Whirligig (17 page)

He sipped his whisky again, and lit another cigarette.

‘There was a survey done. Bit of an amateur job, really. Said there are some… merlins, and sea eagles. And some sparrowhawks. And a few hen harriers. And golden eagles. Total rubbish. Anyway, I've, er… made the report more… realistic.'

‘So, so, so… Brr…' Claypole was having difficulty speaking, having just taken a draught of Knockenglachgach. ‘So, so you've… falsified the report?'

‘Of course not,' said Peregrine with a grin. ‘I've made a few appropriate corrections to some poorly executed work.'

Claypole said nothing.

‘We must think of the wealth that will be created.'

Peregrine had put a dark emphasis on the word ‘wealth', and Claypole took a moment to think. He had often wondered what it would be like to be bribed. Television shows about cops usually had lazy plot lines involving a moral dilemma for some unfeasibly good-looking protagonist. Should he/she take the bribe and protect a friend, or reject it and put them/himself/herself in jeopardy or jail? Occasionally the device was
used well. He had always assumed, when wondering how he would act in the same circumstances, that he would accept the bribe, all things being equal. There didn't seem to be enough drawbacks to not doing so. If the money's there, take it – assuming it is enough to counter the risks. It's an awful lot easier to deal with the consequences of bad behaviour if you're rich. But now that he was being bribed, he couldn't help feeling defiled.

‘Tell you what,' said Peregrine, judiciously changing the mood. ‘Let's go and get some exercise. I'll go and get changed.'

Claypole was left in Peregrine's office, his attention drawn to the pile of papers next to the shredder.

Claypole had been to a few golf clubs, although he had never joined one. He didn't particularly love the game, but some years ago he had fallen in with a crowd of beery entertainment lawyers who enjoyed playing nine holes on a Saturday morning and then getting drunk and complaining about their clients and their wives. Claypole found that it was as good a way as any of keeping a hangover at bay. He and his 'mates' noodled around perfectly maintained courses in south London and Surrey. Featureless carpets of green, they were, smelling of weedkiller and leather polish. Scotland being the birthplace of golf, Claypole had no reason to think that this morning's experience of the sport would be any different.

At the first tee, Peregrine was staring in the direction of the loch. All Peregrine would have been able to see, Claypole thought, even from six foot up, was a
boggy patch of reeds. But it was nonetheless a wistful gesture.

‘So what's the “S” for?' said Peregrine.

‘What?' Claypole knew perfectly well what was being asked. He had been forced to produce identification in order to rent golfing equipment, and Peregrine must have snuck a look at Claypole's driving licence.

‘What's your middle name?'

‘Brr,' said Claypole.

‘Can't be as embarrassing as mine,' said Peregrine. ‘Peregrine Archibald Fincormachus MacGilp, at your service.'

‘Pah,' muttered Claypole.

‘You don't think Fincormachus is embarrassing?' Peregrine seemed almost hurt.

‘Sounds magnificent,' said Claypole with a sneer.

‘I suppose there is something regal about it. Fincormachus was a king of the Scots, as it happens. Fourth century.' Peregrine sniffed.

Claypole nodded.

‘So, come on then,' said the older man. ‘I've shown you mine. Now you show me yours.'

‘Sorry. No can do,' said Claypole, and selected a driver. ‘Now, who's going first?'

‘Oof. You're peppy,' said Peregrine. ‘Care to make it interesting?'

The first hole was a shock. Claypole had to cope with the ignominy of losing three balls, but this being matchplay he was only one hole down. The biggest shock was not that he seemed to have lost his touch and might be in danger of losing the hundred-pound wager. As he knew from even his limited experience of golf, the touch might come back at any time if only he could win the battle in his head. The shock was
the course itself. The Loch Garvach Golf Course was a wild place. There were savagely twisting trees and vast rivers gushing through the middle of meadows you had to wade through with arms raised lest they attract snakes. There were thick forests between holes and down the side of them. Even the greens were barely mown mossy bogs in an otherwise jungly shambles. It was more Borneo than Britain.

At the third tee, Claypole turned to Peregrine. ‘Is there a problem with the right-to-roam thing?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The ramblers. They're going to want to walk all over the wind farm, aren't they?'

Peregrine narrowed his eyes. ‘Over my dead body.'

‘Why would that be a problem?'

Peregrine was suddenly animated.

‘Because I don't want them to!' He cursed. ‘Outrageous. Those ghastly bloody Labour people. What about my rights? Eh? What about
my
right to
my
property?'

‘Well, brr…' Claypole smiled surreptitiously. ‘They probably thought that everyone should be able to enjoy the… great outdoors…'

‘Bah!' Peregrine was almost shouting now. ‘It's
my
great outdoors, damn it!'

‘Right,' said Claypole.

‘Well,
Mister
Blair and all your Islington poofter cohorts…' Peregrine had gone quite scarlet. ‘You can sodding well buy it off me! Then you can enjoy it all you like. I'd say you can have it for market price, which is about two and a half million smackers. But I don't want to leave, so it's going to cost you five. The good news is that I'll take a cheque.'

‘Shouldn't it…?' Claypole knew he risked the wrath of his business partner. ‘Shouldn't all this
wilderness be for everyone to enjoy?'

Peregrine was now purple with indignation.

‘Well, it isn't! It's mine, and that's all there is to it. You can take it off me with an army, if you like. But I'll raise an army too, and neither of us would enjoy what happens after that.'

Claypole snorted, and then laughed. Peregrine frowned at first, but eventually managed an embarrassed laugh.

The two men settled down and discussed the hole. Claypole was due to tee off first. He was two holes down, but felt he could still come back. This was a short hole, which in theory balanced the odds more evenly.

