The Amateurs (27 page)

A
FEW HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, ON THE SIXTH GREEN
, Stevie was worried. Not about the putt–the approach shot had landed in exactly the right spot, leaving them a pretty straight, nicely uphill putt–but about the escalation in volume Gary seemed to be undergoing. The occasional word was now leaping out of the bubbling mantra at considerably more than a whisper. They were standing off to the side of the green while Linklater lined up his putt, a tricky, thirty-foot, left-to-right number.

‘Aye, putt, ya cunt,’ Gary said. ‘Bawsbawsfudspunkhoor-ERSE!-flapsfuck! OW!’ Linklater and Snakes glared over, then resumed examining the line of the putt.

‘Easy,’ Stevie whispered.

‘Ah cannae–fuckcunts–ow!–help it–cunt–Stevie.’ Gary was stuffing his fist in his mouth, biting down hard on his knuckles. But it was no use. He spat his fist out and screamed ‘PRICK!’ at Linklater. People gasped. Linklater threw his arms up in the air, abandoned his putt and
approached the marshal. Stevie put his head in his hands.

‘Well,’ Rowland Daventry said on-air, ‘we can’t hear it from up here, but it seems that Mr Irvine, I’m not quite sure, but…Linklater is speaking to an official. Extraordinary.’

Two R&A officials were walking towards them now; a tall, thin Englishman called Dawkins and a short, fat Scotsman called Morton. ‘Just keep your mouth shut,’ Stevie said. ‘Unnghh,’ Gary said, chewing on knuckles.

‘Mr Irvine,’ Dawkins said, ‘we simply cannot tolerate this behaviour. We cannot allow a competitor to insult another player during his pre-shot routine.’

‘He’s not insulting him specifically. It’s just an aspect of his condition,’ Stevie said.

Across the green Linklater stood with hands on hips. Thousands of spectators looked on.

‘If,’ Dawkins said, addressing Gary directly, ‘there are any further outbursts of this nature I am afraid we will have no choice but to disqualify you. Do you understand?’

‘Urrr…aye,’ Gary said, before quickly adding, ‘prick! ooh ya cunt! Fuck! Sorry! Skinny English prick ye. Sorry!’

‘Are you telling me,’ Morton said to Stevie, ‘that isn’t specific?’

‘It’s an aspect of his–’ Stevie began.

‘Prick. Wank. Sorry! Cunt fat wank. Sorry! AIEEE!’

‘Condition.’ Stevie clamped a hand over Gary’s mouth. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘Mmmff. Uhnn,’ Gary said.

Dawkins and Morton marched off and Stevie took Gary over to the side of the green. ‘Right, listen, please calm down for fuck’s sake. Just try and control yourself for five minutes. I’ve got an idea.’

Gary nodded miserably, fist stuffed back in his mouth,
while Linklater got on with his putt. Stevie ran over to one of the BBC camera positions. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said to the cameraman, ‘I’ve a wee bit of an emergency. You wouldn’t be able to help me out with something, would you?’

Ranta let Masterson go. People were looking. ‘I mean, there’s a golf game going on here, Findlay,’ he said.

‘Fuck your fucking game. If you hadnae fucked things up ah widnae be in this mess. Where’s ma fucking money?’

‘What money?’ Pauline said.

Ranta sighed and stepped towards Masterson. ‘Seeing as we go back a long way, Findlay, ah’m gonnae do ye a favour and have Frank here drive ye home. And ah told ye–you’ll get yer money back, right? But if ah wis you ah’d be very careful about what ah said in future.’

‘Fuck off. Do ye think ah’m scared o’–’

The Beast’s massive hand fell on Masterson’s shoulder.

‘Come on, pal,’ he said, ‘ye can sleep it aff in the car…’

‘See you later, Findlay,’ Ranta said. He turned and jogged up the path, fighting his way back into the crowd, towards where wild cheering was indicating that something important had just happened.

