The Summer Field

211 ‘It’s a hard game,’ Hutton said, after England lost the first Test against Australia in June 1989. It took defence, a sense of humour, ‘which Hedley Verity had’, ‘and the ability to suffer in silence’. Cricket grounds, like the rest of 21 st century England, cannot stand silence; given half an excuse, the air is filled with recorded music, in case we feel under-entertained, or, if left with our thoughts, we might wish to be somewhere else. Cricketers as a rule do not have to suffer. They are young and fit and further from death than most of us. Death seldom comes to the summer field, as it did at Buxton in May 1929. R.C.Legge, the captain of Ashbourne club, had been batting for about 20 minutes ‘when he was seen to fall forward to the ground and although every immediate attention was given him he expired in a few minutes’. He was 56. Hedley Verity was 38 when he died of battle wounds in Italy in 1943. Freeman Barnardo was 24 when a German shell killed him and his crew inside their tank at El Alamein. Among the letters of sympathy to his parents, the one of most note to cricket history was from a patient of his father Dr Thomas Barnardo, the former Essex fast bowler Charles Kortright: My dear Doc, it was with the very greatest regret when I had my attention drawn to the paragraph in the Evening News that I read of your great loss and I write these few lines and give you my sincerest sympathy. I lost a great friend in the last war, a man who was the apple of his father’s eye and when I sympathised with him (the father) he said time the great healer will heal these mental wounds and I pass on my old friend’s philosophical saying to you old chap and in the meantime you have the sincerest sympathy of Charles Kortright. The letter that might have been of most help to Dr Barnardo came from the father of an Eton schoolmate of Freeman’s. John Brewis, too, had died in North Africa in 1942. His name is on the El Alamein memorial; Barnardo is buried in the cemetery. Cricket matters little there; and cricket matters little compared with the loss of a son. Yet R.J.Brewis, in his compassion for a man sharing his suffering, harked back to the Eton and Harrow match five years before: I shall never forget Freddie’s gallant and graceful innings at Lord’s which so largely contributed to his side’s victory. These and many other proud and tender memories will I hope be of some consolation in your profound grief. The expression time is a healer is I fear a misstatement. The passage of time of itself will never heal the sense of loneliness or help to fill the gap in your life but from my own experience existence becomes more tolerable if one can evolve or cling to the faith that our sons have found peace and serenity. If in addition one can resolve not to disturb that peace by grieving too much then I believe that as time passes the sorrow will lessen; but never the void . Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire December 2013-May 2014; August 28, 2015. Into The Void