The boy backed away from his ma’s voice. ‘D’ye think money grows on bushes?’ it shrilled at him from the scullery as he dodged through the kitchen to the front porch: and it went on and on about his da being on the dole and about ‘nobody caring where the next shilling’… Shutting the door behind him he scooted round the gable-end and through the back fence into a hayfield. It was a hot, shirt-and-shorts, June day. That was why he had asked his ma for tuppence for an ice-cream slider. Only tuppence —and all that give-off! She was a real riddle to him. He shook the thought out of his ten-year-old mop-head.
Walking along the side-rig of the field he got to wondering about money growing on bushes: would it be like the rags of cloth folk used to tie on the blackthorn at the old holy-well above in Layde? Mrs. Stone of the sweetie shop had once seen the bush covered with them. He pretended to pluck fivers from the hedge, scattering them like confetti, and had thrown away a fortune when he reached the foot of the field where the land sloped down to the rocky shore. Below him the salmon-boat was making ready to push off under a sky cloudless all the way to Kintyre. The only sound was of grass-hoppers ticking in the heat until the engine of the boat fired in a chum of foam like ice-cream. Ice-cream! At the thought he hopped over a dry-stone wall and headed at a trot for the loanin down past Mrs. Wann’s to the beach and golf-course.
The course, with the spent river Dall making a great ‘S’ through it, upped and downed its fresh green way from the beach almost to the middle of Cushendall. With the game so close to its heart the village naturally produced players, pundits, and pickers-up of lost balls.
‘Binks’—brand-new lost balls—were in the boy’s mind till he saw a comic-cut in the shelter on the beach. Faded and out of date it might be but as he slowly crossed the footbridge over the river he was already lost in its adventures. Bracken just out-of-bounds below the first tee was the very place to lie down for a good read. Within minutes the sough of surf on shingle, the laughter of splashing children, the put-put-put of the salmon-boat crossing the bay were not of his world.
It was the rattle of clubs in golf-bags and voices of players which first got through to him though he didn’t even bother to look up. He knew each voice. Half-reading half-listening his periscopic sense told him that the barrister had driven off and was well up on the crest of the wee hill this side of the first green. Next the doctor, shorter and a bit to the right. The solicitor always went third: into the rough to the left of the hill. There was no mistaking the young barrister. WHAM! Over the hill to the edge of the green. The solicitor said something about it being an immortal shot and off they went, none of them any use to a boy hoping for binks. He wondered if they ever had lost a ball.
The angelus was belling noon and the boy deep in his last story when a short fat bespectacled man in a yellow pullover waddled to the first tee. Hardly had he followed through than the boy was on his knees scrambling up the bracken bank just in time to hear the man mutter ‘Damn!’
‘One for the river’ thought the boy as he crouched to see fatty playing his second. ‘Damn!’. High and left and…. plonk! A third brand-new ball trundled up the fairway on its hundred yard venture with fatty puffing in pursuit.
The boy ran to the footbridge where he could see up-river, could see the fat man up to his waist in whin, and just as yellow, scanning the river and abandoning all hope of salvage. A safe space later, his gutties hidden in bracken, barefooted the boy made his way upstream, now wading now walking, ducking and dipping, till two new Dunlops were binks in his pockets.
Tar on Shore Street was melting in the sun: just what this binkster wanted. He dabbed the tar with a matchstick then dabbed a square of four black dots on one of the balls. That done he hurried to the beach and rubbed the ball in sand till the tar dots looked dried out. Back up Shore Street towards the village where he had a wide-screen view of the course and could watch his man’s plodding progress. Some two hours and five lost balls later fatty eventually gave up and left the course by a wee gate behind the Cottage Hospital. The boy sat waiting on a low wall opposite the Glens of Antrim Hotel till the man came past.
‘Like to buy a golf-ball, mister?’
‘Hope I never see another golf-ball this summer.*
‘But Mister this one’s a bargain. Look.’
He held out a hand with the ball cupped in the palm. The man weakened and looked.
‘That looks very like a ball I lost today. A Dunlop.*
‘Lots of Dunlops, Mister. Had your’s four black dots on it?’
He turned the ball in his hand till the four tar dots came upside …
‘Four black dots like them, mister?*
‘Well, no. How much do you want?*
‘Two bob and it’s for nothing, mister.’
A florin and a ball changed hands and as the man walked away the boy called him back.
‘Did you lose some balls today, mister?’
‘More than some I’m afraid.’
‘Maybe I’ll take a look for them. AH Dunlops? Where are you staying?*
‘In the upper hotel. But I’ll only give you a shilling for finding mine’
They went their ways, the boy at a gallop to Lynn’s Ice-Cream Van knowing there was salvage value in the unmarked ball in his pocket, and a lot of ice-cream.
He bought two big sliders wrapped in grease-paper and didn’t stop running till he was panting in the kitchen. ‘Here … ma.! look … I bought… you … a slider’.
She took the slider and they sat licking together right down to their thumbs.
‘Thank you, son. There’s not the beat of Lynn’s ice-cream.’
Her tired face grey as candle-grease softened into a smile.
‘I saw you in the river, son.’ He looked at her in wide-eyed amazement as she went on …’ There’s money in them binks, son, so there is.’