Hole in One (6 page)

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Authors: Catherine Aird

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BOOK: Hole in One
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Loss of Stroke and Distance
It being an exceedingly ill wind that blows no one any good, the bar of the Berebury Golf Club was doing a brisk trade. Golfers deprived of a game had only three places to turn. Since two of these were the practice hole and the putting green, the other – the bar – was busy.
‘Two halves, please, Molly,' said Brian Southon to the woman behind the bar, ‘and have something for yourself.'
Molly, a calm, statuesque woman built on generous lines, acknowledged this with a quick smile of thanks, and busied herself at a beer engine, at the same time as skilfully catching the eye of the next person waiting for her attention.
‘What are you doing here on a weekday morning, Brian?' a man nearby asked. ‘I thought you worked for a living.'
‘Client meeting.' Brian Southon, a short, stocky man, grinned and pointed to his neighbour. ‘Got to talk turkey with my friend Gilchrist here.'
‘As long as the boss doesn't catch you out and about, that's all.'
‘I'm told my revered employer's out on the course just now,' said Southon, quite relaxed. ‘And he won't mind because I'm doing really great business for Calleshire Consolidated. That's right, Peter, isn't it?'
‘It sure is,' said Peter Gilchrist warmly.
‘There you are then,' said Southon, looking round and smiling. ‘Everyone's pleased. That's what I like.'
‘It's what they will persist in calling a “win-win” situation, I suppose,' said a man called Moffat sourly. He was a retired schoolteacher and English had been his specialist subject.
‘Exactly,' said Brian Southon, ‘and that's what every salesman likes.'
‘Mind you, Brian,' Gilchrist said, ‘I shall have to go back to
the office and do my sums before I sign anything.'
‘Even his card?' called out some wag.
‘I might start to worry if he got too many birdies,' admitted Gilchrist, looking wryly at Southon. ‘But I don't think he will, somehow. After all, he's not that good a player.'
‘Who wouldn't worry about too many birdies?' said Gerald Moffat, who had been made preternaturally suspicious by a lifetime in the teaching profession. ‘Especially with the greens as they are just now.'
‘What's wrong with the greenkeeper then, that he can't keep up with the grass cutting?' asked someone else. ‘It's not as if we've had that much rain.'
‘Tummy bug was what his wife said to the Secretary,' he was informed.
‘That's a gastrointestinal upset to you, Moffat, I suppose,' joked Southon. ‘Got to keep the English standard up, haven't we?'
Moffat muttered something inaudible into his drink.
‘At least the greens are all right now,' said Southon, taking a sip of his beer. ‘Peter here and I gave Alan Pursglove a hand with cutting some of them a couple of evenings ago, didn't we Peter.'
‘We did,' agreed Peter Gilchrist, the plumpish man thus addressed. ‘Hard work it was, too, getting them just right.'
‘So that no one could say that you let the grass grow under your feet, I suppose,' said Moffat uncharitably.
‘Brian certainly doesn't do that,' said the man called Luke Trumper. He put his hand on Southon's shoulder. ‘Never let it be said that our Brian doesn't do his bit for the Club.'
‘I shouldn't be at all surprised,' went on Moffat sarcastically, ‘if he hasn't got a “to-do” list as well. Nobody'll leave the English language alone these days.'
‘Hey, it isn't all me, fellows,' protested Southon. ‘Someone else on the Greens' Committee was going to tackle the others
yesterday evening.'
‘United Mellemetics won't like you two doing a deal,' said a man standing beside the Gilchrist and Southon at the bar. He pointed towards a player sitting on a seat in the window.
‘Nigel Halesworth never likes anyone doing a deal with anyone else,' said Brian Southon, nevertheless turning and giving Halesworth a long, careful look.
‘He's certainly not going to like so much of our business coming your way,' said Gilchrist. ‘I hope you've thought that through, Brian.'
‘Oh, yes,' said Southon easily.
‘United Mellemetics has been one of your suppliers for a long time, Peter, hasn't he?' asked a player who was propping up the far end of the bar. He pushed his glass back over the counter. ‘The usual, Molly, please.'
‘Man and boy,' said Gilchrist, ‘but you could say that Nigel Halesworth and his precious United Mellemetics aren't being as accommodating as Douglas Garwood and Calleshire Consolidated.'
There was a little pause since everyone knew – but nobody mentioned – that Gilchrist's firm was under pressure these days.
‘And Halesworth won't like it either,' continued the same man, ‘if anything comes between him and the new driving range that his technical people have done the feasibility study for.'
‘But they only did the feasibility study,' someone else on the Committee reminded them.
‘And the mammal study,' growled Moffat richly. ‘Mustn't forget the mammals, must we?'
‘Or the archaeologists,' said another voice. ‘They've done their geophysical survey, too.'
‘It's a wonder they don't want to know about ancient lights,' said Moffat.
‘United Mellemetics hasn't got the contract yet, though. Nobody has. It's still out to tender and there's plenty of members' firms who'll want to bid for the work.'
‘And for the land,' said a retired banker. ‘It's the land that matters, you know. Development value and all that.'
‘I still say it should have gone out to open tender,' said someone else. ‘Not just restricted to members.'
‘I don't see why it shouldn't be kept in-house,' said another man obstinately. ‘There's no law against it.'
‘Yet,' said the banker.
‘And I still say that it's a waste of good ground,' declared Moffat with unnecessary firmness. ‘All that a driving range will do is encourage the rabble.'
An uneasy silence descended on the group round the bar. Gerald Moffat was not a man to cross swords with lightly and the question of the driving range was a tricky one at the Club.
‘You must be getting a good deal from Doug's outfit, all the same, Peter,' observed the first man after a moment, tactfully reverting to the earlier conversation, ‘things being how they are,' he added gnomically.
Brian Southon laughed aloud at this oblique reference to Peter Gilchrist's troubles. ‘Believe me, he is. Peter is doing Calleshire Consolidated proud.'
‘Just make sure you don't get drawn against Halesworth in the next knockout, that's all,' advised his neighbour. ‘Either of you. Or he'll be taking his revenge.'
‘That's a risk I'll have to take,' said Gilchrist sombrely.
‘Me, too/ said Southon cheerfully. ‘But I shan't worry too much. Business is business, you know.'
‘True,' said Gilchrist, pushing his glass back across the bar counter. ‘Same again, Molly, please. For both of us.'
 
