“If it is to chastise him I was about to do that myself half-an-hour ago but found the yobbo had already left. So if you could perhaps have a word with Philip, Millicent, now you have the time? Promise him you'll allow him to play in the ladies’ competition in future perhaps? No need to fulfil that undertaking of course. Anything to move him off….” Mr Captain suddenly cut off what he was about to say in favour of a strangulated cry of “Good Lord!” and his demeanour changed in an instant from very worried to the verge of panic.
“What on earth’s the matter Henry?” said Millicent, alarmed.
“The press! The press are here already.” Mr Captain pointed over Millicent’s shoulder.
Millicent turned to see Derbyshire Dales Times reporter Ed Eagles accompanied by staff photographer Ben Booth heading towards them.
“Quick, we'll have to head them off,” said Mr Captain, “We can’t have them seeing Philip, you know what the press is like.”
Millicent knew only too well what the press was like. Fortunately she also knew what was almost guaranteed to divert them. “I'll take them to the beer tent for a free drink,” she said, “Keep them well out of the way until the Mayor arrives.”
With that Mr Captain and Millicent quickly closed in on the two press men. “Good morning, gentlemen,” called Mr Captain, sounding a lot more cheerful than he felt. “You've arrived in good time I see.”
“Why is that woman lying down on the first tee?” demanded Eagles, peering over Mr Captain's shoulder, before Millicent could sidetrack him with an offer of liquid refreshment.
“What woman?” said Mr Captain, looking hopefully in exactly the opposite direction to the first tee, just in case there was a woman over there doing something slightly less embarrassing, who he could palm off on Eagles.
“There's a big blonde bird lying on the first tee.”
“How about a drink, gentlemen?” said Millicent, taking hold of Eagles’ arm and attempting to steer him towards the beer tent.
The reporter pushed Millicent's hand away. “Hold on, hold on a minute. What's the story with the blonde chick?”
“Nothing,” said Mr Captain. “No story at all. He just fainted.”
“He?”
“My husband means 'she',” said Millicent, quickly. “Now if you'd like to….”
But Eagles had already pushed his way past Millicent and was heading purposefully for the first tee, followed by Booth, his camera at the ready, hopeful of getting a good crotch shot. Mr Captain watched them go, helpless to stop them. He let out a deep, forlorn sigh, for he knew what the outcome would be; an unsavoury article in the next edition of the Derbyshire Dales Times, once Eagles had discovered that Phyllis used to be a man, which journalists being journalists he was bound to. The only good thing about it was that whatever the reporter wrote it wouldn't appear until the next edition of the newspaper the following Friday, and therefore it couldn't spoil his day.
The thought cheered him up a little and he began to feel a little better about things. After all, he told himself, although there had been one or two unsavoury incidents which he could have done without, none of them had really spoiled his day. And nothing would spoil his day, he now vowed, taking a firmer hold on himself, whatever the Gods might throw at him. With that he threw back his shoulders and tilted his chin, in the manner he had once seen Neil Hamilton do when facing adversity, and made ready to face the rest of his day.
*
Armitage took his stance and addressed the ball, which at the moment was still a ball. Which is more than can be said for the seven iron in his hands, which, since he’d taken it from his bag to play his approach shot, had metamorphosed into a four feet long penis. He closed his eyes tightly and tried with every nerve in his body and every cell in his addled brain to will the penis into becoming a seven iron once again, however when he re-opened them he saw that it had steadfastly remained a penis. In an effort to try to fool it into thinking it was a golf club again he waggled it. A mistake, as immediately he started waggling the thing it began to stiffen and grow, and as it stiffened and grew the end of it rose upwards and in a matter of seconds was pointing almost skywards. Letting out a strangled scream he threw it high in the air.
“What on earth is the matter Trevor?” enquired the six feet penis in the baseball cap stood watching him.
“There's definitely something the matter with him, George,” said the slightly shorter but thicker bareheaded penis.
