The Line Between Us by Kate Dunn Page B

tugged at me, my head full of the jangle of them until I couldn’t help myself. I climbed the hillside then skirted round Esther’s Garden to the front of the house. The music was coming from one of the downstairs rooms and I stood there, not quite comprehending the jittery, jaunty heart break of it. The record slowed, slurring the notes until someone, I knew it must be you, wound the gramophone again. I inched closer, at an oblique angle to the window, hovering, until I saw you.
    You were dancing the Charleston on your own, your eyes closed, your arms jerking, your feet snapping, caught endlessly in the private compulsion of the beat. The sight was somehow pitiful to see. On and on you danced, with your head thrown back, imprisoned by the music, until I thought you might do yourself an injury. The record slowed and you unwound yourself for long enough to crank it up again, then off you went with your solitary dancing and I stood watching you, a lonely dervish, whirling round and round and round. When the record slowed again you kept on spinning, a little out of kilter, your orbit suddenly uncertain. You opened your eyes and stretched out your arms to steady yourself. And then you saw me.
    I don’t know which of us was the most mortified. You were giddy still, your chest working, your pink face gone pale. You took a few skittering steps and on a reflex I held out my hand to support you, though I was outdoors and beyond your reach. I let my arm fall to my side. You moved closer to the window, casting your net, drawing me in. I was caught in the slow tide of the look you gave me, walking forward until I was so close I could see the cirrus featherings of your breath upon the glass.
    You ran a single finger down the pane, tracing the outline of my neck and then my collarbone with one stroke, all the while considering me. I raised my hand and put it to the window to capture yours and you traced that too, the tip of your finger searching and intent. Through the glass you pressed your palm to mine and the two of us stood, like that. In a distant room the telephone began to ring. You took your hand away, curling it closed and holding it to your lip, hesitating, before you turned, taking your bearings, then headed back to your own world, and the brief sketch of me you’d started was erased.

 
     
    CHAPTER NINETEEN
     
    I remembered the first ever cricket match I played in, on an irretrievably golden afternoon in the summer of that year. Brown told me that before the war there were enough staff at Nanagalan for the house to form an eleven of its own, but with the names of so many fine batsmen carved in stone on the village memorial, it was all we could do to muster a single team from the whole of Morwithy. That year we played Llancloudy, the pitch laid out on Dancing Green, Samuelson’s contribution to roll it assiduously day after day. He was touchy about the lawns, territorial; his hypothesis that if you came up trumps with the things that people noticed, the rest could go hang. He never played in any of the matches, he lurked at the back of the marquee, a pint of cider in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and another tucked behind his ear for later. There was something fugitive about him.
    Brown broached the subject of the match when I went to pick up the newspaper from him on my way home from work. The coach house and the stable block, which formed one side of the courtyard, had been converted into a garage for the Daimler, a workshop and two cottages, one for the Browns and one for Mr Samuelson. There were some loose boxes as well and I fished a couple of carrot tops out of my pocket and fed them to the master’s hunter, his muzzle whickering for more until he had the button of my jacket in his teeth and I was caught up in a proper tug of war when Brown appeared. He freed me with the assistance of a lump of sugar.
    The workshop was his private kingdom. All the doings for the motor were up one end: a mechanical ramp for