The Standing Water (9 page)

I was glad I didn’t
have a brother – because I didn’t have one, I couldn’t bump him off so God
couldn’t brand me with a mark like Cain’s. But, next to me, Jonathon’s lip
shivered harder. His hand inched up.

‘Please Sir, what
if Cain had said sorry? Would God have taken the mark away?’

‘I’m afraid not,
Jonathon. It might seem rather harsh, but we must remember what Cain did. Killing
your own brother – can there be a worse crime? And I should say that God did
have some mercy. People were so furious with Cain they wanted to kill him so
God also used that mark as a sign to warn them off. And Cain had a wife and
children and even once built a city, but – except his family – everybody kept
away from him.’

‘Please Sir,’
Jonathon said, ‘what happened to Cain in the end? Is he still wandering over
the earth today?’

‘I don’t think so,
Jonathon. You must remember this all happened quite a long time ago.  If we
study the Bible, we find – at least according to the logic of that book – that
Cain would have died in the Great Flood, which we’ll talk about soon. Now, if
we can look at some more pages of our booklet …’

We flipped back and
forth through more evidence of God’s dread judgements. There was the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah – though what their crimes exactly were, I
couldn’t understand from the vicar’s explanations. But again that finger
flashed out of the clouds, sent bolts hurtling to make those two proud cities
burn. It reminded me of the eventual – and inevitable – wrecking of Jonathon’s
set-outs: of how avenging fury would always sweep away what men had raised up
in their vanity and in just a few moments level our finest and most painstaking
achievements. The next picture showed Lot and his wife fleeing those flaming
towns and another of the Lord’s judgements. For Lot’s wife had dared to glance
back so the Lord had turned her into a pillar of salt. I sucked in breath at
God’s harshness, but then – on reflection – thought that penalty was just.
Perhaps such a thing could happen to Perkins – I smiled at the idea of her
nagging muffled beneath hard layers of white. It seemed there were endless
amounts of sin in the world God was always having to punish. The vicar appeared
to agree.

‘Yes –’ the priest
screwed up his brow beneath his bald head ‘– it’s sad to say, but we can see
there was a great deal of wickedness on the earth. And God – who, after all,
had created the whole thing – felt He had to do something about it. So, He came
up with a solution that might seem rather drastic, but …’

I knew what was
coming. We turned some pages, and – sure enough – there was a robed,
long-bearded man hammering at a half-finished hull.

‘Look,’ said the
vicar, ‘there’s Noah making his boat – does anyone know why?’

My hand thrust up.

‘Because God told
him there’d be a huge flood, Sir!’

‘Exactly, Ryan, God
decided the earth was so wicked, so sinful He had to drown it all – “the world
is full of violence!” that’s what God said.’

I nodded – it didn’t
seem much had changed. Could God drown Emberfield? We had enough violence:
Weirton’s wallopings, the big lads fighting all the time, myself being nearly
choked in the snow and Jonathon almost blinded, the poor kids in the Old School
who’d been whacked to death. And it wouldn’t have surprised me if foul play had
been involved in the ends of Lucy and Marcus.

‘Unfortunately,’
the vicar went on, ‘Noah was the only honest decent man on the whole earth. God
warned him and he started making his boat. His neighbours laughed; they called
him crazy …’

I managed to show a
smug smile to Stubbs. He’d also mocked me when in the autumn I’d begun to knock
together my own craft in response to the endless rains. Now he could see God
had given a holy example undeniably set down in the Bible’s black ink.

‘And,’ the vicar
said, ‘God opened the windows of heaven and uncapped the fountains of the deep.
And the rains fell for forty days and forty nights till water covered the whole
land.’

I was sure there’d
been times when it’d rained that much in Emberfield. Yet our town was not
submerged. The rain just stayed in the marshy fields, where it lay sullen and
black. It just swelled and strengthened Marcus’s pond.

‘Perhaps …’ the
vicar said, scrunching his eyes, waving a finger, ‘… you might feel God
overreacted
a bit. I mean, drowning your whole Creation because of a few bad deeds, it may
seem rather excessive. But, because God is merciful, He had a plan to save the
world …’

We flipped to the
next page. There was Noah’s boat complete – a sizeable, but not enormous ship.
The sun still shone, but rain-pregnant clouds were blotting the blue from the
sky. Their dark bulks contained a warning for sinners. Noah stood by the side
of his Ark, beaming at his handiwork. A ramp led down from the ship, which a
couple of sheep and two camels were climbing. Back on the ground, a docile
queue of animals waited to go up, supervised by Noah’s sons. There were goats
and cows, elephants, tigers, lions, deer, even a couple of serpents. I wondered
if the snakes – with their sly cunning – hoped to sneak onto the ship
unnoticed. Surely God would want them drowned after their outrage in the
Garden.

