Remember Why You Fear Me (17 page)

The ringmaster looked so much more impressive with a hat on his head and a whip in his hand. He brought out the first act. It was the clowns. Craig Boardman’s dad was the chief clown, and he was ribticklingly funny. He was also very good when he came back later to lift weights, and he rode a horse standing upright, and he spun plates on sticks, I must admit I began to fall a little in love with Craig Boardman’s dad. “Do you see your mother?” I asked, and my son said he did, and pointed—and there she was, at the very top of the tent, climbing on to a swing, squeezed tight into that sequined dress so that all her bits were bulging. We applauded her. She looked so graceful up there, and my heart swelled large and proud. She leaped from the swing, arms stretched out, aiming herself right where Craig Boardman’s dad was waiting to catch her, and she missed, and she plummeted to her death fifty feet below.

They said afterwards she wouldn’t have felt much, it must have been very quick—though I’m not sure, that fake sawdust was awfully sharp, and it impaled her body in a thousand different places. But at that moment I’m afraid I leaped to my feet. And I cried out, and even to me the cry didn’t sound quite human, it was so full of grief, I think, or maybe it was just shock. To think that at one moment my wife had been in the circus, and the next she was lying flat on the ground before us like a squashed jam doughnut. I cried out against the world. I cried so hard. And they turned the lights on me. And everybody began to laugh. The audience, the performers, even my son, even Craig Boardman, even Craig Boardman’s dad. Because somehow, in that epiphany of suffering, I had accidentally pulled the right face. A face for comedy, a face everyone could laugh at guilt-free. And I saw the ringmaster, and he was clapping me, and nodding, as if to say, “Fair play, sir, fair play.”

That night I made my son his favourite dinner. He helped me, quietly, in the kitchen. I wondered whether he felt ashamed that his mania for the circus had pushed his mother to her death. He said he didn’t. He said he felt a certain ennui. He recognized that at some point in any child’s life one has to accept the fallibility of one’s parents. With me, it was my failure to get a job at the circus, with his mother, it was when she so ineptly made a pig’s ear of an elementary trapeze act. “But,” he said to me, “with you, at least you tried. But Mum? I’m sorry, but she didn’t just miss Craig Boardman’s dad, she was
nowhere even near
.” He did seem more adult, and I asked him if he was all right, and he said he was, and I think he was lying, but that’s the adult thing to do. I was proud of him, but I didn’t say. And we sat down to eat.

A basic problem with early photography was its inability to hold the image of cats. Nicephore Niepce’s process of taking a metal plate coated with bitumen and bombarding it with light was quite the discovery, of course, and the further pioneering efforts by Daguerre and Talbot to develop this technique were of huge influence. For the first time in history there really was the sense that a moment in time could be frozen forever, that people and places and events could be preserved accurately. It gave us a glimpse of something godlike, something immortal. We drew a blank with cats, though.

Dogs were all right. There was something so essentially noble and straightforward about a dog, it would have been an offence to the sensibilities had dogs not been photographed. And, although it took a bit of fiddling with the lenses, by the late 1870s it had become increasingly easy to capture the likeness of horses as well. But no one had successfully managed to hold a cat upon film; there were various (unsubstantiated) reports from experimental ’graphers that they had done so (and on the continent, always on the continent!)—only for a little while, and blurred maybe, not a good likeness, though quite definitely feline. But the image never held long enough for anyone to verify these claims, the cats faded away from the pictures within seconds.

Some said it was because the cat had no soul. Others, that it was simply too minor a life form, too low down upon the table of creation for the camera to recognize. And some people—the ones who actually
owned
cats, who knew what they were about, knew their moods and their characters, said that the cats were doing it deliberately. Cats had no interest in their images being preserved on paper via a collusion of light and oil. What was in it for them?

For the sake of simplicity we had long claimed that the photography of cats was impossible, but that didn’t mean we thought it was actually, genuinely
impossible
; no one believed that, I think, except perhaps Gerard Pomfrey, but his fustian ideas about the photosciences had long since been discredited. I was certain that the solution was out there, somewhere. It would be a long voyage of discovery for someone. That someone was not going to be me. I don’t like cats. I was not prepared to devote my hard-earned photoscopic skills to them.

