Day 35
Akhmatova v. Arendt • Magritte and Dali v. Chekhov and Miller • Chandler and Hammett v. Beckett and Duchamp • Lenya and Dietrich v. Sackville-West and Stephen-Woolf • Mansfield and Hodgkins v. Keller and Sullivan • Lawrence and Mansfield v. Bankhead and partner • Astaire and Rogers v. Freud and Klein
Anna Akhmatova’s semi-final against Hannah Arendt was the Centre Court’s first glimpse of either player. Arendt walked through the first set. It was as if the Russian was unprepared, but if she had taken Arendt a little lightly she was under no such misapprehension in the second. She was still playing defensive tennis and was installed on the baseline, but she was making Arendt fight for every bit of ground and stretching her resources to the limit. At 4-all Akhmatova broke the German, won the set and settled in for a fight to the finish.
Arendt came out playing like a winner. At the other end, Akhmatova kept her nerve and waited for her opportunity. It came at 5–5. Arendt took a bit off her serve and Akhmatova hit three low returns at her feet. Arendt got it back to 30–40 with two scorching serves but it was still break point.
The next serve was even faster and wide to the forehand, taking Akhmatova out of court. She got to it and pushed a return back, almost over the umpire’s chair. Arendt waited and smashed. Akhmatova was there and somehow drove it deep into the ad court. The Arendt backhand was level to the task but it found the Russian at the net like a wolf. This was the moment that swung the match. Arendt came back and put enormous pressure on the Akhmatova service but, even though it went to deuce three times, it held for the match.
There might be someone who has played more tennis in the last fortnight than doubles semi-finalists Magritte and Dali but it would be hard to imagine. ‘Not really,’ said Magritte. ‘Not hard to imagine. Just very difficult to do.’ They were on court again against Arthur Miller and Tony Chekhov, who has also had a very full dance card. Today he was in trouble with his breathing early and as the day got hotter he needed longer and longer changeovers. Miller’s serve had won them the first set but after that the match played as it lay. Chekhov was assisted from the court at the finish but returned to thank the crowd.
‘I’d like to thank you all very much,’ he said. ‘It’s been realism. I’d especially like to thank Arthur, who is a great player and a good friend. Now, if it’s all the same with you, I’d like to go to Moscow.’
The Chandler and Hammett versus Beckett and Duchamp semi was another thing altogether. The Americans had spent the previous evening with Edna St Vincent Millay and looked a little tired. Millay was in the stand looking relaxed. Beckett and Duchamp had spent all night in ‘some café somewhere on the Black Bush’, so honours were even at the start and the first set had a haphazard quality. Shots were sprayed everywhere. The Americans took it when the Hammett serve started to fire, a process he described: ‘Like shelling peas. Big peas. And shelling them real fast. Wait a minute. Maybe not peas. Bigger than peas. Pumpkins maybe. It was like shelling pumpkins.’
‘Avocados,’ said Chandler.
‘What?’
‘Avocados.’
‘Some Californian crap is that, Ray?’
‘I was thinking of something more the size of a tennis ball.’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No one shells avocados,’ said Hammett.
‘Pretend I never spoke,’ said Chandler.
‘An avocado doesn’t have a goddam shell.’
‘Nobody home at the Chandler house. Please call back later.’
Beckett and Duchamp got going in the second set, taking it and the third. The fourth could have gone either way but, almost as if they had arranged it, they broke Hammett in the eighth game.
‘I sat there with Hammett in the break at 4–5 in the fourth,’ said Chandler. ‘He tried to talk. I stopped him. It’d keep. The guys up the other end didn’t believe our story anyway. Edna looked great but otherwise this boat was going nowhere. I stared at my racquet. You’d think they’d be able to come up with one of these that actually works. There were people dressed in mattresses floating about putting space stations together in slow motion on the news. And I was sitting there with technology I couldn’t even drink.’
The Americans left to a rousing reception. ‘We’ll be back,’ they said, ‘when the movie comes out.’
Lenya and Dietrich played gallantly in the first women’s doubles semi, working the room well. When Sackville-West and Stephen-Woolf disputed a line call at 3–3 in the first set, they lost the support of the crowd. Dietrich was going to play in the final come hell or high water. Her serving in the final set was supreme, and she and Lenya played the big points better.
Mansfield and Hodgkins beat Keller and Sullivan for a berth in the final. Mansfield is the one to watch here. She seems to be doing so little, but what she does is so good. She is not a great spoiler and no power player. She gets in a side door and makes off through the window like a kid with a cake. Her health is a concern, however, and the effort proved taxing. A short while later she was on court again in the mixed but
