Played!

by JL Merrow

  Con’s eyes widened. “Just how big was this mouse? Sorry. Half a mouse.”

  “It was me. The damage, I mean. I, ah, managed to make a hole in the kitchen wall.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “Just before I flashed the next-door neighbour with the Goldsmith family jewels and caused him to run away in fright. It hasn’t been a very good morning.”

  “Lot of people run screaming when they see the Goldsmith family jewels, do they?”

  “Well, I don’t like to brag…” Tristan grinned and was unnerved by the thrill that shot through him at Con’s answering shy smile. He swallowed. “So is there anyone else I should know on the field today?”

  “Well, there’s Patrick. Over there, see?” Con pointed towards a sandy-haired figure in leg gully, near where the woodland started at the far edge of the field. “He’s playing Puck in Dream. He was s’posed to be Bottom, actually, but when Alan dropped out, Patrick said he’d rather play Puck anyway.”

  “I suppose one can’t argue with that,” Tristan said, although he was a little miffed that, as their one professional actor and, as it were, the saviour of the Sham-Drams, he hadn’t been offered the choice of playing Puck himself.

  “You’d make a good Puck,” Con said, then looked away as if he regretted his words.

  “I would, wouldn’t I?” Tristan said, pleased. “I am that merry wanderer of the night—God, what a shot! Catch it, man!” He jumped to his feet, quickly followed by Heather, Con and Chris.

  The batsman had hit a cracking, if unwise, shot that soared high into the air and headed straight for leg gully. The putative Patrick was running backwards, his eye firmly on the ball. As it reached him, he leapt—and a cheer rose from the home side at the thwack of leather hitting flesh. The fielder clutched the ball to his chest as he hit the ground with a yell and rolled.

  Even as his teammates ran to congratulate him, Tristan could tell something was wrong. The man wasn’t getting up, and his shout had sounded more pained than proud.

  “Something’s up,” Con said in a low tone.

  “Oh my God,” Heather muttered, her hands to her mouth.

  Patrick was still on the ground, surrounded by a crowd of cricketers who obscured him from view—but the hushed muttering from spectators nearer to the action told its own story. A man—Sean, from his bright orange hair—broke off from the group to jog back to the pavilion. The batsman who’d been caught out ran to speak to him, and seemed to get a polite but firm brush-off.

  “I’m going over,” Heather said grimly.

  They all trooped around the outside of the pitch together. Ironically, Tristan thought, if it hadn’t been for Heather hailing him earlier he’d have been right here with a ringside seat for the action.

  There was enough of a crowd still around the, presumably, injured man that there wasn’t a hope of getting to him, so Heather contented herself with grabbing the arm of the bowler. Rob, that was his name. “What happened?”

  Rob looked pained. “Caught his foot in a rabbit hole when he came down. I’m afraid it looks a bit nasty.”

  The man’s accent, Tristan noticed, was several cuts above his interrogator’s. He gave Rob another glance. No, no one he’d been at school or college with, or at least, not that he could recall. He wished the man could have been a little more precise. “Nasty” could mean anything from a mild sprain to fatal injury.

  “What do you mean, nasty?” Heather demanded. “Is he gonna be all right?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely.” Rob gave a worried laugh that was probably meant to be reassuring. “It’s not like they lop your leg off for a compound fracture these days.”

  That, Tristan felt rather strongly, was not reassuring. From the look on Heather’s face, she appeared to agree. “Oh my God,” she said again.

  The crowds parted, and Tristan was able to see that reassurance, indeed, would have been sadly misplaced. Patrick was now vertical, and supported by his one good leg and two of his fellow cricketers. Tristan hoped they were ready to take his full weight. Unsurprisingly, in view of the grisly red stain spreading down one leg of his whites, he was grey-faced and looked as though passing out was more a matter of when than if.

  A shocked silence fell as Patrick was half carried towards the pavilion.

