Loopy (29 page)

“Same shot again,” Weeshy barked at him through the wind and rain, handing over the driver, whose leather grip he had just dried with a towel marked
BALLYKISSANE GC
, which he had almost certainly appropriated during the break for lunch. The rain was now bucketing down harder than ever, and some foolhardy spectators put up umbrellas only to have them blown inside out by the gale. His opponent was also on the fairway, some thirty yards nearer to the green, but had played two safe shots to get there.

As he took a wide stance to brace himself against the gale, Loopy felt that this could be the turning point in what had so far been the closest of contests. He did his best not to think of the last time he had tried to hit a driver off the ground. He was wearing the sweater Amy had given him that day, but it was the sensation of O'Hara's elderly driver shattering to pieces that was at the forefront of his mind as he took his stance. If he could only get the ball airborne with Weeshy's driver, a difficult enough exercise in itself that few golfers attempted even in friendly games, and yet keep it low and on the fairway, he should have an excellent chance of going one up and taking the lead. All of a sudden, he knew, he just
knew,
with a chilling certainty that if he could just get his nose ahead at Eternity, victory would be his.

Yet hitting the driver off the fairway was a calculated risk. A perfectly executed shot would almost certainly win the hole. Against that, the slightest hint of a slice or even hitting the ball too high in the wind must inevitably send it careering out of bounds and onto the road in this vicious crosswind. The instant the driver made contact with the ball, the feedback from the clubhead back up the shaft to his hands told him that it was a cracker, similar in shape and length to his drive off the tee. The ball made a friend of the wind and used it to steal extra yards of roll as it bounded along a fairway still hard as a rock despite the flurries of rain and hail. After two mighty blows on a hole measuring almost six hundred yards, his ball lay in a valley in front of the green, less than seventy yards from the pin.

His opponent was well short of the green in three with a testing pitch over a greenside bunker. Normally Sir Andrew would play a bump and run to the green. He could almost play the shot in his sleep, and anyone who regularly played links courses had to master it. In conditions such as today's, it was ideal because the wind did not affect its low trajectory. This time, however, a yawning bunker intervened between his ball and the green, ruling out any chance of playing his favorite shot. He had no choice but to execute a high lob into the wind and make it land on the putting surface. From where he was, to pull it off would require both a delicate touch and the luck of the devil.

To his credit, he nearly succeeded. Cut upward with an elegant swing, smooth as silk, the ball obediently climbed high into the sky. Then the wind grabbed it at the top of its arc, stopped it in midair for a split second, and flung it back into the bowels of the bunker. Because it was still raining, the sand had become sodden wet, making an already difficult escape even more so.

Loopy was next to play. With a clear run to the pin, he played the low bump and run through the valley and up the slope. The ball scuttled along the ground like a rabbit, coming to a stop within ten feet of the flagstick. This left him with a putt for a birdie four.

His opponent had already played that many shots and was still lying at the bottom of a deep, wet bunker. Hands on hips, Sir Andrew surveyed his situation with obvious distaste. He looked at the shot he would have to make out of the bunker from every angle, assessing his chances of leaving his ball close enough to the flag to get down in one putt for a six. Then he glanced briefly at Loopy's ball on the green. Whether he did not want to risk the embarrassment of failing to get the ball out of the bunker, or he did not want to gift Loopy the psychological boost of making a birdie at the longest hole on the course in appalling conditions, no one would ever know. With a wry smile, he walked over to Loopy's ball, picked it up, and handed it to him.

“Well played, young man. I concede the hole.”

The referee intoned solemnly, “Mr. Lynch goes one up with fifteen holes to go.”

This was greeted by whoops of delight from those hardy souls who had deserted the village bars to brave the worst the elements could throw at them. The referee again appealed for order, “Quiet
please!
” as they moved to the next tee.

The Linhursts appeared out of the crowd to congratulate Loopy. Edward said, “Keep at it. You have him on the run now!” while Amy whispered, “You look fantastic in that sweater!” As she walked away, she turned and blew a kiss in his direction—which made him feel even better about going one up in the most important match of his life.

