Tommy's Honor Part 8

In the early holes the graying Park, having regained some of his old power through practice or sheer cussedness, took a two-hole advantage. But Tommy wasn't fettered to his father as he had been in foursomes. Two down with four to play while Willie's fanatics howled at him, he squared the match, then took the last hole and sent them shuffling home. Later that fall he faced Willie Park for another 25 at the same links, again with a raucous crowd tracking their every move. This time Park held a two-hole edge with only three to play. According to the Fifes.h.i.+re Journal Fifes.h.i.+re Journal, "It was the general impression that he had the game in hand, but Young Tom made a brilliant finish, won the three holes, and gained the match by one."

The marriage banns of Thomas Morris Junior and Margaret Drinnen were announced from the pulpit of Holy Trinity Church for three consecutive Sundays in November. The wedding was set for November 25, 1874. As tradition dictated, it would be held at the bride's home church, the parish church in Whitburn.

It is telling that Tom did not go to Whitburn for the wedding. His wife Nancy was bedridden, but Tom could have made the trip in half a day. The fact that he missed his son's wedding suggests his disapproval, which suggests in turn that the bride's past was no secret to the Morrises. Tommy may have answered gossip about her by telling his parents everything. To him, Margaret was brave as well as beautiful. Their marriage would serve as a mutual rescue, with Meg saved from servitude, sin, and disrepute, and Tommy delivered from a frilly army of timid, devoutly Presbyterian piano-playing virgins.

While their parents stayed home on his wedding day, Tommy rode the train into coal country with his sister Lizzie and paraplegic brother Jack, who had to be lifted onto the train along with his trolley. It was hard work getting Jack through Whitburn's muddy streets. He could pull himself along in the flat, dry parts, propelled by his muscled arms and gloved hands, but mud foiled him and he had to be carried-heavy work now that Jack was fifteen years old. He had to be carried up the church steps and eased into a pew, where he sat beside Tommy, across the aisle from the bride's family. Among the Drinnens was Meg's father Watty, turned out in his shabby Sunday best, his skin tinged with coal dust. Watty was proud of his Meg and he had a right to be, even if his pride was mixed with puzzlement, seeing his pretty daughter marrying a well-to-do lad, academy-educated-a golfer, of all things.

Lizzie Morris served as Meg's best maid that morning. Jack, helped forward from his pew, was his brother's best man. The service was straightforward, with the bride and groom saying their vows and the minister p.r.o.nouncing them man and wife. There was no kiss. After the ceremony Tommy and Meg signed the parish register. He signed as "Thomas Morris, Golf Ball Maker, Bachelor." She signed as "Margaret Drinnen, Domestic Servant, Spinster." A spinster no more, she left the church as Margaret Morris, wife of the world's best golfer. Soon she would have a respectable house and a maid of her own.

Back in St. Andrews, Tom Morris proposed a toast. A born conciliator, Tom never held a grudge in his life. What he wished above all was to keep things running: the links, the shop, and the partners.h.i.+p of the golfing Morrises, father and son. That partners.h.i.+p would last even if they disagreed on something as vital as Tommy's choice of a wife. And so that evening, while Tommy and Meg enjoyed their first hours as husband and wife, Tom hosted a supper in Tommy's honor at the Golf Hotel.

There were echoes here for Tom. The Golf Hotel stood on the former site of Allan Robertson's cottage, where Tom had made featheries with Allan and Lang Willie thirty years before. Now Tommy's Rose Club friends and Tom's workshop employees gathered to eat, laugh, and drink to the newly weds' health. The Citizen Citizen described "a substantial repast and the usual toasts being drunk," including a toast to "the health of Tom Morris, Jun., who they must no longer call Tommy, remarking on his distinguished career as a golfer, and the many victories and trophies he had won. These marked him out as the champion pars excellence. He had carried off the 'belt' in three successive years against all comers notwithstanding that he was then not out of his 'teens.' His performance had not in the least abated as shown by his having twice this autumn defeated Willie Park.... No doubt much of his success was due to that amiability of temper, together with fixed determination, which made him so much a favourite both on and off the green, and which would be carried into the new relations.h.i.+p he had that day formed." With Tom Morris and company hoisting drinks, the night careened pleasantly toward a final toast to the clubmaker's craft and one, obligingly, to "the health of 'The Bride.'" described "a substantial repast and the usual toasts being drunk," including a toast to "the health of Tom Morris, Jun., who they must no longer call Tommy, remarking on his distinguished career as a golfer, and the many victories and trophies he had won. These marked him out as the champion pars excellence. He had carried off the 'belt' in three successive years against all comers notwithstanding that he was then not out of his 'teens.' His performance had not in the least abated as shown by his having twice this autumn defeated Willie Park.... No doubt much of his success was due to that amiability of temper, together with fixed determination, which made him so much a favourite both on and off the green, and which would be carried into the new relations.h.i.+p he had that day formed." With Tom Morris and company hoisting drinks, the night careened pleasantly toward a final toast to the clubmaker's craft and one, obligingly, to "the health of 'The Bride.'"

Tom and Tommy faced the Park brothers on the links at North Berwick, where Berwick Law looms over the town.

ELEVEN.

A Telegram.

