I am pretending to be a peacock, and Dan is pretending to be a dolphin.
No, it’s not a dream; it’s a technique Dan has learned at his Level 4 coaching training. At the moment, he and Josh are both Level 3. Having a Level 4 on the premises means being able to hold bigger, higher-rated tournaments. And having new ways to approach training, like being a peacock. Josh is the most competitive person I’ve ever met, though, and he’s already made noises about Dan never being able to pass his Level 4. I had a buddy hit with Josh one day when Dan was on his course, and he had plenty to say about Dan’s failings. But Dan is older, and officially he is the head coach at the Indoor Tennis Centre.
I preen toward the ball, feathers splayed.
Dan bobs about, clicking. The ball goes back and forth.
“Can dolphins do that?” I ask, as he rips one past me.
He just clicks.
“Shouldn’t you be catching it on your nose or something?”
I preen. I splay, I open my arms as if they are my feathers.
I am, I believe, actually hitting quite a good topspin forehand this way, exaggerating my preparation, crouching down, slowly stroking the top of the ball. Later I tell Dan it felt as if I were playing in slow motion, but he says the balls were coming to me as fast as always. By then I am a cat and he is a hamster. Improbably, he still wins.
•
The idea at the moment is that I will play one tournament every two or three weeks, so I spend whole evenings browsing the LTA website for possibilities. When I first started looking, at the beginning of January, I got the impression that there were singles tennis tournaments being played all the time, all over the country. It certainly seemed as if I could play a tournament a week if I wanted to. I chose my Leicester tournament partly because it sounded accessible, as well as being timed just right to prepare me for the Spring Open. But the snob in me doesn’t really want to enter things called “Way2Play” and “Born2Win” and “Tennis Solutions Matchplay.” I don’t really want to play fast-track ratings tournaments (whatever those even are) or Matchplay Events. I want to play in things like the Cheltenham Open and the Tunbridge Wells Open and the Salisbury Open, the last of which is played this year on March 8–9 and which I entered some time ago, as soon as it was possible to do so. I love the idea of playing a tournament over two days. I see myself in a beautiful cathedral city with the wind blowing through my hair. A good hotel. A spa. This one promises two matches on each day. Four matches! I can’t wait.
The first thing I do in the mornings now is check the LTA website to see what, if anything, is happening on my competition calendar. Has a new tournament opened for entry? And who has entered my tournaments? So far no one has entered Salisbury apart from me, and I’m beginning to get worried. For a while I wondered if the surely inevitable local ladies might leave it until the last minute. But with one day to go I am still the only person on the list of entrants. Reluctantly, I begin looking for an alternative for that weekend.
There’s only one other real possibility: it’s a Grade 4 near Wolverhampton. Its main attraction is that it has three players signed up for it already: an 8.1, a 9.1, and a 9.2. Could I win something like that? Possibly. If I beat the 8.1 I’d be one step closer to becoming an 8.1 myself. It’s how the weird LTA rating system works; each number has two levels. My dream is to go from 8.2 to 8.1, and then to the next level, which is 7.2, and then to 7.1 and so on.
I do a bit of googling. It’s two hours from Euston to Wolverhampton. I could stay in a Ramada hotel only a short cab ride from the venue. With only hours to go before the Salisbury Open closes for entries, I gulp and press the “Withdraw” button, hating this idea that I have to withdraw from a tournament I really want to play, and not quite believing that I am literally the only person in the world who wants to play it. Within minutes my £15 tournament entry fee has been refunded into my PayPal account. Then I enter Wolverhampton. I know Rod won’t come with me—he understandably seems to have little desire to visit either the East or the West Midlands—and so I’ll be spending another weekend in a hotel room on my own. Oh, well. It’s all for the book. And I still get the most amazing thrill when the email comes through saying that my entry has been received.
I start looking ahead, getting all possible future tournaments onto my LTA website watchlist and poking around to see who is entering what. It is clear that the Grade 1 tournaments are by far the most popular. An upcoming Aegon British Tour event at Warwick has twenty players in its main draw, all with ratings of between 1.1 and 3.2. There’s a further sixteen in a qualifying round, nine reserves, and ten who have withdrawn. The lowest-rated player on the reserve list is 5.2. An upcoming Grade 2 in Bolton has forty-seven entries. A 10.2 has entered that, although most of the entrants are 3s and 4s. At this moment I am too scared to enter a Grade 2, although I expect this will soon change. But I am also no longer interested in Grade 5 or 6 tournaments. This is not just because they are lame, local affairs but also because they are the ones that don’t seem to attract anyone.
