The Buttercup Field

by D J O'Leary

  His destination lay beyond the five-barred gate, across the Buttercup Field, through another five-barred gate and into the cricket field. The match was well under way by now of course, and since it was one of the biggest fixtures of the season, it drew a large crowd numbering former players for the Guns, their families and friends and so on. The larger than usual number of spectators meant more cars, and so Tolstoy found himself negotiating a way through and among the vehicles parked in the Buttercup Field. Initially he could only hear the sounds of activity, but then, as Tolstoy reached the second gate, a timeless tableau unrolled before him.

  He just had to pause again and reflect that sometime in the not too distant future all that lay before him was going to be his. It seemed like a dream for someone who had grown up with very little material wealth. Of course he had savings, but a disappointingly low salary demanded that he supplement it from time to time from his nest egg. He was an only child and was just four years old when his father, Bill Pearce, a bank manager, had died of a heart attack. It was Bill’s idea to name him Warren, thus ensuring that his nickname would forever be Tolstoy. Bill had loved joking and was a fan of the Russian author. Warren’s mother, Nora, had been at school with Elspeth and had kept in touch since then, attending Elspeth’s wedding and popping down to Stottenden regularly, especially after Bill’s death. Sadly, breast cancer had claimed Nora when Tolstoy was ten and a boarder at a prep school near Stottenden. Thankfully Nora had had the good sense, after being diagnosed, to make her sister Rosemary and her husband Philip the guardians of her son. Hubert de Groot insisted that he would underwrite his godson’s education from prep school and on through university, although the proceeds of the sale of the Pearce family home were invested and provided, through a trust fund, finances for at least part of the school fees. Tolstoy came to love both his guardians and his godfather and Elspeth, who would have him to stay for parts of the school holidays. Throughout his schooldays he generally escaped bullying, despite his dyspraxia – a condition which affected his coordination and movement – which rendered him a figure of fun in sports. Thankfully he had been blessed with intelligence, academic discipline and a dry wit. If he could not help his peers with their prep, then he could at least get them laughing to take the sting out of any awkward situations and scrapes that he might get himself into from time to time. After prep school it was off to a minor public school in deepest Sussex, before going up to university to read maths. Finally, when he failed interview after interview for various jobs, he stumbled on an archive post, found the work straightforward, even if the hours were not, and that was where he was now. Right. Onward again, he thought.

  Tolstoy leaned over the gate to release the stiffish latch; initially, though, the gate seemed reluctant to swing back and admit him. Indeed, it required a deal of exertion, which instantly had him dripping with sweat, to persuade it to yield. Finally the wooden structure creaked open under his persistent pressure and allowed him onto the outfield. He closed the gate behind him, sighed, then placed his bag at his feet to gaze at what for him was that old cliché, “a quintessentially English scene”. Except for the fact that a very dry spring and now the mid-summer drought had taken their toll. From what he could discern of the cricket ground, the square looked to be on the point of being transformed into a network of cracked clay, having dried to a concrete-like hardness, while the outfield was bare in places and brown in many others. It was still recognisably a cricket ground. On the opposite side stood the pavilion, originally built early in the Victorian era, then subsequently adorned with successive additions to support it and improve its facilities, not just for the players, but for the spectators as well. It presented a charming if somewhat eccentric picture, not quite what one might have expected, but with the large gathering of spectators, the occasional ripple of applause, the thud of willow on leather, for Tolstoy it epitomised everything that an English summer in the countryside should be. He picked up his bag once more, steadfastly refusing to doff his Harris Tweed jacket, and began the tricky job of working his way around to where his godfather habitually positioned himself, just beyond the pavilion and protected by the overhanging branches of a horse chestnut tree. From the start of this, the final stage of his journey that day, he was struck by how crowded the ground was, then he recalled that this was the weekend of the traditional “Guns versus Beaters” match, which had its origins in the local shoot. It had developed into a rivalry that boasted a lengthy history, and attracted a remarkable cross section of society. He paused, removed an already damp handkerchief from his trouser pocket to mop his forehead and face, while contemplating the task that lay before him. In order to reach the pavilion he would have to pick out a pathway through the dense sprawl of spectators. In front of him there lay a rich collection of the sleek and the chic, fast cars and pacy women littering the boundary’s edge, the latter invariably and inevitably turning the fringes of the arena into centre stage with a gesture or a look; the gleaming elegance of the former attracting envious, but admiring, glances from those passing by. And draped carelessly among these models of perfection were knots of old school ties, young men, Tolstoy noted with mild disapproval, who invariably had a hand resting proprietorially on bonnet or buttock, or both when the opportunity presented itself.

  They were lounging around in this part of the field, keeping themselves a little apart, while they alternately quaffed and quipped among themselves, quick to laugh, and loudly; they knew they were not there to look at anything, rather they were there to be looked at. They knew they were the beautiful people. Eternally youthful. Society’s immortals, who would never know pain or penury, illness or infirmity.

