The World of Small Arrows: a short story by Des Molloy

Agnes’s pathway to adulthood, and to such an auspicious occasion in the hallowed halls of London’s Alexandra Palace, had been an interesting one.  Possibly not one to inspire a biopic, but interesting all the same.  Born on the last day of the Twentieth Century to a mum who even the most generous of friends would describe as flaky, she was fortunate to have rock-solid grandparents living only two houses up.  She’d enjoyed her years growing up in the small rural town of Hampden, oblivious to her mother’s inadequacies and was never bullied despite her old-fashioned name and no apparent dad.  There was a lot of routine in her life that she loved.  The walk up the gully from the school bus after school was never a drudge.  Agnes knew that waiting at No 33 would be a warm hug from Nana Mary and almost certainly some baking, sometimes the legendary and most favoured ‘Grandma’s sugar buns’.  The table would be clear for her do a bit of homework before tea.  Her Nana and Koro Keith seemed to know that there was no calm time or clear spaces back at home.  Her mum Tracey just didn’t seem to be suited to the discipline and structure of bringing up a child.  Whilst Tracy had the ability to work hard and long … it was never for long.  She also couldn’t resist the party lifestyle that ran through the hospitality industry that she gravitated towards.

The stability and order provided in No 33 made up for the chaos in No 29.  Her tūpuna provided the physical needs of ample food incorporating good nutrition and homely wisdoms.  The guidance of Mary and Keith was never oppressive, it was always encouraging and collegial.  As soon as she was deemed coordinated enough to help, help Agnes did.  She helped with the baking and dinner preparation, she brought in wood in the winter and the washing in the summer.  At primary school homework was something that she chose to do, not being required to do so.  A natural puzzle-solver, she devoured maths with the ability of one much older than her years.  It started in Keith’s garage watching him play darts, listening to him count back from 501 as the arrows thwunked into the sisal-fibre board.  By the time she was eight, Keith had made a low step so she could reach up to the whiteboard and mark up the progression of his scores.  By the time she was ten she had a 150 mm-high throwing platform, her own lightweight darts and was competing against her koro as well as scoring.  Keith threw against a 501-down constraint, whilst Agnes threw upwards to 501 with no double to finish.  This matched them well for some time.  Her calculatorless scoring was soon quick and accurate.

Keith was impressed that Agnes had the maturity to listen to his guidance regarding not just ‘throwing the arrows at the target’.  He’d helped her with the almost side-on stance, and explained how to grip the dart and do the throw without twisting her arms or imparting any spin at the release moment.

“It is partly ‘muscle memory’ and partly understanding the mechanics of what the body goes through.  You have to keep each linked component in a neutral state, from the core out, all the way to your fingers.  You want no stress on any ligament or tendon … any of the levers.  Everything must move smoothly and freely.  This brings consistency.  Also you need to envisage the flight and strike.  See it before you throw!”

For a while Agnes would shut her eyes for ten seconds after taking up her stance.  This seemed to correspond with a spurt in her successes against her tutor.  Every day after school she practiced and at 12 she moved to direct competition with Keith and the occasional win.

At 14 she was gifted an adult-size set of darts complete with a polished wooden storage box made by Keith.  The box itself was an absolute gem.  It was made from Tawa, a pale native New Zealand hardwood. There was a contrasting darker Rimu top with her initials inlaid in Paua shell.   The spaces for the three Unicorn ‘Aden Kirk’ steel-tip darts had been routered by Keith to hold them snugly with a finger-space to enable easy removal.  The label on the delivery box proclaimed the darts to be 90% Tungsten and weigh 22 g.  There was also a compartment in Keith’s box for a small square 10 ‘ Disston tape measure.  Clearly a vintage item, Keith explained that the two distances in darts that were defined should be checked if it didn’t feel right.

“If the height is out by an inch, or the distance out to the ‘okky’ mark is wrong, you’ll be thinking that maybe you’re just having a bad night.  Don’t be afraid to check it.  I’ve put the measurements on a sticker on the inside of the lid.  You don’t know feet and inches, so I will show you on the tape measure.  It is 5 feet, 8 inches from the floor to the centre of the Bullseye.  From the front of the board to where your front foot can’t go past is 7 feet, 9 and 1/4 inches.  In competitions this will be defined by a raised oche board.  In pubs it will just be a painted line just like here in the garage.”

