The problem with being the hero of your own narrative is not just that you have to suffer, because that seems inevitable, but that you have to change. I am on a journey, but to where? I know I should probably discover that it’s pointless trying to find meaning in tennis, or that winning isn’t that good. But winning is fucking awesome and it’s all I want to do. I don’t want to change; I just want to win. If I do change I want the trajectory to be simple: zero to hero, nobody to champion. But it has not happened yet. I’ve won one tournament, and one further match, but I seem to be stalled, going nowhere.
•
I get back from Bath on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday, April 8, we celebrate Rod’s birthday, which is actually the following day, by going to Sissinghurst and then to dinner, where we drink a lovely bottle of Margaux and talk about Game of Thrones and tennis. We’ve watched a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones and are uncertain about continuing. All that violence, all those breasts. But I like a lot of new things now. I used to be a timid vegetarian who was fond of cricket. Now I want the blood and guts of meat, rugby, tennis. Does tennis actually have blood and guts? Maybe.
We can’t celebrate Rod’s birthday on the proper day because I have to go to the Canongate London Book Fair dinner, where a little speech will be made about me and my upcoming book. It’s important that I go: my foreign publishers will be there, and loads of people from Canongate. I can’t believe that I also have to miss a tennis coaching session—the second this week. All I want to do is play tennis. But instead I have to get my hair done and then go and drink prosecco in a hot room full of people who secretly wish they were doing something else.
I’ve never worked out how to “do” these parties. At least I now have a theme: tennis always gives me something to talk about. So I start making jokes about how I should have a play-off with Geoff Dyer to see who should write Canongate’s tennis book until someone reminds me he’s just had a stroke. People ask me what my new book is about and I say it’s about how evil plants really are, and how they make us do what they want, and then my ex-agent, Simon, walks in and then I’m chatting to someone from a New York publisher that just rejected my book and some nice-looking kid keeps coming around and pouring more prosecco. He’s tall and fit-looking. I wonder if, like me, he’d rather be playing tennis. An author friend of mine is drinking sparkling mineral water. He seems to begin every evening saying he’s not going to drink and then ends up slaughtered anyway.
I hug Simon. We look at each other awkwardly. We used to be such good friends; now this.
“How’s your dad?” Simon asks, out of the blue. People are watching our exchange. I’m sure no one knows our history or why this is so weird but they must be able to feel it. The atmosphere is like a pane of glass about to shatter. Why is he asking about my father?
“Wasn’t he the manager of OMD or something? And then didn’t he get sacked by Virgin Records and go off and work as a bloodstock agent?”
Simon then bombards me with every fact about my life that he knows. He asks me about my ex, the one I left for Rod. How is he? What’s he doing now? The sad thing is that I know Simon’s not doing this on purpose to hurt me back. He’s just nervous, saying the things coming into his mind. At least, I hope that’s the explanation. It’s extremely odd. But then how is he supposed to know that almost every aspect of my life, everything he could pull out of my past, is painful?
After that I go and stand in an empty room upstairs for a while.
Over dinner I learn that friends of the film director sitting on my right moved to California so their daughter could play tennis there. We talk about Infinite Jest. I tell them some anecdotes from various tennis books. I don’t talk about my novel or their films—too obvious. Jamie Byng gets up and talks about my “beautiful book” that isn’t actually out until the following year. I leave early to get the last train from St. Pancras but then sit in it for two and a half hours while police chase some kids out of the tunnel just beyond Stratford. “Just run the little cunts over,” the people across the aisle from me are saying. I sit quietly reading my John McEnroe book, drunk enough to be pretty fine with what’s happening, but—thank God—not so drunk I can’t read at all.
The next day is Thursday. I’m hungover. I finally got home at around 3:30 a.m. I haven’t played tennis all week. I am still reliving the humiliation of the Bath tournament in my head, although this is starting to resolve from “I’m a dick because I lost” into “Next time I will win.” If those girls can do it, there’s no reason why I can’t. They have coaching; I have coaching. It’s as simple as that. Though I won’t be able to take it if Dan covers my racquet with a carrier bag today to try to teach me topspin, or constructs a “washing line” for me to hit over. I don’t think I can take any more humiliation.
Almost as if he knows exactly how I’m feeling, Dan bounces out of the office carrying his mini Bose speaker system. There’s no one else in the tennis center, so we put music on and play along to it. His playlist is all recent hits like “Trumpets” by Jason Derulo and “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit. This is exactly the right music to play tennis to. At one point I connect my iPhone to the speaker, but my playlist—the same one I’ve had since Leicester—feels timeworn and melancholy and not at all motivational, so we go back to Dan’s music.
Our one-hour session has begun at 2:00 p.m. “Shall we go until half four?” Dan asks me nonchalantly when we stop for a drink. I immediately text the person I was due to have afternoon tea with and cancel. It’s amazing. The music shoots me right into the zone and holds me there. I am no longer tired or hungover. We hardly stop, going through basket after basket of balls, hitting rallies that are both competitive and cooperative. We want to keep them going, but we also want to win them. This is my very favorite sort of tennis. I feel myself dropping into a super-relaxed focus. I know I can hit a basic forehand now, wherever I want on the court. So what happens if I brush the top of the ball more? What happens if I try this combination of shots? None of this is exactly Self 1 stuff, though. It feels like Self 2—my higher, chilled self—is having a wonderful playtime. For the whole session I don’t care about anything other than hitting the ball, getting it back one more time, curious about how I hit it and where it goes without being judgmental. By the time I get home all I can do is collapse into a bath.
