The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  Chapter Twenty-six

  We got back to school after the trip to Salton. Weirton sent the brother home, a sticking plaster covering the gash on his brow. It was strange – I thought – that innocent Abel should be the one marked, his cut in more-or-less the same place God had inflicted his brand on Cain in the Bible. Yet Jonathon – that Cain who’d tried to bump off his sibling – still had a smooth forehead, free from any sign of God’s displeasure. Of course, it was early days, and the vicar had said that many years of our lives could seem just a few hours to God so I supposed it might take the Lord some time to stir and fire His bolt down to brand my friend. But I shivered with the knowledge it could come at any moment – it could smite Jonathon on the way home or smash through the school roof, maybe scorching a few infants along the way. Weirton kept Jonathon apart from us. He struggled tearfully through his work out in the corridor, munched on a table of his own at lunchtime. I was just glad he seemed reasonably OK. I’d seen how long Weirton had thrashed him for, how white Jonathon had been when the teacher had put him down. I’d worried for a moment we might have another Marcus or Lucy. And I was amazed the brother seemed all right after his tumble from such a high bridge. Maybe Marcus had decided not to gobble him, had saved him with his magic, hadn’t wanted another boy to share his watery doom. Perhaps it was towards Weirton that Marcus’s malevolence was focused – the man that might have caused his death in the first place.

  News of what had happened soon seeped through the town. In his shop, Davis rapped his first finger on a pile of newspapers, shuffled and chuntered about what the world was coming to when brothers could do such things to one another. Well, he’d heard Mr Weirton had given him a damned fine thrashing, and a good thing too.

  ‘Swinging from that bridge out over that stream,’ the ancient voice quivered. ‘Right over the scene of his crime – best thing for him if you ask me, each wallop slamming into him the fact he’s done wrong. Mind you –’ though there was no one else in the shop, Davis spoke more quietly ‘– in a way, it’s difficult to blame him, with a brother like that. If I had one like him, think I’d have been tempted to shove him off a bridge n’all! I’d stay away from that family if I were you, young Mr Watson. Nothing but trouble those boys – both seem as bad as each other!’

  I walked home, past the wet fields and gardens, past dunghills adding their gentle steam to the misty air. I could understand Davis’s advice to avoid Jonathon. That fitted with the Bible story, in which all had ignored Cain. It just confused me that poor Abel should be shunned too. I reached my house, trudged up my garden path, passing our patient gnome who still hadn’t caught any fish despite his persistence. Leaving our cheery garden dwarf, I entered my home, and was soon in the lounge as a cartoon blared from the TV. I thought for a selfish moment how good it was to be free to watch them, without Jonathon eager to pull me away from those crashes and explosions – pull us away to set-outs, away so he could tell me some new theory he’d concocted. Mum came in with her tray of biscuits and milk as my sister raced around her legs, mouth filled with the dummy she still sometimes sucked. She was now four – another blessed number. It recalled the four elements – whose existence I’d managed to work out by my own reasoning; the four directions, or points of the compass; of course, the four disciples of Christ who’d written their four gospels; the four limbs; the four points of Jesus’s cross; and the four dread horsemen whose appearance – Weirton had told us – would herald time’s end. I was getting on for eight – double four, two circles stitched together, two never-ending loops: a racetrack of an age with no visible exit. Mum put her tray down, turned to look at me. I knew from her gaze, the hesitant way she moved that she wanted to talk about something serious.

  ‘Ryan, I heard what happened on the trip to Salton today.’

  I nodded.

  ‘What a terrible thing to do – pushing your own brother off a bridge! The boy could have been seriously injured or even killed! We’ll see what your father has to say when he gets home, but I don’t think you should be friends with Jonathon anymore. And you can give that brother of his a wide berth too – never been anything but trouble that one!’

  ‘Never anything but trouble!’ my sister sang.

  Again, it seemed that unfortunate Abel also bore the scar of shame, that he was being shunned as much as his guilty sibling.

