‘Daddy, do you think they’ll ever build the pylon up again?’
His father stared.
‘Good lord, I hope not! Why, do you want them to?’
Laurie shook his head as if he meant to shake it off.
‘Oh, no, no, no. Of course not. It’s an eyesore. But I just thought they might.’
That night Laurie dreamed that he had got his wish. There stood the pylon: much as he remembered it, but bigger and taller. At least that was his impression, but as it was night in his dream he couldn’t see very well. But he knew that he had regained his interest in life, and knew what he must do to prove it to himself and others. If he did this, a good report was waiting for him. But first he must get out of bed and put on his dressing-gown which lay across the chair, and go down-stairs, silently of course, for if they were about they would hear and stop him. Sometimes, when he was sleepless, he would go out on to the landing and lean over the banisters and call out: ‘I can’t get to sleep!’ and then they would put him to sleep in the spare-room bed, where later his father would join him. But long before his father came up he would be asleep, asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, such an assurance of security did the promise of his father’s presence bring.
And now if they heard him moving about he would just say that he couldn’t get to sleep, and put off his visit to the pylon to another night. Oh, how clever he was! It was the return of the pylon into his life that made him clever.
Nobody heard him; they had gone to bed. The house was in darkness, but if he was a burglar he wouldn’t mind about that: he would be glad; and Laurie-the-burglar was glad, too, as he tiptoed downstairs in his felt-soled slippers.
But the door—could he unlock it? Yes, the catch yielded to his touch as it would have to a real burglar’s, and he remembered not to shut it, for he must be able to get in again.
He went round to the front of the house. Now the pylon was in full view: its tapering criss-cross shape indistinct against the hill-side, as if someone had drawn it in ink on carbon paper with a ruler; but where it rose above the hill—and it soared much higher than it used to—it was so clear against the sky that you could see every detail—including the exciting cross-piece, just below the summit, that Laurie used to think of as its moustache.
With beating heart and tingling nerves he hastened towards it, through the garden gate and out into the field, feeling it impending over him long before he reached it, before he could even properly see where its four great legs were clamped into the concrete. Now he was almost under it, and what was this? Something grinning at him just above his head, with underneath the words: ‘Danger de Mort’. Abroad all pylons had them. He hadn’t needed to ask his father what the skull and crossbones meant; he hadn’t needed to ask what ‘danger de mort’ meant: ‘Your French is coming on!’ his father said. In England pylons didn’t bear this warning; the English were cleverer than the French—they knew without being told. In England pylons were not dangerous: could this be a French one?
It was a warm night but Laurie shivered and drew his dressing-gown more closely round him. But if there was danger of death, all the more reason to go on, to go up, to be one with the steel girders and the airs that played around them. But not in a dressing-gown, not in bedroom slippers, not in pyjamas, even! Not only because you couldn’t climb in them, but because in them you couldn’t feel the cold touch of the steel upon the flesh. It would be a kind of cheating: you wouldn’t win the good report, perhaps, which depended, didn’t it? on doing things the hardest way.
Lest anyone should steal his night attire Laurie hid it under a low bush close by the monster’s base. Clever Laurie, up to every dodge! English pylons had steps—iron bolts like teeth sticking out six inches from two of the four great supporting girders, and reaching to the top, making the climb easy. But this one hadn’t, so it must be a French pylon. He would have to climb the face of it, clinging to the spars as best he could, for the pylon was an empty shell until almost the top, where a network of struts and stays, like a bird’s nest in a chimney, would give a better foot-hold.
When he had started he dared not look down to see if his clothes were still there, because climbers mustn’t look down, it might make them giddy. Look up! Look up! The climbing wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be, because at the point where the girders met, to form an X like a gigantic kiss in steel, there was a horizontal crossbar on which he could stand and get his breath before the next attempt. All the same, it hurt; it hurt straddling the girders and it hurt holding them, for they were square, not rounded as he thought they would be, and sometimes they cut into him.
That was one thing he hadn’t reckoned with; another was the cold. Down on the ground it had been quite warm; even the grass felt warm when he took his slippers off. But now the cold was like a pain: sometimes it seemed a separate pain, sometimes it mingled with the pain from his grazed and aching limbs.
How much farther had he to go? He looked up—always he must look up—and saw the pylon stretching funnel-wise above him, tapering, tapering, until, when he reached the bird’s nest, it would scrape against his sides. Then he might not be able to go on; he might get wedged between the narrowing girders, like a sheep that has stuck its head through a fence and can’t move either way.
And if he reached the top and clung to the yard-arm, which was his aim, what then? What proof would he have to show them he had made the ascent? When his schoolfellows did a daring climb, they left something behind to show they had; the one who climbed the church-spire, clinging to the crockets, had left his cap on the weathercock; it had been there for days and people craned their necks at it. Laurie had nothing to leave.
And what had happened to him, this boy? What sort of report did he get? He had been expelled—that was the report he got. It had all happened many years ago, long before Laurie was born: but people still talked of it, the schoolboy’s feat, and said it was a shame he’d been expelled. He should have been applauded as a hero, and the school given a whole holiday. Perhaps it was just as well for Laurie that he had nothing to leave, except some of his blood—for he was bleeding now—which wouldn’t be visible from below. But they would believe him, wouldn’t they, when he told them he had scaled the pylon? They would believe him, and make out his report accordingly? Would they say, ‘Jenkins minor has proved himself a brave boy, he has shown conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, in that he has climbed the pylon which no boy of his age has ever climbed before, and in commemoration of this feat the school will be granted a whole holiday’?
Or would they say: ‘Jenkins minor has been a very naughty boy. By climbing the pylon he has disgraced himself and the whole school. He will be publicly expelled in the school yard, and the school will forfeit all half-holidays for the rest of term’?
Well, let them say that if they wouldn’t say the other! At any rate he would have made his mark.
Soon he was too tired to argue with himself: too tired and too frightened. For the pylon had begun to sway. He had expected this, of course. Being elastic the pylon would have to sway, and be all the safer because it swayed. But it shouldn’t sway as much as this, leaning over first to one side, then to the other, then dipping in a kind of circle, so that instead of seeing its central point when he looked up, the point where all its spars converged, the point where his desires converged, the point which meant fulfilment, he saw reeling stretches of the sky, stars flashing past him, the earth itself rushing up to meet him. . . .
He woke and as he woke, before he had time to put a hand out, he was violently sick.
‘I can’t think what it can be,’ his mother said. ‘He can’t have eaten anything that disagreed with him; he ate the same as we did. You didn’t say anything to upset him, did you, Roger?’