I still don’t know why it was me that Simon Harries contacted. We had both studied at Oxford together, and I remember that back then his views on the inconstancy of calotypes from silver salt solutions were regarded as mildly controversial. But Harries was not the man for controversy, he had neither the charisma nor the gall to carry it off. I had had respect for Harries, I could see there was talent within him, and I think maybe I was the closest he had to a friend—but, still, we were
not
friends, not by any stretch of the definition, and I had neither heard from him nor of him since we’d graduated fifteen years before. I can hardly describe the surprise I felt when I received a telegram from him, let alone my surprise at the contents of that message.

He asked me to visit him at his house in South London that very evening—promptly, at half past eleven. He had something of vital importance to show me. There was no hint in his words that we had had no communication for so long, there was no greeting or attempt at reintroduction, it was as if we had been working side by side in the same laboratory every day. I was half inclined to ignore the thing, but for the urgency of the final sentence. He urged me to come alone, and to tell no one—and I confess, I was intrigued.

I had a light supper, and then caught a hansom cab to Streatham. I hadn’t been south of the Thames for a while, and I had forgotten just how much poverty there was to the place. I don’t know how man can live in such slum conditions. Still, I was surprised when the cab dropped me off , the driver himself looking eager to get back to the civilizing areas of the city and only too relieved when I told him he had no reason to wait. I had thought that Harries must have found some decent lodgings here, however cheap; but this was not a house, this was a hovel, there wasn’t even a doorknocker, I had to beat on the door with my fists. Photography was a science studied by gentlemen; this was not a place where a gentleman could live; what had happened to Harries to bring him so low?

Harries opened the door and showed me in. I would not have recognized him. He had aged. His hair was grey. He had not shaven. His cravat was askew. “What is all this about, Harries?” I asked. I felt I had the right to be a little abrupt.

His eyes wouldn’t settle on me, they darted about nervously. “You came alone?”

“As you can see.”

“And you have spoken to no one?”

“You try my patience, man.”

“Forgive me,” he said, and he smiled, and he grasped my hands in his, and shook them briefly, and he began to giggle. “I see so few people nowadays. Oh! but I have done it. I have done it! It is the discovery of the age!”

He lived in one room, I could see, and that a small one; over the floor were papers; over the papers were sheets of acetate, broken or chipped lenses, dyes, gels, scraps of stale food. “I have ‘graphed a cat,” he whispered to me, eyes shining.

I felt no personal affection for Harries, but I was nonetheless sorry that a man of such potential had gone down such a scientific blind alley. He could see the disappointment on my face; I confess, I did not try to disguise it; he grabbed on to my arm, tight. He said, “I’ve done it, I tell you!”

“Then let me see,” I said.

And then he was smiling again, a crafty little smile, I did not like that smile much. “Oho, not yet! Not yet! Not until midnight! The cats only come out at the witching hour, you’ll see, you’ll see.” And he cleared the debris off the only chair, and invited me to sit down.

A little before twelve, he fetched for me a ‘graph. He’d taken a picture of the room. He had taken it from the chair, I think, from the exact place I was sitting. The books were in slightly different positions, maybe, I saw a pile of photoscientific treatises that had since then toppled over. “There’s nothing here,” I said—”Not yet, not yet,” he insisted, “I tell you, midnight!” And I looked hard at the picture, and so did he, and that’s how we spent the next few minutes. I felt ridiculous.

The clock struck. Loud, too loud. “Sorry, sorry,” said Harries, “I make sure I can never sleep through it. But look, look, on the ‘graph!” And I was looking at the ‘graph, and of course, I expected to see nothing, and there would be an end to this. I even opened my mouth to say so; I shut it again.

For wasn’t there something swimming into focus? Wasn’t there a blur, and the blur was taking on a more rigid outline, and then a solid shape. “My God,” I said, and I apologise, but I was that surprised. Because there, looking out of the picture, indubitably, was a cat. Looking out at me. It looked as shocked as I was. Its eyes were wide in the flash light, its ears were pricked, its fur was standing on edge.

