Rosie Thomas - Daughter of the House

‘Arthur’s happy,’ Matthew observed.

The boy could be seen at the foot of the pavilion steps as he tried to catch an off-pitch glimpse of his team heroes.

‘He’s got good reason. This match is in the bag.’

Matthew nodded. They all knew that Cornelius was not quite like other boys and would never tread the conventional path, so Devil had determined that his younger son should go to a great public school. Arthur was a gifted cricketer but he was only average at his lessons, unlike Cornelius who was an encyclopaedic authority on the few subjects that interested him – Lepidoptera and the classical orders of architecture amongst them. So it had been a day of rejoicing in the Wix family when after months of tutoring Arthur narrowly passed the Common Entrance exam for Harrow. For Devil and Eliza it was a measure of how far they had risen in the world.

Eliza’s late father had been a wholesale greengrocer and Devil’s course had been even more dramatic. He ran away from a bleak village childhood, and in his early days in London he had slept in the streets. Now that he was a theatre impresario, even though the foundations of his prosperity were not as secure as they appeared, these precarious origins were not much recalled – even with Faith and Matthew. Arthur was now only weeks away from entering Harrow School, and although he and Faith thought it both pretentious and extravagant of the Wixes to be sending their boy to one of the great public schools, Matthew had to acknowledge that Devil’s partisan attitude was justified today.

The Shaw brothers reappeared from their excursion to the Lord’s Hotel, carrying a beery waft with them. Rowland laced his hands behind his head and stretched his legs beneath the seat in front. He swallowed a belch.

‘I’m quite ready. Play can resume.’

Arthur raced round the ellipse of grass and bounded up to his family.

‘Earle and the rest of our fellows are pretty confident,’ he announced, as if he had taken his lunch in the pavilion with them.

Bats under their arms, two Eton men strode out to the wicket.

Eliza had taken a glass of hock with her picnic. She remarked, ‘How lovely it is to be all together like this. We must come again next year, don’t you think?’

‘Please, Mama, hush,’ Arthur cried in anguish.

Nancy rested her chin on doubled fists. She longed to lose herself in the game like everyone else, but the scent of mown grass rose and surged into the crannies of her head. A tilt of perspective replaced the cricket pitch with mud and shattered trees and the sad remains of men.

She resisted the swamp with all her strength, clenching her teeth until her jaw creaked. No one was looking at her. Flags in front of the pavilion stirred in the summer breeze and she heard the cheering for a boundary as if it came from a long way off.

Perhaps strength of will was what was needed. The Uncanny mustn’t be allowed to claim her.

From now on, she must try to be the one who claimed it .

The white figures of the cricketers swam against the grass but they remained themselves. The smell of grass was now only a midsummer scent mingling with strawberries and her mother’s perfume.

I won’t think about the other place, she repeated. I shall try to be more like Arthur and Lizzie.

As if to endorse her strength of will her father nudged her and winked.

‘What do you think of this, eh?’

She swallowed hard. ‘So exciting.’

Bob Fowler, the Eton captain, was finally caught out.

‘Now we’re secure,’ Arthur crowed.

But Eton’s tenth-wicket partnership suddenly began to hit the Harrow bowling all over the field. Astonishingly, fifty runs were put on in only half an hour.

In the tea interval Devil and the three Shaw men walked to the boundary to watch groundsmen dragging up the heavy roller. The sky was lightening at last and a pale bar of sunlight crept between clouds to fall across the face of the Grand Stand. In a state of unbearable tension Arthur could only jiggle in his seat. The Shaw men stopped ribbing him.

A succession of wickets fell before the Harrow captain came out to bat. He staunched the flow with a score of thirteen, but then he was caught off a savage yorker.

Arthur could not help himself. He jumped up and yelled, ‘No! Earle’s not out. It was a bump ball, I saw it. Not out, I say.’ Faces turned to him.

‘Arthur,’ Devil said sharply. He knew enough about cricket to recognise unsporting behaviour.

Harrow’s tenth man could be seen sprinting out of one of the tea tents with a cream bun still grasped in his hand, urgently summoned to prepare for his innings. The last stand put on a desperate thirteen runs.

‘Come on,’ Arthur gasped.

But then, at one minute to six, the end came. The batsman played inside a ball that did not turn as expected, and was caught in the slips. The roar from the crowd was loud enough to lift the roofs. It swelled over Regent’s Park and the villas of St John’s Wood. Eton had won the match by nine runs.

Arthur blinked at the tumult of Eton boys and families surging on to the pitch. He pulled his straw hat down towards his ears until the crown threatened to split from the brim.

‘I don’t know how that happened,’ he whispered. ‘It’s beyond comprehension.’

Cornelius placed his bookmark.

‘Are we going home now?’

The pandemonium in the ground was growing and the exuberant crowds seemed denser than they had done all day.

‘It will take for ever to make our way to the underground in this crush,’ Matthew complained.

‘And I am afraid I must leave you and take the De Dion to the theatre,’ Devil apologised. He adjusted the brim of his hat with the Harrow colours to a more rakish angle and smoothed the flanks of his striped blazer. In less than an hour he would be in his white tie and tailcoat, ready to step out on the Palmyra stage as the evening’s master of ceremonies.

‘I’m glad you have your motor car, and the rest of us are in no hurry,’ Eliza observed.

Devil kissed her on the cheek and offered Faith the same salute. To Arthur he said, ‘Next year, there will be another match. And in five years’ time you will be lifting your bat in the Harrow eleven.’

Arthur set his smooth jaw as he stared into this dizzy future. A second later Devil had vanished into the crowd.

The rest of the party agreed that they might as well allow the hubbub to die down. The four women took a stroll round the outfield. Lizzie was saying that her boss Mr Hastings was a tremendous oarsman and she greatly preferred rowing to cricket as a spectator sport. Perhaps next year Nancy might like to come with her and some lively girls to Henley? This year they had had so much fun – a broad wink – and she was sure Nancy would adore it.

A man was standing beside the perimeter wall, shading his eyes from the weak sun as he looked towards them. His dark coat made him incongruous amongst the other spectators in their light summer clothes. As they drew abreast he stepped into their path.

‘Mrs Wix? Nancy?’

It was Mr Feather.

He tried to lock his gaze with Nancy’s but after the smallest nod in his direction she fixed her attention on the pavilion roof. Her heart banged uncomfortably against her ribs. Faith and Lizzie politely withdrew a little distance.

‘How are you?’ Eliza murmured to him. The man’s gaunt appearance startled her. ‘I am so sorry about Mrs Clare.’

‘Thank you. It was a terrible … it is not … I had hoped …’

He struggled for the words and then bowed his head. In a man who had been so fluent the inarticulacy was even more shocking than his altered looks.

Eliza placed her hand on his sleeve.

‘Perhaps Nancy might bring you a glass of lemonade?’