The vicar paused; he glanced about; his grey curls wobbled around his bald head. Stone smiled, nodded kindly at him to go on.
‘You see … they’re not exactly true. Of course, I mean, they are true in … er, the highest sense of the word, but … er …’
The vicar’s face screwed itself up; the eyes darted. Stone nodded to encourage him.
‘Stories like the Garden of Eden, the Flood, Cain and Abel, Jacob seeing the ladder leading to Heaven with the angels coming up and down. Er … now these stories tell us great deal about ourselves, about the world, about God, but … they probably didn’t happen, at least not quite like the Bible says. It’s like if you read a great story and it tells you a lot about life and you learn a lot from it. It doesn’t really matter if that story happened or not. What’s important is what it teaches you. So …’
The vicar nervously scanned the class; I too glanced around. Richard Johnson’s face was crinkled in utter confusion; Stubbs sported a sneer; Helen Jacobs nodded serenely as if what she heard was the most normal reasonable thing. Suzie Green’s mouth hung – I swear she was trying to blink back tears.
‘So, even if the whole world wasn’t covered by a flood, we still know we shouldn’t make God angry, and we know that – like in the story of the dove and the rainbow – God will forgive our sins if we’re truly sorry and will show us His signs of peace. There wasn’t really a snake in the Garden that could talk and move about on legs, but we know we shouldn’t listen to people who tempt us to do things God doesn’t like. There wasn’t really a ladder leading down from Heaven that Jacob saw, but we still know God loves us enough to send his angels among us.’
I was glad to know there were still angels – otherwise I’d have really wondered what I’d seen in the sky that Christmas Eve. Still, it made sense they didn’t need a ladder – if angels could fly, glide, hover with their wings, why would they use something like that?
‘Yes,’ the vicar was saying, ‘and Cain didn’t really murder his brother Abel. They probably never even existed. That story’s just telling us to love our brothers, not kill them, to never commit the dreadful sin of murder.’
I flicked my eyes over to Jonathon. I wondered if his Cain’s mark would fade now the vicar had made it clear there’d never been a first Cain who’d been branded. But Jonathon’s mark stubbornly stayed. His fingers even edged up to touch it, as if making sure it was still there.
‘God,’ the vicar went on, ‘would be, understandably, very angry if we tried to kill another person.’
I nodded. So God still had His reasons for having branded Jonathon, for making him bear his shameful scar. I hadn’t been wrong to expect Him to hurl down such a punishment on my friend.
‘Yes.’ The vicar seemed calmer now. ‘Perhaps we should take the Cain and Abel story as a message that God hates the violence we humans, so regrettably, often do to one another.’
At this remark Stone, who’d been smiling, gave a scowl. I thought I knew why. Though there was much less scrapping among the kids than under Weirton, there’d recently been quite an upsurge: Johnson and Stubbs battering each other in the playground, lads ambushed on their way home. It was like the fires of conflict that had blazed under Weirton had been massively damped down by our new headmaster, but evil embers of hatred and violence still glowed, embers that would occasionally flame up. I could tell this worried Stone; he spent a lot of time talking about it in assembly: ‘the bigger man can walk away’, ‘if you feel angry, count to ten before you do or say anything’.
‘And think,’ the vicar continued, ‘about Cain’s fate – how he had to become a wanderer on the earth, how he was shunned by all. Nobody wants to be friends with a violent man, and nobody – certainly – wants anything to do with someone who’s tried to kill!’
Hearing this, Stone nodded. His scowl vanished, and he was soon smiling again.
And so the year slipped by. We had – compared to the previous one – a calm and enjoyable Bonfire Night. Wrapped in coat and scarf, Mr Stone laughed, pointed at the flashes and bangs, cheerful in spite of the disapproving looks of the parents, their curt answers to his attempts at conversation, their attitudes as frosty as the frozen ground. Christmas came, though this year I knew that our lights and baubles shimmered solely in honour of Christ and the great light He’d brought into our dark world, and that they had nothing to do with spurring on our sun, who shone down from heaven regardless of our meagre human activities.
