As a result of my deeply deflating performance on the second hole, Hugh had the honors on the third tee. Perhaps it was my fundamental unpredictability with the driver, but this particular tee shot had always bedeviled me. The tee box itself was elevated well above the fairway, and required a drive back across the same swathe of trees and gorse that lay between the tee and the green on the second hole – that brush and tangle into which I had just buried yet another traitorous ball.
Considerable menace loomed in view. The drive had to enter the fairway at a 45-degree angle, so that a fade was called for; but a thin stream ran across the fairway some 230 yards out, and a gentle fade that turned into a slice could easily drift into the water. The bold player might go for smashing his ball completely over the stream, in which case the green lay a mere 80 yards away, just a simple uphill pitching wedge. But any attempt to carry the stream was, of course, fraught with its own danger. Straining for that extra measure of power, it was dreadfully easy to over-swing and send your shot awry; duck-hooking down into the ravine, flaring wildly to the right and into deeper thickets, or simply dribbling ignominiously down the slope that ran off the hill upon which the tee sat, and into the valley of thorns and brush.
“I’ve always had a hard time with this shot,” observed Hugh as he teed his ball and scratched his chin.
I suppose it could have been an innocent remark – certainly, the words themselves were neutral and unobjectionable. I thought otherwise, however. I had no doubt his bland comment actually masked some ulterior purpose – for, thinking back upon our countless hours on the course, I never recalled him having the slightest difficulty here. In fact, it was just the opposite. I was, therefore, immediately suspicious, and determined to ferret out his plot. “What do you mean?” I queried tartly.
“Well, I always wanted to have a wedge into the green like you big hitters, but I guess it's not to be.”
The clumsiness of his stratagem made me smile.
He struck a 3-iron carefully to the middle of the fairway, away from the bend of the stream, but it drew more than he had intended, leaving him well short of the hazard and, I thought, some considerable distance from the green. He observed his shot phlegmatically, however, and smiled sweetly, as if to say that this day, and all things connected with it, were perfect.
Now it was my turn. In my youth, I would have unsheathed my driver in petulant anger, the better to banish and bury my sad showing on the previous hole. Such, I knew, was my opponent's expectation. That was a long time ago, however. I was a grown man now, and a rational thinker. Hugh's transparent attempt at provocation had been a waste.
“How many balls did I lose on this hole?” I asked Hugh as I took my stance and readied my drive.
“Well,” he replied, “I don’t believe I kept count.”
I smiled agreeably, then struck a boring 5-wood that faded slightly and ran up the fairway just short of the stream, perfectly positioned, a delicious riposte to his sarcasm.
“That's for being clever,” I said.
Together we laughed, and retraced the muddy trail back down through the gloomy ravine and up onto the third fairway. I forgot about the second hole, the casual golfer's essential skill being a capacity for amnesia – or, to put it more accurately, for a kind of selective amnesia, remembering with great clarity all the good shots, perhaps even exaggerating their supereminence, while consigning the rest to the dustbin of history. I felt happy and content. I had never really expected to return to Milford; simply standing once more upon this ground, therefore, particularly on a warm and sunny May afternoon full with the rich fragrance of grass and wildflowers, was a more-than ample benefaction.
We ambled along side-by-side beneath the high blue sky. Hugh told me about his work and asked about mine.
“Lumber brokering?” I asked. “Like, wood for houses?”
“Yeh, residential and commercial both. And specialty woods for custom jobs, furniture, cabinets, whatever's popular and people want.”
“Is it steady?”
“Steady enough,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate.” He paused and grinned. “I didn’t figure you for a lawyer, though!”
“Oh? What then?”
“Well, something useless, I suppose – I mean, the way you’d go about all dreamy-eyed talking books and the like, you know. Your books and memorizing poetry and all, seriously! I’m surprised you ended up doing anything people would pay you for, much less anything with some logical thinking to it. If finding golf balls in the gorse was something you could get paid for, I guess that might have worked out for you.”
“Are you asking me to recite some poetry now?” I laughed.
“No, please!
“There was a young lad from the Haven, whose wits were well beyond savin’; made his living from wood, ‘cause that's all he could; with the pitiful brains that God gave ‘im.”
Hugh shook his head. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he sighed. “Not one bit.”
We waved at two old men in argyle sweaters pulling their carts up the opposite fairway, the eighth. Wisps of clouds billowed in from the west, streaming toward the shelter of the Haven, and it was all just as I had remembered and could have wished.
