The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  “If that is your wish, Mistress,” Brett says, for some reason speaking in a strange, science-fiction, robot voice.

  “Hum,” Sophie says, as she wonders if, even if it isn’t her wish, if it could be if she tried hard enough. But she’s not at all sure she wants to. What she wants here, what she feels like here, is simply a good, long shag. That’s what she really needs.

  She turns to face Brett, about to pierce his bubble, about to explain, gently, that dominatrix isn’t really her bag. But then she sees his dick, throbbing, jumping, begging inside his jogging trousers and realises that just because Brett is tied up, just because he has a dog collar on, clamps on his nipples and a gag in his mouth, it doesn’t mean that she can’t get what she wants too. It doesn’t mean that at all.

  She walks around the bed and attaches the handcuffs, one after the other, to the extremities of the bed-head. “OK, you little slut,” she says, yanking down his jogging trousers and watching his dick spring forth. “You’ve asked for it.”

  “Please, mercy!” Brett says.

  “No mercy,” Sophie says, straddling him. “You’re going to bloody well get what’s coming to you.”

  1951 - Eastbourne, East Sussex.

  Barbara loves living in Eastbourne. She has walked all the way to Holywell this morning (she thinks the spot where the cliffs meet the sea is the prettiest place she has ever seen) and is now on her way home. But this thought, that she loves living here, has filled her mind since the second she got up and opened the curtains.

  For a moment there, specifically for the first week of her marriage, it was hit and miss – she really did think that everything might fall apart. The worst moment of all had been her return, alone, to Donnybrook the morning after the wedding – having to face her mother, her sister, her new in-laws, and explain to them all, one after the other, that she had no idea whatsoever where her new husband was, nor where he had spent the night. Everyone was outraged on her behalf, so outraged in fact, that her own indignation became of little importance when compared to the obvious necessity of calming everyone down before Tony got back, which he did eventually, just before two p.m. He had passed out drunk at Hugh’s, he claimed. He looked poorly enough that this might be true.

  It was unforgivable, everyone agreed. “Unforgivable” – that was the word they all kept using. But given the choice between packing her bags and returning to London (an option that Glenda kept repeating would be, under the circumstances, perfectly justifiable) and forgiving and forgetting, Barbara has chosen to forgive and forget. Happiness is a relative concept and after having lived through a world war in the East End of London, Tony’s absence registered as a mere blip on her personal Richter scale. And today, as she wanders along South Downs Way with the waves crashing to her right, with the taste of sea-salt on her lips and with Tony’s baby just starting to demonstrate her presence (Minnie has swung a ring over her belly and declared that it will be a girl and Barbara believes her), she just knows that she has made the right choice.

  Of course, Tony’s behaviour at the wedding has concerned her, and having now met and spent time with his father, Lionel, she’s worried, more profoundly, that she may have married into some kind of genetic fault-line as far as alcohol is concerned. So she watches Lionel and tries to understand. Like a keen botany student, she’s observing the world around her and making mental notes about what works and what doesn’t. Already, she has identified that Lionel gets grumpy just before he starts to drink. She knows, too, that the first beer makes him normal, the second funny, and the third, euphoric and overbearing. The fourth quietens him down, the fifth leaves him maudlin and then either he falls asleep or carries on to the sixth and the seventh in which case it’s time to escape, because it can only end in an explosion of anger or, if you’re lucky, vomiting.

  She watches Joan, too, to see if she has developed any coping strategies, but other than an inexplicable need to talk all the time (is it the silence that scares her, or the thoughts that might manifest if she shut up for a moment?) she just seems to hunker down and brave her way through each storm as if it were the first and hopefully the last.

  But while Lionel hasn’t spent a single night sober since the wedding, now two weeks ago, Tony, for his part, hasn’t had a single drink. In fact, Tony has been as funny and helpful, as sweet and doting, as he ever has. Glenda told her that she must insist Tony apologise for his disgraceful behaviour but Barbara has never understood Glenda’s need for a clean-cut victory in these things. Tony’s efforts to redeem himself, his constant attentions towards her, are as much apology as Barbara needs.

