‘You never know.’ Jonathon shrugged. ‘Maybe He’s forgotten about it – just like my mum forgets stuff.’
‘I don’t think He’d ever forget. God knows and remembers everything.’
‘Well, even if He did punish me, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Wouldn’t mind being a wanderer on the earth, especially if it got me away from Weirton and Emberfield.’
I nodded, looked at that ribbon of foaming water gushing through the flatlands. How often had I dreamt of following that stream as it led me through the night’s landscapes far, far from my hometown. But there’d be no following it that day, and as the rainbow had faded and vanished we couldn’t follow that either, let alone find its pot of gold. So it was in the drab plains of Emberfield and Salton we were for the moment stuck. We went further down the path, skirting around, hopping over its puddles. Henry VIII’s farmhouse now stood on the shore of a lake; the Scots slept beneath another watery expanse; the Knights Templars’ lands were a morass of ponds and marshes. We walked through sodden woods as the water tower loomed above us. That tower hadn’t done its job, hadn’t saved us from the deluge by sucking the excess liquid from heaven. But then, if faced with God’s unassailable wrath, I doubted there was much any inventions of Man could do. Passing the Drummer Boy’s tunnel – his memorial stone was sunk so deep in brown water you couldn’t read half the plaque – we came to the gates that opened onto the fields leading to the church. The fields held two big pools – a dubious-looking strip of boggy ground ran between them.
‘So much water here!’ I said. ‘God really can’t have been far from drowning Emberfield!’
‘Yeah,’ Jonathon said, ‘good job we decided to put the gauntlet back.’
He stopped, thought for a moment, frowned.
‘You don’t think though … the rain didn’t … you know, stop by itself? That maybe it wasn’t God’s anger? We’ve been wrong about things before … like Davis being one of Noah’s sons and the gauntlet being magic.’
I swear a dark cloud floated across the weak sun. I shivered, turned to my friend.
‘Of course it was God’s anger! It was just like in the Bible – He even showed a rainbow when He decided not to drown us! And He stopped the rains just after we said we’d put the gauntlet back. Come on – let’s get to the church before He changes his mind!’
We wobbled and waded across the fields, stumbling into sloughs of churned mud that – with their rasping sucks – nearly tugged off our wellies. But I’ll say one thing for those fields – they smelt clean, the fury from heaven having washed away the scent of dung. It had been the same in Emberfield – the deluge had cleansed the air of its habitual pongs of smoke and manure heaps. The sour smell of beer had been rinsed from around the pub; even the stagnant stench of Marcus’s pond had been diluted by heaven’s pure waters. I guessed it’d been like that in the Bible when the Ark’s occupants had emerged to find a new earth scrubbed clean of dirt and sin. Only such corruption, I’d noticed, came back quickly – already Emberfield’s air was getting back its smoky tang; the pub’s evil odours were once more forming around it.
We hobbled through the fields without too many mishaps and were soon entering the churchyard. With it being on a rise – being, due to its holiness, drawn up slightly towards heaven – the flooding wasn’t so bad in there, but still a kind of moat had formed against the wall, swamping the lower tombs. Elsewhere puddles had gathered in dips; dark water sat in the creases between graves. We pulled off our wellies in the porch, heaved open the oak doors and padded into the church’s sacred interior. The air within was chill and damp, but nothing seemed damaged. I wondered if the vicar had blessed the roof with his mighty magic to protect that holy house against God’s hammering rage. The flags felt cold beneath my stocking-feet as we shuffled down the aisle. There was the dread altar, guarded by the stern railings we’d never dare pass. To the left slept the noble knight and his lady in their sculpted tomb. I made mental bows towards them, murmured silent words to soothe their ghosts. Soon Jonathon and I stood below the hook – a hook that seemed to accuse us with its emptiness. I shrugged off my satchel, fumbled with its straps.
‘Quick, get some of those cushions!’ I said. ‘We’d better get a move on, get it back up there before anyone sees us.’
