The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  When we’d all sat down, Weirton strode in. He smiled, gave the vicar a couple of hearty claps on the back, causing the vicar’s head and chest to jerk forward. I think Weirton was being friendly, but the vicar first spluttered with shock then a frown flickered over his face. Maybe he was annoyed at Weirton touching his sacred black garments. I didn’t know how Weirton dared to, but maybe God made allowances for headmasters. After all, Weirton had rapped and prodded Lucy’s bones with no apparent fear of her ghost or dread of God’s anger. Thinking of Lucy, I wondered if I should ask the vicar why he’d permitted her not to be buried. Perhaps he’d been content to simply bless her store cupboard. I thought maybe I’d ask the priest about it after class.

  ‘Children!’ Weirton declared. ‘It is time for your second class with the vicar. You’re very lucky to have lessons from a traditional vicar like ours – he’ll teach you good biblical basics that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your lives and beyond, no trendy rot …’

  I didn’t understand all the teacher had said, but Weirton smiled at, flicked his eyes to the vicar. The vicar grinned back – but his lips quivered as if making that grin needed effort.

  ‘So listen, listen carefully to what he says. And – of course – any insolence, any idleness, any lack of attention will be dealt with by me! I think you know what I mean – I’m sure you all remember the episode with Ryan Watson this morning!’

  The vicar’s face twitched into a pained expression as I was mentioned. I cursed Weirton, hoping the priest wouldn’t now look unfavourably on me: I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a man with such mighty powers. Weirton lowered his rigid crown of hair in a nod – that hair still iron-hard despite the hundreds of flakes that must have fallen on it – and Weirton and Perkins left us with the priest. The vicar strode across the front of the class a few times, but his strides weren’t like Weirton’s – they were slow, thoughtful. The priest bit his lip, scrunched his brow. His first finger drifted up, his mouth opened as if he was about to begin – his finger fell, the mouth clamped into tight-lipped uncertainty. He paced some more, the finger again floated up and the vicar started to speak. The vicar’s voice was somewhat strained; it had a slight tremble. But I knew the immense power that modest voice masked.

  ‘Good morning, children. In our first class a fortnight ago, we talked about the world’s creation, about Adam and Eve. Well, today we’ll quickly revise what we learned and then move onto other parts of Genesis – the first book in God’s Holy Bible.’

  Wasn’t the Bible a book already? I wondered how other books could fit inside it – wouldn’t their hard covers get in the way? The vicar went on.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you know some of these stories already – having listened to Mr Weirton or myself in assembly. But I think it can’t hurt to go through them again. I’ll hand you out the booklets we started looking at last time.’

  And out they came, the vicar – in his stooped walk – shuffling along to put one on each of our desks. Turning at the end of my row, he bashed his thigh on the desk of Helen Jacobs, sending her pens and bright pencils, her neat pencil case tumbling to the floor. Helen sighed and scowled – luckily for her, this wasn’t noticed by the vicar. With my still trembling fingers, I leafed through my booklet – there were drawings of robed and bearded men, desert sands. Those drawings looked like they’d been expertly shaded with coloured pencils – the outlines all filled in skilfully with blue, yellow, pink. It was the sort of standard I’d been getting towards in my own sketching. In a mix of strides and shuffles, the vicar moved from the back row to the room’s front.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘if you turn to the first page, you’ll see the Garden of Eden, which we mentioned last time.’

  There it was – in those coloured-pencil pastels: the lovingly shaded ferns and trees, the sleeping tigers and lions. Adam stood muscular, almost naked; Eve’s rude bits were covered by a surprisingly large leaf; a sweep of her hair hid her chest. And on the next page, as Adam slept in the Garden, the wicked serpent coiled around a tree, whispering to weak Eve.

  ‘Yes,’ the vicar said, ‘he’s persuading her to eat of the apple: to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’

  And there it was – the apple hanging in shameful dark red, Eve’s hand reaching for it. I thought it was such a pity she’d bitten that fruit and released all evil into the world. Without it, Lucy wouldn’t have died; Marcus wouldn’t be trapped in his pond; I wouldn’t have been walloped by Weirton. Next to me, Jonathon’s hand crept up.

