Flashman’s Lady. George Fraser MacDonald

privy – you were off to get your leg in plaster, no error. But now they shuffle about the crease like yokels in gaiters, and that great muffin Grace bleats like a ruptured choirboy if a fast ball comes near him. Wouldn’t I just have liked to get him on the old Lord’s wicket after a dry summer, with the pitch rock-hard, Mynn sending down his trimmers from one end and myself going all-out at t’other – they wouldn’t have been calling him the ‘Champion’ then, I may tell you; the old b-----’s beard would have been snow-white after two overs. And the same goes for that fat black nawab and the pup Fry, too.

      From this you may gather that I was a bowler myself, not a batter, and if I say I was a d----d good one, well, the old scores are there to back me up. Seven for 32 against the Gentlemen of Kent, five for 12 against the England XI, and a fair number of runs as a tail-end slogger to boot. Not that I prided myself on my batting; as I’ve said, it could be a risky business against fast men in the old days, when wickets were rough, and I may tell you privately that I took care never to face up to a really scorching bowler without woollen scarves wrapped round my legs (under my flannels) and an old tin soup-bowl over my essentials; sport’s all very well, but you mustn’t let it incapacitate you for the manliest game of all. No, just let me go in about number eight or nine, when the slow lobbers and twisters were practising their wiles, and I could slash away in safety, and then, when t’other side had their innings – give me that ball and a thirty-pace run-up and just watch me make ’em dance.

      It may strike you that old Flashy’s approach to our great summer game wasn’t quite that of your school-storybook hero, apple-cheeked and manly, playing up unselfishly for the honour of the side and love of his gallant captain, revelling in the jolly rivalry of bat and ball while his carefree laughter rings across the green sward. No, not exactly; personal glory and cheap wickets however you could get ’em, and d--n the honour of the side, that was my style, with a few quid picked up in side-bets, and plenty of skirt-chasing afterwards among the sporting ladies who used to ogle us big hairy fielders over their parasols at Canterbury Week. That’s the spirit that wins matches, and you may take my word for it, and ponder our recent disastrous showing against the Australians while you’re about it.¹

      Of course, I speak as one who learned his cricket in the golden age, when I was a miserable fag at Rugby, toadying my way up the school and trying to keep a whole skin in that infernal jungle – you took your choice of emerging a physical wreck or a moral one, and I’m glad to say I never hesitated, which is why I’m the man I am today, what’s left of me. I snivelled and bought my way to safety when I was a small boy, and bullied and tyrannised when I was a big one; how the d---l I’m not in the House of Lords by now, I can’t think. That’s by the way; the point is that Rugby taught me only two things really well, survival and cricket, for I saw even at the tender age of eleven that while bribery, fawning, and deceit might ensure the former, they weren’t enough to earn a popular reputation, which is a very necessary thing. For that, you had to shine at games, and cricket was the only one for me.

      Not that I cared for it above half, at first, but the other great sport was football, and that was downright dangerous; I rubbed along at it only by limping up late to the scrimmages yelping: ‘Play up, you fellows, do! Oh, confound this game leg of mine!’ and by developing a knack of missing my charges against bigger men by a fraction of an inch, plunging on the turf just too late with heroic gasps and roarings.² Cricket was peace and tranquillity by comparison, without any danger of being hacked in the members – and I turned out to be uncommon good at it.

      I say this in all modesty; as you may know, I have three other prime talents, for horses, languages, and fornication, but they’re all God-given, and no credit that I can claim. But I worked to make myself a cricketer, d----d hard I worked, which is probably why, when I look back nowadays on the rewards and trophies of an eventful life – the medals, the knighthood, the accumulated cash, the military glory, the drowsy, satisfied women – all in all, there’s not much I’m prouder of than those five wickets for 12 runs against the flower of England’s batters, or that one glorious over at Lord’s in ’42 when – but I’ll come to that in a moment, for it’s where my present story really begins.

