The Standing Water (7 page)

‘Yes, Ryan Watson,
a whole thirteen minutes late – do you think this is acceptable?’

‘No, Sir,’ I
muttered.

‘I quite agree –
acceptable it is not! So, you understand, Ryan, the punishment … must be …
severe!’

Weirton let those
last words hang. They floated above the class, buoyed on air thick with
tension, thick with expectancy. He stood at the front, motionless apart from
the rhythmic rising of his chest. I gulped; my heart bashed faster in its mad
gallop; my legs jolted under the table as if in a panicked sprint. I prayed to
God, begged Marcus a walloping wouldn’t come, tried to convince my frantic mind
that after all those sweets Marcus must protect me. Weirton stayed still, just
calmly moving his gaze across the blank-faced rows of kids.

Weirton sprang. One
nimble leap and he was in front of me. His arm thrust out; his fingers clasped
my wrist. Pain flowed down my arm: the teacher’s grip was crushing yet sweaty –
oily liquid oozed from his hand as it squeezed. More pain flashed as Weirton yanked
me from my seat and I floated up. My body dangled, my feet scrambling for a
floor now far below. The air whistled; Weirton’s free hand crashed into me. The
whump resounded; pain exploded across my rear; the breath jolted from my lungs;
I sailed up. My feet flew till my body lay flat on a bed of air then my stomach
dropped as I was tugged back. I hurtled, gaining speed on the downward curve.
The hand smashed onto my backside – flinging me on my upward voyage. All breath
forced out; I grasped for air, lips twitching like those of a grounded fish. As
I raced down, I glimpsed the pupils’ faces: the open mouths of some, the
kindling of delight in the eyes of Johnson, Stubbs. The hand banged into me –
my vision shattered; any breath I’d scrabbled together was hurled from my
lungs. Up again on that dizzying flight; my mouth spasming, water massing
behind my eyes. I wasn’t going to cry, I wasn’t going to cry, not in front of
everybody. The hand swept; I braced myself. It smashed onto my rump. I lurched
up on that curve, squeezing my eyes to hold my tears in. I flew down; that palm
slammed into me – salt water burst out: tears arced across the room. Sobs
welled up from my chest, clogged my gulping throat: making it impossible to get
breath in. The palm bashed into me; again, I sailed up. No air could get down
my windpipe; pain tore at the arm I hung from; my arse throbbed. I was sure I’d
had the habitual six of the best, but the hand crashed onto my behind once
more. The impact echoed; I floated up, spraying the room with tears. My empty
lungs ached; nausea sloshed in my stomach. The hand rushed again, hurling my
body up; more teardrops flew. The sobs still clotted my throat; agony now squeezed
my lungs. I remembered what Stubbs had said, pleaded with Marcus to save me,
not to let me choke, not to let me die as I spluttered and swung. But the palm
kept on swooping, kept on bashing out any scraps of air my mouth had managed to
gather. My lungs burned, squeezed tighter; they shot flames of panic, the most
horrifying panic, through my whole body. I wondered how far I was from death,
how long my pain-crushed lungs could hold out. As the hand slammed into me, I
once more prayed to God, pleaded with Marcus, begging him to remember the
sweets I’d chucked him, promising him more presents as soon as his ice thawed. Three
more times the hand swept; three more times the noise resounded; three more
times I was hurled on my airy arc. The strikes stopped, and I swung in smaller
and smaller swoops till I came to a halt. Weirton dangled me for some seconds
before he stepped back and I felt myself lowered. My feet touched the pitching
floor. Weirton let go of my arm: I crumpled, like a puppet cut from its
strings. I swayed and drooped, trying to orientate myself, trying to put my cracked
blurred vision back together as my backside ached. I managed – between sobs –
to get some air down to my famished lungs. They stung as each breath forced
them to expand. My right arm was strangely stretched; my left oddly pain-free.
As my sight cleared, I saw the rows of staring eyes, the silent faces of my
classmates, wondered what was going on in their minds. Weirton was next to me,
his body hunched over his bent legs, his arms leaning on his thighs. Sweat
dripped from his scarlet face; his breath rasped and jolted as he struggled to
steady it. He eventually straightened himself; the huge eyes clasped me.

‘Come on, Ryan
Watson!’ Weirton yelled as his finger thrust at my desk. ‘We haven’t got all
day – get back to your seat!’

But my legs bounced
and swayed as if carved from rubber. My mind urged those legs to move, but they
just wobbled, free of my brain’s control. I stayed where I was – upper body
bobbing and shaking on those clown’s limbs. The eyes of my classmates swelled –
what would happen if I couldn’t make myself move? I felt Weirton’s stare harden,
drill into me – a gaze equally fascinated. The room’s air got thicker, more
humid. My chest jolted; an immense hiccup lurched out. Laughter burst from the
rows.

