Read The Line Between Us Online
Authors: Kate Dunn
I remembered one hot evening when work was done, filling my pockets with windfall apples from the orchard, wandering through the vines in the direction of the Drowning Pool, the branches of the beeches yearning down towards the water. I settled myself into the roots of one of the trees that was sorrowing in the heat and opened my book. I was so deep in the poems that I never heard you approach.
“I didn’t know you could read.” I couldn’t see where your voice was coming from and then suddenly you swooped past me, the rope swing riding the thermals, leaning back so that your toes pointed up to the sky.
At the time I could have thrown the book right at you, but that’s not what I remembered. Your reflection flashed across the green water, I watched your dress trailing the surface, the hem wet and your underskirt showing. “I was a grammar-school boy,” I said as stoutly as I could.
“Oh.” You stopped working the swing. All I could hear was the ache of the rope, slowing. “Why are you here as the gardener’s lad, then?” Your voice was cool; the only cool thing that summer’s evening.
At a safe distance in the tree root, I watched you while I figured out how to answer. I watched you until I was hot all over. “My father was head gardener here, before the war,” I began, thinking of my mother, not my father; of the obligations love places on a person. “If it was good enough for him, and he was a good man, then it’s good enough for me,” I said carefully.
“My father fought in the war.” You bit your lip and looked away. “He was injured at Ypres.”
“Is it true he’s in the asylum?” I asked. “That’s what they say in the village.”
Your dragonfly eyes flickered blue. “It’s a clinic,” you whispered. “He’s got neurasthenia.” The swing was still. The trees loomed around us. You were looking down at the water, at the zithering insects. “Mother took me to see him once. Brown drove us there in the motor. We had to park away from the building because the sound of engines upsets the patients, so we walked the last hundred yards or so. He was waiting for us in the hallway, standing at the bottom of the stairs with one hand on the newel post. He was carrying a small box in his other hand.” You rested your cheek against the rope. “Poor Papa.” The breath of a breeze ruffled the surface of the pool. “He walked towards us and he looked almost like the pictures of him at home. “Brown’s outside with the motor,” Mother told him. “We thought we’d take you for a ride. Bit of fresh air … Let me help you with that,” she reached to take the box from him and he went berserk. He clutched the box to his chest. Said it had been entrusted to him by the Colonel and that he would shoot anybody who tried to take it from him. They had to call a doctor who gave him an injection.” You looked in my direction, but I couldn’t meet your gaze. “He won’t ever come back here. Not now.”
I whirred the pages of my book between my fingers.
“Can you help me down from here?” you asked diffidently. “Only I don’t think I can reach the bank …”
I waded out and with my heart in my mouth I lifted you from the swing. You were light as an armful of clippings and I could feel the shape of you in my arms. I was knee-high in the Drowning Pool, with the water streaming over the tops of my boots, full of wonder at your sapling limbs beneath your dress, the roundness of you. Grave with desire, I charted a safe course to the bank. “My father died in the war, at Messines,” I said as I set you down, wanting you to know I understood. You smoothed the folds of your clothes, though nothing was out of place. I lent you my copy of Edward Thomas to put things right between us and you never gave it back to me.
I remembered being instructed by Samuelson to prune the wisteria that rippled like falling water over the summerhouse roof. It was a June morning and the promise of heat lay in a haze over the valley as I took one of the ladders stored against the kitchen garden wall, strapped my tool belt around my waist and walked to the furthest corner of Dancing Green. A spinney of rowan trees and weeping birch screened the six-sided folly from the drive; it was both lookout and hiding place, with the white flowers of the wisteria picking out flecks as pale as bone in the flint walls and small arched windows echoing the ones in the main house. I leaned my ladder into the welter of frail pods, their cream veins turning brown, then I climbed the first few rungs, disturbing the thrum of insects, sending the bees scattering. I slipped the secateurs out of their sheath and set to work. I climbed higher, reaching up to where tendons of new growth were sliding under the roof tiles, listening to the click and snip of the blades as I worked, enjoying the sense of purpose in the sound, when the window below was flung open without warning and went slamming into the ladder, sending me flying onto the grass. As an afterthought the ladder came bouncing down beside me as I lay on the ground, winded, trying to catch my breath.
