by Jen Silver
“Lady Temperley will be here to greet the ladies, I can assure you. She has, in fact, been at the British Open and was staying in London with her husband last night.”
“She’ll need to be up early to get here by lunchtime,” Jordan said. She had attended the first day of the Women’s British Open before driving down to Temperley Cliffs. It was a good six-hour drive from the Woburn Golf Course to their location on the north coast of Cornwall.
“Not a problem for the aristocracy, my dear,” Roger assured her. “She’ll be arriving by helicopter.”
“Of course.” Jordan gave him a brief smile. She hoped the students would provide enough of a distraction for her to be able to get through the next two weeks being patronised by Jeff and Roger and leered at by Tony. One of the students on her list was the same age. She could only hope that a few out of the sixteen might be lesbians as well. Statistically that had to be the case.
†
Lady Freya Temperley yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Her body felt deliciously relaxed and that was due to the exertions of the sleeping form next to her. She lowered her arms and moved closer to revel in the warmth emanating from the sleeper. It seemed a shame to wake her, but they did need to rise soon to prepare for their journey.
“Andi.” She nudged her lover and whispered, “Are you awake?”
“Mmm,” was the muffled response.
She nudged her again, more firmly this time. “Have I worn you out, sweetheart?”
This got the desired response. Andi’s competitive spirit wouldn’t let this slur on her athletic prowess pass. Lady Temperley found herself quickly rolled into a prone position with Andi on top of her, their legs now inextricably entwined.
“We don’t have time for this,” she gasped.
“Yes we do.” Andi’s mouth on hers stopped any further protests.
†
“Morning, ladies.” Lord Tristan Temperley was already seated when they arrived in the dining room. He lowered his newspaper to look at them, his handsome features creased in a smile. “Well played yesterday, Andi.”
“I did okay. But no one ever remembers who came second, never mind tenth.”
“You can’t win every week.”
“I haven’t won any week this year, Tris.” She helped herself to coffee from the sideboard before sitting at the table.
“Helping out with Freya’s little project could be just the break you need.”
Lady Temperley gave her husband a peck on the cheek and sat down next to Andi with her cup of tea. “It certainly will. And no one knows you’re coming. Having a top golfer from the LPGA tour around for this first two-week session will give it a tremendous boost. Word of mouth alone will help fill the places for the following sessions.” And she was going to enjoy every minute of having Andi at Temperley Cliffs for the next three weeks. They saw too little of each other during the tour season and she had to battle with bouts of jealousy whenever, during a golf tournament, she saw Andi paired with yet another nubile young player. However much Andi reassured her that nothing was going on with any of them, it was hard to believe she wasn’t tempted.
“Have you seen Goran lately?” Tris asked.
“No. He wanted me there for the Euros, but I was preparing for the US Women’s Open in California. And as I was on that side of the continent, I took some time to visit my mum in Vancouver.”
Lady Temperley hoped that Andi’s commitment to her marriage of convenience to Croatian footballer, Goran Mihajlovic was waning. He was likely to retire from playing in the next year and then she thought they would both be free to come out. Her own marriage to Tristan had been for similar reasons and their separate ways of life suited them both, but she felt the time was coming when they could stop hiding their sexuality from the world. Twenty years ago things were different. He hadn’t wanted to be disinherited, and her parents were delighted she was marrying into the aristocracy, leaving her youthful experimentation with female lovers behind.
†
The nausea was starting to subside as she stood under the shower. Andi would happily have taken the train but Tris had assured her it was perfect flying weather. Freya sat up front with him and kept yelling back to Andi to look at the view. She’d kept her eyes resolutely closed and turned up the music on her iPod to drown out the noise. Flying in small planes was something she avoided if possible and she would now add helicopters to the never-again list.
