by Paul Torday
Nevertheless it was, for everyone concerned - except perhaps the organisers - a huge honour to be involved in one of these golf matches. Every event was heavily oversubscribed, and there was considerable acrimony and accusations of favouritism from those who, for reasons of space, could not be included in the tour. The sense of belonging to an elite group, therefore, was almost overwhelming, the esprit de corps a shining example of what discipline and commitment can achieve. Nor was defeat always by a wide margin; often the contest was close enough to allow members to reflect afterwards, over their triple Gordon’s and tonic, on what might have been.
I was conscious that this might be one of the last events I organised for Grouchers. I sensed that my time with the club might be coming to an end, so I wanted it to be looked back on as a success; it would please me to be able to imagine members saying, ‘Michael Gascoigne? He’ll be a hard act to follow.’
The Marine Hotel looks out across the West Links towards the Firth of Forth. The hotel itself is a rather grand relic that fell on hard times and has since been rescued and smartened up. Golfers stay there, and families come for bucket-and-spade holidays, although as a beach resort North Berwick is a quiet and dignified town, rather than a fish-and-chips, cockles-and-winkles sort of place. Visitors arriving there might imagine they have slipped, without quite knowing how, into the understated charm of a seaside town in the 1970s.
Beyond the West Links are the Cowton Rocks, flanked by Broad Sands to the west and North Berwick beach to the east. Out to sea are Fidra and Craigleith, two small islands, and the even smaller Lamb. To the south and east are the guano-covered terraces of the Bass Rock, where thousands of gannets, guillemots, puffins and shags line the rocks and scream at the visitors who come in boats to see them. My parents brought me here as a small child from time to time, as a change from the Fife coast on the far side of the Firth. Those were the days before the voices started, my brief age of innocence. I remember those holidays vividly, although in truth they were a long time ago, before my relationship with my parents became strained and we stopped going away together.
In those days we would take adjoining rooms at the Marine Hotel: my parents in a suite, my nanny and I in adjoining smaller rooms on the same floor. My father would golf at one of the many links courses, and my mother would take me out in a hired fishing boat, hand-lining for mackerel or cod. In the evenings we would walk on Broad Sands together, and I would look for hermit crabs in the spume of the ebbing tide. My father would stroll ahead of us, puffing on a cigar, wreathing us in clouds of fragrant smoke that mingled oddly with the smells of the beach.
It was this memory that first drew me back to North Berwick a few years ago, and persuaded me to try to organise a golf tour so far away from our normal haunts. The choice proved popular with the members. When I went to bed after our first dinner that night, I felt a rare sense of peacefulness as I listened, for a moment, to the sigh of waves on the beaches beyond.
The next morning after breakfast I cornered David Martin and said, ‘David, I’ve got a spot of bother, can you help me out?’
David was our star player and team captain. He was clad in plus-fours, with yellow stockings, and a red jersey with a pair of crossed golf clubs emblazoned on it. Perhaps owing to an air of pre-match tension, our first night had been relatively sober. Even David had limited his consumption of drink the night before, and now he looked fresh and ready for action.
‘What can I do for you, old boy?’
‘Something has come up - a legal problem at Beinn Caorrun. I have to run into Edinburgh to see the lawyers for a few hours. I’m terribly sorry, but it simply can’t wait. Can you find someone to cover for me?’
The last time I had played golf with David was when he had been staying with us at Beinn Caorrun and I had been out of sorts. I had played as badly as I ever had that day, so when I said I couldn’t take part today I thought David looked rather relieved.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find someone to play your round for you. You go and sort out your troubles. We’ll see you at dinner tonight.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Good luck.’
David nodded and sauntered off, whistling between his teeth. Twenty minutes later I was in the car and heading towards the Edinburgh bypass.
I did get back in time for dinner that night. It was a subdued affair. The defeat by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, notwithstanding their reputation and the fact that they were playing on their home course, or that they had never even come close to being beaten by Grouchers, still seemed to have taken the Grouchers golf team by surprise. So the fact that I had hardly any appetite for food and drink did not attract attention, and I was not the only person to make an excuse and go off to bed early.
The next morning dawned bright and breezy. It was our bye day, and I went off with David Martin and two others to play a round at Gullane. My game was quite respectable, for once, and David was in an affable mood as we left the course.
‘We’ll beat those buggers tomorrow if we can keep our form from today,’ he said.
We were back at the hotel by three and I decided to change and take a walk along the beach. By the time I got down there dusk was approaching, but it was a fine evening, and the tide had just turned and was starting to come in. I walked across the now deserted links and found myself on Cowton Rocks. Beyond, the rocks ran out in jagged lines into the sea. These were the Hummel Ridges, and when the tide came in they were covered. Now I was struck by the presence of a tall, thin figure standing on the ridges, the incoming tide lapping around his bare legs and feet.