I come back for more the following day, but there are people around and Dan and I have to go off to Court 4 and only have the music on quietly down at one end. This becomes the “music end” and we entertain each other by dancing each time we arrive there, to music that the other cannot hear. Today we play points. It’s not like last week when I almost beat him. This week feels more like business as usual. I’m in the wrong place on the court as another winner rips past me. What is the difference between last week and this week? How did I do that, instead of this? Or is it just that Dan is playing a lot better?
I’m a little distracted because this season’s teams are being pinned up on the wall. Afterward I go and look at them. There are the two mixed teams, both of which I agreed to play on and captain and . . . oh. I’m not actually on the team for the East Kent league. A weaker woman than me is there instead. WTF? I sigh, wondering how to bring this up with Margaret. Surely she remembers the conversation we had where I said I didn’t want to play ladies’ doubles and she asked if I wanted to be on both mixed teams? But I imagine she hasn’t remembered, that once again, a commitment I thought I’d made just never really existed.
That weekend we have Rod’s daughter Daisy, her husband Ed, and their three children to stay. I spend Saturday holding Eliza, seven, upside-down and playing football with her. I’m feeling energized and excited: on Sunday I have my first Aegon match. Before I leave on Sunday morning Molly, who is eight, tells me earnestly that it doesn’t matter whether I win or lose; it’s how I play that counts. Eliza simply says, “WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN.”
When I arrive at the leisure center, much too early because I wanted to free up the shower for the guests at home, I make the big mistake of walking past the desk because the queue is too long. But it’s the grumpy receptionist Dolly, and she phones down to the gym to say I never waited to get my card swiped, so I get told off just before I’m meant to play. Brilliant. Then Lyn in the café refuses to put my stuff for afternoon tea in the fridge. I do wonder why on earth I am playing tennis for this place. But it turns out that today I’m not. The opposition simply never shows up.
We play doubles anyway, Margaret and me against Sara and Helen, both fill-ins brought in at the last minute. Helen is a solid second-team player and Sara is a rich chick from Sandwich with her own tennis court and—I think—a nice splash of Dior’s Bois d’Argent. She smells lovely. She is lovely. She has a nice hard topspin forehand, a lot of gold jewelry, and a body that looks like it knows how to have fun. I like her immediately. I suspect we share a personal trainer—mine talked about training a woman in Sandwich with her own tennis court.
Sara and Helen are solid players, but they should not win the first set from Margaret and me. They do, 6–4. We win the next one 7–5, but still. When I get home I commission Eliza to draw me a picture of me winning a tennis match. I have to mentally prepare for the Sutton Tennis Academy Easter Grade 2 Tournament, which I have entered on the basis that the ladies’ singles is Grade 3 and I already see that some 9.1s and 9.2s have entered. Eliza’s picture is dominated by a gray net running across the middle of the page. On one side of this net, at the bottom of the page, is a thin girl with brown hair and a purple smile, dressed in purple, with a trophy and the word WINER. But the girl at the top of the page stands out more. She has a green and orange outfit and purple hair. Her green lips are curled down in a sad face. LOOSER! it says at the top. I know, deep down, that this is me.
•
I’ve been reading a new book on mindfulness and eating. I can’t stop wondering about why exactly I remain the same weight no matter how much exercise I do. I’ve noticed that I seem unable to go to tennis without a bottle of Lucozade that contains roughly the same number of calories I’ll be burning off, and of course when I’ve been exercising I give myself permission to eat more.
But it’s not even as simple as that. I think some unconscious part of me wants to remain the same size and I don’t know why. If I know I’m playing tennis later, I sort of panic and pile on the calories because I believe they are fuel, and I might get tired without them. Can I blame my mother for this? Probably. She has that metabolism that burns everything up and constantly needs food. If she doesn’t get her lunch on the dot of midday (or preferably 11:45), she becomes homicidal.
I have also begun realizing the extent to which I emotionally eat, and that is what this new book is about. Instead of eating the numbing, quick-fix piece of chocolate or toast, it suggests, you could try experiencing your actual feelings instead. This immediately makes sense to me. I hadn’t realized the extent to which I now eat the way I used to smoke. Bad feeling? Light up—although these days it’s the fridge that lights up, rather than the cigarette. Of course I never exactly overdo it. I’ve never been much of a binge eater, unless you count having three pieces of toast instead of two, or just a bit more than a normal portion of cheese with my soup.
But it all adds up. The bits of Green & Black’s chocolate bars I sneak from the cupboard while the kettle boils. The extra butter I add to everything. My feeling that I need food: that without it I might die, or at the very least feel a bit hard done by. Rod and I agree that I am the better cook, but I’m not sure he knows this is because I am the freest with the ingredients. Everything I make comes with cream, olive oil, or butter. I buy big steaks when he would buy small ones, two packets of king prawns when he would buy one. It’s not that I don’t try. I periodically cut things out, but when I don’t have dairy I just have more olive oil. I give up wheat but spend whole days eating gluten-free toast. It’s just so frustrating. Like my forehand, like my career, like everything in my life: my weight seems stuck.
•
Going away to a tennis tournament means eating and drinking what I like. After all, I’m staying in a hotel—the Croydon Hilton—and this is like a holiday. Remember: nothing you do in a hotel counts. None of it is normal life. Still, I limit myself to one gin and tonic on the Tuesday night before my first match. But I also eat a big steak and chips and have a pudding. The pudding is deemed “healthy” by Hilton. It is a bowl full of strawberries covered in a kind of mint syrup with a huge portion of thick cream on the top. Even I leave half the cream.
Somewhere at the back of my mind I am aware that I have over one thousand emails, at least four hundred of them unread. I am a week late with a book review. Radio 3 just got in touch to ask if I’d like to do a piece for them on a garden Kipling liked. It’s to be recorded on July 3. There’s an LTA tournament in Spain then that I have tentatively signed up for, but even if I am not in Spain I’ll certainly be doing something tennis related, during the second week of Wimbledon and two days before my birthday. So I turn it down.
