Break Point (2 page)

"Cheers."

Gwen waves
away my gratitude as I find a home for the groceries in the fridge
and the larder. Then I run her bath and help her in and help her
out, and plug in the hoover, and dust round bags of humbugs and a
photograph of what looks like Gwen on her wedding day. My husband,
she says. Dropped down dead four months later. And before I can
blink, it's one o'clock and time to go.

"Right then,
see you same time tomorrow, Gwen."

*

Back at
Elliot's I slip out of my white Carewise uniform and pick among the
hillock of clothes for something to slop about in. Me red T-shirt
with the three buttons, me jeans.

Red suits
you, Bobbie.

Matches me
politics then, don't it?

I told
June when we first met that me politics were red. It was just
before the 79 General Election. But June wasn't a political animal.
I could tell she didn't know one shade of red from another, but she
wanted a piece of my raw red energy which I traded for her
Wimbledon green bits. But June could never keep up with my
politics. In the eighties, when she thought she was being dead
radical shouting,
Maggie Maggie Maggie,
Out Out Out
,
along with the rest, I was collecting for the miners' wives.
June'd come along with me, stand with her bucket, collect
signatures, but she couldn't answer questions like I could. "If you
just ask that woman over there in the black donkey jacket," she'd
say, "she knows more about it than I do." Me, I could yak on to
people for hours in the freezing cold, with a permanent drip on the
end of me conk. One of them people was Babs. She'd have been about
thirty-five then. She's fifty now with shorn black
hair.

"I've always
wanted to sleep with you, Bobbie," Babs said, when we had our
affair last Christmas. "I always thought you had such a
revolutionary face. A short woman with a big presence. Whatever
happened to all that political energy?"

I switch from
my red thoughts, and start settling down to a green and white
afternoon, seeing what's new this year - in fashion. Take the
outfits. Shorts have come up and gone down. All the men these days
are into those baggy shorts, flapping about their knees - the
little bum-huggers Borg and McEnroe and Becker made famous, long
gone, and the shirts are long as well, hanging out, waving about in
the breeze like damp washing. The sort Agassi and Sampras wear.
While women's knickers have gone plain and unfrilled; tunics have
come and gone and come back again - well, for the younger players
anyway, like Venus Williams and Anna Kournikova.

And
it's a good blend. Quiet matches, dramatic matches. An active
morning with Gwen in the quiet, stained glass house followed by a
soft, genteel afternoon with pockets of excitement and surprise,
and gorgeous slow-motion shots, like a ballet. Skirts lifting up,
limbs springing and landing with animal grace.
Change the balls please, the ball was good.

The
balls are lime. June couldn't believe they were green in real life,
when we were up at Wimbledon. She said they looked white on telly.
But in the flesh they were green, even at high-speed. They were
green when they rolled off the court, like that loose one which
went for walkies off one of the outside courts, and I grabbed it,
hid it in me fist and gave it to her later as a souvenir.
It's green, duck. See?
Oh that ball. Like a wedding ring it was to
her.

Well, we were
getting to be like a married couple, even ten years ago. OK, so I
would still sit in the buff on our fluffy hearth rug on our
varnished wood floor at Wimble Den. The cream rug grassing through
my fingers. Lodged in the crook of her great thighs. Yeah, she
still liked my knobbly spine which was like something to unbutton
she said. Yeah, she still liked the way she could always tell when
I was smiling by the way my cheeks rose from behind she said. And
then there were me other cheeks. Me dimpled bum cheeks. But even
our bums were becoming something of a joke, not sexy no more. Her
bum was dead warm and friendly, like another face. You half
expected it to smile at you any minute. I once drew a face on it in
black felt tip for a laugh. Well, we were both rat-arsed, weren't
we? I made her bum dimples into eyes and the crack was like the
nose and at the bottom I did a sort of smile. It turned out more
like a cat so I penned some whiskers on the outer bits. What a
laugh that was. But laughs weren't enough and even they started
dying out after a while. We went dead serious. Seriously
boring.

