The Photographer's Wife Page 8

  But what with Hugh constantly trying to steal kisses from Diane, and Diane nonchalantly laughing at his advances, they are great fun to be with. And the air and the light of Eastbourne are as fresh and invigorating as ever.

  Barbara worries that Diane might have eyes for Tony but when she asks him about it he says, “Don’t be daft. She’s a mate. I’ve known her since I was three or something.”

  Barbara still thinks that she’s right though, and decides that maybe she just needs to nab Tony quickly. Maybe she needs to get there before Diane does.

  When Barbara gets home that Sunday evening, she finds Glenda preparing stew on the little Bendix cooker and Minnie repairing the frayed collars of shirts from the laundry.

  Barbara drops her bag and pecks her mother on the lips.

  “Here, holiday girl,” Minnie says. “Take a bunch of these will you? Just the ones from the top of the pile. Missing buttons. Otherwise I’m never gonna get through ‘em all.”

  Barbara nods, slips off her coat and scoops some shirts from the pile before retiring with the sewing box to the armchair. She’s tired from the journey home. She would have liked to have had a cup of tea first. But she knows better than to argue.

  "How was Eastbourne?” Minnie asks.

  “Lovely,” Barbara says, already cutting a length of cotton and threading a needle. “Not as hot as when Glen and I was there. But it was sunny.”

  Minnie nods and tips her head sideways, prompting her to continue.

  “Diane’s Mum was really nice,” Barbara continues, launching herself into the lie. “And their guest house was almost exactly the same as the one we stayed in, only farther from the sea.”

  “And they didn’t mind having you to stay, then?” Minnie asks, her voice doubtful.

  “No,” Barbara says, putting on a thimble, selecting a matching button from the tin and starting to sew it into place. “And we helped making beds and things. I did washing up too.”

  “You did?” Minnie says, sounding even less convinced.

  Barbara senses that she is on the verge of being rumbled. It’s hard to pull the wool over Minnie’s eyes. She swallows with difficulty and tries to concentrate on the sewing.

  “Shall I put all of these carrots in, Mum?” Glenda asks, and Barbara knows that this is her attempt at providing a distraction. Glenda too, senses the danger.

  “Just use your common sense,” Minnie says, then addressing Barbara, "What else did you get up to? Tell me more. Tell me everything.”

  “We walked along the beach,” Barbara says, remembering the feel of Tony’s hand in her own. “We listened to the band in the Winter Gardens,” she says, remembering the feel of Tony’s beard as he kissed her behind the beach huts. Are her lips still red? she wonders. “Only from outside, of course. It cost too much to go in. We walked along the pier as well,” she says, when in fact she, Diane, Hugh and Tony had all got tipsy on beer Diane had stolen from her father beneath the pier, and once tipsy, she had let Tony slide his hand up her blouse. “Just normal, seaside stuff.”

  Minnie nods and glances up at her, her expression vaguely troubled.

  “Diane’s mum said I can go again next weekend if I want,” Barbara says.

  Minnie snorts. “And how are you going to pay for that, then?”

  “Diane’s dad said he’d pay for the ticket,” Barbara says, and the fact that Glenda, behind her mother, pauses preparing the stew and frowns at her, makes her aware that she has gone too far.

  Minnie stops working again. She licks her lips, then lays down the sewing and stares at her hands for a moment as if inspecting her manicure. “Can you go to the shop and get me some matches?” she asks Glenda without looking up.

  “I’ll go,” Barbara offers.

  “No. You’ll stay here,” Minnie instructs. “And no need to hurry, Glenda.”

  “No, Mum,” Glenda replies, already pulling on her coat and heading for the door. She does not want to be present for whatever is about to happen.

  The second the door has closed, Minnie asks, "So, what’s his name?”

  “Who?” Barbara asks, pretending to concentrate on her sewing. “Diane’s dad? He’s called–”

  Minnie’s fisted hand smashes against the tabletop. “I will not be lied to by my own daughter in my own home,” she spits. “What’s his bleedin’ name?!”

