As Easy as Murder

Two

Deep discussion over, Tom went to bed with The Fellowship of the Ring. . he’s taking a break from Harry Potter. I read Gerard’s letter one more time, ran it through the shredder, wrote him off as a memory, and saw off the rest of Saturday with a coffee on our first-floor terrace, overlooking the square. The day died slowly; there were quite a few stragglers from Arrels del Vi, and the restaurants were busy until almost midnight. But eventually, the village turned in and so did I.

Tom and I spent the first part of Sunday with Charlie on the only beach in our area that allows dogs in the summer months. It allows nudists too, although going naked is not obligatory. (No, I don’t! When I feel like getting all my kit off, I do it in the privacy of my terrace.) We had a late lunch at Vaive, our favourite xiringuita (that’s beach bar to you), then wandered back home, so that we could be showered and reasonably dressed in time for the last session of the fair.

Business around the stalls was even more brisk than it had been the day before, and there were even more pre-schools playing in front of the church. But I was in a sunnier mood so that was fine. The salesman from Miles’s winery tried to quiz me about the owner’s view of his performance, but I gave him no more than an encouraging smile. I wanted to speak to my brother-in-law, to make things as official as they were going to be before I started to act on his behalf.

Tom and I knew most of the people there so we spent a happy couple of hours schmoozing the crowd, me sipping, him sniffing. Shirley and her new beau were in evidence again, getting full value for their tickets.

Before we’d left for the beach I’d done one thing. My time in the ambassadorial thing had given me a few contacts in the Foreign Office. I called the best of them, a man named John Dale, on his mobile, and ran the name Patterson Cowling past him. His response had been immediate. ‘Never heard of him. One of ours, you say?’

‘I don’t, he does. He told me he spent most of his career in your set-up. Fairly senior at the end, but I couldn’t wheedle any more out of him.’

‘Is he giving you cause for concern?’

‘No, but if my eventful life has taught me anything it’s never to take anyone at face value. My friend’s involved with him, so if there’s anything she should know. .’

‘I’ll check, soon as I can, and get back to you.’

Fortunately I was some distance away from the man under discussion when the opening bars of ‘Born to Run’ sounded in my pocket. I took out my mobile, apologised to Alex Guinart and his wife, to whom I’d been chatting, and took a few steps away from the throng.

‘Primavera?’

‘Of course, John.’ I was surprised. Although I knew him well enough to have called him on a Sunday, I hadn’t expected a result for a couple of days, at best.

‘Can’t be too careful. Are you alone? There’s a lot of background noise.’

‘I can’t be overheard and anyway, most of the people making it don’t speak English.’

‘That’s good, because this conversation will never have happened.’

My eyebrows rose, my forehead ridged. ‘Oh yes?’

‘Definitely. I asked a couple of quick questions about your new friend. Wow! I’m not so high up the ladder that I can’t still get my arse kicked, and it didn’t take long for it to happen. I’ve been instructed to tell you to stop asking questions about Mr Cowling, and to take him at face value, as a retired civil servant.’

I reached a very quick conclusion. ‘Oh hell,’ I moaned, ‘you’re not saying he’s a fucking spook, are you? I don’t like those people.’ That was very true; about three years before I’d had real trouble with an MI5 woman, in something that a renegade cousin of mine dragged me into. I’d sorted it out, and her, but I hadn’t forgotten her. If she had anything to do with Mr C. .

‘Primavera,’ John cut in, ‘I’m not saying anything, and neither are you. Understood? If this man gets the faintest notion that you know about his background, there could be hell to pay, for me, personally.’

‘But he seems like such a nice guy.’ Yes, I thought, as the banality escaped, and Eva Braun loved Hitler.

‘I’m sure he is. They’re not all licensed to kill, you know; most of them are linguists, or IT experts, or graduates who had no clear career plan when they left university.’

‘Fine, but what about Patterson?’

‘I don’t know about him!’ He was beginning to sound exasperated. ‘The person who gave me my orders isn’t one to be cross-examined.’

‘Okay,’ I said, to mollify him. ‘Thanks for that. Who were we talking about again? I’ve forgotten his name already.’

‘Good. And not a hint to him, remember.’

‘Promise.’

‘You’ll be held to it, be sure.’ He paused. ‘Hey, about your resignation: are you firm on that? The people in the Barcelona consulate are going to miss you.’

‘I’ll miss them too, but not enough to change my mind. Nothing’s going to do that; my boy needs me more than my country.’

‘I can understand that. Be happy, and keep in touch.’

I pocketed my mobile and turned back to face the throng. Alex and Gloria had moved along, with Marte, my god-daughter, tagging along in Tom’s care. She’s getting disturbingly close to school age, another constant reminder of the passing years. I was about to rejoin them, when Shirley’s bellow stopped me short. ‘Hoi, Primavera, you haven’t forgotten tomorrow, have you?’

