by Voss, Louise
‘I don’t see why not, if I take it easy …Oh, I hate this! I hate not being able to walk! What if I can never walk again? I know it’s only been a month, but sometimes I just can’t even remember what it’s like! Let alone running around a tennis court… Now it’s a big deal for me even to go to the sodding bus stop!’
‘Oh darling,’ she says, her big violet eyes full of concern. The dark grey shadows in the wrinkled skin beneath them make their colour stand out even more vividly. ‘You’re doing so well with your physio. I know there’s not much I can say to make you feel better, but you just have to be patient.’
I stand up on my good foot and reach for my crutches again, a gesture which has become totally instinctive. ‘I just want to know, one way or the other. I didn’t before, but I do now. I’ve got to plan for the future.’
‘I know what you mean,’ says Gordana, so matter-of-factly that I feel humbled. I’m only worried about my career, while she is waiting to find out if she even has a future to plan for. For the first time, I feel something positive about my accident. If I hadn’t injured myself, I would have been able to spend hardly any time with Gordana while she was ill, and I certainly wouldn’t have been living here. I’d have popped in for the odd visit, of course, telling myself that I was doing all I could to be supportive to her, but I bet she’d have had to be at death’s door before I’d pull out of a tournament voluntarily to be at her side. To my complete shame, I’m not even sure I’d do that; not if I was doing well.
What if I’d got through to the semi-finals? The final?
No, of course I would. Of course.
Chapter 42
Susie
Gordana had called me at Corinna’s to say that he’d rung and wanted to meet me. At first I couldn’t even think who he was. My brain seemed a little scrambled from the stress of recent events, as well as the confusion of being based in two different places. I didn’t like to spend more than a few days at a time at either Gordana’s or Corinna’s, not wanting to get under anybody’s feet or outstay my welcome.
‘Karl who?’
‘He says he met you on the skiing holiday.’
I was astounded. ‘Oh, that Karl! Good grief, I don’t believe it.’
‘Did you have time to have a holiday romance?’Gordana asked, a little frostily.
‘No! Of course not! He was just really good to me – to both of us – when we were out there. He gave me lifts to the hospital and so on. He said he’s often in London on business, and because I didn’t know if I’d have a mobile phone over here, I gave him your number. I hope that’s all right.’
‘That is fine,’ said Gordana. ‘He says he’s going to be here until Friday, and if you wished to give him a call, he’d love to hear from you. He asked about Rachel too.’
I copied down the number she read out, trying to remember what Karl looked like. I had a memory of blond eyebrows and thick stubby fingers, and bits of popcorn stuck in his stubble, but whenever I tried to picture him, I saw Paul Newman instead. Oh, and beetroot – that’s right, he made me that supper when we got back from the hospital. That was all a bit blurry, after the brandies I’d consumed and the day I’d had.
What had we talked about? I thought I must have done all the talking, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember any information about him at all. I remembered the iron dragons in the fireplace, and the beige snow falling, and being out on the mountainside in zero visibility, but that was about it. What a truly awful vacation. Meeting Karl had been the only nice part of it, apart from the time spent with Rachel before the accident. But I couldn’t say I’d given him more than a passing thought since our return.
He must fancy me, I thought uncertainly, to look me up. Usually when you met people on holiday and exchanged numbers, it was as good as saying, ‘Have a nice life, it was good meeting you but I’ll never see you again.’
‘Ring him!’ said Corinna when I told her. She was doing the Saturday Times music crossword at the time, frowning at the few remaining unsolved clues. Her bare feet were propped up on the coffee table and her purple sparkly toenail polish was chipped. We were having a lazy Saturday morning together. ‘Go and have a date, it’ll cheer you up. Wish some handsome Aryan knight in shining armour would ring me up.’
‘He was quite handsome, actually,’ I reflected. ‘Quite a bit younger than me though, I’d say. Nice body. I can’t remember what he looked like, other than he had a touch of the young Paul Newman about him.’ I remembered that I’d thought of setting him and Rachel up, but that obviously hadn’t happened. Suddenly I no longer wanted her to have him. That wasn’t to say that I wanted him…at least, not yet. But I decided I’d quite like the option, if there was one going.
