The Blue Field Read online

  ‘The fellow who drafted those laws,’ he remarked, ‘seems to have thought of every possibility. Even the most alarming possibilities. For instance, The ball does not become “dead” on merely hitting the umpire unless it lodges in his pocket or clothing. There’s a good deal to be said for substituting the MCC for a Committee of the House of Commons.’

  When Woody Bourton’s Secretary came up to me in the pavilion and asked ‘Who’s your new umpire?’ adding rudely, ‘It was time you got a new one,’ I took pleasure in saying as casually as I could:

  ‘Oh, he’s our Member of Parliament.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said the Secretary.

  ‘Maurice Halliday.’

  I could see at once that he was impressed. ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘He’s the chap who’s always asking Questions. A well-informed fellow, I should think; though I don’t agree with him politically.’ I felt that the match was half won already. When Halliday put on his spotless white coat I watched the Woody Bourton fieldsmen nudging each other; and when he walked out with measured tread towards the wickets they were so awe-stricken that they even forgot to show off by throwing each other difficult catches as they followed their captain into the field.

  But it was not until the innings started that we realized how thoroughly subdued they were. We had won the toss, and we batted first. Now as a rule the Woody Bourton bowlers, the wicket-keeper, the captain and indeed the whole eleven appeal in raucous voices at the least provocation, and often with no provocation at all. ‘Howzat?’ they shout, in the hoarse tone of vultures clamouring about their doomed prey. ‘ HOW-ZAT?’ they screech, whether the ball hits us on the legs or the arms or in the belly or in the box. There was none of that this afternoon; and the silence was so unfamiliar that some of our batsmen remarked that it was like a Test match and confessed to feeling thoroughly nervous themselves.

  Halliday received only one appeal during the whole innings. The Woody Bourton slow bowler, whose antics when he appeals are generally those of a dancing dervish, asked very humbly and respectfully: ‘How was that, sir?’ in so quiet a tone that Halliday failed to hear him. He therefore ignored the appeal altogether, and the bowler quailed before his impassive silence. I think the incident had a serious moral effect not only upon the Woody Bourton players but upon their own umpire; in the next over, when I walked in front of the wicket and received the ball fair and square upon my pads, I could hardly believe my ears when he said ‘Not out.’

  We scored a hundred and twenty all out, and then we had tea. Vicky helped Mrs Trentfield, Mimi and Meg to cut the sandwiches and pour out. ‘The girl’s getting quite human,’ Mr Chorlton whispered to me. He’d been sitting with her all the afternoon on the bench underneath the shade of the willow trees, and gently teasing her, no doubt, about her politics. A year before it would have seemed almost unbelievable that these two opposite characters should find any pleasure at all in each other’s company; but although they still argued frequently and sometimes savagely there had grown up between them a sort of comradeship, almost an affection, so that strangers meeting them together often assumed that they were father and daughter. Nobody who was wise and less tolerant than Mr Chorlton, I think, would have got past the brisk, assured, humourless personality and discovered the real Vicky underneath. Perhaps the fact that he had spent most of his life with boys had something to do with it; for boys too, because they lack humour and self-confidence, wrap themselves in personalities which are not their own. At any rate he was the only person in the village who was not at least a bit frightened of Vicky, and he was certainly the only one who dared to tease her. I once heard him greet her in the village street with ‘Well, you booksy girl, what’s in the New Statesman today?’ and to my astonishment she actually laughed. It occurred to me to wonder whether Halliday himself had ever tried the effect of pulling her leg.

  After tea the Woody Bourton captain came out, looking grim and purposeful, to open the innings. He was, as it happened, the Conservative agent for a neighbouring constituency, and he was also extremely argumentative; it would be very interesting, I thought, if Halliday had to give him out. The first ball pitched well on his off, he swung at it foolishly, and there was a loud click. Our wicket-keeper appealed, holding the ball triumphantly above his head, and Halliday raised his finger. For a fraction of a second the Woody Bourton captain hesitated, as if he were about to remark, as he always did on such occasions, that the ball had hit his pads or his boot or his arm or that his bat had not been within a mile of it. But there was something extremely authoritative about that raised finger; even the most determined hecklers had been silenced by it; and when he had taken a second look at it the Woody Bourton captain slunk away to the pavilion with the air of a criminal who has been sent down for seven years and knows he deserves it.

