The Standing Water (4 page)

I looked up from my
studies. Davis had been so slow that only now was that gobstopper falling into
the bag. But something had changed in the shopkeeper’s expression. His eyes had
hardened; muscles twitched as they tried to winch his drooping face into a
scowl. Jonathon had dared to make another request.

‘Another chocolate
football he wants, a football if you please!’ The old lips trembled and spat. ‘Youngsters
nowadays, in this blasted modern world, think they can come in here and order
me around – we don’t want this, can we have that? Well, thank God we’ve at
least got Mr Weirton! You should have listened carefully today, Mr Browning! Go
on like this and you’ll be getting the same as Lucy did!’

‘A chocolate
football if you please, a chocolate football!’ Davis turned back to his jars. ‘Cheek
must run in the family – the brother’s the same! Well, they’ll be laughing on
the other side of their faces when they’re like Lucy!’

Davis dumped
Jonathon’s full bag on the counter then unscrewed the shrimp jar. Jonathon
gulped; his face shivered.

‘Would have done
him good if Mr Weirton had given him a few licks last time he spanked that
brother, but let’s just see, let’s see what we can do here …’

Davis took up
Jonathon’s second sachet and soon the tongs were flying in and out of the jar,
filling that sachet up with shrimps.

‘Let’s see what we
can do here … let’s just see …’

In a quick yet
shaking rhythm those shellfish were plucked out, dropped into the bag. I counted
five, six, seven. Jonathon’s eyes were fixed on the moving metal; his mouth was
dropping, slack with despondency.

‘Teach him a good
lesson, teach him not to be like that brother. Nothing but trouble that one …’

The tongs went on
seizing shrimps. Jonathon’s mouth fell wider as eight, nine, ten went into his
sachet. In a surprisingly deft movement for his timeworn hands, Davis twisted
up the corners. With similar twists and curls our three other bags were sealed.
Jonathon slowly handed over his two silver pieces. As the ancient hand closed
around them, we reached up to the counter, clasped our bulging bags.

‘Thank you!’ we
cried, as we turned to leave the store, though my cry was livelier than my
friend’s.

We stretched and
groped for the door catch, but Davis couldn’t let us go without one last
speech. He seemed cheered by the trick he’d pulled on Jonathon; his folds of
flesh almost managed a smile.

‘Thank you they
say, and I should bloody think so too! Quibbling and complaining about what
sweets they get.’ His wrinkled finger wagged from the counter. ‘Think on now,
you should feel lucky you get owt. There are plenty of kids in poor parts of the
world, poor little black and brown blighters, who are grateful if they get one
decent meal a week, never mind lots of sweets! So next time you’re chewing on
your candies, just think of them. Don’t eat those sweets all at once now –
don’t want your mums in here complaining you’ve got sick!’

‘We won’t Mr
Davies, thank you!’ we shouted, as we bolted from the door, the bell clanging
our exit.

We walked a little
way along the street and came to the ‘Old School’ – a low, half-ruined building
not far from the pub that seemed to emanate evil.

‘They say it’s
haunted,’ I said, nodding as we went by.

‘Yeah, I heard
that. Who’s supposed to haunt it then?’ Jonathon’s voice was casual, but he
couldn’t keep a quiver from it.

‘Dunno, but should
we have a look?’

‘Sure we’ve got
time?’ Jonathon asked, as my heart started to pump.

‘Course,’ I said.

‘Probably a lot of
fuss over nothing,’ he said, and he was already walking up to that building,
though I noticed his walk was more of a creep.

We edged up to that
ramshackle structure. Wounds in the flaking plaster revealed ancient brickwork;
lichen-spotted slabs crowned the wall of the playground. Several of those slabs
– disturbingly like gravestones – had slipped from that wall to lean at
cockeyed angles. There was the large schoolroom window at the building’s end –
an oblong topped with a triangle, a more sharp-edged version of the windows I’d
seen on spooky old churches, but with broken panes, cobwebs, dirt-blackened
glass. Weeds overran the cracked flagstones in the yard. How could such a
building not be haunted? Still I tried to shove bravery into my voice.

‘Let’s give it a
minute. If we don’t see any ghosts, we’ll be off.’

I stared at those jagged
windows, looking for wisps of white sheets, phantom hands. I tensed my eyes up
to blur them, hoping this could help me catch glimpses of the otherworld, but
still nothing came. But I was convinced such a scary building had to be peopled
by spooks. I both wished to see them and dreaded their appearance.

‘There’s nowt here,
should we go?’ Jonathon said.

‘Just a minute
longer – we had to wait some time before we saw the witch’s hand, remember?’

Another minute
passed, but still I saw nothing. We were about to trudge away when we spotted
Stubbs striding down the street towards us. He quickened his steps, gave us a
wave.

‘What does he
want?’ Jonathon said.

We stood and waited
till Stubbs had marched up. His breath was fast; his face glowed in the dull
day after his rushed walk.

‘All right,
Stubbsy,’ I said.

‘All right,’ said
Stubbs. ‘I was coming to warn you lads – I wouldn’t hang about here too long if
I was you.’