  ‘Please, Sir, if there was a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden, are there trees like that around in the world today?’

  The vicar’s face twitched; his brow tightened; he raised a thoughtful finger to his chin.

  ‘That’s a very unusual question, Jonathon,’ he said. ‘What made you ask it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jonathon, ‘I just thought, you know, people have babies and animals have babies, and even plants and trees have babies, but their babies just come from seeds and nuts. So why shouldn’t the Tree of Knowledge have had a baby? And its babies’ babies’ babies could still be living in the world today.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Stubbs blurted. ‘If we could find them and eat the fruit, we might know everything!’

  ‘Yeah!’ Richard Johnson echoed.

  Arms outstretched, the vicar bobbed flat palms to settle our enthusiasm.

  ‘I think …’ the vicar paused, grasped his chin, looked this way and that, swivelled his eyes up to heaven as if the solution could be found there ‘… I think the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a very special tree and God made just one, just to test Adam and Eve and – anyway – it would have probably been killed in the Flood, which we’ll talk about later …’

  ‘Anyway, as you know, after they ate the fruit, God threw Adam and Eve out of their beautiful Garden and they were never allowed to return. He even ordered cherubs – a kind of angel – to guard the gate with a flaming sword so no one could get back in. Also, all suffering, sin and death were introduced into the world. And not just Adam and Eve were punished, but all their children and their children’s children and so on – right down to us. That’s, unfortunately, why we must all suffer and die today.’

  Jonathon raised his hand – this time it shot rather than crept up.

  ‘Sir, isn’t that a bit unfair? It’s like if my granddad or great-granddad stole an apple long ago and Mr Weirton whacked me for it.’

  A twinge scrunched the vicar’s face at Jonathon’s last words. He then went through his chin-grasping routine before answering.

  ‘Yes, the whole Garden of Eden thing was rather unfortunate, wasn’t it? It was all a terrible mix-up really. If only Satan hadn’t sneaked into the Garden when Adam was asleep, if only God hadn’t been distracted with something else when the Devil played his dastardly trick, but, anyway, that’s what happened, at least according to the Bible, and we all have to live with it. Most unfortunate set of circumstances, but, anyway, let’s move on …’

  We turned the page of our booklet. A man lay dead on stony ground as a pool of rich blood seeped from him; another man, with a manic-looking face, stood over him bearing a knife.

  ‘Adam and Eve had two sons,’ the vicar said, ‘called Cain and Abel. Cain was a farmer – he grew crops like wheat – while Abel was a herdsman, who looked after sheep and goats. One day they both decided to make a sacrifice to God. Cain put some of what he’d grown on an altar and burned it, and Abel did the same with some lamb. The smoke drifted up to heaven where God could smell and taste it. God said He preferred Abel’s sacrifice and Cain grew jealous – he began to hate his brother in his heart!’

  I could sympathise with the Lord there – I’d also prefer a nice piece of lamb to a bit of boring old wheat. I glanced over at Jonathon – who I guessed hated his brother too after the outrage with the ice-ball. Jonathon was nodding softly – he seemed to understand Cain.

  ‘Well, Cain grew to hate his
brother more and more until … well, it was really rather unfortunate, but … as we see in the picture, Cain murdered his own brother!’

  The class gasped – even Stubbs looked appalled. Jonathon’s lip started to tremble – he bit down on it.

  ‘Well, after some time, God looked down from heaven and He couldn’t see Abel anywhere. He asked Cain where he was – Cain lied, said he didn’t know: that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper. But, of course, God soon found out what had happened – “Your brother’s blood crieth to me from the ground!” He said.’

  Jonathon’s lip shivered more – maybe he was feeling guilty about hoping Marcus would get rid of his brother. I’d once heard a legend about how a man had killed his brother – a long, long time ago – and chopped his body up and hidden it in different parts of a swamp so he couldn’t come alive again. Maybe if Craig really drove Jonathon mad, he could do something like that – hide the brother’s remains under the ditches and bogs and dark ponds and black soil of Emberfield. Who knew – Jonathon might even manage to hoodwink the eyes of God. It had taken the Lord some time to notice the death of Abel.

