The Spire by William Golding
By the west door he had got himself together again. He turned and spoke thickly to the High Altar.
‘Thou hast heard my prayers, O Lord: and these are tears of joy because Thou hast remembered Thy handmaiden.’
Chapter Six
When he returned to the spire, the hosannaing heads were built in at the top of each window. He leaned over the growing edge of the wall, and saw them there from above, each with hair blown back, each with a nose projecting like a beak. They shouted at the tracks which feet were cutting in the downland, they ignored the birds that perched and muted whitely on them. As he looked down the well of the tower, he could see how the vaulting had been rebuilt, so that only a circular hole was left through which the eye could find the dim pavement; pavement so dim as to be almost invisible. But beams came up end on through the hole to where the workmen received them. He took part — or observed, shoved into a corner — in a sort of insanity of creaking and banging and shouting as the beams were laid at the top of the tower to form a floor halfway up. For the tower was to rise another eighty feet in another chamber, with more lights, more hosannaing heads, more platforms and ladders, so that the mind winced to think of it; winced at any rate up here, where solidity balanced in midair among the birds, held its breath over a diminishing series of squares with a round hole at the bottom which was nevertheless the top.
And the work, as he knew, experienced in the consuming steadfastness of his will, the work was blessed. There were astonishing days in December, when the church never knew the sun, when the nave was like a cavern. On those days, it was hard to do anything in the dark church but endure one’s will, knowing that in the end all would be well, though the weight of the lower chamber and the weight of the second chamber now growing, were a strain to be experienced right inside the head. On those days he would climb eagerly, like a child that seeks comfort from its mother. Only he did not care to think of a mother. If he did, Goody with her hidden red hair would stab his mind and prick tears out of his eyes.
On such a day, he passed through the close from the deanery to the west door, hardly able to see his feet for fog; and though the nave was clear of it, like a sort of bubble, it was near enough pitch dark. He climbed, and came out of the corkscrew stair on to the beams, and in a blinding dazzle. For up here, the sun was shining; and even those rays that pierced the chamber were faint against another light that blazed upwards, lit lead and glass and stone, lit the underside of the beam roof, so that the very adze marks were visible. Then when he climbed through this dazzle to the upper chamber, up the ladders and levels to where men were working with blue hands and came at last on the ragged top — then he was pained and blinded indeed, and had to press his palms to his eyes. For there was downland visible all round but nothing else. The fog lay in a dazzling, burning patch over the valley and the city, with nothing but the spire or the tower at least, piercing it. Then he was strangely comforted, and for a time, almost at peace.
But there were other days when the fog drowned even the tower. Then the work would slow down or stop, and he would be shut in at ground level with the cost of everything. The army would work as at the bottom of the sea, in sheds and arbours. They shaped wood. In a shed near the wound in the north transept, there were octagons of beams, each smaller than the one below it. They grew, and were piled taller than a man. The carpenters marked them curiously, part by part, then took them to pieces again, while the master builder brooded on a lattice model of small stick that made a shape like a dunce’s cap. Few people approached him, for he had become unpopular with his men. He was too sullen, too curt, too apt to burst into raging flames of temper, then fling off by himself, with Rachel, strained, painted Rachel, clacking and circling round him. And since Jocelin had come to feel a great compassion for this slave of the work, it was hard to see him climb so slowly, so dourly, hard to see him standing, staring up or down, using his sighting instrument with the same care; or standing in the crossways, listening.
For there was often something to listen to. Late in December the stones began to sing again. They did not sing all the time; and in the Lady Chapel there were whole weeks together when the choir could sing unhindered. But then men would be aware of some vague discomfort, and trying to define it, would decide that the air was too dry or too cold; only to find at last that there was a needle in each ear, and that breath had a tendency to hold itself for no reason whatever. Then the needles would become audible, so that breath let itself out in a long expiration, to be replaced by exasperation and fear. Even the people of the city, and travellers from distant parts, would come to the west door and stand there listening for the threat and the marvel of the singing pillars; but they never came to the crossways as they had done in the early days. When the workmen heard the singing they would pause and look at each other, then bend to their work again. There was not much laughter among them. Only Jocelin, impaled on his will, would find a cheerful answer to the needles in each ear.
‘It will pass.’
Nevertheless, as the winter moved towards spring, and the crocuses towards the surface of the earth, and the tower towards the sky, the stones sang more frequently.
It was at this time that Jocelin discovered something else about the master builder. He had watched him anxiously, assessing him as a tool for building, had counted his steps on the ladders, had waited for the moment when he would need to be resharpened or have the wedge driven more firmly into his haft; but he had come out of all that examination with no more than a knowledge of how Roger Mason looked, and moved. Then one day, looking down at the hole over the pavement, he watched him coming up the tower; and understood to his astonishment that the master builder feared heights as much as Rachel did. He feared them but he endured them. He lived with them, they were part of his craft; but he never enjoyed them as Jocelin did, never seemed to know the breathcatching exultation of a quivering plank up here, where you could no longer hear the stones singing, a quivering, bouncing plank over a sheer drop. So in his new knowledge, Jocelin watched him compassionately as he came up; saw him climb methodically, slowly, never casual as some of the workmen were, saw him looking always at the nearest thing to hand; saw the shaft to the dim pavement beyond the hole, understood why he trod for preference an inch or two nearer the wall than the centre of the ladder. There was a little rain blowing, which clung to Jocelin’s hair, but he stood freely at the top in the push of the wind and waited for Roger who was reduced to head and shoulders with the net visibly round him.
