The Amateurs (19 page)

A
PRIL SCANNED THE BUSY TENT–AGENTS
, PR
S, PLAYERS
and managers all bustling in and out of various suites, glad-handing a combination of journalists, sponsors, TV producers and the like. All strictly B-list, however; the brief appearance of Cyrus Cheeks had aroused the only real flicker of interest in the media centre all morning.

In years gone by the days running up to the opening Thursday of the competition used to be a quiet time for the players: practice rounds in the morning, a little tweaking on the range in the afternoon, dinner and maybe a few drinks with some buddies in the evening, the only real interruption being the traditional pro-am match on the Wednesday. Nowadays, for the top players, there were demands being made upon their time almost every minute of the day: photo opportunities, face time with sponsors and advertisers, people like April clamouring for interviews.

‘Hi, doll.’ April turned. Donald Lawson, Senior Sports Reporter,
Daily Standard
, stood beaming down at her. All
twenty-two stones of him. He had a brimming glass of red wine in one hand and a plateful of sausage rolls in the other.

‘Oh. Hi, Donald.’

‘I heard you were coming down.’ Lawson smiled. ‘Got a wee human interest story on the go, have we?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Language, dear. No, I think it’s nice. Ah’ll catch ye in the bar later, eh? Ah’ve a wee interview with your man Drew Keel to get out the way first.’

‘Watch you don’t eat him by mistake,’ April said, nodding towards the greasy fistful of sausage rolls before turning and walking out of the media tent, trying to look purposeful, as though she really did have somewhere to go. What now though? Maybe swing by the practice range and see if there was anyone interesting about. She turned round and someone walked straight into her. ‘Hey! Why don’t you–oh.’

‘Fuck,’ Gary said.

‘Hi.’

‘Thanks–cunt. Sorry!–Thanks a bunch.’

‘Listen, Gary, it’s–’

‘Yeah, really lovely profile of me. Great. Fannies. Hoor ye. Cheers.’

‘Listen, it’s just–’

‘I should have listened to Stevie. Fat cunt. Ooh ya fat cunt ye,’ Gary said, walking off now, jaw twitching.

‘Hang on, wait!’ April fell into step beside him. ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK? It’s just the job. It’s how you sell papers.’

‘
Hole in Wanker
?’

April bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, OK? Look, no one remembers these things–’

‘I fucking will!’

‘Stop, hang on. Please, Gary.’ April put a hand on his arm
and they stood off to the side of the metal walkway they’d been clanking along, people passing by them in all directions. ‘I hate to say it but you just weren’t enough of a story otherwise. Fucking Donald’s covering the tournament itself and I…I wanted to get a piece in too. If you do well enough I might get a chance to write something else about you. Something better.’

‘Better than “foul-mouthed compulsive masturbator”?’

‘Umm…’ She smiled naughtily. God, she had a nice smile, Gary thought. ‘Sorry about that. Got away from me a wee bit.’ There was a pause, both of them shuffling awkwardly on the sandy grass. ‘Where are you off to now?’ April asked.

‘Back to the clubhouse for a shower. Slut. Dirty slut tits. Sorry. Been on the range for a while.’

April nodded and they stood in silence for a moment.

‘Look, I could lie to you,’ she said. ‘Tell you some crap about how the subs rewrote the piece behind my back. But I wrote it. I…I’m just trying to get my foot in the door.’

Suddenly she looked very young and vulnerable.

‘Well, I suppose it’ll be–fuck–“lining the budgie cages tomorrow” as my mum says.’

She looked up at him, squinting into the sun, shielding her eyes with her hand, and said, ‘Do you fancy coming for walk on the beach?’

Gary thought. ‘Off the record?’ he asked.

‘Off the record.’

It was a fine july morning, the Irish Sea still, green and glittering under a huge sun. April stopped for a moment and grabbed Gary’s arm, steadying herself as she slipped off her shoes. Gary looked around, inhaling fresh sea air, conscious of her grip around his elbow, strangely calming to him, the
need to yelp and bark and curse fading. ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she said, continuing barefoot through the warm sand, gulls crying overhead and a ferry silhouetted on the blue horizon, edging its way back from Arran.

‘You come from around here, don’t you?’ April said, remembering.

‘You see those?’ Gary said, pointing. April followed his forefinger north along the shoreline to where, a few miles away, four squat tower blocks stood darkly against the sky.

‘Mmm.’

‘That’s what we call the “high flats”. I live not too far from them. You see this pipe just up here?’ He pointed again, to where a black iron pipe, the iron stained and pitted orange with rust, ran across the beach and into the sea. ‘That’s the shite pipe. You don’t swim near that. When we were little there was a basking shark–massive thing–washed up on the beach here. Dead. It was there for weeks. Everyone said it had swum too close to the shite pipe and died from inhaling the toxic jobbies of all the bams from Ardgirvan.’

April laughed.

‘Who’s we?’ she asked, one hand behind her back, loosely holding her shoes.

‘Eh?’

