Free Fall by William Golding Page A

for his own safety, Philip became my shadow. Living near the toughest of the lot he was protected. Since he was so close, I could not run after him and my hunting reflexes were not triggered off. Timorous, cruel, needing company yet fearing it, weak of flesh yet fleet of fear, clever, complex, never a child—he was my burden, my ape, my flatterer. He was, perhaps, to me, something of what I had been to Evie. He listened and pretended to believe. I was not quite the fantasist that Evie was; my stories were excess of life, not compensation. Secret societies, exploration, detectives, Sexton Blake—“with a roar the huge car leapt forward”—he pretended to believe them all and wove himself nearer and round me. The fists and the glory were mine; but I was his fool, his clay. He might be bad at fighting but he knew something that none of the rest of us knew. He knew about people.
    There was the business of the fagcards. We all collected them as a matter of course. I had no dad to pass them on to me and Ma smoked some awful cheap brand that relied on the poverty of its clients rather than advertisement. No one who could have afforded anything better would have been content to smoke them. This is the only feeling of inferiority I can trace right back to the Row but it was strictly limited; not that I had no dad, but just that I hadno fagcards. I should have felt the same if my parents had been married non-smokers. I had to rely on pestering men in the streets.
    “Got a fagcard, mister?”
    I liked fagcards; and for some reason or other my favourites were a series of the kings of Egypt. The austere and proud faces were what I felt people should be. Or do I elaborate out of my adult hindsight? The most I can be certain of is that I liked the kings of Egypt, they satisfied me. Anything more is surely an adult interpretation. But those fagcards were very precious to me. I begged for them, bargained for them, fought for them—thus combining business with pleasure. But soon no one with any sense would fight me for fagcards because I always won.
    Philip commiserated, rubbed in my poverty; pointed out the agony of my choice—never to have any more kings of Egypt or else exchange those I had for others and thus lose the first ones for good. I toughed Philip up mechanically for insolence but knew he was right. The kings of Egypt were out of my reach.
    Now Philip took the second step. Some of the smaller boys had fagcards which were wasted on them. What a shame it was to see them crumpling kings of Egypt they were unable to appreciate!
    I remember Philip pausing and my sudden sense of privacy and furtive quiet. I cut right through his other steps.
    “How we going to get ’em?”
    Philip went with me. Immediately I had jumped to the crux, he adapted himself to my position without further comment. He was elastic in such matters. All we—he said we, I remember that clearly—all we had to do was to waylay them in some quiet spot. We should then removethe more precious cards which were of no use to them. We needed a quiet place. The lavatory before school or after school—not in break time, he explained. Then the place would be crowded. He himself would stand in the middle of the playground and give me warning if the master or mistress on duty came too near. As for the treasure, for now the cards had become treasure, and we, pirates, the treasure should be divided. I could keep all the kings of Egypt and he would take the rest.
    This scheme brought me one king of Egypt and Philip about twenty assorted cards. It did not operate long and was never really satisfactory. I waited in the smelly shed, idly looking at the graffiti of our more literate members, graffiti rendered more conspicuous by their careful deletion. I would wait in the creosoted quiet as the cisterns filled automatically and discharged—filled and discharged all day and night, whether they had customers or not. If a small victim appeared, I did not mind twisting his arm,