Tennis Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  ‘Here is a pound each, me dears.’ He handed them round, and pulled back the chimney. ‘Come on, twins, yours first.’

  It was fun to see the notes come tumbling through, because although, of course, one part of you knew that the whole house was hollow, and that naturally if you put something in at the top it would drop to the bottom, the other half could not help thinking of the pound note sliding down the bedroom chimney and walking in a very dignified way to the door and along the passage and then, step by step, down the stairs to the hall.

  ‘What’s the money for?’ Jim asked.

  Grandfather pulled David between his knees.

  ‘I was just going to tell you that. Years ago, when I was no bigger than Jim, I was given my first tennis-racket. It was a funny present, for where I lived there was no tennis-court. We had a house in a big London square, and Londoners, especially children, had no tennis-courts or clubs in those days. I used to look at that racket and wish I could play with it. Of course I took it across to the square gardens and we used it for rounders and tip-and-run, but I always thought those games rather a come-down for a lordly thing like a tennis-racket.’

  ‘Daddy gave Jim and me our rackets for our last birthday,’ Susan put in.

  ‘I know, my dear.’ Grandfather lifted his left eyebrow at her and the red hairs on it stood out more stiffly even than usual; it was a way they had when he was interested in what he was saying. ‘That’s just the point. I have an idea that you might be some good at tennis. It’s fun playing a game, however you play it; but to be first-class! That really is worth while. But games cost money, especially in London. That’s why I bought you this money-box. It’s where the savings can go which will keep you in rackets and balls and pay your subscription to a club.’

  Jim looked at the front door.

  ‘Will we always have to bring it down here when we want some money out of it?’

  Grandfather held out the key to his son.

  ‘No. I’m giving it to your father. Put it on your watch-chain, Edward.’

  Nicky frowned at the house, with her head on one side.

  ‘What I don’t see,’ she said at last, ‘is, who except you is going to put the money in?’

  Jim lifted the chimney and tried to look inside.

  We know there are four pounds in. That’s an awful lot of money. It will probably last years and years.’

  Grandfather shook his head.

  ‘Wish it would. Four pounds won’t even stand the rackets and the balls. Then, later on, there’ll be tournaments. If you’re going to be any good at all, you must play in a tournament or two.’

  ‘Tournaments!’ They all stared at him.

  ‘I say, do you mean proper ones with people watching?’ Jim asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ grandfather nodded. ‘There’s all sorts of expenses. Four pounds won’t last long.’

  ‘It won’t, indeed!’ Mrs. Heath agreed.

  ‘I suggest’—grandfather fingered the box as though he were fond of it—‘that everybody puts something in when they can.’ He smiled down at David who was fiddling in his pockets. ‘Even if it’s only a farthing.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Pinny felt the whole conversation was most admirable. ‘A penny saved to-day is a pound to-morrow.’

  ‘Not always,’ Jim objected. ‘I’ve had a penny since last Saturday. I saved it because it wasn’t enough to buy anything I wanted, and it isn’t a pound yet, it’s still just a penny.’

  Pinny smiled.

  ‘It’s been turned over so often in your pocket, Jim, that I’m afraid it’s the rolling stone gathering no moss.’

  ‘But rolling stones do,’ Jim argued. ‘I saw a stone once——’

  ‘Never mind, son,’ Dr. Heath interrupted. ‘I think I heard the bell for your dinner.’

  They all turned to go, then Susan came back.

  ‘Thank you for the house, grandfather. What shall we call it?’

  He looked at it thoughtfully.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘“Bella Vista” is sweetly pretty,’ Pinny suggested.

  ‘It ought to have something to do with tennis or money,’ Jim pointed out, trying not to show how stupid he thought Pinny’s idea was.

  Susan clasped her hands at the back of her neck, which was a way she had when she got an idea.

  ‘Let’s call it “The Tennis House.”’

