The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  The horse instead trotted closer – each step a stomp that flung up dirty fluid.

  ‘Just ignore it everybody!’ Weirton shouted. ‘And follow me!’

  The horse moved again until it stood in the centre of our path. About three metres away, it lowered its head; its eyes bulged at us trespassers. It tossed its mane; the black lips went back, revealing the flat stones of its giant teeth.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get past, Sir?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Ryan,’ Weirton said. ‘I’ll deal with this… this creature!’

  ‘Everybody remain where you are!’ Weirton called back to our straggly parade. ‘Don’t move!’

  Weirton walked in slow steps up to the horse. All you could hear were the coos of pigeons and the slurp of the ground as he lifted his boots. He walked until he stood perhaps two feet from the animal. Then – face lit by a gleeful sneer, eyes sticking out as much as the stallions’ – he stooped his shoulders, stretched his neck so his head was carried forward. The stallion’s cloudy breath broke on Weirton’s face, and man and horse became locked in a stare. Weirton’s smile broadened; he pulled his lips back so his huge front teeth were also uncovered. He gazed into those eyes taut with their inky liquid, gazed into those endless dark pools. My breath caught and stuttered; my heart beat a slow thud. I’d heard a legend that if confronted with an animal, however dangerous – a bear, a bull, a lion, a serpent – if you had the guts to stare at it and not remove your gaze, it’d eventually submit and slink off. Surely Weirton knew that bit of lore. He seemed entranced now, hypnotised by the deep ponds of that horse’s eyes. He didn’t blink; didn’t slacken his stare; his mouth still curved in its curious smile. The horse also appeared bewitched, lost in the unfamiliar malice of human eyes. But it didn’t bow its head, trail off meekly as the legend had promised. I was close enough to see the swell of tensed muscles under its sweating pelt, see spirals of steam snake from its hide. Still man and beast stayed frozen in their conflict. It reminded me of a vague legend I’d heard of the first ever struggle between man and horse on vast plains long ago. But now Weirton, while not taking away his gaze, was moving his right arm down and back. He gently shook it, stretched his fingers then knotted those fingers into a fist. Face still cut with his grin, and now gleaming with the sweat of expectancy, he edged his fist higher till his arm was at shoulder level then inched the right side of his torso back. All the horse’s attention was still sucked into Weirton’s stare; the teacher now twisted his hip back as well. The hip sprang forward; the torso swung; the arm flew, driving the fist. That fist smashed into the horse’s jaw. A crack reverberated; the horse gave a shrill neigh, reared on its hind legs, waving its front hooves high. The horse unleashed another juddering scream; Weirton shuffled back, raised his arms as if they could protect him when the stallion crashed down. The horse dropped to the ground perhaps two paces from him. It bucked, kicked out its hind legs, snorted, rose, whinnied then turned and – with sulky stomps – trotted off to its mate. Weirton turned to his pupils; he wagged his hand, winced, clasped it in his opposite palm. But the pain screwing his face couldn’t conquer his broad smile.

  ‘It’s all safe now, children!’ he shouted. ‘Follow me over to the church. I’m sure that animal won’t be causing any more trouble!’

  Weirton swivelled and – still clutching the hand, which now hung limp – he marched to the church gate. We formed an obedient awe-hushed procession and tramped after him. From the knoll of the castle, the horses watched us with their liquid eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Looking back across the years, peering through the fogs of memory, I see Weirton leading us to the lichen-splattered wall of the churchyard, ducking under the rusty iron arch that crowned that churchyard’s entrance. We followed him: within that sacred enclosure was bumpy ground, dipping and bulging with the contours of burials. Headstones of various ages leaned, the newer ones still clear about who lay beneath. The older markers were obscured by the creep of moss, the acne of lichen, by the relentless rain which had worn the stone until you had to squint to make out the lettering. The even more ancient stones had lost all trace of the chisel – they were slabs of primal rock, washed by generations of rain, eroded of all flourishes, words, corners. Half-swallowed by the soil, they’d gone back to what they were, what they’d always been. Weirton climbed onto a flat tomb, called for us to gather round. His black heels rubbed off flakes of lichen-crusted stone, delicate bits of carving each time the huge body jerked or twisted.