      I suppose, if Fuller Pilch had got his bat down just a split second sooner, it would all have turned out different. The Skrang pirates wouldn’t have been burned out of their h--lish nest, the black queen of Madagascar would have had one lover fewer (not that she’d have missed a mere one, I daresay, the insatiable great b---h), the French and British wouldn’t have bombarded Tamitave, and I’d have been spared kidnapping, slavery, blowpipes, and the risk of death and torture in unimaginable places – aye, old Fuller’s got a lot to answer for, God rest him. However, that’s anticipating – I was telling you how I became a fast bowler at Rugby, which is a necessary preliminary.

      It was in the ’thirties, you see, that round-arm bowling came into its own, and fellows like Mynn got their hands up shoulder-high. It changed the game like nothing since, for we saw what fast bowling could be – and it was fast – you talk about Spofforth and Brown, but none of them kicked up the dust like those early trimmers. Why, I’ve seen Mynn bowl to five slips and three long-stops, and his deliveries going over ’em all, first bounce right down to Lord’s gate. That’s my ticket, thinks I, and I took up the new slinging style, at first because it was capital fun to buzz the ball round the ears of rabbits and funks who couldn’t hit back, but I soon found this didn’t answer against serious batters, who pulled and drove me all over the place. So I mended my ways until I could whip my fastest ball onto a crown piece, four times out of five, and as I grew tall I became faster still, and was in a fair way to being Cock of Big Side – until that memorable afternoon when the puritan prig Arnold took exception to my being carried home sodden drunk, and turfed me out of the school. Two weeks before the Marylebone match, if you please – well, they lost it without me, which shows that while piety and sobriety may ensure you eternal life, they ain’t enough to beat the MCC.

      However, that was an end to my cricket for a few summers, for I was packed off to the Army and Afghanistan, where I shuddered my way through the Kabul retreat, winning undeserved but undying fame in the siege of Jallalabad. All of which I’ve related elsewhere;^fn1 sufficient to say that I bilked, funked, ran for dear life and screamed for mercy as occasion demanded, all through that ghastly campaign, and came out with four medals, the thanks of Parliament, an audience of our Queen, and a handshake from the Duke of Wellington. It’s astonishing what you can make out of a bad business if you play your hand right and look noble at the proper time.

      Anyway, I came home a popular hero in the late summer of ’42, to a rapturous reception from the public and my beautiful idiot wife Elspeth. Being lionised and fêted, and making up for lost time by whoring and carousing to excess, I didn’t have much time in the first few months for lighter diversions, but it chanced that I was promenading down Regent Street one afternoon, twirling my cane with my hat on three hairs and seeking what I might devour, when I found myself outside ‘The Green Man’. I paused, idly – and that moment’s hesitation launched me on what was perhaps the strangest adventure of my life.

      It’s long gone now, but in those days ‘The Green Man’ was a famous haunt of cricketers, and it was the sight of bats and stumps and other paraphernalia of the game in the window that suddenly brought back memories, and awoke a strange hunger – not to play, you understand, but just to smell the atmosphere again, and hear the talk of batters and bowlers, and the jargon and gossip. So I turned in, ordered a plate of tripe and a quart of home-brewed, exchanged a word or two with the jolly pipe-smokers in the tap, and was soon so carried away by the homely fare, the cheery talk and laughter, and the clean hearty air of the place, that I found myself wishing I’d gone on to the Haymarket and got myself a dish of hot spiced trollop instead. Still, there was time before supper, and I was just calling the waiter to settle up when I noticed a fellow staring at me across the room. He met my eye, shoved his chair back, and came over.

      ‘I say,’ says he, ‘aren’t you Flashman?’ He said it almost warily, as though he didn’t wish quite to believe it. I was used to this sort of thing by now, and having fellows fawn and admire the hero of Jallalabad, but this chap didn’t look like a toad-eater. He was as tall as I was, brown-faced and square-chinned, with a keen look about him, as though he couldn’t wait