The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  Chapter Fifty-four

  I take the train from London to York then pick up the hire car. It’s already getting dark as I edge out of the city, past the last of the shoppers, the workers hurrying home. Drive along the main road as dusk drops over the flat fields. This road at least is pretty straight. Reminds me of something Blake said, ‘Improvement makes straight roads, but crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius.’ Crooked roads – that’s true of Emberfield: crooked in the way we think, the way we act. Could such crookedness, such a strange remote childhood, produce any genius? In me, in anyone? One can hope, but I remain to be persuaded.

  Turn off the main road and soon I’m swerving along those bloody windy lanes. Like I’ve slipped into another realm. Bustling city just twenty minutes or so behind me, but it feels so different here. Another time, other values. Something ancient already in the air, something seeping up from the soil, a miasma, a mood. Complete blackness outside now. Headlights show the snaking road, its faded white lines, a flash of hedgerows, fence posts, a galloping rabbit or hare. It’s still a good few miles away, but all my thoughts are of Emberfield. It’s like something evil in the atmosphere’s polluted my mind, invaded my body with my breath. I know Salton lies across those dark plains, that Salton I peopled so lovingly with all the spooks my imagination and local legend could supply. I picture the castle, the church, the graves all standing so silently – those buildings silent, but somehow knowing: their knowingness due to what their stones have seen, have endured. Gets me thinking of the times the school would go up there with Weirton, which in turn gets me thinking about my classmates. To use the Emberfield term, not many of us have ‘turned out well’.

  Where to start? There’s Richard Johnson, who – the last I heard – had just got out of the clinic. Can’t remember if it was smack, crack or booze this time. Perhaps it was all three. Craig Browning and Darren Hill, apparently, are still in jail. Big ruck, GBH charges. Remember seeing the faces of the lads they’d battered in the local paper. Mum kept it especially to show me. Not the first stretch those two have spent at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Long history of fights, of violence, right from when they started the Big School. Remember being on the end of their rampages a couple of times myself. Suzie Green. Got pregnant, married young – a true shotgun wedding from what I heard, Mr Green paying a visit to the young buck with his twelve bore. Husband battered Suzie, covered her in bumps and bruises, liked kicking her down the stairs. Mr Green found out, battered the husband then battered Suzie a bit too for good measure. Didn’t stop the husband swinging his fists. Divorce, new husband, new baby. New one knocked her around as well. Like there was something in her that expected it, that made them do it, the gossips round here were saying, like Suzie thought that type of thing was normal. Single mum now, family’s disowned her. Lives on hand-outs from the government and – let’s say – she’s found another stream of income to top up the meagre amounts she gets. Blokes in and out of her place on Friday and Saturday nights. They say she’s all right to look at now the bruises have faded. Almost tempted to give her a call, have to do something to release the tension, the spine-tightening, queasy-stomached tension that coming back to this godforsaken dunghill of a place always brings out in me.

  How about Dennis Stubbs? Stubbsy didn’t go with us to the town’s comprehensive. Parents sent him to some pretentious private day school. If they hoped it would make him a gentleman, it failed dismally. Stubbs changed after he went there. He’d been stringy, tough but quite a small lad, not that difficult to knack in if you were determined. He got bigger, shot up, expanded sideways. There were soon reports of him bullying at his new school. Chucked his weight about in town as well. Remember that time he took me by surprise, decked me with one punch out in the street, hoofed kicks into me as I lay groaning on the ground. Plenty of other incidents, but I try not to let them gush from my memory. Relentless persecutor of the Smith lads too, who lived on the other side of Emberfield, but that’s another tale. Ended up becoming a chef in Emberfield’s only hotel. Real bully in the kitchen. You’d hear all sorts of stories about him – holding people’s heads close to boiling pans, flinging knives across the room. And there was that infamous incident when he was in his house and thought he saw two teenagers tampering with his car. Rushed out waving a samurai sword. Had both lads up against the vehicle as his blade shivered at their necks. Also earned a bit of extra cash being a part-time thug and enforcer for the town’s criminal gang. Swaggering around the pubs, hauling blokes outside for ‘a little word, a little persuasion’. Then he got sick. Some terrible disease. Baffled the doctors. Affected his throat and stomach. Had him puking all the time – as if there was something he was desperate to hurl out, as if he had to vomit again and again, try to force some pollution from his body, his soul. Had to give up work, sell his house, move back in with his parents. Now he’s virtually bedbound.

