“Right,” he said.
The ashes fell smoothly. Their speckled and variegated grains cascaded between the stones. A fine dust drifted from them like a final offering. Within a few seconds all that remained of Thomas Laidlaw had vanished into the mound.
Gregory turned. His lips began to tingle unpleasantly with tiny needle-like shocks. He wanted to say “That’s it,” but unaccountably his mouth refused to open.
Around him the moor began to warp, as if he were viewing it from under water. There was a pressure beneath him that he felt could lift him free of the earth. Nothing was real and nothing could be understood.
His body was engulfed by a flame white as a furnace. Blindness fell like an avalanche into his eyes. He was transfixed within a roar or a silence and did not know which.
A woman’s voice spoke not in his ear but inside his mind. “Gregory,” the voice said, “you do not need to live your life like this.” And he felt his soul pour upward in a glowing unstoppable spume.
Alice was picked up bodily and hurled backward through the air. The tumulus burned as bright as magnesium. The sky detonated, the noise exploding through her eardrums into her skull, and everything collapsed inwards.
She could have been unconscious for seconds or for minutes; she was never to know.
At first Alice did not know where she was; she was not even certain who she was. Her face and hands were as raw as if she had passed through fire, and her head was filled with unformed images that hissed and sparked like severed connections. Gradually she became aware that the back of her head was wet, that damp was seeping into her clothes, and that she was lying on drenched grass, spreadeagled and with her feet apart. Her entire body was bruised and her nostrils and lungs had tightened as if she had inhaled steam.
It was painful to sit up, and when she did it was in unclear surroundings. An unequal blurring drifted across her visual field, as if lenses of different focal lengths were passing before her eyes.
Alice put one hand to her face. It was tender and she flinched at her own touch. Almost immediately she turned to one side and retched. A thin stream of spittle ran across her lips and, as it did so, she realized that they were dry and cracked. She struggled to get on to all fours and then she stared at the ground. The blades of grass now appeared fascinatingly infinite and welcoming, a sign that she was present in the world, that she was still alive.
And now Alice remembered that she was on a remote, high moor, next to a pile of ancient stones, that there had been a man with her, and that the man’s name was Gregory Pharaoh.
She could not see him and she could not see the mound. For a few seconds she was perplexed, and then she realized that she must have landed so that she was facing in the other direction. If she looked to her left she could see only the moor, dark as murk, but when she looked to her right she saw a mound of stones that now appeared white and shiny as cut marble.
A motionless figure was stretched out next to them.
When Alice called Gregory’s name it was so muted that it could have been imagined, like a cry from the world of ghosts. She recognized that she had been deafened. Her dulled ears felt as though they had been stuffed and tamped with wadding.
She almost got to her feet but then fell painfully onto her knees. She waited for a few seconds and then got up again. Unsteadily she walked to where the figure lay face upward on the grass. On the way she stumbled over a rucksack that was no longer in the place where she remembered it as having been left. Wispy smoke rose from the turf around the man’s body. Some of the nearby reeds had been set alight and were burning like tapers with low flames that were dying one after the other.
For an incoherent moment Alice was not fully convinced that the man was Gregory. His eyebrows and the front of his hair had vanished. Across his forehead and cheeks were raw pink blisters and layers of peeled skin. His jaws were clamped together and the lips drawn back from the teeth. The tip of his nose and parts of his upper lip were burned raw.
Alice knelt beside him. “Gregory,” she said again. It was like a name spoken through a bandage.
His half-closed eyelids were trembling as though a small electrical charge was being passed through them, but the eyes were distant and loose. His hands also shook, as did one bare foot that protruded from a ripped trouser leg. Nearby was a formless object that Alice could not recognize, but which appeared to have been turned inside out. She thought it could be the missing boot; only later did she begin to suspect that it might have been the urn.
Alice put her hands across her ears and then lifted them away three times, but it made no difference to her hearing. She bent close to Gregory and noticed that there was a ragged hole in one shoulder of his jacket. The hole was the size of a child’s hand and its edges were scorched so that the cloth around it was the color of charred paper.
She did not know what to do. She began to search for her phone, but when she found it the screen was a jumble of meaningless runes, and whatever she pressed did not work. Gregory’s hands shook as if they were palsied. It was frightening just to watch them tremble so helplessly.
Alice did not want to touch him. She was possessed by a fear that his stricken condition could somehow be transferred to her. Then she forced herself to take one of those shivering hands between her own. There was a coating of mud across his fingers. Even though Alice squeezed hard she still could not stop the hand from shaking.
She tried to think of what she could say. She did not know if Gregory could hear, and if he could then she could think of nothing to say that would make sense. After a few seconds, still unable to think clearly, she lied.
“You’ll be all right,” she said.
Her voice sounded as though it had come from another room. She waited for a few seconds and then repeated the phrase. This time it was even less convincing, even more trite.
Gregory’s right hand stopped shaking. She stared at it for a moment and then looked at his left hand. That had stopped shaking, too. The exposed foot gave a final tremor and was still. Until she looked at his eyes Alice thought that the worst had passed. The lids had become still and drawn back; the eyes stared up at the sky but did not see.
