From Strength to Strength Page 2

  In my early childhood I remember riding my little red dinky along the upstairs hall. The hotel was on a corner and my nursery was the last room at the end of the curved hallway.

  After Dad sold the hotel we lived in a house for a short time and then, when I was five, we moved to ‘Halcyon’ in Lakemba. This was where I grew up and where my love for tennis was born.

  At a very early age Mum gave me a lightweight lady’s racquet, and although it was a long time before I could hold it up with one hand, I would race around the court dragging it along and swinging at the ball. By the time I had the strength to hold it in the air, I had worn through the wooden frame.

  My mother was a top district player, and no doubt if she had not chosen to marry and become a mother could have gone on to far more. My dad was also very good and my brother Warren was climbing the success ladder in tennis and soccer very fast. They all had a very definite hand in guiding me along my tennis career path.

  My days revolved around tennis. I ran to school for training and ran home to have enough time for my chores and more practice before it was too dark. My dad made me a practice board and he marked out twelve-inch squares and painted a number in each one. He would call out the number and I would have to hit the ball into that square. I played tennis with anyone who had the patience to play with me. The more they ran me around the court, the harder I tried and the more I liked it. I was so dirty at the end of the day Mum said I looked like the court had been mopped with me.

  We had four courts in the garden and all weekend the best teams in the district A Grade division played there. In one year, seven of the eight teams in the A Grade division for that district had their home court at Halcyon.

  The courts were set in a beautiful rose garden, with over one hundred rose bushes. The rose garden bordered and crossed a long stretch of lawn which finally finished in front of the courts. There were large shade trees and two wooden tiered stands at the edge of the lawn. Next to the stands people sat on the lawns having drinks and afternoon tea. A radio and loud-speaker broadcast the Saturday horse races and the Sunday cricket. Our courts were side by side with the local lawn bowling club and all weekend bowlers and tennis players wandered back and forth listening to the races, chatting, and watching tennis. It was not unusual to have fifty or more people, other than the players, watching the tennis and sipping tea on the lawn under the shade of the plum trees.

  When I look back now I realise I was privileged to have a normal childhood—my parents were loving and caring and I was part of a large robust family—something I took for granted in those days. I had four older brothers who made my life hell most of the time, and one sister, the eldest, who saved me from my brothers many times when Mum or Dad were not around.

  One very precious memory from my early childhood is helping my father cut roses for the local florist. The roses had to be cut in the early morning when the dew was still on the petals. If they had cost what they do today, we would have been multimillionaires. Our house always had the smell of roses during the summer and they are still my favourite flower.

  Other special times were the winter nights in front of the open fire, getting warm enough to brave the freezing dash to my bed on the sleeping porch. I would sit on the floor between Mum and Dad and he would scratch my back and head, and many a night I would fall asleep as they talked. Thinking back now, I realise he talked constantly to Mum but very little to anyone else, until he retired—then you couldn’t stop him, he talked to everyone.

  As a very young child, I listened to the horse racing on the radio on Saturdays. Apart from being fun, it was also very profitable for me. If Poppa’s horse won he would pay me five shillings from his ‘bank’ or the ‘bankroll’ for barracking it home.

  However, on the days when he lost not only the day’s winnings, but also the reserve ‘roll’ things were grim. I would then have to soften Mum up for the Monday request to borrow from her ‘bank’, which caused endless and amazing happenings. We would keep up a happy front until Monday morning when the crunch would come and Poppa would have to ask for a loan. In those days stress levels were not monitored but I think the loss weekends would have registered ten out of ten on the stress scale. The strain was considerable.

  I think Mum was a bit unfair as Dad always gave her money for her bank when he won, but she then considered it hers and was reluctant to part with it. Dad on the other hand looked at it as something like a revolving fund. I suppose, in a final audit, Dad would have had the better deal with Mum financing many of his Saturday betting flings.

  The biggest trauma of those days was saving my butter rations from my brothers. As many people know, during the Second World War all food was rationed as Australia sent most of its produce to England. My earliest memories of food are rationed beef, lots of rabbit, too much shark, and one inch squares of butter, three times a day. The lengths I went to to save my butter rations from my brothers were no doubt when I first began to develop reserves of resourcefulness and determination. Most mealtimes found me sitting under the table in the kitchen eating a piece of bread spread with my precious butter ration. My brothers had to pass Mum to get to me.

  As well as the butter rations, I also remember from that time the air raid warnings. When the sirens started, Mum would huddle us all under a big old desk with stacks of books piled on top. All the windows were covered with heavy drapes as no light was allowed to show. Light wardens patrolled the streets and shouted at any house that showed lights. We spent many a night under the desk fighting and pushing, with me always coming off second best. Air raid warnings were not at all conducive to developing a loving relationship between brothers and a little sister.

  Eventually, after a few planes actually came over Sydney, people were advised to build air raid shelters as constant attacks seemed to be inevitable. Our shelter was built, or dug, next to the tennis shed tuck shop under a camphor laurel tree. It consisted of a hole in the ground about ten feet square with steps dug into the dirt and a domed corrugated tin roof.

