Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (24 page)
‘Mrs Maguire?’ said Sidney. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Leonard Graham returned with a tea towel over his arm. ‘I think that is perfectly plausible.’
‘Don’t you start . . .’
‘It’s not impossible,’ said Hildegard.
‘Mrs Maguire is not in love with me,’ Sidney snapped. There was a pause, and a silence which he tried to fill by standing up. He thought of walking out but realised that such an action would appear childish. Then he sat down again. ‘Is there any more champagne?’ he asked.
‘The lady does protest too much, methinks,’ Leonard added as he shared out the rest of the drinks.
‘Honestly, will you all stop it?’ Sidney asked. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘Does anyone ever call you Hildy?’ Leonard asked, consciously changing the subject.
‘I don’t think so,’ Hildegard replied. ‘But I have no objection if you’d like to call me by that name.’
‘There’s a Hildy Johnson in the film
His Girl Friday
. Do you know it?’ Leonard asked.
‘Is that the one based on
The Front Page
with Rosalind Russell?’ said Amanda.
‘It is,’ Hildegard stood up. ‘But I should check on the lunch.’ She put a hand on Sidney’s shoulder. ‘I am “His Girl Sunday”.’
‘That would be kind,’ Sidney replied, rather too brusquely.
Amanda noticed Hildegard’s proprietary gesture and tried not to mind. ‘I suppose I could always content myself by being “His Girl Saturday”.’
Leonard could not resist continuing. ‘Which would leave Mrs Maguire free to be “His Girl Monday to Friday”.’
‘Will you all please stop going on about Mrs Maguire?’ Sidney said, as quietly and as firmly as he could, only to find himself met by communal laughter and an outright refusal to obey him. He couldn’t decide what he would have to do to regain his authority, or if he had lost his sense of humour altogether.
After lunch they took a walk down to the river while Dickens leapt around them. Sidney let Amanda and Hildegard talk to each other and discussed a few impending matters with his curate who was keener to return to his studies of Dostoevsky than concentrate on his parish duties. It was odd that both men had such strong outside interests, a peculiarity that was enhanced by a fortuitous meeting with Inspector Keating’s family who were enjoying a similar constitutional.
The three young Keating girls were delighted to play with Dickens, throwing him sticks and chasing after him, while Cathy Keating reflected that it was her husband’s first day off in months.
‘He’s always telling me that he never has days off,’ Sidney replied.
‘I think you both like working too much to do anything else. You’re both in love with your jobs.’
‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that.’
‘Well, Canon Chambers, that may be true in your case, since you seem to want to do my husband’s job as well as your own.’
‘Believe me, Mrs Keating . . .’
‘Cathy . . .’
‘I do not seek these things out.’
‘You enjoy it, though.’
‘As a matter of fact I do not. I wish people would lead better lives and did not resort to violence and murder in order to pursue their objectives, but if they insist on so doing then I will do everything in my power to help your husband.’
Hildegard put her arm through Sidney’s. Amanda noticed. ‘He can’t help himself. He is what he is.’
‘And that’s a good man,’ said Keating.
‘I’m not so sure about that either,’ Sidney replied, immediately realising that, on this day of days, he was as reluctant to be praised as he was to be teased.
Amanda drove back to London on the Sunday evening, having kissed Hildegard goodbye and told her how much she had enjoyed meeting her. Sidney found that her manners had been impeccable, and was delighted that his two closest friends seemed to get on so well.
‘She has sparkle,’ Hildegard told him afterwards. ‘And she is cleverer than people think she is. Is that deliberate?’
‘I’m not sure. Amanda doesn’t put on any airs and graces.’
‘Perhaps, because she is privileged, people think that she does not need to work.’
‘She takes her job very seriously, I do know that,’ Sidney replied.
‘More seriously than she takes you?’
‘She thinks I need to be teased.’
‘And do you?’
‘I’d rather be loved.’
Hildegard smiled. ‘I think you have to earn that, Sidney. It, too, requires hard work.’
The couple spent Easter Monday and Tuesday together. They walked in the Botanical Gardens, went to a concert in one of the college chapels and visited the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Sometimes, in front of a painting, Hildegard stood almost too close to Sidney, and he liked it. She was five or six inches smaller than him and he recalled once, when she had said goodbye to him, that she had stood on a higher step so that they were almost level and she had looked him straight in the eye before kissing him on each cheek. He remembered the first time they had sat together on the sofa, when he had had to tell her that they had discovered who had killed her husband, and how natural it had felt for them to be so intimate, even in the silences. He had never experienced the freedom to say nothing at all before.
‘When will I see you next?’ he asked as they made their farewells at the railway station.
‘You could come in the summer,’ Hildegard replied, ‘and see more of the Rhine. We have less murder in Germany. It is safer.’
‘I don’t know what it is about Cambridge.’
‘It is enclosed, so the rivalry is greater.’
‘You would have thought that they all would have better things to think about. Wasn’t it Friedrich Richter who said “a scholar knows no boredom”? German of course.’
Hildegard smiled. ‘Are you ever bored, Sidney? I sometimes worry that I am not enough for you. You need these distractions.’
‘I do not think I need them exactly, but they certainly put me on my mettle.’
‘As long as you do not get too many shocks.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I think that was another joke. Mettle and metal. I think you would say it was feeble.’
‘Nothing about you is feeble, Hildegard.’
‘Perhaps you will start to make jokes in German.’
‘I think I am quite a long way from that. Herr Gruner is very concerned that I should master the basics. I am still very much a beginner.’
The train pulled into the station and its noise drowned out Hildegard’s quiet observation. ‘And perhaps not only in German.’