I can’t play anything on the weekend of March 15–16 because Mum and Couze are launching a book and then I am taking my Writing and the Environment MA students on their annual country ramble. But the week after there is a tournament in Bath that I like the look of. It’s a Grade 4 with no entrants yet. It’s open for entries and so, click-happy, I enter. My mind immediately begins to prepare for my upcoming tournaments. I’ll need hotels and train tickets. Three clean tennis outfits packed in my bag. A nutrition plan. Game plans. It’s so fucking exciting I could die.
My body, meanwhile, is on the verge of not being able to take all this. Each time one thing is fixed, another thing breaks. There are those relaxation exercises you can do where you contemplate your body from your feet up to the top of your head. Indeed, this is often the way a yoga practice will end. Once at the 7:00 a.m. yoga class on holiday somewhere, the young teacher sang timidly, “My feet are relaxed. Relaxed are my feet,” and continued up the body sounding at any moment as if she might burst into tears. She pronounced the word “buttocks” weirdly and then I wanted to laugh. Then I hated myself for wanting to laugh and decided I just wanted to cry too.
Anyway, my feet are not relaxed. I took advantage of the winter sales at the beginning of January and ordered a new pair of Adidas tennis shoes. I’d only been wearing them for around forty minutes when Dan ripped a crosscourt forehand so fast and so angled that in trying to retrieve it I almost collided with the net separating Courts 1 and 2. In order to not do this I had to go from running very fast to stopping very quickly. My left foot slammed into the front of my new tennis shoe and the pain was so intense that I crumpled to the floor, swearing quietly. Dan asked, not for the first time, “Have I broken you?” No, not entirely, not yet. But was my big toe broken? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that it hurt like hell.
The nail immediately went black, completely and deeply black, with perhaps just a tinge of thundercloud purple. I wrapped it in Carnation Animal Wool and managed to play tennis on it the next day, but a couple of days later I couldn’t even get a shoe on. I could not walk or drive. Reluctantly I went to the doctor, but provincial NHS doctors are simply not interested in injuries sustained by the middle classes having fun. “You did this playing tennis?” was just about all she said, witheringly, before sending me to Minor Injuries at the local hospital. Apparently they would have a special needle for draining the toenail.
“A needle?” laughed the jolly fat nurse when I was eventually seen. “No, no, what you need is one of these.” She got out something that looked like a huge Band-Aid and cut it in half. She drew a diagram with her ballpoint pen on the other half to show me how to cut it when I had to change the dressing, which would be three days later. But this was no normal dressing. She explained that it would draw all the “gross stuff” out of my toe. It would also relieve the pain. Great. Fantastic. Could I have another one?
“You’ll be all right. You only need one change.”
“But what if I do it wrong or something? Can I have another one just in case?”
“You’ll be fine with that one.”
I couldn’t quite believe that they would not give me another dressing. I thought about how much I pay in tax every year, how many times I have wept over my tax bill. Surely they can stretch to a bloody dressing? But that is not how things work. When I got home I googled what it said on the packaging: DUODERM EXTRA THIN HYDROCOLLOID DRESSING. Of course they sell them on Amazon. Is there anything they don’t sell on Amazon? “For use on post-surgical wounds, lightly exuding traumatic wounds and superficial pressure sores.” I ordered two packets, just in case.
It is now March and my toenail is still black and still hurts when I sit in the Vajrasana yoga pose, which is basically kneeling, splaying your legs, and then lying backward. But it’s fine to play tennis. And it turns out that my Asics Speed Gels are just the thing. They are soft, fast, kind to my toenails. And now I have attached these lovely blue shiny patches to the inners and it turns out that these little things—Engo Blister Prevention Patches—actually do prevent blisters. My feet are now fine. But my Achilles tendons are not happy. I have micro tears in my right calf. My left calf is tight. My knees are fine as long as I am running, jumping, stretching, or sitting completely still. At all other times—basically during all everyday life activities like walking up the stairs—I feel like a very old person. I squat without thinking—to get milk from the fridge, or to look at the bottom row of books in a shop—and sometimes I actually can’t get up again. My quads are lovely: big, strong, and reliable. They are also prone to contracting a lot when I have finished using them, which is what puts the pressure on my knees. My friend and Pilates teacher Emma Lee always laughs and calls them thunder thighs. “You could take over the world with those!” she often assures me.
