The Amateurs (17 page)

T
HE
O
PEN WAS PLAYED FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME AT
Prestwick Golf Club–a short drive from Ardgirvan–on a cold, drizzly October day in 1860.

Back then Prestwick was a twelve-hole course, the scrubby fairways and greens laid out on common land, land given to the men of Ayrshire by Robert the Bruce in recognition of their fierce services in Scotland’s wars of independence. In 1860 a field of eight players, watched by a crowd of wives, families, curious locals and some sheep and cows, played three rounds in one day, competing for a prize fund of precisely zero. The winner, Willie Park Sr, shot a tremendous score of 174 to beat the favourite, Old Tom Morris, and take home a red leather belt ornamented with a silver buckle. Financially, things improved quickly and, a few years later, when Park won his second Open, he walked away with the winner’s purse of £6, which he promptly spent entertaining his fellow players in the saloon bar of Prestwick’s Red Lion hotel.

A century and a half later a field of 156 golfers–watched
by the tens of thousands of spectators who crammed into the grandstands and lined the fairways of the Old Course at St Andrews, and by millions more watching on television all around the world–competed for a prize fund of £4 million. When Calvin Linklater secured his second Open victory, he took home a winner’s cheque for £720,000. He walked off the final green and was swept into a hotel suite where he was told by his management team that–among other things–he had just been offered $10 million to drink a certain brand of cola, $15 million for the exclusive motion picture rights to his life story, and $120 million to consider switching to another brand of golf clubs for the next five years. The Sultan of Brunei had tabled a million in return for a personal round with the champion.

Entry to the first Open had been restricted to professional golfers only. The following year, in an attempt to attract more players, entry was broadened to allow amateurs to compete and it is a tradition that still stands: any amateur golfer who has a certified handicap of 0.4 or less may attempt to secure a place in the Open. However, today, after nearly thirty exemption categories are factored in–the world top fifty golfers, the top twenty money winners, any previous Open champions aged under sixty-five, any winner of a major championship in the last five years, the top ten from the previous year’s Open–only twelve spots in the field of 156 players are still open to amateurs, who must compete for the places through the qualifying process.

Twelve out of somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 hopefuls will get a place in the Open.

Registration in the teeming clubhouse: the golf equivalent of the weigh-in before a boxing match, with the fighters bristling and pushing and eyeing each other up. There was Alan
McFadden from Ayr, the current Scottish amateur champion, a scratch player when he was fourteen, still only twenty-four and an Ayrshire golfing legend for a decade. There, by the front desk, yawning, relaxed, was Angus Green, a lawyer in his forties who had once qualified for the Open at Carnoustie. Just visible through the doors to the lounge, talking over a pot of tea, were Craig Anderson and Paul Trodden, both about Gary’s age and the leading lights of Bogview Golf Club, Ardgirvan’s other golf club, the posh one. As is the way nowadays, the older players wore chinos or cords in navy or black or varying hues of brown–copper, rust, earth–along with polo shirts and sweaters by Pringle and Lyle and Scott. The younger players were an acid trip of colour and sheen: trousers in atomic pink or fluorescent blue, iridescent tops in citric greens and lemons, white belts with gleaming chrome buckles. And their hair: dyed platinum, streaked with highlights and teased into fins and spikes. Everyone seemed to know each other and greetings and abuse were being freely thrown about. Gary and Stevie–very much the new boys–shuffled along in line. ‘Jesus,’ Gary whispered, ‘they’re young, aren’t they? Fuckingcuntfuck.’

Stevie threw a suspicious glance around the lobby. ‘Looks like a cross between a fucking boy-band convention and a young Conservative dinner-dance.’

‘Name and home club please?’ the girl behind the desk asked Gary.

‘Er, Gary Irvine, Ravenscroft.’

‘Irvine…Irvine…’ the girl repeated as she rifled through a stack of cards. The young golf punk at the head of the next queue along turned to Gary. He was wearing a purple diamond-patterned sweater vest, purple trousers with white piping and wrap-around shades. His hair was spiked with gel, tufting up and over a white sun visor.

