‘It’s a little hard,’ he said. ‘Just when Hirst happens to have an off-day — he was bowling tosh this morning — and the wicket doesn’t suit Rhodes, and one thinks one really has got a chance of taking a few, this man Batkins starts and bowls about fifty per cent above his proper form. Did you see that ball that got MacLaren? It was the sort of beastly thing you get in nightmares. Fast as an express and coming in half a foot. If Batkins doesn’t get off his length after lunch, we’re cooked. And he’s a teetotaller, too!’
I tried to cheer him up by talking about the girl he was engaged to, but it only made him worse.
‘And it’s in front of a girl like that,’ he said, ‘who believes in a chap, too, mind you, that I’m probably going to make a beastly exhibition of myself. That ball of Billy Batkins’ll get me five times out of six. And the sixth time, too.’
Saunders gave me the letter as I was going out. I reminded Bill that he had promised to get hold of Mr Batkins for me.
‘I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘All right. When we get to the ground, come along with me.’
So we left Aunt Edith in the covered seats and walked round to behind the pavilion.
‘Wait here a second,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll send him out. You’ll have to hurry up with whatever you’re going to say to him, because the Players will be taking the field in about three minutes.’
I waited there, prodding the asphalt with my parasol, and presently Mr Batkins appeared, blushing violently and looking very embarrassed.
‘Did you want to see me, miss?’ he said. I said ‘Yes,’ feeling rather gharked and not knowing how to begin.
‘You’re Mr Batkins, aren’t you?’ I said at last. It was rather silly, because he couldn’t very well be anybody else.
‘You played against us last summer,’ I said, ‘for Sir Edward Cave, at Much Middlefold.’
He started. I suppose the name made him think of Saunders.
The bell began ringing in the pavilion. He shuffled his feet. The spikes made a horrid noise on the asphalt, like a squeaking slate-pencil.
‘Was there anything?’ he said. ‘I shall have to be going out in a minute to bowl.’ He pronounced it as if it rhymed with ‘fowl’.
So I saw there was no time to waste, and I plunged straight into the thing.
I said: ‘You know Saunders doesn’t really care a bit for Mr Harry Biggs. She told me so.’
He turned crimson, He had been rather red before, but nothing to this.
‘Me and Ellen, miss —’ he began.
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘She has told me all about it. She’s awfully miserable, Mr Batkins. And she would have written long before, to make it up, only she didn’t know your address. I’ve got a letter from her here, which —’
He simply grabbed the letter and tore it open. I wish I knew what was in it. He read it again and again, breathing very hard, and really looking almost as if he were going to cry.
‘Can I tell Saunders it’s all right?’ I said.
He wouldn’t answer for an age. He kept on reading the letter. Then he said: ‘Oh, yes, miss,’ very fervently. He was what Bob calls ‘absolutely rattled.’ I suppose he must have been fretting awfully all the time, really, only he wouldn’t write and tell Saunders so, but let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, feed on his damask cheek.
(I used to know the whole bit once, to say by heart, I learned it when I did lessons, before I put my hair up. But I’ve forgotten all but that one piece now.)
‘And you’ll come to supper tonight? You’ve got the address on the letter. It’s on the right-hand side of Sloane Street, as you go down.’
‘Oh, yes, miss. Thank you, miss.’
And off he dashed in a great hurry, because the Players were just going out into the field.
So that’s why Batkins’ deliveries were ‘wild and inaccurate’ after lunch. Poor man, he was so flurried by the whole thing that he could hardly bowl at all. The bowler at the other end got a man caught in his first over, and then Bill went in. And Bill hit him in all directions. It was a lovely innings. I don’t think I ever enjoyed one more — not even father’s forty-nine not out against the Cave men. They took poor Mr Batkins off after a time, but Bill was set by then, and they couldn’t get him out. He went on and on, till at last he got his century and won the match. And everybody rushed across the ground from the cheap seats, and stood by the pavilion railings, yelling. And Bill had to lean out of a window and bow.