Read A Few Quick Ones Online

Authors: P G Wodehouse

A Few Quick Ones (17 page)

BOOK: A Few Quick Ones
2.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

"I am refereeing the match."

"Oh, are you? Then you will have a front row seat at the tragedy and will get a good view when my life is blighted and the cup of happiness dashed from my lips."

I frowned. I did not approve of this sort of talk from a young man in the springtime of life. I would not have liked it much even from someone more elderly.

"Come, come," I said. "Don't falter, Walter. Why this defeatist attitude? From what people tell me, George Porter will be less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels. I think you will beat him."

"I don't, and I'll tell you why. You know the Botts family?"

I did indeed, and spent a considerable portion of my time avoiding them. The head of the house, Mrs. Lavender Botts, had a distressing habit of writing books and talking a good deal about them. Her works were not novels. I am a broadminded man and can tolerate female novelists, but Mrs. Botts gave English literature a bad name by turning out those unpleasant whimsical things to which women of her type are so addicted.
My Chums The Pixies
was one of her tides,
How To Talk To The Flowers
another, and
Many Of My Best Friends Are Field Mice
a third. The rumour had got about that she was contemplating a fourth volume on the subject of elves.

Ponsford Botts, her husband, told dialect stories, and perhaps even harder to bear was their elder son, Cosmo, a Civil Servant by profession who reviewed books for various weekly papers and like so many book reviewers had a distressing tendency to set everybody right about everything. Strong men had often hidden behind trees when they saw Cosmo coming.

"Yes, I am fairly Botts-conscious," I said. "Why do you ask?"

His voice shook a little as he replied. "I have just heard they are going to walk round with me tomorrow." I saw what he had in mind.

"You think they will put you off your game?"

"I know they will, but that's not the worst. Angela will be there, too. You see the frightful peril that looms?"

I said no, I didn't, and he muttered something about somebody, whose name I did not catch, being a fatheaded ivory-skulled old dumb-bell.

"Surely it's obvious? You've seen me play golf, haven't you?"

"Oddly enough, no, except when driving off the first tee or holing out at the ninth. No doubt I missed a genuine treat, but I find it pleasanter these days to remain in my chair on this terrace. Why?"

"Because, if you had, you would know that once on the course I become a changed man. In ordinary life calm, suave and courtly, the moment I am out on the links and things go wrong, as they always do, the fiend that sleeps in me is awakened. I curse my caddy, I snarl at spectators, I make a regular exhibition of myself. And tomorrow, as I say, the air will be thick with Bottses, each rasping my nervous system in his or her individual way. And Angela will be there, looking on."

I nodded gravely.

"You think that something will pop?"

"I don't see how it can be avoided. Picture what will happen if just as I have missed a short putt old Botts starts telling me the story of the two costermongers who went to heaven, or Ma Botts brings up the subject of elves, or Cosmo explains how he would have made the shot. Yes, unquestionably something will pop."

"And you fear the effect this generous wrath of yours will have on your betrothed?"

"Well, figure it out for yourself. She thinks she is linking her lot with a Chevalier Bayard. What will be her reaction when she finds that what she has really drawn is a Captain Bligh of the
Bounty?
I'll tell you what her reaction will be. She will recoil from me in horror and cancel all orders for the trousseau before I can say 'Henry Cotton'. And quite understandably. I wouldn't want to marry Captain Bligh of the Bounty myself."

"But I thought the angry young man was all the go nowadays."

"Not if he is as angry as I get when I miss a short putt. And the shock will be all the greater because up till now I have always gone out of my way to be deferential and courteous to these human streptococci. The strain was fearful, but for Angela's sake I stifled my true opinion of them and wore die mask. The urge to tell them to go and boil their respective heads was very strong, but I resisted it."

"You feel that she would have taken in bad part the suggestion that they should go and boil their heads?"

"Of course she would. She has a niece's love for Ma Botts, the same for Pa Botts, and a cousin's love - though I don't see how she manages it - for Cosmo Botts, and had I revealed what I really thought of them, would have been as sore as a gumboil and might even have given me the bum's rush. As it is, I am not sure that I may not have given her some inkling of the truth, for her manner has been strange of late. I catch her looking at me in a speculating sort of way, as if she suspected."

