The Standing Water Read online

  ‘You certainly should know what he’s like – you should take all your brother’s run-ins with him as good lessons! Won’t stand for any nonsense, won’t Mr Weirton! Oh, you’d better get a move on!’

  Soon we were outside on the wet road. We marched down Jonathon’s close, and turned onto the main street. Up in the distance bobbed the satchels and bright kagools – orange, yellow, red – of other tramping children.

  ‘We’d better try to catch them,’ I said, breathing hasty clouds of fog. ‘You heard what your mum said – don’t fancy facing Weirton if we’re late!’

  Soon our legs were gobbling the street. As we strode, I looked across at my friend.

  ‘Jonathon, something dead weird happened yesterday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know the legend of Marcus in the pond?’

  ‘Course … not sure if I believe it.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘How can you not believe it? Marcus disappeared all of a sudden, and no one knew where he went, did they?’

  ‘Doesn’t prove he’s in the pond –’

  ‘No, but listen! We saw him!’

  ‘Saw him!? How?’

  ‘We were skimming stones over the pond. Then Dennis lobbed a massive one in! There was a huge splash and … Marcus’s head came up, all muddy and covered in slime!’

  ‘Oh no!’

  Jonathon bit his lip; the lip trembled; he breathed more quickly.

  ‘I never said I didn’t believe it! I just wasn’t sure. Trust Stubbs though!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘he always gets us in trouble … Jonathon, how do you think Marcus got into the pond?’

  ‘Drowned, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, but do you reckon it was just an accident or did someone do it on purpose?’

  ‘Who could have done it on purpose?’

  ‘Dunno …maybe some adult. Or maybe it was a ghost or some magic.’

  ‘Reckon he just drowned,’ said Jonathon. ‘Sort of thing that could happen easily.’

  We marched on in silence. I pondered the mystery of Marcus for a while, but soon other thoughts crowded into my mind, not the least of which was the need to hurry. But then we came towards a cluster of houses within sight of the pub. I turned to Jonathon.

  ‘Do you think we’ve got time to look at the witch’s hand?’

  ‘Do you really think it’s a witch’s hand?’ he said.

  ‘Course it is – what else could it be?’

  ‘It could be just another of Stubbs’s lies!’

  ‘I reckon you’re scared, Browning!’

  ‘I’m not scared!’ Jonathon said, before moving his shoulders in a shrug. ‘We can have a look if that’s what you want.’

  We crept up to that huddle of buildings. Between the walls of two of the houses was a narrow space. My heart started to bang. Bodies arched and stiffening, we sneaked up to that gap, lifting our feet carefully to keep them silent.

  ‘Bet there’s nothing there,’ Jonathon whispered, unable to keep a quaver from his voice.

  ‘There is!’ I hissed. ‘I’m telling you, it’s down there! We just have to look.’

  ‘You first then!’ said Jonathon

  ‘No, you!’

  We edged closer, pushing and scrabbling, each trying to shove the other ahead, the scrapes of our trainers on the pavement now defeating our desire to stay quiet. We stopped our struggles, looked at each other and came to an unspoken compromise. Heads together, at the same time, we peered down into that dark space.

  ‘Can’t see anything yet,’ I said.

  I tried to make my voice casual while wondering if Jonathon could feel me trembling through our pressed-together heads or if he was jolted by the shudders from my heart.

  ‘Looks like Stubbs lied again!’ said Jonathon.

  ‘But it’s magic, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Sometimes you can see it, and sometimes you can’t. It’s probably better for us if we can’t.’

  We went on staring into that space. My eyes getting used to the gloom, I could make out cobwebs, bits of flaking paint, but nothing more frightening.

  ‘It’s not there,’ Jonathon said. ‘Stubbs has been lying and you’re stupid enough to believe him!’

  ‘Let’s look a little longer.’

  ‘Nah, let’s go.’

  ‘Just one more minute.’

  Whatever we said, we kept our heads shoved up against that crack. The sky was cloudy, but rather than the glowering slab of the day before, it was made up of shifting banks of grey and piles of floating black boulders. As we gaped into that space, the crest of the sun appeared from behind one of those bulbous stacks. More of the sun emerged; it shot a ray downwards. That sunbeam cut into the gap and it illuminated – two thirds of the way down – the outline of a human hand.

