The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  Maybe knowing such retribution was coming made the brother well-disposed towards his sibling. That summer, he and Jonathon got on well. He only beat Jonathon up twice during the whole holiday – and these assaults lacked the ferocity of those he gave out at school. There he’d slam his punches, lash his kicks into Richard Johnson, Dennis Stubbs, Darren Hill, a good few other lads, usually after they’d taunted him about a walloping he’d got from Weirton. The brother’s rampages would result in more beatings from the teacher, and so the pattern went on.

  Jonathon continued with work on his robot. He’d sometimes let his brother help though not with the more intricate parts of the machine’s construction nor did he tell that blabbermouth what we planned to use the robot for. But, to be honest, I think – in those heavenly holidays – Jonathon’s mind was drifting away from thoughts of Weirton, and he just became fascinated with his emerging android. We’d already made an old bin into its head, sawn slots in it for eyes, nostrils, mouth. Jonathon now planned to place behind that mouth a speaker from an abandoned record player, which he’d rig up so the creature could talk. Both arms were now done, we just needed to top them with hands – extremities Jonathon was still struggling over. One dingy day, as I helped him in his shed – stripping the wires from salvaged gadgets then sawing the crinkly iron sheet we’d found by the roadside which would be our mechanical monster’s muscular belly – Jonathon told me what he’d found out about robots in his encyclopaedia. Apparently, the first thing that could be called a robot – or at least an artificial man – had been made long ago in a place called Prague: a beautiful and magical city far, far from Emberfield. It’d been made by the Jews, a blessed people who – before Christ came – had been greatly honoured because they were the only nation God would talk to while he ignored everybody else. Since then they’d smeared their copybook somewhat in the Lord’s sight by not accepting Jesus, but surely their record of being for so long the only people who had the ear and mouth of God made them special. Anyway, in Prague, a rabbi, meaning a Jewish vicar, one day decided he’d make a man. This rabbi was deeply learned – like our vicar, he understood many of the mysteries of God and his magic was mighty. He and his followers went one night to the banks of Prague’s river and formed the shape of a huge man from the wet clay there. They circled it seven times chanting magic spells, and then the rabbi took a piece of paper with a holy word on it, and popped it in the creature’s mouth. That muddy man at once came alive and became the rabbi’s servant.

  ‘Wow!’ I stopped the jarring jerk of my saw. ‘Seems it was easier for the rabbi than us.’

  Jonathon nodded.

  ‘Jonathon,’ I said, ‘there’s plenty of mud round Emberfield. We could do the same as they did in Prague – make a man from mud and magic him into life!’

  My friend shook his head.

  ‘They used special magic words and we don’t know them. We’ll just have to rely on tech-no-logy.’

  ‘Maybe the vicar knows the words?’ I said.

  ‘If he did, he wouldn’t tell us. The vicar’s a peaceful man – he wouldn’t agree with us killing anybody, not even Weirton.’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘We do have a problem, don’t we?’ I said. ‘We can make our robot, put all his parts together, that’s not too hard. But how do we make him come alive?’

  ‘It’s difficult,’ Jonathon said. ‘Remember we talked about the legends of those things called computers. According to the encyclopaedia, the legends are true! It says computers can work on their own or be used as robots’ brains!’

  I’d heard more rumours of those miraculous machines, but didn’t know anyone in Emberfield who had one and we certainly didn’t have one at school. I’d wondered if computers really existed or if they were just some myth – a less believable one than ours about lost drummer boys and ghosts. The idea a man could make an artificial brain, especially without magic, just seemed too far-fetched. Surely making brains was the province of God! But, I supposed, if those incredible contraptions were written about in the encyclopaedia, they must really have been invented.

  ‘So if we need one of those computers to make our robot live,’ I asked, ‘where can we get one?’

  ‘Good question,’ Jonathon said, ‘the only thing I can think of is to wait until someone round here buys one – or the school gets one – then steal it!’

  ‘How long do you think that would take?’

  ‘Maybe a few years,’ Jonathon replied, ‘but I’ve heard people down in London have already started getting them.’

