Reflex (14 page)

George Millace's negatives looked a pale clear transparent orange throughout. Just suppose, I thought, that under the orange there was an image in yellow, which at the moment didn't show.

If I printed those negatives, the yellow would become blue.

An invisible yellow negative image could turn into a totally visible printed image in blue.

Worth trying, I thought. I went into the darkroom and mixed the developing chemicals, and set up the color print processor. It meant waiting half an hour for the built-in thermostatic heaters to raise the various chemical baths to the correct temperatures, but after that the prints were conveyed automatically inside the closed processor from one bath to another on rollers, each sheet of photographic paper taking seven minutes to travel from entry to exit.

I found out almost at once, by making contact prints, that under the orange masking there was indeed blue: but not blue images. Just blue.

There were so many variables in color printing that searching for an image on blank negatives was like walking blindfold through a forest, and although in the end I printed every negative separately and tried every way I knew, I was only partially successful.

I ended, in fact, with thirty-six solid blue oblongs, enlarged to four inches by five and printed four to a sheet, and thirty-six more with greenish blotches here and there.

The only thing one could say, I thought, as I let them wash thoroughly in running water, was that George wouldn't have taken seventy-two pictures of a blue oblong for nothing.

I dried some of the prints and looked at them closely,
and it did seem to me that there were faint darker marks on some of them. Nothing one could plainly see, but something.

When it dawned on me far too late what George had done I was too tired to start all over again. I cleaned up the processor and everything else, and went to bed.

 

Jeremy Folk telephoned early the next morning and asked if I'd been to see my grandmother.

Give me time, I said, and he said I'd had time, and did I remember I had promised?

“Well . . . I'll go,” I said. “Saturday, after Ascot.”

“What have you been doing?” he asked plaintively. “You could have gone any day this week. Don't forget she really is dying.”

“I've been working,” I said. “And printing.”

“From that box?” he said suspiciously.

“Uh huh.”

“Don't do it,” he said, and then, “What have you got?”

“Blue prints. Blue pictures.”

“What?”

“Blue as in blue. Pure deep blue. Forty-seven B.”

“
What
did you say? Are you sober?”

“I am awake and yawning,” I said. “So listen. George Millace screwed a deep blue filter onto his camera and pointed it at a black-and-white picture, and he photographed the black-and-white picture through the blue filter onto color negative film. Forty-seven B is the most intense blue filter you can buy, and I bet that's what he used.”

“You're talking Chinese.”

“I'm talking Millace. Crafty double Millace. Second cousin to double Dutch.”

“You really are drunk.”

“Don't be silly. As soon as I work out how to unscramble the blue, and do it, the next riveting Millace installment will fall into our hands.”

“I seriously think you should burn the lot.”

“Not a chance.”

“You think of it as a game. It isn't a game.”

“No.”

“For God's sake be careful.”

I said I would. One says things like that so easily.

 

I went to Wincanton races in Wiltshire and rode twice for Harold and three times for other people. The day was dry with a sharp wind that brought tears to the eyes, tears which the standard of racing did nothing to dispel, since all the good horses had cried off and gone to Newbury or Ascot instead, leaving chances for the blundering majority. I fumbled and booted my way around five times in safety, and in the novice 'chase, owing to most of the field having fallen over each other at the first open ditch, found myself finishing in front, all alone.

My mount's thin little trainer greeted my return with a huge grin, tear-filled eyes and blue dripping nose.

“By gum, lad, well done. By gum, it's bloody cold. Get thee in and weighed. Don't stand about. By gum, then, that was a bit of all right, wasn't it, all them others falling?”

“You'd schooled yours a treat,” I said, pulling off the saddle. “He jumped great.”

His mouth nearly split its sides with pleasure. “By gum, lad, he'd jump Aintree, the way he went today. Get thee in. Get thee in.”

I went in and weighed, and changed and weighed out, and raced, and returned, and changed and weighed . . .

There had been a time, when it was all new, that my heart had pumped madly every time I walked from the changing room to the parade ring, every time I cantered to the start. After ten years my heart pumped above normal only for the big ones, the Grand National and so on, and then only if my horse had a reasonable chance. The once-fiendish excitement had turned to routine.

Bad weather, long journeys, disappointments and
injuries had at first been shrugged off as “part of the job.” After ten years I saw that they
were
the job. The peaks, the winners, those were the bonuses.

The tools of my trade were a liking for speed and a liking for horses, and the power to combine those two feelings. Also strong bones, an ability to bounce, and a tendency to mend quickly when I didn't.

None of those tools, except probably the liking for horses, would be of the slightest use to me as a photographer.

I walked irritably out to my car at the end of the afternoon. I didn't want to be a photographer. I wanted to remain a jockey. I wanted to stay where I was, in the known; not to step irrevocably into the future. I wanted things to go on as they were, and not to change.

 

Early the following morning Clare Bergen appeared on my doorstep accompanied by a dark young man whose fingertips in a handshake almost tingled with energy. Publishers, I had vaguely supposed, were portly father figures. Another out-of-date illusion gone bust.

Clare herself had come in a bright woolly hat, bright scarf, afghan sheepskin jacket, yellow ski pants and huge fleece-lined boots. Ah well, I thought, she would only frighten half of the horses. The nervous half.

I drove them up onto the Downs in the Land Rover borrowed from Harold for the occasion, and we watched a few strings work. Then I drove them round the village, pointing out which trainers lived where. Then I took them back to the cottage for coffee and cogitation.

The publisher said he would like to poke round a little on foot, and walked off. Clare drank her second steaming cup and said how on earth did we bear it with a wind like that sawing everyone in half.

“It always seems to be windy here,” I agreed, thinking about it.

“All those naked hills.”

“Good for horses.”

“I don't think I've ever actually touched a horse.” She looked faintly surprised. “Most of the people I know despise horse people.”

“Everyone likes to feel superior,” I said, uninsulted. “Particularly when they aren't.”

“Ouch,” she said. “That's a damned fast riposte.”

I smiled. “You'd be surprised the sort of hate that gets aimed at horses. Anything from sneers to hysteria.”

“And you don't mind?”

“What those people feel is their problem, not mine.”

She looked at me straightly with the wide gray eyes.

“What hurts you?” she said.

“People saying I jumped overboard when I went down with the ship.”

“Er . . . what?”

“People saying I fell off when it was the horse which fell, and took me with it.”

“And there's a distinction?”

“Most important.”

“You're having me on,” she said.

“A bit.” I took her empty cup and put it in the dishwasher. “So what hurts you?”

She blinked, but after a pause she answered. “Being thought to be a fool.”

“That,” I said, “is a piercingly truthful reply.”

She looked away from me as if embarrassed, and said she liked the cottage and the kitchen and could she borrow the bathroom. She emerged from there shortly minus the woolly hat and plus some fresh lipstick and asked if the rest of the house was on a par.

“You want to see it?” I said.

“Love to.”

I showed her the sitting room, the bedroom, and finally the darkroom. “And that's all,” I said.

She turned slowly from the darkroom to where I stood behind her in the hall.

“You said you took photographs.”

“Yes, I do.”

“But I thought you meant . . .” She frowned. “Mother said I was short with you when you offered . . . but I'd no idea . . .”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “It's quite all right.”

“Well . . . can I see them?”

“If you like. They're in that filing cabinet over there.”

I pulled open one of the drawers and sorted through the folders. “Here you are, Lambourn village.”

“What are all those others?” she said.

“Just pictures.”

“What of?”

“Fifteen years.”

She looked at me sharply as if I wasn't making sense, so I added, “Since I owned my own camera.”

“Oh.” She looked along the tags on the folders, reading aloud, “America, France, Children, Harold's Place, Jockey's Life . . . What's Jockey's Life?”

“Just everyday living, if you're a jockey.”

“Can I look?”

“Sure.”

She eased the well-filled folder out of the drawer and peeped inside. Then she carried it away towards the kitchen and I followed with the pictures of Lambourn.

She laid the folder she carried on the kitchen table and opened it, and went through the bulky contents picture by picture, steadily and frowning. No comments.

“Can I see Lambourn?” she said.

I gave her Lambourn, and she looked through those also in silence.

“I know they're not marvelous,” I said mildly. “You don't have to rack your brains for something kind to say.”

She looked up at me fiercely. “You're lying. You know damned well they're good.”

She closed the Lambourn file and drummed her fingers
on it. “I can't see why we can't use these,” she said. “But it's not my decision, of course.”

She fished into her large brown handbag and came up with cigarettes and a lighter. She put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it, and I noticed with surprise that her fingers were trembling. What on earth, I wondered, could have made her nervous? Something had disturbed her deeply, because all the glittery extrovert surface had vanished, and what I saw was a dark-haired young woman concentrating acutely on the thoughts in her head.

She took several deep inhaling breaths of smoke, and looked unseeingly at her fingers, which went on trembling.

“What's the matter?” I said at last.

“Nothing.” She gave me a quick glance and looked away, and said, “I've been looking for something like you.”

“Something?” I echoed, puzzled.

“Mm.” She tapped off some ash. “Mother told you, didn't she, that I wanted to be a publisher?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Most people smile, because I'm still young. But I've worked in publishing for five years . . . and I know what I'm doing.”

“I don't doubt it.”

“No . . . but I need . . . I want . . . I need to make a book that will establish my own personal reputation in publishing. I need to be known as the person who produced such-and-such a book. A very successful book. Then my future will be assured. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“So I've been looking for that book for a year or two now. Looking and despairing, because what I want is exceptional. And now . . .” She took a deep breath. “Now I've found it.”

“But,” I said, puzzled, “Lambourn's not news, and anyway I thought it was your boss's book . . .”

“Not that, you fool,” she said. “This.” She put her hand on the Jockey's Life folder. “The pictures in here. They don't need a text. They tell the story on their own.” She drew on the cigarette. “Arranged in the right order . . . presented as a way of living . . . as an autobiography, a social comment, an insight into human nature . . . as well as how an industry works . . . it'll make a spectacular change from flowers and fish.”

“The flowers sold about two million copies, didn't they?”

“You don't believe me, do you?” she demanded. “You simply don't see . . .” She broke off and frowned. “You haven't had any of these photographs published before, have you? In papers or magazines, or anywhere?”

I shook my head. “Nowhere. I've never tried.”

“You're amazing. You have this talent, and you don't use it.”

“But . . . everyone takes photographs.”

“Sure they do. But not everyone takes a long series of photographs which illustrate a whole way of life.” She tapped off the ash. “It's all there, isn't it? The hard work, the dedication, the bad weather, the humdrum, the triumphs, the pain . . . I've only looked through these pictures once, and in no sort of order and I know what your life's like. I know it
intimately
. Because that's how you've photographed it. I know your life from inside. I see what you've seen. I see the enthusiasm in those owners. I see their variety. I see what you owe to the stable lads. I see the worry of trainers, it's everywhere. I see the laughter in jockeys, and the stoicism. I see what you've felt. I see what you've understood about people. I see people in a way I hadn't before, because of what you've seen.”

“I didn't know,” I said slowly, “that these pictures were quite so revealing.”