Henry laughed as he prepared for his run-up.
“Good luck with that, George, someone might just notice!”
“Nip off for a cheeky cig, do a cheeky bit of thieving.” He tapped the bat on the ground. “I jest, of course. Officers in the Household Cavalry would never do such a thing!”
“I wondered where you were going with that corgi hidden up your jumper!” Henry rubbed at his shoulder. A discreet belch escaped him thanks to the cucumber sandwiches, then his long, solid legs carried him effortlessly to the crease, where he delivered a perfect overarm bowl. George was ready, Henry knew that. He saw the strong shoulders square, the green eyes fix on him and, moments after the ball left his hand, he saw the wicket fall.
George turned, looking down in disbelief. Then he looked at the spectators, who erupted in a hail of cheers and a few cries of “Howzat!”
For a few seconds George appeared utterly bewildered then, with a loud cry of celebration, he threw down the bat and ran toward Henry.
Henry gaped at him. No, this wasn’t right. George was going to get a century and go on and on—not lose. Not in front of the whole village, right after Henry’s triumph.
“Bloody hell, George—what was that?”
“I was just—” He laughed, enfolding Henry in another bear hug. “I was watching you and then— I sort of drifted off, I suppose. You did it, old man, two hundred years in the Fitz family!”
Everyone was clapping for Henry, but the victor cheered for George.
“Drifted off?” Henry laughed affectionately. “Must’ve been a carb-crash after lunch!”
“Or maybe I was plotting how to pinch the Longley Parva Cup,” George teased, finally releasing the hug. “What a fellow!”
“Wouldn’t have happened if not for this ankle!” Even as he spoke, Ed was hobbling across the pitch on his ebony walking cane, his father standing at the boundary with his pinstripe-clad arms folded, shaking his head. “Next year, Henry, next year that cup is coming to the Belchers.”
“If we can find a day when you’re not half-cut on champers, then you’re on!”
“Take cover!” Someone yelled the warning as large drops of water began to fall from the still-blue sky and spectators and players alike ran for cover toward the shelter of the pavilion. Henry ran too, even though his progress was delayed by every young lady and old boy in the village approaching to offer their congratulations on his feat.
Steph linked her arm in his, her cardigan held over her head like a canopy.
“I’ll keep you dry—run!” She giggled as she tried to squire her squire to the pavilion, but, feeling her goosebumps against his arm, Henry looked around and wondered where on earth George had got to.
Poor sod must be utterly humiliated, even if he had put a brave face on it.
Henry waited on the veranda, Steph’s arm still hooked through his. If only he could slip off and find his friend. But Steph was anchored to the spot, absorbing the praise that was aimed at Henry, while Fitzwalter Senior nodded at Steph and gave his son the thumbs up.
It was nothing more than a shower and, as the rain ceased, so did George appear once more. He bounded around from the back of the pavilion, calling to Henry and Steph, “Look at the lovebirds!”
“Just sheltering from the rain.” How did one extract oneself politely from a grip like that? And really, everyone in Longley Parva seemed to think that Henry and Steph should be an item, all except one person.
And he’d just won the Longley Parva Cup.
“Come one, come all.” Alan Belcher emerged from the pavilion with his hobbling son in pursuit, waving his arm. “Onto the pitch and let’s get this cup presented. What’re entrepreneurs for if not to give the trophy to yet another Fitzwalter?”
Henry’s father appeared from the direction of the loos. His step was unsteady from a stream of celebratory Longley Spitfires. “A noble tradition, Belcher! Beat you to it myself, remember!”
“Thanks to a bit of weighting in the ball,” Belcher decided. “But I’ll let it pass since I was the first to make it to a million! Nobody cares about an old cricket vase when you’ve got a Maserati in the driveway!”
Mrs. Dalrymple, mayoress, carved a route through the crowd. She stood on the steps and clapped her hands, and everyone fell silent.
“And now, the presentation of the coveted Longley Parva Cup! The prize-giving will take place on the pitch!” She smiled at the trainee vet and skipper-in-waiting and guided the players and spectators across the springy grass. Henry slipped his bat under his arm, smiling, trying to appear humble even though inside a full firework display was going off.
