The Amateurs
Authors: John Niven
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Crime, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective, #General
John Niven
For my father, John Jeffrey Niven, and my son,
Robin John Niven. Golfers who never met.
Here, in Scotland, golf was not an accessory to life, drawing upon one’s marginal energy; it
was
life, played out of the centre of one’s being.
John Updike, ‘Farrell’s Caddie’
He rallied, my tears being in unsurpassably bad taste, and said, ‘Look here, it’s
only
a game.’
Trying to speak softly so the children wouldn’t hear, I said,
‘Fuck you!’
Frederick Exley,
A Fan’s Notes
IT WAS THE MOST HUMILIATING START TO A BIRTHDAY Gary…
PAULINE DROVE FAST THROUGH THE STREETS OF Ardgirvan, heading for…
GARY WALKED ACROSS THE FACTORY FLOOR ON HIS WAY to…
CATHY IRVINE NERVOUSLY FLATTENED HER NAPKIN ON the table and wondered…
LEE IRVINE HAD BEEN NAMED AFTER THE GREAT Mexican golfer Lee Trevino,…
DRIVING RANGES; FLOODLIT CITADELS OF CONCENTRATED torment where the damned…
IN ROOM 411 OF THE HOSPITALITY INN NEAR THE harbour,…
‘SO AH SAID TAE HIM–“HO, CUNT, AH’LL BREAK YOUR fucking…
GARY WENT TO SEE STEVIE FOR SOME COMFORT. AS ever…
THE KRAKEN RISING.
SUNNY SATURDAY MORNING AS GARY PULLED INTO THE car park,…
LEE SLUMPED BACK AGAINST THE TREE AND SLID DOWN onto…
GIVEN GARY’S GOLF ROUTINE, SATURDAY MORNINGS had become a regular…
NORTH AYRSHIRE GENERAL HOSPITAL, BUILT IN THE early 1980s, is…
MASTERSON THUMBED INTO ‘MESSAGES’ AND SWIFTLY deleted Pauline’s most recent…
‘DELTA! STYX! AH’M NO FUCKING KIDDING YE, IF YOU TWO…
THE SMELL OF THE PLACE WAS INCREDIBLE. SO MANY SCENTS…
GARY WAS PLAYING LIKE A DREAM. IN HEAVEN HIS SWING…
THE OCHILPARK ARMS, SITUATED AT A CROSSROADS ON the Barrhead…
‘AYE, BUT WAS THAT NO THAT SAME WEE MAN THAT…
RANTA WAS IN THE LOFT, PLAYING SCALEXTRIC WITH Andy and…
GARY HAD THE DRIVING RANGE TO HIMSELF.
LEE IRVINE WALKED INTO THE TINY KITCHEN. AMAZON was sat on…
‘NEXT MATCH…PRENTICE, ALEXANDER, IRVINE AND Mason,’ the starter’s voice trebly…
LEE IRVINE, SITTING ON THE HOT BONNET OF HIS CAR, lit…
FACING GARY AND PAULINE ACROSS THE DESK IN THE antiseptic…
IN SCOTLAND, MAY AND JUNE CAN OFTEN BE THE MOST…
‘THE OPEN REGIONAL QUALIFIERS?’ APRIL TREMBLE spat the words out…
THE OPEN WAS PLAYED FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME AT…
‘I’M REALLY SORRY,’ GARY SAID FOR THE THIRD TIME, I…
LEE WALKED ON PAST THE CLEARINGS WHERE SO recently he…
STEVIE INCHED THE CAR ALONG THROUGH THE CROWDS towards the…
BORN FROM THE SOCIETY OF ST ANDREWS GOLFERS AND awarded royal status…
APRIL SCANNED THE BUSY TENT–AGENTS, PRS, PLAYERS and managers all…
The Open
GARY AWOKE AT 6.15 WITH BLOOD HURRYING THROUGH his veins,…
A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER AND NOTHING WAS GOING their…
FUCK IT, LEANNE THOUGHT AS SHE ALLOWED THE upended wine…
GARY WAS LYING ON HIS BED IN THEIR ROOM AT…
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE GOLF JUST DECIDES AND IT has…
‘AND HOW MANY NIGHTS WILL YOU BE STAYING FOR?’
