The Amateurs (15 page)

Gary’s ball was about twenty yards behind the red-and-white post that indicated there was 150 yards to the centre of
the green. Pin at the back left, tucked in behind the bunker. Sucker pin position, trying to lure you into the bunker. Ignore it and aim for the heart of the green? But that would leave him a long putt for birdie, with all those people watching…it’d be better to be close.

Hit a draw? Land the ball on the middle of the apron of the green, moving a little right-to-left and cosying up to the flag? A little under 170 yards to the hole: about a five-iron for the old Gary. The new one took a deep breath and pulled out the seven.

Don’t hold back now.

That blissful sensation of weightlessness as he came through the ball, catching it right out of the middle, right out of the sweet spot, like there was nothing there at all, and Gary letting the club wrap around him, falling against the back of his neck, conscious of cold steel against his skin.

The ball bounced once in front of the green, a second time three yards onto it, and began to roll left, out of sight. A second passed, then two, and people behind the green were hopping up and down and beginning to emit a strange noise, a tortured whine, like a jet engine powering up for take-off. Another second, the whine powering up then resolving into a massed
‘Ooooohhh…
’.

As he walked onto the green, into all the clapping and cheering, Gary saw that his ball was nestled just inches from the cup. He became aware of three things.

• 1) He had the simplest of tap-ins to break the course record.
  
• 2) The fizzing sensation in his skull was intensifying, like the lemonade in there was beginning to boil.
  
• 3) The erection in his pants was reaching a scarcely believable pitch of rigidity.
  

Dreamlike now–the sound of the crowd just a distant wash as he watched their mouths opening and closing but heard nothing–he walked into the middle of the green. Someone’s hand on his shoulder, Gary turning to see Auld Bert saying something, indicating that Gary should tap in and take his place in Ravenscroft history right now, rather than waiting until his partners had hit their putts. Everything in slow motion. Numbly Gary settled the putter behind the ball and tapped it. It dropped into the cup with a ‘clink’ he did not hear and he was engulfed in a sea of backslapping, handshaking, smiling and laughing. A whoosing in his head. The hard-on. Jesus.

Senga the barmaid kissing him on the cheek.

His vision dimming at the edges now as he broke away from everyone, their expressions turning to concern as Gary began staggering, scrabbling at his belt buckle with jittery urgency, a strange moan coming from him.

His belt slithering open and his trousers falling down.

Jaws falling too as Gary’s hand disappeared down the front of his boxers, reappearing a split second later, clutching his…

Senga the barmaid screamed.

Everything went black as his legs folded beneath him.

He woke up in a pile of sweaters still in their thin polythene wrappers. Looking up, Gary saw that Stevie and Bert were standing over him. They looked very worried.

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in the pro shop, son,’ Bert said softly.

‘Why? What happened?’

‘Ah, you fainted,’ Bert said.

‘What’s the last thing you remember?’ Stevie asked, offering him a sip of water from a plastic cup and sitting down on the floor beside him.

‘I…’ He took the water. What did he remember?
Some strange dream–his dad, a golf course, lots of flowers?
‘Walking onto the green?’ Gary said. ‘People cheering?’

Stevie raised his eyebrows expectantly. ‘Then?’

‘Then…’ He thought hard, but there was nothing. A vague memory of a tickling in his head, a whooshing sound. ‘What happened then?’

Stevie bit his lip and bowed his head down. Gary looked up at Bert. ‘Bert, what happened?’

Bert coloured. ‘Umm, well, it, ye had, ye know, son, ye started having a…a wee turn at yourself.’

‘Eh?’

Stevie sighed and spoke slowly and clearly. ‘You started wanking yourself off in front of everyone.
Then
you fainted.’

Gary looked up at Bert. Bert nodded. Gary swallowed.

‘Fuck,’ he said finally.

L
EE
I
RVINE, SITTING ON THE HOT BONNET OF HIS CAR
, lit a Mayfair and turned as he heard the crunch of tyres. The black jeep pulled up beside Lee’s Nova in the deserted car park. Alec gestured for him to get in.

