The Exploits of Engelbrecht (6 page)

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.

When I alighted from my fly, Platform 666 at the Ultimate Terminus, that night, was a sight to make sore eyes sorer. Over its limitless expanses swarmed cricketers of all shapes and sizes, clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful. The atmosphere was vibrant with keenness. Giants, Dwarfs, Fragments, Freaks of all kinds, played forward strokes from improvised wickets—lampposts, newspaper-kiosks, porters’ legs. Presently, amid the throng, I discerned my old friend Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, in the act of late cutting a neon bulb that swung in from the off, delivered right round the station clock by the cunning hand of Chippy de Zoete. Lizard Bayliss, my diminutive friend’s pessimistic manager, was keeping wicket behind a Stonehenge-like structure of luggage and station architecture. He was muttering to himself and sucking his fingers which had been damaged by some of the improvised “leathers” with which he was being pelted and which ranged from grape-fruit and Witch Balls to Tommy Prenderghast’s pet hedgehog, Chattox, and the Globe at Swanage.

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.

“I’ve come to put a stop to all this,” he said in a creaking, leathery voice. Lifting his scythe for a back stroke he glided forward towards the pitch. There was a flutter and a scurry from the MCC. Then we saw that W.G. had gone down on his knees in front of the Willow King, edging right up close to his trunk. The Willow King put down a leafy branch and next moment there was nothing to be seen except the tree, and twenty-two yards away the Dwarf Engelbrecht chasing a cabbage white.

This is the story of how Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, wins his Global Football Cap. It’s a story the oldest members still whisper in the Ghost Room of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club, a story of indomitable courage, and no little cunning, winning through against overwhelming odds.

Engelbrecht has never played surrealist football before and his delight at finding his name, just above
Engels, F.,
in the list—a sizeable work in many volumes—of the team to play Mars in the Final of the Interplanetary Challenge Cup, leads to a celebration in which we all take part.

The Final of the Interplanetaries is played off on the Moon, and months before the kick-off all sorts of vehicles—everything from ordinary space-ships to beams, dreams, mediums, and telepathic wave-patterns—start arriving with the players. There’s a pause for rest and reorientation; then they begin trooping into the vast Metamorphosis or Changing Room. Engelbrecht and I blow in in a rocket with the usual party of our Skipper’s intimates. We’ve been training strictly on hashish and mescaline, and by the time we arrive on the Ground it’s a job to sort us out from our hallucinations.

The Lunar Twickenham is a boundless plain of glassy black lava pitted with craters. The Larger Ball is considered
de rigueur.
It has to be something pretty sizeable to keep in play at all, though, as Charlie Wapentake says, it’s a bit nightmarish trying to dribble with a thing like a Roc’s egg.

Dreamy Dan, our old-time surrealist umpire, is thought to be too biased, as well as a trifle slow for such a commando-type operation. The new referee is Cecil B. de Mille, picked for his crowd work. Presently he sends a message to ask the Id to scrabble along and meet the Martian Skipper in a neutral crater for final briefing. So off the Old Master trots, accompanied by Chippy de Zoete, his Vice. When they come back they’re shaking all over and Chippy de Zoete’s chest-wig, which he had made at Clarkson’s to strike terror into the opposing forwards, has turned white as fleece. From which we deduce that this year’s Martian team includes some pretty formidable Entities. So tough, indeed, does the opposition appear that it’s decided to try a very unorthodox ploy and put the full side, the entire human race, into the field straight away.

The opening ceremony is held as usual. There’s a silent tribute to the honour of William Webb Ellis, that Glorious Precursor of Surrealist Sport, the Rugby Schoolboy who first ran with the Ball. Then the Band strikes up the
Supersonic Symphony—
a rather unfortunate choice for it brings half the Grandstand down with a crash. After which we take the Field.

Even I, old hand as I am, haven’t quite bargained for the procession of Giant Monstrosities that come filing out of the Visitors Entrance. When Lizard Bayliss, Engelbrecht’s pessimistic manager, catches sight of them he tries to beat it back to the Changing Room, but the crush of characters is too thick.

It’s our kick-off. It takes a bit of doing to sort us all out, but by the next full moon de Mille has us well in hand. I’ve been given a cosy little assignment, narking to the Central Captain’s Committee on the Wing Forwards, so I take Engelbrecht under my wing and pilot him.

