Read Online Darkness Visible by William Golding - Free Book Online

flowers and looked sideways without moving his head as he passed. But Miss Aylen had bent down and the bower might have been empty for all he could see.
    “Boy!”
    He broke into a shambling trot.
    “Where’ve you been, Boy?”
    But they did not really want to know where he had been,though they would have been amused and liked him better for it if they had known.
    “The van’s been waiting for about half an hour. Load her up!”
    So he hauled the bundles into the van, bundles of metal flung shatteringly into the corner, put down half a dozen folding chairs and finally swung his clumsy body into the seat by the driver.
    “What a lot of flowers we’ve got!”
    Mr Parrish, the arthritic driver, groaned. Matty went on.
    “They’re just like real aren’t they?”
    “I never seen ’em. If you had my knees—”
    “They’re good, those flowers are.”
    Mr Parrish ignored him and set himself to the craft of van-driving. Matty’s voice, practically of its own accord, went on speaking.
    “They’re pretty. Artificials I mean. And that girl, that young lady—”
    The noises that Mr Parrish made dated from the days of his youth when he had driven one of Frankley’s three horse-vans. He had been transferred to a motor van not many years after such an innovation became available and he took two things with him—his horse-van vocabulary and a belief that he had been promoted. There was no sign at first, therefore, that Mr Parrish had heard the Boy. He had heard everything the Boy said, however—was waiting for the right moment to wrap up his silence, roll it into a weapon and hit Matty over the head with it. He did so now.
    “When you address me, my lad, you call me ‘Mr Parrish’.”
    This may well have been the last time Matty ever tried to confide in anyone.
    Later that day he was able to go once more through the lofts over the main shop. Once more he glanced sideways at the coloured blur in the ribbed skylight and once more he peered along under the ceiling. He saw nothing. When the shop closed he hurried to the empty pavement in front of it but saw no one. Next day at the same time he got there early, and was rewarded with an exhibition of light-brown hair with honey lights, the apparently naked crooks of knees and the gleam of two long, shining stockings as they disappeared from the platform of a bus to the interior. The next day was Saturday—a half-day—and he was kept busy all morning so that she had gone before he was free.
    On Sunday he went automatically to morning service, ate thelarge, plain dinner that was served in what Mr Arthur called the Refectory, then wandered out for the walk he was ordered to take for his health. The winged collars snoozed meanwhile on their beds. Matty went along, past GOODCHILD’S RARE BOOKS , past Sprawson’s and turned right up the High Street. He was in a curious state. It was as if there was a high, singing note in the air from which he could not detach himself and which was the direct result of some interior strain, some anxiety that could—if you remembered this thing or that thing—sharpen into anguish. This feeling became so strong that he turned back to Frankley’s as if sight of the place where one of his problems lay would help to solve it. But though he stood and looked it over, and the bookshop next to it and Sprawson’s next to that, he was given no help. He went round the corner of Sprawson’s to the Old Bridge over the canal and the iron loo at the root of the bridge flushed automatically as he passed. He stood, and looked down at the water of the canal in that age-old and unconscious belief that there is help and healing in the sight. He had a moment’s idea of walking along the towpath, but it was muddy. He turned back, round the corner of Sprawson’s, and there was the bookshop and Frankley’s again. He stopped walking and looked in the window of the bookshop. The titles did not help him. The books were full of words, physical reduplication of