by Alec Waugh
How good she looks, Myra thought. The sweater and the tight-fitting pants modelled every muscle of her figure; the swing of the club accentuated the harmony and perfection of that figure. You felt that every bone, every muscle, every nerve had been arranged in just that way so that the club should be swung smoothly. The one had been created for the other—this exquisite creature and the beautiful, ancient game of golf. Heather’s approach flew straight towards the green, high and straight, landing on the edge and running on towards the hole. She does not need to be carried, Myra thought. No pulling by the scruff of the neck today. Another two minutes and the lost hole had been recovered. Two up.
For Myra it was an enchanted afternoon. She had never been particularly athletic. She had watched a little cricket; she had played a little of what in Edwardian days had been called ‘Vicarage’ tennis. Skiing was the one branch of sport she deeply cared for, and that was different; it was a kind of picnic. It was uncompetitive. She had never known the excitement of pitting her skill and strength against those of an opponent. Now she did. She identified herself with Heather and Gerald, playing their shots with them, anxiously watching their opponents, dejected when an enemy’s putt went down, elated when one of Heather or Gerald’s approach shots cleared a bunker. It was a form of excitement she had never known, and she was enjoying the exhilaration, after the long months spent on city pavements, of feeling the turf springy beneath her feet, with the sun warm upon her face, but with the sea breeze cooling it.
She walked beside Heather all the time, except when it was Heather’s turn to drive. Then she would wait in the fairway where she could expect the drive to land. Half the time Gerald would be beside them, and as they progressed from green to green, she felt mounting inside her not only the challenge of the match but a sense of kinship with the pair. She had identified herself with them, feeling that it was her ball that was rising against the sky, her putt that was rolling towards the hole.
In his way Gerald was as magnetically attractive as his partner, but on Myra he did not have the same effect, because the sight of a handsome, well-built man was familiar to her through films and through television. She had not before had an opportunity of watching, except at swimming pools, an extremely attractive woman occupied in sport. But even so they matched each other very well. And they were obviously in tune with one another, with Heather so absorbed in Gerald. It was cruel that he should be the kind of man he was. She had always been told that there was no worse bet for a woman, matrimonially, than a mother’s boy. She looked at him. A sudden thought had struck her. The man who was desperately dependent on his mother might have some secret that he would do anything to prevent his mother knowing. Had Gerald such a secret? Might not the effect of his dependence on his mother be a devious amatory taste? Might this be the quarry that she was seeking? She closed her eyes. What a loathsome person I have become, she thought: making new friends, then plotting to destroy them. She shrugged. She had been through all that before. Useless to go on crying about spilled milk. She was in this thing; the sooner she was out of it the better. If Gerald Armitage held the key that would unlock her prison, she must use it.
She turned to look at Heather. She was so graceful, so willowy, so gentle, so pretty with her unlined cheeks; it was cruel luck that she should have got messed up with a man like Gerald. The fact that she was in a mess, different though it was from her own, gave Myra an additional sense of kinship with her. That same protective urge was on her. She wanted to put an arm about her shoulders, to draw her close, to whisper consolation into her ear. Heather should be spared this kind of thing.
The afternoon wore on. Heather and Gerald’s hold upon the game grew firmer. They were three up at the turn. Then they lost a hole. They had to work hard to square the eleventh, but there was no question of their cracking. They were soon three up again. At the fourteenth they were dormy. The fifteenth they lost, but when Heather at the short sixteenth landed her tee shot on the green, after their opponents had landed in the bunker, there was no longer any doubt. Their male opponent laughed. ‘That should be it,’ he said, ‘but I have in my time sunk an explosion from a bunker.’ He walked to the bunker, swinging his heavy wedge. But this was not one of the times when he was to perform a miracle. His shot hit the ball, instead of the sand behind it, and it soared high and far over the green.
Myra’s voice was on the point of trembling. ‘Congratulations, oh, I am so glad. The whole thing was wonderful.’
‘Will you come around with me tomorrow?’
‘Oh yes, yes, if you really want me.’
‘You made all the difference.’ Heather’s eyes were wide and shining; without knowing how it happened they were holding hands. Their fingers intertwined. Myra had the sense of something under her heart going around and over.
The Final was to take place on Saturday—a thirty-six-hole match. On Friday afternoon, on the seventeenth green, Gerald laid his approach putt dead, and that was that. ‘But I’m afraid that I won’t be able to walk around with you on the great day,’ said Myra.
‘How so?’
‘My husband’s coming down tonight.’
‘Doesn’t he care for golf?’
‘On the contrary, he’s really rather good. But it wouldn’t be the same with him there.’
‘I suppose it wouldn’t.’
‘The two of us would be in the way.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But I’ll be watching.’
‘Don’t fail to be doing that.’ Heather paused. ‘I can’t somehow think of you as married.’
‘You’ve seen my children.’
‘I know, but with that Swedish girl it looks as though there were the two of you doing alternate baby-sitting.’
Myra laughed. ‘He’s quite a real husband, I assure you.’
