The Standing Water (55 page)

‘What!?’ said the
brother. ‘You don’t still believe in all
that
stuff, do you? I could
maybe understand believing in Marcus and the spooks in the Old School, but not
in all
that
!’

He lurched up from
the – still forbidden – sofa. Face crinkled in a sneer, he strode out of the
room.

Many other things
changed as that term went on. It sometimes seemed every week brought new
revelations that – like swinging hammers – cracked, hacked holes in our old
world. This even happened with the most sacred of all possible things, our
religion. With Stone in charge, the songs we sang in assembly altered. We
roared out less hymns, Stone preferring folk and country tunes, and those hymns
we did sing were more upbeat than the dirges we’d rumbled through under
Weirton. Perkins struggled at the piano, plinking those fast merry notes,
trying to keep up with the cheery swell of our words. As for me, I have to say
I missed the gloomy old hymns: the melancholy soaring of the kids’ voices,
Weirton’s baritone shuddering beneath, Perkins bashing out her heavy chords.
The new songs, though fun, seemed to have something missing: they lacked a
vague yet deep connection the others had had – a connection that echoed from
the dark heart of all things, that summed up all the suffering in our world.

Despite our musical
disagreements, I’d never – of course – have swapped Stone for Weirton. Even the
vicar’s lessons changed under him – something that, at first, puzzled many of
us greatly.

‘Now you’re a
little older,’ the vicar said, standing at the front of our class as Stone sat
at the side, ‘there’s something I need to tell you about those wonderful old
stories we were looking at last year from Genesis.’

The vicar paused;
he glanced about; his grey curls wobbled around his bald head. Stone smiled,
nodded kindly at him to go on.

‘You see … they’re
not
exactly
true. Of course, I mean, they
are
true in … er, the
highest sense of the word, but … er …’

The vicar’s face
screwed itself up; the eyes darted. Stone nodded to encourage him.

‘Stories like the
Garden of Eden, the Flood, Cain and Abel, Jacob seeing the ladder leading to
Heaven with the angels coming up and down. Er … now these stories tell us great
deal about ourselves, about the world, about God, but … they probably didn’t
happen, at least not quite like the Bible says. It’s like if you read a great
story and it tells you a lot about life and you learn a lot from it. It doesn’t
really matter if that story happened or not. What’s important is what it
teaches you. So …’

The vicar nervously
scanned the class; I too glanced around. Richard Johnson’s face was crinkled in
utter confusion; Stubbs sported a sneer; Helen Jacobs nodded serenely as if
what she heard was the most normal reasonable thing. Suzie Green’s mouth hung –
I swear she was trying to blink back tears.

‘So, even if the
whole world wasn’t covered by a flood, we still know we shouldn’t make God
angry, and we know that – like in the story of the dove and the rainbow – God
will forgive our sins if we’re truly sorry and will show us His signs of peace.
There wasn’t really a snake in the Garden that could talk and move about on
legs, but we know we shouldn’t listen to people who tempt us to do things God
doesn’t like. There wasn’t really a ladder leading down from Heaven that Jacob
saw, but we still know God loves us enough to send his angels among us.’

I was glad to know
there were still angels – otherwise I’d have really wondered what I’d seen in
the sky that Christmas Eve. Still, it made sense they didn’t need a ladder – if
angels could fly, glide, hover with their wings, why would they use something
like that?

‘Yes,’ the vicar
was saying, ‘and Cain didn’t really murder his brother Abel. They probably
never even existed. That story’s just telling us to love our brothers, not kill
them, to never commit the dreadful sin of murder.’

I flicked my eyes over
to Jonathon. I wondered if his Cain’s mark would fade now the vicar had made it
clear there’d never been a first Cain who’d been branded. But Jonathon’s mark
stubbornly stayed. His fingers even edged up to touch it, as if making sure it
was still there.

‘God,’ the vicar
went on, ‘would be, understandably, very angry if we tried to kill another
person.’

I nodded. So God
still had His reasons for having branded Jonathon, for making him bear his
shameful scar. I hadn’t been wrong to expect Him to hurl down such a punishment
on my friend.

‘Yes.’ The vicar seemed
calmer now. ‘Perhaps we should take the Cain and Abel story as a message that
God hates the violence we humans, so regrettably, often do to one another.’

