tarry with him. Are you, he asks, his carp’s mouth blowing smoky bubbles, one of Sam Montagu’s men or Lloyd George’s? His heavy-lidded eyes have lost the glazed hilarity they had in the train — his gaze is not cold but appraising. Albert replies, I hardly think I’m a personage of sufficient stature for either of those gentlemen to’ve noticed me. . His own eyes drift across to the tee, where Mayhew is performing curious knee-bends. I hardly think, Arbuthnot says caustically, that Mister Mayhew would be of sufficient stature for these gentlemen to notice him, were he not supplied with such an able Number Two. Some Ahrensmeyer, or Datas, with shrewd acuity must be seated inside this barrel of a man, who now pokes his matchbox between two staves. Albert says, What, if you don’t mind my asking, Mister Arbuthnot, precisely is your position at the Bank? — Oh, p-pooh-pooh, Mister De’Ath, I believe you can do better than that, but since you ask. . there are smoky pennants streaming overhead, a dandelion head is crushed down below. . I make certain there are sufficient funds available for your new Ministry to be able to settle its bills on presentation — when will you be starting at the Arsenal? He turns away and moves through the white star haze towards the 2nd tee. Running for more than four hundred yards in a long lazy s down to the Uxbridge Road, and skirting the obvious hazard of a millpond, the hole favours those able to marshal their forces for a rapid advance. Mayhew’s caddy stoops to place his tee, Mayhew stoops to place his ball — he waggles his club and his shoulders, settles his stance, then again waggle, settle, and again waggle, settle. Albert’s own shoulders squirm in sympathy — the last thing he wishes is for his chief to lose face! The drive is an adequate one, although Arbuthnot tops it by at least fifty yards. Both men play efficiently up to the green, while Albert lags judiciously before mercilessly wielding the niblick to sink a twenty-five-yard chip-and-run. And so the three men divide the hole at three strokes apiece, 1 over par. The next four, which take the golfers towards the village of Southall before their flank is turned by a lane and they retreat east back to the River Brent, are plain sailing: broad fairways, complacent bunkers and mundane hillocks. Albert doesn’t have to try too hard to persuade Mayhew that his skill is in the ascendant. Arbuthnot, however, looks Albert in the eye queerly at regular intervals. We could, he says, as they stand observing a puffed Mayhew undertake more knee-bends, have played the Brent Valley course, I have membership there as well. So do several Jews, Mayhew adds apropos of the new cabinet, and I understand they’ve need of a motor-charabanc to take them round the nine such is their laziness —. And parsimony! Arbuthnot adds, then all three laugh — he himself laughing the longest. On the 9th tee Albert realises he is drained of energy by the effort of keeping his swing in check: his back is galvanised bytension, a stress that winds about his arms, pricking and ripping at his nerves and ligaments with sharp barbs. The hole is the most interesting thus far: running for a hundred and thirty yards down a gentle slope, to where a screen of alders hides the point at which the fairway hooks round. Through the shivergreen of leaves, high up on the far bank, Albert sees the pin piercing the kidney of cropped grass — it is only good sportsmanship to point out to his companions that the river is merely a blind. Really? Mayhew queries, pressing the turf with the toe of his shoe, feeling for mines. Bolstered by his subordinate’s hidden directives, he has begun to play the part of a magnanimous victor. Albert says, I rather think that it’s here the course’s architect has lavished all the invention of which the holes thus far have been deprived — I wager that behind the trees there is a water feature right beside the river. Mayhew bleats again: Really? When bedevilled by hectoring telegrams from the Front conceit is a mask Mayhew oft dons — it is this that Albert sees obscuring his features, and through holes cut in it his moist and unmanly eyes scan the mid-distance. Fool! Your country needs not you . .For Mayhew has called for a 3 iron, where any save the most expert would play short, accepting two shots to the green as the price for a safe par 3. There’s nothing now that Albert can do to save him — nor all the whey-faced younger brothers in an ague of terror who have been chucked away on this desperate manoeuvre. So sunk is Albert in this contumely that he neglects to observe the girlish jink of Mayhew’s knees — is aware only of the repugnant slowness of the ball, towed upwards through the deceptively irenic air by steam pinnaces that whistle towards Constantinoples of cloud. They buzz, the machine-gun bullets — or so Albert has heard officers on leave remark: buzz as they make serrate soft things — flesh, cloth, brain matter . .So it proves with Mayhew’s ball, which, gaining insufficient height, fatally pauses, is sheered by the buzzing wind, then plummets. Uncharacteristically, Albert pictures this: the tear in the bilious slime, the dimpled moonface bobbing up in the bloody and stagnant water. The caddy will, he thinks, be prevailed upon to wallow in and retrieve it — no willingness to it, only a dull-witted and hungry compliance. Suddenly he licks the metallic nib of his anger I gave him every opportunity! It is a transformation that clever crapaud registers at once, despite his being more than half blotto, and Albert giving, he is certain, no indication other than the exaggerated deference with which he waves Arbuthnot up before him on to the mound. The banker plays safe, his ball hipertihopping down the incline to lie exactly as it ought for a long chip to the green. There is a point in one’s construction of a golf swing — or so Albert believes — when the player achieves that state of mind described by the Hindoo holy men: with the yogic assumption of the stance — arms up and away, the whole length of the torso twisted precisely on the bipod — force becomes inimical to the meditative calculation of angles: the arc the club’s head will describe and that of the once-smitten ball. All has been decided — the stroke is a ghostly conclusion, void and without form. Moreover, the conflict is not with his ostensible opponents — who are feeble creatures, their features poorly moulded in soft lead — but with the course, this wholly arbitrary strip of land, the tangled dells and ungrazed-upon meadows of which have been invested with a terrible and futile significance. The course is not blameless — it has drawn this fire down