Loopy

  Joe Delany was even more circumspect. His view was that Loopy had indeed won The Atlantic, but that was just one event. It might have been a fluke or it could mean that he had a special talent for the game. The only way to find out, Joe insisted, was for Loopy to pit himself against the best. When he asked how this might be done, Joe snapped, “Q school!”

  “What? You can’t be serious. You mean qualifying school, the one for the pros?” Loopy couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you trying to tell me that I should turn pro? Is that it?”

  The thought had never occurred to him—not in his wildest dreams. It was one thing to make a living from the golf club, tending bar and the driving range. To earn his living actually playing competitively had never crossed his mind.

  Pat O’Hara, as usual, disagreed with the others. “You know damn well that I never approved of you leaving school early. You did because you had to, I suppose, what with your father going off to England and all that. I wanted you to finish your education so that you could make something of yourself in the world. Everyone needs some sort of qualification to get ahead. If you’re not careful, all you’ll have to show for the most important years of your life is a good golf game. I’m no judge, but you seemed to have something special going for you when you won at Ballykissane. As Joe says, you’re as good as the rest of amateurs now with your plus-two handicap, but you can’t afford to play with them. We both saw what it costs to play just one tournament, and that was only up the road, so just imagine what it would set you back with travel, caddies, hotels, and the like. What you need is a proper job that allows you to play the amateur circuit, and you’re not going to get a job like that unless you are properly qualified for something or other. The first step along that road, my lad, is to bloody graduate, and don’t mind what the rest of them may tell you!”

  The talk drifted to other topics for a while, then Joe steered it back to Loopy’s future once more, saying, “Maybe Pat’s right for once.” O’Hara grunted but did not interrupt. “The Q school is probably out of the question. First there’s the expense. It’s well over a thousand pounds to enter. Another drawback is that it’s over six rounds, not the usual four. Guys I know who’ve played in all the big tournaments say every one of those one hundred and eight holes is tougher than playing the first hole of The Open.”

  Edward Linhurst was able to confirm this. “A friend of mine who played in the Walker Cup before turning pro swears that playing for your country is a cakewalk compared to the Q school.”

  The discussion had brought them to a halt, but with people waiting behind them, it was time to move on.

  As they hurried toward the green, O’Hara questioned this. “Why the extra pressure, Joe? I thought The Atlantic was about as tough as it gets, pressure-wise.”

  Joe shook his head with a hollow laugh. “Don’t get me wrong. What Loopy did was fantastic. I’m proud as hell of him and there’s nothing I’d like better than to see him do well in the pro game. But you’d better believe me that Q school is a killer. Two hundred hungry golfers fighting it out with each other like animals for a player’s card to get a crack at the tour.”

  “How many get a card?” Loopy forced out the question though his throat was dry. He was uncomfortable at having his future discussed so openly in front of him. He was also a bit surprised that Amy had not told her father how close they had become. Perhaps she had gone off the whole thing—which to Loopy was far more disturbing than this talk of his future, especially the Q school.

  “Thirty-five eventually. After four rounds, seventy-five get to play the final two rounds. Then the thirty-five lowest scores get their card—for the year.”

  “For the year?” Loopy was incredulous. “Just a year? What happens after that?”

  Joe couldn’t help but smile at the look of dismay on Loopy’s face. He explained gently, “Well, last year forty-four got cards. That was the lowest thirty-five plus those tying on the last qualifying score. Of those forty-four, only eleven managed to win enough to stay on the tour.”

  “Jaysus, Joe…” O’Hara looked genuinely shocked. Being off the drink had made him edgy, but this genuinely caught him unawares. “I didn’t realize it was that bad. Are you sure those figures are right?”

  “Positive. I checked them out this very morning. Three-quarters of those who did get their card had to go back and do it all over again the following year. Only some of them didn’t bother. Couldn’t face the torture all over again, I expect. Only sixteen of them came back for a second dose of the medicine.”

