Leonard's Sister

A short story about Tennis And Yachts and Leather, Paper, Bronze and Gold

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

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After last week’s Audio Fest today’s offering is in the form of an old fashioned story.

There will be more audio of course, and some more weird and wonderful collaborations with the excellent Caleb Fawcett, but this week you have to do the hard work yourself by employing the ancient method of running your eyes along the sentences while listening to the voice in your head!

I was going to say a few things about this story but I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s best if you just dive in and discover whatever you discover and bring those gems to the surface to share in the comments.

Enjoy!

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1.

When I was younger I played a lot of tennis. I’d seen McEnroe losing his shit live on the BBC like someone had thrown a spanner into the works and I was hooked.

I came from a family finger-tipping the poverty line so I taught myself tennis from a book. I played kids on broken concrete courts and entered tennis tournaments advertised in magazines. Rich kids would turn up in cars with coaches and bags full of rackets and I’d thrash them over and over again. I had natural talent. I played county. I played national. I just kept winning.

That’s how I met Leonard. I’d easily outplayed him and as we shook hands at the net he asked me to be his doubles partner. I thought, huh, smart move.

Even though I was hanging about with well off tennis people, I didn’t want to be like them. I’d spent my short lifetime suffering the consequences of being empty handed but these tennis people seemed grotesque in some strange way I couldn’t put my finger on. It was obvious money was the problem and not the solution. It was obvious they’d have been off without it.

I didn’t care about winning either, which was another problem because so much of life, and tennis, seemed to be about clawing your way to the top at all any cost. Maybe I intuitively understood the odds were stacked against me. Maybe I’d grown up in the wrong company but the constant cut throat nature of it all scared me because I couldn’t understand it.

So I lost interest in tennis. I kept playing but my heart wasn’t really in it. I took up the guitar and reading novels and writing poetry and smoking dope and chasing girls. I started seeing the world in more nuanced light.

Besides, being poor meant no one was paying attention. There were a few people who vaguely encouraged my so-called tennis career but there was no money invested, no club, no coaches, no sponsorship. There was just me, a racket, a pair of worn out shoes and some fantastic hand-eye coordination. So I was free to do as I pleased and nobody cared if I swerved off the tennis exit ramp.

Leonard didn’t have that choice. People were paying attention to Leonard. He had brand new shoes, countless rackets, excellent coaches and absolutely no exit ramps. Which was a shame because Leonard just didn’t have the talent. His father’s money could take him so far but no further. But Leonard’s father believed people with money were superior so winning was the only option. Leonard’s mediocrity drove him so crazy that Leonard’s father lost his mind court side over and over until he finally went bananas in the third round of the under seventeen Kent county championships and was banned for attacking an umpire.

2.

A week later Leonard invited me to his house to play on his court. His family sent a Bentley to pick me up. They lived in a mansion with a tennis court and a swimming pool and a fountain in the driveway. The tennis people I knew usually had nice houses but this place was off the scale. We played tennis and swam in the pool and ate delicious food carried to us on a tray by an older women in uniform. It looked like a uniform to me anyway.

I’d had brought some weed in my shoe so I rolled a joint and we went inside and listened to the stereo at full blast. I asked him why they had a foot washer in the bathroom and he laughed his head off trying to explain what a bidet was. I’d never even heard of a bidet.

When his sister appeared she looked right through me and asked Leonard who I was as if I couldn’t speak English. She seemed like a being from a different world almost floating above the ground.

Later, when the car dropped me home I realised I felt embarrassed the driver had seen where I lived.

3.

A few weeks later a Mercedes arrived. Leonard and his sister were in the back seat. I sat next to the driver. He didn’t say a word. Leonard’s sister took a long look at my terraced house and then a long look at me. We drove to a harbour where they kept “the yacht.” It looked like a ship out of a 1950’s Hollywood film. The housekeeper who had brought us food on a tray was on board. There was something about her smile that I couldn’t put my finger on as crew members in striped shirts started unfurling ropes and generally bustling about.

“We’re sailing to France,” Leonard said.

“He’s never been to France,” Leonard’s sister said.

I’d never been anywhere.

In Dieppe they bought white sneakers and firecrackers and wandered about saying, “oooh la la so continental” and exploded bangers under cars and still managed to look utterly bored. We went to a cafe and Leonard’s sister ordered in French. A waiter brought an ice fountain of crabs and prawns some other shellfish and a bottle of wine.

“Lobsters?” I said.

“Langoustine,” Leonard said.

Leonard’s sister said “Remind me where you two actually met?” and Leonard said “Tennis,” and his sister just slowly nodded as she sipped the splash of wine the waiter had poured.

