The Pyramid by William Golding Read Free Book Online Page A

shoulder.
    “Aren’t you going home?”
    “Who? Me? I was going for a walk in any case.”
    Evie smiled her sideways smile.
    “So long, then.”
    I walked smartly back to the bridge, over the top, then crouched and peeped back round a convenient angle. I saw her dress and socks ascend the street and disappear between the Town Hall and Miss Dawlish’s bow window. I walked home by way of side alleys and entered the Square from the north west; but our cottage was dark and my parents in bed. I thought I would play the piano a bit before I went to bed so I practised the study; and now it seemed to contain not only Imogen, but Evie, a passionate frustration on every level.
    My mother put her head round the door and smiled at me lovingly.
    “Oliver, dear. It is rather late—”
    *
    The next day my right forefinger was very tender as if the end of the bone had been bruised. Regretfully therefore, I gave up the piano for the day and went for a walk instead. It was a long walk with a sandwich lunch and ended in the evening. There was very little time left before my pursuit of Evie and I spent it making myself as attractive as I could with the little basic material at my disposal. I could do nothing about Robert’s profile and extra three inches and motor bike. But I could remove any trace of what was called ‘Five o’clock shadow’, and compete with Evie’s perfume by means of hairoil. I did not deceive myself into believing that I was good looking, but I had heard that girls were relatively indifferent to that. I hoped they were; for as I inspected my face in the mirror, I came to the regretful conclusion that it was not the sort of face I should fall in love with myself. There was nothing fragile about it. I tried smiling winningly at myself, but the result made me grimace with disgust.
    “How much milk today Madam? Thank you Madam, yes Madam, no Madam, thank you Madam, good day Madam—”
    I stuck my tongue out at myself.
    “Meeeeeh—”
    There was no doubt about it. I should simply have to be subtle, devious, diplomatic—in a word, clever. Otherwise the only way I was going to have a girl was by using a club. Evie was girl, much girl. I remembered the violence with which she had shoved me down the bank, remembered the ease with which she had put away my tentative pawings—the gentle, pleading way she had put my hands aside. I doubted to myself whether I should really get very far with a club either. Yet the evidence of the trousers sunk without trace was indisputable.
    Evie was accessible.
    “Meeeeeh—!”
    She passed along the south side of the Square without looking across at our house this time and experience had taught me to wait for a while. She was already sitting on the coping stone of the bridge therefore when I came up with her. I was doubtful about any course of action, had evolved no brilliant stratagem. I had thought of professing an interest in bird watching in the hope that she would agree to come with me and stalk the lesser redshanked strike or whatever it was. But in fact I could not tell a barn owl from a skylark and knew myself to be entirely ignorant of the patter. As for looking for wild flowers or searching out the lines of ancient fortifications, or digging for rare minerals—No. I could think of nothing. And anyway, all Evie had to do was to hang up her parent’s prohibitions like a sort of notice, and I was confined to the bridge, or the impossible route between it and Chandler’s Close. In the event, what I did was to make a little dancing step in front of her and stand, my walking stick held across my waist.
    “Hullo Evie!”
    Evie put her head on one side and smiled up at me.
    “Took you a long time.”
    “I was busy.”
    “You!”
    I resented the implication.
    “I’m recovering. I worked very hard, you know.”
    “Isn’t the piano work?”
    “Course not.”
    She said nothing, but continued to smile. I wondered vaguely what the piano was; but while I wondered, Evie began to