The Photographer's Wife (33 page)

She remembers Tony excitedly announcing that he had sold a photo, remembers buying the
Mirror
and thrilling to see her photo in print. She hid that newspaper. She wonders when she lost it. It probably got used to light a fire at some point.

Her throat feels dry, so she sips her tea. She can sense, again, the strange atmosphere around the flat at the time, born of the fact that they would not,
could
not discuss that photo. They both knew who had pressed the shutter release and they both knew that the other person knew the truth as well. It was the only photo in the whole batch that she had taken and it was the only one the
Mirror
chose to publish.
Women Voters Fear Roll-Back of Rights.
She can still picture the headline in her mind’s eye. She spent hours looking proudly at that page of newsprint. She would get it out and sit and stare at it – her guilty pleasure.

Tony had vanished after that, in theory to celebrate, but in reality it was a truth he needed to drown, a truth that came back to haunt them almost seven months later when that same photo won the damned prize. But by then they were pretending, even in private, even between husband and wife, that Tony had taken it himself. She can’t remember when the decision to lie to each other, to lie to
themselves
, was taken. It felt like it just
happened.
It was required, that was all. Rewriting history turned out to be a surprisingly easy thing to do and within a couple of years, she had struggled to remember quite
who
had taken the photo. But that must have been a choice because she certainly remembers now.

At the time of course, (so it was 1970 then) she had far more important things to worry about. Who actually pressed the lever was neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things.

She inhales sharply. She wasn’t expecting
that
. She wasn’t expecting the physical sensation of Minnie’s boney hand to suddenly leap out of her memory at her. Her last physical contact with her mother. She remembers begging the nurses for more morphine, remembers laughing hysterically (in the true sense of that word) when the ward sister informed her that any more morphine than Minnie was already taking would kill her. Her eyes are wet now, her eyesight unfocussed, her mind’s eye projecting above the soft, grey blur of Trafalgar Square, the full horror of Minnie’s slow death.

She swipes at a tear and even this provokes a memory, the physical sensation of crying at the time, not from sorrow but from a profound sense of relief that it was all finally over.

She realises that she has been holding her breath and forces herself to exhale. It’s just too hard. This whole thing is just too hard for her heart to bear. It truly
would
have been better if Sophie had waited until she was gone but how could Sophie even begin to understand that? Barbara has made it her life’s work, after all, to protect her from all of this.

She had braced herself, yes. She had known that certain images would bring up specific memories of particular moments in time. That’s why it has taken her a week to sit down and do this. But no, she had not prepared herself for
this
. She had not imagined the way each image would lead to every other image and lead in turn to wholesale submersion in the most powerful sensations – the smells, the sounds, the
feelings
– of the harshest most dreadful highlights (or lowlights perhaps) of her eighty years on this planet. She hadn’t expected to find herself transported back in time.

There’s no way around it now, though. That train has left the station and she certainly can’t stop it. The exhibition is undoubtedly going to happen. She closes her eyes for a moment and stretches her neck from side to side before continuing rapidly through a few more images.

She pauses next on an image of Sophie, perhaps five years old, on the beach. She’s holding a plastic spade and staring directly into the camera lens. She grew up with cameras, was entirely relaxed around them, and here her expression is completely neutral – her innocence still complete. Such a beautiful child. She still is. Barbara sighs.

Perhaps the time has come for her to tell Sophie part of the truth. Not all of it, of course. They all agreed a long time ago that that would never happen, that it
could
never happen. But just enough to warn her off? Just enough to avoid Brett sniffing around? Just enough to make sure that the rest, the important stuff, the stuff with the power to harm the lives of the living, remains buried?

The trouble is, Barbara realises, still staring into those big, dark eyes, that never mind Brett, Sophie herself is like a sniffer dog. Give her even a whiff of intrigue and she won’t stop digging until she’s unearthed everything. Best, without a doubt, to say nought.

1971 - Hackney, London.

Barbara is feeding Sophie at the kitchen table. She has a snotty nose and the beginning of a cold. She looks pink and angry and ready to burst into a tantrum – it’s just a matter of time. Jonathan, beside her, at the end of
his
cold, is making dams and rivers amidst the peaks of his mashed potato.

