Captain's Day (6 page)

Anyone who is at all familiar with the game of golf would suspect that Bradley, always down the middle, would be by far the better golfer of the three, but in fact he was marginally the worst. The main reason for this was that although he invariably hit the ball straight he never succeeded in hitting it very far, whereas Carter and Abbott were both powerful strikers of the ball. After their tee shots Bradley's ball would be typically straight down the middle and about a hundred and eighty yards distant, whilst Carter's ball would be about two hundred and thirty yards distant but forty yards to the left and Abbott's ball a similar distance to the right, thus leaving all three of them approximately the same distance from the green. After their approach shots, and also on Sunnymere’s five short par three holes, Bradley's ball would either end up on the green, or more usually, due to his lack of hitting power, some way short of it, whilst the balls of Carter and Abbott would more than likely be about pin high forty yards to the left and right of the green respectively, thus giving Bradley a distinct advantage. However this advantage was negated by Bradley’s skill with the putter, which was as non-existent as his playing partners' skill off the tee.

The Red Arrows now drove off. The sunburst followed. Another breathtaking display was underway.

Grover entered the pro's shop. Despite being the proud owner of a personalised number plate Grover wasn’t one of Tobin's best customers, perhaps being the exception that proves the rule, but he was a steady enough client nevertheless, a couple of new sweaters and pair of new trousers a year man and perhaps new golf shoes every two or three years, so well worth buttering up. Tobin loaded his butter knife and started spreading generously. “And a very good morning to you, Mr Grover,” he said. “Lovely day for it. You must fancy your chances more than somewhat today, my word must you; I was watching you play down the ninth and up the tenth the other day and your swing looked to be in very fine fettle, I've never seen you swinging better, put me in mind of Rory McIlroy but not so willowy. So how can I be of assistance to you? The new Nike range is in, they have some really nice sweaters in their latest collection, better even than is usually the case, and that’s saying something.”

“
Well I sincerely hope they're better than the last one I bought off you,” said Grover, snootily. “Because it was absolute rubbish.”

This wasn't the response Tobin had been expecting. 'Let me have a look at them would you?' or 'Have you anything in blue?' or, more hopefully, 'I’ll take half a dozen' being more the sort of reply he'd been looking for, so Grover’s complaint threw him a little. “Pardon, Mr Grover?” he said, after getting over the initial shock.

“
Well it titted, didn’t it.”

“
Titted?”

“
Titted,” repeated Grover. The reiteration of the unfamiliar word left Tobin none the wiser, judging by the puzzled expression on his face. Grover elucidated. “My wife borrowed it. When I got it back from her she wasn't in it any more but it looked like her tits still were. Completely ruined it of course, there’s no way I can ever wear it again.”

The last thing Tobin wanted was a dissatisfied customer. In his experience a dissatisfied customer very often became an ex-customer. Which is why he didn’t suggest the first thing to come into his head – that a possible way round the problem was to make a gift of the sweater to Mrs Grover, seeing as how it now had room for her tits in it – but instead employed a little discretion in an attempt to worm his way back into Grover’s good books. “Er… actually, and I’m sure you won’t mind me mentioning this Mr Grover, but I don't think ladies are supposed to wear men's sweaters,” he said, suitably unctuous, before continuing with the learning. “You see ladies sweaters are designed differently than men’s; they're a different shape, to accommodate the breasts. Whereas men's sweaters are….”

Grover broke in, now getting quite angry about it. “Are you telling me a sweater I paid you the best part of fifty quid for is of such poor quality that it won’t revert back to its former shape just because it’s had a pair of tits in it for a couple of hours?”

“
Well….” said Tobin, searching for but not immediately finding another excuse for what had happened to the sweater.

Grover didn't give him any more time to come up with one. “Half a dozen Dunlop 65s, if you please!”

“
Yes Mr Grover. At once,” said Tobin, quickly handing Grover a box of Dunlop 65s, then, in another effort to repair the damage. “On the house, of course.”

“
I should bloody well think so too,” said Grover, taking the box and making for the door.

