Half of the Human Race Read online

  ‘This is Reggie Culver,’ said Will, half smiling at the affectation of his friend’s monocle.

  ‘I’m sorry to say that our champagne is presently boiling away in the luggage room at Charing Cross. There wasn’t a cab to be had.’

  ‘Ah, don’t fret, dear lady,’ cried Reggie. ‘We’ve gallons of the stuff here. Now do start helping yourself to luncheon – you must be famished after all that walking.’

  Will left his mother and Eleanor in Reggie’s company and strolled out onto the balcony. A wooden pole had been secured against its wrought-iron rail and a huge Union Jack hung out. The red in the flag was the colour of old blood. He looked down onto the street, from this vantage a shifting, murmurous sea of hats – caps, bowlers, boaters, bonnets – that stretched all the way up towards Piccadilly. Across the way he could see figures leaning out of the windows, and even lurking high up between the chimney pots, where the pigeons made their strutting patrol. A bird’s-eye view – to land on a rooftop whenever the fancy took you. What larks … His ornithological reverie was interrupted by two men who had joined him on the balcony. Archie Holbrook and Algy Tregear, friends from college days, had since thickened prosperously around the middle and were now looking uncomfortably warm in tails and waistcoats.

  ‘Hullo, Will,’ said Archie, holding a flute of champagne in one fist and a pheasant’s egg in the other.

  Will smiled. ‘I’ve never seen you two look so smart.’

  ‘All in honour of – the King!’

  ‘The King!’ repeated Algy, and both of them snapped to attention and chortlingly raised their glasses. Will turned back to survey the street.

  ‘What news of our special guest?’ asked Archie.

  ‘Oh, he said he’d be coming. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d stopped for refreshment somewhere on the way.’

  Will knew better than to make a cast-iron guarantee where A. E. Tamburlain was concerned. The man’s habit was to arrive late at parties, or else not at all. His social appetites were in some circles as legendary as his batting feats. When Will had first arrived at the Priory, he had been nervous of Tam, and not merely because he had revered him for so long. He had got wind of Tam’s ‘blooding’ of new recruits. The night before his debut Will had been introduced to ‘Mr Tamburlain’ at the Priory clubhouse.

  ‘Ah, the Blue,’ said Tam, a twinkle beneath his saturnine brow. He turned to the little coterie of clubmen and camp-followers who usually congregated around him. ‘I’ve heard these Varsity men have no head for ale – they fall down at the sniff of a barmaid’s apron. Hope we won’t have to carry you home.’

  Then he and two of his familiars took Will out on the town, starting with oysters and pints of champagne at the Wellington. They proceeded to a dance, where they drank well past midnight and Tam sang ‘If It Wasn’t For the Houses In Between’ to a banjo accompaniment. Between two and five thirty they played poker and whist in another hotel lounge, and having pocketed his winnings, Tam insisted they all went out for a dawn paddle by the Pier. A breakfast of porridge and kippers followed, after which Will was allowed to go home and catch up on some sleep before the match began at eleven that morning. He didn’t have to be carried, although, given his condition, he would have appreciated it.

  Mrs Maitland, in search of diversion, had now stepped onto the balcony. Will, already faintly exhausted by her company, introduced his friends.

  ‘This is my mother – Archie Holbrook, Algy Tregear.’

  Mrs Maitland peered at them. ‘Reggie – Archie – Algy – quite the gathering of diminutives. I dare say you know William from Oxford.’ She spoke, as ever, with a brusque patrician confidence that stopped just short of rudeness. Archie, untypically meek, admitted that they did.

  ‘Did you have a pleasant journey here, Mrs Maitland?’ asked Algy.

  ‘Three hours on the train,’ she replied tersely, as if it had somehow been Algy’s fault, ‘then a footslog down Pall Mall I’d rather have been spared.’

  ‘Closed to traffic,’ Will said.

  ‘I do sympathise,’ Algy pursued. ‘Only last Saturday we were tootling down here from Marylebone when we found all the streets blocked off by the police. Had to abandon the motor and walk it.’

  ‘A ladies’ march – for suffrage,’ Archie explained.

