The Tennis Player from Bermuda (39 page)

“Mark, we’re going to be away from one another for most of the next year. I’ll be at Hopkins, and you’ll be in London. I don’t want you to so much as look at another girl. I’m not going to sit in Baltimore and worry about what you’re doing.”

“Fiona, I’m committed to you. I’m not going to look at any other girl.”

“Good.”

“Fiona, I’m in love with you. I want you to marry me. Are you saying you will?”

“I might work out my internship so that I could be in London. I like Guy’s; maybe they’ll take me in even though I’ve trained at Hopkins.”

“Fiona, please give me a straight answer. What are you going to do?”

I sighed. “I guess I’m going to go back to Claire’s and place an international call to Baltimore. I don’t know if I’ll be able to reach my boyfriend on a Saturday. If he’s in our lab, I can get him, but maybe he’ll be out and about.” I looked at my watch. It was past five in London, so it was early afternoon in Baltimore.

“What are you going to tell him?” Mark asked.

“I’ll probably begin by saying that I’d rather eat a lizard than tell him what I’m about to tell him.”

“Which is what?”

“That a long time ago in Bermuda, I met someone, and this summer in London I’ve met him again, and I’ve fallen in love with him. And that I’m going to marry this person.”

He leaned over and kissed me. “Let me come with you to Claire’s.”

I smiled. “No. I’ll be upset after talking with my boyfriend. Claire would put you out on the street before she’d let you see me upset.”

I thought for a second. “I don’t mean to keep calling him my boyfriend. He’s not any longer. So don’t take that the wrong way. But I do have to tell him myself, and that’ll be a sad telephone call. I can’t help that. You’re all right with my making that call? This just has to be all unwound, and it’s unfair to him for me to wait even a day to tell him.”

Mark said, “But you will marry me? You won’t change your mind?”

“No, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m in love with you, and I’m going to marry you.”

“Tonight you could stay over at my flat.”

“No, give me an evening by myself. I need to move from one part of my life to the next. Claire will want to talk to me. And I have to write to my parents. Are you in hospital tomorrow?”

“Yes. I’m due to be off at seven Sunday evening, but you know how that works.”

“I’ll go to market tomorrow and buy something for us for dinner tomorrow night. Do you hide a spare key to your flat?”

“Yes,” Mark said. “It’s under an empty milk bottle in the hallway.”

“That’s not an original place to hide a key.”

“If I put it in an original hiding place, I wouldn’t be able to remember where I put it.”

“I’ll let myself into your flat and make dinner for us tomorrow. I have to warn you that I’m not much of a cook.”

“Will you spend the night?”

“Yes, I’ll stay over. I’ll bring some of my things. I have to be scrubbed at Guy’s by seven Monday morning.”

“We could make love again.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.” I smiled at him. “I like keeping you in suspense. We’ll be making love to one another for a long time once we’re married.”

“I look forward to that. I promise to make love to you when you’re a grandmother.” He’s kept this particular promise.

He leaned over to kiss me again, but just then, someone called out loudly, “Hallo! You there!” I looked up to see Richard Hawkins, the groundskeeper, standing on St. Mary’s Walk across Court 13 from us. “This court is closed.”

Then Richard recognized me. “It’s good to see you again, Fiona,” he said. “And I’m sorry. But you know the outer courts are all closed. I have to begin working on them.”

“Richard, we’re not playing tennis,” I said. “We’ve just become engaged to be married.”

That stopped Richard in his tracks. “Oh. Well, then. Fiona, my congratulations.” And he walked off.

S
UMMER
1969
M
Y
W
EDDING
B
ERMUDA

The afternoon before my wedding, we had a family picnic on Warwick Long Bay. Mark was holding me against his chest as we sat on the beach, when he suddenly pointed down the beach.

I looked. Fifty meters or so away, Myrtle Hanson had rolled up her skirt and was standing in the Atlantic surf, holding young Fiona’s hand. When the surf rolled out, Myrtle found a fragment of a pink shell for young Fiona, and the two of them bent over to marvel at the bit of shell.

Claire’s head popped up. She had been sitting in a beach chair talking intently with Rachel. From the way Claire had been twirling her index finger, I could tell they were talking about how a tennis ball spins in flight. As though there was anything more to be said on that topic. Now it was almost dusk, and Claire wanted to locate her children.

Her boys were climbing some rocks at the far end of the bay.

Myrtle carried young Fiona back to our beach encampment. She had fallen fast asleep on Myrtle’s shoulder. She put her down on a beach towel and then covered her with another towel.

The only way to tell there was a little girl curled up under the towel was the blond hair spilling out from under one end of the towel, and the tiny left foot sticking out the other. Claire reached down and pulled the towel to cover her daughter’s foot.

I can’t recall which of us asked the question. Maybe it was me, but looking back – it might have been Myrtle.

“Will she be a Wimbledon champion?”

Rachel replied, “Yes.”

