‘That service ought to suit you when you’ve got the hang of it. Stupid to try it out in a tournament, though. But it’s shaping. When we get back you must go up to the club and get some practice. Might work at it during the term, when you get a chance. You could do some good if you go on as you are doing.’
On the day when Susan was to play her first match an awful thing happened. Agag was lost.
As dogs go Agag had unusually set habits. Every morning when Annie came down she opened the front door for him and let him out. This early morning walk was no smell, sniff, and saunter. Briskly, like a city gentleman catching the 8.40, he would set off up the road. No one knew where he went, but in about an hour he came home. Obviously, in his mind, this morning walk was what a day in the office is to a man. He felt when it was over he deserved his comforts. He would lie down in his basket with a sigh of exhaustion. He would roll over on to his back. He would wriggle his rug so that it completely covered him. Then he would sleep. Later in the morning he was willing to put in an appearance. He would go for a walk, if a walk were going. In the winter he would leave his basket for a seat by the fire. In the summer he would lie in the sun in the garden. At Pevensey, if nothing better offered, he would find a starfish and eat it. But no matter where he was or what he was doing, at the first note of Annie’s ‘Whoop, whoop! Coming over!’ he was in the house and sitting by the place where his lunch would be put. He was not allowed his lunch before the family, and if they were late he would look up at them in the most injured way, as if to say:
‘Really, can’t a poor tired city man have his meals on time?’
When his dinner came he swallowed it at top speed. Then he would sit down. He would study his empty plate and think over what he had just eaten. If he considered that he had been treated meanly, he had invented his own way of complaining. He would pick his plate up in his mouth and run round the table. He would pause now and again to tap it on the floor to show, not only that it was empty, but there had not been enough in it to begin with. Usually he was lucky. None of the children could resist him when he had his plate in his mouth. Mrs. Heath was tired of saying:
‘Darlings, you’ll ruin his figure!’
Dr. Heath always said:
‘The dog has had more than enough. Don’t want to make a lapdog of him.’
In the evenings he was either supposed to sit on the floor, or he could go into his basket, which lived in what was called the flower room, though really rubbish room would have been a better name. But Agag was not a dog to bow to the opinions of others. Night after night he would come into the drawing-room and sit down just where he wanted his basket put. First he kept up a series of little whines. Then when these were not attended to, and they never were, he began to bark. Every night the same sort of conversation followed. Mrs. Heath said:
‘Be quiet, Agag. Don’t let’s give in to him, Pinny. He must learn. If he wants to go to bed he must do it in the proper place.’
Then Dr. Heath would look up.
‘Quiet, Agag. Lie down, old man.’
‘Do be quiet, dear,’ Pinny would say gently. ‘You’re disturbing dear kind master and mistress, and you know the doctor’s tired.’
Agag cared for none of these remarks. Nicky and David were in bed, but the twins were there to support him. He would throw them a look out of the corner of his eye, as much as to say: ‘How long do you give them before they give in?’ Sure enough, after a bit either Dr. or Mrs. Heath would say to either Jim or Susan:
‘I suppose we’ll have no peace if he doesn’t have his basket. Better get it for him. But he is a bad dog. He ought to learn.’
Even when his basket was fetched that was not the end. On the hottest of nights he expected to be entirely covered by a rug. Just tucking him in was nowhere near enough. He expected a great deal of trouble taken. If the rug was not exactly as he liked it he would get out of bed again and bark until it was put straight.
‘Really, Agag,’ Mrs. Heath would say, ‘it’s much too hot for a rug. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t give in to him, Susan.’
Dr. Heath would look at Agag severely.
‘What a lily that dog is! Most unhealthy. Rolled up in a rug on a night like this. Lie down, old man. Nobody is going to bother with you.’
Pinny would look up from her knitting.
‘Naughty, naughty boy. Silence is golden, you know.’
But Agag paid not the slightest attention. He knew his Jim and Susan. In a minute one of them would be across. They would tuck him up. Pat his rug in the proper places. Show a nice respect for the way a tired dog expected to be treated.
Susan’s tennis match was looked forward to by them all. She had a bye, and Dr. Heath had seen the girl play in the first round who was now drawn against her. On form Susan should win.
On the day of the match Agag trotted out as usual, looking as though he was catching a train, and disappeared, but this morning he did not come back. Susan’s match had been posted to be played at ten o’clock. Breakfast was at half-past eight. It was almost over before they realized that Agag was missing. There was the most frightful hullabaloo. They ran up and down the beach, shouting; but not a bark, not a sound. Susan came to her father with the tears pouring down her cheeks.
‘I can’t play. The poor little fellow may be hurt or drowned.’
‘I shan’t go and watch,’ Nicky sniffed. ‘I must stay here and hunt.’
Dr. Heath was as worried as everybody else, but he did not believe in scratching matches for which one had entered to play. He took both Nicky and Susan by an arm each.
‘We’re all going in. And Susan’s going to win. Directly the match is over we’ll ring up. If Agag isn’t back, we’ll all come and help hunt. Is that agreed? He looked first at Jim, then at Nicky, and last of all at Susan.
