Iris Murdoch - The Sandcastle

Rain murmured to Mor, ‘Terribly good! I wish I — ’

A loud whispering was going on at the back of the Gym. There was a scraping of chairs and one or two people seemed to be going out of the door at the further end. The boys in front were turning round to see what was happening. Evvy looked over his shoulder and said, ‘Silence, please!’ Bledyard was saying - ‘to draw some moral moral from these preliminary examples.’

‘What’s the excitement back there?’ said Mrs Prewett to Mor. Mor didn’t know. He turned in his chair, bringing his knee into contact with Rain’s thigh. A number of boys were standing up and exchanging whispers. Then several of them began making for the door. ‘ — being as Shakespeare Shakespeare put it, the lords and owners of our faces,’ said Bledyard. Mr Prewett got up and began to make his way down the side of the Gym towards the centre of disaffection at the back.

‘Where is that picture?’ Mor whispered to Rain.

‘National Gallery,’ she whispered back. ‘We’ll go — ’

Bledyard was standing full in the light of the screen pointing upward with his rod. He looked like an alchemist dealing with an apparition. The noise at the back was becoming considerable. More boys were now looking to the back of the Gym than to the front. A whisper of excitement went through the audience. ‘What’s up?’ said someone audibly in the front row.

Prewett had come back down the aisle and was leaning towards Evvy. He said in an agitated voice, ‘You’d better come out, sir. Two boys are climbing the tower.’

Mor’s blood turned to ice. The scene about him was annihilated. He sprang up from his seat and got out into the aisle, stumbling in front of Evvy, who was also rising. He made for the nearest door at the back of the Gym. But a stampede had already started. The boys in the back rows had got up and were pushing towards the door. Their excited voices grew louder and louder. Mor was caught in the midst. As he fought his way through he caught a last glimpse of the scene in the Gym. Bledyard was still standing in the light of the screen, his rod lifted, looking back now towards the audience - while throughout the Gym boys were standing up, pushing, climbing over the chairs, and the smaller boys in the front, who still did not know what it was all about, were asking to be told in tones which rose, with excitement and panic, higher and higher. Evvy was stuck somewhere in the middle of this. His face was visible for a moment in the light reflected from the screen, open-mouthed and stricken with alarm. As he struggled through and finally passed out of the Gym, Mor turned all the lights on.

He ran into the centre of the playground. It was now completely dark outside. A large crowd of boys had already collected, and others were joining them, streaming out of the two doors of the Gymnasium. Mor looked up. After the brightness of the screen he could see nothing at first, not even the tower itself. A dark haze fell in front of his eyes. He tried to look through it. He did not need to be told the identity of the two boys on the tower.

‘There they are, sir,’ said someone at his elbow. It was Rigden. He was pointing upward. Mor tried to see. He could still discern nothing. He felt as if he had become blind. A terrible blockage in his throat nearly stopped him from breathing. Then gradually he began to make out the shape of the tower, rising up sheer into the night sky above him. He stepped back a little.

There was no moon, and the tower emerged blackly against a black sky. It was in two segments: a lower square part which rose out of the roof of Main School, and was used as a book store - there were two small windows in this segment - and above this an extremely tall spire, ornamented with a great deal of grotesque tracery, and ending in a bronze pinnacle. Between the square part of the tower and the Gothic spire there was a jutting parapet, which reached out for a distance of two or three feet, overhanging the lower segment. On the upper side the spire reached almost to the edges of the parapet, which was wide below and narrow above, so that the whole tower had a top-heavy spear-like appearance.

‘There, sir, at the parapet,’ said Rigden, still beside him. Then Mor, craning his neck backwards, saw two dark shapes clinging to the tower. One seemed to be on the parapet, the other just below it, adhering somehow to the side of the wall. They didn’t appear to be moving. A claw of fear contracted slowly about Mor’s heart. He could see better now.

Someone said, ‘They must be stuck.’ A great crowd had by now collected in the centre of the playground, almost the whole School must be there. Glancing back, Mor saw row after row of heads outlined against the light which streamed from the doors of the Gym. Everyone was talking and pointing. The noise rose in a cloud through the warm night air. Mor thought, this will scare them out of their wits and they’ll lose their nerve. He turned, half resolved to clear the boys from the playground. But it was impossible. To do so would create even more noise and chaos than there was already. He looked up again. The pair on the tower were still motionless. It looked as if they were able to get neither up nor down.

Prewett came up to him, pushing through the throng. It was too dark to see his face. He said to Mor, ‘Bill, I’m afraid it’s your son and young Carde.’

‘I know,’ said Mor. He was still looking up. What could be done? He realized that he was shaking all over with violent tremors. ‘Has anyone sent for the fire-brigade?’ he asked Prewett. A long ladder. Why hadn’t he thought of that instantly?

‘Everard is telephoning,’ said Prewett.

‘Oh God,’ said Mor. ‘Oh God! They’re obviously paralysed and can’t move.’

Prewett put a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s the ladder that’s kept behind the pavilion — ’

‘It’s too short,’ said Mor.

‘Shall I go and get it, sir?’ said Rigden, who was standing in a group of boys just behind them.

‘Yes, go,’ said Mor, ‘but it’s too short’ Several boys ran away to accompany Rigden.

Mor bit his hand. Was there nothing he could do? He feared that at any moment Donald or Carde would lose his nerve completely. Still, neither of them appeared to be moving. The agony of the fear nearly broke his body in two.

A steady murmur of excitement was rising from the watching crowd. ‘Turn on the flood-lights!’ cried a voice from the back.

‘No!’ cried Mor, turning towards the speaker. ‘You’ll startle them!’

It was too late. A stampede had started in the direction of the boiler-room, where the master switches were. A moment later the façade of Main School sprang violently out of the darkness, mercilessly illuminated by the powerful flood-lights. Carefully adjusted beams lit up the tower from top to bottom, picking out every detail. A gasp arose from the crowd and everyone covered his eyes, dazzled. Mor gave a moan of fear and tried to look upward. His eyes closed against the violent light. When he opened them he saw, very clearly revealed, the figures of the two boys clinging to the tower. Donald was above, lying full length upon the extremely narrow top of the parapet. Carde was below the overhang. He was clinging like a fly to the edge of the tower. He had one arm over the parapet, and the other curiously flattened against the wall. Then Mor saw that he was holding on to the wire of the lightning conductor which ran down from the top of the tower. His feet were turned sideways, finding a precarious foothold on a tiny decorative ledge, an inch or two wide, which girdled the tower a few feet below the parapet. A rope, which the boys had somehow managed to fix to the base of the spire, dangled some distance away, out of Carde’s reach; and even if he could otherwise have hoisted himself out, past the overhang and on to the parapet, helped perhaps by the lightning conductor which went snaking on upwards above his head, it was impossible for him to do so since Donald was in the way.