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‘I didn’t really look at it,’ I say.
‘So you didn’t go down on him?’ says Penny losing none of her interest for the unspeakable details.
‘Penny!’ I say, feeling my cheeks redden. ‘I’m not certain I know what that means, though I’m certain I don’t want to find out.’
‘I was referring to a blow job,’ says Penny as I might have guessed she would. ‘Otherwise known as “chewing the fat”, “gnawing the nunga”, “slurping the gherkin” or “pork without talk”.’
‘Please!’ I say. ‘I can assure you that nothing so uneatable – I mean, unspeakable – took place. To answer your first question, my tortured senses do suggest to me that the base member was one of the larger variety. Now let us leave the subject alone!’
Penny shakes her head ruefully. ‘You’re a quiet one and no mistake. There I am, trying to find something worth reading in a back number of the PoliceGazette, and you’re getting outside another champion marrow arrow. Tell me, what is the secret of your success with men?’
‘I wish I knew,’ I say. ‘Then I could do something about it. You don’t think I seriously get any pleasure out of all these awful things that happen to me, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Penny. ‘You puzzle me. I’ve never met a girl quite like you. You seem innocent but –’
I wait hopefully but nothing happens. ‘Go on,’ I say.
‘Well,’ says Penny. ‘It’s not easy to put my finger on – not like some other things – but I think you sort of ask for some of the things that happen to you. Maybe it’s fate or something like that.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘I think you’ve hit on it. Without really knowing it. I’ve been crying out for a permanent attachment and my senses have got all jangled up.’ I can see Penny looking bewildered and I start talking faster. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve sorted myself out now and I think I know what I should do. There’s a boy at home called Geoffrey Wilkes, I don’t know if I’ve talked to you about him?’
‘From what you said he sounded a bit of a drip,’ says Penny.
‘If that’s what I said then I wasn’t being very fair,’ I say. ‘He’s not fantastically exciting but he’s got lots of good qualities. He’s dependable and – and –’
‘And what?’ says Penny.
‘And he’s awfully good at tennis,’ I say, after racking my brains. ‘He won the mixed doubles at the Eastwood Lawn Tennis Club last year.’
‘All by himself?’ says Penny. ‘My, that’s what I call an all rounder.’
‘You can sneer,’ I say. ‘But I think that his homespun values are what I’ve been looking for all this time without really knowing it.’
‘So it’s wedding bells, is it?’ says Penny. ‘A sit-down lunch, two weeks at Horridmelinos and a semi-detached in Chingford.’
‘West Woodford,’ I say, responding just as Mum would have done. ‘I don’t know, but it’s what I’d like at the moment. Anyway, I’m going home to see if he’s still interested. We used to be quite close at one time.’
‘I remember,’ says Penny. ‘You had it off when he came down to our place on that course, didn’t you? I knew I’d seen him somewhere. Carroty-headed feller with big hands.’
‘Burnished rust,’ I say. ‘And all his bodily extremities are well-developed.’
The moment that the words have passed my lips I realise that they may have been ill-judged and Penny is swift to prove me correct. ‘There you go again,’ she says. ‘You can’t help giving yourself away, can you? Socking great helpings of steaming male tonk, that’s what turns you on, isn’t it?’
‘Rubbish!’ I say. ‘Come back to Ching – West Woodford and meet Geoffrey properly before you say things like that. Who knows? You might find that there’s something missing from your life.’
These words, thrown down in anger rather than in a genuine attempt at an invitation, do in fact lead to Penny agreeing to accompany me home for a short visit. Apparently her father is about to separate from his latest wife and she always likes to be out of the way when this is happening. Of course, this kind of experience is a million miles from my own and I always think that Penny considers that there is something slightly strange about me because I am still living with the same mother and father as when I was born.
‘What do they find to say to each other?’ she says. This is the kind of question that opens one’s mind to aspects of family life that one has never properly considered before and I begin to wonder whether Penny’s visit will be as mutually rewarding an experience as I had hoped for. It certainly does not start off very well.
‘Gosh,’ says Penny as we take a prohibitively expensive taxi from Buckhurst Hill Station. ‘Look at those ghastly little houses. Can you imagine living in one of them?’
Before I can answer, the cabby shoves on the anchors and we squeal to a halt outside number 47 Pretty Way. ‘Here you are, Miss,’ he says. ‘That’ll be eighty pence please.’
‘It’s lovely,’ says Penny. ‘It’s got a completely different character from the rest of the houses in the street. I love those gnomes trying to fish the milk bottle tops out of the refuse pit.’
‘That’s the pond,’ I say. ‘A lot of stuff blows in from the people who are waiting at the bus stop.’