  “Tony,” Barbara splutters. “His name’s Tony.”

  “Tony,” Minnie repeats, her eyes narrowing.

  Barbara stares at her sewing and wonders if she’s going to cry.

  “Well, go on then, girl. Talk!” Minnie says.

  Once Barbara has told Minnie everything she can think of about Tony that doesn’t involve kissing or beer, Minnie, without a word, resumes her sewing. She is wishing Seamus was here to deal with this. She is trying to decide how she is supposed to react. Things with Glenda were so different – she spun out of control when Minnie wasn’t watching and by the time she noticed, she was too independent to even be guided. But Barbara? Barbara is fragile. Barbara needs protecting, Minnie reckons.

  Barbara waits for a moment, then opens her mouth to ask if she can continue seeing him. But she changes her mind and says nothing. She too resumes her work.

  After a few minutes, Minnie breaks the silence. "Are you serious about him?” she asks. “Do you really like this boy?”

  Barbara clears her throat. “I think so,” she says.

  Minnie nods. “I hope you’re not doing nothing a girl your age shouldn’t be.”

  “No, Mum,” Barbara says. “He hasn’t even tried anything like that. He’s a proper, well brought up boy.”

  “Well, if you’re going to start courting, I suppose you’d better get him up here so I can meet him,” Minnie says.

  “Oh. OK. I’ll, um, write and ask when he can come, shall I?”

  “A Sunday’s best,” Minnie tells her. “Tell him to come here next Sunday afternoon. I’ll make some scones.” She doesn’t really know why Sunday is best, nor why she needs to make scones, except that this is how her own parents greeted Seamus all those years ago. She doesn’t really know how to do any of this but Sunday and scones is at least a start.

  “Couldn’t we meet him in town somewhere?” Barbara asks, her eyes flicking around the room.

  “Why? There’s nothing wrong with here.”

  “I just thought it might be nice if–”

  “Unless you think he’s too posh to come here,” Minnie says. “In which case you should maybe find yourself a nicer boyfriend. ‘Cos I’m not changing anything just because you’ve found yourself some Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

  “That’s not it, Mum,” Barbara lies. “That’s not it at all. I just thought it would be nice for you to get out. I thought it would make a change.”

  “No. He can come here next Sunday afternoon,” Minnie says. “Or not at all.”

  ***

  It’s just after three when Barbara hears the motorbike pull up outside. She goes to the window to check, then announcing, “It’s him. He’s here,” she runs to the landing, then downstairs through the laundry to the front door.

  She opens the door and the bell clangs and the “closed” sign swings from side to side. Tony is removing his crash helmet and looking puzzled. “I thought I’d come to the wrong place,” he says. “I didn’t realise you actually lived in the laundry.”

  “Above it; we live in the flat upstairs,” Barbara explains, pointing ashamedly. “It’s nothing fancy but it’s home to us,” she adds, a line she heard in a film somewhere and saved for this very moment.

  “OK,” Tony says, following her inside the darkened shopfront. “It’s just your mum upstairs, is it? Or is Glenda there too?”

  “No, Glen’s out. It’s just us. I’m feeling all shaky.”

  “Me too.”

  “Come. It’s this way,” Barbara says, taking his hand and pulling him through the laundry, past the racks of clean clothes, past the bags of dirty washing and on behind the counter and through th
e rear door.

  If the laundry itself is shabby, it’s as nothing compared to what lies behind that rear door. The Chinese owner hasn’t done any work since he bought the place at the end of the war and Barbara reckons it must have been in need of more than a lick of paint before that. But as they don’t have the time or money to paint it themselves, shabby is how it remains. She wonders if Tony will simply turn around and leave. She wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  When they reach the upstairs landing, Barbara points at the coat-stand. “You can take your coat off and hang it there,” she says.