I stared as she and Patterson approached, focusing on her alone and trying not to look at him at all, in case something in my expression betrayed me. Spooks must be experts at reading people, I reasoned wildly. ‘What about tomorrow?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Golf,’ she exclaimed. ‘Girona. Christ, you have too.’

She was right. I had; stuff had intervened.

‘Leave the girl alone, Shirley,’ Patterson laughed. ‘Not everyone’s as keen as you to watch guys whacking balls around a field.’

‘It’s the guys we’re going to watch,’ she retorted. ‘Isn’t that right, girl?’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. What time are you picking us up?’

‘Eh?’ was all I could gasp.

‘Come on, you don’t want Patterson to have to drive, do you? Not on his first trip here. Let him see the countryside.’

‘I’m all for that,’ I replied, ‘but can’t he see the sights with you behind the wheel?’

‘Sure, but who’s going to point them out? Besides, I’m a terrible driver.’

The only thing that makes Shirley’s driving terrible is her insistence on approaching Formula One speeds on public highways, but that was reason enough for me to agree. I had spent a few journeys in her passenger seat with my eyes shut tight. ‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘Nine o’clock, your place. But we’ll have coffee and croissants before we set off.’

‘Done deal.’ She frowned briefly. ‘Oh, by the way, Ben was looking for you earlier.’

‘Did he say why? Does he have a problem?’

‘Maybe he wants you to look after the baby.’

Benedict Simmers, our village wine merchant, had settled down; he had fallen in love with a beautiful girl from Barcelona called Tunè, and in June of the previous year they had produced a small angel, name of Lily. She had pushed all my ‘broody’ buttons, and I’d become a regular volunteer babysitter. I looked around trying to spot him among the crowd, and eventually I did, paused in mid-bustle, talking to his mother and sister. He saw me at the same time, and waved me across. ‘No problem,’ I told him, as he approached. ‘Do you want to leave her with us, or have us come to you?’

His eyes said ‘puzzled’ until he worked it out. ‘Oh no, no,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘It’s not about that. Someone’s been looking for you, that’s all. He phoned my shop asking for your phone number. Jordi’s in there just now, looking after things, and naturally he wouldn’t give it, not just like that, to a stranger. So he told the guy to leave his number and you’d call him back, if you felt so inclined, that is.’

He fished in his pocket, produced a scrap of paper, and handed it over. It took me a few seconds to decipher Jordi’s scrawl, but eventually I made out the name ‘Wigwe’, and a phone number that could have been an American mobile, to judge by the format.

‘Wigwe?’ I muttered, wracking my brains. ‘I don’t know anyone called Wigwe. I’m absolutely certain of that. Never have done.’

Ben grinned. ‘Remember it was Jordi who took the message. The name’s as likely to be Smith or Jones.’

True, but I focused on Wigwe in the meantime. Forename or surname? Whichever, where the hell could a handle like that have originated? It couldn’t be an intermediary from Gerard, could it, I wondered as I scratched around for a clue? From the postmark, his letter had taken ten days to reach me. Could he have been hoping that I wouldn’t accept it, that I’d want him enough to fight for him? If so, he’d bet on the wrong horse. But still. .

‘Only one way to find out,’ I declared, digging out my phone once more, and walking away to give myself some more clear space. As I did I saw Tom looking at me; I waved to him and smiled, to let him know that everything was all right.

I keyed in the numbers that Jordi had written down and pressed ‘call’. It took a few seconds to make the connection, but when the ringing tone began it came in single pulses, a clue that the owner was in Spain, or some other part of Europe. It sounded six times, and then it switched to voicemail.

‘Hello,’ a deep, confident, cultured baritone greeted me. ‘This is Uche.’ What the hell happened to Mr Wigwe? I wondered. ‘I’m afraid that I can’t take your call just now, but if you tell me what’s on your mind, then I promise I’ll do something about it.’

What was on my mind was ‘Who the fuck are you?’ but I decided not to share that with him. Instead, I killed the call. He wasn’t linked to my former job, that was for sure, and I didn’t take him for a friend of a friend. If a chum of mine had known anyone with a name like that, more than likely I’d have heard about him and it would have stuck.

That left only one other likely explanation: journalist. It doesn’t happen very often but it has done. On two or three occasions I’ve had approaches from hacks digging into Oz’s life and death. In every case I’ve refused to speak to them: more, I’ve left them in no doubt that if they bothered me further, I had friends in the police force and elsewhere who would bother them.

‘I think I’ll just sweep you under the rug, mate,’ I whispered to myself.

‘Sorted?’ Ben asked as I moved back towards the shade of the entrance tent.

I shook my head. ‘A mystery,’ I replied, ‘and that’s how it will remain. If he calls again, you’ve never heard of me.’

I went back to Tom and to my happy day.

When the next one dawned, there were clouds in the sky. That suited my son, because he had school, and I didn’t mind either. In my experience golf courses are best avoided, either as player or spectator, when the temperature heads towards the nineties as it can here when you least expect it. Tom took his bike to school, with a packed lunch in his haversack. The former was normal, since it was no more than a ten-minute cycle; the latter he likes to do more often than not.

