Aunt Alice chose to natter
right
outside the ventilator flaps, was it?

‘
You
shouldn’t be apologizing, Helena. Brian was…God, I could
shoot
him!’

‘Michael brings the worst out in him.’

‘No, let’s just…Helena, your rosemary! It’s virtually a tree. I just
can’t
get my herbs to thrive. Apart from the mint. The mint’s going crazy.’

A pause.

‘I wonder,’ Mum said, ‘what Daddy would make of them. If he could see them now, I mean.’

‘Brian and Michael?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, first he’d tell us, “Told you so!” Then, he’d roll up his sleeves, pick up whatever they were arguing the opposite of, and not leave the ring until both of them were battered into mute agreement.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘Not as harsh as Daddy! Julia would give him a run for his money, though.’

‘She can be rather…opinionated.’

‘At least it’s CND and Amnesty International she’s opinionated about, Helena, and not Meaty Loaf or the Deaf Leopards.’

A pause.

‘Hugo’s turning into a real charmer.’

‘“Charmer” is
one
word.’

‘But look at how he
insisted
on doing the washing-up. Of course, I couldn’t let him.’

‘Yes, I know, it wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Jason’s still painfully quiet. How’s his speech therapy going?’

(I didn’t want to hear this. But I couldn’t leave without flushing the bog. If I did, they’d know they’d been overheard. So I was stuck there.)

‘Snail’s pace. He sees this South African lady called Mrs de Roo. She tells us not to expect miracle cures. We don’t. She tells us to be patient with him. We are. Not much else to say.’

A long pause.

‘You know, Alice, even after all these years, I
still
find it hard to believe Mummy and Daddy have gone for
good
. That they are actually…dead. Not just on a cruise liner in the Indian Ocean, out of reach for six months. Or…What’s funny?’

‘Being stuck with Daddy on a cruise liner! That
would
be purgatory.’

Mum didn’t answer.

A longer pause.

‘Helena, I’m not prying,’ Aunt Alice’s voice’d shifted, ‘but you haven’t mentioned any more of those phantom telephone calls since January.’

A pause.

‘I’m sorry, Helena, I shouldn’t have stuck my beak into—’

‘No, no…I mean, God knows, who else can I discuss it with? No. There haven’t been any more. I feel a bit guilty for jumping to conclusions. It was just a storm in a teacup, I’m sure. A non-existent storm, I should say. If it hadn’t been for…you know, that “incident” of Michael’s five and a half years ago, or whenever it was, I wouldn’t’ve thought twice. Wrong numbers and crossed lines happen all the time. Don’t they?’

(‘Incident’?)

‘Exactly,’ Aunt Alice answered. ‘Exactly. You haven’t…said…’

‘A “confrontation” with Michael’d be like digging up a grave.’

(My goose bumps actually
hurt
.)

‘Of
course
it would,’ Aunt Alice answered.

‘The average Greenland trainee has a better idea of what goes on in the head of Michael Taylor than his own wife, half the time. Mind you, now I know why Mummy was so down, half the time.’

(I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to. I wanted to. I don’t know.)

‘You’re getting morbid, big sister.’

‘You’re my morbid-mop, Alice.
You
’ve got glamour.
You
get to meet Chinese violinists and swarthy Aztec pan-pipe ensembles. Who’s at the theatre this week?’