From over the fields and orchards Butley Church struck five in mellow tones. Then the clock indoors whizzed and confirmed it with a less resonant tongue. The Flower Show Match was hours away yet – more than six hours in fact. Suppose I’d better go back to bed again, I thought, or I’ll be feeling tired out before the match begins. Soon the maids would be stirring overhead, padding about the floor and talking in muffled voices. Meanwhile I stole down to the pantry to cut myself a piece of cake. What a stuffy smelling place it was, with the taps dripping into the sink and a bluebottle fly buzzing sleepily on the ceiling. I inspected the village grocer’s calendar which was hanging from a nail. On it there was a picture of ‘The Relief of Ladysmith’…. Old Kruger and the Boers. I never could make up my mind what it was all about, that Boer War, and it seemed such a long way off…. Yawning and munching I went creaking up to my room. It was broad daylight out of doors, but I was soon asleep again.
2
After breakfast there was no time to be wasted. First of all I had to rummage about for the tin of ‘Blanco’, which was nowhere to be found. Probably the parlour-maid had bagged it; why on earth couldn’t they leave things alone? I knew exactly where I’d left the tin at the end of last holidays – on the shelf in the schoolroom, standing on an old case of beetles (of which, for a short time, I had been a collector). And now, unless I could find the tin quickly, there’d never be time for me to ‘Blanco’ my pads, for they took ever so long to dry in the sun, even on a blazing hot day like this one….
‘Really; it’s a bit thick, Aunt Evelyn; someone’s taken my tin of “Blanco”,’ I grumbled. But she was already rather fussed, and was at that moment preoccupied in a serious discussion with Mabb, the gardener, about the transportation of the crockery which she was lending for the Cricket Tea.
In a hasty parenthesis she confessed that she had given the tin to Dixon only a week or two ago, so I transferred myself and my grimy pads to the harness room, where I discovered Dixon putting the finishing touches to his white cricket boots; he had already cleaned mine, and he apologized for not having done my pads, as he had been unable to find them. While I busied myself with dabbing and smearing the pads we had a nice chat about county cricket; he also told me how he had taken a ‘highly commended’ at the Crystal Palace Dog Show with one of the smooth-haired collies which he had recently begun breeding. There had been a lull in his horse-buying activities after I went to school; since then I had given up my riding, as my aunt could not afford to keep a cob specially for me to ride in the holidays. So Dixon had consoled himself with his collies and village cricket: and the saddles were only used when he was exercising the sedate horse which now shared the carriage work with the smart little pony Rocket.
Leaving my pads to dry in the sun, I sauntered contentedly back to the house to have a squint at the morning paper, which never arrived until after breakfast. I had a private reason for wanting to look at the Morning Post. I was a firm believer in predestination, and I used to improvise superstitions of my own in connection with the cricket matches I played in. Aunt Evelyn was rustling the newspaper in the drawing-room, where she was having a short spell of inactivity before setting forth to judge the vegetables and sweet peas. Evidently she was reading about politics (she was a staunch Tory).
‘I can’t understand what that miserable Campbell-Bannerman is up to: but thank heaven the Radicals will never get in again,’ she exclaimed, handing me the sheet with the cricket news on it.
Carrying this into the garden I set about consulting the omens for my success in the match. I searched assiduously through the first-class scores, picking out the amateurs whose names, like my own, began with S, and whose initial was G. There were only two that day: the result was most unsatisfactory. G. Shaw run out, 1: G. Smith, c. Lilley, b. Field, o. According to that I should score half a run. So I called in professional assistance, and was rewarded with: Shrewsbury, not out, 127. This left me in a very awkward position. The average now worked out at 64. The highest score I had ever made was 51, and that was only in a practice game at Ballboro’. Besides, 51 from 64 left 13, an unlucky number. It was absurd even to dally with the idea of my making sixty-four in the Butley Flower Show Match. Anything between twenty and thirty would have been encouraging. But Aunt Evelyn’s voice from the drawing-room window informed me that she would be starting in less than ten minutes, so I ran upstairs to change into my flannels. And, anyhow, the weather couldn’t have been better…. While we were walking across the fields Aunt Evelyn paused on the top of a stile to remark that she felt sure Mr Balfour would be a splendid Prime Minister. But I was meditating about Shrewsbury’s innings. How I wished I could bat like him, if only for one day!