‘Why are you afraid, my son?’
The master builder stood before him, breathing deeply. He grasped the parapet with an arm.
‘They’re singing again.’
‘What of it? They’ve sung and stopped before.’
He looked up into the thin rain.
‘Do you know, Roger, I’ve been thinking. That cross up there — the cross that will be up there.’
‘I know it.’
‘Won’t it be taller than a man? Yet on the model it’s the sort of trinket a child might wear round his neck.’
The master builder shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. He groaned.
‘What is it, Roger? What do you want to tell me?’
The master builder looked at him against the sky and spoke huskily.
‘Have mercy.’
‘Not again!’
‘Reverend Father —’
‘Well?’
‘This is enough.’
Jocelin continued to smile; but his smile stiffened. The master builder flung out his free hand.
‘They are overcome by the splendour of what we — of what you —’
He turned away, leaned both elbows on the parapet, put his face between his hands so that his voice was muffled.
‘I said, have mercy,’
‘There’s no one but you.’
Then the master builder was silent for a while, face in hands. He spoke at last without lifting it.
‘I’ll try to tell you about my mystery. The st
He looked up sideways at Jocelin.
‘Or not as you know when you speak to a congregation. You see?’
‘I see well enough.’
‘I tell you, we guess. We judge that this or that is strong enough; but we can never tell until the full strain comes on it whether we were right or wrong. And then the wind, this wind that does nothing but stir the hair round your head —’
He stared angrily at Jocelin.
‘Have you a machine to measure the weight of the wind, Father? Give me that, and I’ll tell you what will stand and what won’t.’
‘But still the pillars aren’t sinking. I told you.’
‘They’ve begun to sing.’
‘Have you never known a building sing before?’
‘Never. We’re surrounded by new things. We guess; and go on building.’
He bent back his thick neck and stared into the sky.
‘And now the spire; another hundred and fifty feet of it. Father — this is enough!’
The will spoke calmly out of Jocelin’s head. He heard it.
‘I understand you, my son. It’s the little dare all over again. Shall I tell you where we’ve come? Think of the mayfly that lives for no more than one day. That raven over there may have some knowledge of yesterday and the day before. The raven knows what the sunrise is like. Perhaps he knows there’ll be another one. But the mayfly doesn’t. There’s never a mayfly who knows what it’s like to be one! And that’s where we’ve come! Oh no, Roger, I’m not going to preach you a sermon on the dreadful brevity of this life. You know, as well as I do, that it’s an unendurable length, that none the less must be endured. But we’ve come to something different, because we were chosen, both of us. We’re mayfly. We can’t tell what it’ll be like up there from foot to foot; but we must live from the morning to the evening every minute with a new thing.’
Roger was watching him closely, tongue licking at his lips.
‘No. I don’t know what you mean. But I know how much the spire will weigh, and I don’t know how strong it’ll be. Look down, Father — right over the parapet, all the way down, past the lights, the buttresses, all the way down to the cedar top in the cloister.’
‘I see it.’
‘Let your eye crawl down like an insect, foot by foot. You think these walls are strong because they’re stone; but I know better. We’ve nothing but a skin of glass and stone stretched between four stone rods, one at each corner. D’you understand that? The stone is no stronger than the glass between the verticals because every inch of the way I have to save weight, bartering strength for weight or weight for strength, guessing how much, how far, how little, how near, until my very heart stops when I think of it. Look down, Father. Don’t look at me — look down! See how the columns at each corner are tacked together. I’ve clamped the stones together but still I can’t make them stronger than stone. Stone snaps, crumbles, tears. Yet even now, when the pillars sing, perhaps this much may stand. I can give you a roof over it, and perhaps a weather vane that men will see for miles.’
Jocelin was suddenly very still, very wary.
‘Go on, my son.’
‘The sheer impossibility of the spire! You need to be thrust this high Father, to understand it, don’t you see? It’ll be a stone skin with stone members. Inside there’ll be a series of those octagons, each a little smaller than the one below it. But the wind, Father! I should have to pin those octagons together, and hang them from the capstone so that they hold the skin down by their weight. Weight, weight, weight, weight! All added to this; all boring down on the columns, on the skin of the wall, down on the singing pillars —’
Now his hand was on Jocelin’s sleeve.
