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Having played for several weeks in the club Minnie van Driver was beginning to feel a little more comfortable at the table. True, she still needed recourse to her smelling salts when the bidding became too high but her card play was improving by the day. Indeed it had been over a week since she had last revoked and she was now perfectly capable of counting trumps to within a card or two. So when Sinclair Whitlands asked whether she would play a tournament at the club she accepted with just the briefest of heart palpitations.

Their first hand was played against Mr and Mrs Batarde, visitors from Louisiana whose name was a corruption of an epithet that many thought they deserved.

Minnie, who was South, found herself as declarer in the exalted contract of 7♥ and received a small spade lead. Still shaking from the auction she overcame her near swoon and studied the dummy intently. Everything looked good so long as hearts divided 3–2. She was unaware of the dreadful break in diamonds and counted 2 spades, 5 hearts, 5 diamonds, and a club.

Winning the spade lead in dummy she drew two rounds of trumps to which both opponents followed suit. Overcome by relief she claimed 13 tricks. But Mr Bastarde, East, in a silky unpleasant voice, revealed that he still had a trump outstanding. Minnie was mortified. She even knew of the outstanding trump but had neglected to specify her line of play and so the director was called.

The director, who was somewhat inexperienced and intimidated by the Bastards, ruled that Minnie had to play out the hand without drawing the outstanding trump.

So Minnie played 5 rounds of diamonds ruffing the fifth in dummy. Then she played ♣A, on which she discarded a spade, and returned to her hand with ♠A. Holding only trumps now she was allowed to play them from the top and made her contract.

Sinclair noted with great satisfaction that, had Minnie been allowed to draw trumps immediately, she would have gone down because of the 5–0 break in diamonds.

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For once Voluptua Stitts was not partnering her boy-friend Randy Hardwick. So when she came to Randy’s table her competitive spirit came to the fore and she was very much on her mettle. Sorting her hand she found

♠8 ♥A ♦985432 ♣KQJT9

Randy was North and opened the bidding with 1♥. Voluptua’s partner was her aunt Frieda who made a Michaels cue bid of 2♥ showing spades and a minor. Gordon (South) leapt to 4♥ which was a pre- emptive bid with excellent heart support. It was now Voluptua’s first opportunity to bid and the level was already rather high. Which minor suit did Frieda have? Eventually she decided on bidding 5♦ thinking that she could correct to 6♣ if Frieda converted to spades. To her immense surprise, Frieda bid 7♦!!

Since Voluptua’s hand was a good deal better than she had already advertised she was quietly confident that she would make the contract easily. But then came a fly in the ointment – Randy bid 7♥, an obvious sacrifice.

This was just the irritating sort of thing that her boy-friend was inclined to do. She would not let him get away with it, so looking at her ♥A she firmly bid 7NT.

Randy, looking rather smug, doubled holding

♠KQJ4 ♥KQJ974 ♦— ♣732

This had been the auction: West North East South

Randy led ♥K and Voluptua gazed hopefully at Frieda’s dummy.

Oh dear! There seemed no way to make the contract because her magnificent clubs were blocked – and Randy was looking so supercilious. Drat him!

Suddenly the solution came to her, and she turned to Randy with a sweet and pitying smile. On the first trick she unblocked by discarding the ♣A. Then she played off the K, Q, J, T, 9 of clubs discarding her top 5 diamond honours from dummy. This left her with 6 diamond winners in her own hand, plus the ♠8 which was taken care of by dummy’s Ace.

The look on Randy’s face would be remembered for a very long time. He had, after all, led the only suit that gave Voluptua access to her hand. But Voluptua graciously did not point this out.

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Miss Wilhemina van Driver made her first nervous entrance at the bridge club in the Autumn. It wasn’t that she was nervous because it was her first time; her entrances everywhere were nervous and this was just the first one at the bridge club. Minnie (as her friends called her) was highly strung, of a delicate disposition, inclined to swoon at the merest hint of excitement, but fairly well-preserved for one in late middle age. Her dear Mama had just passed away and, for the first time in her life, Minnie was a free agent. She wasn’t sure whether she liked this new freedom though; it would be so much more comfortable to sit at home and read her beloved Jane Austen. Still, Reginald, her nephew, had insisted that she “get out” a bit and see the world. He had taught her the rudiments of bridge, and arranged her membership of the club; but, sadly, Reginald was on business in Auckland and couldn’t accompany his Aunt to her first evening at the club. However, he had arranged a partner for Minnie, one Sinclair Whitlands, and Minnie now looked myopically around hoping to find this Mr Whitlands whom she had never met.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a loud voice behind her bade her welcome. “Good evening, exotic flower of Otago, I am Sinclair, your partner for the evening”.

