The Tennis Player from Bermuda (12 page)

I had not thought about this, and I regret to say Mother was correct on this point.

“Also,” Mother continued, “this isn’t a step you should have taken without discussing it first with your father and me. I’m unhappy that you did this on your own.”

I had never thought to talk with Mother about this; I had been too excited. Again, unfortunately, she was in the right about this.

“I think you need to withdraw from this tournament in London.”

I hesitated and then decided on a strategic retreat. “Mother, you’re exactly right, and I apologize to you and Father. I was excited about this, and I acted without thinking. But the tournament will only be a day, at most two. I’m sure I’ll lose in the first or second round. It won’t interfere with anything I’m doing with the Thakehams.”

She had anticipated my retreat. “No. I talked with Rachel Martin today, who is as surprised as I am. But she tells me not to count on your losing. She expects you’ll be in it until the end, or near the end.”

Thanks a lot, Mrs Martin, for all your help here; you can’t be bothered to tell me that I’m any good, but you seem to advertise me widely to everyone else.

“Mother,” I said, “I do apologize, but I will write a letter to Lady Thakeham tonight, a long, polite letter, and mail it in the morning. I’ll tell her I did this without asking you, which I sincerely regret, and I’ll promise her Roehampton won’t interfere with the season. And if it does, I’ll simply withdraw. I’ll tell her I had no idea about this tournament when you accepted her invitation to stay with them, which is true.”

When I said this to Mother, I thought that what I should really do tonight is a calculus problem set, but I put that aside for the moment. The important thing was to hang onto my place at Roehampton. Mother was entirely capable of saying simply that I wasn’t playing tennis in London. That would be that. If she decided I shouldn’t play at Roehampton, it would be hard, probably impossible, to change her mind. I doubted I could persuade Father to take my side on this.

But I had one major psychological advantage over Mother, which is that I was her only child. I have no idea why my parents didn’t have more children; they certainly didn’t seem to have the slightest difficulty having me, and they both loved children. But I was their only child, and that meant, in my experience, that neither of them could be angry or upset at me for long. I could tell Mother was at least a bit mollified by my apology.

So I went at Mother again. “I’ll write Lady Thakeham tonight, and I promise you I’ll make it right with her, and while I’m in London I’ll behave so that she will be happy to have had me visit.”

Mother said, “Fiona, will you write me tonight and tell me you’ve written Mark’s mother?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And you’ll apologize to her?”

“Yes, Mother, I will.”

“And you’ll tell her you’ll withdraw from this tournament if it interferes in any way with your obligations to her family?”

“I will say that explicitly to her.”

“Then please do so. And, Fiona, you really must talk with us before you decide on something like this.”

“Yes, Mother, I will.”

And so we told one another that we loved each other and said goodbye.

Roehampton and Lady Thakeham didn’t turn out exactly the way I promised Mother they would.

S
EPTEMBER
2011
A
LL
E
NGLAND
C
LUB
W
IMBLEDON
L
ONDON
, E
NGLAND

When I told Claire I was going to write this story of my tennis career and how I met my husband, she wasn’t enthusiastic. She and I are both old now – I’m in my late 60s, and Claire is almost 76. It had happened so long ago, why go back into all that? That was Claire’s thinking.

Claire had published her own tennis autobiography soon after she first won Wimbledon in 1960. An autobiography was one of the few accepted ways for a successful amateur to make money from tennis. But Claire hadn’t written a single word of that book – except for the preface. She wrote the preface herself.

Claire explained in the preface that, when she had told her husband, Richard, about her plan to include the louche details of her love affairs with men players when she was a single girl on the international tennis circuit, Richard objected. Then, Claire wrote, Richard engaged a young literary lady from a good English family to ghostwrite a proper tennis autobiography for Claire.

The ghostwriter, naturally, asked to interview Claire, and so Claire had invited her over to the flat. In her preface, Claire wrote: “She was an aspiring novelist; she was charming; she preferred Earl Grey tea; she knew nothing about tennis.”

Claire’s tennis autobiography had been a runaway best seller in England.

I was in London to give a paper at a pediatric medical conference, and I was staying with Claire and Richard. At breakfast, I asked Claire if she’d kept a copy of the telegram she had sent to the Committee about me in 1962.

