At Lord’s

MIKE GOT TO Lord’s just as the umpires moved out into the field. He raced round to the pavilion. Joe met him on the stairs.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘No hurry. We’ve won the toss. I’ve put you in fourth wicket.’

‘Right ho,’ said Mike. ‘Glad we haven’t to field just yet.’

‘We oughtn’t to have to field today if we don’t chuck our wickets away.’

‘Good wicket?’

‘Like a billiard-table. I’m glad you were able to come. Have any difficulty in getting away?’

Joe Jackson’s knowledge of the workings of a bank was of the slightest. He himself had never, since he left Oxford, been in a position where there were obstacles to getting off to play in first-class cricket. By profession he was agent to a sporting baronet whose hobby was the cricket of the county, and so, far from finding any difficulty in playing for the county, he was given to understand by his employer that that was his chief duty. It never occurred to him that Mike might find his bank less amenable in the matter of giving leave. His only fear, when he rang Mike up that morning, had been that this might be a particularly busy day at the New Asiatic Bank. If there was no special rush of work, he took it for granted that Mike would simply go to the manager, ask for leave to play in the match, and be given it with a beaming smile.

Mike did not answer the question, but asked one on his own account.

‘How did you happen to be short?’ he said.

‘It was rotten luck. It was like this. We were altering our team after the Sussex match, to bring in Ballard, Keene, and Willis. They couldn’t get down to Brighton, as the ’Varsity had a match, but there was nothing on for them in the last half of the week, so they’d promised to roll up.’

Ballard, Keene, and Willis were members of the Cambridge team, all very capable performers and much in demand by the county, when they could get away to play for it.

‘Well?’ said Mike.

‘Well, we all came up by train from Brighton last night. But these three asses had arranged to motor down from Cambridge early today, and get here in time for the start. What happens? Why, Willis, who fancies himself as a chauffeur, undertakes to do the driving; and naturally, being an absolute rot-ter, goes and smashes up the whole concern just outside St Albans. The first thing I knew of it was when I got to Lord’s at half-past ten, and found a wire waiting for me to say that they were all three of them crocked, and couldn’t possibly play. I tell you, it was a bit of a jar to get half an hour before the match started. Willis has sprained his ankle, apparently; Keene’s damaged his wrist; and Ballard has smashed his collar-bone. I don’t suppose they’ll be able to play in the ’Varsity match. Rotten luck for Cambridge. Well, fortunately we’d had two reserve pros with us at Brighton, who had come up to London with the team in case they might be wanted, so, with them, we were only one short. Then I thought of you. That’s how it was.’

‘I see,’ said Mike. ‘Who are the pros?’

‘Davis and Brockley. Both bowlers. It weakens our batting a lot. Ballard or Willis might have got a stack of runs on this wicket. Still, we’ve got a certain amount of batting as it is. We oughtn’t to do badly, if we’re careful. You’ve been getting some practice, I suppose, this season?’

‘In a sort of a way. Nets and so on. No matches of any importance.’

‘Dash it, I wish you’d had a game or two in decent class cricket. Still, nets are better than nothing, I hope you’ll be in form. We may want a pretty long knock from you, if things go wrong. These men seem to be settling down all right, thank goodness,’ he added, looking out of the window at the county’s first pair, Warrington and Mills, two professionals, who, as the result of ten minutes’ play, had put up twenty.

‘I’d better go and change,’ said Mike, picking up his bag. ‘You’re in first wicket, I suppose?’

‘Yes. And Reggie, second wicket.’

Reggie was another of Mike’s brothers, not nearly so fine a player as Joe, but a sound bat, who generally made runs if allowed to stay in.

Mike changed, and went out into the little balcony at the top of the pavilion. He had it to himself. There were not many spectators in the pavilion at this early stage of the game.