‘Why not?’ Jonathon
shoved out his chest to show his scepticism.

‘That Old School –’
Stubbs nodded at the building ‘– it’s meant to be haunted.’

‘We know,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but do you
know the whole legend?’ said Stubbs.

We wagged our
heads.

‘A ghostly teacher
haunts that place. She drifts around holding a see-through cane. If she catches
you, she gives you a good whacking – and within a year you die!’

‘It’s probably
haunted by a few kids too,’ I added, my eyes flicking back to the building,
both trying to glimpse and not to glimpse that stick-wielding spectre.

‘That’s right,’
Stubbs went on, ‘there’s a whole ghostly class in there, who died from her
whackings. Do you know what my dad told me? He said we’re lucky Weirton only
uses his hand – in the past they used to
whip
the children! They used a
big whip called the cat of nine tails – nine whips together in one!’

‘Yeah!’ My heart
now boomed. ‘Maybe they buried those kids in the playground!’

‘Their ghosts are
trapped in there with the teacher!’ said Jonathon.

‘Imagine being
trapped with Weirton!’ I said. ‘Forever!’

Stubbs nodded.

‘Yeah …’ Jonathon’s
face gave a wobble though he quickly righted it. ‘Should we go?’

‘Yeah,’ I said,
‘come on.’

‘Hang on a minute,’
said Stubbs, ‘you’ve got some sweets there, haven’t you? Don’t you think it’d
be nice to chuck some in for the ghostly kids? Bet they hardly
ever
get
sweets!’

‘Yeah,’ said
Jonathon, ‘might not have had any for
hundreds
of years!’

Our fingers fumbled
to untwist our bags.

‘So you reckon
those kids died cos the teacher whacked them too hard?’ I asked.

‘Probably,’ Stubbs
said, ‘same might have happened to Lucy. Maybe one day Weirton whacked her too
much and she died!’

‘Can’t have done!’
Jonathon said. ‘Weirton never whacks girls! He sends them to Perkins – being
smacked by her just feels like someone’s slapping you with a limp lettuce
leaf!’

‘Still gets the
girls beefing though,’ I said, ‘but it’s true – Weirton can’t have killed her
cos he never whacks girls.’

‘Maybe he used to,
before he killed Lucy. Maybe that’s what made him change,’ said Stubbs.

Jonathon and I now
each had one bag open. I took a shrimp, threw it into the playground. The pink
creature tumbled in an arc against the dark sky before coming to land next to a
clump of water-beaded grass. Jonathon also lobbed a shrimp in.

‘Hang on,’ I said.
‘Weirton’s not like the ghostly teacher here. He just uses the hand –
that
can’t kill you!’

‘You ever had one
of his whackings?’ Stubbs said. ‘I mean a really tre-mend-ous one.’

We shook our heads.
I’d seen plenty of Weirton’s legendary displays, but never suffered one myself.
I’d watched – amazed, appalled and, I have to confess, sometimes amused – as
kids hurtled through the air, swooping up and swinging down, their red faces
throwing out tears, yet it had never occurred to me how it would feel to be the
star of the show. We’d all – of course – had the odd strike on the bum when
doing something we shouldn’t, the palm sweeping down as Weirton passed, the
teacher barely breaking his stride. But still how that impact rang, how our
rears ached afterwards! A full walloping really must have knocked the stuffing
out of you, as Weirton was fond of saying.

‘I’ve had plenty!’
Stubbs said, his face seeming to glow with both shame and pride. ‘And I can tell
you – a few times – I wondered if that would be it for me!’

‘But why?’ I asked.

‘When he really
gets going, you can’t breathe. He keeps knocking the air out of you before you
can get it in. It really feels like you’re gonna choke!’

Now I thought about
it, kids did pant and gasp for a good few minutes following a thrashing.

‘Yeah, right,
Stubbsy,’ Jonathon said. ‘My dad says a good whacking never did anyone any harm
– and my brother’s had enough!’

‘Well, you wait
till you get your first from Weirton,’ Stubbs said. ‘Reckon that’s what might
have happened to Marcus.’

‘Marcus drowned,
didn’t he?’ I said.

‘Well, probably,
but you never know. Maybe Weirton whacked him to death then dumped him in the
pond to hide the body! Tell you one thing, I’m never going near that pond again
– not after what we saw yesterday!’

‘Yeah, you’d better
be careful Stubbsy!’ I said. ‘Bet Marcus is dead angry with you!’

Stubbsy shivered
then with some effort composed his face.

‘Anyway, we gonna
give these kids some sweets? I’ll help you chuck them in.’

Before we could
stop him, Stubbs grabbed some candies from our bags. Into the playground went
two shrimps, a gobstopper. A cola bottle went into Stubbs’s mouth.

‘Oi!’ I said. ‘Those
sweets are for the kids, not you!’

‘Better get
chucking then,’ said Stubbs. ‘I’m doing all the work here!’

Stubbs’s hand dived
into my bag, wrenched out two more sweets: a shrimp – which he hurled into the
playground – and a fizzy bear, which found its way straight into his gob.  His
hand reached to the bag again; I barged him away with an elbow to the stomach.

