Captain's Day (22 page)

In an effort to reach some sort of compromise Phyllis had offered to play in the ladies’ competitions but off the men's tees, but to no avail. The ladies would not allow her to play in their competitions full stop, and that was the end of the matter. The club chairman George Grover had pointed out to the ladies’ committee, as delicately as he could, that Phyllis now had a vagina, and bigger breasts than his wife, in fact bigger breasts than quite a number of the lady members, but the ladies had been adamant in their rejection of the new member without a member.

Letters had been sent to the R & A and the Ladies Golf Union asking if one or other of those ruling bodies could clarify the situation. Both letters had received no response whatsoever, despite two further letters asking if the original letters had been received, save for a letter postmarked ‘St Andrews’ from someone with a GSOH requesting a photograph of Phyllis, who he WLTM with a view to a dinner date and possible fun afterwards, non-smoker. Consequently the male membership had no alternative but to allow Phyllis to continue playing in the men's competitions. For her part Phyllis didn't mind which competitions she played in just so long as she could play.

So it should have been business as usual. However now that Phyllis was a woman, in her eyes if in no one else's, she began to dress more in the manner of what her idea of a woman should dress like. Out went the pastel shades and tweedy things and well-cut trousers; in came much brighter colours and clingy things and skirts. This in itself wouldn't have been too bad, as quite a number of the more adventurous lady members also wore brighter colours, a few of them even wearing clingy things and skirts, but unlike Phyllis they didn't wear a huge pair of falsies under their jumpers - which she had affected until such time as her new breasts reached maturity - and miniskirts, nor the long platinum blonde wig and full make-up Phyllis had now taken to wearing on the course.

Mr Captain now regarded Phyllis, dressed in her purple mini skirt and pink Lycra top, a matching pink, purple and lilac polka-dotted bandana round her tumbling blonde locks, her long muscular legs freshly waxed, her tattooed arms, her whole body reeking of cheap perfume, and visibly shuddered. He was only grateful that her teeing off time was 11 a.m. and not 11.10. as the Mayor was due to arrive at 11.20. and 11.10. was a time far too close for comfort. If the Mayor were to see the monstrosity it would be the end! The end now proceeded to get a little nearer.

“
Blooming heck I've forgotten my driver,” Phyllis suddenly said to her partners. “The pro's been re-gripping it for me and I was supposed to pick it up.”

“
Well you haven’t got time to go back, Phyllis” said Simpson, checking his watch. “We’re due off in less than two minutes.”

“
Can't you drive with your two wood?” suggested Hawker, helpfully.

Phyllis shook her head. “No, a girl needs her driver.”

Alfred Jacobson, who was in the following threesome and had arrived at the tee early, now spoke up. “Why not go back and get it Phyllis? I'll take your place and you can take mine.”

Mr Captain was onto Jacobson’s suggestion faster than a politician at the opening of a new pig trough. “Over my dead body he will!” he barked tendentiously. “He stays in the threesome he is already in!” (When Phyllis had first become a woman she had requested everyone at the club to not only call her by her new name but to think of her as a woman as well. Mr Captain hadn't even tried to do either, and had steadfastly continued to call her Philip and refer to her as 'he'. Indeed he delighted in doing so.)

“
What’s wrong with me swapping with him?” demanded Phyllis.

Mr Captain didn't beat about the bush. In his opinion all transvestites and transsexuals should be put down, preferably painfully, along with all homosexuals of both sexes, and their remains thrown in a lime pit, and he didn't mind who knew it. “Because the Lord Mayor will be arriving soon,” he said imperiously. “And I don't want him setting eyes on you. And I'm quite sure the Mayor himself wouldn’t want to set eyes on you either if he knew the state of you.”

“
Oh I don't know about that, Mr Captain,” said Simpson. “From what I've heard of the Mayor he likes a bit of skirt.”

“
Phyllis isn't a bit of skirt,” grinned Hawker. “She's a lot of skirt. A great big joyous bundle of skirt.”

