CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ADELE
With the exception of one hour in the morning to coach Milly, Adele didn’t leave her house. She had picked up a copy of the paper on her way home from the club on Wednesday, and her face had stared back at her from the kitchen table ever since. She was furious, and terrified. After more than twenty years in hiding, away from the public humiliation and disgust, she’d thrown away all of her anonymity with one idiotic moment.I should never have let those kids stay on the Ferris wheel for a second ride, she said to herself as she paced the living room.It was their choice to get on the ride, their risk for the chance of a thrill.But those were just words. That was anger spewing out of her. She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if something had happened to them.
When she did force herself to dress and meet Milly for her second lesson of the week, she was skittish and jittery. She kept her sunglasses on for the whole lesson and barely spoke, feeding Milly the ball from the far side of the court.
“Is everything OK, Adele?” Milly called out about half way through. “You left in such a rush yesterday, and you’re awfully quiet today.”
“Fine,” was all Adele could manage.
“You know I never thanked you for averting danger that day on the Ferris wheel,” Milly said. “It’s good they acknowledged you in the paper.”
“Hardly!” Adele stiffened at the thought of other people reading it, everyone seeing her picture. It was a matter of time before someone made the connection between who she was then and who she was now. Just the idea of that brought up all those old feelings of fear and regret. How sickening it had felt to be hated the world over.
“You deserve the praise, Adele. You got everyone to safety,” Milly said. “Why does it bother you so much? Are you camera-shy?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Adele said.
“Try me.”
Adele shook her head. “Let’s just take a break, OK?”
Milly filled her cup with water and took a long drink. “Do you think at some point you can teach me how to play a real match?” she asked.
Adele sighed but didn’t respond. She could barely focus on today’s lesson, but she needed to try because Milly had helped her get this job, and, however small, it was something, and it helped.
“I know I’m not ready, not yet,” Milly went on. “But eventually. You see I’m new here and I don’t know many people. Sylvia introduced me to some of the women, but”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I don’t know if we have that much in common. Their lives, well, their home lives mostly, are a bit different from mine, so I thought maybe if I arranged some matches with a few of the women, it would give us something to talk about. And doubles, that would be my dream; having a partner to play with would be such a good way to make friends around here.”
In the midst of her panic and frustration, Adele felt an unusual pang of sympathy for Milly. She didn’t know any of the other women either, except Sylvia a little, but this Milly woman did seem to be a bit of an outsider, as if she didn’t quite fit in, a little like her. But while Adele had good reason for her situation, she hadn’t figured out what was different about Milly yet.
“None of them know how to play,” Adele said. “At least, not well.”
Milly bounced the ball on her racket and seemed to think about this.
“And,” Adele said, “you cannot serve, and neither can any of thesewomen. Have you seen them serve? It’s not tennis. They serve underhand. You cannot play a match until you can serve.”
“Well, then I’d better learn,” Milly said, smiling. “No time like the present.”
When the hour was up, Adele took her earnings from Milly and bolted off the court. She’d bring Sylvia her share of the earnings tomorrow. She’d made it through the lesson, she’d taught the basics of a serve. Milly had a long way to go, but she would get there. Right now, Adele had more urgent concerns. Hurrying home, she felt as if she were drowning. The photo in the paper had swallowed her up in an overwhelming flood, leaving her awash in memories from her distant, earlier life and forcing her to relive a time when she was losing control, giving in to dissolution, a time that would forever end with that fateful match in 1932.
She had been in London to defend her championship at Wimbledon. By then, she had taken home the silver salver from Wimbledon six times, but this time was different. Everything had intensified. She was twenty-four years old, beloved by her home country and both admired and critiqued by other European and American news outlets, yet she was having a difficult time living up to all the expectations for her. Especially her father’s.
They traveled like royalty—her mother, father, and Adele—everything paid for, staying at the most luxurious hotels or private homes, eating at the finest restaurants, traveling by chauffeured limousine. She was not rich—there was no money in the game—but as long as she was winning, there were significant benefits. In Paris for the French Championships at Stade Roland-Garros the previous month, Adele and her family had been hosted at a millionaire’s lavish mansion. When he and his wife dressed for dinner and noticed that Adele was wearing a simple gold necklace with her gown, the couple took her to Cartier on the way to dinner at La Coupole and insisted she accept their gift—an emeralddouble-strand choker that complemented the green layered-tulle design that Jean Patou had delivered that day.
She was treated to luxury everywhere she turned, but that only heightened the pressure on her to win. Drinking and dancing helped her forget—the booze relaxing her, loosening her from constraint. The press followed her wherever she went, and, when asked about her training, she both shocked and delighted them by confessing that she drank Sancerre before most matches, “as a tonic.” And when they questioned her further, she added, “Nothing is so fine for the nerves, for the strength and morale. A little wine tones the system up just right. One cannot always be serious; there must be some sparkle too.” After a few drinks she was confident and sassy, and her outrageous and often flirtatious remarks always landed on the front page the next morning.
Men fawned over her and complimented her skill, speed, and precision, then often promptly took her to bed. She loved the attention. It was a way to blow off steam, to push the pressures of the court to the very back of her mind. But in the morning, she’d feel shaky, often sick. As she woke in a haze, often in a stranger’s bed, she’d tell herself that if she weren’t skilled on the tennis courts, she would never have the attention of these men, or of her father, and she needed both in very different ways.
She showed up to her appointed matches thick with makeup, heavy with perfume—Joy by Patou—and layered with her white mink coat and gold bracelets. The crowd cheered and roared when she appeared, and then she put on a show and won, again and again. After a while though, the numbing drinks, the attention, and the enthusiastic sex weren’t distracting enough. She began to feel so anxious in the hours leading up to her matches that on occasion she had to postpone or delay them, blaming some sickness. “A serious indisposition caused by heat,” or “an attack of grippe following a swim in the cold ocean.”
Her father, who was also enjoying the riches of opulent dinners and prestigious company, would deliver his brandy-soaked sugar cubes to whatever luxurious hotel they might be staying at that night and begindrilling into her head tactics and strategies to beat her opponent. He would tell her all the weaknesses of whoever she would be playing that day and instill into her what she must do to win. When she lay in bed, the covers shielding her eyes from the sun, he would rip them from the hotel bed, pull open the curtains.
“Tu dois la battre, do you hear me?La battre,” he’d say, “you have to beat her.”
“Oui, Papa,” she’d say, reaching for the sheets only to have them pulled away again.
“Get up,” he’d yell. “If you lose this, we lose everything. We have no more travel, hotels, nice dinners. If you lose we go back to ourtrou de merde.”
