It’s less than a week before Seniors’ Wimbledon and I am still not meditating every day like I should be. I don’t feel very calm. It’s been hard to get hold of Josh for some reason. After the Walmer Open he suddenly wasn’t available for coaching for about ten days. He declared himself “burned out,” went kayaking and fishing, and then when that stopped he told me he couldn’t coach me because he was hitting with an under-18 who was 750th in the world and would be “too knackered.” So the Carters did hear me, then? Or maybe Josh was just humiliated after his loss in the final.
On Friday night Rod and I go to watch The Apartment with David Flusfeder and his wife Sue Swift. I’m exhausted, having spent the morning in Guy’s Hospital visiting Gordian, who has just had part of his right lung removed. I’ve tried to explain what this was like to my friends, but it just comes out like the kind of amusing anecdote I normally tell. I had the first panic attack I’ve had for a long time in the lift on the way up to the respiratory ward. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel my heart. When I realized how high up the ward was, I didn’t let myself get too close to the windows in case I threw myself out. Gordian looked so small and fragile sitting cross-legged on his hospital bed, but also unmistakably still my cool charismatic dad.
On Saturday morning I’m due to play a mixed doubles league match. Dan texts me halfway through the film. I’m thinking Ploughmans have sausage rolls and sweets. Being Dan’s official mixed doubles partner means I have to shop for the tennis afternoon tea. But I fail to fully unravel Dan’s text even when sober, so randomly buy goats’ cheese Camembert and salad. I never eat cheese of any sort but at afternoon tea I do eat some. We’ve won, of course, but I’m a bit more tired than usual. I go home, drink wine, feel vaguely unsettled all night, and then leave early to play a ladies’ doubles at Polo at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday.
It’s one of those mornings when I forget how to play tennis or why I even wanted to. There are high winds and some rain. Everyone’s depressed. My wrist hurts. We lose. If I can’t even win a local doubles match, what on earth am I thinking going to play Wimbledon? Even the word is now making me feel sick. I’ve stopped telling people I’m playing this week and have started hoping they’ll have forgotten.
I’m asked to play another league doubles match that will be just as depressing as this one. It’s on Seniors’ Wimbledon finals day. “Probably,” I say. “I’ll let you know.”
On Monday morning I am worrying about clothes. I’ve assumed that Wimbledon means wearing white, although no one has said anything. I have three white tennis outfits that I like. One of them is Simona Halep’s main Wimbledon outfit. What if I spilled something down one of them, lost another, and then was left with only one tennis outfit for the entire match? I begin to panic. But I don’t really need to buy more white stuff, not this late in the season. In a couple of weeks’ time it’s going to be all about the US Open outfits. Although what am I, a supposedly serious writer, even doing worrying about my clothes? It’s what I do when I’m nervous, what I’ve always done. Every job interview or book launch has always been all about the outfit. But how many outfits do I really need? I’m going to go all the way to Wimbledon and then be beaten and come home again. I need my outfit for about an hour, tops. But what if? What if I do get through? It would take a miracle, but miracles happen, right?
I go to an online tennis shop and fill a virtual basket with skirts and tops, but I don’t check out. On another site I order more kinesiology tape, and I do check out. Go back to the other shopping basket, look at it, sigh. Do a bit of writing. In many ways it’s a normal morning. I mean to meditate, but I don’t. Then I go and play tennis for five hours and somehow fit in a five-hundred-meter sprint on the rowing machine as well. “Tapering nicely then?” comments Josh. I spend the night throwing up.
•
I’ve booked a room above a pub with a good restaurant on Wimbledon Common. Rod and I check in on Wednesday afternoon. My match is on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. I’m anxious to secure a taxi for the morning.
“Where are you going?” asks the girl behind the bar.
“The Aorangi courts at the All England Club,” I say. “I think it’s Gate 1.”
“Sorry,” she says. “Where?”
“The All England Club?”
She looks blank. “What’s that?”
“Er, where they play tennis?” Still she frowns.
