A Handful of Summers

by Gordon Forbes

  In the Foro Italico restaurant once, we sat at a table beside Pietrangeli and Sirola, and Abie viewed the Sirola spaghetti assault with awe.

  Here, at last, he must have decided, was a form of food that could be eaten even faster than steak.

  The next day he ordered spaghetti for lunch, as a starter. When it arrived, he seized a fork, inserted it, wound it round until the spaghetti had reached the approximate dimensions of a tennis ball, then stuffed it into his mouth, and with a thoughtful look on his face, swallowed it. The experiment was apparently successful, for the rest of the plate got dumped in the same way: ‘At last I’ve figured out,’ he said happily, ‘how these Italians eat spaghetti as an hors d’oeuvre. If you eat it fast enough, you don’t know you’ve eaten it, and then you can go on and have steak and salad!’

  Later that afternoon, when I went into the dressing-room to change for our doubles, I found Abie busy with a packet of Eno’s Fruit Salts.

  ‘Jesus, Forbsey,’ he said, ‘that spaghetti’s hard to move. Maybe the steak’s just sittin’ there, waitin’ to get by!’ He downed a huge glass of foaming salts, and did up his shoes with a jerk.

  Throughout our doubles match he retained an intense, anticipatory sort of look, as though he wasn’t quite sure of his immediate future. Once or twice, as he passed me on his way to net after a big serve, I thought that I detected pressure leaks, and these suspicions were verified when we eventually led by two sets to love, 5-3 and my service to come. As I got ready to serve, Abie approached me and muttered with clenched teeth: ‘Better hold this one, buddy, or we may both never make it off the court. You’ve heard of being swallowed by an avalanche – well, just bear that in mind!’

  With both of us, so to speak, under intense pressure, I held my service. Abie shook hands very briefly and then set off for the locker room at a sort of stiff-legged trot. No sooner had he disappeared inside, than I could swear that I felt a sort of distant rumble: a distinct tremor that would probably have shown up on the Richter Scale.

  Diary Notes: Paris 1955

  Roland Garros is tucked into the woods in the Bois de Boulogne. The Renaults and Citroëns arrive at our little hotel near l’Étoile to take us to the courts. The drivers wear berets and smoke Gauloises and grunt at our questions. You wind through the little streets and finally cross the river and plunge into the trees. Soft European woods, with moss and dead leaves underfoot. Sometimes we pass Longchamps and the Racing Club, but there are so many different roads that the tennis courts always take me by surprise when we come upon them.

  You can go for quiet training runs through the woods and hardly hear your own footfalls.

  The Roland Garros Stadium in Paris was disappointing after the splendour of the city; a gaunt, concrete amphitheatre which held about thirteen thousand people, inflicting each with a raw behind and softening only when it was filled up. Paris was memorable for me that year because:

  (a) It was the first time I had been there.

  (b) Because I won the mixed doubles with a young American girl called Darlene Hard, who was playing her first tournament in Europe and whom, by chance, I met and entered with on the morning they closed the draw.

  (c) Because Russell Seymour and I beat Mervyn Rose and George Worthington in a doubles match at 15-13 in the fifth set, having saved eleven match points.

  (d) Because a lunatic Australian player dragged me into a brothel and made me watch an ‘exhibition’ pronounced (and performed) the French way, and thus introduced me to my first brush with the tricky side of love.

  (e) And because I came within a hair’s breadth of defeating Ham Richardson, one of the best players in the world and an expert on clay!

  The doubles match was one of the most remarkable in which I have ever played. Russell Seymour was considered more of a singles than a doubles player, and as Abe Segal and Ian Vermaak were our recognised doubles pair, Russell and I had to make do with one another’s methods.

  We ploughed through several rounds of young Frenchmen, then found ourselves facing Rose and Worthington, who were Australian, seeded, and considered to be very tough to beat.

  We got into the match from the very start and sneaked the first set before they had woken up. Angrily they retaliated and took the second, and then amazingly, we found ourselves locked into a tight third set with neither side giving an inch. We began playing points which defy description. Rallies developed which balanced themselves on the very edge of impossibility – cascades of volleys which sometimes left all four of us open-mouthed. French spectators packed themselves tightly around the court to watch us win a long third set, then lose a short, sharp fourth.

