Free Cross Channel by Julian Barnes Page B

gently rub a little butter into the blade of his bat. Others preferred oil, but he felt a certain local pride in this particularity of his. The instrument itself was carved from a branch of willow hewn on his own estate; now it was being swabbed with butter made from the milk of cows which had grazed in the very water-meadow at whose edge the willows grew.
    He finished soothing his bat and wound around it the yard of muslin within which it always travelled. Dobson’s bat was a cruder engine, and Dobson no doubt had his own secrets for making it as strong and supple as he required. Some men rubbed ale into their bats; others the fat of a ham; others again were said to warm their bats before the fire andthen make water upon them. No doubt the moon had to be in a certain quarter at the same time, thought Sir Hamilton with a sceptical jerk of the head. The only thing that counted was how you smote the ball; and Dobson could smite with the best of them. But it was the persistency and valour of the man’s right arm that had persuaded Sir Hamilton to bring him to Nesfield.
    Dobson was the second under-gardener at the Hall. It was not, however, to Dobson that a man would readily turn for the implementation of a landscape by the late Mr Brown. The fellow could scarce tell a lupin from a turnip, and his duties were confined to the physical and the general rather than to the skilled and the particular. In short, he was not permitted to handle a spade without the presence of an overseer. But Sir Hamilton had not offered him employment - or played the poacher, to use the description of Dobson’s previous employer - with the intention of procuring a lady-fingered turf-trimmer. Dobson’s expertise was with another kind of turf. To witness the man’s unflinchingness when standing at bat’s end was sure compensation for his failure of wit in the kitchen garden.
    They would arrive at Chertsey the next day, and then proceed for Dover on the Saturday. Five of the Duke’s cricketers lived hard by Chertsey: Fry, Edmeads, Attfield, Etheridge and Wood. Then there was to be himself, Dobson, the Earl of Tankerville, William Bedster and Lumpy Stevens. The Duke was naturally in Paris; Tankerville and Bedster were coming separately to Dover; so eight of them would meet at Mr Yalden’s inn at Chertsey. It was here, some years back, that Lumpy Stevens had won Tankerville his famous bet. The Earl had wagered that his man could in practice-bowling hit a feather placed on the ground one time in four.Mr Stevens had obliged his employer, who, it was rumoured, had profited by several hundred pounds in the business. Lumpy Stevens was one of Tankerville’s gardeners, and Sir Hamilton had often set himself musing over the prospect of a separate wager with the Earl: as to which of their two men knew the less about horticulture.
    He admitted to a gloomy and irritable mood as he ignored the passing countryside. Mr Hawkins had declined the invitation to accompany him on the journey. Hamilton had urged his former tutor to cast his eyes upon the Continent of Europe one last time. More than that, he thought it a damned generous offer on his behalf to cart the old fellow across to Paris and back, no doubt enduring many gross and whining episodes of vomit on the packet, if the past were any indicator of the present. But Mr Hawkins had answered that he preferred his memories of tranquillity to a vision of the present troubles. He saw no prospect of excitement in the matter, grateful as he was to Sir Hamilton. Grateful and pusillanimous, Sir Hamilton reflected as he took his leave of the broken-kneed old man. As pusillanimous as Evelina, who had poured thunderstorms from her eyes in an attempt to thwart his departure. Twice he had discovered her in hugger-mugger with Dobson, and had been unable to obtain from either the matter of their discussions. Dobson claimed that he was trying to lighten Milady’s burden of apprehension and fear regarding the voyage, but Sir