Backhand Smash

by J M Gregson

  ‘Well, yes, I did. Apart from the spectators and my failure to master the backhand smash. But that’s what I want to do: play tennis. I’m not interested in all the rest.’

  ‘But you’ve joined a club. You have to acknowledge that; you have to get to know people to get games. The tennis will follow. The two are interlinked.’

  He knew she was right but he felt out of his depth. ‘I’ve never been much of a joiner. No one’s ever wanted me to join anything, for that matter. I suppose I’m like Groucho Marx – I don’t want to join any club that would accept the likes of me.’

  ‘Be a new experience for you, then, won’t it? All part of the rich fabric of life and all that jazz.’

  ‘I was never into jazz, either. People think you’ve got natural rhythm, just because you’re black. I never had that. Perhaps it’s because I’ve lived all my life in Lancashire.’

  She grinned. ‘Brunton’s quite a long way from New Orleans, and not just geographically. But you’re making my point for me: you need to embrace the new experience. And speaking of developing your rhythms and of joining in at the club, you should go to the summer ball at the weekend. Show your face, become a popular and active member of the club, get yourself lots of tennis matches.’

  It isn’t easy for a black man to blanch visibly. But Northcott blanched invisibly and comprehensively at this suggestion. ‘I couldn’t do that. I’m no dancer.’

  ‘You don’t have to be, with modern dancing. My dad says you just jig about and do your own thing. I wouldn’t admit it to him, but he’s right, really.’

  ‘I’m much too big to jig about. I look stupid.’

  ‘It’s all in the mind, Clyde. You have to take these things on. If you keep a straight face, people think you know what you’re doing – even think that you’re an expert, if you remain po-faced for long enough.’

  Northcott decided that it was time for a decisive rejection. ‘You have to dress up and pretend you’re enjoying yourself. I haven’t got the gear and I couldn’t possibly enjoy it.’

  ‘You’ve got the gear, Clyde. It used to be evening dress for the summer ball, but they made it lounge suits to encourage a better attendance a year or two ago. I’ll come with you, if you like.’

  It was as low-key as she could make it, but the offer threw him into confusion. He’d been determined to reject any idea of attendance at the summer ball, even to ridicule it, but now this entrancing girl was offering to accompany him there. Bloody bleeding hell! What a dilemma to be on the pointed horns of. ‘You don’t really want to go. You’re just being kind to the misfit.’

  She shook her head resolutely. ‘Time I joined in again, after being pretty much absent from club activities for the last thee years. Joining in things like the summer ball is part of being in a club, as I told you. Even when I have to go there with a daft new member who has two left feet and no sense of rhythm.’

  ‘Last time I went to a disco I got myself into a punch-up. That was seven years ago, long before I became a copper.’

  ‘I won’t expect you to be in full terpsichorean practice, then. And please don’t get yourself involved in a punch-up at Birch Fields: I have a reputation to keep up. They think I’m a respectable young lady there. I’d rather like them to keep that illusion.’

  And so it was settled. Another function that DS Northcott would never have ventured anywhere near was now to be attended and endured.

  SIX

  Percy Peach was impatient. Not at the station, where people had grown used to that, but at home. He didn’t like keeping secrets from his mother-in-law.

  He had an unusual relationship with Lucy’s mother. She was the only person in his world who understood how he had come by the initials D.C.S. That cricket-mad father who had christened his only son Denis Charles Scott Peach was now long gone. The seventy-one-year-old Agnes Blake was also a cricket fanatic and old enough to remember Denis Charles Scott Compton, the cavalier of English cricket in the drab post-war years. She felt that ‘Percy’ was an unworthy appendage accorded to her son-in-law by an alliteration-obsessed police service. She had a cuttings book of Percy’s achievements as a dashing Lancashire League batsman in the local East Lancs cricket team. A photograph of Percy in perky blue cricket cap stood on her mantelpiece beside the older black-and-white one of her dead husband, pictured with sweater over his shoulder after taking a cluster of wickets in the Northern League.

  Percy had wanted to tell Agnes about the baby as soon as he knew of it himself. But Lucy had wanted to wait until after the first scan. ‘Let’s get all the preliminary tests and checks done first.’

