In Between Frames (4 page)

“No.
 
I, uh, thought I saw their name mentioned in the society pages.”
 
Miles frowned.
 
Were there still such things as society pages?
 
But Peter accepted the explanation, and stamped his passport, handing it back to him.

“Do you know where she lives?” Miles asked.
 
“I’d just like to pay my respects—and let her know the camera is being put to good use.”

Miles would later acknowledge that it was a ridiculous reason, one that nobody except a fellow photographer would appreciate—and even then, it depended on the photographer.
 
But Peter didn’t even question it, just shook his head.
 
“I can’t tell you where she lives.
 
But you could try asking around in Kent.
 
That’s where the estate sale was held.”

~~~

Sam finally found the typewriter she’d been dreaming of having.
 
She had to admit it was a silly conceit—that she hadn’t written anything because she didn’t have a typewriter—but it was a true, nonetheless.
 
Of course everything was done by computer, these days, but Sam had learned to type on an old fashioned typewriter, where each key needed to be depressed six inches before the type bar would even move and a new line required smacking the bejesus out of the carriage return.
 
She did not want one of those, for all that she liked the aesthetics, but the small, “portable” (it still weighed six pounds) electric typewriter she uncovered at the local second-hand shop was perfect.
 
Sam ordered a few new ribbons for it online that evening, but what carbon there was on the ribbon would suffice for her to begin.
 

Begin what, exactly, was something she hadn’t really given much thought to.
 
She didn’t even have much of an idea of who, or what, her novel was going to be about.
 
She titled the manuscript “The Beast”, but she didn’t even know if there was going to be a monster in it.
 
When Mabel got up the next morning, she had already been at work for two hours, scribbling down ideas and trying to get her characters straight, but it was futile.
 

“Stephan is coming today, mummy,” Mabel reminded her, as she fried an egg for her daughter.
 
Mabel, Sam was pleased to see, had eaten her cucumber-and-tomato salad without any comments about how stupid it was to have this for breakfast.
 

“I know,” Sam said, in Greek.
 
“So, will it be hamburgers, then?”

“Yes!
 
With
tzatziki
!”
 

“All right, then.
 
But that means you can’t play on the beach all afternoon, understand?”

“Yes, mummy.”
 

In the weeks that had passed since Sam had settled down in the place, she had completely lost her habit of going grocery shopping once a week.
 
The supermarket was only a mile from their place, and it was a pleasant walk, especially after a morning like this one, where she’d been writing for three hours straight. Most of it was schlock—she might be conceited and vain, but she wasn’t deluded about her ability to write—but that was what the second draft was for.
 
Writing in the morning, while Mabel played on the beach, long walk in the afternoon, followed by Greek lessons and dinner—life, for once, was almost as perfect as it could possibly get.
 

There was only one thing that bothered her, and that was Stephan.
 
He’d made no advances and no romantic gestures in all the times that he came by, and he was great fun to have for dinner.
 
But even so, Sam felt vaguely uneasy when he was around, as if she were leading him on, and he knew that she was leading him on, but had agreed to play the dupe, the sacrificial idiot, the good guy whose heart got broken by a cold British bitch, anyway.
 
Compounding the difficulty was that she’d never stated she was interested in him, nor he in her, and she had no idea what he’d read into that handshake.
 
God only knew what he was telling his friends about her.
 

Still, it was hard to be too bothered by this, especially since Mabel had made friends with a few other girls.
 
Apparently the game of “house” was the same no matter which country you were from.
 
And Mabel liked Stephan, in part because on the two days of the week he came, Sam made “good food”.
 
Sam was slightly indignant about this—she had grown up in France, after all, where one couldn’t escape the concept of good food, well-cooked—but she had to confess to herself that she did take more care to select choicer ingredients, and put some more attention into seasoning, on the nights Stephan was coming.
 
It was a point of hospitality, she told herself, but at the same time, she had to wonder if perhaps her subconscious were trying to tell her something.

Life had settled into a pleasant rhythm, and as she washed the breakfast dishes, Sam was starting to think that maybe that was part of the problem.
 
Her life, so extraordinary at first, had now become mundane, at least to her.
 
She needed a new perspective.
  
The ream of office paper she’d bought shrank by another sheet of paper, this one with the word “PERSPECTIVE” written in angry capitals, encased in a ragged rectangle.
 
A new perspective, or perhaps a new problem to solve.
 

Make that, a problem with a solution, she thought, as her thoughts wandered straight to the raisins that kept appearing in their pantry.
 
She was sure she never bought them.
 
Mabel denied putting them in with the rest of the groceries at the last minute—and indeed, “
ÃÄ
±Æ¯´µÂ” never appeared on her receipt. Sam made a point of throwing them away, or giving them to the children Mabel sometimes came home with, only to find the package returned, whole, in the pantry.
 
At first it was unnerving, and in the first few weeks, Sam had spent several nights sitting up, waiting to catch the raisin-leaver.
 
But after a while, when it became clear that nothing was missing or moved, she gave up, since whoever was doing this apparently only wanted her to have raisins, for some reason.
 
She didn’t believe in ghosts, but if it was a ghost, she freely accepted the possibility that it could elect to do worse.
 
It was a ridiculous problem to have, one that she couldn’t square with writing “real” novel.

And then she realized, that was it.
 
The perspective she needed.
 
The ridiculous nature of high literature and modern art.
 
The ideas came quickly, easily, after that.
 
And there was even a beast.
 