She could not comprehend why a man who was so demonstrably adept at solving crime and understanding human character could be so dilatory with the love that was right in front of him. When, she wondered, would Sidney do anything about it?
It was a saturday in mid May, and Sidney had been prevailed upon to umpire a cricket match between Grantchester and Whittlesford at Fenners. The rain looked as if it was going to hold off, the wicket was good, and by mid morning an expectant crowd of picnickers had begun to gather at one of the most idyllic grounds in the country.
In truth, Sidney was slightly irritated that he had been invited simply to umpire. In another life he might well have been a professional cricketer. At the age of eleven he had been the first boy in his year to get his colours. Then, at public school, he had scored a momentous seventy-eight runs in a tight-fought victory over Wellington. At thirteen his parents had taken him to see Bradman bat on this very ground only to see him bowled for a duck by J.G.W. Davies, misreading a straight one from the renowned off-spinner. Sidney had even played at Cambridge himself, batting at five for Corpus, hoping that he might take part in the annual Varsity Match. But then the war had come.
He missed playing cricket. He bought his copy of Wisden each year, listened to the Test matches on the wireless, and whenever he passed a match on a village green he would always stop to watch an over. The game created a parallel world, Sidney thought. It was drama; it was excitement; it was a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life.
It was also quintessentially English: democratic (there were teams with all levels of ability), communal (the cricket ‘square’ was often at the centre of the village green), and convivial (the game was full of eccentric characters.) It was the representation of a nation’s cuisine, with its milky tea, cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sponge and lashings of beer. It was also beautiful to watch, with fifteen men, dressed in white and moving on green, creating geometrical patterns that looked as if they had been choreographed by a divine choreographer.
As Sidney approached the ground he could feel both the humidity and a touch of moisture in the air. It was definitely a day on which to bowl first. There was enough to give the seamers something to work with and, provided Grantchester won the toss and had a couple of men who knew how to move the ball about a bit, there was a good chance of early wickets.
Sidney believed that there was a science to it all. A bowler who was able to read the prevailing conditions, and work with the moisture in the air, could disguise the flight of the ball or make it swing so that even a degree in physics might prove beneficial. A batsman facing such a bowler would need an anatomical knowledge of the human hand, recognising the different ways in which the fingers could grip a ball and the wrist could spin out any number of trajectories. It was a world in which the application of the scientist met the mind of the psychologist. A batsman who inspected the wicket in front of him, anticipating how it would wear and crack over time, would be better prepared to confront the wiles of a bowler who had undertaken a similar study of that very same patch of grass. And then, at the end of every summer, no matter how brown the surface or how weathered the pitch, there was a need to understand botany and geology as each twenty-two yards of hallowed turf rested over the winter before renewing itself each spring in order to offer another season of possibility.
Sidney felt at home at Fenners. The ground was graced with a handsome pavilion, a separate wooden scoreboard and a couple of nets. Soon the air was filled with the familiar sounds of bags being thrown down, bats being knocked up and cricket studs scraping on the concrete flooring. He had a brief and poignant memory of his schooldays: the smell of freshly mown grass, the sight of the roller on the wicket, the sound of the scoreboard ticking over; a day filled with promise.
He asked the two captains to step out into the middle and tossed up his half-crown. The opposition captain called out ‘Heads’ correctly and opted to field. This was a man who wanted to take advantage of the conditions, capture a few early wickets, and then know how many runs his team would have to chase if they were to win the game. Sidney looked across to see two fast bowlers loosening up in the nets. They looked formidable.
His mood lowered when he saw two of the Grantchester wives arriving with picnic hampers. As the home team took to the field the women smiled and waved, holding up Thermos flasks, sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper, and the all-important bottles of beer. How he wished Hildegard could be here, sitting on a rug by the boundary, with her legs stretched elegantly to one side and a wicker basket in front of her.
‘Come on, Sidney, let’s get out in the middle. You must be dreaming.’
It was Roger Wilson, the second umpire and one of Inspector Keating’s Special Constables, a man whom Sidney knew he should like but was unable to do so because of his relentless attempts to look busy when he was not.
Grantchester began badly, losing both openers to some frisky bowling by Horatio Walsh that provoked considerable muttering back in the pavilion. Was it fair, their captain Andrew Redmond wondered, that a West Indian should be able to turn out for Whittlesford? Should there be eligibility requirements, for example, stating that a person must have lived in a village for at least five years before being allowed to play for them? And what was a West Indian doing in Whittlesford anyway? Sidney had to point out that since Horatio had been allowed into the country, and probably on a colonial passport, he had every right to play for whatever team he chose. Furthermore, Grantchester could hardly complain when they had, in their Indian bowler Zafar Ali, one of the most devastating leg-spinners in the game.
Sidney found the process of umpiring more tiring than he had anticipated. He had to remember to count the number of balls for each over correctly, moving six pebbles from one pocket to another. He had to check the bowlers’ footmarks for no-balls, judge whether the numerous leg-before-wicket appeals were correct, assess whether catches were thin edges off the bat or if they had come off the pad, and anticipate what might happen next. It was exactly like being a detective, he decided. Nothing should pass him by.
After twenty minutes, Grantchester were 8 for 2 and Sidney had already given Geoffrey Thomas, the local grocer and number four batsman, the benefit of the doubt in an extremely close LBW decision. A few runs later, and without a single boundary to trouble the scorer, Grantchester were in deep trouble at 15 for 3. They needed the incoming batsman, Derek Jarvis, to steady the ship and find his form when he joined his captain at the crease.
Sidney had not expected the coroner to be such a good judge of line and length but he could clearly pick which ball to play and which to leave alone. Extraordinary, Sidney thought, how cricket revealed character so clearly; the patient and the impatient, the methodical and the careless, the brave and the fearful.