Agnes loved her ‘forever’ darts with their blue flights.  She was thrilled that Keith had chosen Aden Kirks because he was one of her favourite star players.  He was only in his thirties and whilst he’d not won the World Championship yet … he’d won other tournaments and was seen as a bit of a struggler … an underdog.  He also wrote children’s books.  Sometimes on Saturdays Keith and Agnes would stream a World Darts Federation tournament sitting together in the garage, cheering for their favourites.  Agnes loved the pomp and ceremony with its hype and brash build-ups.  Keith dismissed it all as ‘tosh’ and would tease her about her entry song for when she’d be on the world stage.  Aden Kirk's walk-on music was ‘You Make My Dreams’ by the American duo Hall & Oates.  Although this was a song from Keith’s youth, it was always Agnes who got up and danced to his entry.

At 15 Keith was regularly being beaten, so it was deemed that the time was right for Agnes to be unleashed on the local darts’ world.  So it was that on Thursday nights she would accompany Keith to the Globe Hotel, to what Nana Mary called his church session.  An old, faded beauty that had long since seen its glory days, the Globe still had a coterie of darts’ aficionados who gathered in an adjunct to what had been the old public bar.  The chat may have been light-hearted and the banter often boisterous, but the playing was serious.  Sometimes they would have a knockout tournament, sometimes a visit from another club, but always there was the opportunity to play for the ladder.  Being the newbie,  Agnes was put at the bottom of the ladder.  Being only allowed to challenge two positions above on the ladder, it took her until she was nearly 16 to reach the top.  Her prodigious talent was instantly recognised but the rules were the rules. Her steely stare and metronome-like throws always silenced the throng.  By the time she had dethroned Blade Cooper at the top of the ladder she was ‘their girl’ and the club was looking for challenges for her.  She was feted and carted off to regional competitions, all of which she aced.

Life wasn’t totally a bowl of cherries though, as her mum ran off with the drummer in a visiting band, parting with the words “Well, you’re 15 now.  I left home at 15 and it didn’t hurt me.  Besides, you’re always up with the ‘olds’ anyway!”  Of course, what wasn’t mentioned was that Tracy’s leaving home was not of her own volition, she was taken to a Youth Justice Residence as a result of constantly offending in the community.  Life for Agnes just went on, slowly unfolding in front of her.  School was good, adolescence was OK, her grandparents slowly aged, still caring, still loving but noticeably slowing, and often being more reflective.  Before her 18th birthday she was down in Canterbury in the halls of residence starting an Engineering degree.  She was relieved to find the common room had a dartboard and once the height and throwing distance were adjusted she was able to continue her daily practice.  The bigger city of Christchurch brought more opportunities to compete in competitions and earn World Darts Federation ranking points.  In theory if she earned enough points she could get entries into National competitions and even International ones.  Her studies precluded this to a degree but she still collected a couple of titles every year and never missed a day’s throwing of her Aden Kirks.

It was on one of her trips home and during a throwing session in the garage that she shared with her Koro — “You know how you’ve told me that your Aunt Niamh was a bit fey … had the second sight … I think I might have a wee bit of that.  Sometimes, not always, but sometimes when I do my visualisation, I really do see my shot … and it never misses.  It is always when I am finishing on a bullseye 50.  As I throw, I see the dart race ahead and I hear the applause before it lands.  I see the dart twice, once in my imagination, and once for real.  They’re always exactly the same.”

“It’s been noted that you’re better at finishing on a bullseye rather than a double.”

“But I feel sometimes that I am somehow cheating.”

“No Aggie, you have a gift.”

Sadly, warm-eyed, kind and lovely Nana Mary passed away just after Agnes graduated with her BE (Hons) in Civil Engineering.  It was unexpected and struck Agnes hard, like a stake in her heart, the wound made even saltier when her mum never fronted for the funeral.  She’d never known sorrow.  Keith consoled her.