“But it must be a trick,” I said. “Simon? Is this not some small child you have dressed up as a cat, or . . . ?”

“I have the proof!” he laughed. “Ha ha, I have
proof
!” And at that he threw aside a few more papers, and lifted from the floor the cat itself. He picked it up by the tail. Its face was set in the exact same expression I saw in the ‘graph, its fur still set fast and rigid.

“Dead,” I said, uselessly.

“Dead, yes, ha ha, it always kills ‘em, don’t know why!” said Harries. “Normally they just die, ha ha, and there’s nothing to show for it. But this time I set the exposure right! I got the picture! The cat didn’t die in vain!”

“And how long have you been doing this?” I asked.

He waved his hand as if it were a matter of utter irrelevance; and, I suppose, to him it was. “There are lots of cats on the streets, sniffing around the waste is a good place to find ‘em. Sometimes they claw and bite,” and I could see now, yes, there were marks all over his arms, little scars on his cheeks, “but I’m bigger than ‘em, ha ha, they’re no match for me! I take ‘em here, and I ‘graph ‘em, and I get rid of ‘em, and their bodies end up so frozen hard they sink straight to the bottom of the river! But I kept this one, he’s my little pet, my little boy. I’m proud of him. He’s made me a success, yes, he has, he’s made me all proper and worthwhile.” And he actually stroked at the dead cat’s stiffened fur.

“And what do you want of me?” I asked. And I felt a chill, as if I thought he might want to take a photograph of
me
, he would rob the life from me and set me down on film—but that was silly, no harm had ever come to a human being from being ‘graphed, I was not an animal.

“You have a Reputation,” said Harries, and he said it like that, with a capital R. “You are a good man. People will listen to you. I charge you to bring my discovery to the world.”

“No,” I said. I didn’t even know I was going to refuse him until I spoke, but the refusal came out immediately, as if all my instincts were revolting against him, as if my intellect knew I wanted no part of this before my mouth did.

“Why not?” he said, and for a second he scrunched his hands into fists and something dark passed over his face—then he relaxed, his face slumped back into the same failed despondency I had known from Oxford. “Why not?” he said again, meek and defeated.

“I am a man of science,” I said, “and I duly believe that the purpose of science is to better mankind. And I can see no betterment that comes from the photography of cats, not whether they are alive or dead.”

I did not want to leave on such a terse note, and so endeavoured to make some light talk with Harries about his health and the weather, but neither of our hearts were in it, and I soon gave up and took a cab home.

Three weeks later Simon Harries was dead. The police came to my house and asked whether I could help them with their enquiries, and at first I thought they meant I was implicated, and I was fully prepared to get quite angry about the matter. But they assured me that wasn’t the case, and made apologies, and spoke to me with such due deference that I fetched my coat and my hat and agreed to go with them.

They took me to Harries’ lodgings. In the middle of the room, spread over his papers, was a body, I presumed Harries’, covered with a sheet. I recoiled at that, but not at the sight of death, just at the insensitive way in which I’d been allowed to see it.

“Sorry, sir,” said the constable on duty. “We’ve tried to move it, but it weighs a ton, and that’s a fact.” He showed me a box. He told me it had been left for me, and indeed, it had my name and address written upon the side.

“Would you like me to open this?” I asked, and the policeman said it would be a blessing for ‘em if I didn’t mind.

I could not imagine why Harries would leave me anything. Inside the box I found his camera, and a dozen or so photographs. The camera was old and outmoded, I dare say he’d never had the funds to purchase a better one; I had no need of it, I had several cameras of my own at home. The photographs were an odd mix; some of them, I assume, had been taken by Harries; some of them, like the portrait of Queen Victoria, no doubt rescued from a newspaper, definitely weren’t.

At the bottom of the box I found an envelope. I opened it.

“Can’t Stop Them Now,” was all it said.

It was an unhelpful note, one of vagueness and imprecision, and unworthy of an Oxford graduate. And I understood why Simon Harries had managed no better than a lower second.