The Go-Between (21 page)

  There are eleven men on each side; the side that is
“in” tries to make runs; the other side tries to get them “out.”
Representing the side that is in are the two batsmen; as each
batsman gets out, he is replaced by another until only one is left,
and then the side is out. Meanwhile the other side— the “fielding”
side—is present in full force. Prominent among them are the two
bowlers, the batsmen’s most direct and determined enemies. There
are the “fielders” too—the nine men posted at strategic points
about the ground, to hinder the batsman in his task of making runs,
and, if possible, get him “out.” But it is the batsmen and the
bowlers who take the eye of the crowd. In them is crystallized the
clash of wills that makes the match, so that to the uninitiated the
game may seem like a duel between them. If the bowler sends down a
ball that hits the batsman’s “wicket”—the three “stumps” which it
is his honour, his glory, and (if he is a professional) his
livelihood to defend—then the batsman is out. In a two-innings
match he may get a second chance, but for the purpose of this
innings he is
dead
. (Ours was a single-innings match.)

  There are many other ways for a batsman to get out,
some highly technical, but the most usual way is being “caught,”
which means that after the ball has left his bat, and before it
touches the ground, a fielder catches it. If cricket means anything
to me now, it means a “catch.”

  If I have dwelt on the end of the batsman’s career
rather than on the career itself, it is because the moment of his
getting out is also the moment of highest tension in the game. In a
bullfight, I imagine, the bull does plenty of work and provides the
spectators with plenty of thrills before he is killed— he wouldn’t
be a “good” bull if he didn’t. But the supreme moment, the moment
the crowd waits for, is his death. The batsman is not there to get
out, he is there to make “runs” and help his side to victory; but,
all the same, it is the moment of his defeat and symbolic
death—desired or dreaded, according to which side you are on—that
matters most. At least it did with me.

  I have had no other experience of village cricket,
but I realize that conditions at Brandham were exceptional; the
Triminghams had always been interested in the game, and Mr.
Maudsley carried on the tradition. On the cricket field we had all
the correct accessories, and these gave the match the feeling of
importance, of mattering intensely, which I required from life; had
it been conducted in a slipshod manner, I could not have taken the
same interest in it. I liked existence to be simplified into terms
of winning or losing, and I was a passionate partisan. I felt that
the honour of the Hall was at stake and that we could never lift
our heads up if we lost. Most of the spectators, I imagined, were
against us, being members of the village or of neighbouring
villages. The fact that they applauded a good shot did not give me
a sense of comradeship with them; had we worn rosettes or colours
to distinguish us I could have hardly looked the other party in the
eye, while I would willingly have clasped the hand of the biggest
blackguard on our side.

  Above all, I was anxious that Lord Trimingham should
do well, partly because he was our captain and the word “captain”
had a halo for me, partly because I liked him and enjoyed the sense
of consequence his condescension gave me, and partly because the
glory of Brandham Hall, its highest potentialities for a rhapsody
of greatness, centred in him.

  I watched him walk to the wicket with the
unconscious elegance of bearing that made such a poignant contrast
with his damaged face, and saw him go through the solemn
preliminaries that, if my memory serves, attend the incoming of
each batsman. Denys made some observations about his style,
comparing him to the leading cricketers of the day, not altogether
to their advantage. As I said, my recollection of the niceties of
the game is faint, and even in this one it is the moments of crisis
that I best remember. Modern critics complain that these are all
too few, but for that very reason they stand out.

  The first crisis came almost at once. Lord
Trimingham disappointed us. He made a stroke or two that seemed to
justify Denys’s claims for him—he gave us a taste of his quality—
then out he came.

  A round of applause, subdued and sympathetic, and
more for him than for his play, greeted his return. I joined in the
muted clapping and, averting my eyes, muttered: “Bad luck, sir,”
when he came by; so what was my surprise to see Marian applauding
vigorously as if he had done really well, and her eyes were
sparkling as she lifted them to his. He answered with the twisted
look that served him as a smile. “Can she be mocking him?” I
wondered. “Is it another joke?” I didn’t think so; it was just
that, being a woman, she didn’t know what cricket was.