The newlyweds settled into a two-story house on Playfair Place, 200 yards from the Morris place on Pilmour Links. The rent was 27 a year. Some St. Andreans thought the house a trifle ostentatious, though Tommy could have afforded a bigger one. Without quite flaunting his money, which would be a sin in his father's eyes, he was demonstrating his and Meg's desire to be a respectable couple on a respectable block in old St. Andrews.

According to Rose Club member George Bruce, Tommy was "united, both in the bonds of affection and wedlock, to a young woman for whom he had the strongest love." Meg furnished their half-dozen rooms in a style that would have suited a house in Edinburgh. As custom required she consulted Tommy's mother before buying anything for the house, though she knew more than Nancy about fabric and furniture. Meg put up venetian blinds and tasteful wallpaper. She put a new cast-metal bed in the bedroom and stocked her well-lit kitchen with tin-lined saucepans and Staffords.h.i.+re crockery. On a kitchen counter sat Mrs. Beeton-a st.u.r.dy book t.i.tled Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. Isabella Beeton's 1,014-page bible of middle-cla.s.s domesticity advised Britain's wives on everything from cooking, cleaning, making social calls, and renting a flat to whipping up a batch of homemade hair tonic. Mrs. Beeton had died in 1865 after giving birth at age twenty-eight, but her advice lived on. It was a measure of how far Margaret Morris had risen in the world that she now had her own Mrs. Beeton, a prized wedding gift.

Along with recipes for broiled partridge, stewed rabbit in milk, baked apple pudding, and 2,000 other dishes, Mrs. Beeton gave Victorian wives advice on how to hire a maid. That was a section Meg could skip. Her years at the lower end of the same transaction left her with little patience for the conventional wisdom that saw maids as lazy, though they worked up to twenty hours a day, and greedy, though they dined on table sc.r.a.ps and paid for the clothes they worked in. Meg hired a local girl and gave her crisp direction on cleaning, was.h.i.+ng, dress, manners, and other matters, from walking behind the lady of the house when they went out to making sure that Tommy's boots were clean before he went to the links to muddy them. After leading the girl to the grocer's on Market Street to shop for sugar, tea, and peas, Meg would open wooden drawers stocked with nuts, spices, and dried fruit, each drawer holding its own strong scent. She'd leave the grocer her instructions and then off they went to the next shop, the golfer's wife with her maid trailing behind her and whispers trailing the maid. The whispers had to do with Meg's fast rise in status. After all, she had been a maid in this very town only months before, unable to say good morning to St. Andrews's high-hatted matrons without giving offense, and now she walked down Market Street with her head high. On social calls she left behind a calling card with Tommy's name on it and another with her own: Mrs. Thomas Morris Jnr. Mrs. Thomas Morris Jnr.

Meg and Tommy had to know what a stir their marriage would cause. She was no blus.h.i.+ng bride but a test case for social mobility, a thirty-year-old from coal country. How had she landed young Tommy Morris? By being quick to lift her crinolines?

Despite the gossip, Meg did what she could to fit in. She greeted other wives in the street and spoke knowledgeably about the latest fas.h.i.+ons from London and the Continent when someone stopped to chat. Tommy's sister Lizzie became a particular friend. Lizzie, who had begun taking chaperoned walks with a Rose Club member named James Hunter, may have joined Meg and other women in one of the town's more comical social experiments, the Flagpole Curriculum.

The well-meaning wives of several R&A members wanted to teach the youngest caddies to read and do figures. That way the boys might rise above their illiterate fathers. After recruiting young women like Meg to be teachers, the R&A wives convened early-morning lessons at the flagpole beside the R&A clubhouse. To keep the lads alert, the ladies served coffee. Unfortunately, the coffee was a stronger diuretic than the tea that the boys were accustomed to drinking. They were willing to learn, but their bladders were weak. To the ladies' horror and Meg's likely amus.e.m.e.nt, the boys put the flagpole to what was delicately termed "an ign.o.ble purpose." They peed on the flagpole, then ran like collies, and that spelled the end of reading lessons by the links.

On Sundays, when the links were closed by order of Tom Morris, drums called the town to wors.h.i.+p at half past ten. Tommy and Meg, looking stylish but not showy, linked arms and walked up North Street toward the seven-story tower of Holy Trinity Church. The tower, which predated the rest of the church, had been eighty years old when Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 and had served for centuries as a prison for women found guilty of fornication. It held relics including the Bishop's Brank, an iron cage that fit over the head of a too-talkative woman, with an iron tongue that fit over her tongue, keeping her quiet. Pastor Boyd may have wished he could apply such discipline to his chatty flock, now filling the pews under Holy Trinity's wide stone arches. A thousand was a middling turnout in St. Andrews, a devout town in which the Citizen Citizen chided those who missed Sunday services. The congregation generated enough body heat to warm the coldest Sabbath, while in the summer paris.h.i.+oners carried poseys to ward off the thickening scent of all those bodies. chided those who missed Sunday services. The congregation generated enough body heat to warm the coldest Sabbath, while in the summer paris.h.i.+oners carried poseys to ward off the thickening scent of all those bodies.