"We'll end up
like Babs and Tash if we're not careful, duck," I'd say.

"Oh,
we're not like them," she'd say. "Anyway, they haven't got
Wimbledon. Wimbledon is our barometer, Bobbie. If you ever tire of
Wimbledon, Bobbie, or get bored with it, it'll never be the
same
.
"

"As if,
duck. A zif
.
"

That photo of
me and June on top of Elliot's telly, that says it all. Taken last
July in the back garden of Wimble Den - our green and cream des
res. June's idea that, the name and everything, the paintwork. She
was the domestic one. You can tell from the photo that our last
seven years together had settled into a sort of over 35's match.
Not serious or intense like the games we used to play - but for old
time's sake. I look a bit tired and lined and I'm starting to lose
my cheeks. Cheeks start falling down over the years, they start
getting a bit slack, though I still don't look thirty-seven in that
picture. More like thirty. But I'm not what you'd call pretty, I
never was going to be, though my bone structure's pretty natty so
I've been told. That made June feel safe with me, I reckon. Me not
being some gorgeous catch. She must have thought I wouldn't get
stolen. Bit daft really, knowing the likes of Babs don't give a
stuff about looks but then June thought Babs and Tash would always
be an item. Well, they are, but since when did that stop folk
having affairs?

I nip out to
make myself a cup of tea. I pour the boiled water in the teapot,
then go to the bog. You forget what it's like living with a bloke,
loo seat left up all the time. Up, down, like a yo-yo. Elliot's
flat is a bit chronic in other ways too. Red walls, and not a
tennis forecourt over the road neither but the garage sort, all
prettied up with strings of little triangle flags in patriotic
colours, flapping about and drenched in the stink of petrol. Our
Elliot is lovely as brothers go, and I really don't blame him for
wanting to let out his spare room. Sunday night he said it again.
OK, I said. Soon as the tennis is over, I'll find somewhere,
right?

The black and
lemon tide from Kingham Community will come past in a bit. Then you
know that the early afternoon ball-bounce, ticking backwards and
forwards in timeless strokes has slid into early evening, and then
it'll be the workers, banging around, downing their tools, putting
on their different TV channels. How can they watch anything else?
I'm hooked already, though I said I wouldn't be. No, I'm just
having a final binge of it, though I'm on edge waiting for these
interruptions which will come soon enough. Just as the players are
raising their game. That's what the commentators always say anyway.
He's managed to raise his game just that little bit since the break
in the fifth game but can he sustain it?

Me and
June have never got excited over other tennis tournaments. OK, the
players have been the same but it's the wrong time of year, the
courts the wrong colour, sort of red,
red.
Clay courts. I mean, the
backdrop to Henman's body should always be green, shouldn't it? A
rich baize, like a snooker table. Not that we've ever been
patriotic about the Brits who usually fall in the third round
anyway. No, it's just that Wimbledon's got the
atmosphere.

As predicted,
the interruptions come, way too early. Voices and a lot of clomping
on the stairs. Sounds like Elliot, though he’s not due back yet. He
should be out on the Henderson job still, heaving concrete and
replaying paths, but it's him all right, hobbling through the door
draped over Gordon's shoulder.

"You better
rest it up, El." Gordon lays him out on the settee. "Bobbie'll look
after you. Gotta shoot."

Gordon
vanishes, leaving all doors open.

"Done me back
in with all the lifting," Elliot says. "Looks like I'll be laid up
here tomorrow."

"Not under me
feet during Wimbledon. A good night's rest, that's all your back
needs."

"Any tea
mashing? Hey, looks like old Boris Becker." Elliot pretends not to
follow Wimbledon but he comes over all interested if he fancies one
of the players. Like Anna Kournikova who he calls a babe. "What are
you watching the men for anyway? Why aren't you watching all them
dishy girls?"

