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Chapter Eleven

 True to her word, Zoë shut up once we were on our way, and I only spoke to give directions. I was daunted by the decision I was faced with. The whole thing was unbelievably sudden. There was no doubt now in my mind that I was going to do it. I’d worked that out while Zoë was in the loo. It was just the upheaval. The battle of wills with my mother for starters. It was lucky I had the time during the drive back. It let me prepare myself for the phone call. It conserved energy after what had been a big, big day. I needed all the energy I had.

As I got out of the car I said, “This is going to be a match point of a phone call.”

“Great!” Zoë’s face lit up. “You’ve decided to go for it?”

“Never any doubt really. Just thinking about the alternative, back home, back to school, all stuff I don’t want to do. My poxy housemaster. Another two years of my mother. Her on my back, every day.”

The moon was coming up over the Pennines, a full moon, and it looked huge, only just above the horizon. On the way up. It seemed a good omen.

“Thanks for the lift, Zoë. And the meal. Big help.”

“No problem. Good luck with the call. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

She drove off. She was so enormously together, Zoë. It was hard to imagine her with the same uncertainties as me. I envied her. She’d done it, she had the titles and the status. Life was easy, she had the car, the sponsorships. As if all that wasn’t enough, she was disturbingly, achingly lovely. The evening had discombobulated me, left me in a turmoil, except it was a double turmoil. Could you be discombob-bobulated, I wondered? There was the squash, daunting if anything could be daunting, and there was Zoë. Which did I want more? More chance to become world champion than Zoë’s champion, sadly, and I had to be realistic, what chance was there of that?

I went inside and exchanged greetings with various Kemballs. Dave was only just home and was incredulous.

“Zoë took you out? What was that about? Zoë never socialises.”

I mumbled something about needing to eat and put my sweaty gear in the washing machine. Then I cast around for things to delay my trip upstairs. Nothing convenient presented itself. Listlessly I went up. I had to make the call. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Shell-shocked, and I hadn’t even been shelled. Yet. That was about to come. I put my shoes and racquets and kitbag carefully in their appointed places. I picked up various items of clothing. The room was becoming unaccustomedly tidy: you could see the floor. Maybe I could put the call off until first thing in the morning? No, she’d be worse in the morning. Maybe I could just do the whole thing without telling anyone.

Don’t be a prat.

Finally I sat down on the bed and took a deep breath. This was going to be an epic. Not in length, if I knew my mother. Storm Force Twelve. In my mother’s world, teenagers just didn’t drop out of school; it was unthinkable. Teenagers in my mother’s world were there to be bragged about, to do all the right things. We had to blaze through our exams, ‘It’s been confirmed in the psychometric tests. He’s a genius.’ ‘Oh genius, oh that, how trivial. Mine does genius in her spare time.’  We had to pull the girls and the boys from the rich families, ‘She’s going out with Lady Pevensey’s son. So young, but they’re very much in love.’ ‘Mine’s thick as thieves with Rhiannon de Courtney. She’s a friend of, ah, the Windsors.’  We had to make it into the most exclusive magazines, ‘Now he’s auditioning for a Harry Potter remake.’  We had to carve out colossal careers. ‘The first year bonus is said to be six figures. After that, well, the sky’s the limit.’ We provided the opportunity to be, and remain, one up.

My plan on the other hand didn’t bear thinking about. ‘Mine’s dropped out of school and gone to live with an awful Glaswegian. I can’t understand a word the man says. In Manchester, of all places, Manchester! He’s going to become a full time, can you believe this, a full time squash player. Squash for Christ’s sake, it’s so, it’s so proletarian. So ungrateful.’

I took a deep breath and hit the quick dial code for our landline. Three rings, the breath didn’t have to last for long.

“Hello.”

This wasn’t the neutral hello most people used. It was sentry-at-the-gate hello, who-goes-there hello, and it had better be good at this time of night or I’ll drop the portcullis on you hello. The ground rules for the conversation had been set, a presumption of confrontation.

“Hi Mum, it’s me.”

“Oh, you. It’s late, isn’t it?”

“I knew you’d be at bridge.”

“Well what is it?” Any plans I had to ease into this gently went out the window.

“It’s good news, really. It’s the squash.”

“Squash?” A six letter word. “Why are you calling me about squash at this time of night?”

“It’s going so well. I, er, I’ve been doing better than people expected. It must be all that volleying practice you made me do at tennis.”

“Come on Jolyon. Stop beating about the bush. Why are you calling me now?”

“I’ve been offered the chance to go full time.”

“Full time? At squash?” Waiter, there’s a slug in my salad.

“Yes. Sailor, the coach here, he thinks I’ve the potential to get to the top.”

“Well bully for you. How do you expect to get up to Manchester every weekend for all this full time squash? And you can’t stay with the Kemballs for ever. I wouldn’t do it for their son if it was the other way round.” Don’t worry on that score, Mother, no son of anyone else would want to.

I gulped. “It’s not going to be like that. I’m going to stay up here. With Sailor and his wife. And train full time.”

“Bloody hell, Jolyon. That’s absurd. What are you going to do for money? And where are you going to go to school?”

“Please understand, Mum. This is full time. I’ll be training all day. There won’t be time for school.”

“Jesus wept. I’ve never heard anything so absurd. I’ve no intention of continuing this conversation, not now. You can call me back in the morning. I’ll want to know what your plans are for coming home. You’ve been up there quite long enough, that’s clear. Good night.”

Bang, the conversation, more accurately the clash, ended. The phone may or may not have survived the return to its cradle. I fell back onto the bed. Zero progress, oh dear. I’d have done no worse if I’d told her I was planning to work in the locality of King’s Cross Station as a rent boy. On the credit side? Nothing. Well, not quite nothing. It was a short call and I still had seven minutes credit, ha ha, on my phone. On the debit side? Well, where do you start?

These reflections were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Hello?” It was Russell. “Are you okay? I wasn’t trying to listen, but I couldn’t help overhearing some of that. It sounded a bit heated.”

He came into the room and I sat up. “Superheated, more like. That was my mother.”

“What was it all about?”

It was a relief to have someone to talk to, and Russell might understand. I told him the whole story, from Sailor’s proposal right through to my mother’s response to the call.

“Bloody hell, Jolyon.”