  I looked at our robot – the oblong eyes in the wastepaper bin head, the mouth-like gash where the speaker would go, the powerful arms lying lifeless on the floor. Surely there had to be a more common-sense way of animating it than waiting for one of those new-fangled computers. I pondered for some moments.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘I’ve got a much more sensible idea! We could get hold of a long metal pole or make one ourselves. Then wait till there’s a thunderstorm, carry the robot outside, attach it to the pole and have the pole sticking up into the air. Then hopefully God will send a bolt of lightning down and it’ll jerk our robot into life!’

  ‘Dunno …’

  ‘Come on!’ I said. ‘We should allow God’s magic to help us instead of trying to do it all ourselves!’

  ‘We’d have to put the robot under a plastic sheet,’ Jonathon mused, looking unconvinced. ‘Wouldn’t want the wires getting wet …’

  I got the feeling Jonathon couldn’t be jolted from his technical mania, from his determination to go beyond God’s limits of what a man might do or know. I’d heard legends of people who’d got themselves into trouble this way. One man had sold his soul to the Devil – even signing a contract with the fiend in his own blood! – because he wanted to get all the knowledge in the world. But such knowledge hadn’t given any happiness, and the man had died screaming as demons had dragged his soul down to hell. Another fellow had conceived the unnatural desire to fly like a bird. He’d made wings out of feathers and wax, but had soared too close to the sun. The wax had melted and he’d gone crashing down to his doom. And even the good rabbi in Prague, despite his vast wisdom, had got out of his depth with his muddy android. The automaton had gone mad, and started smashing up the Jewish district until the rabbi had managed to snatch the paper with the holy word from its mouth, and the robot had melted into a pile of sludge – going back to what it had always been, what God had always intended it to be.

  And so the summer slipped by in a kind of happy dream, me writing and drawing, Jonathon labouring over his inventions. I occasionally thought of the gauntlet, thought we should try to steal it now we had the time, thought of all the spooks we’d made our pledges to. I always meant to mention it to Jonathon, but something would distract or absorb me and I’d forget, or I’d tell him and we’d agree to steal it soon yet never get round to it.

  Those long wonderful days wore on. We’d still get our sweets from Davis, toss in a few for the ghostly kids in the Old School then head up to throw some to Marcus in his pond. The only problem was – Marcus was shrinking. When we’d broken up for the holidays, his pond had been a sizeable circle, a deep-looking disc of brown water. But, gradually, it had retreated, leaving plains of raw mud which hardened into a landscape scarred by criss-crossing cracks, by honeycomb patterns. We watched in amazement as Marcus shrank further – soon his pond was half its size then he was only as big as our bathtub then no larger than the pool in which our gnome fished in our garden. Then Marcus’s domains could have fitted into our kitchen sink, and – to give him his sweets – we had to walk across his dried mud and drop them down to him. As the sun shone more, the pool shrank further – it could have been housed in a pan, a soup bowl, a teacup – until by July there was nothing but a wasteland of hard earth. Rusty cans stuck from the dirt like iron gravestones; there were other objects, dust-embalmed, we couldn’t identify. What had happened to Marcus? How could that life-threatening, ice-sheened winter lake; t
hat obese ocean swollen with spring rain become so enfeebled then just disappear? Was Marcus beaten and dead, or might he – like King Arthur – one day return? Perhaps in a far-off future we’d know.

  The holidays did finally finish, the warm weather ended and the doleful day came when we had to go back to school. On a September morning, Jonathon and I plodded with the other plodding kids – returning to a lugubrious life we’d almost forgotten: a former existence which – in those summer centuries – had become so vaguely remembered as to be almost mythical. Indeed, some of us had even begun to doubt we’d ever lived it. But now, here we were, tramping up our patch of town’s main street – tramping through drizzle-soaked air, past the strands of fog low on the fields, past the wisps rising from the dunghills. We passed the gap with the witch’s hand – we looked: it was there, an evil omen outlined by the weak sun. We passed the familiar drab houses, the damp prissy gardens; turned on the pub’s corner. Swinging our reluctant bodies round, we trudged up the school road and saw at least one sight that cheered us. Marcus’s pond was now a crater of rich wet mud, recent rain having smoothed out its cracks. And in the middle – maybe the size of my mum’s washing bowl – was a defiant circle of water.

