‘No.’ Jim wriggled. He tried to think of words to explain what he did mean. ‘But I shan’t be first-class. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to be. I’d like to be just good enough to get fun out of tournaments and things; be able to enter for the same things as you, but not hope to do anything at them.’
Susan twisted a chestnut round, so that its other side was turned to the fire.
‘Have you told dad?’
Jim picked up Agag, who was asleep by the fire. He held him up in the air.
‘I think he knows. I mean, you know what lots of things people do know without anything being said.’
A chestnut popped. Susan picked it out of the fire-place. She squeezed it on the under-side of her skirt.
‘I don’t suppose, anyway, he cares a bit what we’re good at as long as we’re good at something. He told me once he thought tennis was the most likely in our family. But I expect he’ll be just as pleased if it’s swimming or skating or anything else. The awful thing is if none of us are ever really good at anything.’
Jim held out his hand for half the chestnut. He broke off a little bit and put it down to cool for Agag.
‘Of course, I don’t quite understand what he means. About England, I mean. I could understand if he wanted English people to be good at things because he hated a lot of miserable foreigners walking off with everything. But he doesn’t. He seems to admire them for it.’
Susan ate her half of the chestnut.
‘He doesn’t think they’re miserable foreigners. He’d like to see all the countries joined up. What he hates is our country to be feeble when other countries aren’t being.’
Jim gave Agag his bit of chestnut.
‘Anyhow, you’re doing your best, getting more of a star every minute.’
Susan looked pleased.
‘You’ll be all right if you’re a swimming champion. Goodness knows what Nicky and David will do.’
Jim patted Agag.
‘You’re as fine a dog as any nation could imagine, aren’t you?’
Susan leant over and looked closely at the chestnuts.
‘And he’s German. I believe they’re all cooked.’
Nicky had not done at all well in the Junior Hard Court Championship that Christmas. She was going through a difficult time. She had got the clearest picture in her mind of where every ball ought to go. How every stroke ought to look. Yet it was all coming out wrong. Annie was her comforter.
‘You keep on at your practising and don’t mind. You’re only eleven. Plenty of time yet.’
‘Did you do trapeze work when you were eleven?’
Annie laughed.
‘Me! Bless you, yes. I was up on the trapeze time I was eight. ’Course it wasn’t allowed, not by law it wasn’t; but I was a big girl, and we generally had somebody’s birth certificate handy if there was a rozzer along.’
Nicky had talked too much with Annie not to know by now that a policeman, in the circus world, is called a ‘rozzer.’
‘But were you good at eleven?’
Annie looked back over the years.
‘Not to say good. Smart little nipper I was. We didn’t do nothing very showy. Always worked with a net. Matter of fact I’ve a fancy that when I was about your age my dad started taking a stick to me. I tried doing a lot of things I couldn’t. ’Fraid I’d break my neck, he was.’
Nicky made a pattern with her finger in a bowl of flour that was on the kitchen table.
‘But, Annie, I’m not trying to do anything I can’t. I’m doing exactly the things daddy taught me, and they’re all coming out wrong.’
Annie gave her hand a smack.
‘Take your finger out of my flour. I wasn’t never a you, and that’s a fact.’
Nicky screwed up her face.
‘What’s that mean?’
Annie jerked her head towards the door.
‘It means that them as asks no questions won’t be told no lies. You take your racket and go out and practise on that wall.’
David loved being at school. He was at once put in the choir. By Christmas he was singing in the school concert. That Christmas there was enough in the tennis house to get him the racket that was owed him. His father began coaching him. As a matter of fact, while lying about the garden or playing with Agag, David had taken a very intelligent interest in what the others had been taught. He knew quite a lot before he started.
That summer grandfather did not go abroad, so they all stayed with him as usual. Of course, it was awfully nice staying with grandfather, but it was not Pevensey, and there was no getting away from it. Dr. Heath took the twins down a couple of days before the others. He had entered Susan for the Bournemouth Lawn Tennis Tournament. It was an open event. It was obvious that she could not do any good in it, but once more first-class players were entered. It was a grand chance for her to see some decent play.