When we left they didn’t pay, the manager just nodded and scribbled something on a pad.

On the way home I threw up Fruit de Mar into the channel. Leonard laughed and called it a homecoming. Leonard’s sister stood on the foredeck wearing Chanel sunglasses and when I glanced at her she pulled them off and casually dropped them into the sea.

4.

Leonard and I played in an Under 17’s doubles tournament the following week. His sister sat looking bored in the stands. Our opponents knew Leonard was the weak link and fired everything they had at him. We lost 6-4, 6-3. Leonard sulked exquisitely.

I didn’t see him for some weeks after that and then he turned up out of the blue one afternoon asking if I could sell him some weed. His sister was sitting in the car. When I nodded she lowered her sunglasses and stared at me and as they drove away and I stood and watched with a growing feeling of apprehension.

It was that housekeeper’s smile as I’d boarded the yacht a few weeks earlier. She could see all this was as extraordinary to me as it was humdrum to them. She looked like she was smiling at a calf frolicking toward an abattoir, her smile was a warning that said, in a civilised society none of this would matter but we don’t live in a civilised society so keep your wits about you sonny boy.

Leonard and I may have been partners on the tennis court where the rules were clear and the best player won, but in the game of life our friendship was a far more delicate affair. Leonard could trace the family’s land and wealth back to the Norman Conquest. We could trace our family all the way back to grandad. They had social capital. We had social welfare. They might not have been particularly intelligent or talented but the Leonard’s of this world don’t need to be particularly intelligent or talented because they own the rules and I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against that kind of brute inequality.

As soon as I’d sold my weed to Leonard something shifted in a way I couldn’t really understand and that housekeeper’s smile came back to haunt me.

5.

I was lying on the sofa reading Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita, the part where the devil is saying “Well, now, they’re people like any other people, they love money, but that has always been so. Mankind loves money, whatever it’s made of, leather, paper, bronze, gold.”

Just as I was wondering if it really has always been, Leonard rang to invite me to mess about on the boat again.

They arrived in a Jaguar, Leonard and his sister in the back seat, me beside the driver. I said hello to all three but they just nodded and didn’t actuality reply at all.

Funny how quickly the extraordinary becomes ordinary yet so seldom does the ordinary become extraordinary.

I boarded the yacht and the housekeeper nodded and smiled and I nodded and smiled back as if to assure myself that I’ve got it all under control thanks very much.

It was a beautiful day. The three of us lay on the bow deck sunbathing and smoking spliffs and drinking beers. Leonard’s sister listened to a walkman with a stack of tapes in a beach bag beside her.

I felt like one of those dead movie stars, Cary Grant or that French guy in Breathless, a guy playing a role of a role playing a guy, perpetually aware of the camera, always checking my angles. I could feel my newly emerging ego pushing through my old limitations, look at you man, you’re a fucking movie star!

Except I knew I wasn’t a fucking movie star. I knew I was just stowing away on Leonard’s privilege. I knew my duplicitous ego was mimicking their bored coolness merely to blend in so I just casually drank beer and smoked weed and played the movie star like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

Every now and then Leonard’s sister glanced over, not checking me out but taking me in, like an arsonist watching a house burn down. The more time I spent with the these two the more I lost my bearings. Leonard’s sister was watching my transformation as the beer and spliff and this lifestyle turned my brain into a playground. Every time she glanced over I was overwhelmed with lustful possibilities. I wasn’t so different from her, the life she was so bored by, the ridiculous abundance she accepted so casually, the wealth that so hugely eclipsed my own, the entitlement, the casual superiority, it all suddenly seemed obtainable and ordinary.

The partitions that divided up the world seemed to melt away and I found myself believing I inhabited the same planet as they did.

Then the housekeeper appeared dressed in some nautical uniform and said that Wagyu beef and truffles would be served in 15 minutes in the galley. Neither Leonard nor his sister seemed to notice and it was me that sheepishly said thank you as the housekeeper smiled neutrally and utterly ignored our inebriated state.

6.

After lunch we sat about on the deck chairs and smoked. Leonard fell asleep in the sun. The housekeeper wandered about in her usual solemn manner saying nothing, making her private judgements but telegraphing nothing more than mild disdain. I never saw Leonard or his sister actually speak to her, they hardly paid her the slightest attention, she might as well have been a ghost.

Leonard’s sister reached for the joint and took a few puffs, then she leaned over and put her hand on my shoulder. She had never touched me before. I turned to look at her.

“I’ve been watching you,” she seemed uncertain, then she said, “I want to tell you something.”