“All life’s got a beginning and an end.  We don’t usually have a say in either of those.  We just have the middle bit.  It is there to be enjoyed.  It’s ours to do with it what we will.  Mary has been thrilled to see you achieving what you have done so far.  You’ve brought her much joy.  Maybe there is an ‘up there’ and she can look down on you as you continue to forge ahead.”

Agnes sensed that this was a small barb being thrown Tracy’s way and resolved to never let her remaining whanau down.  She’d always looked upon her grandparents as taonga, treasures to be appreciated and revered.

Agnes was offered, and had accepted an internship with the International John Holland Group.  Although they had a presence in New Zealand, the big project that she was wanted for, was the Inland Rail Project in Australia.  This decade-long project was intended to provide a fast route for double-height container freight trains from Melbourne, the 1,600 km to Brisbane.  Although scaled back in 2026 it still was the dream of most graduate civil engineers to be part of.  Agnes was put on the Illabo to Stockinbingal section in inland New South Wales.  Small in the scale of the project, it included 37 km of new track and 2 km of upgraded track.  For her it was ideal.  It included the construction of several small bridges, numerous culverts and MSE walls and the fascinating process of dynamic soil compaction.  She never tired of watching the sizeable lattice-boom crawler crane lift the ten tonne weight ten metres and freefall drop it to the ground ten times in the one place, then move 5 m and repeat.  This was much more exciting than the alternative her rival new-grad engineer Toby from Adelaide was supervising.  A comparison section of soft ground was being prepared by layering up an overlay surcharge of 5 m of fill, and leaving it for a year before removing it.  Both were recognised methods of ground improvement … squashing out the moisture molecules.

Her work and life were varied and interesting.  Quartered in a requisitioned holiday park in Junee, there was the obligatory activities room for her to keep up her throwing skills.  Being almost equidistant from Sydney and Melbourne enabled her to weekend-away to the big regional competitions, as well as the sizeable ones at Goulburn, Wollongong, Nowra and Traralgon.  She picked up steady prize money and WDF points.  The ‘girl from New Zealand’ was slowly gaining a profile, getting a following.  She no longer ‘flew under the radar’, she was ranked, and her wins were now not ‘upsets’.  She started to get media coverage, something she shied away from but couldn’t escape.  Her big opportunity came when Darts Australia announced that their ‘Open’ was indeed open to all-comers and was going to be held in Echuca on the Murray River a bit over 350 km away.  Toby, once her rival on the project, was now her wing man in the absence of Keith.  An unassuming lad with an easy smile, he couldn’t throw darts to save himself, but seemed to like that Agnes could, and in their down time from work, he was always nearby, ‘up for  a chat’ as he called it.  He’d been particularly keen to go to the Echuca event because he wanted Agnes to meet his sister who worked with an indigenous community an hour or so north of there.  She assisted a group of women in designing, producing and promoting leisure clothing under the Boondaburra brand name which is their tribal name for the Platypus.

The Australian Open was a near miss, but also a great success.  Agnes was beaten in the final by five-times champion Belinda Adams.  This result though still brought in the equivalent to six months of her current salary.  A good weekend’s earning.  Toby’s sister Grace, couldn’t have been more aptly named and they bonded naturally.  She’d brought quite a range of Boondaburra clothing for the Sunday Market where her team had a stall.  Agnes had no trouble selecting a couple of tee-shirts from the highly coloured offerings.

“If I get famous I will endorse Boondaburra … I’ll be your product ambassador.  Cheaper than getting a washed-up footie player!”  With much laughter Grace and Agnes haggled out a deal.  Agnes would get two tee-shirts, of her choice every six months and she committed to always wearing the brand at every competition she entered.  Agnes was quite thrilled with this because the designs reflected the flora and fauna of a land she was coming to love.  It wasn’t all Platypuses.  It was clear that the artwork was of indigenous origin with lots of colour and Agnes felt honoured to be part of the fledgling operation.

Keith hadn’t been left out of Agnes’s life.  She rang him two or three times a week and texted pretty much every day sharing everything … including the encroachment into the picture by Toby.  Although initially very resistant, Keith finally agreed to come over for a six month period and share her cabin.  Being seen as a supervisor, she had a two bedroom cabin, quite a step up from the ubiquitous ‘donga’ that most workers had.  The camp manager was of a similar age to Keith and had agreed to provide him with a few chores to do, to keep him busy, and access to his shed where he hoped Keith would help him with his long-term project, a FJ Holden Ute from 1954.  It was the FJ that swung the deal.  It was also seen that Keith could manage Agnes’s dart world.

