There are many other ways for a batsman to get out, some highly technical, but the most usual way is being “caught,” which means that after the ball has left his bat, and before it touches the ground, a fielder catches it. If cricket means anything to me now, it means a “catch.”
If I have dwelt on the end of the batsman’s career rather than on the career itself, it is because the moment of his getting out is also the moment of highest tension in the game. In a bullfight, I imagine, the bull does plenty of work and provides the spectators with plenty of thrills before he is killed—he wouldn’t be a “good” bull if he didn’t. But the supreme moment, the moment the crowd waits for, is his death. The batsman is not there to get out, he is there to make “runs” and help his side to victory; but, all the same, it is the moment of his defeat and symbolic death—desired or dreaded, according to which side you are on—that matters most. At least it did with me.
I have had no other experience of village cricket, but I realize that conditions at Brandham were exceptional; the Triminghams had always been interested in the game, and Mr. Maudsley carried on the tradition. On the cricket field we had all the correct accessories, and these gave the match the feeling of importance, of mattering intensely, which I required from life; had it been conducted in a slipshod manner, I could not have taken the same interest in it. I liked existence to be simplified into terms of winning or losing, and I was a passionate partisan. I felt that the honour of the Hall was at stake and that we could never lift our heads up if we lost. Most of the spectators, I imagined, were against us, being members of the village or of neighbouring villages. The fact that they applauded a good shot did not give me a sense of comradeship with them; had we worn rosettes or colours to distinguish us I could have hardly looked the other party in the eye, while I would willingly have clasped the hand of the biggest blackguard on our side.
Above all, I was anxious that Lord Trimingham should do well, partly because he was our captain and the word “captain” had a halo for me, partly because I liked him and enjoyed the sense of consequence his condescension gave me, and partly because the glory of Brandham Hall, its highest potentialities for a rhapsody of greatness, centred in him.
I watched him walk to the wicket with the unconscious elegance of bearing that made such a poignant contrast with his damaged face, and saw him go through the solemn preliminaries that, if my memory serves, attend the incoming of each batsman. Denys made some observations about his style, comparing him to the leading cricketers of the day, not altogether to their advantage. As I said, my recollection of the niceties of the game is faint, and even in this one it is the moments of crisis that I best remember. Modern critics complain that these are all too few, but for that very reason they stand out.
The first crisis came almost at once. Lord Trimingham disappointed us. He made a stroke or two that seemed to justify Denys’s claims for him—he gave us a taste of his quality—then out he came.
A round of applause, subdued and sympathetic, and more for him than for his play, greeted his return. I joined in the muted clapping and, averting my eyes, muttered: “Bad luck, sir,” when he came by; so what was my surprise to see Marian applauding vigorously as if he had done really well, and her eyes were sparkling as she lifted them to his. He answered with the twisted look that served him as a smile. “Can she be mocking him?” I wondered. “Is it another joke?” I didn’t think so; it was just that, being a woman, she didn’t know what cricket was.
Further disasters followed. It was shocking—these Boers, in their motley raiment, triumphantly throwing the ball into the air after each kill! How I disliked them! The spectators on the “boundary,” standing, sitting, lying, or propped against trees, I imagined to be animated by a revolutionary spirit and revelling in the downfall of their betters.
Such was the position, a grim one, when Mr. Maudsley took the field. He walked stiffly and stopped more than once to fumble with his gloves. I suppose he was no more than fifty, but to me he looked hopelessly old and utterly out of the picture: it was as though old Father Time had come down with his scythe to mow the daisies. He left behind him a whiff of office hours and the faint trail of gold, so alien to the cricket field. Gnome-like he faced the umpire and responded to his directions with quick, jerky movements of his bat. His head flicked round on his thin lizard’s neck as he took in the positions of the fielders. Seeing this, they rubbed their hands and came in closer. Suddenly I felt sorry for him with the odds so heavily against him, playing a game he was too old for, trying to look younger than he was. An element of farce had come into the game, spoiling its seriousness.
But I was wrong. The qualities that had enabled Mr. Maudsley to get on in the world stood by him on the cricket field. Especially the quality of judgment. He knew when to leave well alone, he took no risks. His method was no method, but it worked. He had an uncanny sense of where the gaps in the defence were, and could always slip the ball through them. The village team were brought in closer, they were sent out farther, they straddled their legs and adopted attitudes of extreme watchfulness; but to no purpose.
Our other batsmen were less fortunate. After several had been dismissed for paltry scores, Denys went out to join his father. The ladies, as I could tell from their motionless hats, were now taking a proper interest in the game: mentally I could see the searchlight beam of Mrs. Maudsley’s eye veering between her husband and her son. “She won’t mind much if Denys gets out,” I thought.
Before he left the pavilion Denys had told us what he meant to do. Above all, he said, his father mustn’t tire himself. “I shall do the hitting, and I shan’t let him run more than I can help.”
