Stephen assented brightly. Alfie looked at Richard. “Not play yourself?” he asked.
“Scorer,” said Richard, blushing for no reason that he could have explained. “I’m no good at games of any sort.”
“But he keeps a beautiful neat book,” put in Stephen, not wanting his friend to go unacknowledged. The old man looked down on them from his great height, saw the small gesture of loyalty for what it was, and did it the honour of a friendly smile. Then he said an abrupt farewell, turned and strode off towards his cottage, his long, bony arms swinging vigorously by his sides. On their way back to the Crown the boys said little, each being occupied with his own thoughts.
That evening they met a number of the cricket club, who gave them the undemonstrative welcome that is the hallmark of the freemasonry of cricketers all over the world. The boys left them for a while to drink with Tom at the bar while they held their short selection meeting; and their welcome became markedly more effusive after they had extracted a brief summary of Stephen’s playing form from Richard while Stephen was paying a visit to the gents’. Just before the end of the evening Stephen broached the matter that was uppermost in his mind. “The main reason we came down,” he began, “was to see if there was any chance of fixing up a short tour round these parts at short notice.” He explained the difficulty that had arisen over John in Malton.
The local players looked interrogatively at each other. Scraps of paper were produced, and questions fired back and forth among themselves, at the boys and into mid-air. After a lot of scribbling, crossing-out and semi-coded discussion the captain of the local First XI looked up at them over his glasses and said “I think we could rustle up five games for you, if you like.” They looked at each other in triumph. “That’d be great,” said Stephen, elated, and dashed off to the bar to buy a round.
When he returned with the drinks on a tray he found them busily reducing the mass of bits of paper to a single sheet with lists of names. “We’re okay, so that’s one game you’ve got, for certain,” announced the captain, chewing his pencil. “If any of the other possibles can’t get a side up, we could put up a pretty good President’s XI, as well. That’s two certainties. I play for Brighton Brunswick occasionally, and I’m sure I can roust out a goodish side for you there. They’re good drinkers, too. Worthing’ll turn out, no sweat. That’s four. I can talk to a few people in Portsmouth…”
“I could talk to some people at Southampton Uni,” contributed another of the players. “I played for them in the UAU till the year before last.”
“Right,” murmured the captain, alternately gnawing and scribbling. “What about the duchess?” he added, glancing up at another of his team. “You know the estate manager, don’t you, Les?” The other man nodded and jotted a note in a small pocket diary. “Duchess of Norfolk,” added the captain by way of explanation. “Up at Arundel — only five minutes up the road. They might put out a side from the estate for you.”
The talk went on, with Stephen and Richard getting more and more enthusiastic, as well as slightly drunk, until Tom came hovering and asked if they wished to continue behind closed doors, the while delicately making it apparent that he would prefer to close. “Okay, Tom,” said the captain in mock annoyance, defusing it at the same time with a wry grin. “We’ll let you get to bed. Anyway, Steve, you can tell your people they’ve got a certain four fixtures more or less when they want, and probably five. That do you?”
The two thanked him and the others brightly, and they said their goodnights amid general satisfaction. “We’ve got a touring side next Tuesday,” said the captain as the cricketers were moving off gradually towards the door. “Monday, Wednesday and Friday as well, as a matter of fact. More than half our matches are in midweek,” he added in explanation. “Holiday area. Point is, we’re a bit short on Tuesday, I happen to know. Wouldn’t like to turn out for us, would you?” he went on, looking at Stephen. “Good,” he added, seeing the answer in Stephen’s face before he had opened his mouth. “I’ll bung you down. Scorer too?” he asked, glancing at Richard, who nodded and smiled. “Right,” repeated the captain, busily jotting in his diary. “Leave a phone number with Tom, eh? Case it rains, or whatever, okay? Numbers, I should have said,” he added, just a fraction too hastily, and Richard, who had had less to drink than Stephen and was a little more alert, observed a rapid sequence of glances being exchanged among the local team. Stephen, who had noticed nothing, was assuring him that they would leave a number, however, and he left it at that. Since it always takes a cricket team — or even half a cricket team — a minimum of a quarter of an hour to pass from the inside of a pub door to the outside (though a great deal less going the other way), it was almost midnight when they finally called goodnights to Tom and went rather unsteadily upstairs.