‘You said “when
we
were little”?’

‘Oh. Well, me and my brother I suppose I meant.’

‘Older or younger?’

‘Older. He’s…Anyway, how about you? Brothers? Sisters?’

‘Both. He’s a lawyer, she’s a doctor. I’m the black sheep, the evil tabloid journalist.’

‘I quite fancied university,’ Gary said. ‘I got an offer from Glasgow.’

‘Why didn’t you go?’

‘Well, I got offered a pretty good job. Pauline wanted–we both wanted–to buy a house, get on the property ladder. You know. Being a student, three or four years with no money…it seemed like a long time back then.’

To April the thought was incredible: make a decision about who you were going to spend the rest of your life with while you were still a teenager? Christ, she was twenty-six and she’d only recently decided what her favourite drink was, in the way that she knew automatically what she was going to have in the pub. ‘Is she going to be here this week? Cheering you on?’

‘Ah, I don’t think so. She’s moved out for a wee while. Staying with a pal of hers. We’ve been having some problems.’

‘Oh,’ April said, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s just, since the accident, with all my…stuff and everything. It’s been a lot for her to cope with.’

‘I’m sure you’ll sort it out.’

‘Yeah.’

They sat down on the shite pipe and looked out to sea, at the grey mound of Ailsa Craig, an island of rock jutting up in the Firth of Clyde. A few hundred yards along the beach a woman in a pink tracksuit was jogging down the surfline.

‘Ailsa Craig,’ April said.

‘Aye, they’ll take ye away tae Ailsa,’ Gary said.

‘Eh?’

‘There used to be a mental hospital in Ayrshire called Ailsa. If you were acting up when you were a kid your mum and dad would say they’d come and take you away to Ailsa…’

‘You know something?’ April said, turning to face him. ‘You haven’t sworn at all since we’ve been down here.’

‘Well, the doctors said I was less likely to have outbursts in situations I was comfortable with…’

‘So you’re comfortable with this?’ April said.

‘Yeah, I am,’ Gary said, smiling.

Just then the jogging woman slowly passed by them a few yards away, her jog not much more than an exaggerated walk. She was a big girl, the best part of fifteen stones, April reckoned, with a tangled mop of curly brown, sweat-drenched hair. They were the only three people on the stretch of beach and she waved cheerily to them, mouthing the word ‘hello’. April smiled and waved back.

‘FAT PINK HOOR!’ Gary screamed.

He clamped his hand over his mouth. ‘Sorry! Christ.’ But April was laughing, having already seen the white headphone wires trailing up into the thick nest of the woman’s hair.

‘You’ll get sent to Ailsa,’ April said.

DAY ONE OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

G
ARY AWOKE AT
6.15
WITH BLOOD HURRYING THROUGH
his veins, a squalling pit of butterflies in his stomach, and a life-threatening erection tenting the sheets. Stevie was already gone from the other twin bed, doubtless downstairs cramming a full English into himself. Briskly, Gary masturbated, showered, shaved and dressed and was sipping coffee down in the lounge when Stevie pulled the car around at exactly6.45. He went out and threw his clubs into the back seat. ‘Are we ready?’ Stevie asked, looking at him very seriously as he climbed in.

‘We’re ready.’

‘Are we mean?’

‘We’re mean.’

‘What are we?’

‘Eh?’

‘Christ–we’re mean and ready!’

Stevie whirled the volume knob on the stereo all the way to the right and the opening chords of ‘Complete
Control’ filled the car at deafening volume as they screeched off.

The roads quiet and the Clash loud as they drove through the Ayrshire summer morning, just the cows yawning in the fields around Troon, a milk float and a fat-bellied jet lumbering in over them on its way to Prestwick.

Through the town, a couple of eager lads already out and coming down the first fairway at Dalry as they came along the road leading towards the seafront, the Royal Troon clubhouse proud on their left as Stevie flashed their pass and pulled into the car park.

‘Fuck,’ Gary said as they got out the car and looked down towards the sea.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Stevie.

Stevie was not one to be often moved by the majesty of nature (and a golf course was not exactly nature either, it was nature shaped and coerced so that a few square miles of it ran parallel with some men’s twisted idea of a good time) but, right at that moment, it was as though God Himself had run a gentle hand over this stretch of the Scottish coastline, caressing and finessing what was already beautiful into something incredible. A translucent sheen of dew sparkled over the whole course, broken here and there by the zigzagging tyre tracks of the green staff’s vehicles as they crisscrossed the course, making last-minute checks and adjustments, reraking sand and combing tiny stones from the greens. A silver mist hung over the sand dunes that marked the boundary of the course and the beach. The air was cool and still, not even a breath of wind to ruffle the flags.

Their start time was so early that there was a grand total of five spectators gathered around the first tee when they
walked onto it. There was Cathy and Aunt Sadie, grinning and thumbs-upping. Next to them, giving Gary a sombre nod, was Auld Bert, attending his first Open since the late seventies. Dr Robertson smiled. He’d taken the time off work to be there. Just in case. And there, next to Robertson, waving with a silver Thermos of coffee, was April. ‘Good luck, son!’ Cathy shrieked over the thin trickle of applause.

