The Tennis Player from Bermuda (4 page)

“Of course,” she said and sat down in a wooden chair.

I sat in a chair next to her.

I said, “Perhaps you’re tired after your match.”

“It was a social doubles match. It wasn’t tiring.”

“Would you be willing to play a match with me?”

“Certainly. Let me go to the dressing room and wash my face. I’ll meet you on one of the upper courts.”

It lasted almost three hours. By the second set, all the players on the other courts had abandoned play to watch our match. I’m sure the older tennis players watching us were thinking, “This is an important match for Bermuda.”

She was so strong and hit her groundstrokes so hard that I thought, ‘What could she possibly have been like when she was younger?’ I took the first set 14-12; there were no ‘tiebreaks’ in those days – we’d never heard the phrase ‘tie-break’ in tennis scoring.

She fought every point of the second set, but by then she was tired. She should have put this match off until Sunday morning, when she would have been fresh. Then she could have pulled out the second set. But we both knew this was it. She was desperate to break my service early in the second set; she hit every ball viciously hard. This was her only chance. If the second set went into extra games, she would fade.

I was 17; she must have in her early 40s then. She knew I could play all afternoon and until it was dark. She had to break me, get this set behind her, and then the third set – well, she would deal with the third set when she got there. But she didn’t have the chance.

With the games 6-all on her serve, she drove a backhand long, only by a few centimeters but still long, and made it my advantage in the game. I won the game, breaking her serve. I looked across the net at her; we both knew it was over. She still fought every point; she tried to get the break back; she would never concede. But I kept the break. Finally, I took the second set and the match.

I had beaten her. Not in competition. Not yet. And not when she was fresh. But I had beaten her.

When I came to the net to shake hands, she refused my hand.

Instead, with perhaps 30 people watching us from the sidelines, with the net between us, she put her arms around me, pulled my head to her chest and kissed the top of my head. “You’re wonderful; I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. I felt her tears falling on my forehead.

S
ATURDAY
, 1 J
ULY
1961
M
Y
E
IGHTEENTH
B
IRTHDAY
L
ADIES’
S
INGLES
C
HAMPIONSHIP
F
INAL
T
ENNIS
S
TADIUM
M
ONTPELIER
R
OAD
B
ERMUDA

The next year, I met Mrs Martin in the finals of the Bermuda ladies’ singles championship in the old tennis stadium outside Hamilton. She, as the defending champion, was seeded first; I was seeded second. Every seat was filled, and spectators spilled out onto the sides of the court. She served first, and I took her first serve of the match and hit it for a winner back down the line – the ball just barely touched the baseline and then bounced off the back wall and hung in the air for seconds before it finally landed back in the court.

I wanted everyone there to remember this match forever.

It was a hot Bermuda day, but I felt so cold my hands were shaking between points. I fired volleys to her forehand just to show that I could catch her shot with my racket, drain the ball’s terrific kinetic energy with my hand and forearm, and then sharply angle my volley softly into her service box for a clear winner.

I served ace after ace and volleyed winner after winner; I took service game after service game at love. I hit only for the outer edges of the lines; I took ferocious, insane chances and came out on top each time. In the second set, I started following in my return of her first serve to volley winners.

I wanted to crush her, and I wanted everyone in Bermuda to watch me do it. She fought back; she would never give up; but I overwhelmed her.

Ahead 4-love in the second set, I lunged to volley one of her shots, got too far out over my feet, fell, hit the court, and lacerated the distal surface of my left elbow. I was bleeding, and suddenly there was blood all over the side of my tennis dress. I walked to the sideline and found a towel to stanch the blood. I looked up and saw Father starting down the steps of the bleachers toward the court.

“No, Father. Stay where you are,” I called loudly.

The chair umpire, George Michaels, said from the chair, “Miss Hodgkin, perhaps Doctor Hodgkin or Doctor Wilson should look at your arm before you resume play.” My mother used her maiden name, Wilson, in her medical practice – which was practically a scandal in those days.

“Mr Michaels, I am ready to play now.” I picked up my racket and walked back to the baseline. Mrs Martin, across the net, was expressionless.

It was over in 34 minutes. 6-1, 6-0.

I walked to the net, shook hands with Mrs Martin, and went to pick up a towel to hold to my elbow. Mrs Martin said nothing to me. The spectators, even my parents, were silent. There was no applause. I didn’t care. I knew the spectators thought I hadn’t been sporting.

It was one thing to win a match handily. That would be acceptable. It was quite another for a young girl like me to appear to dominate an older, respected player. That was Not Done. To make it even worse, I had played with an obvious grim fury. I knew Mother and Father would disapprove.

But I had won; I was the champion; that was all I cared about.

Mr Michaels fussily arranged a small table on the court with the two cheap pewter plates that were the prizes for the finalist and the champion. Mrs Martin and I stood side by side. I was still holding a towel to my elbow. Mrs Martin walked forward and brushed past Mr Michaels, who was attempting to award her the finalist plate. Instead, she walked to the center of the court, folded her arms over her chest, and looked out at the spectators.

Everyone in the stadium, still silent, stood up together at once. In Bermuda, in those days, this was a mark of immense respect.

As a teenager – back then she was ‘Miss Rachel Outerbridge’ – she had sailed on a steamship to Australia by herself. She was determined to become an unbeatable tennis machine, but she had almost no money. During her first week in Melbourne, she lived, homesick and lonely, in a decrepit rooming house in St. Kilda, ate only cheap Greek bread, drank tap water, and rode the No. 16 tram down Glenferries Road to Kooyong.