  ‘But your mum’s been desperate for grandchildren for so long. It seems cruel to keep this from her.’

  ‘Things go wrong in the early stages. People have miscarriages.’

  ‘Not you. You’re prime breeding stock.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir, for that fulsome compliment. I feel as if I’m being paraded round the auction ring at the cattle market. You’ll be poking me in the ribs with a walking stick next.’

  ‘Not with a walking stick, my love. And not in the ribs. But don’t you think we should let Agnes know pronto? It will make her week. Correction: it will make her year.’

  ‘I know all that. But it’s early days. Let’s get the preliminaries safely over before we tell her. She’d be heartbroken if we told her I was pregnant and then had to tell her a month later that it was all over.’

  Percy knew that Lucy would be pretty heartbroken on her own account, whilst he would be trying to put a brave front on his own devastation. But he saw the logic of what she was saying, even though he felt like a small boy bursting with his secret each time he saw Agnes. But now, after much deliberation about whether or not to wait until after the first scan, Lucy was about to reveal the great news to her mother. They had saved it for a Saturday night and the news was to be the climax to her favourite meal.

  Percy had insisted that mother and daughter should be alone with each other when the news was revealed, much as he would like to have seen Agnes’s face at that moment. He sat in the lounge and listened to the shriek of delight from the septuagenarian in the kitchen as her daughter gave her the tremulous tidings. He was on his feet by the time Agnes Blake arrived in the room and flung herself into his arms.

  ‘You did it, Percy! I knew you could!’

  ‘It was nothing, Mrs B. Persistence told. It was almost a pleasure, at times. Difficult for me to keep up with young Lucy’s incessant demands, of course, but—’

  ‘Percy!’ His wife’s yell from the door compelled him to embrace his mother-in-law and give Lucy the most benevolent of beams over her shoulder.

  When Agnes eventually divested herself of her son-in-law, she gazed up into his face exultantly and said, ‘He might be a cricketer, Percy!’

  ‘He might indeed, Mrs B.’ Percy mimed an extravagant cover drive.

  ‘He’s got the genes, hasn’t he? With my Bill as his grandfather and you as his dad. He could play for England.’

  ‘Or he might be a girl,’ said Lucy from the doorway. ‘She might be a Wimbledon champion. Or a female prime minister – I expect women will be in charge, by then.’

  Agnes considered this sobering possibility. ‘Don’t you know what it’s going to be? They can tell quite early now on these scan things, can’t they?’

  ‘We haven’t had a scan yet, Mum. And we don’t want to know the sex in advance. We agreed on that. As long as it’s healthy, we don’t mind which it is, do we?’ She took Percy’s arm in a proprietorial manner and looked to him for confirmation.

  He nodded. ‘We don’t want a girl with my looks and Lucy’s brains, Mrs B. Anything else is acceptable.’

  Agnes shrieked with laughter, as she almost always did at Percy’s sallies. ‘Oh, go on with you, Percy Peach! You don’t look so bad, when you’re scrubbed up a bit.’

  ‘And your daughter’s not the complete idiot he implied! Aren’t you going to say that, Mum?’ Lucy’s amusement was a little forced
.

  ‘Of course you’re not, love. But that’s just Percy winding you up, isn’t it? I thought you’d have been intelligent enough to see that.’ Agnes looked to her son-in-law for confirmation, then burst into delighted laughter at his solemn nod.

  They toasted Horace, as Percy and Lucy had been calling the not-yet-visible bump for the last few days, in the vintage port the father-to-be had purchased for the occasion. Agnes was cautious because she had to drive home, and Lucy took only the token sips appropriate to a dutifully pregnant citizen, which meant that Percy had to undertake the onerous task of celebrating for three. Agnes said eventually, ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to wait for the birth to find whether it’s boy or girl. I think that’s nice, though I couldn’t quite say why. I admire your self-control. The knowledge wasn’t available in my day, but I don’t think I’d have been able to resist finding out the sex if it had been me. He’ll be a cricketer, though; you mark my words.’

  Lucy grinned at her affectionately, enjoying her mother’s unconcealed delight almost as much she had enjoyed Percy’s original reaction. ‘I told you, Mum, it might be a girl. And I still think she might be a tennis player. I wasn’t bad at tennis, until I joined CID and Percy Peach put a stop to all that.’

