The Exploits of Engelbrecht Page 5
There was some heated discussion over the choice of bait. Engelbrecht wanted to fish a Barnet By-Pass, a beautifully made facsimile of a suburban housewife with a lot of brightly coloured feathers in her hat, just the kind of gaudy affair calculated to catch the eye of the tyro. But the O.M. counselled a more sober-looking lure known as a College Chaplain, one of Clarkson’s most skilful pieces of human dry-fly-tying, in cork and composition with bespoke tailoring and a neat little hump to conceal the hook. “Did you ever see anything so lifelike?” he said.
“Too damned lifelike altogether,” said Lizard. “Lumme, did you see that? I believe he winked at me.”
“I hope he did no such thing,” said the O.M. severely. “Fishing with human bait is barred. We had to disqualify de Lautréamont for that in ’53.”
Our preparations were now complete. Engelbrecht took a firm grip on the rod and brought all his dwarf strength to bear. The first cast pulled down the façade of a stationer’s shop in Fore Street. The second hooked a tray of glass eyes. The third was a fizzer. Fathom after fathom of line shot out and away Out of sight into the mist. But when we took roll call afterwards Lizard Bayliss was missing.
Presently there was an earsplitting peal from the chapel bell far out across the black water. Engelbrecht began reeling in. Soon we caught sight of a vast domed shape looming through the mist. It was the float with Lizard Bayliss sitting on top of it. We gaffed him ashore. It was obvious he would never be fit to fish again so we packed him off to the psychiatrist’s.
By now the canal bank was a scene of frightful carnage but precious little piscage. Nodder Fothergill, on our right, had landed something I never expected to see outside the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch and was fighting a losing battle trying to put it back. Bones Barlow had plunged in after a Nereid and had his waders rotted off by acid. Little Charlie Wapentake had fouled the Grendel family mère et fils. So critical, indeed, did the Situation become that just before lunch the order was given to Repulse Boarders. We all dropped our rods and rushed to the rescue of whoever needed help most.
The score at lunch time was depressing. Several of our best anglers had either been dragged under, pulled out to sea, or else were raving in the schizophrenic ward. Father Carfax, the Id’s Chaplain, had been lost with all hands during a plucky exorcism ceremony. Some interesting inanimate objects had been caught, including a calculating machine which, as the O.M. observed, would come in handy for telling fishing stories. Salvador Dali had landed a chest of drawers of fifty-seven pounds weight, the contents of which had to be sent to the local police. But no one had had a bite from the man-eating pike and there was a rumour that Chippy de Zoete had been seen slipping some sticks of dynamite into his waistcoat pocket.
After lunch we drew the Fever Hospital Bend, a ticklish stretch where you have to fish off a narrow asphalt track with a fifty foot drop into the Rubbish Dump at your back. I attached a lure known as The Hanged Man and we cast far out into the murk, now thickened by fumes from the chemical works. “They can never resist this one,” said Engelbrecht with typical angler’s optimism. But they could. When the bell tolled and we reeled in we found nothing save a shipwrecked pleasure party clinging to the float. The bait was untouched except for a notice which some under-water character had tied round its neck. It read: “Insufficiently Verisimilitudinous. Better Luck Next Time.”
We showed it to the Oldest Member who was engrossed in Chetham’s Vade Mecum. “That’s the Fisher King,” he said. “A mythological figure who haunts these waters. Reputed to be a cousin of the Id’s. Got a very keen sense of humour. He collected one of those new pens that write underwater from one of our members last year.”
A rattle of musketry on our left denoted that yet another landing party had been repulsed. But still not a bite.
The Oldest Member looked up from Sir Humphrey Davey’s Salmonia which he had been perusing. “I’m afraid you’re having very poor sport,” he said. “The catch of the day so far is a Seven League Boot.”