I’d never been to the PGA Catalunya course, but I had a feeling that it would be even more upmarket than the Emporda norm, which can be fairly posh, so I chose a designer outfit that I’d bought in Barcelona, sticking a lightweight rainproof jacket in my shoulder bag as a precaution, just in case those clouds were water-bearing.

I arrived at Shirley’s a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. The bitch in me hoped that I might catch them on the hop, or even on the job, but they were ready and waiting. Shirl had coffee on the hob and fresh croissants warming in the oven. I was determined not to let Patterson have a whiff of my precautionary interest in him, but I couldn’t stop myself from sneaking the occasional glance at him, trying to catch him off guard, to see if anything showed in his eyes other than the bonhomie so evident at our first meeting.

There was nothing; if anything he was even more laid-back. Those laugh-lined eyes of his were positively twinkling. So, indeed were Shirley’s. I reckoned that they must be getting very well acquainted. Looking at the pair of them made me wonder about myself. They were twenty years older than me and obviously at it like rabbits. So what had I become? Wasn’t I a woman any longer? I hadn’t fancied anyone since Gerard left, not for a second.

It passed quickly, though, as I told myself why that was. In the couple of days that had gone by since Gerard’s letter, I’d come to think of him as a lucky escape. I’d found him attractive, sure, but. . a lapsed priest, for Christ’s sake!

The fact is, my sexual career hasn’t been very exciting or very extensive. I won’t list all my partners: suffice it to say that I’m well short of double figures. And here’s the truth, boys. Of that number, only Oz really knew what he was doing down there, or to put it another way, cared about what he was doing for me. The others ate, shot and left, more or less. A wise and cynical lady, whose name I’ve forgotten, once said that the two saddest times in a woman’s life are, one, when her partner can’t find her clitoris, and two, when he finds it. I’ve had enough sadness in my life, and I’m not about to go looking for more.

Our leisurely breakfast behind us, we hit the road. I didn’t take the scenic route. Patterson had to make do with the scenery from the autopista. It took little more than three-quarters of an hour to find the championship venue. The newish PGA course is set between two trunk roads, just south of Girona Airport, but not so close to the flight path for it to be a major nuisance. It’s tree-lined, with undulating fairways (for non-golfers, those are the close-mown bits where the ball’s supposed to land) that look odd, given that they’re still surrounded by forest, the rest of which was cleared so they could be made. It’s a lovely course, though, and on that day had been beautifully presented for play.

Patterson was surprised to find that the visitors’ car park was far from full. In fact, the place looked deserted. In the distance I could see vans standing beside a giant marquee; it was the exhibitors’ tent, I supposed, but they all seemed to be dropping off stock, so I realised that it wouldn’t be open for business for a few hours, and probably not that day.

‘Where do they sell tickets?’ Patterson asked.

‘What makes you think they will?’ I countered. ‘They might charge a few euro admission during the tournament itself, but not on the practice days.’

‘If this was Wentworth,’ he began, ‘even on a Monday. .’

‘But it isn’t Wentworth,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s Spain, and in this country, golf is still very much a posh people’s sport. Sure, there are plenty of courses around but they’re mostly used by Brits, Germans and Swedes. You can walk up and play on them, but they’re not cheap. As for tournaments like this. . when this starts properly, you’ll find that most of the spectator announcements will be in English.’

As I spoke I wondered whether I should have talked them into waiting until Wednesday or Thursday; but what the hell, I’d shown them the way. If they wanted to come back when the action started, they could. In the meantime, we were there, and there was nothing to do but go in search of whatever there was to be seen.

As we left the car park we saw that there was more bustle about the place than we had realised. Plastic seats were being fitted on the spectator grandstands, a television camera was being winched up on to a stand and a giant leader-board was under construction, beside what I guessed had to be the eighteenth green. The tented village was being set up just behind a big modern clubhouse, around which, happily, there seemed to be plenty happening. There were tables out front under a sun awning; all of them were occupied, exclusively by men, some in blazers like Patterson’s (I had begun to think of it as his uniform), others in what seemed, from a distance, to be designer golf gear. None of it, I reckoned, had been picked up for a couple of euro at the Palafrugell street market.

‘What do we do?’ Shirley asked.

‘Find the practice ground?’ I suggested.

‘How?’

I looked around for any sort of public information, but saw none, not even a layout of the course. Then I glanced back towards the clubhouse and saw three men appear. One, in a T-shirt and shorts, was carrying an enormous golf bag covered in logos, the second, who wore slacks and jacket, had a phone pressed to his ear and was in mid-conversation, and the third, in golf gear and with two-tone footwear that looked hand-crafted, had ginger hair tied back in a ponytail. I recognised him from telly as a pro.

‘Let’s follow them,’ I proposed.

