A Handful of Summers

by Gordon Forbes

  ‘I wish that I could remember why it was that I used to want so badly to play!’

  It is my opinion that she used to want so badly to play in order to please her father. She never knew it, but that was why. Now he’s gone and she still plays, but there’s no one to play for. And she doesn’t know it.

  She walked on court that Tuesday afternoon, looking valiant and forlorn in her new dress; stood beside Louise Brough, curtseyed, then turned to face the battery of cameras. I watched from the players’ stand with my heart in my mouth. It was one of those slippery summer days, with a light wind blowing and the grass as fast as lightning. Even in the hit-up, she seemed uneasy. Her forehand was solid enough, but not her backhand. She was late on the shot – just could not feel the ball on her racket. Kept on having to adjust at the last minute, and of course there was no time. Louise was superb as usual; graceful and careful, with all the time in the world and tremendous power. Towered over everything.

  I kept hoping for a miracle, but there weren’t any. Jeannie simply couldn’t cope. Louise pounded her backhand and pounced on the volleys – it was as it seemed; a woman playing a child. Suddenly the child hurt her knee. Sank down onto the grass with her leg bent under her, and couldn’t get up. Just sat there, with tears rolling down her cheeks. Louise came running round, and so did the St John’s people, and eventually they helped her off the court, leaving it quiet and uneasy. Filled, it seemed, with a soft British compassion.

  No fuss. A non-occasion. The last-minute cancelling of a wild idea by some unruly young tennis god. Later on in the afternoon, the doctors said that she had torn a ligament and would be out of tennis for quite a while.

  I had a reasonably successful Wimbledon, reaching the last sixteen and losing to Vic Seixas. Seixas was much better than he looked. He played all the time as though he was in the midst of a high wind, whirling about the court at great speed and making a wide variety of unlikely shots, many of them off the frame of his racket. But his serve-and-volley game was as sound as a bell, and he had the heart of a great fighter.

  Diary Notes: Wimbledon 1956

  Lew Hoad won. Everyone expected him to. Not that he is that much better than Ken Rosewall – just that he appears to be so much more of a winner. Scared of nothing.

  In the players’ enclosure everyone seemed satisfied as they watched him win the final point. Rosewall will win some other time.

  So last night at Grosvenor House, Lew had to make the winner’s speech and open the dancing with Shirley Fry. As he stood up for the speech there was a dead silence, and his deep Australian voice said:

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are lucky to have me here tonight.’ Then he paused for what seemed to be about half an hour.

  ‘Because,’ he finally continued, ‘by seven o’clock my suit still hadn’t come back from the clayners!’

  There was a great sigh of laughter and relief.

  I forget what he said after that, but it didn’t really matter much.

  After Wimbledon, Jean went home to recover from her knee injury, and I continued the tour with Ian Vermaak. Frinton again, then Le Touquet, Hamburg, Bad Neuhnahr and the Middle East. There was nothing in my life then, but tennis and travel.

  Diary Notes: Flight to Hamburg 1956

  The Forbes technique for opening conversations with Lufthansa Air Hostesses (variation adapted from the Segal Handbook, 1955 edition).

  Selected hostess. Regarded her carefully. Noted red hair and vast quantity of freckles. Devised strategy and waited. Delivered opening gambit as she bent to serve tea.

  I: You must have more than a million.

  She: A million what?

  I: Sommersprossen! (It is essential that the German word for freckles is previously ascertained.)

  She: Much more! (And laughed.)

  I: Do they cover everything?

  She: No, not everysing! Some sings cannot be covered wis sommersprossen!

  Ice now virtually broken. Only formalities remain: name, telephone number, etc.

  Ursula Schultz. Common enough. Nothing hard about it. Wholesome female. Exotic women with the scents of savage flowers behind their ears never seem to cross my path.

  Yes. Ursula has a Volkswagen and will show me Hamburg.

  So today it was, amongst other things, the docks, all bombed and battered. The Zillertal. The Herbert Gasse. The Rieperbahn. Coffee on Der Grosse Freiheit. Das Eros Zentrum, and a boat trip on the Alster. Hamburg sunset. Then back to the Hotel Hauptbahnhof. Her sommersprossen are virtually everywhere. German breasts like plover’s eggs, that match the nose. Even the knees and knuckles – freckled all to hell.