  ‘Well,’ the vicar was saying, ‘of course, God had to punish Cain after such an outrageous act and if you look on the next page, you’ll see what God did.’

  We turned the page over. A huge finger stuck out of a cloud, pointing down. It looked like the finger Weirton often wagged, but this divine digit was unleashing a thunderbolt. It flew from the sky, smote Cain’s forehead.

  ‘Yes,’ said the vicar, ‘Cain received a mark from God as a punishment for his sin.’

  I gaped at the picture; my trembling grew stronger at seeing the sheer might of the Lord. Cain’s mouth hung; lids wrenched back, his eyes stared at the heavens. In the next picture, we saw the jagged burn that branded his wicked brow.

  ‘He could never get it off,’ the vicar said. ‘Cain had to wander his whole life with the sign of his sin upon him. Everywhere he went, people saw that mark and knew what God had done – and no one would have anything to do with him. He became a wanderer on the earth for the rest of his life – loved by none and shunned by all!’

  I was glad I didn’t have a brother – because I didn’t have one, I couldn’t bump him off so God couldn’t brand me with a mark like Cain’s. But, next to me, Jonathon’s lip shivered harder. His hand inched up.

  ‘Please Sir, what if Cain had said sorry? Would God have taken the mark away?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Jonathon. It might seem rather harsh, but we must remember what Cain did. Killing your own brother – can there be a worse crime? And I should say that God did have some mercy. People were so furious with Cain they wanted to kill him so God also used that mark as a sign to warn them off. And Cain had a wife and children and even once built a city, but – except his family – everybody kept away from him.’

  ‘Please Sir,’ Jonathon said, ‘what happened to Cain in the end? Is he still wandering over the earth today?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Jonathon. You must remember this all happened quite a long time ago. If we study the Bible, we find – at least according to the logic of that book – that Cain would have died in the Great Flood, which we’ll talk about soon. Now, if we can look at some more pages of our booklet …’

  We flipped back and forth through more evidence of God’s dread judgements. There was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah – though what their crimes exactly were, I couldn’t understand from the vicar’s explanations. But again that finger flashed out of the clouds, sent bolts hurtling to make those two proud cities burn. It reminded me of the eventual – and inevitable – wrecking of Jonathon’s set-outs: of how avenging fury would always sweep away what men had raised up in their vanity and in just a few moments level our finest and most painstaking achievements. The next picture showed Lot and his wife fleeing those flaming towns and another of the Lord’s judgements. For Lot’s wife had dared to glance back so the Lord had turned her into a pillar of salt. I sucked in breath at God’s harshness, but then – on reflection – thought that penalty was just. Perhaps such a thing could happen to Perkins – I smiled at the idea of her nagging muffled beneath hard layers of white. It seemed there were endless amounts of sin in the world God was always having to punish. The vicar appeared to agree.

  ‘Yes –’ the priest screwed up his brow beneath his bald head ‘– it’s sad to say, but we can see there was a great deal of wickedness on the earth. And God – who, after all, had created the whole thing – felt He had to do something about it. So, He came up with a solution that might seem rather drastic, but …’

  I knew what was coming. We turned some pages, and – sure enough – there was a robed, long-bearded man hammering at a half-finished hull.

  ‘Look,’ said the vicar, ‘there’s Noah making his boat – does anyone know why?’

  My hand thrust up.

  ‘Because God told him there’d be a huge flood, Sir!’

  ‘Exactly, Ryan, God decided the earth was so wicked, so sinful He had to drown it all – “the world is full of violence!” that’s what God said.’

