Nice Jumper (10 page)

Our relief, however, was short-lived. As we improved under Bob’s guidance, Gordon became, contrary to our hopes, a more, not less, central figure. He remained invisible for our searing long irons and masterful lobs, continued to take little to no interest in our ever more encouraging away results, still couldn’t growl the words ‘good score’ without sounding like he was extracting an unusually obstinate chunk of mozzarella from the side of his mouth. But Gordon’s role now had far more definition. In our eyes there was no longer any pretence of supporting the juniors. To us he was, quite brazenly, Hell’s Trucker.

Accompanied by five or six obsequious goons, Hell’s Trucker stalked the fairways in the late summer evenings, a bit like Robert Duvall might have stalked the beach in
Apocalypse Now
if he’d been six inches taller and spent too much time with tarpaulin. With a haulage company inherited from his father, a fondness for Yorkie bars and a hairstyle which was more a cheek-style that happened to creep up onto his head, his mere presence provided a chilling warning to us all about the dangers of arrested golfing development.
According
to the general rules of golf, sevenballs are strictly forbidden, but Hell’s Trucker and his mob didn’t care, and – moreover – knew that no one would dare question them. As the sun began to set, you would see them swaggering over the ridge on the tenth fairway, the last gang in town, and you would make yourself scarce.

For a whole year, Hell’s Trucker eyed us on the greens, hunted us in the rough, and hounded us in the clubhouse. I’d wondered in my early years at Cripsley why the adult members were so tolerant of junior shenanigans: were they simply an unusually charitable group of people, or had we just been lucky? Hell’s Trucker answered my question once and for all. Our luck had run out. We wondered how he found any time for trucking at all, since he seemed to be on the golf course every minute of the day, making our lives a misery.

‘Tom, what are they?’ he demanded, as I attempted to take a short cut through the clubhouse to the locker room.

‘They’re trainers,’ I said.

‘I know they’re trainers. What do you think you’re doing wearing them in the men-only bar?’

‘I thought I could just nip through to get my clubs out of my locker and change into my golf shoes.’

‘Well, think again. This isn’t a bloomin’ sports stadium, you know.’

The climate had changed. One moment it was possible to smash an adult member’s greenhouse and ride home in the Sphincter a free hooligan, the next you couldn’t walk around with your trouser zip down for fear of being summoned to the competition room for a disciplinary hearing. Whether it was Mousey petulantly hurling his club into a pond after a missed three-foot putt, me pulling my trolley inside the line of the bunkers by the sixteenth green, Jamie wearing shorts with ankle socks, or Bushy failing to place his knife and fork together after a clubhouse meal, you could guarantee Hell’s Trucker would know about it. He couldn’t have been more vigilant if he had installed miniature spycams in our tee pegs and manned every bunker with a surveillance dwarf.

The fundamental problem was that Gordon had been made Tournament Chairman. While that might have meant squat to the hunks of monosyllabic sinew that drove his lorries, within the boundaries of Cripsley it meant he was the closest thing to Maggie Thatcher, or at the very least God. Clearly, the adult members viewed Gordon slightly more positively than the juniors did. Tournament Chairman’s privileges included such luxuries as a reserved parking spot, a reserved tee time for Saturday competitions, being referred to as ‘Mr Tournament Chairman’ by fellow members and … well, that’s about it, really.

‘Hello, Gordon,’ I would say, upon seeing Hell’s
Trucker
emerge from his Ford Sierra Cosworth in the club car park (he didn’t drive any of his trucks up to the club), and he would stare me down, his swastika eyes noting my insubordination. The reprimand always came later on, from a messenger – Jim Prescott, or Clark Allydyce. ‘You must call the Tournament Chairman “Mr Tournament Chairman”, Tom,’ I would be informed. ‘Oh – you mean Gordon? He’s the Tournament Chairman now? Oh, right. I didn’t realize,’ I would reply, feigning innocence. ‘I’ll remember in future.’

‘Hi, Gordon,’ I would say to Hell’s Trucker, the next time I saw him.

But he knew he would have his sweet revenge.

