Floyd opened his mouth to speak but Dr. Pinner made a slight movement with his hand to indicate that this might not be the time, and he closed it again.
“You came to Roehampton to play in the championship,” Mr. Beresford continued, “and we think that’s what you should do. You’ve entered. We’ve paid the fees, and we think you should finish what you’ve started. If, at the end of it, you still decide that you don’t want to play competitive tennis, then we’ll accept that decision. But we think you should play out the championship.” He looked directly at Floyd. “Will you do that?”
“I don’t see how I can,” said Floyd. “I’ve already been knocked out of the competition, haven’t I?”
“As it happens,” said his father, “you haven’t. Paul Cutter went out to celebrate last night and broke his ankle jumping off a fire escape, so he can’t play in the next round. The officials called me this morning, and they are prepared to let you through. They want to see a semifinal with four players, and since you only lost to Paul because of a cramp …”
“It wasn’t a cramp,” said Floyd. “It was Mike, and if he decides—”
“Yes, we know it was Mike,” his mother interrupted, “but Dr. Pinner has an idea about that.”
Everyone turned to the psychologist.
“My idea,” said Dr. Pinner, “is that you ask Mike if it’s all right for you to continue playing in the tournament.”
Floyd stared at the psychologist. “You want me to ask his permission?”
“I think it’s a reasonable request under the circumstances. As your father said, he and your mother have invested a great deal of time and money in getting you here, and they would like to see you play the thing out. If Mike appears on court this afternoon, I suggest you ask if he’s prepared to let you do that. You tell him that if, when it’s all over, he still wants you to give up tennis, then, OK, that’s what you’ll do. But you ask him if you can at least finish what you’ve started.”
Floyd tried to imagine himself out on the court, asking someone only he could see for permission to play.
“Will you do it?” asked his father.
“Yes. Yes, of course I will,” said Floyd. He would have agreed to almost anything if it meant not seeing the look of disappointment on his parents’ faces again. He looked at the psychologist. “And you think he’ll say yes?”
“Let’s ask him and see, shall we?” said Dr. Pinner.
Dr. Pinner, in the conversation he had with Floyd before leaving after breakfast to drive back to the clinic, said that he thought an actual request might not be necessary.
“Mike is, after all, a part of you,” he had said, “not a separate person. So anything you know and think, he already knows as well. When you get out on court, it’ll soon be clear whether he’s up for it or not, but I hope he is. Finishing the tournament would help your parents through what we both know is going to be a difficult time.”
The psychologist was right. When he walked out that afternoon to start his warm-up, almost the first person Floyd saw was Mike sitting on the grass bank near the far end of the court, and there was, as Dr. Pinner said, no need for an actual conversation. Mike gave a little wave of acknowledgment, yawned heavily, lay back on the grass, and appeared to fall asleep. Floyd understood that it meant the only opponent he would have to face that day was the one standing on the other side of the net with a tennis racket.
His name was Johnny Cope, a Scot with an impressive serve but little else for Floyd to worry about. Floyd had played against him on several occasions and beaten him each time, though on this occasion it took the full three sets, one of which went to a tiebreak. Floyd was not sure if it was lack of sleep, the trauma of the previous twenty-four hours, or the constant effort needed to fight the increasing reluctance he felt even to pick up a racket—but in a way he did not care. He was doing what he had promised, and now he just wanted the whole thing to be over.
When he shook hands with Johnny over the net, he glanced across at the grass where Mike had slept through the last hour and a quarter, but found he had disappeared.
The final was to be played the next day and it was not a match that Floyd was looking forward to. He would be playing Barrington Gates, and Barrington was in a different league from Floyd’s previous opponents. Not only was he an excellent player, he carried a self-assurance on court that had unnerved many an opponent before a match even started. He played with a flair and an arrogance that said he knew he was better than any of his opponents. And he usually was.
The press had recently noticed this as well. In the past month there had been a spate of newspaper articles about how Barrington was the rising star of the tennis world and how, in a few years, British tennis might even have someone capable of winning at Wimbledon. A few weeks before, Floyd had looked forward to the prospect of playing him, but not now.
In his present state, Floyd knew, there was little chance of beating Barrington and, sitting in the locker room waiting for the call to go out on court, he wondered why he was making himself do this. He remembered Dr. Pinner, in his room at the clinic, explaining how in top-flight sports it had to be all of you out there on the field to have any chance of winning—and Floyd did not have that anymore. There was a part of him that would instead be dozing comfortably on the grass in the shade. It was marginally better than someone walking in front of the net in the middle of a game, or holding on to his arm so that he couldn’t serve, but in the end it didn’t make much difference. Either way, he was going to lose, and lose badly.
Behind him, he heard the noise of someone coming into the room. It was Barrington Gates with a friend, and although the match was due to start in less than ten minutes, he seemed in no particular hurry to get changed. This was, Floyd knew, part of a technique designed to unsettle his opponent. Barrington would often turn up at the last minute, apparently unconcerned, and giving the impression he didn’t much care about the result because, to him, the match wasn’t that important.
