Break Point (4 page)

I watch as
Venus Williams takes the first set and goes ahead in the second.
When this match is over I'll phone Gwen, I tell myself. But Venus
has already conquered her opponent and now they've returned to that
men's match with the big serves, which is nearing the end of the
fourth set. So perhaps I'll just see it through. But it must be
well over half an hour since Hazel called, the Kingham shrieks and
coming-home noises of Clo and Shari have been and gone, and what
was all that about a proposal? I decide to phone Gwen and have done
with it.

"Gwen? Hi.
It's Robina here. Carewise have just called ... "

"They took
their time," Gwen groans. "I'm so glad you've called. I don't think
we should have gone out earlier." She coughs and sounds in a bad
way. "Listen. I think I've found the answer to your housing
problem. You can come and live here until you've got somewhere else
sorted out. You saw the three empty rooms above. You may as well
make use of one of them."

She's caught
me on the hop with that long shot.

"You'll be
doing me a favour as well, Robina. You'll have your own room and I
shan't be any bother. I often doze in the afternoons anyway,
especially now that I'm ill." She sneezes. "Oh dear. I should be in
bed. I just need someone to be there and to bring me drinks and
supper and to take me to the penny bazaar. Then when Anne comes
back she'll resume afternoons and evenings, and you the mornings as
before. You can watch the tennis here. I shan't trouble you in the
afternoons." Her hoarsy voice is fast losing strength, and I am
desperate for somewhere to live, though I've not done residential
work before, not even when I was working at the nursing home on the
other side of Arnecombe. But it's not as if Gwen needs much
personal care.

It must be
fate dealing me a card, though Babs got me looking at fate in a
different way. "You don't have to wait for cards to be dealt," she
said, during our affair. "You can be proactive." Oh we didn't half
have some deep talks. Brilliant talks about particle physics and
that. Colin would be there too sometimes, saying stuff about this
cat in a box. Schrödinger's cat, that was it, and the cat might be
dead or alive inside the box but you won't know which till you open
up the box and see for yourself. It doesn't sound mind-blowing put
like that, but when you're talking about it, believe me it
is.

And it's time
I carried on down that path. Making it happen for me, like June's
done.

"OK, Gwen.
You're on."

"Oh, you're so
kind. When could you come?"

"I just need
someone to help bring my stuff over." Elliot's nodding
enthusiastically, thumbs aloft. "Oh I think my brother's just
volunteered."

"Not me," says
Elliot when I come off the phone. "I'm not quite up to driving. But
I'll get on to Gord right away. Your old lady's found you somewhere
then? Magic."

*

I grab at
clothes and underwear and books and heap them into sacks. I kick a
few boxes out the way and scout about for me spare telly just in
case Gwen's blows up or something. Well, it has been known.
Televisions have a habit of going wrong at some awkward times. Then
I hear Gordon's van outside and the engine running and think,
Right, that'll have to do. One of us can bring more stuff over
later, or whenever.

Three rooms?
Did Gwen say three rooms upstairs?

"I only saw
two rooms up there, Gordon," I say as we crawl along Belvedere
Road.

Together we
unload my bags onto the pavement; my TV onto the wall. "Can you
manage now or d'you need a hand taking it up?"

"No, I'll be
fine, Gordon, cheers."

I look above
the porch to the first floor, and on up to the side of the pointed
roof where there's a skylight. Three rooms!

I stagger up
the path with my clobber and the front door opens. A little fussy
woman in her fifties ushers me through the porch and lists the
things she's done for Gwen who's now in bed. This is Mrs Parrott.
She doesn't need to introduce herself. "Only I must dash," she
says, looking at her watch. "I have choir on
Wednesdays."

In the hall
there's a sharp smell of something. I knock on Gwen's bedroom door.
"Hi, Gwen," I say, poking my face round the door and get a blast of
electric heat and Olbas oil. "I've just moved my stuff into the
hall." The curtains are all shut, the heat stifling, Gwen drowning
in pillows.

"Got
everything you need, Gwen?"

"Some more
tissues. And my commode needs emptying." Her voice is faint and
weary. "And there's some blackcurrant in that jug but I can't
really reach and pour."

I remove the
saucer from the top of the jug and pour some more blackcurrant in
her glass. "Here." I lever her into a better position for drinking.
"That better?"

"Thank you.
You're so kind."

"Where should
I put my things?"

"My old room.
The one above here at the front."

"Okey-doke.
Well, I'll leave you to sleep off your bug. I'll just peep in from
time to time. See if you need anything."

Then I climb
upstairs with my sacks, past the pressed flowers, to Gwen's old
north-facing bedroom where I can already see the late sun under the
door, all gold and mellow. But first, before I start twiddling
about for a good picture on my own little set, before unpacking my
bags even, I must have a quick squiz at that third room. The one up
there. There's this other door, at right angles to the door of the
front bedroom. I open it and climb another set of stairs to the
attic with its skylight window. There's nothing really up here
except more of the dull sage carpeting, a bare mattress with brown
stains, a couple of pillows without cases, and a few feathers. And
lots of drawing pins on the sloping ceiling. Rosemary's bolt-hole,
I shouldn't wonder. Up here, away from it all.

FIRST
THURSDAY

I peeked in on
Gwen first thing, as she lay rasping and cherry-nosed, before
making an early start on the domestic chores - the cleaning and
dusting, the nipping up to the corner shop for essentials. I was
all done by eleven, and with Gwen ill this is a piece of piss
because here I am, undisturbed, upstairs in my room, games
unfolding in front of me like plays. Some with a good plot and lots
of action, others subtle and drawn-out, no climax. I keep checking
on Gwen at regular intervals and I've never known a job like it. Oh
I've had some jobs in my time. The Number 25 bus, and the Arnecombe
nursing home and I've done me Mrs Mop bit in offices and hospitals,
all sorts.

