Lady Emmeline and the Swansong Caper

by Anna Reader

  Algie blocked the fourth and scored a single from the next, so that Purdie was set to face the final ball of the over. It came curling towards her, and she nicked it past fine leg for two more runs.

  The next ball produced something of a scare, as Algie mistimed his stroke slightly and sent the ball looping high into the air.

  “Catch it!” the bowler yelled - but it plopped down harmlessly enough into cow corner, where no-one was keeping guard.

  “Terribly sorry about that,” Algie said to his sister with a rueful grin, as they met in the middle for a quick confab. “Absolutely ham-fisted shot.”

  “Happens to us all,” Purdie replied, chucking her brother affectionately on the shoulder. “Steady as she goes though, Algie – I’m going to Do the Deed when Peter has the gumption to bowl at me again.”

  “Looks like you won’t have to wait terribly long,” Algie observed, as Peter did a few stretches behind them. “Good luck.”

  Algie saw out the rest of his over without incident, and it was soon time for Purdie to face the ball once more. She and Peter made eye-contact briefly before he started to sprint towards her, both grinning in spite of themselves. And then it began; the ball thundered towards Purdie’s stumps and she blocked it with another defensive shot. As soon as the next delivery left Peter’s hand Purdie knew it would be fuller; and so, with a batsman’s raw courage, she knelt down under it and heaved her weight behind the bat, flicking her wrists at the last moment to send the ball soaring in the required direction.

  The fielders gasped; Jago leapt to his feet; and Lord Alverstock bellowed in delight. The ball cleared the boundary with ease and clattered through Cousin Eustace’s second floor window.

  Lord Alverstock jumped up and darted around the edge of the boundary, leaving his wife open-mouthed on the picnic rug. “I say – Umpire,” he cried out, as he neared the pavilion. “That house belongs to a member of the family. I’m sure Cousin Eustace would understand if we nipped in to recover the ball. And I’ll see to replacing the window, of course.”

  “Let me help,” Algie said, peeling off his gloves and abandoning his bat. “I think I saw a small ladder behind the pavilion.”

  As the two men trotted off to rescue the ball, Peter strolled down the wicket towards Purdie. “Hallo,” he said with a lopsided grin. “That was quite a shot.” He ran his hands through his fair hair in rather stunned amusement. “I don’t know many cricketers who can play my bowling like that. I’m almost moved to propose.”

  Purdie’s tongue tied itself in nautical knots for a moment – apparently even joking about matrimony now had the power to send her heart into convulsions. Really, Emmeline, she thought to herself, stop being such a noodle-brain. He’s obviously joking.

  “Thank you, Peter,” she managed to say at last, before adding gamely, “your bowling is so impressive, I might even be tempted to accept.” After a moment’s silence, in which both wondered whether the other was speaking entirely in jest, she continued by asking, “Why do the Chettleforth boys call you Petroc?”

  “My father’s family are Cornish, you see, so it’s what I’ve always been known as around here….Um…your brother appears to be shimmying up a ladder in his pads,” Peter observed, momentarily distracted. “Is this a typical family day out for you, would you say?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Purdie replied, rather proud to find that she meant it. “Algie’s as mad as a bag of cats, but we do have the jolliest time when we’re all together.”

  “Your father’s looking well,” Peter continued, as Lord Alverstock slipped through Eustace’s window after his son.

  “He always does,” Purdie replied, hitting her bat absent-mindedly against her pads. “How long are you down from London?”

  “Only until tomorrow evening,” he answered, looking down at her sun-tanned face and noticing the constellation of freckles across her nose for the first time. “I only came down for the Hardy exhibition.”

  “You like Hardy?” Purdie asked, squinting up at him as the sun danced in her eyes.

  “How could one not?” he replied with a smile. “No one writes more beautifully about the English countryside.”

  Unhelpful, Purdie thought to herself, as she unconsciously started chewing on her bottom lip. Deeply unhelpful.

  “Actually, now I find that you’re here,” he continued, “I wonder if you might…”

  “Yes?” Purdie asked quickly, sensing, rather hopefully, that Peter may be on the cusp of asking her to dinner again.

