by James Dodson
We walked across the street to the Scarisbrick and found a dark wood bar, illuminated principally by beer signs and a blinking fruit machine. A number of elderly men sat alone in booths staring moodily at their beers. Dad slipped into a booth, and I went to the bar and ordered us beers. “How about this,” I said, handing him a pint of Old Speckled Hen, “a funeral home with a bar.”
I sat down, and he sipped his beer and said, “Now, now. Your turn is coming, dear boy. Someone said that to an old man, anyplace that’s warm is a homeland. Especially after playing Birkdale on a day like today.”
“In that case, you should be very happy with our room. It comes with its own sauna. Or maybe I forgot to tell you. It is the sauna.”
He told me how he’d first come to the Scarisbrick with the daughter of a local man named A. H. Tarbuck, whom he’d met by chance on the train. “A charming Jewish gentleman. He’d owned jewelry stores all over Europe before Hitler took over. I offered him a Lucky Strike, and we fell into a conversation about FDR, and he invited me here for a drink. He was an older gentleman, with a wife and a married daughter whose husband was in North Africa. He invited me home for dinner. Tarbuck belonged to the Conservative Club and knew Churchill. He once showed me a bag filled with South African diamonds.”
“What was the married daughter like?”
“She was attractive. Very attractive. Her name was Miriam. She and I used to go out for a drink sometimes at night. We’d come in here—this place, as I say, really got swinging. I think Glenn Miller did a show in here one night.” Opti reminded me of what an absolutely awful singing voice he had by breaking softly into an old war song, something to the effect that a fella who was going to fight had a right to a little romance.
“You seemed to spend a lot of time during the war going to the movies or dancing with attractive English women. Did Mom know?”
“I suppose, though I never mentioned it. She went to USO shows all the time back in the States. There was an admiral at Annapolis who was nuts about her. Good thing I wasn’t in the navy.”
“Did you ever have a wartime romance? If you were going to fight, you had the right, as they say.”
My father looked at me. It was the kind of brazen question he probably never expected me to ask. Until recently, I probably never would have had the nerve to ask it. Part of me would be shocked to hear he had a fling. Part of me wouldn’t be the least bit surprised, because I might have, too.
He didn’t seem either surprised or bothered, in any case.
“Are you asking me if I ever fell for a woman I met over here? The answer is no. Absolutely not. I was married to your mother, and I loved her.”
That, of course, was not what I’d asked him. I’d asked him if he’d ever had an affair, a wartime dalliance, some horizontal refreshment in the cause of liberty, a good old English leg-over. Women were always attracted to my father, I knew, and even at eighty they found his breezy charm almost irresistible.
“I’m not going to pretend to you that I was a saint over here,” he said quietly, fingering the rim of his pint. “The war was on, and we were a long way from home. That’s no moral justification for anything except, perhaps, to say I believe I honored my vows to your mother. I knew she was the woman for me.”
“Was there anybody in Paris?”
He gave a vague half smile. “As a matter of fact, yes. I used to hang out with a Canadian nurse named Helen. We went to some plays, saw the sights. She helped me buy a couple hundred dollars’ worth of perfume for your mother the week before I shipped home. Believe me, it was all pretty innocent. I’m sure you can’t even imagine it.”
Having said this, he drank his beer silently. He was right, I couldn’t. Or maybe I could. At any rate, I believed what he said. He and my mom had been married almost fifty-four years and still liked to put on big-band records—well, CDs now—and dance in the kitchen, like in the old days at the Crystal Palace. That’s when it suddenly came to me how we could have a little more fun.
—
I dropped a Titleist on the thick hall carpet of the Prince of Wales. I unwrapped a water glass from its sanitary paper (“Says here that Winnie Palmer used this very glass to gargle with, maybe that’s why they never washed it”) and walked to the other end of the corridor, placing the glass upside down on the carpet. Then I strolled back.
“The object,” I said, “is to see how many chips and putts it takes you to hit the glass. We’ll play nine holes. Best of nine wins the match and buys dinner.”