‘Gary Irvine?’ the kid said.

‘Ah, aye. Ugh. Baws.’

‘Are you that Gary Irvine who broke the course record at Ravenscroft?’

‘Aye,’ Gary smiled bashfully, extending a hand, ‘pleased to meet–’

‘The same Gary Irvine that started wanking himself aff oan the eighteenth green?’

Gary’s face began to burn.

‘HO! KEVIN! DAVY!’ the kid shouted across the lobby while pointing at Gary. ‘Check it oot! This is that guy who wiz pulling the heed aff it in front of every cunt at Ravenscroft!’

‘No way, man!’ Kevin or Davy shouted.

Everyone looking now, laughter and pointing as the kid produced a mobile phone. ‘Here, big man, let us get a photo wi ye, eh? You’re a fucking legend so ye ur!’

Stevie caught his wrist as he brought the phone up. The kid was easily a foot taller than Stevie, so when he went to pull his arm free he was surprised to find he couldn’t budge it an inch. Stevie leaned in close. ‘Ho, listen, ya wee fud–gie the guy a fucking break, eh? Brain injury. Medical condition an aw that. Ye wouldnae like it if you suffered some kind of accident, ye know, something that prevented ye from playing yer best…’ Stevie tightened his grip, his sausage thumb digging deep into the inside of the kid’s forearm.

‘Iya! Fuck sake–’

‘Noo pit that fucking phone away before ah stuff it up yer Jap’s eye and take a fotay o’ the inside o’ yer fucken baws.’

Stevie released his grip and the kid walked away rubbing his arm.

‘Sign here please, Mr Irvine.’ The girl was blushing.

‘Thanks,’ Gary, said, looking at the girl but really talking
to Stevie as he signed his name, very much aware of the dozen or so under-the-breath conversations going on around the lobby, most of them accompanied by nods in his direction and the traditional fist-pumping gesture.

Across the packed room April looked over towards where the commotion had been as the official handed over her press pass: the blushing guy with the freckles and the slightly ginger hair, signing his name. She thought he looked sweet. Sweet, but a bit wet. Gary Irvine.

The name sounded familiar and it was on a whim and no more that April thought to herself,
Might as well follow his match as any of the others.

Fucking Spam Valley
, Lee thought to himself, looking around as he locked the Nova and tugged hard on the leash to pull back the straining greyhound. He’d borrowed the dog–Bastard–from his mate wee Malky.
Good idea
, Lee thought.
Just looks like I’m walking the dug
.

The houses of The Meadows loomed around him, large as castles. The street he was walking down now and the one Lee lived on shared the same first two letters and two digits in their postcodes, but there the similarities ended. The houses of The Meadows were all detached, separated from one another by large, leafy gardens with mature trees and shrubs. The oldest, most expensive, properties in the area were the two Victorian sandstone mansions down towards the cemetery. (A phenomenon Lee couldn’t understand–why, if you had the money to buy a big hoose like that, would you buy a manky old place instead of a brand-new one?) The majority of the houses were built in the late sixties and early seventies, with a few others being added more recently.

The Mastersons’ house was the last one on the street, the
hedge bordering the property giving onto a small field that contained a couple of grazing piebald ponies. (
Fucking rich pricks. Fucking ponies fur their weans
.) The field gave directly onto the thick expanse of Annick woods, and the woods–as Lee knew from bitter experience–wound all the way down the hill to the bypass.

So: in after dark–she’d be alone in the house–tie her up and gag her while he quickly trashed the place to make it look like a robbery, two shots minimum in the head and then off out the back door, through the field, over the fence into the woods and down to the dual carriageway where he’d have left the motor in a lay-by.

Bob’s yer uncle and Fanny’s yer aunt.

