‘Ought to have given you a good game.’
‘Didn’t.’ Jim took a gulp of his drink. ‘Just made me feel a fool.’
‘Have a sandwich,’ said Mrs. Heath. ‘You’ve got your doubles this afternoon. Perhaps you’ll do better then.’
Susan got out of the Fulford Manor car with shining eyes. She raced up to her father.
‘Daddy, I’ve got through two rounds. The first one I played rottenly and I ought to have been beaten, only the girl I played against played rottenlier.’ She turned to Jim. ‘How did you do?’
Jim made a face.
‘Beaten. Hope I don’t let you down this afternoon.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Susan sat beside him and took her ginger-beer. ‘My goodness, I’m thirsty.’
Nicky got out of the Windlesham car feeling very cocky indeed. After her match everybody had talked to her. All the grown-ups and all the other girls. She felt her family was very lucky to know her. She came over to them. They were talking and did not see her for a moment. She coughed.
‘Have none of you noticed that Nicky Heath is here?’
Jim looked at Susan.
‘I bet she’s won.’
‘As a matter of fact’—Nicky sat down and took her glass of ginger-beer—‘if you want to know, I didn’t. But everybody said I was most remarkable.’
Jim looked sick.
‘Everybody is very stupid to say things like that to you. And anyway I don’t suppose you were.’
‘I was.’ Nicky almost sang. ‘I was. I felt it all over.’
Her father looked at her.
‘That’s enough of you for a bit. Have a sandwich. Susan’s won two rounds. Now, there is something to crow about.’
Nicky felt as though a pin had been dug into her. It was her day. Nobody ought to take it from her.
‘You haven’t?’
Susan’s mouth was full.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Oh!’ Nicky said no more. She ate her lunch in silence. She was not exactly jealous of Susan. But somehow her having done so well took the excited feeling away.
Jim and Susan were knocked out in the first round of the doubles. They came up against a brother and sister who played a lot together. They did not disgrace themselves, though. They took the second set, and got three games in the last. They played at The Grange. Their father, who watched them, was very pleased.
Susan went off in another car after that to Windlesham. She did not come back until nearly five. She was terribly excited. She had won her semi-finals.
The finals were played at The Grange. All the other players and all the grown-ups gathered round to watch. Susan was tired, but buoyed up by the excitement of winning. She had played all day (except for the doubles match) away from The Grange. There had been a small audience all the time, but there were two courts for them to watch, and she had known no one, so she had not been shy. Even now she was not thinking much about the audience. Except for the family she knew no one, so they would not bother to look at her.
The other finalist was a girl of thirteen called Miriam. She was tall, dark, and looked confident. She knew everybody, and walked about, talking first to one group and then to another, before the match started.
Miriam and Susan walked on to the court together. Susan was new to almost everybody there. Besides only being a visitor to the neighbourhood, she had, of course, played away most of the day. The result was that the moment she appeared everybody started to talk in a half-whisper to their next-door neighbour. They asked who she was. They said how pretty she was. They said how well so small a girl must have played to have got into the finals. Those girls who had been beaten by her told their parents that this was the pretty girl they had told them about. In fact, there was a perfect buzz of conversation.
Nicky would have been enchanted. She would have felt that it was all friendly talk, that everybody was liking her and hoping she would win. Susan did not take the talk that way at all. She felt it was about her, but she took it she was being laughed at. Something must be wrong. Perhaps the elastic in the leg of her knickers had broken and one leg was hanging down. Had she torn her frock? What were they all looking at her for? She wished she could run away and hide.
Unable to forget her audience for a second, Susan played badly. She was so self-conscious that she grew stiff. She missed balls that at any other time she would have taken easily. Miriam won the match with the loss of only two games.
Susan felt ashamed of herself. She came very apologetically to her father. He, however, laughed.
‘You must get over minding a crowd, Sukey.’
The man who owned the house came up to her.
‘Well done, my dear. You must come and get your prize.’
‘My prize!’ Susan looked amazed. She had forgotten there were prizes, and anyway would not have expected to get anything as she had not won.
She won a beautiful clock. Her name was called out and she went up to a table to fetch it. She felt shy and wished one of the others would have fetched it for her. But all the people were nice, and clapped so much that it made her feel much better about having played badly.
When they got home Susan and her clock had quite a reception.
Grandfather said he would take it into Salisbury in the morning and have her name and the date of the tournament engraved on it.
Pinny said she should make a point of always cleaning it herself. It was no good letting Annie handle a lovely clock like that.
Even Agag, on being shown it, gave it a respectful lick.
In fact, it was a very proud evening.
CHAPTER VII
THE CIRCUS
It was a good thing the summer holidays were so nice, for the Christmas holidays were awful.
They looked as if they would be particularly good. There were quite a lot of invitations to parties. There were tickets for the pantomime, from grandfather. There was an enormous pile of unopened parcels in the hall.
Jim had not taken a great deal of interest in the Christmas rush. He came home with a cold which made him feel simply rotten. He hoped it would get better, but it did not. On Christmas Eve his temperature went up. By that night he had measles.