  ‘Ahhh!’ I shouted.

  ‘It’s there!’ Jonathon yelled.

  We sprinted from that fire-tinged, five-fingered shape. My breath jerked as my legs powered. What hexes, spells, curses could it fling upon us if our heels weren’t fast enough? We pelted down the road, my bashing heart labouring. We flew past those kagools and bobbing satchels that had seemed so distant just moments earlier. As we hurtled towards the pub, we passed Jonathon’s brother who strode confidently with a crowd of his mates.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ the brother called, his tone mocking, a grin spreading on his face.

  ‘It’s … the witch’s … hand!’ Jonathon yelled, between gasps.

  The brother’s group broke into sniggers.

  ‘You don’t still believe in that, do you?’ one of them shouted.

  ‘We’ve seen it!’ I yelled.

  The laughter echoed again. With a swat of his hand, the brother dismissed us as we sped around the pub’s corner and bolted up the street to the school. Kicking up gravel, we overtook more children. At least, due to the witch’s hand, the threat of lateness and its punishment was less. But now, as we raced towards the school gate, I glimpsed the pond.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted, skidding to a halt, flinging my arm out like a bar, which Jonathon crashed into.

  ‘What!? What is it!?’ Jonathon said, panting.

  ‘The pond!’

  I thrust a finger at that dirty disc, already fatter with rain. We wavered, still full of the energy of our charge down the street, but unsure what to do. Three points of fear from three directions held us: the terror of the witch’s hand, the dread of Marcus muddy and malevolent in his pond, and our fear of Weirton enthroned in his school. There we were stuck as the seconds ticked away. Our feet – still moving but carrying us nowhere – scrunched the road’s gravel. We tottered, arms waving as we forced our minds to think.

  ‘What can we do?’ said Jonathon. ‘We’ve got to get past that pond somehow!’

  I imagined Marcus at the bottom, alone in his murky kingdom, the bubbles of his breath surrounding him. Could he know of our presence, despite his liquid gloom? Would he still be angry about Stubbs’s offence? Pinned by indecision, we watched the satchels and kagools drift past, file into the school gate. Jonathon’s brother and his friends sauntered up.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ the brother called out.

  ‘It’s Marcus, in the pond!’ I said, and gabbled out the events of the day before. The brother’s face darkened.

  ‘Actually, it’s true.’ He gave a grave nod. ‘Marcus is in the pond. We’ve seen him.’

  His gang murmured agreement, also moved their heads up and down.

  ‘If Stubbs did that, you boys should be careful,’ the brother said. ‘Marcus won’t let you get away with that!’

  Again the group backed up his words with a mumble.

  ‘What if we say sorry?’ Jonathon said, his voice high and cracking.

  ‘Sorry?’ the brother said. ‘You could try, but it’d have to be a big one!’

  Jonathon and I looked at each other, at the brother and his friends, at Marcus’s pond. Our eyes reached agreement; we crept up to the pool. We stood for a while trembling, gazing at those
rich brown waters. Circles broke on the surface; we couldn’t be sure if they were raindrops or signs of breath from beneath.

  ‘Well, go on then,’ Jonathon’s brother shouted. ‘I wouldn’t hang around if I was you! I don’t blame him for being angry – wouldn’t you be if someone chucked a rock into your house?’

  ‘We’re sorry!’ Jonathon and I blurted. ‘We’re very, very sorry!’

  We turned and sprinted through the school’s heavy wooden gates. Behind us the brother’s group started to chuckle. Were they just mocking our fear? Surely even those lads wouldn’t have dared ridicule Marcus.

  Chapter Three

  My mind flies over the dark miles of country, across the lines of long-expired years, and I picture our school: squat, redbrick, surrounded by swampy fields. The school had a field of its own, in which we’d spend our playtimes, bordered by fences separating it from corn and sheep, and on one side by a hedge, which – to our delight – was alive with caterpillars in the summer. Jonathon and I fled down the school’s drive, past where Weirton’s black and glossy car was parked. Nearing the doors, we slowed our panting steps, and staggered into the cloakroom. It was full of chattering, squealing, squabbling kids: hanging up coats and satchels, marking the floor with a multi-layered tattoo of hundreds of footprints. As the rain hammered harder outside and steamed off our waterproofs within, in strode the teachers: Mrs Leigh of the infants and Mrs Perkins, who taught us lower juniors. In a herding motion, as if driving cattle, they ushered us towards the hall, and – responding to this sign language – we bunched, barged and shuffled through its doors.

