The Photograph

  And now, today, he is filled with outrage that all this survives only in the head. He wants to retrieve the moment. He wants to retrieve Kath, as never before.

  Elaine listens with cynicism. She is pregnant: heavy, hampered, irritable. Kath has blown in; soon she will blow away again, off back to her unfettered life, to whatever it is she is up to these days.

  Elaine observes that Kath may find that she requires a husband.

  “Oh yes, definitely. I’m looking for one.” Kath is twenty-four. And spoiled for choice, Elaine assumes. On occasion, she is accompanied by some attentive man. Not today.

  This is a time when Elaine’s feelings for her sister rampage from one extreme to another. If Kath disappears for weeks on end, Elaine is on edge about her. Why does she not phone? Where has she got to? When she shows up, need is replaced by a gust of annoyance: there she is—carefree, the fiddling grasshopper amid the striving ants, her beauty a repeated surprise. One had forgotten its effect.

  “Well, look carefully,” says Elaine. She has little faith in Kath’s judgment. She sounds sour, and knows it.

  Kath laughs. “Oh, I do. You’ve no idea how careful I am.” The laughter stops, abruptly. She is suddenly concentrated, serious. Her glance sweeps the room—the cluttered domestic place. It homes in on Elaine’s fecund belly. “Is it wonderful?” she says. “All this?”

  Voices

  “Look,” he says. “It’s Nick. I know I’m absolutely the last person in the world you want to have on the end of a phone, and I don’t blame you if you hang up, but I had to give it a try, OK? I just felt if you and I could talk a bit, and frankly you’ve every right to tell me to piss off, but I thought, No, I bloody well will, I’ll ring him up, there’s nothing to lose, things are bad enough anyway, at least they are at this end. And, Christ, I know what you must have been feeling. Believe me, Glyn. What I’m trying to say is—and I know you must be thinking this is a bit rich coming from me—I’m trying to say it’s . . . well, I’m trying to say it’s not absolutely what it looks like. I mean, I know it must look pretty wretched from your point of view, but that’s where I feel if I could only have a chance to explain a bit, just kind of talk it through, you might be able to see it differently, see me differently. It’s a question of perspective, really. The thing is . . . Are you still there, Glyn?”

  Glyn growls that he is still there—wondering in fact why the hell he is.

  “Oh God, thanks. Thanks for giving me a chance. Look, what I’m trying to say is . . . it was all so bloody stupid, it wasn’t such a big issue, it was a crazy sort of mistake. I don’t know what came over us—came over me. Oh, that’s what people always say, isn’t it—except I’m sure you don’t, you’ve got more sense, I always thought you were such a levelheaded sort of bloke, knew what you were doing, which is why I thought, Let me just try to talk to him.”

  “You seem to be doing just that,” says Glyn. “To what end?”

  “Ah. Well, it’s kind of several things, you see, Glyn. I mean, firstly, me and Kath. What you’ve got to understand is, it was all over almost as soon as it began. It wasn’t some great long-drawn-out business. And it made absolutely no difference to—to other things. Me and Elaine. You and Kath. Those were what mattered, believe me. We both knew that, at the time. She . . . well, I tell you honestly, and I absolutely mean this . . . I always knew her heart was never in it. And for myself, well, I got carried away. She was after all incredibly . . . I just sort of lost my head. But only temporarily, that’s what I’m trying to say. It was just this brief kind of lunacy. And that’s really the point of my getting in touch, Glyn. I mean, it’s long since over and done with, and Kath’s not here to . . . Surely the sensible, reasonable thing is just to bury it, let it be, and all of us get on with life—”

  Glyn interrupts to say that, personally, he is doing precisely that.

  “And that’s where you’re so sensible, Glyn. I mean, you’re seeing it in proportion, you’re being rational about it, and frankly I’m so relieved, talking to you, thank God I did phone, and, believe me, I’ve had to screw myself up to this, but I feel so much better now. But the real trouble is . . . Elaine’s taken it rather differently, and that’s what I wanted to talk about too. She’s really gone over the top about it all, completely overreacted. Actually, Glyn, she’s thrown me out.”

  Glyn has swung from extreme irritation through contempt to boredom. Now, he is interested. Well, well. That’s a turn-up for the books.

  “I’m staying with Polly. I don’t mind telling you, Glyn, I’m in a pretty bad way. It’s so . . . well, I just feel it’s so extreme. I mean, yes, of course, I can see how she feels, but does it have to be like this? She won’t talk to me—nothing Poll says has any effect. What’s occurred to me, Glyn, is . . . Elaine always had a lot of time for you, she respects you, I know that—maybe what’s needed is someone a bit more detached, like yourself, to sort of have a word, put it to her that she’s going too far. I just have this feeling that she’d pay attention to you, Glyn.”

  “Do you, now?” says Glyn.

  “And of course it was through you that she knew about it.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s really all my fault,” says Glyn.

  “Christ, no—that’s not what I mean. I can entirely understand why you felt you had to—”

  “Good,” says Glyn. “Just as well.”