‘And even that isn’t the end of it. However I contrive, the spire won’t thrust perpendicularly. It’ll thrust at the tops of these four columns and it’ll thrust — out! I could put pinnacles on each to bear down — should have to — but there’d be a limit to the height I could make them, because of the weight. At what point should I have to give up the one for the other? Oh yes; we could put in the first octagon and the second and perhaps the third —’ his hand clenched on Jocelin’s arm ‘— but sooner or later there’d be a new noise in the building. Look down again, Father. Sooner or later there’d be a bang, a shudder, a roar. Those four columns would open apart like a flower, and everything else up here, stone, wood, iron, glass, men, would slide down into the church like the fall of a mountain.’
He was silent again for a moment. Then his voice came, no more than a whisper.
‘I tell you — whatever else is uncertain in my mystery — this is certain. I know. I’ve seen a building fall.’
Jocelin’s eyes were shut. Inside his head, a series of octagons, each made of oak beams a foot thick, had built themselves up and up. For a moment, as he stood with gritted teeth, he felt the solid stone under him move — swinging sideways and out. The dunce’s cap a hundred and fifty feet tall began to rip down and tear and burst, sliding with dust and smoke and thunder, faster and faster, breaking and sheering with spark and flame and explosion, crashing down to strike the nave so that the paving stones danced like wood chips till the ruin buried them. So clear was this that he fell with the south west column that swung out over the cloister bent in the middle like a leg and destroyed the library like the blow of a flail. He opened his eyes, sick with falling through the air. He was clutching the parapet and the cloisters were moving below him.
‘What must we do?’
‘Stop building.’
The answer came pat; and even before his sickness had sunk away and the cloisters steadied, some deep centre of awareness understood how the master builder had led up to this answer.
‘No, no, no, no.’
He was muttering and understanding and shaking his head. He understood the plea refused, the final resource, building talk, a mystery not displayed down there on the solid earth, but pondered on, brought up the tower in privacy, used at last like a lever on a fulcrum of vertigo; all so contrived as to bring the will within a single moment of defeat.
‘No.’
At last the reply was assured. It was the reply of one blade to another, clash, slither, clash.
‘Roger, I tell you the thing can be done.’
The master builder flung away furiously, stood in the south west corner with his back to Jocelin. He faced the rain and looked at nothing.
‘Listen Roger.’
What can I tell him? I talked about mayfly but ten minutes later and I can’t remember what. Let the will talk to him.
‘You tried to frighten me as you might frighten a child with a ghost story. You thought it out carefully, didn’t you? And yet you know you can’t go. Can’t go. Can’t get away. And all that time, your curious, valuable mind was finding a way round the impossible. You found it too, because that’s what you’re for. You don’t know if it’s the right answer but it’s the best one you’ve got. But you’re frightened. The best part of you would like to try, but the rest snivels and whimpers.’
He stood next to the broad back and spoke into the rain and the nothingness.
‘Now I’ll tell you what no one else knows. They think I’m mad perhaps; but what does that matter? They’ll know about it one day when I — but you shall hear it now, as man to man, on this very stump of a tower, up here with no one else to listen. My son. The building is a diagram of prayer; and our spire will be a diagram of the highest prayer of all. God revealed it to me in a vision, his unprofitable servant. He chose me. He chooses you, to fill the diagram with glass and iron and stone, since the children of men require a thing to look at. D’you think you can escape? You’re not in my net — oh yes, Roger, I understand a number of things, how you are drawn, and twisted, and tormented — but it isn’t my net. It’s His. We can neither of us avoid this work. And there’s another thin
‘I’ve heard it called so.’
‘The net isn’t mine, Roger, and the folly isn’t mine. It’s God’s Folly. Even in the old days he never asked men to do what was reasonable. Men can do that for themselves. They can buy and sell, heal and govern. But then out of some deep place comes the command to do what makes no sense at all — to build a ship on dry land; to sit among the dunghills; to marry a whore; to set their son on the altar of sacrifice. Then, if men have faith, a new thing comes.’
He was silent for a while, in the prickling rain, looking at Roger Mason’s back. It was my voice that spoke the words, he thought. No. Not my voice. Voice of the devouring Will, my master.
‘Roger?’
‘Well?’
‘You’ll build it to the top. You think those are your own hands, but they aren’t. You think it’s your own mind that’s been working, nagging at the problem, and now sits in secret pride of having solved it. But it isn’t. Anymore than my mind speaks the words that are using my voice.’
Then they were silent again; and he was aware of the third with them, the angel that stood in the cold and rain, warming him at his back.
At last the master builder spoke, toneless and resigned.
‘Steel. Or perhaps steel. I can’t tell. We can pass a great band of it round the whole tower up here and bind the stones together. I don’t know. No one has ever used as much steel as that before. I still don’t know. And it’ll cost more money, much more.’
‘I’ll find it.’
He reached out, timidly almost, and touched the master builder’s shoulder.
‘Roger — He isn’t needlessly cruel, you know. Why, to those who need it because they’re weak, perhaps, he even sends a comforter to stand at their back! He warms them in the rain and the wind. And you’re necessary. Think how the chisel must feel, ground, forced against the hard wood, hour after hour! But then it’s oiled and wrapped in rag and put away. A good workman never uses a tool for something it can’t do; never ignores it; takes care of it.’