The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let that be a lesson to you, Ryan Watson! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! You should know from past examples, like those with the brother of this buffoon, this clown!’ The finger thrust at Jonathon. ‘What the consequences of lateness can be! And now you all know it even better! Yes, let today’s little episode be a lesson to you all!’

  Weirton swivelled his feet and was gone from the room. In a few seconds the voice was booming next door, telling his class to be quiet and get on with their work or he’d be happy to give out more of what Ryan Watson had received.

  Chapter Eight

  Perkins came back in and the lesson went on – Richard Johnson being summoned to her desk to chant out the words of his baby book. I sat on my chair, trying to read but unable to concentrate on my dull text. If my mind was a glass pane, it was like someone had swung a hammer at it. I struggled to pick up the fragments, to patch and mend that shattered sheet. But I just had to wait for that puzzle to remake itself – to piece together its shards and slivers. My tears flowed for a while, dropping onto my book, smudging the print with their tiny explosions. Hiccups still lurched from me. Even when my tears had dried and the hiccups had stopped, I snivelled and snorted through the rest of the lesson, and my arse went on humming against my seat. When Perkins told us to go out for the break, I stood slowly, gingerly. As the others charged out to play in the snow, I swayed and teetered on my unruly legs, navigating the corridor in a bow-legged drunkard’s stagger, Jonathon beside me. My bones felt clumsily strung together – as if they’d been smashed, reassembled in the wrong way. The more steps I took, the easier it got, but – even when I was outside in the falling feathery snow – my body trembled, my legs wobbled and bounced, suddenly bulging out at unpredictable angles.

  In this way, I lurched and tottered down the path that ran alongside the school building then down the steps to the playground. Each one was an obstacle demanding the careful lifting and placing down of my feet, each was lined with slippery slush and icy compacted snow. A couple of times, I had to wave comical arms – like a demented bird flapping its wings– to save my balance. The steps descended alongside a kind of platform or promontory that fronted the school building, looking out over the playground and the vast school field beyond. Weirton stood on the platform, clad in a long black coat, swathed in a rather dapper scarf, his red face glowing against the white day, lips beaming as he turned his head from side-to-side, surveying the view. Was he smiling in triumph after having so obviously crushed me or in happiness at seeing the kids enjoy the snow? And enjoying themselves they were. They ran, chased each other, their feet puncturing the playground’s crust. Their hands carved gashes from it as they stooped to make snowballs. They gouged deep ruts as they rolled huge white boulders. Volleys of snowballs flew. It could have been a painting, a scene from a Christmas card.

  Safely down those stairs, able to walk more quickly as my awkward jerks softened into more fluid movements, Jonathon and I headed away from Weirton, to a patch of the field he couldn’t see from his platform. I looked out over the flat farmland beyond, over that beautiful blank world. The white fields stretched numbly to the horizon. If only I could have transferred some of their numbness to me, have it help the chilly air in its slow soothing of my rump.

  ‘Blimey,’ Jonathon whispered, head twitching back to make sure we were out of the range of Weirton’s legendarily sensitive ears, ‘he gave you one hell of a whacking – must be up there with some of Stubbs’s best! All just for being late!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘what happened to Marcus? Why did he forget those sweets we gave him?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Jonathon screwed up his face as he pondered. ‘Maybe it’s ’cos he’s frozen – he can’t do anything. Or maybe we didn’t give him enough presents. Or maybe … I dunno, do you think he’s really in the pool?’

  ‘Course he is! How on earth could you doubt it? I told you I saw him that day! And we saw him try to get Stubbs – we even saw his handprint!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Course I am. We need to give him more presents. Just a bit difficult to do when his pond’s all frozen.’

  ‘But what can we do till his pond melts?’ said Jonathon. ‘How can we stop Weirton whacking us?’

  ‘Could promise Marcus, I suppose. Say sorry for not giving him enough stuff and say we’ll give him more later. We need to do something! Remember what Stubbsy told us about not being able to breathe during the whacking. It was just like that! I thought I might die – that I was gonna choke! Bet that’s what happened to Lucy!’