‘A’right?’

‘No bad, Alec, no bad. How’s it going?’ Lee pulled the hefty door shut behind him. Leather seats. iPod. Satnav. The business.

‘Here’s how it’s fucking going…’ Alec said, sliding a small green canvas knapsack onto Lee’s lap and looking around the park. Empty, save for a pair of joggers on the wooden running track half a mile away.

Lee thought about looking inside, but decided that might be unprofessional. Better to play it cool. The knapsack felt appropriately heavy on his thighs, dense matter, condensed death.

‘Cheers,’ Lee said with a nonchalance he did not feel.

‘It’s a revolver.’ Alec paused, chewing gum. ‘Ye don’t want
an automatic jamming oan ye. Fucking nightmare. There’s a box o’ shells in there too.’

Alec talked slowly, calmly, never turning Lee’s way. He kept his eyes on the park around them, constantly scanning. ‘Serial number’s been filed aff, but don’t get smart and figure ye’ll keep it and sell it later or whatever. Soon as yer done take a drive doon the harbour and pap it in the fucking water.’ Water pronounced in the full Ayrshire–‘Wah-turr’.

‘Aye, ah’m no fucking daft, Alec.’

‘Ah’m sure yer no, so listen tae this. This job’s come straight doon fae the auld boy. He’s taking a personal interest. Know whit ah’m saying?’

‘Aye.’

The auld boy. Ranta. Lee felt his windpipe tighten.

‘So if ye’ve any doubts aboot this, now’s the time tae say. Ye can just gie us the money back and that’ll be that. Because after this arrangements will be getting made and ma da’ll be giving his word tae the client.’ Alec turned to face Lee for the first time. ‘And ye wouldnae want ma da tae huv tae go back on his word. Would ye?’

‘Course no, Alec. Ah can handle it.’

‘Right.’ Alec passed him an envelope. ‘There’s the address and a photo o’ the cow. Memorise them and burn them.’

‘When’s it tae get done?’ Lee asked.

‘Not for a wee while. Probably be a month or so. There’s arrangements tae be made. Alibis and stuff. Give ye time tae dae yer homework. We’ll be in touch. When it’s aw done ah’ll meet ye and square ye up wi’ the rest o’ the dollar.’

‘Aye, right, Alec. Fair enough. Ah–’ But Alec was turning the ignition on, indicating that the meeting was over.

Lee watched Alec drive off in a beige cloud of gravel. He got in his car and looked around. Still no one in sight. He opened
the knapsack, slid his hand in, and closed his fist around a real gun for the first time in his life. Not an air pistol or a replica. A. Real. Fucking. Gun.

It felt oily and cold, and gripping it tightly did not bring the excitement Lee had thought it might. Only fear. He opened the envelope and took the photo out–a woman, fat, blonde, middle-aged, smiling for the camera, a close head and shoulders shot, taken in a restaurant somewhere. She looked happy. Lee pushed away the thought of how happy she was going to look with a fucking bullet hole in her coupon. He looked at the address written on the back of the photo:
Riverside, 42 The Meadows
. Rich cow then. For some reason this made him feel a little better.

Memorise it.

‘42’, like four-four-two formation with one of the fours taken off. ‘Riverside’, the River Ardgirvan that flowed under the shopping mall, on its banks, its sides, the pitch-and-putt course and the putting green.

He pulled his lighter out and set it to the corner of the photograph. He held it out of the car window, watching as it burned, the glossy paper flaming blue and then pink and then orange as Leanne Masterson’s face crumpled, smoke wreathing away from Lee on the breeze, the ashes fluttering around him like grey-black snowflakes. Lee remembered something he hadn’t thought of in a long time–running down the first fairway at Ravenscroft, him and Gary, throwing their father’s ashes into the air from a gold plastic tub.

