The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  My heart beat harder as I remembered Weirton striding in, as I thought of how easy it’d be for someone to march into the church, catch us taking that glove. Then again, it’d be just as easy for Weirton to go too far with one of his whackings and make us end up like Lucy or Marcus. Jonathon firmly on my shoulders, I straightened up. I tried to keep my balance as he swayed above me and the cushions sagged and shifted below. I struggled to make sure he wouldn’t lurch into the altar’s precinct and meet the same fiery fate as the knight. He reached his arms up; his fingers closed around the glove. I sucked in breath as his triumphant hands clasped it. Voices were coming from my right. I jerked my head, saw – through the arched windows – figures walking in the graveyard: old people, their grey heads bent, bodies stooped. I didn’t recognise them, but still my heart pumped. Nausea, vertigo swirled in my stomach.

  ‘Adults!’ I whispered. ‘Just outside the window! If they looked into the church, they’ll see us!’

  ‘Oh no!’

  I moved to put Jonathon down, praying none of those grown-ups would glance in. I began to squat, but Jonathon didn’t let go of the gauntlet. His hands gripped it hard in their panic. Now Jonathon was off my shoulders and I just had hold of his shins. The cushions slipped and shifted. I swayed, wrenching Jonathon one way then the other as I battled to stay upright. Jonathon still grasped the gauntlet; its chain was jerked from side-to-side; flakes of plaster fluttered down from the ceiling. From outside, the polite voices drifted, their words floating into the church, quivering with a tremble that showed the ancientness of the speakers.

  ‘Ryan!’ Jonathon hissed, as – like dry snowflakes – more bits of plaster twisted down. ‘Stand still and straighten up!’

  ‘But those people –’

  ‘Just do it!’

  I did as he asked, balancing on the wobbling stack of cushions. It felt like one wrong movement could send them sliding from under me. Jonathon resting once more on my shoulders, he began to slip the gauntlet’s metal loop over the hook. A scraping sound rasped as my heart thumped. The metal sounded ancient, rusted into place by the passage of long ages. Now it was scabs of orange that drifted down to fall on my hair, my face. Still those voices came from outside. I glanced at the windows, saw the grey heads nodding, wizened necks moving those heads along. I just prayed none of those heads would turn.

  ‘Got it!’ Jonathon said.

  I glanced upwards. The gauntlet had been freed from its hook; Jonathon’s hands clasped it. I squatted down; the cushions tipped and swayed but didn’t topple us. Jonathon scrabbled off my shoulders.

  ‘Quick! Hide!’ I hissed.

  I threw the cushions back under the pews, and we raced to the tomb of the knight and his lady, squeezed into the gap between it and the wall. As we panted, as I fumbled with the straps of the satchel I’d brought, I begged the knight and lady to protect us, just as they’d shielded us from Weirton. Jonathon’s trembling hands slipped the gauntlet into my bag; my shivering fingers closed and fastened it. We could still hear those quavering voices.

  ‘Do you reckon they saw us?’ Jonathon asked.

  ‘Doubt it,’ I whispered. ‘If they had, they’d have come straight in here.’

  ‘Maybe they’re gonna call the police!’

  ‘Dunno, they seem too calm.’

  ‘You can never tell with grown-ups. Sometimes Weirton sounds really calm – then he goes absolutely mental!’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Hide here till they go. And keep quiet!’

  We stayed in our squat. Pins and needles began torturing my legs. The voices went silent, and we were just about to sneak off when they started up on the other side of the church. I thought those grown-ups were really brave to go there – to the church’s shadow side, where those who’d killed themselves were buried. But I supposed the stakes the vicar had driven into those bodies would keep any unquiet spirits pinned down. We had to stay crouched as those voices leisurely drifted down that side of the church, accompanied – I imagined – by the creak of ancient limbs. To distract myself from the tingles and needle jabs in my legs, I tried to guess how old those people were. I doubted they were quite as old as Davis so they probably didn’t remember Noah’s Flood, but perhaps they were aged enough to have seen Moses giving out his dread laws. Anyway, we stayed in our agonising crouch as those voices slowly rounded the church.

  ‘Just hope they don’t come in!’ I hissed. ‘They’ll see the gauntlet’s gone!’

