Half of the Human Race Page 2

  The family had arrived at an opportune moment. Surrey, the visitors, had been bowled out by the middle of the afternoon, and M—shire’s opening pair of batsmen were now clattering down the shadowed steps and through the gate. A loud volley of applause echoed over the ground. Connie had turned on hearing their footfall and caught a glimpse of the older of the pair as he passed, a tall, broad-shouldered figure with a heavy moustache and a striped club tie raffishly belted around his waist. The bat looked almost puny in his hands. She thought she recognised him, though he looked somewhat older. Louis had briefly disappeared, and she knew that none of her family would have a clue – apart from Lionel, whose conversation she was reluctant to engage. Spotting a boy selling scorecards on the boundary’s edge, she called him over and paid him his tuppence. Her eye scanned the card, and there was his name at the top of the order: A. E. Tamburlain.

  Some minutes later Louis returned, and beamingly introduced his cricketer friend to the family. The latter, tall and loose-limbed, was named Will Maitland. He shook hands with Mrs Callaway and Jemima, then with Olivia and Lionel, and directed a short grave nod to the girls, who blushed at the handsome stranger in his flannels. Connie, seated slightly apart, was the last to be introduced, and unlike the others stood up to take his hand. Louis, dwarfed like a referee between two prizefighters, smiled at his cousin.

  ‘Mr Maitland,’ she said, ‘thank you for accommodating us. I thought it was members only’.

  ‘It is,’ Will admitted. ‘But I couldn’t disappoint Beau here – I mean, Louis – particularly when he’s brought along such agreeable company.’

  Connie allowed herself a slow smile at this gallantry. She sensed him frankly appraising her from beneath his club cap, and to deflect this attention she gestured towards the square.

  ‘I see Mr Tamburlain is playing today.’

  Will followed her gaze. ‘Yes – hence the crowd.’

  ‘Well, they’ve come to see one of the greats,’ Louis broke in. At that, a sound like a rifle crack suddenly pierced the air. Tamburlain had just hit his first boundary of the afternoon, and Louis, pleased to have his words so ringingly affirmed, shouted, ‘Shot, sir!’

  As the applause subsided, Connie turned back to Will. ‘I wonder if it’s difficult for someone of his stature – I mean, after playing for England, and Sussex –’

  ‘– to come and play for a little club like ours?’ said Will, with a wry half-smile. ‘I think Tam enjoys it. He could hardly be more appreciated here. And there are worse teams to play for.’

  ‘I didn’t mean –’ Connie was blushing at her unintended slight, but it was lost to notice by a commotion out on the square. The county’s first wicket had fallen. Will said, ‘I’d better get padded up. I go in at four these days.’

  ‘Good for you, Will,’ cried Louis, surprised. ‘With any luck you’ll get to bat with Tam.’

  Will winked, and turned to Connie. ‘Very nice to meet you, Miss Callaway. I do hope you enjoy the game.’ He nodded abruptly to both of them and walked off to the dressing room.

  The shadows had begun to lengthen over the field as the afternoon wore on. Alice, Jecca and Flora had departed for the beach with Olivia, leaving Lionel to entertain Jemima and his future mother-in-law. This allowed Connie both the leisure to watch the game unfold and to interrogate Louis in some detail about his friend Maitland.

  ‘Mm?’ said Louis, his gaze focused on the middle. ‘His people live down here, or at least, his mother and sister do – Oh, shot!’

  Connie clapped along with her cousin. ‘And his father?’

  ‘Um … died a few years ago. Made a fortune as a wine and spirits importer.’

  ‘Oh. So he didn’t join the family business?’ Connie was failing to suppress a rising inquisitive note in her voice, which Louis, absorbed in the cricket, had not yet registered.

  ‘No … Will studied Law at Magdalen. At one time he was destined for the Bar. But it didn’t appeal to him half as much as wielding the willow. So when he came into his inheritance he dropped out and joined M—shire. I suppose this must be his second or third season here.’

