Growing Pains Read online

  Richard nodded and grinned, and they struggled off the platform, up the ramp and through the teeming concourse to the ticket office.

  A sad farce followed. Realisation came to Stephen — as such realisations always come — at the worst possible moment, when they had at last reached the head of the long queue and Stephen had ordered the first-class tickets importantly, only to be reminded by the more thoughtful Richard that they already possessed ordinary tickets. He promptly asked to amend his requirement to paying the difference, but he wasn’t quite prompt enough for the clerk, who had already run full first-class tickets through his machine, and was less than pleased to be told that they were no longer wanted. The lengthening queue behind them tut-tutted and grumbled and went for short walks of impatient exasperation.

  The clerk, who couldn’t care less if the entire queue missed their trains and got home late, or whether they ever got home at all, eventually agreed to accept the difference between the ordinary fare and the first-class, and thrust two laboriously hand-written tickets at them through the slot below his security glass. It was at that critical moment that Stephen was struck by a sudden thought. His hand flew to his mouth, but the thought was so appalling that for a moment he was left at a loss for words. As soon as he thought he could speak again he turned to Richard, who was eying the queue behind them uneasily. “I say,” he hissed in Richard’s ear. Richard looked anxiously at him, detecting the incipient panic in his voice.

  “What’s up?” he demanded. “Look, for Christ’s sake pay up and let’s get out of here. This lot’ll fucking lynch us if we make them all miss their trains.”

  “Yes,” hissed Stephen, “but that’s just it. Have you got any loot on you?”

  Richard stared at him in gathering horror. “Loot?” he queried blankly. “What d’you mean, loot? You’ve got…” The words dried in his throat as the appalling truth dawned on him. “Oh, Christ!” he said, and it came out as almost a sob. “Jesus. It’s only a cheque, isn’t it? Oh, help.” He fumbled frantically in his pocket, and produced three pound coins, a fifty-pence piece and a few coppers. “That any good?” he asked in a desperate whisper. Stephen seized the coins from his friend’s hand, nodding eagerly. Unfortunately he fumbled in his haste and they managed to drop all the coins, which rolled off in all directions, chased by both boys and a dozen or more of the increasingly enraged would-be commuters behind them, who were by this stage rapidly approaching a state of mutiny — probably homicidal mutiny, reflected Richard bitterly as he darted, sweating profusely, in crabwise, stooping pursuit of an apparently motorised five-pence piece, ending up grovelling miserably at the highly-polished feet of a military-looking gentleman who surveyed him from on high with intense, moustache-twitching disapproval.

  They managed eventually to track down most, at least, of the errant coins, and pooled their resources, not daring even to consider the possibility of not having quite enough as they added the last few pence together. They found that they had the required sum with eleven pence to spare, heaved vast, simultaneous sighs of relief, and, at last, took their tickets, thrust the clattering collection of coins under the grille to the frowning clerk, and escaped.

  “Fuck me!” breathed Richard as they hastened away from the near-homicidal queue. “I never want to have to go through anything like that again. They’d have just about been ready to tear us limb from limb if we’d taken any longer. What about a coffee?” he suggested as an afterthought.

  “What with?” asked Stephen, who was beginning to quiver with internal laughter. Richard saw him shaking, and started to laugh himself.

  They halted, counted their last eleven pence, and gave it, with ill-suppressed explosions of laughter, to a puzzled wino, who stared at them through watery eyes and an alcoholic haze and thought he had identified kindred spirits. Then they charged down the ramp, forced their way aboard the first train going to their station and found their way to the first-class section. When they reached it they found that it was so full that they had to stand in conditions almost as cramped as those that had sent them on their ill-fated mission in the first place. For the duration of their half-hour journey the remainder of the weary, squashed and hideously uncomfortable passengers devoted a great deal of speculation to why the two good-looking and smartly-blazered boys among them persistently doubled up in convulsive laughter every time they managed to catch one another’s eye.