Penny and I make a big thing of paying for the taxi and spill the contents of our purses all over the pavement as we struggle to get the money out first but there is no doubt that the damage has been done. The situation is not improved when sister Natalie opens the front door. She is wearing her pink velvet lounging pants and a lilac green transparent blouse that reveals every inch of fabric on the black bra nearly covering her over-developed breasts. I don’t know how she put on her make-up but it looks as if somebody fired it at her out of a cannon – Mum should take her in hand, I have said so, many times.
‘They’re here, Mum,’ she says. ‘Rosie and her posh friend.’
Penny gives Natalie a smile slightly more deadly than cyanide of potassium and pushes into the interior of the house. ‘What a pretty sister you have, Rosie,’ she says. ‘She’s going to look really lovely when her spots clear up. Have you thought about seeing a specialist?’
I might have guessed that Mum would appear flustered and with flour all over her hands and it is no surprise when she tries to shake hands while she is apologising about the state of the house, covers Penny in flour, tries to rub it off with a cloth that has jam on it and – oh! I can’t bear to go on. By the time Dad comes back, says ‘pleased to meet you’ to Penny, tucks his serviette in the top of his collar, sits at the table with his knife and fork bolt upright in either hand and informs everybody that he is looking forward to Coronation Street I am determined that we must get out of the house at any cost.
As soon as Mum has made a pot of tea – oh, why couldn’t we have had Nescafé – I suggest to Penny that we take a stroll round to the tennis club and she agrees with alacrity. It is a lovely evening and as the long hut hoves into view behind the privet hedge covered with the stale crusts of badly cut cucumber sandwiches my heart lifts to the sound of ball making contact with tightly strung gut. I am no great shakes as a tennis player but – who knows – maybe I will be partnering Geoffrey in the longest mixed doubles match of them all?
I do not really expect to see Geoffrey and it is therefore a surprise to look through a gap in the privet and catch sight of my erstwhile beau chasing a high lob which drops inches inside the base line.
‘Hard luck!’ he calls. ‘Just out.’
‘Geoffrey!’ I shout. ‘Yoo hoo, it’s me!’
Geoffrey whips round like a dog hearing the word ‘walkies’ and his eyes probe the privet. He sees me and his eyes light up. ‘Rosie!’ There is a heart-stabbing choke in his voice as he throws his racket aside and starts to run towards me. It is ever so romantic. Just like those bits in the films when the two lovers run towards each other in slow motion. The only difference is that, in the films, one of the lovers does not catch his toe in the top of the net as he tries to vault it. Yes, thank goodness they are playing on a grass court otherwise it might have been serious. Geoffrey ploughs about five yards into the tramlines but gets away with a green nose turning to bright red at the tip.
‘Blast!’ he says. ‘I knew that bloody net was too high. None of my first serves were going in. How are you, Rosie? You’re looking super. Lovely and brown. I have missed you. How – oh –’ He looks at Penny and dries up. I don’t know what it is about her. She is wearing her normal kit of slightly too-tight jeans and a denim shirt with most of the buttons undone.
‘This is Penny Green,’ I say. ‘You have met – fleetingly.’
‘Yes,’ says Geoffrey. ‘I mean, oh yes. How could I ever forget?’ He stares at Penny and swallows hard.
‘Are you going to finish this game, old boy?’ says the man he is playing with. ‘You’re love-five down and fifteen-forty.’
‘Er – no,’ says Geoffrey, feeling his nose tenderly. ‘Let’s call it a draw, shall we? The light’s getting pretty bad anyway.’
‘Dammit, Wilkes!’ says the other man, throwing his racket on the ground. ‘I’ve never finished a game with you yet! How are we ever going to complete the club ladder?’
But Geoffrey does not reply. He opens a gate beside the court and lets Penny and me into the grounds. ‘Jolly lucky you turning up like this,’ he says. ‘There’s a hop on tonight. You’ll be just what the doctor ordered.’
‘I’m not dressed for dancing,’ says Penny, plucking at the front of her shirt.
Geoffrey flushes. ‘Oh, that’s all right. It’s nothing very swish. Anyway, I think you look super just the way you are.’
‘How sweet of you,’ says Penny.
‘Oh it’s nothing.’ Geoffrey twiddles his racket so fast that he drops it on the ground. ‘Would you – er care for a shandy or something? The bar should be open about now.’
‘That would be lovely,’ says Penny. ‘A large gin and tonic would be absolutely divine.’
They go off together into the clubhouse and I breathe an enormous sigh of relief. Thank goodness they seem to have taken to each other. I could not have stood another setback on the human relationship front.
