The Standing Water (42 page)

Things didn’t lighten
up when I got to school. Realised the pond had grown so much we had no option
but to wade through it. I’d suspected this moment might come and at least we
were prepared. Had to park further down the school lane, pull on the old
gumboots. By the time the kids turned up, myself, Leigh and Perkins were ready
to shepherd them through the water. Meant I had to spend around ten minutes
with my feet in the shallows of that accursed pool. Dreadful! Thankfully, the
stagnant smell had been diluted by the rain, but just looking down at those brown
waters, hearing their slap against my wellies was bad enough. Had a horrible
flashback. I was in the pond with Marcus, fighting, grappling, soaked with
dirty liquid, the pool’s stench making me want to vomit. And my hand was on the
boy’s head, and I was shoving that head down, down into those waters where at
least there was peace, peace for me and peace for him. I imagined his mouth
filling with filthy fluid. The fact that mouth could no longer jeer or snigger
made me want to smile. I watched those bubbles spiralling up. I knew soon no
more bubbles would come, but there was just some force, some force coursing
through my arm, making me keep his head under.

I shook my face,
tried to come back to the present. I was swaying on my feet – I feared for a
moment I’d topple into the pool. I forced myself to focus on sights and sounds
– the twittering kids tramping and splashing through the shallows in their
wellies, Leigh and Perkins nagging as they guided them. For once, I was glad to
hear Perkins’s jarring voice. I hauled my hand across my brow, sucked some deep
breaths. I had to be a man, face up to bad memories. I made myself stare at
that pond, right into the centre of it, at the dark waters that skulked there,
at the very spot that damned incident happened. I breathed heavily, but didn’t
let up my gaze. Sweat spouted from my armpits, slithered down my back, but I
was determined to overcome my fears. And overcoming them I was – my eyes didn’t
move from that patch of water.

‘Mr Weirton!’

I looked round; it
was Perkins. All the kids had gone through the pond. Leigh was guiding a bunch
into the school building. Perkins was standing with another lot – both that
teacher and those kids were gazing at me. I gawped at them for a few seconds
then wagged my face. Thought I’d better boom extra loud to reassert my
authority, stop any funny ideas forming in their heads.

‘Come on, what are
you waiting for!? You all know how to walk, don’t you!? You’d better get into
that school quick smart or this palm might swing behind you to give you some
encouragement!’

The day dragged
past. The rain went on slamming down – beating on the roof, on the path outside
in a way that was both monotonous and alarming. Day was enlivened by a bit of
entertainment – I gave Stubbs a good walloping in the morning, Darren Hill a
sound whacking in the afternoon. My hand thrashed out its impacts,
complementing – I thought – the rain’s tempo. Been giving out a lot of hidings
recently, like that whopper Richard Johnson copped yesterday. Boy could hardly
stand afterwards. Don’t know what it is, why I should be thrashing them more
than usual, but sometimes – as I’m battering their backsides in time with the
rain – I get a sense it’s some strange appeasement to the Lord. Sounds weird,
but when I’m beating away in my rhythmic trance, the idea floats into my brain
that if we show God we’re capable of punishing sins ourselves, He’ll spare us
His Deluge. Have to batter them long and hard to show Him that, so the sounds
of those impacts float up to heaven, so they can be heard above the crashing
downpour. Perkins used to nod in satisfaction as I gave out wallopings, but now
she looks troubled, shocked. Her sour face reminds me of Sandra’s. Those
blasted females would have us bring our lads up with no discipline. Then how
would this world be? Plenty of lads have tasted my hand in the last week or so,
even pupils who aren’t often in trouble. Only exceptions are Ryan Watson and
the younger Browning boy. Those two are usually good lads though sometimes they
do need setting right. It’s just that, when they annoy me, some odd force seems
to stay my hand; a voice in my brain insists I let them off. Heaven knows why.
Hope I’m not being too lax on them.

School ended.
Wellies on to march through Marcus’s pond to the car. Though I wanted to wade
through those accursed shallows as swiftly as possible, I couldn’t help pausing
for a moment as my eyes were drawn to the middle of that pool. I gazed at those
waters, at them throwing up sullen spurts as the rain banged down. Felt myself
slipping into a damned daze again. I ripped my eyes from the pond, strode to
the car.

More fun on the
drive home. There’s this blasted stream now running across the lane to
Goldhill, rushing from one waterlogged field into another. When I came to it, I
saw it had grown since the morning. As I edged my vehicle through that torrent,
praying the engine would be OK, a thought came to me: maybe all this really
is
a punishment from God. If I – like other Christians – believe in an
all-powerful Deity then surely that means He must be in charge of the weather,
and surely no floods could happen without His say-so. There must be a reason
He’s pounding so much rain onto Emberfield. There must be sins He’s determined
to penalise. Adultery, violence, theft from His holy house – it can all be
found in that place. Just hoped – as I looked around at the dark lakes in the
fields, the swollen ditches, the distant yews of the drenched graveyard – those
sinners would take heed of the Lord’s anger before it was too late.

