The Tennis Player from Bermuda
Page 8
“If you had won either of those games, we’d probably still be out there, or maybe you would have won by now. You think so?”
“Yes.”
“You know what I think? You got behind in the score on your serve, and you got impatient. Because you were impatient, you made mistakes. I don’t mean to lecture you, I hate it when people do that to me, but that’s what I think.”
“I know what you’re saying. You’re right.”
“You play so quickly on your serve. I know where that comes from. Rachel plays so quickly. Play has to be continuous, sure. But still, you usually serve less than 10 seconds after the previous point. Slow down, catch your breath, think, plan the next point.”
At that time, the Rules of Lawn Tennis required play to be “continuous,” including between points, so the server wasn’t given time to reach for a towel or bounce the ball endlessly before serving. It wasn’t until 1979 that the server would be allowed 30 seconds (later cut to 20 seconds) to serve. So, in 1962, play in international competition was much faster than today.
Claire smiled. “I’m not going to tell you to bounce the ball on the court while you’re taking your time. I know that’s against Rachel’s rules.”
“But to serve quickly can put pressure on your opponent.”
“Maybe. Maybe a few women feel the pressure. For most of them, though, it’s like trying to put pressure on a rock. They don’t care, and it doesn’t affect them.”
Now I switched subjects. “Were you serious when you said I might win someday at Wimbledon?”
“There’s so much that’s pure luck, good or bad. The weather can be terrible. We always say we should re-schedule Wimbledon and hold it in the summer!’”
I frowned. “Wimbledon is in the summer.”
Claire sighed. “It’s a joke, Fiona.”
“Oh.”
“You can wake up one morning sick. Or you can wake up one morning with your period and feel awful. An opponent can have a great day. You can have a bad day. It’s two long weeks. Unless you have a bye for the first round, it’s six matches in a row just to get to the final. It’s exhausting, it really is exhausting. Anything can happen. And you know Centre Court.”
When she said this, I thought, ‘No, I don’t know Centre Court, but I plan to learn all about it.’
“It all happens so quickly, and then it’s over. All that matters is who wins the last point. So you never know.” She stopped for a moment. “But, yes, I think you might win Wimbledon. For one reason: you’re extraordinary at the net.”
She paused again, thinking. “You may be one of the best ever at the net. That’s what Rachel thinks, and maybe she’s right. But it’s too soon to know. Maybe you’ll collapse in international competition. Rachel is worried about that, because you’ve been cooped up in Bermuda and at college in the States. You certainly take too many chances. That’s Rachel’s influence, to go all out. She’s never liked being cautious. But still – the question is how you’ll do in international competition.”
We heard a knock on the door, and Claire yelled, “Come in!”
The club steward poked his head through the door. “Claire, could we ask you to come back out on the court for some photographs with the members?”
“Yes, I’ll be right there.” Claire turned to me, smiled, and held up her index finger. “Be careful what you wish for!” She walked to the door, stopped for a moment, then turned around to me.
“Fiona, you’re an amateur; am I right about that?”
“Of course.”
“Have you ever played in a tournament where a professional was also playing?” She was referring to the ridiculous rules that governed whether a player could be considered an ‘amateur.’ Even if you had merely played in the same tournament with a professional, you could be disqualified from amateur competition.
“No. Last year I saw Pancho Gonzales beat Frank Sedgman, when Jack Kramer brought them to Bermuda. My parents took me to see them play. But I didn’t even meet them. I’ve never played with a professional.”
“You’ll be in London the week of June 18?”
“Yes. I’ll be at the season.”
She walked back to the bench and sat down beside me. “You could play at Roehampton that week. If I could get you an invitation, would you play?”
“Yes, I’m sure I would enjoy it.” I had never heard of Roehampton. I had no idea what Claire was talking about.
“The draw is probably already set. Everyone fights for an invitation. The LTA would have to submit an entry form for you. That’s all right, they probably consider Bermuda to be part of Great Britain. Don’t get your hopes up; I doubt I can make it happen. Tomorrow morning I’ll send the Committee a telegram about you. But remember, every woman in tennis wants to be at Roehampton. I’ll do my best. Will you give me your address?”