  When she reaches Donnybrook, the front door is open. Barbara climbs the steps and sees that Joan is in the process of mopping the black and white checkered floor-tiles.

  “Hello. I’m back to give you a hand,” she announces, and Joan stops mopping and turns, fag-in-mouth to face her. “Hello love,” she says. “Nice walk?”

  Barbara nods and smiles sweetly. “I went all the way to Helen Gardens again.”

  “You’ll walk yourself out,” Joan admonishes. “A woman in your state should be resting. When I was pregnant with Tony–”

  “The doctor said walking was good,” Barbara interrupts. Joan has already told her how she spent three months in bed before Tony was born. Repeatedly.

  “Yes, well. I’m sure he didn’t mean you to be running a marathon every day either. In my day–”

  “Should I go round the back?” Barbara asks, cutting short another dreaded “in my day” speech. “I don’t want to spoil your nice clean floor.”

  Joan shakes her head and a small clump of ash from her cigarette falls to the floor and is instantly removed with a swipe of the mop. “No, you can come through on one condition.”

  “Yes?”

  “That you go straight to your room and rest-up.”

  Barbara nods. “OK,” she says. “I’ll help you this afternoon though.”

  Joan dries her fingertips on her pinny, then seizes the cigarette and takes a long, visibly satisfying, final drag before stubbing it out in the ashtray on the hall table. “You can peel the spuds and carrots for me,” she says. “You can do that sitting down.”

  As Barbara crosses the hall to the staircase, Joan re-mops the floor in her wake. “Sorry,” Barbara says, glancing back.

  “It’s fine, go on, go on! It’s fine!” she insists.

  Once inside Tony’s bedroom (her old single room has been commandeered for paying guests now the season has started) Barbara unlaces her saddle shoes and kicks them off. She massages one foot, then the other, then crosses the room to open the window. There is no sea view at Donnybrook but she can still hear the gulls, she can still sense the waves crashing against the beach not two hundred yards away and, just occasionally, when the wind is in the right direction, she can hear them too, rushing up the beach, then sinking into the pebbles. It sounds like the sleepy wheezing of some vast, distant giant.

  She sits down and holds her breath and listens for a moment, then throws herself back onto the bed. She stares at the ceiling, then slides one hand over her belly. It feels somehow tighter than usual. Perhaps she has overdone it a bit.

  “Sorry about that,” she says, gently rubbing herself. “You can rest now, baby.”

  By the time Barbara wakes up, the sun has moved around far enough that it is shining onto the bed. A glance at the clock reveals that she has been asleep for almost two hours. She should get up but she feels woozy and strange, feverish and crampy. She closes her eyes and lifts her knees to see if this position will ease the pain, then, when it doesn’t, she slides one hand down to her belly, then further down until it reaches the dampness. She swallows with difficulty, then wrinkles her brow, bites her bottom lip, and sits up to look. Her knickers are spotted with red, just like when her time of the month used to arrive. But that shouldn’t be happening today. She knows this much.

  She tries to imagine herself asking Joan about what’s happening – a toe-curlingly embarrassing tho
ught. She pulls open her knickers and peers inside. There is very little blood. Perhaps this is normal. Perhaps she’ll be OK.

  She feels overly full though, almost like indigestion. She feels a sudden need to ‘spend a penny’ too. Yes, perhaps that’s it. Perhaps she simply needs to pee.

  She stands, feels dizzy, and has to reach out to steady herself against the wall before she manages to cross to the dresser, where she retrieves a fresh pair of undies and a clean flannel mitt she can use as a pad. She crosses to the sink, cleans herself up, then changes. Once the blood is all gone, she feels better. She feels, for a moment, like the scare is over.

  She’ll mention it to Joan later, but at least there’s no hurry now.

  She opens the door and steps out onto the landing. Downstairs she can hear the upright vacuum cleaner being driven, beating and screaming, around the dining room.

