by John Niven
Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday
‘Back With the Killer Again…’
The Auteurs
28
‘THE OPEN REGIONAL QUALIFIERS?’ APRIL TREMBLE spat the words out like they had scalded her mouth. She found they tasted no better the second time.
McIntyre and Devlin both nodded eagerly.
‘Good wee story,’ said Alan McIntyre, the Daily Standard’s editor, his tie thrown over his shoulder as he resumed tucking into his lunch: roast-beef-and-onion sandwiches brought up from the pub on the corner. Two o’clock on a Friday afternoon and he was just starting lunch at his desk. Fucking newspaper business today. At fifty-one Al McIntyre was old enough to remember when Friday-afternoon lunch would have started around noon and continued until the late afternoon: bottles of Bull’s Blood in the subs’ desk drawers and not a secretary in the building who wouldn’t have popped down to the Albany Hotel with you for the night. Not like now, he thought, looking up at the sleek figure of April, her hands on her hips, her head cocked sideways.
April was twenty-six, five nine in the heels she rarely wore (rarely wore skirts either, McIntyre reflected), a clear-skinned beauty with bobbed auburn hair and a degree (‘a first-class honours degree’ as she never tired of reminding them) in Journalism from Napier University. She was the first female sports reporter the Standard had ever had; an editorial decision designed to refute allegations of entrenched sexism at the paper and, hopefully, to draw a few female readers into opening the sports section before they passed it to their husbands or boyfriends.
‘Just a few hundred words, doll,’ said Tam Devlin, the sports editor, unwrapping his ham and cheese, ‘local interest, stars of the future, you know the sort of thing.’
‘Stars of the future? What fucking planet are you two on? I mean, what’s it like? Is the atmosphere breathable? You want me to spend the weekend in the middle of nowhere watching a bunch of nobodies trying to break par? Tell me, Tam, who was the last golfing superstar to emerge from the Open Regional Qualifiers?’
‘Er…’ said Devlin.
McIntyre’s office was on the top floor of the Standard building on the northern bank of the Clyde. Through the long window the dun river snaked away towards the east and lunchtime traffic crawled across the Kingston Bridge.
‘Exactly. Come on,’ April moved in and perched on the edge of the big desk, ‘there’s the World Match Play down in Hertfordshire that weekend. Linklater’s playing. I could–’
‘Donald’s covering that,’ Devlin said through a mouthful of white bread and plastic cheese.
‘Donald! That fucking old wreck! Look at him!’ April pointed through the glass panelling that separated McIntyre’s office from the rest of the floor, towards where an enormously fat man sat with his feet up on his desk and his back to them. Donald Lawson, Senior Sports Reporter. ‘He’s probably asleep right now!’ April added.
‘Scottish Sports Writer of the Year two years running,’ Devlin said.
‘Aye, 1977 and 1978. Fucking hell, Tam, what’s the point in sending Donald? He’ll just sit in the media bar all week, getting pissed, stuffing his face, and then filing copy cribbed from the daily press releases, occasionally wandering out to watch someone sink a putt on the eighteenth. I’d do a good job.’
‘Sorry, April,’ Devlin said, ‘R.H.I.P. Donald has relationships with lots of the players.’
‘Aye, on the seniors tour,’ April said, turning to McIntyre. ‘Come on, Al, don’t give me all this “Rank Has Its Privileges” shite. I’m worth more than this.’
‘Tam’s call,’ McIntyre said.
‘So that’s it, is it?’ April stood up, hands back on her hips. ‘Jobs for the boys? Business as usual?’
‘Jesus, April,’ McIntyre sighed. ‘Does everything have to be an Emily bloody Pankhurst situation with you? You’ve only been here a year. All good things to those who wait.’
‘Yeah. Like you two’ll be waiting until thirty seconds before the paper goes to bed for that alky’s miserable, clichéd-rammed fucking copy.’
McIntyre’s desk phone started ringing and he squinted at the caller ID. ‘Sorry, April. Conference call. We’ve got to take this. Call transport and they’ll sort you out a hire car and a hotel. Enjoy Midlothian. It’s a beautiful part of Scotland, you know.’
She looked at them: two fat, middle-aged sexist bastards who probably thought she was angry because she wasn’t getting enough.
‘You’ve got mayonnaise on your tie, Tam,’ she said, turning on her heel.
‘Bastar—’ Devlin dabbed at his tie with a napkin and McIntyre picked up his phone as April–not gently–closed the door behind her.
Devlin pulled his mobile from his pocket and hit the red button, terminating the call he had been making to McIntyre’s desk phone.
‘Thanks, Tam,’ McIntyre said, turning the TV on and getting European football on Sky. ‘It’s a shame, with all the attitude and that. She’s actually no a bad wee writer.’
‘Aye,’ said Devlin. ‘And the body on it? Ye’d ride it till the wean pushed ye oot.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘Whit, ye think she’s…?’ Devlin made an ‘O’ with the thumb and forefinger of each hand and started banging the two ‘O’s together.
