The Tennis Player from Bermuda (29 page)

At tea, Mark did his level best to charm Mother and it worked. He complimented her frock, asked for advice on a difficult diagnosis he’d had that day in hospital, denied with a laugh her suggestion that I had been ‘inattentive’ as the Thakeham’s guest and offered to pour her another cup of tea. “One more of these small éclairs, Doctor Wilson?” he asked, holding out a plate to her.

No female, not even one as practical as Mother, could resist him – except, apparently, me.

I was left to chat with Lady Thakeham. I would rather have swallowed a lizard.

After we finished our tea, Lady Thakeham and Mother went off to the ladies’ loo together. Mark and I stood looking at one another in the lobby of Claridge’s while we waited for them.

“I don’t want you to hit me,” Mark said cheerfully.

“I’m not going to hit you. I shouldn’t have hit you and I apologize.”

“Not at all. You were entirely justified. I didn’t treat you well, which I regret very much. And I was certainly wrong when I said you would lose the first round at Wimbledon.”

“Actually, your telling me that I’d lose helped me in my first round match. It made me so angry that I was determined to win. Anyway, the mistakes were all my own.”

“Well, I’m proud of you. As is everyone.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that a great deal.”

“Fiona, perhaps before you return to Bermuda we could have dinner together.”

“Mark, I can’t. You’re kind to make the offer. I’m sorry. I’m seeing someone else, and I probably shouldn’t go out with you for dinner.”

Here I was stretching the nature of my relationship with John. I’m sure John would have been surprised to hear that I thought our relationship had any element of exclusivity.

At first, Mark was surprised. Then it dawned on him. “Is this the fellow who was the lucky recipient of the kiss?”

The newspapers had all printed photographs of me kissing John and had called it, in huge headlines, “THE KISS.”

“I doubt he considers himself lucky, but yes, it’s him.”

Mother and Lady Thakeham now reappeared. Mark put his hands on my shoulders and leaned over and kissed my cheek. He pulled back and said, simply, “Friends?”

I smiled at him and replied, “Friends.”

Then we shook hands, and I noticed that he held my hand with a gentle pressure just an instant longer than I might have expected.

Then Lady Thakeham put her hand in the crook of her son’s arm and they swept out of Claridge’s lobby.

An objective observer – Mother, perhaps – might have said that I was turning away a handsome and charming boy, close to my own age, who I liked and who shared and accepted my plans to become a physician. He was, after all, the scion of an old and aristocratic, not to mention wealthy, English family. His children would bear titles.

I had the impression that, if I wanted, in a few years it probably could be arranged for me to be Mark’s wife and then the mother of his children. If I wanted, someday I could be mistress of 16 Hyde Park Gate and Thakeham House. If I wanted, Myrtle Hanson might agree to be my children’s nursery nurse.

But I was giving Mark up in favor of an older man who never would be interested in an exclusive relationship with me – or so Claire said emphatically, and she knew her brother quite well. John himself had said nothing that could lead me to think otherwise.

So I was just fooling myself. But American Grandmother used to say that people are only biological organisms. They don’t do what they should do; they do what they want to do.

T
HURSDAY
E
VENING
, 5 J
ULY
1962
C
LARIDGE
’
S
M
AYFAIR

When John arrived at Claridge’s in the 356, Rachel was waiting in the doorway, with her arms folded over her chest, and an unusually grim look on her face. I was beside her. There was a small crowd of tennis fans waiting for a glimpse of me, and there were news photographers with the same goal.

That afternoon, I had won my semifinal match. My win had created a wild sensation in the tennis world. I was the first lady qualifier to ever advance to the final.

Claire had also won her semifinal match that afternoon. She would be my opponent on Saturday.

John got out of the Porsche and opened the passenger door for me with a flourish.

Rachel said, “John Fitzwilliam, I want her back this evening. I want her to get a good night’s sleep, both tonight and tomorrow night. Do you understand?”

John smiled. “Yes, Rachel, I’ll bring her back tonight.”

“This is serious, John. She’s playing the final on Saturday afternoon. I’m sure Claire is at home, resting.”

