Touching the Dark

by Jane A. Adams

  “I think you’d better go, she told him finally. “I need time, Jack, time to get my head together.”

  “Time for Simon, I suppose?” Jack said bitterly, but to her surprise he didn’t stay around to argue. He left then, his footsteps hollow on the polished floor.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “When did you first know you wanted to be a photographer?”

  Tally smiled at the young girl who asked the question. She was a pretty teenager of about sixteen with mocha skin and hair like a thick, rich river of black treacle.

  “I was fifteen,” Tally said. “We had a project week at school organised by the careers department and one of the options was black and white photography. Taking pictures, learning how to process and print them and a little bit on how to manipulate the image in the darkroom. I was hooked I guess and it’s never lost the magic.”

  She surveyed the kids sitting around her in the classroom and thought how much like them she must have been. At the beginning of her talk they had all been arranged in rows, sitting at their desks and the first thing she had them do was to rearrange the classroom. Now they gathered around her, perched informally on desks and windowsills and the shyness they had displayed in the first half-hour completely gone.

  She had shown slides and prints of her early work. Contrasted those with the images she dealt with now and explained what she felt was the major difference.

  “Back then, I was only interested in the truth. In showing what was out there. I wanted the whole world to get the message. To understand what I was seeing and the blood and the pain that made up the truth of it. Now, I’m dealing with illusion. It’s all phoney. The perfect invented family. The image that the celebrity wants their fans to see...”

  “Don’t you feel you’ve sold out?” The question came from a boy – it usually did- his hair cut in fashionable curtains and the set of his shoulders spelling attitude.

  Tally smiled at him. “Sure I have” she said. “I’ve traded pictures of dead people for people who think they’re living to the max. Pictures of starving kids for breakfast ads. Images of mutilated women and swollen corpses with flies and maggots where they once had eyes for painted models who spend a fortune in money and effort to look emaciated when they could get that way for free if they lived somewhere else.” She shook her head. “I spent four years doing what I thought I had to do. Had good friends shot down only feet away from where I was standing and I knew I’d have to change my life or lose it. It wasn’t that hard a choice.”

  She had shocked them, Tally knew, more because of what she was and the way she looked than because of what she said.

  “Yeah, the boy persisted, but there are other people. Documentary people, journalists and that who carry on for years.”

  “Yeah, they do and they’ve got more bottle than I have. I give them every credit and if any of you should want to be one of them I’d be the last person to talk you out of it. When I started out I was possessed, obsessed, maybe both. I had to prove myself and I just knew that I had something to say that no one had ever said before. I guess the thing that really pissed me off was when I finally realised that I had nothing new to say and nothing new to show. The world doesn’t change so much. The best I could hope to do was to show the same brutality a different way.” She reached for a book lying on the teacher’s desk next to her and flicked through the pages, choosing at random.

  “Robert Capra, D Day landings. This guy was scared, he said so afterwards, how he flattened himself against the sand and just concentrated on getting the pictures and, wow, what pictures. Grainy, out of focus some of them, but real people trying hard not to die.

  “John Sandovy in Budapest. He didn’t know what was going to happen until after he’d framed his shot. Though he was just photographing military prisoners until their guards started executing them. He caught that moment of transition between these men living and falling dead on the ground right there in front of him. And worst of all, for me at any rate, this one by Ron Haeberle during the Vietnam War. It was taken at a place called My Lai where a group of US soldiers lost their minds for a while and slaughtered an entire village down to the smallest kid.”

  She held the book open for them, showing the full-page blow up of the image. A group of women and children, some clearly knowing that they were about to die, others distracted, looking away as though the reality had not yet been comprehended.

  One old woman, her face contorted by anger, looking as though she might be about to fly at those who threatened her, being held by a younger woman who clasped her hands around the old one’s waist and buried her face against her hair. Another woman seemed oblivious, looking down as though fastening a button on her shirt. She was holding a child of maybe two years old.