At this remark
Stone, who’d been smiling, gave a scowl. I thought I knew why. Though there was
much less scrapping among the kids than under Weirton, there’d recently been
quite an upsurge: Johnson and Stubbs battering each other in the playground,
lads ambushed on their way home. It was like the fires of conflict that had
blazed under Weirton had been massively damped down by our new headmaster, but
evil embers of hatred and violence still glowed, embers that would occasionally
flame up. I could tell this worried Stone; he spent a lot of time talking about
it in assembly: ‘the bigger man can walk away’, ‘if you feel angry, count to ten
before you do or say anything’.

‘And think,’ the
vicar continued, ‘about Cain’s fate – how he had to become a wanderer on the
earth, how he was shunned by all. Nobody wants to be friends with a violent
man, and nobody – certainly – wants anything to do with someone who’s tried to
kill
!’

Hearing this, Stone
nodded. His scowl vanished, and he was soon smiling again.

And so the year
slipped by. We had – compared to the previous one – a calm and enjoyable
Bonfire Night. Wrapped in coat and scarf, Mr Stone laughed, pointed at the
flashes and bangs, cheerful in spite of the disapproving looks of the parents,
their curt answers to his attempts at conversation, their attitudes as frosty
as the frozen ground. Christmas came, though this year I knew that our lights
and baubles shimmered solely in honour of Christ and the great light He’d
brought into our dark world, and that they had nothing to do with spurring on
our sun, who shone down from heaven regardless of our meagre human activities.

Stone talked a lot
about science and told us that when we thought we had to try to use something
called ‘reason’. That all seemed fair enough, but I’d sometimes have the strangest
sensations and ideas. I’d be walking to or from school or standing in the
playground or sitting on the field when the thought would strike me: ‘What’s it
all about?’ It was a thought that flew straight to the nub of my being, like an
arrow winging towards its target. My heart would pound; a weird numbness would
flicker over my skin. ‘What’s it all about?’ That question would echo inside me.
Neither Stone’s science and logic nor the vicar’s Bible stories could supply
any answers. It didn’t help that I now knew many of the vicar’s ancient tales
had never happened. It also didn’t help that my notions about the enclosed
sphere I’d thought we’d lived on – that sphere God could summon into being in
six days, that was just six-thousand years old, that God could drown with one
flood, that sphere around which the sun, through obedience and encouragement,
kept his course – that cosy yet violent sphere, had been blasted to pieces by
Stone’s teachings about the vastness of the cosmos, about its trillions of
miles and billions of years. None of what those two men had said helped me as
my heart bashed, as my skin shivered. I couldn’t even call on the spooks I’d
thought peopled Emberfield and Salton. Poor Marcus was entombed under gravel
and tarmac; the Drummer Boy’s beats had only been the noise of a train; the
witch’s hand had been swept away by a couple of thrusts of a workman’s rake. I
felt alone; my question sounded in a mocking void, ‘What’s it all about?’ I’d
look around me. The running chattering children, the sky, the swooping birds –
the whole scene would seem somehow thin, unreal, almost transparent: just a
film covering the mouth of a great nothingness. The other weird sensation I’d
get would be when I’d wonder – just as, years later, I found out Descartes had –
whether I was the only truly living being and the rest of the world no more
than a powerful illusion, established and functioning, for some unknown reason,
entirely for me. After a time I’d shake my head, get rid of those disturbing
ideas, return to my walking, running, drawing, but those thoughts would always
come back to ambush me, to catch me at the oddest moments, to start my heart
booming, to send those eerie shivers scuttling over my skin.

More time passed;
neat redbrick houses stood on the field next to where Marcus’s pool had been.
Those houses soon had squares of garden, boxlike garages, drives leading to the
road that lay over the site of the pond. Soon those houses had families, kids –
kids who went to our school, who tramped every day over where that pond had skulked,
that pond we’d felt such a shivering dread of. On our way to school and back,
Jonathon and I would still sometimes pause there, remember Marcus. A few times
we even – when sure no one was looking – dropped sweets down the drains in the
new road, watching those candies fall through the shiny metal grates, watching
them drop into deep darkness. We’d wonder how far those holes went down –
miles, I thought, maybe right to the centre of the earth; probably just a few
metres, Jonathon reckoned. What we never talked about was why we were dropping
sweets down there in the first place. Hanging around there reminded us of Weirton.
We’d heard little about our old headmaster. People occasionally bumped into his
ex-wife in Goldhill, but she’d look nervous, get fidgety, switch the topic
whenever her former husband was brought up. Of course, the rumours started
flying about what might have happened to him – or what he might have got up to
– in Scotland, but rumours were all they were: nobody had any evidence.