  ‘Look!’ My arm thrust my finger out. ‘Marcus is coming back!’

  Jonathon smiled, nodded. We gazed in satisfaction at that tiny pond – as we’d suspected, Marcus hadn’t been dead, but just sleeping in the soil, waiting for the rain to wake him. Emboldened by Marcus’s victorious return, we joined the others and walked through the school gates. We entered a cloakroom milling with wet children – steam rose from ninety kagools: vapour which massed under the ceiling like a bad-tempered cloud. Kids scuffled, pushed, bickered – patterning the floor with hundreds of footprints. The usual smells of wet hair and damp coats mingled with the pong of festering PE kits left in forgotten bags over the summer.

  I immediately regretted our failure to get the gauntlet, regretted that the summer had lulled us into forgetfulness about Weirton’s ferocity, that I’d been half-persuaded our problems could be solved by Jonathon’s technical endeavours. Before lunchtime had come, we were hearing Weirton raging and stamping at the brother then hearing impacts shuddering and sobs chugging from next door as Perkins raised her darkened and sculpted eyebrows, as Stubbs and Richard Johnson smirked. After lunch, the fireworks were in our class. Weirton swooped in to reprimand Stubbs for something he’d done out on the field and soon the bash of hand on backside was reverberating round our room as Stubbs flung out tears, as those tears streamed on his sickly white face, as his desperate lips battled for breath. And as Weirton thrashed his way to that whacking’s climax, as Weirton stooped, red-faced, struggling for his own breath afterwards, I thought the headmaster seemed different. He had, of course, been a tyrant before, but something had changed. The way he’d greeted us in assembly – it was like he was itching with rage, twitching with anger, like he was just waiting for the tiniest thing to trigger his fury’s eruption: a thing that had come, unsurprisingly, from Craig. Even after that rage had again gushed out over Stubbs, more seemed to bubble up, and soon more yells, more bashes of fists on tables juddered through our wall. I didn’t know what had happened to Weirton, but his mood seemed blacker, even more fiery than before the holidays.

  On Tuesday, Darren Hill and Richard Johnson got walloped. Richard’s ghost-white face, his frantic and useless gasps for air, the – almost lifeless – way the boy’s body flopped when he was put down, and the wheezes he gave out as his ravenous lungs tugged breath in put me in mind of Marcus and Lucy. A few more whacks and Richard might have ended up like them. My heart thumped as I thought of Marcus – of the dead boy’s spirit awakening in his tiny pond – and of Lucy, grim and bare-boned in her cupboard. I bitterly cursed the fact we hadn’t got that gauntlet. As the days passed, and Weirton’s yells reverberated round the school, as his huge hands clasped, lifted, swept, I knew it couldn’t be long till Jonathon and I were clobbered. And, sure enough, on the Friday of the first week back, my friend was pitching through the air as he pitched out his tears, as he sobbed and choked. I prayed to God, I begged all the spooks we’d made our pledges to, not to let him become another Marcus. My thankfulness gushed as I watched him totter back to his seat, swaying on springy legs as Weirton gazed down on him. On Monday, it was my turn. In the six weeks of holidays, I’d forgotten the force of those impacts, how much they knocked out of you. I’d forgotten the desperate vacuum in the lungs, the panic of the sob-blocked throat, the rolling and bouncing on the elastic legs afterwards, the pain of lowering my buzzing backside onto my seat. There was no doubt about it, Weirton had to die. At break-time, I talked to Jonathon.

  ‘We’ve got to get that gauntlet!’

  ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I reckon my robot might nearly be ready. Just need to find one of those computers.’

  ‘How long’s that gonna take? We still don’t know anyone who has one!’

  ‘I’ve heard some rich people on the other side of Emberfield have started getting them.’