“That’s what she said.”

“No, I mean, that’s fantastic news. If Sailor says that. He’s a hard guy to please. That really means something.”

“Fat lot of good it’s doing me.”

“That’s the other side. This is a major major decision. And look at it this way. Suppose I had a call from Dave, late one evening, from let’s say London. ‘I’m like not coming back, Dad, and oh by the way I’m dropping out of school.’ I’d lose my rag too. Dave’s still a kid, at least in Marion’s eyes. I know he’s almost grown up. You too. But that’s not the way parents see it. I’m not surprised your mother was pissed off.”

“But what can I do? I’ve thought about it, the squash. I really want to do it. The idea I could be up there, right up at the top.”

“Dave was pretty impressed on Friday, I must say. When he came home he told me about your game. He said suddenly you were different. He said it felt like he was playing a man, somebody ranked. He really tried. He always does. Especially that first game. He didn’t think you could keep it up. In a way he was disappointed. He wants to be good. He is good, for Heaven’s sake, bloody good. But he kept on saying ‘different’, you were different today, Jolyon was different. Up to now he’s always known he could beat you.”

“He always has.”

“The question is, how are we going to manage this, the whole thing? Firstly, you need to consider, are you absolutely sure it’s what you want to do? It’s a very sudden decision.”

“Oh yes. It’s definite. I didn’t realise how much I was dreading going back till the chance of not going back cropped up. It’s a way out in one way, I suppose. And it’s me. I’m always doing things because of my mother, her little chess piece, move here, move there. I never let myself realise how much I hated life at home.”

“Your father’s in the Navy, isn’t he?”

“That’s right. Submarines. He’s not home much. Anyway, what I do, what I’ve done, is always down to her. I hadn’t really thought about it until this, the whole squash thing, came up. Well, I had a bit. She always wanted me to play tennis. Since I was four or five. I was pretty good at tennis. I used to win all the tournaments locally. Down in Sussex. Then into Surrey. I went to LTA sessions. But it was like I was the prize exhibit. I was her, I dunno, her status. I’d hear her, it still makes me cringe, she used to boast about me. So in the end I took up cross country instead. She hated that, hated cross country. It wasn’t glamorous somehow. That’s true, it isn’t glamorous, especially in the winter. There’s mud and cold and wet. But I loved it. It was, sort of, well it was for me. And I was good at cross country. Our coach said I could do well in running if I kept at it. I did county stuff, and South of England. The squash came up as a sort of accident. Squash is a bit like cross country. It’s so hard. You’ve got to keep pushing and pushing and the other guy’s pushing and pushing back. It’s down to your will in the end, and if your will’s stronger than his you’re going to win. But with squash there’s the shots, too, and the fun of just hitting the ball and winning a hard point, and pushing on when you’re completely out of breath and completely knackered. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as Dave at hitting the ball. Dave’s magic. He’s like Ahmed. It’s just that I’m stronger. And I like the training. I actually enjoy it. Dave doesn’t. He pushes himself but he doesn’t enjoy it. For me these last few weeks have been fantastic, once I’d got the hang of it, the intensity. Then there’s the other guys. Dave’s been great. Riley I’m not so sure of but he’s such a laugh. Ahmed’s a good guy. And Zoë. Seeing what Zoë does, she’s the one who’s really shown me. Almost more than Sailor. It’s her attitude. And what is she? With her attitude, she’s the world champion.

“And like I said, this is me, my decision for once, not my mother’s. Not anyone else’s.”

Russell sat down on the bed beside me. He paused before he spoke, and then he spoke slowly. “It’s important that your mum and dad get to meet Sailor. As soon as possible. They’ve got to understand. He’s got to make them understand what he sees in you. And they’ve got to see that you’re really committed to this. You have to have them on your side.”

“Huh, that’s not going to be easy. Firstly, I’m not sure when my dad’s back. I think it’s something like six weeks from now. As for my mother, well I don’t know.”

“Put yourself in her shoes. She’s bound to be upset. I would be if Dave suddenly decided to give up school, like I said. It’s not as if your future’s guaranteed. I’m wondering if there’s any way you could transfer to a school up here.”

“Sailor says I don’t have the time. I’ve got too much catching up to do. I started squash too late.”

“We’ll see. Don’t rule anything out right now. First, you’ve got to get your mother up here. As soon as possible. She needs to meet Sailor, see the set up. She can come out here and meet Marion and me. It would make sense if she stayed here.”

I was embarrassed I hadn’t talked about that. “That’s something else I wanted to say. It wouldn’t be fair, me carrying on staying with you. Sailor says I can live with him.”

“I think we could manage. If we got a truck to deliver the food. But you’re right. It might make more sense if you were closer in. The buses aren’t great out here.

“Look, sleep on it tonight. Call your mother in the morning and see when she can come up.”

“I’ve got to call Sailor, too. He wants a decision tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. It’s your decision to make, and I can see why you want to do it. I think I’d want to do it, if I had the chance. And been good enough. But a few days to sort out the details, make the arrangements, that’s not going to make any difference.

“So call your mother, call Sailor. I’m working from home tomorrow. You can let me know where things stand.”

I felt a lot better to have someone on my side. I’d seen this horrible void when my mother reacted the way she had. I guess I’d been naïve in expecting to arrange everything with one call home, out of the blue. Maybe that’s the way that Sailor thought it could be done. Perhaps that’s what he did when he signed up for the Navy. Anyway, Russell’s calm presence was making me feel better. And talking to him had made me all the more determined to go for the squash thing rather than struggle on for the next two years at Redbrook.

And with my mother.

When Russell had gone I went through to Dave’s room.

“What’s your dad do?” I asked.

“He’s a lawyer. Family law. He’s in a partnership in Manchester.”

“Ah. He’s good at listening.”

“What do you mean?”

I told Dave about my conversation with Sailor.

“World Champion? Sailor says you could be world champion. Phat! You were the genuine article on Friday, rinsed me. I expected you to cave in after ten minutes at that pace. So if he thinks you can be world champion, what’s he going to say the next time we play and I wipe you off the court?”

He laughed. “I’m only joking. I don’t think I could beat you again. At the moment. Not if you play like that.”

I felt bad for Dave. “Fuck the squash,” I said. “Let’s have a mix.”

