The Photograph

by Penelope Lively

  Nick has refilled their glasses. He is about to sit down again.

  “How about that omelette?”

  “Omelette?” Nick sounds surprised. “Ah. Yes. Omelette and salad. Right, then. Shall do.”

  “Good,” says Elaine. She picks up some stuff about a new brand of fertilizer, skims through it, throws it in the wastepaper basket. Nick is still standing there. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. For a peculiar moment you looked like Kath. OK—supper coming up.” He goes.

  This is profoundly irritating, for reasons that she cannot or perhaps does not wish to define. She does not look like Kath, and never did, which is why Nick has called the moment peculiar. They both know that she and Kath were about as unlike as sisters can be. Nevertheless, she knows what he means. She has seen it herself, in the mirror. Something about the mouth. A particular expression. Some genetic quirk—an arrangement of lip. When, otherwise, it always seemed as though she and Kath shared no genes whatsoever.

  How odd, that Kath should survive thus—in the twist of someone else’s lip. What would she have to say about that? She’d make some throwaway remark—one of those oddball witticisms.

  She’d laugh—that wry little laugh. Hanging on like this in the shape of my lip, thinks Elaine. And in my mind. And in Glyn’s and I daresay in Nick’s and I suppose in Polly’s and in those of a great many others. Many different Kaths. Personal Kaths. She is fragmented now. The dead don’t go; they just slip into other people’s heads.

  It occurs to her that there is an eerie connection between Kath’s presence in her mind nowadays and the way things were in their childhood, when Kath was a permanent, peripheral feature of the domestic landscape. Back then, when she was relegated simply by that matter of age, the wedge of years that sat between them, prescribing and directing. A twelve-year-old does not play with a six-year-old, or that particular twelve-year-old did not. A person of sixteen is not much interested in someone of ten. Elaine remembers the closed door of her own room, the edgy contrived accommodation of family holidays. That time consisted of the long years when Kath was merely a tiresome feature, an occasional source of jealousy, a local climatic effect to be ignored or irritably tolerated. She got more than her fair share of parental attention: “Do remember she’s only five . . . seven . . . nine. . . .” Her existence meant that there was always this unstable element within the household, generating concern, requiring other people’s energies and help.

  And then that time came to an end. Quite suddenly, it now seems. Kath grew up. One day she was no longer that annoying appendage but a person. She had fledged, grown wings—or rather, she had metamorphosed. This girl had appeared. From the child chrysalis there had emerged this spritelike creature—elfin, gamine, all the well-honed terms applied. There she was, slim and quick, with long legs and small perfect body and that pointed face with the thin, neat nose and those lake-green eyes and the high curving brows and the brown-black crop of hair—the ensemble that had everyone looking, and then looking again, homing in on her when she came into a room. You saw people glance, and then keep glancing back, with surprised interest, attention, pleasure. And she had no idea. No more idea than has a bunch of flowers, a picture on the wall, a jewel—anything that seizes the eye, that gives a momentary uplift.

  “You’re so unalike,” they began to say. “No one would realize you’re sisters.” This by then would, perhaps, have been better thought than spoken.

  Nick is now in the kitchen. Elaine can hear his inexpert clattering with pans and plates. She is still here in the conservatory sifting the final tranche of paperwork, which does not require much attention, so that she is also elsewhere, in another time and place, dispatched there by Nick’s provocative remark. He did not of course intend to provoke. Nick never does. That is one of the things about Nick—something that is in itself an aggravation.

  She hears her mother’s voice. This is unusual; her mother is not much with her these days, nor has been for many a year.

  “Our ugly duckling is turning into a swan,” says their mother. “Look at her!”

  And Elaine, home from college for the vacation, takes a look and sees that this is so.

  “People have said she ought to think of going to stage school,” their mother continues.

  Elaine is consumed with annoyance. Typical! she thinks. Typical Mum. Typical people. “Why?” she snaps.