  ‘But how would we get into their houses to steal them? They’ll have locks on the doors and guard dogs and maybe booby traps and guns! At least with the church at Salton we can just walk in.’

  ‘Suppose.’ Jonathon shrugged.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’d trust magic over science any day. At least we know magic works!’

  That Saturday we met to steal the glove. Black clouds moved ominously over the sky, but they dropped no rain. I wondered if they meant thunder; if after that thunder growled, lightning would streak: if one of those bolts would smite Jonathon’s forehead, brand onto him Cain’s mark, but though those clouds shifted moodily, rolled their swollen bulks across the heavens, no sparks, no thunder came. We first threw sweets to the kids in the Old School, renewed our pledges to them. We then tossed candies to Marcus, repeated our vows to him. We were pleased to see that a week of downpours had helped him get back some strength, had helped his pond swell to the size of my gnome’s pool. Next we looked for the witch’s hand. It was there that day, just visible down its crack in the gloom – a wicked shape urging us on in our schemes against Weirton. We spoke our vow to it then sneaked off down the road of council houses, Jonathon sneering as he pointed out all the things his parents mocked – their crooked fences, bumpy gardens, flaking paint. We passed the legendary Big School, where Darren and the brother were due to go if they survived another year with Weirton, and were soon approaching Salton’s gates.

  We paused in front of that magical portal, as the eroded lions watched us from the lichen-spotted pillars and the rusty weed-entwined iron stood patiently. We readied ourselves to enter that realm with its ghost-laden air, reminded each other of the need to pay homage to its spooks. We stepped over that threshold, tramped past the fields and copses, and were soon crossing the bridge over the Bunt. As that brown river gurgled, I wondered again if God might strike down with his vengeance, punish Jonathon at the scene of his crime just as Weirton had. But the clouds remained thick, dark, looking as difficult to divide as it was for our minds to fathom God’s mysteries. For whatever reason, God didn’t fire down the scorching bolt of his justice, and we could move on. Across the fields was the farmhouse haunted by Henry VIII, and with respectful words we acknowledged that great king. We tramped on. The walk seemed so much quicker than last time. What had before been a long path bordered by massive fields, a path that demanded a good leg-aching tramp between each of its legendary sites, could now be stridden down with an effort that required little more than hard breathing. We soon came to the Knights Templars’ lands. We repeated our pledges to those warrior magicians, and I once more felt that strange tingle in my spine, as they sent their enchantments sparking across the eons. We got to the fields where the Scots slept, renewed our oaths to those soldiers. I thought of their mingled bones, rusty weapons lying in the black earth, thought of all the power those ghostly hordes could give us in our struggle. We passed the mysterious, cloud-scraping water tow
er, but noticed the wood surrounding that structure seemed to have been reduced to just a thicket. Leaving it, we saw the church and castle raised up on their knolls and we paused by the Drummer Boy’s stone. No beats or rattles sounded, but I wasn’t put off. During the holidays, I’d heard his patters and rolls plenty of times as I lay in bed, swelling out of the blackness of the brief summer nights. Now I wondered if the Drummer had been trying to urge me – with his language of clatters and thuds – to grab that gauntlet before school started. But, anyway, we placed our hands on his rough stone, once more spoke our vows to him.

  We wobbled and waded across the marshy fields – luckily there were no horses that day – and were soon entering the church’s sacred enclosure, passing under its iron arch. We hid our muddy boots in the same place as before. I reached my hand out, pushed the doors – they were thankfully open. We crept into the church, padded across its cold flags. There were the familiar smells of old stone and mouldy hymnbooks, the arched windows letting in their weak rays of light, the dread railed-off altar, with – of course – the gauntlet suspended in front. My heart banged at the sight of that glove.

  ‘Quick!’ I said. ‘Better not hang around!’

  We gathered three thick cushions from under the pews and stacked them beneath the gauntlet. I squatted on that tower of wool. Jonathon clambered onto my shoulders.

  ‘Hope no one comes in!’ he said. ‘We were so close to getting caught last time!’