The Photographer's Wife Read online

  Brett grins at her strangely. It’s half grin, half sneer, Sophie decides. She’s surprised that she finds it such a sexy combination.

  “I kinda know what you mean,” Brett says. “It’s a fine line, I guess.”

  “I’m overreacting, probably,” Sophie says. “I just get a little bored with the abused-women-equals-art thing. It just all seems a bit eighties to me. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Madonna? Erotica? Feel the pleasure, feel the pain?”

  “Exactly!”

  “But very much in vogue now,” Brett says. “Ha! Vogue! Did you see what I did there?”

  “I did, actually.”

  “But what with Fifty Shades of Grey and all...”

  “Sorry?”

  “Fifty Shades. The S&M novel?”

  “Sorry. I don’t read as much as I should.”

  “Oh you don’t need to read this one. Unless you’re into that kind of thing. But it’s huge back home and no doubt coming to these shores shortly.”

  “I’ll look out for it.”

  “Anyway, as far as these are concerned, I’m not sure about exploitative per se,” Brett says, as they move on to the next, even more shocking photo. “I mean, she’s a professional model, presumably. No one made her do that shit. She even looks like she’s into it.”

  And suddenly, arts correspondent for the Times or not, Sophie can’t help herself. “So here we have a woman being paid by a rich man to be naked, being paid to be tied up naked, being paid, on the photographer’s whim, to let him stick the tail of a plastic dinosaur inside her ... Inside her! Oh, and being paid, while we’re at it, to look like she’s, what was it you said? Oh, ‘into it.’ That’s it. And this is not exploitation?”

  “You’ll have to excuse Sophie,” Genna says, moving between them in what looks like a precise damage-control intervention. “She’s terribly political. Like father, like daughter.”

  “Oh, I kinda think she’s right,” Brett says. “But you know, as long as the press chatters, the buyers buy, the punters get hard and the credit card machine keeps spitting out those little slips of paper (he nods here at the terminal in Genna’s hand), then who cares, hey?”

  Genna freezes for half a second, clearly unsure how to react, then licks her lips, smiles and laughs. “Brett! You’re terrible!” she says. “Just terrible! Now promise me that you won’t be saying that in your write-up.”

  “I promise I won’t be saying that in my write up,” Brett repeats, sotto voce. “Any chance of another glass of that white?”

  “Of course!” Genna says, taking his arm and physically pulling him away from Sophie. “It is rather gorge, isn’t it?”

  Damn, Sophie thinks. You screwed that up.

  ***

  “So Genna tells me that Anthony Marsden was your father,” Brett says. “Were you offended that I didn’t know that, or were you just jerking me around?”

  “Just... winding you up,” Sophie says, wondering how she ended up leaving the gallery with Brett. Does she find him attractive now, or was it just that third glass of wine? Or even worse, does this have something to do with the fact that he is the arts correspondent at the Times. And what if it was a mixture of all of these things? Would that make it OK?

  “The rain has stopped,” Brett says, folding his umbrella. “We could walk it instead. If we’re going to my place, anyway. I’m in Hoxton, so it’s, like, ten minutes from here.”

  Sophie looks at him and thinks about pretending to be outraged, thinks about saying, “Now why would you even think that I’m coming to yours?” But then he does the smile-cum-sneer thing again – a leer, that’s the word – and she hears herself say, “Sure, let’s walk. I like to walk and I’ve been cooped up all day.”

  It’s cold and damp but there’s something rather lovely about these early winter nights, something about the reflections of the lights on the wet pavement, about the swishing of the passing cars and the clip-clop of her heels on the pavement, that Sophie can’t resist. London always feels so much more like itself once winter starts to close in, when the streets are shiny with rain.

  “And you’re a photographer too, I hear,” Brett says. “That’s some pedigree to live up to, right?”

  “Yes,” Sophie says. “But I do fashion shoots mainly. So it’s, you know, a different world.”