‘Quiet!’ Weirton
shouted. ‘You’ll all be quiet or –by God – this hand will give out more today!
And, Ryan Watson – I won’t tell you again!
Get
back to your seat!’

I desperately
laboured, trying to forge a link between brain and body. I was able to lift a
leg, move it forward in a clumsy arc, repeat this action with the other. I
staggered across that floor as more hiccups blurted. Stubbs, Johnson clamped
their lips with their teeth as they battled their sniggers. With bow-legged
strides, I dodged tables, teetered round chairs. Eventually, I reached my own.
I paused and – gripping my chair’s back for support – looked up at Weirton. His
head came down in a nod and I had to lower my stinging arse onto the seat’s
hard plastic. Weirton’s sweat-drenched face beamed in triumph. He loomed – like
some huge monument – over our lowly class.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let
that be a lesson to you, Ryan Watson! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! You should
know from past examples, like those with the brother of this buffoon, this
clown!’ The finger thrust at Jonathon. ‘What the consequences of lateness can
be! And now you all know it even better! Yes, let today’s little episode be a
lesson to you all!’

Weirton swivelled
his feet and was gone from the room. In a few seconds the voice was booming
next door, telling his class to be quiet and get on with their work or he’d be
happy to give out more of what Ryan Watson had received.

Perkins came back
in and the lesson went on – Richard Johnson being summoned to her desk to chant
out the words of his baby book. I sat on my chair, trying to read but unable to
concentrate on my dull text. If my mind was a glass pane, it was like someone
had swung a hammer at it. I struggled to pick up the fragments, to patch and
mend that shattered sheet. But I just had to wait for that puzzle to remake
itself – to piece together its shards and slivers. My tears flowed for a while,
dropping onto my book, smudging the print with their tiny explosions. Hiccups
still lurched from me. Even when my tears had dried and the hiccups had stopped,
I snivelled and snorted through the rest of the lesson, and my arse went on humming
against my seat. When Perkins told us to go out for the break, I stood slowly,
gingerly. As the others charged out to play in the snow, I swayed and teetered
on my unruly legs, navigating the corridor in a bow-legged drunkard’s stagger,
Jonathon beside me. My bones felt clumsily strung together – as if they’d been
smashed, reassembled in the wrong way. The more steps I took, the easier it got,
but – even when I was outside in the falling feathery snow – my body trembled,
my legs wobbled and bounced, suddenly bulging out at unpredictable angles.

In this way, I
lurched and tottered down the path that ran alongside the school building then
down the steps to the playground. Each one was an obstacle demanding the
careful lifting and placing down of my feet, each was lined with slippery slush
and icy compacted snow. A couple of times, I had to wave comical arms – like a
demented bird flapping its wings– to save my balance. The steps descended
alongside a kind of platform or promontory that fronted the school building,
looking out over the playground and the vast school field beyond. Weirton stood
on the platform, clad in a long black coat, swathed in a rather dapper scarf,
his red face glowing against the white day, lips beaming as he turned his head
from side-to-side, surveying the view. Was he smiling in triumph after having
so obviously crushed me or in happiness at seeing the kids enjoy the snow? And
enjoying themselves they were. They ran, chased each other, their feet
puncturing the playground’s crust. Their hands carved gashes from it as they
stooped to make snowballs. They gouged deep ruts as they rolled huge white boulders.
Volleys of snowballs flew. It could have been a painting, a scene from a
Christmas card.

Safely down those
stairs, able to walk more quickly as my awkward jerks softened into more fluid
movements, Jonathon and I headed away from Weirton, to a patch of the field he
couldn’t see from his platform. I looked out over the flat farmland beyond,
over that beautiful blank world. The white fields stretched numbly to the
horizon. If only I could have transferred some of their numbness to me, have it
help the chilly air in its slow soothing of my rump.

‘Blimey,’ Jonathon
whispered, head twitching back to make sure we were out of the range of Weirton’s
legendarily sensitive ears, ‘he gave you one hell of a whacking – must be up
there with some of Stubbs’s best! All just for being late!’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘what
happened to Marcus? Why did he forget those sweets we gave him?’

‘Dunno.’ Jonathon
screwed up his face as he pondered. ‘Maybe it’s ’cos he’s frozen – he can’t do
anything. Or maybe we didn’t give him enough presents. Or maybe … I dunno, do
you think he’s really in the pool?’

‘Course he is! How
on earth could you doubt it? I told you I saw him that day!
And
we saw
him try to get Stubbs – we even saw his handprint!’

