THE LOOPHOLE

“That isn’t the version I heard,” said Philip.

 One of the club members seated at the bar glanced around at the sound of raised voices, but when he saw who was involved only smiled and continued his conversation.

 The Haslemere Golf Club was fairly crowded that Saturday morning. And just before lunch it was often difficult to find a seat in the spacious clubhouse.

 Two of the members had already ordered their second round and settled themselves in the alcove overlooking the first hole long before the room began to fill up. Philip Masters and Michael Gilmour had finished their Saturday-morning ga

me earlier than usual and now seemed engrossed in conversation.

 “And what did you hear?” asked Michael Gilmour quietly, but in a voice that carried.

 “That you weren’t altogether blameless in the matter.”

 “I most certainly was,” said Michael. “What are you suggesting?”

 “I’m not suggesting anything,” said Philip. “But don’t forget, you can’t fool me. I employed you myself once, and I’ve known you for far too long to accept everything you say at face value.”

 “I wasn’t trying to fool anyone,” said Michael. “It’s common knowledge that I lost my job. I’ve never suggested otherwise.”

 “Agreed. But what isn’t common knowledge is how you lost your job and why you haven’t been able to find a new one.”

 “I haven’t been able to find a new one for the simple reason that jobs aren’t that easy to come by at the moment. And by the way, it’s not my fault you’re a success story and a bloody millionaire.”

 “And it’s not my fault that you’re penniless and always out of work. The truth is that jobs are easy enough to come by for someone who can supply references from his last employer.”

 “Just what are you hinting at?” said Michael.

 “I’m not hinting at anything.”

 Several members had stopped taking part in the conversation in front of them as they tried to listen to the one going on behind them.

 “What I am saying,” Philip continued, “is that no one will employ you for the simple reason that you can’t find anyone who will supply you with a reference—and everybody knows it.”

 Everybody didn’t know it, which explained why most people in the room were now trying to find out.

 “I was let go,” insisted Michael.

 “In your case ‘let go’ was just a euphemism for ‘fired.’ No one pretended otherwise at the time.”

 “I was made redundant,” repeated Michael, “for the simple reason that the company profits turned out to be a little disappointing this year.”

 “A little disappointing? That’s rich. They were nonexistent.”

 “Simply because we lost one or two of our major accounts to rivals.”

 “Rivals who, I’m informed, were only too happy to pay for a little inside information.”

 By now most members of the club had cut short their own conversations as they leaned, twisted, turned, and bent in an effort to capture every word coming from the two men seated in the window alcove of the clubroom.

 “The loss of those accounts was fully explained in the report to stockholders at this year’s annual meeting,” said Michael.

 “But was it explained to those same stockholders how a former employee could afford to buy a new car only a matter of days after being fired?” pursued Philip. “A second car, I might add.” Philip took a sip of his tomato juice.

 “It wasn’t new car,” said Michael defensively. “It was a second-hand Mini, and I bought it with part of my severance pay when I had to return the company car. And in any case, you know Carol needs her own car for the job at the bank.”

 “Frankly, I am amazed Carol has stuck it as long as she has after all you’ve put her through.”

 “All I’ve put her through—what are you implying?” asked Michael.

“I am not implying anything,” Philip retorted. “But the fact is that a certain young woman, who shall remain nameless”—this piece of information seemed to disappoint most eavesdroppers—“was also let ago at about the same time, not to mention pregnant.”

 The bartender had not been asked for a drink for nearly seven minutes, and by now there were few members still affecting not to be listening to the altercation between the two men. Some were even staring in open disbelief.

 “But I hardly knew her,” protested Michael.

 “As I said, that’s not the version I heard. And what’s more I’m told the child bears a striking resemblance—”

 “That’s going too far—”

 “Only if you have nothing to hide,” said Philip grimly.

 “You know I’ve nothing to hide.”

