Nice Jumper (19 page)

‘Good game,’ he muttered, as – careful to apply just the right, respectful level of firmness – I shook his hand on the eighteenth green.

Clearly, something was playing on his mind. It could have been the crushing defeat, but I sensed otherwise: he had, after all, spent most of the round regarding my performance with all the excitement of a man with a ringside seat at the quarter-finals of the World Needlework Championships. As he invited me into the clubhouse for muffins (Par-adise was obviously too posh for teacakes), he had the look of an FBI interrogator who knows his suspect is guilty but hasn’t quite located his weakness. I nipped into the locker room and checked myself out in the mirror, discovering to my immense relief that my shirt was tucked in, my flies were zipped up, and no one had covertly scrawled ‘Marxist Deviant Sex Offender Hippy’ across my forehead.

The events of the following hour might have been a series of coincidences and bad breaks. That’s certainly what they felt like at the time. Now that I lay them out in my head, however, it all begins to look somewhat predestined. I wonder, for example, if it was mere
chance
that led us to the particular one of Par-adise’s several imperious-looking bars which played host to the icy, grey-haired man in the dark suit. I muse over whether Gerald’s prolonged visit to the toilet, leaving me in the company of this man and his remorseless manner, was just an acute attack of irritable bowel syndrome or something more contrived. I puzzle over whether the questions that the man put to me were his way of making conversation, or something worked out in a committee room the day before.

‘Do your parents play golf, Tom?’ said the icy man, by way of greeting. He was looking at something forty-five degrees to my right. I followed his gaze to see if it led to another Tom, but saw only a wall filled with framed photos of Par-adise’s past captains. He was talking to me.

‘No. They never have.’

‘What or who made you take it up, then? An uncle?’

‘No. Just thought I’d give it a go, really.’

‘And what line of work are your parents in?’

‘My dad’s a supply teacher. My mum teaches English as a second language at an inner-city primary school.’

A perceptible drop in temperature. ‘Hmmmph. Do you … Do you
know
anyone at our club, Tom?’

‘Only Gerald.’

‘And what makes you want to become a member?’

‘Well, I’ve always loved the course. And I’m looking for a challenge, to help me become a better player. I
aim
to be down to a scratch handicap by the time I’m eighteen.’

‘And how do you feel about the social side of golf? Do you enjoy it?’

‘I … erm. It’s … I … It’s fine.’

At which point the interrogation drew to a close, and Gerald – who’d probably been watching the whole thing through a double-sided mirror with the remainder of the club’s greens committee – returned, bearing a tension-relieving plate of muffins.

Ordinary teenagers principally have the misfortune of hanging around with only two types of old people – their schoolteachers and their relatives. They make up for the indignity of hanging around with the former by inventing cruel nicknames for them and leaving stray drawing-pins on their chairs, and generally do their best to spend as little time with the latter as possible. Golf teenagers aren’t so fortunate. They are abandoned in an almost exclusively adult world where everyone under eighteen is written off as a ‘junior’, yet somehow expected to communicate on a civil level with people far less energetic and happening than them. The one factor that makes this bearable is the game itself. Colin Burroughs, for example, whom I played with in Cripsley’s Rover Cup, might, for all I knew, have been a closet fascist with an Enoch Powell apron and an extensive collection of Barbara Cartland novels, but he, like me, could relate to the difference between an
eight-iron
and a mashie niblick and the tingling sensation associated with a creamy one-iron from a tight lie. These things brought us closer. Without them, I was his worst nightmare.

Which is perhaps why I never hit it off with Gerald and the Human Coolbox. I
tried
to talk about Ian Woosnam’s winning putting streak and the new range of TaylorMade woods, but they didn’t seem interested. They didn’t seem interested in much, least of all my own golfing achievements. I might as well have been a face on the wall, and they probably would have paid more attention to me if I was. Every so often they would talk just out of my earshot, and I would pick up odd words like ‘committee’, ’disciplinary’, ‘union’ and ‘function’. Most of the time, they munched on their muffins and stared longingly at their beloved past captains.

