The Go-Between (20 page)

  I stared at him.

  “Yes. We couldn’t get you into the team because Jim”
(Jim was the pantry boy) “played last year and the year before and
he’s a promising bowler and we daren’t leave him out. Miss Marian
will be furious with me, but you can tell her it’s not my fault. So
you’re to be twelfth man.”

  His whole speech so surprised me that I had hardly
time to feel disappointed before I was again raised to a pinnacle
of happiness.

  “Twelfth man!” I gasped. “So I shall be in the
team!—at least,” I added, “I shall sit with them.”

  “So you’re pleased?” he said.

  “Rather! You see I never expected
anything
!. Shall I go down with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I get ready now?”

  “You can, but we don’t start till two o’clock.”

  “Will you tell me when it’s time to go?”

  “The band will strike up.”

  I was racing off to tell the news to Marcus when he
called me back.

  “Do you feel like taking a message?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Ask her if she’s going to sing ‘Home, Sweet Home’
at the concert.”

  I darted off and found Marian, as I thought I
should, arranging the flowers. Lord Trimingham’s message at once
went out of my head.

  “Oh, Marian, I’m playing!”

  “Playing?” she said. “Aren’t you always
playing?”

  “No, I mean this afternoon, in the cricket match. At
least I’m twelfth man, which is nearly as good. I shouldn’t be able
to bat, of course, even if one of our side was to die.”

  “So it’s no good hoping for that,” she said.

  “No ... But if one of the batsmen got very out of
breath I could run for him, and I could field too, if somebody
broke his leg or sprained his ankle.”

  “Who would you like it to be?” she asked teasingly.
“Papa?”

  “Oh
no
.”

  “Denys?”

  “No.” But I wasn’t able to put quite so much
conviction into this denial.

  “I believe you want it to be Denys. Or do you want
it to be Brunskill?” Brunskill was the butler. “He’s very stiff in
the joints. He’d easily break.”

  I laughed at this.

  “Or Hugh?”

  “Oh
no
, not him!”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, because he’s hurt himself already—and
besides—”

  “Besides what?”

  “Besides he’s our captain and I like him so much,
and—oh, Marian! “

  “Yes?”

  “He asked me to give you a message.” I recollected
myself. “Two really, but one doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me about the one that doesn’t matter. And why
doesn’t it matter?”

  “Because it’s about me. He said you weren’t to be
angry with him—”

  “Why shouldn’t I be angry with him?” She pricked her
finger on the thorn of a white rose. “Blast!” she exclaimed. “Why
shouldn’t I be angry with him?”

  “Because I wasn’t in the eleven.”

  “But I thought you were.”

  “No, only twelfth man.”

  “Of course, you told me. What a shame! I
shall
be angry with him.”

  “Oh no, please not!” I exclaimed, for by the
vindictive way she was thrusting the flowers into their vases I
thought she really might be. “It wasn’t his fault, and anyhow
captains have to—I mean, it would be awful if there was
favouritism. So it wouldn’t be fair if you were cross with him.
Now,” I added hurriedly, dismissing the topic of her anger, “would
you like to hear the other message?”

  “Not specially.”

  I was very much taken aback at this reply, but again
I put it down to the facetiousness that grown-ups practised on
young people.

  “Oh, but—” I began.

  “Well, I suppose I had better hear it. You said it
mattered more than the other. Why?”

  “Because it’s about you,” I said.

  “Oh.” She took some dripping roses from the white
enamelled bowl where they were lying, and held them up and examined
them critically. “Pretty poor specimens, aren’t they?” she said,
and it was true that compared with her they did look wilted. “But I
suppose you can’t expect much of roses at the end of July, and in
all this heat, too.”

  “It isn’t quite the end,” I reminded her, always
calendar-conscious. “It’s only the 21st.”

  “Is it?” she said. “I lose count of the days. We
live in such a whirl of gaiety, don’t we? Parties all the time.
Don’t you get sick of it? Don’t you want to go home?”

  “Oh no,” I said, “unless you want me to.”

  “I certainly do not. You’re the one ray of light. I
couldn’t do without you. How long are you staying, by the way?”

  “Until the 30th.”

