This sally Albert does not hear, it is not until – I say, De’Ath, if we don’t look lively we’ll get caught behind that four – which comes together with an unprecedented hand on his shoulder, that he grasps these two syllables apply to him personally, as much as legally. Mayhew, lopsided by his full bag, smiles down at Albert, dimples eat the neat ends of his burnt-cork moustache. As they leave the changing room and cross in front of the grandly named clubhouse towards the 1st tee, Albert assesses Mayhew’s lurcher gait – he may be too meagre to carry his own bag, yet this hardly matters: urchins come trotting from the tattered shadows of the crack willows along the brook, desperate to lug it for him for thru’pence or less. Moreover, on the train to Hanwell, Mayhew admitted to a handicap in single figures. No virtue or skill of my own, he’d flannelled – apparently the Mayhew family home had backed on to a course. There had been seaside summers messing about on sand dunes and on the links near Rustington – then a half-blue at the varsity.
