The Golf Omnibus (65 page)

He shaped for the shot, however, with undiminished confidence.

“And now,” Ernest Plinlimmon, “to stuff it in.”

His partner, who had picked up and joined us, caught my eye. He had pursed his lips gravely. He was thinking, I knew, as I was, that no good could come of this loose talk.

Ernest Plinlimmon addressed his ball. The line was quite straight and clear, and all that was needed was the right strength. But, alas, nothing is more difficult at the end of a tense round than to estimate strength. As the ball left the clubhead, it looked to me destined for the happy ending. It trickled straight for the hole, and I was just expecting the joyful rattle which would signify that all was well, when it seemed to falter. Two feet . . . one foot . . . six inches . . . it was still moving. Three inches . . . two inches . . . I held my breath.

Would it? Could it?

No! Barely an inch from the cup it wavered, hesitated and stopped. He tapped it in, but it was too late. Ernest Plinlimmon had merely tied for the summer medal, and would have to undergo all the spiritual agonies of a play-off.

It was a moment when unthinking men would have said “Tough luck!” or some such banality. But Ernest's partner and I were seasoned golfers and knew that on these occasions silence is best. We exchanged a mute glance of pity and terror, and then our attention was diverted to the noticeable behaviour of the young man himself.

I had always known Ernest Plinlimmon as a mild, reserved man, and the sight of
his contorted face gave me, I must confess, a rather painful shock. His eyes were wild, and the veins stood out on his forehead. I waited with something like apprehension for his first words, but when he spoke it was to utter a simple query.

“Where,” inquired Ernest Plinlimmon, “is that sheep?”

“What sheep?” said his partner.

“
The
sheep. The sheep I drove into.” His eyes rolled. “The best drive I ever made in my life, a drive that would have put me within easy chip shot of the pin, ruined by a blasted sheep. I now wish to be led into the presence of that sheep, so that I may strangle it with my bare hands.”

“It didn't look like a sheep to me,” said his partner. “More like Miss Fitch, if you follow what I mean.”

“Miss Fitch?”

I gave a violent start. The excitement of watching those final putts had driven everything from my mind. I now remembered that the lad stood in imminent peril, and must be warned to fly while there was yet time. At any moment Clarice Fitch would be coming out of the clubhouse, breathing fire.

“Ernest,” I said rapidly, “our friend here is quite correct. Miss Fitch was on the fairway, tying her shoelace . . .”

“What!”

“Tying her shoelace.”

“What!”

“Tying her . . .”

My voice died away. Clarice Fitch was standing on the edge of the green, her arms folded, her eyes shooting out little sparks.

“Let us get this straight,” said Ernest Plinlimmon, in a strange, quiet voice. “You say that this infernal girl stopped in the middle of the eighteenth fairway, in the middle of a medal competition, in the middle of a man's drive who only needed a four to win, in order to tie her shoelace . . . her blasted shoelace . . . her damned blanked . . .”

A dark flood swept over the young man's face. His teeth came together with a click. For an instant, his mouth opened and his nose twitched and he seemed to be struggling for utterance: then, as if realizing the futility of trying to find words that would do justice to his feelings, he raised his putter and hurled it violently from him. And Clarice Fitch, who had unfolded her arms and was advancing with a slow sinister stride, like the snow leopard of the Himalayas, got it squarely on the shin-bone.

It was a moment which I shall not readily forget. I have always ranked it, indeed, among the high spots of my life. Looking back, I find each smallest detail of the scene rising before my eyes as if it had happened yesterday. I see the setting sun crimsoning the western sky. I see the long shadows creeping over the terrace. I see Clarice Fitch hopping about on one leg, while Ernest Plinlimmon, his wrath turned off as if with a tap, stands gaping at the sight of what he has done. And over all,
after that first sharp, shrill, piercing cry of agony, there broods a strange, eerie silence.

How long this silence lasted I am not able to say, for at these supreme moments one cannot measure time. But presently Clarice Fitch ceased to hop and, coming to a halt with a hand pressed to her shin, began to speak.

