The Standing Water (23 page)

‘It’s all safe now,
children!’ he shouted. ‘Follow me over to the church. I’m sure that
animal
won’t be causing any more trouble!’

Weirton swivelled
and – still clutching the hand, which now hung limp – he marched to the church
gate. We formed an obedient awe-hushed procession and tramped after him. From
the knoll of the castle, the horses watched us with their liquid eyes.

Looking back across
the years, peering through the fogs of memory, I see Weirton leading us to the
lichen-splattered wall of the churchyard, ducking under the rusty iron arch
that crowned that churchyard’s entrance. We followed him: within that sacred
enclosure was bumpy ground, dipping and bulging with the contours of burials.
Headstones of various ages leaned, the newer ones still clear about who lay
beneath. The older markers were obscured by the creep of moss, the acne of
lichen, by the relentless rain which had worn the stone until you had to squint
to make out the lettering. The even more ancient stones had lost all trace of
the chisel – they were slabs of primal rock, washed by generations of rain,
eroded of all flourishes, words, corners. Half-swallowed by the soil, they’d
gone back to what they were, what they’d always been. Weirton climbed onto a
flat tomb, called for us to gather round. His black heels rubbed off flakes of
lichen-crusted stone, delicate bits of carving each time the huge body jerked
or twisted.

‘OK, children,’ he
said, ‘I’m going to hand out the sketchpads, pencils and crayons. You can make
sketches of the gravestones or maybe – if you like – draw the church or those
yew trees over there.’

Weirton’s arm – the
one capped by his good hand – thrust towards where a clump of those boxlike
trees stood. Emblems of immortality, I’d heard, as they never lost their
mournful dark green. If those shrubs symbolised eternity, it had to be a
somewhat sombre one. I thought of how those evergreens sucked their food from the
dead, how they really did conquer death in this way, reaching their roots down
to splinter coffins, topple headstones. Weirton went on.

‘Or you could take
some rubbings of the tombs – remember we learnt to do that in class. Whatever
you do, just produce something. I’ll give you half an hour. By the time that
clock says half-past ten …’

The arm now
stretched to the clock that ticked below the battlements of the church tower.
Built of the same stark stone as the castle, the church seemed equally severe.
Even the clock appeared harsh, its hands wrought in the shape of arrows: arrows
to prick and wound our sinful worldliness, arrows in flight to show the rush of
time, its gallop towards everyone and everything’s inevitable end.

‘… I’ll expect you
to have something decent done. I – or Mrs Perkins – will inspect each of your
drawings. And if they’re not up to standard, I think you know what will
happen!’

Weirton dismounted
from his sepulchral platform. Given their sketching tools then permission to
disperse, the children ran among the graves – skipping, laughing, chattering. I
walked to a headstone near the wall that had already attracted my eye. Near
that stone, a rusty tap topped a simple pipe that stuck up from the ground –
for the mourners’ flowers, I supposed. Weirton strode over to it. He twisted
the tap with his good hand, put the other – painfully half-clenched – under the
jerky stream. He winced as the water gushed.

‘Are you all right,
Sir?’ I asked.

‘I think so, Ryan,
thank you.’ Weirton gave a slight smile. ‘I hope I didn’t startle anyone too
much by hitting that horse. It was the only thing I could think of to stop it
pestering us.’

‘I think you were
very brave, Sir,’ I said.

A grin cracked
Weirton’s face. He straightened up and – using mainly his good hand, but
flinching when he had to use his bad – unknotted his tie. He bathed it in the
stuttering stream then wound it bandage-like around fingers that were already
swelling, turning an angry red.

‘Are you
sure
it’s OK, Sir?’

‘I think I’ll
survive, Ryan.’ Weirton grinned again. ‘It’s like when you’ve thumped another
lad and your fist aches afterwards. I’m sure you know that feeling. Well, times
that by ten, and that’s what I have. But I don’t think anything’s broken, at
least not on
my
body.’