“Like, you know, Wimbledon,” I say.
“Oh, I see.” She smiles. “You going to watch some tennis then?”
I have a huge tennis bag with me. “I’m actually playing.”
“Oh. Right.”
•
Last time I came to Wimbledon—the tennis club—you could barely see the place for people. Now, as Rod and I approach in a taxi down Church Road, the place has a mellow end-of-season feel to it. The seats around Court 2 are covered with plastic, which flaps in the light wind. There’s some building work going on. Fluorescent tape.
I’ve never seen the Aorangi courts before. During Wimbledon fortnight, the fences are covered so you can’t see who is practicing there, but now they are all open. And they are beautiful: around twenty perfect grass courts under a cloudless blue sky with just a pinch of autumn in the air. There’s a large pavilion, too. I go through a door that says PLAYERS’ ENTRANCE and feel impossibly excited. I’m a player! At Wimbledon! I wasn’t sure how I’d feel here—I have failed, in the past, to be excited about the Empire State Building and the Sagrada Família along with many other great tourist attractions—but this is something different. I feel, however fleetingly, like I belong. I feel like I am not just being allowed to go backstage, but actually to be part of the production. But I’m still so incredibly nervous.
I’m early; of course I am. I go to sign in—the control room is a bunch of elderly posh men with big hardback notebooks—and am told that my opponent, Sue Depledge, has not arrived yet. I last saw Sue playing Siobhan Clarke at Canterbury. She’s the second seed here, but I know she’s beatable. Still, I must not allow myself to dream. Not here. Anyway, winning isn’t the thing. Writing is the thing. I’m a better writer than I am a tennis player (although if a fairy came along and gave me one wish right now, I would probably reverse this) and so I am also here in that capacity.
I’ve had a piece commissioned by the Guardian’s Weekend magazine. It’s going to be about what it’s like playing tennis as an over-40 woman, and specifically what it’s like playing Seniors’ Wimbledon. It’s going to be a curtain-raiser for the tennis book as well as a sort of calling card for my new identity as tennis novelist or sports chick or whatever I end up being. It’s like the universe wants this: I’ve also been asked to pitch a regular column to the editor, so I’ve suggested a weekly fitness slot. I’ve been enjoying the gym lately and wondering whether I might get a general fitness instructor qualification rather than a yoga course. I don’t really like yoga. It’s too slow.
So I’m here as a player, which is impossibly exciting, but it doesn’t matter if I lose because I’m also here as a reporter, an anthropologist, a participant observer. I know which one I’d rather be, but I can always fall back on the other.
The changing rooms, “For players and coaches only,” are staffed by two attendants in pale blue uniforms. Signs on the doors remind players to make sure they wear “almost entirely” white, to only take Evian and Robinson’s Barley Water onto court, and if they must drink Gatorade to pour it into an Evian bottle first. I am overwhelmed by brilliant details.
There are piles of white towels on each bench of the changing rooms. These must not be taken on court: only official Wimbledon towels must be taken on court. The white ones are for the players’ private use. This is the Ritz of changing rooms, when before I’ve only been able to get into the worst B&Bs. At the back of the changing rooms is a massage table “for juniors only” and ice that is labeled NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.
A couple of weeks ago I played in Tunbridge Wells. It had OK changing rooms with showers but literally nothing else. I went on the train with Rod. As it was all on grass, it was supposed to be a warm-up for Seniors’ Wimbledon, but my first match was canceled because my opponent sprained her ankle, and then it rained so much that my second match was moved to clay. My opponent—a nice, short-haired woman of about my age—had once played for the Netherlands. She’d asked me what pro tennis I used to play. Then she thrashed me love and love and I cried and the rain mixed with my tears and I wondered about giving up this whole stupid thing. Rod sat there in his anorak trying to analyze it all. My serve wasn’t bad. I did get to deuce on a couple of games. His eventual conclusion was that I gave it my best, but really? She was completely out of my league.