He turned and strolled back towards the car. Glancing left over a low section of hedging he caught a glimpse of her–blonde, fat, beige top; ‘the Target’, as Lee was trying to think of her–standing at one of the downstairs windows and, for a second, he thought she was staring at him. He made much show of tugging on the lead and calling to the dog until he noticed that she had a phone pressed to her ear and she was talking, so she wasn’t really looking at him at all, just staring into space. Lee tried to think of something hard to bolster his nerves, something like,
‘Aye, enjoy yer phone call, ya rich hoor. It’ll be yer fucking last,’
but it didn’t feel right, so he just hurried on back to the car, pulling Bastard along behind him.

‘I’
M REALLY SORRY
,’ G
ARY SAID FOR THE THIRD TIME
, I can’t help it. It’s a side effect of the accident. I don’t even know I’m doing it. Hoor.
Shite!
Sorry!’

‘It’s OK,’ April said. ‘To be honest, I work in an environment where someone with Tourette’s would fit right in…’

By the seventeenth she’d been very glad she’d followed his match. Because this guy Irvine was really something. He had a crazy, untutored eyesore of a swing for sure, but it worked. Chipping and putting lights out too–he’d posted a fairly incredible round of 64. They would have to wait until the scores were in from all the other Open Qualifying courses to see if it would be incredible enough. All the same, April thought, 64? Definitely worth interviewing him. So here they were in a corner of the clubhouse bar, April’s Dictaphone on the low table between them along with their glasses and the plate of cheese-and-ham sandwiches Gary was working his way through. He was a little self-conscious at first about talking while the little red light on the machine glowed at him, but
he was loosening up. Definitely cute too, April thought. But she was struggling to keep a straight face with the swearing. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘what was I saying? Oh yeah, you were an eighteen-handicapper before the accident?’

‘Aye, well, eighteen point seven, so nineteen really.’

‘So was it a gradual thing? I mean, did you find you were swinging a bit better when you came out of the coma and then you just worked on it until–’

‘Not really. The first time I went to the range after the accident I…I just couldn’t make a bad swing.’

‘Really?’ April said, reaching for her soda water, trying not to look as excited as she felt, the adrenalin all good reporters feel when a brilliant story falls into their laps kicking in now. ‘But your swing…it’s pretty, um, unorthodox, eh?’

‘Yeah. But it’s–fucking cocks and baws, sorry–repeatable…near enough.’ Gary grinned through a mouthful of sandwich and April noticed again that he had nice eyes, blue and clear.

‘Can I ask you–I saw you at registration this morning, in the lobby. What was all that stuff about?’

Gary coloured, his freckles standing out as his cheeks flushed. ‘It’s…fuck fuck fuck, another thing, since the accident. I…it’s called Kluver-Bucy syndrome.’

‘How do you spell that?’

‘Sorry, can we not talk about it?’

‘Sure,’ April said, writing
Clue Ver Bucy
in her notebook.

‘You’re not going to write about that stuff, are you? I mean, my mum reads the
Daily Standard
. My friends, my wife…’

April looked at the gold band on his left hand and smiled. ‘How long have you been married?’

‘Ah, eleven years next month.’

‘Wow. You must have been quite young?’

‘I suppose so. We’d known each other since school.’

Christ, childhood sweethearts, April thought. They probably still mate for life down in Ayrshire. Like lobsters. Or was it turtles?

‘What got you into golf?’ Gary asked her.

‘My dad,’ April said. ‘He took me to the Open for the first time when I was eight. 1990 at St Andrews, when Faldo won his second. He shot eighteen under par that year, the lowest winning score since–’

‘Tom Watson at Turnberry in ’77.’ Gary said, finishing the sentence for her. They smiled at each other, Gary thinking how strange it was to be sitting talking golf trivia with a woman, a very pretty woman, her pale skin gradually turning pink in the warmth of the bar. ‘That was
my
first Open. My dad took me. I was only two.’

‘Wow,’ April said, ‘imagine if you qual—’

‘Yeah. It’d make quite a story, wouldn’t it?’

‘Heart-warming, as my editor likes to say.’

