by Tim Heald
‘That man, ffrench-Thomas,’ she said, as they removed themselves to a relatively secluded corner of the tent, while Bognor tried, through a mask of food, to say ‘Frightfully good’. ‘That man ffrench-Thomas,’ she said, ‘was trying to hit Blight-Purley. Terribly dangerous. It could have killed him.’
‘Oh, surely it was a mistake,’ said Bognor, wanting to believe himself at all costs. ‘Just one of those things. Though you’re perfectly right he could have been very badly hurt. Old man like him.’
‘Still pretty quick on his feet though.’ It was, inevitably, Blight-Purley himself who had shuffled into their orbit without their noticing. ‘I’m glad you both agree. That was deliberate all right.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Bognor, wondering whether to go and grab another salmon and scrambled egg concoction or try Crab quiche or Gâteau Berichonne. ‘Why?’
Blight-Purley put his glass down on a side table and tried to fork up a helping of eel galantine. ‘Who knows?’ he said quizzically. ‘It would hardly be company policy. Delphine and I know each other too well for that, but I promise you ffrench-Thomas is too good a cricketer to do that by mistake.’
‘I’m going to get some pie,’ said Bognor. ‘Would you like some?’ He wandered away to find food for two and almost knocked over Gabrielle, locked in apparently antipathetic discussion with Luigi Dotto, the chef from Dynmouth.
Bognor congratulated her enthusiastically on the food. She introduced him to Dotto. ‘I have heard of your investigations,’ said the chef, without enthusiasm. ‘I am delighted to meet you.’
‘Me, too,’ said Bognor, continuing to the buffet. Returning a few minutes later he noticed that the conversation was still in progress. The pair had been joined by ffrench-Thomas. It seemed to Bognor that the two men were trying to persuade Gabrielle of something. Their attack gave every evidence of being concerted. He frowned.
‘Dotto and your would-be assassin seem to be having a bit of a go at Gabrielle,’ he said, addressing Blight-Purley but handing over a plate laden with goodies to Amanda Bullingdon, who regarded the abundance with disbelief.
‘“Assassin”’s putting it a bit strong,’ said the Colonel. ‘Warning me off more like. The idea of his being in cahoots with Dotto strikes me as eccentric.’ He speared a segment of eel and frowned.
As lunch progressed Bognor began to feel more and more euphoric. He circulated widely, eating and drinking as he went, renewing old acquaintances and making new ones. He seemed to speak to almost everyone there, even greeting Massimo, the sinister waiter from the Dour Dragoon, with an effusiveness which he would not normally have vouchsafed. Massimo was disconcerted by this—had in fact been on the point of ignoring him—and was hard-pressed to smile wanly and accept the proffered hand. Ebertson was urbane, Pring polite in his silence over fielding lapses, Gabrielle seemingly edgy, but he put this down to the tensions involved in catering for so large and discerning a party. Dotto was ebulliently tactile, ffrench-Thomas suavely reticent. As they returned to the field after the repast, he was compelled to loosen the tie at his waist. He was drunk enough to be able to kid himself that it was this that was making him giddy and not the quantities of Bitschwiller with which he had lubricated the equally vast amount of banquet he had consumed.
‘I’d like you to have a bash, second over,’ said Pring as they strolled across the sward. He put his hand on Bognor’s shoulder, implying great confidence.
The effect of this was instantly sobering.
‘What, me?’ he asked, half-stifling a burp compounded of mingled apprehension and satiety.
‘Who else?’ His captain (playing) gave him a parting shot and sauntered off to his fielding position, leaving Bognor to ponder the various follies which had exposed him to this torment. He was so unnerved that he scarcely noticed the over’s passage.
