‘Lucky you were there to handle it, then, eh?’ Ransom purrs, eyeing her distended belly, meaningfully.
Esther doesn’t react.
‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Ransom continues, ‘Jimmie? A great coach? Seriously? A great coach?! He wasn’t even a good coach! He was average, at best. And he was the worst kind of drunk: boring, stupid, charmless … A hectoring drunk. The man was a total, fucking liability, Esther. He was also twice your age and happily married when he knocked you up. Remember?’
‘Change the record, Stu,’ Esther mutters, flushing. ‘Me not got nothin’ to do with it. It was all about you an’ your precious swing.’
‘Oh really?’ Ransom half turns to face her.
‘Jimmie was a damn fool tryin’ a mess with it.’ She rolls her eyes, sardonic. ‘Nation may rise an’ nation may fall,’ she sings, ‘but the Lord knows: Stuart Ransom swing – that precious swing of his – transcend it all!’
‘I know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Est,’ Ransom grumbles, ‘but don’t you find it even a little bit ironic that my swing was the thing Jimmie most admired about my game when we first started working together? Jimmie loved my swing! Jimmie said my swing was “at the heart” of who I was as a golfer! He said my swing had – I quote – “a superabundance of character”! I mean what a friggin’ wheeze! What a rib-tickler! What a monumental, fuckin’ card the old boy was, eh?’
‘Ha ha,’ Esther laughs, hollowly.
‘How’s that famous saying go?’ Ransom wonders. ‘The one about people always killing the things they love?’
‘Ain’t got a clue.’
Esther is implacable.
‘It’s a famous saying, dick-head! Look it up on Ask Jeeves or something if you don’t believe me.’
‘I’ll be sure an’ do that’ – Esther nods – ‘on my next schedule day off.’
(Esther hasn’t been scheduled a day off in the previous thirteen months.)
Ransom digests this sullen observation, without comment, before: ‘Where’s the latest edition of Golf World got to? Did you unpack the rest of my stuff yet? I wanna show you that Butch Harmon piece I told you about in the cab. The one where he says nobody gives a flying fuck about swing knowledge any more. The one where he says swing knowledge is yesterday’s chip paper …’
‘Ain’t stop him floggin’ that Swing Memory device of his all over the golfin’ channel every chance he get,’ Esther demurs.
‘That’s just a sop for the punters!’ Ransom snorts. ‘He’s all about “maximizing your ability” nowadays – which means doing more of what you do well, basically …’
‘Baby step.’ Esther shrugs.
‘Baby steps my arse! It’s a completely different psychological approach!’ Ransom scoffs. ‘Fuck baby steps! Leave baby steps to the babies! Look at Westwood for Christ’s sake! He got his game back by just allowing himself to feel again …’
‘Feel again?!’ Esther echoes, disparagingly. ‘Lee rebuild his game from the ground up, an’ lost himself three stone while he was at it!’
Esther slaps Ransom’s belly with the back of her hand. ‘You want his dietician number so you can fire her, too?’
‘What is it with you and paternity?’ Ransom hits back where it hurts most. ‘Three kids by different dads, and each time it’s like some major, friggin’ whodunnit – a bad episode of friggin’ Poirot ! A stupid game of friggin’ Cluedo! Who’s the daddy, Esther? Eh? Who’s the daddy?’ He pokes at her belly with his forefinger. ‘Professor Plum in the map room with the laser-pointer? Colonel Mustard in the pantry with the turkey baster?’
Esther sucks on her tongue in such a way as to render a verbal response unnecessary.
‘I wouldn’t even mind’ – Random smirks – ‘but just as soon as you push the little buggers out you ship them straight back to Jamaica to live with your bloody mother!’
Esther snatches a clipboard from its temporary resting-place on top of a nearby towel rail and appraises it, frowning, struggling to maintain her composure. ‘Don Hansard phone,’ she informs him, indicating towards a yellow Post-it note glued to the top page.
Ransom pays her no heed. He is inspecting her bump with a look of morbid fascination on his face. ‘Man! That thing’s incredible,’ he exclaims (as if seeing it for the first time in all its magnitude). ‘It’s huge! It’s multi-dimensional! Are you sure you got a kid in there and not a litter of bulldogs? It’s mad! It’s like three bumps all in one. It’s like you’re about to give birth to a giant, horizontal turd …’
‘Don Hansard phone,’ she repeats, half an octave higher.