‘I feel I can talk to you, Claypole, old boy,' said Peregrine, suddenly earnest.

‘Yeah, sure,' said Claypole absent-mindedly, yanking a nine iron from his bag. He swung the club in the air, feeling its weight. Claypole turned to look at Peregrine. The old man's expression was puppyish. ‘Brr. You were saying,' said Claypole grimly.

Peregrine looked out to sea again, and the only noise was birdsong as Claypole bent his fat frame over the ground and with a grunt inserted a tee into the sodden earth at his feet, balancing his Slazenger B51 on its head. Claypole lined up the shot and practised a swing. Despite the twinge in his lower back, he thought it went pretty well, and stepped closer to the ball to attempt the real thing. He breathed in and held the breath, preparing to backswing. Just then, Peregrine spoke.

‘I have done some things,' began Peregrine, but sighed to a halt.

Claypole rested on his club and turned to his playing partner with irritation.

‘Oh yes?'

‘I've…' Peregrine began. He paused. ‘No, it doesn't matter.'

Claypole settled into his shot again. ‘OK, then.'

‘I shouldn't have said anything.'

‘Right.' Claypole tried a practice swing again, and settled once more to strike the ball for real.

‘It's just that…'

In the middle of his swing, Claypole stopped. He looked at Peregrine, begging with his eyes for him to shut up. But Peregrine's focus was middle-distance.

‘I've done worse things in my life than manipulate a few documents. Before I was… When I was young, I made a mistake. That mistake has…'

Perhaps it was Claypole's sudden interest that caused Peregrine to falter.

‘Sorry. I shouldn't say anything. I shouldn't involve you…'

Claypole settled again.

‘My sisters hate me.'

This time, Claypole dropped the club altogether, and was about to shout at Peregrine. Something like ‘Are we fucking playing golf or are we not?' But then he realised what Peregrine had said.

‘It's true,' Peregrine continued, perhaps thinking the dropping of the club was an act of surprised shock. ‘Dorcas and Bonnie would probably be happy to see me dead.'

Claypole blushed. ‘Brr.'

‘I'm afraid so. You see, they think I… Well, they put a different interpretation on Mummy's death than I do.'

Claypole didn't know where to look.

‘When Mummy died, and left the estate to me – except for those little parcels of land – they thought…
Well, they blamed me. Words were exchanged. They thought I'd, you know… got Mummy to change her will.'

‘Oh,' said Claypole.

The two men stood in silence. Peregrine seemed close to tears. Claypole couldn't think of what to say. If Peregrine wanted to confess, perhaps Claypole should help him to do so.

‘And did you… manipulate your mother?'

Peregrine looked as if he might speak, but then stopped. He turned away from Claypole, and simply walked off. Claypole thought about calling after him, but decided against it. The last thing Claypole wanted was a tearful toff on his hands. Anyway, Peregrine would forfeit the match if he didn't come back. A hundred pounds was, after all, a hundred pounds. Claypole would play a couple more holes on his own, just for the hell of it.

As he swished and bunted his ball along the third hole, the rain started, and he resolved that the next hole would be his last. But as he practised his tee shot, the rain came down faster. Suddenly, it was suffocatingly wet, and the sensible thing would have been to go immediately back to the Loch Garvach Hotel. He could become reacquainted with his own clothes, take one of the pills Dr De Witt had given him, have a short nap (although a long one would have been nicer) and prepare himself for his appointment at the house of Bonnie Straughan. He would need to be on top of his game for that encounter, and standing in the freezing rain whacking golf balls into the sea was not a constructive use of his time. And yet, he found himself at the fourth tee, and with the knowledge that he could not get any wetter or more
uncomfortable, he became almost relaxed.

‘Just one more hole,' he said aloud, almost laughing at the stupidity of it.

At the fourth tee, he selected a four iron and brought the club back to practise the shot. A gust of wind blew the club head almost out of his hands. He brought it down slowly, determined not to be defeated by these absurd elements. He steadied his feet. They squelched unpleasantly in the puddle he had created simply by standing there. He waggled the club head behind the ball, as if to show the crop to the horse. He saw the rain blowing sideways off the end of the club, but merely smiled to himself and eyed the horizon in the direction he calculated the pin to be.

He estimated the wind – probably a force 10 or 11 – and fidgeted around into it so that when he struck the ball the wind would compensate for the direction and the ball would travel in an arc towards the pin. Of course, this never happened in real life. But this was what you did as a golfer. He had read about it. You pretend you're going to hit the perfect shot, and you spend a lifetime trying minutely to correct your mistakes.

He heaved the club head back, and in the same movement took his swing.

For a moment, there was no rain. There was no wind. In Claypole's head, there was no weather. There was also no sky, and no earth. There was only him, the club and the ball. There was only dreamy sunlight, and Claypole's father was behind him, smiling. The birds twittered, and a full choir sang hallelujah. There was a whooshing noise as the club came forward to strike the ball and then just a neat ‘tink' as it did so. Suddenly, though, as he followed the shot through, Claypole was
back in the real world where the wind was howling and the grey-black sky was pouring forth everything it could to drown the world. But the shot had been taken, and the ball sailed forward in a silver streak. Claypole peered with a sense of panic into the pelting gloom. In a grand parabola, the ball went up, up into the air and sailed into the blackest of the black clouds above. As it did so, it also took the wind and began to head towards the green.

‘Woof. Not bad,' Claypole muttered aloud. He gained a mouthful of freezing rain for the privilege of speaking, and was forced momentarily to turn away from the wind. Turning back, he glanced hopefully in the direction he had hit the ball and peered over the horizon, even hopping onto one leg to see further. But the ball was no longer visible. Oh well, he thought. It might be yet another lost ball, but hitting it had felt good.