* * *
The drive back the following morning was uneventful, but they were both feeling very pleased with their day’s work. Richard occasionally felt a momentary frisson of unease when he thought about the small current he had sensed at the end of the night; but he quickly marked it as nothing more than the kind of curiosity that they were quite used to at their own club, and by the time he eased his mother’s car into its slot in the garage he had dismissed it from his mind.
The next day was Saturday, and they had an 11.30 start at their own ground. Stephen disappointingly ran himself out before he had scored, but made amends by capturing four wickets, including a tenacious opening batsman who occupied the crease in the manner of Trevor Bailey, and a ferocious hitter of the ball who replaced him. He also held a fine catch low down to his left at cover point, so he ended his day in a pleasant glow of satisfaction that was enhanced by the knowledge, which he and Richard had been hugging jealousy to themselves all day, of the news they had for Bill after the game.
The match ended in a nerve-racking draw, with the visitors scrambling byes to the slips in a desperate effort to pinch the last half a dozen runs for an improbable victory, and Elderton Park hurling caution to the winds as they tried everything possible, and quite a lot that wasn’t, to take the last wicket. In the pavilion afterwards Stephen buttonholed Bill and took him aside to an unfrequented corner of the long bar. “I’ve got some news,” he said, waving frantically to Richard to join them.
“What’s up then, Biggsy?” asked Bill, half-turning to get their glasses refilled.
“It’s the tour,” said Stephen triumphantly. “I think I’ve fixed us up with a replacement, if you’re really going to go ahead and cancel Yorkshire.”
Bill stared at him. “Replacement?” he said blankly. “You’ve fixed up… How d’you mean, you’ve fixed up a replacement?”
They told him excitedly, Richard coming to Stephen’s aid when he got carried away by his own cleverness and adding small explanatory footnotes to the confused narrative.
At length Bill thought he had unravelled the tale and made some kind of sense out of it. “Let me see if I’ve got it straight,” he said, brushing beer off his big moustache and bawling to the steward for refills. “You’ve been down to Sussex-by-the-Sea this week, stayed at a hotel where the local cricket team have their selection meetings, and fixed up five matches for us if we want them. That’s right so far, ain’t it?” They nodded.
“Okay,” Bill went on. “Well, it was a very kind thought, Steve, and I don’t say we can’t do something about it. But let me have more details. For a start, I’m curious about how you know this place. You go on holidays there, or summat?”
“No,” said Stephen, straining to keep a straight face and repress the bubbling surge of internal laughter that was seething to burst from him. “I’d never been there till the day before yesterday. But I went down to have a look at the hotel, and the rest of it just, sort of, happened.”
Bill still looked puzzled. “But why should you go down ‘just to have a look at a hotel’ in a place you’ve never been to before?” he asked.
“I own it,” said Stephen quietly.
Bill’s involuntary int
ake of breath was so vast and so rapid that he inhaled a large quantity of lager, promptly choked on it and had to be thumped on the back to get it all up out of his windpipe again before they could go on. “You — ach-wah-prrrrp — you own it?” he spluttered, scarlet in the face and gazing at Stephen through streaming eyes. “What? This hotel? What are you givin me?”
“No, honestly, he does,” put in Richard, pounding Bill on the back again as he hawked and spluttered once more.
“Graham left it to me,” said Stephen quietly, his own fit of exuberance safely under control now. Bill gradually regained his composure. The flush ebbed out of his face and his eyes stopped watering. “Now come on, lads,” he said, glancing round to see that no one was taking any special notice of them. “Just run it by me once again, so I know I’ve got it right.” Eventually, after many steadying gestures and occasional questions from Bill, they managed to explain the sudden and dramatic change in Stephen’s fortunes. When they had finished Bill gazed at him in some amazement. “So Graham suddenly became a millionaire,” he ruminated, “and then never had time to enjoy it… Poor sod. And now you’ve inherited, and you’re the rich man of the club, eh?”