  * * *

  By the time they got off their train they were weak to the point of falling down, from a lethal combination of high excitement, emotional shock, hysterical laughter and the delayed-action effects of nearly half a bottle each of very good Burgundy. They tumbled off the train and emerged in the forecourt feeling slightly sick, but otherwise in a high, and slightly drunken, good humour.

  “Cricket club?” suggested Stephen. “We can borrow some money there — specially with this cheque to borrow it against.”

  But Richard demurred. “No,” he said quietly, the hilarious mood of the last hour evaporating as they found themselves left behind by the galloping crowds and able to think calmly once more. “He said you oughtn’t to flash your money about, didn’t he?” he went on, alluding to some of the good advice the sharp operator had offered Stephen in the wine bar. “No point in telling the whole world you’ve come into money. No, my lovely,” he said, “Let’s go home for a minute. I’d kill for a cup of tea. And I know where I can lay my hands on a bit of cash, too. Dad always leaves me with an emergency reserve — sort of float, in case there are any bills they’ve forgotten, and so on. I can raid that. They wouldn’t mind, in the circumstances. Besides, you can pay the cheque in tomorrow, and then draw some in a day or so’s time, so nobody’ll ever be the wiser. Then we’ll go to the club. How’s that sound, sweet?”

  “It sounds fine,” said Stephen tenderly. “You’re a good chap, Rich. Don’t ever let me forget that, will you?”

  Richard stared at him for a moment. Then he smiled, a sexy, lascivious smile which Stephen recognised very well. They set off for home at a fast walk, and didn’t make the cricket club that evening.

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday, and they were both up early, having been in bed for fifteen hours, and asleep for much of the time. Stephen left Richard cooking breakfast while he trotted into the town centre to pay in his cheque at the solitary Saturday-opening bank. He watched the bored girl behind the security glass closely as he handed over his cheque, and was deeply disappointed when she stamped the slip and returned the stub without a glance. So much, he thought, for being rich, wondering if a cheque for a million would have brought a trace of animation to her face. He giggled to himself as the thought suddenly popped into his head that he was glad he preferred boys. He walked cheerfully out of the bank, never knowing that while his cheque had not done a thing to raise the bored girl’s temperature, his sudden chuckle and his very fair looks had done a great deal. She watched him all the way through the revolving door before returning to the paperback she had out of sight beneath her counter.

  When he got home Richard had made a huge breakfast, for which they were both more than ready, having fallen straight into bed when they had got back early the previous evening. They wolfed it, then set to an eager assessment of the cricket match to come that day. Richard had thoughtfully included Stephen’s cricket bag among the things he had brought back with him after his deckclearing visit to Saint-Hippolyte, and Stephen had found some solace during the hardest part of the previous week in pressing his flannels, cleaning and whitening his pads and boots and meticulously cleaning the face of his bat. He sat with it now, remembering his last birthday but one, when Graham had presented it to him on one of his clandestine visits to his flat in the town.

  He stroked the creamy, silky-textured blade, and suddenly bent forward and kissed it fondly. “Lots of runs from you this season, my darling,” he whispered tenderly. Richard, who knew the bat’s provenance, turned his head away, too moved for words. But Stephen saw the movement, and looked
up, instantly concerned. “There’s three things I want for today,” he said softly. Richard raised his eyebrows. “I’m going to get a hundred today,” went on Stephen. “For… him. And five wickets — for me. And the third thing I want,” he added, very tenderly, “is you. For you. We’ve got time. You’re my banker. I may not get the ton or the wickets, but I can have you, if you’re willing.” Richard looked down at the mug he was drying up, and finished polishing it as if it was ceremonial plate. He put it carefully back in its place in a cupboard and hung the tea-cloth equally carefully on its peg to dry before he raised his eyes again to look into Stephen’s.

  “I love you, Steve,” he said simply.

  * * *

  Stephen came so close to his extravagant target that they reckoned afterwards that it counted as achieved.

