41-Love, page 21
Before I leave, I fill in the form for membership and leave it with Judith. She says I can come in the next day to pick up my key fob and get my password for the computer booking system. I ask for a second form.
“My mixed doubles partner wants to join as well,” I say proudly. “Maybe you know Dan Brewer? He’s a coach at the leisure center.”
Judith shakes her head, but gives me another form anyway.
Dan isn’t in a hurry to fill it out, though. It sits on his desk for days, seemingly lost in a pile of sandwich containers and kids’ report forms. As a member of Canterbury LTC, I can have a guest—I think a maximum of three times a season—as long as I put £5 in the tub in the clubhouse. So the first time we play, Dan is there as my guest. Not that you’d think so, though. Dan seems to know everyone. He stops and chats with a guy named Chuck, and then someone named Steve. Simon, the head coach at Canterbury, is hitting balls to a tiny wiry dark-haired girl of about eleven, and when they stop for a break, he comes over and says hello to Dan, who doesn’t introduce me. In fact, both of them ignore me. Dan seems mildly stressed and unlike himself.
Never mind. Eventually we go onto our court.
“Wow. It’s, like, grainy,” Dan says of the artificial clay.
“You have played on it before, right?”
“Nope,” he says. “Do you really have to sweep it?”
“Yep. With real brooms. So you know Simon, then?” I say, noticing that Dan keeps glancing over at him.
“Yeah, I’m like . . .”
“What?”
Dan lowers his voice. “Don’t say anything, but I’m really scared of him. I literally can’t play badly while he’s watching.”
“He’s not watching. He’s coaching that girl.”
“Do you know who that is?”
“No. Who?”
“Tiegan Aitken. He coaches her all the time. For free. She’s going to be like number one in the country. She’s number one in county juniors at the moment.”
I feel unspeakably jealous all of sudden.
My dream. My dream. It’s not that it was even unattainable: people are living it all around me. It’s just that I never got to live it. Well, all that can still change, right?
When we start playing, it’s terrible. Dan clearly doesn’t want to be shown up playing with a recreational lady, so he slams the ball wildly all over the court while making unamusing banter and generally showing off. Two courts away from us, Simon shows no signs of noticing. I know this, because of course I’m trying to show off too. What if Simon did notice me, like, properly? He’s already turned me down for coaching, yes, but that was before he knew who I was. I imagine playing one of my perfect backhands down the line, or the crosscourt forehand winner that Dan always complains about, and Simon noticing and then talking to me afterward and offering to train me for international seniors’ competitions or whatever would interest him most. I get so lost in my fantasy that I don’t look around for ages and when I do, he and Tiegan have gone.
After that, Dan settles down too and we have quite a nice hit, although he thrashes me in the first game we play for points.
I’ve noticed that when we cross at the net after the first game of a set, when it’s customary to just change ends without sitting down, Dan never goes first. I assumed it was politeness, but today I sense something more.
“You go,” I say, stepping aside and gesturing.
“No, you.”
“Why won’t you go first?”
“It’s just a thing I’ve got,” he says. “If I cross the net first, something bad’ll happen.”
“What, you’ll lose?”
“No. Something worse.”
In the next drinks break, I tell Dan about Luke Green, the coach here who I only hit with, of course, fucking up so many of his serves and overheads. I say that Luke hits the ball in the net way more often than Dan does.
“Tosser,” says Dan, jealously.
“Dan,” I chide.
“And you’re sure he doesn’t actually coach you? It’s just hitting?”
“Of course. I told you.”
This is very sweet in its own way, but does not make me inclined to bring up Josh, which I really have to do soon, before we are found out.
Dan takes the first set 6–1, which is kind of depressing. But I remind myself that Sharapova came back from that against Halep in Madrid last week. Nadal will do the same thing against Andy Murray later today, although obviously I don’t know that yet. I focus on my game plan—hit deep to his backhand at all times—and actually get ahead in the next set, 4–3. Dan takes the next two games and although I get a point away from making it 5–5 he takes the set 6–4. I’m happy with that.