  “You know,” Tristan said into the stillness, “I fail to see why everyone’s always so desperate to get a man back on his feet after he’s fallen. I remember once taking a nasty tumble off my bike as I was coming through King’s, and I’d barely got my breath before people were dragging me upright again. I was in no hurry, believe me. People just don’t seem to realise how bloody safe staying on the ground feels after you’ve come a cropper once already.”

  As if to prove his point, the five-legged race halted halfway across the pitch, and Patrick was awkwardly laid down upon the grass once more.

  “Shit,” Con said, and ran over to them, presumably to be ready should extreme brawn be required. Of course, Patrick wasn’t a particularly solid-looking man. Carrying him single-handed shouldn’t be a problem for Con. Even as far as the hospital, should the ambulance, which had presumably by now been summoned, fail to arrive.

  “Oh my God.”

  Tristan turned to Heather, a little perturbed by her imitation of a stuck gramophone record (Nanna Geary hadn’t approved of such fads as cassettes and CDs). She still had her hands pressed to her mouth, and her face had paled to a sickly yellow against which her freckles stood out starkly.

  Chris too seemed concerned. “He’ll be all right.”

  “Not to play Puck in two months’ time, he won’t!” Her face twisted. “And just shut up, yeah?”

  No one had spoken.

  “I know I’m being a really crap person even thinking about that, all right? But it’s just—God!” She turned away, her shoulders heaving in the sort of alarming manner that made Tristan want to do a quick impersonation of his next-door neighbour and run far, far away.

  Chris cast him a helpless look, and put his arms around her.

  Tristan regarded their backs for a long moment, then decided this was his cue to politely withdraw.

  Fast.

  Chapter Ten

  Outrageous Fortune

  Bloody hell, that had to hurt. Patrick was breathing hard and fast, and looked like he was about to chuck. Looking at his poor bloody leg, Con felt like he was about to chuck.

  He knelt down beside Patrick and grabbed his shoulder. “All right, mate. Ambulance’ll be here soon.”

  Patrick’s hand came up, groping a bit blindly, and clamped on Con’s bicep so tight it hurt. “Gonna be sexy nurses?” he bit out.

  “Promise.” Con forced a smile. “Tight uniforms and everything. Then when you’re better you’ll have all the girls wanting to whip your trousers off so they can see your scar.”

  “Only the girls? I’m disappointed, mate.” He closed his eyes briefly, but didn’t let go of Con’s arm. “Thought gay blokes were supposed to have more taste.”

  “Nah,” Con said, trying to keep it light. “Taste’s nothin’ to do with whether you’re gay or not. It’s what you eat. You know, pineapple’s s’posed to be good, Brussels sprouts and broccoli, bad.”

  Patrick laughed and winced all at the same time. “Gonna write us a cook book, Delia? Seriously Delish Spunk? Bloody hell, where the fuck are those nurses?”

  “On their way, mate. Hold on.” If he held on any tighter, mind, Con’d be joining him in the fracture clinic. “Hey, here we go.”

  He could hear the sirens now, getting louder first gradually and then all at once as they broke through the trees and onto the long, straight road that led through the common to the cricket ground.

  It felt weird, letting Patrick go off in the ambulance on his own. Con smiled and shook his head. Yeah, like they’d been having a bloody moment there.

  He’d always wondered a bit about Patri
ck—whether it was just girls he was into. No real reason. It wasn’t like he’d ever shown any interest in Con, not that Con would’ve expected him to. Patrick was, well, a bit too metrosexual to go out with someone like Con. His hair was always perfect like he’d just got out of the hairdressers, and everything he wore looked like it had a designer label even if it didn’t. And he’d been single, Con was fairly sure, ever since Con had known him, so even if he went for blokes, which Con had no reason to think he did, he was obviously pretty choosy who he went out with.

  But Con had, well, wondered.

  Course, the poor bloke wasn’t going to be running after anyone for a bit now. Sighing, Con looked around for his mates. He saw Heather and Chris soon enough, standing over by the trees with their arms around each other. Tristan wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Con wondered if he should just leave them to it, but then Chris looked up and waved him over.

  Heather broke out of his arms and scrubbed at her eyes. “Is he all right?” she asked when Con got near.

