Unholy Writ

by David Williams

  ‘Six is almost vulgarly good,’ put in Speke-Jones. ‘No doubt the product of a well-spent youth, Mr Treasure,’ he added in a tone that implied he meant the opposite of what he said. ‘I’m eighteen, but you can’t be good at everything! So you give us both strokes. Big money game, is it?’

  ‘I should find 10p for the winner a sufficient incentive,’ replied the vice-chairman of one of Britain’s most affluent merchant banks.

  ‘Done,’ said Scarbuck. ‘Well, age before beauty,’ he continued, placing a ball on the tee. Fred arranged himself and the enormous bag immediately in front of his employer. ‘Nay, lad, that’s not the place. Come over here.’

  Scarbuck grasped his caddy by the shoulders and propelled him to the side of the tee. ‘That’s … where … you … stand,’ he said, slowly and deliberately as though this would overcome Fred’s total inability to translate the words addressed to him. ‘Now … don’t … move.’ He pressed down hard on the little man’s shoulders.

  Scarbuck returned to address the ball, or more accurately to give the impression that he was about to hammer it into the ground with a short downward stroke from the wooden clubhead he held hovering six inches above its gleaming white cover. The hovering went on for some moments accompanied by heavy breathing from Scarbuck. At the point when Treasure was beginning to find the suspense unnerving, some unseen force seemed to impel the clubhead heavenwards at incredible speed. Momentarily, Treasure imagined that the club, with Scarbuck in tow, was being lifted into the sky in the manner depicted in so many Punch cartoons portraying old gentlemen attached to umbrellas in howling gales. A fraction of a second before the fully extended Scarbuck might have been expected actually to levitate – only his toes remained in contact with the earth – the club-head came downwards with the same speed that it had gone upwards, its wielder now appearing to collapse under the pressure of some crushing power exerted on his person from above.

  There was a shower of grass and earth uplifted from the area immediately behind the ball, accompanied by an unwholesome ‘ping’ as the rounded toe of the club came into violent contact with the hard, white sphere, propelling it with tremendous force in the immediate direction of the well-anchored caddy. ‘Ow!’ screamed little Fred, an expression that would have gained nothing in translation. He crumpled in a heap upon the ground, grasping a part of his anatomy well below the belt and too sensitive and pained for even elementary decorum to prevail against the reflex application of aid.

  Fred, his whole body contorted into an uneven ball, rolled about on the ground like some professional footballer grievously fouled for the second time in full view of the television cameras. He screamed and screeched and then began to weep copiously. Scarbuck hurried across from the tee. ‘Did it hit him?’ he enquired lamely, and in the circumstances unnecessarily. ‘Undo your trousers, lad,’ he continued, attempting to take hold of the writhing Filipino by the leather belt that encircled his middle.

  Scarbuck’s fumbling produced an unexpected reaction. His caddy, already severely wounded, albeit by remote control but for all he knew by the malicious, considered action of the man who had so firmly placed him in the line of fire, now concluded that the same oppressor was about to inflict yet more tortures upon his person. Leaping to his feet, head bent in the manner of a battering ram, he charged Scarbuck in the stomach with a force that toppled the older man, then sent him sinking to the ground. Fred next started to run, and despite a lop-sided gait, made good speed in the general direction of the Club House, leaving the colourful, collapsed Scarbuck looking like Humpty Dumpty.

  ‘I’ll murder that little heathen when I get hold of him,’ Scarbuck exploded.

  ‘Well, better make certain he doesn’t get hold of you first,’ said Speke-Jones who, with Treasure, was helping Scarbuck to his feet. ‘He might bear a little grudge after what you just did to him; never know with Orientals – isn’t that right, Mr Treasure?’ and without waiting for a reply he went on, ‘Didn’t you say the Vicar knocked him about already today?’

  ‘Yes, and a pity he didn’t break his neck.’ Scarbuck was still ruffled. He brushed himself down and glanced at his golf bag lying where it had been abandoned on the ground.