  “What happened to the others?” Loopy had to know.

  Joe shrugged. “Who knows? Some of ’em gave up golf altogether, I expect. Others probably went back to being teaching pros, just like me.”

  “Were you ever tempted to give it a go?” Loopy just had to ask that question.

  “Of course, but I was never good enough. Couldn’t afford to anyway, even if my game was up to it. Married early, commitments, that kind of thing…” Joe’s voice trailed off, then became stronger as it took on a wistful note. “And believe me, it was a damn sight easier to get a card then—and hold on to it—than it is today.”

  There followed a long silence, eventually broken by Edward Linhurst asking Loopy, “Well, what do you think?”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it? The thought of turning pro never even crossed my mind until just now. Anyway, it’s out of the question.”

  When no one pressed him on this, he felt he owed them an explanation. “Look, I’ve something to tell you all, only please don’t let it go any further.”

  O’Hara cut in quickly, “If it’s about your father, the whole village knows by now that he was back. For a short visit, I’m told. Shorter than he intended by all accounts. Is that what happened to your knuckles?”

  Loopy nodded ruefully. He turned away, not wanting them to see him blinking back the tears. When he had recovered some of his composure, he answered O’Hara, “Yeah, that’s what happened. So you can see why I can’t suddenly take myself off to some foreign country to try to qualify as a pro. With my father gone again, probably for good this time, someone has to replace him—and I’m the eldest. The sooner I get a proper job the better, and golf will have to take a backseat for the time being.”

  They lapsed into silence for a while, each left with his own thoughts. Then they spoke idly of other things—their play, the condition of the course—the sort of things golfers discuss during a friendly and sociable round of golf. They arrived at the last hole without mentioning Loopy’s future again, each still lost in his own thoughts. In a strange way each felt cheated in some way.

  Joe Delany, without quite realizing it, hoped that through Loopy he could yet live out his earlier ambition to become a touring pro. Fate had unexpectedly handed him an uncut gemstone in the form of Loopy that he had hoped to shape and hone into a glittering diamond. Now the stone had shattered at the first cut. The future held nothing more for Joe than the dreary business of giving lessons, selling golf gear, and making sporadic love to bored wives.

  Pat O’Hara, too, had a sense of loss, though he found it hard to put a finger on exactly why this should be. It wasn’t the drink, though being off it just a few hours was already making him irritable. He told himself that life had something better to offer than a whiskey-soaked future and had hoped that he could have guided this young man in his post–Atlantic Trophy future. Now it looked as if this amazing golf talent was about to join the stampede of youngsters desperately seeking a run-of-the-mill job rather than following his star, however distant it might appear. O’Hara’s salvation, too, might have depended on the unique talent he had stumbled across that afternoon Loopy had driven the thirteenth green. In all his years teaching, he had never found anyone who had lived up to, much less exceeded, his expectations for him. Now, like an exhausted miner on his last dig, he had unearthed a nugget of purest gold when he’d least expected it. He might have passed his twilight days in following his pupil’s progress on and off the gol
f course and, in doing so, worked out some kind of salvation for himself.

  Now all that remained was the challenge of staying on the wagon and baiting the banks, especially in the person of Leo. What O’Hara had told Loopy about his earlier experiences was absolutely true. In O’Hara’s hometown all those years ago, the three big buildings were the church, the police station, and the bank. He realized he was probably cutting off his nose to spite his face where his hatred of banks was concerned, but he was, he told himself bitterly, too old to change. About the banks, of course, he corrected himself hurriedly. Not too old to swear off the drink, though, even if it meant an endless vista of cups of coffee and the regulars in Foley’s Bar sniggering behind their hands. He had already heard one of them that very morning muttering to a crony, “O’Hara off the drink? You must be joking. There’s no way you can teach an old dog like that new tricks, just mark my words!”