The Reverend Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, known as A.K.H.B., was a plump pumpkin of a man, the author of the popular The Recreations of a Country Parson The Recreations of a Country Parson, as well as Twenty-Five Years of St. Andrews. Twenty-Five Years of St. Andrews. Boyd was a favored dinner-party guest in Edinburgh and London, where he spoke of his life in the provinces. When A.K.H.B. visited the capitals he left a subst.i.tute to preside over services at Holy Trinity. It happened so often that some St. Andreans registered their disapproval by staying home on Sundays. For this they were belittled in the pastor's memoir. "Scotch-fas.h.i.+on, two or three persons of humble estate had informed me that they disapproved of Stanley's preaching for me," he wrote, "and they 'testified' by staying away from service. Of course, n.o.body missed them." After one trip Boyd returned to find a clutch of canes hanging from his doork.n.o.b, a reminder that he did as much traveling as preaching. Stepping up into his stone pulpit that Sunday, black-robed and orange-cheeked, he joked sourly that he now had the best walking-stick collection in town. Then came a shout: "Ye'll not put Boyd was a favored dinner-party guest in Edinburgh and London, where he spoke of his life in the provinces. When A.K.H.B. visited the capitals he left a subst.i.tute to preside over services at Holy Trinity. It happened so often that some St. Andreans registered their disapproval by staying home on Sundays. For this they were belittled in the pastor's memoir. "Scotch-fas.h.i.+on, two or three persons of humble estate had informed me that they disapproved of Stanley's preaching for me," he wrote, "and they 'testified' by staying away from service. Of course, n.o.body missed them." After one trip Boyd returned to find a clutch of canes hanging from his doork.n.o.b, a reminder that he did as much traveling as preaching. Stepping up into his stone pulpit that Sunday, black-robed and orange-cheeked, he joked sourly that he now had the best walking-stick collection in town. Then came a shout: "Ye'll not put that that in your books!" The paris.h.i.+oner was right. In his memoirs, at least, A.K.H.B. got the last word. in your books!" The paris.h.i.+oner was right. In his memoirs, at least, A.K.H.B. got the last word.

In church, Tommy and Meg mingled with local swells and their wives, professors from the university, bankers, butchers, and bakers; the coal-pit bottomer's daughter wors.h.i.+pped within sniffing distance of R&A members. With G.o.d's eyes on them, better-born townspeople were likely to be cordial. "Tommy, I hear you've a match coming up," a gentleman might say. "You're in fine form. We must have you and your wife for tea." Yet no invitation to tea would follow. Tommy was no more welcome in a gentleman's parlor than Meg would be in the sewing circle of the gentleman's wife.

Tommy still had his Rose Club allies. The lack of an annual ball hadn't kept the Rose Club from "flouris.h.i.+ng," according to the Citizen Citizen, "yearly adding to its members.h.i.+p and popularity." In March of 1875 the Rose Club's James Hunter married Lizzie Morris at Holy Trinity Church. Tom Morris, who had pa.s.sed up Tommy and Meg's wedding, was delighted to attend this one along with the rest of his family. Hunter was a favorite of all the Morrises, a bright young businessman who had made a fortune in timber. After an 1865 fire ignited fifty tons of Civil War gunpowder and leveled much of Savannah, Georgia, Hunter sailed to America and helped rebuild the town. Tom was thrilled to see his only daughter wed such a clever and prosperous young merchant. He joked that he and Hunter were in the same business: turning sticks of wood into money.

Hunter repaid Tom's regard for him. As part of his wedding-night revels he threw a party for his new father-in-law and Tom's club-makers. "On Thursday evening last week," the Citizen Citizen reported, "the workmen in the employment of Mr. Thomas Morris were entertained along with a few friends to supper in the Golf Hotel (George Honeyman's) by Mr. Hunter on the occasion of his marriage with Miss Morris. Among a variety of suitable toasts 'The Newly-Wed Pair' was pledged." James Hunter would be the Morrises' financial bulwark from this time forward, transforming Lizzie from greenkeeper's daughter to rich man's wife, paying for a new gravel path for Jack to ride from the Morris house to the workshop, easing Tom's lifelong fear of going broke. reported, "the workmen in the employment of Mr. Thomas Morris were entertained along with a few friends to supper in the Golf Hotel (George Honeyman's) by Mr. Hunter on the occasion of his marriage with Miss Morris. Among a variety of suitable toasts 'The Newly-Wed Pair' was pledged." James Hunter would be the Morrises' financial bulwark from this time forward, transforming Lizzie from greenkeeper's daughter to rich man's wife, paying for a new gravel path for Jack to ride from the Morris house to the workshop, easing Tom's lifelong fear of going broke.

The summer of 1875 was a season of wonders. In August a Royal Navy captain, Matthew Webb, smeared himself with porpoise fat, dove from Dover's Admiralty Pier and swam across the English Channel in twenty-two hours. That same summer the R&A rejoiced at word that Prince Leopold had agreed to be the club's next captain. The following year the prince himself would stand waiting while Tom Morris teed him up, then drive himself into office with a royal cannon boom. Take that, Perth and Prestwick and Musselburgh! There was no longer any doubt as to which club was the hub of golf, which town the game's true home.