  Once the second wicket fell, the subject of their discussion emerged from the pavilion and stalked out to the blazing middle. Will nodded to Tam at the other end before taking his guard, then looked around for gaps in the field. He felt in determined, if not quite confident, mood, and the forward-defensive push at his first ball was severely correct. At the end of the over he looked down the wicket at his senior partner: Tam sometimes liked to have a quick chat between overs, but today his frown of concentration was pronounced, and Will decided not to disturb him. The first ball of the next over bounced high and reared past Tam’s chin, prompting ‘ooohs’ from the crowd. He stared back down at the bowler, who, perhaps carried away by the idea of rattling the celebrity, overpitched his next ball. Tam drove it fast and straight, so straight that it almost took Will’s head off at the non-striker’s end. He managed to duck just in time, and watched the ball as it went, one bounce, over the rope at long on. With a faint smile Tam lifted his hand to Will in apology.

  Hearing the vicious whirr of that ball as it scorched past his ear reminded him of the first time he had encountered Andrew Endall Tamburlain – as an opponent. Like so many boys of his generation he had idolised ‘The Great Tam’, the batsman who had rivalled W. G. Grace in popularity and ought to have captained England; but it was not until the summer of 1906 when Will was making his debut for the Varsity against Sussex at the Parks that he came face to face with him. Tam, in his last season for the county, was flogging the Oxford bowling to all corners of the ground. Will had never seen anyone hit the ball so hard. On his fourteenth birthday he had received the gift of a ‘Tamburlain Repeater’ bat, so called for the rifle-like sound of its celebrant’s shots, but he had not yet experienced their force at close quarters. Fielding at point, Will mistimed his dive at one of Tam’s fizzing square cuts; he heard the ball rather than saw it, and next thing it had ricocheted off the turf and gut-punched him. He lay there, winded and gasping for breath, until a couple of his teammates came over to check on him. As he rose unsteadily to his feet he caught sight of Tam standing at his crease and shaking his head in annoyance: that ungainly block had deprived him of four runs.

  It would be the last time that Will or anyone else managed to stop one that afternoon. His abiding memory was of Tam’s swing, which was clean and swift and true, like the old gardener he had once watched cutting down a tree in his parents’ orchard. Tam’s tightly bulked musculature aided his stroke-playing but wasn’t the source of its majesty. His secret lay in his timing, which could create the illusion that he had barely touched the ball. Sometimes it was a conventional pull or hook; at others it was an outrageous scoop at a good-length delivery that was heading for middle-and-leg. Up it would soar, climbing on a diagonal into the soft volume of air, so high you had to squint, less an object in flight than the point of a vertiginous construction, like a church steeple or a weathervane. But the shot he best recalled that day was one of Tam’s least characteristic, a drive square off the front foot past gully for four. It seemed to flow straight from his bat over the rope in one silky flourish.

  ‘Aye. That was the one,’ Tam said later, meeting his young admirer with an approving nod. ‘It went like butter.’

  Will never forgot the phrase. From that moment on he wanted to know how it would feel to play that shot: to make it go like butter.

  That was five years ago. Lulled by this current of memory, Will abruptly resurfaced in the present. He had got himself into difficulties, his timing all out of sorts. Tam meanwhile had gained an ominous fluency, and was entertaining the crowd with his repertoire of favourite shots. The Surrey bowling was hardly menacing, but it was competent, and Will knew that he really needed to play himself in rather than try to emulate his senior partner’s big hitting. What he knew he ought to do and what he felt driven to do, however, were at war in his mind. Now he was facing a medium pacer whose nagging ac
curacy had pinned him down. For some reason he found himself going for cavalier strokes and misjudging them, which only heightened the impression of his overeagerness to grandstand. Tam had sensed that something was amiss, and had come down the wicket to have a word.

  ‘All right, Bluey?’ he said. This had been his nickname for Will ever since he heard that the club had signed up an Oxford Blue.

  Will shook his head. ‘Can’t seem to time it today.’

