The Amateurs

by John Niven

  He’d had to stretch himself a little at the longer third hole–a 420-yard par four–when he pushed his drive out to the right and had to hit a full-blooded eight-iron into the green. By the time the match reached the fourth tee he’d loosened up properly. The fourth: a short par three; 148 yards to the middle of the green, hitting over a water-filled ditch that ran across the front, a ditch that, in his previous life, Gary had skulled and thinned many a seven-iron into. Pin at the front today, just over the left-hand side bunker.

  Gary reached into his bag and pulled out the sand wedge.

  ‘Aye, yer maw,’ Prentice muttered as Gary teed up.

  Gary smiled, miles away, his head dancing with the beautiful maths and physics of the game: about 130 to the cup, the shoulder of the front bunker feeding down towards the flagstick. Land the ball on top of that and it should roll nicely down to the hole. Underhit it and you’d be in the bunker, or–worse–plopping into the ditch. These were negative thoughts that the old Gary would have been all too ready to entertain. Entertain? He’d have laid on a buffet and performed a one-man show for them. Not any more.

  Need some height on this. Stop it dead.

  WHUMP!–a clod of turf the size of a child’s shoe flying forward through the air, the ball rocketing up in a great inverted U shape, seven heads following it into the air.

  ‘Cuntfuckbaws,’ Gary said, tongue between his teeth now, holding his finishing position, his eyes flipping between the descending ball and the shoulder of the bunker. (Shoulder, lip, hole: the human body referenced all over the golf course.)

  The ball landed just two inches over the edge of the bunker and seemed to stop dead. Then it started to roll. Rolling downhill and to the right, very slowly at first, but gathering momentum, trundling through the fine powdery sand that had been blasted out of the bunker by previous matches, trundling down towards the hole.

  ‘Tae fuck, that’s close,’ Prentice said, awed.

  ‘Go on!’ Bert urged.

  The ball caught the right-hand edge of the hole, circled 180 degrees around, and plopped into the cup on the left-hand side.

  They heard the cheer back at the clubhouse.

  ‘SMOKE MA FUCKEN DOBBER!’ Gary was yelling, dropping to his knees in the still-damp grass, his arms extended rigid in front of him and his partners engulfing him in a torrent of high fives. Gary looked up into the sky.

  Did you see that? Were you watching me?

  The fifth hole ran back uphill, with the green adjacent to the first tee and clubhouse. As they came up over the brow of the hill towards their drives they saw the crowd gathered behind the green: maybe a dozen people.

  ‘Aye aye,’ Bert said.

  As they walked up to the green Derek Forbes detached himself from the group and approached Bert. ‘We heard yese shouting yer heeds aff doon there,’ he said.

  ‘Hole in wan at the fourth,’ Bert said.

  ‘Big John?’ Forbes whispered, nodding towards the green, where they were marking their balls.

  Bert shook his head, smiling. ‘Young Gary.’

  Forbes looked at him.

  ‘Boy’s five under par after four holes,’ Bert said.

  ‘Gary Irvine? Away tae fuck.’

  ‘Ah’m telling ye.’

  Forbes stumbled back, almost falling over as he ran off towards his cronies to break the unbelievable news. By the time the group had putted out–Gary’s ball stopping right on the lip, leaving him a tap-in for par, his worst hole of the day so far–and were making their way to the sixth tee, their gallery had doubled.

  Bert and Gary fell into step with each other. ‘Whit the hell’s going on, son?’ Bert said.

  ‘Hoor. I don’t know, Bert. Hoor,’ Gary said.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, just keep doing it. Right, ah’d better leave ye alone. Ah don’t want tae break your concentration.’

  I don’t think you can, Gary thought to himself as Bert walked over to join his friends behind the tee box.

  Word went round.

  A dozen or so members were drinking in the bar when Forbes–red-faced from running for the first time in a decade–burst in through the double doors that led to the locker room.

  ‘Derek!’ said Senga the barmaid. ‘Whit the hell’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s, he’s…’ Forbes spluttered, fighting for breath.

  ‘Christ, take it easy, bud. Here, huv a whisky…’

  ‘He’s just eagled the tenth! Ten under par now!’

  ‘Who?’