At the end of it Pring tossed the ball nonchalantly across. Bognor caught it and stared sadly at the misshapen red leather sphere with its loose stitched seam. The batsmen had not hitherto seemed markedly ept. Their runs had come from the edge, not the centre of the bat. They had been struck often and sometimes painfully on various parts of the body. Nevertheless they were still there. Bognor hitched his trousers, rubbed the ball on his upper thigh, just as he had seen professionals do on television. ‘You going over the wicket or round?’ enquired the umpire who, Bognor realized with a start, was Hugh ffrench-Thomas. It was quite usual for members of the batting side to umpire when the regular umpires needed a rest. ‘Over,’ he replied, remembering dimly that this required him to deliver the ball while standing on the left-hand side of the stumps. ffrench-Thomas regarded him superciliously as he jogged lightly in ball held tightly in his right hand. As he reached the stumps he twirled his arms, let go of the ball and watched it spin slowly away from him. It passed the opposing batsman on the second bounce, well out of his reach. ffrench-Thomas turned to the scorers in the pavilion and stretched his arms out. ‘Wide,’ he said. Bognor blushed, picked up the ball thrown back to him by the wicket-keeper and tried again. This time it was within reach of the batsman, who lunged at it in an agricultural manner and hit it over the square leg boundary for four. The third ball, similarly placed, was similarly treated. Pring approached, brows furrowed. ‘Try pitching it up a little, old man,’ he said. Bognor tried. The bail flew, faster this time, at the head of the batsman, who withdrew to one side, allowing it to pass by. The wicket-keeper, surprised, misfielded, and the batsmen crossed for a single. Bognor took a deep breath. Only three to go. The next one was almost straight and the batsman played it circumspectly straight back along the ground. He fielded it cleanly, turned, trundled in, watched appalled as the ball, which had slipped from his grasp a second too soon, pitched halfway down the wicket. The batsman opened his shoulders, danced down the wicket as if he was doing the polka, and hoisted the ball away over the mid-on boundary. ffrench-Thomas, grinning broadly, raised his arms aloft to indicate six. Fourteen runs, one wide and one bye off the over. It was not good. He waited for the ball to be retrieved from some long grass and cow parsley, waited patiently while Pring, with the air of a man who was suffering badly, spread the fielders to the far corners of the ground. Then he ran in for his last ball only to feel it slip out in precisely the same way as its predecessor. Again it pitched short. Again the polka. Again the hoist. But this time the mighty blow, though higher still, was falling short. Beneath it stood the spruce figure of the American culture vulture, hands cupped in supplication. Everyone watched as the bail began its descent. It looked like a space capsule coming home and any minute Bognor expected to see a little silk parachute billow out and slow its progress. Instead it accelerated until with startling suddenness it landed neatly in Ebertson’s outstretched hands. For a second he stood stock still, then leaping skywards he hurled the ball back up with a mighty bellow of ‘Howzat!’ The appeal was superfluous. The batsman was walking. ffrench-Thomas smiled at Bognor. ‘Very cunning piece of cricket,’ he said, smirking. It was not a view shared by Aubrey Pring, who did not ask Bognor to bowl again, instead recalling Luton to the attack. The remaining two wickets fell with little more ado, and Pendennis’ team were all out for one hundred and fifty-eight.
Batting at number seven it seemed unlikely that he would be called upon for an hour or so, and he decided to find a deck-chair and snooze: a diversion which was interfered with by Ebertson.
‘Quite a combination, our wicket,’ he said, sitting down in the chair next to Bognor’s. ‘I brought a celebration.’ To Bognor’s horror he produced an unopened bottle of Bitschwiller and two glasses.
‘Oh, God,’ said Bognor, then collected himself. Champagne wasn’t really drinking. ‘No, that was a fantastic catch. Really fantastic.’
‘Fine piece of bowling,’ said Ebertson. ‘Let’s drink to it.’ They drank to it, and watched half-heartedly as Aubrey Pring and Basil Luton marched out to do battle with the Pendennis bowlers.
‘Can we talk?’ enquired Ebertson, tentatively, after a few moments of unev
entful cricket. Bognor realized with a start that his eyes had closed, and he had almost dropped off.
‘Of course.’ He wondered what Ebertson meant. Clearly by ‘talking’ he intended something more meaningful than idle chatter about gastronomy or games. He eased himself further back into the yielding striped canvas of his chair and waited.
‘I’d like to extend our field of mutual understanding beyond catching and bowling,’ he said, searching Bognor with a forensic stare.
Bognor wrestled briefly with the sentence, failed to find any hidden meanings, and said, after a pause, ‘Go on.’
‘I’ll put my cards on the table,’ said the American with the air of a poker player revealing half a hand. ‘We didn’t kill Petrov.’
‘That’s rather a negative beginning,’ said Bognor incisively. ‘Who said Petrov’s even dead?’
‘OK, Simon, if that’s the way you want it.’ Ebertson struggled up out of the chair and made as if to remove the still half-full bottle.
‘Relax, relax,’ said Bognor, realizing that however improbable it might seem he could be on the verge of the breakthrough which had been so conspicuously absent hitherto. ‘All right, I know Petrov is dead.’
