The Standing Water (59 page)

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.’