The Fourteenth Hole, by Alasdair Brodie

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Wattie Lumsden had carried for Mr Cathcart three days running, because Mr Cathcart tipped a shilling where the other gentlemen tipped sixpence, and a shilling was the gas and half the bread for the week. His mother had told him to keep his mouth shut and his eyes on the ball, and for three days he had done both.

On the fourteenth, Mr Cathcart sliced his drive into the whins. Wattie saw exactly where it went: in deep, under a gorse bush, where nobody could play it. He knew that patch of gorse the way he knew the cracks in his own ceiling.

Mr Cathcart’s partner was away across the fairway, bent over his own ball. Mr Cathcart strolled into the rough, swinging his iron like a walking stick, and looked about him, and then, very calmly, with the side of his good brown shoe, he nudged a ball out from the whins onto the short grass. A clean white ball. Not the one he had hit. Wattie was almost sure it was not the one he had hit.

‘Found it, boy,’ said Mr Cathcart. ‘Lucky lie.’

Wattie said nothing. He held out the iron and his hand did not shake, which surprised him, because inside he was shaking all over, like a dog put out in the rain. He thought of his father, who had caddied on these links for twenty years and used to say that golf was the only honest thing the gentry ever did. He thought of the shilling. He thought of the gas going out on Thursday night with the kettle half boiled.

Mr Cathcart won the hole, taking a lead his partner could not recover.

In the clubhouse yard he pressed the shilling into Wattie’s palm and kept his hand there a moment longer than he needed to. ‘Sharp eyes,’ he said, smiling. ‘Sharp eyes and a quiet tongue. You’ll go far, son.’

Wattie walked home along the shore with the coin hot in his fist. Twice he took it out and looked at it, as though it might have changed into something else. The sea was coming in grey and flat over the sands. At the end of the harbour wall he stood for a long time with his arm drawn back. Then he put the shilling in his pocket and went home, and did not tell his mother why he was not hungry.

How does the writer show Wattie’s thoughts and feelings about what he sees on the golf course and what happens afterwards?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Wattie
• the writer’s use of language to show his thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.