  No one came in; the voices dwindled away until there was silence. Jonathon and I stayed squatting for a little longer then crept to the door. We sneaked into the porch, peered into the graveyard. There was no sign of anybody, no sound of elderly mumbles.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ I whispered.

  Boots back on, we tottered and balanced through the horseless fields and were soon back on the path. Only then could we feel our triumph.

  ‘We got the gauntlet! We got the gauntlet!’ I sang, skipping down the track, waving my fists high.

  ‘Just need to find a way to put it on Weirton’s hand now.’ Jonathon walked calmly.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but even if we can’t, that glove should protect us. The legend says it protects people against murders and vio-lence.’

  Jonathon frowned; his eyebrows narrowed.

  ‘What is it?’ I slowed my prance till I was only walking.

  ‘I’m just not sure –’ he spoke slowly ‘– if these legends are always true.’

  ‘Course they are! They wouldn’t be legends if they weren’t!’

  ‘It’s just that … in the church, I’m sure my hands went further than the altar rail, and nothing happened to me like it did to the knight!’

  ‘You can’t have gone further!’ I said. ‘The knight must have been destroyed for going beyond that rail! Why else would the gauntlet be hanging there? Even Mr Weirton said it was true!’

  ‘Suppose …’ Jonathon shrugged.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  In my room that evening, I drew the gauntlet from my satchel. It was slightly larger than one of my dad’s gloves; it felt weighty in my hands, but not as heavy as I’d imagined. It was scabbed with spots of rust, stained with what were obviously scorch marks. I wondered how Jonathon could ever doubt the legend of the knight’s fate – I couldn’t with such evidence right before me. Even the smell of the thing – a scent of old iron and leather insides stiffened by ages – had a hint of burnt metal. My heart boomed as I held that glove – I could feel its ancientness, sense its dread power. I recalled more of the legend: that – though the glove would protect those who possessed it – it had a tendency to slip onto the hands of its owners. And as I turned and examined that gauntlet, I did feel it had a desire to slide towards my finger ends, to fit itself onto my hand. I resolved not to take the thing out too much, to handle it only when necessary and then with the utmost care. For the moment, I wrapped it in a couple of plastic bags I’d filched from my mum, and hid it at the bottom of my toy box, under bricks, cars and trucks, under the guardianship of scores of jumbled soldiers.

  I went round to Jonathon’s the next day and we realised we had a problem. We’d managed to get the gauntlet, but how on earth would we put it on Weirton’s hand? We weren’t even in the headmaster’s class, which made the whole thing even more difficult.

  ‘There’s no way we could get it on his hand without him seeing us,’ Jonathon said.

  ‘Maybe I should bring it to school in my satchel every day just in case,’ I said. ‘You never know when we might get an opp-ort-unity.’

  Jonathon frowned.

  ‘Of course, we never know. But I wouldn’t rely on it. I’d better keep working on my robot. If we can’t use magic, we can always fall back on science.’

  We went into his shed and did some work on that android. As I sawed iron and later filed down some metal posts Jonathon said he’d ‘found’ near a road mender’s hut, which he hoped would be the monster’s thighs, Jonathon talked about what h
e’d learned from his encyclopaedia: the – often astounding – facts he’d stumbled across while searching for information to make his robot. For instance, the idea my seven-year-old mind had concocted about the world being made up of four elements had been believed in by the Egyptians, who’d built the Pyramids, and also by some people called phi-los-ophers – meaning clever men – who’d lived long ago in a place called Greece. It had also been believed by men called alchemists, who’d understood many of the mysteries of God and spent their time trying to turn normal metal into gold. I thought it could be useful to learn that skill – we could transform the bits of old iron scattered around the shed into that precious substance, but Jonathon said the encyclopaedia didn’t tell him the formula. Anyway, from what that book said, it seemed Jonathon’s notions had been more accurate – it claimed the world was indeed made up of tiny particles, called mol-ec-ules, which you couldn’t see yet comprised everything. The encyclopaedia said nothing about each of them housing a whole universe, but who knew what the scholars of the future might find out?