  The fifth set made all that had preceded it look tame. All told, we had nine match points in our favour and Rose and Worthington had seven. Twice Worthington served for match, and in one of these games they led forty-love. Three consecutive match points. Somehow we fought back to 40-30. Worthington gathered the balls to serve to me on the left court, and as he was about to serve, Rose, who was up at net, called out to Worthington over his shoulder:

  ‘Watch the line, Wortho, I’m going across!’

  ‘No, don’t!’ Worthington called back.

  ‘I’m going across!’ cried Rose again.

  ‘No. Don’t,’ said Worthington firmly.

  ‘OK, I’m going,’ cried Rose.

  I listened wide-eyed. I had never heard doubles partners shout tactics to one another across the court. They usually made secret signs. More puzzling still was the fact that they didn’t seem to understand each other. I decided to consult Seymour.

  ‘What the devil is Rose going to do?’ I asked him urgently.

  Russell gave the short bray of a laugh he used when he was really desperate.

  ‘You tell me!’ he said. ‘He’s either going across or else he isn’t!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what should I do?’

  ‘You must either go crosscourt or down the line,’ said Russell.

  Nobody was being very helpful, so I got ready to receive. Worthington served a high kicker to my backhand and moved in behind Rose to ‘cover the line’. Rose, meanwhile, true to his word, set off across the net to cut off my return. One of the cardinal rules of men’s doubles is that you watch the ball and not the net-player. Really good doubles players eventually develop a method of being aware of what opponents are doing while still watching the ball, but it is a tricky business and never foolproof. I was vaguely aware of a tremendous scissors movement taking place on the far side, but I’d committed myself to the crosscourt return, and so made the best of it. I gave the ball a low slice and knew at once that it was either going to be a very good shot, or else just too low. It was not quite either. It hit the tape of the net with a whack, ran along the top for about two feet, parallel to the moving Rose, then toppled over onto his side of the court. Rose lunged, but couldn’t possibly dig it out. The crowd went crazy, and Russell, who was given to understatement, told me that I had hit a ‘useful return’.

  We won the set at 15-13, and the match, and in the next round beat the French team of Robert Haillet and Pierre Pelizza before losing to Pietrangeli and Sirola in the quarters.

  The brothel incident was less athletic, but almost as remarkable and was, as I have said, all the work and ingenuity of a lunatic Australian.

  Why he chose me, I never understood – we had met only briefly and were not well acquainted. Perhaps like my friends the pilot and the game ranger, he sensed in me a yearning to do some dangerous deeds with women. As it was, I would never have conceived or undertaken the venture single-handed. The painted ladies who lined the little streets at Place Pigalle fascinated me, but I passed them at a near jogtrot, for fear of being ‘got in the night’.

  The lunatic Australian was big and raucous, and having finished his meal of vegetable soup and steak with petits pois, he pushed back his wooden chair, drained his beer and said, ‘Come wi
th me,’ in a way which I couldn’t disobey. Off we went (in a taxi, no less. No Metro for him), and were set down at the famous little square.

  Of all the seamy places in the cities of the world, Pigalle, I think, has the softest touch. It did then, at any rate. It is sly and seductive, unhygienic and sometimes vulgar, but seldom vicious. In those days, it was almost gentle. The girls in the bars would chat and nibble and smell of sinful scents, and good-naturedly agree to almost anything. My Australian, having answered, ‘Wait and see mate, you’ll be all right’ to all my questions, finally stationed himself in the middle of a little cobbled street and brazenly confronted the line of girls on the sidewalk.

  ‘All right, ladies!’ he cried. ‘It’s your lucky night. Let’s have a look at you!’ He turned to me. ‘You choose one, and I’ll choose one,’ he said, ‘and then we’ll make negotiations.’

  He was a swift chooser.

  ‘Got mine,’ he said. ‘You got yours?’

  Hastily I selected a tall one who seemed to have soft eyes. I pointed.

