The Tennis Player from Bermuda (15 page)

W
EDNESDAY
, 13 J
UNE
1962
T
EDDY
T
INLING’S
S
HOP
M
AYFAIR

“We’ll start with Teddy,” Claire said. “He doesn’t design many evening gowns now, but let’s see what he might have on offer for you.”

“Who’s Teddy?”

“Teddy Tinling. In the 1930s, a girl couldn’t go to the season without at least a couple of Tinling gowns in her closet. After the war, Teddy mostly gave up on gowns because of the utility restrictions on clothes. He started designing tennis kit instead.”

Claire was driving her white Alfa Romeo roadster with the hood down. She suddenly swerved to avoid hitting a young man who was crossing Ken High. Claire turned halfway around in the driver’s seat and blew him a kiss as we roared down the busy street at about 120 kph.

“Maureen Connolly asked Teddy to make her wedding dress when she finally married Norman, and I did the same when I married Richard. But his main line now is tennis dresses.”

She changed down to third gear as we whipped around the Wellington Arch and shot into Piccadilly. Claire’s favorite speed in the Alfa was as fast as it could go.

I was desperately hanging onto a leather strap on the door. “Who in heaven taught you to drive? Or did you just teach yourself?”

“My brother taught me. He taught himself. He bumped into a few things at first, but then he got the hang of it. Now he races autos in his spare time.”

Just off Berkeley Square in Mayfair, she found a tiny parking spot and wedged in the Alfa. Then she led me to a narrow townhouse, where she didn’t bother knocking on the door. She walked in and called, “Teddy, it’s me.”

I gathered from this entrance that Claire was well known in the Tinling establishment.

From the back of the shop stepped the tallest person I’d ever seen. I guessed he was in his early 50s. His head was shaved entirely bald, and he was wearing a yellow shirt with an open collar, trousers with vertical mauve and white stripes, and white patent leather shoes. The effect was dizzying.

He and Claire embraced and kissed one another. He said, “Claire,
ma chérie
, you remind me so much of Suzanne. We should take
Le Train Bleu
to Cannes tonight. Together. Alone. The two of us.”

Claire linked her arm with his. “I don’t remind you of Suzanne in the slightest, but Cannes might be interesting. After Wimbledon perhaps. Now I need you to find a gown for my friend from Bermuda.”

“Suzanne?” I asked, brightly.

Tinling glanced at Claire with one eyebrow raised.

Claire said, “My friend is young. But nice. Once you get to know her.”

Tinling was skeptical.

“Teddy, please meet Miss Fiona Hodgkin. She’s going to play at Roehampton. You remember Rachel Outerbridge, Teddy.”

Tinling nodded.

“Rachel coaches this girl.”

This, I could tell, moved me up several notches in Tinling’s estimation.

Claire turned to me. “Fiona, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Cuthbert Collingwood Tinling. Known to his friends, with one exception, as ‘Teddy.’”

Teddy bowed slightly to me.

“The exception,” Claire said dryly, “is Bud Collins, who calls Teddy ‘The Leaning Tower of Pizazz.’”

I held out my hand to Teddy, but instead of shaking hands, he leaned forward and kissed my hand. “My dear Fiona, how delightful to meet you,” he murmured.

Claire pointed to an old photo that hung on the wall. “Teddy is taller than even Bill Tilden was, and he’s got a photo to prove it.”

The photo showed a young Teddy, with a full head of slicked-down hair, beside Bill Tilden, who was wearing a trench coat and holding two rackets. Teddy was slightly the taller of the two.

“The verdict,” Teddy said, “Tilden 1.8 meters; Tinling 1.9 meters. Actually, I think the measurement of me was wrong. I’m two meters. Claire, I must show you what I’ve made for Maria Bueno.”

With a flourish, Teddy picked up from a cutting table a white tennis dress. The skirt had a pink lining so bright anyone who saw it would feel faint.

“I call this ‘Italian Pink,’” Teddy said.

“Teddy, Maria’s dress is lovely, but have you lost your mind? If that dress makes an appearance on Centre Court, the Committee will have your head mounted on the Doherty Gates, as a warning to others.”

