The Photographer's Wife (36 page)

“Yes,” Sophie says.

“About?”

“I had a rethink,” she announces. “We accept your conditions. Well, Mum and I do. Jonathan wants nothing to do with the whole thing.”

“You accept my conditions,” Brett repeats. “You mean the need for a contract, right?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you think an apology might be in order?”

Sophie shrugs.

“You told me to ‘fuck off’, Sophie,” Brett reminds her. “You said I had a ‘stinky ego.’”

Sophie snorts at this and, as a result, cappuccino goes up her nose.

“Am I laughing here, Sophie? Do you see me smiling?”

She sighs and gives a little shake of her head. “Anyway, what I was–” she begins.

“Come on Sophie,” Brett insists. “Apologise.”

Sophie gasps. “Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me, Brett? I mean, just coming here and saying I was wrong? Can’t you show a little… I don’t know…
compassion?”

Now it’s Brett who snorts. “I don’t think that’s really my problem, Sophie. I think you got into this mess all on your lonesome. Now just say ‘sorry’ and we can move on.”

Sophie gasps. “OK!
Sorry
Brett.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

Sophie laughs again. She can’t help herself. “You sound just like my mother! Now just lighten up, will you?”

“You hurt my feelings, Sophie,” Brett says.

Sophie notes how often he uses her name when he’s being earnest and she notes how much she hates it. It sounds so patronising. “Well,
Brett
,” she says. “You hurt my feelings by asking for a contract. Now can we please just forget it?”

Brett shrugs. “So you don’t know how to apologise. What’s new?”

“Can we?”

“OK. Whatever.”

"So, are we OK? Can we go ahead? With the project?”

“I guess,” Brett says reluctantly. “But what about Jonathan?”

“It’s not like he’s going to talk to anyone else. You’ll still have exclusivity. He just doesn’t want to get involved. He’s got a kid on the way and he wants a quiet life, that’s all.”

“Do you think he’d sign a disclaimer to say that? That he won’t talk to anyone else.”

“Probably,” Sophie says. “But I can personally guarantee that he won’t.”

“OK,” Brett says. “And your mom’s onboard now, huh?”

“Just about. I wouldn’t want to ask her for much but at least she’s not going to throw any spanners in the works. And that at least is something.”

“Indeed.”

“Hey, look at these,” Sophie says, reaching into her bag for the photos. “I finally got them from Mum. We can’t use them or anything, but it shows she’s changed her mind a bit.”

“These are?”

“These are the famous Pentax photos.”

“Oh!” Brett says, flipping open the first pouch. “I thought they had all been destroyed.”

“That’s the official story. But…”

“And we can’t use them
because?”

“Have a look.”

Brett slides the photos out and leafs quickly through them. “Your
father
took these?”

“Pretty shocking, huh?”

Brett pulls a puzzled expression. “It looks like something went wrong with the camera.”

“It was a Pentax ME F. I looked it up on the net. Their first ever autofocus camera. It was meant to be revolutionary but it was just one big fail, really. The technology wasn’t ready and lots of them had technical problems. Dad wasn’t the only one who hated them.”

“Hum,” Brett says. “But I doubt many people failed
quite
so spectacularly.”

“No.”

“Gee, these are baad!” Brett laughs and Sophie, despite herself, despite that fact that in essence she agrees, starts to feel offended.

“Is there any point in my continuing?” Brett asks.

“Not really,” Sophie says, holding out one hand to take the photos back. She slips two from the back of the second wallet and hands them to Brett. “I thought maybe these two,” she says. “We’re a few images short still and at least these look like the soft-focus was intentional.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Brett says, doubtfully, “but if you use these, someone will realise that all the others exist too. People will wanna see them all.”

“We can just say that we didn’t consider them worthy of attention, can’t we? Everyone will realise we’ve made a selection.”

“Nah,” Brett says. “I say trash ‘em.”

“Trash
them?”

“Uh-huh. A famous photographer father is a bigger story than a mediocre one who took some lucky snaps.”

“Aw, come on Brett. My dad was
not
a mediocre guy who took some lucky snaps.”

“Well, anyone who looks at these will kind of think that he was.”