  “It’s something I learned the hard way,” Tally said softly. “That I couldn’t catch that moment even if, as it did in this case, what I photographed would help convict the guilty. I took pictures of some terrible things because I thought the world should know. Should be shocked out of its comfortable complacency, but I couldn’t take that picture, the one that catches that moment when life turns into death and what was vibrant and sentient a moment before just turns up empty.”

  There was silence and the teacher looked uncomfortable. Tally smiled wryly. It was a scene she had played out before and one no doubt that she would do again because she meant every word of it and felt that this was something that ought to be told. That life and death were not easy to capture and put in the frame and that she was not one of those especial people who knew how and why and didn’t let their fear or horror stop them doing.

  “So I came home and switched horses,” she said. She laughed. “It’s a lot less real but it’s a lot less scary.”

  The teacher cleared her throat. “I, er, I mean did you find it a difficult transition? Didn’t you find it hard to convince people that you could do the sort of stuff you do now?”

  “I was lucky,” Tally told her. “I’d done fashion shoots early on in my career, only as an assistant, but it was experience. And I’d earned enough to take time out and get another portfolio together. Anyway, It’s not unknown for photographers to have a foot in more than one camp. Lord Snowdon did a series of pictures protesting against child cruelty and he’s not the only one who’s worked more than one area. And I called in every favour I could,” she grinned at the look of disapproval on the teachers face. “Sometimes it’s the only way. Everyone needs help once in a while.”

  There were more questions then and soon the teacher was looking at her watch and suggesting it was time they wound things up and Tally saw it as a measure of success that she was still talking, standing outside the school gates, way after the teacher had gone. One boy hung back until the others had drifted off. Tally had noticed him in the classroom. He’d said nothing but listened intently throughout her talk. He had dark hair that flopped into his blue eyes and an awkward smile. He clearly wanted to talk to her but was too shy to commit himself in front of the others. Tally smiled at him,

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” He paused, staring down at his feet. He wore scruffy trainers and his feet looked way too big for his present height. A year from Now, Tally guessed and he’d be towering over her.

  “You were good,” he said. “Really got me thinking. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Are you interested in photography?”

  “No..yes...kinda.” He took a deep breath. “I draw mostly. I want to be an artist one day.” He paused again then went on in a rush, “my friend Naomi, she said she’d met you and that you were both at school here. I thought I’d come and say hello.”

  He smiled, tossing the tangle of too long hair out of his eyes. “I guess I’d better go now.”

  “Ok,” Tally smiled at him. “Give Naomi my best, won’t you. What’s your name? I’ll keep a look out for you a few years from now.”

  “Oh, right,”

  She was aware that he scrutinised her closely, expecting mockery
in her words or tone. She hoped that he found none.

  “I’ll tell her you said hello, and it’s Patrick. Patrick Jones” he took off then, almost at a run leaving Tally smiling in spite of herself.

  As she drove away she thought about herself at fifteen. An awkward, gawky child -woman who had suddenly discovered a way to make sense of the world. It seemed a very long time ago.

  *

  Tally stopped at a newsagent close to home and bought chocolate and the local paper. When she got back into her car Jack was sitting in the passenger seat.

  “Hi,” he said. “Remember me?”

  “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Oh, I just saw your car,” he reached out and took her hand. “Don’t be so angry, I missed you.”

  She pulled her hand away, “I told you the other night, give me some space Jack. It’s bad enough with Simon behaving the way he did without you moving in on me as well.” But her resolve was already weakening. She sensed he knew that but did not have the energy to fight.

  “Ok,” she said. “You can come back for coffee, but that’s all.”

  She was frowning as they drove off, annoyed with herself for not ordering him out of her car there and then, but the truth was. Tally had never been able to stay mad at Jack for long. All through their childhood, Jack had been there, her best friend. Sometimes it seemed like her only friend and that had continued into adulthood too.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Giving a talk at Ingham Comprehensive. Year elevens trying to decide what to do with their lives.”

