The Photographer's Wife (12 page)

She splashes water on her face and heads down to the kitchen, where she finds Joan washing potatoes.

“Mrs Marsden,” she says. “Have you seen Tony?”

Joan pouts and shakes her head. “He went off with Diane, I think. I thought you was with them to be honest. I saw them head off and I thought you was all together or something.”

“No. I was upstairs having a snooze,” Barbara says.

“You OK, love? You look a bit peaky.”

“I think I might be coming down with a cold. I caught a chill when Tony was doing the motorbike, I think,” Barbara lies.

“Well, before you take to your deathbed, how about peeling some spuds for me? I’ve got so much to do today and I’ve barely even started. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get it all done.”

“Sure,” Barbara says, moving to Joan’s side. “I’d be happy to.”

Tony doesn’t return at all that evening, so, to avoid the embarrassment of eating alone with Joan, Barbara walks to the seafront and dines on a bag of chips instead. The pamphlet said she has to eat healthy food full of vitamins if she wants a healthy baby but it can’t matter just yet, can it?

When she gets back to the house, Joan asks her if she’s seen Tony. “You’ve not had a row, have you?” she asks.

“I think he said he had to help Diane with some photo developing or something,” Barbara fibs. “I think I just forgot. Yes. I’m sure he said something like that.”

Joan looks unconvinced but nods all the same. “Do you want some tea? I could knock you something up; can’t have you going to bed on an empty stomach.”

“I had fish and chips, thank-you,” Barbara says. “I might go to bed though. I think I need an early night.”

Barbara lies staring at the cracked ceiling and listens to the wind whistling under the gaps beneath the sash window of her room.

Her thoughts are a-whirl and she doesn’t think she will get a wink of sleep tonight, but as the light fades, her fatigue overtakes her and pulls her into a world of tormented dreams where babies are ripped from their mothers and stacked, on shelves, like jumpers.

She awakens at first light and checks her watch: it’s just before six am. She rises, washes her face and pulls on her clothes.

On her way downstairs, she peers into Tony’s room
–
the bed has not been slept in – and then continues down to the kitchen where she knows Joan will already be preparing breakfast. She discovers Tony leaning in the doorway talking to Joan, who is in the process of shaping potato cakes on the kitchen worktop.

She touches Tony lightly on the shoulder and he jumps and turns to face her. He looks pale and blotchy. His eyes are red too. He reeks of beer.

“Have you been out all night?” she asks him.

“Go on, go to bed,” Joan tells her son.

“But–”

“Go to bed!” she says again, only more sharply this time. “Barbara and I need to have a chat.”

Tony nods and then, without catching her eye even once, squeezes clumsily past her and on down the hallway.

“Is he drunk?” Barbara asks.

“Never mind him,” Joan says. “Come wash these dishes will you?”

Barbara watches Tony swing around the bannister and then vanish from view as he clomps his way upstairs in his motorcycle boots, then turns back to Joan. “OK,” she says. “Of course.”

The countertop to the right of the sink is piled high with dishes from last night’s dinner service, so Barbara extracts a pile of plates and begins to wash them as Joan, beside her, continues to shape the potato cakes.

“So Tony thinks you’re up the duff,” Joan says suddenly and without warning.

Plate and scrubbing brush in hand, Barbara freezes. Her mouth drops. She forces it closed, swallows with difficulty and then resumes washing the dish with slow, circular movements.

“Well, are you?” Joan asks.

Barbara raises her shoulders. “I think I might be,” she says quietly.

“You’ve missed your period?”

Barbara bows her head shamefully. She has never had a conversation about sex in her life. Not with Minnie, not with Glenda and not with anyone else for that matter. The closest she has ever got has been to tell Glenda she hasn’t had her troubles this month, upon which Glenda led her to the library.

“Yes,” she says. “It just didn’t come.”

“Any sickness in the mornings?” Joan asks.

Barbara nods. “And I hurt a bit, here,” she says, lightly touching her belly with the back of her wet hand.

“Cramping? Like tummy ache?”

“Yes.”

“Well...” Joan says.

“Is that what it is, then?”

