Glyn Kath. Kath steps from the landing cupboard, where she should not be. The landing cupboard is stacked high with what Glyn calls low-use material: conference papers and student references and offprints, including he hopes an offprint that he needs right now for the article on which he is working. The strata in here go back to his postgraduate days, in no convenient sequential order but all jumbled up and juxtaposed. A crisp column of Past and Present is wedged against a heap of tattered files spewing forth their contents. Forgotten students drift to his feet as he rummages, and lie reproachful on the floor: "Susan Cochrane's contributions to my seminar have been perfunctory. . . ." Labeled boxes of photographs-Aerial, Bishops Munby 1976, Leeds 1985-are squeezed against a further row of files. To remove one will bring the lot crashing down, like an ill-judged move in that game involving a tower of balanced blocks. But he has glimpsed behind them a further cache which may well include offprints. On the shelf above he spots the gold-lettered spine of his own doctoral thesis, its green cloth blotched brown with age; on top of it sits a 1980s run of the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. Come to think of it, the contents of the landing cupboard are a nice reflection of his own trade-it is a landscape in which everything coexists, requiring expert deconstruction. But he does not dwell on that, intent instead upon this, increasingly irritating, search. He tugs at a file to improve his view of what lies beyond and, sure enough, there is a landslide. Exasperated, he gets down on hands and knees to shovel up this mess, and suddenly there is Kath. A brown foolscap-size wallet file, with her loopy scrawl across the flap: Keep! She smiles at him; he sees her skimpy dark fringe, her eyes, that smile. What is she doing here, in the middle of all this stuff that has nothing to do with her? He picks up the file, stares. He cannot think how it got here. Everything of hers was cleared out. Back then. When she. When. Hang on, though. Here underneath it are a couple of folders, also with her handwriting: Recipes. Since when did Kath go in for serious cooking, for heaven's sake? He opens the folder, flicks through the contents. Indeed, yes-cuttings from newspapers and magazines in the late 1980s, but petering out fairly rapidly, which signifies. He investigates the second folder, which contains receipted bills, many of them red-flagged second demands, which signifies also, and an incomplete series of bank statements, indicating a mounting overdraft. It would seem that this assortment of her things got pushed in with his papers by mistake during the big clearing-out operation. The hurried, distracted clearing-out operation. Elaine had volunteered to sort out and dispose of Kath's possessions. She missed this lot. And here they have lain ever since, festering. Well, no, not exactly festering, but turning a little brown at the edges, doggedly degrading away as is everything else in here, doing what inanimate objects do as time passes, preparing to give pause for thought to those whose business is the interpretation of vanished landscapes. The wallet file is brown anyway, so degradation is not much apparent. He dumps the folders on the floor and goes to sit on the top step of the stairs, holding the file. He opens it. Not much inside. Various documents, and a sealed brown envelope containing something stiff. Glyn sets this aside and goes through the rest. A jeweler's valuation for a two-strand pearl necklace and a pair of drop pearl earrings. Originally her mother's, he seems to remember. Kath wore the earrings a lot. Her medical card. And her birth certificate. Aha! So this is where that was, the absence of which caused considerable nuisance back then, necessitating a visit to Somerset House. No marriage certificate, one notes. That too had gone missing, making difficulties. And is still lost, it would seem. Not that that is, now, a problem. Her O-level certificate. Seven subjects, A grades in all but one. Glyn scans this with some surprise. Well, well. Who'd have thought it? The injunction on the file's flap was presumably to herself. This was the repository for items she knew that she must hang on to, but-knowing herself-that she knew she was only too likely to lose. He experiences a stir of fondness, which disconcerts him. And he has been entirely diverted from the hunt for that offprint, which is a matter of some urgency. Fondness is overtaken by annoyance; Kath is getting in the way of his work, which was not allowed, as she well understood. There is also a National Savings Certificate for £5, bearing a date in the mid-1950s. When she was about eight, for heaven's sake. And some checkbook stubs and a Post Office savings book showing a balance of £14.58, and a clutch of letters, at which he glances. The letters are from Kath's mother, the mother who died when Kath was sixteen. Glyn sees no reason to be interested in these and pushes them back into the file unread. He is left with a semiopaque folder which turns out to hold a sequence of studio portraits of Kath. She is looking at him in glossy black and white, now made manifest entirely. Young Kath. A backlit Kath with bare shoulders, head turned this way or that, eyes to the camera or demurely lowered, provocative smile, contemplative sideways gaze. These would date from the aspiring-actress days, long before he knew her. Very young Kath. Glyn studies these photos for quite a while. Kath. He returns everything to the file. There is now just this brown envelope. He