by Otto Penzler
“Want to go out tomorrow?”
Bellerman, damn him. He drew a breath, forced himself to be civil. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but I can’t make it tomorrow.”
“You should, you know. Kid gets thrown from a horse, best thing he can do is get right back on him.”
And get thrown again?
“You obviously love the game, Kramer. Otherwise you wouldn’t be over here after a day like the one you had Saturday. But don’t try to make this take the place of the real thing. You’ve had a taste of golf and you want to keep at it, you know? Say, did you find somebody to put a new shaft on that putter?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, you will. Are you sure you can’t make it tomorrow? Well, then, maybe next week.”
The weekend passed. Monday he ran on the treadmill, and afterward he went online and ordered a new Big Bertha driver. Tuesday he had a good session at the batting cage, and afterward he took his putter to an elderly German gentleman somewhere on the border of Brooklyn and Queens who repaired old golf clubs and fishing rods in his basement workshop. The price was high, more than he’d originally paid for the club, but it was worth it and more if it could erase the evidence of his bad temper.
Wednesday he went to the gun club. He fired the deer rifle and the .22 at his usual targets, then took a break and sipped a cup of coffee. The weight machines tomorrow, he thought, and then the driving range on Friday, and Bellerman would show up, dammit, and what was he going to do about that, anyway?
The real world. There were, he supposed, fellow members of the gun club who hunted. Had country places in Jersey or Pennsylvania, say, and tried to get a buck in deer season, or a brace of pheasant at the appropriate time. But the majority of members, he was sure, just came to practice marksmanship. They didn’t think of their activity as a pale substitute for the real thing, and neither did anybody else.
He went back to practice with the Magnum, selected his usual paper target. Then something made him switch to a target he’d seen used by other members—law enforcement personnel, for the most part. The target was a male silhouette, gun in hand.
It was strange at first. He’d always aimed at a bull’s-eye target, and now he was aiming at a human outline. It, too, had a series of concentric circles, centered upon the figure’s heart, so you could see just how close you came. And it wasn’t a person at all, it was just a piece of paper, but it still took a little getting used to.
And an odd thing happened. Welcome to the real world, said a voice in his head, and it was recognizable, that voice. It was Bellerman’s voice, and he steadied the big handgun and squeezed off a shot, and the gun bucked satisfyingly in his hand, and the bullet found its mark in the silhouette.
He kept hearing Bellerman’s voice in his head, and the two-dimensional generic silhouette began assuming three-dimensional form in his mind, and the face began wearing Bellerman’s features.
He spent a longer time than usual at the range, and his hand and forearm ached by the time he was done. The real world, he thought. The real world indeed.
He returned the rifle and the target pistol to his locker. No one noticed that he walked out with the Magnum tucked into the waistband of his trousers, and the remainder of a box of shells in his pocket.
Would Bellerman show up again at the driving range Friday?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the man would have gotten the message by then and would leave him alone, having done what he could to ruin Kramer’s life.
But somehow Kramer doubted it. Bellerman was no quitter. He’d be there again, with the same abrasive drawl, the same smile that was never far from a sneer. The same invitation to a round of Saturday golf, which this time Kramer would accept.
Only this time there’d be something new in his bag. And, on one of the more remote holes at Bellerman’s club, Kramer would bring out not his brassie or his mashie or his niblick, not his sand wedge, not his (and God’s) 1-iron, but a .357 Magnum revolver, cleaned and loaded and ready.
Welcome to the real world, Bellerman!
THE MAN WHO
DIDN’T PLAY GOLF
Simon Brett
Leonard Wensam thought he had been very clever. Whenever his wife, Amanda, asked him how he’d spent his Thursday, he’d start to tell her about the round of golf he’d played up at the Westmacott Golf Club. That invariably shut her up. And soon she stopped asking.
When he’d first started talking about golf, when he’d spent all that money on a complete set of clubs in a red and white leather bag that zipped over the top, Amanda had tried to show an interest. She’d bought her husband a golf book that Christmas, and some little knickknack to hold tees for his birthday. But she couldn’t sustain the illusion of showing an interest for long.
Theirs was a marriage that ticked over all right. At thirty-six, Amanda was fifteen years younger than her husband. She might have liked children, but Leonard had never been keen on the idea, and as usual his view was the one that counted. What he wanted from his wife was regular sex and a decorative presence at business functions. Leonard Wensam didn’t really like women, preferring the rough shallow heartiness of male company. He thought husbands should have secrets from their wives.
And Amanda believed in wives having secrets from their husbands. One of the secrets she kept from Leonard was the fact that, as she had got to know him better during the early months of their marriage, she had found that she didn’t like him very much. And as he got older and chubbier, she found she liked him less and less.
But the marriage ticked over all right.
And she’d read in a magazine that husbands and wives having different hobbies was the recipe for a successful relationship. Amanda sang in a local choir, and Leonard, who was immune to any form of classical music, never considered attending any of her concerts. So she felt no obligation to attend any of his tournaments at the Westmacott Golf Club.