Summer also brought Lammas Fair. A throwback to medieval times, the fair began as a feeing bazaar: Men from the countryside would come to town, offering their labor to landowners who needed help at harvest time. The men signaled their availability by walking with pieces of straw in their mouths. By the nineteenth century, Lammas Fair had become a summer festival featuring gypsy caravans, music, dancing, sweet treats, and free-flowing beer. A confectioner's stall held rows of pink sugar hearts, gifts for a young husband to offer his wife in exchange for a kiss. Tommy and Meg strolled past jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, and dancing monkeys. Perhaps they had their fortunes told in the tent emblazoned GYPSY QUEEN. GYPSY QUEEN. If the palm-reader was cunning she foretold a happy event-a child coming to the young couple. A baby boy. There was no magic to this. The uncorseted middle under Meg's dress gave her pregnancy away, and predicting a male child was just good business, a way to snag an extra coin from the happy parents-to-be. A son was said to be a "double blessing." The customary gift to new parents was a bottle of whisky if the child was a girl, and if the child was a boy, two bottles. If the palm-reader was cunning she foretold a happy event-a child coming to the young couple. A baby boy. There was no magic to this. The uncorseted middle under Meg's dress gave her pregnancy away, and predicting a male child was just good business, a way to snag an extra coin from the happy parents-to-be. A son was said to be a "double blessing." The customary gift to new parents was a bottle of whisky if the child was a girl, and if the child was a boy, two bottles.

When the Park brothers offered to renew hostilities at North Berwick, Tom welcomed the challenge. There was a tournament coming up in North Berwick on the third of September; he agreed to a foursomes match for 25 to be played the following day. Tommy promised to partner his father in the match. For him it was one contest among many, but for Tom another shot at Willie and Mungo Park was a chance to restore his good name. The Parks' supporters claimed that Musselburgh ruled the world in foursomes thanks to Willie and Mungo's victory the previous fall, a win they owed to Tom's horrid putting. Tom knew that golf watchers were calling him a liability in foursomes, a drag on his son. He knew they said Tommy and Davie Strath made a well-nigh unbeatable duo, while Tommy and Tom were well beatable. Bettors made Tommy and Strath heavy favorites in any match they played, but the two Morrises were often underdogs. And like many an aging athlete, Tom was driven to prove his doubters wrong. He was sure he could play as well as ever on a given day. All he needed was the chance. All he needed was the day.

He needed the money, too. Not to live or even prosper-son-in-law Hunter had eased the fear of penury that spurred men of Tom's generation-but to measure his success or failure. For despite his progress in the world, Tom was still a crack at heart. He was a gambler, and like most gamblers he knew exactly how his wagers stood. He and Tommy were 25 down to the Parks after losing the previous fall. Tom looked forward to September with a gambler's hunger to get even.

But Tommy was torn. The timing was wrong. Meg was now in her ninth month of pregnancy. Her belly was big and tight as a drum, with the occasional drumbeat from inside. The portly town midwife, nicknamed Clootie Dumpling, said Meg's time was at hand. Meg was nearing her confinement, when men were banished while females boiled water, gathered up linens, and enacted the b.l.o.o.d.y drama of childbirth. There had been progress during midwife Clootie Dumpling's time: By 1875 only five women died for every thousand live births. Yet labor and its aftermath, when infections took many more lives, were fearful events. As one writer observed, "these times are looked forward to with dread by all young wives."

There is no reason to think Tommy was any more inclined to witness childbirth than any other Victorian man. His view would have matched that of Kipling, who wrote, "We asked no social questions, we pumped no hidden shame, we never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came." But Tommy was unusually devoted to his wife, whom he showed what Pastor Boyd called "the strongest possible affection." Tommy wanted to be with Meg at the onset of her confinement, before she was shrouded in female commotion. He wanted to be there to see her afterward, to embrace his wife and greet the Little Stranger the two of them had made.

The North Berwick tournament and the foursomes match to follow would take him away for three days. But he could always hurry home if needed. Meg may have encouraged her husband to go, placing his hand on her belly and saying, "Go on. You've done your part here." Still it was Tommy's choice. He chose to honor his pledge to his father.

The journey took more than six hours. The Morris men-"sire and son," newspapers called them-rode the train from St. Andrews to Leuchars, changing there to a train that huffed between fields dotted with sheep. Tom and Tommy caught a ferry at Burntisland, a loud ferry packed elbow-to-elbow with travelers, many heading for North Berwick to see the golf. An Englishman making the trip wrote of being "hurried with a crowd of cheap excursionists into the ferry boat...the screams of babies and the notes of bagpipe, fiddle and other Scotch musical weapons." They crossed the Firth of Forth to Granton and boarded a train that rattled into Edinburgh's Waverly Station, where they switched to an eastbound train that rolled past Holyrood Palace and the rugged brown-green cliff called Arthur's Seat, through humpbacked fields of turnips to the end of the line.

North Berwick-rhymes with Zurich-is a seaside resort of red sandstone walls and gray tile roofs. In 1875 its year-round population of one thousand was less than a good Sabbath turnout at Holy Trinity. North Berwick had two sandy bays, panoramic sea views and a brand-new telegraph office that had recently moved from the foyer of the Dalrymple Arms Hotel to a proper storefront. Town fathers called their burgh "the Biarritz of the North," though without golfers and the crowds that came in their wake, the beaches and the Dalrymple Arms might have been as lively as Pompeii. The caddies of North Berwick were known for what one writer called "superfluous dress and infinite capacity for fiery liquors," but then that was true of caddies everywhere, except for the superfluous dress. The North Berwick links lay at the foot of Berwick Law, the 600-foot hill that loomed over the town. Visible for miles around, Berwick Law was a long-dead volcano, sculpted into a blunt arrowhead shape by ancient glaciers. Above the tree line the arrowhead was gray rock patched with gra.s.s. From its rounded summit rose an odd relic, a twenty-foot arch that resembled a huge croquet wicket. The arch was the gaping jawbone of a whale, planted up there by early whalers. Over the years, while the town changed and the whalers were replaced by holiday-makers, waders, telegraph operators, golfers, and caddies, the jaw went on casting its hungry shadow down the hill. Today its shadow fell on Scotland's best golfers and hundreds of spectators.