  “But that’s so near. You can’t go then. Stay until
the end of the holidays. I’ll arrange it with Mama.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. Mother would miss me. She does miss
me, as it is.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’re flattering yourself.
Stay another week, then. I’ll arrange it with Mama.”

  “I should have to write home—”

  “Yes, of course. Well, now that’s all settled. And
the flowers are arranged, too. Can I trust you to carry one of
these vases for me?”

  “Yes, please,” I said. “But, Marian—”

  “Yes?”

  “You haven’t heard Hugh’s other message.”

  Her face clouded. She put down the vases she was
carrying and said almost irritably: “Well, what is it?”

  “He wants to know if you will sing ‘Home, Sweet
Home’ at the concert.”

  “What concert?”

  “The concert tonight after the cricket match.”

  Marian’s face took on its most sombre look; she
thought a moment and then said: “Tell him I’ll sing it if he will
sing— oh well—if he’ll sing ‘She Wore a Wreath of Roses.’ “

  With my schoolboy’s exaggerated sense of fairness I
thought this a most satisfactory arrangement, and as soon as I had
finished carrying the flowers for Marian, which perforce I had to
do at a walking pace, I ran off to find Lord Trimingham.

  “Well, what did she say?” he asked eagerly.

  I told him the bargain Marian had proposed.

  “But I don’t sing,” he said.

  His voice was much more expressive than his face. I
knew at once that the answer had been a blow. He had said “I don’t
sing” not “I can’t sing,” but it was obvious that he couldn’t and I
wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. At school such rebuffs
were all in the day’s work, and I was surprised that he was so
dejected; but I wanted to cheer him up, so I said, my mind working
quicker than usual: “Oh, it was only a joke.”

  “A joke?” he repeated. “But she knows I don’t
sing.”

  “That was what made it a joke,” I patiently
explained.

  “Oh, do you think so?” he said, his voice
brightening. “I wish I could be sure.”

  It might have been better if I had left him with his
original impression.

  Later in the morning I saw Marian again, and she
asked me if I had given Lord Trimingham her message. I told her I
had.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He laughed,” I said. “He thought it was a very good
joke, because, you see, he doesn’t sing.”

  “Did he really laugh?” She looked put out.

  “Oh yes.” I was beginning to fancy myself as an
editor as well as a messenger.

  With Marcus’s full approval I put on my school
cricket-clothes, but when I asked him if I could wear the school
cap—a blue one made in segments converging on a crowning button,
and having a white gryphon woven on the front—he was doubtful. “It
would be all right,” he said, “if it was an England cap, or even a
county cap or a club cap. But being only a school cap, people might
think you were putting on side.”

  “They wouldn’t if it was to keep the rain off, you
old heifer.”

  “It won’t rain, stomach-pump.”

  We argued for some time about the propriety of
wearing a cap, heaping ingenious insults on each other.

  Sunshine and shadow outside, sunshine and shadow in
my thoughts. Since Marcus’s return I had become vaguely aware that
I was leading a double life. In one way this exhilarated me; it
gave me a sense of power and called out my latent capacities for
intrigue. But also I was afraid, afraid of making some slip, and at
the back of my mind I knew that the practical difficulty of keeping
Marcus in the dark about the letters still existed, though I had
been half persuaded to ignore it. I carried about with me something
that made me dangerous, but what it was and why it made me
dangerous I had no idea; and soon my thought of it was banished by
the imminence of the cricket match, which was making itself felt
throughout the house. I caught glimpses of white-clad figures
striding purposefully to and fro, heard men’s voices calling each
other in tones of authority and urgency, as if life had suddenly
become more serious, as if a battle were in prospect.

  We had a stand-up, buffet luncheon, all going to the
sideboard and helping ourselves, and this seemed a tremendous
innovation. It relieved the excitement and suspense to be always
jumping up, and Marcus and I busied ourselves with waiting on the
others. Waiting on and waiting for them; for we had long ago
finished our meal and were kicking our heels when Lord Trimingham
caught Mr. Maudsley’s eye and said: “Ought we to be moving
now?”

