The book arrived in the post on Monday morning, and by nightfall I was submerged in an avalanche of memories, the mess of guilt and shame lying about me like discarded wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

Jo had chosen to send me a newly published collection of Laurie Lee’s writings – Village Christmas And Other Notes on the English Year – and she had neatly written an inscription for me inside the front cover. It was typically thoughtful of Jo.

‘To my best friend, Rosie,

– a harder life

– a simpler life

– beauty in abundance!

Much love, Jo’

Jo’s inscription was right. And it was wrong. Yes, we had had beauty in abundance; we were in our ascendancy, urged on by the billowing lines of our flexuous bodies into new empires of possibility. Boys were mesmerised, and like the provocative pain of pins and needles beneath our skin we felt the burgeoning force of the power we could yield in a glance, a word, a movement; we just didn’t understand how gently we ought to have held that power, how careful we should have been to avoid the haunting recollections of betrayal that now bloat my thoughts.

But Jo was wrong too because I don’t believe they were simpler times. The purple haze of hindsight has made Jo nostalgic, and the fog of deceit has shrouded her view of what really happened all those years ago. I know the truth because I was the deceiver, and I still am.

‘I thought men aren’t supposed to do love.’ Those were Anna’s first words to me.

I am Séamus – a thinker, a watcher, a listener. I am serious, I guess. Some may misinterpret me as a melancholic pessimist, but I am easy to misinterpret. Quietness often does that.

There are many things I don’t expect to happen in my life. I don’t expect to win anything. I don’t expect to live long. I don’t expect children to like me. I don’t expect people to tell me they have enjoyed my poetry; I don’t expect anyone to read it. I don’t expect eye contact. I don’t expect God to answer my prayers. And I don’t expect unknown women to speak to me in the back corners of cafés.

I didn’t expect Anna.

She arrived, tearing the shafting light from the shop’s miniature cottage windows into two. I could see the shape of a woman and hear the sound of a woman, but the detail was lost in the blinding sunshine. And I could find no words for this faceless being, hovering above me. My tongue fastened in a knot of incomprehension and surprise, like a little boy being admonished for something he was doing that he had no idea was wrong.

‘The book,’ she said, pointing to my hands. ‘Four Letters of Love.’
I glanced down and understood.
‘May I?’ she said, putting her hand on the chair opposite me.
‘Please…,’ was all that I could force through my lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but it’s unusual to see a man reading a book about love.’
‘It’s written by a man,’ I said.
‘Does that make a difference?’

As she sat, her face appeared and I could feel the first stamps of her imprint on my soul. Summer hair, a seaside smile and eyes brimming with inquisition.

‘I think it does,’ I said, finding some composure, now that I could properly see the possessor of the bewitching voice.
‘Why?’ She tilted her head and hooked her hair behind her ear with a smooth stroke of a polished fingernail.
‘Men write about love differently,’ I said.
She stopped stirring her coffee and was staring at the teaspoon, thinking. ‘Sweet love.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Women write about sweet love. What do men write about?’
‘I think men write about love as they’ve experienced it, but women write about the kind of love they’d like to experience.’

She looked at me then. Really looked at me. I think I must have interested her, but it made me shrivel in a flame of uncertainty.

‘I’m Anna,’ she said, and held out her hand.

I took it in mine, shook it and felt her softness. She smelt of the sea.

I was born in late September as the leaves were falling. When my mother and father took me home, the days were darkening and the nights were getting colder. Not even the arrival of a baby stopped life on the farm from moving on; there were jobs to be done. And so it was a few weeks before they even found time to give me a name. Then they called me Damian. My name means “tamer”.

I don’t know why they chose that name. It was if they knew what was to come – what time would bring to pass. I believe God gave them my name. Nothing else could explain it.

