“Well. Thank you for your help.”
I whispered back.
“Not at all. Don’t mention it.”
We parted, and set ourselves to our individual problems of noiseless entry. The church clock struck three.
*
The sun woke me, as it crawled on to my face; and instantly I remembered everything—the car, Robert, the three plums, one of them lifted, a whiff of scent. I knew, with youth’s intuitive optimism, that something was not ended. Something had begun.
And there was more. The window of our bathroom not only looked out over our garden, but the Ewans’s garden too. It was possible, even probable, that I should see Robert keeping fit there, and be able to crow over him. Grinning, I hurried to the bathroom. Sure enough, as soon as I looked out of the window, I saw him trot down the path, in shorts and singlet, beating the air fiercely with the padded gloves. He went trotting to the punchball rigged in the stables and struck it smartly.
“Haa!”
He danced away from it, then round it, then in again.
“Haa!”
The punchball made no reply, only quivered a bit each time he hit it. He danced away, dared it to come after him, then trotted off down the path with the handsome movements of the trained athlete, knees up, gloves up, chin down. As he turned to come back I saw that his shins were heavily armoured with white sticking plaster. He went back to the punchball. I opened the bathroom window, lathering myself vigorously, and began to laugh. Robert faltered, then attacked the punchball with fierce in-fighting.
“Any more for the Skylark?”
This time Robert did not falter. He ducked and wove. As I scraped away with my new razor, I sang raucously.
“We joined the nay-vee to see the world—”
Robert stopped boxing. I stared cheerfully at the brow of the hill to the north of Stilbourne, the rabbit warren spilt down the slope, the clump of trees at the top, and continued to sing.
“—we saw the pond!”
Below the immediate line of my vision, I could see that Robert was giving me a Look. It was the sort of Look that kept the Empire together, or quelled it at least. Armed with that Look and perhaps a riding crop, white men could keep order easily among the clubs and spears. He walked with great dignity into the house, duke’s profile high, attention straight ahead. I laughed loud and long and savagely.
My mother expostulated fondly at breakfast.
“Oliver dear, I know you’ve passed all your examinations and you’re going to Oxford, and heaven knows I’m glad for you to be happy—but you were making a dreadful noise in the bathroom! Whatever will the neighbours think?”
I answered her indistinctly.
“Young Ewan. Laughing at him.”
“Not with your mouth full, dear!”
“Sorry.”
“Bobby Ewan. It’s such a pity that you—Still he’s been away at school most of the time.” This telegraphic style was entirely comprehensible to me. It meant that my mother was regretting the social difference between the Ewans and ourselves. She was thinking too of the incompatibility that had magnified the difference and exacerbated it. As small children, socially innocent, so to speak, we had played together; and I knew things about that play which had reached neither Mrs. Ewan nor my mother. We had hardly been out of our respective prams.
“You’re my slave.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are. My father’s a doctor and yours is only his dispenser.”
That was why I pushed him off the wall into the Ewans’s cucumber frame, where he made a very satisfactory crash. Not surprisingly we drifted apart after that, and what with school and motor bikes and careful parents, the most we ever did was to snipe at each other with our air guns, aiming always to miss. Now I had kissed Evie Babbacombe—well, more or less—and had seen Robert make a fool of himself.
“Oliver, dear—I do wish you wouldn’t whistle with your mouth full!”
