School ended. Wellies on to march through Marcus’s pond to the car. Though I wanted to wade through those accursed shallows as swiftly as possible, I couldn’t help pausing for a moment as my eyes were drawn to the middle of that pool. I gazed at those waters, at them throwing up sullen spurts as the rain banged down. Felt myself slipping into a damned daze again. I ripped my eyes from the pond, strode to the car.
More fun on the drive home. There’s this blasted stream now running across the lane to Goldhill, rushing from one waterlogged field into another. When I came to it, I saw it had grown since the morning. As I edged my vehicle through that torrent, praying the engine would be OK, a thought came to me: maybe all this really is a punishment from God. If I – like other Christians – believe in an all-powerful Deity then surely that means He must be in charge of the weather, and surely no floods could happen without His say-so. There must be a reason He’s pounding so much rain onto Emberfield. There must be sins He’s determined to penalise. Adultery, violence, theft from His holy house – it can all be found in that place. Just hoped – as I looked around at the dark lakes in the fields, the swollen ditches, the distant yews of the drenched graveyard – those sinners would take heed of the Lord’s anger before it was too late.
As I neared Goldhill, the rains eased off and the flooding became less severe. I shook my head, wondered if my thoughts hadn’t been foolish. Of course, ultimately God’s in charge of everything, but since Newton we’ve known that in its day-to-day workings nature follows its own patterns. It’s just something seems to happen to my brain when I’m around Emberfield. Like stepping back into the Middle Ages sometimes, going there.
Took my dinner, ate it in my room in front of the TV. Felt like a rebellious teenager, had a strange sense of sullen satisfaction. Sandra pacing outside my door. Heard her muttering whenever there was a break in the sound coming from the box. Caught the word ‘divorce’ a few times. I’m not bothered by her threats. Let’s see her get by without my salary! Let’s see her raise the boy without my discipline! Of course, the idea of casting that woman off tempts me, but I’m a believer in family life. If couples can’t get through the tough parts of their marriages without giving up, the whole country will be heading for ruin! In fact, that’s partly why it already is.
Chapter Thirty-seven
I sat, a smile dancing on my lips as the lesson dragged on – a grin of triumph celebrating the fact the recaptured gauntlet lay in my satchel. It was raining so hard I think the teachers were unsure whether to let us out for break. I saw Weirton and Perkins discussing it in the corridor, doubt flickering over Perkins’s face, Weirton waving his hands, thrusting his finger. I overheard Weirton saying indoor playtimes were ‘soft’ that ‘the children should be able to face all the elements, be moulded by them, not wrapped in namby-pamby cotton wool’, whatever that meant. Of course, Weirton got his way, and soon we were encased in our kagools, splashing in a playground whose water touched our ankles. I agreed with Weirton – I much preferred being in the fresh outdoors to being cooped in the humid classroom, watching the dull drops slither down the windows.
‘So you’ve really got the gauntlet?’ Jonathon asked me.
‘Yep.’
‘Great!’
‘Yeah, we didn’t manage to put it on Weirton, but at least it’ll protect us against his whackings and stop him murdering us!’
‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘but I wonder if it’ll protect us against drowning. What’ll happen if this rain doesn’t stop? It might be like in the Bible!’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Didn’t the vicar say God had promised not to drown the world again?’
‘God wouldn’t drown the whole world. But what if He just drowned Emberfield?’
‘Why would He do that?’
‘Because of all our sins, I suppose,’ said Jonathon. ‘There’re plenty of them!’
