Bill was in the pavilion all the morning; but when the umpires took the bails off, he came out to us, and we all went back in the motor. Bill was more gloomy than I had ever seen him.
‘It’s a little hard,’ he said. ‘Just when Hirst happens to have an off-day – he was bowling tosh this morning – and the wicket doesn’t suit Rhodes, and one thinks one really has got a chance of taking a few, this man Batkins starts and bowls about fifty per cent above his proper form. Did you see that ball that got MacLaren? It was the sort of beastly thing you get in nightmares. Fast as an express and coming in half a foot. If Batkins doesn’t get off his length after lunch, we’re cooked. And he’s a teetotaller, too!’
I tried to cheer him up by talking about the girl he was engaged to, but it only made him worse.
‘And it’s in front of a girl like that,’ he said, ‘who believes in a chap, too, mind you, that I’m probably going to make a beastly exhibition of myself. That ball of Billy Batkins’ll get me five times out of six. And the sixth time, too.’
Saunders gave me the letter as I was going out. I reminded Bill that he had promised to get hold of Mr Batkins for me.
‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘All right. When we get to the ground, come along with me.’
So we left Aunt Edith in the covered seats and walked round to behind the pavilion.
‘Wait here a second,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll send him out. You’ll have to hurry up with whatever you’re going to say to him, because the Players will be taking the field in about three minutes.’
I waited there, prodding the asphalt with my parasol, and presently Mr Batkins appeared, blushing violently and looking very embarrassed.
‘Did you want to see me, miss?’ he said. I said ‘Yes,’ feeling rather gharked and not knowing how to begin.
‘You’re Mr Batkins, aren’t you?’ I said at last. It was rather silly, because he couldn’t very well be anybody else.
‘You played against us last summer,’ I said, ‘for Sir Edward Cave, at Much Middlefold.’
He started. I suppose the name made him think of Saunders.
The bell began ringing in the pavilion. He shuffled his feet. The spikes made a horrid noise on the asphalt, like a squeaking slate-pencil.
‘Was there anything?’ he said. ‘I shall have to be going out in a minute to bowl.’ He pronounced it as if it rhymed with ‘fowl’.
So I saw there was no time to waste, and I plunged straight into the thing.
I said: ‘You know Saunders doesn’t really care a bit for Mr Harry Biggs. She told me so.’
He turned crimson. He had been rather red before, but nothing to this.
‘Me and Ellen, miss –’ he began.
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘She has told me all about it. She’s awfully miserable, Mr Batkins. And she would have written long before, to make it up, only she didn’t know your address. I’ve got a letter from her here, which –’
He simply grabbed the letter and tore it open. I wish I knew what was in it. He read it again and again, breathing very hard, and really looking almost as if he were going to cry.
‘Can I tell Saunders it’s all right?’ I said.
He wouldn’t answer for an age. He kept on reading the letter. Then he said: ‘Oh, yes, miss,’ very fervently. He was what Bob calls ‘absolutely rattled.’ I suppose he must have been fretting awfully all the time, really, only he wouldn’t write and tell Saunders so, but let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, feed on his damask cheek.
(I used to know the whole bit once, to say by heart. I learned it when I did lessons, before I put my hair up. But I’ve forgotten all but that one piece now.)
‘And you’ll come to supper tonight? You’ve got the address on the letter. It’s on the right-hand side of Sloane Street, as you go down.’
‘Oh, yes, miss. Thank you, miss.’
And off he dashed in a great hurry, because the Players were just going out into the field.
So that’s why ‘Batkins’ deliveries were wild and inaccurate’ after lunch. Poor man, he was so flurried by the whole thing that he could hardly bowl at all. The bowler at the other end got a man caught in his first over, and then Bill went in. And Bill hit him in all directions. It was a lovely innings. I don’t think I ever enjoyed one more – not even father’s forty-nine not out against the Cave men. They took poor Mr Batkins off after a time, but Bill was set by then, and they couldn’t get him out. He went on and on, till at last he got his century and won the match. And everybody rushed across the ground from the cheap seats, and stood by the pavilion railings, yelling. And Bill had to lean out of a window and bow.