Keith had barely settled in when Agnes’s darts’ world was turned on it’s head.  The news even made the mainstream media’s tabloids.  Belinda Adams had failed a drug test.  She’d been caught using Beta-blockers and had been stripped of her current Aussie title and the bonuses that went with it.  This meant that Agnes was promoted to not only have the crown, and the extra prize money, but included in the win had been an all-expenses-paid trip for two to the World Darts Championship in the UK with entry included as the Oceania Women’s Champion.

“Holy shit!” didn’t even get a ticking off from Keith.  They both knew that this was the pinnacle of competitive dart players ambitions.  To throw arrows at ‘Ally Pally’ for the title of World’s best was just a tiny fantasy that Agnes had not really even dared to dream.  It was a competition where the men and women play together.  With 128 players vying for the crown in a knock-out format, the competition takes three weeks to unfold to a final ‘best of 13 sets’ climax.  To get to the Champion’s dais needs seven wins.

“They’ve only got two arms and legs … just like you.  There’s no reason that you can’t win .. and you’ve got your magic powers.”  Keith tousled her hair playfully, “Mary will be watching, so we’d better put on a pretty good show!”

The time to get there was quite limited, so preparations were frenetic.  John Holland were OK about her being away for the last couple of weeks of the year, enjoying the publicity that her unexpected adventure off to London had brought.  Agnes Dropboxed through a licensed copy of the Kiwi folk song Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi.  This waiata celebrating togetherness would be her one minute 30 seconds walk-on music.  Grace chucked in a few extra Boondaburra tops and to Toby’s parting words “Blaze of glory, girl … blaze of glory!” they were off to the bright lights of London.

Alexandra Palace was beyond anything the Kiwi duo could imagine.  The 150-year-old ‘Palace of the people’ is set in 220 acres of parklands.  An A Grade II listed building, it has tones of Italian architecture with soaring glass panels set into stone facades.  It was the original home of the BBC studio that first broadcast Television to the UK and ‘the Beeb’ still were the most prominent of the media companies covering the event with both TV and radio interviewers present every day, all day.  Luckily Agnes was still a small-fry when the competition started.  She was the lowest ranked thrower and as a consequence was drawn against the top seed for her first match.  Her against-the-odds win instantly brought cult status, which only grew as the first week went on.  The young Antipodean ‘whipper snapper’ with her bright tops and the catchy music was suddenly everyone’s favourite.  The television audiences spiked every time she played, features were written about her in The Times as well as the Guardian and Daily Telegraph.  These were not the usual papers of the darts cognoscenti … this was mainstream coverage.  The words on the lips of the nation were “How far can she go?”  Comparisons started being made to the FA Cup run of the Second Division Sunderland football team which won 13 consecutive games to lift the trophy in 1973.

Like bees around a honeypot, journalists mobbed her any time she was in the Great Hall and not actually throwing.

“So you’re not a professional?  Do you see a career in darts ahead of you?”

“No, I am a civil engineer starting out on a big rail project in Australia.  That’s my life.”

“Do you have any sponsors?  Are you looking for sponsors?

“Not really, but I promote the tops I wear.”

“How long have you been playing and where did you start?

The questioning was relentless and often asinine and intrusive.  Training regimes, diet, relationship status, car ownership, savings, motherhood …

Fortunately her calm nature overrode this scrum of attention and Agnes quietly sailed through her first four matches undefeated and still in the game.  There were a couple of rest days before the quarter-finals and this was spent quietly with Keith, listening to his advice on strategy.  She pretty much always played the same game, only adjusting it if her throws didn’t get the numbers she wanted.  She liked to end with a 50 from the Bullseye, rather than a double.  All week she’d got the familiar tingle that came as a precursor to her final throw.  Her visualisation took on a hyper-reality … the ½ inch wire circle came into sharp focus and looked as big as a jam jar top.  “No one could miss this!” was her thought, and ‘every time a coconut’ she didn’t.  The dart flew true on her imagined path.  He second-sight was leading her to stardom.  She was like the ‘little engine that could’.  Keith would tell her every morning “It’s just another day, just another game, just another opponent.  They’ve got no more reason to win than you.  Keep the focus and you can go all the way.  The All Blacks won 18 games in a row … you only have to win seven.”