"Imagination."

"It may be so, but it doesn't matter one way or the other, for tomorrow she will know all. So now you see what I had in mind when I spoke just now of doom, disaster, desolation and despair."

His problem was one that undoubtedly presented many points of interest, and fortunately I was in a position to solve it.

"What you need," I said, "is self-control, and I will tell you how you can achieve it. In my playing days I, like you, was inclined to become a little emotional on the golf course. I cured myself by thinking of Socrates."

"The Greek bozo?"

"The, as you say, Greek bozo. Job would probably have answered equally well, but for some reason I preferred Socrates."

"I don't seem to follow you. How does Socrates get into the act?"

"Perfectly simple. He, if you remember, had his troubles…it can't have been at all pleasant for him to have to drink that bowl of hemlock…but he refused to let them get him down, bearing them consistently with good-humoured calm and a stiff upper hp. So if you keep reminding yourself that even if your best shots end up in bunkers you are much better off than he was, and murmur 'Socrates' to yourself at intervals - or, better, 'Socks'…no, I have it. I shall be with you tomorrow, and every time I notice that you are about to erupt I will whisper the magic word in your ear. That ought to do the trick."

"It solves the whole thing. I see myself getting through the final of the President's Cup without a stain on my character. What was it you were saying - that people were saying that George Porter would be beneath my chariot wheels?"

"Less than the dust."

"They said a mouthful," said Walter, now completely restored to his customary equanimity, and with a gay 'Socks' on his lips went off to the bar for a gin and tonic.

 

He was on the first tee with Angela when I arrived there on the following afternoon, chatting chummily of this and that. Nobody else was present. The annual contest for the President's Cup never draws the dense crowd of spectators which you see at some such event as the British Open. Its high-sounding title is perhaps a little misleading, for it is not one of our big competitions. Entries are accepted only from those whose handicap is not lower than eighteen, it having been designed as a special treat for the underprivileged submerged tenth of our golfing world. It brings out the rabbits as if it were a conjuror extracting them from a silk hat.

George Porter and Walter both had handicaps of eighteen, but I had been told by those who had watched them that there was a marked difference between them in action. George, these eye-witnesses said, played a steady game. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller, and teetotal vegetarians all play a steady game, due, I think, to the essential vitamins in the grated carrots. Walter, on the other hand, was one of those uncertain performers, varying between a dashing scratch and a shaky thirty-six. Which W. Judson, I was asking myself, should we see this afternoon - the masterful stylist who had once done the long seventh in three or his alter ego who frequently took a spotty eleven at the short second?

It was good, at any rate, whatever the future might bring, to note that at the moment he was still plainly in the best of spirits, these appearing to be not in the least damped by the advent at this point of Mr. and Mrs. Botts. They were not accompanied by their son Cosmo, he, they said, having been detained at home by a rush order from the Booksy Weekly for an article on Albert Camus And The Aesthetic Tradition. They held out hopes that he would be joining us at the turn, and Walter said "Capital, capital, capital." A few moments later he drew me aside and revealed the reason for his exuberance. George Porter, it seemed, was in the poorest shape owing to an overnight rift with his fiancée. The local grapevine reported that relations between the two had been severed. From a reliable source Walter had learned that his rival had spent the morning in the bar, sullenly drinking glass after glass of barley-water, and the view he took was that the President's Cup was as good as on his mantelpiece.

"If I can't extract the stuffing from a fellow who has received the ring and letters back and is full to the brim with barley-water/' he said jubilantly, "I'll never show myself on a golf course again. See, here he comes, looking licked to a splinter."

It was true. George Porter, who had just appeared, gave the impression, as he advanced towards us on leaden feet, of having had his insides removed by a taxidermist who had absent-mindedly forgotten to complete the operation by stuffing him. I believe this often happens when a young lover has been handed his hat by the adored object. He groaned civilly in response to my greeting, and in a hollow voice called Tails - correctly - when Walter spun the coin for the honour. With bowed head he took his place on the first tee, and the match began.