His friend was asking Barrington how long he thought it would take to win the coming match, apparently unaware that Floyd, sitting on the other side of some lockers, was in the room and could hear every word. There was a birthday party on a boat, the friend was saying, that they could probably get to if the match didn’t go on for too long.
“I can’t see it taking more than an hour,” Barrington answered. “It’s only the kid from Sheffield, isn’t it?”
“There’s the prize-giving afterward, don’t forget,” said his friend. “And then you’ll have to talk to the press.”
“You’re right,” Barrington agreed. “Better make it an hour and a half. Tell her we’ll be there by four.”
There was something in the casual arrogance of all this that stirred a deep anger in Floyd. He was not someone who became angry often, but at that moment all the bitterness and frustration and disappointment of the last few days seemed to become focused into a single burst of fury directed at one person. Barrington Gates. He might no longer want a career in tennis, Floyd thought, but that didn’t make it any easier to take snubs and put-downs like that. He was filled with a burning desire to wipe the arrogant smile from Barrington’s face and make him—
“Me too,” said a quiet voice.
Floyd turned and found Mike sitting on the bench beside him. Somehow, he wasn’t entirely surprised.
“It’s not really to do with the tennis.” Floyd found himself speaking quietly as well. “I just want to see him lose.”
Mike nodded his agreement.
“And not just lose,” Floyd continued, “but lose really badly, you know?” An idea was forming in his mind. “I don’t suppose … I mean … Is there any way … ?”
Mike smiled. “Be good to go out on a high, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes it would. You think we could do it?”
“Him against us together?” Mike’s smile became even broader. “He won’t stand a chance!”
“Good …” Floyd stood up, suddenly feeling a lot be
tter. “OK, then. Let’s show Mr. Gates what it’s like to play against a kid from Sheffield!”
The Roehampton final always drew a sizable crowd, and on this occasion, almost all of them were expecting Barrington Gates to win. He, after all, was the one who had recently received all the media attention, and a large section of the spectators stand was taken up with a group of young girls carrying a banner with WE LOVE BARRINGTON written on it. There was a great cheer when he came out on court, his hair carefully tousled, his sweater hung loosely over his shoulders, waving graciously at his fans. But from the first ball to the last, there was never any doubt about who was going to win.
Barrington won the toss and served for the opening game with a neatly placed ball down the center line, which was returned with such speed and force that he barely had time to make a lunge in its direction—and miss.
Despite the advantage of having the serve, he lost the opening game without winning a single point and then lost the game that followed without returning a single ball. Floyd served four aces in a row. Every one of them landed in a different section of the court, within inches of the line and so fast that Barrington was still trying to take in where it was going when it had already gone.
The crowd watched, at first, in stunned silence. This was not what they had expected. In the third game, Barrington rallied a little, and even took it to deuce before losing to a crushing volley to the edge of the court that brought a gasp of appreciation from the crowd.
Word spread around the grounds of what was happening and more spectators joined the already crowded stands. Old men drifted out from the clubhouse to see what all the fuss was about. Other players abandoned their games on the other courts to come and watch. Even those who knew little about the game could not help but realize they were watching something truly exceptional.
Though in truth it was not so much a tennis match as an execution. After the shock of losing those three opening games, Barrington did his best to retrieve the situation. He was a player with a long experience of battling back from the brink and had a considerable armory of tactics to employ.
He tried to break up the smooth flow of Floyd’s game with lobs that drove him back from the net. He tried to wear his opponent down with shots from the baseline that would make him run from side to side and tire him out. He tried taking a defensive posture with long rallies and even resorted to the psychological tricks that players sometimes use to break their opponent’s concentration, like asking for the balls to be changed, or “accidentally” losing his racket, or stopping to retie his shoelaces.
Nothing worked. Wherever he put the ball, Floyd would be there waiting for it and the return would be a masterstroke of accuracy and cunning. It would arrive with a speed that made it impossible to return, or a disguised spin that had Barrington completely baffled. And as the match wore on, there was something else. There was something in the ruthless, unruffled confidence of Floyd’s playing that was … unnerving. Something in the way his face never altered and his expression never changed. It told you he didn’t just think he could win. He knew it.
Barrington was not playing badly, in fact he was playing at the height of his ability, but he was simply outclassed and, long before the match was over, he had come to realize it himself. He had been defeated in his head, as Mr. Beresford would have put it. Floyd wasn’t just playing Barrington at tennis, he was killing him, and Barrington no longer believed there was anything he could do about it.
The spectators had come to the same conclusion. From watching in stunned silence, they began to applaud what was clearly an astonishing display from a fifteen-year-old that many of them had never heard of before. The surgical precision with which he placed a half volley within an inch of the baseline to win the fourth game drew the first round of spontaneous applause. After that, it gathered pace. The voices of the Barrington fans cheering their hero grew quieter, while the cheers of delight and astonishment at the skill with which Floyd demolished his increasingly desperate opponent gained in strength with every shot.
