The Amateurs (23 page)

DAY THREE OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

S
ATURDAY MORNING: THE TEMPERATURE RISING AND
the crowds escalating for the weekend.

Gary and Stevie made their way from the locker room to the first tee–stunned by the change in the process from the previous two days. Where before there had been a handful of friends and family along with the odd knot of curious golf fans lining the path, now there were hundreds of people pressing against the ropes, clapping and cheering. Some of them seemed to know his name. ‘Go on, Gary!’ a middle-aged woman shrieked and Gary sheepishly tugged his visor in recognition, something he’d seen some of the professionals doing on TV.

When they came round the corner of the clubhouse building the enormity of what was happening really became apparent: the first tee was engulfed by a heaving mass of spectators. Those who couldn’t get near the tee box were lining the first hundred yards of the fairway. Cardboard periscopes wavered above the bobbing heads. ‘Holy shit,’ he whispered to Stevie out of the corner of his mouth.

‘It’s fine,’ Stevie said. ‘Be cool.’

They walked up onto the tee box–seeing his mum, April and the rest pressed against the ropes (where was Lee? He might at least have…)–and shook hands with the starter and the R&A official who would be following the match. ‘Listen, son,’ the starter said, leaning in close to Gary’s ear and having to raise his voice over the hubbub. ‘You just enjoy yourself out there today. You’ve done a hell of a job just getting this far. Remember that.’

‘Aye, thanks,’ Gary said.

April jockeyed for position near the ropes behind the tee. After yesterday’s miraculous shot her second story about Gary had run in the main paper this morning–not the sports section. If he managed to hang in there near the top until tomorrow she was–as she’d patiently reminded Devlin and McIntyre on the phone last night–sitting on a huge story.

Suddenly, all around them, a massive cheer erupted from the crowd. Gary and Stevie turned and looked back along the path, where a sea of hands was now stretching out, fingers waving, desperately trying for high fives. The ground didn’t begin to shake, but it might as well have, as Drew Keel heaved into sight. Drew Keel; the third best golfer in the world, three-time major championship winner, one of the longest hitters on the PGA tour, walking right towards them, pausing here and there to high-five a well-wisher, laughing and joking with the galleries. Keel–a man Gary had only ever seen on television prior to this moment–walking up the steps and onto the tee now, his hand extended towards Gary and a big lopsided grin on his face. Drew Keel saying, ‘Hi there. I’m Drew.’

In the commentary booth Rowland Daventry was frantically scanning a sheaf of papers he’d just been handed by an
assistant as Reynolds squawked in his earpiece. ‘Rowland?
Rowland!
On air in five, four–’

‘Yes, I know! Fuck!’ Daventry snapped.

‘–two and–’

‘And over to the first tee now,’ Daventry purred smoothly. ‘A very interesting pairing this, the world number three alongside Gary Irvine, the only amateur player to make the cut this year. And what a spectacular fashion he did it in, eh, Bob?’

‘Indeed,’ Torrent said.

On television the screen cut to a replay of Gary’s last shot the previous day, the perfectly struck five-iron drifting towards the hole.

‘…eagling the eighteenth from two hundred yards.’

‘And then promptly fainting!’ Torrent cut in.

‘Yes, poor lad,’ Daventry continued as, on television screens all across the country, a shot of Gary’s face, biting his top lip in concentration, filled the screen. ‘A combination of the heat and the excitement we’ve been told. However, we’ve since found out a little more about Mr Irvine. Extraordinary story, which I’m sure some of you will have been reading about in this morning’s papers…’

Pauline was doing her make-up when Katrina rushed into the bedroom. ‘Come and see this,’ she said, excited. Pauline followed her into the living room, Ben snorting and snuffling at her heels. ‘I was flicking through the channels when…’ She pointed to the TV: Gary’s face, biting his lip in that stupid, goofy way he did when he was concentrating, while Torrent picked up the story. ‘He got his handicap cut from around eighteen down to scratch in the space of a couple of months, which I think is a record in itself.’ Ben looked at the TV screen and began emitting a low growl.

‘I should think so,’ Daventry said. ‘How long did it take you, Bob?’

‘Oh, a good bit longer than that! Every year thousands of amateurs compete for just twelve spots.’

‘Yes. Many are called. Few are chosen,’ Daventry said solemnly. The banter went on as Pauline and Katrina sat down to watch.

‘Well, he made it through and here he is now–playing with Mr Drew Keel.’

‘And a question here via email from a Mrs Agnes Kincaid in Dumbarton,’ Daventry continued as Gary pushed his tee peg into the ground, ‘who asks “What would happen if Mr Irvine found himself in the prize money and he took it?” Well, Agnes, he would of course lose his amateur status and immediately become a professional sportsman. He’d be unable to play in any amateur competitions again. Although, I have to say, if you were a betting man, you’d be a little nervous of sticking your money on him, wouldn’t you, Bob? There hasn’t been an amateur winner of the Open since the late, great Bobby Jones won at Royal Liverpool back in the glorious summer of 1930.’