A man walked over and shook Gary’s hand in businesslike fashion. He was in his late forties and wore check trousers and a bright red sweater vest, his accent was American, springy and Southern. ‘Crawford Koon,’ he said simply. Gary placed the name–an old-school journeyman pro. He’d been on the tour since the early 1980s. Never won anything big.

The third member of their three ball was a young English professional who’d come through the qualifying process. Dean Coffey was in his early twenties and decked out in the requisite fluorescent chinos and polo shirt. Like Gary, it was his first Open.

‘Awright, mate!’ he said, shaking Gary’s hand.

‘How ye doing?’ Gary said.

‘Facking shitting meself, mate!’ Coffey replied.

‘Gentlemen?’ the starter said. ‘If you’re ready…’

Stevie handed Gary the driver. ‘Nothing fancy, just knock this one up the middle,’ he said.

‘On the tee now, from Ravenscroft Golf Club, Ardgirvan, amateur competitor, Mr Gary Irvine!’

Whooping and whistling as Gary walked onto the tee. ‘You go on yourself, Gary son!’ Sadie said. ‘Gary! Gary!’ his mum chanted. Gary grinned sheepishly at them.

‘Got the fan club here, then?’ Coffey said.

Gary teed up his ball and everyone fell silent. He took a few loose easy practice swings, feeling for the tempo, and then
sighted down the fairway. The first hole at Royal Troon, ‘Seal’, is a par four that runs away from the clubhouse and doglegs slightly left. The penalties are severe if the tee shot is offline; thick gorse and marram-grassed hillocks abound. With the sea hard by on the player’s right, many a round has been wrecked early on with a sliced–or even slightly pushed–drive spiralling into deep trouble. Gary cracked it hard down the right-hand edge of the fairway. They watched as it started to fall to earth drawing slowly to the left.

Too slowly.

It landed on the edge of the fairway, took a crazy bounce to the right and vanished.

‘Uh-oh’, Stevie said, using the two-syllable golf shorthand for despair for the first time that day. Oh well, Gary thought, so the first shot hadn’t gone their way. No big deal…

‘So, aye,’ Masterson was saying, ‘Ah’ve just checked in. We’re going tae go fur a walk up around the university this morning. Some buildings up there the boy says. Right fucking…old. Ancient an aw that. Then we’ll go and see some film and then oot fur something tae eat. The boy fancies this bloody Japanese place so he does. Raw fucking fish. Ah telt him there’s no way ah’m eating that pish, but he says they’ve got chicken and rice and stuff so ah’ll get something so ah will. Aye, so, er, yer no going to go out tonight then?’ he said.

‘No. I told you, Karen’s away on holiday,’ Leanne said, ‘Audrey’s not well, I’m just going to get a film out and have a night in by myself.’

‘Aye, right enough, hen. Ye did tell me. So ye did. Aye.’ Masterson was standing up by the blue-tinted, floor-to-ceiling windows of his suite on the twenty-second floor of the Glasgow Hilton. From the adjacent bedroom he could hear the crashes
and bullets of the billion-dollar atrocity his son was watching on Pay TV. Always had to be spending bloody money. Couldnae sit and watch normal telly for an hour. He didnae even like the football. Sometimes Masterson wondered if his son was…naw, no way. No fucking danger. ‘Well, have a nice night then, doll. Ah’ll try and phone ye later.’

‘Don’t call after eleven,’ Leanne said. ‘I’m going to have an early night.’

Another one of her early nights. He pictured it–her away over on her side of the bed, her back to him, grunting or tutting if he kept the telly on a minute past eleven o’clock. Christ, Leanne bored him. All the same, this would probably be the last time he ever spoke to her, to this woman he’d once loved. Should he have something profound to say?

‘Aye, right, well, bye then, hen.’

‘Bye.’

Click. That was that.

Masterson hung up. He badly wanted a drink, a big glug of whisky or something, but it was barely ten o’clock in the morning. He realised there was no way he was going to get through this day sober. Would there be a bar at this cinema? Maybe no. He’d have to make sure this fucking Jap restaurant was licensed. He dialled Pauline’s number but it went straight to voicemail. Where was she going today? To look at some house or other? Maybe she was right. Maybe they should move away. Think about Pauline–that was the way to get through this. Think about those breasts, the arse cheeks. All his. Forever. Keep thinking about that. He stood there and pressed his forehead against the cold glass, his temples going numb as he watched the traffic flowing in and out of the city.

Leanne walked through the big, empty house towards the kitchen, thinking that there had been something weird about the phone call, other than the fact that it was unusual for him ever to call her without a specific reason. ‘Just for a chat.’ It was a few minutes later, as her hot-cross bun was bouncing up out of the toaster, that she put her finger on it.

Nervous.

He’d sounded nervous.