by Simon Raven
The bowler sent down the next, a good length ball outside the off stump. I swished hopefully and got a very thin edge.
‘How’s that?’ bawled Cyril, as he took the catch neatly in his gloves.
‘Not,’ rapped George Geary, who was umpiring at the bowler’s end. ‘Over ball.’
Perhaps it was such a thin edge that George didn’t hear the snick, or perhaps he felt that he owed me something from the occasion when he had so harshly shattered my dream of playing for the Southern Schools at Lord’s. In either case, there I still was, and there, by the Laws of Cricket, I was fully entitled to stay.
Not in Cyril’s view. Before proceeding to the other end, he stuck his face into mine and said, ‘A gentleman would have walked.’
‘And so I would have,’ I said disingenuously, ‘if you hadn’t appealed so quickly. As it was, you asked for a decision and got it, leaving me no choice but to abide by it.’
‘So you admit you were out,’ he snarled. ‘It’s not to late to go.’
‘Yes it is. It would make George Geary look a perfect bloody fool, if I walked out now after he’d given me “not”.’
‘Rotten sportsmanship.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve been given out often enough when I wasn’t and gone with a good grace. Now, just for once, it’s worked the other way, and I’m damn well going to make the best of it. Principle of rough justice.’
The statement was morally sound (or so I have always considered) but factually misleading; for whenever I had been given out and thought I wasn’t, I had gone with the worst possible grace and on one occasion I had thrown my bat through the (closed) Pavilion window.
Cyril went very red.
‘If a gentleman knows he’s out, he goes whatever the circumstances,’ he said, and stalked away to the other end.
It was now clear to me that I had an excellent chance of drinking Bob’s Taylor ’35 that evening; but in order to clinch the matter Thackley must be goaded into some gesture clearly visible from the boundary. A red face and muttered insult, audible by me alone, were not enough. But Thackley was now out of close range and perhaps already cooling off; whatever action I took must be immediate and also effective over a distance of nearly thirty yards. Seeing the batsman at the other end leave the first ball of the new over, ‘WAIT,’ I called very loudly as soon as the ball was in Thackley’s gloves.
The next ball was also left.
‘WAIT,’ I shouted as Thackley gathered the ball, cleanly but with a conceited flourish.
By God’s grace, the batsman played forward to the next and missed it. ‘WAIT,’ I yelled as soon as the ball was past him.
And Thackley, falling victim, as it were, to my propaganda, coming to believe that he might, as the loud call of ‘WAIT’ implied that he might, fumble the ball and give away a run, or if not believing it at least beginning to be nervous on that score – Thackley, I say, worn down by the repetition of the infuriating monosyllable, did indeed fumble the ball and give away a run, which brought me to this end.
‘Another bye,’ I said.
‘DAMN YOU,’ bellowed Thackley in a voice that carried to Godalming or at any rate to Bob and the Uncle on the boundary, ‘DAMN YOU TO HELL.’
Bob was as good as, indeed much better than, his word. He was so pleased that he produced the reigning Prince of all Port Wines – Taylor 1927.
The next occasion on which I drank Taylor ’27 was in King’s, at Founder’s Feast on December 6 of this same year. I shall presently give some account of that festivity, for I suspect that Founder’s Feast is now no longer what it was, and besides, some very important things happened to me at that particular one. First, however, and as a necessary preface, I must go back to some events of the preceding autumn.
Running true to the form of which Uncle Irvine had warned me, our Old Carthusian Tutor, Patrick Wilkinson, had indeed behaved like a ‘ghastly Socialist bore’. I remain to this day very fond of Patrick, of whom I have grateful memories and whom, both as author and teacher, I have always enjoyed and respected; but there can be, I fear, no doubt about it: Patrick when his pink hat was on could nag a man into his coffin.
‘Your Buttery bill,’ he said to me in mid-November, ‘is well over sixty pounds already. How can you hope to pay it?’
‘That’s my business,’ I said.