Jonathon scuttled off to the pews, trotted back with three of those woolly squares. We stacked them on the floor. I drew the gauntlet out of my bag, handling it carefully in case – in this last moment – it might slip itself onto my hand and condemn me with its magic to an evil fate. But then, I thought, it hadn’t protected us from Weirton so maybe it didn’t have the power to seal our end. I passed the glove to Jonathon, balanced on those cushions then hunched down into a squat. Jonathon, grasping the gauntlet, clambered onto my shoulders. As I straightened up, I thought about God’s strange justice: how He’d punished our theft of the glove with an almost immediate deluge while waiting so long to smite Jonathon for trying to kill his brother. Unless Jonathon’s speculations had been right – that the Lord was actually a lot more laid-back than we’d reckoned and that the rain had simply started and stopped by itself. Perhaps if this was true, He wouldn’t brand Jonathon. We swayed and wobbled on those cushions as Jonathon reached for the hook. I saw that, despite his recent scepticism, he was struggling to stay on the safe side of the altar rail. He got the hook in his hand and moved the gauntlet towards it, trying to line up the glove’s loop with the hook’s point. As he started to slide it on, the cushions slipped under me. At first it was just a small shift – I teetered, but kept upright. Jonathon again brought the gauntlet closer to the hook, but this time the middle cushion slipped straight out of the pile. I managed to stay standing, but as we lurched and tottered Jonathon grabbed at the hook. He grasped it, but his momentum swung that barb up over his forehead and its point gouged a cut on the top right of his brow.
‘Owah!’ Jonathon yelled.
The two remaining cushions were more stable, but – as they still rocked slightly – I had to shift and teeter to keep balanced. Jonathon swayed, one hand holding the gauntlet, the other clutching his cut.
‘Try to slip it on again!’ I shouted. ‘Quick!’
Jonathon moved his hand away from his wound. His fingers were bloody – a couple of drops fell on me. He took hold of the hook, squeezed its end through the loop. There was a scraping noise, scabs of rust drifted down as Jonathon slid that hoop down the hook. Jonathon let go, the glove swung on its chain until it settled. That gauntlet now hung back where it was meant to be, hung as a dread warning to us all. I lowered myself into a crouch; Jonathon scrabbled from my shoulders. I hurled the cushions back under the pews then looked at my friend. Blood flowed, meandering down the side of Jonathon’s face, dripping from his chin to splatter his kagool. We had no tissues, but I pulled out a hankie – crusted with snot and stained green, and gave it to Jonathon to press against his gash.
‘Looks serious,’ I said. ‘Better get you home so your mum can look at it.’
‘What will my dad say? I hope he won’t take his belt to me!’
‘Just say it was an accident – say you fell over and cut your head on a stone.’
Jonathon winced as he pushed the hankie harder onto the wound.
‘Feels deep,’ he said. ‘Hope it won’t stay there forever!’
I looked at Jonathon and gasped. I raised my hand, let my shaking fingers hover an inch from the cut.
‘What is it?’ Jonathon said.
I gulped; my heart boomed; my fingers went on quivering. It took some time before I could say, ‘God’s justice!’
‘What?’
‘It’s your mark – the mark of Cain! Right on the forehead – just like in the Bible! OK, God didn’t blast you with lightning, He used that hook, but the vicar says God’s justice works in strange ways! And …’
I again pointed to the wound – or at least where I knew that wound was under the reddening hankie.
‘It’s in exactly the same place as your
brother’s! It must be a punishment from God! He’s Abel and you’re Cain!’
Jonathon sighed. ‘Think I’d better get home, see what my parents can do about it.’
‘You’ll never get it off!’
‘Let’s just see,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s hurry back.’
We left the church, stumbled across the field, and strode swiftly down the track, leaping the smaller puddles, skirting the larger ones, breaking into little runs when we were able. We passed the gates, the Big School, rushed down the road of council homes, which Jonathon – for once – didn’t comment on. We reached his house, babbled our made-up story of his fall. Mrs Browning washed the cut, used a pad to dab it with strong-smelling liquid while the brother watched open-mouthed and Jonathon’s dad paced. I knew why the brother was staring. The cut on his sibling’s brow was fresher, bloodier, but – apart from that – an exact image of his own.
‘We should take him to hospital,’ Mrs Browning said. ‘He might need stitches.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mr Browning. ‘Let me take a look.’
Mrs Browning obediently removed the pad; her husband peered at the wound.
