The Standing Water (18 page)

Remembering Cain
and Abel, I feared that even Jonathon’s words might be enough to enrage the
Lord. Dark clouds sailed across the sky’s dome. Could those clouds part, could
that wrathful finger appear, wing down the spark of its judgement, smite my
friend’s forehead? But those clouds didn’t divide; the Lord didn’t hurl down any
thunderbolts. I helped Jonathon hobble back towards the school, his head
hanging and lolling, as if weighty with its pain. Jonathon – with a trembling
effort – turned that head to look at me. It was as if – in the whirling agony
of his mind – some fragments had coalesced, formed an understanding.

‘Remember we gave
our best toys to Marcus?’ Jonathon mumbled.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well –’ those pain-filled
eyes gazed at me ‘– where’s Marcus now?’

I nodded. I also
couldn’t help feeling let down by Marcus’s powers. How could he have let
something like that happen after all we’d sacrificed to him? Maybe Marcus could
only do a certain amount to protect us. I started to shiver – Jonathon had
survived his ordeal, but I knew a prank like that could mean death. What would
things be like if such a stunt shoved us into the otherworld? Would I be able
to continue with my stories and sketches, Jonathon with his set-outs and
strange contemplations? I didn’t know, but some instinct urged me to cling to
life on our globe, not to let anyone push me into the shady beyond. Whether it
was kids or Weirton who’d been responsible for Lucy and Marcus, we had to keep
trying to guard against their violence, against their idiocies.

The Diary of James Ronald Weirton

Thursday, March 17
^th
,
1983

What a day! Such
are the pleasures of a primary school headmaster. The things kids get it into
their heads to do will never stop amazing me. Getting on for twenty years in
teaching, nine as a head, and they still have the power to shock. Read
something today about some bleeding-heart liberals wanting to go to the
European Court of (so-called) Justice in an effort to get corporal punishment
restricted. Wish they could have seen what happened here today – might have
been enough for even
those
buffoons to change their minds! Kids need
discipline,
societies
need discipline – and, for many, discipline can
only be understood if it is connected with some sort of bodily pain. Reasoned
explanations and nice arguments are all very well, but most people are just too
knuckle-headed to take them in. What seems to work at a Hampstead dinner party
looks a bit different in the dim light of the boggy flatlands of northern
England. Different class, different education, different destinies, different
world. These kids need whipping into shape – no time for your namby-pamby therapies
and gentle telling-offs. The mums and dads here know that – you should listen to
them at parents’ evenings: ‘Don’t you hold back, Mr Weirton – you give him more
if he needs it!’ ‘Don’t be afraid to thrash him – a good few licks never did
anyone any harm!’ They’re a good bunch, really. Dull as the marshy plains
they’ve been bred up in, about as much imagination between them as a swarm of
head-lice, but at least they know what’s what. This isn’t urban England – we’re
a good twenty years behind any developments there, and that’s no bad thing! You
can keep your divorce and drugs and broken families, your kids running wild,
violent gangs and drunken brawls. Here, at least, traditional Christian values
still hold some sway. What will these kids become? Hopefully, a solid – and
stolid – layer somewhere towards the base of our society’s pyramid. No
geniuses, that’s for sure, no Wagners or Darwins or Thomas Hardys. These kids
will till the land or clerk in offices – they’ll labour in the lower reaches of
the civil service, smile at you from behind the counter in the bank. How on
earth would our society be if these … these
drones
thought it was a
bright idea to drop bricks on their bosses’ heads!? We’d have chaos! Anarchy!
For civilisation to function, people need to know their place. They need to
know what’s expected of them and exactly what will happen if they step out of
line. It’s
my
job,
my
place to instil such knowledge in them.

Speaking of
pyramids, I can tell you the Egyptians knew a thing or two. I remember when I
first saw those magnificent monuments. I’d stumbled off the ship into the clear
desert light, crammed myself into a shared taxi heading for Cairo’s outskirts,
and there they were – incredible! – rising up from the sands. Clever people,
the Egyptians – your civilisation doesn’t last for 3,000 years unless you know
what’s what! And what did the pyramid represent? The mound of Creation, yes,
but also the structure of society – with each layer knowing where it stood. For
the superb pinnacle, you need the solid base – good foundations that won’t
shift for millennia! Cement in your blocks and let them be. That’s what all
great achievements are grounded on – Wagner needed someone to clean his
theatres, somebody to copy out his accounts. The socialists and liberals
exciting little heads with their notions of equality – all rot! Such things
will bring the mightiest empires crashing down to dust in just a few decades.

