Games People Play (2 page)

But he seems to be able to run fast. I think that if Ivan carries on making a fuss about him and Rachel, he will soon run – in the opposite direction to where she is.

Then, like I tell Ivan, Rachel will hate him. She will look and look for Mark, and he will be off smiling at some other pretty girl. It’s funny: he is a lot like Ivan was at that age. Same colouring, similar build. Almost as arrogant too.

I go to make me and Ivan a cup of tea in the club kitchen. It gets me cross, the way the Intermediate section shamelessly steal teabags out of the Midweek members tupperware box. I know for a fact that it was half full only two days ago. Then the Intermediates played, and look! Now all that is left is five bags and a lot of brown powder at the bottom of the box. Of course they never leave any money in the tin provided. Someone (not me, too boring) will have to bring it up at the next committee meeting. Maybe Elsie. Elsie always likes to have something to make a fuss about.

I carry a mug of tea out to Ivan, who is restringing a racket for Rachel. I put the mug down on the table next to him – his favourite mug, it says ‘STRESSED’ on it in wavy brown letters – and watch him threading the catgut so fast in and out of the holes around the edge of the racket head, spinning it back and forth in its clamp so he can weave it back through again, pulling it taut each time.

He has always been good with his hands. When he was a little boy, he would sit for hours building Airfix models and then taking pains to decorate them with a particular shade of paint, the one he always used, what was it called? It came in tiny round tins whose lids I had to prise off for him with the edge of a screwdriver. Once the lid was off the paint, he never needed any further help. His tongue would stick out the corner of his mouth, and his frown lines started when he was nine.

‘Olive drab!’ I remember, out loud. Ivan looks at me as if he thinks I have lost my marbles. ‘Sorry,’ I say.

‘Seeing you do that reminds me of those models you used to make when you were seven or eight. You got through a lot of olive drab. Do you remember, we made a pyramid from the empty tins? It was big.’

He permits himself a small smile. I reach out to ruffle his hair, but he jerks his head away. He doesn’t like his hair being touched nowadays, I think since it got all thin in the middle.

‘You should smile more often, Sonny Jim. You are much better when you smile. At the moment you look like a black cloud. But it’s nice to see you down here. Helping you buy this place was the only way I get to see you these days!’

I am joking, of course, but he frowns and looks even more like a black cloud. I think it is because he didn’t like to be reminded that he’d had to borrow money from me and Ted to turn this place from the small-town tennis club I’ve been a member of for years, and where Rachel started playing, into what it is now: this big smart ‘academy’, with six new courts, a new bar and changing rooms with wooden mats on the floor, and Ivan’s name above the door in big letters. But perhaps I am wrong, for all he says is: ‘Don’t let anyone hear you call me that, Mama, it’s embarrassing.’

I laugh, but he doesn’t. Sonny Jim is a nickname I’ve used sometimes for him since he was a little boy. The shopkeeper at the end of the road used to call him that, and even though I had been in England for years, I’d never heard that expression before. I thought it was a term of endearment mixed up with the wrong name. I thought it was
Sunny
Jim, and I remember saying to this shopkeeper, ‘No, his name is not Jim. It is Ivan.’

But she kept on calling him Sonny Jim. Enormous bosoms, she had, that shopkeeper. They went from her neck to her waist.
She
could never have played tennis.

‘Do you think Rachel and Mark are still seeing each other?’

‘No, I don’t. Rachel’s a sensible girl. Zurich’s a huge tournament for her, and she knows she needs to get focused. There’s too much at stake.’

‘She needs to have fun too, Ivan. She is starting to look as serious as you do. All she does is play tennis and work out all the time. At least I managed to persuade her to come to the party tomorrow. Are you coming too?’

Ivan ignores me, just threading the catgut back through another hole. Sometimes he pretends I’m not there when I talk to him. It drives me mad. But I know he will come to the party. He moans about the Midweek and Intermediate sections, all us oldies. If he’d had his own way, he’d have got rid of the whole lot of us when he took over, but I wouldn’t let him. It was our club first, and so I made it a condition of the loan that he wouldn’t change when we could play. It’s a funny mixture here now of young foreign girls bouncing around learning to be pros and the likes of me and my friends who just want a sedate set or two of doubles, and then a nice cup of tea.

