Weirton’s colour was deepening; he was sweating more; the mouth was screwing itself into a snarl. Like before a thunderstorm, we could feel the air grow denser, more humid.
‘Yes, Dennis Stubbs had the ingenious idea to …’
Weirton leapt. Meaty fists hammered his thighs; his face shone red alarm. The immense body banged to the floor – I swear the ground rippled. On his third jump, Weirton started to hurl out the details of Stubbs’s sin.
‘TO TELL A BOY TO DROP A BRICK ON HIS HEAD! TO TELL HIM TO KNEEL DOWN AND HOLD IT AS FAR ABOVE HIM AS HE COULD AND THEN AND THEN TO …’
Almost choking on his rage, Weirton’s head seemed to bulge as pressure swelled within; the TV-screen glasses misted; the face shaded into maroon as his fists pounded his legs. Weirton jumped and fell as spittle flew with his shouts – landing on tables, splattering children.
‘TELL HIM TO LET IT GO! EVEN IF HE IS STUPID ENOUGH TO DO IT!’
Hands covered mouths to mask twitching lips, quell bubbles of laughter; several knowing eyes looked at Jonathon.
‘EVEN IF THE BOY IS SO MONUMENTALLY STUPID – BY GOD, YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN HIM BRAIN DAMAGE!’
The leaps ceased; the drumming on the thighs stopped. The teacher sucked air in big gulps as his breath recovered. Weirton pulled out his hankie; wiped it across his face to soak up pools and streams of sweat. He took off his glasses, gave them a wipe too. In the aftermath of Weirton’s outburst, the air in the room seemed to quake and quiver, fly about as if each gust were seeking to return to its old place. When the teacher’s breath had jerked and jolted back to its normal pattern, when the air was still once more, Weirton continued.
‘And so Dennis Stubbs –’ the voice’s boom was calmer ‘– you understand that, for the good of everyone, it must be demonstrated such behaviour is totally unacceptable!’
We’d watched as the hand had thrashed; as Stubbs had swung and spluttered; as the tears had flown; as Dennis had rasped and gurgled in his quest for air – the trembling lips desperate to suck it in, the merciless hand beating it from Stubbs’s body. We’d watched the horror in his eyes as the hand had thrashed on, watched those frantic eyes darting – as if wondering whether they’d open to greet another day. But eventually the boy was set down. Stubbs swayed and lurched across the carpet in a ludicrous clown’s walk – balancing and teetering on his joke-shop legs before he lowered his arse onto his hard seat. He shook and sobbed as Weirton reached into his jacket, pulled out the dread brown envelope addressed to Stubbs’s parents and sent it sailing on a curve across the room to land with a slap on Dennis’s desk, a slap signifying many more wallops to come. Now it was lunchtime. Jonathon and I stood on the field, out of the sight and hearing of Weirton who strode on his platform. Stubbs and the brother were inside – starting a long sentence of gloomy detentions, struggling through sums under the gaze of Perkins.
‘Phew!’ I said. ‘Glad we gave those toys to Marcus! Could have been us having bricks dropped on our heads or being thrashed to within an inch of our lives by Weirton!’
‘Yeah,’ Jonathon said, ‘a couple more whacks and with both Stubbs and my brother we could have had another Lucy! Bit dim of Craig though – imagine letting Stubbs per-suade you to drop a brick on your head for just one pound!’
‘Yeah, he’d have to have promised at least two quid to me!’
‘Thank God for Marcus protecting us though,’ I went on, ‘still no whackings from Weirton! And we haven’t been beaten up by your brother or any other big lads!’
Jonathon stumbled forwards in a tottering run – the result of a shove from Darren Hill, who stood behind us with a gaggle of boys from all classes.
‘So, the Browning family really covered itself in glory today!’ Hill said. ‘The mon-u-mental stupidity of your brother dropping a brick on his head, followed by the whacking of a lifetime!’
The little crowd echoed approving sniggers.
‘Why don’t you come with us, Browning?’ another lad said. ‘We’ve got a surprise for you.’
‘No thanks,’ Jonathon said.
He jerked his head sideways to hint we should go. We began our walk away; but, after a couple of steps, Hill’s hands flew down and grasped Jonathon’s shoulders. Other boys scooted around him; their hands shot out, grabbing arms, legs, feet. Jonathon kicked, struggled and protested, but the lads hoisted him up, raising him till he was held lying flat at shoulder height. Boys supported sides, limbs, hands. Jonathon bucked his body, lashed his arms and legs, but couldn’t fling himself free.
‘Let’s go!’ Hill shouted.