Fidler drove off the second tee. Taking a triple bogey seven at the first, including the two shot penalty he’d incurred for hitting his first ball out of bounds, had done nothing to improve his temper. However during the short walk from the first green to the second tee he had managed to calm himself down a little, and this time made a much better fist of his drive, the ball on this occasion not veering off line by about a hundred yards to the right and sailing out of bounds, but veering only fifty yards to the right and sailing out of bounds.

“
Shit!” he shouted, as he watched it disappear into the ether and over the perimeter wall.

“
I think another Pinnacle two might be in order, George,” Elwes observed, drily.

On the third green Arbuthnott had just missed a four-footer to save his par, his ball unfortunately just lipping out of the cup.

“
Oh hard luck, Arby,” Bagley commiserated.

“
The rot’s setting in I see,” observed Chapman, commiseration for Arbuthnott not being on his agenda. “As I seem to recall remarking it would not too long ago.”

Arbuthnott retrieved his ball from the can, not too disappointed. “Well it's only a bogey,” he consoled himself, “I'm still one under gross.”

“
And it's still early days,” said Chapman portentously, then started the lengthy business of lining up the putt for his par.

Arbuthnott however was not about to have his convictions shaken by Chapman’s sniping. “It's my day, Gerry. I've told you. It's fated. It is written.”

“
We’ll see, we’ll see.”

The third green at Sunnymere is quite elevated and steeply sloped from back to front. Anyone looking at it from the fairway, or even looking from the front of the green to the back, would see nothing beyond it but the infinity of the sky. Under normal circumstances. Now however, just as Chapman was about to putt, a view that had remained unchanged since the course was laid out over a hundred years earlier was instantly transformed when a large helicopter suddenly erupted from behind the green and commenced to hover some twenty feet overhead, propellers whirling, jet engines howling, a cameraman hanging precariously out of the doorway filming the action on the green.

“
Fuck me!” said Chapman, dropping his putter in alarm.

Bagley cupped a hand to his mouth and mischievously called in the direction of the first tee, “Chapman's swearing again, Mr Captain!”

Grover emerged from the pro’s shop where his playing partners for that day, Trevor Armitage and Gerard Stocks, had been waiting patiently for him outside the door whilst discussing their relative chances of lifting the silverware that day, Armitage hopeful, Stocks less so.

Grover gaily tossed the box of Dunlop 65s up in the air, and caught it. “He'll believe anything, that pro,” he smiled.

The story of what had happened to his sweater was in fact just that, a story, a lie. Grover had thought for some time that Tobin was just a little bit too cocky with all his sales patter and needed to be taken down a peg or two and the tale of the titted sweater was his way of doing it. That he’d gained a free box of golf balls into the bargain was a bonus.

“
What’s that, Geoff?” said Stocks.

“
Nothing,” replied Grover. But it was far from nothing, and would prove to be as instrumental in spoiling Mr Captain’s Day as Fidler’s habit of always playing Top Flight four balls.

9.10 a.m.

R Garland (6)

T Harris (9)

J Ifield (9)

“
Good morning, gentlemen,” said Mr Captain, welcoming to the first tee the fourth threesome that morning. It comprised of Robin Garland, who was the vice captain this year, and his playing partners Terry Harris and Justin Ifield.

“
Well at the moment it is,” said Ifield, in his naturally gloomy voice.

“
Pardon? What was that you said, Justin?” said Mr Captain, aware of what Ifield had said but not why he’d said it.

“
Well it's going to start raining by eleven-o-clock, isn’t it.”

“
Raining?” This was news to Mr Captain and not news he wanted to hear. “Are you sure?”

“
Cats and dogs. Stair rods. Noah's Ark proportions, I believe. Hope you've got your waterproofs with you Mr Captain, you're certainly going to need them. And a pair of wellington boots. Maybe a rowing boat would help, and a couple of distress flares.”

Mr Captain looked anxiously at the sky. It was quite blue. “But there isn't a cloud in the sky.”