  The other three came back to the table. They turned the house round to make sure the name would suit it. They moved the chimney and shook it to see that the notes were still inside.

  David finished examining it first.

  ‘I think “The Tennis House” is an admirable name.’

  So ‘The Tennis House’ the money-box became.

  CHAPTER II

  THE PRACTICE WALL

  You would have thought that, having the silver house, something would have been done about learning tennis the moment the family got back to Tulse Hill. It was not.

  On the journey back from grandfather’s, Dr. and Mrs. Heath travelled in one carriage and Pinny and the four children in another. This was because the train was crowded. In Dr. and Mrs. Heath’s carriage there was a woman and five children, a clergyman, an old lady with an annoying cough and a canary, and a farmer. In Pinny’s and the children’s carriage there were another family and their governess. They looked very dressed-up and affected sort of children, so, as the Heaths were in the carriage first and had got the windows, they turned their backs on them and played ‘Who can see the most cars?’ Susan and David against Jim and Nicky. They were so busy looking for cars that they never noticed the girl who sat next to Nicky. They would have noticed her in the ordinary way as she had a dreadfully swollen face, and they would have wanted to know why. After they had been travelling about an hour Dr. Heath came in to see how they were getting on. He saw the swollen face, and made a signal to them all to come out into the corridor. He told them he didn’t like the look of that face at all and they were not to go back into the carriage. Of course, as they had not noticed the face they had to look at it through the window, one by one so as not to be rude. The governess of the other children saw them looking and frowned, and made the child with the swollen face sit with her back to the corridor. They had all seen it by then, so it did not matter. Jim said he thought it was a bad tooth. Nicky thought a bee might have stung her. David said it was a ‘’brasion.’ Susan told them they were all stupid, obviously it was something infectious or daddy would not have fussed. They asked Pinny what made your face swell. Jim said he thought it was the Black Death because he was doing that in history, but Pinny said: ‘Mumps.’

  It must have been mumps because about a fortnight later lumps came up under Nicky’s ears. Although they hurt she did not say anything about them at first, because it was the last day of Jim’s holidays and they were motoring out into the country for a picnic. She was very cross at the picnic and felt so awful all over that in the end she told Pinny about the lumps. Pinny told Dr. Heath, who felt them and said: ‘That little wretch in the train! Bang goes half a term’s school fees.’

  In the end they all had it. Not together, which would have been bearable, but one by one. Nicky was getting up when David’s neck first got stiff. Jim was feeling too miserable to speak when Nicky and David felt well enough to fight noisily. Susan could not swallow at the moment when a patient of their father’s sent them peaches, so that the other three, who could eat perfectly, had hers as well as their own. In fact, an annoying illness calculated to make things like tennis houses go out of any one’s mind.

  Nobody went back to school until the half-term. It rained a great deal and they got very cross. Then, just when they were at their angriest with everybody and each other Dr. Heath remembered the tennis house, and Annie took a share in making them well.

  Of course it was not the weather to play tennis even if they had a court, and they could not join a club because Susan was still infectious. Then suddenly, one drizzly afternoon, Dr.
Heath said:

  ‘We’ll get a table-tennis set. Very good for teaching you to keep your eye on the ball, and it will be something to do.’

  Opening the tennis house was quite a ceremony. The children half hoped some more money might have got in while they had been ill, but it had not. One by one they put their heads flat upon the table (except Susan, whose neck still would not bend properly) and saw the four pounds lying in the hall. Dr. Heath took one. They thought the three left looked a lot of money.

  Of course, as they were infectious, the children were not allowed to go into the shops, but their father left them outside while he went to the sports department. Jim wanted to bring a bell with them, and, while the car was standing still, ring it and say: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ like the lepers used to do, but he was not allowed to.

  Dr. Heath bought a table-tennis set. They opened the parcel in the car and decided the money had been well spent. They drove home round by Piccadilly Circus, which was out of their way but cheering after mumps. Altogether it was a very good morning.

