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Authors: William Golding
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floor without an epitaph on it and not much more unlettered space on the walls. The church was quite empty and not merely of people. It seemed to him empty of the qualities that lay in the glass ball and had found some kind of response inside him. He could not make any connection and there was a lump in his throat too big to swallow. He began to say the Lord’s Prayer then stopped, for the words seemed to mean nothing. He stayed there, kneeling, bewildered and sorrowful; and while he knelt the painful and extraordinary necessities of the artificials and the brown fall with the honey lights came flooding back.
The daugh ters of men .
He cried out silently to nowhere. Silence reverberated in silence.
Then a voice spoke, quite clearly.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Now this was the voice of the curate who was clearing up certain things in the vestry. He had been submitting himself to an austerity of which his vicar knew nothing. He was surprised in this by the sound of a choir boy scrabbling at the vestry door and trying to get in to retrieve a comic he thought he had left. But the voice sounded right inside Matty’s head. He answered it in the same place. Before the balance with its two scales, the one with a man’s face, the other with a fire of anticipation and enticement, he had a time that was made of pure, whitehot anguish. It was the first exercise of his untried will. He knew, and it never occurred to him to doubt the knowledge, or worse, accept it and be proud of it, that he had chosen, not as a donkey between carrots of unequal size but rather as the awareness that suffered. The whitehot anguish continued to burn. In it was consumed a whole rising future that centred on the artificials and the hair, it had sunk away from the still-possible to the might-have-been. Because he had become aware he saw too how his unattractive appearance wouldhave made an approach to the girl into a farce and humiliation; and thought, as he saw, that it would be so with any woman. He began to weep adult tears, wounded right in the centre of his nature, wept for a vanished prospect as he might have wept for a dead friend. He wept until he could weep no more and never knew what things had drained away from him with the tears. When he had done he found he was in a strange position. He was kneeling but his backside was touching the edge of a bench. His hands were grasping the top of a pew in front of him and his forehead lay on the little shelf where the prayer and hymn books were. As he opened his eyes and focused them he found he was staring down into the wetness of his own tears where they had fallen on stone and lay in the grooves of an ancient epitaph. He was back, in dull, grey daylight with the faint whisper of rain above him on the west window. He saw the impossibility of healing Pedigree. As for the hair—he knew that he must go away.
Chapter Four
It was typical of Matty’s jagged and passionate character that once he had decided to go away he should go as far as humanly possible. It was part of the strange way in which circumstances were apt to adjust themselves round him as he went—as if for all his jaggedness he was fitted for the journey with streamlined farings—that his way to Australia should be made easy. He met what seemed like compassionate officialdom where there might have been indifference; or perhaps it was that those who winced at the sight of his shrivelled ear speeded him out of their sight. It was no more than months before he found himself with a job, a church, a bed in the Y.M.C.A. in Melbourne. All three were waiting for him downtown in Fore Street by the London Hotel. The ironmonger’s was not as large as Frankley’s but there were storerooms overhead, packing-cases in the yard at the side and a machine shop to stand in for a forge. He might have stayed there for years—for a lifetime—if it had lived up to his innocent belief that by going far and fast he had outdistanced his troubles.
The daugh ters of men .
He cried out silently to nowhere. Silence reverberated in silence.
Then a voice spoke, quite clearly.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Now this was the voice of the curate who was clearing up certain things in the vestry. He had been submitting himself to an austerity of which his vicar knew nothing. He was surprised in this by the sound of a choir boy scrabbling at the vestry door and trying to get in to retrieve a comic he thought he had left. But the voice sounded right inside Matty’s head. He answered it in the same place. Before the balance with its two scales, the one with a man’s face, the other with a fire of anticipation and enticement, he had a time that was made of pure, whitehot anguish. It was the first exercise of his untried will. He knew, and it never occurred to him to doubt the knowledge, or worse, accept it and be proud of it, that he had chosen, not as a donkey between carrots of unequal size but rather as the awareness that suffered. The whitehot anguish continued to burn. In it was consumed a whole rising future that centred on the artificials and the hair, it had sunk away from the still-possible to the might-have-been. Because he had become aware he saw too how his unattractive appearance wouldhave made an approach to the girl into a farce and humiliation; and thought, as he saw, that it would be so with any woman. He began to weep adult tears, wounded right in the centre of his nature, wept for a vanished prospect as he might have wept for a dead friend. He wept until he could weep no more and never knew what things had drained away from him with the tears. When he had done he found he was in a strange position. He was kneeling but his backside was touching the edge of a bench. His hands were grasping the top of a pew in front of him and his forehead lay on the little shelf where the prayer and hymn books were. As he opened his eyes and focused them he found he was staring down into the wetness of his own tears where they had fallen on stone and lay in the grooves of an ancient epitaph. He was back, in dull, grey daylight with the faint whisper of rain above him on the west window. He saw the impossibility of healing Pedigree. As for the hair—he knew that he must go away.
Chapter Four
It was typical of Matty’s jagged and passionate character that once he had decided to go away he should go as far as humanly possible. It was part of the strange way in which circumstances were apt to adjust themselves round him as he went—as if for all his jaggedness he was fitted for the journey with streamlined farings—that his way to Australia should be made easy. He met what seemed like compassionate officialdom where there might have been indifference; or perhaps it was that those who winced at the sight of his shrivelled ear speeded him out of their sight. It was no more than months before he found himself with a job, a church, a bed in the Y.M.C.A. in Melbourne. All three were waiting for him downtown in Fore Street by the London Hotel. The ironmonger’s was not as large as Frankley’s but there were storerooms overhead, packing-cases in the yard at the side and a machine shop to stand in for a forge. He might have stayed there for years—for a lifetime—if it had lived up to his innocent belief that by going far and fast he had outdistanced his troubles.
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