I pulled my notepad from my pocketbook, tore off a page, wrote my address at Smith, and handed the page to her. She got up and walked to the door to go have her photograph taken with the Longwood members.
“Claire, what is the ‘LTA’?”
She turned and stared at me. “The Lawn Tennis Association. They run amateur tennis in Britain. I don’t really know how they submit the forms. They do it for me, I guess, more or less automatically.”
“They might submit a form for me? To where?”
Claire laughed. “To the All England Club, silly. For Wimbledon.”
I sat staring at Claire with my mouth hanging open.
It finally dawned on Claire that I wasn’t conversant with the process for selecting the qualifiers for the singles draw at Wimbledon. “Fiona, Roehampton is the week before Wimbledon. It’s the qualifying competition. That’s how I qualified for Wimbledon, my first time. The All England Lawn Tennis Club Committee of Management, in its infinite wisdom, and after consulting with the Referee, Colonel Legg, may invite you to play at Roehampton. There are three rounds at Roehampton. It’s brutal.”
She laughed again. I had the sense that Claire had enjoyed Roehampton thoroughly.
“The women who win all three rounds get unseeded spots in the Wimbledon draw.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll send the Committee a telegram first thing in the morning. I’ll tell them to see what you can do. But they probably won’t listen to me.”
Claire left for photographs with the Longwood members.
To me, then, Wimbledon was merely a shimmering dream. I had seen it only in smudged black and white newspaper photographs showing legendary players, like Angela Mortimer and Maria Bueno, on Centre Court. I had heard matches at Wimbledon only over crackling, short wave BBC radio broadcasts: “Crosscourt. Point to Miss Mortimer. Good show by the girl from Devon.”
I sat on the dressing room bench, trying to breath slowly. I might, just possibly, have a path to Wimbledon.
MAY 1962
SMITH COLLEGE
EMERSON HOUSE
NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Two weeks after I played Claire at Longwood, I was at Smith waiting for an afternoon chemistry lab to get started, when a girl from Emerson House came in and told me that I had received a telegram. She had seen it when she had gone back to the house for lunch. I instantly cut the lab, ran as fast as I could along the path under the trees back to the house, burst through the door, found my telegram on the front hall table, and tore it open.
WESTERN UNION
FIONA HODGKIN
CONFIRM SOONEST ENTRY JUNE 18 QUALIFYING ROEHAMPTON STOP CONFIRM AMATEUR STATUS STOP
THE COMMITTEE
ALL ENGLAND LAWN TENNIS CLUB
I screamed at the top of my lungs, “YES! YES!” I was jumping up and down in the hallway.
The house matron came out of the kitchen. “Fiona, a young man must have proposed to you. That’s the only thing that could make you so happy. Congratulations!”
Mother was Not Pleased.
I had written her immediately with the news about Roehampton, told her I had accepted the Committee’s invitati
on by a reply telegram, and generally made it clear that this was the most wonderful thing that could have happened.
It never entered my mind that Mother would not see it that way.
She telephoned me during dinner one night at Emerson House. “Fiona,” she began coldly. “By agreeing to play tennis in London, you’ve put yourself and me in an awkward position. Lady Thakeham is likely to feel, and would be justified in feeling, that we have taken advantage of her invitation in order to have you enter a tennis tournament.”
I had not thought about this, and I regret to say Mother was correct on this point.
“Also,” Mother continued, “this isn’t a step you should have taken without discussing it first with your father and me. I’m unhappy that you did this on your own.”
I had never thought to talk with Mother about this; I had been too excited. Again, unfortunately, she was in the right about this.
“I think you need to withdraw from this tournament in London.”
I hesitated and then decided on a strategic retreat. “Mother, you’re exactly right, and I apologize to you and Father. I was excited about this, and I acted without thinking. But the tournament will only be a day, at most two. I’m sure I’ll lose in the first or second round. It won’t interfere with anything I’m doing with the Thakehams.”
