The Spire

by William Golding

  ‘This vision.’

  ‘I have it written down in a notebook in the bottom left hand corner of my chest. You can read it if that would help. Soon I shall preach a sermon — we shall have a new pulpit built at the crossways; and then everyone —’

  ‘You are trying to say that the vision made your building of the spire an overriding necessity?’

  ‘Exactly so.’

  ‘And that from this vision, or revelation — which would you call it?’

  ‘I’m not a learned man. Forgive me.’

  ‘From this vision, everything else followed?’

  ‘Just so, just so.’

  ‘To whom did you confide it?’

  ‘To my confessor, of course.’

  Outside the windows, the devils were only just invisible. He looked impatiently at the Visitor.

  ‘My Lord. While we sit here —’

  But the Visitor held up his hand. The secretary was speaking from the left end of the table.

  ‘Anselm, My Lord. The Sacrist.’

  ‘The man who is so concerned about his candles? He is your confessor?’

  ‘He was, My Lord. And hers. If only you knew the pain of knowing and not knowing!’

  ‘Then you’ve changed your confessor? How long since?’

  ‘I — No, My Lord.’

  ‘Then he’s your confessor still, if you have one.’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘My Lord Dean. When did you last go to confession?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘A month? A year? Two years?’

  ‘I can’t remember, I tell you!’

  The questions drove him back in his chair, they pressed in, were unfair and unanswerable.

  ‘And all this time, you have been withdrawn from your spiritual peers, keeping company with men, who if our information is correct, are more than merely wicked?’

  The question loomed over him, expanded, became a mountain. He saw to what a height a mind must climb, ladder after ladder, if it were to answer, so he prepared once more to climb. He stood up, reached down his right hand, drew the hem of his gown through between his knees, twisted it, and tucked it up through his girdle.

  The seven men were standing too. They were stiller than the saints that jumped and rattled in the windows.

  The Visitor sank back slowly into his chair. His smile was very amiable again.

  ‘You are exhausted by your labours, My Lord. Let us continue this discussion tomorrow.’

  ‘But while we waste time here, they are there, outside the windows —’

  ‘By the authority of this seal, I command you to return to your own house.’

  It was gently, kindly spoken; but when he had inspected the seal, he knew that at last he had no answer. He turned to go, and the seven men bowed; but he said to himself, We have got beyond the bowing stage! He walked away over the patterned, clicking pavement, and Father Anonymous hung at his shoulder. The door shut behind him; and there were his spiritual peers ranged in the cloisters. They were a little larger now, but not much. So he walked between the rows of eyes, and he dismissed them from his mind.

  By the west door, he cocked an ear and an eye to see what the devils were doing to the weather. They were free, or in the process of becoming free; and already they were doing more than enough. The storm had swung from the south east to the east, so there was a lee at the west end of the cathedral. Since the water was unblown here, it cascaded down the front from a dozen gullies, spouted from stone mouths, and washed in a constant sheet over the gravel before the steps. Yet with all that water about, the sky was high and light, and there were streaky clouds that seemed to weave over each other. The rain was not falling from any visible cloud. It came as if born from the very air — as if the air were a sponge, spurting here and there with drops that fell oddly.

  But Father Anonymous was at his side.

  ‘Come, My Lord.’

  A cloak fell round Jocelin’s shoulders.

  ‘The hood, My Lord. So.’

  Gently, calmly, pressure on the elbow.

  ‘This way, My Lord, across here. Now.’

  As they came out of the lee, the wind hit them, and hurried them towards the deanery. When they had reached the upper room where his bed was, he dropped the cloak from his shoulders into the chaplain’s hands, and stood, looking down at the floor. The cable still bound his chest.

  ‘I shan’t sleep till it’s finished.’

  He turned to the window, and watched, as a bucketful of water dashed over it. He felt his angel and his devil at war behind his back.

  ‘Go to them now, go back to them. Tell them we must drive the Nail now, before it’s too late. It’s a race.’

  He shut his eyes, and recognised instantly the impossibility of prayer. So he opened them again, and saw Father Anonymous hesitating there.

  He ordered him away irritably.

  ‘You are still under obedience. Be gone!’

  When next he looked, the little man had disappeared.

  He began to pace up and down. When it is driven, he thought, then the spire and my witch will cease to haunt me. Perhaps one day I shall know how wicked she was — exactly how wicked she was; but now the spire is the thing; and the Nail.

  After a while he went and stood close to the window; but he could see nothing clearly because of the drops that hung shuddering, wandered aimlessly, or disappeared as if they had been snatched. He waited for a message but none came. I said I was a fool, he thought; and it is truer than I meant. I should have gone myself — what am I doing here? But he went on standing, hands clasped, lips pursing and unpursing, while the light faded in the window and the wind boomed on. When the window was no more than a dull rectangle, he found how tired he was of standing; so he went to his bed and lay on it fully dressed and waiting. Once he heard a crash and clatter from somewhere among the roofs of the deanery and started up. After that, he lay flat no longer, but listened, propped on one elbow in the thick darkness. He saw the spire fall a hundred times — heard it fall a hundred times until the gale beat in his very head. He tried to doze but could not tell which was sleeping and which waking since both were the same nightmare. He tried to think of other things, only to find that the spire was so firmly based in his head there was nothing else to think of. Sometimes the wind would drop for a moment and his heart would bound; but always the wind would return with a lashing of shot on the window, and at last it roared without ceasing.

