by John Niven
‘Aye,’ Danny said.
‘Aw God, that’s tae die fur so it is. See, ah’ll pay the money for the likes o’ that but for yer basics? Naw. She’s trying tae tell me that a wean kin tell the difference between two cans o’ beans? Aye, pull the other wan, it’s got bells on it. The wean jist sat doon quite the thing and ate the lot o’ it. Did he no, Danny?’
‘Aye.’
Uncle Danny had been hearing this story, or ones very like it, for over forty years now. His AutoAye facility was superhuman, as sharpened and attuned as the senses of a tiger in the dark, wet heart of the jungle. Just by faintly monitoring Sadie’s conversations (or rather, monologues) he could sense when a response was required from him, the depth of sincerity, curiosity or surprise his ‘Aye’ would have to convey (‘Aye’ or ‘Aye?’ or ‘Aye!’), and–most crucially–whether the situation was so severe he would actually have to look up from the paper or away from the TV set.
‘Mind you, wee Sam’ll eat anything. Like his faither. Oor Hugh?’ Sadie looked off dreamily into the mid-distance, her eyes misting and her chest swelling with motherly pride for her staunchly stomached elder son. ‘…Oor Hugh would eat shite.’
Gary yawned and stretched in the bed.
‘Oh, Gary son, huv we wakened ye up?’ Aunt Sadie said.
‘No, it’s OK, Sadie.’
‘You’ve been sleeping a while, son,’ his mum said, coming over to him. ‘How are ye feeling?’
‘No bad.’
‘Ye were making some noise in yer sleep. Whit were ye dreaming about?’
‘Putting, I think. Baws,’ Gary said.
‘You an yer bloody golf,’ Cathy said, smiling.
‘Aye, just like his faither,’ Uncle Danny said.
‘Are ye hungry? It’s near teatime. We were just going tae have a cawfee and a wee craw sant…’
‘I’m starving. I quite fancy a Chinese. I think there’s a–fuck–menu by the phone in the kitchen, Mum. Fucking slut.’
Cathy flinched, but did not respond to the insult. ‘Aye, the doctor said your appetite would be coming back. What would ye like, son?’
‘Ah, chop suey? Maybe some spare ribs? Hoor. Sorry!’
‘Chop suey and spare ribs. No bother. We’ll away doonstairs. You shout if ye need anything, son. Pauline’s away oot working. She said she’d be back tonight.’
‘Aye, thanks, Mum. Tits. Fuck. Sorry, sorry, Mum.’
‘That’s OK, son. Ye cannae help it.’
Cathy, Sadie and Danny went downstairs, to their coffee and croissants. Gary listened to Ben’s barking sharpen as they neared the kitchen, exploding into full pitch as they entered it. He lay back and regarded the bedroom ceiling.
It had taken them a few days to notice how bad the swearing was. Tourette’s syndrome, Dr Robertson said. A side effect of the neurological damage he’d suffered. ‘Post-traumatic. It’s quite rare, but not unheard of.’ It manifested itself in several ways. Sometimes Gary seemed to use random single-word swearing as punctuation in sentences–‘So if I have to–fuck–stay in bed for the next…’ Other times whole phrases would be rapidly jammed in there, almost as stand-alone asides. ‘Could you pass me the–cuntyafuckinghoorye–water please?’ Sometimes the swearing had sexual overtones: a large-breasted nurse they had passed in the hospital corridor on the way down to the coffee shop one morning had been greeted with ‘Ooh, jugs, ya spunky boot! Big tits fuck.’ Occasionally it had been chillingly specific: two maintenance men–one Indian and one very overweight–had arrived in his hospital room one morning to fix a radiator to be greeted with ‘Fuck. Fucking Paki fat bastard ya fat cunt and Paki ye.’ Stevie had taken the astonished janitors outside. Sometimes the swearing was also accompanied by animalistic grunts, barks and yelps.
Robertson explained to Cathy and Pauline that all of it was involuntary, a spasmic reaction not dissimilar to hiccups, and that often he would be completely unaware that he was doing it; although they noticed that sometimes Gary would insert a hurried apology into the outrage, or would swear consciously, through frustration at the condition. A sentence like this might go something like ‘Hi, Mum, I was just–OW! Ya nuddy boot, fuck–Sorry!–fucking cow, sook ma–FUCK!–sook ma dook. SHIT! SORRY! Grrrr!’
