Читать книгу The Oaken Heart - Margery Allingham - Страница 4

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The August party was terrific that year. It reached a zenith, achieved a ripeness, which lifted it out of the class of "Good Times" and planted it in the front row of "Life Experiences."

For some years then this annual jollification had constituted our only family holiday and was our one yearly reunion with all our hosts of old friends. We saved up for it like children, not only in money but in those precious odds-and-ends which one comes by in the country--a remarkable pot of jam, a vast marrow, new clothes, a picture one has painted or a dog kennel one has built, or even a lovely new joke. Sam coaxed his begonias to be at their best for it; Margaret and Chrissie saved their prize bottles of fruit for it; Mr. Doe the butcher kept a special look-out for just the right baron of beef for the Feed, and down the road at Marshling the hams were picked out early for the same occasion. Every one of these little things was of extreme importance to us all, and I think rightly, for the genuine pleasures of life are elusive and seem to lie in the special occasions of commonplace amenities. They are the highlights, so to speak, of the ordinarily good.

The proceedings had a traditional routine and lasted for the best part of a week. This routine had grown steadily from small beginnings and had finally flowered into a series of parties, all following closely on each other's heels.

It began on the Friday before the first Monday in August, and the house filled with people we had either known at school or as students. The only similarity between us all was in age and in the subsequent slight sameness of outlook. Younger brothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts crept in as the years went by, but there never seemed to be any older folk in the house-party.

When I say the house filled I mean it strained its seams. It is a largish rambling old place possessing endless store and box rooms, which all came in very useful as spare bedrooms at these times.

Out of this gathering P.Y.C. could always collect a full cricket team, with certain augmentations from among the neighbours. There was never any dearth of men, and in fact they often had to play thirteen aside to get everybody in. Friday evening was always taken leisurely, and also with the various more important preparations which no one would have liked to miss. Albert and Alec his assistant always appeared on Friday, making an awful mess when everything was tidy for the visitors. Every year he thought out something more ambitious and complicated in the way of garden lighting, and the execution of his new masterpiece was always well worth watching and assisting, for in the years he had acquired as remarkable a collection of cables, coloured bulbs and multi-way switches as ever delighted human amateur. The assortment took rather a long time to put up of course, and in the day-time the garden had a tendency to look like a main overhead telephone section after the storm, but, even allowing for fuses, by Monday night the effect was always impressive and original.

Saturday began quietly and moved on, gathering momentum, to the half-day match between P.Y.C.'s team and Auburn Village. Immediately following the convivial gathering after this match there was a scramble to dress up for the Saturday night party, to which came many neighbours whom we did not know quite so intimately as our house guests. This was always a set piece, the scheme of the masquerade being carefully laid down beforehand.

The explanation of this rather unexpectedly precious proceeding was prosaic. Even if childhood friends remain one's friends they do not grow up like each other, and, like the good people in the rhyme who had different opinions, "some like apples and some like inions." Not to beat about the bush, we had and have among our nearest and dearest those who would not feel happy out of a boiled shirt at an evening party and those who would not be seen dead in one, proclaiming their own variety of costume the only wear, so the natural thing to do was to arrange a function which everyone could attend in either or neither garment with complete propriety.

On that particular occasion Saturday night was to be Spy Night at the Embassy, and the effect aimed at a nice blend of Phillips Oppenheim and Limehouse Nights. Grog had been busy for days painting a brilliant collection of life-sized liveried flunkeys, unconventionally armed with revolvers and sub-machine-guns, which he pinned up about the house to give it the required tone. Our guests, arriving about nine, found us breathless but ready, and the noise and chatter, drinking and dancing and showing off went on until next morning.

Sunday usually passed in recuperation, for on Monday there was serious work to be done.

Among all the very good things there are in life I think I would put in the first flight the glorious bustle of the preparations for a country feast at which very old friends are to predominate. This is entertaining without worry or pretension, and if something goes wrong it is only an added excitement all can share.

There was never any question of hiring extra help on these occasions. Help started arriving at six in the morning and the weather was the only uncertain assistant.

On that day our luck held. At half-past five the sky was grey with the mist which means heat to come, and when Norry arrived with the trestles borrowed from the village hall and the baskets of crockery which Vic was lending us he assured me we were in for a scorcher, and we agreed that in view of this an extra firkin of beer ought to be set aside "in case."

At eleven the Pontisbright team arrived, and with them came their wives and children, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts and everybody else who remembered us--sixty-odd of them.

We had once lived in Pontisbright, fifteen miles from Auburn, and had always had relations there; while Chrissie is Pontisbright born, so that this was another reunion, as important as the previous one on the Friday. Len was there, of course. He is the sexton and their slow bowler, and I have known the time at Pontisbright when half the team was helping to dig like fury all the morning so that he might be free to uphold the honour of the village on the green in the afternoon.

With him came the Ashby brothers from the Mill, and nearly all the Quinneys (who can make up a complete cricket team of brothers if need be), and Stan the parson and Mrs. Stan, and Mrs. Len and Doreen, and Laurie Smith and all the others.

Len was captain that year. His elder sister, Cissie, had worked for us in the last war, and it was she who had fled with we three children to London on that terrifying day when a mistaken order had started a false evacuation of our little corner of the East Coast. However, that was a long while ago, and no one was thinking about war that Monday morning in '38, although there had been a great deal of worried speculation about it on the day before.

It was a staggering morning. The sky was dizzily blue, and the heat haze hung over the bright green meadow and burnt on the trees round its borders. Sam and Len tossed, and the match began, with the regular Auburn team reinforced with the best of P.Y.C.'s to meet such serious opposition.

It is almost impossible to describe village cricket at its superb best. Those people who confuse it either with a game or a religion have given it a bad name in some quarters, but for those who enjoy its peculiar attributes there is no spectacle in the world to take its place. This kind of cricket is a country sport like fishing or making love. For those who do not know it well, perhaps I might venture to set down why I personally find it so good to watch.

Primarily, village cricket is a performance, and has something in common with the Lancers and much with the Harlequinade. It epitomises the very English secret of combining individualism with co-operative effort. Each player has his chance to shine alone, and yet his final success or failure is the team's. Best of all, the day is never lost until it is won. At any moment a thumping miracle may happen, and usually it does. In fact there is a lot of magic in it, and I do not use the word in any poetic sense. The whole business has something of the elements of a rustic charm, and on the right day, in the leafy privacy of the meadow and conducted by the right country people, a very potent sort of atmosphere indeed can be conjured up.

August Monday 1938 in Auburn was one of those occasions. The lunch, or Feed, at which as many as could find places sat down and the rest of us waited our turn after doing our share with the serving, took place as usual under the ilex-tree in the Lady Garden because no room in the house could hold us.

Then there was more cricket, and tea with everybody's name on the cake, and afterwards a finish to the game which was so close that the score had to be checked over before the winners were certain of their victory. Finally came a gathering for more old-and-mild refreshment in all the downstairs rooms at once, with last-minute bits of news and a tremendous concerted ragging of a distinguished guest (one of His Majesty's Recorders), who bore up magnificently under the strain; while yet another four-and-a-half had to be trundled down from the Thatcher's, bringing up the score to the full thirty-six.

The exuberant hour lasted full and good and without spoiling until the moon came up, and the bus drivers put their feet down and carried a sleepy, happy Pontisbright away to its deep green valley inland.