Robin was reading the morning paper when he heard a knock on the door.
‘I have a recorded delivery for you, Mr Chapman,’ said the postman. ‘I’ll need a signature.’
Robin signed on the dotted line, recognizing the crest of the Royal Jersey Golf Club stamped in the top left-hand corner of the envelope. He ripped it open and read the letter as he returned to the kitchen, and read it a second time before he handed it across to Diana.
THE ROYAL JERSEY GOLF CLUB
St Helier, Jersey
9 September 1946
Dear Sir,
We have reason to believe that at some time in the past you applied to become a member of the Royal Jersey Golf Club, but unfortunately all our records were destroyed during the German occupation.
If you still wish to be considered for membership of the club, it will be necessary for you to go through the application process once again and we will be happy to arrange an interview.
Should your application prove successful, your name will be placed on the waiting list.
Yours sincerely,
J. L. Tindall
(Secretary)
Robin swore for the first time since the Germans had left the island.
Diana could do nothing to console him, despite the fact that his brother was coming across from the mainland to spend his first weekend with them since the end of the war.
Robin was standing on the dockside when Malcolm stepped off the Southampton ferry. Malcolm was able to lift his older brother’s spirits when he told him and Diana all the news about the company’s expansion plans, as well as delivering several messages from their children.
‘Kate has a boyfriend,’ he told them, ‘and—’
‘Oh, God,’ said Robin. ‘Am I that old?’
‘Yes,’ said Diana, smiling.
‘I’m thinking of opening a fourth branch of Chapman’s in Brighton,’ Malcolm announced over dinner that night. ‘With so many factories springing up in the area, they’re sure to be in need of our services.’
‘Not looking for a manager are you, by any chance?’ asked Robin.
‘Why, are you available?’ replied Malcolm, looking genuinely surprised.
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Diana firmly.
By the time Malcolm took the boat back home to Southend the following Monday, Robin had perked up considerably. He even felt able to joke about attending the interview at the Royal Jersey. However, when the day came for him to face the committee, Diana had to escort him to the car, drive him to the club and deposit him at the entrance to the clubhouse.
‘Good luck,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek. Robin grunted. ‘And don’t even hint at how angry you are. It’s not their fault that the Germans destroyed all the club’s records.’
‘I shall tell them they can stick my application form up their jumpers,’ said Robin. They both burst out laughing at the latest expression they’d picked up from the mainland. ‘Do they have any idea how old I’ll be in fifteen years’ time?’ he added as he stepped out of the car.
Robin checked his watch. He was five minutes early. He straightened his tie before walking slowly across the gravel to the clubhouse. So many memories came flooding back: the first time he had seen Diana, when she had walked into the bar to speak to her brother; the day he was appointed captain of the club – the first Englishman to be so honoured; that missed putt on the eighteenth that would have won him the President’s Cup; not being able to play in the final the following year because he’d broken his arm; the evening Lord Trent had asked him to sail him to the mainland because the Prime Minister needed his services; the day a German officer had shown him respect and compassion after he had saved the lives of his countrymen. And now, today . . . he opened the newly painted door and stepped inside.
He looked up at the portrait of Harry Vardon and gave him a respectful bow, then turned his attention to Lord Trent, who had died the previous year, having served his country during the war as the Minister for Food.
‘The committee will see you now, Mr Chapman,’ said the club steward, interrupting his thoughts.
Diana had decided to wait in the car, as she assumed the interview wouldn’t take long. After all, every member of the committee had known Robin for over twenty years. But after half an hour she began to glance at her watch every few minutes, and couldn’t believe that Robin still hadn’t appeared an hour later. She had just decided to go in and ask the steward what was holding her husband up when the clubhouse door swung open and Robin marched out, a grim look on his face. She jumped out of the car and ran towards him.
‘Anyone who wishes to reapply for membership cannot hope to be elected for at least another fifteen years,’ he said, walking straight past her.
‘Are there no exceptions?’ asked Diana, chasing after him.