notices for the first time that something is written on it. In her hand. Lightly penciled. "don't open-destroy." And for whom is this second instruction intended? He opens the envelope. Within are a photograph and a folded sheet of paper. He looks first at the photograph. A group of five people; grass beneath their feet, a backdrop of trees. Two members of the group, a man and a woman, have their backs to the photographer. Of the other three, Elaine can be identified at once, visible between the two whose faces cannot be seen. Near to her stand another man and woman, whom Glyn does not recognize. One of the back-turned pair is Kath-he would know that outline anywhere, that stance. The someone else, the man, is at first a bit of a teaser. Familiar, surely-the rather long dark hair, the height, a good head taller than Kath. A slightly hunched way of standing. Glyn brings the photo closer to his face for more minute inspection. And then he sees. He sees the hands. He sees that Kath and this someone, this man, have their hands closely entwined, locked together, pushed behind them so that, as they stand side by side in this moment of private intimacy, this interlocking of hands would be invisible to the rest of the group. Except to the photographer, who may or may not have been aware of what had been immortalized-the freeze-frame revelation. And now Glyn recognizes the someone, the man. It is Nick. He turns to the folded piece of paper that accompanied the photograph. He feels as though gripped by the onset of some incapacitating disease, but this paper requires attention. Handwriting. A brief message. "I can't resist sending you this. Negative destroyed, I'm told. Blessings, my love." No signature. None needed. Neither for Kath then, nor, now, for Glyn. Though confirmation is needed. Somewhere he will have an instance of Nick's handwriting. A signature. A letter from way back when he was a consultant, or some such nonsense, on that landscape-history series Nick published and of which he endlessly and ignorantly enthused, as Nick always did. The disease now has him by the throat. The throat, the gut, the balls. What he feels is . . . well, what he experiences is the most appalling stomach-churning, head-spinning cauldron of emotion. Rage is the top note-beneath that a seethe of jealousy and humiliation, the whole primed with some kind of furious drive and energy. Where? When? Who? Who took this photograph? Who presumably passed it on to Nick and destroyed the negative? The telephone rings, down in his study. Such is Glyn's powered state, his consuming purpose, that he is at once on his feet and halfway down the stairs to pick it up and snap: "I am not available. Sorry." I cannot be doing with you right now, because I have just learned that the woman who was once my wife had an affair with her sister's husband apparently-at some time yet to be identified. I am evidently a dupe, a cuckold. My understanding of the past has been savagely undermined. You will appreciate that for the foreseeable future this requires all my attention. The phone stops. Of course. The answerphone is on. Glyn returns to the top of the stairs. He sits holding the photo and the sheet of paper, looking from one to the other. Kath is everywhere now, the landing is full of her, and the staircase, and the big brimming treacherous cupboard; there are dozens of her, from different times and at different places, all talking at once, it seems. She curls up against him in bed, chattering about some film she has just seen. She puts her head round the door of his study, sunnily smiling, offering coffee. She skids ahead of him down a Cumbrian hillside, a small brilliant figure in a red jacket. Questions are pouring through his head. When and where and who? But also-who else? Who else knew about this? Did Elaine know? Did Elaine connive? Was this matter common knowledge? Was he the innocent, the fool? Did people mutter to one another, throw him patronizing glances? And for whom did she pencil that scribble on the envelope: "don't open-destroy"? For herself? For me? Did she plan this, step-by-step? Did she plan this moment? That she would fall from the landing cupboard, set me ablaze? Well, no. Because Kath was not like that. Kath never planned. Kath never looked beyond tomorrow. Kath seized the days as they came and discarded them when done. No, she came across that file one day, into which she had shoved various items. She flicked through them-looking for something, maybe-and saw that envelope. Took out the photo and the sheet of paper, thought "Oops!," scribbled on the envelope, shoved everything back. But why not just kill the photo, there and then? Because she might want to look at it again. Because it meant something to her. Something? A great deal? Everything? This file was a safe deposit in which she stowed away things that she needed to keep for reasons of expediency or convenience or . . . sentiment. Why not segregate the categories? One file for documents, another for matters of the heart. Because Kath never operated like that-in a careful, considered, rational way. She simply pushed these things into the same file because she wanted or needed to hang on to them. And on the occasion when she wrote these words on that envelope, perhaps the phone rang while she was riffling through the contents. She put everything back, then had a sudden thought. She pulled out the envelope, quickly scribbled on it, returned it to the file, put the file in the drawer or the cupboard or wherever she kept it at the time, and forgot about it. She picked up the