  The news of his loss had gone round the cricket club long since, and everybody was very kind to him when he and Richard sauntered up to the clubhouse an hour and a half before play was due to start. They gathered round him and made a fuss of him, telling how glad they were to see him back in the fold. The players had also put two and two together about Stephen’s relationship with Richard, and once the necessary homage to Graham’s shade was over, the two of them came in for a certain amount of ribaldry. But, in marked contrast to the unpleasant, prurient rumour-mongering that had caused Graham and Stephen such distress the previous year, it had the virtue of being open ribaldry, of much the same rough and ready kind as everybody else got in equal measures, and as such was robbed of offence.

  “We’re throwing first,” said the Boston Ramblers captain ruefully as he strolled back to the pavilion with Bill after the second and third elevens had been chased out of the bar and seen off to their away matches. Don Parker and his partner disappeared into the dressing room to pad up. Bill ambled across to the scorebox, where Stephen was watching the lights come on in the various boxes on the scoreboard while Richard, inside the box, flicked switches, sharpened pencils and hunted for moth-eaten cushions to mitigate the worst effects of his and his colleague’s hard chairs. “Yeah, all okay,” shouted Stephen. “All showing zero.”

  “Get your pads on, Steve,” said Bill, dropping a heavy arm across his shoulders. Stephen looked at him in surprise. “Number three,” said Bill, on his way back to the enclosure. Stephen and Richard looked at each other, and smiled. It was a gesture typical of Bill: kind, generous but yet unobtrusive; and quite clearly intended as a last small tribute to Graham’s memory. First wicket down had been Graham’s regular position. Stephen popped into the scorebox and drew Richard into the cobwebby darkness of the far corner. They gave each other a hard, hurried embrace amongst the paper sacks of Surrey loam and a broken wheelbarrow that people had been meaning to repair for twenty years. Richard kissed Stephen softly as he prepared to dash back to the dressing room. “Get that hundred, my lovely,” he whispered. “For me, as well as him.” Stephen turned back, his eyes gleaming in the semi-darkness, and gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek. “I’ll do my best,” he said, and was gone.

  A few minutes later, promptly at one-thirty — Bill was a martinet about starting games on time — Don and his partner walked out of the dressing room, looked up into the sky to accustom their eyes to the unseasonable but welcome mild sunshine, and walked briskly to the wickets.

  Don’s partner was a newcomer, who had moved into the area over the winter. He was a batsman with a prodigious reputation, who opened the batting for a Minor County side and had averaged eighty-odd for it over the past five seasons. He was a lightish-brown West Indian, very big built but on the portly side, and had a fondness for enormous floppy white billycock hats. On account of his colour, his spherical tendencies and his hats he was known as Paddington Bear, usually abbreviated to P-B. More than half the side had no idea of his real name.

  The Boston Ramblers’ opening bowler was fearsomely quick, but his great accuracy was feared more. It was not at all funny to go in first and face a barrage of ferociously hostile inswingers, all on or about off stump and on a full length, interspersed with the occasional villainous ball that pitched on the identical spot, but fizzed and lifted, or, occasionally, sheered the crucial half-inch away to the off, while the predatory ring of slips and gulleys licked their chops and grinned evilly.

  Don Parker, like most cricketers, was superstitious, and his little foible took the form of an intense dislike of facing the first ball of an innings. Accordingly Paddington Bear settled into his negligent, rather two-eyed stance, leaning on his bat as if he was trying to push it into the ground like a stump, and waited for the first ball of the season. The bowler licked his fingers, did a little stuttering movement with his feet, then settled into his run. It was not very long, but rhythmical and economical of energy, which had enabled him to bowl unchanged many times throughout an innings. He leapt gracefully into a perfect delivery stride that reminded some of the old men sitting in deckchairs in the enclosure of Ray Lindwall, the middle-aged ones of Dennis Lillee, and the young ones of Michael Holding.

  The ball was prodigiously fast; but for once the bowler’s line strayed a little, and it pitched a fraction of an inch outside Paddington Bear’s leg stump. He didn’t bother with a backlift at all; just moved the bat in a short arc, with a kind of short-armed motion, and without any effort at all flicked the ball slightly backward of square-leg, over the row of very tall, newly-budding poplar trees on that boundary, and out of the ground.

