A Division of the Light

by Christopher Burns

  “Thank you for coming,” he begins. “This has been planned for more than a year and it will possibly be the last time my photographs are ever seen in an exhibition. My daughter Cassie—Cassandra—has done all the hard work, including selecting what she thinks are the best photographs to hang. If everything goes well, it’s thanks to her.”

  Gregory stops and then looks aside for a few seconds before starting again.

  “Some of you will know I live in another country now, so I can’t be there with you. I’m not going to say I’m sorry because that’s not true. I’m living where I want to be and this is where I’ll stay. What will be on show in this gallery are the results of a former life, one that I don’t have any interest in reviving. The images hanging on the walls are like archaeological finds. They have a certain value and some of you will speculate about their composition and their messages and their meaning. But you won’t really know the answers, just as I don’t really know the answers. Reality, true reality, lies outside those photographs, just as it lies outside of the world that we all inhabit, like it or not.”

  Keen to finish, evidently bored, Gregory reaches forward to switch off the camera. He says nothing else. As he looms close to the lens his features are made distorted and bulbous before the image vanishes.

  Alice turned away and began to walk around the gallery. A waiter offered drinks from a tray; she took a glass of white wine and held it high in front of her body.

  The silvered prints were hung on white walls with overhead lights. Clusters of guests had gathered in front of particular exhibits that they wished to admire or criticize. Several had attended solely to network and they were holding discussions in tight inward-facing groups. Ready to leave soon if necessary, Alice strolled the perimeter of the room in a calculated saunter, as if she were so used to private views that they were becoming tedious. As she moved she registered fragments of comment about the content of each frame, the variation of shape and motif from object to object, and the calculated dynamism in every composition. Such arcane modes of communication reminded her of humorless gatherings of physicists or archaeologists, except that these conversations were even less rooted in measurable fact. They were merely opinions, quickly assembled as response and defense, but actually as billowingly insubstantial as cloud.

  None of the work in the first room was familiar. There were landscapes, industrial scenes, portraits, groups, buildings. Some were close-ups of objects that Alice could not recognize until she read the accompanying note. Some had sold, most had not, and a few were marked as not available for sale. Dutifully she patrolled them all, and as she did so she watched Cassie Pharaoh out of the corner of her eye. Alice was certain that Cassie had now registered her presence, but so far she had shown no sign of recognition.

  Cassie was talking animatedly to two guests. She was wearing a maroon velvet jacket with scalloped trims, wide lapels and a high neck. Alice believed that it must have been copied from a Regency original, possibly bought at a museum, and that although no other woman in the room was wearing anything similar, it made Cassie look frumpy.

  Alice turned her back on Gregory’s daughter and looked at the next exhibit. A formally robed bishop gazed stonily outward. It was the photograph Gregory had taken on the day that her handbag had been stolen. Everything was pattern. It was just that patterns were usually difficult to make out.

  She sauntered away from the bishop and stood in front of a panoramic shot of a partially destroyed church. She remembered Gregory telling her about the shoot. At the time, she had not considered it significant. In his composition he had included a standing figure to add depth and scale. The figure was almost in silhouette; behind it a broad diagonal of light fell across the nave.

  Another guest was standing beside her. After a few seconds he spoke: “It’s still for sale. The church has bought his portrait of the bishop; it hasn’t yet bought this.”

  Alice had grown used to strange men trying to engage her in conversation. “I didn’t notice,” she answered neutrally, to let him know she was not interested. The man spoke again.

  “The restoration is going well. His daughter is coming back to photograph its completion.”

  Alice wondered why he was telling her this. It could only be that he was expecting to be recognized. She looked more closely at the print.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  He nodded. “That’s why I was invited here, I suppose. I gave Pharaoh my business card so he could keep it in his records—I wanted to make sure they got my name right in the newspaper caption. This photograph isn’t quite the same as the one they printed. And it doesn’t even mention my name. The paper didn’t, either. You knew him, too?”

  Alice ignored the question. “You must have a professional link with this church.”

  “The church as a whole, not just that particular one. I assess damage and recommend action. The destruction here was an unusual case. Very dramatic. Most of the time I’m dealing with plain old-fashioned erosion, lack of maintenance and decay. My name is Adrian Wells, by the way.”

  “I thought people who did that kind of thing would be very old,” Alice told him. “I thought they would have worked as ministers for years and years.”

  There was a momentary pause before the man answered. Alice realized that he had been expecting her to introduce herself, but today she did not want to give her name to anyone.

  “Well, no, I’m not a minister. I have a PhD in church architecture. Although obviously I have to know a lot about liturgy and how buildings were molded to reflect and reinforce orthodoxies. It’s all rather fascinating—to me, anyway. I’m afraid most people find it very boring.”

  “Most?”

  “I think so. I have these theories, you see, about what should be done.”

  Ah, she thought, another man with a theory. Wells began to talk.

