The Photograph (28 page)

Your mother dying when she did. That accounts for much, says Mary. Didn’t you know? There is an edge to her voice; Elaine is uncomfortable.

The business with Nick . . . says Mary.

And Elaine, who would not have spoken of that, goes rigid. Oh, so Glyn has been here. I see, no wonder I was expected.

That sodding photograph, says Mary. Yes, I remember that day. Who? Oh, him. Someone I’m not in touch with anymore.

Forget it, says Mary. That business. Nick. A crazy aberration. God knows why. Do we need to ask?

Halfway home, stationary at a crossroads behind a line of traffic, Elaine discovers that she does not need to ask. This news comes as a relief, a release from something oppressive, and adds to her sense of a change in perception. When the line of cars advances, and she gathers speed once more, it is as though she were moving into some new age, a time when things would be apparently the same but also rather different.

 
What the hell am I doing?

Oliver sits in his car, outside Mary Packard’s gate, and for two pins he would start the engine up again and be off. What is he doing here? This is daft. Embarrassing. Entirely unnecessary. Except that for a few hours, several days ago, it seemed an imperative.

He gets out, locks up, opens the garden gate.

He had forgotten quite what Mary Packard looked like, but she is immediately familiar. Of course—that shock of hair, that cool, calm manner. And as soon as he is sitting in her kitchen, with a mug of tea in his hand, it seems quite reasonable and straightforward to be there.

The thing is, he says, I can’t get all this out of my head. Ever since . . . Well, you see, there’s this bloody photograph that turned up.

I know about the photograph, says Mary Packard. And she tells him why she knows, but Oliver has an eerie feeling that this woman might know everything anyway, by some osmotic process, like the wise woman of folktales.

It’s all my fault, says Oliver. I mean, it isn’t, of course—but actually it is, because I took the photo and then like an idiot I gave it to Nick instead of just throwing it away and saying nothing. If it weren’t for me there wouldn’t be all this fuss. I’ve had Glyn on my back, then Nick. Elaine threw a complete wobbly, it seems, and gave Nick the push.

Yes, says Mary. People do seem to have been on the move.

Is it my fault? says Oliver.

Of course not, she tells him. And you know perfectly well it isn’t. You didn’t come here to ask me that, did you?

Oliver agrees that he did not. They have become oddly companionable, he and Mary Packard, as though they were old friends, though Oliver cannot recall that back then they ever exchanged more than stock civilities. There is now some shared, unstated vision.

It was a crying shame, says Oliver. He is no longer talking about the photograph, or Glyn, or Nick. Her, of all people, he says. The blessed of the gods, you’d have thought. But she wasn’t, was she? One of the damned, more like.

I keep thinking about her. I mean, one always did, but not quite so—compulsively. Was there anything to be done?

Probably not, says Mary.

The afternoon has turned to evening. The mugs of tea have been replaced by glasses of red wine. Oliver and Mary Packard talk about other times. About Kath, especially. They remember this and that; they bring Kath back to life, passing her to and fro between them—looking at her, listening to her. They are clear-eyed; they do not remember with sentimentality. Oliver hears of things he did not know, and the Kath of whom he talks is subtly changed even as he does so; what he saw and heard is infused with a different understanding. But he is somehow soothed. It is as though in this consideration of Kath they are also performing a kind of ritual, they are paying tribute. He has no idea if this is what he came here for, but he is glad that he did. The visit has served a purpose, if not perhaps the one that he sought—if indeed he knew what that was.

She had an effect, he says.

She still is having an effect, says Mary.

“Can you remember what date Mum and I got married?”

“Actually, I wasn’t there,” says Polly.

“It was July, I’m pretty sure. And it’s July now. But what
date
?”

“You don’t
know
?” cries Polly. “All this time, and you don’t know?”

Nick replies that he does know. Well, he sort of knows. He knows sort of whenabouts it is—just, the exact day he sometimes forgets.

