The Amateurs (22 page)

I
T HADN’T BEEN THE WORST PULL IN THE WORLD; HE JUST
came in a little heavily with the right hand, coming across it and tugging it a little to the left. However, with the prevailing right-to-left wind, it was enough to send the shot ten yards offline, where it smacked down into the left-hand greenside bunker.

Worse was in store when they got up there. The ball had plugged under the lip, buried down in the fine sand. ‘Fuck,’ Stevie said.

‘Oh shit,’ April said, tiptoeing to get a look over the ropes and the heads of the other spectators.

Ranta couldn’t believe it. The minute he puts his bet on the cunt makes the first bad swing he’s made in six fucking holes?

Gary was thinking. There was no way to play the ball forward. No way back either. About the only shot open to him was to try and blast it out sideways. Get it out close to the green, get up and down for bogey and then try and make
birdie down the last. If he…Gary stopped himself, derailing the thought process while it was happening.

One shot at a time.

He took the sand wedge from Stevie and dug his feet into the sparkling, powdery sand. Too hard and he might send it flying into the thick rough behind the green. Too soft and he might not clear the bunker. He took a couple of jerky, nervy practice swings, closing the clubface right down to get it to cut into the sand behind the ball.
Just dig the fucker out
. He hovered the club behind the ball and held his breath.

‘Come on, Gary,’ April whispered.

An explosion of sand and he was brushing grains of it out of his face and hair, coughing as he squinted to see where the ball had gone, noticing how oddly silent the crowd were. Gary looked down. There it was–maybe half an inch from where it had been when he swung the club.

‘OK, come on,’ he whispered to himself as he retook his stance. He swung again. Another eruption of sand, launching the ball up and forward this time–where it caught the lip of the bunker and bounced back to land in almost exactly the same spot again.

Ranta’s face was turning a very alarming colour.

Silence as he swung the club for a third time–not even caring any more–and, incredibly, the ball hopped up and landed in the light rough around the edge of the green, about thirty yards from the hole.

Gary put his hands on his hips and stared at the ground.

There was that fizzing sensation in his skull.

‘Easy,’ Stevie said.

‘Grip. Hoor. Baws. Cunt,’ Gary said.

Stevie handed Gary the eight-iron to play his pitch-and-run and tiptoed away from him towards the ropes. Cathy
came up behind him. ‘Stevie son, is he all right?’ she whispered.

‘He’s fine. Just having a wee turn.’

Gary growled and then made a strange bark.

‘He’s fine,’ Stevie said with a reassurance he did not feel.

Lee Irvine–a real Ayrshireman, an unreconstructed product of the old school–was what his mother affection ately termed a ‘plain eater’. Which is to say that he was a thirty-five-year-old man with the palate of a fussy toddler. He would not eat anything in any kind of sauce. Apart from when it came soaked in fat-dripping batter, he had never knowingly eaten fish in his life. Other than potatoes he did not eat vegetables of any description. He liked his meat well done, his cheese orange, his bread white and he was as likely to be found munching on a substantial penis as he was eating a salad.

Consequently, it was with a mixture of trepidation, revulsion and outright fury that he scanned the room-service menu at the Glasgow Radisson. His eyebrows dancing, his lips quivering, his pupils widening: he looked like a devout Muslim reading a very extreme S&M manual. Every dish, even when it contained a central ingredient Lee could tolerate–hamburger, beef, chicken–had been corrupted and perverted by some demonic addition: ‘
black olives…lemon mayonnaise…garlic-and-herb crust…Jerusalem artichokes…fennel
’. Whit in the name o’ fuck was fennel when it was at hame? Glossy photographs of the repulsive dishes–marooned in the middle of enormous white plates and brazenly oozing their luminous sauces–further taunted him. Fuck this. Lee was starving. Hank. Fucking Hank Marvin. Lee Marvin.

Lee was Lee.

There was a chippy near the station. He’d seen it on the way here. Black-pudding supper. The auld darkie’s walloper and chips. Magic.

He stepped out of the elevator and crossed the sunlit atrium towards the revolving glass doors that led to the street. Lost in hunger he realised too late who was coming swirling through the glass doors.

‘A’right, Lee?’ Alec Campbell said.

As his knees buckled Lee sensed someone else moving up behind him, then something hard hidden beneath a coat was being pressed between his kidneys and then he was being led towards a car idling at the kerb.

Suddenly he wasn’t hungry any more.

The wind had really freshened now as Stevie and Gary walked in silence down the eighteenth fairway towards his drive, a decent strike considering he’d hit it in a numb daze. He’d managed to get up and down in two at the last hole, for a triple bogey six. Three over par. Even a birdie here would most likely leave him missing the cut by a single stroke. He fingered the indent in his temple, aware of the fizzing sensation, the sparkling lemonade in his skull intensifying. ‘Oh well,’ Stevie said as they reached his ball, ‘we gave it a good go, eh?’

‘Fudfannyflapsboot,’ Gary replied.

They looked down the fairway to where the grandstands surrounded the eighteenth green. It looked like quite a crowd–people already reserving their places for when the likes of Linklater and Keel started to come rolling through in a couple of hours. Stevie consulted the yardage book.

