The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘Off back to my house – to see what I can do about this rain.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘something does needs to be done – before we all bloomin’ drown!’

  ‘Fancy coming along?’ I said.

  When we arrived, we dried out for a bit in my living room. Then we put our kagools back on – feeling their repulsively cold clasp against our dry skin – and rushed out into the downpour. We hurried through the front garden – past the drowned and drooping flowers, our gnome’s flooded pond, the dwarf perched above the waters on his toadstool like the cockerel had been on his post. We splashed across my driveway, entered the cobwebby shelter of my garage. I yanked down my hood.

  ‘Hopefully it’s in here somewhere,’ I said.

  At the dark end of the garage, beyond where my dad parked his car, was a pile of planks, old tools, mildewed sheets of cardboard. I dove into this mound, clearing away the debris. Spiders fled; I tore tangles of their webs from my arms.

  ‘You sure it’s still there?’ Jonathon asked. ‘Sure your dad didn’t chuck it out?’

  I answered him by delving further into the heap. My fingers scrabbled over a plank with the heads of four purposeful nails driven into each corner. Below was a similar oblong of wood, and below that another.

  ‘Got it!’ I shouted.

  I tugged at that structure. The rest of the debris clattered and tumbled as I levered it out. I struggled a little more and, finally, with a film of sweat coating the inside of my kagool, I stood before my friend in triumph clutching a frame of four long posts with planks nailed across.

  ‘I reckon that’s about a quarter of the hull,’ I said.

  Jonathon nodded.

  ‘If we work hard, shouldn’t take us too long to finish it,’ he said.

  ‘Then if this rain doesn’t stop, at least we can be saved!’

  ‘But even with our ark, how would we survive?’ said Jonathon.

  ‘Have to become pirates. I’ve already asked my mum for a skull-and-crossbones flag. She says she’ll get me one.’

  It was a satisfying image – us floating in buccaneering freedom above the drowned houses, church and school. There’d be no more boring lessons, no more of Weirton’s wallopings. From what I’d read about pirates, I knew that rather than the teacher’s hand, all we’d have to worry about would be the Royal Navy.

  We got down to work – sticking on the dim garage bulb to give us light against the dull day, listening to the ferocious rhythm of God’s unquenchable wrath drumming on the roof.

  ‘Stubbsy laughed at me last year for trying to make my ark,’ I said, as I smacked in a nail.

  ‘He’ll be laughing on the other side of his ugly face when he’s drowning and we’re sailing away!’ Jonathon said. ‘Noah’s neighbours laughed at him and look what happened to them!’

  The work went well and soon we’d got almost one side of the hull done.

  ‘What’ll we do for sails?’ Jonathon asked.

  ‘Have to nick sheets from our mums,’ I said.

  ‘You know,’ Jonathon said, ‘hopefully we’ll escape the flood, but what do you think’s causing it?’

  ‘God’s angry at something, just like in the Bible.’

  ‘But’ – Jonathon paused, one of my Dad’s rusty hammers hanging from his hand – ‘whose fault is it? I hope it’s not mine for trying to kill my brother!’

  ‘Could be,’ I said, ‘but floods aren’t usually the punishment for that – for that you get a mark stuck on your forehead. And at least you’re sorry for it.’

  ‘Could be something else,’ said Jonathon. ‘There are so many sins to choose from – Stubbs’s, Darren Hill’s, the things they say some of the adults do after the pub … and, of course, God might be furious at us stealing the gauntlet.’

  His face frowned; my heart boomed at the mentioned of that crime, but all we could do was go on with our work. The sound of our rapping hammers was overwhelmed by the rain flinging its drops on the roof with even greater vigour. I hoped – as my heart bashed faster – this was not a signal we’d sinned by stealing the glove.

  ‘Whatever it is, God’s really angry!’ I said.

  ‘Might not be us,’ said Jonathon. ‘Could be Weirton with all his whackings. I’m sure God’s furious about him murdering Marcus and Lucy. Perhaps God’s pleased with us for trying to get him out of the way!’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, as the rain blasted down even harder as if roaring a response, ‘he’s given out a lot of wallopings lately – you never know when he might go too far with one!’

