Part 19 (1/2)

She conducts an innocent survey of the spectators next to them. Whose are they? Dima's? Dima's enemies? Hector's? We're going in barefoot We're going in barefoot.

To her left, an iron-jawed blonde woman with a Swiss national cross on her paper hat and another on her ample blouse.

To her right, a middle-aged pessimist in a rainproof hat and cape, sheltering from the rain everybody else is pretending not to notice.

In the row behind them, a Frenchwoman leads her children in a l.u.s.ty singing of 'La Ma.r.s.eillaise', perhaps under the mistaken impression that Federer is French.

With the same insouciance Gail scans the crowd on the open terraces opposite them.

'See anyone special?' Perry yells into her ear.

'Not really. I thought Barry Barry might be here.' might be here.'

'Barry?'

'One of our silks!'

She is talking nonsense. There is a silk called Barry in her Chambers but he loathes tennis and loathes the French. She's hungry. Not only did they leave their coffees behind in the Rodin Museum. They actually forgot lunch. The realization prompts memories of a Beryl Bainbridge novel in which the hostess of a difficult dinner party forgets where she has put the pudding. She shouts to Perry, needing to share the joke: 'How long is it since you and I actually lost the lunch lost the lunch?'

But for once Perry doesn't get the literary reference. He's staring at a row of picture windows halfway up the stands on the other side of the court. White tablecloths and hovering waiters are discernible through the smoked gla.s.s, and he's wondering which window belongs to Dima's hospitality box. She feels the pressure of Dima's arms round her again, and his crotch pressing against her thigh with childlike unawareness. Were the fumes of vodka last night's, or this morning's? She asks Perry.

'He was just getting himself up to par,' Perry replies.

'What?'

'Par!'

Napoleon's troops have fled the battlefield. A p.r.i.c.kly quiet descends. An overhead camera glides on cables across an ugly black sky. Natasha Natasha. Is she or isn't she? Why hasn't she answered my text? Does Tamara know? Is that why she's whisked her back to Berne? No. Natasha takes her own decisions. Natasha is not Tamara's child. And Tamara, G.o.d knows, is n.o.body's idea of a mother. Text Natasha?

Just b.u.mped into yr Dad. Watching Federer. RU pregnant? xox, Gail Don't.

The stadium is erupting. First Robin Soderling, then Roger Federer looking as becomingly modest and self-a.s.sured as only G.o.d can. Perry is craning forward, lips pressed tensely together. He's in the presence.

Warm-up time. Federer mis-hits a couple of backhands; Soderling's forehand returns are a little too waspish for a friendly exchange. Federer practises a couple of serves, alone. Soderling does the same, alone. Practice over. Their jackets fall off them like sheaths from swords. In the pale blue corner, Federer, with a flash of red inside his collar and a matching red tick on his headband. In the white corner, Soderling, with phosph.o.r.escent yellow flashes on his sleeves and shorts.

Perry's gaze strays back to the smoked windows, so Gail's does too. Is that a cream-coloured blazer she sees with a gold anchor on the pocket, floating in the brown mist behind the gla.s.s? If ever there was a man not to get into the back of a taxi with, it's Signor Emilio dell Oro, she wants to tell Perry.

But quiet: the match has begun and to the joy of the crowd, but too suddenly for Gail, Federer has broken Soderling's serve and won his own. Now it's Soderling to serve again. A pretty blonde ballgirl with a ponytail hands him a ball, drops a bob, and canters off again. The linesman howls as if he's been stung. The rain's coming on again. Soderling has double-faulted; Federer's triumphal march to victory has begun. Perry's face is lit with simple awe and Gail discovers she is loving him all over again from scratch: his unaffected courage, his determination to do the right thing even if it's wrong, his need to be loyal and his refusal to be sorry for himself. She's his sister, friend, protector.

A similar feeling must have overtaken Perry, for he grasps her hand and keeps it. Soderling is going for the French Open. Federer is going for history, and Perry is going with him. Federer has won the first set 61. It took him just under half an hour.

The manners of the French crowd are truly beautiful, Gail decides. Federer is their hero as well as Perry's. But they are meticulous in awarding praise to Soderling wherever praise is due. And Soderling is grateful, and shows it. He's taking risks, which means he is also forcing errors and Federer has just committed one. To make up for it he delivers a lethal drop shot from ten feet behind the baseline.

When Perry watches great tennis, he enters a higher, purer register. After a couple of strokes he can tell you where a rally is heading and who's controlling it. Gail isn't like that. She's a ground-shot girl: wallop and see what happens, is her motto. At the level she plays, it works a treat.

But suddenly Perry isn't watching the game any more. He isn't watching the smoked windows either. He has leaped to his feet and barged in front of her, apparently to s.h.i.+eld her, and he's yelling: 'What the h.e.l.l!' with no hope of an answer.