  Mrs Maitland emitted a sound somewhere between a bark and a shriek. ‘Oh, will those creatures give us no peace! If they had the vote they wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

  Archie chuckled at this. ‘I wish you could have seen this couple we ran into, just outside the flat here. The impudence of them! Shouting and carrying on … Poor old Reggie innocently asked one of them, “Madam, do you wish you were a man?” To which this hoyden screamed in reply, “No – do you?”’

  Will burst out laughing at this. His mother looked sharply at him.

  ‘You may laugh, William, but these women are a menace. There’s not a scrap of modesty or decency about them.’

  ‘I dare say,’ Will said, smiling, ‘though you can’t deny that one a certain wit.’

  Mrs Maitland harrumphed at even this concession. Will, who had not properly considered the idea of suffrage for longer than half a minute, was nevertheless surprised by his mother’s antipathy. He had supposed her to be one who might find such a cause congenial. Privileged by birth and imperious by temperament, Sylvia Maitland had a formidable talent for getting her own way. Her force of character had been tested when her husband died unexpectedly in 1899. With no obvious successor to the directorship of Maitland’s Wine and Spirits, she had stepped into the breach and enlisted her brother as partner in the day-to-day running of the business. Her fierce energy had done the rest. She was someone Will would not readily have crossed. Only once had he been obliged to, when, three years ago, he had abandoned the law and signed professional terms as a cricketer. He was still not certain she had forgiven him for it. The repeated twitch in her cheek now was enough to warn him off engaging with her in an argument as to the pros and cons of ‘the vote’.

  A waiter had just refilled their glasses when a noise was collected out of the muggy afternoon. Because the flat was high above the street, the approach of the Coronation party from Westminster Abbey was heard almost as if it were a distant mumble of thunder. Will guessed that the procession was still a long way off. At that moment he found Eleanor at his side.

  ‘Will, you-know-who’s arrived and he’s looking for you.’

  He excused himself and followed her inside. A little knot of men had already gathered about Tam like eager courtiers. Will held back for a moment, watching the guest of honour at work, shaking hands, modestly fielding compliments. It still seemed remarkable to him that he and Tam had become close. He had known senior professionals who quietly but indisputably resented new recruits, and Tam, now into his forties, might have allowed himself such animus, particularly towards one who reminded him of his own youthful verve. Yet far from cold-shouldering Will, the senior man had adopted him; perhaps the truly self-assured have no need of rivals. The early amity forged as batting partners – Tam was at the other end when ‘Bluey’ reached that debut hundred – gradually extended beyond the raucous confines of the changing room and entered a new phase on their discovering a mutual love of fishing. In the contented hours spent on boats and riverbanks, where only a skylark’s yearning trills might be heard, Will discovered another side to the glamorous, buccaneering cricketer of public renown.

  One afternoon the previous summer, as they finished off a lunch of potted herring, and a bottle of Pol Roger lolled at the end of a string in the shallows of the cooling river, Tam had talked for the first time about his family. Though born in Lancashire, he had lived ‘all over’, on account of his father’s job as a travelling salesman. The family had eventually settled on the M—shire coast, where Tamburlain Senior’s commercial fortunes had, after a period of debt, tipped into a steep decline. Drink had hastened the crisis. Tam returned home from school one day to find his father hanged by the nec
k in his garden shed. Will had been disturbed, not only by the content of this history but by Tam’s assumption that he, Will, was an appropriate confidant. Hitherto their talk had been limited to the safe familiarities of cricket and beer and fishing. This tragedy had cast Tam in a new light – the son of a suicide – and in the telling it seemed to breach the boundaries set by their relationship. He would really have preferred not to know, rather than have to wonder what else might be wrong with his friend.

  Now, as Will edged towards the group, he could see a man animatedly recalling a shot of Tam’s he had once witnessed, while the hero of his anecdote maintained a polite, slightly glazed expression, as if he had heard this somewhere before. And, as Will knew, he had heard it before, many times, because Tam’s naturally gregarious instincts brought him into contact with men who would always want to reminisce about the days of his batting prime – those tumultuous innings of the 1890s that had suddenly turned matches. As his interlocutor prattled on, Will caught Tam’s eye, and the latter saluted him with an almost imperceptible lift of his chin. A few minutes later, once another scrum of well-wishers had been dodged, the two men found themselves seated together on a gleaming chesterfield. Tam, cigar in hand, shook his head and sighed.

