The Photograph (10 page)

“Are you planning to have a word with Nick, then?” Elaine is icy.

“Perish the thought. That is your prerogative, if you so wish.”

Quite, thinks Elaine. But you’re not going to leave it alone, are you?

“Nick is your concern,” he continues, dismissively.

“He is indeed. And what is yours?”

Glyn stares at her. He has the intense and concentrated look that she remembers from those times when he would be expounding some new theory, holding forth on a current investigation. He does not reply.

Nick is oddly insignificant, Glyn is finding. He is puzzled himself by this. An initial urge to seek him out and punch him on the nose has given way to a kind of indifference. His business is with Kath, not Nick.

The restaurant has emptied. At the edge of the room, staff loiter.

Elaine folds her napkin, puts it on the table. Glyn cocks an eyebrow in the direction of a watchful waiter. The bill arrives.

“Well,” she says, “thank you for the lunch.”

He grimaces. “I wish the circumstances could have been different.”

“It seems that they were decided a long time ago.”

Except, of course, that they were not. The photograph might have lain unrevealed in Glyn’s landing cupboard; Glyn might have found it but chosen to remain silent. Alternative scenarios flicker in their minds—significant but, now, irrelevant. I know, thinks Elaine, and that’s that. Now for what is to come.

“Just one last thing,” says Glyn. “Can you let me have Oliver’s present address?”

Glyn?

Oliver has not set eyes on Glyn in years. He seldom thinks of him, except in a subliminal way in which past acquaintances can sweep briefly into the mind, and as rapidly evaporate.

But now here is Glyn, fair and square in the office, sprung by Sandra’s terse remark: “Someone called Glyn Peters rang—left a number. Please call back.”

“Right,” says Oliver. He sees Glyn now: that square face, the thick brown crop of hair. He hears the voice, with its tinge of Welsh. Assertive, confident, but always rather compelling. The man addressing you as though you were a seminar, but you listened.

Something in Oliver’s voice has evidently alerted Sandra. “Who is Glyn Peters?”

“Glyn?” says Oliver casually. “Oh, Glyn was Elaine’s brother-in-law. You know . . . Elaine, wife of Nick, my erstwhile partner. Can’t imagine what he wants.”

And, indeed, he cannot.

Sandra has picked up on a point here—the professional eye for detail. “Was?”

“Kath . . . died,” Oliver explains. He gets busy at his screen. “We need to have a talk about the new layout for
Phoenix
.”

“OK,” says Sandra crisply. “Right away, if you like.” He has got her back on course; she is now applying herself to the design problems of the alumni magazine of an Oxford college.

Precision is the name of our game, thinks Oliver. He thinks this with pride. Accuracy. Every comma and full stop in the right place, each paragraph correctly indented. Footnotes, indexes, contents pages. Not a letter out of place. The discovery of a typo in one of his publications can give him a sleepless night. He is more satisfied than ever in his life. Desktop publishing was made for him. No tricky editorial input, no headaches about marketing and distribution. Just take the commission from the client and set about creating the immaculate product. He loves the screen on which he can conjure this precision: the compliant technology, the wonder of being able to twitch lines and letters this way and that. He is always reluctant to delegate; he surreptitiously checks and rechecks the work of even their most reliable operators. Even, it must be said, that of Sandra herself, who is a bird of his own feather. When they are alone together in the office they sit before their screens in companionable absorption, and Oliver knows that Sandra is experiencing a pleasure complementary to his own—creating text, marshaling text, positioning headings and notes. They are both getting the same buzz. It is almost like sex, he thinks.

Which is perhaps how their alliance came about, the reason that a business relationship shifted into something more, so that here they are now together by night as well as by day, in amiable conjunction, an agreeable conjugality. Oliver thinks of Sandra as friend rather than lover. Best friend. Friend with whom he makes friendly love, in the king-size bed in the first house that he has ever owned. No more seedy flats. No more fridges in which lurk nothing but a wedge of moldy cheese and a pint of sour milk. Clean shirts to hand. Spare lightbulbs and loo paper.

