Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1)

by Alan Scholefield

The six pairs of eyes watched him.

  You, netboys, your job is pick up on court near net then get balls to boys at ends. Like so. Rolling ball on ground. Okay?

  So . . . you at back. When Schellberg or other players want balls for service you hold high above head. You throw down, like so. One bounce in front of him. Okay?

  Last thing – be careful of Vickers.

  They nodded. They knew about Vickers.

  So it went.

  Flaming June. Gales. Rain. Cold. Stoppages. Injuries. Tempers.

  The final. The crowd thin. Anoraks. Woollen hats. Umbrellas.

  Schellberg versus Vickers. Germany versus Australia. The ballboys freezing.

  Vickers going down. First set to two; second set running out like sand in a glass.

  Net cord. Query from Vickers. Overruled.

  Service out. Query from Vickers. Overruled.

  Overruled . . . overruled . . .

  Then . . .

  Vickers returning serve down the line.

  Out.

  Schellberg leading by five games to two, second set.

  Vickers walking slowly to the chair. What?

  I saw the ball long.

  You what?

  It was long.

  Bullshit, man.

  The crowd silent, the linespeople watching, the ballboys afraid.

  The umpire starting the stopwatch. Mr Vickers will you please—

  You’re talking shit, man.

  Mr Vickers, abusive language gets you—

  Are you blind? Didn’t you see the chalk? Vickers tapping the court with his racquet. There’s the fucking mark, man.

  Vickers turns to the line judge. His stiff face is beginning to collapse.

  There’s the mark, Vickers says to him. What do you say, man?

  The man says nothing.

  Vickers pushes his racquet in the man’s face. You see all of Schellberg’s in; why not mine?

  Mr Vickers— The umpire is impatient.

  Fuck you man, I want this guy changed.

  I’m not going to change anyone and I’m giving you a public warning—

  Shit! I want the referee. Get me the fucking referee.

  The referee arrives and speaks to the line judge and the line judge changes his decision and the point is reversed and that is that. Vickers walks it seven-five; six-love.

  Jason’s mother said afterwards, wasn’t it a pity about the final. Wasn’t it a pity it was won that way!

  And Lajos said what did she know? She was just a stupid woman. Winning was winning. It didn’t matter how.

  Jason said nothing.

  *

  ‘My daughter tells me you don’t drive,’ Henry Vernon said, as he opened the door of his car for Margaret Newman. ‘Don’t blame you. They don’t know how to drive in this bloody country. They think they do but they don’t. Here, let me take the baby.’

  He held Julie while Margaret got into the car and then passed her in. Margaret took her without a word.

  ‘Do you know Africa?’ Henry said.

  ‘I went out to Cape Town to see Jason play in the Diamond Challenge.’

  He drove slowly down the village street.

  ‘I know the Cape reasonably well. That’s where I retired.’

  She seemed uninterested. They were passing the shop/post office. Abruptly she stiffened. Two middle-aged women and an elderly man formed a knot on the pavement in the afternoon sun. Their heads swung in unison as the car passed them.

  ‘Have a good look,’ Margaret said and turned to stare them down.

  The man dropped his eyes, but the two women looked back with unconcealed interest.

  ‘Bitches,’ she said.

  ‘There’s always talk in a village,’ Henry said. ‘That’s the benefit of living in a city. Nobody gives a damn about you in a city. Of course that can be tricky if something goes badly wrong. No one to care.’

  ‘That’s what I’d like. Nobody to give a damn.’

  ‘Watch where you’re going you old fool!’ Henry shouted out of the car window. An elderly woman in a small Metro disappeared behind them, her face frozen in fright. ‘Geriatrics shouldn’t be allowed to drive,’ he said.

  When he returned from Africa he had been scathing about the cars that thronged the British roads. ‘They all look alike,’ he had said to Anne. ‘Bloody tin cans.’

  In Africa his cars had been something of a legend. Apart from the American truck which he and Watch used as day-to-day transport, he had owned separately, and sometimes together, an Armstrong Siddeley, a Lanchester, a pre-war Jaguar and an Alvis. There was not a single mechanic in any of the countries in which they had lived who had ever seen under the bonnet of cars such as these, nor heard of a pre-selector gearbox. The result was that if anything went wrong – and it did frequently, for Henry would drive into walls and cows and sometimes farm dams – it took not weeks but months to put it right. Large spare parts, like the back axle for the Armstrong, came out by sea from Southampton, smaller items by air to Johannesburg where they were forwarded to Lesotho or Malawi or Botswana depending on where he was living at the time.

  The cars, which in any case had never been built for African roads and which shook to pieces after short and unhappy lives, had ended up in African villages as hen houses. The wheels had been taken off and used on carts, the leather seats as furniture.

  When he came home to England for good he bought a massive 3.5 litre Rover of nearly forty summers which he was now piloting through the narrow lanes of West Sussex.

  He turned to Margaret, registering again her pale skin and fine bone structure, and said, ‘Anne tells me you were a mannequin.’

  The word seemed to puzzle Margaret for a second, then she said, ‘We call it a model now.’