Sophie can sense heat rising. She’s starting to feel angry. “Brett, you just can’t say that. This is my dad you’re talking about.”

“Sophie, I’m just saying what I see here.“

“You know what? If that’s what you really think, then maybe you are better out of this.” Sophie stuffs the photographs back into her bag and stands. “Maybe we really should forget the whole thing.”

“Sophie!” Brett says. “You’re overreacting here.”

“Of course I’m bloody overreacting. He was my Dad. And he’s dead!”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything, OK?” Brett says, but Sophie is already pulling on her coat. She’s knows he’s right, but she’s stuck and doesn’t know how to change direction.

Brett stands and gently touches her arm. “Sophie. I’m apologising here. I’m sorry. Now please,
please
just sit the fuck down.” He glances around the room and Sophie, following his regard, now realises that everyone is looking at her. In case of need of a quick exit she keeps her coat on. But she does manage (just) to sit back down.

“Gee!” Brett says.

“I’m sorry. But you just can’t say stuff like that about my dad.”

“I know this,” Brett says. “It’s countries and families.”

“Countries and families?”

“Sure. People can tell you all kinds of stuff about where they come from. About all the bad things that happened to them. About their home country or their folks or whatever. And they’re allowed to tell you that stuff and you’re allowed to listen. But you must never, ever agree with them. And definitely don’t join in with the trashing.”

Sophie runs her fingers through her hair. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, that’s about the sum of it. It’s OK for me to say these are awful. But just leave it to me, OK?”

“Anyways,” Brett says. “We agree on one thing. We can’t use them.”

“Yes,” Sophie says. “Yes, we agree on that.”

Sophie’s phone vibrates, so she pulls it from her pocket and studies the screen. “Oh my God!” she says.

“What’s that?”

“Judy’s sprogged!”

“Huh!” Brett says.

“It’s a boy. Dylan. The poor wee fucker.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Sophie tells him. “Being called Dylan or having Judy for a mother.”

1976 - The Norfolk Coast.

“Dad,” Jonathan whines. “There’s a whole traffic jam stuck behind us now.”

Embarrassed, as ever, by Tony’s holiday meandering, he is kneeling on the back seat of the Beetle watching the frustrated drivers behind them. Tony only has two driving styles – relaxed and road rage. Personally, Barbara far prefers “relaxed,” but at this moment in time she’s unable to come to his defence.

“I’m doing
forty,”
Tony says, glancing at the speedometer. “There’s nothing wrong with forty.”

“Except that the speed limit’s
sixty,”
Jonathan says.

“It’s a limit, Jon, an
upper
limit. It’s a maximum, not a minimum. Isn’t that right, Barbara?”

Barbara does not answer. She continues to stare out of the side window and Tony drives in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again. “So have you still got the hump with me?” he asks her quietly. “About last night?”

Still Barbara does not answer him.

Sophie, who is seated behind her, shouts (with alarming force) “Beach!”

“Yes, Sophie,” Barbara says. “Yes, that’s a huge beach.”

"I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then, shall I?” Tony asks.

“Take it any way you want. I’m past caring,” Barbara replies.

“
Definitely
a ‘yes’ then,” Tony mumbles.

He did not come home last night and Barbara had been seriously worried. Knowing that they were supposed to be leaving for Norfolk in the early hours, she had been unable to convince herself that this was “just” one more of Tony’s random absences. And when finally, at eight am, he had reappeared, revealing that, yes, it
was
just one more of Tony’s random absences, she had found herself unable to forgive him. Which is pretty much where she remains still.

“I just don’t see what the problem is,” Tony is saying now, prompting Barbara to sigh again. “Talk to me!” he says. “We’re supposed to be on holiday here. We’re supposed to be having fun.”

Barbara licks her lips, then speaks quietly, addressing him over her shoulder. “The problem, Tony,” she says, “is that I was worried. The
problem
is that I didn’t know if you’d be home today or tomorrow, or ever even.”

“But I
was
home in time. And we’re here now, aren’t we?”

“The
problem,”
she continues, “Is that you
still
won’t say where you’ve been.”