  ‘Terrible thing, Blue,’ he said, ‘but after a while you weary even of praise.’

  ‘What story was that fellow delighting you with?’

  ‘Oh … a six I hit at the Priory – landed on top of a passing tram in South Terrace.’

  ‘I never saw that one,’ Will admitted.

  ‘You wouldn’t have done, it was years ago.’ He stared at his glowing cigar, and added, ‘They were all years ago.’

  ‘It’s natural that people want to talk to you. You’re still the best.’

  Tam gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Don’t you start.’

  Will paused. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you something …’

  ‘Oh aye?’ said Tam, squinting through his smoke.

  ‘Have you ever had a truly wretched run with the bat – I mean, so bad that you could never see it ending?’

  ‘Of course. Every cricketer does – you know that.’

  Will gave a mournful nod. ‘I suppose so.’

  Tam paused, and puffed meditatively on his cigar. ‘This game … it preys on doubts. Why is it that some days you can middle every ball, then others you can’t lay the bat on anything? Never easy to understand why you’re having a bad trot. But it wouldn’t be cricket without them doubts.’

  ‘Yes, but how do you conquer them? Is it talent, or luck?’

  Tam’s expression was Delphic. ‘Talent is luck, half of the time. That magnificent square cut that goes for four runs might have been caught at point, if only the fielder hadn’t moved a couple of feet sideways the previous ball.’

  Will sensed that Tam wouldn’t offer advice unless he was directly asked for it. He took a deep breath. ‘Look, Tam, you’ve seen how badly I’ve been playing this season. Is there anything – I mean anything – I can do?’

  Tam tapped the side of his head. ‘The problem might be up here, as I said. Do you have … worries?’

  ‘Yes, I have worries,’ Will groaned, despairing of these generalities. ‘I’m worried I’ll never make any runs again.’

  ‘Well,’ said the senior man, ‘have you changed something, p’raps – something that’s affected your confidence?’

  ‘Nothing that I can think of.’

  ‘Then it might be something you need to change. Don’t forget, bowlers are always looking for a weakness, a flaw they can work on to get you out. P’raps they’ve spotted a chink in your armour, so to speak …’ Tam’s eyes, watchful beneath his brow, were fixed on Will, who now felt uneasy as well as despondent.

  ‘Have you, er, spotted one?’

  ‘You tell me, Bluey.’

  Will shrugged, considering, and remembered a recent conversation on this very subject. It might be worth a try. ‘Could it be my feet not moving properly? I seem to be getting caught on the crease of late. I’m not sure if I’m meant to go forward or back.’

  Tam nodded sagely, as if this were the answer he’d been waiting for. ‘You’ve just been a bit stiff-legged lately, that’s all. If you don’t move your feet you’re not in a position to play the right shot –’

  ‘It can’t be just that,’ Will interrupted.

  ‘No. But it’s a start. Your great advantage is having a quick eye – like me.’ Tam was not a braggart, but he had no truck with false modesty. ‘Speed of eye’s a gift, there’s no learning it. Keeping your head still, moving your feet – that’s just technique.’

  ‘Technique,’ repeated Will. He suppressed an abrupt shiver of mortification.

  ‘Next time we’re at the nets, I’ll give you some pointers,’ said Tam. ‘In the meantime, stop worrying about it. You’ll be back in the runs, I promise.’

