DEAR JIM,
This is only a short extra letter. You know that sometimes the county gives extra coaching at tennis if they think anybody is worth while. We heard to-day that they are giving some to Nicky.
With much love,
SUSAN.
David heard the news from Pinny.
‘Nicky’s had a little honour done her in tennis, dear. Something we won’t talk about. We don’t want to upset poor Susan.’
As David must not tell anybody, he told Agag.
‘Nicky has been chosen for something at tennis. I’m not sure what. I thought you’d like to know.’
Nicky told Annie. Annie was dishing up the dinner. She just nodded in an off-hand way.
‘That’s right. Someone’s got some sense, I can see. Now run along. No need to think you can hang about in the big top just because someone is giving you lessons for nothing.’
Nicky found it a little hard to comport herself decently in the face of her triumph, while at the same time sympathizing with Susan. She thought she ought to have had a bit of a party to celebrate, or at least threepence to spend at Mrs. Pettigrew’s. Instead, Annie brought in one mince-pie and put it in front of Susan.
‘That’s the last, dear, I’ve been saving it for you.’
Pinny said:
‘Susan, dear. There’s the duckiest little frock in Vogue I want you to look at. I’ve seen some very cheap material at Lewis’s. I thought you’d look sweetly pretty in it.’
Nicky felt that she was being neglected.
‘Well, if I haven’t got a mince-pie and nobody’s making me a frock, suppose I choose the game for to-night.’
Her father looked at her with a twinkle in his eye.
‘If I know my Nicky, she’s had enough choosing for to-day.’
‘Yes, darling,’ Mrs. Heath said, ‘we’ll play Lexicon. You’re fond of that, aren’t you, Susan?’
In spite of her triumph, Nicky got into bed feeling cross. There was absolutely nobody to jump about and be pleased with. ‘Oh, well,’ she thought, tucking in her back, ‘if nobody else is pleased, I am.’ She settled down for the night. ‘Good night, Nicky, dear. Many congratulations.’
Susan heard by Nicky’s regular breathing that she was asleep. Suddenly she began to shake. Her teeth chattered. Ever since the secretary had said that at the club, she had been trying not to show anybody that she minded. She had managed to smile and say ‘Well done’ to Nicky, but inside she felt as though she would burst, she was so miserable. All her feelings of not wanting to be looked at, to be just the same as everybody else, came crowding back on her. What a fool she would look now. She had let everybody say how good she was. She had let the girls at school tell her she was marvellous. Why had she never said: ‘But you ought to see Nicky. She plays better than me’? Perhaps people had always known it. Perhaps they had been laughing at her. How odd that you could wake up in the morning so happy and sure of yourself, and go to sleep the same night with everything gone wrong. She did not mind Nicky being good enough for the county to coach. She only minded that she seemed to have been bolstered up by something that was not true. She sat up and looked into the night. ‘You’re not good at tennis, you conceited fool. Nicky’s better than you are. You’re not good. People have been telling you lies. You’re not good.’ Suddenly she could not say it any more. She rolled over on her face on her pillow and sobbed as if she would never stop.
CHAPTER XII
NICKY’S CAREER
It was the first day of the Easter holidays. Susan asked Jim if he would come to Hampton Court. She was learning about Cardinal Wolsey at school and wanted a good look at where he had lived. Besides, she wanted to talk to Jim somewhere with nobody to bother or interrupt.
On the Underground it was too noisy for talking. Besides, they were busy discussing the advertisements. They played the game of marking them all. Ten for full marks. One advertisement they thought so bad they gave it a nought.
After the Underground they took a bus to Hampton Court. They got the front seat. Susan looked round. No one was near them to hear what they were talking about.
‘You never answered that letter about Nicky.’
Jim felt in his pockets for the fares.
‘Nothing to say. I don’t suppose it means much. I suppose she’s good for her age, that’s all.’
