“No—I’m the one who should apologize. I was very rude.”
“I won’t stay now. I need time to think, and I’ll come back later.”
Grey said, “After lunch I have to go for physiotherapy. Could you come again tomorrow?”
“It might be possible. Tony’s driving back to London this afternoon, but I could stay.”
“Where are you?”
“We were in a guest house in Kingsbridge last night. I could probably stay another night or two. I’ll arrange something.”
As before, she was not looking at him when they spoke, except in short, darting glimpses through the strands of fine hair. Her eyes had dried but she looked paler than before. He wanted to feel something for her, remember her, but she was a stranger.
Trying to give her something warmer than this cold exchange of arrangements, he said, “Are you sure you still want to talk to me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Tony said that we—I mean you and I—were once …”
“We went out together for a while. It didn’t last long, but it mattered at the time. I’d hoped you would remember.”
“I’m sorry,” Grey said. “I really don’t.”
“Let’s not talk about it now. I’ll come back tomorrow morning. I won’t get upset again.”
Wanting to explain, he said, “It was because you were with Tony Stuhr. I thought you worked for the newspaper.”
“It was the only way I could find out where you were. I didn’t understand the situation.” She had picked up her bag, a canvas holdall with a long strap. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” She had laid one of her long hands lightly on his. “Are you sure you’d like me to?”
“Yes, of course. Come well before lunch.”
“I should have asked you straight away: are you in much pain? I didn’t realize you would be in a wheelchair.”
“I’m better now. Everything happens very slowly.”
“Richard … ?” She still had her fingers resting on the back of his hand. “Are you sure—I mean, you really can’t remember?”
He wanted to turn his hand so that she would touch his palm, but that would be an intimacy he knew he hadn’t deserved. Looking at her large eyes and her clear complexion he felt how easy he must once have found it to be with her. What was she like, this quiet-spoken woman who had once been his girlfriend? What did she know about him? What did he know of her? Why had they split up, when their relationship had mattered to them both? She was from beyond the coma, beyond the pain of ruptured organs and burnt-off skin, from the lost part of his life. But until today he had had no idea she even existed.
He wanted to answer her question truthfully, but something prevented it.
“I’m trying to remember,” he said. “I feel as if I know you.”
Her fingers briefly tightened. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She stood up, went past his chair and out of his sight. He heard her footsteps soft on the carpet, then more distinctly in the corridor outside. Still he could not turn his head, without the pain.
III
Both of Richard Grey’s parents were now dead. He had no brothers or sisters. His only relative was his father’s sister, who was married and living in Australia. After leaving school, Grey went to Brent Technical College, where he took a diploma in photography. While at Brent he enrolled in a BBC training scheme, and when he had won his diploma he went to work at the BBC Television film studios in Ealing as a camera trainee. After a few months he became a camera assistant, working with various crews in the studios and on location. Eventually he graduated to full camera operator.
When he was twenty-four he left the BBC and went to work as a cameraman for an independent news agency based in North London. The agency syndicated its news film throughout the world, but principally to one of the American networks. Most of the news stories he was assigned to were in Britain and Europe, but he traveled several times to the States, to the Far East and Australia, and to Africa. During the 1970s he made several trips to Northern Ireland, covering the troubles there.
He established a reputation for courage. News crews are frequently in the thick of dangerous events, and it takes a particular kind of dedication to continue shooting footage in the middle of a riot or while under fire. Richard Grey had risked his life on several occasions.
He was twice nominated for a BAFTA Award for documentary or news filming, and in 1978 he and his sound recordist were given a special Prix Italia for film reportage of street fighting in Belfast. The commendation read, “For obtaining unique and shocking pictures under conditions of extreme personal danger.” Among his colleagues, Grey was popular, and in spite of his reputation he never found people unwilling to work with him. As his stature grew it was recognized that he was not foolhardy, endangering himself as well as others, but used skill and experience and knew intuitively when a risk could be taken.
Grey lived alone in the apartment he had bought with the money his father had left him. Most of his friends were people he worked with, and because his work involved so much travel he had never settled down with a steady girlfriend. He found it easy to drift from one encounter to the next, never forming ties. When he was not working he often went to the cinema, sometimes to the theater. About once a week he would meet some of his friends for an evening in a pub. He generally took solitary holidays, camping or walking; once he had extended a working trip to the States by renting a car and driving to California.
Apart from the deaths of his parents, there had been only one major disruption to his life, and that had happened about six months before the car bomb.
Richard Grey worked best with film. He liked the weight of an Arriflex, the balance of it, the quiet vibration of the motor. He saw through the reflex viewfinder as if with an extra eye; he sometimes said he could not see properly without it. And there was something about the texture of film itself, the quality of the picture, the subtlety of its effects. The knowledge that film slipped through the gate, halting and advancing, twenty-five times a second gave an intangible extra feel to his work. He was always irritated if people said they could not tell the difference, on television, between a film sequence and one recorded on an electronic camera. It seemed to him that the difference was manifest: video “footage” had an empty quality, a brightness and sharpness that was unnatural and false.
But for a news medium film was slow and unwieldy. Somehow the cans had to be taken to a lab, then to a cutting room. Sound had to be synched in or overdubbed. There were always technical problems during transmission, especially when a local news studio had to be used or if the film had to be sent by satellite to one of the syndicating stations. The difficulties were increased when working abroad or in a war zone; sometimes the only way to get the story out was by taking the unprocessed film to the nearest airport and putting it on a plane to London, New York or Amsterdam.
News networks around the world were changing over to electronic cameras. Using portable satellite dishes, a crew could transmit pictures direct to the studio as they were being shot. There they could be edited electronically and transmitted without delay.
One by one the news crews were going over to video, and it came, inevitably, to Grey. He went on a retraining course and thereafter had to use an electronic camera. For reasons he never really understood, he found it difficult to transfer his skill. He could not “see” without the intervention of film, the silent whirring of the motor. He became self-conscious about the problem, attempting to overcome it by fundamentally rethinking his approach. He tried to adjust his eye so he could see again, a concept to which his colleagues were sympathetic even though most of them were making the same transition successfully. He kept telling himself that technology was a mere instrument, that his ability was innate and not a product of the medium. Even so, he knew he had lost his flair.