I have stopped opening letters. I have not taken my car in for its service. I still have piles of research from two books ago that I have not put away. But who cares, right? Especially at this moment, when I am more or less On Holiday. Do I deserve a holiday? No, not really. OK, then. This is work. I am writing my very important tennis book and that is why I am here. I don’t convince myself. At this moment tennis feels like video games used to, when I would spend six hours at a time engaged only with the pixels on the TV, trying desperately to win but not sure why, shoring up weapons and lives and skills against an uncertain, violent future.
Still, here I am. The Croydon Hilton is cheerful. When I checked in, the receptionist asked if I was a professional tennis player. I almost feel like one as I prepare for my first match in the Sutton Tennis Academy Easter Grade 2 Tournament tomorrow morning. It feels like a miracle that I’m actually here. In the last few weeks, almost every tournament I’ve signed up for has not run due to lack of interest. It’s like a large, complicated game all its own. You can see people signing up and leaving. I’m even starting to recognize some of the players’ names: people from Leicester, from the Spring Open. Siobhan Clarke has signed up for Sutton, and a couple of other women with a similar profile to me, but it’s always a bit knife-edge and strategic. No one wants to end up in a tournament in which only three other people are playing. No one wants to be the highest-rated player in a tournament (well, unless they are sure they can win it) because no one wants qualifying losses. In order to go up to an 8.1, which will prove to Margaret that I was right to start at 8.2, I need three qualifying wins this season. I’m not off to a good start. A qualifying win is against a player of the same rating or higher. What you can’t do is lose to anyone rated lower than you. So far I’ve beaten an 8.2, lost to an 8.2, and lost to a 4.1 and a 5.2. If I can win a couple of matches here, I’m bound to go up.
How likely is that? While I am engaged in my pre-tournament ritual of watching Rafa clips on YouTube, an email comes through from the tournament organizers. I am to go to lta.tournamentsoftware.com to check my start time, which has now been published. I have assumed that it’s going to be 8:30 but am thrilled to see it’s actually 9:30, which means an extra hour in bed. Or just more time to worry. But how worried am I really? I can see that I’m playing a 9.2. Charanya was a 9.2, and although I played timidly against her in Leicester and allowed her three games, I think I’d blast her now. I love lta.tournamentsoftware.com. It’s the online equivalent of backstage at a tennis event. You can see draws, timings, surfaces. Although no surface has yet been assigned to the women’s singles, I can see from the draw diagram that if I do beat Rachel MacDonald at 9:30, then at 12:30 I’ll be playing the top seed Helen Clements, a nineteen-year-old 4.1 from Sussex. Obviously she’ll thrash me. Fine. Then I’ll come back to the hotel and drink red wine. It’s a plan. I sleep well, dreaming of tennis as usual.
The next morning is bright and sunny. My minicab takes me through endless suburbs. I hadn’t realized quite how far my hotel is from Sutton, quite how much stuff there really is before South London turns into Gatwick. We go past duck ponds in faux village greens. Hawthorn is blossoming, daffodils line the roads. Everything is a detached house, a park, or a garden. The sun is shining. It’s going to be a hot day, apparently. The first real warmth of the year.
I am the first person to sign in for the ladies’ singles at 8:40. I was hoping to find Siobhan Clarke so we could knock up before our first matches. She’s still an 8.2, like me, and her position on the other side of the draw almost exactly mirrors mine. She’s playing a 9.1, Alexandra Groszek. If she beats her she gets to play the second seed, Olivia Parson. I haven’t seen Siobhan since the Spring Open, but I’m sure we’ve both noticed that we’ve been entering some of the same tournaments. Given that hardly anyone enters these tournaments, it’s clear we have something unusual in common: we are both over thirty and we have both been bitten by the tournament bug. I wish I’d beaten her at the Indoor Tennis Centre. I should have beaten her then. But there are no hard feelings and I must admit I’d quite like to see a familiar face at this moment.
This is by far the most well-organized tournament I have played in. The kids’ matches are all Grade 2 and the semifinals and finals actually have real umpires sitting up on high plastic chairs calling balls in and out and keeping track of the score. There seem to be a lot of clay courts and some acrylic courts. I’m half-hoping to get my first go on clay, although I realize that would be mad, as I’ve never played on it before. When I ask the organizer, he’s not sure, but he says it probably will be clay. I admit it: I am excited.
Each match is called over a loudspeaker. After you hear your name called, you have to go to the desk to find out what court you’ve been allocated. A man comes with you and flips a coin, then times a five-minute warm-up. Officials walk around in case there’s any dispute. I bump into Siobhan just before my match is called. She’s been stuck in traffic but would have loved a hit. We wish each other luck and agree to catch up later.
My opponent, Rachel MacDonald, is a nice Scottish woman in her early thirties. We are assigned Court 23, which is clay. I gulp. It’s not quite the sticky red earth I imagined—it’s actually kind of powdery. When we start hitting, I’m surprised to encounter a topspin forehand more like Lucille’s than Charanya’s. She hits it hard and deep. Oh crap. Am I going to lose again? I win the toss and decide to receive. And then it turns out that Rachel is extremely nervous, or has the yips on her serve, or something. Her ground strokes are great but she serves two double faults in the first game, which I take easily. The scoreboard has our names chalked on it and we have been instructed that we must keep it updated on the changeovers. 1–0 to me. It’s a start. I struggle a bit to find rhythm with my first service game and it goes to deuce, but I do win it. Then I win her service game. At the next changeover it’s 3–0. OMG, I think, she’s really good but I’m actually going to win this. I might even win it 6–0, 6–0. I imagine telling Rod. Telling Dan. Going back to the leisure center with a double bagel in an actual Grade 3 tournament.
