Shane Ian Murphy: The Photograph Leda Did Not Take — A Cambridge Story

Fiction set around an imagined Cambridge market. The characters, photography group and exhibition are invented.

Leda had promised herself one good photograph before the exhibition deadline. She had taken four hundred and eighty-three bad ones, although she preferred the word exploratory.

The local photography group had booked the library wall for a month. Each member could submit one image. Most had submitted sunsets, birds, or dramatic studies of rust. Leda had photographed all three and somehow made each look impatient.

“Stop hunting,” her brother said. “You look like you're trying to catch a bus with a lens.”

He could say that. His photographs were effortless, or appeared so, which Leda found more irritating.

On Sunday, she went to the old market carrying her camera, a spare battery, and the determination to be receptive. She told herself this while rejecting a puddle, a stack of baskets, and a dog whose owner insisted it would smile on command.

At the far end of the market stood a shuttered shop with a deep doorway. An elderly woman had set a folding chair there. Beside her stood a boy holding a paper crown.

They were looking upward.

Leda followed their gaze. A narrow strip of sun had reached the wall above them, where two swallows were building a nest beneath a broken sign. One bird arrived with a strand of grass too long for its purpose. The grass swung against the wall like an awkward ribbon.

The boy laughed. The woman lifted her hands to demonstrate something, perhaps the bird's flight, perhaps an old dance. The paper crown slipped over the boy's eyes. He pushed it back without looking away.

There it was: warmth, geometry, the triangle of their faces, the blue shutter behind them. Leda raised her camera.

Through the viewfinder, she saw the woman's hand tremble. The boy caught it, absentmindedly, as though steadying a cup. Then the woman leaned toward him and said something Leda could not hear.

Leda lowered the camera.

She did not feel noble. She felt annoyed. The light was perfect, and she had been given exactly what she had spent weeks looking for. Yet the small gesture had changed the scene. Taking it now would feel like reaching into someone's pocket because something beautiful had been left near the opening.

She stood there until the woman noticed her.

“Are you after the birds?” she asked.

“I was looking at them.”

“They've been at it all week. Very little progress.”

The boy introduced himself as Kit. The woman was his grandmother, Etta. They had come to watch the nest because Etta's kitchen window faced a brick wall and Kit had decided she should have better entertainment.

The crown was for a party later. He had made it early because he distrusted rushed craftsmanship.

Leda asked whether she could sit on the step. Etta moved her shopping bag.

For twenty minutes, they watched the swallows. Kit explained his theory that one bird was the supervisor because it spent more time criticizing than carrying. Etta said this arrangement was common in every industry.

A gust pulled the long grass from the wall. It drifted into the doorway and landed across Leda's shoe.

“Rejected,” Kit said.

She picked it up. One end was soft and green, the other pale and dry. A tiny bead of mud clung to its middle.

When they left, Etta said, “I hope you get your picture.”

Leda almost explained. Instead she said, “Thank you for the seat.”

At home, she placed the strand of grass on her kitchen table. Afternoon light entered through the window. The grass cast a shadow so delicate that she initially mistook it for a crack in the wood.

She took three photographs. In the first, the shadow disappeared. In the second, the grass looked like evidence. In the third, she moved the camera lower and included the table's worn edge, where years of meals had polished a narrow strip.

That was the photograph she submitted.

She called it Building Material.

On opening night, a man stood before it and asked why anyone would photograph a piece of rubbish. Leda felt herself begin to produce an answer involving fragility, architecture, and the language of ordinary objects.

Then she stopped.

“A bird dropped it,” she said. “I liked the shadow.”

Her brother arrived late and studied the picture for a long time.

“You weren't chasing this one,” he said.

“No.”

“Good.”

Two weeks later, Leda returned to the market without her camera. The nest was finished. From inside came a thin, insistent sound.

Etta's chair was in the doorway. Kit had brought another folding chair and was explaining why the birds deserved a bigger house.

Leda asked if she could join them.

This time, nobody mentioned a photograph.

About the author: Shane Ian Murphy is a former co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Limitless Mobile. This story is a work of fiction.