When she emerged from the bathroom, refreshed and wrapped in a bath towel, her luggage had been delivered to the guest room. She opened her suitcase and riffled through it for clean underwear. All her clothes were in need of laundering after the previous week’s golf tournament, and she had just thrown up on the only clean shirt she had left. None of Freya’s clothes would fit. She might have to borrow something from Tris.
Freya appeared carrying a pair of bright red trousers over one arm and a white shirt on a hanger in her other hand. “Here. These will fit you.”
“Haven’t you got anything a little less bright?”
“This is the staff uniform. See, this shirt has your name on it.”
“Fuck’s sake, Frey. I thought this was a break for me.”
“Come on, sweetie. It will give the others a buzz.”
“Poor buggers. Why red?”
“The Temperley crest colours, red and gold. But I didn’t think gold pants would look good.”
“You must have charmed the pants off them if you’ve got them wearing this outfit.”
Freya laid the clothing on the bed and walked over to her. Tugging on the ends of the towel, she said, “I’ve already charmed the pants off you. Any chance of an afternoon replay?”
“I thought you had a bevy of young ladies to meet and greet.”
“Hmm. Some of them aren’t so young. But you’re right. I’ll reserve a tee time with you later.” With one quick yank, she ripped the towel away from Andi’s body. Laughing at the look of outrage on her face, Freya kissed her and gave her a light slap on the butt before walking away. “Make sure you bring your A game,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
Andi picked the towel off the floor and eyed the clothes on the bed with disgust. She’d left her golf pro shop days behind her a long time ago. Still, it was no worse than some of the things her sponsors gave her to wear. With a sigh she finished drying herself and got dressed. Time to put on a brave smile and meet the troops.
Chapter Four
Sitting in the long line of traffic on the A30 crossing Bodmin Moor, Sam considered once more how she had let herself be talked into this job. Apart from the fact that it paid well and was in a stunning location on the north coast of Cornwall, she wasn’t keen on learning to play golf. She did need the money and passing up the chance to work for Sandra’s agency wasn’t an option either. In some of her darkest moments over the past few months, Sam had considered pawning the wedding rings but so far she had managed to get enough work to stave off that necessity.
The wedding had been a low-key affair at a registry office. They had talked about doing something fancier but neither of them wanted a church service. For Beth that was a reaction to having been brought up in a vicarage. Her father was the Church of England vicar for their parish and had strongly disapproved of his daughter’s “lifestyle.” The first time they visited Beth’s parents’ house together, he insisted that they sleep in separate bedrooms. Sam recalled her indignation.
“What? Does he think the neighbours can see through walls?” she’d shouted at Beth when they had gone out for a wander through the adjoining graveyard. That was the last time they visited together. Beth dutifully made once yearly visits without her.
Sam was grateful for her own family’s wholehearted acceptance. Her parents had come to the wedding and joined in the reception held for family and friends at a nearby hotel. Her younger brother, Jacob, had also come along with his wife and children, but it wasn’t a long journey for them from Cumbria. Caleb hadn’t been able to get the time off from the
job he’d just started in New York, but he’d sent a loving message and a beautiful present—a soapstone carving of two women embracing. It was a treasured possession holding pride of place in the centre of their living room mantelpiece. What would happen to that in the divorce settlement?
Bringing her focus back to the road as the traffic started to move faster, Sam thought about the job at hand. She could well understand why the writer Sandra was representing didn’t want to take the time to undertake this two-week course herself. But the reason Sandra had given was that the writer was allergic to grass and suffered from chronic hay fever. Sam was sure she’d heard of a pro golfer who had the same allergy and still managed to play week in, week out.
She had arrived at the hotel in Bath in time to see the last hour of the Women’s British Open the day before. No surprise that it was won by a Korean. The top ten had included five women from South Korea, an Australian, a Canadian, and three Americans. That sounded like the start to a bad joke.