“Well, then, let me tell you. It’s the nineteenth. This Friday. And, frankly, Dad, I’m astonished you don’t know. I think you should ask yourself how on earth it can be that you don’t know. And listen, Dad, I’m going to be away this weekend. I’m going to the country with . . . with a friend.
Please
remember to take your keys with you when you go out.”

 
Nick goes shopping. He stares bemused into windows, glowing caverns in which watches have been tossed carelessly amid folds of satin, in which headless velvet necks display swags of gilt or shining stones, and miniature crystal trees are festooned with gold chains. Since he cannot imagine going into one of these places and entering into some negotiation, he passes on, and eventually ends up in a department store, where he cruises helplessly up and down escalators. He hasn’t been to such an emporium since his mother used to take him on forays to acquire school uniforms. He could do with his mother right now; she would have known how to deal with this.

Nick wanders from Electrical Appliances to China and Glass, through Haberdashery and Lingerie, into Furnishing Fabrics, up to Sports and Garden Furniture, down by way of Baby Wear and Gifts. He is a boat against the current, bumping up against hordes of purposeful people; everybody here knows what they are doing except for him. He is immeasurably dispirited; it seems possible that he will go mad here, pitched finally into the purgatory that has loomed since Elaine told him to go. The store has become a mocking metaphor for a world in which others head confidently for their chosen slots. They know that their destiny is with Lighting or with Hosiery, while he can only drift feckless among them, unable to identify either need or direction. It is all uncomfortably near the knuckle, a parody of some true experience, except that in its way this is indeed real—he is here, by choice, and does not know where to go or what to do.

There are signals from ordinary life. In Kitchenware he passes a kettle like the one at home. He finds himself staring at a chair identical to one in Polly’s flat. He brushes past a girl wearing big hoop earrings like Kath used to wear, but immediately slams Kath out of his mind—there is not time nor space for her, she must be put aside, for now and perhaps forever. Occasionally he comes up against himself, a mirrored glimpse of this distracted man—too bald, too old—and is further disoriented. This cannot be him, but apparently it is.

He comes to a halt at last by a desk. A woman sits at the desk: a calm, benign woman who smiles at him—the first human contact he has experienced in this place. The woman has a sign above her head: she is Customer Services.

There is a chair in front of the desk. Nick sits down. The woman continues to smile invitingly. Later, it seems to him that he bared his soul to her.

 
“It’s the nineteenth,” says Sonia. “And we still don’t have an estimate for the hard landscaping on the Surrey place. Two weeks overdue.”

Elaine registers this—the date rather than the errant estimate. So? she tells herself. So it’s the wedding anniversary? Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? They come round, like bulb-planting or pruning time. So?

Later, when she has snatched an hour to work in the garden, the date lurks, prompting various reflections: that Nick seldom remembered it, and, if he did, invariably got the day wrong and proposed a celebratory dinner a week too early; that this always riled her; that the wedding occasion itself is now something of a blur. How can such a seminal event have dissolved into a few hazy impressions? Auntie Clare’s hat, the rock-hard cake icing that resisted the knife, Kath in a floaty green dress.

Elaine plants out some pulmonarias and tries to concentrate on current projects. She has plenty of work in hand, but since her visit to Mary Packard she has felt disoriented, unable to fix her attention where it is required. It is not so much that she has been dwelling on what she learned from Mary Packard; rather, it is a question of coming to terms with a revised vision, with a new set of responses.

The day proceeds. Elaine spends time on a garden design, and even more time on the phone. Sonia comes in and out with queries, as do Pam and Jim. Elaine achieves a further spell in the garden and, eventually, after five, everyone has gone and she is alone.

Nick’s arrival is nicely judged. Elaine has had a bath and is through in the conservatory when she hears a car in the drive. She goes to the front door, and there he is, with a package in his hand.

Elaine is so taken aback by the sight of him that she just stands there. Possibly she says, “Oh—” Polly is right—he is thinner. Otherwise he is simply Nick, and moreover, Nick wearing the furtive expression that normally heralds a long process of exculpation.