‘Perhaps that wily, old piss-head didn’t knock you up after all,’ Ransom muses. ‘Wanna know who I’m putting my money on?’
She stares at him, stony-faced.
‘Mr fuckin’ Whippy!’ Ransom cackles, then commences whistling a child’s nursery rhyme (to simulate the approach of an ice-cream van). Esther doesn’t crack a smile. She peers down at her clipboard again, blinking.
‘In fact d’you have any idea what a bloody state you look?’ Ransom demands, stepping aside so she can appraise herself in the mirror. ‘You’re a mess! Your face is covered in acne. Your hair’s just a mop. Your grooming’s gone fuckin’ haywire. I mean who the hell told you it was okay to combine fuchsia with apricot? Eh? You’re Stuart Ransom’s manager, woman! Start acting like it! Develop a bit of self-respect! Just look at your top! It’s worn out. It’s a fucking rag. The fabric’s all thin and bobbly where it’s been stretched over the –’
‘He runnin’ a Course Management seminar,’ Esther butts in, reading from the board, ‘an’ he think you might –’
‘What?!’ Ransom scoffs, returning to his shave again. ‘Hansard wants me to help run a seminar on Course Management?! Has he gone totally doo-lally? I couldn’t Course Manage a piss-up in a fuckin’ brewery!’
He pauses for a second, inspects his face in the mirror, does some final clearing up around his jawline, then adds, ‘How much?’
‘How much?’ she echoes.
‘The fee, Dumbo!’
‘No fee.’
‘Come again?’ Ransom’s incredulous. ‘He expects me to do it f’ nowt?!’
Esther shakes her head. ‘He want you go as –’
‘As his patsy? His mentor? His bitch?! To offer moral, fuckin’ support?!’ Ransom interrupts. ‘Gratis? Out of the goodness of my own heart?! With my fuckin’ overdraft? Is he nuts?’
‘As a student,’ Esther finally finishes off.
Ransom’s smile fades. He stares at her, blankly.
‘A student,’ she repeats. ‘Don student. I said you probably wouldn’t.’
‘Probably?’ Ransom’s jaw drops. ‘You told him I probably wouldn’t …?’
‘It’s four thousand for the week – dollar. No board. Then flight on top. We still in dispute with American Airline, remember? Don offerin’ ten per cent reduction for some promotional DVD he been cookin’ up. I tell him even with full complimentary we be stretchin’ our budget –’
‘Hang on a second …’ Ransom scowls. ‘Please tell me you didn’t actually let slip to that gobby, talentless little pip-squeak that Stuart Ransom is strapped for cash?’
‘Strap?!’ Esther echoes, astonished. ‘We stony-broke, Stu! We mortgage to the hilt! We strugglin’ to find cash for last night bar bill!’
‘And you reckon that’s okay, do you?’ Ransom’s almost hoarse with rage now. ‘I mean you reckon it’s perfectly acceptable, as Stuart Ransom’s manager, as Stuart Ransom’s chief representative on fuckin’ earth, to go around cheerfully informing complete, friggin’ strangers what he can and he can’t afford?!’
‘Keep your hair on, boy!’ Esther exclaims. ‘This Don Hansard we talkin’ about …’
‘Holy fuck, Esther!’
Ransom grabs a towel from the nearby rail and pushes his face into it, horrified.
Esther sucks her tongue, bored. ‘You went to Q School with Don Hansard,’ she sighs, ‘you
bail him out in Finland over that dodgy score-card. He live in your house in Holland Park, rent-free, for eighteen month after he split from Shirley. That man owe you, Stu –’
She’s interrupted by a gentle knock on the door. She inspects her watch. ‘That’ll be Toby. He schedule in for ten.’
Ransom’s head remains sunk in the towel. His hands are shaking.
‘An’ we not even get to look at the itinerary,’ she grumbles, observing the hands with a somewhat jaundiced eye. ‘You want him come back in the morning? You got Terence Nimrod at nine …’
Ransom makes no effort to respond.
‘We ain’t got nobody for the bag,’ she persists. ‘The course got three caddie, but they all book up an’ I sure as hell not humpin’ that thing around again …’
She places an anxious hand on her stomach. ‘I hear James Ray twiddlin’ his thumb in Dublin while Tim Pagel recovering from back surgery …’
Still nothing from Ransom.
