Tim Connor Hits Trouble (16 page)

Erica thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I hope so.’

‘I do, too. Let’s see how it goes. But staying in the moment, I could murder that Indian.’

‘Good idea. I’ll give it a whiz in the micro-wave.’

It mattered to Tim that he got to stay the night. Two months previously it wouldn’t have bothered him so much. They made easy love again as dawn spread its crisp light across the bedroom. They ate breakfast by a broad semi-circular window that gave a panoramic view of the city. But smiling and relaxed most of their attention was on themselves.

Tim put off leaving for as long as he could. At the door of the flat, bare-foot, Erica stretched to kiss him goodbye.

‘Do you fancy one for the road, then?’

Tim smiled down at her.

‘Come on now, give piece a chance.’

‘Idiot!’ Erica planted a giant kiss on his lips before they finally parted.

Tim felt a warm glow as he strolled back home through the city. He was pleased with himself, besotted with Erica and inclined to give the world at large the benefit of the doubt. ‘Give peace a chance,’ he repeated to himself as he beamed cheerfully at the passing public, ‘she’s certainly done that.’

‘Is that you Henry?’

‘I think so. I’m not fully awake yet. Is that you, Tim?’

‘Yes, no doubt about it. How are things Henry?’

‘Pretty average Tim. And yourself?’

‘Fine. Not to beat about the bush, how would you like to meet up for a drink and a chat?’

‘The drink sounds good. Any particular reason for a chat? Are you in trouble or something; in need of solace and advice from a wise if fast fading colleague?’

Tim throttled a laugh. He wasn’t quite sure how to take Henry’s self-mockery.

‘No, no more than usual. I just wanted to talk about a few work-related things with you, and see how you are.’

‘Well yeah, good idea. Aren’t we both free from teaching by late afternoon? I finish at three thirty. We could meet then. Do you fancy a round of golf followed by a barrel of ale? I seem to have run out of playing partners these days so it would be just you and me. Can you play the game, by the way?’

‘Not really. It’s always seemed like a slow way of boring yourself to death to me. But maybe I should learn. I’m about reaching the stage when I’ll have to give up soccer for something less physically punishing.’

‘I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ How about we leave from the campus shortly after three thirty? I’ll come and get you from your room. Is that OK?’

‘I’ll look forward to it. See you later.’

‘So you will. Cheers.’

On the golf course Henry was a revelation. He hit shots and sank putts to a standard that looked almost professional to Tim’s untrained eyes. Without ever giving the matter much thought Tim had assumed that a man’s physical strength was well past its peak by the age of sixty. At below average height and with a prominent beer-belly Henry looked even less athletic than many of his age. But this was deceptive. His wide chest and shoulders and low centre of gravity were well suited to golf and by no means all his muscle had turned to fat. He hammered drives in excess of two hundred yards with seemingly little effort. Tim knew from the first hole that two very different rounds of golf were about to unfold.

‘Hell’s bells, Henry, where do you find the strength to do that?’ asked Tim as another of Henry’s drives sailed majestically down the fairway.

‘It’s more timing than strength or at least strength isn’t much use unless you’ve got timing. If club and ball come together on the sweet-spot you hardly know you’ve hit anything. Direction helps as well,’ Henry added with a grin. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll improve with practice.’

‘That’s some consolation, then,’ said Tim whose own drives were a mixture of air-shots and random connections that flew off briskly at unhelpful if interesting angles. One pinged close to a dog of the square-headed, crocodile-jawed variety. The animal was about to make a lively riposte when its agitated owner managed to restrain it.

‘Careful Mate, you shouldn’t be playing if you can’t hit
the ball straight, it’s your own fault if the dog rips a piece off you.’ Tim was about to contest this proposition when he was suddenly struck by a disconcerting resemblance between the snarling pair. If anything the dog was the less repellent of the two.

Confronted by two sets of unfriendly teeth he decided against a withering retort. Instead he waved an apologetic hand and hastened off in pursuit of his ball which had veered erratically towards a dense patch of brambles. Failing to find it, he took a drop and finished the hole in eight.

Their round had by now taken on a distinctive shape, or in Tim’s case, shapelessness. Henry’s opening drives invariably settled on or close to the fairway a hundred or so yards ahead of Tim’s, depending on the length of the hole and the direction Tim’s shot had travelled in. The two men then walked to Tim’s ball usually to retrieve it from the long rough or even more remote locations. Tim then took the necessary number of shots to catch up with Henry. On the longer holes this routine was repeated a second or third time until they reached the green.