  In the next over, however, Halliday refused two appeals for lbw and this pleased us, because it demonstrated the impartiality of our new umpire, of whom we were already feeling extremely proud. We were confident that we could skittle out Woody Bourton for much less than a hundred and twenty, and perhaps we began to take things too easily, for the batsmen scratched and scraped their way into the forties before we got another wicket. Then we dropped a couple of catches, and aided by extras and overthrows our enemies poked and pottered along in what we considered a typically Woody Bourtonish way until the score stood at ninety for seven. The tail-enders began hitting, and before we knew where we were the match had drifted into a state of crisis: there was a hundred and ten on the score-board, eight wickets were down, and two hefty batsmen, the one a butcher and the other a drayman at the brewery, were scoring precious singles by means of mis-hits between their legs. The vociferous supporters whom Woody Bourton had brought with them clapped and cheered and cat-called, there was an atmosphere of authentic suspense between the overs, and the situation was obviously working up to one of those passionate finishes which seemed to be inseparable from the games (if indeed they were games) which we played against Woody Bourton. To add to the mounting tension, there was a huge sable thundercloud bearing down from the north-west, the light was bad, there was a crackle of lightning and a rumble of thunder, and I felt a cold raindrop splash on my nose.

  It was against this Twilight-of-the-Gods background that the remarkable last scene of the match was played.

  The score being then a hundred and fifteen for eight, Alfie Perks bowled to the butcher a slow ball which pitched short and seemed to hang in the air for a moment after it bounced. The butcher began to make a terrific swipe at it, changed his mind at the last moment, and cocked it up in the air. Sir Gerald, who was undoubtedly our worst, but was also our most enthusiastic fieldsman, happened to be standing forward of point. He ran into the middle of the pitch and stood with his hands cupped ready to catch the falling ball. The doomed butcher, in a mighty voice, suddenly called his partner for a run.

  Now the butcher and the drayman, between them, must have weighed about thirty-five stone. I swear the very ground shook as they pounded down the pitch. The butcher charged with his head down, like an infuriated bull, snorting like a grampus; the drayman carried his bat like a lance before him as if he were Don Quixote charging a windmill. Sir Gerald saw them coming, or more probably heard them coming, for he was still looking up at the ball in the air. He was never a very self-assertive person, and I think it was politeness as much as fear that made him move as if to get out of the way. But as he did so a great shout went up from Sammy Hunt, our captain, who still employed the majestic terminology of the sea upon the cricket-field in moments of crisis. ‘Belay, you blithering fool!’ yelled Sammy. ‘Hold your course and shiver their timbers! Catch it!’ For a moment Sir Gerald hesitated; and then, like one who sacrifices himself to Juggernaut, he plunged once more into the middle of the pitch.

  But there was not one Juggernaut, there were two; and Sir Gerald, just as he got his hands to the ball, was sandwiched between them. There was a sickening thud and the three men went down in a heap together; but
even as he fell Sir Gerald kept his head, and there came from his lips a last despairing cry which seemed to be literally squashed out of him, a kind of squeak such as toy teddy-bears make when you squeeze their tummies, a small faint squeak indeed but nevertheless recognizable as ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Out,’ said Halliday, without a moment’s hesitation.

  The batsmen ruefully picked themselves up and stood staring at Halliday. Sir Gerald crawled upon the pitch picking up bits of his broken glasses.

  ‘Out,’ said Halliday again.

  ‘Why?’ demanded the drayman truculently, still waving his bat like a lance.

  ‘For obstructing the field,’ Halliday said; and to everybody’s amazement proceeded to quote verbatim from the Laws of Cricket: ‘Rule 26. The batsman shall be out if under the pretence of running, or otherwise, he wilfully prevents the ball from being caught.’

  ‘All right,’ said the drayman, utterly confounded by this. ‘If it says that then I suppose somebody’s out. But the question is, which?’