‘Yeah,’ said
Jonathon, ‘suppose you’re right.’

‘Course I am. We need
to give him more presents. Just a bit difficult to do when his pond’s all frozen.’

‘But what can we do
till his pond melts?’ said Jonathon. ‘How can we stop Weirton whacking us?’

‘Could promise
Marcus, I suppose. Say sorry for not giving him enough stuff and say we’ll give
him more later. We need to do something! Remember what Stubbsy told us about
not being able to breathe during the whacking. It was just like that! I thought
I might die – that I was gonna choke! Bet that’s what happened to Lucy!’

Something hard and
icy crashed into the back of my head, jerking it forward. Laughter chorused; I
looked round. Stubbs and Johnson stood a few metres off with a bunch of our
classmates. They paced towards us, arrogantly kicking up white powder, lobbing
a few more snowballs, which thankfully missed. I knew from whackings I’d
watched in the past that these punishments could draw both taunts and sympathy.
From the way the lads strode, from the snowy spheres they hurled, I guessed I
wasn’t likely to be getting the latter.

‘Hey Watson!’
Stubbs said. ‘How was your whacking?’

‘You should know,’
I said. ‘You’ve had enough!’

Stubbs’s palm shot
out. My reactions still slow after the walloping, I couldn’t bat it away. It
crashed onto my ear, made it throb and sting in the cold.

‘Yeah,’ Stubbs
said, ‘but at least I’m not the village idiot! At least I don’t go round gawping
at stuff like some imbecile!’

Stubbs jolted into
a ponderous walk, stopping to stick his gormless face out.

‘Duh!’ he intoned.
‘It’s a tree! Duh! It’s a house.’

The gaggle of kids
sniggered. I hurled a punch at Stubbs’s out-thrust chin – he jerked it back. My
fist struck nothing but snowflakes.

‘Why were you
hiccupping so much?’ a lad asked.

‘Oh, that happens
sometimes,’ another said, nodding knowledgably. ‘I asked my dad – he reckons
it’s cos the air gets forced from your body so quickly.’

‘And what a baby!’ Johnson
said. ‘Beefing like mad! Snivelling away for ages afterwards!’

‘Shut up, Johnson!’
I said. ‘The last whacking you got, it took you hours to stop beefing!’

A fist hurtled through
the falling flakes. It struck my jaw; a hammer blow rang in my head. I stumbled
and slipped; I was on my back in the snow; blinking up at the lads’ mocking
faces. To my shame, hot water trickled down my cold cheeks.

‘Look he’s
beefing!’ Stubbs shouted. ‘Oh, don’t beef! Oh, dooon’t beeeef!’

Soon all the lads
took up this refrain, their fingers pointing down at me. The chant was varied
by occasional additions from Stubbs.

‘Oh, dooon’t
beeeef! Oh, doooon’t beeeef! The village idiot! Gawping like an imbecile! Oh,
doooon’t beeeeef!’

Some infants nearby
were rolling a giant snowball, skipping, smiling, faces aglow as they pushed it
with their mittened hands, their white globe as tall as them. Stubbs and
Johnson looked at each other. Their eyes uncertain, they hesitated for a second
then walked from the line of laughing, singing lads. They shoved the infants
away, picked up that orb between them and – straining and stumbling under it –
carried it off, ignoring the infants’ shrill cries. As they brought it back to
their gang, the lads glanced, puzzled, at each other. Then, all at once, they
rushed over to Johnson and Stubbs to help support that sphere.

‘Lift it high!’
Stubbs shouted.

All those hands
held the snowball aloft.

‘One …’ Stubbs
shouted.

‘… two, three!’ the
others yelled.

A planet hurtled
from the sky. A huge freezing object slammed into me. Everything went white
then black. I was lying in a pile of rubbly snow, with just my head sticking
out. My face must have been a comical mask of shock because laughter erupted
from the lads. Fingers thrust at me; boys were bent double, crippled by mirth,
clutching their stomachs. I spat to clear the white dust from my lips, wiped my
gloved hand over my face to clean more away, but just ended up daubing myself
with more snow. Still laughing the lads began to walk off, sometimes turning to
point and shake, to lob the odd snowball at me. The occasional face scrunched
in a kind of dopey concern, but then someone would nudge the lad and he’d let
laughter overcome him again. I spat out more crumbling, melting bits of snow –
this had to be one of the worst bits of teasing I’d heard of in response to a
thrashing. But now Jonathon’s brother and Darren Hill were striding across the
field, with a bunch of older lads. They stopped when they met Stubbs’s gang.