Weirton smiled once
more and paced off to check my schoolmates’ sketches. Soon he was advising,
praising, threatening, thrusting the blunt spear of his good finger down at the
drawings. I squatted to study my stone. I’d meant what I’d said about Weirton’s
courage. In my admiration, all hatred of the headmaster had flown away – on
wings as light as those on which the dead around me must have fluttered to
heaven. He was no longer a hated bully – all I could picture was him facing
down that fearsome animal, before bashing his brave fist into that stubborn
stallion. The other lads felt the same – the line had hummed with celebratory
mutters and whispers as Weirton had led his victory procession towards the arch
of the church. Even Jonathon had murmured approvingly as the low buzz of the
boys had begun to fashion the incident into folklore. But now I had to focus on
that tombstone or – whatever their injuries – I might feel those horse-crushing
hands.

My stone bore the
name of Joseph Wilson – who’d departed this life in 1798. A strange phrase, now
I think about it – as if the deceased had hopped on a train, with an umbrella,
newspaper and overnight bag. I sketched away, getting the stone’s rain-ravaged
curves and corners, the flourishes of the mason just about visible in those lumpy
edges. I squinted to read the dedication – the letters lying perhaps five
millimetres below the rest of the rock, except for the odd one that was
completely worn or masked by lichen. Towards the bottom, to my delight, I could
make out a glob-like protrusion underscored by two raised diagonals – the
weathered remains of a skull-and-crossbones. My pencil slid over the paper –
shading here where the stone was darker, tracing the vague lettering there,
reproducing the motionless explosions of lichen spots, triumphantly etching the
death’s head.

‘That’s great!’

A finger jabbed
onto my page; I jumped; my pencil slipped, causing the last bump of the last
crossed bone to sprout a jerky line. I jolted my rubber across that sudden
embarrassment.

‘Must be the best sketch
today – I’ll show it to the others as an example.’

‘Thanks, Sir,’ I
said.

From my crouching
position, I looked along the finger, up the arm, to Weirton’s towering face,
which beamed down from on high.

‘It’s excellent,
very accurate; I love the little skull.’ The face beamed again, the finger
thrust, smudging one side of that skull’s dome. ‘You seem to have a knack for
art, young Watson, that and writing stories. You know, I think God’s got a
sense of humour – He could have endowed you with useful gifts, made you
excellent at spelling and mathematics, but instead He loads you with these
pointless talents. What good are pretty words and pictures to a country lad of
your class? But what God doesn’t grant us we must develop through hard work and
discipline. You enjoy yourself today, Ryan, you shade and draw to your heart’s
content. Why not take some rubbings of those stones over there?’

I quickly finished
my sketch, correcting the lines smeared by the prod of Weirton’s finger,
copying the wet blades of grass that curved and quivered at the tomb’s base –
trying, in my limited timespan, to reproduce their beads of rainwater, to
capture those transparent orbs of endlessness, the shimmering eternity
displayed in each drop. I straightened up, trudged over to the graveyard’s
other side to do my rubbings as Weirton had commanded. I hadn’t understood all
the headmaster had told me, but in my chest the embers of his approval burnt a
steady glow. I took pride in his compliments, in the thought of him thrusting
forward my picture as an example to the other kids. I thought slyly of the
looks of hatred and envy from the brother and Stubbs, the smug martyrdom with
which I might later bear their punches. Now I came to the place Weirton had
indicated, chose a stone, leaned my paper against it, readied my crayon. I was
near the sombre columns of those yews, close enough to smell their funereal
perfume: like that of pines, but denser, heavier, less fresh, as if they were
breathing back what they’d had for their food. But in the tough and prickly
branches of one of those shrubs, a little bird perched. It trilled into the
mournful misty air, throwing all its weight, all its body, all of its tiny
lungs into its defiant song. As my crayon rubbed against death’s marker, rubbed
against that stone signalling life’s end, that creature went on warbling its
very earthly joy, singing into the infinity of that damp morning. Nearby were
Suzie Green and Helen Jacobs, both on their first pictures. I couldn’t resist a
glance. Helen’s was – to put it broadly – crap. It was all pleasantly shaded in
her good-girl colours: the worn grave a neat grey stone with clear lettering,
with a cheerful blue sky floating above in spite of the heavy storm clouds
loading the heavens. Bright flowers danced at the stone’s base despite the
presence there of just grass. In another insult to actuality, a happy snail
with a colourful shell crawled on the tomb, jolly attentive eyes poised on its
stalks. All that was really there was an empty grey shell lying at the stone’s
foot. She should have made more of its spiral: a staircase that wound the eye
down into eternity – circular steps with no beginning, no end. Instead we had her
jovial cartoon creature. I knew her picture would elicit shrill praises from
Perkins. Weirton was more on my morbid wavelength – he’d appreciated the
bulging clouds I’d drawn, my unadorned facts of life’s finish: the slow
oblivion of eroding stone, the crumbling death’s head. Speaking of wavelengths,
I tuned into the conversation between Helen and Suzie. Suzie stared at the turf
under the stone she was making an appalling sketch of; her chin gave a wobble.

