Towards the Fall

AFTERTHOUGHT

By GILES PLAYFAIR

THERE is not much kick, I suppose, to be got 1 out of calling London. or even South Ken- sington, one's native town, so that if one has the misfortune to be born there, as I had, one is inclined to seek a fantastic alternative. This came to me ready-made at a very early age. As an infant in arms I was taken to breathe my 'native air' in St Andrews. How invigorating I found it then I no longer recall, but I think of it now as the best of all possible tonics.

My father was not born in St Andrews. Nor was his father before him. Nor were any of my ancestors. But the myth which I inherited, and in which 1 profoundly believe, is of fairly long standing. It can be traced to the year 1799, when James Playfair. a prolific writer of vast and learned works, was appointed Principal of the United Colleges of St Andrews Univer- sity. He was my great-great-grandfather; and, according to his younger daughter Janet, the 'keen regret' which be and his family felt at the prospect of being 'cooped up in a nasty con- fined town' was in his case swiftly offset by the flattering warmth of his reception there. 'It is so pleasing.' Janet wrote in her journal. 'to be popular.'

The gratification must have communicated it- self, in an increasingly inflated form, to his descendants. Even for Janet, `the nasty con- fined town' eventually became a lovable 'grey old city,' and later generations adopted it as their own. Very few of the Principal's descen- dants, it is true, have gone to the length of actually living or dying in St Andrews. but nearly all of them have insisted on being buried t:tere. The cathedral burial ground is now populated to quite a remarkable degree by Playfairs.

St Andrews, I should add, has not been un- responsive to this devotion. It has renamed one of its streets Playfair Terrace. In its Church of the Holy Trinity there is a Playfair Chapel. And in the courtyard of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club there is to be seen a rather hideous, but doubtless well-meant, drinking fountain, that was erected in memory of my great-uncle Lyon.

To my great-great-uncle Hugh, however, St Andrews is indebted, if that be the right word, for something more than atavistic loyalty. Though in reality it was no more his native town than it is mine, he did eventually retire to it, and in 1842 was elected Provost. A man of com- manding will, apparently—his career had been spent quelling rebellions in the far-flung Empire —he is credited during his term of office with rescuing the 'ancient ecclesiastical Metropolis of Scotland from decay' and transforming it into what it is today: a popular resort and the wiling capital of the world.

Whether this achievement can be considered meritorious is another matter. Quite possibly, there are St Andrews citizens who, viewing it historically, are obliged to conclude that it was the initial step taken on the road to perdition. And, indeed, there is no denying that the frivolous tastes which inspired my great-great- uncle's reformative zeal—his fondness of the drama as well as his passion for golf—have led to the slow but sure corrosion of those God- fearing principles which once characterised St Andrews life.

Not, to be fair to my great-great-uncle Hugh, that such horrors as mixed bathing could have been foreseen by him in 1842. They were hardly foreseen by me in 1920. which is the year to which my conscious memories of St Andrews date back. At that time, there were three appro- priately enclosed salt-water swimming pools: one for the men, another for the ladies, and the third for the children. No respectable person would have dreamed of displaying himself in the open sea.

But worse has happened to St Andrews than the massing of its half-naked visitors on the beach. It was also in 1920, I recall, on a golden Saturday, that I scored the first and only athletic success of my life. I won the finals of the children's putting competition. This was a trebly sweet victory. I was profoundly and hopelessly in love with my opponent, a girl a couple of years older than I. She also had the reputation of invincibility on the course, and though I believe she allowed me two strokes a hole, that did not lessen my sense of triumph.

Euphoria must account for the fact that next day, which was the Sabbath, I started sand- papering my niblick, and was caught in the act and severely reprimanded by the landlady of the boarding-house where I was staying with my family.

It was during the war that the rot really started. Some Polish troops, stationed in St Andrews, began to show increasing signs of rest- lessness; and at the urgent request of General Eisenhower himself, so it is said, the City Fathers reluctantly agreed to Sunday golf in the after- noon on the Eden Course only, which happens to be the farthest removed from general observation.

I did not hear about this until 1948, when I was in St Andrews to bury my mother. A cousin by marriage had made the arrangements, and he drove me from the station to the hotel where he had booked a room for me.

'You'll forgive me for not corning in with you,' he said. 'But I don't like the manager.'

'Oh. Why not?'

My cousin hesitated. 'Well, he's English, to begin with,' he muttered. and left it at that.

Later, after a lone dinner in the hotel, the mystery was somewhat surprisingly resolved for me. I was approached by the head waiter with an invitation from the manager, whom I had not yet laid eyes on, to have a nightcap with him in his private office. He turned out to be a vigorous-looking young Englishman, with tousled hair, and he came more or less straight to the point. 'I believe you have some influence in this town,' he said. 'I mean you're a Playfair.'

Filled with the pride of the family fantasy, I nodded assent.

'Well, let me tell you,' he continued, 'unless you people wake up and allow Sunday golf, St Andrews hasn't a chance. The tourists won't come here.'

He told me of the concession that had been made during the war, but that, he said, was a piddling reform. Nothing short of the removal of all restrictions would be enough, he insisted. It was obvious why my cousin disliked him.

His own hotel has since been closed down and, for all I know, he himself is dead—or back in England. But, just the same, his pagan views have prevailed. Today, so I am reliably in- formed, on both Sunday mornings and after- noons, the New, the Jubilee, the Penny Putting and the Ladies' Putting, as well as the Eden, are all open for play. The Old Course alone remains closed—and that as a mere gesture to tradition.

I do not report any of this from personal knowledge, because it so happens that in recent years I have only visited St Andrews during deep winter. It still looks to me the 'grey old city' that my forebears bequeathed me. The beach is understandably as deserted as it used to be in high summer-time. And rain or snow or a stiff wind whipping in from the North Sea is likely to discourage the sinful occurrence of golf on the Sabbath, and on weekdays, too, for that matter.

Indeed, as I stand in the cathedral burial ground, thinking, not altogether pessimistically, of the day when I may lie there, I have the illusion that my native air is as pure as it must have been when I first breathed it. Except, pos- sibly, for the pollution of smoke from a towering factory chimney—and I can't fairly blame my great-great-uncle Hugh for that.