Captain's Day (25 page)

“
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.”

The 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?”

Ifield rolled his eyes. “We’re in the middle of a golf course.”

“
There isn’t a toilet?”

“
Well of course there isn’t.”

“
What do you do when you want a piss then?”

“
Golfers do piss, do they?” said Fearon, with a sneer. “When they’re not walking about looking like Rupert Bear?”

Harris ignored the slight. “You have to go behind a tree or a wall,”

James looked around for a tree or a wall but there weren't any nearby. There was a pond though. Fearon noticed it. “Piss in the pond,” he said. “Kill some pond life.”

Constable
James went over to the pond
’
s edge and without ceremony started to urinate in it.

James was a
man who preferred to direct his spray of urine around playfully rather than let it all land in the same spot, and on this occasion he was able to enjoy this extra-curricular pursuit more than usual as normally there were just toilet disinfectant blocks and cigarette ends or whatever else people had thrown in the urinal, to aim at. The pond however offered much more variety as a target for his projectile of pee, and after giving a frog on a lily pad a thorough dowsing he narrowly missed bringing down a dragonfly in mid-flight. Making a second attempt to ground the dragonfly only resulted in him peeing on his boots and the bottoms of his trousers, so he quickly abandoned the idea and chose as his next target a small fish at the edge of the clump of reeds that Garland happened to be lying in. Unfortunately for Garland the stickleback at which James now directed his waterfall was immediately over the vice-captain
’
s head and it wasn't long before a generous amount of the constable
’
s urine went down the reed that Garland had in his mouth. Garland
’
s reaction was spontaneous and immediate. Spluttering and choking on James
’
warm pee, coughing his lungs up, he suddenly erupted from the pond looking for all the world like the Monster of the Lost Lagoon, except that when the monster emerged from the lost lagoon its underpants hadn't filled with water and weren
’
t falling round its knees.

“
Of course,” said Ifield to Harris, “when Tarzan stuck a reed in his mouth and hid in the pond he didn't have a copper pissing on him.”

Garland didn't hang about once his watery hiding place had been revealed. Visions of sharing a prison cell with a cellmate who was hung like a donkey and had a penchant for bottoms made him leap out of the pond even faster than Southfield had just leapt out of Jessica's bed, and pausing only to haul up his waterlogged y-fronts he hared off down the fairway faster than Usain Bolt with his behind on fire.

From where his ball had come to rest
Arbuthnott didn’t have a view of the green, but it didn't really matter; he had played the eighteenth hole at Sunnymere hundreds of times so knew exactly the whereabouts of the green. A four iron over the corner of the dogleg would get him there today, he judged, taking the slight breeze against into account. He took out the chosen club, struck the ball as sweetly as he had ever struck a ball in his life, and the ball sped arrow-like at its target.

Just as Arbuthnott had known exactly where the green was he was now equally certain his ball would end up slap bang in the middle of it. What he didn't know, but was very soon to find out, was that also slap bang in the middle of the green was the huge pile of steaming manure.

The memory of the vision that greeted Mr Captain and Millicent as they led the Lord Mayor into the beer tent - a living tableau of Mr Harkness, the Lady Captain on her knees fellating him, whilst at the same time masturbating Mr Oldknow and Mr Wormald who were standing either side of her, a sight which looked for all the world like some obscene animated coat of arms, a woman genuflecting with three men rampant - would haunt them to their dying day. In fact Millicent could have died there and then and if it had been left to her would have chosen to. Mr Captain's scream of horror came a split second before Millicent's scream of horror, but as if to make up for being the last to react Millicent
’
s scream was louder and more piercing.

“
What is it, what on earth’s the matter?” said a concerned Lord Mayor, and then saw what was the matter. “Good Lord!” A moment or two later, managing to tear his eyes away from the sight set out before him, as he quite liked watching people perform sex acts and usually had to pay for the privilege, he turned to Mr Captain for an explanation. “What the devil is going on here, Fridlington?”

Much to Mr Captain's relief, for he was completely at a loss as to what to do or say, Millicent, a sharper knife than her husband, came to the rescue. “Gipsies,” she said firmly, taking the Mayor and his lady by the arms and attempting to shepherd them away.

“
Gipsies?

“
Yes, they're a blasted nuisance. One only has to put up a tent and the next thing you know they've moved in. Exactly the same thing happened on Lady Captain's Day.” She tugged on the Mayor’s arm. “We’d best be off before they start trying to sell us some lucky white heather or pegs or something.”

Resisting Millicent’s efforts to move him on the Mayor turned to Mr Captain, puzzled. “But didn’t you say you particularly wanted me to meet those people in the beer tent, Fridlington?”