‘It’s little more than a graze! Sort of thing I got all the time when I was a lad – just the consequence of a bit of good old-fashioned rough-and-tumble! You women would make all our lads milksops! He’s not going to any namby-pamby hospital! Give that disinfectant here!’
Mr Browning took a fresh pad, poured some hearty glugs from the bottle of stinky stuff onto it then thrust it onto Jonathon’s brow. Jonathon grimaced, whimpered and squirmed.
‘Don’t be such a baby!’ the father said. ‘Or I really will give you something to cry about! Don’t know what’s happening to lads nowadays. Good dose of disinfectant, slap a plaster on and he’ll be right as rain! The scar will probably be gone in a couple of weeks.’
The brother, the red line of his cut marking his brow, just stared. Soon Jonathon’s gash was covered with a plaster. But I knew Mr Browning was wrong. I knew that under that shield of pink the brand of God’s justice was forming and would never go away.
Chapter Forty-three
After God had ceased pounding the land with the waters of his wrath, it took some time for the floods to dry up. October was cool; the air was full of that wetness that seemed to clasp the skin like a grasping hand, but not much rain fell. Marcus’s pond inched back from the road, but it stood – glowering, sulky – determined to hang on to at least most of the territory it had captured. Streets and gardens dried out, but masses of silent water stayed in the fields. I didn’t trust those dark lakes. I knew if God decided to send another deluge, all that water could be creeping towards our houses.
More worryingly, there was talk of cancelling Bonfire Night. Usually a farmer would lend the town a field so we could enjoy that vital festivity, but that year the council weren’t sure if any would get dry in time. I quaked with dread at what might happen if we couldn’t light our huge fire, blast our rockets skywards. Wouldn’t the sun be tempted to give up in the cold months coming, to never wake from his long winter slumber? I prayed that if we couldn’t celebrate that special night, all the other blazes lit around the world would be enough to encourage the sun, to cheer him as he circled our globe.
Emberfield might have been in danger of losing out on its yearly rockets and bangers, but there were still plenty of fireworks in our school. For a fortnight or so after the rainbow had appeared, Weirton had been quite calm, only giving out three or four hidings. But soon it was almost daily that his yells were reverberating around classrooms and down corridors, that the vast body was jumping, that the fists were pounding the thighs, that pupils were wrenched up, that pupils were swooping and swinging as the hand crashed. And there wasn’t much peace among the kids either. I remember Darren Hill slamming Richard Johnson’s head repeatedly into the gnarled trunk of an oak in the school field’s corner. There was the time Darren and Jonathon’s brother fell out and – by now both quite big lads – knocked chunks out of each other on the way home as kids crowded round in a chanting circle: ‘Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!’ They went on bashing as blood flowed from busted noses, cut eyes.
The way the kids reacted to the beatings Weirton hurled into us was odd. In the past, after a whacking, you maybe got a few taunts, a few punches and shoves. Just occasionally, if Weirton’s oratory was especially funny or dramatic, it might inspire something like my push into the snow. But now Weirton was slamming more thrashings into us, and now those thrashings always went beyond the traditional six of the best and a few for luck. Sometimes they were so extreme all the classmates could do was gape in sympathy as the victim bawled and hiccupped, lurched and teetered afterwards. But sometimes a savage beating triggered a different response. Something would take the kids over, a simmering feeling none of us would be able to explain yet which gripped us nonetheless. The victim would usually be grabbed – still staggering, still tearful – on his way home. Fists had to pummel, feet had to kick until the lads had inflicted as much damage as Weirton, until the boy writhed and sobbed on the ground, his red tear-splashed face screwed with grief and looking up amazed at his tormentors. With our hatred of the headmaster, with our knowledge of what had happened to Marcus and Lucy and – what we guessed – could so easily happen once more whether by kids’ or the teacher’s hands, Jonathon and I never joined in these brutal celebrations. But still, as we walked by or stood on the edge of the mob, I felt a strange bloodlust seethe. I had to concentrate, suck in breaths to calm my tensing muscles, hold back my fists.
