Confessions of a Physical Wrac. Rosie Dixon

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СКАЧАТЬ to run towards me. It is ever so romantic. Just like those bits in the films when the two lovers run towards each other in slow motion. The only difference is that, in the films, one of the lovers does not catch his toe in the top of the net as he tries to vault it. Yes, thank goodness they are playing on a grass court otherwise it might have been serious. Geoffrey ploughs about five yards into the tramlines but gets away with a green nose turning to bright red at the tip.

      ‘Blast!’ he says. ‘I knew that bloody net was too high. None of my first serves were going in. How are you, Rosie? You’re looking super. Lovely and brown. I have missed you. How – oh –’ He looks at Penny and dries up. I don’t know what it is about her. She is wearing her normal kit of slightly too-tight jeans and a denim shirt with most of the buttons undone.

      ‘This is Penny Green,’ I say. ‘You have met – fleetingly.’

      ‘Yes,’ says Geoffrey. ‘I mean, oh yes. How could I ever forget?’ He stares at Penny and swallows hard.

      ‘Are you going to finish this game, old boy?’ says the man he is playing with. ‘You’re love-five down and fifteen-forty.’

      ‘Er – no,’ says Geoffrey, feeling his nose tenderly. ‘Let’s call it a draw, shall we? The light’s getting pretty bad anyway.’

      ‘Dammit, Wilkes!’ says the other man, throwing his racket on the ground. ‘I’ve never finished a game with you yet! How are we ever going to complete the club ladder?’

      But Geoffrey does not reply. He opens a gate beside the court and lets Penny and me into the grounds. ‘Jolly lucky you turning up like this,’ he says. ‘There’s a hop on tonight. You’ll be just what the doctor ordered.’

      ‘I’m not dressed for dancing,’ says Penny, plucking at the front of her shirt.

      Geoffrey flushes. ‘Oh, that’s all right. It’s nothing very swish. Anyway, I think you look super just the way you are.’

      ‘How sweet of you,’ says Penny.

      ‘Oh it’s nothing.’ Geoffrey twiddles his racket so fast that he drops it on the ground. ‘Would you – er care for a shandy or something? The bar should be open about now.’

      ‘That would be lovely,’ says Penny. ‘A large gin and tonic would be absolutely divine.’

      They go off together into the clubhouse and I breathe an enormous sigh of relief. Thank goodness they seem to have taken to each other. I could not have stood another setback on the human relationship front.

      ‘Derek Tharge,’ says the man Geoffrey was playing, coming up behind me. ‘You a member, are you?’ He says it in such a way that I am not certain whether he is expressing interest or accusing me of trespassing. He keeps swishing his racket at any daisy that dares to raise its head above grass level and has a permanently preoccupied expression on his face.

      ‘Rosie Dixon,’ I say. ‘I’m a friend of Geoffrey’s.’

      ‘Left me to pick up the balls as usual,’ says Tharge, suddenly leaping into the air and bringing down a shower of laburnum leaves with a crudely executed smash. ‘I was having a lot of trouble with my backhand today.’

      ‘Really,’ I say, thinking that I had better go and join Geoffrey and Penny before they wonder what has happened to me.

      ‘Yes, I never seem to get my whole game together at the same time. How I won the club championship, I’ll never know. I could hardly put a couple of decent shots together. Everybody else was in the same boat, I suppose.’

      ‘I expect they must have been,’ I say. ‘Well –’

      ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ says Tharge, throwing up a ball and serving it viciously through the window of the small hut where they keep all the broken deckchairs. ‘Ooops – sorry. Need to get this old fellow restrung, you know. That’s another problem, choosing which racket to use. I always think it’s a question of how they come to the hand. What’s your poison?’

      ‘It’s very kind of you,’ I say. ‘But I think my friends have probably bought me a drink.’

      In fact Geoffrey has not bought me a drink. He and Penny are thick as thieves in a corner choosing which of the Jimmy Shand records to put on when the dancing starts. I might as well leave them to it, I suppose. After all, I am going to need a bridesmaid – or is Penny too old to be a bridesmaid? Perhaps she will have to be a maid of honour. I must ask someone about it.

      ‘Going to change your mind?’ says Tharge, who has once again loomed up at my elbow. ‘I’m just going to have a lime and lemonade myself. I never drink anything intoxicating directly after a match.’

      ‘Thank you,’ I say, not wishing to appear rude. ‘A Babycham would be nice.’ I waggle my fingers at Geoffrey but he does not appear to see me.

      ‘I had a bit of trouble with my throw up recently,’ says Derek as he steers me towards one of the foam-rubber-disgorging, torn moquette-covered benches that surround the room.

      ‘Oh dear,’ I say. ‘Not the chipolatas again?’ There was once an unpleasant outbreak of food poisoning after a club barbecue and I imagine that it is something of this nature that Derek is referring to.

      ‘Couldn’t synchronise my arm movements at all,’ continues my companion. ‘It’s terrible when that happens. Your whole game goes to pieces. Ken Rosewall says that if you’re not getting your first service in eighty per cent of the time then you’ve got big problems, cobber – or it might have been Rod Laver. No, wait a moment –’

      The club is beginning to fill up a bit now and the first record goes down on the turntable. Nat King Cole. It seems only yesterday that Geoffrey held me tight in his arms and we drifted round the floor, impervious to all that was happening about us – at least, I was. Somebody had put something in the punch. I wish Geoffrey would ask me to dance now. It really is a bit naughty of him to spend all that time with Penny. And why are they wandering out on to the verandah?

      ‘… so I painted numbered squares all over the garage door.’ Derek Tharge’s voice drones on beside me. ‘Every day I go out there with a racket and a few balls and I shout out numbers to myself. Whatever number I shout, I have to hit the ball against that square. That’s something I learned from Lew Hoad. He used to do it when he was a kid.’

      ‘I believe most children do,’ I say, trying to look out on to the terrace. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.’

      ‘Or was it Frank Sedgeman?’ says Tharge. ‘You know, I think it might have been Spancho Gonzalez. Completely different continent. Amazing to think that he never won Wimbledon, isn’t it?’

      I don’t answer because I am now beginning to get worried about Geoffrey and Penny. What are they up to? Is it possible that they have formed some kind of attachment to each other? It hardly seems credible yet I know that Penny has consummated relationships with amazing speed in the past and that Geoffrey is very easily led astray. If he joined her in a large gin and tonic anything might be happening.

      ‘I’m not much of a dancer. Would you like to step outside?’

      ‘Thank you. Later.’ I say, not really listening to what he is saying.

      ‘I could show you the exercise I use for developing СКАЧАТЬ