Minnie had never been addressed in such colourful terms in her entire life, and she wondered briefly whether she had come in error to a gigolo training school. She stammered her response and waited with trepidation on Mr Whitland’s next utterance. “Tender lady, fear not the foes within” (Sinclair nodded his head in the direction of the playing area) “be of good heart and let valour triumph”.

As this was her first acquaintance with Sinclair she did not realise that he always spoke as though declaiming heroic epics. She therefore became even more alarmed, and her alarm verged on panic when Sinclair took her firmly by the arm and led her to Table 3. Trembling she collapsed into the chair, reached into her handbag for her smelling salts, and applied their vapours with the most delicate of white lace handkerchiefs.

Mercifully the first round was a bye and Minnie managed to regain enough composure to agree a simple version of Acol with Sinclair (well, simple for him, seemingly of byzantine complexity to her). As their first opponents sat down to play Minnie’s apprehension was still very acute. She did not know what to make of her partner’s unconscious impersonation of a chevalier of the Arthurian Round Table. Would this be a disaster of gargantuan proportions, or merely another unhappy episode to haunt her nights of introspection?

Minnie waited apprehensively as her opponents seated themselves and announced a slew of incomprehensible pre-alerts. Unbeknown to her, her opponents were the dastardly Weasel and Ferret who were metaphorically licking their lips (or, as Sinclair would undoubtedly have put it, lubricating their oral orifices) at the prospect of easy pickings.

Minnie, as South, counted her points. Finding the total to be 13 she beamed. Here at least was a situation she could handle. “1NT” she announced. “Shhh” snarled the Ferret “write it on the bidding pad”. Suitably chastened she inscribed “1NT” in beautiful copperplate on the pad. “No, idiot, not on your partner’s side” sneered the Weasel.

Eventually, the correct bid was inserted in the correct place. The Weasel (West) scrawled a contemptuous 2♦ and Sinclair (North) had a difficult problem. Eventually he doubled trying to get across the quality of his hand – and the Ferret competed to 3♦.

Now Minnie was one of God’s pure simple souls. Not for her were the intricacies of competitive doubles, Lebensohl or all their complex ilk. She imagined that Sinclair’s double was showing diamonds and so she tremulously bid 3NT. The Weasel’s double could be heard in the street. Fearing the worst, but deciding to trust his partner, Sinclair passed.

As you can see, Minnie should have lost the first 5 tricks. However, the Weasel led a low diamond expecting his partner to have the ♦Q. Minnie’s ♦Q captured the Ferret’s ♦J. One of the best parts of Minnie’s game was playing off winners and she next played three top hearts and six top clubs.

The Weasel’s three remaining cards set him an insoluble problem. He could not retain a top diamond as well as three spades. Hoping his partner held the ♦T he kept his spade guard and discarded both top diamonds. But now Minnie’s ♦T further squeezed a spade from him and Minnie (who knew a finesse when she saw one) then took the last two tricks in spades. Four doubled overtricks!

Sinclair felt that a little revenge needling of their opponents was justified. “Gentlemen, it was gallant of you to allow my peerless partner to prevail and to purloin but 5 tricks more than perfect defence should permit”.

After this uncomfortable first round against the Weasel and Ferret, Minnie had thoroughly enjoyed her first game. Sinclair had tried to explain to her the complexities of scoring but the only piece of his advice that she retained was that the pairs arriving at their table were not their true opponents – these were all sitting in the same direction as her and would not be encountered. This seemed to be a strange concept but it meant that Minnie was able to welcome and chat with each pair that they played against (or “played with” as she now put it to herself) without feeling that she was consorting with the enemy.

So pair after pair were regaled with the story of how her dog had been terrorised by the postman, how her budgie had attacked the neighbour’s cat, and how those greedy men from the Council had stolen one of her garden cabbages.

All was sweetness and light until the Weasel and Ferret returned for the last round. Determined to be pleasant, Minnie enquired brightly “How have you found those opponents of ours as you went round?”. The Weasel sniffed, the Ferret scowled, and a properly competitive atmosphere descended on the table. Sorrowfully aware that these nasty men were not going to respond to her friendly overtures, Minnie’s erratic judgement became even more mercurial. So when Sinclair (North) opened his hand with a rather light 1♦, Minnie propelled the partnership to 3NT. A second later she realised that she would have to play it and a cold panic beset her, which was compounded by a double from the Weasel (West) so vicious that he broke his pencil.

