Umbrella (25 page)

bayonets already fixed
. . .
yet they cannot prevent the patients from hammering their heads against the floor
bump-bump-bump!
or sweeping up the drifts of spilled L-DOPA – Busner labours and sweat wells from the sticking plaster he had wound round the handle of the club, a mashie niblick picked up from a market stall in Beresford Square when he went for a dekko. Albert smiles down at his own feet planted lumpily in their woollen stockings on the bare floorboards of the changing room. He smiles, and thinks of how it is that an awareness of a splinter is always a posteriori – he can hear Mayhew and Arbuthnot moving around behind him, screened by the jackets that hang from the pegs set above the benches. There is the distinctive tang of deeply penetrated dried perspiration – sweat produced, equally identifiably, he feels, by useless exertion – mixed up with
liniment, linseed oil and gutta-percha
. . .
then
comes the sharp scrape of a cleated boot, the soft slap-flap as trews are belted – but he has no specialist clothing to don or equipment to prepare, instead he wears the trousers from his third-best office suit, a light flannel shirt and his old Bancroft’s cricketing pullover. Albert smiles again: he will, he thinks, tuck the trouser cuffs into his stockings – this will give him greater freedom in his stroke as well as provide the semblance of plus-twos. — When he was shown in to the Principal Overseer’s office, the man hadn’t known what to make of the golf club tucked under Albert’s arm – or else he hadn’t noticed it. Either way, Albert forbore from mentioning it and they went on to inspect the Danger Buildings, the foundries and the machine shops, with the club still in his hand. At one point he employed its handle – then unbandaged, its worn leather grip open-pored – to poke into the bronze cap of a shell casing lying on a workbench, so that he could lift it up and examine its polishing in the
sateen
sunlight that
swagged
down from the high windows. What had the PO thought? Presumably that this was some novel type of swagger stick, since, although he was also a civilian, he seemed terribly flustered by having to deal with another one – one who was also, potentially, in such a senior position. On one or two occasions he had said sir to Albert and sketched a salute. The PO was a much older man in a wing-poke collar and coat of nineties cut, with a complexion – which Albert guessed was normally ruddy – that had been leached by nerves. It could have been Albert’s ramrod-straight bearing that confused the man – not that this was for show, being an entirely legitimate product of
all that footer and cricket
, and, latterly, now that Mister Wilton had had his way,
late evenings
purloined on the links
. He moved, he knew, with an athlete’s unconscious grace – and, although his superiors depended upon Albert for his exceptional brain power, his reasoning and his recall, while
stiffening
their resolve
with his
unimpeachable probity
, he, in turn, relied on his body . . .
long-stemmed, palest green and unearthly . . . rhubarb
, grown on composting dung heaps in the kitchen gardens of Surrey. Rhubarb in last night’s pie set before her lodgers by Missus Hedges, her cheap stays clicking, her bulldog face pouchy with pleasure. If he were to be
accepted by Fair Rosalind . . . by her people
. . .
there would be an end to this domestic simplicity, instead: new furniture, accouchement sets – all the fussing necessitated by baby linen and the
paying
therefore
. She might, he thought, bring with her
seven or eight hundred a year
. . .
But this was
idle fancy
, so far was he from wooing her – he had only seen her once or twice, tipped his hat as she and her illustrious uncle passed down the Ministry stairs. To think of it was
utter folly!
Although, did he not deserve her, or some thing like her? Had he not kept himself
clean
, affixed his eye to the nail through Our Saviour’s hand, not permitting it to stray to a
loosely pinned bodice
? Sitting there, Sunday after Sunday, digging up coin for the velveteen sack poked along the pew, listening with a connoisseur’s ear to the
bronchial moan
of St Jude’s unrestored organ, Albert views the catechism in the same light as the Annual Statistical Table compiled by His Majesty’s Stationery Office: he knows them both by heart, and both ensure the maintenance of his Faith in the Trinity of the King, Kitchener and the Welsh Wizard –.