  I nodded – it didn’t seem much had changed. Could God drown Emberfield? We had enough violence: Weirton’s wallopings, the big lads fighting all the time, myself being nearly choked in the snow and Jonathon almost blinded, the poor kids in the Old School who’d been whacked to death. And it wouldn’t have surprised me if foul play had been involved in the ends of Lucy and Marcus.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ the vicar went on, ‘Noah was the only honest decent man on the whole earth. God warned him and he started making his boat. His neighbours laughed; they called him crazy …’

  I managed to show a smug smile to Stubbs. He’d also mocked me when in the autumn I’d begun to knock together my own craft in response to the endless rains. Now he could see God had given a holy example undeniably set down in the Bible’s black ink.

  ‘And,’ the vicar said, ‘God opened the windows of heaven and uncapped the fountains of the deep. And the rains fell for forty days and forty nights till water covered the whole land.’

  I was sure there’d been times when it’d rained that much in Emberfield. Yet our town was not submerged. The rain just stayed in the marshy fields, where it lay sullen and black. It just swelled and strengthened Marcus’s pond.

  ‘Perhaps …’ the vicar said, scrunching his eyes, waving a finger, ‘… you might feel God overreacted a bit. I mean, drowning your whole Creation because of a few bad deeds, it may seem rather excessive. But, because God is merciful, He had a plan to save the world …’

  We flipped to the next page. There was Noah’s boat complete – a sizeable, but not enormous ship. The sun still shone, but rain-pregnant clouds were blotting the blue from the sky. Their dark bulks contained a warning for sinners. Noah stood by the side of his Ark, beaming at his handiwork. A ramp led down from the ship, which a couple of sheep and two camels were climbing. Back on the ground, a docile queue of animals waited to go up, supervised by Noah’s sons. There were goats and cows, elephants, tigers, lions, deer, even a couple of serpents. I wondered if the snakes – with their sly cunning – hoped to sneak onto the ship unnoticed. Surely God would want them drowned after their outrage in the Garden.

  ‘If you look at the picture,’ the vicar said, ‘you can see God’s plan. He instructed Noah to take a male and female of each species onto the Ark so after the Flood the animals could have babies and repopulate the world. Noah also took his family – his sons and their wives – so there could be new people.’

  Stubbs hurled his hand up.

  ‘Does that mean that we’re all related to Noah?’

  ‘I suppose, according to the Bible, it does,’ the vicar said.

  ‘That means Noah’s my great-great grandfather!’ Stubbs said.

  ‘And mine!’ Richard Johnson shouted.

  ‘Yes … something like that.’ The vicar smiled, nodded.

  I looked at the jolly pastels of that picture. I wondered why the lions weren’
t attacking the deer – perhaps they were calmed by God’s magic.

  ‘Sir,’ Jonathon asked, ‘what about the animals that didn’t live near Israel – like penguins and gorillas and polar bears? How did they get them on the Ark?’

  ‘Maybe they picked them up on the way,’ said Stubbs.

  ‘Er, yes, good question Jonathon, and an intelligent answer Dennis, but … er … we must remember God was involved here so I’m sure He could have sorted out the problem somehow. And … er … we must also remember the Bible was written a long time ago by people who saw the world quite differently. Maybe they didn’t even know about penguins and polar bears.’

  I didn’t see how this lack of knowledge could have helped the bears survive the Deluge yet I didn’t want to trouble the vicar further. But Jonathon’s hand was once more up.

  ‘Sir, the boat in the picture’s not so big, is it? And there are hundreds of types of animals in the world. How could they fit them all on?’

  ‘Well,’ said the vicar, ‘the Ark was quite large. It was three-hundred cubits long and thirty high. A cubit is about as long as a man’s arm from elbow to fingertips.’

  The vicar held up his own cubit to show us.

  ‘But, yes … er … good question – how would they have all fitted on?’

  ‘Maybe God sorted it out with his magic,’ I ventured.

  ‘And what would they have all eaten?’ Stubbs asked.

  ‘Yes … well …’ the vicar said.

  His eyes flicked from side-to-side; his forehead wrinkled; his lips quivered as if they wanted to say something, but couldn’t decide what. Jonathon thrust up his hand. Without waiting for permission, he blurted.