Falling Into Heaven

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  ‘Yes and no; I have a studio in Melpham. My bread and butter work is portraiture and weddings. This...’ He gestured to the landscape. ‘This is artistic indulgence.’

  ‘But it pays?’

  ‘Sometimes it pays very well. But I’d do it even if it didn’t.’

  The horse shifted its hooves, eager to be on its way. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m disturbing you. I didn’t mean to. I was just riding past and saw you perched up here on the hillside. I’m afraid curiosity got the better of me.’ She placed the toe of her boot in the stirrup and mounted smoothly. The horse settled immediately under her weight. ‘I must get on,’ she said. ‘It was nice meeting you.’

  She pulled lightly on the reins and the horse’s head came up. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me have a print of the photograph,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you, of course.’

  Gideon smiled at her. ‘Of course, but no payment; call it a gift. I’ll bring you a copy when I’ve printed some up.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  He shrugged the compliment away. ‘Give me a couple of days,’ he said.

  ‘I will,’ she said and dug her heels into the horse’s flanks. ‘Walk on, boy.’

  He watched her go – every inch the experienced rider, back straight but relaxed, hands holding the reins lightly, all control coming from the gentle pressure of her long slender legs.

  Almost from instinct he reached for his thirty-five millimetre and fired off a number of shots at her departing back. It was a shame he couldn’t get a front view, but he doubted he would forget Kate Hammond in a hurry.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Gideon said to his assistant, Marie. She picked up the sheaf of photographs he’d dropped onto the desk in front of her and began leafing through them.

  ‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Were all these taken on Sunday?’

  ‘The majority of them. The light was perfect, as you can see.’

  Marie Brennan’s passion for photography was matched only by Gideon’s, but he was much the better photographer. She’d been working with him for just over a year and he’d been impressed enough by her skills to let her take over the bulk of the routine work, which was fine by her as she had a love of portraiture. The weddings were a different matter, as she found such formal events quite stressful, the responsibility of getting three-dozen shots quickly and perfectly quite daunting. But she was here to learn, and to learn from a master.

  ‘I like this one especially,’ she said. She’d stopped at the image of the Hammond farmhouse and was examining it closely. ‘Where did you take it?’

  ‘Up on Melpham Tor. I’m just amazed I’ve never noticed the place before. I must have been up there a hundred times.’

  She laid the photograph down on the desk and picked up a magnifying lens, studying the print closely, a frown slightly creasing her brow.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Gideon said, staring over her shoulder at the photograph.

  ‘You had an audience when you took this one.’

  His mind conjured up the face of Kate Hammond and he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. But the question is, how did you?’

  She glanced up at him. ‘You can see him.’

  ‘Him?’ He leaned in closer.

  ‘Third window along. It’s pretty vague, but there’s definitely someone looking back at you. Upper floor, third window along.’

  He lifted the photo and scrutinised it with the lens. Marie was right. There was definitely someone standing at the window of the farmhouse.

  ‘Dammit!’ Gideon said. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’ There was irritation in his voice.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  He gave her a pitying look. ‘Of course it matters. The whole purpose of a shot like this is to present an image of a place that’s impersonal, so that the viewer, coming across it in a magazine or book, can immediately transpose themselves into it... so they can imagine themselves living there. You can’t do that if you have someone, perhaps the owner of the house, staring back at you. It shatters the illusion.’ He dropped the photograph back on the desk with a snort of disgust. ‘Bugger it!’ He said.

  He spent the rest of the morning with a family from the other side of town who’d commissioned him to shoot a series of portraits. The family was large with three children, both sets of grandparents and a King Charles spaniel. The adults were well behaved and took his direction without question. The children and the dog took more persuading. Normally it was the type of work he would have happily left in the capable hands of Marie, but she was tied up in the darkroom, processing films from a wedding the previous Saturday.