Reporters who were present for the final day of The Atlantic were in agreement on at least two issues. It was the worst weather in living memory, and the battle was won and lost on the twenty-first hole. Ironically they had come to a similar conclusion about the previous year's final when Al Neumann had destroyed his lordship's chances—and canceled out his lead—by hitting the third green in two. But that feat had been achieved in perfect conditions. Today the reporters were all of one mind that Loopy's play with the driver off the fairway into the teeth of a crosswind was a match-winner.

What finally won the day for Loopy and his caddy was the long par three. Two hundred and eighteen yards off an elevated tee to a green surrounded by a moonscape of dunes thickly coated with grass and weeds. The narrow, two-tiered green was necklaced with deep bunkers. Right beside the seashore, it was today playing almost directly into the wind, with no place to hide. Any shot, high or low, was going to feel the full blast of the gale, and landing anywhere but on the green was a lottery. One might be lucky enough to find a reasonably good lie on dune grass that had been trampled down by the spectators, or just as easily find the ball so deep in the grass that hacking it out regardless of where it might end up was the only option.

They had halved the preceding holes, and Loopy still retained his slender one-hole lead as he sized up the tee shot to the distant green. The flag fluttered stiff in the gale as he pondered which club to play. Nothing less than a driver or a fairway wood had any chance of reaching the putting surface. At the back of his mind was the comforting thought that his opponent might not be able to reach the green with any club in his bag.

“What do you think?”

Weeshy shrugged his shoulders, grimaced, spat on the ground, and handed him the driver before whispering into his ear, “Whole duck or no dinner, we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb! Bring it in from the left, anyways. Take your time, though, I think the tide's changing.”

From the mixed metaphors Loopy gathered that his caddy was in favor of playing the brave shot and taking the game to his opponent rather than playing safe. For once Weeshy had not indicated how far left Loopy should lay off into the wind, and the reason for this quickly became apparent when the wind suddenly dropped noticeably. As Loopy stooped to tee up his ball, he decided to wait for another moment or two to see if the wind would drop even more. He remembered how changing from a driver to a three iron at the fifteenth had won him the match against O'Donnell. That, too, had been a turning point, when Weeshy predicted that the wind would drop for a brief moment as the tide turned.

The par-three fourteenth he was standing on was the hole before that, and just as exposed to the elements. If he could hit the driver while the wind was at its lowest ebb, then his chances of hitting the green simply had to improve. As he took a few practice swings more than usual, he sensed that the wind was strengthening again, so without further ado he aimed well to the left, toward the foreshore, and hoped for the best as he smashed the ball off the tee. Like a kite on a string it soared out toward the breakers crashing on the beach, then caught the wind and drifted lazily onto the back of the green. The shot was greeted by the loudest applause yet and, despite the pleas of the referee, a cacophony of wild whoops from the Trabane contingent. Their ranks were now swollen by several visibly tipsy supporters who sensed that a famous victory was within their grasp.

“Good man yourself, Lynch!”

“Come on, Trabane, c'mon, the village!”

When Sir Andrew took his stance, the wind had regained most of its earlier fury, a point not lost on Weeshy to judge by the smugness of his grin. The ball never had a chance of reaching the green. It was lucky to find a playable lie from which the best Sir Andrew could do was to hack it onto the front edge of the green, leaving a forty-foot putt up a three-tier green. As he was still farther from the hole than Loopy's first shot, he putted up to within six feet of the cup, an excellent effort in the circumstances. Loopy left his birdie put six inches short, and his lordship made his second concession of the afternoon by picking up his ball and saying, this time with no trace of a smile, “Your hole.”

The referee tried to make himself heard above the excitement of the crowd. “Laurence Lynch wins the hole and goes two up with four holes to play!”

In ever-worsening conditions, the next three holes were halved in one shot over par, and the match ended on the seventeenth with the announcement “Laurence Lynch wins the match by two and one!”

