Caught in the Light (4 page)

"How do you come to know all this, Ian? I can't believe most photographers are caught up in the subject the way you are."

"That's their affair. To me, the dawn of photography is just about the most magical period in history. Until then, everything every tree, every building, every human face was just an artist's impression. At some fundamental level, not quite real. But a photograph is different. A photograph is almost as good as being there." I caught her quizzical look. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's just ... so weird. That I should meet you, of all people."

"What's weird about it?"

"The sheer .. . improbability of it, I suppose. Almost as if ... I knew I'd find you here."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"You're a photographer."

"So?"

"Fascinated by the invention of photography."

"What about it?"

She shook her head. "It's just crazy, that's all."

"Marian '

"Shush." She pressed her fingers against my lips. "I can't tell you exactly what I mean. It's too complicated and too incredible. But I will, I promise. At Lacock. It'll make more sense there. It was an inspired choice of yours, really. Besides, whetting your curiosity like this means I can be sure you'll turn up."

"You can be sure of that anyway. There's no need for guessing games."

"This isn't a game."

"What, then?"

"Wait and see." She grinned. "There are some things I don't give up as easily as my virtue."

I thought at the time she was setting up some subtle joke at my expense about photography, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what. It didn't really seem to matter. She'd promised to explain at Lacock and that was good enough. My impatience to see her again wasn't going to turn on one minor mystery.

In fact, I'd more or less forgotten about it when I left the hotel next morning with just enough time to book out of the Europa and catch the shuttle bus to the airport. I didn't want to go when it came to the point, not just because I'd infinitely have preferred to stay with Marian, but also because there was a flak storm of condemnation from Faith to be ridden out before we'd meet again, all of it justified. I'd have no answer to as many accusations as she cared to throw at me. And then there was Amy. She'd have to be told, too. I was dreading that even more.

But it was all worth it. The certainty struck home as I stopped outside the Cafe Schwarzenberg and looked back at the hotel to see Marian watching me from the window of her room. We waved to each other across the slushy grey bustle of the Ringstrasse and I held her gaze for as long as it took a tram to caterpillar slowly between us. Then I turned reluctantly away and headed on. Towards all the many consequences of what we were doing. And a future I was willing to trade them for.

CHAPTER TWO

They say time seems to pass more quickly as you grow older. They also say there's a good reason for that: the brain measures time by how much of it there is to remember, so each year is a smaller proportion than the one before of your life to date. It's a sour little trick to be the victim of, because it means pleasure, however intense, grows ever more fleeting. Sure enough, my five days with Marian in Vienna seemed like so many hours when I ran through them in my mind on the flight home. Not that it really mattered, because we were going to be apart for an even shorter period. And there's the flip side to the trick: pain obeys the same rule as pleasure.

Maybe that's why I charged at the problem of explaining myself to Faith and Amy like a horse rushing a fence. I wanted to be over it and away. I wanted to be two days in the future, and I opted for the easiest and quickest route. I was a photographer, after all. I knew about brevity. It came with the job. And speed was part of what had drawn Marian and me together, the bloom on the dark fruit we'd bitten and swallowed.

Besides, infatuation makes you selfish. It doesn't leave room for much else, certainly not sensitivity or responsibility. It made me believe that what I wanted was all that counted, so long as Marian wanted it, too. And she did, just as urgently as me. I knew that. And so I knew it had to happen. Watching the tops of the clouds above

London, spilling and pluming like the contours of an undiscovered landscape, I felt elated by the madness we'd set in motion. Everything before was drab and monochrome. I was about to see in colour for the first time.

I'd lived at the house in Barnes for the best part of ten years. When I stepped inside that afternoon, I realized with a kind of delayed shock that it had always been more Faith's home than mine, decorated, run, furnished and inhabited by her, merely used by me. I stood in the hallway, my bags at my feet, the traffic noise from Castelnau a background hum behind the tick of the clock and the buzz of the fridge and the click of the radiator. There'd been no danger of returning to a cold house. Faith's thermostatically controlled domesticity was lying in wait for me.