The village of Butley contained, as one of its chief characters, a portly and prosperous saddler named William Dodd. It was Dodd who now greeted us at the field-gate and ushered Aunt Evelyn into the large, tropical-temperatured tent where the judges had already begun their expert scrutiny of the competing vegetables.
In the minds of most of the inhabitants of Butley William Dodd was an immemorial institution, and no village affairs could properly be transacted without his sanction and assistance. As a churchwarden on Sundays his impressive demeanour led us to suppose that, if he was not yet on hat-raising terms with the Almighty, he at any moment expected to be. During a Parliamentary Election he was equally indispensable, as he supervised the balloting in the village schoolroom; and the sanguine solemnity with which he welcomed the Conservative candidate left no doubt at all as to his own political opinions. He was a man much respected by the local gentry, and was on free and easy terms with the farmers of the neighbourhood. In fact, he was a sort of unofficial mayor of the village, and would have worn his robes, had they existed, with dignity and decorum. Though nearer fifty than forty, he was still one of the most vigorous run-getters in the Butley eleven, and his crafty underarm bowling worked havoc with the tail-end of many an opposing team. On Flower Show day he was in all his glory as captain of the cricket team and secretary and treasurer of the Horticultural Society, and his manner of receiving my aunt and myself was an epitome of his urbane and appreciative attitude toward the universe with which the parish of Butley was discreetly associated. Waggish persons in the village had given him the nickname ‘Did-I-say-Myself’. Anyone who wanted to discover the origin of this witticism could do so by stopping outside the saddler’s shop on a summer morning for a few minutes of gentle gossip. Laying aside whatever implement of his craft he happened to be using, he would get up and come to the door in his protuberant apron, and when interrogated about ‘the team for tomorrow’, ‘Let me see,’ he would reply in a gravely complacent voice. ‘Let me see, there’s Mr Richard Puttridge; and Myself; my brother Alfred; Tom Dixon; Mr Jack Barchard; young Bob Ellis – and did I say Myself?’ – and so on, counting the names on his stubby fingers, and sometimes inserting ‘and I think I said Myself’ again toward the end of the recital. But his sense of his own importance was justified when he had a bat in his hand. No one could gainsay that.
Having, so to speak, received the freedom of the Flower Show from this worthy man, there was nothing more for me to do until the rest of the players had arrived. At present there wasn’t a cricketer to be seen on the small but well-kept ground, and it seemed unlikely that the match would start before noon. It was now a little after eleven and a cloudless day. Sitting in the shadow of a chestnut tree I watched the exertions of a muscular man with a mallet. He was putting up a ‘coconut shy’ in the adjoining meadow, where a steam roundabout, some boat-swings, a shooting gallery, and other recreative facilities were in readiness for the afternoon. On the opposite side of the cricket field had been erected a Tea Tent, which would contain such spectators as were prevented, by their social status, from shying at coconuts or turning almost upside-down in a boat-swing. The ground sloped from the Tea Tent to the side where I was sitting (twenty-five summers ago), so that the genteel onlookers were enabled to feel themselves perceptibly above the rest of the
proceedings.
Behind the Tent was a thick thorn hedge; beyond the hedge ran the dusty high road to the village. In the later afternoon of a cricket match there would be several dilatory vehicles drawn up on the other side of the hedge, and the drivers would watch the game in Olympian detachment. There would be the carrier’s van, and the brewer’s dray, and the baker’s cart, and the doctor’s gig, and sometimes even a wagon-load of hay. None of them ever seemed to be pressed for time, and once they were there they were likely to stay till the end of the innings. Rooks would be cawing in the vicarage elms, and Butley, with its huddle of red roofs and square church tower, was a contented-looking place.
In my retrospect the players are now beginning to appear in ones and twos. Some skim easily across the greensward on bicycles; others arrive philosophically on foot, pausing to inspect the wicket, which has a nasty habit of causing fast bowling to ‘bump’ after a spell of dry weather.
