The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  Hello.

  So first of all, am I right in calling punk a movement? Or would it be more accurate to call punk a fashion?

  “We could go and get some food maybe,” Malcolm says. “I only really want to see our Tony here.”

  “I can fast forward it to the Tony bit if you want,” Dave says, his finger hovering over one of the chrome levers of the video recorder.

  “Can you?”

  “Of course,” Dave says. “You can do all sorts with these.” He presses the lever and the on-screen image speeds up.

  “That’s funny,” Sophie says. “I like it when it’s faster.”

  “Can we get one of these, Mum?” Jonathan asks.

  “A video recorder? No. They cost a fortune, don’t they Dave?”

  “This one’s rented,” Dave says. “But yes, they cost hundreds to buy.”

  “There!” Jonathan, who has been avidly watching the television set, is pointing and on-screen, Tony is wobbling from side to side – gesticulating at triple speed.

  Dave rewinds then forward winds repeatedly until, finally finding the right spot, he freezes the image.

  “You took your tie off,” Jonathan comments.

  “It was boiling,” Tony says. “The lights… I was sweating like a pig.”

  Barbara sighs. With his shirt collar spread out over the lapels of his three piece suit, he really does look like one of the Bee Gees, and that hadn’t been the look they’d been aiming for.

  “Ready?” Dave asks. Absolute silence falls upon the room. People even stop chewing the peanuts in their mouths.

  “It’s a shame you don’t have a colour set,” Malcolm says, prompting another round of shushing noises.

  Finally Dave releases the button and the screen is filled with Tony looking uncomfortable, then a series of his prizewinning photos: a woman on a baked beach, a punk with a mohican climbing onto an Intercity 125 train, a demonstration in front of number 10 Downing Street…

  We can see from just a few of your photographs that you have an exceptional sense of composition. Did you learn that in a formal setting or is it a natural gift that you have developed?

  Barbara, at the rear of the room, sees Sophie grip Jonathan’s arm as she waits for her father to reply. She wishes that she too had someone to hold on to. She grips the back of an armchair instead.

  It’s more… natural, really.

  A few seconds of silence follow. The interviewer is clearly waiting for Tony to elaborate, and eventually he does.

  I mean, I never went to art school or anything. I just like taking photographs.

  Splendid! And what’s your motivation? Where do you get your drive? Take this photo…

  He flashes the beach photo at the camera.

  Is it a comment on modern society? Are all these baked bodies there to tell us something about leisure in the modern sense?

  Onscreen, Tony coughs and scratches his neck. He pulls a face as if he is perhaps suffocating. Finally he speaks and everyone in the lounge resumes breathing.

  I… I… Look, I get a bit sick of all this talk about art to be honest. Art, and I mean visual art obviously, well, it’s meant to be looked at, isn’t it? If people want talk they can listen to the radio or read a book.

  Peter Hall is visibly peeved.

  Or watch television, ha ha. I’m sure that our viewers are watching in the hope that you’ll talk to us about your prize-winning photographs, after all.

  Yes. But I’m not a television host, am I? I’m a photographer. So I’d rather people just looked at my work. That’s the point of photography. It’s literal. A camera is, to me, like a butter knife, cutting through reality and saving it in slices for later. What the photo means is whatever the person looking at it thinks it means. Visual art is visual. That’s the whole point of it. It’s there to be looked at, not to be explained. So why don’t you look at my photo and tell me what you think it’s about. That’s far more interesting to me than what I think it’s about.

  Indeed. Well, one thing we can all agree on is that we all enjoy your stunning photographs. So congratulations on your prize.

  Thank-you.

  The camera zooms back onto Peter Hall’s face. He looks flustered.

  Now long before the punk movement, another musical event took London by storm. Beatlemania. A new musical opening in the West End next week…

  “You can stop it there,” Tony says. “That’s it. Some bird had dragged me off the set by then.”

  Dave presses the button.

  "What do you think?” Tony asks. “Did I get away with it?”

