A woman screamed. I was on my feet in a second. We both were. And another scream! I was already reaching for my dressing gown when there was a third screech. And a fourth. By now we were beginning to laugh.
‘Peacocks!’ Harriet exclaimed. ‘There were a couple on the terrace, weren’t there? I wonder why they’ve come round here.’
‘Here’ of course was beneath our window. Not only was it an undistinguished room, but it was on the undistinguished side of the house, well away from the terrace on which the birds should have been disporting themselves.
‘God knows why Barrington should want such noisy brutes in the first place,’ I grumbled. ‘I’d shoot the things tomorrow.’
‘There’s probably a law against it. Or perhaps it would be as bad as shooting an albatross. Oh, Matthew, that’s the poem I should have recited!’
‘What? The Ancient Mariner? All of it?’
‘As much as I could remember. I think Coleridge might have been somewhat less controversial than such a full-blown love poem.’
‘It was the best welcome into a room that I’ve ever had,’ I declared, ‘and this is my response.’
But it was hard to sustain even the most passionate of embraces when it was accompanied by an ongoing chorus of squawks. We collapsed in laughter. In any case, the little maid would soon come scratching at the door, and some decorum was called for.
Her eyes still warm with passion, Harriet sat down composedly. ‘Tell me about your evening with the gentlemen.’
I sat too, actually very pleased to share the details of a gathering I would not have found strange five, even two, years ago when I was used to exclusively masculine social gatherings. But my life at Thorncroft House had changed my expectations of my fellow men – and now I liked the softening, indeed the humanizing, presence of the opposite sex. Not that the women of Thorncroft expected to be cosseted. Our conversations were robust and full of cut and thrust in argument – never simperingly genteel, as the latter part of this evening’s chatter had become.
She nodded. ‘Perhaps you were expecting Barrington to be more like Mark, and Lady Hortensia to be more like Mark’s Dora?’
‘Perhaps I had simply forgotten what a bore our poor host can be – and to my shame I had forgotten how bad his injuries must have been. His stoicism! Anyway, he explained why Mark isn’t here. He’s due to lead the defence at an important trial next week and needed to prepare for it.’ I watched the shadow of disappointment cross her face.
‘What a shame! But I honour him for putting preparations for his client before a weekend of pleasure.’
I put it more bluntly. ‘A weekend I fancy he would already be dismissing as tedious. And you know that Dora’s opinions about women like Mary Wollstonecraft would have shocked the ladies far more than anything you could say, or even recite. You did not want to come. I insisted. You were right. I’m sorry.’
‘Let us accept it as … education. At least the evening didn’t last as long as I feared it might. I hadn’t realized that many of the party would need to return home while there was enough light. Come, my love: the team’s plans for the cricket match – that’s what you were supposed to be discussing.’
‘And did. Intermittently. But there is some unease between Barrington and his deputy, Jameson.’
‘Jameson? Ah, the Major, very conscious of how well he looks in his mess uniform Our villagers would dismiss him as having a bob on himself. He seems quite a charmer, though – the ladies seemed delighted to engage in conversation with him.’
‘Were you?’
‘I am too old for his attentions. In any case, I thought he was an ogler – of the younger women at least. But what is this unease?’
‘I don’t know. Just an edge between them. I hope it won’t affect what Barrington will refer to as his team.’
She frowned. ‘His team? But surely he cannot play with those injuries of his.’
I replied, deadpan, ‘He is planning to bat with a runner and send on a substitute when we field.’
Her eyebrows rose to dizzy heights. ‘And such an arrangement appears where in the Laws of Cricket?’
‘My love, you know that gentlemen can and do rewrite laws at any time to suit themselves. And in many respects the laws governing the game are notoriously lax.’
She shrugged, but asked suspiciously, ‘And has Barrington adopted a flexible attitude to being dismissed? He has to be bowled three times before he quits the field, perhaps? No! Matthew, you are mocking me!’
‘Not a jot!’
The tiny maid’s arrival silenced us briefly. I would have been more than happy to dismiss her and take her place, but I sensed that Harriet wanted to give the child confidence and perhaps draw her out a little, so once more I withdrew to the dressing room.
‘I thought she would never finish!’ I exclaimed, when it was safe to return.
‘So did I. I tried to be patient with her, but even the most gentle question transformed even more of her fingers into thumbs. Enough of her and her shortcomings, my love. We have other things to talk about – or perhaps not even talk about …’
The peacocks had the decency to remain silent throughout the night, but one gave us an early call next morning. We had the rare luxury of unhurried time together, so were content to drowse or talk or neither.
At last Harriet asked, ‘Are you required to go to net-practice this morning?’
‘Indeed. There’s a three-line whip. But not till ten thirty. Jameson wanted eleven, Barrington ten. It took a very long time for everyone to accept a compromise.’
‘Surely, within reason, the longer the practice the better.’
‘You would have thought so. I have the impression that Jameson argues with me for the sheer pleasure of it, though I have no idea why. But enough of him. Mark’s place will have to be taken by one of the household – the head gardener has been requisitioned.’
She looked at me quizzically. ‘But you don’t approve.’
‘I might if the head gardener had a say in it. But it seems that he is the best batsman in the village team, so theirs will be a double loss. And they could equally well have asked the rector or curate to play – or others of their circle – instead of telling a working man what he had to do.’
‘My love, your next move should not be to a greater country house but into the greatest house – the House of Commons!’ Her voice was mocking, but the expression on her face was lovingly serious.