  “Think you helped them? How many are going to go home and cross photojournalist off their list?”

  Tally laughed. “I don’t think any of them had it on,” she said. “Most seem to be doing business studies or computing.”

  “Not too late for a career change, Miss Palmer. I remember you at that sort of age. Shy little Tally Palmer. Daft name, too much hair and arms and legs that were too long. The way you always stooped a little because you thought you were so tall...” he reached out, running a hand along her arm and up to her shoulder. Tally could feel the heat of his hand through the fabric of her jacket. For a moment she closed her eyes.

  For a time, they drove in silence, but it was not uncomfortable, they knew each other far too well for that. She thought about the Tally that Jack had described. About the way she had been at school, the terrible shyness that had come with adolescence. About the way her school reports described her as a good student, but quiet and insular, hating class discussions, avoiding anything that might draw attention to her.

  But there had always been Jack.

  “How come we drifted apart, Tally?” Jack asked her.

  Tally shook her head.

  “You didn’t want to share my life, Jack,” she said. “You wanted all of it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Saturday afternoon, Alec, Simon and Patrick gathered at Tally’s flat and began to collate the material Simon had brought over.

  Alec’s annoyance at Jack’s visit to the advice centre had been matched only by his frustration with Naomi over her decision to visit Tally alone.

  “What if he’d been there?” he demanded.

  “I’d’ve made sure she heard what I thought of him.”

  “Funny then that you didn’t mention it to her. Didn’t tell her that her ex-boyfriend or close friend or whatever the hell he describes himself as, had come round and made threats.”

  “He didn’t threaten. Not in the way you mean. Anyway, Alec, I’ve tackled worse situations alone. You never worried about it then, I was simply another work colleague.”

  “You were never just another colleague and you damned well know it. And it was different back then.”

  “Why? How was it different? You mean, back then I could see and now I’m helpless.”

  “I’ve never said that. Never even implied it. Naomi, whose been the one who’s always encouraged you? Told you to go for it when you weren’t sure you could handle the advice centre. Tried to...” He threw himself down into Naomi’s favourite chair, expelling breath in an exaggerated sigh.

  “I nearly lost you twice,” he said softly. “Once in that pile up on the motorway and the other time when that mad woman thought she’d add kidnap and arson to murder. Naomi, when I knew you were trapped in that building. When I saw the flames...I don’t want to go through that again. I don’t want you to go through anything like that again.”

  “It’s hardly the same thing,” she told him stubbornly, though the memory of that day, trapped in a burning building with no option but to jump out into the unknown still haunted her dreams. Patrick had been with her, helped her break the windows and get out. She was under no illusions that had the boy not been there she might not have escaped. But she wasn’t prepared to give in just yet. “I lost my sight, Alec, not my mind, my intelligence or my experience.”

  “Any of which must be telling you what a damn fool thing you did,” he countered sharply. He sighed again and said more quietly. “If a serving officer had done what you did without calling for back up or even calling in to report where they were going they’d be in deep shit and you know it. This man poses a threat. You know that, your colleagues at the centre realized that and yet you go to what’s effectively his home address with no thought that he might be there, no contingency plans, no sense that maybe you ought to tell someone first and you expect me not to be annoyed. Not to be worried?”

  “He wasn’t there.” She told him stubbornly, stinging because she knew that he was right, had put off telling him about her visit to Tally’s flat because she knew all of those things, though she knew too that Alec didn’t keep his own rules any more than did any long serving officer. Than had Naomi herself in those days when she was still a D.I. and much as she could see the sense in what he said and see his point of view, it still rankled.

  “At least you’re both taking this seriously now,” Simon grumbled. In the heat of their argument they had almost forgotten about him and Patrick.

  “We’re thinking about it,” Alec resisted. “I’m still not letting you off the hook for behaving like you did.”