  “. . . of course I understand that. And you and Elaine have known each other a long time—though I wish you’d come to me first, if you and I could only have had a talk at that point—”

  That does it. “Quite,” snaps Glyn. “Elaine and I go way back.”

  “Sorry?”

  “We . . . considered one another for a while. But you may be aware of that.”

  “Actually, no—I wasn’t.”

  “Again, no big issue, put in perspective. You take my point?”

  Afterwards, Glyn has no idea why he said this. Exasperation? Mischief? Somehow, the words just fell out.

  “Oh,” says Nick. “You and Elaine—” And is silent.

  “So, I could, I daresay, have a word, as you propose—but on the whole I think it inappropriate. You have to deal with this for yourself, if I may say so.”

  When Elaine puts the phone down she can hardly believe that this conversation with Nick has taken place. In which she has had to agree that, yes, she and Glyn were once . . . interested in one another . . . that, yes, she met Glyn on a few occasions. But that, no, they were never lovers. She is experiencing a brew of emotions: fury at Glyn, embarrassment, defensive cool with Nick, who has bypassed the answerphone because she forgot to put it on. But now that their exchange is over, and she is angry and undermined, she realizes that Nick’s tone was not what she might have expected. There was neither challenge nor reproach; rather, he seemed bemused, incredulous. He was not out to make capital from this, it would appear. The phone call was to seek confirmation : “I thought he might be making it up.”

  And whatever had Nick been doing talking to Glyn? She can hardly believe this either: “I wanted to ask him to speak to you about . . . everything. Put in a word for me.”

  Only Nick could have come up with such a ruse, or only Nick in some manic state. Provoking Glyn to this backhander. It is as though we are all possessed, she thinks.

  Eventually, he is successful. Here it is, not in any address book but scrawled in the back of a notebook, amid jottings about printers and suppliers and pages of figures and costings. All this dates from the Hammond & Watson days. And next to her address he has written “photos,” and circled the word. He must have scribbled this down at the very end of the picnic at the Roman Villa; he must have promised to send her photos. And presumably did so, though that he cannot remember, but in making the selection he would have come across the fatal frame. Which he presumably did not include in the batch that he sent to Mary Packard.

  Elaine’s voice rings loud too. What she said. How she said it: frosty, but with an undertow of confusion. Nick himself is in a
turmoil now, but it is in some ways an oddly reassuring turmoil; actually, he is feeling better rather than worse, though he cannot quite work out why, and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. Glyn has refused to be drawn in as an intermediary, and Nick wonders now how he can ever have imagined that he would, but instead Glyn has thrown this bombshell. Or is it just a small firework? Nick is trying to get himself sorted out about this. What does he feel about it? Well, he is surprised. Elaine and Glyn? Though it would seem that there wasn’t all that much to get excited about. But even so . . . Does he feel angry, jealous? Well, not exactly. Though perhaps a little . . . upstaged. And it puts a rather different complexion on things, does it not?

  Most of all, Nick finds himself plunged suddenly into endless replays of Glyn’s voice. Not only now, but back then. That day. When Kath. He hears him then, sounding the same, but different. The phone rings again, and it is Glyn: “I need to speak to Elaine.”

  That Day

  A Thursday. Glyn left early for the university on account of a nine o’clock seminar. He had woken late, reached for the clock, said, “Bloody hell, look at the time!,” and saw Kath lying wide-eyed beside him.

  “Why didn’t you wake me? I’ve got to get in early.”

  Everything about that day stood out in bold relief, later. What was said; what was seen.

  He showered, he shaved. He saw his own face in the mirror, foam-flecked, and a reflection of Kath passing behind him—a bare shoulder, her profile. When he went back to the bedroom, she had gone; he dressed. Downstairs, she was in the kitchen, wearing that blue toweling bathrobe, making toast; bare legs below the bathrobe, her hair brushed behind her ears. There was coffee on the table. She said, “Boiled egg?”

  “No, I haven’t got time.” He went into his study, gathered up papers he needed, returned to the kitchen, poured coffee, glanced through a student essay.

  “A boiled egg takes four minutes.”

  “No, no—”

  Afterwards, he would home in on this repeated offer; usually, it was take it or leave it—or he fixed something for himself.

  In the garden, the sound of an autumn robin. He looked up from the essay: the grass freckled with fallen leaves, the skinny branches of the trees.

  She said, “How about we go out for supper tonight? The Italian place?”

  “I shan’t get back till nine or so—there’s something I have to go to. Bit late—”

  “OK. I may go to the pictures with Julia.” She had friends in the city, people he hardly knew, people she saw on her own.

  She was sitting opposite him, reading the front page of the newspaper; the shape of her face, its perfect planes—intensely familiar, but always catching the eye.

  She looked up, held out the paper. “Did you want it?”

  “No, thanks. I’m off in a minute.” He went back to the essay.

  She said, “It’s nothing but death and disaster.” He saw a headline about famine in Africa, the wizened features of a ragged child.

  “It was ever thus. This student is telling me—somewhat inadequately—about the demographic effects of the Black Death.”

  Kath said, “I wish I was one of your students.”

