Played!

by JL Merrow

  Rob blinked several times. “Do I actually want to know?”

  Heather and Sean laughed. “In Hev’s theatre group, yeah? They’re doing Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thought you and me could go and see it.”

  “Oh. Yes, that sounds lovely.” Rob frowned at Heather. “And you’ll be playing… Helena or Hermia? I always manage to forget which is which.”

  “Hermia. She’s the one everyone starts out in love with. And I’m directing it,” Heather added proudly.

  “Excellent! Well, we shall certainly come along and support your endeavours.”

  “Long as nothing else goes wrong.” Heather nudged Con, who’d been keeping quiet through all this. “Oi, you and him getting involved better not cause any problems.”

  “We’re not involved! Told you, nothing happened. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “Sure?” Sean put in. “I’d have thought he was just your sort.”

  Con wished he’d never bloody shown Sean that picture of Mo. Or, all right, spent a good few nights at the pub going on about the bloke. “Look, can we leave it? It’s not… I don’t do casual stuff, okay?”

  “Maybe he wants more than that,” Rob suggested, which was a bloody nerve seeing as he hardly knew Con and hadn’t even met Tristan yet.

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Sure?” Heather teased.

  “Yeah, I’m sure, because he sodding well said so, all right?” Con stood up. “I’ll go help Chris with that order.” He stomped off, wishing he’d just stayed in bed instead of coming up here to be got at by his so-called mates.

  Course, when he got to the bar he found Chris had already got to the front and ordered, so he ended up sitting back down with them about two minutes later. Chris gave them all suspicious looks along with their change. “Oi, what’s with the awkward silence? You lot been talking about me, or what?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, mate,” Sean said with a smile. “So when are we gonna get you playing cricket?”

  “Cricket? Call that a sport? You spend three hours standing around a field and maybe have a ball come your way once. Telling you, mate, football’s where it’s at.”

  “Yeah? And when’s the last time you kicked a ball in anger?”

  “Kick yours for you if you like, mate…”

  The conversation stayed light and easy after that, and Con felt a lot more relaxed now it wasn’t him in the spotlight.

  After they’d eaten, Con wandered over the road to the village cricket ground with the rest of them. Not that he was really into cricket, but, well, it was a nice day and it was right there. Might as well sit out in the sun for a bit longer and cheer on Sean and Rob before heading off home to catch up on the laundry. He supposed it was the same for Chris and Heather—or did she feel she had to watch Sean doing his cricket stuff seeing as he came to her plays?

  One day, maybe, he was going to ask one of them how all that worked. But it bloody well wasn’t going to be today, with Rob and Chris there with them.

  “Right—wish us luck,” Sean said, looking over at the pavilion where the visiting team were limbering up. “It’s Bishops Langley first team today. League leaders, and they gave us a right thrashing last time.”

  “Knock ’em dead,” Chris told him.

  “Yeah, break a leg stump,” Heather said. “What? I know my cricketing terms.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, Hevs.”

  Rob gave a wave that was sort of half a salute, and Sean and him sauntered over to join their team. They looked good together—both tall and lean, with an easy stride. Con would’ve looked like a bloody gorilla lumbering along beside them.

  Heather tugged on his arm. “Come on, sit down. It’ll make it less obvious when you ogle the players.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Nothing wrong with a good ogle, I always say.”

  “Yeah?” Chris put in. “’Cos there’s a bird over there with a fantastic pair of—”

  He broke off, laughing, as she slapped him.

  Con reckoned he was going to be making his excuses sooner rather than later, if they were going to be all over each other all the time. He let his gaze wander around the field. There weren’t a lot of spectators—there never were—but he could see a fair few families with picnics scattered around. Mums bringing the kiddies up to support dad and get a bit of fresh air at the same time, he supposed.

  The other side of the pitch there was a bloke sitting on his own. Con squinted, trying to make him out. Was that…?

  “That’s Tristan,” Heather said in surprise. She stood up and waved energetically. “Hey, Tristan! Come and join us!”

