Free Fall by William Golding Page B

but I disliked taking his fagcards. And Philip had miscalculated, though I am sure he profited by the lesson. The situation was never as simple as we had envisaged. Some of the older boys got to know and wanted to share the loot, which gave me more but unprofitable fights and some of them actually objected to the whole business. Then the supply of small boys dried up and only a day or two went by before I found myself being interviewed by the head teacher. A small boy had been found being excused behind a brick buttress by the boiler-shed. Another had wetted himself handsomely in class, burst into tears and sobbed that he was frightened to be excused because of the big boy. The ordinary course of their instruction was immediately interrupted. Soon there was a file of littleboys outside the head teacher’s room all waiting to give evidence. The fingers pointed straight at Sammy Mountjoy.
    This was a humane and enlightened school. Why punish a boy if you can make him conscious of his guilt? The head teacher explained carefully the cruelty and dishonesty of my actions. He did not ask me whether I had done it or no, for he would not give me a chance to lie. He traced the connection between my passion for the kings of Egypt and the size of the temptation that had overcome me. He knew nothing about Philip and found out nothing.
    “It’s really because you like pictures, eh, Sammy? Only you mustn’t get them that way. Draw them. You’d better give back as many as you can. And—here. You can have these.”
    He gave me three kings of Egypt. I believe he had gone to great trouble over those fagcards. He was a kindly, careful and conscientious man who never came within a mile of understanding his children. He let the cane stay in the corner and my guilt stay on my back.
     
    Is this the point I am looking for?
    No.
    Not here.
     
    But that was not the profoundest thing that Philip achieved for me. His next was a masterpiece of passion. It was, I suppose, a clumsier exhibition, a botched job from his prentice hand. It reveals Philip to me as a person in three D, as more than a cutout. Like the appearing ice, a point above water, it gives evidence of great depths in Philip. He has always had much in common with an iceberg.He is still pale, still involved and subtle, still dangerous to shipping. He avoided me for a time after the fagcard case. As for me, I fought more than ever; and I do not think it an adult wisdom to say that now I fought with a more furious desire to compel and hurt. At this time I had my greatest hour with Johnny. Out of an obscure and ungovernable rage against something indefinable, I went for the only thing I knew would not flinch at a battering—Johnny’s face. But when I hit his nose he tripped and cut his head open on the corner of the school building. So then his ma came and saw the head teacher—Johnny was most anxious that I should understand he had asked her not to—and I was in trouble again. I can still sense my feelings of defiance and isolation; a man against society. For the first, but not the last time I was avoided. The head teacher thought a period in Coventry would show me the value of social contact and persuade me to stop using people as a punchball.
    During this period Philip slid alongside again. He assured me of his friendship and we quickly became intimate because he was the only friend I had. Johnny always had a great respect for authority. If the head teacher said no talk, then Johnny was mum. Johnny was adventurous but dared an authority he respected. Philip had no respect for authority, but caution rather. So he quickly slid alongside again. Perhaps among the teachers he may even have built up a little credit as a faithful friend. Who knows? Certainly I was grateful.
    As I piece together and judge our relationship during those few weeks I am overcome with astonishment. Can it be possible? Was he so clever so early? Was he even then so cowardly, so dangerous, so elaborate?
    When he