Death from the Claret Jug Page 2

  For Scotland, it was turning into a pretty nice day. It was a little cool for the month of July, but then, Scotland is always a bit chilly. If it wasn’t for the saving grace of the warm Gulf Stream, Scotland would have the same climate as Labrador, and you can often feel that menacing background coldness in the air. The collection of gray-bottomed clouds that had just crossed the Atlantic with us blew across the sky in an energetic following wind, alternately hiding and releasing the warming sun. The pebbly surface of the macadam on the roadway—the road-building process had been invented by and named after a Scotsman, John Loudon MacAdam—had been darkened by one of the frequent showers released by the clouds and when the sun came back out, the reddish surface of the road sparkled happily.

  I am Scottish neither by ethnicity nor heritage, as far as I know, but I have always felt instantly and strangely at home here. Some might say that I was probably a Scot in a previous life, and I suppose I could claim to be the reincarnation of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce or some other great warrior hero of the ancient and misty past. Others may think that as a golf writer, of course I feel an affinity to the place where the game was invented, Dutch, French and Chinese claims to the contrary nothwithstanding. But that doesn’t explain that deep inner feeling of being home whenever I arrive back in Scotland. I don’t try to explain it, it just is.

  Mary Jane had drifted off to sleep. Neither of us had slept very much on the overnight flight. The cabin had been crowded, noisy with caterwauling children and too hot, and just as I was beginning to nod off a bit, the flight crew had thrown on the lights and began serving us breakfast, a mere two hours after they had cleared away the dinner. I knew that I would be sleepy soon, but had learned over the years to fight off sleep on the first day in Europe as long as possible, to get my internal clock adjusted to its new time zone.

  I clicked on the radio and found one of the many BBC channels, which was playing some kind of retrospective of Frank Sinatra, the Columbia Years. Frankie launched into “The Lady is a Tramp” and I motored along with him, swinging up the A80 and merging onto the M9 signposted for “The North.”

  We weren’t heading too far north. I had arranged to spend the first couple nights of our trip with an old friend of mine, Duncan Taylor, a longtime rules official and golf professional who lived just past Glendevon, down the road from the Gleneagles resort. I had met Duncan years before at the U.S. Open, where he had been imported to help with rules adjudication, and we saw each other annually after that. He had spent some time in Boston, where I had taken him to some of our good local courses, and he had issued a longstanding invitation to visit with him and his wife Vivienne in Scotland. We were taking him up on the offer.

  The local Scottish version of the BBC interrupted Frankie’s singing at the top of the hour, and I listened to the news announcer telling us of a work stoppage in the Borders, a football fans “incident” after a heated match in Inverness, and the weather report, which called for the usual strong gales across the Orkneys.

  “And in sport,” the announcer said, “The world’s best golfers will gather next week in St. Andrews for the Open Championship. But they may find a reception not to their liking from one group. Jane Harrison reports from Fife…”

  Jane Harrison, whose Scottish brogue was as thick as the Argyle sweater she was probably wearing, told us that a group called Eliminate Golf, or EGo, was planning a series of protests and marches in the Auld Grey Toon during the week of the Open championship. This organization was apparently down on golf, holding that it was a rich white man’s game that discriminated against minorities and women, desecrated the environment and diverted attention and especially funds from the world’s poor, who were more important, said Jane’s interviewee, “than this group of coddled, spoiled, overpaid leeches who do nothing, really, for the benefit of the world.”

  The speaker, a male with a deep, dramatically theatrical baritone voice, continued. “Just take this one week, Jane,” he said into the microphone. “It will cost more than three hundred and fifty million pounds to stage this tournament here in St. Andrews next week, and that’s not counting the time and talent of the local residents here who will be displaced, delayed and disgusted by the many thousands of visitors who will traipse through our city. Imagine what good could be done with three hundred and fifty million pounds among the poor, the disenfranchised and the hungry. And if you ask yourself, ‘Is it worth it?’ I think you’ll come to the same conclusion as EGo. Not by any reasonable standard of the Western world today.”

