The Standing Water (28 page)

The woman shuddered.

‘Yes, well, this is
all very interesting,’ she said, ‘but I’d better be getting on. I’ll have half
a pound of bacon please, Mr Davis.’

Davis took a hunk
of meat, sliced the dead flesh as we stood – quietly now – in his funereal
store. I finally got served and wandered off with my sweets. I pitched a few
into the Old School playground for the ghostly kids then tramped up to the pond
to chuck some to Marcus. But it didn’t seem the same without my friend beside
me. I’d thought about sneakily trying to talk to Jonathon, but the image of my
dad’s swooping belt kept us separated. As I hurled candies into Marcus’s
waters, I looked up at the thick sky. I wondered why lightning hadn’t streaked
from it, why there was still no brand on Jonathon’s forehead. By contrast, the
brother’s scar showed no sign of fading. It had now scabbed over, but was no
less visible – a mark for all to know him by, avoid him because of.

More lonely days followed,
more long quiet nights. I couldn’t get what I’d heard in the shop out of my head.
At night, when I couldn’t sleep, however much I ordered my mind not to, however
hard I tried to think of other things, I couldn’t help imagining that gauntlet
just hanging in that silent church, couldn’t help thinking of the awful fate of
the knight who’d worn it, all the deaths it had caused since. My fear of it
grew to be even greater than my terrors of Emberfield’s spooks: the sleeping
Scots, Henry VIII, the witch’s hand, Lucy in her cupboard, maybe even Marcus in
his pond. But sometimes the Drummer Boy would comfort me – his reassuring thuds
and rattles calming my mind with their predictable rhythm.

A little more time
went by, during which I copped a couple of sound hidings from Weirton, but at
least I was cheered by the approach of my eighth birthday. My party, though, at
first seemed lacklustre – it wasn’t much fun without my best friend. Stubbs,
Richard Johnson, Darren Hill, a few others sat in our dining room, filling
festive paper plates and cramming their greedy gobs with my mum’s sandwiches.
Some kicking, pinching, prodding went on under the table. I got Dennis with a
good one. He’d been annoying me – and my mum I think too – by banging on about
their garden gnome: theirs was much better painted than ours, a far superior
make. So I clumsily knocked my paper hat – its absurd spikes crowning me joke
king for a joke day – onto the floor and dropped down on my knees to get it
back. Under the table – the cellar, as I imagined it, of my comical palace,
that strange cavern of dust, legs, shoes and crumbs – I fixed my eyes on
Dennis’s stomach: bloated with stick-skewered squares of cheese and pineapple,
blown up with bubbles of fizzy drink, stuffed with sweetly mortared slabs of
birthday cake. I knelt by his lordly belly, pulled my arm and shoulder back,
drove my fist with all my force at the target of his navel. His torso shot
forward. Apparently, above the table Stubbs jack-knifed; his hand flew to cap
his mouth; he lurched up; sprinted to the bathroom, from where we heard his
loud disgorging of his banquet. All the mums present joined in a song of
disapproval about modern youth’s lack of restraint. I clambered up from my
cellar, crowned myself again with my hat, feeling more truly kinglike.

More days passed. Not
only Jonathon’s but also the brother’s ostracism was undeniable. Maybe we were
making a mistake by repulsing him – confusing his scar with the sign God should
have branded on Jonathon. Unless the unthinkable had happened and the Lord Himself
had made a boob. Even when the three weeks were up and Jonathon was released
from his dreary detentions, his shunning went on. He’d drift through break and
lunchtime alone in the wet playground. But the curse of Cain seemed easily
spread. It had branded the brother and I couldn’t help feeling its fingers had
drawn a mark on me. I’d never been the most popular lad, but now everything I
did or said was rebuffed with some insult, punch or put-down. I couldn’t get
back in touch with Jonathon – the threat of my dad’s belt still swung between
us, and there was the sheer force of Jonathon’s isolation, which shoved me
away. I hoped he didn’t think I’d turned my back on him. As he wandered through
those bleak break-times, his blank face made it impossible to tell.