He looked even more real when he arrived by the late train, yet somehow she did not feel that she had particularly missed him. She had been so occupied that she had not fully appreciated that he wasn’t there.
He had brought his golf clubs with him. She ought not to have been surprised, but in fact she was. ‘You don’t expect me to come down to Sandwich and not play golf, do you?’
‘The final of the mixed foursomes is tomorrow,’ she informed him.
‘What difference does that make? They only occupy one half fairway at a time.’
‘I’ve been watching the matches all the week. I thought you’d want to.’
‘What? Watch a game when I can play it? Not at my age.’
‘You don’t mind if I watch, do you?’
‘Heavens, no, it’ll keep you out of the way.’
‘Then I’ll tell Heather.’
‘Heather?’
‘Mrs. Bennett.’
‘Of course, yes, I’d forgotten.’
‘I’ll telephone her now.’
She was smoking. She hesitated, then out of mischief left the smouldering cigarette in the ashtray. She called Heather from the bedroom. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Victor wants to play himself tomorrow, so I’ll be there.’
‘Oh, wonderful.’ There was in her voice a note of genuine relief. ‘It’ll make such a difference. You can’t think what a difference you have made to me this week.’
I believe I really have, thought Myra.
She returned to the sitting room to find that the cigarette had been stamped out as she had known it would be. She assumed a look of guilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I get into bad habits when I’m alone.’
‘It’s a revolting habit, you know I think it is.’
‘You look annoyed.’
‘I am annoyed.’
She laughed. ‘Almost as annoyed as you were when that girl friend of yours got drunk at parties?’
He started, fixed her with a puzzled look, which changed to one of conspiratorial amusement. ‘That’s a fine parallel,’ he said. ‘Yes, just about as much annoyed. You’d better be on your guard or there’ll be trouble.’ She chuckled. Now she knew what to do if s
he was in the mood.
Victor looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘did you call up Mrs. Bennett?’
‘To tell her that you were going to play golf and that I was free to watch the final.’
‘Have you been watching all these matches?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve never taken the slightest interest in golf before.’
‘Nobody’s ever encouraged me to take an interest in it.’
‘Oh come now, wait.’ He paused. ‘Have you fallen in love with Gerald Armitage?’
Her heart bounded. Victor jealous! Nothing in years had built her up as much. ‘What could make you think that?’ she asked.
‘I can’t see any other reason why a woman like yourself should gallery a succession of matches of a game in which up to now she has not evinced the slightest interest.’
She chuckled inwardly. This was one of the very best moments of her life, that Victor, her self-complacent husband, should have doubts … She saw in a flash all the possibilities it opened. But she saw also the dangers that were incident to those possibilities. This was not the right moment to exacerbate an irritation; this was the moment to renew his confidence in himself, to build him up. Why not, now and again, tell a man the truth? Keep a man guessing, so the textbooks said. Wasn’t that a tart’s philosophy, not a wife’s? Victor had a whisky and soda at his side. She had not sat down since her return from telephoning. She walked across to Victor. She raised her hand, she laid it on his cheek. ‘Do you think, my silly sweet, that any woman who has a husband like you, particularly such a you as she has found over the last few months, could be bothered with a golf-course glamour boy?’ She drew her hand in a slow caress along his cheek. ‘Bring that drink into the next room,’ she said. ‘I think that for you four nights away from me is at least one too many.’
They breakfasted in their suite with the children and the au pair girl. It was gay and cosy and the sun streamed across the table.
‘I’ve fixed up with the secretary for a game this morning. But I might as well go around with you in the afternoon,’ he said. ‘I might learn something after all.’
At lunchtime the game was all square. ‘How important is all this for Gerald Armitage?’ Myra asked.
‘In what way how important?’
‘If he stops winning tournaments, will he cease to be of value to his wine firm?’
Victor shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say. It is important for a firm like Gerald’s to have as their representative someone who is in the public eye; therefore in ten years’ time, or even in five years’ time, when Gerald has ceased to be in the news, they’ll want someone to take his place. But if he has been an efficient salesman for them while he was making the headlines, they’ll keep him on. They’re a generous firm; they can afford to be.’
‘Heather says that athletes who get jobs as wine salesmen don’t often keep them.’
‘That’s because so many of them start to drink too much. When they don’t have to keep fit for the big events, they’ve every temptation after all. Their business is booze and they do their business over booze.’
‘Heather’s very gloomy about his future. She thinks that in five or ten years’ time he’ll be unemployed and unemployable.’
Victor smiled. ‘That’s partly guilt. She’s afraid that she’s ruining his life, because she can’t marry him. It’s partly self-importance. She likes to think a man is being ruined on her account.’
‘You don’t like her, do you?’
‘I don’t feel much either way. I hardly know her. This is the first time that I’ve really met her.’
‘She’s attractive, don’t you think?’
‘She’s photogenic, but that isn’t the same thing.’
‘How so?’
‘I don’t feel any warmth.’
‘Oh.’
