‘What better, indeed,’ I said, kissing her.
And so, as Harry Conrad, on that Saturday afternoon, I finally got my game of cricket. Certainly no one could have recognised me — as either Marlow or Conrad. For I was the perfectly dressed late nineteenth-century cricketer now, complete with rather moth-eaten old flannels riding high above my ankles and secured at the waist by a yellow and purple tie, a cream shirt and a minute Tweedledum cap, striped in various faded blues, with an even smaller peak perched high on my head. I had heavy sidewhiskers, blossoming like rampant ivy round my ears, and a handsome bandit’s moustache curling down round my chin, which Alice had fixed up for me, together with a bandana handkerchief, like a stevedore’s, knotted against the sweat about my neck.
The rest of the equipment, gathered together by the Victorian Society from old pavilions, schools and houses about the country, was equally in period — stumps, bats and pads. Only the ball was contemporary, along with the players beneath their beards, among them half a dozen well-known cricketers. I had secured a place on one of these celebrity teams purely as Alice’s house-guest.
Of course, I needn’t have taken part. But I couldn’t resist it. My disguise seemed overwhelming, Clare was being looked after nearby by Alice all the time, and the air of pleasurable anticipation down in the old log-built pavilion where we all assembled for drinks before lunch, was immense. It was all worth the risk, I thought. The food was cold, a sumptuous buffet with whole hams and pâtés with a great deal of chilled Frascati to go with it, slaking already rising thirsts, for the day was brilliantly fine and hot again. The captain of my team was a distinguished ex-England cricketer, a batsman from Gloucestershire, a classic stylist in his day, tall and still supple and now unsuitably got up to look like his great predecessor in that county, Dr W. G. Grace. The poor man had to remove part of his huge beard before he could get near the Yorkshire ham.
But I was put to sit next another player, at a back table out of the way, someone, like me, quite unknown in the game. Middle-aged, with thin hair cut short, a very conventional-looking fellow ill-at-ease in his disguise, as well he might, since it was composed of a most rapacious growth of mutton-chop whiskers. I didn’t press myself on my neighbour here. On the other hand I couldn’t remain entirely silent. And nor could he, though he seemed no great talker either, even encouraged as we both were with repeated draughts of iced Frascati. But I explained vaguely that I was down from London, and more vaguely still that I was a lawyer.
My companion perked up at this information. ‘Oh,’ he said, trying to extricate a piece of the salad that had lodged in his rampant whiskers. ‘I used to see a lot of lawyers. I’m with the Police. The South Riding. I’m Alec Wilson. Chief Superintendent, for my sins.’
My stomach turned over. ‘I play a little cricket,’ the man went on. ‘But I’m really interested in the history of the game. That’s why they invited me here. I’ve written a bit for the cricket magazines — mostly about overseas tours in the nineteenth century: that’s my speciality. Those American and Canadian tours, for example, in the late nineties. There was quite a bit of good cricket over there then, did you know? Surprising.’
‘Oh, was there?’ I tried not to look at the man uneasily.
Luckily, shortly afterwards, the Chief Superintendent became engrossed with his other neighbour in some long and arcane tale about an early Indian tour, games against the great Ranji some time after the Great War. Meanwhile, I studiously occupied myself with an innocent young man to my right — beardless, in a peach-coloured blazer, who turned out to be an Oxford scholar doing a thesis on Sport and Society in nineteenth-century Britain.
The lunch passed off without further alarm, and with a good deal more cold Frascati, so that by the time I was fielding in the blazing heat out on the mid wicket boundary half an hour later I could barely see the game, seventy-five yards away, what with the sun in my eyes and the drink running to my head. Thus when one of the celebrity batsmen, an old English wicket-keeper rarely noted for his circumspection, clouted the ball mightily in my direction, I never saw it at all. It sailed right over my head and into the cornfield, not yet cut, which lay behind the pavilion: the same field which, starving in my tree nearly three months before, I had stalked through on my way to steal the cricketer’s tea.
I went after the ball, vaulting the fence before wading into the edge of the tall corn. And it was then, less than twenty yards away to my right, that I heard something rustle in the stalks, deep down, and saw the corn move — agitated by some fairly large animal, I thought, since there was no wind at all that afternoon. I found the ball. And then it suddenly struck me: what sort of animal, in such broad daylight, near such crowds, would be lurking in a corn hide? A hare perhaps, or a fox? Or a man? An African?
I was uneasy for the rest of the match. Of course we were all being watched — by three or four hundred spectators round the ground. But increasingly from then on I had the feeling that I particularly was being watched, especially when I went out to bat, much later in the afternoon, when the sun had come to slant right down over the big chestnut trees on the western perimeter of the park. It may have been nothing more than sheer nerves or imagination of course. But I became convinced that someone was watching me as I walked out to the middle: someone from above, I thought, from one of the trees beyond the boundary. Someone, hiding, had their eye on me, just as I had spied before on the weekend games here from my own look-out post on top of the huge copper beech.
The fierce glare of the afternoon had gone now, replaced by velvet shades of blue and violet in the sky, and the long spiky shadows of the fielders crept across the wicket like Gothic spires and pinnacles as I took guard. And now I felt completely exposed, at risk, especially since the fielders were crowding in all round me, hoping to finish the game quickly and get back to the pavilion for some long drinks, for I was a tail-ender and our team still had forty-odd runs to make to win.
I wanted to get back to the safety of the pavilion myself, to see if Clare was all right. I was extraordinarily jittery. I looked round, checking the field, before the first ball. What was that sudden flash of light, I wondered, something reflected from the low sun in one of the trees? That movement of a branch in another? Why that sudden murmur from the crowd, riding on the evening breeze now? There was something malign in the air, in the thick trees round the boundary. I wanted to get out of the game as soon as I could, out of the firing-line. The ring of close fielders gathered round me, threatening me with their great beards. The bowler began his long run.
Of course, as happens in cricket, when one wants to get out one fails. And I failed miserably that afternoon. I swung viciously at every ball, the old ebony-coloured bat with its twine handle making perfect arcs down the line, carving the air with a tremendous swish, so that even if I’d not connected with the ball the impudent fielders would, I think, have retreated. As it was, they were all soon out on the boundary. I couldn’t get myself out at all. Instead, with fours and sixes sizzling back over the bowler’s head like cannon-shot, we won the game in less than twenty minutes.
Head down and running, I tried to escape the applause when I returned to the pavilion. One of my sidewhiskers had come loose. It was time to disappear back to the house. But I couldn’t see Alice or Clare as I walked through the crowds gathered now outside the log hut. Then I was inside the pavilion, among the other cricketers, offering their congratulations. And then I saw the tall, lanky, dark man with a fuzz of wiry hair, in the smart tropical sports jacket straight in front of me: the African. He was coming towards me, smiling. I raised my bat — as if to strike or protect myself, the sweat from my exertions falling in my eyes, almost blinding me, as I waited for the blows to fall.