Loopy Page 5

  Larry was not as enthusiastic as the other two about taking up golf. Of course it was gratifying, thrilling even, to see two grown men dancing with excitement at the way he had just hit a golf ball. But that did not change his view one iota: golf was a game for snobs. That’s what he had been told for as long as he could remember, and old habits died hard. Admittedly this was only his second time out on the golf course with Mr. O’Hara, but in that time he had never seen anyone of his own age around the place, except for some of the caddies. And they weren’t up to much. When not caddying, they could be seen, hanging around the chip shop, smoking cigarettes and making comments about passersby, especially girls. Only yesterday, a group of them had called after him, “Hey, Skippy, how’s the leg?” and “You got what was comin’ to you from the Lisbeg crowd!”

  Though his ears had reddened, he’d walked past them without making eye contact. There were too many of them to take on all at once—but he hadn’t forgotten their faces.

  The trio finished the round in something of a daze, Larry still being the one least affected by the amazing feat. Instead of heading for the changing room, both men made straight for the professional’s shop with the sign reading JOSEPH DELANY, PROFESSIONAL AND PGA-QUALIFIED INSTRUCTOR.

  Larry had never been there before. Inside was an impressive array of shiny new golf clubs, bags, shoes, sweaters, and all the other odds and ends associated with the game. Behind a counter a strongly built man in his thirties was doing something complicated to the grip of a club as they entered. He looked up and smiled.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” He looked questioningly at Larry. “I haven’t seen you ’round here before, have I?”

  O’Hara made the introductions, adding solemnly, “We have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.”

  Joe looked startled at O’Hara’s mock-serious expression. “What is it? What’s the bad news?”

  “This young man”—suddenly Pat O’Hara looked much younger. Larry suddenly realized that this was the first time he had ever seen him look really happy—“has just driven the thirteenth green.”

  “From the medal tee?” Joe’s eyebrows were arched high in surprise.

  “From the medal tee, Joe, the same one you hit from yourself all those years ago. What’s more, this young lad did it into the wind!”

  The professional whistled in admiration.

  Tim Porter chimed in excitedly with further details. “His ball finished ten feet to the side of the pin—which is, as you know, well back in the green. He must have carried the graveyard on the fly. Anyway, Joe, old boy, your record is gone the way of all flesh!”

  Joe’s reaction surprised even himself. Wordlessly he grasped the boy’s hand, saying, “Well done, young fella! Make my day and tell me that you holed the putt for an eagle?”

  Larry was fairly certain that an eagle was better than a birdie. Not being sure, he chose to say nothing.

  Again Tim intervened. “Pat picked up his ball there and then. Said the lad hadn’t got as far as learning how to putt yet!”

  “My God, but that takes the bloody biscuit.” Joe was aghast. “Doesn’t even know how to putt and he drives the thirteenth—into the wind at that!”

  A stunned silence descended on the little group gathered in the pro shop as each pondered the recent miracle, then Joe Delany carefully put aside the club he was working on and took a key down from a nail above his head. As they filed out of the shop, he locked the door behind him. He watched Larry closely as he limped from the shop to the clubhouse, carrying O’Hara’s bag over his shoulder.

  “Aren’t you young Lynch, the lad that takes the frees for the Gaels?”

  Larry’s chest swelled with pride. That someone who had nothing whatsoever to do with the GAA and the game of hurling should recognize him off the field of play was fame indeed. He gave Joe Delany a wide, toothy grin as he replied proudly, “That’s me, sir.”

  “The same lad that nearly got the leg cut off him last Sunday?”

  This time Larry didn’t grin, just nodded. The pro shook his head several times, muttering more to himself than anyone else, “What a waste, what a waste!”

  He did not elaborate on this. Wordlessly they made for the bar, which was deserted at that time of the evening. Joe went behind the counter and announced, “This one is on me. It isn’t every day your record is broken.”

