by Neil Dominik
Sometimes life comes along and kicks you repeatedly in the teeth, but then relents and, quite unexpectedly, a great huge silver lining beams out of the cumulonimbus.
This is just what happened to me...
It had been a bad couple of weeks; Denise had finally ditched me for being too boring, although she claimed that her intolerance and short attention span was her problem, not mine, to try to make me feel better. It didn't, and when I had a prang on the way to work and the roof began leaking into the spare bedroom, in the next couple of days I felt that life was dealing me a particularly shitty hand. This was a bit self-pitying, I admit, since I did still have a job, a car and a house; however, when the features editor called me into his office I wondered whether those were also soon to be taken away.
But Rex was smiling.
"Do you know much about tennis?" he asked.
This was an unexpected cross-court volley which left me flat-footed.
"Um ... I play a bit," I admitted. "Why?"
"Thought so, your CV said you were sporty. Thing is, we've got an interview arranged with Wynette Monsoon, she's playing an exhibition match and Des has gone down with the flu and Robbo's covering the Man U fixture in Russia, so we're a bit stuck for sports coverage. Do you think you could step in?"
As a junior reporter it was normally my job to follow up on any lost cats and to lurk around the magistrates' court trying to pick up on any mildly interesting civic misdemeanours, so to bag an interview with a British Wimbledon ladies quarter-finalist - albeit a losing one, of course - was quite a coup.
"Sure Rex, when is it scheduled?"
"Eleven-fifteen tomorrow, Mercure hotel small conference suite. Her Rottweiler might be there, so make sure you're polite."
The Rottweiler was a reference to Gus, a Balkan-American who'd long since given up trying to win a major championship himself and was aiming for the reflected glory of coaching one. And Wynette was our Great White Hope of bagging a Wimbledon title for an English player, although she was barely eighteen.
"Always am, Rex," I assured him. "Especially when interviewing young ladies!"
I did some internet research on Wynette in the evening, and discovered that her father was a prominent businessman from Ghana, and had sent Wynette back to his home country for schooling prior to her returning and soaring up through the tennis rankings in less than two years. That would provide a springboard for the human interest angle rather than discussing tournaments and tennis shots, I thought, and wrote out a few open-ended questions for the following day.
As it happened, Gus was nowhere to be seen, so at the appointed time I rather self-consciously sat myself opposite Wynette in a room which would have fitted thirty people. Now I had to establish a relationship which would make it conducive to eliciting interesting information; I willed myself to look neither at her breasts nor her shiny black legs, set the recorder whirring and smiled.
"So, Miss Monsoon, what do you consider to be the chief factor which has enabled you to become the leading British female player for at least a generation?" I said, reading from my notes. Shit, that was so wordy and sycophantic!
But she smiled in return, shifted in her seat, stared me straight in the eye and replied.
"Lots of good hidings!"
Unfazed, I carried on:
"So it's essential for a young player to face and overcome the inevitable bitterness of defeat early in her career?"
This time she frowned.
"Who the hell said anything about defeat? I HATE losing! No, I mean getting a sound ass-whupping!"
I pressed the 'Pause' button.
"Err ... you mean, like, having your real ass spanked with, like, whatever?"
"Sure do," she said nonchalantly. "Listen, you know my dad sent me off to boarding school in Ghana?"
"Yep!"
"Well, then, it ain't Cheltenham Ladies College out there! You talk in class, teacher hauls you out to the front and you're over his desk for the slipper. Don't do your work, or get in a fight, and you're touching your toes in the head's office, and this time it's the cane! Just like fifty years ago!" Suddenly, all the questions about tournaments and tennis shots seemed to have become a bit irrelevant.
"Can I switch this back on again?" I asked. "And ... talk some more about your schooling and why you were educated abroad?"
"Obvious, innit?" she said. "African parents believe in discipline; if you can set up a half-decent school in Accra, you'll get great results 'cos parents will demand it, and if the kids go to bed with a sore ass every night nobody will be calling Social Services!"
"But that's in the past, how do you motivate yourself now?" I asked.
"Same in the tennis world - play badly, don't practice and it's a thrashing with the plimsoll from Gus ... don't look so surprised, how the hell are we meant to compete with the Russians and the Chinese if we just sit on our sweet soft ass and have everybody tell us how wonderful we are?"
I sat with my mouth agape, the recorder now whirring empty sound. Then...
"Hey, talking of practice, I need to get some done today ... say, do you play at all, I don't have a partner up here and Gus is outa town?" she asked.
"Um, a bit," I said. "We've got a couple of courts down at my sports club, if you want a knock-about."
"Great," she said, "I'll just grab us some gear, see you at the front in five minutes."
I realised that I'd gained an extremely short interview, but on the plus side I was actually going to get a game with a top professional, albeit a girl; my journalist instinct told me this was working up to be a pretty good story, especially if I could use all the smack-bottom stuff.
I drove us to the club; the season hadn't started yet and it was a bit chilly, so there was no difficulty getting a free court. Wynette went into the changing rooms and donned her gear, which was skimpy and showed even more leg than her interview dress; fortunately I always kept some spare kit in my locker.
Back on court, Wynette delved into her sports bag, gave me a spare racket, uncorked a tube of virgin balls and bounced them a few times, then ferreted in her sports bag once more and emerged holding a rather battered plimsoll.
"This is what Gus calls Mister Motivator," she said. "Tell you what, for every point you score you can give me a whack over the net at the end of each game. Deal?"
I nodded, dumbfounded once more.
Wynette served, and delivered the ball into the far corner where I stood no chance. I instinctively moved slightly to the right, and the next ball came fizzing towards my belly, giving me no opportunity to use my backhand. The third serve I reached, but could only catch the ball with the edge of my racket - 40-love already! The game point was won when I finally returned the ball cleanly but weakly, and Wynette smashed it gleefully way out of reach. She came dancing down to change ends, with a mocking smile.
I double-faulted my first serve in over-eagerness, then compensated with a poor serve which she returned into the corner of the court. Then followed two reasonable rallies, but she gradually had me running to and fro along the baseline until I inevitably lost both points. Two games down and Wynette's bouncy ass still quite unscathed.
For Wynette's next set of serves I stood much nearer to the centre line; this made her serve wide, which worked for her the first time but then her next serve was out, and she was forced to play safe to avoid a double fault. I hit the return fairly well then charged the net; startled, Wynette tried a lob but it hit the side netting. Rattled, she tried the same tactic herself and charged the net but I had enough time to play down the line and saw it land safely. 30-15 to me! Seeing her butt suddenly at risk no doubt concentrated her mind, and she gained the game with safe percentage play, but this time she shrugged and meekly bent over the net. Oh joy! I griped the plimsoll by the heel and brought it down sharply, once on each side of a pair of fetching white frilly panties. Wynette winced and rubbed slightly, but grinned as she went to await my next serve.
The vision of fresh white panties above strong black thighs, submissively taut to await punishment for sporting failure, had been a singularly arousing one, so much so that I played out of my skin, diving and grazing my knees to retrieve lost causes and, with luck and some degree of judgment, won the fourth game.
"Four more of the best for you, dear, and an extra game to play!" I crowed.
"Huh - I can't believe how lucky you were that time, don't call me dear and get on with it!" she growled, bending over the net once again.
I slippered each side twice, slightly harder than before, and Wynette yelped as the plimsoll bit.
"Had enough practice?" I asked.
"The heck I have, let's play the set out as planned!" she said, returning to her spot.
"What the hell's going on here?" boomed an angry voice. "You're supposed to be going for an interview. I ask at the hotel and they say you'd gone out for the day with some boyfriend you 'forgot' to tell me about!"
"Oh, sorry, Gus," said Wynette. "This is Peter, he's not my boyfriend, he's a journalist and we're just having a knock-about, we've done the interview already."
"The hell he is," replied Gus. "I just saw him win a game; you're supposed to be able to beat any guy outside of the top two hundred!" His eyes narrowed as he surveyed me. "I can't place you, son, what's your world ranking?"
"I'm not in the rankings; I'm an amateur like Wynette says. I did play for Cheshire boys and I sometimes win the club tournament here, but they said my serve was too weak to turn professional," I said. "So I went to work for the newspapers."
"You bas ... rotter!" yelled Wynette. "You never said you were any good!"
"You didn't ask just how good I was," I shrugged. I had suddenly found spanking to also be a great motivator at the safe end of the slipper!
Suddenly, Gus's craggy face was lit by a rare smile, but it was an evil one. He turned to me.
"Oh! Well, as the lady said, let's play the set out. Mustn't disappoint her, eh? And I expect you to play to your potential; I'll know if you don't and just might drop a line to your editor about this unorthodox interview technique."
Gus reached out his hand for the slipper.
"And I'll get to use that, you just concentrate on your tennis. As you say, your serve isn't strong enough!"
Wynette finally won the set 6-2, but not before she'd dropped several points and Gus had walloped her hard at the end of every game. After the final game she shook my hand briefly, eyes brimming with tears, and then dashed off for the sanctuary of the changing room.
"Don't feel so hard about it, young feller," said Gus, laying a meaty hand on my shoulder. "I think she's got the hots for you; she wouldn't have pulled that stunt with just anybody, you know!"
Then he suddenly turned pensive.
"Say, could you take time out to accompany us on the UK tour? She needs a regular partner who'll stretch her a bit. And I'm usually a pretty good judge of character, I reckon you'll keep her in line, and keep anyone else out of her pants. What d'ya say, son?"
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