  Tony unzips then takes off his waxed-cotton motorcycle jacket revealing a slightly undersized black suit. “Ooh, you look lovely,” Barbara says, straightening his skinny black tie.

  “It’s Hugh’s,” Tony murmurs. “I loaned it off him.”

  “I thought so. It looks alright though. So! Ready?”

  Tony pulls a scared face and takes a deep breath. “Ready,” he says.

  Barbara pecks him on the cheek, then puts her hand on the doorknob and pushes the door open, leading Tony into the first of their two rooms, the room which serves as lounge, dining room, kitchen, workroom and Minnie’s bedroom, and in which, due to lack of storage, not a single surface has been spared. Around the sink area, pots and pans are piled up. Near the armchair it’s books and magazines. Near the single bed are piles of Minnie’s clothes. And everywhere else are stacks and stacks of laundry awaiting adjustments or repairs. Barbara imagines seeing the room through Tony’s eyes and thinks that she knows that it’s all over – is convinced she knows that he will leave her at the end of this.

  “Well?” Minnie prompts. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  “Mum, this is Tony,” she announces. “Tony, my mum.”

  “Hello, Mrs Doyle,” Tony says, and Barbara can hear the tremor in his voice. “I’m really pleased to meet you.” He steps forward and offers his hand.

  “We’ll see about that,” Minnie says, ignoring his proffered hand, as ferocious as ever. “Just sit yourself there,” she adds, nodding at the dining table upon which she has cleared just enough space for the plate of scones and the pot of tea. “And you, Miss,” she says, addressing Barbara. “Go make yourself scarce for an hour, would you?”

  “Oh,” Barbara says. “I thought we were going to have tea together.”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” Minnie says. “Now, off you scoot.”

  Barbara steps back out onto the landing and pulls the door closed behind her. She pulls on her coat but then hesitates and stands beside the door, listening. “So, you’re the famous Tony,” Minnie is saying.

  “Last time I looked I was, Mrs Doyle,” Tony replies.

  Barbara pulls a face. Her mother won’t appreciate being cheeked like that. Not one bit.

  “And you came up from Eastbourne on that motorbike of yours, did you?”

  “That’s right, Mrs Doyle. Quite chilly it was.”

  Because this is followed by a lull in the conversation, Barbara leans in closer to the door and almost faints in fright when Minnie rips it open. “I thought you were going,” Minnie says, her voice surprisingly calm.

  “Yes, yes. Um, I’m just g-going,” Barbara stutters, turning and running downstairs.

  Out on the street, she hesitates, then turns towards the high street. It’s a coolish September day and the sky is a pale grey, the breeze gentle.

  As she walks, she tries to imagine the conversation between her mother and Tony. She imagines them eating scones together and wonders if Tony will dribble jam down his tie – he’s a horribly messy eater. She tries to guess what Minnie will say when she gets back. “I’m sorry, he’s a nice lad, but he’s just not the kind of boy I want you to see,” seems a possible formula. Or perhaps, “I’ve thought about it but you’re just a bit young to be courting right now. I think you need to wait a few years.” Her mum always says ‘courting’. But would Tony wait for her? Of course he wouldn’t. Especially not with Diane waiting in the wings. Minnie will surely have noticed his frayed collar and the undersized suit as well. Of that much, Barbara is certain. And will Tony still want to see her now he knows she lives in a slum above a laundry? Most probably not. Her heart is racing and she can’t think of any reasonable way to make an hour disappear. “Please?” she prays, silently. “My whole life depends on this.”

  When, after forlornly wandering the streets for an hour, she gets back, she glances up at the windows as if they might reveal something about the atmosphere inside but all she can see is a reflection of the sky.

  She lets herself in, walks through the laundry and pauses at the bottom of the stairs to listen. To her great surprise, she hears Minnie laughing. She can’t remember ever having heard her mother laugh. It’s a shock to discover that she is actually capable of doing so.