  “Uh…” Con didn’t want to give her false hope, but he didn’t fancy being shot as the messenger either. “They’ll look after him,” he said in the end. “He was already looking forward to looking down the nurses’ collars.”

  Chris laughed. Heather sniffed.

  “What happened to Tristan?”

  “Tristan? He buggered off. Din’t even say good-bye.” Heather sniffed again.

  Con frowned. He’d thought better of Tristan.

  “Come on,” Chris said firmly. “Let’s get back to the pub and buy this girl a drink. Sean and Rob are gonna get changed and meet us there.”

  “Aren’t they carrying on with the match?” Con hadn’t thought cricket matches were ever halted for anything but rain. Hadn’t there been that bloke in Pakistan who got hit by a ball, and they just marked him on the scoreboard as “retired, dead” and carried on?

  “Nah, those Bishops Langley wusses said the pitch wasn’t safe to play so they’ve all packed up and gone home. Bunch of bloody wimps. Sean reckons it’s only ’cos their star batsman got caught out for a duck.” Chris looked like he wanted to spit.

  Sean was probably right, Con reckoned. “Yeah, it wasn’t even like it was their bloke who got injured.”

  They crossed over the road and headed straight for the bar. “I’ll get ’em,” Con said quickly. It wasn’t his round but Heather looked like she was about to cry and Con did not want to be on his own with her if that happened.

  “Cheers, mate,” Chris said, already steering Heather over to a table.

  “Innit terrible about that bloke at the cricket?” the barmaid said as she pulled Con’s pint. “Course, you know why it happened.”

  “Er, yeah, rabbit hole,” he muttered. He should have expected the news to have travelled—it wasn’t like it’d had far to come.

  “I blame them animal rights people. They should never have let ’em ban hunting.”

  Con gave her a look. He’d thought that was foxes. Then again, what did he know?

  “All them town folk,” she went on. “Coming into rural areas and telling us how to do stuff. It’s not right. Bottle of Becks, was it?”

  “Yeah. Ta.” Being a town bloke himself, Con wasn’t sorry to change the subject.

  He took the drinks over to where Heather and Chris were sitting in the corner. Heather grabbed her beer like it was a lifeline. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” she sniffed.

  Con frowned as he pulled out a bar stool and sat down. “There must be someone who can take over playing Puck. What about Alan? I mean, I know he dropped out, but couldn’t he drop back in?”

  Chris and Heather sent each other looks. Con couldn’t work them out, but they weren’t happy ones. “What?” he asked.

  Heather took a deep breath. “I might have gone off on him a bit. For leaving me in the lurch like that. I don’t think he’s gonna want to do me any favours.”

  Con took a thoughtful mouthful of beer. “There’s other blokes in SADS, though. What about Keith? I mean, I know he’s a bit old, but—”

  “Yeah, and a bit rubbish. He’d ruin it.”

  “Roger?”

  “Like he’d ever let me direct him.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  Heather rolled her eyes and ticked off on her fingers. “Well, let’s see? First, he was against Dream from the start. Second, I’m too young. Third, and more importantly, I’m too female. Fourth, and for all I know, this is the sodding deal-breaker all by itself, I’m too black.”

  Chris frowned. “Come on, you don’t know that. I’ve never heard him say anything racist.”

  “No? So where were you when he was asking me where ‘my people’ came from?”

  “He probably just meant your family. You know, like my folks come from Hampshire.”

  “Yeah, right.” Heather’s expression was getting stormier by the minute. “’Cos of course you’d know far more about racism than someone who’s actually experienced it.”

  Con leaned forward a bit desperately. “What about Trevor?”

  Chris and Heather stopped bickering and turned matching pitying looks on him. “You know what he’s like. Roger says ‘heel’ and he scampers over with his tail wagging. He wouldn’t dare have anything to do with a production once Roger’s come out against it.”

  “Can you double up any more of the roles?”