Corinna cackled. ‘Oh dear, it gets worse and worse…You sound like “younger” is a problem! A young, fit, decent, man who looks like Paul Newman is ringing you up? I’d be jumping for flaming joy if it was me…Eight letters, second letter L, Britpop band whose single was “Connection”. Ooh, I’m sure I know that…’
‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t a lot of Britpop in Lawrence; not that I ever heard. It was more bluegrass or reggae instead. I’d like to see him again,’ I added. ‘If only to thank him for everything he did for us in Italy. I could take him out for a meal, couldn’t I? But what if he—’
‘ Elastica! Of course.’ She scribbled it in. ‘What? What if he what?’
‘Well. You know, does fancy me?’
Corinna shook her head pityingly. ‘Oh come on, Susie, get a grip. I mean, literally. Get a grip. If he fancies you, go for it. Have some good old-fashioned uncomplicated sex! It’ll do wonders for your ego if nothing else, and put a smile on your face. You lucky bitch.’
I laughed and slapped her shoulder affectionately. Perhaps she was right. I suppose it felt a bit funny, Gordana being the one who passed on the message. She made no bones about the fact that she’d love to see Ivan and me back together again, which of course was completely preposterous, but I had too much regard for Gordana to tell her that her son was an arrogant, devious cheat, and I didn’t even want to be in the same room as him, let alone in another doomed marriage.
‘I can’t imagine having sex with anyone other than Billy,’ I said dolefully. ‘And I don’t think I’m ever going to get married again. I’d have married Billy years ago if I’d wanted that.’
‘Who’s talking about marriage? You’re going to meet up with a new friend, who may or may not fancy you…Oh, I can’t do this one: the Rainmakers’ only single, four words, last word ends in O. I’ve never even heard of the Rainmakers.’
I got up. ‘It’s “Let My People Go-Go”.’
Corinna gaped at me in mock admiration.
‘They’re from Kansas, don’t you remember?’
‘No, I can’t say I do. But thanks. Now go and ring your Karl bloke.’
Karl and I arranged to meet on Monday night for dinner, although I made him promise to allow me to pay, which he harrumphed about Germanically before conceding. Once I heard his voice on the phone, I remembered how relaxed I felt in his company. I still couldn’t visualize his face, but I heard the smile in his voice and how he had that wonderful ‘port in a storm’ quality of making me feel safe. A bit like Billy had.
It was an odd feeling, getting ready for a date with a different man. I found myself dressing to impress Billy: a squirt of the perfume he liked, my hair up the way he approved of, the matching underwear he’d bought me (Lord knows how he managed that. I think he must have stood in the doorway of the lingerie shop in Lawrence looking lost until a sales lady took pity on him. For which I’m most thankful, otherwise I might have ended up with a purple polka-dot bra two sizes too large and some orange nylon briefs …).
Corinna lent me a funky pink charm bracelet, and her pink suede boots, which were a size and a half too large, but so lovely. I felt like I did as a five year old, dressing up and clunking around the house in my mother’s clothes, and it gave me an unexpected pang of loss. As well as my pa
rents being long dead, Billy never saw his folks: they were divorced, and one lived in Canada, one in Tallahassee. Gordana was my substitute mother, and I knew that whatever happened with Ivan and me, she would always be there for me. I couldn’t stand the thought that she might not survive this illness. She was the hub of the closest thing I had to a family, however dysfunctional and fractured it was.
‘What’s up, Susie?’ said Corinna, who was teasing my hair into big waves with her curling tongs.
‘Just thinking about Gordana,’ I replied, concentrating on applying shiny pink eyeshadow. ‘I want to spend as much time as I can with her, but I don’t want to have another run-in with you-know-who. He’s like a bear with a sore head. I’m getting enough grief from one ex, I don’t need it from the other as well.’
Corinna squeezed my shoulder. ‘Think about your date instead. You can’t change anything by worrying about Gordana.’