  From a tennis point of view, I did not set the Thames alight in Hamburg. But in Bad Neuhnahr, the following week, I won the tournament and a gold Omega watch. And thereafter, Beirut. Istanbul and Athens passed in a welter of brilliant Mediterranean summer, dusty tennis courts, doubles victories and soft evenings with air like silk.

  It was then that the crossroad gods laid a trap for me. Such a small intersection, it seemed. I decided, after several long minutes of thought, that I badly needed a store of some kind for my old age – a sports store, preferably, all beautifully stocked up with rackets and sweatsuits, and one into which I could wander at about ten in the morning after my practice sessions. I would check the till, swing a few dumb-bells, advise customers about racket grips and attend to the lunchtime rush. The place would smell of varnish and linseed oil, and have a golf net in the back. There’d be a wall of tennis photographs, autographed to me by my friends.

  ‘For Gordon, the best always. Hugh Stewart.’ It would never, even remotely, I assured myself, interfere with my tennis career.

  So I bought a partnership in an arms and ammunition business, which would, I fondly imagined, become my dream, only with a rack of guns and some fishing tackle to add glamour.

  I also got married; to a slender and sharply attractive girl called Valerie. She, too, played tennis – was in fact one of South Africa’s most promising young players. She had marvellous legs, green eyes and a fiery temper, which, when it came into contact with mine, produced quarrels of terrific velocity. In spite of these, we were very much in love. Before us lay stretched out an eternity of travelling and tennis, of friendship, love and fighting, with forward planning on neither of our priority lists.

  The purchase of the store took up all my savings, and even left me with a bank overdraft which, I was assured by everyone, profits would soon wipe out. I signed and sealed the purchase, paid over the cash, and Valerie and I left almost at once for our permanent tennis honeymoon.

  Just after Wimbledon that year, Jack called. The store, he said, was in trouble. On the verge of insolvency. I was to return at once, he suggested. That was all there was. There were no bangs, only some whimpers, and those, my own. Our freedom was at an end. Reality was at hand.

  I will never forget those first months of our newly acquired life. The alarm clock at six forty-five, the little flat with its rented furniture, the sleepy eyes, the dry toast and weak tea, the bus rides. At seven forty-five I would open the doors, check out the arms register, clear the till, and try to organise the stock. In the afternoons Jean took time off from university to do the typing and help me with the books. We’d sit and puzzle over Cash Books and Ledgers and Sundry Creditors, and I would serve the customers under the watchful eye of my Polish partner, who scared the wits out of me by forever telling me that the bank, to which we always owed money, was about to close us down. It was boring, desperately boring, and, simultaneously, tense. The nine-hour day.

  Even the gun shop dished up a few laughs. I was desperate to maintain contact with my world, so I invested in a dozen or so racket frames which I hung up amongst the cartridge belts and hunting knives and which I occasionally sold to loyal friends. My colleague behind the counter was a genial and bookish man called Mr Saphra. He enjoyed demonstrating the various re
volvers and automatic pistols which we stocked – especially the large-calibre ones with their safety devices. One of the makes had no less than three devices, all of which had to be activated before the pistol would go off. During the Sharpeville riots when there was much panic and consternation, many people decided that guns should be urgently acquired. Our quiet little shop was suddenly inundated with customers waving money. Bedlam was the order of the day, and I was in a constant state of nerves, making sure that no one stole any stock. Help was recruited, including both my sisters, Jean and Jenny, a big German called Gerond and a Greek immigrant called Scoutarides, who used to amaze us all with his graphic demonstrations. Like all Greeks, he was fascinated by guns, excitement and the general idea of a revolution of any kind.