The defence cashed 4 diamonds and the Weasel switched to ♠J. Minnie counted her top tricks. There were 8 only but, in error, she came to a total to 9. So thinking that she only had to take her top winners she began to play them out (as her grandmother had taught her years ago in her Victorian parlour). She began by cashing the ♥A and then her 4 top clubs.

She did not know it but she had executed a Vienna coup against the Weasel who could not guard spades and also retain his ♥K. Sinclair, of course, recognised the situation. So when Minnie, pink and breathless, finished taking her 9 tricks Sinclair began whistling a Strauss waltz and danced her around the bridge club. It was an unusual ending to the evening but Minnie was now hooked on bridge and would undoubtedly return.

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Frieda Mayer brushed her teeth, climbed into bed and picked up her book on the gardens of Sussex and Kent. After a few minutes she set it aside and lay musing on the beauty of an English garden. Just then a weary looking Gordon joined her and asked what she was thinking about. Frieda decided that she would have to dissemble; to answer that she had been lying back thinking of England might suggest ideas to Gordon that he seemed too tired to discharge tonight. Quickly she recalled a hand that she and Gordon had played together. The bidding had been as follows with North the dealer.

Frieda had been West and had alerted Gordon’s 2♥ bid as showing a good passed hand with spade support. Since she was minimal she had made her weakest rebid of 2♠ and this was the lowly contract she played in.

North, thinking no doubt to cut down ruffs in dummy, led ♠A and continued with another spade to which South followed. Contemplating her hand along with dummy, Frieda could only see 7 tricks at first. She had 4 trump tricks, two aces, and could establish a diamond; but that was not enough. What could she do?

One possibility was to hope that clubs were 3–3; then her fourth club would be a winner. Another was to play towards the ♦Q (North surely had the Ace) and then duck the next diamond hoping that North held two diamonds only.

But then she spotted an almost certain line: a dummy reversal. So she took the second trick in her own hand, played a heart to the Ace and ruffed a heart. Then she played a diamond towards the Queen (North dare not take the Ace for that would concede two diamond tricks). Having won with the ♦Q she ruffed another heart. Next came a club to the Ace and she ruffed the last of dummy’s hearts with her last trump. That made 7 tricks and she still had the ♠J in dummy for her eighth trick.

Dummy reversals are not all that common and they are usually hard to spot so Frieda had done very well. “You were very clever, my dear” praised Gordon. Indeed, reliving the memory had quite refreshed him and Frieda was looking radiant. “Now” he said, glancing at her book on gardens, “I see you’ve been thinking of England”.

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Over the holiday period Randy and Voluptua had been very much preoccupied with each other. Voluptua’s Aunt Frieda had often stared with vexation at Voluptua’s closed bedroom door but tried not to speculate. However on the one occasion they ventured forth to play a holiday game they did very well, helped somewhat by this hand.

Randy declared 3NT as South having been so bewitched by his magnificent hand that all Voluptua’s pleas for him to withdraw from the auction were ignored. He received the somewhat fortunate lead of ♠5 but there was still much work to do.

Randy counted his tricks. There were two spades, two hearts (after knocking out the ♥A), three diamonds, and two clubs (after knocking out the ♣K). That make nine tricks, thought Randy with a sigh of relief (he desperately wanted to impress Voluptua).

But wait a minute! His first spade stopper had just been dislodged, and the second would be dislodged when he gave up a trick to ♥A; then, when he lost to the ♣K, the opponents would run a zillion spades.

What could be done? In a testosterone-induced flash the answer came to him. Having captured the first trick with ♠Q he played his three top diamonds. Then, with a masterful smile, he played his ♣J.

The opponents were helpless. In the end, East ducked realising that dummy’s diamonds would bring home the contract through the ♣Q entry. But now, with a club trick won, Randy could simply knock out the ♥A and come to his planned nine tricks.

No other declarer had found this line and Randy smugly awaited compliments from his beloved. Voluptua’s attention had been distracted by a broken fingernail however, and all she said was “29 points in total and all you could manage was nine tricks?” With an admirable and impassive stoicism Randy went on to the next hand.

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