  He did not know what she meant, nor would he do so subsequently—examining the words. “Why?”

  “Oh . . . just, they know someone I don’t. Do you get fond of them?”

  “Some leave an impression. It’s a relentless tide, you know. One lot goes, another comes.” He swept the pile of essays into his briefcase, took a final swig of coffee. “Right—”

  “Glyn—” She put her hand out as he stood up, as he moved past her towards the door—she touched his arm. He paused: “Yes?” Hurried, distracted.

  “Nothing.” And there was nothing in her face, nothing that he could see then, or would see later. A smile. “You get going. See you—”

  Thus, that morning. The beginning of an autumn day, a working day, unexceptional. Her voice, her presence, as on a thousand other mornings. He went out of the front door, heard the robin again, got into the car. He may have glanced back at the house, in which Kath was sitting in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee, reading the paper. Perhaps picking up the phone to say, “Hi! What about a film this evening . . . ?”

  At the university he gave a seminar on eighteenth-century agrarian reform to third-year students. In his office he went through the mail, wrote some letters and a student reference, took a completed paper to the departmental secretary for typing. He stopped to chat with her for a minute: Joy, a chirpy young woman who served as the hub of local activity, pestered by staff and students alike. At twelve, he lectured.

  What did you do that day? While she was home, alone.

  At one o’clock he went over to the cafeteria for something to eat, joined a couple of colleagues, got into an argument about student expansion, discussed a proposed new course, had a beer. At one-fifty he returned to the department in haste, to collect a file on his way to the library. Joy beckoned as he passed her open door. “Your wife rang. She tried your direct line, but you weren’t there. She asked if you could call her back.”

  He picked up his file, and was at once waylaid by an importunate student; the student occupied his attention for ten minutes, driving other thoughts from his mind. At two-twenty he was on the steps of the library, and briefly remembered Joy’s message. The phone call to Kath would have to wait—he had only an hour and a half in which to finish off some crucial checking of references.

  In the event, he got back to the department five minutes late for his four o’clock appointment with a research student, already waiting patiently outside his door. That session overran, which meant that by the time the man left, Glyn’s five o’clock seminar group was also camped in the corridor.

  At a quarter past six he was through with them. There could be a further quick foray to the library before the inaugural lecture and ensuing reception, which he planned to attend. He was going to this not out of intellectual curiosity and support of a colleague, but in order to confirm his view that this appointment, which he had opposed, was a disaster. He was halfway down the stairs when he remembered that he should phone Kath.

  He went back to his office, made the call. No reply. He listened to the ringing tone for a minute or so—maybe she was in the bathroom—then hung up. Gone out, presumably.

  A useful hour in the library. Then the lecture, which was satisfactorily poor. Finally, the reception, at which he stayed for rather longer than he had intended, carried away by a couple of glasses of wine.

  At ten past nine he arrived home. The hall light was on—but he knew at once that there was no one here: the inert feeling of an empty house. He went into his study, dumped his briefcase. Then to the kitchen for a glass of water; the breakfast things were still on the draining board. He looked in the fridge: some cold meats, and the wherewithal for a salad. Kath would no doubt eat out.

  He went up to the bedroom to shed his jacket and find a sweater. He switched on the light, and saw that the bed was occupied.

  She lay on her side, turned away from him so that he could not see her face. He knew, as he stood there. He knew before he went over and touched her, looked at her. There was no one here; the room was empty of life, just as the house had felt barren as he entered.

  When at last he walked over to her—looked, touched—it was as though she were a husk. This was Kath, but also it was not Kath at all; the face hers, but also a mask, a void. She had vomited; her mouth was open, there was a mess on the pillow. He wanted to cover her up; no, there were things that had to happen now. He saw the glass on the bedside table, the little capless brown bottle, some empty packets. He seemed to be acting like an automaton; he could move about, respond, but at some other level there was rampaging disbelief. This was not possible. Impossible that he was here, in these moments, with this around him; the proper place to be was hours ago, back this morning, dressing in this room, while downstairs Kath made toast and coffee, picked the newspaper up off the mat. That
was real, this was not.

  The ambulance came, and went. Later, the police arrived, two of them, a man and a woman. They went up to the bedroom, incongruous invaders, and came back down with the things from the bedside table. They sat with Glyn in the kitchen and asked a few questions—dispassionate, perhaps apologetic.

  What did you do that day? While she . . .

  The woman asked if there was anyone he would like them to call. He shook his head.

  When they had gone, he sat there; the automaton struggled with the rampaging disbeliever. He made a cup of tea, but never drank it.

  Then he reached for the address book and looked for Elaine’s number.

  Eleven o’clock by now, and the day snapping at her heels. Sonia needed guidance, Nick wanted to talk about buying a computer, which would give him a head start with this exciting new scheme he had to tell her about, there was a tricky phone call to be made to a new and exacting client. Elaine set Sonia straight, deflected Nick, was relieved to find the client unavailable, and turned at last to her largest current project—landscaping the grounds of a refurbished country-house hotel. She spent a couple of hours on design and costings.