  ‘OK, children,’ he said, ‘I’m going to hand out the sketchpads, pencils and crayons. You can make sketches of the gravestones or maybe – if you like – draw the church or those yew trees over there.’

  Weirton’s arm – the one capped by his good hand – thrust towards where a clump of those boxlike trees stood. Emblems of immortality, I’d heard, as they never lost their mournful dark green. If those shrubs symbolised eternity, it had to be a somewhat sombre one. I thought of how those evergreens sucked their food from the dead, how they really did conquer death in this way, reaching their roots down to splinter coffins, topple headstones. Weirton went on.

  ‘Or you could take some rubbings of the tombs – remember we learnt to do that in class. Whatever you do, just produce something. I’ll give you half an hour. By the time that clock says half-past ten …’

  The arm now stretched to the clock that ticked below the battlements of the church tower. Built of the same stark stone as the castle, the church seemed equally severe. Even the clock appeared harsh, its hands wrought in the shape of arrows: arrows to prick and wound our sinful worldliness, arrows in flight to show the rush of time, its gallop towards everyone and everything’s inevitable end.

  ‘… I’ll expect you to have something decent done. I – or Mrs Perkins – will inspect each of your drawings. And if they’re not up to standard, I think you know what will happen!’

  Weirton dismounted from his sepulchral platform. Given their sketching tools then permission to disperse, the children ran among the graves – skipping, laughing, chattering. I walked to a headstone near the wall that had already attracted my eye. Near that stone, a rusty tap topped a simple pipe that stuck up from the ground – for the mourners’ flowers, I supposed. Weirton strode over to it. He twisted the tap with his good hand, put the other – painfully half-clenched – under the jerky stream. He winced as the water gushed.

  ‘Are you all right, Sir?’ I asked.

  ‘I think so, Ryan, thank you.’ Weirton gave a slight smile. ‘I hope I didn’t startle anyone too much by hitting that horse. It was the only thing I could think of to stop it pestering us.’

  ‘I think you were very brave, Sir,’ I said.

  A grin cracked Weirton’s face. He straightened up and – using mainly his good hand, but flinching when he had to use his bad – unknotted his tie. He bathed it in the stuttering stream then wound it bandage-like around fingers that were already swelling, turning an angry red.

  ‘Are you sure it’s OK, Sir?’

  ‘I think I’ll survive, Ryan.’ Weirton grinned again. ‘It’s like when you’ve thumped another lad and your fist aches afterwards. I’m sure you know that feeling. Well, times that by ten, and that’s what I have. But I don’t think anything’s broken, at least not on my body.’

  Weirton smiled once more and paced off to check my schoolmates’ sketches. Soon he was advising, praising, threatening, thrusting the blunt spear of his good finger down at the drawings. I squatted to study my stone. I’d meant what I’d said about Weirton’s courage. In my admiration, all hatred of the headmaster had flown away – on wings as light as those on which the dead around me must have fluttered to heaven. He was no longer a hated bully – all I could picture was him facing down that fearsome animal, before bashing his brave fist into that stubborn stallion. The other lads felt the same – the line had hummed with celebratory mutters and whispers as Weirton had led his victory procession towards the arch of the church. Even Jon
athon had murmured approvingly as the low buzz of the boys had begun to fashion the incident into folklore. But now I had to focus on that tombstone or – whatever their injuries – I might feel those horse-crushing hands.

  My stone bore the name of Joseph Wilson – who’d departed this life in 1798. A strange phrase, now I think about it – as if the deceased had hopped on a train, with an umbrella, newspaper and overnight bag. I sketched away, getting the stone’s rain-ravaged curves and corners, the flourishes of the mason just about visible in those lumpy edges. I squinted to read the dedication – the letters lying perhaps five millimetres below the rest of the rock, except for the odd one that was completely worn or masked by lichen. Towards the bottom, to my delight, I could make out a glob-like protrusion underscored by two raised diagonals – the weathered remains of a skull-and-crossbones. My pencil slid over the paper – shading here where the stone was darker, tracing the vague lettering there, reproducing the motionless explosions of lichen spots, triumphantly etching the death’s head.