Our conversation drew us back to old friends and old memories, and soon we wandered into the subject of our days playing junior rugby - both of us having been stalwarts of the Junior XV at the grammar school, and, in this capacity, having consumed many stern hours slogging through the muddy practice fields, in bitter, biting cold, preparing for weekend contests against the schools in Haverfordwest, or Tenby, or Fishguard, or rivals farther inland, deep between the hills up near, or even beyond, the Landsker Line; that invisible linguistic demarcation which people said ran through Pembrokeshire, and separated its soft English south from its true, hard, Welsh north.
There, in these matches in the north, the pitches were flinty and the wind raged furiously, so furiously it hurt awfully to run, much less to play rugby, much less to smash flesh and bone against other hurtling bodies. And the boys from these landlocked towns, steeped in a harsh, proud, Celtic heritage, seemed so grimly severe about their rugby, and went about it with such implacable fixedness, as to give me the unsettling sensation of being in an uncomfortable embrace with some blind, stubborn force of great antiquity. In a way that eluded my facility with words, it seemed to me these boys were different; that they went about their rugby not as a lark or a pastime - or even to impress the girls, or to gain status in that invisible hierarchy which governs the world of the boys, motivations I could easily have understood and respected – but, rather, under some rough, unyielding prod that escaped my ken altogether. It was disconcerting, in an undefinable way. What sort of men might these hard, stony creatures possibly become? From what sort of men did they issue? I tried not to look at the wraith-like figures roaming the sidelines, shrouded in thick grey overcoats – their fathers, no doubt, uncles, grandfathers – fevered, red-rimmed eyes gleaming beneath woolen caps, deep-lined faces covered with grey-black stubble. Instead, I chased and cursed the hard boys from the hard inland villages as they bore relentlessly forward.
Our team, however, the Milford Junior XV, was different. Something about living by the sea, and the lightness of spirit that derives from proximity to the water, seemed to infuse our collective personality, so that while we always played gamely, never were we fanatical about winning or overly concerned with results. The ride back to Milford was warm and languid; the bus wound down through the rolling coast, back to our homes on the hills above the Haven, and we laughed and joked and sang, and the match itself would recede, leaving us simply with its pleasant residue, our shared effort and our shared fatigue. Come Monday, we would return to the muddy pitch for yet more practice, the gray clouds scuttling overhead, the wind lacerating our pallid arms and legs, our coach exhorting us anew to run faster and tackle harder, slam and bang with greater gusto, give it more, because – especially if we had suffered a grievous thumping in last Saturday's match - we owed the school a victory after our shameful, gutless performance.
Sauntering down the fairway – like two boulevardiers with time on our hands, I suggested to Hugh's amusement - we agreed that any reminiscence of our bygone rugby careers would be incomplete without special attention to the memory of our old coach - for indeed the coach of the Junior XV had carved a unique impression, unabraded by time.
The man's name was Jack Brown – a nondescript enough tag, calling to mind absolutely nothing of note or interest. In his ordinary, daily incarnation, Mr. Brown served as the school's Geography teacher, relegated to a musty classroom hung with large, faded maps depicting obscure regions of the globe. Looking back, I suspect several were likely obsolete – but no matter. He was clipped and concise in his lectures, and stuck vigilantly to his lesson plans; developed, no doubt, over years, and completely impervious to change. No commotion, no ruckus; steady, ordered, and dry. Cloaked in this wholly unprepossessing demeanor, he discharged his teaching duties.
Behind the unremarkable curtain of his flat workaday guise, however, lurked something far different – something with which we boys on the Junior XV became intimately familiar. For, once the day's final bell had rung the end of classes, after we had changed into our kit and stretched and assembled on the field behind the school, it was some wildly unrecognizable rendition of our tepid and forgettable Geography teacher who materialized on the rugby pitch, mutated through some Hyde-like alchemy into an absolute dervish, one foot already sunk into the well of madness.
He screamed, he shouted, he ranted, he leapt up and down, he glowered, he spat black curses, he spun in circles, he kicked savagely at the ground (digging divots larger than any I ever carved into the golf course), made ghoulish faces, and threw vicious punches at sprites in the air. It was like a soda bottle shaken hard then uncorked, froth cascading out uncontrollably, spilling and foaming over everything. And, in the grip of this bizarre persona, he possessed a remarkable verve with invective. “Run, lad, or I’ll have your guts for garters!” the maniac bawled at any poor wretch lagging behind the play or pausing to catch his breath. “Aha, show me more of that, you spineless pissers!” the cross-eyed crackpot cackled as we collided in heaving scrums and launched ourselves recklessly into bone-crunching tackles. “Bloody, worthless bloody bloody idiot!” howled the hysteric as some miscreant dropped the ball or slipped in the mire.