Until recently my sacroiliac joint has been giving me no end of problems, but lately it has started responding to my osteopath Charlotte Webb’s attentions and also all the yoga I’ve been doing. Rocking Child is particularly soothing. And Vajrasana, when I can bear the pressure on my toenail. The rest of my back seems OK, and although I have a nerve that is prone to getting trapped in my right shoulder, the tennis seems actually to be helping that. My left arm is fine. It would be: I have a one-handed backhand, so it never has to do anything apart from occasionally pointing at the ball. Or tossing the ball for my serve. Actually, it doesn’t like weightlifting, but seems to be over its last wrist strain. My right wrist is a bit sore from volleying practice, but squeezing a squash ball seems to help. That’s it. It doesn’t actually look that bad written down. My top half is basically OK. Or maybe I have just forgotten what normal is.
When I turn up for training on Tuesday, Dan has strung my new racquet. Fuck, it feels good hitting the ball with it. The strings have more bite. They chew over the ball, sending it spinning across the net in all sorts of new and complicated ways. But the best thing is that a higher tension means I can hit the ball a lot harder and it will stay in. This must be why the pros tend to go for higher tensions. They don’t need more power from a racquet; they need more control. But by the end of Wednesday my right arm is killing me. All that killer-forehand practice combined with a more tightly strung racquet has led to a weird pain that begins in my shoulder and goes all the way down to the tip of my forefinger, like a red line in some sort of anatomy diagram.
“It’s like my whole right side is on the verge of giving up,” I tell Charlotte Webb when I see her on Friday. “Why?”
She laughs. “Because you’re playing tennis about twenty times a week.”
“Oh.”
“You’re actually doing pretty well, all things considered.”
•
When the Wolverhampton tournament closes for entries there are still only four players registered. But that’s OK, I tell myself. They could do a round robin, perhaps even with normal sets. And it doesn’t really matter how many people there are in the main draw as long as I get as many matches as possible. If there are three other people in the tournament, I could get three matches. It’s not a disaster. I look at how many ranking points you get for winning a Grade 4. 125; the same as Lucille got for winning the Spring Open. If I won this I would go ahead of her in the Kent rankings. Each tournament gives a certain period of time for withdrawal after your entry has been accepted. At least with this one it’s quick; almost as soon as the main draw is published, the 8.1 goes. Left as the highest rated of three, I have to go too. I sort of understand that now. There’s no real point in playing a tournament for rankings at this stage; everyone wants ratings. Anyway, you can just about have a tournament with four people, but with three? I imagine it will be canceled, but I withdraw anyway. So I have no tournament to play on March 8–9. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to prepare for. Something inside me deflates a little.
•
It’s not just my body that’s giving up. Dan is complaining about his Achilles tendon. Also his knees. And a back problem.
“I guess all that wouldn’t have helped in the Spring Open,” I say.
It turns out Dan was humiliated even worse than I was. He lost both his matches and didn’t get anywhere in the consolation draw. He didn’t receive any points. He lost his second match to one of the recreational players who comes on a Tuesday and Thursday morning, a guy who was at least sixty-five.
“I was just shit,” he says sadly.
“We need to do yoga,” I say. “Yoga will fix everything.”
“Really?” he says. “I don’t know. All those fit women.”
“What? Around here?” I say, laughing. “Anyway, you won’t need to worry about all that. I’m going to qualify as a yoga teacher, and then I’m going to start a men’s yoga class, like specifically for tennis players and footballers and stuff. You in?”
“Yeah, I’m in,” says Dan. “That would be good, actually. I could do yoga if it was with you.”
•
I realize how tired I am on the way to Mum and Couze’s book launch. It’s in Senate House at the University of London. The only way I can get there is to park the car at Ashford after teaching my class and meet Rod on the train. It’s been an exhausting day. The launch goes on for a long time, with a lot of talks on the subject of poverty and children. My mum has recently completed a PhD and, with the help of Couze, has turned it into a book. Her research area was the historical exclusion of children, which I’ve always found ironic, given that I got expelled from school myself.
After my GCSEs I didn’t want to stay on at my boarding school, locked in the middle of nowhere with my bottle-green uniform and all the boring girls who were staying there for sixth form. I wanted to go to the expensive, beautiful Perse School in Cambridge, where two of my closer friends were going. By that point I had become comfortable with the world of boarding school. I felt like an insider, even if I was the one who broke all the rules, got dangerously drunk at the end-of-term disco, and escaped to London one Sunday afternoon with my friends, because I thought no one cared and so no one would notice. We all got suspended after that.
