Fate Cannot Harm Me (13 page)

A little irritably Monty got up and excused himself—it was later than he thought, and batsmen who overdid the two-eyed stance were so damned dull to watch. Truly he could not listen longer to second-hand opinions regurgitated by that empty-headed young idler. And
it did not fit!
They weren't playing straight, but why not and for what purpose? Monty was frankly in a state of bewilderment, a state which he disliked and to which he was little accustomed.

That was how matters stood in the drama of Hedley and Paraday-Royne in the summer of 1934.

“Whoever would appreciate cricket rightly must have a sense, as he sits in the sun (there can be no real cricket without sunshine), that he is simply attending to one part, and just one part, of the pageant of summer as it slowly goes along, and yet a part as true to summer as villages in the Cotswolds, stretches of pleasing meadow-land, and pools in the hills. Cricket in high summer is played with the mind of the born lover of it conscious the whole time that all this happy English life is around him—that cricket is but a corner in the teeming garden of the year.”

NEVILLE CARDUS

Monty sank into a corner seat of his carriage with a sigh of relief and pleasure. It was a perfect August day; he was about to leave London; and best of all he was bound for George Appleby's cricket week—or, to be more accurate, for the tail-end of that best of all summer functions. For George Appleby's cricket week was in truth a function. In Monty's calendar it was always a “date”—marking for him, as did the Derby and Wimbledon, Lord's and Goodwood, a definite stage in the year's programme. Since his undergraduate days he had never missed it, and of all the year's pleasures it was the one from which he derived the most enjoyment.

The “week” dated back to the days of old Tom Appleby, George's father, and it was George's boast that in all essentials it remained unchanged year after year. Country house cricket of the pre-war sort—the best type of the best of games—so the Fincham House week might be described. The programme was always the same. On the Monday there was a match against the local Hunt, which was in the nature of an appetiser, for the full strength of the house side was not, as a rule, assembled. On Tuesday and Wednesday came the Old
Uptonians' match. All the Applebys had been at Upton, and the Old Boys' side had visited Fincham in their turn since the middle nineties. Thursday and Friday were sacred to the Free Foresters. But the first three matches were, in a sense, only preparatory to the Saturday match: that was the real test match, the match which to every one at Fincham transcended in importance not only the other matches of the week but all the cricket, of whatever kind, played in England that year. Yorkshire or Lancashire might win the County Championship, and George Appleby, who was firmly rooted in the south, and to whom cricket was a religion, would feel only a transitory, though acute, annoyance. Australia might secure the Ashes, and his complaints of the decadence of English cricket would be bitter but of short duration. But if the match against Sir Anstruther Oliver's side, his “Saturday” match, was lost, George would be plunged into gloom for a week at least, whilst a victory in that annual Homeric contest made him happy for months on end. Sir Anstruther lived at Besterton, about fifteen miles away, and his cricket week ran contemporaneously with George's. It was not so old established, for it had begun, as Fincham supporters were apt to point out, only a paltry thirty years back, but it was played in the same spirit. For both parties the Saturday match was of primary importance; it took place in alternate years at Fincham and at Besterton. This year was the Fincham turn.

Sitting in his carriage Monty let his mind dwell on earlier visits. How well he remembered his first appearance in the “test match.” It was in his freshman year at Oxford; he had been asked at the last moment to fill a gap, and had captured his host's heart for ever by holding two difficult catches in the slips at the crisis of the match. Since then he had never missed a year, but this time he had been so busy that he had had to refuse the invitation for the earlier matches, and was now
journeying down on Friday afternoon for the last game only. No excuse was conceivable which would keep him away from Fincham on the second Saturday in August. A kindly smile flitted across his face as he thought of his host. George Appleby, at the age of fifty, was a widower with a family of unmarried sons and daughters, but he was still a schoolboy himself in his keenness and enthusiasm. Hospitable, generous and kind almost to the verge of folly, he gave to cricket, and to his cricket week, a devotion which he denied to the other activities of his life. He was a tolerant and easy-going landlord—too easy-going for his own interests. He could forgive a failure on the part of a tenant to pay his rent with far greater equanimity than he would pardon a dropped catch by one of his side. It stood to reason that he was slightly ridiculous, as all men are whose standards of values are abnormal, but, though every one smiled at him, all loved him too. To Monty he was in character a kind of Dr. Syntax.

Among the high, or with the low,
Syntax had never made a foe;
And, though the jest of all he knew,
Yet, while they laugh'd they lov'd him too
.