“Oh! I’m awfully sorry!” You came hurrying through the French doors and pitched yourself onto the lawn beside me. “Are you alright? I didn’t realise you were there.”
I scrambled into a sitting position, my mouth agape as I hacked away trying to get some air into my lungs. My chest was in spasm. I couldn’t have answered you for the life of me.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” You bent your head closer to inspect me. “Shall I go and get …?” You tailed off, sounding uncertain, then glanced back over your shoulder at the summerhouse. “I could get you some water …”
I wheezed something as best I could by way of reply.
You disappeared for a moment and when you came back to you were holding a cracked china cup half full of water. “I’m awfully sorry,” you said. “I had no idea you were there.”
“Thanks,” I managed, taking a sip. I breathed in and out, then in and out again. “That’s better.” I lifted the cup to my mouth for more.
“That’s probably enough,” you said intercepting it. “I’m meant to be doing some water colours. Mama said I should. I brought this to clean the brushes with.”
My eyes widened.
“Only it’s a long way to go back for more. Don’t worry,” you added, “I haven’t used it yet.”
I handed you the cup and climbed to my feet, arching my back then bending forwards.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said in noble tones, then I arched my back again until the bones cracked.
“Perhaps you should sit down for a bit …”
It was too good an offer to resist. I followed you into the summerhouse. The small hexagonal room had a flagstone floor and a stone bench running right around the edge. There were blue Delft tiles on the walls showing ordinary people at work, like me: fishing, hoeing in the fields, weaving baskets. A small easel was set up in the centre, supporting a wooden board with a blank sheet of paper pinned to it. I perched on the edge of the bench, feeling the cool of the stone through my trousers.
You placed the cup of water on the floor beside the easel. “There,” you said, sitting yourself a few feet from me. The open window swung on its hinge in the breeze and you stood up to secure it, flashing me a guilty look as you did so. You sat down slightly closer to me this time.
I made a study of the tiles directly opposite me; there was a blue galleon, its white sails billowing with wind on a blue, blue sea, and the blue shadow of a tiny gull cast against white clouds that billowed too.
“Well …” you said.
I bit my lip. “Do you paint, then?”
You glanced at the blank sheet of paper and pulled a face. “Not really. Mama thinks I should. She says it’s one of the skills a young lady needs to acquire.” You started patting your pockets. You were wearing some kind of linen smock over your normal clothes. “I don’t think I’ve brought my cigarettes. Damn.”
I blinked at your daring, at the language you used. “You’ve got the costume, though,” I said, nodding at your smock.
You stared at me for a moment. “Don’t you ever get lonely? When it’s just you and Samuelson?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe I should paint you?” Before I could say anything, you stood up and went across to the easel. As you fiddled with the catch on a box of watercolours I felt the sear of panic run me through.
“I’m not very good,” you said idly. The box opened and you took out a brush. “Would you mind?”
I felt wild with unspoken excuses – but what about Mr Samuelson? What about the pruning? What about the ladder left lying on the grass? Look at the time, I’d better – I glanced towards the door, opened my mouth to speak, but said nothing. My clothes were laced with broken fronds of wisteria. There was grass stain on my shirt. I wasn’t sure how I was going to endure your scrutiny. I sat a little straighter on the bench. “S’pose not.”
You dipped your brush in the water, holding it against the rim of the cup to let the last drip drain away. “Can you look over my shoulder, just to the left? That’s it, like that. Good. Stay still, now.”
I fixed my gaze beyond you, so that you were in my vision but out of focus. It’s where I felt I existed with you, on the periphery. I was conscious of the time you took to choose a colour, listening for the whisper of the brush against the paper.
“Don’t you …” I said, “ever get lonely?”
“All the time,” you answered. “Dreadfully. Don’t move,” you said as my head swung round instinctively to look at you. I took up my position once again. I wasn’t lonely in the sense you meant, what with Ma and Delyth and the lads in the village and all the work there was to do, though the feeling of being only half a family, the lesser half, was always with us. I had an intimation of what your absence might mean to me, if that counted as loneliness.