 “Not even the blond hairs Carol found all over the back seat of the new Mini? The girl at work was a blond, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, but those hairs came from a golden retriever.”

 “You don’t have a golden retriever.”

 “I know, but the dog belonged to the last owner.”

 “That bitch didn’t belong to the last owner, and I refuse to believe Carol fell for that old chestnut.”

 “She believed it because it was the truth.”

 “The truth, I fear, is something you lost contact with a long time ago. You were fired first because you couldn’t keep your hands off anything in a skirt under forty, and second because you couldn’t keep your fingers out of the till. I ought to know. Don’t forget I had to get rid of you for the same reasons.”

 Michael jumped up, his cheeks almost the color of Philip’s tomato juice. He raised his clenched fist and was about to take a swing at Philip when Colonel Mather, the club president, appeared at his side.

 “Good morning, sir,” said Philip calmly, rising for the colonel.

 “Good morning, Philip,” the colonel barked. “Don’t you think this little misunderstanding has gone quite far enough?”

 “Little misunderstanding?” protested Michael. “Didn’t you hear what he’s been saying about me?”

 “Every word, unfortunately, like any other member present,” said the colonel. Turning back to Philip, he added, “Perhaps you two should shake hands like good fellows and call it a day.”

 “Shake hands with that philandering, double-crossing shyster? Never,” said Philip. “I tell you, Colonel, he’s not fit to be a member of this club, and I can assure you that you’ve heard only half the story.”

 Before the colonel could attempt another round of diplomacy Michael sprang on Philip, and it took three men younger than the club president to pry them apart. The colonel immediately ordered both men off the premises, warning them that their conduct would be reported to the house committee at its next monthly meeting. And until that meeting had taken place, they were both suspended.

 The club secretary, Jeremy Howard, escorted the two men off the premises and watched Philip get into his Rolls-Royce and drive sedately down the drive and out through the gates. He had to wait on the steps of the club for several minutes before Michael departed in his Mini. He appeared to be sitting in the front seat writing something. When he had eventually passed through the club gates, the secretary turned on his heels and made his way back to the bar. What they did to each other after they left the grounds was none of his business.

 Back in the clubhouse, the secretary found that the conversation had not returned to the likely winner of the President’s Putter, the seeding of the Ladies’ Handicap Cup, or who might be prevailed upon to sponsor the Youth Tournament that year.

 “They seemed in a jolly enough mood when I passed them on the sixteenth hole earlier this morning,” the club captain informed the colonel.

 The colonel admitted to being mystified. He had known both men since the day they joined the club nearly fifteen years before. They weren’t bad lads, he assured the captain; in fact he rather liked them. They had played a round of golf every Saturday morning for as long as anyone could remember, and never a cross word had been known to pass between them.

 “Pity,” said the colonel. “I was hoping to ask Masters to sponsor the Youth Tournament this year.”

 “Good idea, but I can’t see you pulling that off now.”

 “I can’t imagine what they thought they were up to.”

 “Can it simply be that Philip is such a success story and Michael has fallen on hard times?” suggested the captain.

 “No, there’s more to it than that,” replied the colonel. “This morning’s little episode requires a fuller explanation,” he added sagely.

 Everyone in the club was aware that Philip Masters had built up his own busines

s from scratch after he had left his first job as a kitchen salesman. “Ready-Fit Kitchens” had started in a shed at the end of Philip’s garden and ended up in a factory on the other side of town that employed more than three hundred people. After Ready-Fit went public, the financial press speculated that Philip’s shares alone had to be worth a couple of million. When five years later the company was taken over by the John Lewis Partnership, it became public knowledge that Philip had walked away from the deal with a check for seventeen million pounds and a five-year service contract that would have pleased a pop star. Some of the windfall had been spent on a magnificent Georgian house in sixty acres of woodland just outside Haslemere: He could even see the golf course from his bedroom. Philip had been married for more than twenty years, and his wife, Sally, was chairman of the regional branch of the Save the Children Fund and a JP. Their son had just won a place at St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

 Michael was the boy’s godfather.

