PICTURES TAKEN ON A BOX CAMERA

I arrived on the four-thirty train and fully intended to stay on board, go to the end of the line, and shunt back; but how could I do that without feeling like an utter fool, a total coward? How could I travel back to where I started without doing what I set out to do? Alighting with a mass of excited schoolchildren, and a hoard of hopeful-looking adults eager to join their families for the holidays, I held back.

The platform cleared and I could see the ground stretched like graph paper before me, up to the main exit. Out there, a taxi would take me to her. There were three left on the rank. The man quickly put my bag – my bag with its telling contents – in the boot. It started to rain. My directions made no sense to him. I had to explain it was a bit out of town, so he looked me up and down to determine whether I could afford it. Getting into the car, into the remnant stink of a thousand passengers, with damp shoulders and too-tight shoes, I felt even less like the drive out to Duncan Close.

She was playing Finlandia in the studio. Loud; so loud she would not hear either my knock or the bell. Leaving my case sheltered in the doorway, I hitched up my coat collar, pulled my hat lower over forehead and eyes, and stepped out to the back, past the garage. I got to the wide wooden doors to the choir singing Be Still my Soul. An emotional arrival to an appropriate accompaniment. It would have been funny if it were not such a cliché.

The staccato trumpet accompanied my knock. I waited, and slapped my palm against the wood. I would be soaked if she took any longer.

A narrow shaft of yellow light shimmered on the ground.

‘Clement!’ Her head appeared sideways. She stepped back quickly.

It was so warm in the studio it felt as if I’d walked into a bakery or forge or tannery; but the smell, the smell, was all about her. She ran back to the gramophone and turned it off. I watched her light movement, the way her hair moved.

‘Clement, what are you doing here?’

‘Hello to you too. I’m feeling good, thank you. So how are things, Evelyn?’ The smell of paint, the acrid presence of turpentine, the heaviness of linseed oil made me sneeze.

‘Oh god, come in. You’re soaked.’ My response had made her smile. ‘Come to the fire. How marvellous to see you!’ She took my coat and draped it over a chair. ‘I … how … I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I almost stayed on the train. I wasn’t at all sure you’d even be here.’

‘Where else would I be.’ The hint of humour in her eyes said it; there were a hundred places she could have been. ‘Doris and Edgar did ask me to go to them for a week or so, but I didn’t think I could bear her for that long, so I said no. Besides – their guest bedrooms are like ice boxes.’

‘Cold? But your sister is perfect. Surely she has a flawless house.’ I just voiced the mockery in her head.

‘She thinks it’s perfect, and there’s the rub.’

I looked around, for a second distracted from the roaring fire, its snaps and crackles, its belching warmth. Half the studio was in semi-darkness, looking burnished and festive and ghostly, all at once. She had a tree there, half-hung with stars and bells.

‘What are you working on?’ For an instant, it was as if the choir I heard as I approached the converted stables was still in my head. My words seemed chanted or sung.

‘Oh, you know … Fabienne’s portrait, a small landscape, and one of those still lives that sell like crazy, for reasons I could never fathom.’

‘All that. How old is Fabienne now?’

‘Nearly twelve – but Doris and Edgar treat her like she’s five.’ She shrugged. ‘Clement, you must eat something. You must have a drink. Let’s go to the house. There’s a fire laid in the sitting room. You could put a match to that!’ She made me sound like some sort of pyromaniac.

She wiped hands hastily on a streaked rag, pulled off her leather apron, stood a guard in front of the fire, and led us out across the gravel breezeway, which once must have rustled and clanged with equine business.

I did not expect the house to be in such darkness. A small lamp glowed in the passage past the mud room, but that was all. She levered brass switches as she passed. By the time we reached the small front sitting room, she seemed half out of breath and the house was bright.

‘I’ll pour us both a drink. Please do your magic with the fire.’

As she said, there was a perfectly-laid pyramid of kindling and splinters, wedges and logs just waiting to be sparked. Someone had placed tightly wadded balls of newspaper at the bottom. Certainly not Evelyn.

‘Do you have news? It’s ages since I’ve been anywhere.’ She handed me a tumbler of whisky and water, and waited until I stood up.

The fire started slowly, with small reluctant flames licking at the newspaper and kindling. ‘I haven’t done much else but write.’

‘What are you working on?’

We were skirting what had kept us apart for so long, for almost a year, ignoring the issue that sat there in the room with us, large and cold and threatening. We had not looked in each other’s eyes since I arrived.

‘I thought you knew. I’m writing Samuel’s biography.’

She grimaced and turned her eyes away. ‘Goodness, Clement.’

No one could blame her for sounding shocked. She qualified her startled statement. ‘Anyone with less … um … patience? Endurance? Anyone else would baulk at … the reams and reams of stuff he must have left behind.’