Oliver is still astonished to find himself one half of a couple, at this relatively late point. After the long bachelor years, the occasional forays in halfhearted pursuit of someone, the withdrawals into not especially discontented solitude. Sex on tap is indeed a luxury, though, truth to tell, both of them are somewhat less inclined these days. The cheerful roistering of their early time together is pretty well a thing of the past. But, in any case, lust was never really the driving force where his gathering interest in Sandra was concerned. More affection, appreciation—and along with these the realization that, yes, it would be rather good to go to bed with her.

And thus it was that one day he put a finger on Sandra’s knee—a nylon-clad knee from which her skirt had ridden up as she sat bolt upright in her desk chair. “I’ve been wondering . . .” he said.

And Sandra did not slap his face, or his hand, or rush from the room. She made a correction on her screen, turned to look at him. A long, steady look. “As it happens,” she said, “so have I.”

Sandra is nothing like the girls he used to run after, time was. She does not have long blond hair or legs to her armpits. She has full breasts and quite muscular calves. Her face is rather flat, all on one plane, it seems; large gray eyes, the mouth a trifle thin. Her neat cap of brown hair is streaked with gray—becoming silver glints. She is quick and calm and cool. Oliver has never seen her truly fazed, that he can recall. An essential quality in a business partner and also, he now finds, one conducive to a tranquil home life. The fridge is always stocked, the bills are paid, the insurance policies are in order.

Actually, Sandra is nothing like the people he used to know. She is nothing like Nick. As business associates, Sandra and Nick might as well be from different planets. She is nothing like Elaine.

She is nothing like Kath. Above all, she is nothing like Kath.

As if, thinks Oliver.

Oliver used to know all sorts of people. Quite a few of these were women in whom he was currently interested, but usually not sufficiently interested to make a great issue of it. He took them out from time to time, and then, usually, they went off with someone more pressing. The rest were people with whom he had a drink or a meal every now and then. Some of these were fallout from the days with Nick. Nick and Elaine. The business generated a vibrant social life; there were always people turning up at the house, those whom Nick thought potential contributors to some series and had invited along with a gust of enthusiasm—picture researchers, photographers, freelance designers. Temporary assistants came and went, hired by Nick and then gently fired by Oliver when it was realized that resources couldn’t run to this. Oliver had his own office in the converted barn that adjoined the house, and a scruffy flat in the nearby market town. In his office he dealt with what Nick called the boring part of publishing: the negotiations with printers, with distributors, with accountants. Over in the house, the fun went on. Nick seldom came to the barn, though Oliver was frequently in the house, summoned to meet this brilliant photographer, this amazing writer. He spent many hours at that kitchen table, while ideas were bandied about over glasses of red plonk. Often Elaine was there. Polly was a baby in a high chair, then a toddler, eventually a schoolgirl.

Sometimes Kath came.

Oliver did not contribute much to those fervent creative sessions around the table. He would come up with quickly calculated figures when appropriate; occasionally, when the level of unreality was getting high, he would be quietly insistent about costings and projections. But not too insistent; he had learned that it was better to have a chat with Nick at some later point, by which time he might have gone off the whole idea anyway. Besides, Oliver enjoyed those occasions. He enjoyed the heady to-and-fro of ideas, Nick’s flights of fancy, the provocative range of people. He liked the fetching girls with portfolios of artwork—and tried his luck with these, every now and then. He was properly impressed by the erudite experts on this and that, who might or might not be just the author they were looking for. He was well aware of his own role and image: the sweet voice of reason, sensible Oliver, who’ll sort out the paperwork and get this off the ground. But it seemed as though he had taken on a degree of protective coloring; he too was caught up in the creative process. He was a modest but essential adjunct to all this excited planning. He contributed by his very presence, and thus became a part of the fluctuating society around Elaine’s kitchen table. He stepped out for a while with a girl Nick brought in to do design. He struck up a friendship with a man who knew all there was to know about windmills. He became someone people invited along to Sunday lunch gatherings, he was a useful extra car-driver for spontaneous excursions. That was a breezy time; there was always some new venture in the pipeline, other projects charging ahead, fresh people conjured up by Nick. Thus it was perhaps that Oliver’s natural pragmatism was set aside, that he failed to be alert to the warning signs until it was too late. Then there were the unnerving weeks when he went over the figures again and again, looking for some lifeline, and could find none.