Michael Gilmour could not have been a greater contrast. On leaving school, where Philip had been his closest friend, he had drifted from job to job. He started out as a trainee with Watneys, but lasted only a few months before moving on to work as a rep with a publishing company. Like Philip, he married his childhood sweetheart, Carol West, the daughter of a local doctor.

 When their own daughter was born, Carol complained about the hours Michael spent away from home, so he left publishing and signed on as a distribution manager with a local soft drinks firm. He lasted for a couple of years until his deputy was promoted over him as area manager, at which decision Michael left in a huff. After his first time on unemployment, Michael joined a grain-packing company, but found he was allergic to corn and, having been supplied with a medical certificate to prove it, collected his first redundancy cheque. He then joined Philip as a Ready-Fit Kitchens rep but left without explanation within a month of the company being taken over. Another spell of unemployment followed before he took up the job of sales manager with a company that made microwave ovens. He seemed to have settled down at last until, without warning, he was let go. It was true that the company profits had been halved that year, while the company directors were sorry to see Michael go—or that was how it was expressed in their in-house magazine.

Carol was unable to hide her distress when Michael was let go for the fourth time. They could have used the extra cash now that their daughter had been offered a place at art school.

 Philip was the girl’s godfather.

 “What are you going to do about it?” asked Carol anxiously, when Michael had told her what had taken place at the club.

 “There’s only one thing I can do,” he replied. “After all, I have my reputation to consider. I shall sue the bastard.”

 “That’s a terrible way to talk about your oldest friend. And anyway we can’t afford to go to law,” said Carol. “Philip’s a millionaire and we’re penniless.”

 “Can’t be helped,” said Michael. “I’ll have to go through with it, even if it means selling everything.”

 “And even if the rest of your family has to suffer along with you?”

 “None of us will suffer when he ends up paying my costs plus massive damages.”

 “But you could lose,” said Carol. “Then we would end up with nothing—worse than nothing.”

 “‘That’s not possible,” said Michael. “He made the mistake of saying all those things in front of witnesses. There must have been over fifty members in the clubhouse this morning, including the president of the club and the editor of the local paper, and they couldn’t have failed to hear every word.”

 Carol remained unconvinced, and she was relieved that during the next few days Michael didn’t mention Philip’s name once. She hoped that her husband had come to his senses and the whole affair was best forgotten.

 But then the Haslemere Chronicle decided to print its version of the quarrel between Michael and Philip. Under the headline FIGHT BREAKS OUT AT GOLF CLUB came a carefully worded account of what had taken place on the previous Saturday. The editor of the Haslemere Chronicle knew only too well that the conversation itself was unprintable unless he also wanted to be sued, but he managed to include enough innuendo in the article to give a full flavor of what had happened that morning.

 “That’s the final straw,” said Michael, when he finished reading the article for a third time. Carol realized that nothing she could say or do was going to stop her husband now.

The following Monday, Michael contacted a local solicitor, Reginald Lomax, who had been at school with them both. Armed with the article, Michael briefed Lomax on the conversation that the Chronicle had felt injudicious to publish in any great detail. Michael also gave Lomax his own detailed account of what had happened at the club that morning, and handed him four pages of handwritten notes to back his claims up.

 Lomax studied the notes carefully.

 “When did you write these?”

 “In my car, immediately after we were suspended.”

 “That was circumspect of you,” said Lomax. “Most circumspect.” He stared quizzically at his client over the top of his half-moon spectacles. Michael made no comment. “Of course you must be aware that the law is an expensive pastime,” Lomax continued. “Suing for slander will not come cheap, and even with evidence as strong as this”—he tapped the notes in front of him—“you could still lose. Slander depends so much on what other people remember or, more important, will admit to remembering.”

 “I’m well aware of that,” said Michael. “But I’m determined to go through with it. There were over fifty people in the club within earshot that morning.”

 “So be it,” said Lomax. “Then I shall require five thousand pounds in advance as a contingency fee to cover all the immediate costs and the preparations for a court case.” For the first time Michael looked hesitant.

 “Returnable, of course, but only if you win the case.”

 Michael removed his checkbook and wrote out a figure that, he reflected, would only just be covered by the remainder of his severance pay.

 The writ for slander against Philip Masters was issued the next morning by Lomax, Davis & Lomax.

 A week later the writ was accepted by another firm of solicitors in the same town, actually in the same building.

Back at the club, debate on the rights and wrongs of Gilmour v. Masters did not subside as the weeks passed.

 Club members whispered furtively among themselves whether they might be called to give evidence at the trial. Several had already received letters from Lomax, Davis & Lomax requesting statements about what they could recall being said by the two men that morning. A good many pleaded amnesia or deafness but a few turned in graphic accounts of the quarrel. Encouraged, Michael pressed on, much to Carol’s dismay.

 One morning about a month later, after Carol had left for the bank, Michael Gilmour received a call from Reginald Lomax. The defendant’s solicitors, he was informed, had requested a “without prejudice” consultation.

 “Surely you’re not surprised by that after all the evidence we’ve collected?” Michael replied.

 “It’s only a consultation,” Lomax reminded him.

 “Consultation or no consultation, I won’t settle for less than one hundred thousand pounds.”

 “Well, I don’t even know that they—” began Lomax.

 “I do, and I also know that for the last eleven weeks I haven’t been able to even get an interview for a job because of that bastard,” Michael said with contempt. “Nothing less than one hundred thousand pounds, do you hear me?”

 “I think you are being a trifle optimistic, in the circumstances,” said Lomax. “But I’ll call you and let you know the other side’s response as soon as the meeting has taken place.”

 Michael told Carol the good news that evening, but like Reginald Lomax she was skeptical. The ringing of the phone interrupted their discussion on the subject. Michael, with Carol standing by his side, listened carefully to Lomax’s report. Philip, it seemed, was willing to settle for twenty-five thousand pounds and had agreed to paying both sides’ costs.

 Carol nodded her grateful acceptance, but Michael only repeated that Lomax was to hold out for nothing less than one hundred thousand. “Can’t you see that Philip’s already worked out what it’s going to cost him if this case ends up in court? And he knows only too well that I won’t give in.”

Carol and Lomax remained unconvinced. “It’s much more touch-and-go than you realize,” the solicitor told him. “A High Court jury might consider the words were only meant as banter.”

 “Banter? But what about the fight that followed the banter?” said Michael.

 “Started by you,” Lomax pointed out. “Twenty-five thousand is a good figure in the circumstances,” he added.

 Michael refused to budge, and ended the conversation by repeating his demand for one hundred thousand pounds.

 Two weeks passed before the other side offered fifty thousand in exchange for a quick settlement. This time Lomax was not surprised when Michael rejected the offer out of hand. “Quick settlement be damned. I’ve told you I won’t consider less than a hundred thousand.” Lomax knew by now that any plea for prudence was going to fall on deaf ears.

 It took three more weeks and several more phone calls between solicitors before the other side accepted that they were going to have to pay the full one hundred thousand pounds. Reginald Lomax rang Michael to inform him of the news late one evening, trying to make it sound as if he had scored a personal triumph. He assured Michael that the necessary papers could be drawn up immediately and the settlement signed in a matter of days.

 “Naturally all your costs will be covered,” he added.

 “Naturally,” said Michael.

 “So all that is left for you to do now is agree on a statement.”