Engelbrecht was down at the reel end of the rod. He rang through on the “phone to ask me to come and take a turn, while he had a chat with the O.M. When he came back his face was set and grim. He was wearing a Frogman’s suit of black india rubber and a clerical collar. “Hook me, pal,” he said, “hook me in the hump.”
“But dwarfie,” I said, “you’re not going in yourself?”
“It’s the only way,” he said.
“But you’re human, aren’t you? You’ll be disqualified.”
“The O.M. says not. He says it’s all right if you bait your own hook. You’ll hold the rod for me, pal?”
“Well,” I said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I hope I do too,” he said.
“Greater love hath no angler than this,” said the voice of the O.M. behind us.
I fixed the hook tight into the artificial hump and paid out enough line to reach all the way. I gave the hook a final tug to make sure it was good and firm. Then 1 cast. The dwarf-baited hook flew out through the thick night air far over the water. It fell with a light splash. I reeled in a few hundred fathoms to keep him riding on top of the water and gave the line a couple of jerks to make it seem as if he was drowning. Then I lit my pipe.
Presently I heard Engelbrecht’s voice on the intercom. “They’re coming for me, pal,” he said. “I can see their eyes all round me. It’s just a question which one gets me first. Soon as you hear me holler you got to strike for all you’re worth.”
Next moment the bell pealed out the Angelus and Engelbrecht’s voice yelled in my ear: “Strike like beggary.” I turned on the donkey engine full steam ahead and struck.
The line ran out at a rate of knots. There was silence for some time. Then Engelbrecht came through again. “You there, pal? He’s hooked good. It’s the giant pike all right.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s swallowed me and I just picked up a Bishop’s mitre with the name Ely on the sweat band. Play him, pal. Play him for all you’re worth. You got to land him before the season ends.”
In the months that followed I played that pike all over the network of our inland waterways, in and out of drains and culverts and subterranean streams known only to spaeleologists. Sometimes when the line was right out I had to take the train to keep up with him. And always the Oldest Member was at my elbow ready to give sage counsel. “Whatever happens we must head him off from the Fens,” he kept telling me. “Black Fen, which is his home water, is known to he bottomless.”
It was the last week of the season and Engelbrecht had just ’phoned through, very faint, to say that his rations had run out. We were streaking along the Manchester Ship Canal with mighty few fathoms in hand. “I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” said the Oldest Member. “You’ll have to order your little pal to abandon fish.” With a sob in my voice I told Engelbrecht to unhook himself. Suddenly we rounded a bend and caught sight of a bunch of Theological Students out for a walk with the Bishop at their head. The pike must have seen them too. He leapt in a great green-yellow arc for the bank. But he was too weak, and before his jaws could close, the Bishop, an old sportsman if ever there was one, had gaffed him in the gills with his umbrella. The ordination candidates formed a chain, clasping each other by the waist.
After a tremendous struggle we got him ashore and wired for Doctor Sadismus, who removed Engelbrecht, little the worse for wear. There was a good deal of controversy in surrealist piscatorial circles, but it was finally decided that the Catch should stand. And you can see the pike stuffed, with the Bishop of Ely’s mitre underneath, in the Fisherman’s Eternal Rest.
ENGELBRECHT AND THE DEMON BOWLER
The news that I, A.N. Other, had been selected, as twelfth man, to support the eleven which was to play the MCC’s Touring Side at the Nightmare Abbey Cricket Week was brought to me, late, as I lay in the great, grey, brain-shaped Dream-Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club. I had just time to pack my vampire-bat and catch the Town Drain.
The Terminus Bell tolled and we all surged forward as one flannelled fool, singing the Long Stop’s Chorus from Sir Henry Newbolt’s Opera Middle and Leg, towards Platform N, where the Town Drain was gaping at the seams to receive us. I bought the latest best-seller, How to Win Over Fiends and Influence Paranoiacs, from a strolling stall and settled down in my padded corner.
When I recovered the priceless gift of consciousness which distinguishes us from the brutes, I was lying on my back in a clearing surrounded by clumps of Old Man’s Beard. Amnesia, that all too frequent occupational complaint of the surrealist sportsman, had me in its grip. “Where am I?” I asked.