F
ACING
G
ARY AND
P
AULINE ACROSS THE DESK IN THE
antiseptic consulting room was Dr Robertson and a short, bespectacled man in his forties wearing a beige corduroy jacket. He looked more like a teacher to Pauline than a doctor. ‘Yes, congratulations!’ Robertson said. ‘Sixty-one! I heard you nearly holed a seven-iron at the eighteenth?’

‘Yeah.’ Gary said. ‘From about 170. Fud. Rolled to about three–OW!–inches.’

‘My goodness!’

‘Yeah. It was–’

‘Sorry,’ Pauline interrupted, ‘can we just…?’

‘Yes, sorry, anyway, this is Dr Fuller–’ Robertson extended a hand towards him–‘from the neurology department at Glasgow University.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Fuller said cheerfully, leaning across the desk to shake their hands.

‘Hello,’ Pauline said.

‘Hi. Cunt. Speccy cunt, ye,’ Gary said.

‘Gary!’ Pauline said.

‘Fascinating,’ Fuller said, scribbling a note.

‘Sorry!’ Gary said.

‘Dr Fuller,’ Robertson went on, ‘has a bit more experience than myself with these kinds of cases.’

‘Oh,’ Pauline said, ‘with the Tourette’s, you mean?’

‘Not specifically the Tourette’s,’ Fuller said. ‘I’m leading a team researching behavioural abnormalities as a result of head trauma.’

‘Oh,’ Pauline said.

‘Big tits, ya fud ye. Sorry,’ Gary said.

‘Mr Irvine,’ Fuller began.

‘Gary’s fine,’ Gary said, before adding, ‘cunt.’

‘Gary, is it fair to say that this performance on the golf course was far in excess of your usual capability at the, um, game?’

‘Well, my handicap’s eighteen. Grr. So yeah,’ Gary said.

‘Mmmm,’ Fuller said, chewing his biro while he reviewed Gary’s file. ‘I see here that just before you were struck on the head by the golf ball you were, in fact, practising golf. Can you recall exactly what happened before the ball hit you?’

‘Umm, I’d been hitting it really badly, shanking them all over the place. And then I–tits–made an absolutely perfect swing. Spunk. Nine-iron. Baws. Hoor. Right out of the socket. I saw it land, it was rolling towards the hole–
rodeyerfucken-mawyacunt
–and then–bang! Goodnight Vienna.’

‘I see, I see,’ Fuller murmured, scribbling away.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pauline cut in, having had just about enough of all this, ‘but what’s all this got to do with what he…did the other day?’

‘Oh, I’ll come to the masturbation,’ Fuller said casually, as though it were common or garden enough, ‘but as regards
the golf performance, what I think might have happened–and I must stress this is only conjecture–is that the trauma of the cerebellum Gary suffered has served to dramatically reinforce the successful performance of a specific physical action.’ Fuller got up and went to a chart on the wall–a detailed cross section of the human brain. ‘The cerebellum is attached to the stem of the actual brain.’ He pointed it out with his pen. ‘Among other things it’s responsible for orchestrating and fine-tuning movement and is integral in performing intricate actions like, for instance, threading a needle or–’

‘Swinging a golf club,’ Robertson said.

‘Exactly. Any information to be passed to your muscles is passed first through the cerebellum. Now, when a physical action produces a good, successful outcome this sensation is reinforced in the cerebellum. What I think may have happened in your case,’ he came back to the desk, genuinely excited now, ‘is that the trauma caused by the impact of the golf ball has somehow massively reinforced the sensation you experienced when you struck the shot perfectly, or “right out of the socket”, to use your words. Consequently every time you swing the club now, it’s possible that your brain is following, well, a burned-in template of how a successful swing should be executed. I’ve never come across anything quite like it before. There have been instances of head-injury patients suddenly displaying mathematical abilities they never had previously, but this would seem to indicate physical
and
ment—’

‘Hang on.’ Gary interrupted, unable to quite believe what he was hearing. ‘Are you saying that
I can’t make a bad swing
?’

‘It’s possible. What do you think, Dr Robertson?’

