The Photograph Read Online Free

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