“God,” Alice said.
She placed the palm of her hand across his lips but could detect nothing. Then she told herself that even if Gregory breathed out she would probably still not be able to sense it. Desperately she tried to remember what she had been taught on a first aid course. She could remember where it was held, and the name of the tutor, and even the texture of the fake skin on the dummy she had to practice on, but she could remember nothing at all of what she had learned.
It began to rain.
Alice parted Gregory’s jacket so that she could feel his chest. He was wearing a buttoned outdoor shirt with a T-shirt beneath. After a moment’s hesitation she put her hands between the buttons to see if she could feel a heartbeat through the T-shirt. She could not. She put her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and pushed both shirts up over his ribcage. They bunched in an unmoving wave just above the heart.
The exposed skin was mottled and deathly pale. Alice was both repulsed and ashamed of her reaction. There was a layer of fat across his belly and several random hairs that he had let grow long. She realized with a shock that even though Gregory had studied every inch of her own body, she knew nothing of his apart from his head and his hands. Rain fell on the pale flesh and tricked it out with faint light.
Alice placed her hands together and pressed them down with as much force as she could muster above Gregory’s heart. His flesh was slippery. She began to count, did not know when to stop, finished at thirteen and then tried again. She did this several times and then paused. She thought she could feel a beat, but her own heart was racing so strongly that she could have been mistaken.
Gregory’s mouth opened slightly. Again Alice held her hand above it but could detect no outward breath. Maybe there was no point in going on. Her hand was shaking almost as much as his had been. Ar
ound them rain began to fall more heavily. A mist rose from the grass.
She took Gregory’s chin between her hands so that she could steady his head. Then she put her lips to his, made the seal as airtight as she could, and exhaled steadily. His mouth tasted of blood and smoke. She lifted her head and searched for a response. Nothing came. She tried again. After she had done it a dozen times she put her ear to his mouth. Was that a shallow breath she could feel? Once again she could not be certain. Rain began to hiss against the mound.
They would both die, Alice thought. It was like this: Gregory could be dying or already dead, and if she did not get off the moor she would die too. She would perish from shock and exposure.
She got back to her feet. His body seemed to be lying in a slightly different position, but that could be an illusion. In the time that she stared at him he did not move, did not even twitch. In that posture, and with his clothing awry, he resembled photographs of battlefield corpses.
Mist rose higher from the moor. Within a very short time she would become disoriented and lost. Dozens of tiny clicks could be heard on the rocks; hail was falling with the rain.
She bent down and touched the side of Gregory’s head with extended fingers. A tiny sliver of his skin became stuck to her hand and she dashed it away.
“Help,” she said in a croak, and then swallowed. “I’ll get help,” she went on.
He did not look as if he had heard. Maybe he had already gone beyond hearing. Alice turned away and began to walk as quickly as she could back to the road.
After several yards she began to tremble violently. Her limbs lost energy with each passing second, the moor sucked hungrily at her feet with each step, and the mist and rain grew ever thicker and more unforgiving. Maybe both she and Gregory were meant to lose their lives here, she thought. She had imagined that they had been drawn to the moor for a beneficial purpose, but perhaps all the time it had been destined to end this way, in deaths that were pointless and cruel.
She was still thinking this when she found herself standing on the road.
Reddish puddles of water were deepening on its surface and a stream was sluicing from the moor and down the hill. She had not expected to reach the road so soon. Now that she had, she was seized by a terrible uncertainty. She did not know what to do. Faint twin lights wavered on the road, their beams dissolving in the rain. Behind them a shape that was darker than the mist began to emerge from it. She fell onto her knees and did not feel the hurt.
Later, the driver of the Land Rover was to tell Alice that she had been almost invisible in the fog, and that his headlights had only picked her up when she was standing just a few yards in front of him. And that both he and his colleague could hardly believe what they were seeing.
12
Many of the prints are strikingly large—much larger than Gregory would have chosen. He would have filled the space with smaller, more numerous images. Cassie, however, had measured the walls, weighed up the sight lines and concluded that fewer photographs in larger formats would have a greater impact. Whenever she sees guests pause before the more dramatic compositions—the near-abstract depiction of numbered skulls, say, or a statuesque nude—she is satisfied that she has made the right choice.
Cassie has also ignored her father’s decision not to give any clarifying detail. Instead she has described each print on information cards fastened to the walls alongside them. Portraits quote the name of the sitter and buildings are given a location, so that a bishop and a damaged church are clearly identified. Some other nomenclatures are deliberately brief. Three photographs of a dying woman are called Ruth I–III; various nudes, usually of different models, are simply called Nude, and numbered I to XIV. Each print is fine-grained and with subtle gradations of contrast, so that every image has a tactile quality—velvety jets, whites as glossy as albumen, grays like fine volcanic ash. The occasional color prints all use vivid primaries to focus attention.