Here, in the Aorangi players’ changing rooms, there are not only the fluffy white towels but three different types of deodorant, hair mousse, hair spray, combs, cleansers. I get the impression that if there was anything you needed—anything at all—the attendants would help you, but in a down-to-earth, motherly sort of way. They sit in a little glass booth, reading magazines and filing their nails. Golden oldies are playing on a transistor radio.
It’s only really since Nottingham that I’ve discovered the joy of the locker room. At school the changing rooms were cold, damp, moldy, and apparently haunted. Anyone in their right mind either avoided going in there in the first place or got out as quickly as possible. I was the kid who never had the right kit, or found that my cheese and cucumber sandwiches had fallen into my shoe. I never had a clean, dry pair of knickers to put on after my shower. But as school PE seemed to consist of standing around shivering, I’m not sure I ever needed the shower or the knickers.
Now, though, I understand that locker rooms are where you can go to think, plan, stretch, be alone. In his autobiography, Rafael Nadal describes his frenzied pre-match activity, all of which takes place in the locker room: he puts grips on his racquets, has his fingers taped, runs back and forth, jumps up and down, and then takes a cold shower. In contrast, Roger Federer apparently sits quite serenely waiting to be called, maybe checking his perfect socks are the same height on his perfect ankles. I’m not sure what I should do. I have ages and ages. I try to breathe. Meditate. Pray. Stretch. I’m so fucking nervous I could die. It’s not really that peaceful in here. The place is filling with women, all over thirty-five, but mainly over sixty. One smiles at me as she finds a small gap on one of the benches, but no one else acknowledges me. I don’t know anyone here and I feel like an outsider.
There has been a heavy dew overnight, so play is delayed. A voice announces over a loudspeaker that there will be another inspection at 10:30. I saw in the control room that there are lots of singles matches scheduled this morning. At 10:00 a.m., as well as the women’s over-40 quarterfinals—which is what I am playing, because there were not enough entries to have a round of sixteen—there are four women’s over-65 matches and four men’s over-65 matches. At 11:30 there are four over-75 women’s singles and two over-80 women’s singles. The delay makes people giggly. A group of women in their seventies are all trying on tennis outfits with GREAT BRITAIN written on them. Everyone else is slowly changing into their whites, waiting for their name to be called. It’s thrilling, but so terrifying.
People drift out. The changing rooms grow quiet and I notice all the neat piles of clothes: floral knickers, M&S skirts, sensible cardigans. But when I get outside all I see are athletes, and I wonder if there is some magic in these locker rooms. Is this where you go to shed the uniform of wife, mother, grandmother, trustee, respectable member of the Women’s Institute, or—who knows?—the CP, and put on a different uniform: badass, number 1 seed, tennis queen? And is it really too late for me to be able to do that too? Could I be wearing a GB tennis outfit in my seventies? Margaret’s voice immediately pipes up in my mind: “No. And get over yourself.” While it’s here, the voice also reminds me that I shouldn’t be in these changing rooms at all. This tournament is not for people like me. But I am here, and I’m writing about it for a national newspaper, so.
Josh sends me a text message wishing me luck and reminding me to hit crosscourt, especially if I am nervous. Dan texts me too. I have all kinds of good luck messages on Facebook. I try to imagine that my supporters are here, that I didn’t deliberately put them all off. Is there a small chance that I could I do this? Sue is beatable, tantalizingly beatable. I’m an 8.2 with a good recent run of victories over 8.1s. She’s just a 7.2, the next step up from an 8.1. It’s not as if I am playing a 4.1 or something. She is in the top ten in the country, yet she is within reach.
I want this so much—to be able to say I got to the semifinals at Wimbledon, to receive the huge amount of ranking points, to get one more ratings win. But mainly I don’t want to go down 6–0, 6–0. As I walk to Court 17 with Rod, Sue, and a can of match balls, I’m asking the universe: Please, not the double bagel. I’m too nervous to speak, so Rod makes polite conversation with Sue. I have no idea what they’re saying. I’m trying to focus on the calm green all around me. The beautifully cut grass. The faint birdsong. The vanishing mist.