  Percy was spluttering into a denial, but Agnes was far more spontaneous and swift. ‘It’ll be a lad, our Lucy. And he’ll be a cricketer. I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘He might do all kinds of things, Mum, as the new generation.’ She glanced mischievously at Percy and then lit her mother’s fuse. ‘He might even be a golfer.’

  ‘A GOLFER!’ Agnes Blake shrieked in capitals, as she invariably did when the baleful exercise of golf was mentioned. ‘No grandson of mine is going to be a GOLFER! Game for toffs and degenerates, GOLF is!’

  Lucy shook her head soberly. ‘You might just be right there, Mum. Percy’s quite good at it, they tell me. But I’d hardly call him a toff.’

  ‘He gave up cricket far too early and took up that stupid game!’ muttered Agnes Blake darkly. She gave the man in question one of her rare scowls.

  ‘Anno Domini, Mrs B.,’ said Percy, shaking his head sadly. Then he added piously, ‘And a sense of duty, of course. Someone has to keep an eye on the toffs and the degenerates at the North Lancs Golf Club.’

  Agnes screeched her delight at that notion. ‘Oh, go on with you, Percy Peach! You’re a regular caution, you are!’

  With which familiar observation, she bade them farewell and departed joyfully to convey her great tidings to the women in her village at the foot of Longridge Fell, who had known Lucy since she herself was a child.

  The Saturday night when Lucy and Percy delivered their great news to Agnes was also the night of the Birch Fields Tennis Club’s summer ball. The latest recruit to the club was in reluctant attendance. Clyde Northcott was still adamant that this was emphatically not his scene. The presence of Elaine Brockman was the enormous bonus that had been necessary to secure his presence here.

  He was already regretting his concession, magnificent as his partner for the evening looked at his side. The emerald necklace she sported above her low-necked green dress must surely be costume jewellery; he was pretty sure that no one below the rank of duchess was allowed to possess real emeralds as large as that. But real emeralds couldn’t possibly have made Elaine look prettier, in his not entirely unbiased view.

  For her part, Elaine thought that it was splendid to see her man spruced up in a dark blue suit and a discreet lighter blue tie. She knew he would be uncomfortable in the early part of the evening, but he carried these clothes well, despite his reluctance to don them. He stood erect and impressive in his formal wear, not only the tallest man in the room but, in her view, the most impressive one. She had been proud to take him in to meet her parents when he had called to collect her. Her dad had been deadpan as usual, scrupulously polite, scrupulously the same as he had been with the other boyfriends she had visited upon him over the last few years. But her mother was easier to read and she had been impressed by Clyde. Understandably, in Elaine’s view: the man’s physical presence was something no woman could ignore.

  She found it was so at the summer ball. Everyone in the room was conscious of Northcott’s presence, even when he stood at the edge of the dance floor, talking quietly with her and one of the men with whom he had played tennis.

  Only one man found it easy to ignore him.

  The chairman of the club did not arrive until the dance was well under way. Most people had enjoyed a dance or two and a drink or two and were pleasantly relaxed by the time Arthur Swarbrick made his appearance. Everyone in the room knew him and he was received either enthusiastically or politely as he made his way around the edge of the floor and greeted his members at the greatest social occasion in the club’s calendar. Elaine was conscious of his progress, aware that he had known her since she had joined the club at ten. He had seemed an old man to her then, a grandfatherly rather than a fatherly figure. She calculated now that he couldn’t have been more than fifty then. She prepared her best smile for him.

  Shirley Swarbrick greeted her by name, then smiled graciously as she was introduced to Clyde. She passed on swiftly to the next group at the side of the dance floor, making steady progress towards the table and chairs discreetly reserved for the chairman at the furthest point from the band. Her husband was a little behind her, delaying his progress deliberately by a few words to the adjoining group. Then he stood in front of them, and Elaine knew suddenly what he was about to do.

