The Photograph (11 page)

“That’s her,” he says. “Yup.”

“I see.” Sandra looks reflectively at him. “She was extremely attractive, then?”

“Yes,” says Oliver. “She was. Yes, you could say that.”

“I’d taken it that the photo was of some girlfriend.”

Oliver is almost shocked. “Oh dear me, no. No, no.”

Sandra gives him a little smile. She turns back to her screen. Kath has been dealt with, so far as she is concerned.

It still seems incredible to Oliver that Kath will not suddenly walk into the room. Never again. That is what she did, back then. No one was expecting her, Elaine didn’t know where she was, what she was doing, and then there she would be—smiling, laughing: “Are you all terribly busy? Can I come to lunch?”

He sees her arriving thus with a great tray of peaches in her arms. She has bought up the entire stock of some greengrocer. “Here . . .” she says. “I couldn’t resist. Let’s gorge.” And Elaine has pursed lips. Oliver can read her thoughts: extravagant, exaggerated, they’ll go bad before they can all be eaten.

Elaine was strange where Kath was concerned. You could feel that she was unsettled when Kath was around, there was that sense of concealed tension. She watched Kath a lot—but, then, everyone did that. And she chivied her. Criticized. Elder-sister stuff—but there was a compulsive edge to it. Though it all seemed to roll off Kath; she would smile, deflect. “All right, I’ll reform, I promise. . . . Listen, I want to tell you about this amazing place I’ve found—”

Kath. What a shame it was, thinks Oliver. What a crying shame. When Kath comes into his mind, it is always like a sudden shaft of light. She is talking about a place she’s been to, a person she’s met, she is all zest and animation, a group springs to life when she is there. There was nobody, Oliver thinks, but nobody, less likely to be . . . dead.

He sometimes wonders why he did not fall in love with her. Plenty did, after all. But no. Kath always seemed out-of-bounds. Sacrosanct, in some curious way. Not for him. She was never less than warm, friendly, welcoming. But then she was like that with everyone. Almost everyone. If Kath didn’t care for a person she simply moved away; you never saw dislike, disapproval, but she would have created a space, turned aside. What a talent, thinks Oliver. But that was how she seemed to run her life. When things no longer suited her, she moved on, moved off. Or so one understood. He remembers Elaine’s terse inquiries: “You mean you’re not working at that gallery anymore?” and Kath’s light responses: “Things weren’t going quite so well. And I’ve met this nice man who wants me to help with a festival he’s running.”

Occasionally, when Kath turned up, there was a man with her. Hardly surprising. Oliver can barely remember these men. One cast an eye over them, of course. Envious? Well, no, not that—but with a kind of proprietorial concern. Was this fellow worthy? And since the same man seldom came a second time, and more often than not she was alone, there was no reason to get exercised about the matter. It seemed remarkable that no one had snapped her up on a permanent basis, but clearly she had this talent for evasion.

Which made Glyn Peters all the more surprising. Oliver remembers well the advent of Glyn Peters. One became aware of an intensity about Elaine, a tautness. And then one day there was Kath and she had this bloke with her, very much at home apparently, knees under Elaine’s kitchen table as though he had a right there, one eye on Kath all the time, holding forth. Oliver had been wary at first, hackles raised; gradually he had found himself intrigued, even slightly mesmerized. The man had a way with him, no doubt about that. Not surprising he’d been a hit on the telly, apparently. He had that knack of talking whereby he seemed to be addressing you personally, as though you were especially equipped to appreciate all this intriguing information. Oliver can hear him now, giving them all a breakdown on medieval crop-rotation systems, on how to date a hedge; he would glance in your direction, and you felt flattered, singled out, recognized as a connoisseur.

Was that what Kath had felt? Elaine put her head round his office door one morning—brisk and to the point: “A date for your diary, Oliver. Kath’s getting married. We’ll have a bit of a party. You met Glyn a few weeks ago—remember?” And that was it. Well, well. Lucky Glyn Peters. How had he done it? Oliver remembers Kath at one of those kitchen gatherings, the table awash with food and drink, Nick talking, Glyn talking most of all, and Kath sitting slightly apart, on the window seat, her legs curled under her, Polly alongside. Polly was always wherever Kath was. Kath is plaiting Polly’s hair—Polly’s long schoolgirl hair. She combs the hair and looks towards Glyn, a speculative look, as though she is asking him something, asking herself something. They are shortly to be married. Oliver inspects Kath for indications of consuming passion; but there is just this querying gaze. Puzzled, almost.

