J. Gregson: In Vino Veritas

Her face was in her hands for what seemed to her a long time. As far as she could see, there was no solution to this. Well, only one. And that surely wasn’t possible, was it?

Jason Knight was used to working under pressure. It is a necessary skill for any chef in charge of a busy kitchen.

This was a different sort of pressure and he wasn’t coping anything like as well. Playing golf against the club champion in the third round of the singles knockout competition was proving more testing of his temperament than he had expected. It was ridiculous to take the random bounces and rolls of a small white golf ball quite so seriously, he told himself, but the thought did not help him.

Jason was thirty-eight and in his golfing prime, in his opinion. He had played the game intermittently since he was a boy, and regularly since he had come to this area and joined the Ross-on-Wye Golf Club. He had a handicap of eight, which he considered generous, whereas his opponent played off scratch. Jason was receiving eight shots in this match. When discussing his chances with other members beforehand, he had discounted his chances against the young man with what he hoped was a becoming modesty. Privately, he had thought his progress to the next round highly probable.

Now, after eleven holes, he was one down and five of his shots were gone — squandered, for the most part, in his view. On the short twelfth, he was standing over a putt three feet above the hole for a half. It should have been a doddle, with his normal calm putting technique. He stood over the ball for what was probably a little too long, jerked his putter convulsively at it, and watched it shoot over the right edge of the hole.

Two down.

‘Bad luck!’ said his opponent sympathetically, before he moved away gratefully towards the thirteenth tee. Both of them knew that it was bad play rather than bad luck, but the polite golfing fiction was observed.

The thirteenth at Ross is a shortish but very tight par four, where any errant tee shot will leave you baulked by trees from a second shot to the green. Most good players take a fairway wood or even an iron from the tee, to place the ball safely on the fairway; Jason was delighted to see his opponent reaching for his driver. The arrogance of youth, he thought happily, and stood silently waiting for the appropriate punishment to befall this tall and gifted young man.

Sometimes talent subdues justice. The young Titan hit the ball long and very straight indeed, and it seemed to Jason to go on bouncing for a disagreeably long time. It came to rest over three hundred yards from them, and it looked to Jason to be no more than fifteen yards from the green. ‘Good shot, Tom!’ he said through clenched teeth.

His own much more puny effort was also straight and he managed to put a six-iron second into the middle of the green. Tom in turn chipped his short shot on to the green and watched it run perhaps six feet past the hole. There followed an illustration of what some enthusiasts call ‘the glorious unpredictability of golf’, and what its victims call something much more vulgar.

Jason Knight holed his curling putt of perhaps twenty-two feet up a sharp slope, then watched his opponent’s six-footer lip the hole and stay out, to give him the hole. ‘Bad luck, Tom! No justice!’ said Jason, trying and failing to keep the elation out of his voice.

Buoyed by this unexpected success, he holed another decent putt to win the difficult fourteenth, where he had a shot. He managed to halve the next two short but tricky par fours, where Tom Bowles was unlucky not to make at least one birdie. He received his last shot on the long, difficult seventeenth, where he could not reach the green in two but managed to hole his tricky curling putt for a four and the win. For the first time in the afternoon, he was ahead. A half at the eighteenth would give him the match.

He got on to the green in two, but his ball ran to the back, leaving him a long putt to the hole. His rather tentative effort stopped a tantalizing four feet short. He studied the line he knew perfectly well for a long time before he could make himself hit the ball, then watched it run right round the rim of the hole before it dropped in. Tom was thrusting his hand out in congratulation almost before Jason could appreciate that he had won a famous victory.

Jason had a pint waiting for his opponent when he came into the bar. He had never even spoken to Tom Bowles before, but the tall young athlete now confirmed the impression Jason had formed of him on the course: he was a pleasant and friendly young man. Both of them were well aware that Jason would have been heavily defeated in a straight contest without handicaps, so that Tom was not much cast down by his defeat. He had more serious matters to contend with: a county match at the weekend to start with, and after that a move to London and a new job. He had already been proposed for membership at the prestigious Sunningdale Golf Club, a fact which much impressed Jason Knight.

‘You’re doing well to get in there so quickly,’ he said. ‘I suppose being scratch must help.’

‘And being a lawyer doesn’t do any harm. There’s a strong legal element at Sunningdale, and a couple of them have proposed me.’

‘What sort of a lawyer are you?’ said Jason, trying not to sound too interested.

‘The dull sort. Company law is my speciality. It’s nothing like as glamorous as criminal law, but pleasingly lucrative, so far.’

Jason Knight took a long pull at his pint, trying to disguise the fact that he was thinking furiously. This bright young man knew he was a chef, but nothing more than that. Like many bright lads of his age, Bowles was preoccupied with his own concerns and his own progress in life. He was leaving the area and going off to a new job in London very shortly; the probability was that Jason would never see him again. He said slowly, ‘I expect being a lawyer must be like being a doctor — as soon as you say what you do people start asking for advice.’

‘Not really, no. Company law isn’t the most riveting subject. As a matter of fact, I’m still wet enough behind the ears to find it quite flattering when people think my opinion is worth having.’

‘Really? Well, a pal of mine has a problem, actually. He’s an important person in the firm, a key to its success, and he feels he should have more say in how the business is being run.’

‘Which is understandable. Unfortunately, the fact that he’s central to the firm’s success doesn’t give him any legal standing. Is he any more than a salaried employee?’

‘No. He would like to be.’

Tom shook his head, transformed for a second or two into the dullest of family solicitors. ‘Is it a public company? Could he buy shares?’

‘No. It’s a private limited company. There’s just the owner and one very junior partner involved. In effect, it’s a one-man band, with the owner making all the important decisions.’

Each of them was well aware by now that Knight was talking about himself, but it suited both to preserve the fiction of the mysterious friend, so as to keep the exchange at a less personal level. Tom Bowles said, ‘Is there any chance of your friend becoming a partner?’

‘How would he do that?’

Tom pursed his lips, shook his head sadly, and again looked for a moment like a much older man. ‘Difficult, without the willing acceptance of the big cheese. He could offer to put up capital, when he sees the firm is short.’

Jason shook his head decisively. ‘He couldn’t do that. The firm is in perpetual need of capital, but he isn’t in a position to provide it.’

‘Then his only option seems to be to persuade the owner that he is so integral to the firm’s development that he deserves greater recognition, in the form of a partnership.’