  They were not allowed to play much tennis at first because of after-effects of mumps, but they played a bit and, though they were not much good, it made something to do. Because they were only allowed to play a little they did not get tired of it as they had of ‘rummy’ and things like that, so not being allowed to play much had its advantages.

  Annie had been marvellous all the time they were ill. She had once had mumps and knew the not-swallowing stage, and she had been a great help at getting things down. Each day she had a different joke. The mere sound of her ‘Whoop, whoop, coming over’ outside the door made life less depressing. The jokes were not terribly funny really, but when it is milky stuff in a cup which, apart from being nasty, hurts to swallow, anything which takes your mind off it seems grand. Sometimes she dressed up. Sometimes she danced a breakdown while they drank. Sometimes she sang funny songs. On the days they were worst she did clown tricks. She came in very stuck out behind and then suddenly went flat. Another time she wore an old hat and a little stream of water came out of the top of it. They tried to make her tell how she worked the tricks, but she said:

  ‘No. We’ve measles, chicken-pox, and scarlet fever to have yet. We’ll keep ’em for those.’

  One day, when it was too wet and cold to go out, when they had played all the table tennis they were allowed to, when every other game anybody suggested they knew they would hate, Annie put her head round the door.

  ‘My! You look like freaks in a show. Get taken on anywhere as the longest faces in England. Why don’t you play something?’

  ‘We mayn’t play any more table tennis,’ Susan explained, ‘because of our glands.’

  ‘Well, what about us making toffee?’ Annie suggested.

  There was a tremendous rush at this. Toffee-making is, of course, always a nice thing to do, but with Annie it was especially fun. She would pull out long strands of toffee before it had quite set and explain with it how trapeze acts were done. She had a sneaking hope that perhaps she might talk one of them into taking up circus work as a career. To-day, as they were feeling miserable, she was especially talkative.

  ‘There’s nothin’ like the circus,’ she said, heaving a spoonful of toffee over. ‘You should see us in the early morning moving on. The smell of the breakfast cooking. The sounds of the men loading. The steam being got up on the old trailer.’

  ‘And I suppose a lot of animal noises?’ Jim took a little bit of toffee off the spoon and licked his finger. ‘Growls from lions, and things like that?’

  Annie stopped stirring and looked at him very scornfully.

  ‘Lions! Your ignorance, Jim! There aren’t no lions nor no tigers in a circus! “Cats,” that’s what we call ’em.’

  Susan pulled her arm.

  ‘Did they have “cats” down below while you were doing your act?’

  Annie went back to her stirring.

  ‘I never travelled with “cats,” not above once. The last turn, they are, on account of fixing the cage and that. Maybe I’d be doing me act when they were being set. What’d I care up in the air?’

  David looked into the saucepan to see how the toffee was doing.

  ‘By grabitation you might fall.’

  ‘Grab nothing,’ said Annie, who did not even know the word pronounced properly. ‘Fall, indeed! Why, I could hang upside-down a week and never drop.’

  Nicky stood on one leg and hopped round the kitchen table on the other.

  ‘But you couldn’t now?’

  ‘Bet I could. Not a week, because of me work. But upside-down never did mean anything to me nor never will.’ She passed the spoon she was using to Susan. ‘You keep that goin’. Now wait a minute while I find a bit of elastic.’

  Nicky stopped hopping.

  ‘We’ve no elastic strong enough to hold you.’

  ‘Hold me!’ Annie sniffed scornfully. ‘What’s the matter with me feet holding me?’ She found a length of elastic in a cup on the dresser. ‘Here we are.’

  Susan looked round from her stirring.

  ‘If it’s not to hold you up, what do you want elastic for?’