  “You were brilliant,” Malcolm says. “The perfect anti-hero. A man of the people! They’re going to love you.”

  ***

  Barbara regretfully leaves the calm of the dining room and forces herself to return to the fray. She feels uncomfortable and self conscious but holding the plate helps. Having a purpose enables her to forget the mechanics of putting one foot in front of another, enables her to forget, almost, the many challenges involved in breathing.

  In the lounge, there are twice as many people as before – strictly standing room only.

  Jonathan is playing records on the new music centre (Barbara has told him that he can play anything except the Bee Gees), and people are drinking and shouting above the music. A couple of people are smoking joints and a few are beginning to move their hips to Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

  Barbara passes once around the room with her plate of mini-quiches, then returns, like a diver coming up for air, to the safe haven of the dining room where she pours herself a larger than usual glass of sherry and downs it in one. It seems to work for everyone else. Why not her?

  When she returns to the lounge, she finds Diane standing in the doorway. “Wow!” Diane says, almost having to shout to be heard over the music. “This is some party!”

  “Yes! I didn’t even know you were coming! Celery stick?”

  Diane glances at the plate with disdain, as if perhaps Barbara has gone completely mad, which in this instant she perceives that she may well have. “Of course you don’t want a celery stick!” she says.

  Diane shrugs and takes one from the plate. “Sure,” she says. “I’ll have a celery stick. Let’s go crazy!”

  “We haven’t seen you for ages.”

  Diane crunches into the celery, then chews before replying, “No. I’m sorry about that. Things have been… you know… hard for me.”

  Barbara nods gently. “I understand,” she says. “I understand entirely. It’s been a difficult time for everyone.”

  “Anyway…” Diane says, visibly casting around for the next subject. “I love your dress! Where did you get that?”

  Barbara blushes and looks down at her feet encased in slightly too small but rather smart vinyl boots from the charity shop. “Don’t tell anyone,” she says, “But I made it. I copied it from one I saw in Carnaby street.”

  “You didn’t do the tie-die thing yourself, did you?”

  Barbara nods. “Uh huh,” she says. “The one in the shop was much brighter, all oranges and greens… but I wanted something more subtle.”

  “Well, you look amazing,” Diane says. “Really!”

  “Thanks,” Barbara says, glancing briefly at her feet again. “You’re looking very well too. Very tanned and healthy.”

  “I just got back from California,” Diane says. “I’m still jet lagged.”

  “California?”

  “I loved it there. I think I want to go and live there to be honest. It’s just like in the films. Everyone’s groovy and everyone’s hip, and everyone’s stoned. And San Francisco – I just fell in love with the place!”

  “Gosh!” Barbara says. “How exciting.”

  “You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  “Mind what?”

  “If I really did move there?”

  “Me?”

  “Both of you?”

  “Diane!” Barbara says. “How could we?”

/>   “Good… Because I really might. Oh, I saw Tony on TV. It was the night I got back, actually. He did well.”

  “He did, it’s true. We watched earlier on, on a tape recorder thingy.”

  Diane flicks her hair. “That anti-establishment thing is all the rage in America too. That was a very good move on his part.”

  “Anti-establishment?”

  Diane nods eagerly. “Yes, the whole I get sick of talking about art angle. Like he wasn’t on an arts program! I could have died. But it was clever. It worked.”

  “Actually, I thought of that.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. We were on the way to the train station and Tony was all in a panic about what he was going to say. And I said, ‘Just tell them they’re photos. Say they’re meant to be looked at, not talked about.’”

  “Well, it was a very good move. People love that stuff. Oh! And here he is! The man of the moment. My, you’re looking fierce!”

  Barbara turns to see Tony standing beside her. He is indeed looking fierce. But he shakes his head and denies it. “Fierce? Not at all,” he says, smiling at Diane, then somehow managing to look completely different when he turns the same frozen smile on Barbara.

  He takes Diane by the arm. “Don’t stand there on the threshold,” he says. “Come and join the party. And tell me about America!”

