LITMIR.BIZ

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get off his seat and scarper, and allow the woman her privacy, but there was the hygiene aspect of his sojourn that had yet to be attended to. He glanced around him in the dimness looking for squares of paper.

      Happily, he was released from his dilemma when the woman stood up and allowed her skirts to fall back.

      ‘I’m mekkin’ a cup o’ tay. Dun yer want e’er un? I’ll bring thee one out if yo’ve a mind.’

      ‘No, thank you,’ Arthur replied with a shake of his head. ‘That’s very kind. But I’m just on my way. I just popped in for a quick one.’

      ‘Suit yerself then, my son. Ta-ra.’

      Arthur lived with his father, whom he hated, and his mother whom he felt sorry for, in Brierley Hill in a lane called Lower Delph, commonly referred to as The Delph. His older brother Talbot had fled the nest to feather his own when he was married some five years earlier, to a fine girl rejoicing in the name Magnolia. The family business had been founded by his father years ago and was conducted from the workshop, yard and stables which adjoined the house. Arthur was a man of many interests, but his big love was cricket.

      The only cricket team he had access to play for was the one loosely attached to the old red brick church of St Michael, which he regularly attended on Sundays. The solemnity of Anglican worship and the richness of religious language appealed to his serious side. St Michael’s cricket team played their home matches on a decently maintained area of flat ground in Silver End, adjacent to the railway line. Now Arthur was afraid that the acute bout of diarrhoea he’d suffered that very morning might manifest itself again on the cricket field, which would be to his ultimate embarrassment.

      ‘I’ve cut you some bread to go with this, my lad,’ his mother, Dinah, said as she placed a bowl of groaty pudding and hefty chunks of a loaf before him at the scullery table. ‘It’ll help bung yer up.’

      ‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said miserably, repeating the supplication he’d made perched on the seat of the Pensnett privy. He wore an exaggerated look of pain on his face to elicit his mother’s sympathy.

      ‘Your father’s feeling none too well either.’ She returned to the mug of beer she’d neglected while serving Arthur’s dinner, and took a gulp.

      Arthur dipped a lump of bread into the stew-like morass. ‘But I bet he ain’t got the diarrhee, has he? You can’t imagine what it’s like being took short in a graveyard with the diarrhee and no privy for miles.’

      ‘There’s ne’er a privy at the cricket pitch neither, but that ain’t going to stop you playing cricket there this afternoon by the looks of it,’ Dinah remarked astutely. ‘’Tis to be hoped as you’m well enough to knock a few runs without shitting yourself.’

      ‘’Tis to be hoped,’ Arthur said again and grinned, thankful that his family were not so high-faluting that they could not discuss such delicate matters in plain English at the scullery table. ‘I’m nursing meself so as I can play cricket this afternoon.’

      ‘I wish I’d got the time to nurse meself,’ Dinah said, and took another swig of beer. ‘I’m certain sure as I’ve sprained me wrist humping buckets of coal up from the damn cellar.’

      Arthur contemplated that it did not prevent her from lifting a mug of beer, but made no comment. ‘I’d have fetched the coal up for you,’ he said instead and winced as if there were another twinge of pain in his gut. ‘You know I would.’

      ‘Never mind, you weren’t here.’

      ‘It’s just a pity Father’s too miserable to spend money employing a maid. You could have sent the maid to the cellar for coal.’

      ‘A maid? He’ll never employ a maid. He’s too mean.’

      ‘That’s what I just said.’

      Arthur finished his dinner, fetched his bat from the cupboard under the stairs and walked steadily and circumspectly to the cricket field, looking forward to the game against Stourbridge Cricket Club with a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.

      St Michael’s team lost the match. Arthur was the sixth man to bat, surviving the remaining batsmen who came after him. His team needed fifty-five runs to win and Arthur felt it was his responsibility to try and get those runs. But he experienced that dreaded loose feeling in his bowels again and had no option but to get himself run out when they still needed forty-eight, ending the team’s innings. It turned out to be a false alarm, and Arthur sincerely regretted having thrown the match.

      ‘I couldn’t run,’ he lamented to Joey Eccleston, with whom he had been batting at the end. They walked back together to the tent that was always erected on match days, to a ripple of applause from the attendant wives and sweethearts. ‘I had the diarrhee this morning and I was afeared to shake me guts up too much for fear it come on again.’

      ‘Well, we tried, Arthur,’ Joey said philosophically and patted his colleague on the back. ‘You especially. But we were no match for Stourbridge today. Next year, maybe. There’s always next year. Next year we’ll give ’em a thrashing … Coming for a drink after?’

      ‘No, I’m due an early night, Joe. I promised my mother. My guts are still all of a quiver. I got to get myself better for work on Monday. The old man’s already queer ’cause I didn’t finish my job off this morning. Maybe I’ll have a spot or two of laudanum to go to bed with.’

      ‘It won’t hurt you to come for a drink first. A drop of brandy or whisky would settle your stomach. You don’t have to stop out late. It’s been the last match of the season today. We’ll all be going. You can’t not come as well.’

      They reached the tent and Arthur pulled off his old and worn batting gloves. ‘I suppose it’ll be regarded as bad form if I don’t go, eh, Joey?’

      ‘Sure to be. Anyway, you don’t want to be seen as some stick-in-the-mud, or that you’re mollycoddled.’

      Arthur grinned matily. ‘Me mollycoddled? That’ll be the day.’

      ‘That’s settled then.’

      ‘So where are we going for a drink?’

      ‘We’ve settled on the Whimsey.’

      The gentlemen of the church cricket team arrived at the Whimsey about eight o’ clock, as the last embers of sunset were finally extinguished. Those who were blessed with wives or lady friends allowed them to attend and they occupied a room they called the parlour and chattered animatedly with each other, while the men stood in three groups in the taproom and got on with the serious business of drinking and analysing their defeat.

      The Whimsey had opened for business in 1815. It was situated a couple of hundred yards below St Michael’s church on the busy turnpike road where it was called Church Street. By the time Benjamin Elwell took it over in 1840 it was a well-established concern. Being a Saturday night the Whimsey was busy, and would get even busier. Already, the taproom was hazy with a blue mist of tobacco smoke from the men’s clay pipes, and noisy from the voices of folk trying to be heard over the chatter of their neighbours.

      ‘Pity you and Joey Eccleston couldn’t keep up your innings a bit longer, Arthur,’ James Paskin, the team captain, commented.

      ‘I’m sorry, James,’ Arthur answered guiltily, and took a quick slurp of his beer to avoid James’s eyes. ‘I was telling Joey – I had a bad bout of the diarrhee this morning and I was afeared of churning me guts up again on the cricket pitch, so I couldn’t run very well. I didn’t fancy being took short between the wickets.’

      ‘Good Lord, I didn’t realise,’ James said with concern. ‘In that case it was a valiant effort. Do you feel all right now?’

      ‘Still a bit queer, to tell the truth.’

      ‘Well, they beat us fair and square, Arthur. I didn’t have a very good innings myself, nor did old Dingwell Tromans.’

      ‘We’ll do better next season,’ Arthur said, although

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