BY CHRIST, THE BOY WAS PLAYING WELL, RANTA thought. Gary…
IT HADN’T BEEN THE WORST PULL IN THE WORLD; HE…
HIS DAD WAS ON THE VERANDA AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL, IN…
PAULINE WALKED THROUGH THE BIG, EMPTY ROOMS alone, her heels…
SATURDAY MORNING: THE TEMPERATURE RISING AND the crowds escalating for…
FOR TWO HOURS GARY AND STEVIE, AND A PRESSING gallery…
THE ROOM WAS SUDDENLY ILLUMINATED BY A BURST of sunlight…
MASTERSON WAS FINDING IT HARD TO RECOGNISE THE woman sitting…
BERT HAD BEEN WRONG. GARY’S BALL HAD ACTUALLY finished four…
GARY SHYLY TWEAKED HIS VISOR AT THE CHEERING crowd. It…
GARY WOKE UP WITH A LIGHT HEADACHE–A SOFT, regular throb…
LEE TOOK THE TICKET RANTA HANDED HIM AND MOVED through…
WHILE CALVIN LINKLATER BEGAN HIS FINAL-DAY routine (the stretches and…
BY 2.30, THE TIME THE FINAL PAIRING–LINKLATER, C. and IRVINE,…
HE’D STORMED OUT OF THE HOUSE–TELLING LEANNE he had to…
A FEW HUNDRED YARDS AWAY, ON THE SIXTH GREEN, Stevie…
LINKLATER STRODE ON AHEAD TO THE NEXT TEE, HEAD down,…
FRUSTRATED, PUSHING TOO HARD TO MAKE SOMETHING happen, Linklater overhit…
HE KNEW WHERE HE WAS THE MOMENT HE INHALED. HE…
‘GET BACK A BIT, PLEASE. GIVE THE BOY SOME AIR.’…
RANTA WAS IN LUCK. THERE WAS A LONG QUEUE TO…
SHUFFLING ALONG LIKE A CONDEMNED MAN, LEE followed Alec towards…
DOWN ON THE GREEN, IN FRONT OF THOUSANDS OF cheering…
Gary Irvine resigned from Henderson’s and attended Strathclyde University as a…
They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
Alexander Pope
I
T WAS THE MOST HUMILIATING START TO A BIRTHDAY
Gary Irvine could remember.
There had been more painful–his twelfth, when his parents had been unable to afford the skateboard he’d wanted. His dad had fashioned him one by gluing a piece of rubber tread to one side of a short plank and fixing the wheels from an old pair of roller skates to the other. Lacking any steering capabilities he’d barrelled down Castleglen Bridge and straight into the bus shelter, losing his front teeth in the process.
There had been more outrageous–his eighteenth, when he had been woken by his mum’s shrieking after she found him unconscious in the downstairs hall, the cold trail of vomit marking his wobbly progress from the front door, the cock and balls inked on his forehead starkly proclaiming that he was now of legal drinking age.
And there had been more confrontational–last year for instance, when Pauline had accused him of being selfish
because he’d suggested derailing her plans to go shopping in Glasgow so that he could play golf.
But this was definitely the most humiliating. It happened like this…
Pauline had to be up early, to get to a school over near Cumnock where she had a show to put on for some Year One kids. Even though it was
his
birthday he got up before her, as he always did, and made her breakfast.
At 6.30 he slipped from the warm pocket of the bed, the golf dream he was having (ball flying straight and true under a clear sky) evaporating around him as he yawned and scratched his way downstairs. It was the second week of April and the spring dawn was already under way on the west coast of Scotland, squares of weak sunlight forming on the walls.