We did, at a discreet distance. The path they took led past a bronze statue of a man straddling an enormous golf club. . five or six iron, I guessed. . and past a hotel complex on our right, before opening out into a wide field, at one end of which around a dozen golfers stood in a long rank, some with caddies, others with coaches as well, each with a bucket of balls at his feet, each engaged in whacking them into the distance.

‘This is more like it,’ Patterson beamed. ‘Practice range.’

Maybe so, but I felt instantly self-conscious. Although there was a small tiered grandstand behind the players, with half a dozen rows of seats, they were empty, and there was nobody else around who looked even remotely like a spectator, or who didn’t know what they were doing there. Someone else thought so too. A tall white-haired man with tanned, leathery skin came walking towards us. Fortunately he was smiling.

‘Morning,’ he began, in a refreshingly Scottish accent. ‘Can I help you? I’m Clive Tate, the practice ground manager. Are you looking for anyone in particular? If you’re media, your tent isn’t open yet, but I saw the Tour press officer on the clubhouse terrace with some of the early arrivals.’

‘No, no,’ I told him, hurriedly. ‘We’re not journos, God forbid.’

The smile became a chuckle. ‘I didn’t really think so; I know all the regulars. But occasionally we have people turn up at these Spanish events saying they work for ex-pat newspapers; websites too, these days.’

‘That’s not us, I promise. We’re punters, simple as that.’

‘In that case you’ll have the stand to yourself.’ He reached behind his back and pulled a rolled-up magazine from a trouser pocket. ‘Here,’ he said as he handed it to me, ‘on the house for a fellow Jock. It’s the programme for the week, with all the players listed. You won’t be able to buy one of these until Wednesday. That’s how early you three are. Still, if you stick around for a few hours, you should see quite a few of the top guys. This event has a high-quality entry field.’

He left us to it and headed back towards the Portakabin that seemed to be his office. We chose seats in the top row of the not-very-grandstand. One or two of the players glanced in our direction, but most of them stayed completely focused on what they were doing.

Shirley and I sat on either side of Patterson, who seemed to know his stuff as he played ‘spot the golfer’. He named quite a few stars even I’d never heard of, proving himself right when in doubt with a quick check of the programme. I concentrated on the ponytailed chap we’d followed. He was one of the oldest on the range, built like a man who’d enjoyed a few good breakfasts in his time, and with a distinctive practice routine which I guessed that he had been following on other ranges for at least a quarter of a century, and probably more. He loosened up before every shot with a huge, furious swing of the club, but when he put a ball at his feet, he struck it with a slow, controlled rhythm, sending it off into the distance with a perfect left to right fade.

I watched him for a while as he worked his way through all the clubs in his bag, then switched to another player that I recognised, a former US Open champion no less. Patterson remarked that his very presence was a sign that the Catalan Masters event was being taken seriously, and that the prize fund was attractive. I studied his form for a while. At one point he turned to speak to his coach, and noticed us in the stand. He smiled, and I heard him say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a gallery already.’ He waved in our direction. I formed the conceited impression that it was meant specifically for me, and found myself smiling back.

‘He’s a new one on me,’ Patterson murmured, drawing my attention back to him. ‘I wonder who he is.’

I followed his gaze and saw a well-muscled young man of medium height with braided hair, and skin like shiny ebony, carrying a huge golf bag along the back of the range until he found a space between two players. ‘Yes indeed,’ I whispered, as he swung the clubs from his shoulders and planted it firmly on the ground.

‘No,’ said Patterson, ‘not him; he’s a caddie. I mean his boss.’ He pointed to a guy who was following him, a few paces behind. He was quite a bit taller than the other, and his tanned face was set in serious concentration.

If we hadn’t been sitting I’d have fallen over. I felt my heart hammer as it jumped from the normal sixty-something beats per minute to rather more than twice that. My head swam, and for a split second I didn’t know who or where I was. Bizarrely, I wondered if I was dead, like those cops in purgatory in that TV series, for it was as if I was looking at someone I knew better than any man in the world, only it couldn’t be him, for he really was dead, and anyway this version was only half the age he’d have attained if he hadn’t been. My right hand was at my mouth. I bit my fingers, hard, to restore a semblance of reality.

Shirley had been looking at me. ‘Primavera,’ I heard her call out, ‘are you all right?’

I gulped and nodded, but I was speechless.

Patterson had been oblivious to my near faint. He’d been too busy leafing through the programme. ‘Got him,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s that new lad, the kid from the last Walker Cup team. He’s just turned pro and this is his first event.’ He thrust a page in front of me. ‘There he is. Sinclair, his name is: Jonathan Sinclair.’

I had worked it out for myself by that time. I’d placed him, even though I hadn’t seen him since he was a precocious, pre-pubescent youth, not since the days when I’d been married to his uncle, his Uncle Oz. I knew how his life had developed, though; his Grandpa Blackstone was vastly proud of him, and had kept me in occasional touch with his progress as a golfer. I knew that he’d gone to university in America, on a sports scholarship, and that he’d made a name for himself on the amateur circuit. But I hadn’t seen Mac for a while, and so, while I’d been aware that turning pro had been on the cards, I’d no way of knowing that it had happened.

