The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  “Brown rice maybe?”

  “Well, quite. She showed us her latest paintings of course.”

  “Of course. And?”

  “‘Ugh’ pretty much sums it up.”

  “It doesn’t sound like a very fun evening.”

  “No. Well, it was never going to be fun. But it smoothed things over with Mum, so I can go down next weekend and carry on as if nothing happened. So in that, at least, it was mission accomplished.”

  “Good,” Brett says, pulling on his jacket. “Sorry, but–”

  “I know, you have to run.”

  “I have to run.”

  Sophie puts down her coffee cup, stands, pulls her dressing gown more tightly around her and crosses the room. She smooths out a crinkle in Brett’s collar. “I was hoping for a shag,” she says.

  “No can do. Editorial meeting at nine.”

  “OK. See you tonight.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Damn, I forgot, you’ve got that private view thing to go to in Liverpool.”

  “I have.”

  Sophie follows Brett to the front door, hands him his satchel, then kisses him goodbye and closes the door after him.

  She turns back to face her silent apartment then stands, with Brett’s footsteps receding behind her, and stares at the interior. It looks somehow alien. It looks odd like a film set, odd perhaps, like a Kubrick film set. The emptiness of last night has returned, only this morning it is clearer to her where it comes from. Spending time with her family makes her feel like a child... No, not like a child but like an impostor – perhaps a child pretending to be an adult. Why doesn’t she feel as grown up as Jon and Judy, or her mother, or Brett even? She’s a pretend artist, in a pretend artist’s flat, with a pretend boyfriend. She sighs deeply, then frowns as she struggles to remember first what day it is, and next what her pretend artist’s schedule is for today.

  “Monday,” she mutters, then, “Shit!” She strides through to the kitchen and checks the clock: 8:04. “Shit, shit, shit!” she spits. She’s supposed to be on the other side of London; she has a photo shoot at nine. She has a very real photo shoot at a very specific time.

  1962 - Peckham, London.

  “How many months is it now?” Phil asks. Phil is Tony’s best friend from work, a news photographer at the Mirror, and this being Barbara’s fourth pregnancy in the ten years he has known them, he knows better than to ask when it’s “due.” Because like Barbara and like Tony, he knows the sad truth is that it probably isn’t due at all.

  “This is four months,” Barbara says, then, to answer some unspoken question lingering in the air, she adds, “So yes, this is the longest I’ve ever carried term. We’re keeping everything crossed.”

  “Keeping everything crossed” – that oft repeated mantra, a mantra that doesn’t even begin to describe the hope and the fear, the terror and the yearning surrounding each pregnancy.

  This time, her fourth attempt, Barbara feels ready for anything. She feels ready even for the heartbreak of another miscarriage. She knows the horror now, is familiar, even intimate with it, the way one is intimate with a devious, despicable relative. And though even a familiar horror remains horrific, the knowledge that she can survive this makes it at least possible to face up to the future; it makes it possible to go through all this hoping.

  She is ready to be told that she can never try again as well. The doctors seemed doubtful that she would even be able to get pregnant again after last time. Her womb, they say, is “under-developed”; it is “damaged”. But when she asked the (rather abrupt) doctor if it was OK to keep trying, he said, “there’s never any harm in trying, dear. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

  So try, they did. And now, getting their hopes up, they are.

  She’s ready for Tony to leave her if it all goes wrong too. She has sensed his growing desperation for children, his growing impatience with her for failing to provide them; she has measured the way her failure to do so has gradually belittled her in his regard. She senses how Joan and Lionel have come to see their son’s marriage as a mistake, for the simple reason that it is “fruitless.” A fruitless marriage to a “barren” woman. She’s certain that this is what people say behind her back. Why would Tony choose to stay?

  So yes, this fourth time feels like the last time. She can see it in people’s eyes, she can hear it in their sighs. She can sense it deep within – can detect it in the vibration of the space between matter, in an emptiness that longs to be filled. The last time. Her last chance. She’s keeping everything crossed.

  “You make sure you take things easy,” Phil is saying.