But since I’d also
been ostracised, I decided I had little to lose. Jonathon and I started with a
few furtive conferences in the school field’s far corners, went together to
Marcus’s pond. We got bolder. I called at Jonathon’s house; we walked to school
together a few times. Davis saw us and reported it to my dad. Dad gave me a
good whacking – though with the hand not the belt – but afterwards his attitude
softened. After I’d copped a couple more of his, rather half-hearted,
wallopings, one day when we were at home Dad said, ‘I suppose if you’re that
keen to hang around with the Browning boy, I shouldn’t try to stop you. He’s
usually a good lad; maybe that terrible incident was just a one-off. And if
I
had a brother like him, I’d have been tempted to do the same! But only if he
keeps his nose clean mind! If he steps out of line in the slightest and you go
on keeping him company, I’ll make sure you won’t be able to sit down for a
month! Do you hear me now? Only if he keeps his nose clean!’

‘Yes, Dad,’ I said,
though I couldn’t work out what nasal hygiene had to do with our friendship.
Surely in that long wet spring – which refused to morph into summer – when we
were all snuffling with colds, keeping one’s nose spotless was impossible. I
told Jonathon and he took to constantly wiping and blowing his hooter,
polishing it – in the end – to a beacon glow.

‘Aye, make sure he keeps
his nose clean and it’s OK with me,’ Dad said. ‘But
that brother
– have
as little as possible to do with that one! He was probably the cause of all this
trouble in the first place!’

All this made me
feel a bit sorry for the brother. Craig’s mark refused to disappear, that pink
cut stayed on his forehead – a wound which seemed to single him out for endless
teasing and punches from the kids, wallopings from Weirton. Jonathon’s brow was
still unblemished. It had been so long since his crime, I wondered if it might
stay like that. But I suspected that God’s unavoidable justice, the Lord’s
implacable revenge was working through its crooked paths, to be ready at the
right time to strike down with all its fury on Jonathon.

The next time I
called for Jonathon, I found him squatting on his lounge floor, staring at a
massive book which lay open beneath him. He didn’t even notice me when I entered,
barely looked up when I spoke. His finger was tracing a column of tiny type,
almost as small as that in the newspapers in Davis’s shop. At that column’s
head, a bigger word said ‘Robots’. I repeated Jonathon’s name a couple of
times, but got hardly any response.

‘Oh, you don’t want
to worry about him!’ Mrs Browning nodded towards her son as she brought in a
tray of milk and biscuits. ‘
We
don’t pay too much attention to his
crazes. First it was set-outs then it was knights – we had to get him toy
knives and swords for Christmas, which, come to think of it, I haven’t seen for
a while. Lately it’s been robots this, robots that. Doesn’t he get sick of all
that metal, all those wires? Give it a few weeks and he’ll be onto something
else, banging on about that all the time.’

‘When I wasn’t
allowed to play with anyone, after what happened with my brother,’ Jonathon
said, ‘I was bored so I started looking through our en-cyclo-pedias.’

Jonathon pronounced
the word slowly, but correctly and with some triumph.

‘That’s how I got
interested in robots.’

‘He was pouring
over them all the time.’ Mrs Browning put down her tray and pointed at the row
of neat heavy books that lined the living room shelf. ‘We decided to buy them
because we thought they’d look nice, all those books up there; it’d be a nice
decoration for the lounge. Cost a pretty penny, I can tell you. I just hope he
doesn’t scuff or damage them with his constant looking through!’

I glanced at those
weighty volumes – they drew my eyes in with their big solemn letters, painted
on the spines in pure gold. Maybe that was why they’d been so costly. They
looked like wizards’ spell-books. My fingers itched to open them as I thought
of the arcane lore their pages could hold. My arms longed to pull one down, but
I thought Mrs Browning wouldn’t want me spoiling their arrangement.

‘The en-cyclo-pedias
are great!’ Jonathon said. ‘You can learn things from them! It’d be nice if we
could learn things in school.’

‘Listen to the
little scholar!’ His mum smiled. ‘You’d better not let Mr Weirton hear you
taking like that, or he’ll have your guts for garters!’

I knew what guts
were though I wasn’t sure about garters, but anyway such a punishment sounded
hideous – I had images of Weirton gleefully pulling out cords of intestine. Maybe
that was what happened to the worst of pupils; perhaps that had been the fate
of Marcus and Lucy.

