The Pyramid (3 page)

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 north 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!”

She disappeared again. Robert’s head and shoulders rose out of the bracken. One hand held a scarlet and sopping handkerchief to his face. The other was out of sight—probably still between his legs. Even then, he essayed a sort of
nonchalant
courtesy through the bloody linen.

“Frifling infury. Hofpital. Outfashients. ’Fscuse—”

He waded away. Evie was still hidden.

“Bobb—
ee
—Where are you?”

She broke out into the glade, came tripping along it, socks and sandals flicking this way and that. On the other side of the bracken the motor bike started and rattled away in a decrescendo. Evie stopped.

“There! How am I going to get home? It’s all your fault! And he’s going off to Cranwell tomorrow! It was the last—”

“Last what?”

She turned back to me. Her one eye was very bright, and she was breathing as quickly as I was. She gave a scandalized laugh.

“Boys are awful!”

“Spoilt his beauty for him at any rate.”

“Your shirt’s wringing wet—look. It’s sticking to you.”

“Cadet Officer Ewan, the Noseless Wonder. That’s what he’ll be.”

I caught another whiff of her, through the rank smell of my own sweat. I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close. My teeth had unclenched themselves but my heart had started to pound all over again.

“Evie—”

The woods swam.

“I’ll—I’ll drain the pond for you.”

Her paintbrushes shivered. Inside them, one eyeball rolled up. Her lips curled farther open as I bent towards them.

“Listen! There!”

I tried to draw her close; but she was stronger than Robert and shoved me away. She moved in a panic. From the valley, I could hear the church clock striking.

“Third time I been late this week!”

She plunged into the bracken and I plunged after her but my naked feet found a mass of thistles so that I danced and howled.

“Wait for me, Evie!”

“It’s surg’ry already!”

I pulled the more obvious of the prickles out, then crawled through, back the way Robert and I had come. His trousers and jacket still hung on the bush, and there was a shoe under it. I rolled down my own trouser legs and got my own shoes and socks on as quickly as I could. Evie was fifty yards up the road by the time I was ready to go after her. She would walk, then run for a bit with her bob flopping, then walk again. The most I thought I could salvage out of this encounter was an arrangement for another meeting, so I rode fast and skidded to a spectacular stop ahead of her.

“There’s a good idea! Don’t look round—”

She was hitching her skirt up nearly to her waist. She was wearing short white knickers under them with white
embroidery
round the edges. She sat astride the carrier of my bike and the carrier groaned.

“You
are
a pet! Hurry!”

By putting my full weight on one pedal, I could just about get the bike moving. We wobbled off up the road.

“I shall be ever so late.”

I exerted what strength I had left and started to sweat again. We worked up a fair speed.

“Oliver—I believe he left his jacket behind, as well as—I don’t know what Mrs. Ewan’s going to say! After we’ve got back, you wouldn’t like to—”

“To what?”

“Somebody ought to fetch them for him.”

I gave a kind of snarl, put up one hand to wipe the hair and sweat out of my eyes and nearly fell off.

“Careful!”

There was a sudden flood of light, so though my eyes watched the road under my front wheel I knew we were out of the woods and at the top of the hill. I sat back, allowing gravity to do the rest. The church clock stood at a quarter past the hour.

“Aren’t you going a bit fast?”

I put both brakes on. They dragged for a moment, then our speed increased again. I gripped them hard but they had no effect. I heard a shriek from behind me and then the rise of the Old Bridge approached us at about sixty miles an hour. As we struck it there came a grinding clatter from the carrier, a loud bang from my rear tire and a wail from Evie. The bike seemed to stop in its own length; and her weight nearly sent me over the handlebars. She detached herself from the carrier and stood for a moment, beating her bottom with both hands.