  The minute the excitement began, he left the café that he owned next door to us in the care of his wife, and quite voluntarily came to assist us, selling only the biggest and most expensive of our range, and doubling the prices if he thought that he could get away with it. For the premiums they paid, customers would get instruction on fast draws from shoulder holsters, shooting from the hip and dropping to the ground should fire be returned. In the midst of blasts of instructions in mixed Greek and English, he would sometimes become so carried away that he would fall full length to the floor behind the counter, cautiously rising and presenting only his eyes to his startled clients before continuing with his sale. Detailed descriptions of what bullets did to the insides of people kept us (and the customers) permanently agog. Often he sold throwing knives to people as accessories, in case their guns jammed or ran out of ammunition in the face of hordes of oncoming savages. For country-dwellers and farmers, rifles, shotguns and pistols were recommended, and often he would discuss the correct length of barrel to be left, in case a customer decided to have his shotgun ‘sawed off’.

  ‘Shotterguns with-a short barrel make one-a hell of a mess,’ I heard him telling someone. ‘I-a had-a uncle in-a Athens, who had-a such a shottergun. One-a day he clean-a the gun and she-a goes pouff! Blew-a hole like that (he held his arms in a big circle) in-a the new icebox of-a my auntie.’ He paused and chuckled to himself. ‘Was she-a mad. Oh-a boy! She-a empty the-a bucket of slops on-a his head and-a she shouts at him, “I spit-a on your shottergun!”’ He paused, beaming, and then went on: ‘This-a gun, if-a you cut-a the barrel, will blow-a such a hole in an icebox.’ He was an enthusiastic salesman, was Scoutarides.

  Of course, Mr Saphra maintained that it was Scoutarides who had left the cartridge in the gun and was thus responsible for the disaster; Scoutarides denied this to the end. At any rate, someone had left the gun loaded. Of that, there was no doubt. Mr Saphra, proudly demonstrating the safety device of a .45-calibre ex-army U.S. Colt Automatic had got through two of them without incident, and was explaining the third.

  ‘And only then,’ he told the fascinated customer, ‘when those two are in the “fire” position and the palm of the hand depresses this lever on the butt, only then will the pistol actually fire,’ and pointing the gun upwards, he demonstrated by pulling the trigger.

  Colt .45s make terrific bangs, especially in small shops. This one was no exception. The explosion that followed shook the whole building and hammered our eardrums with a hot blast of cordite. Scoutarides hurled himself to the floor with a mighty shout, convinced that the revolution was finally at hand. Customers screamed, and I turned with my heart in my mouth in time to see my racket frames literally leap into the air and fragment, as the huge bullet neatly tore the shoulders out of six of them, bounced off the concrete ceiling, overturned several cans of gun oil, swept away a row of golf balls, and finally came to rest on the office tea tray with a clatter of broken china. A dead silence ensued. Mr Saphra stood like a statue, the smoking Colt held aloft.

  ‘Bloody thing was loaded!’ he said at last, quite unnecessarily.

  ‘Of course, loaded!’ said Scoutarides from the floor behind the counter. ‘Otherwise she never go pouff!’

  He raised himself gingerly and began plugging the leaking oil cans with paper, muttering ‘Damn bloody-a dangerous,’ over and over. We all agreed, but Mr Saphra was furious and felt he had been betrayed.

  I remembered very little of those years, and neglected to keep a diary. Not that there was much to record. I kept up my tennis as best I could, playing weekend tournaments in Johannesburg and, during the Christmas holiday, the windy South African coastal circuit.

  In 1958 Gavin Duncan was born, blue-eyed, unexpected and much adored, and his arrival at that particular point in time made further international tennis travels seem even more remote.

  But in 1959 I won the South African title for the first time, in spite of my precarious position in the arms trade, and I was persuaded to travel to Europe with the Davis Cup team again. It was a short, uneasy little tour, during which my Polish partner, who hated tennis, refused to pay my salary, so that I spent most of my time in a state of tension, worried about saving money to send home to my wife and baby son. As team members we received eight dollars a day, half of which I religiously saved up for this purpose. I was tentative and moody, and hardly played a worthwhile tennis match in two months. In the Davis Cup competition that year we lost to the Italian team in Florence. Pietrangeli and Sirola again. I have hardly any recollection of that uneasy trip, save for a few disjointed diary entries in an old black notebook. One in particular brings back sharp memories.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1959

  Florence. Super old city. No! Painting of a city! Full of sculptures. The classical music festival is on and the Modern Jazz Quartet is playing several concerts! Unbelievable luck! The first time that a jazz group has ever been this honoured. The Florentine society people are very serious about their festival, attended by the great orchestras of Europe. Everyone in black ties, with opera glasses, moving about like figures in Lautrec paintings. Abie and I have to hire suits to go. Those, and the tickets, cost a fortune but Abie still has his shippers! He’s always paying bills for me, then saying, ‘Don it worry about it, Forbsey, it’s only money!’ Which enables me to hire a dinner suit, go to see the MJQ and still send home twenty-five dollars a week.