  Forbes took a gulp of whisky. ‘Gary Irvine!’

  A split second before the laughter started. ‘Away and don’t talk pish!’ someone said.

  ‘Hey, that’s no the first drink you’ve hud the day!’

  ‘Ah’m telling yese!’

  They saw he was serious.

  ‘He eagled the tenth?’

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘Ten under par?’ someone repeated.

  ‘Christ,’ Senga said. ‘He’s gonnae win the Medal!’

  ‘Win the Medal?’ Forbes said, knocking back the rest of his drink. ‘He’s gonnae break the bloody course record!’ With that he was off, running back towards the course. A clattering of pint pots and whisky glasses onto wooden tabletops, the whisper of jackets and sweaters coming off the backs of chairs, and everyone was following him.

  Ardgirvan is a small town. it has often been said that if you farted on your way out the Bam, then the story that you’d shat yourself would be doing the rounds by the time you passed the the Annick. Stevie got a call from a mate of Prentice’s saying that Gary was playing like Calvin Fucking Linklater and was going to smash the course record. He shut up shop and drove up to Ravenscroft, catching up with the match on the twelfth tee, where he joined the gallery of maybe fifty spectators as Gary’s group prepared to tee off.

  At 466 yards the twelfth hole was the longest par four on the course. The right-hand side of the fairway gave the best line into the green, but it was a dangerous route: out of bounds all the way. A rusted wire fence divided the golf course from the main road and, across the road, the mento home. Today, as every day, its saliva-flecked windows were thronged with the twitching, vibrating faces of those who had proved too much for their children.

  Gary stepped onto the tee. There was a decent breeze blowing into his face, coming from the right.

  Hit it down the right and have the wind keep it in play.

  KEERACK!

  Just at the moment the ball left the tee–struck well, flying on the line he had intended–the wind abruptly changed direction, suddenly, crazily, blowing from the left, pushing his ball right, sending it drifting over the right-hand edge of the fairway, over the right-hand rough, towards the road…

  ‘Fuck,’ Stevie said.

  The ball struck the edge of one of the concrete posts marking the Out of Bounds line and ricocheted off across the road towards the mento home.

  The mentos all turned their heads skywards as Gary’s ball bounced three times down the roof above them.

  ‘Shite,’ Bert whispered to Stevie. ‘Three aff the tee,’ meaning that with the penalty strokes Gary’s next shot would be his third.

  Understandably shaken, Gary pulled it left into thick rough–the first drive he had mishit all day. He hacked out and overhit his approach shot into the deep bunker behind the green. He got the ball out of the bunker and then made his first three putt of the morning, chalking up a horrific quintuple bogey nine and tumbling back to five under par in the process.

  ‘Well,’ someone said, ‘so much for the course record.’ A few people began to drift away.

  ‘What is the course record?’ Stevie asked Bert as they set off towards the next tee.

  ‘Sixty-two,’ Bert said. ‘Ten under par. He’ll need to birdie every hole from here on in if he’s gonnae beat it.’

  ‘Sixty-two?’ Stevie whistled. ‘Who set that?’

  Bert was laughing as he said: ‘I bloody did!’

  Five under par on the thirteenth tee. The old,
pre-accident, Gary Irvine would have allowed one of his testicles to be surgically removed–sans anaesthetic–in return for such a score. The new Gary Irvine wanted more. And in golf wanting it too much can often translate into trying too hard; a fatal error in a sport which asks its greatest exponents simply to perform their very best with an attitude of complete indifference. This is the Zone, where the professional golfer must live when he is playing at full stretch: in his own little world where nothing exists except putting the club sweetly through the ball–not the munching, coughing, farting, camera-phone-waving spectators, not the swivelling, trundling black-eyed TV cameras, not the other players. Nothing. The fine art of being there and not being there. Gary had heard about the Zone, of course, but he had never been there for more than a few seconds at a time. Now, the trauma of the last hole behind him, he felt himself slipping back into it; his mind pleasantly vacant apart from a gentle fizzing sensation in his skull, like bubbling lemonade, his body loose apart from the usual nagging semi-erection in his pants.

  He was there and he wasn’t there when he drove the green at the thirteenth and then made the twenty-foot putt for his second eagle of the day.