To Myra, Heather was aglow with friendliness. She had seldom felt so at one with anyone. Perhaps after that unlucky marriage, and then with Gerald’s being the kind of man he was, she was on her guard with men.
‘I guess that Heather has given so much to Gerald that she hasn’t much to spare for anybody else,’ he said.
Myra did not answer. That only showed how little Victor knew about Heather, or about Gerald for that matter.
‘And you really want to gallery that match this afternoon?’ he said.
‘I’d like to, yes.’
‘You’ve certainly become an addict. I think that you’ll have to start taking lessons when we get back to London.’
She began to think so herself during the afternoon. Walking around with Victor was altogether different from walking around with Heather. During those earlier matches, she had identified herself with Heather. She had seen the game from the inside, or rather through Heather’s eyes, and as she had scarcely ever talked to Heather, had been far from appreciating, ignorant of the game as she was, what was really happening. With Victor it was different. As they were apart from the players, they could talk withour fear of interrupting them. Victor could explain the strategy and tactics of the game. Perhaps it would be a good idea if she took up golf. It would be an added thing for them to share. There was no reason why she shouldn’t be quite good. She would not be so tied to the nursery now. She had resented having to go around with Victor instead of Heather, but as it turned out she found herself enjoying herself rather more. And it was good, very good, at the end when the match had been won at the thirty-fourth hole, to have Heather turning round from the tee, looking for her in the crowd, then pushing her way through to her. It was a genuine singling of her out.
‘Wasn’t it wonderful?’ Heather said.
‘I was praying for you all the time.’
‘I knew you were. It made all the difference.’
Next morning Victor was again out on the links. Heather was in her room; she had some work, she said, in connection with the next term’s syllabus. Myra, letting Olga go to church, took the children to the swimming pool. Gerald was there too. It was so warm as to be almost sultry. After their swim they set their long chairs side by side under a beach umbrella. She could watch the children at the shallow end. It was the first time that she had been cosily alone with Gerald. Now was the chance to draw him out, to find if he was a possible prey for her. She had a feeling that he might be.
‘Men’s friendships are a curious thing,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s a strange way to open a conversation.’
‘They’re so important to them; and they keep them apart, in watertight compartments, from their home lives. Yet they’re incomplete.’
‘Now there you have said a lot. What’s put all this into your mind?’
‘I was thinking of you and Victor. Seeing you together, hearing you talk together, you’d think you were lifelong friends. You are now, aren’t you?’
‘Scarcely that. You know how England is. It’s so small. We all know each other, or about each other. Victor and I belong to the same crowd. We’re in the same age group.’
‘How often would you say you saw each other?’
‘Not all that often.’
‘You wouldn’t ever have a lunch together?’
‘No, I’d say never.’
‘If his name came up and he was being discussed, you’d join in the discussion, wouldn’t you?’
‘Naturally.’
‘He’s never mentioned you to me.’
‘Is there any reason why he should?’
‘And yet you recognised me on the terrace.’
‘I explained that. I’d seen your photograph when you were engaged. I thought, Lucky Victor.’
‘Yet you never said to him, “I’d like to meet this attractive wife of yours.” ‘
‘It’s not the kind of thing that Englishmen say to one another.’
‘You keep your homes, your clubs, your offices quite separate.’
‘That’s so.’
‘So really none of you knows each other very well.’
&nb
sp; ‘Now we’re getting onto something.’
‘I don’t think, for instance, that Victor knows very much about you.’
‘I wouldn’t think so either. But what makes you think he doesn’t?’
‘The things he said about you.’
‘What did he say?’
She hesitated before replying. Now was her chance, if she moved cautiously.
‘I rang him up that first evening after meeting you,’ Myra said. ‘I asked about you; I knew a bit of course, but he filled in the gaps. Then he asked was Mrs. Bennett with you. I said she was, then he asked, “Is she staying in the same hotel?” That told me how the land lay, or rather how he thought the land lay.’
‘He imagines that Heather and I are having the romance of the century.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that we can’t marry because she’s married to a Catholic who won’t agree to a divorce.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s what a lot of people think. It’s what most people think, I fancy.’
‘And it isn’t true?’
‘What makes you think it isn’t true?’
‘What Heather told me.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘That you weren’t having an affair at all.’
‘That’s perfectly correct. We aren’t, we never have. What else did she say?’
‘That’s enough, isn’t it?’
‘It may be, but I bet she told you more.’
Myra hesitated. She was not going to reveal what Heather had said about Gerald’s mother. It might make trouble.
‘It’s decent of you to be discreet. But there’s no need for you to be. I know what she thinks of me, so I’m pretty sure that I know what she told you. She thinks I’m so absorbed in my mother that I can’t fall in love with any woman. That is what she said, isn’t it?’
‘It’s what she said.’
There was a pause. There was a quizzical expression on his face.
‘Isn’t that true either?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘It’s no more true than what your husband thinks about me. It’s Heather’s story, though. And quite a lot of people, women mostly, are ready to accept it.’