I sighed. ‘I know, but….’ There wasn’t much else I could say.
All the way into town on the train, I was still seeing Paul Newman’s face on Karl’s body. But when I met Karl at the bar of the tapas restaurant near Waterloo Station that Corinna had recommended, Paul Newman vanished with a pop, and I couldn’t think how I’d ever made the association. They weren’t a bit alike, apart from the hair. I also couldn’t think how I hadn’t been able to remember what Karl looked like – as soon as I saw him, he looked utterly familiar. Having felt nervous about meeting him, I instantly felt nothing but pleasure.
‘Hi!’ I said warmly, kissing him on both cheeks, enjoying the feel of faint stubble against my lips. I tried and failed to recall the last time I’d had sex. ‘It’s really nice to see you again.’
‘You also,’ he said, appraising me at arm’s length.
‘You look great.’
I laughed, remembering the Tweedledee salopettes that were my sartorial lot the last time he’d seen me. His trademark ‘alt-zo’ hit the spot, too.
‘Well, rented ski gear from the Eighties doesn’t do much for a girl’s appearance. Not to mention the trauma of that week.’
‘No, I don’t suppose they do.’
I was half waiting for him to say that I’d looked great in Italy too, but he didn’t.
‘How is Rachel?’ he asked.
‘She’s much better, thanks,’ I said, accepting the seat he pulled back for me. ‘She’s still on crutches, but the physio’s going well, and she’ll find out if she can play competitively again in a couple of months’ time.’
‘I looked her up on the Internet,’ said Karl with enthusiasm. ‘She’s done very well, hasn’t she?’
‘Yeah. Although she’s convinced she could go a lot further. She wants to be at least the British number one – she’s number eight at the moment. Well, at least she was, before the accident.’
‘That sounds impressive to me,’ Karl said. ‘Please send her my best wishes.’
‘Did you meet her?’ I asked curiously. I couldn’t remember that they’d even had a conversation, only that he’d brought her up with the rest of us in the van, and then seen her semi-conscious in hospital.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We had a good chat the first morning over breakfast. I think you were not awake yet. We …how do you say it? Hit it off.’
‘Oh right. Shall we order?’
In the end, the evening was somehow not quite how I’d imagined it would be. Whilst I’d been unable to get to grips with Corinna’s idea of having a therapeutic, confidence-boosting one-night stand with Karl, I had thought that it would be …well, more of a date, I suppose. It was more like a comfortable, companiable dinner with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while.
Which was fine, of course, and infinitely preferable to a stilted meal full of pregnant pauses or, worse, unwanted advances. But on reflection, I think I was slightly hurt that there were no advances, unwanted or otherwise. Karl was utterly natural, and funny, and sweet. He told me all about his magnet-supplying business, which was a sideline to his ‘real’ work as a wine-importer, and how he loved the time he spent at the hotel in Italy.
He didn’t volunteer any personal information at all, apart from saying he’d never been married. He didn’t ask me anything personal either – although, recalling how I’d banged on relentlessly for several hours at the hotel that night, there probably wasn’t anything left that he felt he didn’t already know about me. Our chat was strictly present tense: I told him how I was dividing my time between Gordana and Corinna’s places, and we talked a lot about how great London was after the small towns we were used to. It was all very…polite.
At the end of dinner, there was an unseemly tussle for the bill – he had reneged on his promise to let me pay – in which our hands accidentally brushed one another; but that was the only physical contact we had, apart from kisses hello and goodbye. We eventually agreed to split the bill, and after we’d got our coats and walked out into the still noisy bustle of the Cut, to my surprise he asked me out again.
‘Lunch, perhaps, on Wednesday? I could come out to where you are staying. I would like to say hello to Rachel also.’
I felt puzzled. He wasn’t even looking in my eyes as he spoke. Instead, he was watching the progress of a homeless man weaving drunkenly along the pavement opposite, swamped by a huge macintosh which made him look like a Dalek. I might have been horribly out of practice, but Karl wasn’t giving off signs that he liked me in any way other than as a friend. Perhaps he was gay? Lonely? No social skills? I discounted the last one – he was charm personified. The first two were far more likely.
