Oxford Blood (18 page)

'Oh Ivo, are you going to play?' cried Lady St Ives.

'If anyone will play with an old man like me,' replied Lord St Ives genially. 'A geriatric doubles, perhaps, after this dashing match is over.' He settled himself down, as though the matter was decided. Jemima was nonetheless left with the impression that the tension within Eugenia which Proffy had in some way tried to relieve, had not subsided.

The tennis court itself, Jemima was
amused to note, was more in the
tradition of Lady St Ives' jewellery, antique splendour now much dimmed, than of anything more professional. Andrew Iverstone did indeed allow himself some fairly barbed references to the superiority of the court in - or rather near - Henley. Lord St Ives bore it all with great humour as he sat in a deck chair, itself not in its first youth, his face shaded by an aged straw hat, whose faded ribbon doubtless proclaimed membership of some exclusive club to which Andrew Iverstone had never belonged.

'Can't you get your people to look at this court, Ivo?' shouted Andrew Iverstone eventually, when he failed to return a modest lob from Saffron which landed in one of the more obvious craters.

'What people, my dear chap? I don't have any tennis people, I fear. This court was made before the war.
En-Tout-Cas.'
He gave the name exquisite French pronunciation. 'I must say it's lived up to the name. Until today that is.'

'I'll give you the name of ours,' grunted Iverstone, smashing a good low forehand drive from his daughter unexpectedly to Saffron's backhand and thus winning the point.

'Such charming people' fluted Daphne Iverstone in the vague direction of Gwendolen St Ives. 'Old-fashioned manners which I think make such a difference—'

'Be quiet, will you, Daphne, when we're playing.' Andrew Iverstone's politeness, in its own way as much a part of his public character as that of Lord St Ives, evidently did not stretch as far as the tennis court. Some of the other young sprawled temporarily by the court. They included Bernardo Valliera who proved to own both the Harley Davidson and the Porsche (how had he transported
both
to Saffron Ivy?). The dusty Cortina however did not belong to Jack who said cheerfully he could not afford a car, but to Proffy. The smart little Mini was a recent present from Saffron to Tiggie. Then the young departed for the croquet lawn which lay at some distance, sufficiently far for the gales of laughter which punctuated play to have a charming rather than irritating effect upon the ear.

Iverstone was at net where he made an imposing bull-like figure, his great red forehead gleaming with sweat; there was no doubt that he was still a formidable tennis player, and Jemima could well imagine that he had once been in the top class. In spite of his weight - in any case much of it still gave the impression of being muscle - he looked fit enough. Jack looked quite puny beside him and was, as he wryly admitted, still regularly beaten by his father on that immaculate Henley court.

'Since Daddy is a master of the chop shot, the slice, the top spin and all other similar ploys.'

'Tennis is about winning, my dear boy' was Andrew Iverstone's comment on this. All the same, Jack was a good player, with style and ease.

Jemima glanced at the spectators. It was odd how Eugenia Jones kept her glance quite rigidly fixed on Andrew Iverstone and to a lesser extent lack, her tension if anything increased. She remained silent throughout. Proffy on the other hand took an active interest in the game, shouted encouraging comments, applauded, and generally revealed himself in the rather unlikely role of a tennis buff. Although his ceaseless chatter might have put off some players, it was in a way preferable to E
ugenia Jones' unhappy silence. J
emima turned back to the court itself.

The wonder was that Saffron and Fanny had taken the first set; perhaps knowledge of local conditions, in the form of the court's bad patches, had helped them, Jemima reflected wryly. If Saffron in his tight white breeches and red vest looked like a stage gipsy, he played tennis more like a stage bullfighter in the sense that his tennis had the air of being conducted largely for the benefit of the spectators. There were frequent smashes, many of which landed against the rusty old netting at the end of the court, rather than anywhere more conventional within the white lines.

At any rate Andrew Iverstone and Jack took the second set quite easily, six-one. Although Jemima could not help noticing that Iverstone took advantage of every doubtful ball to call the score in his own favour, without any interference from Jack: it was so characteristic of the man. Even when the Iverstones were leading four-love against Saffron and Fanny, Andrew Iverstone insisted that a particular ball of his daughter's had been out although Jemima could have sworn that there was a tiny puff of chalk from the bedraggled court. Jack did nothing. After all, what was there for him to do? Only Saffron, with a deliberate swagger, carefully dropped the next few balls which came his way just over the net.

'Just to make sure, Cousin Andrew.' It was in fact this method which secured Saffron and Fanny their solitary game, since it defeated both Iverstone at the back of the court and Jack who waited for his father to take them.

None of this seemed to make much impact upon Tiggie, sitting on the grass at the side of the court and wearing a large flowered cotton sun bonnet - where had she found it? - which accorded oddly with the rest of her khaki outfit. She was totally docile, to the extent that Jemima wondered if she was actually aware of the play in progress.

The third and decisive set began. It did not seem likely that Saffron and Fanny would find their original form again. Tiggie's head in its large bonnet drooped. But it so happened that Saffron and Fanny, having gone a long way down at the start of the set, with Andrew Iverstone (and to a lesser extent Jack) grimly determined to pulverize every ball, now began to pull back.

This was partly due to Fanny's steady strong play: Saffron's comparison to Martina Navratilova was perhaps going a little far, but there was certainly something of the same d
etermined masculine style about
Fanny's tennis. Jemima discerned for the first time a distinct resemblance to her father in the stance of the well-muscled but shapely legs, for example, which were not particularly long but twinkled across the court at an astonishing pace to bat balls down the tramlines beyond her father's reach.

Saffron's smashes were also beginning to find their mark just inside the court instead of a yard outside it; and similarly his first service actually produced some aces, as well as the usual ration of ineffectively hard shots which left the aged net shaking as they slammed into it.