I win the toss and put Sue into serve. Unless I’ve been warming up for hours, I always now do this, not at all because of Brad, but on the basis that I can use my opponent’s service game as an extended warm-up. It also puts pressure on: you’re supposed to win your service games but often serving first means you are serving cold and nervous. It can be a good way to get an early break. But gosh—I didn’t realize just how nervous my opponent was going to be. The first three points are double faults. I’m 0–40 up without having done anything. Somehow this unsettles me so much that I manage to lose the next two points off Sue’s very wobbly, nerve-wracked second serves that only just make it over the net. But I go on to win the first game. And the second. And the third. Sue’s making a lot of mistakes and I am, albeit in a scrappy kind of way, capitalizing on them.
I do not allow myself to think that this is really happening. I’ve made that mistake before. Instead, I try to focus as Sue struggles with her serve. She really has the yips but I can’t allow myself to feel sorry for her. I do a bit, though, and I’m an idiot, calling a serve in when it was probably just out—and then losing the point. My own game is struggling to find any kind of rhythm. I’m not serving that well either, and my forehand has gone a bit wrong. As usual, I’m not hitting the ball hard enough, not playing aggressively enough. I’m afraid to hit the ball hard in case it goes out; bizarrely—for someone deliberately wearing a neon pink bra under her whites—I am afraid to hit my more flamboyant shots in case someone laughs at me. But who? There’s no one here apart from Rod, and I know he’ll be willing me to hit the ball harder, as usual. Oh, and two supporters of Sue’s, perhaps her husband and son. They’re so unobtrusive that I almost don’t notice them at all.
I’ve spent the past few months developing my two-handed backhand, which does not seem to want to appear in this match. So I am hitting my one-hander instead: my oldest and in some ways most dependable shot. My second serve involves a grip change from my first serve and today I am so tight I can’t even manage that. As always when I am most nervous, I simply flop a pathetic second serve into the box and then despise myself. Against strong opponents who kill these serves, and when I am losing badly, I tell myself, “Just first serves from now on,” but more often than not my body just will not do it and, stuck between the serve I want and the one my unconscious seems to want, I end up double-faulting anyway. Today I tell myself—again and again—to hit hard, go for my shots, don’t worry if I lose the first set because there are two more left in which to play more defensively if I have to, but my body simply will not do it. It still wants to block, push, play it safe. Why? It baffles me.
However, it soon becomes clear that Sue is doing such a great job of losing this match that all I really need to do to win is remain alive and on the other side of the net. Is that even true? She does hit a small number of amazing shots, and I manage a few myself, but her serve still isn’t working. I hold all my serves, except one. I somehow manage to play all the shots that have worked for me this summer on grass: little crosscourt backhand flicks, sliced backhands down the line, drop shots. This match seems to be more about delicate play than power, and I can feel my unconscious rubbing its hands because this is the game it likes best. Low-risk, low-power tennis. My conscious self still yearns to look like Rafa, but it’s never going to happen.
I win the first set 6–2. Breathe. Remind myself that this isn’t over. How many times does Sharapova lose her first set only to blast her opponent to oblivion in the next two? Am I going to be blasted into oblivion? Sue does come out fighting and holds her serve in the first game of the second set, but then everything goes exactly the same way as the first and I win it 6–2. Even on match point I’m worried that she’s going to fight back: take the game, the set, the next set. It’s so terrifying, so exhausting, so—
OMG. I’ve won. I’ve actually fucking won! I don’t believe it. We shake hands at the net and Sue apologizes for giving me such a poor game, for having lost her serve completely. She looks sad and tired. I come off court unsure what to feel. Did I play better than I thought I was playing? I hope so. I must have done. But it doesn’t matter: I’ve got the win. A convincing win. I go up to the control room to find out when I might be playing tomorrow.
