Tennis Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  It must have been seeing those men and their moneybox that made him think of the tennis house and his sixpence halfpenny. He did not believe that bears and wolves ate children who broke promises. All the same, since Nicky had told him about bears eating you in the daytime and wolves at night, he had wished he had paid his sixpence halfpenny. Now he saw the perfect chance to do it. He sang far better than those men. Why should he not walk up the road and earn sixpence halfpenny? He no sooner thought of it than he started.

  David was wearing grey flannel shorts, a green shirt and tie, and a grey felt hat. He took off the hat and held it out for the money. He started walking slowly up the kerb, just as the men had done. He sang Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He found it rather difficult to sing loud enough to be heard against so many buses and motorcars. Luckily he had rather a high voice and the top notes seemed to come out above everything. It was surprising how quickly people seemed interested. But they did not let him go on walking like the six men had done. Instead, they all stood round him. Of course, as they stood round him, David had to stand still.

  When he reached the end of the song he held out his hat. But the people did not seem to understand. Instead of putting pennies in it, as they had in the box, they clapped. David looked at them in shocked surprise.

  ‘Men,’ he said with dignity, ‘what sings in the street gets money.’

  A lady standing near him laughed. She leant down to him.

  ‘Where do you come from, darling? Haven’t you got a nurse or anything?’

  David was puzzled. Nobody had asked the six men where they came from. They just gave them money. He looked round.

  ‘Would you all put pennies in my hat if I sang again?’

  They did not wait for him to sing. A lady in a purple hat with a feather opened her purse. She gave him a shilling. A man offered sixpence. Somebody else put in a handful of coppers. David was clever at money. He understood it perfectly. He looked in his hat.

  ‘I don’t want all this. I wanted six pennies and one halfpenny.’ He took out the sixpence and a halfpenny and held out his hat. ‘None of this isn’t for me.’

  ‘Oh, but it is, dear,’ said the purple hat. ‘You sing so nicely. You can buy yourself a pretty toy.’

  David did not like her tone. She spoke to him as if he was a baby.

  ‘I have toys, thank you. My farm I am making over to milk. It’s doing very well.’

  The first lady, who had asked him if he had a nurse, took his hat from him. She looked round.

  ‘I think you’d better take this back. I’ll take charge of the gentleman and see where he belongs.’

  The purple hat and the man who gave the pennies took their money back. The lady gave David his hat. She took his hand.

  ‘Let’s go and have some milk and some cakes, or perhaps an ice. It’s such a hot day, isn’t it?’

  It was only now that David noticed a very nice thing about this lady. The other hand that was not holding his had a green lead in it, and on the end of the lead was a brown dog. He was a very little dog and very long. David pulled his hand free and squatted down.

  ‘This is a very nice dog,’ he said. ‘Is it yours?’

  The lady nodded.

  ‘It’s a dachshund.’

  ‘Oh,’ David said politely, not understanding what she meant. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Agag. I don’t suppose you would know why, but in the Bible there was an Agag that walked delicately.’

  ‘What’s walking delicat’ly?’

  The lady held out her hand again and took his.

  ‘If we walk up the road you’ll see. You watch his front paws.’

  They set off up Oxford Street. The paws were certainly picked up very carefully each step.

  ‘I suppose I couldn’t hold his lead, could I?’ David asked.

  She was a very nice lady. She never said ‘No’ if she could help it. She just passed over the lead without saying a word. David thought it was a lovely walk. He hoped people thought the dog was his. Presently they came to the first shop that he had been in with Pinny. He remembered it because there was a lady in a bathing-dress in the window. She was doing a dive off a cliff. They stopped outside the shop. The lady looked at Agag.

  ‘I’m afraid we shall have to carry him.’

  David stooped down and picked the dog up. Although he was only a little dog he could not hold him very well. It was because he was so long. First his front part and then his hind part kept slipping.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better carry him,’ said the lady. David gave Agag up regretfully.