  “Huh!” Brett says, buttoning the top button of his jacket, folding his collar up against the cold and then yanking on his tie so that it juts out a little more from his collar.

  “Huh?”

  “Fashion. Just doesn’t really fit with the discourse. About Arakis. I would have expected you to be photographing starving kids or lesbians or something.”

  “Yes, well...” Sophie agrees, shocked that Brett has so quickly placed his finger on her weak-spot, the one spot that can actually make her want to cry. “We all have to make compromises, don’t we?” she continues. “And we’re all full of contradictions. It’s part of being human.”

  “I guess,” Brett says, doubtfully. “And you don’t carry any equipment?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “All my photographer pals have their cameras with them at all times.”

  “Oh, I have this,” Sophie says, pulling her Leica compact from her inside pocket, then dropping it back in again. “But I don’t carry the big one around unless I’m actually going on a shoot. Why? Did you want me to photograph you?”

  “Maybe,” Brett says, raising one eyebrow and shooting her another cocky leer.

  ***

  His flat is beautiful. They step from a dingy, external walkway that looks like it might feature in a Mike Leigh film, into a vast lounge that is so white, so chic, it almost resembles a gallery.

  “Wow!” Sophie exclaims, heading straight for the bay-windows. “A room with a view!”

  “Yes, you can see right down to the river,” Brett says.

  “I’m impressed.”

  “It’s a rental,” Brett says, “and shared. So don’t be.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m not sure I’m staying yet, so...”

  “Staying?”

  “Yeah. I might be going back home.”

  “And home is?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Right. Well, I can understand the appeal of that.”

  “But London’s fine for now,” Brett says, hanging his jacket on the back of a chair, loosening his gold tie and undoing his top button. "So, Drink? Food? Kiss? A spot of fiendish rope-work perhaps?”

  “Let’s start with a drink,” Sophie says, “and see where it leads us.”

  “Sure,” Brett says. “Let’s do that.”

  1941 - Shoreditch, London

  They can see the blaze from over three blocks away and as her mother’s hand tightens around her own, Barbara realises that something bad has happened. All three are thinking the same thing: Is that coming from our house? But as they trip along in the dingy morning light, no one says a word.

  As the corner of their street comes into view, they can smell the smoke and see the fire hoses. Minnie starts to run, dragging her daughter along beside her. Glenda is already in front.

  And now they round the corner and, just for a second, it’s as if they have made a mistake, as if they have come to the wrong place, because the street is unrecognisable. The house opposite – the Robinson place – is gone, just a pile of rubble. The house to the left of theirs, where the Smiths and the Havershams live, (lived?) is gone as well. And the house to the right of theirs, number twenty-six, is a red ball of licking, crackling flame producing a dark column of smoke which twists and turns as it rises into the sky.

  “Oh,” Minnie says – more an exhalation than a word. Because language has just failed her.

  Five blackened firemen are pointing hoses at the blaze. They have clearly been here for some time now, as there is no apparent urgency – just the noisy rush and hiss of water jets hitting the base of the fire, jets which, though massive, seem entirely insufficient for the job at h
and. They might as well be spraying petrol on for all the good it’s doing.

  After a full minute of paralysis, Minnie says, “My tin!” and unexpectedly breaks free from the girls. “Stay!” she instructs as she starts to sprint towards their house, now skipping over fire hoses, now opening the gate to their front yard, somehow absurd amidst all this destruction. A gate to protect from what exactly?

  Imagining the building collapsing, Glenda shouts, “Mum! No!” and lets go of Barbara’s hand to run after her.

  The nearest fireman now turns to see what the commotion is and drops his hose, which snakes and buckles on the ground, then spins, briefly spraying Barbara with water, before backing up and lodging itself against the wheel of a fire-truck. He jumps over the small dividing wall between the two gardens and seizes Minnie’s arms just as she is trying to force the front door open.

