"Let's go and play the new golf," said James.
Now as I understand it there are four kinds of golf. First, the ordinary
golf, as played by all people who are not quite right in their heads;
second, the ideal golf, to be played by me (but not till I get to
heaven) on a bowling-green with a croquet-mallet, the holes being
sixty-six feet apart and both cutting-in and going-through strictly
prohibited; third, the absurd golf, as played by James in pre-war days
on his private nine-hole course; and fourth, it seemed, the new golf,
such as James would be liable to create during a recovery from
shell-shock.
James is one of those people who, possessing what _Country Life_ would
call one of the lesser country-houses of England, has an indeterminate
bit of ground beyond the garden, called, according to choice of costume,
"the rock-garden," "the home-farm," "the grouse moor," or "no rubbish
may be shot here." James calls his own particular nettle-bed (or slag
heap) "the golf-course."
When anyone went to stay with James, he was adjured to
"bring-your-golf-clubs-old-man-as-I-can-give
-you-a-bit-of-a-game-on-my-own-course-only-a-nine-hole-one-you
understand." And when James went--far more willingly--to stay opposite
the Germans, until an interesting visit was short-circuited by
shell-shock, he showed himself so wonderfully at home in dug-outs and
shell-holes and mine-craters, so completely undisturbed by the weariful
lack of any green on the course over which his battalion was playing,
that he rose from Second-Lieutenant to Lieutenant with almost unheard-of
celerity in the space of two years and nine months. And now the absurd
figure-of-eight nine-hole course, the third hole of which was also the
seventh, and the first the ninth, had been complicated into a war
kitchen-garden, and James, bored with ordinary difficulties and
discomforts, had evolved the new golf.
"Come on," said he, burning with the zeal of a martyr-burner, "I'll show
you the ground."
"Can't I see it by standing up in the hammock?" I protested.
We approached the dark demesne, which was now pretty decently clothed
with potatoes, artichokes, rhubarb, raspberry-canes, marrows and even
cucumber-frames. In the midst was a large open cask which filled itself
by a pipe from a former six-inch water-hazard. Here James began to
propound the mysteries.
"The game," he said, "is a mixture of the old golf, tiddleywinks, ludo
and the race game."
"Not spillikins?" I protested. "A game I rather fancy myself at."
"For your information, please," continued James in his kindliest
military manner, "I may remark that a mashie is the club mostly
used--except when it is necessary to keep low between, say, two clumps
of potatoes."
"So as not to rouse the wireworms," I nodded. "Yes--go on."
"The conditions of the game are governed by the necessity of paying due
respect to the vegetable hazards. There is only one hole on the course."
"If you remember," I said, "I told you long ago that that was all there
was room for, but you would persist in making it nine."
"The hole," said James, "is the water-butt. You have to get into that.
By the way, your balls are floaters, I hope?"
"Only six of 'em," I said. "However, I dare say you won't mind if I grub
up a few potatoes to carry on with afterwards. So we hole out in the
water-butt? That's the tiddleywinks part of it, I suppose? Go on."
"There are various penalties," he explained. "If you get among the
potatoes, you add ten to your strokes and start again at the tee. If you
are bunkered in the raspberries, you lift out--"
"Step back three paces out of sight and pick one over your left
shoulder?" I inquired hopefully. "I shall often find myself in the
raspberry hazard."
"And if," concluded James sternly, "you are so clumsy as not to avoid
the cucumber-frames--"
"Say no more," I begged. "I understand. I shall ask for the time-table,
shake hands, thank you for a most delightful visit, and express my
regrets that any little _contretemps_ should have arisen to hasten my
departure."
"--you add fifty to your strokes. Five for the marrows and the
rhubarb--in each case returning to the tee."
"And the artichokes," I asked, surveying a thick forest of them guarding
the right flank of the water-butt--"what is their market value?"
"No penalty," said James grimly, "except staying there till you get
out."
"One last piece of information. What is bogey for this hole?"
"About two hundred, I think," said James; "but no doubt you'll lower
it."
"I don't know," I replied. "That's about my usual at the old game." And
therewith I made my tee, drove and went into the garden to cut a cabbage
leaf.
* * * * *
After hoeing the vegetables with a mashie for a hot two hours, I fought
my way out of the rhubarb on all fours, with a golf-ball between my
teeth, and then strode doggedly back to the tee and drove into the
virgin artichoke forest. While I toyed there with the sub-soil, the
unwearied James went to earth among the marrows. Hastily I heeled my
ball into the ground (to be retrieved by James months later and
announced as a curious scientific result of growing artichokes on a golf
course), uttered a cry of triumph, and strolled out into the open.
"A hundred and seventy-nine. My game, I think," I announced.
James extricated himself and walked with me to the butt.
"Hullo!" I said, "it's sunk. Thought it was a floater. It ought to be
for a half-crown ball."
"You mustn't lose it," said James suspiciously. "Well let off the water
and get it out."
"No, no," I protested. "It's not one that I really valued. Oh, very
well," I added indifferently, feeling in my pocket for a non-floater.
James stooped to open the tap, and I popped the new ball in
unobtrusively.
It floated. And the next instant James stood up and saw it.
After that of course there was nothing left to do but to ask for the
time-table, shake hands, thank James for a most delightful visit, and
express my regrets that any little _contretemps...._