  Oh, bloody hell. “What did you do that for?” Con demanded. The figure over the other side had stilled. He’d definitely seen them.

  “What? We can’t leave the poor bloke all on his own. Only just moved here, hasn’t he? Probably hasn’t got any mates apart from us. What’s your problem?”

  “You know what the problem is!”

  She carried on waving. “He asked if you fancied a shag, and you turned him down, that’s what you said. Although God knows why. I mean, he’s a bit up himself, but he’s all right really. But anyway, so what? And we want to keep him sweet. So if he’s okay with coming over here, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be.”

  Con’s stomach flipped over as Tristan got to his feet.

  Chapter Nine

  The Game’s Afoot

  Tristan’s Sunday morning did not have an auspicious start.

  Partly because he’d spent a wretched night in fitful sleep filled with unhappy dreams of large, well-muscled handymen, but mostly because when he finally set one weary foot out of bed, it landed squarely on half a mouse.

  Said rodent revenant was soft and damp, and collapsed under his bare toes with a sickening sort of soggy crunch. Tristan yelped, fell back on top of the duvet and stared in horror at his foot, now liberally smeared with thick, dark blood. He swallowed bile and dared a glance at the floor. Oh God. The sad little remains still clearly showed that the creature had been neatly bisected down the middle, leaving Tristan with its rear end.

  Which rather begged two questions. Firstly, was this some sick hazing prank by his fellow Sham-Drams, punning on the name of his character? And secondly, and rather more pressingly, where the bloody hell was the other half?

  Thirdly—and Tristan felt very strongly that, in the circumstances, he could be forgiven for not having had the presence of mind to think of this one first—just who or what had been in his bedroom while he was sleeping to leave the wretched thing there? Whilst Tristan had always liked to think of his bedroom as having something of an open door policy, anyone who made a habit of leaving fractional corpses behind them was very much off the guest list.

  Had he offended any small-time mobsters, perhaps? Not able to stretch to a racehorse’s head, they’d left him instead a mouse’s arse?

  No, no, that was getting ridiculous. And oh God, he needed to get his foot clean right now. Scanning the floor feverishly for any further rodent casualties, Tristan set his unscathed foot out of bed and began to hop towards the stairs. Nanna Geary’s house had been built in the halcyon days of outside privies and tin tubs by the fire, and there was a long, long trail a-winding down the stairs and through the kitchen to the bathroom which had been tacked on as an afterthought several decades later.

  Tristan was amazed he managed to reach the ground floor without breaking his neck. He had a narrow squeak (hah!) in the kitchen, when a sudden noise startled him mid-hop. Turning just in time to see the cat flap closing behind a dark shadow he was almost certain was a black furry tail, Tristan cursed as his foot slipped on a patch of grease. His stomach lurching, he made a grab for the nearest means of support. This, unfortunately, was Nanna Geary’s Royal Wedding tea towel, hanging on a hook on the wall.

  There was a loud ripping sound�
��and then the hook decided to curtail the lèse-majesté by detaching itself from the wall, taking with it a fair chunk of plaster. Dust rained down on Tristan as he landed on his arse on the tiled kitchen floor a lot harder than was comfortable.

  “Bloody, buggering hell.” He was too dispirited to even come up with a decent bit of profanity. It didn’t help that seeing the cat flap reminded him of Con, who would not, now, be coming round to nail it shut for him or for anything else, for that matter.

  Maybe Tristan should just cut his losses and spend the summer in New York, frying eggs on the sidewalk or getting mugged in Central Park or whatever one did for amusement over there. Village life clearly wasn’t working out for him. He took a deep breath. “No. No, this will not do. You are a Goldsmith; comport yourself accordingly. You will rise above minor setbacks, and emerge victorious at last.”

  Hmm. Not bad, as pep-talks went, but the delivery could have been better. Tristan repeated his words several times, with varying emphasis and inflection, and then tacked on a bit of Henry V just for the hell of it. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, ONCE MORE; or close the wall up with our Shamwell dead,” he roared into the kitchen, flinging the arm still holding the tea towel out dramatically.

