Out of the corner of his eye, he observed that one of a trio of men sitting a couple of tables away had caught Chip Harvey’s attention as he passed and seemed to be questioning him closely. Oh shoot, thought Joe. Is good old-fashioned flesh and blood going to get to me before I can order a drink?
It looked like it. The man stood up. He was maybe forty, solidly built but mostly muscle, little flab. He was wearing a pale brown sports shirt and matching tailored shorts which made Joe glad he’d grounded the Technicolor parrots. His vigorous dark brown hair was rather becomingly tipped with grey and he had the kind of square open face which gets people buying double glazing or giving cash advances to jobbing builders. He was smiling but Joe didn’t let this lull his fears. Places he did most of his drinking in, if a guy came at you with intent to smash your face in, he usually had the decency to look like a guy whose intent this was. Here, he guessed, different conventions might apply.
But it seemed he was wrong.
‘Mr Sixsmith, I believe? I’m Tom Latimer, club vice-captain. Young Chip tells me you’re waiting for Chris Porphyry.’
‘That’s right,’ said Joe, taking the outstretched hand and returning the warm handshake. ‘Nice boy, that Chip.’
‘Yes, we have high hopes of him. Think he might make it on the tour. He’ll need backing, of course, but we’ve got big hearts as well as deep pockets here at the Hoo.’
This didn’t mean a lot to Joe, who in any case was preoccupied by the fact that the handshake had become a tow rope drawing him out of his seat as Latimer continued, ‘Wonder if you’d care to join us? Chris isn’t the best of timekeepers, I’m afraid. Always hits the first tee at a run!’
Unable to think of a good way to say, No, thanks, I’d rather sit here by myself, Joe found himself moving towards the other two men who were also brushing up the welcoming smiles.
One was less successful than the other. His name was Arthur Surtees, thirty something, his head close shaven presumably to hide the fact that he was bald anyway, and his deep sunken watchful eyes giving the lie to his wide stretched mouth, like a poorly put-together police photofit.
The other was Colin Rowe, in his fifties, grey-haired, with a lean intelligent face which would have looked well on a college professor. His smile was perfectly natural, nothing exaggerated about it, the kind of wryly sympathetic expression which would, Joe imagined, encourage an errant student to admit he hadn’t done his homework.
But why do I get the feeling these guys know exactly who I am? thought Joe. That was impossible. Had to be his own sense of being out of place talking.
The steward, wearing a linen jacket as white and crisp as a hoar-frost, appeared as Joe sat down. Thinking that maybe a pint of cold Guinness might strike a wrong note, Joe asked for coffee.
‘Hot or iced, sir?’ the steward enquired. He had a lovely voice, like an old-fashioned actor’s. You probably needed a public school education just to get a job keeping bar at places like Royal Hoo.
Joe hesitated. Cold coffee? You got that down at Dot’s Diner, you sent it back to be put in the microwave.
‘Iced, I think, Bert,’ said Latimer. ‘And the same again for the rest of us. Well, Joe – all right if I call you Joe? We don’t stand on ceremony here – how do you like the look of us so far?’
Joe had no natural talent to deceive, which could be a bit of a drawback in his chosen profession. He was working on it, but on the whole he made do in most situations by looking for straws of truth to get a firm hold of.
‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Weather like this, it beats sitting in my office.’
‘We all know the feeling,’ said Surtees. ‘So where do you play, Joe?’
Why the shoot can’t folk make conversation without asking direct questions? Joe wondered, as he marshalled the few facts he knew about golf to ascertain if there was an answer like ‘left wing’ or ‘in goal’. Didn’t seem likely, so presumably they were into geography. Could tell them Luton Municipal Pitch’n’Putt and watch their faces, but that two hundred nestling against his left buttock was beginning to feel very much at home there.
He said, ‘I travel around a lot, so anywhere I can, really.’
‘And welcome wherever you go, I’m sure,’ said Latimer heartily.
A silence. With a bit of luck, thought Joe, it might turn into a siesta and stretch to fill the minutes till Porphyry appeared.
But luck wasn’t on offer.
‘So how’s your game, Joe?’ said Colin Rowe.
‘Well, you know what it’s like, up and down,’ said Joe.
Rowe laughed and said, ‘Part of its charm, eh? Pity they didn’t build its fluctuations into the handicap system. Doesn’t matter if I feel like crap, when I step on that first tee, I’m playing off 5. Arthur here’s a bandit 7. And Tom’s 9.’
‘On a good day with the wind behind me,’ said Latimer lightly. ‘So how about you, Joe?’
‘Sorry?’ said Joe.
‘Just wondering what your handicap was,’ said Latimer.
Joe found a dozen smart answers crowding his tongue. He guessed a couple of them might be floating around Latimer’s mind too. So don’t give him the satisfaction, just play it straight. Which sounded a lot easier than it was. That golf had a handicap system he knew, but how it worked he had no idea. The only other game he knew that used handicaps was polo, and that was only because it had come up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Joe, who was quite keen to be a millionaire, had been trying to improve his general knowledge by making a note of all the correct answers till Beryl had screamed with laughter and said, ‘Joe, this stuff you’re trying to learn is exactly the stuff you don’t need to know, ’cos they’ve asked it already!’ But the polo question had stuck.
What is the best handicap a top-class polo player can have?
The four alternatives had been 0, 10, 24, 36.
The answer had been 10. Seemed that beginners started at 0 or even minus something, and 24 and 36 didn’t exist.
Which fitted very well here. Rowe had said he was 7 and Surtees was 5 while Latimer, the club vice-captain and therefore presumably one of its best players, was 9.
So play it safe.
‘Oh pretty low, you know,’ he said vaguely.
‘Pretty low? Come on, Joe, don’t be modest!’ said Surtees with just the hint of a sneer.
He’s trying to provoke me! thought Joe. Wants me to claim I’m a top gun, then he’ll look for a way to show me up. Well, hard luck, mate. One thing I’ve learned is if you have to lie, keep it in bounds of reason.
‘No, really,’ he said. ‘My handicap’s nothing. A big 0.’
In other words I’m a rank beginner. Put that in your pipe!
‘Scratch, eh? Thought as much,’ said Rowe. ‘Soon as I set eyes on you, I thought, there’s a scratch man if ever I saw one!’
Scratch man. Now that sounded really offensive, but Rowe didn’t say it in a particularly offensive way, and in any case a guy who was actually boasting when he said he was a lousy golfer didn’t ought to get hot and bothered when he was told that’s just what he looked like.
‘Yeah? Well, like the man said, what you see is