The Pyramid (7 page)

Mrs. Babbacombe came up the other side of the High Street, carrying a string bag full of packets and paper bags. She was wearing her usual grey suit, usual grey cloche. An enormous artificial pearl hung on her left ear. She came up wizened and smiling, with an unacknowledged greeting to this person and that. Then she saw me. She did not alter her brisk walk; but her head sank sideways, inclined, her false teeth dazzled. She held that bow, that smile, for a good five yards, till a man by a lamp post hid her.

Knowledge poured into me. Awe-stricken, I realized exactly how perilous my lust was. I knew something else, too. Neither Sergeant Babbacombe nor his wife could have my mother’s flashes of diabolical perception. This was Evie’s doing. She had used me as a lightning conductor. More accurately and unconsciously than I ever played any scale, I raced over in my mind the realities of people. Evie could never have Robert for keeps. She could not even catch him. If she tried, she would come up against a cliff of adamant. But since she liked his motor bike and had paid for her rides—yes, paid for them!—she needed excuses for lateness, for staying out, for—My cliff was as adamant as the Ewans’s; but not as high. No, not nearly as high. It was not as high, for example, as the cliff that separated Evie herself, from the louts who hung round the Town Hall, out of work. For Evie, I was a lightning conductor. To her parents I was a possible suitor. Bellicose Sergeant Babbacombe must have been twisted by those white fingers, persuaded by that tinkling voice that we were courting. I put my hair up out of my eyes and took a deep breath. Apart from my terror at her parents’
assumptions
, I was lost in conjectures as to how Evie had used me. Was it I, for example, who had kept her out after twelve—I who had pinched Bounce’s car, even? And what else? What other strings did Evie have to her trim little bow? I assumed without thinking, that she would lie when necessary, as I lied myself when necessary. In that case, driven by necessity, she might say anything. I saw as in a nightmare, Sergeant
Babbacombe
turn up on our door step, twisting his three-cornered hat in his hands, and demand of my father to know what my intentions were. I knew what my intentions were, and so did Evie; but they were too neatly describable for family life. I went home, round the other side of the Town Hall, and played the piano very softly.

That evening the news of Robert was mixed. The only thing that was certain was that he would be in hospital a long time. I went out early to the bridge, thinking to myself that if I were seen sitting there often enough, no one would notice or at any rate, comment, on my meetings with Evie. It was twilight again before she appeared, pacing down the street. She came up to me with no more than a ghost of her smile.

“Weren’t you hurt at all?”

Her smile became brighter, and a bit arch.

“What d’you mean Olly? What you talking about?”

“Last night.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I saw you, Evie. On the bike.”

She shuddered suddenly, drawing up her shoulders.

“What’s the matter?”

“Goose walked over my grave I ’xpect. Olly—”

“Well?”

She glanced sideways at the street.

“You won’t tell, will you?”

“Why should I?”

She smiled at me nicely and let out a long breath.

“Thanks.”

I laughed with fierce sarcasm.

“Oh yes! You were here with me on the bridge, weren’t you? We talked about music, didn’t we? We went down there by the water, fishing for tiddlers. Didn’t you show your mother a jam jar full of them?”

“I just said—”

“You said I took you over to Bumstead. You said I pinched Bounce’s car! I know you!” I glared down at her, trying hard to hurt. That, at least, was possible. “I wonder what else you’ve said. How many lies you’ve told. Getting me out of bed in the middle of the night—such a nice boy, Oliver, even if he hasn’t got a motor bike!”

“It isn’t like that, Olly—I
had
to! You just don’t
understand
—”

“I understand well enough. You’re like—” I stared round at the road, the river, the looming darkness of the woods at the top of the hill. I snatched a phrase out of the air without knowing why. I roared it. “You’re like—the Savoy Orpheans!”

Evie burst into giggles that confounded me and shut me up.

“You’re such a funny boy, Olly!”

Her giggles went on and got mixed up with laughter and choking. She leaned forward from the coping of the bridge, held me with both hands, her head bowed between them. I could feel how she was shaking.