  So now we had to run down the garden and into the hole. Personally, I thought the desk and books were a much better and more pleasant form of protection. But the theory was that the bombs would be dropped on houses so the shelter had to be far away from the house. For good measure Mum put the shelter under the tree. Of course when it rained water simply poured in, making it unusable. So on rainy nights it was back to the desk and books, a much better alternative to slopping around in the dark and mud, running the risk of catching pneumonia.

  I really do not know how Mum got us all through the war. Air raids in the middle of the night, sick children, rationing, fighting children, more air raids. Mum also had a thing about lightning, so whenever there was a storm, it was back under the desk again. Between air raids and storms, I spent most of my childhood nights during the war under the desk. I have no idea when Mum slept.

  Dad left all the disciplining to Mum. I remember him quietly watching all our activities, but only stepping in when he thought it necessary—or when he could get the boys to settle their differences with boxing gloves. Dad had been a good amateur boxer and was very keen to train the boys, but Mum would have none of it. She would say, ‘I did not raise healthy sons for you to put in the boxing ring and have what brains they have knocked out of their heads.’ But Dad never missed an opportunity when Mum was busy or out of hearing distance. He would immediately put the boxing gloves on the two offenders, take out his stopwatch, and read them the Queens-berry rules. I do believe he even went so far as to provoke arguments in order to referee a good fight.

  He had a lot to do with the physical side of our upbringing. We slept on an open sleeping porch with sliding windows for bad weather. I remember at night he would check each child to make sure he or she was breathing through the nose. If someone’s mouth was open, he would wake that child up and tell him or her to breathe through the nose. He would flatten our ears, straighten our arms and legs and tuck the blanket in all around. When he reached me he wo
uld take my head in his hands and kiss me on the forehead. He did not kiss the boys.

  Every Saturday morning he would line us up and give out doses of senna tea. What we didn’t do to get out of that little proceeding defies description.

  On Sundays, having just recovered from the Saturday morning senna tea and Saturday night festivities, he would make us work our way through some exercise routine from the Sunday morning paper. We would moan and groan through page after page with Dad enthusiastically calling out, ‘Stomachs in, breathe deeply, exhale . . .’ When he reached the end of the article we were allowed to stagger back to bed. As we drifted back into a peaceful sleep, we could hear him reading the rest of the newspaper, page by page, to Mum in the kitchen. It was fortunate Dad’s work occupied most of his time, or we would all have been total wrecks, including Mum.

  I suppose the first indication of any business talent occurred when I was nine. All my brothers played football more than once a week, so their boots constantly needed cleaning. I agreed to clean them at the rate of threepence per pair. When it was time to pay, one reneged on his agreement. I asked nicely for my money and he told me to go away. I went to arbitration but she was busy with dinner and the organisation of a charity affair. I sat and thought about this situation for a long time, and came to several conclusions. First, I had done a good job and therefore I should be paid. Second, if my brother didn’t pay the amount he had agreed, he would never pay again, thereby depriving me of future income. Third, if arbitration would not help me when I presented a fair and just complaint, there was only one course left open to me—I would have to deal with the problem myself. I decided I would have to make my brother realise that not honouring his agreement would be more trouble than it was worth. But how was I, a mere nine-year-old, going to achieve this? Brute strength was out—I didn’t have it—so it came down to cunning.

  It was Saturday night and the house was abuzz with all my brothers busy preparing for the Saturday night’s festivities. Having laid my trap for revenge, I stayed very close to Mum, something like a second skin. As the howl went up, I moved in closer and closed my eyes. My brother came storming into the room.

  ‘Look what that little brat has done!’ He held out his shoes, which I had filled with honey. Mum turned to me and just looked.

  ‘Well you wouldn’t help and he owed me that money and he reneged on his agreement!’

  ‘Did you agree to pay her for cleaning your boots?’

  ‘Well, sort of,’ he replied feebly.

  ‘Well, did you or did you not agree?’

  ‘She didn’t clean them properly, that’s why I didn’t pay her.’

  ‘The other boys paid,’ I shot in. ‘You ask them, Mum. I did a good job.’

  ‘Pay her!’ said arbitration. I jumped around laughing over my victory.

  ‘What about my shoes?’ wailed my brother.

  ‘You, young lady, will pay for the honey.’ That stopped me laughing. It not only wiped out my gain, but also the money from the three other pairs of shoes.

  My brother started laughing and hopping around as tears streamed down my face.

  My father walked into the room and said, ‘You can stop laughing, because you borrowed my shoes, so you will pay for a new pair and you can keep that pair.’ That certainly stopped my brother’s laughter.

  The case was closed but very important business procedures had been established. First, my brother learned that if he had agreed to pay me it was too much trouble not to. Second, it did not pay for me to take matters into my own hands, better to just wear arbitration down. Negotiations from that point on were fairly reasonable; arbitration was called on a few times, but no more honey. If arbitration was busy cooking, I would just hide something that belonged to the offender until he paid or arbitration stopped cooking long enough to settle the dispute.

