The Spire by William Golding
‘My child!’
Laughing but half vexed, he moved across, arms spread, so that she could not pass. She stood under the wall, sideways and shrinking. Her hair was decently hidden, her face turned away so that he could see little but the long hollow of one cheek.
‘My child, I have been meaning —’
Meaning what? What have I to tell her? What am I to ask her?
But she was speaking up to him, pleading.
‘Let me go, Father. Please let me go!’
‘He’ll come back.’
‘Please!’
‘And meanwhile — all these years — My child, you are very dear to me.’
With a sudden shock, he saw how white her lips were, white and drawn in against her teeth. He could see too, how wide and staring, wide, dark eyes could be, as if the eyelids had been drawn back, like the lips. The basket jerked up against her breast, and he could only just hear what she whispered.
‘Not you too!’
Then she was gone, gasping and sobbing, and slipping past him, to race down the dark ambulatory, so that her heavy cloak flapped in the air, and beneath her skirt he glimpsed her ankles and feet.
He put his hands on either side of his head and spoke angrily out of the depths of his confusion and incomprehension.
‘What’s all this?’
Then he shook himself, for he felt her cling, and this was bad for the work. I must put aside all small things, he thought. If they are part of the cost, why so be it. And if I cannot help, what is the point of all this brooding? I have too great a work on hand. Work! Work!
He had a thought so brilliant he knew it had been put into his mind. It was an illumination. I must climb away from all this confusion! And with the thought came the high, fretful laugh again. I shall take this burning will of mine up the tower. He looked down at his gown and saw that it was not designed for climbing; but he bent and pulled the back hem through his legs and twisted it up into his girdle. A workman coming down, stood aside on the first staging and knuckled his forehead. Suddenly everything was easier in Jocelin’s head. There was sunlight at last, flashing round him. He climbed again and again; came to the dark and unwalled platform of the triforium and ducked into a stairway lighted by nothing but arrow slits, as though the building might have to be defended by archers. He came out of the stair and the new beams above the vaulting lay before him. He climbed again, up wide ladders by the flash and glitter of the lower tower windows.
‘Of course,’ he cried, ‘Of course!’
He felt his heart hitting his ribs and he rested a while to slow it and get his breath. He perched on the edge of a staging like a raven on the edge of a cliff. The men climbing up and down, looked at him curiously but said nothing. He hutched to the very edge and let his legs hang over. He clutched an upright with both hands, leaned round it and looked down.
The shafts, wall and windows of the tower drew together below him, and seemed everywhere only just thick enough to bear their own weight. Everything was clean and new. The eighty foot lights of the windows, two in each of the four sides, the platforms and uprights, the ladders and newly adzed beams, were clear with present light. He felt the same appalled delight as a small boy feels when first he climbs too high in a forbidden tree. He felt his head swim, and encouraged his own dizziness and caught breath by squinting straight down — down, down, hole after hole depth after depth to the distant world of the crossways. The pavement was as dim as the bottom of the pit had been, discoloured by depth and the dullness of ground level. Then the dizziness passed to leave thought and delight behind it.
‘Of course!’
So a bird must feel, free in a world of branches and the liberty of wings. So grey we must seem, so reduced to our heads and shoulders, so shackled, crawling over the earth, and as he thought that, he saw Rachel crawl across the pavement from one side to the other as though she were something stirred out of the earth itself. He felt free of her and he turned back to the mounting ladders. He got up and he clambered on, heedless of the white impropriety of his thighs. More than two hundred feet up in the air, they became proper. He went from level to level, looking up always at the verge where the men worked themselves towards the sky. The noises of building became loud about him again. He stopped for his breath by the swallows’ nest and found it was a room, large as his own, and hanging in one corner with an unglassed gap looking into the shaft of the tower for light. The master builder was sighting by it from this stone here to that one across the tower. Jocelin stood radiantly by him on the four planks, and shouted out of the necessity of height and exhilaration.
‘You see, my son! The pillars don’t sink!’
The master builder answered sourly, still peering at his instrument.
‘Who knows what anything does? Perhaps each pillar stands on its own foundation.’
‘I told you, Roger. They float!’
The master builder shook his shoulders irritably.
‘I can hear you well enough.’
‘Roger!’
He put out a hand, but Roger Mason pulled away as though his body were tender to the touch. He swung round on the plank nearest the white wall, and clutched his sighting instrument to his chest.
‘I told you years ago, Father — and now!’
‘How can you speak so, Roger, with a, a miracle all about you? Can’t you feel it? Can’t you get strength from it, learn from it, see how it changes everything?’
They were silent, looking at each other in the noises of scraped stone. Roger Mason examined him slowly, from the toes of his shoes, along the shins, the white thighs, up past the body to the face. They stood eye to eye, and the master builder smiled grimly.
‘It’s changed things all right.’
He turned away, opened the door of the swallows’ nest; then jerked round and shouted furiously.
‘And can’t you see what you’ve done?’