One of the advantages enjoyed by a girl who gets about a bit is that in the crises of life she is not confined to the poor resources of her native tongue. I doubt if Clarice Fitch would have been able to say a tithe of the things she wished to say, had she been compelled to say them in English. The fact that as the result of her travels she had at her command a round dozen or so of African dialects enabled her now to express herself with a rich breadth which could not but awe even one who, like myself, did not understand a single word. There was no need to understand words. Given the situation, one got the general sense, and as the address gathered speed and volume I found myself edging away from Ernest Plinlimmon, fearful lest the lightning playing about his head might include me in its activities. So might the children of Israel have edged away from one of their number who had been so unfortunate as to fall out with the prophet Jeremiah.

And Ernest, as I say, stood gaping. One can dimly picture the young man's feelings. There before him was the shin he loved to touch, and he had sloshed it with a putter. In a similar situation, no doubt, Sir Jasper Medallion-Carteret would merely have sneered. Or he might even have followed up the putter with the number four iron. But Ernest was no Sir Jasper. He had the air of one who is out on his feet.

Over the quiet green the stream of words flowed on without a break. There seemed to be no reason why it should not go on for ever. And then, suddenly, in the very midst of what appeared to be a particularly powerful passage, Clarice Fitch broke down. Bursting into tears, she buried her face in her hands and began hopping again.

I cannot explain this. An instant before, one would have said that she was incapable of such a feminine weakness. The only theory I can advance is that, having reached this point in her remarks, she had suddenly become aware once more of the agony which oratory had for the time enabled her to forget. At any rate, be that as it may, she now burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

The effect on Ernest Plinlimmon was as if some magic spell had been removed, bringing life again to his congealed frame. He had been standing transfixed, incapable of movement. He now gave a convulsive start, like a somnambulist rudely awakened, and bounded forward—unless I am mistaken in my conjecture—with the idea of grovelling at her feet and beating his head upon the ground. His eyes were glaring. His lips were twisted. He waved his arms in frantic appeal. And just as he reached the girl she raised her head, and his fist, shooting out in a passionate gesture of remorse, caught her on the right eye.

The result was extraordinary. If he had been practising for weeks with a punching bag he could not have brought off a sweeter left jab. It travelled about eight inches with all his weight behind it, and it sent Clarice Fitch over the side of the green as if she had been shot from a gun. One moment, she was among those present; the next,
she had disappeared and a fountain of sand showed that she had found the pot bunker which stands at the base of the slope to catch a hooked second.

Ernest Plinlimmon congealed once more, and again time stood still.

As before, one could, in a dim way, picture his feelings. Plainly, he was running over in his mind the recent series of events. He loved this girl and yearned for her to be his. And, in addition to singing “Only God Can Make A Tree” in her presence, he had—in the course of some fifteen minutes—biffed her with a golf ball, cracked her over the shin with a putter and pasted her in the right eye with his fist. Not so good, he was evidently thinking. I saw him put up a hand to straighten his spectacles, only to lower it again on finding no spectacles there. The action was that of a man in a trance.

And he was still standing there, when there was a scrabbling sound and Clarice's head appeared over the edge of the green. And at the sight of it I uttered an involuntary cry of joy, for in her left eye—the other was closed and already assuming a blackish tint—I saw the light of love.

A moment ago, I said that I had been able to read Ernest Plinlimmon's mind. Now, even more clearly, I could read that of Clarice Fitch. It did not need words to tell me that she had been thinking things over in the bunker and had arrived at an arresting conclusion.

That drive that had struck her amidships she had attributed to carelessness. That hurled putter had seemed to her a putter hurled at random. But this punch in the eye had put an entirely different complexion on the matter. That, she knew, had been deliberate and calculated, the violent attempt at self-expression of a man who, though mild of aspect and intensely spectacled, possessed the soul of an infuriated rhinoceros and did not intend to allow girls to abuse him in Swahili without lodging a protest. And if that blow had been deliberate, so must the assault with the driver and putter have been deliberate. In other words, this man, crazed with love, had been wooing her just as she had hoped some day some man would come and woo her. Even the chief of the Lesser 'Mgowpi had not been so rough as this, and, as for Sir Jasper Medallion-Carteret, he became, in comparison with Ernest Plinlimmon, mere small-town stuff.