  Throughout the morning he found his mind drifting back to the photograph of the farmhouse, and to the figure staring back at him from the upstairs window. He couldn’t explain to himself why the image bothered him so much, but every time he pictured it in his mind his body gave an involuntary shudder.

  The rest of the day was frustrating. He wanted to get into the darkroom and investigate the picture further, but a succession of customers kept him occupied until closing time. Marie left at five thirty and he pulled down the blinds and retreated to the darkroom.

  Three hours later he was still there.

  Finally he switched on the light and took the finished enlargements through to the office. He spread the pictures out on the desk and sat down in the chair. This time there was no need for a lens. He had a number of ten by eight inch images of the face that was staring back at him from the farmhouse. He picked up the sharpest picture and sat gazing it, lost in thought, his hands shaking slightly as he focussed on the face.

  The man in the picture looked about his age, mid-forties. The skin was pale, made paler by the jet-black hair that was swept away from his face. He didn’t recognise him, but then he hadn’t expected to. The eyes were dark, the face thin, but it was the expression on the man’s face that made his hands tremble.

  He had never in his life seen an expression of such stark terror as that on the man’s face. There was terror, and something more; hopeless, abject despair.

  It was the face of a man deeply frightened by something, and who had given up all hope of avoiding whatever terrified him.

  With a low whistle he dropped the photograph to the desk and leaned back in his chair. There was a story here, a terrible story of human tragedy, captured for all time on photographic paper. What the story was he couldn’t begin to imagine, but he knew that one way or another he would have to discover it.

  He checked his watch. It was too late to do anything about it tonight, but first thing in the morning he would deliver the photographs of the farmhouse to Kate Hammond, and perhaps then he would discover what the story was.

  He sorted through the images and found the best general shot of the farmhouse and slipped it into his attaché case, along with one of the enlargements, and then he scribbled a note to Marie. She had her own key and would open up the shop in the morning. The note was terse. Delivering the photo of the farmhouse. I’ll be in later. Hold the fort. Ray.

  He propped the note on the desk, and locked up for the night.

  His route the next morning took him around the base of Melpham Tor, a twisting, circuitous lane bordered by high hedgerows obstructing the view of the fields and meadows beyond. At every junction he craned his neck, trying to see past the tall stands of hawthorn and cow parsley, looking for the Hammond farmhouse. It came upon him so suddenly he nearly missed it. Not the house itself, just a weather-beaten sign at the head of a narrow track. In faded white letters on a curling piece of plywood was the name ‘Hammond’. He’d overshot the entrance by several yards before the sign registered. With a curse he checked his mirror, threw the car into reverse and backed up just past the track, then, spinning the wheel eased the car forward.

  The track was badly overgrown, ferns and nettles crowding in from both sides, while long, whippy branches of bramble scraped against the car’s paintwork. He followed the track for half a mile before coming up against a five bar gate that cut the tra
ck in half.

  He climbed out of the car and went to inspect the gate. Like the sign the gate was the worse for wear, the cross struts rotting and flaking wood. There was another, smaller sign affixed to the gate, but the letters had all but been obliterated. Beyond the gate the track deteriorated into a wet and muddy morass, pot-holes and puddles, which surprised him as there hadn’t been rain for weeks and the country was in the middle of a prolonged heat wave that had dried rivers and reduced the level in the local reservoir by half.

  The track was in such a state that he doubted he would be able to drive any further. He went back to the car and locked it. He kept a pair of rubber over-shoes in the boot of his car – along with a spare camera they were a necessary part of his kit. He liked to think he was covered for every eventuality. Better to be over-prepared than to miss a shot. He slipped them on over his canvass espadrilles and went back to the gate.

  He had to climb over as the gate was secured by a heavy chain and padlock, rusted through lack of use. He dropped down on the other side of the gate and started to pick his way carefully along the track.

  In the distance he could see the Hammond farmhouse, as pristine and beautiful as it appeared in the photograph. As he got nearer he could see no damage to the thatch, and the walls looked as sound as they must have when they were first built, sometime back in the eighteenth century.