You could not but be absorbed by Kath, even if you did not fall in love with her. There was what she looked like, and there was what she was. She was . . . What was she? thinks Oliver. She was an entirely nice person. Nice? What does that mean? A non-word. You couldn’t imagine Kath doing anything mean, or malevolent, or despicable. She was nice to people—hang on, that word again—she was friendly, and interested, and kind. And a provocative thought arises: Was she able to be that way because of what she looked like? Because the world smiles upon the physically attractive and they can smile back? But the world is also well stocked with malign beauties, and ever has been, from Snow White’s stepmother onwards. A ravishing woman can also have a vile temperament. So that theory won’t wash.

When Oliver remembers Kath, that luminous quality predominates. The way your spirits lifted a notch, just because she was there: the day seemed more promising, the adrenaline ran stronger. And really, Oliver thinks, that is distinctly odd. Perverse, even. Kath had gaiety and verve, but she was not especially wise, nor clever, nor well informed. If one is being realistic, one would have to say that her contribution to society was nil. She did nothing useful, had no sustained employment, was neither creative nor industrious. She had no children, if children are to be seen as fulfillment of a social purpose. She simply was—as a flower is, or a bird. People are meant to be more than that, are they not?

Oh, come on, thinks Oliver, this is getting heavy. It’s enough that she was a startlingly appealing person, in every way.

She could surprise you, take you unawares. Once, he was with her in the courtyard between the house and his office in the barn; they were sitting on the bench there, waiting, it seems, for someone or something—the framework of the moment is gone now. And she turned to him and said, “Are you happy, Oliver?”

He had clenched in alarm. He had wanted to protest that he wasn’t the sort of person who answers that sort of question, or to whom that sort of question is put. He had gazed at her beseechingly: was he supposed to say, “Are you, Kath?”

She had gazed back, thoughtful, expectant, really wanting to know, it seemed, as though his reply might solve some problem. And when he went on saying nothing she smiled—that smile, that great smile that always made you smile back, willy-nilly: “I bet you are. You’ve got more sense than to be unhappy.”

When he realized that there was something going on between her and Nick, he had been disturbed. More than that—incredulous, alarmed, offended. How could this be?

The first intimation had been a look, quite simply. Nick watching Kath in the way that others watched her, those coming across her for the first time, people who hadn’t known her for years, as Nick had. Elaine had not been present; Oliver had been uneasily glad of that.

After that, small disconcerting signals. Nick covertly attentive when Elaine was on the phone to Kath, pretending to read the newspaper. Kath visiting less, rather than more. Elaine saying one day, “Ages since Kath showed up—where’s she got to now?”; Nick’s furtive look, his apparent casual lack of interest.

And then one day Oliver had gone to the Blue Boar in Welborne to meet a man for a drink—a piece of fellow flotsam from that footloose uncoupled time—and there at a table across the room were Nick and Kath. Quite evidently intent upon one another. Oliver had been all of a dither. What to do? March up to them, jolly and unconcerned: “Hi there—what a coincidence! Tom’s with me—you know, Tom Willows—we’ll join you.” And then he had hesitated, headed in one direction and then another, and they had looked up and the expression on their faces was not one of cheery innocent welcome but of dismay. Oliver had flapped a hand, mouthed some dismissive greeting, bolted for an alcove as far from them as possible. “Isn’t that your partner?” said Tom Willows, puzzled. “No,” said Oliver. “I mean, yes. Business meeting—no need to get involved. Pint?”

Later that day Nick came across to the barn. “Just to have a word about print runs for the new series, and to ask what you think about this jacket artwork—fantastic, isn’t it?” The usual Nick, all lit up with plans and ideas. “I think we should really go for broke on this one, don’t you—?” And, at the end of it, turning to go, he had shot Oliver a look—a wary, propitiating look: “Oh . . . and, Olly, incidentally, you didn’t see me this morning, OK?”