‘Jonny.’ I only whispered the name, but Shirley heard me nonetheless.

‘Who?’ she asked, loud enough to make the former US Open champion’s caddie throw a frown in her direction.

‘Jonny,’ I repeated. ‘I’d forgotten what his dad’s surname was. He’s Oz’s sister’s older boy.’

She stared at me, then at him, then back at me. ‘Oz’s nephew? The kid who was here when you and he were married? He’s turned into that?’ She looked at him again, a little more closely. ‘Now you tell me, yes, he does look like him. Not as much as Tom does, of course, but still. .’

Of course. It came back to me; Shirley had met him, when Grandpa Mac, Ellie and her boys had come for Christmas to the house in L’Escala that Oz and I had bought not long after we were married. For several reasons, that place, that whole time, had been a disaster for us. The only positive had been Tom’s conception, just as his parents were falling apart as a couple. Things had been pretty bad also for Shirley then. But she hadn’t reacted by taking flight, she’d done so by correcting a mistake, and buying back the house she’d sold believing wrongly that she’d be happy somewhere else. Still, tough and all as she was, my instant concern was that being hauled back to those days wouldn’t be good for her.

I should have known better. ‘Wow,’ she whistled. ‘What a honey. What age will he be now?’

‘Hmmph,’ I snorted. ‘Trust you, Mrs Gash. Young enough to be your grandson.’ I did a quick sum. Jonny would have been. . what?. . eleven back then, so. . ‘He’ll be twenty-two, I reckon.’

‘Well, if I can’t have him, what about his caddie? He’d look great in my garden.’

‘Hands off!’ I warned. ‘I saw him first.’

‘Actually,’ Patterson pointed out, affably, ‘I did.’

Shirley looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

He laughed. ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing I haven’t told you.’ He turned to me. ‘What are you going to do, Primavera?’

I leaned closer to him, as if I was trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, which, in all probability, I was. ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t want to interrupt his practice, that’s for sure. God, I may be the last person in the world he’d want to see. There was a lot of shit happened between his uncle and me. His mother probably hates me, so he’ll have had his card well marked about me.’

‘If he has,’ he said quietly, ‘there was an up-to-date picture on it. He’s staring at you.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I wouldn’t, in these circumstances. No joke.’

I forced myself to look back towards the practice range. He was right; Jonny was gazing up towards the spectator stand, and there was nobody else he could have been looking at. He was frowning. Most of me wanted to be out of there. I thought about jumping off the back of the structure and legging it, but my dignity wouldn’t let me take that way out. So I let my eyes meet his.

And when I did, he smiled. ‘Auntie Primavera,’ he said. I could hear the laughter in his voice, and see my past in his wide, friendly smile. He started to move in our direction. I knew that if I stayed where I was he’d climb up to us. I didn’t want to involve Shirley and her man in such an unexpected reunion, so I rose and headed towards him, stepping over the empty seats in front and jumping down on to the ground.

‘Auntie Primavera,’ he repeated, as I stood in front of him, then he swept me up and off my feet, into unexpectedly strong arms and hugged me tight. And I hugged him back. I was feeling lots of things, but none of them was very clear to me at that point. I didn’t know whether I was happy or sad, whether I was really hugging him or whether he was a surrogate for the dead. I kissed his neck, the nearest part available, then whispered ‘Lovely to see you, Jonny. Now put me down. At least three Major champions are staring at us.’

I was overstating it; there were only two. Back on my feet, I took my first close-up look at Jonathan Sinclair as an adult. He was slightly taller than his uncle had been, and maybe not as naturally heavily built, but he had the sort of gym muscles that you find on young pro golfers these days, since power became all-important to many of their coaches. There was a slight facial resemblance to his father, a first-generation computer nerd who’d been more interested in his job than his family, until finally Ellie Blackstone had binned him, but mostly he took after his mother. Other than temperamentally, it seemed; my former sister-in-law is most kindly described as formidable, a woman given to making her point.

‘So Uche’s message did get to you,’ said Johnny. ‘The sod never told me you’d called him back.’

‘I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘Well, I did, but I decided not to leave a message, since I’d no idea who he was. Who the hell is he, anyway?’

‘He’s my caddie.’

‘You’ve got a caddie?’ I gasped, inanely, as if it was natural in my world for a pro golfer to carry his own clubs.

‘Of course I have, Auntie,’ he chuckled. He nodded, over his shoulder, towards the black guy, who had closed in on us. ‘This is Uche,’ he continued. ‘Uche Wigwe. He’s my mate really; we were at Arizona State together. He hopes to join the tour as well, but he’s caddying for me until we can both go to qualifying school.’

‘That’s if we both have to, ma’am,’ Uche intervened. ‘If Jonny makes enough money through sponsors’ invitations, he’ll earn a playing card automatically.’