  The hand had certainly been active. The brother – bearing his sinful mark – had been beaten seven times in the last three weeks. Stubbs had picked up five thrashings in the same period; Darren Hill and Richard Johnson had each got four.

  ‘Good job you snatched that glove back,’ said Jonathon. ‘At least it keeps Weirton away from us.’

  That was true. Since I’d got it back, we’d hardly had an angry look from the headmaster. We worked on for some time without speaking – the knocking of our hammers against iron and wood an under-rhythm to the rain’s fury.

  ‘Maybe Weirton really has gone too far in God’s eyes,’ I said. ‘After all, Jesus says we should be kind and gentle.’

  ‘Well, he’ll be sorry when we sail away in our boat!’ Jonathon said. ‘Just imagine – fat old Weirton drowning in the dirty water along with all those stupid kids who laugh at us after we’ve got whacked! We’ll be the ones laughing then!’

  The rain softened. The sound it now drummed seemed one of encouragement – one that urged us on by mimicking the tapping of our hammers. I hoped this meant God approved of us. But as the noise of our hammers changed from cautious taps to more committed bangs, the rain responded – switching from its gentle patters to a raging downpour. In our puzzlement about what the Lord was punishing, we could only work on.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Over the next few days, we had to quicken our work on the ark as the deluge showed no signs of slackening. At best, the rains might cease for an hour, the sun might sneak the odd ray through the clouds to glitter on the standing waters in the fields, but soon those clouds would close over any patches of blue and the rain would hammer once more. Every evening, Jonathon and I laboured in my garage. We followed the plans Jonathon sketched out – he’d spend lengthy sessions with his head stooped over his encyclopaedia before his pencil filled bits of paper with designs for decks, cabins, the curve of the hull. Soon we’d got both sides of that hull done – we just needed to join them together. We’d also nailed two posts into a cross to be our mast. Jonathon had stolen a sheet from his house, and we were struggling to figure out how we’d attach that makeshift sail.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘How about asking Mr Davis? It was a long time ago, but he might remember how the first Ark was built.’

  ‘Could do,’ Jonathon replied. ‘But why would Davis help us make our ship? He won’t even give us the sweets we ask for.’

  ‘Well …’ I thought for a moment. ‘Maybe we could let him come on our boat. Being one of Noah’s sons, he’ll know how bad these floods can be. Bet if we told him he could come on our ark, he’d be so grateful he’d help us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘but then we’d have to put up with him grumbling all the time.’

  ‘Might not be so bad if we made him promise to bring all his sweets. We’d need something to eat, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Suppose,’ said Jonathon.

  Anyway, we put the sail to one side, and started cobbling together a cabin from some old boards we’d found. We knew we had to work quickly: there were fears among the adults Emberfield might get ‘cut off’ – become an island in an increasingly watery world. My mum and I even drove to Goldhill to fill the car with shopping before it was too late.

  The car hit the puddles along our patch of town’s main street, causing brown waves to arc. The rain drummed on our roof as we passed the pub – t
hat sinful hostelry surrounded by pond-like puddles its wicked clients would have to wade across. Soon we were roaring down the lane to Goldhill, hurling up spray on each side. The road was fringed by dripping, half-submerged hedgerows; in the fields were vast lakes much bigger than Marcus’s pond. Maybe some of them would be good for trying out our ark. We came to a dip in the land – a stream gushed from a pool on one side of the lane, burbled into a field with a dark lake on the other. Mum slowed and – engine growling – the car crossed that torrent, sending up curves of water as Mum anxiously bit her lip. Having got over that ford, we again picked up speed as we sloshed along the winding road. I wondered why our lanes were so bendy. Weirton had told us that in the Olden Days they’d been deliberately made so to confuse ghosts and spirits – who could only walk straight. This would stop the spooks floating about the countryside and pestering folk with their hauntings. This had made sense to me until Jonathon said his encyclopaedia had told him they were built like that to dodge things like large rocks or bits of boggy ground. I wasn’t sure which explanation to believe; in a way they both seemed logical so I supposed both could be true.