Rachel wins the next game. And the next three after that. I realize only when I think about it later that she has been hitting her shots freely, and even though quite a lot of them have sailed out early on, she has now found the lines. I have been playing more carefully, building an advantage out of her mistakes. But now she’s making fewer mistakes and I’m stuck with my hesitant comfort-play. Her serve is still terrible, though, and I break it again for 4–4, but I’m not hitting enough winners and I don’t really have any kind of game plan beyond seeing what she does and responding as best I can. I don’t really know how to play on clay. It looks good on TV but it’s kind of slippery. I see now why the players do that slidey thing, but I can’t do it. Rachel sends me wide on the backhand and then blasts a winner down my forehand side. On acrylic I might have been able to recover and get to the shot. On clay? Not a chance.
But we both want to win this. I come into the net a few times, but again get more points off the errors forced by the surprise factor than off playing actual winners myself. The clay is heavy but also dusty, and you have to “sweep the lines,” with an actual broom, after playing on it. In fact, the lines could do with a sweep now. I can’t see the baseline. I can’t see the inner tramline on the deuce side. My brain needs to see the lines in order to be able to hit them. I send balls deep into what I think is the far deuce court corner. “Out,” calls Rachel. It’s 5–5. If I can get the next game and serve for the set . . . but I don’t get it, and Rachel gets the set 7–5. Fuck. I’ve gone from 3–0 up to 7–5 down. How did that happen? I feel like crying.
It is very warm, and I’m wearing my tennis skirt without leggings underneath for the first time ever. I began feeling free because of this, but in fact my thighs are rubbing together and chafing. Not only does this hurt, it’s confirmation that I am fat.
I am a fat loser, I think, going into the second set.
Rachel never quite gets her serve together, but her attacking ground strokes get better and better. I do keep playing in the second set, but she plays better than me and takes it 6–4. When we shake hands at the net I tell her this is the first time I’ve played on clay. I’m hoping that she’ll admit to being a clay expert, which will give me the excuse I need for this. But no, she’s only played on clay on holiday, and that was real clay, not this artificial stuff. This clay is artificial? I guess it is.
We go back to the tournament desk to give our result. I feel fucking awful. There is literally no joy in this. I’m told that players have fifteen minutes to sign up for the consolation event after losing their first match. I still can’t believe I have lost my first match. I feel like I need a lot more than fifteen minutes to process it. Siobhan is sitting at a table with a blonde woman in a yellow Stella McCartney top, whom she introduces as Stela Krumova. I wonder if she’s her next opponent.
“How did you do?” Siobhan asks me.
I make a face and shake my head. “You?”
“I won!” she says. “I can’t believe it. I lost the first set 6–0, won the next one 6–1, and then scraped through the tiebreak 11–9.”
“Well done,” I say, trying to sound like I mean it. Do I wish she’d lost? Of course I do. I’m human. Also: How does someone lose a first set 6–0 and then win the next one 6–1? It’s too weird.
I take a consolation draw form from the desk. Hope starts to trickle through me again. I couldn’t possibly lose twice, could I? I assume these matches will be played today, but when I ask the organizer he says that they’ll begin tomorrow. Crap. Do I really want to go through another whole day of this? I have no hotel booked tomorrow night, so I’d have to check out tomorrow morning and bring my suitcase here. It’s way too much hassle. I put the form back. I could go home now. But then what about my red wine? It’s Wednesday night, which is a non-drinking night at home, but if I remain On Holiday then I can drink as much as I like. Then again, if I’m playing the consolation draw I’d better not drink too much. Although that approach hasn’t helped me today. I could pretend I’m playing in the McEnroe era and come tomorrow with a hangover and see if that helps.
I go out and sit on the grass in the sunshine and text my result to Dan. Then I ring Rod. He’s lovely. A match doesn’t get much closer than 7–5, 6–4, although perhaps Siobhan’s freakish result is mathematically closer. Of course, I should have taken it to three sets. I should have won the second set and then lost the tiebreak. Or maybe even won the tiebreak! But I hate tiebreaks. I tell him how strange it was playing on clay, but also how I somehow didn’t want to win, can’t have wanted to win. How could I throw away a 3–0 lead? He thinks I should stay on and play the consolation draw. Get some more practice on clay. I must admit that playing outside in the sun is lovely, even with the chafing. Right now I don’t want to leave this place, where it feels properly warm for the first time this year, and where there is nothing in the world apart from tennis. I’ve come all the way here. I should play more than one match.
It turns out that Stela is Siobhan’s friend from the Dartford David Lloyd Tennis Centre. Stela is playing next, so I go with Siobhan to the grassy hill behind the far clay courts to watch her. Two courts over, Rachel is playing Helen Clements in the match I hoped I was going to be playing, so we watch that at the same time. I half-hope Rachel wins, because if the person who knocked me out also knocks out the top seed then that makes a good story. But I also hope she loses because she beat me and I want her to suffer. But she’s certainly playing well and the rallies are a lot longer than the ones I had with Vanessa Brill.
“There’s no way she’s a 9.2,” says Siobhan.
“I know,” I say.
“The girl I played wasn’t a 9.1 either. No way.”
“At least you beat her.”
“Yeah.” Siobhan chuckles. “I was amazed.”
“How exactly did you turn it around from 6–0?”
“Took the pace off the ball. She likes to hit it hard so I just took all the pace off.” She laughs again. I smile. It’s the same tactic she used on me in the ITC.
On the clay court below us, Stela is floundering. Apparently Stela has recently gone up from an 8.1 to a 7.2. She’s playing a 7.1. Siobhan tells me that Stela hits with her husband every day, that she’s obsessed with tennis. But then that’s true of all of us here. I learn that Siobhan’s partner is a tennis coach. I assume, although don’t ask, that both Siobhan and Stela don’t have children. Like me.
