A Division of the Light (28 page)

Despite a clear statement in the catalog that Gregory is alive and well, and despite a recording of him that she has arranged on a loop, Cassie believes that most of the guests will treat the exhibition as a summation, an ending, a coda to work that has ceased. Business associates now acknowledge that, although the name of Gregory Pharaoh continues, it is his daughter who will fulfill any contracts agreed with the company. Most are content with this arrangement, and only a few have compared her work unfavorably with her father's. Whenever clients have asked if Gregory will return, Cassie has truthfully answered that she does not know. If they have then gone on to ask if he will take up the business again if he does, she has smiled politely and replied that nothing is impossible.

Cassie has posted invitations not only to clients, subjects, reviewers and cultural commentators, but also to many of the other names that feature in her long list of contacts. On reflection she believes the potential guest numbers to be too high, but perhaps they are justified if this is to be Gregory's last exhibition. She has even sent an invitation to Alice Fell, although she does not expect her to accept it.

Since the accident on Sampson's Bratfull, Cassie and Alice have spoken on the phone several times. They have even found it necessary to meet—only once—so that Alice could recount exactly what had happened on the moor and Cassie could inform her of Gregory's present condition. They met at a café in the center of town and sat at a table by the window so that each could turn away from the other and study the outside world as it passed by.

A spiky awareness replaced their mutual antagonism, but neither
was prepared to give ground to the other. Alice wore dark glasses with large frames and a fashionable cap that she pulled low on her forehead. At first Cassie thought that these and the heavy make-up were part of a defense mechanism, but then Alice lifted the glasses and raised the cap to prove that she, too, had suffered flash burns.

“The dermatologist says I'll be fine in a couple of weeks,” she said. And then she added, tartly, “I hope you're not disappointed.”

“You must be pleased,” Cassie said. “I know that looks mean a lot to you.”

“More than they do to you, Cassandra.”

Cassie recognized that Alice was not unattractive, but she also saw that she possessed a certain worn, depressive quality. Alice's life had been full, but she had lived it without sufficient discrimination. Her smart but conventional clothes, her looks, the way she carried herself, all formed part of a guarded charm that would draw many men toward her. Men who were aging, and whose sexual chances were lessening, would feel the magnetism more fiercely than others. They were the ones who would be willing to endanger their own peace of mind. For them, love would become a burden and a damnation.

Once again Alice described what had happened on the moor. In her previous phone conversations she had been sparing with detail. Now the presence of another woman, even one as unsympathetic as Cassie, gave her license to speak much more extensively.

Afterward Cassie described the accident as the last step on a path she had been unable to prevent her father from taking. The decision to scatter crematorium ashes on a remote moor had been made at Alice's whim. Who could doubt that if she had not
persuaded Gregory to accompany her then he would not have been injured, not have been hospitalized, not have had to suffer the indignity of psychiatric examinations?

“Your father could have refused, but he didn't,” Alice told her. “He could have altered the date and time of the visit, but he didn't. If he'd done that we would both have avoided the storm.”

It seemed the easiest thing to say. Alice did not wish to explain that the workings of fate were cruel and occult. Thomas was meant to die just as Gregory was meant to be on the moor at the moment of the storm. He was meant to be stricken just as Alice was meant to save him. If that was not true then the world was merely chaotic and without purpose or significance. More than that Alice was unable to see.

“I thought he was dead,” she admitted. “I tried my best to save him. I really did. And if I hadn't been able to get to that road, and if the forestry people hadn't come along, he could still have died.”

“I know you did your best. I'm grateful for that. I have to be.”

They sat in silence for a while, each avoiding the other's gaze. And then Cassie spoke again.

“I was suspicious of you and I still am. But I see now that you have qualities that weren't obvious.”

Alice shook her head. “I never wanted to come between your father and you. He just wanted to photograph me. That was it. It was never going to go any further than that.”

As soon as the words were spoken she wondered if Cassie had recognized they were a lie.

When the two women parted they shook hands formally. It was an acceptable compromise for them both. A departure without touching would have been insulting, an embrace impossible. As
they walked away, each grew aware that they shared a disconcerting and unwanted comradeship.

Cassie does not register that Alice has arrived at the exhibition and is standing alongside others as they watch Gregory's recorded message. The screen has been placed next to the table with the catalogs so that as they enter the gallery everyone has the chance to pause and watch him speak. Alice is confident, ready to face anyone, and dressed in a tailored black suit that she wore for her successful interview with a firm of business consultants. She has been working for them now for several months.

In his message Gregory appears distracted, as if he has only reluctantly agreed to be filmed. There are no establishing shots other than a few seconds of feed as he sits against a white background and fixes a lapel microphone to his heavy coat. When the frame is almost entirely filled with a close-up of his face it appears that his skin has undergone a change in pigmentation, although many put this down to the inadequacy of the recording. Gregory glances to one side for a few seconds and then speaks. It is a short statement, its outline apparently jotted on a notepad just out of camera range. Even so, his remarks are interrupted by several pauses and at one point he appears to lose interest completely.

“Thank you for coming,” he begins. “This has been planned for more than a year and it will possibly be the last time my photographs are ever seen in an exhibition. My daughter Cassie—Cassandra—has done all the hard work, including selecting what she thinks are the best photographs to hang. If everything goes well, it's thanks to her.”

Gregory stops and then looks aside for a few seconds before starting again.

“Some of you will know I live in another country now, so I
can't be there with you. I'm not going to say I'm sorry because that's not true. I'm living where I want to be and this is where I'll stay. What will be on show in this gallery are the results of a former life, one that I don't have any interest in reviving. The images hanging on the walls are like archaeological finds. They have a certain value and some of you will speculate about their composition and their messages and their meaning. But you won't really know the answers, just as I don't really know the answers. Reality, true reality, lies outside those photographs, just as it lies outside of the world that we all inhabit, like it or not.”