The gang moved off; Jonathon writhed, looking like someone violently tossing in his sleep. But those writhings couldn’t overcome all those hands that clasped him. He was clumsily transported, body stretched and prone beneath the weak clouded eye of the spring sun. The gang came to the hedge, turned and carried their captive along it.
‘He doesn’t like it! Let him go!’ I yelled.
I ran at the procession, barged a captor away, grabbed one of Jonathon’s arms and tried to wrench him free. His bearers dragged him back; there was a tug-of-war. Jonathon screamed as he was stretched in the middle. I’d heard legends of men being held like that between four horses before being ripped into quarters. Could such a thing happen to Jonathon? He was certainly shrieking enough, begging us to stop. Hill let go of the arm he was pulling and strode round to me. His fist hurtled, slammed into my jaw. The world wheeled; the midday sky gave birth to stars; I collapsed into a squat as those stars spun. I stumbled back up just as Jonathon’s bearers reached the wall where the hedge ended. A few more steps, and they started to put the struggling lad down. Body swaying, I forced my feet into a tottering run and jogged closer to them. The lads now shoved Jonathon into a kneeling pose – kids leant on his shoulders, a couple clamped his arms, another two pushed down his thighs. A couple more stood and watched while Darren reached into that now notorious patch of weeds and brambles. Face tensed, Hill’s hand scrabbled in that tangle of plants. The hand stopped its searching; whatever it had found tugged Hill’s lips into a grin. Hill drew back his arm – like the brother’s it was blood-spotted where thorns had pricked it. And just like the brother, Hill clutched a brick – its red also faded, its edges worn.
‘No!’ Jonathon yelled.
Jonathon jerked his shoulders; he writhed and wriggled, but couldn’t get free. The two idling lads rushed to help hold him down. Hill approached bearing the brick.
‘So, Browning,’ he said, ‘fancy following in the family tradition?’
‘No!’ Jonathon shouted.
‘Let him go!’ I yelled. ‘Mr Weirton said something like that can kill you!’
Hill turned, hurled the brick at me. I ducked; that block flew, tumbling inches over my head. Waving his fists, Hill charged in my direction; I ran; he picked up the brick; strode back to the others. Hill’s attention again on Jonathon, I once more edged closer.
‘Hope you’re ready to cover yourself in glory just like your brother did!’ Hill shouted.
‘The sins of the brothers shall be visited on the brothers!’ another lad said, before his face scrunched up as if surprised at those words. The others also glanced around, brows crinkled, before Hill shouted.
‘Pull up his hands!’
Jonathon screamed, bucked and twisted, but the lads held him in place. His captors pulled his shivering arms up till they were stretched above his head, just as his brother’s had been.
‘Open his hands!’ Darren yelled.
Those hands were gripped into fists, but, one-by-one, each finger was prised back until Jonathon’s palms were flattened. Hill strode forward and placed the brick on the platform those palms made. He stepped back, gazed at that worn block.
‘Get ready!’ Hill shouted.
The lads kept Jonathon pinned down, kept his quaking arms up.
‘Now!’
They jerked his arms apart. The brick hovered for one second then plummeted. It slammed onto Jonathon’s head; as w
ith the brother it broke into halves, which bounced from Jonathon’s shoulders before tumbling to the ground. I cringed at Jonathon’s pain-twisted face; cringed at the thought of billions of universes destroyed – planets pulverised, stars snuffed out. As with the brother, laughter erupted. Lads rolled on the grass; their fists bashed the earth. They flipped over, kicked their legs. Darren had flopped down on his knees. His shaking arm pointed at Jonathon as giggles jerked through him. Head still bent from the brick’s impact, Jonathon now looked up. His eyes whirled with the same dull agony the brother’s had. I imagined the swirling cosmos of pain Jonathon’s skull enclosed. Yes, he raised his face with its imbecilic blankness, its pupils spiralling. The boys paused in their laughter then seeing his idiotic expression, their giggles gushed again – again they flopped on the field, rolled, kicked legs, beat fists. The laughter jolted through them till the lads lay exhausted – their weakened fists still tapped the ground, mirth softly jerked their feet. It took until the end of lunchtime before the boys could haul themselves up and – arms round each other’s shoulders – hobble, still shaken by their sniggers, back towards the steps. I helped Jonathon to his feet.
‘My bloody brother – the idiot!’ Jonathon murmured. ‘This is all his fault! I want to kill him sometimes – to kill him!’
‘Better not kill your brother!’ I said. ‘You know what happened to Cain!’
‘My bloody brother – I’ll kill him!’
‘Sssshhh!’ I hissed, firing a glance at the sky.
