The Standing Water (10 page)

I thought more
about what the vicar had said about angels. I often wondered if such beings
were around us. Did angels really climb up and down ladders dangling from
heaven, did they really stride among us as we studied in school, among our
parents as they worked, cleaned our houses, shopped? Though I felt bad about
questioning the vicar, I wondered about the angels in the same way I still
occasionally wondered about the ghostly kids in the Old School, Lucy, even
Marcus. But with Christmas edging nearer, would my doubts over those heavenly
beings be eased? Indeed, I’d heard a legend people were more likely to see them
at such a holy time of year.

My excitement grew
as each day took us closer to Christmas. One morning, we trooped into assembly
and saw Weirton standing at the front next to a huge pine, its mighty branches
still unbowed by gleaming baubles, tinsel manes. That pine stood in a massive
pot, one I was sure it would have taken twenty strong men to lift. Weirton
started to pace; he went on striding till we’d all got settled cross-legged on
the floor.

‘You will notice’ –
Weirton stopped, swivelled, flung his finger at the pine – ‘we have our
magnificent Christmas tree here, which we will decorate according to our holy
traditions; traditions it is of the greatest importance to keep up! Yes, we’ll
take the box of decorations from the store cupboard …’

I sucked in a quiet
gasp as I remembered that magical box which only came out once a year, that box
filled with lights, glitter, baubles, decorations in the most fantastic shapes,
and – if I remembered rightly – angels: angels blowing trumpets, angels
unfurling strip-like banners written with magic words in some mystical
language, angels with circles of tinsel propped on little sticks over their
heads. Why would people, I told myself, make decorations modelled on such
beings if no one ever saw them? I thought of that enchanted box, of that box of
wonders that skulked so mysteriously the rest of the year in that cupboard’s
depths. But then I sucked another, louder breath – causing some kids near me to
turn round, causing even the vast face of Weirton – I thought, for a moment –
to twitch in my direction. That same cupboard, of course, contained Lucy. I
imagined her hanging so silently in the dark, her skull grinning into the
blackness. Who would dare venture into that haunted space to retrieve our Christmas
box? I prayed Mr Weirton wouldn’t order me to do it.

‘Yes, we’ll trim up
the school –’ Weirton beamed ‘– the hall, the corridors, the classrooms. And,
of course, you’ll all have the chance to make decorations. This afternoon,
we’ll cover all the tables, get out the card, glitter, paint and glue, and
we’ll make our stars, our baubles, our own blessed angels to praise God and His
son, to make sure our great traditions
live
even in this modern world!’

Weirton grinned at
us. He turned his head as his eyes scanned our rows. Those eyes were warm and
kind behind their glasses – warm and kindly rather than angry and hard. Ever
since Weirton had walked into the hall he’d been smiling. He was obviously
affected by the holiness of that time of year. Maybe his usually irritation,
his ever-present twitching rage had been soothed by the angels that even at
that moment might have been walking among us. I just wished that, if they were
indeed there, my eyes could learn to see their shimmering presence.

So, that afternoon,
newspapers covered the tables, and the paint and glue came out. The two junior
groups mingled, going in and out of each other’s classes. I laboured on a big
table in Weirton’s room. I took a piece of card, and – doing my best with the
blunt lances of our brushes, their bristles often gunged together, our round
cakes of crumbly paints, spotted and stained with different colours – I mixed
some blue with white, getting a lovely pale sky shade, a shade I thought had a
holiness and purity most suitable for angels’ robes. I painted all my card in
that colour then carved – as best I could with our clumsy scissors – my angel
shapes from it: skilfully sculpting the curves of the wings, with their bumpy
outlines of feathers below, the rims of the halos, the edges of the robes, the
sandal-shod feet sticking out under them. I mixed more paints then shaded in
the pink of the face, the blond hair, the robes’ creases before adding a
carefully judged sprinkling of glitter to ape the angels’ heavenly radiance.
When I’d got a few done, I sat back, scrutinised my work. I nodded, gave a
smile – it was certainly impressive.

