Photograph by Krithika Varagur.
Hangovers announced themselves on the wan faces on the District line to SW19 on the first Sunday of Wimbledon. Maybe I was projecting. It was a shame, people noted in low tones, that all the British players were now out. A pair of men splitting a salmon-colored broadsheet wondered which BBC presenter was at the center of a recent grooming scandal. “Last night was a proper, proper … if you saw the amount of tequila we were putting away,” said one handsome man, sitting between two heavily made-up girls. All of us filed out, in no particular rush, at Southfields. I went into Costa for an iced Americano before my friend arrived.
“Careful, dear,” tutted an elderly woman, gesturing to my wide-open tote, the only bag I had in London. “I have no spatial awareness at all,” I admitted, surveying some almonds, a packable quilted jacket, and a copy of Persuasion, all ripe for the picking. “It’s not a rough crowd, of course,” she said, adjusting a georgette shawl, that was the same pearl color as her fluffy hair. “These days, you just never know …” She trailed off. We’d realized, I think simultaneously, that we were in our first queue of the day at Wimbledon, which isn’t just the world’s oldest tennis tournament but a pageant of exuberant restraint, where orderly lines and enclosures have the quality of rites.
Louis arrived, wearing a gray wool suit, and we submitted ourselves to the flow of the crowd. A specter was haunting the weekend outfits—the specter of the Italian player Jannik Sinner’s huge Gucci duffel bag. Logomania was back, all around us: Goyard and Chanel bags, giant plastic Prada sunglasses, even several pairs of those Obama-era Tory Burch medallion flats. I complimented the sturdy unmarked sweater of a teacher from Somerset, who had, in recent years, become both a Wimbledon regular and a self-published author of over two dozen books on the pedagogy of drama. “I was actually going to wear my jumper printed with strawberries,” she said, “but we had a mishap with the dog this morning.”
At the corporate suite that housed our tickets, I asked a three-time seasonal employee if he’d ever encountered misbehavior at Wimbledon. Not really, he said. Had anyone ever, like, passed out? No. Had he ever heard an ambulance called? He jogged his memory for a moment, but also no. “I think,” he conjectured, “that people just sip on their drinks all day, but it’s a long day, so they end up absolutely fine.”