The Canadian woman was married to a footballer, Goran something or other. He was Croatian but playing for Liverpool, a strong midfield presence but probably not for much longer. He was doing well to still make the first team regularly at the age of thirty-nine. Football, that was a game she could understand following. Sitting through the golf coverage had been like watching paint dry, not something she planned to take up regularly. Still it had helped her soak up some of the terminology. No doubt by the end of these two weeks she would be familiar with bogeys, eagles, and the like. She would be rotating her hips and shifting her weight with the best of them. And there was obviously an art to shouting “in the hole” just as players reached the top of their backswing. From the commentary on the TV coverage, she understood this kind of unsporting spectator behaviour was more prevalent in the men’s game.
Sam knew she should have used her time in Bath better but she had seen all the sights before. Once, as part of a research project, and another time with Beth, when they had ignored the chance to visit the Roman baths in favour of a Jane Austen walking tour. Sam’s knowledge of the famous writer started and ended with the TV series of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth. The tour hadn’t inspired her to read any of the books, but Beth’s enthusiasm kept her going and, although footsore and bored, Sam had stuck it out knowing she would be rewarded for her patience when they made it back to their hotel room.
It had been a mistake to break the long journey from Yorkshire in Bath, Sam realised afterwards. It only brought back memories of shared time there. Sam would have to add it to the list of places to be avoided. Too bad that Copenhagen was at the top of that list. Their brief honeymoon had been spent in the Danish capital. She recalled a beautiful sunny afternoon sitting outside a café in Nyhavn, watching the passersby and the swaying masts of the beautiful wooden ships on the water. They had always said they would love to return sometime and explore more of the city. That hadn’t happened, and now it never would.
In the six months since Beth had moved out, Sam still hadn’t found the courage to tell any of her family members. Like filing for divorce, telling them would make it all too real. For now she wanted to maintain the fantasy that Beth would come back to her. Sam’s parents lived only an hour’s drive from the golf resort and she planned to visit them when the two-week course finished. Face-to-face, she just might be able to break the news to them. Actually, there was no might about it. They would want to know where Beth was, why she hadn’t accompanied her. Sam didn’t see either of her brothers often enough that she would tell them and let one of them tell their parents. They had always taken great pleasure in snitching on her during their childhood years, so it would be the easy way out to give them the news first.
She hadn’t exactly been suffering in silence. Troy and Webby, along with Scott and Barbara, had patiently listened to her when she gave in to moments of despair, although she felt their sympathy ebbing as the months passed by. Troy had strongly advised her to take this opportunity of two weeks away from everything she knew to sort herself out and start living again.
Her melancholy mood hadn’t diminished with the beauty of the scenery she was now driving through. Listening to the emotive songs of Tracy Chapman helped her to stay awake for the last fifty miles of the four-hour journey but didn’t manage to lift her spirits.
The sat-nav eventually woke up to tell her she had reached her destination. Turning into the drive between two huge stone pillars, with statues of lions sitting on them, she was reminded of a visit to a stately home in Yorkshire. The impressive looking gatehouse was bigger than any house she had ever lived in. A hundred yards past the entrance to the drive, the view opened out with a warning sign to watch for golfers teeing off on the right. In the distance she could see the large Georgian mansion, and not far beyond that, glimmerings of the sea. The house was indeed reminiscent of those tours of National Trust properties where visitors wandered through the rooms, commenting more on the choice of wallpaper and furnishings than reflecting on the lives of the people who had lived and died there.
The parts of the course she could see as she drove towards the mansion offered vistas of wide fairways with a sprinkling of bunkers. Having checked out the course plan on the Temperley Cliffs website, she knew there were a number of ponds to negotiate and a few ravines. The signature hole involved hitting the ball across an expanse of ocean, described as the ultimate risk-and-reward shot. Sam wondered how a group of beginners would be expected to cope with that after only a few training sessions.
A sign directed her to a car park behind the left-hand wing of the house. The joining instructions she had received informed her that, on arrival, a staff member would take her luggage to her room.
