I had won Wimbledon.
SATURDAY EVENING, 7 JULY 1962
CLARIDGE’S
MAYFAIR
That evening, Mother vetoed for me the Wimbledon Ball at Grosvenor House, so Rod Laver, the gentlemen’s champion, had to dance with Claire rather than me. To be honest, I didn’t want to go to the Ball. Mother and Father had decided my nose wasn’t broken, but already I had a bruise appearing on my face. Mother had held an ice pack on me for 15 minutes. All I wanted was to have a bath and tea in the room I shared with Rachel and go to sleep.
Claire rang before she left her flat for the Ball to see how I was feeling. We talked for a couple of minutes about our match. I held an ice pack to my face.
Claire asked, “Have you told your parents about you and John?”
“No. Not yet. I haven’t had time.”
“Well, you need to tell my parents. Before you sail for Bermuda.” My parents and I were sailing for Hamilton from Southampton on Wednesday. Rachel was staying in England to visit her relatives in the Midlands.
Claire said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Tell your parents tomorrow. Then you and I will meet for lunch on Monday. Let’s go to The Goring, on Beeston Place. We can talk then.” Claire said this in a conspiratorial tone, as though we were planning a bank robbery. “But tell your parents that my parents want to have them for tea Monday afternoon. I’ll arrange that with Mother and Father. Then, during tea, you can tell my parents.”
I replied quietly, because Mother was still in the room. “That sounds as though I, by myself, have to tell both sets of parents.”
“Well, you’re the one who’s engaged to John, after all.”
So I agreed to Claire’s plan.
Claridge’s delivered a wonderfully full tea tray to our room, and, wearing only my bathrobe, with my wet hair hanging down my back and a nascent bruise on my nose, I stepped outside into the hall to hold the door open for the lady who was delivering the tea. I looked down the hall toward the lift and saw a London bobby standing there. He was the same bobby that John had been chatting with earlier in the week. Even though I was wearing just the bathrobe, I let the door to our room close and walked down the hall toward him.
“Good evening, Officer,” I said. “I think we’ve met, but my friend John Fitzwilliam failed to introduce us.”
The bobby smiled. “Well, Miss, perhaps the Captain was more interested in seeing you. Congratulations to you on your win today.”
“Thank you, and I’m glad to see you, but why are you here?”
“Just to make sure that anyone who gets off the lift belongs here, that’s all, Miss. Normal procedure for us. I’ll be here for a bit, and then one of my mates will take my place.”
He meant he was there to protect my privacy.
“Officer, may I bring you a cup of tea?”
“That’s not necessary, Miss.”
“I’m bringing you a cup. Milk or lemon?”
“Milk, Miss, please.”
I returned to the room, and Rachel opened the door for me. “Do we have an extra cup?” I asked.
“The lady brought two extra cups, for your parents, I expect.”
I poured a cup of tea, put milk in it and said to Rachel, “I’ll return in one moment.”
I went back in the hall. I looked ridiculous barefoot, with wet hair, a bruise on my face, wearing nothing but my hotel bathrobe. I carried the cup of tea to the bobby. I could tell he was looking at my legs. I hoped he didn’t realize or imagine that I was naked under the bathrobe. “Here you are.”
“Thank you, Miss.”
I started to go. He said, “Will Captain Fitzwilliam be here this evening?”
“John has been called away on duty.”
“Just as you say, Miss,” the bobby replied stoically. He knew what that meant.
I walked away.
“Miss!” the bobby called out.
I turned around.
“I served directly under Captain Fitzwilliam in the Royal Marines for the better part of two years. He was the finest officer in the Marines.”
“Thank you, Officer. I’m happy to say he is my fiancé.”
“Well, my congratulations to you both.”
SUNDAY, 8 JULY 1962
AFTERNOON TEA AT CLARIDGE’S
MAYFAIR
Winning Wimbledon certainly increases the invitations a girl has to lunch and dinner dances. On Sunday, Mother fielded four invitations for me to have lunch on Monday, and I think five invitations for dinner dances on Tuesday evening. She turned them all down.
When I walked out of Claridge’s, there were photographers, but my bobby friend would shoo them away when I came out. Father was approached by an American businessman who had plans for ‘promoting’ me in the States. Father’s curt response was decidedly negative. I knew Mother and Father were proud of me, but I sensed that the attention now being paid to me at age 19 made them uneasy.
At tea that afternoon, my parents launched their coordinated attack. They said that my winning Wimbledon had been extraordinary, they were proud of me, but they hoped I wasn’t going to forget my medical studies. Like the good mixed doubles partners they were, first one talked and then the other about my future and my responsibilities to Bermuda, but I cut them off in mid-sentence. I told them that I would be back at Smith in September to continue with pre-med.
I had gotten what I wanted from tennis.
I reached into my pocketbook and pulled out a telegram I had received the evening before. The author of the telegram suggested that, although I was an amateur, still there were certain financial arrangements that could be made, if need be, to induce me to compete at Forest Hills that August. I handed the telegram to Father. “May I ask you to reply to this for me?” He took the telegram in his hand.
