Chapter 19

After we had showered and changed, we went through to the lounge, which was a very large room, luxuriously furnished with comfortable looking armchairs grouped round tables, fully carpeted, and with large picture windows overlooking the course. I made a quick count, and there were at least twenty tables, each with half a dozen chairs round them. Of all this accommodation, only one table at the far end of the room had anyone sitting at it. At the far end was a large open fire place with a pair of photographs above it, but I was too far away to see what the subjects were.

"Shall we have another drink, or wait for the ladies?" asked Mike, but before I could answer, Margaret and Sally appeared. As I remembered, Sally looked absolutely gorgeous in her blue dress, and I couldn't wait for the time later this evening when I would be able to take it off her.

"Shall we sit down and have a drink?" asked Margaret. "Mother will be down soon, I expect, and she wouldn't want us to wait for her."

We sat down at one of the tables, and Mike asked us all what we would like. The ladies both had a gin and tonic, and when I asked for a scotch, Mike said he would have the same, suggesting that we had a Glenmorangie, with which I agreed. Mike went up to the bar and ordered, and while he was doing so, I asked the ladies how they had got on.

"I think it's a lovely course, Peter, don't you?" said Sally.

"I'm not surprised," said Margaret. "She cleaned up today, taking a tenner from each of us."

"Beginner's luck," said Sally. "Don't you find that you tend to play better on a new course because you tend to play a bit more conservatively?"

"Yes, that's true," replied Margaret. "How did you two get on?" she asked, as Mike returned.

"I had two putts to tie the whole thing," said Mike. "We halved the front nine, and Peter was one up coming to the last, and took a five, leaving me with two putts to square everything. My first putt was a couple of feet past, and the tight sod didn't give it to me, and then I missed it, so I lost seven pounds to him, as we were playing for the same stakes as you did."

"May I make a suggestion, Mike?" I asked.

"You may, by all means." Just then the barmaid brought our drinks across.

"Never look to see if your putt is going to be conceded. I was about to concede your last, or rather last but one, putt, but then you looked at me as if asking for it, and I remembered what my Uncle Ian told me, many moons ago. He said that if your opponent looks at you for you to concede a putt, it means he isn't sure if he can hole it. If he was, he wouldn't be asking for it. 'Just look at your shoes, laddie, ' he said, 'just look at your shoes.' So when I saw you looking at me for a concession, I just looked at my shoes."

"Well done, Peter," said Margaret, "Just because he was captain last year, his opponents have given him far too many putts that he ought to have been made to hole."

Sally, who was sitting opposite to me, just said:

"Well done, Peter."

"I nearly blew it though," I said, "I threw away the second and third holes, mainly through bad course management, going for the green when only my best shot would get me there, and then I remembered the instructions I had been given — 'Don't go for miracle shots, don't give holes away, make him beat you'."

"And who gave you this unnecessary piece of advice, and thereby cost me money. After the third, I thought you were going to be easy meat, constantly putting yourself into trouble."

"My golf coach must remain anonymous," I replied, "but I think that her blue dress suits her."

Whether deliberately or not, Sally uncrossed her legs and then re-crossed them when I said this, and I was able to catch a glimpse of the top of her stockings, and the lilac panties above them. When I looked up into her eyes, I knew that it was deliberate.

At that point, Lydia came in and sat down, and almost immediately the barmaid was alongside her.

"I'll have a whisky, Karen, please. Everyone else all right?"

"With water, Mrs Blackwell?"

"Yes please, Karen."

"You've no doubt heard how your lady bandit took money off a little old lady, have you Peter?" asked Lydia, and I nodded, "How did you get on?"

"I managed to take seven pounds off your son-in law. I'm afraid we're not very polite guests, at least not on the golf course." She obviously thought that this was splendid.

Then she turned to Mike, and said quite abruptly:

"Well?"

He obviously knew what she was asking, and replied:

"Yes, definitely."

When the barmaid then returned with her drink, Lydia said to her:

"See if Mr Brooke is in, please Karen, and if he is, ask him to come up and see me."

We chatted generally about various of the holes on the golf course, when a man in a dark suit, with a shirt and discreet tie came in, and came across to us.

"You wanted to see me, Mrs Blackwood?"

"Yes, Leo." And she stood up, and walked to the other side of the room and began talking to him. I couldn't hear what was being said, but I noticed that he was writing something down in a notebook he had removed from his pocket.

"Sorry about that," she said when she returned, "Leo is the General Manager, and there was something I wanted to deal with straight away. Now, I understand that you two are looking for a new house in the area, and are looking for a fairly large place, is that right?"

"Yes," I replied, "Mike wants us to be able to entertain company clients and accommodate them when necessary, so it will need to be fairly substantial. Sally has a daughter who lives with her, and once I get a house, I hope that my daughter will come and live with us as well. She's been living with her mother since we divorced, but she and Lucy, Sally's daughter are very close, and she would be devastated if we took Lucy away. She wants to live with me rather than her mother anyway, as, among other things, she gets on very badly with her mother's new husband."

"The reason I was asking wasn't just curiosity, but there's a member of the club who is involved in the upper end of the housing market. Not an estate agent in the conventional sense, but one who knows all the large properties on the market in a fairly large radius, and also usually knows which houses are going to become available. This means that sometimes, a sale is arranged before a house even reaches the market. Would you like to be put in touch?"