  So he lay and dozed or waked. At some point in the night the window leaped into bright light so that his body contracted on the bed, but the noise of thunder never penetrated the wind. After that there were more crashes among the roofing, and the skitter of tiles. Then it occurred to him that if he watched at the window he might see how the building did, by the lightning flash when it came, so he crawled off his bed and stood waiting. The next flash showed him nothing but that the window was in the wrong place; so he turned a little and finally made out the dim square. He went close, put his face by it, listening to the slung water and then the next flash came. It was not even the split of a glimpse. It was a pain in the eyes, with light turning green even after he had got his hands in front of them. He knew that the bulk in the middle of the light was the tower but could not tell exactly how it was shaped, or whether it leaned, or whether it had a spire on. He fumbled back to his bed and lay on it. He lay on his face, trying, of all things, to think of old times that had been happy; times with Father Anselm, master of the novices or novice rather, in the sunlit place by the sea; and then again, he got up and stood by the window. But the next flash was far away beyond the cathedral so that he seemed to see its black bulk hurtling shapelessly at him. Then he lay down again and did not know whether he fell into a doze or whether he fainted clean away.

  He came up out of a deep well. There was a flat noise at the top like a cover; but this was not what drew him up. There were other noises, thin screams, bird noises, almost. Suddenly he was wide awake, knowing where he wa
s, in the dimmest of grey lights. He could hear their clamour on the stairs.

  He rolled off the bed and went quickly to the door.

  ‘I’m here. You must be brave, my children!’

  But the voices shrieked and sobbed.

  ‘— now and in the hour of —’

  ‘— Father!’

  He shouted down the stairs.

  ‘No harm is coming to you!’

  There were hands at his feet, and pulling at his gown.

  ‘The city’s being destroyed!’

  ‘— the whole thatch of a house lying in the graveyard and beating to pieces —’

  He shouted down at them.

  ‘What’s happened to the spire?’

  Hands crawled up his body, and a beard thrust into his face.

  ‘It’s falling, Reverend Father. There were stones falling from the parapet even before dark —’

  He pulled himself away and went to the window and rubbed at the dullness with foolish fingers as though he could smear it away like paint. He hurried back to the stairs.

  ‘Satan is loose. But no harm shall come to you. I swear it.’

  ‘Help us, Reverend Father! Pray for us!’

  Then, in the faint light, among the hands and the booming of the wind, he saw what he had to do. He pressed forward among them, pushing them aside, pulled his skirt away, shook a hand from his elbow. Then he was clear, with a stone step coming to each foot. He found the great hall and the door with its latch. He fumbled the latch up, and the door slammed open, throwing him back across the hall. He crept round the wind and bored into it through the doorway. Again it threw him back against the wall so that he hung there, panting. Then the wind let him go from its mouth so that he dropped on gravel. He scrambled forward and the wind picked him up again, then let him fall on all fours; and already he was soaked as though he had fallen in the river. He had a confused thought that now he worked with his body as others did, and he burrowed forward across the lane to the graveyard. A handful of something struck his face and left a stinging behind as if it had been nettles. He fell in the lee of a hummock with a wooden cross on it and the skirt of his gown flogged him, so he pulled it up through his belt. A lath came from somewhere and raised a cruel welt on his thigh.

