“I thought you’d like his camera and his map,” he explained. “I’ve scrolled through his photos. There are a few inside a flat—the one he shared with you, I suppose—but with no one there. Not a soul. I don’t know why he would do that.”
Gregory improvised. “Maybe you were planning to redecorate,” he said to Alice.
“That was the idea,” she agreed, and Richard went on.
“After those there are dozens and dozens of photographs of the places that he visited. I have no idea where they are. They all look the same to me.”
Once more, Alice hesitated.
“Thanks,” Gregory said, picking up the map and glancing at it. “He’s marked this,” he added.
“Yes, he made notes all over it. His wristwatch, would you like? His address book? He had two archaeology books in his rucksack—do you want those?”
“Richard,” Alice insisted, “I have lots of things to remember your brother by. I really don’t need anything else.”
“Apart from the Kodak and the map,” Gregory said quickly, holding out his hand for the camera. “I’ll take care of it,” he said as soon as it was passed over.
“There was another thing,” Richard added cautiously. Alice noticed him tense a little, as though anticipating a dismissive reaction.
They waited. Richard looked up at the crematorium roof and then back at them. She wondered if he was looking for smoke.
“There’s a memorial garden here,” he said.
They waited until Richard continued.
“I was going to have the ashes buried there. The undertaker said he would see to it. And they’ll put a plaque on the wall. It’ll be durable plastic because people steal the brass ones.”
Alice glanced at Gregory, but he did not look back at her.
“But maybe,” Richard went on, then stopped, then started again. “Maybe Tommy would have wanted his ashes scattered in a different place. Maybe he said something to you about it.”
“No, he didn’t. Why should he?”
Richard shrugged.
“He must have believed that his death was years away,” Alice said.
“I suppose so. Yes.”
Not knowing how to answer him further, Alice turned to Gregory. “What did you do with your wife’s ashes?”
“I buried them where we had been happiest,” he said.
“I thought, perhaps,” Richard said tentatively, “one of those ancient sites that so fascinated him—you know, circles, mounds, things like that, the ones in his photos . . .” His voice tailed off. “But maybe not,” he added defensively.
Once the suggestion had been made, it seemed to Alice that this was the best ethical solution. It would be fitting if all that remained of Thomas were interred in a place that had informed his ambition. It was the least he deserved.
“You’re right,” she agreed. “Why don’t you do that?”
“But I don’t know anything about archaeology. We were very different people, and what interested Tommy never interested me. If you shared his life, you must have shared his interests—at least to some extent. So I thought that maybe you would have the best idea.” And before Alice could answer he went on, rushing out his suggestion so that the words collided with each other. “And I thought that you would like to do it—bury his ashes at one of his favorite places, I mean. Or scatter them there. Whatever’s best.”
“I don’t know if I want to do that.”
“It seems right to me,” Richard insisted. “I don’t have to be there. In fact it’s probably better that I’m not. I don’t even need to know where the site is. Because I think it’s something that should be done by the person closest to him. And that’s you. It could be your secret. I wouldn’t mind.”
Even his own brother wasn’t concerned, Alice thought. Thomas had been more alone than she had ever fully realized. He had always needed someone; even his remains still needed someone.
“What do you think?” she asked Gregory.
“Maybe it would just be best if they were scattered in the memorial garden. Look, let’s be frank, Thomas is dead. He’s not going to know or care where his ashes are.”
“But you felt a duty to your wife to leave her at the right place,” Alice said. “Maybe this is about duty.”
Gregory said nothing. His suspicion was confirmed: Thomas was a problem even in death.
The three of them stood together and said nothing until Richard looked at his watch.
“I have to go,” he said. “Maybe you can think about it and let me know. If you can decide within the next hour or so that would help.”
Alice came to a decision.
“You’re right,” she said. “Thomas shouldn’t be left here. He should be somewhere else. Somewhere that he would want to be.” She turned back to Gregory. “We should do what you did—take him to where he would have been happy.”
Richard’s relief and eagerness were apparent.
“And you’ll do that?” he asked, far too quickly.
“Of course.”
“And once we’ve got the ashes to you, I can forget them?”
“Yes,” Alice said. “Yes, you can forget them. I’ll make sure they go to the right place.”
Richard leaned forward. For a moment she thought he was about to kiss her, but instead of that he grasped her hand in both of his.
“I was never a true friend to my brother,” he said, “but I always wished him well. You were good for Tommy. I’m so happy that he met you. You knew what was right for him. You still do.”
She nodded. The muscles in her neck felt stiff. Richard went on.
“It’s sad that you didn’t have a lot more time together. You must have really loved each other.”
There was no point now in telling Richard the truth. She lied to keep him content.
“Yes,” she said, “we did.”
