Late one dreary January evening I was at my computer, doing some research for a matter at work, when I decided to take a break and google “Milford Haven” once again. Every few months, I skimmed the internet in a perfunctory sort of way, generally turning up the same travel articles extolling the natural beauty of the Pembrokeshire Coast, the Milford Mercury webpage, government reports on shipping activity, agricultural production, council housing expansion projects, unemployment rates, or, in the way of variety, the latest official inquiries into the Sea Empress oil spill disaster and reports on the progress of clean-up efforts. Occasionally I might stumble across the site of a business with offices in Milford, a property agent or solicitor. Rarely, though, did I encounter anything of any real interest.
This evening, however, my searching lead me somewhere new; a bulletin board service containing a long list of towns throughout the United Kingdom. I ran through the list and located the Milford board. The concept was simple – if you wished to try to communicate with someone in your location of choice, or were seeking information related to that locale, you simply typed your query, clicked, and added it to the board for your location. Any reader wishing to respond was then free to do so. I was intrigued, and immediately began reading the posts.
It quickly became evident that the bulletin board served as a huge stew-pot, containing messages of almost every variety, from all kinds of people, with all manner of connections to Milford, composed in everything from the Queen's English to barely comprehensible doggerel: sailors who had manned minesweepers patrolling the Irish Sea from bases in the Haven during the war, wondering what had become of the pretty girls with whom they had danced so gaily on bright Saturday nights at the emporium; wanderers whose parents had emigrated from Milford long years past, to Australia or New Zealand or Canada, pleading hopefully for a word from an old school mate, or a neighbor, anyone at all in their unforgotten hometown; men searching for old flames, and vice versa; a woman soliciting information concerning her wayward husband, who she believed to be hiding out somewhere in Pembrokeshire, most likely with a red-headed slattern called Rita; a bitter exile pouring forth buckets of bilge on account of old, imagined wrongs perpetrated upon him as a child growing up in Milford; an aging lady who had celebrated the end of the war by wantonly and repeatedly trading kisses with a complete stranger on Hamilton Terrace, inquiring whether the monument stood there still, she having relocated to Portsmouth in 1954, but her brief moment of joyous public passion having survived in her memory with the freshness of the morning dew. I spent nearly an hour poring over all the posts, and all the responses, fascinated, then entered a brief message of my own – a message stating that I was one of the Americans who had lived in Milford during the construction of the Gulf refinery, and had attended the Grammar School. Then I listed several of my old friends, and invited anyone who remembered me to please respond.
It was late and I was tired, so I logged off after posting my missive.
I was feeling quite cheery about the way my little competition with Hugh was shaping up. It seemed churlish, however, to hoard my agreeable spirits as a purely private pleasure. Arriving at the fifth hole, therefore, I decided to elevate Hugh's sagging morale with some friendly conversation, and began by hurling in his direction a wide and hearty grin.
“Well,” I announced amiably, prominently displaying my best smile, “If my memory is correct, this is two drives and a 4-wood for you.”
I referred, of course, to my playing partner's lamentable lack of distance off the tee; for this was a full-blooded par-5, not one of his bland par-3's, or an uncomplicated par-4 easily subdued with a middling drive and an accurate approach. No, we were on my turf now. How many times had I humbled Hugh on this 5th hole with a booming drive, followed by a scorching fairway wood to the green? How many times had I observed with delight my second shot descending from the clouds to make landfall nearly pin high, within easy chipping distance – leaving poor Hugh abandoned forlornly back in the fairway, sizing up a 6-iron approach for his third? Many times, was the answer, many times indeed. Now all the tables were turned. It was time for his clever sarcasm on the previous holes to come home to roost. Accounts were about to be settled. I was two up and brimming with confidence.
Hugh declined to reciprocate my goodwill – perhaps questioning its sincerity, age having planted the seed of cynicism in his heart.
I was enjoying myself, however, and ignored the sour shadow upon his face. I loitered a bit on the tee, savoring the mental picture of my drive winging down the middle of the fairway and rising like a hawk, like an arrow, against the backdrop of the bright blue sky. The wind was still and I sensed a chance to seize complete command of the match.
“Ah well, three straight shots still beats two crooked ones,” Hugh suddenly remarked casually, as if talking to himself, or thinking out loud.
I paused in my preparations; then, without a hint of warning, things went wobbly before my eyes. Aghast, I realized precisely what was happening, recognized the unmistakable signs of the spinning wheel of my golfing fortunes in motion. I should have stepped away, right then, and regrouped, allowed the disturbance to pass. My bravado, however, had rendered retreat from the tee impossible. And thus, despite knowing full well that I should on no account swing my club, I swung it anyway, and launched a hideous but immensely powerful hook high over the rough lining the left side of the 5th fairway, and well into the adjacent 6th fairway, where an old man wearing a gray sweater and pulling a small, rickety cart watched my ball roll past his, then stop. The elderly gentleman stared at my ball for a moment, then turned to gaze foggily back toward us on the 5th tee. In my shock, I had neglected to shout “Fore!” and so belatedly waved my hand in apology. The phlegmatic fellow replied with a wave of his own, then hunched his shoulders and shuffled on, pulling his cart behind.
Had a witness not been present, I would have assaulted Hugh then and there with my driver – a loose, languid backswing followed by a powerful blow to the center of the cranium. A delicious thought! And so just and fair! Three straight shots beating two crooked ones indeed, the sarcastic conniver!