‘Don’t be insolent.’
‘I’m not being insolent, Tutor. The bill will fall due early next January. Correct?’
He nodded.
‘By that time, Tutor, I shall be twenty-one. Of age. Entitled and expected to run my own money affairs. A task that will be all the easier for me as I shall have come into a legacy.’
Patrick’s mouth drooped in displeasure. I don’t know which he disliked more – the idea of my inheriting money or the plain fact that he had just been very soundly drubbed on points. In the matter of money he, of course, was to have the last laugh: my ‘legacy’ was Granny Raven’s £100 in the Post Office Saving Bank; and my finances would be in incurable disorder before the next May was out. But that was still some months away and in any case Patrick could not be aware of it. For all he knew, I might be about to inherit tens of thousands. Undeniably humiliated on the one front, then, he changed his axis and attacked on another.
‘I notice,’ he said, ‘that you spend all your time with old public school boys – and most of it with Etonians. I did indicate to you, when you arrived last summer, that you might find other and more interesting company.’
‘A matter of taste,’ I said.
‘It makes for bad feeling in the College,’ said Patrick, ‘if there is a set of rich young men who lead a privileged and luxurious life – who conspicuously lead such a life – and ignore those who are worse off than themselves.’
‘We don’t ignore anybody and are perfectly civil to everybody. It’s just that there are some people whom we do not seek out.’
‘Exactly. You do not ask them to your parties and so on. They feel left out.’
‘If one is to ask the entire College to one’s parties, you would have even more cause for complaint about the size of one’s Buttery bill.’
‘The refreshments could be of a humbler kind and thus more widely distributed. What I really deprecate is the style of your entertainments… champagne being delivered to your rooms by the crate. It is that sort of thing which causes resentment.’
‘Could you mean “envy”, Tutor?’
‘Justifiable resentment. A legitimate sense of grievance.’
‘There was a time when both “resentment” and “grievance” were considered to be ugly words denoting mean and ugly reactions. Now, you tell me, they are “justifiable” and “legitimate”. You will be telling me next, Tutor, that they are positively virtuous.’
‘You must understand. This College will tolerate almost anything except assumptions of social superiority.’
I remembered the warning which the Dean of Discipline had given me the previous August. Like all tolerant institutions, he had said, King’s had its fads against which one offended at one’s peril. ‘The fad here, with most of ’em, is equality.’ And, earlier in our conversation, ‘Sooner or later you are going to annoy somebody here very much indeed.’ Now it had happened: I had offended against the fad of equality and had annoyed Patrick Wilkinson, to judge from the look of him, to a point not far short of actual rage. Ah well, I thought: in for a penny in for a pony [£25], a saying current among the smart set at the time.
‘No one is assuming superiority,’ I said, ‘it is simply a matter of realities. Either one has the money to spend on these things or one has not.’
How often was I to remember these words and blush at them when I looked back from the shiftless penury of my future to the fraudulent affluence of my past. It is typical of the generous spirit which, at bottom, informed all Patrick’s actions (however tiresome) that he never, at any stage of my subsequent financial disintegration, threw this remark back in my face.
‘If one has such
money,’ he said now, ‘it should be spent on other more worthwhile things than champagne and smoked salmon. It should be spent, at any rate, without vulgar public display. Perhaps it should not be spent at all. There is every hope that a Socialist Government will sooner or later see to that.’
‘If there’s one thing I loathe,’ I said, ‘it is Socialism. “A” and “B” getting together to decide what “C” should do about “x”. Interference and spite disguised and excused by sanctimonious drivel.’
I thought so then and I think so now.
‘You,’ said Patrick, ‘are a thoroughly selfish young man.’
He was right then and he is right now, though, alas, I am no longer young.
‘There are two kinds of selfishness,’ I said, ‘doing what one wants to do; and making other people do what one wants to do, or wants them to do. The first kind, relatively harmless and venial, is mine. The second, self-righteous and dictatorial, is the driving force behind all forms of tyranny, the smelliest of which are Nazism and Communism – with Socialism a very close third.’
