The Captain and the Cricketer

by Catherine Curzon

  Lil grinned at their local celebrity. “Makeup? I don’t wear makeup! I’m entirely au naturel, I’ll have you know?”

  “That’s a shame.” He shrugged good-naturedly. “I was going to ask if you fancied giving me a bit of a one-to-one later, but I’ll have to keep looking for the right girl.”

  Lil’s jaw dropped. She clutched at her collar like a surprised society dame clutching at her pearls.

  “Oh, well, actually—I mean, I do know a lot? I gave a contouring demo to the Girl Guides the other week, actually? Yes, so, actually, I am just the right girl for you? Erm…actually?”

  Henry reined in his urge to chuckle.

  “Could you spare an hour this afternoon to show a chap how to put on a face?” He silenced Tabitha, who was no doubt about to remind him of the extensive professional makeup artists at their disposal. “I don’t want to look like a drag queen, I want to look like this is just what I do.”

  “That would, like, be the most amazing thing that I’ve ever actually, like, done?”

  “Good stuff, and I’ll bung you a few quid to say thanks. When can you come over?” He smiled his most winsome smile and told Tabitha, “Lil is the only person I’d trust to babysit Jez, other than Fitz, obviously. She’s going to be very big in the horse world.”

  “Or the makeup world, actually? I can come over when you’re finished here?”

  “Walk back up with us after lunch if you like?” He looked to Tabitha and asked, “Think of it, Tabs, local talent behind the scenes too?”

  “Oh, I like it!” Tabitha dropped her sunglasses onto her nose and took an enormous glug of wine. The food arrived along with a generous bowl of water for Jez and there, in the early summer sun, George’s next venture began to take shape.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A sudden shaft of sunlight struck the metal blade as Henry worked his way through the brambles. He had taken the papers concerning Rupert the goat with him when he’d left George’s cottage earlier and was now searching for his two-hundred-year-old resting place.

  Where would an eccentric Georgian vicar bury his pet goat? Somewhere in the garden of the manor. But that was not so straightforward as it might at first have appeared because Henry’s back garden was measured in acres, rather than in meters.

  Yet among the papers there was a clue.

  All our days are gone

  But the sun shall not set on Rupert

  And The Seven shall watch over his sleeping place.

  Would there be a headstone for the creature that the Reverend had so doted on? But if he had had only a wooden marker, it would have rotted to dust years before. George so wanted to pay his respects that Henry felt honor-bound to tackle the overgrown garden, even though it seemed a Herculean task. His mother had been a great one for the garden, but she had died from a wasp sting when Henry was a boy. His father had neglected the garden, as if he blamed the natural world for his loss and enjoyed watching it helplessly tangle in on itself.

  A stream ran through part of the manor’s grounds, which curved round to feed the lake. In one corner, far from the house, the banks were very high, and Henry had been forbidden from venturing there as a boy. Being the sort of child who always did as he was told, he had never transgressed the order.

  Until now. For George.

  Because Henry had a hunch as to who ‘The Seven’ were.

  Despite the heat of the day, it was cool and shady near the stream, the moss along the bank bright emerald green. The brambles had grown up around a grove of tall trees that Henry’s father had called The Seven Grandfathers. Why, Henry had never known. But if they were The Seven from the goat’s eulogy, then that name and the trees must be old indeed.

  Much of the bramble was dead, despite the ready source of water from the stream, so clearing it away in gauntlets was not as hard as Henry had feared. As he worked, a breeze rocked the high branches of the Grandfathers, and Henry had the strangest notion that he was not alone here.

  A hand fell onto his shoulder.

  Who on earth—?

  But when he turned, it was only a branch that had caught his shirt.

  “Show me, then, Billy—if that’s you.”

  The breeze stirred the trees again and sighed like a voice that Henry couldn’t quite decipher.

  He tutted to himself. What a superstitious fool he was. He took up the scythe and swept forward again through the bramble.

  His scythe struck stone with a clang.

  This was surely it—the headstone for a goat.