phone, cried out, "Oh, hello . . . How lovely to hear you, I'm so glad you've rung. I was going to . . . Listen, what are you doing today? I've got this sudden yen to go to-" And off she spun into another spontaneous activity, some more uncalculated hours. But in writing these words-in thinking of writing them-she had some subliminal notion of a person who might at some point be going through her things, might come upon the envelope, might open it. Me. So she tells me not to open it. And does she expect me to comply? Or does she assume-with a little curve of her mouth, a tiny shrug, a roll of the eyes-that I will open it? Be it upon his head, she thinks. I told him not to. All in a matter of seconds. As the phone rings. As she picks up a pencil. Glyn has been sitting on the stairs now for so long that his backside is beginning to ache. He gets up, returns to the cupboard. He picks up from the floor the landslide of files and puts them in a pile on the windowsill. Kath's file he lays to one side, along with that envelope and its contents. He sets about a search of the area behind the files, which is silted up with miscellaneous papers alongside which, finally, there do appear to be some offprints. That initial incandescent shock and rage have given way now to a sense of consuming purpose. He knows what he is going to do-but first things first. He is still raking over what he has seen and all that that implies, but at the same time he will grimly keep to its appointed course this day, which has turned out to be a day apart. He will find that bloody offprint. He burrows through the detritus of thirty-five years. Paper, paper, paper. Entire forests that have died for him. Oak, ash, and thorn have perished to sustain his career-well, no, Scandinavian pine, more likely. In this heightened state he finds himself able to think in complex ways. Thoughts hurtle in parallel; thoughts shunt one another aside. He homes in on the photograph: when? who? He spots a box of slides, remembers a lecture he has to give, pulls them out. Where was the photo taken? Where are they standing, the pair of them? No offprint, so far. He returns the stack of files to their place and moves up to the next shelf. Newspaper cuttings, bulging boxes; another forest has been felled. He imagines the axes-no, chain saws, it would have to be. There were trees in the background of that photograph, he remembers. What kind of tree? A clue; check later. He takes down a box, opens it. Notes-reams of handwritten library notes from the days before photocopying facilities. Work. His own laborious hours of work. Heaven knows how many hundreds of thousands of hours of work the contents of this cupboard represent: his work, the work of others. And his work is in its turn the reflection of the work of countless nameless dead. "A landscape historian deconstructs the physical evidence of work done by generations of nameless people. The daily application of a faceless horde, century after century-laboring away hour after hour, year after year, hot, cold, wet, hungry, with aching limbs. Digging and shoveling and hauling. Fetching and carrying. Hacking and chopping. Loading, stacking, lifting. Herding animals, tending animals, butchering animals. Felling trees, quarrying stone. Turning wood and rock into houses and barns and churches and cathedrals. Heaving stone and glass up into the sky. And all this manipulation of the physical world carried out by scurrying, driven people, set only upon survival, upon working in order to eat in order to live from one day to the next, in order to feel the sun and the rain and the wind, get a bellyful of food, catch a few hours' sleep, wake to see another day." When did I write that? he wonders. Not bad, eh? He seems to remember saying it to camera, when they did the first television series. That heady time. Those were the days. Being whisked around with that attendant entourage-the pretty, feisty girls with clipboards, and the director and the camera people and the sound people-and himself always at the hub of it all. Holding forth on hillsides and halfway up cathedrals and realizing that he loved every minute of it. Being recognized by strangers once the programs had gone out: that sideways glance in the street or on a railway platform. Snide remarks from colleagues, for which he didn't give a damn. Jealous, weren't they? Oh, it was a helter-skelter, full-pelt time, that was. But work, all of it. Well, there's work and work. And I've been wet and cold too, thinks Glyn, and I've done a spot of digging, though I pass on shoveling and hauling, and hungry hasn't much come into it. But there's not a day of my life in which I haven't worked. And here Kath comes in, dead on cue. It is her voice that is clearest. What is said. Why is it that words hang in the mind forever? A sentence that is spoken over and over again. In his head, Kath is words quite as much as she is flesh and blood. "You're not going to come with me?" The tone shoots up-a high emphatic note: ". . . with me?" And now he sees as well as hears. She is sitting at the other end of the table in the kitchen in Ealing, a letter in her hand. It must be summertime; her skin is very brown against her white shirt. That gold chain is round her neck. Her hair is damp from the shower, flattened against her neck. "You're not coming with me to Devon for a lovely weekend with the Barrons?" Now she gives him that teasing look-never pleading, oh, never that, just a take-it-or-leave-it quirky glance. "Plenty of landscape in Devon." And he explains-no doubt for the second or third time-that there is