How long we would have gone on bickering in this imbecile fashion, I do not know. At this stage, however, Noël Annan, the Assistant Tutor, came in to drop off a file, and I was able to escape.
I walked down to the Cam to think over my discussion with Patrick. One thing was certain, I thought: whatever the rights or wrongs of his moral and social criticisms, his initial and financial enquiries were dead on target; as far as money went I was going to be found wanting. Granny Raven’s hundred quid (plus thirty odd in accumulated interest) was already heavily mortgaged against my twenty-first birthday on December 28. True, there would also be substantial presents, and what with one thing and another I should definitely be able to settle the current term’s College account as well as the tradesmen; but after that the prospects for 1949 were exceedingly bleak, offering a choice between amendment of life and abuse of credit, the latter of which could lead only to humiliation and even expulsion.
While I was pondering the choice and opting for abuse of credit (after all, something might turn up), my name was called from behind and Noël Annan came spinning up on his bicycle.
‘What on earth,’ he said, dismounting with the grace of a ballet dancer and the aplomb of a High Court Judge, ‘what on earth have you done to Patrick? He is fizzing, my dear, but fizzing with fury.’
I told him what had passed.
‘As to money,’ said Noël, ‘I never discuss it…my own or anybody else’s. Your money, like your choice of friends, is of course a personal matter. But when we come to this question of ostentation, Patrick has a point. Oh dear me, yes: Patrick has a point.’
‘Because Patrick is steward, shall there be no more cakes and ale?’
‘Cakes and ale in plenty, my dear; but not rare vintages, prodigally consumed in a spirit of exhibition.’
‘More discreetly consumed then?’
‘Although there are no sumptuary laws here, Simon, there is a certain degree of sumptuary custom. You see, however much discretion you practise in the consumption of delicacies, some people, e.g. the College servants and the clerks who make up the accounts, are bound to know what you are up to. They are faced with the spectacle of a young man one half their age who spends on an evening’s entertainment more money than they can earn in a month.’
‘The wine is in the cellar. It has to be drunk.’
‘And so it will be. At College Feasts, or by the elders of the College, men furnished with ability and some reputation, in whom the servants expect and even respect a certain amplitude of habit. My point is that they do not expect it in you, and it is unmannerly of you to thrust your extravagance in their faces. Hence the “sumptuary custom” which I mentioned just now. It does not operate by rule. It does not enjoin on you, as an undergraduate, that you shall have one bottle, no more, of this, and of that you shall have none at all. It is, let us say, a quiet prayer for decency and moderation.’
I was impressed by this, though I had forgotten it long before my next visit to the College Buttery.
‘And of course,’ said Noël, ‘if you really want to revel in expensive luxuries, you can always go out to do so. Restaurants and so on.’
‘Thus surely offending the servants there.’
‘No. They do not know you and you do not know them. Not seriously. But the servants and clerks of the College do know you, and will for three years, perhaps much longer. They are of the College as surely as you are, though in a different way. They are part of the family. They must be treated with a kindness and respect that match their loyalty and love.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to cut down on gin and champers.’
I wish I had.
‘You might also try passing the word, with the reasons I have given, among your friends. Talking of whom, let me make a suggestion. Although I said just now that your choice of friends is entirely a personal matter, I nevertheless opine that it would be politic in you, after this morning’s work, to please Patrick and get him back on your side by occasional association with the – er – less upper crust members of the College, or perhaps with one of the – er – Africans. What about Nikkai Urnandi, from the Gold Coast? Yes,’ Noël said, tilting his face to the heavens as if giving thanks for his inspiration, ‘Nikkai Urnandi is just the ticket. He has a passion for Trollope, like you; he’s very nice looking in his way; and he is, I vouch for it, a thoroughly amusing fellow to talk to. Besides,’ said Noël, as he remounted his bike with the elegance of a guardee and the precision of a gymnast, ‘Nikkai is a gentleman in his own country and has quite a generous allowance, so you will probably find him preferable to some skulking son of toil with a Brumagen accent.’