As Hugh and I strolled toward our shots and reminisced, the figure of our schizophrenic Geography teacher and rugby coach took shape again before my eyes, red-faced and puffing, shrouded in the wet mist that seemed to hover forever above the practice pitch, roaring “Well, there's a Yank who wants to play rugby! Take a lesson, you miserable cretins!” as one afternoon, in some long-vanished twilight, I raced past a pack of would-be tacklers and left them sprawling in the mud.
An involuntary shiver shook me head-to-toe, as again the soaked and clammy jersey clung to my skin, again the incessant wind cut me to ribbons, again my hands and feet throbbed as we slid in the muck, piled on top of one another, chased the bouncing ball, grabbed at one other's arms and legs, shouted and laughed, the day waning and gray dusk descending over the pitch, till finally we drag ourselves frigid and exhausted to the changing room.
As we poked around the remnants of memories concerning our mad and farcical coach, Hugh remarked, almost as an afterthought, “Rugby's a complicated game to understand.”
It seemed a cryptic utterance. I offered no reply, awaiting some sort of clarification or elaboration. None followed, however. As we continued strolling the fairway, Hugh seemed momentarily lost in thought. I wondered if he was thinking back to his own days on the pitch – he had been a wonderful young player, lithe and elusive, with great endurance and spirit. He was also, I remembered, an ardent fan who followed the game very seriously – and, like every Welshman, nothing surpassed his devotion to the national team, the Wales XV.
Once, late in the springtime – it would have been April or May - Hugh had organized a group of schoolmates to charter a cheap bus to Cardiff for the Wales v. England match. The event meant nothing to me, other than the prospect of a fun-filled outing with my friends. I had clearly misread the occasion, however, for it soon became obvious that larger and deeper forces were at play, twisting my friends into tight coils of anticipation. And this bubbling excitement among my mates proved so contagious that shortly I too found myself caught up in its hot boil. This Wales v. England affair, I surmised, must be something important, and a thing worth seeing.
As dawn began to tiptoe in early on the appointed Saturday morning, the sky faintly streaked with strands of pink and yellow, the rented coach lumbered up and gasped to a halt in front of Johnson's candy shop on Waterloo Square. There, the twenty or thirty of us who had paid our share of the cost stood waiting, our breath smoky in the clear, cold air. Unceremoniously, addled by having risen at daybreak, we all piled in, and the bus rumbled noisily away, heaving and coughing like a tubercular case.
As we rode, the nervous energy intensified, and our early morning daze evaporated. Everyone's wits sharpened; the chatter and banter amplified with each mile passed. Great events loomed ahead - of that, we were certain, the entire day opening up, adventures and escapades in Wales’ capitol city beckoning, parents abandoned far behind. Before us lay the promise of a fine and splendid occasion on which to be young and carefree, and a long way from home. In high spirits, therefore, we rattled happily along, and the morning lengthened.
Finally, after three hours of clunking, clanking twists and turns, from what I had by then concluded was our severely underpowered conveyance, we crept to a halt outside stately Cardiff Arms stadium, the day now brilliantly bright and sunny – and the sensation of stepping off the bus into a surging swarm of many thousand fully-steamed, fully-charged, fully-fired devotees of the Welsh National Team struck like electricity.
Energy and fervor not only sizzled through the air – energy and fervor made up every atom of the air itself. Every superheated breath singed my lungs with an unseen force, which, like some supernatural current, was crackling across and between the mass of bodies into which we had descended. It was a huge hubbub, a maelstrom of galvanized, concentrated emotion. I felt as if within a teeming, fevered, school of fish – animated and united by a single-minded focus which, I rapidly deduced, boiled down to the annihilation of the Englishmen, spawns of the underworld. I saw two men in dirty jackets fighting outside a loo. Two pals and I endeavored to chat up three rose-cheeked girls in line for fish and chips. Our efforts proved woefully short-lived, however, as a couple of older toughs smoking cigarettes shoved us off the sidewalk and glared threateningly - as if we might seriously entertain the notion of mixing it up with them. The rapid failure of our romantic sorties did nothing to dampen our moods, however – we moved along and mingled into the throng, sank into it, bought lunch and match programs, wandered, pointed, joined in chants full of dirty words exalting all things Welsh and condemning the English as lower than buggers, and eventually found our way into the stands.
Barely in time did we locate and wedge into our places in the terrace – the pitted, weather-beaten stone steps smelling ever so faintly of urine, or stale beer – or possibly both, against a subtle finish of ripened vomitus. The teams were introduced, the national anthems played, and then, amid a tremendous, bellowing roar, the match was on.
