Chapter Twenty-One #2
I found myself pumping my fist without even realising it. Come on, I mumbled under my breath. I knew it was better to make an early break, particularly if his plan was for Duardin to lose focus and begin to doubt himself. Marcus had to try to break his serve, and the sooner the better.
The crowd were respectfully silent as Marcus took his position behind the baseline, crouching down, swinging his hips ever so slightly from side to side, gripping his racquet with both hands, entirely focused on what Duardin was about to do with that ball.
Duardin served straight at Marcus, almost hitting his feet.
Marcus literally jumped out of the way and managed to hit the ball back over the net.
There was a long rally this time, the first of the match, and I knew this was Marcus’s sweet spot.
Sure enough, after whacking the ball back and forth, back and forth, to the right, to the left, Duardin hit it into the net.
Love-Fifteen. Our entire box roared, as did much of the crowd.
He was winning them over, I could see it.
If he could just keep his head. Keep playing well.
Duardin served again, missing his first. Marcus had told me this rarely happened.
He was losing focus, just as Marcus wanted him to.
He served again, Marcus hit it back cross court, Duardin lunged, making the return, but Marcus was already at the net, ready to volley it to the ground with an impossible-to-reach smash. Love-Thirty.
He was doing it. He could win this.
‘Come on, Marcus!’ I shouted, suddenly not paying attention to the part of me that worried about upsetting him.
He said I calmed him down, so maybe hearing my voice might help in some small way.
In any case, it had been completely involuntary and it was done now, and I wasn’t the only one because Nick was yelling too.
I felt part of the team, as invested in Marcus as they were, and I’d never wanted him to win so badly.
He won the game and the first set, 7-5. Everything was looking to be in Marcus’s favour.
Duardin had already smashed one racquet and had shouted at his team more than once.
Marcus looked tired, but not exhausted – I knew he had it in him to push through, to take him in straight sets.
But then, in the rest break, I noticed Marcus staring over his shoulder.
It wasn’t at us, at anyone in our box – he seemed to be fixated on somebody in the audience further down our row.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Dean.
Dean stood up, straining his neck to see. ‘Oh fuck.’ He turned to Patrick. ‘His mother’s here.’
His mother?
I leaned forward in my seat, trying to catch a glimpse of her myself.
I spotted Denise immediately. Her hair was not as blonde as it had been in pictures I’d seen from a few years back, and was flecked with specks of grey.
Her eyes were dark and intense, like Marcus’s, and she was wearing a white blouse tucked into jeans.
She was in her fifties, slim and angular.
I looked back at Marcus, who had his head in his hands, perhaps trying to block out the image of what – or who – he’d just seen.
She hadn’t been to one of his matches for years and it felt like too much of a coincidence that I’d shown Marcus that story and now she was here – had I inadvertently set something in motion that would damage Marcus’s chances of winning?
‘Time,’ called the umpire.
Marcus got up and walked out on court. Everything about his demeanour was different; it was like the energy he’d had in the first set had been sucked out of him.
He took his position to serve. The crowd hadn’t noticed the change in him, of course, and were roaring away – it was only our box that was strangely quiet now, in anticipation of how all of this was going to affect him.
Could he block his mother out? Could he imagine her not here, could he focus on what he needed to do and put his feelings for her to one side?
He double-faulted right off the bat, the first one I’d ever seen him do. Love-Fifteen.
His next serve went in, but Duardin hammered it back so hard that Marcus only just reached it in time, slamming it into the net. He let out a primal roar.
‘Shit,’ said Dean.
Shaking his head, Marcus served again. The first one was long, the second barely skimmed the net, but it was in. Duardin got it past him again. Love-Forty.
Come on, come on, come on, I begged silently. Don’t let this throw you off.
He produced a decent serve, forcing Duardin slightly off balance. But when he tried for the shot he’d been practising, to the far-left corner where Patrick had relentlessly put his can, the ball landed just outside the baseline. Something else I’d never seen him do. Game Duardin.
The French members of the crowd went wild. And when Marcus flung his racquet into his chair, they went even wilder, booing, hissing and stamping their feet.
