A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
Mr. Green's head appeared in the doorway of the Pro Shop. "Bring a cart around, Quint. The gentleman is waiting."
"Yes Mr. Green."
Quint crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, tucked half of his shirt into his pants, and mounted the steps. By the time he got to the top he was sweating.
"Yes Mr. Green," Quint said again. It seemed to be required.
Mr. Green tossed the keys at Quint's chest, but the boy fumbled and dropped them. He bent to pick them up. For a moment he felt himself teeter on the edge of the steps, and his heart rate seemed to double, then he lurched forward and both hands hit the concrete. One of them closed over the keys. When he stood up straight again he was puffing. Mr. Green smiled like a concertina. His head retracted back through the doorway.
In exchange for working at the Pro Shop on weekends, Quint was allowed to play free games at Royal Durham after school. He was an unremarkable golfer. He never got any better, but he never got any worse either. Quint was consistent. But he liked golf. It is, after all, one of the few sports fat people can play without looking ridiculous.
Quint brought a cart around to the old man at the first tee. The girl playing with him was about Quint's age. His granddaughter, probably. She looked obscenely healthy, in the way only rich girls and racehorses do. Her skin glowed. Her hair shone. She looked at Quint as if he were a golf cart. The old man's eyes lingered. Quint wondered if it was the way his shirt cling to his chest: the biggest uniform Royal Durham had been able to supply still fit him like a wetsuit. He wondered if there was anything in the world worse than being sixteen years old and roughly the size and weight of a side-by-side refrigerator.
Quint lumbered back to the Pro Shop. A regiment of hire buggies stood in a line beside it. Two of the buggies needed to be fixed. Quint liked fixing things. Besides, the buggies were out of sight of the Pro Shop window, and thus Mr. Green. He could sit here with a buggy between his enormous thighs, a shifting spanner in one hand, and daydream. Today he daydreamed about the old man's pretty granddaughter. After he had made himself thoroughly miserable, he turned to watch the golfers tee off.
The only thing the players at Royal Durham had in common was money. Lots of it. Quint's family had never had money. He had been brought up to think of the wealthy as a kind of homogeneous mass; working at Royal Durham however, he had learned otherwise.
Rich people were weird.
There was a gaunt man folded over the ball-washing machine, pumping the handle mechanically. His fingernails were bitten down to nubs. His golf clothes were so faded and worn that he could have been mistaken for a homeless man. He never blinked. He watched the balls putter around inside the machine, his eyes glazed, studying the course layout in his mind, plotting his way around it, checking the wind speed against his moist lips.
A swaggering giant with circus-tent hair walked bow-legged to the first tee. Logos fought for space on the side of his bag. Tigers, lions, apes stared from the heads of his drivers. He teed off with a musical tink and the ball disappeared up the middle of the fairway, flying forever. He grunted and spat, then put a hippopotamus over the head of the driver and thrust it back into the bag. Four pairs of plastic eyes jiggled.
A man stood motionless beneath a tree behind the practice green. It was hard to make him out in the shadows. At first Quint mistook his bag for a giant dog. Dogs aren't allowed here, he thought, and then laughed at himself for thinking such a stupid thing. He could have sworn it had moved though. The man looked up suddenly, as if realising he was being watched; his eyes seemed very white in the darkness. Was that a smile stretching slowly across his face? It was hard to tell from this distance.
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