The Amateurs

by John Niven

  Through sheer exhaustion, he’d managed to drift off for a little while. When he opened his eyes he saw sunlight filtering in through the cracks around the door on the far side of the room. He could hear children’s voices and a dog barking somewhere close by. Somehow these sounds made him more miserable than he’d ever been. Like when you were little and you got sent to bed early on a summer’s night for being bad: the worst punishment. You’d hear the sounds from the street, ice cream vans chiming, kids playing; all reminding you that life went on without you.

  ‘Christ knows what’s going tae happen to you, boy.’

  His father had said this to him more than once, after one or other of his escalating teenage transgressions (the truancy, into shoplifting, into glue-sniffing, into smoking hash, into whatever) had been uncovered. Well, Christ knew now. And Lee knew too, swallowing and tasting coppery blood. He was going to die here, in this windowless concrete room, surrounded by engine parts, oil stains and men who were harder than he was.

  46

  FOR TWO HOURS GARY AND STEVIE, AND A PRESSING gallery of thousands of spectators, watched in awe as Drew Keel heroically tackled Royal Troon’s front nine. He crunched drivers 350 yards. He went for the par fives in two shots every time. He slashed mighty three-irons out of rough most players would have trembled at taking the lob wedge to. He went right at every pin, no matter how riskily they were positioned.

  Golf, of course, couldn’t care less about heroics and by the time they were walking towards the tenth tee Keel was a horrendous four over par for the round.

  Gary drove the ball conservatively, routinely hitting the three-wood and the rescue club. He laid up on par fives, playing for position in the centre of the fairway and leaving himself soft wedges into the greens and comfortable two putts for his pars. After a morning of grinding it out he had made one birdie over nine holes. Level par for the tournament.

  Cathy Irvine was once again watching her son lining up his second shot at the treacherous eleventh. He’d pushed his drive a bit, landing in the first cut of rough on the right-hand side of the fairway, just at the corner where it doglegged right. Cathy automatically tilted her eyes up to the sky. ‘Come on, you…’

  Meanwhile, sixty-odd yards away, Gary was hearing the more corporeal advice of Stevie. ‘Fucking fucked fae here, cunty-baws,’ Stevie said, surveying the situation.

  The eleventh is a shortish par five by modern tour standards, almost a par four for some of the bigger hitters. Keel had creamed his drive and was lying in the middle of the fairway about fifty yards ahead of Gary, who still had over two hundred yards to go, with thick rough and out-of-bounds waiting all along the right and a huge, yawning bunker guarding the left of the green. The sensible shot–the shot Stevie was urging–was something like a seven-iron into the neck of the fairway, leaving a wedge in for a two-putt par.

  At the same time…he could definitely reach the green and there weren’t many two-putt birdie opportunities left out here today. Something else too–he just fancied this. A phenomenon unique to golf: sometimes a straightforward chip can fill the player with unexpected dread while the most ludicrous shot, an arcing draw from a scrubby patch of rough over a terrible canyon, makes the mouth water. Something about the way the wind was blowing, the way his ball was lying–in the rough, but sitting up a little on a springy tuft of grass–conspired to make Gary think he could just muller this one. He reached past Stevie’s proffered seven-iron and pulled out the four.

  ‘Ho, bawbag,’ Stevie said, ‘are you aff yer tits? If ye come up short over this rough it’s game over.’

  ‘I can make it.’

  ‘Sayonara.’

  ‘Ball’s sitting up nice.’

  ‘Kaput.’

  ‘Wind’s helping a wee bit.’

  ‘Goodnight Vienna.’

  ‘Stevie!’

  ‘Sorry. Best o’ luck.’

  Stevie stepped back and Gary took his stance. Pin back right. Fucking out-of-bounds all over the place. No, don’t think about that. Plenty of room.

  In the crowd Cathy turned to Bert. ‘Whit were they arguing about, Bert?’

  ‘It looks like he’s going for the green. Ah think young Stevie wanted him tae lay up. Difficult shot. Tricky hole.’

  ‘Yeah,’ April said. ‘Didn’t Nicklaus make something like a 12 here back in ’62?’

  Bert looked at the lassie, impressed. ‘Thirteen, hen. Thirteen.’