L
INKLATER STRODE ON AHEAD TO THE NEXT TEE, HEAD
down, ignoring the outstretched hands of the fans behind the ropes, furious that his birdie putt had lipped out. Snakes followed him, then, bringing up the rear, Gary and Stevie. While Gary was not unhappy with his performance on the last green–his uphill ten-footer for birdie had rattled straight into the middle of the cup, taking him to a four-stroke lead–he too, and for very different reasons, was trying to ignore the smiles, shouts and stares of the fans.

He had a large strip of silver tape plastered across his mouth.

Stevie had used a golf tee to punch four small holes along the middle of the strip of tape, where his lips met, so Gary could breath through his mouth, but he could make no sound beyond muffled ‘mmmgghhs’ and ‘unhhhhs’.

‘Well,’ Daventry said, ‘I’ve seen it all now.’

‘Mmmmfff,’ Gary grunted as they walked onto the next tee–straight into Dawkins and Morton. Dawkins had his hands on his hips and was shaking his head slowly from side
to side. He looked very angry. Morton was thumbing frantically through a copy of
The Rules of Golf
. ‘He can’t play like that!’ Dawkins said.

‘Why not?’ Stevie said.

‘Because…’ Dawkins turned to Morton.

‘It’s…’ Morton said.

‘Mnnngggh,’ Gary said.

‘It’s a bit of tape,’ Stevie said. ‘And there’s absolutely nothing in that book that says anything about not being allowed to have a bit of tape over your face.’

‘Ah!’ Morton said, stopping triumphantly at a page. ‘It constitutes a distraction to other players.’

‘Does it fuck,’ Stevie said reasonably.

‘Piss off!’ came a shout from the crowd.

‘Leave him alone!’ came another.

‘Mr Linklater,’ Dawkins said, turning away, ignoring the voices as Linklater walked over from the other side of the tee, ‘if you deem…
this
–’ he pronounced the word with maximum distaste as he gestured to Gary–‘distracting…’

Linklater looked at Gary, at the fat strip of tape, at his lowered, shameful eyes, the eyes of Ben after he had expansively urinated on the living-room carpet. A long moment of silence then Linklater started to grin. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘long as you’re not shouting at me, you wear what you like.’ The crowd around the tee box burst into applause and cheering.

‘B-but…surely…’ Dawkins said.

‘Come on, let’s play some golf,’ Linklater said, gesturing towards the tee box. ‘Your honour.’

‘Mnngghh. Uhnnnn,’ Gary said.

‘He says thank you,’ Stevie said as he passed Gary the driver.

Pauline rejoined the huddle just in time to see Gary hit a perfect drive. ‘Wha…what’s that on his face?’ she
asked beneath the roar of approval that followed the shot.

‘Stevie did it, it’s tae help wi his…Turret’s syndrome,’ Cathy said.

‘Christ,’ Pauline said, ‘he looks ridiculous.’

Lee turned round in front of them and Pauline smiled at him. Lee did not smile back. As soon he’d seen her arguing with that guy with the massive tache, he’d figured it all out.

The tache guy was that carpet guy whose adverts were on the telly.

The same guy from the family photo in the bathroom the other night.

Pauline–the fucking dirty hoor.

A little way off in the crowd, Ranta’s hands were beginning to shake. He had to fight hard to keep from visualising his winnings. Cannae be doing that yet. Fucking jinx it.

His mobile began to vibrate in his pocket. Jesus fuck–
whit now
? He slipped it out and looked at the screen–‘FINDLAY HOME’. Christ, Frank must have got the foot down if he was home already. Probably starting to sober up, calling to apologise. Ranta thumbed the button. ‘Aye?’ he said gruffly.

‘Mr Campbell?’ a woman’s voice said. ‘Mr Ranta Campbell?’

‘Er, aye. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Leanne Masterson.’

Ranta moved away from the ropes, deeper into the crowd, his eyebrows going up as he listened, pressing the phone harder against his ear.

At the thirteenth, a par four of just over 465 yards, the match turned into the wind as the run of homeward-bound holes began. Both players had smashed their drives into the middle of the undulating fairway and still found themselves facing
200-yard approach shots, with Linklater’s ball slightly behind Gary’s.

Linklater rubbed his chin. The pin was on the back of an elevated green, a club more than usual in normal circumstances. With this wind getting up? Two clubs? Maybe more.