  “It’s a pity you took the key back,” Patrick mused. “If she’s gone away we could have had a look around.”

  “We?” Simon queried.

  “Well. Maybe just you.”

  Simon crossed to the big blue sofa and sat down. “Wouldn’t have found anything,” he said. “Nothing about Jack any way.”

  “You looked?” Naomi asked him.

  “Oh yes, I looked and believe me, I’m not proud of it. I looked, I searched through everything I could, but Jack was nowhere.”

  For that matter, he thought, Tally wasn’t much in evidence either. Hesitantly, he told them about the first time he had let himself into Tally Palmer’s flat, knowing he had an hour or two before she made it home. Seeing the place as though through a strangers eyes, recapturing that first time he had surveyed he minimalist domain.

  Tally’s apartment was empty and tidy. So tidy that it was hard to think that anyone really lived there. He wandered through to the tiny kitchen with its stainless steel and chrome and clinical white walls. Tally was an excellent cook and the cupboard were full of herbs and flavoured oils and exotic ingredients that Simon had barely heard of before, but a casual visitor would have no impression of that. He thought of his mother’s kitchen. His mother delighted in the ingredients. The colour of the fruit and vegetables, the sheer quantity of spices and herbs displayed in their labelled containers. The blue dishes filled with garlic and brilliant, fiery peppers and the growing herbs that sat upon the windowsill. He thought of the pleasure his mother took in displaying her best crockery and the fine glassware, Birthday and anniversary presents mostly, that she kept polished and gleaming in the cabinet beside the kitchen table. Had he been asked to describe Tally’s flat – and he found it hard to call it Tally’s home – he would have described it as a series of absences.

 
He padded back into the living room. The blinds were fully open and he paused to admire the view across the city and out to the hills of the country beyond. A line of poplars marking the cemetery boundary close to where Tally had grown up clearly visible from where he stood. He wondered for a moment if Tally had chosen this place for that particular view.

  He glanced downward into the car park. His old Volvo parked next to where Tally habitually parked her beloved MX5. Realised with a guilty start that he was checking that she had not come back too soon; half hoping that she had and that he could forget what he planned to do. Somewhere in this place were stored the clues to Tally, the rest of Tally, those unseen parts that she kept hidden from him. Those other absences and Simon was determined to discover them.

  He ran his hand along the length of maple that topped the cupboard beneath the window. The space was just calling out to be filled, he thought. Had it been his it would have been covered with mementoes. With the symbolic clutter that would say “Simon Emmet lives here” and maybe even cushions to turn the cupboards into a window seat. Somewhere to relax and enjoy the panorama of the world beyond the window.

  He opened the cupboard nearest to him and then the next and the next, leaving the doors standing wide, exposing all of those things that Tally kept inside and all the while kept one eye upon that empty space in the car park below.

  In the cupboard at the end were two empty spaces. The blue camera bag, Simon thought, that was missing and the hard, silver equipment case. The gaps neat and exact ready to be restored when Tally came home. Next to that were the portfolios of Tally’s work. The same style of black case, varying only in the size and each one neatly labelled. The early ones were a little battered, dating from Tally’s school days and the first stages of her career. One last glance at the car park and Simon crouched down and, picking at random, drew one of the heavy volumes out. Many of the images were familiar to him. He’d seen them published so many times and, while researching for his own piece on Tally, he had looked through many of the portfolio before. What surprised him though, as he turned pages were how many he had never seen. Powerful, disturbing images that would have graced the cover of Time and Newsweek and made front page on any of the dailies seemed to have been hidden away, unused. He knew that photographers took many pictures, rolls of film often just to end up with one that they thought good enough to use. That most pictures wouldn’t get past the contact print stage, or, in this day of digital cameras might exist only as a thumbnail stored only until space was needed for something else. That Tally should have gone to the trouble of printing these, enlarging them, storing them so carefully meant that she recognised their value and had actually chosen not to put them on display.