Miss Maskall had made the game seem rather remote. She cared nothing for cricket, and had only come there for an afternoon spree. But she was taciturn during her tour of the Flower Show: when we tucked her into her shabby old victoria she leant back and closed her eyes. Years ago she must have had a lovely face. While we watched her carriage turn the corner I wondered what it felt like to be eighty-seven; but I did not connect such antiquity with my own future. Long before I was born she had seen gentlemen playing cricket in queer whiskers and tall hats.
Next moment I was safely back in the present, and craning my neck for a glimpse of the scoreboard as I hustled Aunt Evelyn along to the Tea Tent. There had been a Tea Interval during our absence, so we hadn’t missed so very much. Five wickets were done for ninety and the shadows of the cricketers were growing longer in the warm glare which slanted down the field. A sense of my own share in the game invaded me and it was uncomfortable to imagine that I might soon be walking out into the middle to be bowled at by Crump and Bishop, who now seemed gigantic and forbidding. And then impetuous Ned Noakes must needs call Frank Peckham for an impossibly short run, and his partner retreated with a wrathful shake of his head. Everything now depended on Dixon who was always as cool in a crisis.
“Give ’em a bit of the long handle, Tom!” bawled someone from the Beer Tent, while he marched serenely toward the wicket, pausing for a confidential word with Noakes who was still looking a bit crestfallen after the recent catastrophe. Dixon was a stylish left-hander and never worried much about playing himself in. Bishop was well aware of this, and he at once arranged an extra man in the outfield for him. Sure enough, the second ball he received was lifted straight into long-off’s hands. But the sun was in the fielder’s eyes and he misjudged the flight of the catch. The Beer Tent exulted vociferously. Dixon then set about the bowling and the score mounted merrily. He was energetically supported by Ned Noakes. But when their partnership had added over fifty, and they looked like knocking off the runs, Noakes was caught in the slips off a bumping ball and the situation instantly became serious again.
Realizing that I was in next but one, I went off in a fluster to put my pads on, disregarding Aunt Evelyn’s tremulous “I do so hope you’ll do well, dear.” By the time I had arrived on the other side of the ground, Amos Hickmott, the wheelwright’s son, had already caused acute anxiety. After surviving a tigerish appeal for leg-before, he had as near as a toucher run Dixon out in a half-witted endeavour to escape from the bowling. My palsied fingers were still busy with straps and buckles when what sounded to me like a deafening crash warned me that it was all over with Hickmott. We still wanted seven runs to win when I wandered weakly in the direction of the wicket. But it was the end of an over, and Dixon had the bowling. When I arrived the Reverend Yalden was dawdling up the pitch in his usual duck-footed progress when crossing from one wicket to the other.
“Well, young man, you’ve got to look lively this time,” he observed with intimidating jocosity. But there seemed to be a twinkle of encouragement in Seamark’s light blue eye as I established myself in his shadow.
Dixon played the first three balls carefully. The fourth he smote clean out of the ground. The hit was worth six, but “three all round and four over” was an immemorial rule at Butley. Unfortunately, he tried to repeat the stroke, and the fifth ball shattered his stumps. In those days there were only five balls to an over.
Peter Baitup now rolled up with a wide grin on his fringed face, but it was no grinning moment for me at the bottom end when Sutler gave me “middle-and-leg” and I confronted impending disaster from Crump with the sun in my eyes. The first ball (which I lost sight of) missed my wicket by “a coat of varnish” and travelled swiftly to the boundary for two byes, leaving Mr. Yalden with his huge gauntlets above his head in an attitude of aggrieved astonishment. The game was now a tie. Through some obscure psychological process my whole being now became clarified. I remembered Shrewsbury’s century and became as bold as brass. There was the enormous auctioneer with the ball in his hand. And there I calmly resolved to look lively and defeat his destructive aim. The ball hit my bat and trickled slowly up the pitch. “Come on!” I shouted, and Peter came gallantly on. Crump was so taken by surprise that we were safe home before he’d picked up the ball. And that was the end of the Flower Show Match.
III
A Fresh Start
I
Except for the letters written to me by Mr. Pennett I have no documentary evidence concerning the young man who was existing under my name in the summer after I left Cambridge. The fact that I have preserved them is a proof that I was aware of their significance, although it is now nearly twenty years since I last read them through. In these days they would be typewritten; but in those days they were fair-copied by a clerk, and the slanting calligraphy helps me to recapture my faded self as I was when I apprehensively extracted them from their envelopes. Even now they make rather uncomfortable reading, and I find myself wondering how their simple-minded recipient managed to repel such an onslaught of worldly wisdom.
But Tom Dixon was still about the place to pitchfork me into the village