She parked in a space next to a silver BMW that looked brand new. The personalised number plate read “P4LMER.” Her black, and now very dusty, VW Golf looked shabby by comparison.
Walking around to the courtyard, she was struck again by the size of the place. The photos on the website hadn’t managed to convey the immensity of it. She would have to start making notes. Her employer would want as much detail of her first impressions as she could provide.
Sam stepped into the cool interior of the hall and was immediately entranced by its splendour. The abundant flowering greenery dominating the central display would have induced an instant hay-fever attack for the golf-shy writer. A vision dressed in white and red appeared from behind the large palm tree by the reception desk. For the first time since accepting the assignment, Sam felt that spending the next two weeks learning to play golf might actually be enjoyable.
†
Beth climbed out of the train, hefting her heavy suitcase with both hands and trying not to fall over. She cursed Lydia again. When she booked this two-week break for them, the plan had been to drive down together. Two days before the end of the summer term, Lydia informed her she had to attend a head teachers’ symposium in Lincoln that coincided with the first three days of their holiday. It had been Lydia’s decision that they only needed to have one car at the resort, so she would drive across to the eastern side of the country while Beth took the train. Temperley Cliffs, although not quite at the most southerly point of the British Isles, was certainly a much longer journey.
Only when Beth went online to book the train tickets did she realise how long it would take. In order to make it in time for the Monday lunchtime start, she would have to break the journey and have an overnight stay in Exeter. The train from there to Truro would still take almost two and a half hours.
Beth felt hot, sticky, and disgruntled from the time spent on an overcrowded train full of families setting off for their summer vacations. Two-and-a-half hours of over-excited children shouting and running around had not been a peaceful start. At least she knew there would be no kids at Temperley Cliffs. Beth was looking forward to being in a childfree zone.
Meanwhile, Lydia would have enjoyed the drive to Lincoln in her air-conditioned cocoon, listening to music, and stopping only long enough at the
services to pee. She even had supplies of water and sandwiches.
Beth hadn’t been able to read on the train. Gazing out of the window at the passing scenery, she distracted herself from the surrounding noise by recalling the stories that had enchanted her as a teenager—romantic tales of the Cornish landscape brought to life through the books by Daphne du Maurier—Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn. Beth had noted the proximity of Temperley to Tintagel, another place steeped in myth and mystery.
She wanted to share all this with Lydia, but now that plan was ruined. Beth’s reaction to Lydia’s news about the symposium had escalated into their first full-blown argument. She was convinced Lydia had purposely set out to sabotage their holiday. After one night of the silent treatment, Lydia had promised to make it up to her with a weekend in London before the start of the new term. Beth guessed she thought London was far enough away that no one from the school would see them together.
Pulling her suitcase past the station ticket office and out to the front of the building, Beth looked around for the shuttle bus that was meeting her and some of the other Temperley Cliffs guests. There was no sign of any vehicle that looked like it could carry six passengers and their luggage, but there were four women grouped by the curb. Two of them were smoking and talking quietly to each other. One woman was looking around anxiously while a fourth was sitting on her suitcase, face lifted to the sun.
The smokers looked like they had stepped off the front cover of a women’s golf magazine, with new Nike-branded sleeveless tops. One wore a bright floral-patterned mini-skirt, and the other presented a more subdued appearance with beige tailored shorts. Beth and Lydia had discussed what they would wear and both decided their regular summer clothes would do. There was no point spending money on golf outfits if they discovered they didn’t like the sport. The anxious woman was dressed as if going to a summer garden party, flowery frock complete with straw hat. The one lounging on her suitcase was wearing cut-off jeans and a tank top that might have once been white. She looked the most comfortably attired of the four. Beth decided her own hastily thrown together ensemble of sand-coloured chinos and a loose-fitting blouse was probably the right choice. She was sure she had read somewhere that golf clubs didn’t allow jeans to be worn in their clubhouses.