I suddenly get a warm glow. Here I am with women I have things in common with—not a love of literature or an understanding of phenomenology or an interest in contemporary art—other things. Earthier things. In John McEnroe’s book there is a real sense of what it was like going around tournaments in the ’70s and ’80s, bumping into friends and rivals and just deciding on the spur of the moment to enter the doubles with some pal you’ve run into in the locker room, or the bar. At John McEnroe’s first Wimbledon he ended up entering the mixed doubles on a whim with his childhood friend Mary Carillo. In this spirit I ask Siobhan if she’d like to enter the doubles with me, but she has to get home.
I yawn, stretch back onto the grass. The sun is lovely. Even though I feel like a loser, it’s nice here with the sounds of tennis all around me. Planes fly over. There are a few bees. Siobhan gets out some sunscreen. I realize that even though my tennis bag contains, among other things, four types of bandage, three types of painkiller, lipstick, spare change, extra fluid, liquid chalk, various changes of clothes, and three tennis racquets, I do not have sunscreen. Siobhan offers me some of hers. I put a bit on my ankles, but really, how harsh can the sun be in England in April?
Rachel finishes playing. It didn’t look like she was losing heavily—and Siobhan thought maybe she was even winning—but her score is 6–2, 6–1. It is a heavy loss, but for a 9.2 against a 4.1 it’s actually pretty good. Stela comes off and joins us. She has lost more badly: 6–1, 6–0. She blames the clay, and a pain in her side, and flops down next to us. She’s wearing cool earrings with her bright yellow top. She has sharp cheekbones and insouciant, slutty-in-a-good-way makeup. I really like her. She’s going to be in the consolation draw with me. If there is an in-crowd at this tournament, I suddenly realize, we are it. When Rachel comes over to us we are possibly a little cold with her. She drifts away. Siobhan starts speculating about whether or not Stela and I will play each other. On the court below us, Rushan Tonge-Bobia, the big-haired Black girl who I last saw at Leicester, is being beaten by the third seed. “I bet you’ll actually end up playing her,” Siobhan says to Stela. For me she predicts Alexandra Groszek. She’s right both times.
There’s no gluten-free food here so I get a cup of tea instead. Stela and I watch Siobhan get double-bagelled by the second seed. I keep checking my phone for a reply from Dan, but nothing comes.
Afterward, Siobhan is keen to get home. Stela’s second match is also tomorrow, like mine. She’s going to drive home and then come back, but she’s not in such a hurry.
“Do you fancy a hit?” she asks me.
“What, now?”
“Sure. There’re lots of free courts.”
She’s right. It’s approaching 4:00 p.m. and most of the matches are over. There’s an early summer, early evening feel to the place. We go down to the courts and start hitting. Stela is a surprisingly competitive hitter, more determined to win points than keep the rally going. But it’s OK. It’s just nice to get some more practice on the clay.
A family turns up on the next court. A big woman in a floral skirt, two children, and a dog. The little boy starts running around with the dog. The woman has a large carrier bag with her. It is full of mangled-looking tennis balls. The little girl goes to one side of the net, and the mother starts feeding balls to her.
“Hit it!” she shouts, her voice heavily accented. “Move yourrrrr feet!”
This is the soundtrack to the rest of my hit with Stela. The mother shouts at her daughter frequently in English but also in some other language.
“Move! Lazy! Hit it!”
“It’s Bulgarian,” says Stela, when we break for a drink.
“What’s she saying?” I ask.
Stela laughs. “Stuff like the daughter is useless, worthless.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Right now she’s threatening to beat her with the tennis racquet.”
•
I’ve finished the McEnroe book, and so my companion on this trip is Serena Williams’s My Life. What is it about tennis parents? Serena’s father Richard apparently drew up a seventy-eight-page plan for his daughters’ tennis careers when Serena was around four years old. He was listed in the “pushy fathers” speech in the “Teddy Perkins” episode of Atlanta, which I now use to teach students the Gothic. I read all about how Richard Williams ordered instructional videos and books and tried out their techniques on his wife, then pregnant with Venus, while I eat my large dinner, after my long bath and massive gin and tonic. Some years later I’ll be having dinner with a poet who’s come to examine one of my PhD students, and he will laughingly, sheepishly, admit to a tennis-parent episode of his own that culminated in him writing to the LTA to ask them to ban another parent—previously a close friend—from coming within ten feet of his son.
Right now, I am exhausted and sunburnt. My chafing has left red welts on my inner thighs. But I can carry on, right? Surely, surely I can’t lose again tomorrow? I picture myself beating Alexandra Groszek and then patiently working my way through the rest of the consolation draw. It could happen. I need to win more than ever now, because my loss against Rachel MacDonald has neutralized my win against Sharon. I need three new qualifying wins to go up to an 8.1. Or maybe four, actually, since I think we’re in a new season now.
The next day I get my cab driver to stop at a drugstore and I buy Piz Buin sunscreen and some Vaseline to rub on my thighs. Nothing is going to stop me. At Sutton Tennis Academy it’s clearly boy day. There are under-14, under-16, and under-18 matches going on everywhere. It’s hard to see where the women’s consolation draw is going to fit in. When I arrive, two under-16s are really going at it on Court 18. One of them cries when a ball he thought was in was called out by his opponent. He goes all the way to the opposite baseline to examine the mark—clay encourages this kind of drama—but there is no mark. The other boy loses the set and then he cries too. For the rest of the match they shout things at each other. “So late!” yells one of them after his serve is called out only after the other boy has fluffed his return. “Just because your shot was so lame.” There are tennis parents everywhere. One dad complains to another that his son doesn’t like the courts wet, but doesn’t like them dry either. I overhear a mother on her phone telling her husband how well their son is hitting the ball today, despite “significant pressure on his backhand.”