  By the time the bar began to fill up with golfers, Joe had learned that the drive that had removed him from the club record books was only the second time Larry had ever hit a golf ball in his life, and that the lad had an amazing loop at the top of his backswing. By then Larry had long since gone home. When Brona asked him how he had got on caddying for O’Hara, he replied that he had earned five pounds. Two for carrying the bag and one each from three men in the bar. He didn’t mention the long drive at the thirteenth hole because he didn’t really understand much about it. Because of this he felt he couldn’t even begin to properly explain to her what Mr. O’Hara and the Porter person were getting so excited about.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The injured leg had not improved as quickly as he had hoped. It was not helped by Larry’s falling off a load of hay. He had been stacking the bales high up on a trailer when one of them had given way under him and he’d fallen heavily on the cobblestone farmyard. He had had to go back again to the hospital, where they’d strapped it up once more and warned Brona, who had accompanied him this time round, that he should stay far away from tractors and trailers. Mother and son were also told that any further setbacks to his recovery could result in a permanent limp.

  The hospital consultant had reluctantly allowed to him continue working in the supermarket and to help out in the golf club bar as long as he didn’t overdo it. Spring was when most golfers took their clubs out of the attic after the winter hibernation, and the sudden rush of players on the Trabane links put a strain on Joe Delany’s schedule. In return for looking after the pro shop while Joe was on the practice range giving lessons, he promised that he would coach Larry at every opportunity. Unknown to Larry, some members had already been complaining: “What’s the point in having a blasted professional if there is a CLOSED sign on his door every time you need him?”

  Some lady members attributed Joe’s frequent absences to his intensive coaching of Rosa Martin, wife of Leo the bank manager. Rosa was not popular among the other lady members, for her shorts were too skimpy and the tops she wore revealed more than they concealed. Worst of all, she had somehow acquired a generous handicap that enabled her to win more than her fair share of competitions. The men, on the other hand, mostly welcomed her presence on the course and in the bar, feeling that she added a bit of glamour and excitement to their lives.

  Whatever the reason, Larry was now spending most of his time either serving behind the counter of the bar or looking after the pro shop. He had left school long before graduating, much to O’Hara’s disgust. Falling off the trailer had aggravated his leg injury to the point where the bending and kneeling in stacking Norbert’s shelves was becoming a daily agony. To make matters worse, Norbert’s attitude had changed when it had become clear that Larry could not play for the Trabane Gaels. Overnight, Larry had become just another employee, and now his work was being criticized as it had not been before. Matters were not improved by Maire using her senior status as checkout operator to order him around, as well as accusing him of spending too much time “with those snobs up at the golf club.”

  Eventually Joe Delany did get round to giving Larry his first lesson. He pointed to a bucket of balls and handed Larry a driver out of his own bag of clubs. Larry recalled that when he had driven the thirteenth green, the ball had been placed on a small wooden tee that raised it off the ground and made it easier to hit. This time there was no tee, but he thought it better not to ask for one. Instead he made a vicious slash at one of the balls—and missed it completely. Joe Delany said nothing. Nor did he offer to put the next ball up on a tee. Out of the blue O’Hara’s words came back to Larry
like a mantra learned in the classroom: “Shake hands with the club, head still, and swing easy!”

  It wasn’t easy to do all three things at once, but nonetheless he managed to give the ball a really solid hit. It took off on a low trajectory and was still climbing as it disappeared over a fence at the far end of the practice range. He thought he heard a strangled oath coming from behind him but wasn’t quite sure. He was about to hit another ball when Joe grabbed his shoulder.

  “Stop right there! Who taught you that swing?”

  “No one, sir. That is, Mr. O’Hara told me to do a few things, that’s all.”

  “What were they?”

  “A-h-h … swing easy, try to keep my head still, and shake hands with the club.”

  Joe exhaled through pursed lips, making a sound like a tire deflating. “Good advice. Now about that loop in your swing. You have just hit a driver off the ground and sent it out over the back fence. I haven’t seen anyone do that before. Not off a tee, never mind off the deck. Here”—Joe took a long wooden peg out of his pocket and handed it to Larry—“tee a ball up on that and hit it.”