  ‘That’s great!’

  A finger jabbed onto my page; I jumped; my pencil slipped, causing the last bump of the last crossed bone to sprout a jerky line. I jolted my rubber across that sudden embarrassment.

  ‘Must be the best sketch today – I’ll show it to the others as an example.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir,’ I said.

  From my crouching position, I looked along the finger, up the arm, to Weirton’s towering face, which beamed down from on high.

  ‘It’s excellent, very accurate; I love the little skull.’ The face beamed again, the finger thrust, smudging one side of that skull’s dome. ‘You seem to have a knack for art, young Watson, that and writing stories. You know, I think God’s got a sense of humour – He could have endowed you with useful gifts, made you excellent at spelling and mathematics, but instead He loads you with these pointless talents. What good are pretty words and pictures to a country lad of your class? But what God doesn’t grant us we must develop through hard work and discipline. You enjoy yourself today, Ryan, you shade and draw to your heart’s content. Why not take some rubbings of those stones over there?’

  I quickly finished my sketch, correcting the lines smeared by the prod of Weirton’s finger, copying the wet blades of grass that curved and quivered at the tomb’s base – trying, in my limited timespan, to reproduce their beads of rainwater, to capture those transparent orbs of endlessness, the shimmering eternity displayed in each drop. I straightened up, trudged over to the graveyard’s other side to do my rubbings as Weirton had commanded. I hadn’t understood all the headmaster had told me, but in my chest the embers of his approval burnt a steady glow. I took pride in his compliments, in the thought of him thrusting forward my picture as an example to the other kids. I thought slyly of the looks of hatred and envy from the brother and Stubbs, the smug martyrdom with which I might later bear their punches. Now I came to the place Weirton had indicated, chose a stone, leaned my paper against it, readied my crayon. I was near the sombre columns of those yews, close enough to smell their funereal perfume: like that of pines, but denser, heavier, less fresh, as if they were breathing back what they’d had for their food. But in the tough and prickly branches of one of those shrubs, a little bird perched. It trilled into the mournful misty air, throwing all its weight, all its body, all of its tiny lungs into its defiant song. As my crayon rubbed against death’s marker, rubbed against that stone signalling life’s end, that creature went on warbling its very earthly joy, singing into the infinity of that damp morning. Nearby were Suzie Green and Helen Jacobs, both on their first pictures. I couldn’t resist a glance. Helen’s was – to put it broadly – crap. It was all pleasantly shaded in her good-girl colours: the worn grave a neat grey stone with clear lettering, with a cheerful blue sky floating above in spite of the heavy storm clouds loading the heavens. Bright flowers danced at the stone’s base despite the presence there of just grass. In another insult to actuality, a happy snail with a colourful shell crawled on the tomb, jolly attentive eyes poised on its stalks. All that was really there was an empty grey shell lying at the stone’s foot. She should have made more of its spiral: a staircase that wound the eye down into eternity – circular steps with no beginning, no end. Instead we had her jovial cartoon creature. I knew her picture would elicit shrill praises from Perkins. Weirton was more on my morbid wavelength – he’d appreciated the bulging clouds I’d drawn, my unadorned facts of life’s finish: the slow oblivion of eroding stone, the crumbling death’s head. Speaking of wavelengths, I tuned into the conversation between Helen and Suzie. Suzie stared at the turf under the stone she was making an appalling sketch of; her chin gave a wobble.

  ‘Well, what did you think it was like down there?’ Helen was saying.

  ‘I don’t know …’ said Suzie, as her chin quivered once more, ‘maybe a bit like our life, but underground. You know, like living in an underground house –’

  ‘Silly!’ said Helen. ‘Graves don’t have kitchens and sitting rooms and bedrooms and things like that.’

  ‘Well, what are they like, then?’

  ‘Just earth, I suppose, and blackness, and worms –’

  ‘Eeeuch! Sounds horrible! Horrible and really, really boring!’

  ‘Well, maybe you don’t worry about being bored when you’re dead. Maybe you’re not even too frightened of creepy crawlies.’

