The Photograph (23 page)

Myra goes off to the ladies’. Glyn wanders out onto the wide terrace overlooking a green vista of southern England, and as he does so he is joined by Kath. She comes with a rush, not just in his head, but all around him, it seems, so that he is with her as he once was at some similar place, to which he hustled her during that ferocious accelerated period of courtship. They stand at a stone parapet, overlooking tree-studded parkland, and she puts a hand on his arm: “There’s something you never say.” And then, “Never mind—” This rings now in his head: “There’s something you never say—”

Myra appears, and they start their tour of the gardens, a couple enjoying an outing amid all the other couples and the families and the straggling coach party. The weather remains idyllic, the roses are out. Myra is high with satisfaction. “Well!” she says. “This
was
a good idea.”

For Glyn, it is no longer Myra who is at his side, but Kath: Myra talks, but anything she says becomes irrelevant background interference; he reaches beyond it for Kath.

“You’re not
listening
,” says Kath. But he is. He is listening with all his might. Listening and seeing. And along with the familiar signals that endlessly repeat themselves, the reliable structure of the years with Kath, the received interpretation, there come odd vagrant challenging flashes—like the hitherto undetected stars that periodically excite astronomers. But Glyn is not excited; he is disturbed, perturbed, awry.

He hears Kath on the phone—a low voice that falters, crumbles. Is she
crying
? He comes into the room, and she is putting the phone down: “I’ll have to go, Mary.” Her face is odd, distorted. He is in a hurry, he is leaving for a conference in the States, and he has mislaid a crucial paper. He cannot dwell on Kath’s face, that shriveled look, but he must have stashed it away because now, here, today, it comes swimming up to him.

Long ago, Elaine considered not having Polly. That is to say, she considered not having children at all. Being childless. There is a choice. She could see that life is a good deal less cluttered without that. One would be able to get on with work a lot more easily. She looked around at her contemporaries and took note. There were those who toiled from day to day, burdened with sleepless nights and howling days, and those who cruised free, accountable only to themselves.

It could have gone either way. For a couple of years, she thought of the matter from time to time, but would push it to one side. And then she noticed that if she forgot to take the pill, she was not particularly bothered about the lapse. She forgot quite often.

When she knew she was pregnant, Nick said, “Oh, good. What fun.” She had never discussed with him her own doubts about becoming a parent. Of course there were two of them in this, but it had seemed to her that in the last resort the issue was a personal one. She knew who would be taking the brunt.

Nick was not a bad father. When he was around, and had nothing better to do, he fathered with a boisterous enthusiasm. From the age of about two, Polly saw him as some kind of engaging but wayward family pet—good for a romp, but not to be taken entirely seriously. As she grew older, this attitude firmed up into one in which affection and amusement rode upon an undercurrent of mild exasperation:
“Typical!”
“Trust Dad—” Polly seemed to shoot past him, becoming the responsible and efficient adult, while he remained in a time warp of feckless adolescence.

Polly’s phone calls are now more circumspect. She has given up on direct appeals, defeated by Elaine’s polite deflection: “Can we not talk about this.” Instead she skirmishes around the edge of the subject. She mentions the trouble involved in fixing the washing machine ill-treated by Nick. Elaine offers at once to pay. “It’s not the money,” says Polly. “It’s the
bother
.” She describes how she has hauled Nick into the offices of a rental agency: “On Saturday morning, when actually I had a million things to do . . . And we went to see this really nice flat and he said yes, OK, fine. And then as soon as we’re back at my place again, he does a U-turn and it’s no, he’s not sure, maybe, he’ll sleep on it. And there’s my Saturday morning down the drain.” She makes dark references to drinking sessions. She says Nick has lost weight: “Not that he couldn’t do with that, but all the same—”

All this has an effect on Elaine. She is distracted. Her resolve is faltering. Instead of concentrating smoothly upon work, upon the demands of each day, upon future plans, her thoughts come homing back to what Polly last said. She pictures Nick wandering aimlessly around London. She wonders about this weight loss, and the drinking.

Polly visits. She visits at short notice, as usual, dashing down on a Sunday. “Dad knows where I’ve gone,” she says pointedly. “He . . . well, he sent his love.”