‘Only for the new president,’ said Robin, ‘who will be made an honorary life member. The rules don’t seem to apply to him.’
‘But that really is so unfair,’ said Diana, bursting into tears. ‘I shall personally complain to the new president.’
‘I’m sure you will, my dear,’ said Robin, taking his wife in his arms. ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ll take any notice.’
THE UNDIPLOMATIC DIPLOMAT*
10
PERCIVAL ARTHUR Clarence Forsdyke – his mother called him Percival, while the few friends he had called him Percy – was born into a family which had played its part in ensuring that the sun never set on the British Empire.
Percy’s grandfather, Lord Clarence Forsdyke, had been Governor General of the Sudan, while his father, Sir Arthur Forsdyke KCMG, had been our man in Mesopotamia. So, naturally, great things were expected of young Percy.
Within hours of entering this world, he had been put down for the Dragon prep school, Winchester College and Trinity, Cambridge, establishments at which four generations of Forsdykes had been educated.
After Cambridge, it was assumed that Percy would follow his illustrious forebears into the Foreign Office, where he would be expected at least to equal and possibly even to surpass their achievements. All might have gone to plan had it not been for one small problem: Percy was far too clever for his own good. He won a scholarship to the Dragon at the age of eight, an election to Winchester College before his eleventh birthday, and the Anderson Classics Prize to Trinity while he was still in short trousers. After leaving Cambridge with a double first in Classics, he sat the Civil Service exam, and frankly no one was surprised when he came top in his year.
Percy was welcomed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with open arms, but that was when his problems began. Or, to be more accurate, when the Foreign Office’s problems began.
The mandarins at the FCO, who are expected to identify high flyers worthy of being fast-tracked, came to the reluctant conclusion that, despite Forsdyke’s academic achievements, the young man lacked common sense, possessed few social skills and cared little for the diplomatic niceties required when representing your country abroad – something of a disadvantage if you wish to pursue a career in the Foreign Office.
During his first posting, to Nigeria, Percy told the Minister of Finance that he had no grasp of economics. The problem was that the minister didn’t have any grasp of economics, so Percy had to be dispatched back to England on the first available boat.
After a couple of years in administration, Percy was given a second chance, and sent to Paris as an assistant secretary. He might have survived this posting had he not told the French President’s wife at a government reception that the world was overpopulated, and she wasn’t helping matters by producing so many children. Percy had a point, as the lady in question had seven offspring and was pregnant at the time, but he was still to be found packing his bags before lunch the following day. A further spell in admin followed before he was given his third, and final, chance.
On this occasion he was dispatched to one of Her Majesty’s smaller colonies in Central Africa as a deputy consul. Within six months he had manag
ed to cause an altercation between two tribes who had lived in harmony for over a century. The following morning Percy was escorted on to a British Airways plane clutching a one-way ticket to London, and was never offered a foreign posting again.
On returning to London, Percy was appointed as an archives clerk (no one gets the sack at the FCO), and allocated a small office in the basement.
As few people at the FCO ever found any reason to visit the basement, Percy flourished. Within weeks he had instigated a new procedure for cataloguing statements, speeches, memoranda and treaties, and within months he could locate any document, however obscure, required by even the most demanding minister. By the end of the year he could offer an opinion on any FCO demand, based on historic precedent, often without having to refer to a file.
No one was surprised when Percy was appointed Senior Archivist after his boss unexpectedly took early retirement. However, Percy still yearned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become our man in some foreign field, to be addressed by all and sundry as ‘Your Excellency’. Sadly, it was not to be, because Percy was not allowed out of the basement for the next thirty years, and only then when he retired at the age of sixty.
At Percy’s leaving party, held in the India Room of the FCO, the Foreign Secretary described him in his tribute speech as a man with an unrivalled encyclopaedic memory who could probably recite every agreement and treaty Britain had ever entered into. This was followed by laughter and loud applause. No one heard Percy mutter under his breath, ‘Not every one, Minister.’