“Something like that,” assented Stephen, absurdly pleased at Bill’s way of putting it.
“What’s it like in that part of the world?” went on Bill. “All old fogeys — ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ an all that, I s’pose?”
“Well, Tom — that’s the manager of the hotel — says it’s the Costa Geriatrica,” ventured Stephen.
“Aye, I can imagine,” grinned Bill. “All authoresses in tweeds lookin like Margaret Rutherford, an retired officers. Lieutenant-Commander Rottem-Soxe, RN (retired), eh?”
“Something like that,” they agreed, grinning.
“Well,” said Bill. “I don’t see any good reason why we shouldn’t give it a go. It’s a nice part of the world, and by the sound of it your boozer’s a bit of all right. You really are serious?” he added, looking a little doubtfully at Stephen. Stephen nodded and assured him eagerly that he was. “Well, okey-dokey, then,” said Bill. “I’ll talk to some of the others, and the Tour Committee, and then maybe we’ll put it up to the full club Committee. But it’s very generous of you, our kid. I mean that. Thanks.” It was an apparently perfunctory expression of gratitude, but it was all Stephen needed; and he said far more in the way he ruffled Stephen’s hair, and in the smile he gave both boys before lumbering across to some of the other seniors to consult them about the unexpected development.
Stephen and Richard wandered off and joined some of the youngsters in a lively replay of the final overs of the match. It was a couple of hours later when Bill found them playing killer on the dartboard with half the side. “Well, our kid,” he said. “Your idea seems to be pretty popular. We’re calling an extraordinary committee meeting for Monday night to discuss it. Meanwhile, you’d better call Rottem-Soxe an tell him it’s firmin up, okay, Stevie? Then he can start puttin the first few ideas in train.”
“Your wish is my command, O king,” said Stephen, and went back to the darts match feeling as happy as he had felt since Graham died.
9
Over the next few weeks the two of them spent their weekends at cricket and most of their weekdays in Sussex. Richard’s parents came back bright and faintly tanned from their holiday, and had to be taken to the Crown for a welcome-home dinner with champagne. The boys quickly made themselves popular with the younger element in the village. This was in part because the cricket club took to them whole-heartedly. Stephen made a fairly vast difference to the playing prowess of the local side. Richard scored for the club, and both of them made great efforts to avoid giving any impression of being pushy outsiders. They did their utmost not to rock any long-serving local boats or to put any local noses out of joint. Both felt their way into the local atmosphere gently, almost gingerly. Stephen made a conspicuous point of being a model player, accepting his captain’s instructions without question, and never succumbed to the temptation to make reference to the considerably grander standard of cricket to which he was accustomed at weekends.
There was a great day at Elderton Park when Bill drew the boys aside and informed them that Stephen’s name had been mentioned as a possibility for the Hertfordshire side in the Minor Counties Championship later that season. Down in Sussex the following week it was Richard who let the fact slip in conversation, in passing, almost absent-mindedly, and this did Stephen a great deal of good among the players, who crowded round him and demanded to know why he had been hiding his newly-enhanced light under a bushel, while all the time thoroughly approving the fact that he had done so.
Their popularity in the village flowed also from the fact that the Crown was the only public house, and as such featured strongly as the main social centre for the village. The fact that they used the pub as ordinary customers, treated it, its traditions, and the staff and customers alike with the greatest respect, meant much to the villagers, and the related fact that they studiously allowed, even encouraged, Tom to continue to run it as he had always run it counted for still more.
