The Centre Line

The first time Mara Dwyer called mine, she meant the ball.

I had already decided to hit it. I was at the net with my weight moving left, racquet up, a perfectly ordinary forehand volley coming at me. Then she said the word from somewhere behind my right shoulder. I checked my swing. The ball passed between us and landed a hand’s breadth inside the baseline.

Our opponents didn’t celebrate. They were fifteen minutes into a practice set and had the manners to pretend that a point won by two women getting in each other’s way was a point they had made.

Mara walked to the back fence to collect the ball. I stayed where I was.

“You were going behind me,” I said.

“I was going to the ball.”

“That isn’t the same information.”

She turned the ball in her hand until the manufacturer’s name disappeared under her thumb. I had been told that Mara was difficult to partner. Nobody had mentioned that she could make silence feel like a request for further particulars.

“You had it,” she said. “I called late.”

It was less satisfying than an argument. I was ready for one of those. I knew how to win them.

“Next time,” I said, “tell me where you’re going before you go there.”

She looked at the service line, then at me. “You’ll do the same?”

“If I know.”

“Good.”

She bounced the ball to me, though it was her turn to serve.

There were two public courts at the Vale, four under the roof, and a corridor that smelt of new grip tape and old coffee. I had trained there often enough to know which overhead lamps hummed. Today was the first day of our partnership, a word our coach had used before either of us had agreed it meant anything. My last doubles partner had moved back to singles. Mara’s had moved on without making an announcement, which in tennis is sometimes the announcement.

At thirty-two, I had changed disciplines once already. People who had watched me lose early singles matches called doubles a sensible use of my hands. They meant it kindly, most of them. I had come to the Vale to learn what my hands could do when somebody else’s depended on them.

Mara was thirty-four. I knew her record, because I had watched her work from the far side of three different draws. She saw open court a shot before it opened. Her partners sometimes saw only the direction she expected them to move.

“Rowe,” called Anika from the other baseline. “Are we playing?”

“We are. Mara’s giving me a lecture.”

Mara took her place beside me. “I said one word.”

“It was a long word.”

Anika served wide. I returned down the middle, low enough that her partner had to lift it. Ahead of me, Mara said, “Crossing left.”

This time I could move without looking. I held the middle and put the next ball through the space Mara had left. Anika lunged and missed.

Mara tapped her racquet twice against the toe of her shoe. Not applause; she was dislodging grit. I found myself wanting it to mean something anyway.

We lost the set six-four. It was a useful loss: close enough to expose every bad habit, not close enough to let us blame one point. I took three balls that were hers. She crossed on two that were mine. Once, on a break point, I looked back for a call that never came, and we both watched a slow ball land at our feet.

Afterwards Anika’s partner said we had looked better in the second half. Anika asked whether I wanted to play again on Thursday. Mara was towelling her face at the gate, close enough to hear my answer.

“I’ll be here,” I said.

Anika smiled at Mara. “That makes one of them.”

“Two,” Mara said.

I was drinking from my bottle and almost missed it.

The coach had booked the court for another hour. When Anika and Devika left, he offered to feed us balls and let us work on the middle. Mara said she would rather play points. I said we couldn’t play points without another team. She looked at the empty half of the court as if it might produce one.

“I’ll feed,” I said. “You show me when you cross.”

“I can tell you.”

“You can show me as well. I’m capable of learning twice.”

She stood at the baseline while I went to the basket. The coach gave me a look he probably meant as encouragement. I had spent too many years being encouraged whenever I accepted an instruction, so I pretended not to see it.

I fed the first ball towards the sideline. Mara moved across, took it early and sent it deep. Before I could feed the next, she held up a finger.

“I know how that looked,” she said. “I went before you could see the opening.”

“I saw the opening.”

“You were looking at the ball.”

“Where would you prefer I look?”

“At me.”

The coach coughed behind the basket. I set down the ball I was holding. Mara did not appear to have heard what she had said in any way other than the one she intended.

“At your feet,” she amended. “I load my right foot before I cross. You can see it from the net.”

“I can’t see your feet from the net when I’m facing the other side.”