  He was there and he wasn’t there when he made a perfect connection with his approach on the fourteenth, sending the ball straight and high, pumping the eight-iron higher than most players can send the sand wedge, and nailing the six-foot putt it left him.

  He was there and he wasn’t there as he birdied the sixteenth and seventeenth (an unlucky roll of the green had denied him his birdie at the fifteenth; he’d tapped in for par) and walked towards the last tee with a crowd of sixty people following him, back to ten under par now and needing one last birdie to break the course record, a record set by the man walking beside him before he was even born. Bert smiled over at him, but Gary didn’t see it.

  ‘Come on, Gary!’

  ‘Go on yerself, son!’

  ‘Come on, big man!’

  ‘Get in there!’

  Gary drove first, bombing one just under three hundred yards up the middle. Prentice, Mason and Alexander, long reduced to walk-on parts and their confidence shredded by having to play in front of an audience, all missed the fairway, finding trees, gorse and–in Prentice’s case–the driveway, which wound up the right-hand side of the fairway, connecting the golf club with the main road.

  As they came up the hill the eighteenth green came into sight. It was completely surrounded. Every member was out from the bar. Members who hadn’t been playing that day had been alerted that the course record that had stood for thirty-seven years was in danger of being broken. They had driven up to the course, abandoning lunches and families to witness this momentous occasion.

  Gary’s ball was about twenty yards behind the red-and-white post that indicated there was 150 yards to the centre of the green. Pin at the back left, tucked in behind the bunker. Sucker pin position, trying to lure you into the bunker. Ignore it and aim for the heart of the green? But that would leave him a long putt for birdie, with all those people watching…it’d be better to be close.

  Hit a draw? Land the ball on the middle of the apron of the green, moving a little right-to-left and cosying up to the flag? A little under 170 yards to the hole: about a five-iron for the old Gary. The new one took a deep breath and pulled out the seven.

  Don’t hold back now.

  That blissful sensation of weightlessness as he came through the ball, catching it right out of the middle, right out of the sweet spot, like there was nothing there at all, and Gary letting the club wrap around him, falling against the back of his neck, conscious of cold steel against his skin.

  The ball bounced once in front of the green, a second time three yards onto it, and began to roll left, out of sight. A second passed, then two, and people behind the green were hopping up and down and beginning to emit a strange noise, a tortured whine, like a jet engine powering up for take-off. Another second, the whine powering up then resolving into a massed ‘Ooooohhh…’.

  As he walked onto the green, into all the clapping and cheering, Gary saw that his ball was nestled just inches from the cup. He became aware of three things.

  1) He had the simplest of tap-ins to break the course record.

  2) The fizzing sensation in his skull was intensifying, like the lemonade in there was beginning to boil.

  3) The erection in his pants was reaching a scarcely believable pitch of rigidity.

  Dreamlike now–the sound of the crowd just a distant wash as he watched their mouths opening and closing but heard nothing–he walked into the middle of the green. Someone’s hand on his shoulder, Gary turning to see Auld Bert saying something, indicating that Gary should tap in and take his place in Ravenscroft history right now, rather than waiting until his partners had hit their putts. Everything in slow motion. Numbly Gary settled the putter behind the ball and tapped it. It dropped into the cup with a ‘clink’ he did not hear and he was engulfed in a sea of backslapping, handshaking, smiling and laughing. A whoosing in his head. The hard-on. Jesus.

  Senga the barmaid kissing him on the cheek.

  His vision dimming at the edges now as he broke away from everyone, their expressions turning to concern as Gary began staggering, scrabbling at his belt buckle with jittery urgency, a strange moan coming from him.

  His belt slithering open and his trousers falling down.

  Jaws falling too as Gary’s hand disappeared down the front of his boxers, reappearing a split second later, clutching his…

  Senga the barmaid screamed.

  Everything went black as his legs folded beneath him.

  He woke up in a pile of sweaters still in their thin polythene wrappers. Looking up, Gary saw that Stevie and Bert were standing over him. They looked very worried.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in the pro shop, son,’ Bert said softly.

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘Ah, you fainted,’ Bert said.

  ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ Stevie asked, offering him a sip of water from a plastic cup and sitting down on the floor beside him.