One night they were lounging in the bar, idly watching Tom cleaning up before sitting with them for their by-now customary after-hours drink with him. “I s’pose they all know we’re gay, don’t they?” said Stephen out of the blue. He spoke casually, more for something to say than anything else. They always stayed in the same room together, they were inseparable, neither of them was ever seen with a girl or heard to mention girls, generally or specifically, and in all they had become so accustomed to their relationship attracting no untoward interest that either of them would have been astonished to discover that it was the cause of any comment at all.
“Oh, yes,” said Tom absently, wrestling with a gas-bottle nozzle that had developed a fault in the course of the evening. “Most of em assumed that from the first coupla times you stayed here after the selection meeting. Always goin upstairs together and so on. Never talking about girls. Oh yes. People aren’t blind, you know.”
“But no one’s bothered about it?” said Stephen, more alertly. He had sensed, rather than heard, a note he didn’t quite like in Tom’s voice — or, at any rate, he thought he had. He raised his eyes at Richard, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod, indicating that he thought so too. He was looking faintly perturbed, and Stephen, who had a profound respect for his friend’s acuity, straightened up and began to take more interest in Tom’s reply.
In fact, Tom said nothing at all until he had persuaded the gas nozzle to behave itself. Then he straightened up; but his eyes remained firmly directed at his hands as he rubbed them briskly together to remove the grime he had gathered in his exertions with the fitting. At length he examined his hands a last time, assured himself that they were clean again, and, rather reluctantly, they thought, looked once more in their direction.
“It’s… it’s like this,” he said slowly and, they both thought, a little uncomfortably. “Amongst the youngsters, you’re all right. There’s no problem there. Sure they know about you, and they don’t care. They think, most of em at any rate, that it’s your business and no one else’s, and that what you get up to in your room at nights has nothing to do with anyone or anything else. That goes for most of em, as I say. Most of the others, the older ones, well, they may not approve, as such, but they’ll turn a blind eye rather than make a fuss about it, I think, as long as you leave things much as they are. You’ve made yourselves pleasant, in fact you’ve gone out of your way to make yourselves agreeable. You haven’t come sweeping in here making a lot of changes for the sake of the thing, as most of the older ones, at least, feared you would. It’s just…” He tailed off unhappily. “It’s just one or two of them,” he went on. “One or two that have got some sort of… of thing about… er… your sort…”
“Like who?” said Stephen, bridling.
Tom shifted awkwardly. “The Major, I suppose?” murmured Richard gently, feeling rather sorry for Tom, who had always made it
abundantly clear that he liked and accepted them completely.
“No,” said Tom quickly. “No, oddly enough, the Major’s one of your supporters. He’s seen it all before, he’s said, more than once. In the army, I imagine. No, the old Major’s on your side. He’s often put in a tactful word when… when… people have said the odd thing, you know. He’s tried to take the wind out of their sails.”
“Who, then?” demanded Stephen, a steely note creeping into his voice. Richard put a hand softly on his forearm, shaking his head slightly. “Give him a chance,” he murmured, so softly that even Stephen only barely heard the words.
“Do you really want me to say?” asked Tom, looking steadily at Stephen.
“Yes,” said Stephen, and it came out almost as a snap. “No,” said Richard softly at the same moment. Stephen rounded on him, his eyes wide in surprise to find opposition coming from such an unexpected quarter. “Don’t we?” he said, very puzzled.
“Richard’s right, if you want my opinion,” said Tom. “If I tell you — and I will, if you do, really, want me to, it’ll make for unpleasantness, without doing any good.”
“I only want to know who thinks he’s got the right to dictate to me about my private life,” rumbled Stephen. “I shan’t go hitting him on the nose or anything.”
“No, I know you won’t do anything like that,” agreed Tom. “But you wouldn’t be able to keep your feelings to yourself, Steve. I know you pretty well by this time, and you must know yourself, too. You know you’re not the kind to have that kind of information and not say anything. Next time the people concerned come into the bar, you’ll be on the attack, giving em opportunities to say something, and then you’ll tear into em, and there’ll be a thoroughly unpleasant scene, which will probably end in them stamping out and not coming back, losing us trade and making waves in the village that we can well do without…”
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