“You’ve yet to see the matching panties.”

“Don’t show them to me. I want to be able to tell the Committee truthfully that I knew nothing about the panties.”

“There’s nothing in the rules or on the entry form that prohibits colour on ladies’ tennis dresses.”

“What about the sign in the ladies’ upper dressing room?”

“It’s gone. I took it down last week.” He fished around in the fabric scraps on the table and finally held up a small, faded handwritten sign: ‘
Competitors are Expected to Wear White Clothing
.’

I asked, “How could you take down a sign that was in a ladies’ dressing room?”

Claire explained. “Kay Menzies always wore Teddy’s dresses, but one afternoon she couldn’t get her zipper up. Mrs Ward tried but couldn’t get it up either.”

“Who’s Mrs Ward?”

Teddy said, “She’s the attendant for the upper dressing room. Been there since Worple Road, probably.”

“So Teddy was in the hallway, banging on the door and yelling for Kay to get onto Centre Court. Finally, Teddy barges through the door, gets Kay’s zipper up in one second, and hustles her out to the waiting room.”

I looked at Teddy in shock. “You went into the ladies’ dressing room?”

Teddy made an elaborate courtier’s bow, with his incredibly long arms outstretched.

Claire said, “Maybe a couple of girls had to wrap towels around themselves. But the world didn’t come to an end. Since then, Teddy comes and goes as he pleases. He doesn’t even knock. He makes all the tennis kit, so it’s convenient to have him around.”

I picked up the handwritten sign that Teddy had taken from the dressing room. “Why was there a sign like this in the first place?”

It must be hard to look sheepish when you’re two meters tall, but Teddy did.

Claire said, “The sign was thumbtacked to the wall in 1949. Just before
l’affaire
Gussy Moran.”

“But it had nothing to do with Gussy,” Teddy objected.

“I know. It was the pink and blue hems you sewed on the dresses for Joy Gannon and Betty Hilton in ’48.”

Claire turned to me. “The Committee think they’ve fixed the ‘Tinling Problem’ with the sign in the dressing room when BOOM!” Claire flung her hands out to mimic an explosion. “Gussy Moran appears at Hurlingham the day before Wimbledon wearing panties on which Teddy had sewn lace around the bottom.”

“Did anyone notice?” I asked.

They both looked at me as though I had just arrived from Mars.

“Everyone noticed,” Claire said. “Including the photographers from
Life
magazine, who were all on their stomachs trying to get photos of the panties. The newspapers issued special editions on sightings of the lace panties. Teddy, what was it Louis Greig said about all this?”

“Sir Louis told the newspapers, ‘Wimbledon needs no panties for its popularity.’”

“Sir Louis?” I asked.

“At the time,” Teddy said, “Sir Louis was the Chairman of the All England Club. I regret to say he has since gone to his reward in heaven, where I have it on good authority all white attire is required.”

Minutes later, I found myself in only my knickers, standing in the middle of the room. I had my arms wrapped resolutely around my small bust. Teddy, Claire, and Mrs Hogan, Teddy’s long time assistant, were unconcerned by my obvious embarrassment at being practically naked in front of them.

Teddy gave Claire a look that I could tell meant, ‘Where did you find this girl?’

“Fiona,” Claire said. “Please. Drop your arms. Teddy needs to fit a gown for you. In the unlikely event Teddy is overcome by lust, Mrs Hogan and I will protect you.”

Reluctantly, I dropped my arms, and the three of them regarded my boyish figure.

Teddy said, “This young lady needs a gown cut with considerable décolletage.”

Claire, who is well endowed in the bust department, was dubious. “Teddy, are you sure? Fiona doesn’t have much décolletage to work with.”

“Perhaps, but this girl reminds me of what Billy Wilder – Claire, you know, the movie director – said about Audrey Hepburn when he first met her.”

“What was that?”

“‘This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past.’”

All three of them chuckled. I snapped my arms back around my chest.