“Mother, Father, there’s something you should know.” I don’t know why it is, but the phrase ‘there’s something you should know’ coming from a child instantly grabs the attention of parents.
They both looked at me intently. They weren’t going to like this, not at all, and I dreaded telling them. I knew what they would say: ‘What about medical school? Aren’t you too young to make a decision like this? Isn’t he a bit old for you? Have you had time to think about this carefully? You’ve only known him for a few days.’ I didn’t have any answers for those questions. I didn’t have an engagement ring. I didn’t even know where John was or when I would see him again. I was a pathetic excuse for an engaged daughter.
Anyway, I told them; I just blurted it out. “I’m engaged to be married to John Fitzwilliam.”
In the middle of Sunday tea in the dining room of Claridge’s, they both hugged me at once. They were from old, established English families, and they probably knew half the people having tea that afternoon at Claridge’s. Knew? They were probably related to half the people at tea. But still, they forgot themselves. Mother started crying. Father said, “Darling, sweetheart.”
Mother said, through her tears, “That is so wonderful.”
Father said, “I hope the plan is to be married in Bermuda?”
Mother wiped her eyes. “We should have the wedding in the garden of Midpoint. That’s where your father and I were married.”
Father said, “Captain Fitzwilliam is perfect for you.”
“Fiona, you should wear what you want, of course. If you want to wear my wedding dress, we still have it at home.”
Mother’s wedding dress had been English Grandmother’s wedding dress in 1917, during the Great War. One afternoon in 1942, in the middle of another war, my two grandmothers had hurriedly altered the dress to fit Mother. I can imagine English Grandmother that afternoon watching the sweeping, wild loops of thread American Grandmother was using to stitch the dress back together. English Grandmother probably said dryly, “Fiona, dear, we’re all so pleased that you didn’t let William Halsted talk you into becoming a surgeon.” After my parents’ marriage, the dress had spent two decades in a humid Bermuda closet, ripe with mildew.
<
br /> It was not, shall we say, a Teddy Tinling wedding gown.
“Mother, I plan to wear your dress when I marry John.”
She began crying again. Father put his arm around me. “In a few years, several grandchildren would be welcome additions to the family.”
As planned, I met Claire in Beeston Place for lunch on Monday. She simply left the white Alfa with its hood down, smack in front of The Goring, handed the keys to the doorman, and kissed his cheek.
“Darling young man,” she said to him. He looked to be around 70. “You will take care of my Alfa?”
“Certainly, Claire,” he replied, tipping his bowler.
She took my arm and whispered, “Now I’m sure I’m pregnant!”
I giggled.
A press photographer standing across Beeston Place caught this scene, with Claire speaking to me and me giggling. A morning newspaper the next day ran this photo on its front page under the caption, ‘WIMBLEDON FOES CHATTER IN BELGRAVIA!’
We walked out on the hotel’s veranda, looking over the gardens, and took a table. I ordered a plate of cucumber and salmon sandwiches for myself, all of which Claire proceeded to eat. After lunch, we went to her parents’ home to prepare tea; she had told her mother not to worry about tea, that Claire and I would take care of it.
WEDNESDAY, 25 JULY 1962
STATEMENT BY THE LAWN TENNIS ASSOCIATION
LONDON, ENGLAND
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Association has received an inquiry from the United States Lawn Tennis Association in regard to whether arrangements could be made for Mrs Richard Kershaw and Miss Fiona Hodgkin to enter the United States National Championships upon the lawns at Forest Hills in New York City. In light of the intense public interest in a potential re-match between Mrs Kershaw and Miss Hodgkin, and the continued speculation in the sporting press, the Association has concluded to issue this statement in reply to the inquiry.
Mrs Kershaw has advised the Association that she and her husband are expecting their first child, and therefore she will not be in a position to compete at Forest Hills.
Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, D.S.C., father of Miss Hodgkin, has advised the Association that his daughter’s pre-medical studies at college will cause her to limit her tennis competition to collegiate matches in the New England area of the United States. Consequently, Miss Hodgkin will not compete at Forest Hills.
* * * * *
After our Wimbledon final, neither Claire nor I ever played tennis in international competition again.
PART FOUR
ST. MARGARET’S
OCTOBER 1962
ST. MARGARET’S
WESTMINSTER
LONDON, ENGLAND
October came, and I was back at Smith as a sophomore premed student immersed in organic chemistry. I had told the tennis coach that I would still play on the team, but that I no longer wished to play in the number one position. I said that my chemistry classes and labs would prevent me from giving the tennis team the time it deserved if I remained in the first position. This was half true. If I could have left the team altogether without disappointing my teammates, the coach, and Smith generally, I would have done so. But for Smith to have a Wimbledon champion on the team was sensational, so I played.
By late October, Claire and her parents had still heard nothing from or about John. I had been sick with worry about him, but slowly, in my heart, I came to feel John was dead. Otherwise, by then, he would have come back to find me. One day, I walked back to Emerson house through the New England fall afternoon and found a telegram addressed to me from London on the hall table. I picked it up and walked back outside to read it.