  ‘I’m not surprised Mr Weirton gave Jonathon a good hiding!’ Mum said.

  ‘A good hiding!’ shouted my sister.

  A little later, Dad arrived, a big newspaper draped across his arm. I doubted he’d bought it from Davis as he didn’t appear to know about Jonathon’s outrage. He just sat on the sofa, unfurled his paper and was soon snarling and tutting to himself. I overheard some of his mutters, but wasn’t sure what they all meant – ‘these damned homeless should be locked up, or put in the army’, ‘all these unemployed are unemployable’, ‘damn Irish bastards – hang all terrorists!’ Dad turned the page, flexed the newspaper and I peered at a graph of something called unemployment statistics. It showed a jagged line climbing up – looking a little like the spikes on the back of my toy plastic dinosaur. Mum beckoned Dad from the lounge, with a sigh and tut he flung down the paper and went to her. As we were eating later that evening, my father said, ‘Ryan, your mum told me about what happened on today’s trip. I thought that here in Emberfield we were at least spared most of the rot, the hooliganism, the laxity that’s overtaking the country, but it seems even here we’re beginning to be poisoned by it all –’

  ‘Hopefully the government we’ve got in now will improve things, help turn the clock back,’ Mum said. ‘And at least here we’ve got Mr Weirton at the school to set them straight.’

  ‘Yes, at least there’s that,’ said Dad. ‘And he did set Jonathon straight by the sounds of it. But anyway, Ryan –’ Dad turned back to me ‘– I don’t want you seeing any more of those Browning lads – either of them! Seems they’re both as bad as each other! Your friendship with Jonathon ends right here!’

  ‘But Dad – ’

  ‘Sorry, Ryan, I’ve made my decision. Whatever rot, whatever cancer might be infecting our nation, I’m damned if I’ll see it take over my kids. I’m not surprised Jonathon turned out like that with a brother like Craig! You’ll not hang around with either of them again!’

  ‘Aw Dad –’

  ‘And if you do, I’ll take my belt to your behind!’

  ‘Belt to your behind!’ my sister yelled.

  I tried to pinch her under the table, but she instinctively squirmed away.

  That night I lay in bed in the blackness. As well as the usual terrors of goblins and ghosts, sadness tugged my heart down. Life in Emberfield without my friend stretched ahead of me. It seemed nothing but a dull trudge through a numb lonely world. Who else was there to hang around with but the sneaky Stubbs, the violent Richard Johnson, the gormless Darren Hill? I gulped, sniffed; a couple of tears trickled. I tried to distract myself by thinking of the flat dark landscape spreading outside the house – the silent bogs and ditches, Marcus snoozing in his pond. I wondered if a flash would light up that world beyond my curtains as God streaked lightning down to smite Jonathon as he slept just a few streets away, but no such bolt hurtled. I shuddered as my mind floated off to Salton, as I remembered all the stories Weirton had told that day. I thought of Henry VIII drifting, axe in hand, through that quiet farmhouse, the sleeping Scots, the church at Salton ringed by graves, that gauntlet suspended inside. A shiver jerked through me as I recalled the legend of it bringing death to anyone foolish enough to slip it on. I pictured it hanging, just hanging there, full of its dread power. Then I walked my mind back outside, thought of the poor Drummer Boy trapped in his tunnel, another child victim of adult ideas. I shivered again as I imagined how damp and dark, cold and lonely it must be down there. I jumped and twisted in my bed as his beats started up. Unmistakably they came rattling across the flatlands. There were bangs and patters, thuds and clunks, swelling from a quiet sound to a
loud echo as I grasped my cover, shook beneath it. In faster and faster waves those beats clattered as my heart punched my ribs. But then I noticed something in the Drummer’s rhythm urging me not to be afraid – as if those bashes and rolls were trying to speak to me across the ages. There was sympathy there, friendliness, understanding. I relaxed my fear-gripped body, my booming heart slowed, and I just lay on my back and listened as the beats reverberated across the countryside before those patters faded.