There followed the most amazing scenes ever witnessed in the long history of Ballykissane and the Atlantic Trophy. Bottles of stout and noggins of whiskey appeared from nowhere. Undeterred by wind or rain, the celebrations began there and then, accompanied by snatches of song and bursts of prolonged cheering.

“C'mon, the village!” was a cry taken up by a knot of burly, excited men who heaved Loopy up on their shoulders. Despite the pleas of the referee for order and decorum, they bore him away on a lap of honor around the green as photographers jostled with each other to record the occasion.

They finally set Loopy down in front of the clubhouse, where the presentation was to take place. A roped-off area seemed awash with blazers, green for the members of Ballykissane and blue for the high command of Allied Banks of Ireland. Someone was trying desperately to get the microphone to work, as it emitted piercing whistles and ear-shattering shrieks. These were not quite loud enough, however, to blot out the chants of “Save our bank, save our Bank!” that vied with the more raucous “Good man yourself, Lynch, ya boyo!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Irish Rover was not the sort of place that featured in any directory of Good English Pubs. It was a place where the Irish in Birmingham congregated to exchange information about jobs to be had, horses to be backed, and, at weekends, money to be spent on lukewarm English bitter beer. It was always quiet in midweek, when Sean Lynch found himself nursing a small beer and lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last one. He picked up a copy of the
Irish Post
that someone had left behind. As he sought the section where news of Trabane might feature if anything of interest had happened in the village over the past week, a headline caught his eye: “Trabane Boy Wins Atlantic Trophy.”

He was surprised to learn that his son had won one of the most coveted trophies in Irish amateur golf some days earlier. He ordered another glass of beer and got down to some serious thinking.

Loopy's victory also gave food for thought to the members of Trabane Golf Club. The behavior of his supporters had gladdened some of his ardent backers in the club and appalled those who had never approved of him representing Trabane Golf Club in the first place. To them, Tim Porter was the man for the job. Admittedly he had never come close to winning, but his background enabled him to mingle effortlessly in the highest circles.

At a committee meeting shortly after Loopy's win, Pat O'Hara proposed it be celebrated with a gala dinner. Tim Porter thought it was a great idea and suggested that Loopy hand over the huge chunk of silverware that was the Atlantic Trophy to the club for safekeeping until the following year. The suggestion would have met with Brona's approval for she had already told her son, “You're not keeping that thing here in this house. I wouldn't get a wink of sleep worrying that it might be stolen. All that silver must be worth a fortune, but who's going to polish it every week? Not me, that's for sure!”

The meeting agreed to a gala dinner and that Leo Martin would do the honors on behalf of the sponsor, ABI. Loopy would then make a brief acceptance speech and present the cup to the club. In his heart of hearts Leo hated the whole idea. He feared the dinner would provide a platform for further protest at the imminent closure of his bank. He had heard on the grapevine that the announcement, though delayed for some reason, would be made any day now. In the meantime he remained tight-lipped. When pressed, all he would reveal was “The matter is now out of my hands!”

This was nearer the truth than Leo could have imagined. Sir Andrew had been reviewing the case for closing the Trabane branch since the protests at the Atlantic Trophy and a conversation he'd had about it with Loopy. Privately he had rather enjoyed the discomfiture of some of his fellow directors with whom he sat on the board of ABI. The protesters, while noisy, had, on the whole, been well-behaved. He was adamant that they had not affected his play in the least and had insisted that his defeat at the hands of the younger man was fair and square.

The more he looked into the underlying reasons for the closure, the less convinced he became. The Trabane branch, though poorly managed, was perfectly viable. Plans to shut it down were for cosmetic reasons only, it seemed to Sir Andrew. It was no secret that the ABI share price had been falling of late. This was in sharp contrast to the shares of their competitors, which were increasing in value, a source of some embarrassment to the directors. With the Annual General Meeting of the bank less than a month away, the board could expect some heat from the shareholders unless they were seen to be doing something to add value to the shares.