Geoffrey had thought of Vanessa lying up there in the
cemetery under the sugary marble angel, which he’d chosen with
care and come to hate, as he let the heavy linen bag drop into the
churning flood. Much better if Ophelia-like she vanished with
the current, cast into the flow, to be one with the stones and
indifferent water. It was the river, after all, that had killed her —
he and the river, in spite of all that was said. The doctor was so
cocksure that diphtheria would have taken hold, even without the
wetting, but Geoffrey knew otherwise. His heart insisted on guilt.

He’d never take another photograph of a woman, clothed or naked; he was sure of that. Oh, he had tried to — had at least
hung out his slate again, got the photographic studio
re-established when the first paralysis of grief had passed and he
was left sifting the ashes of loss, over and over, in the awfulness
of desolation. But each occasion had been the same. Strong in
determination to master the demon, he would position the
subject — ‘Arm a little this way’, ‘To the left’, ‘Head more to one
side’, ‘Relax your fingers on the chair back’ and then, as he
arranged a ringlet on a shoulder, or picked up a dropped glove,
the drift of woman’s scent, maybe mixed with lily-of-the-valley
bath salts or lavender water, or the sight of the soft bloom on a cheek, or light on a buttoned boot, would take hold again and,
impossible to dislodge, it would stab at his entrails over and over.

Brandy was the only opiate. A quarter of a bottle and the
pain mellowed, half and it was almost gone, more and there was
oblivion. And next morning waking with a hangover that seemed
to have cracked his skull in half, and mouth hot and dry.

Somehow Geoffrey had dragged his way out of it, refusing
to take any more portraits of women, avoiding what he called to
himself ‘the occasions of sin’ — those blistering moments when
some trivial sight or smell reminding him of Vanessa unleashed
the furies.