Seven Lies South

1

The match was even after the seventeenth hole and the Englishman smiled widely and said, “A bit of luck, wasn’t it?” He had won the hole with a long curling putt, and as they walked toward the eighteenth tee he patted Mike Beecher on the shoulder in a gesture which suggested both condolence and conciliation. “I hadn’t counted on your tightening up, old man. Quite frankly, I thought I was done for.”

“I just hooked the iron into the trap,” Mike Beecher said. “I can do that under any and all circumstances.”

“You rushed it a bit, actually. Nerves, I expect. It’s the whole thing in this game.” They stopped on the tee and the caddies gave them their drivers. The caddies were Spanish boys, brown and grave, sixteen or seventeen years old, and the tops of their heads barely came even with the clubs sticking up from the bags.

“Now what’s the drill here?” the Englishman asked. “Where’ve they hidden the bloody green?”

The eighteenth hole of the golf course near the coastal city of Málaga was a dog-leg right, and the green was blocked from view by a stand of fir trees half-way down the fairway. It was an uncomplicated par four.

Mike Beecher explained this and moved to the back of the tee with the caddies. But the Englishman hesitated, staring at the line of fir trees which hid the green from sight. “The long way home, isn’t it?” he said with teeth flashing in his wide and rather childish smile. “It’s tempting, you know.” Beecher understood what he meant; a drive over the trees would nearly carry the green. But it was a risky shot, a gamble an experienced golfer wouldn’t take unless a match depended on it.

“Yes, it’s tempting,” Beecher said. “The line is straight over the tallest tree.”

The Englishman deliberated an instant longer, then sighed and teed-up his ball. “I’m afraid I’m going to play it safely.”

With a compact swing he split the middle of the fairway with a straight, safe drive, and Mike Beecher knew that for all practical purposes the match was decided and that he was going to lose it.

As he prepared to drive, he wondered a bit irritably why he was convinced he would lose. He was a connoisseur of his own failures, of course. That was part of it. He could predict defeat as other men predicted the weather, sensing signs and portents that were too subtle for conscious examination. To want something very much was usually an indication he wouldn’t get it. But he didn’t know why this was true. Why in hell do I want to win this match? he wondered. There was nothing at stake but a round of drinks. He had met the Englishman in the village of Mirimar a few days ago, and they had chatted about golf, among other things. Beecher had lived in Spain for two years, the Englishman was there on a month’s holiday. They had arranged a match, and since the Englishman had no car Beecher had picked him up at his pension, the Lorita, which was in the second category and inexpensive even by Spanish standards. The Englishman’s name was James Lynch. “It’s Irish, actually, I wouldn’t wonder,” he had said, with the bright youthful smile. “One of the wild geese who settled in England, contrary to all plans, I dare say. Jimmy will do nicely, however.”

But Mike Beecher called him Lynch. They were roughly the same age, in their late thirties, and he found Lynch’s preference for the diminutive of his Christian name a bit silly.

He admired Lynch but he didn’t particularly like him, and he wondered if this was why he had wanted to win the match. Lynch was perfect of a certain class of Englishman Beecher had met, and for this he admired him: he was tall and ruddy, with great bony arms and legs, and the tough, well-conditioned body of a cavalryman. He wore khaki shorts and Clark’s desert boots, and on his head, rather incredibly, a tiny blue-and-white knitted skullcap which Beecher knew was Moroccan. This outfit, with the brilliant cap as exclamation point, was silly but rather touching, and so was Lynch’s youthful exuberance, his great wide smiles, and the flow of “Good shot, there!” and, “I say, well done!” with which he marked Beecher’s progress around the course. His manner was engaging, and he was quite handsome, with thick fair hair, and eyes that were blue and clear as a baby’s against his deeply tanned skin. He had obviously been in service during World War II. His speech was interlarded with military slang: “drill” and “gen” and “Boffins” and “pranged” and “whacko” were all securely embedded in his vocabulary. Beecher had met his type before in Spain, oddly wistful Englishmen approaching their middle years, but savoring the last sweetness of their wartime youth like children sucking cautiously on a lozenge, determined to make it last until a given hour, perhaps even until sundown. And for these things Beecher admired him; the silly Moroccan skullcap, the desert boots, the boyish enthusiasm, the outdated expletives and exhortations — these were not the trappings of a role to be assumed or put aside at will, but the touching and honest portrait the man’s past had drawn of him.