When the shit hit the fan, the people who had been striving to get cool were invariably Robin and me. We weren’t the oldest juniors, but since those who were older were either part-time golfers or Ashley – who, despite being the most senior in age, was still only the size of Bob Boffinger’s leg and eternally nine in the head – we were looked upon, oddly, as the ones who should be ‘setting an example’. It had taken a while for the two of us to become friends – Robin was the son of a member, and I had originally thought he was a bit on the sniffy side, but all that changed after he was kind enough to share with me a bottle of Thunderbird he’d stashed in his locker. The other notable detail about Robin is that he looked a bit like Chesney Hawkes, the
one-hit-wonder
ego-rocker of the late eighties, but I decided that, since he seemed like a good laugh, I could let that go.

Disciplinary harangues took place in the little white scorer’s room, to the rear of the men-only bar. As Bob Boffinger and Hell’s Trucker used phrases like ‘absolutely imperative’, ‘correct colour slacks’, and ‘local rules’, Robin and I nodded obediently, promised to be more civilized young men, and tried not to break out in hysterics at Bob’s constantly gurgling stomach. Bob probably saw through Hell’s Trucker’s bullshit just as clearly as we did. He never told us as much but it was clear to us that, forty years earlier, Bob had been the kind of teenager who liked nothing better than leaning out of slow-moving cars and making constipated sheep noises at passers-by. With Bob on our side, these bollockings were something to be weathered with good grace. ‘Yes, we will wear collars under our jumpers next time.’ ‘No, snapping your seven-iron across your knee is not a good example to set younger members.’ ‘No. Hiding the greenkeeper’s Flymo is not big or clever.’ Two minutes after being let back out into the fresh air, Robin and I would be over at the pro shop, throwing full, frothed-up cans of Fanta at one another – assured in the knowledge that we were in the one place to which Hell’s Trucker’s doomwatch didn’t extend.

Just once in the Trucker’s reign did we get caught for doing something
truly
horrible.

A lot of people have taken credit for the act over the years – Jamie, Ashley, Mousey – but I would like to say, for the record, that it was me who put the mouse in Rick Sweeney’s shoe. It was just too tempting. The Sweeney was a speccy weed who looked like a ginger version of the Milky Bar Kid – one of the few private-school sprats who’d come through Mike Shalcross’s junior lessons and maintained enough enthusiasm to join the club itself – and it was our avowed mission to heap misery onto his nervous, paranoid existence until he left the junior section for eternity. It certainly wasn’t that we were threatened by his ability: he was consistently last in every competition he played in, and his swing had all the elegance of a giraffe getting its neck trapped in a filing cabinet. In fact, I cannot quite remember our precise reasons for the incessant bullying, but I seem to recall it was something to do with his dad having a beard.

The previous week, the Sweeney had withdrawn from the Waldman Carr trophy at Bullwell Forest Golf Club, clearly rattled by hearing seven people simultaneously whistling the theme to a well-loved seventies TV cop show as he began to unwind his first backswing of the day. After that, you might have expected him to be on his guard, but on this particular day he had been downright negligent: leaving your brand-new Adidas shoes sitting out in the open, in the locker room, while your auntie treats you to teacakes in the clubhouse was
never
going to be a good move with Ashley, Jamie and me in the vicinity. As for the mouse, it hardly looked dignified, sitting there in the cellar of the pro shop, its forehead glued to a seven-year-old Kit Kat. I surmised it was the least I could do to honour it with a proper burial. The prank was an act of common sense more than anything else, and when it resulted in no immediate outcome – the Sweeney was far too cowardly to report us, we assumed – none of us were particularly surprised.

Three weeks later my mum arrived in my bedroom, wearing a look on her face I was well acquainted with. I’d seen it on the local news, on the faces of parents of teenage drug-dealer rapists. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Tom,’ she said.

I racked my brain for recent transgressions. Dirty socks left under living-room sofa? Grade E in Business Studies coursework? British Home Stores glass lampshade smashed with three-iron? ‘What now?’

‘What do you think? Putting that poor bird in that poor boy’s shoe. I can’t believe you could do such a thing! Bob Boffinger’s just been on the phone, and he’s horrified. He says he wants to see you and Robin in the competition room tomorrow at four o’clock. And take that ridiculous smirk off your face.’

I couldn’t help smiling. It had been
three sodding weeks
. I’d assumed, quite logically, that I’d got away with it. What had the Sweeney been
doing
? I knew for sure he’d played at least three rounds of golf since the
mouse’s
interment. Had he been walking around the course, wondering why his left shoe seemed to fit just that bit more snugly than the right one? Did he mistake that slightly moist, decomposing smell for that of his own socks? And what was all this bird nonsense?