  ‘It’s not that he’s heavy,’ he explained; ‘but he slips.’

  They went through the shop and came to a cool part at the other end. They sat down at a marble-topped table.

  ‘I think strawberry ices, as it’s hot, don’t you?’ said the lady. David supposed he was buying his own.

  ‘I’ve only got six pennies and one halfpenny what I got for singing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that’s to go in the tennis house.’

  The lady said that she meant to pay. She said she had not put any money in his hat, and the ices were instead. While they were waiting for the ices to come they talked. She asked him all about himself, about the family, the tennis house, and where exactly he lived. She seemed very interested in everything.

  When the ices came they were so good that no more talking was done until they were eaten. They were not a bit like the ices inside a wafer which David had bought from Mrs. Pettigrew’s. They had real cream on top and a cherry, and pink bits inside which looked like pieces of strawberry. When he had finished eating David felt very full. He leant back and sighed. He felt a lick on his leg. He looked down, and there were two very reproachful eyes looking up at him.

  ‘Oh, my goo’ness!’ he said. ‘His eyes is different. One’s blue and one is brown.’

  The lady said she knew. It was all right. They were meant to be like that. He was what was called harlequin.

  David thought Agag looked reproachful.

  ‘It was mean. I’ve eaten all my ice and never given him none.’

  ‘I don’t think he would care for ices.’ The lady looked sad. ‘Anyway, poor little fellow, he’s going back to the kennels where he came from to-morrow. I’m going away to India. I couldn’t find the right home for him.’

  David looked pityingly at Agag.

  ‘Do you mean he hasn’t got no home?’

  ‘Yes.’ The lady stopped suddenly and looked at him. ‘I wonder if all of you—the twins and Nicky and your father and mother—would like to have him?’

  David looked down at Agag.

  ‘I’d rather have him all for my own self.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Dogs should belong to a family. You’ll go away to school one day. It’s nicer for him if he’s everybody’s. Come along. I’m going to telephone your father and then drive you home. We’ll take Agag and see what they say. You sound to me just the home he’d choose.’

  They went out into the street to get a taxi. The lady said it would be less trouble to telephone from the hotel. It was just as they stepped out into the road that they saw Pinny. She looked the most sad sight. Her hat was on one side. Her hair seemed to have come down. She was running very fast. Tears poured down her cheeks. As she ran she kept calling out, as though to a dog: ‘David! David! David!’

  David ran forward and caught her round the knees. He meant to tell her all about the ice and Agag coming to live with them, and how he had sung Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; but just when he was going to begin Pinny looked down at him, turned bright green, made a funny moaning noise, and lay down in the road.

  The lady took them all home in a car. Pinny sat beside the chauffeur to get the air, as she said she felt ‘all coming and going.’ David, Agag, and the lady sat inside.

  When they got home Mrs. Heath was in, and she made the lady stay to lunch. Pinny did not have any lunch, but lay on her bed, still ‘coming and going.’ David and Agag had theirs
in the kitchen with Annie. Afterwards the lady drove away in her car. David was sorry to see her go. But it did not matter much really because he had had his ice, he had got his sixpence halfpenny, and, best of all, there was Agag. Whichever way you looked at it, a most satisfactory morning.

  Having Agag made the summer holidays nicer for all of them. It’s odd how much most people resent going for a walk when it is just a walk and nothing else, and how nobody minds at all when it is taking out a dog. Owing to the amount of time that was spent on the tennis-court, David and Pinny did most of the walking out with Agag. He was a dog who did much more walking on a walk than the people who took him out. He would run for miles, giving little short, sharp, excited barks. The barking was because he smelt rabbits. David always wondered if one day he would catch one and bring it home. One morning he found that catching a rabbit did not seem to be Agag’s idea in barking. They met a rabbit quite unexpectedly sitting in the middle of a path. Both Pinny and David stopped and said: ‘Oh!’ expecting to see the rabbit torn limb from limb. Agag seemed very surprised to meet face to face one of the things he had been chasing for so long. He paused. He looked at it. Then he stepped to one side and walked on with an apologetic air as if to say: ‘Sorry to have troubled you, madam.’