Six months after his retirement, the name of Percival Arthur Clarence Forsdyke appeared on the New Year’s Honours List. Percy had been awarded the CBE for services to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
He read the citation without any satisfaction. In fact, he felt he was a failure and had let the family down. After all, his grandfather had been a peer of the realm, his father a Knight Commander of St Michael and St George, whereas he ended up a mere Commander of a lower order.
However, Percy had a plan to rectify the situation, and to rectify it quickly.
Once he had left the FCO, Percy did not head straight for the British Library to begin work on his memoirs, as he felt he had achieved nothing worthy of historic record, nor did he retire to his country home to tend his roses, possibly because he didn’t have a country home, or any roses. However, he did heed the Foreign Secretary’s words, and decided to make use of his unrivalled encyclopaedic memory.
Deep in the recesses of his remarkable mind, Percy recalled an ancient British law which had been passed by an Act of Parliament in 1762, during the reign of King George III. It took Percy some considerable time to double-check, in fact, triple-check, that the Act had not been repealed at any time in the past two hundred years. He was delighted to discover that, far from being repealed, it had been enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and again in the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. Clearly neither organization had someone of Percy’s calibre tucked away in its basement. Having read the Act several times, Percy decided to visit the Royal Geographical Society on Kensington Gore, where he spent hours poring over charts that detailed the coastal waters surrounding the British Isles.
After completing his research at the RGS, Percy was satisfied that everything was in place for him to comply with clause 7, addendum 3, of the Territories Settlement Act of 1762.
He returned to his home in Pimlico and locked himself away in his study for three weeks – with only Horatio, his three-legged, one-eyed cat, for company – while he put the final touches to a detailed memorandum that would reveal the real significance of the Territories Settlement Act of 1762, and its relevance for Great Britain in the year 2009.
Once he’d completed his task, he placed the nineteen-page handwritten document, along with a copy of the 1762 Act showing one particular clause highlighted, in a large white envelope which he addressed to Sir Nigel Henderson KCMG, Permanent Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street, Whitehall, London SW1A 2AH. He then put the unsealed envelope in the top drawer of his desk, where it would remain for the next three months while he disappeared off the face of the earth. Horatio purred.
On 22 June 2009, Percy took a taxi to Euston station, where he boarded the overnight sleeper for Inverness. His luggage consisted of an overnight bag and his old school trunk, while inside his jacket pocket was a wallet containing two thousand pounds in cash.
On arrival in Inverness, Percy changed platforms and, an hour later, boarded a train that would take him even further north. The five-carriage shuttle stopped at every station on its long and relentless journey up the north-east coast of Scotland, until it finally came to a halt at the remote harbour town of Wick.
When Percy left the station, he commandeered the only taxi, which took him to the only hotel, where he booked into the only available room. After a one-course meal – the menu being fairly limited, and the kitchen staff having all left at nine o’clock – Percy retired to his room and read Robinson Crusoe before falling asleep.
The following morning he rose before the sun, as do most of the natives of the outer reaches of Scotland. He feasted on a large bowl of porridge oats and a pair of kippers that would have graced the Savoy, but rejected an offer of the Scotsman in favour of studying a long list of the items that would have to be acquired before the sun had set that afternoon.
Percy spent the first hour after breakfast walking up and down the high street, trying to identify the shops he would have to patronize if his trunk was to be filled by the time he left the following morning.
The first establishment he entered was MacPherson’s Camping Store. ‘Everything a hiker needs when trekking in the Highlands’ was stencilled boldly on the window. After much bending over, lying down and crawling in and out, Percy purchased an easy-to-erect, all-weather tent that the proprietor assured him would still be standing after a desert storm or a mountain gale.
By the time Percy had left the store he had filled four large brown carrier bags with his tent, a primus stove, a kettle, a goose-down sleeping bag with an inflatable pillow, a Swiss army knife (he had checked that it had a tin opener), a pair of Wellington boots, a fishing rod, a camera, a compass and a portable telescope.