"The professional tournament," The Field The Field told its readers, "has this year been on a more extended scale than formerly, and has on the whole been highly successful." In the tournament held on Friday, September 3, Tommy outgunned a strong field that featured the Park brothers, Bob Fergusson, and Davie Strath, as well as Tom Morris. Once again Tommy pipped Willie Park by a single stroke, leaving Willie gritting his teeth, cursing his luck. Then came a sudden protest: Another man came forward waving his scorecard, claiming he had beaten both Morris and Park. The told its readers, "has this year been on a more extended scale than formerly, and has on the whole been highly successful." In the tournament held on Friday, September 3, Tommy outgunned a strong field that featured the Park brothers, Bob Fergusson, and Davie Strath, as well as Tom Morris. Once again Tommy pipped Willie Park by a single stroke, leaving Willie gritting his teeth, cursing his luck. Then came a sudden protest: Another man came forward waving his scorecard, claiming he had beaten both Morris and Park. The Fifes.h.i.+re Journal Fifes.h.i.+re Journal described the card, "which bore that a Musselburgh professional named Cosgrove had accomplished the 3 rounds of the green in one less stroke than Morris." Bob Cosgrove, a decent player but no threat to the leading professionals, was the sort of crack Colonel Fairlie had worried about when he and Tom organized the first Open-the whisky-scented sort who needed a gentleman scorekeeper to keep him from cheating. Cosgrove had tried this trick before: He would shave strokes, turn in a low score and hope to make off with a few pounds. Now Cosgrove waved his scorecard, demanding the 7 first prize, while a mob of his fellow Musselburghers cheered him on. Kindly Bob Fergusson tried to make peace while his townsmen shouted at the umpire for disqualifying Cosgrove, touching off a dispute that threatened to become a brawl. described the card, "which bore that a Musselburgh professional named Cosgrove had accomplished the 3 rounds of the green in one less stroke than Morris." Bob Cosgrove, a decent player but no threat to the leading professionals, was the sort of crack Colonel Fairlie had worried about when he and Tom organized the first Open-the whisky-scented sort who needed a gentleman scorekeeper to keep him from cheating. Cosgrove had tried this trick before: He would shave strokes, turn in a low score and hope to make off with a few pounds. Now Cosgrove waved his scorecard, demanding the 7 first prize, while a mob of his fellow Musselburghers cheered him on. Kindly Bob Fergusson tried to make peace while his townsmen shouted at the umpire for disqualifying Cosgrove, touching off a dispute that threatened to become a brawl.

Tommy slipped away with his 7, enjoyed a celebratory dinner with his father, and made his weary way to their hotel room for a good night's sleep before their battle with the Park brothers. He might have slept better had his father not left the window open.

Sat.u.r.day broke clear and cool, a hint of autumn. Beach-combers padded through the sands beside the North Berwick links, pausing to grab for crabs skittering in tide pools. Behind them was Craigleith, a gra.s.sy rock 500 yards from sh.o.r.e. Farther out sat gray Ba.s.s Rock, a steep-sided crag protruding from the sea a mile and a half out. Then as now, the white sides of Ba.s.s Rock itched and moved-the motion of tens of thousands of gannets, the snowy seabirds that nest there. Male gannets fly off to hunt fish while females stay behind to sit on eggs. Gannets are hard on their young: They use their beaks to spoon fledglings out of their nests. Strong fledglings fly; weak ones tumble down the rock to the water where they float until they starve.

The water at North Berwick is bluer than the roiled gray of St. Andrews Bay. It is just as cold as St. Andrews Bay, as Tom discovered during his morning dip on Sat.u.r.day, the fourth of September, 1875. He met Tommy for breakfast and then they ambled to the links to meet the Musselburgh boys. Newspapers were calling it the "Morrises' Return," a grudge match pitting the Parks of Musselburgh, who had staked a claim to be foursomes champions of Scotland, against the Morrises of St. Andrews, who aimed to take back that t.i.tle along with 25 and pocketfuls of side bets. They would go four times around North Berwick's short, quirky nine-hole course, where the outbound holes slanted toward beach dunes bordering a defunct rock quarry overgrown with reeds. Two stone walls angling through the course could send low approach shots caroming backward. A stand of firs jutting into the links tempted golfers to try to drive over the trees, risking what one prolix golf guide called "that bourne from which no traveler returns-for if you cannot carry it the penalty is that for a lost ball, viz., stroke and distance."