‘Derek Tharge,’ says the man Geoffrey was playing, coming up behind me. ‘You a member, are you?’ He says it in such a way that I am not certain whether he is expressing interest or accusing me of trespassing. He keeps swishing his racket at any daisy that dares to raise its head above grass level and has a permanently preoccupied expression on his face.
‘Rosie Dixon,’ I say. ‘I’m a friend of Geoffrey’s.’
‘Left me to pick up the balls as usual,’ says Tharge, suddenly leaping into the air and bringing down a shower of laburnum leaves with a crudely executed smash. ‘I was having a lot of trouble with my backhand today.’
‘Really,’ I say, thinking that I had better go and join Geoffrey and Penny before they wonder what has happened to me.
‘Yes, I never seem to get my whole game together at the same time. How I won the club championship, I’ll never know. I could hardly put a couple of decent shots together. Everybody else was in the same boat, I suppose.’
‘I expect they must have been,’ I say. ‘Well –’
‘Let me buy you a drink,’ says Tharge, throwing up a ball and serving it viciously through the window of the small hut where they keep all the broken deckchairs. ‘Ooops – sorry. Need to get this old fellow restrung, you know. That’s another problem, choosing which racket to use. I always think it’s a question of how they come to the hand. What’s your poison?’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ I say. ‘But I think my friends have probably bought me a drink.’
In fact Geoffrey has not bought me a drink. He and Penny are thick as thieves in a corner choosing which of the Jimmy Shand records to put on when the dancing starts. I might as well leave them to it, I suppose. After all, I am going to need a bridesmaid – or is Penny too old to be a bridesmaid? Perhaps she will have to be a maid of honour. I must ask someone about it.
‘Going to change your mind?’ says Tharge, who has once again loomed up at my elbow. ‘I’m just going to have a lime and lemonade myself. I never drink anything intoxicating directly after a match.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, not wishing to appear rude. ‘A Babycham would be nice.’ I waggle my fingers at Geoffrey but he does not appear to see me.
‘I had a bit of trouble with my throw up recently,’ says Derek as he steers me towards one of the foam-rubber-disgorging, torn moquette-covered benches that surround the room.
‘Oh dear,’ I say. ‘Not the chipolatas again?’ There was once an unpleasant outbreak of food poisoning after a club barbecue and I imagine that it is something of this nature that Derek is referring to.
‘Couldn’t synchronise my arm movements at all,’ continues my companion. ‘It’s terrible when that happens. Your whole game goes to pieces. Ken Rosewall says that if you’re not getting your first service in eighty per cent of the time then you’ve got big problems, cobber – or it might have been Rod Laver. No, wait a moment –’
The club is beginning to fill up a bit now and the first record goes down on the turntable. Nat King Cole. It seems only yesterday that Geoffrey held me tight in his arms and we drifted round the floor, impervious to all that was happening about us – at least, I was. Somebody had put something in the punch. I wish Geoffrey would ask me to dance now. It really is a bit naughty of him to spend all that time with Penny. And why are they wandering out on to the verandah?
‘… so I painted numbered squares all over the garage door.’ Derek Tharge’s voice drones on beside me. ‘Every day I go out there with a racket and a few balls and I shout out numbers to myself. Whatever number I shout, I have to hit the ball against that square. That’s something I learned from Lew Hoad. He used to do it when he was a kid.’
‘I believe most children do,’ I say, trying to look out on to the terrace. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.’
‘Or was it Frank Sedgeman?’ says Tharge. ‘You know, I think it might have been Spancho Gonzalez. Completely different continent. Amazing to think that he never won Wimbledon, isn’t it?’
I don’t answer because I am now beginning to get worried about Geoffrey and Penny. What are they up to? Is it possible that they have formed some kind of attachment to each other? It hardly seems credible yet I know that Penny has consummated relationships with amazing speed in the past and that Geoffrey is very easily led astray. If he joined her in a large gin and tonic anything might be happening.
‘I’m not much of a dancer. Would you like to step outside?’
‘Thank you. Later.’ I say, not really listening to what he is saying.
‘I could show you the exercise I use for developing my wrists.’
‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Will you excuse me a minute? I must…’
I let my voice die away discreetly and move towards the door with ‘Dames’ on it – a memento of a reciprocal exchange visit with a French tennis club that was never reciprocated. A quick glance towards Tharge tells me that he has his nose in his lime and lemon so I veer left sharply and head out on to the verandah. Dusk is falling and I am disturbed to find that there is no sign of Geoffrey and Penny. I glance towards the courts. Perhaps they have gone to look for Geoffrey’s balls? No, they couldn’t have. Derek Tharge was grumbling about the fact that he had to bring them in.