But in the end the Troellers didn’t have the money for me to carry on at private school. Or maybe they thought I was a lost cause. Princess Helena College had not turned me into Ruth’s dream of a polite, well-spoken girl headed for philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford. If anything, I’d become more confident in myself—my actual self—and I was interested in breaking as many rules as possible. I begged to go to the Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge so I could at least be near my friends (and wear jeans to school!), but there was nowhere for me to stay. So, back in Chelmsford with my family, I applied to the local boys’ grammar school, KEGS, which took a few girls in sixth form. I lasted there just over one month. After all, I’d spent two years locked away in the countryside watching Dirty Dancing and studying Athena postcards of girls in ripped jeans and ballet shoes gazing out on a Paris skyline. I was primed. As soon as I arrived, I started living what I’d thought would be my best life. Things had become uncertain with my long-term boyfriend, so I got a new one—there was quite a lot of choice, after all. We listened to loud music in the common room, had sex, took drugs—well, OK, we made out a bit and smoked a couple of spliffs. It was enough for me and my new friend Georgia to be thrown out. Our worst crime? “Leading the boys astray.”
The next weeks were the worst hell of my life up to that point, even after enduring a childhood with Steve, a summer with Ruth, and then boarding school. My mother refused to speak to me, instead bursting into tears whenever she saw me. She went to bed with headaches, exhaustion, depression—all caused by me. I liked sleeping until mid-morning, but Couze would wake me at the crack of dawn and tell me, “Your mother’s been crying again.” When Mum did speak to me again, it was to read out loud the diary she’d written when I was a pure precious baby, in which she had particularly hoped I’d never take drugs.
All this because of a couple of spliffs! If they hadn’t wanted me to be that kind of teenager, why had they bought me the Little Red Schoolbook? I was quite a mild kid, but I’d always thought that they’d love me more if I were more ballsy and alternative. Apparently not. Eventually I was forced to sign a “contract” in which I agreed never to wear black, never to see my friends again, never to go to the Prince of Orange pub, and never to wear my favorite perfume, Givenchy III, which reminded my mother of the “bad times.”
But we’ve all moved on from that, obviously. I can wear as much black as I want now, which is a relief because it makes me look so much thinner. But they stopped making Givenchy III back in the 1990s because of the oak moss in it. Instead I wear the most similar perfume I’ve been able to find—31 Rue Cambon by Chanel—but it’s not quite the same.
After the launch we go to a Turkish restaurant and luckily I manage to sit near my brothers, so I don’t have to talk to any social science academics. Mum and Couze are really proud, which is lovely to see. No one knows that this will be the last time Couze will come to London, and that the prostate cancer that had been moving very slowly through his system will start moving faster later this year. I have one glass of wine, then another. I’m trying to stay awake. Each sip of wine gives me a little buzz that then fades instantly.
Rod glances at me.
“What?” I say.
“Aren’t you driving later?”
Of course I am. I’m driving him and my brother Sam from Ashford back to our house. I’m not proud of myself when I snap at him and tell him to mind his own business and stop watching me. It’s only two glasses of wine, for God’s sake. Or maybe three. But they’ll have worn off by the time we get to Ashford, surely?
On the drive back I find I’m struggling. I ask for someone to make conversation to keep me awake. I think Rod’s still a bit pissed off because I was so horrible to him at the restaurant. So Sam asks me to tell him who is my tennis nemesis. Good old Sam. He’s known me longer than anyone in my life apart from Mum.
“My God,” I say. “But there are so many.”
“You must have one, though,” he says. “One main nemesis.”
And it’s true, I should. But I don’t know who to choose. Is it Lucille, the woman who stole my story? Is it Siobhan Clarke, who stole my victory at the ITC Open? Is it Hayley Palmer, still Dan’s official mixed doubles partner, even though I’ve been playing all the matches? No. My nemesis is Becky Carter. Pure, blonde, sweet, teenage Becky Carter, with the firmest stomach, the most perfect abs, and no massive fuckups behind her.
