Chapter Fourteen #3
‘Was your dad around, too, when you were growing up?’ I asked, thinking my question linked in nicely. He was the one who’d mentioned his family, it wasn’t like I’d just plucked my question out of thin air.
‘Not really,’ said Marcus, focusing on his dough and surprisingly not looking as though he was about to shut me down. ‘My parents split up when I was about two. He wasn’t around much after that.’
Parents split up aged two. Didn’t see much of Dad. This felt like an important piece of the puzzle. Did his dad have a temper, too, I wondered? Or was his dad the reason Marcus was so hard on himself – did he need to prove to his dad that he was doing just fine without him?
‘What about now?’ I asked. ‘Are the two of you in contact? He must be really proud of what you’ve achieved?’
‘He came to a match once, a few years back,’ said Marcus.
‘I was playing at Eastbourne. Apparently, he lives down that way now, Brighton or somewhere, and he just showed up, asked for me at the security desk. Told everyone he was my dad. They didn’t let him in, obviously, but someone came to check, so I had to go out and see him so as not to cause a scene. ’
‘How long had it been since you’d spoken?’
‘I tried to work it out at the time. He’d made a brief appearance at my tenth birthday, and then when I was fifteen he came to the tennis club where Mum worked and they had a row and the owner had to ask him to leave.
That had been the last time I’d seen him before Eastbourne, so thirteen, fourteen years? ’
‘What did he say? What had made him just rock up there after all that time?’
Marcus shrugged. ‘He started banging on about how much he missed me. How much he regretted disappearing on me. I told him I had a match to focus on, that it wasn’t a good time, but as usual what I wanted didn’t seem to count for a thing.
In the end I had to threaten to call security if he didn’t leave. ’
‘That must have been hard,’ I said.
‘It was. Is. Sometimes. It’s worse that I don’t really speak to my mum anymore. My dad I can live without, I’ve pretty much always had to anyway.’
Before I could ask him more, Colette brought the group together to watch her knead the dough in the bowl.
‘Remember, keep checking the temperature of your dough. If it is too cold, we have a problem. If it is too hot, we have a problem. Oui? You understand?’ she said.
We all nodded.
‘And be aware of the texture of your baguette dough. When it is ready, it will feel smooth on the outside, but also soft, like a beach ball.’
‘Why am I thinking this is the point at which this all goes badly wrong?’ I said, grimacing in Marcus’s direction.
‘Ditto,’ he said, prodding nervously at his dough.
‘Mesdames et messieurs, please do not forget to flour your hands before you touch the dough!’ instructed Colette.
‘Well, you’ve ruined it now,’ I said to Marcus.
He hurriedly dipped his hands in some flour and then returned to work his dough.
‘We’ll see about that. As you know, I never give up.’
We simultaneously kneaded in silence for a while, until my dough began to work itself together and I felt confident that it wasn’t going to be a total disaster.
Dare I go back to the conversation we’d been having before?
I’d finally been getting somewhere with my questions about his parents, and I didn’t think I should stop now – there might never be another opportunity this good.
I’d keep it casual, off the cuff – he could tell me as much as he wanted to tell me.
‘I was wondering why your mum never comes to watch you play anymore,’ I said, keeping my voice light, as though it wasn’t the one piece of Marcus’s history I was just dying to know the truth about. ‘Did you have a falling-out?’
Marcus paused, his hands hovering over his bowl. ‘You want to talk about that now?’
‘No time like the present,’ I said. ‘Also, it can be easier to talk about difficult stuff when you’re focused on something else. It feels less intense or something.’
Not to blow my own trumpet, but that had actually sounded quite knowledgeable, particularly from someone who had a pathological hatred of talking about difficult things herself.
If this worked on Marcus, perhaps I would try it on Cassie next time I was home.
We could bake together, even if she would think that was an odd suggestion coming from me, and then I could slip in a question about her love life, or why she hadn’t managed to make any friends, or whether she wanted to spend her entire life acting like a victim.
That last one was a bit harsh, but I’d thought it, so it must – in my head at least – be true.
Marcus sighed. ‘Fine. Sometimes I forget you’re actually here to interview me.’
‘Well, what else would I be here for?’ I asked, raising my eyebrows at him.
‘That is a very good point. So my mother . . .’
‘Your mother . . .’ I prompted.
