“And you think he’s a part of me that wants to do something dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“Something so dangerous that I have to pretend it’s his idea and not mine?”
“Yes.”
“So what is it? What is this idea that’s so dangerous?”
Dr. Pinner made a little gesture with his hands. “That’s what we’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”
Floyd stared at him. “You already know, don’t you?”
“What I know, or think I know, isn’t important,” said Dr. Pinner. “These things only have real meaning if you discover them for yourself.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“Well, if you think about it”—the psychologist smiled encouragingly—“Mike’s already told you. More or less.”
“Mike hasn’t told me anything,” protested Floyd. “We keep asking him what he’s doing here and he never answers.”
“According to my notes”—Dr. Pinner tapped at his notepad—“Mike has spoken to you on three occasions so far, and I’d argue that he told you something very important each time.”
“Oh, come on!” Floyd felt a sudden surge of anger without quite knowing why. “All he’s ever said was that I should tell you about a tennis coach I had when I was six, and invited me to go for a walk by the sea!”
“And I think he had a very clear message for you on both those occasions,” said Dr. Pinner, “but possibly not as clear as the first thing he said to you. That’s when he really laid it out.”
Floyd tried to recall what it was that Mike had said to him on the first occasion, but for some reason it was difficult to remember when the first occasion had been, let alone what Mike had said. In the last few seconds, his vision had narrowed, and there was a sort of fog in his brain that made it difficult to focus …
“It was when you were practicing on your own in the indoor courts at the school,” said Dr. Pinner. “You asked Mike who he was, and he told you his name.”
Yes … Floyd remembered now … Sort of … Though what had happened after that was still hazy. The fog in his head was making it difficult to remember anything …
“Then you asked if you’d ever played against him in a match somewhere,” Dr. Pinner prompted.
Yes … And what was it Mike had said in reply … ? Something about not being that interested in tennis … ? But what was so special about Mike saying that … ? Except that … hadn’t Dr. Pinner said Mike was a part of himself … ? And if Mike had said he wasn’t that interested in tennis, that would mean … That would mean …
It was, Floyd later said, as if someone had pulled the pin on a grenade inside his head. For a brief moment he was no longer in Dr. Pinner’s room on the first floor of the Altringham clinic, but somewhere indefinable where he was looking at … his whole life. Not just a part of it. All of it. All at the same time, in a single moment that seemed outside of time altogether.
He saw himself with his father playing to-and-fro across a net in the dining room, and laughing. He saw his mother taking him down to the tennis court in the backyard and encouraging his first attempts to get the ball over the net and how proud she had been when he succeeded. He watched all the hours he had spent with his parents learning to make the ball go where he wanted it to, and how much fun it had been.
But, in the same timeless moment, he was also watching himself as the practice and the training grew more serious. He could see the part of his mind that began to wonder, as he endlessly practiced his serve … Why am I doing this? He was practicing his backhand against endless shots from the ball gun and asking himself … What was the point? And he was playing in tournament after tournament, making such huge efforts to win, while all the time thinking … What did it matter? Winning or losing. What did any of it really matter?
Because the truth was … he was not that interested in tennis …
He was not that interested in tennis.
And then he was back in Dr. Pinner’s office and the sweat was running down his face, and he was gripping the arms of the chair as if desperate to keep his balance.
Dr. Pinner was no longer behind his desk, but sitting on a chair directly in front of Floyd, an expression of kindly concern on his face.
“Deep breaths,” he was saying. “That’s right … deep breaths … you’re fine … well done …” He patted Floyd’s arm. “Very well done! Here.” He held out a glass of water. “Have a sip of this.”
As Floyd took the glass, he turned to the window where Mike was still standing. He was no longer staring out at the gardens below but had turned and was looking at Floyd, with the sort of smile on his face that you might give a companion when, after a hard day’s climbing, you had both finally made it to the top of a mountain together.
And then he vanished.
“He’s gone,” said Floyd.
“You mean Mike?” Dr. Pinner was over at the sink, pouring another glass of water for himself.
“Yes.”
For some reason, Floyd found, Mike’s disappearance had left him overwhelmingly sad. As if he had actually lost a real friend.
“Well, I suppose he’s done what he came to do.” The psychologist returned to his chair in front of Floyd. “How are you feeling?”
“Terrible.”
The psychologist smiled sympathetically. “Yes, I can imagine …”
There was, of course, another thought even more painful than losing an invisible friend.
“If my parents find out about this, it’ll kill them!”
“That might be a slight exaggeration …”
“No, it’s not!” said Floyd. “My tennis is what they live for! Everything they do is for that. They’ve spent years working for it. It’s the only thing they’ve ever wanted!”
“Yes …” Dr. Pinner put his head on one side. “Why is that, do you think?”
“What?”
“Well, it’s not every parent who decides to train their son as a tennis star from the age of two, is it? Why did they have that particular dream, do you think?”
It was not something that Floyd had ever considered before, possibly because the answer seemed so obvious.