  Now we laboured up a slight slope crowned by the graveyard – Emberfield doing its best to raise the souls of its departed out of the earthly swamp and a little towards heaven. And – of course – if they could never get quite there, the roads were windy enough to stop them bothering our town. The graveyard was a strange place – all creeping ivy and sombre boxlike yews. There’d been a church there once, but that sagging structure had been knocked down and a cheerier redbrick one built in our part of Emberfield. But the old entangled graveyard fascinated me more. Heart knocking, I sneaked a glimpse – seeing the weathered curves of the crumbling stones. Tea-dark puddles surrounded the lower tombs – broken crosses, slanting headstones poking out of the water. The branches of yews dripped and shivered; the little path looked waterlogged. That graveyard – or the one at Salton – was where Weirton should have buried Lucy! I thought again how all this rain might be a punishment for that. I hoped our graveyards wouldn’t be washed away by the unrelenting downpours: that we wouldn’t wake one morning to find ourselves struggling in deep water, bobbing with worm-crawling corpses and skeletons. Jonathon and I really had to crack on with our boat. But soon the car hauled us past, we were over the little rise, and the graveyard vanished from view.

  Our car sped on, the damp engine chuntering. We now had a vista of flat land – the mud-churned fields dotted with ponds and lakes, the great trees weary under their sodden crowns, the sky full of scudding rain-stuffed clouds. I wondered where the sun had gone, if he would emerge to dry up all this water. Surely we weren’t far from his summer high point – he should still have had plenty of strength, maybe enough to scorch a path through those clouds. But he hardly ever appeared though we’d encouraged him enough with our Bonfire Night blaze and our lights and baubles at Christmas. We’d have to double our efforts to please him at the end of that year – if the year’s end ever came, if Emberfield wasn’t under watery miles by then. That thought made fear rise in me – I pictured the school, the houses, the churches, my home submerged under the endless quiet, the deathly silence of deep water. Actually, that image was not an unpleasant one – it caused a tingle of pleasure to rise from my stomach, flicker down my arms: a sensation that strangely mingled with my shivers of terror and awe. Even the thought of my parents and sister drowned didn’t cause much grief. Guilt surged over that – I was frightened God might punish my heartlessness, my lack of love for the family He’d given me. As if in response, the rain pounded harder on the car’s roof. Mum interrupted my ponderings.

  ‘I heard some more about that stolen gauntlet,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, really?’ I struggled to keep my voice calm.

  ‘They haven’t found out who did it or anything like that –’ relief rushed through me ‘– I just heard the vicar said something about it the other night during a meeting at the Community Hall. He said that even if the police couldn’t find the thieves, God knew who they were and God would have His justice. Apparently, he seemed angry about it – something unusual for such a gentle man. I suppose it’s like in the Bible – no sins really go unpunished, at least none I can think of.’

  As Mum rarely opened that book or went to Church, I wasn’t sure how much she knew about God’s ways yet still my heart boomed. The black clouds in the heavens glowered down at me.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said, ‘let’s think – God flooded the whole world for its sins, destroyed the cities on the plain, if I remember right, and punished Cain for murdering his brother. And our modern world is full of enough evil – just look at how things are! I really hope the police catch those thieves, but – if they don’t – I’m sure the vicar’s right that God will have His vengeance!’

  We made it to Goldhill, but – as we trailed around the supermarket – I couldn’t help thinking about Mum’s words. I imagined the enraged vicar working his mighty magic – throwing his arms up to the heavens to summon, with the Lord’s will, dense swirling masses of cloud, which would fling God’s wrath upon us, punishing the innocent as well as the guilty until those responsible either repented or confessed. We hurriedly loaded the car up and drove back as more rain bounced down. I noticed the flooding wasn’t so bad near Goldhill; it got much worse as we approached Emberfield and Salton. I swear the lakes and ponds in the fields had grown in the hour or so we’d been away. I looked at all that water stacked on the sodden land – just waiting to rise to the right level to engulf Emberfield. I cursed the day we’d had the idea to steal that gauntlet; cursed Weirton for making us do so. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if God’s waters really did blot out our sinful town. Or would the best thing be to attempt to pacify Him while there was still time? As the car raced along the lane hurling up water, as we passed the graveyard in which I swear the floods had edged further up the headstones, as we struggled across what seemed a deeper and more gushing ford, I willed our vehicle on, silently urging the spluttering engine to get us home so I could rush round to Jonathon’s, talk about all this to him.