  The problem Tolstoy had was how to negotiate a way through these svelte women and athletic-looking young men, who in general were showing more interest in each other and their glasses of bubbly than in the cricket match unfolding at their backs. Tolstoy noted wryly that they had commandeered a section of the outfield that had a welcome area of shade, one that, because of the angle of the shaw, the narrow strip of woodland which ran along this edge of the cricket field, would remain in shadow for much of the afternoon. He knew none of them, and they, for their part, took little notice of him, an averagely built man of indeterminate age, maybe late twenties, perhaps a thirty-something. All they might have noted was that this appeared to be someone dressed beyond his years, also unfashionably, and, given the weather, most inappropriately.

  In truth Tolstoy was beginning to regret the choice of the jacket, but his navy blazer was pure wool, and if anything, even hotter than the Harris Tweed. Thereafter he had little else to choose from in his simple wardrobe, neither of his suits being remotely right for a sporting occasion on a summer’s afternoon. Even as he made his cautious way through the cool ranks before him, his fingers dithered and dallied around the buttons of his jacket, uncertain as to whether he should stop and peel it off, sling it over his shoulder and then resume his slow walk, or leave it on and suffer until he had arrived at his destination. He convinced himself that to stop and disrobe right then would probably end in embarrassment, because that was the way of things in his life. Something untoward was bound to happen, inevitably attracting unwanted attention, so he opted for the “do nothing approach”. He had already concluded the same for his collar and tie. They were to remain tight to his throat, as ever. Rare was the day when he could be found in an open-neck shirt. Work expected a collar and tie, habit demanded them; even Saturdays and Sundays he would be found buttoned up and wound into a fat Windsor knot, his only concession at weekends being to sport something a little more colourful and less conservative, perhaps a polka dot pattern or a garishly striped one. Today’s, for example, was a startling red and white stripe, one that, he noticed irritably, had contrived to allow itself to be flicked over his left shoulder at some point on his way to the ground. In a brief blaze of temper he tucked the loose tail of the tie into the waistband of his cavalry twill trousers, jabbed his now damp handkerchief deep into
his left-hand pocket, then took a firmer grip on his holdall and began to pick a way as delicately as he could around and through all the bodies that sat and lay on the grass. A murmured ‘Excuse me, please’ or a muttered ‘So sorry’ worked, if not quite as efficiently as Aaron’s rod when he parted the Red Sea, then at least well enough to produce, albeit reluctantly, a temporary path over legs, around hampers and between supine and prone bodies. Gratefully he eased through, uncomfortable under any brief scrutiny as he picked his way, clumsily and sweatily, through their chilled, perfumed ranks. He was ever mindful of his broad, brown and heavy shoes, which frequently had a way of turning his feet into uncontrollable, not to say lethal, weapons.

  Tolstoy enjoyed cricket at all levels, but most especially village cricket, although he was by no means fanatical about it; he did not play the game, had not done so for many years, thanks to an inexplicable, although mild, form of dyspraxia, which had from very early on persuaded him to seek out other pursuits which could be better negotiated. So not since his second year at school had he made a complete idiot of himself with bat or ball. Summers therefore had been spent in the long jump pit, although the only jumping he did there was when he was startled awake from his afternoon nap by the games master on the prowl for slackers. Winters had seen him strolling around the cross country course, taking in nature, watching for fieldfares and redwings, and being rewarded for his alertness with the occasional glimpse of a sparrowhawk beating up along the hedgerows, zooming effortlessly up and over from either side of the hedge in a breathtaking aerobatic display calculated to flush finches from their hiding places and into the hawk’s clutches. He was not, by any description, an ornithologist, and certainly not a twitcher, travelling at a moment’s notice to farthest Cornwall or to the most remote point of the north in order to tick off an “accidental” or rarity, yet he was drawn to nature, and found himself more and more frequently using the miniature binoculars, purchased for cricket, when he was abroad in the countryside. This afternoon he would interrupt his erratic progress whenever he had the chance with a brief halt and a glance out to the middle to take in the action, where he noted, with a degree of pleasure, that every man involved in the match was in “whites” or creams. That, and the frequent muted applause reassured him that the traditions of the game and respect for it were still alive and thriving, at least in this part of rural England.