The Morrises and the Parks teed off at eleven, encircled by "a very large number of spectators...whose numbers were, despite the use of a long rope behind which they were kept, at times rather difficult to manage." What The Field The Field dubbed "golfomania" was on the rise. Hooligans from Musselburgh tugged the rope and hooted at the Morrises, while female spectators-another sign of the game's growing popularity-applauded by tapping gloved fingers to their palms. "The prevailing enthusiasm may be guessed from the fact that in the throng the young lady visitors to North Berwick were numerously represented, all of them resolutely sticking to their posts abreast of the rope." dubbed "golfomania" was on the rise. Hooligans from Musselburgh tugged the rope and hooted at the Morrises, while female spectators-another sign of the game's growing popularity-applauded by tapping gloved fingers to their palms. "The prevailing enthusiasm may be guessed from the fact that in the throng the young lady visitors to North Berwick were numerously represented, all of them resolutely sticking to their posts abreast of the rope."

The Parks drew first blood when Willie knocked in a putt and Tommy's bid to answer stayed out, "the ball just running round the hole." Tommy evened the match at the seventh, "and in the tussle for the eighth hole, the St. Andrews men had the better of it." The Morrises were one up. Willie and Mungo struck back with a pair of booming, wind-a.s.sisted clouts at the long ninth to pull even. In the second round the Morrises held a one-hole edge when Tom found a bit of old music in his putter: "By a clever long put, Old Tom increased the lead to two." He and Tommy boosted their advantage with help from Mungo, who kept knocking the Parks' ball into bunkers, leaving his fuming brother to slash it out. Then Mungo flubbed a short putt. "By missing a put, Mungo failed to secure a half of the next hole," the Scotsman Scotsman grumbled on Willie's behalf, "and through his brother's shortcomings Willie had the pleasure of seeing the eighth also go to the Morrises, making their lead 'three up.'" grumbled on Willie's behalf, "and through his brother's shortcomings Willie had the pleasure of seeing the eighth also go to the Morrises, making their lead 'three up.'"

After two nine-hole rounds-the midpoint of the match-the Morrises led by four holes. Tom tapped sweet tobacco into his pipe and breathed blue smoke during the luncheon break. A four-hole lead with eighteen to play wasn't safe, but the day was shaping up nicely. He had already contributed more to the cause than in a dozen other tries as Tommy's partner. Two dozen. Perhaps even more than that. As Hutchison wrote twenty years later, "never but on one occasion as North Berwick was old Tom much better than a drag upon his son." That occasion was today.

The third round began at two o'clock. The long Sea Hole, a three-shotter that called for a carry over a jagged, shoulder-high boundary wall, became a six-shotter for the Morrises when Tom duck-hooked a drive: "On the way to the second hole," the Scotsman Scotsman reported, "fortune changed sides. Here Old Tom swerved to the left in his 'tee' shot, and brought his son into using the niblick." Tommy slapped the Morris ball from a bad lie to a worse one, and Tom's next swing barely moved it. Meanwhile the Parks' gutty flew to the green. When Tommy's aggressive approach "came to grief in a bunker," his father picked up the ball. The hole was lost, but they were still four up. reported, "fortune changed sides. Here Old Tom swerved to the left in his 'tee' shot, and brought his son into using the niblick." Tommy slapped the Morris ball from a bad lie to a worse one, and Tom's next swing barely moved it. Meanwhile the Parks' gutty flew to the green. When Tommy's aggressive approach "came to grief in a bunker," his father picked up the ball. The hole was lost, but they were still four up.

Tommy's bold play cost his side again when he tried to putt through the long, rocky bunker on the Trap Hole, a play the Scotsman Scotsman deemed foolish: "Young Tom gave the hole to his opponents...the youngster had an easy iron lift to the green, but taking his putter, and trying to run the ball across the bunker, he failed." The shot skipped into the sand and died short of the green. deemed foolish: "Young Tom gave the hole to his opponents...the youngster had an easy iron lift to the green, but taking his putter, and trying to run the ball across the bunker, he failed." The shot skipped into the sand and died short of the green.

Willie and Mungo were whittling away at the Morrises' lead. They looked certain to pull within two at the next hole, where Tommy flailed at a bunkered ball only to see it catch the lip, pop straight up and roll back between his boots. Tom would have to get the next one close to keep the Morrises alive on the hole. "This the veteran did beautifully," the Scotsman Scotsman reported. With his coattails flapping, Tom sent a spray of sand toward the pin, the ball floating through chunks of flying sand to a skidding halt inches from the cup. reported. With his coattails flapping, Tom sent a spray of sand toward the pin, the ball floating through chunks of flying sand to a skidding halt inches from the cup.

Tommy grinned, clapping his hands. The Parks could still claim the hole by getting down in two, but after Willie ran a thirty-foot putt to tap-in distance, Mungo blew the tap-in. The hole went to the Morrises.

Tom's bunker shot had reversed the tide. Mungo, desperate to redeem himself, knocked an approach at the eighth hole over the flag, over the green and half the beach, "over-shooting...and running down to the seaside." Willie hit a skillful pitch from there, but Mungo's putt stopped four feet short and Willie missed from there. Mungo, the current Champion Golfer of Scotland, must have wished he were on a boat to Zanzibar. When the sides matched fours at the ninth hole, the third round finished the way it began. With nine holes to play, St. Andrews was four to the good.