  ‘Right-ho,’ he said. ‘Good choice. Bit of length can’t do any harm.’ He beckoned them over with two forefingers, and they approached giggling.

  ‘How much?’ he said firmly. ‘Com bien? For une exhibition? Un tres bien exhibition extraordinaire!’

  There is no sound more remarkable than an Australian tennis player delving into French.

  ‘Aaah!’ they said, laughing and nudging one another. ‘Une exhibition! Aaah! Monsieur est tres romantique! Pour faire une exhibition formidable, six mille francs. Seex sousand francs!’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the Australian. ‘Seex thousand! Have to be one hell of an exhibition for seex thousand! We’ll pay you five. Tu comprends? Cinq. Cinq bloody mille, and not a dollar more!’

  ‘Aaah, monsieur! Cinq mille?’ Their mouths turned down at the corners.

  ‘That’s right, cinq mille. And we’ll throw in another five hundred if you are tres, tres formidable!’

  The bargain was struck, and they set off, beckoning us to follow.

  By now I was in the customary state of nervous tension that beset me whenever I felt something uncontrollable was about to happen. It was true, certainly, that I had successfully ‘cracked it’. But the possibility of performing in a group was another matter altogether, producing disturbing visions of calamity in the presence of three people. In a display of what I judged to be nonchalance, I paused at a fruit barrow and bought a bunch of bananas.

  ‘Bananas!’ said the lunatic Australian. ‘Hell of a time for bananas. Could come in handy, though.’ He broke one off the bunch and ate it thoughtfully while we turned into a little doorway. ‘Mind the skins. Don’t want to slip on our asses on the way down, do we?’

  The room into which the girls led us had a large bed and a smell of Paris and old perfume and other things essentially French. Coyly they began to undress, gradually revealing all the lacy things that fit onto ladies of that kind, collapsing against each other in a gale of giggles at the sight of the bananas and continuing until I began to wish I’d selected some other kind of fruit. They were undressed at last, and began caressing one another with soft little mewing sounds, touching their tongues together, their fingers, thighs, tummies, arms, bridling coyly, with sly words and breathy laughter.

  I sat watching, transfixed, while the lunatic Australian muttered ‘Bloody hell’ to himself occasionally and sometimes also, ‘Would you bloody credit it? Would you ever bloody well have believed that?’

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘That’s enough of that; now show us the exhibition.’ And they gravely began a demonstration of the various lovemaking positions.

  I was filled with unease and curiosity and stood in a corner, eating bananas like one possessed. At last it was over.

  ‘Only nineteen positions,’ said the lunatic Australian. ‘I thought there were supposed to be fifty-seven.’ He looked across at me.

  ‘You finished your bananas yet, Forbsey?’

  More laughter.

  With a little skip and a sly smile, the girl I had chosen, whose name I remember was Françoise (inevitably), took me by the hand and led me off to another room.

  Later, when I found the lunatic Australian in the street below, we walked off to take the Metro.

  ‘Make bloody good wives, those French girls,’ he said laconically. ‘A man could do worse than take one of them home to tea.’

  In those championships I played one of my best-ever matches on slow clay. In the third round I found myself drawn against Hamilton Richardson, who was ranked about second or third in the United States and who was one of the players whom, during our farm practice sessions, we used to ‘become’.

  We played for hours, I remember, and for me the match was fine, and filled with deft, thrilling shots that I had never believed I could make.

  Finally, it was the fifth set, 5-4 for me, 15-40; his serve, match point on the centre court, the Roland Garros Stadium, Paris, France and the kind of hush that falls upon crowded tennis stadiums when seeded players are about to be beaten by unknown juniors. To add to the already tense situation, Richardson missed with his first service and was left with one ball between himself and disaster. There was no doubt about it. If ever I was to play a remarkable shot, this was an opportune time.

  Twenty-five separate pieces of other people’s advice flashed through my mind . . . and these in addition to the random bits that I was giving myself at the time. Eventually out of the confusion emerged a cryptic instruction that Abe Segal had once given me:

  ‘If ever, Forbsey, you get to a real big point, just forget everything, look at the ball carefully and hit the shit out of it. That way, even if you hit it over the fence, you feel a hell of a lot better than if you just stand there crappin’ yourself and bein’ careful . . .’