“Tennis is their life. It always has been. The tennis club was where they met, where they got married, where Dad turned pro and …”
“Yes, your mother told me about that.” Dr. Pinner had stood up and was carrying his chair back to behind his desk. “She said that considering his background and how late he started, getting as high as he did in the rankings was an astonishing achievement.”
“Seventh,” said Floyd. “He was ranked seventh in the U.K. And he’d have been number one without the accident.”
“Ah, yes … the accident …” Dr. Pinner nodded slowly. “Athens, wasn’t it?”
Athens was indeed where the accident had happened, only a year after Floyd’s parents got married. His father was there for a tournament. He had played and won his first round and was heading back to the hotel when he was knocked down by a drunk driver. The surgeons did a remarkable job on the shattered bones of his right leg, and these days he walked with only a slight limp, but the dream he had had of a career playing professional tennis had been shattered in a way that could never be repaired.
“Your mother told me it’s the only time in his life that she’s seen your dad give up,” said Dr. Pinner. “His whole future had been snatched away from him, and for a while he thought there was no point going on, until …”
She saved me. That was what his father had said, remembered Floyd, on the one occasion he had talked to him about it. Your mother saved me.
“Because she came up with a new dream, didn’t she? Your dad might never be a champion himself, but by then she was expecting a baby, and she suggested maybe their child could have the chance to achieve all the things that his father had been denied.
“That was the new dream, and it wasn’t a bad one. But it was their dream, not yours. Which didn’t matter so much when you were a child,
but now you’re growing older, and what you do with your life is something you’ll need to decide for yourself. It’d be wonderful for everybody if what you wanted to do was play tennis, but … that isn’t what you want, is it?”
Floyd could not deny it. He knew the truth now. He did not want to spend the next fifteen years on a tennis court. Nor even the next fifteen weeks.
There was a long period of silence when neither of them spoke, and the more Floyd thought about it, the more impossible it all seemed. He had come here to get better, he thought, and all that had happened was that he felt worse.
Much, much worse.
Dr. Pinner advised Floyd, in the short term at least, to keep the discovery he had made to himself.
“I think you’ve had quite enough excitement for one day,” he said as Floyd was leaving. “You need to give yourself time to process it all. Let it soak in for a bit. Next session, we’ll start talking about what you want to do, and how best to tell your parents.”
Floyd agreed. Telling his parents that he was “not that interested in tennis” was a conversation he was happy to postpone for as long as possible. What he wanted most at the moment was somewhere quiet, where he could lie down and go to sleep.
When his mother drove Floyd home that evening, however, he found his father had other ideas. Mr. Beresford met them in the hallway, sounding particularly excited and cheerful.
“It’s a celebration!” he said. “In fact, a double celebration! You’ve both got ten minutes to get changed. I’m taking us all out to dinner.”
A quarter of an hour later, at a table in the corner of the Italian restaurant that had seen them celebrate innumerable triumphs over the years, Mr. Beresford explained that the first cause of celebration was that he had found a buyer for their company. He had put out word the week before that he would shortly be selling his tennis court construction business, and someone from the Sandown club had already expressed a keen interest.
“It means,” he said happily, “that when you go to Florida, we can all go together, like we planned! The timing’s perfect!”
But the even better news, he went on, was that the seedings for Roehampton were in and Floyd had been placed second. Barrington Gates was the number one seed, as they had always known he would be, but the organizers had decided that Floyd, still only fifteen, was ranked just behind him.
“He’s going to get the shock of his life when he plays you this time,” said Floyd’s father with a chuckle. “He’s not going to know what hit him!”
“I’ve got some film of him you ought to watch,” said his mother. “He’s good, but I think he’s lazy. If he’s made to move around the court too much, he gets flustered.”
They discussed tactics for a good part of the evening, and if Floyd was quieter than usual, his parents did not seem to notice—though in fairness, there was a good deal going on to distract them. Several of the other diners in the restaurant—which had always been popular with members of the Sandown tennis club—took the opportunity to come over and congratulate Floyd on being second seed and to wish him well at Roehampton. Then, while they were waiting for dessert, Mr. Tullio, the restaurant manager, appeared with a cake lit with a dozen sparklers and Good Luck! written in icing on the top, along with a card signed by everyone on the staff.
It was only toward the end of the evening, when Mrs. Beresford had gone to the restroom, that Floyd’s father inquired, almost casually, how things had gone that day with Dr. Pinner.
“I don’t mean to pry,” he said—he knew that what went on in Floyd’s sessions with the psychologist was private—“but it has been several weeks now and … I mean, is he getting anywhere? Is he … sorting things out?”
“I think so,” said Floyd.
“Good …” His father hesitated for a moment. “But he still turns up occasionally, does he?”
“You mean Mike?”
“Yes.”
Floyd wondered briefly how best to reply, and decided he could tell at least part of the truth.
“Well,” he said, “I’m not sure, but I think he’s gone.”