Measles is always a hateful thing to have. Jim thought nobody could be more miserable than he was on Christmas Day. He was wrong. By the third of January Susan was so ill that she ceased to care what anybody did to her. They could wash her, make her swallow things, turn her over, and she just gave in, too wretched to resist. Two days after that Nicky started a most suspicious cold, which was clearly measles by the next afternoon. Even while they were deciding Nicky was certainly a case Pinny heard David give a cough.
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ she said.
She was right. It was measles. David had it worse than all the others because it went to his ears.
The whole holidays were spent being ill. Jim went back to school a week late, and Susan and Nicky eleven days. It was not much comfort missing school because they were in the cross convalescent stage. For Jim and Susan there was one bright spot. Partly because everybody was busy nursing David and they needed air, and partly because they were considered old enough, they were allowed to go about alone.
The London you see when you go where you are taken is quite a different place to the London you discover when you go about by yourself.
Jim and Susan were hampered by their lack of money for fares. In the ordinary way they could walk a lot, but now their legs had after-measles wobble. All the same, once they were allowed out alone they never spent a minute indoors except for meals. They had to be back for tea and were not supposed to go out again. But between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and tea, they travelled miles.
Twice they went up to the West End. They loitered about looking at the boats on the Thames. They fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square with some maize a man gave them. They looked at Buckingham Palace and wondered what the sentries would do if they tried to walk through the gates. They stood and watc
hed some acrobats entertain a matinée queue. In fact, they just meandered round getting the feel and smell of the place.
‘Next holidays, Sukey,’ Jim said, ‘we’ll go to the other parts. I want to see the docks. And there are exhibitions and things which don’t cost much. We can just go.’
Susan sighed with satisfaction. She had always hated the idea of growing up. There was something frightening about it. Yet now there were advantages she had never imagined.
‘It’s odd. I never thought of us doing this. Of course, I knew we could go where we liked when we grew up, but not now, somehow.’
Jim considered a moment.
‘I suppose it’s the measles, and David needing looking after. Anyway, it’s luck.’
Their luck did not hold every day. Sometimes they were told to take Nicky with them. Having Nicky meant just a walk. Walks were all right, and they took Agag, which cheered things up. But being three spoilt talking.
They tried not to let Nicky feel she was not wanted, but they did not succeed very well, and this made her deliberately annoying. The walks were usually one long argument.
‘Don’t walk in the road, Nicky.’
‘Thank you, Jim. It’s kind of you to bother about me.’
‘It’s not you I’m bothering about, it’s Agag. If you walk in the road he does too. He might get run over.’
Susan, anxious to avoid a row, would break in. She and Jim would talk about something for a bit. Then suddenly Nicky would start to sing. Jim would glare at her.
‘Do shut up! You can’t make that noise in the road.’
Nicky would stop singing for a moment.
‘If nobody talks to me I must do something.’ Then she would sing again.
Or, at other times, if the twins talked to each other, she would have a loud conversation with Agag.
‘It’s very nice for us, Agag, having each other, as nobody else speaks to us. You’d hardly think we were their sister and their dog, would you?’
They were all quite glad when they were clear of infection and allowed to go back to school. It had been a wretched Christmas and was best forgotten.
The Easter holidays were a different matter.
The twins’ birthday came at the beginning of the summer term. This year they had an early present. They had a letter from grandfather on the first day of the holidays.
MY DEAR TWINS,
As you will, I think, be eleven quite shortly, it is time you joined a tennis club. I hear there are excellent covered courts in your neighbourhood on which, for one guinea a year, you may play from Monday till Friday. I expect the tennis house is in a poor way, since I noticed three new rackets last summer, so I enclose a cheque for two guineas.
Your affectionate
GRANDFATHER.
Grandfather was quite right. The tennis house was in a poor way. As a matter of fact, it was in debt. There had been in it grandfather’s first four pounds; then his one pound that came at Easter. There was the four shillings and tenpence halfpenny from the children. They had meant to put more in at Christmas but, having measles, they felt they needed their money for other things. There was two guineas Dr. Heath got from a patient, which he looked on as a present as he had knocked it off as a bad debt. There were two ten-shilling notes Pinny had earned knitting jumpers for nurses at the hospital. There was one pound eighteen shillings and sixpence, put in by Dr. and Mrs. Heath out of what they called their odd money. All this, of course, came to ten pounds five shillings and fourpence halfpenny. But out of the front door had gone: the money for the table-tennis set. One pound five shillings for Nobby’s wall. They had used the twins’ original rackets until they were not worth re-stringing. Before they had gone to grandfather’s, Dr. Heath (who knew someone from whom he could buy wholesale) bought three really good rackets. They had also bought a dozen used balls. As well the house was in debt. When the three rackets were bought an IOU was put in for David. It was signed by Dr. Heath for the house. It said:
‘IOU David. One tennis racket. When you require a racket it shall be purchased before satisfying any other tennis need in the family.’