  Alice had found that when they met an attractive woman most men were far too eager to list what they thought or what they had done. They did this automatically and without hesitation, like peacocks unable to resist a display.

  Wells spoke too rapidly, as if he had to cram as many facts as possible into a strictly limited space. Belief systems, he claimed, had been forced by modernity to take new shapes. Everyone knew this to be true. There was a saying that the waterhole of each scientific advance was surrounded by the corpses of theologians. Knowledge could no longer be ignored. The heavy, ornate, enclosed spaces of the traditional church were unequal to the discoveries of cosmology and physics, to what we now knew of the social constructs of reality, and to biblical archaeology and textual scholarship. What the faithful needed was a solution that was collective and inclusive. Worship, communion, call it what you like, had to be open and accessible and not restricted by outmoded forms.

  Alice knew that if she did not stop him he would talk like this for another five minutes.

  “You mean like the communities that must have worshipped at prehistoric circles and avenues and henges?”

  She could see him considering what to say next. “Perhaps. It really depends if people need a charismatic leader and a priest caste. I’d like to think not. Evidence seems to suggest that they do.” He paused for a moment. “You know about prehistoric sites?”

  “I used to visit them. It was a while ago.”

  Wells nodded. Alice could see that he had begun to think differently about her. She could not resist impressing him further.

  “Stonehenge, of course,” she said, “but also Avebury, the Rollrights, Sampson’s Bratfull.”

  He was puzzled. “I haven’t heard of that one.”

  “No,” she said, “not many people have.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Wells said admiringly. “It’s not just the space, you see. It’s alignment and illumination. Whatever religion you follow, light is always a sign for the eternal, for the numinous.”

  Aware now that he had been too enthusiastic, he shrugged in self-deprecation.

  “I talk too much, given the chan
ce. I’m sorry if you’re bored.”

  “I’m not bored,” Alice said, but smiled to end the conversation. “I have to go,” she said.

  “Of course. You knew Pharaoh too, did you?”

  “Yes, I knew him.”

  “And did he take your portrait? Is it on these walls? Will I recognize you?”

  “Oh, I don’t think you should look for me here,” Alice said.

  As Wells nodded in an attempt to demonstrate that he was an understanding listener, she turned away.

  Like lovers parting after an argument, they moved off in opposite directions. Other conversations, other approaches grew and flourished in the widening gap between them.

  A waiter appeared with a tray. Alice put her empty glass on it but did not pick up a replacement.

  In the next section of the gallery she came across a print of the skulls in the crypt. It had been taken at an angle that made them resemble smooth and uniform boulders, steeply raked like shingle after a violent tide. Only the empty eye sockets showed that these were human remains, and their cumulative and remorseless fate was emphasized by the inked numbers on the craniums. Gregory had been right.

  A woman spoke close to her ear.

  “They’re going to bury them all.”

  Alice recognized the voice, but did not respond.

  “The decision was made last week. They’re going to be boxed up together and buried in consecrated ground. There will be a short service.”

  She turned. Cassie was standing much nearer than she expected. Their faces were uncomfortably close together, but neither woman stepped back or averted her eyes or blinked.

  “I didn’t know if you’d come,” Cassie said.

  “I didn’t think I’d be asked.”

  “It wouldn’t have been right to exclude you.”

  “But you didn’t expect me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I thought you might see this as an opportunity to draw a line.”

  “I’m going to keep out of your way from now on, if that’s what you’re asking. Your father and I have already gone our separate ways. But there again, he’s gone his separate way from everyone. Even from you.”

  Cassie glanced to one side and appeared to soften.

  Alice decided that perhaps she had been too abrupt. After all, any stranger who looked at the two of them would be aware who was better equipped to live a full life. Alice thought that it must be obvious to every woman in the room that Cassie had not done herself justice, and that her hairstyle and dress and makeup were unflattering. Men would probably not notice such detail, but simply judge that Gregory’s daughter looked too much in control to be approachable. Perhaps they would even conclude that she was indifferent to sexual intimacy. But women would speculate that there was a need in Cassie that had been denied for so long that it was no longer capable of expressing itself.

  “Have you heard from him?” Alice asked. “Recently, I mean?”

  “Not since the video. Have you?”

  “I’ve heard nothing. He must want to keep silent. Maybe because he realizes now that we’re all just part of a pattern.”

  “What pattern?”

  A distant feeling of responsibility sang within Alice, like a slow sequence of musical notes that Cassie would never be able to hear.

  “I used to think that I was the focus of it all,” she admitted. “Until Sampson’s Bratfull everything seemed to have been directed toward me, to my future, to my understanding. But I’m not the focus at all. I’m just an agent. An enabler.”

  She stopped when she saw that Cassie’s expression had remained neutral.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about,” Alice said.

  “Should I?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just forget I said it.” Anxious to change the subject, Alice looked again at the rake of skulls. “I helped at that shoot,” she said.

  Cassie had suspected as much but had never asked, and Gregory had never volunteered to tell her.