“Gone? You mean gone for good?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“Oh, that is excellent!” Mr. Beresford clapped his hands in delight. “You know, I had a feeling when I got up this morning that it was going to be a good day, and it’s just kept on getting better and better!” He beamed across at his son. “Did you ever find out who he was?”
“Mike?”
“Yes.”
“Dr. Pinner reckoned that he was a projection.”
“A projection? What’s that?”
“It means he was an outward expression of some inner … anxieties,” said Floyd. “About tennis and stuff.”
“Oh, yes?” His father was nodding again. “And how do you know?”
“What?”
“That he’s gone.”
“Dr. Pinner says that’s how it works. Mike was a projection of these unconscious feelings and anxieties, so when I made them conscious, there was no need for him anymore. And he’s gone.”
“For good?”
“That’s what Dr. Pinner thinks.”
“Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!” Mr. Beresford turned to his wife, who had just gotten back from the restroom. “He’s gone!”
“Who has?”
“Floyd’s friend, Mike! And Dr. Pinner reckons he’s gone for good!”
“Really?” Mrs. Beresford looked at Floyd.
Floyd nodded.
“Oh, that is such a relief!” Mrs. Beresford reached out and took her son’s hand in her own. “I don’t mind telling you we’ve been very worried.” She sat down. “Did you find out who he was?”
“Turns out he was a projection,” said Mr. Beresford.
“What’s a projection?” asked Mrs. Beresford.
“I’ll explain it to you later,” said her husband. “The point is, he’s gone, and Floyd’s got a clear run to Roehampton.” He was grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, that is such wonderful news!”
And it was there in the restaurant, with his parents smiling across at him, and with the pride and happiness shining from their faces, that Floyd understood what he was going to have to do.
“I wanted to ask,” said Floyd, at the start of his next session with Dr. Pinner, “if there’s anything you can do about it.”
“About what?”
“About the part of me that doesn’t want to play tennis,” said Floyd. “The part that isn’t … interested. I wondered if there’s anything you can do about that.”
“You mean can I help you make those feelings go away?”
“Yes.”
“No,” said Dr. Pinner. “I’m afraid not.”
“I only ask,” said Floyd, “because at the first session we had, you said that if all else failed you could try the magic green pills and …”
“That was a joke,” said Dr. Pinner. “I’m sorry, but there aren’t any magic pills. Not ones that’ll let you play tennis, anyway.”
“I thought not,” said Floyd, “but I wanted to check. And you’re quite sure there’s nothing I can do?”
“Not that I know of, no.” Dr. Pinner was sitting with his feet up on the couch, his hands clasped behind his head, his legs stretched out in front of him, the cat asleep in his lap. “We want what we want, I’m afraid. We can deny it sometimes, but we can’t change it.”
He looked across at Floyd.
“I know how disappointing all this must be. You came here to sort out Mike so you could go back to playing tennis, and I promised I’d help you do that and … and I really thought I could.”
He let out a long sigh, and then sat up, pushing the cat to one side and swinging his feet down onto the ground before continuing.
“You know why people come to me, Floyd? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the people who wind up in this room are here because they’re frightened. It doesn’t matter what the sport is or how successful they are, that’s almost always what causes the pro
blem. There’s a part of them got frightened. Frightened of winning. Frightened of losing. Frightened they’re not good enough …
“And I can do something about that. I can talk to the part of them that’s scared and teach it not to be frightened. I can give them exercises that’ll boost their confidence and sharpen their focus and help them relax at times of stress …” He pointed a finger at Floyd. “But the part of you that doesn’t want to play tennis isn’t frightened. It just doesn’t want to play tennis.”
Neither of them spoke for a while.
“I’ve been thinking about what to tell my parents,” said Floyd.
“Oh, yes?”
“And I’ve decided I’m not going to tell them anything.”
“Ah … ,” said Dr. Pinner.
“That’s what I’ve come here to say, really. I’ve decided I’m going to continue playing tennis. There’s no way I’m going to tell my parents they’ve wasted the last ten years of their lives. So I’m going to continue with the tennis, just like they planned.”
Dr. Pinner took a deep breath. “Are you going to tell them anything about … ?”
“No,” said Floyd flatly. “And I don’t want you to tell them either. You won’t, will you?”
Dr. Pinner gave a little shrug. “Whatever we say in here stays in here, you know that. But I think it’s a mistake.”
“Yes. I know you want me to tell them—”
“What I want,” Dr. Pinner interrupted, “has nothing to do with it. I just don’t think it’ll work. You might get away with it in some fields, but … this is top-line sport we’re talking about. If you want to succeed, it has to be all of you, every single part of you, and if you don’t have that …”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Floyd. “If it turns out I’m not good enough, that’s OK. Dad’ll be disappointed, but I’ll have tried. I’ll have done everything I could.”
“Have you considered,” said Dr. Pinner, “that although you’re not very interested in tennis, there might be something else that you do want to do?”
“I know there is.”
Mike Page 4
