Darkness Visible by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page A

left at the end of term for reasons of health; and because the tragedy had been what pushed him out, in his retirement in a bungalow above the white cliffs, he went over the dim fringes of it again and again without understanding it more deeply. Only once did he come across what might be a clue, but even so could not be certain. He found a quotation from the Old Testament, “Over Edom have I cast out my shoe.” When he remembered Matty after that he felt a little chill on his skin. The quotation was, of course, a primitive curse, the physical expression of which had been concealed in the translation, like “Smiting hip and thigh,” and a dozen other savageries. So he sat and thought and wondered whether he had the key to something even darker than the tragedy of young Henderson.
    He would nod, and mutter to himself—
    “Oh yes, to say is one thing: but to do is quite another matter.”

Chapter Three
    Frankley’s was an ironmonger’s of character. When the canal was cut and the Old Bridge built, it diminished the value of all the properties at that end of Greenfield. Frankley’s, in the early days of the nineteenth century, moved into rickety buildings that backed on the towpath and were going dirt cheap. The buildings were indeterminate in date, some walls of brick, some tile-hung, some lath and plaster and some of a curious wooden construction. It is not impossible that parts of these wooden areas were in fact medieval windows filled as was the custom with wooden slats and now thought to be no more than chinky walls. Certainly there was not a beam in the place that did not have here and there notches cut, grooves and an occasional hole that indicated building and rebuilding, division, reclamation and substitution, carried on throughout a quite preposterous length of time. The buildings that at last were subsumed under Frankley’s management were random and seemingly as confused as coral growths. The front that faced up the High Street was only done up and unified as late as 1850 and stayed so until it was done up all over again for the visit of His Majesty King Edward the Seventh, in 1909.
    By that time, if not earlier, all the lofts and attics, galleries, corridors, nooks, crannies had been used as warehouses and were filled with stock. This was over-stocking. Frankley’s held from each age, each generation, each lot of goods, a sediment or remainder. Poking about in far corners the visitor might come across such items as carriage lamps or a sawyer’s frame, destined not for a museum but for the passing stagecoach or sawyer who had refused to turn over to steam. True, during the early days of the twentieth century, Frankley’s made a determined effort to get as much of the contemporary stock downstairs as possible. This, by a kind of evolution with no visible agent, organized itself intosections or departments devoted to various interests as it might be tools, gardening, croquet or miscellaneous. After the convulsion of the First World War the place grew a spider’s web of wires along which money trundled in small, wooden jars. For people of all ages, from babies to pensioners, this was entrancing. Some assistant would fire the jar—clang!—from his counter and when the flying jar reached the till it would ring a bell—Dong! So the cashier would reach up, unscrew the jar, take out the money and inspect the bill, put in the change and fire the jar back—Clang! . . . Clang! All this took a great deal of time but was full of interest and enjoyment, like playing with model trains. On market days the noise of the bell was frequent and loud enough to be heard above the lowing of the cattle that were being driven over the Old Bridge. But on other days the bell would be silent for periods that grew longer as the years revolved. Then, a visitor wandering in the darker and farther parts of Frankley’s might find another property of the wooden jars. Tricks of construction might muffle the sound of the bells