Remembering Cain and Abel, I feared that even Jonathon’s words might be enough to enrage the Lord. Dark clouds sailed across the sky’s dome. Could those clouds part, could that wrathful finger appear, wing down the spark of its judgement, smite my friend’s forehead? But those clouds didn’t divide; the Lord didn’t hurl down any thunderbolts. I helped Jonathon hobble back towards the school, his head hanging and lolling, as if weighty with its pain. Jonathon – with a trembling effort – turned that head to look at me. It was as if – in the whirling agony of his mind – some fragments had coalesced, formed an understanding.
‘Remember we gave our best toys to Marcus?’ Jonathon mumbled.
‘Yeah?’
‘Well –’ those pain-filled eyes gazed at me ‘– where’s Marcus now?’
I nodded. I also couldn’t help feeling let down by Marcus’s powers. How could he have let something like that happen after all we’d sacrificed to him? Maybe Marcus could only do a certain amount to protect us. I started to shiver – Jonathon had survived his ordeal, but I knew a prank like that could mean death. What would things be like if such a stunt shoved us into the otherworld? Would I be able to continue with my stories and sketches, Jonathon with his set-outs and strange contemplations? I didn’t know, but some instinct urged me to cling to life on our globe, not to let anyone push me into the shady beyond. Whether it was kids or Weirton who’d been responsible for Lucy and Marcus, we had to keep trying to guard against their violence, against their idiocies.
Chapter Nineteen
The Diary of James Ronald Weirton
Thursday, March 17th, 1983
What a day! Such are the pleasures of a primary school headmaster. The things kids get it into their heads to do will never stop amazing me. Getting on for twenty years in teaching, nine as a head, and they still have the power to shock. Read something today about some bleeding-heart liberals wanting to go to the European Court of (so-called) Justice in an effort to get corporal punishment restricted. Wish they could have seen what happened here today – might have been enough for even those buffoons to change their minds! Kids need discipline, societies need discipline – and, for many, discipline can only be understood if it is connected with some sort of bodily pain. Reasoned explanations and nice arguments are all very well, but most people are just too knuckle-headed to take them in. What seems to work at a Hampstead dinner party looks a bit different in the dim light of the boggy flatlands of northern England. Different class, different education, different destinies, different world. These kids need whipping into shape – no time for your namby-pamby therapies and gentle telling-offs. The mums and dads here know that – you should listen to them at parents’ evenings: ‘Don’t you hold back, Mr Weirton – you give him more if he needs it!’ ‘Don’t be afraid to thrash him – a good few licks never did anyone any harm!’ They’re a good bunch, really. Dull as the marshy plains they’ve been bred up in, about as much imagination between them as a swarm of head-lice, but at least they know what’s what. This isn’t urban England – we’re a good twenty years behind any developments there, and that’s no bad thing! You can keep your divorce and drugs and broken families, your kids running wild, violent gangs and drunken brawls. Here, at least, traditional Christian values still hold some sway. What will these kids become? Hopefully, a solid – and stolid – layer somewhere towards the base of our society’s pyramid. No geniuses, that’s for sure, no Wagners or Darwins or Thomas Hardys. These kids will till the land or clerk in offices – they’ll labour in the lower reaches of the civil service, smile at you from behind the counter in the bank. How on earth would our society be if these … these drones thought it was a bright idea to drop bricks on their bosses’ heads!? We’d have chaos! Anarchy! For civilisation to function, people need to know their place. They need to know what’s expected of them and exactly what will happen if they step out of line. It’s my job, my place to instil such knowledge in them.
Speaking of pyramids, I can tell you the Egyptians knew a thing or two. I remember when I first saw those magnificent monuments. I’d stumbled off the ship into the clear desert light, crammed myself into a shared taxi heading for Cairo’s outskirts, and there they were – incredible! – rising up from the sands. Clever people, the Egyptians – your civilisation doesn’t last for 3,000 years unless you know what’s what! And what did the pyramid represent? The mound of Creation, yes, but also the structure of society – with each layer knowing where it stood. For the superb pinnacle, you need the solid base – good foundations that won’t shift for millennia! Cement in your blocks and let them be. That’s what all great achievements are grounded on – Wagner needed someone to clean his theatres, somebody to copy out his accounts. The socialists and liberals exciting little heads with their notions of equality – all rot! Such things will bring the mightiest empires crashing down to dust in just a few decades.