  ‘Aww my God!’ Cathy cried as thousands of necks suddenly snapped to the left.

  Gary and Stevie held their breath as the ball flew over the right-hand rough, terrifyingly close to the railway tracks. An ‘oooh’ from up ahead as his ball came down.

  ‘Is he on the green?’ Cathy asked Bert, her hands over her face.

  ‘On the green?’ Bert said. ‘I reckon he’s about three feet fae the bloody pin!’

  ‘Oh thank God for that,’ Cathy said as she felt a tugging at her elbow. She turned.

  Lisa looked terrible: bloodshot eyes, streaked mascara.

  ‘Lisa hen! Whit is it? Whit’s wrang?’ Cathy’s stomach was tightening.

  ‘Aw Cathy!’

  ‘Aw God, whit’s he done, hen?’

  Lisa burst into fresh tears.

  47

  THE ROOM WAS SUDDENLY ILLUMINATED BY A BURST of sunlight as the door was thrown open. Lee squinted up and saw Ranta Campbell floating towards him, perfectly silhouetted, a corona of sunlight burning around him, his long coat flowing out like black smoke and an axe in his hand.

  Lee made a sound he’d never made before. He whimpered, like a miserable dog, or a child who knows they have done something very, very bad. Ranta tore the oily rag from Lee’s mouth and heard exactly what he had been expecting to hear:

  ‘Rantapleasefucksakeah’llpayyeawthemoneybackahsweartaefuck’

  Lee went on like this for a while, all the time staring straight into Ranta’s eyes–an unsettling enough experience in its own right. Ranta listened to the speech in the same way a seasoned judge might listen to an earnest, but inexperienced, barrister, tuning out all the cliché and hyperbole he’d heard countless times before while keeping a weary ear open in case a surprising detail emerged from the babble. After a minute or so of garbled raving Lee gave up and just started crying.

  Ranta looked down at him. The boy looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Ranta had met a lot of bams over the years, in rooms like this, with a tool, a chib, an equaliser in his hand. Leaning casually on the long-handled axe as a golfer leans on a club when he is waiting for a green to clear, Ranta said, ‘Sorry, son, Lee is it? Is that yer name?’ Lee nodded miserably. ‘Look, ah kin see what happened, Lee. Ye thought ye’d play wi the big boys and when it came doon tae it ye shat yer pants and ran away. Ah see that. Ah’m no a monster. It’s just that ah gave ma word that this job would be done. Ah cannae let it get about that any wee fanny in the town can make me look like a total fud whenever he feels like it. Can I?’ Lee, crying softly, head bowed, did not answer. ‘Look at me, son.’

  Lee looked up, blinking away his tears, and saw Ranta was hefting the axe up into his hands now. ‘I mean–do you want me to look like a total fud?’

  Alec and Frank laughed. The boss was a fucking riot sometimes so he was. Lee shook his head. ‘Naw,’ Ranta said, still calm and pleasant, ‘ah didnae think so…’

  Frank stepped back as Ranta widened his stance and brought the axe back. He’d seen this before: one time Ranta had almost missed the guy completely, slicing off half his face by mistake–right forehead, tip of the nose and right cheek–and the cunt had thrashed around screaming and spraying blood everywhere before Frank shot him in the face.

  Lee looked at Alec. ‘Please, Alec.’

  ‘You’re a fucking amateur, Lee Irvine,’ Alec said as Ranta brought the axe down hard.

  Lee shut his eyes.

  He felt the breath of air on his face as the blade passed very close to his cheek. Simultaneously he felt the familiar thick, oily spurt into the
gusset of his boxer shorts, then the hollow clang of metal hitting cement, his bare forearm tingling as sparks bounced off him. He looked up.

  Ranta was standing over him, breathing a little hard from the exertion. The axe had dug a chip of concrete the size of a toffee out of the floor next to Lee’s knee. Ranta, his massive hands stinging from the impact, like when he misstruck a long-iron, looked down at Lee and said, ‘Irvine? You’re no any relation to the boy Gary Irvine who’s playing in the Open, are ye?’

  48

  MASTERSON WAS FINDING IT HARD TO RECOGNISE THE woman sitting across the table from him. He glanced around nervously, hoping none of the other lunching customers could hear Pauline as she repeated herself, this time inserting an expletive between the two words.

