In the corresponding match in the previous year, which had been played at St Catherine’s, they had failed to come off. Roger had been clean bowled in the first over by the one unplayable ball of the match and Billy, who followed his twin in most things, had been out five runs later. Now, with another twelve months of experience behind them, thought Nigel, who was umpiring at one end, they might see something rather different. At this point the larger, and more aggressive of the St Catherine’s openers edged a ball to Sacher who caught it competently. As the batsman walked towards the pavilion, Nigel caught sight of a car turning in at the gate at the bottom of the ground. He wondered who it could be. Cars were normally parked in the yard behind the school. They were discouraged from coming on to the field.
He saw Mr Fairfax lever himself out of his deck-chair and walk to meet the intruder. The car, which was a big Daimler, circled slowly and came to rest alongside the pavilion. Evidently a privileged parent. Mr Fairfax was shaking him warmly by the hand.
As the fielders crossed over, Sacher said, ‘Just like my father to drive slap onto the ground.’
‘Is that really your father?’ said Nigel.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Sacher. ‘And I bet those two chaps with him are goons.’
‘A little more to your right for middle and leg,’ said Nigel. ‘Six balls to come. Play.’
The new batsman hit a soft catch back to McMurtrie, and departed for the pavilion, looking sheepish.
‘We seem to be doing a bit better this year,’ said Mr Fairfax to Ben Sacher. ‘That was a very nice catch Jared held. Do you know Colonel Brabazon, our Chairman?’
‘We haven’t met,’ said Sacher. ‘I’m glad to have the opportunity.’ He was a small man, but undeniably impressive. The brown hair had streaks of grey in it and there were deep lines running down on either side of his mouth to the corners of his chin, but these were the only signs of worry or strain in a face of remarkable serenity and power.
‘Good of you to find time to pay us a visit,’ said Mr Fairfax. He glanced for a moment at the young man who was standing a yard behind Sacher and wondered if he was going to be included in the introduction. Apparently not. The other young man had got back into the car and was sitting in the passenger seat, with the windows rolled down.
‘It’s a pleasure to get out of London,’ said Sacher, ‘and a double pleasure to come to a place like this, in weather like this.’
He looked round the wide field of smooth-shaved grass, framed by lines of two-hundred-year-old elm and beech; at the white-clad marionettes performing in the middle; at the group of little boys in bright blazers lounging on rugs and watching the game; at a solitary horse poking his head over the dry-stone wall from the next field, watching the boys. A lazy enjoyable ritual, which meant nothing and proved nothing. What was at the back of it? A refusal to look facts in the face, or a refusal to be frightened by them? Complacency or common sense? Compared with his own arid, vital country, where boys were labourers at fourteen and soldiers at sixteen, this was an absurdity. Had he been wrong in letting Jared have any part of it?
A burst of clapping announced that some important event had taken place.
‘That’s another wicket down,’ said Mr Fairfax with satisfaction. ‘Their second opener gone. Eighty for five. At this rate we’ll have them all out by tea, and with any luck for not much more than a hundred. Better than last year. They declared at 180 for 5 and had us out for 70.’
‘A major catastrophe,’ agreed Ben Sacher gravely.
The young man said something. Sacher swung round to look and then said to Mr Fairfax, ‘Did anyone know that I was intending to come down here this afternoon?’
‘It was a surprise for all of us.’
‘Then what are the press doing here?’
‘The press?’
‘That man with a camera.’
‘Where? Oh, that’s all right. That’s not the press. That’s one of our staff. I’ll introduce him.’
Mr Diplock shambled up, watched suspiciously by the young man, and shook hands with Sacher, who said, ‘That’s a fine camera you have. You take a lot of photographs?’
‘It’s a Swiss Hassalblatt. I’ve had some excellent pictures with it.’
Sacher thought for a moment, and said, ‘Yes. I have seen one of them. Jared brought it home. It was a picture of him. He seemed to be puzzling over something. He had no idea that he was being photographed, I think.’
