Free The Pyramid by William Golding

much as I can!”
    “ You can’t help him! What d’you think you are? A nurse?”
    Evie said nothing but smiled a secret smile. She dropped the cross down inside her dress. I watched it disappear, with a sudden feeling of absolute determination and certainty.
    “You don’t need to help him, anyway. He’s all right. Only bruised and a few ribs broken.”
    Evie stopped, turned and faced me. I stopped too.
    “What d’you mean, Olly? You mean he’s better?”
    Bitterly, I felt the unfairness of it all—Robert getting a reputation for daring and all this sympathy and paying nothing for it. Evie was looking at me, through me, with a face of heavenly delight.
    I spoke out of my certainty.
    “Help me ,then.”
    I glanced at the bushy track that led winding up the face of the escarpment. I turned back to her, and nodded solemnly.
    “Yes. He’s all right. I’m not.”
    “And he won’t be—”
    “I’m not.”
    Evie moved to go home. I caught her wrist as Sergeant Babbacombe had caught it and bore down on it, so that she stopped, staggered, then stood looking up at me.
    “I’m not. You think you can do what you like, don’t you?” I walked to the beginning of the track, towing her.
    “Olly! What you doing?”
    I went on towing. The bushes and scrubby trees closed round us. I towed her up the steep path, not looking round.
    “Little Olly isn’t a sucker any more. Little Olly is in charge from now on. And if Bobby gets better and starts anything, little Olly will break his neck.”
    “Let me go, Olly!”
    “And little Evie’s neck.”
    She laughed her scandalized laugh and pawed at my swollen knuckles with her free hand. I shook it irritably. The path got narrower and the trees closed in over it. Evie’s hand relaxed and hung limp from mine. She no longer pulled back, but followed obediently. I laughed aloud.
    “That’s better!”
    “Listen, Olly. I got to explain.”
    I answered her elaborately.
    “No explanation is necessary, my dear young lady!”
    “What I’m trying to say is, everything’s different—see—if you could only—”
    “Here we are.”
    I looked round me at the clump of trees, hardly hearing Evie’s voice as she went on talking. The edge of the escarpment concealed us from the town; and beneath the trees was a tangle of undergrowth, sown thick with flowers. I drew Evie round from behind me, and we were facing each other.
    “You haven’t been listening!”
    I put my arms round her and squeezed with that strange feeling of certainty. Her eyes closed, her head went back. I lowered my own and kissed her. She resisted me for a moment but for a moment only. Then she pulled her mouth away with a shocked giggle and tried to escape. To my surprise, that strength for carrying coal and chopping wood now seemed wholly inadequate.
    “Let me go, Olly! I got to help Mum!”
    I squeezed again, bore her back against a tree. She was solid and female and I did not know how to go on. Then, with primitive inspiration I took out the rigid and burning root of the matter and laid her unresisting hands on it. Evie’s eyes opened and she looked down. Her mouth went lopsided and instead of a smile there appeared a sneering grin, that was at once knowing and avid and contemptuous. Her voice was a hoarse and breathy mutter. Her chest started to go in and out.
    “Should I have all that?”
    Yes, I assured her, breathy and hoarse as she, so that the wood swung with it and jumped with heart-thump, yes, she should, she should. Her legs began to give, she was sliding down me. And through all the turmoil I heard her breathe at me.
    “Get on with it, then.”
    *
    The clump settled back into place as my heart settled. I was lying flat, eyes half-open, and the leafy tops of the trees were out of focus. Each heart-thump shattered them like an image in suddenly disturbed water. I was aware of nothing but peace; peace in my blood and nerves, my bones, peace in my head and my deep breath and in my slowing heart. It was