The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘Pleeaase!’ we both chorused.

  Slowly the shopkeeper began to move, manipulating his old limbs. With no great urgency, he picked up a pair of tongs, and creaked and shuffled over – to our leaping delight – to the shelves that lined the wall behind the counter. Those shelves supported large plastic jars of sweets.

  ‘No shrimps for me, please,’ Jonathon called out, ‘but I’d like lots of cola bottles please, especially the fizzy ones!’

  ‘No shrimps for me either, please,’ I said, ‘but can I have some chocolate footballs?’

  ‘You should know by now boys that, with ten-penny mixtures, you have to take what you’re given.’ The shopkeeper’s ancient hand wagged the tongs at us. ‘And you should be grateful for it. I hope Mr Weirton eventually succeeds in knocking some manners into you lot …’

  The shop owner shuffled and mumbled for a while. Realising Jonathon and I were gawping too obviously at the jars, I tried to play it cool. One hand hanging half from my pocket, the other on my hip, I glanced around that little store – taking in the few drab postcards of Emberfield that hung near the entrance, the meat counter behind us, the mysterious white sarcophagi of the oblong freezers, the post office counter at the shop’s other end with its judicious scales and what I’d been told was the Queen’s crown above it, who I guessed was like our pharaoh – presiding over everything. I returned my eager eyes to the sweet jars. My display of indifference hadn’t endeared me to the shopkeeper. Now with a small white paper bag in his veined hand, he was chuntering, as if repeating some old charm, ‘I hope Mr Weirton knocks some bloody sense and decency into them, I hope …’

  ‘He said “bloody”!’ Jonathon whispered gleefully.

  The old blue eyes swivelled slowly to face us. They clasped Jonathon in their watery stare.

  ‘What’s that young Mr Browning?’ Davis’s voice trembled out. ‘Questioning your elders? I’d have thought the little lesson you had today would’ve taught you not to do such things.’

  Still chuntering, Davis began to turn and – after what seemed an age – he again faced the shelves and the lid of the first jar was twisted off. To my joy, it was the chocolate footballs.

  ‘Five of those would be good, please,’ I said.

  The shopkeeper laboriously manoeuvred his head round. He wagged his finger once; scrunched his face into an expression that insisted on quiet. With leisurely aged creaks, the neck turned his face back to the jars. The tongs went in, captured one chocolate football, lifted it out, dropped it in the bag. The tongs went back and hovered for a moment over the jar’s open neck. For an epoch of indecision, the old face looked at me. Giddy hope rose from my stomach, through my chest, as those uncertain tongs were suspended. Then, with unquestionable finality, the tongs jerked away, and – with sudden and surprising power – Davis smacked the lid down on the jar and screwed it shut. My joy plummeted from throat to belly. The old dodderer shifted to the pink candy shrimps, the dullest of sweets. They were lacklustre, squidgy; they gave no explosions of sugary pleasure. The gnarled hands screwed the top off the jar; again the tongs hovered. The tongs swooped, seized a shrimp, plopped it in the bag. The tongs dived again; another shrimp was snatched, dropped to join its companion in the sachet.

  ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘just two – suppose I can live with that.’

  Back the tongs went; they hung over those sea creatures. In again they dived, my heart plummeted: one, two, three, four – four! – more shrimps fell into the bag. I had six shrimps and just one football! Now the tongs dangled above the cola bottles – cola bottles were good; my mouth filled with sweet spit, spit almost imitating their glorious taste.

  ‘Yes, I like cola bottles!’ I said.

  Davis hobbled and shuffled his body around, again clasped us with his weak stare.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘Mr Weirton gave you a good lesson today, but it seems you haven’t taken any notice of it. Well, don’t say he didn’t warn you! How will you feel when next year it’s your bones he wheels out in assembly?’

  ‘How do you know we saw Lucy!?’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh, I find out everything round here, believe you me. I’d advise you to remember Lucy and remember her well! And to thank God you’ve got a kind teacher who’ll warn you about such things …’

  Davis turned in his slow circle back to the jars. One – one! – measly cola bottle was fished out, before the jar’s top was slammed down. Fizzy cola bottles next, even more delicious – also only one. Then came fizzy bears – oh raptures, how I loved fizzy bears: the joy of each granule as it erupted on the tongue! My teeth nipped my lips to keep my smile from the shopkeeper. But he turned, saw the longing in my face, so it was just one of those. As he shuffled to the next jar, he again took up his chunter.

