The Amateurs

by John Niven

  The Beast grinned and Lee nodded miserably.

  ‘Good boy. Right, we’ll meet the two of ye at that place that does the steak sandwiches, just next tae the fish and chip stall, OK?’

  ‘Right,’ the Beast said, nudging Lee towards the hotel. ‘Come on, ya fanny. Let’s go and play happy fucking families.’

  Breakfast in the hospitality tent. Journalists, guests of players and esteemed corporate clients wandered through the hot waft of frying bacon and grilling sausages. There were devilled kidneys, kedgeree, kippers and eggs poached, fried and scrambled. Pastries and croissants were piled high on silver trays, flanked by huge urns of coffee and tea.

  April, who got hungry when she was nervous, was sliding a third sausage onto a plate already groaning with a very full English when she spotted Pauline up ahead at the buffet. It was not yet 7 a.m., April had barely brushed her hair after jumping straight into the same crumpled clothes–jeans and a fleece–she’d been wearing the day before, but Pauline looked like she’d come straight from a weekend at a beauty spa. Perfect hair and make-up, her lips shining a glossy pink in the light of the heat lamps that were warming the food.

  ‘Hi there,’ April said, sliding up beside her. ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Pauline said, giving her a thin smile. ‘Not great, actually. He was a nightmare, up and down the whole night.’

  ‘Well, nerves. Oh.’ April turned away from Pauline as Lawson approached. ‘Hello, Donald! Peckish?’ She nodded down at the plate Lawson was carrying with both hands. It made April’s breakfast look like an amuse-bouche. In addition to the bacon, sausages, eggs, black pudding, kidneys, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans and potato scones, he’d piled a couple of pastries on the side, perhaps as a kind of dessert, April wondered?

  Lawson grunted, ignoring the sarcasm, and asked, ‘How’s your boy this morning?’

  ‘Actually, Donald, this is his wife.’ April gestured to Pauline. ‘Pauline Irvine, Donald Lawson.’

  ‘Hi.’ Pauline smiled.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Watch what you tell this one,’ he said, continuing on his way.

  ‘Shall we?’ April said to Pauline, motioning to a nearby table for two. Pauline hesitated for a second, glancing around the room before realising she knew absolutely no one.

  They put their trays down. On hers Pauline had four grapes, a banana and a cup of peppermint tea.

  ‘Not hungry?’ April asked.

  ‘Oh, I only ever have fruit in the morning. Maybe some porridge.’ Pauline now took in April’s tray. ‘God, how on earth do you keep your figure?’

  ‘Dunno,’ April said, already spearing bacon onto toast and pushing it into the greasy golden heart of one of her eggs. ‘I pretty much eat whatever I like. Never seem to put weight on.’

  ‘Wow,’ Pauline said, sipping her herbal tea and thinking, you total fucking cow.

  ‘So, pretty unbelievable story, isn’t it?’ April said, chewing.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your husband. Amateur player gets hit on the head and wakes up tied for the lead with the world number one on the last day of the Open. Make a great book.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Sporting-triumph books? Sell bucketloads.’

  ‘How…I mean, do you know, roughly, how much money you’d get for something like that?’

  ‘Depends,’ April said, blowing through a mouthful of hot sausage. ‘A lot of money, I should think. If he wins? An awful lot of money.’

  ‘Really?’ Pauline said.

  ‘Oh yeah. Then there’s all the other stuff.’

  ‘Well, I know the winner gets…is it seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds?’

  ‘That’s the least of it. Endorsement fees for clubs, balls, clothes and bags. Appearance fees at tournaments, advertising, instructional books, magazine fees…I mean, whistles and bells, you’re talking millions of pounds.’

  ‘Really?’ Pauline said innocently, aware that she was gripping her mug so hard it might splinter apart in her hands.

  April looked up, a dot of yolk shining on her bottom lip. ‘Are you OK, Pauline?’

  ‘Just a bit…nervous.’

  Pauline looked over to their right, to where a man was stacking copies of all the morning’s newspapers onto a rack on the wall. Her husband’s face was on the cover of four of them. April gave a little shriek and ran over and grabbed a copy of the Standard. Above a photo of Gary walking off the eighteenth green yesterday was the headline ‘HE CAN DO IT!’. Below it was the byline ‘by sports reporter April Tremble’.

  Her first front-cover byline.

