The Photograph (17 page)

Hapgood talks about the painting. It was not so much her beauty, he says—one doesn’t necessarily want to paint someone because they are handsome—it was the way she composed herself. The way she stood, sat, moved. Arresting. And so absolutely natural. Like some elegant animal. He had agonized over the pose—had thought of having her sit, stand, be this way or the other—and then one day had noticed her settle herself like that in a chair and had thought, Yes, that’s it.

Glyn scarcely hears him. He is intent upon the little translucent shape in his hand, this Kath preserved in amber light. He finds that he does not want to give it up. He searches for Kath’s features, but the scale is too small. Eventually he hands the slide back to Ben Hapgood. “Thank you,” he says.

 
Glyn drives home in a trance. He pays scant attention to anything; the landscape whips past unobserved. He makes none of the usual mental notes about place names, about a road arrangement to be checked out later, about buildings, about field structures. He can think only about that slide, about the lost and unknown Kath that he held for a few moments in his hand. Kath is interfering with his work again, but he does not notice.

She came this way. Not once, but several times. She went to that house, talked and laughed with those people, played with their children, was welcomed. She sat in the basket chair in Ben Hapgood’s studio, for many hours, gazing out of the window. Thinking about what?

He had never been jealous of her friends, had never resented that shifting pack who drifted in and out of the house, who kept her forever on the phone. They did not much interest him, truth to tell. Lovers would have been one thing; friends were neither here nor there. He is in pursuit of lovers right now, but it is these others who are unsettling his life, stirring up these unaccustomed feelings of . . . of what?

Feelings of exclusion, of ignorance, of deprivation. He is glimpsing a Kath whom apparently he did not know, a Kath known to these others who are themselves mysterious, so far as he is concerned. Strangers, who were nevertheless entirely familiar to the person with whom he lived in that ultimate intimacy.

You knew that at the time. You knew she had friends.

Of course.

So why is this now causing difficulties?

How should I know? How the hell would I know? Glyn sweeps onwards round the M25. Counties wheel past to one side; London lurks out there on the other. He sees none of it. Faces are streaming through his mind, the alien faces of the Hapgoods, of Peter Claverdon, faces that are underpinned by words, the continuous repetitive refrain that plays unprompted—from just now, from long ago: “What a shame it all went wrong. . . . It was a problem for her, looking like that. . . . You’re not listening, are you?”

 
He steps from the lift of this block of mansion flats. The place is hushed and carpeted and proposes solid wealth. The voice of Saul Clements on the entry phone has told him to come up, and Glyn is preparing himself for this man. He knows better now than to second-guess; he has no image in his head, but he is on guard, he is in his corner, waiting for the bell. This is where he is going to need all his perceptions, all his powers of deduction, for the man who so urgently bought Kath’s portrait.

The door to the flat is already open. And there stands the ugliest man Glyn has ever seen. This man is a toad, a gnome, a troglodyte. He is as squat as a barrel, his nose is bulbous, his mouth is a letter box. He is seventy-five years old at least. This man was never Kath’s lover?

The troglodyte leads Glyn into a room whose furnishings are deep and rich and darkly gleaming. The world beyond has been turned into exterior décor—a glimpse of the London skyline framed in thick glowing brocade curtains, the faintest purr of traffic sound. There are velvety sofas and chairs, desk and tables of museum quality, all the wonders of the Orient underfoot. Oh, there is the smell of money here. And the walls are covered with paintings, each softly and precisely lit. This is perhaps a William Nicholson, and that one maybe an Ivon Hitchens, and over there is possibly a Lucian Freud. This man likes art, it seems. He likes it a lot. He has splashed out, over the years.

It is impossible to imagine Kath in this room. Except that there she is, there in that corner, suspended above a delicate little eighteenth-century davenport. Spotlit Kath. Kath framed about two foot by three, wearing a plain green dress, arms bare, legs tucked under her, sitting on the basket chair that Glyn saw in Ben Hapgood’s studio, her face in semiprofile, turned to the light of the window, the light of another time, a time of which Glyn knew nothing.