  “Oh, I’m taking things very easy,” Barbara replies. “Tony won’t let me do anything. I hardly even leave the flat these days.”

  The front door opens and Tony returns, a clinking bag hanging from his hand.

  Barbara eyes the bag. She mentally estimates the weight and deduces the number of bottles within – perhaps five or six. She sighs with relief. The boys really are just going to “have a couple” as Tony said they would. It’s been months since his last binge and this makes her feel nervous. A binge is overdue and Phil could well have been, as he has been so many times before, the catalyst that sets Tony off. But she’s guessing from the weight of the bag that they’re safe this evening.

  “I got you this,” Tony says, pulling a bottle from the bag and handing it to Barbara.

  “What’s that?” Phil asks.

  “Irn-Bru,” Barbara explains, taking the bottle. “It’s got iron in it, so it’s good for pregnant lassies like myself, or so they say.”

  “That’s what Mum reckons anyway,” Tony says. “Swears by it, she does.”

  “And the fish and chips?” Barbara asks.

  “He said to come back in half an hour,” Tony says, glancing at the clock on the mantlepiece. “They’ve got a backlog to get through. It is Friday, after all.”

  “Why do people eat fish and chips on a Friday?” Phil asks, taking a bottle of pale ale from Tony’s outstretched hand.

  Tony shrugs. “Because it’s the end of the week?” he says. “Because they’re too knackered to cook?”

  “I think it’s a Catholic thing,” Barbara ventures. “I think it’s something to do with Lent.”

  “We have fish and chips every night,” Tony says. “I hope it’s not a sin.”

  “Not every night.”

  “Third time this week...”

  Barbara pulls a guilty face. “Cravings,” she tells Phil in a confidential tone of voice. “And they say it’s best to go with what you fancy. They say it’s the baby asking for whatever it needs to grow big and strong. And what this one seems to want is fish and chips. And tartar sauce. Particularly the tartar sauce.”

  “Well, I’ll drink to a big strong baby,” Phil says.

  Tony heads to the kitchen area and returns with a bottle opener.

  “Oh, get glasses,” Barbara protests.

  “Phil doesn’t mind, do you?”

  Phil shakes his head solemnly and levers off the bottle cap.

  “I do!” Barbara says.

  “I’ll go,” Phil says, standing.

  “Girls!” Tony laughs.

  “So, are you moving?” Phil asks when he returns with Barbara’s glass. “Have you decided?”

  “We’re waiting to see what happens, aren’t we?” Tony says.

  “What happens with…?”

  “We’re waiting to see if Babs can keep this one in till the end,” Tony says.

  Though Barbara knows he’s just making light of their heartache, she hears the accusation inherent in his choice of words. Because after all, how difficult could it possibly be to keep it in?

  “If I get to six months, we’ll move,” Barbara explains. “That’s what we decided.”

  “But you’ll stay around here?”

  “Babs wants to move back to Shoreditch,” Tony says. “She wants her mummy, don’t you?”

  “I think we’ll need Mum to ba
bysit,” Barbara explains. “If we ever get that far,” she adds, tagging a conditional onto the end of her sentence like a good luck charm.

  “So come on,” Tony says, addressing Phil. “Show me these pictures of yours.”

  Phil retrieves a green marbled folder from beside his chair and snaps back the elastic straps. Within are twenty or so glossy, colour photographs which he begins to hand around.

  “I love that smell,” Barbara says, lifting a photograph of a yellow cornfield to her nose.

  She hands it to Tony and takes the next one from Phil’s grasp. The image is of a little girl in a bright blue dress stroking a cat on a deep red letterbox. “Gosh,” Barbara says. “The colours!”

  “These are nice,” Tony says.

  They leaf through the images of windswept fields, fluorescent green lawns and orange autumn leaves, passing them around the circle until they return to Phil and the folder.

  “They’re beautiful, Phil,” Barbara comments.

  Tony frowns at her.

  “Well, they are!” she insists.

  “She never says that about mine,” Tony says with laughter in his voice, but beyond the laughter, she can see he is hurt.