He’ll come to the party, though, I’m sure he will. He loves the attention. It takes his mind off whatever has bothered him for some time now. Years, I think, this particular thing has bothered him. I keep asking him what it is, if I can help, but he just ignores me. I think it is more than just his disappearing hair, or his unsatisfactory career, or the money he owes me and Ted.

I must confess, I was terribly disappointed when Ivan didn’t succeed as a professional tennis player. He looks so dashing on court, so tall and handsome, and I was so proud of him. I really thought he could be the British Number One. I used to dream of him holding up the Wimbledon trophy and blowing me a kiss from where he’d be standing, next to the Duchess of Kent.

I’d think of my cousins back in Korčula, in their ill-fitting nylon dresses, drinking their bitter coffees and watching my gorgeous son win Wimbledon on a wall-mounted television in an austere café on the square.

I had even planned out in my head the letter I’d write to them, alerting them to the fact that the very same Ivan Anderson who was through to the quarter-finals was my own boy: Ivanovic Korolija’s grandson.

I wouldn’t want to tempt fate, so I wouldn’t post the letter until he got to the quarter-finals, and then I’d have to send it Next Day Delivery, to make sure they didn’t miss the semi or the final. I’d address it to Sabrina Franulovic; from what I heard she was still the town gossip. I’d pretend that I was merely being solicitous, enquiring about the wellbeing of her and her family, then I’d drop in the part about Ivan being through to the quarter-finals, hotly tipped as the winner. I would have to get somebody to check my Croatian though, it’s got very rusty since Mama died.

I imagine us going back to visit, with Ivan, walking triumphantly into their dreary cafés and their dreary lives, probably unchanged since we were last there, when Ivan was just five years old.

Mama used to tell me how shocked they all were when she and Papa brought me over to England, and how they sucked their teeth and told each other we’d never survive in this big noisy country with no family around us, but they were wrong. We did. If those cousins could see the house Ted and I live in now, they’d think it was Buckingham Palace.

I don’t believe this is just because I married a rich man, either. Ted wouldn’t be as rich as he’s become if it weren’t for me. I taught him to make more out of his money. I would never let one penny go to waste. It’s our money. Our house.

Rachel

Tennis, tennis, bloody tennis. Even my social life revolves around it. Sometimes I feel so bored by it that I can hardly bear to pick up a racket, and the sight of those damn endless balls makes my heart sink.

Not always, though. It’s great when I’m winning, of course, and I love the challenge of it. Most of the time I feel grateful that at least there’s something I’m really good at – and I am really good.

Too good to give up…but not yet good enough to give up, either.

It’s just that I sometimes wonder if perhaps everyone could talk about something else for a change? Not much chance of that in my family, though: Dad – ex-British hopeful, coach, my business manager, Mr flaming Ambitious; my grandmother, Gordana – even more ambitious than Dad, if such a thing were possible. Only my mother doesn’t seem afflicted by this particular sporting obsession; she escaped nine years ago to live in the back end of nowhere in mid America.

So, because trying to imagine my family not talking about tennis is too much of a stretch, I try and imagine a different family altogether. A mum and dad in safe white collar jobs, home at six every night for dinner; siblings; regular family outings to Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty; queues for the bathroom, bickering; hugging; laughing conspiratorially…I hate being an only child.

It’s really hot in here. When Dad took over and revamped this place, a bit of airconditioning wouldn’t have gone amiss. I wish I was out in the cold night air, participating in the men’s training session, under the sickly yellow glow of the floodlights. Instead I’m squashed up at one of five trestle tables occupied by forty club members, mostly female and of a certain age. They’re all chatting loudly about house prices and school fees, their burgundy cheeks and shiny foreheads signalling that they’re as hot as I am. The lady opposite me, Margery, delves into her handbag and rather ostentatiously pulls out a silver compact. As she powders her nose, I see the compact is engraved with the words ‘Runner Up, the Winnie Wainthrop Midweek Trophy 2004’.

I’m sandwiched between my grandmother, Gordana, and another of the old club stalwarts, Elsie, and I wish I was pretty much anywhere else at all. I only agreed to come because Mark is training outside, but with Dad bound to turn up at any moment, I think it’s unlikely I’ll even get the chance to talk to Mark after his practice finishes.