‘And give up Thorncroft House? And tear you from Lord Croft’s library? You see, I could not be one of those men who leaves his wife behind while he disports himself in London. Meanwhile, I have tomorrow to look forward to. For a youngish man, Jameson seems very dogmatic. I wonder,’ I added stretching, ‘what he will make of my new bowling technique. The one you taught me, of course.’
‘For goodness’ sake don’t tell him that! He’ll drop you from the team and send you to bowl for the village.’ She turned and kissed me. ‘And in your present mood that’s exactly what you would like, isn’t it?’
‘Among other things,’ I agreed.
My school and university days had taught me that there were two types of teacher: those who told you that you were wrong, and needed to do something their way, and those who were interested in what you were doing and were even prepared to learn from it. I learnt from Major Jameson that everything about my bowling was at fault, especially, it seemed, my approach to the wicket.
‘They say you’re an Oxford Blue,’ he sneered, ‘but I’ve never seen a run-up like that at a Varsity match.’
That was probably true. It had changed – some might say matured – since I took my degree. As a result, I was now the leading wicket-taker in our village team, with a wonderful partnership with our wicket-keeper, who happened to be the village constable. Once I had discovered who this motley side’s wicket-keeper was, and told him how I would signal each variation in my delivery, all would be well. Would the Almighty forgive me if I prayed it would not be Jameson behind the stumps? I hoped He would, especially as Jameson was now criticizing the length of my delivery stride. Like a schoolboy, I was supposed to act on his instructions. Bubbling with fury, and totally ignoring him, I bowled faster than I ever had in my life, and with more accuracy. I actually broke one of the stumps. It was better than breaking his jaw.
Suddenly, Jameson decided I needed no more attention, and turned his guns on others he considered were not meeting his impeccable standards. There was a lot of muttering, especially when Turton, a stuttering chinless lad, one of Harriet’s dinner partners, was reduced almost to tears by the man’s mockery of his affliction. I should have tried to stop it all – why didn’t Barrington intervene, for goodness’ sake?– but my temper was on such a knife-edge I knew I might do him injury. Finally he pointed to the head gardener, the man whom Barrington had purloined from the village team. His strapping physique suggested he might bowl as well as bat.
‘You. The new man,’ he began. ‘Harry or whatever your name is.’
‘Harrison, sir.’
‘Harris. Look at the way you’re standing. Sloppy. Straighten your back, for God’s sake. Call yourself a cricketer?’
The head gardener looked at him. Any moment he would be accused of dumb insolence.
My hands clenched to my sides, I looked around at the other players. All these brave young men desperate for a leader! How might I help? Either I floored the man, or I pretended I was acting a part from one of the plays we sometimes read aloud at home. Yes, I must be the reasonable idiot for a few minutes: ‘Barrington, old man, I wonder if we might spend the last few minutes practising our fielding. Catching especially.’ After all, it was a skill which won and lost matches. Though even as I suggested catching, I knew the converse was throwing, which could lead to its own problems. What if I was tempted to hurl the ball not to Jameson but at him?
There was a gratifying murmur of assent.
‘Good God, man, you want us running round like a tribe of schoolboys?’ His face fixed in a sneer, Jameson stormed off, Barrington eventually limping in his wake, presumably to remonstrate.
Casually I threw the ball at the nearest player, who promptly dropped it. Most players quickly understood what I meant to do. Our practice might not have been blessed by our captain and his truculent sidekick, but it lasted a very profitable half-hour. Not least because the stuttering lad who had been tormented could throw further and faster than anyone else, and because Harrison, the humiliated gardener, seemed to have glue on his fingers. By common consent he became our wicket-keeper, though it seemed he might have to borrow gloves from his village team counterpart. We had some sort of team at least. I would have continued longer, had I not recalled to my shame and chagrin that I had forgotten Harriet. She had firmly – and, as it transpired, rightly – rejected my suggestion that she might like to be present at our cricket practice and was now at the mercy of the remaining guests. So I gathered the men together. ‘Gentlemen, let us simply play a good game for our own sakes. Our own and our colleagues’. And indeed for the sake of the opposition, who will sadly be lacking a very good player.’ I reached over to shake Harrison’s hand. He might have smiled and shaken it firmly, but I feared he still burned with anger as much as I did.
‘Have you a moment?’ I asked, trusting that Harriet would forgive me if she knew what I was doing. ‘Because we need to learn to read each other’s signals if we are to take wickets …’
Harriet was not on the front lawn, where a gaggle of women were cooing over the contents of the perambulators pushed by a trio of nannies. At least as much attention seemed to be paid to the perambulators themselves – these were designed to be pushed, it seemed, a considerable improvement on the system where the nanny was turned into a draught horse towing her charge. Harriet would have approved, certainly. But she never put herself in the way of children, one of the rare occasions, it seemed to me, when she betrayed her sorrow at not being able to bear one herself. At one point she had been reluctant to marry me on the grounds that I would want an heir. I wanted her, and had never once regretted my decision.
The obvious places to look were the gallery and the library. The former was deserted, but for a lugubrious maid with a long feather-duster, who appeared to detest each painting even more than its predecessor. If I wanted to stop her and tell her to look at the beauty in front of her – Gainsboroughs, a couple of Claudes, for instance – I was sure that Harriet could not have resisted. I confined myself to a mild observation about the comic figures in a Breughel, which earned a resigned bob of a curtsy, and left her to her work, heading for the library.
But it was empty.