‘Look, me not wanna freak you out, Stu,’ she murmurs, her tone suddenly gentle, almost caressing, ‘but you been talkin’ about yourself in the third person again …’
Pause.
‘The shrink said …’
‘Bollocks!’ Ransom’s face emerges from the towel, puce and indignant.
‘You done it three time in as many minute.’ Esther is typically unyielding. ‘You said, “as Stuart Ransom manager”; “as Stuart Ransom chief repre—”’
‘It was a figure of speech!’ Ransom hisses.
‘Everything that come out your mouth is a figure of speech.’ Esther shrugs. ‘Everything that come out my mouth is a figure of speech, come to that.’
‘I don’t think you grasp the meaning of a “figure of speech”,’ Ransom rejoins.
‘I understand perfectly well, thank you very much,’ Esther demurs. ‘I also remember all what the shrink say about it. He say referrin’ to yourself in the third person was an early warning sign that you was becoming “detached from reality” and it must be strongly discourage under all possible circumstances.’
‘I can’t believe you’re bringing this up!’ Ransom’s childishly defensive, bleating, almost stamping his foot. ‘And at such a critical moment, Esther! The start of the week’s play!’
‘There never gonna be a good time, Stu,’ Esther maintains.
‘At the start of a week’s play, Esther!’ Ransom reiterates. ‘It’s completely counter-productive!’
A second knock on the door.
‘The pro-am not till Friday,’ Esther informs him, checking the itinerary.
‘And it was a virus,’ Ransom persists, slinging the towel on to the floor. ‘A virus. Yeah? I was ill. My face was like a balloon. My balls were covered in scabs. It was glandular. I only saw the shrink because the insurance people –’
‘It a yeast infection, Stu!’ Esther snaps. ‘If a woman get a yeast infection she go to the chemist an’ buy herself some bicarbonate, then it done and dusted. When you get yourself a yeast infection it glandular fever! It “Stop the world! Hold the front page! Stuart Ransom got him some tiny little scab on his testicle!”’
‘How many times do I have to repeat myself?’ Ransom’s bored and exasperated. ‘The yeast infection was just a tiny symptom of the larger malaise …’
‘As God is my witness’ – Esther raises an impatient hand to ward him off – ‘Jimmie tell me you was discussing the Course Management idea just a couple of day since …’
‘Oh yeah, I discussed it with him all right.’ Ransom’s face is glowing. ‘I discussed it with him directly before I sacked his scraggy arse!’
‘Course Management always come in handy,’ Esther persists. ‘Remember Royal Birkdale? Huh? Micky fall down on his knee an’ he beg you not to use that wood on the twelfth …’
‘The bloody wood!’ Ransom throws up his hands. ‘One shot! One, stupid, bloody shot! When will I ever hear the end of it?’
Esther stares at him, darkly.
‘Well if you not listen to your coach, an’ you not listen to your caddie, then maybe …’
‘Maybe what? I should listen to you?’ Ransom smirks, contemptuously.
A third knock at the door. Esther hands him the clipboard, then bends down, with a grunt, to pick up the dropped towel.
‘Could do worse,’ she murmurs, straightening up again.
‘See this?’
Ransom points to the small cut on his cheek. ‘This is what happens when I give you free rein with my career, Esther. I end up meeting a deranged, drug-addled, bottle-toting kid whose mother I put into a coma at the hotel she formerly worked in as a publicity stunt.’
‘No point cryin’ over spilt milk.’ Esther shrugs. ‘’Specially when it get ya page twelve in the Mail …’ she snorts, mirthlessly. ‘Man, that as close as you been to the sport section in some while …’
‘This is precisely why my life is falling apart!’ Ransom gurgles.
‘This is precisely why you got a career right now,’ Esther corrects him.
‘I have a career because I’m a world-class golfer,’ Ransom corrects her.
‘You got a career because you could handle a club an’ had good hair – good, thick hair – fifteen, long year ago,’ Esther retorts, sharply. ‘Ya got lucky, Stu. But your luck finally run out. Now you gotta buckle down an’ work, same as the rest of us.’
Ransom’s hand moves to his hairline, then down to the cut on his cheek again.
A fourth knock sounds on the door.
‘Some likkle-ickle, baby cut on your cheek!’ Esther guffaws, heading off to answer it. ‘I took a bigger blow to my dignity this afternoon gettin’ your room upgraded.’
