A Division of the Light (24 page)

“It's a rather unprepossessing site,” he told her.

“That's not the point,” Alice said.

“I mean that it's possible he got there and just didn't think it was worth photographing. Those stones wouldn't have caught my attention. There are collapsed sheepfolds all across the moor. The place is just littered with stones.”

“But Thomas recorded everything else, didn't he? So why
wouldn't
he have taken photos of Sampson's Bratfull? No, he can't have reached it. I'm sure of that. Did you study the map?”

The landline rang. Cassie picked it up and looked across to Gregory with raised eyebrows.

“Is that someone calling you?” Alice asked. “I don't want to get in the way of business.”

Gregory shifted his hold on the mobile. “They can wait,” he told her. “There are a couple of bridges on the map, Bleng bridge and an upper one across the same river. His water bottle was found next to the upper one. He could have been on his way to the Bratfull, or coming back.”

Cassie raised her voice so that it carried across the room.

“Yes,” she told her caller, “that's Gregory Pharaoh you can hear speaking on the other line. But he shouldn't be too long. Unless I can help?”

“Is that your daughter?” Alice asked.

“Yes. Go on.”

“The police told Richard that the river was in spate. It would have been easy to miss your footing. Thomas never reached Sampson's Bratfull. He never got to where he wanted to be.”

Cassie was making a note on her pad. “I don't know,” she told her caller, “he may be away on those dates.”

Alice spoke again.

“It's the right place for Thomas,” she said. “I
know
it's the right place.”

“It's a long way,” Gregory said. He was already thinking about what could happen.

“Will you arrange things? Please?”

It was not in his interest to refuse. Once Thomas's ashes had been scattered then a door would be closed on the past. And Gregory imagined a comfortable, discreet hotel in a quiet part of the country, far enough away from the collapsing tumulus for Alice to be able to forget it easily, with crisp sheets and old furniture and soft bedside lights that filled the room with warm shadows.
And he thought of her body, a body that he had studied and recorded, and the presence that had tantalized him, and that Alice Fell would be his and his alone for as long as he wanted her.

“Yes,” he said, “I'll fix everything.”

He ended the call at the same time as Cassie was ending hers.

“As soon as possible,” she said as she hung up.

Gregory returned his attention to the screen. After a while Cassie spoke again. As if in reproof, she had rested her fingers on the curve of her mother's necklace.

“You have to give me some answers.”

“Is there anything urgent?”

“It depends if you're going away next week. Are you?”

“Cassie, I know you disapprove.”

“It doesn't matter if I do.”

“And you think I'm too old to be behaving like this.”

“I can't see why you have to drop important work and drive half across England just to scatter the ashes of someone you never even met.”

Gregory ignored the comment. “We shouldn't refuse a lucrative contract even if it has to be completed next week. You could do it. I'm happy with that. You're very capable.”

“I know I am. But I'm covering for you more and more.”

“One of these days I'll stop doing this job. But the business will continue.”

“Photographers are like actors—they die in harness. Dad, you haven't even asked what the project is.”

“Do I need to know? Is it something that I really should be shooting?”

Cassie considered for a few seconds before answering. “I don't suppose it is, no.”

“Well then, you do it. With my blessing.”

“And the exhibition? You have to start finalizing the selection soon. You can't put that off. It's essential.”

“You could help me with that, too. Oh, and I need to sort out a hotel. For next week.”

Cassie was silent. Gregory studied the carvings on the wheel-head cross as he waited for her to volunteer. The crucified man lay within the sandstone, his Norse features as blank as those of a chessboard king.

“I'll arrange your hotel,” Cassie said at last. “I'll find one that you'll like. Just tell me your preferred location.”

“Thanks.” Gregory paused for a moment and then apologized. “I'm being unreasonable. I should make my own booking. You must feel you're colluding with something you don't want to happen.”

“That's one way of putting it. Another way is to say that I'm helping you get through your little bit of madness as quickly as possible, because once you've come out the other side then things will get back to normal. And I like things to be normal. A double room?”

“Let's leave it as two singles.”

“How cautious of you,” Cassie said drily.

“I mean it. You know, before you met Alice I was certain that you would like each other.”

“How could we, when we understand each other so well?”

“You don't really.”

“Dad, let's say that you think you can discover parts of her character by staring at her body through your lens, but that I can see other parts just by looking straight into her eyes. Why don't I just book you a double room? Won't that be simpler? Get it over with?”

“If you dislike her so much, then why are you so keen that we sleep together?”

“You know why. You're not very interested in women as individuals. You like them as types, as examples of some aspects of femininity that you're fascinated by and yet don't know all that much about. So losing them doesn't affect you very deeply.”

“That's not true,” Gregory insisted, and yet he thought that his daughter could be right. After Ruth's death, had he retreated from the particular to the generalized, from depth to surface, from commitment to indifference, from wise man to fool?

“Dad, Alice Fell is a schemer. She's not enigmatic and she's not challenging. Once you've slept together, she'll lose her allure—it'll fall away like a broken shell. You'll wake up and see that her ambitions are selfish and ordinary. The sooner that happens, the better.”

Gregory tapped a finger against the edge of his keyboard. “Let's keep it as two singles.” After a few seconds he went on, “I have to consider what happened to Thomas. Nothing will change until after his ashes are scattered.”

Cassie crooked her finger through the necklace.

“If you think about how he died,” she said, “then it must be even more obvious why I don't trust her.”

Cassie returned Gregory's steady gaze as she continued.

“That man must have been very naïve. He was probably convinced that she was the love of his life. Even worse, he must have persuaded himself that she felt the same. It's obvious when you look at it. Thomas killed himself because of how Alice treated him.”