  He did as he was told. This time he didn’t hit it as far, but it went much higher and landed just short of the fence.

  Again Joe exhaled noisily. “Try hitting it with this.”

  He handed Larry an iron club with the number 7 engraved on it. It looked completely different from the weapon he had just used. It felt lighter in his hands but it did look slightly more like a hurley. This time no tee peg was offered. Larry swished the club a few times and it felt very different from the heavier driver he had just been using. He swung hard at the ball but hit the ground well behind the ball, making an enormous divot but sending the ball not more than twenty paces.

  Joe did not seem in the least perturbed by this. “Have another try, only this time imagine the ball has an arse—and try to look up it!”

  Larry glanced at his mentor to make sure he had heard right. He had. Joe’s expression was one of utter concentration with not a hint of a smutty joke. Larry tried really hard to do as he was told, even though it meant craning his neck behind the ball, which felt awkward and uncomfortable. He swung the club more slowly this time and was gratified to see the ball soar skyward, in much the same flight path as the sliotair had taken just before he was felled by the sheep farmer.

  Joe grunted with satisfaction. “That’s more like it. I’ll leave the driver and the seven iron with you. Hit the rest of those balls, then come back to the shop. I’ve a lesson in a few minutes. Oh, yes, another thing. From now on I’m going to call you Loopy. After that swing of yours—in case you were wondering.”

  With that Joe disappeared in the direction of the clubhouse. Alone now, Larry stopped hitting golf balls for a moment to get his breath back. Below him lay Trabane in all its glory, a jumble of houses, their windows sparkling with the sun’s reflections. The village might have been a glittering pendant hanging from the golden necklace of sandy beach that almost encircled the bay. The Atlantic was calm today, a mirror of deepest blue with scarcely a ripple. Overhead, gulls swooped and shrieked. In the distance a green mail van, tiny as an ant, crawled along the winding road that meandered from Trabane to Lisbeg.

  There were many more lessons like that. Joe would loan Larry his own clubs, a bucket of balls, and let him get on with it. Whenever he caddied for O’Hara, he picked up the basics of the short game and got to hit a few putts on the green when O’Hara was certain no club members were watching.

  When Tim Porter returned to Trabane after a lengthy visit to the vineyards, he was amazed at the strides Loopy, as everyone now called him, had made at the game. His length off the tee was still phenomenal, but now he could also hit iron shots long and straight. This improvement decided Tim Porter to give Larry an old set of golf clubs he had stopped using. When Joe Delany looked them over, his only comment was that they would do for the time being.

  However, there remained the problem of Loopy’s membership. Because he was no longer attending school, reduced student rates did not apply to him. It went without saying that the annual subscription of five hundred pounds was out of the question. For the moment O’Hara and Joe Delany agreed things could go on as they were, but both men realized that sooner or later the problem would have to be met head-on. If Loopy was to continue to progress at the game, he would have to play regularly on the golf course, and to do so, he would have to become a paid-up member of Trabane Golf Club.

  It was just as well that Loopy was blissfully unaware of the problem for he had others to keep him awake at night. With the arrival of another spring, most of the hay remained unsold. As the weather got better every day, cattle were leaving their winter quarters to graze fields of fresh grass. In the barn, the hay would keep indefinitely, but selling it would provide some much needed cash. Leo Martin again wrote to Brona inquiring when her bank account might “be put on a proper footing” and looking forward to her proposals for “reducing the arrears in the account, which have now assumed alarming levels of indebtedness!”

  Leo did so in a determined effort to clear his file of any overdue accounts that might hinder his prospects. The grapevine at Allied Banks of Ireland was humming with rumors that the Trabane outlet was due for the chop, despite the furor caused by the recent closure of the Lisbeg branch.