  Entering in a chaotic bulge, we soon became orderly under Weirton’s gaze and filed to our pre-ordained places: oldest kids at the front, the middle class (predictably) in the middle and infants (as matched their lowly status) at the back. As my nose recognised the hall’s usual pong – wet clothes mingled with wisps of wood polish and the ghost of yesterday’s lunch, Jonathon and I found a space and joined a cross-legged row on the wooden floor. The hall was used for assemblies in the morning, lunch at midday, gym class some afternoons. The piled metal and burnished red leather of the gym equipment for the bigger boys stood in a corner – all puzzling and cruel-looking prongs, spikes and supports. These lengths of metal formed baffling contraptions of improbable height and usage, whose mystery had already given birth to whispered legends in the pupils’ folklore. For the hall’s function as dining room, the evidence was more straightforward. Bits of food would be missed by the cleaner’s broom and lie in wait for the descent of unwary backsides. These could be peas from the day before – ripe swelling pustules, keen to burst in all their freshness the moment a bum lowered itself. Or there could be fossilized baked beans, wrapped in their shrouds of mouldering sauce. Having dodged weeks of mops and brushes, these beans would avenge their eventual squashing by painting a streak of sulky orange across the seats of skirts or jeans. Indeed, out of the edge of my eye at that moment, I saw Dennis Stubbs – sitting one row behind me and slightly to the right – flick a bit of food – a piece of chicken from the pie of yesterday, still gooey with gravy – under the descending skirt of a refined girl, Helen Jacobs. The chicken was soon beneath the shadow of Helen’s behind, and in a few seconds the space between that rump and the planks of the floor vanished, the soft meat splattering as those objects met.

  The children went on filing in – we saw Jonathon’s brother with his mates, still smirking and joshing each other: something suicidally daring in front of Weirton. I glanced around, stared for some time through the tall windows that made up most of one wall. They gave us a panorama of drab freedom: the deep green of the school field, the final barricade of the twisted hawthorn of its hedge. Crows and blackbirds hopped, beaks driving into the soil for rain-fattened worms. On the front wall were the iron-shuttered windows of the kitchen, behind which we knew laboured huge iron machines – mysterious pipes and flues and furnaces we’d been warned could be deadly. We didn’t understand why – we just knew the kitchen as the room from which our food appeared. But, having read Hansel and Gretel, I couldn’t help remembering the witch’s fondness for boiling children, the screams of the fattened child, the wicked smoke that would rush from her chimney. Maybe that was why we weren’t allowed in the kitchen. Also on that front wall were the doors to a kind of teachers’ foyer – another forbidden area. It was a place into which we were rarely admitted, and if summoned there, it was for some dread reason. A call to that enclosure, to that other world of staffroom, offices, teachers’ toilets, could only mean the harshest punishments would follow. And – as the last few dribbles of children filed in – it was in front of that fearful kitchen and that portal to the ominous staff area that Mr Weirton paced.

  The heels of his black shoes rapped out impacts that echoed above the children’s chatter. How he towered over everyone – the cross-legged pupils on the floor, Leigh and Perkins, who had now slid into seats at the hall’s side. My eyes climbed up the vast black-suited legs then over the huge torso encased in its black jacket. A broad chest stretched this garment; a smaller belly pushed at it below; arms bulged against its sleeves. The teacher’s muscles tensed and jerked as he strode. It was as if they were straining to bust those bonds, burst out of that flimsy material. The teacher continued to pace, his feet performing a sharp swivel as he neared each wall. Sometimes he’d stop; the black shoes – perfect in their shine – would tip forward and rock back as he scanned his gaze over the hall. Weirton would clasp his hands behind him as those eyes searched, as his body twitched and seemed to swell with expectancy. Jonathon leaned towards me, and – though a hum of chatter was permitted – he hissed in a whisper, ‘Good job my brother told us to say sorry to Marcus!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, also forcing my voice low, ‘he might have saved our bacon!’