  ‘Looks as though you’ve been left to carry the white man’s burden, George,’ said Speke-Jones lightly. ‘Tell you what, I’ll carry my bag and you can put yours on my trolley.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Scarbuck replied, rubbing his stomach, ‘quite put me off my game, that has.’ A comment that produced a shrug of scarcely suppressed laughter from Treasure. ‘If you don’t mind I’ll sit here for a few minutes,’ Scarbuck continued, moving towards a wooden bench. ‘You two go ahead and I’ll catch you up and walk a few holes with you later.’

  After some mild but unconvincing protest from both Treasure and Speke-Jones, the two men moved back to the tee. His opponent invited Treasure to drive first.

  The first hole at Mid-Stoke is a simple three hundred and twenty yard par four, with a ‘dog-leg’ to the left two-thirds of the way to the green. Treasure took the two wood from his bag, and with a perfectly co-ordinated swing drove the ball two hundred and fifty yards – a little more to the left than he had intended so that its final course took it perilously close to the edge of a bunker. It rolled up the lip of the trap without dropping in, trickled down the other side of the incline, stopping on flat ground some sixty yards short of the green.

  Most of Treasure’s golfing intimates would have uttered a good natured ‘lucky’ at this escape. Speke-Jones offered no such comment. ‘Good shot,’ he said, and sounded as though he meant it.

  ‘Lucky finish, you mean.’ Treasure smiled.

  Speke-Jones shook his head. ‘I’m not a great believer in luck, Mr Treasure, in golf or anything else for that matter. We’re all captains of our own fate. I prefer making chances to taking them.’ As if to illustrate the application of this philosophy he pointed to the number on the four wood he was holding.

  Speke-Jones did not so much address the ball as consciously demonstrate the consecutive motions involved in a well-learned drill. His grip, stance and swing were copies of those frequently illustrated in the Sunday newspapers. He was insufficiently relaxed in play, yet he clearly did not extend himself to the full. His drive sent the ball an unimpressive hundred and fifty yards – but down the very centre of the fairway: a safe and sensible shot for a high handicap player with a stroke in hand against his opponent.

  Treasure admired the control displayed by a golfer evidently high on application if low on natural aptitude. The banker was practised at reading character from the way a man played golf. What he had just witnessed fitted very well with his assessment of Speke-Jones. Cynically he wondered how high the stakes would need to be for the politician to take chances.

  Chapter Nine

  The players halved the first hole. Treasure won the longer second. At the difficult third the politician had demonstrated his coolness under pressure and a continuing mature appreciation of his own limitations. Both players had reached the green in two. Treasure had just missed getting a ‘birdie’ three with a putt that obstinately halted at the very lip of the hole; Speke-Jones had also taken two putts.

  ‘Well done; halved with no stroke for you,’ said Treasure, smiling. ‘Keep playing that kind of golf and they’ll soon have your handicap down.’

  ‘It’s the stimulation and challenge of your example,’ replied Speke-Jones seriously as they walked across to the fourth tee. ‘I don’t often play with people of your calibre, but they say that’s the way to improve one’s game.’ He paused before adding with a touch more meaning, ‘And that doesn’t only apply to golf either.’

  The fairway of the short fourth hole was littered with the persons of four very inexpert players, none of whom had reached the green with his drive nor even succeeded in following the most direct line of approach.

  ‘We’ve caught up a bunch of rabbits,’ Treasure observed testily. ‘Perhaps they’ll let us through at the next tee,’ he added
hopefully but without much conviction.

  ‘Smoke?’ Speke-Jones had seated himself on the bench provided against the eventuality they were facing.

  Treasure refused a cigarette but noted the opulent Dupont lighter. ‘Tell me about Forward Britain,’ he said casually. ‘Is it really your line of country?’ There was a compliment suggested in his tone, implying that the two men shared an attitude that put both above involvement with sideshow pressure groups.

  ‘Oh, you’re right there,’ agreed Speke-Jones with alacrity. ‘It’s a movement in search of a cause, you might say.’

  ‘And a leader?’

  Speke-Jones smiled. ‘You could say that too. George Scarbuck isn’t exactly heaven-sent in that connection, is he? Colourful, mind you … and there is good in the idea, of Forward Britain, I mean. This lurch to the left … there’s bound to be a reaction sooner or later, and I can’t see that coming in conventionally political form.’

