The Next Entry

Mum came to the Vale on a Tuesday when no one had a match.

She had seen footage of Mara playing with Jules once and had spent most of it telling me the camera had found the wrong half of the court. I had told her that was how doubles worked. She’d said she knew how cameras worked. Now she stood at the fence with a tin of biscuits she had made and watched Mara feed me a basket of balls.

“She’s not your coach,” Mum said when we stopped.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I wanted to be sure you had.”

Mara heard her. She brought the empty basket over and shook Mum’s hand as if the months between that first exhibition and today hadn’t included a clinician’s room, a missed final, several difficult telephone calls and my mother’s suggestion that Mara ought to learn to make a decent cup of tea. The tea complaint had been deserved.

Mum offered her a biscuit. Mara took one, bit into it and said, without any change in expression, that it was excellent. It was excellent. Mum gave me the tin to hold and began asking about the junior sessions I’d filmed. Mara listened while I explained why a player could see an opening on video and still miss it on court. Halfway through, I realised I was talking about work I expected to keep doing. My tennis career had not been replaced by a better story about resilience. It had acquired another room.

After Mum left, I travelled with Mara to Northmere. I had a paid film day with the younger players the next morning. Mara had no match there. She came because I asked, and because she had grown fond of the garden behind the courts even when the light made her drawing wrong.

We took a late train and sat opposite each other. She was reading a note from Jules about a possible autumn event. I had an email from Anika with a date in the same week. For a little while we let the other woman read without pretending not to notice.

“Jules asked,” Mara said. “I haven’t answered.”

“Anika did too.”

“I know. I heard her mention it.”

“You could have told me.”

“It was her invitation to make.”

I thought about the first time Mara had decided what I’d do with my film work before I’d heard the question. It would have been easy to turn today’s restraint into evidence that she had become a perfect person. She wasn’t. I was grateful for the ordinary, deliberate choice she had made.

“I’d like to play that week,” I said. “I don’t know with whom yet.”

“Nor do I.”

The train went through a cutting and our reflections took over the window. Mara put down her phone. She did not ask which invitation I would take. I had learned that silence could be a kindness when the question was mine to answer, and a cruelty when she wanted me to make the question disappear. I reached across the table.

“Are you frightened I’ll choose Anika?”

“A little. Are you frightened I’ll choose Jules?”

“A little.”

“We could play with them and still go home together.”

“I know. I want to play with you too.”

“So do I.”

For the first time the wanting didn’t sound like a deadline.

The next morning, while I worked, Mara sat on a bench at the end of the corridor drawing the stair and garden again. When the junior session ended she had made a mess of the page. The light was behind the building instead of falling across it; the railing cut a different shape on the stone.

“Five uprights,” I said.

“I know. I keep putting six.”

“You could leave it. No one else will count.”

“I would.”

She started another sketch while I wrote my notes. One of the players came over to ask about a return she’d kept sending long. I showed her two clips and asked what she noticed between them. Mara let me finish. The player found the answer before I had to give it to her and ran to tell her partner. I felt the old satisfaction of helping someone see the court, with no reason to pretend it wasn’t mine.

At lunch I answered Anika. I wanted to do the autumn event with her. She had trusted me before I trusted my own return to competition, and the court we made together at Northmere deserved another try. I told Mara before I sent it, so she wouldn’t learn it from a draw. She listened to the whole reason.

“I hope you win,” she said. “Unless we’re opposite you again.”

“You’ll take Jules?”

“I think so. She asked me honestly, and I like the way she covers the line. I’ll ask her tonight.”

We sat with that. Then I said, “I’d like us to choose a winter event together. After those.”

“I’ll look at the calendar with you. No entries made on a train.”

“A rule?”

“A request. You can refuse it.”

I said yes, because I wanted to.

Mara set the sketchbook on her knee. “Is there another question you’ve been saving?”

“Several. I keep trying to ask one that will cover the others.”

“Try the smallest.”

“When you go to that event with Jules, will you still want to come back to this place with me?”

“Yes. I’ll want you there even if you spend the whole afternoon telling me the railing’s wrong.”

“It is wrong.”

“I can live with one wrong line.”

I had asked the question in a way that made a future afternoon stand for a life. She had answered the afternoon. She waited to see whether I would ask for more. Through the garden gate I could hear the players beginning their warm-up on the far court. A ball struck the fence, then another. Nobody here needed the two of us to settle what would happen next year before the second serve.

“I love you,” I said. “I have for a while. I kept giving you other sentences because I thought a larger one would ask for more than you had offered.”

She closed the book, holding her place with a finger. “I love you. I didn’t know whether saying it after Southmere would make you think I expected you to come back to tennis for me. Then we were together, and I was afraid it would sound like an answer to every career decision.”

“It isn’t an answer to the autumn entry.”

“No. I will still dislike losing to you.”

“I would worry if you didn’t.”

She took my hand. There was no score we could use to qualify what we’d said. I felt exposed in a way no missed volley had ever made me feel, and I wanted to stay where I was. Mara kissed my knuckles once and let my hand rest between us while the afternoon players called for a ball.

Later she showed me the new drawing. She’d left the garden wall unfinished. In its open part was the space where someone would stand to look through the railing, and she had made it wide enough for two people without drawing either of us in.

“You don’t need to put us there,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“I know. I like that there’s room.”

Mara turned the page over before a spot of rain could touch it. We walked through the service entrance because the main doors were being painted. Its hinge made almost the same complaint as the door at the Vale. Mara caught my eye. I laughed first.

At the court, the afternoon players were beginning to arrive. We had time for one practice game before my train. Mara asked if I wanted to serve. I did. On the second point she moved towards the middle before I called. I tapped my racquet twice against my shoe, and she stopped long enough to look at me.

“I’ll take the first ball,” I said. “If it comes back high, yours.”

“All right.”

I bounced the ball. Across the net were two players who wanted the point as much as we did. Beside me was a woman who could leave for another court tomorrow and still choose to meet me here. I served. The return climbed towards the middle and she called mine while I still had time to stay. I let her take it.