‘Actually,’ said Mr Diplock, ‘he was trying to digest the binomial theory.’
Sacher smiled suddenly, a smile which lit his face from the inside. He said, ‘It certainly looked as if he was trying to digest something. I thought it was a doughnut that had gone down the wrong way.’
‘Come and meet some of the parents,’ said Mr Fairfax.
‘So you had the police in too,’ said Mrs Paxton. ‘I’d no idea you had a place in this area. I imagined you lived in London.’
‘We do,’ said Sonia Warlock. ‘We took this house for the summer. Robin’s in two of the four plays at the Chichester Festival this year.’
‘Of course. I’d forgotten.’
‘It was a sergeant and another man. They were very polite, but goodness, were they thorough.’
‘So they were with us. They looked absolutely everywhere. No thank you. I don’t think I could manage another. They’re quite delicious.’
A small, stout man, who turned out to be Mr Gedge, said, ‘What beats me is how they know what to look for.’
‘My husband says it’s the scientists,’ said Mrs Paxton. ‘They’ve got wonderful machines. Give them a fragment of metal or a flake of paint and they can reconstruct the whole car.’
The marquee was bulging at the seams. At one end Lucy presided behind a line of trestle tables with urns of hot brown water masquerading as tea. The St Catherine’s eleven had been shepherded into one corner where the master in charge, a young clergyman, was keeping a strict eye on them. Though it was not clear, as Nigel remarked to Mr Diplock, whether he was doing it to prevent them from being contaminated by Protestant doctrine, or lured into over-eating.
Ben Sacher, accompanied now by both young men, was holding court in one corner. The other guests, as tends to happen when a real celebrity is present, were divided between those who wanted to be seen talking to him, and those who were determined not to be impressed and kept as far away as possible.
The boys were scurrying round with plates of cakes and sandwiches and bowls of strawberries, smiling shyly and eating more than anyone would have thought possible.
Two of the steadiest eaters were Roger and Bill Warlock.
‘If you eat one more sandwich,’ said McMurtrie, ‘You won’t be able to stand up straight. Let alone bat.’
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ said Roger. ‘Dad always says, eat as much as you like before you go in to bat, but don’t drink anything.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘He was playing for the Taverners last Summer. It was a match against the Middlesex Club and ground. They’re jolly hot stuff, and he didn’t expect to be in for more than a couple of overs. He’d been putting back pints and pints of beer. Actually he was in rather good form. He was batting for an hour and a half. The last half-hour was absolute agony.’
‘What did he do?’
‘In the end, he couldn’t stand it any longer. There was only one thing to do.’
‘You don’t mean to say–’
‘He hit his own wicket.’
Billy said, ‘See if you can get us another lot of strawberries. Young Cracknell has got a trayful of them.’
‘If you don’t catch him quickly,’ said Roger, ‘there won’t be any left. He’s had three lots himself already. Greedy little beast.’
The amount they had eaten at tea did not seem to have affected the batting ability of the Warlock twins. The St Catherine’s opener was fast for a schoolboy and bowled to an intimidating assembly of two slips, a gully and a third man. Since the first four ba
lls of the over were shortish and on the off-side, his plan was evidently to bowl for catches.
Roger made no attempt to play any of them.
This disconcerted the bowler. The fifth ball was straight and to a good length and Roger blocked it. The last ball of the over was straight but short and he smacked it round through the empty leg-side field for an easy four. Billy treated the slow bowler at the other end with a similar mixture of caution and contempt. Nigel breathed a sigh of relief and settled back on his heels to watch them knock off the hundred and twenty runs which were needed for victory.
At thirty they were getting into their stride. At forty the St Catherine’s captain had a word with the master who was umpiring at one end, and two new bowlers were brought on. The result of this was to increase the rate of the scoring.
‘I used to grudge all the time they spent away from home,’ said Sonia Warlock. ‘But it aimost seems worth it, doesn’t it?’