Mr MacPherson directed Percy towards the MacPherson General Store on the other side of the road, assuring him that his brother Sandy would be happy to fulfil any other requirements he might still have.
The second Mr MacPherson supplied Percy with a shovel, a plastic mug, plate, knife, fork and spoon, a dozen boxes of matches (Swan Vesta), a Roberts radio, three dozen Eveready batteries, four dozen candles and a first-aid kit, which filled three more carrier bags. Once Percy had established that there wasn’t a third MacPherson brother to assist him, he settled for Menzies, where he was able to place several more ticks against items on his long list – a copy of the Radio Times, the Complete Works of Shakespeare (paperback), a day-to-day 2009 diary (half price) and an Ordnance Survey map showing the outlying islands in the North Sea.
Percy took a taxi back to his hotel, accompanied by nine carrier bags, which he dragged in relays up to his room on the second floor. After a light lunch of fish pie and peas, he set off once again for the high street.
He spent most of the afternoon pushing a trolley up and down the aisles of the local supermarket, stocking up with enough provisions to ensure he could survive for ninety days. Once he was back in his hotel room, he sat on the end of the bed and checked his list once again. He still required one essential item; in fact, he couldn’t leave Wick without it.
Although Percy had failed to find what he wanted in any of the shops in town, he had spotted a perfect second-hand example on the roof of the hotel. He approached the proprietor, who was surprised by the guest’s request but, noticing his desperation, drove a hard bargain, insisting on seventy pounds for the family heirloom.
‘But it’s old, battered and torn,’ said Percy.
‘If it’s nae guid enough fu
r ye, sur,’ said the owner loftily, ‘ah feel sure y’ll bi able tae find a superior wan in Inverness.’ Percy gave in, having discovered the true meaning of the word canny, and handed over seven ten-pound notes. The proprietor promised that he would have it taken down from the roof before Percy left the following morning.
After such an exhausting day, Percy felt he had earned a rest, but he still had one more task to fulfil before he could retire to bed.
At supper in the three-table dining room, the head waiter (the only waiter) told Percy the name of the man who could solve his final problem, and exactly where he would be located at that time of night. After cleaning his teeth (he always cleaned his teeth after a meal), Percy made his way down to the harbour in search of the Fisherman’s Arms. He tapped his jacket pocket to check he hadn’t forgotten his wallet and the all-important map.
When Percy entered the pub he received some curious stares from the locals, who didn’t approve of stray Englishmen invading their territory. He spotted the man he was looking for seated in a far corner, playing dominoes with three younger men, and made his way slowly across the room, every eye following him, until he came to a halt in front of a squat, bearded man dressed in a thick blue sweater and salt-encrusted jeans.
The man looked up and gave the stranger who had dared to interrupt his game an unwelcoming gaze.
‘Are you Captain Campbell?’ Percy enquired.
‘Who wants tae ken?’ asked the bearded man suspiciously.
‘My name is Forsdyke,’ said Percy, and then, to the astonishment of everyone in the pub, delivered a short, well-rehearsed speech at the top of his voice.
When Percy came to the end, the bearded man placed his double four reluctantly back on the table and, in a brogue that Percy could just about decipher, asked, ‘An wur exactly dae ye expect mi tae tak’ ye?’
Percy opened his map and spread it out on the table, propelling dominoes in every direction. He then placed a finger in the middle of the North Sea. Four pairs of eyes looked down in disbelief. The captain shook his head, repeating the words ‘Nae possible’ several times, until Percy mentioned the figure of five hundred pounds. All four of the men seated around the table suddenly took a far greater interest in the Englishman’s preposterous proposal. Captain Campbell then began a conversation with his colleagues that no one south of Inverness would have been able to follow without a translator. He finally looked up and said, ‘Ah want a hundred pound up front, noo, an’ the ether four hundred afore ah let ye oan ma boat.’
The New Collected Short Stories Page 57