Dave was even more of a natural at mixing than he was at squash. Everyone said he could make it as a DJ. He had a perfect ear for beat, that wasn’t so difficult, but he also could see things in the melody that worked when you dropped. And even the lyrics. He had a ton of vinyl, literally hundreds of discs, and he had an amazing memory. Each track on each disc, he knew where to find them.

Chapter Twelve

 First thing in the morning I called Sailor. “So your mother was unhappy at the idea,” he said. He sounded gruff. “It’s usually the other way round. They’re begging me to take their wee bairns.”

“Well, it was rather sudden. The thing is, Sailor, I’d like my Mum to come up here, meet you, have a look at the set up. She’ll be happier about it then.”

“What about your father? He’ll get the point. I’d like to speak to your father.”

“He’s on a tour right now. Not back for six weeks, I think.”

“You can contact him.”

“I always do it through Mum. I’ll phone her now. Is there any bad time for her to visit?”

“No. Next two weeks are clear. We’re all here.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to you.”

Thirty seconds later, it took me twenty seconds to raise the nerve, my mother picked up the phone. “What is it?”

“Hi Mum, it’s me.”

“Oh you. I take it you’ve come to your senses.”

“Hey, don’t be like that. I’ve been trying to arrange for you to come up here. I want you to meet Sailor. You’d understand a bit better then. And when’s Dad back? Beginning of October, isn’t it?”

“I’m not wasting your father’s time on this. And if you think I’m coming up to Manchester, Manchester of all places, to meet some sweaty Jock-the-squash-coach, you’ve got another think coming. The sooner you come to your senses the better, Jolyon.”

Coming up to Manchester. Think coming, Jolyon. Come back to Brighton. Come to your senses. I liked to mentally dissect my mother’s words, Come come, Mum, I’m really not scum. Throw me a crumb, Mum. Don’t be so dumb.

“Your father will be just as adamant as I am. There’s no way we’ll countenance your stopping school.”

Oh eff! Eff off! Not good at all. And she always found a way of making me angry.

“It’d be different if it was tennis. If I was some great white hope at tennis. Then you’d be licking the LTA’s arse, and, and arranging for a private tutor or something.”

There was a brief pause while the neutrons built up in my mother’s plutonium brain. B-a-n-g! F-u-l-l n-u-c-l-e-a-r F-I-S-S-I-O-N! I winced as Chernobyl’s reactor number four blasted out of my mobile.

“I – won’t – be – spoken – to – like – that!”

Communications from the Ukraine abruptly ceased. The fallout would reach the farthest corners of Europe. My milk, a metaphor my English teacher would have liked, would be poisoned by iodine-131for[AW1]  the next ten years.

I called back immediately.

“Yes.”

Not just ‘Yes?’ It was a bunker busting ‘YES!’

“Look, Mum, I’m sorry. That was rude of me. It’s just I’ve made up my mind about the squash and I can’t get you to listen. I’m going to do this, you have to understand. No one can physically make me go to school. You can’t march me through the gates at Redbrook, not now I’ve done my GCSEs. There’s no law saying I have to do the sixth form. This is a real chance for me, can’t you see? A serious chance. And Sailor’s big time. He already coaches one world champion. Zoë Quantock. She was on Sports Personality of the Year before Christmas. And Sailor’s got such a strong squad here. It’s the base for England Squash, too. This isn’t some tin pot set up nobody’s heard about.”

Silence. Now the nuclear winter.

“Please. I’m sure if you came up here you’d understand better. I want you to meet Sailor, talk to him.”

“There’s no chance of that, Jolyon. This is crazy. There is absolutely no chance.”

“What, no chance about you coming up here, or no chance about me doing this?”

“Both. I’ve heard quite enough of this, this fantasy. I want you to come to your senses and get yourself back down here. Pronto. By next weekend at the latest.”

Again the phone went dead. It was half past eight. I was exhausted. I slumped on the bed. A moment later I was roused by a call from downstairs.

“Do you want some breakfast, Jolyon. It sounds as if you need some breakfast.”

It was Marion. Russell must have told her what was going on after he’d seen me last night. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to eat. My stomach was churning too much. Some tea and some company would be good, though, so I went downstairs. Dave wasn’t up yet but Russell came through from his study and the three of us sat down at the kitchen table.

“I take it your mother wasn’t receptive,” he said rather than asked.

“That’s right. She was blank unreceptive.”

“What about your father?” Marion asked.

“He’s at sea. Not back for six weeks.”

“Can’t you wait until then? From what you’ve said, you could work something out with your father. Even if your mother’s against it.”

“Not really. For one thing, Sailor’s said he wants an answer by now, today, this morning. And with Sailor, that’s not negotiable. He says I don’t have the time. I’ve got to commit or the offer goes.”

“That’s Sailor,” Russell said.

“Money’s going to be important,” Marion went on.

I’d thought a lot about money. “That will just about be okay. Sailor says he won’t charge me much to live with him. And he says that I’ll almost certainly get a lottery grant, assuming I do well in the tournaments this autumn. And the really good thing is, my grandfather’s set up a trust, which I get access to when I’m eighteen. My birthday’s March the tenth so that’s, what, eighteen, nineteen months away. It’s a lot of money, half a million quid, something like that. I’d always thought I’d just leave the trust alone for the time being. I didn’t think I’d need it, or maybe just something for university. It’s not as if my parents have been stingy.”

Marion whistled. “Phew, you’re a lucky boy. So you’ve got to get through the next year and a half. After that, it sounds like money won’t be an issue.”

“The next eighteen months should be all right if you get a lottery grant,” Russell said. “They’re not big at the bottom level, but your travel to tournaments, accommodation, stuff like that, that’s part of the deal, and you should be able to get by otherwise on pocket money really. You won’t have time to be out spending, and you should be too tired for anything else anyway. If you’re training properly, even girls, ho ho. I know Sailor well enough; it’s not going to be a picnic. I bet your mother doesn’t realise.”

“Go on then,” Marion said. “Make the call to Sailor. You’d be welcome to stay here going forward, but I can see Sailor’s offer makes more sense.” She glanced at Russell. “And if you needed some money in the short term, I’m sure we could help.”

I was embarrassed at the Kemball’s generosity. “That’s so kind. I’d pay you back. If it actually came to it. But I hope not.”