  The others teased David about Agag. They said he was nicer to him than to anybody else.

  ‘I like him better,’ he explained. ‘He barks and I sings. And we’re comp’ny.’

  Grandfather, who heard this, nodded approval, the red hairs in his left eyebrow standing out very stiffly.

  ‘Quite right, too. Most dogs more worth knowin’ than most men.’

  Apart from Agag, the tennis tournament was the most exciting thing in the holidays. In the end it had been decided that Nicky should be allowed to play. The tournament was being held on the courts of four houses, the players being taken to and fro in cars. Everybody had to be under fourteen. Nicky was, of course, very much under fourteen, and Jim and Susan had some way to go.

  In order to prepare them a bit for their first tournament their grandfather took a hand in their coaching. He could not play at all now, but he gave them a lot of advice. Concentration was what he talked about most. Keeping your eye on the ball. And, as well, tactics. He said it was stupid, however small you were, merely to return the ball and be quite pleased because you had got it over the net. They all knew enough about the game from what they had been told, and from watching each other, to be able to look for the weak spots in their opponents. It might be that they would come across somebody who was weak at returning a deep drive from the base-line. They were bound to come across people who were weak in their backhand. They must try and return balls at lengths and to places where they were not expected and least wanted.

  Dr. Heath was very proud of Susan. She was an ideal person to coach. She was so keen, she never minded how long she went on trying at the same stroke. She would go down to the court and get her father to send her ball after ball, which she would return, whenever possible, backhanded. She would spend any amount of time by herself working at her service. She would put down a piece of note-paper on the court and try and hit it when she served. She found the wall of the stable made a place to practise on. It was not so good as the wall at home because it had no line painted across it, but it worked all right.

  Jim had a great deal to work at to be anywhere near Susan’s style. He had, after all, only had that bit of coaching last Easter holidays. He had, of course, played about one time or another on his grandfather’s court, but he had not known how to make strokes then, so he had not really gained much from it. Now that his father was coaching him and he got time to play hard singles with Susan, he suddenly became really keen on the game. He had the sort of brain that does like to know why. He still wasted an awful lot of his time in arguing. But little by little he began to understand. Quite often he knew for himself why he had gone wrong before any one said a word.

  Nicky was a little bored by the tennis that summer. It would be fun to play in a tournament, of course, but she felt rather out of things otherwise. She had her daily coachings with her father. She had a certain amount of games with Jim or Susan. They also played doubles, she and her father against the twins. This last was fun, although it meant a lot of running about for her, as of course her father could not get about the court quickly. At other times she felt a bit in the way. She knew Jim and Susan would much rather play with each other; that they thought it a nuisance having her there.

  Nicky was annoyed by this. She was, after all, nearly as good as Susan and much better than Jim. It was ridiculous of them both to put on airs and suggest she should go out with David and Agag. She might not be eight yet, but she soon would be, and in any case she knew as much as Susan did, or nearly. She wished that you could be good at things without having to work so hard. In her heart she thought you could. She would be on the bank watching Susan, red in the face, slamming the balls all over the place. Sometimes while she lay watching she would make up a lovely fairy story about the tournament. It would be a day of tremendous triumph for her. She would win the first prize. Jim and Susan would come and talk to her the next morning and say:

  ‘Please teach us to play as well as you do, Nicky dear.’ Nobody would ever dare say ‘work’ to her again.

  They all went through agonies of fear the day before the tournament. Suppose it rained! They need not have worried. It was a cloudy morning of the sort to make you nervous, but it cleared up before it was time to start, and by the time they arrived the sun had come out.