There are few more restful places, if one wishes to think, than the upper balconies of Lord’s pavilion. Mike, watching the game making its leisurely progress on the turf below, set himself seriously to review the situation in all its aspects. The exhilaration of bursting the bonds had begun to fade, and he found himself able to look into the matter of his desertion and weigh up the consequences. There was no doubt that he had cut the painter once and for all. Even a friendly-disposed management could hardly overlook what he had done. And the management of the New Asiatic Bank was the very reverse of friendly. Mr Bickersdyke, he knew, would jump at this chance of getting rid of him. He realised that he must look on his career in the bank as a closed book. It was definitely over, and he must now think about the future.

It was not a time for half-measures. He could not go home. He must carry the thing through, now that he had begun, and find something definite to do, to support himself.

There seemed only one opening for him. What could he do, he asked himself. Just one thing. He could play cricket. It was by his cricket that he must live. He would have to become a professional. Could he get taken on? That was the question. It was impossible that he should play for his own county on his residential qualification. He could not appear as a professional in the same team in which his brothers were playing as amateurs. He must stake all on his birth qualification for Surrey.

On the other hand, had he the credentials which Surrey would want? He had a school reputation. But was that enough? He could not help feeling that it might not be.

Thinking it over more tensely than he had ever thought over anything in his whole life, he saw clearly that everything depended on what sort of a show he made in this match which was now in progress. It was his big chance. If he succeeded, all would be well. He did not care to think what his position would be if he did not succeed.

A distant appeal and a sound of clapping from the crowd broke in on his thoughts. Mills was out, caught at the wicket. The telegraph-board gave the total as forty-eight. Not sensational. The success of the team depended largely on what sort of a start the two professionals made.

The clapping broke out again as Joe made his way down the steps. Joe, as an All England player, was a favourite with the crowd.

Mike watched him play an over in his strong, graceful style: then it suddenly occurred to him that he would like to know how matters had gone at the bank in his absence.

He went down to the telephone, rang up the bank, and asked for Psmith.

Presently the familiar voice made itself heard.

‘Hullo, Smith.’

‘Hullo. Is that Comrade Jackson? How are things progressing?’

‘Fairly well. We’re in first. We’ve lost one wicket, and the fifty’s just up. I say, what’s happened at the bank?’

‘I broke the news to Comrade Gregory. A charming personality. I feel that we shall be friends.’

‘Was he sick?’

‘In a measure, yes. Indeed, I may say he practically foamed at the mouth. I explained the situation, but he was not to be appeased. He jerked me into the presence of Comrade Bickersdyke, with whom I had a brief but entertaining chat. He had not a great deal to say, but he listened attentively to my narrative, and eventually told me off to take your place in the Fixed Deposits. That melancholy task I am now performing to the best of my ability. I find the work a little trying. There is too much ledger-lugging to be done for my simple tastes. I have been hauling ledgers from the safe all the morning. The cry is beginning to go round, “Psmith is willing, but can his physique stand the strain?” In the excitement of the moment just now I dropped a somewhat massive tome onto Comrade Gregory’s foot, unfortunately, I understand, the foot in which he has of late been suffering twinges of gout. I passed the thing off with ready tact, but I cannot deny that there was a certain temporary coolness, which, indeed, is not yet past. These things, Comrade Jackson, are the whirlpools in the quiet stream of commercial life.’

‘Have I got the sack?’

‘No official pronouncement has been made to me as yet on the subject, but I think I should advise you, if you are offered another job in the course of the day, to accept it. I cannot say that you are precisely the pet of the management just at present. However, I have ideas for your future, which I will divulge when we meet. I propose to slide coyly from the office at about four o’clock. I am meeting my father at that hour. We shall come straight on to Lord’s.’

‘Right ho,’ said Mike. ‘I’ll be looking out for you.’

‘Is there any little message I can give Comrade Gregory from you?’

‘You can give him my love, if you like.’

‘It shall be done. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye.’

Mike replaced the receiver, and went up to his balcony again.

As soon as his eye fell on the telegraph-board he saw with a start that things had been moving rapidly in his brief absence. The numbers of the batsmen on the board were three and five.

‘Great Scott!’ he cried. ‘Why, I’m in next. What on earth’s been happening?’

He put on his pads hurriedly, expecting every moment that a wicket would fall and find him unprepared. But the batsmen were still together when he rose, ready for the fray, and went downstairs to get news.

