Free Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley

least protected, there turned up on the scene this Viennese biologist called Kammerer who appeared to claim once more that Lamarck was probably right - in certain circumstances parents could, yes, be shown to transmit by heredity to their offspring characterics which they had acquired during their lifetimes.
    Kammerer was this thin man with a high forehead and brushed-back hair; he had come on to our lawn and had kissed my mother's hand: my father was banging his tennis racket against his leg.
    This was on a Sunday afternoon; there were the men in blazers and white flannels on the lawn. They were playing croquet; at any moment they might be playing leap-frog. Dr Kammerer was looking round the garden as if he were sizing up possible escape routes; or perhaps manoeuvres for survival on this strange planet.

    My father said 'Do you play tennis?'
    Dr Kammerer said 'I sometimes play.'
    My father said 'I can lend you a pair of shoes.'
    Now I knew about my father's ways of playing tennis: he used a tennis court as some sort of battle-ground on which to engage with the people (and these seemed to be most people) against whom he felt aggression. He was, I suppose, quite a good player for his age; he put great energy into his game; he would serve and rush to the net; he would leap to and fro volleying; he would prance backwards towards the baseline slashing at high balls as if they were seagulls or vultures attacking him. Sometimes I would be his partner in a foursome and it seemed to be his aim, at the net, never to let a ball reach me. Once there was a very high lob and my father came staggering back; it was obviously my ball; I tried to get to it; my father and I collided and he fell on top of me. I remember the bright amused look in his eye as people ran up to us as if he might have done me some injury.
    Now Dr Kammerer was saying 'Oh I don't need any shoes!'
    My father said 'You can't play in those.'
    Dr Kammerer said 'I will play in bare feet.'
    He sat on the grass and took off his shoes. My mother watched him. When he looked up he seemed to wink at my mother.
    Then he took off his jacket and jumped up and down on his toes. He had trousers that were much narrower than the trousers of my father's friends. He looked elegant. Trousers at that time were apt to be like the screens behind which one undressed in a doctor's consulting-room.
    My father said 'Well I suppose you'll need a racket!'
    Dr Kammerer said 'Or shall I use my bare hands!' He smiled, not quite catching my mother's eye.
    She said 'You don't have to play, you know!'
    He said 'Oh I think I do!'
    In fact Kammerer played tennis well. But he seemed to treat it not so much as a game - an activity in which someone had to win and someone to lose - as an exercise in practising some quite solitary proficiency. He stood halfway up the court near the service line and played most of his shots from there; he did not rush to the net nor come prancing back; he stayed roughly where he was and when balls came near him he volleyed or half-volleyed them for the most part expertly, and when balls did not come near him he turned and watched his partner solicitously. When it came to his turn to serve

    he seemed reluctant and even slightly bewildered about this; but then he pulled off some quick cutting serves that went into the corners of his opponents' court and were quite often aces. He appeared to be somewhat apologetic about these: but not too much, as if he were anxious lest this might seem condescending.
    My father on the other side of the net heaved and leaped and dashed about like a seal: I thought - Kammerer is a keeper at a zoo and he is throwing my father fish. When the score had reached something like six all my father said 'You've played quite a bit!'
    Dr Kammerer said 'In my time.'
    My father said 'Shall we play sudden death?'
    Dr Kammerer looked to where my mother and I were sitting, and where Watson was coming out with tea-things on to the lawn. He put his hand on his heart.