After breakfast I went as casually as I could to the dispensary, where my father was making pills, in the old-fashioned way. I stood in the doorway that led from our cottage into the dispensary thinking consciously for the first time how much more like a doctor he looked than staid Dr. Ewan, or the junior partner, reedy Dr. Jones. Such a visit was not usual, and my father looked round ponderously under his heavy brows but said nothing. I leaned against the wall by the door and wondered what excuse I could find for going through into the reception room where Evie would be working. Perhaps, I thought, my father would agree that I needed a thorough overhaul; and indeed, my heart seemed to be acting up in an unusual manner. But before I had got round to saying anything, Evie—who must have been equipped with antennae like my mother—appeared at the end of the passage. She was wearing her blue and white cotton dress, and respectable stockings under her white socks; for of course she could not sit at the desk in the reception room with bare legs. She had one finger on her lips and was shaking her head severely. Her face was different. The orbital area of her left eye was swollen so that on the left side her paint brushes were motionless, their tips projecting in a rigid line. The right side made up for this inactivity; but I had little time to inspect her in detail since she so clearly had a message for me. The finger on the lips, the shaken head—that, I could understand. Don’t say anything to anybody about anything! Sensible enough and not really necessary; but those weaving motions with both hands at her throat as if she were trying to avoid strangulation, that hand then so fiercely stabbing with the fore-finger in the general direction of the Square—and now the head, nodding this time, the bob flying—.
Evie stopped moving. Listened. Disappeared into the reception room, the door closing without a sound. My father was still making pills. Casually, I lounged back into the cottage and sat myself at the piano. I played, thinking. It was always a useful cover. What did she want with the Square? And who was going to strangle her? Sergeant Babbacombe was the obvious candidate but was hardly likely to do it in the doctor’s reception room. Perhaps she wanted me to go out into the Square so that she could pass me a message—say, in the High Street? It would be hours before she could get away from her desk. But she could make some excuse or other. What was more and more delightfully evident was that Evie Babbacombe wanted to meet me. Not Robert. Me!
I strolled into the Square, and stood, hands in pockets, inspecting the sky. It was bright blue, in a cooperative sort of way. I waited, hoping she would appear and that I could follow her to whatever private place was suitable for such a meeting, but the minutes lengthened, then dragged, and still she did not come. What came at last, was Sergeant Babbacombe. He marched out from under the pillars of the Town Hall and stood at attention, facing the length of the Square to the church. He was carrying his brass handbell and wearing his Town Crier’s dress—buckled shoes, white cotton stockings, red knee breeches, red waistcoat, cotton ruffle, blue frock coat, and blue, three-cornered hat. He rang the handbell, staring belligerently over his chest at the church tower. Then he bawled.
“Ho yay, ho yay, ho yay! Lost. In Chandler’s Lane, between the chaplofese and Chandler’s Close. Hay gold cross hand chain. With the hinitials hee bee. Hand the hinscription ‘Hamor vinshit Homniar.’ Ther finder will be rewarded.”
He rang the bell again, lifted his three-cornered hat towards the sky and uttered the loyal shout.
“God hsave-ther KING!”
He put his hat on, turned right, and marched off with steps of regulation thirty inches towards the corner of Mill Lane to do it all over again. Hee bee! Evie Babbacome! I saw it all. The cross was to be found and returned to her in strictest secrecy. Not a word about woods or ponds. Probably not a word about a hop at Bumstead. I knew exactly what I was to do.
With that capacity for long and deep calculation which has since proved so beneficial to my country I set myself to evaluate the situation. Evie wanted her gold cross. I wanted Evie. A return to that place where she had proved so accessible to Robert might solve the problem for us both.
Panic-stricken and furtive, she would steal off to look herself, given the chance; and my most delicate calculation was involved with getting us both there at the same time. I knew the working arrangements of the Ewans’s practice as well as I knew anything. I knew the times that Evie could pretend she had stayed behind to clear up, or sort the files. She might even invent an emergency as cover for her own. Because if some stroller in the woods saw the cross glittering among the twigs and empty acorn cups and turned it in to Sergeant Babbacombe, Evie was due for the shiner to outshine all shiners. She might even qualify, if rumour was not entirely a lying jade, for the sergeant’s army belt with its buckle and rows of shining brass studs. When I thought of the rumoured belt and the chance I had of preserving her from it, I felt a twinge of noble sympathy amid my tenseness and excitement.
I went through the cottage and got my bike. I rode down the High Street and very carefully over the Old Bridge, since Sergeant Babbacombe was reciting his piece again on the crest of it. I pushed my bike up the hill, then freewheeled down to the pond.