Oh well, I thought. Go with the flow. You like him, he obviously likes you enough to see you again, very soon. Perhaps it’s a German thing: trying to look at all costs as though there was no question of fancying the person whom you were asking out…
‘That would be lovely,’ I said, trying to sound brisk and not coy. ‘Give me a ring on the mobile, and we’ll fix something up for Wednesday. I’m not sure whether I’ll be in Surrey, though, or at Corinna’s place. But I’ll give Rach a ring to find out if she’s free. I’m sure she’d love to see you too.’
Karl beamed at me, tearing his eyes away from the swaying drunk.
‘Wednesday then,’ he said.
Chapter 43
Rachel
I managed to get the bus all the way to Dad and Anthea’s, but it was more traumatic than I’d envisaged it would be. Partly because I timed it badly – I left it till mid-afternoon, and the schoolchildren had all just come out. The bus was a blur of off-white shirts, wonky ties and talk of bands I’d barely even heard of: McFly and Busted. A backpack in front of me was painted with the words ‘50 Cent’ in big white letters. Was that a band or a solo artist? Kerry would know. I was worried that my crutches would slide to the floor and trip someone up, or that someone would accidentally kick my bad leg.
I listened to the teenagers’ conversations with interest, as I always do when around non-tennis players. Until the accident, I found it hard to imagine how people not on the tour managed to occupy their time. What did they think about if they didn’t have first-serve percentages to improve, or core stability to increase? What did they say to one another? What the hell did they do all day?
When I wasn’t playing matches myself, but watching my friends or rivals from the stands, I used to love eavesdropping on crowd conversations, too. They gave me clues about what preoccupied people. Sure, a lot of those conversations pertained to the match, and were hilarious enough to listen to in their erroneous suppositions about the players or the technique, but what I really liked was the staggering inanity of many of the non-tennis related ones. After I got knocked out in the second round at my last British tournament, I sat in front of two middle-aged women who occupied an entire game of a thrilling quarter-final between Kerry and Tatiana Garbin in a discussion about jelly.
Garbin was an Italian player ranked fifty-second in the world, and it was Kerry’s biggest match to date. She’d done really well to get that far, and it
went to three sets before she succumbed, so I felt quite outraged on her behalf that these two women weren’t paying more attention.
‘Do you like jelly?’ one had asked the other. ‘I make a lot of jelly at home, you know, with the cubes that you melt. Although I’m not so keen on the lemon sort.’
She continued in this vein for some time, with her friend agreeing or disagreeing on the relative merits of different flavours, until the score in the game reached a fourth deuce, the crowd was biting its collective nails, hollering and gasping, and her friend said conclusively, ‘We eat a huge amount of yogurt in our house.’
Perhaps it was because they didn’t have anything more important than jelly to concern them. I fear that kind of existence; the thought of being unemployed, or trapped at home with babies or dependants, makes me feel ill with itchiness.
Although now I’ve had several weeks of it, I do feel a little differently. I can understand how days pass in cycles of small activities. Time just moves more slowly, that’s all. The physio’s going well, and I have filled two entire sketchpads with my drawings. I feel really good about that. So perhaps life doesn’t have to be an endless round of extreme stimulation in order to be fulfilling. Perhaps I am beginning to understand how little things can matter too: a few hours chilling out in the company of a loved one; a good soap opera; a nice cup of tea …Oh Rachel, listen to yourself! You sound about ninety-seven.
‘Excuse me,’ said an uncertain voice, accompanied by a tap on my shoulder.
I automatically shuffled across towards the window, thinking that the voice’s owner, an acne-ridden skinny boy in his early teens, was asking me to move up so he could sit down in the other half of my seat. But he remained standing in the aisle, weighed down with sports kit and backpack and racket bag, blushing furiously.
‘Are you Rachel Anderson?’ he said, looking from side to side of him to make sure his mates weren’t witnessing this exchange.
‘Yes,’ I replied equally cautiously, instinctively reaching my hand down to shield my knee. Tennis nerd, I thought.