in the woods in question now. Again the shade was welcome. As they followed a diagonal line towards the stretch of fairway out of sight from the tee, Joe glimpsed a house through the trees, set well back.
As if answering a question, Porphyry said, ‘That’s Penley Farm where Jimmy Postgate lives. One of our founder members. In fact, come to think of it, the only one still with us. In his eighties, but still manages nine now and then. Lost distance, of course, but he’s never lost the ability to hit a straight ball. Dead straight in everything, Jimmy. True English gentleman, which is what makes it so difficult.’
‘Sorry?’ said Joe, thinking, here we go! Back to round-the-houses land.
‘But I’d better stick to the proper sequence so’s not to confuse you,’ said Porphyry. ‘I was poking around pretty aimlessly. To tell the truth, I hadn’t much hope, when you hear a ball clatter like that, you know it could have gone anywhere. Then I glimpsed something white up ahead towards the fairway there. Thought it was probably a mushroom at first, but when I went up to it, lo and behold, it was my ball! Here it was, right here. A truly fortunate lie.’
They came almost to the edge of the trees. Here the ground was free of undergrowth, bare earth mainly with a bit of scrubby grass.
‘How did you know it was your ball?’ wondered Joe.
‘Chap always knows what ball he’s playing with, otherwise there could be all kinds of confusion. I’m a Titleist man myself, always Number 1, and just to make assurance doubly sure, I have them personalized.’
He pulled a ball out of his pocket and handed it to Joe. On it in purple was stamped a small seahorse with the initials CP.
‘Family coat of arms. Three seahorses rampant, and a dolphin couchant.’
Joe listened uncomprehendingly, but once the bit was between his teeth, he wasn’t a man to let himself be led astray, especially not by seahorses.
He said, ‘So you found your first ball. What about the other one you hit?’
‘Oh, I gave Syd a wave to show him I was all right, and he played his second shot, then picked up my provisional and brought it with him. No use for it, you see, not once I’d found the first one.’
Joe was still a bit bewildered by all this two-ball stuff. The same with tennis where if you missed your first serve, they let you have another. Imagine trying that in footie. Oh sorry, ref, says Beckham. I didn’t mean to blaze that one over the bar, can I have another go?
But it was too hot for diversion.
He said, ‘Any chance of getting to the cheating bit?’
‘Yes, I’m getting there,’ said Porphyry with just the faintest hint of irritation. Even gods don’t care to be hurried. ‘Syd’s shot was pretty good, he drew it round the bend nicely, leaving himself a medium iron to reach the green in regulation. Now a half was no good to me – you recall I was dormy three. So I took out my three wood. As you’ll have noticed, I didn’t have a view of the green. I was going to need to get not only the distance but put enough draw on the ball to take it round the bend and up to the green. As if to make up for my drive, I hit a cracker. Off it went and when we got to the green it was lying four feet from the flag and I knocked it in for an eagle. That means two under par. Three shots on this hole. So even though Syd got a birdie, that’s four shots on this hole, I won.’
Joe said, ‘My head’s hurting.’
Porphyry said anxiously, ‘It must be the sun. You should have worn a hat. Would you like to sit down for a minute?’
‘No, I’m fine. We any nearer the cheating?’
‘Nearly there,’ said the YFG, heading back into the woods in the direction of the house. ‘What happened was that Syd was a bit demoralized. Getting a birdie and still losing the hole can do that. I won the next two holes so we ended up all square.’
‘Like a draw?’
‘That’s it. But you can’t have a draw in a knock-out competition, so we went down the first again.’
‘To play another eighteen holes, you mean?’ said Joe aghast.
‘Oh no. First man to win a hole wins the match,’ said Porphyry.
‘Like a penalty shoot-out?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I won that hole too, so we headed back to the clubhouse for a drink. My treat, of course, being the winner. We were standing at the bar. Syd was telling everyone who came in that I must have sacrificed a virgin to the devil or something, coming back from dormy three to win. He was particularly eloquent on my incredible luck on the sixteenth, clattering my drive into the woods, and yet still somehow managing to come up with an eagle to beat his birdie. He’d just repeated the story for the third or fourth time when Jimmy Postgate came in. That’s Jimmy from Penley Farm, the house I showed you on the far edge of these woods. He speaks quite loudly, Jimmy, because he’s a touch deaf. So everyone in the bar heard it loud and clear when he took a golf ball out of his pocket and tossed it to me, saying, “Here’s the one you lost at the sixteenth, Chris. Plopped right into my swimming pool! Good job there was no one in there or it might have been a burial-at-sea job!”’
Trust
Now the Young Fair God fell silent, clearly reliving what even Joe with his weak grasp on the finer points of the game could see must have been a devastating moment.
But just to be quite sure he said, ‘So if that was your ball went into the swimming pool, no way you could have found it sitting nice and handy right at the edge of the fairway. No way except one, that is?’
‘Except one?’
The YFG was regarding him with hope brightening his face. Poor sod thinks I’m going to pull a rabbit out of the hat, thought Joe. Willie Woodbine must really have sold him the notion I’m some kind of voodoo priest. Well, it was disillusion time.
He said, ‘The except one being that you put it there.’
The light died.
‘Of course. That’s the obvious conclusion everyone reached.’
‘Not everyone, surely?’
‘Oh, one or two like Jimmy tell me they find it impossible to believe, but I wouldn’t blame them if even they had doubts. Let’s face it, what other explanation can there be?’
‘Only that you were fitted up,’ said Joe.
‘Fitted up?’
It was hard to believe in this wall-to-wall TV cop-show age that anybody could still be ignorant of the jargon.
‘That it’s a fix,’ said Joe. ‘That someone wants you to be accused of cheating.’
‘Oh,’ said the YFG, sounding disappointed again. ‘That’s what Willie