Susan nudged him because the conductor was coming. The conductor said it was a nice day for Hampton Court. They agreed with him. When he had gone, Susan went on with the conversation as if they had not been interrupted.
‘She’s more than that. I know because of the club. You know how everybody hears things like that People look at her and point her out. Sometimes they watch her when she’s playing. I heard they think she shows more promise than any one they’ve ever had.’
Jim gave Susan her ticket. He stuck his in a crack under the window.
‘Seeing the names on the board I just don’t believe it. If it’s true, why didn’t we notice it?’
Susan rolled her ticket into a tube.
‘She had her wrist at the tournament last summer, then she was in quarantine at Christmas. It’s ages since anybody saw her play properly. The person who ought to have known was me. I’m always playing with her. But I suppose if you’re trying to do something yourself, you don’t notice the other people.’
‘’Course you don’t,’ Jim agreed. ‘Anyway, I dare say you’ll be the best in the end.’
Susan shook her head.
‘Oh, no.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose you’ll say “Sour grapes,” but, honestly, I’m not keen on being good any more. Just at first I minded, but afterwards I suddenly knew I was glad. Tennis is fun if you just enter for doubles and try to get through a round or two of singles, but not when people are expecting you to do something grand. They can do all their expecting about Nicky now.’
Jim frowned in a puzzled way.
‘I shouldn’t think just Nicky being good, if she is, would be enough for dad. He wants us all to be.’
Susan nodded.
‘I know. But I think even trying to make us will cost too much. You know, even with all the bits there’s never enough in the tennis house for everything. Of course, grandfather gives us our club subscriptions, and he gave us our first coaching, but he can’t go on for ever. Think of all the getting about to tournaments, and the rackets and the clothes it will take, if she gets really good.’
‘Well?’ Jim looked at her inquiringly. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I’ve been thinking a lot. I’d like dad and grandfather to have one of us Wightman Cup Wimbledon standard; they’d be so pleased. I think Nicky could be. Well, let’s try and make her. There isn’t the money for all of us. I vote it mostly goes on her as the likeliest one.’
Jim sighed.
‘I can’t think of anything more awful than Nicky as a star turn.’
Susan considered Nicky.
‘I don’t suppose she’ll be awfuller than she often is, anyway. Look! This is where we get off. Now let’s pretend Cardinal Wolsey still lives here.’
After tea that evening, when Pinny had taken Nicky to the club for her lesson, Dr. Heath came into the drawing-room. Jim and Susan were playing bezique. They stopped. Susan thought it was a good moment to talk to him. She explained her idea about Nicky.
‘Of course I don’t mean,’ she finished, ‘that we’d stop working. Only it’s quite different just working at something and being a sort of professional at it.’
Dr. Heath sat down.
‘Professional, indeed! I should hope not.’ He looked at David, who was lying on his chest, sticking stamps into his album. ‘What about him? He may have the makings of something good for all we know.’
David did not look up from his album.
‘Don’t trouble about me. I’m fixing my ambitions on my voice. I want to be the man who sings with the band on the wireless. I shan’t have much time for games.’
Dr. Heath took his pipe out of his pocket.
‘I think you’re looking ahead a bit, Susan. I don’t know we’ve any grounds at the moment for thinking Nicky’s our only hope. Besides, although the coaches speak well of her, it may be only a flash in the pan.’
Susan sat on the arm of her father’s chair.
‘Well, anyway, she’s a flash in the pan. The rest of us aren’t that. You know, darling, if you were absolutely honest, you’d own you never have believed much in me.’
Her father looked up at her over the match he was holding to the bowl of his pipe.
‘You miserable daughter, pinning your poor father down. I thought, and I still think, some day you’ll be a very nice player. Quite honestly, I don’t think you’ve the champion’s temperament. If it comes to that, all I think about Nicky is that quite suddenly she has come on and is at the moment out of the ordinary promising. As for match play, we don’t know. We haven’t seen her.’
Jim took down the tennis house and shook it.