  ‘You’re fucking joking?’

  ‘Calm down, for fuck’s sake,’ he whispered.

  ‘Calm down? I’ve been to see the place twice. I told the estate agent we’d be putting an offer in tomorrow. I found a sofa!’ Pauline delivered this last sentence with the kind of panicky stress normally heard only in emergency rooms, on battlefields, on the flight decks of failing aircraft.

  ‘It’s only a fucking house!’ Masterson said. ‘We’ll just have to live somewhere smaller for a wee while.’

  ‘Smaller?’

  ‘It’s just, after the divorce, ah won’t have as much spare cash. But, once the boy’s finished university and aw that…and Leanne might get remarried sometime. As long as we’ve got each other, eh?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to get a divorce. I thought…’ Pauline wasn’t quite sure what she’d thought.

  ‘Well. Change o’ plan,’ Masterson said. He couldn’t go through with it again. That was that.

  Pauline let him put his hands over hers but she didn’t meet his gaze. She stared at the tablecloth, thinking about the house, the matching his and hers sinks, the garden. Lawyers for neighbours.

  ‘There’s just the two of us, eh?’ Masterson said enthusiastically. ‘A nice wee flat would do us for a bit.’

  ‘Flat?’ Pauline said, doing a very good job of making it sound like she had just said ‘Aids’ or ‘cancer’.

  49

  BERT HAD BEEN WRONG. GARY’S BALL HAD ACTUALLY finished four and a half feet from the pin. He rolled it in for an eagle: two under for the tournament. A few moments later, after Keel had three-putted his way to a par, they were walking towards the twelfth tee when Stevie said, ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘What?’ Gary asked.

  ‘Look,’ Stevie said, pointing. Gary followed his finger towards one of the huge leader boards that dotted the course. It had just been changed. Gary’s mouth flapped open as he looked at it. It said:

  1st: LINKLATER C–5

  2nd: LATHE T–4

  3rd: RODRIGUEZ J–3

  4th: HONEYDEW III J–2

  4th: IRVINE G (A)–2

  He’d known he was playing well, but he hadn’t really been thinking about his score. Now here he was–tied fourth in the Open. Just three shots behind Linklater.

  Calvin Fucking Linklater.

  Gary felt his chest tightening and he was breathing harder. ‘Jesus, Stevie,’ he said. ‘Jesus fucking fuck.’

  ‘I know, come on, breathe easy now.’

  ‘Aye. Breathe. Cunt. Dug rider. Fuck.’

  Oh Christ, not now, Stevie thought as Drew Keel sloped over to them. ‘Listen, son,’ he said, laying a massive gloved hand on Gary’s shoulder, ‘don’t you even think about that shit. Just keep playing your own game and don’t worry what anyone else is doing, OK?

  ‘Aye. Wankyawankye. Wank me aff,’ Gary said.

  ‘Sure, son,’ Keel said, Gary’s Ayrshire accent as foreign and indecipherable to his ears as Chinese. ‘No need to thank me. You just hang in there.’ He sauntered back towards the tee.

  ‘Oh Christ, Stevie,’ Gary whispered, ‘ah’ve got a fucking hard-on.’

  ‘I know. It’s exciting. Calm down. Just a few holes to–’

  ‘No!’ Gary whispered through gritted teeth, ‘I mean I’ve got an actual hard-on. It’s killing me.’

  Stevie looked at him. Then at their gallery–thousands of spectators now, lining the fairway, pressed up against the ropes all along the tee box and the paths. ‘Look,’ Stevie said, ‘it cannae be that bad…’

  ‘Bad? It’s fucking bionic.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  Keel and his caddie were already waiting for them on the tee as Stevie walked over to their marshal. ‘Umm, sorry tae to be a pain but my player needs a quick…comfort break?’

  ‘Christ, son, the match behind is nearly caught up with us.’

  ‘I know, he really needs to…go.’

  ‘OK, but make it quick.’

  Inside the humid Portaloo, breathing through his mouth against the tangy fug of urine and faeces, it took just forty-five seconds before–cross-eyed, sighing and separated from thousands of spectators by just half an inch of green plastic–Gary felt blessed relief beginning to rumble up from the floor of his testicles. He reached for the toilet paper to find that the box was, of course, empty. Only one thing for it. He grunted as he ejaculated gratefully into his golf glove.