“If you keep playing with that, it’ll get cold,” Barbara reminds him. It amazes Barbara how many times you have to tell children things before they remember them. Even things about danger – warnings about hotness or sharpness – she has to tell them over and over again. Sometimes she tires of telling
before
they learn and resigns herself instead to watching them burn or cut themselves just so that they can find out on their own.

“It’s the Thames,” Jonathan says. “Look.”

“Yes,” Barbara tells him. “Lovely. Now eat it!”

The door to the cellar opens. Tony, unusually, is home for lunch, not to see Barbara or to spend time with the kids but to use the darkroom. There’s a postal strike on and he’s hoping to sell some pictures he has taken.

“Yours is in the oven,” Barbara tells him. “But be careful. The plate is hot.” And how many times has she said
that
? And how many times has he burned himself all the same?

Tony crosses the kitchen, touches the plate and gives an unconvincing, “ouch” before using a tea-towel to carry it to the dinner table. He places a contact sheet next to his plate then, while studying the rows of photos on it, begins to eat.

“So how did it go?” Barbara asks.

“Not good, I’m afraid. They’re all misty,” Tony says, through a mouth of steak and kidney pie.

Barbara swipes the spoon across Sophie’s mouth to remove the excess, then leans in to study the photos herself.

“Isn’t that b–” Barbara says, then, “Never mind.”

“Yes?” Tony asks.

“No, nothing. I’m really not sure.”

“Go on,” Tony says. “Really.”

“Um, is the fogging on the negatives? Or just the contact sheet?”

“Both.”

“Then you didn’t fix it long enough.”

“I did a full six minutes,” Tony says. “A bit more maybe.”

Barbara wonders at that use of the word
maybe
. Minutes are real things. There were six of them or there weren’t. If she had done it, she would have known exactly how many minutes had passed. “Was the temperature right?”

“For the developer, it was,” Tony says. “I don’t think it matters for the fixer.”

“Hum,” Barbara says, returning to feeding Sophie. “Well, it looks to me like it
might
matter.”

“It
was
a bit cold maybe,” Tony says. “Bloody annoying though. I really thought I was going to flog those.”

Barbara loads up Sophie’s tiny rose-bud mouth, then puts down the feeding spoon and lifts the sheet so that she can study it more closely. “Ooh, they
are
foggy. Is that a sorting office?”

“Yep. The big one in Bethnal Green. There’s no way to get rid of that, is there?”

“The fog? No, I shouldn’t think so. Not if it’s on the negatives. I suppose you could always go down there and take them again.”

“I expect everyone’s gone home now,” Tony says. “Bloody annoying. I liked all those undelivered boxes piled behind them.”

“Yes. It’s good,” Barbara says. Then taking her life in her hands, she adds, “If you
did
go back, you could get one of the strikers to actually sit on those parcels in the foreground. Maybe even put a mug of tea in his hand and one of those strike placards at his feet.”

“What, you mean stage it?”

“Maybe,” Barbara says. “It would make for a good photo, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll have time to go back there now. I’ve got to take the van up to Manchester, then Liverpool, then Rugby,” Tony says.

“But that’ll take forever, won’t it?”

Tony nods. “It’s the postal strike, isn’t it,” he says. “It’s the only way to get stuff around at the moment.”

“Any sorting office would do. I’m sure they all have strikers.
And
piles of boxes.”

“Yes, I suppose so. I just really liked that one in Bethnal Green. The light was good.”

Sophie starts to wave her arms manically, so Barbara hands back the contact sheet and resumes feeding her. “I take it you’re going to be late then?” she asks over her shoulder.

“Eight or nine at the earliest,” Tony says, already finishing his plate and standing. “Don’t bother with tea or anything. I’ll grab something at the roadside.”

“Well, drive carefully.”

“I always do.”

In the end, it’s almost midnight by the time Tony gets home.