The whistle blows and Melchisedek takes the kick. Nebuchadnezzar follows up and gathers it. He passes to Nero, Nero to Attila, Attila to the Venerable Bede, the Venerable Bede to Ethelred the Unready, who knocks on into a crater. De Mille screams for a scrum. Engelbrecht tries to climb down into the thick of it. “You keep out of that,” I tell him. “The idea! A dwarf trying to scrum down between Henry VIII and Cetewayo. You’d get pulped.”

De Mille rolls the ball down an inclined plane right into the centre of the great heaving mass. Anak and Harold Hardrada, our hookers, get their toes round it. But our frail human forwards are too light for those great Martian thugs. We can’t possibly hold them. Our only hope is to heel out quickly before they can crush us against the sides of the crater. It doesn’t take Charlie Marx, our scrum-half, long to twig this, and as we peer down over the lip we can hear his harsh bark of “Heel! You
teufels!
Heel in the name of History!” And heel they do, but only just in time. As Charlie Marx gathers the ovoid from Bismarck’s boot, our front line breaks and the Martian phalanx comes crashing through. Marx slings it back to Fred Engels, his fly-half. Then he’s down in a sea of boots and backsides. “You’ve got to hand it to old Charlie,” says Tommy Prenderghast, “he may he nasty tempered but he’s the nippiest scrum-half in this world or the next. Well, we’d better be heading for Goal. Can I give you chums a lift?”

But Fred Engels has seen it coming and had time to get his life-line organized. He passes it up to Gladstone who makes a present of it to Blondin. And before you can say “I told you so”, Blondin’s away out on his tight-rope with the Giant Ball at his feet. It’s a great moment, one of the greatest in the history of the game. The field is in a frenzy and the Band can think of no more fitting token than to strike up the Second Movement of the
Supersonic Symphony,
which brings down the other half of the stand.

We’re out of the crater but still on the defensive. Unfortunately, it’s not been possible to fix Blondin’s tight-rope to a strategic point, and he has to find touch. Still, we recover a good bit of ground, and it’s a lovely run of Blondin’s, especially when you remember that for the last five miles he’s being worried by a pack of pterodactyls loosed from a string-bag by a Martian bobby-soxer.

At the line-out it’s our ball, but it falls into bad hands. Stavisky catches it and passes it to Bottomley, Bottomley to Jabez Balfour, Jabez Balfour to Charlie Peace, and Charlie Peace to Jonathan Wild, losing ground all the way. Jonathan Wild slings a long one to Judas Iscariot, who sells the pass to the Martian Threequarter line, and they get into their stride. For a surrealist football-fan, no doubt it’s a lovely sight to see this far-flung line of giants racing across the jet-black surface of the Moon with the Ball flashing from one wing to the other and back again. For us, who’re supposed to stop them, it’s slightly different. I’m too busy taking notes of shirkers’ names myself; but Engelbrecht insists on showing what he’s made of. With a grunt of defiance he hurls himself through the air and catches hold of a Martian Three Q’s bootlace. He hangs on like grim death, taking fearful punishment as he’s dragged over the lava.

There’s nothing to stop them now except Salvador Dali, our Full Back. Some of us doubt the wisdom of our skipper’s choice of such an
avant-garde
type for such a die-hard position. But we’ve got to hand it to old Salvador. He tries Everything. As a last attempt to stop them he even camouflages the Goal Posts as a Giant Gallows with some very tasty objects from his studio strung up from the cross-bar. Neither—though some of his less charitable team-mates say this is because he’s got stuck in the chest of drawers with which he’s been protecting his person— does he flinch from the ultimate sacrifice of a flying tackle. Useless, of course. A brief splintering crash. Then the Martian Three Q touches down between the goal posts.

As we all crowd together in the Goal Mouth there’s a multitude of doleful faces such as never was seen since the Last Trump. I’ve just handed in my list when Charlie Wapentake jogs my arm and points to the Id and Chippy de Zoete chatting to Pierpoint, the Public Executioner. We know what that means. Somebody’s going to swing for it.

The Martians convert and we migrate back to midfield. Soon after the kick-off Vivekananda finds touch. But our luck’s out. At the line-out Zerubabel tips it back to Origen, but Origen passes to Julian the Apostate, who starts running back. Luther and John Huss trip him up and start a plucky dribble. They’re joined by Calvin who picks up and passes to Wesley. For a glorious moment it looks as if we’re going to get somewhere. Wesley jinks like a rabbit, sells the dummy to three enemy forwards. But he hasn’t got the legs. He passes, and one of the Plymouth Brothers knocks on. This time the enemy forwards get the ball and wheel with it. Charlie Marx empties his pistol again and again into the back row of our scrum in an attempt to stop the rot.

