The Photograph

by Penelope Lively

  The phone rings. “I’ll get it,” says Elaine crisply.

  Polly. “Hi, where have you been, I tried you earlier. . . .” Polly is at once in full flow. Elaine pictures her, feet up on the sofa in that small Highbury flat (“the mortgage payments are wicked, but it’s so nice, and it’s two minutes from the tube station”). Polly has had a punishing day, she is wiped out, no one would believe the trouble there’s been with these new clients, she’s just off to chill out with some friends over a meal. She’ll call again before the weekend, maybe she’ll shoot down for lunch on Sunday, depending on how things are—anyway, this is just to check in, this week has been crazy, take care, see you.

  Polly’s voice invades the kitchen like a message from another planet, which in a sense it is. Elaine knows plenty about her daughter’s life: the feverish mix of work and play, the determined application to everything she does. Polly is a thirty-year-old Web designer. By the time she is a thirty-four-year-old Web designer she intends to be running her own business and will be thinking of a baby. As yet, the putative baby has no putative father, but all in good time. Elaine finds herself admiring Polly’s strategic approach to life. Months and years are mapped out, a matter of target achievements: new carpeting for the flat when I get my salary increase, a job move next spring, split up with Dan by Christmas if things don’t seem to be going anywhere. It is an approach mirrored by the question apparently asked by potential employers: “What do you expect to be doing in five years’ time?” Or perhaps the question has conditioned the outlook of a generation. Elaine herself, at thirty, would not have cared to hazard a guess about what she might be doing in five years’ time. Or rather, she would have felt that to do so would be tempting providence. Certainly, she could not have given the confident and ambitious reply that is evidently de rigueur. She admires this combination of pragmatism and positive intent; this is a climate that would have suited her too. As it is, her own success has been achieved by hard work and a degree of opportunism rather than any calculated ascent.

  “Poll hard at it?” says Nick. He chuckles. “I was filled in earlier on. A job for some big outfit, apparently. It’s all go, isn’t it?”

  For Nick, Polly remains a source of benign amusement, just as when she was six or sixteen. Polly, over the years, came to treat her father with impatient tolerance, like some wayward older brother. She bustled around him: “Dad, your desk is a shambles, I’m going to do something about it.” She would contemplate him, her mouth knotted with disapproval: “You cannot wear that tie with that shirt.” There was affection here; when Polly did not care for people she did not bother to sort them out. And Nick, congenitally disposed to delegate anything that did not appeal to him, made no objection. Nowadays Polly deals with his income tax for him, such as it is. She prescribed Chinese herbal medicine for his hay fever and has chivied him into membership of a health club. That undertow of irritation has been replaced by a sort of protectiveness, as though he were some flawed but valued institution. Elaine finds this attitude both annoying and perverse.

  The thing about coming home, says Polly, when she dashes down for a night, or a meal, is that everything’s always got to be exactly the same. Don’t you see? I mean, you can have some new curtains occasionally, if you like, within reason, but basically it’s got to stay put. I’ve got to be able to touch base. Totally self-centered, I know, but you don’t mind, do you? The occasional innovation I will allow—actually, a makeover of the bathroom would be no bad thing—but basics have to stay the same, right? No blue rinses, Mum, OK? And if Dad ever goes in for gray flannels and a tweed jacket I’ll slaughter him.

  Whenever Elaine hears this mantra, she is both touched and slightly mutinous. All right, all right, she thinks, I take your point. But you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you? Oh dear me, no. Any radical steps taken around here are to do with planting schemes or office equipment, with which presumably you would be in sympathy.

  Nick has finished his coffee. He is now leafing through the newspaper in search of the television programs. Elaine picks up her address book and pulls the phone towards her. She must call a client who is only available in the evenings. Nick glances across the table.

  “That reminds me. Glyn rang. Said he’d try you again tomorrow.”

  “Glyn?” she says. “Oh . . . Glyn.”

  Elaine and Glyn

  Why this restaurant? Why not come to the house? Why, hy this restaurant? Why not come to the house? Why, anyway?

  Elaine drives into the car park behind the Swan, finds a space. She tidies her hair, checks her face. It is a long while since she saw Glyn; longer still since she ate a meal alone with him.