  Further disasters followed. It was shocking—these
Boers, in their motley raiment, triumphantly throwing the ball into
the air after each kill! How I disliked them! The spectators on the
“boundary,” standing, sitting, lying, or propped against trees, I
imagined to be animated by a revolutionary spirit and revelling in
the downfall of their betters.

  Such was the position, a grim one, when Mr. Maudsley
took the field. He walked stiffly and stopped more than once to
fumble with his gloves. I suppose he was no more than fifty, but to
me he looked hopelessly old and utterly out of the picture: it was
as though old Father Time had come down with his scythe to mow the
daisies. He left behind him a whiff of office hours and the faint
trail of gold, so alien to the cricket field. Gnome-like he faced
the umpire and responded to his directions with quick, jerky
movements of his bat. His head flicked round on his thin lizard’s
neck as he took in the positions of the fielders. Seeing this, they
rubbed their hands and came in closer. Suddenly I felt sorry for
him with the odds so heavily against him, playing a game he was too
old for, trying to look younger than he was. An element of farce
had come into the game, spoiling its seriousness.

  But I was wrong. The qualities that had enabled Mr.
Maudsley to get on in the world stood by him on the cricket field.
Especially the quality of judgment. He knew when to leave well
alone, he took no risks. His method was no method, but it worked.
He had an uncanny sense of where the gaps in the defence were, and
could always slip the ball through them. The village team were
brought in closer, they were sent out farther, they straddled their
legs and adopted attitudes of extreme watchfulness; but to no
purpose.

  Our other batsmen were less fortunate. After several
had been dismissed for paltry scores, Denys went out to join his
father. The ladies, as I could tell from their motionless hats,
were now taking a proper interest in the game: mentally I could see
the searchlight beam of Mrs. Maudsley’s eye veering between her
husband and her son. “She won’t mind much if Denys gets out,” I
thought.

  Before he left the pavilion Denys had told us what
he meant to do. Above all, he said, his father mustn’t tire
himself. “I shall do the hitting, and I shan’t let him run more
than I can help.”

  For a time these tactics were successful. Denys hit
to such good purpose that no running was needed. (A “boundary” hit
counts four and you don’t have to run.) He played with a great deal
of gesture, walking about meditatively when it was not his turn,
strolling out to pat the pitch, and making practice airshots. But
his method didn’t combine well with his father’s opportunist
policy. Mr. Maudsley would start out to run, and be thwarted by
Denys’s raised arm, which shot up like a policeman’s. Once or twice
when this happened the spectators tittered, but Denys seemed to be
as unconscious of their amusement as he was of his father’s
irritation, which was also evident to us. At last, when the signal
was once more raised against him, Mr. Maudsley shouted out “Come
on
!” It was like the crack of a whip. All the authority he
so carefully concealed in his daily life spoke in those two words.
Denys started off like a rabbit, but he was too late and paid the
penalty. Crestfallen and red in the face, he returned to the
pavilion.

  There was now no doubt about who dominated the
field. But oddly enough, though I did not grudge my host his
triumph, I could not quite reconcile it with the spirit of the
game. It wasn’t cricket—that phrase which used to mean so much to
an Englishman—it wasn’t cricket that an elderly, wizened individual
with a stringy neck and creaking joints should, by dint of headwork
and superior cunning, reverse the proverb that youth will be
served. Brawn, I obscurely felt, should prevail over brain.

  Mr. Maudsley did not find anyone to stay with him
long, however. The next three batsmen were soon disposed of.
Perhaps they felt the responsibility of being Mr. Maudsley’s
partners too acutely; at any rate the tail, as they say, did not
wag. Still, our final score of 142 was very respectable. Tremendous
applause greeted Mr. Maudsley as he came back, undefeated, having
made his coveted “fifty” runs. He walked alone—the footman, his
last companion at the wicket, having joined the village side, with
whom no doubt he felt more at his ease. We all rose to do honour to
Mr. Maudsley; he looked a little pale, but much less heated than
the village team, who were perspiring freely and mopping their
faces. Lord Trim-ingham took the liberty of patting him on the
back; gentle as the pat was, his frail frame shook under it.