Dan is off to see Steve Davis performing in Ashford and is running late, so I agree to take his completed membership form down to the office. It’s a miracle that he’s remembered to do it at all. Obviously on the way I read it. I want to see what he’s written in the part where you have to describe your standard of play. I expect him to have put something like AWESOME TENNIS COACH in capital letters, or at least to have said something about being head coach at both the Indoor Tennis Centre and Folkestone. But instead it’s rather modest: “9.2, reasonable doubles player, currently playing in Kent and East Kent leagues.” But then he is modest, unlike me.
•
I’ve suffered from anxiety for most of my life. It got a lot worse after the abortion, but I’d be lying if I tried to blame it all on that. I can’t exactly blame my family complications either. When Mum and Gordian sat down with me when I was twelve and told me Gordian was my father, I was dazed and kind of pleased. Finally, something interesting had happened to me! I was probably most affected by Mum’s breakup with Steve when I was nine. When we first moved to Chelmsford I would lie in bed and imagine fires and floods and other natural disasters. I made the family do fire drills and felt thankful that we didn’t have those double-glazed windows that people couldn’t escape from. I would usually go to sleep terrified that something bad was going to happen overnight and I would never wake up. But even before that I’d been quite a timid child, afraid of the dark, ghosts, being on my own.
My anxiety has come and gone over the years. I’ve learned that I am worse if I have too much caffeine, alcohol, and sugar, and also, of course, when I am stressed. After we moved to our current seaside town in 2010, I was worried it was a mistake. It was just a bit too far from the university—a forty-five-minute drive that I would do too early with wet hair to try to beat the traffic and get a parking space. I was full-time then, running Creative Writing at Kent. This sounds grander than it was. Creative Writing occupies its own unique little space in the university—semi-independent but part of the School of English. It was like the professional equivalent of being a teenager who’s been given a small allowance. Every time a big decision needed to be made, someone else had to do it—often someone who wasn’t even as senior as me, but occupied a big admin role in the wider School of English.
Soon I developed a psychological problem with one part of the road into work: a long straight narrow section on which people drove a bit too fast. Eventually, I would shake and cry whenever I had to drive down it—or worse, my vision would blur and I’d be convinced I would pass out. What if I completely lost it and drove onto the wrong side of the road? What if I did it when a big lorry or bus was coming? What if I did it on purpose, in a terrible moment of madness? What was wrong with me? It was then that I signed up for the sessions with the transpersonal therapist who got me thinking about A Course in Miracles and being loved. It helped to unleash Scary Scarlett, but it genuinely enhanced my spirituality too. My thing with the road faded in the end and I felt a bit better. Reducing my hours and not being Director of Creative Writing helped even more, and led me to wonder whether giving up the university altogether would be better for my mental health.
Now, I’m not sure what tennis is doing to it.
The following Sunday is our first Aegon away match in Maidstone. We’re playing a team called LA Fitness Ladies. I imagine big boobs and high-cut rainbow-colored leotards. I plan a long circuitous route that will take about two hours but at least doesn’t involve motorways. Like my mother, I never drive on motorways. I completely freak out if I find myself on one: like the scene in Clueless, but not funny. My neck goes numb, then my arms, then my vision starts to blur.
Somehow, I don’t feel right the whole way to Maidstone. When I drive across a bridge over the M2 (the very motorway I’m specifically not driving on), I get a sudden vertiginous urge to throw myself off it. I think that if I had to stop here and contemplate the void below, I’d find it so painful I’d have to throw myself in. It’s basically vertigo, but on a motorway bridge. What the fuck? Until recently, all my anxieties have been about things outside myself. A fire, an earthquake, a plane crash. I used to insist on driving everywhere myself because I didn’t trust other drivers of any sort. But what happens if you can’t trust yourself? What if the problem is inside you, not outside? But the feeling passes quickly and I don’t think about it again for a while.