“So funny! So funny!”

“Shut up, Evie! Good God!
Will
you shut up?”

At last she was silent. She pulled herself up and sat upright on the coping. She shook her head so that her bob flopped and flew aromatically. She took a scrap of white stuff from under the imitation amber bangle on her left wrist, touched her face here and there, then put the scrap back again. Despite myself, I was touched. I disguised this slight decline in manliness by being as gruff as I could.

“You were dam’ lucky. Why weren’t you hurt?”

“Doesn’t matter. Oh all right—I wasn’t on the bike.”

“How the—”

“I egged him on. I dared him. He said ‘This little machine would climb a tree with me at the controls.’ So I dared him. I wanted to try with him. There was this chalk pit—”

“Where was it?”

“I wanted to try too, honest I did. ‘Not with you on the back, young Babbacombe,’ he said. ‘Hop off.’ The bike fell right on ’im.”

There was a droning under the Great Wain. I looked up and saw the red light moving towards us. It was some regular flight, then, some exercise or other. Evie did not look up with me. She was looking at her feet. When she spoke it was in a strangely hoarse voice, and one from far down in Chandler’s Close.

“E may be a cripple.”

The plane droned away, sinking slowly out of sight behind the trees at the top of the hill. Evie cleared her throat.

“For life.”

Then we were silent, Evie looking down at the road between my feet, I digesting this news according to my nature. I felt properly shocked of course; on the other hand I felt a little of Stilbourne’s excitement and appetite at the news of someone else’s misfortune.

She drew herself up on the coping, and smiled at me.

“You didn’t play today, Olly.”

“Yes I did. Softly.”

I held up my forefinger, in explanation and invitation. But Evie glanced at it then away. In some extraordinary way she had inhibited her exhalation. It was like one of those scraps of film run backward; flames, seen to draw themselves in,
reconstitute
the paper they had burned, then vanish, leaving nothing but ordinariness. Even the sodium light in her right eye was a duller and perhaps steadier gleam. This inhibition affected me too; but optimistically enough I discounted it.

“Come on, Evie! Let’s go down there!”

She shook her head.

“Come on, young Babbacombe!”

The sodium light exploded.

“Don’t call me that!”

She stood up quickly.

“Robert does.”

“He can call me what he likes!”

“Temper!”

She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind. She squinted over her shoulder, beating any possible stone dust off her seat. I exploded like the sodium light.

“Why the hell did you come down to the bridge, then?”

She stopped beating her seat and looked at me, eyes and mouth open.

“Why? Where else is there to go?”

She wiped one hand on the other, smiled briefly and turned away towards the street.

“Evie—”

She did not answer, but went on walking. At the bottom of the Bridge where the street began she glinted back over her left shoulder, lifting her hand by it and wiggling the fingers. I stood, my walking stick across my thighs, and watched her. She was doing her walk again, our local phenomenon, nothing moving but legs below the knee, on the invisible line patrolled daily by Sergeant or Mrs.
Babbacombe
. She moved from light to light; and with my new craving, my new wickedness, I saw and understood how the moneyless shapes of men outside each pub watched her, their heads turning with a silent and hopeless avidity. She would be fifty yards past them, when the burst of jeering, libidinous laughter came. I knew that I should never be able to endure it myself, my feet swollen, face rigid; but Evie never faltered. I went home by way of side alleys to avoid running that gauntlet.

Next morning, shaving sullenly, I had an idea that stopped the razor on my cheek. There, in the Ewans’s stable was Robert’s bike. I looked out quickly and saw that nothing had been done about it at all. I finished shaving and hurried down to breakfast, telling myself I must be careful and diplomatic. Lead the conversation round, bit by bit.

I was so quick that both my father and mother were still eating. My mother broke off to fetch my breakfast from the pan. This was fortunate.

“Young Robert’s bike is still in the stable, I see.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. It is.”

My father glanced up under his eyebrows through his pebble glasses.

“Best place for it.”

I nodded, and kept the ball in play.

“It’s out of the rain, anyway.”

“Ha!”