  He lifted his head a little and squinted into the grey light, across the useful grave; and at that moment, Satan in the likeness of a cosmic wildcat leapt off all four feet on the north east horizon and came screaming down at Jocelin and his folly. The cloak burst at his throat and went flapping away somewhere like a black crow, but his hands held to the wooden cross. He lay there cunningly, until the wildcat had tired a little. After that he went from grave to grave, grabbing a cross and a lee, until he came to the biggest lee of all by the west door, and through the door, leaning his back against it and gasping for breath. Yet for a moment as he leaned there he thought the cathedral had a full congregation. But then he realised that the lights were swimming inside his eyes, and the singing was the noise of all the devils out of hell. They swarmed through the dim heights, they banged and rattled and smashed at the windows in an extravagance of fury, they made the great window at the west end boom like a sail. But he minded them no more than birds as they swooped at him, for he was outside himself, awake and asleep at the same time, a man led. Wah! Wah! they howled, and Yah! Yah! they howled, beating at him with scaly wings then going off to batter at the singing pillars and the windows and the vaulting that shuddered over; and he heard someone, himself perhaps, imitating their cries as his body ran crouching up the nave through the semi-darkness. He could hear the groans of the arcades as they stiffened their stone shoulders. When he saw the deserted altar before him the devils raged as they leapt and swung from the main arch. He fumbled at the altar, then snatched the silver box as if it contained nothing but an ordinary nail. There came a smash from the south transept, the crash and shatter of stone; from the north transept a boom and the icy skitter of glass. The devils fought with him at the entry to the corkscrew stairs but he beat them off with the Nail. Then as he made his way up his heart began to hit him at the base of the throat, and when he reached the lower chamber he could hardly see it for the glossy lights that danced round him. Nor could his ears accept the noise any more; for what had once been the whispered expostulations of the spire was now a shouting and screaming with the roar of released Satan as a sort of universal black background. Wood and stone no longer swayed subtly. They lurched so that he was flung sideways, or clung to the ladders like a man climbing a mast at sea. On one side out in the roar, there was a continual break and fall. In the tent of wood at the top of the tower, the floor was deep in broken stone and splinters, in which he scrabbled for the foot of the first of the spire ladders. There was a devil at his left who opened and shut a mouth of grey daylight slowly, as he looked. Then there were the ladders over ladder, zigzag into darkness — one ladder newly freed at the bottom, another bowed and humming as if it had been strung. The darkness was full of splinters that scratched and stabbed as he scrambled up, his angel burning and thrusting, the box twisted into the lap of his skirt — up, up, to where there was so little space the skin enclosed him like a chimney and he could feel the difference in the movement of wood and stone skin, and then, huddled in the last space of all, fumbling open the box, dropping the linen, holding the Nail workmanlike, his weight gripped by leg and elbow, banging away with the soft silver box, beating the Nail into wood, fumbling, feeling, banging —

  The noises of the spire and the spire itself, moved out of his head. He let the box fall and could not hear the erratic sounds of its descent. He began to let himself down, rung by rung. He felt the hand by which he held on begin to tremble uncontrollably, so he clung with his body. By the time he had reached the corkscrew stair he was crawling.

  The devils still had possession of the nave though the spire was safe from them. But he was not safe from them himself. His angel left him, and the sweetness of his devil was laid on him like a hot hand. He felt the waters of sleep rising and was powerless to prevent them. He crawled out of the stair into the grey ambulatory and lay on his face among smashed stone, and it was as if all substance was flowering softly. The devils no longer screamed, but sang. They sang softly and remorselessly. They disguised themselves and appeared in his head as people.

  He spoke to the smashed stone.

  ‘I drove the Nail. You might have fallen for want of It!’

  But the devils bound him softly and they showed him a vision that drew near. All at once he was looking right across the close in sunlight to where the elms made a shade over a swarm of daisies. The devils were dancing there, three of them, sweet and small. He drew near, down a long line of shadow. They were dancing and clapping their hands and singing.

  ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost,

  For want of a shoe the horse was lost,

  For want of a horse the rider was lost,

  For want of a rider the kingdom was lost —’

  He heard himself, younger and laughing, finish the song for them —

  ‘And all for the want of a horseshoe nail! Come here, child.’

  Then the devil drew near over the grass, while the others went away and he stood looking down and loving her innocence and beauty. He heard his kind questions probing, saw her restless, hands behind her back, red hair straggled this way and that, one thin foot rubbing over the other; heard her make an answer out of her complete incomprehension —

  ‘But it’s just a game we’re playing, Father!’ In this uncountry there was blue sky and light, consent and no sin. She came towards him naked in her red hair. She was smiling and humming from an empty mouth. He knew the sound explained everything, removed all hurt and all concealment, for this was the nature of the uncountry. He could not see the devil’s face for this was the nature of the uncountry too; but he knew she was there, and moving towards him totally as he was moving towards her. Then there was a wave of ineffable good sweetness, wave after wave, and an atonement.
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  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter Ten

  He came to himself very slowly. His cheek was on broken stone, and the daylight was inescapably present. For a long time, even after his eyes were open they were the only part of him that he moved. He sent his sight down the long corridor and saw a familiar monument. He attached himself to this, examining it inch by inch, as if this were a way of filling time, lest something worse should come to fill it. But the monument gave no help, nor did anything else. At last he was left, helplessly in the grip of the new knowledge.

  That was when he spoke first.

  ‘Of course. I should have known. I should have understood.’

  There were noises in the church, the distant clash of a door, voices. He got up and limped slowly toward the crossways. When he stepped out into it, there were shouts. Two men servants came running and father Adam was behind them. He waited for the chaplain, head and hands hanging.

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Go with me. The woman is waiting.’

  ‘What woman?’

  But even as he said this, he remembered she was dead; and that this woman was Alison in search of a comfortable grave.

  ‘I’ll see her. She may know something. It was her whole life, after all.’

  So they went together down the nave, the two men behind them. There was a figure in her corner, and his heart moved; but it was the dumb man, not even humming. He knew how the shame included the dumb young man, and he looked away, to the door through which they led him.

  He stopped in the forecourt of the deanery.

  ‘May I still go in?’

  ‘It was decided so. For the time being.’