  The following day, Weirton gave Jonathon a hammering in front of us all in assembly. My hatred for the headmaster surged as his hand thrashed my friend, as his tears were pitched, as Jonathon was lowered – his face ghost-white – to bounce on swaying legs and grasp for breath as Weirton – scarlet-cheeked, sweat-drenched – also struggled for air. Jonathon then had to work on a table of his own, was kept in at lunchtime and break. Over the next days, I drifted to and from school by myself, watching the bright kagools bobbing through the mist ahead. After maybe a week, the brother’s plaster came off. I gasped when I saw him without it. A thick inch-long scar ran down one side of his forehead. A film of skin, like the thinnest tracing paper, held back a gooey, wormlike substance. Surely this was a mark people would know him by! And it was a mark people responded to. Craig was shunned by all, even Dennis Stubbs and Darren Hill. It was like some force emanated from that wound, shoving people away. Jonathon and I, the brother, would each plod to school by ourselves, trudge through the dull days alone. But in the long silent night, when I lay in the terrifying blackness, unable to stop myself imagining the vast plains outside, imagining what lay beneath or roved over them, I’d sometimes hear the beats of the Drummer Boy rattling across the land and feel comforted, his patters giving gentle companionship, his patters driving the threats from all those other spooks away.

  In the lonely drabness of the daylight hours, the odd interesting thing did happen. Once, I was in Davis’s shop, waiting behind an old housewife as she waffled to that store’s owner. The talk at first was pretty predictable.

  ‘Eeh look at that one there.’ The housewife jabbed her finger at me. ‘Look how eager he is to get his sweets. No patience, no manners these days.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Davis, ‘but don’t you worry – Mr Weirton will set them right. May take a good few years of batterings with that hand, but he’ll put ’em right before they leave, you mark my words! And that one –’ Davis thrust his trembling finger at me ‘– he’s been a lot better since they stopped him seeing those Browning boys. Nothing but trouble, the pair of them! If I ever see you with either of those lads, young man, I’ll tell your father and he’ll take his belt to your behind quick smart!’

  I let Davis and the woman waffle, and gazed down at the papers. I could read more and more each time I looked at them, but they were just full of the usual stuff – unemployment, inflation, strikes, riots, bombs. I looked up from my studies and found the talk had got onto something much more intriguing.

  ‘Now, they say that gauntlet,’ Davis was saying, ‘belonged to some knight long ago who died in a horrible way. You must have heard the legend – anyone who slips it on is dead in a matter of weeks.’

  ‘It is just a legend, surely?’ the woman said.

  I couldn’t see why something should be valued less because it was a legend, but Davis went on.

  ‘Well, that’s what you say. But I know for a fact that over the years several jokers have tried it on and all of them died just a month or so later – car crashes, heart attacks, riding accidents, you name it. Even knew a few of them myself. Remember them boasting of how they’d dared put the thing on and I also remember going to their funerals not long afterwards!’

  Of course, Davis would remember – he’d probably arrived in Emberfield shortly after the mighty waters of God’s Great Flood had retreated. I imagined a younger version of him, striding across the marshy land – even marshier in those days – to start up his shop. But what he was saying about the gauntlet pricked my interest.

  ‘That’s why they hang it so high on that chain – to stop reckless idiots trying it on.’

  ‘You wonder why anyone would want to go anywhere near it!’ the woman said.

  ‘Well,’ said Davis, ‘the legend says the thing does have some useful properties. Apparently, those who possess it, but don’t put it on are kept safe from all violence, robberies and murderers. Something pretty useful in the old days, I’d bet.’

  ‘Useful now, the way things have been going!’ The woman’s finger rapped the newspapers stacked on the counter. ‘Country’s been going to the dogs!’

  ‘The thing is though –’ Davis lowered his voice although I could still hear him ‘– if you possess it, it gives you this protection, but I’ve heard the thing tries to slip itself on your hand. It ends up falling onto it or getting itself in a place you thrust your hand into. And, well, we know what’ll happen after that!’