“No, I didn’t. I just scribbled something down on a Western Union message pad in the hotel in Boston that morning. I didn’t think to keep a copy.”

“You must remember what you said about me to the Committee.”

“No, I don’t. Anyway, it’s a mistake, this idea of writing it all down.”

I persisted. I had decided to write my story, and I was going to do it.

Finally, Claire said, “ The All England Club hasn’t thrown anything away, ever. So they’ll have my telegram. Just speak with the Club’s Secretary.”

That morning I rang the Club. The Secretary said, “It’s Doctor Hodgkin, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I regret that you and I haven’t been introduced. But if you please. There was a telegram in 1962, about me. If it still exists, may I see it?”

“A telegram?”

“To the Committee of Management,” I said. “From Claire. I mean, from Mrs Richard Kershaw. About me.”

The Secretary told me to come around to the Club, and he would meet me at Gate 5. We would see, he said, if the telegram could be found in the files.

I took the Tube to Southfields and walked under my umbrella in the rain down Church Road. I hadn’t been to Wimbledon in many years, and all the new gates confused me. But surely the ‘Gate 5’ the Secretary directed me to must be the old South East Gate, the main entrance to the Club?

Good to his word, the Secretary was standing at the gate under an umbrella.

“Where are the Doherty Gates?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re down at the south end of the ground now. Have been since 2006.”

The Doherty Memorial Gates, made of black wrought iron, with the letters ‘A.E.L.T.C.’ in bright gold leaf, had stood at the South East Gate since 1931. They had been given to the Club by Rev. W. V. Doherty in memory of his brothers, Reggie and Laurie, who between them had won Wimbledon nine times – Laurie won five times in a row, 1902 to1906. The Committee approved the design of the Gates in October 1930, and they had been bolted to the masonry gateposts the next year.

“Why in heaven would the Doherty Gates be moved?”

“My dear Doctor Hodgkin, the lorries, of course.”

“The lorries?”

“When Centre Court was rebuilt. For the new retractable roof. The construction lorries were too wide for the old gates.”

“But no one ever goes to the south end of the ground! No one would see the gates.”

“Oh, the Committee put quite a nice little plaque down there. In the wall beside them.”

Once we were in his office, the Secretary summoned a young clerk. “Simon, we want a telegram from 1962, it will likely be on an old Post Office Telegram form, probably quite short, telegrams were expensive. From Mrs Richard Kershaw to the Committee.”

I interjected. “She may have signed the telegram ‘Claire Kershaw,’ or even just ‘Claire.’”

“Just so,” the Secretary said. “Off you go, then, Simon.”

The Secretary suggested that I wait in the members’ buffet in the Millennium Building, on the other side of Centre Court, while Simon conducted his search.

In September, on a chilly, rainy London day, the buffet was as cold and closed as a tomb. The lone attendant gave me a cup of tea, and I took it out on the covered balcony, which had a view of the outer grass courts and, in the distance, on a hill, in the mist, the old spire of St. Mary’s Church.

On a sunny day during the Championships, this balcony would be a splendid spot from which to see the milling crowds, the brilliant green grass, the tennis players fighting to stay in the draw, and the blooming hydrangea. Now, though, the nets were down, the umpires’ chairs gone, the hydrangea pruned back to the old wood, and the only sign of life was a single groundskeeper wearing a yellow rain slicker who appeared to be merely looking forlornly down at the grass.

I stood there, lost in thought.

Simon, the young clerk, appeared after about an hour. He coughed, politely, to gain my attention. I turned around.

“Doctor, is this possibly the telegram for which you are looking?”

I went back inside the buffet and sat down at a table. The telegram was crinkled, and I held it down with my fingers spread to flatten it. The strips of type that had been pasted onto the form were peeling off.

