At the same time that Rita is contemplating the front of the house where the new French windows will go, and while Michael sits in his classroom listening to the island symphony, Vic is on the fairway.
The world is wide again out here. No houses, no streets, no footpaths. Nothing but the endless fairway rolled out before him. Crisp, trimmed and springy as a new carpet beneath his feet, the bright green lawns sweep down the gradual slope of the first fairway until the grass meets the creek that once ran through the whole suburb. Once children jumped this creek going to and from school, now it runs unseen and unheard beneath the footpaths and roads of the suburb. On the other side of the creek the fairway starts again and runs up to the meticulously manicured green where a small red flag flutters in the afternoon breeze.
You need binoculars to see that far, binoculars strong enough to see into the future because that’s where that tiny red triangle of fluttering red cloth seems to be. You also need a good, strong swing to hit the ball that far. The first tee of this golf course is famous across the city. A few minutes ago, as Vic stood on the tee, his legs perfectly placed, his balance just right and the glistening white ball firmly in his sights, he felt as though he might be able to hit that ball clear into tomorrow. And when he hit the ball he was sure he had never hit a ball so cleanly and sweetly before in his life. But the stroke was no match for the fairway and it landed a brisk stroll away. One day he’ll look up and that ball really will be a tiny, white dot on a distant green.
As he dropped his club back into the bag, Vic and the three other men with whom he has teamed up for the afternoon began their stroll out to the middle of the fairway, and that was when the world opened up and he forgot all about the shot and his disappointment. The green and white clubhouse shrank behind them, the foursome waiting on the tee to play next became small and the world became wide again. Wide, like it always was when he drove those old engines all through the night, clear out into the next morning. Like it always was when he drove out into the sun with the whole city spread out in front of him and everybody was still sleeping. And because he’d seen tomorrow rise up before him time and again on the night shift, he never doubted that tomorrow would always be there to be driven into and that the world would always be wide. That was the kind of expectation that engine driving gave you.
He wheels his buggy down to where his ball lies and watches as, one by one, the other three players clip their balls across the creek. He knows one of them, Gannon, an ex-policeman, a short, square man, but he doesn’t know the other two. Gannon is graceless and brutal. He clubs the ball, bludgeons it onward and the ball resists him, but goes anyway, on pain of further violence. Another, an accountant in a neatly ironed golf shirt and yellow leather gloves, is a morning golfer whose day has been thrown out. As Vic studies him, he can see that he has the crisply dressed look of a man used to teeing off with the dew beneath his feet, just like Arnie. The third is a bank manager who slips away from his office once a week. Out here they all cease to be what they were and are — an ex-engine driver, an ex-detective, an accountant and a bank manager. Out here, they are golfers.
Nobody says much. Vic watches as the new, white balls, each in turn, glide across the creek and land within chipping distance of the green, its flag still fluttering in the afternoon breeze. Beyond the fairway, the rough, the ghost gums, pines and the rotted wooden fence that runs along the eastern boundary of the golf course, the rest of the world goes on. Somewhere out there, Webster’s factory presses scrap metal into spare engine parts; special wheat trains bring grain to the mill; Nat, the Italian barber, trims a customer’s moustache; a red suburban rattler pulls out of the station; and Bruchner’s builders raise a wooden beam into place on the square frame that will be somebody’s home.
The quiet, weekday industry of the suburb continues as it always does, nobody looking up. Vic sweeps on up the fairway. He feels the breeze on his cheek — and after a lifetime of shaving twice before work he feels that breeze more keenly than those around him. As he turns his cheek to the side to feel the full rush of the breeze part of him is driving again. And as he steps over the small, wooden bridge that fords the creek, he looks around him at the sky and the tall gums that were all there before the suburb arrived, and briefly recovers that feeling of width that his world once had.