  Their mother blunders on. She has come to be mildly afraid of Elaine, but has never learned how to step cautiously.

  “Well, because she’s so pretty, I suppose.”

  “And can Kath act?”

  Their mother refers to a supporting role in a school nativity play, some while back. She speculates that after all you go to stage school to be taught how to act, don’t you?

  Kath did go to stage school, in the fullness of time, perhaps because of their mother, perhaps because of these anonymous people with their unconsidered opinions, and much good it did her. But by then their mother was dead.

  The trouble with Mum, thinks Elaine, was that she took everything at face value. Literally, in that instance. Her views were simplistic, if one is being entirely honest. Not her fault. A restricted education; a life centered upon family and home. And Dad, not exactly stimulating, was he? I don’t remember any kind of discussion ever taking place, except about what color to paint the kitchen, or where to go for the summer holiday. They were comfortable and unambitious. Mum looked after Kath and me, put food on the table, and saw that everything was in prime Good Housekeeping condition; Dad went to his office, brought home a salary, piled up a pension. They were entirely satisfied.

  No, I’m not being patronizing—I’m being objective. I’m seeing them as they were, which doesn’t mean I wasn’t fond of them. And yes, I know that they lived as the vast majority of the population lives, and what’s wrong with that? All I’m doing is taking the detached view. Mum was fine, but she had her limitations.

  And she died. At forty-three. They hadn’t reckoned on that. Well, who would?

  I remember Kath phoning me: “Mum’s got something horrible wrong with her.” That was the first I knew. It was months only, after that—four, six? I went home as often as I possibly could, but it was a hectic time, my first job—even at weekends I had work to catch up with. And Kath was there.

  Yes, I know she was only sixteen. But she’d always been closer to Mum than I was. She’d been agitating about leaving school anyway, even before Mum got ill. Well, she could have gone to sixth-form college or something later, couldn’t she? But she wouldn’t, would she?

  I saw to the funeral, didn’t I? It’s all a bit hazy now, but there are moments that float to the surface. Dad sitting there blank-faced, helpless—this was right outside his remit. Me saying, “It’s all right, I’ll sort it out, don’t worry.” Phoning priests and undertakers. Twenty-two-year-olds don’t have much experience with such people, but I managed. I remember feeling quietly pleased with myself—thinking, If I can deal with this I’ll be able to deal with other things.

  Kath seemed to be in a kind of trance, over all that time. She hardly spoke. And her looks went. It was as though she’d been blown out, like a candle. She became this ordinary teenager—peaky, with a little monkey face. She was like that for a year or so, and then gradually it all came back, and people were glancing again, and there began to be boys by the shoal, of course. She ran wild rather, I suppose. Dad was like an automaton, just doing what had to be done, day by day. And then he took up with Jenny Peterson down the road, or rather she took up with him, and they got married.

  Kath says, “I can’t go on living there. Jenny doesn’t like me.” She has been saying this over and over, down the years. She says it very precisely—she sounds distant, calm. But that is all she says. Listen as she may, Elaine can now hear no more.

  What did I say?

  Look, there was no way I could have had her move in with me. I was in that bedsit in Chiswick, saving up every penny for a mortgage deposit. She was g
oing on nineteen by then. We were poles apart—not just the age thing anymore, but tastes, inclinations, everything. We’d have driven each other mad. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t have friends. Kath always had friends—droves of them.

  I kept in touch, didn’t I? Not that it was easy, the way she flitted around. You could never be sure where she was or what she was up to from one week to the next. That was the drama school time. Which didn’t last long. One minute she was all wide-eyed about it, and the next thing you knew it was all off: “That? Oh, wasn’t working out. Some people I know have asked me to come and live in their squat in Brighton.”