Because Barbara suspects that he’s been drinking, she feigns sleep, even snoring lightly for added effect. After a minute or so, Tony, who she can tell is wide awake beside her, whispers, “Barbara? Are you asleep?” and because he sounds sober and because he sounds
excited
, she pretends to stir from her slumber, stretching and yawning theatrically.

“Hello,” she says. “You’re home.”

“I sold that photo,” he says immediately. “I sold the whole roll.”

“Which photo?” Barbara asks. “Which roll? Did you go back?” She suddenly remembers that she’s supposed to be half asleep, so she throws another yawn into the mix.

“Yes. The one you said about. The strikers on the boxes, drinking tea and that.”

“How did you develop them?
Where
did you develop them?”

“I didn’t. They bought them on spec. I just gave them the roll straight out of the camera. Just like the agency guys do. I told them what was on them and they took it. Said it was exactly what they wanted. There were definitely some crackers on there, even if I do say so myself.”

“That’s great news.”

“It is,” Tony says, proudly. “It must mean they trust me, if they’re taking my pictures without even seeing them.”

“Yes. I think that’s exactly what it means.”

Tony stares into her eyes for a moment. His regard seems to hold a question.

“What?” Barbara laughs.

“I know it’s late and you’re half asleep and everything,” Tony says. “But you don’t fancy a bit, do you?”

Barbara laughs nervously, both because it’s been months since they made love (such things virtually ceased when Jonathan was born and never really picked up again) and because the answer, surprisingly, is yes. She
does
“fancy a bit.”

By way of an answer, because she could never
say
‘yes’ to sex, Barbara leans across the pillow and pecks her husband on the lips.

“Hum,” Tony murmurs, shuffling across the bed and sliding one knee over her legs. “Thank God for that then. ‘Cos I’m feeling horny as hell.”

***

Barbara is slowly, methodically buttering bread. Sophie and Tony are sleeping and Jonathan is eating his breakfast in the dining room whilst reading a picture book. He’s hardly a rowdy child but all the same, these moments when the house is quiet are rare and precious, tiny oases in the midst of the screaming and banging that is a home with children. In the middle of the emotional turmoil that is Barbara’s life right now, she needs these moments of silence every bit as much as she needs food or drink.

“What you making?” It’s Tony’s voice and Barbara looks up to see him in the doorway looking sleepy. Her moment is over.

“Sandwiches!” she says. “Are you hungry, sweetheart?” She adds the
sweetheart
in order to soften the sentence. Her tone, she fears, was harsh.

Tony shakes his head. “No, not really,” he replies. “Not yet. So what are the sandwiches for?”

Barbara pauses her buttering operation, puts down the knife and turns to face her husband. She has detected something dishonest in his voice and wants to take the time and space to think about what it means. “You know what they’re for,” she says. “They’re for Hyde Park. For the festival thing.”

“Yes,” Tony says, still sounding fake. “Yeah, about that... I thought I might go on my own.”

“What?” Barbara asks, then,
“Why?”

Tony wrinkles his nose. “I’m not sure it will be a good place for kids,” he says.

Barbara laughs lightly. “Tony, it’s Mary Whitehouse and Cliff Richard! How bad can it be?”

Jonathan has just appeared from the dining room, peering around his father’s legs. “Hi Dad,” he says, and Tony reaches down and rests a big hand on his blond mop of hair. “What time are we leaving?”

“I... We’re just discussing that,” Barbara tells him. “Go and get your breakfast finished and–”

“I finished.”

“Then go and play for a bit. I’ll come and get you once we’ve decided.”

Jonathan looks dubious but leaves the room without a word.

“As I was saying,” Barbara says, “It’s Mary Whit–”

“I know they’re supposed to be the moral majority and everything,” Tony interrupts. “But they’re not actually that nice. There’s lots of people they don’t like and lots of people who don’t like
them
. There might be protests. It might get nasty.”

Barbara sighs and lets her shoulders droop. She’s been living on her nerves ever since Sophie was born, doubly so since her mother fell ill. She doesn’t have any energy reserves available to deal with Tony’s (frequent) changes of plan. “Then can we all do something else, please?” she asks. “Can we all just go somewhere as a family? I’ve made a picnic and everything.”