  ‘Well, there’s no hurry. Just hold steady and wait for the bad’un – we can make a pile of runs here.’ There was a kindliness in Tam’s flat Lancastrian accent, and Will felt emboldened by his companionable use of ‘we’ rather than ‘you’. It implied that they were equals, run-getters-in-arms. A few balls later the bowler at the pavilion end sent down a long hop and Will gratefully heaved it over the midwicket boundary. At last! The applause crackled pleasantly in his ears. He glanced down at Tam, whose cheerful wink seemed to him like a benediction. Strange, he thought, how a single moment’s lapse could change everything. He’d been scratching around for twenty minutes, playing and missing, hopelessly out of touch. Now the opposition had gifted him a loose one and the shackles were off; he was free to fill his boots. Such were his thoughts as he faced his next ball, which struck a divot and climbed suddenly. Will was into his stroke before he could adjust to the ball’s altered trajectory. It hit his bat on the splice and arced high, high into the air, you could almost hear the collective intake of breath. His heart froze as he looked up – the ball had height but no distance – and as it steepled and fell towards the man fielding at square leg, Will knew his time at the crease was over and done with. It was like a foreglimpse of dying. He had already started trudging back to the pavilion when he heard the roars of the Surrey players behind him celebrating the catch.

  The sun was just disappearing over the cliffs when play finished for the day. The others had left for the hotel about an hour before. As the fielding side converged on the pavilion and their spiked boots clinked on the steps, Louis called out to Tam, trailing a little way behind, ‘Well played, Tam!’ The latter looked up to the stalls on hearing this tribute and lifted the brim of his cap in acknowledgement. Louis turned his face in delight to Connie, as if to say, Did you see that?

  ‘I suppose we should go and say cheer-o to Will,’ he added, and Connie followed him as he edged past the departing spectators and through the pavilion’s tall glass doors. A bouquet of linseed oil, tobacco smoke and sweat hung about the murky entrance hall as Louis stood on tiptoe trying to spot his friend amid the jostle of weary cricketers and ground staff. Connie, glancing off towards a changing room, saw a man sitting alone, bare to his waist, with a towel draped over his head. She recognised him in spite of his shrouded face, and called over to Louis.

  ‘Isn’t that him?’

  He nodded and entered the room, while Connie modestly held back, watching. She couldn’t hear what was said above the clamour of voices around her, but she did see him pulling back the towel from his head as he talked to Louis. During this short colloquy Will glanced through the door at her, and though she felt the impropriety of staring at a half-naked stranger, she did not avert her eyes. His torso, she noticed, was lean and rangy. He held her gaze for a moment, then turned back to Louis. The hall was bustling now, and the two men disappeared from view as more white-clad figures filed past into the dressing room. Connie walked back outside and took a seat in the emptying stalls, where she opened a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

  A few moments later, Louis emerged through the doors and did a small double take as he noticed the cigarette in her hand. Connie expelled a plume of smoke and said, ‘Please, do not mention this to my mother.’

  ‘Mum’s the word,’ said Louis, then chuckled at his accidental witticism.

  They strolled back along the esplanade to their hotel, serenaded by the screeching of plump herring gulls overhead. From below they could hear the rattle of bathing huts being hauled up the beach for the day. Louis was enthusing over a mighty six that Tam had struck earlier in the afternoon. The ball, which had flown over the wall into South Terrace, had ended up in someone’s drawing room. They had all heard the faintly comical explosion of tinkling glass.

  ‘That’s the benefit of such a compact ground,’ he explained, mimicking the shot for Connie’s instruction. ‘You see a lot of big sixes.’

  ‘And a lot of broken windows, by the sound,’ Connie added, before continuing. ‘Your friend, Mr Maitland, looked glum.’

  ‘Hmm, poor old Will missed out today.’

  ‘It’s a shame we won’t see him play tomorrow.’ They were due to return to London the next day.

  ‘Yes … though Will did mention a party that’s being held tonight. It’s the club’s fiftieth anniversary, or something.’

  ‘Oh. He invited you?’

  ‘Mm. As a matter of fact, he invited you too. But I wasn’t sure you’d be interested.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Well … the company is mostly male, and the atmosphere may be – a little rowdy …’

  Connie smiled. ‘Nice of you to be so protective, Lou, but I’m sure that my delicate sensibility can cope.’

  ‘Capital!’ said Louis, who continued boyishly practising his forward defensive strokes, left elbow thrust outwards, oblivious to the passers-by on their early-evening promenade.