Dixon and I were having a little practice up against the fence when Aunt Evelyn emerged from the Flower Show Tent with a bevy of head-gardeners. She signalled to me, so I clambered over the palings and went up to her. She only wanted to tell me that she would be back again after lunch and did so hope she wouldn’t miss my innings.
‘I’m feeling quite proud that Master George is playing in the match,’ she exclaimed, turning to a short, clean-shaven, small-eyed man in a square bowler hat and his dark Sunday suit, who was standing near her. And then, to me, she added, ‘I was just congratulating Mr Bathwick on his wonderful vegetables. We’ve given him the first prize, and he thoroughly deserves it. You never saw such tomatoes and cucumbers! I’ve been telling Mr Bathwick that he’s a positive example to us all!’…
Sam Bathwick, who had a very large mouth, grinned bashfully, though his heavy, sallow face had an irrepressibly artful look about it. He farmed a little bit of land in an out-of-the-way corner of the parish, and was reputed to have put by more money than he admitted to.
Climbing over the fence again I became aware of the arrival of the Rotherden eleven in a two-horse brake. It was close on twelve o’clock, but they’d had a fourteen-mile drive and the road was up and down hill all the way. How enormous they looked as they sauntered across the ground – several of them carrying cricket bags. I should be lucky if I made any runs at all against such men as they were!
Butley Church clock was tolling twelve while our opponents were bearing down on us from the other side of the field, with William Dodd already half-way across to meet them. But the Rotherden men appeared to be in no great hurry to begin the game as they stopped to have a look at the wicket. Meanwhile Butley bells chimed sedately to the close of the mellow extra celebration which Providence allowed them every three hours without fail….
‘I suppose they’ve got their best team?’ I faltered to Dixon, whose keen gaze was identifying the still distant stalwarts.
‘You bet they have!’ he replied with a grim smile.
Two of the tallest men had detached themselves from the others and were now pacing importantly down the pitch with Dodd between them. Dixon indicated this group. ‘They’ve got Crump and Bishop, anyhow,’ he remarked…. Crump and Bishop! The names had a profound significance for me. For many years I had heard Dixon speak of them, and I had even watched them playing in a few Flower Show Matches. Heavily built men in dark blue caps, with large drooping moustaches, one of them bowling vindictively at each end and Butley wickets falling fast; or else one of them batting at each end and Butley bowling being scored off with masterful severity.
But they had also produced a less localized effect on me. Rotherden was on the ‘unhunted’ side of our district; it was in a part of the country which I somehow associated with cherry-blossom and black-and-white timbered cottages. Also it had the charm of remoteness, and whenever I thought of Crump and Bishop, I comprehensively visualized the whole fourteen miles of more or less unfamiliar landscape which lay between Butley and Rotherden. For me the names meant certain lovely glimpses of the Weald, and the smell of mown hayfields, and the noise of a shallow river flowing under a bridge. Yet Crump was an ordinary auctioneer who sold sheep and cattle on market days, and Bishop kept the ‘Rose and Crown’ at Rotherden.
3
Butley had lost the toss. As we went on to the field I tightened the black and yellow scarf which I wore round my waist; the scarf proved that I had won a place in my House Eleven at School, and it was my sole credential as a cricketer. But today was more exciting and important than any House Match, and my sense of my own inferiority did not prevent me from observing every detail of the proceedings which I am now able to visualize so clearly across the intervening years.
The umpires in their long white coats have placed the bails on the stumps, each at his own end, and they are still satisfying themselves that the stumps are in the requisite state of exact uprightness. Tom Seamark, the Rotherden umpire, is a red-faced sporting publican who bulks as large as a lighthouse. As an umpire he has certain emphatic mannerisms. When appealed to he expresses a negative decision with a severe and stentorian ‘NOT OOUT’: but when adjudicating that the batsman is out, he silently shoots his right arm toward the sky – an impressive and irrevocable gesture which effectively quells all adverse criticism. He is, of course, a tremendous judge of the game, and when not absorbed by his grave responsibilities he is one of the most jovial men you could meet with.