The man who cannot have been Kath’s lover steers him over to the painting. He is speaking. His voice is firm, patrician, modulated—as elegant as his appearance is uncouth. Glyn finds himself silenced. He feels suddenly chastened. He feels like the guest who has committed a solecism, he feels like some hapless schoolboy. He wants out, but he is here now, he got himself into this, he has only himself to blame.

Glyn gazes at Kath. He sees her face—pensive, abstracted. Oh, he knows that sideways look, that partial removal of herself, that retreat into reflection. He stares at Kath, at this vanished Kath, who lives on in this man’s gilded cage, who has lived here for years, locked into another time, other days, sealed within a frame by Ben Hapgood. He wonders about those hours. What did they talk about, she and Ben, and Glenda, who perhaps wandered in and out with cups of coffee, or a summons to a meal? He strains to hear Kath’s voice. In the most bewildering way, he wants, he needs that voice—here in this alien place, amid the man’s great sofas and his groomed antique furniture.

The man is talking. He says that when he bought the painting Ben Hapgood’s work was not familiar to him, but that as soon as he saw this painting in the exhibition he was at once struck by it. He was entranced: “A quick and easy decision. One rather welcomes those—the knowledge that one must have this picture and that is all there is to it.” He smiles at Glyn, a collusive look as though to a fellow collector. He draws Glyn’s attention to the modeling of the face. He indicates the use of light, the way that it falls upon the arm, upon the protruding corner of a yellow cushion.

He is all courtesy, this man. His letter was all courtesy, in which he replied to Glyn’s inquiry—Glyn’s ever-so-carefully phrased inquiry as to the whereabouts of the portrait of his late wife, which he has been given to understand Mr. Clements purchased back in 1989, and which he would so very much like to see and photograph. Glyn’s camera is in his pocket.

And now the man asks a startling question. He asks what Kath’s name was. He has never known, it seems; the portrait was sold to him as that of a friend of the artist, unspecified. When he is told, he looks long and hard at the painting.

“Kath,” he says. “So. Kath. I have always thought of her simply as—she. Respectfully, you understand—but she has always been anonymous. Now, it will be oddly different. Kath. And knowing that she is no longer alive.”

 
Glyn files away Mr. Saul Clements, who was never Kath’s lover, who did not know Kath, but now lives with her in a strange daily intimacy. He files away Peter Claverdon and Ben Hapgood, who also were not Kath’s lovers, but who was to know? He has been up several blind alleys, but that is always the case with a research project. Glyn is well used to the sense of frustration, the need for patience and tenacity. But he is not accustomed to the feelings generated by this particular project. He is unnerved, unsettled, he is not in control of his own reactions. Instead of a calm commitment to the objective—which is to establish whether or not Kath was in the habit of infidelity—he finds himself waylaid and distracted. He should be able to discard these various unfruitful areas, now that they are investigated and seen to be unpromising, instead of which he broods upon them. He thinks constantly of that studio in which Kath sat, and talked, and laughed. He sees the spotlit portrait. He wonders about the summer of that festival, when Kath was so radiant in the group photograph. He wants to go back there and ask her questions—questions he never asked at the time. Where are you going? Why? What is it like there?

Nick is in a daze. He doesn’t feel very well. He loses track of time, of the day of the week. He wanders about London, because it is worse to sit in Polly’s flat, but he cannot think of anything he wants to do. A jaunt to London used to be an indulgence; now he feels as though he has been dispatched to Siberia. When he is hungry, he must find food, because Polly is out all day and most evenings, and her fridge is not like the richly furnished fridge at home. Home? But he no longer has a home, apparently. Goaded by Polly, he goes into estate agents’ offices and asks about rentals. But he barely hears what they say, and the lists that they give him lie about unread.

This cannot be. This is all some absurd mistake. He telephones Elaine, but she is never available. Either Sonia answers, and is evasive and diplomatic, or the answerphone is on. He leaves messages—appeals that are initially dignified, but which soon degenerate to petulant cries and abject supplication. Elaine does not respond.