She had anticipated my retreat. “No. I talked with Rachel Martin today, who is as surprised as I am. But she tells me not to count on your losing. She expects you’ll be in it until the end, or near the end.”
Thanks a lot, Mrs Martin, for all your help here; you can’t be bothered to tell me that I’m any good, but you seem to advertise me widely to everyone else.
“Mother,” I said, “I do apologize, but I will write a letter to Lady Thakeham tonight, a long, polite letter, and mail it in the morning. I’ll tell her I did this without asking you, which I sincerely regret, and I’ll promise her Roehampton won’t interfere with the season. And if it does, I’ll simply withdraw. I’ll tell her I had no idea about this tournament when you accepted her invitation to stay with them, which is true.”
When I said this to Mother, I thought that what I should really do tonight is a calculus problem set, but I put that aside for the moment. The important thing was to hang onto my place at Roehampton. Mother was entirely capable of saying simply that I wasn’t playing tennis in London. That would be that. If she decided I shouldn’t play at Roehampton, it would be hard, probably impossible, to change her mind. I doubted I could persuade Father to take my side on this.
But I had one major psychological advantage over Mother, which is that I was her only child. I have no idea why my parents didn’t have more children; they certainly didn’t seem to have the slightest difficulty having me, and they both loved children. But I was their only child, and that meant, in my experience, that neither of them could be angry or upset at me for long. I could tell Mother was at least a bit mollified by my apology.
So I went at Mother again. “I’ll write Lady Thakeham tonight, and I promise you I’ll make it right with her, and while I’m in London I’ll behave so that she will be happy to have had me visit.”
Mother said, “Fiona, will you write me tonight and tell me you’ve written Mark’s mother?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“And you’ll apologize to her?”
“Yes, Mother, I will.”
“And you’ll tell her you’ll withdraw from this tournament if it interferes in any way with your obligations to her family?”
“I will say that explicitly to her.”
“Then please do so. And, Fiona, you really must talk with us before you decide on something like this.”
“Yes, Mother, I will.”
And so we told one another that we loved each other and said goodbye.
Roehampton and Lady Thakeham didn’t turn out exactly the way I promised Mother they would.
SEPTEMBER 2011
ALL ENGLAND CLUB WIMBLEDON
LONDON, ENGLAND
When I told Claire I was going to write this story of my tennis career and how I met my husband, she wasn’t enthusiastic. She and I are both old now – I’m in my late 60s, and Claire is almost 76. It had happened so long ago, why go back into all that? That was Claire’s thinking.
Claire had published her own tennis autobiography soon after she first won Wimbledon in 1960. An autobiography was one of the few accepted ways for a successful amateur to make money from tennis. But Claire hadn’t written a single word of that book – except for the preface. She wrote the preface herself.
Claire explained in the preface that, when she had told her husband, Richard, about her plan to include the louche details of her love affairs with men players when she was a single girl on the international tennis circuit, Richard objected. Then, Claire wrote, Richard engaged a young literary lady from a good English family to ghostwrite a proper tennis autobiography for Claire.
The ghostwriter, naturally, asked to interview Claire, and so Claire had invited her over to the flat. In her preface, Claire wrote: “She was an aspiring novelist; she was charming; she preferred Earl Grey tea; she knew nothing about tennis.”
Claire’s tennis autobiography had been a runaway best seller in England.
I was in London to give a paper at a pediatric medical conference, and I was staying with Claire and Richard. At breakfast, I asked Claire if she’d kept a copy of the telegram she had sent to the Committee about me in 1962.
“No, I didn’t. I just scribbled something down on a Western Union message pad in the hotel in Boston that morning. I didn’t think to keep a copy.”
“You must remember what you said about me to the Committee.”
“No, I don’t. Anyway, it’s a mistake, this idea of writing it all down.”
I persisted. I had decided to write my story, and I was going to do it.