Bill Sutler, our umpire, is totally different. To begin with, he has a wooden leg. Nobody knows how he lost his leg; he does not deny the local tradition that he was once a soldier, but even in his cups he has never been heard to claim that he gave the limb for Queen and Country. It is, however, quite certain that he is now a cobbler (with a heavily waxed moustache) and Butley has ceased to deny that he is a grossly partisan umpire. In direct contrast to Tom Seamark he invariably signifies ‘not out’ by a sour shake of the head: when the answer is an affirmative one he bawls ‘Hout’ as if he’s been stung by a wasp. It is reputed that (after giving the enemy’s last man out leg-before in a closely-fought finish) he was once heard to add, in an exultant undertone: ‘and I’ve won my five bob.’ He has also been accused of making holes in the pitch with his wooden leg in order to facilitate the efforts of the Butley bowlers.
The umpires are in their places. But it is in the sunshine of my own clarified retrospection that they are wearing their white coats. While I was describing them I had forgotten that they have both of them been dead for many years. Nevertheless, their voices are distinctly audible to me. ‘Same boundaries as usual, Bill?’ shouts Seamark, as loudly as if he were talking to a deaf customer in his tap-room. ‘Same as usual, Muster Seamark; three all round and four over the fence. Draw at six-thirty, and seven if there’s anything in it,’ says Sutler. And so, with an intensified detachment, I look around me at the Butley players, who are now safely distributed in the positions which an omniscient Dodd has decreed for them.
I see myself, an awkward overgrown boy, fielding anxiously at mid-on. And there’s Ned Noakes, the whiskered and one-eyed wicketkeeper, alert and active, though he’s forty-five if he’s a day. With his one eye (and a glass one) he sees more than most of us do, and his enthusiasm for the game is apparent in every attitude. Alongside of him lounges big Will Picksett, a taciturn good-natured young yokel; though over-deliberate in his movements. Will is a tower of strength in the team, and he sweeps half-volleys to the boundary with his enormous brown arms as though he were scything a hayfield. But there is no more time to describe the fielders, for Dodd has thrown a bright red ball to Frank Peckham, who is to begin the bowling from the top end. While Crump and Bishop are still on their way to the wickets I cannot help wondering whether, to modern eyes, the Butley team would not seem just a little unorthodox. William Dodd, for example, comfortably dressed in a pale pink shirt and grey trousers; and Peter Baitup, the ground-man (whose face is framed in a ‘Newgate fringe’), wearing dingy white trousers with thin green stripes, and carrying his cap in his belt while he bowls his tem
pting left-hand slows. But things were different in those days.
In the meantime Bill Crump has taken his guard and is waiting with watchful ease to subjugate the first ball of the match, while Peckham, a stalwart fierce-browed farmer, takes a final look round the field. Peckham is a fast bowler with an eccentric style. Like most fast bowlers, he starts about fifteen paces from the wicket, but instead of running he walks the whole way to the crease, very much on his heels, breaking his aggressive stride with a couple of systematic hops when about half-way to his destination. Now he is ready. Seamark pronounces the word ‘Play!’ And off he goes, walking for all he is worth, gripping the ball ferociously, and eyeing the batsman as if he intended to murder him if he can’t bowl him neck and crop. On the ultimate stride his arm swings over, and a short-pitched ball pops up and whizzes alarmingly near Crump’s magnificent moustache. Ned Noakes receives it rapturously with an adroit snap of his gauntlets. Unperturbed, and with immense deliberation, Crump strolls up the pitch and prods with his bat the spot where he has made up his mind that the ball hit the ground on its way towards his head. The ground-man scratches his nose apologetically. ‘Don’t drop ’em too short, Frank,’ says Dodd mildly, with an expostulatory shake of his bristly grey cranium. Thus the match proceeds, until, twenty-five years ago, it is lunch time, and Rotherden has made seventy runs with three wickets down. And since both Crump and Bishop have been got rid of, Butley thinks it hasn’t done badly.
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 1 - Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man Page 7