  A struggle ensues – an actual fight – where Minnie, held from behind by the fireman, buckles and kicks and shrieks about her tin as she tries, hopelessly, to break free. Glenda is pulling on her mother’s arm, shouting, crying, “Mum, please, no! It’s dangerous! I’m scared. Please, Mum, please!”

  Barbara stands on the wet pavement watching all of this, smelling the smoke, sensing the heat of the flames on her face, and listening to the crackle of burning wood and the pop of windows exploding with the heat. She sees when the fireman finally loses patience and slaps her mother hard across the side of the face. She sees how everything stops, how Minnie’s arms drop to her sides, how she doubles up and cries out a long warbling, “Nooo!” before allowing herself to be led, looking crumpled like an abandoned set of clothes, from the front door, then back into the street, first by Glenda and then by an air-raid warden who has run to them in order to join the fray.

  Glenda returns for Barbara, and the fireman, who is still watching Minnie in case she makes a dash for it, (he’s seen it happen before) crosses the road to address them.

  “You’ll be able to get your things tomorrow, alright?” he tells the girls. “So just get your Mum out of here. She doesn’t want to be here tonight. She doesn’t want to be seeing this.”

  “Take her where?” Glenda asks. “Where should we go?”

  “But that’s our house,” Barbara protests angrily, feeling that the nasty man who slapped her mother hasn’t understood this simple fact.

  “Go to a friend’s or something,” the fireman says. “Or go to a shelter. And then come back tomorrow once the fire’s out.”

  Glenda nods rigidly. “Thank you,” she says, and Barbara blinks up at her in confusion.

  She starts to lead Barbara along the road, towards where Minnie is now sitting on a wall being spoken to sternly by the air-raid warden, but as they pass the collapsed house – the Robinson place – Barbara freezes.

  “Come on!” Glenda prompts, pulling at her hand, then, “What?”

  With her free hand, Barbara is pointing, and Glenda now follows her gaze, her features forming a frown in the flickering light. “Oh,” she says.

  “Look,” Barbara says.

  “Yes. Um, go to Mum and I’ll... I’ll tell the fireman. He’ll know what to do.”

  Barbara walks robotically on, her head swivelling as she does so, unable to tear her eyes from the horrific sight. Behind her, she hears Glenda shout to the fireman. “Excuse me! Excuse me! Mr Fireman!”

  “Yes?” the man replies.

  “There’s someone stuck under that door,” she says, her voice quivering with emotion.

  “What?”

  “There’s a hand sticking out. Over there. Someone’s under that door.”

  “Jesus!” the fireman says, walking backwards so that he can look at the door in question while still pointing his hose at the fire opposite. “Alright love,” he says calmly, reasonably, as if this is all quite routine. “Don’t worry. We’ll get them out. You just go with your mum now. Off you go!”

  As Glenda runs to catch up with Barbara and takes her hand again, they hear him shout, “Jack! JACK! They missed one over ‘ere. There’s another body. Can you come give us a hand?”

  Minnie does not go to work that day and the girls do not go to school. For want of a better idea, with Minnie still in a worrying, trance-like state that Glenda has no idea how to deal with, they return to the youth club shelter. Being daytime, and with no warnings having sounded, the shelter is almost empty now.

  Minnie lies down on an empty mattress and, as far as the girls can see, sleeps all day.

  “What’s wrong with Mum?” Barbara asks.

  “She’s just tired,” Glenda tells her. “She didn’t get any sleep last night. She can’t sleep sitting up. You know that.”

  But Minnie isn’t tired. And she isn’t sleeping either. She has simply run out of courage. It’s not, as everyone keeps pretending, an unlimited resource.

  Because the hours in the shelter are so horrifically slow, Glenda takes Barbara, who has been getting fidgety, for a walk. They ramble aimlessly through the empty streets, some untouched by the bombing, some missing houses or shops, and a few, like their own, so unrecognisable that Glenda worries they are lost.

  In Liverpool Street they see a demonstration by communists demanding access to the underground stations for shelter, so they stand and watch and listen to the chanting until the police arrive and things start to get raucous, whereupon Glenda shepherds them back towards Shoreditch.