One day Weirton gave me a colossal walloping. I saw Stubbs’s sly smile as I tottered back to my seat. We’d been doing group work before Weirton had swept in to thrash me, and – when the air had settled after the thunder of his rage, the storm of his whacking – that was what we went on with. This meant a hum of chatter was allowed, which was soon taken advantage of by Stubbs. Through my tear-blurred eyes, I saw Stubbs’s cautious grin morph into a smirk. He leaned into Johnson and whispered, ‘Let’s knack Watson in after school – pass it on!’ Soon that phrase was buzzing round the class, darting above, under and through the drone of the kids’ natter like some evil marshland fly. It made its rounds as I sobbed and hiccupped. My mind still spun in fragments so it was hard to be sure of all that was happening, but still I heard the gleeful whine of Stubbs’s voice: ‘Pass it on! Pass it on!’ More words came; I couldn’t piece them all together: ‘By the hedge’, ‘Plenty there’, ‘Good strong ones’, ‘He won’t forget this in a hurry!’
School soon ended. I stumbled from the classroom as Stubbs, Johnson and the bunch of lads they’d worked up hurried off, jogging down the corridor and out through the cloakroom, pausing on their way to grab Darren Hill, other older lads, whisper to them their plan. Both Jonathon and the brother were off sick so I was truly on my own. In the cloakroom, my still shaking hands – now shivering more strongly as I wondered what Stubbs was up to – fumbled with my kagool. It took ages to get it on, gifting my enemies – I later realised – time to get prepared. But at least that time gave me the chance to recover from my walloping, and when I left the building I was walking almost normally.
I saw them massing at the gates. My heart thudded. There must have been fifteen lads. Their faces were eager, their smiles manic. They stared at me as I made the slow walk up to them. My hands were jolting up and down; my heart bashed faster. Some lads started beating their fists into their palms; more joined in till they pounded out an expectant rhythm. Others kept their hands behind their backs – what were they hiding? I had nowhere to go but forward. I tried to edge past the mob; Stubbs stepped sideways to block me.
‘Where do you think you’re going Watson?’ He gave me a push in the chest with one hand while keeping his other concealed.
‘Home,’ I replied.
‘Not in one piece, you’re not,’ said Richard. ‘Not if we’ve anything to do with it!’
‘What do you think, lads?’ Stubbs shouted. ‘Shall we give him ten se
conds?’
‘Yeah!’ the mob echoed.
As the crowd roared out that word, they thrust up their arms. Some shook fists; those who’d had their hands behind their backs revealed what they’d been hiding. My mouth dropped; my eyes bulged. Johnson wielded a hefty tree branch, spiked with sharp stumps where twigs had been snapped off. Other lads waved weighty sticks. Stubbs brandished what looked like the lid of a rusty paint tin. The edge of that evil discus was snagged with fang-like points. Stubbs turned his grinning face to me.
‘I’ve already started counting, you idiot!’ he said, ‘Eight, seven …’
My trainers flung up gravel as I hurled myself into a sprint. I tore past Marcus’s pond – its brown waters passive – as the mob took up Stubbs’s chant, each number swelling with their bloodlust.
‘Six, five …’
I hurtled down the street as my heart thumped, skidding around the pub’s corner as ‘four’ and ‘three’ were bellowed out. With the pub’s sour whiff in my nostrils, I sped onto the main road as ‘two’ and ‘one’ echoed after me. I pelted past the witch’s hand. The triumphant ‘zero!’ resounded. A cry went up; it rumbled along the road, across the fields. I tried to quicken my dash, but I was already sprinting as hard as I could. My tingling arms pumped; the blood beat in my ears; my spit-flecked breath jerked out and in. I glanced back; the mob was swerving around the corner. At the sight of me, the lads gave a battle roar. Up it floated, to hover above that gang: a warlike cloud. I swear all those feet sent judders down the road – like one mass the mob ran, its many arms shaking their sticks and branches.
‘Get him!’ Stubbs yelled.
The battle roar thundered again; the arms shook their weapons. A few more strides and I glanced back. Stubbs hurled his discus. It whipped through the air – its spinning spikes a blur. I ducked without missing a step. The lid struck a telegraph pole, wedged its teeth deep in the wood.
‘Get him!’ Dennis shouted.
The Standing Water Page 45