  Arthur Swarbrick stood directly opposite her, produced a very deliberate and very mirthless smile, and said, ‘Good evening, Elaine. It’s good to see you back here.’ He studiously avoided any acknowledgement of the tall, dark figure who stood dutifully and expectantly at her side. Then he switched off his smile and moved briskly on to the next group of people by the dance floor, as if the man who everyone in the room was aware of had not been present.

  Elaine moved to follow him, but Clyde had his strong hand on her elbow in a flash. ‘Leave it!’ he commanded in an urgent whisper. Swarbrick moved on to rejoin his wife. Only those in the immediate vicinity were conscious of the very deliberate snub he had just administered.

  Elaine Brockman was pink with fury. ‘He can’t be allowed to get away with that!’ she hissed at her companion.

  ‘He can and he will. It’s much better left at that. It becomes bigger if you react to it. I have some experience of these things.’

  A new voice spoke in Elaine’s ear. ‘He’s right, love. Leave it, for now. He won’t get away with it. I for one will take it up with Mr High and Mighty Swarbrick, and there might be others.’ Olive Crawshaw had materialized mysteriously beside them; Elaine had not seen her previously during the evening. Olive said to the offended party, ‘You’re absolutely right, Clyde. Just carry on as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘Nothing has,’ said Northcott evenly. ‘Nothing that I haven’t experienced a hundred times before and dealt with.’

  There was an immense dignity about him, Elaine thought. He was almost a figure larger than his mere self, though she wasn’t at all sure what she meant by that. Pretentious nonsense, she could hear her late tutor at the university telling her, though she was sure of what she meant in her own mind, and that was something quite impressive. These reflections were brought to an abrupt end by Clyde seizing her hand and propelling her on to the dance floor, an action she had been convinced he would never take of his own volition.

  Clyde didn’t have to coordinate his actions with hers for this number: they were standing opposite each other and gyrating individually. And he managed a respectable attempt at what her father would have called ‘twitching and twirling’. After five minutes of this, Elaine had recovered her equilibrium and some sense of perspective. Even, perhaps, her sense of humour. She said to Clyde, ‘You danced well there. I think you must have a natural sense of rhythm. Something in the genes, perhaps.’

  ‘Watch it, sprog. You’re still on probati
on,’ said Clyde, with a face as straight as hers.

  She wasn’t sure whether he meant as a police officer or as his girlfriend. Could she claim that status yet, or would that be assuming too much? The upshot of the Swarbrick incident was that the evening went well from there on. They relaxed with each other, danced as much as was necessary, and got on well with the friends she already had and the ones he was rapidly making. Elaine resolved to tell Arthur Swarbrick if she ever got the chance that his action had broken the ice agreeably for them.

  Clyde even managed the last waltz, holding her with increasing confidence as they moved slowly around the crowded dance floor. He behaved like the perfect gentleman in the taxi afterwards and left her at the door of her home with the briefest chaste kiss on her forehead. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to be such a gentleman, although she was sure that her dad would have thought it admirable. And she still wasn’t quite sure that she was Clyde’s girlfriend, even though she was quite sure now that she wanted to be.

  There were other issues at the summer ball. Those with an interest in the control of the Birch Fields Tennis Club were watching each other closely on this key occasion in the club’s social calendar.

  Olive Crawshaw had already noted and condemned Arthur Swarbrick’s conduct towards Clyde Northcott. She spent part of the evening wondering whether a private rebuke was enough, or whether she should prepare the ground for a formal complaint in committee against the respected chairman of the club. Probably not, she thought. She joined in the dancing when she was invited on to the floor by her friends, but she also canvassed support discreetly amongst like-minded members against what was plainly racist conduct.

  She deliberately ignored one man who would no doubt have given her his support. Olive had been one of the pioneers in the introduction of Asian members into the club, but she didn’t trust Younis Hafeez. She didn’t like the way he looked at women and she particularly deplored the way he looked at young girls. Olive was in charge of junior girls, and she had noticed Hafeez’s presence beside the courts with a disturbing frequency when her girls were playing. He professed an interest in the development of young talent, but she noticed that he wasn’t around when the boys were playing and that he took no interest in their progress. Olive Crawshaw knew better than to utter formal warnings against a man as powerful in the town and the tennis club as Hafeez, but she let it be known, whenever she could do so discreetly, that mothers and young women should not trust the man any further than they had to.