Free Fall (6 page)

But Philip, even at that raw age, had begun to watch his parents objectively and had come to certain conclusions. He could not quite take the plunge but he hesitated on the verge of thinking the whole thing daft. Yet not quite. The trouble was the curate. Philip had to go to some class or other—were they confirmation classes or was he not far too young? The rector had nothing to do with this class. He was a strange, lonely old man. He was rumoured to be writing a book and he lived in the vast rectory with a housekeeper almost as old as he.

How had religion touched us so far? I was neutral and Philip tormented. Perhaps Johnny Spragg had the best of it with his unthinking acceptance and untroubled mind. He knew where he was with Miss Massey who ensured that we knew what we ought to know. And you knew where you were with her—scared out of your wits and struck by lightning if your attention wandered. She was
fair but fierce. She was a thin, grey-haired woman, in complete control of everything. We were having a lesson with her one day on a fine afternoon with piles of white clouds and blue sky outside the window. We were watching Miss Massey because no one dared to do anything else—all of us except Johnny. His ruling passion had caught up with him. The Moth had appeared among the clouds, climbing, looping, spinning and threading the high valleys over Kent. Johnny was up there, too. He was flying. I knew what was going to happen and I made cautious attempts to warn him; but the whistle of the wind in the wires and the smooth roar of the engine drowned out my whisper. We knew that Miss Massey had noticed because of an additional awe in the atmosphere. She went on speaking as if nothing out of the way was happening. Johnny spun.

She finished her story.

“Now do you remember why I told you those three little stories? What do they show us, children? Could you tell us, Philip Arnold?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Jenny?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Sammy Mountjoy? Susan? Margaret? Ronald Wakes?”

“Miss. Miss. Miss. Miss.”

But Johnny was diving for a loop. He was sitting, building up under his seat the power that would swing him into his sky. He was helmeted, assured, delicate at the rudder-bar and joystick in the fish-’n’-chip smell of the engine oil and great wind. He pulled the joystick back slowly, a huge hand thrust him up and he rolled off the
top of the loop while the irrelevant dark earth reeled sideways as easy as a shadow.

“Johnny Spragg!”

Johnny made a crash landing.

“Come here.”

He clattered out of his desk for the pay off. Flying was always expensive—three pounds dual and thirty shillings solo, for an hour of it.

“Why did I tell you those three stories?”

Johnny’s hands were behind his back, his chin on his chest.

“Look at me when I speak to you.”

The chin lifted, ever so slightly.

“Why did I tell you those three stories?”

We could just hear his muttered answer. The Moth had flown away.

“Idunnomiss.”

Miss Massey hit him on both sides of the head, precisely with either hand, a word and a blow.

“God——”

Smack!

“—is——”

Smack!

“—love!”

Smack! Smack! Smack!

You knew where you were with Miss Massey.

So religion, if disorganized, had entered our several lives. I think Johnny and I accepted it as an inevitable part of an enigmatic situation which was quite beyond our control. But we had not met Philip’s curate.

He was pale, intense, sincere and holy. The rector had withdrawn from a multitude of fears and disappointments
into secluded eccentricity; and more and more of the church work fell into the hands of Father Anselm. He enthralled and frightened his little pitchers. He adjusted his discourse to their level. He got Philip. He slipped past his guard and menaced his knowledge of people, his selfishness. He took them to the high altar and made them kneel. He was not emotional, no Welsh hwyll for him. He made everything concrete. He showed them the cup. He talked about the
Queen
Mary
or some other great work then a-building. He talked about wealth. He held out the silver cup. Have you a sixpence, children, a silver sixpence?

He bowed the cup towards them. Look, children; that is what they think, the kings of Egypt. The cup is lined with pure gold.

Philip was torn down to the soles of his feet. So there was something in it after all. They treated the reality of this subject with the same practical reverence as they treated anything else. They gave it gold. In his clever, tortuous mind, religion swam up out of deceit and gooseberry bush into awful power. The curate would not let him be. Having knocked him down with the cup he finished him off with the altar.

