The Standing Water (61 page)

‘Well?’ I follow
him, shouting above the wails. ‘How does it feel having a stronger person beat
you? Not so keen on it now, are you!?’

Dad leans on the
hall cabinet, fumbles for the phone. After a couple of attempts, he picks it up.
His first finger shivers above the keypad.

‘Any more, Ryan,’
he stammers, ‘and I’m calling the police!’

‘I’d be
very
happy to give you more! And maybe –’ I turn, stare at my mum and sister ‘– I’ll
save some for you two! Let you know
exactly
what it’s like!’

Sarah lets go a louder,
even higher-pitched howl. Dad’s finger comes down on the first nine.

‘It’s all right,’ I
say. ‘I’m going!’

I run up to my
bedroom, jog downstairs with my rucksack. Dad brandishes the receiver at me in
the way a hunter might shake a club at a wild animal. I stride past him to the
front door.

‘It’s a pity,’ Dad
shouts as I hurl it open, ‘that Weirton didn’t thrash him harder!’

I slam that door,
march down the path, the car keys gripped in my hand – a hand I now notice is
trembling. I’m about to pace out of the front garden when I see our gnome, still
fishing patiently. I turn, stride across the lawn, boot the gnome hard. He shatters
into bits of plaster and I realise he had nothing inside. His rod flies up,
flutters down to land in his little pool. A neighbour’s head’s poked over the
fence – he’s staring, gob open.

‘What the fuck are
you looking at!?’ I yell.

The head plummets
below that barrier. I stride to the car, fling my rucksack on the backseat. I
twist the key, the engine roars and I’m out of there.

I pilot the car
down our patch of town’s miserable main street. Probably the last time I’ll see
it. Can’t imagine ever being welcome back here. My heart’s still pounding. It
pumps a strange tingly joy through me. I’m nervous, euphoric – euphoric that
I’ll never have to see this street again, that I’ll be free of this place forever.
My hands tremble on the wheel; they sting where the teapot burned. I look
around as I drive. There are the little redbrick houses, the bungalows roofed
by grey cloud. I see the bleak gardens of those dwellings – their enclosed
squares of English earth, their trimmed rectangles of grass. Some still have
gnomes, even now. I’m approaching the pub’s corner. Some instinct forces me to swing
the car around, drive up the school lane. It’s an instinct that makes my rational
mind scream protests – I should be getting away in case Dad or the neighbours
really do have the bright idea to call the cops. But I need to have one final
look at this scrap of Emberfield. I pull up at the school gate, clamber out of
the car.

I gaze at the
school first – an evil-looking building, low, redbrick. Seems so much smaller
than it used to – the foreboding edifice of my childhood now looks comically
tiny: as if someone could pick it up, pack it away in a box. I think of all the
wickedness, all the violence that went on in there, of all the wickedness and
violence that place inspired in us. I wonder if such memories might make the
place grow, enable some devilish power to morph it back into its old size, but
it stays as it is – small, squat, its evil seeping out into the landscape.
Stone’s long gone. A couple of years ago, I was upset to hear he’d passed away.
He was getting on a bit when he taught us – must have been his last job before
he retired. There’s a headmistress there now – never hits the kids, of course,
no matter how much Sarah and her husband might like her to. And even if she
wanted to swing her right hand, it would be restrained by law.

I stare at the
school for long minutes. A part of my mind worries I’ll hear sirens, see a
police car flashing past, but I just keep gazing. Perhaps I’m trying to stare
down the school’s malevolence, scare away the ghosts of past times, the throng
of evil spirits that must still haunt the place. But, however much I stare,
nothing alters. It’s just like the rest of Emberfield. That same stubborn
resistance to change – change comes slowly here: as ages pass away elsewhere
they’re only beginning in our town. Change takes as long as it takes soft rain
to erode a rock.

I turn from the
school and look at where Marcus’s pond stood. It’s still sealed under the
tarmac of the road. But the steady rains have leached that tarmac from deep
black to dark grey. I look at the houses on the estate beyond – the brightness,
the modern harshness of their redbrick has also faded; they’ve become worn,
shabbier, more a part of the landscape. No one’s around; it’s quiet except for
the odd pigeon coo – a lonely echo across the land. I walk into the middle of
the road till I’m standing right where the pond’s centre used to be. That pond
too would have seemed much bigger to us kids than it was. But that circle of
sullen water could work wickedness. I remember Stubbs’s plummet through the
ice; Weirton thrashing and writhing in that deadly pool. And I can still,
somehow, feel the pond’s presence. Its evil is buried beneath the modern
world’s progress, but it’s still there, just waiting, biding its time. One day,
I know, those houses will be abandoned, those houses will crumble, the road
will wash away and the pond – once more – will start to form. The eager rain
will carve out its hollow, and the standing water will gather there.

