The morning of the match was crisp and sunny with only a faint autumnal haze, which gave promise of a fine still day. It was of course a single-innings game, and was due to start at eleven o’clock. To my sorrow, Miss Greville was debarred from seeing me perform by an engagement at the vicarage where Mr Lesly, with extremely bad taste, had chosen this particular day for St Jude’s annual garden party. Yet, in a way, I felt slightly relieved at this enforced absence of my ‘aunt’, since there was always the horrid possibility that one or other of her more outspoken observations might expose the true nature of our relationship. It was enough that I carried her good wishes with me as, at ten o’clock, I set out for the club ground.
Now the game of cricket is presumably not a matter of passionate interest for every reader of this book, nevertheless this particular match was an exciting one, and since its upshot proved even more memorable, I must briefly describe it.
A coin was spun in front of the pavilion and Cunningham, having won the toss, elected to bat first. Our opponents, with a jocularity that we found offensive, were prepared to treat us lightly. They began by offering catches in the deep field which to their surprise we accepted. When they settled down to be serious it was a different matter. But our bowling was steady. Douglas, son of the yachtsman, had a particularly deceptive off break, and our fielding, of the swift dash and one-handed-pick-up variety, kept the score down, besides bringing frequent bursts of hand clapping from the spectators. Although Cunningham, unfortunately, carried his bat for fifty-seven, which included eleven boundary hits, they were all out just after one o’clock for a hundred and thirty-nine.
Mrs Heston had provided an excellent buffet lunch which was taken standing up, people moving about with plates of chicken salad and cold veal pie, in a general air of heartiness. All my running had made me extremely hot so that I did not feel up to eating much which, in view of the excellent fare, was rather a pity. But I had a ham sandwich and several glasses of lemon squash. As I went up for my final squash Mrs Heston, who must have known of me from her husband, said in my ear:
‘I do wish you a good knock, Laurence.’
After the luncheon interval it was our turn to bat. Scott, a first-class batsman and good all-rounder, had bowled without change at one end. Now, with Bethune, he went in to open our innings. How I admired as he walked elegantly to the wicket and calmly took centre. He played the first over confidently, scoring two off the last ball.
Seated on the pavilion veranda with the others, applauding that strong, clean, cover drive, I felt a rising hope—despite Mrs Heston’s good wishes—that I should not have to go in. Although in my usual fashion I had built extravagantly on a spectacular performance, now that deeds might be demanded of me, the prospect of that lonely walk to the wicket had begun to intimidate me. Thus far, while I had made no catches, I had fielded extremely well. My reputation might rest on that with safety. Bethune, having taken middle and leg, was now set to receive an over from Cunningham who, taking an alarmingly long run, delivered his first ball. Fast and well pitched up, it knocked out Bethune’s middle stump. One out, and only two on the scoreboard—it was a shock.
When Bethune returned, to averted glances, while I entered a painful nought in my scoring card—which I have retained to this day—Colquhoun followed. Next to Scott he was our soundest bat, one who could be relied upon to stay. Unfortunately, on this occasion, he remained for a bare ten minutes and a stodgy nine. The next batsman’s effort was equally short and even more uneventful. He contributed three. A chill air of despondency had now settled on the veranda bench. My agitation was increasing by the minute. Once the rot started the sorrowful procession continued and was held up only by Hailey, our wicketkeeper, who made a solid ten, all singles, before being caught and bowled by Cunningham. A final, momentary respite was provided by Douglas, the spin bowler who, hitting out at everything, scored fourteen including three wild but valuable boundaries that sailed over second slip’s head.
When Douglas left, out to a catch at long leg the score, aided by some kindly extras, stood at no more than ninety-two for eight wickets, of which Scott-Hamilton had made forty-six. And I now shivered as the younger Scott-Hamilton, who immediately preceded me on the batting order, went swaggering out to the pitch in a manner that made me envy his cheek. There was a good deal of the clown in Harry, he liked to raise a laugh even if against himself. On this occasion he succeeded. After taking guard in exaggerated fashion he walked up and down patting imaginary imperfections in the bone-dry pitch. Having succeeded in amusing the spectators, who as the afternoon wore on had grown in number, he took guard again and faced the bowler. The ball was a slow leg break. Harry turned to pull it to leg, missed his footing and sat down on his wicket. The result was an enormous shout of laughter in which, irresistibly, even the fielders joined. So in this atmosphere of hilarity I would have to go in. My pads were already on. With a frightful hollow in my stomach I put my bat under my arm and stumbled down the wooden steps of the pavilion into that wide green arena.
