‘So what sort of level are we looking at here, if I may inquire?’ he asked with heavy gentility, taking in without comment the quality of Perry’s battle-scarred racquets, his thick white socks and worn but serviceable tennis shoes, and Gail’s neckline.
For two people past their first youth but still in the bloom of life, Perry and Gail made a strikingly attractive pair. Nature had provided Gail with long, shapely legs and arms, high, small breasts, a lissom body, English skin, fine gold hair and a smile to light the gloomiest corners of life. Perry had a different sort of Englishness, being lank and at first sight dislocated, with a long neck and prominent Adam’s apple. His stride was ungainly, he seemed to topple and his ears protruded. At his State school he had been awarded the nickname of Giraffe, until those unwise enough to use it learned their lesson. But with manhood he had acquired – unconsciously, which only made it more impressive – a precarious but undoubted grace. He had a mop of brown curls, a wide, freckled forehead, and large, bespectacled eyes that gave out an air of angelic perplexity.
Not trusting Perry to blow his own trumpet, and protective of him as always, Gail took the pro’s question upon herself.
‘Perry plays qualifiers for Queen’s and he got into the main draw once too, didn’t you? You actually made it to the Masters. And that was after breaking his leg skiing and not playing for six months,’ she added proudly.
‘And you, madam, if I may make so bold?’ Mark the obsequious pro inquired, with a little more spin on the ‘madam’ than Gail cared for.
‘I’m his rabbit,’ she replied coolly, to which Perry said, ‘Sheer bollocks,’ and the Australian sucked his teeth, shook his heavy head in disbelief and thumbed the messy pages of his ledger.
‘Well, I’ve got one pair here might do you good people. They’re a sight too classy for my other guests, I’ll tell you that right now. Not that I’ve a vast selection of humanity to choose from, frankly. Maybe you four should give each other a whirl.’
Their opponents turned out to be an Indian honeymoon couple from Mumbai. The centre court was taken, but court 1 was free. Soon a handful of passers-by and players from other courts had drifted over to watch the four of them warm up: fluid strokes from the baseline casually returned, passing shots that nobody ran for, the unanswered smash from the net. Perry and Gail won the toss, Perry gave first serve to Gail who twice double-faulted and they lost the game. The Indian bride followed her. Play remained sedate.
It wasn’t till Perry began serving that the quality of his play became apparent. His first serve had height and power, and when it went in, there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. He served four in a row. The crowd grew, the players were young and good-looking, the ball boys discovered new heights of energy. Towards the end of the first set, Mark the pro casually turned out to take a look, stayed for three games, then with a thoughtful frown returned to his shop.
After a long second set, the score was one set each. The third and final set reached 4–3, with Perry and Gail having the edge. But if Gail was inclined to hold back, Perry was by now in full cry, and the match ended without the Indian couple winning another game.
The crowd drifted away. The four lingered to exchange compliments, fix a return and maybe catch a drink in the bar this evening? You bet. The Indians departed, leaving Perry and Gail to gather up their spare racquets and pullovers.
As they did so, the Australian pro returned to the court bringing with him a muscular, erect, huge-chested, completely bald man wearing a diamond-encrusted gold Rolex wristwatch and grey tracksuit bottoms kept up by a drawstring tied in a bow at his midriff.
Why Perry should have spotted the bow at his midriff first and the rest of the man afterwards is easily explained. He was in the act of changing his elderly but comfortable tennis shoes for a pair of beach shoes with rope soles, and when he heard his name called he was still bent double. Therefore he lifted his long head slowly, the way tall, angular men do, and registered first a pair of leather espadrilles on small, almost feminine feet set piratically apart, then a couple of stocky, tracksuited calves in grey; and, coming up, the drawstring bow that kept the trousers aloft, double-tied as such a bow should be, given its considerable area of responsibility.
And above the bow-line, a belly of finest crimson cotton blouse encasing a massive torso that seemed not to know its stomach from its chest, and rising to an Eastern-style collar that if fastened would have made a cut-down version of a clerical dog-collar, except that there was no way it could have accommodated the muscular neck inside it.