At Teddy’s direction, Mrs Hogan disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with a black, strapless, floor-length gown, which the three of them pulled over my head. Teddy and Mrs Hogan began sticking pins into the gown and occasionally, by accident, into me, while they fitted the gown.

They led me over to a floor length mirror. The gown was about five times more sophisticated and revealing than any dress I’d ever worn, and about 10 times more expensive. If the goal was to make people talk about me, this gown would make that happen. I instantly loved the gown.

After I wrote Teddy a bank draft on Butterfield’s for an outrageous amount of money, Claire drove me back to Hyde Park Gate.

“You and Teddy were talking about Suzanne. Does she work for Teddy?”

Claire made a racing change and swung into Kensington Road. “Teddy meant Suzanne Lenglen. She won Wimbledon six times. Five times in a row, 1919 to 1923. She had jaundice in 1924, but she won again in 1925.”

Claire narrowly missed swiping a bus.

“In 1919, Suzanne appeared on the old Centre Court on Worple Road in a short dress – and get this! – no corset.”

“Well,” I said, “she certainly couldn’t play tennis wearing a corset.”

“Think again. Suzanne was the first girl to play on Centre Court without wearing a corset. It was so shocking and immoral that everyone had to come watch her!” Claire laughed. “The Committee were scandalized, but they decided to build a bigger Centre Court on Church Road so more paying spectators could come see Suzanne.”

Claire slowed slightly so I could wave to the bobby at the entrance to Hyde Park Gate to let him know I belonged there. “Bunny Ryan was Suzanne’s doubles partner. They won the last match ever played on the old Centre Court. The BBC interviewed Bunny a month or so ago, and Bunny said every English tennis girl should kneel down and thank Suzanne for getting rid of corsets!”

“Did Teddy know Suzanne?”

Claire started to say something but then stopped. I wasn’t a member of the informal Wimbledon family. Maybe I would be in a few years but not now. Not yet.

“Yes, Teddy knew Suzanne. Quite well.”

That night, Harold drove Mark and me back from Miss Rutherford’s breakfast after two in the morning. My Tinling gown wouldn’t be ready for several days, but in any event I had half decided to save it for Catherine’s party, which would be the Wednesday during the first week of Wimbledon. So I wore a party dress that dated from my days as a Bermuda teenage schoolgirl.

Until that evening, I had no idea that my parents were well known, and well liked, in London. Several couples I met said, “You’re the daughter of Fiona and Tom, aren’t you? It’s wonderful to have you in London. You must come for tea next Tuesday.” And they seemed sincere. Mark and I danced together, and I was quite aware that there were many girls watching who were envious of me.

Still, even at two in the morning, Mark felt that we had left breakfast a bit early, and I had been the one to suggest we say our goodbyes. I was tired. Mark was in the middle of a hospital rotation in London, but in those days medical school rotations, at least in England, and especially during the season, were relaxed affairs, not at all the frenetic, 18-hour-a-day marathons that they became just in time for me to start my own medical rotations.

If it didn’t rain, I was meeting Claire at Roehampton to practice at 11 the next morning, or rather
that
morning, and I wanted to go straight to sleep. I had learned that practice with Claire was so exhausting that it made practice with Rachel seem like time spent reading a mystery novel at the beach. Claire was
serious.

But I sensed my boyfriend was unhappy with me, and so I sat him down on a sofa in Dr. Thakeham’s study and gave him the type of kiss that I hoped would make him feel better. It did, but it also made him feel that the idea of me going straight to sleep was premature.

“We should spend some time alone,” Mark said. It was true that, since I had arrived, most of my time had been spent on tennis, and when Mark and I were together, we had been in the company of other people.

“Yes, definitely,” I said. “But not tonight. I’m tired, and I’m meeting Claire at Roehampton in the morning.”

“Fiona, is this friendship you have with Kershaw a bit too much of a good thing, do you think?”

I was taken aback by this. I had known Claire only a short time – two months, perhaps. She was older than me by almost eight years. I didn’t think of her as my ‘friend.’ I was thrilled even to know her. I hadn’t thought of it before Mark asked, but I suppose I had assumed that Claire was looking after me merely because Rachel had asked her to do so.