A Division of the Light (2 page)

As Gregory had expected, the woman's wallet and mobile phone were missing, but all the other items were untouched.

“I'll ring the police,” he said, producing his own phone, “although they probably won't be all that interested.”

He was right. To the police it was just another street robbery, the kind that happened several times a day. Gregory handed his
phone across for the woman to speak to an officer whom he imagined to be filling in a form at a desk and concerned that he get the details correct. She gave her name as Alice Fell and quoted an address. The smokers each lit another cigarette. In the still air a nicotine smell wreathed around everyone.

After the report Alice turned back to him. “They say I have to get in touch with my bank straight away about any credit cards.”

“Of course. Do you know their numbers?”

She shook her head. Sunlight smeared the dark lenses. Gregory wondered what color her eyes were.

“They'll take you for whatever they can,” he warned. “Tell me which bank you use and we'll do what we can to limit any damage.”

The smokers brought tea in plastic cups from a dispensing machine and would not take payment; meanwhile Alice used Gregory's phone again. As she talked, he began to wonder what would happen if his own daughter were attacked and robbed and there was no one there to help. At the end of the street an unbroken stream of traffic moved past.

“I owe you for these,” Alice said when the last call was finished.

“It's all right. You owe me nothing.”

At this moment she appeared to become disoriented again.

“I'm at work,” she said. “I should get back there.”

“Go on home,” the tall smoker said, collecting the empty cups. “You can't go back to work in the state you're in. Besides, look—those nice trousers are all torn at the knee.”

“She's right,” Gregory agreed.

Alice looked unsure. “They'll be expecting me back. This is my lunch-break and . . .” The sentence tailed away.

The smokers were ever eager with advice.

“Report in sick, love, that's what you should do.” The tall one turned to Gregory. “Give her back your phone so she can do it—
go on
.”

Alice did not need further persuasion. She dialed a number and told whoever answered that she had been attacked and robbed but would be all right soon. When she handed the mobile back to Gregory she told him that her employers had advised her to take the rest of the day off.

“What did I tell you?” the tall smoker said. “You should get a taxi back home. It's not right you standing around like this. It'll make you feel better to get those dirty clothes off and have a shower and relax.”

“Besides, you could go into shock real easy,” her friend added.

“She's right. You could start to shake all over and not stop. That wouldn't do you any good.”

“I'll walk,” Alice announced.

“You should do no such thing.”

“I have to. All my money's gone.”

“Your friend here will lend you some cash—won't you, darling?”

The smokers fixed Gregory with challenging stares while Alice hid behind her dark lenses.

“Don't say you're going to say no,” the tall smoker accused him.

“We can get a taxi easily at the end of the street,” Gregory said.

Alice moved her head like a blind person reacting to noise. “Thank you. I can pay the driver when I get home.”

They walked to the end of the street and were surprised to find that the smokers accompanied them. Evidently they were not yet prepared to relinquish their part in the drama of the
robbery. Gregory was sure that within a few short minutes they would be back in the office eagerly telling their colleagues what had happened.

In the distance a taxi with an illuminated sign appeared and he hailed it.

“Give her the fare,” the tall smoker said. “Go on.”

Alice shook her head. “There's no need.”

“Course there is.
You
don't mind, do you?”

“I don't mind,” Gregory said. There was little choice. He asked the driver approximately how much the fare would be. There were lots of hold-ups on that route, the driver said, and a few diversions; it all depended.

Gregory took a twenty-pound note from his wallet.

“It could be a bit more,” the driver said.

“I don't think so,” Gregory answered. He passed the note to Alice. She folded it several times and then closed her fist round it.

“I'll pay you back. Give me your address and I'll send the money. Honestly.”

As she settled into the back of the cab Gregory handed over one of his business cards. In the dim interior Alice had to lift her glasses slightly to read the print. For just a second he saw that her eyes were puffed up with weeping. She had not cried since he had helped her up from the pavement. It must have been happening just before the attack.

Alice lowered her glasses again.

“Should I know you?” she asked. “It's an unusual surname.”

“Maybe you've seen it in print. When you get home will there be someone to look after you?”

She hesitated for longer than he expected before she answered. “Yes, there will be.”

Gregory closed the door and nodded at the driver. He expected Alice to say something else, or at least look at him as she was driven away, but instead she looked down, like a mourner at a funeral.

The smokers surveyed him with the satisfaction of matchmakers.

“Lovely woman, that,” the tall one said.

“Lovely,” the shorter one echoed.

Gregory nodded, said thanks, and began to walk away.

“You won't have seen the last of her,” the tall one added. “I know.”

“We can tell,” the shorter one said.

But Gregory did not expect to see the woman again. His life was filled with brief meetings and casual encounters. He believed that Alice Fell had been one of those. And besides, if he wanted, there were always other women.

From across the city there was the sudden noiseless flash of summer lightning.

Alice topples like a felled tree, her arms flung out like spreading branches, the lost shoe parted from her like a root left in the ground by the stroke of an ax. Gregory's photographs testify to the force that propelled her body forward with a single blow. He studies them on a monitor, weighing their virtues and failings, and it is not long before he begins to manipulate them. Because of the high contrast between sunlight and shade they have unintended limitations. However, adjustments that are merely necessary soon become creative.

Gregory drains the images of color. He contracts the margins. He enlarges sections until their texture becomes granular. One of the frames he crops so severely that all it contains is Alice's tumbled hair parted into shadowy roots and the fallen sunglasses that have darkened to jet. Her body is abstracted into balances of shape and texture. When he has finished, Gregory puts his visual rearrangements on a slideshow program and assesses them even more critically.

