[Once in a while you do do something just because you can. This is one of those instances. Eli Lampwick has appeared on the pages of Silverback Digest, but don’t bother to look him (a potetially deceptive assumption of masculinity) up on Wikipedia. It’s a pseudonym. It is also both a hint and an anagram. This is unedited and unannotated. A few graphics have been added to aid readability. SB SM]
Camelot Golf Shop
The Fair Maid of Astolat
By Eli Lampwick
The Entry
Just off Post Office Square a wooden escutcheon hangs above a storefront. It bears three gold crowns upon an azure field, a falcon crest, and supporters, Arthur on the left, and Gwen on the right. Across the achievement, Camelot Golf Shop is scripted in medieval font. Uneven granite slabs step up from a narrow, cracked sidewalk to a thick, sliding-glass door that leads to a slate-floored entry.
At a reception desk inside the entryway, sits Cador, Gwen’s cousin. He is unshaven, his eyes are wide with weary, his hair that once was brown is thinning. He is on the desk phone, “Good morning, Golf Shop, Cador speaking…” He speaks with a Scottish accent. Sunlight reflects off high windows across the street, illuminating the dust on the sill and sparkling off the laminated cover of a copy of Metamorphoses. In a shadowed corner of the desk, curlycues of receipts lay in a tangle of telephone and computer cords.
In the back room, known as Sim 2, overhead spotlights stud the slumping black canvas inexpertly stretched across the ceiling to keep errant balls from igniting the sprinkler system. The astroturf carpet is crudely carved at the doorway, creating a slight but tricky elevation change at entry and exit. Black draperies cover the side walls. Unless they are stretched to full width, one can see holes, each forty-three millimeters in diameter, punched through the gypsum wallboard.
A dust ridden cone of light escapes a projector hung beneath the ceiling canvas. It projects onto a screen covering the entire far wall the image of a golf driving range, mountains in the distance, slightly out of focus and hot in the center. The screen sags in the middle, creating gentle curving shadows in the sky.
Lance, the principal instructor, has been traveling, exploring potential acquisitions, doing whatever is possible to expand Arthur’s kingdom. In his absence, Cador has maintained the facility as best one might, but things have devolved, as they will when a business is understaffed. He has no doubt that better order will be restored now that Lance has returned. It seems that Lance can and will do anything for Arthur and Gwen
Elaine
The spots in Sim 2 shine down now directly upon the glowing, shoulder-length, carefully styled, wine-dark hair of a young woman. The golden buckle of the Gucci belt that cinches her pleated black slacks flashes when it catches the lights. Beneath a cropped black jacket, she wears a coffee-colored, chiffon blouse. Le Labo scents the air around her.
Elaine is employed at Astolat Bancorp, responsible for coordinating services to clients of the bank’s custody department. In that capacity, she participates in golf outings for clients. Such events are most often scrambles. One needs only rudimentary knowledge of the game to play in this format. Nevertheless, in order to avoid embarrassment, in the past Elaine would assist at the registration desk early and at the bar late, rather than play.
This year, though, she decided to improve her game. She intended to purchase four one-hour lessons, but she succumbed to Lance’s appeals and bought an annual membership. Lance was pleased. Arthur was pleased with the revenue. Gwen was dubious, which she displayed by a most considerate and careful attention.
Arthur, Gwen, and Cador
Camelot Golf is a vanity project, funded by Arthur, driven by Gwen. Arthur, who had an estimable career as a New England amateur, met Gwen at one of the annual Ouimet dinners. She too, had been a regional golfing standout. Each spent the night describing to the other moments of heroism and triumph in the arena. By the end of the night, though neither was a good listener, they found each other’s company charming.
Arthur’s principal business is asset management. He inherited the business from his father, who received it several generations removed from the Old China Trade, whereby tea for Britain was purchased with proceeds from the sale of opium grown in India. The family wealth and its sensible stewardship attracted others with the need for such stewardship and now Winchester Capital is regarded as the figurehead upon the tall ship of Boston’s conservative financial acumen.
Elaine booked her initial appointment by phone through Cador. She has come to find him pleasing, despite his too-casual attention to appearance. His pleasantries brighten the drab facility. He has been fortunate. His wife, with whom he shares true married love, tells him that they do need the money, but he endures his employment here mostly because he loves the game.
The Lesson
Lance catches a tumble of black and red across the rug as Elaine exchanges low heels for running shoes. She is a marathoner. She met her husband at the Boston Marathon the year of the bombing. He posted will-you-marry-me signs every mile of the race. Her friends believe she married him to avoid bruising his feelings. After his affair, she gave him just one notice, divorce.
Elaine takes the club Lance hands her. He positions the down-the-line camera and adjusts the lighting, which is already warming the poorly-ventilated room.
Lance begins with a question, “Why is the golf swing like a vegetable?”