  The woman shuddered.

  ‘Yes, well, this is all very interesting,’ she said, ‘but I’d better be getting on. I’ll have half a pound of bacon please, Mr Davis.’

  Davis took a hunk of meat, sliced the dead flesh as we stood – quietly now – in his funereal store. I finally got served and wandered off with my sweets. I pitched a few into the Old School playground for the ghostly kids then tramped up to the pond to chuck some to Marcus. But it didn’t seem the same without my friend beside me. I’d thought about sneakily trying to talk to Jonathon, but the image of my dad’s swooping belt kept us separated. As I hurled candies into Marcus’s waters, I looked up at the thick sky. I wondered why lightning hadn’t streaked from it, why there was still no brand on Jonathon’s forehead. By contrast, the brother’s scar showed no sign of fading. It had now scabbed over, but was no less visible – a mark for all to know him by, avoid him because of.

  More lonely days followed, more long quiet nights. I couldn’t get what I’d heard in the shop out of my head. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, however much I ordered my mind not to, however hard I tried to think of other things, I couldn’t help imagining that gauntlet just hanging in that silent church, couldn’t help thinking of the awful fate of the knight who’d worn it, all the deaths it had caused since. My fear of it grew to be even greater than my terrors of Emberfield’s spooks: the sleeping Scots, Henry VIII, the witch’s hand, Lucy in her cupboard, maybe even Marcus in his pond. But sometimes the Drummer Boy would comfort me – his reassuring thuds and rattles calming my mind with their predictable rhythm.

  A little more time went by, during which I copped a couple of sound hidings from Weirton, but at least I was cheered by the approach of my eighth birthday. My party, though, at first seemed lacklustre – it wasn’t much fun without my best friend. Stubbs, Richard Johnson, Darren Hill, a few others sat in our dining room, filling festive paper plates and cramming their greedy gobs with my mum’s sandwiches. Some kicking, pinching, prodding went on under the table. I got Dennis with a good one. He’d been annoying me – and my mum I think too – by banging on about their garden gnome: theirs was much better painted than ours, a far superior make. So I clumsily knocked my paper hat – its absurd spikes crowning me joke king for a joke day – onto the floor and dropped down on my knees to get it back. Under the table – the cellar, as I imagined it, of my comical palace, that strange cavern of dust, legs, shoes and crumbs – I fixed my eyes on Dennis’s stomach: bloated with stick-skewered squares of cheese and pineapple, blown up with bubbles of fizzy drink, stuffed with sweetly mortared slabs of birthday cake. I knelt by his lordly belly, pulled my arm and shoulder back, drove my fist with all my force at the target of his navel. His torso shot forward. Apparently, above the table Stubbs jack-knifed; his hand flew to cap his mouth; he lurched up; sprinted to the bathroom, from where we heard his loud disgorging of his banquet. All the mums present joined in a song of disapproval about modern youth’s lack of restraint. I clambered up from my cellar, crowned myself again with my hat, feeling more truly kinglike.

  More days passed. N
ot only Jonathon’s but also the brother’s ostracism was undeniable. Maybe we were making a mistake by repulsing him – confusing his scar with the sign God should have branded on Jonathon. Unless the unthinkable had happened and the Lord Himself had made a boob. Even when the three weeks were up and Jonathon was released from his dreary detentions, his shunning went on. He’d drift through break and lunchtime alone in the wet playground. But the curse of Cain seemed easily spread. It had branded the brother and I couldn’t help feeling its fingers had drawn a mark on me. I’d never been the most popular lad, but now everything I did or said was rebuffed with some insult, punch or put-down. I couldn’t get back in touch with Jonathon – the threat of my dad’s belt still swung between us, and there was the sheer force of Jonathon’s isolation, which shoved me away. I hoped he didn’t think I’d turned my back on him. As he wandered through those bleak break-times, his blank face made it impossible to tell.