  He ran back to the tee box only slightly red-faced. ‘Go on, Gary!’ someone shouted from behind the ropes. ‘You can do it!’

  ‘Thanks, cheers.’

  ‘That was quick,’ Stevie said, holding the driver out.

  ‘Aye, give us a new glove out the bag, would ye?’

  ‘Glove?’

  ‘Aye.’

  The various sponsors provided an endless supply of free golf junk: balls, tees, gloves, towels, umbrellas and the like, all piled high in the locker room. Stevie knelt down and rummaged through the golf bag.

  ‘Feeling better, kid?’ Keel asked.

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  ‘Your honour, Mr Irvine,’ the official said, gesturing towards the tee.

  ‘Aye, just a sec.’

  Stevie came up from the bag. ‘Umm, sorry. I forgot to lift some new gloves this morning.’

  Gary swallowed.

  ‘Please, Mr Irvine,’ the official said. ‘I’m going to have to put you on the clock.’

  ‘OK,’ Gary said, fishing in his pocket.

  He shuddered as he slid his left hand into the cold, glutinous semen-filled glove and walked onto the tee.

  Pauline had popped back to the house to pick up some clothes. She knew he was staying in Troon, that the place would be empty. What with the heat and trauma of the day she’d decided to take a cool shower to try and relax. She had the radio on as she leaned into the cold needles, but terrible words kept drifting up to haunt her–only a house…somewhere smaller…a flat. She felt the water tingling into her scalp and held her breath for as long as she could.

  She turned the shower off and in the quiet heard that the hourly news bulletin had commenced. ‘…with the Prime Minister now in close discussion with the rest of the Cabinet. In sporting news, in a dramatic turn of events at the Open Championship in Troon, amateur player Gary Irvine has just birdied the eighteenth hole to take the lead as the penultimate day of play draws to a close. More now from Roger Morton at Royal Troon.’

  Pauline ground a pinkie into her left ear, squeaking out the soapy water.

  ‘Yes, Angela, dramatic scenes here. All the more so because Gary Irvine really is a local boy, from Ardgirvan just a few miles along the coast and–’

  The doorbell rang. Probably Shona from next door, an avid Radio Ayrshire listener, wanting to tell her that Gary was on the news. Pauline wrapped a towel around herself, turbaned her hair up and ran downstairs.

  She opened the front door, the words ‘I know, Shona’ already forming on her lips.

  Pauline was dazzled by a fusillade of light guns.

  Reporters were crowded around the doorstep. More were streaming through the garden gate, making their way across the front lawn and along the path, some of them even managing to avoid the various decaying turds Ben had strewn around the place
. (And ‘strewn’ was wrong, for it suggested the random acts of a madman. The satanic beast had, of course, placed the reeking mounds as strategically as a retreating commander would landmine a field.) Pauline felt the heat of a lamp on her face as cameras, microphones and Dictaphones were thrust in her direction. ‘Mrs Irvine,’ someone was asking her, ‘how do you feel about your husband’s performance?’

  ‘Do you think he’ll go all the way?’

  ‘Was his accident a big factor?’

  Faced with such an ambush, many people would crumble. They would stammer and slam the door. Pauline–a veteran of tabloids and celebrity magazines, well versed in doorstep journalism and reality TV–found her answers coming immediate and slick.

  ‘I’m very pleased he’s playing so well…he works hard at his golf…I’m not a doctor so I’m afraid I couldn’t say how much his accident affected his playing…I think if he keeps playing the way he is he can definitely go all the way!’

  Cameras flashed, microphones were thrust closer, more questions were shouted and Pauline began to feel…what, exactly?

  For so long she had felt like there was a hole somewhere in the centre of her being. A sense that she was missing something, that she was living out the wrong life. That greater, better things had been intended for her. Now, here on her own doorstep, under TV lighting and the strobing of the cameras with the long, heavy lenses, the hole was being filled. The missing part was being found. She was finally slipping into the right life. For the first time in a long time she felt like she was exactly where she was meant to be. She felt alive. She felt famous.