It takes ages to get to Maidstone the way I’m going, but it is a beautiful hot day, and I’m listening to cheap pop music on Heart FM, and once the anxiety about the motorway bridge passes, I feel pretty good. I love playing tennis in the heat: it’s one of my strengths. While visiting teams visibly wilt and complain that they feel faint in the ITC, I seem to be a pure machine running only on Evian water. I sweat like Nadal, like some kind of permanent spurting fountain, and then I simply replace all my fluids. It’s fine; pleasurable even. Later, when everything goes wrong, one of my theories about what’s wrong with me will be dehydration, and then I’ll realize that I should put a pinch of salt in my water, or a fizzy pink electrolyte tablet. But now? I do none of that.
LA Fitness is quite hard to find, and Siri isn’t much help. I drive around the one-way system a couple of times before realizing I have to go under an old Victorian railway bridge and into an industrial estate and then down a narrow concrete lane. It’s all cheerful, light and plastic inside, like a kind of dry swimming pool. There’s a brightly lit bar and some glossy suburban mothers and a couple of sulky teenage girls.
Fiona is waiting for me. She’s with Jane, the captain of LA Fitness Ladies.
“Well, it’s just us,” Fiona says.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “Margaret literally couldn’t find anyone else to play. She didn’t even tell me. She phoned Jane.”
Jane nods. “That’s right.”
“But why didn’t we cancel?” I say.
“It’s not fair to cancel altogether,” says Jane. “I mean, the girls want a game. And we’ve made a lot of afternoon tea.”
For God’s sake. I’m fuming. Maidstone is not exactly around the fucking corner. With only two players we can’t win or even draw. We should have just canceled and given LA Fitness the points. Of course, I never ended up captaining this Aegon team: Margaret decided to captain herself, which is fair enough. And somehow Becky ended up playing for us as well—at least, she’s apparently down for this game but can’t play. And Margaret has apparently been roped into working at the ITC and no one else was available, not even Kofo or Karen or Hayley.
“Margaret thought we’d want the games too,” says Fiona. “I mean, I bloody don’t. It’s my husband’s birthday today.”
“Yeah, and I’ve got to go to a dinner party in Faversham later. I could have done without this.”
Jane puts the two teenage girls, Lucy and Gabby, on against Fiona and me. We have to play singles first, then the doubles. My opponent Gabby is fifteen years old and a 5.1. This isn’t what I came here for. Although I suppose as an 8.2 I would have probably had to play her anyway, because I’m the highest rated in my team. But what’s a 5.1 doing in League 2 of Kent Aegon Team Tennis? Maybe League 1 is full of 2.1s and 1.2s. Unlikely, though, given that players of that standard would be playing national tournaments. Given the circumstances, it would be fairer and more fun for me and Fiona to play the older women. LA Fitness Ladies has won anyway. But no.
Gabby has beautiful pale blue eyes, high cheekbones, and shoulders made entirely of right angles. Oh, well. I’ve been here before. I don’t even need to give myself permission to lose, as it seems inevitable. I begin tight and embarrassed and still a bit annoyed because it would have been so much more fun to play the older women on the team. This is Vanessa Brill all over again. Gabby’s mother is watching, but there are other people too. A brother? Her father? They clap her good shots and call her Gabs. Everyone loves her. No one loves me. I have become an extra in Gabs’s life. Except she is having trouble returning my first serve, and not because it’s rubbish, either. If I hit to her forehand she kills it, but her backhand is not so strong. I keep to my game plan and play to her backhand as often as possible. In the end it’s 6–1, 6–1. But I am pleased that the two games I get are my service games and I win them properly. I am quite happy with my serve. I managed to return her serve well. I got good depth on a lot of my shots. And I am really loving playing in the heat, as I knew I would. But otherwise this is fucking depressing and so, so pointless.
Before we begin the doubles, the parents open a bottle of Chardonnay. They stand there in the shade, glasses of wine in hand, as the girls thrash us 6–0, 6–2. There is no shade on these courts, not even a tiny bit to stand in when we change ends. It doesn’t take long, but by the time we’ve finished, the parents are on to a second bottle of wine. After the match is over, we go into the bar and they, and the non-playing members of the team, order more wine, rosé this time. Afternoon tea is laid out on one of the low round tables in the bar area. It’s 100 percent wheat: cakes, sandwiches, pretzels.
