The Pyramid Read Online Free PDF

us as we lay at the firing point, giving advice and encouragement.
    “Don’t pull, boy! Your foresight’s going up and down like a bucket in a well! Squeeze —like this.”
    Then you would feel a handful of your gluteus maximus massaged and squeezed for a few moments.
    “Now what do you think of that, Captain?”
    Captain Wilmot inched forward on his two sticks and examined the car closely.
    “Been through a barrage by the looks of it.”
    My feet were not frozen to the concrete. They were buried in it.
    “Joy Riding they call it,” said Henry. “Young black-guards . I’d give them joy riding.” He opened the door and poked about inside. “Here. Look at this!”
    He backed out and turned round. In his hand he held a gold cross and chain.
    “Well now, a cross is a thing Miss Dawlish never wore in her life, I’m certain!”
    Captain Wilmot leaned over Henry’s hand.
    “Are you sure, Henry? I’ve seen it somewhere—”
    Henry brought it close to his eyes.
    “‘I.H.S.’ There’s writing on the other side too. ‘E.B. Amor vincit omnia.’ What would that mean, then?”
    Captain Wilmot turned to me.
    “Come on, young Oliver. You’re the scholar of the party.”
    I was cold inside from fear, and hot outside from embarrassment .
    “I think it means, ‘Love beats everything’.”
    “E.B.,” said Henry. “Evie Babbacombe!”
    He lifted his sad, brown eyes to my face and kept them there.
    “I knew I’d seen it before,” said Captain Wilmot. “Lives next door. Comes to me for lessons y’know. Correspondence and filin’ and all that. She wears it under her dress, down between here.”
    “She used to work here,” said Henry, his eyes still on my face, “before she went to the doctor’s. I expect that’s when it got lost.”
    “Of course,” said Captain Wilmot, “she doesn’t always wear it down under her dress. If she’s not wearin’ her beads, she wears it outside, down between here. Well, I must get on.”
    He turned laboriously back to his carriage, saying no more about the battery or the team. He grinned at us, a grin that went savage as he lowered himself. He stowed his two sticks, turned the carriage in its own length and hissed away.
    Henry continued to look at me. A blush started rising irresistibly from the soles of my feet. It surged to my shoulders, shot down my arms, so that my hands bloated on the handle bars. It filled my face, my head—till even my hair seemed burning with it.
    “Well now,” said Henry at last. “Evie Babbacombe.”
    The two oil-smeared lads who had been taking apart the engine of a lorry were standing and looking at us with grins only less savage than the Captain’s. As if he had four eyes instead of two, Henry wheeled on them.
    “Do you lads think I pay you to stand about all day with your mouths open? I want those valves ready by half-past five!”
    I muttered.
    “Give it to her if you like. I’ll give it to her—”
    Henry turned back to me. I unstuck one hand and held it out. He swung the cross above it by the chain like a pendulum, looked closely at me.
    “You don’t drive yet, do you, Master Oliver?”
    “No. No. I don’t drive.”
    Henry nodded and dropped the cross in my palm.
    “With the compliments of the management.”
    He turned back and burrowed into the car. I wheeled my bumpety bike away, the cross clenched in one hand, my feet able to move at last. I had only one thought in my head as I went towards our cottage.
    That was a near thing.
    *
    After I had put my bike away I went through into the dispensary, where my father was squinting down a microscope under the window.
    “Henry,” I said, swinging the cross casually. “Henry Williams. Miss Babbacombe left this thing down there when she was working in his garage.” I threw it up and caught it effortlessly. “Asked me to give it to her,” I said. “I expect she’ll be in the reception room won’t she? I’ll just go through—”
    I walked down the short passage and opened