The Tennis Player from Bermuda (11 page)

“In 1960. This year will probably be my last Wimbledon. I’ve been there six times so far. I’d love to win again before I give up competition.”

“Do you think you’ll win?”

“I have to get past Margaret Smith first. She hasn’t yet won the singles at Wimbledon. Lucky for me, last year Margaret lost in the fifth round to Christine Truman. But now the London bookies are giving highwaymen’s odds of six to four on Margaret to win the singles this year. I’ve played her three times in competition, all three times on grass, and I lost twice. I lost to her at Kooyong just a few months ago.”

“Why would you give up competition?”

“I want to have a family. I could still compete after I have children; I know some women who do. I talked to Kay Menzies about it.”

“Who is she?”

Claire stared at me in disbelief. “Kay Stammers Menzies. The best English woman player before and after the war. Older than me but a good friend. She had her family during the war, then led our Wightman Cup team.”

“Oh.”

“But I don’t think I want to keep playing if I can have a baby. Too much travel, for one thing.” Claire leaned over to me and said softly, “Richard and I are already trying to have a baby. I thought that, even if I were lucky enough to get pregnant, Wimbledon would be so early for me that being pregnant wouldn’t make any difference.”

“Won’t you miss tennis?”

“No, not if I can have a family.”

I was silent. It was hard for me to imagine giving up tennis, I mean in competition.

Claire knew what I was thinking. “Fiona, do you know what I did after I won the final in 1960? I went out with Richard, my brother, and my parents and celebrated at the Wimbledon Ball. But we went home quite early because I was tired.”

She laughed. “Actually, we were
both
tired. Richard claims it’s much harder to watch a Wimbledon final than to play in one. And then, Sunday morning, I woke up and boiled him an egg and made tea for his breakfast. It was the same as always. I had gotten what I had wanted for years, but everything was just the same. I mean, there’s all this, now.” She smiled. “Exhibition matches with girls from Bermuda. But nothing really changed. I won’t miss it.”

She thought for a moment. “I want a family now.”

Then she changed the subject. “Tell me about this boyfriend.”

“I only met him a month or so ago. He came to Bermuda to visit his aunt there on holiday, and I was set up with him.”

“Set up?”

I thought that maybe I had used an exclusively American expression. “I just mean that apparently it had been arranged that I should meet him.”

“I know what ‘set up’ means. I’m not a dinosaur. How were you set up?”

“I don’t know exactly, but his father and my father served together in the war, in the Royal Navy, and they’re friends. I had the feeling that everyone had decided I should meet him. When I did, then my parents basically let me see him whenever I wanted, which was all the time. That’s unheard of for them.”

“You must like him.”

“A great deal.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Claire!”

“Yes, yes, it’s a personal question, I shouldn’t ask, it’s private, I’m awful. What’s the answer?”

“No. But maybe I should have.”

“Have you ever slept with anyone?’

“No.”

“Well, as soon as you’re on the international tennis circuit, the men players will fix that, for sure, and quickly.” Claire said this bitterly.

“Did you sleep with anyone before your husband?”

She shook her head ruefully. “Fiona, I was already on the circuit, and by myself, when I was your age. By the time Richard finally got around to proposing to me, I had gone through most of the men on the circuit and was about to start in on the Wimbledon ball boys.”

Then she asked, “What’s this boyfriend like?”

“He’s good looking. He’s a medical student at Cambridge, so he’s older than me.”

“So he doesn’t push you into things? He must not, or you’d already have been in his bed.”

I nodded. “Well, I seem to do almost anything he asks. But I don’t think he pushes me, at least not too much. He’s about right, I mean in the way he treats me.” I smiled. “Claire, he’s wonderful.”

She laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

Then Claire switched subjects again. “Fiona, will I offend you if I say something about your game?”

“I’d want to hear anything you say about my game.”

“There were only two important games in our match. The two games when I broke you.”

“Yes.”

“If you had won either of those games, we’d probably still be out there, or maybe you would have won by now. You think so?”

“Yes.”

“You know what I think? You got behind in the score on your serve, and you got impatient. Because you were impatient, you made mistakes. I don’t mean to lecture you, I hate it when people do that to me, but that’s what I think.”

“I know what you’re saying. You’re right.”

“You play so quickly on your serve. I know where that comes from. Rachel plays so quickly. Play has to be continuous, sure. But still, you usually serve less than 10 seconds after the previous point. Slow down, catch your breath, think, plan the next point.”

At that time, the Rules of Lawn Tennis required play to be “continuous,” including between points, so the server wasn’t given time to reach for a towel or bounce the ball endlessly before serving. It wasn’t until 1979 that the server would be allowed 30 seconds (later cut to 20 seconds) to serve. So, in 1962, play in international competition was much faster than today.

Claire smiled. “I’m not going to tell you to bounce the ball on the court while you’re taking your time. I know that’s against Rachel’s rules.”

“But to serve quickly can put pressure on your opponent.”

“Maybe. Maybe a few women feel the pressure. For most of them, though, it’s like trying to put pressure on a rock. They don’t care, and it doesn’t affect them.”

Now I switched subjects. “Were you serious when you said I might win someday at Wimbledon?”

“There’s so much that’s pure luck, good or bad. The weather can be terrible. We always say we should re-schedule Wimbledon and hold it in the summer!’”

I frowned. “Wimbledon is in the summer.”

Claire sighed. “It’s a joke, Fiona.”

“Oh.”

“You can wake up one morning sick. Or you can wake up one morning with your period and feel awful. An opponent can have a great day. You can have a bad day. It’s two long weeks. Unless you have a bye for the first round, it’s six matches in a row just to get to the final. It’s exhausting, it really is exhausting. Anything can happen. And you know Centre Court.”