As I neared
Goldhill, the rains eased off and the flooding became less severe. I shook my
head, wondered if my thoughts hadn’t been foolish. Of course, ultimately God’s
in charge of everything, but since Newton we’ve known that in its day-to-day
workings nature follows its own patterns. It’s just something seems to happen
to my brain when I’m around Emberfield. Like stepping back into the Middle Ages
sometimes, going there.

Took my dinner, ate
it in my room in front of the TV. Felt like a rebellious teenager, had a
strange sense of sullen satisfaction. Sandra pacing outside my door. Heard her
muttering whenever there was a break in the sound coming from the box. Caught
the word ‘divorce’ a few times. I’m not bothered by her threats. Let’s see her
get by without my salary! Let’s see her raise the boy without my discipline! Of
course, the idea of casting that woman off tempts me, but I’m a believer in
family life. If couples can’t get through the tough parts of their marriages
without giving up, the whole country will be heading for ruin! In fact, that’s
partly why it already is.

I sat, a smile dancing
on my lips as the lesson dragged on – a grin of triumph celebrating the fact
the recaptured gauntlet lay in my satchel. It was raining so hard I think the
teachers were unsure whether to let us out for break. I saw Weirton and Perkins
discussing it in the corridor, doubt flickering over Perkins’s face, Weirton
waving his hands, thrusting his finger. I overheard Weirton saying indoor
playtimes were ‘soft’ that ‘the children should be able to face all the
elements, be moulded by them, not wrapped in namby-pamby cotton wool’, whatever
that meant. Of course, Weirton got his way, and soon we were encased in our
kagools, splashing in a playground whose water touched our ankles. I agreed
with Weirton – I much preferred being in the fresh outdoors to being cooped in
the humid classroom, watching the dull drops slither down the windows.

‘So you’ve really
got the gauntlet?’ Jonathon asked me.

‘Yep.’

‘Great!’

‘Yeah, we didn’t
manage to put it on Weirton, but at least it’ll protect us against his whackings
and stop him murdering us!’

‘Yeah,’ said
Jonathon, ‘but I wonder if it’ll protect us against drowning. What’ll happen if
this rain doesn’t stop? It might be like in the Bible!’

‘Wait a minute,’ I
said. ‘Didn’t the vicar say God had promised not to drown the world again?’

‘God wouldn’t drown
the whole world. But what if He just drowned Emberfield?’

‘Why would He do
that?’

‘Because of all our
sins, I suppose,’ said Jonathon. ‘There’re plenty of
them
!’

I glanced up at the
sky. Black clouds sailed over one another – big slow evil things. I couldn’t
imagine the downpour stopping any time soon. And, as I looked at those clouds,
as the rain rapped its rhythms on my hood, I thought about what Jonathon had
said. If this all really was a punishment from the Lord, which sins was he
penalising? Of course, he could be angry about us stealing the glove from the
church, about us breaking one of his dread commandments right in his sacred
dwelling. But we’d only taken it to fight against a far worse evil – the
murderous Weirton, who’d probably already killed two pupils. Who knew when he
might add a third to his gruesome tally? There was also Weirton’s crime of
keeping Lucy’s bones, not laying them in holy ground as God wished. Then again,
there were lots of sins among us kids too – our frequent fights, the brother’s
rampages, the beatings Darren Hill and Stubbs relished handing out, lads engineering
whackings for one another. And I guessed God was still angry about Jonathon
trying to kill Craig – a crime for which Jonathon still awaited punishment
although the penalty for that was having a mark scorched on your brow not your
whole town being flooded. Yet I had no doubt God would eventually smite Jonathon
with that shameful scar. Maybe the Lord would even kill two birds with one
stone, and send a thunderstorm to finish off the flooding of Emberfield during
which he’d shoot down lightning to brand my friend. And now I thought about it
– or thought as well as I could with the rain bashing its din on my mac –
Emberfield’s sins were not limited to our school. There were the beatings in
the Stubbs household, Mr Browning’s readiness to resort to his belt. And I’d
heard legends of what went on late at night after some adults had drunk a lot
of that sour-smelling stuff in the pub. I’d heard tales of men tottering home with
their arms around women who weren’t their wives! Of those women even going into
those men’s houses rather than their husbands’! Surely the Bible forbade such
things! But as so many sins had been committed, it was difficult to know which
one was being punished. In the heavens, the black clouds massed, but gave me no
hints. I sometimes wished the Lord could be more precise when letting us know
what He was angry about. Maybe He could just tell us in a rumbling voice from above
– then we could simply alter our habits instead of desperately trying to work
out what we’d done wrong as the rain lashed and the waters rose around us. Even
Weirton told us what we were being walloped for.