‘That’s just it. Susan thinks Nicky ought to do a lot of that.’
Dr. Heath put his matches back in his pocket.
‘What I take it you are trying to tell me is, that if it comes to a pinch you’d rather I spread myself on Nicky than tried to do you a bit of good all round?’
‘That’s it, darling.’ Susan patted his shoulder. ‘But don’t think we’re being noble. We’re not. It’s just we think it’s a worth-while gamble.’
He puffed at his pipe.
‘I take it that if you’re gambling away your shares out of the tennis house, that I can trust all of you to see that if Nicky gets any extra chances she doesn’t waste them?’
Jim put the tennis house back on the mantelpiece.
‘You bet you can. We’ll see the little tike works.’
Susan giggled.
‘Poor Nicky! She’ll have a dog’s life. If she doesn’t get to Wimbledon it won’t be our faults.’
David caught hold of Agag, who was lying beside him. He stood him up on his hind legs.
‘Us two will even give up our singing practice to see she works. Won’t we, Agag?’
How Nicky’s nose was glued to the grindstone! She would not have minded if it was only her tennis practice she was made to work at; but a good deal of the rest of her time somebody was doing something towards her training.
Susan considered that Nicky ought to know how the great tennis minds of the past had worked. She ransacked the public library for books for her. Nicky, who was no great reader at any time, grew to dread the sight of Susan with books under her arm. She eyed the bundle nervously.
‘You’ve not got another one for me, have you?’
Susan nodded proudly.
‘I’ve managed to get Lacoste on Tennis.’
Nicky made a face at the book.
‘But I’m still reading Suzanne Lenglen, and I’ve read Alice Marble.’
‘When you’ve finished with Lacoste, I’m getting you Hazel Wightman and Helen Wills, and I expect there are a lot more if I look around.’
‘Oh, don’t look!’ Nicky pleaded. ‘It takes me ages and ages to read even something interesting. But these books I just can’t get through.’
Nicky would have skimmed the books, but Susan kept her eye on her. Every morning before they got up she gave her a short examination on what she had read the day before.
‘What does Kathleen MacKane say about smashing and overhead play? What did Betty Nuthall say about footwork? What did Perry say about position on the court?’
Once or twice Nicky refused to answer a question.
‘I don’t know what they said and I don’t care. They all say the same things and they all use the same words, and it’s miserably dull. I read The Secret Garden yesterday, if you want to know. I chose it because nobody plays tennis in it.’
‘All right,’ Susan retorted. ‘If you aren’t keen on being good I don’t care. Jim was letting you have an extra racket and making his old one do. I’ll write and tell him not to bother.’
Something of that sort usually brought Nicky to heel. Not for worlds would she have owned just how keen she was. It was spoiling her reputation for laziness. Without any bullying from any of them she had learnt just how hard you had to work to get something even nearly right. She tried to work at the wall when nobody was about. She was not going to have them all looking at each other and saying: ‘Fancy, do you know I saw Nicky work for over half an hour at just one stroke. You wouldn’t have thought she would, would you?’ She wanted them to think she was just as lazy as ever, and became good by luck.
It was Jim who invented the part of Nicky’s training she hated most. One day in the Easter holidays he overheard the coach tell her that she must concentrate more, must not notice what was going on around her. After that he invented games for her. Sometimes it was a general knowledge paper on things she knew quite well. Sometimes it was a memory test with trays of mixed things. Sometimes tricks, such as picking up peas with knitting-needles, or something of the sort. Whatever it was she was going to do, he and Susan did it first. They worked out how long she ought to take. Then they put her at a table with her watch in front of her and told her to begin.
The moment Nicky began the other three began too. But theirs was a different game. They thought out the most ingenious ways of distracting her attention. Once Susan rushed in with a parcel and said: ‘Look, this has come for me.’ Jim and David sat down by her. All their backs were to Nicky. Slowly they cut the string and started unwrapping, until finally they all said: ‘Oh!’ Of course Nicky looked up. It was not human nature not to. She was furious she had, when she found it was just an empty box they were staring at.