My father looked wary. “I don’t think this is such a good idea. People could be trying to rest.”
“Dad, this place makes the city morgue seem busy. Why do you think the real Prince of Wales is always in Scotland massacring birds? It’s so he never has to come here. To quote Camilla Parker Bowles, ‘Quit dawdling, Charlie. Be a man and shoot the blimey little critter.’ ”
“You shoot.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake…coward.”
I took aim with my pitching wedge, drew the club back, and made (if I say so myself) an excellent chipping swing. The ball ricocheted off the hallway’s ornate wallpaper just below a Constable reproduction and struck the leg of a small table halfway down the corridor, coming to a stop twenty yards from the glass. If it’s true that it’s better to be luckier than good in golf, I’d just gotten a really lousy break.
“Good grief,” muttered my father. “You’re destroying the place.”
“You’re right. I probably should have used a longer iron.”
He dropped his Top-Flite and took a quick jabbing chip as if he expected an enraged floor manager to come wheeling through the staircase door at any moment. None came. His ball rolled neatly down the corridor and stopped four feet from the water glass. The man could have chipped on the hood of a Buick.
I made him putt it out anyway. We walked back to the end of the corridor. He was one up with eight to play. He duplicated the chip and left his next shot only about three feet from the glass. My turn, I decided to putt rather than chip and smacked my ball hard enough to send it bouncing off the baseboard at the far end of the corridor, a resounding crack that made my father wince.
“Finesse doesn’t seem to be your long suit today,” he said. “Something chewing at you?”
I shook my head, then admitted I was annoyed that our room was so disappointing. The angry Welshman had a point after all.
“Forget it,” Dad said. “We’ve both stayed in worse. Why waste time worrying about it? Well be out of here before you know it. Let’s play.”
Opti was right, of course. We played another “hole,” this time halving, and walked back to the end of the corridor again. I said I’d enjoyed our strange abbreviated round at Birkdale. My father nodded.
“You held up really well,” I said. “Mom will be pleased.”
“I doubt that. She wasn’t thrilled about this trip. Let’s keep the details of our adventures a little vague, shall we?”
I agreed, then I told him what was really bothering me. I said I’d spent a lot of the round thinking about my grandfather and his grandfather and how much he now seemed to be like them. I wasn’t really bothered, I said, so much as thoughtful.
“I’m flattered you think so. They were good men. Pop could barely write his name, but he was the most civil man I ever knew. He never turned anybody away from our door during the Depression, black or white. Uncle Jimmy was quite a charming old gent. I never heard him raise his voice.”
We chipped again. Dad’s runner ended up five or six feet from the glass. Mine also got close to the target for a change. As we approached our putts, I said, “I remember when Pop died. You said you had to go to Florida to take care of him for a few days. The next thing I knew, Mom said he had died. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Well, you were only eleven or twelve. Death doesn’t seem possible at that age.”
“You’re right. It’s funny what goes through a kid’s head. I recall being fascinated by the idea of death. I always wante
d to ask you what it was like being with him when he passed away.”
“He died with a lot of dignity, just sort of ebbed away. His kidneys were failing, but he was pretty clear-headed right up to the end. We sat and talked a lot. I remember he said he was going to get out of that bed and take you and your brother fishing. The last thing he asked me to do for him was give him a shave. I tried to find a barber who could do it, but no one would come to the house, so I did it myself. I lathered up his face and used his old straight razor.”
The hallway doors opened, and a young man in a dark suit approached us with a strained smile on his face. Uh-oh, I thought. The management cometh.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the man said, clearing his throat. “I’m Weeks, the hotel floor manager. Seems we’ve had a bit of a noise complaint about your…golfing.”
“Really?” I said, the picture of innocence abroad.
“I’m very sorry,” said my father, blushing. “We’ll stop right away.” He padded off dutifully to retrieve the water glass and our balls, and Weeks smiled after him like the pleased headmaster who’s caught the boy scribbling dirty words in the hymnals.