  “I just wish you’d take colour pictures,” she says. “They’re so pretty.”

  “Pretty...” Tony repeats dismissively. “Anyway, it’s too expensive and I’m saving up for other things at the moment like cots and prams.”

  “It is an expensive business,” Phil agrees.

  “Plus the colours are all wrong,” Tony says. “I’ll do colour once they manage to get the colours right.”

  “They’re getting better,” Phil says. “These were taken with that new Kodacolor X film and it’s a lot nicer than before. I rather like it, to be honest. I like the way everything’s just slightly off-key. It makes it a bit surreal.”

  “Like a dream,” Barbara says, fingering a photo of a deep blue sky, streaked through with red from the setting sun. “I like it too. It’s like real life but, you know, more.”

  “She’s good,” Phil says, nodding at Barbara and then winking at Tony.

  “Yeah,” Tony says, swigging his beer. “I still prefer black and white. I think it’s more artistic. I think it’s more dramatic.”

  And because Barbara can hear a slight edge in his voice, an edge that she knows and fears, she backtracks. “Well, you’re probably right, Tony,” she says, handing the photos back to Phil. “After all, what do I know?” Tony has recently sold a few photos to the Mirror instead of just delivering packages, so it’s important not to undermine his confidence.

  “Lucky for you that’s all the Mirror wants anyway,” Phil says, apparently having decided the same thing. “And those photos you took of that demonstration were good. They were very real. Very gritty.”

  “Thanks,” Tony says, looking as sullen as a two-year old.

  1963 - Hackney, London.

  Barbara lies and stares at the ceiling and waits for whatever comes next to come next.

  Beside her the drip drip-drips into the tube leading into her arm. The entry point is sore now from when, using her final reserves of fury, she had ripped it out. But it was to no avail. She hadn’t known her way around, so they had caught her, they had stopped her, and with an orderly on one side and a nurse on the other, they had marched her back to bed. They said that if she tried it again, they would strap her down but she’s too exhausted to fight now anyway. And so she just lies here, distraught, waiting for whatever happens next to happen.

  It’s three days since they rushed her into hospital, three days since they cut her open and removed whatever was inside. They say it was a baby – they say it was a boy. But she doesn’t believe them. They won’t let her see it. They won’t let her hold it. So how can she believe them? But something was removed, this much is sure. Behind the angry scar bisecting her abdomen, she can sense the familiar emptiness, that sad absence which says that this pregnancy is over.

  The scar hurts. It’s a source of a constant, throbbing pain, which during her breakout attempt, became downright crippling agony. It will heal, they say. The baby’s fine, they say.

  Footsteps are approaching along the centre of the ward now – hard women’s heels clip-clopping against the tiles. Another tough, war-trained nurse, no doubt ready to inflict some new act of malevolence upon her. Barbara stares at the ceiling hoping that she’ll simply walk on by.

  Glenda’s face appears above her. “Hello,” she says. “Guess who I’ve just been to see.”

  Barbara swallows hard then says, “Not you as well...”

  “Not me?”

  “Even you won’t tell me the truth.”

  Glenda laughs. She actually laughs, then says the same thing the nurses have been saying, the same thing Tony has been saying, the same thing her mother has told her. “He’s fine,” she says.

  They’re all in this together.

  “He’s small,” she continues. “He’s tiny and wrinkled like a little old man but he’s fine. He’s still in an incubator thing but soon he’ll be out. Soon they’ll bring him up to you.”

  But Barbara knows that this isn’t true, because of the simple fact that if it were true, they would have let her see him. No one would put her through this agony of not knowing, this trauma of not-bonding, if it wasn’t to spare her from some terrible, terrible truth.

  She imagines various versions of that truth now. A baby with a huge head like the one she miscarried. A baby with one arm, with no arms. A baby that’s a cretin, a baby that’s mongoloid, a baby that’s already dead...

  “He’s beautiful,” Glenda says, patting her hand, and the cruelty of these lies, the treachery of her sister, is such that Barbara can’t bear to look at her.

