The General slightly raised his hand.
‘A minute!’ he said. ‘I was about to tell Chrissie, here, that if I am offered the job—of course it’s an order really—of suppressing the Ulster Volunteers . . . I’d rather cut my throat than do it . . . ’
Sandbach said:
‘Of course you would, old chap. They’re our brothers. You’d see the beastly, lying Government damned first.’
‘I was going to say that I should accept,’ the General said, ‘I shouldn’t resign my commission.’
Sandbach said:
‘Good God!’
Tietjens said:
‘Well, I didn’t.’
Sandbach exclaimed:
‘General! You! After all Claudine and I have said . . . ’ Tietjens interrupted:
‘Excuse me, Sandbach. I’m receiving this reprimand for the moment. I wasn’t, then, rude to Ingleby. If I’d expressed contempt for what he said or for himself, that would have been rude. I didn’t. He wasn’t in the least offended. He looked like a cockatoo, but he wasn’t offended. And I let him over-persuade me. He was right, really. He pointed out that, if I didn’t do the job, those swine would put on one of our little competition wallah head clerks and get all the schedules faked, as well as starting off with false premises!’
‘That’s the view I take,’ the General said, ‘if I don’t take the Ulster job the Government will put on a fellow who’ll burn all the farm-houses and rape all the women in the three counties. They’ve got him up their sleeve. He only asks for the Connaught Rangers to go through the north with. And you know what that means. All the same . . . ’ He looked at Tietjens: ‘One should not be rude to one’s superiors.’
‘I tell you I wasn’t rude,’ Tietjens exclaimed. ‘Damn your nice, paternal old eyes. Get that into your mind!’ The General shook his head:
‘You brilliant fellows!’ he said. ‘The country, or the army, or anything, could not be run by you. It takes stupid fools like me and Sandbach, along with sound moderate heads like our friend here.’ He indicated Macmaster and, rising, went on: ‘Come along. You’re playing me, Macmaster. They say you’re hot stuff. Chrissie’s no good. He can take Sandbach on.’
He walked off with Macmaster towards the dressing-room.
Sandbach, wriggling awkwardly out of his chair, shouted:
‘Save the country . . . Damn it . . . ’ He stood on his feet. ‘I and Campion . . . Look at what the country’s come to . . . What with swine like these two in our club houses! And policemen to go round the links with Ministers to protect them from the wild women . . . By God! I’d like to have the flaying of the skin off some of their backs I would. My God I would.’
He added:
‘That fellow Waterslops is a bit of a sportsman. I haven’t been able to tell you about our bet, you’ve been making such a noise . . . Is your friend really plus one at North Berwick? What are you like?’
‘Macmaster is a good plus two anywhere when he’s in practice.’
Sandbach said:
‘Good Lord . . . A stout fellow . . . ’
‘As for me,’ Tietjens said, ‘I loathe the beastly game.’ ‘So do I,’ Sandbach answered. ‘We’ll just lollop along behind them.’
4
They came out into the bright open where all the distances under the tall sky showed with distinct prismatic outlines. They made a little group of seven—for Tietjens would not have a caddy—waiting on the flat, first teeing ground. Macmaster walked up to Tietjens and said under his voice:
‘You’ve really sent that wire? . . . ’
Tietjens said:
‘It’ll be in Germany by now!’
Mr Sandbach hobbled from one to the other explaining the terms of his wager with Mr Waterhouse. Mr Waterhouse had backed one of the young men playing with him to drive into and hit twice in the eighteen holes the two city men who would be playing ahead of them. As the Minister had taken rather short odds, Mr Sandbach considered him a good sport.
A long way down the first hole Mr Waterhouse and his two companions were approaching the first green. They had high sandhills to the right and, to their left, a road that was fringed with rushes and a narrow dyke. Ahead of the Cabinet Minister the two city men and their two caddies stood on the edge of the dyke or poked downwards into the rushes. Two girls appeared and disappeared on the tops of the sandhills. The policeman was strolling along the road, level with Mr Waterhouse. The General said:
‘I think we could go now.’
Sandbach said:
‘Waterslops will get a hit at them from the next tee. They’re in the dyke.’
The General drove a straight, goodish ball. Just as Macmaster was in his swing Sandbach shouted:
‘By God! He nearly did it. See that fellow jump!’ Macmaster looked round over his shoulder and hissed with vexation between his teeth:
‘Don’t you know that you don’t shout while a man is driving? Or haven’t you played golf?’ He hurried fussily after his ball.
Sandbach said to Tietjens:
‘Golly! That chap’s got a temper!’
Tietjens said:
‘Only over this game. You deserved what you got.’ Sandbach said:
‘I did . . . But I didn’t spoil his shot. He’s outdriven the General twenty yards.’
Tietjens said:
‘It would have been sixty but for you.’
They loitered about on the tee waiting for the others to get their distance. Sandbach said:
‘By Jove, your friend is on with his second . . . You wouldn’t believe it of such a little beggar!’ He added: ‘He’s not much class, is he?’
Tietjens looked down his nose.
‘Oh, about our class!’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t take a bet about driving into the couple ahead.’
Sandbach hated Tietjens for being a Tietjens of Groby: Tietjens was enraged by the existence of Sandbach, who was the son of an ennobled mayor of Middlesbrough, seven miles or so from Groby. The feuds between the Cleveland landowners and the Cleveland plutocrats are very bitter. Sandbach said:
‘Ah, I suppose he gets you out of scrapes with girls and the Treasury, and you take him about in return. It’s a practical combination.’
‘Like Pottle Mills and Stanton,’ Tietjens said. The financial operations connected with the amalgamating of these two steelworks had earned Sandbach’s father a good deal of odium in the Cleveland district . . . Sandbach said:
‘Look here, Tietjens . . . ’ But he changed his mind and said:
‘We’d better go now.’ He drove off with an awkward action but not without skill. He certainly outplayed Tietjens.
Playing very slowly, for both were desultory and Sandbach very lame, they lost sight of the others behind some coastguard cottages and dunes before they had left the third tee. Because of his game leg Sandbach sliced a good deal. On this occasion he sliced right into the gardens of the cottages and went with his boy to look for his ball among potato-haulms, beyond a low wall. Tietjens patted his own ball lazily up the fairway and,