Minute after minute the procession of bleak, lifeless photographs slid across Gregory’s screen. At the beginning of each section he halted their progress and consulted Thomas’s OS map. After this he searched the internet for images that would confirm Alice’s provisional identification of the locations; she needed to be certain that each stage of Thomas’s final journey had been correctly tracked. Perhaps, Gregory thought, a file of digital images and a map covered in handwritten jottings were to be her dead lover’s only memorial.
During this period there were three incoming calls to the office. On each occasion Cassie pointedly greeted the caller by name so that her father would know who was ringing. None was unimportant, but Gregory shook his head in dismissal and continued his research. Cassie had to promise each time that he would call back as soon as he could. Gregory had not noticed, but she was wearing her mother’s necklace for the first time since he had borrowed it to photograph Alice.
There was little pattern in Thomas’s map. It appeared that although his route had been initially systematic it had soon degenerated into unpredictability. Rather than pursue an itinerary based on rational topography, he had instead been prone to impulse. Sometimes he had traveled to sites that were miles away from each other and returned later to ones he had overlooked. In the final days he appeared to have crossed his own tracks several times. Alice had speculated that this might have been the result of transport difficulties, and cited infrequent bus services and poor availability of accommodation. Although Gregory had not disputed this he believed that the doomed journey’s haphazard nature was the product of a disordered mind that could no longer comprehend its best course of action.
The very last photographs were of a wheel-head cross that was so tall and spindly that Thomas had evidently had difficulty fitting it all into the frame. He had also taken several close-ups of patterns and images carved into its sandstone surfaces. Although much of the detail had weathered, Gregory could identify a tree in full leaf, a snake and several human figures, one with its arms outstretched. Only when he checked further did he discover that these were representations of the sacred ash tree that supports
the world, the serpent that surrounds it, and a depiction of a crucified man. The cross was an amalgam of pagan and Christian mythology, with the crucifixion sharing the same column as the battle between the Norse gods.
Gregory telephoned Alice from his mobile. She told him that she understood why the cross would have intrigued Thomas; one of his interests had been the cultural impact of belief systems. New beliefs, he had claimed, entered a community first as threat, then as distortion and finally as transformation. Alice suspected that he had seen that process illustrated in the carvings.
Gregory knew that what concerned Alice most of all was that the photographic record stopped in that churchyard. The cross was its terminal point. There were no images of Thomas’s planned destination.
“I know where the cross is,” Gregory told her. “The date on the photos and the notations on the map correspond.”
“He was on his way to Sampson’s Bratfull,” Alice said.
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But he never got there. If he had done, he’d have photographed it.”
“That sounds right.”
Alice did not answer. Some extraneous noise, perhaps an echo, rustled in his ear.
Until quite recently Gregory would have been bemused by the name of Sampson’s Bratfull, and would have assumed that it was fictitious until he was shown it on a map. And if he had then researched the mound further he would have judged it to be uninteresting and of marginal archaeological interest. Now, as the place toward which Alice’s last lover had been heading when he drowned, the location assumed an importance that he could scarcely measure.
Evidence on the Bratfull was scant. Internet photographs showed a concentration of stones set on a drab, marshy, desolate moor. According to posted comment, the modest scale of the mound had disappointed passing walkers. If it had been a tumulus, Gregory thought, it must originally have been much higher; perhaps builders of stone walls or believers in pagan religions had cannibalized it over the decades. There was agreement that the name originated in a folk tale in which a giant let stones fall from his overloaded apron as he strode across the high moor. The sixteenth-century spelling of Sampson, and the Old English and Gaelic name for cloak, brat, testified to the antiquity of the myth. Some sources, however, claimed that it was not an earthly giant who was carrying the stones, but the devil.
“It’s a rather unprepossessing site,” he told her.
“That’s not the point,” Alice said.
“I mean that it’s possible he got there and just didn’t think it was worth photographing. Those stones wouldn’t have caught my attention. There are collapsed sheepfolds all across the moor. The place is just littered with stones.”
“But Thomas recorded everything else, didn’t he? So why wouldn’t he have taken photos of Sampson’s Bratfull? No, he can’t have reached it. I’m sure of that. Did you study the map?”
The landline rang. Cassie picked it up and looked across to Gregory with raised eyebrows.
“Is that someone calling you?” Alice asked. “I don’t want to get in the way of business.”
Gregory shifted his hold on the mobile. “They can wait,” he told her. “There are a couple of bridges on the map, Bleng bridge and an upper one across the same river. His water bottle was found next to the upper one. He could have been on his way to the Bratfull, or coming back.”
Cassie raised her voice so that it carried across the room.
“Yes,” she told her caller, “that’s Gregory Pharaoh you can hear speaking on the other line. But he shouldn’t be too long. Unless I can help?”
“Is that your daughter?” Alice asked.
“Yes. Go on.”
“The police told Richard that the river was in spate. It would have been easy to miss your footing. Thomas never reached Sampson’s Bratfull. He never got to where he wanted to be.”
Cassie was making a note on her pad. “I don’t know,” she told her caller, “he may be away on those dates.”