I glanced up at the sky. Black clouds sailed over one another – big slow evil things. I couldn’t imagine the downpour stopping any time soon. And, as I looked at those clouds, as the rain rapped its rhythms on my hood, I thought about what Jonathon had said. If this all really was a punishment from the Lord, which sins was he penalising? Of course, he could be angry about us stealing the glove from the church, about us breaking one of his dread commandments right in his sacred dwelling. But we’d only taken it to fight against a far worse evil – the murderous Weirton, who’d probably already killed two pupils. Who knew when he might add a third to his gruesome tally? There was also Weirton’s crime of keeping Lucy’s bones, not laying them in holy ground as God wished. Then again, there were lots of sins among us kids too – our frequent fights, the brother’s rampages, the beatings Darren Hill and Stubbs relished handing out, lads engineering whackings for one another. And I guessed God was still angry about Jonathon trying to kill Craig – a crime for which Jonathon still awaited punishment although the penalty for that was having a mark scorched on your brow not your whole town being flooded. Yet I had no doubt God would eventually smite Jonathon with that shameful scar. Maybe the Lord would even kill two birds with one stone, and send a thunderstorm to finish off the flooding of Emberfield during which he’d shoot down lightning to brand my friend. And now I thought about it – or thought as well as I could with the rain bashing its din on my mac – Emberfield’s sins were not limited to our school. There were the beatings in the Stubbs household, Mr Browning’s readiness to resort to his belt. And I’d heard legends of what went on late at night after some adults had drunk a lot of that sour-smelling stuff in the pub. I’d heard tales of men tottering home with their arms around women who weren’t their wives! Of those women even going into those men’s houses rather than their husbands’! Surely the Bible forbade such things! But as so many sins had been committed, it was difficult to know which one was being punished. In the heavens, the black clouds massed, but gave me no hints. I sometimes wished the Lord could be more precise when letting us know what He was angry about. Maybe He could just tell us in a rumbling voice from above – then we could simply alter our habits instead of desperately trying to work out what we’d done wrong as the rain lashed and the waters rose around us. Even Weirton told us what we were being walloped for.
Break ended and we trudged inside, pushed and barged as we hung up soaking macs in the steaming cloakroom. Through the next lesson the rain crashed, and when lunchtime came, Weirton decided we should stay in. It hadn’t eased off by the afternoon break so we spent that inside too, watching the rain flung down with all of God’s fury, watching the submerged path outside hurl up its explosions as water lashed it, watching the puddles grow on the school field. Home-time came and God’s wrath still thudded down. Kagools done right up, stooped against the rain, we began our trudge home. We paused by Marcus’s pond. His pool was a rich brown circle, a circle ruffled and pitted by the endless drops hurled from heaven. All the territory Marcus had fled from in summer, all that cracked earth had been reclaimed. I imagined that soil now dense and muddy, forming Marcus’s bed.
‘Do you reckon,’ said Jonathon, ‘that if it keeps raining, Marcus’s pond might grow and cover the whole town?’
‘Suppose it would,’ I said, ‘if the rain doesn’t stop.’
‘We’ve got to do something! We can’t just let God drown us!’
‘But if God wants to drown us, drown us for all our sins, what can we do?’
Jonathon shrugged and we started our plod home. Large dark puddles had formed in the fields; fleeces soaked, the sheep breathed out mournful mist. Streams ran down the dunghills, carving gullies as those manure piles let their steam float up into the deluge. Dirty rivers gurgled in the road’s gutters, poured in torrents down drains. All around was the bashing, the pattering, the burbling of water.
I reached my house, saw our gnome’s pond had overflowed. His toadstool was now an islet, on which he perched above the rising waters still fishing merrily. The downpour went on as I watched my cartoons, drank my milk and munched my biscuits. As
soon as I was able, I sneaked up to my room, and – after making sure the door was closed and no footsteps creaked on the stairs – I drew the gauntlet from my satchel. I fingered that glove, feeling its cold iron, handling it with breathless care so it couldn’t slide onto my hand. I eyed its dull metal changing shade in the electric light, the scorch marks that told of the knight’s sad end. I needed to hide the thing, but where? I wrapped it in a couple of plastic bags, put it at the back of my wardrobe, behind stinky old shoes and thick balls of socks, knowing by the confined smell that my mum rarely delved into that corner. And so that fearsome gauntlet was concealed – even though we hadn’t bumped off Weirton, at least I knew its ancient power should stop him whacking us. I drifted downstairs, watched some more cartoons. A little later Dad came home and Mum called us to the dinner table. We had to raise our voices to be heard over the drops battering above.