Henry was modestly enjoying his moment as top banana. He chatted and smiled encouragingly as Tim hacked round in his wake. He observed kindly that once Tim’s ball was within a foot or so of the hole, he putted with ‘an iron nerve.’ Accepting that his round was beyond embarrassment and pleased for the older man, Tim took the piss-taking compliment with good grace. At Henry’s insistence they abandoned any pretence of competition and treated the round as Tim’s introduction to the game.

The eighteenth hole offered Henry a moment of transcendence and Tim one of partial redemption. The hole was a four-fifty yarder which dog-legged at forty-five degrees from about halfway. It was lined with thick-trunked trees on either side of the fairway.

‘Tim, I’ve had the honour all the way, so you go first on the last hole. It might change your luck.’

‘I doubt it. But ok. Make sure you stand well behind me. The one mistake I don’t think I’ll make is clubbing the ball backwards. But remember I have a long swing. I don’t want to decapitate you.’

Tim selected a driver and squared up to the ball with renewed intent – a last chance to shine. He launched the club and himself savagely at the blameless orb. Seventeen holes worth of frustration cascaded through his long arms and the whirling blade. Man and ball left the ground at the moment of impact.

‘Crack!’

Tim stumbled to the floor but the ball was motoring. A second crack rang out as it smacked into a tree trunk. It then angled back across the fairway cannoning into another tree propelling it a further fifty or so yards forward. The ball had reached the dogleg and came to rest in the middle of the fairway. The law of averages had finally worked in Tim’s favour, aided by several touches of contingency.

Tim got up from the floor and waved his fists in triumph.

‘Got you at last, Henry. You might equal that but you can’t beat it.’

Henry nodded in appreciation. ‘Cometh the moment, cometh the man.’

He carefully teed up his own ball before holding up a moistened finger to test the direction of the wind. Satisfied he selected a wood from his golf-bag. He loosened his shoulders and steadied himself as he addressed the ball. The club travelled swiftly in a perfect arch from one shoulder to the other, striking the ball almost noiselessly. The ball was still rising fifty yards short of the dogleg where it caught a gust of wind that carried it round the angle. They were just able to see it beginning to dip into the second part of the fairway.

The two men stood for a moment in awed contemplation, witnesses to an act of golfing perfection.

It was Henry who broke the silence.

‘Tim, let’s leave it at that. If I never play golf again, I’ll live
happily with the memory of that shot. Indulge me, young man, and give me an honourable draw. This is my Nicklaus-Jacklin moment.’

‘Henry, the honour is all yours. You can call it a draw if you like but I’m calling it a lesson – and not just in golf. You’re a model of sporting grace. By the way the next round is mine, in the bar that is.’

In the clubhouse the first pint of well-kept local ale tasted better than amber nectar. They talked sport before spending a few minutes effortlessly solving the world’s major problems. Eventually Tim felt relaxed enough to bring the conversation round to Henry’s difficulties at work. He had no clear idea of what he wanted their talk to achieve other than persuading Henry not to provoke the hierarchy into sacking him. On the other hand the fighter in him warmed to the fighter in Henry. But fight or flight he knew he was on the older man’s side. This was the ethics of the gut but that was the way he felt.

He looked thoughtfully at his colleague: even as Henry relaxed there was nothing about him that suggested much capacity for compromise: the jutting chin, the belligerent brow, and a nose that looked as though it had battled its way through more than a few fist fights. The notion that Henry might lower his profile and stay more or less sober on campus was probably a non-starter. Tim broached matters tentatively.

‘Some of us thought you got a rough deal in Swankie’s job rotation exercise.’

‘And others didn’t. Steir’s been out to get me for years.’

‘I wouldn’t know. But I think Swankie is your real enemy. I guess you’re pretty pissed off.’

‘You could say that,’ a shadow passed across Henry’s face. ‘It’s not just those two. The whole place is changing and in my view for the worse. I mean, I got an email from Swankie the other day asking me, well telling me, ordering me if you like, to go and see the Director of Learning and Teaching. I know there is such an entity but I’m fucked if I’m going to
see him, or her - whoever it is. For God’s sake, ‘The Director of Learning and Teaching’! I thought academics directed learning and teaching. Not that ‘direct’ is the right word. I like to think I teach students, communicate with them. And despite what those shits think I still have plenty to say.’

As the beer went down Henry talked on. As usual his target of attack was ‘the system’ but Tim appreciated that a lot of emotional unloading was taking place.