  The Swan is apparently a halfway point, as near as makes no odds. Thirty miles for each of them to drive: Glyn, brisk and practical—“So, thanks for your kind offer, but if you don’t mind . . . It’ll be good to see you.” And the phone is put down without further explanation.

  So here she is. And as she walks into the Swan’s dining room—dark paneling, red-checked tablecloths, limited clientele on this weekday lunchtime—she sees that here too is Glyn. He rises to greet her: the polite kiss. “You’re looking well, Elaine.”

  Glyn is surprised. Elaine must be sixtyish, for heaven’s sake, but she does not look it. Any more than one does oneself, come to that.

  She sits down, making a crisply critical comment about the hotel’s garden, which is visible beyond the window. He takes note of her: becoming haircut, clothes that are casual but smart. There was always a compelling vigor about Elaine; she still has it. Fellow eaters glance at them. If things were otherwise, he could be enjoying this occasion—a pleasant get-together with a woman he has known for many years. But this is no indulgent arrangement. There is an agenda; it is smoldering in his pocket, distracting him as the waiter proffers menus, as Elaine asks some question.

  So what is this lunch about? Elaine knows at once that Glyn is in a heightened state. Mind, you need close experience of Glyn to be aware of that—not a man who was ever less than charged. But there is something up today. She can sense it: an absence of concentration, a restlessness. It is apparently an effort for him to give a rundown of his latest project, a reticence which is unusual. So what is afoot? Maybe he is about to remarry and considers it proper to tell a former sister-in-law in a formal manner? Perhaps he has been elevated to the peerage—well, he is a prominent academic, occasionally outspoken on public issues. Possibly—here Elaine’s interest is sparked—possibly he has some professional scheme requiring garden-history expertise, as he did . . . back then. If that were so, one might well find oneself available. All the rage, these days—lost gardens. Prime-time television and all that. No bad thing to become involved.

  The waiter returns. Choices are made, the meal is ordered. “Nick sends greetings,” says Elaine.

  Glyn becomes busy with his napkin. He butters a roll. “And how’s business, Elaine? Lots of work?”

  “All I want.”

  “Good, good. You’re a fortunate woman. You embellish the landscape and get paid for it. As opposed to those of us who fritter away a lifetime asking questions about it.”

  “You too get paid,” says Elaine.

  “True.” He reaches across the table, pats her hand. “I’m glad things are going well. You deserve it. You’re a worker, always were.”

  Glyn is a physical-contact man. An arm-round-the-shoulders man, a hand-on-your-elbow man. The pat reminds her of that: his mode of emphasis.

  “I’m certainly not complaining. Only when it comes to the more perverse clients.”

  “Ah, that’s a hazard of the trade. Capability Brown had plenty to say about his. Repton too. Dealing with patronizing eighteenth-century aristocrats. Bear in mind that it is they who will vanish without trace. Your creations will outlast the merchant bankers or whoever they are that plague you.”

  He continues along these lines as the first course arrives. He talks of some stately-home magnate who had a lake dug and then didn’t care for t
he effect and had the lot filled in again. He moves on to cite instances of vast expenditure on historic garden creation. Elaine had forgotten his compendious resources, that capacity to conjure up facts, figures, anecdotes. Compelling enough, in its way, but there is the hint, just now, of a routine.

  Glyn is treading water. He would like to get on with the matter in hand, his mind is on that and on nothing else, but good manners would seem to insist that the niceties are observed. A period of general chat. A decent interval of white noise.

  “Fascinating,” says Elaine. “What a mine of information you are, Glyn—I’d forgotten. I’m flattered at being lumped in with Repton and Brown. Can’t say I’ve dug any lakes lately, but perhaps my day will come.”

  Glyn plows on. This is conversation, of a kind: comments are made, opinions exchanged, occasionally there is glancing reference to some past shared experience. Plates are taken away; more food arrives. Now, thinks Glyn. In two minutes, when she’s finished eating.

  Elaine is talking of Polly. Glyn stares at her, trying to focus. The daughter. That’s right, the daughter. “—Web designer,” Elaine is saying. Glyn inclines his head, all interest.

  “Do you know what a Web designer is?”

  Glyn spreads his hands, defeated.