‘Terrible, isn’t it, that theft from the church at Salton?’ Mum said. ‘I bumped into the vicar today; he told me all about it.’
My heart struck up its thud, banging out booms that backed the rattling rain with a bass-like rhythm.
‘Was he furious?’ said my father, in clipped angry words. ‘I know I’d be.’
‘Not furious, exactly,’ said Mum, ‘but sad – shocked and disappointed someone could do such a thing.’
A dreadful guilt weighted my stomach. I’d offended the poor vicar – we’d never thought of his feelings when we’d nicked that gauntlet.
‘Yes,’ said Dad, ‘I don’t know how anyone could have stooped so low!? What’s this country turning into!? It’s all this damn liberalism and laxity, that’s the problem! All these bleeding-heart lefties letting people get away with murder! And look – this is what happens when people have no discipline!’
‘At least we’ve got Mr Weirton,’ Mum said. ‘At least we know none of the kids at our school would’ve done it.’
‘Yes, there is that,’ Dad said. ‘Good old Mr Weirton! He’s like a man fighting a war against the modern world – one of the few people left who are prepared to instil decent Christian values into our young! Stealing from a church –’ my father tutted, shook his head ‘– is nothing sacred anymore?’
‘Do they have any idea who might have done it?’ Mum asked.
‘Several theories,’ Dad said, ‘according to the local paper –’
I gulped; my parents, sister looked round – I pretended I was swallowing a big lump of food. Our theft had even made the paper!
‘They think it might have been lads from the secondary school,’ Dad said, ‘a stupid dare or something.’
‘Shame those lads couldn’t have had a taste of Mr Weirton’s hand!’ Mum said.
‘By God, yes!’ said Dad. ‘I’d give them such a hiding if it was up to me – they’d never venture into a church again, not with all those hard pews! But that big school’s a namby-pamby place by all accounts – the head hardly ever takes out the cane. I’d like to see those lads get such a whacking –’
‘Such a whacking! Such a whacking!’ my sister sang, bouncing on her chair.
‘Hush, Sarah,’ Dad said. ‘On the other hand, it might not have been kids at all. Some criminals might have made off with that gauntlet to sell the scrap metal.’
‘But there’s not much metal on it, surely?’ said Mum.
‘I reckon if it was stolen for scrap, damned gypsies did it!’ Dad said. ‘They’d steal anything that lot, have your eyeballs out of your head before you knew it! Or perhaps it was more sophisticated crooks who wanted to sell the thing as an antique.’
‘You wonder what can be done with such people,’ Mum said.
‘A good flogging!’ Dad’s finger rapped the table as a scowl creased his face. ‘That’s the only solution! A good hiding if it’s kids, a damn good whipping if it’s adults! That’s the only thing that sort would understand! A damn good flogging and a few years in jail! Of course, the liberals and lefties wouldn’t allow it!’
‘Good flogging! Good flogging!’ my sister shouted.
Just then the downpour battered even harder – pounding the roof, lashing the windows so strongly the glass shook. Mum nodded towards those shivering panes.
‘Blimey, haven’t seen it rain this heavily for a good while! If it doesn’t ease off, it’ll be like Noah’s Flood!’