While considering, she toys with the club, watching the head rotate back and forth. She catches his eye. “Because they’re tough to swallow?”
She laughs at herself. “No clue. Why?”
“They both come from the ground.” His voice is serious. “Feel the ground in your stance. Wind down into it on the way back, and up and out of it through impact.”
“Sounds like a corkscrew. These lights are warm,” she said. “Do you mind if I take off my jacket?”
Cador steps carefully across the threshold, setting an awkward tall box just inside. “Apologies,” he says. “These are the irons for Arthur’s lesson later.”
Lance looks up. Cador turns and leaves.
“Ah, that’s better,” Elaine says, stepping into position, feet and shoulders carefully and casually aligned. She begins to fumble to find the grip she has been taught.
“May I?” Lance asks.
He steps in to adjust the grip. Her hands are cool.
“V’s pointing at the right shoulder…”
He is close. She relaxes. His hands are warm.
“Now, feet together, shoes touching…” The perfume.
She looks up from her hands and clicks her heels in a play of fascism, and again, the smile. She wonders that she trusts him, but, despite what she has heard, she feels safe.
“Your wanting me to take the membership, it was’t just about the money, was it?” she asks, with coquetry in her voice, which surprises her. It is a habit of flirtation, fostered by her work environment. She has promised herself not to feed it. Some mock her for reticence, but it is not reticence; it is clarity and patience and purpose.
For Lance, this relationship is fraught. His fellows would concur that he enjoys the company of women. His exploits are legendary. He knows, however, that his duty to Gwen precludes an intimate relationship with Elaine. This new liaison might be more than teacher/pupil, but it will be platonic, although one wonders if Lance understands the term.
Lance does understand that he and Elaine will never share a bed. His is a twisted, tightly gripped sense of honor. The proximity of another man’s wife induces him to leave the field rather than joust with Elaine. She might have elevated the high regard in which he is generally held. Alternatively, an outcome he never considered, he might have been bested.
The Tournament
The first day of the tournament, September 11, a bright, innocent morning, a light wind carries a hint of the sea. There is a chill off the water, but the sun is warm. “Play away,” the starter calls.
Lance drives a a wooden tee into the all-receiving earth and deftly balances upon it a bright white Bridgestone ball. A green dot is painted on it. In days past, he might have imagined the shoulder turn, the shaft sliding beneath the swing plane, the outward rotation and posting of the left knee, but now, simply focus.
The ball flattens onto the carbon face of the driver. With the crack of impact, the ball bounds off the club-face at 165 mph, its ai-sculpted dimples scrambling up molecular stairs at 2200 rpms, climbing into the blue. The ball describes a gentle, upwardly tightening arc before flattening onto an apex one-hundred and twenty feet above the ground, to which it drops in a ballistic curve, as resistance requires. It bounds an additional twelve yards forward off the thin turf leaving him only an eight iron approach to the back-right pin.
Walking the fairway, he turns his gaze to the contours of the green complex. A long, shallow bunker crouches left of the green, alert to catch any shot even slightly offline. Further left are pines and wetlands. A broad slope short right, the architect’s bailout area, banks toward the center of the green.
Over his second shot, he sees the neutrino. In order to focus, sometimes he imagines a neutrino, having traveled light years to do it, tracing a line through the center of the green dot and his sixth chakra. This morning, he sees it. As it meets his forehead, the image of the shot explodes onto his mind. When his right shoulder lifts his chin, about one-tenth of a second post impact, the neutrino is twenty thousand miles behind him. The ball is rising to its pinnacle, poised to drop to the grass floor only a few feet from his target.
A soaring Red Tail hawk calls his attention. He sees the tight lattice of branches and twigs, her nest, prominent and high in the tallest pine left of the green. He is disturbed by urgent, staccato cries, blackbirds fluttering about the hawk. He looks to the birds, but they have vanished. A passenger jet high and bright in the sky appears bug-like and vulnerable.
The Lesson II
“A golf ball is not that smart.” Lance is introducing the five elements that dictate the shot at the instant of contact between the club and the ball. “It only knows five things: face angle, attack angle, path, speed, and centeredness of hit. That’s all you need to control at impact.”
“Right.” Elaine says, her head cocked sideways, almost to horizontal now, exaggerating her wonder that he thinks he is communicating.
She comes to life in the spotlit circle with a wide, gathering backswing, a pause in transition, and, at gravity’s cue, an accelerating, centripetal down-swing, as if she were an ice skater tucking widespread arms to quicken her spin. She finishes in balance, facing the target with her hands high, left leg posted, standing tall.
“Beautiful,” says Lance.
Contact was poor. She caught the ball well below the sweet spot and towards the toe. The ball slammed into the canvas only a few feet above the floor and scuttled behind the curtain wall. It’s avatar scuttled into the fescue short of the first bunker on the right.
