The Standing Water (22 page)

Weirton led us on.
He worked himself up to quite a stride so we shorter-legged kids soon found
ourselves at the back of a thinning procession. As I pondered how Mr Weirton
knew so much about that battle – surely his granddad was too young to have
fought in it, but maybe his great-granddad had – we approached another wood: a
modest oblong of pines, barbed-wire sealed. I wondered what had happened to the
vast forests of Salton that had lived in my mind. Had they all been chopped
down since my last visit? If they had, the land had been cleansed of them well.
There was no mess of roots, no stumps. I turned to Jonathon.

‘I’m sure this wood
used to be bigger. I remember it spreading further than I could see.’

‘Yeah –’ Jonathon
shrugged ‘– me too.’

Disappointed at
that drab rectangle of trees, we walked on. But soon we came upon something
that made our hearts beat, our mouths gape. At the edge of the track, by the
knocked-down column of another noble gate – which had once marked the other end
of the grounds, Mr Weirton told us – was a pile of white stones. About five
feet high, the mound gleamed and glimmered in the weak light.

‘Diamonds!’ Stubbs
exclaimed.

‘Wow!’ I said.

‘Are you sure!?’
Jonathon asked, voice pitched high.

‘Course!’ said
Stubbs. ‘They’re white shiny stones – what else could they be?’

This was even
better than the breastplate. No need to scrabble down that stinging bank to
capture my fortune – I could just cram my bag and pockets right there. Then no
more school, none of my dad’s dreary work when I got older; maybe I could even
escape from Emberfield. I could draw, play, relax always. Jonathon, Stubbs and
I approached that heap. Now closer, I could see how light refracted through the
inner chambers of those stones – almost an infinity, a maze of compartments.
Admittedly, the rocks didn’t have the clear sparkle of diamonds; they were
rather a dullish white, but surely when cleaned up they’d have that perfect
lustre. After telling us about the column of that gate, Weirton had resumed his
striding and was some way ahead. Dennis and I both reached out a hand. My heart
knocked, but its boom was tempered by Weirton being so far away. Surely the trudging
line of pupils would shield us from him. My hand closed around a rough chalky
stone. I gripped; its edges pricked my palm pleasingly. I withdrew it from the
mound as my shoulders shrugged off my satchel. My whole future lay in that gem
– its endless caverns and chambers infinite possibilities, its light the rays
of my life’s hope. I unbuckled the two straps of my satchel, flung its flap
back to reveal the hole into which I’d drop my treasure. The voice blasted.

‘Ryan Watson!
Dennis Stubbs! What on earth are you doing!?’

My heart jumped
into my throat; Weirton marched back along the parade, arms sweeping aside any
children who’d not scrambled from his path. Perhaps five metres from us, he
stopped and – with a fling of his pointing finger – yelled:

‘Leave those stones
alone and get a move on! I can’t think
why
you find them so fascinating.
And no more dawdling – the last thing we need is for you to be lost and roaming
over the fields!’

He sighed, turned
to Perkins.

‘Mrs Perkins, will
you please bring up the rear. And any more shenanigans from these lads, just
let me know, and I’ll come down on them with more weight than all those stones
combined!’

With an irritated
swivel, Weirton turned his great body and strode to the line’s front. With much
tutting and fussing, Perkins pursued us at the back.

‘Ooh, you’d better
look sharp now! Better get a move on and don’t dawdle, or he’ll give you the
walloping of your life! Won’t be able to sit down for a week, you know, so
you’d better hurry …’

Propelled by her
rhythmic puffs of nagging, we picked up the pace. The track took us between
fields then we entered some more woods which – though thin – managed to darken
our path. There was a twist in the track and a moment’s euphoria bubbled from
my belly at the sight of a tower poking from the trees – tip scratching the sky
just as I’d remembered. A Victorian water tower, Weirton said. I wondered what
a water tower was – where did that redbrick sharp-roofed building get its water
from? Maybe its point punctured the clouds, maybe it then sucked the moisture
down as through a straw to keep it in its long stomach. There was certainly
enough water up there, but I didn’t see why we needed to store it when so much
lay around us in the ponds and swamps and ditches of Emberfield. Perhaps the
tower syphoned some rain from those black clouds to prevent our town being
soaked by endless downpours, stopping Emberfield being drowned like in Noah’s
Flood. Anyway, we trudged on. Soon we were out of that slither of forest, into
open fields again.

‘Look!’ Jonathon
said.

Once more, Salton
didn’t disappoint. A castle rose from the flatlands – four storeys of thick
stone, grey battlements, thrusting turrets.

‘Wow!’ Stubbs and I
said.

‘Bet it’s haunted!’
Jonathon said.

‘Must be,’ I
replied, ‘must be loads of ghosts in the dungeons – people who were tortured to
death!’

