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

wouldn’t.”
    “Would.”
    “Wouldn’t.”
    I’d break a policeman’s window, see?
    Philip introduced the subject of the church. It was autumn and growing dusky. It was the right hour for a desperate deed.
    No, not the window, said Philip; but he bet and he bet. So we moved by dare and vaunt and dare and vaunt until I was where he wanted me. Before the light had drained down and the dusk turned to darkness—I might lick every boy in the school but not this, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t dare—honest, Sammy, you better not! and giggling , appalled and flapping his hands at awed promise of an accident——
    “I would, then, see? I’d piss on it.”
    Giggle flap tremor, heart-thud.
    And so by dare upon dare in the autumn streets I found myself at last engaged to defile the high altar. Ο streets, cold with copper smoke and brazen noise, with brown profile of warehouse and gasworks glory be for you under the eternal sky. Glory be for the biggest warehouse of all, huddled away from the shining canal among trees and bones.
    Philip led the way with his dance and flap and I followed in the net. I was not cold particularly but my teeth had a tendency to shake in my mouth if I did not clench them. I had to cry to Philip to wait a bit under the bridge over the canal and I made concentric, spreading circles in the water and a speck of foam. He ran ahead and came back like a puppy, for all the world as if I were the master.As we went, I found that something seemed to be wrong with my guts and I had to stop again in a dark alley. But Philip danced round me, his white knees gleaming in the dusk. I wouldn’t, he bet.
    We came to the stone wall, the lych-gate, the glooming yews. I stopped again and used the wall that the dogs used and then Philip clicked the latch and we were through. He went on tiptoe and I followed with strange shapes of darkness expanding before my eyes. The stones were tall about us and when Philip lifted a longer latch in the yawning porch it sounded like a castle gate. I crouched in after him, hand out to feel him in this thicker darkness but still we were not inside. There was another door, soft-covered; and when Philip pushed, it spoke to us.
    Wuff.
    I followed still, Philip let me through. I did not know the drill and the released door spoke again behind us.
    Wubb wuff!
    There were miles of church—first a sense of a world of hollowed stone, all shadow, all guessed-at glossy rectangles dim as an after-image, sudden, startling figures near at hand. I was nothing but singing teeth and jumping skin and hair that crawled without orders. Philip was as bad. His need must have been deep indeed. I could see nothing of him but hands and face and knees. His face was close to mine. We had a fierce and insane argument under the shadow of the inner door with Prayer Books piled on a table at shoulder height.
    “It’s too dark, I tell you! I can’t see!”
    “You’re a coward then, you can just talk that’s all——”
    “It’s too dark!”
    We even struggled there, unhandily, I made impotentby his unpredictable female strength. And then it was not too dark. The distances were visible. I cannoned into something wooden with green lights revolving round me; then saw a path stretching and guessed rather than knew that this was the way on. Blasts of hot air blew up my legs from metal grilles in the ground. At the end of the path a clutch of dully shining rectangles went careering away up into the sky and below them there was a great shape. There was a light by the altar jazzing as if a maniac were holding it. Silence began to sound, to fill with a high, nightmare note. There were steps to mount and then a blankness of cloth with a line of white at the top. I ran back to Philip, pattering through the blasts of hot air from the grilles in the floor. We argued and tussled again.  The awe of the place was on me; even on my speech.
    “But I been three times, Phil—don’t you see? I can’t pee any more!”
    Philip