  Something hard and icy crashed into the back of my head, jerking it forward. Laughter chorused; I looked round. Stubbs and Johnson stood a few metres off with a bunch of our classmates. They paced towards us, arrogantly kicking up white powder, lobbing a few more snowballs, which thankfully missed. I knew from whackings I’d watched in the past that these punishments could draw both taunts and sympathy. From the way the lads strode, from the snowy spheres they hurled, I guessed I wasn’t likely to be getting the latter.

  ‘Hey Watson!’ Stubbs said. ‘How was your whacking?’

  ‘You should know,’ I said. ‘You’ve had enough!’

  Stubbs’s palm shot out. My reactions still slow after the walloping, I couldn’t bat it away. It crashed onto my ear, made it throb and sting in the cold.

  ‘Yeah,’ Stubbs said, ‘but at least I’m not the village idiot! At least I don’t go round gawping at stuff like some imbecile!’

  Stubbs jolted into a ponderous walk, stopping to stick his gormless face out.

  ‘Duh!’ he intoned. ‘It’s a tree! Duh! It’s a house.’

  The gaggle of kids sniggered. I hurled a punch at Stubbs’s out-thrust chin – he jerked it back. My fist struck nothing but snowflakes.

  ‘Why were you hiccupping so much?’ a lad asked.

  ‘Oh, that happens sometimes,’ another said, nodding knowledgably. ‘I asked my dad – he reckons it’s cos the air gets forced from your body so quickly.’

  ‘And what a baby!’ Johnson said. ‘Beefing like mad! Snivelling away for ages afterwards!’

  ‘Shut up, Johnson!’ I said. ‘The last whacking you got, it took you hours to stop beefing!’

  A fist hurtled through the falling flakes. It struck my jaw; a hammer blow rang in my head. I stumbled and slipped; I was on my back in the snow; blinking up at the lads’ mocking faces. To my shame, hot water trickled down my cold cheeks.

  ‘Look he’s beefing!’ Stubbs shouted. ‘Oh, don’t beef! Oh, dooon’t beeeef!’

  Soon all the lads took up this refrain, their fingers pointing down at me. The chant was varied by occasional additions from Stubbs.

  ‘Oh, dooon’t beeeef! Oh, doooon’t beeeef! The village idiot! Gawping like an imbecile! Oh, doooon’t beeeeef!’

  Some infants nearby were rolling a giant snowball, skipping, smiling, faces aglow as they pushed it with their mittened hands, their white globe as tall as them. Stubbs and Johnson looked at each other. Their eyes uncertain, they hesitated for a second then walked from the line of laughing, singing lads. They shoved the infants away, picked up that orb between them and – straining and stumbling under it – carried it off, ignoring the infants’ shrill cries. As they brought it back to their gang, the lads glanced, puzzled, at each other. Then, all at once, they rushed over to Johnson and Stubbs to help support that sphere.

  ‘Lift it high!’ Stubbs shouted.

  All those hands held the snowball aloft.

  ‘One …’ Stubbs shouted.

  ‘… two, three!’ the others yelled.

  A planet hurtled from the sky. A huge freezing object slammed into me. Everything went white then black. I was lying in a pile of rubbly snow, with just my head sticking out. My face must have been a comical mask of shock because laughter erupted from the lads. Fingers thrust at me; boys were bent double, crippled by mirth, clutching their stomachs. I spat to clear the white dust from my lips, wiped
my gloved hand over my face to clean more away, but just ended up daubing myself with more snow. Still laughing the lads began to walk off, sometimes turning to point and shake, to lob the odd snowball at me. The occasional face scrunched in a kind of dopey concern, but then someone would nudge the lad and he’d let laughter overcome him again. I spat out more crumbling, melting bits of snow – this had to be one of the worst bits of teasing I’d heard of in response to a thrashing. But now Jonathon’s brother and Darren Hill were striding across the field, with a bunch of older lads. They stopped when they met Stubbs’s gang.

  ‘Hey!’ said Darren. ‘We heard Weirton’s little show through the wall with the village idiot here!’

  Hill pointed at me; all the lads laughed.

  ‘How many did he get?’ the brother asked Stubbs.

  ‘Loads and loads –’ a sly smile inched up Stubbs’s face ‘– must have been at least eighteen!’

  ‘It wasn’t that many!’ I yelled. Anger flushed through me; I felt it shine from my cheeks as I tried to shove myself up from the ground.