  April whistled in Lawson’s direction. He turned to see her beaming, holding the paper up by the top corners. Lawson simply nodded and turned back to his food. Fuck you, fat man, April thought, sitting down to read her story. Pauline looked again at the headline.

  ‘Can he?’ she asked.

  April just smiled.

  53

  WHILE CALVIN LINKLATER BEGAN HIS FINAL-DAY routine (the stretches and stomach crunches, the silent, high-fibre breakfast) alone in a room that could comfortably have held a party for forty people, Gary’s preparations were more hectic. Cathy, Lisa, Aunt Sadie, Stevie, Dr Robertson and Gary were all crammed into the small twin-bedded room. Stevie was packing the golf bag, loading up on gloves, Robertson was shining a penlight into Gary’s left eye, and Lisa, Cathy and Sadie were crying.

  ‘Aw God, son, ah’m sorry tae bother ye wi this the noo, ah didnae want tae tell ye yesterday, ye’ve enough oan yer plate, son, it’s jist we…we don’t know whit he’s gone and got himself intae this time. God only knows where he is,’ Cathy went on, ‘lying…lying DEED SOMEWHERE!’ She and Lisa burst into fresh peals of tears. It had been a terrible, sleepless, tear-filled night for Cathy and Lisa as they tried to work out what to do. The kind of night Lee specialised in causing.

  ‘By Christ,’ Sadie said, snuffling, ‘the hertbreak that boy’s brought you, hen.’

  Robertson stepped back from Gary, snapping off the penlight. ‘You seem OK. But the minute you’re finished we’re going to the hospital for a CAT scan. How’s the headache?’

  ‘No too–prick–bad,’ Gary said.

  ‘Aww God, Doctor,’ Cathy said, ‘ah’m sorry you’ve had tae listen tae all this. You must think we’re some family.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Sh-should,’ Cathy stuttered, ‘we go tae the police?’

  ‘Mum, listen,’ Gary said, taking her trembling hands in his own, ‘that might only make things worse. He probably–tits–owes these guys money. We’ll just have to pay them back.’

  ‘But, Gary,’ Lisa cried, ‘he said it wisnae even about the money any more. And whit was this money for anyway?’

  ‘Aww God only knows, hen,’ Cathy said, sucking in a deep breath and composing herself. She stared wistfully off, looking out of the window, but not seeing anything through tear-stinging eyes. ‘Ah cannae believe that your own brother isnay here the day to see you play. Thank God your father–’

  ‘Look, Cathy,’ Stevie cut in, ‘ah’m sorry, but we really need tae head down the practice range.’

  ‘Ah know, son. We’ll just have to–’

  ‘Shit,’ Gary said. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should call the police. I mean, if–’

  The door opened and Lee Irvine strode into the room.

  In terms of effect it was something like Jesus strolling into church at the climax of Sunday’s sermon.

  Amid the silence Lee was trying for an expression somewhere between defiant and nonchalant, his eyes darting about the walls, not meeting anyone’s stunned gaze. His studied nonchalance was undermined by the fact that half his face looked like raw steak and his front teeth were missing. Finally Lee looked at his brother and spoke.

  ‘A’right, bawbag?’

  Masterson felt his mobile vibrate twice in his pocket, announcing the arrival of a text message; a seismic event for those engaged in an affair, enough to cause the heart t
o flex hopefully in the chest. Well covered by the Sunday papers he had spread across the kitchen table, and with Leanne busy at the cooker a good distance across the kitchen, he slipped the mobile out and glanced down at the text. Bastard: just her cousin Gerry, crowing about the Rangers defeat, the dirty Fenian fucker.

  ‘One egg or two?’ Leanne was asking him.

  ‘Ah, gies two.’

  He lifted his mug and blew on the hot tea. He’d left three messages now. Where was she? He’d tried Katrina’s. He’d driven by Pauline’s house. Nothing. Maybe he should send her another text? Naw, start to look desperate. She was just a bit upset. Had her heart set on that big house, so she did. He’d make it up to her. After his lawyer served the papers on Leanne and it was all out in the open they’d have a nice wee holiday somewhere. Spain maybe. She’d come round.

