A Few Quick Ones (3 page)

"What would have been too late?"

"It. We've got to change those tickets."

"What, again?"

"Immediately. You remember me saying that my Uncle Horace was staying at a place called Hollrock Manor in Hertfordshire? Well, naturally I supposed that it was one of those luxury country hotels where he would be having twice of everything and filling up with beer, champagne, liqueurs and what not. But was it?"

"Wasn't it? What was it if it wasn't?"

"It was what they call a clinic, run by some foul doctor, where the superfatted go to reduce. He had gone there to please a woman who had told him he looked like a hippopotamus.”

"He does look rather like a hippopotamus."

"He does in that snapshot, I grant you, but that was taken weeks and weeks ago, and during those weeks he has been living on apple juice, tomato juice, orange juice, pineapple juice, parsnip juice, grated carrots, potassium broth and seaweed soup. He has also been having daily massage, the term massage embracing
effleurage,
stroking, kneading,
petrissage
tapotement and vibration."

"Lord love a duck!"

"Lord love a duck is right. I needn't tell you what happens when that sort of thing is going on. Something has to give. By now he must have lost at least a couple of stone and be utterly incapable of giving old Blicester a race. So slip me the Uncle Horace ticket, and I will slip you the Blicester, and the situation will be stabilized once more. Gosh, Freddie, old man, when I think how near I came to letting you down, thinking I was acting in your best interests, I shudder."

Freddie stroked his beard. To Oofy's dismay, he seemed hesitant, dubious.

"Well, I'm not so sure about this," he said. "You say your Uncle Horace has lost a couple of stone. I am strongly of the opinion that he could lose three and still be fatter than my Uncle Rodney, and I'm wondering if I ought to take a chance. You see, a great deal hangs on my winning this tourney. I owe fifty quid to a clairvoyant bookie, who, looking in his crystal ball, has predicted that if I don't brass up, some nasty accident will happen to me, and from what he tells me that crystal ball of his is to be relied on. I should feel an awful ass if I gave up the Uncle Horace ticket and took the Uncle Rodney ticket and Uncle Horace won and I found myself in a hospital with surgeons doing crochet work all over me."

"I only want to help."

"I know you do, but the question is, are you helping?"

Oofy was unable to stroke his beard, for he had not got one, but he fingered his chin. He was thinking with the rapidity with which he always thought when there was money floating around to be picked up. It did not take him long to reach a decision. Agony though it was to part with fifty pounds, winning the sweep would leave him with a nice profit. There was nothing for it but to make the great sacrifice. If you do not speculate, you cannot accumulate.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said, producing his wallet and extracting the bank notes with which it always bulged. "I'll give you fifty quid. That will take care of the bookie, and you'll be all right, whatever happens."

As much as was visible of Freddie's face between the crevices of the beard fit up. He looked like someone staring incredulously at someone through a haystack.

"Golly, Oofy! Will you really do that?"

"It's not much to do for an old friend."

"But what is there in it for you?"

"Just that glow, old man, just that glow," said Oofy.

Going upstairs, he found the Crumpet in the hall, studying the fist in his notebook, and broke the news that a little further pencil-work would be required of him. It brought a frown to the other's face.

"I disapprove of all this chopping and changing," he said, though agreeing that there was nothing in the rules against it. "Let's get this straight. Freddie Widgeon now has the Blicester ticket and you have the Horace Prosser ticket. Right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Not vice versa ?"

"No, not vice versa."

"Good, I'm glad that's settled. I've worn out one piece of indiarubber already."

It was at this moment that the hall porter, who for some little time had been trying to attract Oofy's attention, spoke.

"There's a gentleman asking for you, Mr. Prosser. Name of Prosser, same as yours."

"Ah, yes, my uncle. Where is he?"

"He stepped into the bar."

"He would. Will you go and give him a cocktail," said Oofy to the Crumpet. "I'll be with you in a minute, after I've booked a table in the dining-room."