  “And that’s the opinion of Dr. Cecil Knox a professor of sociology at the University here in St. Andrews, and chairman of EGo, Eliminate Golf,” Jane said, wrapping up her piece.

  I laughed, but you had to admire the man’s brio. To stand on the street in St. Andrews, the Home of Golf, and diss the game took some fairly large onions. I made a mental note to go find this Knox guy next week. He might make an amusing sidebar for my readers back home.

  As we left the flat valley behind, the hills began to rise on both sides of the highway. Soon we passed by Stirling, the gateway to the Highlands, with its impressive fortress castle atop a forbidding and rocky escarpment. I would not want to be the general in charge of storming that castle, nor would I want to be the foot soldier to whom it fell to climb that cliff while fending off hails of arrows or buckets of boiling oil.

  North of Stirling, the Ochil Hills rose on both sides of the road. Too small, really, to be called “hills,” they were not yet mountains either. They rolled up dramatically in smooth, rounded lines, almost totally devoid of trees, and filled only with the heather and gorse, a billion or two white dots of grazing sheep, and the whistling of the ever-present wind.

  In another half hour, I pulled off the motorway at the Auchterarder exit. To the left, the road led up to the famous Gleneagles resort, a 1920s-era railroad resort hotel that was probably the classiest, and most expensive, golf resort in Scotland. I have been there many a time, both for pleasure and to cover the occasional Scottish Open staged on one of its three courses, and never tired of the place. Especially when someone else was picking up the tab.

  I turned instead to the right, crossed the railroad tracks, and followed the road through a narrow valley and into the dramatic cleft in the hills known as Glendevon. Over the millennia, the River Devon had etched away the rocky hills and created an east-west passage, bounded on both sides by the steeply rising terrain. I reached over and nudged Mary Jane awake. It was too pretty to miss.

  “Wow,” she said as we began driving through the glen, the twisting road following the rushing torrent of the river down below. “Where the hell are we? I have to pee.”

  Oh, yeah. That was another thing about traveling with Mary Jane. The woman has a bladder the size of a thimble. Luckily, I knew there was a pub and cafe not too far down the glen, and in short order, we pulled in, and Mary Jane scurried inside to take care of business. I got out, yawned and stretched in the cool sunshine of the morning. I could hear the river rushing through the rocks, and meadowlarks singing in the hills above. Above the tall forest of pines, I saw a pair of hawks riding the thermals way up high, and hoped that they—the hawks—had as much fun doing that as it looked from down below.

  “Right then,” Mary Jane said as she came out of the restaurant, looking refreshed and combed, and holding two cups of to-go coffee. “Where are we?”

  “Glendevon,” I told her. “Just passed Gleneagles, where I’ll bet we’re playing golf tomorrow. Duncan’s place is just down the road, maybe ten miles or so.”

  “It’s pretty,” Mary Jane said. “The air smells fresh.”

  “Aye,” I said. She looked at me, a smile playing about her lips.

  “Are we talking pirate?” she said, giggling a little.

  “Nae, lassie” I said. “Scottish.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, me hearty brawny lad, let us hie away forthwith. And is that a claymore ‘neath your kilt or are you just happy to see me?”

 
“Shut up and get in the car,” I said.

  She reached for the passenger door, realized it was the driver’s side, cursed under her breath and walked around. I smiled.

  Duncan Taylor’s home was in the village of Pool o’Muckhart, which was a village only in the sense that there was a group of about four buildings comprising a bank, a gas station, a pub and the local farm supplier who sold tractors, tools, feedstock and Lord knows what else. I didn’t see a pool and didn’t really want to know what a ‘muckhart’ was.

  We came out of Glendevon, still following the river as it spilled out of a reservoir near the end of the valley and headed toward the Firth of Forth. Now on the southeastern slopes of the Ochil Hills, the land faded away and flattened to the east, towards the capital of Edinburgh on the southern banks of the Firth, with the Kingdom of Fife and St. Andrews to the north.