  Henry flung the scythe down to fall where it would and, with renewed energy, heaved away the brambles.

  But what rose up from the floor of the grove to greet him was not a tombstone. At least, not a conventional one.

  Because, of course, the Reverend and the Squire had not been conventional people.

  Chapter Twenty

  Are you out vetting? J and I sunbathing at the lake with a beer, got a treat to show you! Love you xxx

  It was a couple of hot, hard-working hours later that George’s text arrived. Whatever he had spent his afternoon doing, however, George had not been hacking back a century’s worth of bramble. Instead he was sunbathing, because he was George.

  Henry knew he must look a sight. His hair was stuck down with sweat, his plaid shirt was torn, his arms and face were scratched, his stained gauntlets bulged in his trouser pockets and he was carrying the scythe over his shoulder like a sinister fashion accessory.

  But George was in his cargo shorts and nothing else besides a pair of Wayfarers. And as Henry got nearer—makeup?

  He’d left it on?

  “My God.” At Henry’s approach, George pushed himself to sit up on the grass. He slid his sunglasses up into his hair to reveal not only that white powdered face and rouged red lips but a perfectly outlined eye. And there, on his chiseled cheekbone, a small, black heart. “Fitz, you look— You’re bloody gorgeous!”

  Henry gave him a lopsided grin but couldn’t tear his eyes from the transformation before him.

  “You—you look just like… It’s like seeing a ghost. Except it’s a ghost in cargo pants! I can’t quite— George, you look amazing!”

  Henry crouched to put the scythe down on the ground, checking that Jez hadn’t taken an interest in it, then hurried to George. He reached toward his face then brought his hand back, wanting to touch but restrained by George’s otherworldly beauty.

  “I don’t look like Joan Crawford, then?”

  “No—not at all! You look just like Lady Georgina. The very image of her, as if she’d just stepped out of her portrait! And for some reason, decided to wear cargo pants and lounge about on my lawn.”

  As Henry stared, a thought occurred to him. “So—you walked from Lil’s—with your face like that?” He looked away, nervous suddenly, toward the curve of the driveway. “Did anyone see you? Did they see you heading up my driveway? Maybe no one would think—would assume—but…”

  Henry dropped to his knees beside his lover. He stroked George’s bare shoulder, the skin warm from the sun.

  “I’m not scolding, George—please don’t think that. At the risk of stating the obvious, we must be careful, darling.”

  “I told her the truth, that it was for the program. Fitz, I’m not about to out us to the village.” He blinked, peering up at Henry. “You look very… Well, you look very physical.”

  Henry pinched his sweaty shirt away from his chest and puffed out his cheeks.

  “I look—and unfortunately smell—like a man who’s been wrestling with brambles on a hot day! And has found what seems to be your goat’s last resting place. And not only that, but the last resting place of a dog called Nimrod as well.”

  George’s perfectly shadowed eyes widened, his mascaraed lashes falling in a shocked blink. “You’ve found our ancestors’ faithful friends?”

  “Would appear so!” Henry slid his hand from George’s shoulder to his neck and toyed with the warm hair at his nape. “Over on the other side of the
garden, in a grove of trees. And it’s not just any old headstone, either—it’s a sundial with a brass goat on top. Do you see? The sun shall not set on Rupert. And around the plinth, there’s a huge brass dog’s collar, with Nimrod Fitzwalter etched into it. It’s in very good nick—I suppose the trees and then the brambles sheltered the memorial from the worst of the elements over the years. They were quite a pair, our ancestors!”

  George glanced over his shoulder then caught Henry’s hand and drew him closer for a kiss. His skin smelled of perfume and his rouged lips were soft against Henry’s own.

  “So the only question is whether we swim first,” George gave a casual smile, “or pay our respects to the boys in full slap?”

  “We swim?”

