The Chalk Giants Read Online Free PDF Page A

the floors have been swept. It’s a real little Home from Home! He sees how carefully it has all been planned; he sees how she clings to him as he goes from room to room, rubbing him with her little brown hands. He’s glad he’s had so much practice at keeping the half-smile clamped to his mouth, at lidding his eyes and at staring at the ground; for nobody has guessed his secret. It was all his fault, right from the start. He has been silly; men with fat bottoms should never fall in love!
    There is even a tablecloth, gay-checked in white and blue. They make a meal, using his stove; there’s no question but that they’re going to let him stay. He blushes, smiling at the cloth, as they thank him, thank him for what he has done; and the party is quite gay. Afterwards the cars are hidden, driven from sight in a ruined outhouse, and bracken and brushwood heaped round their fenders to make them invisible from the air. Stan fetches his handlamp because there are only two Tillys, and naturally they will be needing three rooms. But there is a spare room, at the end of a cold, cluttered corridor; Martin leads the way to it, Tilly lamp held high, the light glancing from his soft blond hair. He calls the place the Bachelor’s Suite, and they all laugh, and Stan joins in. There is no water, explains his host; but he has found a jug and basin, and set up an old packing crate as a wash-hand stand. He was expecting more visitors, he tells him, more than in fact arrived. He hopes he will be comfortable, and leaves him.
    There is an awkward moment then because she stands in the doorway and smiles as if she means it and says, ‘Thank you,’ again and for a moment it’s almost as if she’s going to peck his cheek. But Martin calls from the corridor, and adds something Stan doesn’t catch, though he hears the artist laugh. So she turns away, and he pushes the door to and hangs the lamp from a hook in one of the ceiling beams. Then he spreads his bag out and turns the liner back, and Gets Undone.
    He doesn’t feel he can really bother to shave.
    He lay for a while unsleeping, though now that he and the Champ had both done their bit he supposed they had earned a rest. The sea lapped and whispered outside the place, the still, damp air of the room stung his cheeks. For a time the traffic noise dinned in his ears; the shouting and hooting, revving of engines, bawling of the many loudhailers. Then he wished that he could become angry, but his inhibition was too great. Men with large bottoms look funny when they are annoyed. From this his thoughts drifted to other things, none creative, some positively counter-productive. He remembered how one day in Biology Chapman discovered his resemblance to the duckbilled platypus, and passed a note to Smythe about it, so from Potty Potts he became Potts the Platypus, which he did not like. Though the name didn’t take too well till the Sledge found a drawing on the board one day, and realized the direction of the sniggerings, and said, ‘How rare is the platypus, Potts?’ and there was this great roar of laughing. So he had to stand up, ‘on his back legs’, as Sledger put it, and stammer out all he knew about the creature, and after that the nickname was assured. Then the R stream got hold of it, the yobboes, so each break time and each afternoon it was Platypus, platypus, in chanted rhythm while he was josded and shoved and had his balls grabbed from behind, at the centre of a ring of races, unable to get away, waiting for the prefect’s bell to end the torture. He thought perhaps he could beat one of them up till he saw Tompkins, who was the worst, fight in the boxing tournament and realized what would happen to him if he tried. And so the half-smile was born. It had stayed on his face for twenty-five years.
    Platypus, platypus. Potty-the-rarimus-plat...
     
    The moon sank, beyond the ridge of cliff. With its setting, clouds drew across the sky; and for a time the summer night was at its