“Then I’ll call.”

“Before, Mara. Not when you’re already gone.”

She nodded once. On the next feed she said, “Left,” while the ball was still on my strings. I put it over the net with enough height to give her time. Her racquet met it in front of her body. For half a second the court was exactly where we both believed it to be.

We did it again. The third time I called, “Staying,” and she left me the middle. The fifth time she called left and I said, “No, mine,” because I had a better angle. She stopped. I made the shot.

“You don’t have to tell me if I was right,” I said as I collected the balls.

“You were.”

“You could have made me work for that.”

“You already did.”

It was the longest exchange we’d had all morning that wasn’t about fault. I carried the basket to the bench before I could turn it into one.

At lunch, my phone showed a message from Mum asking whether I liked the new partner. I wrote too early to tell, erased it, and wrote she listens. Then I erased that as well. It sounded like an answer to a question Mum had not asked.

Mara came out of the changing rooms with wet hair and a black kit bag. She stopped when she saw me at the café table, one sandwich unwrapped and another still in its paper.

“The other one’s Devika’s,” I said. “She forgot to take it.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You looked at it.”

“I look at exits too.”

“And?”

“That one squeaks.” She indicated the service door at the far end of the corridor.

It did. Every fourth opening produced a sound like somebody trying to stop a laugh. I knew because I had spent the previous week walking through it with too much equipment in my arms. I had never noticed anyone else noticing.

“A tactical assessment?” I asked.

“A warning. If you want to leave a conversation quietly, use the front door.”

She passed me and bought coffee. She did not invite herself to sit down. I had an empty chair, and it would have been easy to call her back. Easy in the way crossing too early had been easy: I could see where I wanted to be, and mistake that for having agreed how to get there.

“Mara,” I said. “Thursday. Are we practising first, or playing them cold?”

She turned from the counter. “What do you want?”

“Half an hour on the middle. Then points.”

“Yes.”

“That was suspiciously painless.”

“You’re right about the middle.”

I leaned back. “Do you say that often?”

“When someone is right.”

She took her coffee to the other end of the room. It could have been a rebuff. It didn’t feel like one. She was giving me the same choice she had given me on court: a place to stand, with the space between us left open.

By Thursday morning I had watched the practice set twice. On film the point we had won after her first early call looked simple, almost dull. Nobody watching would have known how much had been decided before the ball crossed the net.

I arrived at the Vale with a notebook full of arrows I did not intend to show her. Mara was already on court, arranging four cones along the centre line. She moved one, reconsidered, and put it back. When she saw me she lifted a cone.

“Too much?”

“Depends,” I said. “Are you going to tell me what they’re for before I run into one?”

She set it down. “Yes.”

I put my bag beside hers. Her grip tape was worn at the top and clean where her thumb sat; the detail had stayed with me from Tuesday though I had no reason to know it. She noticed the notebook in my hand, but waited.

The coach came through the side gate carrying the entry sheet for Saturday’s club event. It was an exhibition with four invited pairs, nothing that would change a ranking, but there would be a crowd and somebody keeping score who wasn’t being paid to tell us what we had done well. He had offered us a place after Tuesday’s set. I’d told him we had to play together once more before I answered.

He held the sheet out to Mara. “You two decide?”

She could have signed for us. Her name was printed on the first line, mine underneath, with two empty boxes at the right. Instead she took the pen and handed both to me.

“I haven’t said yes,” I told her.

“I know.”

“You want to?”

“I do.” She looked at the lines of our names and then up at me. “I also want to see whether we can play a set without making the other person guess. If we can’t, we can still say no.”

The coach said he needed the answer before lunch. Mara looked at him until he went to arrange the balls at the far baseline. I had spent years having decisions presented as opportunities that would disappear if I asked a question. This one did have a deadline. She had made room inside it anyway.

“I have a plan,” I said.

“So do I.”

“We might have to argue.”

“We might.”

Across the net the coach called for us to start. Mara held out a ball. I took it, and for the first time since I had moved to doubles I did not feel as if the other half of the court belonged to somebody else.