Scott came to meet me halfway to the wicket. Pale with anger and disappointment he greeted me with a string of scarifying bad words.
‘The bowling is absolute blank, blank tosh. These blank, blank toads have simply got themselves out. Just keep your blank end up and let me do the scoring.’
These profane injunctions did little to fortify me. I was so wretchedly nervous when I went to the wicket that I forgot to take guard. The game had degenerated into farce and in the interests of cricket must be terminated at once by my dismissal. The first ball shaved my wicket, the second hit me a sad crack on the elbow. It was then the end of the over.
While the field changed, Heston, who was umpiring at my end, strolled towards me, hands in the pockets of his long white coat.
‘Straight bat,’ he said mildly. ‘Don’t run away from them.’
In the events that followed Scott-Hamilton was the hero, I merely the accessory to the fact. It is enough to report simply and briefly that, with incredible good fortune, I stayed there for more than three-quarters of an hour, surviving by the skin of my teeth, while Scott hit up another thirty-one runs. His score was seventy-seven, my total no more than a miserable seventeen, but beyond keeping my wicket intact I had one moment of glory, when, off what proved to be the last ball of the match, I ventured on a square cut that somehow sped past cover point then trickled to the boundary. I did not realize that it was the winning hit until I saw Scott waiting for me to walk to the pavilion.
In the pavilion, as we took off our pads, he brushed off all congratulations.
‘I never believed I would have the misfortune to know such a blank collection of blankety toads. You, Harry, were the toadiest of the lot. Lucky there was one toad,’ he announced, ‘who wasn’t altogether toadish.’ Then turning to me: ‘You’ll come home to tea with me, won’t you, Carroll?’
The invitation went to my head like wine. This was the final accolade, an honour and an intimacy I had never hoped, to attain. My powers in the game had already raised me well above myself. Now I floated, disembodied, an elected member of the élite.
When we had changed we set out, Scott, Harry and I, sauntering towards their house, which stood quite near, in a secluded position, behind the wood. On the way over we discussed the match, Harry with his usual sense of fun, Scott mockingly amused at Mr Cunningham’s discomfiture. To me the master had not appeared at all upset at the defeat of his side, rather the contrary, and apart from his unfortunate teeth he seemed a genuinely nice sort of man. He had clapped me heartily on the back and said ‘Well played’ as we came off the field. But it was enough that for reasons of his own Scott detested him. Strolling along easily in my new-found arrogance I derided the unhappy Cunningham, inventing comic names for him, of which one, ‘Rabbit Teeth’, won approval. Scott said that it would stick.
The grounds of the house were imposingly large. We went along an avenue of chestnut trees that revealed a paddock on one side and distantly on the other the fruit and vegetable garden, where two men were working, and beyond which I made out an inviting row of glasshouses. A shrubbery and a rock garden appeared next before finally we came to the house, a half-timbered mansion draped in virginia creeper, fronting a wide stretch of lawn flanked by twin herbaceous borders.
A woman, tall, thin, with greying hair and a distinguished look, was crossing the lawn as we approached. She was wearing gardening gloves and carried a trug in which lay a profusion of full-blown roses.
‘Mother,’ Scott said, ‘this is Carroll. I’ve asked him to tea.’
She smiled pleasantly, viewing us all, not with the outgiving affection my own mother would have shown, but with a certain aristocratic, faintly amused contraction of her brows which, to my shame, I now preferred.
‘How did the match go?’
‘We won, naturally,’ Scott said offhandedly.
‘Behold the two heroes, Mother. I made a duck.’
‘Oh, you wretch, Harry. Never mind, you’ll have tea with me when I’ve finished cutting.’ Turning to go, she said: ‘Then you may tell me all about it.’
Scott led the way into the house, through the hall and along a passage at the back to a green baize-covered service door.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘You won’t mind coming in here?’
Gaily, in a free and easy manner, I followed them to the kitchen which was large, white-tiled and well lit. At the window a smartly dressed maid was polishing silver while a stout cook, with her back to us, was at the stove bending over the oven.
‘We’d like some ginger beer, Bridgie.’
‘Take it then,’ said the cook, over her shoulder. ‘But leave these pancakes be, Master Harry, they’re for the mistress’s tea.’