“In the deep,” said Lizard Bayliss, who was bending over me, fanning me with a dock leaf. “You’ve stopped one on the conk from W. G. Grace. We was sent out here, you and me and the dwarf and some more, at the beginning of the last over, as part of Prenderghast’s leg-trap. ‘Send all those ruddy duffers right out into the deep,’ Prendy roars. So we marches off here and here we’ve been ever since. We’ve beaten off several attacks from Fuzzy Wuzzy. The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead and we’re still waiting for the voice of a schoolboy to rally the ranks. The Dwarf caught the leather and he’s trying to break through with it to Square Leg. You better lie still. You been acting queer for days.”
Just then a message came through on the Bush Telegraph to say it was Over. We struck Camp and began the long trek to the other end of the field.
The appearance of our sadly depleted party in the neighbourhood of the Pitch was the signal for a burst of clapping. Engelbrecht, it seemed, had got through without dropping the catch. The Men in White were now in the act of overpowering Dr. Grace. They disarmed him of his bat and hauled him, still struggling, from the wicket.
But the scoreboard, at 903 for 1, gave us little encouragement, and the black flag on the abbey tower drooped at half-mast. At the Pavilion End, our skipper, the Id, was deep in conference with his lieutenants. As we hacked our way through the palisades of cow parsley and cronesbane that flanked the outfield, we looked back for the last time. The Id had tossed the ball to the Village Idiot.
Victor Trumper came striding out of the pavilion and took middle and leg.
Presently a rumour began to reach us out in the deep that the Village Idiot had found a spot. It appears that several generations of his forebears had been buried in Murderers’ Meadow before it was enclosed and turned into a cricket field. The thunder of Dr. Grace’s hooves had considerably disturbed their rest and now the V.I., by some primitive, atavistic, homing instinct, had found his spot right on the crown of his great-great-grandfather’s skull which was anchored a few feet outside the off stump. The result was some absolutely unplayable stuff.
With his first ball he sent a joyful death rattle through Trumper’s wicket. His second caught Ranjit Singhi between wind and water. By the end of the over the score was 1001 for 5. But during the luncheon interval Dr. Grace and a couple of J.P.s, of which the visiting team had no shortage, pulled a fast one on us, by having him certified. The rest of our bowling was poor stuff and though Salvador Dali’s lobs soared up to dizzy heights and came down accompanied by unmentionable objects, they took no wickets.
The monster innings dragged on. Summer was past and gone and with the decay of the vegetation we in the outfield were exposed not only to the elements but also to the scrutiny of our skipper. I was compelled to suspend my monograph on Varieties of the Cuckoo-Spit while Lizard Bayliss had to fold up the Crown and Anchor Board with which he had been trimming the cricket correspondents of The Fly Paper. Soon afterwards, however, Dr. Grace appealed against floods and snow and we retired to winter quarters.
The recess was spent in feverish planning and our side’s Headquarters in the Refractory Wing of the Three Jolly Cricketers was like an S.S. Sabotage College. But against such an experienced tactician as Dr. Grace our best-laid schemes miscarried. Play had scarcely been resumed under a tropical sun when the mine which Chippy de Zoete’s Sappers had dug under the leg stump was detected and rendered harmless. One after another, explosive bats, winged bails, and gyroscopically controlled balls were detected and appealed against while the plucky decisions of our staunch umpire were set at naught by the MCC. In the end it was only fear of utter exhaustion and premature death which caused the visitors to declare their innings closed at 3,333,333 for 9; truly, as the Editor of The Fly Paper remarked in his leading article, a formidable total.
If our batting was on a par with our bowling—and despite Salvador Dali’s boast that he would carry his chest-of-drawers right through the innings, there was no reason to suppose it would be any different—we were all set for an innings defeat. It was generally agreed that the side needed stiffening, though some defeatists were even beginning to mutter that the sooner it was over the better, that cricket with its rigid code and static tempo was not our game.
