Shadows On the Grass

by Simon Raven

  Although it was now permitted to him to marry a wife and bring her to live in the Master’s Lodge, he could not admit to having married years before and so to having breached the statutes. They therefore arranged a second marriage in the College Chapel, passing it off as their first. But alas, the tradesman’s daughter had tradesmen’s manners: from now on, instead of advancing his career by her secret exertions she jeopardised it by her public ineptitudes. The Master, who by now had his eye fixed on the Vice-Chancellorship, found the situation intolerable: he wanted his wife out of the way, yet such were the bonds of habit and affection that he could not bear to live without her.

  So at last he put it about that his wife must go into another county to care for her ailing mother, and in fact sent her back to the apartment near the station – a manoeuvre which, to do the good woman full justice, she did not at all resent, indeed appeared, to the surprise of her husband, positively to welcome. Thus the years went on and the Master was at last inducted as Vice-Chancellor – only to be arrested, as he was escorted out of the Senate House by the Esquire Bedells after the ceremony, on a charge of bigamy: for whereas he thought he had married the same woman twice, he had in fact married, one at a time, two identical twin sisters, who had taken turn and turn about with him without revealing each other’s existence. This deception, the Professor concluded, had been much easier to practice when he was absent from his ‘wife’ for long periods in each twenty-four hours, and hence the good humour with which she/they consented to be exiled from the Master’s Lodge back to the apartment by the station.

  ‘But sir,’ I objected, ‘it’s only in Shakespeare or Menander that twins are absolutely identical; and even if these two had been, there must have been – well – observable differences in their intimate responses.’

  ‘Quite wight, dear boy,’ said the Professor. ‘This is my test story for undergraduates new to my acquaintance. An undergraduate who believes it I write off as a cretin; an undergraduate who effects to believe it I designate a sycophant; but an undergraduate who, like you, raises rational or empirical objection I regard as being, in posse at least, an Intelligent and Honest Young Gentleman. Your only mistake was this: you should not have gone beyond the first part of your refutation, admirably decorated as it was with literary reference. By raising the question of intimate behaviour, you revealed yourself as “Knowing” without necessarily being correct. Have you sound biological warranty for what you say? Is it impossible that two twin sisters should conduct themselves indistinguishably under the same masculine stimulus?’

  With such conjectures, and with many more tales (true ones now, or so he promised me) of dons who slept in coffins or rode tricycles or translated the whole of Shakespeare into Latin Iambic Trimeters or forgot to change their gear for two decades on end – with such matter did the adorable Professor Adcock (chubby and pink, bouncing about in his seat like a bungy children’s ball) beguile the road to Windsor. What a splendid day I’m having, I thought, as we disembarked near College – little knowing what the afternoon had in store for me.

  The first surprise which the afternoon sprung was the arrival of the Provost (of King’s, not Eton).

  There was, in the Cambridge of those days, a celebrated chauffeur called Mears, to whom the regulations about petrol rationing did not apparently apply and who would hire out himself and his Rolls Royce to take one anywhere from Trumpington to Timbuctoo. Him the Provost had engaged on impulse to ply from Cambridge to Eton that summer’s day, and from his Rolls, looking seventy-five but in fact barely turned sixty, complete with wing collar, black boots, Master’s gown and mortar board, the Provost now emerged to issue his celebrated benediction, ‘Bless you, dear boys. Bless you one and all.’

  While the cricketers stood in reverence, he doddered over the ground and across the middle of the wicket, disappeared behind a tree on the far side, coyly peeped out round it, gaily tossed his flowing grey locks, whisked back behind it, was still for a good ten minutes, then doddered back (fly parted to reveal much woolly white pant) by the same route, frequently pausing to acknowledge imaginary salutations or applause by waving his silver-topped cane in the air.

  Two senior masters, who had been his contemporaries at King’s, now took him in hand, and the match was allowed to continue. Our side, having lost the toss but been sent in to bat first, had made 35 runs for no wicket, the bowling was humdrum and the pitch was easy, the trees rustled and the doves murmured, the Pax Etoniana reigned over all…when this very English afternoon was suddenly disrupted by the following events, each one quite harmless by itself but the series quite appalling in its ultimate issue.

  The first thing which happened was that a wicket fell.

  I then walked in to bat.

  As I was taking guard, Professor Adcock, who had been on some mission to the Library, came whizzing along from the direction of the School buildings and paused to watch me take my first ball.

  Before this could be bowled, the Provost, who was walking round the ground with the two senior masters, came to a halt dead in front of the sight screen, started an oration about something or other with many gestures and even a certain amount of prancing, and either did not understand or would not heed his companions’ admonition that he was standing behind the bowler’s arm and thus obstructing the course of play.

  The umpire at the bowler’s end waved politely to the Provost in an attempt to move him on.

  The Provost, who took this as a greeting, interrupted himself to wave back and then resumed his discourse.

  A very presentable boy, who was fielding on the long on boundary, ran up to the Provost, took off his pretty cap, folded it, held it in front of him with both hands, and requested the Provost to walk a few steps to his left or his right and thus enable play to proceed.