  Whether consciously or not, Tolstoy had been working his way to the outside edge of the crowd, where the going was less complicated, but the nearer he drew to the pavilion the older the people were and the more deckchairs he encountered. Then threading his way through became much more of a lottery, because interspersed among the deckchairs were picnic parties whose members had eschewed formal seating and instead had set up on the grass, and Tolstoy gradually found himself becoming more and more hemmed in again, until he finally reached a dead end. There just seemed to be no way through. As he turned this way and that, looking for a gap, he found himself confronted by an ocean of red hair, a discovery which gave him something of a jolt, and a not unpleasant one at that. As he hovered over the hair he became aware of a delicious smell of perfume, an almost lemony, yet floral fragrance that was really rather heady. For a few moments he lingered there, partly because he was reluctant to disturb the owner of the hair and partly because he was enjoying the moment, half-closing his eyes and breathing it all in deeply. He need not have fretted about not disturbing the hair’s owner though. That he had already managed. The feeling of foreboding he had harboured about his clumsy feet had become reality. His right foot had inadvertently settled heavily onto some of the lustrous locks, and when the owner sought to move her head, to try to discover what was going on, she found she could not, not without a deal of pain anyway, and upon experiencing the pain let out a shriek, half in agony, half in anger. Thus everyone in the vicinity turned to look first at the source of the noise, then at the cause. “The Cause” blushed a deep crimson and began sweating even more profusely. Worse, he found himself unable to utter a sound, so embarrassed was he. He was rendered mute for long, miserable seconds. All he could do was stare down at her vacuously, his foot unmoving, seemingly frozen to the spot. He was shocked to the core at what had happened, and was unable to think or speak, so the shoe remained in place and the mouth remained half-open, slack with sorrow, and disbelief, incapable of forming sounds or words.

  The look with which she greeted him when he finally acted and lifted his foot, was withering, icy, even. His eventual, scratchily uttered, ‘Terribly sorry,’ did not seem to register with her. But her voice reached him and indeed carried further, to the appreciative audience that had gathered around. ‘Why, thank you so much for freeing my hair. Perhaps you might watch where you place your feet in future. And it might be advisable to find a route with fewer obstructions to negotiate.’ Although the phrasing seemed mild, the tone used would not have been out of place in the Arctic Circle. He cringed, shrivelling in mortification. He tried apologising again, but his muttered stutterings fell on vexed ears. The young woman simply gathered her hair and herself, got to her feet and turned disdainfully away from him. He, spotting the opening left by his victim’s action, darted through it and away from the scene of his humiliation.

  There were no more such incidents, mercifully, and, with a glance out to the middle where the cricketing action was taking place, in order to update himself on the state of play, he finally arrived at the pavilion, pausing before stepping onto its venerable verandah to turn once more and drink in the near timeless scene. All thoughts of his recent embarrassing encounter with the chestnut-haired woman fled, and he relaxed for the first time in a while.

  Before he could enter the pavilion Tolstoy heard his name, his proper name, being called out. The source of the voice was on the far side of the pavilion. He scanned the sea of faces, the majority of which were deckchair-based, and at first recognised no one.

  ‘Warren! Warren! Over here!’

  It was Elspeth. She stood up to make it easier for him to spot where the two of them were.

  Tolstoy stepped off the verandah, gratefully, and this time made a trouble-free, if tortuous, trip over to them, managing to avoid young children, bored with the match, chasing each other around and through the spectators.

  It was Elspeth who greeted him first. ‘Tolstoy, darling,’ and she stepped forward to give him a hug. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well, if a little hot and dusty, perhaps. That’s quite a walk from the station in this weather.’

  ‘You should have let us know when you arrived, it would have been no trouble to get the car out and potter down to the station.’

  ‘Oh, I had no idea what precise time I would be getting in, and as things turned out I managed to miss one train, the next was cancelled, so I’m at least a couple of hours behind schedule. I didn’t want to bother you, drag you away from this. And that is just as well given the way things turned out. Anyway, the exercise may well have done me some good.’

  ‘Well you’re here now. When you’ve said your hellos to Hubert I shall take you over to the pavilion, Fiona Selby – do you remember Fiona? – anyway, she has made the most delicious lemonade. It’s her grandmother’s recipe and it is utterly refreshing.’

  Tolstoy shook his godfather’s hand, smiling. ‘Hello Hubert. How are things?’

  ‘So-so. The damned thing gets no better and it’s bloody well spreading. But I’m still here. I wouldn’t have missed this match for the world.’

  And Tolstoy nodded, he knew how much this annual match meant to his godfather. He had taken part in it for many years, and had ensured that neither side ever had to struggle for players by paying for drinks and bar food in the Snitcher’s Head after the match.

  ‘Now, put your bag down, by the deckchair, we’ve fought hard to ensure no one else pinched it, then go off with Elspeth and wash the dust from your throat.’

  It was surprisingly cool inside the pavilion, and
Tolstoy noticed a suspicion of musty, mouldy pine in the atmosphere, but there was also a hint of expensive perfume overlying that, a smell that grew stronger the nearer they drew to the bustling kitchen area. Elspeth marched her charge up to the counter and left him there, while she headed into the kitchen, merging with the constantly shifting crowd of mothers, wives, sisters and girlfriends who were toiling over the teams’ teas and putting together sandwiches and cakes for the spectators. Some of the faces of the volunteers behind the counter were vaguely familiar to Tolstoy, although putting a name to any of them would be impossible, he knew.