Susan tried terribly hard to stop crying. But she was certain somewhere a long little brown body was lying. Never to bark again or carry a plate. Her father took her by the chin. He turned up her face.
‘Well, old lady, let’s see your courage.’
Susan forced her face into what was almost a smile.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’
Pinny patted her on the back.
‘There’s a splendid girl. Be sure I shall look for our little man. Many hands make light work, you know.’
Jim was already in the car. He looked out of the window.
‘Agag won’t be found with hands. You ought to say either eyes or voices.’ But he spoke in so dispirited a way that nobody argued with him. They were all too depressed.
David was appalled at the tragedy that had fallen on the house. Agag gone. Susan crying, so that she would not win her tennis match. Directly the car had disappeared he set off inland. ‘It’s me must find him,’ he told himself firmly.
David walked for about half a mile, calling Agag all the way. It was not very likely that he would find him. It was sandy country without much in the way of a rabbit, and there were marshes and water. Then suddenly he came to a group of cottages. Behind the first cottage was a dustbin. Standing up, looking into the dustbin, was Agag.
‘Agag!’ said David in a very shocked voice, for when you have been certain that your dog has either been drowned or caught in a trap, it is humiliating to find him stealing things out of a dustbin. Agag evidently felt he had done the wrong thing. He put down his tail. He came over to David with his legs so bent that he did not seem to have any at all. He seemed merely creeping along like a snake.
‘You are a bad boy.’ David took off his sandal. He held Agag by the collar and hit him hard three times. Then he put on his sandal again, took Agag in his arms, and kissed him. Agag, with a tongue all over dustbin, licked David’s face. They had as big a reunion scene as though he had been lost for days instead of only about two hours. All the same David said to him affectionately:
‘All this lickin’ isn’t going to make things right. Susan thinks you’re lost and she won’t win. You an’ me have got
to go to Eastbourne.’
It was all very well to say that they must go to Eastbourne, but how were a dog and a boy with no money to get there? David stopped a man who was going by on a bicycle.
‘Could you tell me the time?’ he asked politely.
The man looked at his watch.
‘Ten to ten.’
‘Could you tell me,’ David went on, ‘how I would get to Eastbourne from here?’
‘Bus,’ said the man over his shoulder. He pedalled on a little further. Then he looked back again. ‘Be along in about five minutes.’
David puzzled, as he often had before, at the stupidity of grown-ups. Neither he nor Agag looked moneyed people, yet the moment you asked how to get anywhere you were told ‘Bus,’ just as if buses did not cost anything. Stupid to go about talking to people just as though everybody had money in their pockets. He looked up the road. A lorry was coming towards them. He picked up Agag and stepped forward and held out his hand. The lorry stopped.
‘Well,’ said the man. ‘What’s up?’
‘Were you going to Eastbourne?’ David asked politely. ‘If so, would you take me and my dog?’ He looked down at Agag. ‘He’s a very safe dog. He never bites.’
The man opened the little door beside him.
‘Hop in.’
It was nice riding on the lorry. The man said that he was taking wood for building a house. David explained all about Agag being lost and the tennis tournament. The man said, well, the wood was for the old town anyhow, and it wouldn’t be far out of his way to drop David at the Devonshire Park. He agreed with David that Susan was very unlikely to win if she was worried about Agag being lost.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘my missus had a cat called Jane. She was off for three days. Shocking, it was. My missus never stopped crying. I seemed to have no heart for me work.’
David pulled Agag more securely on to his knee.
‘And did Jane come back all right?’
The man nodded.
‘Walked in as cool as a cucumber, with never a by your leave or anything.’
David tried to picture a cat looking like a cucumber.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘She must have looked terribly thin. Never having eaten anything for three days.’
The man blew his horn in a scornful sort of way.
‘Don’t you believe it. Cats always falls on their feet. Three days or three weeks, it’s all one to them. Come in looking as fat as I don’t know what.’
‘Oh!’ said David, puzzling why the man knew that Jane looked like a cucumber, when he did not know what she looked like. ‘I wonder where she went to.’
‘Ah!’ The man spoke in the gloomy tones of one who fears the worst. ‘That’s a thing we won’t never know.’ He stopped the lorry. ‘Well, here’s the Devonshire Park.’
David got out of the lorry and stood Agag in the road.
‘Thank you very much indeed for your kindness,’ he said politely. ‘Please remember me to Jane and your missus.’
‘I will,’ the man agreed. ‘Hope Susan wins.’ He started the lorry again and drove off.
David and Agag went to the entrance to the Devonshire Park, and for the first time he realized a terrible thing. It cost money to get in. There was a turnstile gate and people walking through, and some had tickets and some paid, but nobody got in for nothing. After a time he noticed that the man who was taking the money did not ask some of the people for a ticket or money. They began to get a ticket out of their bag or pocket, but the man always nodded.
‘That’s all right, sir,’ or ‘madam,’ he said. ‘Nice morning.’
