witha crisp walk across Battersea Park. If I am coming directly from my house, I have only a five-hundred-yard walk. The Athleticus has been my unlikely club and away-from-it-all for a large chunk of my adult life. Prue calls it my playpen. When I was abroad I kept my membership going and used my spells of home leave to stay on the ladder. Whenever the Office hauled me back for an operational meeting,I’d find time to grab a game. In the Athleticus I’m Nat to the world and its brother, nobody gives a hoot what I or anyone else does for a living and nobody asks. Chinese and other Asian members outnumber us Caucasians three to one. Steff has refused to play ever since she learned to say ‘no’, but there was a time when I’d cart her along for an ice cream and a swim. Prue as a good sport will turnto if asked, but only on sufferanceand latterly, what with her
pro bono
work and the class actions her partnership gets embroiled in, not at all.
We have an ageless insomniac Swatownese barman called Fred. We do a junior membership that is wildly uneconomic, but only until age twenty-two. After that it’s two hundred and fifty smackers a year and a hefty joining fee. And we’d have had to putup shop or raise the ante still higher if a Chinese member named Arthur hadn’t made an anonymous donation of a hundred thousand euros out of the blue, and thereby hangs a tale. As Hon. Club Secretary I was one of the few who were allowed to thank Arthur for his generosity. One evening I was told he was sitting in the bar. He was my age but already white-haired, wearing a smart suit and tie and staringahead of him. No drink.
‘Arthur,’ I say, sitting down beside him, ‘we don’t know how to thank you.’
I wait for him to turn his head, but his gaze stays fixed on the middle distance.
‘It’s for my boy,’ he replies after an age.
‘So is your boy with us here tonight?’ I ask, observing a group of Chinese kids hanging round the pool.
‘No more,’ he replies, still without turning his head.
No more?What did that mean?
I mount a discreet search. Chinese names are tricky. There was a junior member who seemed to have the same surname as our donor, but his annual membership was six months overdue and he’d ignored the usual string of reminders. It took Alice to make the connection. Kim, she remembered. That eager, skinny little lad. Sweet as pie, gave his age as sixteen but looked sixty. A Chinesewoman, she came along with him, very polite, could have been his mother, or maybe nurse. Bought a six-lesson start-up course for cash outright but that boy, he couldn’t connect with the shuttle, not even dolly shots. The coach now, he suggested he give it a try at home, just hand–eye, shuttle on racquet, andcome back like in a few weeks. That boy, he never did. The nurse neither. We guessed he’dgiven up or gone home to China. Oh dear Jesus, don’t say it. Well, God bless that poor Kim.
I’m not sure why I recount this episode in such detail except that I love the place and what it has been to me over the years, and it’s the place where I played my fifteen games with Ed and enjoyed all but the last one.
*
Our first appointed Monday did not exactly get off to the rollicking start therecord suggests. I am a punctual man – Steff says anally so. For our date, made a full three weeks previously, he arrived out of breath with less than three minutes to spare wearing a rumpled town suit and bicycle clips round his ankles. He was armed with a brown imitation-leather briefcase, and he was in a filthy temper.
Bear in mind now that I had seen him only the once in badminton gear. Bearin mind further that he was a good twenty years my junior, had issued me with a challenge under the gaze of my fellow members, and I had accepted his challenge not least to save his face. Further bear in mind that not only was I Club champion, I had spent the morning conducting back-to-back handover meetings with two of Giles’s least promising
pro bono
work and the class actions her partnership gets embroiled in, not at all.
We have an ageless insomniac Swatownese barman called Fred. We do a junior membership that is wildly uneconomic, but only until age twenty-two. After that it’s two hundred and fifty smackers a year and a hefty joining fee. And we’d have had to putup shop or raise the ante still higher if a Chinese member named Arthur hadn’t made an anonymous donation of a hundred thousand euros out of the blue, and thereby hangs a tale. As Hon. Club Secretary I was one of the few who were allowed to thank Arthur for his generosity. One evening I was told he was sitting in the bar. He was my age but already white-haired, wearing a smart suit and tie and staringahead of him. No drink.
‘Arthur,’ I say, sitting down beside him, ‘we don’t know how to thank you.’
I wait for him to turn his head, but his gaze stays fixed on the middle distance.
‘It’s for my boy,’ he replies after an age.
‘So is your boy with us here tonight?’ I ask, observing a group of Chinese kids hanging round the pool.
‘No more,’ he replies, still without turning his head.
No more?What did that mean?
I mount a discreet search. Chinese names are tricky. There was a junior member who seemed to have the same surname as our donor, but his annual membership was six months overdue and he’d ignored the usual string of reminders. It took Alice to make the connection. Kim, she remembered. That eager, skinny little lad. Sweet as pie, gave his age as sixteen but looked sixty. A Chinesewoman, she came along with him, very polite, could have been his mother, or maybe nurse. Bought a six-lesson start-up course for cash outright but that boy, he couldn’t connect with the shuttle, not even dolly shots. The coach now, he suggested he give it a try at home, just hand–eye, shuttle on racquet, andcome back like in a few weeks. That boy, he never did. The nurse neither. We guessed he’dgiven up or gone home to China. Oh dear Jesus, don’t say it. Well, God bless that poor Kim.
I’m not sure why I recount this episode in such detail except that I love the place and what it has been to me over the years, and it’s the place where I played my fifteen games with Ed and enjoyed all but the last one.
*
Our first appointed Monday did not exactly get off to the rollicking start therecord suggests. I am a punctual man – Steff says anally so. For our date, made a full three weeks previously, he arrived out of breath with less than three minutes to spare wearing a rumpled town suit and bicycle clips round his ankles. He was armed with a brown imitation-leather briefcase, and he was in a filthy temper.
Bear in mind now that I had seen him only the once in badminton gear. Bearin mind further that he was a good twenty years my junior, had issued me with a challenge under the gaze of my fellow members, and I had accepted his challenge not least to save his face. Further bear in mind that not only was I Club champion, I had spent the morning conducting back-to-back handover meetings with two of Giles’s least promising
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