  We arrive, all spruced up, and mingle with the Lautrec figures. They’re all a little haughty and self-conscious about being at a jazz concert. Not quite the thing. But curious – damned curious. Wouldn’t miss it for worlds. Half hoping for a debacle, or at the least, something lowbrow! They tuck the programmes under their chins and suck their teeth. Last night it was Ivry Gitlis and Sibelius; tonight, Milt Jackson!

  Abie and I take our seats. Even Abie is silenced by this lofty, reverent place. My heart is pounding away. The Modern Jazz Quartet! I can hardly believe it. Know all their recordings off by heart! On the stage is nothing but a white grand piano, a set of shining drums and the vibra-harp.

  ‘Good God, Forbsey,’ says Abie. ‘They’re gonna need more than just four people to fill this place with sounds!’

  He’s right. Nothing happens for ten minutes or more – just elegant Italian counts and things, filling up the seats. We are absolutely in the best place.

  ‘If we’re goin’, Forbsey, we’re goin’ first class,’ says Abie.

  Jazz has fascinated me for years. On the farm gramophone we had played Artie Shaw’s Deep Purple over and over, and the Benny Goodman quartet recordings. Then George Shearing, Errol Garner and the big, fat tenor saxophone sounds: Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Finally, the exquisite agonies of Charlie Parker.

  In Paris that year, I’d abandoned the Place Pigalle and spent three dollars each night to sit in the Blue Note on the Rue d’Artois, listening to Bud Powell and Kenny Clark. Powell in his twilight world, stumbling over his unbelievable chords, and once, ending a mammoth performance of Cherokee, by doing a double-handed run to the top of the keyboard, and then just keeping going, falling slowly off the stool onto his side and just lying there. Torben Ulrich had introduced me to Gerry Mulligan one night a
t the Blue Note. It was a brave world, that modern jazz world of the late fifties.

  Diary Notes: Summer 1959

  At eight, exactly, the quartet emerge. John Lewis in black, the others in white tuxedos, calm and aloof. Percy Heath is smaller than his bass. They take their places and sit motionless. Dead silence. Not a single sound. John Lewis’s first chord comes out of the white piano like a solid living thing, all angles, like a sculpture. It’s ‘Django’ – absolutely simple – each sound separate in these acoustics. Cascades of notes from Jackson’s vibes; Heath’s bass, plunging and lifting against the metal cymbals. Webs of sound, spun together, lifting off the stage like mobiles, balanced on silence. The audience are caught and held, halfway between surprise and disbelief. The theme is stated and suddenly the true rhythm emerges, insidiously, anchored by the bass and drummer’s brush work. The sly jazz phrases of Milt Jackson. Lewis’s stately piano, walking along behind.

  At last the tune ends. The last notes of the vibes hang quivering, and then again, the eerie silence which is suddenly, violently, torn to pieces by wild applause as the black-tied people jump up.

  It is one o’clock before we leave, walking softly. For once, even Abie is quiet. ‘Damn Forbsey, I mean, how do they do it, those guys?’

  In 1961, when the Sharpeville riots came, we sold out our entire stock of firearms in less than a month. I seized the opportunity to sell my share of the company back to my Polish partner and, with a boundless sigh of relief, celebrated my return to tennis by winning the South African open title for the second time.

  Eight

  My only reservation about envying the lives of the rich, young tennis professionals of today is the fact that very few of them will ever know what it is like to be locked into an eight-to-five desk job. Very few of them, therefore, will ever realise how extraordinarily fortunate they are to be able to follow the lifestyle allotted to them by the destiny gods. Like being the son of someone very rich, and then trying to imagine what it is like to feel the shock of realising that there is not enough money to pay the rent!