Despite a clear statement in the catalog that Gregory is alive and well, and despite a recording of him that she has arranged on a loop, Cassie believes that most of the guests will treat the exhibition as a summation, an ending, a coda to work that has ceased. Business associates now acknowledge that, although the name of Gregory Pharaoh continues, it is his daughter who will fulfill any contracts agreed with the company. Most are content with this arrangement, and only a few have compared her work unfavorably with her father’s. Whenever clients have asked if Gregory will return, Cassie has truthfully answered that she does not know. If they have then gone on to ask if he will take up the business again if he does, she has smiled politely and replied that nothing is impossible.
Cassie has posted invitations not only to clients, subjects, reviewers and cultural commentators, but also to many of the other names that feature in her long list of contacts. On reflection she believes the potential guest numbers to be too high, but perhaps they are justified if this is to be Gregory’s last exhibition. She has even sent an invitation to Alice Fell, although she does not expect her to accept it.
Since the accident on Sampson’s Bratfull, Cassie and Alice have spoken on the phone several times. They have even found it necessary to meet—only once—so that Alice could recount exactly what had happened on the moor and Cassie could inform her of Gregory’s present condition. They met at a café in the center of town and sat at a table by the window so that each could turn away from the other and study the outside world as it passed by.
A spiky awareness replaced their mutual antagonism, but neither was prepared to give ground to the other. Alice wore dark glasses with large frames and a fashionable cap that she pulled low on her forehead. At first Cassie thought that these and the heavy make-up were part of a defense mechanism, but then Alice lifted the glasses and raised the cap to prove that she, too, had suffered flash burns.
“The dermatologist says I’ll be fine in a couple of weeks,” she said. And then she added, tartly, “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
“You must be pleased,” Cassie said. “I know that looks mean a lot to you.”
“More than they do to you, Cassandra.”
Cassie recognized that Alice was not unattractive, but she also saw that she possessed a certain worn, depressive quality. Alice’s life had been full, but she had lived it without sufficient discrimination. Her smart but conventional clothes, her looks, the way she carried herself, all formed part of a guarded charm that would draw many men toward her. Men who were aging, and whose sexual chances were lessening, would feel the magnetism more fiercely than others. They were the ones who would be willing to endanger their own peace of mind. For them, love would become a burden and a damnation.
Once again Alice described what had happened on the moor. In her previous phone conversations she had been sparing with detail. Now the presence of another woman, even one as unsympathetic as Cassie, gave her license to speak much more extensively.
Afterward Cassie described the accident as the last step on a path she had been unable to prevent her father from taking. The decision to scatter crematorium ashes on a remote moor had been made at Alice’s whim. Who could doubt that if she had not persuaded Gregory to accompany her then he would not have been injured, not have been hospitalized, not have had to suffer the indignity of psychiatric examinations?
“Your father could have refused, but he didn’t,” Alice told her. “He could have altered the date and time of the visit, but he didn’t. If he’d done that we would both have avoided the storm.”
It seemed the easiest thing to say. Alice did not wish to explain that the workings of fate were cruel and occult. Thomas was meant to die just as Gregory was meant to be on the moor at the moment of the storm. He was meant to be stricken just as Alice was meant to save him. If that was not true then the world was merely chaotic and without purpose or significance. More than that Alice was unable to see.
“I thought he was dead,” she admitted. “I tried my best to save him. I really did. And if I hadn’t been able
to get to that road, and if the forestry people hadn’t come along, he could still have died.”
“I know you did your best. I’m grateful for that. I have to be.”
They sat in silence for a while, each avoiding the other’s gaze. And then Cassie spoke again.
“I was suspicious of you and I still am. But I see now that you have qualities that weren’t obvious.”
Alice shook her head. “I never wanted to come between your father and you. He just wanted to photograph me. That was it. It was never going to go any further than that.”
As soon as the words were spoken she wondered if Cassie had recognized they were a lie.
When the two women parted they shook hands formally. It was an acceptable compromise for them both. A departure without touching would have been insulting, an embrace impossible. As they walked away, each grew aware that they shared a disconcerting and unwanted comradeship.
Cassie does not register that Alice has arrived at the exhibition and is standing alongside others as they watch Gregory’s recorded message. The screen has been placed next to the table with the catalogs so that as they enter the gallery everyone has the chance to pause and watch him speak. Alice is confident, ready to face anyone, and dressed in a tailored black suit that she wore for her successful interview with a firm of business consultants. She has been working for them now for several months.
In his message Gregory appears distracted, as if he has only reluctantly agreed to be filmed. There are no establishing shots other than a few seconds of feed as he sits against a white background and fixes a lapel microphone to his heavy coat. When the frame is almost entirely filled with a close-up of his face it appears that his skin has undergone a change in pigmentation, although many put this down to the inadequacy of the recording. Gregory glances to one side for a few seconds and then speaks. It is a short statement, its outline apparently jotted on a notepad just out of camera range. Even so, his remarks are interrupted by several pauses and at one point he appears to lose interest completely.
A Division of the Light Page 21