I turned and looked at the framed photograph of her and Amy hanging beside the barometer on the wall. It was one of my better efforts, capturing their unposed smiles, their snub-nosed twinkling-eyed resemblance and, just within the camera's grasp, their ease together, their certainty, their indissoluble kinship.

"You take pictures, Dad," Amy once said to me. "But there are hardly any of you. Why's that?" Because the photographer is never quite part of what he sees, Amy. Because the price of clear vision is the distance you need to focus in. I like to see, not be seen.

It didn't take me long to pack the little I needed. I'd be back for the rest later, when the dust had settled and our plans were clearer. Faith would be reasonable, I knew. There'd be no scissored suits or burned books. She'd let me off lightly in the end. I phoned Tim Sadler when I'd finished packing and asked if he could put me up for a couple of nights. Tim qualified as just about my best and oldest friend. We'd met at university, where we'd both specialized in photography during our art degree course. He'd been doing most of my developing for several years at his small trade processing lab in Fulham. He was too fussy and set in his ways for my line of work, but his pernickety nature made him the ideal developer. It also made him fastidiously loyal to friends. Besides, he'd heard this tale before and knew better than to press for details.

"Does this mean what I think it means, Ian?"

"Sort of."

"A cooling-off period?"

"A bit more than that."

"Well, be my guest anyway. And give my love to Faith if you have the chance."

It was a nice idea, but hardly practical. I had only one message for Faith and it wasn't of love. I'd been on a form of marital parole since the affair with Nicole and I was about to break bail. Not for the first time, Tim was going to be harbouring a fugitive.

Faith came in at six, the clip of her office heels on the path warning me a few seconds before her key turned in the lock. The door was still closing as I walked out of the lounge and looked at her, groomed and smartly suited, briefcase in one hand, keys jangling in the other. Her weary expression turned towards suspicion as our eyes met. Already, at some intuitive level where our years together, the good as well as the bad, merged in her memory, she knew.

"Not unpacked yet?" she asked, noticing the suitcase further down the hall.

"There's something I have to tell you, Faith."

"What?" She dropped her briefcase and stared at me. "What's happened?"

"I'm leaving."

"You've only just got back."

"I mean I'm leaving .. ." I looked away, gesturing helplessly. "You. This house. Our marriage. It's over."

"Over?"

"Finished. Done with. I can't '

"Can't what?"

"Make it easy when it isn't. Be fair when I'm not being. We've had our problems before and ridden them out. But not this time. This is the end."

"It's Nicole, isn't it?" She crashed the keys down on the telephone table and stepped closer. Her face was flushed, her breathing rapid. She was more shocked than angry. But soon the balance would change. "Isn't it?"

"No."

"That bloody woman."

"It isn't Nicole. It's someone ... you don't know."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter who she is. What matters is that I love her."

Faith tried to laugh, but her eyes were closer to tears. "I doubt you dolan I doubt you even know the meaning of the word."

"Nothing you say will make any difference. I'm sorry, truly sorry, to tell you so ... bluntly. But there really is no other way."

"I forgave you Nicole. Have you forgotten that?"

"No. Of course not."

"I could have made things a lot harder for you."

"I know."

"Not just then. Other times. I've given you far more than you've ever deserved."

"I know. Faith, for God's sake '

"What about Amy? Have you considered how she's going to react?"

"She's a level-headed girl. She'll understand."

"Oh, she will, will she? Well, just in case she doesn't, perhaps you'd like to explain it to me. I mean, the way it works. Why it's so easy for you to walk out on fifteen years of my life as well as yours."

"Who said it was easy?"

"It must be. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it."

"You know things haven't been right between us for a long time."

"And this is how you put them right?"