‘I withdraw what I said about friend Batkins being a teetotaller,’ said Bill after dinner that night to me. ‘No man could have bowled as rottenly as he did after lunch, on lemonade. It was the sort of stuff you get in a village game ‘very fast and beautifully inaccurate.’
Then I told him how it had happened, and he owned that his suspicions were unjust. We were in the drawing-room at the time. The drawing-room is just over the kitchen. Bill stretched out his hands, palms downwards, and looked at the floor.
‘Bless you, my children!’ he said.
Bill is really an awfully good sort. When I was leaving Aunt Edith’s, he came up and gave me a mysterious little paper parcel. I opened it, and inside it was a jeweller’s cardboard box. And inside that, in cotton wool, was the duckiest little golden bat.
‘A presentation bat,’ he explained, ‘because you made a century for Gentlemen v. Players.’
Between the Innings
IT SEEMED TO be the general opinion that the country wanted rain. Meaning by the country the half-dozen of us who were gathered together in the billiard-room at Heath Hall smoking, playing pool, and talking cricket ‘shop’, with particular reference to the match which would come to an end on the following day.
It was, indeed, a most solemn and important occasion. This was the last night but one of the Hall cricket-week, and, so far, success had crowned the efforts of the Hall team as never before.
The Zingari had come and gone, routed – a five-wickets affair. The Band of Brothers had headed us on the first innings, but failed in the next, and we had come through for the second time with half our wickets in hand. We were now in the middle of the Incogniti match, and our one aim in life was to win this and set up a Hall week record. Never before had the Hall been able to score more than a couple of victories in the three matches.
The best week up to the present had occurred six years before, when Ronald Heath was captain of the Oxford team, and Jack Heath half-way up the list of the same. Then we had won two and drawn the third favourably.
What made this season’s week such a triumph was the fact that, on paper, we were not so strong as usual. Jack was in India playing polo instead of cricket, and Ronald was obliged to confine his efforts to umpiring, having strained a muscle in a county match of the previous week. We should have missed them more had it not been for the unusually fine form in which young Tommy Heath, the third of the brothers, happened to find himself at this crisis.
Tommy had captained Winchester that season and scored a century against Eton; but even that had not prepared us for his feats during this week. He had followed up two brilliant innings in the earlier games with a masterly eighty-four in the match now in progress, which match was now in such a position that it might be said to be anybody’s game. We had batted first. Wicket hard and true.
The Hall ground is small, and scoring is generally fast there. Starting at a quarter to eleven, we had made two hundred and ten by lunch-time for six wickets. By three o’clock we were all out for two hundred and fifty.
It was not a large score for the ground. Having lived all my life at my father’s rectory across the Park, I could remember many Hall weeks, including at least three when the side that had won the toss had nearly succeeded in putting four hundred on the board before going the way of all batting sides. But two hundred and fifty proved good enough in
the present case. The Incogs had replied with two hundred and twenty-three. In an hour and a half of the second innings we had put up a hundred and thirty for seven wickets by the time stumps were drawn for the day.
Wherefore we prayed for rain. A steady downpour in the night, and the wicket would play easy for the first hour on the morrow, during which period our last three men might be expected to put on at least another fifty. Which, if the sun came out, as it probably would, ought to be enough, we thought, to give us a winning lead.
Dalgliesh flung up the window and peered earnestly out into the night.
‘It looks like rain,’ he said. ‘There’s thunder hanging about somewhere.’
‘Yellow to play,’ said Felstone, moving round the table after chalking his cue – ‘dot vos me. No good. I don’t think pool’s my forte. Hullo! Lightning.’
He joined Dalgliesh at the window. Summer lightning flickered across the dark opening. It was oppressively hot. Too hot to last. The rain was bound to come soon. But it might delay its advent for another twenty-four hours, by which time, like most late-comers in this world, it would find its services not required and even unpopular.