  ‘Me skirts.’ Annie tied the elastic round the bottom of her skirts. ‘Used to do a double somersault in our act. Pink tarlatan and fleshings I wore. Used to keep an elastic round me waist and push it down. Looked better, dad always said.’ She went over to the door, put a chair against it, stood on her hands, and hung on to the top of the door by her feet. ‘Take away the chair, Jim.’ She grinned at them. ‘This is where rightly there ought to be a roll on the drums.’

  Annie had to come down again because of the toffee; but they saw she had spoken the truth and really did not mind which way up she was.

  David examined the door.

  ‘It looks as though us could do that.’

  Annie laughed, and poured the toffee into a tin.

  ‘So you could, too, and a lot more besides.’

  Susan sat on the table.

  ‘Could we? Would you teach us?’

  ‘I would that. Bit of patter dancing too, you might learn. Not to mention juggling with three balls. Maybe that’s where we better start. The other two might be rough on your glands.’

  Juggling was where they started. They did not begin with three balls, of course, but with one. Annie said she had learnt a lot of juggling along of some cousins who were in the business. Her father had told Annie to learn all she could of it, as it was a fine training for the eye.

  ‘And I should think it was.’ Annie caught the balls nimbly as she talked. ‘I’d go over to them for a bit of dinner on a Sunday, and sudden he’d say: “Comin’ over!” and before you knew where you was there’d be ten or twelve plates skimming at you.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever break any?’ asked Susan. She sighed enviously, thinking how much more amusing meals would be eaten like that.

  ‘No. They wouldn’t break. Tin they was. Lost a front tooth, though, I did. Dad said he was glad of it. It would be a lesson to me not to take me eye off what I was doin’.’

  Annie’s dad’s views about the necessity of having your eye fixed on what you were doing were deeply embedded in Annie. The children found learning to juggle with a ball was fun, but sometimes it was more like lessons. Annie, bred to the circus, had spent her childhood at practice and yet more practice, and expected the children to do the same. She had them in a row in front of her in the afternoon and was very severe if they had not improved since the day before.

  ‘Now, Jim, a couple of hours in the big top wouldn’t hurt you in the morning. That’s the sixth time you’ve dropped that ball.

  ‘If you want to play marbles on the floor, David, no need to do it in my kitchen. This is jugglin’ what’s goin’ on here.

  ‘That’s better, Susan. No need to frown at it like that, though. A smile won’t hurt you.

  ‘All right, Nicky, we all know you can do it. But I seen many a good artist crash because it seemed to come natural. Nothin’ don’t come natural.
You may ’ave the gift, but there ain’t nothin’ but knowin’ your job what stands behind you.’

  When their health got better she added to her lesson a few steps in patter dancing. All the children were clumsy at this, but they liked doing it. They had to be stopped practising when the patients were about, the tapping made such a noise.

  The day before Jim went back to school Annie hung each of them upside-down on the door. They came down very red in the face, not really having liked it much, but of course nobody said so.

  What with table tennis, juggling, patter dancing, and hanging upside-down, as well as all the usual Christmas things, including going to Olympia with Annie and meeting a clown whom she knew, nobody thought about the tennis house in the Christmas holidays.

  It was in the Easter holidays that the twins had their letter from grandfather:

  MY DEAR TWINS,

  Looking round the shops for something for your tenth birthdays, which, unless I am much mistaken, will soon be here, I remembered the tennis house. How is it doing? I hope you are all practising hard and putting in plenty of pennies. I enclose a pound to help.

  Your affectionate

  GRANDFATHER.

  PS. Please tell David I am glad he liked the trucks for his train. Tell him now he is five I shall expect a letter written by himself. I am glad he had a nice birthday.

  Jim and Susan opened this letter between them. When letters came addressed to them both they opened them fairly. Susan slit one side of the envelope flap and Jim the other. Susan took the letter out. Jim straightened it. Susan read the first line, Jim the second, and so on down to the end. They had read joint letters like that ever since they could read at all, so they did it now without thinking. They read the letter out loud and everybody looked ashamed except David, who was annoyed by the postscript.