‘A Ping-Pong table!’ Alex was as excited as Luke and together they dragged it out into the sunlight. It was warped slightly on one side, a chunk appeared to have been bitten out of a corner, a leg was missing: these things aside, it was easily ‘of championship standard’. The net, when they found it, was ragged but Nicole managed to tie string across the rips. They set up the table in a sheltered spot by the side of the house, using bricks to prop up the sagging, legless corner.
‘There is one small problem,’ said Alex. ‘We haven’t got bats or balls.’
‘Shit!’
They bought them the next time they went into town and began playing as soon as they got back. It was years since anyone had played and at first they tapped the ball back and forth mechanically, rarely deviating from the safety of the backhand. Spin was introduced gradually. Then, occasionally, one of them would finish the rally with an aggressive forehand, either winning the point (very rarely) or (more usually) whacking the ball into the net. After a few days the success rate for forehands went up — but so too did the frequency with which these shots were returned. From there it was a small step to returning an attacking forehand with an attacking forehand of still greater ferocity. Instead of simply taking it in turns to play, Luke and Alex forced through the principle of Winner Stays On. Nicole dropped quickly out of the rankings and tended not to play. Sahra, who claimed to have played for her school team, won some games but the table came to be dominated, predictably, by Luke and Alex. Alex attacked relentlessly but Luke, relying on twisting combinations of spin — the Ping-Pong equivalent of judo — began to use his opponent’s strength against him. Standing way back from the table he kept looping the ball back until Alex finally over-hit or slammed it into the net and lost the point.
For a while Ping-Pong dominated their lives. Then it was sidelined by a more important discovery. On most days one or all of the party went out ‘on reconnaissance’ (as Luke and Alex termed it), ‘for a bike ride’ (as Nicole and Sahra termed it). They were all out together, about two miles from home, when they came across an old clay tennis court. It was at the edge of a field and seemed to belong to no one. Luke and Alex tore home, snatched up their rackets, cycled back and launched immediately into what turned out to be a gruelling four-setter (won by Alex) in ninety-degree heat. The women returned from their ride to find both men cowering in the shade, dehydrated, on the brink of heat-stroke.
Sahra and Nicole liked to play too, in the early evenings. The men played singles and then, when it was cooler, the women turned up for mixed doubles. The games between Luke and Alex were always fiercely competitive but if the match was still under way when Sahra and Nicole arrived the sight of their girlfriends cycling up spurred them on to new heights of aggressiveness. Alex was the stronger and more skilful of the two but Luke ran down every ball, stretching out his thin arms and somehow getting it back. This was both the strength of his game and its fundamental flaw: he loved soaking up punishment but in tennis this proved a less successful strategy than in Ping-Pong. He stood too far back, behind the baseline, putting himself under immediate pressure. What he most enjoyed was chasing lost causes and refusing to accept defeat — but he could never convert this determination not to lose into an ability to win. On the contrary, he had such a dread of losing that it became inevitable that he would. He believed that he was the kind of person who could pull himself back to equal terms from a two-set deficit — and he was, he did. But then, having drawn level at two sets all and gone four games ahead in the fifth, he contrived, somehow, to blow it. He tensed, choked, lost.
After these encounters Luke and Alex came off court and rested while Nicole and Sahra knocked up. They sat on the clay, drenched in sweat, drinking bottles of water, occasionally rolling back a ball that had bounced towards them.
‘I had my chances,’ said Luke.
‘You did.’
‘I didn’t take them.’
‘You didn’t. And do you know why you didn’t take them?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t let you.’
‘That’s not true. If I hadn’t hit those volleys into the net, I’d have been flying. As it was I was crashing. But if I had made those volleys. .’
‘Do you know what I’d have done then?’
‘What?’
‘Raised my game.’ They laughed and settled back to watch Sahra and Nicole play. Both women had been coached when young, they had the strokes, but both suffered from incredible lapses of concentration that sometimes lasted for the best part of the game. Nicole also got into weird tangles when the ball came straight at her, trying desperately to play a backhand and forehand simultaneously. She had no anticipation, waited for the ball to come at her, made no allowance for spin. After twenty minutes Luke and Alex joined the women on court and they played a set or two of mixed doubles together.
The favourite game of the whole summer, though, was Bombing the Television. Cycling back from tennis they always crossed a small river. From the bridge one evening they saw a television, screen-up, floating downstream.
‘Great,’ said Luke. ‘Let’s smash it up.’ Alex needed no encouragement and immediately they were scurrying around looking for suitable rocks. The TV was ten metres away and was proving difficult to hit. The women joined in and soon were hysterical with delight, desperate to sink it. As the TV drifted nearer it was hit, twice, on the walnut surround but no one could get the screen itself. It floated closer to them but they were running out of decent ammo. Alex was about to propose a cease-fire which would give the TV a sporting chance of survival — no throwing until it had passed a certain distance beyond the far side of the bridge — when Sahra caught it with a direct hit. The screen did not just crack: it exploded, and the TV immediately sank without trace. Nicole and Sahra high-fived each other, weak with the excitement of destruction.
‘It just goes to show,’ said Luke as they clambered back on their bikes like a gang of delinquents, ‘there is nothing in life more pleasurable than destroying things.’
They decided to take a different route home and soon became lost. The sun was slipping behind the remains of a cloud. Trees grew black. Birds were heading home (they could have been heading out but that seemed unlikely). Everything, it seemed, was packing up and heading home, even the clouds: only a few were left. They came to a railway crossing.
‘Let’s walk along the tracks,’ said Sahra.
‘Where do you think they’re going?’
‘In this world there is one path that only you can walk,’ said Luke, echoing Miles. ‘Where does it lead? Don’t ask: take it.’
They locked their bikes together and walked along the railway line, into the embers of the sun. Sahra kept looking behind in case there was a train coming. Alex said there was no chance.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the rails are rusty, one. And, two, there’s no shit on the tracks.’ He was right but the other three still felt a little uneasy as they stepped across the sleepers. After a point it did not get any darker. Instead, the twilight became more intense. The light faded but the darkness glowed. They followed the rails which kept everything in perspective, lent an automatic purpose to their steps. It seemed possible to walk like this for ever. Then Nicole said she was hungry. The others agreed that they were hungry too, starving in fact. And thirsty. They turned back and walked in two pairs, holding hands.