He was beautifully spoken, much better than Jonny, much better than me for that matter. ‘Your accent,’ I began.

‘African,’ he explained. ‘Nigerian, to be precise. My father is what the British media delight in calling a “princeling”, the implication being that our nobility isn’t nearly as grand or important as yours. It’s a slur that doesn’t trouble us, however, for aside from his old tribal title, he’s filthy rich.’

‘Uche was at Winchester School before Arizona State,’ Jonny added. ‘No scholarships, by the way. In theory we have the same manager, but it’s harder to get sponsors’ invites for him.’

‘Why?’ I asked, naively.

‘Why do you think? I played on the Walker Cup team; he didn’t.’

‘Jonny.’ The posh bag-carrier nudged him, gently.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Auntie, I have to hit some balls. Stay and watch and we’ll talk when I’ve done. Can we have lunch afterwards?’

‘On one condition,’ I told him. ‘Stop calling me “Auntie”, will you?’

I climbed back up to my perch, and Jonny went to work. From that moment I wasn’t looking at anyone else, not at any of the champions on parade, only my nephew. . technically he hadn’t been since Oz and I divorced, but I was claiming him anyway. I know a little about golf, from the telly and from playing myself. It didn’t take me long to work out that the swing I was watching wasn’t the one he had learned from his grandfather and his uncle, classic Scottish amateurs both, conditioned to hit the ball low, and under the wind. His flight was high, and long. At first I thought that his natural shot was a fade, until he started to hit it the other way, drawing from right to left.

I heard Patterson murmur beside me. ‘See how straight his back is?’ he whispered. That hadn’t escaped my notice; everything about him seemed perfectly balanced. ‘He hits it like a dream,’ he added. ‘I wonder what his short game’s like?’

‘If he’s anything like his Grandpa Blackstone, it’ll be deadly. Mac’s a bandit around the greens.’

‘You sound as if you’re still in touch with him.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be? He’s my son’s grandfather too. Mac’s a regular visitor.’

‘Why isn’t he here for Jonathan’s debut?’ he wondered aloud.

‘I can tell you that,’ I said. ‘He and Mary are on a long cruise, out in the Far East. He may not even know about it.’ But if he had, would he even have told me? I wondered. A loose, unofficial pact had grown up between Mac and me. While he had given me occasional reports of Jonny’s golfing progress, we never talked about events past, and rarely about people from it. Tom was our shared future and we concentrated on him.

The thought was still in my head when I noticed that Jonny and Uche seemed to have been joined by someone else. . at least I assumed they had, for she, the only woman on the range, was standing beside the caddie, talking to him, but watching Jonny, while filming him with a handheld camera. He stopped, to change clubs and to take on some water, and I managed a look at her in profile. She was well over thirty, maybe even my age. Her hair was blonde, without being lustrous, and her skin was brown, but weather-beaten rather than tanned. She was dressed in pale green trousers, golf shoes and a polo shirt. Although I couldn’t see the front, it looked a match for the Ashworth that the guys were wearing, and it had the same car manufacturer logo that was on their sleeves. I’d noticed her earlier, near the clubhouse, talking to a large blond guy and two kids. One of the team, I guessed, but who was she?

Once again, Patterson came up with the goods. ‘That’s impressive too,’ he remarked. ‘That must be Lena Mankell. She’s Swedish, a swing coach. . the only woman doing that job on the men’s tour, so it’s got to be her. . and she’s reckoned to be one of the two or three best around. If she’s working with Jonny, and it looks as if she is, that’s a statement in itself.’

From then on, I watched her as well. Two or three times she stopped Jonny to play him back the video she had shot, and once adjusting the position of his hands at the top of the backswing, but otherwise she seemed happy with what she was seeing.

They worked on; that upright swing never seemed to vary, but gradually I could spot the slight differences in the set-up that triggered the differences in ball flight. When the session ended, and Uche put Jonny’s driver back in his bag, I checked my watch and found that they had been at it for well over two hours. By that time I was on my own, Shirley having pleaded a combination of sore bum and hunger before dragging Patterson off to find refreshment in the clubhouse.

As his caddie shouldered the enormous bag and headed for the locker room, Jonny was left in conversation with the big blond guy, who had joined him just before his practice broke up; it didn’t stop him waving me down to join them. ‘This is Lars,’ he said, ‘Lars Martinsson; he’s married to my coach, and he’s a pro as well.’

‘By the skin of my teeth,’ his companion added, in comfortable, if accented, English. ‘I don’t play so much these days. Lena’s work takes her to the big events, mostly. I don’t get to play in them very often, but I don’t like to be away from her and the kids, so I don’t spend too much time on the minor circuit. The one time I did win, seven years ago in Malmo, she wasn’t there to see it.’

Nice, I thought, a golfer who follows his wife, rather than the other way around.

‘Come on, Auntie,’ Jonny interrupted. ‘Let’s go to the players’ catering. I need to take on some carbs for this afternoon’s session.’