  That was more like it. He stood to take a bow—and almost fell over again on meeting the wide-eyed stare of a total stranger, goggling at him through the glass in the kitchen door.

  It was at this point that Tristan started to seriously wonder if he should reconsider his habit of sleeping nude. His inner self wanted to curl up into a tiny ball and rock itself gently. Luckily his outer self was made of sterner stuff, and merely fixed the man with a steely gaze. “Can I help you?” he demanded icily.

  “Er… I can come back,” the man said, his voice depressingly audible through the door. “Looks like you’re busy.”

  “No, no, whatever it is, let’s get this over with,” Tristan said, hopping to the door and holding the shreds of his dignity together with the shreds of the tea towel.

  The man backed off. He was middle-aged, casually dressed, and looked vaguely familiar, now Tristan thought about it. Although possibly his expression had been a shade less alarmed last time Tristan had seen him.

  “No, it’s all right. Some other time.”

  He turned and ran for the hills. Or, to be strictly accurate, vaulted over the low wall to the house next door, which was, Tristan now recalled, where he lived. It was the neighbour Con had indicated as having taken in bloody mouse-murdering Meggie the Second. Tristan sighed, and sank down to the floor again, wincing as his bruised behind hit the tiles.

  And then jumped back up so quickly he nearly strained something, when that bloody frog hopped out from under the fridge and gave a loud croak from not six inches away.

  Things didn’t much improve after that. After the wretched, messy business of cleaning dead mouse from between his toes, Tristan had to go back upstairs and start the wretched, messy business of cleaning considerably more dead mouse from Nanna Geary’s bedroom carpet.

  After several gallons of water enriched with an expensive amount of Tristan’s shampoo—because surely carpet shampoo couldn’t be that different from hair shampoo?—only a sad little sandalwood-scented stain remained to reproach Tristan for his abysmal caretaking skills. Damn it. Less than a week in residence, and he’d already allowed infestation and caused wholesale destruction. There’d be nothing of the place left by October. If Nanna Geary were ever to receive the national recognition she so richly deserved, they’d have to mount the blue plaque on a bloody crater.

  God, he needed to get out of the house. If only to preserve it awhile longer.

  Nanna Geary had mentioned something about village cricket on Sunday afternoons, Tristan was sure. And he’d driven past the grounds, unmistakable with the low pavilion and the big, white sight screen that remained bafflingly free of graffiti, despite the lack of anti-vandal fencing around the place. It was in a pleasant looking spot up the hill at the village end of the common, and would be idyllic in today’s warm sunshine. Yes, a spot of cricket, that would be the ticket.

  Wondering whimsically whether he could manage to spend an entire day thinking in rhyming couplets like a character in a play by a modern-day Molière, Tristan went to get dressed. Hmm. What did one wear to a village cricket match? Linen trousers, he decided—dark, so as not to show grass stains—and a casual shirt. Upon reflection, he rolled up the sleeves to display his forearms, which were well on the way to being respectably tanned. There, that would do. Nicely informal, but with a nod to the seriousness of the occasion.

  Cricketers, Tristan had learned at both school and college, were wont to take their sport very seriously indeed. Anyone caught reciting the old poem about “flannelled fools at the wicket” was liable to receive very short shrift.

  Tristan had never had much interest in or, if he was honest, aptitude for participating in team sports, but he could appreciate it in others. He therefore parked the BMW up at the cricket ground with the anticipation of a pleasant, relaxing afternoon watching vaguely attractive men do vaguely athletic things. Fortunately there was a good-sized car park with plenty of room—the BMW was an unwieldy beast, and would certainly not have been his first choice of conveyance or even second or third, but Father had refused point blank to lend him the Lamborghini for the summer. And even Tristan would be forced to admit it wouldn’t have been particularly practical for clearing Nanna Geary’s house. But damn it, it would have been a lot more fun to drive.

  It wasn’t until he’d settled himself in a nice, shady spot on the leg side of the pitch that things started to go wrong.

