Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

131 The glass eyes of the upside-down animal’s head gazed placidly and untroubled at the wreckage its horns were doing to its partner’s trousers. I timidly inquired the cause of this barbaric ceremony. ‘Oh,’ said the MAN, ‘he’ – referring to the now nearly exhausted youth – ‘is taking that head to a Big Game Exhibition.’ Judging from appearances, I doubted his statement. Then the MAN mentioned the number of points on the antlers, some of which at that moment fell against the fleshy part of the youth’s right leg, and were received with mature profanity. But at last, with only very small portions of the door being torn off, the head with the brave youth still hanging on to it got to the lift – and, what is more wonderful, got into it, accompanied by faint, compressed language, the idiotic glass eyes still placid and undimmed. The lift man, with that superior hauteur of his particular class, slung the door to – and I buried my face in my pipe and dared look no more. The soft pad-pad of the MAN’s moccassined feet recalled me. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘about those strokes!’ He grabbed a few bats and a handful of balls, and went up twelve stairs a time into the Unknown. I followed, musing on life insurance. ‘Now you are the man from the bowler’s point of view!’ Though I say it, mindful of the fact that I may be termed vainglorious, I faced the MAN with open eyes, produced my sketch-book, and then shut both eyes and turned up my coat collar! He bowled with one hand and batted with two, and the room was only twelve feet long. I am too young to have ridden at Balaclava, but I fully appreciate the picnic the noble Six Hundred must have had – with one exception. When the cannon balls were to right of them and left of them and behind them they were not in front of them at the same time. With me it was different. They were everywhere! But I only remarked limply: ‘I see. I think I shall quite remember those particular strokes’ – which was solid Gospel truth, and we left the torture chamber and spoke of brigands. ‘Couldn’t you,’ said the MAN, gazing like an elongated blond saint at the smoke ring that hung an uncertain numbus over his head, ‘couldn’t you go to Malaga, and get captured by brigands? It’d put pounds into my pocket!’ Then flashed upon me a mental picture of ‘held to ransom by by brigand chief,’ and the wire to the magazine office: ‘Have your artist. Will chop toes off, beginning left foot, unless your value of him received by return. Don OK. The Legacy