‘If you look at the
picture,’ the vicar said, ‘you can see God’s plan. He instructed Noah to take a
male and female of each species onto the Ark so after the Flood the animals
could have babies and repopulate the world. Noah also took his family – his
sons and their wives – so there could be new people.’

Stubbs hurled his
hand up.

‘Does that mean that
we’re all related to Noah?’

‘I suppose, according
to the Bible, it does,’ the vicar said.

‘That means Noah’s
my great-great grandfather!’ Stubbs said.

‘And mine!’ Richard
Johnson shouted.

‘Yes …
something
like that.’ The vicar smiled, nodded.

I looked at the
jolly pastels of that picture. I wondered why the lions weren’t attacking the
deer – perhaps they were calmed by God’s magic.

‘Sir,’ Jonathon
asked, ‘what about the animals that didn’t live near Israel – like penguins and
gorillas and polar bears? How did they get them on the Ark?’

‘Maybe they picked
them up on the way,’ said Stubbs.

‘Er, yes, good
question Jonathon, and an intelligent answer Dennis, but … er … we must remember
God was involved here so I’m sure He could have sorted out the problem somehow.
And … er … we must also remember the Bible was written a long time ago by
people who saw the world quite differently. Maybe they didn’t even know about
penguins and polar bears.’

I didn’t see how
this lack of knowledge could have helped the bears survive the Deluge yet I
didn’t want to trouble the vicar further. But Jonathon’s hand was once more up.

‘Sir, the boat in
the picture’s not so big, is it? And there are hundreds of types of animals in
the world. How could they fit them all on?’

‘Well,’ said the
vicar, ‘the Ark was quite large. It was three-hundred cubits long and thirty
high. A cubit is about as long as a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips.’

The vicar held up
his own cubit to show us.

‘But, yes … er …
good question – how would they have all fitted on?’

‘Maybe God sorted
it out with his magic,’ I ventured.

‘And what would
they have all eaten?’ Stubbs asked.

‘Yes … well …’ the
vicar said.

His eyes flicked
from side-to-side; his forehead wrinkled; his lips quivered as if they wanted
to say something, but couldn’t decide what. Jonathon thrust up his hand.
Without waiting for permission, he blurted.

‘But the Ark story
must
have happened even if we’re not sure how! Remember in assembly Mr Weirton told
us you can find seashells in rocks on high mountains – he said that means there
must
have been a Flood!’

‘Oh …’ the class
muttered. With nods we accepted this unquestionable evidence. The vicar’s
scrunched forehead slackened; his eyes stopped their twitching.

‘Yes, thank you,
Jonathon,’ he said, ‘now, if we can just get back to the story …’

We flipped the page
in our booklets. The Ark floated on an eerie expanse of water – a desert of
pastel blue.

‘Just imagine,’ the
vicar said, ‘deep under that water is our normal world. Cities and towns, shops
and houses, hills, fields … all deep, deep under those waters God flung down
from heaven in his anger.’

‘Be great if it
happened in Emberfield!’ I whispered to Jonathon.

My heart thudded as
the vicar’s frown told me he’d overheard.

‘I don’t think it
would
be great, Ryan! Just imagine – your house, your school, your town, all the land
around it beneath miles of water: all the poor animals and people drowned. I
don’t think you’d like that very much, would you?’

I gave a shake to
my head – a shake propelled by some dishonesty.

‘Anyway,’ the vicar
said, ‘the Ark floated for a long time. The waters finally started to go down,
and after seven months the Ark ended up on top of a mountain, called Mount
Ararat. After ten months, Noah sent a dove and raven out to see what they could
find. Only the dove came back. Noah waited seven days and sent the dove out
again. It returned with an olive branch in its beak – showing more land must
have been uncovered. The next time Noah sent the dove out it didn’t come back,
telling them they could come off the Ark and live on the new land – the beautiful
new land washed free of sin.’

‘And then God did
something very special. He allowed a rainbow to appear in the heavens and told
Noah it was a sign of peace. God said that never again would He destroy the
earth with water – that was His promise to Man. Don’t you think that was ever
so kind of Him?’

