A Division of the Light

by Christopher Burns

“Dad, they want you, not me. They know you. And sometimes you forget that I don’t work here full-time.”

  “Maybe you should do. That cancer charity can’t pay you much.”

  “Neither do you. And I need an answer.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Cassie persisted. “If you’re interested I can phone them now. The refurbishment won’t be completed for a couple of months. The dates would fit in easily with your diary.”

  Gregory pointed at the screen. “From this point on there’s an improvement, but the necklace didn’t work as well as I imagined.”

  “I told you it wasn’t right.” Cassie paused for a moment before continuing. “I’ll go back and try to agree terms. Is that all right?”

  “Can you see that the compositional dynamics are wrong? That wasn’t obvious at the time.”

  Cassie looked at the screen again. Alice sat with her shoulders bared and her fingers resting on the necklace that had belonged to Cassie’s mother. She wondered if it was her imagination that lent a particular suggestiveness to the touch of those fingertips on the beads. The part-smile on Alice’s mouth hinted at a triumph.

  “The studies of her back are an improvement,” Gregory said, “but we didn’t get to the point I wanted to reach. I mean, technically the work is fine, but there’s no true excellence. I have to be honest and admit that none of it is unique.”

  Cassie understood that her father was expecting too much.

  “You can’t be unique all the time,” she told him. “Maybe you’ve got all there is to get. Maybe there’s nothing else that’s worth retrieving.”

  She sat motionless and waited for his response.

  Cassie prided herself on assessing people within a minute or so of meeting them, and had seldom been wrong. She had shared brief exchanges with Alice Fell at the beginning and end of the studio session. Alice’s evasions and forced pleasantries had convinced Cassie that beneath that blandly attractive exterior there was an untrustworthy and manipulative woman.

  “Meaning?” Gregory asked after a few seconds.

  “Meaning that maybe you’re looking for something in your model that isn’t really there.”

  “It’s there all right.”

  “You can’t be certain. Not really.”

  “I’ve got a sixth sense for hidden qualities. This subject is more difficult than most. She works hard at being a challenge. In a way, you’ve got to respect that.”

  “But if she’s so resistant to being photographed—”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  “That’s what it sounded like. If she’s so resistant, then what’s the point? Why play a game it’s impossible to win?”

  Alice gazed out from the screen. The lens had caught reflections in her eyes. To Cassie it was obvious that Gregory should forget the session and move on to more rewarding subjects. She opened her hand to the image as if she were casting pebbles into a still pool.

  “It’s not worth anyone’s while for you to continue,” she said.

  Gregory did not answer directly, but mused on Alice as if she were a conundrum that only he could solve.

  “She protects herself all the time. Even when she’s partly stripped and with her back turned she looks protected. She can’t look as natural as I want, because she’s not in a relaxed state. If she can use something as a shield then she will do, even if it’s just a string of beads.”

  He sat back and announced his conclusion.

  “It would be better if I did some nude studies. There would be nothing for her personality to hide behind.”

  Cassie was unsure if she should respond. What her father saw as deep insulation she saw as brittle coating. Alice Fell’s mystique was thin and as easily cracked as lacquer.

  “Not everyone wants to be photographed naked,” she said cautiously.

  “True, they don’t.”

  “So Alice Fell may not.”

  “Cassie, she’s not like your mother.”

  The remark was as unexpected and cruel as a shower of ice. For a few seconds all was silence.

  “That’s an insulting comparison to make,” Cassie said at last.

  Gregory made a nervous motion with one hand, as if his words still hung in the air and he was able to erase them, and then he shook his head.

  “It’s just a difference of people,” he said. “Women like Ruth are uncomfortable with nudity on camera. Other women aren’t. Even though she doesn’t know it yet, Alice would love to pose naked.”

  “Dad, this sounds like a daydream.”

  “She’ll come round, I’m sure she will. I’ve lent her the Eastman book on the development of photography. She’ll see the argument more clearly once she’s studied the history. She’ll be able to concentrate on the results that gifted photographers can get. Now, look at these.”

  Alice posed naked to the waist, back to the camera, shoulder blades prominent and arms folded protectively in front of her body. Cassie studied her with a disaffected eye.

  “Her strap marks are visible. There, you see? Where they cut in under the arms? They ruin the grain of the picture. You must have noticed.”

  “I took all these as a kind of test.”

  “I see. Does she turn round?”

  “She didn’t want to.”

  “And yet you think she’ll be easily persuaded to take off all her clothes?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy. Most people don’t like to admit to what they secretly want.”

  “Well, I think we could agree that Alice Fell has secrets.”

  “She’s a different kind of model,” Gregory insisted. “Sooner or later she’ll understand that we can’t remain where the session stopped. We have to go on.”

  Alice had stretched out her arms horizontally. She could have been awaiting some kind of brutal punishment, the lash perhaps, or she could have been preaching to an invisible crowd. Under the studio’s angled light her hair shone as it fell across the base of her neck. The skin on the long track of her spine was illuminated like ivory.

  Gregory tapped the keyboard with one finger and then turned to Cassie.