"We'd be most grateful. We'd started looking at brochures, but only for the size of house we wanted for our own needs, and so we were going to go round the agents tomorrow, looking for larger properties. It sounds as though..." I hesitated. Lydia seemed to be watching me very carefully, and I thought back over what she had said, and realised that the sex of the member concerned had not been mentioned by her. "He, or she, could save us a lot of time."

"Hah, you caught it just in time, most people don't." said Lydia, with an approving smile, "Well done. I'll telephone Barbara in a few minutes and ask her if she's free to see you tomorrow. Would that be convenient?"

"Not merely convenient, the answer to our prayers," interjected Sally, "I was not at all looking forward to traipsing round estate agents all morning and afternoon tomorrow and possibly Saturday as well."

"No, nor was I," I added, "It wasn't too bad ringing them all up and asking them to send us brochures, we managed to do that in a morning between us, using two telephones, and two daughters to keep us supplied with coffee. But having to visit them all, which we'd have to do, because obviously they wouldn't get anything to us this weekend, and the pictures and descriptions in the papers aren't adequate."

Just then the General Manager came across to us, with what looked at first like two credit cards in his hands.

"Mr McKenzie," he gave one card to me, "and Mrs Roman," he gave the other to Sally, "welcome to Beech Hollow Golf Club. These are your membership cards. Until the gatekeeper gets to know you, you'll need them for access to the club. You also use them to pay for anything in the club. There is one hundred pounds on them at present, you can top this up at any time by coming to the office and giving myself or my secretary a cheque. If you go overdrawn on the card, there is no charge for the first fourteen days, after that we charge five per cent per month. I should add that we have not been able to collect any interest charges for the past three years." He smiled.

"Regrettably, I cannot provide you with a Rule Book at present," he continued, "as they are being reprinted, but if there is anything you want to know, please ask any of the staff at any time. I expect that Mr and Mrs Armitage or Mrs Blackwell will tell you all you need to know to go on with. I hope that you enjoy your golf here at Beech Hollow." With that he left. I was so speechless, I was even unable to thank him, and I saw that Sally was equally gob-smacked.

"I don't know what to say," I finally managed to get out. "I assume that we owe this to one or all of you, and I can't tell you how grateful we are, we'd been discussing joining a club in the area, but understood that many of the club's had long waiting lists."

"Yes," said Sally, "I was told that your waiting list was about twenty years, even if one could get on the list."

"By and large, you're correct," said Lydia, "But some pigs are more equal than others. You are aware that this is not a members' club, but is privately owned, are you?" We both nodded. "Do you see the two photographs over the fire place. The one on the left is my grandfather, Joshua Carpenter, he was the club's first president, the one on the right is Henry Carpenter, his son, and my father, he was the second president, and if you look on the right as you come in the entrance hall, opposite Reception, you will see my photograph, as the third president. When I die, or decide to resign, most probably the former, Margaret will be the fourth president. We, that is Margaret and I, own this club, and there is no-one here who will query the membership of anyone to whom I choose to offer it. If they should be so foolish as to do so in my hearing, they will be asked to play their golf elsewhere. That is how things go around here."

"Don't let Mother get you to think she's a power-mad dictator, Peter. To all intents and purposes, this club functions just like any other, with the usual array of committees, organizing all the things that other committees organize. The only real difference is that Mother reserves the right of veto, but that hardly ever gets used, and if it does, it is usually for some good reason, not on a whim."

"About the subscriptions, Peter," said Mike, "they are pretty substantial, but the company will pick them up, for both of you. This will be a taxable benefit, I'm afraid, so you'll have to pay sixty per cent of them, but we will put it to the taxman that it is partly for the benefit of the company, and so I expect that you will only be taxed on half of it, as are Margaret and I."

"That is very generous, Mike, and again I must say how grateful we are."

"No need to be. The benefit to the company when we can bring people here to play golf is enormous. The golf is good, the course is never crowded, and the dining room is superb. I honestly think that some of our clients remain with us just so they can come up here two or three times a year to play and then eat. Moving on from that, you said while we were playing that you were thinking of getting some new clubs."

"Yes, I understand that club technology has moved on considerably since I bought mine, and I have an appointment to try some out on Monday evening."

"Well, the pro here doesn't have a conventional shop, selling clubs and clothes and so on, but he is a very good teacher and swing analyst. What we usually do when anyone wants new clubs, is to ask him to go with us to wherever we intend to get them from, and he will advise along with the pro or whatever at the place we go to. I would strongly recommend you to ask him to go with you."

"That sounds an excellent idea."

"Shall I see if he would be available on Monday?"

"If it is not a problem, yes please."

"Karen," he called to the barmaid, "would you bring us the same again, and ring down to the pro shop and ask Frank if he could spare me a couple of minutes please."

"While you see Frank, I'll just try and get hold of Barbara," said Lydia, and went out of the lounge.

"I must say that you are all being very kind to us," Sally said.

"Yes, I agree, and we are very grateful."

"Not at all," said Mike, "It is in our personal interest that you can start entertaining instead of us doing it, and in the company's interest that you are settled and happy as soon as possible."

"But your Mother doesn't need to put herself out on our behalf, not that we don't appreciate it."

"The company's interests and Mother's run hand in hand. Didn't the name of the first president ring any bells?"

I thought back, and then it dawned on me:

"Joshua Carpenter, of course, it didn't sink in at the time."

"What didn't?" asked Sally

"Joshua Carpenter was the founder of the company. You mean that Lydia owns the company as well?"

"Not owns it, and not now. She was the major shareholder, but she passed most of her shares on to Margaret some years ago to avoid Inheritance Tax. By the way, that is not generally known, particularly inside the company, so keep it to yourself."