Sometimes contemplating pro tennis is like contemplating the entire universe, or at least how many times you’d have to fold a piece of paper before it would reach to the moon. How many of these kids are going to make it? If “making it” means breaking into the top 250 in the world, say, then somewhere between one and none. Probably none. When he was this age, Andy Murray was in Spain playing against Rafa, not competing in bland LTA tournaments. Venus and Serena didn’t do junior tournaments because even someone as bonkers as their father realized that they break people’s spirits. Other big players who did play on junior circuits were so good that it’s unlikely that any of them—even McEnroe—cried over line calls. Rafa was already winning under-12s easily at the age of eight. Then again, there is that story in his autobiography about the time he chose to have fun one summer rather than practice tennis and then lost a tournament. “I never want to feel like this again,” he said to his father. Or something like that.
I feel like that too, after being beaten by Alexandra Groszek.
What happened during our match? I don’t know. The score is recorded, but I didn’t make any notes. The record tells a story of its own. The match took place on clay Court 21 and she won: 7–6 [3], 6–1. The three in brackets means that the set went to a tiebreak at 6–6 and that she won it 7–3. The score in the second set shows that I more or less gave up. I gave up, lost, and then what? Got my bag from where I’d left it behind the desk at reception and got in a cab and went to Sutton station and then to St. Pancras, where I probably bought another fluorescent sports bra from JD Sports, which used to be by the escalators up to Platforms 11, 12, and 13. But I actually have no idea what happened, because I made no notes. Between April 15 and 17, I also took no photographs (unthinkable now, as I write this in 2019, in a new age of limitless selfies and my Instagram Story to keep up). I’m sure I cried. I remember her being mean in some way, possibly a bit arsey. Was she maybe Polish? I remember vaguely wanting to say something about how my ex had been Polish. I think I wanted to be friendly, and she didn’t.
Meanwhile, Stela was being beaten by Rushan Tonge-Bobia on clay Court 19. I don’t remember whether we spoke again or not. We must have. Or maybe not. We started at the same time, and her match took one hour and fifty-five minutes, and mine took one hour and fifty. Maybe I simply used those five minutes to slip away because I couldn’t bear to say anything or write anything or think anything about the fact that I’d lost yet again. Dan never responded to my message with my result from my first game, so I probably didn’t even bother to send him another one. It’s as if the whole thing never happened.
•
The following weekend, my brother Hari and his girlfriend Nia come to stay. They are such a lovely couple, beautiful, laid-back, and cool, but Hari is as competitive as I am, maybe more so. He’s rarely played tennis. I think he had the odd knockabout in the park with Couze, but after Couze was diagnosed with angina in 1992, he became afraid of exercise and so didn’t play so much sport. Hari was more of a football kid anyway, and a skateboarder. But he wants to play tennis now. He has the same gene as I do—that must come down my mother’s line. The gene says You can do anything you want. It says Miracles happen. It says There’s always a chance the other person will die and you’ll win by default. Or, maybe (miracle!) you’ll realize that you are a glorious undiscovered talent in ice-skating/ballet/tennis/whatever. Of course, if the miracle doesn’t happen, there’s no need to go back after that first session. No need to actually try, because trying is for losers and the uncool.
Hari therefore wonders whether he’s been blessed with some incredible inner skill, undetected up until now, that means he will be able to thrash me, despite the fact that I train several times a week. Who knows? He could be right.
We go to the leisure center. The ITC is eerily empty. It’s a good thing, because I don’t look great playing Hari. He’s naturally athletic and cool, but he stands out badly as an amateur in here. He hits the ball in high loops in the air. He does underspin. He has no follow-through. No backhand. No serve. I look good when I am playing a tennis professional who generates all the power. I can then whack the ball back and it looks like I have the same amount of power. During this session I realize how lame I truly am. Playing with Hari, I should look like a tennis professional myself. I should be able to deliver well-paced balls to his forehand that will make both of us look good. I can do this sometimes, but it’s erratic. I’m basically shit.
While we are dibbly-dobblying the ball around, the green doors squeak open and some young guys come in. Are they Josh’s friends? They go to Court 2 and start thwacking the ball around with power and verve. Then—oh God—Dan comes in with a woman I’ve never seen before. He waves at me, slightly embarrassed, and they go off to Court 4. I carry on looking like a bad recreational player who has never won a match in her life. Hari suggests we play some points. I give him three serves. It’s fun, and he goes for every single point, but I do still beat him 6–0, 6–0.
“I see why you’re doing this,” he says afterward. “You’re genuinely good.”
But I’m not. Not really. And my arm hurts.
•
Tuesday. I am very worried about my arm, but excited about playing tennis today. Dan will be back at his Level 4 course for the rest of the week, so I won’t have my Wednesday session. And then I leave with Rod for Venice on Sunday, which means I’ll miss both my sessions next week. Dan never did respond to my text message with my first match result from Sutton, so I’m looking forward to talking to him about what went wrong. What can I work on now? More than anything, I want a confidence boost. I want to be able to hit the ball hard again. I want Dan to say something nice to me, to somehow make it all OK.