I glanced around
our table. The same couldn’t be said for the others’ creations. The brother sat
opposite me. Face lit by a dopey smile, he was ramming his blunt-ended brush
into a jam-jar of glue. He then smeared huge amounts of that gloopy liquid over
some shape he’d hacked from a sheet of card though what that shape was meant to
be I couldn’t guess. When he’d smothered it with glue – in the process sticking
a good quarter of it to the table’s newspaper covering – he grabbed a whole pot
of glitter, tipped it upside down so an immense cloud of twinkling flakes
plummeted over his work. He gazed down at it, his mouth hanging; his joy at his
excess made that open mouth morph into a huge grin. Seated next to Craig,
Jonathon was doing somewhat better. He was making stars. He had his ruler, his
pencil – that pencil sharpened to a precise point. A tooth bit his lip; he
stared down as he drew his star on the card, each beam a triangle expertly
measured. As best he could with our blunt scissors, he then carefully cut it
out. He gazed at the glue, scrutinising its jam-jar as he – I supposed – was
estimating exactly how much he’d use. He dipped his brush’s tip into that
sticky substance and smeared a light coating of it onto his star. He next gazed
at the glitter. His eyes flickered as it again seemed he was calculating the
precise amount required. He dipped his fingers in the pot then applied a judicious
sprinkling – just what was needed but no more, just enough to make his star
shimmer enticingly. Jonathon picked up ruler and pencil again, went to work on
his next star as my eyes moved on from him. Next to his brother, Craig still
worked – still thrusting his brush, lavishing his glue, lunging across the
table to grab another pot of glitter, his open-gobbed moronic smile still set
on his face. Most of the other kids were doing better than Craig, but not much.
We had a table of misshapen Santas, off-centre angels, baubles bulging out at
odd angles, attempts at reindeer that looked more like deformed cows. Only
Helen Jacobs was producing anything decent. She was carving neat ovals from her
card, ovals topped with holly spikes. Those shapes she transformed into
Christmas puddings: painted brown, dotted with specs of black, with glowing
green holly leaves and ripe red berries, with – below those crowning sprigs – dollops
of bright custard to top those sweet ovals. Though well-made, they looked like
no Christmas puddings I’d ever seen. Everything was too perfect – the oval too
neat, the currents scattered too regularly, even the custard oozed with a kind
of good-girl tidiness. Helen held up one of her finished puds, smiled smugly
and went on to make some more.

Though most kids
appeared to be enjoying their attempts at art, only Craig seemed to completely
relax, to let the joy of the moment shine in his gormless grin. The other
children would shoot glances at the door, fire nervous looks over their shoulders.
They’d smile, but those smiles would wobble with anxiety. Weirton had been
pacing between the classrooms inspecting the kids’ work. He’d been next door
for a while and now we heard the steady boom of his voice through the wall.
Though that boom lacked anger, it still made the kids’ hands quiver, made their
lips shake as they forced their eyes to look down at their dismal decorations.
For the first time, Craig’s grin faltered, his eyes widened as I guessed the
realisation dawned that his enthusiastic yet slapdash efforts might not be
looked at favourably by Weirton. Jonathon sighed, leaned over to look at his
brother’s work. He picked up his pencil and ruler, and had soon measured out a
series of neat stars from Craig’s misshapen effort, stars which he then cut out
for his brother. Craig’s open mouth twitched back into a smile; he gazed in
gratitude at his sibling. I’d made quite a few angels by now so I decided to
have a little variation. I created some fairies. They weren’t so different to
the angels really – I just swapped halos for wands then capped each with a
star, which was a Christmassy symbol anyway. I knew angels had heralded
Christ’s birth – I wondered if perhaps fairies had too. Footsteps sounded in
the corridor. Kids jumped in their seats, snatched up pencils, brushes, strove
to look busy. The door creaked, Weirton’s vast face appeared and he paced into
the room. That face peered down; the eyes swelled behind the square glasses as
the teacher moved slowly along our table.