‘We were close when I was a kid. Because it was just her and me against the world, I suppose. We went everywhere together, partly because I had to because she couldn’t afford childcare, but also because she liked having me around.
If it wasn’t for her, I’d never even have picked up a tennis racquet.
I’d be hanging around the tennis club waiting for her to finish her shift and she’d persuade one of the coaches to give me a knock-around out on court.
I don’t think anyone had expected that I’d be good at it. ’
‘I bet all the rich kids at the club hated you.’
Marcus shrugged. ‘I honestly couldn’t have cared less what they thought. It made it easier for me to beat them out on court if I didn’t like them.’
‘Ah, so that’s where you cultivated your I don’t give a damn what people think of me attitude.’
‘Oh, I had it way before that, Ava. I’ve always had it.’
I shook my head at him, baffled. ‘How? Did you come out of the womb full of confidence and bravado, or was it something you learned?’
I ran my hands over my dough. Good, it was feeling smooth on the outside, just like Colette had said it should.
‘No idea. You’d have to ask my mum, if she ever bothers to come and see me play again, that is.’
I chewed on my lip, wondering if that was enough for this evening, or if it was better to keep going while he was on a roll. Who knew if he’d ever open up this much again – perhaps there was something about the kneading of the dough . . .
‘I’ve seen pictures,’ I said, before I could change my mind. ‘Of the two of you together in the early days of your career. Your mum looked so proud of you. What happened? Why doesn’t she come and watch you anymore?’
Marcus wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘Is it hot in here or is it me?’ he said.
‘Tell me,’ I said quietly, not letting him deflect.
He winced, as though he was grappling with something. Was it possible that nobody had ever asked him this question directly? That he’d never had to put what had happened between them into words before?’
‘She was part of my team, my mum. It was much smaller in those days, just my coach at the time, a guy called Mark, and my mum, who was basically my manager.’
‘So she did what Dean does now?’
‘A scaled-down version of that. I didn’t have any sponsorship deals back then, but she arranged my travel for me, the odd interview on local radio, that kind of thing.
But then the press started trying to dig up dirt on her, went out of their way to talk to people she’d worked with at the tennis club.
Banged on and on about how we’d come from nothing, how she was a barmaid not a manager.
If anything went wrong with my game, if I crashed out early in a tournament or whatever, they’d blame my mum.
They’d say she had no clue what she was doing, that she didn’t belong in the world of tennis and perhaps neither did I.
One tabloid newspaper – it’s closed down now, thank God – printed pictures of her drunk and then exposed her for being arrested for shoplifting when she was sixteen. ’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That must have been really tough for both of you.’
‘I couldn’t care less what they were saying about me, but it got to my mum. And at the same time, I’d started earning a bit of money, progressing in tournaments. It was the year before I won the Australian Open and I’d done well on the US swing.’
I looked at him, confused.
‘The Miami Open, the US Open, Indian Wells,’ Marcus explained.
‘Ah, that mysterious-sounding place again,’ I said.
‘You’ll have to come with me next time and then you’ll know exactly what it is, won’t you?’
Now it was my turn to freeze, with my fingers plunged right inside the dough.
‘Did I just say that out loud?’ said Marcus, tipping his head, making a joke of it. ‘Never mind, as we were!’
Now wasn’t the time to try to decipher what he’d meant by that comment, even if suddenly my entire body did feel warm and fuzzy and soft, like the beginnings of our baguettes.
He’d have meant as friends, if anything.
Maybe we would be, after all of this, although it was much more likely that once my article was submitted, I’d never see nor hear from Marcus again.
‘So, yes. Your mum. You’d started to make money and . . . ?’
‘And she started to spend it. Which was fine – that’s why I gave it to her.
I wanted her to be happy, to have access to the kind of life she’d never been able to have.
But then she put an offer on an expensive house and asked me to cover the mortgage on it.
She said it was for both of us, but if I’d wanted a house out in Richmond, or wherever, I’d have bought one myself, wouldn’t I?
Plus, I was travelling so much, owning a property was the last thing on my mind. ’
‘So you told her no?’
‘Basically. She was trying to make me play in a tournament I didn’t want to play and I put my foot down. I could tell I was getting burnt out and I wanted my body to be rested and ready for the Australian Open. The prize money for a win was particularly high, but I didn’t want to do it.’