April signalled the waiter for the bill. ‘How come your dad wasn’t here cheering you on?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘That’s OK. It was a long time ago.’

‘Well, I’m sure he’d have been very proud watching you out there to–’

‘HO!’ They both turned to see Stevie, coming into the bar through the doors that led out onto the patio. He had grunted disapprovingly when April introduced herself as a tabloid journalist but now he was beaming. ‘Scores are in,’ he said.

‘No,’ Gary said simply.

‘Fucking
aye
,’ Stevie said. ‘You’ve qualified. We’re going to the Open.’

Gary leapt to his feet and he and Stevie started jumping up and down hugging each other. April reached down and turned the Dictaphone off.
Quite a story is right
, she was thinking.

L
EE WALKED ON PAST THE CLEARINGS WHERE SO
recently he had dug frantically, heading deeper into the trees. He came to a large clearing deep in the woods and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. He was breathing hard, a ticklish rasping in his chest. Fucking fags. He took a half-smoked joint from behind his ear, lit it and swung the knapsack down off his shoulder.

The gun was black with a chequered-wood grip, the wood warm and natural against the palm of his hand, the metal trigger guard icy cold against the back of his forefinger. Lee pushed the release forward with his thumb and the cylinder sprang out–six empty chambers facing him. He sat the weapon on the knapsack and took out the cardboard box. He counted out the bullets, surprised at how heavy they were, and loaded six into the gun, pleased at how snugly the brass cartridges slotted into their individual compartments. He tried to flip the chamber shut with a flick of his wrist, the way you saw them do it in the films. Three of the bullets fell
out. Lee picked them up, reloaded and closed the chamber carefully.

He reached back into the knapsack and took out the copy of the
Sun
he’d bought on the way up here. He flipped through and found a full-page photograph of some Hollywood actress, some daft hoor that Lisa liked. Lee tore it out, walked across the clearing, and used his penknife to stick the page to the trunk of a big tree. He walked away from the tree, counted off twenty paces and turned round.

The woods, the gun, target practice: it all reminded him of some film he’d seen once, years ago, with his dad. Some mad cunt trying to assassinate the president of Spain, or some mad fucking place. He shot a melon or something with this mental bullet and the whole thing blew up. What was the name of the film? Fucking memory oan him. No real.

Lee took a last heavy drag on the spliff, raised the gun in his right hand and pulled back the hammer with his thumb. It took a surprising amount of strength. He closed his left eye and squinted down the barrel, over the sight and towards the target. Slowly he squeezed the trigger.

CRACK!
Birds flew from the branches overhead and Lee’s hand jerked up and back.

The photograph, the entire tree, remained untouched.

Tongue out in concentration now, Lee took the pistol in both hands, crouched down into a shooting stance and fired again.

Coughing through the acrid gunsmoke, sweating, his ears ringing from the concussion, Lee saw that both photograph and tree remained unscathed.

He edged a few paces nearer, stuck the gun out and tugged the trigger angrily. A third bang and still not a mark on the photograph.

‘FUCK YOU, YA FUCKING HOOR!’ Lee screamed as
he ran up to the tree and fired three times at point-blank range into the photograph, bark splintering everywhere, the girl’s face disappearing in scorched newsprint. Lee slumped down at the foot of the tree, panting.

Later, on the drive home, the needle living triumphantly in the top half of the petrol gauge since his meeting with Alec, it back came to him:
The Day of the Jackal
, that was it. That was the bloody film. Lee couldn’t be sure, it was a long time ago and his memory wasn’t what it was, but he had a feeling it hadn’t ended too well for the Jackal cunt. It hadn’t been his fucking day at all…

‘When ah think of all the hours you had tae work to pay for aw the stuff she wanted done tae that bloody house,’ Cathy said, busy with the corkscrew, ‘and then
she
walks out oan
you
, son…’

He’d known something was wrong as soon as he walked in the front door (tired and hung-over, he and Stevie had hit the bars of Musselburgh pretty hard to celebrate his qualification) and there was no barking. He’d put his golf bag down in the hall and walked through to the kitchen. ‘Ben?’ he’d shouted to the empty house. Then he saw it–the single sheet of A4 notepaper on the kitchen table, covered in Pauline’s girlish handwriting. How many hearts have been destroyed in such a fashion? He scanned it quickly, the key words leaping off the page: ‘
my own space for a while…drifting apart…unhappy…
’

He’d been dying to tell her that he’d got through. That it hadn’t been a waste of time.

