Captain's Day by Terry Ravenscroft

Tobin wanted was a dissatisfied customer. In his experience a dissatisfied customer very often became an ex-customer. Which is why he didn’t suggest the first thing to come into his head – that a possible way round the problem was to make a gift of the sweater to Mrs Grover, seeing as how it now had room for her tits in it – but instead employed a little discretion in an attempt to worm his way back into Grover’s good books. “Er… actually, and I’m sure you won’t mind me mentioning this Mr Grover, but I don't think ladies are supposed to wear men's sweaters,” he said, suitably unctuous, before continuing with the learning. “You see ladies sweaters are designed differently than men’s; they're a different shape, to accommodate the breasts. Whereas men's sweaters are….”
    Grover broke in, now getting quite angry about it. “Are you telling me a sweater I paid you the best part of fifty quid for is of such poor quality that it won’t revert back to its former shape just because it’s had a pair of tits in it for a couple of hours?”
    “ Well….” said Tobin, searching for but not immediately finding another excuse for what had happened to the sweater.
    Grover didn't give him any more time to come up with one. “Half a dozen Dunlop 65s, if you please!”
    “ Yes Mr Grover. At once,” said Tobin, quickly handing Grover a box of Dunlop 65s, then, in another effort to repair the damage. “On the house, of course.”
    “ I should bloody well think so too,” said Grover, taking the box and making for the door.

    Fidler drove off the second tee. Taking a triple bogey seven at the first, including the two shot penalty he’d incurred for hitting his first ball out of bounds, had done nothing to improve his temper. However during the short walk from the first green to the second tee he had managed to calm himself down a little, and this time made a much better fist of his drive, the ball on this occasion not veering off line by about a hundred yards to the right and sailing out of bounds, but veering only fifty yards to the right and sailing out of bounds.
    “ Shit!” he shouted, as he watched it disappear into the ether and over the perimeter wall.
    “ I think another Pinnacle two might be in order, George,” Elwes observed, drily.

    On the third green Arbuthnott had just missed a four-footer to save his par, his ball unfortunately just lipping out of the cup.
    “ Oh hard luck, Arby,” Bagley commiserated.
    “ The rot’s setting in I see,” observed Chapman, commiseration for Arbuthnott not being on his agenda. “As I seem to recall remarking it would not too long ago.”
    Arbuthnott retrieved his ball from the can, not too disappointed. “Well it's only a bogey,” he consoled himself, “I'm still one under gross.”
    “ And it's still early days,” said Chapman portentously, then started the lengthy business of lining up the putt for his par.
    Arbuthnott however was not about to have his convictions shaken by Chapman’s sniping. “It's my day, Gerry. I've told you. It's fated. It is written.”
    “ We’ll see, we’ll see.”
    The third green at Sunnymere is quite elevated and steeply sloped from back to front. Anyone looking at it from the fairway, or even looking from the front of the green to the back, would see nothing beyond it but the infinity of the sky. Under normal circumstances. Now however, just as Chapman was about to putt, a view that had remained unchanged since the course was laid out over a hundred years earlier was instantly transformed when a large helicopter suddenly erupted from behind the green and commenced to hover some twenty feet overhead, propellers whirling, jet engines howling, a cameraman hanging precariously out of the doorway filming the action on the green.
    “ Fuck me!” said Chapman, dropping his putter in alarm.
    Bagley cupped a hand to his mouth and mischievously called in the direction of the first tee, “Chapman's swearing again, Mr