Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

David Green. He’s an older boy, leaving school soon. Stands on his swing, bends his legs to push. Swings high. One day he’ll go over the bar. Over the bar.

‘I’ve got a car,’ he says. Still swinging high, he sits down. Scared he’ll fall. Swing harder. Lean into the crayon blue sky.

‘You can’t have. You’re not old enough to drive.’ Bikes in the long grass. His has drops, a proper racer. Mine a Raleigh for girls. The saddle raised, now I’m ten.

‘Yes I am. I can drive on private land. My Uncle’s got a farm.’

Like the boys at school, driving tractors on Sundays.

‘Do you believe me?’ He slows his swing, looks at me with eyes the colour of the sea. I agonise, imagine I can hear the waves, beyond the hill, stare at the cottages, the cardboard cut-out trees on the horizon.

‘I suppose so.’ He hesitates and nods and then he smiles.

‘Suck-er! Suck-er!’ Swings high again. My face burns.

‘Your sister’s a sucker!’ he shouts. Mandy’s playing houses under the swing with Jane. She looks up, shrugs, goes back to cooking the tea. She’s wearing her transfer t-shirt with the horse on it. Mine’s Starsky and Hutch.

‘Have you got brothers and sisters?’ I ask.

‘I had a sister.’ He stares at me again. ‘She died.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘It’s true.’

Strange to know someone who’s died. Someone not old. Like being famous. Swing harder.

‘Prove it.’

‘I’ll take you to the grave.’ He jumps high from the swing. ‘Race you up the hill.’ He runs before I know where we’re going. He always wins. He falls onto the yellow dry grass and I follow. Roll onto our fronts, watch the ants running over the hard soil.

‘Are you my boyfriend?’

‘Red ones are poisonous,’ he says. He takes out his penknife, scoops one up on the end, squashes it on my bare arm.

‘Uggh!’ I scream, though I don’t mind. He’s close and smells of salt and summer.

His t-shirt is frayed round the collar. Light hairs on his chin.

‘Mum says it’s my fault.’

I pick up a piece of broken glass, dig at the earth. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I was looking after her. She fell out of the window.’

‘How old was she?’

‘She was seven and I was ten.’

‘Same age as me.’ I shiver.

‘If you’re my girlfriend,’ he says ‘you should kiss me.’

I pucker my lips, press them on his.

‘Not like that,’ he says, ‘properly.’

I don’t know what he means!

‘If I show you the grave will you kiss me properly?’

I don’t believe him. ‘Okay.’

‘Meet me after tea in the graveyard. By the conker tree.’

Dad comes back from the beach, golden like the sand still in his hair. I would go too if it wasn’t for Greenie.

‘Where’s your Mum?’

I carefully dry the big glass salad bowl.

‘Upstairs, sewing.’
I make a face and he smiles. It’s always like this since he lost the business. Invisible, upstairs, she spends her days making dresses I will never wear. The whirr of the machine overhangs the house, all we can afford, all we can afford.

I put away the last of the plates, remember to hang the tea-towel on the rail so Mum won’t get angry.

‘Shall I get the football?’ he says.

I’ve got to meet Greenie soon. ‘I’m not sure.’

Dad’s face drops and I feel this strange sadness, like when I kicked the ball too hard and it went over the fence, into the brambles. He went to fetch it, brought it back in his cut hands and never complained.

‘Well talk to me while I make some tea,’ he says.

‘Alright.’ He boils the kettle and cuts himself a slice of cake - home-made now.

‘Guess what Dad, I saw Greenie today and he suckered me again and...’

‘He what?’

‘You know. Suck-er!’ I say it in the sing-song voice. ‘He told me he’s got a car and then he told me he killed his sister and I’m going to meet him in the graveyard so he can prove it.’

‘Is this the older boy?’

‘Yeah, so?’

‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘But Dad...’

‘But nothing. He’s too old.’

‘What’s age got to do with it?’

‘You’ll understand one day.’

‘‘When I’m older?’

‘Yes.’

‘But Greenie’s older so he must be sensible!’

He says nothing and I think I’ve won but he says, ‘I mean it’, and I know it’s time to give up.

I have to take my bike, although the church is just across the road, because I’ve told Dad I’m going to the park. I leave as he’s going upstairs for his bath. As I walk through the gate, I look over my shoulder.

Endless sun of evening summer. Past the white cross. A Norwegian soldier, dead in 1944. The year Mum was born. It used to scare me, to think she was alive in the war.

The warm stone of the church. The shade of the conker tree. Names in hearts carved into the bark.

He steps closer, the penknife pointing at the stone.

‘No!’ An arm grabs me. ‘What did I tell you!’

Her name on the stone, mine on the tree. Greenie, wilting flowers, the strange look in his eyes.

Dad holding my arm till it hurts.