Upsetting though Cathy found all this, she took it as a small price to pay for having her son delivered back to her from the dead. Whenever a string of obscenities flurried from Gary’s mouth she simply chose to hear hiccups.
Pauline was less stoic. ‘How long will he be like this?’ she’d asked immediately.
‘It’s hard to say,’ Robertson said. ‘Hopefully, it’ll gradually fade as the brain recovers from the trauma.’
Jesus, Pauline thought. Jesus fucking wept. Another sick hand life had dealt her.
Stevie thought it a strangely appropriate affliction for a golfer to suffer from. Stand on any busy golf course when the wind was blowing in the right direction and you would be forgiven for thinking that half the population suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.
They’d kept him in for observation for a week before sending him home: two weeks minimum of absolute bed rest.
Gary took a grape and rolled it around his mouth, testing its thin skin with his teeth, making his mouth water, while he listened to the house noises around and below him: a door creaking, water rushing in copper pipes, a faint ping from a radiator, his mum and Sadie talking in the kitchen, the scrape and scuttle of Ben’s talons on the wooden floors as the monster lurched from room to room, his perma-growling routinely breaking into a series of sharp barks. (Gary sometimes pictured the dog doing this when he and Pauline were both out: Ben eyeballing a door, or staring out a cushion–literally trying to pick a fight in an empty house.)
The enormity of his boredom struck him when he realised he was counting the number of DVDs they had in the rack next to the TV. (Sixty-eight, but did you just count box sets as one?)
Another week of this?
He crossed the bedroom and looked at himself in the full-length mirror inside Pauline’s wardrobe. He lifted the corner of the turban of bandages a little and gingerly pressed the tip of his pinkie into the indent on his right temple: a concave hollow about the diameter of a ten-pence piece, with tiny dimples. The exact impression of Billy Douglas’s golf ball. The bruising was still a vivid purple at the centre, fading into a deep green, into a funky yellow as it reached the hairline.
Gary had a little notebook next to the bed in which Dr Robertson had asked him to record the occurrence, frequency and severity of a number of symptoms, from headaches, to butterflies in his stomach, to experiences of déjà vu, to unusually intense perceptions of smells. There had been the odd headache, but none of the others. Oh, there was one thing, but Robertson hadn’t mentioned it and Gary was in no rush to share it with anyone so it hadn’t made it into the notebook yet.
The erections.
There was the run-of-the-mill Morning Glory that greeted him warmly every single day. There was the sudden and vicious Afternoon Delight that appeared out of nowhere, the Ferrari of erections, taking his penis from plasticine to the kind of metal they use in space in 3.2 seconds. There was the more gradual Slow Burner, a mild pulse in his groin, followed by a lazy, yawning semi, followed by a kind of three-quarter erect twanginess that could last for several hours.
Then there was the Fury, an agonising madman of a hard-on that arrived during sleep and had the power to drag him from the bed and send him groaning and stumbling to the cold-water tap. It felt like mad cock-scientists had grafted a concrete tube with a titanium core onto his crotch while he slept. There had even been a couple of terrifying occasions where the Fury had lasted all night, finally colliding with the arrival of Morning Glory somewhere around dawn, the two joining forces in a hands-across-the-ocean deal to create the perfect storm of erections, an unassailable super-hard-on. Unwankable. The kind of boner that would take a wanking and just keep smiling right at you. Most erections, Gary reasoned, saw the jettisoning of semen as the end resu
lt. Not the Fury. Even after you had ejaculated, it just stayed there, trying to suck your testicles up into your stomach.
But maybe, he thought, this was all just a side effect of being in bed all the time, yawning and scratching, his hands forever absent-mindedly scampering down the front of his pyjamas. Nothing to trouble the doctors about.
God, he was bored.
