Par for the Course

It was a Friday ritual, always at the same course and always at the same time. Stan always arrived first, having programmed his GPS and consulted the whiteboard on his daughter’s kitchen wall where he, and she, meticulously wrote down all his instructions for the week.

It was the highlight of his week, so much so that he often woke up on other days and it was the first thing on his mind. After, that is, the ubiquitous thought of Corrine, his recently deceased wife. Recent and past photos of her crowded the table beside his bed which he shared with his Jack Russell and cat. As soon as he awoke, Oscar would lick his face clean and await his morning greeting and cuddle.

The little steps which he had built to help the tiny puppy, Oscar, get onto the bed, now helped the ageing one to hobble up and down to join his master and best friend. Every time he saw Oscar struggling up the steps, much as he did with his rugby ruined knees, he thought of Corrine lying beside him in the unit they had rented shortly after their arrival in Australia.

They had been childhood sweethearts and, apart from rugby tours and his six-week stints in the army, they had never been apart. When she died, they had been married for forty-four years. Her long and courageous battle with cancer had completely devastated him and it was only the hospice and a counsellor who had kept him from buckling under. 

When she died, David, one of his oldest friends, had been overseas and because of a misunderstanding did not learn about it until nearly a month later. He phoned him immediately.

“Hello Stan, David here.”

“Hello David old chap,” he replied haltingly and with a distant sadness David had never heard in his voice before. Stan had always been so cheerful and always put a positive spin on everything so David reeled back from the unexpected blow.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Corrine, Stan. How you feeling? It must be very hard for you.”

There was a long silence and David could hear him choking back a sob and struggling to compose himself.

“I … I can’t talk now David … it’s, it’s too … I’ll phone you back!”

David realised, too late, that he shouldn’t have asked an open question and replied, “Phone when you’re ready Stan. It doesn’t matter how long it takes; months, days … phone when you’re ready.”

“Thanks David old chap,” Stan sobbed.

David hung up as tears filled his eyes.

It was their first game of golf in over two months. During that time, Corrine had deteriorated rapidly and her death was swift and merciful. Stan had resolved much with his young counsellor and the support of his children. His son, who had flown out from the UK, and his daughter and her family with whom he lived, had helped him to get through the worst.

He was looking forward to seeing David and waited, as always, beside his car in the golf course’s carpark. David, too, was a stickler for punctuality and always arrived within five minutes of Stan.

When he drove up David waved at Stan and greeted him in the Zimbabwean way, “Howsit Stan.”

“Howsit David.”

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to phone you, Stan. We were in Bali for a few months and Pat thought that we were back when we weren’t. She left a message on our answering machine about the funeral thinking we’d get it, but we didn’t until we got back. We only found out about it after it was over.”

He could see that Stan was struggling to follow what he had just said and wondered how far his Alzheimers had progressed.

“Ja, no. I’m sorry about phoning you back.”

“No fashmale, Stan, I understand.”

“I’ll tell you all about Corrine while we play.”

The nine holes were slower than usual; a sloth could have caddied for them. Stan took David through the events of Corrine’s death with a shaking voice and tears in his eyes. After the round they had their usual cold drink and David listened to his friend offering advice when he felt it was appropriate.

As they left Stan said, “My counsellor would be very pleased with what’s happened today, David. Thanks very much. It’s helped a lot.”

Tears ran down both their cheeks as they shook hands in the carpark. As he drove past Stan, who was diligently brushing his cart’s wheels and shoes, and all the way home, David wandered through their years of shared experience.

For the next three or four Fridays, Stan retold the sequence of the events of his wife’s death and, in spite of other signs of his advancing illness, he seemed to have memorised this most traumatic period of his life. He seemed also to be convinced that each time he retold it, it was for the first time.

He had been an accountant and it was he who always marked the scorecard. When they finished a hole David would tell him his score, but now he would have to repeat it at least twice before they reached the next tee.

Although his retelling of the events of Corrine’s death had been meticulous, he became less and less tearful and began to lose the waver in his voice. As time passed he had become convinced that she had died much earlier than she had.

The disease progressed steadily and after eight months he had to surrender his driving licence. They stopped playing golf and he didn’t seem to mind. David learnt from Stan’s daughter that he no longer watched rugby on TV. Rugby had been his whole life.

As a young boy he had been touted as a future Springbok and had played at university and for Rhodesia. He coached right up to national junior level and had been on many rugby boards including the national board of Zimbabwe.

It saddened David to see Stan lose interest in rugby because of his frustration at not being able to follow the flow of the game. All he watched was the science fiction channel and the commercial game shows.

It was as if he were being dragged away by the treacherous rapids below the Victoria Falls while David tried to hold onto his arm. He knew that eventually he would only be touching a fingertip and then …

For this reason, whenever they met David directed the conversation to the distant past, where Stan was at his most lucid and comfortable. They talked of school and university and the early years of the war.

Their conversations were wide ranging and varied from the jocular to the fairly serious. It hadn’t always been thus, because Stan had always steered away from deeper conversations when they were younger. David had spent most of the time since their middle twenties overseas and it was only in the last seven years in Australia that they had renewed their friendship. It was only since Corrine’s death that they were able to have deeper conversations.

They had both been very sociable with positive and optimistic dispositions and were very grateful for everything Australia had done for them.

There was one conversation, however, which they only had between themselves and occasionally with some other Zimbabweans. They had it frequently and it went something like this:

“Ja, you can’t talk about what we experienced in Zim because they might not understand. They think we’re bullshitting, trying to make ourselves out to be Danny Archers.”

“Ja, I once tried to tell a colleague about the things I’ve seen, like when I was shot at on the Plumtree Road to Botswana. I could tell that she didn’t really believe me. She seemed okay with general stories about Mugabe’s atrocities but not anything featuring me.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t tell anyone about a friend who’d been in the scouts who told me how one of them once shot a white Portuguese train driver after a black colleague accused them of only shooting blacks, or how I shared a place with one of the Seychelles mercenaries, ex RLI, who hijacked a plane to Durban.”

“Ja, or a bloke I played rugby with who told me he had ambushed some missionaries to discredit Zipra just before the elections,” said Stan. “I promised I’d never tell. You’re the only bloke I’ve told, though I’ll never say who he was!”

Soon Stan moved into a retirement home and, as was his nature, the move was amicable. David had been liaising with Stan’s daughter, whom he had known since she was born, to reinforce what she had been doing for her father. She had struggled with the concept of moving him into a home, but after his first visit David was able to reassure her that Stan was really happy there. It was a relief for both of them.

Whenever he visited, David would take Stan for a drive and a meal somewhere and they would rehash the old stories over and over. His grip on Stan became increasingly weaker and the current stronger and stronger.

One day they were telling the stories to which only they could relate and David had, for the umpteenth time, told the one about how he had camped on the Zambezi as a sixteen-year-old. He went on about how modern children could never hope to experience anything like that. Stan, of course, nodded his assent, mumbling that no one here would ever believe it.

“Ja, just like that mate of yours who ambushed the missionaries,” David said.

“That wasn’t my mate. That was me!” Stan whispered.

David knew then … It couldn’t possibly be true.

He felt the rapids pull their fingertips apart and watched Stan drift off down the gorge to Matetsi and beyond. He heard the mournful cry of a fish eagle circling high above and climbed out of the gorge, leaving Stan there forever.