Then he was gone, slamming the door so that the nest shook round him.
Jocelin looked at the walls.
‘I know! I know! Indeed I know!’
He was swept by a sudden gust of joy that took him laughing to the ladder; and by the time he had climbed it, he had forgotten Roger Mason and the pavement below him.
For this was the growing point, the top. Three planks led round it on every side and the builders were working there. It was a place of little speech. The men bent outward and worked at knee height on a wall that varied in level by the height of a stone before them. Here, it was only one stone high above the planking but with mortar already spread thinly while the workmen manoeuvred the next stone; there — and this was the same in all four walls — no stone appeared above the plank at all, but only wood, shaped to the key of an arch. The stones of the arch had drawn together partway along each curve, but left a gap where the keystone would be; and he knew that each arch contained the lights below, drew them together, swept up and over, so that all their transparencies would seem part of one thing, a single deed. By each wooden form, lay a stone head, shouting silently and exulting in the height of heaven and the brightness. The young man knelt by one and did something to the face with his graver — looked up, and laughed silently as the head, across the reeling gap. Jocelin found himself laughing back, genuinely with pleasure for the new things and the miracle. A thought came into his head with the laughter and he shouted it across to the young man careless of dignity.
‘Up here we are free of all the confusion!’
And the young man laughed back, a good dog; then bent to his work again.
Also there was a new noise. This was not speech or chipping or banging. It was constant, not deep or thick enough to be a purr, and not sharp enough to be the stones singing. He listened carefully and discovered that it was the touch of the wind up here on stone. He knelt down, then sat, his arm laid across the stone of the wall and listened to the wind. For a while he was at peace and his thoughts had their way with his head, popping in and out; and he was content to let them do so.
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Then to right the swimming world, he concentrated on the model again, the model down there in the dimness of the nave. But when he concentrated, unlooked-for things came with the spire, things put aside, from the time when the earth crept and the stones began to sing. He found himself once more holding his breath and listening. He saw for an instant between a blue tunic and a brown one, Pangall at the broom’s end, one of the army dancing towards him, the spire projecting obscenely between his legs. He saw a fall of red hair. And then he found himself gripping the stone, eyes shut, mouth open, while the ribs tightened round his breath. The confusion was in his head again. He said dizzily to himself; it’s the cost! What else should I have expected? And I can’t pray for them since my whole life has become one prayer of will, fused, built in.
Have mercy. Or teach me.
But there was no answer. Only the touch of wind on stone.
He opened his eyes and found that he was looking away from the tower and out into the world: and it had changed in nature. It had bent itself into a sort of bowl, detailed here, sweeping up beyond that to a blue rim. In astonishment and delight, he laid hold of the stone and heaved himself into kneeling. This is what it must mean to be a bird, he thought — and as if in illustration, a raven slipped past his face, slanting on the wind with a harsh expostulation at the people lifted so boldly into its kingdom. Beyond the raven — and now Jocelin let go the stone and stood up so that he could see over the bending workmen — the valleys of the three rivers that met by the cathedral close opened themselves up. The rivers glittered towards the tower; and you could see that all those places which had been separate to feet and only joined by an act of reason, were indeed part of a whole. To the north east he could pick out three separate mills, three separate cascades at different levels, all joined by leagues of water that snaked towards the cathedral. The river did indeed run down hill. He saw the white stones of the new bridge at Stilbury, saw the very nuns, or two of them at least, in their garth, though they were enclosed, and this distant inspection a breaking of the wall. Remembering this, he concentrated on the new bridge, screwed up his eyes and saw a straggling line of packmules, asses, draughthorses, pedlars and beggars on foot, country people with their loads of vegetables drifting towards the stalls at the north end of the bridge. It was market day in Stilbury then, though not here in the City, a fact known before to reason, but now all swept under one eye and seen to be so. His joy beat at him like wings. I would like the spire to be a thousand feet high, he thought, and then I should be able to oversee the whole county; and he wondered at himself, remembering whose spire it would be. And as if in answer, he thought he felt his angel at his back, warming him in the wind. Now it is true, without any doubt; up here, among the tapping and clinking and scraping, here, moving towards the clouds, I am cheerful as a child that sings. I didn’t know I could still be as happy! So he stood on the planks in the wind and let the happiness calm all the confusions in his head. He examined the strips and patches of cultivation, the rounded downlands that rose to a wooded and notched edge. They were soft and warm and smooth as a young body.
He got down on his knees, hard, eyes shut, crossing himself and praying. I bring my essential wickedness even here into thy air. For the world is not like that. The earth is a huddle of noseless men grinning upward, there are gallows everywhere, the blood of childbirth never ceases to flow, nor sweat in the furrow, the brothels are down there and drunk men lie in the gutter. There is no good thing in all this circle but the great house, the ark, the refuge, a ship to contain all these people and now fitted with a mast. Forgive me.