‘Yeah!’ said
Stubbs.

The castle
certainly commanded the swampy plains. Weirton stopped, went into a speech,
flinging his arms. He hurled a hand towards the castle as he explained it had
once been just a noble mansion which had to be fortified due to the – and now
he flung his finger north – raids of the dastardly Scots. He told us there was
rumoured to be a tunnel between the castle and church. His arm now thrust
across the marshlands to where the church sat, bordered by the wall of its
graveyard, above which peeped the tops of headstones. The church had a hefty
tower crowned with battlements because – Weirton said – the Scots were so
depraved they’d even stoop to ransacking places of worship.

‘Anyway,’ the
teacher’s sombre voice boomed, ‘one day some curious locals wanted to see if
there really was a tunnel. They took a little drummer boy – probably about the
age of the lads in my class – into the castle dungeons and sent him off down what
seemed a dark passageway. The idea was he would drum and the adults would
follow his beats from above ground until he hopefully came up in the church
crypts.’

Crypts – weren’t
they underground vaults filled with coffins and skeletons! I thought of how
awful it must have been for the Drummer Boy: forced to stumble along that black
tunnel – probably full of cobwebs, massive spiders – and then, even worse, to
come up in such a place. I reckoned all the adults who’d sent him down there would
have been too scared to do it.

‘They traced the
rattle of his drum across the fields until’ – Weirton allowed a long pause – ‘it
suddenly … stopped!’

We gasped. Weirton
let more seconds pass before he went on.

‘They waited for
him to restart yet only silence came from below. The Drummer Boy was never
found, but – on dark quiet nights – it’s said you can still hear his taps and
rolls echoing from beneath the ground.’

I gasped again; my
heart started to bash. I knew this legend must be true – I’d often lain in bed
in the black spaces that stretched between bouts of sleep, and heard an eerie
clatter floating over the fields. It’d go on for five minutes, maybe ten as –
heart banging, limbs stiff – I’d hide, shivering, under my blankets. I’d pray
for it to end, but the patter would grimly go on. I’d only stop shaking long
after the last echoes had faded into the night. My parents had tried to tell me
it was probably just a tractor rumbling by, but I now saw through their
well-meaning attempts to calm me. Weirton ushered us on, towards a gate at the
path’s side – a gate leading to the fields we’d tramp over to get to the
church. Just before we came to it, Stubbs hissed, ‘Look!’

Beside the track
stood a stone, onto which a metal plaque had been hammered. Our eyes flicked
over the words engraved on it.

‘… and this is the
spot at which, according to legend, the beats of the Little Drummer Boy stopped
and he was heard and seen no more.’

‘It’s true!’ said
Stubbs.

‘Must be!’ said
Jonathon. ‘It’s all here – in writing!’

‘My parents lied!’
I said. ‘It was the Drummer’s ghost
I heard at night!’

Weirton was now
wheeling open the gate, plodding through the churned mud and hoof prints under
it. He beckoned us through and soon we were wading through that slurry, hearing
its rasping suck as we pulled up our feet.

‘Do you think it’s
just mud or is it shit?’ Jonathon said.

‘Probably a good
mixture,’ replied Stubbs.

That mixture
invaded my far-from-watertight shoes, squelched under the arches of my feet,
splurged between my toes. I watched it seep into then gush out of my footwear
with my walk’s tread, a rich puree of rainwater and black soil, with a browner
tinge from the innards of animals. With the rest of my schoolmates, I hobbled
and balanced – arms out – across the field. We came to a second gate, which
Weirton swung ajar, then trudged through another bog of grasping earth,
trampled dung and stagnant puddles. About halfway across this new field, a path
could be made out, leading to the church, which squatted, ringed by its graveyard,
on a tiny knoll – Emberfield’s best attempt to raise it towards heaven. On
another hillock on the field’s other side stood the stern castle. I gazed at
that fortress.

‘Be great if we
could go inside it,’ I said, ‘get up on its battlements.’

‘Yeah!’ said
Jonathon. ‘And climb the towers and explore the dungeons!’

‘I’m afraid you
can’t lads.’ We both jumped at the steady boom of Weirton’s voice. ‘It’s a
working farm now – no tourists allowed and certainly no curious schoolchildren.’

I let my stare slip
down those austere walls and saw Weirton was right. Barbed wire encircled the
shit-splattered farmyard. Notices rose above that wire’s sharp-toothed tangle:
‘Strictly Private Property – Keep out!’ ‘Beware – Vicious Dogs Kept Here!’

At least we still
had the church, but now even our way to that seemed barred. There were two
horses in the field: one brown, one grey, massive muscular beasts, snorting the
morning air from their vast nostrils. They trotted and stamped, hooves patterning
the damp earth. They were over by the castle as we made our tottering way
across the first part of the field, but – on becoming aware of us – the brown
larger horse, probably the male, stopped and began to stare. The grey drew
alongside him and also looked steadily at our doddering parade. Indifferent to
the horses, Weirton led us on. The stallion breathed more mist: irritated, angry
mist – he thrust a hoof into the soil like a child stamping a foot.