Once everyone was assembled to her liking, Mrs. Dalrymple stared back toward the pavilion.
“What the devil is Tom up to?”
Henry turned. Tom was pantomiming his dismay. Shrugging, turning out his hands, pointing.
Mrs. Dalrymple cupped her sizeable hands about her mouth, turning them into a megaphone. Her voice could be heard halfway to Brighton as she shouted, “Tom, bring the bloody cup, you fool!”
Tom ran from the pavilion, his face ashen.
“Where’s the cup?” Mrs. Dalrymple glared at him. “I can’t award Henry the cup if you haven’t got it. Where is it?”
He bent over and clutched his knees before looking up at the Parvans, his gaze settling on Henry. “It’s gone.”
A gasp of alarm rippled through the crowd.
“The back door of the office is open. I said we needed a new padlock, that one is rusted to buggery, and now look what’s happened!”
“Henry Fitzwalter needs his cup.” Mrs. Dalrymple settled her bunched fists on her hips. “Go and find it, Tom.”
“I’ve just been looking for it, Gladys! For God’s sake, someone must’ve nicked it!”
Not now.
Not at the moment of Henry’s triumph, the cup that he’d dreamed of winning through his boyhood, that should’ve been in his hands, but was now— Where was it? Who would nick it?
Steph clung to his arm and George, with a devil-may-care laugh, announced, “It was the only way we Standish-Brookes were ever going to get it, after all!”
Henry was frozen with shock. No. Not George. Not his bloody best friend.
“You—you bloody took it? My trophy?”
“Well,” Ed added, “he did throw the match for you, Henry. Maybe he changed his mind when he realized his people had lost. Again.”
“Not now, Ed!” Henry gripped his bat’s handle as if he was about to hit another six. “Where is it, George? This isn’t funny, no one’s laughing—where’s my trophy?”
“Me?” George pressed his hand to his chest, all wounded innocence. “It was a joke, Fitz! Why would I take your trophy?”
Steph tightened her grip on Henry’s arm. His whole world collapsed. George’s green eyes and long lashes and full lips… He could never, ever have them. He couldn’t bear it anymore.
“Because you’re an idiot, because you’re a reckless nightmare, because you threw the match!”
Henry swung the bat over his head, self-control entirely lost.
“This was my victory—but one last petty rivalry and—” He didn’t stop, even when George ducked nimbly out of the path of the whirling bat. “I thought you were my friend! Don’t you ever speak to me ever again!”
“Erm… Mr. Fitzwalter?” Mrs. Dalrymple appeared to be the only person brave enough to confront the cricket-bat-wielding maniac, and at last Henry blinked away his madness.
Through tears, he was dimly aware that the crowd who had come to see him receive his trophy were edging slowly back across the field. Shocked conversation whispered through them as they receded.
George was standing a few feet away, his mouth gaping and his horrified gaze fixed on Henry. Something was gripped in his hand but it wasn’t a Georgian vase, it was a cricket ball. He looked down at the ball, then up at Henry and finally down at the ball again. He threw it onto the pitch and turned. George walked away, his mother running after
him in a clatter of wooden bracelets and a cloud of patchouli.
It was Ed who picked up the discarded cricket ball and looked at it. There on the red surface, whittled by George with a blade, was a scratched inscription.
HF—130—GSB
“He took it.” Belcher sniffed, taking the ball from his son. “Thoroughly strange sort of family, that one.”
He strolled away to the outfield and beyond, toward the dense copse in which Henry and George had learned to climb trees and had built their forts and hideaways each summer. Without a glance back, Belcher flung the ball overarm into the trees and shouted, “Six, Ed!”
“Henry, Henry!” Steph consoled him with her yielding embrace and the scent of her soft vanilla perfume.
At least, Henry assumed she was trying to. But nothing could ever console him now.
Chapter Seven
Henry passed his hand through his hair and sighed. That was his version of events—edited to avoid admitting to George that he had gazed at his lips and wished that he could—
“What happened to the ball from that match?” George stood at the back door to the cottage as he spoke, his arms folded tight across his chest. Rather muscular arms, Henry registered, while trying not to notice. The sort of arms that could probably give a hell of a hug if one were—
A thief’s arms.