  Anyway, the next day was Monday, and as we trudged to school, I felt the extra weight of that gauntlet in my satchel. It was strange to sit in Perkins’s class, knowing that object of immense power lay right by my feet. My heart thudded whenever I reached into my bag to take out a book or pen and my fingers brushed against that metal. How easy it would be for them to slip into that glove! When Perkins wasn’t looking, I tried to make things safer by subtly twisting the gauntlet to position it with its fingers pointing up. But a few minutes later I reached into my bag and found that glove had somehow shuffled back to how it had been before. I sucked in a strong breath; Stubbs, Helen Jacobs, other kids looked at me. Thankfully, that sound didn’t get through Perkins’s woolly hair to her ears.

  As I laboured through my dull sums and drab books, I ransacked my brain, searching for ways we could get that glove onto Weirton. The headmaster did sweep into our class – once to whack Stubbs, another time to yell at Suzie Green, to loom above her drilling his finger into her crown as tears coursed down her grey face. But as the headmaster sweated and walloped, as he drove his merciless finger into Suzie’s shivering head, as he watched with satisfaction as the girl was stretched over Perkins’s knee, I could think of no schemes to get that artefact from my satchel and onto the teacher’s hand.

  The next day there was an unexpected assembly announcement. Perkins was sick so Weirton said he’d take our class while a supply teacher taught his own.

  ‘That way I can keep an eye on certain troublesome individuals,’ the voice juddered as Weirton’s eyes panned the hall, ‘mentioning no names – Dennis Stubbs and Richard Johnson! Also, Craig Browning and Darren Hill will join the lower juniors today. I’d like to keep an eye on you too and – let’s face it – I don’t think either of you dunces would suffer from the work being too simple!’

  Back in the classroom, Weirton strode as his voice rumbled. He explained some maths, his chalk squeaking as he drove it hard – as if he had to gouge the numbers into the board. He was a better teacher than Perkins, but not much. He seemed irritated – the vast shoulders twitched; the huge face looked tired as if he hadn’t slept. When he bent down to check our work, I noticed more grey hairs streaking the rigid blond. It didn’t take us long to make him angry – he blasted Suzie Green, the mouse shivering at each of his yells as if she was being assailed by gusts of freezing wind. He drilled his finger down into Stubbs’s head. Darren and the brother exchanged smirks as Dennis’s face trembled and drooped under that relentless pain. But Weirton’s rage seemed to simmer at a certain level – there was no full eruption, no whacking given out. Break came, and Jonathon and I were soon hunched in a corner of the playground.

  ‘We’ve got to do it today!’ I said. ‘We might never get this chance again!’

  ‘But how?’ said Jonathon. ‘How would we get the glove on him, especially without him seeing us?’

  We walked back in with the satisfaction of knowing we had a plan. My heart’s booms shook through my body as that lesson dragged on, as Weirton yelled, sweated, glowered, thumped his desk, but didn’t completely explode or wallop anybody. I kept thinking of our plot, mulling it in my brain. It could be quick; it could be simple; with some luck we wouldn’t get spotted. I just had to sit and wait as lunchtime drew closer, as – between Weirton’s bashes and shouts – the clock ticked its slow seconds down, as I thought of the dread artefact hidden by my satchel’s thin fabric. Eventually, the clock’s hands came together at twelve.

  ‘Stand!’ Weirton bellowed.

  Chairs scraped, shoes shuffled as thirty kids got to their feet. Under the cover of this noise and movement, I reached down into my bag. My fingers gripped the gauntlet. I whipped it from my satchel, slipped it under my jumper then rested my arm against my side to keep it in place. We began to leave the room; I strode as casually as I could – even though my body was shaking, even though my heart galloped and pounded so hard I was sure it would shatter my vision, that its booms must be echoing round the class. I was amazed no one noticed any of this. On the way out, I neared Weirton’s chair. Draped over its back was the headmaster’s coat. I brushed and stumbled against it, and in a second had slipped the gauntlet into one of the pockets. It fit snugly. If Weirton thrust his hand in there, which he often did when supervising us in the playground, it would go straight into the glove. As I moved away from the teacher’s chair, I glanced around. My classmates were hurrying down the corridor, eager to stuff their bellies yet tramping in an orderly way under the gaze of Weirton. I joined their hungry march, and soon Jonathon was walking next to me.