  While they had been talking more guests had arrived and were now congregating around the balcony. As they rose and followed the drift to the doors, Will noticed two or three of the men stepping aside to let Tam through, and the reflected dazzle from his friend’s celebrity fell on him like a balm. The distant alarums heard twenty minutes before were gathering to a climax; it seemed edged almost with panic. The royal procession was yet to turn into St James’s Street, but the noise waxing from Pall Mall had created a thrum of anticipation across the teeming masses below, pushing little waves of hysteria in front of it. Louder, louder, the roar climbed, cacophonous and exhilarated, until a tidal wave of cheering, whistling, clapping seemed to engulf the very rooftops. And then, from Reggie’s balcony, they could see the vanguard of caparisoned horses make the turn, prancing up the street in a torrid blaze of colours, somewhat unreal, like a child’s tin soldiers. The noise now entered a feverish new dimension as the royal carriage, like a giant silver gravy boat, wheeled into view, and Will’s gaze was held by the stunned majestic glitter of the newly crowned monarch and his queen, waving her gloved hand somewhat nervously, first this side, then that. It felt to him as if the crowds were trying to outdo their own pleading displays of deference, as if a collective will in the celebrations were as vital to the success of the day as the tiny royal pair whose progress was being so exuberantly saluted. On the street, hats had been torn off and whirled in the air like so many spinning tops. For one lady on their balcony the excitement was too acute; the colour had fled from her face, and she was tottering backwards in a swoon. Two men had taken charge and were leading the victim away in an odd stumbling dance, while other ladies murmured sympathetic ‘oohs’ in their wake. Will caught Eleanor’s expression – a comical widening of the eyes – and smiled.

  The carriage was now directly below them, and the King and Queen so close that, had the crowd’s tumult been less deafening, someone might have called from the balcony to draw their attention. Whether prompted by a heightening of patriotic fervour, or a consciousness that the royal pair would soon be passing by and out of their sight forever, someone sitting at Reggie’s grand piano had seized the moment and was now plonking out the notes of the only song it could have been permissible to play.

  God save our gracious King

  Long live our noble King

  God save the King!

  Will had joined in, and now their raised voices could be heard through the din. All of the men around him had spontaneously removed their hats. The tune caught on, delirious and unstoppable; down on the street they were roaring out the words, too. Later, people would swear that they had seen the King turn and incline the royal head in acknowledgement of the anthem.

  Send him victo-o-orius

  Happy and glo-o-o-oruis

  Long to reign over us

  God save the King!

  As the familiar cadences fell into place, Will looked around him and felt something extraordinary take hold. The prayer contained in the words had lit up the faces around him in a jubilant glow. Without quite understanding why, his eyes began to moisten. Order had been drawn out of chaos. That misanthropic
spasm he’d experienced towards the ‘common rabble’ a few hours before – a deplorable impulse of snobbery, entirely unworthy of him. Here they stood at the beginning of a new era, a sovereign people with a new king; they lived in the greatest country on earth, at the greatest possible time. Hot tears were rolling down his cheeks, blurring his sight, and though he considered such a reaction unmanly he was quite beyond helping himself. Tam’s deep Lancastrian voice – a basso profundo that started somewhere in his chest – sounded behind him, and Will felt a giddy sort of elation oxygenating his lungs; it felt as though he had been reprieved. ‘You’ll be back in the runs, I promise,’ Tam had said. He had promised! Will choked down a happy sob, and reassured himself that all would be well. There was nothing he couldn’t do.

  4

  RUSSELL SQUARE WAS A trench of raw fog as Connie peered through the window of the motor cab. It was an evening in November, and not the sort that would have drawn anybody onto the streets unless it were vitally necessary. The cab was nosing into a lane from which it had emerged some minutes previously.

  ‘I think our driver is lost,’ said Connie, wiping the condensation from the glass.

  ‘No wonder,’ said Lily. ‘I can’t make out a thing from this side.’

  They were passing by gas lamps that floated and glimmered against the enshrouding gloom. The address they had given the cabbie was a hall in an obscure back lane of Holborn, an area which neither she nor Lily had had much cause to investigate before. The hall was that evening’s venue for an emergency meeting of their local suffragist group, prompted by rumours that the Conciliation Bill, on which so many hopes were riding, had been effectively scuppered by the prime minister and Lloyd George.

  Connie rapped on the glass and asked the cabman to stop. ‘I think we might find our own way from here,’ she called. They stepped out into the blurred night, and having taken their bearings started up a narrow side street where the Georgian terraces stared down, black and glassy.

  ‘Ugh!’ cried Lily, spluttering. ‘I’ve just got a mouthful of that fog. Are you sure this is the right direction, Con?’