For a time these tactics were successful. Denys hit to such good purpose that no running was needed. (A “boundary” hit counts four and you don’t have to run.) He played with a great deal of gesture, walking about meditatively when it was not his turn, strolling out to pat the pitch, and making practice airshots. But his method didn’t combine well with his father’s opportunist policy. Mr. Maudsley would start out to run, and be thwarted by Denys’s raised arm, which shot up like a policeman’s. Once or twice when this happened the spectators tittered, but Denys seemed to be as unconscious of their amusement as he was of his father’s irritation, which was also evident to us. At last, when the signal was once more raised against him, Mr. Maudsley shouted out “Come on!” It was like the crack of a whip. All the authority he so carefully concealed in his daily life spoke in those two words. Denys started off like a rabbit, but he was too late and paid the penalty. Crestfallen and red in the face, he returned to the pavilion.
There was now no doubt about who dominated the field. But oddly enough, though I did not grudge my host his triumph, I could not quite reconcile it with the spirit of the game. It wasn’t cricket—that phrase which used to mean so much to an Englishman—it wasn’t cricket that an elderly, wizened individual with a stringy neck and creaking joints should, by dint of headwork and superior cunning, reverse the proverb that youth will be served. Brawn, I obscurely felt, should prevail over brain.
Mr. Maudsley did not find anyone to stay with him long, however. The next three batsmen were soon disposed of. Perhaps they felt the responsibility of being Mr. Maudsley’s partners too acutely; at any rate the tail, as they say, did not wag. Still, our final score of 142 was very respectable. Tremendous applause greeted Mr. Maudsley as he came back, undefeated, having made his coveted “fifty” runs. He walked alone—the footman, his last companion at the wicket, having joined the village side, with whom no doubt he felt more at his ease. We all rose to do honour to Mr. Maudsley; he looked a little pale, but much less heated than the village team, who were perspiring freely and mopping their faces. Lord Trimingham took the liberty of patting him on the back; gentle as the pat was, his frail frame shook under it.
During the tea interval the game was replayed many times, but the hero of the hour seemed content to be left out; indeed, it soon became as difficult to associate him with
his play as with the financial operations he directed in the city. At five o’clock our team took the field; the village had 143 runs to make to beat us, and two hours to make them in.
12
I STILL have the score cards, but whereas the figures of our score still speak to me of who made them, and how, the figures of theirs are not so articulate; they are voiceless until half-way through. The reason is, no doubt, that our players were all known to me personally, whereas theirs, with one exception, were not. Also because it looked like being such an easy win for us that I withdrew some of my attention: one cannot fix it on a walk-over, and, keen as I was on the game, a child’s attention is easily distracted. The excitements of before the tea interval seemed far away and wasted, as if we had put out all our strength to lift a pin. I remember feeling rather sorry for the village side, as one after another their batsmen went back to the pavilion, long-faced and looking much smaller than when they had started out.
And as the game receded from my mind, the landscape filled it. There were two arches: the arch of the sky beyond the cricket field, and the arch of the sky above; and each repeated the other’s curve. This delighted my sense of symmetry; what disturbed it was the spire of the church. The church itself was almost invisible among the trees, which grew over the mound it stood on in the shape of a protractor, an almost perfect semicircle. But the spire, instead of dividing the protractor into two equal segments, raised its pencil-point to the left of the centre—about eight degrees, I calculated. Why didn’t the church conform to nature’s plan? There must be a place, I thought, where the spire would be seen as a continuation of the protractor’s axis, producing the perpendicular indefinitely into the sky, with two majestic right angles at its base, like flying buttresses, holding it up. Perhaps some of the spectators enjoyed this view. I wished I could go in search of it while our team was demolishing the village side.
But soon my eye, following the distressful spire into the heavens, rested on the enormous cloud that hung there, and tried to penetrate its depths. A creation of the heat, it was like no cloud I had ever seen. It was pure white on top, rounded and thick and lustrous as a snowdrift; below, the white was flushed with pink, and still farther below, in the very heart of the cloud, the pink deepened to purple. Was there a menace in this purple tract, a hint of thunder? I did not think so. The cloud seemed absolutely motionless; scan it as I would, I could not detect the smallest alteration in its outline. And yet it was moving—moving towards the sun, and getting brighter and brighter as it approached it. A few more degrees, and then—
As I was visualizing the lines of the protractor printed on the sky, I heard a rattle and a clatter. It was Ted Burgess going out to bat and whistling, no doubt to keep his spirits up. It was not the way a gentleman would have behaved.
How did I feel about Ted? Did I want him to do badly? He was an enemy, of course—not my personal enemy, but an enemy of the Hall. I was puzzled, for till now my feelings had been quite clear. Of course, he mustn’t make a big score, but if he made just one big hit, one mighty swipe—
He tried to, and was only saved, it seemed, by a miracle: and then I knew: I knew I didn’t want him to succumb. (“Succumb” was a word the newspapers used in reports of cricket matches to describe a batsman’s exit; I rather liked it.) The knowledge made me feel guilty of disloyalty; but I consoled myself with the thought that it was sporting, and therefore meritorious, to want the enemy to put up a fight; besides, they were so far behind! And in this state of uneasy neutrality I remained, while Ted let fly at the balls that came to him and made one mis-hit after another.