Everything was different, and the same. The water was still. The woods were still, yet they hummed and buzzed under the sun. There was green dapple, flash of a dragonfly over the water, whirl and dance of flies. I pushed my bike up the rise from the pond and leaned it against the gigantic oak bole. I looked round, then carefully followed the shallow tracks down to the pond. I found no gold cross, but only a muddy shoe. I threw the shoe towards some clear grass in front of a flowering bush and stood, staring down at the brown water. There was nothing for it. This would have to be a proper scientific search, like quartering the desert for a crashed plane. The cross might be—probably was—in the pond. But the sensible thing to do was to look in the easy places first.
I went back to the oak and inspected every inch of ground near the tracks. When I had cleared an area, I laid broken twigs at each corner; and presently I had a pattern of them all the way from the oak to the edge of the pond. But I could not find the cross. There was nothing for it. I took off my socks and shoes and stepped into the water. Every time I moved I stirred up mud and had to wait for it to settle again; and even then, I could not pretend that I could see the bottom at all clearly. In the end, I was reduced to groping blindly with my fingers. Every now and then, I stuck twigs upright so that their ends showed. All I found, was a pair of twisted-up trousers, deeply embedded.
I paddled back and sat moodily under the oak tree, waiting for my feet to dry. I went over my calculations again, but this time I was interrupted. A sound as of a rocket, climbed the hill from Stilbourne and roared down the road through the woods. When the motor bike reached the pond, I heard it slow, then come revving and backfiring across the grass to the other side of the oak tree. It coughed to a stop.
“Hop off, m’dear!”
Evie, like a good soldier’s daughter, had mobilized all her forces.
“Well, well,” said Robert. “Well, well, well! Whom have we here? But whom have we here?”
Evie came running round the tree after him.
“Have you found it, Olly?”
“No. Sorry.”
Evie clasped her hands. Wrung them.
“Oh dear, oh dear!”
She didn’t seem to be wearing anything but the cotton frock, unless you count the socks and sandals. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to risk her stockings on the back of the motor bike. Perhaps she just didn’t like wearing them. When I tore my eyes away from the rest of her, I saw that now the swelling round her left eye had spread down into the cheek. Her other bright, grey eye was very wide open among the motionless paintbrushes—wide open and anxious.
“How’s your face feeling, Evie?”
“It’s all right now. Doesn’t hurt a bit. I hit it on the door you know. It hurt dreadfully then. Oh look—we must find that cross! Suppose somebody’s found it already! Dad’ll ’alf-well—”
Robert laid a hand on her shoulder. He spoke kindly but firmly.
“Now don’t get in a tizzy, young Babbacombe. It’s just a question of looking.”
“I’ve looked.”
“We’ll look again.”
“What d’you think all those twigs are? I conducted a scientific search. The only thing left is to drain the pond. By the way, your trousers are hanging on that bush to dry.”
“Thanks,” said Robert stiffly. He looked towards the bush. “My God, young Olly! You might have got some of the mud off!”
“Well damn me!”
“Olly! Bobby! Boys!”
“I’d have found it for you if I could.”
“Somebody’s probably pinched it”, said Robert. “Ha! The scientific search—inch by inch and still couldn’t find it. Well, we’ve only got your word for that, young Oliver!”
“Just exactly what do you mean to imply?”
“Scientific stuff,” said Robert, still laughing down his profile. “Great brain and all that stuff—”
A brilliant insult occurred to me.
“I turned his pockets out, Evie, but it wasn’t there. He probably put it in his breast pocket. Ask him, will you?”
“Olly! Bobby! I got to be back at surg’ry in half an hour!”
Robert had stopped laughing. He had gone very still, very calm. He patted her shoulder.
“Now don’t you worry, m’dear.”
I laughed jeeringly.
“Did you feel a sharp tug at your neck last night?”
“No. ’Course not. What a thing!”