•
League doubles matches have stopped being exciting and have instead become familiar and almost dull. I am now one of those people that turns up for a 7:00 p.m. match at 7:00 p.m., although I do still warm up in the gym first. I even sometimes remember to change ends when a tiebreak score is divisible by six. I know how to fill in the result form, and am often made de facto captain for this reason. I have completely given up on Brad Gilbert and chat happily with the other team between sets, games, and sometimes even points. I congratulate them when they play good shots. I am a Good Sport. I don’t hate myself. Except when I lose.
The women’s Slazenger Inter Club League matches are played on a Wednesday night. This is the same night as trampolining practice, so the leisure center’s upstairs is full of little girls in makeup with their names sewn on their bottoms in sequins. As I go in, achy and tired, to play Ashford First Team, I hear a dad say to his daughter, “The thing is, Kayleigh, you just can’t win competitions. It’s time we faced up to it.” Poor kid. I know how she feels.
Still, it is glamorous, playing for the ITC Ladies’ First Team. I’ve been playing as Hannah Martin’s partner for a while now. Hannah and I work particularly well together. I’m outrageous; she’s polite. I hit hard; she’s accurate. We even have a few patterns of play that work. She’s really good at keeping rallies going from the back; I’m good as the aggressive punch-volleyer waiting to pick off the weak return.
None of that is going to work against Ashford, though. There simply are no weak returns. Women’s doubles in tennis is sometimes—most of the time—like watching paint dry, particularly at the higher levels of local league tennis. It’s grueling and long—like childbirth, marriage, and Weight Watchers. The server will place the ball carefully, usually wide so as not to hit the volleyer in the head, and then a long crosscourt rally will begin. Then it’s simply a matter of who blinks first. If you are the player at the back, you are looking for the moment when the volleyer has effectively drifted off—either to sleep, or just a millimeter out of position—to blast the ball down the tramlines. If you are the volleyer, you are looking for the crosscourt ball that’s a little weaker than the others, because you can then “poach” it. Much more poaching goes on when there are men involved. Put four women together and no one’s going to poach anything. It just seems too up-yourself.
Normally I’m not bothered by such niceties, but the Ashford team is really, really good. There’s an extremely sexy dark-haired player named Susie. What is it about her? They are all fit, but no one is young or has abs like Becky Carter’s. They look like rugby players or CrossFitters. Their Ashford team T-shirts look as if they’ve been in the wash thousands of times. They are all wearing battered Adidas baseball caps or visors. They look amazing. They absolutely thrash us. We don’t even get one game. Susie even does some poaching. As soon as I get home, I go on Amazon and order a black Adidas cap.
Early the next week, Margaret leaves me a message saying she wants to talk to me about “team matters” for next season. I’ve been feeling anxious about this because I’m not sure how to tell her that I don’t really want to play ladies’ doubles. Am I even sure I don’t? Am I just really smugly thinking I’m good enough to play singles? Is everyone laughing at me because I’m too old? And maybe doubles is good for me. McEnroe used to play doubles to keep fit for singles. And I love mixed. Dan and I have just played against Hythe, and although we lost one of our matches—mainly because of a big, strong player named Chuck—we thrashed the other pair. And I’m finally feeling good playing all this tennis. Osteopath Charlotte has explained that this is the “hair of the dog” principle, whereby I am continually preventing my body ever being able to recover—which is when it feels bad—by never stopping.
“It’s basically like being an alcoholic, but with sport,” she says at the end of our next session. Am I listening? Not in the way I should be.
The following Wednesday, I have a good session with Dan. I’m so enjoying the awesomeness of my tightly strung Juice racquet, and my arm feels better now too. After Dan leaves, and while Margaret is upstairs getting a cup of tea, three guys ask me to join them for a few games. This is the kind of thing I have fantasized about since I was a kid. Being asked to join in with someone’s cricket game or football down the park. And especially being a girl, and being asked by guys! One of them is a Kiwi: he’s pleased I can identify his accent. One’s a German, one’s a Scot. They always play as a threesome. I feel a bit like a pro or at least a semipro in my matching Adidas outfit, with my coach just gone. I feel almost like I am doing them a favor by playing with them. Bringing them some glitz and glamour. I play OK, but my legs are shaking afterward. I shouldn’t really have just added an extra half hour of tennis when I’m playing tonight. I’m playing for the First Team again. I love saying that. I also love telling the Second Team—Cheryl, Bev, Sylvia, and Hayley Palmer—that I can’t play down any more, now that I’ve played for the First Team more than twice.