this conference. "Never mind," she says. "Too bad. Toast?" Kath did not work. Kath was not fettered by obligation, by responsibility, by having to be in a certain place at a particular time, by having to do things she might not especially wish to do. In the mind's eye, Kath is forever breezing down the street, smiling, traveling light, while all around her is perforce and necessity: the postman dealing out mail, door-to-door, the van driver heaving cartons into the corner shop, the patrolling traffic warden, the gang busy with hydraulic drills and JCB, the estate agents displayed at their desks, the driver of the taxi panting at the lights. All except Kath, who is bound for some destination of her choice, to do something she prefers to do. And even when Kath did work she did not appear to be doing so. When she had a job-in those interludes when she was employed, gainfully or otherwise-it was because she had elected to do so. It had seemed suddenly interesting or entertaining to help out in an art gallery or a craft center, to get involved in a music festival, to do picture research for a publisher. And when the interest and entertainment faded, somehow Kath was no longer there. She had simply melted away, from one day to the next-perhaps with a vague apologetic smile, perhaps not. Glyn knew these episodes, because he was sometimes on the receiving end of the inquiring phone calls, which could range from perplexity to indignation. How did she do it? Well, thinks Glyn, she managed nicely for ten years because she was married to me. I paid the bills. I fed her and housed her and clothed her, pretty well. But before that? After all, Kath was a fully fledged adult by the time she came into my hands. She was thirty-six, she had been on the loose for twenty years, given that the home more or less broke up when the mother died. The girls each had a bit from her, of course, but not enough to live on. Well, not quite, but enough to scrape by, perhaps, in a hand-to-mouth sort of way. With the occasional top-up from somewhere or someone. I suppose that is the answer. And Elaine, being Elaine, set to and learned a trade and worked for the next forty years-very lucratively, these days, one understands-while Kath, being Kath, did not. Glyn is still ferreting away in the cupboard, but if the offprint comes his way he is in danger of missing it entirely, so dense are his thoughts. He is finding that these thoughts are nothing new, but that everything is somehow skewed by what has just happened. This illness that he now has-this fever-has given everything a twist. Kath is both what she ever was, and she is also someone else. He is looking differently at her-he is looking differently for her. She toiled not, neither did she spin. She did her own thing. In that sense she was in tune with the spirit of the day. But in other ways she was not. She didn't care a jot for achievement or status-neither for herself nor in others. She laughed at pretension. The hedonistic climate of the times suited her well, but the confrontations of the day were of no interest. I don't remember Kath ever getting exercised about the international situation or how she should vote. Feminism passed her by. Women's rights meant nothing to her because she had them anyway. Nothing had ever been denied to her because she was a woman. Being a woman enabled her to sail through life, setting her own course, following mood and fancy. But not every woman can do that, thinks Glyn. Oh dear me, no. And why could Kath do it? Because. And at this point consideration gives way to imagery. He no longer thinks about Kath but sees her, experiences her. He sees her breasts. Small, neat breasts-little cones tipped with those surprising chocolate-brown nipples. He could not take his eyes off them, once, and they surge again, full frontal, at this moment. That bush-a rich, silky pelt exactly matching her hair. Those legs. Her slim feet. And her face. Oh yes-her face. Kath could do it because she was a startlingly attractive woman. Not a conventional beauty, but with looks that were maverick and mesmerizing. The small face with those delicate features-the set of her nose, green eyes that seemed to catch the light, mouth tilted when she smiled. If she was present, you noted that everyone's glance strayed towards her. Men, women. Even children. Kath had an affinity with children. They drifted her way, and she to them. Perhaps if . . . God, no. Kath as a mother? She with the attention span of a butterfly. Just as well it was never on the cards. And, anyway, I never wanted children. He has reached the top shelf of the cupboard now. More files; more boxes of this and that. Oxfordshire Drove Roads-1984. He opens the box: maps, photographs, and Kath once more. Not as such, not standing somewhere sometime holding someone's hand, twisting the past, but lightly laid across that time, staking a claim. "Why are we here?" she says. "It's getting terribly muddy." She has climbed onto a five-barred gate and sits there, squinting into the sun. She is wearing jeans and a T-shirt with no bra. Glyn can see the shape of her nipples through the thin material; this sight distracts him from the matter in hand, which is close inspection of the Ordnance Survey map. If there were a nearby haystack he would take her into it and be done with it. But when did you last see a haystack? He does not yet know this woman very well, but soon will, if things go according to plan. They have been following a track between fields, the grassy surface of which has now given way to rutted mud and puddles. Glyn is interested