“George?” Armitage said to himself. “What does it mean, George? Penises aren't called George, they're called Dick or Percy or Willy or John Thomas, I've never heard of one called George before.”
“He doesn't look too good to me,” said the six feet penis. “Maybe it would be as well if we sat him down for a bit and got someone to take a look at him.”
“Doctor Jackman is in the threesome behind us, let's ask him if he’ll give him the once over,” said the slightly shorter but thicker penis.
The two penises began to approach Armitage, who immediately cowered and started backing away from them, his arms raised in front of him to fend them off. “Get away from me you pricks!” he shouted, then turned and hared off back down the fairway as fast as his legs could carry him.
11.20 a.m.
J Sturgess (8)
P Mickleover (10)
A Huddlestone (11)
Mr Captain and Millicent were waiting outside the clubhouse when the Mayoral limousine drew up, right on time. They both stepped forward, all beams, as the chauffeur opened the door and the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress alighted.
“Welcome to Sunnymere Golf Club,” said Mr Captain, offering his hand.
The Mayor shook Mr Captain’s hand but seemed far more interested in what was happening on the first tee. He pointed at it. “What's going on over there?” Fortunately the five minutes that had elapsed since Ed Eagles had gone to interview Phyllis had given Mr Captain the chance to think up a reasonably believable explanation for the scene on the first tee. “The lady prostrate on the tee is the official starter,” he replied. “Unfortunately she was hit by a stray golf ball.”
The Mayor raised an eyebrow. “Really? How unfortunate. I must go to her and offer her my commiserations.”
“No!” said Mr Captain, panic-stricken. “No, there isn't time. I've just noticed a threesome come off the ninth green and make their way towards the beer tent, and they happen to be three men I'd particularly like you to meet.”
“It won't take a minute,” said the Lord Mayor, anxious not to miss an opportunity of getting a close-up of a big titted-blonde lying on the ground, probably showing her knickers.
“Maybe later, Herbert,” said the Lady Mayoress. She knew her husband all too well and was well aware that he would be offering the big-titted blonde quite a bit more than his commiserations if he got half the chance.
“Of course, dear,” said the Lord Mayor, reluctantly.
*
“Hey up, trouble,” said Harris, looking back down the fairway from the fourteenth green.
By the expedient of walking each hole in turn from the first tee the two policemen and Jason had finally arrived on the same hole as Garland, Harris and Ifield, despite having had to stop for ten minutes whilst James had a rest. As yet they were too far away from their quarry to recognise them as such but that moment wouldn't be too long in coming, provided of course that James didn't feel the need of another rest.
“Shit!” said Garland, on seeing the policemen. “I stand a chance of winning this as well.”
“Well I don't much fancy your chances of winning it now, Mr Vice,” said Ifield. “I mean a child abuse charge?”
“Child abuse? What are you talking about? I only tied him to my trolley for God's sake.”
“I don't think his dad will see it that way,” said Harris. “The fuzz are very keen on child abuse nowadays.”
Ifield piled on the agony. “Especially if it’s their own kid that’s the victim of the abuse.”
“Automatic custod
ial offence I should think,” said Harris.
Garland swallowed. “Prison?”
“I wouldn't bet against it,” said Ifield. “And we all know what happens to child abusers when they get banged up, don't we?” He thought that Garland would have a fair idea, but Ifield, one of those individuals who seem to take a delight in his fellow man’s discomfort, told him anyway. “Put it this way, I'd rather have my arsehole than yours after you've been inside for a week or two.”
“Shit a brick!”
“You might well be able to when you’ve been inside for a week or two and your arsehole has been stretched.”
Garland reacted angrily. “Will you just shut it, things are bad enough as it is!”
