Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘Yeah. Baby steps. Ouch .’

Ransom winces as she inadvertently jogs him with her bump. The razor nicks into the side of his lip. She promptly leans down and grabs a square of toilet paper from the roll, tears off a tiny corner, crumples it up, and applies it to the wound.

‘So far as I recollect,’ Ransom mutters, ‘Jimmie had a lot of fair points to make. If only he’d kept his cock in his pocket he could’ve still been making them.’

‘Jimmie cock never enter into it!’ Esther snorts, withdrawing. ‘The man a fine coach — a great coach — an’ cheap at half the money. Truth is, you just couldn’t handle what he was dishin’ out.’

‘Lucky you were there to handle it, then, eh?’ Ransom purrs, eyeing her distended belly, meaningfully.

Esther doesn’t react.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Ransom continues, ‘Jimmie? A great coach? Seriously? A great coach?! He wasn’t even a good coach! He was average, at best. And he was the worst kind of drunk: boring, stupid, charmless … A hectoring drunk. The man was a total, fucking liability, Esther. He was also twice your age and happily married when he knocked you up. Remember?’

‘Change the record, Stu,’ Esther mutters, flushing. ‘Me not got nothin’ to do with it. It was all about you an’ your precious swing.’

‘Oh really?’ Ransom half turns to face her.

‘Jimmie was a damn fool tryin’ a mess with it.’ She rolls her eyes, sardonic. ‘Nation may rise an’ nation may fall,’ she sings, ‘but the Lord knows: Stuart Ransom swing — that precious swing of his — transcend it all!’

‘I know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Est,’ Ransom grumbles, ‘but don’t you find it even a little bit ironic that my swing was the thing Jimmie most admired about my game when we first started working together? Jimmie loved my swing! Jimmie said my swing was “at the heart” of who I was as a golfer! He said my swing had — I quote — “a superabundance of character”! I mean what a friggin’ wheeze! What a rib-tickler! What a monumental, fuckin’ card the old boy was, eh?’

‘Ha ha,’ Esther laughs, hollowly.

‘How’s that famous saying go?’ Ransom wonders. ‘The one about people always killing the things they love?’

‘Ain’t got a clue.’

Esther is implacable.

‘It’s a famous saying, dick-head! Look it up on Ask Jeeves or something if you don’t believe me.’

‘I’ll be sure an’ do that’ — Esther nods — ‘on my next schedule day off.’

(Esther hasn’t been scheduled a day off in the previous thirteen months.)

Ransom digests this sullen observation, without comment, before: ‘Where’s the latest edition of Golf World got to? Did you unpack the rest of my stuff yet? I wanna show you that Butch Harmon piece I told you about in the cab. The one where he says nobody gives a flying fuck about swing knowledge any more. The one where he says swing knowledge is yesterday’s chip paper …’

‘Ain’t stop him floggin’ that Swing Memory device of his all over the golfin’ channel every chance he get,’ Esther demurs.

‘That’s just a sop for the punters!’ Ransom snorts. ‘He’s all about “maximizing your ability” nowadays — which means doing more of what you do well, basically …’

‘Baby step.’ Esther shrugs.

‘Baby steps my arse! It’s a completely different psychological approach!’ Ransom scoffs. ‘Fuck baby steps! Leave baby steps to the babies! Look at Westwood for Christ’s sake! He got his game back by just allowing himself to feel again …’

‘Feel again?!’ Esther echoes, disparagingly. ‘Lee rebuild his game from the ground up, an’ lost himself three stone while he was at it!’

Esther slaps Ransom’s belly with the back of her hand. ‘You want his dietician number so you can fire her, too?’

‘What is it with you and paternity?’ Ransom hits back where it hurts most. ‘Three kids by different dads, and each time it’s like some major, friggin’ whodunnit — a bad episode of friggin’ Poirot ! A stupid game of friggin’ Cluedo ! Who’s the daddy, Esther? Eh? Who’s the daddy?’ He pokes at her belly with his forefinger. ‘Professor Plum in the map room with the laser-pointer? Colonel Mustard in the pantry with the turkey baster?’

Esther sucks on her tongue in such a way as to render a verbal response unnecessary.

‘I wouldn’t even mind’ — Random smirks — ‘but just as soon as you push the little buggers out you ship them straight back to Jamaica to live with your bloody mother!’

Esther snatches a clipboard from its temporary resting-place on top of a nearby towel rail and appraises it, frowning, struggling to maintain her composure. ‘Don Hansard phone,’ she informs him, indicating towards a yellow Post-it note glued to the top page.

Ransom pays her no heed. He is inspecting her bump with a look of morbid fascination on his face. ‘ Man! That thing’s incredible,’ he exclaims (as if seeing it for the first time in all its magnitude). ‘It’s huge! It’s multi-dimensional! Are you sure you got a kid in there and not a litter of bulldogs? It’s mad! It’s like three bumps all in one. It’s like you’re about to give birth to a giant, horizontal turd …’

‘Don Hansard phone,’ she repeats, half an octave higher.

‘Perhaps that wily, old piss-head didn’t knock you up after all,’ Ransom muses. ‘Wanna know who I’m putting my money on?’

She stares at him, stony-faced.

‘Mr fuckin’ Whippy!’ Ransom cackles, then commences whistling a child’s nursery rhyme (to simulate the approach of an ice-cream van). Esther doesn’t crack a smile. She peers down at her clipboard again, blinking.

‘In fact d’you have any idea what a bloody state you look?’ Ransom demands, stepping aside so she can appraise herself in the mirror. ‘You’re a mess! Your face is covered in acne. Your hair’s just a mop. Your grooming’s gone fuckin’ haywire. I mean who the hell told you it was okay to combine fuchsia with apricot? Eh? You’re Stuart Ransom’s manager, woman! Start acting like it! Develop a bit of self-respect! Just look at your top! It’s worn out. It’s a fucking rag . The fabric’s all thin and bobbly where it’s been stretched over the —’

‘He runnin’ a Course Management seminar,’ Esther butts in, reading from the board, ‘an’ he think you might —’

‘ What?! ’ Ransom scoffs, returning to his shave again. ‘Hansard wants me to help run a seminar on Course Management?! Has he gone totally doo-lally? I couldn’t Course Manage a piss-up in a fuckin’ brewery!’

He pauses for a second, inspects his face in the mirror, does some final clearing up around his jawline, then adds, ‘How much?’

‘How much?’ she echoes.

‘The fee, Dumbo!’

‘No fee.’

‘Come again?’ Ransom’s incredulous. ‘He expects me to do it f’ nowt ?!’

Esther shakes her head. ‘He want you go as —’

‘As his patsy? His mentor? His bitch ?! To offer moral, fuckin’ support?!’ Ransom interrupts. ‘ Gratis? Out of the goodness of my own heart?! With my fuckin’ overdraft? Is he nuts?’

‘As a student,’ Esther finally finishes off.

Ransom’s smile fades. He stares at her, blankly.

‘A student,’ she repeats. ‘Don student. I said you probably wouldn’t.’

‘Probably?’ Ransom’s jaw drops. ‘You told him I probably wouldn’t …?’

‘It’s four thousand for the week — dollar. No board. Then flight on top. We still in dispute with American Airline, remember? Don offerin’ ten per cent reduction for some promotional DVD he been cookin’ up. I tell him even with full complimentary we be stretchin’ our budget —’