PAGE 7
The Rough Stuff
by
“And you, my lad,” said Ramsden curtly, “you kindly remember that this is a competition, and keep your merry flow of conversation as much as possible to yourself. You’ve got a bad habit of breaking into small talk when a man’s addressing the ball.”
“If you think that my brother will be in the way—-” began Eunice coldly.
“Oh, I don’t mind him coming round,” said Ramsden, “if he keeps quiet.”
Eunice gasped. She had not played enough golf to understand how that noblest of games changes a man’s whole nature when on the links. She was thinking of something crushing to say to him, when he advanced to the tee to drive off.
He drove a perfect ball, hard and low with a lot of roll. Even Eunice was impressed.
“Good shot, partner!” she said.
Ramsden was apparently unaware that she had spoken. He was gazing down the fairway with his club over his left shoulder in an attitude almost identical with that of Sandy McBean in the plate labelled “The Drive–Correct Finish”, to face page twenty-four of his monumental work, “How to Become a Scratch Player Your First Season by Studying Photographs”. Eunice bit her lip. She was piqued. She felt as if she had patted the head of a pet lamb, and the lamb had turned and bitten her in the finger.
“I said, ‘Good shot, partner!'” she repeated coldly.
“Yes,” said Ramsden, “but don’t talk. It prevents one concentrating.” He turned to Wilberforce. “And don’t let me have to tell you that again!” he said.
“Wilberforce has been like a mouse!”
“That is what I complain of,” said Ramsden. “Mice make a beastly scratching sound, and that’s what he was doing when I drove that ball.”
“He was only playing with the sand in the tee box.”
“Well, if he does it again, I shall be reluctantly compelled to take steps.”
They walked in silence to where the ball had stopped. It was nicely perched up on the grass, and to have plunked it on to the green with an iron should have been for any reasonable golfer the work of a moment. Eunice, however, only succeeded in slicing it feebly into the rough.
Ramsden reached for his niblick and plunged into the bushes. And, presently, as if it had been shot up by some convulsion of nature, the ball, accompanied on the early stages of its journey by about a pound of mixed mud, grass, and pebbles, soared through the air and fell on the green. But the mischief had been done. Miss Bingley, putting forcefully, put the opposition ball down for a four and won the hole.
Eunice now began to play better, and, as Ramsden was on the top of his game, a ding-dong race ensued for the remainder of the first nine holes. The Bingley-Perkins combination, owing to some inspired work by the female of the species, managed to keep their lead up to the tricky ravine hole, but there George Perkins, as might have been expected of him, deposited the ball right in among the rocks, and Ramsden and Eunice drew level. The next four holes were halved and they reached the club-house with no advantage to either side. Here there was a pause while Miss Bingley went to the professional’s shop to have a tack put into the leather of her mashie, which had worked loose. George Perkins and little Wilberforce, who believed in keeping up their strength, melted silently away in the direction of the refreshment bar, and Ramsden and Eunice were alone.
* * * * *
The pique which Eunice had felt at the beginning of the game had vanished by now. She was feeling extremely pleased with her performance on the last few holes, and would have been glad to go into the matter fully. Also, she was conscious of a feeling not perhaps of respect so much as condescending tolerance towards Ramsden. He might be a pretty minus quantity in a drawing-room or at a dance, but in a bunker or out in the open with a cleek, Eunice felt, you’d be surprised. She was just about to address him in a spirit of kindliness, when he spoke.