As I was prevented by circumstances from committing the crime, however, I politely yielded the tee to Hugh, without acknowledging his presence. I uttered no word, nor the slightest sound. Instead, I stepped silently aside and devoted my attention to adjusting my belt. Hugh coughed and cleared his throat, as if something had lodged unexpectedly in his gullet – intending, no doubt, to voice some sardonic comment - then prepared to hit his drive. I turned my head and watched the old man in the gray sweater swat limply at his ball on the sixth fairway, as Hugh nudged his ball 200 yards or so straight down our fairway, then stalked off in pursuit of my errant and treacherous shot.
In the end, I had always been able to tolerate my grotesqueries – as I had come to think of them - because I knew that eventually I would advance to the next stop, a much happier stop, on the great transit of my golf game. This knowledge gave me peace and fortitude. And thus, upon arriving at my grossly disobedient ball, I saw that I had both a good lie and a perfectly clear shot to the green; and sensed that I had, in fact, moved on to the next station on that ever-revolving circuit. Patience, I had learned, always paid off. And my intuition proved correct – for after watching Hugh poke a 4-wood some 100 yards short of the green, I nonchalantly blistered a 3-wood that rode high into the now-windless sky, hung still at its apex like a photograph against a brilliant azure canvas, then dropped delicately to the earth just short of the front of the green. Thoughts of mayhem receded, as I perceived a renewed opportunity to put a stranglehold on the match.
“You get a better angle from over there,” I informed Hugh, when we met back on the fairway. He lay 3, just off the green, after his wedge approach had carried long and faded a tad. “If I had to hit the ball straight every time I’d quit this game. I wouldn’t be able to stay awake.”
“Well, I did fancy a lay-down while you took your hike,” he said.
“You didn’t miss that shot while you were sleeping, though, did you?”
“Not too bad, I agree,” he said. “I forgot you do manage a good shot every now and then. I guess I’d remember it better if it had happened more often.”
I smiled at my friend's tart humor. The seedling of his laconic nature had grown into a mighty oak of ironic bemusement toward all events. Hugh had been born in Milford, grown up in Milford, been schooled in Milford, married in Milford, raised his children in Milford, made his business and career in Milford and, barring some dramatic and unforeseen deviation, would die, be eulogized at a funeral attended by lifelong friends, be buried in familiar ground, then repose contentedly forever in Milford. He was one of those individuals who belongs completely – mind, body, heart, and soul - to one single place, and can scarcely be imagined existing elsewhere; a plant adapted for one soil only, thriving heartily in its favored setting. His life, so I imagined, had been a clean, straight line; no smudges, no detours left or right, no curves, no angles, no hills, and certainly no dangerous precipices. It suited him perfectly, this fixedness, this smooth synchronicity, into which he dovetailed with absolute precision.
Yet again, my thoughts turned to what my course might have been had I contrived somehow to remain; if Milford had also been my home for all these many years. I wondered whether my restless, seeking nature could have found satisfaction in its placid, recurrent routines, or whether its true appeal had always been that it represented a world I could never actually inhabit, and which served mainly as a concept, a construct of some idyllic, unattainable existence. Why had I never been able to escape its tug upon my memory? Or simply put it away on a shelf in the cupboard, along with the myriad other memories of my youth, memories of other places I had lived, other people I had known, other things I had seen and done? Such questions led nowhere, however. Whatever the cause, for whatever reason, I returned always, in my mind, to the deep and tranquil waters of the Haven, and my little band of friends who took me in as if I were a native, born and bred.
I arrived at my ball, which lay a mere five feet short of the green and seemed to radiate a transcendent aura; so placid, so untroubled, that it might have been placed there by a pair of tender, loving hands, rather than having flown sizzling through the air like a bullet. What a shot! I reflected, congratulating myself on my golfing prowess.
I glanced at Hugh, but his gaze was turned in the other direction. I had a perfect lie, more suited for a putt than a chip, and therefore proceeded insouciantly to putt the ball to within a foot of the flagstick. Hugh's chip ran well past the cup, and I tapped in for a birdie, to win the hole and go three up. I announced the score in a loud, clear voice, but Hugh pretended to pay no attention – it was evident I had inflicted a telling wound.
We dropped our putters back into our bags and grabbed our carts. As we departed the fifth green and made our way along the lumpy path toward the 6th tee, he gave a mischievous little laugh.
“I had to let you win that one, you know” he said. “You wouldn’t have thought it worth coming back if you didn’t win that hole.”
“You don’t begrudge me a birdie on my favorite hole, do you?” I asked. “You sound jealous. You shouldn’t be jealous after all this time.”
Hugh laughed again. “Jealous? But does everyone in America play golf like you?”
“We have short attention spans,” I said. “We need constant stimulation.”
He nodded as if pondering a sage observation. “Then why play golf? Why not auto racing, or bungee jumping, or something like that?”
“Ah well, maybe you’re right, I’ve been playing the wrong game. But think of all the entertainment you would have missed. You should thank me for having broadened your horizons.”
We both laughed together. It was a bit of a stroll to the 6th tee and we trod slowly along the path, pulling our carts side by side.
“Will Alan Zelinski be coming tonight, do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Hugh said. “I haven’t seen Alan in ages. I’m not sure he even lives here anymore. Why?”
“No reason, really. He was just the first friend I had when we moved here, and I’d like to see him again.”
“I think he got into something with computers,” Hugh said, frowning. “I think I remember he went away to work, then came back when his mother got ill. Then she died and the hotel closed down, and I don’t know what he did then. He always kept to himself, you know.”
I nodded. It wasn’t much in the way of news.
I didn’t tell him I was still curious about the baffling and secretive Mr. Zelinski.
We walked on toward the next tee. The clouds rolled past overhead and the wind was gentle and warm, and a red and black tanker sat placidly in the Haven in the distance like a huge animal, a leviathan, enjoying the sun in its favorite watering hole.