Loopy (7 page)

“What were they?”

“A-h-h … swing easy, try to keep my head still, and shake hands with the club.”

Joe exhaled through pursed lips, making a sound like a tire deflating. “Good advice. Now about that loop in your swing. You have just hit a driver off the ground and sent it out over the back fence. I haven't seen anyone do that before. Not off a tee, never mind off the deck. Here”—Joe took a long wooden peg out of his pocket and handed it to Larry—“tee a ball up on that and hit it.”

He did as he was told. This time he didn't hit it as far, but it went much higher and landed just short of the fence.

Again Joe exhaled noisily. “Try hitting it with this.”

He handed Larry an iron club with the number 7 engraved on it. It looked completely different from the weapon he had just used. It felt lighter in his hands but it did
look
slightly more like a hurley. This time no tee peg was offered. Larry swished the club a few times and it felt very different from the heavier driver he had just been using. He swung hard at the ball but hit the ground well behind the ball, making an enormous divot but sending the ball not more than twenty paces.

Joe did not seem in the least perturbed by this. “Have another try, only this time imagine the ball has an arse—and try to look up it!”

Larry glanced at his mentor to make sure he had heard right. He had. Joe's expression was one of utter concentration with not a hint of a smutty joke. Larry tried really hard to do as he was told, even though it meant craning his neck behind the ball, which felt awkward and uncomfortable. He swung the club more slowly this time and was gratified to see the ball soar skyward, in much the same flight path as the sliotair had taken just before he was felled by the sheep farmer.

Joe grunted with satisfaction. “That's more like it. I'll leave the driver and the seven iron with you. Hit the rest of those balls, then come back to the shop. I've a lesson in a few minutes. Oh, yes, another thing. From now on I'm going to call you Loopy. After that swing of yours—in case you were wondering.”

With that Joe disappeared in the direction of the clubhouse. Alone now, Larry stopped hitting golf balls for a moment to get his breath back. Below him lay Trabane in all its glory, a jumble of houses, their windows sparkling with the sun's reflections. The village might have been a glittering pendant hanging from the golden necklace of sandy beach that almost encircled the bay. The Atlantic was calm today, a mirror of deepest blue with scarcely a ripple. Overhead, gulls swooped and shrieked. In the distance a green mail van, tiny as an ant, crawled along the winding road that meandered from Trabane to Lisbeg.

There were many more lessons like that. Joe would loan Larry his own clubs, a bucket of balls, and let him get on with it. Whenever he caddied for O'Hara, he picked up the basics of the short game and got to hit a few putts on the green when O'Hara was certain no club members were watching.

When Tim Porter returned to Trabane after a lengthy visit to the vineyards, he was amazed at the strides Loopy, as everyone now called him, had made at the game. His length off the tee was still phenomenal, but now he could also hit iron shots long and straight. This improvement decided Tim Porter to give Larry an old set of golf clubs he had stopped using. When Joe Delany looked them over, his only comment was that they would do for the time being.

However, there remained the problem of Loopy's membership. Because he was no longer attending school, reduced student rates did not apply to him. It went without saying that the annual subscription of five hundred pounds was out of the question. For the moment O'Hara and Joe Delany agreed things could go on as they were, but both men realized that sooner or later the problem would have to be met head-on. If Loopy was to continue to progress at the game, he would have to play regularly on the golf course, and to do so, he would have to become a paid-up member of Trabane Golf Club.

It was just as well that Loopy was blissfully unaware of the problem for he had others to keep him awake at night. With the arrival of another spring, most of the hay remained unsold. As the weather got better every day, cattle were leaving their winter quarters to graze fields of fresh grass. In the barn, the hay would keep indefinitely, but selling it would provide some much needed cash. Leo Martin again wrote to Brona inquiring when her bank account might “be put on a proper footing” and looking forward to her proposals for “reducing the arrears in the account, which have now assumed alarming levels of indebtedness!”