The next time
I look in on Gwen she's half-awake. "Can I get you anything,
Gwen?"

"I was in
charge you know."

"In
charge?"

"Of all the
nurses. I could have been a doctor. Dr Lewis said I knew more about
some of these conditions than many of the doctors."

"Shouldn't you
be resting some more, Gwen? You're not doing your voice any good by
the sounds of it."

"I suppose
not. Is my uniform clean? Check in the wardrobe, would you,
dear?"

Uniform? But
Gwen's not dementing. She just gets these time and people slips.
That's what it is, especially now when she's ill and drowsy, and
there's no uniform in here, no matrony blue thing with a timepiece
clipped upside down for a quick and constant time check - just
loads of fawns and duns and the pale blue dress Gwen was wearing on
Tuesday, and the straw-coloured suit she had on yesterday which
made her look a bit colonial and now Gwen's already out and
snoring. I wonder if any of the great tennis stars will end up like
this, always harking back to their greatest moments. It's human
nature, I suppose. But the talk of wardrobes has just reminded me
about my own clothes and the few things at the bottom of my sacks
still to sort through. I crack on with it during the short breaks
between games, swashing about in the bottom of the sacks and then I
feel it. The Wimbledon ball! The one June chucked back at me after
the Babs affair.

Above the
Slazenger sign is some panther-like creature. Below it, more
writing: LTA Official Ball. The green ball, which contains the
energy of a perfect day. That July day ten years ago when the
Centre Court matches were a bit of a foregone conclusion but me and
June could hear the excitement echoing off Number One Court where
Chris Lloyd (as Chris Evert was back then) was trailing behind in
the third set to her opponent. We knew we had to get on that court
but the security guard looked at our tickets with Centre Court
printed in bold dark letters and told us our tickets admitted us
onto Centre Court only and we would have to queue like non-ticket
holders for Number One Court. But we weren't having any of it. Not
militants like me, and - on that day - even June. We picked another
entrance with a different security guard, only this time waving our
tickets at him with confidence, and hiding the giveaway word
'Centre' with our thumbs. But it worked. We saw the best half hour
of the match which Chris Evert turned round and went on to win, one
of her last big wins at Wimbledon, and we all cheered her on, the
atmosphere was electric, the sun hot on our backs, and we didn't
half brag about it to Babs and Tash when we got home.

Then
came the great clump of cosy years. June never even realized. She
thought I felt the same. But she should have seen the signs. Me
saying, Move over, June, your toenails are pronging me. Me with me
head stuck in Simone de Beauvoir and Radclyffe Hall again after all
these years, searching for some lost student radicalism. Me sniping
at
Thelma and Louise
- one of her favourite films. But none of the protagonists is
even gay, June, for fuck's sake. Me slagging off Vinegar Tits and
all the characters in
Prisoner Cell Block
H
that we both used to love or love to
hate. Me lamenting the loss of her singing days - all that opera
singing she was going to get into, when she found time, when she
felt confident, when this, when that, always some chuffing excuse.
Me trawling the floor for a lost earring, worried me hole was going
to close up without it.

Was that
Freudian, or what?

Was that a
knock at the back door?

There it goes
again. Short fussy Mrs Parrott knocks. I go down and let her in. "I
didn't want to knock too loudly because of the invalid," she says.
"Is she sleeping?"

"Yeah, I think
so."

"I'll just
creep in. I won't disturb her if she's ... ah, Gwen. It's only me.
Are you comfortable?" She does some adjusting of the bedclothes and
curtains. "It's so hot in here."

"I'm
cold."

"That'll be
your cold, I expect. They are supposed to purify the system.
Anyway, I was just wondering whether you'll be needing me this
Sunday, now that you've got your new lady? Or will Anne be ...
?"

Gwen groans
something like a no.

"Now is that
no you won't be needing me or no you haven't got anybody? Only I'm
supposed to be taking over from Lillie at two o'clock on Sunday for
a couple of hours. We've got a stall at the church hall. It's for
children with leukaemia. I've been busy making some more of my
pictures. With the pressed flowers."

Oh
they're
hers
.
Those poor flowers flattened to death under glass. But it's for a
good cause. Kill a flower, save a child!

"Right then."
Mrs Parrott folds along the edge of Gwen's blanket anew and tucks
it well in. "I'll call in tomorrow anyway to see how you
are."

What an
interfering woman, I think as I return to my tennis. There's a
women's match on BBC2. Women’s matches are often on in the
afternoons; the men’s scheduled for prime time viewing to coincide
with folk coming in from work. I look at the women on screen,
trying to get to know them, their styles. If I don't get used to
them now, get to know their little ways, I won't know the classics
of the future, will I? Billie Jean King and Jimmy Connors and the
rest were all unheard of once. Sometimes they make a big first
impression. Like Tracey Austin in her Alice-in-Wonderland frock and
big bunches. Like Steffi Graf aged fifteen with short wavy hair and
tears welling up because she lost to Jo Durie after taking the
first set off her. It matters at that age, the winning. But it's
much more exciting watching them when you know all their little
habits and rituals. Wimbledon is about your personality as much as
your style of tennis.

Sometimes I've
tried imagining people I know in a tennis kit, and what their
little tics might be. I've tried picturing June, her hair all
plaited, or Tash with her nervy eyes behind the round glasses which
she'd never take off at the end of the match like Martina used to -
Tash can only live behind glass. I only saw her once without them.
It was after she found out about the affair, and her eyes looked
all odd, sort of swollen. Without any structure. She took off the
frames and rubbed the foreign eyes and some tears ran down. "I
trusted Babs. I trusted you both. I don't know what to
do."

"Well, me and
June are parting. We're selling up and splitting up."