'You got telescopes, Professor? You so fucking high up, you need oxygen!'
Again he repeats the joke in Russian, but again the standing group behind him seems to be waiting rather than listening. Is his breathlessness new since Antigua? Or new for today? Is it a heart thing? Or a vodka thing?
'We gotta goddam hospitality box, hear me? Corporation shit. Young guys I work with from Moscow. Armani kids. Got pretty girls. Look at them!'
A pair of the girls do indeed catch Gail's eye: leather jackets, pencil skirts and ankle boots. Pretty wives? Or pretty hookers. If so, top of the range. And the Armani kids a hostile blur of blue-black suits and sodden stares.
'Thirty number-one seats, food you die for,' Dima is bellowing. 'You wanna do that, Gail? Come join us? Watch the game like a lady? Drink champagne? We got spare. Hey, come on, Professor. Why the fuck not?'
Because Hector told him to be hard to get, is why the fuck not. Because the harder he is to get, the harder you'll have to work to get him, and me with him, and the greater will be our credibility with your guests from Moscow. Pushed into a corner, Perry is making a good job of being Perry: frowning, doing his diffident and awkward bit. For a rank beginner in the arts of dissembling, he's putting on a pretty good turn. Time to help him out all the same:
'The tickets were a present, you see, Dima,' she confides sweetly, touching his arm. 'A good friend gave them to us, a dear old gentleman. For love. I don't think he'd like us to leave our seats empty, would he? If he found out, he'd be heartbroken' – which was the answer they'd cooked up with Luke and Ollie over a late nightcap of malt.
Dima stares from one to other of them in disappointment while he regroups his thoughts.
Restlessness in the ranks behind him: can't we get this over?
The initiative is with the poor bugger in the field…
Solution!
'Then hear me, Professor, OK? Hear me once' – his finger jabbing into Perry's chest – 'OK,' he repeats, nodding menacingly. 'After the game. Hear me? Soon as the goddam game is over, you gonna come visit us in hospitality.' He swings round to Gail, challenging her to upset his great plan. 'Hear me, Gail? You gonna bring this Professor to our hospitality. And you gonna drink champagne with us. The game don't end when it ends. They gotta do goddam presentations out there, speeches, lotta shit. Federer gonna win easy. You wanna bet me five grand US he don't win, Professor? I give you three to one. Four to one.'
Perry laughs. If he had a god, it would be Federer. No dice, Dima, sorry, he says. Not even at a hundred to one. But he isn't out of the wood yet:
'You're gonna play me tennis tomorrow, Professor, hear me? A rematch' – the finger still stabbing at Perry's chest – 'I gonna send someone round find you after the game, you gonna come visit us in hospitality, and we gonna fix a rematch, no pussying. And I'm gonna beat the shit outta you, buy you a massage after. You're gonna need it, hear me?'
Perry has no time for further protestation. Out of the corner of her eye, Gail has observed the tour guide with the silvery hair and red brolly detach himself from the group and advance on Dima's undefended back.
'Aren't you going to introduce us to your friends, Dima? You can't keep a beautiful lady like this all to yourself, you know,' a silken voice says reproachfully in pitch-perfect English with a faint Italian accent. 'Dell Oro,' he announces. 'Emilio dell Oro. An old friend of Dima's from way, way back. So pleased.' And takes each of their hands, first Gail's with a gallant downward tip of the head, then Perry's without one, thereby reminding her of a ballroom Lothario called Percy who cut in on her best boyfriend when she was seventeen, and nearly raped her on the dance floor.
'And I'm Perry Makepiece and she's Gail Perkins,' Perry says. And as a light-hearted footnote that really impresses her: 'I'm not really a professor, so don't be alarmed. It's just Dima's way of putting me off my tennis.'
'Then welcome to Roland Garros Stadium, Gail Perkins and Perry Makepiece,' dell Oro replies, with a radiant smile that she is beginning to suspect is permanent. 'So glad we shall have the pleasure of seeing you after the historic match. If there is a match,' he adds, with a theatrical lift of the hands and a glance of reproach at the grey sky.
But the last word is Dima's:
'I gonna send someone get you, hear me, Professor? Don't walk out on me. Tomorrow I beat the shit outta you. I love this guy, hear me?' he cries to the supercilious Armani kids with their watery smiles gathered behind him, and having enfolded Perry for a last defiant hug, falls in beside them as they resume their amble.
12
Settling at Perry's side in the twelfth row of the western stand of the Roland Garros Stadium, Gail stares incredulously at the band of Napoleon's Garde Republicaine in their brass helmets, red cockades, skin-tight white breeches and thigh-length boots as they roll out their kettledrums and give their bugles a final blow before their conductor mounts his wooden rostrum, suspends his white-gloved hands above his head, spreads his fingers and flutters them like a dress designer. Perry is talking to her but has to repeat himself. She turns her head to him, then leans it on his shoulder to calm herself, because she's trembling. And so in his own way is Perry, because she can hear the pulse of his body – boom boom.
'Is this the Men's Singles Finals or the Battle of Borodino?' he shouts gaily, pointing at Napoleon's troops. She makes him say it again, lets out a hoot of laughter and gives his hand a squeeze to bring them both down to earth.
'It's all right!' she yells into his ear. 'You did fine! You were a star! Super seats too! Well done!'
'You too! Dima looked great.'
'Great. But the children are already in Berne!'
'What?'
'Tamara and the little girls are already in Berne! Natasha too! I'd have thought they'd all be together!'
'Me too.'
But his disappointment is of a lesser order than hers.
Napoleon's band is very loud. Whole regiments could march to it and never return.
'He's very keen to play tennis with you again, poor man!' Doolittle shouts.
'I've noticed!' Big nods and smiles from Milton.
'Have you got time tomorrow?'
'Absolutely not. Too many dates,' Milton replies, with an adamant shake of his head.
'That's what I feared. Tricky.'
'Very,' Milton agrees.
Are they just being children, or has the fear of God crept into them? Carrying his hand to her lips, Gail kisses it then keeps it against her cheek because, quite unconsciously, he has moved her nearly to tears:
Of all the days in his life that he should be free to enjoy, and isn't! To watch Federer in the Final of the French Open is for Perry like watching Nijinsky in L'Apres-midi d'un Faune! How many Perry-lectures has she not happily listened to, curled up with him in front of the television set in Primrose Hill, on the subject of Federer, the perfected athlete Perry would love to be? – Federer as formed man, Federer the runner as dancer, shortening and lengthening his stride to tame the flying ball into providing him with the tiny, hanging extra split second that he needs to find the pace and angle – the steadiness of his upper body whether it's moving backwards, forwards, sideways – his supernatural powers of anticipation that aren't supernatural at all, Gail, but the summit of eye-body-brain coordination.
'I really want you to enjoy today!' she shouts into his ear like a final message. 'Just put everything else out of your mind. I love you: I said I love you, idiot!'
*
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.
To her left, an iron-jawed blonde woman with a Swiss national cross on her paper hat and another on her ample blouse.