Rising with him, which isn't easy because now everyone is standing too and yelling 'what the h.e.l.l' in French, Swiss German, English or whatever language comes naturally to them, her first expectation is that she is about to see a brace of dead pheasant at Roger Federer's feet: a left and a right. This is because she confuses the clatter of everybody leaping up with the din of panicked birds clambering into the air like out-of-date aeroplanes, to be shot down by her brother and his rich friends. Her second equally wild thought is that it is Dima who has been shot, probably by Niki, and tossed out of the smoked-gla.s.s windows.

But the spindly man who has appeared like a ragged red bird at Federer's end of the tennis court is not Dima, and he is anything but dead. He wears the red hat favoured by Madame Guillotine and long, blood-red socks. He has a blood-red robe draped over his shoulders and he's standing chatting to Federer just behind the baseline that Federer has been serving from.

Federer is a bit perplexed about what to say they clearly haven't met before but he preserves his on-court nice manners, although he looks a tad irritated in a grouchy, Swiss sort of way that reminds us that his celebrated armour has its c.h.i.n.ks. After all, he's here to make history, not waste the time of day with a spindly man in a red dress who's burst on to the court and introduced himself.

But whatever has pa.s.sed between them is over, and the man in the red dress is scampering for the net, skirts and elbows flying. A bunch of tardy, black-suited gentlemen are in comic pursuit, and the crowd isn't uttering a word any more: it's a sporting crowd, and this is sport, if not of a high order. The man in the red dress vaults the net, but not cleanly: a bit of net-cord there. The dress is no longer a dress. It never was. It's a flag. Two more black-suits have appeared on the other side of the net. The flag is the flag of Spain L'Espagne but that's only according to the woman who sang 'La Ma.r.s.eillaise', and her opinion is contested by a hoa.r.s.e-voiced man several rows up from her who insists it belongs to le Club Football de Barcelona le Club Football de Barcelona.

A black-suit has finally brought the man with the flag down with a rugger tackle. Two more pounce on him and drag him into the darkness of a tunnel. Gail is staring into Perry's face, which is paler than she has ever seen it before.

'Christ that was close,' she whispers. that was close,' she whispers.

Close to what? What does she mean? Perry agrees. Yes, close.

G.o.d does not sweat. Federer's pale blue s.h.i.+rt is unstained except for a single skid-mark between the shoulder blades. His movements seem a trifle less fluid, but whether that's the rain or the clotting clay or the nervous impact of the flag-man is anybody's guess. The sun has gone in, umbrellas are opening round the court, somehow it's 34 in the second set, Soderling is rallying and Federer looks a bit depressed. He just wants to make history and go home to his beloved Switzerland. And, oh dear, it's a tie-break except it hardly is, because Federer's first serves are flying in one after the other, the way Perry's do sometimes, but twice as fast. It's the third set and Federer has broken Soderling's serve, he's back in perfect rhythm and the flag-man has lost after all.

Is Federer weeping even before he's won?

Never mind. He's won now. It's as simple and uneventful as that. Federer has won and he can weep his heart out, and Perry too is blinking away a manly tear. His idol has made the history that he came to make, and the crowd is on its feet for the history-maker, and Niki the baby-faced bodyguard is edging his way towards them along the row of happy people; the handclapping has become a coordinated drumbeat.

'I'm the guy drove you back to your hotel in Antigua, remember?' he says, not quite smiling.

'h.e.l.lo, Niki,' Perry says.

'Enjoy the match?'

'Very much,' says Perry.

'Pretty good, eh? Federer?'

'Superb.'

'You wanna come visit Dima?'

Perry looks doubtfully at Gail: your turn your turn.

'We're a bit pressed for time, actually, Niki. We've just got so so many people in Paris who need to see us ' many people in Paris who need to see us '

'You know something, Gail?' Niki inquires sadly. 'You don't come have a drink with Dima, I think he'll cut my b.a.l.l.s off.'

Gail lets Perry hear this instead of her: 'Up to you,' says Perry, still to Gail.

'Well how about just one one drink?' Gail suggests, doing reluctant surrender. drink?' Gail suggests, doing reluctant surrender.

Niki shoos them ahead and follows, which she supposes is what bodyguards learn to do. But Perry and Gail are not planning to run away. In the main concourse, Swiss alphorns are booming out a heart-rending dirge to a swarm of umbrellas. With Niki leading from the back, they climb a bare stone staircase and enter a jazzy corridor with each door painted a different colour, like the lockers in Gail's school gymnasium, except that instead of girls' names they bear the names of corporations: blue door for MEYER-AMBROSINI GMBH MEYER-AMBROSINI GMBH, pink for SEGURA-h.e.l.lENIKA SEGURA-h.e.l.lENIKA & & CIE CIE, yellow for EROS VACANCIA PLC EROS VACANCIA PLC. And crimson for FIRST ARENA CYPRUS FIRST ARENA CYPRUS, which is where Niki pops open the cover of a black box mounted on the doorpost, and taps a number into it, and waits for the door to be opened from the inside by friendly hands.