A Handful of Summers

by Gordon Forbes

  Fate can play savage tricks on amateur romantics. Disaster struck in the form of a freak wave. We were suddenly overwhelmed by roaring water which rolled us over several times towards the shore, shook us briefly, then hauled us seawards in a swirl of liquid sand before leaving us lying there like two pieces of driftwood. Both my ears were filled with sand; Nicole, who finished up underneath, was in a far worse plight, with almost all her orifices silted up. We struggled to our feet.

  ‘You and your romantic notion,’ she cried, half laughing, half sobbing. ‘Such a thing would never ’ave ’appened to Lancastaire!’

  She was probably right, although if it had, I suppose they would have done another take. We would never have seen Burt Lancaster rolled over and have his ears filled with sand! It took some considerable sluicing off in the water to clear ourselves of sand and seaweed and, in retrospect, we both agreed that the whole business of embracing on the water’s edge by moonlight was overdone and best left lying in the mind.

  French maids’ company must be good therapy for men’s doubles. Cliff and I formed an unlikely but effective combination, and reached the final round without undue desperation. On finals afternoon, Bill Clothier arrived and I was determined that we win the tournament. I had even spent some time the previous evening persuading Cliff to have an early night, and also to knock off the sitters – as he had a nasty habit of trying clever and Larsen-like shots off the easy ones, which caused flurries of activity at a moment when I felt the umpire should be calling the score in our favour. There is nothing as bad as being in a tight match, getting an easy one, not quite killing it and having your opponent recover it and send up a high lob, which you suddenly realise is going to drop in, and saying to yourself, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ – now I have to do the whole thing over again, when I should be towelling off and sipping Coke!’

  Our final was scheduled at four in the afternoon, against some couple like Whitney Reed and Eugene Scott. Chuck McKinley and Dennis Ralston, the current United States doubles champions, were not playing at Southampton that year, leaving a mixed bag of American teams, all very good.

  Cliff and I hit some practice balls at about two-thirty, and then he announced that he had to return to the house for some or other reason. I watched the singles finals for a while, then remembered that I had forgotten to bring my spare rackets. I returned to the house and opened the front door in time to see Francoise and Cliff disappearing furtively into our suite. I ran up the stairs and opened the door.

  ‘Oh no, you bloody well don’t,’ I cried, and for once Cliff looked sheepish. ‘It’s quite good before doubles,’ he said. ‘It clears your eyes. Before singles, it’s a bit ambitious.’

  ‘Your eyes are clear enough for doubles,’ I said grimly, ‘and I am not interested in your theories about singles. I am not leaving for the courts without you!’

  We won the finals and received silver water-pitchers and the congratulations of Clothier. I was delighted with Cliff as a doubles partner – he had excellent reflexes and particularly damaging service returns, and he obviously enjoyed playing with me.

  I made the journey across the Sound to Newport in a light aircraft, feeling far happier about playing in the United States. The tournament, held at the Newport Casino, was run by the great American innovator and enthusiast James van Alen.

  As mentor, founder and general factotum of the Newport tournament, Van Alen insisted even then that the nine-point sudden death tie-breaker be used in all matches, if the game’s score reached five-all. In the first round there I came within a hair’s breadth of being beaten by Clark Graebner who led me one set, five-all, and four points to love in the tie-breaker. To win five consecutive points, two of which were on his service, against Graebner on grass was a miracle by any standards and so rattled him that I won the third set quite easily.

  There has always been a great depth of competent players in the United States. You could be sure that even number thirty-four on the National Grading List could play well enough to add a few grey hairs to visiting foreigners. Even if they weren’t the standard big serve and volleyers, they were always other things – diabolical forehand-hitters, lightning net-rushers or nuggety devils who dug in on the baseline and hit heavy groundshots; and all of them behaved as though it was simply a matter of time before they would become the world’s best players.

  To breeze through the early rounds of any big American tournament, one had to be an almighty player, fully equipped with everything, including a sense of humour. After Graebner, I beat Larry Nagler in another third-set tie-breaker, and after him someone else, whose name I can’t remember.