This is all a long
way from boys dropping bricks on their heads. Sometimes I do ramble. Not that
there’s much else to do here in Goldhill, with the wife and son in bed and the
darkness stretching over the flatlands outside, stretching over the ten silent
miles to Emberfield, where I’ll have to drive tomorrow to try to ram education
into the heads of those sons and daughters of inbred farmers and drab office
boys. Shouldn’t speak of them like that, really, they’re decent people, the
type that are this nation’s backbone. What a day, though! What Dennis Stubbs
got up to, I don’t think even Marcus Jones could have matched in his prime!
When I heard what he’d done, I was just flabbergasted – he’s an audacious
little rascal, that Stubbs, can’t blame the Browning boy, really, for the
beating he gave out. Would have been something wrong with him if he
hadn’t
thrashed a schoolmate after a stunt like that! Of course, I blasted both of
them into the middle of next week, gave Stubbs a gargantuan walloping in front
of his classmates to set an example. But … well, I must admit, Stubbs’s antics
did make me have a secret snigger. He’s a joker that one and no mistake, a
buffoon of the first order! When he grows up, he’ll probably be the office
clown. Of course, I checked the Browning boy was all right, asked him how many
fingers I was holding up. When the haze in his head had cleared somewhat, he
didn’t seem any dimmer than normal. Went out to have a look at the infamous
brick and sighed my relief. It was from that old wall in the field’s corner – a
thing so leached and eroded from Emberfield’s endless rains it was little more
than a wafer of red dust. No wonder Browning’s thick skull snapped it! Still,
bet that skull ached until the day’s end. And he won’t sit down for a week
after the walloping I gave him! Poor lad, bet he couldn’t decide which end
pained him most! Thick as two short planks that boy. And with a younger brother
so bright! Sometimes I really think God has a sense of humour. If God was a
socialist, He’d have split the brains equally between them. But He gave almost
all to one and almost none to the other. That’s what life’s like – it’s unfair
and harsh, and the sooner people acknowledge that, the better. I should watch
the younger Browning, though. Sometimes the clever kids can be more trouble
than the dense ones. That’s why I came down so hard on Ryan Watson that day he
dawdled in late. Can’t let them get too many bright ideas in their heads or
you’ll never have any peace for a moment.

It’s been a long
day, better get some rest so I can rise again for tomorrow’s duties. Of course,
I’m also a block in the pyramid though one positioned a few levels higher than
the good folk of Emberfield. Don’t always feel like driving over those damp
flatlands to work; don’t always feel like driving back across them as dusk
tinges the low sky for another evening at home. But we all have duties –
duties! Take out too many blocks and the whole thing will crash down. I’m also
– as I should be – firmly mortared in my place.

Friday, March 18
^th
,
1983

Dull day, nothing
much happened. Spelling, a bit of basic arithmetic, some reading after lunch.
No need for any fireworks or theatrics let alone a walloping. Even those
knuckleheads Craig Browning and Darren Hill did all right. Surprising really,
considering the little our esteemed Mrs Perkins – also not one of life’s
brightest sparks – managed to teach them when they were in her class. Probably
too busy fussing with her make-up, don’t know what it is with women nowadays.
Pleased, of course, the class didn’t do too badly, but somehow … I don’t know,
such days lack something. It’s not that I enjoy yelling and screaming at kids –
my health could do with a lot less of it for a start! It’s not that I enjoy
picking them up and belting the living daylights from them – not the best for
the old health either. But there is satisfaction at seeing discipline imposed,
at seeing the fear I’ve put in their classmates’ eyes, at seeing them smart at
a clever put-down, seeing them shiver as my voice booms, seeing them howl and
sob afterwards. It’s not that I
like
being cruel, it’s more just
contentment at a job well done – a lesson firmly and skilfully powered into
them, demonstrated in clear terms to their classmates. And it
does
take
some skill, I can tell you, skills that need a long time to master – the
perfectly stretched pause, the soaring rhetoric, the furious outburst that
comes at exactly the right time yet is also a shock, the pinpoint timing of the
wrist-clasp and lift. Then there’s the swoop of the hand, the twist of the
body, the split-second collision of palm and backside – at just the correct
angle – that comprise the perfect wallop. You shouldn’t think I was always such
an expert in this art – I remember my first class back in Newcastle, now they
were
a struggle to keep orderly. Long years of practice, my headmaster there said.
Of course, he was right. Only danger is, I sometimes get too engrossed in it,
too satisfied at my own skill, and I just want to keep going, to crown a perfect
display with a magnificent finale. Something I need to watch in myself,
especially after what happened with Marcus Jones. Six of the best and two or
three for luck is sufficient for most crimes. On reflection, I
did
go a
bit too far with Stubbs and Craig Browning yesterday. Understandable, of
course, when one lad gets another to drop a brick on his head, when one lad is
merrily beating another to a pulp in the middle of the school field and
would
have
if I hadn’t stopped him! Even so, putting Stubbs down, just looking at
the lad, I was panicking we might have another Marcus, panicking about my own
booming heart, the tingles running over my skin. Luckily, it was all OK in the
end for us both.