I wanted to say something movie-star-ish but I was way so far out of my depth and Leonard’s sister could see it straight away.

“How long do you think this’ll last,” she twirled her finger around and around and I knew that she meant how long did I think I could stowaway on their privilege.

I tried to pretend I didn’t understand what she meant but she just stared me down.

“How long does it usually last?” I said.

“Well, that depends,” she said.

“On what?” I said

“On you,” she said and I said nothing because I was scared what was coming next.

“Do you know,” she twirled a finger again, “the price of all this shit?”

“Millions?” I said.

“Not the fucking money,” she said. Then she turned to me and said, “The price is your soul,” and then she stared into space looking distraught, “you should keep the fuck away from us, we’re fucked up, we’ll chew you up and spit you out just for the fun of it, we can’t help ourselves, we’re angry, hateful, fucking vampires and we’ll destroy you and then we’ll hate you for letting us do it.”

I sat silently unsure what to say. I had a sudden rush of shame as if I’d been caught red handed. She was right, I was being seduced by whatever it’s made of, leather, paper, bronze, gold. They were destroying something deep in me, something proud and dignified. The were making me self conscious and embarrassed and something in me was ashamed in myself for letting them do it.

“I can have anything I want, but all I really want is for every one to suffer like I’m suffering and to feel as empty and fucked up as I feel,” she said as a tear rolled down her face.

I had no idea what to say, she looked so miserable. I just sat there like a fool.

“It’s so easy to be evil and so fucking hard to be good” she said, “I just want to destroy everything, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

I said nothing. I felt naked and embarrassed and astonished at her for pulling these words out from the shadows.

Then I heard myself saying, “Because in your world being a human isn’t enough, no one loves you for just being you, so you end up despising yourself and everyone else too and because all this,” I twirled my finger, “is an evilness that’s robbed you of your humanity and it’s destroying the world and you know that and you’re ashamed because you can’t face it and you can’t escape it and even with all your wealth and power you’re still broken and helpless,” I could feel my own tears welling as we stared at each other in mutual surprise that any of this was marching into the open.

“You seemed to want it three minutes ago,” she said.

I looked around at the plush yacht and at Leonard dozing in a stoned stupor and the housekeeper lurking on the peripheries and Leonard’s sister in her expensive sunglasses covering her tear streaked face and said, “This shit is destroying everything that’s beautiful in the world, and all this,” my hand spun around again, “all this luxury, all this feeding your insane hunger to fill the emptiness is the fucking problem, all this selfish ego driven competition to be the last one standing and I don’t know what I wanted, maybe I was just curious to peer into the dark, maybe I was being seduced by all that glitters or maybe I just wanted to be accepted by the very thing that rejected me,” I shook my head, “I don’t know but your right I shouldn’t be here. none of us should.”

Leonard stirred in his deck chair and she seemed to come around and lay back in her deckchair and took a deep puff on the spliff and closed her eyes and I could see her tears like jewels sparkling in the sunlight on her cheeks.

Then I noticed the housekeeper was staring at us and I looked away feeling naked and embarrassed and I wanted to get dressed and go home, “Your housekeeper is staring at us,” I said.

“What the fuck,” she said, “that’s not the housekeeper, that’s my mother,” and we both sat silently for a second before a kind of stupefied laughter erupted between us at the sheer idiocy of it all.

7.

A few weeks later Leonard called. I told him I was sorry but I’ve given up playing tennis, but I said I’d be happy to meet up for a game sometime. He said nothing and then he said, “Yeah, yeah, definitely, I’ll call you,” and he hung up and that was the last time I ever heard from Leonard.

I never saw Leonard’s sister again either. Our paths didn’t cross for obvious reasons but on occasion over the years I did think about her and wondered if she ever escaped her pain.

The gulf in power between the Haves and the Have Not’s got worse and worse as time passed. The world got colder and darker. The only thing that seemed to matter was leather, paper, bronze, and gold. Something important and delicate, something hard to put your finger on had broken and the powerful acted more and more like Leonard’s sister said, they wanted to destroy everything, even themselves, because it was easier to be evil than it was to be good and it was easier to destroy everything than to face up to themselves or to feel the pain of their emptiness, so they went on a rampage that they themselves didn’t even know how to stop.

Sometimes I thought of how Leonard’s sister had spoken the truth to me on that strange sunny day on their luxury yacht and I’d wondered if the whole world wasn’t trapped in some terrible film of someone else’s making with everyone pretending to be movie stars and I wondered if there was anyone who would ever come along and dare to throw a spanner into the works and set us all free.

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