‘And I’m correct in saying that your people didn’t do it either.’ He was sitting down again.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Bognor. He was uncertain himself, and said so.
‘I’m going to be very frank,’ said Ebertson. ‘We are very interested in the Scoff set-up, and we would like to acquire it for ourselves. More important we don’t want it to go elsewhere. Certainly not to Moscow. So, frankly, our people weren’t too sorry about Dmitri, but …’
‘You didn’t do it.’ There was a clatter of applause from the spectators. The shiny red ball was speeding inexorably to the mid-off boundary. Basil Luton stood watching it, bat held aloft theatrically.
‘No, we didn’t do it.’
They both sipped at their drinks. Then Bognor said, ‘But if neither of us did it, who did? His own people?’
Ebertson shrugged. ‘Doesn’t fit. Look, the reason I’m saying all this is that we’re interested in the destination of the Scoff system, but we’re not being greedy.’
Bognor thought he twigged. ‘In other words, you don’t mind us having it, but you don’t want it going to what some of our people refer to as “an unnamed power”?’
‘Right.’
‘I see,’ said Bognor. ‘But look, are you even certain that Scoff set up a proper network?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And what? Gabrielle has inherited it?’
‘I would guess so, though there may be some sort of internal power struggle going on. My guess is that some of the leaders are for going on like Scoff as an independent who sold to the highest bidder. Some of the others may want a firm long-term contract.’
‘I see.’ Bognor gazed out at the idyllic scene. Green grass, white figures far enough away to seem elegant, birdsong. A smell of ordure and animals. In the context the conversation seemed impossible.
‘Who else would bid?’ he asked. ‘Assuming your diagnosis is right.’
‘That’s what I don’t understand. My hunch, and it’s only a hunch, is that the Russians are out of it.’
‘The unnamed power?’
‘Precisely.’
‘What does that leave us with? Zionists … Arabs … what do you reckon?’
‘I’m not certain I reckon anything. Oh, good catch. Poor Aubrey. He won’t be happy about that.’ Aubrey Pring had dabbed feebly at a short ball from ffrench-Thomas and been caught by Luigi Dotto behind the wicket. Dotto had produced a spectacular horizontal dive which seemed unlikely in one so corpulent.
‘When are you in?’ enquired Bognor.
‘Eleven,’ said Ebertson. ‘Aubrey’s not entirely happy with my batting.’
‘You may not have to go in at all.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Ebertson sighed. ‘We never win. It’s part of the ritual. I shall survive approximately three balls.’ He poured out more wine. ‘Maybe if I drink enough I might last four.’ He laughed, a dry chuckle from well back. ‘Anyway, all I’m saying, unofficially, mind, is that as far as we’re concerned it’s no contest. We would be quite happy to see you British take over the network, always provided the usual understandings continue.’
‘Quite,’ said Bognor. ‘By the way, who do you think killed Scoff?’
‘You don’t think he killed himself?’ Ebertson’s voice took on a harder note. ‘It seemed obvious enough.’
‘Up to a point,’ said Bognor. ‘But there’s something fishy about it.’
‘Oddly enough,’ said Ebertson, ‘we didn’t consider there was anything particularly “fishy”, as you put it, until you yourself appeared on the scene.’
‘You mean …’ Bognor paused as batsman number three, an athletic PR man with an off-licence chain, had his stumps flattened by one of ffrench-Thomas’s quicker balls, ‘you mean you realized I was investigating Scoff’s death right at the beginning?’
‘Oh, sure. I think we all did.’
‘Oh,’ said Bognor, humiliated. There didn’t seem a great deal more to be said, and the sun and the drink continued to exact their toll. They dozed, chatting only desultorily, as the score was pushed along steadily by Basil Luton while wickets fell at the other end. As the fourth went down with the score at seventy Bognor went to get padded up. The fifth batsman was dismissed at ninety-four, and the players adjourned for tea. Coming relatively soon after the earlier meal it was more in the nature of a digestif than the fully fledged cream bun and éclair occasion which Bognor remembered from youth. There was a choice of teas—Russian Caravan, Lapsang Souchong or Earl Grey—and cucumber or tomato sandwiches, sliced very thin and crustless. More drink for those who wanted it. Bognor sipped Earl Grey and nibbled a cucumber sandwich while his playing and non-playing captains briefed him. ‘Just stick there,’ they said as one. ‘No heroics. Just stay in and leave the runs to Basil.’ Basil, they told him, was batting beautifully. Indeed he had just passed fifty. ‘It’s up to you,’ said Pring. ‘After you there’s only Aubergine as a sort of surprise package, and after that it’s just rabbits.’
