Free Fall by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page A

and coloured and enlivened by the pipes of hot water that discharged there continually. Sometimes barges lay up under the greasy wall and once we even got aboard one and hid under the tarpaulin. But we were chased out of there, too, and that was the first time we ever climbed the streets to the other hill. We ran all the way because the bargee was a giant and disliked children. We were excited by the exploit and trapped into another one by our exhilaration. We reached the wall of the general’s garden in the late evening. As soon as we got our breath back Johnny danced on the pavement. No one could catch us. We were too quick for them. Not even the general could catch us.
    “You wouldn’t go in!”
    Johnny would.
    Now this was not so daring a vaunt as it appeared. Nobody could get into the general’s garden because there was a very high wall all round; and this combined with his reputation for shooting lions had started the rumour that wild animals roamed those secluded acres—a rumour which we believed, in order to make life a little more exciting.
    Johnny would. What was more—secure in the knowledge of the unclimbable wall—he would look for a way in. So off we padded along the road, excited by our daring, to look for a hole which was not there. We went along by the gate house to the corner, passed down the southeast side and round to the back. Everywhere the brick wall was impenetrable and the trees looked over. But then we stopped, without saying anything. There was reallynothing to say. Thirty yards of the wall was down, fallen inward among the trees, the gap darkling and shaped like a lower lip. Someone knew about the gap. There was a gesture of chicken wire along the lower edge, but nothing that could keep determined climbers out.
    Now it was my turn to be excited.
    “You said you would, Johnny——”
    “And you’re coming, too.”
    “I didn’t say I would!”
    We could hardly see each other under the trees. I followed him and near the wall, shrubs and creepers grew thick and apparently unvisited.
    I smelt lion. I said so to Johnny so that we held our breath and listened to our hearts beating until we heard something else. The something was far worse than a lion. When we looked back we could see him in the gap, his dome-shaped helmet, the top half of his dark uniform as he bent to examine the disarranged netting. Without a word spoken we made our choice. Noiselessly as rabbits in a hedge we stole forward away from the policeman and towards the lions.
    That was a jungle and the land inside the walls was a whole country. We came to a part where there were furrows and small glass boxes in rows on the ground and there we saw another man, working in the door of a shed; so we nipped away again into shrubs.
    A dog barked.
    We peered at each other in the dull light. This was far more than an adventure.
    Johnny muttered:
    “How we going to get out, Sam?”
    In a moment or two we were recriminating and cryingtogether. Coppers, men, dogs—we were surrounded.
    There was a wide lawn in front of us with the back of the house running along the other side. Some of the windows were lighted. There was a terrace below the windows because as we watched we saw a dark figure pace along by them in ritual solemnity, and carrying a tray. Somehow this dignity was even more terrifying than the thought of lions.
    “How we going to get out? I want to go home!”
    “Keep quiet, Sam, and follow me.”
    We crept away round the edge of the lawn. The tall windows let long swathes of light lie across the grass and each time we came to one of these we had to duck into the bushes again. Our nerve began to come back. Neither the lions nor the policeman had spotted us. We found a dark corner by a white statue and lay still.
    Slowly the noises of people died down and our tremors died away with them so that the lions were forgotten. The high parapet of the house began to shine, a full moon lugged herself over the top and immediately the