De’Ath – De’Ath? This sally Albert does not hear, it is not until – I say, De’Ath, if we don’t look lively we’ll get caught behind that four – which comes together with an unprecedented hand on his shoulder, that he grasps these two syllables apply to him personally, as much as legally. Mayhew,
lopsided
by his full bag, smiles down at Albert, dimples eat the neat ends of his
burnt-cork
moustache
. As they leave the changing room and cross in front of the grandly named clubhouse towards the 1st tee, Albert assesses Mayhew’s
lurcher gait
– he may be too meagre to carry his own bag, yet this hardly matters: urchins come trotting from the tattered shadows of the crack willows along the brook, desperate to lug it for him for thru’pence or less. Moreover, on the train to Hanwell, Mayhew admitted to a handicap in single figures. No virtue or skill of my own, he’d flannelled – apparently the Mayhew family home had backed on to a course. There had been seaside summers messing about on sand dunes and on the links near Rustington – then a half-blue at the varsity. As the stopper pottered alongside the Great Western line through Royal Oak, Acton and Ealing, Albert’s immediate superior indulged his own modesty. Albert was grateful for Arbuthnot, whom Mayhew had introduced as
doin’ something jolly tedious at the Bank
, but who was
spiffed up as flashily as a Jew stock-jobber
, what with his lavender spats, silk hatband and buttonhole
big enough for bumble bees
. Arbuthnot seemed only to have been waiting for the train to chug away from Paddington before he got out his flask and offered it round, saying, To spite His Majesty I’ve taken it up for the duration. And when it came to Mayhew’s
humbug
he did not mince his words: Give it a rest, Mayhew, ol’ man. To hear you talk you’d think you didn’t so much as enter into the swing, physically speaking – that the Holy Spirit did it all for you! Arbuthnot, his carnal countenance blue and red blended
mutton turned
, laughed loud – laughed longest. Now, wiping his full and saturnine lips with a snowy pocket kerchief and passing his also well-stocked bag to one of the caddies, Arbuthnot notices that Albert is still carrying only the two clubs he had with him on the train – the mashie niblick and an equally ancient spoon – takes this in, and absorbs also the désordonné of the younger man’s costume, which, in the clear May daylight, presents a brutal contrast with his own natty golfing togs: elasticated tartan stockings, pale green plus-twos that flatter his heavy thighs, and a matching windbreaker covered with an assortment of belts and straps. He says, Are those your only clubs? And when Albert admits to this, the banker goes on, Well, you’re welcome to the use of whichever of mine you please – damn it, you might rather prefer to leave those behind and simply share the bag. One does not ascend so far and so fast in the Service by taking offence – not that one becomes incapable of perceiving those utterances that, whether intentionally or not, should occasion such – but the banker means exactly what he says, and this is of a piece with his whole manner, with its easy and unforced egalitarianism, so unlike that of Mayhew, who, hearing their exchange, hastens to chip in: Why, De’Ath, I should’ve offered before – of course, you must feel free. And when Albert demurs, Thank you, sir, and thank you, Mister Arbuthnot, I’d as soon stick with these, I’m familiar with their, ah . . . peculiarities, and to be frank I welcome the challenge, Mayhew presses uncomfortably: Come-come, De’Ath, I think no such formalities on the course – here we’re all golfers first and only secondly . . . before becoming confused, so uncomfortable is he with saying gentlemen. Albert has some sympathy, as he appreciates the brilliance of his own personation: by no means affecting to be what he is not, while his flat, neutral accents and perfect diction no longer give any clue to the Foulham boy he once was.
Don’t av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t av any more, Missus Moore
. . .
Not so: there will be thousands more of his stamp
recruited in the halls by the White-Eyed Kaffir
. . .
Albert understands far better than his companions that war is always an opportunity. At last Mayhew manages to force out: . . . civil servants, then bends to place his tee, straightens, waggles, sights to where the fairway doglegs between stately oaks, dips a knee prettily as the club’s head comes up, then swipes and digs. His ball bounces once, twice, and disappears into the rough – from wherever Mayhew’s handicap derives, Albert muses, it cannot be his drive. — Walking down the drowsy avenue from Hanwell Station, past two new villas and an old rectory of a piece with its ancient yew and oily crows, Arbuthnot and Mayhew had discussed the deposition of the national reserves, the sack after sack of gold sovereigns that had been loaded into the Bank – so many, Arbuthnot had contended, that the City constabulary had held up all the traffic on King William Street so that the motor vans, motor cars – and even drays taken on by a few of the larger local branches – might form an orderly queue. A housemaid who had been punishing a carpet in the front garden of one of the villas left off and blushed prettily as the three men strolled past. Albert saw over on the far side of the railway line the black chapel spire, redbrick chimneystacks and umber masonry towers of the County Asylum. The lunatics were probably brought in by rail or road – but why not by the Grand Junction Canal? He heard their cries
lapping at the coal wharves . . . lunatic women
. . .
they were being classified now in terms of their usefulness for the effort – why not children, then, imbeciles, perhaps? After all, they’d serve quite as well as . . .
machine-gun fodder
. The difference a year made – where would they be in three?
He, Hi, gave ’er a knock, Which made the old woman go hipertihop, He, Hi, hipertihop
. . .
Now, having observed the tussock that hides Mayhew’s ball for a decent while, Arbuthnot bends to poke in his own tee, saying, I’ve waited until now to propose my wager. The two caddies who have been taken on snigger – and the four who were not, and who sit ankles crossed in a row a few yards off, snigger also . . .
the sycophants of sycophants
. Arbuthnot’s behind presents a billowy expanse . . .
barges tacking downriver under full sail
. . .
but when he straightens he brings with him one of the new ten-shilling notes, taut between his fingers with Bradbury’s signature floating in the sky and framed by
high, wispy cirrus
. . .