  In front of the house was a cobbled courtyard and to the left of it a stable block, but there was no sign of horses. He wondered if Kate Hammond was out riding again, but when he tugged on the antiquated bell-pull a voice floated down to him from the upper floor. ‘Won’t keep you a moment.’

  After a minute or so the door opened and Kate Hammond stood there smiling. ‘Mr Gideon. Have you brought my photograph?’

  Out of her riding clothes she looked completely different. She wore a floral print dress and her hair was swept up, dark curls piled on top of her head. The hair and the make up she wore – deep red lipstick and rouge-blushed cheeks – gave her a strangely old-fashioned appearance, but she was as beautiful as he remembered and her smile was welcoming.

  ‘I was just changing the beds,’ she said by way of apology for keeping him waiting. ‘Do come in.’

  She led him through to an immaculately tidy sitting room occupied by an old-fashioned three-piece suite covered in faded chintz. The room itself seemed rooted in the past. Against one wall was a Welsh dresser, its shelves adorned with willow-pattern plates and a number of framed photographs, mostly black and white portraits. His eyes scanned them quickly and professionally. There was a picture of an elegant couple, the sepia tones softening the severity of the harsh Edwardian clothes they wore. To the right of this was a head and shoulders portrait of a handsome man in an RAF uniform, cap tilted at a rakish angle, a briar pipe clenched between neat white teeth. There were others but Kate Hammond was talking to him and he transferred his attention to her.

  ‘...so good of you to take the trouble to deliver the photograph. I rarely get into town these days.’

  ‘It was no trouble,’ he said. ‘Mind you, this place took some finding.’

  She smiled. ‘Off the beaten track,’ she said. ‘Geoffery used to say it was the house’s main attraction.’

  ‘Geoffery?’

  ‘Sorry. I should have explained. Geoffery was my husband. We moved here not long after we were married. Unfortunately he didn’t live long enough to really get to enjoy the place.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gideon said.

  She waved the apology away. ‘No reason to be. It was a long time ago, and we had a few very good years together.’ She clapped her hands together like an excited child. ‘Anyway, to the purpose of your visit.’

  He unzipped the attaché case and handed her the photograph. Her eyes lit up as she gazed at it. ‘But it’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘You’ve really captured the spirit of the place. It’s hard when you have lived in a house for so long, especially living alone, to see it as others do. This...’ She clutched the photograph close to her breast. ‘...this makes me look at the house with fresh eyes.’

  Gideon smiled at her enthusiasm, but a question still gnawed away at the back of his mind. He cleared his throat and brought the question to the forefront. ‘I’m not sure your friend shares your pleasure at being photographed. He looks quite anxious.’

  The smile dropped from her face to be replaced by a frown. ‘Friend? Sorry, I’m not sure who you mean.’

  He stood beside her. ‘There,’ he said, pointing to the third window along. ‘I thought it must have been your husband, but of course that couldn’t…’

  She followed the line of his finger with her eyes. ‘I still can’t see...’

  He reached into his case again, took out the enlargement of the face that had stared so forlornly at him.

  Kate Hammond gave a cry of delight. ‘But that’s Marcus. Marcus Bannister. I thought he’d gone. I thought I’d lost him.’ She took Gideon’s arm and led him to a watercolour picture that hung from the wall. The painting was a skilled impression of the farmhouse, economic and deft brushwork lending the place an ambience missing from his photograph.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not quite with you,’ he said. He could feel her fingers digging into the flesh of his forearm.

  ‘But don’t you see? If you took your photograph on Sunday it means Marcus is still here.’

  ‘I still don’t follow...’ But she had moved away from him towards the stairs.

  ‘He’s upstairs!’ she said, her voice rising in excitement. ‘Oh you can’t possibly realise what this means to me. Since Geoffery died I’ve been so lonely, so terribly lonely.’

