From that point on he farmed the bowling assiduously. Wickets fell, but he remained, and the longer he stayed the fiercer his hitting became. He stopped showing the county bowler even a semblance of respect, and treated the assortment of stock bowlers brought on at the other end with lordly contempt. When twenty overs had been bowled the score stood at a miserable 48-2, with Stephen on 13, most of them grubbed. After thirty overs he and his partner had added eighty-six, of which Stephen had taken seventy-nine. After 31 he was on 99. The first ball of the 32nd over he flicked disdainfully off his legs through mid-wicket for four, and thus achieved his first century, for the club or for anyone. The entire fielding side applauded. In the pavilion his team-mates went to the lengths of putting down the cans they had thoughtfully brought from the Crown in order to give him a roaring ovation that lasted a full minute. In the scorebox, Richard wept.
After this, it was almost over. Having reached his hundred in a kind of trance of deadly concentration, he now stepped up both his scoring rate and the risks he was willing to take; and when he was finally bowled playing over the top of a long-hop from sheer tiredness, for 168, his side needed under a hundred to win. They got them without difficulty, the fielders being by now so leadenfooted from the leather-hunting they had endured that the run-rate if anything actually increased after Stephen’s departure. As for Stephen himself, when he trailed into the enclosure, bone-weary but in a state of elation unlike anything he had known, Bill picked him clean off the ground, swung him round in a crushing bear-hug and planted a huge kiss on each cheek, Russian style, before charging off to find him a can of beer. The others pounded him on the back until his shoulders ached fiercely. Paddington Bear threatened to put bromide in his beer if he intended to try to steal his reputation in such cavalier fashion. And after sinking his first can without a pause, Stephen allowed someone to press another into his hand, then slipped away to the scorebox to dry Richard’s eyes and be alone with his lover and his triumph, on the most glorious, joyful day of his life.
* * *
Back in the Crown a couple of hours later the celebrations were well advanced when a member of the President’s XI, who had been in conversation for some time at the bar with Tom, threaded his way through the press and asked Richard if he might have a word somewhere quieter. Richard was a little surprised, wondering what the man could want to say to him in private, but he was quite glad to escape from the hubbub and the smoke for a few moments, so he followed the man outside to the car park.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I’m a reporter,” said the other man. “For the local paper in Brighton. I’ve been talking to the chap behind the bar, and he’s told me a very surprising thing.”
“Oh?” said Richard suspiciously. “What was that, then?”
“Don’t get worried,” said the journalist. “It’s a story I think would be of interest locally. He said this pub’s actually owned by the boy who got the hundred today. He also said that he’s only nineteen or twenty. I think it would make a very interesting story locally. Maybe we could get up some sort of advertising feature to accompany it. But there’s no need for that if he’d rather not. The story’s interesting enough in its own right.”
Richard stood in silence for a moment, thinking rapidly. “Why are you speaking to me?” he asked. “I’m not his keeper, you know.”
“No,” said the journalist, watching him closely. “But I thought I’d have a quiet word with you first, to see how you thought he might react to a suggestion. I understand you’re a… very good friend of his.”
“Well,” said Richard slowly, mentally cursing Tom for a loquacious ass, and wondering how best to squash the man without merely arousing his interest further. “You can ask him, I suppose. But I don’t think he’ll be very interested in publicity. I’d better get back,” he added, and turned to head back inside. The reporter moved quickly, however, and caught him by the arm. “If you’re worried about the gay aspect of it, you’ve no need to,” he said. Richard swung round on him, his eyes gleaming. “Don’t lose your wool,” urged the reporter quietly. “I’m gay myself, and I know he wouldn’t want to make a splash about that round these parts. But I would like to do a staightforward story about his owning the pub, how he came to acquire such a place at his age. That sort of thing.”
“As I said,” muttered Richard, very angry indeed, “you’ll have to ask him yourself. But I don’t think he’ll want a story.” He
turned away again, and this time went quickly back into the bar before the man could ask him anything further. The reporter, however, stood for some moments after he had disappeared, considering.