In the last go-round, the Parks got one back at the first hole and stole another at the second when "the Morrises found luck against them, as Old Tom had to play...from a bunker, while a promising swipe of his son's was afterwards caught and spoiled on the top of a knoll." Tom and Tommy won the fourth hole to go three up with five to play, but saw the fifth s.n.a.t.c.hed away by "an admirable long put of Mungo's, which somewhat redeemed the champion's character." At the next, where Tommy "played into a nasty hazard to the left of the green," the Parks sliced their deficit to a single hole. Now the course swept downhill, with the outward holes to the left and a seven-foot stone wall protecting the seaside villas to the right. "The excitement among the onlookers was now intense, and it was doubly increased at the next hole, where Willie holed from fully a dozen yards' distance, making the match 'all even.'" Park fanatics cheered and threw their hats. Bettors called out odds for new wagers on the duel of the year, a thirty-six-hole contest that was deadlocked with two holes to play. The crowd bubbled around the golfers as they stepped to the teeing-ground at North Berwick's eighth hole. Few noticed a boy moving through the gallery, a messenger from the telegraph office, pus.h.i.+ng his way toward the golfers.

The Parks had the honor. Willie spoke to Mungo, who nodded. Tommy stood alone, staring at the green.

The messenger pushed through the crowd. He held a slip of paper: a telegram addressed to Thomas Morris. Which man was that? Spectators pointed and told him that there were two Thomas Morrises, father and son. But leave them be-they were busily engaged, playing golf for 25.

The messenger couldn't wait. His telegram was urgent. He handed it to Tom, who read it while the others were playing.

Come home, the telegram said.

It was from St. Andrews-probably sent by a frantic Jimmy Morris. Margaret's labor had begun, the telegram said, and she was struggling. Come home posthaste. Come home posthaste.

The bleeding would not stop. Meg lay in her new cast-metal bed, swaddled in sheets soaked with her sweat and her blood. Her sister-in-law Lizzie squeezed her hand. Clootie Dumpling, the midwife, ran for fresh rags to soak up the blood. An external cut might be cauterized with a red-hot iron from the hearth, but there was nothing to do about blood from inside but soak it up and pray. Clootie Dumpling brought rags and when the rags were full of blood she took new linens and bunched them between Meg's legs while Meg wailed, for her hopes must surely be gone if they were using her fine wedding linens to soak up her blood.

The midwife sent for Dr. Moir.

Tom Morris stood in the hubbub on the North Berwick links, reading the telegram from St. Andrews. Come home posthaste. Come home posthaste. If he and Tommy left now they would lose. They would lose the match, the 25 stakes and side bets of more than that, and Tom's field day would amount to nothing. If he and Tommy left now they would lose. They would lose the match, the 25 stakes and side bets of more than that, and Tom's field day would amount to nothing.

On the other hand, difficult births were common. Margaret might well be cradling her child in her arms by now. In any case, time was surely not much of an issue in this matter. He and Tommy were six to eight hours from home and the match was almost over. Walking in from here would save a few minutes at most, and the next train for Edinburgh wouldn't leave for hours. How much difference could a few minutes make?

Tom put the telegram in his pocket.

On the penultimate hole, Willie Park hooked his drive into a bunker. The ball ran up the face and stopped. All Mungo could do was chip out sideways. The Parks would be lucky to make six while the Morrises, "who took a capital road for the pin," lay three twenty-five feet from the hole. Tommy could have cozied one close for his father to tap in. That was the wise play. But Tommy wanted to make the putt. He set up over the Morrises' ball, drew his putter back until it nearly touched his boot, and sent the ball barreling across the green.

"Duck in!"

Now there was no ball. The ball had hit the back of the hole, popped up, and fallen in, knocking all the wind out of the Parks' loud, fist-waving crowd.

The mob wasn't quiet for long. According to the Scotsman Scotsman, "The Morrises were in this way 'dormy,' but the game for the last hole was watched with the greatest closeness by every one on the green, the spectators crowding in at times and giving expression to their sympathies in a not very becoming way."

From the last teeing-ground the golfers aimed for the far-off green between Ba.s.s Rock and the left flank of Berwick Law. "After the 'tee' shot things did not look too well for the Musselburgh players, as their ball lay rather badly." But Willie's recovery put the Parks' ball near the green, and Tommy overcooked his approach. The ball came flying in like a hornet, headed for trouble, only to take a crazy, lucky bounce-a rub of the green that led the Parks' supporters to wonder why heaven so favored Tommy Morris. "[H]ad it not been for a lucky 'rub' which his ball came in for, it would no doubt have been into a bunker, and the result of the game might have been different. As it was, both holed out in 5, the match consequently being gained by the Morrises by one hole."

The crowd gave the winners a grudging round of applause for what the Fifes.h.i.+re Journal Fifes.h.i.+re Journal would rate "one of the best-contested matches ever seen." would rate "one of the best-contested matches ever seen."

Tom pulled his son aside. "We must go," he said. "Your wife is ill."

They couldn't go home the way they came. There would be no train out of North Berwick until seven o'clock, almost three hours hence. They could take a horse-drawn coach to Waverly Station in Edinburgh, catch a train to Granton and reach the ferry dock around sundown, but by then the last ferry would be gone. Ferries from Granton could not cross the Firth of Forth after dusk; there were no lights at Burntisland on the other side.

Tommy looked across the Forth with mounting worry. He saw the low hills of Fife, blue in the distance, fifteen miles away.