My pre-tennis routine is getting longer all the time. It starts properly when I wake up. If I’m playing tennis, that’s usually my first thought of the day. Then I start counting down to the time I’m going to start. I think about what I can eat and drink to help me prepare. I have a little fizz in my stomach—part nerves, part excitement—that gets more intense as the day goes on. About an hour and a half before the official start of my session, I stop what I’m doing and begin getting ready. I get changed into my kit, pack my bag with a clean towel, my purse, my phone, and check the rest of my stuff is there: my three Juice racquets, my sweatbands, my spare top. Then I go downstairs to mix up my drink. Today it’s Evian with green tea and nettle cordial. I am trying to make my own drinks fresh like this in the hope of stopping drinking Lucozade. And I’m also trying to increase the nutrient value of everything I consume, which means green tea rather than black tea and coconut oil rather than butter and so on. I am missing my big caffeine hits, though, and I feel oddly tearful.
I get to the leisure center early with the idea of spending a good amount of time warming up in the gym. But the nice girl behind the desk can’t find my booking on the system.
“It’s a private lesson,” I say. “Dan should have put it on there.”
“I can’t see it,” she says. “And the courts are all booked up for a tournament until four.” She looks worried. She tries to phone the tennis office but gets no reply, so she sends me down. The place is unusually full of color and sound: kids, parents, mini-tennis balls, nets, and what seem like thousands of people with clipboards. Dan, Josh, and Margaret are there officiating the whole thing. Dan sees me and bounces over, sort of grimacing, but quite cheerful.
“Sorry!” he says. “I think it’ll be over by three. Can we start then?”
Fine. I go to Sainsbury’s and then to Walmer Tennis Club, looking for membership forms. Apparently everyone plays here in the summer. I’ve learned that it’s usual for serious tennis players to be members of all the local clubs at once: the leisure center for when it rains, Canterbury for the clay and the good level of play, Walmer for perfectly manicured grass courts and the rule that everyone has to wear all white. I find Walmer’s wrought iron gates dusty and padlocked, like the beginning of a fairy tale, or perhaps a bit of a video game that you are not supposed to have found yet. The year 1886 is inscribed on the gates.
I get back to the leisure center around half past two so I can still do my warm-up in the gym. This time grumpy Dolly is at the desk too. I’ve already paid for my lesson, and the nice girl that gave me my receipt wants to wave me through, but I’m scared of getting into trouble so I make her sign me in for the gym, even though she obviously thinks this is unnecessary.
“Well, I hope you’re not expecting to play tennis,” Dolly says to me.
The other girl looks embarrassed. “She’s got a lesson,” she says to Dolly. “It’s all arranged.”
“Well, all I know is that all the courts are booked until four,” says Dolly.
“She’s arranged it directly with Dan,” says the girl.
“Oh, I see. Got a hotline to the tennis coaches, have you?”
“I know how to send a text message,” I say, a bit crisply.
When I go down to the tennis center at five past three, it’s still chaos. Karen Bayliss is there, watching her son Daniel. None of the kids’ matches look anywhere near ending.
“You’re not expecting to have a tennis lesson in this chaos, are you?” Karen says.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
But then Dan comes over and says that the tournament actually does go on until four, not three, and then he has to coach Daniel Bayliss as part of his course assessment, so we can’t play at all today. He offers me Saturday afternoon, but I’ll be on my way to Gatwick then. I’m becoming unhappy. Is he incapable of texting me to let me know what’s going on? I have a block booking for Tuesday afternoon. No one told me it was canceled today. I don’t say anything for a few seconds. I’m sort of stunned.
“Can I at least use the ball machine?” I ask. I can see Court 4 is free.
“The thing is the schools have booked all the courts and paid for them until four,” he says. “So probably not. Hang on. I’ll check.”
But then a parent comes and asks him for a bandage and I can see he’s swamped in this tournament. He makes a kind of “sorry” face at me, and I actually make a kind of “fuck you” face back. I mean, this is just stupid. I am already crying as I leave the leisure center, hoping Dolly can’t see me. I feel like a child. I drive to the seafront and sob my heart out because my tennis coaching session was canceled. OK, not just that, but because no one told me. And then Daniel got a spare slot and I didn’t. And Daniel is an up-and-coming kid and I’m just a pathetic old woman with a hollow dream. That thing Dan said to his Level 4 instructor about a “lady” at his club having the same Juice racquet as him comes back to me. That time he called me a recreational player. He thinks I am a joke. I am being coached by someone who thinks I am a joke, who doesn’t even bother to tell me that my session is canceled. I have a book review due tomorrow. I got up at 6:00 a.m. to work on it so I could play tennis at 2:30 with a clear conscience. Does Dan not think I have a life?
Maybe he’s right. I feel like a fucking loser.
When I get home I wonder about giving tennis a rest for a few days. We leave for Venice on Saturday. My arm hurts a lot, although I’ve actually hardly played tennis for the last week. There was just that session with Hari. But, still, maybe I should rest it some more? Then again, if I rested everything that hurt I’d never play tennis again. I sent a message to Luke, but haven’t heard back, which I assume means he’s not going to be around on Thursday. I have two hours with Lee on Wednesday. Perhaps I should cancel that too and just have a good period of time off.
Or I could text Margaret and ask if Josh is available.
I’ve avoided doing this since last time, as I sensed there was some problem. Had I broken some rule of etiquette by having a buddy hit with Josh when Dan is officially my coach? But fuck it. Now I have nothing to lose. I text Margaret and say that as my two sessions with Dan have been canceled this week, does Josh have any slots free? The next morning I get a text from Josh himself. Yes, he’s around. When do I want to play? We arrange two sessions: one for Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. and another for Friday at 4:00. There are matches going on that should finish by 2:00, but Josh says he’ll text me by 1:40 just to confirm. He doesn’t, he says, want a repeat of the “disaster” of yesterday.
So they did realize.
•
When I arrive at the leisure center, there are two people behind the desk: Dolly and the nice girl from the other day. But the nice girl is on the phone. At least there’s no queue today.
“Hello, Scarlett,” says Dolly cheerfully, in her low, treacly, northern voice.