Alice spoke again.
“It’s the right place for Thomas,” she said. “I know it’s the right place.”
“It’s a long way,” Gregory said. He was already thinking about what could happen.
“Will you arrange things? Please?”
It was not in his interest to refuse. Once Thomas’s ashes had been scattered then a door would be closed on the past. And Gregory imagined a comfortable, discreet hotel in a quiet part of the country, far enough away from the collapsing tumulus for Alice to be able to forget it easily, with crisp sheets and old furniture and soft bedside lights that filled the room with warm shadows. And he thought of her body, a body that he had studied and recorded, and the presence that had tantalized him, and that Alice Fell would be his and his alone for as long as he wanted her.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll fix everything.”
He ended the call at the same time as Cassie was ending hers.
“As soon as possible,” she said as she hung up.
Gregory returned his attention to the screen. After a while Cassie spoke again. As if in reproof, she had rested her fingers on the curve of her mother’s necklace.
“You have to give me some answers.”
“Is there anything urgent?”
“It depends if you’re going away next week. Are you?”
“Cassie, I know you disapprove.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do.”
“And you think I’m too old to be behaving like this.”
“I can’t see why you have to drop important work and drive half across England just to scatter the ashes of someone you never even met.”
Gregory ignored the comment. “We shouldn’t refuse a lucrative contract even if it has to be completed next week. You could do it. I’m happy with that. You’re very capable.”
“I know I am. But I’m covering for you more and more.”
“One of these days I’ll stop doing this job. But the business will continue.”
“Photographers are like actors—they die in harness. Dad, you haven’t even asked what the project is.”
“Do I need to know? Is it something that I really should be shooting?”
Cassie considered for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t suppose it is, no.”
“Well then, you do it. With my blessing.”
“And the exhibition? You have to start finalizing the selection soon. You can’t put that off. It’s essential.”
“You could help me with that, too. Oh, and I need to sort out a hotel. For next week.”
Cassie was silent. Gregory studied the carvings on the wheel-head cross as he waited for her to volunteer. The crucified man lay within the sandstone, his Norse features as blank as those of a chessboard king.
“I’ll arrange your hotel,” Cassie said at last. “I’ll find one that you’ll like. Just tell me your preferred location.”
“Thanks.” Gregory paused for a moment and then apologized. “I’m being unreasonable. I should make my own booking. You must feel you’re colluding with something you don’t want to happen.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Another way is to say that I’m helping you get through your little bit of madness as quickly as possible, because once you’ve come out the other side then things will get back to normal. And I like things to be normal. A double room?”
“Let’s leave it as two singles.”
“How cautious of you,” Cassie said drily.
“I mean it. You know, before you met Alice I was certain that you would like each other.”
“How could we, when we understand each other so well?”
“You don’t really.”
“Dad, let’s say that you think you can discover parts of her character by staring at her body through your lens, but that I can see other parts just by looking straight into her eyes. Why don’t I just book you a double room? Won’t that be simpler? Get it over with?”
“If you dislike her so much, then why are you so keen that
we sleep together?”
“You know why. You’re not very interested in women as individuals. You like them as types, as examples of some aspects of femininity that you’re fascinated by and yet don’t know all that much about. So losing them doesn’t affect you very deeply.”
“That’s not true,” Gregory insisted, and yet he thought that his daughter could be right. After Ruth’s death, had he retreated from the particular to the generalized, from depth to surface, from commitment to indifference, from wise man to fool?
“Dad, Alice Fell is a schemer. She’s not enigmatic and she’s not challenging. Once you’ve slept together, she’ll lose her allure—it’ll fall away like a broken shell. You’ll wake up and see that her ambitions are selfish and ordinary. The sooner that happens, the better.”
Gregory tapped a finger against the edge of his keyboard. “Let’s keep it as two singles.” After a few seconds he went on, “I have to consider what happened to Thomas. Nothing will change until after his ashes are scattered.”
Cassie crooked her finger through the necklace.
“If you think about how he died,” she said, “then it must be even more obvious why I don’t trust her.”
Cassie returned Gregory’s steady gaze as she continued.
“That man must have been very naïve. He was probably convinced that she was the love of his life. Even worse, he must have persuaded himself that she felt the same. It’s obvious when you look at it. Thomas killed himself because of how Alice treated him.”
“That isn’t what anyone else thinks.”
“Dad, you must know that’s what happened. I don’t need to hear any more detail to know that’s true.”
“People don’t kill themselves for love.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know it.”
Gregory believed that he had lost more than Thomas would ever have had, and yet he could never have thrown himself into a river. If he had done that he would have betrayed Ruth as well as Cassie.
“You’ve always had reasons to live, Dad. Maybe Thomas Laidlaw couldn’t find any.”
Gregory shrugged and his eyes strayed to the screen again. He had no wish to extend the conversation any further.
A Division of the Light Page 18
