Nothing Serious (14 page)

Once,
as I strolled along the road, I heard a noise like machine-gun fire and turned
the corner to find him slapping little Irwin’s shoulder in a breezy,
elder-brotherly manner. His pockets were generally bulging with biscuits for
Alphonse, and from time to time he would come and tell me how he was getting
along with Mrs Botts’ books. These, he confessed, called for all that he had of
resolution and fortitude, but he told me that he was slowly mastering their
contents and already knew a lot more about pixies than most people.

It
would all have been easier, he said, if he had been in a position to be able to
concentrate his whole attention upon them. But of course he had his living to
earn and could not afford to neglect his office work. He held a subordinate
post in the well-known firm of R. P. Crumbles Inc., purveyors of Silver
Sardines (The Sardine with A Soul), and R. P. Crumbles was a hard taskmaster.
And, in addition to this, he had entered for the annual handicap competition
known as the President’s Cup.

It was
upon this latter topic, as the date of the tourney drew near, that he spoke
almost as frequently and eloquently as upon the theme of his love. He had been
playing golf, it appeared, for some seven years, and up till now had never come
within even measurable distance of winning a trophy. Generally, he said, it was
his putting that dished him. But recently, as the result of reading golf books,
he had adopted a super-scientific system, and was now hoping for the best.

It was
a stimulating experience to listen to his fine, frank enthusiasm. He spoke of
the President’s Cup as some young knight of King Arthur’s Round Table might
have spoken of the Holy Grail. And it was consequently with peculiar
satisfaction that I noted his success in the early rounds. Step by step, he won
his way into the semi-finals in his bracket, and was enabled to get
triumphantly through that critical test owing to the fortunate circumstance of
his opponent tripping over a passing cat on the eve of the match and spraining
his ankle.

Many
members of the club would, of course, have been fully competent to defeat Horace
Bewstridge if they had sprained both ankles, or even broken both arms, but
Mortimer Gooch, his antagonist, was not one of these. He scratched, and Horace
walked over into the final.

His
chances now, it seemed to me, were extremely good. According to how the
semi-final in the other bracket went, he would be playing either Peter Willard,
who would be as clay in his hands, or a certain Sir George Copstone, a visiting
Englishman whom his employer, R. P. Crumbles, had put up for the club, and who
by an odd coincidence was residing as a guest at the house of Ponsford Botts.
I had watched this hand across the sea in action, and was convinced that
Horace, provided he did not lose his nerve, could trim him nicely.

A meeting
on the fifteenth green the afternoon before the match enabled me to convey
these views to the young fellow. We were there to watch the finish of the
opposition semi-final, and when Sir George Copstone had won this, I linked my
arm in Horace’s and told him that in my opinion the thing was in the bag.

“If
Peter Willard, our most outstanding golfing cripple, can take this man to the
fifteenth, your victory should be a certainty.”

“Peter
was receiving thirty-eight.”

“You
could give him fifty. What is this Copstone? A twenty-four like yourself, is he
not?”

“Yes.”

“Then
you need feel no anxiety, my boy,” I said, for when I give a pep talk I like it
to be a pep talk. “If you are not too busy to-night reading about pixies, you
might be looking around your living-room for a spot to put that cup.”

He snorted
devoutly, and I think he was about to burst into one of those ecstatic
monologues of his, but at this moment we reached the terrace. And, as we did
so, a harsh, metallic voice called his name, and I perceived, standing at some
little distance, a beetle-browed man of formidable aspect, who looked like a
cartoon of capital in a Labour paper. He was smoking a large cigar, with which
he beckoned to Horace Bewstridge imperiously, and Horace, leaving my side,
ambled up to him like a spaniel From the fact that, as he ambled, he was
bleating “Oh, good evening, Mr Crumbles. Yes, Mr Crumbles. I’m coming, Mr
Crumbles,” I deduced that this was the eminent sardine fancier who provided him
with his weekly envelope.

Their
conversation was not an extended one. R. P. Crumbles spoke rapidly and
authoritatively for some moments, emphasising his remarks with swift,
captain-of-industry prods at Horace’s breast-bone, and then he turned on his
heel and strode off in a strong, economic royalist sort of way, and Horace came
back to where I stood.

Now, I
had noticed once or twice during the interview that the young fellow had seemed
to totter on his axis, and as he drew nearer, his pallid face, with its
starting eyes and drooping jaw, told me that all was not well.

“That
was my boss,” he said, in a low, faint voice.

“So I
had guessed. Why did he call the conference?” Horace Bewstridge beat his
breast.

“It’s
about Sir George Copstone.”

“What
about him!?”

Horace
Bewstridge clutched his hair.

“Apparently
this Copstone runs a vast system of chain stores throughout the British Isles,
and old Crumbles has been fawning on him ever since his arrival in the hope of
getting him to take on the Silver Sardine and propagate it over there. He says
that this is a big opportunity for the dear old firm and that it behoves all of
us to do our bit and push it along. So——”

“So—?”

Horace
Bewstridge rent his pullover.

“So,”
he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve got to play Customer’s Golf to-morrow and let the
man win that cup.”

“Horace!”
I cried.

I would
have seized his hand and pressed it, but it was not there. Horace Bewstridge
had left me. All that my eye encountered was a swirl of dust and his flying
form disappearing in the direction of the bar. I understood and sympathized.
There are moments in the life of every man when human consolation cannot avail
and only two or three quick will meet the case.

I did
not see him again until we met next afternoon on the first tee for the start of
the final.

You,
being a newcomer here (said the Oldest Member) may possibly have formed an
erroneous impression regarding this President’s Cup of which I have been
speaking. Its name, I admit, is misleading, suggesting as it does the guerdon
of some terrific tourney baffled for by the cream of the local golfing talent.
One pictures perspiring scratch men straining every nerve and history being
made by amateur champions.