Mr Captain had by now recovered enough to make some sort of answer. “Er….that's right,” he said. “To demonstrate to you exactly what a huge problem these damned gipsies can be in the town. So that in your capacity of Lord Mayor you might be able to get the council to do something about it.”

“
So, now you have seen the extent of the problem Mr Mayor, can we please leave?” said Millicent, strengthening her grip on the Mayor’s arm and re-doubling her efforts to lead him away from the terrible scene.

The Mayor was not about to depart that easily however. “I thought we were going to have a drink?” he said, not caring one way or the other if he had a drink, but wanting very much to see a bit more of the live sex show, which far from grinding to a halt on the arrival of the Mayoral party had continued unabashed and had now increased in its intensity as all three old gentlemen neared their climax.

Millicent was a match for him. “There won't be any drink left; the gipsies will have drunk it all by now if I know anything about gipsies.”

“
And Millicent knows her gipsies,” added Mr Captain. “So all in all I think the best thing we can do is repair to the eighteenth green without further delay.” He glanced at his watch. “If I'm not mistaken the first threesome will be arriving anytime now, so we'll be just in time to greet them if we hurry.”

Many of the holes at Sunnymere have tree-lined fairways, the trees serving not only to define the whole of the hole but also to provide it with a setting that is easy on the eye. Armitage would happily have settled for being on a fairway that had no trees at all, but whichever way he ran and no matter how many times he altered his course, he kept running into tree-lined fairways that were anything but easy on the eye, as through his eyes the fairways were lined not by trees but by tree-sized penises.

On the fairways themselves the dozen or so much smaller talking penises pulling golf trolleys which he had passed by and who had stopped, transfixed, to watch his progress, had said things to him like: “What's the matter, Trevor, what are you running away from?” and “Who’s chasing you?” Armitage didn't stop to enlighten them, not even breaking stride in his eagerness to depart the phallus-infested hell in which he had found himself.

“
Well bless my soul!” said Bagley, when he, Arbuthnott and Chapman had reached the eighteenth green, “It's a pile of horseshit!”

They had first seen the pile of manure when they had rounded the corner of the dogleg and the green came into view. At that distance, some hundred and fifty yards away, it was by no means clear what it was, although the smell, aided by the prevailing light breeze, might have given them a clue. Bagley had suggested it might be a new hazard, some sort of hillock, which had been secretly introduced overnight to make the closing hole more difficult, and that it might not be on the green at all, as it appeared to be, but either behind or in front of it. Once they had arrived at the green however and realised what the mound was composed of Chapman said that if it was indeed a hazard then it was a hazard he had no intention of ever venturing onto or into in order to join his ball if ever it should land in it. “What club could I use for my recovery shot?” he asked, not unreasonably, “A shit iron?”

Having checked the un-manured portion of the green, the greenside bunkers and behind the green, and discovering his ball to be in none of those locations, Arbuthnot said, “My ball must be in the manure because it’s not on the green. What do you think I should do?”

“
Send for a shit iron,” said Chapman, enjoying himself now. “Tobin’s bound to have one, he’s got everything else.”

“
I don’t think there’s a rule that covers a heap of manure on the green,” said Bagley, then added helpfully, “Unless of course you were to treat it as a loose impediment.”

This suggestion pleased Chapman no end. “Well I’m not sure about it being an impediment but something must have been pretty loose to shit that lot,” he chortled.

Bagley was more sympathetic to Arbuthnott’s dilemma. “Perhaps you’d better declare it a lost ball and go back and play another one,” he suggested.

“
Like hell I will,” said Arbuthnott, vehemently. “That would be a two stroke penalty. And even if I did there's no guarantee the same thing wouldn't happen again. Anyway it isn't lost, it's in that pile of manure.”

“
What are you going to do then?” said Bagley. “You’re going to have to do something.”

“
Well we'll just have to find it, won't we. We’ve got five minutes.”

“
We
?” said Chapman.

“
Surely you’re going to help me look for my ball?”

“
You are joking, aren’t you? It’s in a pile of horseshit.”

Arbuthnott could scarcely credit it, even of Chapman. “You don't mean to say you're going to leave it to me and Baggers to search for it on our own? When I'm within a gnat's whiskers of winning?”

“
Er….” said Bagley, shaking his head.

Arbuthnott was aghast. “Not you too Baggers, surely?”

“
Sorry Arby, you'll have to leave me out of this one, I'm allergic to manure.”

“
Since when?”

“
Since he realised your ball was in a bloody great steaming heap of it,” grinned Chapman.

Arbuthnott turned on Chapman. “It's nothing to gloat about, Gerry. This could cost me the competition.”

“
I thought you said you couldn't lose it?”