  Chuck McKinley in the semi-final was too hard to handle. On court he behaved like a rubber cannonball that had been fired into a walled enclosure, bounding about and hitting everything at a hundred miles an hour. Against him I kept feeling that he was about one point ahead of me, so that by the time I had completed my point, he was already halfway through the following one. By the end of our match, which he won by two sets to one, he had begun towelling off and I was still busy playing the last point or two when I heard the umpire call the score. It was very disconcerting. Cliff and I lost to McKinley and Dennis Ralston in the semi-final, also in three sets.

  The United States men’s doubles championship took place in Boston in those days, during the week preceding Forest Hills. The doubles combination which Cliff and I had drummed up made the event far more interesting, and I arrived at the tournament filled with enthusiasm.

  ‘You’ll be staying,’ they told me on arrival, ‘with the Furcolos. Rod Laver will also be there, and you will be sharing the guest suite.’

  I was excited. Foster Furcolo was the ex-governor of Massachusetts and lived with his family in a superb old house not far from the club. Besides, Rod, tremendously famous, was about to compete at Forest Hills for the last leg of his Grand Slam. We were firm friends by then, and I knew we would have an interesting time. My faithful friend Clifford Drysdale was consulted and relegated to more modest digs, while I made ready to move into the luxury and culture of Bostonian society.

  The house was beautiful. It had a hall with a wide and elegant stairway, which divided into two on the landing before giving way to the suites above. On the wall above this landing hung a great sailfish; a trophy, I think, from some heraldic deep-sea fishing trip of days past. After climbing the section of stairway beneath the sailfish, one reached the upper floor and turned immediately left into the suite which Rod and I were to occupy. This elaborate description all seems irrelevant now, just as then it did to me. Only later, after that night, had I cause to examine the topography of the place more carefully.

  Rod had already arrived. He was sitting in the bedroom on one of the beds, surrounded by piles of new tennis equipment. Most of the better players of the circuits were well provided with tennis gear, but I never got used to the quantities and varieties showered upon Laver. He looked up as I entered, with typical Laver-like casualness.

  ‘Hello, bastard,’ he said, although I hadn’t seen him since Hamburg. ‘Look at all this bloody gear. Enough gear here to start a store. And that’s only half of it. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to wear all this lot, unless I change my shirt after every game!’

  I felt happy and at home with Rod – he had a mild manner, with a sense of humour which often played on understatement. He’d understate almost everything, especially his remarkable successes and superb tennis ability; like the unbelievable, impossible shots he sometimes pulled out of a hat when they were least expected and badly needed. These he would scrutinise soberly, before remarking:

  ‘Not a bad little bit of an old nudge, would you say?’ or ‘Rare bit of old arse, that one, don’t you think?’

  When Governor Furcolo lent us a Cadillac for the week, Rod gave it an appreciative look. ‘Thanks, Governor,’ he said, ‘now we’ve got transport!’

  Now, sitting on his bed, busy lacing up a tennis s
hoe, he waved a hand at the extravagant surroundings and said: ‘Choose a bed. It’s not much, but it’s home!’

  There was only one other bed apart from the one upon which he was sitting, so I established myself on it and began unpacking. Rodney told me that he and Fred were top seeds for the tournament, and that Cliff and I would meet them in the quarter-finals.

  ‘Who do we play on the way to the quarters?’ I asked him warily. He had a bad habit of judging other people’s abilities on the strength of his own, thus carving away the mere possibility of losing before the quarter-finals, at least.

  ‘Oh, teams,’ he said vaguely. ‘Dell and Bond. Hoogs and McManus. Eugene Scott and somebody. People like that. Just got to keep the ball in play and give the loose ones a bit of a nudge.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You mean just coast through the early rounds.’ He nodded, not even recognising my slight sarcasm. Competitive tennis, I realised, was a very simple matter for Rodney George.