They drove over to Bournemouth three days running. Susan had a bye and was not knocked out until the third day. They were the most lovely three days. Apart from the tennis, which was good, they enjoyed picnicking on the beach, or in the country around. The whole place smelt of pine-needles. It was the beginning of the holidays. The sun shone every day.
‘It’s a pity,’ Susan said, ‘you can’t keep nice things and put them away in a box.’
Dr. Heath laughed.
‘On a dirty, foggy night in November we’d say: “Let’s take out Bournemouth and sit among the pine-trees for a bit.”’
‘That’s what I do mean,’ Susan agreed. ‘It would be nice if we could.’
That summer there was another junior tournament in aid of charity. This year Susan won it and came home with a silver cup. Jim got the second boys’ prize: a travelling clock.
Nicky did not play in the tournament. Two days before it she climbed up a plum-tree to get some plums. The rule at grandfather’s about fruit was that finding was keeping, if it was on the ground. Nicky was obviously not looking on the ground. She fell off the tree and sprained her wrist. She tried to say nothing about it, because no one had seen her fall. She hoped her wrist would hurt less in a minute. But the minutes went by and, instead of hurting less, it hurt more and more, and turned blue and swelled up as though a bee had stung it. At last she could not bear it any longer and went to look for her father to have something done about it. He was sitting on the edge of the tennis-court, watching Jim and Susan play. She set off towards him. The odd thing was, the nearer she got to him the further off he seemed to go, and the fainter he became. She went on trying to get to him, but somehow she did not seem to manage it. David and Agag were playing with a ball. David happened to look up and saw Nicky.
‘My goo’ness,’ he said. ‘You look most peculiar.’
Nicky did more than look peculiar, for at that moment she fell down in a faint.
As a matter of fact, when Nicky recovered she rather enjoyed her sprain. To begin with, she felt grand with her arm in a sling, and all the others were terribly interested in her faint.
‘Do you mean to say,’ Susan asked, ‘that you were just walking along ordinarily and quite suddenly you didn’t know anything any more?’
‘I didn’t know anything,’ Nicky agreed proudly, ‘until I was on the sofa with my hand being tied up.’
‘But you must have dreamt,’ Jim argued. ‘There was a boy at school fainted once. He was quite different. He said he heard bells first. He was only unconscious for a minute, then he was as sick as anything all over the floor.’
‘It was a very good thing Nicky wasn’t that,’ David put in, ‘because both me and Agag were sitting on the floor beside her while daddy tied her up.’
‘I had real brandy to drink,’ Nicky said proudly. ‘I never even felt sick.’
Her grandfather gave her a large basket of plums.
‘I understand that you injured your wrist because you wanted these. Stupid to go climbing unless you know how to hold on. However, chew them up and get well soon.’
When it came to the day
of the tournament Nicky felt low about her arm. It was all very well to look interesting with a sling, but it was much more interesting to be the other three with their tennis rackets, all wondering who they would play against. However, she succeeded in having the sort of day she liked, the grown-ups making a fuss of her. Besides, one of the players said something which made her look on the whole family differently. It was a girl who had been asking about her arm. She said:
‘Oh, well, it’s a good thing one of you red-headed champions can’t play.’
Red-headed champions, indeed! Did people think of them like that?
Before they went home, grandfather said he was arranging to have the whole lot of them coached. He told them about it one evening. The red whiskers were sticking out of his left eyebrow. They glinted in the light from his reading-lamp.
‘I understand the coach up at the tennis club is just about first-class. I’m fixing to have the lot of you have twelve lessons lastin’ half an hour. An hour’s too long. None of you could concentrate. I’m gettin’ your father to sound this coachin’ fellow as to how you’re all shaping. I’m keeping your coaching, David, until this autumn year. No good starting too young. You’ll have two of your lessons at the end of these holidays, Jim, and the rest at Christmas or Easter. Susan, and Nicky if she doesn’t go falling off more trees, can have two lessons a week, startin’ when they get home.’
