The Pyramid by William Golding

play so beautifully before you went mad on the piano!”
    “Then when you come back from Oxford for the holidays, you’ll have a proper instrument.”
    He turned back to his plate and went on eating.
    “Of course,” said my mother, “it won’t be a BBC piano you know!”
    “Be better, though,” said my father. “They can do a lot. It not as though it’s a wooden frame after all. Wooden frames always go. I don’t know why they use them.”
    “Perhaps they can even get the keys white again.”
    “Wooden frames always go. It’s the climate.”
    “We don’t need the candle holders. They can take them off.”
    “Iron frames give you a steady tension. Ours is an iron frame.”
    “What’s the matter, dear? Now come on! It’s all forgotten and done with!”
    “Steady on, old son!”
    “It’s The Blood you know, Father.”
    “Show us your tongue old son.”
    “Don’t bother him. Eat some ham, Oliver. That’ll do you good.”
    My father got up ponderously and plodded into the dispensary .
    “Why, you old crybaby,” said my mother gently. “I know how it is, dear. Growing up is difficult even for boys. It’s the blood, you see. Everything stirred up. Now eat your ham dear and you’ll feel much, much better. Why, I remember—you’d be surprised, Olly. We’re really very proud of you, you know, my dear, only it wouldn’t be good for us always to be telling you about it. Here’s the mustard.”
    My father came back silently and put a little glass down by my plate. In it was some more opening medicine.
    *
    The days dragged themselves away. Mrs. Babbacombe continued to flash me her brilliant sideways bow from any distance up to fifty yards. Evie did not walk the patrolled route any more. When I waited in Chandler’s Lane it was with less and less hope. Sometimes I could hear her typing in the reception room, and sometimes I saw her making her quick way from surgery to her home, but that was all. Evie was avoiding me. Monday came, Tuesday and Wednesday, and she made no sign. I had settled from terror to a state of continual worry. My dreams had a new dread; and always the same thing. I dreamed I was walking about Stilbourne, but condemned to death. My parents were in the dream—indeed all the people of Stilbourne were there and all concurred in the death sentence since my crime, which the dream left vague, was unpardonable. I would wake up with relief to find it a dream; and then remember Evie.
    A week later I saw Evie again, though not to speak to. I was in the bathroom and caught sight of Evie and Dr. Ewan’s weedy partner, Dr. Jones, walking up and down together on the larger of the Ewans’s two lawns. I stared at her first, anxiously, as if I had X-ray eyes; but could make out nothing different about her. Indeed, if anything, she was more the same than before. She was moving only below the knee, her matted, unruly eyelashes were flickering, her mouth was open, lips smiling mysteriously and exhaling. I was at once indignant and relieved. Surely a girl in her condition—if she was in her condition—But weedy Dr. Jones was behaving strangely. His hands were clasped behind his thin body. He would warp his knees away from her, look down sideways and laugh. He didn’t look much like a doctor, I thought; more like a silly old man—forty if he was a day.
    Then I remembered that whatever he looked like he was nevertheless a doctor; and I knew why girls saw doctors. I watched the happy pair disappear back towards the house as if they had been gorgons. One thing was clear. I had to see her. Yet I had no excuse for going through into the reception room. Unless I had something as obviously wrong with me as a broken arm or a rash, any plea that I needed medical attention would be met by my father with more opening medicine; or perhaps, in view of the complete success of the last two doses, some closing medicine. Even my left hand had healed and limbered up, as though busting the panel of a piano were only a