As a
matter of fact, it is open for competition only to those whose handicap is not
lower than twenty-four, and excites little interest outside the ranks of the submerged
tenth who play for it. As a sporting event on our fixture list, as I often have
to explain, it may be classed somewhere between the Grandmothers’ Umbrella and
the All day Sucker competed for by children who have not passed their seventh
year.

The
final, accordingly, did not attract a large gate. In fact, I think I was the
only spectator. I was thus enabled to obtain an excellent view of the
contestants and to follow their play to the best advantage. And, as on the
previous occasions when I had watched him perform, I found myself speculating
with no little bewilderment as to how Horace’s opponent had got that way.

Sir
George Copstone was one of those tall, thin, bony Englishmen who seem to have
been left over from the eighteen-sixties. He did not actually wear long
side-whiskers of the type known as Piccadilly Weepers, nor did he really flaunt
a fore-and-aft deer-stalker cap of the type affected by Sherlock Holmes, but
you got the illusion that this was so, and it was partly the unnerving effect
of his appearance on his opponents that had facilitated his making his way into
the final. But what had been the basic factor in his success was his method of
play.

A
deliberate man, this Copstone. Before making a shot, he would inspect his
enormous bag of clubs and take out one after another, slowly, as if he were
playing spillikens. Having at length made his selection, he would stand
motionless beside his ball, staring at it for what seemed an eternity. Only
after one had begun to give up hope that life would ever again animate the
rigid limbs, would he start his stroke. He was affectionately known on our
links as The Frozen Horror.

Even in
normal circumstances, a sensitive, highly-strung young man like Horace
Bewstridge might well have found himself hard put to it to cope with such an
antagonist. And when you take into consideration the fact that he had received
those special instructions from the front office, it is not surprising that he
should have failed in the opening stages of the encounter to give of his best.
The fourth hole found him four down, and one had the feeling that he was lucky
not to be five.

At this
point, however, there occurred one of those remarkable changes of fortune which
are so common in golf and which make it the undisputed king of games. Teeing up
at the fifth, Sir George Copstone appeared suddenly to have become afflicted
with some form of shaking palsy. Where before he had stood addressing his ball
like Lot’s wife just after she had been turned into a pillar of salt, he now
wriggled like an Ouled Nail dancer in the throes of colic. Nor did his
condition improve as the match progressed. His movements took on an ever freer
abandon. To cut a long story short, which I am told is a thing I seldom do, he
lost four holes in a row, and they came to the ninth all square.

And it
was here that I observed an almost equally surprising change in the demeanour
of Horace Bewstridge.

Until
this moment, Horace had been going through the motions with something of the
weary moodiness of a Volga boatman, his face drawn, his manner listless. But
now he had become a different man. As he advanced to the ninth tee, his eyes
gleamed, his ears wiggled and his lips were set. He looked like a Volga boatman
who has just learned that Stalin has purged his employer.

I could
see what had happened. Intoxicated with this unexpected success, he was
beginning to rebel against those instructions from up top. The almost religious
fervour which comes upon a twenty-four handicap man when he sees a chance of winning
his first cup had him in its grip. Who, he was asking himself, was R. P.
Crumbles? The man who paid him his salary and could fire him out on his ear,
yes, but was money everything? Suppose he won this cup and starved in the
gutter, I could almost hear him murmuring, would not that be better than losing
the cup and getting his three square a day?

And
when on the ninth green, by pure accident, he sank a thirty-foot putt, I saw
his lips move and I knew what he was saying to himself. It was the word “Excelsior.”

It was
as he stood gaping at the hole into which his ball had disappeared that Sir
George Copstone spoke for the first time.

“Jolly
good shot, what?” said Sir George, a gallant sportsman. “Right in the old
crevasse, what, what? I say, look here,” he went on, jerking his shoulders in a
convulsive gesture, “do you mind if I go and shake out the underlinen? Got a
beetle or something down my back.”

“Certainly,”
said Horace.

“Won’t
keep you long. I’ll just strip off the next-the-skins and spring upon it
unawares.”

He
performed another complicated writhing movement, and was about to leave us,
when along came R. P. Crumbles.

“How’s
it going?” asked R. P. Crumbles.

“Eh?
What? Going? Oh, one down at the turn.”

“He is?”

“No, I
am,” said Sir George. “He, in sharp contradistinction, is one up. Sank a dashed
fine putt on this green. Thirty feet, if an inch. Well, excuse me, I’ll just
buzz off and bash this beetle.”

He
hastened away, twitching in every limb, and R. P. Crumbles turned to Horace.
His face was suffused.

“Do I
get no co-operation, Bewstridge?” he demanded. “What the devil do you mean by
being one up? And what’s all this nonsense about thirty-foot putts? How dare
you sink thirty-foot putts?”

I could
have told him that Horace was in no way responsible for what had occurred and
that the thing must be looked on as an Act of God, but I hesitated to wound the
young man’s feelings, and R. P. Crumbles continued.

“Thirty-foot
putts, indeed! Have you forgotten what I told you?”

Horace
Bewstridge met his accusing glare without a tremor. His face was like granite.
His eyes shone with a strange light.

“I have
not forgotten the inter-office memo. to which you refer,” he said, in a firm,
quiet voice. “But I am ignoring it. I intend to trim the pants off this
stranger in our midst.”

“You
do, and see what happens.”

“I don’t
care what happens.”

“Bewstridge,”
said R. P. Crumbles, “nine more holes remain to be played. During these nine
holes, think well. I shall be waiting on the eighteenth to see the finish. I
shall hope to find,” he added significantly, “that the match has ended before
then.”