He opened his eyes and stood up, looking for his happiness to see where it had gone, looked up into the air where the rest of the tower and the spire would be, an unthinkable height. A great bird floated up there on spread wings, and he said aloud, remembering Saint John: ‘It is an eagle.’
But the young man who was working at a mouth, looked up too, then smiled and shook his head. Jocelin went over to him along the planks, bent and tugged his curly hair.
‘Well. As far as I am concerned it is an eagle.’
But the young man was at work again.
At the nearer edge of the downs, there were knobs and lumps appearing, as if bushes were growing by magic. As he watched, they pushed up, and became men. Behind them were more knobs which became horses, asses in foal with panniers, a whole procession of travellers with burdens. They came straight over the nearer ridge from the one so bluely outlined behind it. They were moving straight down the hill towards his eye, towards the tower, the cathedral, the city. They had not gone by the west, circling down by Cold Harbour to make their way slanting along the deep trench that generations of hooves had cut. They were saving time, if not labour. In a flash of vision he saw how other feet would cut their track arrowstraight towards the city, understood how the tower was laying a hand on the whole landscape, altering it, dominating it, enforcing a pattern that reached wherever the tower could be seen, by sheer force of its being there. He swung round the horizon and saw how true his vision was. There were new tracks, people in parties, making their way sturdily between bushes and through heather. The countryside was shrugging itself obediently into a new shape. Presently, with this great finger sticking up, the City would lie like the hub at the centre of a predestined wheel. New Street, New Inn, New Wharf, New Bridge; and now new roads to bring in new people.
I thought it would be simple. I thought the spire would complete a stone bible, be the apocalypse in stone. I never guessed in my folly that there would be a new lesson at every level, and a new power. Nor could I have been told. I had to build in faith, against advice. That’s the only way. But when you build like this, men blunt like a poor chisel or fly off like the head of an axe. I was too taken up with my vision to consider this; and the vision was enough.
He looked down at the tiny rectangle of Pangall’s kingdom, where now there were far fewer piles of stone; saw the small square of the cloisters. He could even see the white counters that the songschool boys had left on the sill of the arcade from playing their game of checkers. He looked round at the houses, ranged along the limits of the close. Over the red roof ridges, backyards were open to him, spotted with cows and pigs. He watched an old man go heavily into a privy, and secure between his walls, leave the door wide open. Three houses away was a woman, a small patch of white and a large patch of brown, and she was preparing to go from house to house. She had two wooden pails and the yoke lay near against the wall. Screwing up his eyes, he could make out that the pails contained milk; and he smiled grimly to himself as he watched her top up each pail with water. He watched her lift the pails, vanish under the roof ridge and appear again in the street, then cross the road to avoid the drunk man who lay in the gutter beating time feebly with his arm while a dog lifted its leg over him.
‘The slug.’
He swung round, startled. But Roger Mason was not looking at the drunk man. He was looking away, down to the south east and the invisible sea.
‘The louse.’
Seven glittering reaches away, there was a huddle of houses by the river.
‘What can you see, Roger?’
‘Look at him the thief! He’ll be in the Three Tuns. He’ll leave his barge alongside with our good stone in it, while he swills himself all night and all tomorrow. For all he cares we can wait and whistle!’
‘My son —’
The master builder bawled at him.
‘What’s it to me? Or you? You won, didn’t you?’
Then there was stillness. Daze, like after a blow. Faces lifted. No scraping or tapping.
‘Gently Roger. Gently.’
‘Gently! I —’
Roger Mason put his hands up to his face. He spoke harshly from behind them.
‘You men. Get back to your work.’
Presently the tapping began again. But Roger Mason lowered his hands without looking at Jocelin. He went away, saying no more, and made his bear’s way down the ladders, paw after paw.
Jocelin watched him go down, and a new knowledge came into his head. I dread to go down there, he thought. Here is my place. But it must be done, since no man can live his life with eagles. So he forced himself, down the ladders, past the swallows’ nest, down on to staging after staging, down the corkscrew stair to the dim world, to the dull, factual pavement at the bottom of the pit. He had a message for the master builder but Rachel flitted between them so that he could not entirely detach himself from her babble — looking better for the exercise my lord she wished oh how she wished she could follow Roger to the top of his craft but heights were a real purgatory to her — painted face jerking in spate, body jerking — had to stay down in this mess at the crossways it was a real crime the way Pangall deserted his duty, so like a man, well not all men, not like some she could mention, to go off into the blue without so much as a message and leaving his Goody with child at last on top of it, poor soul, sweet soul, such a dear person and now to be left —
A great anger swamped Jocelin, rage at the drunk man in the gutter and the sot in the Three Tuns. He cried out to Roger’s averted face.
‘My son! You must use my authority. Send a man on a good horse to the Three Tuns. Let him take a whip with him, and let him use it as necessary!’
Then he was walking away down the nave from the mess and the babble, walking away, and tears streamed down his cheeks. Oh the lessons I have learned, he thought, the height and power and cost!