~~~

Miles rushed the last shoot in order to have a few hours in Kent.
  
He hadn’t wanted to rush, but he had been all over Britain in that week, logging more hours than he cared to count on the trains, setting up his equipment in cramped flats, conducting interviews, and for the last shoot—a
Morrocan’s
take on the British “steak and kidney pie”—he reached into his bag for his raisins and discovered they weren’t there. A wave of uncontrollable crankiness pulsed through him, and it was all he could do to pack his equipment and get himself to a nearby Marks & Spencer’s without killing anybody, where he picked up a boxed sandwich and a bottle of Coke. As he stood in the parking lot, eating, he imagined he could feel the sugar hitting his system, knocking back the crankiness to a manageable level.
 
He actually felt physically better with every bite he took.
 
By the time he finished the sandwich, he was calm enough to regret leaving
Hassim
El-
Abou
so quickly, but not sorry enough to slog twenty minutes back to his place and set up his equipment again—if there was anything left to shoot of it, since
Hassim
had told him he loved this variation and could eat the entire pie in one sitting.
 

So onwards to Kent it was.
 
Miles decided, as he finished the Coke, to buy a roll of black-and-white from Ritz Photos, shoot off a few frames with the Leica.
 
With overnight processing, he could pick it up the next day, be in Kent, inquire about the camera, show them the shots and tell them how nice it was, and ask if they knew where the widow had gone.
 
He’d tell them that there’d been a roll of film left in it, which he’d developed, and that he’d like to know where to send them.
 

Ritz only sold one type of black-and-white, and he was feeling the weight of his equipment.
 
Still, he managed to shoot off the roll—he’d call it his “London on the street” series—and drop it off, and head back to the hotel without incident.
 
It was a good series of shots, he thought, as he lay soaking in the tub—meditative views on the street, rusty signs, a homeless guy panhandling for change next to a sign that read “
HeLP
WaNted
”—appropriately artsy, not too pretentious.
  
He’d ordered larger prints, for a more quasi-professional look and feel.
  
It would give his story legitimacy, and the family might be more willing to talk with him if he offered them a print or two.

The next day, he’d checked out of the hotel, picked up his photos, and took the train to Kent.
  
It was a short trip, so he’d only just worked the envelope open when the train pulled into the station.
 
He tucked the envelope under his arm, checked his hair in his reflection in the train window, and hailed a cab to take him to the address he’d found through extensive
Googling
the night before.
 
Finding the news piece on David Wilcox’s death had been hard enough, but it had taken him several hours banging away at his laptop before he finally located the obituary in a cached page issued by King’s Crossing, and then he had to look for Werner and Deirdre Wilcox in the antiquated phone book.
 
They were David’s parents—he hoped they didn’t hate their daughter-in-law.

As the cab left him by the curb in front of an imposing Tudor-style house, he began to have his doubts about this scheme working.
 
He didn’t even really know what he hoped to gain by it, other than meeting the woman whose image haunted his camera.
 
And for what end?
 

Still, he was standing at their door, knocking, before he could persuade himself not to.
 
The woman that greeted him was not what he expected when he read David’s obituary—the rising star of trauma surgery, a driven man dedicated to his field.
 
He expected that she would be taller, more imposing—the type of mother who never had to tell her children to do anything, because she’d managed to instil in them the martial discipline to do things themselves.
 
Deirdre Wilcox was tiny, standing at four feet eleven inches, her hair pulled back in a matronly bun, wearing glasses Miles had only ever seen on John Denver.
 
“Yes?” she mouthed.
 
It was a moment before Miles realized she’d spoken.

He was tempted to make up a name, and a purpose, but he heard himself say, “Hello, ma’am, I’m Miles Garrison, a professional photographer,” before he could think to do anything different.
 
“I bought a camera from eBay, and by chance the customs agent at Heathrow was the man who sold it to me.
 
My condolences for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said, beginning to look puzzled.
 
“Can I help you?”

“Well, there was a roll of film in it, which I processed, and I would like to send the prints to his widow.
 
Do you know where she might be?”

At that point, a male voice—Werner—could be heard shouting, “Deirdre!
 
Stop letting out the air conditioning!”

“Please, come in,” the woman said, her voice so soft Miles had to strain to hear it.
 
She really was a tiny, wispy thing—Miles noticed that she was wearing heels, even.
 
“You’ll have to speak to my husband.
 
He’ll know.”