  It was the 1960s. Kath suited the sixties—the sixties suited her. Letting it all hang out, doing your own thing. It was the right climate for her—she was young at the appropriate time. Whereas I wasn’t. To be industrious and achieving was to be out of step. And gardening had no cachet at all, back then. It meant old men with allotments, or middle-aged ladies in Gloucestershire. Kath waltzed about the place—to be honest, I don’t even know what she was doing, half the time—while I knew just what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be.

  Of course I was concerned about her. Of course. But she was a consenting adult by then, wasn’t she? It wasn’t for me to tell her what to do and what not to do. Even if there was no one else, Dad having opted out altogether. And if you did say something, she had this way of sidestepping.

  “You’re so judgmental,” says Kath. “I come all this way to see you and you tell me I need a haircut. Be nice to me. Listen, I’m learning to drive—how about that!”

  The money Mum left me went towards the deposit on the flat. I told Kath she should do the same with hers, but she didn’t. Naturally not. She lived hither, and thither, wherever she happened to fetch up. A room in someone else’s house, flatshares, a friend’s sofa . . . Goodness knows what happened to the money. I suppose she just nibbled away at it, over time. Not that she was extravagant. At least, only in odd ways.

  Kath is on the doorstep. At least, on the doorstep there is this great sheaf of flowers, a cornucopia of lilies, and through it peers Kath, smiling, sparkling: “Surprise! When I woke up this morning I knew the one thing I wanted was to come and see you!” And all Elaine can think of is that there must be £20 worth of florist’s goods there, which will die within days.

  Of course I didn’t say it. Not outright. I suppose I may have hinted—I mean, she was always skint, jobless more often than not. Possibly I murmured something.

  When Kath is full and strong in the head, there is frequently this sense of a mute subversive presence, of someone playing devil’s advocate. Elaine knows perfectly well how things were, what happened, who did what, but there is often now this interference that distorts and confuses. As though one were not in control of the facts.

  Nick is shouting from the kitchen. The omelette will be on the table in a couple of minutes.

  Elaine gets up, puts the paperwork back in the office, visits the downstairs loo. There she takes a quick look in the mirror for signs of Kath, and can see none at all. Her mouth is her own once more. Moreover she is not displeased by what she sees: a face that has improved with age, settled into something more arresting than ever it was in youth. What was never pretty has now become handsome. Shapely nose and jaw, wide-set eyes, discernible cheek-bones. Thick brown hair; not much gray as yet. Wearing nicely, thinks Elaine—that’s what comes of a rewarding occupation, not to mention a lifetime of fresh air and moderate physical labor. Reinvigorated, she goes to join Nick in the kitchen.

  The omelette is leathery and the salad indifferent. Nick has never bothered with the acquisition of domestic skills. Nevertheless, he presents this meal as though he were a gracious and benevolent host: “There! And I’ve opened a bottle of red. Now relax!”

  They eat. Nick talks about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and about the engineering complexity of the Great Britain, which reminds him to remind her that his car has to go into the garage tomorrow to have a new exhaust—any chance of borrowing hers? He leaps from thence to reflection on an idea he has for a series of handbooks on geological walks: “Region by region . . . Follow the Blue Lias from Yorkshire to Dorset, go Cambrian in Wales . . . You’d need a team of researchers, of course.”

  Elaine hears all this but her attention is upon her own concerns. She roves between contemplation of today’s commission, notes for further action, and various flotsam that sneaks unsought into the crevices. Regal lilies with a backdrop of drystone walling become entwined with the rehearsal of a stroppy phone call to a recalcitrant compost-supplier; a vision of Sorbus vilmorinii is swept aside by an unquenchable memory of walking with Polly along the Cobb at Lyme Regis, prompted by a glance at the flowered dish on the dresser, bought back then. Polly is eternally eight and a half, wearing pink shorts and T-shirt. “Can I have a choc bar?” she says. Elaine is pondering whether or not to splurge on this piece of Victoriana by which she is tempted. “Can I?” Where is Nick? Why is he not involved in the dish and the choc bar? But Nick is not there, and the moment is finite; at some point she must have returned to the antique shop and bought the dish, but that she cannot remember, and she no longer knows if Polly got her choc bar. Probably, being Polly.