The networks started to stream her games out to the colonies.  Toby and Grace reporting back that when she was on, there was no work done at John Hollands or at the Boondaburra workshop.  Grace also reporting that numerous orders had come in from the UK for ‘tops like the Kiwi girl wears’.  

Agnes found it interesting that after winning the quarter-final, she sensed that the other players were becoming wary of her.  Not only were the crowds now fully behind her, singing along to the Tūtira Mai walk-on music, but the other competitors were appearing in the audience, both the vanquished and also potential opponents.  She was being studied and analysed.  Paddy Power, the tournament naming bookies, had shortened her odds of winning from 120 to one, down to three to one.

The quarter-final played out just as the first week’s games had, to the delight of the full-house 10,000 attendees, who chanted her out with “Aggy, Aggy, Aggy … Oi, Oi, Oi!  This was seen as some sort of bizarre adaption of the ubiquitous Aussie chant, and she’d like to have told them that Kiwis don’t do that, but it had been spontaneous and irrepressible.  She’d have to live with it, and she smiled as she saw irritation written across the face of her semi-final opponent.  As the tournament had progressed the matches had got longer.  Each game from 501 to out, is called a leg and when three legs are won, it is called a set.  The Semi was to be the ‘Best of 11 Sets’ and the Final the ‘Best of 13 Sets’.  To win a set might take five legs and to win the ‘Semi’ might take six sets, so could be 30 games.  Stamina was coming into play.  She was young and fit but she could see that her opponent Bluey Jacobs, although middle-aged, was wiry and had a reputation for being wily.  The upcoming games could stretch to three hours or more.

The ‘Semi’ unfolded just as Keith had scripted for her.  She replicated her throwing leg after leg.  She’d start with a triple 20, then adjust to throw slightly higher and put two darts into the meat of the bigger 20 wedge.  This relatively conservative lead-out netted her 100.  Her second three throws were always her adjustment to set up for her final throw.  She’d throw an 11, a triple 20 and a bare 20.  This would take her down to 310.  Her next go would be the trickiest because it required her landing two darts in the narrow double 20, then a triple 20 to give her 140 and get her to the preferred throw-out of 170.  Her throw-out was also tricky because it needed two darts in the triple 20 to leave her to finish with her bullseye 50.  Bluey Jacobs threw well and most sets took five legs.  He sprang out to a three set lead, but slowly wilted as Agnes time and time again finished out with a 50 and to a rapturous roar from the crowd when her final arrow struck home to complete the six wins needed, she was through!  The youngest ever to make a World Championship final and the first woman.

“You’re still getting your tingle aren’t you?  I can tell when your eyes almost glaze over and you don’t follow the dart to the board … you already know the result.”

“One more day, then we can go home.  I am getting headaches from all the visualisations.  Did you know that Unicorn Darts want to put my name to a range of darts?  They want to engage with young women throwers.  They’re offering silly money.  And Toyota will supply me a Landcruiser in Aus, if I agree to it being labelled, but after three years I can take the labelling off and it is mine to keep.  There was a shoe company pestering me for my contact details.  And a Woman’s magazine want to pay for an interview with me, back on the Inland Rail project with some big equipment featuring in the background.  There is an eye make-up company after rights … and a sports bra brand.  I can’t say that I am enjoying this side of things.”

“You’re a commodity now … a celebrity and even if you lose tomorrow your runner-up prize money is nearly a million bucks Aussie.  They all want a share of you — you’re rich, you’re famous, your face will be on Time magazine’s front cover next month.  Obscurity will be pretty hard now.  But … you could add to the legend by walking away.”

History records that Agnes Templeton won the World Championship Final, then withdrew into personal anonymity competing in no other major darts competitions.  She endorsed nothing other than Boondaburra clothing.

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