Inside Richard was fighting his way through a densely packed circle of players, in the middle of which Stephen, already slightly tipsy, was animatedly discussing the weaknesses of the current England Test squad. At last he managed to seize Stephen’s elbow and signal frantically to him to come away for a moment. Stephen, mistaking his motives, smiled to himself and followed him through the door into the accommodation part of the hotel, still clutching his pint glass.
Richard breathed a deep gasp of relief when they got into their room. He sat down heavily on one of the beds and rapidly repeated his short conversation with the journalist. Stephen looked thoughtfully at him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t see what harm it can do, do you? Be good for the pub, anyway, wouldn’t it? And I don’t see how we can stop him writing his article if he wants to, can we?”
“I don’t like it,” said Richard, not quite knowing why his hackles were up as they were. “But I do know that that bloody idiot Tom’s blabbed about us — being gay, I mean. This reporter said he was gay himself, so he wasn’t planning to make anything of that side of it. But I don’t like getting mixed up with newspapers. Once they get hold of something they never let it go, and there’s no end of grief.”
“Well,” said Stephen mildly, after thinking about it, “I can’t very well refuse to talk to him. That’ll only make him more curious. I’ll talk to him if he really wants to, and try to make it so boring that he won’t think it’s worth reporting in the first place. If he insists, well, I’ll tell him the bare minimum. Thanks for letting me know,” he finished, putting an arm round Richard and kissing him fondly. Now come down and have a drink, my sweet.” Richard, with deep misgivings, had little alternative, and went.
* * *
The last match of the tour was, almost inevitably, something of an anticlimax. Elderton Park made it five straight wins for the week, despatching Bognor Regis in convincing style. Bill and his men departed in the small hours of Saturday morning to get ready for their league match later the same day, feeling well satisfied with their impromptu substitute tour. Stephen and Richard went with them, in bubbling high spirits which effectively neutralised their hangovers.
* * *
The story appeared in the following weekend’s edition of the local paper. It was bland enough, and the reporter had been conscientious enough to follow fairly closely what Stephen had told him. Stephen himself was very pleased to find, when Tom showed them the copy of the paper he had saved for them, that almost as much of its space was given over to the cricket week, and in particular to his century and a half. “Well, there’s no harm in that, is there?” he said to Richard, reading it again in their room. “I hope not,” muttered Richard, meaning it, but not yet convinced.
Stephen looked up from the paper and studied his friend closely. What he saw was enough to make him forget his absorption in the account of his epic innings, get up and lope over to Richard where he sat miserably tracing patterns with a forefinger on the counterpane of the other bed. “What’s up?” he asked.
For a long time Richard did not answer, sitting unhappily with his head hung low, staring at the carpet a yard in front of his feet. When he did finally reply it was in a low, hesitant voice. “I… I don’t know,” he faltered. “It’s just that… oh, I don’t know. It’s just that there’s something… something seems dishones
t about it, that’s all.”
Stephen stared at him. Then he moved a little closer, and put an arm round Richard’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, love,” he said gently, “but I don’t get. Who’s been dishonest, and how? What about? It’s all true, isn’t it? He talks about my becoming the owner of the pub, and about the cricket match. Well, what in the world’s wrong with that?”
Richard raised a troubled face to him, and Stephen was astonished to see that it was streaked with tears, and that his eyes were wet. “Richard,” he said urgently. “Richard,” he repeated, shaking him gently. “For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s biting you?”
Richard sat for a further long pause, collecting his thoughts, and Stephen had the sense to let him do so in silence. “I said it was dishonest,” said Richard at length. “Not untrue. Dishonest. It doesn’t say how you came to inherit the place from Graham, does it, for starters? There’s no mention of Graham at all, not by name, anyway. That reporter took it on himself to assume that you wouldn’t want publicity for the fact that you inherited it from a lover — a gay lover — and you let him go on assuming it. He assumed that you — or rather we — wouldn’t want it talked about that we’re gay, and you let him go right on assuming that, too, didn’t you?”