“Gosh, you beat the second seed,” says the official with a smile, writing the score down in his hardback notebook. “Bravo!”
I am given a phone number on a scrap of paper that I am to ring this evening to find out when I am next on. This is impossibly old-school-glamorous, but what about the internet? Frowns all round. Oh well, yes, of course, if I really want to, I can also find out on the internet.
I go back to the changing rooms feeling a sense of belonging I have never quite had before. I won! Oh my God. I won. I breathe, taking it all in, deep, deep into myself. The attendants on their lunch break in their booth watching Countdown, the machine where they wash the white towels, the place you can fill your water bottle . . . I love it all and it loves me back. I just want to stay here, inside this feeling, forever. I take the longest shower I have ever had. I use All England Club shampoo, conditioner, shower gel. I take ages combing out my hair, putting on moisturizer, makeup. I belong here. I am a winner.
Lunch—a sandwich using up the last of the gluten-free bread they could find in the Aorangi Pavilion—is the best I have ever had. I drink the most delicious cup of tea. I ring up the pub we stayed in last night and book us in for tonight. I almost didn’t bring an extra tennis kit because I didn’t want to tempt fate, but luckily I did. I also put an extra day’s parking on the car back home in the train station car park “just in case.” Only one day though. I know tomorrow is my last day here. There’s no way I could make it to the final. Could I?
I persuade Rod that we should stay at the All England Club as long as possible today: watch some tennis and soak it all up. He doesn’t need much persuading; it’s fascinating here. After lunch we are just in time to see match point in one of the over-85 men’s singles quarterfinals. The man who wins—with a hard-hit, sharply angled forehand—has a pronounced stoop, seems barely able to walk, and has a leather wrist support that could have been manufactured two centuries ago.
I think all of us in the over-35, -40, and -45 age groups must feel incredibly young—indeed, this is the place to come if you are middle-aged but want to feel young—and slightly smug because of our just-about-still-functioning fascia, but also a bit worried about what would happen if we ever had to play one of the super-vets. Their skill is unfathomable. On another court, two over-75 men play an amazing point, full of intelligence and grace but absolutely zero footwork, and we all clap. Next to them is a doubles game featuring a pair who look as if they have come straight from Dad’s Army, complete with long shorts and stern expressions. One of them calls out a crisp “Me” or “You” each time the ball comes over the net. I’m sitting on a bench next to the top seed in the men’s over-45 singles, who has also just won his match.
“He’s like my doubles partner,” I say to him, laughing, the next time the player calls “You” as a winner flies down the middle of the court behind his partner. The next time he calls “Me” he fails to get the shot back and shouts loudly, “Bloody hell!”
“He should get a code violation for that,” I observe.
“Yeah, they should take his bus pass away,” comments the over-45 guy with a smile.
I love this so much. I’ve won. I belong here. I’m here at a tournament that I’m still in. I have not been eliminated. I have not been sent home. This is the best drug I’ve ever taken. I’m completely, utterly in love—with today, with tennis, with this place.
I have already texted Josh and Dan, so now I do a Facebook status update for everyone else. About two seconds later my mother rings.
“My baby!” she cries. “You won!”
“Hi, Mum.”
“I’m so proud of you! Semifinals next!”
“Yes, but seriously, this is it. I’m not going to win tomorrow. I’m just going to go out there and try to enjoy it. Relax, have a laugh, you know?”
There’s a long pause. “Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think that’s good enough.”
“Mum!”
“Well, you’re not going to win with that attitude.”
“Well, I’m not going to win with your attitude. Can you not see that I am trying to take the pressure off myself so I have more chance of winning? Do you know anything about sports psychology?”
“All right, all right.”
“That’s it. You are dismissed as my mother. I’m going to find another one. There’s plenty of choice here.”
We stay until it begins to rain around 4:00 p.m. I go to the control room for a taxi number and receive another scrap of paper with a scrawled number. I ask an official where I should say I am, and he tells me Gate 1 of the All England Club. But the number doesn’t work and so I google “Wimbledon Taxis” on my phone.