‘You’ll remember that, Rowland,’ Torrent said.

In the booth Daventry stuck two fingers up at Torrent while he said, ‘Oh yes. Great days.’

Pauline watched the man she already thought of as her ex-husband stand behind his ball and sight down the gun barrel of his extended driver. She felt a curious mixture of emotions: the electric tingle of seeing someone she knew intimately on the television; resentment that, despite the fact that she had no discernible talent, it was Gary and not her who was appearing on TV; and also, and unexpected this, there was a curious rush at seeing the surname which was still hers
standing out in white-on-blue lettering in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

‘God, doesn’t he look fat?’ Katrina said while, from the television, there came the swish and crack of the driver as Gary hit his first shot of the day.

‘The camera adds ten pounds,’ Pauline said. She’d read that somewhere. In one of her magazines. Ben barked twice sharply as on-screen Gary’s match walked off the tee and headed down the fairway.

Lee had endured worse nights, but not many. His first night in Saughton had been worse; on his back on the hard bunk in the cold cell, listening to that guy wanking three feet above him, listening to the prison making its prison sounds all around him–pipes clanking, metal gates rattling, distant footsteps on concrete floors, humming machinery. (Prisons, Lee learned, are like hospitals and hotels: insomniac buildings, never silent, never completely asleep.)

But this night, spent handcuffed to a radiator, lying on an oil-stained cement floor with his arms twisted over to the side and his back against the damp breeze-block wall and his jaw aching from the oily rag they’d stuffed in it, this was definitely up there. He could just about move his tongue around the rag, enough for him to probe the tip of it into one of the ragged, salty holes in his bottom gum where two of his molars were missing. One of the small mercies of the rag was that he couldn’t run his tongue across the gap where his front teeth used to be; they’d splintered when they’d thrown him headlong and face down onto the floor as they’d dragged him in here.

Through sheer exhaustion, he’d managed to drift off for a little while. When he opened his eyes he saw sunlight filtering in through the cracks around the door on the far side of the
room. He could hear children’s voices and a dog barking somewhere close by. Somehow these sounds made him more miserable than he’d ever been. Like when you were little and you got sent to bed early on a summer’s night for being bad: the worst punishment. You’d hear the sounds from the street, ice cream vans chiming, kids playing; all reminding you that life went on without you.

‘
Christ knows what’s going tae happen to you, boy.
’

His father had said this to him more than once, after one or other of his escalating teenage transgressions (the truancy, into shoplifting, into glue-sniffing, into smoking hash, into whatever) had been uncovered. Well, Christ knew now. And Lee knew too, swallowing and tasting coppery blood. He was going to die here, in this windowless concrete room, surrounded by engine parts, oil stains and men who were harder than he was.

F
OR TWO HOURS
G
ARY AND
S
TEVIE, AND A PRESSING
gallery of thousands of spectators, watched in awe as Drew Keel heroically tackled Royal Troon’s front nine. He crunched drivers 350 yards. He went for the par fives in two shots every time. He slashed mighty three-irons out of rough most players would have trembled at taking the lob wedge to. He went right at every pin, no matter how riskily they were positioned.

Golf, of course, couldn’t care less about heroics and by the time they were walking towards the tenth tee Keel was a horrendous four over par for the round.

Gary drove the ball conservatively, routinely hitting the three-wood and the rescue club. He laid up on par fives, playing for position in the centre of the fairway and leaving himself soft wedges into the greens and comfortable two putts for his pars. After a morning of grinding it out he had made one birdie over nine holes. Level par for the tournament.

Cathy Irvine was once again watching her son lining up his second shot at the treacherous eleventh. He’d pushed his drive
a bit, landing in the first cut of rough on the right-hand side of the fairway, just at the corner where it doglegged right. Cathy automatically tilted her eyes up to the sky. ‘
Come on, you…
’

Meanwhile, sixty-odd yards away, Gary was hearing the more corporeal advice of Stevie. ‘Fucking fucked fae here, cunty-baws,’ Stevie said, surveying the situation.

The eleventh is a shortish par five by modern tour standards, almost a par four for some of the bigger hitters. Keel had creamed his drive and was lying in the middle of the fairway about fifty yards ahead of Gary, who still had over two hundred yards to go, with thick rough and out-of-bounds waiting all along the right and a huge, yawning bunker guarding the left of the green. The sensible shot–the shot Stevie was urging–was something like a seven-iron into the neck of the fairway, leaving a wedge in for a two-putt par.

At the same time…he could definitely reach the green and there weren’t many two-putt birdie opportunities left out here today. Something else too–he just fancied this. A phenomenon unique to golf: sometimes a straightforward chip can fill the player with unexpected dread while the most ludicrous shot, an arcing draw from a scrubby patch of rough over a terrible canyon, makes the mouth water. Something about the way the wind was blowing, the way his ball was lying–in the rough, but sitting up a little on a springy tuft of grass–conspired to make Gary think he could just muller this one. He reached past Stevie’s proffered seven-iron and pulled out the four.