P
OST
O
FFICE
T
ELEGRAM

THE COMMITTEE

ALL ENGLAND LAWN TENNIS CLUB

DEAR DARLING BOYS STOP YESTERDAY EXHIBITION MATCH LONGWOOD BOSTON GRASS FIONA HODGKIN 18 YEARS BERMUDA AMATEUR SINGLES CHAMPION STOP COACH AMATEUR RACHEL OUTERBRIDGE 1939 SINGLES FINALIST STOP FH SWEET YOUNG BALL OF ENERGY STOP YOU MUST LIST FH FOR ROEHAMPTON STOP FH ADDRESS EMERSON HOUSE SMITH COLLEGE NORTHAMPTON MASS US STOP I PROMISE TO SLEEP WITH EACH OF YOU UPON RETURN ENGLAND STOP SEPARATELY OF COURSE STOP

The telegram was signed with a single word: CLAIRE.

I burst out laughing, which startled Simon. In 1962, the members of the Committee were all men, with an average age of probably 75. (The first woman on the Committee would be Virginia Wade, but that wouldn’t happen until 1982.) In their dreams, the Committee members no doubt wished the beautiful Claire actually meant to sleep with them.

But they had obediently put me down for Roehampton.

In the rain, under my umbrella, I walked back to Gate 5. The young security guards at the gate wore bright orange jackets and had coiled wires from their radios running under their collars to earphones. They must have been told who I was or, more accurately, who I had been before they were born, because they quietly stepped aside as I approached.

I stood at the gate for a moment, looking across Church Road at the Wimbledon golf course.

Then, instead of turning left, back to Southfields, I turned right and walked toward to the point where Church Road met Somerset Road, at the south end of the Club’s ground.

I wanted to say hello to my poor old friends, the Doherty Memorial Gates.

S
ATURDAY
, 9 J
UNE
1962
M
IDPOINT
P
AGET
P
ARISH
, B
ERMUDA

The day before my flight to London, Mother was helping me pack. We were going to have a family dinner that evening with my grandparents to say goodbye for a month.

While we were in my room, surrounded by piles of clothes, Mother said, “Fiona, during the season in London, many young people drink too much at the parties and do not conduct themselves well; in fact, quite badly sometimes. Drinking is a risk for girls – I mean drinking alcohol.”

I was glad she had cleared that up for me.

“Your father and I are sending you off for the season because we can count on you to show good judgment and to conduct yourself well. Can we rely on you?”

“Yes, Mother.” I predicted to myself what was coming next. Mark Thakeham. And I was right.

“I know you like Mark a great deal. And he seems to like you. Maybe over the next few years you’ll have a friendship that’s important to both of you. If that happens, all well and good. But Mark is four years older than you, and I’m confident he’s sexually experienced. Perhaps quite so.”

She was right about that, I thought.

“You, I take it, are not sexually experienced?”

“Uh, well, not very.”

She sighed. “I meant my question to ask whether you’ve had sexual intercourse.” She had been a physician for a long time and didn’t shy away from biological facts.

“No.”

Mother looked at me. “But something close to it, I think,” she said.

I said nothing.

Mother arched her eyebrow. “Well?”

“Mark touched me once.” I dreaded telling her what I was talking about, but to my surprise she seemed to know exactly what I meant.

“And that’s all?”

“Mark said he would just touch me, nothing more. That’s all he did.”

“Well, good for you, Mark Thakeham,” Mother said softly. She sounded a bit surprised at the show of at least partially responsible conduct from this quarter.

Then she asked, “Do you plan to sleep with him while you’re in England?”

I hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

“Good. I don’t want you to. Fiona, I know how tiresome it is at your age to have adults always saying that you’re too young to do this or that, but here you really are too young. I want you to wait.”

“I won’t sleep with him while I’m in London.”

“Good.”

“But maybe someday?”

“Fiona, if in two or three years you decide this is what is right for you, and you protect yourself with a contraceptive, then go straight ahead. But when you decide to start, do it on your terms, not on Mark’s terms, or on some other boy’s terms. And not now.”

“I promise that’s what I’ll do.”

“Good. So I don’t need to take you to the clinic in the morning and fit you with a diaphragm. Am I right about that?”

“I don’t need a diaphragm,” I almost whispered.

The idea of having Mother fit me with a diaphragm made the blood drain from my face. I knew about contraception because, a year or so earlier, while I was on a walk in Paget with American Grandmother, she had told me, in great and embarrassingly graphic detail, how to use a diaphragm. Then, having built up a full head of steam on the subject of human reproduction, American Grandmother had gone on to explain the biochemistry of the menstrual cycle.