Opening the kitchen door he saw Ben’s lifeless form slumped in the corner–his snout buried deep inside a training shoe, like he was wearing an oxygen mask–and for a second Gary entertained the usual delicious thought: the monster had finally died in the night. But when he leaned in to investigate he saw that the dog’s flank was rhythmically rising and falling as his ancient, tattered lungs emptied and refilled, his back legs trembling and twitching as Ben pursued his own dreams into the dawn. (Terrible Ben-dreams–rivers of human blood. Turds the size of cities.)
Ben scented him and rolled over, not completely awake yet but already composing his features into a snarl of hateful greeting, the growl rising within him his instinctive response to any human presence bar Pauline’s. As he stretched himself fully awake Ben’s growl sharpened in pitch, quickly reaching the level of ultra-hate reserved solely for Gary–defiler of his mistress–before resolving into a series of short barks.
‘Oh,
please
shut up, Ben.’
Ben stopped barking. Not, of course, through any impulse towards obedience, but simply to allow himself to concentrate fully on glaring at Gary; his lips pulled back, black and pink gums and caramel teeth exposed in a furious scowl. Gary and Ben eyeballed each other silently, each seeing what the other saw.
Gary saw a seventeen-year-old mongrel, the issue of the congress between a corgi and a Border collie; this unholy union the crucible in which Ben’s unique ‘personality’ had been formed. Predominately black with white and tan patches, most notably on his face, which was half-white and half-black (the colours erroneously suggesting a yin and yang of the soul, a light side and a dark side. There was no yin; Ben’s soul was all yang). Ben was short–like a regular collie that had been cruelly sawn off at the knees. His eyes, once jet-black pools, were cracked and fissured with milky cataracts, and in those eyes Gary saw a Scotsman–thirty-three years old that very morning–with a thick, boyish thatch of reddish-brown hair and rust-coloured patches in his stubble. (A ‘hawf’ or ‘semi’ ginger they’d called him at school.) Gary’s eyes were blue and clear, the eyes of a man who ran three miles most mornings and who rarely drank spirits. His complexion was youthful, although lately he’d been finding, in the hollows beside his nostrils, in the pouches beneath his eyes, the odd open pore that contained deep reserves of waxy pus: a posthumous inheritance from his dad, a two-handicap golfer in his prime and thirteen years dead this summer.
Man and beast remained locked in the stare a moment longer–old adversaries acknowledging that fresh hostilities were about to commence–before Gary opened the back door and, with some difficulty, hustled the dog into the garden. Ben, of course, didn’t even make it as far as the grass, gleefully urinating on the patio three feet from the door, his panting face wreathed in steaming urine.
Now the ritual of Pauline’s porridge.
Pauline’s porridge was the product of much ingenuity and toil. It was made with milk and nuked in the microwave for exactly three and a half minutes. This specific timing produced exactly the right consistency of gruel and had been arrived at after much research and development early in their marriage, after Pauline had rejected many a bowl of too-loose or too-solid porridge.
Gary stood in the warming kitchen in boxer shorts and ancient Stone Roses T-shirt, listening to the hum of the microwave and the rumble of the kettle. Had he been standing in this exact spot a year ago he would have been in the garden. The extended kitchen/dining room–Pauline’s project–had only recently been completed, long over-schedule and much over-budget.
They had moved into the small development five years ago. (‘Spam Valley’ his brother Lee had called it, a piece of indigenous abuse meaning that the fools who bought such houses had to live on tinned meat in order to make the mortgage payments.) The house was brand new. Their arguments were the first its walls had contained, their lovemaking the first its oatmeal carpets had borne. (And when had
that
last happened?)
The microwave pinged brightly. He removed the blistering bowl and added chopped banana, blueberries and slices of strawberry. As the fruit sank into the grey quicksand he added a drizzle of maple syrup. (Just a drizzle, mind. Pauline wanted the echo of sweetness. She did not–emphatically
not
–want to get fat. Much of her reading, her ferocious scanning of
Babe!