“Probably. Yes,” Joan says. She sighs deeply, then continues, “Does your mother know yet?”

Barbara shakes her head.

“Are you scared to tell her?”

Barbara nods.

“I would be too,” Joan says, then, “There’s a woman in Newhaven. A friend of a friend. She... you know... deals with this sort of thing.”

Barbara stops washing dishes again and turns slowly to look at Joan’s face. The two women stare deeply into each other’s eyes for a moment, then Joan’s features soften and she says, “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“You want to keep it then?”

Barbara licks her lips and opens her mouth to speak but her throat feels constricted. Instead she just nods.

“You’re just so young, love,” Joan says. “You both are. Wouldn’t you rather have some fun first?”

Barbara clears her throat. “I’m how old my mum was when she had Glenda,” she says, aware that she’s sounding vaguely belligerent but unable to help herself.

“You’re the same age I was when I had Tony,” Joan says. “That’s why I’m telling you it’s too young. I
know.
”

“I thought he’d be glad,” Barbara says, her voice wobbling. “But he thinks I did it on purpose.”

Joan’s face softens again. She drops the tea-towel she has been wringing and crosses the room to take Barbara in her arms. “On purpose?” she says. “As if that was something you could do on your own. Men! They don’t get any better. You do your best to bring them up proper but nothing ever changes.”

“I thought he’d want to get married,” Barbara says, emboldened by Joan’s support. “But he just seemed angry.”

“Is that what you want?” Joan asks. “To get married?”

Barbara nods and buries her face in Joan’s shoulder.

“We had better get Tony back down and talk to him,” she says.

Barbara nods. “But I think he’s still drunk.”

Joan pushes her away and looks into her eyes. “Exactly,” she says. “You’ve still got a lot to learn, girl – a
lot
to learn. Now go fetch him and let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

2012 - Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Sophie rings the doorbell and, unsure if it is currently working or not, raps on the front door as well. Her mother gave her a key years ago but because she doesn’t seem to like Sophie actually using it, (she always makes a fuss about
nearly having had a heart attack
) Sophie rarely even brings it with her these days.

Her mother’s voice comes from behind the frosted window of the front door. “Who is it?”

“It’s me! Sophie!” she says, rolling her eyes and thinking,
who else is it likely to be?
Her mother has few visitors and Sophie forewarned her that she would be here at ten. She checks her watch. She’s one minute early.

The door opens a few inches, its movement limited by a flimsy gold chain that any of the ruffians mentioned in her mother’s
Daily Mail
could snap with a single kick. Her mother’s face peers through the gap and Nut, her ginger cat, looks up at her from ground level. “Oh, it’s you,” she says, and Sophie can’t help but roll her eyes again.

She strokes Nut, then kisses her mother on the cheek and heads into the house. “Yes, it’s me. As expected.”

“I suppose you’ll be wanting some lunch?” her mother says, locking and chaining the door behind her – an invitation to dine disguised as criticism.

“No, I said on the phone that I’d take you out,” Sophie says, looking around the room and sensing that inexplicable queasiness she always feels when faced with the floral stasis of her mother’s house.

“There’s no point wasting money on silly restaurant prices,” her mother says. “I’ve got a fridge full of perfectly good food.”

“Oh, come on, Mum. Let’s go out. It doesn’t have to be expensive.”

“It’ll still cost the same as my weekly shop,” she says, but she twists her mouth sideways indicating that she’s prepared to be convinced.

Sophie restrains a sigh. She has never understood her mother’s obsession with the cost of everything, particularly because, though she has never been rich per se, she has never, to Sophie’s knowledge, been hard up either. As far as she knows her mother has never had to struggle to pay for anything essential. “Look, one it’s my treat, and two, it doesn’t have to be expensive. I actually quite fancy fish and chips. What d’you reckon?”

“I suppose we could go to Qualisea. That wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.”

“Sure. Why not,” Sophie concedes. Qualisea is Eastbourne’s most popular, most economical fish and chip restaurant. It also happens to be, for all of these reasons, a firm favourite with the most geriatric section of Eastbourne’s population. And in a town where the biggest daily hazard is of being run over by a mobility trike, that’s really saying something. But Sophie has succeeded in persuading her mum to leave the house and that, these days, is reward enough.