‘You’ve got about 190 to the pin.’

‘Pishpishcuntpish,’ Gary said, plucking a tuft of grass and
flicking it into the air above their heads. It blew straight over them and back down the fairway towards the tee.

‘Five?’ Stevie said.

‘Spunk. Six. Spunk ya slut.’

Intae this wind?
Stevie thought. But what was the point in arguing now? Let him hit what he wanted. Stevie pulled the six-iron from the bag and said, ‘Give it a good skelp…’

‘Fucking cock.’

Gary sighted towards the green, the wind blowing a little from right to left, the pin back left of the green.
Keep it right of the flagstick. In line with the clock above the entrance to the clubhouse.

He settled the clubhead behind the ball.

Stevie closed his eyes.

Bert looked at the ground.

‘Come on, son, stick it close,’ Ranta whispered, praying that a birdie and two over might just be good enough.

Cathy looked up to the sky and whispered,
‘Come on, you.’

April was surprised at how much she wanted him to hit a good shot. Surprised at how she felt a little depressed when she allowed her mind to follow the logical chain of events that would be caused by him hitting a bad shot: he misses the cut and goes home and she never sees him again.

A long moment passed before Gary swung the club, whipping through the ball fast and hard, picking it cleanly off the fairway. He pivoted through the shot and came up watching the ball disappear into the sky above the clubhouse.

‘Slut,’ he said instantly.

‘Ye caught that,’ Stevie said.

In the crowd, in unison, Auld Bert and Robertson both murmured, ‘Gowf shot.’

They lost sight of the ball for a second. Then a cheer went
up from the grandstands as it landed at the front of the green, right in line with the clock, dead centre where Gary had been aiming. It bounced left and disappeared from sight into the heart of the green.

‘It’s good…’ Stevie said.

The cheer from the grandstands was still growing, twisting into a kind of
‘oooohhh’
.

‘Fud?’ Gary said.

The
oooohhh
reached a crescendo and then exploded into a roar as everyone in the grandstands leapt to their feet as one, the clapping and whistling carrying down towards them on the breeze.

‘Flaps?’ Gary said, numb and confused, his skull boiling.

Stevie turned to him. ‘I think you’ve…’

Now everyone–from the people in the grandstands to the spectators all the way along the ropes–was going berserk. The tickling sensation in his skull erupting now as Gary’s eyeballs flipped upwards in their sockets.

‘Urrr,’ he said, as his vision dimmed.

‘Hey!’ Stevie said, reaching out for him as he went over, clattering into the golf bag on his way down onto the hard, baked turf.

H
IS DAD WAS ON THE VERANDA AT
A
UGUSTA
N
ATIONAL, IN
the shade, just out of the hot sun. In front of him on the table was a bottle of the Grouse that was famous, an ice bucket, two cans of Sprite, two glasses and a pack of Regal. He was wearing the hat he always wore when he played in hot weather, an old-school Bing Crosby-style trilby in a lightweight blue-and-white-striped fabric, with faint brownish rings visible where his sweat had soaked through. The hat was tilted back at a rakish angle and Gary smiled as he watched his dad mixing himself a whisky and lemonade and thought to himself:
After you died I used to stuff my face into that hat so I could still smell you.

But he wasn’t dead. Here he was: fresh as the morning and very pleased with himself, laughing like a blocked drain as he torched another Regal.

‘Aye, by Christ, you should have seen his face! He’s four feet fae the hole–dead set for a birdie–ah’m aff the bloody green. Ye wouldnae believe it–ah chip in and he misses the putt! He whiffs it
and leaves it short! Ah thought Snead was gauny explode so ah did.’

Gary laughed. ‘So you won?’

‘Aye, three and two. The boys are up at the bar,’ his dad said, sipping the whisky. ‘By the way, son, that was some shot there. Had to have been two hunner yards.’

‘You saw that?’

‘Oh aye. Ah see all your shots. Ah see it when ye improve yer lie in the rough, when ye ground the club in the bunker. Everything.’

Gary felt his face going red. ‘I don’t–’

‘Hey, come on. Don’t kid a kidder.’

Gary thought he could smell a reeking sulphurous stench. He eyed his father–a man who had, on more than one occasion, found humour in farting in the faces of his wife and children–with suspicion, but the old boy was still talking. ‘It’s funny, ye’d think it would be more helpful to think of the dead when ye were about to do something that
wouldn’t
make them proud, eh? Then they could act as a moral corrective. So tae speak.’

How strange to be sitting here talking philosophy with his father, an electrician by trade.

‘What could I do that wouldn’t make you proud?’

His dad shook his head. ‘You’re that self-centred sometimes,’ he said. ‘What makes you think ah’m talking about you?’

Lee. Where had Lee got that money?

‘He’s no a bad boy really,’ his dad said. ‘He’s just had a bad run. Anyway,’ he started gathering up his cigarettes, his scorecard and pencil, ‘I’m away tae play the puggys. We won eighty dollars the other night. Two bells on the left and we nudged the other two up!’

Gary got up and went to follow him through the open doors and into the dark of the clubhouse, where a throng of golfers stood
laughing and joking at the bar. Sam Snead was talking to Harry Vardon. Payne Stewart was demonstrating a putting stroke to a baffled Walter Hagen.

‘Sorry, son,’ his dad said, putting a hand on Gary’s shoulder. ‘Members only in the clubhouse, ye know that.’

He did know that. He could already feel everything starting to whirl and blur around him as the terrible stench grew stronger, blocking out the pine, magnolia and dogwood.

‘Pauline left me, Dad.’

‘Oh aye?’ his dad said fairly cheerfully.

‘You never liked Pauline?’

‘Well, ah wis never that keen, son. Ah huv tae say.’

‘Why didn’t you–’

‘Ach, come on now. Giving advice about relationships is like giving advice about club selection. People always end up going with their gut feeling anyway. There’s no caddies in love…’

As his father said this the smell of pure sulphur hit Gary hard.

Robertson pulled the bottle of smelling salts back from Gary’s nose as he sat up coughing and blinking. He was in a tent of some kind, with faces all around him: his mum, Stevie, Dr Robertson, two uniformed St John’s ambulancemen, April.

‘What happened?’ he asked

‘You holed it,’ Stevie said.

‘You made the cut,’ April said. She was smiling.

P
AULINE WALKED THROUGH THE BIG, EMPTY ROOMS
alone, her heels echoing on the hardwood floor, the stifling heat pressing in on her. She could hear the estate agent talking on her mobile somewhere far away in the house, but the sound was pleasantly distant, reminding her just how large this place was, how many rooms it contained, how much fun she was going to have filling these rooms with nice new things.

She was in the master bedroom, a space that could contain her and Gary’s bedroom three times over. Super-kingsize bed there, she was thinking. Maybe some bookshelves in that alcove in the corner? (Although they would have to get some books first.) An archway led off the bedroom to the en suite bathroom with matching his and hers sinks. Pauline had wanted an en suite bathroom with twin sinks so badly for so long that it almost made her tearful to think that here she was–on the verge of having one.

She walked over to the big bay window and looked outside. There were eleven other homes in the development, all
slightly different variations on what the agent called ‘classical’ architecture: sand-coloured stone with grey slate roofs, two-car garages and conservatories.

Directly below where Pauline stood, French windows led from the living room out into the garden. It was over a hundred yards long, with a raised decking area off to one side. She pictured them having garden parties. Barbecues. Beyond the tall wooden fence at the end of the garden was woodland, the edges of the country park, with Glasgow to the north, somewhere in the distance.

Pauline heard heels clacking towards the room and turned as Mrs McMahon from Bowles, Kinney & Ross entered.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, indicating her mobile, ‘crazy at the office just now.’ McMahon was older than Pauline, late thirties, and well groomed. ‘Fabulous garden,’ McMahon said, joining Pauline at the window. ‘Perfect for children…’

‘Mmm,’ Pauline said.

Right
, McMahon thought, quickly adding, ‘…or for entertaining.’

‘I know. I was just thinking that.’

‘Well, if you’re definitely interested, I wouldn’t hang about, Pauline. It’s the last house left and I’ve got three more viewings lined up this weekend. I don’t think it’ll be on the market much longer.’

‘I just need to talk to my…boyfriend tonight. I’m pretty sure we’ll be making an offer.’

Just as she climbed back into her stupid jeep–hopefully soon to be another relic of her past life–her mobile rang. Findlay. Perfect.

‘Hi, darling. Listen, I’ve just been to look at the house again. And–’

Masterson talked. Pauline listened.

‘What?’ she cut in. ‘I thought you said–’ She listened some more. ‘But the estate agent was just saying–’ He cut her off again. ‘But we might lose the house! Don’t shout at me! Look, I, we’ll talk about it when I get back.’

Pauline drove back to Ardgirvan fast and aggressively, at one point seeing the road through a smear of angry tears. He’d said it was all going to be fine. If they lost the bloody house because…She flipped the radio on and, punching through the presets, caught a snatch of an oddly familiar voice. Frowning, she punched back until she found it again. It was Radio Ayrshire, the local station she listened to mainly for the traffic reports. She turned the volume up. ‘I don’t know really,’ the voice was saying, ‘just try and go out and do the same again tomorrow, I suppose. Try not to think about it too much…’

‘Great, well, good luck tomorrow,’ the interviewer said.

‘Aye, er, cheers. No bother.’

‘Ardgirvan golfer Gary Irvine,’ the studio announcer’s voice said, causing Pauline to swerve towards the right-hand lane of the dual carriageway, causing the driver of the car passing her to scrunch his horn angrily, ‘who fainted on the eighteenth fairway at Royal Troon earlier this afternoon after becoming the only amateur player to make the cut at this year’s Open Championship.’

‘But he sounds fine now,’ a female voice cut in.

‘He does, Joan, he does. Now, tell us what’s going on with the weather. Are we in for much more of this heat?’

‘We certainly are, Tom, we certainly are…’