Being coached professionally ought to have been fun. Jim wasted a good deal of his first two lessons arguing. About the only thing the coach found faultless was his racket. He said the weight was right and it was a good make. For the rest, he had a lot of improvements to suggest.
The coaching was begun by playing a game or two. During it weaknesses were spotted and worked at afterwards. Inside him Jim knew they honestly were weaknesses. He knew he had always had them. They were exactly the same as his father had complained of from the beginning. On the other hand, he had just won a clock in a tournament. He belonged to a family who were supposed to be some good at the game. He was not a child to be ordered about. Wasn’t he just going to a public school? He would never have owned to it, but inside he had expected the coach to be pretty flattering. When, at the end of two games, instead he heard a long list of things that were wrong, he simply had to argue.
The coach was absolutely unmoved by arguing. He knew Dr. Heath. He admired the way the family had been grounded and was determined to get everything into them he could. He grinned at Jim.
‘All right,’ he agreed. ‘I’m all wrong. But you’re here to be taught by me, and you’ve got to learn my way.’
Susan, of course, slaved at her lessons. If she was disappointed at finding how much was wrong with her game she never showed it. Without a murmur she re-learnt many things from the beginning. She enjoyed every moment of her lessons. So did the coach. It is obviously more fun teaching people who are keen.
Nicky might have wasted her time as Jim did in argument, if she had not had a conversation with Annie before her first lesson. Annie beckoned her into the kitchen, and dug her elbow into her in a knowing sort of way.
‘This gentleman what you’re havin’ lessons from this afternoon. You pick up what you can. From all I hear, he’s a real champ. There was a champ I saw once in a cat act. Wonderful he was. Walk in and out of the cage amongst those great roaring beasts like as though they were so many mice.’
‘Was he afraid?’
‘Couldn’t say. Never saw him above once. Well, in our circus there was a Miss Umbopo and ’er dad. Mabel Lee her name was really. Gippo, they was. They were travelling with one mangy old cat. I says to her: “Mabel, there’s a proper champ with the cats playing in that posh circus. You go and have a word with him. See if you can’t pick up a tip or two.” Well, she says she’ll go. But does she? No. About three weeks later her dad gets influenza and Mabel has to do the act with the old cat. In she walks, bold as brass. But the cat turns nasty. Before anything can be done he makes a spring at her.’
‘Goodness!’ said Nicky. ‘What happened to Mabel?’
‘Oh, she was corpsed.’ Annie spoke casually. ‘I sent a lovely wreath to the funeral. But even when I was paying for it, I said to myself: “Annie,” I said, “you wouldn’t be paying for this now if Mabel had gone and learnt from the champ.”’
Nicky pulled up her socks.
‘I don’t see what’s going to eat me, even if I don’t learn.’
‘Nothing will,’ said Annie darkly. ‘But you just fix your mind on Mabel.’
Whether Nicky fixed her mind on Mabel or not, she certainly did work at her lessons. The coach was very good to her. He often gave her an extra five minutes or so. He started her exactly as he started the others. Only in her case, when he had seen her play, it seemed as though there was everything wrong everywhere. He started her off from the beginning. Her stance, her service, her forehand drive, her backhand drive, volleying, net play, lobs, and smashes. Then at last, right at the end of her course of lessons, court tactics. He was very generous to her over these. He taught her a lot during her lessons, but still more in the talks he had with her outside her classes.
‘Don’t you forget that, though, of course, you’ve got to have a racket, and you’ve got to have a ball, and your body’s got to be the right way round, and the arm that holds the racket has got to strike the ball, in the end it’s the way you think that matters. You must think of every match you play as one person’s brain against another’s. I can give you, and other people can give you, all the strokes. You can have a natural gift, but it’s all wasted unless your brain is just that much better than your opponent’s. No matter how good a stroke may be, it’s only worth half if it isn’t used cleverly.’
Nicky nodded. They were sitting together in the gallery, waiting for a court.
