Silverstone Part One: Through Dark Waters

by J. J. Moody

  SILVERSTONE

  Part One: Through Dark Waters

  J.J.Moody

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  First published July 2016 by James Moody

  Copyright © James Moody 2016

  ISBN 978-0-9946112-0-8 (EPUB)

  www.silverstonestory.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  The Strange Swimming Pool

  Chapter Two

  A Perilous Welcome

  Chapter Three

  The Birthday Party

  From the author

  Q&A

  Chapter One

  The Strange Swimming Pool

  That day was not a happy one for Ben Silverstone.

  For his parents Jackie and Steven, buying an old, crumbling little cottage on the edge of Hulstead Village, in South East London, was a dream they had been talking about for years, and for which he knew they had worked extremely hard in their jobs as accountants for a company whose name was a collection of four letters he could never remember. Not only that, but moving from their small flat in Fulham would save them lots of money as it had been far more expensive. He had watched them at the dining table sometimes, while he quietly pretended to watch television nearby, as they talked with worried frowns about the bills, and was at least pleased that they seemed to be in a safer financial position now. He could see a weight had lifted from their shoulders, and hadn’t seen them stop smiling since they had bought the house four months ago, even in spite of all the mountain of paperwork he had seen them working through.

  For his little brother Toby, the house would be a treasure trove to explore and play in, especially the little patch of garden at the back of the property, sandwiched between the enormous castle-like properties on either side of them. Once it had some grass in it that was. Right now it needed all the rubbish cleaned away, and probably also to have an exterminator come to get rid of any rats likely to be hiding in it, Ben thought. But Toby was more amused by all the brown cardboard packing boxes than anything else at the moment anyway.

  As for Paddy, Ben’s grey and white whippet, he sat directly in front of Ben, head tilting to one side, and then to the other, as if looking at Ben from a different angle would enable him to find a smile somewhere within his gloomy expression. That was his default pose for trying to cheer Ben up, and usually worked wonders. They had found Paddy in Battersea Dogs Home when Ben had been about Toby’s age, and Paddy had been attached to Ben ever since. The staff had said he’d been found in the river at night by a police boat, somehow managing to keep his head above water long enough for them to drag him out and dry him off. Ben could understand his dislike of being washed in water. He obliged him with a scratch behind the ear and watched the skinny little dog tremble with delight.

  For Ben though, there was a lot of change happening all at the same time. Not only had he just moved from where he’d spent almost all of his eleven years of life so far in to a dilapidated old house, he was starting at the even older secondary school in the village in a few weeks time. His parents had reassured him things would be absolutely fine once he had settled in, but he was used to the way things had been back in Fulham, and quite comfortable there, and also much preferred modern things anyway. He liked things that were clean, and worked reliably and easily. He didn’t know very much about oddly shaped, disintegrating things with dark holes and strange smells, and they made him a bit uncomfortable. As he stared blankly at Paddy he felt a dull ache in his chest forming, which he thought must have been all of the feelings he had about these changes compressed tightly into one spot. Maybe he was just hungry.

  His mother called him for dinner. They ate fish fingers and peas from the local supermarket that Ben’s mother had cooked on a camping stove, on a table of boxes, by candlelight.

  “We’ll get the electricity and gas turned on tomorrow hopefully,” his father said, as he walked in from what was going to be their bedroom, putting his phone down on another of the boxes. The truck his parents had hired to move was still half full outside, and Ben wondered if there was enough room in the tiny house for all their contents or whether they might end up having to just pile up all of the things they didn’t have space for into one of the rooms all the way to the ceiling, and squeeze the door closed behind.

  “That’s good Dad. But I actually quite like the candlelight,” Ben lied, trying to put on a brave face. His father patted him on the back.

  That night his parents stayed up very late unpacking in the candlelight, while Ben sat in his new bedroom, wrapped in his own thoughts, with Paddy dosing on his lap, and Toby sleeping next to them on a makeshift bed of boxes and what his mother had managed to find of the bedding. Toby would have happily slept inside a box that first night, surrounded in a nest of neatly packed towels and sheets, Ben mused, with a smile. Unwilling to make a start on his unpacking, he lay down, and finally drifted off.

  The next morning was a rush. Ben’s parents had fallen asleep underneath an old photo album they had uncovered, and had slept through several alarms. The tour of Ben’s new school was scheduled to begin at 9am sharp, and Ben’s parents did not want to be tardy and upset Ms Villeneuve, the school headmistress. There was a whirlwind of bread and peanut butter for breakfast, and Toby and Paddy were hastily handed over to Ben’s Auntie Maggie to look after, before Ben and his parents jumped into their rusty VW Polo and raced over the speed bumps towards the school.