“You’ve got friends, though.”
“Yes, yes I have. Some.” I was aware of you scanning my face and had to steel myself to keep staring over your shoulder. “Neighbours, mostly. Not the kind of friends you’d necessarily choose yourself,” you said. I could hear your wrist move over the paper as you traced a line across the page. “You have nice eyes,” you observed, your voice as soft as a sable brush mark. “Don’t look round.”
I could feel the blood flee from my brain and from my limbs and from my fingers’ ends and settle in my heart. The Delft tiles blurred and fused together. I kept staring to the left of you, just over your shoulder, although I was giddy with you. “There’s no need for you …” I began.
“I don’t necessarily have the life I’d choose for myself, come to that.”
“… to be lonely.”
You rested the brush on the easel. The summerhouse was full of a silence as noiseless as the flight of birds. I could feel the downdraught of what both of us had said, the slow fall of the spoken word.
“I’m no good at this,” you said, dropping your head.
I wasn’t sure if you were talking about the painting. “You’re –” I didn’t know what I was going to say. I thought if I started, something would come to me. I wanted to tell you that you were perfect in every way, that the thought of you being lonely filled me with terrible joy, that the thought of you filled me –
“Boy!”
I was saved by Samuelson, his distant roar barrelling across Dancing Green. Both of us leapt to our feet, shooting stricken glances round the room: left, right, where to put ourselves, which way to go. Afterwards, I couldn’t work out why both of us felt so guilty. I thought it was a promising sign, although I told myself it promised nothing, really. You rushed to the French doors and called out, “He’s here. I knocked him off the ladder. I was just making sure – I won’t keep him any longer. Ifor –”
You stood to one side, shepherding me through the door. As I passed the easel, I couldn’t help glancing at the piece of paper. There were faint lines of different shades of green, like a hayfield fading towards the horizon. I was full of the memory of your searching gaze upon me. You weren’t painting me at all.
I remembered the day the Duke of York was married to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. What a to do that was. We didn’t have a half day holiday, which Ma said would have happened in the old days, but everyone who worked for the family and all the tenant farmers were invited up to the big house to drink a loyal toast to the happy couple.
There was a bit of an atmosphere when we arrived at Nanagalan and made our way to the kitchens: Brown and Samuelson had scant regard for one another even at the best of times. Brown had served in the infantry during the war although he was too old for enlistment, but Samuelson took the exemption for agricultural workers and stayed at home for the duration, and the rot set in after that. I had a good deal of respect for Brown. He used to let me read the newspaper from the day before, when the family had finished with it: “Got to keep abreast of events, Ifor, or you’ll be left behind.” He was a worrier, always fretting about being on time, a stickler for rules and regulations, for saying the right thing, for being seen to do the right thing; he had the kind of anxiety that controls other, stronger feelings. It would drive you mad if you had to live with it, until you reminded yourself that he was at the third battle of Ypres and on the Somme as well. The day of the Royal Wedding he was wearing his chauffeur’s uniform with his medals pinned to his chest and some of the substance seemed to have been put back into him.
Samuelson rolled up at the kitchen door and I don’t believe that he had shaved, though he had his best trousers on and not his usual corduroys, with a clean shirt but no collar, just his old neckerchief tied skew whiff as usual. He was late. The rest of us were waiting, all chapel-pressed and respectable.
“What’s a fellow have to do to get a cup of tea round here?” He lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table without being asked, addressing himself to Mrs Brown in a way which seemed a little over-familiar, even to me. Three o’clock, when lunch is over appeared to hang unspoken in the air between them.
“This won’t do, Samuelson,” said her husband before she could answer. “This isn’t good enough.”
Samuelson’s eyes flicked in his direction, taking in his cap with its patent leather brim parked on the table, his polished boots, his grey jodhpurs and jacket, with the medal ribbons the only dash of colour. His gaze flicked back to Mrs Brown. “What’s a fellow have to do …?” he asked her in a voice that was soft and sly.
