The new book Ace, Marvel, Spy by author Jenni Walsh tells the story of the '30s tennis star, Wonder Woman comic editor and WWII spy Alice Marble. An exclusive expert is below, courtesy of HarperCollins.
July 19, 1930
British Columbia Clay Court Championships
Alice growled deep in her throat, from both pain and frustration. She’d won the first set of the match. Her opponent had taken the second, which swayed the game’s momentum in the other player’s favor. Now they were going into a third and final set after a ten-minute break.
At a limp, Alice followed her opponent off the court and toward the dressing room. She didn’t know the other player’s name. Not because Alice thought herself above the girl. In fact, it was the opposite. Alice’s opponent was spit and polish. Wearing a uniform Alice drooled over, which made her own middy blouse and long white pleated skirt appear frumpy. The other girl was likely born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a top-of-the-line racquet in her hand. Alice didn’t know her opponent’s name because whether it was Jane or Judy or Jennifer, it wouldn’t have meant a lick to Alice. At only seventeen years old, but more importantly, having played for only two years, Alice was too wet behind the ears to know the who’s who of tennis.
In fact, she was too new to know much of anything about tennis. She only picked up a racquet to begin with because her oldest brother, Dan, insisted it was more ladylike than playing baseball with the boys.
“You can hit a tennis ball just as hard as a baseball,” Dan reasoned.
Alice could.
With her first swing, she fell in love with tennis. She became obsessed with the satisfying thunk of the ball striking her racquet. How rewarding it was when her timing was on and she hit it perfectly. Or when the ball went exactly where she wanted it to go.
More than anything, Alice coveted being in control.
She glanced again at her opponent. The other girl was chatting with her coach, strategizing while changing into a new game blouse.
Alice sat alone in the dressing room. Her shirt stuck to her with sweat.
Feeling inferior was an emotion all too real to Alice off the court. But put her on a court . . . now, that was the great equalizer. It didn’t matter that Alice’s background was humbler. Both girls had a racquet, the same out-of-bound lines, and a net to hit the ball over. At the end of the match, whoever played best won.
Alice so badly wanted that to be her. The biggest problem she faced going into the third set: her heels were on fire. Which, frankly, made being the better player damn near impossible. She blew out a breath and tucked her short blonde hair behind her ears, repositioning on the bench, seething in pain. A moment later, another person dropped beside her.
“Miss Marble?”
She nodded to the man.
“Let me have a look at those feet of yours.”
“You’re a doctor? You look like one.”
It was the white hair, bushy eyebrows. The stethoscope around his neck also helped.
“Thank you, I suppose,” he said with a smile. “Now, off with your shoes.”
“It won’t be pretty,” Alice warned him.
“I once drained an abscess as big as my hand.”
Gingerly she removed her battered shoes. Alice’s socks already had holes from overuse. Now they were also bloodied. While she removed them, the doctor made a clucking sound. When he set his eyes on her bare skin, he sucked in a breath through his teeth.
“Sweetie,” he started, stopped. He shook his head. “You’ve been playing for days with blisters, haven’t you?”
At this point, the days had run together. But it was the finals of the British Columbia Clay Court Championships, and Alice had played three rounds, a quarterfinal, and a semifinal to get here.
Frankly, she still couldn’t believe the Northern California Tennis Association invited her to go as their representative. Yes, she’d won a few junior tournaments to get on their radar. But she was just a kid. A kid without a coach or tennis club. Without a sponsor and all the fancy equipment. Without any real tennis knowledge besides to hit the ball as hard as she could when it was blasted over the net at her.
Originally Alice almost had to reject the invitation. An answer she would’ve delivered through tears. Her family, now that Dad had been gone a few years, barely had the money to buy new socks, let alone send her to another country, even with the tennis association giving her a stipend of seventy-five dollars to go toward her expenses. She didn’t have the heart to ask her ma for the rest. Instead, Alice did the odd job. Jobs, really. And she sold her old glove and bat. Still, she’d come up short.
Then a mysterious envelope arrived in the mail—no sender, hence the mystery—with three twenty-dollars bills inside. With that very generous donation, the measly amount Alice had earned, and the association’s stipend, she’d been able to make the trip north.
And now that she was at the Jericho Club, she couldn’t blow it. She’d come too far and still had so much to prove. There was just that little problem that she could barely walk, let alone run.
“Can you fix me up, Doctor?”
He pressed his lips together. “Miss Marble, your blisters are infected, badly. I’m surprised you’ve made it this long. And as a medical professional, I am bound to tell you that it’s unsafe to continue playing.”
“I just need enough bandaging to get me through this last set. Can you do that?”
To prove a point, he gently pressed gauze to her heel. Alice cringed and tears sprang to her eyes.
Someone shouted a warning that the match would resume in two minutes. She rolled her neck, feeling defeated, feeling angry, feeling like she was going to let down everyone who believed in her.
Truth be told, Alice didn’t know where the idea came from—a stroke of brilliance, perhaps—but she asked the good doctor if he had any scissors in his bag of tricks.
He did.
Without a minute to spare, she hacked at the heels of her shoes, cutting out a square shape in both.
The doctor’s bushy eyebrows were sky-high.
“Tape?” Alice asked him.
It was the best she could think of to keep on her backless footwear.
“Well, I’ll be,” the doctor said, shaking his head as she wrapped the tape in figure eights around her ankles and the bottoms of her shoes. Alice hoped that response meant respect as opposed to thinking her a foolish kid.
All she could think was, Well, I’ll be finishing these games, this set, and this match.
Buy a copy of Ace, Marvel, Spy at HarperCollins.com