A strange shiver
passes through me. It’s time to leave. I start the car, turn on the pub’s
corner, getting one last glimpse of that stinking inn. I pass the Old School,
Davis’s shop, the final few houses then I’m out of Emberfield. I accelerate
down the lane, take the first bend, a bend that blocks any view back to my hometown,
and I know I’ll never see it again. I just want to get away as fast as I can. I
jerk the wheel, wrench the gearstick as I negotiate the road. My right hand’s
starting to swell where I punched Dad. A couple more twists in the lane and I
pass that eerie graveyard, where I used to think Weirton should bury Lucy.
Seems absurd now – a human grave for a fake skeleton. I wind down the lane some
more before joining the main road to Goldhill. I head along that, aiming to
link up with the A1. The Great North Road. The car hums me efficiently through
the flatlands. Over on my left I glimpse Salton – castle keep, church tower,
the wall ringing the graveyard, the tips of tombstones poking above. Last I’ll
see of Salton too. Again, it all seems smaller – a child’s toys on a carpet of
green and brown. A little mist lies low on the land. I remember how I used to
think it was mingled with ancient curses – the hexes of Knights Templars, the
whispered spells of Scots. That shudder goes through me once more.

I glance again at
those timeworn buildings, evil strongholds rising above the evil land. My heart
starts to thud; sweat trickles. I jam my foot down; the car picks up speed,
whizzes me across the flatlands; away, away. I make that metal box fly,
determined to leave behind the ghosts and curses of my childhood. I shoot past
the silent farms, the lonely hamlets, the isolated churches pricking the cloud
with their spires. Who knows how many stories the land holds, how many legends,
secrets, skeletons? I just know those marshes, those fields, those damp
hedgerows are things I have to escape from.

I dip under the
railway bridge. I’m again reminded how I used to think the trains’ clatters
were the beats of the Drummer Boy. Another shiver jolts through me; my heart
bangs harder; I speed up. I don’t begin to relax, breathe more easily till I
see the A1 slicing across the landscape, see its four lanes of thundering
traffic. Those cars and trucks hurtle. I can imagine them making the ancient
churches and their worn graves quiver, shivering the old farmhouses, making the
timeless bogs, the huge aged trees shake. I wonder what was unearthed when that
road was built, what was scooped up by the shovels of snarling machines, what
artefacts, what treasures, what bones were gouged from the land, dumped on the
backs of lorries, what stories were carted away on those snorting trucks,
stories we’ll never know.

Soon I’m speeding
down the slip-road, speeding towards the northbound carriageway. Yes, I’m
heading north: far north, deep north, the north beyond the north, or what we
call north in our little nation, on our small island. The monotonous hums and
growls of the racing vehicles begin to soothe my nerves. My heart slows, and
the weird feelings I had by the school and while driving past Salton now seem
no more real than a strange nightmare. There’s something calming about the rush
of bright uniform modernity, something calming about the way I charge past the
landscape people have carved over painstaking centuries, past the churches and
manor houses it took decades to build. My worries, my tensions fly away in the
car’s slipstream; my clasp loosens on the wheel. After hurtling for an hour or
so, I pull up at a service station. I sit in the canteen, sip a coffee. Again,
I’m soothed – soothed by the plastic and neon, by the beeping of the tills, the
shallow chatter of the customers. Coffee gulped, I stroll around. I enjoy the
flashes, the synthetic shouts and roars coming from the videogames room, the
disinfectant stink that wafts from the toilets, the harsh strip-lights gleaming
on shiny products in the shop. I get outside, light a fag among the exhaust
fumes. My view’s of the carpark, the busy carriageway beyond. It’s only when I
turn, stare in the other direction that some of my uneasiness comes back. I see
spreading fields ridged by Saxon furrows, old patient trees, crumbling
farmhouses, another ancient church spiking the horizon. I throw my fag to the
floor, grind it out, stride back to the car.

