Darkness Visible (30 page)

Mr Pedigree, wearing his ancient pepper-and-salt suit, had the
overcoat slung over one arm and carried the ball held between his two hands on his way to the park. He was a little breathless and indignant at his breathlessness because he traced it to the talk he had had a few days before with Mr Goodchild and Mr Bell—a talk at which he had voluntarily spoken about his age. Age, then, had leapt out of its ambush somewhere and now went with him, so that he felt in himself even less able than usual to cope with the graph of his obsession. The graph was still there, it was so, no one could deny it, how else do you find yourself at that time of autumn when the day is still warm but these evenings suddenly cold—how else do you still find yourself going towards, despite the desperate words spoken only an hour before, and not just then but here and now as feet took themselves along despite you—no, no, no, not again, Oh God! And still the feet (as you knew they would) took you along and up the long hill to the paradisal, dangerous, damned park where the sons of the morning ran and played—and now, with the still open iron gates ahead, his own breathlessness seemed to matter less; and the
fact,
the undoubted
fact
already standing there, that he would spend tonight in a cell at the police station and overwhelmed with that special contempt they did not feel for murderers—that undoubted
fact
which he tried to rely on to support the ‘no, no, no, Oh God!’ that versicle without any response, the
fact
was diminishing in importance and was now overlaid quiveringly with an anticipation that really, one could not disguise it, tended to promote the breathlessness of age, not old age, but age, none the less, or its threshold as he said
Tηλἱκου ὣσπερ ἐγών
—

Still breathing deeply, astonished and sad, he saw his feet move him forward now again up the steep lip of his obsession, up to the gate on to the gravel, the feet themselves looking, peering at that far side where the boys shouted and played—only half an hour and they will be home with mum. Only another half hour and I would have held out for another whole day!

A wind took a scurry of autumn leaves across his feet but they ignored them and went on fast, too fast—

“Wait! I said wait!”

But it was all reasonable. Only the body has its reasons and feet are selfish, so that as they tried to pass the seat he was able for a while to arrest them and he pulled the coat round him, then slumped on the iron slats.

“Overdone it, you two.”

The two did nothing inside their shining boots and he came to himself a little, feeling sheepish and wrapped in a cloud of illusion. Heart was more important than feet and protested. He hung over it, hoping that something nasty was not going to happen with its thump, thump, thump; and as he detected the first slowing of the beat he said inside, not daring even to risk giving the words air, since air was what heart wanted and must have to the exclusion of any other activity—

That was a narrow escape!

Presently he opened his eyes and made the brilliant colours of the ball take firm shape. The boys would not stay at the farther end of the park. Some of them would come this way, they must, to get to the main gate, they would come down the road and they would see the brilliant ball, bring it back to him when he threw it—the ploy was infallible, at worst would lead to a moment’s banter, at best—

A cloud moved away from the sun and the sun itself seized him with many golden hands and warmed him. He was surprised to find how grateful he was to the sun for his mercy and that there was a little while to wait until the children came. If thought and decision was an exciting affair it was also a tiring one, hysterical sometimes and dangerous. He thought his heart would be the better for a little rest until he had to go into action, so he nestled into the huge coat and leaned his head down on his chest. The golden hands of the sun stroked him warmly and he was conscious of sunlight like waves as if someone were stirring it with a paddle. This was impossible of course but he was happy to find that light was a positive thing, an element on its own and what was more, one lying very close to the skin. This led him to open his eyes and look about. Then he discovered it was a function of this sunlight not merely to soak things in gold but also to hide them for he seemed to be sitting up to his very eyes in a sea of light. He looked to the left and saw nothing; and then to the right and saw without any surprise at all that Matty was coming. He knew this ought to surprise him because Matty was dead. But here Matty was, entering the park through the main gate and as usual dressed in black. He came slowly to Mr Pedigree who found his approach not only natural but even agreeable for the boy was not really as awful to look at as one might think, there where he
waded along waist deep in gold. He came and stood before Pedigree and looked down at him. Pedigree understood that they were in a park of mutuality and closeness where the sunlight lay right on the skin.