And so, the next morning I married Mark in the garden of Midpoint. I wore Mother’s wedding dress. She had altered it to fit me, just as my grandmothers had altered it to fit Mother, and she had gotten most of the mildew off it.

Father gave me away, and Claire and Rachel stood beside me. Myrtle Hanson was holding young Fiona. They had taken a liking to one another.

The sky that morning was the blue that you see only in Bermuda, and during the short service, I turned my head to hear the soft clop, clop of an old farmer’s horse-drawn cart far below on Harbour Road.

E
PILOGUE

KOOYONG, 1987

J
ANUARY
1987
A
USTRALIAN
O
PEN
K
OOYONG
L
AWN
T
ENNIS
C
LUB
M
ELBOURNE
, A
USTRALIA

Late afternoon. A sunny day in Melbourne but cool for January. Claire, Richard, Myrtle, Mark, and I were having a late lunch on the balcony just outside the members’ bar of the Kooyong clubhouse. The Australian Open was on, and there were huge crowds milling about on the lawns below us. I was amazed at how well the Aussies were able to stage a global tournament at such a small, private grass court club. But this year would be it. In 1988, the Australian Open would leave Kooyong forever and move to the composition courts at Flinders Park in Melbourne.

Young Fiona and Rachel were in the media tent for the (mandatory) post-match press conference. Earlier that afternoon, young Fiona had won her quarterfinal match at Kooyong against a top seed in three sets. She was in the semifinals of the Australian Open.

Just after young Fiona won, Claire had said to Rachel, “Will you go with her to the press conference? Keep her from saying anything shocking on television.”

“Any suggestions on how to do that?” Rachel asked.

Claire thought for a moment. “Nothing comes to mind. But you’re her coach, you’ll think of something. Clap your hand over her mouth perhaps?”

Rachel snorted.

For lunch, Claire and I both ordered chicken salad sandwiches, and when the waiter set the plates in front of us, Claire, without a word, reached over with her knife and fork, cut my sandwich in two, deftly transferred the larger part to her own plate, and began eating.

I didn’t bother objecting. Claire would eat everything in sight, even if the food in question happened to be on my plate. She would never change.

My twin daughters appeared on the balcony.

“Mom,” one of them whispered. “You have to come see something.”

“I’m having lunch.”

The other twin clutched at my sleeve. “Now, Mom. You have to see this.”

Myrtle looked at the twins with her head cocked to one side. Usually, one look from Myrtle was enough to cause the twins to back down from whatever mischief they were up to, but this time they persisted.

I sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

The twins practically dragged me inside the members’ bar.

One of them thrust out her teenage hip and pointed at the wall in an exaggerated way. “Who is
that
?”

“That’s the Club’s portrait of Harry Hopman.”

The twins rolled their eyes.

“Not the portrait, Mom. The
photo
next to it.”

The old black and white photograph hanging on the wall showed a shy young girl clutching her racket to her chest.

“Oh. That’s your tennis coach.” The twins had grown up playing with Rachel on the grass court at Tempest, our home in Bermuda.

The twins looked at one another with their usual where-did-we-find-this-mother expression.

“Mom,” one of them said. “It’s not Rachel.”

“It looks like her, though,” the other said.

“But it couldn’t be. The girl in the photo is a teenager.”

“Yeah, it’s not possible.”

I laughed. “I have news for you two. It’s a photo of Rachel after she won the championship here at Kooyong. May I return to lunch?”

The next day the twins played one another in the Australian junior girls’ final. Claire and young Fiona knocked up with the twins before the match. Claire almost never hit tennis balls in public, and I could hear the excited whispers running through the crowd: “Claire Kershaw is practicing on court 8.” Minutes later, the sides of the grass court were thronged with spectators.

It was even cooler that day in Melbourne, and young Fiona was wearing Rachel’s ragged Kooyong sweater. I had given it to her the year before when she had been invited to play at Roehampton, where she had qualified for the Wimbledon draw.

It can be chilly in London in June, and I felt better knowing young Fiona had something warm to wear.

A steward arrived to take the twins into the old Kooyong stadium. The twins had Mark’s strawberry blond hair and good looks. They were beautiful, really. I had sewn small Bermuda flags on their tennis dresses.

Young Fiona gave them each a hug. The twins adored young Fiona; to them, she was their older sister. Rachel said to the twins, simply, “Good luck.”

Once we took our seats, Mark said to me, “I can’t watch,” and he put his head in his hands.

The chair umpire switched on her microphone and turned to her left.

“Lady Rachel Thakeham, are you ready?”

“Ready!”

The umpire turned to her right.

“Lady Claire Thakeham, are you ready?”

“Ready!”

“Lady Rachel to serve. Play.”

Young Rachel tossed the tennis ball high and out, cocked her racket deep behind her shoulder, went up on her toes, whipped the racket forward, slammed the ball and ran toward the net.

Acknowledgements