It was Peter Robinson. He was still wearing his golfing clothes: a jersey, and plus-fours rolled up above the knee. His socks and shoes had been left somewhere, I hoped for his sake above the tideline. He was looking down at a rock pool at his feet. To get back to land he would have to wade through this pool, or jump off the ridges into the sea and risk breaking a leg or at least turning an ankle on the hidden rocks. I scrambled along the slippery ridges, beginning to get quite damp myself in the spray, and said, ‘Peter? Hadn’t you better come back? The tide’s coming in quite fast now.’
He did not move. He was staring down into the rock pool. A wave crashed against the rocks and from where I was standing, it looked as if the spray must have soaked him from the waist down, but still he did not move or even flinch. As I got closer I could make out, even in the fading light, how white and strained his face appeared, his mouth set in a rictus that was a grotesque mockery of a smile.
‘Peter!’ I called again. ‘You must come ashore ... you’ll be swept off the rocks.’
I heard him mumble something but could not make out the words. The light was fading fast now, and the rocks on which I stood were intermittently covered in seawater, which floated the seaweed, making it difficult to progress any farther. I managed another couple of steps and called out, ‘Peter, come towards me.’
Another, bigger wave crashed against the rocks behind him, making him stagger forward under the impact of the water, and I saw a look of terror on his face as he put a foot into the rock pool. He must be soaked from head to toe, I thought. He pulled his foot out of the pool and stepped back.
‘Peter, come to me,’ I shouted at him once more.
‘I can’t,’ he wailed.
‘Why not?’
‘There’s a lobster in that pool.’
A lobster?
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I muttered and, edging forward, I arrived at the pool and looked into its clear water. I thought I saw the antennae of a small lobster waving but as I came close, whatever it was edged into a crevice out of sight.
‘It’s gone now,’ I said to Peter. He looked at me like a great baby on the verge of tears.
‘You’re just saying that,’ he said accusingly.
I stepped into the pool and said, ‘Look, it’s quite safe,’ then reached out and took him by the hand. At first he resisted but then he allowed me to pull him gently forward. I could feel a shudde
r run through his body as we crossed the pool, but once we were past the lobster - real or imagined - his resistance vanished. Together we made our way back awkwardly to the safety of Cowton Rocks. Peter found his shoes, but did not put them on as by now they were the only dry item of clothing he had. The lights of the Marine Hotel were ahead of us as we crossed the links. Peter turned to me then, and said in a voice that was almost normal, ‘Thank God it was you that found me.’
‘Thank God it was anyone. Why were you standing there?’
Peter did not answer directly. ‘Because you understand. You’ve been ill too, only you weren’t fool enough to stop taking your medication. I had to stop, the drugs were making me feel so lousy. I haven’t taken anything for weeks. But I could have died out there, if you hadn’t come along.’
Suddenly he sat down on the short grass and began to weep.
‘The lobster looked so big. I thought it would eat me.’
I put my hand on his shoulder. If this was happening to Peter after a couple of weeks off the pills, what on earth was happening to me? But I knew. I knew what was happening to me, and I no longer cared.
Peter straightened up, and then got to his feet.
‘They re-engineer us with these drugs,’ he said, as we walked slowly back to the hotel. ‘That’s what Stephen Gunnerton told me when I went to see him, when you and I first met. I was on the edge of serious mental illness at the time. My career was at risk and so was my relationship with Mary. I’d simply lost my ability to cope. Stephen told me the drugs would deal with all of that and, in a way, he was right. I’m one of the best human rights barristers in London now, I have a happy marriage, and life would be wonderful if I didn’t feel like crap half the time. So life is a trade-off. I will go back on my medication when I get back to my room. But it’s all so unfair. Don’t you ever think that?’
I was silent for a second, thinking about what he had said. It was all about choices, after all. We could choose to accept the chemicals that allowed us to float through the world like ghosts, or we could revert to whatever we had been intended to be.
‘We always have a choice, Peter,’ I said.
‘No, we don’t,’ he said. ‘Not if we want to survive.’
Peter must have started on his medication straight away, and it must have gone to work on him quickly because the next morning he was his normal, intense, overbearing self. We played our match with the Borderers, and lost, but not by as much as the year before. It was generally agreed we were making progress, rather than that the other team was getting worse.
That evening was the formal dinner that always marked the end of these trips. I had arranged a private room, and David and I had agreed a menu and a wine list. It was black tie, of course, as all Grouchers formal dinners were, and it started out as a very convivial evening. I was sitting at one end of the table, flanked by Peter Robinson and Edward Macy, another lawyer. At the other end was David Martin. As the evening progressed, I could not help becoming aware that, with the golf behind us, the group of people around the table was dividing into two camps. Peter Robinson’s set was one, and mostly at my end of the table; David Martin’s was the other. The conversation became even more polarised until I almost wished I had split everyone up on to two tables.