"I'll take you," said J.C.B. Lewis, a gentleman golfer who kept a yacht in North Berwick's little harbor. "We'll sail across." Lewis pointed to a twenty-eight-foot ketch bobbing in choppy water at the foot of the links. He rounded up a two-man crew and they set sail-Lewis and Tom chatting, Tom casting fretful glances toward Tommy, who had nothing to do but watch the sun sink over Scotland.

A myth would grow up around their journey. In the myth the yacht races across the firth as if it were a river, the Morrises' hobnailed boots clanking from the North Berwick dock to the St. Andrews pier in an hour or two. In fact it was a long night's voyage, most of it in the dark, thirty-two miles in a ketch that made four knots in calm seas. Such a trip would take at least eight hours, which means that they could not reach St. Andrews before one in the morning.

The sun was already falling when Lewis's crew hoisted sail and the boat swung out of North Berwick's little harbor. Behind them a handful of Tommy's friends waved from the pier, wis.h.i.+ng him G.o.dspeed. The ketch glided past white-faced Ba.s.s Rock and made for the Isle of May, a gray paving stone in the water to the north. Hours later it slid past the isle on its way to the eastern tip of Fife, and northwest from there toward Crail and St. Andrews.

"A long, weary crossing," Tom called it years later, remembering "the frozen look Tommy had on his face." The boat rolled as the crew trimmed its sails. Perhaps Lewis cracked open a bottle of porter for his pa.s.sengers. The stars were thick and clear, the yachts' lanterns the only other light. Midnight came and went. They heard the hull slapping water. They kept watch for the Bell Rock lighthouse, which would give them a line to their target. At last they saw it: three long beats of light followed by two short ones, the signature of the lighthouse at Bell Rock.

The yacht curved left like a putt on the Home Hole. Soon it found its way to the long stone pier. Tommy gripped the toe rail, waiting to jump out. The town was pitch dark; the lamplighter had snuffed out the last streetlamp hours ago. The time was between one and four in the morning.

They heard Jimmy's voice. "Father, Tommy!" The telegraph office had closed just after word arrived from North Berwick saying that Tom and Tommy were coming home by boat. Nineteen-year-old Jimmy had gone to the pier to wait for his father and brother.

At the end of the pier, a set of stone steps rose out of the water. Tommy clambered out of the yacht, splashed onto the lowest step and hurried up to the pier. His father thanked Lewis and followed. The stars cast a pale light, just enough to keep a man from stepping off the pier into black water. Jimmy spoke to Tom for a moment, saying something Tommy didn't hear.

Tommy walked 300 yards up the pier to the corner of town where the fisher-folk lived. The air smelled of gutted fish. He set off toward North Street.

The next day's Scotsman Scotsman would tell of a second telegram that had gone from St. Andrews to North Berwick on September 4, arriving moments after Lewis's yacht departed: "[T]hey had just cleared the harbour, and were hoisting sail, when a messenger reached the pier bearing another telegram stating that Mrs. Morris had given birth to a son, but that both mother and child were dead. The purport of the message being made known to a number of [Tommy's] friends who had been seeing him off they agreed, although the yacht was within easy hailing distance, to allow it to sail without acquainting those on board with the distressing news, fearing that the shock to the unhappy husband would be too great." would tell of a second telegram that had gone from St. Andrews to North Berwick on September 4, arriving moments after Lewis's yacht departed: "[T]hey had just cleared the harbour, and were hoisting sail, when a messenger reached the pier bearing another telegram stating that Mrs. Morris had given birth to a son, but that both mother and child were dead. The purport of the message being made known to a number of [Tommy's] friends who had been seeing him off they agreed, although the yacht was within easy hailing distance, to allow it to sail without acquainting those on board with the distressing news, fearing that the shock to the unhappy husband would be too great."

Jimmy had whispered the news to his father. Now Tom had to say it aloud.

"Tommy, it's over," he said. Margaret was dead, he said. The baby was dead. He was sorry, he said.

Tommy started home. He walked past the shuttered fisher pubs, the Auld Hoose and the Bell Rock Tavern. It was an uphill mile from the pier to the house where he and Meg lived. Their house was at the western end of town, the links end, where the air smelled of turf and brine and seaweed. The houses he pa.s.sed were dark, but yellow light leaked through drawn blinds at the house at the end of the street, 2 Playfair Place, Tommy and Meg's house. The front door was darker than the street, recessed by six inches, hidden from starlight. Tommy shoved the door open. Inside he found his mother propped in a chair, his sister Lizzie and brother Jack, and the Country Parson himself, the Rev. A.K.H. Boyd, all waiting for him.

"There was a pathetic event here at the beginning of September," Pastor Boyd wrote. "On Thursday September 2, father and son went together to North Berwick, to play a great match on the Links there. Tommy left his wife perfectly well.... But on Sat.u.r.day afternoon that fine girl...ran down and died. A telegram was sent to Tom, who told his son they must leave at once...I was in the house [when] they arrived. What can one say in such an hour? I never forget the young man's stony look: stricken stricken was the word: and how all of a sudden he started up and cried, 'It's not true!' I have seen many sorrowful things, but not many like that Sat.u.r.day night." was the word: and how all of a sudden he started up and cried, 'It's not true!' I have seen many sorrowful things, but not many like that Sat.u.r.day night."

Tommy hurried to the bedroom.

The blizzard of 1875 froze the St. Andrews links.

TWELVE.