Whiskey & Charlie by Annabel Smith Page B

at five a.m. most weekends to get a ride down the Peninsula or along the Ocean Road with some friends from school. Even with five-millimeter wet suits, booties, and hoods, they emerged from the water blue-lipped, and it took them the hour and a half back to Melbourne with the car heater on high to thaw out. Whiskey never showed the slightest interest in golf, until Charlie won a trophy for the most promising junior. After all, Whiskey was the sporty one, the athletic one. If anyone was going to be winning trophies, it should be him.
    â€œMaybe I should give it a go myself,” he said at Charlie’s celebration dinner. He did not say, “There can’t be much to it, if Charlie’s winning trophies,” but the words were there at the table all the same. Only their father did not notice.
    â€œCharlie’s bloody good,” he said. “He’s better than me, in fact, but you might be able to give him a run for his money, Whiskey.”
    Their mother frowned. “What about your surfing, William?” She was the only person who still called Whiskey William.
    Whiskey shrugged. “The ocean’s not going anywhere.”
    x x x
    Charlie didn’t want to play with Whiskey, didn’t want to lend him his clubs so Whiskey could play with their dad.
    He didn’t want Whiskey hacking around the course with the clubs he’d saved up to buy. He had seen how Whiskey treated the things he borrowed—CDs stacked in piles without their cases, books with their covers bent back. If Whiskey wanted to play golf so badly, let him get a job and save up for his own clubs to ruin. Charlie wanted no part of it.
    â€œYou’d be better off sharing Dad’s clubs, seeing as you’re taller than me,” he said when Whiskey asked him, knowing full well it was against the rules to play out of one bag.
    Charlie thought that would be the end of it, but he underestimated their father, who, though he had the utmost respect for the rules of the game, had what he called a healthy disregard for the rules of the club.
    â€œThere’s plenty there for both of us,” he said.
    So Whiskey started playing with their dad while Charlie made excuses, saying he had a test to study for, an essay to write. Their dad didn’t notice Charlie’s reticence. Before Whiskey had put in a single card, he was telling anyone who would listen that both his sons were golfers now, joking that if only he could persuade Elaine to take it up, they could form a family team.
    Charlie knew playing with Whiskey would take all the pleasure out of it for him, and he managed to avoid it for almost two months, until their father signed the three of them up for a competition, with his friend Neil making up the foursome. Charlie thought about making another excuse, but he knew what Whiskey would think, didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying, “Charlie’s scared I’m going to beat him.”
    â€œWhat’s Neil like, then?” Whiskey asked on the way to the club, already sizing up the competition.
    â€œWell,” their dad said, “he’s good company, Neil. I like playing with him, but to be honest, he couldn’t hit a cow’s ass with a shovel.”
    Whiskey laughed. Charlie said nothing, thinking it unsportsmanlike of his dad to speak of his friend that way. But once they were on the course, Charlie saw that his dad was right.
    Neil took a long time over his shots, seemed to plan them carefully enough, but once he stepped up to the tee, he went to pieces, shafting the ball as though it didn’t matter to him which way it went. He made the same mistakes again and again, muttered to himself as he saw it, yet seemed incapable of correcting himself.
    Their father was a different kettle of fish entirely. When anyone asked him how his golf was going, he always said shithouse , but in fact he played off a steady fourteen and, other than the odd bad day, was true to his