I hurl a
cushion at him. Me and June have never been like Babs and Tash who
don't watch men's tennis on principle.

Elliot limps
through to the kitchen .

"See
you
can
walk, El.
And bend."

"Only just."
He presses his palms against his lower back. "Ouch. Help me back on
t' settee, can you?"

"Christ,
Elliot, I've had this all chuffing day."

"Careful with
me, Bobbie ... that's the way, duck. Any major upsets?"

"Yeah." I pick
up the cushion I chucked at him and wedge it behind him. "Martina
Hingis slaughtered by a sixteen-year-old."

"What, the
Number 1 seed?"

"Yeah. Someone
called Dokic beat her." I take a slurp of my lukewarm char. "Well,
aren't you going to ask how it went?"

"Oh yeah. How
d'it go?"

"Yeah, she's
all right is Gwen. A bit of a windbag, hey, but guess what? Said
she might be able to find me somewhere to live."

"Great." Elliot's now lying flat out on the settee, eyes
closed, and I look at my watch. 4.22. School's out time, and here
it comes, the crocodile of black blazers and lemon shirts and grey
bottoms trailing beneath the window. In the corner of my ear I pick
up all the latest lingo.
Wicked! I'll be
listening 24-7. Is that full on or what? Oh she's just a sad bitch.
Clo! Clo! Get the driver to hang on! Oy pull your skirt down Shari,
you slag! Sharivari off the hook!
Today
I'm curious enough to lean my elbows on the sill and watch Clo
holding up the bus; Shari showing too much thigh. That'll be Shari,
yeah, that one there. Hair blond and condemned.

Then I curl
back in front of the set, a cube of Wimbledon green.

FIRST
WEDNESDAY

I leave Elliot
behind, Wednesday, and make my way over to Gwen's. I ring the
doorbell and finally Gwen appears, stick first, in a light canvas
hat and matching suit, a brooch pinned to her lapel. A cluster of
ceramic flowers.

"Don't you
have your own key, Rosemary? It would save me having to get up and
down."

(Not even
Betty now.)

"You'll find a
spare set in the pantry. Hanging on the near hook."

"These
them?"

"Let me see
... yes, they're the ones." Her voice is distinctly more croaky
today and there's a hint of medicated sweet on her breath. I follow
her to her chairside. "Would you be so kind as to put my cushions
straight before I sit down again? I didn't sleep very well last
night."

"Sorry about
that, Gwen. Maybe it's just one of those summer colds."

She puffs.
"Could you warm the pot before pouring, the way Anne does? It makes
such a difference."

"Oh I
always warm the pot, me." (Fancy her asking
me
that. We take our tea dead
serious where I come from.)

"Now I’d like
a little scrambled egg on toast for breakfast and some cornflakes
to start. There should be a new packet in the pantry. Anne bought
them yesterday evening from the corner shop."

In the kitchen
there's evidence of Anne all around. She's rearranged my work of
yesterday and put all the knives back with the knives, forks with
the forks, spoons with spoons. They gleam like cutlery should, and
the dish-cloth isn't where I left it but it's bone-dry and hung out
neatly astride the sink. The draining-board's been wiped down until
it sparkles, taps shone up like mirrors, stone floor of the pantry
brushed bald.

I carry in
Gwen’s breakfast and join her, trying not to gobble my own. The
clock ticks slowly, like it might pack up before the next tock, and
there's the sedate clink of cutlery against china which goes quiet
between Gwen's dawdling mouthfuls. There's the dignified pour of
real tea, through the strainer, into proper cups.

When Gwen
finally draws her knife and fork together, and the last of the tea
has been poured and drunk, I clear it away and wash it all up, and
then Gwen says, "Would you be so kind as to tidy up in here first
of all? Those newspapers, and all those things on the chair over
there. Just call out if you're not sure where anything
lives."

Most of it’s
straightforward, finding a home for magazines, newspapers and the
like. "What about these Gwen? Where do these go?"