He went round to see his mum, and here she was, cooking and–in her own fashion–comforting.

‘
Her own space for a while
,’ Cathy repeated, rereading the letter while she poured them both some wine. ‘Me and your
father were together nearly thirty years. We never needed oor own bloody “space”! Has she no got enough bloody space? All the money ye spent oan that extension?’

‘Things are–fuck, ya cunt ye, sorry, Mum–different nowadays, Mum,’ Gary said, not really sure what he meant. Back home with his mum, in the house he’d grown up in. They were eating dinner at the little table at the back of the living room: chicken grilled on Cathy’s ‘Magic-Griller’, a plastic and metal clamp which magically removed all fat from the meat as it cooked it, less magically removing all flavour too. The pale, dry breast came accompanied by peas, potatoes and carrots, all of which Cathy appeared to have been boiling since before decimalisation.

‘Where’s she gone?’ Cathy asked.

‘She’s staying–HOOR!–with her pal Katrina.’

‘Och, that wan’s a fine example. Is she no divorced aboot three times herself?’

‘Twice, Mum.’

‘And have ye tried calling her?’

‘Her phone’s off. Fucking boots, ya slut. Sorry.’

‘Aye,’ Cathy sighed, ‘it’s some state of affairs right enough.’ Her eyes misted over as she gazed into the mid-distance. ‘Ah’m only glad he’s no here to see this. One of you separated from your wife and the other one…God only knows what’s going to happen tae that boy. Just recently I had to lend him two hundred pounds to pay this loan the two of them took out–to buy that new sofa and that stupid big telly they didnae even need–and that wisnae the first time ah’ve lent him money recently, let me tell you…’

‘Mmm,’ Gary said, a significant and long-standing creditor of Lee’s himself.

‘Anyway, last night, naw, night before last it was. He came
in and says he’s got some job he’s doing. Pays me it back! Two hundred pound in cash. Counts it right oot oan the kitchen table.’

‘What kind of–flaps–job? Pishflapsyaboot.’

‘Och, he said something to do wi his pal Scooter and that tyre business he’s got. Selling a load of tyres tae some place in Glasgow.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’ Gary said with a positivity he did not feel. ‘Christ, Mum, you’re worried when he borrows money off you–fucktitsbaws–then you’re worried when he pays it back!’

‘Ah just…ah worry he slips back into his old ways. Starts hanging aboot wi aw they druggies and God knows what again. Ah couldnae take it he had to go…away again. See, the nights I lie in ma bed and I think aboot…’

And Cathy was off; a torrent of worry, fear and paranoia roped together into a wine-hazed monologue. Gary switched to AutoAye, reading the paper and saying ‘Aye’ and ‘Aye?’ while he tried to convince himself that it really was possible that Lee was enjoying fruitful employment in the world of wholesale radial tyres.

Meanwhile, up in Glasgow, in the gathering dusk of the news-room, April was finishing off her story. A little bit of googling had yielded her the full
Ardgirvan Gazette
story–Gary’s ‘incident’ on the eighteenth green at Ravenscroft. She’d rung the reporter for a few more details, the hick being mightily impressed to have someone from the big leagues calling. She moved the cursor up onto the little disk and clicked to save. She sat back, lit only by the soft grey-white light from the screen and chewed on a ragged thumbnail while she thought. A moment passed and then a grin began spreading across her
face, a grin known to subeditors across the world. April quickly typed the headline in above the piece and hit ‘Save’ again.

Devlin would wet himself.