“As I told you—Belcher Senior threw it into the copse.”
“Oh well, at least you’re not accusing me of taking that too,” George told him. “Chasing me across the field, shouting and carrying on. I came home for a peaceful summer, and you’re still yammering on about that bloody vase!”
“Because we were such friends, and—and I couldn’t look you in the eye anymore! But everywhere I go—there you are! I switch on my television, there’s Captain George, I flick through a newspaper, there’s Captain George, I put on Radio 3 and there’s Captain George, I watch Comic Relief, and there’s Captain George, Royal Command Performance? There’s Captain George! Bloody hell, a bus goes past me in Brighton, it’s got an advert on it and who’s that? Doesn’t he look rather familiar, because of course—it’s Captain George. And then—and then—I’m judging a Bonny Baby Contest, and you bloody turn up again! I can’t get away from you!”
“It’s a vase, Fitz.” George laughed in disbelief. “It wasn’t worth a friendship.”
Henry pursed his lips. He was back on the crease again, swinging the cricket bat over his head, tears pricking his eyes. Henry mumbled, “Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Shall we leave it there then? Agree to keep out of each other’s way, and I won’t ask you to be in the doc.” George reached for the door handle. “I’ll get someone to play you, give Dom a bell or someone like that.”
Henry nodded. Once more, he felt defeated. As he was about to walk away, he paused and looked over his shoulder.
“Thanks for earlier. For sorting out Ed, when he was—” Henry grimaced and peered down at his groin. “I—I appreciate it.”
“I’m still your friend.” George quirked a smile. “Even if you can’t stand me.”
“It’s not exactly easy to avoid you, old bean.”
“You could always get rid of your TV? Otherwise, hold on until autumn and maybe I’ll be on my travels again.”
“Anywhere nice?”
“The Beeb wanted to film me visiting Darioush. He and his folks live in Sweden now.” George shook his head, referring to the wide-eyed little boy in that photograph. Henry knew that Darioush wouldn’t be anywhere now if not for George, of course, sheltering him from the blast with his own body. “I’ve already said no thanks to that, I’m not turning good people into a circus sideshow. Maybe something, I don’t know, Amazonian? Bit of a gad through the Amazon Basin or something, I’ll give it a think.”
Captain George Standish-Brookes turning down an opportunity for television?
Henry sank his hands into his trouser pockets. The irritating, ubiquitous celebrity took on a new light. How many other things had George refused, and never trumpeted forth about?
He gave his erstwhile friend a firm nod.
“Jolly decent of you, George, refusing to do that filming with the little chap you saved.”
“They’re just a nice family living a peaceful life, they don’t want to be a Christmas special.” He shrugged, keeping up his self-deprecating act to the last. “Maybe I’ll do a hot air balloon over the Andes, bit of fun like that. A chap gets tired of roaming sometimes, you know? I’m rather getting a taste for the sitting-at-home-writing-books side of history.”
Henry came back to the door of the cottage and propped himself up against it.
“Do you know what’d make for an interesting book? Bad Billy Fitzwalter and Reverend Standish and bloody Belcher! Don’t you think?” Henry forgot that half an hour earlier he’d been bellowing in fury at this man. Instead, he felt confiding. “Now, Ed let slip that he’s got certain papers that belonged to his ancestor, even a diary, which sounds to me as if it’s full of gossip about Bad Billy and the vicar. My grandfather deposited a load of papers relating to the manor in the county archive—Father said it was all boring stuff about who rented what field, but I heard that there’s something rather salacious in those documents. I keep meaning to go and have a look, but…well…I’m a busy chap. Don’t you think that would be fascinating? Georgian gents getting up to no good? I’d read it.”
“I wonder.” George frowned and let go of the door handle, turning back to Henry. “And not many vicars have a mum like Georgina, do they? Four husbands, a dozen children and all sorts of saucy rumors. You’ve got me wondering now, Fitz.”