‘I’m due to play in the Midland Youths Championships next month,’ I casually mentioned to Gerald, in an attempt to pep the conversation up slightly.

‘Mmm?’

‘Yes. It’s at Stoke Rochford. I think I’m in with a good chance this year.’

‘Hmmm. Well, good luck.’

Was that it? ‘Well, good luck’? I might not have been Boy Wonder, but I was used to more deference than this. I was the youngest ever club champion of Cripsley, but I was marginally less important than a muffin at Par-adise. Reluctantly, I balled my fists, controlled my
breathing,
and swallowed my pride. After all, I was here to improve my golf, to get away from the evil temptations of Granny on Wheels and Ching!, and Nick Bellamy and the pro shop. I was here because it was a place where I wouldn’t be distracted from the serious business of golf by the fun business of aiming punched one-irons at a tractor driven by someone called Stig or Reg or Rog. I wasn’t here for the diverse culture, pithy conversation and lively nightlife. I was here strictly to do business. If the ice twins were going to play it cool, I could deal with that. Providing, of course, that they offered me membership.

I left that day not quite sure whether they had or not.

Stony Thrapston, the micro-suburb I lived in when I was sixteen, was, despite its rustic name, a classic eighties Meccano village: a vaguely aspiring middle-class community, surrounded on all sides by vaguely apathetic working-class ones. If you ignored the smoke billowing from the burning Gazmobiles on the council estate a hundred yards or so to the rear of our house, you might even mistake Mornington Road for quite a peaceful street, where burglaries didn’t happen once every fortnight. The Human Coolbox was understandably unfamiliar with the place but – uncharacteristically, I thought – insisted on driving me home anyway, since it appeared to be roughly on his way. Conversation didn’t exactly flow on the journey
(‘So
, what exactly does teaching English as a second language entail?’ ‘I don’t really know.’), but for the first time I began to review my day’s work and feel positive. I’d withstood the onslaught of etiquette and stoicism. OK, I hadn’t done
much
, but I hadn’t done anything
wrong
. At least – I was pretty sure I hadn’t.

Then I remembered the Sphincter.

By the time I thought of it, we’d already turned into Mornington Road, and it was probably too late. I toyed briefly with the idea of asking to be dropped off next door, at the house belonging to Mr and Mrs Singh, and trying to pass them off as my parents, but, foreseeing the problems that might be involved in explaining my Sikh adoption to the Par-adise committee, thought better of it. My one remaining hope was that my dad had, on a whim, decided to lock his precious jalopy in the garage for the evening. It was, admittedly, a slim hope, given that – with the exception of environmental health – there was no logical reason to lock the Sphincter away for the night since the only exterior parts of it that hadn’t rusted already were the tyres, the windows and the headlights, and even they were beginning to look a bit on the orange side.

Who was I kidding? I was asking for a miracle. I closed my eyes and asked hard. When I opened them, I saw an empty drive.

It belonged to the Jacksons, the couple who lived opposite us.

In my own drive, as ever, squatted the Sphincter – looking less roadworthy than ever, it had to be said. I noted with interest that somewhere on the way home from the lumberyard earlier in the day my dad had managed to lose the car’s one remaining hubcap. Through the rear window, it was possible to see the bin liners full of decomposing garden refuse intended for the local tip. If you peered hard enough at a small area of part-preserved paintwork beneath the rear bumper, it was just possible to make out the car’s original beige hue. In the left-hand window – the side facing us – was the ‘Ban the Bomb’ sticker that my parents had bought at a 1982 CND funfair.

Had Coolbox – I still hadn’t discovered his real name or what desperately important, clandestine function he performed in the Par-adise machine – spotted this (only just) living insult to the automobile industry? It was hard to tell. But if he hadn’t, he was certainly just about to. And if he wasn’t, he was going to catch a whiff of the burning vest smell that the Sphincter always gave off if it had been driven more than two miles at some point during the previous twenty-four hours.