I was raised in much the same way as the rest of the livestock on the farm. I was fed and watered, kept warm at night and tended to when I was ill, but beyond that I just had to fit in, play my part and not complain. There was little time for bike rides, games of football or holidays at the beach. The time we spent together as a family was while we worked – with one exception. Every night my father put me to bed. The routine was always the same: he read a story to me, said a prayer and tucked me in. I loved that time of day best. I learnt things about my father then, just from the little comments he made, the looks on his face and the tone of his voice.

One night will stay in my memory, because my father seemed unusually sad. He said he didn’t have time to read me a story; he needed to do some sums. I asked why. His brow furrowed and his eyes watered as he spoke. “The wind has been blowing hard lately,” he said. “It’s flattened one of the fields of corn. There’s no way we can sell it now.” I was upset to see my father so unhappy, and that night, after my father had gone, I prayed myself. I asked God to stop the wind blowing.

The next day I decided to help God answer my prayer …

Jim Quinn was in his forty-third year when a midlife crisis caused him to head north. With only tattered relationships and career disappointments trailing in his wake, Jim had found himself staring out of the window one day when the words of his old headteacher unexpectedly came back to him like long lost school friends. ‘Elevate yourself, young Mr. Quinn. Otherwise, you will get nowhere in life.’ 

And it was the recollection of those words, falling in with his desire to escape, that provoked Jim to make a decision. He would go, drive upwards, the road north. ‘Okay, you grumpy, old sod. I’ll do exactly what you wanted,’ he muttered to himself as he threw a half filled overnight bag and his set of golf clubs into the boot of his car. 

Jim crossed the border into Scotland and hesitated as he reached the turn-off for Gretna Green. He wanted a break from driving but the reputation of Gretna as a wedding retreat for young, idealistic lovers repelled him. The deceit of dreams. If only they knew all the disillusionment that was waiting for them just the other side of the honeymoon. But he needed coffee and so ten minutes later he found himself cradling a cup and gazing into the past, his mind crowded with all the unfulfilled promises of romance that lay scattered about him like spilt sugar.

‘It was just so peaceful. I loved the simplicity of it.’ There were four of them, middle-aged, wearing branded caps and lambswool V-necks, red-faced and relaxed, clearly on a golfing trip.

The words grabbed Jim by the collar and hoisted him out of his morose trance. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help overhearing. Which golf course is that?’

‘We played four.’

‘The one you called peaceful.’

The golfer who had described it looked quietly triumphant. ‘Portpatrick. It was just beautiful. I’d definitely play it again.’

Like the soft lullabies of sirens, the words – peaceful, simplicity, beautiful – had seduced Jim. He had been lured. He would head west. As he left Gretna Green he found himself holding onto two new things: a destination and a desire. It was a long time since he had possessed either.

ii

On the outskirts of Portpatrick Jim spotted a signpost and turned towards the golf club. He was surprised to find only a few cars in the car park. He wandered up past the first tee and stopped briefly to glance out across the course. A links golf course can never be fully appreciated unless you walk it. It nestles snugly into the earth, like an outlaw lying low and will only reveal its true self to you if you approach it respectfully step by step in the manner it wants to be played. Jim noted what he had seen and headed into the clubhouse. He introduced himself to the professional and arranged to play The Dunskey the following morning.

‘We have a wee course here too. Nine holes. The Dinvin.’

Jim raised his eyebrows and smiled.

‘It’s quiet out there at the moment.’

‘I’d love to play it,’ said Jim.

‘Feel free.’

On the first tee Jim slid the eight iron from his bag and watched his hands as they instinctively wrapped around the grip, fingers slotting into one another. It was an old habit, an intuitive response but here on the first tee of The Dinvin, as the day was drawing to a close, he was doing it slowly, deliberately, consciously, and he felt as if the club were a natural extension of himself. He had never taken hold of a club with such an acute awareness before. Time slackened and each of his movements – even the tiniest of them – seemed to be filled with such an intense amount of life. He suddenly felt that there was nothing to rush to and nothing to escape from; the moment was all he had and all he needed. As he followed his ball up the first hole a word settled itself into his mind: ‘serenity’. It was settling into his soul too.