‘Just mind you
don’t leave those books lying around,’ Mrs Browning said. ‘It was bad enough
dealing with your bloomin’ set-outs!’

Mrs Browning chuntered
her way out of the lounge. My eyes drifted down to Jonathon’s book – and soon I
was kneeling on the carpet, also trying to decipher those tiny lines stuffed
with mysterious words. I was so curious, I eventually had to ask, ‘So, what’s
all this about Robots then?’

‘I’ll show you in a
few moments,’ Jonathon said. ‘When we’ve finished our biscuits and milk, I’ll
take you out to my dad’s shed.’

‘You should see
what he’s got in there.’ A voice spoke behind us, making me leap a little from
the carpet. ‘It’s pretty impressive!’

We looked around –
the brother was perched illicitly on the arm of the sofa. I let out a gasp,
jumped from my knees into a squat. My body tensed as I prepared for whatever
tricks or assaults his mind was concocting. But the brother just calmly stayed
on the settee.

‘I’ve been working
on it for some time,’ Jonathon said. ‘I needed something to do when I couldn’t
see anybody. Craig was even helping me a bit.’

‘No one wanted to
see me either.’ Craig shrugged. ‘I needed some’ut to do n’all.’

‘Yeah, I understand.’
I said. ‘Can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on.’

Our chat continued
– my moving lips disguising my shock. I was surprised at the friendliness
between the siblings. The brother wasn’t that civilised at school – he’d beaten
a few people up recently though they had relentlessly provoked him. Then he’d got
thrashed by Weirton, leading to more jeers from the kids, leading to him
lashing out again. But here he was different, unlike in the past when he’d
hounded Jonathon even in his home. And recently, at school, I recalled,
Jonathon hadn’t been on the end of one of his rampages. Perversely, it seemed,
since Jonathon had attempted to bump off his brother, Craig’s respect for him
had increased. Maybe the brother now knew what Jonathon was capable of, making
him more wary. Perhaps he strangely admired the ruthless strain he’d brought
out in his sibling. It certainly wasn’t all proceeding according to the Bible’s
prophecies. Maybe, as the vicar liked to tell us, God was working His will through
some
very
odd paths.

‘Why’s your cut
still there?’ I blurted, stupidly raising my finger to my forehead.

If I expected an
eruption from the brother, it didn’t come. He just shrugged, smiled, stroked a
fingertip over his wound.

‘Guess Jonathon got
me with a really good one,’ he said, with even a hint of pride.

‘Who knows?’
Jonathon said. ‘Maybe one day you’ll get me back, give me one to match.’

The brother shook
his head, continued to stroke his cut like it was one of the battle scars some
people’s granddads boasted about. But I still had faith in the Bible, still
knew it wouldn’t be the brother who’d brand the mark of vengeance onto
Jonathon.

Jonathon and I walked
out of his house and across the little patch of lawn to his dad’s shed.
Jonathon creaked open the door, and we were soon inside that wooden chamber –
duskily lit by one grime-caked window, smelling of varnish and old tools. A
dirty blanket lay over a table. Jonathon whisked it back.

‘Wow!’ I said.
‘You’re making a robot!’

He’d already done
most of one arm – two iron bars connected with what looked like a door hinge.
Tangles of wires – red, green, yellow – were heaped at one side. Jonathon said
they’d be ‘nerves and tendons’, whatever those were. A metal wastepaper bin also
lay on the table. This would be the head. Jonathon and the brother had cut
eyeholes, a mouth, nostrils into it.

‘Right now,’
Jonathon said, ‘I’m trying to make the hand.’

Another book of the
encyclopaedia lay next to the bits of robot. I just hoped it wouldn’t get spotted
with oil, smeared with grease or Jonathon’s dad’s belt would soon be swinging.
It was open on a page that showed drawings of the human hand. I marvelled at
the finger bones – so much longer than they looked when encased in flesh. I
gawped at the criss-crossing swathes of muscle, the networks of arteries and
veins, the delicate hinge of the wrist. I’d no idea our bodies could be so
complex. Though I’d learnt a bit from Weirton’s display with Lucy, I’d always
thought of humans as little more than fleshy puppets jerked around by the hands
of God. But without God, what then? I put my doubts to Jonathon.