  If that were not bad enough, things were going from bad to worse at the supermarket. Maire’s so-called promotion had gone to her head, so much so that whenever Norbert was absent, she would seek out extra jobs for Loopy to do in addition to stacking shelves. These often entailed lifting heavy cartons or climbing up ladders in the storeroom—the very things he had been warned against by the hospital consultant. His pride would not allow him to explain this to her, so relations between them went from bad to worse.

  There had been no more trips to the fort, nor did they laugh together as they had done before. He sometimes wondered if her attitude had changed so drastically because he was no longer a rising star of the hurling team. Working with her in the supermarket was a job now—nothing more.

  God, he thought, women are so complicated.

  The schoolteacher Pat O’Hara was another complication. He had still not abandoned hope that his ex-pupil might go back to school in the autumn, after a year’s absence. “If you don’t, you’ll live to regret it, young fella. Can’t you see that education is your only way out of a place like Trabane where there isn’t a decent job for man or beast at the minute? Why don’t you come back to school, graduate, and then the world will be your oyster. With a bit of paper behind you, you’ll be the equal of any man. Stay the way you are and you’ll still be stacking shelves when you’re my age. And don’t think that being able to hit a golf ball out of sight is going to do you any good when push comes to shove. Oh, sure, Joe Delany’s doing his best for you right now, but a time will come when there’s nothing more he can teach you, and what’ll you do then?”

  Loopy did not attempt to answer this. He didn’t know, and to tell the truth, he didn’t really care. What the schoolteacher was going on about was far away in the distant future. Getting rid of the hay in the barn and improving his golf game were his two immediate objectives in life. Going back to school again was simply not on the agenda because, apart from any other considerations, the pressure to pay off the bank was increasing letter by letter.

  Leo Martin, apart from being manager of Allied Banks of Ireland in Trabane, also held down the position of honorary treasurer to the Golf Club. Whether it was from a wish to add to the profits of the bar, the ever-worsening recession, or because of some deeper, personal reason, he had taken to spending a lot of time there of late. Loopy noticed that when Leo and O’Hara were there at the same time, they sat as far apart as possible. Tonight, the bar was almost full and both men had been drinking for much longer than anyone else.

  The talk among the members had been of the deepening recession that had descended on their town, with rumors of job losses and impending closures flitting forward an
d backward across the bar. The Maltings were due to shed eight more jobs at the end of the month, bringing to thirty their job losses for the year—a disaster for a tiny place like Trabane. To lighten the gloomy atmosphere, someone thought to change the subject by asking Loopy if his golf game was improving and if he was playing much.

  Before he could answer, Leo Martin grumbled aloud, “If he’s playing on the course, then he shouldn’t be. You all know damn well that only members or those who have paid their green fees are allowed to play on this golf course, no matter”—here he paused with glass uplifted and glowered across at O’Hara, who was sitting at a table not far away—“what some other members whom I would have expected to set a better example may like to think!”

  Pat O’Hara, drunk through he was, caught every syllable—and nuance. “Leo, you really should try not to be such a stuck-up old bollocks. Young Lynch here is shaping up to be the best golfer this place has ever produced by a bloody mile. All he needs is a free run at it without bother from pompous ould eejits like yourself”—a murmur of disapproval greeted this, but it failed to silence the irate schoolteacher—“so if it’s the young lad’s membership that’s troubling you, I here and now propose Laurence Lynch as a full member. Now”—O’Hara glared around the bar with a piercing look that he had perfected in the classroom when seeking out miscreants—“who’ll second my proposal?”

  There was a long silence. Most of the drinkers would have supported O’Hara, though they would have preferred that his proposal were couched in milder terms. Leo Martin, though widely disliked, was nevertheless a force to be reckoned with in a small community such as Trabane. At the stroke of his pen, one’s line of credit could be cut off—or restored—according to his whim. At the best of times, Leo would not have been someone to trifle with, but just now with half the business firms in Trabane struggling to survive, no one in his right mind would deliberately upset him. All the more surprising then when the silence was broken by a voice coming from the open door of the bar.