“Can I get a taxi from Gate 1 of the All England Club?” I say.
“Of which club?”
“The All England Club.” No response. “Where they play tennis?”
“Tennis club? Which road please?”
“Church Road? It’s really quite a big tennis club.”
This is beginning to baffle me.
•
In the hotel room I lie in bed waiting for my iPad to load the over-40 rankings. I should definitely move into the top ten in Kent now, with this win. The ranking points for a Grade 1 are incredible. The system doesn’t care that I went straight into the quarterfinals, it wants to give me the points anyway. In my tennis career so far I have managed to amass around fifty-nine points. But for this I will get around five hundred.
But when I click on my name on the LTA website I find that I am already number 3 in over-40 women in Kent, and number 17 nationally. How? Why do I suddenly have 415 points? Oh. I see. I was given a walkover in Tunbridge Wells, and so I got the points for doing absolutely nothing. But wow. This win today means that I will become number 2 in Kent and end up somewhere in the top ten in the country. Me! I start gabbling about this to Rod, but he’s not as impressed as I think he’ll be.
“Don’t focus on numbers,” he says. “Just focus on the game.”
•
My semifinal is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Friday but we arrive around 11:00 a.m. I want to spend more time at Wimbledon as a winner, because I know my time is running out. In theory my game plan today is to be relaxed, play loose and open, because all the pressure is on my opponent, Chantal Kilov. I met her yesterday in the control room before our first matches. She’s a thin, fit-looking woman who plays tennis every day, even Christmas. She’s a 6.1. She beat another 6.1 to get here. I am an 8.2 and therefore a total underdog. So the idea is that I will have fun and she will not have fun. I will smile, be irreverent, play my best game, while she tightens, plays it safe, and loses.
Hang on, hang on. I didn’t realize this was what I was doing. Have I somehow decided that I am going to win this? FFS, that is so stupid. Because of course if I think I have any chance at all of winning I can say goodbye to being relaxed, loose, etc. Indeed, I can already feel it. I am tense, anxious, snappy. I feel my energy draining away as nerves. This was supposed to be fun! I blame my mother. There are good matches going on all around me. It’s semifinals day, after all. One of the women’s over-35 matches is awesome, both players hitting hard, deep, crosscourt shots. Do I play like that? I think I do. I hope I do. Perhaps sometimes in practice? I wonder if my match will be put on Court 1 or 2. I feel like having an audience today. I’ve brought my best tennis dress, although I do worry that it makes me look a bit fat. And a bright blue bra for underneath.
One of the more elderly competitors has fallen asleep on the junior massage table. The attendants are watching a murder mystery on their portable television. I love it here so much. It has the feel of an old-fashioned British institution, like remote studios at the BBC, or Baker Street Tube station when it’s quiet. I change, do my hair, fill my water bottles, and try to do my normal stretching routine, but I’m so nervous I keep forgetting which bits I’ve done. Everything hurts. My wrist, my lower back, my calves. I don’t usually play on anti-inflammatories anymore because they make me feel a little dull, but I pop one today.
Chantal walks in and I try not to catch her eye. I can’t take any pre-match chatting. I do approximately ten pees between noon and 1:00 p.m. And then our names are not called. I wonder again if the organizers are waiting for an appropriate court for such an important match. This is a semifinal in one of the lower age categories, after all. But when we are called, at 1:40, we are given a pass code for a gate situated way behind the most remote Aorangi courts. “And then you cross a road, go through another gate . . .” So much for having an audience.
Immediately I feel tearful and cross. This is like Leicester all over again. I’ve come all this way, spent £200 on a hotel, reached the semifinals of a Grade 1, only to have to play my match in what may as well be another tennis club. The whole point of this was to play at Wimbledon. Real Wimbledon. My bad mood persists through the warm-up. Chantal wants her volleys too early; she wants to trade winners rather than have rallies; she wants us to serve at the same time. I’ve ended up at the sunny end, and when she gives me overheads I simply can’t see them. More of my energy drains away with being cross, and by the time we begin I feel like I can’t be bothered anymore.
