“I expect we’ll want to know all their names,” said the fat boy, “and make a list. We ought to have a meeting.”
Ralph did not take the hint so the fat boy was forced to continue.
“I don’t care what they call me,” he said confidentially, “so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me at school.’
Ralph was faintly interested.
“What was that?”
The fat boy glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward Ralph.
He whispered.
“They used to call me ‘Piggy.’”
Ralph shrieked with laughter. He jumped up.
“Piggy! Piggy!”
“Ralph—please!”
Piggy clasped his hands in apprehension.
“I said I didn’t want—”
“Piggy! Piggy!”
Ralph danced out into the hot air of the beach and then returned as a fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Piggy.
“Sche-aa-ow!”
He dived in the sand at Piggy’s feet and lay there laughing.
“Piggy!”
Piggy grinned reluctantly, pleased despite himself at even this much recognition.
“So long as you don’t tell the others—”
Ralph giggled into the sand. The expression of pain and concentration returned to Piggy’s face.
“Half a sec’.”
He hastened back into the forest. Ralph stood up and trotted along to the right.
Here the beach was interrupted abruptly by the square motif of the landscape; a great platform of pink granite thrust up uncompromisingly through forest and terrace and sand and lagoon to make a raised jetty four feet high. The top of this was covered with a thin layer of soil and coarse grass and shaded with young palm trees. There was not enough soil for them to grow to any height and when they reached perhaps twenty feet they fell and dried, forming a criss-cross pattern of trunks, very convenient to sit on. The palms that still stood made a green roof, covered on the underside with a quivering tangle of reflections from the lagoon. Ralph hauled himself onto this platform, noted the coolness and shade, shut one eye, ana decided that the shadows on his body were really green. He picked his way to the seaward edge of the platform and stood looking down into the water. It was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and coral. A school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither. Ralph spoke to himself, sounding the bass strings of delight.
“Whizzoh!”
Beyond the platform there was more enchantment. Some act of God—a typhoon perhaps, or the storm that had accompanied his own arrival—had banked sand inside the lagoon so that there was a long, deep pool in the beach with a high ledge of pink granite at the further end. Ralph had been deceived before now by the specious appearance of depth in a beach pool and he approached this one preparing to be disappointed. But the island ran true to form and the incredible pool, which clearly was only invaded by the sea at high tide, was so deep at one end as to be dark green. Ralph inspected the whole thirty yards carefully and then plunged in. The water was warmer than his blood and he might have been swimming in a huge bath.
Piggy appeared again, sat on the rocky ledge, and watched Ralph’s green and white body enviously.
“You can’t half swim.”
“Piggy.”
Piggy took off his shoes and socks, ranged them carefully on the ledge, and tested the water with one toe.
“It’s hot!”
“What did you expect?”
“I didn’t expect nothing. My auntie—”
“Sucks to your auntie!”
Ralph did a surface dive and swam under water with his eyes open; the sandy edge of the pool loomed up like a hillside. He turned over, holding his nose, and a golden light danced and shattered just over his face. Piggy was looking determined and began to take off his shorts. Presently he was palely and fatly naked. He tiptoed down the sandy side of the pool, and sat there up to his neck in water smiling proudly at Ralph.
“Aren’t you going to swim?”
Piggy shook his head.
“I can’t swim. I wasn’t allowed. My asthma—”
“Sucks to your ass-mar!”
Piggy bore this with a sort of humble patience.
“You can’t half swim well.”
Ralph paddled backwards down the slope, immersed his mouth and blew a jet of water into the air. Then he lifted his chin and spoke.
“I could swim when I was five. Daddy taught me. He’s a commander in the Navy. When he gets leave hell come and rescue us. What’s your father?”
Piggy flushed suddenly.
“My dad’s dead,” he said quickly, “and my mum—”
He took off his glasses and looked vainly for something with which to clean them.
“I used to live with my auntie. She kept a candy store. I used to get ever so many candies. As many as I liked. When’ll your dad rescue us?”
“Soon as he can.”
Piggy rose dripping from the water and stood naked, cleaning his glasses with a sock. The only sound that reached them now through the heat of the morning was the long, grinding roar of the breakers on the reef.
“How does he know we’re here?”
Ralph lolled in the water. Sleep enveloped him like the swathing mirages that were wrestling with the brilliance of the lagoon.
“How does he know we’re here?”
Because, thought Ralph, because, because. The roar from the reef became very distant.
“They’d tell him at the airport.”
Piggy shook his head, put on his flashing glasses and looked down at Ralph.
“Not them. Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.”
Ralph pulled himself out of the water, stood facing Piggy, and considered this unusual problem.
Piggy persisted.
“This an island, isn’t it?”
“I climbed a rock,” said Ralph slowly, “and I think this is an island.”
“They’re all dead,” said Piggy, “an’ this is an island. Nobody don’t know we’re here. Your dad don’t know, nobody don t know—”
His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist.
“We may stay here till we die.”
With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.
“Get my clothes,” muttered Ralph. “Along there.”
He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun’s enmity, crossed the platform and found his scattered clothes. To put on a grey shirt once more was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge of the platform and sat in the green shade on a convenient trunk. Piggy hauled himself up, carrying most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat carefully on a fallen trunk near the little cliff that fronted the lagoon; and the tangled reflections quivered over him.
Presently he spoke.
“We got to find the others. We got to do something.”
Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun, ignoring Piggy’s ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.
Piggy insisted.
“How many of us are there?”
Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.
“I don’t know.”
Here and there, little breezes crept over the polished waters beneath the haze of heat. When these breezes reached the platform the palm fronds would whisper, so that spots of blurred sunlight slid over their bodies or moved like bright, winged things in the shade.
Piggy looked up at Ralph. All the shadows on Ralph’s face were reversed; green above, bright below from the lagoon. A blur of sunlight was crawling across his hair.
“We got to do something.”
Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined out never fully realized place leaping into real life. Ralph’s lips parted in a delighted smile and Piggy, taking this smile to himself as a mark of recognition, laughed with pleasure.
“If ft really is an island—”
“What’s that?”
Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
“A stone.”
“No. A shell”
Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement