The Captain and the Cricketer Read online

  “Now, quite rightly, Fitz won that tournament. He never received his cup and to this day, that cup—vase, really—remains missing, the thief at large. That summer, life changed. Fitz went into vetting, I went off to join the army and do the odd bit of telly.”

  The laughter was more than polite now, but appreciative. Oh, what a modest, handsome, rich, effortlessly successful war hero George was!

  Oh, how Henry loathed him.

  “Yet Fitz never forgave that injustice and still, to this very day, blames his old pal George for stealing that vase. From that day to this, no single wicket has been fought and Henry Fitzwalter’s record stands.” George raised his glass of beer toward Henry, eliciting a small round of applause for his former friend’s sporting triumph. “This summer, I intend to bring back the Longley Parva Single Wicket! I’ve invited a few pals you might know to take part—they’re better known as the England Cricket Team, and I’ll be turning our village adventure into a doc for Auntie Beeb. They’re keen for a book too—the interest should bring a nice bit of cash into the village hall fund!”

  A roar of appreciation rose from the crowd. A book, money, TV, the England Cricket Team in Longley Parva.

  Of course George couldn’t let Henry’s triumph in the tournament stand—he had to send in the entire England team to win it from him.

  “So, this is where you come in, my fellow Parvans! I’m home at last and I’m making each and every one of you the star of my Christmas special The Secret History of the Longley Parva Cup!”

  Only George could turn his own dark deed into Sunday evening family entertainment. And of course, once George stood in front of the cameras, blinking his long eyelashes at the lenses, a careless toss of the head, admitting after all these years, Sorry, chaps, I’m the Longley Parva Bandit! The entire village—the entire South Downs, damn it, the entire country, plus everyone watching on BBC America, would sigh over him. What a rascal!

  What an utter bastard.

  But as Henry watched George down a pint to rapturous applause without a drop spilled, he realized he couldn’t ignore the sliver of himself that wished George would prove him wrong. Deep down, he wanted to believe, after all these years, that maybe it wasn’t George who had stolen the cup. That the cricket jumper he had turned up in wasn’t just George’s way of rubbing it in.

  And of course, out of honor, if George wasn’t a thief, then Henry would be required to apologize. And that would be the most difficult thing of all.

  “So let’s raise a glass to Longley Parva, the Longley Parvans and the cup, wheresoever it may currently be. Hip hip, hooray!”

  And the whole beer garden chorused with him, the sound as loud as a summer storm and just as annoying as Ed in childhood, dragging his nails down the school blackboard whenever the teacher left the room.

  “Ooof!” Henry’s ale sloshed over the rim of his glass and spilled onto his jacket. An elbow in the ribs from Tom Golding was never a gentle nudge.

  “Remember that, don’t you? When the cup disappeared! You two lads were the stars of my team that year. Bloody good all-rounder, you are, Henry! Bloody glad you moved back to the village, otherwise—truth be told—with the other players in this village, we’d be the laughingstock of every team from here to Dartmoor.”

  “Keeps me fit.” Henry, for the second time that day, dabbed at his jacket with a clean handkerchief. He didn’t want to think about it—that moment of rage that had cost him a friendship.

  “If George is here for a while, we should get him to join the team, eh, Skipper? What do you say? He’s dressed for the part, I’ll give him that!”

  Yes, he has, hasn’t he?

  “Captain George’ll be too busy, Tom, what with all the camera crews and outside broadcast units he’ll have to deal with. He’ll be sat in his makeup trailer, zhushing up his hair—he won’t have time for cricket and cucumber sandwiches.”

  Tom slapped Henry on the shoulder and waved across to their temporarily resident celebrity. “Nah, I’ll ask him—oi, George!”

  “Tom, you old devil!” George leaped down from his impromptu stage and ambled over to join them, greeting him with a matey slap on the back. “What can I do for you?”

  “Seeing as you’ll be around for the season, don’t suppose you’d consider joining your old team again, eh?” Tom put his glass down on a nearby table and mimed an overarm bowl. “Like the good ol’ days, when you bowled out every bloody man in that Didthorne Magna friendly?”

  “Before I accept, I should give you fair warning that I’m bloody average at the batting crease.” George laughed, leaning one elbow on Tom’s shoulder. “And still a daydreamer when I’m in the outfield. If you can live with that, I’d love to bring my steam-powered shoulder back to bowl, if the skipper will allow it!”

  Henry gritted his teeth and extended his hand to George. “I’m the skipper, in case you were wondering, Captain George.”

  George seized Henry’s hand and shook it. This wasn’t the battle of strength in Ed’s handshake, though, but a warm and firm gesture that lasted just long enough.

  “Looks like I’m out before I’m in!” George laughed and shrugged. “There’s no way our Fitz is going to let the suspected Longley Parva Bandit onto the pitch!”

  “I told Tom you’d be too busy. If you want to join, you’d be welcome, of course you would, but—”

  “Splendid.” George beamed and Tom patted him encouragingly on the shoulder. “Then I’m on the team!”

  “Great!” Only after the word had left his mouth did Henry realize he had said it.

  “Just like the old days,” was the opinion of his Nemesis. “Though without you braining me with a bat, of course!”

  Henry curled his lips into a grudging smile. “I seem to recall that you ducked.”

  “Afghanistan was like Disney World in comparison.” George laughed, but Henry knew that was a lie, because Henry knew what George had faced in Afghanistan. Everyone knew—it was etched across the front pages, the Internet, the public consciousness. Courage under fire. The true meaning of a hero.

  Without being entirely conscious that he was doing it, Henry gave George a gentle pat on the shoulder. Then he cleared his throat and took a deep swallow of his ale.

  “Hope you chaps don’t mind me asking the England lads along to perform fielding duties.” George looked from Tom to Henry with a smile. “Should bring a fair few pennies into the village hall fund, though, not to mention make good telly.”

  “Will they knock about with the kids in the practice nets, do you think?” Tom laughed as he turned to Henry. “The England lads fielding, eh—you’d have your work cut out to defend your title then, Skip!”

  Henry replied with a mirthless chuckle and swilled the remains of his ale from side to side in his glass. He was trying very hard not to look up at George. Of course George’s intervention in the village would be good. But why did he have to be here, why did he have to keep appearing at Henry’s elbow? Reminding him, with every smile, of what he had lost?

  “We could lay on a bit of a meet and greet for the kids too. Photos, autographs, a morning coaching with the team before the tournament?” George suggested with a grin.

  A long, low sigh escaped Henry. “Of course! Can’t disappoint the kiddies. And why not fling in a buffet and a clown on a unicycle as well?”

  He hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, but there it was, he’d said what he’d said. The golden boy had returned, after all. So Henry upended his glass and finished the dregs.

  “Right—well, things to do. See you about, Cap’n George—Tom, you too.” Henry made a sarcastic salute, then shoved his hands into his pockets and made for the gate at the side of the beer garden.

  Chapter Three

  George Standish-Brookes, of course, was never the first to leave a party. Nor was he the last, for he knew the value in leaving people wanting more. He drank a little, laughed a lot, signed the requisite number of autographs on all manner of objects and posed for a week’s worth of ph
otos in a couple of hours. He smiled to think that he had even considered trying to make his return to Longley Parva low-key, for he wouldn’t know how to do low-key if his life depended on it.

  After the noise and bustle of London, the frantic pressure of the filmed circumnavigation, the weight of the deadlines that must be met, the quiet streets of his childhood village were indeed a balm to a soul that nobody would ever have guessed might have known a moment’s unhappiness. He strolled across the green, his hands in his pockets, and paused before the war memorial, blinking as he read the inscription through the darkness.

  Let those who come after see to it that their names are not forgotten.

  Captain George Standish-Brookes, the most dashing officer in the Household Cavalry, bowed his head for a few seconds in recognition of that shared sacrifice. Then he lifted his gaze and looked up into the heavens, the Milky Way blazing bright, studding the ink-black sky.

  And there was a shooting star, as if on cue.

  What an opening this would make to the book.

  With that thought, George set off once again toward the cottage where he had grown from a babe into a boy and from there into a young man, ready to go off and fight for the country he loved. Here his father had died and his mother had worked and now, with Alexandra Standish-Brookes—call me Andie, darling—off making pots in her commune in Marrakech, this ramshackle pink cottage, shielded by trees and roses, its lopsided windows glowing with lamplight, was his home once more, at least for the summer.

  Just the place for a chap to unwind, not to mention make a village famous.

  At the door of the cottage he stopped and breathed in the scent of the climbing roses that framed the entrance. To his right a hedgehog snuffled through the grass, to his left a nightingale sang and, somewhere in the darkness, he heard the cry of a fox.

  This was a long way from London.

  George unlocked the door and stooped beneath the heavy-beamed head jamb into the low light of the hallway. Standing among the bright paintings on either side, his feet muffled by the vivid woven rug on the flagstone floor, he was instantly catapulted back to childhood. Mrs. Linley had done a sterling job in keeping the place homely during his mother’s travels, and even now he could hear the chaos of this house. There had always been children playing and the radio booming, Andie shaping her pots or baking disastrous bread and trying and failing to make jam.

  Now the cottage carried the fragrance of the bright, freshly cut blooms on every windowsill and there was no sound at all. He couldn’t quite decide if it was wonderful or unbearable.

  Wonderful, he told himself. And it’ll be even better when the mystery is solved.

  Chapter Four

  On Monday morning, Henry was halfway out of his front door when the post arrived, courtesy of Manjit. He was still chewing his toast and managed to smear an important-looking envelope in Tiptree Tawny marmalade. The envelope demanded his attention, but so did his day ahead, a diary full of appointments, farmers and distressed pet owners.

  And now another complication.

  “There’s a man in your lake, by the way.” Manjit nodded across the gardens toward a circle of bulrushes in a natural dip of the lawn by the driveway. She grinned as if this was not surprising in the least and hopped onto her bicycle, the bell trilling as she pedaled away.

  A man, in the lake of Longley Parva Manor?

  Henry stuffed the soiled envelope into the pocket of his fourth-best tweed suit and strode across the lawn.

  People didn’t swim in the lake and nor would they ever—it was ornamental, a thing to be looked at now and again and fretted about whenever a daring cat jumped on its frozen surface in the coldest winters. Of course, before he even admitted it to himself, Henry knew there was only one man who would dare to have trespassed so shamelessly on the family land. When he reached the edge of the lake and saw the sun glistening off George Standish-Brookes’ broad shoulders a second before they disappeared beneath the surface, his worst fears were realized.

  “Get out of my bloody lake, man! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He had no idea if George could hear him under the water, but Henry couldn’t stop the words as they escaped him in a shout. Perhaps George couldn’t, he realized, as his former friend surfaced for a second then dived down again. Either that or he was simply ignoring the squire of Longley Parva Manor.

  Henry yelled and waved his arms about. “George, for God’s sake, you idiot!” No Captain George now, not even a sarcastic one. “The last thing I need today is a drowning in my sodding lake!”

  Especially not the drowning of a beloved local celebrity.

  “What’s that, old chap?” George broke through the mirrored surface, beaming at Henry. He tossed his head back, a shower of water spraying from his hair in the sunlight. “Bit naughty, I know, but I remembered the lake and just couldn’t resist!”

  Another angered shout was ready on Henry’s lips, but it died away at the sight of George’s chest, partly visible above the water. Henry had seen it in the flesh before, of course, but on the body of a gangly youth. And, like everyone else, had seen the more mature, muscled version on television. Shocked audiences wrote to Points of View to complain if that toned chest and stomach weren’t bared to the camera at least once per episode of George’s television series.

  “You’ll—you’ll catch your death.” Henry pointed his toe toward George’s discarded clothes.

  “You’re talking to an enthusiastic ice swimmer.” George laughed. “Come on, jump in!”

