Tollesbury Time Forever (16 page)

“Mmm. Garden shears. I never had call for them. I do have some big scissors though that I use to cut cloth for the children's clothes. Would they do?”

“Yes, yes. That would be great.”

He went into the barn and returned moments later with a large, rusty pair of scissors. I thanked him and rushed to the level piece of field on the other side of the barn. The groundsman had his land and his tools and the whole morning ahead of him to prepare his wicket. At that moment, I don’t believe I had ever been happier or more imbued with purpose.

And so with the Tollesbury sun on my back and the English air filling my lungs, I made a mark in the earth. I walked twenty two paces and stopped, forging another mark with the blade of the scissors. I laid on the grass vertical to the mark I had made and stretched my arms above my head. I figured this to be about eight feet and holding the scissors in my outstretched hand made another mark. I reversed my position, made a further mark and joined them with a long score in the earth. I repeated the exercise at the other end of the twenty two yards. Having done this, I scored a long line down each side, joining the two shorter marks I had made. I looked upon my long rectangle and considered myself satisfied.

A child brought me over a cup of cool water, patted me on the head where I sat, and skipped away. I drank the water slowly, using every sensation available to me to appreciate it. I tasted its wetness and listened to it as it entered my throat and imagined being able to see it as it made its way to my stomach before sustaining me in all sorts of ways. We are as plants, needing nourishment to grow and continue, the natural fuel of the land and the sea being our most abundant benefactors. God, when life is that simple, no worries need impinge upon the perfection of Albion’s mighty horizon.

The morning wore on and I continued on my mission. I worked a small area at a time, bent over, using the old scissors to trim the grass within the rectangle, taking it almost back to the soil. Various children came and went either to replenish me with water or to stare and giggle at this strange man on his knees cutting the summer grass with the same implement that fashioned their meagre garments. I saw nothing of W.G. that morning. Where he was, what he was doing and what he was thinking, I knew not. If I had known what was truly occupying his soul, I may well have ceased my work. As it was, I was all
joy and optimism, as child-like as my fascinated and frequent little visitors.

I don’t know how many hours it took me to finish my work. I had begun to lose track of time during the preceding days and was glad of it. For what is time but an unhealthy imposition on the natural flow of existence? It prevents us from fully immersing ourselves in THE MOMENT. It urges us on blindly and leads us not to fulfilment but to one more point of stress after another. The land is in darkness or the land is in light. That is the only approximation of time we really need. Yet we hurtle from one day to the next, trapped and inhibited by the ticking of the grand clock of society - that ticktockticktock rhythm to which our hearts meekly comply. To have time is said to be a luxury. I would contend that the opposite is true. But then, having just described how I had used a rusty old pair of early nineteenth century scissors to create a cricket pitch, you may well be stepping slowly away from me at this moment, looking over your shoulder for the nearest available exit…

Well, onwards.

I stood back and surveyed what I had made. It was most definitely a batsman’s paradise - flat, not a crack in sight and bereft of any of the morning dew. Pity the poor bowlers on this track! But a cricket pitch isn’t a cricket pitch without stumps.

I do believe The Walrus had a deal of fun making my stumps and bails. He knew of cricket but had never seen it played. He did a fine job and, before long, my masterpiece was complete. It may not seem much to some, but making my own cricket pitch was a dream that had long lingered in my disordered mind.

I located W.G. at the back of the barn. He was leaning against the wooden building, his crooked bat in one hand and his ball in the other, as if he had been waiting for me all day. Looking past him through the window to the sombre dining area, it seemed he had just cleared up the children’s afternoon meal - some were still seated at the table, whilst others were on the floor, cross-legged in front of The Walrus who stood before them, laughing and gesticulating.

“Hi,” I said to W.G. “Ready?”

“I suppose,” he replied.

I should imagine my odour was not one that would inspire anyone to uncork an empty bottle with which to ensnare it and I must have looked flushed indeed, toiling as I had been in the field for most of the day. Me, toiling in the fields. Imagine that!

W.G. followed me to my cricket pitch as if he were walking out to bat at Lord’s. I was proud of my achievement and he treated it with due deference, turning to me and smiling. It was the first time I had seen him without an ounce of either bitterness or anger. He actually looked like the child he was and not the weary, encumbered soul he had so evidently become. He threw the ball to me and strode to the crease. I made my way to the bowler’s end, paced out a run-up and took a deep breath. And I knew then that no moment in my life would ever compare to the one I was then experiencing.

“Play,” I announced.

W.G. didn’t take guard, he just stood there in front of the stumps gazing in my direction, his make-shift bat at the ready. I ambled in and looped up a half-volley. The boy dispatched it over my head without even moving his feet. He grinned and nodded in my direction.

“So that’s how it is,” I said to myself as I walked some thirty yards back to fetch the ball. But before I could get there, a small boy picked it up and lobbed it to me, positioning himself, rather sensibly I might add, at mid-on.

“We’ll call that a four,” I yelled to W.G. when I reached my run up.

“Call it what you like,” he replied.

Now I have never considered myself to be competitive in any way. But then, up until that point, I had never had a ball smacked back over my head by a boy who had put no more effort into the shot than he would have done swatting a fly. My fielder was in position, all five years of him, and I bowled the next ball, short and fast. It reared up past W.G.’s shoulder and on past his left ear. Did I feel at all guilty? Not a bit of it. Did I smile as W.G. glared back at me? Indeed I did. The beaten
batsman turned to get the ball, but there was no need. The Walrus picked it up, threw it back to me and took up his position as wicket-keeper. Where he had come from, I did not know, nor did I care. Every bowler needs a safe pair of hands behind the stumps and it seemed I had mine.

And so it went on. Each time W.G. seemed to be dominating my bowling, I managed to get in a sneaky off-break (no mean feat on that pitch!) or a faster ball that beat him for pace and bounce. But I was never even close to getting him out even though, all the while, my options in the field were increasing. One by one, the children took up their places with minimal guidance from me, appearing unbidden as if from the earth itself. Before long, I had a mid-off, a mid-on, two slips, a wicket-keeper, a gully, a cover point, a square leg, a short-leg and a third man (or rather a third small girl to be exact.)

Occasionally I pointed to one of my team mates to just move a few yards to the left or to the right, or maybe to come in a bit from the invisible boundary - not for any other reason than I had always wanted to do it; the demon bowler directing his field in order to out-think the in-form batsman.

The little fielders charged around the field like flies in an empty jam-jar, chasing after the ball and returning it to me in a ramshackle, hickledy-pickledy display of clumsiness and glee. On more than one occasion, two of the fielders collided, only to roll around laughing at the glory of it all and filling the air itself with joy.

I was having the time of my life.

W.G. hit the ball to all parts, jogging a single here, hitting a boundary there. In truth, he was unbeatable and I was tiring. I had bowled a thirty over spell after all. The sun was creeping towards the back of the barn and the little girl at third man was asleep on the grass. One of my slips came and told me that the small boy fielding at gully had possibly wet himself.

I was on the verge of considering a bowling change when The Walrus left his place behind the stumps and walked up the wicket towards me. He ruffled my hair, shook my hand and called a halt to proceedings. He lifted the bails off the
stumps at the bowler’s end, did the same at the batsman’s end and pulled the stumps out of the ground. W.G. stood there resting his bat upon his shoulder. His performance had been legendary. I laid down my set of stumps and the ball and clapped heartily. All the children joined in as W.G. walked off the field and down the incline and out of sight. I like to think he had a tear in his eye on this, his finest day. I know I did.

A feeling of elation coupled with absolute weariness overcame me. I could have slept right there on the wicket of my own devising and would surely have done so had I not spotted a figure sprawled on the ground some sixty yards away at what would have been the cover boundary. I stood up, wiped the sweat from my grimy forehead and looked around. The Walrus and the children were long gone. I walked achingly across the field and soon saw that it was none other than Zachariah Leonard. It just had to be, didn’t it?