  ‘Ah. Anyway, going back to what we were saying, don’t models need publicity? I mean you wouldn’t get so much work if no one gave a damn about you.’

  ‘You do when you’re starting. It becomes a nightmare afterwards.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After Jason and I – well, started going together.’

  ‘You don’t have to be on your best behaviour. I can remember what men and women do. Rows and fornication in varying measures.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘You remind me of my father.’

  ‘Must be a splendid chap.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘All the best people are.’

  ‘He wanted me to be a doctor – like your daughter. But I wasn’t clever enough. In fact I was thick. Watch it!’

  A delivery van missed them by a few inches.

  ‘Monster!’ Henry shouted.

  ‘You were in the middle of the road,’ Margaret said severely.

  ‘I have a granddaughter who uses that tone when she speaks to me. What did your father make of you modelling?’

  ‘He died when I was getting started. I don’t think he would have liked me modelling swimsuits or bras and pants.’

  ‘He didn’t know Jason then?’

  ‘No, thank God. He hated people like Jason. I mean people who made exhibitions of themselves on the sports field. He stopped watching sport on tv, except golf.’

  ‘He sounds better and better. I’m sorry I never knew him. What sort of behaviour?’

  ‘The usual – abusing the umpire and the lines people. My father really hated that. He always said it was unfair because they had no comeback; they just had to take it.’

  ‘My feelings precisely.’

  ‘But Jason wasn’t like that in real life. Off court he was the gentlest person. Until . . .’

  He waited, but she did not continue. ‘Anne told me he’d beaten you up.’

  She did not reply directly, instead said, ‘You know, if you live with a tennis player, really live, there’s nothing else. He’s it. The centre of the universe. He wanted me with him all the time; at courtside, travelling, in hotels. So I had to give up my own career.’ She paused. ‘It was pretty horrible, really. Sometimes we didn’t even know w
hat country we were in. We’d get to an airport and the courtesy car would take us to our hotel. Jason can’t sleep on planes so he’d get into bed while I unpacked. Then he’d watch tv. Maybe I’d watch it with him. I’ve seen “I Love Lucy” God knows how many times. I’ve seen it dubbed into Malayan and Arabic and Spanish, even Japanese. After a time you forget what it sounds like in English. Then there’s the “entourage”. The coach, the physio, the manager. For a time Jason even had his own psychologist. If you didn’t have your own psychologist you weren’t where it was at.’

  ‘Did he really need one?’

  ‘Didn’t matter. The best players had them for motivation. Some even had security guards in case the tennis groupies threw them down and screwed them. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘I get the general drift.’

  ‘And then you play your match and if you get through the first round you go to the press conference and have a massage and some vitamins and you drink Diet Coke. If you’re Jason you eat ice-cream, though you shouldn’t, and watch some more dubbed tv and have an early night. And if you don’t get through the first round you’re flying again and asking yourself was that Bangkok we just left? Or was it Singapore? And who cares, anyway?’

  ‘There must be compensations,’ Henry said, just missing a bus. ‘Fame? Money?’

  ‘For some. When Jason was in the top ten on the computer it was like owning a bank. Money kept pouring in: sponsorship deals, endorsements, advertising. He had contracts with clothing manufacturers, racquet manufacturers, shoe companies. Free cars. You name it. People kept coming to us with buckets of money if only he’d endorse this or that. We had a flat in London in Barons Court so he could practise at Queen’s, a house in Hampshire and a condo on a tennis complex in Florida.’

  ‘I once had three tents,’ Henry said.

  She smiled vaguely, gripped by her own memories. ‘Eventually things became more and more difficult. There’s always pressure. Pressure to win, to go here, to open this, to speak at that, to wear this, to be interviewed here, to be photographed there. And you can’t say no because the sponsors wouldn’t like it. Once Jason didn’t go on a photo call to a children’s hospital. The sports pages called him callous. The thing was he had food poisoning. But no one cared about that. I think that was about the time the press really turned on him, when he started losing.’

  Kingstown Castle showed up on the horizon and the traffic became heavier.

  ‘My daughter tells me you got caught in the Lloyds crash.’

  ‘That’s why we’re in that horrible house. Jason’s financial adviser always said we should look to the future. What if something happened and Jason couldn’t play? We had friends in their early twenties who couldn’t play because of injuries. Well, we weren’t going to be caught that way. We were going to invest our money. So we invested in Lloyds and then came the hurricanes and the Exxon Valdez and God knows what else and the syndicate went bust and they came to us and said so sorry and took the houses, cars, furniture – everything of value.’

  ‘But Jason was still playing, wasn’t he? Still earning?’

  She shook her head. ‘He began to have shoulder trouble. They said it was his big serve and starting so young that had damaged the joint. But I don’t think it was. I think he simply burned out. Players do, you know. Whatever has kept them near the top just seeps away; you only have to look down the list at some of the names: Andrea Jaeger, Tracy Austen . . . there are lots of them. Some had injuries but some burned out.’

  Henry turned the car into the prison car park. ‘Here we are.’

  Her need to talk had activated a fountain, now suddenly it was turned off. He had been aware that it was a catharsis, probably triggered by loneliness and the silence of the house. Now her own silence engulfed her. He sat silent too, waiting.