  Oh, yes, the ice swimming.

  Henry had seen that episode. More than once.

  “I don’t have time! And—and I can’t go swimming in a lake. It’s full of reeds. You can’t see the bottom. And you’ve probably disturbed my newts!”

  But Henry had swum the lake as a boy, with his friend George. They’d dared each other, raced each other, dived and splashed and laughed until the sun had set.

  What had happened to that Henry Fitzwalter? Was he still there somewhere under the tweeds and the corduroy and the sensible brogues?

  Of course not. What a ludicrous notion. The boy had fled.

  “Your newts are perfectly happy, Fitz!” George lifted his arms and slicked his hand back over his wet hair. “Now come on, like the good old days? The pre-cricket bat days?”

  Henry twisted the top button of his jacket. Awkward, he swung his foot and peered over his shoulder at the driveway as if someone was watching them. He took out his fob watch.

  “I’m going to be late.”

  “What’s the verdict on the lake?” George’s arms were gently scything the water now, keeping him afloat. “Any objections to me taking a morning swim like back in the day?”

  The muscles in George’s shoulders rippled with his movements. Henry looked away, glancing down at his toes, which were wet with the dew.

  “Yes, I do mind! Get out of my bloody lake!”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, waiting for George to leave. His fingers touched the envelope. Henry fished it out and turned it over to look at the return address.

  It was from a solicitor’s, Pennycuick & Sons.

  “I’m swimming,” George informed him brightly. “Come on, Fitz, don’t be such a bore!”

  “You can’t just dive into someone’s lake like that, it’s not on! And anyway, I’ve got a letter here from a bloody solicitor, and you titting about in my bloody lake is the last sodding straw! Get out before I fetch the bloody boat hook and drag you out!”

  “Calm down, Fitz.” George laughed in the way that a man with no worries was able to do. Then, at a leisurely pace, he began to swim toward the lakeshore. Henry watched his interloper crest through the reedy water like a sleek otter. But the letter was burning in Henry’s hand. He looked away from the glistening water creature and opened the envelope carefully.

  Henry read the letter through three times. He still didn’t understand it, although its contents seemed to be a presentiment of doom. Per
taining to the intestate… Copyhold property… Unsubstantiated claim by descent… Grossly immoral conduct of one William Fitzwalter Esq… Prior historical claim… Enclosures Act… On behalf of our client…

  “Our client Ed Belcher? What the devil—?”

  Henry took one step then stumbled, his knees buckling under him. He knelt on the ground, the letter on the lawn beside him. Frowning at the clinical, typed text, he tried to understand the import of what he had just read.

  “Bad news?” George’s voice was concerned. Henry heard the sound of splashing as his friend left the lake and a shadow fell, telling him that George was standing just a few feet away. “Is there an’ ’ole in t’op ’edge, vet’n’ry? Is tha’ sheep worryin’ tha’ pigs?”

  “What the bloody hell are you on about—was that supposed to be a Yorkshire accent? It sounded more like you’ve contracted lockjaw from swimming in the lake!” Henry flicked the back of his hand against the letter as if it were a particularly annoying fly.

  “It’s from Ed Belcher’s lawyers. It—it sounds as if Ed is making a claim that Longley Parva Manor is by rights his. You know what happened, don’t you? Napoleonic Wars, my hellraiser ancestor played a cricket match and—so they say—William Fitzwalter gambled the house. He was playing against Ed’s ancestor, and your ancestor, Reverend Standish, umpired. And the silly sods were too drunk to know who won. And now Ed has chosen this moment to rake up a two-hundred-year-old family squabble—as if that bloody prat needed any more money!”

  “Ed was a bully at school, he’s a bully now.” George shrugged, his hands resting on his hips where a pair of thankfully generous swimming shorts ended and his naked torso began. “Chuck it away, pop your hand up a cow’s rear end and crack on with the day!”

  Henry tried to look George in the eye. “What sort of— Chuck it away? It’s a letter from a lawyer, you can’t just chuck it away!”