Break ended and we
trudged inside, pushed and barged as we hung up soaking macs in the steaming
cloakroom. Through the next lesson the rain crashed, and when lunchtime came,
Weirton decided we should stay in. It hadn’t eased off by the afternoon break
so we spent that inside too, watching the rain flung down with all of God’s fury,
watching the submerged path outside hurl up its explosions as water lashed it,
watching the puddles grow on the school field. Home-time came and God’s wrath
still thudded down. Kagools done right up, stooped against the rain, we began
our trudge home. We paused by Marcus’s pond. His pool was a rich brown circle,
a circle ruffled and pitted by the endless drops hurled from heaven. All the
territory Marcus had fled from in summer, all that cracked earth had been
reclaimed. I imagined that soil now dense and muddy, forming Marcus’s bed.

‘Do you reckon,’
said Jonathon, ‘that if it keeps raining, Marcus’s pond might grow and cover
the whole town?’

‘Suppose it would,’
I said, ‘if the rain doesn’t stop.’

‘We’ve got to do
something! We can’t just let God drown us!’

‘But if God
wants
to drown us, drown us for all our sins, what can we do?’

Jonathon shrugged
and we started our plod home. Large dark puddles had formed in the fields;
fleeces soaked, the sheep breathed out mournful mist. Streams ran down the dunghills,
carving gullies as those manure piles let their steam float up into the deluge.
Dirty rivers gurgled in the road’s gutters, poured in torrents down drains. All
around was the bashing, the pattering, the burbling of water.

I reached my house,
saw our gnome’s pond had overflowed. His toadstool was now an islet, on which
he perched above the rising waters still fishing merrily. The downpour went on
as I watched my cartoons, drank my milk and munched my biscuits. As soon as I
was able, I sneaked up to my room, and – after making sure the door was closed
and no footsteps creaked on the stairs – I drew the gauntlet from my satchel. I
fingered that glove, feeling its cold iron, handling it with breathless care so
it couldn’t slide onto my hand. I eyed its dull metal changing shade in the
electric light, the scorch marks that told of the knight’s sad end. I needed to
hide the thing, but where? I wrapped it in a couple of plastic bags, put it at
the back of my wardrobe, behind stinky old shoes and thick balls of socks,
knowing by the confined smell that my mum rarely delved into that corner. And
so that fearsome gauntlet was concealed – even though we hadn’t bumped off
Weirton, at least I knew its ancient power should stop him whacking us. I
drifted downstairs, watched some more cartoons. A little later Dad came home
and Mum called us to the dinner table. We had to raise our voices to be heard
over the drops battering above.

‘Terrible, isn’t
it, that theft from the church at Salton?’ Mum said. ‘I bumped into the vicar
today; he told me all about it.’

My heart struck up
its thud, banging out booms that backed the rattling rain with a bass-like
rhythm.

‘Was he furious?’
said my father, in clipped angry words. ‘I know I’d be.’

‘Not furious,
exactly,’ said Mum, ‘but sad – shocked and disappointed someone could do such a
thing.’

A dreadful guilt
weighted my stomach. I’d offended the poor vicar – we’d never thought of his
feelings when we’d nicked that gauntlet.

‘Yes,’ said Dad, ‘
I
don’t know how anyone could have stooped so low!? What’s this country turning
into!? It’s all this damn liberalism and laxity, that’s the problem! All these
bleeding-heart lefties letting people get away with murder! And look –
this
is what happens when people have no discipline!’

‘At least we’ve got
Mr Weirton,’ Mum said. ‘At least we know none of the kids at our school would’ve
done it.’

‘Yes, there is
that,’ Dad said. ‘Good old Mr Weirton! He’s like a man fighting a war against
the modern world – one of the few people left who are prepared to instil decent
Christian values into our young! Stealing from a church –’ my father tutted,
shook his head ‘– is nothing sacred anymore?’

‘Do they have any
idea who might have done it?’ Mum asked.

‘Several theories,’
Dad said, ‘according to the local paper –’

I gulped; my
parents, sister looked round – I pretended I was swallowing a big lump of food.
Our theft had even made the paper!

‘They think it
might have been lads from the secondary school,’ Dad said, ‘a stupid dare or
something.’

‘Shame
those
lads couldn’t have had a taste of Mr Weirton’s hand!’ Mum said.