‘And I wouldn’t blame the Lord if He sent another Deluge!’ Dad said. ‘There’s enough wickedness in the world that needs wiping out! Stealing from a church –’ Dad again shook his head ‘– stealing from a church …’
Over the next week, the rain went on belting down. It thudded from dark skies during the day, hammered in the blackness at night. I lay in bed listening to God’s fury bashing our roof. I couldn’t even have the comfort of hearing the Drummer Boy – there was no way his subtle patters and beats would be heard above that downpour. I imagined him in his dripping tunnel, his drum hanging unused, silenced by the rage-filled rhythms God pounded out above. As I laboured through drab books and exercises in Perkins’s room, I’d thieve glances from the window to see the drops bouncing on the school field, adding to its spreading dark puddles. Marcus’s pond grew, gulping the endless water God poured upon it. Soon it was lapping at the road then it was halfway across it then two-thirds. Weirton skirted it each day in his funereal car, clinging to a narrower and narrower strip of tarmac. Soon he was sending up high waves of brown water as his vehicle crept in through the gate. But Marcus would not be sated – his gluttonous pond spread over the whole road. Weirton had to park in front of it, tug rather comical green wellies over his suit trousers and wade into Marcus’s shallows. We kids did the same – Perkins and Leigh supervising us pulling on our gumboots before marching us through the water. I knew why they watched us so closely – the smallest slip and one of us could have been gobbled. Like any growing boy, Marcus would be desperate for food. You could tell Weirton was worried – I heard him mumbling the pond was a ‘danger’, a ‘menace’ and that ‘something should be done about it’. But other than placating Marcus, I couldn’t think what.
There was no placating God, who continued to hammer his rains down. The adults all shook their heads, said they’d never known anything like it – even the old folks, whose grandparents may have witnessed Noah’s Deluge. Some outlying farms were flooded, the water rolling off sodden fields into barns and kitchens. We saw pictures on the local TV news – the brown water swirling in halls and bathrooms, lapping at stairs. A confused cockerel was stranded on a post, its feathers drenched, its cone floppy. The fields around our houses became swamps – the sheep huddling dumbly on islets of dry land, the farmers fighting through the water in their tractors to feed them.
I knew God had promised never to drown the whole world again. It was called a covenant, branded on the Bible’s pages in stern black type for all to see. But a legend I’d recently heard proved God could still punish local crimes. A village not far from Emberfield had stood by a lake: a small lake, not much bigger than Marcus’s pond. One day, an angel of the Lord had come down to test the villagers. Disguised as an old beggar, he’d wandered from house to house asking for help, and – despite the wealth of many homesteads – he was sent away. Just the last place he tried – a poor man’s cottage clinging to a hill – gave him supper and a bed. Having enjoyed a night’s hospitality, as he left the next day, the angel commanded the lake to rise and drown all the mean people and their houses, saving just the humble cottage. Apparently, to this day, if you listen hard, you can still hear the ghostly bells of the church tolling under the water.
I wondered if such a thing was happening in Emberfield. I couldn’t imagine our town being overly generous. My dad hated tramps, the homeless, beggars. When any report came on the news about the growing numbers down in London sleeping on park benches and in shop doorways, he yelled at the telly, ordering it to get a job. Jonathon’s father shouted the same at his newspaper and radio. Davis said they should lock them all up or put them in the army, which I supposed would at least
mean they’d have some food and a roof to shelter them. But if a beggar had turned up in Emberfield, I wouldn’t have imagined he’d have much more luck than the angel of the Lord. Maybe such an angel had come asking for aid and Emberfield’s rebuffs – rather than stolen gauntlets or boys in ponds – had caused the creeping floods and constant rains. I wondered if I should talk to the vicar about it. But having committed the sin of taking something from his church, I knew I’d quake before his mighty magic: maybe he’d see right into me, see evidence of my crime and strike me down right there. Or maybe he’d applaud our efforts to rid our town of Weirton’s evil. Like the God he served, it was difficult to know what he thought sometimes.
The rains wouldn’t stop, more farms and hamlets were flooded, and Jonathon and I grew frantic. I ransacked my mind to think what we should do. It took some time to discover the solution. One day, around a fortnight after the rainy weather had begun, I bumped into Jonathon in the street.
The Standing Water Page 40