  “I don’t believe you,” she breathes, allowing her head to roll away so that Glenda won’t see the tears which have begun to form.

  Barbara couldn’t say how long Glenda stays at her bedside. These hours, these days waiting for the truth to be revealed stretch out like chewing gum, so it’s hard to count them properly. But eventually Barbara notes her absence and once the nurse has given her a pill, she drifts into sleep, her only refuge from the anguish of here and now, her only escape from this living nightmare.

  When she awakens, the daylight has faded (is it still the same day?) and Tony is sitting beside her. “Barbara,” he is saying. “Barbara!”

  She opens her eyes and struggles against the drugs as she tries to focus on him. He looks hazy and blurred but surprisingly handsome.

  “Barbara,” he says again, “He’s here,” and for a moment she thinks he means her father. Which must surely be proof that the end of the world is nigh. She manages to raise one hand to her face; she succeeds in rubbing her eyes.

  “Look,” Tony says, and now she sees his face, smiling, beaming, radiant. She traces the arc of his arm to the pointing finger and beyond that, to the cot beside him.

  Still struggling with her eyesight, she rolls a little towards him and peers at the cot. Inside it is a white bundle. The moment of truth has arrived. Barbara’s heart begins to race. She attempts to sit up but is held back by her severed abdominal muscles. She rolls back, grimaces at the pain and then tries again.

  Tony says, “Wait.” He stands and pushes the wheeled cot until it touches the bed beside her so that from her new, semi-propped up position, she can see.

  Swaddled in hospital blankets, she can’t see much – only the baby’s red, wrinkled features are visible. But it has two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Barbara gasps. It’s a start.

  Wincing at the pain from her stitches, she reaches out and tries to fumble with the blankets. She’s sure the blankets are hiding something.

  “What are you doing?” Tony asks, frowning now. “You’ll wake him.”

  “I need to see,” Barbara says, her voice coming out as an absurd squeak.

  “Barbara!”

  “Let me see. I need to see what’s wrong,” she gasps.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Tony says
.

  “Show me! Let me see!”

  Tony stares deeply into Barbara’s eyes and his own features start to collapse. He can see madness here today. Madness but also almost unbearable suffering. “OK, OK,” he says. “Look.”

  As Barbara holds her breath, he leans over the cot and gently pulls back the blankets. As Tony, glancing guiltily over his shoulder, lifts the baby, he stirs. He kicks his legs. He has two of them. He moves his arms. Two of those as well. The legs have feet. The arms have hands. Barbara stares at him and counts toes and fingers. Five and five and five and five... She holds her arms out.

  “You can’t hold him. He has to stay–”

  “Give him to me.”

  “They said...”

  “Give him to me.”

  Tony pulls a face – resigned, compassionate. “Here. Look,” he says, handing the tiny bundle over. “He’s OK, Barbara.” His eyes are now tearing as well as he watches her pull the child towards her breast. “He really is. Just be careful–”

  “He’s very red.”

  Tony sniffs. “They said it’s normal. It’s because he’s early. It will go away.”

  “He’s all blotchy.”

  “That too.”

  “He’s so tiny.”

  “I told you. Four pounds, six ounces,” Tony says. “But he’s going to be fine, Babs.”

  “Is this one mine?” Barbara asks, almost unable to believe, after three days with her fears, that this is her baby – suspecting that she is failing to experience some profound maternal tug that would occur were this truly her child.

  Tony nods. “He’s ours. And he’s fine.”

  Barbara bites her bottom lip and turns the baby to face her.

  “I’ve been telling you for days,” Tony says. He moves to the bed and, with difficulty, positions himself sideways so that he can enfold Barbara and the baby within his arms. His face screws up with pride and joy and a hundred other emotions that he can’t even identify. “You’re fine aren’t you, Jonathan,” he says, reaching out to stroke the baby’s cheek, and the baby gurgles briefly, then begins to cry. “We’ve got a son, Barbara,” Tony says, squeezing her hand. “We’ve got a baby boy.”