  We made it home, and soon I was out in the street, on my way to my friends’ as more rain pelted. Dad had said he’d heard on the radio they’d be bringing sandbags if things didn’t get better. Luckily, the only river near Emberfield was the Bunt, which was titchy, but the radio had said there was so much flooding in the fields all that standing water could roll off and into our homes. There was no doubt now we either had to work like crazy on our ark or find a way to soothe the rage of the Lord. I called for Jonathon, and soon we were running back to mine as the sky spat down its waters in grey sheets. I yanked up the door of the garage and hauled the ark from the pile of rotting cardboard and old planks that shielded our ship. Our hammers were soon tapping.

  ‘Jonathon,’ I said, ‘I think it might be the gauntlet God’s angry about.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Mum told me the vicar said to all the adults God would punish the thieves even if the police couldn’t catch them!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Maybe it is us then – unless God’s punishing all Emberfield’s sins, ours as well. Maybe we’re all so bad He’s just decided to drown the lot of us!’

  ‘Better crack on with the ark then,’ I said. ‘But there is something else we could try.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We could put back the gauntlet.’

  ‘Could do …’ Jonathon said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind keeping it to stop Weirton whacking us. He’s been going so mad lately. No use building our ark if Weirton whacks us to death first!’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, as water bashed the roof, gargled in the garage’s gutters. ‘If God’s angry with us, we could always put the glove back before we sail away – if the church isn’t totally underwater by then!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonathon, ‘but for now we should get on with our boat.’
/>   Soon we were banging and sawing, exchanging no words as the rain beat above.

  A couple of days later, though no one’s home was yet flooded, a truck from the council came round to give out sandbags. The gutters swarmed with so much water that soon just the middle of the main road stuck above the flow – a strip which cars would edge cautiously down. The news brought us scenes every day of nearby villages that had succumbed to the water: houses full of filthy liquid, sinful pubs punished by floods lapping against their windows, low-lying churchyards turned to lakes with only the very tops of headstones poking out while the churches still stood – as firm strongholds of God – above the wet chaos. Few people now attempted to go to Goldhill. I prayed and hoped God’s righteous waters would prevent Weirton getting to work. Perhaps then school would be cancelled and we could get on with the vital task of finishing our ark. But each day the teacher made it in, each day he had to park further down the street before wading through Marcus’s spreading waters. I was sure Marcus was tempted to take this chance of revenge. I think Weirton knew this too – after pulling on his wellies, he’d stick to the very edge of the pond, stride through it with his mouth frowning, his eyes crinkled, though whether in anger, fear or just distaste I couldn’t tell. But, if fear it was, it wasn’t enough to stop the headmaster coming in, stop him braving the watery dangers between Emberfield and Goldhill. I overheard him boasting to Perkins about how he’d never let ‘a little namby-pamby water’ stop him, about how each day he got his car over that ford Mum and I had struggled through, how ‘in this decadent modern world’ whatever that meant ‘people get all worried about a little rain – well, I won’t let it stop me doing my duty!’

  And Weirton wasn’t failing to do that. As the rain hammered outside, the palm hammered within. Indeed, the beating down of God’s fury seemed to encourage the beating of that hand. Stubbs, Darren Hill, the brother, Richard Johnson, a good few other lads – all were thrashed, the poundings of Weirton weaving themselves into the rhythms of the rain. At least, knowing Jonathon and I were safe, I could relax. As long as that gauntlet stayed in my cupboard, the teacher could inflict on us no violence, let alone wallop us until we met the sad end of Marcus or Lucy. Jonathon was right – I’d be crazy to put that glove back before we were ready to sail away.