You cannot see it, dear children; but the Power that made the universe and holds you up, lives there. Mercifully you cannot see it as Moses could not see though he asked to. If the veils were lifted from your eyes you would be blasted and destroyed. Let us pray, meekly kneeling on our knees.

You may go now, dear children. Take with you the thought of that Power, uplifting, comforting, loving and punishing, a care for you that will not falter, an eye that never sleeps.

Philip walked away on riven feet. He could not tell me what the matter was but I know now. If what they said was true, and not just another bit of parental guff then what future was there for Philip? What of the schemes, the diplomacy? What of the careful manipulations of other people? Suppose there was indeed another scale of values in which the means were not wholly justified by the results? Philip could not express this. But he could convey his urgent, his desperate desire to know. Gold has never been a metal to me but a symbol. I picked it delightedly out of school, myrrh and fine gold, a golden calf—what a pity they had to grind it to powder!—golden fleece, Goldilocks, Goldilocks let down, golden apple Ο golden apple, they irradiated my mind’s eye and I saw nothing in Philip’s cup but another bit of myths and legend. But I was isolated now and in Coventry. It was for this reason that Philip had slid alongside again. With that dreadful perspicacity of his he had assessed my loneliness and resentment, my braggadocio. He knew, even then, the right man and the right moment for a job.

Because how could you test the truth of what Father Anselm said? The only way, surely, was the method used with an unlighted house. I was to ring the bell and run away. Philip would be stationed where he could watch and judge by the ensuing reaction whether anyone was at home or not. I was to be manoeuvred into that position, using as a lever my isolation and the excesses of my character. He got me grateful first. Here we were, walking together by the canal. He had talked to me in break when the master on duty was not looking. He was my only true friend. Not that I cared about them of course, did I? No. I cared for nobody like the Miller and I would break the
head teacher’s window as like as not, just to show.

“Bet you wouldn’t.”

“Would.”

“Wouldn’t.”

I’d break a policeman’s window, see?

Philip introduced the subject of the church. It was autumn and growing dusky. It was the right hour for a desperate deed.

No, not the window, said Philip; but he bet and he bet. So we moved by dare and vaunt and dare and vaunt until I was where he wanted me. Before the light had drained down and the dusk turned to darkness—I might lick every boy in the school but not this, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t dare—honest, Sammy, you better not! and
giggling
, appalled and flapping his hands at awed promise of an accident——

“I would, then, see? I’d piss on it.”

Giggle flap tremor, heart-thud.

And so by dare upon dare in the autumn streets I found myself at last engaged to defile the high altar. Ο streets, cold with copper smoke and brazen noise, with brown profile of warehouse and gasworks glory be for you under the eternal sky. Glory be for the biggest warehouse of all, huddled away from the shining canal among trees and bones.

Philip led the way with his dance and flap and I followed in the net. I was not cold particularly but my teeth had a tendency to shake in my mouth if I did not clench them. I had to cry to Philip to wait a bit under the bridge over the canal and I made concentric, spreading circles in the water and a speck of foam. He ran ahead and came back like a puppy, for all the world as if I were the master.
As we went, I found that something seemed to be wrong with my guts and I had to stop again in a dark alley. But Philip danced round me, his white knees gleaming in the dusk. I wouldn’t, he bet.

We came to the stone wall, the lych-gate, the glooming yews. I stopped again and used the wall that the dogs used and then Philip clicked the latch and we were through. He went on tiptoe and I followed with strange shapes of darkness expanding before my eyes. The stones were tall about us and when Philip lifted a longer latch in the yawning porch it sounded like a castle gate. I crouched in after him, hand out to feel him in this thicker darkness but still we were not inside. There was another door, soft-covered; and when Philip pushed, it spoke to us.

Wuff.

I followed still, Philip let me through. I did not know the drill and the released door spoke again behind us.

Wubb wuff!

There were miles of church—first a sense of a world of hollowed stone, all shadow, all guessed-at glossy rectangles dim as an after-image, sudden, startling figures near at hand. I was nothing but singing teeth and jumping skin and hair that crawled without orders. Philip was as bad. His need must have been deep indeed. I could see nothing of him but hands and face and knees. His face was close to mine. We had a fierce and insane argument under the shadow of the inner door with Prayer Books piled on a table at shoulder height.