‘Greedy guts!’ I
said, as he wheezed, grasped his belly, tottered back. ‘We’ll do the rest.’

Jonathon and I
glanced at each other. Though wary of the ghosts, we stepped up to the
lichen-dappled wall. We gingerly leaned our elbows on its upper slabs, nervous
fingers tracing the weather-coarsened stone.

‘We can give them
more of the shrimps and eggs,’ said Jonathon. ‘Bet they’ll be glad to have
owt.’

We chucked a few of
those unwanted sweets over the wall. They lay on the yard’s cracked stones,
between wet stalks of grass. The little ghostly hands would probably scrabble
for them after we’d left.

‘But do you think,’
I said, unable to stop my face’s twinge, ‘that it might be nice to give them
some better sweets too?’

‘Suppose …’
Jonathon’s shoulders shrugged, but his lips shivered.

My hand reached
into my bag, drew out the liquorice bootlace. I twisted it around my fingers, imagining
the pleasure in its murky tang. I dangled it above the wall. That string seemed
to hover on the border between two worlds – our normal world of the living, in
which it would be gobbled by me or Jonathon, and that playground, that
enclosure of the dead, where we dared not go. Jonathon saw my hesitation.

‘It’s good to be
nice and kind,’ he said. ‘In assembly, Mr Weirton’s always telling us to be
nice and kind, just like Jesus was.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, as
Stubbs still spluttered behind us. ‘I suppose we should be.’

I flung that length
of pungent black into that territory of ghosts. It spiralled in the air, landed
on and curled around a tuft of grass. Next was a gobstopper – admittedly less
of a wrench. That sphere rolled across cloud as it sailed into that courtyard
of spooks. We chucked in the rest of the eggs, flinging them frisby-like. Their
yolks glowed in the shattered playground.

‘We’d better go,’ I
said, ‘maybe the ghosts of the kids are shy. Maybe they won’t come out till
we’ve gone.’

‘Yeah,’ Jonathon
said, ‘and we don’t want to see the teacher!’

We began our trudge
away. Stubbs – his breathing back to normal – trotted after us.

‘Where are you lads
off to?’ he said.

‘Should we go to
the pond?’ I turned to Jonathon. ‘Maybe Marcus would like some sweets too.’

‘If that’s where
you’re going, I’m off home,’ Stubbs said. ‘Don’t fancy seeing him again – or
him seeing me!’

Jonathon and I
rounded the pub’s stinking corner, walked towards the pool.

‘What do you want
to see Marcus for?’ Jonathon asked.

‘I was just
thinking about what Stubbsy said. If Weirton really
is
dangerous, if he
really did kill Marcus and Lucy, we’ll need some pro-tect-ion. Marcus is magic
– maybe he can keep us safe from Weirton.’

‘Yeah,’ Jonathon
said. ‘I’d look after someone if they gave me their sweets.’

But as we got
nearer the pond, my heart beat faster. I gulped as I remembered the horrible sight
of the day before. I was glad we at least came armed with sweets as offerings.

‘Do you know if you
suck the top of a cola bottle long enough –’ I fought to keep my voice perky,
fought to distract myself ‘– the cola will rise up just like in a real one?’

‘It’s not true!
Richard Johnson tried it for
three hours
and it didn’t work!’

And so we walked –
but not too quickly – up the street to our school. That building loomed as we
got closer, seeming eerily quiet in its freedom from children’s squawks and
Weirton’s shouts. Just before we reached the gates, we turned aside and stood
before the pond. The sky was layered with clouds – squiggles of grey,
fat-bellied black monsters. The rain had stopped, but everywhere was wet – the
dripping bushes, the damp grass, the sodden fields, the clammy feel of the air.
Marcus’s pond seemed bigger, as if his empire were expanding. We looked across
the silent surface, across its rich earthy brown. No bubbles broke; there were
none of the toys or cans I’d seen the previous day. We’d either sent them to
watery tombs with our stones or they’d disappeared beneath the rising waters of
Marcus’s dominions.

‘Imagine,’ I said.
‘If the weather stays rainy, Marcus’s pond could flood the whole of
Emberfield!’

‘Yeah!’ Jonathon
replied.

We smiled; Jonathon
went on.

‘Or at least the
school! That’d be good – especially if Weirton would be in it! Weirton and my
brother!’

We laughed; the
calm pool gave no response. I turned to my friend.

‘Hang on a minute …
why would you want Marcus to drown your brother?’

‘It’s his partly
his fault I got all those shrimps! You heard what Davis said!’

‘Suppose,’ I said,
‘but then your brother did tell us to say sorry to Marcus.’

‘Yeah.’ Jonathon’s
forehead crinkled. ‘Suppose you’re right. Maybe it’s better if Marcus doesn’t
kill him.’

We stood silently
on Marcus’s shore: not too near his waters yet close enough to breathe in the
stench of rotten mud. I thought again of our task. My heart wouldn’t stop
thudding. After some moments, Jonathon spoke.

‘Do you want to
start?’