  During the tea interval the game was replayed many
times, but the hero of the hour seemed content to be left out;
indeed, it soon became as difficult to associate him with his play
as with the financial operations he directed in the city. At five
o’clock our team took the field; the village had 143 runs to make
to beat us, and two hours to make them in.

  12

  I STILL have the score cards, but whereas the
figures of our score still speak to me of who made them, and how,
the figures of theirs are not so articulate; they are voiceless
until half-way through. The reason is, no doubt, that our players
were all known to me personally, whereas theirs, with one
exception, were not. Also because it looked like being such an easy
win for us that I withdrew some of my attention: one cannot fix it
on a walk-over, and, keen as I was on the game, a child’s attention
is easily distracted. The excitements of before the tea interval
seemed far away and wasted, as if we had put out all our strength
to lift a pin. I remember feeling rather sorry for the village
side, as one after another their batsmen went back to the pavilion,
long-faced and looking much smaller than when they had started
out.

  And as the game receded from my mind, the landscape
filled it. There were two arches: the arch of the sky beyond the
cricket field, and the arch of the sky above; and each repeated the
other’s curve. This delighted my sense of symmetry; what disturbed
it was the spire of the church. The church itself was almost
invisible among the trees, which grew over the mound it stood on in
the shape of a protractor, an almost perfect semicircle. But the
spire, instead of dividing the protractor into two equal segments,
raised its pencil-point to the left of the centre—about eight
degrees, I calculated. Why didn’t the church conform to nature’s
plan? There must be a place, I thought, where the spire would be
seen as a continuation of the protractor’s axis, producing the
perpendicular indefinitely into the sky, with two majestic right
angles at its base, like flying buttresses, holding it up. Perhaps
some of the spectators enjoyed this view. I wished I could go in
search of it while our team was demolishing the village side.

  But soon my eye, following the distressful spire
into the heavens, rested on the enormous cloud that hung there, and
tried to penetrate its depths. A creation of the heat, it was like
no cloud I had ever seen. It was pure white on top, rounded and
thick and lustrous as a snowdrift; below, the white was flushed
with pink, and still farther below, in the very heart of the cloud,
the pink deepened to purple. Was there a menace in this purple
tract, a hint of thunder? I did not think so. The cloud seemed
absolutely motionless; scan it as I would, I could not detect the
smallest alteration in its outline. And yet it was moving—moving
towards the sun, and getting brighter and brighter as it approached
it. A few more degrees, and then—

  As I was visualizing the lines of the protractor
printed on the sky, I heard a rattle and a clatter. It was Ted
Burgess going out to bat and whistling, no doubt to keep his
spirits up. It was not the way a gentleman would have behaved.

  How did I feel about Ted? Did I want him to do
badly? He was an enemy, of course—not my personal enemy, but an
enemy of the Hall. I was puzzled, for till now my feelings had been
quite clear. Of course, he mustn’t make a big score, but if he made
just one big hit, one mighty swipe—

  He tried to, and was only saved, it seemed, by a
miracle: and then I knew: I knew I didn’t want him to succumb.
(“Succumb” was a word the newspapers used in reports of cricket
matches to describe a batsman’s exit; I rather liked it.) The
knowledge made me feel guilty of disloyalty; but I consoled myself
with the thought that it was sporting, and therefore meritorious,
to want the enemy to put up a fight; besides, they were so far
behind! And in this state of uneasy neutrality I remained, while
Ted let fly at the balls that came to him and made one mis-hit
after another.

  Then he began to settle down and the big hits I had
hoped for followed. The spectators laughed and scattered as the
ball came rushing at them, but no one, I fancy, thought that it was
more than a flash in the pan. “He’ll soon get out that way,” one
wiseacre sitting near me observed. And in fact it always seemed
that his next stroke would be his last.