Mrs Brown opened the clasp of her handbag and then shut it again with a bashfulness she quelled as an afterthought, stealing a glance at her husband. He was livid: clenched and ready. He raised his hand and we all waited, then with terrible precision he ran his fingers through his thinning hair. For an instant the room relaxed as everybody dropped their guard, then like tracer fire, his arm up shot out, his fist a missile and I could see the trajectory arcing towards Mr Samuelson and without thinking I stepped forward.
“Mr Brown –?” I said like a juggins, as the blow caught me on the temple and sent me sprawling. I cracked my head on the table leg as I went down and strange blooms flowered brightly behind my eyes.
People were calling out my name: Ifor! Ifor! Ifor! Ifor! which confused me because I didn’t know who to answer first and then I found I couldn’t answer anyway. Someone threw a jug of water over me and hauled me up into a sitting position and I slumped one way and then another until I heard Ma’s voiced raised above the others.
“You stupid, stupid boy,” I’d never heard her so angry and I blinked and sat upright, about to protest, but she wasn’t finished yet, not by a mile, “And as for the two of you! Grown men, are you? I can’t think what possessed you. You should both of you know better.” She read them their fortune good and proper, while Mrs Brown insinuated herself into the throng carrying a little pad of clean white sheeting. Ma plucked it from her hands without even looking and knelt beside me. “What time is it?” she asked, surveying me. She dabbed at my forehead and when she took the pad away it was red with blood. Her face whitened. The atmosphere between my Ma and me could sometimes feel … overloaded and all at once I needed some air.
“It’s a little after half past four,” Brown cleared his throat. “Must apologise. Didn’t mean –” He was clasping the offending fist behind his back. “No harm done, eh?” he said uncertainly.
They sat me in a chair to bandage my head, Mrs Brown hovering with more sheeting and some safety pins. I was soaking wet, but it was too late to go home and change. I drank some water then stood up and took a few coltish steps, my knees a law unto themselves.
I had never been to the family’s part of the house before; I had stomped my way around the kitchen a good few times but that was about it, so when Ma and Delyth helped me through the green baize door into the main entrance hall, my eyes were out on stalks. There was a black and white marble floor the size of a cricket pitch and a central staircase which divided halfway up with one flight curving away to the right and one to the left, both leading to a galleried hallway swagged with intricate plasterwork just like a wedding cake. There were family portraits and statues and a chandelier made with vast constellations of crystal. At the bottom of the stairs was a table holding a porcelain vase filled with white lilac that I had cut myself that morning and a photograph of the royal couple. There was a tray laid out with small glasses of sherry, about a mouthful each.
It was like being in church, the room full of restrained and respectful murmurations; I half expected the organ to strike up. Then you appeared on the landing, your mother leaning on your arm, looking as well-upholstered and as stiff and severe as Queen Mary herself. You were solicitous of her as you led her down the stairs and as you drew closer I could see there was a preoccupied look on the mistress’s face, as though she wasn’t here but somewhere else, and I remembered Ma remarking how sorry she felt for her, married yet not married, which coming from Ma, a widow, was quite a thing to say.
You handed round the sherry – the gentry making much of their humility, as Delyth observed under her breath – and when you came across to us I could see the shock on your face as you noticed my bandage, then the swift concealment of it as you looked down at the tray that you were carrying. You were wearing white gloves with seed pearls stitched along the back and your white dress with its embroidered loveliness skimmed your ankles and you could have been a bride yourself. My heart contracted when I thought that, and I held that minute glass of sherry miserably and you shot me a glance, curious and appraising, which only made it worse.
You cocked your head to one side. “In the wars again, Ifor?”
“Had an accident, Miss Ella.”
“That looks nasty,” you said, eyeing the makeshift bandage.
“It’s nothing,” I replied, untruthfully. My temple was throbbing and I felt slightly queasy. You opened your mouth to say something, but your mother raised her glass for the loyal toast.
“The happy couple,” we chorused, all of us. “God bless the Duke and Duchess of York,” and as we shuffled our way home, our duty done, it wasn’t only Delyth who was sore at the inequity of life.