  She listens a little longer, then after glancing at the clock to check that exactly an hour has passed, she climbs the stairs, takes off her coat and then hesitantly knocks on the door.

  “Come in, love,” Minnie says, and after the laughter, even her voice sounds changed and unfamiliar.

  Barbara enters the room and finds Minnie wiping a tear from her eye and Tony grinning broadly. “You’ve got yourself a proper little comedian here,” Minnie says. “He’s had me in stitches, he has.”

  Barbara struggles not to frown as she looks at them both. This is such an unexpected result, it feels like some kind of a trick. “Well, come and have a scone then,” Minnie says. “Tony’s going to have to leave soon, more’s the pity.”

  Tony winks at her and only then does Barbara let her features relax.

  Out on the street, half an hour later, as Tony pulls on his crash helmet, Barbara glances up at Minnie watching them from the window and asks, quietly, “What on earth did you say to make her laugh like that?”

  Tony shrugs. “I told her some jokes,” he says. “My dad’s mainly. She’s really nice, your mum is.”

  “Jokes?! What jokes?”

  “Dunno. The one about the cannibals cooking the clergymen. Stuff like that.”

  “What, ‘Shall we boil him? No this one’s a friar?’” Barbara asks, perplexed.

  “Yeah.”

  “But she was in tears.”

  Tony shrugs again. “Maybe nobody bothered to tell her any jokes for a while,” he says.

  “No,” Barbara concedes. “No, maybe nobody did.”

  "So, when can I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose Mum will talk to me now. Once you’ve gone.”

  “I had better get going then.”

  “I’ll write. As soon as I know something, I’ll write.”

  “And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  And then Tony jumps on the kick-starter of his motorbike, clunks into gear and heads off down the street.

  When Barbara gets back inside, Minnie is already sewing.

  “Can I have another scone?” she asks.

  “As long as you leave some for Glenda.”

  "So, did you like him?”

  “Yes,” Minnie says. “Yes, he’s a nice enough lad.”

  “Can I carry on seeing him, then?”

  Minnie pauses and looks up at her. “I’m going to write to his parents,” she says. “I want assurances you’ll be in separate rooms when you stay there.”

  “We always sleep in separate rooms.”

  “Good,” Minnie says. “Because as I told Tony. If he gets you in trouble, he marries you.”

  Barbara gulps and looks down at the pile of scones.

  “Did you hear me?” Minnie asks.

  “Yes, Mum,” Barbara says. “Yes. I heard you.”

  2012 - Southwark, London.

  Sophie arrives early for her photo shoot. She surreptitiously stacks her equipment in a corner of the cavernous warehouse structure the studio is located in and pulls her Nikon from the bag.

  When she reaches the stage, Ralph, who is gay and ripped, (and prettier than most of the models) is busy draping va
st white sheets across the backdrop. He hasn’t noticed Sophie, so she silently removes the lens cover and raises the camera to her eye.

  Ralph is on a too-small stepladder and is stretching to reach the far corner of the frame. His denim shirt has risen up revealing a tantalising stretch of skin above his low-waisted jeans and he actually has stirrups on his cowboy boots. It’s going to be a sexy shot, Sophie reckons.

  Unfortunately, Sophie has forgotten to silence the camera, so the beep of the auto-focus alerts Ralph to her presence.

  “Hey, Sophie,” he says, turning and smiling. “What you up to?”

  “Shh!” Sophie says. “I’m doing a little photo-réportage.”

  Ralph raises the staple gun and fires a shot into the top corner of the sheet. “Cool, well make sure you send me copies.”

  “Of course I will,” Sophie says, zooming in on his arse and firing off three more shots. “Nice abs, by the way. I wish my boyfriend had a set of those.”

  “Oh, they’re pretty easy to come by,” Ralph says, climbing down. “You just have to abandon any idea of having a social life and spend all your free time at the gym.”

  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.