“That isn't what anyone else thinks.”

“Dad, you
mus
t know that's what happened. I don't need to hear any more detail to know that's true.”

“People don't kill themselves for love.”

“You don't think so?”

“I know it.”

Gregory believed that he had lost more than Thomas would ever have had, and yet he could never have thrown himself into a river. If he had done that he would have betrayed Ruth as well as Cassie.

“You've always had reasons to live, Dad. Maybe Thomas Laidlaw couldn't find any.”

Gregory shrugged and his eyes strayed to the screen again. He had no wish to extend the conversation any further.

“Maybe,” he said. “In the end all that matters is that he's dead.”

He had already lost interest in Cassie's opinion, because it arose from observation and not experience. No one would ever know what had really happened to Thomas, and yet his daughter wanted to blame Alice for his death. Gregory decided that this was because she wanted to protect him; she was worried that he would take a path that would be similarly irrational.

Cassie was settled and at ease in a predictable life; Gregory accepted that. But he saw no need to be so wary in the closing stages of his own life; instead all that he saw was the necessity of satisfying a longing that refused to let him rest.

The road became narrow as it threaded its way between bushes, fences and trees. Gregory drove slowly, half expecting to meet an oncoming vehicle that would make him reverse to the last passing-place, but the way ahead remained deserted. Alice sat in silence, sometimes turning her head to look out of the windows. She had last spoken when he had taken shots of the cross in the churchyard. As soon as he had lowered the camera she had asked him to leave it locked in the car boot from then on. Alice did not think it right that he should make a visual record of the place where Thomas had died; and besides, she would never wish to be reminded of it. Gregory had reluctantly agreed, for without a camera he always felt strangely unmanned.

He stopped the car on an area of gravel, puddles and compacted earth marked by tire tracks. Dead leaves were plastered on the drying mud like faded messages.

“It seems that from now on we walk,” he said.

Once the car doors were open Alice looked around and then glanced up at the sky. Little of it could be seen between the high
trees. The river could be clearly heard as it coursed behind a raised bank colonized by saplings and scrub.

“Will it rain, do you think?” she asked.

“This doesn't feel like a place that avoids bad weather,” Gregory said. He handed Alice her waterproof jacket and then put on his own.

“There's something in the air. Don't you feel it?”

“I'd check the lacing on your boots,” he suggested by way of an answer, and bent to check his own.

Alice had last worn outdoor clothing when she had visited archaeological remains with Thomas, and for almost a year it had remained unused and half-forgotten in a cupboard. She had not wanted to wear it now, but Gregory had insisted. She felt cumbersome, unattractive, and with boots that were far too heavy.

He lifted his rucksack from the back seat, hoisted it on his back, and adjusted the straps over his shoulders. Spare sweaters had been packed beside the urn, but it still felt unwieldy and oddly shaped against his back.

“Should I carry the pack?” Alice asked.

“I don't mind.”

“I thought that maybe you wanted me to do that. After all, you didn't know Thomas.”

“I don't want you to do anything. What's important is what
you
want. When we get there you can be the one who empties it—if you think you should.”

“I don't even know if I should do that. The truth is that I'm only here because no one else would bring Thomas to where he should be. But after the argument we had when we split up . . .”

She stopped and then started again.

“I had to tell him things that were very hurtful. There was no choice.”

Gregory nodded briskly. Alice had made similar remarks several times, and there was little point in entering another discussion now. He wanted the ashes carried to where they would be scattered, and once the job was done he wanted to return to the hotel as quickly as possible. The disposal of what little was left of Thomas Laidlaw would close off that part of the past. Afterward, her duty discharged, freed from guilt and memory, Alice would wish to delay no longer. Gregory's single room was big enough for the purpose, or he could go to hers.

His imagination had already excited itself with possibilities. Secretly he had rehearsed how to make their first bout of lovemaking uninhibited and exhausting. He hoped that running through Alice's mind there would be a similarly adventurous heat: imperative, overwhelming, but as yet unexpressed.

They walked side by side down a short stretch of metaled road alongside huge trees whose shadows had starved the earth around their roots. In a field on their left a white horse stood motionless as it watched them pass.

Gregory had studied the map closely. “The lower crossing should be here,” he said, and after a few more yards Bleng bridge came into view. They walked over it without pause and immediately came to a fork in the road. A board pointed to the right with the name of Scalderskew Farm painted on it. They stood looking at it for a moment.

“Thomas must have taken the forestry road,” Alice said, reiterating their understanding as if she expected a challenge. “If he'd gone to the left he'd have reached Sampson's Bratfull before he got to the upper bridge. Is that right?”

“According to the map, yes.”

“And he can't have done that because there are no photographs of the Bratfull. I've thought about this and even if he'd been disappointed I'm certain he would have taken some. You agree?”

“If you think so.”

“So if we go to the right then we follow in his footsteps.”

“All right,” Gregory said, adjusting his pack again. “The quicker we move the sooner we'll get back.”

At first the road climbed so steeply that they had to lean forward to obtain a better purchase on the surface. Gregory dropped back a little and studied Alice from behind. He liked seeing the movement of her limbs as she pressed onward, because he could not help but think of her naked body angled in such a way. And then he luxuriated once more in the memory of how, undressed, she had paced across a room that was hushed by dustsheets, had willingly laid her body open to his lens, had spoken with a goading frankness that had keyed up his sexual expectations. By now he had studied those photographs many times, stared at tableaux that both challenged his gaze and questioned it, become absorbed in her eyes and nipples, skin and hair, the shaping of ivory and shadow.