Garland, as anxious to hold on to his anal virginity as the next man, or most next men, now looked wildly around for somewhere to hide. Trees were abundant at Sunnymere, many of them large oaks, easily wide enough for a man to hide behind with comfort, and Garland would have hidden behind one, or better still up one and safely concealed in its uppermost branches, but unfortunately the fourteenth was one of the few holes that didn't have any trees. It did however have a pond, and very close by too, about twenty yards from the green at its nearest point. What's more, Garland now noted, the pond had several large clumps of reeds at its edge in which a man might hide himself. He glanced quickly back down the fairway. The policemen were about a couple of hundred yards away so he certainly couldn't afford to hang about.
“Tell them I've gone,” he said, quickly beginning to slip out of his clothes.
“What are you going to do?” said Harris.
“You'll see. If they ask you where I am tell them I had to leave the course, sick. Which isn't too far from the bloody truth.”
Now down to his underpants he stuffed his clothes into the pocket of his golf bag, tossed the bag into the bunker at the back of the green, then hurried to the pond and stepped into it, near to one of the clumps of reeds. The water came up to mid thigh. Despite the warm weather the water was quite cold and it took his breath for a moment. He quickly snapped off a two feet section of reed then, needing all the breath he could muster for what he had in mind he inhaled deeply, put one end of the reed in his mouth, then lay down in the water amongst the clump of reeds.
“He'll drown himself,” said Harris, alarmed.
“No,” said Ifield. “He put a reed in his mouth.”
“What?”
“To breathe through.”
“Will he be all right then?”
“Oh yes. It's very effective. I once saw Tarzan do it in a film. Tarzan and the Leopard Women I think. And Sabu, he did it too; can’t remember the film though.”
*
“Frank Fart.”
“Frank Wetfart.”
“Frank Shitimself.”
*
Arbuthnott had been driving well all morning but his drive at the eighteenth was his best yet, two hundred and forty yards straight down the middle, almost to the corner of the slight dogleg, in perfect position for his approach shot to the green. He turned to Chapman, flapped his arms as though they were wings, scratched the floor with one of his feet, and crowed, “Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
“Bollocks,” said Chapman.
*
“Jessica?” called Fidler, at the foot of the stairs.
Fidler had expected his wife to be in when he arrived home from the golf course, she usually was. He checked the kitchen but she wasn’t there either, then opened the back door to see if she was in the garden. He called out again but there was no response. “Must have slipped out somewhere,” he said to himself, when his call prompted no reply. He hoped she wouldn't be long in coming back because he’d decided to use the spare time he now had on his hands to go with her to pick the new hall carpet they planned on buying and save themselves the trouble of having to do it in the afternoon, as they’d planned.
Upstairs Southfield paused in his labours astride Fidler’s wife and cocked an ear at the door.
“What's the matter?” said Jessica. “Why have you stopped?”
“I'm sure I heard somebody call your name,” whispered Southfield, worry lines creasing his brow.
“It was you, you get carried away, 'Jessica, Jessica, I'm going to take you to the moon,' you said. Well keep going Captain Kirk, we're not there yet.”
Southfield listened for a moment more. “Must have imagined it,” he said, and carried on with his lunar mission.
It was the third time they'd had sex that morning. They were naked again this time. Well he was, she was almost naked; at his request she'd left on her boots from the second time they'd had sex, when she'd dressed up as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.
In fact it was the boots which were the first thing Fidler saw when he stepped into the bedroom. He'd bought them for Jessica only a couple of weeks previously for her birthday. At first he thought he was seeing things, as the boots appeared to be hanging upside down in mid-air, before it registered in his brain that Jessica's legs were in them. And a moment later that someone was in Jessica.
The man, whoever he was, had his back to him. Jessica, eyes closed, was moaning something about landing on the Moon and how she was nearly there and looking forward to his Moonshot. They never touched down. What stopped her, and her lover, was the single shouted word 'So!' Fidler felt really foolish when he shouted it, feeling it made him sound like the cuckold in a Victorian melodrama, but he couldn't think of anything more appropriate to say.