When she said this, I thought, ‘No, I don’t know Centre Court, but I plan to learn all about it.’

“It all happens so quickly, and then it’s over. All that matters is who wins the last point. So you never know.” She stopped for a moment. “But, yes, I think you might win Wimbledon. For one reason: you’re extraordinary at the net.”

She paused again, thinking. “You may be one of the best ever at the net. That’s what Rachel thinks, and maybe she’s right. But it’s too soon to know. Maybe you’ll collapse in international competition. Rachel is worried about that, because you’ve been cooped up in Bermuda and at college in the States. You certainly take too many chances. That’s Rachel’s influence, to go all out. She’s never liked being cautious. But still – the question is how you’ll do in international competition.”

We heard a knock on the door, and Claire yelled, “Come in!”

The club steward poked his head through the door. “Claire, could we ask you to come back out on the court for some photographs with the members?”

“Yes, I’ll be right there.” Claire turned to me, smiled, and held up her index finger. “Be careful what you wish for!” She walked to the door, stopped for a moment, then turned around to me.

“Fiona, you’re an amateur; am I right about that?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever played in a tournament where a professional was also playing?” She was referring to the ridiculous rules that governed whether a player could be considered an ‘amateur.’ Even if you had merely played in the same tournament with a professional, you could be disqualified from amateur competition.

“No. Last year I saw Pancho Gonzales beat Frank Sedgman, when Jack Kramer brought them to Bermuda. My parents took me to see them play. But I didn’t even meet them. I’ve never played with a professional.”

“You’ll be in London the week of June 18?”

“Yes. I’ll be at the season.”

She walked back to the bench and sat down beside me. “You could play at Roehampton that week. If I could get you an invitation, would you play?”

“Yes, I’m sure I would enjoy it.” I had never heard of Roehampton. I had no idea what Claire was talking about.

“The draw is probably already set. Everyone fights for an invitation. The LTA would have to submit an entry form for you. That’s all right, they probably consider Bermuda to be part of Great Britain. Don’t get your hopes up; I doubt I can make it happen. Tomorrow morning I’ll send the Committee a telegram about you. But remember, every woman in tennis wants to be at Roehampton. I’ll do my best. Will you give me your address?”

I pulled my notepad from my pocketbook, tore off a page, wrote my address at Smith, and handed the page to her. She got up and walked to the door to go have her photograph taken with the Longwood members.

“Claire, what is the ‘LTA’?”

She turned and stared at me. “The Lawn Tennis Association. They run amateur tennis in Britain. I don’t really know how they submit the forms. They do it for me, I guess, more or less automatically.”

“They might submit a form for me? To where?”

Claire laughed. “To the All England Club, silly. For Wimbledon.”

I sat staring at Claire with my mouth hanging open.

It finally dawned on Claire that I wasn’t conversant with the process for selecting the qualifiers for the singles draw at Wimbledon. “Fiona, Roehampton is the week before Wimbledon. It’s the qualifying competition. That’s how I qualified for Wimbledon, my first time. The All England Lawn Tennis Club Committee of Management, in its infinite wisdom, and after consulting with the Referee, Colonel Legg, may invite you to play at Roehampton. There are three rounds at Roehampton. It’s brutal.”

She laughed again. I had the sense that Claire had enjoyed Roehampton thoroughly.

“The women who win all three rounds get unseeded spots in the Wimbledon draw.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll send the Committee a telegram first thing in the morning. I’ll tell them to see what you can do. But they probably won’t listen to me.”

Claire left for photographs with the Longwood members.

To me, then, Wimbledon was merely a shimmering dream. I had seen it only in smudged black and white newspaper photographs showing legendary players, like Angela Mortimer and Maria Bueno, on Centre Court. I had heard matches at Wimbledon only over crackling, short wave BBC radio broadcasts: “
Crosscourt. Point to Miss Mortimer. Good show by the girl from Devon.”

I sat on the dressing room bench, trying to breath slowly. I might, just possibly, have a path to Wimbledon.

M
AY
1962
S
MITH
C
OLLEGE
E
MERSON
H
OUSE
N
ORTHAMPTON
, M
ASSACHUSETTS

Two weeks after I played Claire at Longwood, I was at Smith waiting for an afternoon chemistry lab to get started, when a girl from Emerson House came in and told me that I had received a telegram. She had seen it when she had gone back to the house for lunch. I instantly cut the lab, ran as fast as I could along the path under the trees back to the house, burst through the door, found my telegram on the front hall table, and tore it open.

W
ESTERN
U
NION

FIONA HODGKIN

CONFIRM SOONEST ENTRY JUNE 18 QUALIFYING ROEHAMPTON STOP CONFIRM AMATEUR STATUS STOP

THE COMMITTEE

ALL ENGLAND LAWN TENNIS CLUB

I screamed at the top of my lungs, “YES! YES!” I was jumping up and down in the hallway.

The house matron came out of the kitchen. “Fiona, a young man must have proposed to you. That’s the only thing that could make you so happy. Congratulations!”

Mother was Not Pleased.

I had written her immediately with the news about Roehampton, told her I had accepted the Committee’s invitation by a reply telegram, and generally made it clear that this was the most wonderful thing that could have happened.

It never entered my mind that Mother would not see it that way.

She telephoned me during dinner one night at Emerson House. “Fiona,” she began coldly. “By agreeing to play tennis in London, you’ve put yourself and me in an awkward position. Lady Thakeham is likely to feel, and would be justified in feeling, that we have taken advantage of her invitation in order to have you enter a tennis tournament.”