Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

108 Chapter Twenty Home in the South The Llewellyns were at large. A return south suited his wife and by 29 September 1939, four weeks into the war, they were living at 88 Avondale Avenue, Staines, which was then in Middlesex. They soon settled in Chertsey in Surrey, a couple of miles away on the southern bank of the Thames. They would not be too far away from Agatha who lived at Worthing on the West Sussex coast with her husband Charles Anderton, who worked in a bank, and their three sons. The First World War seems almost to have passed Buck by, but on the outbreak of the Second, he was quick to enrol as an auxiliary orderly at a local hospital. Botley (later St. Peter’s) Hospital, Chertsey, had been built specifically for service personnel who had been injured in war, and when he celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday in 1941, he was fully occupied with the work. He became a well-known figure in the town, keeping fit by getting around on his bicycle. Thus far, he was little affected by advancing years, but the family’s circumstances were changing: Holly married a GI and after the war moved to Canada. Dovey also married, but remained nearby at Ottershaw, while Bobbie, so christened as Buck had wanted a son, married a Mr Saunders. They had a daughter, the only cousin to the three Anderton boys. In 1956, Charles Anderton retired and the family moved to Chertsey to be near to the Llewellyns. In the winter of 1959/60 John Arlott, with the help of Desmond Eagar, formerly captain, and at that time secretary of Hampshire, traced Buck to his ‘trim bungalow’ on the edge of Chertsey where he was living with his wife Lucy and two of his daughters, who were presumably Dovey and Bobbie. John had some doubts about calling on the 83-year-old unannounced, but he need not have worried. Buck was as spry as a sparrow: too lazy to walk very much, or so he said, he was still making his local excursions by bicycle. He was, wrote Arlott, still recognisable from his playing days by his wide, high forehead and quick eyes. He retained the Lancashire accent which he had acquired during his sojourn of