  Elaine puts her knife and fork together, dabs her mouth with her napkin. “Actually,” she says, “I don’t think you heard a word of that, did you?” She gives him a long, speculative look. “Come on, unload. I’ve got a feeling we’re not here just to chat, are we?”

  “Ah . . .” Glyn pushes his plate to one side. Right, here goes. Suddenly, he feels once more in control, back on course. Some questions will be answered. He reaches into his pocket. “Actually, you’re right, Elaine.”

  Elaine sees and hears that this is something of another order. This is not marriage, or ennoblement, or garden history. She feels a creep of disquiet.

  Glyn is holding something out to her. She takes the photograph. She takes that scribbled note. She looks first at the photograph. She looks at it for quite a while. Then she reads the note.

  She says nothing. She holds them, one in each hand, looking, not speaking. Then she looks across the table at Glyn.

  “In a file in the landing cupboard,” he says. “Must have been there since she—since then. They were in this.” He pushes across the table towards her that envelope. “DON’T OPEN—DESTROY,” Elaine reads.

  “So . . .” says Glyn. “So here’s a turn-up for the books.” He watches her.

  Elaine looks back at the photograph. Something strange is happening—to her, to the figures that she sees. She sees people who are familiar, but now all of a sudden quite unfamiliar. It is as though both Kath and Nick have undergone some hideous metamorphosis. A stone has been cast into the reliable, immutable pond of the past, and as the ripples subside, everything appears different. The reflections are quite other; everything has swung and shattered, it is all beyond recovery. What was, is now something else.

  “Or perhaps you knew?” says Glyn.

  “No, I didn’t know. Assuming that there was indeed something to know.”

  “Well, what does it look like?”

  Elaine has seen enough. The hands. The handwriting, the language. She picks up the photograph and the scribbled note and puts them in the envelope.

  “I suppose it looks like—what it looks like. And, no, I didn’t know.”

  “Then I’m sorry. This is as much a shock to you as it was to me. I’d begun to think I was the only one in the dark.”

  Elaine makes no comment. The ripples are widening; the reflections become clearer. But, at the same time, they are not clear at all; they are ugly, distorted, deceptive.

  “When was it? Where were you all?”

  “It must have been in the late 1980s—’87 or ’88. We’d gone to the Roman Villa at Chedworth. I forget quite why. Mary Packard was there, and the man she was with then. Do you remember her?” Elaine speaks dully. She would prefer not to speak at all.

  Glyn shakes his head. He is not interested in Mary Packard. “Who else was there? Who took the photograph? And passed it on to Nick?”

  Elaine is silent. At last she says, “Oliver.”

  Oliver. Even as she speaks, Oliver falls apart and is reassembled—in a nanosecond, in a single destructive instant. He too becomes someone else. The Oliver who has been in her head these last ten or fifteen years disintegrates and is replaced by a new and different Oliver, one whom she does not know. Did not know.

  “I see. Him. Nice, reliable old Oliver. In collusion, apparently.”

  The waiter is hovering, menus in hand, proposing dessert. Elaine feels now as though she had fallen from a great height and were picking herself up, gingerly testing limbs. “Nothing else,” she says. “Just coffee.”

  Never mind Oliver, thinks Glyn. I’ll get to him in due course. The point is that there are now two of us in this. He looks guardedly at Elaine; she has been rocked all right, he saw that in her face, but there is no sign of collapse. Well, Elaine is not the type to run weeping from the room.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s a slap in the face, isn’t it? I’ve had a few days to digest. Not that I find that makes a great deal of difference.”

  “Difference to what?” This is not so much a question as a prompt. Talk, thinks Elaine. Just talk and let me consider. Let me do some steady breathing and take stock. I seem to be intact, more intact than I would have expected.

  “—point is the suggestion that nothing was what it seemed to be,” Glyn is saying. “That what one has been carrying around in the head is apparently fallacious. That one was, that we were, unaware of a significant fact, namely, that your sister—my wife—at one time had an evidently intimate relationship with your husband, to put it baldly. Suddenly everything has to be looked at in a different light.”

  “Some might prefer not to look,” says Elaine.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t find that possible. Do you?”

  A pause. “Probably not.”

