The Men and the Girls by Joanna Trollope Page B

of you is going to give me a golf lesson, on camera, that is? Then we’ll do a tour of the facilities. I’ll have a wallow in the jacuzzi if you like. Anything.’ He leaned forward and patted the Chairman’s arm. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘trust me.’
    George and Edward Hunter, wearing identical dark-blue dressing gowns piped in scarlet, shared a bean bag in front of the television. They were not usually allowed television as late as this, but tonight was an exception because Hugh was appearing on Midland Miscellany , the daily round-up of news items from around the region. Behind George and Edward, Hugh and Julia sat on a cream-coloured sofa. Hugh had a tumbler of whisky in his hand; Julia, a glass of white wine diluted with soda water.
    The screen filled with some stone writing. Julia read it out. It said, ‘Rapswell Golf and Country Club. Members Only’. Then a voice said that the television personality, Hugh Hunter, had opened the club earlier in the day and there had been a crowd of over eight hundred people. There were pictures of a huge, house-like thing, and then some of a room full of sofas and a lot of men standing about holding glasses, and a girl with a lot of teeth wearing a bathing suit under a towelling dressing gown, and then there was Hugh.
    â€˜You took your jacket off!’ Edward said reprovingly.
    â€˜I had to,’ Hugh said, ‘watch.’
    They watched. They saw Hugh being taught how to hold a golf club by a man with a grey moustache. They saw Hugh swing the club at a ball and miss and go spinning about, clowning, apparently out of control, and then fall over. They saw him pick himself up and do it again and land up in the arms of a lady in a red suit who was laughing so much she could hardly stand up herself. Then they saw him flailing away at another golf ball in a sandpit and then trying to kick it nearer the little hole in the middle of the green, and being told off by the man with the moustache, except the man with the moustache was laughing all the time and didn’t sound very cross. Then they saw Hugh running into the huge building chased by a crowd of people, and jumping into a sort of enormous bath, and then the camera got faster and faster and Hugh went scampering in and out of rooms, pursued by all these people, and there was very loud, very fast music and suddenly there was a great banging chord in the music and the camera stopped dead on Hugh, flopped out in an armchair, with his eyes crossed. The twins cheered and squealed and fell off the bean bag.
    â€˜I have to tell you,’ Hugh said to Julia, ‘I was an absolute wow.’
    â€˜I can see—’
    â€˜They want me to go back and host the Christmas dance.’
    â€˜Will you?’
    â€˜They doubled my fee, you know. I could bear the Christmas dance for another double fee.’
    â€˜Oh Hugh,’ said Julia, taking his hand and smiling at him.
    â€˜Long ago, before you were born, I did that kind of thing in a pantomime at Kidderminster. I’d forgotten I could.’ He leaned forward towards the rolling, giggling twins. He felt tremendously happy. ‘Well, then. Was I funny?’
    â€˜Yes!’ shouted Edward. He scrambled to his feet and began to tear round the room. ‘This is you, this is you, this is you!’
    George joined him. A lamp, its flex caught by their flying passage, tottered on its table.
    â€˜Stop it!’ Julia said, but she was smiling.
    â€˜Here’s you!’ George yelled, leaping into an armchair and scattering cushions. ‘Here’s you in that bath!’ He collapsed on his back and kicked his legs about.
    â€˜Amazing,’ Hugh said, watching him, holding Julia’s hand, ‘amazing, isn’t it, to be paid six hundred pounds and a case of champagne for doing exactly that?’
    â€˜But they loved you, you can see that, they loved you.’
    â€˜He looked away for a minute and then took a