The Photographer's Wife (11 page)

Sophie laughs and then, switching the camera to silent mode as she does so, heads around the back to peer into the make-up room.

Inside, she finds the three models that
Now
has chosen for today’s shoot. There are two women, the ferocious mixed-race Eddi Day, whom she has worked with before, and a new, skinny, slightly green-tinged blonde creature. The guy is of the stunning-but-dumb looking genre, with thick eyebrows which are so horizontal you could use them as a spirit level. He looks a bit like a young, built Colin Farrell.

Sophie raises the camera and takes a few rear-photos of Butch powdering his nose in the mirror, one of Eddi Day checking her nasal passages, and one of Miss Skinny’s boney hand ripping off a tiny chunk of croissant and putting it to her lips. Judging from her lack of body fat, or indeed body, this is the first bit of nourishment to pass those lips this year.

Silently, Sophie edges into the room. She sees that Butch has now noticed her presence – he grins at her but continues to powder his nose. Sophie hopes that
Now
won’t be wanting any smiley shots, because his grin is frankly creepy. But he doesn’t say anything, which is good because Sophie knows that as soon as Day spots her presence, this session will be over.

“Did they choose you for that Monsoon shoot in the end?” Day is asking Skinny.

“Nah. They chose some anorexic redhead,” Skinny replies, and Sophie pulls a face as she tries to imagine what a model who
Skinny
considers anorexic might look like. Auschwitz imagery comes to mind.

Sophie edges along the right hand wall and manages to take a series of photos of the three models all in profile, all peering into their mirrors but with a different face in focus in each shot. If they work, it could make a great triptych.

And then Butch, damn him, says, "So, what are those for?” and Eddi Day turns to face Sophie with one of the most terrifying scowls she has ever seen.
No one even imagines that models can look like this,
Sophie thinks, managing to snap three more shots as she lowers the camera.

“What the fuck?” Eddi Day snarls.

“They’re just for me,” Sophie says.

“Fuck that,” Eddi Day spits. “That’s not in the contract.”

“Calm down. This isn’t work,” Sophie says. “As I said, they’re just for me.”

“They had better be,” Eddi says. “Or I will sue the arse off you.”

Skinny turns to look at her now and nods exaggeratedly. “Me too,” she says.

Butch shrugs. “I don’t mind,” he says, sending Sophie a wink. “Shoot away.”

***

When Brett arrives at Sophie’s flat on Saturday morning, the screen of her twenty-seven inch iMac is filled with the gruesomely curled lip of Eddi Day.

Brett hangs his coat up, then crosses the room and leans in to kiss Sophie’s neck. “Gees!” he exclaims, performing a double take. “Who’s that?”

“Eddi Day,” Sophie says.

“And who might Eddi Day be?”

Sophie laughs. “You know Eddi Day even if you don’t realise it. You just never saw her like this before.”

She clicks a few times on the mouse and finds an online advert for Noméa anti-ageing cream.

“Oh, the face of Noméa, huh?”

“Yep.”

“And she’s moving into horror movies or what?”

Sophie snorts and restores her stolen photo. “A bit of a shocker, right?”

“A bit of an understatement. And she has wrinkles!” he says, pointing at the fine lines around her eyes.

“She
is
thirty-five,” Sophie says. “I have to Photoshop them out these days.”

“But she still does the adverts for anti-wrinkle cream, right?”

“Exactly. That’s why I Photoshop them out.”

"So, w’happen?” Brett asks, walking over to the kitchen and pouring himself a mug of coffee. “You hit the shutter button by accident?”

“No, I’ve been mucking around. Looking for an angle, as you would say,” Sophie explains.

“And?”

“This is part of an idea I had. The hidden side of the fashion industry. That’s my big idea. Well, currently it is anyway.”

Brett leans back against the kitchen worktop and smiles. “Nah, that’s not a big idea. That’s just you being lazy. Thinking you can take a few extra shots while you’re at work and call it art.”

Sophie leans back in her chair and swivels gently from side to side as she studies the photo. She feels vaguely mesmerised by Eddi Day’s scowl, specifically by the blob of saliva in the corner of her curled lip. “Art is all about the explanation you put on it,” she says. “If you explain it in the right way, it becomes art.”