‘Give us three hours’ good, steady, soaking downpour,’ said Dalgliesh meditatively, ‘and we shall have those Incogs by the short hairs. We shall then call upon our Mr Peter Baynes to give his celebrated imitation of Braund.’
‘On a nice, sticky pitch,’ I replied, being the Peter Baynes alluded to and the slow bowler of the Hall team, ‘with a hot sun drying it up while you look at it, I’ll see what I can do for you. But if the wicket’s going to be the mixture of concrete and granite it was this afternoon, gallery performances are off and I shall take to golf.’
For the Hall ground on a day such as we had just had was enough to break the heart of any slow bowler, who likes assistance from the pitch when he embarks upon his duties. The combination of good wicket and short boundaries had done neither myself nor my analysis any good that afternoon.
‘Did your father read the prayer for rain last Sunday?’ asked Melhuish in his solemn way.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he did.’
‘Good!’ said Melhuish. ‘We shall need it.’
The door opened as he spoke, and Wentworth Flood came in. Flood was a man I cordially disliked, and I have reason to believe that my feelings were shared by at least a good working majority of those present. How he came to be tame cat in a house the very atmosphere of which breathed sport, I had never been able to understand. I take it, however, that women, however many sons they may have playing in first-class cricket, and however interested they may be in the game, cherish a secret liking for a man who can always be relied on to make himself useful in the drawing-room instead of seeking his pleasure out-of-doors.
Wentworth Flood dressed well, looked neat, never broke things, handled tea-cups admirably, played a number of card-games with more than average skill, acted if there were theatricals, and was always ready to play an accompaniment on the mandoline; so, I suppose, Lady Heath saw reasons for having him about the house which we did not.
He was a small man, with an almost irritating lack of anything wrong in his personal appearance. His hair was parted exactly in the middle. His tie was tied with a nicety which almost suggested the made-up article. His voice was ‘ever soft, gentle, and low,’ which, though it may be an ‘excellent thing in a woman,’ is not such an endearing quality in man.
‘Been playing bridge, Flood?’ asked Dalgliesh, breaking one of those awkward pauses which occur when the uncongenial spirit breaks in upon the social gathering.
‘No,’ said Flood precisely. ‘I have not been playing bridge. I have been playing the mandoline.’
There did not seem much that could be said by way of comment on this. Somehow the mention of mandolines in the middle of the profound and serious discussion of a cricket match struck us as almost blasphemous. Dalgliesh snorted, and Manners, whose turn it was to play, nearly cut the cloth. Otherwise there was no attempt at criticism.
‘Tommy Heath tells me we shall win the cricket match tomorrow,’ said Flood, after a silence lasting for the space of two strokes of the cue.
‘So we shall,’ said Dalgliesh, ‘if it rains.’
‘But I thought you could not play cricket in the rain?’
‘No, but rain occasionally stops, and then the wicket gets soft,’ said Manners.
‘And then Baynes leaves off those half-volleys which worry Sir John’s nesting pheasants,’ said Dalgliesh, ‘and gets some work on the ball.’
‘But why should it matter if the ground is soft?’ inquired Flood.
‘Because,’ I said, ‘a merciful Providence, watching over slow bowlers, has ordained that batsmen make fewer runs on a soft pitch, and get out quicker. That’s why.’
Flood looked thoughtful, and I noticed that he went to the window, and stood for some time gazing at the sky. At the moment I wondered why, and what possible interest he could take in the weather. A drawing-room is just as pleasant on a wet as on a dry day.
It was at eleven o’clock, when I left the billiard-room to begin my homeward journey, that I found out his reason. In the hall I met Tommy Heath. He looked worried and rather pale.
‘Going already?’ he said. ‘It’s quite early. Come for a bit of a stroll with me first. I’ve got something I want to tell you.’
We walked slowly round to the back of the house, and came to an anchor on a garden-seat that stood against the wall, facing the Park.
‘Well?’ I said.