In the corner of the bedroom, leaning up against the wardrobe, was one of his old putters. He got out of bed and crossed the room. On the floor of the wardrobe he found his putting practice machine–a plastic horseshoe with a green faux-felt cup that fired the ball back to you–and a few stray golf balls. He set the putting machine on the beige carpet at one end of the bedroom and walked to the other. One, two, three, four, five paces. Five yards. Fifteen feet. He lined up the first ball. Open stance, wrists forward, and commentator Rowland Daventry’s voice in his head–Here he is now, a tricky fifteen-footer to clinch the Open. Downhill. Gentle touch needed here. Gary made a smooth pendulum stroke and the ball trickled across the carpet and rolled neatly into the cup. Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting: the machine spat the ball straight back to him.
He set up again. Final of the World Match Play Championship. He needs this to stay in the game. This is a must make… Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
A chance here to secure the Ryder Cup for Europe…
Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
This for birdie–
Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
A long eagle putt–
Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
Can he possibly–
Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
Gary made fourteen putts in a row. He was oblivious to the doorbell, to the bedroom door opening, until he looked up and saw Stevie was standing there. ‘Aye aye,’ Stevie said. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’
‘I’m making putts. This is for fifteen on the bounce.’
‘Fiver ye miss it.’
Click. Rrrrrrp. Ting.
‘Impressive,’ Stevie said, ‘most impressive. But–’ Stevie paused.
Gary looked at him. ‘But what?’
‘But you?’
‘Eh?’
‘But you are not a Jedi yet! Fucking hell, what’s wrong with you?’ Stevie said, handing the fiver over.
‘What films did you bring?’
Stevie produced a pair of DVDs from his carrier bag. ‘We have two Michaels–the new Haneke or the director’s cut of Heat. What do we think?’ He held one up in each hand. ‘Challenging new cinema or mindless old school?’
Gary tapped the copy of Heat. Stevie sighed.
‘You, my friend, have no interest in broadening your horizons.’
‘Aww, come on–baws–ow!–I’m ill!’ Gary said pleadingly, jumping back into bed.
‘Aye, ma erse, ya malingering bam.’
The doorbell rang.
‘Oh, here.’ Gary handed Stevie back his fiver. ‘Give this tae ma mum. Fuck. I ordered a Chinese. Grab a plate and ah’ll cut ye in. Fud. Fat fud. Fuck!’
‘Right, er…’ Stevie tossed Gary the DVD. ‘Set that mother up.’
Stevie started down the stairs in time to see Cathy round the corner below him and open the front door. A smiling Chinese lad of about nineteen stood on the doorstep holding up a blue plastic carrier bag. ‘Gary!’ Cathy called out in her cheery sing-song voice. ‘That’s yer Chinky!’
Stevie watched as she sang it–literally sang the word ‘Chinky’–right into the guy’s face. He and Stevie looked at each other; a look that said ‘I’m so sorry’ on Stevie’s part and ‘I know’ on the delivery boy’s.
‘Thanks, son, keep the change,’ Cathy said, smiling, as she handed over the money and closed the door.
Stevie numbly held out the fiver as he took the bag from Cathy. ‘That’s OK, son. I’ll get it,’ she said. ‘You keep yer money.’ Stevie stood there, warm carrier in hand, and watched Cathy bustle off towards the kitchen with something approaching awe.
21
RANTA WAS IN THE LOFT, PLAYING SCALEXTRIC WITH Andy and Tommy, the two youngest of his six children. Andy, seven, had just sent his little silver Lotus Elan flying off the end of the track for the umpteenth time.
‘Naw, son, look, ye need tae slow doon fur the bends,’ Ranta patiently explained again.
‘He’s a mutant, Da!’ Tommy, nine, said.
‘Naw–you’re a mutant!’ Andy shot back.
‘Hey,’ Ranta said, ‘nobody’s a bloody mutant! Here, son,’ Ranta folded his massive fist gently around Andy’s tiny hand and demonstrated how to ease the pressure off on the trigger of the pistol grip, slowing the car down into the bend.
Lately, with Alec increasingly helping run the business–not too much, the boy still had a lot to learn, but you had to let them make some decisions on their own, give them their head–Ranta was getting a wee taste of retirement. Ranta liked the look of retirement very much indeed: sleeping late, a wee bit of golf here and there, playing with his children and grandchildren every day…Alison often joked that the reason he liked spending so much time with the kids was because he was just a big wean himself. Whatever the reason, Ranta was a good father and a solid provider. Alison had long ago learned not to ask in too much detail about the finer points of the providing.