Before I leave, I go in to see Margaret. She has a moan about Ashford First Team and their victory the week before. Did I see how they were warming up before the match? Running around the courts and doing arm exercises! Who did they think they were? I approved of their warm-up, and wish we did something similar, but think it best to say nothing.
Margaret’s wondering how many teams I want to play for in the new season. Obviously I’m going to be on the Aegon team, where we play singles as well as doubles, and Margaret says she’s going to put me on the First Team for that. My ego swells a little, although really, what else did I expect? Not to be put in the First Team for what I’m best at? Unthinkable. Then she talks about ladies’ doubles and mixed doubles and it looks like I could end up on three or four teams but of course I’ve got my singles tournaments . . .
“Where do you see me fitting in best?” I ask her.
I must say that although my priority is to protect my singles tournaments, none of them ever seem to run anyway, and I feel really quite special, being called into Margaret’s office like this, like I am an important member of the club—
“I’ve put you down for the ladies’ First Team,” says Margaret. I swell a little more. “You can play with Hannah. We’ll have Fiona as well, of course, and then there’s Sally who might want to play. You’ll be a good foursome. A strong team.”
“OK, well, thanks—”
“And you can captain that if you’d like to.”
What? Fuck. Wow.
“OK.” Swelling, swelling. “Yes, great.” But— “What about Lucille and Becky?” I am suspicious of a First Team that does not include Lucille and Becky.
“Oh. Yes. Well.” Margaret moves a piece of paper on her desk. “They’ve actually both defected to Walmer.”
“What, like playing for their teams?” I am planning to join Walmer myself. But not to actually play for them. I mean, not unless they make me a better offer. Although actually, now that I have been asked to captain the ladies’ First Team at the Indoor Tennis Centre, I realize that I will be loyal to them for life.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Bummer.”
“I know. I might have to leave Herne Bay and start playing here instead.”
It’s always been an unexplained element of Margaret that she plays for Herne Bay rather than here.
This is how I have started seeing the hierarchy of women at the Indoor Tennis Centre: If we ignore Hayley, who hits it hard but makes a lot of errors and, OK, might be better than me but always plays for Bev’s team and never for the First Team, then it’s obvious that it goes Lucille, Becky, me. Right? Indeed, Margaret is certainly making this clear now. They have gone, so I am the captain of the ladies’ First Team, which is basically being the best woman player in the club. I relax a little. If Lucille and Becky have gone, then perhaps I don’t have to beat them anymore. I have won! Something in me deflates a little, and I find I’m not sure about all this. If you take away Lucille and Becky and ignore Hayley, then OK, maybe I am the best woman singles player in the club. Possibly. Probably. Unless there are people I don’t know about. If you don’t count Amie Tonkiss, who belongs to Canterbury and who I beat anyway and Margaret. But doubles? I am, when it comes down to it, still rubbish at doubles. Whenever I go to the Tuesday or Thursday daytime sessions and play against specialized doubles players, they thrash me. It doesn’t matter that I am stronger and fitter and better at running and retrieving and finding gaps on a singles court. They have a soft, light, cunning touch. They are unbeatable at the net.
But.
If Margaret thinks I’ve got potential then so be it. She must know, after all. She must have seen countless players come and go. She thinks I am the right person to be captain of the First Team. We talk for a while longer about what it means to be a captain and how some people don’t take it seriously but that it is a very important role. I assure Margaret that I feel honored and that I will do my very best.
When I leave, I feel like punching the air or doing a little dance. When I get to the leisure center car park, I find that I’ve got a parking ticket.
•
On Monday after the evening Reccy session, Sylvia, Cheryl, Hayley, and I are called in to Margaret’s office to talk about our upcoming away game at Bearsted. If we can win 3–1 or 4–0 then we will win the league and go into the final. This is not my team. This is Bev’s team. The Second Team. I have been assured that I can play “down” because it’s in a different league from the First Team that I’ve been playing for. Whatever. I am gracious. Even though I am captain of the ladies’ First Team I can bring my genius and talent to the Seconds just this once. And when I am named as one of the First Team, I won’t be able to play down at all. Anyway, I joke that I don’t care whether we win or lose because it’s not my team and not my final but I am actually quite caught up in the excitement.