He proffers the package.

“It’s a scarf,” he explains. “It’s got flowers on it. Actually, a nice woman in the shop helped me, I must admit. You know I’m not good at shops. I told her all about you, and she thought this one with the flowers. It’s Italian, apparently. Silk.”

Elaine continues to stand there, now holding the package. An entirely fresh image from that day thirty-two years ago has swum into her head: she sees Nick’s hand above hers as he puts on the ring. She remembers her startled recognition that she was now part of a unit of two, whatever that was going to mean.

Nick is on the doorstep, expectant.

“Well,” she says. “You’d better come in.” She knows as she speaks that he will not be leaving again, and that this will be all right, or as all right as it ever was.

 
“You know how everything was completely fouled up for me?” says Polly. “Well, now it isn’t. Honestly,
life
. . . First of all, I think it may be serious—with Andy. We went away for the weekend and—let’s just say it was pretty good. What? Yes, of course there was amazing sex, but that’s not the whole picture, is it? The thing is, he’s just such an understanding person. You can relate to him. He’s not—well, he’s not like the men I usually end up with. Oh God, just talking about him’s making me feel all peculiar. Do you know—this may be it.

“And there’s more. My dad’s gone back to my mum. Or rather my mum’s let my dad come home. I got in late on Friday night and there’s this message saying actually he’s at home now and he’ll come and pick his things up next week. Just like that. Sorted, apparently.”

 
In youth, Oliver was good at Latin. Occasionally, a shred of Virgil or of Caesar can still float into his head. These days, he is haunted by
lacrimae rerum
—those plangent words. He remembers that the Latin master considered the phrase untranslatable. He would chalk it up on the board, with some suggested renderings: the pity of things, the tears of the world. “Not right, are they?” he would say. “A beautiful expression, the ultimate in poetry—and it has to be left as it is.”

Lacrimae rerum
. Oh yes, indeed, thinks Oliver. Admittedly, run-of-the-mill distress such as he has in mind is hardly on a par with the fall of Troy, but nevertheless the language seems apt, and a curious kind of solace. He allows the words to float, and one afternoon he lets them fill his monitor also, in many different colors and fonts—red, purple, yellow, green, bold, italic, Symbol, Tahoma, Times New Roman, you name it. He shuffles them up and moves them around.

Sandra, crossing the room at one point and glancing over his shoulder, says, “What on earth are you up to?”

“Doodling,” says Oliver. He clears the screen. “Right. Now, am I doing the Rotary Club job or are you?”

 
Glyn works. Of course—that is what Glyn does, what he has always done. Term is over, so there is no longer the dictation of students and colleagues; he spends long hours in the library and in his study, preparation for a far-reaching new project on transport systems. He thinks prehistoric trackways and salt and cattle and coal; he thinks road, water, and rail; his mind’s eye is concentrated upon the map of Britain, a network of communication, layer upon layer, piled up, intersecting, making nonsense of chronology. He does not think about himself, he does not think about Kath; or he believes that he does not.

That photograph is back in the landing cupboard. Glyn does not wish or intend to look at it again. He might as well destroy it, but the destruction of archival material offends his deepest instinct. Let it lie there.

Glyn works, amid this tide of paper—books, periodicals, offprints, maps. He reads and writes, he marshals information, he interprets and reinterprets. Even when he takes a break he is pondering the route of a canal, the advance of a railway; as he makes a cup of coffee, river systems are imposed upon the kitchen counter; as he walks to the shop to buy a newspaper he is considering connections and survivals.

But every now and then this detachment fails him. He is flung inexorably into contemplation of other things. That day, above all. The day he returned in the evening to this empty house. He moves through the day again and again, and at the end he sees what he saw then. The sight is the same as ever it was, except that it is informed by new wisdoms, and he looks differently.

Glyn knows now that he has to find a new way of living with Kath, or rather a way of living with a new Kath. And of living without her, in a fresh, sharp deprivation.