The morning our innings opened, I was leaning over the pavilion rails, watching the groundsmen stoke up the furnace in which the MCC kept their Demon Bowler between overs, when Chippy de Zoete, our vice-captain, tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m awfully sorry, Other, old boy,” he said, “but I’m going to ask you to stand down. It’s for the good of the side, of course. Fact is we want to play Another in your place.”
I said: “Of course.” I couldn’t very well say anything else. After all, the family motto of the Others is “They also serve”. And by George when I heard who my substitute was, I let out a great cheer. For it was none other than the Willow King himself, the British Wood-Demon, the tutelary deity of the Game. It seems he had fallen into a decline a long time gone because of the deathly stillness which had crept into the sacred ritual, and being subject, like all Willows, to melancholia, he had got himself into a very bad way indeed. In fact when the Id’s talent spotters finally ran him to earth he was in the Weeping Willow Ward of an Asylum for Trees. However, they strapped pads over his roots and tied his Free Foresters’ scarf round his trunk, and he perked up no end; by the time they reached the ground he was playing strokes all round the wicket so lightning fast it looked as if every one of his branches was a bat. All we needed was someone to stay in with him and stonewall while he scored.
The innings opened like a dream. The Id decided to waste no time and sent in the Willow King with the Marquis de Sade to keep him company. We had expected W. G. might appeal, but when he saw the God of Cricket in person he doffed his cap in homage, unwound his MCC scarf, “the oriflamme of English Cricket”, as C.B. Fry once called it, and hung it from a convenient branch. When the applause had subsided the W.K. took guard. The umpire shouted play. The door of the asbestos oven swung open and with a puff of smoke and a blast of flame the Demon Bowler roared out on his scorching run.
The ease with which that old tree opened his shoulders and drove the first five balls out of the ground and tapped the sixth towards cover point for a single became positively monotonous, especially when he had repeated the process for a few hundred overs.
The score stood at
333,333 for 0 when disaster overtook us. De Sade tripped over a sylph at midwicket and was stumped before he could get back to his crease. In the next over the Demon Bowler took 6 wickets for no runs. Clearly, one more mishap like this would be our undoing. It was not long in coming. Salvador Dali was the next man in, but when at the end of another triumphant over the Willow King snicked his single, it was found that he had taken root in the ground and could not leave his crease. “Atras!” he shouted courteously in Spanish, and waved Dali back to his crease. The first ball of the Demon Bowler’s next over splintered the Catalan sportsman’s chest of drawers as if it had been matchwood. We afterwards discovered it was matchwood.
333,363 for 7 and the D.B. had five balls in which to take three wickets. He went through Chippy de Zoete, put in late to stiffen the tail, and Charlie Wapentake, like an eel through milk.
333,363 for 9; all the hours on the clock to play and the last man in. Reeling from the smite of his dynamic captain’s hand on his shoulder, the dwarf Engelbrecht stumbled out of the pavilion and made his way towards his wicket, which towered above him like the pillars of some vast monument. Testily he took guard and settled into his crease like a flea in a crack.
Wham! The D.B. sent down a perfect length express dead on the middle stump. Casting himself into the air like a soul waltzing in hell, the dwarf just managed to reach it with the tip of his bat, and deflect it over the wicket-keeper’s head. By way of celebration the W.K. burst into bud.
Three more balls to go. The sun was blazing down, but the Willow King stretched out his leaves to make shade for the valiant dwarf. Again the Demon Bowler let fly with all the vice of his sinewy black arm. And once again the dwarf deflected the spheroid.
After that it was plain sailing. Myth and Dwarf were all set for the finest last wicket stand in the history of the game. Seasons flew by. Our total had reached an astronomical figure, and the Id was trying to summon up courage enough to declare, when a very old man with a scythe and an hour-glass came wandering towards the pitch.