when Lysander was sorting out Marigold. Lysander had been a nice young lad, always prepared to carry logs or dustbins, even if he couldn’t mow in a straight line.
His shirt billowing out, long-legged and loose-limbed as a West Indian, Lysander loped up to the wicket. A split second later the ball had removed Bob’s middle stump. The crowd exploded in joy and relief which turned to ill-disguised mirth as Larry came in to bat. He had padding on his thighs, chest and gut and he was wearing Ian Botham gloves, Astra-turf trainers with plastic studs, a short-sleeved cricket shirt that was much too tight for him, a helmet and a face guard. His bat had never been used. Fortunately the laughter was drowned by loud applause as Bob came back with seventy-eight runs on the board.
‘What sort of a ball was it?’ asked Larry pompously.
‘I think it was a red one.’ Bob mopped his brow. ‘It’s like a furnace out there.’
‘And here’s Larry Lockton,’ said the commentator, ‘who, we’re told, had a trial for Surrey.’
As Larry made a prolonged fuss about taking guard, Lysander walked back rubbing the ball up and down his trousers.
‘Oh, to be that ball,’ sighed Meredith.
Lysander’s second ball hit Larry on the snow-white pad.
‘’Owzat?’ howled the Paradise slips.
‘Out,’ intoned Mr Brimscombe to the noisy chagrin of Marigold.
‘Bollocks,’ bellowed Larry, mouthing like a gorilla behind his face guard.
‘Out,’ confirmed Clive the doghandler, who didn’t like Larry any better.
‘Don’t think you’ll ever get your fucking job back,’ roared Larry as he stalked back to the pavilion.
‘Must have been a trial
Lysander had taken a devastating five wickets for nine runs and ended his second over with London Met looking suddenly in trouble, when Guy came in. Immediately the band launched into ‘Rock Star’.
‘Mum is clever,’ admitted Flora. ‘It does sound lovely played by a proper orchestra.’
‘Mr Rock Star himself,’ crackled the loudspeaker. ‘No mean cricketer if my spies tell me right.’
With his athlete’s stride, his powerful body, his strong handsome face and arctic-blond hair glinting in the sunlight, Guy looked worthy to have pop songs dedicated to him. He wished Ju Ju was watching and where the hell was Georgie? Who could blame him being unfaithful to a woman who never gave him any support? Then, just as he was taking guard, he saw her arrive with Dinsdale, wandering round the wooded side of the pitch, past Lysander who was now fielding in the deep again. Her newly washed hair was tied back with a blue ribbon and she was wearing a duck-egg-blue shirt tied under her slender midriff and yesterday’s flowered trousers.
‘And if I’m not mistaken, here’s Georgie Maguire herself; Mrs Rock Star’s just arrived in time,’ said the commentator, and the band struck up again.
Guy kicked off with a wristy single to loud applause. Then the tenor, who had the reputation for being a big hitter, blocked four balls, then clouted a six over Lysander’s leaping outstretched fingers deep into the dark midgy wood behind. Next moment, Lysander, Georgie and Dinsdale, followed by a racing-up yapping Maggie and Jack, disappeared in search of it. At first the players were happy to sit down and rest, then all eyes were turned to the wood as Dinsdale emerged carrying the ball. Waddling across the pitch he proudly dropped it to shouts of laughter at his master’s feet.
As the field changed over, it was Lysander’s turn to bowl again and all the Paradise fielders yelled for him to come back because the ball had been found. Then everyone waited and waited and waited until, finally, a good five minutes later Lysander and Georgie came out of the wood grinning from ear to ear. Lysander was ostentatiously wiping off the remains of Georgie’s peach-pink lipstick with the back of his hand and Georgie’s hair had escaped the blue ribbon.
Once more the whole crowd burst out laughing and the band struck up:
Flora had wandered over to join Rannaldini by the pavilion as Guy stormed past.
‘You’re a single parent now, Dad,’ she called out. ‘As Lysander was being free in the forest with Mum, he should wear your sweater.’
Rannaldini’s eyes sparkled with evil amusement.
Poor Guy was absolutely livid. Never had he needed his green-and-magenta sweater as a badge of former achievement more. A reporter from the
‘Your toy boy seems to have transferred his affections to Georgie,’ he told Marigold nastily.
‘Pity Wolfie’s not here to make some runs for you,’ Flora murmured to Rannaldini. ‘Aren’t you sorry now you pinched his girlfriend?’
‘It was worth eet. Have you missed me a leetle?’
‘No,’ said Flora, then, looking up at him from under her thick eyelashes, ‘I missed you a lot.’
‘Once the London Met and your father are safely in the field we can slope off to the tower, Tabloid will keep watch.’
30
London Met was all out for 160 followed by tea in the great hall which was blissfully cool. White tablecloths had been laid over big oak tables. Huge vasefuls of red-hot pokers and early scarlet dahlias flamed like beacons in each corner. Kitty had provided a wonderful tea. Her sandwiches, made of smoked salmon, prawns swimming in real mayonnaise, scrambled eggs filled with herbs and the most delicate turkey breast, contained more filling than bread. There were also home-made scones to eat with mulberry jam and clotted cream, walnut, lemon and chocolate cakes, beautifully decorated on top and groaning with butter icing inside and a huge rainbow cake on whose white icing she had piped in blue: LONDON MET V. PARADISE 1990. Everything had been done to please Rannaldini. It was a pity that because of the heat more praising went on than eating.
‘I can’t go in there,’ whimpered Georgie, who’d already been mobbed by autograph hunters, as she saw the crowds milling in the great hall. ‘Guy’s about to murder me for disappearing.’
‘I’ll stay with you the whole time,’ said Lysander soothingly. ‘Actually, I’m bloody hungry. Very Gothic this house, isn’t it?’
Nor could the heat of hellfire put Percival Hillary, the vicar of All Saints, Paradise, off his grub. A consummate cadger of other people’s food and drink, with a fish face redder than Ferdie’s Ferrari and breath that could crack a safe at fifty yards, he was now piling his plate with sandwiches and crying in a fluting voice: ‘What a wonderful, wonderful spread.’
‘What a feast,’ cried his wife Joy, who was always described as a ‘tower of strength’. A bosomless chatterbox with a ringing laugh, she spent her time bullying the unwilling into charity work and hovering round Paradise flushing out lapses of behaviour like Milton’s God.
‘I always feel I should wear my fig-leaf outside my shorts when Joy’s about,’ grumbled Meredith.
It was a running battle between Joy, Marigold and Lady Chisleden who actually ran Paradise. Despite her high moral tone, however, Joy Hillary shared her husband’s weakness for good-looking men and was potty about Guy. Guy was only prepared to be buttonholed by her for so long. Yanking Georgie from Lysander’s side, hissing, ‘How
‘Joyful, my dear, I’d like you to meet my wife, Georgie.’
A staunch vegetarian, who was systematically opening and casting aside sandwiches which contained meat, eggs or fish, Joy told Georgie that she’d just been saying to Guy that she couldn’t understand why there were so many wild oats about this year.