  Diane glances over her shoulder as Tony tugs her away. She winks at Barbara and throws her a parting peace offering. “You really do look beautiful in that dress!” she says.

  Diane’s flattery and the sherry suddenly hit home and as she sashays through the crowd, Barbara feels comfortable in her skin. It’s an unusual experience for her and it’s a shock to realise just how good that feels – what a relief it is to suddenly have the impression that she’s at one with her own body. She generally feels like a tiny, scared child lurking within, trying to pilot some big, alien machine around the room.

  “Celery stick?” she offers to the right. “Oh, hello Malcolm! Celery stick? Hello Jenny! How are you?”

  “I love the dress!”

  “Why, thank you! Celery stick, anyone?”

  By the time she reaches the far side of the room, the plate is almost empty, so she turns back towards the kitchen. The Things We Do For Love is playing and she feels drunk and perhaps slightly stoned (is it possible to get stoned on other people’s smoke?) and Tony is no longer with Diane but with Jules, and 10cc are singing about love. All is right with the world.

  “Jules. You know Barbara?” Tony says, grabbing her arm as she passes by. He is shockingly red in the face which is generally a sign that he’s getting dangerously drunk.

  “Yes,” Jules says, smiling benignly. “Of course. Great outfit, Barbara.”

  “She made it herself,” Tony says. “Out of an old bed-sheet! Can you believe that?”

  Barbara’s smile fades a little. “I actually–“

  “Babs is terribly creative,” Tony interrupts. “She gives me all of my best ideas. In fact, I don’t think I’d have a clever thought without her. Isn’t that right, Babs?”

  Barbara opens her mouth to reply but then can’t think of anything to say. Nice Tony has vanished and nasty Tony is back. Sophisticated, charming Barbara, so briefly glimpsed, has vanished also, leaving the tiny terrified child back in control, randomly pulling on levers as the vehicle lurches around the room. “Celery stick?” she mutters, stumbling on through the crowd.

  Back in the kitchen, she washes the plate before returning to the dining room for another shot of sherry and a handful of cheesy footballs. So what if she did make the dress from an old curtain? So what if she did tie-die it herself? How dare he!

  At this moment, she is saved, because her favourite song of the moment comes on, Abba’s Money, Money, Money. Damn him! she thinks. I will enjoy this party.

  In the lounge, the room has divided into two, those who are drinking at the front, and those who are dancing crowded around the music centre.

  Sophie is spinning around like a dervish, dancing rock-and-roll style with Diane, and Barbara watches them jealously for a moment before she reminds herself that Diane may be leaving soon. Of course she’ll want to make the most of the occasion. It’s all perfectly normal.

  She moves to the edge of the dancers and closes her eyes to shut it all out. She lets her body begin to sway. She likes the way the dress moves around her. She likes the way the music and the floor, filtered through sherry, feel soft and welcoming, like a mattress in the sun. Money, money, money… She begins to smile. Such an uplifting sound!

  Someone speaks to her. “She’s such a good dancer!”

  She opens her eyes to see Diane dancing in a slow, swaying motion in front of her. With her beautiful straight black hair, she looks like a reed on the seabed, undulating with the tide. “Sophie, you mean?”

  Diane nods and smiles some more. “Yes. She’s amazing!”

  “Oh, I know,” Barbara says. “She loves to dance. Yesterday morning, I came in and found her dancing like the Zulus do.”

  “Like the who?”

  Barbara laughs. “Like the Zulus,” she repeats, patting a hand against her mouth and turning in a circle whilst stamping one foot in time with the music.

  “Oh, how funny!” Diane says.

  “I think she saw it on the telly,” Barbara says, struggling to intonate – she’s definitely tipsy. “I watched her for ages. She went round and around.”

  “What’s all this?” Tony has joined them but is not dancing. Tony never dances, can’t dance, in fact. Though Barbara tried in the early days to teach him, it’s impossible. He simply has no sense of rhythm.