  In those days I had a sliced backhand and was unable to ‘hit the shit out of the ball’ if it came on that side, so I decided to ‘run around my backhand’ at all costs and bring my forehand to bear. My decision coincided with one by Richardson to serve his second service to my forehand – a brave move, and one which left me waiting tensely with a forehand grip held ready, about four yards from the passing ball. The failure of my strategy appalled me and I could hear Abie in my mind (who was watching from the stand) saying under his breath: ‘Jesus, Forbsey, where the hell are you goin’? You got to be in the right area, buddy. Don’t leave before the action starts!’

  Unnerved and preoccupied by those gloomy thoughts, I did not give the 40-30 point much thought, deciding at the last minute to ‘play it safe’. The result was a tame backhand into the middle of the net, and the end of a marvellous opportunity, offered and retracted by the sly gods who control such situations. Bloody tennis gods! They could easily have had Richardson miss that second serve!

  My performance evoked some dressing-room advice from Tony Trabert (another one of our farm heroes), who said to me: ‘Listen, kid. When you get to very important points, forget about everything except watching the ball. Then hit it firmly and make your opponent play the shot.’ His advice was sound and carried me through quite a number of tennis crises. But I still believe that I might have won that match point and a lot more had I gone to the trouble of having one of my rackets painted black.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1955

  Abie has taken up poker. He arranges his face into a slanted smile, narrows his eyes, and sardonically produces a pack of cards to practise his shuffling with. I think he thinks that if he can manage to shuffle extravagantly, the rest is easy. He’s mad, of course. The poker school consists of a very tricky bunch of players. Mervyn Rose, Don Candy, Sven Davidson, Herbie Flam, Malcolm Fox, Hugh Stewart and Warren Woodcock. Others occasionally sit in. They’re very good, and know every trick and percentage backwards. Malcolm Fox is supposed to have virtually cleaned out an entire troopship on his way back from Korea. Warren Woodcock has an angelic
face, and Mervyn Rose is evil, through and through. Abie, meanwhile, believes that there is nothing to it but shuffling and dealing. He absolutely relishes the way they look across at each other, eye to eye, adjust the stakes and say: ‘Your hundred, and another hundred.’ He’d like it even better if they could play in lire and he could say: ‘Your million, and another million!’ He also likes the way they arrange themselves at a corner table surrounded by awe-stricken onlookers, who are riveted by the piles of money. Woodcock and Rose, apparently, have encouraged Abie to play. It’s his own fault, of course, because he loves to act the big spender, and have everyone believe that if he is not already a millionaire, he’s about to become one at any moment. He’s been losing steadily for the last week. Twice I’ve caught him in the corner of the dressing-room, doling out money.

  But this afternoon, catastrophe struck. As usual, they were playing in the players’ restaurant at Roland Garros, a dungeon of a place. The table was littered with ‘sandwich jambon’, cokes and ashtrays, with the air decidedly thick.

  ‘Seven-card stud’, Abie says the game was called. A tremendous round developed and the pot grew and grew. By the time the stragglers had fallen out, at least three hundred dollars in French francs lay on the table in carelessly crumpled notes, and only Abie and Mervyn Rose remained. A fortune was at stake.

  By the time they had finished betting, the pile had grown to a thousand dollars, and then Abie’s full-house of aces and kings was pipped by Rose’s four miserable nines. Gloom and tragedy, and frantic telephone calls to Abie’s ‘shippers’. Whatever they are. Whenever Abie runs out of money he phones up these mysterious ‘shippers’. I asked him how one went about getting ‘shippers’, and he told me that ‘good shippers are one hell of a hard thing to find’.

  Just at that time tennis was weighed down with literally dozens of the most extraordinary characters. Colourful lunatics, one could almost say. To the extent, almost, that anyone young and unsuspecting coming on the scene might be excused if he thought that in order to reach the top in the game, one needed to be slightly touched.