Dumped, Actually(55)

It’s quite shocking just how much bottled-up emotion I still have about the break-up. I thought I was moving on a bit. I thought my recent experiences, and the success of ‘Dumped Actually’, were helping me to get past Samantha – and yet here I am, reliving all of it like it was yesterday. All because I’ve just been asked to betray all of my principals and morals by a shark dressed in golfing clothes.

‘You’re up first on this hole, Oliver,’ Benedict tells me as we come to a halt.

I don’t answer him. I can’t trust myself to say anything right now.

I don’t want to play this stupid game any more, either. I hate golf. I thought I liked it when I came fourth in the pitch and putt, but now I am entirely sure that I will never step foot on to a golf course again after today, for as long as I live.

I snatch the driver out of my golf bag. I yank a tee and a ball from the front pocket. I see Hung looking at me from his perch on the back of the cart and I glower at him. This is completely unfair of me. None of this is his doing. But I glower at him all the same.

Walking over to the tenth hole, my grip is so tight on the club that my hands have gone white. I can feel my jaw clenching hard as I look down the narrow gap through the trees to the fairway beyond. I’ll have to hit this ball as straight as possible to avoid the thick row of pine trees that runs along either side of the teeing ground. But what’s even more important is that I’ll have to hit the ball as hard as possible.

Extremely hard.

That little pimpled bastard is about to experience all of the rage I cannot direct at Benedict – and certainly cannot direct at Samantha.

With hands still shaking with fury, I stab the tee into the ground and put the ball on to it. Benedict and Hung stand behind me, watching.

Yeah . . . you just watch. You just watch me hit this little white bastard five hundred yards.

As I swing the driver back, I actually emit a grunt of frustration, and as I propel it towards the ball with all of my strength, I let out a full-blown cry of rage that makes the birds rise from the surrounding trees.

The club hits the ball with almost Herculean might. It flies off the tee at supersonic speed.

Because I have sacrificed all technique for unrestrained anger, the swing I delivered was completely cack-handed and therefore the golf ball does not fly straight and true off the tee. Not even close.

Instead, it fires off to the right, straight at one of the thick pine trees that surround us.

It hits this at a vast rate of knots with a loud crack . . . and comes straight back at us.

Hung screams. I shriek. Benedict says nothing.

It’s a little hard to immediately express yourself when a golf ball has just hit you in the testicles at three hundred miles an hour.

He does let out a cry of pain as his hands go towards the most vulnerable part of his body. Then his legs sag, all the strength gone out of them.

Such is the shock and trauma of it all, Benedict loses complete control of his body, causing him to face-plant into the grass beneath his limp feet. This leaves him with his bottom pointing upwards, proud to the sky.

He then emits a high-pitched whine of agony and starts to twitch spasmodically.

I look at Hung. Hung looks at me. We both look down at Benedict.

‘Mr Montifore, are you alright, sir?’ Hung says.

He gets no reply.

‘Benedict? Can you hear us?’ I venture, getting much the same response.

Hung moves closer, and gently pokes Benedict on the rump. You’d think that this would get a reaction, but nope . . . absolutely nothing. Even the painful whine has ceased.

‘I think . . . I think he might be unconscious,’ I say in disbelief. It shouldn’t be possible to fall unconscious with your arse hanging in the air, but Benedict has somehow accomplished it.

‘He’s unconscious?’ Hung says, poking him again.

‘I’d say so.’

‘So, he doesn’t know what’s going on?’

‘No. I would say that he doesn’t.’

Hung gives me a look of such ferocity, I have to take a step back. If I have been holding on to a ball of repressed anger, then this man has apparently been holding on to an entire planet of it.

Hung also takes a step back, sets himself . . . and then kicks Benedict Montifore so hard up the arse that I’m amazed his foot doesn’t appear from between the man’s perfectly white teeth.

‘Fuck you, you piece of shit!’ Hung screams.

For a second I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve just witnessed an assault on an unconscious man. I really should be reporting it to someone.

Instead I roar with approval and throw up a high-five, which Hung slaps with aplomb, grace and the triumph of a man who’s just got his own back for the first time in many, many years.

Benedict makes a burbling noise, and does very little else.

‘I suppose we’d better call the doctors,’ Hung says regretfully, and goes over to the golf cart. There he pulls out a small corded telephone from somewhere under the dashboard.

I hold out a hand. ‘Maybe . . . Maybe just give it a few minutes,’ I suggest. ‘I don’t think he’s actually in any real danger. Look . . . he’s twitching a bit. I’m sure he’s fine.’ I look up into the crisp blue sky overhead. ‘Let’s just enjoy a few minutes’ peace.’

Hung smiles at me and deposits the phone back into its recess. I go over to where he’s now sat in the driver’s seat and plop myself down next to him.