“Are you a golfer, Weeks?” I asked him.
“Actually, I am not. Sorry to say.” He sounded as if I’d asked him if he enjoyed beheading small animals.
“So you don’t know who that is?” I indicated the elderly figure scurrying to please him. Weeks looked at my father with slightly less disdain, and I looked at Weeks wondering if he possibly suffered from mad cow disease.
“Actually, no. As a matter of fact, I haven’t a clue.”
“Ever heard of Sam Snead? They called him the Slammer. Winningest golfer who ever lived. Won more than a hundred tournaments worldwide, including your Open at St. Andrews in 1946. Called the place a cow pasture and never came back again.” I waited for this critical information to penetrate his bony Anglo brow. “You see, Weeks, we got rained out over at Birkdale this morning. Dad just felt like chipping a bit, for old times’ sake. You’ve got champions’ names written all over that mirrored wall downstairs. This guy was the best of the bunch.”
“Really?” he murmured. “I had no idea.”
“That’s okay. Please don’t make a fuss over him.” Dad was headed back our way now. “He hates for people to make a fuss over him.”
“I understand.” Weeks switched on a five-star smile for my father.
“Sir, if it would be of interest to you, we could perhaps make one of our larger reception rooms available to you for your practicing.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Dad said contritely. “Our little game is done. I’m sorry for any trouble we may have made.”
“No bother whatsoever,” Weeks assured him. “And if there’s anything further you require, Mr. Snead, please don’t hesitate to call me personally.” He bowed and left us.
My father handed me the balls and the Winnie Palmer gargling glass and frowned.
“Mr. Snead?” he said.
I gave him the same defiant grin my son sometimes gives me when he’s been caught clobbering the dog or bashing a lamp with his “indoor” golf club. Why bother trying to deny you did the crime, seems to be Jack’s strategy—when you can simply rejoice in it!
“I guess something I might have said made him think you were Sam Snead,” I said, patting him gently on the back. “Isn’t that funny?”
“Not really. Next thing you know, they’ll be asking me to sign that ridiculous mirror downstairs.” An entire wall in the hotel’s pub was covered with signatures of the world’s most famous players; everybody from Ray Floyd to Nick Faldo. The previous evening, we’d wasted half an hour debating over the authenticity of the signatures. Dad was of the opinion that they might be genuine, but (call me a cynical cuss) I was pretty sure a kid named Bruno from the kitchen really painted them.
“Don’t worry.”
As we strolled back to our sauna, I told my father what Sam Snead had once told me—us country boys always stick together. I said dinner was on me because he’d whipped my tail at Birkdale, which made me one-for-three in our matches, not counting the interrupted Prince of Wales carpet contest. That didn’t count, I said, due to an unauthorized spectator on the course.
“When we reach Scotland tomorrow,” I promised him, “I’ll take me revenge.”
“Dream on,” he said.
EIGHT
All the Lovely Wee Places
A winding road from Dumfries, Scotland, took us to Southerness, a marvelous short links course unknown to most Americans overlooking the Solway Firth, where we met up with a retired vet named Dr. Jupp and his wife Freddie for a late Saturday afternoon round. The Jupps were on a “weekend break,” as Freddie Jupp called it, staying at an inn nearby. Our first day in Scotland was rain-free, the sun gloriously warm on our shoulders.
“We’ve been to America quite a number of times,” Dr. Jupp pronounced loudly as we marched off the first tee together. He was a tall, thin man with a wisp of duck fluff waving from the crown of his bald head. “Got some foreign friends in St. Louis named Kellogg. She’s all right, husband’s a bit of a lush. Know ’em?”
He was frowning at me, though I quickly realized frowning was Dr. Jupp’s natural expression. His scowl fell somewhere between that of a disapproving owl and a constipated eagle. I admitted I didn’t know the Kelloggs of St. Louis; I said that the only Kelloggs I knew came from Battle Creek. I paid homage to them every time I ate my cornflakes, I said. Ta-dump. No one but my father seemed to catch my little funny.