"You're not listening, Faith. I've fallen in love with somebody else. It's as simple as that. If I stayed now, I'd be living a lie. And I'm not prepared to do that. I'm doing this for your sake as much as mine."

"Bullshit. You're doing it because you want to."

"All right. That's true, of course. It's what I want. But in time you may come to see that '

"It's what I wanted all along without realizing it? Is that going to be your twisted justification for running off with whoever this bitch is?"

"I'm sorry." I held up my hands to signal my abandonment of the argument. "This is getting us nowhere. I have to be true to myself, Faith. I've made my choice. I'm leaving."

"Go ahead then." Her eyes were red and brimming now. She blundered past me into the kitchen, catching my camera bag with her foot and slewing it across the floor. "Do as you please." She ran water from the tap onto her fingers and rinsed some of the tears away.

"You can contact me through Tim if there's anything '

"There won't be." Her voice was thick with emotion. I wanted to hug and comfort her, but my own words held me back.

"Obviously, as soon as I'm settled '

"Get out, damn you!" She turned and glared at me. "If you're so determined to be ... true to yourself .. . and false to me ... then you're right. There really is nothing else to say. Whatever you've got with this woman won't last, even if it is more than sex, which I doubt. Either way, when it's over, and that'll be sooner than you think, I won't be waiting for you. Walk out of this house now and remember, it's an exit only. There's no way back."

"Faith '

"What's stopping you? It's what you say you want. So go ahead."

"All right, but I just '

"Just nothing. Get out. That's all I'm asking you to do. Get the hell out."

I gathered up my coat and bags and retreated to the door. Holding it open, I looked at her down the length of the hall, standing defensively in the kitchen, her arms folded, her face set and blank, her whole body trembling faintly. A favourite phrase of Tim's ran through my mind: The things people do to each other. God, it was true. I felt guilt and remorse at one remove. They should have enveloped me. But for the moment they couldn't touch me. I recognized them only as theoretical emotions. The real thing was what I felt for Marian. It made everything else seem not just worthwhile but irrelevant. Without another word I stepped out through the door and pulled it shut behind me.

Tim lived alone in a small terraced house in Parsons Green, well set in his contented ways, which revolved in neatly described circles round his cat, his classical music collection and his processing lab half a mile up the road. He viewed his friends' emotional crises with the pained bafflement of someone who'd never experienced anything even remotely similar, although I'd often wondered if he harboured a secret passion for Faith. They were alike in many ways. And that evening at his local, the White Horse, he told me, as he had on numerous occasions in the past, that I was mad to treat her so badly.

"You're probably right, Tim. But falling in love isn't much different from going mad. Just rather more fun."

"I wouldn't know, would I?" he responded, slipping out a self-deprecating smile. "I'll have to take your word for it. You're certainly not the same man I had a drink with a fortnight ago."

"How do you mean?"

"You look about five years younger and you can't stop grinning, which doesn't make any sense considering you're in the process of turning your life upside down. So I suppose it has to be love."

"I've never met anyone like her before."

"Naturally not."

"She's just.. . utterly extraordinary."

"Of course."

"And we're doing the right thing. I know we are."

"Good."

"I'm only sorry other people have to get hurt along the way. I wish it could be avoided. But it can't. You do see that, don't you?"

"Are you asking me for my approval, Ian? I'm not sure I can give you that."

"Let's say I'm not, then."

"After all, this may be simpler than five years ago, but in the long run it could be a great deal more significant."

"It's bound to be."

"What about Amy, for instance?"

"I'll go up and see her tomorrow, before Faith has the chance to make it sound worse than it is."

"She wouldn't do that." Tim sounded disappointed at needing to contradict me. "Besides, how could she? Let's be honest. There aren't a lot of extenuating circumstances, are there?"

I stared hard at him, then we both smiled. "No, Tim. There aren't. Not one, since you mention it. Except that I can't seem to stop myself."

"I reckoned not. It's why I haven't bothered trying to talk you out of it."

"Perceptive, as usual."