I don’t want this, Oliver had thought. I don’t want any part of this. This is nothing to do with me.

But it was, now.

No one else must know: that was paramount. He knew, who had no wish to, but there must be no others. Above all, not Elaine. Above all, not Glyn Peters—a man who struck Oliver as being quite likely to come charging in with a horsewhip.

The matter was never raised again between him and Nick. Except that once, tacitly. The business with the photograph. That had been his warning shot. Nothing said. Just that silent indication: Watch it, stop it. And, eventually, he assumed, that was just what had come about. It ended, as these things do.

Oh well . . . long out of the way, all that, thinks Oliver. Laid to rest, thanks be. No harm done, in the end.

“I’m off out,” says Sandra. “I’ve got to go to the bank. Mind the shop for half an hour, will you?”

And she is gone. Oliver makes himself a cup of coffee. He yawns. He is drifting rather this morning—he will need to go over those pages carefully. He stares out of the window for a moment, remembers that call. He picks up the phone.

“Oh—Glyn? Oliver Watson here, returning your call.”

Nick goes to a health club these days. This is on account of ick goes to a health club these days. This is on account of his paunch, which has been causing him disquiet. He is also disturbed about his bald patch, and while he is aware that visits to the health club will not do much for that, he feels that all the same there may be some general knock-on effect. Nick cannot understand how he has come to be fifty-eight. This is ridiculous, frankly. Time has been stalking him, but the thing to do was to give it the cold shoulder, pay no attention. And now suddenly it has reached out and clobbered him. He does not care for what he sees in the mirror; he is pained and affronted.

At the health club, Nick jogs and cycles and pumps. He plows up and down the gold-dappled blue waters of the pool. He is bored to desperation while doing this, and the jogging and pumping make him ache, but he is satisfied with his own strength of mind. He weighs himself frequently, finds that he can definitely chalk up the loss of two and a half pounds, and buys a new pair of jeans to celebrate the fact. Elaine has made it plain that she thinks men of his age should not be wearing jeans, which is unkind, he feels; why should he give up the habit of a lifetime?

The boredom of the health club is somewhat tempered by idle observation of those around him. Most are much younger—in their twenties or thirties. Many of the girls are tattooed—a butterfly on the shoulder, a spray of leaves on the thigh, a star on the ankle. To pass the time, Nick makes a mental inventory of these tattoos, which means he needs to look quite closely at the girls, though he is careful to do so discreetly, knowing how easy it is for men to be misconstrued these days. He has listed clover leaves, and ivy and daisies, and a single rose. He got a fleeting glimpse once of a dragon round the midriff, which needs a confirmatory sighting. The girls themselves are of course pleasing, though that is about as far as it goes. He can honestly say that while there is the odd
frisson
of sexual interest, he is not tempted. Occasionally, he exchanges a few words with one of them in the cafeteria—Could I take that paper if you’ve done with it? Were you wanting this chair?—and the girl will be polite enough, though not what you might call encouraging. In transitory glum moments, Nick wonders if he is emasculated by the paunch and the bald patch.

But Nick is not constitutionally glum, never has been.

All his life, he has woken up each day with a renewed surge of interest. When he looks back—which in fact he does not much do—he has this gratifying sense of busyness, of teeming schemes and projects, of some unquenchable source of stimulation. Admittedly, plenty of schemes and projects never came to fruition, and indeed he has forgotten now what most of them were, but it is the general effect that counts. He has never been bored—or, if he has, he has quickly sidestepped. Which is why he is proud of his tenacity at the health club.

And he has plenty still to do. He has two or three ideas on the go that just need some more research. A gazetteer of eighteenth-century follies; the definitive series on hill walking; a photographic survey of World War II pillboxes. Truth to tell, it is a blessing that with Elaine doing so well for years now the pressure is off, he can take his time, play around with any new inspiration, and look really carefully at what might be involved. And there’s no need to do too much hack stuff, where the money, to be honest, is neither here nor there. Quite a good idea to keep one’s hand in with the odd piece of journalism, but no point in becoming a slave to it.

 
“There is something we have got to talk about,” says Elaine.