  “Found it!” Algie bellowed out of the window, to lusty cheers of approval from the spectators. “Down in a jiffy!”

  “I don’t right believe it,” Jago declared, suddenly stomping his way between Purdie and Peter. “You sure you’re a lass?”

  Peter just managed to turn a startled bark of laughter into a cough.

  “Is that a serious question?” Purdie asked her captain, one eye-brow raised into a crushing arc.

  “Well,” the man continued, flushing ever so slightly, “I won’t deny you’re bonny enough, but hitting a ball like that….Ain’t logical.”

  “Neither’s living in a patriarchy, and yet here we all are,” Purdie retorted cheerfully, to more strangled coughs from Peter. “Here’s Algie – back to our positions, I think.”

  As the remaining overs rolled by, Peter and Purdie put on a masterclass demonstration for the spectators. Algie was bowled not long after his foray into Cousin Eustace’s spare bedroom, but Purdie anchored the batsmen around her, scoring a clutch of fours and two more sixes before the final bat on her team surrendered his wicket and left her without a partner. She had, by the time her innings ended, scored a stonking eighty-five not out, thus leading her team to a respectable score of two hundred and thirty-one.

  “Darlings, that was wonderful,” Lady Alverstock cried, as her children joined their parents for tea. “So thrilling when you hit the ball over that rope, Emmie, and Algie – you looked as though you were in…jolly fine form.”

  “Well done, mother,” Algie said, laughing and throwing an arm around her. “You’ve got the lingo down pat.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mr Dashwood to join us?” she said, turning to Purdie with a look of complete innocence. “Such a nice boy, and we’ve got plenty of food. Woods packed us off with enough lunch to feed an army.”

  “I’d love to,” Purdie replied, lying through her teeth, “but I think he said he was meeting a chum at the pub.”

  “That’s him over there, isn’t it?” Lady Alverstock asked, undeterred. “Sitting under the willow tree with his team? I bet he hasn’t had nearly enough to eat….”

  “He was marching off with a whopping great slab of Battenberg when I left the pavilion,” Algie said with a snort. “Anyway, mother, he’s hardly wasting away – arm like a ruddy rocket. If he can bat like he bowls then we’ll be smacked all over the park.”

  At that precise moment Peter glanced over at the Purdews and smiled. “There we are,” Lady Alverstock declared, triumphant, waving her handkerchief at him in some kind of elaborate semaphore. “Do join us,” she mouthed as clearly as she could. The message seemed to transmit, as Peter pushed himself up from the grass and loped towards them.

  “Hallo,” he said, smiling down at them from his great height. Looking back up at him, Purdie couldn’t help but notice the heavenly way the afternoon sun was illuminating the gold in his hair and the flecks of copper in his green eyes. From that angle, his shoulders also looked awfully broad…Noodle-brain, Purdie’s inner voice repeated once more, as she tried to remember the fact that she was technically in the middle of committing yet another crime.

  “Dashwood,” Lord Alverstock said, indicating with a flourish of his sun-hat that Peter should join the children on the rug. “Some very fine bowling out there. What were your figures?”

  “Thank you, sir. Not bad at all – although they would have been much more impressive if your daughter hadn’t swatted me about the field with quite such abandon.”

 
; “Ha!” Lord Alverstock cried, delighted by this praise of his girl. “I wish I could say that she’d inherited it all from her father, but it would be a lie, I’m afraid. I was never so good.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t believe that, sir,” Peter replied.

  “I think I should have liked to have played cricket,” Lady Alverstock interjected suddenly. “Alas, my mother didn’t even like us to walk too quickly, so playing with the old oak and leather was never an option.”

  “Willow, Ma,” Algie said. “She sang a song of willow, not of oak.”

  “But you shall have a cricket bat of oak if your heart so desires, my love,” Lord Alverstock promised, forever the gallant.

  “I once played with a couple of junior hockey sticks lashed together with nylons,” Purdie reminisced. “We were always terribly low on kit at school. Pongo ran a black-market in tennis rackets during the summer term, as I recall – we were absolutely desperate.”

  “Games mistress spent it all on gin, I expect,” Algie said.