Stone talked a lot about science and told us that when we thought we had to try to use something called ‘reason’. That all seemed fair enough, but I’d sometimes have the strangest sensations and ideas. I’d be walking to or from school or standing in the playground or sitting on the field when the thought would strike me: ‘What’s it all about?’ It was a thought that flew straight to the nub of my being, like an arrow winging towards its target. My heart would pound; a weird numbness would flicker over my skin. ‘What’s it all about?’ That question would echo inside me. Neither Stone’s science and logic nor the vicar’s Bible stories could supply any answers. It didn’t help that I now knew many of the vicar’s ancient tales had never happened. It also didn’t help that my notions about the enclosed sphere I’d thought we’d lived on – that sphere God could summon into being in six days, that was just six-thousand years old, that God could drown with one flood, that sphere around which the sun, through obedience and encouragement, kept his course – that cosy yet violent sphere, had been blasted to pieces by Stone’s teachings about the vastness of the cosmos, about its trillions of miles and billions of years. None of what those two men had said helped me as my heart bashed, as my skin shivered. I couldn’t even call on the spooks I’d thought peopled Emberfield and Salton. Poor Marcus was entombed under gravel and tarmac; the Drummer Boy’s beats had only been the noise of a train; the witch’s hand had been swept away by a couple of thrusts of a workman’s rake. I felt alone; my question sounded in a mocking void, ‘What’s it all about?’ I’d look around me. The running chattering children, the sky, the swooping birds – the whole scene would seem somehow thin, unreal, almost transparent: just a film covering the mouth of a great nothingness. The other weird sensation I’d get would be when I’d wonder – just as, years later, I found out Descartes had – whether I was the only truly living being and the rest of the world no more than a powerful illusion, established and functioning, for some unknown reason, entirely for me. After a time I’d shake my head, get rid of those disturbing ideas, return to my walking, running, drawing, but those thoughts would always come back to ambush me, to catch me at the oddest moments, to start my heart booming, to send those eerie shivers scuttling over my skin.
More time passed; neat redbrick houses stood on the field next to where Marcus’s pool had been. Those houses soon had squares of garden, boxlike garages, drives leading to the road that lay over the site of the pond. Soon those houses had families, kids – kids who went to our school, who tramped every day over where that pond had skulked, that pond we’d felt such a shivering dread of. On our way to school and back, Jonathon and I would still sometimes pause there, remember Marcus. A few times we even – when sure no one was looking – dropped sweets down the drains in the new road, watching those candies fall through the shiny metal grates, watching them drop into deep darkness. We’d wonder how far those holes went down – miles, I thought, maybe right to the centre of the earth; probably just a few metres, Jonathon reckoned. What we never talked about was why we were dropping sweets down there in the first place. Hanging around there reminded us of Weirton. We’d heard little about our old headmaster. People occasionally bumped into his ex-wife in Goldhill, but she’d look nervous, get fidgety, switch the topic whenever her former husband was brought up. Of course, the rumours started flying about what might have happened to him – or what he might have got up to – in Scotland, but rumours were all they were: nobody had any evidence.