At that moment Dave wandered into the kitchen, in his shorts. “What’s this? Some big pow wow?”

“No, a social breakfast, which you’d have been welcome to join if you’d got up in time.”

Dave smiled. “He kept me up last night. It’s his fault.” Marion made the obvious point that it hadn’t stopped me from getting up.

That reminded me about my situation and I lurched internally. Talk about burning my boats. I wouldn’t have been up so soon without the need to call to my mother.

After breakfast I spoke to Sailor. “That’s good, son,” was all he said when I told him I wanted to take up his offer. Then I explained the problem with my mother. “I can understand. It’s no’ an easy call. Your father’s away? I tell ye what. Ye’ll have to go south to pick up stuff. I’ll drive you down. I’m sure I can square things with the Captain, but I ought to meet your mother too.”

Blimey. The rock going to meet the hard place. Twelve three-minute rounds, bare knuckle. It would be bound to end in a stoppage.

Two days later we set out on the trip. It was a long drive and we arrived in the late afternoon. The last couple of miles were in a dank south coast fog. The rest of the journey had been in brilliant sunshine, with every one of the thirty ambient degrees finding its way into Sailor’s old car. No air con. Air con, apparently, was for Sassenach pansies and pouffy Monaco playboys.

The fog was bad enough. The temperature descended further as soon as we went into the house. “I don’t have much time, Mr McCann,” was my mother’s friendly greeting. “And I want you to know straight away, I don’t approve of this. At all.”

I went away to make some tea, since my mother hadn’t offered, and returned with a large pot, some milk and some biscuits. There was an absence of small talk between Sailor and my mother. And large talk, indeed any sort of talk. They were sitting opposite each other on the hard sofas, both straight backed, gazing out of the French windows, an autistic blind date.

Sailor broke combat silence as I poured the tea. “I don’t always get the chance to meet the families of my players,” he said. “Overseas, Egypt, Pakistan. But I write to them. I understand the responsibilities I have. I make sure they’re properly looked after. No messing, no trouble. No polis. Ye can set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs Jacks. I can see you’re against this wi’ Jolyon. An’ I can see why. It’s hard to let go at the best o’ times. He’s just a young lad. But ask yourself this. When did the Captain first go away? When did he leave home? This isn’t any different. I know for a fact when he went because he told me. It was his seventeenth birthday. Same as me. Jolyon’s no’ seventeen, but he’s no’ far short.”

“You can save the speeches, Mr McCann. This is simple madness, no discussion. Jolyon has always been immature. He’s never made good choices. I’ve had to make them for him. I’ve looked into the whole business of school. There’s nothing I can do to prevent my son dropping out. Physically. But I’m sure Adam will be paying you a visit when he’s next on leave.”

She turned to me and I stared back. How could she be such a cow? I was angry and embarrassed and, I suppose, fearful.

“That’s if you’re not back here already,” she went on. “One thing I’m going to make absolutely clear, Jolyon. You’re not going to get a penny out of us. Not till you come to your senses. I’m not going to be party to your squandering your life with this hair-brained fantasy.

“Excuse my abruptness, Mr McCann.” Golly, she’d noticed. “There are times when plain speaking is necessary.”

Then she unleashed her bombshell. What had gone before was only small arms fire by comparison. Sailor and I had discussed money on the drive down. He was certain that I’d get a small lottery grant as soon as I was regularly reaching the later stages of the big junior tournaments, enough to cover tournament expenses. And I’d told him about my grandfather’s trust.

“And one other thing, Jolyon,” my mother said in her best House of Lords voice. “I’ve already spoken to your grandfather. He’s in complete agreement. He’s going to amend the terms of your trust. The fund now will be controlled by Adam and me on his death, if he lasts till you’re over eighteen. It’ll be managed at our discretion from then on. And believe you me, you won’t see a penny of it, not one penny, until your attitude changes and you’ve demonstrated that you’re going to grow up.”

I felt a surge of anger, no, more than that, fury, rage, all of them. It wasn’t so much the threat of my losing the legacy, or at least not having access to it for the next however many years, although that was fundamental in terms of the plans I’d made. It was the way my mother said it, and her sheer meanness. She liked to control everything, including her father. Control. I was powerless.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a lovely old man. He was now in his nineties, long widowed, living quietly not so far away from us in a sheltered home. He was still active, and still ‘had a long way to go’ as he put it. Grandpa had always taken an interest in what I was up to. When I was small he’d been a big factor, a regular factor, in my life. More than my father. He’d talk about things, take me on outings, and, I realised now, he’d give me a break from my mother. He’d made a reasonably sized fortune with an engineering business after the Second World War, and sold the business while he had time to enjoy the proceeds. He and my grandmother had had two daughters. My mother was the older one. Her sister had never married so I was his only grandchild.

Grandpa had first told me about the trust on my twelfth birthday, how he wanted me to use it sensibly, and with a wistful smile, how he’d come back to haunt me if I squandered it. Eighteen sounded a million years away then, and I hadn’t thought much about the money until Sailor had made his squash proposal. Then the forthcoming bequest had loomed as a lifeline, even though I knew there would be the possibility of lottery grants in squash if I did well. I’d guessed that my mother wouldn’t approve of my dropping out of school, and whatever the reason, she was the one who made the financial decisions in our family. My father just wanted to do his Navy thing, for as long as it allowed him to go to sea. I was coming round to the view that this was the preferred alternative to being on land with my mother. It would be the sea for me too, preferably deep down, or eighteen months at a time on an Antarctic research station, if I’d been married to her. My father was a far less present factor in my day-to-day life than I imagined most fathers were.

“You can stuff the legacy, Mum. You want to place as many obstacles in front of me as you can. Well thank you very much. One more isn’t going to make much difference.”

My mother stood up. “I will not be spoken to like that. Excuse me, Mr McCann.” She glared at me. “You can leave the house, Jolyon. Come back when you want to talk sensibly. And civilly. After a proper apology. I hope that one day you’ll see how dismal this whole, this whole tawdry episode has been.”

“Come on, Sailor,” I said. “There’s some stuff I need to pick up.” I turned to my mother, who was standing implacably, arms folded, radiating, I don’t know, radiating indignation and righteousness and cast iron certainty.