  I began unpacking and, as I did so, an uneasy thought struck me. Rodney was, as far as I knew, unaware of my erratic nocturnal behaviour. It was true that Abe Segal had frequently raved about ‘Forbsey belonging in a strait-jacket at night,’ or other such remarks, in various lounges and dressing-rooms, but it was equally true that Abie himself was considered highly unreliable as a source of factual information and, in fact, an imminently eligible strait-jacket case himself – moreover, not only at night.

  I conducted a quick consultation with myself about the wisdom of even broaching the subject with Rodney. I’d hardly done anything unusual for weeks, discounting the odd outburst or two and the fact that Cliff informed me one morning that I had pulled him out of bed the previous night and coldly instructed him to get on with the match, as play had to be continuous – an accusation which I felt to be groundless, as I usually had some vague memory of my more positive actions, whereas, on this occasion, I’d had none. Still, Laver was Laver, and I balked at the idea of taking him completely by surprise, so I decided to mention the thing very casually.

  ‘In case you hear me moving about the room in the dark,’ I said, idly examining one of the racket grips at which he continually scraped and whittled, ‘don’t worry. Just put on the light.’ He looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘What might you be doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I . . . er, sometimes, very occasionally – well, you know . . . I, er –’

  ‘Start a revolution,’ he interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me big Abie wasn’t just raving on?’

  ‘Abie exaggerates enormously,’ I said. ‘At worst I usually walk quietly round my bed, or give one or two instructions.’

  He said no more, besides giving me a penetrating look and muttering, ‘My bloody oath,’ under his breath once or twice, in a very Australian way.

  The Furcolos were a great family, epitomising the warm but casual hospitality, the lack of pompousness, yet the proper dignity of the true American. We had dinner and a game or two of table tennis before turning in. It was as well that I had warned Rodney. Sometime during that first night, in the light of the moon that poured in through the window, I saw a thin, smallish and vicious-looking animal leap onto my bed and run up the covers towards my face at an alarming rate. Laver or no Laver, action had to be taken. In the nick of time I leapt up, rolled the creature up in the bedcovers and, kneeling on my bed, I was busy squeezing the rolled bedcover violently in order to throttle the creature, when Rodney awoke. He sat up immediately.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, not unreasonably.

  ‘I’ve got the little devil in here,’ I cried.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Rodney.

  ‘A thin little bastard,’ I replied.

  Suddenly I threw the rolled up cover on Rodney’s bed.

  ‘Have a look if he’s dead yet,’ I commanded.

  Rodney backed away. ‘You have a look,’ he said.

  I began to realise then that something passing strange was going on, but was still in the grip of the dream. Gingerly I unrolled the cover, and by the time it was open, I had fully awoken.

  ‘I warned you that I sometimes did things in the night,’ I said sheepishly. ‘You should have switched the light on.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Rodney, typically. ‘Came as a bit of a shock, though. Didn’t know what you had rolled up in there. Wasn’t sure whether you’d managed to kill it. Thought it might jump out. For a moment there I really thought you had something!’

  ‘So did I,’ I said fervently, and quietly thanked my stars that the incident was over and that it had not been worse. Also, to my great relief, I began sleeping like a log, so that it seemed that my night-time performance had been a flash in the pan.

  I practised each morning with Rodney – rigidly effective Hopman-type practice which forced you to make every shot with a purpose in mind, not the comfortable, free-swinging hit-ups which were so tempting and which made you imagine that you were beautifully in form, and playing like a sort of improved version of Donald Budge.

  Ten minutes of forehand crosscourts – ten of forehand-to-backhand, up the line, ten of backhand-to-forehand, ten of crosscourt backhands; then all four repeated twice over with alternate players volleying. All that added up to two hours, leaving thirty minutes for practising overheads, services or any special weaknesses. A half-hour practice set completed the three-hour session which Rodney insisted we follow. By the end of the week I had never played better, and often, in retrospect, I have thought of those far-off sessions and said to myself wistfully, ‘If only, Forbes, if only!’