I’ll either award this to the best of my companions’ rounds, he says, or pocket it for good. Mayhew makes another blunder . . .
he flounders, the Lusitania sucks him down
. . .
–
Don’tcha think that’s a little steep, old chap? and compounds this with a nod of the club in the direction of Albert, who quickly says, Not at all. Indeed, if you’ll oblige me, Mister Arbuthnot, may I double you? And he takes a pound note from his pocket book. – You see I have one of these new instruments of my own
shrewdly withdrawn in anticipation of precisely this eventuality
. . .
Arbuthnot vigorously assents – and Mayhew has no option but to add a pound of his own to the kitty. Arbuthnot takes up his stance, which is
brutally compact
. He manages the difficult feat, for such a heavyset man, of raising up his arms to the perpendicular. Albert thinks there is too much force in the drive, although club meets ball with a clean crack! so that it ascends, whistling faintly, in a steep
Minniewerfer
parabola
, which, long before it reaches its zenith, Albert calculates will overshoot its target. A two-hundred-and-sixty-yard par 4, pinched into an hourglass by the oaks, firing over these risked
the ordnance falling into a mine crater at the back of Fosse
8
– which is what happens to Arbuthnot’s ball. The safer course is to
lay down covering fire
in the
no-man’s-land
in front of the trees, then employ a mid-range iron to
target
the green – which is what Albert does, despite lacking both driver and suitable iron. He understands every nick and bump in his spoon, knows to several decimal points the angle of its face: once his swing has been
calibrated
he needs must exert no effort, only allow
firing pin
to meet
cartridge
unimpeded so that the ball
hipertihops
to a halt twenty yards short of the trees. Mayhew requires two strokes to clear the rough, Arbuthnot three to blast out of the bunker, the sand spraying from his
hoggish delving
. Advancing to his perfect lie, Albert swaps clubs, leans back into his downswing and lofts his ball over the embroidery of the oaks. A cleanly cut divot falls back to the earth and he takes his time tamping this down before waving the victorious mashie niblick overhead as he makes for the green, calling out, Sorry about that . . . The two older men look on in silence as, using the flat back of the gripped-down spoon, Albert sinks the seven-yard putt. With the evidence of his companions’ frailties afforded by the 1st hole – and no more knowledge of the further seventeen other than their length and par, as detailed by the notice in the clubhouse – Albert has already played ahead. He will, he thinks, almost certainly win by thirteen strokes – fourteen if there is some radically unforeseen circumstance. En route to the 2nd tee Arbuthnot pauses to light his pipe and indicates with the match that Albert should
tarry with him
. Are you, he asks, his
carp
’s mouth blowing
smoky bubbles
, one of Sam Montagu’s men or Lloyd George’s? His heavy-lidded eyes have lost the glazed hilarity they had in the train – his gaze is not cold but appraising. Albert replies, I hardly think I’m a personage of sufficient stature for either of those gentlemen to’ve noticed me . . . His own eyes drift across to the tee, where Mayhew is performing curious knee-bends. I hardly think, Arbuthnot says caustically, that Mister Mayhew would be of sufficient stature for these gentlemen to notice him, were he not supplied with such an able Number Two. Some Ahrensmeyer, or Datas, with shrewd acuity must be seated inside this
barrel of a man
, who now pokes his matchbox between
two staves
. Albert says, What, if you don’t mind my asking, Mister Arbuthnot, precisely is your position at the Bank? – Oh, p-pooh-pooh, Mister De’Ath, I believe you can do better than that, but since you ask . . . there are
smoky pennants streaming overhead, a dandelion head is crushed down below
. . . I make certain there are sufficient funds available for your new Ministry to be able to settle its bills on presentation – when will you be starting at the Arsenal? He turns away and moves through the
white star
haze towards the 2nd tee. Running for more than four hundred yards in a long lazy
s
down to the Uxbridge Road, and skirting the obvious hazard of a millpond, the hole favours those able to
marshal their forces for a rapid advance
. Mayhew’s caddy stoops to place his tee, Mayhew stoops to place his ball – he waggles his club and his shoulders, settles his stance, then again
waggle,
settle
, and again
waggle,
settle
. Albert’s own shoulders squirm in sympathy – the last thing he wishes is for his chief to
lose face!
The drive is an adequate one, although Arbuthnot tops it by at least fifty yards. Both men play efficiently up to the green, while Albert lags judiciously before mercilessly wielding the niblick to sink a twenty-five-yard chip-and-run. And so the three men divide the hole at three strokes apiece, 1 over par. The next four, which take the golfers towards the village of Southall before their flank is turned by a lane and they retreat east back to the River Brent, are