He does not put his shot of the escaping thieves on the slideshow, although unexpectedly he has come to regret that there are no
means of identification to be found within it. Indeed, the picture contains so little information that no arrest could ever be achieved from its content. Gregory understands that it is impossible that he should become an agent for justice, and yet to him it is also inexplicable that he should fantasize about being thought of as a kind of savior.

In almost a week he has not heard from Alice. Although at first he assumes that she has merely been delayed in returning his money, he soon begins to believe that she has never intended to. This does not prevent him from thinking more and more about her.

After seven days he was due to leave on his next assignment and still he had heard nothing. Her silence was disappointing but perhaps inevitable. Gregory told himself that he, too, had been robbed of cash, but only of twenty pounds, and not by opportunist thieves but by a woman who had probably simply decided that there was no moral need to return a stranger's kindness.

Nevertheless he wanted to hear from Alice. The money was not important. He was willing to forget that. At one point he checked the call log of his mobile and discovered her work number. When he rang it an unfamiliar voice answered and quoted a company name. Although he had intended to ask if Alice Fell was there, he immediately closed the connection when she did not answer.

He told himself he should think no more about the robbery. And besides, he was leaving within the next few hours. And yet when his daughter Cassie rang on the landline Gregory realized that he had wanted the call to be from Alice. Disappointment hit him as a sudden ache across the lower line of his ribcage. This
was both irrational and reprehensible; he had, after all, been expecting Cassie to phone.

After the call was over Gregory felt guilty about his crazy hope that it could have been Alice. He was also uneasy that Cassie might have registered the evident deflation in his tone. Perhaps she could have learned more than he had wanted to reveal.

For three days each week his daughter worked as his assistant, secretary and unofficial manager, and on the other two days she worked for a national cancer charity. Gregory had grown dependent on her abilities. She organized his contracts, diary, correspondence, and accounts, and often she helped out in the studio. On occasion she had even taken photographs instead of him.

Although he had told her what had happened Gregory had not confessed that he had given money to Alice Fell. Instead he used the robbery as a cautionary tale of how easily one could be attacked on a city street in broad daylight. Cassie's reaction had been so offhand that he felt it necessary to repeat how risks could be minimized. He recognized that she and Alice were about the same age, and he could easily imagine Cassie being struck between the shoulder blades in the same callous manner. Furthermore, Gregory could picture how his daughter would look if she were unable to break her fall and instead smashed her head against the pavement. He did not want to have to photograph those injuries. As always, Cassie had allayed his fears with a breezy confidence.

Twenty minutes later he had just picked up his bag and was about to leave when the landline rang again. Gregory paused by the door. His own voice rasped from the answerphone. The caller hung up without saying anything.

He wondered if he should go back and check the incoming number, but then decided that this would be madness. If the call
had been important then either a message would have been left or he would have been phoned on his mobile. Gregory closed the door and tried to put the incident out of his mind, but all the way to the airport he wondered if he had done the right thing.

The flight was delayed and made unpleasant by turbulence. By the time it landed Gregory could feel the tensions of the journey in the muscles at the back of his legs. He was jaded and cynical and felt that he was getting old. Around him the airport was featureless and unwelcoming, with armed security guards in illfitting uniforms and a luggage carousel that creaked and squealed as if about to seize up completely.

Carla from the agency was waiting in Arrivals. Her name was all that he had been told about her. She was in her early forties, had angular features and an unwavering stare, and spoke English as if she had spent time in the States. An ignition key was held in her hand like a valued possession.

A shower of heavy rain passed across the airport before they reached the car. Droplets pocked the gray dust on its surfaces so that they resembled NASA studies of lunar plains. Gregory sat with one camera on his lap and the equipment lodged behind the passenger seat. He was already telephoning his journalist contact as Carla drove away from the airport.

Within a few minutes Gregory knew that they would spend most of their long journey in a silence that both he and Carla understood, just as he was confident that she would offer him the opportunity to sleep with her that night. He was not sure that he wanted to. Even if he did, he wondered if he would be doing so just because it was expected of him. Perhaps it would be wiser to remain alone in his hotel room and hunt through the satellite channels.

In this part of the world even the best roads were narrow. Military vehicles moved along them in short convoys, but so did overloaded lorries that left a smell of burned diesel in the air and tiny cars that looked as if they would fold up under the slightest impact. In litter-strewn lay-bys alongside spruce forests prostitutes stood at intervals of two or three hundred yards. They ignored Carla and, as if under a conditioned reflex, lifted their skirts as the car passed. One stood at the corner of a fenced area, as immobile as a mannequin, her heavy coat left open to show a pale body wearing black knickers and nothing else. Dark glasses covered her eyes like shields, like targets. Momentarily Gregory thought again about Alice and the way she had scrabbled on the pavement for the camouflage of smoky lenses.

They drove to a tiny village that was two hours away along potholed zigzag roads and so high above the central plain that the air was permanently cold and damp. Tall conifers dripped rain. Below the village a few tents had been pitched on a level band of earth sheltered by a thin line of broadleaf trees. At the edge of the houses a tall cross of raw pine had been erected. The heads of nails gleamed like silver against the wood. A tractor's rusty hulk stood nearby, stripped of all usable parts. Just beyond it a series of cars had been parked on a stretch of mud. One had its window open, and behind its wheel the driver was talking excitedly into his phone. In another a woman in a fur coat snoozed with her chin sunk on her chest.

It was here that they met the journalist. He guided Gregory and Carla up through the village while its people gazed at them as if they could not quite decide whether they should be welcomed. When the journalist asked if he made a specialty of recording such cases Gregory told him that he did not, and that neither
had he any religious belief. It was possible, he added wryly, that his editor thought he would be interested merely because he had recently photographed a controversial bishop and turned him into something monolithically baroque. He did not say that it had been on his return from this assignment that he had witnessed a woman being thrown to the ground and robbed.