I had no real grasp of the contest's history or meaning, of course, but the entire epic character of the clash was tangible, and I felt its waves drenching everyone in the stadium, including me, soaking every soul in hot, wet, fervor for Wales. Before my wondering eyes, laconic, diffident Hugh became transformed, churning with intensity, concentrating on every run, contorting with every tackle, crying passionately and crudely with every eddy in the twisting swirl of the game. In contrast – for although I experienced the tide of collective zeal, I could not help but also stand a bit apart - I observed as if peering in through a window, enjoying the crowd and the setting, the atmosphere, contemplating what a nice souvenir my Wales roseate was going to make.
It was quickly apparent that out of all the mortal beings stuffed into Cardiff Arms that day, only I had control of myself. The stands beat and throbbed with stomping, arm-waving, wide-eyed, flush-faced Welshmen. The reek of ale and cigarettes gathered above the crowd like a sour fog, and the entire mass swayed to and fro, delivering up one full-throated song after another, brawny and buoyant. Every spectator sported a Wales button or flag, and the strong young Welshmen on the field of battle were heroes, whose heroism resided in their sheer effort and pluck against the overbearing English, and not the actual results, as to which I gathered the crowd had no real expectation.
The match ebbed and flowed, rose and fell, and the score seemed incidental as a Welsh halfback was kicked in the head and stumbled to the sideline, only to return with a bloody bandage around his skull, and the men in the stands swelled, and their voices rang ever louder, and the brave Welshman's return seemed to ignite the lads, who surged nine points ahead with only five minutes to go. I sensed the tension tightening, close and palpable, thousands of hopes mingling with a sort of collective fatalistic anxiety rooted in history.
Then suddenly, the referee blew his whistle, and Wales had held on to claim the victory! The crowd exploded in wild jubilation, everyone hugged everyone, and the flags with their red dragons bright against green-and-white backgrounds flapped majestically against the brilliant blue sky, and my head spun from this intimate immersion in a passion, a drama, with historic, ethnic, martial, socio-economic, personal, familial, caste, and cultural substance I could not begin to comprehend, and of which I understood but a sliver.
And so, if I was unable to comprehend rugby in its fullness when living in Wales back then, a heartland and cauldron of the sport, certainly I did not understand it now, and did not understand Hugh's strange comment.
“What do you mean? I asked.
“You have to be Welsh to understand rugby,” he replied in a definitive, dismissive sort of way.
I laughed. “Well, I guess that's why I never really got it, “I said. “I just played it.”
“And not too bad for a Yank, I have to admit,” Hugh ventured, gazing ahead down the fairway as we approached his ball.
Quite a compliment indeed, from my old, laconic, rugby-mad friend.
Following an extended period of deliberation, Hugh extracted a 5-iron from his bag. A sudden ripple of concern creased his brow.
“Is that enough club?” I inquired solicitously. Although monotonously accurate, Hugh had never been a long hitter. And he needed to clear the stream as well as the rise to the green.
“Well, what do you recommend?” he replied tersely, lifting an eyebrow.
I remained silent and thoughtful, according his inquiry the serious consideration it deserved. I narrowed my eyes and squinted analytically toward the target. “I couldn’t say, really,” I finally responded, professorially, as if speaking of grave and weighty matters, full of serious philosophical implications. “Whatever you think, you know better than me.”
Hugh surveyed me with what seemed like disappointment in his eyes - although it might have been something more malign - then addressed his ball and waggled his club. His preparations bespoke an uncharacteristic hesitancy. He waggled again, then abruptly stepped away. “You don’t think I can get there with a 5, do you?” he snapped accusingly.
“No, no,” I replied quickly. “You’ve gotten too suspicious. I’m sure a 5 is fine. Perfect.”
Again, he addressed the ball.
“It's only a bit uphill,” I observed helpfully. “And the wind's behind you.”
Hugh's shot sailed easily over the stream, but then seemed to catch in the air, fluttered and faltered above the fairway like a broken kite, then fell to ground well short of the green and to the left, buried deep in a nasty mound of thatch.
I uttered not a word. Nor did Hugh.
Up the fairway we trod, to my ball. I punched a solid 9-iron to the center of the green, from where I two-putted to win the hole. As we departed, Hugh gazed wistfully back down the fairway, then at me, then upwards towards the sky and the unpredictable, ever-shifting wind.
“One up,” I announced in a firm voice. “No help up there.”
He glanced again toward the heavens. “I didn’t know you’d become an atheist,” he said. “I’m not surprised.”