It must have showed on my face. ‘Auntie P, is this going to be difficult for you?’ he asked. ‘I mean. . Hell, I don’t know how to say it. If I’m a reminder of. . anybody: I’d understand if you changed your mind about this.’
‘Jonny, suppose you were, you wouldn’t be nearly as big a reminder as the guy who opened the door for you. And why should I be bothered? Don’t you like to be reminded of your uncle? I know that you and he were very close.’
‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t think about him. I carry his picture in my bag for luck; he’s done pretty well for me so far. He’s always looked out for me, and he’s still doing it, in my head at least.’
I smiled at him. ‘Just don’t let him read your putts,’ I said. ‘That was always the weakest part of his game. Come on; I’ll show you the rest of the house, and the pool.’
‘You’ve got a pool?’
‘Yes, it’s out the back. It’s big; stretches all the way to Italy and beyond.’
His eyes shone when he saw the Mediterranean from my terrace. ‘Windsurfers!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s my other sport. If I buy a board can you store it for me?’
‘Sure, right beside Tom’s, in the garage. It’s vast; there’s room for your car too.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t think there’d be much opportunity for windsurfing in Arizona. I lived in Las Vegas for a while and there wasn’t a hell of a lot there.’
‘There is in Fife. I have a feeling it’ll be a lot warmer here, though.’
‘You can use mine for now, if you want,’ Tom volunteered, from his bedroom doorway. ‘It’s big enough for you.’ I’d taken some persuasion to allow him to graduate to a larger board, but Ben Simmers, his unofficial coach, had assured me that he was good enough and strong enough to handle it. In fact, his real passion, and Ben reckoned his real talent, was free surfing, but the big waves in the Bay of Roses come too infrequently for him to concentrate on that alone.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I said, ‘if Jonny has time. Tonight we have a date, all of us. Patterson and Shirley. .’ I told my nephew who they were, reminding him that he’d met Shirl when he was a kid, ‘. . have invited us to supper in La Terrassa d’Empúries. It’s their thank you to me for driving them down today, plus Patterson’s a golfer and he’s dead keen to meet you, Jonny. . if that’s okay with you.’
He nodded. ‘Sure, that’s very kind of them. Do you know the place?’ he asked, not quite casually enough.
‘We live right on top of it. Why? Don’t tell me you’re a fussy eater?’
He shook his head. ‘Not me. I’m a Fifer, remember. But,’ he added, ‘I’m also a professional sportsman, and these days even golfers have drug testing.’
‘Is it so strict that you’re worried about going to a local pizza place?’
‘No, I don’t suppose it is. We’re given a list of banned substances, but you hear these horror stories about athletes being banned for buying a brand of cough mixture where the formula’s different in different countries, so. .’
‘. . you can’t be too careful,’ Tom concluded.
‘Exactly, cuz. The testing’s supposed to be random, but I’m the new boy this week, so I’m more than half expecting to be asked to pee in a bottle at some point.’
‘That’s bloody ludicrous,’ I protested. ‘This is golf we’re talking about, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Quite a few players agree with you, but everyone has to accept that it’s part of the age we live in. We play every week around the world for millions of dollars, euro or whatever, and most of that money comes from or is underwritten by sponsors. We have to show them that we have nothing to hide.’
‘Is garlic banned?’ I asked him.
He stared at me. ‘Garlic? No, of course not.’
‘Then you’re fine here,’ I promised him, checking my watch. ‘Come on; they’re probably waiting for us.’
They were. Two tables had been drawn together to accommodate the five of us. Charlie wasn’t eating, but there was a bowl of water on the ground, ready for him. There was also a bottle of cava in an ice bucket. Shirley and Patterson hadn’t been closer to Jonny than the viewing stand, so I did the honours, and we took our seats. Patterson arranged things so that my nephew and my son were on either side of him, with Shirl and me left to our own conversation and devices, but since neither of us had brought any. . we exchanged a glance that said, ‘Ah, what the hell, he’s paying,’ and let him get away with it.
While our host began a gentle interrogation, with Tom listening in, we took the ‘little woman’ route, and talked between ourselves.
‘Seems like a nice lad, your Jonny,’ Shirley declared. ‘He scrubs up well, too.’ She had a point. He had arrived on my doorstep freshly shaved and immaculately dressed, but not with the air of someone out to make an impression, rather that of one who knows no other way. ‘What age did you say he was?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Going on thirty-three, I’d say.’
‘I agree; how things have changed. When I met him he was seven, going on six. Yes, a very presentable young man.’
A gleam of pure wickedness shone in my friend’s eyes. ‘Primavera,’ she whispered, ‘you’re not thinking about. .’
I shot her flight of fancy down, well before it reached cruising height. ‘Absolutely not,’ I told her. ‘I’m in loco parentis here. If I was in any doubt of that, I had a call from his mum to remind me.’
‘In that case, you might think about putting an ad in the British Society magazine making it clear, ’cos, my dear, there will be those that says otherwise.’
‘Just like they said about me and Gerard,’ I reminded her. ‘But as before, none of them will have the stones to say it to my face.’
‘If they say it to mine, I’ll put them right.’ I knew that was a promise, and also, that our chattering class, i.e. most of the ex-pat population, would make their way to Shirley’s door sooner or later. My reputation, and as a mother I did care about it, was in safe hands.
‘What about that Swedish coach of his?’ she continued. ‘Do you think she’s the mother type too?’
As she finished, I saw Jonny throw the merest glance in her direction, and a smile flicker at the corner of his mouth. ‘Come on,’ I called out. ‘What does that grin mean, other than that you’ve got hearing like a. .’
‘Yes, Lena is the mother type,’ he laughed, as Patterson and Tom stared at me. ‘She and her husband have two kids, ages two and four. Lars won the Scandinavian championship in his playing days; he’s a great big bloke who’s about as given to smiling as she is, that being not a lot.’
Unkind, I thought. He’d been friendly enough with me, in our brief conversation.
‘He never let her coach him,’ Jonny continued. ‘He says she’s too scary on the practice ground. Pity, he might have done better on tour if she had.’
‘Where did you find her?’ Patterson asked him, just as the waitress arrived to take our meal orders.
‘I didn’t,’ he replied, once she had headed for the kitchen. ‘She found me. People like her are always on the lookout for young golfers to add to their stable. She took a look at my game, and liked what she saw. She told him she was sure I could make it as a pro, and Brush made the arrangements between us. That was the moment when I truly made the mental commitment to going on tour.’
Something about the chronology of that struck me as odd. ‘So that means that Brush was your manager even before you decided you were going to be a pro?’
‘Yes, but that’s not unusual. As I said, quite a lot of promising amateurs have people looking out for them.’
‘Your mum told me that quite a few people wanted to manage you, including the top agencies.’
He nodded. ‘True, but they only approached me this year, after I made the Walker Cup. Mum insisted on Harvey taking a look at them all, and I let him.’ He turned to Tom. ‘You will find out, mate, that as far as mums are concerned you will always be fifteen to them.’