  He turned the page and there it was in black and white: Pauline on the doorstep, wrapped in a white dressing gown, her hair turbaned up in a towel, smiling as she spoke to someone just to the right of the camera. Gripping the mug tighter in his left hand and the corner of the paper tighter in his right, he scanned the article, eyeballs jerking left to right as various phrases sprung up at him: ‘pleased he’s playing so well…works hard at his golf…can definitely go all the way…’

  ‘YA FUCKEN HOOR!’ Masterson screamed, boiling tea spilling down his arm.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Leanne said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I…nothing. I just spilt ma tea. Chuck us a cloth for fuck’s sake!’

  Leanne rinsed a cloth under the cold tap and took it over to him. She watched as he dabbed at his arm, then at the table and the papers crumpled in front of him.

  She had surprised herself these past few days.

  She was surprised at how equably she was able to behave towards this man who had paid someone to come here in the night and shoot her in the head. (Surprised too at how coolly she had handled her would-be murderer, at how much information he’d told her after he’d finally stopped crying.)

  She was surprised at how calmly and diligently she had gone about plotting her revenge: withdrawing funds from the bank account he didn’t know she had, the emergency fund she’d squirrelled money into over the past twenty years, five hundred here, a thousand there. It certainly had added up.

  She allowed herself a smile as she walked back to the cooker to turn the bacon over.

  ‘Aww, son, yer f-face. Whit happened tae yer face?’ Cathy had been crying for a long time now as Sadie rubbed her back. Lisa sobbed softly while she held Lee’s hand. Just the four of them in Gary’s room now, Lee with his mum and his wife on either side of him on the narrow single bed.

  ‘C’mon, Maw. It’s a’right. It looks worse than it is, so it does.’

  ‘Whit have ye got yerself intae now, Lee?’ Cathy said for the third or fourth time.

  ‘It’s just a misunderstanding wi some boys.’

  ‘My God, Lee,’ Sadie said, ‘the state o’ yer teeth. It makes ma bum go aw fizzy just looking at them so it diz!’

  ‘But, Lee,’ Lisa said, ‘Alec Campbell? My God.’

  ‘Och, Alec’s no that bad,’ Lee lied. ‘Ye don’t want to believe half the shite ye hear in this toon.’

  ‘Ah…ah couldnae take it if ye had to go…away again, son,’ Cathy said. ‘It’d put me a pine box so it would.’

  Cathy’s departure from the family home ensconced in a pine box had been a regular threat when Lee and Gary had misbehaved as children–‘Aye, see how ye feel when they’re carrying me oot that door in a pine box.’ Lee flashed briefly on the pine box that had contained his father. He’d helped carry it into the crematorium and he remembered how nice the grain of the cool wood had felt against his cheek: he’d drunk half a bottle of Buckfast and taken a phenomenal amount of temazepam. The big, old-school jellies. Eggs. Couldn’t get them any more. Fucking brilliant gear. He wished he had some now.

  He lifted his mother’s head up and held her face tenderly as he spoke softly. A strange experience, to see Lee Irvine holding tenderly, speaking softly: like seeing a heavyweight fighter painting a watercolour, the brush daintily inserted in the boxing glove.

  ‘Maw, listen tae me. Everything’s fine. Ah’m no going anywhere. Ah’ve learned ma lesson. Come on now, we’ll go and get some breakfast, eh?’

  While the women dried their tears and began gathering their things, Lee moved to the window and pulled the net curtains aside. Hundreds of people were making their way through the sunny streets of Troon towards the golf course, windcheaters and sweaters tied around their waists. Shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare Lee looked west, towards the sea, towards the course, the towering camera cranes and the scaffolding of the grandstands in their green netting. He looked back at the street and caught the sun straight in his eyes. So it was through a shimmering haze of pink and yellow sunspots that he saw the Beast standing across the road waiting for him. He was smoking a cigarette and looking straight up at the window, grinning a cold, frightening grin.

  For fuck’s sake, Gary, Lee thought, make some fucking birdies today, pal.

  54

  BY 2.30, THE TIME THE FINAL PAIRING–LINKLATER, C. and IRVINE, G. (A)–was due to tee off, the gates had long been closed to the public and officials were estimating the crowd at over 50,000: a final-day record. Most of the 50,000 seemed to be crammed around the first tee, spilling onto the road behind, into the car park and onto the flower beds in front of the clubhouse. Marshals struggled to keep people behind the ropes and off the walkways designated for players only. Half the county, from school kids to pensioners, seemed to have turned out to watch one of Scotland’s own do battle with the world’s best golfer. Children perched on the shoulders of adults, the cardboard periscopes bristled and bobbed. Many faces were painted with the saltire, or daubed crazily with blue in Braveheart fashion.