He was himself, as might have been expected, a very moderate cricketer, for your wild enthusiast is hardly ever a highly successful performer. But application and enthusiasm had made him a useful member of his side. As a bowler he was both expensive and destructive; his innocuous slows, which seldom deviated from either the off or leg, and which maintained a steady length (everlasting half-volleys, thought Monty) took more wickets than they deserved. With three carefully chosen fieldsmen in the deep he lured many batsmen to their destruction. Caution was not encouraged in Fincham cricket, and an opponent who had hit George Appleby for a
couple of sixes in his first over was not unlikely to be caught in the deep in the second. Monty always declared that George traded on the lack of stamina amongst his opponents. “You hit him for sixes till your arms get tired and then you're caught.” Incessant practice had made him, too, a difficult batsman to dislodge, though he had few scoring strokes—and going in ten or eleven he had saved many matches for his side. If he scored fifteen or twenty runs he was in the seventh heaven of delight—more pleased by far than many players would have been after completing a century. Yes, thought Monty, he was indeed one of the world's enthusiasts—a boy at heart, engaging, lovable, a trifle ridiculous. There was nothing at Fincham which did not bear witness to the owner's prevailing passion; the library which contained one of the most complete collections of cricket books in the country, the cricket pictures, the bound score-books which lay on the library table. Even the years were dated by reference to past triumphs. “Was that in the year that Coronach won the Derby?” an incautious guest had once remarked. “You mean the year that Monty Renshaw made a hundred and forty against, the Old Uptonians,” George had replied in a tone of reproof. There was a legend, zealously propagated by Monty, that George had, somewhere about 1921, referred to the Germans as “those chaps who stopped my cricket week for five years,” but the most assiduous and crafty conversational leads had never succeeded in making him repeat the phrase. And then the great year, 1924! It was 1924 no doubt in the history books, but no one would have referred to it in that manner at Fincham. There it was the year that George won the “Saturday” match, or, more simply, “George's year.” In sober fact he had, on that famous occasion, made twenty-five runs not out, batting number eleven, and so turned a certain defeat into a glorious victory. It is true that another member of his side had
on the same occasion played an almost chanceless innings of one hundred and thirteen, but that was seldom mentioned. 1924 was, for ever, George's year, the
annus mirabilis
. That the feat had been performed in the Saturday match gave it, of course, an added value, for that match had an importance and a ritual all its own. Indeed so many conventions had grown up around it that it almost deserved a set of rules for itself. Play began always punctually at 11.30, and continued, whatever the state of the game, until 7. The luncheon interval was never a moment longer than three-quarters of an hour. In the composition of the sides, too, certain well-established precedents were maintained. Sir Anstruther Oliver had been educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and George Appleby would therefore have considered it an act of very doubtful sportsmanship to include a representative of either of these two seminaries in his eleven. Otherwise both captains were always casting their nets for fresh recruits of merit. But one rule was never broken. Anyone who had played in the match for either Fincham or Besterton was held to have committed himself for life; for good or evil he had chosen his part—never after that could he play for the other side. It would have been easier by far for a great player to have assisted England in one season and Australia in the next than for a lesser player to have given his services first to Fincham and then to Besterton.

It was half past seven when Monty arrived at Fincham, and his host had already gone upstairs, so Monty went straight to his room in the bachelors' wing. A quarter of an hour later there was a knock on the door, and Basil, already dressed, strolled in.

“Well met, Monty. I heard you were rolling up about dinner-time. How goes it? All teed up for the test match, I hope?”

“Hardly any practice this year—too busy—but full of fight. What sort of a side have we got?”

“Much as usual, let me see.” Basil began to tick off the players on his fingers. “There's George and Tom—Gerald can't play, he's broken a finger (Tom and Gerald were George Appleby's two sons), and you and myself—that's four, and of course Bobby Hawes and that damned Colonel. (Col. Murcher-Pringle was a regular but unpopular member of the side). And Johnny Rashwood—really he is the finest cover-point I've seen for ages. (Monty nodded assent—he had watched Johnny Rashwood fielding for Oxford in the 'Varsity match with a connoisseur's appreciation.) Then there's Rawstone—he's a real good player as you know, and a boy called Clerk from Oxford, he's a new importation.”

“Is he any use?”

“Not bad, but nothing startling—about ordinary sort of Authentic standard. And then there's rather a disaster. George had got that Redman fellow, who took a whole packet of wickets for Middlesex in July—got him for the whole week—and then last Saturday came a wire to say that his father was very ill, and he couldn't come. A big loss, and we've had a series of rather inefficient substitutes in his place all the week. To-morrow we've got an Admiral Findon-Duff, who's just retired and come to live hereabouts—I expect he'll let us down in the field, though they say he's a first-class chap. How many's that?

“Ten, isn't it? Who else is there?”

“Oh, I know, Slingsby, of course, I'd forgotten him, but he won't be much good in this weather.” Slingsby was George Appleby's agent and a-left-handed bowler—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was a left-handed bowler and George's agent. When he had been first appointed, an intimate of his employer's had ventured to draw attention to the rather rudimentary nature of Slingby's knowledge of estate management,
and his other shortcomings as a business man. George's reply had been decisive. “Nonsense,” he had said, “look how he can spin the ball, he'll be invaluable to me in a wet summer.” Time had certainly justified George's optimism, Slingsby had learned by experience to manage the estate with tolerable efficiency, and his bowling had remained a permanent asset to Fincham cricket.

Monty considered the side, and delivered his verdict. “It's much as usual, but a bit weaker in bowling—we shall have a sticky time if we don't win the toss. And what about the rest of the party—any ladies to add gaiety to the scene?”

Basil smiled, for he, as well as Monty, had little use for a cricket week which lacked female society.

“Why yes—you must know that nothing changes here. There are the girls”—(the girls were the Appleby daughters)—“and a couple of cousins of theirs, and Muriel Hawes and Cynthia Hetherington and Mrs. Rawstone—I think that's the lot.”

Monty nodded approval. He had hoped, but hardly expected, that Cynthia would be in the party.

“And what about the week so far? Has it been up to standard?”

“Not too good from my point of view. I didn't get here in time to play on Monday, got a few runs both times against the Old Uptonians, but had a wretched match yesterday and to-day—bowled by a real fizzer in the first innings, and out trying to hook a long hop too early in the second. And then like an ass I missed a balloon this afternoon—just in front of the pavilion too.”

Adjusting his tie Monty smiled to himself. How characteristic of Basil! To be asked about the week, and to reply with an account of his own performances! Evidently he had not shone very much before Cynthia; that missed catch rankled! Aloud he said: