Wilberforce (36 page)

 

25

Always turn out clean in mind and body.

Never forget that while you face the ball alone, it takes both striker and nonstriker to make a run.

Always trust your partner. Whether he calls on you to come or to wait, accept his judgment of the ball as you would have him trust you.

Never let a mistake worry you unduly.

Always remember that your character is reflected in your game.

Whatever you do, do it with all your might.

All my love, Father.

He was in the dormitory changing his flannels. Nathan and Laurie were with their people, leaving him to an uneasy solitude. His father's unsent letter, dated the month Morgan started prep school, lay across his blanket, its script regular and familiar. Morgan had no memory of asking his father
to explain the rules of cricket and tell it in a good way
, but such a demand didn't strike him as uncharacteristic. He'd gone through a mad cricket phase, and he remembered having the impression that school would be something like a training academy. He'd been dismally disappointed by his prep school's diet of Latin, spelling, arithmetic, and penmanship.

Nathan thought playing for the XI was a brilliant shot at glory. Laurie said that it was high time the Old Boys match got interesting. Colin offered to take over Morgan's bookmaking at the Keys should he not survive the ordeal. On the First XI itself, those who had spoken to him expressed the hope that he would refrain from mucking things up; Andrewes exhorted him to do as he was told and to keep his eye on the ball. There was no way to tell whether he'd get off with doing nothing or whether he'd be called to prove himself before an audience hostile in more ways than one.

Outside the pavilion just now, Fletcher had brushed hard against him, as if he might, like that night in the changing room, press Morgan to the wall, arm across his throat.

—What did you do to him? Fletcher had demanded that winter evening. He's in a funk.

Fletcher had pressed harder, crushing his windpipe:

—Hasn't been like that since—

—Since Gallowhill?

A ringing cuff.

—Leave him be.

—What's it to you?

—It's to me to see that men like Silk aren't put out by tarts like you.

A heavy shove.

—Little sod.

Fletcher's arm had dropped, and his own fist rose, swinging into Fletcher's cheek, fleshy, hard, sore. Fletcher gasped:

—They only hit when it's true.

He needed food. He needed to focus. He needed to seize this actual day: lunch, cricket, tea,
Polly
. The sun would not set for another ten hours. There wasn't a moment to lose.

*   *   *

The innings had gone a good deal better than John had hoped. The Old Boys had managed a hundred and three, unprecedented in John's time at the Academy. Bradley and Fletcher had done particularly well as the last two in. In consequence, lunch was late and everyone ravenous, not least John. He chose carefully from the buffet, taking not so much that he would become soporific, but enough to fortify him for what was sure to be a long afternoon bowling. Burton would have to be pleased with his management of the Old Boys. As long as nothing tragic happened in the field, the day would have to be classed a success.

John joined his men at what was normally REN's junior table. Burton sat at the masters' table with various personages John did not know. The man looked, for all the success of the day, uncomfortably hot. Perhaps some political concern had exploded in his hands. Irrationalities like that made John certain he would never be a Housemaster, a Headmaster, or any master of visible importance. Give him his lessons, his games, his little demesne. Leave the sticky maneuvers to men who cared for such things.

—You came after Gallowhill, did you? one of the Old Boys was asking him.

—Yes, John replied.

—So you never knew him?

—Alas.

—He and I were boys here together, the man said.

—Were you indeed?

John tried to handle the man gently, but he was seized by irritation at the sentimentality that overcame everyone when Gallowhill was mentioned. Why should Gallowhill deserve such grief?

Meg always spoke of dying as a release from suffering. She quoted exclusively from the milk-and-honey parts of Scripture. This world was a shadow, she claimed. In the next, they would put on glory.

John longed to be comforted by her sentiments, but it was all too abstract. He knew only this life, this concrete, body-bound life, this meanwhile ruled by their inadequacies and yearnings. He reminded himself not to confuse the nostalgia that surrounded him with a philosophical frame of mind.

The man who had been at the Academy with Gallowhill had within his middle-aged face the anxious eyes of a Third Former casting about for the friend who was no longer there, adrift in the crowd without this essential ally. John wondered how he himself would behave were he ever forced to return to the scene of his own schooldays. But this was a topic both unsavory and inapt. The facts were simply that some men never forgot school; they defined themselves perpetually by those old relationships, by that ancient status or lack thereof, and by the boys they had been when everything had pressed together so hard they felt they couldn't endure the intensity of living.

John grimaced at the Old Boy and loaded a fork with cold ham and cheese. Burton was winding his way through the throng. John put his fork into his mouth and ate. As Burton advanced through the room, groups congealed and dispersed around him. John made a mental note to speak with REN about images under a microscope and their similarity to groups in crowded rooms.

His body registered the event long before his brain caught up. First, his limbs froze. A hot tingling spread across the surface of his skin, beginning in his scalp and creeping down the back of his neck. Voluntary motion ceased. His heart and lungs, powered by a reptilian sector of his brain, continued to sustain life. He wished they wouldn't. The rest of his brain sat listless in his skull, like a dumb and captive beast. Eventually it stirred, but only to lecture him on the impossibility of the coming moment. He was mistaken, it told him, about the identity of the person following Burton through the crowds. He was tired and imagining things. The man might look like a person he had once known, but as he hadn't laid eyes on that person since the time he made it a cast-iron rule never to contemplate, how could he hope to recognize that person even if reality broke with its bonds and magicked him to the St. Stephen's refectory? Fact: people changed beyond all recognition between the ages of seventeen and twenty-whatever; therefore fact: this person could not be that person; therefore fact: he had to keep his head and avoid letting insanity run away with him.

The person was surrounded by men John did not know, and the globule was bearing down on his table. He could flee. He should flee. Why wasn't he fleeing? He was not fleeing for the simple reason that the entire affair was a mistake, a hallucination, and a disgusting display of lost nerve. There was simply not the remotest possibility that the person he had left in the place his cast-iron rules forbade him to recall had discovered him here in the most obscure corner of Yorkshire.

—Here he is, Burton said to a graying man in the group. Grieves, our young history master and able Captain of the Old Boys.

The gray man extended a hand, which John's elbow forced him to meet.

—Capital innings, the gray man said.

John swallowed the saliva in his mouth and allowed the man to pump his arm up and down.

—Grieves, this is Overall, Chairman of our Board.

John managed to mumble a greeting. Overall released his hand and introduced him to two or three more gray men, also members of the Board. They seemed not displeased, yet not as cheerful as they might after satisfactory cricket and satisfactory luncheon. John was conscious of the underside of his rib cage tingling like his face and scalp, and then reality as he knew it perished. The person whom he could not hope to recognize, the person who did not belong in Yorkshire, the person from that outlawed time and place stood before him. This person stopped talking to the gray men and brought his full attention to the precise spot where John stood, lining up their gazes with a recognition that took John's brain and split it.

—Grieves, Sebastian. Visiting us from Marlborough. But you know one another already, I'm told.

A hand was gripping his, though he scarcely felt it.

—Hello, John.

Catastrophic smile.

But Burton was filling the air with explanations great and small, introducing Overall and his men to the Old Boys at John's table. The person continued to grip his hand:

—You look well.

The sooner this moment passed, the sooner he would be able to breathe. Not that breath was strictly necessary. Only his mind existed. Through every disaster, every destruction, it preserved him, the essential him. He could survive without the Academy, without teaching, without anything. Any moment now his hand would be free and he could escape. Before anyone had a chance to look for him, he'd be on a train to Scotland or the Channel Isles or even the Continent if necessary. He could work with his hands, digging ditches, allowing his skin to brown and harden in the Mediterranean sun.

—Bang-up spread, one of the gray men was saying.

The others were concurring. The intruder was smiling, at him. He released John's hand only to come stand at John's side.

—Fearful hock, he murmured in John's ear. And an even worse claret.

John flinched. The person chuckled.

—There I go putting my foot in it again, the person said. It's obvious I haven't changed.

His sleeve brushed John's. John took a step backwards and reached for his orange squash.

—Clever choice, the person said. Then, you've always been clever.

John slammed the glass down on the table. This was the moment to unleash a telling off the likes of which would make the Fifth Form quake. This person was committing a monstrous impertinence murmuring things into his ear. This person had no right to stand near him, no right even to exist. John opened his mouth to say all this.

—We must leave our Captain to his team, Burton announced. Now let me …

He conducted the gray men away. They drew the intruder along with them, but not before he could inflict another harrowing smile:

—I shall enjoy this, he said. Immensely.

*   *   *

Nathan's parents welcomed Morgan warmly and insisted he sit with them. Nathan's mother declared that he had grown; Nathan's father congratulated him on his promotion to the First XI. When Morgan tried to explain that it was only for the day, Nathan listed all the boys who had been passed over for the honor. Alex sat beside Mrs. Pearl and impishly stole bites of her Victoria sponge. She pretended to scold him, but his cheekiness amused her. Towards the end of the meal, Alex darted over to the table where Colin sat with his parents. Money changed hands. Alex returned, and while his father chided him, he had the nerve to aim a smirk at Morgan.

—Why do you look like the cat who ate the bird? Morgan demanded.

Alex mimed cleaning his whiskers and licking his paws. He was the most unsavory specimen.

 

26

If ever a day demanded a drink, this one did. But having a drink would only give that person a satisfaction he didn't deserve. John did not have time to sift through details of the surreal encounter. He had no time to analyze what the person meant by
I shall enjoy this
.
This
, what? But, again, there was no time. John had to inspect the pitch. He had to rouse his players from postprandial stupor. He had to make final decisions about fielding positions. Bradley, he conceded, would have to keep wicket. No one else with plausible wicketkeeping experience had presented himself, and the Old Boys had to make a show of trying to stop the First XI. One of the older men had volunteered to bowl; John decided to let him start. Fletcher had offered to bowl as well, but after the claret John had watched him down at lunch, John didn't trust him hurling hard objects. He would have to bowl himself, as usual, but with any luck the older man, whatever his name was, would provide periodic relief.

John had been watching the First XI for a month. He knew its strengths and weaknesses at bat, and he instructed his bowler (Old Boy circa 1890) to spin the ball as hard as possible and bowl a full length. After eight singles and a boundary, the man bowled a googly and took the wicket. John felt his energy surge. One out, only nine to go.

*   *   *

Droit spent the afternoon in a deck chair, peering through field glasses at visiting females and speculating about their biographies, carnal or otherwise. Morgan sat beside him sipping orange squash. The Old Boys had begun the innings hopelessly, and the XI had scored sixty-two runs in the first hour. Eventually, some codgers rotated on and others off, Grieves came in to bowl, and the Old Boys began to sober up. Bradley had been keeping wicket all afternoon and was getting better by the over.

When Buxton came in, the eighth man, Morgan went to get his pads and to warm up. Evidently, he would bat after all.

He began his stretches; the familiar routine did not calm him.

Never forget that there are ten others with you; if they fail, it is up to you to see the side through.
A ridiculous maxim since he was not batting last. The truth was, if he failed, Andrewes and Radcliffe would see the side through and he would be humiliated in front of hundreds of people, including Grieves and Bradley.

Grieves bowled only one ball to Bux before asking for time-out and going to consult with a codger on the veranda. After a brief exchange, Grieves retired to the pavilion and the codger went to the crease. His flabby bowling delighted the XI, and two boundaries later, they had moved within thirteen runs of victory. A glance around the sidelines revealed a number of empty seats. Evidently, Grieves had conceded the match. Morgan would not be needed after all.