‘Great. Terrific. Thanks.’ Ransom turns to face the mirror again, wincing. ‘The gloves are finally off, eh?’
‘Gloves?’ Esther chuckles, wryly. ‘I wa’ dragged up in Trenchtown, Stu. We never had us no gloves in the ghetto.’
‘Jeez. Cue the friggin’ violins!’ Ransom mutters, palpably outmanoeuvred.
‘Listen up,’ Esther volunteers, fingers gripping the door handle. ‘If you want me treat you “world class”, then you better start behavin’ world class: play a round in under four over par, dally more than twenty minute on the range, phone your wife so’s I don’t spend half my born day fieldin’ her call, quit them muscle relaxant an’ ditch the belly putter. Deal?’
Esther spits on her palm and proffers him her hand.
Ransom doesn’t respond. He’s staring down at his itinerary, scowling. After several seconds he pulls the yellow Post-it from the front and screws it into a ball. ‘Don fucking Hansard offering the Stuart Ransom pathetic, little hand-outs on a Course Management seminar?!’ he scoffs. ‘That’s pure, unadulterated bullshit! It’s an outrage! I mean a whole ten per cent off for a tragic DVD appearance?!’
‘Third person, Stu,’ Esther warns him, sharply.
Ransom drops the Post-it into the toilet and flushes. ‘That sucks, man,’ he mutters, watching its frenetic progress around the bowl with a distinctly martyred air. ‘That stinks. That just really fuckin’ …’
He yanks, aimlessly, at the sagging belt on his robe as the offending, yellow scrap finally disappears from view. ‘… that smarts.’
Chapter 4
‘Why fret?’ she demands. ‘Why all this pointless fretting? You can entertain who you like in here. It’s not the men’s toilet per se – it’s your own, private room. It’s your cubby. It’s your special little watchtower …’
Jen pulls out a stool, sits down on it, tosses a blonde pigtail over her shoulder, bends forward, pushes her two thumbs into the diamanté-lined elasticated tops of her pink knee-high socks and yanks them both up by a couple of extra centimetres.
‘My “watchtower”?’ Gene echoes, bemused.
‘It’s kinda weird, though, don’t you reckon?’ Jen peers around her, frowning. ‘I mean having an office with a large window looking straight out on to the latrines?’
She twists sideways, presses her hands on t
o the wide shelf that runs below the window and gazes through it. At this precise moment the door into the toilet opens, a man enters, sees Jen at the window, does a rapid 180-degree turn and leaves.
‘God. I bet you see some extraordinary sights in here,’ she sighs.
‘Strange as this may seem, Jen’ – Gene struggles to control the edge of sarcasm in his voice – ‘I’m in the toilets to work’ – he motions towards the mop – ‘not to perve on the poor clients all day.’
‘But why else would there be a window if you weren’t meant to look out of it?’ Jen demands.
‘So people can look in?’ Gene hazards a guess. ‘Ask for help, maybe?’
‘But why would they want to do that?’
‘I’ve no idea …’ Gene shrugs. ‘For reassurance. Or if there’s a blockage in one of the toilets, or if they’ve run out of –’
‘Hi there!’
Jen waves through the window at a teenage boy who has just entered. He blushes, apologizes, and leaves.
‘Bless him!’ Jen coos. ‘He thinks he came into the Ladies by mistake!’
‘Perhaps you could move back a little?’ Gene suggests.
‘I see you’ve won three awards!’ Jen jumps up and goes to inspect a series of certificates on the wall. ‘You’re such a clever boy! Such a powerhouse! Is there anything you’re not brilliant at, Eugene?’
She turns and bats her lashes at him.
‘Oh, I can think of a few things,’ Gene murmurs, scowling.
‘I love this place!’ Jen skips around the office, baby-clapping. ‘It’s just wonderful! I’m perfectly at home! Are you hiring at the moment?’
‘No.’
‘Aw.’
Jen sticks out her lower lip and pretends to look traumatized.
An elderly man enters the toilet, spots Jen, exclaims loudly, then dashes for a cubicle. He slams his way inside and shoots the bolt.
‘Oh dear.’ Jen presses her nose against the window and peers out (leaving a large smudge of make-up in her stead). ‘I think we might’ve given that old boy a bit of a turn …’
The toilet door swings open again. Before she can instigate any further chaos, Gene grabs Jen by the arm and frog-marches her into an extensive broom cupboard to the rear of the room.
The Yips Page 13