  Well, O’Hara told himself, he would do just that. He would mark their words and show the bastards who was right in the end. That, however, was not going to make things any easier in the meantime. He had briefly considered joining Alcoholics Anonymous but decided against it on the grounds that he wasn’t quite ready to put his hand in the air and relate the story of his life to a collection of total strangers. Not just yet, anyway, he decided.

  Then there was Amy. She had told her father that very morning of an offer from Allied Banks of Ireland to join their PR team. Her report on the Maltings had so impressed Sir Andrew Villiers-Stewart that, wearing his banker’s cap, he had almost begged her to join the newly formed Public Relations Bureau at Allied Banks of Ireland. Apparently, most of the older PR types at the bank had been posted elsewhere, though why this had happened, no one had yet explained. The only thing stopping her from snapping up the offer there and then was that the job was based in Dublin. Though that was closer to Trabane than her present job in London, it was still too far away from Loopy now that she realized how much she loved him.

  Even Edward Linhurst himself, the man who supposedly had everything, felt a vague sense of loss. He couldn’t explain it, but as he walked off the last green, he felt like a dog that had lost its bone. With the work on his house completed, time was already weighing heavily on his hands. The long walks along the beach suddenly seemed less invigorating than before, and his golf game was not improving quite as much as he had hoped. He realized with a start that he had been unwittingly linking his future with that of Loopy. With directorships in the city and friends in many of the better golf clubs in England, he could have secured invitations for his young protégé to play in tournaments that would otherwise have been closed to him. Without realizing it, he had been casting himself in the role of Loopy’s manager and mentor, a dual role that might go some way toward dispelling the dark cloud of boredom that was threatening to engulf him.

  LAST CHAPTER

  “… And to those of our critics who claim that we are getting too big for our boots, I can only say…”

  With every fiber of his being, Pat O’Hara wanted to bellow the word bollocks, but his being sober caused a loss of nerve. Instead he contented himself with a deep sigh and put a hand over his mouth to hide his utter disgust.

  “… that Allied Banks of Ireland has grown from within. Not by taking over our competitors who are left free to compete, as indeed they should be, in a free market…”

  O’Hara wanted to shriek, What about Lisbeg? but restrained himself. Could he be getting mellow, he asked himself, or was his still being on the wagon what sparked this unusual display of self-control? He couldn’t help but notice that the rest of the crowded marquee were drinking in Leo’s honeyed words. They had wined and dined at the expense of ABI and were loath to see their hosts in anything but the best of light. Even O’Hara could not have accused those who’d sponsored the Gala Dinner of stinting in any way. Drink flowed all evening and Linda had excelled with an array of lobster and cold cuts that had the buffet table groaning under their weight.

  Loopy and Brona sat in the place of honor at the top table, on a podium that looked out on two hundred or more merrymakers. They were flanked on one side by Leo and Rosa, Joe and Linda, and on the other by Edward and Amy, who sat next to Sam and Tim Porter. The PR man for the bank and O’Hara were side by side at another table on the lower level, facing the stage and not twenty feet away from Leo.

  Sir Andrew Villiers-Stewart had sent his regrets, but the PRO who had given Leo such a hard time during The Atlantic was sent in his place to keep an eye on things.

  “… It is therefore my pleasant duty to welcome you all here on behalf of Allied Banks of Ireland. As you all know, this dinner was organized at very short notice, and I would like to congratulate Linda on the wonderful job…”

  Leo’s praise was swamped by a wave of applause. As soon as it died down, he resumed, “Her husband, Joe, who has coached our hero of the hour…”

  Even louder applause, accompanied by the stamping of feet and shrieks of “Good man yourself, Lynch!” When quiet returned, Leo intoned, “Young Larry Lynch…”

  More applause, louder than ever, followed this. It was a full minute before Leo could make himself heard: “In whose honor we are all gathered here tonight.”

  Another staccato burst of hand-clapping, scattered calls for quiet, and O’Hara wished they would let Leo get on with it, otherwise he looked like keeping them there all night.