The score in games was now five-four to Saffron and Fanny, Saffron having just held his service with a triumphant last ace. Now Andrew Iverstone himself was serving, with Jack a slightly deferential figure at net. Jack's air of deference was in part due to the fact that his father's service had become just slightly erratic with age: although Iverstone was still capable of delivering balls with an amount of top-spin which made them highly challenging to return, he was equally capable of an apparently inexplicable double fault. In such a case, Iverstone's temper, like his service, could be erratic.

Now a series of these double faults from Iverstone had brought the score to deuce. Then Fanny in the right-hand court passed Jack at net with one of her well-placed drives. Andrew Iverstone glanced briefly and very angrily at the ball: for one moment Jemima thought he might actually call it out - although the ball was in by inches. Instead he said nothing. It was left to Saffron to sing out the score:

'Advantage Lord Saffron and Miss Iverstone, that popular young couple. Set point. Don't feel nervous.' Jemima thought it singularly tactless of him. After all, everybody realized it was set point. Nobody else commented. Saffron, still very much at his ease, crouched slightly to receive Andrew Iverstone's service.

It was at this very moment that Tiggie, for no particular reason that anyone could see, suddenly jerked into life. Her head came up and she stared at the court. Then she started to laugh and clap with uninhibited frenzy:

'Saffer, Saffer, ooh Saffer,' she clapped again, 'I've got something for you, Saffer.'

Jemima realized rather belatedly that Tiggie had to be stoned; not necessarily stoned out of her mind, but certainly stoned beyond the permissible level of a spectator at a tennis match. The symptoms which Jemima would soon have identified in metropolitan London had been so alien to the mellow environment of Saffron Ivy that she had failed to recognize them. Pot? Cocaine? Probably the latter, since Tiggie now seemed to be miming some form of sni
ff for the benefit of her fiancé
. Jemima wondered what Andrew Iverstone's reaction would be. It was not likely that this kind of interruption would be tolerated for very long by a man who had told his own wife to be quiet when he was playing a point. And at a crucial moment in the match.

Afterwards it was difficult to decide whether Tiggie's frenzied clapping, her cries of 'Saffer, oooh Saffer', had actually caught Andrew Iverstone in mid serve. As a matter of fact, he had probably already delivered the serve when she broke out into her little birdsong. All the same, fairly or not, the fact that the ball went into the net on the first service seemed not unconnected with Tiggie's cries.

Immediately Iverstone served again, too quickly perhaps. That service too foundered. In this low-key fashion the third and decisive set had been won by Saffron and Fanny.

In the prevailing silence - no one dared clap - Tiggie gave a loud titter: 'Oooh, there it goes again. Into the net. End of the set.'

At this point three things happened more or less simultaneously. Saffron flung up his racket in a whoop of triumph (the racket, unlike the net, was gleaming new): 'Six-four to the good guys. Well done, Cousin Fan.'

Lord St Ives went with great speed behind Tiggie's chair and started to help her up with the words: 'Come along, Antigone my dear.'

And Andrew Iverstone, with astonishing viciousness, aimed a ball hard at precisely that bit of wire netting which protected Tiggie's frail figure from the game's onslaught. 'Little bitch!' he shouted.

That in itself might not have mattered so much had the Saffron Ivy netting been of the high quality of, say, the Iverstone court at Henley. Only too clearly, it was not. The impact caused a large section of the blackened netting to fall to the ground, amid an unpleasant hail of rust. The ball itself struck Tiggie just as she was obediently rising to Lord St Ives' command. Shock, more than pain, must have caused her to give a short scream. Tiggie opened her large eyes and sucked her finger.

Jemima involuntarily looked towards the court. Andrew Iverstone stood panting and flushed as though struggling to master himself and resume the mantle of his manners. And on Jack Iverstone's face she saw a surprised look of absolute disgust, presumably at his father's behaviour, so strong as to amount to something close to hatred.

Jemima sighed. She pitied him.

'Daddy, don't be such a bad loser.' Fanny's bracing voice came as a positive relief. Jemima watched, fascinated, as the mask of i
mpas
sivity came down again on Jack's face; there was now no trace of the strong emotion he had exhibited only a moment before.

'I'm terribly sorry.' Andrew Iverstone's voice was musical in its apology; he made a theatrical gesture with his hands. 'How could I be such an oat? Fanny's quite right. I'm the most awful loser.' He made it sound as if this was a charming eccentricity on his part. 'Antigone, are you all right?'

But Tiggie was being helped towards the house by Lord St Ives - 'I'll be back later for my game' - and Saffron, whose high spirits were quite unimpaired by recent happenings, was busy trying to do a breakdance on the court.

'Jemima, can you do this?' he called. Saffron made no attempt to follow Tiggie, nor for that matter did her mother. When Lord St Ives finally returned, dressed in ancient white flannels which in no way diminished his air of battered elegance, it was to find the little party at the court, spectators and exhausted players, waiting in a silence which still had a great deal of awkwardness about it.

'Now for the Golden Oldies!' cried Saffron, whose gyrations were by now quite unnerving.

'Personally, I need a fast runner for a partner, one who's going to take every shot in the front of the court. My dear boy, if
you're
to fill that role—' Lord St Ives looked pointedly towards Saffron, who was still standing on the top of his head '- do take care.'

'We'll take you on, Ivo. Fathers and sons. Jack and I against you and Saffron.' Andrew Iverstone stood up. He still looked heavily flushed. Jemima could understand why Daphne Iverstone began a tremulous protest.

'Oh darling, you know what the doctor said—'

She expected Andrew Iverstone, in spite of his state, to administer a sharp snap to his wife. Instead of which Iverstone hesitated, then smiled affably and sat down again.