“
Why thank you, Martin,” said Phyllis, fluttering her false eyelashes, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Mr Captain cringed at Phyllis’s overt display of feminism, which only made him stick even more firmly to his guns. “So for the sake of the Mayor I insist you stick to your official starting time,” he commanded.

“
The Mayor,” said Phyllis, with a flamboyant toss of her curls, “can kiss my bottom.”

Hawker gave a lewd smile. “You can put me down for that too, Phyllis.”

“
Get in the queue,” said Simpson, joining in the fun.

“
Down boys,” said Phyllis. She turned to Jacobson. “Thanks for swapping with me, Alf,” she said, and set off for the pro's shop without further ado, leaving Mr Captain utterly distraught.

“
Hello hello hello, what's all this then?” said Harris, on the walk from the tee to the thirteenth green.

“
What's all what?” said Garland.

Harris pointed at the adjoining twelfth fairway. “Plod.”

Garland and Ifield looked across to see Constable Fearon, Constable James and Jason some hundred yards away making their way down the fairway in the opposite direction. Ifield recognised Jason immediately. “It's that kid you took prisoner, Mr Vice!”

“
You're right,” said Harris. “He said his dad was a policeman. The little bugger must have been telling the truth.”

“
Christ I can do without this,” said Garland, annoyed. “I've got a good round going.”

“
I don't think they'll bother too much about that, if I know coppers,” said Ifield. “They can be mean bastards when they want to be.”

“
They're walking away from us anyway,” observed Harris. “Perhaps they'll miss us.”

“
Let's just hope so,” said Garland uncomfortably.

On the eleventh green Armitage settled over his putt, if the verb settled can be ascribed to someone whose current state of mind was about as stable as a ping pong ball going over Niagara Falls. Thankfully the double vision which had plagued him for the last couple of holes had completely disappeared. When it had been restored to normal Armitage had breathed a huge sigh of relief. Taking an apprehensive sharp intake of breath would have been more appropriate, for the brief spell of normal vision had quickly been replaced by what can only be described as phallus vision. And accompanying the phallus vision came the suspicion that what Grover had said to him earlier, that he had dicks on the brain, might somehow be true. In fact he knew it to be true, he had seen evidence of it with his own eyes.

He now saw evidence of it again as the head of his Ping putter struck the ball, and, as the ball set off for the hole some twelve feet away, proceeded to elongate itself into a six inch long, golf ball-wide, penis. As Armitage watched its journey to the hole, mouth agape, eyes stuck out like chapel hat pegs, the penis sprouted a couple of golf ball-sized testicles. Then, as the hole got nearer the penis got bigger, until at the moment it entered the hole it was the same diameter, and a perfect fit, the shaft of the penis disappearing up to the hilt, leaving the testicles above ground.

“
Oh well holed,” said Stock, as the penis disappeared. He approached the hole, flagstick in hand. “Stay there, I'll throw it back to you.”

With that Stock retrieved the penis and tossed it back to Armitage. By now it was fully eighteen inches long. Armitage instinctively dropped his putter and held out his hands wide enough to enable him to catch something of this size. However by the time it arrived it was a normal-sized golf ball again. Passing through his outstretched hands it hit him on the chest and dropped harmlessly to the ground.

“
Han Ging Li.”

“
Lou Sinpediment.”

“
Caz Hywel Water.”

When Fidler had started to make his way from the course after running out of balls he had every intention, as he had intimated to Dawson and Elwes, of going to the pro's shop to buy some more. However on the way there it struck him what a pointless exercise it would be. After all he had only five more holes to play and even if he happened by some miracle to get a hole in one at each of them his play had been so poor on the previous thirteen holes that he would still have no chance of winning. Apart from that he had things to do, the lawn needed mowing for one and his VAT return needed to be filled in for another. Of course Dawson and Elwes would be waiting for him to return, and if he were to go home they would be waiting until the cows came home, which was something to be considered. However, on reflection, far from this being an obstacle to his going home he saw it as all the more reason for him to do so in view of the spiteful trick they'd played on him. So he went home.