Leo did so in a determined effort to clear his file of any overdue accounts that might hinder his prospects. The grapevine at Allied Banks of Ireland was humming with rumors that the Trabane outlet was due for the chop, despite the furor caused by the recent closure of the Lisbeg branch.

If that were not bad enough, things were going from bad to worse at the supermarket. Maire's so-called promotion had gone to her head, so much so that whenever Norbert was absent, she would seek out extra jobs for Loopy to do in addition to stacking shelves. These often entailed lifting heavy cartons or climbing up ladders in the storeroom—the very things he had been warned against by the hospital consultant. His pride would not allow him to explain this to her, so relations between them went from bad to worse.

There had been no more trips to the fort, nor did they laugh together as they had done before. He sometimes wondered if her attitude had changed so drastically because he was no longer a rising star of the hurling team. Working with her in the supermarket was a job now—nothing more.

God,
he thought,
women are so complicated.

The schoolteacher Pat O'Hara was another complication. He had still not abandoned hope that his ex-pupil might go back to school in the autumn, after a year's absence. “If you don't, you'll live to regret it, young fella. Can't you see that education is your only way out of a place like Trabane where there isn't a decent job for man or beast at the minute? Why don't you come back to school, graduate, and then the world will be your oyster. With a bit of paper behind you, you'll be the equal of any man. Stay the way you are and you'll still be stacking shelves when you're my age. And don't think that being able to hit a golf ball out of sight is going to do you any good when push comes to shove. Oh, sure, Joe Delany's doing his best for you right now, but a time will come when there's nothing more he can teach you, and what'll you do then?”

Loopy did not attempt to answer this. He didn't know, and to tell the truth, he didn't really care. What the schoolteacher was going on about was far away in the distant future. Getting rid of the hay in the barn and improving his golf game were his two immediate objectives in life. Going back to school again was simply not on the agenda because, apart from any other considerations, the pressure to pay off the bank was increasing letter by letter.

Leo Martin, apart from being manager of Allied Banks of Ireland in Trabane, also held down the position of honorary treasurer to the Golf Club. Whether it was from a wish to add to the profits of the bar, the ever-worsening recession, or because of some deeper, personal reason, he had taken to spending a lot of time there of late. Loopy noticed that when Leo and O'Hara were there at the same time, they sat as far apart as possible. Tonight, the bar was almost full and both men had been drinking for much longer than anyone else.

The talk among the members had been of the deepening recession that had descended on their town, with rumors of job losses and impending closures flitting forward and backward across the bar. The Maltings were due to shed eight more jobs at the end of the month, bringing to thirty their job losses for the year—a disaster for a tiny place like Trabane. To lighten the gloomy atmosphere, someone thought to change the subject by asking Loopy if his golf game was improving and if he was playing much.

Before he could answer, Leo Martin grumbled aloud, “If he's playing on the course, then he shouldn't be. You all know damn well that only members or those who have paid their green fees are allowed to play on this golf course, no matter”—here he paused with glass uplifted and glowered across at O'Hara, who was sitting at a table not far away—“
what
some other members whom I would have expected to set a better example may like to think!”

Pat O'Hara, drunk through he was, caught every syllable—and nuance. “Leo, you really should try not to be such a stuck-up old bollocks. Young Lynch here is shaping up to be the best golfer this place has ever produced by a bloody mile. All he needs is a free run at it without bother from pompous ould eejits like yourself”—a murmur of disapproval greeted this, but it failed to silence the irate schoolteacher—“so if it's the young lad's membership that's troubling you, I here and now propose Laurence Lynch as a full member. Now”—O'Hara glared around the bar with a piercing look that he had perfected in the classroom when seeking out miscreants—“who'll second my proposal?”

There was a long silence. Most of the drinkers would have supported O'Hara, though they would have preferred that his proposal were couched in milder terms. Leo Martin, though widely disliked, was nevertheless a force to be reckoned with in a small community such as Trabane. At the stroke of his pen, one's line of credit could be cut off—or restored—according to his whim. At the best of times, Leo would not have been someone to trifle with, but just now with half the business firms in Trabane struggling to survive, no one in his right mind would deliberately upset him. All the more surprising then when the silence was broken by a voice coming from the open door of the bar.