If I first spoke to Nikkai Urnandi in furtherance of Noël’s suggested policy of pleasing Patrick, I very soon came to relish his company entirely for its own sake. He once told me that there had been among his ancestors a famous professional storyteller who had lost his head for talking his way into one Royal bed too many. Nikkai certainly inherited his gift, though he did not use it to obtain the entrée to high class beds as these were open to him already. Of all the tales he told me, walking by the river or drinking coffee or on the way to or from lectures, the following has always been my favourite, not only for its substance but also because it was the indirect cause, as you will see, of my making some meetings which were to have an important effect on my immediate future and indeed on my whole life.
‘My bedmaker says,’ said Nikkai one winter’s evening, ‘that these coal fires we have are going to be replaced by gas during the summer, so that this is the last winter of coal in King’s. “Aiaia, aiai,” I told her, “I like your English coal fires.” But she is very happy, she says, as she will no longer have to clean out the grates, which is her most hated task.
‘What is so dreadful about the grates?’ I asked. ‘To clean out a grate is surely better than to empty the washing basins and the chamber pots?’
‘“Oh, they can keep the jerries as long as they like,” she said, “I don’t mind a little piddle. I always amuse myself by imagining the cocks it came out of. Young Mr Bruce’s downstairs,” she said, “it’s as clear as a mountain stream. Just think of that spurting out of his lovely strong young doings. Yum, yumetyyum.”’
‘Well, this recalled to me the sad story of Joy my lady Jollif the wife of an English man of business in Lagos some while back. Aiaia, aiai, the Jollifs are now shamed and gone, and if you listen you will learn why; but five years ago they were a power in our land, for my lor’ Jollif was a mighty merchant and bounteous with his gain – of which he lavished much gold on the Gold Coast Cricket Club, whereof he was called the Captain, though the season had now long passed when he could actually disport himself upon the pitch.
‘Now as you know, my dear friend, we blacks can make good cricketers, but somehow there is not the same love of the game among us in Gold Coast as there is, say, in Cape Town or Port of Spain. So the people who were playing for the Gold
Coast Cricket Club were mostly white. But of course all the ground staff and the bearers in the Pavilion were Africans, and so was the Club Scorer – who was I, Nikkai Urnandi. For I had been selected by the Headmaster from among all the boys of my school at the behest of my lor’ Jollif, who had said to the Headmaster, “Find me one smart little nigger boy, to cast up the figures at our matches.” So the Headmaster found me, and in return for a little money and my tiffin and my tea I would sit all day, when there was a match, in a little box at one end of the Pavilion, notching the scores of the cricketers. Sometimes the other side would bring a scorer who would sit and reckon with me and sometimes not; but I never lacked for company, as in the box was always Samuel Uziele, the groundsman’s apprentice, who used to operate the scoring board, which was just above our box, with rows of handles which were always getting stuck.
‘“Oil those handles, man,” I used to say to Samuel, “and they will no longer be sticking.”
‘“O foolish little one-pubic-hair,” Samuel would say, “there is no oil to spare for such trifles. It is consumed by the Roller, with which we prevent this ground from turning to dust and flying away beneath our very eyes. And what is not consumed thus is for me to sell in the market, bringing me money to take my pleasure among the women in the Street of Love.”
‘Samuel was only a year and a half older than I, but he vaunted himself a man of the world and my Mentor, and when he was pleased with me he would tell me tales of the women he had in the whorehouses…and other tales such as this:
‘“You know that my mother is long since dead, little one-pubic-hair, and that I have a step-mother. This morning, since the spirits had stolen her wits and she knew no shame, she came to me as I lay on my couch and said, “Samuel, your father is both a feeble and a jealous old man. But now he is gone to the market. Sweet Samuel, make me feel that I am a woman.”’