As for why he didn’t like the man he wasn’t so sure. His confidence was part of it. It wasn’t leavened with grace. Lynch had expected the locker-room attendant to be at his side when he removed his jacket. If the man hadn’t been there the jacket would have dropped to the floor. But Antonio was at his side, with a quick smile and a murmured courtesy, and Lynch had sat down to change his shoes without so much as glancing at him. He approved of Spaniards. He told Beecher as much. “They’ve been well-trained,” he had said, and added, “Jolly well too, I’m pleased to see.” But he didn’t respect them except as examples of sound discipline. His respect, Beecher felt, would go to their trainers.

Also, Lynch owned a shattering directness which was saved from rudeness only by his quick smiles and pleasant manner. “I dare say you don’t play golf regularly back in the States,” he had said at one point in the match. “It’s frightfully expensive there, isn’t it? Do you belong to a club?”

Beecher admitted he didn’t. And again, Lynch had commented with a grin on Beecher’s drinking. “I saw you sipping a brandy one morning, and I thought to meself, now there’s a lucky chap. Enjoying the sun and cheap brandy without a care in the world, while the rest of us are out grubbing for a living. How long did you say you’ve been here?”

“Two years,” Beecher had said, almost curtly. He was short of money, and was drinking too much out of idleness and boredom. Lynch’s inferences were therefore accurate but irritating.

Beecher put everything from his mind and prepared to hit his drive. He decided to ignore the feeling that he was going to lose. It wasn’t over yet. There were three ways to play this hole. Straight and safe was one. Over the trees to the green was two. The third required a deliberate slice, a fading shot which would land close to the tree line and turn the corner with the natural slope of the fairway. Played well, this shot would roll down to within eighty or ninety yards of the pin. From there he would have a sure par, and a good chance at a birdie. Lynch still needed another big iron to reach the green in two, and had no serious hope of getting down under par.

Beecher hit his drive solidly; it had the height and distance, but the fade was accented by a vagrant wind and the ball came down very close to the tree line. It might be in the rough. Beecher glanced at his caddy, Salvador, who shrugged and made a quick little gesture, as if he were balancing a grain of buckshot on the back of his wrist.

Beecher gave him his driver and caught up with the Englishman, who was starting vigorously down the fairway.

The Mediterranean spread before them, vast and rosy in the glow of the late afternoon sun. A golden pathway stretched out to the horizon. The fairway was bordered with banks of blood-red carnations which mingled pleasingly with the delicate pink of oleander blossoms. Through the green fir trees he could see the white gleam of the white house, and he thought of a shower and a cold drink. The air was cool now, drying the perspiration on his forehead.

He made a guess at why he had been so sure he was going to lose. The Englishman had played it safe, confident that he would need nothing better than a par to win. He was taking a chance on Beecher’s game going bad; not betting on his own skill at all. There was a caution in this decision which wasn’t consistent with his manner and personality, Beecher thought; the rake-hell Commando, the man who talked of “sticky wickets” when bombs fell around him, might logically be expected to play a more reckless game of golf.

Lynch’s ball had rolled to a good lie, and now sat up invitingly on a rare patch of good turf. The green was wide open. Lynch hit a four-iron that was short of the apron, another careful shot which left him with a good if not certain chance for the par.

“Nice shot,” Beecher said automatically.

“It was a bit fat, actually,” Lynch said. “Still, I won’t take it back.” He sounded complacent. “Now let’s see where you’ve got to.”

They walked across the fairway to the stand of trees, with Beecher’s caddy ranging ahead of him like a bird dog. Beecher went into the shade of the trees and poked around in the tall grass. He had got over the habit of looking where he hoped the ball would be; golf had added to his normal pessimism in some ways. It was cool in the grove of trees and he accepted this, and the lovely tones of the evening, as compensation for having lost the match. Then, surprisingly, he saw his ball lying in the fairway a few inches from the rough. He smiled. The lie was good, and he was only about a hundred yards from the green; his finesse had worked.

Lynch was standing near the ball with his hands on his hips, and both caddies had gone into the trees a dozen or so yards beyond Beecher. Beecher opened his mouth to yell to Salvador, but at the same instant Lynch took a step forward and put his foot firmly on the ball. He allowed his weight to rest on it for a deliberate instant, then walked on toward the caddies. “I don’t think it got down this far,” he called to them in English.

Beecher stared after him in silence. The Englishman seemed an ungainly, preposterous figure in the dappled light of the grove, with the bright skullcap gleaming on his fair head, and his storklike legs driving him on in great, greedy strides. He continued to harangue the caddies in English. “Now see here!” he cried, staring down at them from his great height. “The bloody ball is back that way.” He waved his bony arm in Beecher’s direction. “Do you understand? No es here! Look alive now. I say, Beecher, you speak the lingo. Tell the little beggars they’re miles off course, will you?”

“Never mind, I’ve got it,” Beecher said, and walked back to the fairway.

“Good show!”

Beecher looked at his ball with a frown gathering on his forehead. It was buried so deeply that only a fleck of white showed above the earth. Had Lynch done it on purpose? Or was it just an accident?

“I say, that’s a pity,” Lynch said, when he joined him on the fairway. “Plugged itself bloody well out of sight, didn’t it? Curious. Must have fell like a bomb.”

“Yes, it is curious.” Beecher looked steadily at Lynch, but the Englishman’s face was guileless as a sleeping infant’s.

Salvador ran up with the bag flopping diagonally across his back. He stared at the ball in dismay. The ground here was moist but firm, and Lynch’s large footprint was clearly marked in the turf. Salvador understood what had happened, Beecher knew, even before the boy let loose a barrage of outraged explanation.

Lynch smiled indulgently. “What’s the little beggar got on his mind?” he asked Beecher. “Sounds like he’s accusing you of selling his sister to the Moors, doesn’t it?”

“He’s just explaining why he didn’t see it.”

Beecher exploded the ball into the air with his wedge; then pitched up to the green. He was lying three, Lynch two. They both two-putted and the match was over; Lynch had won.

They shook hands after holing-out. Lynch was smiling broadly, the sun gleaming in his fair hair. “I had extraordinary luck. Next time you’ll give me a lesson, I dare say.”

And Beecher, caught up in the Englishman’s sporting ethos, apologized for making the match as close as it was. “I was scrambling all the way,” he said. “The law of averages finally caught up with me.”

Salvador watched him with sorrowful brown eyes. He began to speak, but Beecher cut him off with a wink. They understood each other quite well. Salvador shrugged and went off to the pro shop, and Beecher joined Lynch who was strolling toward the locker room.

“Drinks are on me,” Beecher said.

Antonio brought them gin slings and they drank them sitting on a bench in the locker room, their shirts off and the evening air cool against their warm bodies.

Lynch raised his glass. “All the best.”

“Cheers,” Beecher said.

“I imagine I could be quite happy in Spain,” Lynch said, after taking a long thirsty pull from his drink. “It’s a peaceful country, isn’t it? Servants are cheap, the liquor is an amazing bargain — well, what else does a chap want? Job of work now and again to keep him out of mischief, I expect.” He took a sip from his drink. “What do you do over here?”

“Nothing,” Beecher said.

“Really? I thought most of you American chaps were writing books or painting pictures or something like that.”

“Not me,” Beecher said.

“Well, how do you manage it then?” He smiled easily. “As far as LSD goes, that is.”

LSD. Beecher thought. Pounds, shillings, pence. “I saved enough to last for a while.”

“That’s sensible, isn’t it? No point mucking around in some racket over here, is there?”

“Would you like to take a shower?” Beecher asked him.

“I didn’t bring a change. I’ll just have another drink. You go ahead.”

“Antonio will get anything you want.”

Beecher stood gratefully under the driving hot water, letting the heat soak into his pleasantly tired muscles and joints. He had lost the match, but he didn’t mind any more. It was usually that way. The loss wasn’t important. It was only the curious foreknowledge of defeat that bothered him. Antonio brought his clothes into the dressing room beyond the shower stalls, and Beecher got into khaki slacks which he had bought in Gibraltar, a white knit sports shirt from Tangier, and alpargatas, which were made in the village of Mirimar and sold for about twenty-five cents a pair. He had run through the clothes he had brought with him to Spain. There were some army things left, but he seldom wore them; he had had enough of uniforms and insignia over the years, and he preferred the anonymity of clothes from Gibraltar, or Tangier, or Spain.

He drove Lynch back to Mirimar through a lovely twilight. Fields of sugar cane stood stiffly on both sides of the road, and when they passed the refinery the air was full of the sweet heavy fragrance of molasses. The Sierra Nevadas were to their right, the bottom and middle ranges the color of elephant hide, but the peaks sparkling with rose and lemon light in the last long rays of the sun. The sea itself was dull red now, a smoldering and vivid color, and the triangular sails of the tiny fishing boats skimmed like white birds along the horizon.

Lynch said suddenly, “By the way, have you got anything on tonight?”

“Why?”

“I met an interesting chap in the village last night. A German. Don Willie something-or-other. I’m no good at all with names. Do you know him?”

“Yes.”

“He seemed awfully friendly. I was sitting alone in the café, and he introduced himself. After a bit, he asked me to a party he’s giving in his villa tonight. Insisted I come, and bring a friend. I rather imagine he meant a girl friend, but why don’t you come along? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m sorry,” Beecher said. “I’ve got some letters to write.”

“Oh, I say! They can’t be all that pressing. Do come! It sounds great fun.”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Just as you say. But I thought you Americans loved a fling. My American friends in London do, I can promise you. They don’t consider it a night until dawn, if you know what I mean.”

Beecher made no comment on this. They drove on in silence toward Mirimar, following a curving road that swept down the coastline into the village. The reason he had given Lynch was partially true; he did have letters to write, perfunctory notes to a sister and friends at home. But more importantly, he didn’t like Don Willie, and he didn’t intend to suspend or qualify that feeling for the sake of a plateful of food and a few free drinks.

“What does Don Willie do here in Spain?” Lynch asked him. He was hunched like an awkward bird in Beecher’s Citroen, bony knees drawn up to clear the dashboard. “What’s the name of his villa? The Paloma something-or-other?”

“La Paloma Negra. The Black Dove. He’s in the construction business,” Beecher said.

“I understand it’s a show place. He told me he built it a year or so after the war. He’s practically a native, isn’t he?”

“He’s been here fifteen years, I think.”

“I’m sorry you won’t come along with me. He told me there’ll be flamenco dancers and fireworks, and tons of people. I gather the construction business is doing well.”

“When Don Willie came here the Spaniards were starving. Land was going for a few pesetas an acre. He did all right.”

Lynch glanced at him curiously. “You sound as if you don’t like him.”

“I was just commenting on economic facts. The party will be a good one. He enjoys doing things on a big scale.”

“That should make him popular, I’d imagine.”

Beecher realized that Lynch was pumping him for information. He didn’t mind this; it wasn’t important one way or the other. But he had a certain native reserve about announcing his own opinions, so he merely said, “Yes, everyone enjoys his parties.” This was true enough, of course, but people enjoyed them for differing reasons. Some liked the free food and drink, the fireworks and gypsy dancers, and a view of the sea from terraces cut high into the mountains. But others went to laugh at their host, for Don Willie was in many ways a ridiculous sort of man. His bearing and enthusiasms suggested a paragon of Prussian values; in appearance he was tall and beefy and powerful, and he wore black leather overcoats in bad weather and kept a pair of vicious police dogs. He was elated by drums and parades, and spearing fish underwater. But behind this blatantly masculine façade trembled the anxious heart of a timid girl. At least it seemed this way to Beecher. Don Willie was pathetically eager to be liked, and painfully sensitive to real or fancied slights. He suffered over his “entertainments” like a nervous bride. The morning after one of his fiestas he would come shyly to the village to sample the gossip, to sift grains of truth from the polite chaff. Had the mayonnaise been too oily? Was there enough to eat and drink? Was it true that so-and-so had become ill after leaving? Had this been his cook’s fault? And the flamenco? He had rehearsed the gypsies like soldiers, but still they had danced too long...