  There was a howl of delight from the pavilion enclosure, followed by a stream of white-clad figures running round the boundary to find the ball. They were beaten to it by a small boy, who lobbed it back to square-leg, waiting for it with a rueful grin on his face. “I wouldn’t mind bettin it’s the first time he’s been pinged for six first ball of a season,” he grinned to Bill and the others as they stopped in their rush to find the ball. “First time I’ve ever seen such a thing,” said Bill delightedly. They decided to turn their mission of assistance into a stroll round the boundary, but stood watching in great curiosity to see what form the bowler’s reprisal for such an outrageous assault would take.

  “Betcha he drops it short,” said Alan Hood, Bill’s vice-captain. uNah!” said Bill. “Waste a time on this strip. Like bowlin on Christmas pudd’n. No, he’ll try an york him, you see.”

  Bill was right. The bowler, furious though he was at being treated in so dismissive a manner, was nonetheless far too good a cricketer to waste a delivery on a gesture of outrage that, on that pitch, would have been stillborn. The next ball was even faster than its predecessor, and had the advantage of not losing any of its sting by contact with the deadening pitch. It speared in lethally at the roots of Paddington Bear’s middle and off stumps, low and swinging just the right amount. It was a beautiful ball, the perfect response of a very good cricketer indeed to an act of outrageous disrespect.

  Paddington Bear watched the ball closely, as if inspecting a form of bug hitherto unknown to science, and, at the very last moment, dropped the deadest bat in the county on it, killing it stone dead in his blockhole. In its way it was a still more magnificent stroke of batsmanship than the six the ball before, and the players walking round greeted it with a roar still louder than for the six. Like the six, it was played with such masterly ease, and such total lack of any conspicuous effort, that everyone on the ground knew they were in the presence of a cricketer a class above almost anyone else there, except, probably, Don Parker.

  For the next twenty minutes they watched in deep appreciation as Paddington Bear treated them to a short but champagne-quality exhibition of batsmanship. On a pitch which made scoring runs at least as difficult as bowling penetratively, he scored 47, taking runs all round the wicket, and not missing a single chance of scoring. It was a masterpiece of an innings, and when he was out, caught on the backward point boundary attempting to square cut a six to reach his fifty, he was cheered from the wicket to the dressing room, including by the opposition. “Sorry, Bill,” he said in his pronounced London acce
nt as he threw his bat down and dropped heavily into a deckchair. “Can’t seem to stop playin these risky shots.” Bill laughed. “We’ll forgive you this once,” he said. “But see that it doesn’t happen again. Good luck, our kid,” he went on, addressing Stephen, who had risen lithely from his deckchair and was just setting off to the wicket, adjusting his school XI cap. Stephen turned and gave him a faintly apprehensive smile. “Just play your own game, kid,” said Bill. “No hurry. An don’t try an square cut any sixes, or it’s jugsville for you, like him.” He jabbed an elbow in Paddington Bear’s ribs.

  Stephen grinned. “They ought to be pretty well softened up,” he said mildly, and walked briskly out to the middle, where he played without a trace of PB-style flamboyance but very well indeed, hitting bad balls mercilessly, scampering singles so fast that they turned into twos and left Don Parker, who was twenty years older than Stephen, complaining and asking the umpire to call a cardiologist. At four o’clock he wanted seven for his century. Bill pursed his lips, for he hated teams that batted on when they were in no trouble; but he decided to give Stephen five minutes or so to make his hundred. Next ball Stephen, tiring rapidly, tried to whip an innocuous half-volley on leg stump through mid-wicket. The only fate it deserved was to be retrieved from the hedge by the perspiring mid-on. As it was, he played it a fraction early, got a leading edge, and spooned up a dolly of a return catch to the bowler, who was so surprised that he dropped it, tried again, juggled it, dropped it again, and caught it triumphantly and in unprintable relief as it bounced a foot upwards off his knee. Bill declared, and they came in with a far more than respectable 227 on Richard’s board for the loss of two wickets.