One side of her face giggled, then was solemn again. Robert paced slowly to the bush and hung his jacket by the trousers. He took off the silk square from under his open shirt and stuffed it in the jacket. He came back just as slowly.
“If you’d care to stroll round the other side of the tree, young Babbacombe—”
“Why? What you going to do?”
“I’m going to give this young oaf the lesson he obviously needs.”
He turned to me, a good fifteen inches higher up in the air, and jerked his head sideways.
“Come on you. This way.”
He stalked off round the bush. I glanced at Evie questioningly. She was staring after him, hands clasped up by her neck, lips wide apart. I picked my way after him with my naked feet among the twigs and acorn cups. On the other side of the bush was a glade, an open length of perfect turf between walls of high green bracken. Robert was waiting for me, and pulled aside a thorny sucker with awesome courtesy so that I could step through. Then he faced me from a few yards away, his jaw set, limbs loose. He reminded me vaguely of something—an illustration in a book perhaps. He addressed me as if he too were remembering a book.
“Which way would you care to face?”
We fought of course at my Grammar School after our fashion. We couldn’t afford boxing gloves and punch balls and that sort of thing. Besides, I was Head Boy, and a dedicated chemist. I had put such childish pastimes behind me.
“I don’t box.”
“This will teach you. Are you going to apologize?”
“I’ll see you in hell first.”
Robert turned his left shoulder towards me, put up his fists, lowered his chin into them and came dancing in. I put my own fists up, left fist forward, though I was what Robert would have called in his knowledgeable way a “South paw”. My left hand octave-technique always had an effortless brilliance which was very impressive until you detected the fumbling inadequacy of my right hand. But Robert was not a piano. I saw his left arm shoot out its bony length, and half the woods exploded into an electric white star. I made a dab at him in return; but he was already three yards away, flicking his sandy head, his feet dancing, as he prepared to come in again. I made another dab through the red circles that were now expanding and contracting in front of my right eye, but Robert was somewhere else. His right arm came round and my left ear—indeed, all the woods—rang with a mellow and continuous note. Apart from my hands, I have always been a bit clumsy, a bit ungainly; and now, with Robert dancing so unattainably beyond my n
orth paw or whatever the technical term was, I began to move from irritation, through anger, to rage. The blows themselves—and my right eye produced another electric star—were no more than an irritant, flick, flick, tap! It was his invulnerability that was making me pant and sweat. I abandoned all attempt to imitate him; so feeling him near me beyond the red rings, I hit him with my octave technique, fortissimo, sforzando, in the pit of the stomach. It was lovely. His breath and his spit came out in my face. He hung himself over me, his long arms beating feebly at my sides as he reached for his breath without finding it. One shoe scraped excruciatingly down my naked instep. I howled and jerked it up, and my knee fitted itself neatly between his legs. Robert bent double with extraordinary swiftness, his mouth open, both fists clamped in his crutch. I swung my left fist in three-quarters of a circle so that it was still whistling upward when it smashed his nose. He went over backwards into the bracken by the side of the glade and disappeared.
The red rings were dwindling, the mellow note diminishing. I stood, bare-footed in the glade, the sweat streaming down me. My teeth were clenched so tightly that they hurt. The only noises I could hear outside the storm in my head were faint ones from Robert, hidden somewhere in the bracken. They were variations on the theme of “Ooo”. The first I heard was very delicate, prolonged, and ended with an upward inflection, as if he were posing some intimate question to himself. The next was just as long, and very tender, as if he had found the answer. The third was utter abandonment. My own chest was going in and out, and I had a sudden urge to run and put my shoes on, then come back and jump up and down on him.
“Olly! Bobby! Where are you?”
It was Evie, threshing about somewhere in the bracken. Still with my fists and teeth clenched I shouted as loudly as I could.
“Here! Where d’you think?”
She appeared for a moment.
“Where is he? What have you done to him? Bobby!”
The Pyramid Page 2