  He watched as she ran up the stairs calling, ‘Marcus! Marcus!’ It was extraordinary behaviour. From above he heard the sound of doors being opened and closed, and every so often Kate Hammond’s voice calling Marcus’s name.

  He turned back to the watercolour, studying the picture in more detail. It was a stylised image of the house, but none the worse for that. His gaze travelled on to the bottom right hand corner of the picture. The artist had signed it. M. Bannister, 1955. He looked closer but there was no mistake. The date was definitely 1955, nearly fifty years ago.

  He had the sudden urge to leave the house. He walked back past the dresser and the photograph of the airman caught his eye again, only this time he saw the inscription. To my Darling Kate. Your loving husband, Geoffery.

  He stared hard at the photograph. When he’d first seen it he’d assumed it was a portrait of Kate Hammond’s father. The photograph was old, slightly faded in its frame, and he could tell from the style of the portrait and the paper it was printed on that it couldn’t have been taken within the last thirty years.

  He lifted it from the shelf and turned it over. It was held in the frame by three small clips. He eased them to one side and removed the back plate. As he expected the photographer had stamped his name on the back of the photograph. It was a name that brought back memories of his childhood, growing up in Melpham. Lionel Wilson had his shop and studio in the High Street, nearly opposite to where Gideon’s now stood, and as a boy he had spent long hours staring at Wilson’s fine photography. A window filled with glowing visual testimonials to Wilson’s craft. It was staring at these photographic masterpieces that had inspired his own passion, and prompted his continual nagging of his parents until they finally relented and bought him a small box camera of his own.

  It was Lionel Wilson’s name stamped on the back of the portrait of Geoffery Hammond, and Gideon knew for a fact that Wilson had sold his shop and retired to Bournemouth in the early sixties, over forty years ago.

  Whatever was happening at the Hammond farmhouse Gideon wanted no part of it. He clipped the frame back together again and set it back on the dresser. He was at the front door when Kate Hammond appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘It’s no use… he’s not here.’

  He glanced up at her, said nothing but pulled open the door.

  ‘But you can’t go,’ she said as she des
cended the stairs. ‘It’s so lonely here.’

  He stepped outside and stopped dead.

  Outside the landscape had changed. Outside everything had changed.

  He stared at the trees surrounding the house. They stood, tall stiff sentinels, unmoving, their leaves and branches static. There was absolute silence, with not even the sound of a bird or the buzzing of a bee to disturb it. In a neighbouring field a tractor stood motionless, clods of earth thrown up by the plough it towed hanging in mid-air, whilst above the plough a flock of gulls were frozen in time, wings spread, beaks open, giving the impression of china models hung from wires.

  He took a few tentative steps forward, and stopped again, but this time he stopped because he couldn’t physically walk any further. He stretched out his hands and touched a flat, shiny surface covered with a two dimensional image of a landscape. A photograph of a landscape, huge and all encompassing. Slowly he turned back to the house. Kate Hammond stood in the doorway of the farmhouse, but she was shifting in and out of focus, as if he was looking at her through a heat-haze, or through an out of focus lens. Her lips were moving but the words were a long time reaching his ears.

  ‘I said you couldn’t leave.’

  Marie read the note and dropped it back onto the desk. ‘Thanks a bunch, Ray,’ she muttered, but her irritation was tempered with unease. On her way to work that morning she’d finally worked out what was bothering her about the photograph Gideon had taken of the farmhouse. She was born and raised in Melpham and knew the town and its surroundings well, especially Melpham Tor. She’d played there as a child, and during her teenage years had spent much of her courting time on the green hill. She knew the tor and its surrounding landscape and knew there wasn’t a house that matched the photograph Gideon had taken.

  She went through to the darkroom and switched on the light. Gideon was an untidy worker and every flat surface was strewn with photographs. She lifted a pile from beside the developing tank and started to leaf through them, but the sound of the shop bell interrupted her.