Jim wandered around in an empty-minded haze as the gem of a course smoothed away the edges of his sharper thoughts. The course led him, twisting and turning, up and down past sprinkled patches of gorse. The blind tee shots and tiny greens fired doubts at him and he questioned whether he could trust his swing and club selection, but he knew he must. There was no other way to play it. ‘Just let go,’ he whispered to himself.

As he left the final green, hunkered down behind the modest clubhouse, he knew he had been cosseted and softened. The Dinvin had called for something other than brute strength, something that Jim, being a man, found harder to find: delicacy. A gentle feminine touch. Soft hands and a fearless heart. He was still in a contemplative mood when later that evening his head hit the crisp hotel pillows and sleep engulfed him.

iii

Jim’s life had turned out to be largely unsatisfactory. He had made a bit of money and in the process had lost a proper sense of himself in the wilderness of corporate sales figures and the pursuit of bigger bottom lines. He was a serial monogamist with an itch that needed scratching much more frequently than every seven years. When his last relationship had become too claustrophobic he had found himself gazing at the sky and craving space, green space. It was a pattern, a habit. Golf was the wife he kept returning to when his mistresses grew fed up of him and he of them. As he lay in bed contemplating breakfast, he acknowledged to himself that he had often become disillusioned with golf too. It was the brands and their never ending promises of longer, straighter, more forgiving; the obsession with statistics and constant measurement; the relentless stream of rules made by the corporate types who, at retirement, had found themselves bereft of people to control; and his own intense dislike of being told his socks were too short and his shorts were not tailored enough. But yesterday, on The Dinvin at Portpatrick, he had found something. He had a few clubs slung across his back in a pencil bag, five assorted balls, a handful of wooden tees and a stub of a pencil with no lead. He did not record a single score either on his card or even in his head. And not one little bit did he begrudge the lack of another nine holes; who said golf has to be eighteen holes to be worthwhile? The journey around the gloriously subtle Dinvin felt too profound for Jim to tolerate any traces of dissatisfaction. He had simply wanted to play with an uncluttered head and an untroubled soul. He closed his eyes again, his intentions to get going subdued by a moment of contentment; breakfast could wait.

iv

On the first tee of the Dunskey Jim found himself alone. There were no queues of impatient go-getters who in their heads had finished the round before they had even started it. Nobody watching over him, waiting for him to transgress. Just him and the company of a demure breeze. He gently stroked away his ball down the first fairway and walked into tranquility. 

It was a generous course, which was just what Jim needed. His boss had been telling Jim that he was slipping, taking his foot off the accelerator, becoming stale. And his last lover had had a remarkable knack for making lists, many of which were to do with her often repeated sentiment that Jim needed to do some work on himself. When eventually she moved on, all that she left him was a list entitled ‘Things you can do to make life easier for the next woman in your life’. Jim knew that she genuinely thought she was being helpful. He had long since realised that he had been a project of hers, rather than a companion, and he was still feeling the discouraging impact of her attempts to mould him into her make-believe man, but The Dunskey was undoing … well, everything. The wide fairways. The uninterrupted view. The barrenness. And, now, the quickening breeze. Jim felt like he was dissolving into the landscape. Playing most of his golf on tree lined courses had made Jim feel caged, constricted; it had tightened him. But here at Portpatrick he felt a sense of expansion, of freedom. The space was allowing him to breathe and swing, and his soul was growing. He was conscious of playing well – and by that he did not mean scoring well; that was something else entirely. No, he felt he was playing in the way God intended his children to play – with loose limbs, a calm mind and an uninhibited spirit. Jim walked up the incline of the twelfth fairway as the wind brushed against him like a homely cat. It made him feel small and vulnerable, but he was thankful for its company.