Bognor looked round to see if Ebertson could have overheard this opprobrious description. No. He was talking coolly, elegantly even, in a far corner to Gabrielle. Aubrey was trying to boost Bognor’s morale but was only succeeding in making him feel more inadequate. ‘Don’t try to hit anything outside the line of the stumps,’ he said. ‘Just go very carefully, and we’re home and dry.’ Amanda Bullingdon wandered over. ‘Best of luck,’ she said. So did Aubergine Bristol. ‘I’m not expecting to have to go in,’ she said. Bognor smiled. Had he felt less apprehensive he would have asked why, in that case, she was wearing pads.
On the way out Basil Luton said, ‘I’ll do my best to keep you away from ffrench-Thomas. He’s the real menace. Otherwise nothing to write home about. We’ll try to go for a single at the end of each over. All right?’
Bognor adjusted his cap, which had so far attracted no remark, and nodded. ‘All right,’ he said.
Luton faced the bowling, which was ffrench-Thomas’s. From where Bognor stood it indeed looked frighteningly fast. Off the first four balls Luton took a two, which Bognor ran efficiently if ungracefully, and a four, which he did not, of course, have to run at all. On the other two he missed one and played the other safely but without scoring from it. The fifth ball he prodded to third man. One run. So far so good. It meant that Bognor had but one ball to face. He selected a guard of middle and leg, peered round at the field in the approved fashion, and settled down as ffrench-Thomas began to run in. It was a long run, and he ran faster and faster. Bognor tapped his bat nervously. He was very frightened, but he was also rather drunk. The ball was a rocket. It screamed down at him with a sinister whirring noise, swinging as it went. He scarcely had time to consider whether it was straight or not but, with a reflex culled from the recesses of some long-forgotten textbook, he threw his bat g
ently, at the same time advancing his left leg towards the ball, which he could not see at all clearly. There was a sharp clunk as the willow and leather collided. He opened his eyes just as he heard a voice—Luton’s he realized—exclaim, ‘Oh, shot!’ Then he saw that, almost without knowing it, he had propelled the ball with some velocity past the cover fielder. It had gone for four runs. No point in bothering to run.
The end of the over. A hundred and five for five. S. Bognor four not out. Luton came down for a conference. ‘Is that a Gordouli cap?’ he asked. Then without waiting for an answer he continued, ‘Can’t think what you’re doing at number seven. Forget the singles, we’ll get it in boundaries.’ Bognor felt elated and drunker still. The next bowler was a trundler, and Luton, evidently inspired by Bognor’s cover drive, hit him to all corners of the ground. Four, four, two, six, four, an unexpected nothing, bringing the score to one hundred and twenty-five for five with Luton on eighty not out. Only thirty-four needed and suddenly it seemed that Blight-Purley’s team had it almost in the bag. The final ball was turned adroitly off Luton’s legs to long leg. ‘Take three,’ called Luton as he crossed Bognor on the first run. Bognor grimaced. A cricket pitch is twenty-two yards long and in his present state Bognor found anything over that hard to contemplate. At the end of Luton’s second run Bognor was barely embarked on his. As he grounded his bat for his second Bognor turned to wave Luton back. He could not manage more. In fact he felt nauseous. He also had a stitch. Luton, however, had set off and was halfway down the wicket. ‘No more, no more,’ croaked Bognor waving feebly at his partner and watching petrified as he saw the strong arm of the fielder, none other than ffrench-Thomas, poised for the throw. It was too late. The throw was unerring and strong. It reached the Italian wicket-keeper first bounce and Dotto had removed the bails with Luton a clear yard out of his ground. ‘Howazzazat?’ he cried, and for once Blight-Purley, standing in the crucial umpiring position, was forced to acknowledge the justice of the appeal. His finger went up. Luton looked at the ground, muttered noisily and expletively, and marched back towards the pavilion. As he passed him Bognor said, plaintively, ‘I’m awfully sorry, old man.’ But his victim merely stabbed at the turf with his bat and said something which Bognor thought sounded suspiciously like ‘Piss off!’ He winced. After all, it wasn’t his fault. He’d told him. It had been Luton’s idea to run three, not his. It was that bloody cap that had done it. That and the flukey cover drive.