‘I think,’ Robertson said, staring enviously at the fading indented bruise on Gary’s temple, thinking about the millions
of amateur golfers gnashing and weeping their way around the world’s courses every weekend, ‘that if we could market this as an operation we’d all be bloody billionaires!’

‘Right,’ Pauline said, finally losing patience. ‘Can we just forget about the bloody golf please? What about the fact that he…’ What was the right word to use in front of doctors? ‘…interfered with himself in front of all those people?’

‘Oh yes,’ Fuller said, ‘it’s very likely that Gary is suffering from a neurological condition called Kluver-Bucy syndrome.’ His tone of voice was that of a geologist who had gone from discussing a rare gemstone to talking about coal.

‘Klu…’ Pauline began.

‘Kloo-ver-Boo-sey,’
Fuller enunciated. ‘It was first observed by scientists studying how various degrees of lobotomy-affected–’

‘Lobotomy?’ Gary said.

‘–affected monkeys,’ Fuller continued. ‘They found that after performing bilateral temporal lobectomies–which, of course, caused separate lesions of the amygdala, uncus and temporal cortices–a startling variety of behavioural changes were observed in the monkeys.’

Pauline and Gary stared at him.

‘Although naturally,’ he said, looking to clarify, ‘it was simply the bilateral amygdalotomies–and the resultant damage to their outflow tracts, the diagonal band of Broca and, um, stria terminalis–that resulted in the clinical picture.’

Christ
, Robertson thought. He cut in and explained it simply.

‘What kind of “behavioural changes”?’ Gary asked.

‘Hyperorality, dietary abnormalities, emotional blunting and, of course, hypersexuality.’

‘Hang on,’ Gary said. ‘Bloody monkeys is one thing, but how–sookit–I mean, do humans get this?’

‘Oh, it’s pretty rare,’ Fuller said happily. ‘In over twenty years I’ve witnessed just two or three cases. One of them, a young woman who was involved in an RTA–’

‘Road traffic accident,’ Robertson said.

‘–had a GCS score of 7, rather more severe than yours,’ Fuller continued, nodding at Gary. ‘She was in a coma for twelve days. When she regained consciousness she displayed a range of Kluver-Bucy behaviour, including the marked hypersexuality.’

‘What kind of umm…hypersexuality?’ Pauline asked.

‘Oh, the usual things, attempting to take her clothes off, inappropriate touching–grabbing doctors’ genitals–excessive and often public masturbation.’

‘Christ,’ Pauline said.

‘What happened to her?’ Gary asked.

‘Mmm?’

‘The girl. What happened to her?’

‘Oh, she died.’

Fuller said this in exactly the same tone he might have used for ‘she’s fine’. Robertson closed his eyes.

‘But, but,’ Fuller said, ‘there are several documented cases of patients making a full recovery. You see, I think there’s a good chance that you may be suffering from a relatively mild form of Kluver-Bucy syndrome known as post-traumatic KBS. There’s a good chance you’ll make a full recovery.’

‘How…how long will that take?’ Gary asked.

‘Oh, the literature records cases resolving themselves in anything from a week or two to a year.’

‘A year?
’ Pauline said. ‘He could be like this for a year?’

‘Like what?’ Robertson asked.

‘Like wanking in the bloody high street!’ Pauline said.

‘Well, it’s possible,’ Fuller said. ‘However, we have found
that the worst incidences of that kind of thing seem to occur when the subject is placed in situations of unusually high stress or tension. So I’d avoid those.’

‘I can play golf though, can’t I?’ Gary asked.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake–’ Pauline said.

‘Well, I suppose so. But I–’

‘Dick,’ Gary said.

‘I’d try to–’

‘Big dicks.’

‘Try to avoid–’

‘Strapafuckendicktome.’

‘Avoid the kind of high-pressure situation you found yourself in the other day.’ Fuller smiled. ‘You know, just play for fun!’

Gary and Robertson–the two golfers in the room–looked at each other, both of them thinking; ‘
Fun?
What the fuck is this boy talking about?’