“Hum,” Brett says, sounding sarcastic. “Now let me see. Didn’t a certain Anthony Marsden say something different. Wasn’t his catchphrase something about–”

“Well, that was Dad being clever,” Sophie interrupts. “Saying that art wasn’t meant to be explained, that it was just meant to be looked at... well, that was Dad’s clever deconstructionist explanation of what art is, wasn’t it? It was a double bluff.”

“If you say so.”

“But seriously, Brett, look at this. There’s something magnificent here, don’t you think? Imagine this blown up to three by three. Metres that is, not feet. Or more. Maybe five by five. You’d be able to see every pore. Every blackhead.”

“It would be awesome,” Brett says, “And she’d sue the ass off you.”

“Her exact words, in fact.”

“Uh?”

“That’s what she said when I took the photo. That she’d sue the ass off me if I used it. Well, she said ‘earse’, actually,” Sophie says, doing a Liverpool accent. “She’s from Runcorn, not New York, so...”

“So, you really
can’t
use it?”

“Not this one, no. But I could probably get auth for some of them. Look at these.” She fiddles with the mouse until the screen is displaying the first of her three triple-profile photos, now converted to high contrast black and white. “Well, come on!”

Brett sidles over and crouches down beside her and Sophie clicks through the three almost identical photos of the three models doing their makeup, the focus moving with each click from one face to the next. “I was imagining a huge triptych.”

“It’s kind of cool when you click through them like that,” Brett says. “Video might be the way to go.”

“Yes. You’re right.”

“Is he actually powdering his nose?”

“He is.”

“Wow.”

“And that’s just the first layer. The makeup artist came just after that and plastered them all with foundation. Look.” She shows Brett a series of photos showing the makeup artist applying foundation from a spray gun.

“Wow!” Brett laughs. “They literally spray it on.”

“Literally.”

“And the final result?”

Sophie lines up two photos side-by-side, one of Eddi Day in a
Now
black skirt and a sleeveless, orange, cable-knit jumper, and one of Patrick (Butch’s real name turned out to be Patrick Evans) wearing an off-the-peg, grey, three-piece suit with a white, round-collared shirt and a skinny, pink tie.

“Huh!” Brett exclaims. “Foundation suits him. Nice suit too. Who’s is that?”

“Now,” Sophie says.

“Now?”

“The high-street chain, yeah.”

“Their suits don’t look like that in the window.”

Sophie grins and bites her bottom lip. For once, she is the expert here and she’s enjoying it. She’s loving being able to reveal the secrets of the fashion world to Brett. “Look at this,” she says, selecting a different photo of Patrick taken from behind.

“What
are
those?” Brett asks. “Clothes pegs?”

“Yep,” Sophie says. “That’s how you get a
Now
suit to look good on a gym built model. Pegs all down the back so that the front hangs right. And if you look closely...” She chooses another photo taken from behind. In this one, Patrick is wearing only the trousers and the satin-backed waistcoat. Sophie zooms in on the waistband of the trousers. “You can see that they actually had to unstitch the waistband, yeah?”

“Because it was the wrong size? Or he has exceptionally big buns? What?”

“The fashion is skinnier this year than they expected. So to make the suit look skinnier they’ve pegged the jacket to pull the waist in and used an undersized pair of trousers. But to get him into them, they had to unpick the seams.”

“So, if this guy goes into a branch of
Now
and buys this same suit–”

“It will look like shit,” Sophie confirms.

“That’s crazy.”

“Plus of course, I still need to Photoshop it.”

“More nasal hair, huh?”

“No. But his left eyebrow is thicker than the right one, see? So I’ll even that up. And I’ll get rid of some of these creases here...” Sophie runs her finger down the inner thigh of Patrick’s trousers. “I’ll whiten everyone’s teeth too.”

“And we wonder why we never look like the people in the ads,” Brett says.

“I know. And I know I can’t use these because they’re professional models and everything, but if I did the same thing with some non-professionals... paid them for their time and did double shots, you know, before all the trickery and after... do a whole series of them showing the pegs and the foundation-from-a-can and the Photoshop stuff, don’t you think it could be cool?”

“Hum,” Brett says.