  There was a long pause, and it was apparent to some of us, though not, I think, to the dazed and puzzled batsmen, that Halliday didn’t know the answer to this problem. His reading of Wisden had been pretty thorough, but he could not remember any of the Laws of Cricket which covered so unlikely a situation; for the impact had occurred exactly in the middle of the pitch and both the batsmen, running from opposite directions, had collided with Sir Gerald simultaneously. If the butcher was to blame, pounding along like a mad bull, so was the drayman, charging like a lancer. It was impossible to say that one was more culpable than the other.

  ‘Which of us is out?’ demanded the drayman again.

  ‘Both,’ said Halliday firmly.

  And strangely enough they went. They went quite meekly, though they muttered and murmured together and shook their heads in a puzzled way; and so the match was over and Brensham had won by five runs. As if to finish off the drama with a good spectacular curtain there was a vivid flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and as we all raced for the pavilion the rain came sousing down.

  It was very surprising, and it says a good deal for Halliday’s air of authority, that not a single member of the Woody Bourton team openly criticized his peculiar verdict, and indeed the only adverse comment came from our own side – from Dai Roberts Postman who kept the score for us so neatly that it looked like a sonnet and who now complained, ‘Out of all reason it iss, and untidy will it make the score-sheet look, for two men to be out together.’ He made a neat little squiggle to record his disapproval, and we still possess the score-book with the remarkable entry in it, which looks like this:

  However, as Sammy Hunt said, if Woody Bourton were satisfied, we were more than satisfied. Sir Gerald, especially, despite his bruises and the loss of his glasses, felt like a conquering hero. Alfie remarked that the whole thing restored his faith in the House of Commons.

  When we had changed, and Woody Bourton, still puzzled, grumbling, but morally a defeated side, had climbed into their bus and driven away, Mr Chorlton lit his pipe and observed to Halliday between long puffs.

  ‘That was a very remarkable decision, if I may say so. Solomon himself could hardly have made a fairer one. But I wonder if you happen to know what the rule really is?’

  Halliday shook his head.

  ‘Nor did Woody Bourton, apparently’. said Mr Chorlton.

  ‘Unless I’m much mistaken there’s a note (a) in small type under Rule 26: It should be noted that it is the striker who is out if this law in infringed’

  ‘Good Lord! Then they weren’t both out?’

  ‘Of course not. Two men can’t be out at once.’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ said Halliday. ‘I learned the rules by heart, but I must have missed the note. What a rotten umpire.’

  ‘Not at all. A jolly good umpire: you won the match. Let’s go along to the Horse and Harrow,’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘and celebrate it.’

  The Long Man

  We drove to the pub in my car: Halliday, Vicky, Mr Chorlton, Sir Gerald and myself. On the way Mr Chorlton broached the subject of William Hart and Halliday listened attentively, asked sensible questions, and jotted down brief details of the case in a diary which seemed to be more full of engagements than any diary I had ever seen before. ‘Obviously,’ he said,’ it would be monstrous to turn the old man out in the circumstances. Our job is to make bureaucracy humane. It isn’t easy, within a few years, to turn glorified clerks into benevolent despots. But aristocracy wasn’t always humane, was it? What about the dispossessed crofters in the Scottish deer-forests?’

  ‘True enough,’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘but there were sanctions against aristocracy. If a landowner was wicked enough you broke his windows and burned his ricks—’

  ‘If you dared,’ interrupted Halliday swiftly. ‘And then you were deported to Australia. But I agree with you to some extent. Public opinion did count for something. The man in his office in Whitehall is insulated against public opinion. Much too often he doesn’t feel which way the wind is blowing.’ He paused and said almost wistfully: ‘There’s no wind there,’ as if he often longed for a breath of the wind and a sight of the sky. The storm, which hadn’t yet spent itself, seemed to please and even excite him, for he looked gayer than I had ever seen him before and when there was a particularly loud crack of thunder he glanced at me and grinned: ‘The weather is something you miss, in London.’