  Henry couldn’t remember the last time he’d swum in the lake. But it had been with George, that much was certain. Before all that business with the dratted Longley Parva Cup. A day in late summer when they’d stood on the jetty by the boathouse and taken a run up to jump as far as they could into the lake. They’d had a good-natured tussle in the water over who had jumped out the farthest. But a swim, now? He didn’t even have swimwear anymore. Not since Steph had laughed at his Bermuda shorts on their last caravanning holiday, when it had done nothing for a week but rain.

  “Let’s go and look at the sundial, m’ lady.” Henry began to stand, helping Lady Georgina to his feet. “We can follow the stream from the end of the lake.”

  George curtsied as he rose and, with Jez trotting over to join them, slipped his arm through Henry’s.

  “Last night was wonderful, Fitz,” he murmured.

  “I never dared hope to be as happy as I am now, George—Lady Georgina?”

  It was said that Bad Billy’s uncle had been rather partial to Lady Georgina. Had they walked here, where now George and Henry wandered, winding their way beside the route of the stream to The Seven Grandfathers? Billy and Toby most certainly had.

  Henry smiled. “Just think—Billy and Toby walking here, like us. Off to commemorate their animal chums. I’m not sure if Billy was all sweaty or if Toby had made-up like his mum, but!” They passed a rosebush and Henry snapped off a pink, petal-heavy head, offering it to George’s nose. “For Rupert and Nimrod.”

  George inhaled the scent, his eyes closing for a moment before he whispered, “I don’t think I’ll ever want to leave here again, Fitz.”

  Could it really be that the man who had seen the world, had climbed to the highest peaks and dived into the deepest oceans, might have been so bewitched by the place he had known longer than anywhere? Had Captain George Standish-Brookes, hero of the Household Cavalry, savior of helpless children and wide-eyed foals, come home to stay? Henry held George’s arm more tightly, resting his cheek against his.

  “If you stayed, I’d make you happy, George—I swear it. I’d never let you be sad for even a second.”

  “You wouldn’t cricket bat me if I left the lid off the toothpaste?”

  “No—but I might tickle you!”

  “I could live with that.” George stepped in front of Henry and slipped his arms around his waist, meeting his gaze. For a few seconds he was silent, studying Henry’s face, then he whispered, “I’ll always look after you, even if— I’m sorry this has to be a secret.”

  “I understand, darling—honestly, I do. It’s not something I can go shouting about either. We’re in a bit of a bind—but we have each other now. And I can bear anything if I have you, even in secret.”

  “You could, Fitz, that’s why I feel so dreadful. I’m stopping you being who you are, and—” George let his forehead rest against Henry’s. “You understand now, but one day— I don’t ever want you to think that it’s anything about you, it’s this stupid bloody career thing.”

  “I’ve stopped myself from being who I am. I love this village, but how would they react? And there’s Dad as well—he’s not the most understanding of people. I’m not angry. What a splendid secret to share. Us.”

  A breeze from high above moved through the branches of the monkey puzzle tree and stirred the warm air. Jez flicked his tail.

  “If those two reprobate grandads of ours kept their secret for two hundred years, then so can we.” Henry’s lips brushed against George’s.

  “Let’s go and lay this on our boys’ graves,” George told him tenderly, touching his fingertips to the rose. “They’ve been forgotten for too long.”

  Henry took Lady Georgina’s arm again and they wandered along the path of the stream, beside the pink and blue hydrangeas and the waxy-leaved rhododendrons with their purple blooms, past the mallows and the foxgloves and the lavender buzzing with bees. They went farther and farther into the reaches of the garden, until Henry gestured toward the grove of trees before them. The branches stretched up to form a green lattice ceiling overhead.

  “See, George—it’s The Seven. Although more accurately The Five, now, thanks to that hurricane when we were little. The sundial is right in the middle. Can you see it? I cleared away as much of the bramble as I could.”

  But George was already on his way to the sundial, towing Henry along behind him into the shelter of The Five. George picked his way closer to the monument, the trainers on his feet crushing the remaining bramble cuttings beneath them.

  “They stood here, Fitz,” George said with wonder in his voice. “Billy and Tobias stood right here, just like us, and remembered.”