It speedily became evident that Walter, in predicting a one-sided contest, had not erred. What ensued was a mere massacre, and I am not ashamed to say that, pro-Walter though I was, my heart bled for George Porter. It was plain that the unfortunate man felt his position deeply. It is bad enough to lose the girl you love after spending a fortune on her for months in the matter of flowers and chocolates, and when in addition to this the pants are being trimmed off you in an important golf match the nadir of depression is reached. I have said that George Porter's head was bowed, but his trouble was that he did not keep it bowed. Too often, when making a shot, he would raise it heavenwards, as if asking why a good man should be persecuted like this, which of course resulted in topping. And in sharp contradistinction to his pitiful efforts Walter, striking an inspired vein, was playing superbly.

Golf in its essence is a simple game. All you have to do is hit the ball hard in the right direction. Walter, if he hit the ball at all, always hit it hard, and by the law of averages there was bound to come a day sooner or later when he hit it in the right direction. It had come this afternoon, and I was not surprised that he found himself three up at the turn. His lead would have been even more substantial, had he not at two of the short holes overdriven the green by some fifty yards, while on the ninth the same excess of zeal caused him to miss the cup four times in succession.

There was a brief intermission here while Walter genially permitted his opponent a breathing spell in which he could regroup his shattered forces. George Porter wandered off a little way, to be alone with his grief, and Walter held a sort of court on the tenth tee.

The suavity of his manner had never been more pronounced. He was all courteous attention when Mrs. Botts brought the conversation round to elves. Those little beetles you saw crawling on the turf were really elves, she said, and when she mentioned that she was thinking of calling her forthcoming book Elves On The Golf Course nothing could have exceeded the warm enthusiasm with which Walter agreed that that was the stuff to give them. Ponsford Botts once more told his story of the two costermongers who went to heaven, and even though he told it with a Swedish dialect Walter laughed unstintedly. He also patted his caddy on the head, and when Cosmo Botts appeared from the clubhouse greeted him like a brother. It seemed to me that in appointing myself his guardian angel this afternoon I had taken on a sinecure.

I mentioned this to Walter when I managed to get him alone for an instant, and he agreed with me.

"It was a good idea," he said, "but, as things have turned out, quite unnecessary. Why should I bother to start thinking of Socrates when I am enjoying a pleasant round of golf, right at the peak of my form and with my loved ones about me ?"

"Would you call them loved ones ?"

"Technically, being relatives of Angela's, they are loved ones. A charming family, in my opinion."

"Mrs. Botts?"

"Delightful woman. Most informative about elves."

"Mr. Botts?"

"Very droll and entertaining. Hard to keep a straight face when he tells those stories of his."

"Cosmo Botts ?"

Here he hesitated for a moment, but speedily rallied.

"A most interesting, cultured young man. Knows a lot. He was telling me just now that he would give me a tip or two for improving my game on the next Nine. Very civil of him, I thought it."

I was rejoiced to find his morale so high and had started to say so, when my eye was caught by something that was happening on the George Porter sector. A girl was tripping across the greensward towards him, a girl with chestnut hair and a turned-up nose, in whom I recognized Mabel Case, his ex-fiancée. But there was nothing ex about her behaviour now. Scarcely had my gaze rested upon her, when she flung herself on George's neck and kissed him fondly. Apparently something in the nature of a lovers' reconciliation was taking place, and George, as he bade her a tender farewell and came striding buoyantly to the tee, was plainly a new man. His eye was bright, his walk lissom, and he swung his driver like whoever it was who used to swing the sword Excalibur.

"Gosh!" he cried. "I feel as if a rich uncle in Australia had just handed in his dinner pail and left me a million sterling. What a beautiful world this is! And what a lovely day! The air's like orange juice. How do we stand?

 

Three down, am I not? Well, well, we will soon adjust that state of affairs."

BOOK: A Few Quick Ones
2.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

La Reina Isabel cantaba rancheras by Hernán Rivera Letelier
Places, Please!: Becoming a Jersey Boy by Sullivan, Daniel Robert
A Little Learning by J M Gregson
La caverna by José Saramago
Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital