A Division of the Light (12 page)

“Dad, I have no reason to trust Alice Fell. I don't
know
her. It seems that you don't either.”

“I don't have to know people. It's enough that I sense their capabilities.”

Cassie paused only for a moment. She did not want to think of her father as suddenly vulnerable. Perhaps, she thought, Alice Fell had qualities that she was blind to. Or it was possible that Gregory had reached that point at which middle-aged men become overwhelmed by irrational dreams. The hope of a transcendent passion was, she knew, powerful enough to eat at the roots of male stolidity and destroy all caution. Whatever the truth, Cassie had no reason to be gentle when she asked her next question.

“Surely you realize that there's something strange in the way you talk about this woman?”

“I talk about her in the same way that I would about anyone.”

“That's not true. You don't.”

She stared directly at Gregory, but he kept his concentration on the screen. Even his posture was defensive.

“You think Alice Fell is different in some way that you can't quite pin down,” Cassie went on. “Whenever you mention her it's as if your imagination is intense and unfocused at the same time. And when you look at her face or her body, just like you're doing now, your mind isn't on what I say, or what anyone else
would say. It doesn't even appear to be fixed on where we are or what your future commissions could be. Your concentration isn't professional concentration. This isn't like you. Not at all.”

He answered as though testifying. “I'm
always
professional. If I'm intrigued then it's on a professional level. I always want to portray things about my subjects that I'm sure are there.”

“And for Alice Fell, what do you think that would be? Self-regard? Avarice?”

“Don't be so bitchy, Cassie. I don't know what her qualities are until I find them. Direction, maybe. Yes, one of them could be direction. I'm sure she's looking for a pathway in her life. I'd like to be able to get that on camera.”

“Dad, I've met women like this before. They have no sense of direction whatsoever. They're adrift, like castaways. They just cling onto any passing man in the hope that he'll take them to a friendly shore.”

Gregory reached forward and switched off the display. Light collapsed inside the screen.

“Now you're being petulant,” Cassie said. “It proves my point.”

“You know me better than anyone else. But I'm not some foolish moonstruck kid, and you should stop talking to me as if I were.”

“It's also true that I know you better than you know yourself. You're going to tell me that you've had affairs with your models before—”

“I make no secret of that. You've even seen the photos.”

“But those girls were nothing very much to you, were they? You shared relationships that you both understood. In a way, you each got what you wanted and that equalized everything. But you're right: Alice is different. She's capricious. Maybe she hasn't
decided what she wants yet, but she knows that you can offer something that other people can't. And once she's got that she'll just throw you away.”

“You can't know that. You met her for a few minutes. Hardly long enough to make a judgment, is it?”

“It's time enough. I wouldn't trust her an inch.”

“Besides, she was probably nervous and eager not to show it. So you couldn't be more wrong.”

“We'll see. How many times have you told me you rely on my opinion? Are you going to rely on it now?”

Gregory made a formless sound under his breath. He hated arguing with his daughter, and always did his best to avoid it. Even if everything else in his life were to become unstable, he knew he could always rely on Cassie. It made him feel particularly uneasy that she had taken against a woman he found so intriguing.

Impulsively he reached forward and took Cassie's hand. His felt large and clumsy in comparison to hers.

“I'll be all right,” he said. “You needn't worry about me.”

Cassie did not move her other hand.

Unspoken between father and daughter was the knowledge that throughout her life Cassie had avoided being either transported or harrowed by sexual fascination. Her involvement with men had never been wholehearted; even the break-up of her last relationship had caused her only minimal distress. Cassie had closed the door on affairs of the heart and did not wish to open it again. Often she wondered if the time spent on her brief dalliance with romance would have been better spent elsewhere; it had, however, helped her understand why her father treated women in the way that he did.

Gregory could never recover from Ruth's death, but it was
impossible for him to spend the rest of his life pursued by fantasies of a return to their shared happiness. His world had changed too much. Instead he took refuge in affairs that lasted for weeks, or sometimes only days. Cassie was content that her father should seduce women or be seduced by them, but if he were ever to fall in love she would believe that her mother had been unforgivably betrayed.

Eventually she extended her other hand so that Gregory's was encased in both of hers.

“Dad, you're too old to be infatuated.”

“I'm not too old for anything. And I can never be infatuated. I'm far too wise.”

“Look, nowadays you and I share the same belief. Love, or whatever you want to call it, simply isn't worth the trouble it causes.”

“Cassie, I've been here before. It's old territory.”

“I don't think so. In all your dealings with women there was never any sense that you could lose control. You knew that and your girlfriends knew it. You were in charge, Dad. That's your personality. That's what works best. You shouldn't let that part of you be eaten away.”

“There's nothing wrong with being excited by someone new.”

“But there's something wrong in reaching out for a thing that isn't there. We both felt abandoned when Mother died. We both fastened everything in, even the best of emotions. But it would scare me if you decided that it was time to find her successor. We only ever have one chance with the life of the heart. You and I, we've had our time. Both of us have.”

“There's always another chance, Cassie. Even for you.”

“No, there isn't. That's just a kind of specter. Sometimes people
are left with empty spaces that get filled up by dreams—the kind of dreams that are so disorienting that it makes them fall into the arms of fantasists. I don't want that to happen to you.”

She and Gregory looked at each other in silence.

And for a brief hallucinatory moment it seemed to Gregory that he should take his daughter's advice and forget Alice. He should write off the studio session as something that had not quite worked, despite all his efforts. He should move on. After all, he had other assignments waiting to be fulfilled. Within the next few days there were portraits of an actor and then a footballer, just to begin with. And there were always other women.

And then it seemed that it would be cowardice if he turned away. With each day that passed he grew older and his energy levels declined. Perhaps he was condemned to brief unsatisfactory liaisons such as the one with Carla, but perhaps Alice was his last opportunity to enter a relationship exciting enough to effect a change in his life. Cassie had talked of foolishness, but the real foolishness would be if he remained safe and secure.

“Don't worry,” he told Cassie, as he smiled broadly and falsely, “I'm not going to fall into any trap. I'm an expert at avoiding them.”

“And Alice?”

“You're right. In the end, she was just another model.”

But even as he spoke Gregory realized that he was treating Alice as an incarnation of the complexities and allure that he found in all women. In refusing to admit that he secretly wanted Alice, he had not admitted to himself the strength of his need for her.

If only he could photograph her without compromise. If only he could produce an image so charged and so powerful
as to be overwhelming. All he had to do, Gregory thought wryly, was find the location, the confidence and the pose. And most of all, and most difficult of all, he had to find the decisive moment.

She spoke his name and he did not answer, but Alice was convinced that he had heard.

Thomas sat at the table on the other side of the room, his head down and his hand held so that a pen jutted upward from between his fingers. In front of him were two open textbooks and an A4 writing pad whose pages he was covering in notes. Another three books were stacked to one side. A CD of the “Goldberg Variations” was playing, but he did not appear to be listening. It was one of Alice's favorite recordings, and had been given to her by a former lover. Her knowledge of classical music had come only from him, and now she could appreciate how the interleaving and mathematical progression of the work appealed to her innate sense of patterning.

Thomas was too shallow, Alice thought. He was a clever man but she was a complex woman, not easily understood, and far beyond his comprehension. Most people found her to be a challenge; why should she ever have believed that Thomas Laidlaw would be any different?

It pleased Alice to be thought of as unfathomable. To her colleagues at work she was personable and attractive, although far from beautiful. They had noted how she avoided involvement; superficial friendships were all that she needed. Sometimes Alice joined them on infrequent celebratory nights out, but remained sober and in control when drink and proximity made others loose-tongued. On the hangover mornings many of those were
subdued, but Alice Fell was always calmly assured. She never had anything to regret.

Little was known about her. She made no secret of the fact that she lived with a man called Thomas, apparently an archaeology expert—some believed that he was a professor—but no one had ever seen him. Everyone assumed that her past must hold other men, but Alice never mentioned them. Occasionally she held intriguing telephone conversations with callers from outside the office, but afterward she expertly brushed away questions from anyone intent on finding out more.

In contrast, she was unabashed about questioning others, particularly if they possessed specialist knowledge. Whenever overseas buyers or agents visited the building she sought conversation, not about their businesses but about their countries, customs, languages, lives. Varieties of religious faith so fascinated Alice that more than once she had asked visitors about their personal beliefs. Often this had disconcerted them, and on one occasion she had been forbidden by management to ask such questions.

Because she guarded her own privacy Alice was considered mysterious and enticing. Several members of staff, both male and female, thought of her as intriguing but unwinnable. Not only was she delighted by this, she encouraged it.

Alice also knew of the rumor that she had once had a passionate affair with a director, a married man no longer with the company, and that it had ended dramatically. But she had had no such affair. True, she had been charmed by the man, but she clearly knew that if she had allowed that attraction to develop then her life would have become too restricted. Besides, beneath the sheen of his experience there had been a bruise of desperation. Her potential lover was so needful of an escape that he was bound to have
become irrationally possessive. Involvement would have hindered any progress she wished to make. Because sometime, maybe soon, Alice was sure to find a lover who was not only better than anyone she had ever had, but who would be more exciting, more inventive and completely in tune with whatever it was that she needed. So far, none had been able to come close to that promise.

Despite the brevity of her relationships, despite the frustrations of the jobs she had taken, Alice remained confident that a rewarding future lay just beyond her reach. The right lover would help her to seize that future, and once it was in her grasp its momentum would drag her free.

A man was always a part of her ambition. Alice loved men—passionately, wholeheartedly, but temporarily. Over several months, perhaps longer, she would devote her life to one particular partner. Without exception, toward the end of that period she would stare clear-eyed into the heart of their love and find that it had become empty. She would be distressed and tearful, but unmoving in her determination. It was always Alice who found the courage necessary to put an end to the relationship; always Alice who delivered the final blow.

Her betrayed men were often distraught. Up until the last days they imagined that she was content. But because it was so evident to Alice that a break-up was unavoidable, she was puzzled by the lovers who clung so despairingly to the past—could they not see that there was nothing of any value left?

At the end of these intense romances she believed that she had learned all that was worth knowing about each man, but every one of them felt that they had not known Alice at all. She recognized this and took pleasure from it. Alice had a need to be unlike other people. Ever since her adolescence she had been convinced
that she was destined for excitement, progress and revelation; it was just a matter of events being allowed to fall around her in a particular pattern.

So it had become obvious to her that her time with Thomas was reaching its natural end. It was also obvious that, like most men, Thomas would choose to ignore the evidence, or perhaps be unable to comprehend it.

She spoke his name again, more sharply this time so that it carried over the Bach, and he looked up.

Alice picked up the remote control and lowered the volume by several levels. Thomas did not react. She waited for a few seconds before putting her question.

“Thomas, why don't you do something that you
really
want?”

His expression was at first startled and then suspicious. She gazed back at him with innocent eyes and he moved one hand across the textbook as if he were throwing dice.