‘What we got to the flag?’ he asked.

‘Two hundred and five to the stick,’ Snakes said. ‘What you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking we need birdie putts every hole from here on in or this thing is over.’

‘You got that right.’ Snakes looked over to where Gary and Stevie stood, the silver tape on Gary’s mouth glinting in the sunlight.

‘Gimme the four,’ Linklater said, hitching up his sleeve.

‘Dial in, boss,’ Snakes said, passing him the club.

Linklater would later say it was one of the purest golf shots he ever hit: a long, low, stinging four-iron into a stiff wind, the ball bouncing once in front of the green, again right in the middle of the green’s elevated bank, the second bounce killing the ball’s energy and allowing it to roll the last forty feet, curling up eleven feet from the hole. The champion acknowledged the cheers of the crowd with a raised, gloved hand, head down as he passed the club back to Snakes. ‘Follow that in,’ Snakes said quietly as the spotlight shifted over to Gary.

Communication between Gary and Stevie was now being conducted with grunting and pointing. Gary grunted and pointed at the five-iron. Stevie shook his head and proffered the four. Gary grunted and reached for the five.

‘Are you aff yer fucking heed?’ Stevie said. ‘Two-hundred-odd yards? Intae this wind? Elevated green? Pin at the back? The big man just hit a four for fuck’s sake.’

‘Mnnghh!’

‘Your funeral.’ Stevie passed him the five-iron and stepped back.

Gary had never felt so pumped up in his life. It was as though the gag was stoppering up all the energy that would normally have been released by the Tourette’s. As if every fuck, cunt, balls, hoor, flaps, wank, tits, spunk and fanny that should have been coming out of his mouth was now being channelled through his veins and into his muscles, like his body was literally being supercharged by the unreleased expletives. Ominously, that strange sensation in his head returning; a tingling of the scalp, not completely unpleasant, as though the excess adrenalin was bubbling up through the top of his skull.

He swung the club so hard he nearly fell off his feet, but the connection was good, the ball coming down right at the green. It bounced once right in the middle of the elevated bank and hopped forward, stopping quicker than any five-iron had a right to, finishing perhaps a foot behind Linklater’s ball.

The crowd went berserk.

‘Jesus,’ Snakes said as they headed off towards the green. ‘What you gotta do to beat this guy?’

There was something inevitable about what happened next. Gary’s putt slammed into the cup for his
sixth
birdie of the day while Linklater’s grazed the lip and curled around the hole before coming to rest above ground.
‘Fuck it
,’ Linklater growled through gritted teeth as he walked forward to tap in, frustration beginning to show now.

‘Go on, bro!’ Lee shouted.

‘My Gawd…oh my Gawd!’ Cathy was shrieking. ‘He’s gonnae do it. He’s gonnae win!’

Ranta was hyperventilating. Still reeling from Leanne’s
phone call, he was watching the golf equivalent of a race where his horse was twenty furlongs ahead of the field with five furlongs left to go. Still, Ranta had gambled long and viciously enough to know that horses had lost races from such positions. So, with an eye on the finances and the worst-case scenario (and business was business after all), he decided to cover his bet.

The Beast was enjoying being on the bypass, getting the foot down. It had taken forever to get out of Troon. He glanced at Masterson in the passenger seat; out cold, paralytic, his head against the window, his hair greasing up the glass. The reek of bevvy aff the cunt. Maybe he should give him a slap, tell him to sit up. Naw, he wis an auld pal of the boss’s. Better play the white man.

The Beast’s mobile trilled into life. ‘Ho,’ he said.

‘Where are ye?’ Ranta asked.

‘Oan the bypass. Took fucking ages tae get aff the course and oot the toon so it did.’

‘How’s oor friend?’

‘Cunt’s lying here spark out, boss. Fucking steamboats so he was. We’ll be at his place in about ten minutes.’

‘Might be a wee change o’ plan…’ Ranta said.