There was a bench about a hundred meters from the house, under a small copse of trees, and I walked to the bench and sat down. There were the red and gold leaves that New England trees produce in the fall on the ground, and there was a slight breeze that blew the leaves around my ankles. I looked at the telegram envelope for probably 20 minutes before I opened it. I knew exactly what the telegram would say.
WESTERN UNION
LEARNED TODAY JOHN DID NOT SURVIVE STOP HIS REMAINS NOT RECOVERED STOP NO OTHER INFORMATION STOP SERVICE ST MARGARETS NEXT WEEK STOP COME LONDON SOONEST STOP
LOVE CLAIRE.
I didn’t cry. I was numb with sadness. Although I’ve led a happy, privileged life, and, after a long time, I finally said goodbye to John, even today a part of me has never left that bench under the trees, where I sat mourning him.
I went back inside my house and made the arrangements to make an international call to my parents. I sat down while I waited for the call to go through and held the telegram between my fingers. When the call came through, I picked up the receiver. Mother spoke first. She was crying. “Fiona, we know. Claire sent Rachel a telegram.”
“Claire has asked me to come to London.” I knew this would be a large expense for my parents, and going to London would take me away from Smith for at least a week, perhaps longer.
Father said, “You have to go to London. I’ll make your flight arrangements in the morning. Flying from Boston probably would be best.”
It was too late that day to send a telegram from Northampton, but in the morning I cut an English class and walked into town, where I sent Claire a telegram.
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
ON MY WAY LONDON STOP LOVE FIONA
Claire met me at Heathrow. She was visibly pregnant. We embraced, and I asked, “Tell me how you feel?”
“Tired and nauseated. The baby has moved in and completely taken over. I wanted to be this way?” We half laughed and half cried.
I stayed with Claire’s parents. The day after I arrived, Claire and I undertook the task of clearing out John’s flat. There were few personal things there; maybe, I thought, he had deliberately kept his life simple, at least until he met me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Claire discreetly pull a pair of lady’s knickers from John’s laundry and put them in her pocket.
“Claire, you look exhausted. Sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.” John had shown me how to operate the huge stove to make tea.
Claire sat on the couch without protest. When the tea was ready, I handed her a cup. “May I have the knickers?”
“What knickers?”
“Claire, they’re mine.”
“Oh,” she said. “I was just concerned that – ” She stopped, reached into her pocket, and handed them to me. “You and John must have been quite compatible in bed.”
“Yes, quite compatible, in all ways.”
I got myself a cup of tea and sat down beside Claire. She said sadly, “We’ll never be sisters-in-law.”
I nodded.
“When I was a girl,” Claire said, “I looked up to John. I followed him around, at least when he would let me. But I always wanted a sister. I wanted someone to talk to.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t remember the Blitz well. This house wasn’t hit directly. It was damaged, but we could stay here. We were lucky. One night, Mother and Father told John and me that the next day the two of us would be leaving for Canada, for Quebec City, on the St. Lawrence. Father had a business friend there. He and his wife were going to take us in. Mother and Father worried about the sea travel, but they must have decided it was worth the risk to get us to Canada. Father had gotten us passes for a train to Liverpool the next morning – that wasn’t easy to arrange. John and I were going to go by ourselves. Father started to explain to John how to get us from the train to the ship in Liverpool.”
“I never knew you and John were evacuated to Canada.”
“We weren’t.”
“Why not?”
“John told Father, ‘I won’t leave London while the King is here, you and Mother are here, and we’re being bombed.’ Father said to him, ‘Son, this is the best thing for you and your sister.’ But John said, ‘Father, I’ll run away, live in the Tube, and take Claire with me.’ Mother started crying and saying that we had to leave, how could we qu
estion our parents. But Father looked at John and said, ‘If you stay here, you and Claire both could be killed.’”
There were tears streaming down Claire’s face. She wiped them away with her palm. “John told Father, ‘I won’t leave London, and Claire won’t either.’ Mother was saying we would have to leave the next day, but Father motioned to her with his hand. He looked at me: ‘Do you know what your brother is saying?’ I didn’t, but I told him, ‘I’m staying with John.’”
“So you didn’t go to Canada?”
She shrugged. “All four of us stayed in this house. We weren’t evacuated. We lived here, on the ground floor, for awhile.”
She looked around. “This used to be a coal bin, before Mother had the flat made for John.”
Then she changed the subject. “Fiona, you and I could decide to be sisters.”
I said, “Yes.”
I put my arms around her, and we held one another. We talked for a long time, and finally she fell asleep on my shoulder. I lowered her head onto a pillow on the couch, stood up, got the blanket from the bed I had shared with John and gently covered her with it.
The day before the memorial service, an equerry from Buckingham Palace arrived with a letter and a small wooden box. The letter was from the Queen, in her handwriting. She had awarded John the Victoria Cross posthumously “for exceptional valor in defending the realm.” The VC was in the box. Legend had it that the VC medals were struck from the barrels of canon used in the Crimean War.
I saw John’s father open the box, glance at the medal, close the box, and shove it onto the mantelpiece. It’s still there today. I don’t think it has ever been moved or maybe even touched.
The Tennis Player from Bermuda Page 25