‘Ho, bawbag,’ Stevie said, ‘are you aff yer tits? If ye come up short over this rough it’s game over.’

‘I can make it.’

‘Sayonara.’

‘Ball’s sitting up nice.’

‘Kaput.’

‘Wind’s helping a wee bit.’

‘Goodnight Vienna.’

‘Stevie!’

‘Sorry. Best o’ luck.’

Stevie stepped back and Gary took his stance. Pin back right. Fucking out-of-bounds all over the place. No, don’t think about that. Plenty of room.

In the crowd Cathy turned to Bert. ‘Whit were they arguing about, Bert?’

‘It looks like he’s going for the green. Ah think young Stevie wanted him tae lay up. Difficult shot. Tricky hole.’

‘Yeah,’ April said. ‘Didn’t Nicklaus make something like a 12 here back in ’62?’

Bert looked at the lassie, impressed. ‘Thirteen, hen. Thirteen.’

‘Aww my God!’ Cathy cried as thousands of necks suddenly snapped to the left.

Gary and Stevie held their breath as the ball flew over the right-hand rough, terrifyingly close to the railway tracks. An ‘
oooh
’ from up ahead as his ball came down.

‘Is he on the green?’ Cathy asked Bert, her hands over her face.

‘On the green?’ Bert said. ‘I reckon he’s about three feet fae the bloody pin!’

‘Oh thank God for that,’ Cathy said as she felt a tugging at her elbow. She turned.

Lisa looked terrible: bloodshot eyes, streaked mascara.

‘Lisa hen! Whit is it? Whit’s wrang?’ Cathy’s stomach was tightening.

‘Aw Cathy!’

‘Aw God, whit’s he done, hen?’

Lisa burst into fresh tears.

T
HE ROOM WAS SUDDENLY ILLUMINATED BY A BURST
of sunlight as the door was thrown open. Lee squinted up and saw Ranta Campbell floating towards him, perfectly silhouetted, a corona of sunlight burning around him, his long coat flowing out like black smoke and an axe in his hand.

Lee made a sound he’d never made before. He whimpered, like a miserable dog, or a child who knows they have done something very, very bad. Ranta tore the oily rag from Lee’s mouth and heard exactly what he had been expecting to hear:

‘Rantapleasefucksakeah’llpayyeawthemoneybackahsweartaefuck’

Lee went on like this for a while, all the time staring straight into Ranta’s eyes–an unsettling enough experience in its own right. Ranta listened to the speech in the same way a seasoned judge might listen to an earnest, but inexperienced, barrister, tuning out all the cliché and hyperbole he’d heard countless times before while keeping a weary ear open in case a surprising detail emerged from the babble. After a
minute or so of garbled raving Lee gave up and just started crying.

Ranta looked down at him. The boy looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Ranta had met a lot of bams over the years, in rooms like this, with a tool, a chib, an equaliser in his hand. Leaning casually on the long-handled axe as a golfer leans on a club when he is waiting for a green to clear, Ranta said, ‘Sorry, son, Lee is it? Is that yer name?’ Lee nodded miserably. ‘Look, ah kin see what happened, Lee. Ye thought ye’d play wi the big boys and when it came doon tae it ye shat yer pants and ran away. Ah see that. Ah’m no a monster. It’s just that ah gave ma word that this job would be done. Ah cannae let it get about that any wee fanny in the town can make me look like a total fud whenever he feels like it. Can I?’ Lee, crying softly, head bowed, did not answer. ‘Look at me, son.’

Lee looked up, blinking away his tears, and saw Ranta was hefting the axe up into his hands now. ‘I mean–do you want me to look like a total fud?’

Alec and Frank laughed. The boss was a fucking riot sometimes so he was. Lee shook his head. ‘Naw,’ Ranta said, still calm and pleasant, ‘ah didnae think so…’

Frank stepped back as Ranta widened his stance and brought the axe back. He’d seen this before: one time Ranta had almost missed the guy completely, slicing off half his face by mistake–right forehead, tip of the nose and right cheek–and the cunt had thrashed around screaming and spraying blood everywhere before Frank shot him in the face.

Lee looked at Alec. ‘Please, Alec.’

‘You’re a fucking amateur, Lee Irvine,’ Alec said as Ranta brought the axe down hard.

Lee shut his eyes.

He felt the breath of air on his face as the blade passed very close to his cheek. Simultaneously he felt the familiar thick, oily spurt into the gusset of his boxer shorts, then the hollow clang of metal hitting cement, his bare forearm tingling as sparks bounced off him. He looked up.

Ranta was standing over him, breathing a little hard from the exertion. The axe had dug a chip of concrete the size of a toffee out of the floor next to Lee’s knee. Ranta, his massive hands stinging from the impact, like when he misstruck a long-iron, looked down at Lee and said, ‘Irvine? You’re no any relation to the boy Gary Irvine who’s playing in the Open, are ye?’