  Dinner was prolonged by Lionel, who peevishly voiced dissatisfaction with the temperature of his Dover sole, and then made a fuss about the wine that proved, on inspection, not to be corked after all. Even Olivia looked rather put out by his pedantic line of argument with the head waiter. It was a little embarrassing, because everyone could tell that the waiter (who behaved impeccably) knew more than Lionel – everyone, that is, but Lionel himself. The dining room fronted onto the sea, and the windows of the Royal Victoria had been opened to accommodate the warmth of the evening. A pleasant sea-salty tang wafted through the air, with only the faintest scent of horse manure trailing behind. Alice, Jecca and Flora had attached themselves to another family at the hotel who were taking them to the evening performance at the Pier. The adults would perhaps play bridge, as long as Mrs Callaway’s slight neurasthenia allowed; she had not come down this evening, and Connie, once dinner was over, had gone immediately to her room.

  ‘I’m quite all right, darling,’ said Mrs Callaway, supine on her bed with the curtains drawn. ‘You go out with Louis. Don’t worry about me.’

  Connie sometimes wondered if her mother’s martyred tone was born of calculation, or if it came, in fact, quite naturally to her. Its quiet plaintiveness had the same result, in any event, prompting in Connie a mixture of guilt and exasperation. Tactfully, she refrained from voicing it. In the three years since her husband’s death, Mrs Callaway, passive by nature, had sunk into a kind of elegant lassitude from which her younger daughter, out of love and duty, would try very gently to rouse her.

  ‘Ma,’ said Connie, plumping the pillows behind her mother’s head, ‘if you feel well enough, they need a fourth for bridge downstairs.’

  Mrs Callaway nodded, and waved her hand in dismissal. Connie waited for a few moments. Then, as she opened the door to leave, she heard a feeble little cough behind her. The voice quavered again.

  ‘Darling, perhaps you could fetch me a bowl of the soup before you leave.’

  The Wellington was one in a long terrace of creamy stucco hotels on the Queens Parade, and as Connie and Louis approached they could hear the jaunty strains of a piano from somewhere inside. A horse-drawn cab had just pulled up at the entrance, and out of it stepped two young men they had seen that afternoon in the Priory pavilion. Both now sported boaters and blazers, and, once Connie saw them close up, matching moustaches. She briefly reflected on how difficult it would be to kiss a man with facial hair. Now Louis was leading her through the vestibule and down a corridor, following the sound of the piano and the gathering hum of conversation. As soon as she entered the room Connie sense
d many eyes turning to her. There were other women present, but most of them were hotel staff carrying pints of ale and champagne buckets draped in napkins. The acrid stench of cigar smoke seemed to Connie at that moment the essence of hearty masculine camaraderie, even more so than the desultory caws of laughter and the sing-song that had just started up. ‘Daisy Bell’ was plainly a Priory favourite, and as Connie stood at the bar waiting for Louis to be served, a young man boomed out behind her ear: ‘… I’m half crazy / All for the love of youuu!’ and favoured her with a wink when she turned. Not wishing to be thought prim, she offered him a half-smile in return. Louis, edging through the crush, glanced around nervously and seemed at once to realise that Connie had become the cynosure of the room. As he handed over a glass he leaned towards her, raising his voice above the braying chorus: ‘Are you, er, all right with this place?’

  She was touched by Louis’s expression of solicitude, realising at that moment how typical it was of him. Rather than shout back, she simply patted his arm and smiled. She still found it disconcerting to be ogled, though she had to admit it was oddly gratifying, too. When the song finished, the man who had winked at her leaned over and said, with a chuckle in his voice, ‘So … what brings a nice girl like you to a place like this?’

  ‘Oh, probably just the same thing as you,’ Connie replied, raising her glass cheerily. The man, blazered and brilliantined, hoisted his eyebrows at this.

  ‘I’m not sure we’re thinking about quite the same thing,’ he drawled, at which remark Louis stepped in, his face darkening.

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said, glaring at him. ‘You’re talking to a lady.’

  The man looked down at Louis, stifled a guffaw, and turned to Connie. ‘I’m sorry – is this your little brother?’

  Louis lurched towards him, but was prevented from further obligation by the arrival of Will, who said in a good-humoured tone, ‘Now, Beau, take no notice of this chap. Revill here is our resident joker, and I’m sure he’ll apologise to Miss Callaway for any … unseemly remark.’