This is all a long way from boys dropping bricks on their heads. Sometimes I do ramble. Not that there’s much else to do here in Goldhill, with the wife and son in bed and the darkness stretching over the flatlands outside, stretching over the ten silent miles to Emberfield, where I’ll have to drive tomorrow to try to ram education into the heads of those sons and daughters of inbred farmers and drab office boys. Shouldn’t speak of them like that, really, they’re decent people, the type that are this nation’s backbone. What a day, though! What Dennis Stubbs got up to, I don’t think even Marcus Jones could have matched in his prime! When I heard what he’d done, I was just flabbergasted – he’s an audacious little rascal, that Stubbs, can’t blame the Browning boy, really, for the beating he gave out. Would have been something wrong with him if he hadn’t thrashed a schoolmate after a stunt like that! Of course, I blasted both of them into the middle of next week, gave Stubbs a gargantuan walloping in front of his classmates to set an example. But … well, I must admit, Stubbs’s antics did make me have a secret snigger. He’s a joker that one and no mistake, a buffoon of the first order! When he grows up, he’ll probably be the office clown. Of course, I checked the Browning boy was all right, asked him how many fingers I was holding up. When the haze in his head had cleared somewhat, he didn’t seem any dimmer than normal. Went out to have a look at the infamous brick and sighed my relief. It was from that old wall in the field’s corner – a thing so leached and eroded from Emberfield’s endless rains it was little more than a wafer of red dust. No wonder Browning’s thick skull snapped it! Still, bet that skull ached until the day’s end. And
he won’t sit down for a week after the walloping I gave him! Poor lad, bet he couldn’t decide which end pained him most! Thick as two short planks that boy. And with a younger brother so bright! Sometimes I really think God has a sense of humour. If God was a socialist, He’d have split the brains equally between them. But He gave almost all to one and almost none to the other. That’s what life’s like – it’s unfair and harsh, and the sooner people acknowledge that, the better. I should watch the younger Browning, though. Sometimes the clever kids can be more trouble than the dense ones. That’s why I came down so hard on Ryan Watson that day he dawdled in late. Can’t let them get too many bright ideas in their heads or you’ll never have any peace for a moment.
It’s been a long day, better get some rest so I can rise again for tomorrow’s duties. Of course, I’m also a block in the pyramid though one positioned a few levels higher than the good folk of Emberfield. Don’t always feel like driving over those damp flatlands to work; don’t always feel like driving back across them as dusk tinges the low sky for another evening at home. But we all have duties – duties! Take out too many blocks and the whole thing will crash down. I’m also – as I should be – firmly mortared in my place.
Friday, March 18th, 1983
Dull day, nothing much happened. Spelling, a bit of basic arithmetic, some reading after lunch. No need for any fireworks or theatrics let alone a walloping. Even those knuckleheads Craig Browning and Darren Hill did all right. Surprising really, considering the little our esteemed Mrs Perkins – also not one of life’s brightest sparks – managed to teach them when they were in her class. Probably too busy fussing with her make-up, don’t know what it is with women nowadays. Pleased, of course, the class didn’t do too badly, but somehow … I don’t know, such days lack something. It’s not that I enjoy yelling and screaming at kids – my health could do with a lot less of it for a start! It’s not that I enjoy picking them up and belting the living daylights from them – not the best for the old health either. But there is satisfaction at seeing discipline imposed, at seeing the fear I’ve put in their classmates’ eyes, at seeing them smart at a clever put-down, seeing them shiver as my voice booms, seeing them howl and sob afterwards. It’s not that I like being cruel, it’s more just contentment at a job well done – a lesson firmly and skilfully powered into them, demonstrated in clear terms to their classmates. And it does take some skill, I can tell you, skills that need a long time to master – the perfectly stretched pause, the soaring rhetoric, the furious outburst that comes at exactly the right time yet is also a shock, the pinpoint timing of the wrist-clasp and lift. Then there’s the swoop of the hand, the twist of the body, the split-second collision of palm and backside – at just the correct angle – that comprise the perfect wallop. You shouldn’t think I was always such an expert in this art – I remember my first class back in Newcastle, now they were a struggle to keep orderly. Long years of practice, my headmaster there said. Of course, he was right. Only danger is, I sometimes get too engrossed in it, too satisfied at my own skill, and I just want to keep going, to crown a perfect display with a magnificent finale. Something I need to watch in myself, especially after what happened with Marcus Jones. Six of the best and two or three for luck is sufficient for most crimes. On reflection, I did go a bit too far with Stubbs and Craig Browning yesterday. Understandable, of course, when one lad gets another to drop a brick on his head, when one lad is merrily beating another to a pulp in the middle of the school field and would have if I hadn’t stopped him! Even so, putting Stubbs down, just looking at the lad, I was panicking we might have another Marcus, panicking about my own booming heart, the tingles running over my skin. Luckily, it was all OK in the end for us both.
The Standing Water Page 17