‘Do you think it’s
safe?’ someone said.

‘I’m scared!’ a
quivering voice admitted.

‘Nothing to be
scared of!’ Weirton boomed. ‘Man is the dominant animal, as the Bible says.
They’re only a couple of horses – not exactly wild tigers, are they? Keep in
line and follow me.’

The horses were not
impressed with Weirton’s rhetoric. As we continued our cautious plod, the male
cantered towards us. Though it stopped some way off, its huge eyes swelled –
those eyes were fixed on our procession, especially Weirton at its front.

‘Go on, shoo!’
Weirton called out, waving his arms at the horse as he stumbled and balanced
through the bog.

The horse did not
shoo, but moved a few paces closer. Its mate stood, observing the spectacle, as
the stallion gushed out more steam, as it banged its feet into the ground. Its
eyes were like dark pools, its liquid stare was now concentrated on Weirton and
the first of his students – myself, Jonathon, Stubbs, the brother. I looked
over my shoulder and saw our timid line had thinned. Some pupils – and Perkins
– trudged laboriously, finding the field full of delaying obstacles. Other kids
had stopped – they watched Weirton and the horse with studied interest while
staying in dashing distance of the gate. Weirton glared over his shoulder; his
eyes and nostrils flared.

‘Keep up I say!’ he
yelled at the dawdlers before turning to the horse. ‘And you – shoo! Go on –
get out of it!’

The horse instead
trotted closer – each step a stomp that flung up dirty fluid.

‘Just ignore it
everybody!’ Weirton shouted. ‘And follow me!’

The horse moved
again until it stood in the centre of our path. About three metres away, it
lowered its head; its eyes bulged at us trespassers. It tossed its mane; the
black lips went back, revealing the flat stones of its giant teeth.

‘Do you think we’ll
get past, Sir?’ I said.

‘Don’t you worry,
Ryan,’ Weirton said. ‘I’ll deal with this… this
creature
!’

‘Everybody remain
where you are!’ Weirton called back to our straggly parade. ‘Don’t move!’

Weirton walked in
slow steps up to the horse. All you could hear were the coos of pigeons and the
slurp of the ground as he lifted his boots. He walked until he stood perhaps
two feet from the animal. Then – face lit by a gleeful sneer, eyes sticking out
as much as the stallions’ – he stooped his shoulders, stretched his neck so his
head was carried forward. The stallion’s cloudy breath broke on Weirton’s face,
and man and horse became locked in a stare. Weirton’s smile broadened; he
pulled his lips back so his huge front teeth were also uncovered. He gazed into
those eyes taut with their inky liquid, gazed into those endless dark pools. My
breath caught and stuttered; my heart beat a slow thud. I’d heard a legend that
if confronted with an animal, however dangerous – a bear, a bull, a lion, a
serpent – if you had the guts to stare at it and not remove your gaze, it’d
eventually submit and slink off. Surely Weirton knew that bit of lore. He
seemed entranced now, hypnotised by the deep ponds of that horse’s eyes. He
didn’t blink; didn’t slacken his stare; his mouth still curved in its curious
smile. The horse also appeared bewitched, lost in the unfamiliar malice of
human eyes. But it didn’t bow its head, trail off meekly as the legend had
promised. I was close enough to see the swell of tensed muscles under its
sweating pelt, see spirals of steam snake from its hide. Still man and beast
stayed frozen in their conflict. It reminded me of a vague legend I’d heard of
the first ever struggle between man and horse on vast plains long ago. But now
Weirton, while not taking away his gaze, was moving his right arm down and
back. He gently shook it, stretched his fingers then knotted those fingers into
a fist. Face still cut with his grin, and now gleaming with the sweat of
expectancy, he edged his fist higher till his arm was at shoulder level then
inched the right side of his torso back. All the horse’s attention was still
sucked into Weirton’s stare; the teacher now twisted his hip back as well. The
hip sprang forward; the torso swung; the arm flew, driving the fist. That fist
smashed into the horse’s jaw. A crack reverberated; the horse gave a shrill
neigh, reared on its hind legs, waving its front hooves high. The horse
unleashed another juddering scream; Weirton shuffled back, raised his arms as
if they could protect him when the stallion crashed down. The horse dropped to
the ground perhaps two paces from him. It bucked, kicked out its hind legs,
snorted, rose, whinnied then turned and – with sulky stomps – trotted off to
its mate. Weirton turned to his pupils; he wagged his hand, winced, clasped it
in his opposite palm. But the pain screwing his face couldn’t conquer his broad
smile.