Then he began to settle down and the big hits I had hoped for followed. The spectators laughed and scattered as the ball came rushing at them, but no one, I fancy, thought that it was more than a flash in the pan. “He’ll soon get out that way,” one wiseacre sitting near me observed. And in fact it always seemed that his next stroke would be his last.
But luck was with him, he had found a way of harnessing his strength, and all at once he opened his shoulders and hit the ball right over the pavilion roof.
A cluster of small boys tore off to look for it, and while they were looking our side lay down on the grass; only Ted and his partner and the two umpires remained standing, looking like victors on a stricken field. All the impulse seemed to go out of the game; it was a moment of utter relaxation. And even when the ball had been found and play began again, it still had a light-hearted, knock-about character. “Good old Ted!” someone called out.
With the score card in front of me I still can’t remember at what point I was reminded that it was a match and not a game, and that Ted’s fireworks, which were so exhilarating to watch, might spell disaster for us, might mean in fact that we should lose—unless he was got rid of. Perhaps a stiffening in the attitude of the spectators told me; at any rate I felt my heart pounding in my chest.
Lose! I didn’t like the word, or what it stood for. I didn’t want to be on the losing side. I knew how to lose with a good grace, it was one of the first things we learned at school. Grin and bear it! And sharing made it easier, of course. Many heads bowed, not one. And telling one another, with raised eyebrows, head-shakes, shrugs, and carefully disinterested voices, that if it hadn’t been for this or that piece of unfairness, and this or that stroke of bad luck, if X hadn’t been off form, or Y had been able to play, the result would have been different. Yes, defeat could be taken with dignity, like any other medicine. But oh, the contraction of spirit it entailed!—that was what, in prospect, I really minded. Instead of expanding in the sunshine of success, to have to shrink into oneself, make oneself into a hard tight core of disappointment, raise all one’s hackles, and defences, to keep out the cold breath of failure!
People were cheering; Ted had made his “fifty.” It was a very different “fifty” from Mr. Maudsley’s, a triumph of luck, not of cunning, for the will and even the wish to win seemed absent from it. He might have been giving an exhibition, on which nothing hung. Dimly I felt that the contrast represented something more than the conflict between Hall and village. It was that, but it was also a struggle between order and lawlessness, between obedience to tradition and defiance of it, between social stability and revolution, between one attitude to life and another. I knew which side I was on, yet the traitor within my gates was not so sure; he felt the issue differently, he backed the individual against the side, even my own side, and wouldn’t mind seeing Ted Burgess pull it off. But I couldn’t voice such thoughts to the hosts of Midian prowling round me under the shade of the pavilion veranda. Their looks had cleared marvellously and they were now taking bets about the outcome, not without sly glances at me; so spying a vacant seat beside Marian, I edged my way down to her and whispered:
“Isn’t it exciting?” I felt that this was not too much of a betrayal of our side.
When she did not answer, I repeated the question. She turned to me and nodded, and I saw that she didn’t answer because she couldn’t trust herself to speak. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and her lips trembled. I was a child and lived in the society of children and I knew the signs. At the time I didn’t ask myself what they meant, but the sight of a grown-up person so openly affected greatly increased my emotional response to the game, so that I could hardly sit still, for I always wriggled when excited. The conflict in my feelings grew more acute. I knew what Marian wanted, and deep down I couldn’t help wanting what she wanted. It had always been so. Yet my training and my loyalty to the Hall made it impossible for me to will the other side to win. With burning cheeks I stole back to my place.
Ted Burgess might win the match, but he couldn’t do it alone; some other batsman must stay with him until our score was passed. It was a partnership, and if no partner stayed the course, the game was up. Only two of the village batsmen remained to keep him company. Last on the list, they were sure to be “rabbits.”
With Ted hitting so hard, Lord Trimingham had put several of his fielders on the “boundary
” as far away from Ted as possible. One of them was standing just in front of us. Ted hit the ball straight at him. I thought it would go over his head, but soon its trajectory flattened, and as it came to earth it seemed to gather speed. The fieldsman put out his hand, but the ball cannoned off it and hurtled threateningly towards us. Mrs. Maudsley jumped up with a little cry; Marian’s hands flew to protect her face; I held my breath. There was a moment of tension and confused inquiry before it was discovered that neither of them had been touched. Both the ladies laughed at their narrow escape and tried to pass it off. The ball lay at Mrs. Maudsley’s feet looking strangely small and harmless. I threw it to the man who had tried to stop it (I saw now that he was one of our gardeners), but he didn’t pick it up. His face twisted with pain, he was nursing his left hand in his right and gingerly rubbing it.
Lord Trimingham and some other members of our side came towards him and he went out to meet them. I saw him showing them his injured hand. They conferred; they seemed to come to a decision; then the group broke up and Lord Trimingham and the gardener returned to the pavilion.
Confusion reigned in my mind. I thought all sorts of things at the same time—that the match was over, that the gardener would be maimed for life, that Ted would be sent to prison. Then I heard Lord Trimingham say: “We’ve had a casualty. Pollin has sprained his thumb, and I’m afraid we shall have to call on our twelfth man.” Even then I didn’t know that he meant me.