Neither did Leonard ever ask her how the concerts had gone, so, having suffered an excruciating hour of tedium the first time she asked him how his round of golf had gone, Amanda subsequently felt no guilt about never again even making the inquiry. As the magazine had said, it was husbands and wives pursuing different interests that kept marriages alive. Amanda felt reasonably happy with the arrangement.
It was doubtful that she would have felt quite as happy had she known from the start the interest that her husband was actually pursuing: a thirty-nine-year-old red-haired divorcée called Juliette. Every Thursday, when Leonard Wensam said he was playing a round, he was, in fact, playing around.
He had semiretired from the accountancy business he had inherited from his father. With no perceptible effort on Leonard’s part, the firm had grown satisfactorily over the years and made him a wealthy man. When his rapidly aging mother died, he would be even wealthier. He could afford to buy anything he wanted, and could have afforded to buy Amanda anything she wanted too. But it was not in Leonard’s nature to be overgenerous, so he bought very little for either himself or his wife. He was, in fact, extremely mean.
Even Juliette was becoming aware of this shortcoming in her older lover. In the early days, when he had been trying to winkle his way into her bed, Leonard had lunched Juliette lavishly at up-market restaurants, but increasingly he abandoned this expensive foreplay in favor of bringing sandwiches and a bottle of wine round to her place. Not liking this diminution of her pampering, the woman he didn’t play golf with on Thursdays looked forward to the moment when she would dump Leonard. But she was in no hurry. She liked sex, she liked the attentions of a man—even a man as mean as this one—and she was not going to get rid of him until she had a successor firmly in place.
Leonard was unaware of these thoughts going through his mistress’s mind. He was too self-centered to be aware of the thoughts going through any mind but his own. He thought he had his life well organized—financial sufficiency, the secure marriage, the “bit on the side.”
He was getting a bit fat, true. Last time he’d been to the quack he�
��d been told he ought to take more exercise. And that was something he intended to do… when he got round to it.
Amanda had even once observed that Leonard’s regular golf did not seem to be making him any fitter. But he had avoided the moment of potential embarrassment by the deft assertion that golfers needed to cultivate a low center of gravity. He hadn’t put on weight; he had just redistributed muscle.
And Amanda appeared to accept that lie as readily as she had accepted all the others.
Oh yes, Leonard Wensam thought he had been very clever.
It was his mother’s death that provided the first potential threat to his nice cozy little setup. The news was phoned through from the nursing home one Thursday morning, when Amanda was alone in the house. She didn’t expect Leonard to be emotionally affected by his bereavement, but, uncaring though he undoubtedly was, she knew he wouldn’t want to be seen as uncaring by other family members. He needed to be told quickly, so that he could start dutifully phoning round and making funeral arrangements. Leonard never took his cell phone with him on Thursdays (“the one day a week when I can really forget about the office”), and the information was not the kind that could be passed on in a message. So Amanda decided she would have to go up to the Westmacott Golf Club in person to break the sad news to her husband.
Though she had driven past the entrance many times, she had never been inside the grounds. Many of her friends used to walk up there (the club permitted that, so long as the walkers kept off the fairways), and in one of his moments of good resolution about getting fitter, Leonard had even spoken of exercising there. But that was before he started the golf. Amanda felt strange being in a venue that must be so familiar to her husband, so much a part of his life. She parked amid the rows of Jaguars, BMWs and Mercedes in front of the high mock-Tudor clubhouse, and looked around for someone who might know Leonard’s whereabouts. A sign reading “Floyd Carter, Professional” seemed the most promising starting point. The young boy who was minding the shop said that Floyd was out on the practice greens and pointed Amanda toward a tall, rangy figure of about forty hunched over a putt. He had a row of six balls in front of him, and he moved along, slotting in each one with unerring accuracy.
As the last ball perched on the edge of the crowded hole, the professional looked up at her, squinting against the sunshine. He had strong teeth and his face was tanned, revealing as it relaxed a tracery of white lines around his bright blue eyes.
“You do that very well,” said Amanda.
“I’ve practiced it a few times.” The voice had a slight antipodean twang. “I can usually hit the target.” He grinned easily. “What can I do for you, madam? You want to arrange a lesson?”
“No. I’m Mrs. Wensam.” The name didn’t appear to mean anything to him. “I’m looking for my husband. Mr. Wensam,” she added unnecessarily.
The second name didn’t prompt any more recognition than the first.
“My husband’s a member here. He plays a round every Thursday.”
“Wensam?” Floyd Carter shook his head. “No member of the name of Wensam here.”
Amanda couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Seeming aware of the potential ramifications of what he’d just said, Floyd Carter immediately went to the defense of a fellow male. “You probably got the name of the club wrong. A lot of other clubs around. Maybe he plays at one of them?”
“I know it’s the Westmacott Golf Club. That’s the one he always talks about.”
The professional gave an easy shrug of his shoulders. “Well, I know the names of all the members—even the midweek hackers who spray balls all over the course—and I tell you, not one of them is called Wensam.” Still, in the cause of male solidarity, he added tentatively, “Maybe he plays under a false name?”
“Why should he do that?”
“There are a lot of members whose golf’s so bad they should play under false names.”