10-nil, and the game’s only in its first light-year. Some poets start a passing movement. Chatterton passes to Keats, Keats to Shelley, Shelley to Byron, Byron to Wilde, who muffs it. There’s a lot of tittering in the loose. The Martians get it back to their Three Q’s, and there’s no stopping them. They run through us like a dose of salts, cock snooks at the Easter Island statues which Dali has brought up to guard the Goal Mouth, and score again.

After that it’s a procession and they score as they please. Full backs are tried by the dozen only to have rings made round them.

At half-time the score is astronomical, and Wing-forwards are being shot in batches in the Changing Room.

Towards the end of the Interval, Engelbrecht, Lizard Bayliss, his manager, and I, are reclining in our bivouac, toasting our toes at the core of a crater, when Charlie Marx and Fred Engels limp past. “There’s only one way,
knabe,”
we hear Charlie say. “We must give them the old Trojan horse.” “All very well,” says Fred, “but there’s not much room in there.” “Room for a little ’un,” says Charlie. His eye lights on Engelbrecht. “How about it,
junge?”
he says, raising an eyebrow and cocking his pistol. “Care to volunteer for an interesting mission in History’s service?” And before we can remonstrate he marches Engelbrecht off to the Changing Room.

We come out for the second half dizzy and defeatist. But the moment they kick off it’s clear that a change has come over the game. The Ball is taking a hand. It won’t roll right for the Martians nohow. They muff pass after pass and in the scrum our hookers get it every time. It’s as if it’s grown a little pair of legs of its own. Soon comes our first try. Charlie gathers it clean as a whistle and passes to Fred, who punts for the open field. Stenka Razin and his band trap it and take it on with their feet. There’s a fierce loose scrummage in a crater, but Guy Fawkes has got a map of the Underground. The Ball seems to beckon him on. They surface just in front of the Goal, and Jack Cade slips over for a touch-down. Goliath, the new full back, takes the kick. The Ball grazes the cross bar, but instead of bouncing off it seems to hang there in the air. Then it drops over.

The Score is 5555-5. Things are looking up. The Id commutes the sentences of one in ten of the doomed Wing Forwards to Life in the Scrum. Soon after the kick, Hannibal gets it and blunders right through with his footballing elephants. Goliath converts.

All that epoch the same tactics are repeated. We’re using our feet like dancing masters. It’s 5555-5550 now. Not long to go. Some unlikely characters have scored, even Heliogabalus, Bishop Berkley, and Aubrey Beardsley.

De Mille is looking at his travelling clock. He’s lifting the whistle to his lips with both hands. Sorrowfully, Lizard Bayliss folds up the special edition of the
Fly Paper
with Engelbrecht’s Obituary notice, and wipes away a tear. “If only he could have lived to see this,” he says.

Charlie Marx is giving the forwards their final pep-talk. “A Spectre is haunting Football!” I hear him bark. “The time has come to convert the Feet of History into the History of Feet! Forwards of the World! Pack Tight! You have nothing to lose but your Shins!”

The Martians try hard to find touch with a terrific root, but the Ball drops back into play. There follows one of the sweetest pieces of combination in History. Lecky passes to Gibbon, Gibbon to Tacitus, Tacitus to Josephus. Josephus slings a long pass to Isaiah, who punts ahead. Samuel catches it and passes to Lot, Lot to Noah, who gives it to Cain. Cain tries to keep it but it slips sideways out of his fingers. Abel dribbles it over the line and Adam falls flat on it.

Goliath has strained a tendon and the Id orders Dali out of the Morgue to take the kick. He asks me to place for him.

As he adjusts the angle to his liking I hear Engelbrecht’s voice speaking to me from inside the Ball. “What’s the score, chum?” it says. “I’ve rather lost count.”

That night, at a little private ceremony in the Changing Room, attended only by Charlie Marx, Arnold of Rugby, and the Politbureau of the Selection Committee, Engelbrecht receives the highest award of Global Football, the crypto-Cap.

As soon as the ceremony is over he’s smuggled out of the Changing Room in a tiny coffin.