 A short statement was penned and, with the agreement of both sides, issued to the Haslemere Chronicle. The paper printed the contents the following Friday on its front page. “The writ for slander between Gilmour and Masters,” the Chronicle reported, “has been withdrawn with the agreement of both sides but only after a substantial out-of-court settlement by the defendant. Philip Masters has withdrawn unreservedly what was said at the club that morning and ha

s given an unconditional apology; he has also made a promise that he will never repeat the words used again. Mr. Masters has paid the plaintiff’s costs in full.”

 Philip wrote to the colonel the same day, admitting perhaps he had had a little too much to drink on the morning in question. He regretted his impetuous outburst, apologized, and assured the club’s president it would never happen again.

 Carol was the only one who seemed to be saddened by the outcome.

 “What’s the matter, darling?” asked Michael. “We’ve won, and what’s more it’s solved our financial problems.”

 “I know,” said Carol, “but is it worth losing your closest friend for one hundred thousand pounds?”

 On the following Saturday morning Michael was pleased to find an envelope among his morning post with the Golf Club crest on the flap. He opened it nervously and pulled out a single sheet of paper. It read:

 Dear Mr. Gilmour,

 At the monthly committee meeting held last Wednesday Colonel Mather raised the matter of your behavior in the clubhouse on the morning of Saturday, April 16.

 It was decided to minute the complaints of several members, but on this occasion only to issue a severe reprimand to you both. Should a similar incident occur in the future, loss of membership would be automatic.

 The temporary suspension issued by Colonel Mather on April 16 is now lifted.

 Yours sincerely,

 Jeremy Howard (Secretary)

 “I’m off to do the shopping,” shouted Carol from the top of the stairs. “What are your plans for the morning?”

 “I’m going to have a round of golf,” said Michael, folding up the letter.

 “Good idea,” said Carol to herself as she wondered whom Michael would find to play against in the future.

 Quite a few members noticed Michael and Philip teeing up at the first hole that Saturday morning. The club captain commented to the colonel that he was glad to observe that the quarrel had been sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction.

 “Not to mine,” said the colonel under his breath. “You can’t get drunk on tomato juice.”

 “I wonder what the devil they can be talking about?” the club captain said as he stared at them both through the bay windows. The colonel raised his binoculars to take a closer look at the two men.

 “How could you possibly miss a four-foot putt, dummy?” asked Michael when they had reached the first green. “You must be drunk again.”

 “As you well know,” replied Philip, “I never drink before dinner, and I therefore suggest that your allegation that I am drunk again is nothing less than slander.”

 “Yes, but where are your witnesses?” said Michael as they moved up on to the second tee. “I had over fifty, don’t forget.”

 Both men laughed.

 Their conversation ranged over many subjects as they played the first eight holes, never once touching on their past quarrel until they reached the ninth green, the farthest point from the clubhouse. They both checked to see there was no one within earshot. The nearest player was still putting out some two hundred yards behind them on the eighth hole. It was then that Michael removed a bulky brown envelope from his golf bag and handed it over to Philip.

 “Thank you,” said Philip, dropping the package into his own golf bag as he removed a putter. “As neat a little operation as I’ve been involved in for a long time,” Philip added as he addressed the ball.

 “I end up with forty thousand pounds,” said Michael grinning, “while you lose nothing at all.”

 “Only because I pay tax at the highest rate and can therefore claim the loss as a legitimate business expense,” said Philip, “and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t. once employed you.”

 “And I, as a successful litigant, need pay no tax at all on damages received in a civil case.”

 “A loophole that even this chancellor hasn’t caught on to,” said Philip.

 “Even though it went to Reggie Lomax, I was sorry about the solicitors’ fees,” added Michael.

 “No problem, old fellow. They’re also one hundred percent claimable against tax. So as you see, I didn’t lose a penny and you ended up with forty thousand pounds tax free.”

 “And nobody the wiser,” said Michael, laughing.

 The colonel put his binoculars back into their case.

 “Had your eye on this year’s winner of the President’s Putter, Colonel?” asked the club captain.

 “No,” the colonel replied. “The certain sponsor of this year’s Youth Tournament.”

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