“Georgina was quite the one, wasn’t she!” Henry chuckled. “Have you ever seen Bad Billy’s will? I found it copied out in the back of a family Bible. From what I could make out, your Reverend was actually living at the manor—he left the rectory to the curate. Billy bequeathed him two rooms and the necessary furniture, and all the wood he needed! I mean—for lighting a fire. I mean…they were close friends.”
“Merry widowers indeed.” George laughed, for a moment taking on a very definite resemblance to the breast-baring Georgian minx who smiled out from an oil painting in the sitting room of the cottage. “And this would be when the Reverend Standish’s boys had gone off to school? Paid for by their grandma Georgina’s ill-gotten gains, I believe!”
“Yes, that’s it! Loved to have been a fly on the wall of the manor in those days, eh? What were they getting up to? Bad Billy left his wine cellar to the Reverend—they must’ve had some amazing parties!”
Henry couldn’t remember when he’d last had a party at the manor, let alone an amazing one. But it was enough that he and George were, strangely, standing at the cottage door laughing. How on earth had this come to pass?
George slapped his hand to Henry’s arm and nodded to the garden with its rustic wooden bench, the bucolic duck pond and clouds of bees buzzing around bright-colored flowers.
“Let’s have a little snifter, you and I, see the day out in the garden?” He opened the back door. “I’ll grab a couple of G&Ts and we’ll have a think about this Ed problem. I’m a criminal mastermind, after all!”
Henry swallowed. “I’d like that. I really would.”
“Have you eaten?” He pushed the door open a little farther as he spoke, pottering into the cottage. “Come on in, Fitz, let’s get some treats together for our picnic!”
“Now you come to mention it—haven’t had anything apart from some toast for breakfast. And that feels like a long time ago.”
As if he were an interloper, Henry left the balmy evening and entered George’s cottage. Although the ceiling was low, the cottage wasn’t dingy, thanks to the profusion of bright colors that glowed and sparkled within its ancient walls. Amber-covered cushions and turquoise drapes, ornate lanterns and curlicued candlesticks, mirrored wind-chimes and colored glass cluttered the space. It was the most bohemian house in the village, and Henry knew full well how ridiculous he was in this
cottage—pinstripes against sequins, Old Spice against incense sticks.
So many fond memories rushed back to Henry that he almost forgot why he was there. The stairs that he and George had run up and down heading from one game to another, the mirror in the corridor that they had stood in front of, checking their hair before the school disco, the armchair that a very drunk George had draped a very drunk Henry over one New Year’s Eve. A vision sparkled by him—George’s mother, hands caked in drying clay, a chiffon scarf wound about her ebony hair, pressing a kiss to the top of Henry’s head as she wafted off to her kiln.
The kitchen was just as Henry remembered it, with a large wooden table and a ramshackle collection of old kitchen cupboards. Corn dollies stood across the mantelpiece and bunches of dried herbs dangled from the laundry rack overhead, along with a rather old tea towel from Beaulieu Motor Museum.
“Chuck off your jacket, Fitz, I promise not to nick it.” George busied himself mixing a couple of very generous gin and tonics, the glasses stuffed with ice and freshly cut slices of lemon. “So, ’orrible Ed’s really after your house? I was listening to every word. It’d make a hell of a show, wouldn’t it?”
“What? George, I’m going to lose my house because two hundred years ago our ancestors got drunk!” Henry sighed. “Closing scene—me, under a bridge in a soggy cardboard box, Ed’s laughter echoing as he hops into his Ferrari. What great telly that would be—except I’d never see it as I wouldn’t have a house!”
Toot-bloody-toot.
“Oh, don’t be melodramatic!” George put one of the glasses in front of Henry, the ice tinkling merrily against the sides. “Get yourself a lawyer, laugh him out of court! I’ve got some treats, if you’re feeling naughty.”
Henry’s stomach answered for him with a gurgling roar.
“I think that means I’m hungry…” He unbuttoned his jacket and sighed. “I wish I could get a lawyer, but you see, I can’t, George, because I haven’t the money. I’ve barely got the spondoolicks to get my Landy fixed up.”
The Captain and the Cricketer Page 6