After two putts, Jim retrieved his ball from the cup, and as he straightened up he breathed in deeply, turned to face the wind and closed his eyes. It felt good, like the freshness of cold water and the softness of silk. And then he wandered over to the thirteenth tee and what he would later describe as a kind of renewal. His renewal.

v

There was something about the thirteenth hole Jim was not prepared for. He placed his bag of clubs gently on the ground and looked out across the shifting sea, then slowly brought his gaze back around through the grey speckled backdrop of the bay and over the green topped cliffs until it rested on where he was heading. All he saw was beauty and his heart surged, upraised it seemed by gratitude. From the tee he looked down the steep incline to the squarish shaped green and the words of his old headteacher came back to him again. ‘Elevate yourself.’ 

‘I’ve done it,’ Jim said out loud. ‘I’m here.’

For once in his life he felt like he was where he was meant to be. His eyes glazed and a kind of second sight, from deep within him, took over.

‘And I can see,’ he whispered. And he could. It was the plainness of the landscape, the sense of his place within it and the simplicity of his endeavour; everything cleared. It was not that he came to terms with anything, was healed or that he received any great revelation. The path that he must now take did not map itself out in his mind. Neither was it a conversion. It was as if he were a pendulum that had been frightened to stop moving but had finally come to rest and found it not such a bad place to be. There was something unexpectedly fulfilling about the lack of motion. He could see that this was where his spirit could be still. Perfectly still.

Slowly, he slipped a tee into the earth, placed a ball atop and swung a club. A rhythm that had lain dormant in Jim’s sinews was awakened and his body moved through the ball with an elegant gracefulness that made him feel like he was submerged in warm water. He watched his ball arc and roll, guided by the slope into the centre of the green, and then he picked up his clubs and walked down the hill feeling as if he were entering a painting from which he may never find a way out. Serenity had slipped into his soul on The Dinvin the day before and here on the thirteenth of The Dunskey it had settled in. Jim stepped onto the green treading with the softness of gentle dreams and with an even fluidity he took his stance and rolled the putt into the centre of the hole, but he was not watching. He was looking back up the hill to where he had started and it was only the rattle of the ball in the cup that confirmed to him that the hole was complete. He stood still for a while and waited, and the wind blew, and then it was time to move on. 

vi

It is true to say that Jim played the remaining holes in a state of acceptance that he would never again find in quite so much intensity. He was in complete control; the movement of limbs in perfect equilibrium with the sequence of thought. Unhurried and quiet, with a poise that can never be cultivated, only bestowed. There were no witnesses, but if there had been, they would have testified that Jim was in a world of his own – and they would have been wrong. On the thirteenth hole Jim had found a world beyond himself and his own understanding, a world most others only ever glimpse; he was a smaller part of something larger, a fragment in a heavenly landscape of wind and water and vegetation, balanced and belonging. And in that place he felt completely attuned to the swing of a golf club, like it was the most natural thing in the universe, and in the furthermost reaches of his being he felt the soft reverberations of the club on ball, as if he were sinking into the ball and the ball into him. Each shot fed the undiscovered appetites of body and soul and all the lust and hurt and desire and dissatisfaction in Jim’s life were overcome in the pure, sweet strike of a golf ball.

vii

Jim left Portpatrick early the following morning in a state of wistfulness. It was not that the meaning of life in its entirety had revealed itself to him on the thirteenth hole, and he could never explain what had happened that day, but he could not help feeling that he had been allowed to see a fragment of real truth, just for a short while. Of course, seeing truth and knowing truth are two different things and Jim would spend the rest of his life searching for an understanding of what had happened to him on The Dunskey, trying to discern some kind of meaning. He knew it had been spiritual. He felt a newness within him, like his soul had been taken away, tidied up and returned to him with a fresh lick of paint, and he longed for the experience again. Occasionally he felt as if he was teetering on its very edge, but he had never toppled in. He knew it was there though. It was within reach once; it must be again, and so, to this day, he walks off every green towards the next tee with hope that what he found on the thirteenth hole at Portpatrick will revisit him and renew him again. And he believes it will happen. The chances are good. There are many more holes left to play.

The End