  And now this incarnation of Polly is replaced by another—prompted by nothing in particular, it would seem, just part of a chain of imagery. This Polly has shrunk by a few years. She is four, or thereabouts. She is dancing. She is dancing with Kath, in the living room at the old house. There is music—a tape, the radio? Elaine can hear the music: “Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. . . .” Melodic, compelling. Polly and Kath face each other, holding hands—small Polly, grown-up Kath—and they whirl about the room. “Here we go round the mulberry bush. . . .” Their faces are rapt, smiling, intent. Polly gazes up at Kath, and they whirl on and on. Forever, apparently.

  Definitely a wisteria walk for the Surrey mansion, but would alliums be right for the underplanting? Tomorrow she must get to work on the new book proposal, must have a session with Pam, must talk to the accountants. She looks across at Nick, who is still in full flow, and these considerations are eclipsed by the sight of his left ear, which prompts the resurrection of their wedding night, or rather the morning after their wedding night, when she awoke to find herself staring in surprise into a pink whorl on the pillow alongside her. She had never studied an ear with such intimacy and intensity before; so this is marriage, she had thought.

  Now, she finds herself wondering if she could pick out Nick’s ear from any other. Would she recognize it, unattached? If, say, it were sent to her in an envelope, as kidnappers are said to do.

  “Of course there are guides galore to good walks,” Nick is saying. “But a thematic line would be something new. One could go on to botanical, historical, you name it—” He breaks off. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Elaine abandons the thoughts provoked by the ear, challenging as they are. “Will you undertake these walks yourself?”

  “One hasn’t really got the time. A team of volunteers is what I’m thinking of. I’m wondering if the garden girls—”

  “No.”

  “There could be an expense allowance, of course.”

  “The garden girls, as you call them, are horticultural trainees, not freelance ramblers.” Elaine gets up. “Do you want coffee?”

  “OK, if you’re making it. I may do a bit of preliminary scouting around tomorrow. Locally. Just to get ideas. So all right if I take your car?”

  “No. I have to go to the supermarket. Unless you’d care to do that.”

  Nick pursues this line no further, as was to be anticipated. He changes tack. “Not to worry. I’ll do it when mine has been fixed. Actually, we’re going to have to think about replacing mine—there’s too much going wrong.”

  “And what will we replace it with?”

  “I thought one of those new Renaults might be fun,” says Nick eagerly. “Like in the ads, you know? Red. I’ve alway
s wanted a red car.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the replacement car. I was asking what money we would be using.”

  This is bad manners. There is a tacit agreement that the fact that it is Elaine who pays the bills is not openly contemplated. At least, it is a tacit agreement so far as Nick is concerned.

  He pulls a face. He shrugs. He gives her what she thinks of as his beaten-puppy look. It is a look that used to disarm her twenty years ago, but has somehow lost its potency in recent times.

  Elaine makes coffee. There is silence now in the kitchen, which also serves as a workplace, with reminders on all sides of what goes on there: the blackboard on the wall with its chalked messages from the labor force, the publishers’ posters of Elaine’s books, the windowsill dense with a propagating frame, pots of this and that, the copper jug crammed with Iris sibirica. For Elaine, the silence is barely apparent, her preoccupations still loud. The blackboard reminds her that it is probably the tractor mower that requires replacing rather than Nick’s wretched car; the irises provoke concern about an overdue bulb order. But these thoughts float above more insistent background noise, which is not to do with things that have happened and things that have not happened and the way things are. She is feeling irritated, burdened, and a touch belligerent. She puts a mug of coffee in front of Nick, with unspoken comments. You are complacent, she tells him. You have always been complacent about me, above all. A mistake. I have not always been as I have perhaps seemed. There have been times when I have been a long way away from you. One time in particular, I suppose. Take note.