She is laughing. “I almost missed it…and it hurt! It’s in the hay…you’ll have to help me find it.”
The Gala
Arthur and Gwen’s oceanside North Shore residence, which Gwen has christened Tintagel, sits on a cliff, where landscaped acreage takes a commanding view of the beach below, a small picturesque island just offshore, and the broad-shouldered sea. On the lawn, beneath a wide, white tent is a podium where Arthur’s brother will perform his father-of-the-bride speech. Art and Gwen, of course, will be at the head table, Lance also, and, after sensitive negotiations, Elaine. The brother’s paramour will be seated next to him. His wife is not in attendance. Members of the uniformed wait staff move trays of filled champagne flutes among the guests, deftly lifting, now lowering and turning. There are candles burning in the hurricane lamps. The lights of Boston’s towers glimmer in the dusk in the distant south. The Millennium tower and the Hancock look like match boxes turned on end.
After proper introductions, Elaine, struck by the vista, escapes to the extremity of the lawn where, slightly lifting the skirt of her gown, she steps up onto the low border wall. Lance, momentarily left behind, sees the risk she is taking, balancing, swaying above the cliff. She tilts her face to the sky, eyes closed, arms extended and low, her heart offered to the wind, giving and taking, seeking and receiving.
It is comfortably cool now. Women and girls cover and uncover, their shawls and sweaters of white and beige, or black and red, or yellow and orange and pink, flutter as they shift in pairs or groups to and from the parquet dance floor and the lawn. The colors deepen as we rotate west to east.
The classic bistro lighting has come to life. Dozens of clear round bulbs glow overhead and at the tent perimeter. At the several bars, short lines develop as guests anticipate the call to be seated. In apparently accidental concurrence, three bartenders simultaneously tilt hat-high bottles, letting liquor splash onto knife-edged ice clattering in circling crystal.
The Game of Honor
Lance is broadcasting: Golf presents every kind of challenge: physical, ethical, and mental. It is a mountain without summit, like integrity. Until the trumpet blasts, one’s honor is not secure.
Elaine straightens, a twinkle in her eyes. “I think you left out moral.”
Lance may not have heard. “You know, Bobby Jones said golf is the closest game to the game we call life.”
Tall, almost at tiptoe, Elaine offers, “Ben Hogan said as you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round … you gave me the book.”
She was comfortable enough with him now to throw him from his well-regarded mount.
The Dance
The band is playing You Made Me Love You. The young have scurried off. Lance and Elaine excuse themselves from the table to join the now quieter dance floor. Gwen, having turned in conversation, does not notice and is more amused than disturbed when she looks back. She can be unkind, but she has foresight, to an extent. She would not wish this, but she can enjoy it.
Elaine is wearing a crimson Chanel gown. A necklace of Akoya pearls drapes and slides as she moves in the dance. She ventures, “If I may be allowed a personal question, what is it with you and Gwen? You know she will never leave Arthur.”
“My allegiance is to both. I would never dishonor Arthur.” This, spoken in spite of the widely known fact that when Arthur travels, Lance often stays with Gwen at the condo. Lance lifts his arm and guides Elaine to a graceful turn beneath it, putting her at a slight distance, which they close in rhythm. “I try to color within the lines.”
“Sometimes it’s fun to go beyond,” she suggests. Her eyes search his face, but discover little.
“Come with me. I have something for you.”
“I will. Just a moment. This way.”
They descend a gentle slope and down stairs carved in rock. Elaine slips off her Louboutins with easy, quick movement. When crossed in bare feet, the private sands of Tintagel‘s crescent beach screech at footfall, as do the sands of the public beach just to the south, past a massive rock outcropping that fortuitously limits intruders.
“I have to test the water,” she says, spinning and dancing toward the serpentine line of foam where the water’s further advance is halted. As immutable as the rocks behind them seem, they were not always there. They are part of an exotic terrane, Avalonia, broken off of Gondwana hundreds of millions of years ago.
The two have returned to the octagonal gazebo now, away from the others. A checkerboard of dark, fertile plots comprises the formal garden before them. Off the ferns and decorative grasses, pathway lights cast long shadows, warriors springing from the soil.Koi swirl in the water beneath a small fountain. Vines suffocate the pergola that curves behind the pool. Elaine is carrying a small blue box, which she has just received from Lance, along with distancing language she is still trying to parse.
Arthur’s Nightmare
Arthur’s slumber was occasionally disturbed by visions of Lance and Gwen in flagrante delicto. Sometimes in the dream it was apparent that a purported injury had been a lie all along. Lance had never lost fatherhood in Pamplona. Lance and Gwen were laughing. How easily they had deceived Arthur. Other nights there would be only an extended, repeating seduction, a disturbing, mutual seduction. Recently, he dreamed Elaine was the temptress, only to witness her transform into Gwen before his eyes. Arthur lies alone in the darkness, an unwilling witness, unable to look away and so cold.