My mother came back and put my plate down with the kind of firmness that always indicated further
communication
.

“Don’t think you’re going to have that bike, Oliver, either to borrow or buy!”

My mouth fell open. She sat down again.

“Besides,” said my father, “We couldn’t afford it.”

“I’ve got—”

“And you’ll need it,” said my mother, “every penny of it.”

“If Robert—”

“I
do
wish you’d clear your mouth before speaking, dear,” said my mother. She swallowed. “He will want it again
anyway
. If his father lets him ride it again, which I doubt. Ewan’s not a fool.”

“How can he want it again if he’s a cripple?”

“Cripple!” said my mother. “Who gave you that idea?”

“He was badly bruised,” said my father. “He’s broken some ribs too. But he’ll be all right.”

“I thought—I saw the bike—it was so badly damaged—”

“Just a few weeks,” said my father. “Young Ewan’s all right. Teach him a lesson, silly ass!”

“Every week you see something in the
Stilbourne
Adver
tiser
.
Killed, like as not. Oh! Which reminds me, Father—Imogen Grantley’s getting married in Barchester
Cathedral
!”

“That’ll be a big do,” said my father as he pushed away his plate. “When?”

“July the twenty-seventh. Only gives her a few weeks. But of course with money to spend—”

“Lot of nonsense,” said my father. “Dressing up.”

“After all, Father, her great-uncle
was
Dean. He married a Totterfield. Then—I wonder who she’ll have for bride’s maids?”

“Not me, at any rate,” said my father. He twinkled through his pebbles and stood up. “I’ve got work to do.”

“Oliver, dear, eat your other egg!”

“Put the bike out of your head, old son. When you’re as old as I am, you’ll understand.”

“Eat it up.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Don’t speak to your mother like that!”

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I—don’t want it!”

My father sat down and looked at me gravely.

“He’s up and down all the time,” said my mother looking at him. He looked back. She nodded meaningly. “I always wondered if it was a good idea.”

They began to weave a web across the table of care and attention.

“Routine,” said my father. “That’s what he needs again.”

“Oh I don’t know, you know. He’s always been up and down you know. I was the same.”

“A steady, calming routine. He ought to go back to school for the last three weeks or whatever it is.”

“I won’t. I’m not a schoolboy any more!”

“Show us your tongue, old son.”

“For God’s sake!”

“Don’t speak to your father like that!”

“I want to go away.”

“
Now
,
Oliver—!”

“I do. Anywhere.”

“Well,” said my mother kindly. “You’re going to Oxford, aren’t you? Only a few weeks’ time—”

“Storm in a teacup,” said my father gruffly. “Needs a good clear-out, that’s what the boy needs.”

“He was always up and down. Even as a baby.”

My father stood up again, and plodded towards the
dispensary
. His mutter was cut off by the door.

“I’ll just go and get him a—”

I stood up too, my legs trembling.

“Where are you going, dear?”

I slammed the dining room door brutally. I stood, still trembling, looking at our battered piano with the worn music stool before it. I swung my left fist with all my force into the shining walnut panel between the two brass candle-holders and it cracked from top to bottom.

“
Oliver
!”

I was wrestling with the chains and locks and bolts of the front door.

“Oliver—come back! I want to speak to you! All because we won’t buy you a—”

I slammed the front door too, and heard its immediate replication from the church tower. I got our iron gate open, and stood on the cobbles by the chain rails round the grass. I saw Mrs. Babbacombe carrying her inclined smile at me along in front of the railing before Miss Dawlish’s house.

I only came to myself a little when I was sitting on the coping stone of the Old Bridge. My throat was drier than it had ever been and my left hand looked like a boxing glove.

I began to wander aimlessly round the town. I saw, from far off, Evie leave the Ewans’s house after surgery and hurry back to Chandler’s Close; and sneered to myself. But then I saw her come back, past the vicarage, and vanish down an alley that led to Chandler’s Lane behind our garden. Still jeering and sneering at myself I went another way round, to see where she had got to, but Chandler’s Lane was empty. I began to search it, without hope; but searching was
something
to do.