  ‘That’s how they’ll turn out if they don’t watch themselves. Their bones will be hanging there if they don’t mend their ways –’

  ‘Please, Mr Davis,’ Jonathon piped up. ‘Is Lucy a real skeleton? I was wondering if she was just a model.’

  Davis turned in his hobbling circle. The watery eyes gripped Jonathon; the shaking hand wagged the tongs at him.

  ‘I can assure you it’s no model, young fellah-me-lad! Oh no! Lucy was real – I remember her! All Mr Weirton told you was true. A young tearaway she was. Mr Weirton did his best with her, but she wouldn’t listen. And – well – you saw how she ended up!’

  Jonathon looked down, bit his trembling lip. There could be no doubt now about Lucy’s sad death. But how had she got like … like that?

  ‘Please Mr Davis,’ I said. ‘How did Lucy die?’

  ‘Got cloth ears, have you? Mr Weirton explained it all this morning. It was through being a bad girl. And one or two others had better watch their step! There’s that brother of young Mr Browning’s for a start! Mr Weirton must have worn his hand out on that one over the years! They say that sort of bad behaviour runs in families, you know!’

  ‘But, please Sir, I’m not like him!’ Jonathon’s voice shot high with protest.

  ‘Oh, that’s what you say.’ Davis shuffled over to the next jar – candied fried eggs, pretty boring, one of which his tongs grasped to complete my first ten-penny mixture. ‘That’s what you say, but these things do run in families. Bad genes or whatever …’

  I wasn’t sure what Jonathon’s trousers had to do with it, but Davis went on.

  ‘When I was at school, if a lad got walloped, they’d often give his brother some too – stop him getting any bright ideas …’

  Jonathon and I swapped a wide-eyed look. Davis must have been at school so long ago – had they actually had schools in the Olden Days?

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt young Mr Browning,’ the old voice trembled on, ‘if Mr Weirton got into the habit of saving one or two strikes for him …’

  But I wanted to get the talk back onto what had happened to our dead classmates. I ventured a question.

  ‘Please, Mr Davis, do you know what happened to Marcus?’

  ‘Marcus, Marcus Jones? Disappeared suddenly that lad, didn’t he? No, can’t say I know where he went. Now he was a bad ’un, always in bother with Mr Weirton – wouldn’t surprise me if that boy ended up sharing Lucy’s fate!’

  Jonathon and I gawped at each other, but Mr Davis – putting my full bag to one side – took up an empty one. My joy soared with the delicious rustle he made by separating its two paper sheathes. I wrestled to hide my eagerness, but Davis looked down at me and his blue eyes drank it in. He turned back to the still open egg jar – plop, plop, plop, plop: four – four! – eggs went into my bag. Next came a gobstopper – OK, I suppose, and – more excitingly – a couple of liquorice shoelaces. I could enjoy their earthily pungent charms. I exulted in one – just one – cherry-red string, again encrusted with sugary explosions, before one dull mint was added, a drab pebble I’d probably donate to my dad. I hurriedly counted up on my fingers – reckoned I had only one sweet to go. The shopkeeper turned, looked long at me then spent some time surveying his collect
ion of jars. There were a few sweets I’d have settled for – those chewy yellow squares that always had the danger of tugging out your fillings, the satisfying soil-like tang of the blackjacks – each suggestively shielded in its own wrapper, even the pasty cloying taste of those larger jelly babies. Tongs poised, the shopkeeper’s drooping face pondered. The jar of shrimps was unscrewed and one final unwanted shellfish dropped into my bag.

  ‘That’s twenty pence, please,’ the old man said.

  Disappointment weighting my chest, I handed over the two coins my palm had been gripping. That was my treasury bankrupt for another week.

