Read Online Free Fall by William Golding - Free Book Online Page A

blow.
    “God——”
    Smack!
    “—is——”
    Smack!
    “—love!”
    Smack! Smack! Smack!
    You knew where you were with Miss Massey.
    So religion, if disorganized, had entered our several lives. I think Johnny and I accepted it as an inevitable part of an enigmatic situation which was quite beyond our control. But we had not met Philip’s curate.
    He was pale, intense, sincere and holy. The rector had withdrawn from a multitude of fears and disappointmentsinto secluded eccentricity; and more and more of the church work fell into the hands of Father Anselm. He enthralled and frightened his little pitchers. He adjusted his discourse to their level. He got Philip. He slipped past his guard and menaced his knowledge of people, his selfishness. He took them to the high altar and made them kneel. He was not emotional, no Welsh hwyll for him. He made everything concrete. He showed them the cup. He talked about the Queen Mary or some other great work then a-building. He talked about wealth. He held out the silver cup. Have you a sixpence, children, a silver sixpence?
    He bowed the cup towards them. Look, children; that is what they think, the kings of Egypt. The cup is lined with pure gold.
    Philip was torn down to the soles of his feet. So there was something in it after all. They treated the reality of this subject with the same practical reverence as they treated anything else. They gave it gold. In his clever, tortuous mind, religion swam up out of deceit and gooseberry bush into awful power. The curate would not let him be. Having knocked him down with the cup he finished him off with the altar.
    You cannot see it, dear children; but the Power that made the universe and holds you up, lives there. Mercifully you cannot see it as Moses could not see though he asked to. If the veils were lifted from your eyes you would be blasted and destroyed. Let us pray, meekly kneeling on our knees.
    You may go now, dear children. Take with you the thought of that Power, uplifting, comforting, loving and punishing, a care for you that will not falter, an eye that never sleeps.
    Philip walked away on riven feet. He could not tell me what the matter was but I know now. If what they said was true, and not just another bit of parental guff then what future was there for Philip? What of the schemes, the diplomacy? What of the careful manipulations of other people? Suppose there was indeed another scale of values in which the means were not wholly justified by the results? Philip could not express this. But he could convey his urgent, his desperate desire to know. Gold has never been a metal to me but a symbol. I picked it delightedly out of school, myrrh and fine gold, a golden calf—what a pity they had to grind it to powder!—golden fleece, Goldilocks, Goldilocks let down, golden apple Ο golden apple, they irradiated my mind’s eye and I saw nothing in Philip’s cup but another bit of myths and legend. But I was isolated now and in Coventry. It was for this reason that Philip had slid alongside again. With that dreadful perspicacity of his he had assessed my loneliness and resentment, my braggadocio. He knew, even then, the right man and the right moment for a job.
    Because how could you test the truth of what Father Anselm said? The only way, surely, was the method used with an unlighted house. I was to ring the bell and run away. Philip would be stationed where he could watch and judge by the ensuing reaction whether anyone was at home or not. I was to be manoeuvred into that position, using as a lever my isolation and the excesses of my character. He got me grateful first. Here we were, walking together by the canal. He had talked to me in break when the master on duty was not looking. He was my only true friend. Not that I cared about them of course, did I? No. I cared for nobody like the Miller and I would break thehead teacher’s window as like as not, just to show.
    “Bet you