But when she played in the second round of the Australian championship on the lawns at Kooyong, Nell Hopman watched. Nell had just won her own second round match. Nell turned to her husband. “Who
is
that girl? What’s that flag on her dress?”

That afternoon, Nell and Harry found a wealthy family in the Toorak neighborhood to take in Rachel. For her first two days with that family, Rachel told me decades later, all she had done was eat.

And Nell, being Nell, had taken Rachel’s pocketbook without asking, rummaged around in it and – just as Nell expected – found no money. So she had the Lawn Tennis Association of Victoria give Rachel some spending money. This is what Rachel told me she remembered most: that the LTAV had given her money for her pocketbook.

Rachel was the youngest Australian ladies’ singles champion until Margaret Smith, two decades later. An old black and white photograph of Rachel, taken just after she defeated Nell in the final, shows a shy young girl clutching her racket to her chest. The framed photo still hangs in the members’ bar in the Kooyong clubhouse.

The news that Rachel had won the championship at Kooyong flashed to Bermuda in the middle of the night, and the next morning all Bermuda was on Front Street, cheering. Her anxious parents sent her a telegram congratulating her but urging her to come home to Bermuda.

She could afford to send only a one-word telegram in reply: WIMBLEDON.

I thought, ‘What would she have done for Bermuda in tennis if the war hadn’t come?’ I think everyone else there that day had the same thought.

Mrs Martin turned away from the spectators, and Mr Michaels, relieved that she was finally going to accept her finalist plate, picked it up from the table.

“George, will you kindly forget those silly plates?”

She walked back to where I was standing. I tensed, expecting she might slap me across the face. Instead, she gently put her arm around my shoulders and walked with me back onto the court. I stood there with my hand holding the towel against my left elbow, with bloodstains on my dress, and Mrs Martin’s arm around me. The crowd was completely silent.

Mrs Martin was at least four inches taller than I. She leaned her head down and kissed my cheek.

Then she said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Miss Hodgkin, that match was quite well played. Bermuda should be proud of you. I am.”

The whole stadium suddenly exploded with cheers. My parents forgot themselves to such an extent that they actually hugged one another in public and began yelling together, “Fiona! Fiona!” Everyone took up crying out my name.

Mrs Martin turned to me and said quietly, “Now we need to ask one of your parents to look after your arm.”

S
EPTEMBER
1961
P
AGET
P
ARISH
B
ERMUDA

From today’s perspective, my application to enter Smith College appears ridiculously simple. It consisted of a brief letter in late 1960 from Mother to Thomas Mendenhall, the then President of Smith, noting that I, Miss Fiona Alice Ashburton Hodgkin, of Paget, Bermuda, would be 18 years of age on July 1, 1961; that I was the granddaughter of Fiona Alice Wilson, née Ashburton, M.D., Smith class of 1912; that I was the daughter of herself, Fiona Alice Ashburton Hodgkin, née Wilson, M.D., Smith class of 1935; and that I would appreciate the opportunity to matriculate at Smith in the fall of 1961.

Mother, perhaps unnecessarily, added that I would pursue a pre-medical course of study at Smith.

Professor Mendenhall replied in an equally short letter to Mother stating merely that I would room in Emerson House (where Mother had lived), that classes would begin on Tuesday, September 5, 1961, and finally, that Mother would receive the college’s statement for my fees and tuition.

And that was that.

Bermuda families, even today, are frugal. We are so isolated, and much more so then than now. I was not surprised when Mother, who was helping me pack for Smith, lugged out storage boxes of her own winter clothes from Smith for me to take to Northampton. The clothes were outlandish and hideous. The winter boots were enormous, the sweaters incredibly thick; I could not imagine what it would be like to wear them. I had never seen snow except in cinemas and photographs. I did know what snow was: it was white and cold.

The day before I left Bermuda to fly to New York on my way to Smith, I went to see Mrs Martin. She was hanging her family’s laundry to dry on a line in their garden. She saw me getting off my bicycle, and she put down the laundry and waited for me to walk through the garden to where she was standing.

“I leave tomorrow. I came to say goodbye – and to thank you.”

“I appreciate you coming to see me.”

She didn’t say anything more. I waited and finally said, “Could we sit down?”

We sat down on the grass. She took my hand and held it. I was happy just sitting with her.

After a minute, she said, “You play at a level that, in a few years, will give you a place in international competition.”

“You did as well.”

“A long time ago.”

“I want to do as well as I can at tennis.”

“You want to win Wimbledon.”

She was exactly right. “I can’t expect it to happen for me.”

She snorted. “We spent years on tennis courts so you could predict you can’t win?”

“You didn’t win.”

“I didn’t. I wanted to.”

“But the weather was terrible, and you were all alone in England.”

“I wasn’t alone. I was with a young man. A German tennis player from Berlin.” She hesitated. “I met him at Kooyong.”

“You were seeing him?”

“Well, ‘seeing him’ is the polite way of saying what I was doing. The evening before I played Alice, he broke up with me. I never saw him again.”

She stopped. I thought this was all she would say, but then she started again: “Later, I heard we shot down his bomber over the Channel in the Battle of Britain. He drowned.”

She paused for a long time. “Or so I heard.”

“Why did he break up with you?” I couldn’t help asking, but I had crossed a line. This man broke up with her the evening before her Wimbledon final? I was dumbfounded.

“It made no difference. My match with Alice would have turned out the same anyway.”

“How can you know that?”

She didn’t answer. She leaned over, put her arm around me, and pulled my head against her chest, with her hand holding my head to her.

She held me for a few moments. “It’s tomorrow, then?”

“Yes.”

She stood and brushed off her skirt. She didn’t say goodbye. She turned and went back to her laundry, and I took my bicycle and went home.