“I feel I’ve let you down.” It was to Elaine that he had said this, not Nick. And he remembers being surprised by her calmness in the face of what was happening. Her husband was about to go out of business, but she seemed quietly buoyant. “We’ll be all right,” she had said. “I’ve got some plans. What will you do, Oliver?”

He too had had a strategy in mind. He had seen what he could do, even as Hammond & Watson was laid to rest. He had taken happily to computers. That was the way to go. Word processing, printing on demand. He had sidestepped Nick’s bustling ideas for future collaboration and slid away. Sometimes he thinks of those years with a touch of nostalgia; mostly he relishes his present certainty and control. Satisfaction lies in an impeccable page, and healthy accounts.

Sandra knows little of Nick, or of Elaine. Least of all does she know anything of Kath. She is aware that Oliver’s previous business venture had to do with mainstream publishing, and that his partner was the inspirational and creative member of the team and ended up if anything a mite too inspirational and creative, which was why the thing folded.

Both Sandra and Oliver are reticent about other times. Sandra is divorced, but Oliver knows little of why or when. “’Nuff said,” says Sandra crisply. “Over and done with.” Equally, she does not press Oliver for information. There is tacit agreement between them that both have lived other lives and that a mutual respect for privacy is appropriate in a late liaison such as theirs. Oliver finds that he is distinctly incurious about Sandra’s past. This fact has occasionally given pause for thought; it seems to indicate a detachment that is perhaps not quite right. He reminds himself of Sandra’s qualities and of the reasons why life with her is so compatible—her unruffled efficiency, her household management. Her compact, nubile body—nicely sexy when you wanted to see it that way but not a daily disturbing provocation. Her panache behind the wheel; he has come to dislike driving. Her
bœuf en daube
.

Given all that, an obsessive concern with Sandra’s previous life seems superfluous, and indeed childish. Leave that to young lovers.

And Sandra too steers clear of inquiry. Though just occasionally an edge creeps into her voice which perhaps indicates suppressed attention. She comes across an inscription in one of Oliver’s books: “Happy birthday—tons of love, Nell.”

“One of your ladies, I suppose.” Crisp, but a statement, not a question. The matter is not pursued.

Where Nick and Elaine are concerned, she is apparently uninterested. The business was wound up; Oliver went his own way. That will do, it seems, for Sandra.

Nowadays, Oliver does not know nearly so many people. He has lost touch with pretty well all of those acquired during the Hammond & Watson years. His clients of today do not move on to a more intimate plane; many of them he never meets—they remain a voice on the phone, a sender of faxes and e-mails. Occasionally he and Sandra entertain another couple for supper. He has moved into that closed society of coupledom, he realizes, on the fringes of which he hung round for so many years. A member of a couple always has someone with whom to go to the cinema, to take a walk. The unattached are flotsam, eddying about the solid purposeful mass of the coupled. From time to time, he does give a wistful thought to life as flotsam: it had its compensations.

“Kath?” says Sandra.

She speaks so abruptly that Oliver is jolted to attention. He has been cruising happily, fingers tapping out a routine task, thoughts quite elsewhere. He stops tapping, and returns to the office.

“The sister. What did she look like?” Sandra is wearing that intent look that he knows so well, like a dog pointing. This can be applied equally to the choice of a cut of meat or consideration of a page layout.

What did Kath look like? Oliver is stymied. How did you begin to describe Kath? “She was . . .” he begins. “Well, she . . . she had dark hair. Not very tall.”

“There’s a photo I saw once in that envelope you’ve got in your desk at home. I noticed it when you were trying to find an old photo of yourself to show me. A girl sitting beside a pond. Is that her?”

Sandra’s observational talent. He knows at once the picture she means. Kath is sitting cross-legged on the grass in front of the garden pond at Nick and Elaine’s house. Her eyes are screwed up in the sunlight, she has bare arms and legs, and a radiant smile, beaming straight at the camera: she is entrancing. Yes, Sandra would have noticed that photo.