She and Elaine sit and eat lunch in the conservatory. “I can’t believe Dad’s not here,” says Polly. “I keep expecting him to walk in. All right, all right, I’m not going to start up again. Just . . . well, it’s so
unreal
.”

Elaine agrees, but she is not going to say so. Polly talks about a man. This Andy. “Not that I’m rushing into anything,” she says. “But it’s
interesting
, put it that way.” She looks speculatively at Elaine. “Did you and Dad fall in love with a great wham, or what?”

Elaine is thrown. She is not open to this kind of exchange, nor is Polly in the habit of such questioning. Have normal family conventions been abandoned?

“Oh—” she says. “It’s such a long time ago.”

Polly is having none of that. “Oh, come on, Mum. Everyone remembers falling in love.”

Elaine is busy over the salad. “All home produce,” she announces. “This is a kind of rocket I’ve never tried before. Grows like a weed.” She piles herbage on Polly’s plate. “And the first baby beetroot. Here—”

Polly eyes her. “Mum, don’t mind me saying so, but you’d feel better if you let go a bit more. You’re
so
buttoned up. I mean, I know it’s the way you are, but it can’t be good for you.”

Elaine is used to being scolded by Polly. Polly has been scolding her ever since she was about three. Usually it has been over questions of diet, or dress, or household management. Now, it would seem that she is going for basics.

“I seem to remember a process of gradual drift,” she says.

“Drift?” yelps Polly. “
Drift!
For heaven’s sake, Mum!”

Actually, Elaine is trying to be honest. That is what she remembers. She searches for passion, and something does come smoking up: an incandescent day when she and Nick walked on the Sussex downs, not long before they got married, and she had brimmed with well-being, with anticipation—yes, with love.

“Well, there was more than that.”

“So I should hope,” snaps Polly. She becomes reflective. “I mean, I’ve been in love, but I’m accepting that I haven’t been definitively in love. Not the full five-star menu, the earth moving, the real thing. Just a few appetizers. I’m waiting.”

“Plenty of time,” says Elaine. “How’s work going?”

But Polly is not interested in talking about work. “Was Kath in love with Glyn?”

Why is Polly so exercised about love? Is it love in the past or love in the future that concerns her? Elaine’s love, or her lack of it? Or a potential love of Polly’s own? Whichever, Elaine is uncomfortable.

“I suppose—” she begins. “Well—she seemed very happy.”

Kath comes down the register-office steps, again and again, smiling and smiling. She smiles into the camera, at Elaine on the other side of the road. Her skirt is crooked.

“When didn’t Kath seem happy?” cries Polly.

Elaine wants to stop this conversation, if conversation it is, but can see that Polly is in a relentless mood. Nor can she say, “Can we not talk about this,” because Polly is not doing so; she is keeping the matter of Nick at arm’s length.

But now Polly plunges in another direction. “The thing is, I don’t
understand
. I don’t understand how people can be so . . .
mysterious
. I don’t understand
people
. You think you’ve got them pretty well sewn up, and then they go all flaky on you. They fly apart. They even fly apart in your
head
, for goodness’ sake! I don’t understand Kath. I mean, I knew Kath. I don’t understand Dad. I look at him—and he’s a real mess these days, Mum, I can tell you, grubby shirts, needs a haircut, doesn’t bother to shave—I look at him and I don’t know
what’s
in his head. And I don’t understand you, Mum. Absolutely I do not.”

There is a butterfly tapping against the conservatory window, beating furiously up and down: a tortoiseshell. Beyond, in the garden, the sunlight sifting through the crab apple trees has turned the lawn to a brocade of green and gold. Pam wheels a barrow across the end of the grass walk; some stuff falls off and she stoops to pick it up. Elaine is aware of all this, the stable and consoling backcloth to her daughter’s discordant presence. Polly no longer sounds thirty; this wail is coming from a person of eight, or ten, or twelve.

“I don’t understand how everything can suddenly go completely off the rails. I mean, the point about life surely is that it moves on. It goes forward. On and on, regardless. It doesn’t . . . loop backwards. Which, as far as I can see, is what yours is doing. Yours and Dad’s. There’s Dad, and he’s a zombie. He’s completely out of it. I’m beginning to think therapy. There’s a woman I’ve heard of—”

Elaine is jolted into reaction. “No. Definitely none of that.” She stares at Polly, who has pushed her half-eaten lunch to one side and is managing to look both martyred and mutinous.