, or
Hot!
, or the women’s section of the
Daily Standard
–‘Scotland’s brightest family paper!’–was devoted to the subject of avoiding fatness.)
While he prepared the porridge Pauline’s tea was brewing. Again the methodology here was chillingly specific. The tea bag had to be left in the cup for a minimum of three minutes and a maximum of five. The bag then had to be lifted cleanly out of the mug. It was not to be squashed against the side as this could result in a ‘bruising’ of the tea.
Gary Irvine performed these tasks with the assiduity, the attention to detail, of a man in a long-term relationship who very much hoped he would soon be having sex.
Before he took the tray up he went out into the garden to fetch Ben. From the kitchen door to the back of the garden was no more than fifty yards. A half sand wedge from where he stood. (But probably better to pitch-and-run it with the seven-iron. Percentage shot.) There was no point in calling Ben, for the dog’s deafness was now almost total. (Or, Gary suspected, selective: the rustle of a biscuit wrapper, or a styrofoam tray of meat squeaking on the kitchen counter, could bring the fiend running from half a mile away. But if Ben were engaged in an activity he enjoyed–eating, sleeping, probing the delicate rainbow of scents in another dog’s quivering anus–you could scream his name from three feet and he heard nothing.) The grass was cold under his bare feet as he looked around at the two neighbouring gardens, both of which had brightly coloured children’s toys scattered around them; tractors and trikes and big water pistols–more like bazookas these days–in orange and yellow and pink plastic. There were no toys in their garden.
This year she’d promised.
He came up behind the dog and discovered–as the beast turned to greet him and black chunks of the succulent turd he was munching on fell from the corners of his mouth–that Ben had indeed been engaged in an activity he enjoyed.
‘Oh Jesus!’ Gary said, gagging. ‘Oh you…you
animal
!’
He hurried back towards the house, Ben barking angrily after him, saying to him in broad Scottish dog:
‘Hey, whit’s your problem, bawbag? Do ye no fancy a wee bit o’ breakfast jobby? Naw? Well, get tae fuck then!’
Pauline was already at her dressing table, wrapped in a beige towel, busy with the straightening tongs and the hairbrush. She had already showered and her milk-chocolate hair was slicked back, giving her a sleek, otter-ish look. He set the tray down next to her and leaned in to kiss her cheek, smelling apple and vanilla and tea tree and blackberry and gingseng and lime and whatever other scents were in the oils, unguents, conditioners and gels Pauline spent a small fortune on. (
‘By Christ,
’ his mother had said once when balefully inspecting the rows of tubs, tubes and jars in their bathroom,
‘is that lassie wanting tae open a bloody chemist’s?’
) As he gazed down at his wife’s heavy breasts, tightly contained by the towel, Gary was conscious of the return of the erection that had woken him in the night.
‘Happy birthday,’ Pauline cooed, pecking him back and handing him a purple envelope. His full name was written on it in her girlish hand (the little balloon over the second ‘i’ in his surname) and Gary dimly recalled the thrill that had run through him when he first saw her handwriting–on a valentine card, fifteen years ago. (The thrill he’d experienced the first time he saw her too–coming out of school assembly arm in arm with two of her friends. Pauline Shaw. The May Day Queen. Just fourteen years old and already the cause of much creative self-abuse among Gary’s fellow fifth-formers.)
‘Aw, thanks, doll. What time you got to be at the school?’ he said, making it sound casual, jumping back into bed,
jamming a slice of toast into his mouth and working a thumb into the seal of the envelope.
‘Half eight.
Please
be careful with that toast. I don’t want butter all over those sheets.’ The new sheets, from that designer place in Glasgow she liked.
‘Sorry.’ He set he toast down on top of the dog-eared copy of Dr Ted Alabaster’s
Putting: the Secret Game
that lived on his bedside cabinet and checked the time: 7.02. Thirty/forty-minute drive to Cumnock, she’d already showered…plenty of time.
