The Pyramid Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    “Tore my dress I think—no. It’s all right.”
    “Hang on a minute!”
    “I got to go.”
    “Can’t we—”
    “P’raps. I don’t know. Thanks anyway for the lift.”
    She scurried over the bridge and vanished down the other side. I examined my bike. The carrier and the rear mudguard had wrapped themselves round the wheel. The tyre was flat. I cursed and struggled with the wreckage. At last I managed to disentangle it, jerking the mudguard away from the tattered rubber. I pushed my bike bumpety-bump over the bridge. Evie was progressing up the High Street in the same way as she had come from the pond—a little run, then a walk, then a little run again. Suddenly she quickened her pace and kept it up; but she was too late. Tiny, birdlike Mrs. Babbacombe with her grey cloche hat and shopping basket had seen her. She ran across the road, grabbed Evie by the elbow and kept hold of it. They went up the street side by side, Mrs. Babbacombe making pecks and nags at her daughter’s shoulder. I thought with ungenerous satisfaction that Evie would have to think fast, to get out from under that one. I went bumping up the street and then turned in over the concrete apron of the garage to find Henry; but when I saw where he was I went on wheeling my bike in a semicircle to come out again. He was standing in white overalls, his hands on his hips, looking at Miss Dawlish’s little two-seater.
    “Master Oliver—”
    “Oh hullo Henry. I thought you were busy. I wasn’t going to bother you.”
    Henry bent down and examined my back wheel. I looked over him at the two-seater and my feet froze to the concrete. It might have been sunk for a year or two in a swamp.
    “ Dyma vi ,” said Henry. “That’s a bad split, indeed it is. You’ve been giving some other lad a lift, haven’t you? Well now. We shan’t get any more use out of that!”
    I heard a soft hissing behind me. Captain Wilmot pulled up beside us in his electric invalid carriage.
    “Hullo Henry. Is my other battery ready?”
    “Not for another hour, Captain,” said Henry. “Just take a look at this!”
    He went over to the two-seater.
    “Hold on,” said Captain Wilmot. “I’ll stretch me legs for a bit. Don’t go, young Oliver. I want to hear about the team.”
    He began to manoeuvre in the basketwork chair, grunting and gritting his teeth.
    “Fix bayonets!”
    Captain Wilmot was a war wreck, adequately pensioned, provided with transport, and a secretarial job at the hospital for which he was, as he said, remunerated with an honorarium . The shell that had buried him had also filled him full of metal fragments in unexcavatable places. The rude wits of Chandler’s Close, where he lived in the cottage opposite Sergeant Babbacombe, always said that he rattled far more than his chair. He was deaf in one ear from the shell. Cotton wool hung out of it. He secreted, heavily.
    “I’ve got to get away. I—”
    “For God’s sake! Stay where you are.”
    He was testy. This was because he was getting out of his carriage. Whenever he was getting in or out of his carriage he was testy. Indeed, if you caught a glimpse of his face before he had rearranged it you could sometimes see a sort of animal savagery there as if the force that lifted him had been sheer hate. Yet he was fond of young people and of youth generally—perhaps because his own had been blown out of him before he had had any use from it; a junior clerk whose country needed him. He gave his services free to the team on the miniature rifle range at our grammar school. After endless manoeuvring he would sit by