Stubbs smiled –
screwing his features into a look of infuriating smugness. He put up his hand.

‘So, Sir, God will
never again send a flood that’ll cover the whole world?’

‘That’s right,
Dennis.’

‘So it’d be very
silly if someone tried to make a boat like the Ark?’

‘Yes, I suppose it
would.’

Stubbs brought his
smug face down in a slow nod while gazing at me. My fists gripped under the
table, aching to smash his annoying mug. Then I remembered what I’d thought
seeing the snow earlier.

‘Sir,’ I asked, ‘God
said He’d never destroy the earth with rain, but what about snow? If He was
very angry, would He allow it to just keep snowing?’

The vicar’s finger
floated to his chin. He stared for some time from the window, at the thousands
of flakes falling on their spidery courses down. I stared from the window too,
at the ground’s covering of endless white – imagining Emberfield buried under
its cold purity.

‘Er … no, I don’t
think so Ryan,’ the vicar finally said. ‘I suppose snow counts as a kind of
water.’

Stubbs once more
fixed his gloating gaze on me.

‘And I think …’ the
vicar’s eyes flicked to his watch. ‘Do we have time? Yes, it seems we just
about do … I think I should point out that God is always with us in the world
and He remembers his promises – or covenants, in biblical language. Because of
His great kindness and love, never again shall He destroy us … er … at least
not with water. I just want you to see something else before we finish.’

We flipped a few
pages ahead in our booklets. A man lay sleeping on a rug on desert ground. The
curved heavens around him shone with stars. And from the tip of the sky’s dome
a spiral staircase descended. Up and down it moved winged figures robed in
white. A strange light glowed from them out into the darkness.

‘That man sleeping
is a prophet called Jacob,’ the vicar said, ‘and one night he lay in the desert
and dreamed that a ladder – or stairway – reached down to the earth from heaven
and up and down that ladder angels were passing …’

Up my hand leapt.

‘Sir – does that
mean that we might see angels sometimes?’

‘I
suppose
we might,’ the vicar said, ‘although such visions are rare. But yes, if we look
at the drawing, I think it tells us God is always with us – the link between
heaven and earth is not completely broken. Though most of us can’t see them, He
still loves us enough to send His angels among us.’

I stared at those long-limbed
figures, their wings, their robes the colour of vanilla ice-cream. I wondered
what it might be like to see one.

‘Angels among us to
protect, to guide …’ the vicar said.

It was a nice
thought that those angels moved through Emberfield’s damp streets, floated
above our marshes and flat fields, hovered over Marcus’s pond, the Old School,
maybe even brought comfort to Lucy in her cupboard. It was nice of God, amongst
all the dread and thunder of His judgements, to send us sights so uplifting.
But to see one – that would be incredible. I wondered if anyone I knew had – my
parents, the vicar, Davis, Mr Weirton. I resolved to find out.

After the vicar
finished, it was lunchtime. The flakes went on falling; the jibes went on
flying from Stubbs, Johnson, the brother, Darren Hill over my walloping and my
suffocating shove down into the snow. In the playground, Stubbs took off
Jonathon – staggering and moaning in mock blindness – while the brother and
Darren laughed. I itched to lamp Stubbsy, but with Weirton striding on his
platform, we could only taunt him back – reminding him of his plunge through
Marcus’s ice, the massive wallopings he did indeed get from both his mum and
dad that day.

School ended about
the time those flakes stopped coming down, and – loving the brittle crunches
our boots made as they ruptured the snow’s fresh surface – we trudged towards
Davis’s shop. I snuffled up the smell of milky purity, a smell that managed to
overwhelm the stench of beer from the pub, the pong of dunghills and chimney
smoke. Pushing Davis’s door, clanging the bell, we left that shining world of
white and entered the shopkeeper’s deathly realm. There were the cold slabs of ham
behind the meat counter, the coffin-like freezers, the mummified flies from
summer still on the window ledge, the crown of the Queen – our pharaoh – over
the post-office section. We ordered our ten-penny mixtures, went through the
usual routine with Davis dangling tongs over jars as our mouths gushed the
sweet spit of our longings. Davis had by now worked out the sweets we loved
best – he teased me for ages with fizzy cola bottles, tortured Jonathon by
keeping his tongs over the chocolate footballs before slamming the lid shut
without having fished out any of those delicious spheres. He lumbered Jonathon
with a cherry-red string, knowing he wasn’t keen on those, but I thought we’d
get our own back as we could just swap it later. He taunted us both with the
flying saucers – moving the tongs nearer to and farther from their jar – but
neither of us got one of those spaceships. As he was piling shrimps into my bag,
he turned his drooping face and his watery eyes grasped me.