  “You don’t trust her, do you?” he asked, with unexpected directness.

  “Dad, I have no reason to trust Alice Fell. I don’t know her. It seems that you don’t either.”

  “I don’t have to know people. It’s enough that I sense their capabilities.”

  Cassie paused only for a moment. She did not want to think of her father as suddenly vulnerable. Perhaps, she thought, Alice Fell had qualities that she was blind to. Or it was possible that Gregory had reached that point at which middle-aged men become overwhelmed by irrational dreams. The hope of a transcendent passion was, she knew, powerful enough to eat at the roots of male stolidity and destroy all caution. Whatever the truth, Cassie had no reason to be gentle when she asked her next question.

  “Surely you realize that there’s something strange in the way you talk about this woman?”

  “I talk about her in the same way that I would about anyone.”

  “That’s not true. You don’t.”

  She stared directly at Gregory, but he kept his concentration on the screen. Even his posture was defensive.

  “You think Alice Fell is different in some way that you can’t quite pin down,” Cassie went on. “Whenever you mention her it’s as if your imagination is intense and unfocused at the same time. And when you look at her face or her body, just like you’re doing now, your mind isn’t on what I say, or what anyone else would say. It doesn’t even appear to be fixed on where we are or what your future commissions could be. Your concentration isn’t professional concentration. This isn’t like you. Not at all.”

  He answered as though testifying. “I’m always professional. If I’m intrigued then it’s on a professional level. I always want to portray things about my subjects that I’m sure are there.”

  “And for Alice Fell, what do you think that would be? Self-regard? Avarice?”

  “Don�
��t be so bitchy, Cassie. I don’t know what her qualities are until I find them. Direction, maybe. Yes, one of them could be direction. I’m sure she’s looking for a pathway in her life. I’d like to be able to get that on camera.”

  “Dad, I’ve met women like this before. They have no sense of direction whatsoever. They’re adrift, like castaways. They just cling onto any passing man in the hope that he’ll take them to a friendly shore.”

  Gregory reached forward and switched off the display. Light collapsed inside the screen.

  “Now you’re being petulant,” Cassie said. “It proves my point.”

  “You know me better than anyone else. But I’m not some foolish moonstruck kid, and you should stop talking to me as if I were.”

  “It’s also true that I know you better than you know yourself. You’re going to tell me that you’ve had affairs with your models before—”

  “I make no secret of that. You’ve even seen the photos.”

  “But those girls were nothing very much to you, were they? You shared relationships that you both understood. In a way, you each got what you wanted and that equalized everything. But you’re right: Alice is different. She’s capricious. Maybe she hasn’t decided what she wants yet, but she knows that you can offer something that other people can’t. And once she’s got that she’ll just throw you away.”

  “You can’t know that. You met her for a few minutes. Hardly long enough to make a judgment, is it?”

  “It’s time enough. I wouldn’t trust her an inch.”

  “Besides, she was probably nervous and eager not to show it. So you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “We’ll see. How many times have you told me you rely on my opinion? Are you going to rely on it now?”

  Gregory made a formless sound under his breath. He hated arguing with his daughter, and always did his best to avoid it. Even if everything else in his life were to become unstable, he knew he could always rely on Cassie. It made him feel particularly uneasy that she had taken against a woman he found so intriguing.

  Impulsively he reached forward and took Cassie’s hand. His felt large and clumsy in comparison to hers.

  “I’ll be all right,” he said. “You needn’t worry about me.”

  Cassie did not move her other hand.

  Unspoken between father and daughter was the knowledge that throughout her life Cassie had avoided being either transported or harrowed by sexual fascination. Her involvement with men had never been wholehearted; even the break-up of her last relationship had caused her only minimal distress. Cassie had closed the door on affairs of the heart and did not wish to open it again. Often she wondered if the time spent on her brief dalliance with romance would have been better spent elsewhere; it had, however, helped her understand why her father treated women in the way that he did.

  Gregory could never recover from Ruth’s death, but it was impossible for him to spend the rest of his life pursued by fantasies of a return to their shared happiness. His world had changed too much. Instead he took refuge in affairs that lasted for weeks, or sometimes only days. Cassie was content that her father should seduce women or be seduced by them, but if he were ever to fall in love she would believe that her mother had been unforgivably betrayed.

  Eventually she extended her other hand so that Gregory’s was encased in both of hers.

  “Dad, you’re too old to be infatuated.”

  “I’m not too old for anything. And I can never be infatuated. I’m far too wise.”

  “Look, nowadays you and I share the same belief. Love, or whatever you want to call it, simply isn’t worth the trouble it causes.”

  “Cassie, I’ve been here before. It’s old territory.”

  “I don’t think so. In all your dealings with women there was never any sense that you could lose control. You knew that and your girlfriends knew it. You were in charge, Dad. That’s your personality. That’s what works best. You shouldn’t let that part of you be eaten away.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being excited by someone new.”

  “But there’s something wrong in reaching out for a thing that isn’t there. We both felt abandoned when Mother died. We both fastened everything in, even the best of emotions. But it would scare me if you decided that it was time to find her successor. We only ever have one chance with the life of the heart. You and I, we’ve had our time. Both of us have.”