“Or something,” I said.

Rachel went on. “I don’t want Fiona out late, and I don’t want her to come back – ” Rachel paused, trying to think of a polite term. “Tired. I don’t want her tired.”

John laughed. “Why isn’t anyone ever worried about
me
being tired? But I promise – I won’t bring her back tired.”

I got in the Porsche, and we left with the motor rasping. I turned backwards and kneeled on the seat to look back at Rachel over the hood. I leaned my elbows down on the folded, blue hood, and gave Rachel a huge grin and two thumbs up.

I couldn’t believe that in less than two days I would play to win Wimbledon.

Rachel slowly put out her hands and gave me two thumbs up in return.

I looked back at her in surprise. I could tell from her face that she was sad. No – she wasn’t just sad; she was about to begin crying.

She had wanted to win Wimbledon herself so much; she had come so close that July afternoon in 1939. But Rachel loved Claire. She probably realized the first time she saw Claire play that Claire could win Wimbledon for her.

I remembered the first time I served for Rachel in July 1957, when I was 14. I didn’t know Claire existed.

But that same Saturday afternoon in 1957, Claire had lost a long, desperate final on Centre Court against Althea Gibson. At the moment I was serving for Rachel, Claire was back in her flat in London, crying. She was in Richard’s arms and telling him that she worried she’d never win Wimbledon.

Then in 1960, at long last, she’d held up the Rosewater Dish on Centre Court for the first time.

After I served for Rachel, I didn’t keep going to the net. Instead, I turned and glared at her with my mouth open. I wasn’t crying anymore, and I wasn’t scared. The ball I had served was still in the air above South Road, just beginning its arc back down onto the court.

Rachel looked back at me coldly. She had said only “Like that” and then left.

I was still kneeling backwards on the seat of the 356. John reached his left hand over to brace my back. “Careful,” he said. Then he made a racing change down into third gear, and the Porsche howled off through the London traffic.

How could I not have understood? That afternoon in 1957, Rachel must have known that she would teach me to play tennis, that she’d never again tell me to stay back on the baseline. I had, or would have after years of work, the serve I needed to take me to the net.

Rachel had known that first afternoon. I had wondered why she seemed to dislike me, as though teaching me to be a champion was the most difficult thing she could do, but it was something she was obligated to carry out as best she possibly could. The irony was that Rachel had come to love me in the same way she loved Claire. That’s why she had looked about to cry as I pulled away in my lover’s Porsche.

Somehow, she’d known from that first serve at Coral Beach that, eventually, someday, I would play Claire for the Championship on Centre Court.

And I might win.

F
RIDAY
M
ORNING
, 6 J
ULY
1962
B
REAKFAST
A
T
C
LARIDGE
’
S
M
AYFAIR

At breakfast, I sat beside Rachel, with Mother and Father across from us. Father was reading
The Times
intently. After a few minutes, he folded the paper to display a particular column and then pushed the paper across the table so that it was between Rachel and me. He took his fountain pen from his lapel pocket and used it to point to a headline in the paper:

A
N
A
LL
-M
ARTIN
L
ADIES
’ F
INAL
A
T
W
IMBLEDON

I looked at Rachel; she was as baffled as I was. We began to read the article together.

Twenty-three years ago, on the eve of the war, this reporter, as a young man, covered for this newspaper perhaps the most thrilling ladies’ singles final ever played at Wimbledon. An American, Miss Alice Marble, supported by her formidable coach, Miss Eleanor (‘Teach’) Tennant, defeated a teenage girl from the island of Bermuda, who was then known as Miss Rachel Outerbridge, 6-8, 12-10, 10-8.

The match was played under metaphorical clouds of war (it was the last Wimbledon until 1946) and real clouds of rain. There were two rain delays, the first of half an hour and the second of almost two hours, and the match was completed only late in the evening as both twilight and drizzle fell on Centre Court.

In the weeks before the final, the English public had become well acquainted with Miss Outerbridge, because she often had been romantically linked in the society pages with the handsome, debonair, and brilliant German player, Gerhardt von Schleicher, from Berlin’s famed Rot-Weiss tennis club and a member of Germany’s Davis Cup Team. The couple had just quarreled, or so the society pages the morning of the final said, over Miss Outerbridge’s strong and quite outspoken anti-Nazi stance.