In spite of herself, Amanda smiled. There was something very engaging about Floyd Carter. She had to force a bit of hauteur into her voice as she said, “I can’t imagine my husband ever using a false name for any reason. He’s not deceitful.”
But even as she said the words, Amanda Wensam wondered whether she was telling the truth.
She watched as the professional gathered up his golf balls and again laid them out in a line in front of him. “Going to get them all down the hole again?” she asked.
“No, done enough putting for today. Have a go at that now. Just a few trick shots.” He pointed to the other side of the practice green where a wooden arrow on a pole pointed toward the first tee.
Selecting another club from his bag, Floyd Carter moved forward to the first ball. An effortless flick sent it up to clatter against the arrow. Before it hit the ground, the second ball was in flight. Then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth hit the arrow and bounced back.
“Can you do that every time?” asked Amanda breathlessly.
Floyd Carter gave a wry, self-deprecating smile. “Not every time, no. Can’t guarantee it.” His grin became more confident. “Often, though.”
The following morning, Amanda woke up earlier than Leonard. Now she came to think of it, he did always seem particularly sleepy on a Thursday night. Previously, she’d put it down to the physical stresses of a round of golf. Now, though…
Amanda went down to the garage and put on the light. She rarely drove Leonard’s Lexus, but he did grudgingly allow her a spare key “for emergencies.” She opened the boot.
The red and white leather golf bag lay there, gleaming, pristine, clean. The clubs revealed when she unzipped the top looked equally unscarred by ball or divot. And that wasn’t just the result of post-round cleaning; the cellophane was still tight about their heads. The whole set could have been returned to the shop whence it was bought and the owners could not have refused to refund the money. Everything was as new. Nothing had ever been used.
Amanda was pensive as she closed the car boot. And a plan began to form in her head. A plan that would provide a very effective revenge on her errant husband.
Leonard was jaunty as he returned home from the office one Wednesday a few weeks later. He had had a very cheering meeting with his solicitor that afternoon. Though always knowing that his mother had been left wealthy by his father’s death, he had only just become aware of how much her judicious investments had increased his inheritance. Leonard Wensam would soon be a very rich man indeed. This knowledge gave him enormous satisfaction. There was nothing he wanted to buy with his newfound wealth; he just liked the idea of all that money sitting there. His.
When he walked in, Leonard was surprised to find a visitor in the house. He knew that Amanda occasionally invited her female friends for tea and, though they interested him not at all, he was quite capable of being polite to them.
But it was the first time he’d found a tall, tanned young man rising from the sofa to greet him in his own sitting room.
“Leonard, I’d like you to meet Floyd Carter.”
“Hello,” he said, mystified, as he shook the firm, tanned hand.
“Floyd’s wife sings in the choir with me, and I thought you’d love to meet him… because he’s terribly interested in golf too.”
“Ah.” Leonard nodded at his wife’s words, playing for time. He sensed trouble.
“In fact,” Amanda went on, “Floyd’s the professional at Westmacott Golf Club. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I, Leonard?”
“No. Of course we’ve met,” her husband mumbled uncomfortably.
There was a long silence. Amanda looked excited, almost triumphant, waiting to see her plotting come to fruition.
Then, to her apparent amazement, Floyd Carter said, “Too right. Of course I know Len.”
Leonard gleefully watched the dismay grow in his wife’s face during the ensuing conversation. She tried to hide it, but without complete success. Amanda had set up this interview, he knew, to show him up. The Westmacott Golf Club professional, she had calculated, would b
e bound to expose her husband’s lies. But she seemed not to have reckoned with the enduring strength of male solidarity. Women might shop errant husbands to their wronged wives; but no man would ever behave like that to a fellowman. The masculine reaction to hearing of another man’s infidelity was always, “Good on you, mate… you dirty dog. Anyway, it’s not my business.”
Aware of his strength, Leonard pushed the conversation even deeper into golf, for the sheer pleasure of watching Amanda’s discomfiture grow. He initiated discussion with Floyd Carter on the idiosyncrasies of golf club members whose names he’d only just invented. He summoned up Woffles Rimington, who kept a liter of whiskey in his golf bag and had always emptied it by the end of the round; Tugboat Clark, who was so rich that he bribed all his opponents to lose to him; and Roly Crooke-Winterburn, who’d had to leave the club after being found bunkered in a compromising position with the lady captain.
As each of these fictional figures emerged from Leonard Wensam’s lips, Floyd Carter provided further recollections of their quirks and misdemeanors. The two men laughed a lot, as Amanda looked coldly on.
Leonard’s invention didn’t stop at the names of golfers; he let it spread into golfing terms too, confident that Floyd still wasn’t going to show him up.
So, for example, when the professional said, “I always think the fourteenth is an easy par. I can usually reckon on an eagle there,” Leonard riposted gleefully, “Oh, I’m afraid I usually get a pelican.”
Or when Floyd Carter recommended the use of a spoon to get out of the kidney-shaped bunker at the back of the seventh green, Leonard confessed that he got his best results with a knife and fork.
And Floyd’s assertion that he always used a 5-iron and reduced backswing to guarantee getting over the water hazard at the short third was greeted by the news that Leonard had been remarkably successful using a 17-aluminum and a limp wrist.