  As soon as they had found a parking spot in the school car park, Ben and his parents joined a small group of other parents and children lined up in a neat row before the steps to the main school building, waiting for Ms Villeneuve, who was to escort them on the tour herself. The main building was an enormous old structure three times the size of Ben’s primary school, and he imagined that it and the other buildings in the grounds could probably hold thousands of children like him, in classes of hundreds, sitting at rows and rows of old wooden desks like little learning machines, in front of scary white haired men who probably still dressed like the teachers used to a hundred years ago and taught them nothing but ancient Latin. This was not going to be a fun place to go to school, he decided, as he looked around. Still, he did his best to look enthusiastic as his parents grinned at him excitedly.

  He glanced up at the clock tower that rose above the left side of the main building. The tower had been one of the most ancient parts of the school, his parents had said after they had done the first school tour a few months ago, and it looked like it was leaning dangerously to one side, ready to collapse on top of some unfortunate students at any minute. To the right of the clock tower above what looked like the main doors, there were the remains of a crest containing a book and some kind of winged animal, and below them something written in a language Ben didn’t understand.

  There were several large stone arched windows along the front of the building, with odd diamond shaped pieces of glass that shimmered in the morning sun like the scales of an enormous snake that had squeezed its way inside to lie in wait for them. Around the top just before the roof began there perched the ruins of a row of gargoyles, which were probably more likely to squash anyone walking below who had managed to get past the treacherous clock tower than scare off any evil spirits in their crumbling condition, Ben thought.

  On the sharply pointed slate-tiled rooftop directly above the main doors he caught sight of a man painting on
e of the chimneys, while sitting very precariously on the pinnacle of the roof. For a moment the man paused to look down at the tour group, and Ben wondered how on earth he had got up there, with no scaffolding or ladders in sight, and nowhere near a window. Then the man turned his attention back to the painting, and Ben turned his attention to the other families joining the Silverstones on the tour.

  There were now three other families in the tour with them. The first was dressed so immaculately it appeared as though their clothes had been sewed and ironed while they stood there. They must have arrived first, and were waiting patiently for Ms Villeneuve without saying a word, and keeping very still at the far right of the line. Their boy was about the same size as Ben, and seemed very experienced at keeping still and quiet.

  The next family was dressed in very bright colours that reminded Ben of the colourful birds in the Amazon rainforest that he had seen on David Attenborough wildlife documentaries. The father jangled his keys in the air as he paced up and down talking loudly into his gold mobile phone, while the mother carefully styled her son’s blond hair.

  “Keep still Jordan lovely,” she said to him as she licked her fingers and styled his hair into a sharp, gravity-defying point.

  Jordan tapped on his matching gold phone with a blank expression, ignoring everything else.

  The Silverstones had arrived next and stood beside Jordan and his family, and to their left had just arrived a very tall, skinny family with twin girls, who talked to each other much too fast for Ben to interpret, while their parents did the same. He thought they might have been foreign.

  After a few moments further waiting as more families arrived, the clock struck 9am, and the enormous doors at the top of the steps to the main building made a groaning noise as they creaked open, precisely on cue. Ms Villeneuve stepped out.

  Ben had been half expecting a headmistress like old Mrs Bumblebottom at his little primary school in Parsons Green. But Ms Villeneuve was very different. She wore a pensive expression as if she was constantly considering a problem she hadn’t yet been able to solve, and actually looked no older than his parents. Her clothes were similar to those worn by the first family in the line, but a touch sharper and more modern, and helped reinforce the air of superiority she exuded as she calmly glided along toward them. Her glasses were rimless, and magnified her sharp green eyes to at least twice their normal size as she observed them. Her light brown hair was contained in a perfect bun, positioned very carefully in the very centre of her head.

  She paused at the top of the stairs for a moment to survey the group, measured out a small smile, and then descended and introduced the tour.

  “Welcome back to Hulstead College and thank you for coming. Parents, your previous tour covered most of the grounds and buildings, so today is simply a formality to make your children more comfortable prior to the commencement of the school term in three weeks time.”

  Ms Villeneuve talked in perfect English, but with a subtle French accent. Jordan’s father was clearly impressed.

  “Great. Yeah. Fantastic,” he commented, as his wife concluded a final flourish to Jordan’s quiff.

  “We will begin with the Great Hall behind me,” she said with a dramatic gesture, without removing her gaze from the group. The parents and children looked up at the grand features of the building. Ben’s parents seemed to love it, and he heard them oohing and ahhing a great deal as they pointed towards different parts of it.

  The crisp morning sun gradually gave way to a few grey wisps of cloud, and a cool breeze rustled the early autumn leaves from the trees behind them as Ms Villeneuve recited a perfectly rehearsed history of the school, and in particular the Great Hall. The boy from the smartly dressed family posed a question, and she dealt with it swiftly before returning effortlessly to the narration. To Ben, the building was just old.

  Finally she reached a precise pause. “Now, let us go inside.”

