was all he said when I declined. Nor did he offer to drive me home again, just left me to walk back alone.
For a few weeks, I didn’t speak to Ollie. Not that he was around much not to speak to, but whenever I passed him I let him know with a cold stare what I thought of his conduct. Perhaps it’s as well he was so preoccupied with himself that he didn’t notice. Over time our relationship healed, like his tendon, and by the end of the second year, we were friends again. To him, we’d never not been friends.
‘You sound so gay,’ Em says, when I talk about that time. ‘Anyone would think you were lovers and he jilted you.’ She has a point. But though I was hurt by Ollie, then and later — hurt past all surgery — I’m not someone who bears grudges and honestly had no wish to hurt him back. We were friends. We did stuff. We even played golf together.
The first hole at Sandylands is a par-four dog-leg: from the tee, you drive uphill, over an earth mound, towards a narrow strip of fairway, to the left of which is bracken and to the right an alder copse deemed out of bounds; then from the crest (supposing you’ve reached it) you hit your second leftward and downhill, to a two-level green, the risk being that you’ll overshoot and fetch up in the hidden bunker at the back. I had never played there, of course; but during the journey in his MGB Ollie described each hole in detail. He’d not played much lately, he said, but for him, ‘not much’ probablymeant twice weekly. And he had the advantage of knowing the course from years before. He could still remember a thirty-foot putt on the par-three third, and his father’s pride and envy when he holed it. He told me this as he drove, with the roof down and the breeze fraying his hair. It might just have been the wind but his eyes watered as he spoke — less from the memory of his father, I suspected, than from recalling the trueness of that putt.
I was wearing the clothes I’d come in: baggy shorts, a T-shirt and trainers. Ollie had shorts, too, but they were tailored. The rest of him — shoes, socks, collared shirt, glove — was impeccably dress-code.
‘Your honour, I believe,’ he said.
According to Ollie there are four kinds of sportsmen: those who think they’re good and are; those who think they’re good and aren’t; those who think they’re bad and aren’t; those who think they’re bad and are. Though I put myself in the last category and Ollie in the first, he has developed a cautious respect for my game. But to suggest I tee off first, on the grounds I’d won the last time we played, was ridiculous. (Surely he remembered: it was in Surrey and he had beaten me five and four.)
‘No, yours,’ I said, in the hope that Ollie would screw up.
His ball pinged sweetly, soared two hundred yards or more, and landed perfectly on the hillcrest.
There was no one around to watch me drive off. But my hand shook as I placed the ball on the tee and Ollie reiterated the rules of our contest. Scoring by holes won rather than total shots taken; one mis-hit tee shot to be discarded without penalty; maximum of eight shots on any hole; any putt of less than three feet to be conceded — that’s to say a gimme.
They were the rules we’d always played by, and they stopped you missing nine-inch putts or reaching double figures at asingle hole. But that didn’t make me any less nervous as I settled, or failed to settle, to the ball.
I topped my first drive into the earth fifty yards away. The second sliced into the alder copse.
‘OK, two discarded drives without penalty,’ Ollie said, finally remembering how bad my golf is. ‘And I’m giving you a two-hole start, remember.’
He’d always given me a start but this time he hadn’t made it clear. Perhaps he’d been waiting to see how out of practice I was before committing himself.
‘Sounds fair enough,’ I said, and it was, more than fair. But he played (or used to) off a handicap of twelve whereas I wasn’t
For a few weeks, I didn’t speak to Ollie. Not that he was around much not to speak to, but whenever I passed him I let him know with a cold stare what I thought of his conduct. Perhaps it’s as well he was so preoccupied with himself that he didn’t notice. Over time our relationship healed, like his tendon, and by the end of the second year, we were friends again. To him, we’d never not been friends.
‘You sound so gay,’ Em says, when I talk about that time. ‘Anyone would think you were lovers and he jilted you.’ She has a point. But though I was hurt by Ollie, then and later — hurt past all surgery — I’m not someone who bears grudges and honestly had no wish to hurt him back. We were friends. We did stuff. We even played golf together.
The first hole at Sandylands is a par-four dog-leg: from the tee, you drive uphill, over an earth mound, towards a narrow strip of fairway, to the left of which is bracken and to the right an alder copse deemed out of bounds; then from the crest (supposing you’ve reached it) you hit your second leftward and downhill, to a two-level green, the risk being that you’ll overshoot and fetch up in the hidden bunker at the back. I had never played there, of course; but during the journey in his MGB Ollie described each hole in detail. He’d not played much lately, he said, but for him, ‘not much’ probablymeant twice weekly. And he had the advantage of knowing the course from years before. He could still remember a thirty-foot putt on the par-three third, and his father’s pride and envy when he holed it. He told me this as he drove, with the roof down and the breeze fraying his hair. It might just have been the wind but his eyes watered as he spoke — less from the memory of his father, I suspected, than from recalling the trueness of that putt.
I was wearing the clothes I’d come in: baggy shorts, a T-shirt and trainers. Ollie had shorts, too, but they were tailored. The rest of him — shoes, socks, collared shirt, glove — was impeccably dress-code.
‘Your honour, I believe,’ he said.
According to Ollie there are four kinds of sportsmen: those who think they’re good and are; those who think they’re good and aren’t; those who think they’re bad and aren’t; those who think they’re bad and are. Though I put myself in the last category and Ollie in the first, he has developed a cautious respect for my game. But to suggest I tee off first, on the grounds I’d won the last time we played, was ridiculous. (Surely he remembered: it was in Surrey and he had beaten me five and four.)
‘No, yours,’ I said, in the hope that Ollie would screw up.
His ball pinged sweetly, soared two hundred yards or more, and landed perfectly on the hillcrest.
There was no one around to watch me drive off. But my hand shook as I placed the ball on the tee and Ollie reiterated the rules of our contest. Scoring by holes won rather than total shots taken; one mis-hit tee shot to be discarded without penalty; maximum of eight shots on any hole; any putt of less than three feet to be conceded — that’s to say a gimme.
They were the rules we’d always played by, and they stopped you missing nine-inch putts or reaching double figures at asingle hole. But that didn’t make me any less nervous as I settled, or failed to settle, to the ball.
I topped my first drive into the earth fifty yards away. The second sliced into the alder copse.
‘OK, two discarded drives without penalty,’ Ollie said, finally remembering how bad my golf is. ‘And I’m giving you a two-hole start, remember.’
He’d always given me a start but this time he hadn’t made it clear. Perhaps he’d been waiting to see how out of practice I was before committing himself.
‘Sounds fair enough,’ I said, and it was, more than fair. But he played (or used to) off a handicap of twelve whereas I wasn’t
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