  When she reaches the lavatory, she sits down and notes with dismay that the flannel is already spotted with bright, almost fluorescent blood. She’ll have to talk to Joan, after all.

  She reads, for the umpteenth time, the framed embroidery above the toilet roll holder. Who waits outside the door / One may never know / So tarry not my friend / He too may need to go. She wishes it wasn’t there, because, for some reason, she’s incapable of ever sitting here without reading it, and she didn’t find it funny the first time around. By now, she has read it so many times that reading it again makes her feel a little bit sick.

  She’s just about to stand up when she feels a fresh cramping sensation, strong enough to make her gasp. She sits back down, then wipes her forehead upon which beads of sweat are forming. “That’s not right,” she says quietly. She wishes Glenda was here. Glenda would know what to do.

  A fresh, even stronger wave of cramping rolls through her body, followed by a weird, sickening push that originates from deep within. A new batch of more-viscous liquid gushes out and she is torn between the alarmed instinct to look and see what’s happening down there and a new terror of what she will discover if she does. She is sweating heavily now. She’s crying too, she realises in surprise – tears are rolling down her cheeks, snot is dribbling from her nose. It feels as if her body is turning to liquid, melting like an ice cube. ‘Water, water, everywhere,’ she thinks. Perhaps Joan will come upstairs and simply find a puddle on the floor and no one will ever know where Barbara vanished to.

  She knows what is happening now, and on top of the fear and the cramps, and the sweat and the tears, she feels as if her heart is breaking as well; her sobs become real, become tortured. “Oh baby, not yet,” she gasps, screwing up her features.

  And then, as if in reply, a vast, stabbing cramp wracks her innards, making her double over and gasp loudly as something slides from within her – something of consequence, something big enough that she hears it slap against the porcelain of the toilet bowl.

  “Joan!” she starts to scream. “Joan! Joan! Joan!!” But Joan can’t hear her. The damned vacuum cleaner continues to throb and moan below, the vibrations travelling through the walls of the house.

  Yet another round of cramping seizes her body but she’s empty now, so terrifyingly empty, as empty as she has ever felt. She needs to look. She doesn’t think the baby can be alive this early on, but in truth she doesn’t know. She doesn’t think anyone has ever told her how many months would be needed before the baby is actually alive. But whatever came out felt big; it felt terrifyingly, traumatically big. So she needs to look. Just in case.

  She moves back as far as she can and peers into the bowl. And there it is. A bloody, translucent bag, a misshapen foetus.

  Paralysed, she stares at it. She stares at the tiny arms, at the outsized, alien head. She wonders if it’s dead or if it was never, in fact, alive. She wonders if it’s deformed because there’s something wrong with it, or because it’s simply too early. The unborn babies in the book certainly looked nothing like this. And then she wonders, with a fresh batch of tears, if it’s alive and slowly suffocating inside the bag.

  She reaches out and prods it with a trembling finger. It’s warm and surprisingly solid. She had expected it to feel, somehow, less real. She can barely see through the tears now, so she wipes her eyes with her wrist and then reaches out again and tries to turn the head towards her, tries to see if this thing (and could something this ugly really be her baby?) is alive or dead. It unexpectedly slides an inch down the porcelain, making her jump. The movement makes her scream and once she starts screaming, she can’t stop. She screams as loudly as she has ever screamed. And below her, finally, the vacuum cleaner stops and over her own screams she hears Joan’s voice rising from below. “Barbara? Barbara? Are you alright, love?”

  ***

  Barbara opens her eyes and looks at the green curtains surrounding the bed. Her memories of the trip to the hospital are patchy. A neighbour brought her, she thinks. Yes, a neighbour who is a taxi driver, that’s right.

  She looks to the left at the jug of rehydration salts and remembers both that she is supposed to drink the liquid within and that it tastes horrible.

  Behind the curtain, she can hear Joan whispering to someone. Joan, talking, always talking. “She lost a lot of blood,” she is saying now and Barbara remembers that too.

  She dozes off again for a while and when she awakens, Joan is still talking. “That’s what they said. That it was nature being kind.”