Elaine realizes that what she is now experiencing is guilt, and that she has perhaps been experiencing this for some while. She is feeling guilty about Nick. How can this be? She is the one who is sinned against, but there has been a reversal of roles. It is Nick who is apparently some sort of victim, who is at risk, who invites concern. Whereas she is unreasonable, implacable, unkind.

She says, “You do remember what this is all about?”

“Oh,
Mum
. . . of course I do. But look at you. . . . Frankly, Mum, you’re all over the place. I mean, I can tell—you’re twitchy, you’ve got baggy eyes, you’re not you.”

Is this so? Elaine thinks of the way in which Sonia glances at her from time to time. She remembers Pam’s solicitous offers to take on extra tasks. Is this how she appears? Is this, indeed, how she is?

There is a silence. “There—” says Polly. “That’s all. I’ll shut up.” She reaches for her plate and starts to eat again. “The salad’s good. Can I take some of this rocket stuff back for Dad and me?”

Oliver finds himself thinking about Kath’s men. Those who came with her when she turned up at Elaine’s house. They are a shadowy crew—for the most part he can no longer put a name to a face, and frequently the faces too are lost. There were not that many of them—four, five, six maybe, over the years. A couple who came only once; others more tenacious, who have left a stronger impression. An assorted lot—taller, shorter, younger, older—but the common denominator that Oliver remembers is a certain triumphal quality. They were men in possession of a trophy, successful competitors in some contest with which Oliver was not involved. Oliver knew that he was not the sort of man who aspired to a woman like Kath. These men were better-looking, rich with confidence, purposeful. Kath was their purpose of the moment, apparently. They accompanied her with complacent ease; she was their due, they were owed someone like this.

He remembers an actor whose name he vaguely recognized, a roguish charmer; he remembers an urbane fellow with a BMW convertible. Both of these turned up on more than one occasion. And, homing in on recollections of these men and on the way in which they melted away, over time, he finds himself in Elaine’s garden, with Kath, companionably gathering windfall apples. She has come alone this time: no man. Polly darts round them, busy with apples. She rushes up, laden: “Look how many I’ve got!” “Clever girl!” says Kath. “Put them in the basket.”

“Where’s Mike?” demands Polly. “He promised he’d give me a ride in his car without a top.”

And Kath replies, “Mike’s not coming anymore.” Offhand, inspecting an apple. Polly pulls a face and goes back to the apple hunt.

Kath turns to Oliver. Was he betraying interest? Or surprise, or sympathy? She smiles: “It’s all right, Olly—my heart is not broken. Did you like him?”

And Oliver, flustered, prevaricates—unable to say that so far as he is concerned, they are jammy beggars who don’t know their luck, the lot of them.

Kath sighs. She polishes an apple on her sleeve, takes a bite; he sees her white teeth against the shiny red. “The thing is to move away before it’s too late.” Is she talking to herself, or to him? He does not know that look: something anxious about it, lost.

“Too late?” he says firmly, to bring her back.

And she smiles—familiar cheery Kath. “Before they change their minds. Have you got a girlfriend, Olly?”

How did Oliver reply? Oh, he can guess. He would have floundered about, and Kath would have laughed, and teased him, and they would have gathered up the apples, and Polly, and gone back to the house for lunch, or tea, or supper.

Indeed, the whole scene is now a fluid mix of imagery and supposition. He sees Kath, and small Polly flitting about in the long grass, and experiences the satisfaction of lighting on a perfect apple—no bruising, no scabs or holes. He sees that alien look on Kath’s face. Snatches of what is said ring out: “My heart is not broken. . . . The thing is to move away . . . Before they change their minds.” The rest is unreliable—perhaps that is how it was, perhaps later wisdoms have imposed themselves, perhaps the need for narrative and sequence has stepped in. Suffice it that he was there, then, with Kath, and it was thus, or very like.

 
Polly does not remember the day of the apples. It is subsumed into the crowded simultaneous present of her childhood, when she is just a pair of eyes and ears—seeing, hearing, storing. She has stored Kath many times—she can conjure up different incarnations of Kath. Kath gets smaller as Polly gets larger, until eventually they are shoulder to shoulder. Kath is now like some kind of big sister.