Zachariah looked more invigorated than last I’d seen him. He had regained that indestructible demeanour that had not so long ago shaken me to my very soul. The purity of the day was brought to a close; for Zachariah Leonard brought dirt to the occasion, granite to the party. He was the thud in the gloom, the depth to the darkness. And instantly I saw that he was a part of me. I smiled. My smile turned to a grin. Zachariah’s torrid face was ablaze with smoulder. A part of me was complete. A part of him was fulfilled. He stood up. I was already standing. Now that was easy.

“Hello,” I said.

He nodded. But I was not so distracted as to fail to notice how he screwed up a piece of paper in one of his hands.

“What have you been doing,” I asked.

“Nothing, boy. Nothing that need concern you.”

We stood looking at one another. He was dirty and hard and charming as ever.

“Let’s go,” he murmured, putting a big hand upon my shoulder and nudging me with it. We walked away from the cricket pitch and down the incline.

W.G. seemed to have disappeared in the same manner as The Walrus and the children. So there I was, at the foot of the
incline once more, this time though not with a disturbed young boy, but with a brooding Zachariah Leonard.

“Sit,” he ordered. So I sat.

It was reminiscent of that first time I had met him, the two of us seated on the grass, side by side, eyes upon the bold horizon. The Tollesbury sky was dark now, black and still.

“Tell me what has passed,” said Zachariah, finally, just as I was beginning to settle into the silence.

So I did.

 
“Forgive everybody everything. Recognise beauty wherever it be. Understand the nature of loss. Give love wherever you go. Anger devours the soul. Look deep or do not look at all. Imagination is life. Trust everybody, for at heart, people are good”

I turned at last to look at him, having intoned the previous words with neither excitement nor emotion, for as I spoke them, they seemed too naïve, too trite to be uttered in the presence of such a man as Zachariah Leonard. But then I saw the tears upon his face, edging their way through the centuries of grime, filling the deep grooves and crevices, bringing water to that arid land of his countenance. He didn’t shake or rock or move at all; just those tears easing from his heart and his mind, flowing out into the night.

“You are wonderful,” I whispered.

He closed his eyes. And the tears stopped. I had the feeling he was using all his might to keep his eyes shut and wondered if he would ever open them again. He was absolutely like a rock. The piece of paper I had seen him with earlier was on the grass by one of his crossed legs. Without thought of consequence, I leaned over and picked it up. It was rough in my hands and the marks upon it had been made with what could have been a piece of coal, so dark and deep were they. I blew upon the sheet and cleared the debris. The words beneath were thus revealed. The beating of my heart was the only sound to be heard from miles around as I read.

‘W.G. - 100 not out - Man of the Match and King of the World.’

As I read that last word, the silence of the moment was shattered, broken in a most terrifying fashion. His eyes still closed and remaining perfectly still, Zachariah opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound like I had never heard before - high-pitched and never ending; such that would break this whole world in two. It was a dog in its death throes, a train screeching into a wall, the grinding to a halt of the rusty iron wheel of our times, the shriek of the abused, and the roar of the risen. And he just kept going - it was an avalanche, an earthquake, the fracturing of nations, the splintering of minds and the cracking open of the skies, the panic of the new-born, the explosion of adolescence, the gurgling rattle of the dying. It was all these things.
 
It was all these things.

And it was happening. It was happening now.

From behind, I felt the ground shudder. I stood and whirled around. It was W.G. charging down the incline. He came to a halt just a foot in front of me. Whatever Zachariah had used to mark the paper, may well have been used to forge the eyes of the young boy. I stared in horror at the blood that spattered his face and the red juice that dripped from his crude, home-made cricket bat that he held tightly in both hands. It was as if the blood were seeping from the wood itself. We stared at one another, both of us struggling to control our breathing.