‘Now young Mr
Watson,’ the aged voice trembled. ‘Hear you got taught a good lesson today.’

I looked blankly at
Davis. Surely he couldn’t be talking about the tedium of Perkins’s classes.

‘Oh yes, it was a
great one by the sounds of it – won’t be able to sit down for a week, that’s
what I heard! You’ll think twice before being late again!’

‘How did you find
out about that so quickly!?’ I blurted.

‘Oh, as you should
know, I find out everything round here and quick smart as well! Hope it taught
you a good lesson – keep going on that way and you’ll end up like Lucy …’

Chuntering, Davis
turned back to his jars.

‘Wipe the smile off
his face if he ends up like that Lucy. That’s where bad behaviour leads them …
he should thank Mr Weirton for his guidance … doesn’t want to end up a pile of
bones …’

I gulped and
shivered; my heart started its thud.  Was I really wandering down Lucy’s doomed
track?

‘Please, Mr Davis,
was Lucy often late?’

‘Oh, she was, she
was, all the time – Mr Weirton tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t take any
notice. And this one had better watch out too …’

The old face nodded
at Jonathon.

‘I always said Mr
Weirton should give you a few licks to stop you following in the footsteps of
your brother. He’s a right handful that Craig – had Mrs Browning in here
earlier complaining about him, about how your dad had to give him a few strokes
yesterday. Should give
you
a few too from what I’ve heard – covering
your bedroom floor with your mess, not letting your poor mum clean up …’

Jonathon frowned as
Davis plopped a shrimp into his sachet as a punishment. Grateful that for a
time Davis wasn’t waffling about me, I let my eyes scan the folded newspapers
on his counter. There were those words again – strikes, un-employ-ment, in-flation
– with a few new ones: hard-ship, pov-ert-y. bombs, shoot-ings. I struggled
with the tiny print as Davis wagged his tongs and waffled. I was jerked from my
studies by the plonking of two swollen bags on the counter. I looked up; the
ancient blue eyes had fastened themselves on me.

‘Well, wonders will
never cease – a young lad here actually trying to read the papers! A good
thing, I suppose, a youngster interested in current affairs – as long as they
don’t fill their heads with strange ideas, end up voting for the wrong side
when they get older. But you want to watch yourself, my lad – make sure we
don’t have any more dawdling down the street, dreaming about heaven knows what,
making yourself late. Remember what happened to Lucy!’

‘And Marcus too?’
Jonathon asked.

‘Quite possibly,
quite possibly –’ hanging skin flopped as Davis nodded, ‘– can’t say I know exactly
what happened to him, but he came to a sticky end, I’m sure. Always in trouble
with Mr Weirton that one …’

Back out on the
street, Jonathon and I drifted past the Old School, got rid of a few shrimps by
lobbing them into the shattered playground for the ghostly kids. Though Marcus
was impounded in ice, we guessed the spooks of those children could still
scrabble for sweets despite the piercing cold. I turned to Jonathon.

‘Good job Davis
warned me to be careful – I could soon end up like Marcus and Lucy! Felt I
wasn’t far off today – Jonathon, have you ever gone for a long time without
air? I really thought Weirton might kill me.’

‘Nah, but you’re
lucky Weirton didn’t kill you, and you’re lucky Stubbs and my bloody brother
didn’t either when they pushed you into the snow. You never know, maybe it
was
daft kids who bumped Marcus and Lucy off!’

‘Can you think of
anything we can do to stop him – just in case it doesn’t work with Marcus?’

‘Stop who – Weirton
or my brother?’

‘Weirton, I
suppose.’

‘Nah, just have to
trust Marcus. Ryan, Mr Davis is
really
old, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah, he’s
ancient. Know what I reckon? Remember what the vicar was saying today about
Noah’s Ark. I think Mr Davis might be one of Noah’s sons.’

‘Really!? You sure
he’s
that
old?’

‘Yeah, reckon he’s
about the right age. Next time we get some sweets we should ask him what it was
like on Noah’s ship.’

‘Yeah, you should.’

‘No, you.’