A friendship that crossed continents and lasted years

But it was a genuine friendship, with a past, a present, and a future, something far removed from life on the tennis circuit. In the world of professional tennis, week after week, year after year, players face each other across the net. Points are scored any way you can get them, using any weakness — your opponent’s feeble backhand, his insipid second serve, or his foundering  relationship — to win. Tennis is a physical game, sure, but at the top professional level with big prize money and even more lucrative endorsements on the line, it’s far more mental. So little is shared, and no one talks. No one gives up the game.

Week after week, women like me who traveled the  circuit — the wives, the girlfriends, the  groupies — checked each other out from across hotel lobbies and players’ lounges. We also kept score. Who had the biggest diamond, the biggest hair, and whose partner landed the biggest paycheck at the end of the week. Those  were the constants. In that world of fast serves and even faster lifestyles, women came and went. The players knew who had the hottest girlfriend or, in the case of some guys, who had the most women. One week it was Allison, next week Julia, after that who knew, who cared. Your real  friends — like the real  world — were very far away.

“Ginger, hey, Ginger, want a cuppa tea?” John, our host, asked, bringing me back to the bush.

We walked onto a large wooden deck fi tted into the trees with the riverbed far below.

“Oh yeah, great.” I accepted a cup of rooibos, or bush tea, and a chunk of what looked like stale bread.

I bit into the bread; the power of the crunch turned heads and nearly broke a tooth. Kevin didn’t say a word. He dipped his rusk into his tea and it melted in his mouth. I stepped away from the small group of game rangers and looked below at the pools that dotted the sand and the birds that fl uttered between the reeds. The air was crisp, and the sound of silence infused with laughter echoed across the riverbed.

This was the bush. Peace, quiet, mystery, and an almost tangible magic. I’d seen pictures in National Geographic of elephants walking across vast open plains and watched a documentary film on lion behavior in South-West Africa, but those images, though moving, were one-or two-dimensional. Now I could feel the roughness of the earth, smell the richness of the rivers, almost taste life and death. It was fertile and raw, wild and ancient, and I couldn’t have been further away from Richmond.

We finished our tea and began a tour around camp. It was clear that John was justly proud of his home. Londolozi was once a family farm, but John, along with his brother Dave and his wife, Shan, transformed it into a five-star experience in ecotourism long before anyone called it that. The Varty family were widely respected and emulated in the conservation world for their practice of reclaiming land, stopping illegal hunting, and providing jobs to members of the impoverished local communities. We stopped outside a chalet where thick duvets and natural fabrics mixed with African art and unabashed luxury.

John grinned at me and said, “You can have this room or you can sleep outside the camp, away from everyone, if you want.”

Kevin looked amused and I wondered, Is this a test?

I laughed, unsure of the right answer, but the thought of no electricity, no toilet, and plenty of animals with big sharp teeth sent a chill down my spine. Power lurking behind the trees wasn’t restricted to the pages of a book now; it was palpable.

“I think we’ll sleep inside.”

It didn’t matter. I hardly slept at all. Lion roars, hippo snorts, and owls screeching provided the audio backdrop to a physical yearning to get outside. My eyes picked up the slightest movement; my ears heard every twig snap, every alarm call. I was entranced by the bush, and when I saw a leopard for the first time, I was gone. Diamonds, rubies,  emeralds — there was nothing more stunning in the world than her deep green eyes. In them I found the beauty, the tension, and the power of the bush. She was at once enticing and threatening, gorgeous and dangerous. As she disappeared back into the thicket, I felt these natural extremes touch a deep, primal place in my soul. I felt as if I belonged here, and oddly, though it was Kevin who’d introduced me to the bush that he loved, this feeling of belonging wasn’t tied to him. It felt unique, mine alone, a feeling that remained with me long after we left Africa.

Whenever possible, Kevin and I returned to the African bush, but our life together revolved around the very unnatural world of the tennis circuit. During the infrequent weeks when I  wasn’t traveling on the tour with him, I went home to visit my family, but there was rarely an opportunity to see Sara or my other old friends. No sooner had I landed in Richmond than I was back on the phone, using Kevin’s calling card to make plans to pick up my prepaid ticket at the airport to join him again. Indoors, outdoors, hard courts or grass, the tournaments melted into one another. Off the courts, life was full of moments I could never have imagined when Sara and I had shared our childhood dreams.

In Tokyo a charming representative from Cartier, complete with gold cuff links and a thick French accent, laid out three watches in front of me on the table. “Please, Ginger, would you select one?” In Montreal, between matches, I wandered the streets of the old quarter alone, returning to the courts in time to watch Kevin play. In Melbourne, alone on the sidelines, I cheered as Kevin reached the finals of another Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open. Back in South Africa, I was asked to model — all five feet four inches of me, blue eye makeup and pink cheeks, hair teased and the spring wardrobe prepared and presented as a gift. And there was the prospect of another, even better present.

“Gin, what if I gave you a fabulous  ring — say, three  carats — but then something happened between us. What would you do?” Kevin spoke quietly, not looking at me but gazing out into the distance, across one of the largest, deepest ravines in South Africa.

Below, between the cliffs, a black eagle soared on thermals. His words hung in the air. I shifted closer, resting my head on his shoulder; the breeze blew my hair around his neck.

“Don’t worry. I’d give you back one and a half carats.”

A near-perfect ending to another African holiday.

So many times I’d wanted to call home, to giggle with Sara about seeing myself on page one of newspapers, to laugh about nearly plowing down Faye Dunaway on the steps at Wimbledon, or to share the giddy feeling of riding through the streets of London in a Rolls-Royce while trying to act blasé. I also wanted to know what was happening in her life. Was she happy? Was the search for a good story as rewarding as the search for true love? Had she found her ticket out of Richmond?  Were we still friends, or would the outside perceptions of our lives once again keep us apart? I wanted to reconnect, but the time was never right. Morning in England meant the middle of the night in the U.S. In most places I was too  jet-lagged to even begin to figure out the time difference. Then too much time passed. Months rolled into years and I wondered if my old friends remembered me as part of their present, or just their past. I never called and then I wondered if anyone would answer if I did.

Excerpted from "The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship" by Sara James and Ginger Mauney. Copyright 2007 by Sara James and Ginger Mauney. Published by HarperCollins Publishers. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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