‘By God, yes!’ said
Dad. ‘I’d give them such a hiding if it was up to me – they’d never venture
into a church again, not with all those hard pews! But that big school’s a
namby-pamby place by all accounts – the head hardly ever takes out the cane. I’d
like to see those lads get such a whacking –’

‘Such a whacking!
Such a whacking!’ my sister sang, bouncing on her chair.

‘Hush, Sarah,’ Dad
said. ‘On the other hand, it might not have been kids at all. Some criminals
might have made off with that gauntlet to sell the scrap metal.’

‘But there’s not
much metal on it, surely?’ said Mum.

‘I reckon if it was
stolen for scrap, damned gypsies did it!’ Dad said. ‘They’d steal anything that
lot, have your eyeballs out of your head before you knew it! Or perhaps it was
more sophisticated crooks who wanted to sell the thing as an antique.’

‘You wonder what can
be done with such people,’ Mum said.

‘A good flogging!’
Dad’s finger rapped the table as a scowl creased his face. ‘That’s the only
solution! A good hiding if it’s kids, a damn good whipping if it’s adults!
That’s
the only thing that sort would understand! A damn good flogging and a few years
in jail! Of course, the liberals and lefties wouldn’t allow it!’

‘Good flogging! Good
flogging!’ my sister shouted.

Just then the
downpour battered even harder – pounding the roof, lashing the windows so
strongly the glass shook. Mum nodded towards those shivering panes.

‘Blimey, haven’t
seen it rain this heavily for a good while! If it doesn’t ease off, it’ll be
like Noah’s Flood!’

‘And I wouldn’t blame
the Lord if He sent another Deluge!’ Dad said. ‘There’s enough wickedness in
the world that needs wiping out! Stealing from a church –’ Dad again shook his
head ‘– stealing from a church …’

Over the next week,
the rain went on belting down. It thudded from dark skies during the day,
hammered in the blackness at night. I lay in bed listening to God’s fury
bashing our roof. I couldn’t even have the comfort of hearing the Drummer Boy –
there was no way his subtle patters and beats would be heard above that
downpour. I imagined him in his dripping tunnel, his drum hanging unused, silenced
by the rage-filled rhythms God pounded out above. As I laboured through drab
books and exercises in Perkins’s room, I’d thieve glances from the window to
see the drops bouncing on the school field, adding to its spreading dark
puddles. Marcus’s pond grew, gulping the endless water God poured upon it. Soon
it was lapping at the road then it was halfway across it then two-thirds.
Weirton skirted it each day in his funereal car, clinging to a narrower and
narrower strip of tarmac. Soon he was sending up high waves of brown water as
his vehicle crept in through the gate. But Marcus would not be sated – his
gluttonous pond spread over the whole road. Weirton had to park in front of it,
tug rather comical green wellies over his suit trousers and wade into Marcus’s
shallows. We kids did the same – Perkins and Leigh supervising us pulling on
our gumboots before marching us through the water. I knew why they watched us
so closely – the smallest slip and one of us could have been gobbled. Like any
growing boy, Marcus would be desperate for food. You could tell Weirton was
worried – I heard him mumbling the pond was a ‘danger’, a ‘menace’ and that ‘something
should be done about it’. But other than placating Marcus, I couldn’t think
what.

There was no
placating God, who continued to hammer his rains down. The adults all shook
their heads, said they’d never known anything like it – even the old folks,
whose grandparents may have witnessed Noah’s Deluge. Some outlying farms were flooded,
the water rolling off sodden fields into barns and kitchens. We saw pictures on
the local TV news – the brown water swirling in halls and bathrooms, lapping at
stairs. A confused cockerel was stranded on a post, its feathers drenched, its
cone floppy. The fields around our houses became swamps – the sheep huddling
dumbly on islets of dry land, the farmers fighting through the water in their
tractors to feed them.

I knew God had
promised never to drown the whole world again. It was called a covenant,
branded on the Bible’s pages in stern black type for all to see. But a legend
I’d recently heard proved God could still punish local crimes. A village not
far from Emberfield had stood by a lake: a small lake, not much bigger than
Marcus’s pond. One day, an angel of the Lord had come down to test the
villagers. Disguised as an old beggar, he’d wandered from house to house asking
for help, and – despite the wealth of many homesteads – he was sent away. Just
the last place he tried – a poor man’s cottage clinging to a hill – gave him
supper and a bed. Having enjoyed a night’s hospitality, as he left the next
day, the angel commanded the lake to rise and drown all the mean people and
their houses, saving just the humble cottage. Apparently, to this day, if you
listen hard, you can still hear the ghostly bells of the church tolling under
the water.