‘This isn’t over yet. I’m not going to let my working life end in a humiliating shambles. They’re trying to buy me off with a lump sum but I’ve no intention of making life easy for them. I might get a lawyer on the case to rough them up a bit. I’ve already talked to the union rep; she mentioned something about constructive dismissal. Or maybe I’ll find some way of nailing them myself. I might enjoy that more.’

Abandoning any attempt to calm Henry down Tim reminded him of the likely outcome of any battle with management.

‘Henry if you fight them they will probably suspend you or even sack you. They have the power and you don’t.’

Henry was in no mood for realism.

‘I’ll think of something, believe me. I’ve nothing to lose.’

‘Are you sure about that? Might they not mess around with your pension or your leaving package? I mean, I don’t know, it’s not the kind of thing I’ve looked into.’

‘Tim I’m not going to be pushed out. If I go it will be under my own steam. Anyway, I don’t think they can do much. My pension’s opted out. I’m willing to suffer a bit if I can shaft them as well.’

‘You mean Swankie and Rachel Steir?’

‘Swankie mainly. She cosies up to him, feeds him the crap but he’s the one that takes the decisions.’

‘Henry, will a war of attrition do you any good? Why don’t you just keep out of their way? Skip departmental meetings if you want. I’ll feed them excuses for you.’

Henry gave Tim a stubborn look.

‘I don’t need excuses. The department was doing fine
before Steir and her mate came along. Who do they think they are: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? They’ve fucked up and now they’re trying to mess me up, us up.’

Tim suppressed an impulse to jump to Erica’s defence. It was best to keep the conversation on Henry’s problems. Besides he didn’t know the details of departmental politics of recent years. The conversation went round in circles for a few more minutes. Tim was about to suggest that they call a halt when he noticed that Henry’s expression had changed. For once he looked vulnerable, struggling for words.

‘Tim, look, I know I’m not the best advert for the things I believe in. When you get older you can see your mistakes more clearly, the opportunities you missed, the hurt you caused for other people. But you can’t start again. You’re stuck with what you’ve done. There’s an analogy that I’ve come across that captures what I’m trying to say.

‘Go ahead.’

‘So, compare the journey through life to climbing a mountain, Every now and then you stop and look back. At every point you see more of the landscape or, in the analogy, more of the pattern of your life. The closer you are to the end of the journey the more you see and understand about what’s gone before, especially your own part in it. It’s all there in sharper perspective but set hard and immutable. You can’t change anything. It’s too late. There’s no denying what’s been done and there’s no going back. Failed relationships of years ago that perhaps you gave up on too easily, can be seen for what they are, failures, perhaps selfish failures; culpable lack of effort in work, shrugged off at the time, clearly appears now as laziness or weakness. It’s the same with failure to get really involved in the political causes you believe in.’

‘Henry, you’re being too hard on yourself.’

Henry brushed aside Tim’s attempt to halt his lapse into melancholic nostalgia.

‘No, I’m not, I wish I was. I know exactly what I’ve done
and not done, exactly where I am in my life. It’s not pretty and I’m sorry for a lot of it: my penchant for fine words and feeble actions. But Tim, I want to say this to you. My inadequacies don’t mean that my values and the causes I believe in are wrong. I believe that corrupt elites run this country and higher education has gone along with it. Academics have done almost nothing to stop it: a modern
trahison des clercs
. Ok… there have been a few protests and angry books and articles a-plenty but no serious action. We’re a pusillanimous lot. And I admit I’ve been worse than most. There’s not much I can do now. But I won’t creep away and hide under a stone. If all I can achieve is a gesture then so be it.’

He shook his fist in rhythm with his concluding words, refocusing on Tim as he did so.

‘Tim, I’m sorry. I’m banging on about myself again. I’m not a complete egocentric degenerate, you know. Well, not just,’ he attempted a self-disparagingly smile. ‘I should be helping you to settle in, not dumping on you. I know you have your share of personal problems too. Maybe more than I do. And you’ve walked into a bit of a maelstrom here – don’t let it suck you in. But you’ve got youth on your side, a life still to build. It’s harder when you’re closer to the other end of things.’

He paused, resisting the temptation to return to his own problems. ‘Look I’m sorry I’ve been more hindrance than help to you. You seem to be coping well but you deserved better than this. If there’s any way I can help you I will.’

Tim was moved by the older man’s unexpected apologia. But he felt awkward and uncertain how to respond. He seldom got emotionally close to other men and rarely seemed to want to. His air of independence and slight aloofness meant that it was not often that people confided their problems to him and he was even less likely to talk about his own. That was the way it had been for as long as he could remember.