“Is it okay for me to go to my room, mother?”

“That’s enough, Jolyon,” Sailor said. “Don’t be silly.”

He grabbed me by the shoulder and with an ‘Excuse us, Mrs Jacks’ marched me out of the room.

“Where now?”

“Upstairs, first on the left.”

In my room, with a stern-faced Sailor looking on, I could hardly control myself. I prowled around, fists clenched. “How could she be like that?” I took a punch at a wardrobe and my fist went straight through the veneer. “Oh fuck, I’ve cut myself.”

“Get a grip on yourself, son. This isn’t helping. You’ll no’ get your mother or me or anyone else to treat you as an adult if you continue to behave like a child. It’s time to grow up. Now.” I stopped and licked the blood off the gouge in the back of my hand.

“Let’s see, what do you need from here?”

It was his air of authority that did it. I realised I was being a pillock. I managed to exit the angry loop and collect my thoughts. “Okay, there’s some clothes. My squash kit’s all at the Kemballs already. This vinyl and my decks, and the amp and the mixer.”

“You pack up your clothes and I’ll begin taking stuff out to the car.” He made the mistake of starting on the vinyl. “Lord save me, this weighs a ton.”

Sailor staggered out with two cases of vinyl and I pulled an old kitbag down from the top of the damaged wardrobe. I worried for a moment about my mother’s reaction to the now fenestrated door. Then I thought ‘sod you’. I started chucking stuff into the bag. I looked around. What else? Not the trophies all over the mantelpiece and the window sill. It would be a laugh to move them to my mother’s bedroom. She was the one they were important to. Not the posters. Not the books. Except the dictionary; I liked having a dictionary. Certainly not the revision texts. Goodbye to all that.

Sailor came back and I started to disconnect my mixing kit. Good point: remember to take the pliers and the screwdrivers. And my Swiss Army knife. My grandfather had given me that, to my mother’s audible disapproval, on my tenth birthday.

Sailor looked around the room. “I hope you’re planning to leave some of this behind?”

“Don’t worry, I’m almost done. Most of this is history.”

Then another ‘Lord save me’. He was looking at the admittedly impressive straps of copper cabling for my amp and speakers. “Is this thing connected to the National Grid?”

“Don’t worry,” I semi lied. “It’s not for the power; it’s the quality of the audio.”

“Well there’ll be no quality audio thumping out in my house.”

“It’s okay, I can use headphones.”

It took two more trips to the car to transfer the small proportion of my worldly possessions that I wanted with me. I couldn’t bring myself to confront my mother again to say goodbye, but Sailor called out as we left, “We’re off, Mrs Jacks. I’ll call when your husband’s home.”

Don’t bother to see us out, I muttered to myself. I couldn’t believe that my mother had been so rude in front of a stranger. She had potential in that direction, and her support for me at junior tennis tournaments could have been dismissed as simply combative, but I’d never witnessed anything like her performance this afternoon.

Sailor efficiently navigated us back onto the M23, pointing north. Our plan originally had been to stay in Sussex overnight, me at home and him with friends in Brighton, but both of us felt deflated. His suggestion that we cut our losses and head straight back to Manchester seemed a good one, even if it meant a lot more miles that evening.

After half an hour’s silence I started to apologise, but Sailor cut me short. “Don’t worry about it, son. I’m never surprised any more, not by human nature. She’s one powerful woman. I’ve seen her type. Mothers and fathers, it can be either. They have to have control. Did ye hear about Marcel Darnaud the other day?”

I was amazed that Sailor had reached this certainly accurate conclusion about my mother after what, only five minutes in her presence. “That’s right,” I said. “I’d never really worked it out before. She wants to dictate how every little detail goes down.”

“I’ve seen lots of them like that. In sport. They live out their ambitions through their kids. They try to clear the path for them. Watch out anyone who’s in the way. Marcel’s the father of a good young French player, Armand Darnaud. Plenty of ability there. The boy’s been playing since he was a bairn. His father disgraced himself last week with the marker at a junior tournament.”

“Sounds like my mother.”

“Ay. With those ones, often as not it’s me in the way. I’ll no’ be having big egos around my kids, any of them.”

He glanced in the rear view mirror. We can’t have been doing more than sixty miles an hour and traffic was flowing past. “Tell me, son, what do you think’s the most important attribute in a top squash player?”

I didn’t reply for a moment. “Go on,” he insisted, “gimme an answer.”

I thought a bit more. “It’s so hard physically. It must be fitness, so you can keep on at a high pace. You don’t have to have Ahmed’s level of skill.”

“No,” he said. “It’s no’ physical at all. It’s summat you can’t see, can’t measure. It’s a little worm somewhere in the player’s head. Something that drives them. Point is, no parent’s going to put that in their darling bairn’s brain. Sure they push. They bully them into training, for a while. They make them run, do sit ups. Enter them in tournaments. But they can’t instil the soul. The soul of competition. It comes from inside. You’ve got that worm, son. Mebbe I can understand your set up now. Well some of it. Your father, your mother. And she’s pushed you. And now your pushing back. Harder.

“She’d probably make a fine naval captain,” he said with a grimace. “I’m no’ surprised your pa likes to be away. There’s no room for two captains on one ship.”

“It feels strange,” I said. “Like I’m cut off. I was so angry. Now it’s just empty. And scary.”

“Ay, I can see that. Just hang on to what I said on Friday. It’ll no’ be easy, but let the little worm grow. It’s a big decision ye’ve made, ’specially with no support from home. Let the worm grow, son. Concentrate on getting experience. That’s what you lack. You’ve everything else. The physical stuff? Ye’ll take that in your stride.”

“I’m worried about money, Sailor. I thought I’d be okay.”

“It’ll no’ be easy, but it’s doable. I’ve had two lads with jack shit, lads who made it. Alan Lindwall, you know how he did. Top twenty for three, mebbe four, years. Before his injury. And Krishnan Singh, a right scally. Krishnan made it with nothing from his folks. And I mean nothing, not a rupee. Darned maharajahs, too. When I first saw Krishnan he was playing with a wooden racquet.”

He wiped his hand over his mouth. “It’s doable, son. And it’s down to you.”