“Oh God, I’m really sorry. I should have said I was gluten-free,” I say.
Jane glowers at me. “Those cakes are homemade,” she says.
“Come on,” says Fiona. “We’ll have to try and eat some of it.”
So I sit there eating Victoria sponge cake while Gabby’s and Lucy’s parents congratulate them and ask them about their training and their GCSEs and no one says anything to me at all.
•
I think Rod’s a bit pissed off with me. Why wouldn’t he be? After all, I am now obsessed with tennis to the exclusion of all else. We did manage a holiday, but I spent the whole thing reading tennis books, missing tennis, and thinking about going back to tennis. Which is why I’ve agreed to this dinner party I don’t want to go to, with his friends in Faversham. The deal is that we don’t stay long and he drives. There will be nice people there: Abdulrazak Gurnah and Denise Narian are good friends, and I always love seeing them. Then there’s Lyn Innes and Martin Schofield. I’m opposite Martin. Everyone’s into my tennis adventure, and I’m happy to talk about it. One great thing about tennis is it means I’m not socially awkward anymore. I always, always have conversation.
This evening, though, I’m fucking knackered. Yes, I do have my usual chilled post-exercise buzz, but it increasingly now flattens too quickly into exhaustion, into a state where I can only just keep going without knowing exactly what fuel I’m running on. But wait, I do know: it’s alcohol. After a couple of glasses of white wine, I feel a bit more sparkly, but when I go into the downstairs loo I’m sure everyone can hear me yelp as I try to sit on it to pee. It’s my knees. They are so tight and achy. And my quads. And my hamstrings. And my calves. My arm feels a lot better, though.
When I get back, Martin’s saying something about Laurence Goldstein, a colleague from another department in the university. I instinctively cue up my favorite Laurence story, although there are lots. My second favorite is from when I was on an appointments panel with Laurence for a lectureship in philosophy and we’d just finished reading the harrowing story of one applicant: a single mother who’d been disabled after a car accident and then found she had cancer.
“Well, she’s going to be a right whinger,” said Laurence into the awkward silence, with his perfect comic timing. It was exactly what you can’t say, what you’re not supposed to say, but what everyone’s thinking. And because Laurence was so kind and gentle, he could get away with saying things like that—just throwing a bit of honesty out there and seeing what came back.
But my favorite Laurence story is from just after the university decided to shut down the Center for Divination, a part of the Religious Studies department.
“They should have seen it coming,” said Laurence, with a cheeky grin.
Laurence joined the university the year after me, in 2005. He’d had a world-renowned academic post in Hong Kong just before that and had joined Kent as a professor. Being a novelist and, as I was at that time, a cricketer means you make all sorts of unusual connections around the university. I knew people from the Business School, Computing, Anthropology. One of my closest cricketing friends, Mudassar Iqbal, was working on a computer program that could predict the effects of certain viruses and hormones in the body. I think I first met Laurence because I was trying to get him to play on the staff cricket team. Or maybe it was because he, as a paradox-solving polymath, also roamed the university meeting new and different people and wanted to talk to me about paradoxes. He set up a Centre for Paradox and for a while four of us would meet and talk about how paradox was important in our particular disciplines. I planned to talk about paradox in Hamlet but never quite got around to it. In those days I was younger and more enthusiastic about the university. I wanted to know people, do things, be someone.
I haven’t seen Laurence for months, but he recently sent me a book through interoffice post about sport that I haven’t got around to reading yet. Last time I saw him he talked about how he wished he could swap the years he spent training as an elite cyclist for extra time to think about philosophy and Wittgenstein. I argued at the time that sport is pure philosophy: it means actually living, properly striving and struggling. I probably declared that it is Nietzschean; Dionysian.
“Yes,” Martin is saying, across the dinner table. “It’s an inoperable brain tumor.”