  I allowed myself another nervous glance at the teacher, who was tilting his body back and forth, leaning out across the children as his eyes panned over us. A smile flickered on the massive face, a smile that also appeared expectant. I thought of how Mr Weirton seemed built of oblongs, squares and sharp angles. The cuboid body was topped by a huge rectangular head. The teacher’s glasses – heavy panes framed in black – reminded me of television screens. Behind the glass, the blue eyes were for the moment calm though their pupils would flick without warning to one side or another. But I knew how suddenly those eyes could harden, sharpen, be unleashed. Jonathon again leant into me.

  ‘Suppose I should be thankful I’ve got a brother like that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘remember when he stopped Darren Hill beating us up that time? But don’t you sometimes hate him?’

  ‘Course,’ Jonathon whispered, ‘that’s normal, especially when he beats me up a bit himself, but …’

  Thought crumpled Jonathon’s forehead; he bunched his mouth up as he pondered.

  ‘I suppose I like him much more than I hate him.’

  I flicked my eyes back to the headmaster. The face was its usual ham-colour – there was no sign of it flushing to a deeper red. But still, reddish it was, as always. I wondered why. Maybe it was the tie Weirton wore, the way its knot looked as if it had been looped so tight, wrenched up so savagely. Perhaps that strangulation explained Weirton’s skin shade. Above the glasses curved two blond eyebrows, and on top of the huge forehead – also meat-coloured, lightly sweat-beaded – was the crown of an iron hairstyle. A plate of hair leapt two inches from the brow; the rest of it was combed back in a blond, metal-hard parting. However Weirton twisted and leapt, however fast his arm swooped, however the rain lashed or wind blew, that hair never moved. It fascinated me; I was tempted to ask Weirton how he managed to sculpt it, but I knew, some instinct deep in my belly knew, that I’d better not. Weirton turned, paced for another moment as the last kids settled themselves. An abrupt halt, he swivelled on those shoes to face the rows of children.

  ‘Silence!’

  Like an axe this word fell, slicing through the children’s natter, killing it. Weir
ton stood for some seconds in the pool of quiet he’d created. He readied his body to deliver his next words.

  ‘Good morning, children!’ his voice rumbled.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Weirton,’ the kids chorused, their intonation rising and dipping through this submissive song.

  ‘Let’s start the day with a hymn!’ Weirton thrust out his finger to launch this command. ‘Page seventy-six!’

  The monitors despatched the hymnbooks along our rows; the hands of the children hurried to pass them down. My book came to me – its cover scuffed and scratched; its smell musty and ancient.

  ‘Stand!’ Weirton shouted, before the last hymnbooks had found their pupils. Panicked whispers squabbled; hands snatched, scrabbled and slapped: sounds which were thankfully masked by the ninety or so children clambering to their feet.

  Mrs Perkins had now moved to the piano. She bashed out the first chords – wrong notes clashed with each other, jarred with the air; the instrument was out of tune. It didn’t matter – after her crashing introduction, our voices united in an off-key roar. The hymn was fascinatingly miserable; its tones seemed to echo from a long-distant age, conjuring pictures of stern black-clad people in old-fashioned clothes.

  ‘Lord we confess our many faults

  How great our guilt has been

  Foolish and vain were all our thoughts

  No good could come from within

  And by the water and the blood

  Our souls are washed from sin’

  The music eddied and swelled: an out-of-tempo death march. I didn’t know what the song was about; it was never explained. I just mused on that mournful line – ‘the water and the blood’. It seemed something to do with dead bodies, their stagnant fluids: a severe summary of the foolishness of finding any joy in this life. Perkins plonked away; I sucked down breath for the surging chorus.

  ‘And by the water and the blood

  Our souls are washed

  Our souls are washed from sin’

  Perkins went on pounding those melancholy notes. A pain jabbed my ribs; I turned, saw Stubbs’s retreating hand; palm and fingers held as a flat blade. He’d hoped to plunge me into trouble by making me cry out. He tried it again – I smacked away his hand.