I’d often linger near the place Marcus’s pool had been, someti
mes with Jonathon, sometimes alone, linger as long as I could until someone spotted me and I’d have to move off before they found me strange. But, when I was sure no one was around, I’d stare at that tarmac, stare at its still-pristine blackness, gaze until blackness was all my eyes could see, all that filled my brain. I’d then picture those dark, dark standing waters. I’d remember how deep, how dark, how dangerous I’d thought they’d been. In a strange sense, I knew they were still there, still living, still lurking under that sealed road. And, at that moment, I’d long for clouds to mass above – the blackest, biggest, wickedest clouds ever. I’d long for them to send their waters down in such a deluge that the neat road would be pounded, that bits of it would be gouged out, washed away in torrents. I’d want the rain to hammer for so long that the whole road would be carried off, along with the gravel beneath, till that downpour had scooped out the old shape of Marcus’s pond. Down the rains would bash, day after day, until that pond inched beyond its boundaries, started flooding the town. The hated school would disappear beneath the waters as would the stinking pub, Davis’s shop with its peevish old owner trapped within, all the houses, with all the savage gossips of Emberfield stuck inside. The flood would go on rising till the entire town was swamped, till the waters lay over the realm of Salton, far above the church, the castle, the Drummer’s tunnel, above the sleeping Scots, above any ancient curses that drifted there. The rain wouldn’t stop; the waters would get higher until the whole country was covered. I’d imagine Weirton clinging to a Scottish mountain top – his face red and sweating, his eyes blinking behind his glasses, as the waters lapped at his shoes then his legs, his neck. On and on the rains would fall, the water would rise until everything and everybody lay miles below. And then – finally – there’d be peace: no yelling voices, swooping hands, bawling kids, squabbling children, swinging belts, blabbering mouths, beating fists. Just endless calm waters – like in the beginning of the world, as the vicar had told us, before God had conjured the Creation and all our problems had started. Nothing but featureless, perfectly serene standing water.
Part Three
Chapter Fifty-one
I pace around my little room. Been painting. Room stinks of paints, white spirit. Half-finished work propped on the easel. Pictures stacked in the corner I’d love to be able to sell. Manage it sometimes, but the sort of art I do isn’t fashionable. If I could just sell one – enable me not to worry about money for a week or so.
As for the book. Well, really need to get away, but it’s more than that. Got this wonderfully nutty idea. Cottage in Scotland, yes, looked into it, quite cheap at the moment, out of season. Strain the overdraft, but it needs to be done. If I don’t find what – or should I say who? – I’m looking for, I suppose it’d still be worth it, clear the brain at least. Spoke with Mum on the phone recently and – after a long rant about how a lot of my classmates have turned out – guess what she mentioned. She’d bumped into Weirton’s wife in Goldhill and the ex-Mrs Weirton had let slip the area her husband had moved to. But she’d looked really nervous when Mum asked how Weirton was, said she hadn’t had any contact for years with him. It’s between Fort William and Oban near a landmark called Castle Stalker. OK, crazy idea, trying to find him. He might have died, moved away; even if he hasn’t I might not be able to locate his whereabouts. And what would I do if I did meet him? Ask him to sit down and write the bits of the book I’m struggling over? Ask him to apologise for the damage that rolling voice and right hand have caused? Or would that thing happen to my brain and my kicks start lashing, my punches hurtle? Could do what I intended to so many years ago. Often wonder what’s been happening to him. Like to invent scenarios – terrible illnesses, car crashes, slow and agonising forms of death, life sentences in third-world prisons. Try not to think such thoughts, but I can’t stop. Stride over to the bookshelves, my fingers linger over the Works of William Blake. Not even old Blake’s wisdom can help:
‘Mutual forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the gates of Paradise.’
Sorry, William, it’s not that simple. Cycles of revenge and hatred are like whirlpools, nearly impossible to climb out of. Also nearly impossible to avoid drowning in. Whirlpools within whirlpools within even bigger whirlpools – individuals, families, communities, nations – cycles turning each other, feeding off each other. Is this what our world has to be like?
Anyway, something nags at me – I’ve got to book that cottage. When Mum and Dad hear I’m heading north, they’ll insist I stay for a night with them in Emberfield. A lot of fun that will be! Means I might as well hire the car in York instead of Scotland – more and more expense!
Always seem dragged back – whether in body or mind – to that fucking awful place. I can never really flee it.