  I turn off the Goldhill road. The lane gets even windier as I swing towards Emberfield. Think about Jonathon. How I used to reckon he was marked like Cain. That mark proved prophetic. He really did become a wanderer on the earth. Shortly after we started the Big School, his family moved away, further north. Moved back to Goldhill so I saw a bit of him. Then they moved down south then back to Goldhill again, so the brother could reignite his tragic alliance with Darren Hill. Was Jonathon shunned by all? He certainly had his problems. Around the time he got his last wallopings from Weirton, something changed in him. He withdrew. It was subtle at first, but it grew as the months and years went by, like Weirton had left some evil seed in him that germinated then morphed into a dismal tree, a tree that strangled his spirit with its branches and roots. Stubbs, Richard Johnson, other lads began to notice, started to push him around. Jonathon talked less, played less, got more wrapped up in his inventions, his gizmos, his books. His schoolwork got worse, had Stone baffled. People couldn’t take him seriously. Lost confidence, developed a couple of nervous twitches, became a target for ridicule. First few months at the Big School before his family moved away – he got into upper streams for most things: it wasn’t hard there, but, like some snuffed-out star, he couldn’t allow himself to shine. It was like he made some huge effort to be mediocre, go unnoticed. This boy who’d been building robots, designing arks hardly ever scored above a C, even in science. Not that I blamed him – it wasn’t easy at that place if you were labelled a ‘swot’. Picked up a few punches myself for being good at English and art, especially as these were ‘poncy subjects’. But it was more than that with Jonathon. It was like something in him had been snapped, broken, shattered. He had no choice but to limp through life rebuffed and mocked by everybody. I’m sure people could just sense he’d take whatever they hurled at him. Things didn’t get much better when he left school. He’s bounced from one mundane office job to another. Branded by his Cain’s mark, he’s kept moving. Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham – was down in London for a bit, so we were able to meet, catch up. Then he was up in Scotland, back down to Wales. Spent some time on the south coast then he was in London again. Same wherever he goes. Drab job, awful pay, belittled by the bosses, jibes from his co-workers. It’s like he’s roaming around – or driven on – constantly looking for something, something that was lost long ago in the dismal plains, the stinking fens, the misty marshes of his past, something – sadly – I don’t think he’ll ever find.

  The only one of us who’s done alright is Helen Jacobs. She’s high up in some big charity. Good wage, pricy house in London, travels all over the world. Husband writes for a liberal broadsheet, the type that gets Dad fuming. Couple of kids in posh schools.

  As I steer closer to Emberfield, as the darkness somehow thickens outside, as my hands clench the wheel, I wonder what I can say about myself. I know what they say about me. It seems the good folk of Emberfield have never been able to forgive me ‘for running off to be an artist in London.’ They assumed I was asking for their approval, their forgiveness in the first place. They sniggered when they
heard I’d published my first book. I know they celebrated each time Mum told them about its meagre sales – celebrated as they imagined my illusions pulverised, my daft flights of fancy dragged down. As if I was softheaded enough to think I’d sell like Stephen King or that Harry Potter woman. If you start writing literary fiction to make money, you need your bloody head checked. Still, a few more sales would have been nice. I could just imaging Davis doing his shuddering dance of joy, the gobs of the gossips clacking as they heard about what they considered my multiple failures – still living in one room, skint, still painting my ‘hopeless pictures no bugger understands.’ I could just see the sheer pleasure lighting their faces, curving up their lips. It’s what small-town people are like – there’s no titbit so juicy, no feast that tastes so fine as the failures, the disgrace, the misfortunes of others.