  “We wouldn’t have minded that,” Purdie said. “In fact, I think she channelled the entire budget into croquet equipment. I mean, really. The only time that was ever useful was when the fourth form staged an adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the amphitheatre.”

  “Do help yourself to a drink, Peter,” Lady Alverstock told their amused guest. “There’s plenty in the hamper.”

  “Allow me,” Lord Alverstock said, rather too quickly. “I fear I may have squashed a strawberry in there somewhere, and I’d feel awful if you stained your whites.”

  Algie and Purdie’s eyes met – evidently their father had “concealed” the bail amongst the sardine sandwiches.

  If he picked up on the unusual alacrity of this solicitude Peter certainly didn’t betray as much, and accepted the bottle of lemonade with an easy smile. “I wanted to ask you, Lady Alverstock,” he said, “whether you might all be able to spare Emmeline this evening? I was rather hoping to take her out for supper.”

  Algie’s eyes boggled, Lady Alverstock beamed, and Purdie inhaled rather too deeply on her cigarette, causing a brief coughing fit. “Of course we can spare her,” Lady Alverstock replied, carefully avoiding her daughters gaze. Purdie generally hated having her evenings arranged for her.

  “Wonderful, thank you,” Peter said.

  “You haven’t asked me yet, Mr Dashwood,” Purdie observed, amused by this bold approach in spite of herself.

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d have the heart to refuse a chap when you’ve just decimated his season’s average,” Peter replied in his easy way. “That’d be rather brutal, and you don’t strike me as being a cruel woman.”

  “You should see her playing poker,” Algie snorted. “Ruthless.”

  “Algie,” Lady Alverstock cried, conscious once again of the enormous gulf which existed between her generation and her children’s’; she could obviously play poker with the best of them, but she certainly wouldn’t have confessed as much to a handsome young man in the middle of a picnic.

  “I’ll pick you up at about seven o’clock, then,” Peter said as he got to his feet, aware that the teams were beginning to make their way back to their positions in the field. “Looks like show time. Thank you very much for the drink, Lady Alverstock.”

  “Golly, he’s right,” Algie said, abandoning the slice of cake he was about to attack. “Finish that ciggie, Em, we’re on.”

  Jago and Algie were set to open the bowling for the visitors, with Peter and the butcher’s apprentice sent out to defend Chettleforth’s wickets. Whatever Purdie thought of her temporary captain’s antiquated views about women, she had to admit that he could bowl; he had the most unusual, stuttering run-up, yet when the ball was eventually released it invariably landed just millimetres from the batsman’s feet, making him a very difficult chap to play.

  Peter was in no hurry, apparently; he blocked everything Jago threw at him with ease, and opened up whenever a loose delivery flew towards him. The butcher’s apprentice was more of a fire-cracker and swung at everything. Occasionally the bat found the ball and he milked a few runs, but it didn’t take Algie long to find him out with a slower ball, and send the bails clattering to the ground.

  Led by Peter’s effortless and stoical batting, however, the visitors had chalked up one hundred and eighty runs by the thirty fifth over, leaving them to chase a distinctly manageable target.

  “Don’t suppose you can bowl spin?” Jago hissed in Purdie’s ear, having by now exhausted his best bowlers and keenly aware of the need to dry up Chettleforth’s runs.

  “I dabble,” Purdie replied innocently.

  “Well then, it’s time to get dabbling,” Jago barked, conveniently abandoning his life-long views on the frailties of the female sex. “Arthur!” he shouted, “Lady Muck will bowl the next over!”

  And so, almost as though it had been preordained, Purdie found herself staring down the field at Peter once again, their positions now reversed. He found his place in front of his stumps as she marked out her short run up, with Jago’s cry of “Lady Muck” still ringing in her ears.

  “Lady Muck, indeed,” she muttered under her breath, before trotting forwards, passing the ball into her left hand, and bowling around the wicket at Inspector Dashwood. Purdie knew as soon as she snapped the ball out of her fingers that it was a doozy, and she looked on hopefully as it hit a patch of dryer earth and bounced up into Peter’s pads.