F
RUSTRATED, PUSHING TOO HARD TO MAKE SOMETHING
happen, Linklater overhit his tee shot at the fourteenth–the par-three Alton–and wound up scrambling to make par. Both players parred the fifteenth. Gary birdied the sixteenth while Linklater notched up another par. They walked towards the seventeenth tee, the crowds ecstatic now, some singing ‘Flower of Scotland’, impromptu celebrations breaking out, Gary’s victory seeming assured, inevitable. So far Stevie and Gary had managed to avoid looking at a single leader board. Finally they looked up at one of the towering yellow walls. It said:

IRVINE G (A)–11

LINKLATER C–4

RODRIGUEZ J–2

LATHE T–2

They looked at each other. Gary pointed at the strip of tape,
at his mouth. Stevie looked around. They were at a safe distance from the spectators. Linklater and Snakes were ahead of them, upwind and out of earshot, Dawkins and Morton safely behind them. Stevie nodded and Gary stripped the tape from his mouth.

‘FuckjesusfuckyacuntoohSteviefatbastardweefatbastardye!’

‘Easy, nearly home. Nearly there.’

‘Stevie-fuckcuntstits-ma-hoormasterflapspishbaws-head’sersemawrodeyermaw-sore.’

‘Your head’s sore?’

Gary nodded, rubbing the crown of his head–a gallon of boiling lemonade in there now.

‘Oh fuck,’ Stevie said.

‘And ah cannae–oohyacuntyefuckingblackbastard–stop it’

‘Stop what? The swearing?’

‘Aye–fuck. OW! Prick. Big pricks. Baws ya fat cunt ye. Slutboothoornail.’

‘Shit. Look, it’s just two holes tae go. Do ye think ye can keep it together that long?’

Gary took a deep breath and nodded. ‘But, Stevie?’

‘Aye?’ Stevie noticed that he looked very scared.

‘Whit if–fuckingslutyacuntsookmabawsgrrrBASTARD!–ah’m like this–PRRRRRRICK!–forever?’

‘It…it’s probably just the stress. This is a pretty fucking unusual situation here. Try and relax. But, in the meantime–’ Stevie glanced towards the pathway, where Dawkins and Morton were waiting for them, Morton looking at his watch–‘there’s no sense in us getting disqualified this close to finishing, eh? Sorry, pal, no be long now.’ He reaffixed the makeshift gag firmly across his friend’s mouth.

‘This is just a fucking nightmare now, so it is,’ Alec said to Ranta. The crush and press of the enormous crowd was so great that it was impossible to get anywhere near the action. All they’d seen the last couple of holes had been the odd clubhead popping up above the sea of people, then the crack of metal on ball, followed by heads turning as one to follow the shot.

‘Aye, right enough,’ Ranta agreed. ‘Come on and we’ll go and watch the last couple o’ holes on the big screen in the bar. Get a pint.’ He was rubbing his hands briskly together. ‘The boy’s got this in the bag anyway. Seven shots ahead wi two tae play? Ho ho!’

‘Whit aboot laughing boy?’ Alec said, nodding towards where Lee was standing with Lisa, cheering as Gary and Linklater passed by.

Ranta, a man who was capable of feeling more affection for a winning racehorse than he was for certain family members, looked over at Lee, thinking. He smiled.

‘Ach, fuck it. We’ll let this wan go. Let the boy stay and watch his brother. We all make mistakes, eh?’

‘Christ, how much did you put on this cunt?’

Ranta tapped the side of his nose and winked conspiratorially. ‘You just leave it tae yer auld da, son. He’ll see ye right. Come on, ah’m gasping fur a bevvy so ah um.’

‘Another fine pair of tee shots,’ Daventry said as, on television, Gary and Linklater walked up to the seventeenth green. ‘Both players on the green at this very demanding par three. But, you’d have to say, Bob, it looks like it’s all over bar the shouting.’

‘And I’ll tell you something,’ Torrent added, as the screen filled with a shot of Gary, walking along, head hung, mouth
taped, ‘there’s going to be some shouting in a minute for this lad…’

Gary had made the front of the green and was still looking at a putt of nearly seventy feet. Linklater was closer, with maybe a fifty-footer for birdie.