‘It’s hard work. Your cousin’s tiny handwriting, and his way with words … but the photographs are interesting.’

She looked round so fast it was as if her hair flew in a breeze. ‘Photos?’

What did I see in her eyes? It was unusual for Evelyn to disclose intimate sentiments. One received warmth, hospitable cordiality, perhaps hints of pathos when recounting something, elegant conviviality at parties and gatherings; but never naked emotion, unrehearsed and candid.

‘Look, there’s a ham on the kitchen table. Um …’ Her hands fell into a fidget. ‘Shall we rustle up some sandwiches?’

It was surprising. ‘Is your housekeeper …?’

‘They’re all away on a week’s holiday. I gave them all a break. Is it a sin to want to be alone once in a while? I didn’t even bother with Christmas this year.’

‘I saw you had a tree, half done.’

‘Everything in my life seems half-done.’ She laughed. ‘I just needed to be alone.’

I stepped back. ‘Oh. Perhaps I should go then.’

‘Don’t be silly, Clement. You’re always welcome, whether Mrs Cortis is here or not. Making a sandwich won’t kill us. This is nineteen forty-nine, not the Middle Ages.’

‘But …’

‘You can have the green room. I’m sure the bed up there’s made up.’

‘I’ve stayed in it before.’ After her wedding, before her divorce.

She remembered.

The bread was very fresh, and the butter, because of the vicinity of Dollery’s farm, was wonderful. Evelyn uncovered part of the ham, which stood on a large Victorian porcelain stand, in a pattern that also ornamented the teapot and some of the cups, and proceeded to cut large thin slices.

‘Father taught me to do this,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘We even had ham in the war, because of his … Please – sit down, Clement, and butter some bread. There’s mustard somewhere.’ Her laugh was musical, what I had looked forward to, what I had dreaded; yet it contained something forced, something that came from that startled look when I mentioned Samuel’s photos.

The kettle on the range was always close to the boil. She put tealeaves in the large pot. I must say I was cheered and comforted by the food and the excellent tea. The kitchen was almost too warm. My trouser cuffs dried and I felt once more human, at ease. Evelyn stood and bustled about.

‘Let me help with clearing up.’

‘I won’t hear of it. But you must tell me about Samuel’s photographs.’ She laughed. ‘I’d hazard a guess people are hardly recognizable.’

So that was what she was afraid of. Visual evidence of whatever had gone on between her and Samuel, when we were all younger, and all thrown together by circumstance. I thought I would tease her for a while, and mention a few names, and that of Samuel, to see her squirm a little for old times’ sake.

It is true what they say about revenge being a meal best served cold, but I could not do it. How could I put her through that kind of torture, just for petty satisfaction, so many years down the track? What was she now; twenty-nine, thirty-two, or something? No, I could not do it. ‘No people to speak of, Evelyn, except for old Gregson the butler in one of them, looking dreadfully old. And Lady Froggatt.’

‘Oh gosh – it’s ages since Samuel’s mother died. Remember we called her Auntie Mite? She went in the war. Before – no, after – my … after Reggie and I got married.’

‘Yes.’

‘No people, then … but you said there were a lot of photos.’

‘Dozens. Boxes full.’

She slowed down, holding a dish she was drying. Her gaze went past me to the curtained window, as if she could look through it and beyond. The rain had stopped, and I could hear the wind, whistling past the thick walls of the stables-turned-studio. She was dying to ask, and yet kept her words in check. It was a miracle to watch.

Back in the sitting room, she poured us another whisky and water, without asking first. So I held the tumbler and looked at the fire through it; a mass of well-behaved flames dying down within crystal diamonds and the amber liquid I held at a tilt.

There was a moment I thought she would speak, say something about her divorce, about Reggie, about Samuel, but she stayed silent.

‘Owls.’

She looked at me strangely, and I could see her mind wrestle with my single clearly-uttered word. She did not repeat it.

‘That’s what’s in the photos, Evelyn. Many, many owls. Some – surprisingly – photographed during the day. Most, in moonlight. Great clear shafts of moonlight with big night owls caught forever in that mysterious stare of theirs. They stare, with eyes like saucers. Or pouncing on some poor creature, some prey, in the clear light of day.’

‘Owls – during the day?’

I could see she hid her relief underneath the new subject, eager to discuss the birds, now that the anxiety that I could have discovered something about her and Samuel, about her and any other young person milling around us all those two summers, was past. We were all in love with her. I milled and mooned around her for two years – she knew that. That she married Reggie Lonsdale in the end surprised us all; perhaps even Evelyn herself a bit. But no one guessed the depth and length of Samuel’s obsession.