  Cliff and I continued our efficient combination, edging out the American teams by the odd service break – all that is needed in grass court doubles. In the quarters we found ourselves faced by Laver and Stolle, having beaten Donald Dell and Billy Bond in the sixteens. It was strange that, having begun my doubles link-up with Cliff in a state of some uncertainty, we now found ourselves in the quarters of the United States National Doubles, actually discussing positively the possibility of beating the first seeded team.

  The evening before the encounter, the four of us drank a few beers together in a mood of good-natured banter. Fred Stolle warned Cliff against hitting ‘those arsey shots off that crappy double-hander’, and Cliff in turn said that Fred should ‘watch his tramline and not serve too many doubles’.

  This remark carried a slight edge to it, as Fred never pandered to caution on his second ball, serving it virtually as hard as his first. This resulted in a restless time for the receiver, but also, on Fred’s off days, a good many double-faults. Rodney said very little, except that he thought the four of us should be able to ‘move the ball about a bit out there on fast grass!’

  Rodney and I turned in early that night. And I remember clearly that the thought of any unforeseen activity did not even enter my head. I was tired, and fell asleep almost at once. Our room was so arranged that the wall which backed up against the stairwell consisted of a long built-in cupboard, which Rod and I shared. As Rodney had chosen the bed furthest from the cupboard, my bed was adjacent to it, at a distance of perhaps ten to twelve feet.

  Some time late that night, I opened my eyes to find the room full of moonlight. Standing in the cupboard, quite still, was a man whom I could see clearly through the open door. My heart froze as my mind raced through the possible reasons for his presence, finally fastening onto what seemed to be the obvious one. He was there to ‘get’ Rodney. There was no doubt about it. Rod was a celebrity and this man, hiding in our cupboard, was an American psychopath, out to do him in. But my bed was between him and Rod, and the thought that he might not be sure which was Rod and which was me made the situation even more desperate. The headline, Laver Saved when Assassin Strikes Thin South African flashed through my mind. Action had to be taken at once.

  Suddenly a daring and subtle plan occurred to me. The cupboard had heavy doors with keys which turned easily. All I had to do, I de
cided, was to brace myself, leap up, slam the door and lock him in. There was no time to lose so, tensing myself for the deed, I began the countdown. In a state of nervous tension, one moves like lightning. I counted to three, hurled aside the bedclothes, gave a mighty leap, landed beside the cupboard, closed the door with a slam, and turned the key. As the noise died away, I heard an answering rumbling from somewhere in the house, then silence. I leaned for a moment against the cupboard door, weak with relief and overwhelmed suddenly by tiredness. Such was the depth of the nightmare that I was still tightly in its grip. It was then that I noticed Rodney, standing bolt upright on the far side of his bed.

  ‘Bit of a hell of a bang,’ he said shakily. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘There was a guy in the cupboard,’ I replied, ‘who was out to get you. I locked him in.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Rodney.

  ‘We’ll get him out in the morning,’ I said.

  I was desperately tired, and climbed back into bed. The incident was closed, my mind was blank, yet at that moment as I lay back and closed my eyes, the first nudges of reality occurred.

  ‘It’s not possible,’ I remember thinking to myself. ‘I couldn’t have actually done that. Not again. Not tonight, of all nights!’

  But then there was a knocking sound and I opened my eyes. Rodney was standing next to the cupboard, tapping on the door with his knuckles and holding an ear to it.

  ‘Anyone in there?’ he said in an urgent whisper. ‘Who in the hell are you?’

  ‘It’s OK, Rodney,’ I said loudly, and he jumped about three inches off the floor. ‘There’s no one in there.’

  ‘You just told me there was,’ he said. ‘Could have believed you, too.’

  ‘It’s one of my dreams,’ I said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. You should have put the light on.’

  ‘No time for that,’ he said. ‘Just a bloody great bang. A man doesn’t think about switching lights on when he thinks he’s in a raid. Anyway, I’m opening this cupboard, just to make sure!’