Free The Pyramid by William Golding Page A

a good peace, that spread. Those were good leaves up there, with a good, bright sky beyond them. This was a good earth beneath my back, soft as a bed and all its unexamined depths was a good darkness. I let my head fall sideways and saw a white sock and brown sandal. The other was a yard away. I turned over and got on one elbow, and examined her feet and legs inch by inch in a deep, calm peace. My eye searched them, parted and slack, white, soft, gentle with wandering veins of faintest blue. It searched further, calmly past her thighs to her almost hairless body, where the evidence of my perilous onanism was scattered round her pink petals. It moved along, taking in the white arms on either side, hands open, to the shiver of pulse over her heart; inspected where she breathed, more quickly than I, so that the two smooth segments of spheres with their pink tips, bounced and quivered minutely, for all their firmness.
    Triumph and delight began to burgeon and spread in me. I looked, smiling at the cotton dress, rucked, jammed up in a bundle from armpit to armpit. I lifted my chin and stared, laughing into her face. Her head was propped up a bit, eyes dark and deep and slitted between the shivering paintbrushes . Her lips were everted still more, her mouth breathing quickly as if it were the only way she could rid herself of her body’s heat. I sat upright and she gave a quick glance at me from far back in her head, then looked away again.
    She muttered.
    “That’s all I s’pose.”
    Her dark hair lay strewn among the smashed and scattered bluebells. I bent quickly, and kissed the nearer pink tip and she shivered from head to foot. I kissed the other, laughing, then sat back and put the hair out of my eyes. As I did it I felt some discomfort, so lifted my left hand again and examined it. The knuckles were a mess, the whole thing puffed and ungainly. When I tried to flex my fingers, the pain stabbed up my arm.
    “My God. I wonder why it’s begun to ache like this? It wasn’t aching before!”
    Evie lifted her head and examined herself.
    “Got what you want now, haven’t you?”
    “Here. Have my handkerchief.”
    “Ta.”
    Possessively I reached to her breast, but she smacked my hand away.
    “Leave me alone!”
    She jumped up, and pulled at her dress so that it stretched down like a concertina.
    “Look at all these creases—how am I—Oh!”
    She stamped in the brown leaves, snatched her head square and her knickers from where I had thrown them.
    “You’ve got some leaves in your hair. And a twig.”
    “ Look at these creases!”
    They certainly told the story explicitly enough. I had a passing thought that Evie must surely have met this particular difficulty before, at least with Robert. I tried to help her, passing my hand heavily down her back, but she jerked away.
    “Don’t think I belong to you, young Oliver!”
    “I’m older than you are!”
    She looked at me, not glinting or provocatively, but as a human being might look at an object. It was odd, I thought, how dark grey eyes can seem to be. She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again and went on, smoothing and beating. Nevertheless, I thought—and the triumph that had been burgeoning, burst into sudden scarlet blossom—I had had this sulky, feminine, gorgeous creature!
    “Hold still a moment, Evie. I’ll get the twig out.”
    I untwisted her hair, smelt it, and the scent of the earth, and the faint, thin smell of the smashed flowers. I threw the twig away and hugged her. She was a sullen and passive lump in my arms.
    Evie pulled away and picked among the trees towards the path. I followed. She began to walk faster, hurrying out of the trees, down between the bushes, broke into an uneven trot that she only interrupted where the brambles were too close together for anything but delicate negotiation. A few yards from Chandler’s Lane I stopped her.
    “Evie—”
    She looked up at me, smouldering.
    “When shall we—”
    “Don’t