“You know it was all your fault Matty.”

Matty seemed to agree; and really the boy was quite pleasant to look at!

“So I’m not going to be preached at Matty. We’ll say no more about it. Eh?”

Windrove continued to weave and hold on to his hat. Mr Pedigree saw that it was the extraordinarily lively nature of this gold, this wind, this wonderful light and warmth that kept Windrove moving rhythmically in order to stay in one place. There was a long period then, when he felt that the situation was so enjoyable as to make it unnecessary to think of anything else. But after a time, random thoughts began to perform themselves in the volume that Mr Pedigree was accustomed to regard as himself.

He spoke out of this thinking.

“I don’t want to wake up and find I’m inside, you know. That’s happened so often. What they used to call chokey in my young day.”

Windrove appeared to agree; and then, without words, Mr Pedigree knew that Windrove
did
agree—and this was such a joy of certainty that Mr Pedigree felt the tears streaming down his face. Presently, when he was more himself, he spoke out of the certainty.

“You’re an odd chap, Matty, you always were. You have this habit of popping up. There’ve been times when I wondered if you actually existed when no one else was looking and listening if you see what I mean. Times when I thought—is he all connected with everything else or does he kind of drift through; I wonder!”

Then there was another long silence. Mr Pedigree was the one to break it at last.

“They call it so many things, don’t they, sex, money, power, knowledge—and all the time it lies right on their skin! The thing they all want without knowing it—yet that it should be you, ugly little Matty, who really loved me! I tried to throw it away you know, but it wouldn’t go. Who are you, Matty? There’ve been such people in this neighbourhood, such monsters, that girl and her men, Stanhope, Goodchild, Bell even, and his ghastly
wife—I’m not like them, bad but not as bad, I never hurt anybody—
they
thought I hurt children but I didn’t, I hurt myself. And you know about the last thing the thing I shall be scared into doing if I live long enough—just to keep a child quiet, keep it from telling—that’s hell Matty, that’ll be hell—help me!”

It was at this point that Sebastian Pedigree found he was not dreaming. For the golden immediacy of the wind altered at its heart and began first to drift upwards, then swirl upwards then rush upwards round Matty. The gold grew fierce and burned. Sebastian watched in terror as the man before him was consumed, melted, vanished like a guy in a bonfire; and the face was no longer two-tone but gold as the fire and stern and everywhere there was a sense of the peacock eyes of great feathers and the smile round the lips was loving and terrible. This being drew Sebastian towards him so that the terror of the golden lips jerked a cry out of him—

    “Why? Why?”

The face looming over him seemed to speak or sing but not in human speech.

    
Freedom.

Then Sebastian, feeling the many-coloured ball that he held against his chest, and knowing what was to happen, cried out in agony.

    “No! No! No!”

He clutched the ball closer, drew it in to avoid the great hands that were reaching towards him. He drew the ball closer than the gold on the skin, he could feel how it beat between his hands with terror and he clutched it and screamed again and again. But the hands came in through his. They took the ball as it beat and drew it away so that the strings that bound it to him tore as he screamed. Then it was gone.

The park keeper coming from the other gate saw him where he sat with his head on his chest. The park keeper was tired and irritated for he could see the brilliant ball lying a few yards from the old man’s feet where it had rolled when he dropped it. He knew the filthy old thing would never be cured and he was more than twenty yards away when he began talking at him bitterly.

When William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel Foundation said of his novels that they ‘illuminate the human condition in the world of today’. Born in Cornwall in 1911, Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor, a musician and a schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, submarines and aircraft, and also took part in the pursuit of the
Bismarck
.

Lord of the Flies
, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers and one literary agent. It was rescued from the ‘slush pile’ by a young editor at Faber and Faber and published in 1954. The book would go on to sell several million copies; it was translated into 35 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. He wrote eleven other novels,
The Inheritors
and
The Spire
among them, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for his novel
Rites of Passage
in 1980, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993.

www.william-golding.co.uk