  As the daylight starts to fade, they pass back down their own street. The flames have been extinguished now and their house, though blackened and windowless, is otherwise undamaged. Sandwiched between the smouldering remains of number twenty-six and the pile of rubble that is number twenty-two, it makes a forlorn sight.

  The girls independently cast glances at the collapsed house opposite to check. They both see that the door and the hand have gone.

  Looking at their own house, Barbara asks, “Can we go inside?”

  “We’re not supposed to. It’s unsafe, I think.”

  “Unsafe?”

  “It might fall down.”

  Barbara nods. Seeing that Glenda is furtively checking left and right, she says, “But you’re going to go inside anyway and get Mum’s tin.”

  “Yes,” Glenda says. “Yes, I think so.”

  “It’s in the cooker.”

  “I know. If someone hasn’t nicked it. I want to get my nice dress, too, before someone nicks that.”

  “Your birthday dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have Lucy Loop?”

  “If I can see her,” Glenda says, glancing left and right again, then sprinting past the burned-out building and around to the back of the house.

  When they get back to the shelter, Minnie is still lying on her back staring at the ceiling. The place is filling up now and her occupancy of an entire mattress will soon be cause for jealousy.

  “I got the tin,” Glenda tells her proudly, and Minnie’s face starts to animate as if someone has swapped in new batteries. First her brow wrinkles, then her eyes widen, then she sits up and stares peculiarly at Glenda as if she has perhaps spoken some foreign language that she doesn’t quite understand.

  “Everything’s still in it, I think,” Glenda says, proffering the tin and nodding encouragingly.

  Minnie swallows, then snatches the rusty Jacob’s Cracker tin from her daughter’s grasp.

  She pulls off the lid and starts to empty the contents: a roll of pound notes with an elastic band around them, a pile of dog-eared photos, the girls’ birth certificates, her mother’s headband, Seamus’ broken watch... All of these, she casts aside. They are not her primary concern.

  And then she finds her wedding ring. She slips it onto her finger and says, “Thank God for that. That won’t be coming off again.” She looks up at Glenda and manages a weak smile. “You’re a good girl, Glenda,” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” And Barbara wishes that it had been she who braved the danger of the house to recover the box.

  “Can we look at th
e pictures?” Glenda asks.

  Minnie sighs, then nods and pats the mattress beside her. “Course you can,” she says, then addressing Barbara and spotting the doll under her arm, “You too. Bring Lucy Loop and come sit on my lap.”

  Barbara slides between her mother’s arms and for the first time today, feels safe again.

  “That was our first trip out,” Minnie says, pulling the first tatty photo from the pile. “That’s Margate pier, that is.”

  All three stare at the picture, a plain but pretty woman smiling sheepishly, holding hands with a good looking lad all buttoned up in his best Sunday suit.

  Barbara reaches out and runs her finger across the image of her father, as if perhaps she might touch him, as if perhaps that might make him seem more real to her.

  The image is so alien, so detached from everything around them, that none of them can think of a word to say, so they just sit, a little awed, the mother and her two daughters. They stare and wonder, each in her own way, if things will ever be that simple again.

  By the time of their return to the house the next morning, someone has painted “Danger!” across the front door in dribbled, red letters.

  Mrs Haversham and her son Bertie are next door in what used to be their front room, sifting through the still smouldering remains for intact possessions.

  “Alice!” Minnie exclaims, climbing over the burnt remains of the front door and hugging her. “You’re alright then. I thought you’d come a cropper.”

  “We was down the shelter,” Alice replies. “Thank God for small mercies.”

  Minnie nods thoughtfully as the true meaning of the phrase hits her for the first time. She looks around, then up past where the ceiling and roof should be at the sky. “You poor things. And the Smiths?”

  “She evacuated the little-uns just last week. So they’re OK. But...” Here she glances at Barbara, pulls her mouth downward and shakes her head.