Cruelty Read online

  Once again, Peter didn’t move.

  Ernie came up close to the smaller boy and bent down and stuck his face right up to Peter’s. ‘I’m tellin’ you for the last time,’ he said, soft and dangerous. ‘Go get ’er!’

  Tears were running down Peter’s face as he went slowly down the bank and entered the water. He waded out to the dead swan and picked it up tenderly with both hands. Underneath it were two tiny cygnets, their bodies covered with yellow down. They were huddling together in the centre of the nest.

  ‘Any eggs?’ Ernie shouted from the bank.

  ‘No,’ Peter answered. ‘Nothing.’ There was a chance, he felt, that when the male swan returned, it would continue to feed the young ones on its own if they were left in the nest. He certainly did not want to leave them to the tender mercies of Ernie and Raymond.

  Peter carried the dead swan back to the edge of the lake. He placed it on the ground. Then he stood up and faced the two others. His eyes, still wet with tears, were blazing with fury. ‘That was a filthy thing to do!’ he shouted. ‘It was a stupid pointless act of vandalism! You’re a couple of ignorant idiots! It’s you who ought to be dead instead of the swan! You’re not fit to be alive!’

  He stood there, as tall as he could stand, splendid in his fury, facing the two taller boys and not caring any longer what they did to him.

  Ernie didn’t hit him this time. He seemed just a tiny bit taken aback at first by this outburst, but he quickly recovered. And now his loose lips formed themselves into a sly, wet smirk and his small close-together eyes began to glint in a most malicious manner. ‘So you like swans, is that right?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I like swans and I hate you!’ Peter cried.

  ‘And am I right in thinkin’,’ Ernie went on, still smirking, ‘am I absolutely right in thinkin’ that you wished this old swan down ’ere were alive instead of dead?’

  ‘That’s a stupid question!’ Peter shouted.

  ‘ ’Ee needs a clip over the ear-’ole,’ Raymond said.

  ‘Wait,’ Ernie said. ‘I’m doin’ this exercise.’ He turned back to Peter. ‘So if I could make this swan come alive and go flyin’ round the sky all over again, then you’d be ’appy. Right?’

  ‘That’s another stupid question!’ Peter cried out. ‘Who d’you think you are?’

  ‘I’ll tell you ’oo I am,’ Ernie said. ‘I’m a magic man, that’s ’oo I am. And just to make you ’appy and contented, I am about to do a magic trick that’ll make this dead swan come alive and go flyin’ all over the sky once again.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Peter said. ‘I’m going.’ He turned and started to walk away.

  ‘Grab ’im!’ Ernie said.

  Raymond grabbed him.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Peter cried out.

  Raymond slapped him on the cheek, hard. ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘Don’t fight with auntie, not unless you want to get ’urt.’

  ‘Gimme your knife,’ Ernie said, holding out his hand. Raymond gave him his knife.

  Ernie knelt down beside the dead swan and stretched out one of its enormous wings. ‘Watch this,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the big idea?’ Raymond asked.

  ‘Wait and see,’ Ernie said. And now, using the knife, he proceeded to sever the great white wing from the swan’s body. There is a joint in the bone where the wing meets the side of the bird, and Ernie located this and slid the knife into the joint and cut through the tendon. The knife was very sharp and it cut well, and soon the wing came away all in one piece.

  Ernie turned the swan over and severed the other wing.

  ‘String,’ he said, holding out his hand to Raymond.

  Raymond, who was grasping Peter by the arm, was watching fascinated. ‘Where’d you learn ’ow to butcher up a bird like that?’ he asked.

  ‘With chickens,’ Ernie said. ‘We used to nick chickens from up at Stevens Farm and cut ’em up into chicken parts and flog ’em to a shop in Aylesbury. Gimme the string.’

  Raymond gave him the ball of string. Ernie cut off six pieces, each about a yard long.

  There are a series of strong bones running along the top edge of a swan’s wing, and Ernie took one of the wings and started tying one end of the bits of string all the way along the top edge of the great wing. When he had done this, he lifted the wing with the six string ends dangling from it and said to Peter, ‘Stick out your arm.’

  ‘You’re absolutely mad!’ the smaller boy shouted. ‘You’re demented!’

  ‘Make ’im stick it out,’ Ernie said to Raymond.

  Raymond held up a clenched fist in front of Peter’s face and dabbed it gently against his nose. ‘You see this,’ he said. ‘Well I’m goin’ to smash you right in the kisser with it unless you do exactly as you’re told, see? Now, stick out your arm, there’s a good little boy.’

  Peter felt his resistance collapsing. He couldn’t hold out against these people any longer. For a few seconds, he stared at Ernie. Ernie with the tiny close-together black eyes gave the impression he would be capable of doing just about anything if he got really angry. Ernie, Peter felt at that moment, might quite easily kill a person if he were to lose his temper. Ernie, the dangerous backward child, was playing games now and it would be very unwise to spoil his fun. Peter held out an arm.

  Ernie then proceeded to tie the six string ends one by one to Peter’s arm, and when he had finished, the white wing of the swan was securely attached along the entire length of the arm itself.

  ‘Ow’s that, eh?’ Ernie said, stepping back and surveying his work.

  ‘Now the other one,’ Raymond said, catching on to what Ernie was doing. ‘You can’t expect ’im to go flyin’ round the sky with only one wing, can you?’

  ‘Second wing comin’ up,’ Ernie said. He knelt down again and tied six more lengths of string to the top bones of the second wing. Then he stood up again. ‘Let’s ’ave the other arm,’ he said. Peter, feeling sick and ridiculous, held out his other arm. Ernie strapped the wing tightly along the length of it.

  ‘Now!’ Ernie cried, clapping his hands and dancing a little jig on the grass. ‘Now we got ourselves a real live swan all over again! Didn’t I tell you I was a magic man? Didn’t I tell you I was goin’ to do a magic trick and make this dead swan come alive and go flyin’ all over the sky? Didn’t I tell you that?’

  Peter stood there in the sunshine beside the lake on this beautiful May morning, the enormous, limp and slightly bloodied wings dangling grotesquely at his sides. ‘Have you finished?’ he said.

  ‘Swans don’t talk,’ Ernie said. ‘Keep your flippin’ beak shut! And save your energy, laddie, because you’re goin’ to need all the strength and energy you got when it comes to flyin’ round in the sky.’ Ernie picked up his gun from the ground, then he grabbed Peter by the back of the neck with his free hand and said, ‘March!’

  They marched along the bank of the lake until they came to a tall and graceful willow tree. There they halted. The tree was a weeping willow, and the long branches hung down from a great height and almost touched the surface of the lake.

  ‘And now the magic swan is goin’ to show us a bit of magic flyin’,’ Ernie announced. ‘So what you’re goin’ to do, Mister Swan, is to climb up to the very top of this tree, and when you get there you’re goin’ to spread out your wings like a clever little swannee-swan-swan and you’re goin’ to take off!’

  ‘Fantastic!’ cried Raymond. ‘Terrific! I like it very much!’

  ‘So do I,’ Ernie said. ‘Because now we’re goin’ to find out just exactly ’ow clever this clever little swannee-swan-swan really is. ’Ee’s terribly clever at school, we all know that, and ’ee’s top of the class and everything else that’s lovely, but let’s see just exactly ’ow clever ’ee is when ’ee’s at the top of the tree! Right, Mister Swan?’ He gave Peter a push towards the tree.

  How much further could this madness go? Peter wondered. He was beginning to feel a little mad himself, as though nothing was real any more and none o