  It was Jonathon’s turn. As with me, Davis dithered around the jars, hanging his tongs above the tasty sweets as he watched Jonathon’s mouth curve, his face beam in the dusky shop. Davis did the same with the dull candies, his watery gaze watching as Jonathon’s lips drooped, as disappointment dimmed his eyes. But at first, Jonathon didn’t do too badly – four normal cola bottles, one fizzy one, a chocolate football, two fizzy bears, even a flying saucer! A flying saucer – two domes of rice paper formed that star-ship, a ship that carried the most incredible cargo: sherbet that would fizz and bang with unearthly power on the tongue for ages. I gawped with envy as it fluttered into Jonathon’s bag. But as Davis shuffled to the next jar – of gobstoppers, I think – my attention was drawn back to the newspapers. I struggled with their stern print, the tiny letters almost as difficult as the Egyptians’ picture writing. But concentration screwed my brow; I summoned up more effort and was soon silently spelling stuff out: ri-ots, st-ri-kes, in-fl-at-ion, out-rag-eous de-mands. I smiled at my success, but just wondered what was meant by the mysterious words those signs formed.

  I looked up from my studies. Davis had been so slow that only now was that gobstopper falling into the bag. But something had changed in the shopkeeper’s expression. His eyes had hardened; muscles twitched as they tried to winch his drooping face into a scowl. Jonathon had dared to make another request.

  ‘Another chocolate football he wants, a football if you please!’ The old lips trembled and spat. ‘Youngsters nowadays, in this blasted modern world, think they can come in here and order me around – we don’t want this, can we have that? Well, thank God we’ve at least got Mr Weirton! You should have listened carefully today, Mr Browning! Go on like this and you’ll be getting the same as Lucy did!’

  ‘A chocolate football if you please, a chocolate football!’ Davis turned back to his jars. ‘Cheek must run in the family – the brother’s the same! Well, they’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces when they’re like Lucy!’

  Davis dumped Jonathon’s full bag on the counter then unscrewed the shrimp jar. Jonathon gulped; his face shivered.

  ‘Would have done him good if Mr Weirton had given him a few licks last time he spanked that brother, but let’s just see, let’s see what we can do here …’

  Davis took up Jonathon’s second sachet and soon the tongs were flying in and out of the jar, filling that sachet up with shrimps.

  ‘Let’s see what we can do here … let’s just see …’

  In a quick yet shaking rhythm those shellfish were plucked out, dropped into the bag. I counted five, six, seven. Jonathon’s eyes were fixed on the moving metal; his mouth was dropping, slack with despondency.

  ‘Teach him a good lesson, teach him not to be like that brother. Nothing but trouble that one …’

  The tongs went on seizing shrimps. Jonathon’s mouth fell wider as eight, nine, ten went into his sachet. In a surprisingly deft movement for his timeworn hands, Davis twisted up the corners. With similar twists and curls our three other bags were sealed. Jonathon slowly handed over his two silver pieces. As the ancient hand closed around them, we reached up to the counter, clasped our bulging bags.

  ‘Thank you!’ we cried, as we turned to leave the store, though my cry was livelier than my friend’s.

  We stretched and groped for the door catch, but Davis couldn’t let us go without one last speech. He seemed cheered by the trick he’d pulled on Jonathon; his folds of flesh almost managed a smile.

  ‘Thank you they say, and I should bloody think so too! Quibbling and complaining about what sweets they get.’ His wrinkled finger wagged from the counter. ‘Think on now, you should feel lucky you get owt. There are plenty of kids in poor parts of the world, poor little black and brown blighters, who are grateful if they get one decent meal a week, never mind lots of sweets! So next time you’re chewing on your candies, just think of them. Don’t eat those sweets all at once now – don’t want your mums in here complaining you’ve got sick!’

  ‘We won’t Mr Davies, thank you!’ we shouted, as we bolted from the door, the bell clanging our exit.

  Chapter Five

  We walked a little way along the street and came to the ‘Old School’ – a low, half-ruined building not far from the pub that seemed to emanate evil.

  ‘They say it’s haunted,’ I said, nodding as we went by.

  ‘Yeah, I heard that. Who’s supposed to haunt it then?’ Jonathon’s voice was casual, but he couldn’t keep a quiver from it.

  ‘Dunno, but should we have a look?’

  ‘Sure we’ve got time?’ Jonathon asked, as my heart started to pump.

  ‘Course,’ I said.

  ‘Probably a lot of fuss over nothing,’ he said, and he was already walking up to that building, though I noticed his walk was more of a creep.

  We edged up to that ramshackle structure. Wounds in the flaking plaster revealed ancient brickwork; lichen-spotted slabs crowned the wall of the playground. Several of those slabs – disturbingly like gravestones – had slipped from that wall to lean at cockeyed angles. There was the large schoolroom window at the building’s end – an oblong topped with a triangle, a more sharp-edged version of the windows I’d seen on spooky old churches, but with broken panes, cobwebs, dirt-blackened glass. Weeds overran the cracked flagstones in the yard. How could such a building not be haunted? Still I tried to shove bravery into my voice.