My jaw dropped. Years before, Rachel had once mentioned the Rot-Weiss club to me. I looked at her, but she was still reading.

Although Miss Marble ultimately defeated Miss Outerbridge, this reporter has not seen any other tennis player with the electric energy and dynamic play of Miss Outerbridge. That is, perhaps until now. One of the lady finalists tomorrow is another teenage girl from Bermuda, Miss Fiona Hodgkin. Miss Hodgkin is slightly built but runs like the wind and appears utterly fearless on Centre Court. She has charmed the spectators at this year’s Championships with her good-natured humor, sportsmanship, and youthful insouciance.

I looked up. “Father, what does ‘insouciance’ mean?”

“He means you appear to be unconcerned. He’s complimenting you, sweetheart.”

Miss Hodgkin has won over the Wimbledon spectators by showing her allegiance to the tiny island she represents. She appears on Centre Court with the Bermuda flag sewn onto her tennis dress. Miss Outerbridge, this reporter recalls, wore the Bermuda flag on her dress as well.

“Why do they always say that Bermuda is a ‘tiny’ island?” I asked. “It’s not as though it’s a speck.”

“It’s just the English, dear,” Mother said. “Their idea of a good-sized island is Australia.”

Yesterday, in her semifinal match against Fancy Pants La Bueno (also known as Maria Esther Andion Bueno), Miss Hodgkin was unperturbed by the loud commotion on Centre Court each time Miss Bueno’s short skirt flipped up to reveal her dazzling pink panties designed by the irrepressible Mr Tinling.

Miss Hodgkin plays a wild serve and volley game and accepts risks in making her shots that no doubt many more experienced players would avoid, but in doing so she makes her matches extremely exciting to watch. Indeed, Miss Hodgkin reminds this reporter of no one so much as Miss Outerbridge herself. Perhaps this reporter should not be surprised, because Miss Hodgkin’s amateur coach is Mrs Derek Martin – formerly known as Miss Rachel Outerbridge.

The other finalist is the defending ladies’ champion, Mrs Richard Kershaw, who many tennis fans may still recall as Miss Claire Fitzwilliam. Mrs Kershaw is a classic English beauty. Few women tennis players of the top rank regularly appear on the covers of leading women’s fashion magazines, as Mrs Kershaw did before her marriage.

I said to Rachel, “Is that true? Has Claire been on the cover of magazines?” Rachel snorted, didn’t answer, and kept reading. I don’t think Rachel kept track of the women’s fashion magazines.

The talented Australian girl, Miss Margaret Smith, has challenged Mrs Kershaw recently, but in this Wimbledon Miss Smith was eliminated on Ladies’ Day by the doughty American, Miss Billie Jean Moffitt. Mrs Kershaw has a clear path to her third Wimbledon championship.

There is, however, a delicious irony. This reporter has learned that Mrs Kershaw, when she was a teenager, was also coached by Mrs Derek Martin, and that Mrs Kershaw’s interest in tennis, and her competitive spirit, began during her time spent with Mrs Martin.

So, on Saturday afternoon, the spectators on Centre Court will see two ladies battle for a championship for which they have both been prepared by the same coach.

It has been striking to this reporter during the Wimbledon fortnight that Mrs Kershaw and Miss Hodgkin are close friends, as well as tennis practice partners. Centre Court this past Monday afternoon was treated to a memorable kiss Miss Hodgkin gave a handsome Royal Marines officer, who happens to be Mrs Kershaw’s brother.

‘Oh, great,’ I thought to myself. ‘Mother will be pleased as punch that I’ve managed to get my private life into the newspapers again.’

Mrs Kershaw is stronger than Miss Hodgkin, far more experienced in international tennis competition, and has a game that is better balanced than that of the diminutive Bermudian girl. At the top level, however, tennis, to a greater degree than other sports, is more about character than skill or experience. Both these players have character that seems to have been shaped by their common coach, Mrs Derek Martin.