“
Well I'm only telling you what Fred the Weatherman said on television last night” said Ifield. “And I swear by him. Well I would if I was allowed to swear,” he added, artfully, then went on, “A warm night for the time of the year, minimum temperature fourteen degrees, followed by a promising start to the morning, but by eleven-o-clock this will have deteriorated, dark storm clouds quickly forming, leading to torrential non-stop rain for the rest of the day.” His gloomy voice made the forecast sound even gloomier than he had painted it. “Fine tomorrow,” he concluded, adding insult to injury.

Mr Captain checked the sky again. It looked as though it would never rain again, never mind in less than two hours’ time. But if it had been on the television weather forecast? They could be wrong of course, but they weren’t all that far out usually, and this wasn’t Michael Fish who had done the forecasting but Fred the Weatherman whose meteorological predictions he knew to be reasonably reliable. “You are quite sure about this are you, Justin?” he asked Ifield again.

Ifield nodded. “Well that's what Fred said. And I've never known him to be wrong yet. Especially where rain is concerned. He’s very good on rain. It’ll be coming down in buckets, no doubt about it.”

“
And they do say there’s only two things you can be absolutely certain of coming down,” said Harris, knowledgeably. “Rain, and knickers on a honeymoon.”

Mr Captain disliked crude talk almost as much as he disliked swearing but was so concerned by Ifield’s weather prediction that he didn’t even bat an eyelid at Harris’s coarseness, far less pull him up about it.

Not only is golf one of the most expensive sports to take up, it is one of the most difficult to play. It is possible, indeed usual, to pay over a thousand pounds to join a golf club, a further thousand pounds in annual membership fees, in excess of five hundred pounds for a set of clubs and a similar amount in competition fees and sundry expenses, and in return for such a high outlay receive nothing for it but utter frustration, if not humiliation. It is some sort of consolation therefore, and an advantage which golf holds over most other sports, that it is a game which is almost always played in pleasant surroundings. Not for golf the bare enclosed environs of a squash court or the monotony of an endless running track, a muddy rugby pitch or the stark tiled surfaces of a swimming pool. No, by and large the amphitheatre in which the golfer plays his sport is of gently rolling pastures or links land, trees and bushes of every known variety lining the fairways as they wind their broad green swathe from tee to green, with perhaps some colourful clumps of gorse and heather here and there, enhanced by little swales and hillocks, maybe a small stream criss-crossing the fairway at various points as it threads a path through the course, with very often a lake or two thrown in for good measure.

An added attraction is that when a golfer goes about his golf he is much nearer to nature than is the participator in most other sports. There are birds to see and hear, ducks, geese, pied wagtails, jays, kingfishers; there are small mammals to observe, squirrels, rabbits, stoats, weasels, maybe a fox or a deer if one is lucky; there are insects, dragonflies, butterflies and moths; and there are wild flowers and colourful shrubs to see and smell. And as the golfer proceeds on his way through the course, from driving off at the first tee until putting out on the eighteenth green, he can continually drink from his surroundings, take sustenance from them, so that even if he is having a bad day as far as the golf is concerned his journey will not have been a complete waste of time. Not without good reason did Mark Twain once comment that golf is a good walk spoilt.

Sunnymere Golf Club was especially blessed. A member of a visiting party once remarked that he always enjoyed playing there as the course was so picturesque that he didn't really mind how well or badly he played. Located in the Derbyshire Dales, itself considered by many to be the brightest jewel in England's crown, not only was the golf course itself set in beautiful countryside but it was surrounded by even more beautiful countryside, and as far as the eye could see.

The area around Sunnymere attracted many visitors, and at 9.10 a.m. on Captain's Day it had attracted two such visitors to the small copse just to the left of the limestone boundary wall bordering the second fairway. They were two young lovers, Dean Shawcross and his girlfriend Gemma Higginbottom, he eighteen years old, she a year younger. Who at the moment were loving. At least that's what Gemma called it. Dean called it getting his end away. And Gemma was loving, and Dean was getting his end away, as naked as the day they were born. In the nuddy as Gemma called it. Strip bollock naked as Dean called it.