‘Well, thanks for the lift,’ I said, squeezing out of the passenger door, trying to inflate my body in order to block out the view behind me.

‘Yes. Well …’ He seemed distracted.

‘I guess Gerald will be in touch?’

‘What?’ Putting the car in gear. ‘Oh, yes, you’ll hear from Gerald. At some point.’

I watched and waved with a sinking heart as he sped off back up the road, still with my doubts as to whether he’d fully evaluated the putrid heap of scrap behind me, but instinctively coming to terms with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be seeing him again.

The following month unfolded with inevitable, desperate silence, which soon devolved into normality. ‘How did it go?’ Ted had asked. ‘I’m not sure. Well, I think,’ I’d told him, not yet wanting to concede that all hope was gone. After another four weeks of silence from Gerald and apologies from Ted, the news came, the lateness, vagueness and spuriousness of the verdict – ‘Unfortunately Par-adise has decided it doesn’t have room for any more junior members at this stage’ – an insult to my ambition and Ted’s friendship. By then, though, I’d long since given up.

A couple of months later, at a tournament near Kidderminster, I found myself paired, uncommonly, with one of Par-adise’s low-handicap adult members, a man I hadn’t met before nor heard of – strangely, considering the close-knit nature of the Nottinghamshire scene. While waiting for the green ahead of us to clear, I found myself striking up a conversation with him about the state of Nottinghamshire junior golf. He seemed a genial enough fella, and I asked him, just out of interest, how his club’s junior section were fairing that season.

‘Ooh, not bad. The odd good round,’ he replied. Then he paused, as if considering something right under his nose for the first time. ‘Of course, there’s always the problem of numbers.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘How many under-eighteen players have you got at the moment?’

‘Ooh … let me think,’ he replied. ‘Eight, I reckon. Yes, that’s right. Eight. Seven or eight.’

‘
NO!
NO!
WHAT
on earth are you talking about? No! Of course I’m not drunk. It’s eight in the fuckin’ morning … Will you just get off my case, for
once in my life?
… What are you talking about?
What?
Why do you have to be the most boring person in the world? Can you not just be, you know, cool, just for five seconds of my stupid
life?
Tell me.
Can
you? Mmm? Look. You’re embarrassing me. I’m here with my friends and you’re embarrassing me … No – of course I don’t have to tell you. In fact, I don’t have to tell you
anything
. I’m almost
fifteen!
’

The dream had started serenely enough: the American professional Fred Couples had called round at my place,
as usual
, wondering if I fancied a swift nine holes at the luxury Pebble Beach complex in California. There’d been a bit of trouble getting permission from my mum and, frankly, I thought the seat
belts
on Fred’s Lear jet could have been better designed, but Fred said he had a surprise in store, so I went along with it and as we stepped onto the tarmac (Fred had his own reserved landing spot in the clubhouse car park) we were greeted by the cast of the movie
Mondo Topless
, who explained that they would remove one item of clothing for every birdie we made … But, now, suddenly, the dream had slipped from my control. Someone – Fred Couples? – was shouting at me, and I couldn’t understand why.

I bolted awake as the phone slammed into its cradle. ‘Parents, huh?’ grumbled a voice. It seemed a bit feminine to belong to Fred Couples, but it was definitely the same one that had been yelling at me, even though its tone was surprisingly pleasant now. Removing a piece of sock fluff from the corner of my mouth, I traced my way through the rubble of beer cans, underwear and golf balls at eye level in an attempt to locate the voice’s owner. Every time my gaze stretched beyond the three feet of carpet directly in front of me my head rattled like a quarter-full piggy bank, but I wasn’t going to be discouraged. With a gargantuan mental shove, I looked up, and saw a girl – not a member of the cast of
Mondo Topless
, but not unattractive – clad in ripped jeans and a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Cool As Fuck’ emblazoned across the front.