Tommy and I had been to different schools, and I was some years his senior, but we had known one another since his sailor-suit days; and we generally told each other things.
Tommy lit a cigarette, an act which would possibly have disturbed his headmaster if he had seen it.
‘I’m in rather a hole,’ he said.
‘What’s up now?’ I asked.
‘It’s that man Flood. Hope he’s not a friend of yours, by the way?’
‘Not in the very least,’ I said. ‘Don’t let that worry you. What has Flood been doing to you?’
‘Well, it was like this. He’d been trying to be funny the whole evening, and then he started shooting off his confounded epigrams about cricket. I’m hanged if I can remember how it all came about, but we met on the stairs, going to the drawing-room, and he began chipping the Hall team. Beastly bad form, considering I was captain. I couldn’t think of anything much to say, don’t you know, but I had to say something, so I said: “Well, I bet you ten to one the Hall wins tomorrow, whatever you think of the team.”’
‘What happened then? That wouldn’t squash him.’
‘It didn’t,’ said Tommy briefly. ‘The man took me up like a shot. “Ten to one?” he said. I believe he’s a Jew. He looked just like one. “Ten to one? In what? Shall we say fivers?”’
I sat up.
‘You don’t mean to say you were idiot enough to make it fivers?’ I said.
‘Not so loud, man,’ said Tommy, ‘I don’t want everyone to hear. Yes, I was. I don’t know why I did it. I must have been cracked. But, somehow, looking at him standing there, and knowing that I should feel scored off if I backed out, I said, yes, fivers if he liked. Do you know, the man actually planked it down in a beastly little pocket-book, and asked me to initial it. So, there you are. That’s the situation. And if we don’t win tomorrow I’m in for rather a pleasant thing.’
‘But, Tommy,’ I gasped, ‘this is absurd! You haven’t got fifty pounds in the world. Suppose we lose tomorrow? And we probably shall if it don’t rain tonight. What will you do?’
‘Oh, it’s simple enough. I shall go to the governor. I’ve got a couple of hundred quid in the bank, but I can’t draw without his leave. He’ll want to know why I’m asking for a big sum like that. I shall tell him it’s for a bet.’
‘And then what?’ I said.
‘And then he’ll give me the fifty pounds, and not let me go to the ’Varsity. Ever since he had to pay up for Ronald’s Oxfo
rd debts – he ran them up a bit, as you probably remember – he’s told us plainly that the first sign we show of not being able to take care of money scratches us as far as the ’Varsity’s concerned. Jack had to be awfully careful when he went up. That’s what’ll happen.’
I was silent. I knew that he had set his heart on going up to Oxford and adding a third to the family list of cricket Blues. And I knew that Sir John, rigid as steel in matters of this sort, would keep his word.
‘You can’t back out?’ I said at length. ‘Flood surely must know that ten to one was simply a way of speaking. He can’t imagine that you were really offering him odds.’
‘Of course he didn’t,’ said Tommy bitterly. ‘Flood’s not a fool. He’s the other thing. But, all the same, I can’t get out of it now. I’m not going to give a man like Flood the whip-hand of me, even if I lose my chance of a Blue through it. There’s only one way out. We must win tomorrow.’
‘I wish we could water that wicket,’ I said. ‘If only that infernal concrete turf would get a soaking I could make the ball do a bit. As it is, I’m helpless.’
I made my way across the Park in a very gloomy frame of mind. It was warmer than ever. The sky was inky black, except when a flash of summer lightning lit it up. I knew every inch of the Park, or I might not have been able to find my way.
My nearest path lay across the cricket-field. When I got to the pitch where we had been playing that afternoon I stopped. But for the white creases, which showed faintly through the darkness, I should have passed by without seeing it. I stooped, and pressed a finger into the turf. It was dry as tinder. On such a wicket, with a whole day in which to make the runs, the Incogniti could hardly help winning, even if our tail were to wag more energetically than the most sanguine among us hoped.
Wodehouse at the Wicket: A Cricketing Anthology Page 13