We stopped a couple of times on the way back, for food, petrol and to let Sailor stretch his legs. I called the Kemballs and told them about our quick turn around. Some time after midnight I quietly let myself in with the key they’d given me. I’d agreed with Sailor to move over to his place the next day, provided I could get a lift with my stuff.

It was a long time before I went to sleep.

The transfer to Sailor’s house turned out to be easy. I hadn’t much in the way of personal possessions at the Kemballs, so packing didn’t take long. Russell was working from home again and drove me over after the morning traffic had died down. Sailor lived in a quiet road about ten minutes away from the Man City sports complex. It was an ordinary semi, with three bedrooms and a small garden at the back. He’d stayed home to let me in. Once Russell was on his way he showed me round.

I was to be given the third bedroom. It wasn’t large, about a third the size of my room at home, but the bed seemed okay. The room had the basics, a wardrobe, a bedside light and a small desk. Sailor had dumped the stuff we’d picked up at home on the floor. ‘It gave me a hernia, son.’ Sailor’s wife apparently worked, so I’d meet her that evening.

“Now, listen to me, here’s the rules. My wife is no’ a housekeeper.”

“What’s her name?” Sailor had never spoken about his wife.

“Mary. She works full time. Long hours. I do the housekeeping. So listen carefully. Housekeeping I don’t like. So that gives us rule number one. With you here there’ll be no extra housekeeping for me. None. You do your own. You make a mess? Ye clear it up. You’ve dirty laundry? Machine’s in the kitchen. Kit? Ye wash it yourself. That’s rule number two. No festering kit. Ye change your bed every two weeks. I’ll no’ have your room turning into a pit. Food. Ye’ll eat with us. Breakfast, six thirty.”

“Come on! There’s no way I can eat breakfast at six thirty.”

Sailor gave me a look and repeated in an identical tone, “Breakfast at six thirty. Sharp. And our evening meal’s at seven. Ye’ll give us fifty pounds a month, for the food, that’s rule number three. And rule number four, ye keep your bedroom tidy.”

“God. I made up my mind years ago not to go into submarines. My dad showed me round one once. There was no space and it was all so tidy. Not to mention the discipline. Now I find myself in the Manchester equivalent of a submarine.”

It might have been a faint smile crossing Sailor’s face: “Rule number five, son, no insolence.”

“All right, Sailor, not much insolence.”

“No insolence.” The smile had gone.

“One problem,” I continued, “big time, and I should have talked about this while we were driving back. I don’t have any money with me at all. You know the situation. I’d ask my mother but I can’t imagine she’ll give me anything now.”

“No, I can see that. I’ve thought about that, and I’ve a proposal. Ye’ll have to get a job, obviously. Can you swim?”

“Yes, I’m okay at swimming. I used to swim for the club until I was nine or ten. Before my mother decided winning Wimbledon was the only thing for me.”

“Good. I know the people at Fallowfield Pool. Hartford Road.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s no’ far. Lifeguarding. Ye can do that as and when. It’s no’ exciting, but it’ll keep ye out of mischief and give you some pocket money.”

“That sounds okay, I suppose. Will I get to rescue any drowning teenage girls?”

This time it was a stern look. “That’s another thing. No girls here overnight. Ye do that and you’re out. Understand? Back home, finished. End of story.”

It clearly wasn’t the time to ask whether overnight boys would be all right.

“Understand?”

“Yes, Sailor, I understand.” I was already starting to wonder about my social life, but breakfast at six thirty wouldn’t be compatible with overnight guests anyway.

“Is it six thirty breakfast at weekends, too?”

“Ay, six thirty sharp. Training doesn’t stop at weekends.”

We were interrupted by a call on my mobile. The screen carried the single word, ‘Home’. My mother, uunghhh.

“Hello, Mum.”

“Now listen to me, Jolyon, pay attention. I’ve been to see your grandfather this morning.” Blimey, she hadn’t wasted any time. “He wants to see you.”

“What for? It’s hundreds of miles from Manchester and I’ve only just come back. In case you’d forgotten.”

“He can’t believe what you’re doing.” I held the phone away from my ear. “Neither can I, by the way. But he wants to hear about it. Directly from you. In person. He wants to talk about what you’re doing. He thinks he can change your mind or something. I tried to tell him he’s wasting his time on you, we all are, that’s obvious, but he’s insistent. Don’t get any silly ideas about the trust conditions. That was decided when I spoke to him the other day. His lawyer is dealing with that at the moment. Today. But before he authorises the changes to your trust, he wants to talk to you.”

Sailor could clearly hear what my mother was saying. They could probably hear out in the street. “Next weekend,” he mouthed. “Do it next weekend. Ye can take the coach.”

Chapter Thirteen

So I arranged to travel down to the South coast the following Friday. What a fun journey that would be. Hours of boredom on the M6 and M1, Victoria Coach Station in London and then further hours into Sussex. At least I could actually talk to my grandfather, and tell him myself what I was doing. Explain it to him properly. I didn’t have any illusions about getting him to change his mind about the trust fund. Not after my mother had tenderised his attitudes with her steak mallet approach. But I did want to try to make him understand, to lighten the picture my mother would have painted. He of all people would understand.

Sailor suggested I wait to sort out my room till that evening, and we headed off to the EIS. Most of the group were already there, in the middle of some on-court routines. On the way to the changing rooms Sailor said, “I’m going to do some planning for ye this morning. We’ll go through it at lunchtime, right.”

Lunchtime came, and with it the plans. Sailor had taken over a quiet table at the side of the canteen area. He waved the others away. I’d had a quick shower and brought the tray with our sandwiches, three for me and one for him, and the same ratio of isotonic drink. I’d worked hard to catch up through the morning and was thirstier than I should have been. Sailor put his half moon glasses on and extracted an A4 pad from his battered brief case.

“Right, son, how old are ye now, sixteen?”

“That’s right.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“March the tenth.”

He looked down and made a note on his pad. “Excellent.”

“Why excellent?”

“It means ye’ve three British Junior Opens, one at under seventeen, two at under nineteen. The Juniors are played at the start of January so a March birthday’s good. That helps me with what we’ll do through the autumn. Focus on the under seventeen. Ye should win that, I’m telling you now. We need to build your reputation. If you were Dave, for instance, with lots of experience we might even skip the under seventeen this year and go direct into the under nineteen. But ye could lose early in that. I want ye to win the under seventeen.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Yes,” he said. “Without dropping a game.”