I’d often linger
near the place Marcus’s pool had been, sometimes with Jonathon, sometimes
alone, linger as long as I could until someone spotted me and I’d have to move
off before they found me strange. But, when I was sure no one was around, I’d
stare at that tarmac, stare at its still-pristine blackness, gaze until
blackness was all my eyes could see, all that filled my brain. I’d then picture
those dark, dark standing waters. I’d remember how deep, how dark, how
dangerous I’d thought they’d been. In a strange sense, I knew they were still there,
still living, still lurking under that sealed road. And, at that moment, I’d
long for clouds to mass above – the blackest, biggest, wickedest clouds ever.
I’d long for them to send their waters down in such a deluge that the neat road
would be pounded, that bits of it would be gouged out, washed away in torrents.
I’d want the rain to hammer for so long that the whole road would be carried
off, along with the gravel beneath, till that downpour had scooped out the old
shape of Marcus’s pond. Down the rains would bash, day after day, until that
pond inched beyond its boundaries, started flooding the town. The hated school
would disappear beneath the waters as would the stinking pub, Davis’s shop with
its peevish old owner trapped within, all the houses, with all the savage
gossips of Emberfield stuck inside. The flood would go on rising till the entire
town was swamped, till the waters lay over the realm of Salton, far above the
church, the castle, the Drummer’s tunnel, above the sleeping Scots, above any
ancient curses that drifted there. The rain wouldn’t stop; the waters would get
higher until the whole country was covered. I’d imagine Weirton clinging to a Scottish
mountain top – his face red and sweating, his eyes blinking behind his glasses,
as the waters lapped at his shoes then his legs, his neck. On and on the rains
would fall, the water would rise until everything and everybody lay miles below.
And then – finally – there’d be peace: no yelling voices, swooping hands,
bawling kids, squabbling children, swinging belts, blabbering mouths, beating
fists. Just endless calm waters – like in the beginning of the world, as the
vicar had told us, before God had conjured the Creation and all our problems
had started. Nothing but featureless, perfectly serene standing water.

I pace around my
little room. Been painting. Room stinks of paints, white spirit. Half-finished
work propped on the easel. Pictures stacked in the corner I’d love to be able
to sell. Manage it sometimes, but the sort of art I do isn’t fashionable. If I
could just sell one – enable me not to worry about money for a week or so.

As for the book.
Well, really need to get away, but it’s more than that. Got this wonderfully
nutty idea. Cottage in Scotland, yes, looked into it, quite cheap at the
moment, out of season. Strain the overdraft, but it needs to be done. If I
don’t find what – or should I say who? – I’m looking for, I suppose it’d still
be worth it, clear the brain at least. Spoke with Mum on the phone recently and
– after a long rant about how a lot of my classmates have turned out – guess
what she mentioned. She’d bumped into Weirton’s wife in Goldhill and the ex-Mrs
Weirton had let slip the area her husband had moved to. But she’d looked really
nervous when Mum asked how Weirton was, said she hadn’t had any contact for
years with him. It’s between Fort William and Oban near a landmark called
Castle Stalker. OK, crazy idea, trying to find him. He might have died, moved
away; even if he hasn’t I might not be able to locate his whereabouts. And what
would I do if I
did
meet him? Ask him to sit down and write the bits of
the book I’m struggling over? Ask him to apologise for the damage that rolling
voice and right hand have caused? Or would that thing happen to my brain and my
kicks start lashing, my punches hurtle? Could do what I intended to so many
years ago. Often wonder what’s been happening to him. Like to invent scenarios
– terrible illnesses, car crashes, slow and agonising forms of death, life
sentences in third-world prisons. Try not to think such thoughts, but I can’t
stop. Stride over to the bookshelves, my fingers linger over the
Works of
William Blake
. Not even old Blake’s wisdom can help:

‘Mutual forgiveness
of each vice,

Such are the gates
of Paradise.’

Sorry, William,
it’s not that simple. Cycles of revenge and hatred are like whirlpools, nearly
impossible to climb out of. Also nearly impossible to avoid drowning in.
Whirlpools within whirlpools within even bigger whirlpools – individuals,
families, communities, nations – cycles turning each other,
feeding
off
each other. Is this what our world has to be like?

Anyway, something
nags at me – I’ve got to book that cottage. When Mum and Dad hear I’m heading
north, they’ll insist I stay for a night with them in Emberfield. A lot of fun
that
will be! Means I might as well hire the car in York instead of Scotland – more
and more expense!

Always seem dragged
back – whether in body or mind – to that fucking awful place. I can never
really flee it.