Umbrella (26 page)

plain sailing
: broad fairways, complacent bunkers and mundane hillocks. Albert doesn’t have to try too hard to persuade Mayhew that his skill is
in the ascendant
. Arbuthnot, however, looks Albert in the eye queerly at regular intervals. We could, he says, as they stand observing a puffed Mayhew undertake more knee-bends, have played the Brent Valley course, I have membership there as well. So do several Jews, Mayhew adds apropos of the new cabinet, and I understand they’ve need of a motor-charabanc to take them round the nine such is their laziness –. And parsimony! Arbuthnot adds, then all three laugh – he himself laughing the longest. On the 9th tee Albert realises he is drained of energy by the effort of keeping his swing in check: his back is
galvanised
by
tension, a stress that
winds
about his arms,
pricking and ripping
at his nerves and ligaments with sharp
barbs
. The hole is the most interesting thus far: running for a hundred and thirty yards down a gentle slope, to where a screen of alders hides the point at which the fairway hooks round. Through the
shivergreen
of leaves, high up on the far bank, Albert sees the pin piercing the kidney of cropped grass – it is only good sportsmanship to point out to his companions that the river is
merely a blind
. Really? Mayhew queries, pressing the turf with the toe of his shoe,
feeling for mines
. Bolstered by his subordinate’s hidden directives, he has begun to play the part of a
magnanimous victor
. Albert says, I rather think that it’s here the course’s architect has lavished all the invention of which the holes thus far have been deprived – I wager that behind the trees there is a water feature right beside the river. Mayhew bleats again: Really? When bedevilled by hectoring telegrams from the Front
conceit is a mask Mayhew oft dons
– it is this that Albert sees obscuring his features, and through
holes cut
in it his
moist and unmanly
eyes scan the mid-distance.
Fool! Your country needs not you
. . .
For Mayhew has called for a 3 iron, where any save the most expert would play short, accepting two shots to the green as the price for a safe par 3. There’s nothing now that Albert can do to save him – nor all the
whey-faced younger brothers in an ague of terror
who have been chucked away on this
desperate manoeuvre
. So sunk is Albert in this contumely that he neglects to observe the girlish jink of Mayhew’s knees – is aware only of the repugnant slowness of the ball, towed upwards through the deceptively irenic air by
steam pinnaces that whistle towards Constantinoples of
cloud
. They buzz, the machine-gun bullets – or so Albert has heard officers on leave remark: buzz as they make serrate soft things –
flesh, cloth, brain matter
. . .
So it proves with Mayhew’s ball, which, gaining insufficient height, fatally pauses, is sheered by the buzzing wind, then plummets. Uncharacteristically, Albert pictures this: the tear in the bilious slime, the dimpled moonface bobbing up in the bloody and stagnant water. The caddy will, he thinks, be prevailed upon to wallow in and retrieve it – no willingness to it, only
a dull-witted and hungry compliance
. Suddenly he licks the metallic nib of his anger
I gave him every opportunity!
It is a transformation
that
clever crapaud
registers at once, despite his being more than
half blotto
, and Albert giving, he is certain, no indication other than the exaggerated deference with which he waves Arbuthnot up before him on to the mound. The banker plays safe, his ball
hipertihopping
down the incline to lie exactly as it ought for a long chip to the green. There is a point in one’s construction of a golf swing – or so Albert believes – when the player achieves that state of mind described by the Hindoo holy men: with the yogic assumption of the stance – arms up and away, the whole length of the torso
twisted
precisely on the bipod
– force becomes inimical to the meditative calculation of angles: the arc the club’s head will describe and that of the once-smitten ball.
All
has been
decided
– the stroke is a ghostly conclusion,
void and without form
. Moreover, the conflict is not with his ostensible opponents – who are feeble creatures, their features
poorly moulded in soft lead
– but with the course, this wholly arbitrary strip of land, the tangled dells and ungrazed-upon meadows of which have been invested with a terrible and futile significance. The course is not blameless – it has
drawn this fire down
on itself by reason of its very marginality. Its manifest features, streams, copses, isolated and venerable elms, mean nothing any longer, indeed, they are only there at all to provide bearings from which the combatants can get their range. Albert’s long body unwinds and rewinds, and, as he unwinds again, he feels in every fibre the perfection of the stroke – the mashie niblick, he also, both might have been made for this moment alone. Cheer-o, Mayhew mutters – the three of them, the caddies and hangers-on too, are all floating away with the air ball, which mounts and mounts the pneumatic column for a long while, then poises, then drops. All anticipate the
hippertihop
on the green, the white
scut
of the invisible
coney
– yet there is nothing. It appears, Mayhew says as they go on, that you too have come a cropper. Arbuthnot smiles his lipless toady smile –
my anger amuses him!
And it all unfolds as Albert foresaw: the caddy wading in the mucky mere diverted from the stream, while Mayhew, increasingly intemperate, paces the bank, yelping commands. It isn’t until Arbuthnot places a weighty hand on his shoulder that he settles down, accepts the two penalty strokes and the new ball. While the two of them play up to the green Albert stalks its hinterland, parting
quiff
after
quiff
of grass, each time seeing only what he expects: a straggle of old beech mast, a catkin, a strewing of
parched sheep shot
. . .