I am also terrified because I not only have to play with Hayley, I have to drive her there. On my pathetic non-highway route. Still, for now I soak up the glamour of being part of this serious team talk. Also, while we’re here, Margaret wants to make some final checks on the teams. Would I like to play mixed doubles as Dan’s official partner? Yes! He’s going to be playing in two mixed teams this season. He’ll partner Hayley in one of the teams and me in another. Probably me in the Kent league and Hayley in the East Kent league. The East Kent league has stronger, tougher opponents. It also involves not having to drive to Bromley and Shooter’s Hill, but going to more civilized places like Canterbury and Hythe. But whatever. I am thrilled to have been chosen once more.
All week I keep thinking this delicious thought: I am Captain of the ladies’ First Team. I am the Indoor Tennis Centre Ladies’ First Team Captain. I know, deep down, that it’s not exactly what I want from my tennis; not what I’d planned for this year. But I am puffed up with pride and excitement nevertheless. I tell my mother. I tell my brothers. I go on and on about it to Rod. I will tell more people as soon as I get the chance. The following Wednesday, a writer that I like, not just professionally but personally, is coming to read at the university. There’s a dinner afterward. But instead I’m going to the Wednesday evening tennis session because after that is when Margaret announces the teams. There’s also a Wimbledon ballot that I’m less interested in, partly because I don’t know what it is. I want to be there in person to be given my fixture list and my captain’s pack. I want there to be an audience when I am announced as First Team captain. I keep my best tennis outfit back for Wednesday.
•
Wednesday evening comes. A lot of the regulars are at the club session. Bev, Cheryl, Tim, Lee, Sylvia, and Jon Wise, who captains one of the men’s teams. Carolla from Walmer is also there. In the first game of the evening Cheryl and I beat Carolla and Lee 6–0. But Lee has improved a lot and when Tim and I take on him and Jon, they thrash us. All the time my ego is whirring away, making “sense” out of what is happening. Of course I am the strongest lady; I must be to be put with a man against two men. So then why can’t I do better? Tim and Lee, who are my friends, I see as mere weaklings. The real contest here is between me and Jon. I lose. FFS. Then I have to play with Tim again, against Lee again. This time Lee plays with Sylvia, who is good, cunning, hits the ball hard and serves well, but whom I never feel threatened by. We scrape a win.
Then I’m playing with Sylvia against Bev and Jon. I realize how hard these experienced women hit the ball, particularly Bev and Cheryl. I mean, I beat Cheryl at singles easily and suspect I would do the same to Bev, but looking at them here with their solid net-play I think how much stronger than me they seem. I tell myself again that I have been chosen as ladies’ First Team captain and they have not. Margaret knows my inner strength. But I am fading. It’s nine o’clock and I have played a lot of tennis over the last three days. Today I have been to Pilates and had a ninety-minute coaching session before this. My calves feel like they have rocks in them. I am in a bad mood. Tim keeps talking about us being on the same team—he has decided he wants to play mixed doubles—and although I am Dan’s partner I am dreading the possibility of ever having to play with Tim again. He’s got so much potential but is often let down by nerves. I don’t think my happy-happy-we’re-going-to-win stuff helps him very much. More to the point, I never win when I play with him. Maybe it’s me.
Tonight’s session seems to go on forever. Eventually, though, Margaret says we are to assemble in the “bar” upstairs. I spend half my life in the leisure center and I didn’t know it had a bar. Turns out it’s one of the fuzzy-carpet rooms they use for yoga and Pilates that does indeed have a small, locked bar out of sight in the corner.
The Wimbledon ballot is first. I take no notice. It dawns on me that this is how you get tickets for Wimbledon, but I’m not interested in that. I don’t want to go to Wimbledon. Why watch tennis when you can play? At last, Margaret moves on to the teams. She does the men’s teams first. The First Team will be captained by Josh and will feature his brother Bobby, junior coach Adam, and the good-looking friend who always hangs around with them. The Second Team will feature Lee, Tim, Jon, and Jack.
Margaret then reads out the names of the Ladies’ First Team.
I’m not one of them. WTF? The names are a blur. Why am I not there? Is it because I’m captain? Does that come afterward? But I’m sure she just read four names.
“And they’ll be captained by Sylvia,” she finishes.
My jaw is clenched. My hands are fists. What the actual fuck?
“And on to the Ladies’ Second Team,” says Margaret. “Which will be captained by Scarlett . . .”
I drive home in tears. Before I even think about what I’m doing, I send Margaret an email expressing surprise at tonight’s announcement, and telling her that I actually don’t want to play any ladies’ doubles at all this year. I’m going to focus on singles and on writing my book—the thing I actually set out to do this year.