There would be some more money put in the house, but not nearly enough to join a club. Grandfather’s present could not have come at a better moment. The twins were so glad he had not just sent the money for the house, but had said how it was to be spent. If it had gone into the house it would have belonged to them all and could not very well have been used as club subscriptions for two.
The covered courts club made them feel very grand. From the moment you passed the ‘Members Only’ written on the gate you felt in a world of real tennis. There were three boards in the hall, looking like the boards in the hall at St. Clair’s. On one board were the names of the boys and girls who had won the club junior championships. There were some such distinguished names amongst them that Jim and Susan, reading them for the first time, could only nudge each other and stare. It seemed magnificent to belong to a club where people like that had once played.
There were three hard courts. Of course there were a lot of members to play on them. When you had finished a set you booked one of the others for later on. Waiting about did not matter, for there was a lovely big lounge, with lots of arm-chairs and newspapers. There was also table tennis. There was a place where you could get tea and things to eat. The twins were not there at tea-time, but sometimes when funds allowed they had glasses of lemonade.
The whole of that holiday the twins went to their club every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, which were not included in their subscriptions. They had to come home to meals, and they had to be out of doors for two hours, unless it was raining. They never spent less than three hours a day in the club. Sometimes their father went down with them for half an hour. There was a gallery on one side of the courts. He would go up and sit and watch them and take notes. Driving home he would tell them a few of the things they did wrong.
‘No good having a smashing first service, Jim, if it never conies off. Just a lot of wasted energy. Besides, it means you play safe with your second ball and just tap it over. Better work at something less ferocious that comes off the first time.
‘You could both do with a daily quarter of an hour’s practice against the wall. All your strokes want working at. As for you, Jim, it wouldn’t hurt you to give a week to it—you’re still running all round the ball rather than take it on your backhand.
‘It is stupid to slash about on a court all day thinking of nothing but who’s winning. Keep looking at yourself. Feel where you’re going wrong. It’s a pity to give up your wall practice. No need to go to the club every day just because you belong to it. Keep an eye on yourselves, or you’ll turn your faults into habits.’
Nicky was disgusted with the whole way life was going. She had always fought against being classed with David as ‘the little ones.’ Now it was David or nobody.
‘I do think it’s mean, daddy,’ she grumbled, ‘not to join me to the tennis club too.’
Dr. Heath laughed.
‘Tennis clubs are not for babies.’
Nicky was very cross.
‘I shall be nine next October. That’s not a baby. Even last summer, when I wasn’t even eight, I was allowed to play in a tennis tournament. So I should think I’d be old enough for a club now.’
‘My dear Nicky, playing pat-ball at a local tournament with a lot of kids who don’t know how to hold a racket, is a different thing to joining a club.’
Nicky looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
‘You didn’t call it pat-ball when Susan won a clock.’
He ruffled her hair.
‘Maybe I didn’t. But you are not joining the club, which I take it is what we are really discussing. For one thing, I can’t afford it. The twins’ joining was a present from grandfather.’
Nicky thought a moment.
‘If you and grandfather gave me next birthday presents now, I could join.’
‘You could not. Not if you had a hundred birthday
presents. As a matter of fact, as far as my present is concerned, aren’t there two more umbrellas owing?’
That was the end of the discussion. Nicky said no more. It did seem awful to think of two more umbrellas. She had not realized it would take so long. It was mean, when all she got for them had been one shilling and a penny. She tried her mother next.
She found her arranging flowers. Someone had sent her a box of daffodils.
‘Mummy!’ Nicky picked up one of the daffodils. ‘I was wondering if there was any way I could earn some money?’
‘What for?’ Mrs. Heath popped a daffodil into her vase and stood back to look at the effect.
‘I want to join the tennis club.’
Mrs. Heath took the daffodil from her.
‘Don’t kill the poor flower. The tennis club!’ She smiled at Nicky. ‘You are much too small, darling. We hope perhaps to manage it in a year’s time.’
‘A year!’ Nicky looked shocked. ‘Why, I might be dead.’
‘I don’t think so. You don’t look a bit like dying. Talking of tennis, run up to Pinny and tell her I’m going out, and say does she want some buttons for Susan’s tennis frocks.’
Pinny was at the sewing-machine. She said she had enough buttons. Nicky yelled this news over the stairs to her mother. She came back to Pinny.
‘Have you saved much money, Pinny?’
‘No, dear. Hardly any. I’ve a little put into a society. It will pay me a lump sum when I’m sixty-five. Why?’
‘I was just wondering.’ Nicky spun the cotton-reel round on the top of the machine. ‘It’s dull with the others out all day.’
Pinny came to the end of the seam she was machining. She took up the dress and examined it.
‘Well, dear, we reap as we sow, you know. I dare say, if the truth were to be told, you are not very good when you go out with them.’
‘All the same, it is dull.’ Nicky caught her finger in the cotton and unthreaded it. She laid the end beside the needle, hoping Pinny would not notice. ‘I wish I could join the tennis club.’
Pinny saw her needle was unthreaded.