He took the card out: a photograph, black and white, 1950s Gary guessed, of a couple kissing on an iron bridge in some European city. The kind of card Pauline normally chose–classy, a wee bit arty. Inside was a handwritten message (‘Happy 33rd! All my love Pauline xxx’) and his present–one hundred pounds of gift vouchers for Oklahoma Dan’s Discount Golf World, the new golf superstore up by the bypass.
‘You can get yourself something nice for your golf, can’t you? I wouldn’t have a clue.’
‘Aye, great, that’s brilliant. C’mere–’ He reached out towards her as she crossed the room. Pauline kissed him primly on the forehead, but, before he could pull the towel off, she twirled away out of reach, across the landing towards the bathroom.
Calm. Keep calm. Don’t paw.
He slipped his T-shirt off, lifted the duvet with one hand and the elastic waistband of his boxer shorts with the other. Fuck sake–look at the state of that. A cat couldnae scratch it. Suddenly he sneezed, the starburst of the sneeze falling tingling and sparkling over the length of his near-naked body.
Take your mind off it for a minute.
He grabbed the remote control and thumbed through the
channels until the screen turned a familiar comforting green and he heard the swish and clank of metal driver hitting ball: the Golf Network, a preview of the Masters, which started the following week. The camera roved over the lush green fairways and rich forestry of Augusta National in Georgia (arguably the most photogenic golf course in the world) with stirring, dramatic music playing and an American voice saying ‘
where the greatest players in the world will be teeing it up to compete in the first major championship of the year
’. Now a quick compilation clip of some of the greats–Brett Spafford, Torsten Lathe, James Honeydew III, Drew Keel–before the commentator’s voice shifted down a gear dramatically and he said,
‘including, looking for his tenth major title
,’ and then the screen was filled with the image of a man.
A man?
The
Man. The Big Man. The Don.
‘
The world number one…Calvin Linklater.
’
Calvin Fucking Linklater.
A shot of Linklater slashing an iron from thick rough at St Andrews the previous summer, on his way to winning his second consecutive Open. Gary had been in the crowd, managing at one point to get close enough to the ropes to shout ‘Go on yerself, big man!’ as Linklater passed. Gary felt the familiar ripple of awe he always felt when he watched his hero at work. For Linklater was not just a man to Gary. He was a god.
They were the same age.
They had both taken up the sport when they were five years old, taught by their fathers.
They both played Spaxon balls.
They were both golfers. (Indeed, Gary had even been named after a golfer–the great South African pro Gary Player. His father had been much taken with Player’s compelling victory
in the 1974 Open at Royal Lytham & St Anne’s, where the black-clad dynamo had led the tournament from the first day.)
Actually, to say that Linklater and Gary were both golfers was a little misleading. Like saying that Jimi Hendrix and a busker cranking out the three chords of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ on an out-of-tune acoustic guitar were both musicians. Linklater was a
golfing machine.
The youngest major winner in history. Arguably the greatest putter in the history of the sport. Owner of the smoothest, most faultless swing since Ben Hogan; a swing that had brought him over fifty million dollars in career earnings (and many times that in ancillary income) and nine major titles.
Gary’s handicap was eighteen. He was capable of routinely whiffing two-foot putts and he could always, always, be counted on to choke in a crunch situation. (If he had ten pence for every time he had uttered the words ‘Sorry, partner’ he would be richer than Linklater.) Gary’s swing was so terrible that many golfers at the club refused to watch it in case they became contaminated by its uncountable faults. It had, as they say, more moving parts than
Terms of Endearment
and it had brought him a pen and a single golf ball in career earnings (both token prizes given to any junior member who had finished the Junior Medal in a terrible rainstorm twenty years ago) and more heartbreak than any man should have to endure. Linklater was one of the very few whom the Golf Gods chose at birth to bestow incredible talent upon. Gary was one of the very many whom the Golf Gods devoted their immortality to tormenting.