Adders on the Heath

lined up for the high hurdles or the short sprint, they were adept at not quite beating the gun, and so were the terror of the timid, red-blazered starter.

'Still,' said Corinna May to her fellow-hurdler and second string, Dulcie Cobham, 'it takes the males to spike each other on the bends, and, personally-and I have it for a fact because he told me so himself-I happen to know that poor old Bert was spiked, yes, and jostled, too, by that pot-bellied so-and-so in the two miles this afternoon. Bert could of won, and he certainly did ought to have done, and, if he had, he'd of stood a good chance of being picked for the county at the White City British Games, Whitsun. It was a damn' shame!'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Dulcie, who was a fair-minded girl except where her own boy friend was concerned. 'It's easy enough to jostle and even spike people without really meaning to. I mean, you've got to do the best you can for yourself, haven't you? Anyway, they ought to start the distance races further back up the straight, and then there wouldn't be that fight for the inside place at the first bend.'

'All the same,' said Corinna, sticking to her guns, (for she was hoping to go steady with Albert when, at the age of twenty, she retired from the track), 'poor old Bert was jostled and he was spiked, and it was done by that bitchy Lord Haw-Haw that everybody hates and despises. He never does run fair. I don't know why we still have fixtures with that bloody lot, I don't really!'

'Oh, I don't know. They've got some quite good runners,' said Dulcie, biting back her opinion of Albert Colnbrook's own shady mannerisms on bends screened by water-jump hedges. 'Quite good runners,' she repeated.

'Oh, you!' exclaimed Bert's girl friend, exasperated, but, so far, unwilling to quarrel, since she was expecting Dulcie to act as pace-maker over the first two hurdles in the inter-club competition. 'You'd stick up for Satan if he was a long-distance runner!'

'Well, anyhow, he'd probably burn up the opposition,' retorted Dulcie, who had been brought up on the Bible.

Corinna's sentiments (or something remarkably like them) were being expressed in a men's dressing-room some weeks later.

'Bumping and boring are a recognised part of their technique on the track, and one expects this and makes allowances. And, of course, some of those blighters know exactly what to do behind the little hedge at the water-jump. But when it comes to cross-country running and an ugly great lout offers to put a fist in your face because, in jumping a brook just ahead of him (and that, of course, was what he couldn't stand), you happen to throw a bit of soft mud in his eye, well, give me Heton and 'Arrer, or even Ox and Tab. Why, the poisonous bounder actually threatened to murder me!' complained a young man named Richardson.

'What did you do?' asked his audience, towelling themselves vigorously and indicating that they were not particularly stirred by these disclosures.

'Me? Well, I said, 'Sorry, old boy. See you later for a drink.' You have to play soft with these yobs, and the match was only a friendly. But would he play ball? No.'

'So then?' asked someone, in a bored tone.

'He took it upon himself to tell me how I was raised and reared.'

'And you?' asked Mr Bones, still unenthusiastic.

'I slapped him in the kisser and told him I would remember him in my will.'

'Meaning you'd twist his head off?' The question came from a dried-and-dressed as he parted his hair.

'Well, actually, he fell in the brook, so I cantered lightly on, but took jolly good care I didn't sit next to him at that rather decent supper they gave us, if you noticed.'

'What was his name?'

'A. B. Colnbrook, but I shouldn't think he'd ever been to sea!'

'Albert Basil. My second cousin knows him, in a way. She did a lot of research last year on people's psychological reactions to winning and losing, and A.B.C. was one of her favourite guinea-pigs.'

'Good Lord! It's a small world!'

'So the angels probably say from their rather precarious seats in outer space. It must look a small world to them.'

'Did your second cousin concentrate on studying athletes?' asked a chunky long-jumper, pulling on his sweater.

'Lord, no! Bingo, the dogs, the flat, steeple-chasing, the pools-everything was grist to her mill.'

'And what did she do with her notes?' asked a high-hurdler. The audience, almost fully dressed, was alert at last.

'Sent them to some bloke who was doing a book on how to tame hyenas.'

'And how do you?'

'I haven't read the book. I don't know.'

'Did Albert Basil figure as a hyena?'

'So far as I was concerned, he figured as a bloody great gorilla.'

'Oh, he isn't as chesty as all that!' objected a shot-putt man from a corner of the dressing-room.

'Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer, said the privates!' carolled and quoted an anxious voice; and the dressing-room emptied rapidly.

CHAPTER ONE

TENT ON THE COMMON