‘You mean, in the end you could stop thinking if you were doing things right or wrong, or whether you were standing right, but you couldn’t ever stop thinking how best to win.’
‘It’s exactly what I do mean.’ He looked at her in rather a puzzled way. ‘How old are you?’
‘Eleven.’ Nicky gripped one of her knees with her arm and rested her chin on it. ‘I’ve had a very troubled life. Do you know, my twelfth birthday will be one of the only birthdays I ever had when I could have all my presents. First I had umbrellas and umbrellas. Then, when I joined this, it was part of grandfather’s birthday present and one Christmas too.’
‘Why did you have umbrellas?’ he asked.
Nicky told the story of the umbrella man. He was interested to hear about the tennis house.
Nicky lolled back.
‘It’s not so bad just now. There’s quite a lot of money in it. That’s because Pinny keeps knitting jumpers, then mummy had a little windfall over something that she thought would never pay again and did. Then daddy had a few bad debts paid up. But it wouldn’t have anything in it at all, if it wasn’t for grandfather. He’s giving us you, and he is giving us all our subscriptions to the club for Christmas presents. The house has to get all the extra things, tennis-rackets, balls, and entrance fees for the tournaments.’
He nodded sympathetically.
‘Bit of a struggle, I should think. Still, maybe in the end it will be worth while.’
At that moment the court below was empty.
‘There’s our court,’ said Nicky. ‘I hope to be worth while, and Susan’s sure to be. Come on!’
That Christmas only Jim and Susan entered for the Junior Hard Court Championship. Nicky and David had a piece of disgusting bad luck. They went to a party two days before Christmas, and soon afterwards a child who had been at it came out with chicken-pox.
Nicky stamped with rage.
‘Quarantine for Christmas! I can’t play in the tournament. Oh, it is mean!’
‘It isn’t even as if it was an exceptionally good party,’ David pointed out. ‘Life is most outrageous.’
As a matter of fact, neither of them got chicken-pox. Their grandfather sent them seats for the circ
us to make up for the quarantine. He also sent them five shillings each to spend on sideshows.
Pinny took them. She had a most miserable afternoon. She was afraid to let them go on the sideshows alone for fear she lost them, so she joined them on scenic railways and whips and ghost trains and grew greener and greener. In the end they had to take her to a chemist and give her sal volatile. Nicky and David enjoyed the day all the same.
Neither Jim nor Susan shone in the tournament that Christmas. They were both unlucky in the draw and were knocked out in the first round. Susan, however, put up a very good fight. Once more she got a certain amount of notice in the press. It did her good. She was even getting quite a confident air at St. Clair’s. When people talked to her about her tennis, she stopped getting red and stammering. Everybody said she was good, even the papers. She herself began to believe it at last.
One day before Easter Nicky and Susan were going up to practise at the club. They had had their last coaching some time before and were back again playing games with each other. Just as they were starting, it came on to pour with rain. Dr. Heath put his nose round his surgery door.
‘If you two will wait five minutes I’ll drive you up. I might wait and have a look at you. I’d like to see what that coach has done for you.’
They drove up to the club. It was raining cats and dogs. They ran in laughing and shaking themselves like Agag did when he had been out in the wet. The secretary had his door open. He looked out to see who was coming. He gave them all a friendly smile. Then he seemed to remember something. He came into the passage.
‘Oh, Dr. Heath, I was wanting you. As you know, or perhaps you don’t, our coach makes a report on all the pupils he’s had through his hands. If anybody is outstanding, or shows promise, the county sometimes gives them six lessons. They have decided to do so in this case.
Susan gasped with pleasure. Dr. Heath gave her a quick smile. The secretary looked at the list in his hand.
‘Nicolette Heath.’ He looked at Nicky. ‘Congratulations, my dear.’
The whole family was completely stunned. When as a family you have accepted one person as being supremely good at something, that authorities who ought to know should pick out one of the others, upsets all preconceived ideas. Of course, nobody said very much about it at home because of Susan. Dr. Heath told Mrs. Heath and Pinny. Then he wrote to grandfather. Susan wrote to Jim: