The Elderbrook Brothers by Gerald Bullet Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t know that they do, but they could,’ said Matthew, retreating from an impossible position. ‘If they wanted to,’ he added, making the thing incontestable.
    â€˜That’s rather different, isn’t it?’ she retorted primly.
    â€˜Is it?’ said Matthew. ‘Not so very.’
    The softness and fairness of her skin was a miracle. Her downiness made him think of newly hatched chicks. The curve of her cheek and the blue of her eyes, like the sky with a hint of gold in it …
    She glanced at him half-amusedly, prodding the ground with her parasol.
    â€˜Pigs might fly,’ she said. ‘But they don’t.’
    â€˜They haven’t got wings, that’s why,’ said Matthew. ‘There’s no comparison.’
    â€˜No comparison? Who said so?’
    â€˜Between girls and pigs,’ said Matthew, laboriously explaining himself.
    â€˜Well, I suppose
you
ought to know,’ she said.
    â€˜About pigs I do, anyhow.’
    But not about girls, he thought. I know nothing about girls. Sex was no mystery to this farm-bred boy. No one had tried, far from it, to hide the ‘facts of life’ from him. Nor could they by any mistaken zeal have succeeded in such an enterprise. But though he had that knowledge, and though he had sisters who were (he supposed) in some sense girls, of girls and the wonder they symbolized, beyond mere sex, he knew almost nothing: it was a mystery dimly, doubtfully, breathlessly apprehended. And it seemed to him that he had never been nearer to it than in this moment of artless idiotic disputation about nothing at all.
    â€˜I expect you do,’ she said softly.
    He hardly knew what she referred to now. Nor could he be sure she was not laughing at him. It made no difference. He did not care. For the moment, for no discernible reason, he was in a state of peace and blessedness. The summer evening was luminous and tranquil, and beyond time. It had suddenly the quality of a golden age. Could the curve of a cheek, the soft gleam of eyes from under dark lashes, do that? The lantern of the day glowed with a mellow light. The evening stillness was enriched by a multitude of small unurgent sounds: the occasional clean tap of wood on wood, bird-calls from the wooded hills, a horse and cart going along the road behind the row of beeches, and the varied voices of men, laughing, exclaiming, disputing, admonishing. Without pause, without haste, the game wenton, a leisurely ritual but full of surprises for those who played it.
    It is a feature of this absurd beautiful pastime that after the first few woods have been played the man who is to bowl next must rely largely on the advice of his forerunner. And how willingly that advice is given! Forerunners they are in a double sense, for having played their second wood they do, with most delicate caperings, run with it up the green, and plant themselves behind the jack to give advice to those of their side who follow them. With arms outstretched like the conductor of an orchestra they move this way and that, reporting on relative positions, improvising tactics, shouting advice.
    â€˜Try the fore hand, boy. Come in round George’s wood and you’ll just do it. Take plenty of land now. That’s right. That’s nice. That’s slipping along nice…. Ah, but has it got the
legs
, boy? Will it
make?’
    Sometimes, lacking ‘the legs’, the wood would run short of its goal. Sometimes the cry would go up ‘It’s running away, it’s running away! … Bit too heavy, boy!’ or, with genial sarcasm, ‘Good wood! Another one for the ditch!’, the ditch being the ultimate sepulchre of misguided or over-impetuous woods. Each player had his own quality and style. Matthew privately thought his father looked very funny, dancing up and down the rink, studying with prodigious sagacity the lie of the woods, and at intervals flinging up his blunt fingers with a yell of