It was with the feeling that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds that he entered the dining-room. Like the Battle of Waterloo, it had been a devilish close-run thing, but he had won through, and his morale was high. He did not actually say "Tra-la" as he ordered his table, but the ejaculation was implicit in the sunniness of his smile and the sparkle in his eyes. Coming out again into the hall with a gay air on his lips, he was surprised to find the Crumpet there.

"Hullo," he said. "Didn't you go to the bar?"

"I went."

"Didn't you find the old boy?"

"I found him." The Crumpet's manner seemed strange to Oofy. He was looking grave and reproachful, like a Crumpet who considers that he has been played fast and loose with. "Oofy," he said, "Fun's fun, and no one's fonder of a joke than I am, but there are limits. I can see no excuse for a fellow pulling a gag in connection with a race meeting as important as this one. You knew the rules governing the sweep perfectly well. Only genuine uncles were eligible. I suppose you thought it would be humorous to ring in a
non-uncle."

"Do what?"

"It's as bad as entering a greyhound for the Grand National."

Oofy could make nothing of this. The thought flitted through his mind that the other had been lunching.

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about that bloke in there with the billowy curves. You said he was your uncle."

"He is my uncle."

"He is nothing of the bally sort."

"His name's Prosser."

 "No doubt."

"He signed his letter 'Uncle Horace'."

"Very possibly. But that doesn't alter the stark fact that he's a sort of distant cousin. He was telling me about it while we quaffed. It appears that as a child you used to call him Uncle Horace but, stripped of his mask, he is, as I say, merely a distant cousin. If you didn't know this and were not just trying to be funny when you entered him, I apologise for my recent remarks. You are more to be pitied than censured, it would seem, for the blighter is of course disqualified and the stakes go to Frederick Fortescue Widgeon, holder of the Blicester ticket."

To think simultaneously of what might have been and what is going to be is not an easy task, but Oofy, as he heard these words of doom, found himself doing it. For even as his mind dwelled on the thought that he had paid Freddie Widgeon fifty pounds to deprive himself of the sweepstake money, he was also vividly aware that in a brace of shakes he would be standing his distant cousin Horace a lunch which, Horace being the man he was, could scarcely put him in the hole for less than a fiver. His whole soul seethed like a cistern struck by a thunderbolt, and  everything seemed to go black.

The Crumpet was regarding him with concern. "Don't gulp like that, Oofy," he said. "You can't be sick here."

Oofy was not so sure. He was feeling as if he could be sick anywhere.

2

Scratch Man

A DEVOUT expression had come into the face of the young man in plus fours who sat with the Oldest Member on the terrace overlooking the ninth green. With something of the abruptness of a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat he drew a photograph from his left breast pocket and handed it to his companion. The Sage inspected it thoughtfully.

"This is the girl you were speaking of?"

"Yes."

"You love her?"

"Madly."

"And how do you find it affects your game?"

"I've started shanking a bit."

The Oldest Member nodded.

"I am sorry," he said, "but not surprised. Either that or missing short putts is what generally happens on these occasions. I doubt if golfers ought to fall in love. I have known it to cost men ten shots in a medal round. They think of the girl and forget to keep their eyes on the ball. On the other hand, there was the case of Harold Pickering."

"I don't think I've met him."

"He was before your time. He took a cottage here a few years ago. His handicap was fourteen. Yet within a month of his arrival love had brought him down to scratch."

"Quick service."

"Very. He went back eventually to. a shaky ten, but the fact remains. But for his great love he would not have become even temporarily a scratch man."

I HAD seen Harold Pickering in and about the clubhouse (said the Oldest Member) for some time before I made his acquaintance, and there was something in his manner which suggested that sooner or later he would be seeking me out and telling me the story of his life. For some reason, possibly because I have white whiskers, I seem to act on men with stories of their lives to tell like catnip on cats. And sure enough, I was sitting on this terrace one evening, enjoying a quiet gin-and-ginger, when he sidled up, coughed once or twice like a sheep with bronchitis and gave me the works.