  “He was wrong to involve you,” she said. “Dad never used his models as assistants before he met you. A lot of the decisions he made in those last few months were mistakes.”

  “I’m ahead of you. You’re going to tell me that I was the worst of those mistakes.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “No, I was good for him.” Alice leaned closer to Cassie and lowered her voice. “I wasn’t like the other women who modeled for your father and then slept with him. I was out of the ordinary. I was special. He saw things in me that other people can’t. That will always be true.”

  “I admit this, Alice. I never thought a woman would be able to lead him. But you did. You’re probably the kind of person who feels proud of that. Who knows what he thinks of you now? I don’t know what Dad thinks about the past. I wonder if he thinks about it at all.”

  “Maybe he’s happy.”

  “If you can say that a person is happy at the feet of someone he used to think was either disturbed or a fraud.”

  “I remember that photograph. Did you select it for this?”

  “Along here.”

  They threaded their way through the crowded gallery. Twice Cassie had to stop briefly and promise other guests that she would return to talk to them soon. On the second of these pauses Alice looked to one side and recognized, high on the wall, the image of a naked back spread as if in crucifixion, the deltoid muscles emphasized by the angle and intensity of light, the elegant neck ascending to a dark screen of elegantly styled hair.

  “I’ve marked it not for sale,” Cassie murmured. “I thought you would prefer not to be part of a market. You and I know that it’s you. No one else does. That was the day he borrowed my necklace.”

  “He took it away.”

  “I told him it wouldn’t work.”

  “I knew that the necklace belonged to you. I felt bad about wearing it.”

  “Didn’t you know that I inherited it? It was my mother’s. His wife’s. Ruth’s. That’s why it’s important to me.”

  Alice felt the muscles of her belly become tight. “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “No, I can see that he wouldn’t. For Dad, the image was all that mattered.”

  “Like this one? He says on that video that you made all the choices for the exhibition. Is that right? Did you choose this?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “I look so muscular. It’s the way that the light fell. Look at those shoulders.”

  “That’s why I chose it. They seem as though they could support wings.”

  “Like an angel?”

  “No, I don’t think he ever saw you as an angel.”

  Cassie had carefully studied each of Alice’s picture files, had perused each image as if it held within it a code that would explain why her father had become so obsessed. Naked, Alice Fell was no great beauty, but her unembarrassed displays flaunted a physical confidence that Cassie would never have wanted to match. Secretly, however, she had found that she grudgingly admired that confidence and was perhaps even in awe of it.

  “And the other shots of me that are stored in his library,” Alice asked, “the ones taken in a hotel room with dust covers?”

  “I’ve kept his promise to you. That’s why there are none on display here. Someday you’ll change your mind and want to have them exhibited.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  And Alice thought of the hours that she had spent looking at the pictures taken in that shrouded, paint-spattered room. It was the first time she had studied herself as a lengthy display of static images, and as her reactions had swung from uncertainty to fascination she had begun to have a clearer insight into what men found so exciting and so humbling about the nude female body.

  She could not know what her reactions would have been if she had found an identifiable image of her naked self displayed on these walls. For the near future she would continue to insist that those photographs not be shown, and yet a part of her imagination relished the impact they would have. Gregor
y had been right about that, too. Alice had always thought of herself as special, but she had never assumed that a part of that singular nature could be expressed in explicit terms. And if Gregory had been able to find and exploit that pictorially, then it must also be possible that others could detect further aspects of her uniqueness and wish to express them in different ways.

  Cassie and Alice walked further along the gallery to where an image of Little Maria was hung. They had to wait silently for a short while until other guests moved out of the way and they could see it clearly.

  The photograph was slightly different from the one that Alice had seen when she had first visited Gregory’s studio, but must have been taken within a few seconds of it. Little Maria’s pinched, undernourished face displayed a kind of stunned suspicion. There was no sense of holiness, of being chosen, or of revelation. Instead she appeared to be trapped.

  “This has been sold,” Cassie said. “I didn’t expect that. One of her future disciples, maybe.”

  Alice read the descriptive card: Girl Who Sees Visions.

  “People must ask,” she said.

  “They do,” Cassie answered, “and if they do, I tell them that’s where Dad is living. But I don’t talk about all those other misguided dreamers who camp out there as well.”

  “Do you want him back?”

  Cassie shrugged. “Would he listen to me, or to you? No. That part of his life is all over. Whatever we think and whatever we do, we have no influence with him now.”

  “I don’t want influence, Cassie. Not any more.”

  “That’s a difference between us. I do.”

  Little Maria’s eyes were as impenetrable as glass. Just by looking at her, Alice began to feel the chill of renunciation.

  “It may be all over,” Alice said, “but in the end, you got what was due to you.”

  “His business? That wasn’t my due. We talked about it, but I didn’t think it would happen. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to take over the Gregory Pharaoh company. But I carry it on, and fulfill his contracts, and I’m good at what I do. Someone had to pick up the pieces and it had to be me. I can’t just walk away from responsibility.”