  The Provost handed his cane to one of the masters, seized the boy’s two hands (and cap) in both of his own, and went on with his oration, which now turned out to be a speech from the Iliad in which Achilles laments the dead Patroclos.

  The boy, who had been commendably bred, stood still and listened. Professor Adcock, who was losing patience, cupped his hands round his mouth and called, ‘Pway stand aside, Pwovost. You are impeding the pwotagonists.’

  This the Provost ignored and went on pumping out Greek Hexameters.

  I myself, having taken guard and being all keyed up to begin, said to the bowler and to the umpire at the bowling end, ‘Never mind the Provost. Let’s get on with it.’

  The umpire assented and the bowler walked back.

  The boy who was detained by the Provost, seeing that despite everything play was about to begin again, tried to back himself off, only to find that the Provost had him tight; all the boy’s effort achieved was a slight movement of the pair of them which brought them from behind the boundary line and a foot or two on to the ground itself.

  The two masters had meanwhile slunk away, trying to pretend that nothing was happening.

  Professor Adcock, who was by now beside himself with annoyance at these irregularities, bounced up and down twice, then shot across the ground towards the Provost.

  Since his route would take him some yards clear of the actual square, he was ignored by the players.

  The bowler reached his mark, turned and began his run.

  The Provost gushed with lachrymose Greek.

  The boy with the pretty cap made no further attempt to escape.

  The bowler bowled, a medium paced ball which was quite well up to me.

  I put my foot down the wicket and struck the ball on the lift, hard and high, straight over the bowler’s head.

  Professor Adcock came up to the Provost from his flank, made to hustle him away from the sight screen, and startled him both into silence and into releasing the boy, who dropped his cap, turned adroitly and caught the ball with his left hand high over his head, his feet being perhaps a yard inside the boundary, a fair and splendid catch if ever there was.

  But a catch that he should never have been able t
o make. If the Provost had not secured him, he would have been away at long on instead of being straight behind the bowler, and the ball would have sailed over the boundary for six. Or again, if Professor Adcock had not interfered, the Provost would have held the boy fast, and the ball would have passed over their heads by a clear yard – for six. Or yet again, if those two masters hadn’t been so wet, they would have moved the Provost on, whether before or after he had secured the boy did not matter, and the ball would have gone unhindered – for six.

  All this passed through my mind in the space of about one second, after which, maddened that such ill luck should have attended so seigneurial a stroke, ‘CLITORIS,’ I howled as I turned to walk away from the wicket.

  There was a long and serious silence, not because I had been foul-tongued but because I had betrayed the code which we were all there to honour: I had shown bad sportsmanship.

  Nor was that the end of my misfortunes. A little while later, as I sat down red in the face with shame and disappointment among the other members of my side, Professor Adcock came scooting up, tapped me on the shoulder and worried me away to one side. Then he informed me that the Provost, who was apt to interpret anything which might occur solely in relation to himself, was convinced that I had been swearing directly at him.

  ‘It is imprudent,’ said Adders, ‘to call one’s Provost by the name of a low physiological organ.’

  ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘– Of course you didn’t, dear boy. But he thinks you did.’

  ‘How can I make him understand?’

  ‘You can admit and apologise for your deleterious manners, but then explain that you were addressing fate and not the Provost of King’s. If he believes you, he will hold your hand. If not, he will pretend to be deaf.’

  In the event he did both. I muttered and stuttered for five minutes without receiving a word of reply or a single sigh of comprehension. At the end of my dismal recitation the Provost merely pressed my hand and then released it, which I took as a token of dismissal.

  ‘So what does all that mean?’ I said to Adders in the bus on the way home.

  Adders looked grave.

  ‘It means,’ he said, ‘that he finds you personable and will take no immediate action; but also that you are by no means forgiven. You are under suspended sentence. Not an auspicious beginning to your career in the College.’

  For a while at least I was careful to do nothing that might bring down the Damocleian sword on my head. I minded my book and my good fortune in being where I was, and in return was civilly treated, if somewhat obliquely regarded, by all the dons I had to do with. As the Dean of Discipline remarked a fortnight later: ‘You seem to be settling in rather well – if only you would forget you were once an Officer.’

  ‘Why should I? I’m not ashamed of it. Rather the reverse.’

  ‘It’s your manner. You march round the place as if you were expecting to be saluted.’

  ‘Only by the college servants,’ I smirked.

  The Dean sighed.

  ‘We do not distinguish here,’ the Dean said, ‘between ex-Officers and ex-Privates.’

  ‘Do you mean, you actually accept ex-Privates?’

  In those days that was my idea of a joke.

  ‘Sooner or later,’ the Dean said, ‘you are going to annoy somebody here – not me, I think, but somebody – very much indeed. And then look out for trouble.’

  How right he was to prove.

  ‘This College,’ the Dean continued, ‘is the most tolerant in the kingdom. But like all highly tolerant institutions, or people, it can turn spiteful and vindictive over very minor misdemeanours if these offend against its particular fads. The fad here, with most of ’em, is equality. Think that one out. Now off you go and have a good time.’