Barrington lost the match 6–0, 6–0. He had not won a single game and, in the last two games, as with the first, did not win a single point. As he stepped up to the net to shake hands, he was white and shaking. He looked as if he was trying not to cry …
Floyd shook hands without smiling, then glanced at his watch. “You were right,” he said quietly. “All over in much less than an hour. Plenty of time for you to get to your party.” And he strode off to where the judges were lining up to give him his trophy.
Standing on the dais, holding the silver cup above his head, with the cameras flashing on all sides of him, Floyd felt no elation, but was aware of a quiet sense of satisfaction. He might not want a career in tennis anymore, but it felt a lot better to finish as the youngest ever U.K. Under-18 Champion than as someone who retired after getting knocked out in the third round. Much better.
It didn’t change anything, of course, though his parents were not convinced of that yet.
“I knew it!” his father cried, his eyes alight with pleasure, before uttering a fierce whoop of delight as he stood beside his son. “I knew you could do it! We’ve got a news conference set up so that you can …”
“No,” said Floyd, and he was surprised at how calmly he could say what had to be said. “No news conference. No interviews. There’s no point.”
“You’re not still talking about giving up, are you?” His father took his arm. “Because I won’t believe it. I won’t!”
“I promised you I’d finish this tournament, and I have,” said Floyd firmly. “But that’s it. Sorry.”
“Floyd! Please!” His father was still clutching his arm. “You won out there! Don’t you realize what that means? You can do anything now! And don’t tell me you don’t like tennis, because I won’t believe you. Not after seeing you play like that.”
“I played like that,” said Floyd, “because I was angry. I can’t spend the rest of my life being angry. I’m sorry. But that was it. That was my last game.”
Floyd presumed that, after Roehampton, he had seen the last of Mike. Now that his “friend” had done what he had come to do and any dream of a tennis career had been abandoned, he would, Floyd thought, have no further reason for any of his strange appearances.
It was Dr. Pinner who warned him that this might not be the case, and he put his warning in a letter that he sent a few days after the match with Barrington. His father brought it up to Floyd in his room, where he was cleaning out a fish tank.
“Dr. Pinner’s written to you,” he said, holding up an envelope. “He wrote to your mother and me as well and said we could read the one to you if we wanted. So we did.”
He gave Floyd the envelope, which had not been sealed, and then stood in the doorway while Floyd took out a single typewritten sheet and read what it said.
The psychologist began by congratulating Floyd on winning the championship. He said that, although he had been unable to watch the match himself, he had heard graphic accounts of it from several sources, and one day he hoped very much to hear the full story of how such a victory had been possible.
But it was in the second paragraph that Dr. Pinner explained the real reason he was writing.
You may not want to hear this, but I think I should warn you that I doubt very much that this is the end of your friend’s story. If Mike was, as I at first believed, a simple projection of a repressed wish, he would have disappeared when that wish was brought to light. The fact that he reappeared seems to indicate that he is something more and I think, at some point, he will be back.
I hope if that happens that it will not worry you unduly. It has always seemed to me that Mike is, as he said himself, your friend—and a friend with only your best interests at heart. However, if he does return and you think it might help to talk about it, please do not hesitate to contact me. I have told your parents I would be more than happy to discuss things with you, either as a psychologist or as a friend.
In the l
ast part of the letter, Dr. Pinner went on to say how sorry he was that things had turned out so differently from the way everyone had hoped. He said he knew things would be a bit awkward at home for a while, but that he felt sure that Floyd and his parents would work it out, adding that he much admired the way they had all coped with such a difficult and unexpected situation so far.
At the end, he repeated his offer to be available to talk at any time, and gave two phone numbers and an email address where he could be contacted.
“And has he?”
Floyd’s father was still standing in the doorway.
“What?”
“Your ‘friend,’ Mike. Has he reappeared? Since Roehampton?”
“No. No, he hasn’t.”
Floyd’s father sniffed briefly. “So do you want to talk to him?”
“To Mike?”
“To Dr. Pinner.”
Floyd considered this. There was a part of him that wanted very much to know why the psychologist thought Mike might return and what it was that Mike might want if he did, but there was another part of him that didn’t want to think about any of that. Not now, anyway. What Floyd wanted now was a chance to rest. A few days at least of peace and quiet.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” His father turned away. “I’m not sure I could cope with any more help from Dr. Pinner at the moment.”
The psychologist was certainly right about things at home being awkward, thought Floyd as his father strode off toward the stairs, but that was no more than he had expected. For as long as he could remember, his family’s daily routine had revolved, in one form or another, almost entirely around tennis. Tennis was what they did together first thing in the morning, what they talked about at mealtimes, and the future they had planned for in the evenings. It had been the glue that had bound them together as a family, and now … all that was gone. The pieces had come unstuck and Floyd could not see any way of ever putting them back together.
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