‘Splendid little batsmen,’ said Colonel Brabazon.
The boys who had not qualified for tea in the marquee were now trooping back on to the field. Commander Gaze, who was master on duty, came with them. He said to Mr Diplock, ‘Have you got any idea where Manifold is? I wanted him to stand in for me for half an hour.’
‘Haven’t seen him all afternoon,’ said Mr Diplock. He was busy with one of his cameras which was fixed up on a tripod. He was adjusting the telescopic lens. He said, ‘If that fat oaf, who thinks he’s fielding at point, would move half a step to the right, I could get just the picture I want.’
‘If he doesn’t move back a bit,’ said the Commander, ‘Roger will decapitate him. He really is clouting them, isn’t he?’
At this moment Roger executed a ringing square cut, the boy at point jumped back, and Mr Diplock’s camera clicked.
‘Eighty up,’ said Mr Fairfax. ‘I do believe we shall do it.’
‘Aren’t you going to bat at all?’ said Ben Sacher to his son.
‘Not if I don’t have to,’ said Jared. ‘I’d much rather watch Roger and Billy. If they’ll put the hundred up, I reckon the rest of us could manage the twenty.’
The score was two short of the hundred when Roger skied a ball over the bowler’s head. The St Catherine’s captain, standing almost on the boundary, caught it and Roger returned to the pavilion, removing his cap politely in acknowledgement of the applause.
Two minutes and two runs later his twin had joined him.
‘It looks as if I shall have to get my pads on after all,’ said Jared.
This unexpected success had clearly heartened the St Catherine’s attack. The opening bowlers came on again and in twenty painful minutes captured seven more wickets for seventeen runs.
McMurtrie, who had gone in number six, was stolidly holding up his end. He was not a great batsman, but he wasn’t afraid of the fast bowler. Following Roger’s example he ignored anything on the off and presented a bat like a barn-door to anything that was straight.
The last man in was Monty Gedge. He was less worried than his father, who was moist with excitement and hoarse with good advice.
‘I’ve never made any runs in a match before,’ said Monty placidly, ‘so no one’s going to be disappointed if I don’t make any now, are they?’
Following the same tactics as McMurtrie he survived the rest of the over without difficulty. The next over produced two byes.
It was a moment when good nerves were more valuable than technique. And it was the St Catherine’s fast bowler who lost his head. Trying to produce a particularly vicious ball he overstepped the crease by a clear foot. Nigel bellowed out “No Ball”. McMurtrie, seeing his chance, jumped out and smote it. It was not a classical shot, but it cleared mid-wicket and was worth two runs. The school roared its approval. A move was made to chair the heroes back to the pavilion, but the thought of carrying McMurtrie and Gedge, both substantial characters, for fifty yards proved a deterrent. However, everyone who could get near them either patted them on the back or shook them by the hand, or managed to grab some part of their clothing.
‘Like being touched for the King’s evil,’ said Mr Diplock.
‘If it was soccer,’ said the Commander, ‘I suppose they’d be kissing them.’
‘Keep the boys off the pitch,’ said Mr Fairfax. ‘We’ve got two more matches to play on it.’
Colonel Brabazon said, ‘Splendid match. Splendid match. Very close finish. Couldn’t have been better.’
‘I don’t really understand the technique of the game,’ said Ben Sacher, ‘but it appears to me to have much in common with warfare. If you maintain your positions long enough, the other side defeats itself.’
When McMurtrie got through the crowd and reached the steps of the pavilion he received a surprise which had an element of shock in it. Sitting on a seat in front of the scorer’s box, smoking a pipe and looking sun-burnt and relaxed, was his father.
‘I’ve explained the situation as we see it,’ said Sir Charles McMurtrie. ‘You’ve got a responsibility for all your boys. Not just for one of them. The final decision must rest with you. But if I might use a metaphor which seems particularly appropriate after this afternoon, we shall have a great deal more chance of winning if we play this fixture on our own ground. You follow me?’
