‘Michael, we have lived here since just after Jason was born, but we are townies. Oh, they’re polite, for the most part. In front of us. But…’
(I checked my Casio. My appointment with Spooks was soon.)
‘Mum’s right.’ Julia toyed with the Egyptian ankh necklace Ewan’d given her. ‘Kate says if you haven’t lived in Black Swan Green since the War of the Roses, you’ll never be a local.’
Dad looked shirty, like we’d deliberately refused to get his point.
Mum took a deep breath. ‘I’m lonely. It’s that simple.’
The cows swished their tails at the fat flies around their dungy arses.
Graveyards’re sardined with rotting bodies, so of course they’re scary places. A bit. But few things’re only one thing if you think about them long enough. Last summer on sunny days I cycled as far as Ordnance Survey Map 150’d let me. Even Winchcombe, one time. If I found a Norman (rounded) or Saxon (stumpy) church with no one else around, I’d hide my bike round the back and lie down in the graveyard grass. Invisible birds, the odd flower in a jam jar. No Excalibur stuck in a stone, but I did find a tombstone from 1665. 1665 was the plague year. That was my record. Gravestones mostly flake away after a couple of centuries. Even death sort of dies. The saddest sentence ever I found in a graveyard on Bredon Hill. HER ABUNDANT VIRTUES WOULD HAVE ADORNED A LONGER LIFE. Burying people’s a question of fashion, too, like flares and drainpipe trousers. Yew trees grow in graveyards ’cause the Devil hates the smell of yew, Mr Broadwas told me. I don’t know if I believe that, but Weejee boards’re definitely real. There’re stacks of stories where the glass spells out something like ‘S-A-T-A-N-I-S-Y-O-U-R-M-A-S-T-E-R’, shatters, then the kids have to call a vicar. (Grant Burch got possessed one time and told Philip Phelps he was going to die on 2 August 1985. Philip Phelps won’t go to sleep now unless there’s a Bible under his pillow.)
People’re always buried facing west so at the end of time when the Last Trumpet blows, all the dead people’ll claw their way up and walk due west to the Throne of Jesus to be judged. From Black Swan Green that means the Throne of Jesus’ll be in Aberystwyth. Suicides, mind, get buried facing north. They won’t be able to find Jesus ’cause dead people only walk in straight lines. They’ll all end up in John o’ Groats. Aberystwyth’s a bit of a dive, but Dad says John o’ Groats’s just a few houses where Scotland runs out of Scotland.
Isn’t no god better than one who does that to people?
In case Spooks were spying on me, I did an ace SAS roll. But St Gabriel’s graveyard was deserted. Bell-ringing practice was still going on. Close up, bells don’t really peal but tip, trip, dranggg and baloooooom. Quarter past eight came and went. A breeze picked up and the two giant redwoods creaked their bones. Half past eight. The bells stopped and didn’t start. Quietness rings loud as ringing at first. I began worrying about time. Tomorrow’s a Saturday, but if I wasn’t home in an hour or so, I’d be getting a hell of a What time do you call this? Nine or ten bell-ringers left the church, talking about someone called Malcolm who’d joined the Moonies and’d last been seen giving away flowers in Coventry. The bell-ringers drifted through the lych-gate, and their voices floated off towards the Black Swan.
I noticed a kid sat on the graveyard wall. Too small for Pluto Noak. Too scrawny for Grant Burch or Gilbert Swinyard or Pete Redmarley. Silent as a Ninja, I sneaked up on him. He wore an army baseball cap with the flap turned back, like Nick Yew.
I knew Nick Yew’d be a Spook.
‘All right, Nick.’
But it was Dean Moran who went Gaaa! and dropped off the wall.
Moran jumped up from a pond of nettles, swatting his arms, legs and neck. ‘These bastard stingers’ve stinged me like bastards!’ Moran knew he looked too much of a tit to get bolshy. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Got a note, didn’t I? Invitation to join—’ You can see Moran think. ‘Eh. You’re never a Spook, are yer?’
‘No. I thought…you were.’
‘Then this note in my pencil case?’
He unscrumpled a note identical to mine.
Moran read my confusion right. ‘You got a note too?’
‘Yeah.’ This development was confusing, disappointing and worrying. Confusing ’cause Dean Moran’s just not Spooks material.