He rested his hand
on Jonathon’s shoulder, nodded at his stars, murmuring, ‘good, good.’ He walked
on, skirting our long rectangle. Dennis Stubbs, Richard Johnson looked up at
Weirton, looked down at their misshapen baubles; their lips quivered; their
hands trembled but Weirton just beamed, moved on. I really wondered if an angel
was walking beside him, putting him in such a good mood. Normally, for work of
that quality, a lad could expect to be blasted by shouts, to be wrenched into
the air, battered by the swooping palm. Now the teacher was striding down my
side of the table. It was my turn to shiver. I reckoned my work was good, but
with Weirton you never knew. I’d heard legends of him being sympathetic when
lads had got all their sums wrong, but on other occasions flinging down
tremendous hidings when boys had only made a couple of errors. A force bashed
my back, knocking the breath from my body, sending my torso shooting over my
desk. That force flung my arms out; my hands only narrowly missed pots of
glitter, glue. I looked up, saw the grinning pink face. The massive palm once
more slammed onto my back.

‘That’s great!’ the
voice boomed. ‘I really love those angels and those fairies! Must be the best
decorations I’ve seen today! Keep it up, young Ryan! We’ll make sure your angels
and fairies get the best places on the tree!’

I felt my face
redden as satisfaction rose, as warmth glowed in my stomach, chest at Weirton’s
kind words. Stubbs, Darren Hill snarled at me. I knew I might get it later, but
this only seemed to add to the smug happiness I felt. Weirton was now praising
Helen’s Christmas puddings. My jealousy burned as he exclaimed over her holly
sprigs, her custard dollops, the exactness of her ovals. Helen smiled, though
it seemed to me a smile that expected such praise, that was pleased to see
things going on in their normal course. But still, I thought, though Weirton’s
voice boomed out its compliments, there was something lacking in the teacher’s
tones. His praise seemed mechanical; it was almost as if he had to do it; his
voice didn’t rumble with the same enthusiasm it had about my pieces. Lastly,
Weirton came to Suzie Green: a girl pale, mouse-like, dim, who often triggered
his wrath, who’d often – after being blasted by the headmaster – find herself
draped over Perkins’s knee. Weirton looked down at Suzie’s work; Suzie’s grey
shivering face looked up at him. I understood why she was worried. Her effort
was worse than Craig’s had been. A jagged indistinct shape had been hacked from
card, daubed – seemingly at random – with paint and glue, encrusted with a
bumpy landscape of glitter. Weirton went on staring at it; Suzie now shook
violently. The atmosphere in the room got denser; we all braced ourselves for
an explosion. But Weirton’s good angel really must have been with him. Smiling,
he bent down, took Suzie’s scissors, and started sculpting her misbegotten
creation into a respectable – though, I have to say, off-centre – star. Suzie’s
face lit up with gratitude; her eyes widened in relief.

The final day of
term came and we trudged into assembly. In the last week or so, I’d become more
and more convinced the vicar was right – that angels did walk among us,
especially at such a sacred time of year. I thought it really might explain why
Weirton had been in a good mood all week. He’d only given out one whacking – to
Craig Browning, not surprisingly – and all that lad had got had been six of the
best and two for luck: nothing compared to some of the legendary wallopings
Weirton had hurled down not long ago. Of course, the school looking so festive put
us all in a happy state. In the hall, the tree gleamed and glimmered in its
corner – shining out its sacred light against the day’s duskiness. I was sure –
when I peered from my cross-legged position midway down the hall – I could
catch the shimmer on the wings of those angels I’d sculpted. The hall’s sides,
the corridors, the classrooms were festooned with paper chains – I remembered
Weirton beaming as Stubbs, Darren Hill balanced and teetered on stools,
stretching to put them up. But I suspected the teacher’s unusual jollity must
have been caused by more than our decorations. And what I’d hear in that
assembly would make my suspicions firmer. Weirton was pacing at the front. When
we’d all got settled down, he halted his stride, swivelled round and hurled his
pointing finger out over our rows.

‘Children!’ the
voice boomed. ‘Let’s begin with a hymn. Yes, a hymn to celebrate the joyous
start of our most holy Christmas holiday. Page forty in your books!’

Despite Weirton’s
merry mood, the books were still scrabbled urgently along our rows. Perkins
turned to the piano, bashed out her chords and we all shuffled to our feet.
Those chords, as usual, were heavy, sombre, but joyful lighter notes skipped
above their gloom. Soon we were roaring out the song.