“What?”

“That’s your first target, without dropping a game. That’s the first opportunity to show ye’ve something different.

“And that’s the plan. When you start on the professional tour, in the Challenger tournaments, I want people to know about you. You won’t win much, at first, but I want people scared at the way ye go about it. Scared about what they have to do to beat you. If you’re going to be as successful as you can be in this sport, it’ll be because you beat people before you go on court. The top two inches, that’s where you’ve got to beat them. In their minds.”

“That’s a long way off, Sailor. I know I can get a lot fitter, from what I’ve done here already. But I’ve hardly played anyone.”

“Can it, son, can it. Ye’ve got to believe it now.” He raised his voice. “Now.

“See, I know what ye can do.

“You’ve seen what you can do. Mentally.

“You were the same person last week when you beat Dave, same body, same player that had always lost to Dave. But not in the top two inches, that’s where you changed.

“Mentally ye were different.

“And see what happened. You wiped him. It’s no good now slipping back into the old Jolyon Jacks: talented lad, used to be a tennis player, good runner, little bit o’ this, little bit o’ that. What you are son, is the winningest squash player on the planet. Winningest ever. Well potentially. Stuff Geoff Hunt. Stuff Jonah Barrington. Stuff Zaman, Shabana,” he counted on his fingers as he ran through the names, “Peter Nicol, Jansher, Jahangir, Jonathan Power, Lincou, Ramy Ashour, all the others, Nick Matthew. It doesn’t matter who.”

Sailor was staring at me now, his voice rising. He took a breath. “Everything ye do from now on, mentally you’re the best. Every training session. Every practice game. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“Believe it. You believe it, son.

“Now, something else.” In a more business-like way Sailor rummaged in his briefcase and came out with a plastic A4 binder. “Ye need to be fully aware, and I mean fully, about drugs. Here’s the background, the whole story and it includes the current list of banned substances.” He handed me the binder, which had ‘UK Sport. Background to Dope Control’ on the cover. It was surprisingly thick, maybe twenty pages. Someone took this seriously.

“Keep this. Ye’ll need to read it, cover to cover. First things first, are you asthmatic?”

“Me? No.” Several of my friends back home had inhalers, even a couple of the runners, but not me.

“That’s good. And no’ epileptic?”

“No.”

“So ye’re no’ taking any regular medication?”

“No.” Not since I stopped doing draw at raves back home, I omitted to add. Hardly medication, I suppose.

“Good. Asthma’s the one that can get you. And cold remedies. And food supplements. Asthma, some of the medications are on the banned list but ye can get a so called Therapeutic Use Exemption. You get a note from your doctor. Cold remedies? Don’t take ’em. Full stop.” He glared at me. “If you’re poorly with a cold, come and see me. Do you hear me?”

He stayed fierce. “And food supplements.”

“Banned?”

“Not quite. There’s just one we consider. The protein drink you’ve had. That’s okay because I say so. People get into all sorts of bother with food supplements. Standard excuse for anyone caught taking steroids.” He mimicked a whinging voice, “‘I didna know it was in there. I’d never take a drug’. You know what I think of that. No matter what anyone says, ye don’t take food supplements. Understand?”

I nodded. “Could we get tested here?”

“Unlikely here out of season. But at a tournament, yes. World championships, always. WADA rules, that’s the World Anti-Doping Agency. All sports associations are affiliated. WSF, World Squash Federation, that’s us. Junior championships included.”

“So there could be testing at any tournament I’m in?”

“Sure, could be. And you’ll be in the World Juniors soon enough. Testing in this country’s covered by UK Sport. They operate through the UK Anti-Doping organisation, UKAD.”

“At last I’ll be able to win at Scrabble.”

There was a pause. “Son, ye don’t seem to understand, this is one subject where there are no jokes. D’ye get me, no jokes?” He tasered me, a twin high voltage beam from hostile blue eyes.

“Do... you... get... me? No jokes.”

I nodded again.

“So the answer to your question is yes, you could be tested, at any tournament. Not often in the juniors, but it happens. But it’s no’ a worry, is it, son? Because you’re no’ taking anything. Ever? Are ye? In our world, dope is a dirty word. D-o-p-e, four letters. In my squad, dope equals out, final, no excuses, no explanations. I will not be disgraced by anyone in my squad.

“Understand?”

Another nod. Apart from the draw, I’d tried E a few times, and once, what a mistake, I’d snorted some ketamine. Sailor’s rules would save money on the E and the draw, and in the case of K, save serious embarrassment. With the ketamine someone had caught me on their mobile, staggering around, gurning like a retard.

Most of all I understood that if I got done for dope I’d have to deal with Sailor. Gamma ray burst in Manchester, cosmic catastrophe leaves nothing but a smoking hole. No survivors.

I was glad to meet Sailor’s wife when we got back to his place that evening. What a contrast. For a start, she was Irish, with a soft, lilting voice a long way removed from her husband’s. Unlike Sailor, she projected a proper education. I asked her what she did and she explained that she was an actuary, working at the head office of a building society in Manchester. That would explain the smartly cut suit she changed out of after Sailor had introduced us. The jeans she came back in probably cost as much as my entire wardrobe, but not as much as the shoes she’d left upstairs in exchange for a smart canvas pair. I knew about shoes. They were one of my mother’s obsessions.

Sailor had cooked the evening meal, and true to his word it was ready at seven o’clock prompt. It was some sort of chicken stew containing chickpeas and potatoes and something hot.

“Harissa paste, son, a grand ingredient. I’ll rub it into your eyeballs if you slack at training.”

Just my eyeballs? Instead I said, “That’s harassment.”

“No lad, it’s encouragement.”

We had sat down in the McCann’s dining room, with a proper table cloth and linen napkins. I’d risked a, ‘What are these small sheets for?’ and Sailor had replied with a ‘Remember Rule Number Five, son, no insolence’.

I soon came to realise that Mary McCann was closer in character to Sailor than first impressions suggested. She coolly described having to fire an individual that week for poor performance, and made it sound exactly like Sailor’s ejection of a Spanish guy from his squad earlier in the summer. She talked about work stuff that was way over my head, but not, apparently, Sailor’s. I started to see him in a different light.