Once, he dreamed that Lance and Gwen knelt in prayer side-by-side at his bedside. A focal point of mist appears, grows to a columnar cloud, then dissolves to reveal, standing at his bedside, Merle, Arthur’s ancient friend and advisor. Merle looks down at Arthur and smiles. Without turning his gaze from Arthur’s face he extends his right arm so that his hand, palm down, rests in the air directly above Lance. From the extended hand a shower of light falls to envelop Lance. Merle bends over Arthur to whisper in his ear, “You are the fool.” As Merle straightens, the clipped tails of his waistcoat extend and curl, flowing backwards, waves becoming water. Lance has become a white stallion and Gwen a Naiad leading him into the mystical water. “You are the fool,” Merle repeats twice more. Then he sinks into the sea in which the bed is floating.
The Bridge
Returning home from the gala, Elaine approaches the crest of the Tobin, a cantilevered, truss bridge two miles long carrying traffic between Chelsea and Charlestown. It is among the tallest in the country, with one hundred thirty-five feet of clearance to the waters of the Mystic River, tall enough for LNG tankers but not tall enough for the container ships. They come and go from Conley Terminal further up the harbor. The sun has now set, leaving only a black backdrop behind the cityscape.
Elaine is recalling standing on the wall earlier, arms open, heart open. She was bleeding, but into the world, not out of it. She releases the seat belt to retrieve the gift from the sequined clutch on the passenger seat. She places it on the center console. It is a gold bangle with an emerald-cut diamond in a bezel setting. On its inner surface nothing is inscribed. This is not a welcome gift. She cannot imagine ever wearing it. Why their connection is circumscribed, she does not grasp, but she reconciles herself to not knowing.
Through the stroboscopic effect of the steel girders, she glances down and notices the running lights of a tug passing below. When she looks up, she is confused. It takes a moment to realize what is before her. Headlights blinding and close, coming at her fast.
“How could anyone be going the wrong way here?”
She locks the brakes, leans into the horn and drags the wheel clockwise. To no avail. She is ejected from the car.
Had she not lost consciousness, she might have smiled as she reached the instant of stasis between rising and falling. She was in the transition. She might have arched her back, spread her arms to their limit and lifted her vision to the night for the last time. Only at the end, would she have tucked her arms to her side, like a falcon diving towards its prey, to enter the chill water silently, leaving behind only the slightest circular ripple of phosphorescence. The bracelet landed on the barge being towed to the recycling plant beside the LNG tanks.
The Allure of Golf
At impact the squire is knighted. The ball so recently subject, is now sovereign, a regal, solitary traveler, its destiny ordained in the five impressions of impact and written down by chance. It is the cat in the box with the arsenic. It may land in the bunker dead left or it may nestle beside the pin. A well stuck ball, as it curls through the wind, carving a draw around a burn, or teasing a cut under a limb and over a glen is beauty birthed full-grown from the imagination.
To play well, one must solve the architect’s puzzle, answer the riddle of each shot in a syntax of angles, planes and parametric equations. Cunning, power, wisdom, and humility become one. The bunkers, left and right, intended to affront the player and protect the green, now, as a cloud-cast shadow caresses them, invite the assault.
Lance owns this course today, but still he will be careful, deferential even. He knows his wandering mind or her, the course’s, whim can be costly. But today, even a misplayed shot finds an opening in the canopy. She is laughing. “You can even make birdie from there!” Again, she laughs. Such a tease.
The Wake
Arthur, Lance and Gwen stand by the floor-to-ceiling window of their new facility in the Seaport, testament to Lance’s victories. The scene is in constant motion. Ferries, water taxis and a gaggle of j-boats criss-cross the harbor. Gulls share the sky with helicopters scanning the piers and waterways below. Nimble private jets and lumbering jet liners descend and rise, landing at or leaving Logan. To the north, one can see the distant green chords and struts of the Tobin, to the east, Boston Light, a salt shaker erect on a crumpled napkin of granite.
Between the plate glass window through which they stare and the sun-splashed orange of the starboard hull of a dry bulk carrier being guided out of the harbor, the water is noticeably disturbed. Pogies are massing at the surface, attacked by blues. In the ship’s hold, amidst the processed pellets of scrap steel and aluminum, rest the remains of a gold bangle and an emerald-cut diamond.
Cador stands behind the triumvirate, but he sees what they see. A cormorant rises from the edge of the commotion. It takes the shape of a reaching arm. A second cormorant, assuming the shape of a sword, dives directly behind the first, which appears to catch it before curling its looping neck and disappearing into the deep.
Cover image detail of painting by Ivy Iizzard