  Treasure weighed this piece of rationalization and found it made better sense as self-justification. Speke-Jones was a Labour Member of Parliament with dwindling credibility, who might himself soon be looking for a cause. A further ‘lurch to the left’ on the part of the Socialists might well leave him quite a long way to the right of centre, and certainly outside the party fold. Treasure found it difficult to accept that a cyclical reaction from the forces of the right would not express itself through conventional political channels; he could appreciate, however, that trimmers of Speke-Jones’s type might find themselves washed out of mainstream politics if attitudes and parties polarized. He knew enough of Speke-Jones’s political provenance to figure that the man would be unacceptable as a parliamentary candidate in any other party – and in any case he did not strike Treasure as the kind ready to persevere with the long haul back to credibility that inevitably faces the lesser breed of political turncoat.

  ‘It’s the rule of law, d’you see. Taken a hell of a knock over the last ten years.’ Speke-Jones seemed almost to be talking to himself. ‘If unemployment gets any higher they’ll be pushing for increases in National Assistance, and where’s the money to come from? Worker power is too strong now to be fobbed off with a reduction in the dole like the ’thirties.’ He paused, and this time looked at Treasure. ‘Mark my words, there’ll be civil strife and the only thing standing between you and me and bloody revolution will be the loyalty of the police force and the army. Policemen and soldiers accept the rule of law because they live by it – and they’re the only ones who do nowadays. But put them in a real crisis, and where’s the leadership coming from to keep up morale and loyalty – not from my lot; workers are sacred cows to us whether they work or not. And as for the other bunch, God help us if the chips go down. I tell you, something has to be done … and I’m ready to do it,’ he finished firmly.

  Treasure not only caught the drift of this soliloquy; on consideration he thought he might actually be ahead of its implications. If Speke-Jones was openly allying himself with a new and evidently political movement, and at the same time freely denigrating the policy of the party he was elected to represent, he must already have estimated that the stakes were high enough to attract him into the game. But Treasure doubted that Speke-Jones would be ready to exchange the relative security of an ‘also-ran’ position in an established political party for anything less than the leadership of a hardly formed pressure group. Even accepting that the loss of his parliamentary seat would mark the end of Speke-Jones in conventional politics, the man had friends well placed in British industry, and Treasure did not doubt that these would provide him with a sufficient income through outside directorships and consultancy fees – indeed, he guessed some were doing so already.

  If financial gain was not motivating Speke-Jones, then Treasure was experienced enough in such matters to conclude that power was the only possible alternative prize. And Speke-Jones had yet to enjoy real political power. He had never been afforded the meanest position under the Crown when his party was in office. Was this the cause of his disenchantment, his frustration, and his ambition? Was Speke-Jones casting himself in the Messianic role of the leader above ordinary politics, prepared to rescue Britain from the popularly threatened onset of nationwide anarchy if economic disaster did overtake the country?

  Treasure even accepted that the scenario sketched by the politician was, in certain circumstances, a credible prediction. But he happened to have a very healthy regard for the rule of law himself, and no faith whatsoever in self-convinced dictators masquerading as saviours at the head of private armies.

  ‘The green’s clear; my honour, I think.’ Speke-Jones was roughly jerked back into the present by Treasure’s remark. This time the better player’s near-perfect shot to the centre of the green was sadly unmatched by his opponent’s ill-prepared, scuffed drive. Speke-Jones had lost his concentration – or more accurately he was preoccupied with something other than golf. Treasure won the hole easily, but the other’s leap-frogging series of strokes to the green through thick rough had been time-consuming. They reached the next tee too late to be invited through by the players ahead who were once again spread out across the next fairway.

  Treasure decided to employ the inevitable waiting time to some purpose. ‘So you see the Forward Britain Movement as a vehicle for national survival? – bit puny, I’d have thought.’