‘He was obsessed with owls, apparently.’ I used the word in my head; a stupid thing to do. A purposeful thing to do. It was the same resolve that put me on that train and got me there. But I too dived into the owl thing, using it as a kind of diversion. ‘I took the pictures to a local birdwatcher. I think there’s an avid birdwatcher in every single village, isn’t there? Don’t you think?’

She nodded.

‘He told me there are some kinds of owls that hunt during the day. He pointed them out in the pictures. Pygmy owls, hawk owls, he said, tapping his fingers and his folded glasses on the photos. He was a weird bird himself.’

‘We have a big one … a big owl, or at least I think it’s always the same one. I see it when I cross back from the studio some nights.’ Evelyn held up her hands. ‘About this high, with a big white face.’

‘A barn owl?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. To someone like me, owls are owls. I don’t know much about birds. Did you bring the photos with you?’

She sensed I did. She knew I would not have taken a train halfway across the country just to talk about photos. This was about Samuel. About how he died. About how it was high time we talked about things and got on with life. How it was about time she understood his feelings for her.

We sat across from each other near the fire, in elegant matching armchairs, on her exotic silk rug, imported from goodness knew where. It took only about ten minutes before the photos were scattered in front of us, all over a small low table she drew up.

‘Goodness. Birds, birds, birds. I had no idea he had such a fascination for owls.’

I spoke from experience when I said, ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? We think we know someone well, intimately, even … think we know everything about them, and—’

She did not let me finish. ‘And there are aspects we have no idea about. Perhaps things they kept from us.’ She lined up six or seven pictures, drew a finger across their jagged edges. ‘He had that box camera I liked, in a brown case. Fascinating, because it was carried around easily, without an easel or tripod or anything.’

‘Portable, they call them.’

‘But I had no … Look, Clement. All these owls. What did your man say? Hawk owls? Pygmy owls? Night owls? This one here is surely a barn owl – it’s like the one I see here, outside.’ All of a sudden she was sure. She turned the picture around, and I looked. A shaft of moonlight, an owl in full flight, white face splendid in the night, but flawed. It was blurred, out of balance. I looked, and then I saw it. It was such a shock I bit the side of my lip. I wondered if she had seen it too.

For a minute, neither of us spoke.

The fire did. It was dying down, and cracked and hissed at us in the silence we had created.

I swallowed hard. Stupefied. Confused, I was, that I had not noticed it before. I had been through those photos a hundred times, shuffling them like playing cards, wondering whether they held anything worth putting into Samuel’s biography. Was that not why I brought them to her, to poke cruel barbs at her; to show she knew less than she thought about him? Samuel Quintrell, financier and philanthropist, whose life could not go unwritten.

How could I have missed it?

She picked it up. A perfect square of black and white and grey, which contained – which illustrated – why things had gone the way they did for all of us. I wondered if there were others that pictured the fate Evelyn had pushed us towards. But no, no; they were all about owls, some perfectly taken, others lacking balance or perspective, or enough light. Twisting her wrist, she looked at the back of it, then turned over a number of the photos lying on the table.

‘None of them have dates or anything on the back. But this one …’

I could see a large pencilled X on the back of the one she held.

‘Only that one?’ I did not allow my voice to be anything but normal; what I hoped sounded even-keeled, composed, unshaken. Was this why I took that train?

‘Yes.’

That was when she saw it. Past the badly-focused owl, past the branch of birch it had flown from, a couple, tiny, in the distance, embracing. Silhouettes, but silhouettes whose clear focus indicated they were what the photo was all about.

‘Goodness, Clement. It’s me. And Samuel, isn’t it?’ Her voice was hoarse.

I had to say something. ‘I think Samuel took it, Evelyn.’

I saw her swallow. ‘Where is this? It’s not here, not Duncan Close. Where were we?’

‘Auntie Mite’s, I think … that summer.’

‘The … when … when Reggie and I got engaged. This is me … and Reggie.’ Her wrist twisted again. She looked at front and back of the photo Samuel took that so devastated him.

I rose and pushed the poker into the heart of the fire, so sparks flew and a few flames rose. I looked into the glow, the radiance, letting Evelyn summon her wits, understand why I was there. Why someone had to tell her.

In silence, I picked up the empty glasses and took them into the kitchen. In the morning, we might talk. In the clear light of day, we might rake through the ashes of what was and why Samuel was no more. Of why I had to put down a book about his life, his generosity, the kind of steadfast, loyal, passionate man he was. Of why he took his life in such a neat, sec, devastating way.

I put the crystal glasses down on the draining board without making a sound. In the morning, we might talk. I heard her soft sobs, her long intake of breath. In the morning, she would have calmed down.

In the morning, I would be on that train before she was up.

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