Wee Andy, his face a perfect study in concentration, slowed the car down now to a ludicrous degree, barely crawling around the bend, but keeping it on the track.
‘Ah did it, Da!’
‘That’s the stuff!’ Ranta furiously ruffled Andy’s hair, the boy squealing with delight.
‘Pile on!’ Tommy shouted as he leapt on his father, the three of them rolling around on the floor in a frenzy of ticklish play-fighting.
‘Hey! Will you three stop that carry-on!’ Alison’s head appeared through the hatch at the far end of the loft. She was far from angry; pleased as always at the delight her husband took in their children. ‘Andy, Tommy, come and get your dinner.’
‘Go on with yer mum, boys,’ Ranta said, sending Tommy on his way with a playful smack on the arse.
‘And that’s number-one son here,’ Alison said.
‘Aye, good, tell him tae come up, hen.’
Father and son sat in the den, the TV on, showing the golf–the Schitzbaul Invitational Trophy, live from Benders Creek Golf Club, North Carolina–with the sound down as they talked business.
‘Do ye want Frank tae dae it?’ Alec was asking.
Ranta thought. A woman. Not a difficult job. ‘Naw. Don’t use one of the boys. Farm it oot tae someone. But make sure they’re reliable, Alec. Someone wi a track record in doing the business, and who understands whit would fucking happen tae them if something went wrong and they chose tae mention us by name. Five should be plenty, eh?’
‘Fuck, aye, Da. Half the bams in this toon would do themselves fur five grand.’
Ranta opened his desk drawer and took out the Manila envelope Masterson had given him the night before: fifteen thousand pounds in new, waxy fifty-pound notes. Ten grand profit for a couple of phone calls. No bad. Quickly, professionally, with a licked thumb, Ranta counted out a hundred of them and handed them to Alec.
‘Cheers, Da.’ Alec stuffed the notes into his inside pocket. ‘Hey,’ he said, nodding towards the TV, a shot of Drew Keel, biting his lip as he watched a drive sail into the sky, dangerously close to the tree line. ‘Did ye see thon shot yer man there hit at that par five yesterday?
‘Did ah fucken see it? Ah near shat maself watching it. Two-hundred-and-ten-yard carry over water wi a six-iron? No real.’ Ranta slurped his tea and, without taking his eyes off the screen, said, ‘Have ye someone in mind then?’
Alec nodded. He did indeed have someone in mind.
Two birds one stone.
Gary propped himself up in bed, a plateful of toast in front of him, a mug of tea in his hand, the curtains drawn against the sunshine and the golf on TV. Ben lay on the floor, his snout moving carefully from left to right and back again as he monitored the progress of each piece of toast from plat
e to mouth, strands of saliva hanging from his jaws. He looked like he was watching a very delicious tennis match–two stuffed, basted turkeys playing each other in ultra-slow motion. Gary tossed the fiend a crust–snuffled up in a nanosecond–and turned up the volume.
Benders Creek was one of the toughest courses on the US circuit, with miles of jungly rough and greens cut tight against deep water. The Schitzbaul Trophy (‘the Shit’ the players called it) had one of the richest purses in golf: over a million dollars for the winner. The guy who came in last would get something like fifty grand. Consequently the tournament always attracted a star-studded line-up: Keel, Spafford, Honeydew III, Novotell, Lathe, Von Strapple and, of course, Linklater himself, were all playing, and Gary–golf-starved to the point of insanity–had wanted to catch every second.
But, Christ, lying in bed as the camera panned down a fairway–a gorgeous dogleg, velvety green grass, the sand in the bunkers smooth and golden, almost inviting–it was like watching golf pornography. Torture.
He got up and walked over to the window. It was a beautiful early-May morning. Not a cloud in the sky. When had he last gone nearly a month without swinging a golf club? He looked at the clock. Pauline gone all day, hours until his mum would look in…
Complete bed rest for at least a fortnight.
Well, it had nearly been a fortnight. He felt fine for fuck’s sake. Just the driving range for an hour or so, hit a few wedges and whatnot–nothing too strenuous. Just get into the groove of swinging the club again.