  ‘I…’ He took the water. What did he remember? Some strange dream–his dad, a golf course, lots of flowers? ‘Walking onto the green?’ Gary said. ‘People cheering?’

  Stevie raised his eyebrows expectantly. ‘Then?’

  ‘Then…’ He thought hard, but there was nothing. A vague memory of a tickling in his head, a whooshing sound. ‘What happened then?’

  Stevie bit his lip and bowed his head down. Gary looked up at Bert. ‘Bert, what happened?’

  Bert coloured. ‘Umm, well, it, ye had, ye know, son, ye started having a…a wee turn at yourself.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Stevie sighed and spoke slowly and clearly. ‘You started wanking yourself off in front of everyone. Then you fainted.’

  Gary looked up at Bert. Bert nodded. Gary swallowed.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said finally.

  25

  LEE IRVINE, SITTING ON THE HOT BONNET OF HIS CAR, lit a Mayfair and turned as he heard the crunch of tyres. The black jeep pulled up beside Lee’s Nova in the deserted car park. Alec gestured for him to get in.

  ‘A’right?’

  ‘No bad, Alec, no bad. How’s it going?’ Lee pulled the hefty door shut behind him. Leather seats. iPod. Satnav. The business.

  ‘Here’s how it’s fucking going…’ Alec said, sliding a small green canvas knapsack onto Lee’s lap and looking around the park. Empty, save for a pair of joggers on the wooden running track half a mile away.

  Lee thought about looking inside, but decided that might be unprofessional. Better to play it cool. The knapsack felt appropriately heavy on his thighs, dense matter, condensed death.

  ‘Cheers,’ Lee said with a nonchalance he did not feel.

  ‘It’s a revolver.’ Alec paused, chewing gum. ‘Ye don’t want an automatic jamming oan ye. Fucking nightmare. There’s a box o’ shells in there too.’

  Alec talked slowly, c
almly, never turning Lee’s way. He kept his eyes on the park around them, constantly scanning. ‘Serial number’s been filed aff, but don’t get smart and figure ye’ll keep it and sell it later or whatever. Soon as yer done take a drive doon the harbour and pap it in the fucking water.’ Water pronounced in the full Ayrshire–‘Wah-turr’.

  ‘Aye, ah’m no fucking daft, Alec.’

  ‘Ah’m sure yer no, so listen tae this. This job’s come straight doon fae the auld boy. He’s taking a personal interest. Know whit ah’m saying?’

  ‘Aye.’

  The auld boy. Ranta. Lee felt his windpipe tighten.

  ‘So if ye’ve any doubts aboot this, now’s the time tae say. Ye can just gie us the money back and that’ll be that. Because after this arrangements will be getting made and ma da’ll be giving his word tae the client.’ Alec turned to face Lee for the first time. ‘And ye wouldnae want ma da tae huv tae go back on his word. Would ye?’

  ‘Course no, Alec. Ah can handle it.’

  ‘Right.’ Alec passed him an envelope. ‘There’s the address and a photo o’ the cow. Memorise them and burn them.’

  ‘When’s it tae get done?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Not for a wee while. Probably be a month or so. There’s arrangements tae be made. Alibis and stuff. Give ye time tae dae yer homework. We’ll be in touch. When it’s aw done ah’ll meet ye and square ye up wi’ the rest o’ the dollar.’

  ‘Aye, right, Alec. Fair enough. Ah–’ But Alec was turning the ignition on, indicating that the meeting was over.

  Lee watched Alec drive off in a beige cloud of gravel. He got in his car and looked around. Still no one in sight. He opened the knapsack, slid his hand in, and closed his fist around a real gun for the first time in his life. Not an air pistol or a replica. A. Real. Fucking. Gun.

  It felt oily and cold, and gripping it tightly did not bring the excitement Lee had thought it might. Only fear. He opened the envelope and took the photo out–a woman, fat, blonde, middle-aged, smiling for the camera, a close head and shoulders shot, taken in a restaurant somewhere. She looked happy. Lee pushed away the thought of how happy she was going to look with a fucking bullet hole in her coupon. He looked at the address written on the back of the photo: Riverside, 42 The Meadows. Rich cow then. For some reason this made him feel a little better.