Finally, Claire said, “ The All England Club hasn’t thrown anything away, ever. So they’ll have my telegram. Just speak with the Club’s Secretary.”
That morning I rang the Club. The Secretary said, “It’s Doctor Hodgkin, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I regret that you and I haven’t been introduced. But if you please. There was a telegram in 1962, about me. If it still exists, may I see it?”
“A telegram?”
“To the Committee of Management,” I said. “From Claire. I mean, from Mrs Richard Kershaw. About me.”
The Secretary told me to come around to the Club, and he would meet me at Gate 5. We would see, he said, if the telegram could be found in the files.
I took the Tube to Southfields and walked under my umbrella in the rain down Church Road. I hadn’t been to Wimbledon in many years, and all the new gates confused me. But surely the ‘Gate 5’ the Secretary directed me to must be the old South East Gate, the main entrance to the Club?
Good to his word, the Secretary was standing at the gate under an umbrella.
“Where are the Doherty Gates?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re down at the south end of the ground now. Have been since 2006.”
The Doherty Memorial Gates, made of black wrought iron, with the letters ‘A.E.L.T.C.’ in bright gold leaf, had stood at the South East Gate since 1931. They had been given to the Club by Rev. W. V. Doherty in memory of his brothers, Reggie and Laurie, who between them had won Wimbledon nine times – Laurie won five times in a row, 1902 to1906. The Committee approved the design of the Gates in October 1930, and they had been bolted to the masonry gateposts the next year.
“Why in heaven would the Doherty Gates be moved?”
“My dear Doctor Hodgkin, the lorries, of course.”
“The lorries?”
“When Centre Court was rebuilt. For the new retractable roof. The construction lorries were too wide for the old gates.”
“But no one ever goes to the south end of the ground! No one would see the gates.”
“Oh, the Committee put quite a nice little plaque down there. In the wall beside them.”
I interjected. “She may have signed the telegram ‘Claire Kershaw,’ or even just ‘Claire.’”
“Just so,” the Secretary said. “Off you go, then, Simon.”
The Secretary suggested that I wait in the members’ buffet in the Millennium Building, on the other side of Centre Court, while Simon conducted his search.
In September, on a chilly, rainy London day, the buffet was as cold and closed as a tomb. The lone attendant gave me a cup of tea, and I took it out on the covered balcony, which had a view of the outer grass courts and, in the distance, on a hill, in the mist, the old spire of St. Mary’s Church.
On a sunny day during the Championships, this balcony would be a splendid spot from which to see the milling crowds, the brilliant green grass, the tennis players fighting to stay in the draw, and the blooming hydrangea. Now, though, the nets were down, the umpires’ chairs gone, the hydrangea pruned back to the old wood, and the only sign of life was a single groundskeeper wearing a yellow rain slicker who appeared to be merely looking forlornly down at the grass.
I stood there, lost in thought.
Simon, the young clerk, appeared after about an hour. He coughed, politely, to gain my attention. I turned around.
“Doctor, is this possibly the telegram for which you are looking?”
I went back inside the buffet and sat down at a table. The telegram was crinkled, and I held it down with my fingers spread to flatten it. The strips of type that had been pasted onto the form were peeling off.
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
THE COMMITTEE
ALL ENGLAND LAWN TENNIS CLUB
DEAR DARLING BOYS STOP YESTERDAY EXHIBITION MATCH LONGWOOD BOSTON GRASS FIONA HODGKIN 18 YEARS BERMUDA AMATEUR SINGLES CHAMPION STOP COACH AMATEUR RACHEL OUTERBRIDGE 1939 SINGLES FINALIST STOP FH SWEET YOUNG BALL OF ENERGY STOP YOU MUST LIST FH FOR ROEHAMPTON STOP FH ADDRESS EMERSON HOUSE SMITH COLLEGE NORTHAMPTON MASS US STOP I PROMISE TO SLEEP WITH EACH OF YOU UPON RETURN ENGLAND STOP SEPARATELY OF COURSE STOP