‘Do you think he can come back from this?’ I asked Dean, who looked as subdued as I felt.
He shrugged. ‘I fucking hope so.’
After being annihilated in the second set (6-2 to Duardin), something seemed to change.
Marcus had spent the changeover with a towel over his head.
He did not turn around to look at his mum, and he didn’t look over this way either.
I wondered what was going through his mind, what he was saying to himself.
I knew he would want to fight and that the match wasn’t over yet – there was one more set and everything to play for.
From the moment he stepped back out on the court, he played like he had for the first forty minutes.
Duardin’s serve was solid, but as Marcus matched him game for game, you could see doubt beginning to creep in, which Marcus used to his advantage.
He kept the ball long, the two of them slogging it out on the baseline, just how Marcus liked it, his phenomenal accuracy returning.
Two out of three times, Marcus won the point because Duardin hit it long. Marcus didn’t hit it long once.
At six games all, the match went to a tie break. I remembered Patrick saying that even the top players sometimes crumbled under the pressure of a tie break. I didn’t think Marcus would crumble under usual circumstances, but today, with his mother watching, I wasn’t sure.
Duardin served and won the point. One-zero Duardin. Marcus took the next two. Two-one Taylor.
The entire court was on tenterhooks. Dean was half sitting down, half on his feet, flying up and down as Marcus took three of the next four points.
Duardin served again, losing the point by fudging Marcus’s return of serve. Two-six Taylor.
I was on my feet, we all were. Match point.
‘Come on, Marcus!’ I shouted, my voice drowned out by the thousands of other voices screaming the same thing.
‘Quiet, please,’ said the umpire.
Silence descended as Marcus took his place behind the baseline, crouching to receive.
The ball slammed over the net. Marcus returned it cross court.
Duardin was there, whacking it down the tramline, forcing Marcus on to his backhand.
But his backhand was his strength and he returned it easily, knocking it just inside the baseline.
Duardin returned it and I assumed we were in for another long rally, the battle of the heavy hitters, until Marcus did something I’d never seen him do before.
He sliced the ball, making it look like it was going to go long but morphing it into a perfectly executed drop shot that fell just over Duardin’s side of the net.
Duardin hesitated a split second too long before running in, using the full length of his body to reach for the shot.
The ball bounced twice before he could get to it.
Marcus had won not only the match, but the Queen’s Club Championships.
It seemed to take a moment for it to sink in before he put his head in his hands and bent double at the waist as the crowd went wild.
I blinked back tears as I stood up and then I didn’t bother to blink them back anymore, I just let them flow, yelling and whooping.
Marcus stood up and glanced over at us, smiling like I’d never seen him smile.
I raised my hands in the air, clapping above my head as Marcus looked directly at me.
For a nanosecond, as we made eye contact, our faces beaming, the warmth we felt for each other shining through, I thought I might never have been as proud of anybody in my entire life.
That night, Dean threw a party for Marcus at a rooftop restaurant in Kensington.
He was so busy being congratulated by everyone that I didn’t see him for much of the night and hung out with Dean and Nick instead, and occasionally Patrick when he wasn’t schmoozing with the rest of the tennis crowd.
It wasn’t until gone eleven that I finally got to speak to Marcus alone.
‘Want to get some fresh air?’ he asked.
He had beads of sweat on his forehead and he was smiling, excited in a way I’d never seen him.
‘Sure,’ I said.
He took my hand and led me outside on to the terrace, a beautiful tree-lined space with views over rooftops and chimneys, the lit-up London Eye dominating the skyline.
We leaned on the railings taking it all in, enjoying the cool breeze on our faces, the thumping music from inside the bar barely audible.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘I can’t even put it into words. It’s a strange mixture of not believing it’s actually happened and knowing that it’s exactly what was supposed to happen. Does that even make sense?’
‘I think even if you feel like you deserve something, that it’s meant to be, there’s a nagging fear that it was a fluke, or a one-off, or that somebody’s made a mistake and you haven’t won this thing, or got this job, or whatever it is, after all.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, turning to face me. ‘Exactly that.’