He found his brother Reggie in the dressing-room.

‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘How were you out?’

‘LBW,’ said Reggie. ‘Goodness knows how it happened. My eyesight must be going. I mistimed the thing altogether.’

‘How was Warrington out?’

‘Caught in the slips.’

‘By Jove!’ said Mike. ‘This is pretty rocky. Three for sixty-one. We shall get mopped.’

‘Unless you and Joe do something. There’s no earthly need to get out. The wicket’s as good as you want, and the bowling’s nothing special. Well played, Joe!’

A beautiful glide to leg by the greatest of the Jacksons had rolled up against the pavilion rails. The fieldsmen changed across for the next over.

‘If only Peters stops a bit –’ began Mike, and broke off. Peters’ off stump was lying at an angle of forty-five degrees.

‘Well, he hasn’t,’ said Reggie grimly. ‘Silly ass, why did he hit at that one? All he’d got to do was to stay in with Joe. Now it’s up to you. Do try and do something, or we’ll be out under the hundred.’

Mike waited till the outcoming batsman had turned in at the professionals’ gate. Then he walked down the steps and out into the open, feeling more nervous than he had felt since that far-off day when he had first gone in to bat for Wrykyn against the MCC. He found his thoughts flying back to that occasion. Today, as then, everything seemed very distant and unreal. The spectators were miles away. He had often been to Lord’s as a spectator, but the place seemed entirely unfamiliar now. He felt as if he were in a strange land.

He was conscious of Joe leaving the crease to meet him on his way. He smiled feebly. ‘Buck up,’ said Joe in that robust way of his which was so heartening. ‘Nothing in the bowling, and the wicket like a shirt-front. Play just as if you were at the nets. And for goodness’ sake don’t try to score all your runs in the first over. Stick in, and we’ve got them.’

Mike smiled again more feebly than before, and made a weird gurgling noise in his throat.

It had been the Middlesex fast bowler who had destroyed Peters. Mike was not sorry. He did not object to fast bowling. He took guard, and looked round him, taking careful note of the positions of the slips.

As usual, once he was at the wicket the paralysed feeling left him. He became conscious again of his power. Dash it all, what was there to be afraid of? He was a jolly good bat, and he would jolly well show them that he was, too.

The fast bowler, with a preliminary bound, began his run. Mike settled himself into position, his whole soul concentrated on the ball. Everything else was wiped from his mind.

For nearly two hours Mike had been experiencing the keenest pleasure that it had ever fallen to his lot to feel. From the moment he took his first ball till the luncheon interval he had suffered the acutest discomfort. His nervousness had left him to a great extent, but he had never really settled down. Sometimes by luck, and sometimes by skill, he had kept the ball out of his wicket; but he was scratching, and he knew it. Not for a single over had he been comfortable. On several occasions he had edged balls to leg and through the slips in quite an inferior manner, and it was seldom that he managed to hit with the centre of the bat.

Nobody is more alive to the fact that he is not playing up to his true form than the batsman. Even though his score mounted little by little into the twenties, Mike was miserable. If this was the best he could do on a perfect wicket, he felt there was not much hope for him as a professional.

The poorness of his play was accentuated by the brilliance of Joe’s. Joe combined science and vigour to a remarkable degree. He laid on the wood with a graceful robustness which drew much cheering from the crowd. Beside him Mike was oppressed by that leaden sense of moral inferiority which weighs on a man who has turned up to dinner in ordinary clothes when everybody else has dressed. He felt awkward and conspicuously out of place.

Then came lunch – and after lunch a glorious change.

Volumes might be written on the cricket lunch and the influence it has on the run of the game; how it undoes one man, and sends another back to the fray like a giant refreshed; how it turns the brilliant fast bowler into the sluggish medium, and the nervous bat into the masterful smiter.

On Mike its effect was magical. He lunched wisely and well, chewing his food with the concentration of a thirty-three bites a mouthful crank, and drinking dry ginger-ale. As he walked out with Joe after the interval he knew that a change had taken place in him. His nerve had come back, and with it his form.