  “I do not propose to keep you much longer”—Good! thought O’Hara, now getting edgier and more impatient with every word that passed from Leo’s lips—“however, I must tell you the program for the rest of the evening. In a moment we are going to have the raffle. Hopefully by now you will have all bought tickets for the sweater with the Loopy crest on it that our guest of honor wore with such distinction when winning the Atlantic Trophy…”

  Leo’s words were lost yet again in another outbreak of cheering, foot-stamping and clapping but he pressed on regardless.

  “I now ask Tim Porter, himself a golfer of great talent who has represented our club with distinction on so many occasions, to say a few words before he makes the draw.”

  Tim made his way to the microphone, where Leo stood close to him, unwilling to relinquish any of the limelight.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great pleasure for me to draw the winning ticket for the raffle. As my good friend Leo said, Larry Lynch wore that sweater with honor right through the week. Let me be the very first to say that he accomplished something I myself never managed to do, he won the damn thing!”

  This was greeted with the loudest applause yet.

  “So without further ado, I will pick a ticket out of the hat. It is number … let me see … number one hundred and thirty! And the name on it is … oh, it’s so hard to read this handwriting after all the hospitality, but I’ll do my best … the name is Miss Amy Linhurst. There she is, ladies and gentlemen, seated at the table over there. Stand up, Amy, and let the people see how gorgeous you are.”

  More cheering and hooting as a blushing Amy reluctantly rose to her feet and then, spurred by some unseen prompting, called back to Tim, “I’m giving it back to the club!”

  Tim was in his element. “What a wonderful gesture, ladies and gentlemen. Doubly so, if I may say so, since it was Amy who gave that very sweater to our hero of the hour just a few weeks ago. Now she is giving it back to the club, who will, no doubt, put it on display. The money raised from the raffle goes to the Simon Community to help them look after those less fortunate than ourselves. Now I hand you back to our master of the revels, our good friend Leo Martin!”

  Leo took the microphone in a grip of steel and bawled into it, “Thank you, Tim, and thank you, Amy, for being so sporting as to donate the sweater to the club. Allied Banks of Ireland, as I have said, is delighted to play host to you all tonight. Now that I mentioned the bank, I have something to tell you.”

  O’Hara was by now at the end of his tether. He wanted to scream in a voice loud enough to be heard at the back of the m
arquee, You’re closing it down, that’s what you’re going to shagging tell us! Instead, he rose to his feet, made his excuses to the PR man seated next to him, and made his way through the tables to exit. He had almost made it to the back of the marquee before Loopy or anyone else at the top table quite realized what was happening. Leo was still droning on, oblivious to having one less listener.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you may have heard, as I did, the ridiculous rumors flying around that our bank is going to close. Well, I am here to give you my solemn assurance that the Trabane branch of Allied Banks of Ireland is to remain open. Not only that, but it will shortly undergo a major refurbishment to cater for the extra business we so confidently predict will come from a thriving seaside community like ours.”

  A burst of applause greeted Leo’s words, even though some in the audience might not agree that Trabane was thriving. Even if the bank was staying open, the Maltings continued to leak jobs like a sieve. Still, as they came to grips with what Leo was saying, his listeners gabbled excitedly to each other. A dutiful smattering of applause came from those at the top table, while cries of “C’mon, the village!” drifted up from the back of the marquee. Sensing that it was now or never, the PRO leapt to his feet, clapping wildly and shouting “Bravo!” at the top of his voice. Others followed his example and got to their feet, cheering and clapping. O’Hara’s early exit was already forgotten by the few who had noticed it. The standing ovation, contrived though it was, obviously heartened Leo, for he picked up where he had left off in even better voice.

  “So now that you have heard it from the horse’s mouth”—here he paused for a laugh that did not come—“I hope we will hear no more nonsense about closures. Allied Banks of Ireland is a fixture in Trabane and, like the town itself, will go from strength to strength.