As the pudding plates were cleared away, I saw Peter rise to his feet and clink his glass with a knife. This was lèse-majest’. It was accepted convention that only the captain, in this case David Martin, made a speech on a golf night, and his main job was to toast, first the team for being such sporting losers, and then the membership secretary for organising it all. I saw David give Peter a murderous look, but once Peter was on his feet he was unstoppable. It was what he did for a living, after all.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘having so many of the club’s leading members here is too good an opportunity to miss, and I want to say just a very few words before giving way to our excellent captain, David Martin.’
He had sufficient force of personality to command silence, at least for a time.
‘Today is another example of what a wonderful institution Grouchers is.’ He paused long enough for someone to say, ‘Hear, hear,’ but nobody did. ‘And as in all institutions,’ said Peter, looking around over the top of his spectacles, ‘it is our ability to change and adapt that is our best guarantee for the future. Some of you may have been wondering why I have been so active in promoting the candidacy of a particular gentleman I would like to see become a member of the club.’
At this there were cries of ‘Sooty!’ and a bread roll was thrown but landed nowhere near Peter. It would have required a lot of courage, or alcohol, to throw a roll directly at Peter when he was in barrister mode. He held his hand up for silence, and got it.
‘I am aware that this action has caused discomfort to some members and for this, I apologise unreservedly. The last thing I want to do is upset anybody. But I also think Mr Patel is a gentleman, and would be an asset to any club he joined.’ This time his neighbour Edward Macy said, ‘Hear, hear,’ although he said it quietly. ‘That in itself is not the point. I am pursuing the matter because I believe that, if we cannot adapt to the modern world, and if we cannot show ourselves to be free from ancient and unseemly prejudices, I fear we will no longer be a club worth belonging to. So this has become a matter of principle for me and some other gentlemen sitting here tonight. I repeat that I am sorry for any discomfort I have caused, but I urge you to reflect on what I have said. This is about the future of Grouchers, not about an individual candidate. We must change and modernise. We must discard attitudes that are now out of date. That is the way forward for Grouchers.’
With that he sat down to a deathly silence. After a moment, David Martin broke it by drawling, ‘Thank you, dear boy, for giving me the chance to say a few words. Are you quite sure you have finished? Don’t want to give us a potted history of the tribes of Uganda? [Laughter from one end of the table; silence at the other.] No? Then I’ll give a little speech of my own.’
To my relief David did not continue with his leaden sarcasm, but instead simply made the traditional golfing-dinner speech. It was mercifully short, and he earned a brief round of applause as he sat down, but between the two of them, they had killed off the evening and now the two camps were barely speaking to each other.
A bar had been set up at the other end of the room, and David Martin and his friends gathered around it, clutching large whisky and sodas; Peter and one or two of his friends remained at the table, drinking glasses of port. I longed to go to bed, to get away from these people, but it was still too early to disappear.
‘Where were you the first day?’ asked Edward Macy, pushing the port decanter in my direction. I passed it straight on to a neighbour. I was beyond alcohol now.
‘I had to pop into Edinburgh on some business,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, you’re from this part of the world, aren’t you?’
‘Perthshire,’ I said briefly.
‘My wife thought she saw you filling up your car at the Milnathort service station on the M90, coming back from Perth. We live part of the time in Fife, you know. We’re almost neighbours.’
‘Are we?’ I replied. ‘Well, she must have mistaken me for someone else.’ At that moment the group at the bar burst into song:Rule, Britannia
Britannia rules the waves
For Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
There was a lot of laughter and back-slapping. Peter Robinson gave the men around the bar his most supercilious look. David Martin raised a brimming beaker of whisky and soda to him in an ironic toast.
Who did they all think they were, these people? I wondered. When they sang their ridiculous song about Britons, what did they mean? Small fractions of their genetic make-up might be Saxon, perhaps even Viking or Norman. A larger part of the blood that flowed through their veins contained the genes of the Ordovicians, the Silures, the Catevallauni, the Iceni or the Brigantes: one or other of the ancient Belgic tribes that had been here when t
he Romans came. But mostly their DNA came from the real Britons: aboriginal inhabitants of the islands, the people who were here before the Celts, hunter-gatherers from the Atlantic coast of France and Spain, an ancient people who had been invaded, enslaved, raped, colonised, murdered, persecuted by almost everyone who had taken the time to land on our shores. Britons in that sense had always been slaves, ruled by one elite after another - by Roman governors; by Saxon and then Viking warlords; Norman barons; Dutch Orange-men; German princes; and now by the political classes of the present age.