This is a horrible feeling to have on a tennis court. This match is what I have dreamed of, trained for. This is, objectively, one of the high points of my entire year. Maybe even the very highest. But I just feel meh. There’s no audience, no atmosphere. Rod has to watch from an entire court away, because this court wasn’t designed to have spectators. He says later it was like looking down the wrong end of binoculars. The part of me that should be OK about losing is actually desperate to win, but the part of me that actually needs to complete this task knows I am going to lose. I need a sports psychologist, but it’s too late.
Still, my right arm feels surprisingly relaxed and I seem able to hit some OK shots. I win the first point of the match with a lovely forehand down the line. I’ve hit it hard! I win the next point as well. Then Chantal wins the next three points to take it to 40–30. Something in me relaxes, but now in a bad way. I’ve almost won the first game, I think. Almost is good enough in this situation, right? But it’s not. It can be, sometimes, when your opponent is going to lose as long as you remain steady. But remaining steady with this opponent means she is going to win. Still, I hold my first service game. But it’s the only game I win.
The main problem is that Chantal is good. She’s not frighteningly good, just good. She is consistent. She plays every point slightly better than I do, which means she wins most of them. I can see her confidence building as mine begins to slip away. I do everything you’re supposed to do. I jump up and down, stay on my toes, keep positive. But I can’t make myself do what I need to do to win more points. I’m not hitting the ball hard enough. I’m not taking risks. I’m playing stupidly and cautiously and giving her all the opportunities she needs to win. Why am I doing this? Why, knowing now for sure that I am going to lose, can I just not decide to hit out, be bold, go down in flames?
I manage to draw the last game out to deuce by playing slightly better, but it’s too late. We shake hands at the net. I wish her luck in the final. I don’t feel like chatting so I leave as quickly as I can, tears beginning to come. I really, really want to hit or smash something. There’s a bin. I kick it over and walk on, tears now streaming. Rod catches up with me.
“Hey,” he says. “Wait—”
But I want to cry without anyone seeing me. We somehow manage to get out of the complicated gate and across the road and back into the All England Club. There are lots of matches going on but for me the spell is now broken. The changing rooms are not magic anymore. I am an outsider again. I have to take a shower, get changed, go home. Then what? Get drunk? What else is there? But I don’t even feel like getting drunk. I’ve been building up to this all summer and I never thought about what I’d do afterward. I pull my phone out of my bag and find an email from the editor at the Guardian saying she’s sorry, but they’re going to pass on the fitness column idea. I’m gutted. What exactly is the universe trying to do to me here? I plod off to the showers and then stand under the water sobbing, thinking of Nadal after he lost the Wimbledon final to Federer in 2007. But I am nothing like Nadal. I am rubbish. I will soon officially enter the national top ten in my age group, but I feel as if I can barely play the game. I’m stupid, pathetic, a loser. I must now give up tennis, this ridiculous passion. I’m too old, too inexperienced, too prone to psychological collapse. Fuck this. Fuck everything.
As we leave, competitors are still milling about. One man carries an ancient leather racquet bag that could easily have been a prop in Brideshead. Another man, well into his seventies, rolls on the floor to ease his back. It’s a move I know from yoga. All around are posters advertising the next big seniors’ tournament, in Woking. I remember that I have entered this, but not paid. I must now withdraw, surely. I mean to do this on the train home, I really do. But instead I text Josh to tell him about my national ranking. I guess we’d better start making me look like I deserve it, I say. And then I press the button to pay for the Woking tournament. Well, one more go won’t hurt.
•
It’s my first session with Josh after Seniors’ Wimbledon. He’s excited that I’m now number 8 in the country for over-40 women. He asks about my world ranking. I don’t think I have one, I say. All I had was that walkover in the one international seniors’ tournament I’ve played at Tunbridge Wells. But do I have world ranking points? Yeah, maybe a few. He looks me up on his phone. Almost drops it. Laughs.