“I told you. I had a work shoot up north. I stayed over at Phil’s.”

“And the problem,” Barbara says, “is that’s simply not true. And we both know it.”

“There’s another beach,” Sophie shouts, pointing again. They have been driving for an hour since lunch and she’s getting bored. The car is unbearably hot, doubly so in the rear seats, and having been promised a beach, a beach is what she wants.

“Phone Phil,” Tony says. “He’ll tell you. He’ll back me up.”

Barbara turns to face him and raises one hand to paint an imaginary headline across the windscreen. “Man’s best drinking buddy confirms dodgy excuse to wife!” she reads. “Shock scoop!”

“You’re impossible when you’re like this.”

“
I’m
impossible?”

“Mum!” Sophie says, now pointing backwards. “What was wrong with
that
beach?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan says. “It looked alright to me.”

“What was it like?” Tony asks, grateful for the subject change. “I didn’t see.”

“It was baked solid,” Barbara says, fidgeting in the discomfort of her sweaty vinyl seat.

“So we carry on?”

Barbara chews a fingernail and fights with herself. The beach they just passed may not be ideal for Sophie’s needs (sandcastles) but it was
absolutely
perfect for Tony’s needs, which are for saleable photographic evidence of the “hottest summer for three-hundred years.”

“The next beach won’t be far,” Tony says, and both Jonathan and Sophie groan.

“Cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
The phrase, one of Minnie’s favourites, pops into Barbara’s mind. It happens a lot these days and Barbara wonders if Minnie is somehow present and talking to her, or if it’s nothing more than random memories bubbling up from her past. Sometimes she thinks that those two versions of the truth amount to pretty much the same thing – that those who are no longer with us remain with us specifically
through
our memories of them. That memories are perhaps more than just recordings, that they are the actual
essence
of the people we have known, the places we have been, lingering on long after the event, like time travellers, like ghosts.

In this instance Minnie would be right. As a family they need Tony to do well: they need him to take the right photographs and they need him to sell them. And if he isn’t going to tell her where he vanishes to – and after thirteen years of marriage, she knows that he isn’t – and if she isn’t going to leave him – and after thirteen years, she knows that as well – then sabotaging the professional aspect of this trip, which Tony assured her was going, after all, to
pay
for this trip, really doesn’t make any sense. It really would be
cutting off her nose to spite her face.

She turns her body to face him now. She leans in so that only he can hear her. “I hate you right now,” she whispers.

Tony glances at her, then back at the road. He frowns.
“What?”
he says.

She leans in and says it again. “Right now, at this instant, I
really
hate you. I just want you to know that.”

“Jesus!” Tony exclaims, looking distinctly unsettled.

“But…” she adds, more loudly. “You should turn around and go back to that beach.”

“What?” Tony says again.

“Go back to that last beach,” she repeats, soliciting cheers from both Jonathan and Sophie.

“Why?”
Tony asks, suspicious of Barbara’s motives, scared that she has perhaps seen a cliff she wants to push him off.

“That beach was amazing,” Barbara says. “It’s all baked and cracked like crazy paving. And it’s covered with semi-naked, bright pink females. It’s exactly what you said you were looking for.”

Tony glances in the mirror, flicks on an indicator and then pulls into a siding. The tailback of frustrated drivers speeds past, already accelerating to speeds that Jonathan would consider more reasonable now that the
Beetle from Hell
has finally pulled aside.

“Really?” Tony asks. “You’re not just winding me up.”

“Go back, Dad,” Jonathan says.

“Yes, come on,” Sophie agrees. “Go back.”

Barbara nods and smiles and flutters her eyelashes at him repulsively. “Go back, darling,” she says. “You’ll see. I meant
everything
I said.”

1977 - Hackney, London.

Barbara glances at the kitchen clock. “You’d better get a move on,” she tells Jonathan. “You’re going to be late.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jonathan says. “It’s just P.E.”

“It
all
matters.”

“I just want to see the dude in his new threads,” Jonathan says.

“If you mean your father, you’ve already seen him in a suit at Phil’s wedding,” Barbara says, even though she understands entirely. She too is looking forward to seeing Tony in his new suit.