  “Barbara’s showing me how the Zulus dance,” Diane laughs, gaily.

  “Show me.”

  Barbara shrugs, then laughs and repeats the dance. “I was only explaining what–“

  “Ha! That’s great. Malcolm!” Tony shouts. “Look at this! Do it again!”

  Barbara frowns but repeats the movement one more time. “I was just showing Diane here how Sophie–” she begins again to explain, but Tony, laughing raucously, is staggering away.

  “Don’t mind him,” Diane says. “He’s drunk.”

  “Yes, I know,” Barbara replies. But she does mind, not because her little bubble of happiness has been burst, but because she knows that bursting it was Tony’s specific purpose in laughing at her like that.

  Valiantly, so as not to admit defeat, she dances until the end of the song, but her heart is no longer in it. Afterwards, she returns to the dining room where she eats a sausage on a stick and then to the kitchen where she drinks a glass of tap water. But these rooms are busy now, and because all she wants is to be alone, she heads out to the back yard.

  With the noise of the party behind her, she breathes in the cold night air and looks at the moon, hanging spectacularly over the neighbour’s apple tree.

  She sits on a border-wall and forces herself to take long deep breaths until, after what must be at least ten minutes, her jagged breathing returns to normal.

  As she stands to return to the house, Sophie runs out followed by Jonathan in hot pursuit. Sophie hides behind Barbara’s legs. “Jonathan’s trying to lock me in the bedroom,” she says breathlessly.

  “Dad says she has to go to bed,” Jonathan explains. “He says it’s getting too rowdy for eight-year-olds.”

  Barbara smooths her daughter’s hair. “That’s probably not such a bad idea. It is almost midnight.”

  “But I’m fine. I’m not sleepy. I want to dance.”

  “Look,” Barbara says. “How about we dance to one more song and then I’ll put you to bed.”

  Sophie looks up at her. “Two songs?” she says. “No, three songs.”

  “OK, three more songs.”

  Back in the lounge, the music has stopped. “Where’s our disc jockey?” Tony shouts. “Come on lad!”

  “I’m on it, Dad, I’m on it,” Jonathan replies, forcing his way through the dancers, unexpectedly stranded in a sea
of silence.

  “Put something African on,” Tony says.

  Barbara bristles. She knows where this is going already. “Tony,” she protests.

  “African?” Jonathan asks.

  “Yeah. Your mum’s gonna show us how the Zulus dance, aren’t you?”

  Half the people in the room now turn to face Barbara. Some of their faces express drunken glee but a few, the women mainly, look sad, compassionate… Barbara’s not sure which is worse. The compassion probably. Her face begins to burn.

  “What should I put on?” Jonathan asks. He still doesn’t understand what’s happening here.

  “Anything,” Barbara tells him. “I’m not dancing any more tonight.”

  Sophie swings on her arm. “Mum!” she whines. “You promised.”

  “Yeah! Come on Babs!” Tony shouts. “Everyone wants to see how the bloody Zulus dance!”

  Barbara scans the expectant faces around her, then throws a withering gaze at Tony. But he’s too drunk to decode the subtleties of her regard. Or to care. He simply leers back.

  “Put the Bee Gees on, then,” Barbara tells Jonathan. “Your dad’s dressed just right for that.”

  She glances at Tony, hopeful that her dig, borrowed cruelly from her son, has hit home. But unlike hers, Tony’s ego isn’t fragile. He is just standing there in his cream suit still laughing at her. She can’t even tell if he has heard her or understood the joke.

  Stayin’ Alive comes on the speakers now and Tony begins to shout and clap. “Bar-bra, Zulu-dance, Bar-bra, Zulu-dance,” he chants, and two of his stupid, drunken friends join in.

  Barbara pushes Sophie towards the middle of the dance-floor. “Just dance, sweetheart,” she says. “I’m off to bed.”

  Sophie looks adoringly up at her. “But we can do the Zulu dance together,” she says.