We're delighted to present an extract from Olivia Smith's short story The Women at the Golf Club, taken from the new anthology Counterparts: A Synergy of Law and Literature, edited by Danielle McLaughlin and published by The Stinging Fly Press, in aid of Peter McVerry Trust.
The anthology is arranged as a series of pairings, with writing by contemporary Irish lawyer-writers paired with extracts from a legal judgment of the writers’ choosing. The writers also offer their reasons for choosing that particular judgment. In some cases a law report may have prompted a new piece of writing; in others, writers may see resonances of theme or language between the legal writing of the judgment and the themes they seek to explore in their own work; or it may simply be that they were drawn to a fascinating human story told in fine language, as the law reports so often deliver!
Olivia Smith’s story, The Women at the Golf Club, is based on a real-life legal case: Equality Authority v Portmarnock Golf Club & Others [2009] IESC 73.
I’ve been a widow since 1990. I’m the only one of the women without a husband. Widowhood doesn’t bother me really, the loneliness that people go on about. I was already alone for years when he was alive. He walked into the river with lumps of rocks in his pockets. No note, just debts. But at least I hadn’t signed any guarantee documents like some wives you’d read about in the papers. Not that he didn’t try. Once the shock wore off, Jane didn’t seem that affected, thank God, too busy studying.
Saturday evenings at the golf club are for couples. This isn’t an official rule and not universally observed, but I know how things work and I don’t press against it. And anyway, it makes the Tuesday evening meet-up that bit more interesting for me as I can catch up and add my tuppenceworth. Occasionally there’ll be a strained look from Rose, as if to say, ‘you don’t have a husband’. But at least mine wasn’t from a terraced house in Mullingar town.
We’re not actually members of the golf club, although Rose and Carmel did play at certain times before Rose got that plantar fasciitis thing. I thought it was something to do with Hitler but it’s in the foot. Full membership is reserved for the men. I only figured this once it all came out in the papers about that golf club above in Dublin and the case that’s been in the courts. Our golf club, well, the one we use for the wine drinking, has the same rule it seems, since its foundation 91 years ago. Our wine chats at the golf club are actually courtesy of Rose’s husband, a member, who signs us in on the Tuesday and Thursday evenings. He sits in the opposite corner for the duration. In case we lose the run of ourselves.
Jane was raging when she heard I was going to the golf club socials. As a corporate solicitor I would have thought it would be exactly her thing. Or it should be. Do you really want to be giving these uppity fuckers in diamond-patterned jumpers your widow’s pension, she roared down the phone at me. This was after another complaint about the price of wine at the club. You know there’s only a handful of sports clubs in the country that couldn’t be bothered to change their rules?
But the women can play at certain times, I said, and anyway, we’re not interested in sports, we only go because of Rose and the smoking ban and not looking like a hoor on the street. She shouted something back about us all being prejudiced against sex workers and our failure to appreciate intersecting axes of oppression… I couldn’t really follow. I find it best to be silent when she gets academic and blustery. Then she added whether I had forgotten the treatment of my own mother at the hands of these exact types of retrogrades. That’s different, I said, different times. Right, she said, and after another of our silences I moved us on to international oil prices. I hadn’t seen her this wound up about something since that referendum in 2004 when Michael McDowell was a minister. I eventually voted how she told me in that one. She was never gone on McDowell even though he’s a lawyer as well. I even persuaded the women to vote Jane’s way and Jesus, that took some doing, what will all those stories going round about the non-nationals being given free mobile phones and the like.
*
I was newly married and had just moved to an unfamiliar town to begin my life. I had just given up my job to fulfill expectations. The town was bleak enough, not unlike the marriage, and my mother had come to visit, a respite. I smiled for her and took her on a tour of the town’s main streets. I dressed nicely for the day so as not to upset her. We wandered around with me pointing out the small bits of colour I had managed to find in the town. My mother felt faint and weak, with an as yet undiagnosed terminal illness, so we decided to enter the nearest public house so she could have a settling brandy and a sit-down. I left her in the snug and went to the counter. The barman turned, smirked and then announced loudly to me and the rest of the bar its policy. We left, saying nothing, although I felt my mother’s shame in the way my ears seeped red.
*
There’s been a lot of media attention on the court case involving that Dublin golf club’s no-women members rule. It’s even dominating the women’s talk, even though Carmel has just bought a new second-hand Lexus. Morning Ireland had an interview the other day with some of the women who actually play the golf at the club and a good few of them didn’t seem that bothered by the status quo. Rose wonders why people are so het up about this especially when you think about the war in Iraq and old people dying on hospital trolleys and the collapse in property prices.
One of the Sunday newspapers criticised the state quango that’s taking the case against the club. A waste of money on lawyers in these recessionary times, it said, and the country going down the toilet. The case is off to the Supreme Court now. There’s been a lot of sympathy around our local club for the predicament of the Dublin club and the risk of it losing its drinks licence. A couple of locals have played there as guests. It seems the course is very well regarded internationally and it has been on the television. A shame to put a national institution through this, I overheard one of the members saying to the bar staff as I ordered our drinks. There’s been a lot of hushed discussions going on around the place among the committee members in the blazers. A special sub-committee has even been suggested for fear our club will face a similar court case is the latest rumour from Rose, whose second cousin takes the committee minutes. Next Saturday
there’s to be a fundraiser to help with pay for legal advice. First prize in the raffle is an all-expenses paid trip to Venice and ten lessons with the club’s professional. The other rumour is that a major personality from RTE is coming west to compere the evening. I’m hoping for Marty Whelan.
Marvellous, says Jane on the phone, and are the women allowed go to the fundraiser? Will ye be allowed to buy a raffle ticket? I suppose I’m only telling her because… well, the women were wondering whether she knew if many of the Supreme Court judges are golfers. Probably don’t have the time, she says. But at least we’ve women Supreme Court justices now, she shouts. Though they probably golf elsewhere I mutter while holding the phone away from my ear.
Counterparts: A Synergy of Law and Literature (published by Stinging Fly Press) is out now, with all monies raised going to the Peter McVerry Trust - a limited edition slipcase edition (of only 300 editions) is available through the Stinging Fly website.
About The Author: Olivia Smith is a graduate of University College Cork (BCL; LLM) and the University of Edinburgh (PhD). She has lectured in law in universities in the UK and Ireland and has been a visiting scholar at law schools in the United States and Canada. She is the author of Disability Discrimination Law (Thomson Roundhall, 2010) and many articles and chapters in the area of equality and discrimination law. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the annual anthology for the arts, Winter Papers.