‘Hey!’ said Darren.
‘We heard Weirton’s little show through the wall with the village idiot here!’

Hill pointed at me;
all the lads laughed.

‘How many did he
get?’ the brother asked Stubbs.

‘Loads and loads –’
a sly smile inched up Stubbs’s face ‘– must have been at least eighteen!’

‘It wasn’t that
many!’ I yelled. Anger flushed through me; I felt it shine from my cheeks as I
tried to shove myself up from the ground.

‘Eighteen!’ The
brother sniggered, his hands squeezing a snowball, compacting it to ice.
‘Eighteen, Eighteen …’

The brother’s arm
went back; he aimed his ice-ball at me.

‘Craig, don’t!’
Jonathon shouted to the brother. ‘He’s had enough!’

The brother turned,
looked at his sibling. Indecision flickered on his face then – from just two
metres away – he hurled his ice-ball at Jonathon. It crashed into him just
above his nose.

‘Aaargh!’ Jonathon
yelled. He bent his body, clasped his face in his hands. ‘I’ve gone blind! I
can’t see!’

‘You idiots!’ I shouted.
‘Look what you’ve done!’

The lads just
laughed. Jonathon went on crying out as he staggered, his hands over his eyes.
Different expressions darted across the brother’s face – victorious smiles, the
glow of what seemed like gormless triumph at what he’d done, at the laughter
he’d provoked. But there was something else – a twitch of the mouth, a scrunch
of the brow seemed to signal dim regret or concern for his sibling. Yet such
expressions would rapidly be conquered by those of scorn, amusement.

‘Hey!’ Stubbs yelled.
‘I’ve got an idea – let’s push Watson down in the snow and see what happens!’

‘Yeah, let’s!’ the
others chorused.

No hesitation now,
the brother ran, launched himself into the air, crashed onto me. The impact
shoved me into the snow, knocked breath from my lungs. He grabbed my head;
flipped me over so I lay with my face balanced on top of the chill white. He
pushed my body down. I felt thuds as other lads flung themselves on us, forming
a heap. His hand thrust my head – thrust it right into cold wetness. The hand
pushed it deeper – I tasted snow on my lips, like flavourless ice-cream. With
more strength the hand shoved – compressed snow squeaked against my face;
chilly trickles ran in my ears; the ice at the bottom bent my nose. My mouth
tried to spit out the powder invading it. The boys’ shouts and laughs were
muffled by that whispering enveloping white, obscured by the creaks and crunches
their boots made as they scrunched snow. But still I heard Stubbs yell:

‘Everybody!’

Another mass of
boys must have flung themselves on me. My face was rammed into the ice, my arms
pinned by all that pressure. The weight forced air from my chest; snow plugged
my nostrils; my mouth could only draw in freezing flakes. All was black now; I
used the last of my breath to scream: a sound that echoed meekly into the snow.
Something pushed me harder into the unyielding ice – more lads must have thrown
themselves on the heap. My head was getting hot, as if some furnace bulged
inside. My heart banged out a rapid boom; my lungs ached as my lips spasmed in
a desperate search for breath. There was none – my mouth just sucked in snow.
My skull throbbed, feeling ready to rupture. I wondered if this crushing
blackness was already hell. I begged Marcus to help me, to save me if he could
– hoping that in his icy state he might have some power over snow. But still
the merciless weight pressed; still my mouth could find no air. My lungs
burned; I felt faint then I was spiralling into an awful void. My mind screamed
more pleas to Marcus. I felt a shifting above and the weight on me lessened as
if boys were peeling themselves off the pile. I still couldn’t move, but with
each less lad I had a centimetre more freedom, another inch of air. More kids
hauled themselves off, the force on me softened, and I heard shouting and
laughter. With trembling arms, I pushed myself from the ground, stood on
shaking legs beside an outline of myself in the snow. I gulped air, my lungs
aching as they were forced to stretch, as shards and needles of cold pricked them.

‘Look at the shape
he’s left in the snow!’ Stubbs called out.

Giggles echoed
before someone said, ‘Looks like an Egyptian mummy! Like those pictures Weirton
showed us!’

Indeed it did – the
oval head free of features, the torso with arms bound. There was even a
bandage-type pattern – formed by the creases in my trousers and coat. As my
breath jerked and quivered, as my fury surged, I thought of how that funereal
impression really could have marked my murder. The lads wandered off – still
laughing, turning to point, slapping each other’s shoulders. I was about to go
after Stubbs, pull him back, punch him when a wail startled me. I glanced round,
saw Jonathon wandering in the snow, his blind hands groping at the flake-filled
air.

‘I can’t see!’ he
moaned.

I tottered over to
him, grabbed his shoulders.