  ‘Eighteen!’ The brother sniggered, his hands squeezing a snowball, compacting it to ice. ‘Eighteen, Eighteen …’

  The brother’s arm went back; he aimed his ice-ball at me.

  ‘Craig, don’t!’ Jonathon shouted to the brother. ‘He’s had enough!’

  The brother turned, looked at his sibling. Indecision flickered on his face then – from just two metres away – he hurled his ice-ball at Jonathon. It crashed into him just above his nose.

  ‘Aaargh!’ Jonathon yelled. He bent his body, clasped his face in his hands. ‘I’ve gone blind! I can’t see!’

  ‘You idiots!’ I shouted. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

  The lads just laughed. Jonathon went on crying out as he staggered, his hands over his eyes. Different expressions darted across the brother’s face – victorious smiles, the glow of what seemed like gormless triumph at what he’d done, at the laughter he’d provoked. But there was something else – a twitch of the mouth, a scrunch of the brow seemed to signal dim regret or concern for his sibling. Yet such expressions would rapidly be conquered by those of scorn, amusement.

  ‘Hey!’ Stubbs yelled. ‘I’ve got an idea – let’s push Watson down in the snow and see what happens!’

  ‘Yeah, let’s!’ the others chorused.

  No hesitation now, the brother ran, launched himself into the air, crashed onto me. The impact shoved me into the snow, knocked breath from my lungs. He grabbed my head; flipped me over so I lay with my face balanced on top of the chill white. He pushed my body down. I felt thuds as other lads flung themselves on us, forming a heap. His hand thrust my head – thrust it right into cold wetness. The hand pushed it deeper – I tasted snow on my lips, like flavourless ice-cream. With more strength the hand shoved – compressed snow squeaked against my face; chilly trickles ran in my ears; the ice at the bottom bent my nose. My mouth tried to spit out the powder invading it. The boys’ shouts and laughs were muffled by that whispering enveloping white, obscured by the creaks and crunches their boots made as they scrunched snow. But still I heard Stubbs yell:

  ‘Everybody!’

  Another mass of boys must have flung themselves on me. My face was rammed into the ice, my arms pinned by all that pressure. The weight forced air from my chest; snow plugged my nostrils; my mouth could only draw in freezing flakes. All was black now; I used the last of my breath to scream: a sound that echoed meekly into the snow. Something pushed me harder into the unyielding ice – more lads must have thrown themselves on the heap. My head was getting hot, as if some furnace bulged inside. My heart banged out a rapid boom; my lungs ached as my lips spasmed in a desperate search for breath. There was none – my mouth just sucked in snow. My skull throbbed, feeling ready to rupture. I wondered if this crushing blackness was already hell. I begged Marcus to help me, to save me if he could – hoping that in his icy state he might have some power over snow. But still the merciless weight pressed; still my mouth could find no air. My lungs burned; I felt faint then I was spiralling into an awful void. My mind screamed more pleas to Marcus. I felt a shifting above and the weight on me lessened as if boys were peeling themselves off the pile. I still couldn’t move, but with each less lad I had a centimetre more freedom, another inch of air. More kids hauled themselves off, the force on me softened, and I heard shouting and laughter. With trembling arms, I pushed myself from the ground, stood on shaking legs beside an outline of myself in the snow. I gulped air, my lungs aching as they were forced to stretch, as shards and needles of cold pricked them.

  ‘Look at the shape he’s left in the snow!’ Stubbs called out.

  Giggles echoed before someone said, ‘Looks like an Egyptian mummy! Like those pictures Weirton showed us!’

  Indeed it did – the oval head free of features, the torso with arms bound. There was even a bandage-type pattern – formed by the creases in my trousers and coat. As my breath jerked and quivered, as my fury surged, I thought of how that funereal impression really could have marked my murder. The lads wandered off – still laughing, turning to point, slapping each other’s shoulders. I was about to go after Stubbs, pull him back, punch him when a wail startled me. I glanced round, saw Jonathon wandering in the snow, his blind hands groping at the flake-filled air.

  ‘I can’t see!’ he moaned.

  I tottered over to him, grabbed his shoulders.

  ‘It’s me, Ryan!’

  ‘I’ve gone blind! I’m blind forever – because my bloody brother lobbed that ice-ball at me!’

