The Photograph by Penelope Lively Page B

his guard.
    “Did Kath ever know?”
    “Know . . . what?” Glyn is prevaricating. Both of them are well aware of this.
    Elaine gives a tiny shrug, a steely glance.
    “Well, there wasn’t so much to know, was there?” He shoots up his eyebrows, that Glyn expression of deprecation, surprise—whatever is appropriate.
    “Maybe not,” says Elaine. “But did she?”
    “No. She had no idea.”
    Elaine reflects, and decides that this is probably true. There is silence between them. Something has been let loose; she has broken a taboo.
    “Long time ago . . .” says Glyn. He avoids her eye. Is this necessary, for heaven’s sake? An aberration, after all, surely that has long been understood?
    Yes, indeed—time out of mind ago. But not entirely out of mind, and that is what is at issue. We were both there, after all, thinks Elaine; nothing can change that. We are the same people. Up to a point. She watches Glyn; it is astonishing to her that, once, she burned for this man.
    Glyn is experiencing something of the same sensation. Before them both there hangs that time of the Bellbrook garden project. Both shed eighteen years, and see one another again for the first time.
    Elaine sees a muddy wasteland, girdled with Portakabins, littered with bulldozers, piles of bricks and planks. She sees the aerial photograph of the same site before this invasion, which has been handed to her, with its provocative patterning of lines and depressions. She sees the television team that is here to record the shadowy presence of the gardens of a vanished Jacobean mansion discovered on the building site of a new housing estate. And especially she notes the talkative personable presenter of this program in the making. A landscape historian, she has been told—the first time she had heard of such a trade.
    Glyn sees the inviting potential of this unusual site. He assesses the contractors’ crane, from which it is proposed that he should make the opening commentary, with the camera panning away to a bird’s-eye view of the garden’s outlines disappearing beneath the geometry of suburban streets and crescents. And he turns from consideration of subsequent shots to inspection of this expert on garden history and design who has been called in to elucidate the visible evidence. “This is definitely a parterre,” she is saying. “And it looks to me as though the vista runs along that axis. . . .” He steps across, hand outstretched: “Glyn Peters. Great to have you with us. Now. Tell me—”
    She tells. She gets out pencil and paper and sketches a possible design for this extinguished landscape. “Assuming that this pattern is complemented by an identical layout on the other side of the central path, which it must have been, you’ve got the whole thing extending—oh, a couple of hundred yards or more, most of it built over already. I do feel that some sort of central basin and fountain is implied. . . .” Glyn eyes her. He rather likes what he sees. Something in her eyes, and the curve of her mouth. He feels a distinct flare of interest. He is all exuberance and enthusiasm. He lays a hand on her arm: “Wonderful! Thank goodness they brought you in. Listen—let’s take off to the pub while they set up the cameras and then we can really talk.”
    He talks. He is an exhilarating and refreshing companion. They are noticed in the Crown and Cushion of some unmemorable high street. He recounts entertaining anecdotes of filming experience, he is compelling about field systems and drove roads, or so it seemed at the time. Elaine remembers thinking with approval that this is enthusiasm bolstered with the authority of knowledge. This is a man who knows what he is doing. She likes that Welsh intonation too.
    And thus by the time they return to the site there is a definite rapport, an alignment firmer than that required by this transitory professional association. Glyn wonders if he might pick her brains at some point about early park plantings;