  I slow down as I round a bend, swerve past that eerie graveyard. Shows I’m nearly back in my hometown, back in that fucking awful place. I shift on the seat and my back tightens, pain jolts up my spine. Always problems in that area. Guess it’ll be worse now because I’m so tense. Lower back stiff, backs of legs stiff – braced forever for Weirton’s impacts. Still waiting, after so many years, for that palm to swoop. The fear of that yank into the air, of those massive blows never leaves. You can convince your mind it won’t happen again, the body’s another matter. Long memories, muscles have. Chest tight where breathlessness would squeeze and crush my ribcage; throat tight due to gurgling, suffocating on my sobs. I think, even more than Weirton’s strikes, the breathlessness was the worst. The stomach’s queasy vacuum, the lips quivering for air before the merciless hand would hurl it out. Reminds me of when God created Adam. He moulded the man out of cold clay then brought that clay to life by breathing into it. It was only that exhalation that made Adam live. Breath is life, and maybe life was what Weirton hated. He wanted to knock it out of us, reduce us to senseless clay, reduce us to the state of automatons.

  Entering Emberfield now. Car slopes past the first houses, the church, the shop. Makes me remember Davis. Thought he’d hobble on for ever. Finally retired about fifteen years ago, been in a home for the last five. Must be a hundred by now. Heard the old wretch gives the staff in there a terrible time. Edge the car along our patch of town’s main street. The lampposts let down their skirts of faint orange – dim triangles cut from the darkness. I pass the pub, its windows lit, then there’s the black void where the road leads up to the school and the site of the old pond. A shiver jerks through me as I pass it. Glide down the rest of the street, past the community hall, past the Stubbs’s home. I reach my parents’ house, the last in Emberfield. The lights are on, but the spectral darkness stretches off on all sides. I park the car, walk up the path, trip the security lamp. It floods the garden, illuminating our gnome who – his colour faded, his plaster worn – still patiently fishes in his pool. And after all these years, he’s still caught nowt. I rap on the door, see Mum’s silhouette coming through the curtained glass.

  Soon my mother, father and I are seated round our kitchen table. I’m scoffing the food Mum’s saved. My folks ate earlier, as always, at six. Same time every day. I look around the room – same tiles, chipped and faded now, showing their country scenes. And, as always, when we’re in the kitchen, the radio is on. The news blares from the speaker – a depressing broadside: robbery, rape, murder, terrorism, fraud. I hate having the radio on when I’m eating, it gives me indigestion, but this is my father’s house so I don’t feel I can complain. Dad snorts and snarls as the news is spat into our kitchen; he nods and grumbles, seeming both outraged and satisfied as the world confirms the views he’s held of it for many years.

  ‘Police are looking for a man …’ the speaker crackles.

  ‘Black,’ Dad mutters.

  ‘A black man aged about …’ the radio says.

  ‘See!’ Dad glares around the table, his eyes both inviting and forbidding any responses. ‘This is what our country’s coming to!’

  Then he’s off. He rants as I struggle to chew and swallow. All the usual topics: benefit scroungers, immigrants, the EU, Muslims, binge drinkers, feminists, wind turbines, lefties, unions, gays, health and safety, the nanny state, our country’s shocking lack of censorship, never being allowed to say anything anymore, the frequency of child abuse, the disgraceful lack of corporal punishment. He doesn’t pause to suck in breath. On and on he goes, the radio – crackling and sharp-voiced – modulating in the background, occasionally backing up Dad in his diatribe. I just sigh, wish I could be elsewhere, that Dad would at least break for a moment, let me concentrate on getting my grub down, but he doesn’t stop.

  ‘The problem nowadays,’ Mum eventually chimes in, ‘is there’s no sense of society or community in many places. There’s no discipline, too much freedom. It’s all me, me, me. People just barging each other out of the way, not caring about others. If a young man wants something, he’ll mug an old lady so he can get it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ says Dad. ‘Whatever’s happened to decency, to respect, to knowing your place and what’s expected of you?’

  It’s hard not to smile. In the eighties, they were both rabid Thatcher fans. You vote for a party that promotes selfishness and greed then you’re dismayed when people start to act in a selfish and greedy manner. Dad goes on.

  ‘At least we don’t have too much of that sort of thing in Emberfield yet. This place, thank God, is like an island in the flood, not swamped by the dreadfulness of the modern world. There are hardly any niggers and Pakis in Emberfield and absolutely no poofs!’