Presently a car drove up with a lady dressed in purple inside. She was obviously the sort of lady that people did not look at the tickets of; the sort people saluted and said ‘Good morning’ to. David took Agag under his arm and got close behind the lady. She had a great deal of skirt. He caught hold of a little bit of it.
‘Good morning, madam,’ said the park attendant. ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ the lady agreed in the grandest kind of voice, and pushed through. David kept to the side of her that was furthest from the man. He pushed through too. Even fastened to the lady in purple he would never have got in for nothing, but luckily the man was taking some money from somebody else and did not notice him.
Lawn tennis, like everything else in the world, needs all your concentration to do well at it. Susan tried to give her match all her concentration. She served well, making very few faults. She took her returns properly, getting quickly into the right positions. She used her wits and kept the other girl moving. But there was just the edge off her play. There was a lack of strength in her drives, a lack of energy in her service. When they changed courts she kept thinking: ‘Perhaps he’s turning over and over in the sea, like a bottle. Perhaps I won’t see him any more.’ Then her eyes would fill with tears.
The family did not help her much. It was obvious from their long, miserable faces nobody but Dr. Heath was thinking about the game, and he was only part of the time.
Her opponent won the first set 6—4, then she won the first five games in the second set. ‘Oh dear, I am being a disappointment to daddy,’ Susan thought; ‘but I can’t help it. What’s it matter if I win or not, if Agag’s dead.’
It was her service. She picked up two balls. She raised her racket. Then she was startled by a noise through the wire fencing behind her. She looked round. A shiny wet little nose was stuck through the hole in the wire. One blue eye and one brown eye were staring at her. David was holding Agag. He was panting with excitement.
‘He’s found, Sukey, he’s found. Now you must win!’
Susan felt all swollen inside, she was so happy. She slammed her service across the net. She won her service. She won the next game. She won that set. Then she took the third set. ‘Game, set, and match to Susan Heath,’ said the umpire. Susan shook her opponent by the hand. Then she raced round to David.
‘Did you know, in the middle, he was found, Sukey?’ Nicky asked.
Dr. Heath pulled her plaits.
‘Did she know! You’re a bad girl. Even losing Agag oughtn’t to put you off your game.’ Then he smiled at her. ‘But it was grand to see you win.’
CHAPTER XI
THE TENNIS COACH
Susan got through three rounds in the South of England Junior Tournament. She was mentioned in the local papers. In fact, she felt somebody. She came back to Tulse Hill accepted as the best player in the family.
Being a bit of a success gave her a temporary confidence. She did very well indeed in the Junior Covered Court Championship at Christmas. She was not knocked out until the third round, and then it was by that year’s champion. She might have had luck. The first girl she played against had a heavy cold. The second was weak anyway. She was only in the second round thanks to a bye. But still, Susan was not knocked out until the third round, which was something to be proud of.
For her match with the champion there was quite a gallery. Other players, other players’ parents, critics from the newspapers. Susan hated all the staring faces, but she was getting more used to them. Besides, it gives you confidence to know you play fairly well, or at any rate are not likely to make a fool of yourself.
After the match several of the papers had things about her in them. They said Miss S. Heath had done very well to take two games off so experienced a player; they said her volleying was resolute. They said she made one or two splendid drop shots; they said she was apt to forget where her opponents’ weaknesses lay, but she would remember with more experience; they said little Miss S. Heath had no chance against the brilliance of her adversary; she had, however, style and some good strokes when she got a chance to bring them off. In fact, they were very kind to her. Some of the picture papers had photographs of her. She was growing prettier as she grew up, and she really looked very nice in them. Even her family said she did not look bad, which was quite a compliment for them.
In the summer term she played in the school first s
ix. They hardly ever won a match. The standard of tennis at St. Clair’s certainly was not improving. On the other hand, nobody else in the team was only thirteen. The rest of the school thought her wonderful. Although she knew she was not, it was nice so many people thought so.
Jim had done well with Susan in the doubles of the Junior Hard Court Championship at Christmas. They got through a couple of rounds together. He thought he was lucky to have Susan to play with. He told her so one evening. They were cooking chestnuts.
‘You know, Sukey, if you could find somebody better for next year, I wish you would. I don’t get so much practice as you, and even if I did I wouldn’t be as good. I don’t get much chance at school. I don’t suppose I’ll get any at Marlborough.’
Susan told him not to be an idiot.
‘You would be just as good as me if you got more time at it.’
Jim hesitated.
‘You know, of course, dad’s frightfully keen on tennis, and so’s grandfather, but really I’m much keener on swimming. The sergeant told me that he believed I might do some good at a longer distance presently. He thinks the 880 might be my mark.’
Susan dug a knitting-needle into another chestnut. She put it on the bars of the grate.
‘Do you think they think that you could be really good? I mean break records, and Olympic Games and things like that?’
Jim pushed a chestnut off the fire. He squeezed it in his handkerchief to see if it was done.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. You have to be frightfully good for that sort of thing. But I suppose I shall have a dab at anything that’s going.’
Susan eyed his chestnut.
‘Is it done?’ He shook his head. She took it from him and put it back on the bars. ‘Do you mean you would like to drop tennis altogether?’