Harry, who knew his way about, had supplied us with glasses of stone ginger beer, when the cook swung round and straightened, exposing to us a full red amiable face set with a pair of button black eyes. I stiffened, choked on my ginger beer. I recognized her instantly. Bridget O’Halloran, staunch devotee of St Mary’s and leading member of the Guild of St Teresa. Did she know me? Idiotic, futile question. Had she not sat beside me in church, walked in the same procession, even passed me occasionally on her afternoon off as she went to the church and I emerged from school? If this damning evidence was not enough, her stare of wondering surprise that plainly said ‘What is he doing here, where he doesn’t belong, with Master Scott and Master Harry?’ would surely have convinced me. And now her expression had changed. I saw that she distrusted and resented my upstart appearance in a society so far above me, a sphere where as an old and privileged servant she had the right to feel at home. I was an offence against the sound established order that she believed in as firmly as she did the Communion of Saints.
She placed herself in a conversational attitude, one hand on her hip.
‘You have a new friend, Master Scott?’
‘Decidedly,’ he agreed, drinking deeply.
‘That’s nice. He’ll be at the Beechfield with you?’
‘No, Bridgie,’ Harry interposed. ‘For your private information, he has a weak chest and doesn’t go to school at present.’
‘Indeed now, that’s interesting. And where does he get his education like?’
‘He has a tutor.’
‘A tutor is it?’
Disregarding Master Harry, who was now helping himself to pancakes, she fixed me with a chilly, penetrating stare. Yet her tone was persuasive as, in a meditative manner, she queried:
‘But surely … haven’t I seen you in Clay Street with a school satchel?’
I affected an incredulous smile. It was a feeble effort.
‘Of course not.’
‘Strange,’ she pursued. ‘I could have sworn it was you. Down by St Mary’s School?’
I was pale. The smile had stiffened on my lips. Ineffectually I tried an edging movement towards the door.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t you?’
‘I’m dead positive,’ I said violently. ‘What the dickens would I be doing down there?’
She considered me for a long moment, then said slowly:
‘And the cock crowed thrice.’
Master Harry went into a fit of laughter.
‘Silly Bridgie. And the cock crowed. Cock-a-doodle-do.’
But Scott-Hamilton, unsmiling, was looking at me very curiously.
‘Shut up, Harry. Let’s clear out.’
Tea in the drawing-room where, basking in glory, I had hoped to shine, was a torment. Despite Mrs Scott-Hamilton’s puzzled efforts, conversation flagged and died. As soon as I could, I said that I must go.
‘Must you?’ said Scott, getting up immediately. ‘Pity you have to leave,’ he said with cold politeness, having escorted me to the front door.
‘I have to meet someone,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows with a faint, contemptuous smile.
‘The tutor?’ These were his parting words.
I went out of the house and along the avenue, past the two gardeners, the peach house, and the twin tennis courts. Sick with shame and blind with rage I saw nothing. All the hot bitterness of my burning heart was directed against Scott, against all the Scott-Hamiltons, against Beechfield, the cricket club, the entire world, most of all against myself. I loathed and despised myself with a searing and corroding violence that, while it must end in abysmal misery, kept me striding instinctively, in some such manner as the murderer is compelled to return to the scene of his crime, towards St Mary’s. Had Bridget’s final words stung so fiercely as to stir in my perfidious soul emotions of compunction and contrition that could be assuaged only by a solitary visit to the church? If so, I did not reach that haven of penitence. Beyond the Victoria library at the junction of the main road and Clay Street a game was in progress, a low, common vulgar game of ‘kick the can’ played in the public thoroughfare by a ragged scattering of my schoolfellows. My eyes dilated. Here, I thought, are my compeers. Welcomed by acclamation, unmindful of my patrician clothes, I flung myself into the game, running, sliding, kicking, falling in the gutter, shouting and sweating, revelling in the awareness that I was shedding the spurious veneer with which for the past two months I had encased myself.
In the midst of one hectic mêlée I heard a shrill exclamation of dismay. I looked up. An elderly lady in a spotted veil and a feather boa, with a bundle of library books under her arm, was gazing at me in horror. She was Miss Galbraith, one of Miss Greville’s tea-party friends who played the violin and painted nicely in watercolours, and to whom, not long before, I had made my bow.
‘Laurence! What are you doing! With these dreadful little ragamuffins!’
‘Playing.’
‘Oh, no, no, not with these frightful young hooligans. You must go home at once.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Do come away with me, dear.’ She took my arm. ‘You must.’
‘No,’ I shouted, breaking free. ‘I won’t come away. These are my friends. You can go to h––l.’
The game proceeded until dusk. I did not give up until I felt myself completely purged. Then, pledging myself to more games when school took up next week, I set out for home, with a tear in the knee of my flannel trousers, exhausted, dirty, and sad, but for the moment at peace.