‘Can’t we get some fresh air in here?’ I say, forgetting my alternative family daydream (we’d all be sitting down to shepherd’s pie and carrots about now, perhaps planning a holiday for next year, even though we should by rights all have grown out of the desire to go on holiday with our parents. They’d tease us, and make jokes, ‘When are we ever going to get rid of you all?’ but we’d know they were delighted we want to be included...)

I fan myself with a copy of the fixtures list. Through the stubbornly closed window, I watch Mark execute a perfect slice backhand on Court One, spreading both his arms wide after the shot as if he could take flight. The sight of him out there, his face ruddy with exertion, makes me feel even hotter.

‘And let all that warm air go to waste?’ Elsie frowns at me. ‘Do you have any idea how expensive it is to heat a place like this? No wonder our subscriptions are so high, with people like you going round opening windows willy nilly!’

Elsie is probably the same age as Gordana, early sixties, but behaves as if she is from a completely different generation. Gordana wears a nifty Nike ensemble on court: a tightish skirt and blue and white top which she absolutely still has the figure for, and in which, at a distance, she could pass for a woman in her forties. Elsie, on the other hand, plays in a hideous navy garment circa 1952, with about five million pleats in it to enable it to encompass her enormously wide hips. It rides up at the back to expose buttocks drooping in Billy Jean King frilly tennis knickers, and perfectly accentuates her Delta map of matching blue varicose veins and blancmangey legs.

She hates what’s happened to the club since Dad took it over. She hates having all these young, fit people around. I wonder why she still comes? Habit I suppose. She doesn’t even seem to enjoy her tennis any more. She has so many stipulations to be fulfilled before she’ll set foot on a court that it hardly seems worth it: she will only play on one of the two red courts and not on any of the green ones (too slippery), using Wilson balls, not Slazenger (I have no idea why); she refuses to play with men (too aggressive); she won’t stand for anybody chewing gum on court (too uncouth); and has a problem playing with anybody under forty (because they soon realize that she’s got a gammy leg and therefore can only hit the ball if it lands right at her feet).

When the conditions are acceptable for her to play, she’s a nightmare on court. Although she can’t run, can’t serve, can’t volley or lob, she finds it necessary to give ‘constructive’ criticism to whoever has the misfortune to partner her in doubles: ‘Don’t swing at your volleys!’ ‘That should have landed
inside
the baseline!’ I sometimes watch her out of the corner of my eye when I’m training on the next court with José, and I can’t believe some of the things she comes out with. Plus she’s a horrendous gossip, and nobody likes her. She lives in our street, which makes it worse: she’s always trying to cadge lifts off Dad, and he can’t stand her.

I gulp down half a glass of tepid white wine, and try to stop myself looking at my watch yet again. Only a few minutes till the men’s training finishes, and then perhaps there’ll be a chance of a furtive kiss with Mark before he goes off to the pub with the rest of his team. Providing Dad doesn’t turn up.

‘Where is Ivan?’ Gordana asks me, reading my mind.

There is an empty seat at the head of our table, and an expectant air to the other women around me. They all adore Dad.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen him all day. But I went to the gym at six this morning, and I haven’t been home since.’ My muscles ache as if reminding me of this, and I think longingly of my cool, firm mattress.

Bang on time, somebody switches off the floodlights, and the courts outside are plunged into pitch darkness. A few moments later six sweaty men burst through the door, shouting and laughing, causing a momentary hush in the chat of the women inside as we turn as one, some disapprovingly (Elsie: ugh, men); and some admiringly (Gordana and I).

‘Coming to join us, boys?’ calls Gordana in her husky voice, waving her wine glass merrily at them.

Her English is still slightly imperfect at times, even though she’s lived in this country since childhood. I am convinced she cultivates a Croatian accent for added sex appeal.

Mark smiles at me, but manages to make it look as if he is actually smiling at my grandmother. ‘Sorry, Gordana. Tempting, but we’ve got pints with our names on them waiting for us. Thanks anyway.’

They all jostle into the men’s changing room, and the chat in the room resumes, although the wistful looks on some of the ladies’ faces suggests that their minds are more on the fit, naked male bodies not ten feet away in the shower, rather than who is responsible for laundering the clubhouse curtains. There are
some
compensations for having their club overrun by youngsters…