  “What a thing to say!” It’s Tony’s voice and Barbara is torn between calling out to him and keeping quiet so that she can hear Joan’s reply.

  “The baby wasn’t right, love,” Joan is telling him, now. “I brought the poor thing in so they could look at it and the doctor said it had stopped growing a while back and that even if it hadn’t, that it was better this way.”

  “Tony?” Barbara calls out, as much to interrupt the flow of uncensored information as anything else.

  “Sounds like she’s awake,” Joan says.

  Like a Punch and Judy puppet, Tony’s face appears between the curtains. “I just got here,” he says, moving around the bed now and taking her hand. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Barbara says.

  “Hey, it wasn’t your fault, was it?”

  “At least she’s OK,” another woman’s voice says from behind the curtain.

  “Is that Diane?” Barbara asks.

  Tony nods. “She wanted to come see you. Is that OK?”

  “I don’t want to see anyone else,” Barbara says. “Just you.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m so sorry, Tony,” Barbara says again. “I think I walked too far.”

  “That’s not the reason,” Tony tells her. “They said he’d stopped growing already.”

  “He?”

  Tony nods. “That’s what Mum said.”

  “A boy!” Barbara gasps, an actual future discovered only once it has been cancelled; her loss, suddenly made real.

  “You’re going to be alright,” Tony says, now patting her hand. “That’s the main thing.”

  “It was a boy though.”

  “Yes, well, we can always try again.”

  Try again! Barbara can’t think what to say to that. Because right now she never wanted anything less. Tony’s expectant face is just too much to bear so she closes her eyes and then decides that the best strategy is, in fact, to keep them closed.

  Eventually, he releases her hand and she hears the rattle of the curtain runners as he steps outside. “She’s fallen asleep again,” he says.

  “She’s exhausted, poor thing,” Joan says. “It’s the worst thing that can happen to a woman.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Such a shock,” Diane says.

  “I just wish we’d known before, you know...” Tony whispers.

  “Well, quite,” Joan says. “But life’s like that, love. You never know what’s around the corner.”

  “Should I stay d’you think?” Diane asks.

  “Nah. Go,” Tony tells her. “You can
both go, actually. I don’t think she’s going to be in the mood for visits today.”

  During Barbara’s week in hospital, there are three things, three obsessions, that she finds herself unable to push from her mind. The first is the image of the baby – huge head, tiny hands – so human and yet so very wrong. The second is the phrase, “Nature being kind.” It’s the cruellest thing she has ever heard. And the third is Tony declaring, “I just wish we’d known before.”

  It’s not until they are being driven away from the hospital that she dares to ask him what he meant by it. Tony asks her to repeat herself twice before looking shifty and saying, “No. I wouldn’t have said that. I definitely wouldn’t have said that.”

  But she knows that he did. She knows that beyond doubt.

  ***

  Barbara opens her eyes to find Joan bustling into the bedroom. “I’ve never seen such a mess...” she is saying, and Barbara struggles to focus on the room around her. She tries to see what might be wrong with it, then realises that Joan is talking about a guest’s room. “They only came for two nights, but there’s shopping bags and underwear all over the floor, knickers hanging on the door-knob, dirty cups they’ve brung up from downstairs. I dread to think what it’s like in their own homes. And I say homes advisedly. I’m pretty sure they’re not married, even if they did introduce themselves as Mr and Mrs Grady. I wonder what the real Mrs Grady would have to say about their little trip to Eastbourne? Then again, she’s probably glad of the break. From the cleaning, like.”

  Barbara blinks and struggles to situate herself in the here and now of this moment, this bedroom, this bed, bathed in the afternoon light. She tries to wrench herself from the woozy afternoon dream she was having where she had been so very pleasantly... Where had she been? Damn. It’s gone. Only the pleasant afterglow of whatever it was remains.

  She tries to concentrate on Joan’s stream-of-consciousness monologue as she folds and piles and dusts and collects plates from around the room. “... over at Beach Cottage...” she is saying now. “...actually managed to break a window...”