In the beer tent Mr Harkness, Mr Oldknow and Mr Wormald were already well into their third double whisky with pint of bitter chaser and things were livening up. The Lady Captain, who was matching them with double gins but eschewing the pints of bitter in favour of more double gins, had just succeeded in bringing the gentlemen’s conversation on the subject of crown green bowls round to the subject of sex, a quantum leap by any stretch of the imagination, but nothing to a woman who has taken a shine to someone.

“
Taller men make the best lovers,” she said, looking fondly at Harkness, then added, modestly, “Or so I have been told.”

“
Really?” said Harkness, genuinely surprised.

“
So I’m led to believe.” The Lady Captain looked him up and down appreciatively. “You're quite a tall man, aren't you Mr Harkness.”

“
Quite tall, yes.”

“
I'm not, but I'm prepared to stand on a box,” said Oldknow.

“
Me too,” said Wormald.

“
Of course that isn't to say that shorter men can't be excellent lovers too,” said the Lady Captain to Oldknow and Wormald, aware that Harkness might not feel the same way about her as she felt about him, and hedging her bets.

At almost sixty years of age the Lady Captain was still a very attractive woman so Oldknow and Wormald wasted no time in encouraging her further.

“
It's not the size of the gun....” said Oldknow.

“
....It's the force of the bullet,” said Wormald.

“
Quite,” said the Lady Captain. She re-crossed her legs, making sure the three old men seated opposite her got a good view of a generous expanse of creamy white thigh and hopefully a glimpse of her pink silk French knickers. “Of course my husband Bobby was a tall man. He was an excellent lover.”

“
I wouldn't expect a man who said a pint of bitter always went down better when it was accompanied by a chaser to be anything else,” said Oldknow, sagely.

“
Me neither,” said Wormald.

“
But of course he's sadly passed on, and....” the Lady Captain said sadly, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken.

Oldknow filled it in as “I'm going short.”

Wormald, a coarser man, filled it in as “I'm gasping for the leg over.”

Harkness, a less worldly man and more of a gentleman than his companions, didn't fill it in at all. His late wife had kept him just as short of sex as she had of alcohol and it had been so long since he’d had it he had almost forgotten it existed. Certainly any play for his affections would have to be couched in more obvious terms than “But of course he's sadly passed on, and....”

The Lady Captain now sensed that her words, while bringing more than a twinkle to the eye of Oldknow, and nothing short of a lascivious grin and the beginnings of an erection from Wormald, had had no effect at all on Harkness. She decided to adopt a less oblique approach. She got up, walked over to him, sat on his knee, put her arms round his neck, and said, “How about a fuck?”

Mr Captain had just about recovered from the upset of Phyllis Hill when the fire engine drove onto the course.

It wasn't the first time Mr Captain had seen a fire engine on the course; a few years previously during a period of drought the local fire service had been good enough to pump thousands of gallons of water over the greens and fairways in an effort to stop them burning up. However there was no drought at the moment, and even if there had been and the course had been drier than the Sahara Desert nobody would have sent for the fire service to pump water over it today, not on Captain's Day.

In fact Tobin, who observed the appearance of the fire engine through the pro’s shop window, would himself have sent for the fire service to pump water over the course if he'd thought of it. However he wasn't too disappointed at not thinking of it as he'd thought of something much, much better.

Mr Captain quickly headed for the fire engine, waving his arms about in an effort to make it stop. It would have stopped anyway, as the driver of the fire engine, Leading Fireman Jeffers, needed directions. After pulling up and waiting for Mr Captain to walk round to his side of the cab the fire officer wound down the window and said, “Excuse me, which is the way to the thirteenth green?”

Not for the first time that day, nor the last, Mr Captain couldn't believe his ears. “What?”

“
The thirteenth green. Apparently you have a woman stuck up a tree.”