  ‘Did it!’ I whispered.

  ‘Great!’ he said.

  ‘Just have to wait till after lunch now!’ I hissed. ‘When we’re out in the playground and Weirton’s got his coat on he’s bound to put his hand in his pocket and then he’s certain to die!’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  I suddenly wondered if it was. We were going to kill a man, which – as the vicar frequently told us –was against God’s law. Jonathon didn’t appear worried – he seemed to see bumping troublesome people off as an effective solution, whether shoving his brother from a bridge or designing a robot to crush his headmaster. My heart, which was just starting to settle after the success with the gauntlet, began thumping once more. I had an urge to go back, yank that glove from the teacher’s pocket, save our tyrant’s life. I forced myself to picture his many outrages – the swinging white-faced kids hurling tears, their bouncing walks back to their seats. As we strode into the hall, I reminded myself of his almost certain slaying of Marcus and Lucy, of how the murder of another kid could easily be added to his grim record. And, speaking of God, I remembered those heroes in the Bible who’d despatched despots and bullies with the Lord’s blessing. There was David and Goliath, Moses engineering with God’s help the drowning of Pharaoh’s army. I guessed that killing for righteous reasons must be OK in God’s eyes. As I pulled my chair up to my table, a different thought struck. We’d also committed the sin of theft, thereby breaking another of the Lord’s Commandments. Then again, I remembered the vicar saying that when the Israelites had fled Egypt, they’d carried treasures with them out of that country, treasures which – I supposed – they must have nicked. So maybe stealing was sometimes all right too. I just hoped God would understand.

  As the school’s daily ritual of scoffing dragged on, as Jonathon and I shuffled impatiently on our chairs, I kept praying for success, kept picturing the headmaster drawing his hand from his pocket, his arm capped by the gauntlet, mouth hanging, eyes wide as he stared at that glove, knowing full-well what it was and what its consequences would be. As my nervousness buzzed around my body with my pumping blood, I struggled to swallow my sandwiches. There was a bit of a diversion courtesy of Suzie Green. Jonathon and I didn’t partake of the school-cooked food; we brought our own and sat on the ‘packed-lunch’ tables. We didn’t partake for good reasons, and those reasons were the soggy chips, che
wy meat, and the watery mounds of cabbage whose stink filled the hall, haunted the corridors and even reached long fingers of scent into the classrooms on the days we had it. Suzie was refusing to eat a sausage. I didn’t blame her. The offending banger, carved in two, sat on her plate. The insides were pink and flabby yet also spotted with glistening knots of gristle. A dinner lady speared one half of the sausage with a fork and advanced towards Suzie brandishing it. Her colleague held the struggling girl down, prizing her mouth open to receive that cylinder of flesh as Suzie’s throat gulped, as disgust swelled in her eyes, as Weirton paced darkly beside the grappling figures ranting about the girl’s ingratitude. Suzie, of course, ended up over Mrs Leigh’s knee as Weirton watched and nodded.

  Lunch over, Leigh marched us outside as Weirton headed in the direction of our classroom – I assumed – to get his coat. Soon kids were charging around the playground and field – playing tig, booting footballs – as Leigh watched from the promontory. When out of Leigh’s gaze, the girls taunted Suzie about what had happened in the hall. The bawling, sickly-looking girl was pinched, prodded, punched, Helen Jacobs taking an enthusiastic part in the proceedings. I wondered where Weirton was. Usually, he’d be out by now. Perhaps he’d noticed the weight difference as he’d yanked on his coat and so delved into the pocket, and was now staring – pallid-faced – at what he knew must mean his doom.

  ‘Weirton’s coming!’ Jonathon hissed.

  I looked up, saw suited legs appear from round the corner of the school and start marching down the path to the playground. Weirton’s walk was confident, brisk – it didn’t look like the stagger of a man who’d seen his death decreed or a stride jerked with the fury of someone who’d uncovered a murderous plot. I moved my eyes from Weirton’s legs up over his body. He wasn’t wearing his coat. The day was mild; the clouds – white and light grey – betokened no rain.

  ‘Damn!’ I said.