“Hum?”

“Yeah. Hum.”

“Hum what?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“OK, I see two problems. The first is that it’s a news item, not art. It’s a myth buster and it’s interesting... it’s, it’s...
liberating
, even. But it’s not art.”

“Surely that depends how good the photos–”

“There’s still too much narrative. It’s too useful. Too literal.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, Hon.”

“And the second thing? You said you saw two problems.”

“Oh yeah. You’d never work in the fashion industry again.”

“No,” Sophie says. “No, I thought about that.”

“So,” Brett says.

“So?”

“So, are you gonna suck my dick or aren’t you?” he asks, his sexy leer suddenly back.

Sophie sighs, rubs her brow, then tears her eyes away from the screen. “Hum,” she says.

“Gee, thanks for the enthusiasm.”

“Hey, you can’t blow my entire project out of the water and then expect me to–”

“To
blow
me?”

“Exactly.”

“OK! Then it’s a great idea!” Brett says. “It’s so good, I’ll bet they give you a one man show at the Tate Modern.”

Sophie frowns at him.

“So,
now
will you suck my dick?” Brett asks.

1951 - Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Tony glances up at Barbara, his brow furrowed. He is crouched beside the motorbike with a soapy sponge in his hand. Barbara has waited until this moment to make her announcement, because, due to the fact that Tony has his hands full and can’t run away or strangle her, she somehow feels safer.

“What?”
he says.

“I think you heard me,” Barbara says quietly.

“I
heard
you,” Tony says. “But I don’t know what that means.”

“You know,” Barbara says. “My woman’s trouble. It happens once a month. Only it didn’t this time.”

“I still don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Tony says. “Are you ill? Do you need to see a quack?”

Barbara covers her mouth with her hand and murmurs, “Oh Tony.”

“You’re not trying to say... you don’t mean...” Tony coughs. “You’re not, you know...” he says, nodding at her belly. “Are you?”

Barbara nods vaguely.

“You are?”

“I think so.”

“But we haven’t even been trying,” Tony says.

Barbara clears her throat. “I know. That’s what I thought. But I don’t think you need to actually try. I think you just need to do... you know... what we’ve
been
doing.”

“Jesus!” Tony says.

“Please don’t swear.”

“I know. But... blimey. Just like that? Did you do it on purpose? Did you do it to get me to marry you?”

Barbara frowns deeply and licks her lips. She shrugs. “Of course not. Did
you?”

“Don’t be stupid. Bloody hell, Barbara! I can’t believe you’re telling me this. Not this way.”

“So you’re upset,” Barbara says. “I thought you might be pleased.”

“Pleased?!” Tony splutters. “I don’t know what I bloody am.”

Barbara turns and strides back into Donnybrook, then runs upstairs to her room on the top floor. She pulls the door closed and throws herself upon the bed.

Were she someone who cried, she would cry. But unlike her sister, Barbara isn’t someone who cries. Even when she wants to, she can’t. Because she’s fully expecting Tony to follow her and she wants him to see how upset she is, she wets her finger and rubs it down the crease of her nose. She wants him to take her in his arms and tell her that it’s all going to be OK.

Though she understood that she
could
get pregnant, she honestly didn’t think it could happen so quickly, so easily. She didn’t quite understand what the term, “trying for a baby” meant, but along with Tony, she did in some way imagine that you had to at least
want
to get pregnant for it to happen. But perhaps secretly she did.

When her period had failed to materialise, she’d been unable to believe it was true, had assumed that there must be some other explanation. But with Glenda holding her hand, she had gone to the local library and together they had read through that well-thumbed pamphlet. Her tiredness, her nausea, her tender breasts... the conclusion was unavoidable.

These last two weeks have been horrific. She has alternated between having thrilling visions of the perfect white wedding she and Tony will now be forced to have (Tony has repeatedly said he’s in no hurry but now the hurry has arrived of its own free will) and more often, feelings of sheer terror: the terror of the dark street and the coat-hanger. Or the terror of a trip to a convent somewhere in Wales, as happened to her schoolfriend Valery. For those are the only possible outcomes she can think of.

After almost an hour, Barbara stands and crosses to the window. Outside she can see the motorbike, but Tony is no longer there.