But if everything had gone well, and the praise seemed not only fulsome but honest, Don Willie would simper like a pleased housewife, cheeks glowing and eyes sparkling with relief and happiness. Then he would confess the fears that had gripped him: that the police might not grant a permit for the fireworks; that the gypsies would show up drunk; that the delicacies ordered from Gibraltar would be stopped by Customs — and all the while sipping tiny glasses of Dutch gin, and bubbling with pride because he had circumvented these disasters.

Once a terrible thing had happened to Don Willie in the village. While sitting with friends on the terrace of the Bar Central, a small, poorly dressed man had attacked him violently and suddenly, raining impotent blows against his broad beefy chest and shoulders. Don Willie had stared at him for an instant in hideous disbelief, and then had leaped to his feet and fled across the plaza. From there he had run down the narrow street that led to his villa, eyes rolling like a stallion in panic, leather coattails flapping madly. That same night he had flown his airplane to Madrid, and had spent the rest of the summer attending to his various interests in Barcelona and Valencia.

Meanwhile the little man had been taken into custody by the police. He claimed that Don Willie had murdered his wife and children in a concentration camp during the war. He was a Czech. There was nothing that could be done about any of this, of course. The police let him go and told him to behave himself in the future. For several days he stayed in the village, a picture of impotent misery, a study in shock and anguish. A French family was kind to him. He sat at their table weeping and smoking cheap cigarettes. They told him nothing could be done about it. They advised him to forget the whole business. He left the village a week or so later, and everyone was vaguely relieved to see him go, even the French family.

As they approached the Pension Lorita, Lynch said, “It’s curious, isn’t it, how time softens up wartime memories and feelings,” and it was as if he had picked a thought from Beecher’s mind. “Take this Don Willie chap, for example. I dare say he was one of Hitler’s finest, and a dozen years ago I wouldn’t have shaken his hand for money. But now, all in all, he seems a decent enough sort. I imagine he took orders like the rest of us did. You can’t really hold it against a man for fighting for his country, now can you?”

“Maybe not,” Beecher said.

“You were in it, I imagine.”

“I was a flyer.”

“Dangerous racket, that.” Lynch smiled warmly. “Lucky to get out in one piece. Well, thanks awfully for the golf. I enjoyed it immensely.”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, by the way,” Lynch said, after opening the car door. “There was a girl with Don Willie. Dark-haired little thing, quite attractive but rather moody, I thought. Do you know her?”

“Yes, her name is Ilse. She’s Austrian.”

“And she lives with him?” Lynch’s eyes were bright with interest.

“That’s right.”

“His mistress, eh? Shouldn’t have guessed it from the way she acted. Not very lively, if you know what I mean. A chap told me they call her the Black Dove. What’s the gen on that?”

If Lynch had asked someone else about Don Willie’s friend, Beecher wondered why he was questioning him too. But he said, “It’s a play on words. Spaniards appreciate that sort of thing. They can discuss Don Willie’s villa and his mistress under one heading. They can ring some funny changes that way.”

“They don’t approve of her then?”

Beecher shifted gears as a mild hint. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

“Well thanks awfully again for the golf,” Lynch said and climbed out of the car. “Cheerio, old man.”

Beecher watched him stride up the palm-flanked pathway to the Lorita, his long sinewy legs covering the distance greedily, and his blue-and-white skullcap flickering among the lower branches of the trees like some silly but tranquil bird. Beecher smiled and drove back into the village.