It didn't really matter, whatever he had said would have stopped Southfield and Jessica, probably even 'Carry on fucking'. Jessica opened her eyes, saw Fidler and screamed. The man turned his head to him. Fidler recognised him immediately and, sounding once again like a wronged husband in a Victorian melodrama cried out, “Southfield!”
There was nothing Victorian or melodramatic in the way Southfield now disengaged himself from Jessica faster than shit off a shovel and leapt off the bed, it was one hundred per cent twenty first century kitchen sink realism. As was his pathetic excuse. “It isn't what you think,” he blurted out, pulling at the sheet in an effort to cover his nakedness.
“Oh? Well I was thinking you were shagging my wife, so if you weren't shagging my wife perhaps you can put me right and enlighten me as to what exactly you were doing?” said Fidler, now having regained his full power of speech and putting it to good effect.
“I.…I mean….”
Southfield never got the chance to say what he meant because Fidler now lunged forward and made a grab for him. Southfield just managed to avoid him, causing him to slip and fall to the floor, and whilst his adversary was disoriented seized the opportunity to make a run for it. Fidler cursed, picked himself up and gave chase.
*
“Are you all right now, love?” said Leading Fireman Jeffers, when he and Fireman Blakey had eventually managed to get Mrs Quayle down from the tree.
“Nothing that a good kick in Mr Irwin's testicles won't put right,” said Mrs Quayle, brushing twigs, leaves and the remnants of a thrush’s nest off her clothes.
Jeffers winced at the thought. “I think we'd better give you a lift back to the clubhouse, get them to phone for a doctor, just to be on the safe side.”
“Oh can I come too?” said Mrs Salinas. “I've always wanted to ride in a fire engine.”
“Me too,” said Mrs Rattray. “Please? And please may I ring the bell?”
“Didn't you say something about doing the measuring in the Nearest the Pin competition?” said Blakey.
“Oh never mind that,” said Mrs Salinas. “They can do their own measuring after what that man did to poor Mrs Quayle. Apart from that the whole business has given me quite a shock, so I may have to be looked at too.”
“I’m feeling a little fragile myself,” added Mrs Rattray. “All this fuss and bother, I need my blood pressure checked at the very least.”
“Well it'll be a bit cramped, but I suppose we can manage,” said Jeffers. “Hop in.”
*
T
he lorry with the load of twenty tons of manure that Tobin had ordered over the phone a short while ago now drove onto the course. Tobin, watching through the pro's shop window with Darren, smiled to himself.
Without pause the lorry drove onto the middle of the eighteenth green and deposited its load, then drove off, leaving behind a steaming pile of horse muck approximately ten feet high by twenty feet wide, between the greenside bunker and the flagstick.
“Awesome,” said Darren.
*
By the time Harris and Irwin had putted out the two policemen and Jason had reached the green.
Jason pointed an accusing finger at them. “Them two blokes were playing with him.”
Fearon eyeballed Harris. “So where's your mate then?”
“Mate?”
“The bloke you were playing your stupid bloody game with?”
“Oh, Mr Vice you mean.”
“Yes, Mr bloody Vice. Where is the bastard?”
“He was having a bad round so he ripped up. Said he had better things to do.”
“That I can believe. Anything is a better thing to do than golf. Any idea where he might be?”
“You could try the nineteenth hole.”
Fearon’s eyes glinted. “Have I to get my truncheon out?”
“What?”
“I might not know too much about your pansy game but I do know there’s only eighteen holes in it.”
“The nineteenth hole is the name we give to the bar,” Harris explained, loftily.
Fearon grunted. “Typical. And he could be there, right?”
“Well he usually calls in for a couple before he goes.”
Fearon turned to Jason. “These two wankers didn't abuse you as well, did they?”
“No we bloody well didn't!” protested Ifield. “Anyway he was pinching balls.”
“I'll pinch your balls if you don't shut it, shit for brains” said Fearon, then turned to Constable James. “Let's go.”
James was looking around. “Is there a toilet round here?”
Captain's Day Page 18