in the width of the track. He considers this, resolutely ignoring Kath's nipples. One thing at a time. "We're here," he says, "because I think this track may be an early drove road. I need to check it out. I did mention this when we set off." "So you did. I keep forgetting you're working." She laughs. That laugh. Like no other. "It feels like a country walk. But, actually, would you mind if I stay put here while you check out the rest of it? I'm going to sunbathe behind the hedge." And she is over the gate, into the field, and is sprawled with her back on the grass, T-shirt off, bare-breasted to the sky. He shoves the box back onto the shelf, and as he does so he spots a cache of papers behind. Offprints-aha! And, yes, here at last is the quarry: "Basic Patterns of Settlement Distribution in Northern England," Advancement of Science, 1961. Had he started at the top, that file would never have come to light. Or not on this particular day. The day would have proceeded as it should; he would now be at his desk downstairs, getting on with the work in hand. Glyn sweeps up all that he needs, closes the cupboard, and goes down to his study. There he sets the offprint to one side. He will get back to work in due course, dammit. He takes out the photograph. Look again. I may have missed something first time round. Kath is wearing a full skirt, and some sort of black top that shows a lot of her neck and back. I think I remember that top. She has dangly earrings. Those too I remember. Nick wears dark trousers and a short-sleeved check shirt. Neither item strikes a chord, but I remember well that characteristic somewhat too long hair and the way it flopped across his forehead. Here, it obscures his face, which is turned to one side, looking not at Kath but towards someone else. Towards Elaine, it seems. Elaine faces the camera. She is speaking, perhaps-her mouth is slightly open. Maybe she is speaking to them. She wears trousers and a casual sort of sweater thing, a bag slung over one shoulder, a denim hat. The other two I do not recognize. A tall thin man. A shortish woman with dark curly hair. Also dressed in light, casual clothes, which tells me only that this is summer, and that the occasion is distinctly informal. Quite a little party. And then there is the photographer, of course. Him; her. Where am I? Well, patently I am not there. I was absent, elsewhere, about other business. And where are they all? The background is anonymous. A belt of trees. Grass on which they stand. Sky-blue, the odd white cloud. An outing. A little excursion. "Listen, let's go to . . . Drop everything, why don't you! It's a heavenly day. Elaine's coming, and Nick of course. . . ." When? Judging by Elaine's youngish face we are looking back into the 1980s. Thereabouts. But one would like to know precisely when. No-one would not like to know, but one feels driven to know. I am driven to extract from this vital piece of evidence all that it can tell about how things were back then, since it appears that they were not as they seemed to be at the time, nor as I have believed them to have been ever since. When was this photograph taken? And who was the photographer? The person who collected a wallet of developed film, idly inspected the contents, looked more closely at this print, did some quick thinking, cut the negative from the strip, passed on the print to him. Tacit collusion. By whom? The person who can tell me, of course, is Elaine. Who may or may not have been in collusion herself-and that I need to know-but who will certainly be aware of the identity of all members of the party on that interesting little outing. And now it is Elaine who fills the room. He sees and hears her, in various incarnations. He has known Elaine for a long time, in different ways. Crucially, she is Kath's sister, and it is as such that he now examines her. Well, they weren't all that close, of course. Elaine the elder by far, and the two of them poles apart-in looks, inclinations, personality, everything. But there was something going on between them-that odd mix of tension and commitment between siblings. Elaine sniping away about Kath being Kath, which she never apparently came to terms with-but then coming over all protective. Kath suddenly nipping off to see Elaine for no good reason, ringing her up late at night. None of my business, anyway, thinks Glyn. It was up to them. But now suddenly it is his business. Where does Elaine stand over this matter? Does she know? Did she know? He scrutinizes Elaine-Elaine of that time, successful garden designer, burgeoning businesswoman, Nick's wife. Longtime associate of his own-he and Elaine go way back, after all. But Elaine is tiresomely inscrutable. She speaks and looks and does as she always has: no clues. Perhaps she was ever thus-quite a cool customer, Elaine. She was in this room, once. Back then. When. After. "Will you go on living here?" she asks. And when he replies she makes no comment. She offers to see to Kath's things. Which she did, though not, evidently, achieving a clean sweep. As if he needed a house move, on top of it all. Yes, of course there would be . . . resonances. But there will be resonances anyway. One would have to learn to live with them. He dismisses Elaine. She has nothing to offer, or at least not in this form. He pulls his notes towards him, switches on the computer: it is midafternoon and enough of the day has been dissipated. That photograph smolders in its envelope, and in his head. Excerpted from The Photograph by Penelope Lively All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