Mr Fairfax nodded. He was afraid that if he said anything at all his voice would run up into a squeak and sound silly. He was desperately disturbed.
Sir Charles said, ‘You’ve got to appreciate that we’re not up against people with unlimited resources. I should have said that the PFO never, at any time, had more than half a dozen agents who could operate with impunity in this country. This is not their home ground. They can buy a certain amount of help, through criminal contacts, but such people are subordinates. People who drive cars and do a bit of shooting. They’re not organizers, and they’re not principals. As I said, you could almost count those on the fingers of one hand.’ He paused for a moment and added, ‘And we got three of them in the embassy job.’
‘Then what you’re telling me,’ said Mr Fairfax, speaking very carefully, ‘is that there are only one or two left in this country who are really dangerous.’
‘At the moment, and for some time to come. Yes.’
Speaking of it like that, in the calm of a beautiful summer evening, with the square and reassuring figure of Sir Charles McMurtrie filling his visitor’s chair, it suddenly seemed to be rather less alarming.
‘You can’t be sure that they’ll try?’
‘Certainly not. You may have a very peaceful remainder of the term. I hope you will. If you were to send young Sacher away, of course, you’d be perfectly safe.’
Mr Fairfax had made up his mind. He was afraid that if he thought about it much longer he would say “no”. He said, ‘I’ll have a word with Sacher. If he agrees that his son should stop on for the rest of this term, I shan’t ask him to take him away.’
Sir Charles said, ‘You can rest assured that I, and quite a number of other people, will be doing our best to see that you don’t run into any trouble. Would it be all right if Alastair came out with me now? I’ll take him to dinner somewhere and return him by nine o’clock.’
‘Certainly.’ When his visitor was at the door he added, ‘He’s a very balanced boy. One of the best all-rounders I’ve ever had anything to do with.’
‘You must take some credit for that,’ said Sir Charles.
‘I can only put it in this way,’ said Ben Sacher. ‘The security forces of this country, for whom I have considerable respect, are convinced that one further move has already been planned against me. In the future, no doubt, there will be others. Any servant of the Israeli State who lives or moves abroad is a target. But evil, like good, takes time to mature. You follow me?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Fairfax. His mind was made up. He simply wished that people would stop talking about it.
‘There are indications, from certain preliminary moves which have been noted, that the blow may fall here. We have, of course, n
o right to place you, or your staff and the boys under your charge in any sort of danger.’
‘No,’ said Mr Fairfax.
‘Although one might argue,’ – as Sacher said this, for the second time that day a smile lit up his face – ‘that since, in the present state of the world no boy is likely to go through the whole of his life without meeting violence in some form or other, it would be part of a good preparatory school curriculum to prepare him for it. In the same way, I believe, that you encourage boys to get over mumps and measles at this stage in their lives when they can absorb the result more easily. However, that is not perhaps an analogy which I should press too far.’
‘If such an attempt were made,’ said Mr Fairfax abruptly, ‘the only person in any immediate danger would be your son?’
‘That is correct. If everyone does what he is told to do and keeps his head, there should be no danger to anyone else.’
‘And you are prepared to accept the responsibility for that? The danger to him?’
‘There is no question of my accepting responsibility by proxy. Jared is of age to accept it for himself. In your religion you call it the age of confirmation. We call it Bar Mitzvah. Jared will make up his own mind. I shall not make it up for him.’
‘You can call it what you like,’ said Mr Fairfax testily. ‘He’s still a boy. You could take him away, if you wished. There are plenty of places you could hide him for the time being.’
‘Yes,’ said Sacher. ‘He could hide. For the time being. But there is a drawback. If you run away the first time you see danger, it is twice as easy to run away the second time. And when you have started running, it is very difficult to stop. But I am only telling you something your own father must often have told you.’
For the first time in this remarkable conversation, Mr Fairfax was really surprised.
‘You knew my father?’ he said.
Night of the Twelfth Page 11