  We got to the Horse and Harrow before opening-time, but Joe, like most people in Brensham, never locks his door, so we went into the empty bar. I hammered on the counter for Joe, while Vicky once again examined the absurd vegetables on the mantelpiece, which never failed to irritate her. ‘Like a harvest festival dedicated to the Devil,’ she said.

  ‘Hallo!’ exclaimed Halliday suddenly. ‘What on earth’s this?’ The object stood in the shadows at the back of the bar, among the tins of snuff and the pipe-cleaners and the sets of darts; for even Joe, with his easy-going view of what constituted a good joke, had not seen fit to display it to the public gaze. But Halliday happened to notice it and now he leaned over the bar to take a closer look, for at first, I suppose, he thought that some trick of the light had deceived him. This, however, was not the case. William Hart, in one of his most mischievous moods, had been minded to give Joe a present. Liking the sound of Joe’s laughter, and knowing well the sort of thing which would make him laugh loudest, he had carved for him a somewhat fanciful and greatly exaggerated version of the Long Man of Elmbury.

  The Long Man, I must explain, was the creation of a furniture and curio dealer called Mr Parfitt, who kept a shop in Elmbury. After a holiday at Cerne Abbas, he had been inspired to invent the legend of a monstrous figure which, he said, had once existed on Brensham Hill but had been ploughed up long ago at the instance of a puritanical parson. For years he had made a profitable business out of carving models of this Long Man and selling them to gullible visitors; and in the end the legend had found its way into the learned books of the folk-lorists and the archaeologists, so that Mr Parfitt in his humble way had actually made history. The naughty little figure had greatly appealed to William Hart, who had carved his own lively version of it whenever he laid hands on a piece of wood which had the sort of shape which suggested it.

  ‘Good God,’ said Halliday. ‘Look at this!’ He stretched across the bar, picked it up, and set it on the counter in front of him.

  There was a brief silence, while the thunder rumbled and the rain lashed the windows and the Hallidays stood and stared without speaking at the outrageous little statuette. The Long Man, in an attitude halfway between menace and frolic, and with an expression halfway between a grin and a leer, uncompromisingly stared back at them.

  ‘At Cerne Abbas in Dorset,’ said Mr Chorlton, ‘there is one rather like it carved on the side of a hill . . .’

  Sir Gerald, who without his glasses was very nearly blind, leaned down myopically to examine the figure, then suddenly straightened himself and said: �
��Dear! Dear!’

  Vicky, meanwhile, regarded the figure with studied unconcern. She was extremely well educated and believed that nothing could embarrass or shock her; I am sure she must have read the whole of The Golden Bough before she was nineteen. She put the Long Man in his place with a cool stare. It must be admitted, however, that for a moment she had looked slightly startled; and now she gave a kind of snort, expressing her disapproval of the monstrosity. ‘Put it away, Maurice,’ she said. ‘It’s disagreeable, and if I may say so, rather silly.’

  Halliday, however, seemed to be in no hurry to put it away. With his hands in his pockets and a rare smile on his face he stood and contemplated it. William Hart had thrown all his boisterous mischief into the carving of the figure; and because he had dedicated it, as it were, to Joe Trent-field, he had contrived to mix a little of Joe’s rough humour with his own. In truth it was his masterpiece. There was fun and frolic and laughter and lust in it, and even the lust was a sort of comprehensive lust of life. The sideways-glancing secret eyes beneath the heavy lids reminded me of a picture which had often come into my mind when I was reading the Classics at school: behind the printed text and the solemn notes, behind the dull glossary, behind Liddell and Scott, there had often appeared a cool green glade dappled with sunlight, with a crystal stream reed-girt running through it; and the reeds swaying in the wind were furtively pulled apart by brown hairy hands, and between them when they were parted peered out the secret eyes of the ancient, the Goat-Footed One. Like that were the eyes of William Hart’s wooden idol; but no, not quite like that. For they were a man’s eyes nevertheless, dreams as well as desires in them. As they followed the light-treading nymph they would discover the lilt of a piece of music in her movements and make the soft curves of her breasts into a sonnet. The wide, loose, slanting mouth, the long lips parted, might equally utter a jest or a love-song, or dare to shout a challenge to the high gods themselves.