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“I did it, I did it! See—did you see?”
“Of course you did,” said Darcy, ruffling her hair. “You can do anything if you put your mind to it. Now go over there and practice your throw. You want to arch your wrist as you do it.”
Ada took the ball from his hand and ran away of her own volition. Darcy looked at him intently, but it was Bron, eyeing up the cream, but not the whiteness, of Darcy’s clothing, his jumper with its black and yellow stripes, who was first to speak.
“It is a real shame you won’t be playing. I think Mr. Edwards really wanted you to.”
“As I said before, Bron, I rather detest the game.”
“Detest? That’s quite assured.”
Darcy looked out toward the marquee, toward the pitch. “I wouldn’t dare to be seen playing cricket. It symbolizes everything I hate about this country. A portrait of propriety, a natural social order, a myth upheld by the village green.”
Yet more symbols for this quaint, idyllic game—but he wanted to counter Darcy, to say that everything he’d just described was the very thing that Darcy exuded. But then again, he thought about what it meant to exist within a space once inaccessible. The team he was playing on. He could feel it acutely, his time on the rugby pitch at St. Mary’s, the discomfort of being there among the other boys. Felt it even now, embedded into his core. He was their baggage, a weight they’d rather have done without. And yet here he was, invited to play on yet another field. As one of them. Cricket was kind of dance, performed by men, to each other, across the field. A love affair (kind of gay—a sentiment he’d also felt when watching his schoolmates play rugby).
When Mr. Edwards jogged toward them, already in his gear, he began to stretch, first each of his arms and then his legs,dipping into lunges. The rest of the players gathered onto the makeshift pitch for gameplay. None of the men looked particularly athletic—they did not resemble the St. Mary’s rugby team, with their large biceps and agile way of moving even as teenagers. Instead, these were middle-aged men whose hobby it was to play sports on the weekends. Which was to say, they looked exactly like themselves. Just clad in white. The necessary paraphernalia appeared. The batsmen were handed their bats; cricket pads were unfolded and strapped on; shin pads ornately shone, having been polished for the occasion. The fielders took their places, scattered about.
Bron asked one of the players for a round-up of the rules. He still didn’t understand some of the terms he heard being thrown about, though he nodded and said he did when the player explained them to him again. He decided there was no use in trying. Like a language, one had to grow up with it to be truly fluent, to understand it fully with all its nuances: there were too many rules, too many players, too many things going on at once. It seemed to him like a game of baseball, a game he was familiar with, having heard enough about it from Harry. But that was the extent of it. When he vocalized this comparison, he was met with a flout of tutting.
The umpire was at the ready. Ada, who had elected herself assistant umpire, was tasked with watching the match closely and to enforce the rules and settle any matters which might arise; she was as well assistant scorer, whose job was to note of each team’s number of runs. She brought out the usual paper and clipboard, gripped hard at the pencil. Wore a whistle around her neck.
The village team was to play the first innings. This was the division of the game where each side was to take their turn at batting. In gameplay, he watched men huff and roll about as he stood beside a wicket, practically a bystander. So far, so good. Unscathed. Village had won the toss, and soon they had scored three. Balls were flying every which way, and at an interval afterthe first inning, they were brought back to the buffet table to a grating of knives and forks against plates, and an undignified amount of chewing. Mr. Edwards resumed spooning food into his bowl when Clarence approached with a cup of yellow tea, different from any of the options in the caddy. Mr. Edwards swiped the sweat off his brow as he drank, wincing at the taste. “I seem to be out of practice, Clarence.”
“It’s okay, sir. It’s okay. Drink, to replenish you.”
The sky grew overcast, and Clarence fetched blankets from the house to drape over the spectators.
The game resumed. Bron followed Mr. Edwards, who at the wicket continued to fan his reddened face. It was his turn to bat. Readying himself for a swing, Mr. Edwards lurched forward, dropping the bat suddenly and running four meters away to puke into the grass, out of the way of the players. Bron would have approached him if Darcy hadn’t sprung from his chair and gone to him in seconds. Mr. Edwards waved Darcy away, but when the retching didn’t stop and he turned ghostly pale, he allowed Darcy to stir him away from the pitch and plant him into a chair under the awning.
The spectators whispered through this commotion, and the game stalled for a few minutes. Mr. Edwards insisted they go on. Darcy walked to the center of the ground with a grace that, had Bron not heard of his aversion for the game, might have pronounced a naturalness to the setting. A perfect scene to be shot. Knowing of this reluctance hardened the soft glow of his vision.
Darcy stopped at the wicket, called out, “Too many prawns, I suspect,” then gestured toward Mr. Edwards, who made a sign with his hands that was quite in agreement and had the crowd laughing. Darcy picked up the bat, taking his father’s place.
It was nearing the end of the game, and the village team was up by twenty. It was all on Darcy to win the game for Greenwood. On his first swing, he hit one four, and then another four, and slowly the gap between the scores inched closer. Clearly he’d played before and was even rather good at it. Of course he was.
Now it was Bron’s turn to bat. He rolled his shoulders, and his eyes met Darcy’s, which froze him into place. Darcy nodded at him, a kind movement.
“You need to see the ball coming,”Darcy had said to Ada. He imagined Darcy saying it to him as he focused intently at the bowler, poising his legs, his arms, ready to launch his swing. This blurred with a recollection of what Harry used to say to him on the rugby pitch.“You don’t want to be afraid of the ball. The ball is your friend. If you look scared, they’ll know it, and you’ll lose. You want to outmaneuver them, anticipate their throw. You can do it, Bron. Don’t listen to them.”
He would listen to Harry, would listen to Darcy.
The ball was thrown. The first time he hit, the ball was lost. On the second throw, the bat made contact. Into the air it rose, and he ran backward, backward, backward, reaching his arms into the sky and jumping up in a way that any other person on the ground might have described as running like a girl. He saw the ball being passed back, back between the fielders. Despite what they thought of him, he could and would succeed. He wasn’t an addition, an anomaly, or a small percentage of the population to be overlooked. He was no longer a schoolboy, forced onto the pitch at risk of detention. He was as real as the rest of them—those playing, those sitting down, those from his past. He was knocked by impact, but it was his feet that threw him into the air.
He had batted and scored the required number. Mr. Edwards roared from the sidelines, and Ada ran up to him and helped him back to his feet. The teams shook hands, and Darcy tipped up his head in approval. Behind them all, sitting among the spectators, he saw a boy who looked like Harry, smiling that smile he used to know so well, and hearing echoes of that cheeky laugh he doted on. Harry would have been proud.
He may have run like a girl, but he’d won them the game.
12
MR.EDWARDS HAD YETto overcome the bout of illness that had taken him from the cricket match, and kept to his bedroom as much as was possible, with Ada taking on the part of nurse wherever she could.
Bron and Ada made meals together in the kitchen: a mac and cheese, her favorite food, whenever she fancied it (revealing a secret once shared with him by one of the chefs at St. Mary’s—that a dollop of English mustard could go a long way in giving the cheese sauce a much richer taste than the powdered granules and hot water alone would allow), and later, when Ada declared her father to be in need of soup, they sautéed onion, garlic, and celery on the stove, and softened the carrots and potatoes in a pot, before pouring in the water. Mixing it all together, they ladled the concoction into a bowl. Ada insisted Bron be the first to taste it. He took a sip and hid his grimace as he swallowed.
Ada tasted it next. “Mmm, delicious.”
“Ada, we forgot to add the stock.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t notice.”