Chapter Fifty-two
The Diary of James Ronald Weirton
Wednesday, 8th June, 1984
It was wonderful to walk out of my cottage this morning, taste the fresh biting air, see the sun shimmering on the loch. Breeze off the water ruffling my shirt, the mountain peaks rimming the lake scratching the sky, that sky a drifting patchwork of clouds the sun was shooting its rays down through like an archer unleashing his arrows. Magnificent! All so different to Goldhill and Emberfield. Flavour of the air was the first thing I noticed when I got here – it’s not tainted by smoke and manure scents, by skulking lowland vapours, by the miasmas of graveyards, never mind by the pollution of ancient curses. Here the air’s so fresh, so vigorous it’s almost painful – good salt nip to it, snapping up at you from the sea loch, mixed with the not unpleasant aroma of rotting seaweed. Just love to stare over the lake – what peace, what freedom! Could easily stand there for hours just gazing – the sun’s glitter on the water, the rocky islets tinged that lovely browny-green by lichen and seaweed, the bulk of Castle Stalker rising on its island just down the shore. Even when it rains the view’s impressive – the storms breaking over the mountains, the pounding sheets sweeping down the loch. So, so different to the downpours round Emberfield – the water bashing onto the sodden flatlands, onto the sulky marshes where it then lies in dirty puddles and evil pools. Give me any day an honest Scottish deluge – let me see the raw power of nature at work!
Did some gardening in the morning, had a stroll round my – my – two fields in the afternoon, around my scrap of Scotland, my scrap of sacred land. How wonderful compared to the pathetic square of garden we had in Goldhill! Seriously thinking of getting some sheep – cottage comes with grazing rights on the mountain as well as fishing rights on the loch. Have to learn how to milk them, make cheese, already know how to sheer, of course, just have to brush up my technique as it’s been so long. Took a simple lunch in the cottage. Had a good glance around – still can’t quite believe it’s mine! I love it all – the thick rough walls, the slanting floors, the old fireplace. Apparently, they burn peat here in winter. I reached out a hand, ran it along the bulging and dipping contours of the walls – wonderful! Here, I thought, is real life – life in all its rugged glory! How different to the monotone smoothness of the redbrick of Emberfield. People down there wouldn’t know real life if it whacked them round the chops! Only reminders of my former existence are a few sticks of furniture I took from the old place, the Mercedes – of course – parked outside, and – unfortunately, I have to say – Lucy. Didn’t know what to do with her so I brought her here. Phoned the school – that buffoon Stone even drove her to Goldhill. Bet he’d turn pale if he knew what had been on his backseat! Said I intended to use her as a teaching aide. There she is now, in her corner, grinning as I write, staring at me gormlessly. She’s no more gormless than a lot of the kids I taught in Emberfield! What else could I have done but take her with me? How do you simply dispose of a ten-year-old girl’s skeleton? And if I’d left her in the school, that clown Stone might have got suspicious. He told me himself he’s the ‘inquisitive type’. In other words, he loves to shove his nose in where that nose shouldn’t be!
So, anyway, he
re Lucy hangs in the corner of my living room. Makes me uneasy at night, I have to say, especially when the wind’s howling around the mountains, swooping over the loch, shaking my door. One night I even saw Lucy shivering and clacking in some dreadful dance! Jumped out of my chair, cold sweats, heart hammering. Thought the old ticker was going to pop again, the old brain going to blow. All Lucy was telling me was that I had a draught. Moved her to the opposite corner – a place where she has no temptations to rattle and jig! Still feel like she’s looking at, watching me sometimes, especially at night when it gets so quiet here! Incredible silence – makes Goldhill seem like Leicester Square. Wanted to put her in a cupboard, closet her out of my damned sight, but nothing here’s big enough. Have to go into Oban or Fort William, find a furniture shop. Buy a nice coffin so I can lock Lucy away!
Often think of how she came to be in my possession. How – despite the fun I’ve had with her over the years – I wish I could go back in time, bash my head till the whole hair-brained idea of acquiring her is driven from my skull. Wish I’d never gone into in that blasted junkshop! Funny old fellow who ran it – how I wish I’d never got talking to him! Think he immediately clocked something about me – takes one to know one, as they say. Dark humour, a feel for the macabre – he sniffed that out all right. Sidled up to me as I was browsing in his cluttered dusty store – white beard, white hair, impish flicker in his eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ he said. ‘Seen anything of interest, Sir?’
‘That model skeleton –’ I nodded towards where Lucy dangled ‘– pretty lifelike, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a she, actually – genuine bit of Victoriana, used for teaching medical students. Hence the veins and arteries painted on.’
The Standing Water Page 53