  “There’s always another chance, Cassie. Even for you.”

  “No, there isn’t. That’s just a kind of specter. Sometimes people are left with empty spaces that get filled up by dreams—the kind of dreams that are so disorienting that it makes them fall into the arms of fantasists. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  She and Gregory looked at each other in silence.

  And for a brief hallucinatory moment it seemed to Gregory that he should take his daughter’s advice and forget Alice. He should write off the studio session as something that had not quite worked, despite all his efforts. He should move on. After all, he had other assignments waiting to be fulfilled. Within the next few days there were portraits of an actor and then a footballer, just to begin with. And there were always other women.

  And then it seemed that it would be cowardice if he turned away. With each day that passed he grew older and his energy levels declined. Perhaps he was condemned to brief unsatisfactory liaisons such as the one with Carla, but perhaps Alice was his last opportunity to enter a relationship exciting enough to effect a change in his life. Cassie had talked of foolishness, but the real foolishness would be if he remained safe and secure.

  “Don’t worry,” he told Cassie, as he smiled broadly and falsely, “I’m not going to fall into any trap. I’m an expert at avoiding them.”

  “And Alice?”

  “You’re right. In the end, she was just another model.”

  But even as he spoke Gregory realized that he was treating Alice as an incarnation of the complexities and allure that he found in all women. In refusing to admit that he secretly wanted Alice, he had not admitted to himself the strength of his need for her.

  If only he could photograph her without compromise. If only he could produce an image so charged and so powerful as to be overwhelming. All he had to do, Gregory thought wryly, was find the location, the confidence and the pose. And most of all, and most difficult of all, he had to find the decisive moment.

  She spoke his name and he did not answer, but Alice was convinced that he had heard.

  Thomas sat at the table on the other side of the room, his head down and his hand held so that a pen jutted upward from between his fingers. In front of him were two open textbooks and an A4 writing pad whose pages he was covering in notes. Another three books were stacked to one side. A CD of the “Goldberg Variations” was playing, but he did not appear to be listening. It was one of Alice’s favorite recordings, and had been given to her by a former lover. Her knowledge of classical music had come only from him, and now she could appreciate how the interleaving and mathematical progression of the work appealed to her innate sense of patterning.

  Thomas was too shallow, Alice thought. He was a clever man but she was a complex woman, not easily understood, and far beyond his comprehension. Most people found her to be a challenge; why should she ever have believed that Thomas Laidlaw would be any different?

  It pleased Alice to be thought of as unfathomable. To her colleagues at work she was personable and attractive, although far from beautiful. They had noted how she avoided involvement; superficial friendships were all that she needed. Sometimes Alice joined them on infrequent celebratory nights out, but remained sober and in control when drink and proximity made others loose-tongued. On the hangover mornings many of those were subdued, but Alice Fell was always calmly assured. She never had anything to regret.

  Little was known about her. She made no secret of the fact that she lived with a man called Thomas, apparently an archaeology expert—some believed that he was a professor—but no one ha
d ever seen him. Everyone assumed that her past must hold other men, but Alice never mentioned them. Occasionally she held intriguing telephone conversations with callers from outside the office, but afterward she expertly brushed away questions from anyone intent on finding out more.

  In contrast, she was unabashed about questioning others, particularly if they possessed specialist knowledge. Whenever overseas buyers or agents visited the building she sought conversation, not about their businesses but about their countries, customs, languages, lives. Varieties of religious faith so fascinated Alice that more than once she had asked visitors about their personal beliefs. Often this had disconcerted them, and on one occasion she had been forbidden by management to ask such questions.

  Because she guarded her own privacy Alice was considered mysterious and enticing. Several members of staff, both male and female, thought of her as intriguing but unwinnable. Not only was she delighted by this, she encouraged it.

  Alice also knew of the rumor that she had once had a passionate affair with a director, a married man no longer with the company, and that it had ended dramatically. But she had had no such affair. True, she had been charmed by the man, but she clearly knew that if she had allowed that attraction to develop then her life would have become too restricted. Besides, beneath the sheen of his experience there had been a bruise of desperation. Her potential lover was so needful of an escape that he was bound to have become irrationally possessive. Involvement would have hindered any progress she wished to make. Because sometime, maybe soon, Alice was sure to find a lover who was not only better than anyone she had ever had, but who would be more exciting, more inventive and completely in tune with whatever it was that she needed. So far, none had been able to come close to that promise.

  Despite the brevity of her relationships, despite the frustrations of the jobs she had taken, Alice remained confident that a rewarding future lay just beyond her reach. The right lover would help her to seize that future, and once it was in her grasp its momentum would drag her free.

  A man was always a part of her ambition. Alice loved men—passionately, wholeheartedly, but temporarily. Over several months, perhaps longer, she would devote her life to one particular partner. Without exception, toward the end of that period she would stare clear-eyed into the heart of their love and find that it had become empty. She would be distressed and tearful, but unmoving in her determination. It was always Alice who found the courage necessary to put an end to the relationship; always Alice who delivered the final blow.