  Ben’s chest ached again. He drifted back behind the parents like the other children, and exchanged a few pleasantries with his fellow students. Ilse and Lotte were from Holland, and had moved over to London so that they could grow up speaking more English. George didn’t say much at all besides his name, and was eager to pay attention to everything that Ms Villeneuve had to say. Jordan showed Ben an amusing picture of a cat on his phone while Ms Villeneuve talked about the stained glass windows.

  But Ben remained largely quiet, anxiously eyeing the old wooden beams of the Great Hall that towered above them, the rickety old staircases leading up into forgotten corners of the school, and the deep, rich colours everywhere that felt so unwelcoming. It smelled damp and cold. The floors were hard stone and polished wood, with the exception of the patterned carpet on the raised platform at the far end of the hall, from where the school assemblies were delivered.

  They moved on to some other buildings after the Great Hall, and towards the end of the tour they came to the school gymnasium. It was a large brick building set in a lonely spot near the edge of the grounds, housing an exercise hall and a swimming pool. As they approached a light rain began to fall, and the group hurried as much as they could behind Ms Villeneuve, who produced a large black and grey umbrella from somewhere, but refused to compromise her steady pace.

  It was a relief to Ben to step inside, and the bright lights of the exercise hall seemed reassuringly modern to him. He enjoyed playing most sports – he thought he was fairly good at them – and the hall brought a feeling of safety after the creaking stairs and crumbling walls of the other buildings. Ben’s mother squeezed his shoulders reassuringly as they entered.

  “The gymnasium is well equipped as you can see, and our boys and girls are required to participate in three exercise classes every week. We pride ourselves on an excellent performance record within the Greater London leagues and our boys and girls participate at county and national levels as well.” She made a sweeping gesture around the room, ending at a small door in a corner on the far side.

  “The original building was destroyed in a fire in the 1920’s but was originally constructed around 1750 at the same time as the Great Hall where we began the tour. At the time of the fire it was little more than the swimming pool, which we will visit in a moment, and a tennis court where you are now standing.”

  “There you go Jord, you like tennis,” Jordan’s father declared.

  Ms Villeneuve glided toward the small door.

  They passed through the door, and then into the boys changing rooms. The twin girls held their noses tightly, afraid of any residual smells of boys that had changed there previously. Then the group hurried through the long, open boys shower room, whose faucets looked unlikely to be capable of providing anything except icy cold water, before finally coming into the pool room.

  The room was very dark despite the lights, but Ben slowly looked around. It was a large pool, probably Olympic sized, he thought, with a spring diving board at one end, and lanes marked out with the usual dividers. There was the normal chlorine smell coming from it, but the water must not be well heated at all, as it was still fairly cold in the room and several of the group had wrapped their coats a little closer after they had come in. On the other side of the pool there were a few spectator stands, and Ben noticed a man dozing on them under his cap; a mop and bucket propped up nearby.

  Ms Villeneuve led the tour around the pool in the direction of the stands. “As you can see, the pool itself has been around for some time.” She smiled as if this was expected to draw a laugh, and a few of the parents obliged.

  “Is there a school swimming team?” Ilse asked.

  “Yes of course. The teams practice after school with Mr Taylor on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the school year, beginning with the initial team selection trials during the first week of term, and they compete in the Greater London Swimming League, with an excellent record.”

  The girls nodded.

  “And always a lifeguard?” their father said, with a frown.

  Some of the parents mutter
ed quietly.

  “Some kid drowned here once,” Jordan’s father explained to Ben’s dad in a mock whisper, whilst patting him repeatedly on the back as if trying to help him with a ticklish cough. “In the middle of a swimming class too. Big mystery. But that was a hundred bloody years ago when they didn’t mind about losing one or two of the students!” He burst into loud laughter and moved away.

  Ben’s father smiled gratefully for the information.

  Ms Villeneuve stepped in to answer the question. “Yes there is always a lifeguard present during swimming classes and competitions. I assure you the pool is quite safe.”

  Ben looked around again. There were extravagant mosaic patterns around the pool and under the water. It reminded him of the Roman baths he had seen in Bath, when his family had visited. Not your typical school swimming pool, he thought. He wondered why they hadn’t updated it. It was probably one of the protected historic buildings he was learning more and more about.

  But the water was the most peculiar thing about it. The shallow end directly in front of where the group stood seemed brightly lit and still, except for the churn of the chlorine pumps. But as they walked around toward the bleachers side and the deeper end the water became unnaturally dark. So much so that Ben couldn’t even make out the bottom. The light cast by the bulbs beneath the surface seemed barely to be escaping. Just how deep was it? he wondered, looking for depth markings. He couldn’t see any. Was it his imagination or could he spot movement down there?

  Even the surface of the water seemed to move with a heaviness more like the open sea, with powerful rises and troughs like the deep water far away from the safety of land. He was glad to be standing on the side, but still felt as though he was at the unstable edge of a great yawning ocean trench.