  I remember walking to the cricket ground with our
team, sometimes trying to feel, and sometimes trying not to feel,
that I was one of them; and the conviction I had, which comes so
quickly to a boy, that nothing in the world mattered except that we
should win. I remember how class distinctions melted away and how
the butler, the footman, the coachman, the gardener, and the pantry
boy seemed completely on an equality with us, and I remember having
a sixth sense that enabled me to foretell, with some accuracy, how
each of them would shape.

  All our side were in white flannels. The village
team, most of whom were already assembled in the pavilion,
distressed me by their nondescript appearance; some wore their
working clothes, some had already taken their coats off, revealing
that they wore braces. “How can they have any chance against us?” I
asked myself, for though less conventional than Marcus, I did not
believe you could succeed at a game unless you were dressed
properly for it. It was like trained soldiers fighting natives. And
then it crossed my mind that perhaps the village team were like the
Boers, who did not have much in the way of equipment by our
standards, but could give a good account of themselves, none the
less; and I looked at them with a new respect.

  Most of the members of the opposing sides knew one
another already; those who did not were formally made acquainted by
Lord Trimingham. The process of successively shaking hands with
person after person I found confusing, as I still do; the first
name or two held, then they began to trickle off my memory like
raindrops off a mackintosh. Suddenly I heard: “Burgess, this is our
twelfth man, Leo Colston.” Automatically I stretched my hand out
and then, seeing who it was, for some reason I blushed furiously.
He, too, seemed embarrassed, but recovered himself more quickly
than I did, and said: “Oh yes, my lord, we know each other, Master
Colston and I, he comes to slide down my straw-stack.”

  “Stupid of me,” said Lord Trimingham; “of course, he
told us. But you should make him run errands for you, Burgess, he’s
a nailer at that.”

  “I’m sure he’s a useful young gentleman,” said the
farmer, before I had time to speak.

  Lord Trimingham turned away, leaving us
together.

  “I didn’t see you when I came,” I blurted out,
eyeing the farmer’s white flannels, which transformed him almost as
much as if he had been wearing fancy dress.

  “I was with the mare,” he said, “but she’s
comfortable now, she’s got her foal. You must come and see
them.”

  “Are you the captain?” I asked, for it was difficult
to think of him in a subordinate position.

  “Oh no,” said he, “I’m not much of a cricketer. I
just hit out at them. Bill Burdock, he’s our skipper. That’s him
over there, talking to his lordship.” Of course I was used to
hearing the servants call Lord Trimingham his lordship, but it
seemed odd to me that Ted should, and involuntarily I glanced round
to see if Marian was there; but the ladies from the Hall had not
appeared. “Look, they’re spinning the coin,” he said, with an
eagerness that was almost boyish. “But it won’t signify; his
lordship never wins the toss.”

  This time he did, however, and we went in first.

  The game was already under way when Mrs. Maudsley
and her train arrived. I could hardly contain my disapproval of
their lateness. “They simply wouldn’t start,” Marcus confided to
me. “See you again, old man.” He went down with them to a row of
chairs below the steps; I sat with the team in the pavilion.

  I have never voluntarily watched a game of cricket
since, and have forgotten most of the rules. If I can still
remember this match in some detail, it is in the same way that I
can still construe a passage, say, of Virgil that I learned at
school. I may be word-perfect in it, but I couldn’t apply my
accomplishment to the rest of Latin literature—an unknown passage
would floor me, however simple it was. And so with cricket: I
couldn’t transfer my understanding of this particular match, still
less the emotions it aroused in me, to the game of cricket in
general. If anyone said to me now that cricket is slow and dull, I
should not contradict him, whereas if anyone had said it to me
then, I should have wanted to hit him.

  Cricket is more than a game, they say, or used to
say: it is an attitude of mind, a point of view. I don’t know about
that. You can think of it as a set of ritual movements, or as a
ballet, a ballet in a green field, a ballet of summer, which you
can enjoy without knowing what it’s about or what it means. At
least that is how I should recommend other people to enjoy
it—ballets are not for me. I like facts. In those days I knew the
facts about cricket and I can still repeat some of them
parrot-wise. It is like knowing the figures in a sum without being
able to add them up. At least, if I added them up, they wouldn’t
make a game of cricket as I used to know it.