  ‘Let’s give it a minute. If we don’t see any ghosts, we’ll be off.’

  I stared at those jagged windows, looking for wisps of white sheets, phantom hands. I tensed my eyes up to blur them, hoping this could help me catch glimpses of the otherworld, but still nothing came. But I was convinced such a scary building had to be peopled by spooks. I both wished to see them and dreaded their appearance.

  ‘There’s nowt here, should we go?’ Jonathon said.

  ‘Just a minute longer – we had to wait some time before we saw the witch’s hand, remember?’

  Another minute passed, but still I saw nothing. We were about to trudge away when we spotted Stubbs striding down the street towards us. He quickened his steps, gave us a wave.

  ‘What does he want?’ Jonathon said.

  We stood and waited till Stubbs had marched up. His breath was fast; his face glowed in the dull day after his rushed walk.

  ‘All right, Stubbsy,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ said Stubbs. ‘I was coming to warn you lads – I wouldn’t hang about here too long if I was you.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jonathon shoved out his chest to show his scepticism.

  ‘That Old School –’ Stubbs nodded at the building ‘– it’s meant to be haunted.’

  ‘We know,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but do you know the whole legend?’ said Stubbs.

  We wagged our heads.

  ‘A ghostly teacher haunts that place. She drifts around holding a see-through cane. If she catches you, she gives you a good whacking – and within a year you die!’

  ‘It’s probably haunted by a few kids too,’ I added, my eyes flicking back to the building, both trying to glimpse and not to glimpse that stick-wielding spectre.

  ‘That’s right,’ Stubbs went on, ‘there’s a whole ghostly class in there, who died from her whackings. Do you know what my dad told me? He said we’re lucky Weirton only uses his hand – in the past they used to whip the children! Th
ey used a big whip called the cat of nine tails – nine whips together in one!’

  ‘Yeah!’ My heart now boomed. ‘Maybe they buried those kids in the playground!’

  ‘Their ghosts are trapped in there with the teacher!’ said Jonathon.

  ‘Imagine being trapped with Weirton!’ I said. ‘Forever!’

  Stubbs nodded.

  ‘Yeah …’ Jonathon’s face gave a wobble though he quickly righted it. ‘Should we go?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘come on.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Stubbs, ‘you’ve got some sweets there, haven’t you? Don’t you think it’d be nice to chuck some in for the ghostly kids? Bet they hardly ever get sweets!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘might not have had any for hundreds of years!’

  Our fingers fumbled to untwist our bags.

  ‘So you reckon those kids died cos the teacher whacked them too hard?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably,’ Stubbs said, ‘same might have happened to Lucy. Maybe one day Weirton whacked her too much and she died!’

  ‘Can’t have done!’ Jonathon said. ‘Weirton never whacks girls! He sends them to Perkins – being smacked by her just feels like someone’s slapping you with a limp lettuce leaf!’

  ‘Still gets the girls beefing though,’ I said, ‘but it’s true – Weirton can’t have killed her cos he never whacks girls.’

  ‘Maybe he used to, before he killed Lucy. Maybe that’s what made him change,’ said Stubbs.

  Jonathon and I now each had one bag open. I took a shrimp, threw it into the playground. The pink creature tumbled in an arc against the dark sky before coming to land next to a clump of water-beaded grass. Jonathon also lobbed a shrimp in.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Weirton’s not like the ghostly teacher here. He just uses the hand – that can’t kill you!’

  ‘You ever had one of his whackings?’ Stubbs said. ‘I mean a really tre-mend-ous one.’

  We shook our heads. I’d seen plenty of Weirton’s legendary displays, but never suffered one myself. I’d watched – amazed, appalled and, I have to confess, sometimes amused – as kids hurtled through the air, swooping up and swinging down, their red faces throwing out tears, yet it had never occurred to me how it would feel to be the star of the show. We’d all – of course – had the odd strike on the bum when doing something we shouldn’t, the palm sweeping down as Weirton passed, the teacher barely breaking his stride. But still how that impact rang, how our rears ached afterwards! A full walloping really must have knocked the stuffing out of you, as Weirton was fond of saying.