Stephen gazed at him in mingled irritation and surprise. “Well, bugger me, we didn’t want that publicised, did we?” he said.
“Why not?” snapped Richard. “It’s the most newsworthy part of the whole story, isn’t it? He’s a professional newspaperman, and he’s fallen down on his job, and he must know he has. You encouraged him to do so.”
“But… but… Christ, Rich, you said yourself, you didn’t want the bloody story to appear at all,” said Stephen. His voice rose to a squawk of baffled frustration at his inability to follow his friend’s argument.
“No,” said Richard, “I didn’t. I don’t want publicity from newspapers, ever. Not about anything. If I went over Niagara Falls on a tea-tray I wouldn’t want the newspapers prying into it. If I won the fucking Nobel Peace Prize I wouldn’t. But if they did, I wouldn’t want them leaving half the bloody story out of it, just in case it upset a few reactionaries in a piddling Sussex village who still think it’s the middle of the seventeenth century, and that people like us are some kind of perverts, or ‘unnatural’, or something.” He flung Stephen’s arm off his shoulders and threw himself facedown onto the pillow.
Stephen sat staring at him for a long time, with a mixture of bewilderment, confusion, hurt feelings and plain incomprehension making changing patterns in his eyes. When he spoke his voice was very gentle. “I’m sorry, old chap,” he murmured. “I’d never realised you, er, felt so strongly about things. I mean, I’d never thought of you as a… as being militant like this. About being gay, I mean. Can you try and be a bit more specific? About what you really wanted, I mean?”
Richard sat up, glaring at him angrily. “I didn’t want anything in particular,” he said snappishly. “I didn’t want that shit-mongering reporter poking his long nose into our affairs at all. But if he had to have his pound of flesh out of us, I’d have rather he had it blood and all. He’s gay himself, he told us so. Yet he was the one who suggested that we should carefully suppress any mention of our being gay, and he did that to avoid adverse criticism of us from the people here. In other words, he was willing to go along with the hypocrisy and deceit that this report amounts to. Well, that’s his affair. If he chooses to go uncle tomming to heterosexist, reactionary bastards, that’s his problem, and I hope he chokes on it. But I’m damned if I see why we should be trapped into the same miserable hole-and-corner attitudes. Jesus,” he spat, his face creased in distaste, “he did every bloody thing bar inventing girlfriends for us!”
Stephen sat and thought about it. “Hmmm. Yes,” he mused. “I suppose I see what you mean. But surely,” he went on, rallying, “surely it’s not that important, is it? Aren’t you making a bit of song and a dance about it? I mean, this” — he picked up the folded newspaper and brandished it under Richard’s nose — “this’ll all be forgotten in two days from now. Anyway, it’s more about the cricket than about us — or rather, me.” A thought occurred to him. Initially he thrust it from him in revulsion, like something unclean, loathing himself for being able to conceive of something so unworthy. But it kept on creeping round his defences, insidiously demanding to be made flesh by articulation, and at length he couldn’t help himself. “You’re not… I suppose this is nothing to do with the fact that you don’t get a mention, is it, Richard? I mean, I would have liked him to have given us equal coverage, treat us as joint-owners, cos that’s what we are. But…”
Richard sat up rigidly, staring at him in astonishment. A steely gleam came into his eyes, and he flushed angrily. “You can bloody well take that back, Stephen Hill,” he snapped furiously, “or I’ll walk out of here and not come back.”