Albert disdains his
own self-doubt, although it remains important that it be one of the others – although not necessarily Mayhew – who, on withdrawing the pin to retrieve his own ball, cries out in astonishment, Oh, I say! before stooping to pluck out the second that lies coddled in the cup and calling to Albert: Does yours have a mark that you recall? Albert calls back hoarsely, Three hearts! He hears not Arbuthnot’s terse congratulation or Mayhew’s feigned one – he ignores the ragged cheers of caddies and hangers-on, he strides on to the next tee,
releases the ratchet, swings the bipod forward, tightens the ratchet
, settles into his stance, grips the club,
flicks his eyes to the horizon, clicks the springloaded wheel to select the range, cranks the handle and lays down covering fire
, beneath which he can advance his reputation. Two birdies in succession – an eagle at the 12th. If the first half of the match was distinguished by a terrible stasis as Albert’s imposture held them all in check, now there is a delirious release into mobile warfare, as the trio quarter the remaining area of the course, then quarter it again. Pigeons hang in the hawthorn beside the 17th tee, their bodies
quite disgustingly plump
writhing amidst the thorns. It is
stand to
, and to the west the sun seeps through watery cloud, to the east all the Mary Annes and Mays in the villas of Castlebar Hill and Drayton Green poke the banked-down ranges with care: coal must be brought home by pram, a half-hundredweight at a time. Already the flow of commuters back from the station is choked off by death – while smoke rises from chimneypots and streams madder towards the next dawn. A sudden spring shower silvering slates – and on the 18th tee stands Mayhew, pushing away the brolly his cabby has taken from his bag and opened. – No, man, I cannot see from under it. There is the
pull
and then the
pull again
of mud on Albert’s boots as they walk towards the clubhouse – clods of ire fall away and he is
inclined to leniency
. As they wait their turns to use the boot scraper, Mayhew and Arbuthnot pay off their caddies with the florins and half-crowns in their waistcoat pockets before withdrawing wallets from animal-damp tweed. Astonishing, Mayhew says as he hands over the pound note, what was it in the end – six, seven strokes? Albert is succinct: Fourteen. Mayhew flutes ruefully, And all achieved with two clubs – no driver, and no putter either . . . Still – he dabs his pantomime moustache – some might argue that only having two makes things easier, choosing the right club being part of the skill . . . of . . . the game . . . He falls silent. Albert accepts Arbuthnot’s pound note and handshakes from both men – he leans on his spoon and mashie niblick
the Norwegian at the Pole
, while the hip flask is passed amongst them, then he uses the niblick’s head to ease out the muddy slug trapped in the right-angle of heel and sole. I shall take the position at Woolwich, he says, each word
lightly slapping
Mayhew’s rain-washed cheeks, the shell crisis needs must be addressed.
Incarnadined
, Mayhew’s face is
a wound suffused with indignant hurt
: And you . . . you’re the man for the task – you believe? Yes, Albert says, that’s precisely what I believe. — He leaves them there, and, grabbing his jacket from the hook in the changing room, strides off to Hanwell Station, the shafts of the clubs grinding in his blistered hand. At Paddington he realises the weather has closed in in earnest, when, making his way along the platform, he has to dodge this way, then that, to avoid the tips of umbrella struts that
snipe
for his eyes – the enemy of the tall man in this
crowded
stone trench
. Three ladies lurk by the ticket barrier – the youngest steps forward and stares at him boldly from the black-straw grotto of her hat. Albert notes her fashionably short skirt, she has slim ankles –
les attaches fines, the French would say
– she says, Shirker, which he affects not to hear. Shirker, she says again, struggling to contain herself as she is tossed from the hand of righteousness to that of decorum . . .
which drops the catch
. She drums her gloved hands on his chest. Now, now! Her older companion
a chinless drab
restrains her by the hips
and happily
. You’ve only to give it to him, Lucy. The third of their party
ashamed, possibly?
taps the platform to one side of her boots and then the other with the point of an umbrella Albert recognises as having been manufactured by the company with which his sister holds a position. This
sturdy body
is hatless – or rather her hair, worn in a Mikado tuck-up, is her hat. What’s this! And this?! his assailant cries, but Albert, while perfectly aware of what is transpiring, remains powerless to intervene: he treads water some way off, looking back at the tall, limber young man, the golf clubs in one of his hands, the skirt of his cricketing pullover visible between the flaps of his jacket, and the muddy spatter on his trews which are still tucked into his stockings. – Do you not see yourself, my fine fellow – d’you not? There are brave men dying at Ypres, while you – you . . . Albert considers the third woman’s movements to be mysterious, almost ritualised: the way her divided skirts sway as she taps the platform here, then there. Were this peacetime, someone might intervene, as it is he imagines that the passers-by – who hurry on, faces averted, cold grey gabardine shoulders