Polly goes to see her mother, and returns cross and flustered. “You’ll have to give it time, Dad,” she says. “And, look, have you been to see the place in Clerkenwell? I thought that sounded just the sort of thing you want.”

But Nick does not want a stunning loft conversion in EC1. He wants to go home, not after time, but now. He wants this nightmare over, stashed away in the past where mistakes should be, out of sight and out of mind. Which is where the whole Kath thing belongs, and where it safely was until this . . . this ludicrous accident, this insane intervention by bloody Glyn.

It was over and done with. All right, it shouldn’t have happened, but no harm was done, only
now
is harm being done, and that is so unnecessary. Nick cannot believe that something long since laid to rest can thus come bubbling up and wreck his life. He is affronted, run ragged; no wonder he has these headaches, this heaving gut. He and Elaine should be working this out together, quiet and calm, as he is sure they could if only she would give him the chance.

Instead of which, here he is pacing horrible London, occasionally meeting up for a drink with some old acquaintance. But such arrangements have lost their kick. Furthermore, he no longer wants to go and potter around Northumberland for a few days, and the various projects he was considering are not of the slightest interest to him. Can Elaine seriously think that he is able to work under these circumstances? He can barely focus for long enough to buy himself a newspaper. He sits on park benches with a beer in his hand, like some wino, staring at the ground.

And staring also at what happened back then, which should not have happened, which should not be roaring up to clobber him like this.

 
He looked at Kath one day and saw that she was
so
pretty. Had he never realized this before? Well, yes—but in a casual, take-it-or-leave-it sort of way. Now suddenly her prettiness was of another order: it was relevant, it related to him, it made him feel he needed to do something about it.

He wanted to go to bed with her. As soon as he recognized this he was shocked. Look here—this is Elaine’s sister. Elaine’s
sister
, for Christ’s sake, whom you’ve known for years.

And it made no difference. None whatsoever. So? said some still, small voice. So she’s Elaine’s sister? Things like this happen, don’t they? Nothing anyone can do about it. It’s not your fault or hers.

He remembers that onslaught of . . . well, lust. He remembers looking and looking at Kath, astonished that he should be looking so differently, that Kath’s familiar presence was suddenly something quite other. Astonished but also quietly thrilled. He remembers how the days took color, how he brimmed with energy.

He remembers all that. He remembers less about the sequence of that time. How long did it go on? Six months? A year? How many times did they make love? Not that many. In his head, the whole thing is now compacted into a handful of vibrant moments: Kath’s face, her body, her voice.

She rolls away from him. “Why are we doing this?” she asks. She stares at him—he sees that look still, an intent gaze, that has something of resignation about it. It is a look that bothers him, and he should not be bothered at this particular moment. “
You’re
doing it for the reasons that men do”—she corrects herself—“that people do. But why am
I
doing it?”

He tries to hush her. At least he supposes that he did. When he listens to her now, it seems to him that there are things he should have said, but apparently he did not.

“You’re Elaine’s husband. Is that why I’m doing it? Is it
because
you’re Elaine’s husband?”

He remembers the day of the photograph. That bloody photograph, but for which he would not be here now, sitting on a bench with crisp packets swirling round his feet, alongside an old fellow reading the
Sun.
I can’t go on living like this, he thinks, I can’t.

Why did they go to that place? Was it Kath’s idea? But Kath was never into Roman villas. It seems to Nick that maybe he himself proposed that excursion, tenuously linked perhaps to some project. But in reality it was an excuse to see Kath, because at that point it was essential to be with her, even if it was in the company of others. So there they all were—Elaine and himself, and Kath, and that woman Mary Packard with some man, and Oliver. Fateful Oliver, who went and brought his camera along.

He remembers a picnic. All of them sprawled around on the grass, and him intensely conscious of Kath—being careful not to pay her significant attention, assiduously behaving normally, treating Kath just as he always had, for years. He remembers her wandering off with Mary Packard, the two of them looking at some mosaic, laughing together. He had wondered if Mary Packard knew; Kath’s great friend, she was. How much did Kath confide in her? He half wanted to think that Mary Packard knew.