  ‘At the moment, yes – and it will take organizing, or reorganizing, but the basic structure’s there already. You know there are three hundred thousand members?’ Treasure did not know, and the number surprised him. ‘And they’re recruiting at the rate of a thousand a week – mostly disaffected middle-class people with a genuine grievance. They’re the real losers, d’you see – galloping inflation, higher taxation, subsidies for the indolent, there’s no end to it, except a reduction in living standards for people who’ve worked to improve their lot. The very rich are waterproof enough to ride out any storm.’ Speke-Jones gave Treasure an almost apologetic glance. ‘The so-called underprivileged have nothing to lose in the circumstances, and they think they’ve everything to gain. It’s the people in the middle who are feeling the pinch – and they’re about ready to fight back, offered some leadership. They’d vote for a real national government, given the chance, but they’re not going to get it.’

  ‘And you think Forward Britain would meet their aspirations?’

  ‘Well, it’s very broadly based for a start. All kinds of people united by a common interest. This bunch Scarbuck’s get here today is pretty representative. There’re a lot of trade unionists involved – not the ones who live in council houses, but the ones with mortgages, and that’s the clue; property ownership; something to defend.’ Speke-Jones hesitated before his next statement, then continued slowly, as though weighing his words more carefully than before. ‘You’d be surprised at the number of serving officers involved … police too … people used to an ordered, disciplined life looking for leadership at national level and not finding it. They’re the ones who are most bitter about the social drift – and fearful about its consequences.’

  Treasure stooped to place a ball on the tee with this Welsh rhetoric claiming more of his attention than he had expected. He remained unconvinced about the role Speke-Jones had in mind for Forward Britain, but he was disturbed by some of the things he had been told. The suggestion that commissioned officers in HM Forces might be knowingly involved in a movement progressing to power outside the democratic process he found absurd. He was more concerned that such people might be unknowingly gathered into such an organization at a point where its real aims were not revealed.

  Treasure had been aware of Forward Britain for some time but had dismissed it as a fold for cranks, not a den of fanatics. In his work he had enjoyed many civilized, intelligent conversations with leaders of some of the resurgent countries. It still disappointed if not surprised him that many such men could be calm and sensible in private, then cruel and worse than autocratic in their public utterances and actions. He had an uneasy feeling t
hat his rational companion might belong to this breed, easily capable of explaining away the need for stern dictatorial measures as the means for promoting desirable, national ends. He wondered, too, if he had been treated to the confidences he had just heard more in his capacity as a banker than as a private citizen. He resolved to find this out.

  The fifth hole at Mid-Stoke, although only three hundred yards long, involves a carry of a hundred and sixty yards over a valley of thick rough. Using his driver, Treasure sent the ball streaking low and long on to the fairway to finish not quite on the green but close to it.

  ‘Magnificent,’ said Speke-Jones, at the same time giving a sidelong glance at an alternative tee placed some thirty yards ahead and slightly to the left of the one they were using.

  Although no tournament of any consequence had ever been played at Mid-Stoke, each hole was provided with three tees – Ladies, Players, and what the Club Committee presumed to call Championship. Out of habit, Treasure had selected the backward Championship tee at the first hole while waiting for Scarbuck and Speke-Jones. Now he realised that it would have been charitable to have given Speke-Jones the option at the beginning. To suggest that his opponent should play off a forward tee at this point in the game was an offer that Treasure was hardly ready to risk. Yet somehow he found himself making it.

  Speke-Jones required no second bidding. ‘Well, it is a long carry,’ he said, trundling his bag and trolley to the other tee. Treasure concluded first that bankers lived sheltered lives, and secondly that Speke-Jones was the most unabashed opportunist he had met in a very long time – a view that was shortly to be reinforced.

  Despite the advantage he enjoyed on the Player’s tee, Speke-Jones failed to carry the rough. His ball lodged in a bank just below the fairway.

  It was obvious to Treasure that his opponent had abandoned rather than lost the studied application he had demonstrated earlier in the game – undoubtedly because he had more important things on his mind. It was for this reason that Treasure felt no inhibition about putting a further question on what he would normally have felt an unfairly distracting subject. ‘Who provides the funding for Forward Britain?’ he enquired as the two walked down in the direction of Speke-Jones’s ball. ‘That is, if there’s no secrecy involved,’ he added.