I am about to turn back when I hear a noise. At first it is difficult to place but then it reminds me of someone pouring water over a cabbage leaf. I stick my head round the corner of the verandah and am met with the unpleasant sight of Mr Westbury, the club treasurer, responding to a call of nature.
‘Ooops,’ he says, clearly causing himself some discomfort in his attempt to take evasive action. ‘Didn’t know there were any ladies about.’
I cannot think of an appropriate response to this statement so I turn on my heel with the intention of going back into the clubhouse. Perhaps Penny has gone into the Ladies without me noticing.
I have taken half a dozen steps when my attention is attracted by another noise. It is that of a sharp intake of breath – more a gasp, in fact – and it comes from male lips. I notice that the light is on behind the frosted glass windows of the small room where the tea urn is kept and visiting ladies’ teams sometimes change. As my blood freezes, I hear Penny’s voice.
‘Sorry, I was trying to be gentle.’
‘Oh you were – I mean, you are.’ Geoffrey’s voice sounds on edge. What are they doing? Surely they couldn’t be – No! The thought is too awful.
‘Which way do you want me to stick it?’
‘I don’t mind. I’m in your hands.’
‘Up, I think. Hold on a minute, I’ll just peel the end back. Now, here we go. Gently does it. How does that feel?’
My senses reel and for a moment I think I am going to faint. Can this be true? My best friend and – and my fiancé!
‘Lovely. You put something on it, didn’t you?’
‘Just a dab of Germolene to be on the safe side.’
How cold-blooded can you get? The shameless hussy! I take a stride towards the door intending to expose them in ‘fragrantly delicious’, or whatever it is called, but I control myself. In my present mood I cannot be responsible for what might happen if I got my hands on Penny. There is a tray of knives and forks beside the plastic beakers in the tea-room and if I snatched one of them up –! Who knows? They are plastic, too, but you can do yourself a nasty injury nonetheless. I remember when Geoffrey was trying to prise open a rusty racket press with one of them and it – Geoffrey! How could you do this to me? I don’t know whether I shout the words aloud because I am concentrating on holding back the hot scalding tears. I rush back into the clubhouse and try and pull myself together in the Ladies. There is no point in me staying here any longer. I will go home and Penny can do what she likes. No doubt Geoffrey will bring her back when – when they’ve finished.
Through the flimsy plywood door I hear the haunting strains of Blue Moon and nearly lose all my newly found composure. Why did they have to play that tune? ‘Blue moon, why am I standing alone? Without a something in my heart, without a dream of my own.’ I remember dancing with Geoffrey to that after Rodney Neasden and Janine Smallwood went down with jaundice in suspicious circumstances and had to scratch from the final of the mixed doubles making him and Althea Hodge the champions. It wasn’t much of a victory because only three couples entered and Geoffrey and Althea had a bye in the first and only round but it had seemed a triumph at the time. Now, bitterness and a new insight into Geoffrey’s character helps me to put it in its true perspective. I take a deep breath, stand up, unlock the door and go out to meet the combined glare of the four girls who have been waiting outside the cubicle. I glare back. They can all go and hang themselves as far as I am concerned. I am never coming back to the Eastwood Lawn Tennis Club as long as I live. Tinny dump.
I leave the Ladies and push past the couples on the now crowded dance floor. They are not dancing because the record has stuck. ‘Alone, alone, alone, alone –’ How symbolic. I sweep through the open door and welcome the enveloping darkness.
‘Hey! You’re not going, are you? I’ve just got you another drink.’ Derek Tharge looms up behind me holding a half empty Babycham glass. ‘I’ve spilled most of it now. That’s fifteen p down the drain.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I came over a little faint. It was rather hot in there.’
‘You want to put your head between your legs,’ says Tharge. ‘That’s what I always do. Take a few deep breaths while you’re down there.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to be the answer,’ I say.
‘Maybe you ought to loosen some of your clothing,’ says Derek. ‘You’re not wearing tights, are you?’
‘No,’ I say. In fact I am wearing one of the few suspender belts that I have managed to rescue from Natalie’s thieving fingers. I have a nasty suspicion that she wears them to make herself more sexy when she goes out with her disgusting little boyfriends. I must talk to Mum about her.
‘Good. They’re very unhealthy, you know. I read an article about it.’
‘Really,’ I say. ‘Well, thank you for –’
‘What do you wear?’
This question coming completely out of the blue rather throws me as does the sudden pressure of Derek’s hand on my elbow. We are walking along the line of dwarf conifers that lead from the courts to the road and I had thought that Derek was escorting me to the gate. Am I now to believe that his horizons extend beyond the two lines that border the edge of a tennis court?