  “I can’t tolerate a misconception. Everything is thrown into doubt. At least that is what I’m finding. Everything.” He stops abruptly. He is finding also that he does not wish to pursue this line. Personal breast-beating was never on the agenda. There was an entirely practical motive for this meeting, and that has now been satisfied. He knows what he needs to know. Or rather, he has begun to know what he needs to know. He is sidetracked now by a new line of thought.

  “Professional conditioning, to some extent, I suppose. We don’t like the status quo to be upset. Some new and vital piece of information comes along and the whole historical edifice is undermined. Take carbon-fourteen dating. They’ve got everything nicely worked out—what is contemporary with what, a chronology set in tablets of stone—and then along comes dendrochronology and the whole thing is shot to pieces. Stonehenge is earlier than the Pyramids, the Neolithic isn’t when they thought it was. Throw it all out. Think again.” He gives Elaine an interrogatory glance. “You know about carbon-fourteen dating?”

  “As much as I need to know at this moment.”

  “Recent history is less vulnerable. More a question of constant raking over of the ashes. Reinterpreting. Arguing. The sudden reversal is less likely. It’s the early stuff that is the shifting sand. Let alone when you get back to paleontology. A minefield. That said, nothing’s sacrosanct. There’s always the possibility of startling new evidence that moves the goalposts. The drought summer of 1975 made possible aerial photographs that showed up a whole range of early settlements on the southern gravel terraces that were completely unsuspected. Prehistoric-population estimates had to be entirely revised. You follow me?”

  “I take your point. Your personal goalposts have been moved, right now.”

  Glyn stares across the table at her. “Is that not how it seems from your perspective?”

  Coffee has arrived. And with it, for both of them, a further presence. Kath is around. Or rather, several Kaths have arrived. For Glyn, she i
s for no apparent reason sitting on the roof of a narrow boat, somewhere in a Northamptonshire reach of the Grand Union Canal. Her arms are wrapped round her legs, she wears rope-soled canvas shoes, her tattered straw hat has a bright-blue scarf tied around the crown. And what was he doing? Steering the boat, presumably, which Kath never learned to do, and if the other couple he hazily remembers to have been there on that weekend outing are present, they are not evident in this slide. Kath sits alone, and she is gazing at a couple of children running along the towpath. Quite small children—oddly, he still sees them also. Kath gazes, and presumably he, Glyn, was yanking away at that wheel and anticipating the next lock, while Kath’s mind is patently on something quite other.

  Elaine is experiencing several Kaths, which tumble in her head. Kath is not under control, she will not be dismissed. She is a continuous effect, as she was in childhood, a glimmering presence, flickering away there on the perimeter. She cannot be disregarded; “Here I am,” she says. “Here I was. Look at me.”

  And Elaine looks. She sees a new Kath, who is colored by what Elaine now knows. She is angry with this Kath: angry, resentful, frustrated. But she is also baffled and a touch incredulous. Why? Why Nick? Kath hardly noticed Nick. Or so one thought. Nick was simply a person who was around, as far as Kath was concerned. Familiar, and inevitable—my husband. But apparently all the time . . . or some of the time.

  Elaine summons up that day, the day of this photograph. In a snatch of time—as she stirs her coffee, sets down the spoon, lifts the cup to her lips, drinks, returns it to the saucer—she recovers those hours. But there is not much to recover—tracts of it have gone down the sluice, it seems. She sees neatly restored ruins, a mosaic pavement, a glassed and labeled fragment of Roman cement on which is the paw print of a Roman dog. She sees a grassy bank, the surrounding woodland. She sees Kath walking towards them in a car park, Mary Packard and her companion behind: evidently they all met up at this place. The arrangement, and its reason, are gone. But can be surmised: Kath’s phone call—“Listen, Mary and I have this plan. . . . Yes, yes, tomorrow as ever is . . . Of course you can drop everything, both of you, bring Oliver too. . . .” And now a picnic comes floating up: Nick is rummaging in the coolbag, he looks up at her, he says, “Is there any fruit, sweetie?” Mary Packard and Kath lean over the railing that surrounds the mosaic, laughing at something. Mary Packard’s man is so irretrievably consigned to the sluice that Elaine cannot supply him with features or a name; he is just a lurking presence. But Mary Packard is loud and clear: Kath’s longtime friend, the crony, the soul mate, the abiding element amidst the ebb and flow of Kath’s associates. Short curly hair, emphatic manner, a potter by occupation.