  ‘Perhaps being dead’s not so bad then!’ Suzie’s mouth turned up, a little red bloomed in her cheeks. ‘At least you wouldn’t have to put up with Perkins and Weirton!’

  ‘OK children, everybody come over here!’

  Weirton’s boom cut across the girls’ chatter. Shaken out of their philosophising, the girls joined the other kids trooping to where Weirton stood near the church door. The kids sheepishly gripped their pictures – half-finished, varying in degrees from passable to atrocious. If they’d wished to show their failure, they couldn’t have mimed it more – slow steps, hanging heads, drawings dangling from drooping arms like lacklustre flags. I quickly finished my rubbing: jerking the crayon across the stone, achieving a rusty red reproduction of the letters stating that in 1824 Mary Robson had departed – booking her single fare on that heavenly express train. I just managed to trace the solemn capitals RIP – why did people write ‘rip’ on graves? What got ripped? Was it some ghastly form of death? – before I had to join that plodding semi-circle closing around the headmaster. When we’d all assembled, Weirton spoke.

  ‘Children, it’s time for us to go into the church. I shouldn’t have to remind you of this, but I will – it is God’s house you are going to enter! When you visit someone’s home, you should – as you know – be on your best behaviour, and this is, of course, even more the case when you visit the abode of almighty God! So if any of you do the slightest thing wrong – any bad words, clumsiness, fighting – I promise I will knock you into the middle of next week! Is that clear now?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Weirton,’ came our undulating chorus.

  ‘OK, so follow me – and for heaven’s sake, wipe your feet! We don’t want you tramping dirt and dung all over our Father’s living room!’

  Weirton swivelled and strode through the arch of the church porch. I briefly surveyed the building before going in. It looked very holy – rising, a stern stronghold of God, above the slanting graves and bumpy ground. It was built of those little old stones – held together by moss and ancient mortar – that seemed to breathe a sacred weightiness from a distant past. There were the rows of pointy windows, filled with their sober patchworks of clear leaded glass – each with its arch tapering to its tip: showing the soul’s leap towards God, the vicar had told us. I squeezed through the church’s mighty oak doors into the porch, joined the scrum of boys. They pushed, barged and jostled as they ritually scraped their feet on the mat, the rasps echoing in that chamber. Weirton watched, eyes fixed on us with satisfaction as we so eagerly followed his command. He at least seemed to have forgotten the promise to inspect our pictur
es, but now we laboured under a new imperative – a single spot of dirt, a lone clod of dung trampled into God’s holy dwelling and our backsides would reverberate with the Lord’s wrath for a week. The problem was there were so many children, so much wet earth and damp shit, that the mat – the humble mat that lay before the second set of doors – soon became a slough, a store of all the mud we’d brought from outside.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Weirton shouted. ‘That little mat won’t take all your filth! Why don’t you use that metal scraper like any civilised human being would?’

  Weirton thrust his arm at that device, which stood at the side of the porch.

  ‘I’m warning you!’ Weirton’s first finger on his good hand wagged. ‘The tiniest piece of dirt trampled into the Lord’s house, and I will come down on you with such force you will think God himself is pouring down his vengeance! Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Weirton,’ we recited.

  We boys pushed and fought to get at the foot-scraper. Under the cover of the scrum, I gave Stubbs a good shove, sending him spiralling out of the crowd. He tripped, banged and bounced across the floor, before being halted by the thud of his head on carved stone. I gasped; guilt swelled from my stomach at Stubbs’s wincing face, at the very real possibility this could mean a whacking. But Weirton just beamed benignly, tipping back and forward on his feet, jovial hands clasped behind his back. He seemed pleased to see this particular rowdiness; this earnest rumpus aimed at obeying his orders. In the midst of the throng, Darren Hill jabbed a couple of blows into my stomach; I retaliated by bringing my knee up into his balls. I finally got to the scraper and was able to scratch the rich black earth from my soles. Shoes clean enough, I hoped, I made off through the porch, whose sombre stone and tapered roof still echoed with our shuffles, scrapes, smacks and bickers, and – slipping through the weighty doors that stood ajar – I entered the church’s main body. As a group of us strode into that vast chamber, the booming voice followed.