The Forever Girl by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: tpl, rt
ISBN: 9780345807588
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2014-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

20

They welcomed Amanda at the tennis club as if her absence had been three months rather than three years. Although there was a floating population of expatriates – those who came for a few years before going on somewhere else, or returning to the place they had come from – there were others who stayed for years, for the greater part of a lifetime in some cases. These people might spend much of their time elsewhere but seemed drawn back to the sheltering skirts of the place that having asked so little from them in terms of tax, then made no demands of them other than that they pay their bills and refrain from challenging corrupt politicians or well-connected developers. If they had the bad taste to be rich, then they might at least have the good taste to keep a low profile politically, and certainly not give others their advice.

With money, there came an ability to escape the normal constraints of geography. Most people did not have much choice about where they lived, and they stayed there year upon year. By contrast, the wealthy could move about as they wished, following the tides of whim and fashion. But too much absence could be a bad thing: being off island meant that you were away, but would probably return when you had had enough of the grind of existence in London or New York or wherever it was that you had gone to.

So the secretary of the tennis club merely added Amanda’s name to the club competition ladder and sent her the bill for a renewed membership even without asking her whether she still wanted to play tennis.

“I heard you were back,” she said when Amanda first visited the club. “I took the liberty of adding you to the doubles ladder: we needed another woman for the mixed doubles and I thought of you.”

Amanda had not objected. “My tennis is rusty,” she said. “I joined a club in Edinburgh but you know how it is in Scotland. They have all-weather courts but that doesn’t really help all that much if there’s wind.”

“You can book the pro.”

“I will.”

Clover went with her mother for her first lesson, and watched as Amanda returned serve after serve and responded to shouted instructions.

“He shouldn’t shout at you like that,” she muttered at the end of the lesson. “You’re paying him, aren’t you?”

“That’s the whole point, darling. This island is full of people …” – she almost said rich people, but stopped herself – “who pay others to shout at them. Personal trainers, and so on. There are hundreds of them.”

Clover did not come to watch the second lesson, which took place the next afternoon, in that crucial hour before evening fell when the temperature was right for activities that involved exertion. The coach was impressed with the progress they had made and shouted less; her backhand, he said, was improving and would obviously get stronger with practice. At the end of the lesson, she made arrangements for the next session and then went into the club house for a shower.

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