That sounded like a good idea, so I bade farewell to Lars, and fell into step alongside him. ‘You’re not finished?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I have to take advantage of today. It’s going to be really busy here tomorrow, so I want to get out on the course while I can. I’m due on the tee at two fifteen in a four-ball with. .’ He rattled off three names; one of them was the former US Open champion, another had been captain of the previous year’s Ryder Cup team, and the third was likely to be his successor. ‘They’re curious,’ he explained. ‘They want to see how I shape up. Plus they’re all good guys, to be sharing practice time with a newcomer like me. But this is a generous sport, Auntie Primavera.’

I smiled. ‘Hey, I told you not to call me that.’

‘I like calling you Auntie. You’re the only one I’ve got.’

‘Not so,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s your Auntie Susie, in Monaco.’

He stopped smiling. ‘She doesn’t count. I don’t like her. Now that Uncle Oz is dead she’s off the list.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, Jonny.’

‘No it isn’t. Mum can’t stand her either, and Grandpa and Mary only tolerate her because of the two grandkids, Janet and my namesake. They’ve never forgiven her for the way she came between you and Uncle Oz. I was too young to know what was happening at the time, but now I do, and I feel the same as them.’

I was still pondering this as we walked into the catering tent, the only part of the tournament’s canvas village that appeared to be working. I chose a salad from the buffet table, but Jonny helped himself to an enormous plate of rigatoni, with a rich meatball sauce.

‘You know,’ I told him, ‘your grandpa’s never said a word against Susie to me.’

‘He wouldn’t, for Tom’s sake, but that’s how he feels, trust me. Mum and him always liked you, Auntie P. Mum says that Susie’s man, the one she was engaged to before, was hardly in the ground before she set her cap at Uncle Oz.’ He grinned, and I could see the kid that still lived within him. ‘She doesn’t actually say “Set her cap”, but you know what I mean.’

‘I know,’ I admitted, ‘but I put that behind me a long time ago. It’s history. Yes, Susie might have thrown herself at Oz, but he didn’t have to catch her, especially not since we were technically on honeymoon at the time. But the truth is I wasn’t perfect either. Your uncle managed to get the both of us pregnant at the same time, but I was so mad with him that I kept my condition to myself. . for four years, as it turned out. It wasn’t really Susie he left me for, you see, it was her baby. If I’d told him about mine. . about ours. .’

‘That’s what Mum says too. She says your problem then was being too nice about it.’

I chuckled. ‘That’s not something I’ve ever been accused of before. So anyway, how is your mother? I haven’t seen her for years, since the last time I saw you in fact.’

‘She’s still the same; fearsome as ever. She hasn’t changed a bit.’ He paused. ‘Well, she has in one respect. She’s Lady January, now that my stepfather’s a Court of Session judge, and a lord. She and Harvey live mostly in Edinburgh now, since my brother left to go to university.’

‘And how’s he? How’s Colin? He was a wild little bugger, as I remember.’

‘He’s tamed. He learned to wipe his nose when he was about fourteen and got all serious with it. He’s doing a maths degree at Oxford; I hardly ever see him.’

I thought of the Sinclair boys when first I’d met them, in the French village where their father had parked them and Ellie while he worked all the hours God sent. Urchins, both of them. What fifteen years could do. ‘Will that be two graduates in the family?’ I asked. ‘What do you golf students come out with? I don’t know.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve got a Bachelor’s degree in agribusiness; majoring in golf course management. If I don’t make it on tour I can fall back on that; maybe I’ll do an MBA, and go to work for Brush, or somebody like him.’

‘No worries there, son. You’ll make it all right. With a swing like that, how can you not?’

‘We’ve all got swings like that, Auntie. That’s why we use people like Lena Mankell. You saw her, did you?’ I nodded. ‘This is the first pro event I’ve ever played, and Brush has got me invitations to six more here in Europe, that’s as many as you can have, and another five in the States.’

‘Who’s this Brush you keep mentioning?’ I asked.

‘He’s my manager.’

‘Our Jonny; with a manager.’ I shook my head and smiled. ‘You do realise you’re making me feel ancient?’

‘Not you,’ he said, gallantly, and quickly enough for it to sound sincere. ‘We all have, even as amateurs, some of us. His real name’s James Donnelly, but everybody calls him “Brush”, because he sweeps everything up.’

‘Sounds handy. So how does the invitation thing work? Who invites you?’

‘The event sponsors; it gets you past pre-qualifying. Like I said, I can have up to seven this year, but if I manage to finish in the top ten in a tournament, I get automatic entry to the one the next week, and I don’t have to use up an invitation, if I have one. In theory, I could be playing full time for the rest of this season, and make enough money to get my playing card for next year. But on the other hand I could use up all my invites, miss every halfway cut, and not make a cent, then go to tour qualifying school and get cut again halfway through. If that happens, the sponsors that Brush has got for me will disappear,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘just like that.’