David thought of dozens of ways of making Agag a distraction. Sometimes he would make him bark. Sometimes he dressed him up. Sometimes he would say: ‘My goo’ness, look at Agag! He’s never done that before.’ To begin with he nearly always caught Nicky.
Nicky started by never getting any of the things done. She was always looking round and wasting time, and then was made to start all over again until they were worn out. Then quite suddenly one day (it was a day when she was given hundreds of needles to thread) she did them on time. She found she had never heard Jim tell the others they were all going to a cinema that night. She had never noticed the roars of laughter when Agag came in dressed as a baby. It was a good many nights after that before she did as well again, but she was improving. When the boys went back to school, Susan carried on with the game and got the grown-ups to help. Nicky nearly always loathed it because usually she had something else she wanted to do. But she could not get out of it, because Dr. Heath said it was a splendid idea and she was to do it every day. As a matter of fact, it must have been a splendid idea, for by the summer holidays she was mostly on time, and if she was not it was because she was stupid at whatever she had been given to do, and not because she lacked concentration. In the end she would not have noticed if the house had fallen down. It was useful. It made her concentration at tennis remarkable. Not from one end of the game to the other did she think of outside things.
Dr. Heath stopped coaching Nicky. He thought she was better left entirely in the coaches’ hands. But he made her skip for a quarter of an hour before breakfast every day, and on Saturday afternoons he gave her half an hour’s special exercises to make her supple.
Annie, on hearing that ‘keep your eye on the ball’ was important, got Nicky to come to the kitchen every day for ten minutes’ juggling. She got to the glorified stage at last of using three balls. She thought, having reached that point, she had done enough, but Annie nipped that in the bud.
‘Think it’s any fun for me to watch you messin’ about with the balls? Well, I’ll tell you it’s not. But if they’re goin’ to make a champ of you, Annie’s not goin’ to be the only one who hasn’t done ’er bit. Now then, get on with it, and don’t let me hear any more of your nonsense.’
As a reward for her efforts she was given a chance of a lot of tournament play that summer. She was to play at Bournem
outh, the Pleasure Gardens, Folkestone, the County Junior championship, and the South of England Junior at Eastbourne. Jim and Susan were playing only at Bournemouth and in the County Junior championships.
They were all to stay with grandfather. Pinny was in even more of a fuss than usual before they started.
‘All this match play means more tennis things.’
‘If you’re going to make my things,’ said Nicky, ‘for goodness’ sake see they don’t hang down between the legs. They look simply awful if they do.’
Pinny was worried.
‘I’ll do my best, dear, but there’s many a slip, you know, between the cup and the lip.’
Nicky scowled.
‘I’d rather you didn’t make them. I’d rather just have two lots ready made. They could wash.’
‘You need more than two, dear,’ Pinny explained, ‘and I’ve said I’ll try.’
‘And I’ve said I’d rather you didn’t, unless they’re right.’
Mrs. Heath was writing while this argument went on. She looked up.
‘Come here, Nicky.’ Nicky came over slowly. She could see her mother was cross. ‘Everybody in this house gives up some of their time to improving your tennis. Now here’s Pinny planning to make for you, and all you do is to be rude before you’ve seen what she’s making.’
‘But you see——’ Nicky broke in.
‘I see a very spoilt child. Now we don’t like punishments, but you must learn you can’t behave like that.’ Mrs. Heath turned to Pinny. ‘Nicky seems to have clear ideas how she wants her tennis things. Very well, she can cut the pattern herself.’
‘Oh, I say!’ Nicky gasped. ‘I can’t cut a pattern.’
Her mother looked at her.
‘You should have thought of that before you were rude to Pinny. You will cut a pattern, and it’s the only one Pinny will use. And you will wear the frock cut from the pattern at all your tournaments.’