‘Ah, but you didn’t win the third, did you?’ countered the Doc.
‘I didn’t,’ agreed Matisse.
‘In fact you were humiliated in the third, weren’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t say humiliated,’ said Matisse. ‘I broke a string at 5–5 and that was that.’
‘In this dream, what colour clothing were you wearing?’
‘It wasn’t a dream but I was wearing white.’
‘Ah!’ said Freud. ‘White. You know what that signifies, don’t you?’
‘That we were playing tennis?’ ventured Matisse.
‘Semen.’
‘Semen?’ said Matisse. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Last night I was fucking this model…’
‘I don’t want to hear about that. I want to discuss your sexual repression,’ said the Doc.
‘That’s exactly what I was saying to her!’ said Matisse. ‘She has these particularly wonderful breasts—’
‘Please,’ interrupted Freud.
‘I mean seriously beautiful,’ continued Matisse. ‘Now, between ourselves, I’m an arse man but is there anything more beautiful than a pair of full bulging—’
‘Enough already!’ said Freud. ‘Everyone can hear you. You’re talking into a microphone!’
‘Correct,’ said Matisse with a smile. ‘Anyone else want me to stop?’
And, of course, as with the Frenchman’s play during the match itself, nobody wanted Matisse to stop and Freud could only watch his own dream begin to evaporate.
‘Sigmund has changed everything about the game,’ concluded Matisse. ‘My own opinion is that he’s better at describing his conclusions than he is at reaching them.’
Bill Faulkner didn’t know quite how to deal with Paul Robeson. The two hadn’t met before and they tested each other out for a set and a half. Robeson is a great athlete and was in excellent touch until he was informed, at two sets up, that his American passport had been revoked.
‘Revoked?’ he queried. ‘Do you mean I can’t go home after the tournament?’
‘That’s right,’ said a US official.
‘Can’t get back into my own country? Why not?’
‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before you criticised American tennis.’
‘Why shouldn’t I criticise the way things are done in America?’ asked Robeson.
‘Because America is a free country. And the cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.’
‘How can it be a free country,’ asked Robeson, ‘if it can’t be criticised by its own citizens?’
‘In order for a society to work properly,’ explained the official, ‘its citizens must be opposed to its enemies.’
‘A society is a group of citizens who all think the same?’ asked Robeson. ‘Could you perhaps name one?’
‘Don’t try to be clever. Americans are individuals. It is in your beloved Russia that everyone is forced to think the same.’
‘You listen here, pipsqueak,’ said Robeson. ‘I am not here playing for America. I’m playing for the black people in America.’
He resumed the match in a quiet fury but the incident upset his rhythm and he seemed worn out. He had come so far and a great sense of hopelessness now settled on his effort. Many in the crowd couldn’t bear to look as he played out the match, magnificent at times and always with dignity but broken and disappointed. Afterwards he thanked the crowd. ‘A word or two before you go,’ he said. ‘I have done the state some service. And they know it.’
There was also a touch of tragedy about Bessie Smith, the tall and powerful stroke-maker whose wonderful rhythm was the deciding factor in her win over Maxine Elliott. Smith said afterwards that she loved to play and especially in Paris. Elliott agreed. ‘It’s a great thing to come from some little place somewhere and end up playing in Paris in front of all these people.’
What was the particular appeal of Paris?
‘It ain’t St Louis,’ said Smith. ‘Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.’
West-Indian-born but now based in England, Jean Rhys has some experience of the heat and when the humidity went through the roof early this afternoon she must have realised she had a sliver of a chance against the solid technique of Gertrude Stein. Stein is no stranger to local conditions and was well supported. Hemingway, Picasso and Pound were all at courtside and French and American paparazzi vied with one another for position.
Stein said later it was not the heat that beat her, but the fact that she failed to vary her play. ‘The heat. Not the heat. The heat beat. The heat did not beat,’ she revealed. ‘The play was the same. The play that was the same beat. The beat of the play that was the same beat. It was the same. It was the same beat. The play was the same beat was the same play beat was the same.’
Rhys had a different approach. ‘I knew something of the way Gertrude worked and I tried to imagine her as coming from the same background as myself, in Dominica. Then I could understand her and work out what she was about.’ She began, as it were, to think as Stein and to make Stein think as her. Rhys was in high spirits after the match.
An hour later she and Raymond Chandler were dug out of a bar in a nearby hotel and informed that their mixed-doubles match was about to start on Court 4. They had another quick one and got to the court looking slightly distracted but, the moment play got under way, you’d have thought they were the world champions. Their rhythm was superb, their placement was deadly and their stamina was admirable.
Yeats put Gershwin out of business quite early and there was some suggestion the American was burdened with an injury of some kind. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel too bad but I certainly couldn’t lift when I needed to.’
Magritte was out today too. His ability to disguise his shots was much in evidence but he could do little against van Gogh at full pace. In the third set van Gogh got an astonishing 112 per cent of first serves in and ran from point to point as if working to a deadline.
‘Theo told me to play my natural game,’ he said. ‘So I did. Theo is a good man.’
And was he pleased with the win?
‘What we need