I get above
Newcastle. The landscape improves, and soon I’m driving through the pretty
border county. I cross the frontier; something changes; there’s a different
feel to the air that whips in through the slither of open window; a different
vibe floating up from the land. Here are different stories, different legends,
other myths. I weave through the Cheviot Hills, cut across the Central Belt,
get round Glasgow, and head into the Highlands. The mountains rise up; the
lochs form as if in response to my expectant eyes. The sun shoots its last rays
through the clouds as it retires behind the peaks; the rays shatter then
sparkle on the waves of the lochs. I pull up in a lay-bye, peer at the map. I
need to skirt Loch Linnhe then a smaller lake called Loch Laich. Cottage is up
a slope overlooking that watery expanse. Need to look out for Castle Stalker. But
for a moment, I just sit and think. All the theatrics in Emberfield have jerked
my mind away from my notions of confronting Weirton. Am I really going to tramp
round the neighbourhood asking about him? What if I
did
meet the old
bastard? I can’t believe I’m feeling fear, but my heart knocks, my skin
tingles. Fury surges too, my hands start tightening into fists. What
could
I do to him, given the chance? I try to calm myself. I probably won’t find him.
With any luck, the old git will have snuffed it long ago. If I don’t discover
him, I just hope I can get something done up here. It’s certainly a change from
London, a change from Emberfield. Hopefully, that change will jolt me into
seeing what’s wrong with the book, seeing what it needs, seeing the slippery
solutions that have been evading me.

It’s dark when I
get near the place. I pass the famous castle, my headlights granting it a flash
of illumination as it sits above the black waters of the loch. Further along
the road I pass a pub – could be a place for a late supper. I slow down to make
sure I don’t miss my turning. I see it – a rusting signpost almost overgrown by
the enthusiastic verge. I swing the car around; it labours up what’s little
more than a farm track. My lights pick out a low, rather ramshackle dwelling. I
clamber from my car, snuffle up the air, noticing it’s good – cool, mountain-clear,
with a hint of salt from the sea loch. I’ve phoned ahead; someone’s there to
let me in, give me the key. Inside its pretty much as I’d imagined – thick
uneven walls, crooked floor, big fireplace. Soon I’m back in my vehicle, inching
down the slope in search of the pub. I turn, skirt the quiet loch, and soon come
to it.

I’m striding
towards an old-looking white building; a signboard swings and creaks in the
breeze coming off the lake. I shove the door, walk in. Inside its dusky,
partitioned; lamps hanging above the bar give out a soft light that gleams off
mirrors, polished wood. There’s that stale-beer aroma that can be smelt in pubs
up and down the land. Not many people are in – a young couple in one corner,
two old men supping weary pints in a booth close to the bar. I order a pint of
the local bitter, ask if they’re still serving food. The barman huffs and
grumbles, but says he can rustle up a burger. I sit at the bar, sip my beer;
when the burger’s plonked in front of me, I scoff it there too. There’s no
telly in the pub, no music. As my teeth grind the soft bread, the chewy beef,
for the lack of anything more interesting to do, I tune into the old blokes’ conversation.
They’re going on about farming – sheep, turnips, the hay harvest, prices for
livestock. Nothing engrossing, sort of stuff that used to bore me in Emberfield.
As their words are dull, I focus instead on the rhythms of the local accent.
It’s so different to how we speak in England’s north – the lengthy pauses
before a statement’s clattered out in one long charge, the way the voice rises
to a higher thinner pitch, slightly strangulated, to express important points.
Except, now I’m listening carefully, one of the blokes sounds different. It’s
like the Scots intonation is riding and whinnying above an earthier base. There
are shades of northern England in that voice, mixed with something even
slightly posh. I turn round, sneak a look at those men. It’s strange for a
well-spoken bloke from the North to end up as a poor Scottish crofter, which is
what I assume these guys are. They look tired, weather-beaten; there’s that
stoop poverty gives the aged. They don’t seem like landowners or well-off
farmers. I watch the more English one. There’s something about the way he
gesticulates. He’s pot-bellied, drooping-faced, sagging-shouldered; weak eyes
peer from behind thick square glasses. His fingers tremble. But his movements
have force; they command authority – the decisive sweeps of his hand, the
shaking of the fist in a moment of agitation, the scowl that scrunches his
features. His companion’s a little in awe of him. His eyes widen; he flinches
back as the hand slashes the air; he offers rapid soothing words when the hand
bunches into a fist or the face frowns. My heart begins to bash. I shiver, yank
my stare from the men, hunch over the bar. I’m back in primary school, crouched
on my chair, hoping to avoid that eagle gaze panning the class. I suck in deep
breaths; I tell my galloping heart, my racing brain that it’s crazy to be
frightened of a broken-down elderly man. What harm could he do me? I force
myself to stand; I force myself to walk across the room, to walk in slow heavy
steps up to the old blokes’ table.

‘Excuse me.’

They look up. It’s
unmistakable – the broad pink face, the blue eyes behind the glasses. The iron
hairstyle’s gone – just a few wisps of grey lie over a bald crown, but it’s
him; I’ve got no doubt.

‘Sorry to disturb
you.’ I feel oddly detached from my voice as I send it out, as I hope that
voice won’t quiver. ‘But I think I recognise you, Sir. Are you Mr Weirton who
used to teach in Emberfield?’