At school, I had a foolproof method for seeing myself through punishment with a straight face. I thought about the back of Beau O’Dowd’s head. Beau O’Dowd was the boy who sat in front of me in Maths, and treated me to a view that was a miracle of vapidity and uncomplicatedness, even in the notoriously vapid and uncomplicated arena of backs of heads. If I focused on it intensely enough, I could remain poker-faced under even the most extreme didactic pressure. I can picture it now: its lacklustre yet neat arrangement of hairs, its overwhelmingly underwhelming sense of sheer
headness
. I’ve even been known to call on it in more recent times of real crisis – when I’m in danger of losing an argument, say, or finding Mark Lamarr funny by mistake.

I’m ashamed to say, however, that that time in the white room with Bob Boffinger, Robin and Hell’s Trucker, even Beau let me down.

‘This is really unforgggivabbble,’ stressed Bob, who had an endearing habit of reverberating on his ‘b’s and ‘g’s upon becoming riled. Not quite a stutter – something more guttural and impressive.

‘May I ask if either of you boys know who’s responsible for this blatant victimization?’ said Hell’s Trucker.

‘Haven’t got a clue,’ I said, shaking my head in horror.

‘I really don’t know, Mr Captain,’ pleaded Robin, somehow making the note of sarcasm in his voice audible only to me.

‘Gruuurgggle,’ said Bob’s stomach.

‘I mean, a dead bird in a boy’s shoe!’ said Hell’s Trucker. I felt a nudge from Robin. ‘Rick Sweeney might not quite fit in with the other juniors, but he’s got as much right to play golf, peacefully and undisturbed, as anyone else.’

‘This is really unforgggivabbble,’ stressed Bob.

‘And I suppose you killed the bird as well?’ asked Hell’s Trucker.

Another nudge from Robin, followed by an uncomfortable silence. One of two things was going to break it.

‘Blllurgle,’ said Bob’s stomach.

Beau O’Dowd’s head, Beau O’Dowd’s head, BeauO’Dowd’sheadBeauO’Dowd …

A piece of paper had arrived on the table in front of me from the direction of Robin. I tried not to look at it. I didn’t try hard enough. It contained a rough sketch of a boy with glasses, running away from a tiny sparrow. Next to it was a speech bubble, which said,
‘Keep
away from me! I don’t like toads.’ I let a grin escape.

Hell’s Trucker clocked it, and pounced.

‘This kind of thing has been going on too long,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if these boys haven’t been warned. My feeling is that they spend too much time at the golf club.’

‘But why are you blaming Tom and me?’ pleaded Robin.

‘Because you’re the ones the younger lads look up to.’

I dwelled on this for a moment. Earlier in the day I had suggested to Jamie, the ‘baby’ of the junior section, that the two of us go out and play some serious golf for a change instead of what we were doing, which was hanging around in the pro shop, using the
Yellow Pages
and the shop phone to order a random selection of dog trainers, landscape gardeners and thatched-roof specialists for people we didn’t like at our schools. Jamie had duly outlined to me that he ‘couldn’t be arsed’.

‘If these boys realized there was a bit more to life than golf,’ said Hell’s Trucker, ‘and weren’t permitted to come up here seven days a week, then perhaps they’d have a bit more respect.’

Hold on a minute, I thought. We – well, our parents – were paying membership fees here. Not as much as the adults, true, but not exactly a matter of a couple of
groats,
either. We were
supposed
to have unlimited access to the golf club. It was the middle of the summer holidays. We were young. We were enthusiastic, which, from what I could gather from Bob, was more than any of the Cripsley junior sections of the past had been. We were also getting
good
.

‘These boys think they own the course …’

Er, excuse me, Mr
Sevenball
.

‘… and unless we show some discipline I can only see this getting more and more out of hand …’

Christ. Had this guy no idea whatsoever what it was like to
dream
?

‘… so the only option seems to be a two-week suspension.’

What!?

‘Clllurrrrble,’ said Bob’s stomach.

‘Gordon, I think that’s a bit extreme,’ said Robin beseechingly.

‘Under the circum—’ began Hell’s Trucker.

‘No,’ interrupted Bob, ‘I agggree that
at the most
a suspension should be imposed, and that at the least, it’s abbbsolutely imperative that the bbboys should be bbbanned from visiting the gggolf clubbb on Mondays and Tuesdays.’