  I looked into his face. His eyes – under a dusting of ice and snow – were indeed screwed shut.

  ‘It’s all gone black! All black forever – and it’s all my brother’s fault!’

  Acting from some strange instinct, I rubbed my hands together, jerking them until all the cold was gone, until the space between them hummed with a dry heat. I placed my palms over Jonathon’s eyes.

  ‘I could kill him – blind because of my bloody brother!’

  I pressed my hands onto his lids, felt tiny trickles.

  ‘Try to open them now,’ I said.

  He tried to blink; the lids stayed shut; he blinked again; they sprang apart. I took my hands away.

  ‘OK now?’

  Jonathon blinked some more; his eyes widened – they stared, like it was the first time they’d seen snow, the school, Emberfield’s flat landscape.

  ‘Phew!’ Jonathon said. ‘Glad I’m not really blind!’

  ‘Jonathon, what’s being blind like?’

  ‘Everything’s just black, but not normal black – really, really black: blacker than any black you’ve ever seen! Anyway, what happened to you?’

  I described my shove into the snow, nearly drowning in that cold white and only being saved after my plea to Marcus.

  ‘See!’ I said. ‘Marcus is there! Maybe he can do less when he’s frozen, but he does listen to us! Good job we gave him those sweets! And come to think of it, when I was being whacked I promised him more stuff and the whacking stopped soon after!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon. ‘Wonder if he could do owt to protect me from my brother! We need pro-tect-ion from idiots like him. Sounds like those lads could have killed you in that snow. Maybe something like that happened to Marcus and Lucy!’

  Chapter Nine

  Break ended and we formed three lines, one for each class, at the foot of the steps. The snow was coming down so heavily that Weirton’s huge dark-suited form at their top was wrapped in veils of white. It was then it struck me how easily he could have noticed our rumpus on the field, heard our yells, come pacing over to see the disgraceful sight of the mound of struggling boys pressing me into the snow. What could have happened then – one of the mass whackings we’d heard of in legends: a whole morning of Weirton thrashing the guilty in front of all the kids in the hall? My relief surged out on a long breath. I guessed the side of the school building must have flanked us, our cries, shouts, insults merged into the
general tumult of the kids enjoying the snow. Through the swirls of flakes, I saw Weirton bring his vast head down. As usual, the upper juniors filed in first. The brother and Darren Hill tried to punch me as they went by – I slapped their hands away. Our class was the next to go in. As we mounted the steps, I battled to make my unsteady legs walk normally, prayed Weirton wouldn’t notice the agitated look I couldn’t expel from my still glowing face. My heart thudded as I walked past the teacher, felt the weight of his gaze bearing down from so far above, but Weirton didn’t say anything. Still shaking, I fumbled off my coat and gloves in the humid shoving chaos of the cloakroom. Though I staggered down the corridor, my classmates were walking with a joyful bounce, knowing the next lesson would be different. Entering our room, we saw a man standing next to Perkins. He was tall; a kindly face twitched and pondered beneath a bald head bordered by unruly spirals of grey hair. He wore black trousers and shirt, but – something I never understood – rather than the long ties Weirton and my dad sported, his neck was ringed by what looked like a strip of cardboard. Someone had told me that was what priests always wore though I couldn’t see why – none of the pictures of Jesus showed him wearing one. I’d thought of making one for myself by cutting up an old cereal packet, but had guessed Weirton’s reaction wouldn’t be favourable.

  The vicar stood and beamed, glancing from side to side as we all came in, peering through his thick glasses which – rather than Weirton’s TV screens – were somewhat rounded. Though he looked nice and kind, I’d have never wanted to offend or annoy him as I’d heard his magic was mighty. I’d heard a legend that – when he put the bread and wine on the altar – he had the power to summon the Lord himself to fly down to our little church, and that – by mumbling the right words and with swift movements of his enchanter’s hands – he could even change the humble bread into the body of Christ and the wine into His blood! I’d also heard he was the guardian of that dread altar – that no one could approach it without his say-so and that if anyone was rash enough to blunder into its sacred space, God would shoot a thunderbolt from heaven to burn the insolent sinner up. I wasn’t surprised the vicar had no problems in our class with rowdiness. Even Dennis Stubbs was well-behaved.