Competitive Singles at Frinton Tennis Club

There are few places I like better than Frinton Tennis Club. I have been a member off and on since I was a teenager, over 30 years.

The thatched clubhouse, beautifully prepared grass courts, the wooden dance floor in the ballroom and the black and white photographs of endless summers hark back to a more genteel age.

And the one thing that is a feature of all the best clubs - healthy competition both on and off the court.

Not that I am at all competitive of course.

I divorced several years ago from John but had heard on the grapevine that he was engaged to a lady called Elody who I had seen at the club but had not met.

Elody was several years younger than me.

She and John had surprisingly invited me to a dinner to celebrate this happy event. Some of their friends from the club - who were obviously my old friends too - John’s work colleagues and Elody’s immediate family.

John had phoned a couple of weeks previously to invite me.

He was a bit sheepish and not sure of the protocol and whether I would be OK with it all but apparently Elody was keen to meet me.

If Elody was keen then fine by me – free food and drink and a chat to some old friends. I was a member of the Tennis Club after all.

Besides, the divorce had been very amicable. By that stage neither of us loved the other, the children were off our hands and after nearly 30 years we both felt it was time to move on before ill health and lethargy trapped us long term.

From what I’d seen Elody was undoubtedly attractive - in a small, slightly rounded, bottle-blonde way.

Mind you, where John would have said she was bubbly I perhaps would have said simpering, where John would extol her tactile nature, I might have ventured clingy and in John’s eyes her charming innocence might , for me, verge on a sort of bland idiocy.

Who was I to judge. John was a nice, charming man and I really didn’t begrudge him his relationship with her as much as be slightly surprised by it.

John and I had played doubles with some success in our younger years and there was a photograph of me competing in the Ladies Singles back in the day on the clubhouse wall somewhere.

I had been a competent player, solid ground strokes quite athletic around the court. The photographer had, rather unkindly, caught me looking extremely competitive. Determined jaw and steely blue eyes forcing a cross court volley. Though obviously not in the picture I remember it nicked the line for game.

Elody, of course, was a non-playing social member.

After the dinner and speeches in which John graciously acknowledged my presence and quietly corrected Elody after her apology for the temperature of the Gazpacho, she made her way over to speak to me.

‘I don’t think we’ve met yet’ she said. With a slightly patronising tilt of the head and wan smile she held out her hand to shake mine ostentatiously displaying a very large diamond and sapphire engagement ring.

‘It was John’s mother’s you know’.

I did of course know it was John’s mother’s as he had once given the ring to me.

John had asked for the ring back after our divorce and for some reason this had rankled. Maybe I felt I had earned it.

No matter. The ring had deserved a proper clean before I returned it to him. One of the sapphires looked as though it was working loose so I took it to Jones the Jewellers in Colchester to have it looked at.

‘The value is in the cut and the size of the stones, the setting itself is pretty poor but the stones are good and reasonably valuable – but of course the true value of these things is in the emotional attachment to them’ Mr Jones had ventured.

‘Of course’ I said.  ‘Exactly how much might the stones be worth?’

Jones peered closely at them through his eyepiece and measured them. ‘The diamond maybe £6,000 and the two sapphires £1500 each. I can re-fix the sapphire but the setting is almost worthless. You could always replace the stones with paste and use them in something more appropriate to their value’

‘We see a lot of these things – rather good stones in rather poor settings’

I remembered his phrase as I circulated chatting to the random collection of John’s boring colleagues, Elody’s relations and the one or two of John’s and my old friends who had clearly jumped ship to his and Elody’s circle.

Around ten-thirty I went to politely thank my hosts and leave.

‘Congratulations Elody’ I said ‘it is a lovely ring you should have it valued’ then ‘but of course the true value is in your emotional attachment to it’.

Elody seemed a bit discomfited and pulled John closer, pathetically nuzzling his neck.

Maybe it was just the obvious ease with which I had chatted and laughed with what were once my, but were now her, friends.

Or just an urge to protect her territory.

Who knows. Who cares.

As I made my way out of the dining room, past the bar and to the exit I noticed the photograph of a much younger me on the wall.

I stopped and as I peered at it I could see, reflected in the glass of the frame, an older version of the young woman in the photograph with the same strong determined jaw and steely eyes.

I smiled at my reflection and could not but admire how the light caught a large diamond pendant and a pair of beautiful sapphire earrings that I had recently commissioned from Jones of Colchester especially for the occasion.

Sometimes, much like Elody’s soup, small acts of revenge are dishes best served cold.