  “How’s that?” she cried, her appeal to the umpire echoed by her excited team-mates. The umpire’s hands stayed firmly by his side, however and he shook his head.

  Her second ball nibbled the grass around Peter’s toes, forcing him to tie himself in knots as he tried to keep it well away from his stumps. This appeared to rattle him rather, so when Purdie’s deliberately shorter third ball came spinning towards him, he sent it hurtling into the air and straight towards an idling fielder.

  “Catch it!” Purdie shouted, her heart in her mouth. The ball bounced up out of the fielder’s hands once, twice, before finally trickling to a standstill at his feet. Jago flung his cap into the dirt in frustration, and the red-faced fielder sent the ball back to the bowler in a state of abject misery. Purdie, who had been taught by her father to be sporting even in moments of pernicious defeat, clapped the lad’s effort nevertheless.

  “Next time,” she shouted out to him, smiling broadly as she threw the ball from hand to hand. This small act of kindness shook poor Peter to the core, who was already finding it devilishly difficult to concentrate with Purdie facing him like some kind of heavenly spin-bowling apparition.

  From then on, it became a race against the clock. Purdie and her bowling counterpart used spin to try to suppress the run rate, whilst Peter did everything he could to keep himself on strike and float any stray ball to the boundary. By the final over, the batsmen required eight runs to win the game. A tense hush descended upon the crowd, and all picnicking was abandoned. Even the children on the outfield stopped playing their game of tag, sensing that this was a moment of great importance for the village.

  Purdie looked on from her position on the boundary as the thatcher from Appleby Parva loped in and bowled the first ball at Peter’s wingman. The pair stole a single, putting Peter back on strike.

  “Come on, chaps!” Algie cried, geeing his teammates up. “High time for a wicket!”

  The thatcher trundled past the umpire and bowled the second ball, which Peter promptly hooked to the boundary for four. The next ball looked sure to give the batsmen two more runs, but some nifty fielding from the visitors restricted them to a single, putting the nervous number eight batsman back in the firing line.

  The thatcher took his three half-skipping steps towards his mark and released a slow, looping ball, daring the batsman to play for the big shot. The gambit worked; the batsman drew back his bat and threw it into a heaving slog. Purdie watched the cherry-red ball as it flew through the air, and instinctively began running in from the boundary to
meet it.

  “Mine!” she shouted, as she positioned herself under the rapidly descending missile, much to the dismay of the batsman.

  “Not a chance,” the sceptical wicket-keeper muttered to the man at gully. “My Nellie can barely catch a cold.”

  “Wind your neck in,” Jago growled. “That lass put us in this game, so show her some respect. Attagirl!”

  The ball fell into Purdie’s two waiting hands, and she clung on to it for a second or two before lobbing it into the air in delight. The rest of the fielders crowded around her, distributing hearty back-slaps.

  An exceedingly nervous-looking tenth man tramped onto the field, swinging the bat by his side and pushing an over-sized cap back from his forehead. He couldn’t have been much more than fifteen, and there were roars of support from the pavilion and the crowd.

  “Come on, Harry!” a man’s voice boomed out from a spot of grass just behind Lord and Lady Alverstock; the boy’s father, Purdie presumed. “For Chettleforth!”

  She may have been a competitive cove, but in her heart of hearts Purdie was willing the boy on; not only for a love of Chettleforth, but because she knew how much it would mean to him. Winning a cricket match like this for your home team was the sort of feeling to stay with a person for the rest of their lives; it was deeply character affirming.

  Peter and the young man met in the middle of the field for a hushed conversation on tactics. Purdie’s heart juddered as she watched Peter throw an easy arm around the boy’s shoulders, and mutter what she was sure would be a moving exposition on courage, technique, and perspective. After a small nod of the head, the young man took his position in front of the stumps, and eyed the bowler with as much gumption as he could muster.

  Aflutter with nerves he mistimed his first shot, leaving the ball looping dangerously close to the bails.

  “Steady there,” she heard Peter shout, as Harry shook the tension from his shoulders, slowed his breathing, and looked up to face the penultimate ball of the match. He needed two runs to draw the match, and three to win.