  Preceded by a clutch of R&A officials, two policemen, his personal security guards and, finally, his caddie, Snakes, Calvin Linklater strode out of the clubhouse. The crowd went berserk: screaming, cheering, whistling, hands and children thrust out in an attempt to make contact. Linklater acknowledged the reception with a smile, a nod and a tweak of his visor but, really, he wasn’t there. The pandemonium was already as distant to him as the waves breaking on the beach a few hundred yards away.

  Stevie and Gary–late–were half jogging round the side of the clubhouse when they heard the roar for Linklater. They looked at each other. ‘Fuck,’ Gary said. ‘Easy,’ Stevie said as they turned the corner. As soon as they came into view a roar went up that made Linklater’s greeting sound muted. Individual cries pierced through the din, some more sporting than others.

  ‘GO ON YERSELF, GARY!’

  ‘C’MON, BIG MAN!’

  ‘FUCK IT INTAE THAT YANK BASTARD!’

  ‘YA FUCKING DANCER YE!’

  ‘FREEEEEDOM!’

  Stevie was helping officials push people back behind the ropes, which were straining, threatening to break.

  Up high in the commentary booth, Rowland Daventry said, ‘And here he is. He seems to have recovered from a rather unfortunate incident in the press tent yesterday, which I’m sure many of you read about in today’s papers.’ On screen: a close-up of Gary’s face, his jaw working silently as he muttered to himself. ‘And what,’ Daventry asked, ‘can be going through this young man’s head right now?’

  ‘Fuck,’ Gary was saying. ‘Bigtittedhooryespunkfuck.’ He came through the crowd and stepped up onto the tee. There, dressed in a powder-blue polo shirt and dark chinos, was Calvin Linklater. He was taller and even more powerfully built than Gary had expected, the cords running down the inside of his arms seemed to suggest that thick hydraulic cables rather than veins were buried beneath his tanned skin. Calvin Fucking Linklater. He was extending a hand towards Gary.

  ‘Hi, I’m Calvin.’

  ‘Aye.’ Gary looked like he had been punched in the face. He was beginning to hyperventilate.

  ‘Gary,’ Stevie shot in. ‘This
is Gary.’

  They shook hands and Linklater walked back to the far side of the tee box, a boxer returning to his own side of the ring. ‘Baws,’ Gary said to Stevie. ‘Baws and flaps.’

  ‘Ye can say that again,’ Stevie said, pulling the three-wood out of the bag.

  ‘Sook it,’ Gary added with some urgency.

  ‘LADIES AND GENTLEMAN,’ the starter said. Incredibly, the crowd instantly fell silent. ‘Can you please ensure all mobile telephones are switched off and be aware that no photography is permitted during play. The final pairing of the afternoon, on the tee, from Ravenscroft Golf Club, Ardgirvan–’ an enormous cheer–‘Mr Gary Irvine.’

  A jubilant explosion of noise went on for nearly thirty seconds. Cathy was jumping up and down, screaming herself hoarse. Lee looked across the tee and made perfect eye contact with Ranta. Ranta did not smile.

  The crowd fell completely silent as Gary walked up behind his ball. As soon as his brain engaged the activity of calculating the shot, factoring in wind and pin position, the swearing roar of voices in his head fell away and the tic in his jaw stopped. Nice and safe, he thought as, with a low, punchy sweep, he brought the three-wood down. An enormous roar, the ball flying straight down the middle, Gary picking up his tee peg, not even needing to look, and Linklater was already behind him, looking for where he was going to tee up.

  ‘And the battle was joined,’ Daventry said to the millions watching around the planet.

  Three things became apparent during the first few holes.

  One, and in stark contrast to yesterday’s round with Drew Keel: Team Linklater did not invite conversation. After Stevie had made a couple of innocuous opening gambits–How did they like Scotland? What an honour it was to be playing with the great man–only to be met with one-word answers–‘Great’ and ‘Thanks’–Snakes took him aside. ‘Listen, kid,’ he whispered out of the side of his mouth, ‘ya all seem like nice folks and maybe later we’ll grab a beer. But this is the last round of a major championship. So, no offence, but we don’t do chit-chat.’