  Bowing with bad grace to the inevitable, Tristan walked slowly around the cricket pitch to where Heather appeared to be doing a one-woman impersonation of an American cheerleading squad. Next to, he couldn’t help but notice, a very disgruntled looking Con. And Flute, of course—what was his real name? Chris, that was it.

  He felt exceedingly hard done by. Of all the people he’d have expected to bump into at a village cricket match, Con was way down on the list, rubbing spectral shoulders with Nanna Geary’s ghost. If anyone seemed likely to be more a fan of the muddied oafs at the goal than of their flannelled counterparts at the wicket, it was Con. He’d noticed him arrive, of course. The day he didn’t notice Con within five hundred yards of him would be the day he signed up for a pair of dark glasses and a long white stick. Con towered over the diminutive Heather like an oil tanker over the Cutty Sark, with Chris some kind of merchant vessel laden with containers chugging along to starboard. Tristan had hoped they either wouldn’t notice his sad, lonely presence, or would at least politely ignore him.

  Being alone and friendless in an unkind world, he could handle. Being seen and pitied, however, was more than he could bear.

  All he could do was keep the broiling mass of shock and humiliation from showing on his face. He beamed at them all. “I see you share my taste for a spot of organised loafing. Lovely day for it, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, gorgeous, innit,” Heather said. “Sit down, Rob’s about to go in to bowl.”

  Tristan sat, carefully choosing the patch of grass next to Con to show beyond a shadow of doubt that he was not upset by what had passed between them the previous evening. “Rob?” he asked politely, peering at the pitch. A tall, slender, attractive man in gleaming whites was striding out towards the wicket, polishing the ball on his trouser leg.

  Tristan had always wondered why they did that. Perhaps they just liked the way it left reddish streaks in the vicinity of their crotch.

  “He’s Sean’s bloke,” Heather told him before giving a piercing whistle. The bowler took off his cap and swept it with a flourish in her direction.

  There were good-natured cries of “Stop eyeing up the ladies” and “Get on with it!”

  “Sean?”

  “He’s the ginge,” she supplied helpfully, jerking her hea
d towards a fielder in mid off. Chris nudged her in the ribs and she yelped. “Oi!”

  “In’t that ginge-ist or something?” Chris teased.

  “So how would you describe him? The bloke in cricket gear standing on the field with all the other blokes in cricket gear? Very bloody helpful I don’t think.” Heather rolled her eyes, then broke into giggling as Chris tickled her.

  Tristan wasn’t sorry to have his attention distracted from their somewhat embarrassing interplay when, for the first time, Con spoke. “He’s the pest control bloke, remember?” He stared resolutely at the cricket pitch, upon which absolutely nothing had yet happened.

  Tristan blinked. “Ah, yes. The one who doesn’t do frogs. I now have mice as well. Does he deal with them?”

  Con turned to look at Tristan, which was a definite improvement. “Mice?”

  “Yes. Small, furry, traditional liking for cheese?”

  “I know what a bloody mouse is, all right? I’m not that bloody thick.” Con coloured.

  Tristan was hurt. He hadn’t meant anything by his comment. He was cheered to see Heather turn a startled look on Con, before looking back to the match with great deliberation. “Yes, well, I found one in my house this morning. Well, rounding up, I did. It would be more exact to say I found half a mouse in my house this morning. The rear half.”

  Con gave him a long look. “Not sure Sean can help you there,” he said at last. “I mean, I’m not an expert, but I reckon he’d have trouble getting it to take the bait.”

  Tristan’s heart, inexplicably, lightened. “You think so?” He allowed the merest suspicion of a pout to shape his lips.

  “Yeah, ’fraid so. Course, if it’d been the front half…” Con wasn’t exactly smiling now, but there was definitely less disgruntlement in his expression. Perhaps even a modicum of gruntlement.

  Tristan felt a wholly unwonted urge to punch the air. “I’m still looking forward to finding the front half,” he said, his tone drier than Nanna Geary’s sherry. “Actually,” he added, the weather seeming clement for a spot of hay-making, “I could do with your professional services. There was, ah, some damage caused.”