Keen to finish, evidently bored, Gregory reaches forward to switch off the camera. He says nothing else. As he looms close to the lens his features are made distorted and bulbous before the image vanishes.

Alice turned away and began to walk around the gallery. A waiter offered drinks from a tray; she took a glass of white wine and held it high in front of her body.

The silvered prints were hung on white walls with overhead lights. Clusters of guests had gathered in front of particular exhibits that they wished to admire or criticize. Several had attended solely to network and they were holding discussions in tight inward-facing groups. Ready to leave soon if necessary, Alice strolled the perimeter of the room in a calculated saunter, as if she were so used to private views that they were becoming tedious. As she moved she registered fragments of comment about the content of each frame, the variation of shape and motif from object to object, and the calculated dynamism in every composition. Such arcane modes of communication reminded her of humorless gatherings of physicists or archaeologists, except that these conversations were even less rooted in measurable fact. They were merely
opinions, quickly assembled as response and defense, but actually as billowingly insubstantial as cloud.

None of the work in the first room was familiar. There were landscapes, industrial scenes, portraits, groups, buildings. Some were close-ups of objects that Alice could not recognize until she read the accompanying note. Some had sold, most had not, and a few were marked as not available for sale. Dutifully she patrolled them all, and as she did so she watched Cassie Pharaoh out of the corner of her eye. Alice was certain that Cassie had now registered her presence, but so far she had shown no sign of recognition.

Cassie was talking animatedly to two guests. She was wearing a maroon velvet jacket with scalloped trims, wide lapels and a high neck. Alice believed that it must have been copied from a Regency original, possibly bought at a museum, and that although no other woman in the room was wearing anything similar, it made Cassie look frumpy.

Alice turned her back on Gregory's daughter and looked at the next exhibit. A formally robed bishop gazed stonily outward. It was the photograph Gregory had taken on the day that her handbag had been stolen. Everything was pattern. It was just that patterns were usually difficult to make out.

She sauntered away from the bishop and stood in front of a panoramic shot of a partially destroyed church. She remembered Gregory telling her about the shoot. At the time, she had not considered it significant. In his composition he had included a standing figure to add depth and scale. The figure was almost in silhouette; behind it a broad diagonal of light fell across the nave.

Another guest was standing beside her. After a few seconds he
spoke: “It's still for sale. The church has bought his portrait of the bishop; it hasn't yet bought this.”

Alice had grown used to strange men trying to engage her in conversation. “I didn't notice,” she answered neutrally, to let him know she was not interested. The man spoke again.

“The restoration is going well. His daughter is coming back to photograph its completion.”

Alice wondered why he was telling her this. It could only be that he was expecting to be recognized. She looked more closely at the print.

“It's you,” she said.

He nodded. “That's why I was invited here, I suppose. I gave Pharaoh my business card so he could keep it in his records—I wanted to make sure they got my name right in the newspaper caption. This photograph isn't quite the same as the one they printed. And it doesn't even mention my name. The paper didn't, either. You knew him, too?”

Alice ignored the question. “You must have a professional link with this church.”

“The church as a whole, not just that particular one. I assess damage and recommend action. The destruction here was an unusual case. Very dramatic. Most of the time I'm dealing with plain old-fashioned erosion, lack of maintenance and decay. My name is Adrian Wells, by the way.”

“I thought people who did that kind of thing would be very old,” Alice told him. “I thought they would have worked as ministers for years and years.”

There was a momentary pause before the man answered. Alice realized that he had been expecting her to introduce herself, but today she did not want to give her name to anyone.

“Well, no, I'm not a minister. I have a PhD in church architecture. Although obviously I have to know a lot about liturgy and how buildings were molded to reflect and reinforce orthodoxies. It's all rather fascinating—to me, anyway. I'm afraid most people find it very boring.”

“Most?”

“I think so. I have these theories, you see, about what should be done.”

Ah, she thought, another man with a theory. Wells began to talk.

Alice had found that when they met an attractive woman most men were far too eager to list what they thought or what they had done. They did this automatically and without hesitation, like peacocks unable to resist a display.

Wells spoke too rapidly, as if he had to cram as many facts as possible into a strictly limited space. Belief systems, he claimed, had been forced by modernity to take new shapes. Everyone knew this to be true. There was a saying that the waterhole of each scientific advance was surrounded by the corpses of theologians. Knowledge could no longer be ignored. The heavy, ornate, enclosed spaces of the traditional church were unequal to the discoveries of cosmology and physics, to what we now knew of the social constructs of reality, and to biblical archaeology and textual scholarship. What the faithful needed was a solution that was collective and inclusive. Worship, communion, call it what you like, had to be open and accessible and not restricted by outmoded forms.

Alice knew that if she did not stop him he would talk like this for another five minutes.

“You mean like the communities that must have worshipped at prehistoric circles and avenues and henges?”

She could see him considering what to say next. “Perhaps. It really depends if people need a charismatic leader and a priest caste. I'd like to think not. Evidence seems to suggest that they do.” He paused for a moment. “You know about prehistoric sites?”

“I used to visit them. It was a while ago.”

Wells nodded. Alice could see that he had begun to think differently about her. She could not resist impressing him further.

“Stonehenge, of course,” she said, “but also Avebury, the Rollrights, Sampson's Bratfull.”

He was puzzled. “I haven't heard of that one.”

“No,” she said, “not many people have.”