Matty seemed to agree; and really the boy was quite pleasant to look at!
“So I’m not going to be preached at Matty. We’ll say no more about it. Eh?”
Windrove continued to weave and hold on to his hat. Mr Pedigree saw that it was the extraordinarily lively nature of this gold, this wind, this wonderful light and warmth that kept Windrove moving rhythmically in order to stay in one place. There was a long period then, when he felt that the situation was so enjoyable as to make it unnecessary to think of anything else. But after a time, random thoughts began to perform themselves in the volume that Mr Pedigree was accustomed to regard as himself.
He spoke out of this thinking.
“I don’t want to wake up and find I’m inside, you know. That’s happened so often. What they used to call chokey in my young day.”
Windrove appeared to agree; and then, without words, Mr Pedigree knew that Windrove did agree—and this was such a joy of certainty that Mr Pedigree felt the tears streaming down his face. Presently, when he was more himself, he spoke out of the certainty.
“You’re an odd chap, Matty, you always were. You have this habit of popping up. There’ve been times when I wondered if you actually existed when no one else was looking and listening if you see what I mean. Times when I thought—is he all connected with everything else or does he kind of drift through; I wonder!”
Then there was another long silence. Mr Pedigree was the one to break it at last.
“They call it so many things, don’t they, sex, money, power, knowledge—and all the time it lies right on their skin! The thing they all want without knowing it—yet that it should be you, ugly little Matty, who really loved me! I tried to throw it away you know, but it wouldn’t go. Who are you, Matty? There’ve been such people in this neighbourhood, such monsters, that girl and her men, Stanhope, Goodchild, Bell even, and his ghastly wife—I’m not like them, bad but not as bad, I never hurt anybody—they thought I hurt children but I didn’t, I hurt myself. And you know about the last thing the thing I shall be scared into doing if I live long enough—just to keep a child quiet, keep it from telling—that’s hell Matty, that’ll be hell—help me!”
It was at this point that Sebastian Pedigree found he was not dreaming. For the golden immediacy of the wind altered at its heart and began first to drift upwards, then swirl upwards then rush upwards round Matty. The gold grew fierce and burned. Sebastian watched in terror as the man before him was consumed, melted, vanished like a guy in a bonfire; and the face was no longer two-tone but gold as the fire and stern and everywhere there was a sense of the peacock eyes of great feathers and the smile round the lips was loving and terrible. This being drew Sebastian towards him so that the terror of the golden lips jerked a cry out of him—
“Why? Why?”
The face looming over him seemed to speak or sing but not in human speech.
Freedom.
Then Sebastian, feeling the many-coloured ball that he held against his chest, and knowing what was to happen, cried out in agony.
“No! No! No!”
He clutched the ball closer, drew it in to avoid the great hands that were reaching towards him. He drew the ball closer than the gold on the skin, he could feel how it beat between his hands with terror and he clutched it and screamed again and again. But the hands came in through his. They took the ball as it beat and drew it away so that the strings that bound it to him tore as he screamed. Then it was gone.
The park keeper coming from the other gate saw him where he sat with his head on his chest. The park keeper was tired and irritated for he could see the brilliant ball lying a few yards from the old man’s feet where it had rolled when he dropped it. He knew the filthy old thing would never be cured and he was more than twenty yards away when he began talking at him bitterly.
About the Author
When William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel Foundation said of his novels that they ‘illuminate the human condition in the world of today’. Born in Cornwall in 1911, Golding was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor, a musician and a schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and saw action against battleships, submarines and aircraft, and also took part in the pursuit of the Bismarck.
Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers and one literary agent. It was rescued from the ‘slush pile’ by a young editor at Faber and Faber and published in 1954. The book would go on to sell several million copies; it was translated into 35 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. He wrote eleven other novels, The Inheritors and The Spire among them, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993.
www.william-golding.co.uk
Books by
Sir William Golding
1911–1993
Nobel Prize in Literature
Fiction
LORD OF THE FLIES
THE INHERITORS
PINCHER MARTIN
FREE FALL
THE SPIRE
THE PYRAMID
THE SCORPION GOD
DARKNESS VISIBLE
THE PAPER MEN
RITES OF PASSAGE
CLOSE QUARTERS
FIRE DOWN BELOW
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
(comprising Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down Below in a revised text; foreword by the author)
THE DOUBLE TONGUE
Essays
THE HOT GATES
A MOVING TARGET
Travel
AN EGYPTIAN JOURNAL
Plays
THE BRASS BUTTERFLY
LORD OF THE FLIES
adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams
WILLIAM GOLDING: A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS
by Mark Kinkead-Weekes and Ian Gregor
Copyright
First published in 1979
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition published in 2013
All rights reserved
© William Golding, 1980
Introduction © Philip Hensher, 2013
The right of William Golding to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31224–5
Darkness Visible: With an Introduction by Philip Hensher Page 30