CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ADELE
One week later, Adele sat down in one of the armchairs in her living room across from Jonathan Rutherford. A huge light box shone down on her from its spindly metal legs, and a large camera faced her and Jonathan from the back of the room. Wires and clunky equipment were everywhere, and it was hot as hell.
“Can we open a window?” she asked.
“Sorry, ma’am,” a young man in a charcoal suit replied as he adjusted the two large microphones. “We can’t risk picking up any outside noise.”
“Mon Dieu,” Adele mumbled under her breath, dabbing at her forehead, which caused the young makeup woman to rush forward with a powder puff. “Can we just get this over with?” Adele added impatiently.
“We’re about to get started,” Jonathan said, setting an unlit cigarette and a box of matches on the table next to him.
“You can’t smoke in here,” Adele told him. “It’s too hot, and I can’t stand the smell.”
“A French woman who doesn’t smoke?” he said. “You used to be known for always having a cigarette in your hand after your matches.”
“I quit years ago.”
“All right,” he replied, handing them to one of the camera crew. “I usually light one as a prop, but I don’t have to.”
“Good.” She eyed him. She’d tried to prepare for the interview, for every imaginable invasive and personal question he might ask, but she had no idea how much he knew about that awful day.
There were far too many people crammed into her tiny living room. Sylvia and Milly had been relegated to the kitchen out of view, but they could still hear what was going on, and just having them there was a comfort. Adele rubbed her hands together and realized her palms were sweating. The director announced something to get everyone’s attention, then called out, “And we’re on in five, four, three, two…” and he mouthed “one.”
“Good evening, and welcome toLives & Stories,” Jonathan said, sounding like a different version of himself. “I’m Jonathan Rutherford, and tonight it is my absolute pleasure to bring you one of the most famous, and infamous, female tennis players of our time, a woman who revolutionized women’s tennis and wowed us with her speed, her power strokes, her elegance, and balletic moves on the court from Paris to New York, to London, to California, and beyond. She became possibly as well-known for her fashion choices as she was for her prodigious talent in tennis. She has been out of the public eye for more than twenty years, following an altercation with her fellow tennis champion Margery Horn, which turned her biggest fans against her. On air tonight to tell her story in her own words, for the first time since 1932, please welcome the one and only Adeline Léglise.”
The camera turned to Adele and she stared, momentarily stunned, at the bright light. Realizing she should respond, she looked back to Jonathan. “It’s Adele,” she said. “I go by Adele now.”
“Of course,” he said. “We are filming live today from Adele’s home in sunny Southern California, some six thousand miles from where she grew up in the South of France. Now, Miss Léglise, you were a champion, a star. You won eight Grand Slam titles in singles and twenty-one titles altogether. You were a four-time World Hard Court Champion, and you won Wimbledon in singles six times. You were arguably the best female tennis player in the world. Would you agree?”
“Oui,” she said. “If I’d been given the chance to compete against the men, you’d likely say I was the best tennis player in the world,la fin.”
Jonathan laughed. “It’s possible,” he said. “It’s very, very possible. You were on top of the tennis world and then on one Saturday in July 1932, things went terribly wrong. Can you take us back through the events of that fateful day?”
Adele took a deep breath. She’d hoped perhaps he would ease into this—first ask questions about her career or how she began to play tennis in the first place—before diving headfirst into her worst nightmare. But she knew what made news. They wanted viewers, and they wanted them right away. She braced herself as the events of that day flashed through her mind.
She had walked to the baseline and was already sweating. She hated herself for what she’d done. She knew she could win without cheating, without drugging her opponent’s drink. Now, Margery could trip and fall, she could be pounded by a ball if she didn’t move fast enough. When the powder kicked in, Margery would likely have to default the match. Adele could get caught and her career would be over, but there was no turning back. The damage had been done.
A Wimbledon official tossed the coin. Margery was to serve first, but Adele couldn’t stop thinking, wondering, if it had taken effect. Frozen with fear, she faltered, stepping too late to return Margery’s serve as it aced her, shaking her resolve. Margery took her own service and broke Adele’s to take a 2–love lead.
“Idiote,” Adele cursed herself.“Tu es une idiote stupide.”
The pounding in her chest was thunderous. When Adele looked up to her father, his face was beet red and he stood, motioning with his hands so firmly and dramatically that she thought he might hit the people next to him. She squinted to make out what he was saying but, as if in a nightmare, she couldn’t. He was yelling but the pulsating in her ears was louder. Her opponent was bouncing on her toes eagerly awaiting Adele’sserve in the third game. Why wasn’t she getting tired? Why wasn’t the crushed pill working? She had regretted it at first, but now with her own inner agony and her father screaming from the sidelines, she wanted it to do its job, make Margery drowsy, make her slow. Make her lose.
When Adele lost the first set, unable to control herself, she approached the net and screamed at Margery, then she turned her attention to her father, who was now courtside.
“Que fais-tu?” he screeched. “You have no energy, you have no focus; you play as if you’ve never picked up a racket,” he snarled in a rage. “What is wrong with you? Where is your power, your drive? Watching you is an embarrassment. And to think the king of England is here, watching this pathetic spectacle.” Spit fired from his mouth as he hurled insults at her.“Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas chez toi?”
Adele looked down at the ground, holding back tears. She was ashamed, humiliated; reporters were everywhere, watching. She knew she could play better than this, but the panic, the thumping in her chest, the fear of losing and facing her father afterward was paralyzing.
Her confidence shattered, Adele lost the first game in the second set. She never suffered losses like this. She had to do something to turn it around. She didn’t dare look up to the stands to see the disappointment in her father’s face again, so she began to yell at the umpire in his tall wooden chair.
“That was a bad call,” she shouted, pointing to her last ball, which had landed just outside the white line. “It was in.” It had been close, possibly in, but more likely out, but Adele didn’t know what else to do. The umpire gave her a warning, and when Adele looked up to her father for guidance, he was gone. She looked around the stands to see if he was there, pacing—she knew this was as stressful for him as it was for her—but he was nowhere to be found, and her mother, who looked so small and insignificant sitting there alone, had turned her face away from the court, as if she couldn’t bear to watch.
Margery took a step toward the umpire’s chair to defend the call that Adele’s ball was out, but the sight of this woman, about to beather, exhilarated and on her feet despite the crushed pill, only terrified and enraged Adele further.
“It was in; it was clearly in,” Adele screamed, throwing her racket with all the power she could muster toward the spot where her ball had hit the court. But by now Margery was inexplicably charging toward the umpire, equally passionate in her defense, and at that very moment the racket spun upward and hit her in the face, hard. There was a yelp as Margery cupped her hands over her left eye and collapsed to the ground.