For an instant, she stood there, rubbing her shin and her eye alternately. Then with oustretched hands she advanced towards young Plinlimmon.

“My man!” she said.

Ernest Plinlimmon did not appear to get it.

“Eh?” he said, blinking. “Your what?”

“My great, strong, wonderful man!”

Once more, he blinked.

“Who, me?”

She flung her arms about his neck in an ecstasy of devotion, so that even Ernest Plinlimmon was able, though still somewhat fogged, to get the general idea. He was bewildered, yes, but he retained sufficient intelligence to do his bit. I saw him stand
on tiptoe, for she was considerably the taller, and kiss her. Then with a little sigh of happiness, he adjusted himself to her embrace as if he had been an average, and I turned to his partner who, during the recent events, had been practising short putts.

“Come,” I said. “Let us leave them together.”

AS THE OLDEST
Member stood chatting with his week-end guest on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, there came out of the club-house a girl of radiant beauty who, greeting the Sage cordially drew his attention to the bracelet on her shapely arm.

“Isn't it lovely!” she said. “Ambrose gave it me for my birthday.”

She passed on, and the guest heaved a moody sigh.

“Once again!” he said. “I've never known it to fail. What on earth is the good of Nature turning out girls like that, seeing that before an honest man can put in his bid they have always gone and got an Ambrose attached to them? Or if not an Ambrose, a Jim or a Tim, or a Fred or a Ned or a Mike or a Spike or a Percival. Sometimes I think I shall go into a monastery and get away from it all.”

“You admired my little friend?”

“She is what the doctor ordered.”

“It is odd that you should say that, for she is what the doctor got. She is the wife of our local medicine man, Ambrose Gussett.”

“I'll bet he isn't worthy of her.”

“On the contrary. You might say that he married beneath him. He is a scratch, she a mere painstaking eighteen. But then we must remember that until shortly before her marriage she had never touched a golf club. She was a tennis player,” said the Oldest Member, wincing. A devout golfer from the days of the gutty ball, his attitude towards exponents of the rival game had always resembled that of the early Christians towards the Ebionites.

“Well, anyway,” said the guest. “I'm glad he remembers her birthday.”

“He will always do so. That is one date which is graven on his memory in letters of brass. The time may come when in an absent-minded moment Ambrose Gussett will forgot to pronate the wrists and let the clubhead lead, but he will never forget his wife's birthday. And I'll tell you why,” said the Oldest Member, securing his companion's attention by digging him in the lower ribs with the handle of a putter.

Ambrose Gussett (the Sage proceeded) had been a member of our little community for some months before Evangeline Tewkesbury came into his life. We all liked Ambrose and wished him well. He was a pleasant clean-cut young fellow with frank blue eyes and an easy swing, and several of our Society matrons with daughters on their hands were heard to express a regret that he should remain a bachelor.

Attempts to remedy this, however, had come to nothing. Like so many young doctors with agreeable manners and frank blue eyes, Ambrose Gussett continued to be an iodoform-scented butterfly flitting from flower to flower but never resting on any individual bloom long enough to run the risk of having to sign on the dotted line.

And then Evangeline Tewkesbury arrived on a visit to her aunt, Miss Martha Tewkesbury, and he fell for her with a thud which you could have heard in the next county.

It generally happens around these parts that young men who fall in love look me up in my favourite chair on this terrace in order to obtain sympathy and advice as to how to act for the best. Ambrose Gussett was no exception. Waking from a light doze one evening, I perceived him standing before me, scratching his chin coyly with a number three iron.

“I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” said Ambrose Gussett, getting down to it without preamble. “When in her presence I note a marked cachexia. My temperature goes up, and a curious burning is accompanied by a well-marked yearning. There are floating spots before my eyes, and I am conscious of an overpowering urge to clasp her in my arms and cry ‘My mate!'”