Our Kind of Traitor

Selecting a bench, Perry dumped his tennis bag on it, the one he hadn’t let the bodyguards look inside, and yanked the zip. He fished a couple of sweatbands from his bag, one for his head, one for his wrist.

‘You a priest?’ Dima asked, with the same earnestness.

‘Why? D’you need one?’

‘Doctor? Some kinda medic?’

‘Not a doctor either, I’m afraid.’

‘Lawyer?’

‘I just play tennis.’

‘Banker?’

‘God forbid,’ Perry replied irritably, and fiddled with a battered sunhat before slinging it back into the bag.

But actually he felt more than irritable. He’d been rolled and didn’t care for being rolled. Rolled by the pro and rolled by the bodyguards, if he’d let them. And all right he hadn’t let them, but their presence on the court – they’d established themselves like line judges at either end – was quite enough to keep his anger going. More pertinently he had been rolled by Dima himself, and the fact that Dima had press-ganged a bunch of strays into turning out at seven in the morning to watch him win only added to the offence.

Dima had shoved a hand into the pocket of his long black tennis shorts and hauled out a John F. Kennedy silver half-dollar.

‘Know something? My kids tell me I had some crook spike it for me so I win,’ he confided, indicating with a nod of his bald head the two freckled boys in the stands. ‘I win the toss, my own kids think I spike the goddam coin. You got kids?’

‘No.’

‘Want some?’

‘Eventually.’ Mind your own bloody business, in other words.

‘Wanna call?’

Spike, Perry repeated to himself. Where did a man who spoke mangled English with a semi-Bronx accent get a word like spike from? He called tails, lost, and heard a honk of derision, the first sign of interest anybody on the spectators’ stand had deigned to show. His tutorial eye fixed on Dima’s two sons, smirking behind their hands. Dima glanced at the sun and chose the shaded end.

‘What racquet you got there?’ he asked, with a twinkle of his soulful brown eyes. ‘Looks illegal. Never mind, I beat you anyway.’ And as he set off down the court: ‘That’s some girl you got. Worth a lot of camels. You better marry her quick.’

And how in hell’s name does the man know we’re not married? Perry fumed.

* * *

Perry has served four aces in a row, just as he did against the Indian couple, but he’s overhitting, knows it, doesn’t give a damn. Replying to Dima’s service, he does what he wouldn’t dream of doing unless he was at the top of his game and playing a far weaker opponent: he stands forward, toes practically on the service line, taking the ball on the half-volley, angling it across court or flipping it just inside the tramlines to where the baby-faced bodyguard stands with his arms folded. But only for the first couple of serves, because Dima quickly gets wise to him and drives him back to the baseline where he belongs.

‘So then I suppose I began to cool down a bit,’ Perry conceded, grinning ruefully at his interlocutors and rubbing the back of his wrist across his mouth at the same time.

‘Perry was a total bully,’ Gail corrected him. ‘And Dima was a natural. For his weight, height and age, amazing. Wasn’t he, Perry? You said so yourself. You said he defied the laws of gravity. And really sporting with it. Sweet.’

‘Didn’t jump for the ball. Levitated,’ Perry conceded. ‘And yes, he was a good sport, couldn’t ask for more. I thought we were going to be in for tantrums and line disputes. We didn’t do any of that stuff. He was really good to play with. And cunning as a box of monkeys. Withheld his shots till the absolute last minute and beyond.’

‘And he had a limp,’ Gail put in excitedly. ‘He played on the skew and he favoured his right leg, didn’t he, Perry? And he was stiff as a ramrod. And he had a knee bandage. And he still levitated!’

‘Yeah, well, I had to hold off a bit,’ Perry admitted, clawing awkwardly at his brow. ‘His grunts got a bit heavy on the ear as the game went by, frankly.’

But for all his grunting, Dima’s inquisition of Perry between games continued unabated:

‘You some big scientist? Blow the goddam world up, same way you serve?’ he asked, helping himself to a gulp of iced water.

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Apparatchik?’

The guessing game had gone on long enough: ‘Actually, I teach,’ Perry said, peeling a banana.

‘Teach like you teach students? Like a professor, you teach?’

‘Correct. I teach students. But I’m not a professor.’

‘Where?’

‘Currently at Oxford.’

‘Oxford University?’

‘Got it.’

‘What you teach?’

‘English literature,’ Perry replied, not particularly wishing, at that moment, to explain to a total stranger that his future was up for grabs.

But Dima’s pleasure knew no bounds:

‘Listen. You know Jack London? Number-one English writer?’

‘Not personally.’ It was a joke, but Dima didn’t share it.

‘You like the guy?’

‘Admire him.’

‘Charlotte Bronte? You like her too?’

‘Very much.’

‘Somerset Maugham?’

‘Less, I’m afraid.’

‘I got books by all those guys! Like hundreds! In Russian! Big bookshelves!’

‘Great.’

‘You read Dostoevsky? Lermontov? Tolstoy?’

‘Of course.’

‘I got them all. All the number-one guys. I got Pasternak. Know something? Pasternak wrote about my home town. Called it Yuriatin. That’s Perm. Crazy fucker called it Yuriatin. I dunno why. Writers do that. All crazy. See my daughter up there? That’s Natasha, don’t give a shit about tennis, love books. Hey, Natasha! Say hello to the Professor here!’

After a delay to show that she is being intruded upon, Natasha distractedly raises her head and draws aside her hair long enough to allow Perry to be astonished by her beauty before she returns to her leatherbound tome.

‘Embarrassed,’ Dima explained. ‘Don’t wanna hear me yelling at her. See that book she reading? Turgenev. Number-one Russian guy. I buy it. She wanna book, I buy. OK, Professor. You serve.’

‘From that moment on, I was Professor. I told him again and again I wasn’t one, he wouldn’t listen, so I gave up. Within a couple of days, half the hotel was calling me Professor. Which is pretty bloody odd when you’ve decided you’re not even a don any more.’

Changing ends at 2–5 in Perry’s favour, Perry is consoled to notice that Gail has parted company from the importunate Mark and is installed on the top bench between two little girls.

* * *

The game was settling to a decent rhythm, said Perry. Not the greatest match ever but – for as long as he lowered his play – fun and entertaining to watch, assuming anybody wanted to be entertained, which remained in