There was a payphone in the lobby of the Golf Club. Sloan fished in his pocket for some loose change and punched in his
own home number.
‘That you, Margaret?' he said. ‘Chris here. Listen, love, I'm going to be a bit late home.'
He heard a deep sigh.
‘Something's come up,' he hurried on. This was absolutely true and what had come up would soon be on its way to the mortuary, which was where he would have to go soon, too.
There was no audible response to this at the other end of the line.
‘Work-wise,' he stumbled on.
In the long pause that followed this last Sloan's mind drifted back to when they'd done Shakespeare's play
Coriolanus
at school. Now that was a play for boys if ever there was one: fighting, treachery and war, war, war.
All magnificent masculine stuff, making the schoolroom echo with the imagined sounds of battle, conjured up by heady words. Even so, their teacher had seen fit to draw their attention to the soldier Coriolanus's description of his wife. Sloan had never forgotten it: that great general had called her “my gracious silence”.
 
The class of teenagers had nodded then with what they thought was world-weary sophistication in approval of quiet, undemanding wives. Now, years later, an adult Christopher Dennis Sloan wasn't at all sure that wifely silence was always gracious.
Not this silence, anyway.
He hastened into further speech. ‘I'm ringing from the Golf Club,' he said.
That did the trick.
‘Where did you say?' asked Margaret Sloan upon the instant.
‘I'm at the Golf Club,' he said, adding, with perfect – but not the whole – truth, ‘With the Superintendent. Can't say
anything more. Not now. Tell you later.'
The finding of the body would be common knowledge in the town by evening.
‘Your mother will be pleased,' she said obliquely.
He doubted it. His mother's life revolved round St Ninian's Church in Berebury. She never missed her weekly Bible Study meeting – or failed to expand on it at Sunday lunchtime. At length.
‘You won't beat the Super, Chris, will you?' said Margaret Sloan anxiously. ‘Not the first time you play.'
‘I promise,' he said – and meant it.
‘Except,' she added astringently, ‘over the head with a club if he makes you late tonight.'
Parthian shots, he should have remembered, had come up in a later lesson.
 
The girl whom Edmund Pemberton had addressed as Hilary advanced further into the caddies' hut. ‘Hullo, Edmund,' she repeated. She looked round at the other men and said ‘And hullo everyone else.'
There was a general shuffling of feet but very few answering “hullo‘s” until Bert Hedges eventually said ‘Morning, miss. And what can we do for you?'
‘Let me do some caddying,' replied the girl briskly. ‘I'm Hilary Trumper, by the way.'
‘Can't stop you,' said Dickie Castle, adding meaningfully, ‘even if we wanted to.'
‘Would you happen to be Mr Trumper's daughter, miss?' asked Bert Hedges.
‘What if I am?' she said truculently.
‘Nothing, miss. Sorry I spoke, I'm sure,' said Bert Hedges without any noticeable sign of regret.
‘How does the system work?' she asked. ‘First come, first served?'
‘Not quite,' said Castle reluctantly.
‘How, then?'
‘A regular player books us for a match,' said Castle.
‘Or sometimes just for a game,' put in Shipley.
‘All right, I'll buy it,' said the girl. ‘What's the difference?'
‘A match is played for serious …' Dickie began to explain.
‘A game is presumably something played purely for pleasure,' interrupted Edmund Pemberton. ‘Surely that's the correct definition of a game?'
Everyone present ignored him.
‘So therefore a caddy can be booked for either?' concluded Hilary swiftly.
‘Or both, surely,' said Edmund Pemberton.
‘Oh, don't be such a pedant, Edmund,' said Hilary, turning back to Dickie Castle. ‘What happens if a particular caddy hasn't been booked? Do you work on the cab rank principle? Like barristers have to take their dock briefs?'
‘She does mean “first come, first served”,' explained Edmund unnecessarily.
Hilary shot him a withering glance. ‘They know what I mean.
‘Yes, miss,' said Bert Castle hastily. ‘The player just knocks on the door and calls out “Caddy wanted”.'
‘When it's warm we sit outside on the bench in the sun,' said Fred Shipley, who must have caught something of Edmund Pemberton's precision.
‘Ships' pilots work on the same principle,' Pemberton informed them gratuitously. ‘Taking what comes next.'
‘We don't need to know that, Edmund,' said Hilary dismissively. ‘What I need to know is how exactly do I get to start caddying here?'
Bert Hedges, visibly fascinated by the girl's bare midriff, began to say something about in her case sitting on the bench and showing her ankles as well as her tummy would probably
do the trick but thought better of it and subsided into silence.
‘You wait your turn like everyone else, miss,' said someone else.

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