His was a curious and romantic tale. He was by profession a partner in a publishing house, and shortly before his arrival here he had gone to negotiate with John Rockett for the purchase of his Reminiscences.

The name John Rockett will, of course, be familiar to you. If you are a student of history, you will recall that he was twice British Amateur Champion and three times runner-up in the Open. He had long retired from competition golf and settled down to a life of leisured ease, and when Harold Pickering presented himself he found the great veteran celebrating his silver wedding. All the family were there - his grandmother, now ageing a little but in her day a demon with the gutty ball; his wife, at one time British Ladies Champion; his three sons, Sandwich, Hoylake and St. Andrew; and his two daughters, Troon and Prestwick. He called his children after the courses on which he had won renown, and they did not disgrace the honoured names. They were all scratch.

In a gathering so august, you might have supposed that a sense of what was fitting would have kept a fourteen-handicap man from getting above himself. But passion knows no class distinctions. Ten minutes after his arrival, Harold Pickering had fallen in love with Troon Rockett, with a fervour which could not have been more wholehearted if he had been playing to plus two. And a week later he put his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all.

"Of course, I was mad…mad," he said, moodily chewing the ham sandwich he had ordered, for he had had only a light lunch. "How could I suppose that a girl who was scratch - the sister of scratch men - the daughter of an amateur champion - would stoop to a fellow like me? Even as I started to speak, I saw the horror and amazement on her face. Well, when I say speak, I didn't exactly speak, I sort of gargled. But it was enough. She rose quickly and left the room. And I came here…"

"To forget her?"

"Talk sense," said Harold Pickering shortly. "I came to try to make myself worthy of her. I intended to get myself down to scratch, if it choked me. I heard that your pro here was the best instructor in the country, so I signed the lease for a cottage, seized my clubs and raced round to his shop…only to discover what?"

"That he has broken his leg?"

"Exactly. What a sensible, level-headed pro wants to break his leg for is more than I can imagine. But there it was. No chance of any lessons from him."

"It must have been a shock for you."

"I was stunned. It seemed to me that this was the end. But now things have brightened considerably. Do you know a Miss Flack?"

I did indeed. Agnes Flack was one of the recognized sights of the place. One pointed her out to visitors together with the Lovers Leap, the waterfall and the curious rock formation near the twelfth tee. Built rather on the lines of the village blacksmith, she had for many seasons been the undisputed female champion of the club. She had the shoulders of an all-in wrestler, the breezy self-confidence of a sergeant-major and a voice like a toastmaster's. I had often seen the Wrecking Crew, that quartette of spavined septuagenarians whose pride it was that they never let anyone through, scatter like leaves in an autumn gale at the sound of her stentorian "Fore!" A dynamic and interesting personality.

"She is going to coach me," said Harold Pickering. "I saw her practising chip shots my first morning here, and I was amazed at her virtuosity. She seemed just to give a flick of the wrist and the ball fell a foot from the pin and flopped there like a poached egg. It struck me immediately that here was someone whose methods I could study to my great advantage. The chip is my weak spot. For the last ten days or so, accordingly, I have been following her about the course, watching her every movement, and yesterday we happened to fall into conversation and I confided my ambition to her. With a hearty laugh, she told me that if I wanted to become scratch I had come to the right shop. She said that she could make a scratch player out of a cheese mite, provided it had not lost the use of its limbs, and gave as evidence of her tuitionary skill the fact that she had turned a man named Sidney McMurdo from a mere blot on the local scene into something which in a dim light might be mistaken for a golfer. I haven't met McMurdo."

"He is away at the moment. He has gone to attend the sickbed of an uncle. He will be back to play for the club championship."

"As hot as that, is he?"

"Yes, I suppose he would be about the best man we have." "Scratch?"

"Plus one, I believe, actually."

"And what was he before Miss Flack took him in hand?"

"His handicap, if I remember rightly, was fifteen."

"You don't say?" said Harold Pickering, his face lighting up. "Was it, by Jove? Then this begins to look like something. If she could turn him into such a tiger, there's a chance for me. We start the lessons tomorrow."