Odense Golf Club

“Since you have developed such an aversion to airports I have arranged a lift from Sandwich to Hamburg.”
 
Is this a favour meriting a discount on my fee? I have never asked, it comes with the trade. It is true that airports make me angry, a lift from Herbert was a much better idea. At six in the morning, 11th June 2011 we set off from the Quay side car park Sandwich, Kent.

The car, a Mercedes glided away. I began to describe it predicting this account. It is lived in like my face, modern enough to have the necessary gadgets, a music system that picks every note, a sat nav that gave instructions in the most discreet German, a climatic control that made no noise but for the inaudible whoosh that silenced any outside noise. Once on the ferry to Ostende the sound of gulls, tannoy and sea made me say to self “concentrate Michael, this is not a film but a job”.


Back on the road the motorways made Europe, the Continent, appear as a lot of green fields. Herbert drove fast, each field a frame replaced by another. There was no sense of speed, it is a Mercedes, only the Sat Nav voice and the display with colours more gaudy than the outside reporting that we were ever nearer to Hamburg railway station. Were there borders? There were no places that we stopped other than for lunch at a restaurant five kilometres of the track where Herbert was, I gathered from the greetings, known as a customer. A little wine, some beetroot too.

I knew Herbert a little since he had visited Sandwich to play drums with a Dixie Jazz band, a fixture at the festival and a couple of times between.  He has a mistress there who I know passing well since the rich retired meet often in the streets of any small town. We meet in walled gardens. During one or more such supper Herbert told me he had made a later fortune in floor coverings .


Herbert knew my story: a long time in Africa, once with HM Government, a hotel, Zanzibar, latterly English teaching and the publication of Kiswahili language primers.

It was understood that we neither of us would want to say more. That is easy for men, there is no need to fill the silence with questions. Herbert put Dixie on the car stereo, mostly recordings of the band where he brushed the drums. He remarked on the quality of the solos, occasionally swapped, with a touch of his thumb, to Duke Ellington. The fields gave way to suburbs and then, some relief, to town, until the Sat Nav voice said, in English, “You have arrived at Hamburg railway station.” We had been seven hours together, most pleasantly, with four questions each. Now we spoke again
“You live in Hamburg?”

“No Dusseldorf. I will go there now

“Quite a drive. Anyway thanks for the lift”
“It has been my pleasure

Standard lines, standard play, but still a long way out of his ordinary drive to Dusseldorf. I had no idea nor, I noticed inclination, to ask how the Washerman would know of Herbert.

At Hamburg station my hire car booking was all set, the booking clerk spoke English with a top marks for grammar, the sat nav was set in English. They did not ask me where I was going. I set the new destination: City Hotel, Odense, distance to destination 210.6 kilometres. “That won’t take long on the smooth roads of northern Europe”. Herbert had driven the meat of it.


And it did not take long, two hours and a bit, the light did not fade, there was no border that I noticed, and City Hotel, Odense had kept my reservation, (paid for in advance), had some parking, a beer for the room, which was of course exactly as such a room would be in any part of Europe that is inside the fence. That red passport, that anonymous and anodyne look of an old white man on a business trip made me a very comfortable part of the wallpaper. As the hotel room closed, the softest of clunks, I felt very relieved and for a second very happy that I had left Tanzania for the last time and jobs, few as they were, would be henceforth in Europe

“No one will notice you there. You will like that.”

The next morning Lars Smith was waiting when I arrived forty five minutes early of the tee time he had booked. It was our first, perhaps our last meeting, but anonymous as we are, any two old men meeting, recognition was immediate. Lars introduced himself and then his companion: “This is Magarethe” Twenty minutes of conversation, all of well told stories, much rehearsed less often played out.

“So what is your handicap?” I told him

“Mine is the same, so we will play match play, every hole a competition”

Lars went to the cloakroom eight minutes before we were timed to play. He left a simple Nokia on the table. It was switched of. My voice recorder is smaller but more obvious in its function.

"Crackerjack". There is still a relief when the first drive sets off somewhere high and forward. We played even up to the ninth, though I had the impression that Lars was playing a little inside himself. He gave me one that was too long, missed, by a few inches a couple he should have taken.

The notes said say the piece on the ninth hole. But the ninth is short at Odense so that could not be done. The first hitch? One never knows with the Washerman. I decided to leave it until the tenth: I like a decision every now and again

I won the ninth, so drove off the tenth. Lars hit  very well to a yard of mine. That was very convenient. “This is the ninth hole"  I said very clearly to the pocket my recorder was in. Lars, as obviously, had his Nokia in his hand as we walked together down the fairway. I said my lines, he said his. There were some variations- enough to justify the trip and the product. Once we had to send reports, but now, easier, just send the edited audio. But, simple as it is, it does not work. Secret as we are these mpg files exist, they can and will be copied. We have used this authenticity to make our lies more credible.


We were even at the seventeenth where my impression, (my conviction really) that Lars was playing a little inside himself was confirmed. His first putt was dead though I did not give it. On the eighteenth his approach shot was that of a practised amateur familiar with the lay of Odense Golf Club.


Back in the club house Lars said we will take a shower, be fresh for dinner and the ladies. In the shower once we were naked Lars turned the showers to full and then turned full on all the basin taps. I remembered suddenly the waves crashing the coral beneath the bar at Sazani Beach and the story teller saying nothing obscures the recorded voice better than the sound of moving water. Lars came naked from the cubicle, the shower jets hissed the steam rose- excellent changing rooms.

He said, the lines of a familiar play.
“We can talk privately here which is we presume way you have made this long journey”.

We did ebding with:
“And thanksfor the golf”

I felt some relief, some liberated feeling that I may have actually on this occasion.
Dressed, me in a tie, we went to meet the ladies. Margarethe introduced Birgitte. Our conversation for drinks and dinner was very relaxed. I had now private as well as professional reasons to go more easy on the wine that is my lonely habit. In the morning Birgitte calling from the shower, the accent I love:

“Get up Englishman and have breakfast with me. Then I must leave you, it is a working day in Denmark”

On the way to Hamburg, the car smooth, I wished for more jobs like these. Everything had gone very efficiently, pleasantly, it was all very Denmark. After dropping the car at Hamburg station, tempted to stay an extra night, I called in a café to send the now pointless audio tapes- I had edited them in the presence of Birgitte- and to check my account. The fee was already there- very nice, from Living English- very imaginative. I said out loud "It is all commercial now,thank god.”