The Photograph Read Online Free Page A

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.
     
Dispassionate appraisal is Glyn’s working method. Appraisal of evidence, consideration of the available facts. A system which has produced several books, many articles, a torrent of lectures and papers and reviews. Opinion comes into it as well, of course, and Glyn is known for forceful opinion and vigorous defense of his position. But detachment and the balanced view are paramount.
    A dispassionate view of Glyn himself, at this moment, would show a man of around sixty staring at a computer screen, a shock of dark hair, flicked with gray. A square, rugged face that has evidently seen a good deal of fresh air—the reddened, weathered look of a farmer. Large brown eyes, chunky brows. Mouth pulled down at the corners, indicating perhaps embattled concentration. He thumps the keyboard, making a lot of errors: a two-fingered typist. Once in a while he reaches for a paper from the pile beside him, scowls sideways at it, bangs away again.
    The room is a workshop, that is clear enough. It is lined with bookcases, crammed from top to bottom: books vertical, books horizontal. Tables and chairs piled with papers. Filing cabinets. There is little that is decorative or nonfunctional: a pair of Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece, a luster jug on the windowsill, a worn Persian rug on the floor. A framed Ordnance Survey map of a patch of Yorkshire from the mid-nineteenth century. Some aerial photographs of green sections of landscape. A color photograph of Glyn himself, a couple of decades younger, handsome on a windblown hillside, with scrawled signatures beneath his feet: “Greetings from us all: Changes in the Land team, 1980.”
    Pull back further—take a more distanced view—and the room is subsumed within a house