  “And I doubt anyone else has been here since. Because who would look at a sundial where the trees obscure the sun? Even back then, these trees would’ve been quite tall.”

  Henry bowed his head. His voice took on the soft quality it always assumed when he spoke of other people’s pets. “I hope Nimrod was a good friend to Rupert.”

  “The best.”

  “I wish I still had my dog. Then he could’ve been Jez’s friend.”

  “He was a lovely old boy.” George smiled. “If you wanted to look for another dog— Well, I’ll be in the village working on my next book, so I could dog-sit if you needed it.”

  “That’d be very kind—George, you’re going to stay, aren’t you? In Longley Parva, I mean.”

  George nodded. “The job will take me off from time to time but I want to really buckle down to Georgie’s bio, and I can do that here. I owe my publisher at least two books, so they’ll be happy, and I’ve a feeling there’re a lot of Secret Histories to be told here in the good old British Isles!”

  He took the rose and, with a reverence Henry had rarely seen George display, put it down atop the sundial. Then he closed his eyes and bowed his head as though engaged in a silent prayer for the two faithful companions who rested here, hidden away from the world.

  Henry held his breath while George paid his respects. He’s going to stay! Surely George would be able to hear how loudly Henry’s heart was beating in the quiet of the grove? He wanted to jump into the air and click his heels together and shout Hooray! But that seemed somewhat undignified. He lowered his head, thinking of Rupert, and Nimrod and the late faithful Dave, Border Collie extraordinaire, who had been buried under a camellia when Henry was eighteen.

  If he could save the manor, then he would ask George to live here with him. But not yet. Because if his home was wrenched from him, then where would he go? The wind sighed above them again and the branch tapped his shoulder. Henry turned to brush it away, but there was no branch there. Only a shimmer on the air that fast disappeared before his eyes.

  “I think I’m going mad in this heat. I could’ve sworn—” But there was no one there besides a vet, a television personality and a gangly-legged foal.

  Must be the heat, Henry decided, and he put his arm around George’s waist, resting his head against his lover’s.

  “I think,” George’s voice was still quiet, but rich with mischief in place of contemplation, “that Rupert, Nimrod and Dave the magnificent dog are having a hell of a time somewhere.”

  He turned his head to capture Henry’s mouth with his own, leaving yet more of Geo
rgina’s rouge on his lips.

  “Come for a swim? Let’s leave Tobe and Billy to pay their respects?”

  Henry stared at George in amazement as they began to walk away. Whispering, to avoid disturbing the other visitors to the sundial, Henry asked, “So you felt it too?’

  His answer was to shrug and comment casually, “Why would anybody want to leave? They love it here as much as we do.”

  “Then we have to save the manor, don’t we? We can’t let Ed get his mitts on it.”

  “I’ve got a fair bit of cash going spare and it’s yours if you need it, but I’m nowhere near Ed levels of green.” George clicked his tongue, clearly musing on the problem. “But you leave it with old Georgie, he’ll sort it. Don’t ask how, just know that I will.”

  “I still haven’t hired a property lawyer—if you could lend me the money for that, it would be brilliant.” Henry nudged his friend. “Lend, that is—I will most definitely pay you back. Whatever happens.”

  They blinked as they emerged from the shady half of the garden back into the sunlight where the lake glittered before them.

  “Now, enough of lawyers and money and worrying, swimming awaits!” George pecked Henry’s cheek and untangled their arms. He stepped out of his trainers and moved to unfasten his shorts, leaving Henry to assume that his companion must be wearing trunks. Not so, for the shorts fell away to reveal boxers, then George’s hands were on the waistband, clearly about to shed what remained of his clothing.

  “Erm—hang on there, George!” Henry turned quickly to look at the driveway. It was empty. The heat of the day hung silent and heavy over the quietened village. “What if someone turns up? What if they see?”

  “They’ll see the straightest man on telly and the straightest man in Sussex swimming?”

  “In the nude!”