  I had come to him for a four-day Exeat, as I was going down to Charterhouse to play my first matches for the Friars. Bob Arrowsmith had invited me to stay with him in his lodgings in Pepperharrow Road, where we had pints of small ale for breakfast instead of tea or coffee.

  ‘Rossall Wanderers today,’ said Bob, and drained his tankard, ‘watch out for Cyril Thackley.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s a cracking shit, that’s what about him.’

  Then we walked up Charterhouse Hill to Green.

  Cyril Thackley was an Old Rossallian who had been a very fair cricketer as a schoolboy and had then, as an undergraduate player in the Cambridge of the early forties, achieved far higher place than he would have done in time of peace. For Thackley was a wartime Blue, and that just about summed the man up. He didn’t smell right. Excused military service in order to read science, he stayed away from lectures and laboratories to play cricket, along with the conscientious objectors and sufferers from asthma, bed-wetting or flat feet who were likewise deferred or exempt. They were a rotten crowd and played the wretched sort of cricket one might have expected of them. I know, having watched it with my Grandfather at Fenner’s in 1941 and ’42.

  ‘This lot needs a Drill Serjeant,’ my Grandfather said, ‘they can’t even clean their pads properly.’

  Nevertheless they were allowed to award themselves things which they called ‘Blues’ and to wear special haberdashery in celebration thereof, and on the strength of his, Thackley, who emerged from Cambridge three times ‘capped’ and with a bad third in the Natural Philosophy Tripos, had presumed to write a book about how to teach the game at school and university level. Thackley, in short, knew the lot.

  To be strictly fair, he could bat to a very decent club standard and could well have kept wicket for a Minor County, if any such would have had him. This particular day on Green he was keeping for the Rossall Wanderers (who had lost the toss and been sent into the field) with accuracy and panache.

  ‘Showing off,’ said Bob, who was sitting with me by the scoreboard. ‘You can always tell a really good wicketkeeper. He’s the one you don’t notice at all. As Pericles said of women, a wicketkeeper should be noticed neither for good nor ill.’

  ‘I thought it was “spoken of neither for good nor ill”.’

  ‘Here comes Uncle Irvine. He’ll tell us.’

  But the Uncle said he could not remember, which was annoying as I knew I was right. I also knew he was holding out on me, as he did not approve of the confutation by the young of their elders. However, in all other ways he was exceedingly genial and very anxious to hear about King’s.

  ‘Have you come across Patrick Wilkinson yet?’ he wanted to know.

  Patrick (L P) Wilkinson was at that time Tutor of King’s; he also taught and wrote about the Classics. He was, I had been told, an Old Carthusian, but beyond this I knew nothing more of him than I had learned from a five-minute courtesy call, most of which he had passed in instructing me how interesting I should find the black students from Africa and the white ones from the working class.

  ‘Typical of Patrick,’ said the Uncle when I told him this now. ‘He’s always had these left-wing hankerings and he’s always tried to ram them straight down everybody else’s throat. He’s a good scholar, and he writes very perceptively about Latin poetry, but he’s a ghastly Socialist bore. He won’t leave it alone, you’ll find. He wasn’t just suggesting you should get to know the blacks and soon, he was telling you for your own good – which is Socialist lingo for commanding.’

  A wicket fell: my turn to bat.

  ‘I shall open a bottle of my Taylor ’35 for you,’ said Bob, ‘if you can manage to annoy or discommode Cyril Thackley while you are out there.’

  ‘How am I to do that?’

  ‘My dear Shimon (sic),’ said the Uncle, ‘Remember your Tully [Cicero]. If you want to get best of shomebody, “id quo superbit temnendum…belittle that of which he has conceit.”

  Which was what, more or less and by sheer accident, I did. For it chanced that the first three balls I received were all quickish deliveries, on a good length, just outside the leg stump. In each case I moved my left foot across in an effort to sweep
the ball, in each case I missed it, and in each case I also blocked Thackley’s view, so that he did not see, until too late, that the ball was turning very sharply to the leg. All three balls, then, went spurting past his left-hand glove to the boundary, which meant that he had given away 12 runs in byes inside three minutes, a very terrible thing to happen even to the most moderate of wicketkeepers. After the first boundary-bye he muttered, after the second he banged his gloves together, and after the third he came round the wicket to accost me.

  ‘You may not know it,’ he said, ‘but in this class of cricket one does not deliberately mask the ball from the wicketkeeper.’

  ‘I’ve played three perfectly fair strokes, and missed. What happened then was entirely your affair. If you’re not happy, you could always try standing back.’

  He mouthed and moved back behind the wicket. In those days wicketkeepers, particularly amateur ones, took great pride in not standing back except to the very fastest of bowling. I could hear Cyril grating away behind the stumps and muttering to himself about ‘ignorance’, a word he apparently used in its lower-class connotation of ‘rudeness’ or ‘bad manners’. Then he lowered himself on to his hunkers to prepare for the next ball. So far from standing back, he nearly had his nose in my pocket.