‘Do you believe,’ I asked, ‘that is what’s going to happen?’

‘No.’ His answer was instantaneous, and firm. ‘I believe I’m going to win this week and never look back. I really mean that. I did sports psychology in my degree; if you can’t manage your head, you’ll never manage your game.’

‘Is your mum coming to see you?’

He frowned. ‘She can’t. She had a hysterectomy a couple of weeks ago, and she’s not cleared to travel yet.’ He saw my expression. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing life-threatening. It was serious, though. She developed a condition called endometriosis, a couple of years back. It really floored her. They tried all sorts of treatments, lasers and things, but nothing did much good, and finally, surgery was recommended as the only way. She’ll be fine now, they say.’

I’d heard of that complaint, and thanked my lucky stars it hadn’t come my way. Anything that could floor Ellie Blackstone January was not to be messed with.

‘I’m glad to hear it’s sorted,’ I told him, and I was, very glad. I’d assumed that Ellie had set her face against me forever, and was hugely pleased to learn that she hadn’t. ‘So, since she’s not here, can I come and watch you?’

‘I hope you will. That’s one reason why I asked Uche to try to get in touch with you. I’m sorry if he confused you, by the way. Grandpa’s out of touch, so I couldn’t get your number from him. All Uche did was look up the local Yellow Pages and call the first number he found with an address in St Martí.’

That filled in all the blanks. ‘No worries. It’s a date, then. I’ll bring Tom at the weekend too.’

‘Good. I’m looking forward to meeting him. What’s he like?’

My son had met his Aunt Ellie on a few occasions, at first with Oz, and since then once or twice when we’d been visiting my dad in Auchterarder, and Grandpa Mac had picked him up and taken him to Fife for the day. He knew his cousin Colin as well, and Harvey, his newish uncle, but Jonny had been away on each visit, so their paths had never crossed.

I took a photograph, the one that goes with me everywhere, from my bag; Tom and Charlie, taken a few months before, on the beach in winter. ‘He’s the one without the tail,’ I said. My nephew’s eyes misted for a second or two as he looked at it. ‘Yes,’ I murmured. ‘He is like his father, isn’t he?’

Then I had another thought, a very big thought. ‘Where do you live, Jonny?’ I asked.

‘This week? Brush has rented a house for Uche and me, plus Lena and her crew. It’s not far from here, in a place called Caldes de something or other. We’re all staying there.’

‘No, not just this week; I meant permanently.’

He shrugged his shoulders and gave me that awkward Blackstone grin. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve just left college, so I don’t have a place yet, other than Mum’s house.’

‘But you’ll need one, won’t you, for the weeks you’re not involved in a tournament?’

‘I suppose, yeah.’

‘Somewhere with decent weather and near good practice facilities? Somewhere central to the European events you’re playing?’

‘Yeah, but to be honest I haven’t thought much about it, not yet. I’ve been too full of this week.’

I took the plunge. ‘Then come and live with us; make our place your European base. It ticks all those boxes, the weather’s a hell of a lot better than St Andrews, plus it’s forty minutes from an airport. We’ve got room, Tom and me.’ Then a question that I’d overlooked popped into my head. ‘Or do you have other involvements? Do you have a girlfriend?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m between, you might say.’

‘Then what’s to stop you coming to stay with your old. . scratch that, middle-aged auntie?’

He blinked. ‘Nothing, I suppose. But things tend to get busy around me; the phone’s going all the time. Uche would need to be close by as well. My caddie goes where I go, during the day at any rate.’

‘We can find him somewhere. . when I think about it, I could squeeze him in as well.’

‘No thanks, I wouldn’t want him that close.’ He grinned. ‘Neither would you, for that matter. Uche’s a night owl; he’s a playboy. Lovely guy, but he needs to get his mind more focused if he wants to make it as a golfer.’

‘There are places available around St Martí that would give him his freedom, don’t you worry.’ I smiled at him, feeling a warmth akin to the way that Tom makes me glow. ‘Are you up for it?’ I asked again.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘if you’re sure.’

Strangely, I hadn’t been surer of anything for quite some time. ‘Entirely. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come home with me tonight, and see how it feels?’

‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘But what about Tom? It’ll be a big change for him. Doesn’t he have a vote?’

‘Yes, but I know how he’ll cast it. You’ll be a hero to him; think of the bragging rights he’ll have at school.’

He grinned. ‘The dog in the photo? Is he yours?’

‘Yes, but don’t worry about Charlie; he does not have a vote.’

‘I’ll pay my way, mind,’ he warned.

I looked him in the eye. ‘And do you with your mother? The truth now; I’ll ask Mac if I have to.’

He shook his head.

‘Right you are, then. Jonny, we’re family. If you like, you can take us for a meal whenever you make a big enough cheque; that’ll be an added incentive for you. Every time you’re over a twelve-footer on the last green that’s worth a few grand, you can think of me done up to the nines in the best restaurant in L’Escala.’