‘Sorry, bowler,’ said Sir Henry.
At the other end, Woody came ambling in with the deceptive canter I’d seen the night before. The Dorset Gent looked surprised when the ball zipped past his defensive poke. He at once called a mid-pitch conference with his fellow Gent, which ended with a good deal of head-shaking and ground-prodding.
Out in the deep, I found my mind wandering a bit. I had no idea why the Dorset Gents, even if they might not have Woody’s touch, didn’t just give it a wallop like old Stinker.
I was also thinking about Rupert Venables. He was stationed on the other side of the pitch from me, recognisable by his white sunhat. I wondered how much of his time he spent travelling and how much writing, whether he would run out of places and types of transport that began with the same letter, and what the role of the wife of such a fellow might be. I had gone into something of a daydream, and may even have been muttering out loud ‘By Tricycle to Torquay’ when a cry of ‘Wilberforce!’ reached my ears and I saw the ball rapidly approaching. I bent to stop it, but as I did so it diverted off some plantain or daisy and carried on its way unmolested to the boundary.
‘Get something behind it, man!’ the captain called out from behind the timbers.
The afternoon reached a rather sleepy passage, like the slow movement in a bit of music at the Albert Hall when you snatch a bracing forty winks to give yourself strength for the rousing finale and the sharp exit to dinner. The Dorset Gents had reached 85 for the loss of three wickets. A group of small boys were training a magnifying glass on to the back of a wooden bench, with some success. Dame Judith had her nose back in Sumeria, if that’s where Hammurabi came from. Amelia had taken up some sewing, and beside her Georgiana was staring silently into the summer air. A few villagers who had a crack at the beer barrel now lay snoozing peacefully with handkerchiefs over their faces.
Liddle came on to bowl what Sir Henry referred to as his ‘wobblers’ – a curious procedure with a whirling of both arms from which the ball eventually emerged at a friendly pace. It may have swung or wobbled a bit as it went, but from my angle it was hard to see.
‘Etringham!’ said Sir Henry. ‘Do you fancy a couple of overs?’
Jeeves marked out a short run, made some minor adjustments to the field, and came in to bowl. The ball bit into the ground as it landed and turned away from the batsman, who followed it with his bat, edging into the eager gloves of the custodian. A mighty fumble was followed by a curse as the ball trickled down his pad and on to the ground.
‘Sorry, bowler,’ said Sir Henry, bending down to pick up the ball.
Jeeves had come halfway down the wicket. Sir Henry meant to throw the ball back to him, but managed only to throw it over his head, so the journey was fruitless.
‘Sorry, bowler,’ said Sir Henry again, a bare couple of seconds separating the two apologies. ‘Sorry, bowler.’
Eventually, a catch flew to Woody, who managed to cling on to it.
‘Well held, old man,’ I said, as he walked past me.
‘Thank you. We just have to hope no more chances go to Old Irongloves.’
‘A dashed disrespectful way to refer to the future father-in-law, young Beeching.’
The look I received in return could best be described, I think, as stricken. Clearly even 95 of the best had not melted the heart of the young Ice Queen of Kingston St Giles.
The Dorset Gents were making good progress, when Sir Henry threw the ball to Sidney Venables. ‘Let’s see a few of those in-duckers you were telling me about, Venables.’
Vishnu Venables looked frankly surprised to be called into the attack at this point.
‘You remember,’ said Sir Henry. ‘You told me you took six for thirty-eight against the Bombay Gymkhana.’
I couldn’t say what particular delivery Venables senior then proceeded to offer, but it certainly seemed to tickle the fancy of the Dorset Gentlemen, whose total rocketed upwards.
‘What sort of bowling is that?’ I asked Woody as we crossed again at the end of the over. ‘Leg spin or something?’
‘It’s called cafeteria,’ said Woody. ‘Help yourself.’
The Gents proceeded to do exactly that, and their total began to approach that of the home side when one of them, a burly youth who seemed to have been at the crease all afternoon, hit one high in the air towards Venables junior.
Readers who have been lulled into a sense of calm by the summer afternoon proceedings may be surprised by what happened next; keener types may have noticed that one character has been notable by his absence – so far.
Opinions later differed as to what it was about Venables junior that got right up the dog Bartholomew’s nose. Some blamed the floppy white sunhat; others thought Venables had shown insufficient respect towards the hound before lunch – he being a dog who generally commanded a fair bit of bowing and scraping. Stiffy claimed Bartholomew was ‘only trying to help catch the ball, which that useless yard of tap water would never have managed on his own’.