‘Well, what did you
think it was like down there?’ Helen was saying.

‘I don’t know …’
said Suzie, as her chin quivered once more, ‘maybe a bit like our life, but
underground. You know, like living in an underground house –’

‘Silly!’ said
Helen. ‘Graves don’t have kitchens and sitting rooms and bedrooms and things
like that.’

‘Well, what are
they like, then?’

‘Just earth, I suppose,
and blackness, and worms –’

‘Eeeuch! Sounds
horrible! Horrible and really, really boring!’

‘Well, maybe you
don’t worry about being bored when you’re dead. Maybe you’re not even too
frightened of creepy crawlies.’

‘Perhaps being
dead’s not so bad then!’ Suzie’s mouth turned up, a little red bloomed in her cheeks.
‘At least you wouldn’t have to put up with Perkins and Weirton!’

‘OK children,
everybody come over here!’

Weirton’s boom cut
across the girls’ chatter. Shaken out of their philosophising, the girls joined
the other kids trooping to where Weirton stood near the church door. The kids
sheepishly gripped their pictures – half-finished, varying in degrees from
passable to atrocious. If they’d wished to show their failure, they couldn’t
have mimed it more – slow steps, hanging heads, drawings dangling from drooping
arms like lacklustre flags. I quickly finished my rubbing: jerking the crayon
across the stone, achieving a rusty red reproduction of the letters stating
that in 1824 Mary Robson had departed – booking her single fare on that
heavenly express train. I just managed to trace the solemn capitals RIP – why
did people write ‘rip’ on graves? What got ripped? Was it some ghastly form of
death? – before I had to join that plodding semi-circle closing around the
headmaster. When we’d all assembled, Weirton spoke.

‘Children, it’s
time for us to go into the church. I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, but
I will – it is
God’s
house you are going to enter! When you visit
someone’s home, you should – as you know – be on your best behaviour, and this
is, of course, even more the case when you visit the abode of almighty God! So
if any of you do the slightest thing wrong – any bad words, clumsiness,
fighting – I promise I will knock you into the middle of next week! Is that
clear now?’

‘Yes, Mr Weirton,’
came our undulating chorus.

‘OK, so follow me –
and for heaven’s sake, wipe your feet! We don’t want you tramping dirt and dung
all over our Father’s living room!’

Weirton swivelled
and strode through the arch of the church porch. I briefly surveyed the
building before going in. It looked very holy – rising, a stern stronghold of
God, above the slanting graves and bumpy ground. It was built of those little
old stones – held together by moss and ancient mortar – that seemed to breathe
a sacred weightiness from a distant past. There were the rows of pointy
windows, filled with their sober patchworks of clear leaded glass – each with
its arch tapering to its tip: showing the soul’s leap towards God, the vicar
had told us. I squeezed through the church’s mighty oak doors into the porch,
joined the scrum of boys. They pushed, barged and jostled as they ritually
scraped their feet on the mat, the rasps echoing in that chamber. Weirton
watched, eyes fixed on us with satisfaction as we so eagerly followed his
command. He at least seemed to have forgotten the promise to inspect our
pictures, but now we laboured under a new imperative – a single spot of dirt, a
lone clod of dung trampled into God’s holy dwelling and our backsides would
reverberate with the Lord’s wrath for a week. The problem was there were so
many children, so much wet earth and damp shit, that the mat – the humble mat
that lay before the second set of doors – soon became a slough, a store of all
the mud we’d brought from outside.