“I'll second that.”

Joe Delany had just come back from the practice ground, though the sun had long since gone down. He had given Rosa Martin a lesson in the short game in which he had stood behind her, then put his hands around her waist and onto the golf club she was already gripping a little too feverishly. As he'd thought to himself on the walk back from the practice ground after she'd departed in a flurry of gravel from the club, the lesson may not have done her golf much good but it had certainly made him feel a whole lot better.

All eyes focused on the professional for a moment, then swung back to the man who had started it all—Leo Martin. He did not react well. It may have been the drink or perhaps his natural disposition. Whatever the cause, his next question was unforgivable.

“Who'll pay his sub,” he snarled, “or does anyone here imagine that the bank is going to loan him the money just so that he can play golf?”

This was greeted with a silence even longer than the one that had preceded it. Then an English accent cut through the tense, smoke-filled atmosphere like a knife through butter. Edward Linhurst was on his feet and rummaging in his jacket for a checkbook. “That won't be necessary, Leo old man. I trust a check will be satisfactory?”

If Leo Martin detected the sarcasm in the voice of Trabane's richest resident, he chose to ignore it. Instead he muttered something unintelligible into his pint glass and developed a sudden interest in the beer mat on his table. The roar of conversation resumed as Loopy tried to come to terms with his suddenly having become a full member of Trabane Golf Club.

CHAPTER FOUR

The tournament was held throughout the year, come wind or rain. To win it was the ambition of every member of Trabane Golf Club. Despite being called the Monthly Medal, it did not mean that a real medal was presented. Instead the winner received a voucher from the pro shop, which complied with the rule that amateurs were not to play for prize money. It was played on the last Sunday of every month, and the presentation of the prize was at seven o'clock on the dot. This gave everyone time for a drink beforehand—and afterward, should they be so inclined.

Handicaps define a golfer, the lower the number the better the player. Beginners usually start out with the target of a really low handicap, then get caught up in the complexities of the game and settle for a higher handicap off which they can play with some degree of comfort. Almost a parable of life itself, wherein the pilgrim starts out full of hope until disillusionment arrives on the scene and, sometimes, takes over completely.

Edward Linhurst was different, for disillusionment never stood a chance. His self-confidence—some called it cockiness—guaranteed that. In his younger days he played off a single-figure handicap and could see no good reason why he should not do so again. With plenty of time to concentrate on the game, he had been taking lessons from Joe Delany, who treated him much the same as Loopy. He would give Linhurst a few things to work on at the start of the lesson, then let him get on with it. When a bucket of balls had been hit, Joe would come back to check for any improvement. If not, he would try something else. The method usually worked because most people did better on their own than with the professional looking over their shoulder. Rosa Martin was the exception.

On the driving range after one of these lessons, Edward Linhurst renewed his acquaintance with the young man whose subscription he had paid on the spur of the moment. In the excitement that had followed Linhurst's intervention, Loopy had not had an opportunity to thank his benefactor until now.

“I never got a chance to thank you properly, Mr. Linhurst, for doing what you did. I'll pay you back as I can. Honest I will.”

Linhurst was both gratified and nonplussed. He had wondered several times since then what could possibly have sparked such an uncharacteristic intervention. He was not one to draw attention to himself. Quite the opposite, in fact. Those who knew him well regarded him as a shrinking violet—cocky and self-confident, of course, yet someone who shunned the limelight whenever possible. He couldn't blame it on too much drink, either. He had had two, possibly three, gin and tonics before responding to the bank manager's outburst. Nor was he trying to impress anyone. He liked almost everyone in the golf club and found them fun to be with, but by paying Loopy's subscription, he wasn't trying to impress them with his wealth. No one, he reflected, could accuse him of trying to impress
anyone.