  Duncan had sent us detailed directions, and it wasn’t hard to find his place. We motored slowly through the village, took a fork to the right off the main road, turned right again at the brown fence and continued up the road until we came to Duncan’s house. It was a pretty little whitewashed stucco cottage with a steep tiled roof, sitting back from the road on a small rise and surrounded by a small green lawn and a garden in the back. The sweep of the hill rose off in the distance beyond the house.

  I pulled in and honked and Duncan came bustling out to greet us. He was in his sixties, short and round, with a mass of snow-white hair and dramatic eyebrows that stuck out like the prow of a ship. He was delighted to welcome us, made a fuss over Mary Jane and ushered us inside.

  “Viv is out doing the marketing,” he said. “But I think I can manage a cup of tea. Sit down, sit down! How was the trip? You must be exhausted! Would you like to nap right off, or are you going to fight to the bitter end?”

  I laughed and led Mary Jane as we followed Duncan out to an enclosed sunny porch with floor to ceiling windows on three sides. It brought the garden and the looming hills into the house. The windows magnified the sunlight and made the room warm and bright. Vivienne had all kinds of things growing in pots tucked here and there on the floor and on shelves of the sunroom, and they apparently liked this warm, sunny spot, for the greenery spilled out and several plants were in gorgeous bloom.

  Duncan came out from the kitchen carrying a tray with teapot and china cups and a plate of cookies and set it down on a side table. He poured three cups of steaming tea, made sure we had the proper additions of sugar and milk, and finally sat down with us.

  We chatted idly about golf while we sipped our tea and munched on the lemon cookies. Duncan was always full of good gossip about the golf scene on his side of the Atlantic, as he often was called to work as a rules official for many of the European PGA tournaments, as well as all the big Scottish amateur and junior events. It gave him an excellent view of up-and-coming talent, and he always had several names that he predicted would be heard from in the years ahead.

  “So,” I asked him, putting my cup down. “Any dark horses likely to rear up on the Old Course next week?”

  His eyebrows jumped up and down energetically. “You mean, can anyone beat your American chaps?” he said, chuckling a bit. “That’s always the question, isn’t it? Even now that Tiger Woods has left the scene, there are always two or three more threatening to dominate.” He sipped some tea. “We used to have a complex about you Yanks, but now there are plenty of golfers on this side of the Pond that can put up a good fight. Padraig Harrington has been playing well this year, Poulter always seems to be on the verge, but I don’t think Justin Rose has quite rounded into top form this year.” He paused and nibbled the edge of a cookie.

  “But I know of two young men who might surprise some people next week,” he continued. One is Willie Dalgleish, who plays out of Helensburgh, just over the mountains from here,” he gestured vaguely to the west. “Fine player, long, straight and seems unflappable, like so many of the young men coming along these days. But if you wanted a longshot, I might suggest the Irish wonder, as they’re calling him, Conor Kelly. When you watch him play, I swear you can hear poetry and music in the air.”

  Mary Jane, who had been sitting quietly sipping tea and listening to us talk, laughed softly. “Yeats or Joyce?” she asked.

  Duncan smiled fondly at her. “Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Hearing the voice of James Joyce when watching a golfer play might not be so good, with all those run-on sentences and jagged use of language. No, my dear, Kelly’s play is more lyric and flowing, like William Butler Yeats.”

  “’Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,’” Mary Jane recited. “’Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are …’”

  “’ …Full of passionate intensity,’” Duncan finished. “Yes,” he said, nodding, “That’s it exactly. He plays with passionate intensity, although he’s far from the worst. It’s quite a thing to watch.”

  I stared at Mary Jane. “Poetry?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I was an English major at UMass before I got pregnant with Victoria,” she said. “The Irish poets were my favorites.”

  We heard a car pull up the drive. Duncan jumped to his feet. “That will be Viv,” he said.

  Vivienne Taylor was the model of a Scottish housewife. She was short and plump, with jet-black hair pulled back in a bun, and wore a plain cotton dress under an old blue sweater that hung down to her hips. She wore sensible black square-toe shoes and a pair of spectacles dangled from a chain around her neck. She also had an impish smile and a wonderful sense of humor.

  Mary Jane and I jumped up to greet her and offer help loading in the groceries, but she shooed us away back to the garden room while she put things away and puttered in her kitchen, and finally came out with her own cup of tea to join us.

  “Lovely day tis, yes?” she said, plumping herself down in a soft chair. “You poor people must be tired after that long flight. Duncan, why don’t you take these young people out for a walk? The fresh air is reviving after traveling.”

  “Yes, m’dear,” Duncan said, smiling. “I thought I’d let them relax a bit, take them out for a bit of lunch and a wander and we’ll let them catch up on their rest tonight.”

  All this talk about being sleepy was making me sleepy. I poured myself another cup of the strong dark tea. Mary Jane launched into her conversation starter, a sure-fire gambit designed to get others talking so she didn’t have to.

  “So,” she said, smiling at Viv, “How did you two meet?”

  “Oh, my,” Viv said, glancing over at Duncan and blushing a bit. “That was so many years ago, I think I’ve almost forgotten. I believe it was Duncan’s cousin Hugh who suggested that he give me a call. I had just broken up with another lad, and he thought Duncan would be amusing for me.”

  “What?” Duncan sat up. “There was someone else before me?” He sounded outraged, although we all knew he wasn’t. “I thought I was your first!”

  Viv chuckled softly. “Oh, you old coot,” she said. “You knew about Harold.”

  “So was he?” Mary Jane said.

  “What is that, m’dear?” Viv asked, giving her husband a fond glance.

  “Amusing?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, smiling to herself. “He was amusing and interesting and handsome, all at once. I think I knew in the first ten minutes that we would be married.”

  “And never a doubt since!” Duncan trumpeted.

  “Oh, I wouldna say that, old man,” she said. “I wonder sometimes when I hear you talking to the news presenters on the telly. Imagine,” she said, looking at Mary Jane for feminine support. “A grown man talking to the box!”

  Mary Jane smiled. “I’d say you only need to worry when he tells you the telly is talking back,” she said. We all laughed.

  Duncan helped me lug our suitcases into the house, and showed us to the guest room in the back. Mary Jane and I looked
longingly at the bed, covered with a thick down duvet and soft pillows, but we changed into blue jeans and sweaters and climbed into Duncan’s car.

  He drove us down to the Muckhart Golf Club on the other side of the town and ushered us into its rickety wooden clubhouse, a Victorian-era building with some elaborate gingerbread highlights. In the back there was a small dining room and bar overlooking the last hole, and we could see a four-ball of women, pulling their trolleys behind them, trundling up the fairway. Duncan was a member here and something of a celebrity, judging by the way he was greeted and backslapped by everyone. We sat down in a sunny corner and ordered some soup and toasties—basically a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich and one of Scotland’s true culinary delights. Even though we’d had two meals in the last six or seven hours, I was ravenous.

  People came and went throughout our lunch, stopping to chat with Duncan and shake our hands. When the four ladies we had seen on the 18th hole finished putting out and came inside, I saw that they were all well into their seventies, with grandmotherly white hair and rosy red cheeks. They parked themselves off in a corner, ordered gin and tonics all around and began a spirited discussion of who, actually, had won the match.

  It reminded me again of the egalitarian spirit that informs golf in Scotland. In almost all of the rest of the world, golf is an elitist game, played mainly by the upper classes who are the only ones who can afford steep greens fees and multi-thousand-dollar private-club dues. In Scotland, it’s quite the reverse, and the game is played and embraced by virtually everyone. Kids play after school. Grandmothers play in the morning, have a quick lunch and a few G&Ts and go home. A couple of elderly gents, both trailed by their dogs, will blast around a course on foot in two hours. Sure, there are some fancy and upscale places in Scotland where the great unwashed aren’t much welcomed—Muirfield and Royal Troon and Loch Lomond spring to mind—but for the most part, golf is viewed as a birthright of the Scots, and its cheap, accessible and accepted for almost everyone. It would have been rude of me to ask Duncan what his annual club dues were, but I knew they could not be more than about $200 a year. Probably less.