“What are your ambitions, Jolyon?” Mary asked while Sailor was out making coffee.

I thought for a moment, looking down and noticing with relief that I hadn’t spilt anything on the tablecloth. Hmm, what were my ambitions? I looked back at Mary and she was staring at me.

“I’m going to be world squash champion.”

“Yes. Sailor said so.” Her eyes looked right inside me. “He gets these things right. Don’t let him down.” There was every bit as much steel in her delicate Irish as there was in Sailor’s harsh Glaswegian.

The only distraction from the routines and the training leading up to Friday was a trip to Fallowfield Pool to meet the manager, Jim Braddock. Jim was a decent fellow who talked me through the NPLQ certification that would qualify me as a lifeguard. I’d have to do a one week course and pass every one of the sections of the assessment. After this and some supervision at the centre, I’d apparently be licensed to fish drowning individuals, of all shapes and sizes, not just the ones I’d chosen, from the pool. Then there’d be the mouth to mouth resuscitation. Looking around at the Pension Club members cruising up and down the pool, at speeds that might have been just detectable with time lapse photography, I hoped again that any drowners would be female, sixteen years old and shaped like Samantha, not sixty six and shaped like a discarded sofa. I didn’t mention this to Jim, but signed up for the next NPQL course, which conveniently was only couple of weeks away.

Friday came. I took an early bus into the centre of Manchester to catch the London coach. It only added three or four miles, and a single hour, to the journey. What was another hour? Then it was motorway boredom, relieved to some extent by the mixes in my iPod, recordings Dave and I had made as demos.

I didn’t reach Brighton until six o’clock that evening, and spent virtually all my remaining cash on the taxi home. I’d called my mother, admittedly pessimistically, and asked her to meet me. “What do you mean? I’m your mother, Jolyon, not your chauffeur.”

The plan was, my mother explained, to visit my grandfather in the morning after breakfast. I’d hoped we could do it that evening so that I start the return journey in good time.

“No, that doesn’t suit me,” my mother said. “I have a do over in Lewes.” Well do your flipping do.

So I called up Samantha. “Hi, it’s me.”

“I know it’s you. You still come up on my phone because I’ve not got round to deleting your number. Can’t think why. Why haven’t you called? And where are you now, anyway?”

This wasn’t going well. In fact it was a good question, why I hadn’t called. The true answer was that I’d been wrapped up in all the squash stuff. When I’d been thinking of the opposite sex it was invariably of Zoë.

“I’ve been wanting to call but I wanted to wait till I was back down. I’m at home now. Any chance you could come round? My mother’s out.”

“That’s just like you. You don’t do Facebook, don’t call for weeks, and when you do it’s no warning and you’re down here and all you’re after is a fuck.”

“Hey, that’s not true, Sam.” Hmm, it was somewhat true. “It’s so inconvenient, me being in Manchester, but I really want to see you.”

With an empty evening stretching in front of me the idea of seeing Samantha in the flesh, even seeing Samantha’s actual flesh if I could persuade her to expose it, was hugely appealing.

“I want to hear how the new term’s started,” spot the lie, “and what else you’ve been up to.” Another lie. “Come on, Sam. You can show me your new car.” True, even if a means to an end.

Samantha had turned seventeen in August and after a blitz of driving lessons had passed her test first time, just before the new term started. Affluent divorced Mummy had come up with a new car for her. I was relieved that I had managed to respond in kind to her text that carried this good news, but regretted now that I hadn’t called back straight away to congratulate her. That might have simplified the current conversation and even paved the way to one of our tsunami shags.

“Look, maybe we can sort out a trip for you up to Manchester. At half term or something.” Not to stay at the McCanns obviously. Perhaps, I thought, she could stay at the Kemballs. “It’s a great scene up there and I’ll be playing some sets pretty soon.” If I could get away. And if I wasn’t too knackered by the training.

“I bet you’ve got a girlfriend up there. Already.”

“That’s rubbish, I haven’t at all.” This time sadly true. I was a million miles from being able to call the only candidate my girlfriend.

“Come on, Sam, I’d love to see you.” Another truth. But, I realised with momentary guilt, not on your terms.

“Oh, all right, but I can’t stay long.”

Yesss!

There was a knock on the door inside ten minutes. I’d always fancied Sam and she looked good as she proudly showed me round her car in the twilight. She took me for a drive up and down the lane, but the thing I noticed most was the way the seat belt bisected her boobs and emphasised them in her skimpy tee shirt.

Back in the house we uncomfortably circled each other in my rather empty bedroom.

“When am I going to see you properly?” Sam demanded.

“Well, we’re seeing each other now. And like I said, you can come up to Manchester at half term.”

“When are you coming down here again?”

“I’m sure I will for tournaments. And possibly to see my granddad.”

“What about me?”

“We could see each other in Manchester.”

“Why not here? Why can’t you come down at weekends?”

“I can’t drive, for one thing. It’s a real mission by coach.” And the truth is, I wouldn’t want to interrupt my training. I moved closer to her, wanting to line up for a snog, but she stepped back.

“You mean the squash is more important than me?”

“Oh come on, Sam. Of course it isn’t.”

“If it wasn’t you’d come and see me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s not fair that you’ve gone away and don’t make any effort to see me, even to contact me.”

“I’ve come to see you now. I’m here aren’t I?” I sat down on the bed, in the hope she’d join me.

No such luck. She leant against the wall on the other side of the room, arms folded. “You’d have called if you’d been coming to see me. You’re here for something else.”

“I do have to see my granddad.”

“You see, it’s not me at all, is it?”

“We’re going round in circles, Sam. Why don’t you come here and give me a hug?”

“Don’t you mean a fuck?”

“Well yes, I really fancy you, you know that. I haven’t noticed you not wanting to do it before.”

“That was when I thought we were friends.”

“We are.”

“Not in my book. I’ve got to go, anyway.”

“Oh Sam!”

“It’s no good ‘Oh Sam-ing’ me.” She headed out of the door. “It’s good bye. Don’t bother to call.”

I caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs and grabbed her arm. There were tears running down her face. “Don’t bother,” she said and tried to pull away. I resisted then let her go and she ran out of the front door, slamming it behind her. I heard the car start and drive away with the engine revving hard.

Another link with my Sussex life gone.