“Richard, Richard,” gasped Stephen, deeply distressed. “For Jesus Christ’s sake, be reasonable. Come down off that fiery pillar. I only meant…” He stopped, wondering exactly what he had meant. “I’m sorry, Rich,” he said softly after an interval. “I do take it back. It was wrong, and I knew it even before I said it. Only… only, I couldn’t work out what it was that you were so angry about…”
Richard scrutinised his face long and hard, looking for evasion. He saw nothing but anguished, puzzled concern, and after a moment his face softened. “Well, I’m sorry too,” he said eventually. “I didn’t mean to get so steamed up. You’re right, I suppose. It will all be forgotten in a day or so. I just don’t like seeing someone I love, and respect, and… and admire, sailing under false colours. That’s you — but it’s me too, by implication. I… I suppose I felt… oh, I don’t know what I felt. I suppose I just felt that you’d let yourself get manoeuvred into a false position by that bloody man, and drawn me into it with you.” The angry gleam died down in his eyes, and the bright red flush ebbed out of his face gradually. “Anyway,” he conceded, “it’s probably all a storm in a teacup. I’m just making a fuss about nothing. Must be my period coming or something,” he added, and sketched a rather fragile, damp edition of his usual brilliant smile. Stephen’s mind performed small somersaults of relief; but a calm, remote part of it still continued to worry away at the problem. He still had no real idea of what his friend had been so upset about. For the present, however, he was glad enough to see that the storm had blown itself out, and to accept the fact at face value. He gave Richard his brightest grin, swung his legs up onto the bed and pulled Richard gently down beside him.
10
It was a quiet Wednesday evening. Stephen and Richard had turned up to play for the village against one of the many touring sides who made up more than half the club’s fixture list. The game had hardly got under way when it had been washed out beyond hope of salvation by a summer downpour which appeared from nowhere and left the entire ground first submerged and then, as the water soaked into the parched turf, blanketed with enormous hailstones the size of marbles. The players had waited about for an hour in the hope of salvaging something from the wreckage of their game, but the first cloudburst was followed by a series of short, torrential showers, and they had given up. By three o’clock they had had a miserable tea and trooped dismally down to the Crown, where they were dotted about in groups making the subdued, grimly cheerful conversation common to people trying to make believe that beer-drinking is an adequate substitute for a ruined cricket match.
Richard was ensconced with the Elderton Park scorebook and a calculator, behind an almost palpable barrier of solitary concentration, wrestling to get the seasonal batting and bowling averages up to date. Stephen was chatting in a corner to Major Sealey, a small, soft-spoken man with an upright bearing, a fine head of white hair and a military moustache, and keen, intelligent eyes undimmed by his seventy-odd years. Rather to the boys’ surprise he had been one of the older regulars at the inn who had been notably unworried when their relationship had become known; indeed, as Tom had ment
ioned, he had from time to time made counter balancing comments, soothing or acid as the mood took him, when Gibson the dentist and his cronies had been particularly unpleasant on the subject. In marked contrast, the Major had formed rather a soft spot for Stephen. Richard, whose eyes were very sharp, had more than once observed him watching Stephen with a measuring eye, and had speculated whether he was seeing him as the son he had never had — the Major was a widower, Tom had informed them, and childless — or as a bright young officer in his regiment. At all events, he was often to be seen, standing ramrod-straight, chatting to Stephen; and Stephen, who with all his faults was a naturally well-mannered and gracious boy, and responded very quickly to kindness, treated the old man with conspicuous and unaffected respect, like a favourite and indulgent grandfather.
“Would you mind if I asked you something, Major?” Stephen said on this occasion.
“Not at all, my boy,” said the Major, who never abbreviated names whether their owners liked it or not and tended to an old-fashioned “my boy” with anyone under the age of forty-five.
“Well,” said Stephen, “I hope it isn’t rude of me to ask, but why do some people keep their military ranks and others not? I mean, why are you still Major Sealey? I know sev… well, a couple of other people who were in the army, and they’re just plain Misters. I’m only asking because I’m curious,” he added disarmingly, realising a little belatedly how it might have sounded. “I mean, I wasn’t being…”
“Sarcastic,” supplied the Major for him, putting him out of his misery. “No, I know you weren’t. As to the answer, well, I don’t really know. I think it’s mostly a matter of habit. And of personal preference, I imagine. The army was my life, you know, for a very long time. When I retired I was so used to being Major Sealey that it seemed natural to carry on. People seemed happy to call me ‘Major’, and… there you have it. I imagine others, perhaps less happy than I was in the service, dropped their ranks and were glad to.
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