  He watched her hands. Her fingers tightened on the baby’s clothing, then relaxed, tightened and relaxed. She lit a cigarette and he saw she had been using the clothing to cling to. Without that anchor her hands shook uncontrollably.

  ‘I can’t!’ she said, softly.

  ‘He’s your husband.’

  ‘I just can’t.’

  ‘He needs you. Think how much worse it is for him.’

  ‘You don’t know . . .’

  He waited, but she did not continue.

  He said, ‘No matter how hard something is, once you’ve faced it it’s not so bad.’

  After a moment she said, ‘My father used to say something like that.’

  She opened her bag, took out a small bottle of pills and swallowed one.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she said.

  ‘Take all the time you need.’

  She got out of the car.

  ‘Do you want me to come to the door with you?’ Henry said.

  ‘No, I—’

  A woman’s voice said, ‘Can’t park there, dear. It’s all staff parking.’

  ‘Can’t you see she’s got a baby?’ Henry said.

  ‘I’m only trying to be helpful,’ Ida Tribe was offended. Then she looked at the baby. ‘What’s her name, dear?’

  ‘Julie,’ Margaret said.

  ‘That’s a lovely name. I had a cousin called Julie. On my Uncle Percy’s side. Lived near Bosham. Worked in a greenhouse that grew chrysanths. You going in?’

  ‘Of course, she’s going in,’ Henry said. ‘Why d’you think we’ve come here?’

  Mrs Tribe ignored him. ‘Your first time?’

  Margaret nodded.

  ‘You come with me then, dear. Boyfriend?’

  ‘Husband.’

  ‘That’s nice. Not many young mothers have husbands these days.’

  The two of them made their way towards the great wooden doors of the prison where the other visitors were waiting.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Dr Melville’s in court today, Billy, and he asked me to go on with your assessment. Are you agreeable?’

  They were in Anne’s room. Billy Sweete had been brought over from the remand wing by Les and had the same deferential air about him as last time. This puzzled her, for by his own account and by the few remarks passed by his grandmother, his attitude to life was quite the opposite.

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’

  He was dressed in jeans with rolled up bottoms, a check shirt and brown leather bomber jacket.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Anne said. ‘I’ve only just made it.’

  She gave him a mug.

  ‘I’d like to go back to the last interview and pick up a couple of points.’

  She was looking down at Tom’s notes. She was aware that doctors held all the championship points for illegibility but she had never seen anything like this. For all she could decipher it might have been written in Glagol or cuneiform. Fortunately she had made sketchy notes herself.

  ‘Is Dr Melville not coming in, then?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘Oh.’

  This seemed to mark a change in him. He leaned back in the chair and looked round at the green walls, the newly-painted shelves, the glass coffee filter on its white stand, the books, the rug.

  ‘Nice,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t usually see places like this in the nick.’

  It was said in a chatty, person-to-person style.

  ‘I’d like to go back to something Dr Melville said, about you burning down barns.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Because they contained straw and that made them burn better.’

  ‘And hay.’

  ‘Right. And you said you started when you were fifteen.’

  ‘I burned an old car. It was in a field on the farm. Been there for years. I put some petrol in the tank and lit it.’

  ‘I thought that would make it explode?’

  His face broke into a crooked smile. ‘I used a fuse.’

  ‘Did anyone report it?’

  ‘You ain’t going to the police if something happens to something you don’t want.’
>
  ‘Then there was a barn?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He took out the makings, rolled a cigarette and lit it. As he did so he looked over the flame as if challenging her to make him put it out. He hadn’t smoked during his first interview.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘It was on the farm.’

  ‘Mr Gillis’s farm?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I felt like it.’

  ‘Just out of the blue?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t you think that was a strange thing to do?’

  Sudden apprehension flashed across his face. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, you had no motive, did you?’

  ‘I dunno about that.’

  ‘What had happened before that? Can you remember?’

  He paused. ‘I’d been with Mr Gillis.’

  ‘Had that been one of the times—’

  ‘Yeah.’ He stared at her, waiting.

  ‘And afterwards you went and burned down his barn.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you felt better?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think he knew it was you?’

  ‘Yeah. He could smell the petrol on me.’

  ‘Did he go to the police?’

  ‘Couldn’t, could he? Otherwise I’d have told what he done to me.’

  ‘So you felt better when you burned down the barn. In what way? Getting back at Mr Gillis?’

  ‘Yeah. I felt relaxed.’

  ‘The fire caused you to feel relaxed?’

  ‘Yeah. The fire.’

  ‘What was it about the fire?’

  ‘The warmth.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The flames.’

  ‘What about the flames?’

  ‘They sort of . . . excited me. I mean you got a barn full of stuff. Terrific flames. So then I comes.

  ‘But you’d have to be at the barn to light the fire.’

  ‘’Course I was there. That’s where I comes.’

  At first she thought this was some form of rural vernacular which she had not come across before.

  ‘It relaxes me, see.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you, Billy. You came to the barn, lit the straw—’

  ‘It was hay.’

  ‘Okay, hay. You lit the hay and you enjoyed the warmth and the flames and they excited you. And you relaxed.’