Being away from Colleen for so long often leaves me feeling as if I am falling down inside. She knows what this means to me to try for all I am worth to fulfill my pledge to our son, and she has told me again and again not to worry about anything and just to learn as much as I can, and to be calm about things. We can’t talk by telephone because of the cost, but her encouragement in letters and by e-mail is constant.
But now I will get to remember Colleen here in her striped skirt and her ruffled blouse. She surprised me and flew over a few days ago, and she and I and Glen are now sharing the flat since the Open is in town. He and I are looping doubles every day in the rain up at Castle Course, leaving the flat at 5:30 in the morning and hitchhiking up the hill in the darkness. When we return home in the evening, Colleen puts supper on the table while we hang up our soaking-wet clothes. Life for caddies can’t get much better than this, though I have only two hours a day when I’m not working or sleeping to spend with Colleen. I don’t want to even think how lonely this flat will feel when I’m alone here again.
I have not written many e-mails this season, since it involves me walking to the pub at night, but yesterday I wrote to Jack and his sisters and sent them a photograph of their mother with the PGA Tour player Ricky Barnes. I was out in the morning caddying at the Castle Course for a friend of Ricky’s, who told me that he had gotten into the field for the open as the last alternate and he was looking for someone who knew the Old Course and would walk it with his caddie. I spent the evening with Ray Farnell, a brilliant young caddie from Australia who had never set foot on the Old Course. Ray was caddying in his first major, and he wasn’t willing to leave anything to chance. When I told him that the wind can turn 180 degrees when the tide changes, he looked right in my eyes and said, “Where can I get a tide chart in town, mate?”
“Hey, Jack,” I wrote in my e-mail. “Here’s your beautiful mother with a golfer you will recognize. Last evening I walked the Old Course with his caddie, showing him all the secrets of the place. Check the leaderboard tonight after the second round and you’ll see that he is currently in second place.”
I left it at that. When I told Colleen about it that night lying in bed, she knew exactly what I had been hoping. “You still think you’ll be Jack’s caddie someday?” she asked.
“It doesn’t seem very likely,” I told her. “But I don’t give up easily, I guess.”
“I’m glad you don’t,” she said.
I pulled her close and told her that I was going to miss her after she left. “I already counted the days I’ll have to get through without you,” I said. “Once I get home, I’m never leaving you again.”
“We’ll see,” she said.