  “Only if you want it to end up looking like Gollum talking to himself in Lord of the Rings. Everyone’s already playing at least two roles—all except Puck and Bottom, and they can’t ’cos they’re on so much. We went through all this when Alan dropped out, remember? There’s no way round it, except by finding another bloke to do it.”

  “You know,” Chris started, looking like he knew he was going to get shot down. “You could let a girl play Puck. Loads of productions—”

  Heather turned on him. “You know how I feel about that! The whole play is supposed to be a war-of-the-sexes thing. And to make the point about men treating women like shit. How’s it gonna bloody well do that if Oberon’s ally is a girl, hey? You wanna explain that one to me?”

  Chris didn’t flinch. Which made him a braver man than Con. “Well, it’s gotta be better than cancelling the show.”

  “Oi, who’s cancelling the show?” It was Sean’s voice, and Con spun on his seat to see him and Rob, now out of their cricket whites and into what they normally wore at weekends, which for Sean was jeans and a T-shirt and for Rob involved a bow tie and braces. At least he didn’t have his tweed jacket on today, which always made Con feel itchy and uncomfortable just looking at it.

  “No one’s cancelling anything,” Heather said firmly. Then she collapsed onto the table, her head down on her folded arms, and wailed, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do…” It came out a bit muffled and with a sniff on the end.

  Rob looked a bit alarmed. “Ah, drinks, anyone?”

  He wasn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable. Con stood up. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  By the time they got back with the round of drinks—all two of them, but Rob was a good bloke and he hadn’t called Con out on the fact he clearly hadn’t needed his help—Heather had disappeared.

  “Ladies,” Chris explained, catching Con’s look at her empty seat. “Gone to fix her face. ’Cept she’ll probably ruin it all again soon as she gets out. I’m telling you, this play is death to my sex life. She’s always either knackered or terminally depressed.” He gave Sean and Rob a sad puppy-dog look. “Don’t s’pose either of you two lads wanna give acting a go?”

  Rob made a face. “I’m afraid September really isn’t a good month for me to make such a commitment for, what with parents’ evenings and open days. In any case, I’m fairly certain my performance would be as wooden as the scenery.”

  “Yeah, and don’t look at me,” Sean said firmly. “Not my thing. I’ll co
me and support you any time, but you’re not getting me up on stage. Not if you paid me.” He paused, then turned to Con. “Still think you should give it a go, mate.”

  Con choked on his pint. “No. No way,” he said, trying to shake his head and wipe his mouth on his sleeve at the same time.

  “No, but listen, I’ve been thinking about it, yeah? Hear me out.” Sean leaned forward on the table. “You’re always telling us bits from your audiobooks, right? And it’s dead funny. You know how to tell it, how to, I dunno, make it dramatic. So how different can that be from acting?”

  “It’s nothing like acting! I just tell it how the voice in the book told it.” Con drew back.

  “So? So all you have to do is find an audio recording of the play and learn how the actor in that did all the lines. Easy.”

  “You just wanna see me make a giant tit of myself on stage,” Con muttered into his glass.

  “Who’s gonna be a tit on stage?” Heather demanded, sitting back down. She’d done something with her face but her eyes were still red.

  “Con is,” Chris said proudly, like it’d all been his idea and more to the point, like Con was actually ever going to do it.

  “You’re gonna do it?” she squealed. “Oh my God, you’re wonderful!”

  “No! I never said that.” Con glared at Chris, who avoided his gaze.

  Heather slumped down in her seat. “Look, just think about it, yeah? Please? For me?”

  Con felt like a total bastard, seeing her expression turn from joy to despair. He could kill Chris for dropping him in it like that. “I’ll think about it, all right? But I just don’t see how it can work.”

  Chapter Eleven

  But Beg One Favour

  Tristan went to open his door in a state of high anticipation on Sunday evening, leavened with a spoonful or two of trepidation. The chances were good it would be Con—who else in the village knew where he lived? There was, however, a not insignificant possibility that his next-door neighbour still wanted to talk to him, hopefully about permanently adopting Meggie the Second, and had decided to go for a formal approach this time. Possibly bringing reinforcements to protect him against rampaging naked queers.