  Somewhere in amongst all of this, the war ended and I didn’t have to fight for my butter any more. I also became more involved in my tennis career, and I didn’t have time to clean football boots. This change went a long way towards establishing more harmonious relationships between my brothers and myself.

  In 1952 I was one of the junior players picked to be ballgirl for the Davis Cup—Australia versus America at White City. The junior boys were ballboys for the singles and the junior girls for the doubles. One of my great claims to fame at that early age was when Pancho Gonzales (whose serve was calculated to be over one hundred miles per hour) aced Frank Sedgman and the ball hit me in the solar plexus. I went down like a stone and Pancho jumped the net, rushed to my side, scooped me up and carried me to the first-aid room. My dizziness cleared to see his anxious face and the first-aid officer looking at me. When I was declared ‘out of danger’ he went back to the doubles match. I was detained under observation. When he finished the match he came back to check that I was alright. During the rest of the Cup he always spoke to me whenever he saw me, and I was the envy of all the juniors at White City.

  School took a second place to tennis, but Mum made it clear that there would be no tennis unless my schoolwork was completed in an above-average manner.

  At fourteen I was picked to represent New South Wales in the under-fifteen schoolgirls team. A great honour for my school and me, so I was allowed ample time for tennis practice by my school. Mum was not so cooperative and I found myself doing double time on both tennis and study.

  I topped my year in physiology, my next love to tennis. At the end of third year I had a choice: tennis or more study, and if I could keep up the marks, study to be a doctor? My one and only dream was to win Wimbledon, so of course I chose tennis. At fifteen it looked much easier and far more glamorous than seven years of study. But I was not to get off that easily. Mum insisted I be qualified in some field that I could, as she put it, fall back on. She would have liked to see me go on to study to be a doctor but she knew my study habits only too well and I think she realised that another seven years was not for me. Looking back now, I wish she had pushed me a little harder. Still to this day I find I would rather read the latest medical discoveries before anything, and have always loved and still would love to do research.

  So it was more study. Not the intense study required to pass the grades for a doctor, but for the ‘something to fall back on’. There were years of typing, shorthand, office procedure, filing, and business principles, all of which I found extremely boring. However, I still had the time I needed for tennis.

  I was also enrolled in the Pat Woodley School of Modelling and Deportment to put the finishing touches to Mum’s training. I cannot remember the number of girls in that particular class but we were soon all friends. We had loads of fun learning to behave as young ladies should. We walked around with books on our heads trying to look graceful—most of us looked as if we were about to be attacked from all sides. I received a diploma to say that, to the satisfaction of the school, I had acquired all the social graces necessary to pass as a well-groomed young lady. In those days it was necessary to have a diploma to prove this. During class our behaviour was extremely prim and proper, but if Miss Woodley could have seen us dashing around the streets of Sydney in our short lunchbreak, she would not have been amused.

  All in all, the course has proved to be a bonus in my life. It certainly stood me in good stead when I walked across the stage at the Regent in 1990. Who would have dreamed that those madcap months of training back in 1950 would pay off so many years later?

  I did a few swimsuit and sportswear modelling jobs but the requirements for a fashion model were tall, slim and no bust. With a thirty-six-inch bustline I was definitely not fashion material so it was fortunate that tennis was my love and not modelling.

  Boys entered my life around this period but tennis still occupied most of my time, so most of the boys I found myself swooning over were tennis players or athletes.

  However, the confidence and style I had on the tennis court did not extend to boys. With them I was awkward, shy and nervous, everywhere except on the tennis court. Eve
n my confidence-building deportment course did not help in this area. I can now smile at those heart-wrenching situations which, at regular intervals, made life impossible to continue, but then it was agonising.

  One heart throb was a cyclist with his heart set on the Olympics. He adored my leg muscles! He said if he had my leg muscles he would be world champion. Not exactly what a young girl dreams of hearing but he really was a gorgeous-looking boy and the fact that most of the girls were clamouring to get a date with him made me feel quite smug—at least I had his adoring attention.

  However, obviously my leg muscles were not enough because the following season he fell madly in love with my doubles partner, and she didn’t have any muscles at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  1955-1959

  At nineteen I got engaged. All my girlfriends were. Ben and I drove with friends to a surf carnival down the south coast from Sydney. Ben’s parents had recently bought him a Triumph TR-2 sports car, and on the way back up the coast road the engine finally clocked up two thousand miles, meaning the engine was now ‘run-in’ and could be driven at more than thirty miles per hour without it seizing. So Ben put the car through its paces.

  One of the front tyres blew on a tight bend. The car went into a slide, the back skidded into a cement mileage post and the car spun up into the air like a top. I was thrown out across the road into the oncoming traffic. The car then flipped over, trapping Ben underneath.

  I do not remember much of the crash. I was turning around to see how far the lights of the other cars were behind when everything started to whirl in dizzying circles. When my vision cleared, I was on my back in the middle of the road with the bumper bar of a car almost over my head, and a nice man patiently telling the driver to back up. I think the driver was in more shock than me because there was no way he was going to get back in his car. Finally a few men pushed the car to the side of the road.