But before going to sleep, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, he had been day-dreaming — of Wimbledon. Wimbledon: his Mecca! Wimbledon, which he had followed with such rapt attention in those boyhood days when he had played, unceasingly and nearly always alone, with an old racquet against the wall of his house; sometimes the wall of the mill where his father worked. As the years had passed, he had gone to work at the same mill, found others to play tennis, found it possible to play on a real grass court, found himself using a racquet which was properly strung . . .
There was much that he had not known, in those days. For instance, that a man who was building an extra store room for the mill often watched him. This man’s name was Willison, and in those days he had been a man in his early thirties, a very keen tennis player but much more keenly a master-builder in the business he had inherited from an uncle. And there at the mill, while the raw cotton was being unloaded from the great wire cages on the trucks, with the cotton and its dust flying lazily in the bright sunlight, and the great maws of the feeder taking the fluffy stuff to work and card and turn it into threads, he had seen the young negro play.
Barnaby Rudge had played tennis in every moment of his spare time; every moment when there was light enough to see. And Willison, passing by the mill some evenings, had seen the solitary figure, a silhouette against the red-tinged beauty of the after-glow, serving to an imaginary opponent. He served with utter and unbelievable precision, time after time, to hit a tiny circle-no larger than a tennis ball-placed in various spots inside the serving area.
Willison had been fascinated.
At that stage, some men might have found Barnaby Rudge a special ‘fixed’ job so that he could spend most of his time on the tennis court. In this way he could have been frequently tested in tournaments, and regularly exposed to players a little better and more experienced than himself. And in this way, many believed, champions were made. Willison had never quite understood what had held him back; but then, he had never quite understood himself. He had a flair, perhaps even a touch of genius, which told him when to act and when to bide his time. He had not been sure, in those early days, what to make of Barnaby Rudge, except that Barnaby was undoubtedly going to be a brilliant player; his reflexes were as remarkable as his physical strength and endurance. But how brilliant, and in what way it would be best to develop him, Willison did not know.
He gave Barnaby a job in his building organisation, one which would keep him fit as well as develop his body and leave him ample time for practice. And he soon discovered one strange characteristic about Barnaby which proved very helpful: Barnaby was a loner. The companionship of others did not mean much to him, and he took real pleasure in his constant search after perfection in placing a tennis ball exactly where he wanted it. In other things, he was no more than average, in some ways even less.
He had to be told what to do and how to do it time and time again. But once he got it into his head, nothing could shake it out and he became set on performing every task to the absolute limit of his capacity. He had a pleasant, humble home life. Besides working in the mill, his father was a Baptist minister, his mother was a midwife: there was no poverty and no hunger in his family.
One business friend of Willison’s, seeing Barnaby play one day, remarked: “That boy wants some real competition, Lou. He could make the big time.”
“He’s not ready, yet,” Louis Willison had demurred.
Barnaby sometimes drove him in a utility truck to one of the working sites: Willison invariably had half-a-dozen different building projects in hand at one time. (“He’ll stretch himself too fir one day,” the wiseacres said. But he made more and more money, and took on more and more projects.) Just after his friend’s comment he spoke more seriously than usual as Barnaby drove him to a site.
“What do you want to do as you get older, Barnaby?”
“Play more tennis, sir,” came the swift answer.
“Big tennis? Professional tennis?” asked Willison.
“Only one place means anything to me in tennis, sir. Just one place-and that’s Wimbledon.” Barnaby uttered the name in awe.
“Wimbledon!” gasped Willison.
“That’s what you’ve been keeping me for, sir, isn’t it?” asked Barnaby, and Willison quickly recovered his poise and told his harmless white lie.
“Yes-but I didn’t think you realised it.” After a pause, he went on: “Wimbledon can be murder, Barnaby. You would need a lot of competition and match-practice to get anywhere near the final. You must know that.”
“I surely do, sir,” said Barnaby, humbly. “But I got one tiling I haven’t shown even you, sir — a surefire winner anywhere I use it. I wanted to wait until I had it perfect; you taught me the value of patience real well!”
Willison, half-amused, half-amazed, pondered; then asked, almost warily: “How near are you to perfection?”
“I can show you any time,” declared Barnaby. “All we need is a tennis court with no one looking on, Mr Willison. Maybe if one of your friends would let me show you on a private court —” He looked shyly hopeful.
Three days later, he gave his demonstration; and Willison was astounded.
Barnaby had a fireball service which no player in the world was ever likely to be able to return. He admitted that he didn’t know exactly how he did it: there was something in the way his biceps and forearm muscles flexed and merged in tremendous power at the moment of contact between gut and ball. But he could now use it with devastating accuracy, striking any part of the court he desired at will.
After the demonstration, shiny-faced, perspiring, he looked to his sponsor for comment.
“Barnaby,” Willison told him urgently, “don’t show that service to a soul. Not a single person, do you understand? Keep it in practice, but hide it from everyone except me.”
“I certainly will,” Barnaby promised fervently.
“And now we’ve got to get you some competition — you’ve got to work on the rest of your game. But understand: don’t let anyone so much as glimpse that service!”
“It sure is a fireball, isn’t it?” Barnaby said, with a fascinating mixture of humility and confidence. “It sure is a surefire winner, Mr. Willison. It sure is good.”
Only a few weeks later, when he had paid the substantial expenses of the trip, Willison had run head-on
