The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope Page A

Rapswell.’
    Hugh made faces of mock panic. ‘I couldn’t hit a golf ball. I couldn’t hit a beach ball at two paces.’
    They drove peacefully through the north Cotswolds. Hugh, who had chosen to sit beside the driver in an effort to appear approachable (‘Good old pro,’ he told himself), began to feel happier as the miles rolled by, less resentful and more as if he were approaching a performance. His feelings had also, without question, taken an upward turn after the extraordinary tea party in the Randolph Hotel, and he had spent much of the night after it planning a memo on a projected programme for a mate of his whom he could trust to be executive producer. He had no intention of telling Kevin McKinley, not, at least, until the programme was about to go out, and it was too late to halt it, to fuss about consulting the ITC, and risk having it stopped. He’d also thought a good deal about Miss Bachelor. He saw, now, why James had made a friend of her. You could say typical spinster of Beatrice, you could say she was dried-up, dusty, bookish, sexless, but for all that she had a powerful appeal, the appeal of someone with intellectual poise and the zest added by originality and by wit. ‘Why not indeed,’ she’d said to Hugh about his proposal that she should appear on television. No fluster, no old-ladyish demurring and terror of being conspicuous. ‘Why not indeed,’ she’d said. Bravo, Hugh thought, bravo, Miss Bachelor.
    â€˜Nearly there, sir,’ the driver said.
    Hugh looked out of his window at the landscape which had abruptly turned from being a nondescript succession of fields and bungalows to being a manicured series of small green hills and curved yellow sandpits.
    â€˜Cost millions,’ the driver said proudly. ‘Best course in the Midlands. All-weather greens, club house with jacuzzi and gym, you name it. Those bunkers are filled with sand brought in from Saudi Arabia.’
    â€˜Is Saudi sand better than our sand?’
    The driver looked shocked. ‘’Course, sir. They had to fly it in. It wasn’t just dug up at Bournemouth.’
    The car turned in between curved walls ending in huge stone gateposts crowned with lions holding shields. Chiselled stone tablets pronounced, ‘Rapswell Golf and Country Club. Members Only’.
    â€˜There’s a waiting list of hundreds,’ the driver said. ‘Half Birmingham wants to get in.’
    The smooth drive was edged with smoother verges, the latter protected by a spiked chain looped between short, varnished posts.
    â€˜It looks very tidy,’ Hugh said.
    The driver said reverently, ‘I tell you, Mr Hunter, it’s the last word.’
    Outside the club house, a vast verandahed structure which would have looked perfectly at home in Texas, the club chairman and committee waited in violent agitation. The scheduled golfing star had been stricken by a gastric virus and had cried off only an hour before. They were in despair. They had telephoned every substitute they could think of, but no-one was available at such short notice, no-one, that is, of any distinction. They clustered round Hugh, almost pawing him in their anxiety and disappointment.
    â€˜Well,’ Hugh said. ‘You will simply have to make do with me.’
    â€˜Mr Hunter,’ the Chairman began. ‘Forgive me but—’
    â€˜Why not?’ said Hugh, smiling at him. ‘Why not? I’m game for anything. I’ve never played golf in my life, but I’ve been performing for over thirty years.’ He waved to the television cameras waiting at the edge of the group. ‘Morning, lads!’
    One of the cameramen, who knew him, waved back. The committee looked at one another.
    â€˜You haven’t a choice, really,’ Hugh said. ‘You’ve half an hour to kick-off. I’ll carry it, I promise you, I’ll open this club like no club has ever been opened before. Which