Maria crouched at the net as I prepared to serve. I bounced the ball at my left toe once then again and then tossed it high in the air, swinging my racket through a wide arch tightening my grip on the racket and connecting with a satisfying thwack. The serve was good, not an ace but enough to push our opposition into a defensive formation, the return just out of reach of Maria's attempted volley but easy for me to return to the offside of the court deep and wide; Maria pounced on the backhand return with a crisp, clean volley to win the point and throw her arms in the air to celebrate not just winning the game and the match but the league championship.
I ran to her, hot and sweaty and hugged her tightly; she clung to me; then to remain sporting we reluctantly detached ourselves and turned to shake the hands of our opponents accepting their praise on a great match. It had been a great match, close, tense and competitive and as the pressure had built Maria had played her role to perfection without nerves and finishing with clinical precision at any opportunity, what a transition; but perhaps I should explain.
I am a keen tennis player and over the years have been involved in many clubs around the country, but I was especially proud of this one having been involved from the very start, finding the spare parish land agreeing on the change of use, finding the funding to build the courts and adding all of the facilities such as floodlights and a club house needed to attract over 2000 members. Over the years of hard work it had become a thriving community hub with coaching, competitions and a rising reputation as a tough competitor to other local clubs. My own standard of play was quite high, but as I moved into my 50's I favoured playing doubles and had come to especially enjoy mixed doubles partly because with skill I could still control the pace of the game but perhaps more so because of the opportunity to mix with the younger female members during matches away from the family and community events.
This season I had scanned the membership list for a partner to play in the county mixed doubles tournaments and was excited to see an old name return to the list; Maria Jackson. Maria had been one of our first members as a young teenager attending coaching and then with her family taking the first tentative steps into club events and tournaments before disappearing for quite some years, I guess to go to University. Maria had a great deal of promise as a young player, she was fit and fast around the court had a good eye and understood the tactics of the game, however in competition she always buckled under pressure even from a young age and so tended not to win too often. However we had often played together at club events where I would take a fatherly role as coach and try to ease her through the pressures and so win. Maria clearly looked up to me and it was always fun, but it had been some years since we had played together so I was very glad to see her name on the members roster.
A few weeks before the start of the season's competitions I had still not found a partner when by chance I ran into Maria at the club one evening. I had walked to the club house to post some notices, part of my role as treasurer; as I approached the club I saw that the floodlights were on. I could not hear a game being played but just the occasional solo strike of the ball and as the courts came into view I saw Maria practising on her own. She had certainly grown up, standing about 5' 5" with her blond hair in a pigtail, well muscled slim legs and a pert backside, small breasts held tightly by a sports bra; she was concentrating her blue green eyes hard on the ball taking a full back swing as she hit serve after serve into the opposite side of the court.
She did not hear me coming until I was quite close, but when she turned and saw me her face lit up with obvious pleasure and I must confess my heart skipped a beat as she still looked very fresh and innocent and I mentally reflected that she was young enough to be my daughter; her look now was all adult. I smiled back, waved and opened the gate to the court and walking in to the lights found myself being hugged by this lovely young woman.
"Oh I hoped you would come, I have so wanted to see you, how are things with you?" The words tumbled out, and I was quite surprised to see the intensity and pleasure that Maria was showing.
"Well things are much better now I've seen you, in fact when I saw that you had re-joined the club I was going to give you a call to see if you had a partner yet for the mixed doubles league, and also for a match on Saturday, would you like to be my partner?"
A cloud passed across her face and she looked down seemingly distressed.
"I wanted to speak to you about that, you see I have had a few problems with my tennis and I am not sure what to do about it, do you have a few minutes so that we can talk about it now?"
"Maria, you don't need to worry of course I have time for you, why don't we collect the practice balls as we talk, I would offer you a game but I left my racket at home!"
Maria looked up and smiled and then started to tell me about the problem. It seemed that she had gone to University to study Languages and had enjoyed an active life joining clubs and societies one of which was the University tennis society.
"At first it went really well, all the advice you gave me helped and I was pretty competitive, I began to win matches on my own, until I met Paul." She paused and looked at me;
"Carry on." I said.
"Well, Paul was in a post graduate psychology programme and was a good tennis player, so we teamed up for some competitions; I don't know how it came up but I told Paul about my nerves when under pressure and he said he could help me by using some techniques he was studying using hypnosis; I agreed to let him hypnotise me and place the suggestion that I would not get nerves in tight competitions and would remain focused on key parts of my game; It was great we won a whole range of matches and I was really happy until Cardiff." I looked at Maria, she was now sitting next to me on the court bench, but gazing at her feet, and I could see that she was blushing.
"So what happened in Cardiff?" I asked.
"Paul was a nice guy and all that, but not really my type, to be blunt just a bit immature and, sort of silly sometimes; We went with the team to a match against Cardiff, the games went well and we had a drink afterwards and then, well then I can't remember anything at all until I woke up in my room; I was alone but I wasn't wearing any clothes and felt a bit dirty; when I got out of bed there were stains and marks on my sheets and my clothes were all over the floor." Maria continued to look at her feet, a deep crimson blush on rising up her neck.
"Go on Maria" I said quietly, now quite concerned.
"It's not like I'm a virgin or anything so I knew that the stains were from a man's, you know what, and I could feel that I had had sex, I just could not remember who with or what went on, and I'd only had a couple of beers so I hadn't been drunk; I didn't know what to do so I did nothing, but when I went to tennis the next week Paul seemed really distant and a bit guilty; I can put two and two together and so confronted him; He was quite nasty and when I threatened to go to the Police he just smiled and then he simply said out right to me that I was no good in bed anyway, that I had no evidence and that my tennis would be really bad from here on!" She went on. "What makes it worse is that I don't have any evidence, nobody else was around and to cap it all my tennis game really has fallen apart; I really don't know what to do about any of this."