  ‘But even here,’ Mum says darkly, ‘even here you can see some of the modern world’s effects. Even here –’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes,’ Dad says. ‘There are quite a few of Ryan’s classmates who haven’t turned out well.’

  ‘I blame that Mr Stone,’ Mum says. ‘Everything was OK until he replaced Mr Weirton. That’s when a lot of those youngsters started going bad.’

  ‘Of course –’ Dad nods ‘– it’s obvious, isn’t it? Those lads only behaved well because of Mr Weirton’s discipline. Withdraw that, replace it with namby-pamby modern ideas and trendy nonsense, and lads are bound to start running wild! Stone didn’t give out a single hiding! Not one! What on earth can you expect?’

  ‘Look at them now … that Darren Hill!’

  ‘And that Richard Johnson – now that lad …’

  And Dad’s off again, ranting about druggies and drunks, saying what they need is a good flogging then putting in the army. The conversation moves onto Suzie Green and Dad embarks on a tirade about single mothers. I struggle to gulp down the last of my food, wonder when it would be polite to escape from the table. I could plead tiredness, sneak upstairs. But with Mum and Dad’s diatribes gushing out, I can’t slide a word in. A long discussion of Craig Browning’s outrages follows next, along with occasional asides flung at Jonathon.

  ‘And that brother of his hasn’t made much of his life by all accounts. Roaming around the country like some damned gypsy, flitting from one dead-end job to the next. Always seemed quite a bright lad, n’all. Must be laziness, due to lack of discipline. That blasted Mr Stone …’

  I try to glug my tea down so I can decently slip away. It’s too hot. I burn my mouth, scorch my throat. As I sit, blowing on that damned drink, I think about Emberfield. Its residents may despise people who are different, most of whom live far away in big cities, down south, even abroad. They may aim the arrows of their fury at those mysterious conspirators they blame for swallowing their taxes, ruining their country, blighting their lives. But the very fact so many of those detested aliens are far off means that – to vent their rage, express their hatred – Emberfield’s inhabitants have to search much nearer their homes. And many convenient scapegoats are Weirton’s former pupils.

  The food finally finished, the tea drunk, I stand up, give an exaggerated stretch, speak of my long day and journey, and retreat to my room. Trudge up the staircase, past the picture of th
e beggar boy still holding out his hopeful tin, that tin which – even after so many years – has still not received a coin. I shut my bedroom door; its wood thankfully muffles the spiky crackles of the radio as that device goes on pouring out its woeful tales. At last, a bit of peace. I go to the window, stick my head through the curtains, gaze outside. There’s not much to see. Light from the house illuminates the front garden. The streetlamp opposite sends down its orange cone then beyond there’s just blackness. I imagine the fields stretching away, the miles of dark marshes just occasionally spotted by a lonely farmhouse, a dull hamlet, an old church. A train rattles past in the distance, making the sound I used to think came from the Drummer Boy. The train’s echo fades; I think of Salton, the castle and graveyard standing so quietly, the cursed glove with which we’d tried to kill Weirton hanging in the church, so motionless, so silent. As I stare from the window, I wonder why I ever come back here. No mates left in Emberfield now – they’ve all moved away. Obligation – feel it’s my duty to visit the family. Difficult to understand why we need to put each other through it – we don’t like each other, don’t get on. We see the world very differently; when we’re together we grate on each other’s nerves. Past resentments foam and bubble just under the surface. There’s this unspoken law that you have to love your parents, adore your family, but why? You’re just a bunch of people the randomness of genetics has flung together. There’s no reason – beyond your DNA – why you should have much in common. And why should I like, let alone love, people who – not only willingly, but enthusiastically – subjected me to Weirton? People who urged on every swoop of his hand, applauded each impact. I really can’t comprehend how people can not only bear, but actually celebrate such things being done to their children. We really do live in different universes. I try not to despise my parents, but it’s a struggle I often lose. I sometimes wonder how the hell someone like me could have grown up in such a family, in such a place. I’m the absolute opposite of everything I’ve been brought up to be. It can’t just be youthful rebellion now I’m thirty-five. It must be the way I am. Though how I turned out like this would puzzle anyone.