“You don’t know your world ranking?”
I shrug. “No.”
He laughs again. “You’re 131 in the world for over-40 women. You’re in the top 150. Oh my God.”
He beams. He’s proud.
“Wow. But I’ve got like one walkover and one loss?”
“It’s got two wins, two losses here. The walkover’s a win, so . . .”
“Oh. Right.” I think. “Oh! Seniors’ Wimbledon must have counted.”
“Wow.”
“Oh my God.”
We carry on with our session but something has changed. I’m a world-ranked player. Am I playing like one? I’m still trying to work on my forehand. Taking it earlier, higher, hitting it harder. Some of my shots are amazing and Josh is obviously impressed. But after a flat forehand down the line sails way out, he laughs at me.
“That’s a shot from the 131,000th player in the world,” he says. Which is probably what I am if you take me out of my age group. Probably not even that.
Then later he does a status update on Facebook.
Congratulations to Scarlett Thomas for going from not having a ranking in Kent, to breaking into the top 150 in the world for Over 40s . . . all in the space of 4 months!! 2nd in Kent, 8th in GB and 131 on Earth! One very proud coach.
A few days later I’m checking my stats on the LTA website, taking a screenshot to send to my agent to show him how far I’ve already got this year. When the page loads I see I’m still number 2 in Kent, but I’ve gone up to number 6 in the over-40 GB rankings. How is this possible? I literally haven’t done anything. Maybe someone died, or had a birthday. Who knows how these things work?
So I’m number 6 in the country, but still an 8.2.
I withdraw from Woking. I find I have no appetite for any more tournaments. Not right now, anyway. Until I know that I can have easier, more pleasurable victories, I decide to simply train like mad in the ITC, diet like crazy, and do the fitness instructor course. But being in the tennis center has become stressful and difficult. I’m that woman who played Wimbledon, who has a world ranking. So why then do I still look like all the other middle-aged losers, fluffing easy shots in league doubles matches? Dan and I are still winning most of our matches, but unless we win them love and love I really, really hate myself.
From late September I’m back at work after my study leave, busy with teaching and supervisions. But I still manage to fit in four or five hours of tennis most days. I’m in the leisure center all the time. Rod has decided that the only way he can get to see me is if he takes up tennis as well. Some days I have a coaching session with Josh, two hours of hitting with Dan and then another two hours of hitting with Rod. My whole life in a rectangle, just like I wanted it to be.
My diet doesn’t work, so I change it. People around me are telling me not to lose any more weight, but I haven’t fucking lost any! I count calories, go macrobiotic, then primal, then vegan, then keto. One day I’m bending down to pick up a tennis ball after a long rally with Dan. The green acrylic floor begins to swim and blur and suddenly everything is spinning and I feel faint. I stagger back to my chair by the net, which seems about a million miles away.
“You all right? You’ve gone pale,” says Dan.
“Don’t say that,” I tell him, desperately chugging water. “If this is anxiety, it’ll make it worse.”
He looks concerned. “Don’t pass out on me.”
“OK, you have to stop saying that.” I tell him that I’m pretty sure this is a panic attack, that I used to have them a lot, back in the olden days when I smoked and didn’t have a killer forehand.
But it can’t be that. I’m so fit now, and so successful, and so normal, right? And I have my world ranking and—
breathe
All of a sudden I’m allergic to the ITC. I feel faint every time I go there. Is it the fluorescent lighting perhaps? Severe dehydration? Those bites I got in the summer—did I get Lyme disease or something? I read dark stories about the tarantella, about people who get bitten by tarantulas having to dance out the poison, after which they are either dead or completely cured. Or maybe mine is more of a Red Shoes problem; I did begin my adventure in red shoes, after all. I just never realized that they’d take me to a place where I’d be unable to stop. And it still does take me a few more weeks to stop entirely, by which point I can hardly stand up anymore.