“It’s too dark, I tell you! I can’t see!”

“You’re a coward then, you can just talk that’s all——”

“It’s too dark!”

We even struggled there, unhandily, I made impotent
by his unpredictable female strength. And then it was not too dark. The distances were visible. I cannoned into something wooden with green lights revolving round me; then saw a path stretching and guessed rather than knew that this was the way on. Blasts of hot air blew up my legs from metal grilles in the ground. At the end of the path a clutch of dully shining rectangles went careering away up into the sky and below them there was a great shape. There was a light by the altar jazzing as if a maniac were holding it. Silence began to sound, to fill with a high, nightmare note. There were steps to mount and then a blankness of cloth with a line of white at the top. I ran back to Philip, pattering through the blasts of hot air from the grilles in the floor. We argued and tussled again.  The awe of the place was on me; even on my speech.

“But I been three times, Phil—don’t you see? I can’t pee any more!”

Philip raged at me out of the darkness, raged weakly, vilely, cleverly—my brother.

“All right then. I can’t pee. But I can spit.”

I went back through the hot air and a brass eagle ignored me. Though evening had come on there was more light rather than less—enough to show high fences of carved oak on either hand, a carpet, a pattern of black and grey in the stone floor. I stood as near as I dared to the bottom step; but now my mouth was dry, too. I was involutely thankful for that dry mouth. I snatched wildly and legalistically at the hope of another misfire.

Leaning forward, the green lights swimming round me, I made my motions loud so that Philip should hear them.

“Ptah! Ptah! Ptah!”

The universe exploded from the right-hand side. My
right ear roared. There were rockets, cascades of light, catherine-wheels; and I was fumbling round on stone. A bright light shone down on me from a single eye.

“You little devil!”

I tried mechanically to get my body on its feet but they slithered under me and I fell down again before the angry eye. Through the singing and roaring I heard only one natural noise.

Wubb. Wuff.

I was being hauled across the stone floor and the eye was dancing a beam of light over carved wood, books and glittering cloth. The verger held me all the way and as soon as he had me in the vestry he switched on a light. It was a fair cop. But I could manage neither the insolence nor the stoicism of Black Hand when unmasked by Sexton Blake and Tinker. The floor and the ceiling could not decide between them on up and down. The verger had me cornered literally in an angle and when he let me go I slid all the way down the wall and was a boneless heap. Life had suddenly rearranged itself. On one side of my head life was bigger and more portentous than on the other. The sky, with stars of infinite velocity and remote noise that patterned their travel had opened into me on the right. Infinity, darkness and space had invaded my island. What remained of normal inspected a light, a wooden box, white cloaks hanging up and a brass cross—looked through an arch, and saw that it was lighted now. This world of terror and lightning was only a church being prepared for an evening service. I did not look at the
verger
, cannot remember at that time what sort of face he had, saw only black trousers and shiny shoes—for at any moment I might have dropped off the floor and
broken my bones on the ceiling by the single electric light. A lady appeared in the arch, a grey lady carrying a sheaf of flowers and the verger talked a lot, calling her madam. They talked about me and by that time I was sitting on a low stool, inspecting the lady in one direction and the universe in the other through the hole that had been blown in the side of my head. The verger said I was another of them. What was he going to do? He had to have help, that was what it had come to and the church must be kept locked. The grey lady looked down at me across whole continents and oceans and told him that the rector must decide. So the verger opened another door and led me through into darkness on gravel. He was talking down to me, I deserved the birch and if he had his way I should get it—boys! They were young devils and getting worse every day, like the world and where it would end he didn’t know and no one else seemed to, either. The gravel felt as if it had been ploughed and my feet were unclever. I said nothing but tried to get along without tumbling over. Then I found the verger was holding my hand instead of my ear and soon after that he was bending sideways with his hand under my elbow and the other somewhere round my waist. He talked all the time. We came to another door and another grey lady who opened it but carried no flowers and the verger was still talking. We went up some stairs and crossed a landing to a big door. This was a bog because I could hear someone straining inside.