Anyway, there was
no need for any of that today. I’m a fair man and I decided to reward them for
their good work. Took them to the hall for a sing-along to the radio. Had them
sitting down cross-legged, watched their faces light up as I wheeled the dusty
old contraption out from behind its curtain, watched their smiles broaden as I
fiddled with the dial. Then, we had it, good old folk and – especially –
country tunes, all those high voices belting them out as mine rumbled beneath. Wonderful!
The kids enjoyed it, and I was glad – I’m keen for them to think of me as a
dispenser of pleasure as well as pain. Good for them to know rewards and
punishments come from the same source. The country songs reminded me of my time
in Montana – the soaring peaks, the air clear as pure water, not like the dark
bogs and glowering clouds round here. Good times with my mates, going out to
bars, them laughing as I stuck a cowboy hat on my Limey head to shield it from
the sun. World away from Emberfield. But I like our cheerful singing sessions
though I’m not usually one for cheery music. Beethoven and Wagner are the
masters for me. I like good gloomy traditional Anglican hymns – none of your
bouncy modern rot desecrating our old churches. Glad our vicar agrees – damn
good chap, traditional he is, sticks to biblical basics. Teaches the kids every
true sacred word of God’s holy book from Genesis right on. I wouldn’t stand for
any modern trendy. Wonderfully poetic, those old hymns, in a miserable sort of
way, perfectly sum up the mess our first parents left us when they sinned in
the Garden. No point trying to disguise it. I make sure we sing plenty of them,
let the kids know what’s what.

Got the kids off
home, endured of bit of Mrs Perkins’s tittle-tattle as she fussed about this
and that before I managed to politely shunt her from the door too.  Settled
down in the quiet classroom to get some marking done. Amazing how tiny that
room seems without the children. Felt like a bird shut in a box. If I had
wings, there’d be no space to stretch them. As my pen etched ticks and crosses,
I thought about how many hours of my life I must have spent in there, how many
hours in that birdcage I’ll have to come – boxed by ceiling, walls, long window.
Grey carpet, kids’ garbage on the walls we have to stick up to please the
inspectors – dreadful poems, awful pictures. You’d think they’d be better by
this age. Only kid who can write and draw reasonably well is Ryan Watson. Get
Mrs Perkins to show me his stuff sometimes in the guise of routine checking. Lifts
the spirits somewhat.

I cracked on with
the marking, knowing that when it was done I could escape, really let the
weekend start. Prefer to get it finished at school – harder to concentrate at
home with Sandra prattling on and Nicholas whining. I wrote ‘escape’ just now –
not that escape’s a pleasing prospect when all you can run to is flat fields,
rain-filled swamps, the lurking banks of clouds ready to throw down even more
water. Only vaguely interesting place round here is Salton, for historical and
– we could say – mythological reasons. Have to take the two upper classes down
there for a walk one morning – make them see that even in these godforsaken
marshes, even in these soul-destroying flatlands, even in this town as dull as
the water in the ditches that gird it, heritage can be found and heritage is
important.

Marking over, I
packed up the briefcase and strode out to the car. Nice little motor – like to
think it makes me cut a dash: a sleek black bullet racing across the green
farmland. Good price for a Mercedes – probably third or fourth hand, but it runs
all right: good engineers, those Germans, know what’s what when it comes to
cars. Not like our dreadful union-infested plants, but, anyway, it’s important
for a man to make an effort – good car, smart clothes, well-groomed hair. Stand
tall, walk straight. Not difficult to stand out here among the shabby farm
labourers, the slouching office boys in their cheap suits. At six foot three, I’m
literally head and shoulders above them.

I edged the car out
of the gate and past the pond. Those skulking brown waters seem …
evil
somehow. It’s a hazard, that pool – I’ve asked the council enough times to do
something about it, but there it stands, year after year, just waiting for some
daft kid to topple in and drown. As I was passing it, I thought about what had
happened with Marcus Jones and I shivered violently. A big bead of cold sweat
ran down my backbone. That accursed pond will always remind me of that accursed
boy! How he contrived to get himself in there will never cease to surprise me.