The Eleventh hour...

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On Sundays we would sometimes visit my Uncle Alf and Auntie Edie. They lived in a low ceilinged cottage at Priest End, all dimly dark and smelling of coal smoke. They were old. My dad said that they were rich, he said they had money all over the house, he said they had golden guineas wrapped in white fivers on their lace-draped dressing table, but then my Dad said a lot of things.

Uncle Alf loved cricket. He’d played a lot before the first war; he played for the village, batted number one - that’s him in the middle, dark hair with the side parting, the one with his arms folded. After 1918 when he returned, after it was all over, he ‘didn’t have the heart left’ to play, he’d say. My Dad said that Uncle Alf never did say much, and what he did say was about cricket, and he never spoke of the war.

They all signed up in the Summer of 1914, all eleven of them – bakers boys, the blacksmith, the teacher, a butcher or two - and by the end of August they’d taken the shilling and were over in France. There’d be plenty of time to play cricket the following year they all agreed, after all it would all be over by Christmas. Three Christmases on and Uncle Alf was the only one to come home – all dazed and dented. His words, not the doctor’s - the doctors called it shell-shock.

After he got out of the hospital he never once went to the war memorial on Armistice Day with the rest. He never marched at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month, preferring to walk down to the field by the church and sit in the cricket pavilion watching his old friends bat and bowl and field - smiling, clapping at fours and sixes. ‘Howzat!’ he’d mutter as a shell exploded on the pitch. ‘Howzat!’, when one of his mates was caught, or bowled, or shot by a sniper hiding in the trees down by the far side of the church.

Once I sat with him for a while listening to him murmur, watching his eyes as he followed the play. I saw him flinch each time a shell exploded in the church field.

‘Howzat?’ he’d whispered, ‘Howzat?’

It was always about Cricket with Uncle Alf , that’s all he ever talked about - my Dad says.
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The Match – by Alfred Roberts

On the cricket pitch
The wicket keeper stands
Crouched low behind the stumps.
Waiting, watching, ready.
And waiting for a catch
Eyes watching, waiting,
Darkly deep,
Both hidden by a hat.
Waits patient
For the match to start,
As the hunted come to bat.

Come play the game,
My game,
The game,
Play out this game with me.
I’ll watch for you,
I’ll keep for you,
I’ll wait while you take tea.

No Maidens here.
All men,
Own men,
And here to play the game.
To their own way,
And well cast rules,
Scattered around the green.

I’m always here,
I’m ever here,
I watch and wait
You’ll see.
I know your face,
I know your name,
I know what you would be.

As play moves on,
Slow motioned caught,
Trapped in ongoing over.
Men rush,
Men run,
Some stand in rain,
As players rush for cover.

It will come soon,
Soon it will come.
And ever come to me.
There is no hurry,
No way back,
All mine eventually.

And so the wicket keeper waits,
And watches patiently.
No matter how you play the game
All runs are his, must be.
He’ll win the game, he always wins,
You lose, run out, clean bowled.
He’ll take your bails, your stumps, the ball.
He’ll take them, you - and me.

...............11th November, 1921.