Stevie chewed his nails nervously as he watched Gary line his putt up. They were no longer conferring on putts. Gary’s mind seemed to be reading them with superhuman intuition. Although his swearing was inaudible now, the muffled words hammering against the tape were coming thick and furious, in a near-constant stream. He was red-faced and sweating and seemed to be developing a slight tremor, a flicker, in his right eye, the eye beneath the indentation on his temple where the ball struck him. It seemed to Stevie like his golf was reaching a crescendo of perfection along with the swearing. As the round had progressed he’d swung more easily and relaxed almost in direct proportion to the magnitude that the swearing had increased by. Stevie wished he knew more about the human brain, about what could be happening in there, what fusing and rewiring of cortex and cerebellum had happened, how one thing might be affecting the other.

The crowd fell silent as Gary assumed his putting stance. Seventy-three feet, left-to-right. He aimed a foot and a half left of the hole and pulled the trigger. The ball snaked across the green, curving slightly right as it reached the halfway point, turning towards the hole. It was so sweetly struck, on such perfect line, that it looked like the ball was running along a little channel dug into the green, leading directly into the cup and seen only by Gary.

‘Shit,’ Linklater said, crouching by the side of the green.

‘Aye, yer fucking maw,’ Stevie said.

‘I say,’ Daventry said as the moan of the crowd began to escalate and sharpen in pitch.

‘AYE! AYE! AYE! AYE!’ Ranta was shouting, up on a table in the beer tent now.

Golf fanatics all around the world were yelling all of these things and more at their television sets in over seventy different languages.

The ball broke a final few inches to the right, bang on line but slowing, slowing, slowing. It reached the lip and stopped, half of the ball teetering over the cool dark below, half of it somehow remaining on the grass.

‘GO OAN, YA FUCKING TOTAL HOOR YE!’ Ranta screamed.

The ball dropped into the cup and the crowd erupted. Even Linklater was smiling now, shaking his head in what-can-you-do? fashion.

‘My goodness,’ Daventry said.

Gary ran into the middle of the green and ripped the gag off. ‘AAGGHHHH!’ he screamed. ‘YA FUCKING DIRTY BIKE BOOT SLUT YE OOHH YA CUNT FUCKING BASTARD HOOR BAWS SPUNK SHITE SHITE SHITE! COCKS YA FUCKING PRICKS!’

The astonished crowd gradually stopped cheering. As the silence fell, Gary’s volume increased, or rather it became much more apparent, and his outburst became more rapid. He was now atop a greenside bunker, screaming right into the faces of the crowd.

‘FUCK FUCK FUCKING TITS FANNY PISH FLAPS…BENDERS! FUCKING GOBBLING DUGS!’

People’s jaws falling.

Parents covering children’s ears.

‘CUNT…CUNT SUCKING ON THE TEATS OF A HOOOORRR!’

On television they quickly cut to footage of dogs scampering on the nearby beach while Daventry improvised. ‘And, er, there seems to be something of an…unusual celebration going on there. I’m sure we’ll come back to it when things have…umm…calmed down a wee bit.’

Back on the green: ‘SOOK IT SOOK IT! HONK MA FUCKING BOBO, SMOKE MA DOBBER! BITE MA BANGER! BITE IT, BITE IT…’ Gary was scrabbling at his trousers now, unbuckling, unzipping, just feet away from a horrified knot of pensioners.

Stevie started sprinting across the green.

‘
BITE IT, YA FUCKING CUNNNNNTSSSS!
’

An old woman fainting.

Stevie was almost upon him when Gary turned, one hand down the front of his trousers, clamped around the root of his titanium erection, about to haul it out.

‘BITE IT–’

He stopped in mid-sentence, a strange expression on his face, as if he’d just remembered something important. A trickle of blood ran from his right nostril. Stevie stopped.

‘Gary?’ he said.

Gary’s eyes were screwed shut, like he was about to sneeze.

Something burst in the middle of his head.

A thick spurt of blood sprayed out of his nose, gushing down his chin and across his shirt. The crowd gasped.

‘SON!’ Cathy screamed.

Gary toppled backwards into the bunker, everything going milky, then black, as the screaming and shouting of the crowd faded away, and soon there was nothing at all.