Perhaps I could try neutralizing her again?
“Hi, Dolly,” I say. “How are you?”
“So busy,” she says, sighing.
“Is it still Easter?” I say. “Or have the kids gone back now?”
“They’ve gone back. But we’re still so busy.”
“OK, well, can I have a buddy hit with Josh please, beginning at 2:00 p.m.?”
This is simple. And it is five to two so she can’t tell me I’m here too early or have a go at me for not officially signing into the gym or taking my bag in there or whatever because I’m not even going to the gym. I have my membership card and my business debit card ready. Nothing can go wrong.
“Spend all your pocket money on tennis lessons, don’t you?” she says.
I try to smile politely. “Something like that.”
“I mean,” she goes on, “you don’t pay my entire wages but you must come quite close.”
Ouch. How does she do this? She’s like a pro tennis player who can hit a winner from anywhere on the court. Even though I have not done anything wrong, she has found a way to get to me. Why?
•
Last time I hit with Josh, he said he didn’t want to interfere with what Dan was doing with me. “Treat me like a ball machine,” he said. Today, after we’ve been hitting for ten minutes or so, he comes to the net.
“I don’t want to interfere with what Dan is doing with you,” he says, “but . . .”
“Go on, interfere,” I say.
He starts instructing me on my forehand. It’s not as if poor Dan hasn’t been hammering away at my forehand for months now, but Josh just says one or two key things and they work. Am I like one of those puppies that won’t sit for its master but will do it for guests? Then again, sometimes it works with Dan too, but then in a couple of sessions I go back to my old forehand and it feels comfortable and it works OK—but I’m not winning matches with it against any but the very wildest hitters. Josh also gives me a different grip: a full western.
“The thing is,” he says, “that grip that Dan uses and that you’ve been using is a bit old-fashioned now.”
Right. OK. Game on, it seems.
Still, one nice thing about Josh is that he gives feedback that isn’t all bad.
“Good,” he says. “Those last four were great. But the fifth one, did you feel how that was different? You were scooping again.”
The only thing that bothers me a bit is that Dan only ever says pleasant, positive, admiring things about Josh, telling me stories about the holes Josh makes in balls because he whacks them so hard, and all the winners he hits when they play together. But Josh is not so nice about Dan.
“What does he actually do with you?” he asks me as we leave the court after our session is complete.
“Well, lately we’ve just been putting loud music on and whacking balls to each other,” I say. I don’t add that I love doing this almost more than anything in the world. I guess I’m still sore about Tuesday, and about losing the week before. The lack of responses to my texts. Did I lose because I practice to music rather than slavishly improving my forehand? At this moment that feels like as good an excuse as any.
Josh looks unimpressed.
“The thing is,” he says, “while it’s not always true that the best tennis players make the best coaches, in this case I think you could learn more from me. Especially given what you’re trying to achieve.”
“Could that work?” I say. “What’s the etiquette of maybe having you as my actual coach and Dan as more of a hitting partner?”
Obviously I know the answer to this. In tennis terms it’s like leaving your husband to shag someone else while hoping you can still “remain friends.” Or like sacking your agent—and friend—of more than ten years. I am a bad person.
In my defense, I have to say that it is only Wednesday and I am still very cross about Tuesday. And Josh has just taught me loads about my forehand. But I still sort of hate myself. Dan is my friend. It’s true that he sometimes doesn’t reply to my messages, and our sessions often begin five minutes late. On the other hand, Josh’s lessons finish on the dot while Dan’s are likely to go on for an extra half hour, hour, or more. Josh so obviously plays down to me and says so. Today, after a particularly excruciating rally that left me gasping for a break and a drink, I said something like “Wow, what a tough point,” and he said, “Yes, I just put the ball where I thought it would stretch you just the right amount.”
Friday’s session is exhilarating. Josh gets out a basket of the best Head Pro balls—my favorites—which he has clearly assembled beforehand. He feeds them to me and I hit forehand after forehand down the line. Winner after winner after winner. Of course, it helps that there’s no one on the other side of the net. After this I’m dripping with sweat, developing that post-exercise high that some people say burns you out if you abuse it.
While we’re having a drink, Josh asks me about my book. He seems genuinely interested—he is, after all, a grammar school boy with good manners.
“I don’t think Dan reads very many books,” he says.
“No,” I agree.
“Right,” says Josh, springing up from his chair. “Enough lazing about. I want to teach you a two-handed backhand. It’s what you need.”
“OK,” I say. “Cool. Although . . .”
He grins at me like a kid caught mid-prank. “What?”
“Well, when I next play Dan. If I turn up with a two-handed backhand then he’ll know.”
“Fuck him,” says Josh.
•
Home later, showered and foam-rollered. Rod’s out at a New Zealand Studies Network thing. I’ve got a gin and tonic and some tennis to watch and I should feel happy but instead I feel flat. I just can’t imagine going into the tennis center to train for neat clipped hours with Josh and not playing with Dan any more. Then again, I see Dan as a friend. How does he see me? Am I just some chick with a bit of money that he has to coach, or does he see me as a friend too? Tomorrow Rod and I are packing and leaving for a night at Gatwick before our early flight to Venice. No more tennis for me until I get back. This, too, makes me feel flat. I compose a text to Dan. I tell him I’ve had a couple of sessions with Josh and that I hope he doesn’t mind but it was the only way I could get any tennis this week, as the person I hit with in Canterbury has a bad back. Would he be free maybe the Saturday or Sunday after I get back? I hit send and feel a little bit better about myself. Then I watch Rafa lose to Nicolas Almagro in the quarterfinals of Barcelona. Rafa isn’t hitting it deep enough, with enough belief. It’s hard to tell what’s wrong with him. He’s ahead for the whole match and then he loses.