‘Either way,’ McIntyre said, turning the volume up with a mustard-smeared thumb, ‘she’s probably no getting enough…’
It had taken a fair bit of thinking. He hadn’t wanted it to look too obvious. He thought about attending some carpet conference or convention, but Leanne knew how much he hated those. Or maybe a trip with the lads to see Rangers play away somewhere, but the summer had started and there weren’t any suitable games any time soon. Finally he hit upon it.
Leanne found it slightly odd that her husband had decided to make a trip up to Glasgow for a night of ‘father-and-son bonding’, but she was pleased. He spent little enough time with the boy. The university was on holiday but Keith had got a job in Glasgow for the summer, working at some computer games store and keeping his flat on in the west end. Two weeks on Thursday–17 July–Masterson would drive up to the city, get a hotel room and they’d go out to dinner, maybe see a film. ‘You’ll be OK on your own?’ he asked her.
‘Of course ah will,’ Leanne said.
Later, Masterson drove into town on the pretext of picking up some beers. Using a payphone in the shopping centre he made one short call.
Ranta hung up on Masterson and made another short call.
Alec hung up on his father and punched a number up on his mobile. He said the date, repeating it very clearly twice.
‘A’right,’ Lee said. He was going to say more, maybe something reassuring like ‘don’t worry’, or ‘leave it to me’, but there was just a click as Alec hung up.
‘The Open Regional Qualifiers?’
Pauline had been using her incredulous tone so much recently that it was beginning to sound normal to her. Every other word seemed to be coming out of her mouth in italics these days. ‘Where?’
‘Musselburgh. It’s in Midlothian. Up near Edinburgh. Shut up, Ben!’ Gary did not look up from the bag he was packing.
‘But…you…you’re off work because you’re sick.’
‘Have you seen my toilet bag? The wee black one?’
‘No! Shut up, Ben!’
‘Never mind, I’ll just–
‘No–not the fucking toilet bag, I mean no! You’re not going off to play in some stupid bloody golf competition. If you’re well enough to bugger about playing golf then you’re well enough to go back to work. Will you ever fucking shut up, Ben!’
Gary stopped packing and turned to her, a pair of black socks in his hand. Ben continued to growl at him, circling around behind Pauline as the argument paused–her enforcer, her praetorian guard.
How many times had he attempted to defy her in the past? There had been that stag night to Dublin he’d wanted to go on, some guy from work, back in ’97…an argument about the extension
to the house a few years ago. Not much over the years. Pauline looked at him. They were the same eyes, blue and clear. But it wasn’t him any more. Something fundamental was different and she felt a sudden unease, as if the rules had been changed without her consent, as if the same opponent she had beaten countless times before had somehow acquired a new technique, a new level of confidence.
Given how things were progressing with Masterson, Pauline was surprised at how angry she was. What did she care if he wanted to waste his life farting about on a golf course? But every relationship has its comfort zones, its normal way of doing things, and Gary was increasingly transgressing the boundaries laid down over the years. His golf was a pleasure Pauline tolerated as long as it was understood that there was to be guilt attached to it, that it was to be fitted in here and there and could be curtailed whenever Pauline saw fit.
Gary placed a hand on her shoulder, guided her to the edge of the bed, and sat down beside her. He began very gently. ‘Pauline, listen. Shite, fud, cunt. You don’t understand. Whatever’s happened in here–’ he tapped his temple, the indented bruise still visible–‘I can do something I’ve always wanted to do. I can imagine a shot, I can see it in my head, and then I can do it. I can make it happen almost exactly like I see it. Not now and again, or once in a blue moon–paps–But nearly every single time.’
‘So what are you saying? You’ve had a bump on the bloody head and so you’re going to pack your job in and go off and become a professional golfer?’
‘No. Don’t be daft. I just want to…take this a bit further. Can’t you understand that?’
A car horn sounded from outside.
‘That’ll be Stevie,’ Gary said, getting up. ‘He’s caddying for me.’
‘Do you want to leave me?’
‘Leave you? No, God. Of course not.’
‘Because if you walk out that door and bugger off to play fucking golf for the weekend–’
‘Can’t you just let me do this? Can’t you be happy for me?’
Pauline tried to picture herself being happy for Gary. Being happy that he was out swinging a golf club in the sunshine, laughing and enjoying himself while she had a party to do: six-year-olds shrieking and screaming and running around crying their eyes out. She felt a sickening rage twisting in the pit of her stomach. ‘If you walk out that door I…’
He reached out and put a hand on her cheek. This would be the point where the old Gary crumbled. Where he fell apart and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ or ‘OK.’ The new Gary smiled softly. ‘Och, Pauline,’ he said, ‘don’t be so fucking melodramatic.’
She listened to his feet pounding down the stairs, the metallic clank of his golf bag being picked up, and then the front door was slamming behind him. She heard him exchanging greetings with Stevie, the boot and then the car door slamming and the two of them driving off.
So, it was war, then.
29
THE OPEN 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 pho
to 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.