“How have you been?” Sophie asks, once they are outdoors and heading towards the blustery seafront.

“Oh, you know,” her mother replies. “Comme ci, come ça.”

“So, what have you been up to?”

“Nothing. The usual. Sleeping, cleaning, eating.”

Sophie, despite herself, tuts, prompting her mother to add, “It’s called life, dear. It’s called retirement. So don’t tut at me about it. It’ll come to you soon enough.”

They pause at a pelican crossing and Sophie pulls a face as she presses the button. Her mother has never really been much fun to hang out with. In fact Sophie’s not even sure if she understands the concept of “fun.” But she worries about her all the same. Her father’s many friends faded from view at a shocking rate after his death and the only time her mother’s friends seem to get a mention nowadays is when they’re ill or, more and more frequently, have died. Her social life seems to have contracted to such a ridiculous degree that Sophie suspects that eating, sleeping and watching television really is about as exciting as it gets most of the time, and she can’t help but feel bad about that.

“I spoke to Jonathan,” Sophie offers – an attempt at lightening the conversation. “He seems well.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky?”

“Well, he certainly never calls
me.”

“I
called
him
, actually,” Sophie says. She knows for a fact that what her mum is saying isn’t true. Jonathan is the perfect doting son. She knows, also, that her mum says exactly the same thing to Jon about her. But she lets it ride. “I shall give him a good telling off the next time I speak to him,” she says, “and I’ll make sure he calls you.”

Her mother simply snorts.

During the train journey this morning, Sophie had debated, yet again, whether or not to tell her mother about Brett. She suspects that secretly (because her mother would never admit as much) this news, that her daughter finally has a boyfriend, would cheer her up no end. But as she never asks Sophie about her life, she also makes it incredibly easy
not
to tell her, so easy in fact that Sophie is now six months into the relationship and her mother has no inkling that anything has changed. And this is now the problem. Because if she
does
tell her mother the truth, she will be opening the door to a whole lorryload of
well you kept that one quiet
reproach. Of course, she could lie and say that she met Brett a few weeks ago but then her mother would assume that it’s just a passing romance of no importance, which really
wouldn’t
cheer her up. Which is why she didn’t tell her at the start. So, she’s a bit stuck.

As they move beyond the shelter provided by the Redoubt fortress, they are hit by the full force of the salt-laden wind. “Gosh,” Sophie exclaims.

“Gosh indeed,” her mother shouts back, leaning into the wind and, rather sweetly, taking Sophie’s hand. Sophie remembers when it was to anchor
her,
not her fragile mother, that they held hands.

As they step into Qualisea, the change of temperature is so shocking that both mother and daughter flush red. “Well, that was bracing,” Sophie says.

“You’re the one who wanted to go out,” her mother replies.

A Polish waitress crosses to greet them. “Hello,” she says, nodding at her mother, then turning and smiling at Sophie too. “You want usual table?”

Her mother nods. “That would be nice,” she says.

They cross to a corner table, take their seats and place orders: cod and chips twice, a side order of mushy peas and two cups of tea. Sophie looks around at the blue rinses and trembling hands surrounding them and wonders again why they can’t ever go and sit in a nice restaurant. She has never been able to see, really, what such working class pretension has to do with her mother.

They shrug off their coats and hang them over the backs of the chairs and then Sophie’s mother interlinks her fingers and looks her straight in the eye. It’s something that she has always done and it’s a gesture that has always set Sophie’s nerves on edge. It’s as if her mother is peering into her soul in search of hidden secrets, which Sophie reckons, is probably precisely what she
is
doing.

“Jonathan’s working lots,” Sophie says, more because she feels she has to say something than because it’s any more true than usual.

“He always was a hard worker,” her mother replies, and Sophie struggles not to take this as a criticism of her own supposedly dissolute lifestyle.

“And Judy’s still churning out hundreds of those horrible paintings of hers,” Sophie adds, subconsciously pointing out that even if she isn’t particularly productive herself, at least she doesn’t produce shit.