“Where’s that?” wondered Freddie primly.
“Michigan,” I said, “land of wolverines, big two-hearted rivers, and Henry Ford. A budding northern golf mecca, too. You might want to check it out on your next trip.”
“Right,” snapped Dr. Jupp. “I’ve eaten lobsters from there.”
I decided not to tell him lobsters came from Maine, not Michigan. He didn’t seem like the sort who could handle being corrected by a foreigner, and I didn’t fancy having my appendix taken out with a mashie niblick. We watched Freddie tee up and crack her ball a hundred yards down the fairway with a big loping swing.
“Get your arse lower to the ground, Freddie!” Dr. Jupp shouted helpfully at his wife through a pair of bony cupped hands. “Arse to the ground, that’s the ticket!”
“Fizz off,” Freddie said.
I smiled at my father, wondering what it was about Brits and their arses. He seemed to be thinking the same thing. Was getting your arse to the ground anything like getting your bum into the shot?
Southerness is considered a “plain” course by some devotees of Scottish linkslands. For one thing, it’s one of the most contemporary seaside creations in Britain, having been built by MacKenzie Ross during the same postwar years he was restoring Turnberry’s links, seventy miles up the coast. There Ross used earth-moving machinery to marvelous effect, sculpting the dunes and hummocks that give the Turnberry player a powerful sense of the land’s whimsical elevations.
For one reason or another—but probably economic in nature—Ross left the lovely green earth at Southerness alone, routing his course over relatively flat pastures and hayfields. The whole enterprise cost less than two thousand pounds to create and was turfed, not seeded, the soil being almost identical, the story goes, to that found in the fens of England. There is, at any rate, an unhurried grace about this little-known linksland—evidenced by the fact that, upon a golfing barman’s strong recommendation, we’d simply dialed up from a local pub where we were having lunch and been politely invited to drop in.
Southerness was a bonus. It was supposed to be an “off day” for Dad to rest his wheels, but the hot lunch and cold beer seemed to give him renewed enthusiasm for the game, and what ensued from this unscheduled side trip was a lively round with the Jupps. Dad chatted amiably with Dr. Jupp, who hailed from the Cheviot Hills, about the war, and Freddie pointed to the rumpled green-gray line of the Solway’s distant shore and said to me, “That’s Silloth, dear. Do yo
u know Silloth?” I admitted I didn’t. “That’s England over there, the place where the great Cecil Leith came from. Do you know her? She was quite a champion lady golfer back in the teens, though someone said she was, you know, a strong-willed and rather peculiar girl.”
I said I knew a bit about Cecil Leith. Some said she was the first lady golfer who struck the ball as well as a man, and had been the first undisputed queen of women’s golf until a tall, pallid twenty-year-old from Surrey named Joyce Wethered challenged her in the finals of the British Ladies’ championship at Turnberry in 1921. They met a year later at Prince’s, Sandwich, and the roles neatly reversed. The shy Wethered became the dominant lady of the golf world until a new crop of American female golfers rose up in the 1920s, led by a powerful-swinging Rhode Island girl named Glenna Collett, who became Glenna Vare.
“Fancy you know all that,” Freddie said with surprise.
I admitted I’d been lucky enough to know Glenna Vare before she passed away.
A stiff breeze was whipping off the Solway, but snuggled under my checked wool cap, and swinging a club much better than I had all week, I’d run off a string of pars almost before I even realized what was going on. The unhurried pace and flat terrain seemed to suit my father, too. He pulled his trolley along Southerness’s gentle undulations with a minimum of trouble, firing off some excellent approach shots, making his usual share of ten-foot putts.
I went out in 38, my best score of the trip, and Freddie Jupp demanded to know if I was a “professional American player.” I smiled, thanked her profusely for thinking such an absurd thing, and admitted that I was just a humble golf scribe playing above his head for the moment.
“A what?” She fingered her pearls.
“I write about golf.”
“Ted,” she said sharply to her husband, “this young man says he is a golf writer. What do you think of that?”