  The tournament began at eleven o’clock. Singles were to be played before lunch to get them well going, and both the singles and the doubles in the afternoon, and the finals, if all worked out to time, were to be played after tea.

  It was a very elaborate affair to understand at a first tournament. The courts were at four different houses. The players had against their names the house at which they were to play. As none of the children had ever heard of the houses they found it confusing. Susan, looking at the draw, saw she was playing somebody called Nancy Green at Fulford Manor. Jim had a bye, and then he was to play the winner of the bracket above him at Pinton. Nicky was to play Marion Hawthorne at Windlesham. The house they had arrived at, and where the draw was stuck up, was called The Grange. Very muddling, they all thought.

  Nicky, who never minded where she went or who with, was quite happy to be taken with Marion Hawthorne and a whole lot of other children to Windlesham in a perfectly strange car. Jim would rather have stayed with Susan, but he did not really mind being packed into an old Ford with a whole lot of boys to Pinton. Susan, however, was quite sick with horror at finding herself collected, together with Nancy Green, and taken to Fulford Manor. On the drive she cheered up, for Nancy Green, who proved to be rather nice and exactly six months older than she was, said:

  ‘I’m awfully glad we are going to Fulford to start with, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why?’ Susan asked.

  ‘Well,’ Nancy confessed, ‘my father and mother have brought me over. I’d much rather they didn’t see me play. I hate people watching, don’t you?’

  This was what cheered Susan. She was delighted to discover such a kindred spirit. She agreed heartily that she, too, hated being looked at.

  As a matter of fact they did have an audience, because there were only two courts at Fulford, and all the people who were waiting to play sat round and watched.

  Susan won her match. She was a far more promising player than Nancy. But this would not have helped her as she played badly from sheer nerves. Fortunately for her Nancy played badly from nerves too. Nancy’s badly was very bad indeed.

  Jim was beaten. He was not a bit surprised. He had watched the match which brought the boy who played against him into the second round. He was older than Jim, about thirteen, and the best player there. He did, in fact, end by winning the tournament. Jim came on to the court feeling beaten, and therefore played atrociously. He felt very glad his father had not been th
ere to see him.

  Nicky, at Windlesham, enjoyed herself. The people who lived in the house sat round the courts in deck-chairs watching the games. The girls who were not playing watched too. Nicky was by far the youngest player. Marion Hawthorne was the oldest. She would, in fact, be fourteen the next day.

  When their match was called Nicky jumped down on to the court. Marion, who was big and heavy for her age, lumbered after her. The grown-up people sitting round laughed, and called them ‘David and Goliath.’ The girls who were watching called out: ‘Don’t kill her, Marion.’ They said to each other that they hoped the baby would be allowed to win a game.

  Nicky had no idea until that moment how helpful she would find an audience. She knew all through her that every one would be pleased at each point she made. She could feel them hoping that she would do well. It was Marion’s service. She skipped to her place.

  Marion served her first ball. Nicky’s eye was glued to it. She returned it perfectly. She got well down to it, and put it far out of Marion’s reach just inside the baseline. There was a roar of applause and a great deal of whispering.

  Nicky was beaten. She must have been. Marion was quite good and had played regularly for over four years. But Nicky, considering the short time she had been at it and her age, was a marvel. From that first crack of applause she was lit up. She remembered all she had been taught. She felt quick and light; not herself at all.

  The players were asked to bring picnic lunches. Tea would be provided. Mrs. Heath had laid the family lunch under a tree. Dr. Heath helped by opening the ginger-beer. The car from Pinton came back first. All the boys scattered to find their families. Jim looked a bit hang-dog when he saw his father.

  ‘I was beaten, dad.’

  Dr. Heath went on pouring out drinks.

  ‘Well, what could you expect in your first tournament? Have some ginger-beer.’

  Jim took the ginger-beer.

  ‘I played rottenly. You see, he played just before. I knew he was much better than me.’