It sometimes happens at cricket that when one feels particularly fit one gets snapped in the slips in the first over, or clean bowled by a full toss; but neither of these things happened to Mike. He stayed in, and began to score. Now there were no edgings through the slips and snicks to leg. He was meeting the ball in the centre of the bat, and meeting it vigorously. Two boundaries in successive balls off the fast bowler, hard, clean drives past extra-cover, put him at peace with all the world. He was on top. He had found himself.

Joe, at the other end, resumed his brilliant career. His century and Mike’s fifty arrived in the same over. The bowling began to grow loose.

Joe, having reached his century, slowed down somewhat, and Mike took up the running. The score rose rapidly.

A leg-theory bowler kept down the pace of the run-getting for a time, but the bowlers at the other end continued to give away runs. Mike’s score passed from sixty to seventy, from seventy to eighty, from eighty to ninety. When the Smiths, father and son, came on to the ground the total was ninety-eight. Joe had made a hundred and thirty-three.

Mike reached his century just as Psmith and his father took their seats. A square cut off the slow bowler was just too wide for point to get to. By the time third man had sprinted across and returned the ball the batsmen had run two.

Mr Smith was enthusiastic.

‘I tell you,’ he said to Psmith, who was clapping in a gently encouraging manner, ‘the boy’s a wonderful bat. I said so when he was down with us. I remember telling him so myself. “I’ve seen your brothers play,” I said, “and you’re better than any of them.” I remember it distinctly. He’ll be playing for England in another year or two. Fancy putting a cricketer like that into the City! It’s a crime.’

‘I gather,’ said Psmith, ‘that the family coffers had got a bit low. It was necessary for Comrade Jackson to do something by way of saving the Old Home.’

‘He ought to be at the University. Look, he’s got that man away to the boundary again. They’ll never get him out.’

At six o’clock the partnership was broken. Joe running himself out in trying to snatch a single where no single was. He had made a hundred and eighty-nine.

Mike flung himself down on the turf with mixed feelings. He was sorry Joe was out, but he was very glad indeed of the chance of a rest. He was utterly fagged. A half-day match once a week is no training for first-class cricket. Joe, who had been playing all the season, was as tough as india-rubber, and trotted into the pavilion as fresh as if he had been having a brief spell at the nets. Mike, on the other hand, felt that he simply wanted to be dropped into a cold bath and left there indefinitely. There was only another half-hour’s play, but he doubted if he could get through it.

He dragged himself up wearily as Joe’s successor arrived at the wickets. He had crossed Joe before the latter’s downfall, and it was his turn to take the bowling.

Something seemed to have gone out of him. He could not time the ball properly. The last ball of the over looked like a half-volley, and he hit out at it. But it was just short of a half-volley, and his stroke arrived too soon. The bowler, running in the direction of mid-on, brought off an easy c.-and-b.

Mike turned away towards the pavilion. He heard the gradually swelling applause in a sort of dream. It seemed to him hours before he reached the dressing-room.

He was sitting on a chair, wishing that somebody would come along and take off his pads, when Psmith’s card was brought to him. A few moments later the old Etonian appeared in person.

‘Hullo, Smith,’ said Mike, ‘By Jove! I’m done.’

‘“How Little Willie Saved the Match,”’ said Psmith. ‘What you want is one of those gin and ginger-beers we hear so much about. Remove those pads, and let us flit downstairs in search of a couple. Well, Comrade Jackson, you have fought the good fight this day. My father sends his compliments. He is dining out, or he would have come up. He is going to look in at the flat latish.’

‘How many did I get?’ asked Mike. ‘I was so jolly done I didn’t think of looking.’

‘A hundred and forty-eight of the best,’ said Psmith. ‘What will they say at the old homestead about this? Are you ready? Then let us test this fruity old ginger-beer of theirs.’

The two batsmen who had followed the big stand were apparently having a little stand all of their own. No more wickets fell before the drawing of stumps. Psmith waited for Mike while he changed, and carried him off in a cab to Simpson’s, a restaurant which, as he justly observed, offered two great advantages, namely, that you need not dress, and, secondly, that you paid your half-crown, and were then at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed, without extra charge.