The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  “No. It’s just not possible. There’s been a mistake. He was a photographer, not a junkie.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Marsden. I was only translating.”

  Barbara takes a moment to look out of the window, a moment to catch her breath. It’s sunny outside and she feels that it should not be. The sunshine seems somehow an affront. It should rain, she thinks, on funeral days.

  "Is that what they’re saying killed him?” she asks, her voice wobbling strangely. “Did it make him have a heart attack? Because they said a heart attack. Is that right?”

  “It says it might have contributed,” the man says, pointing at some more French words on the sheet. “With the alcohol and the cocaine. And the, um, exertion.”

  Barbara chews her cheek. “The exertion,” she repeats.

  “Yes. He, um, wasn’t on his own,” the policeman says, clamping his jaw as if he has toothache.

  “He wasn’t alone?”

  The policeman runs his finger across the text and then stops. He nods at the sheet. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  Barbara looks at his finger. He has a little dirt under the fingernail. And then she looks at the word above the fingernail. It says, “SEXUEL”. It says, “RAPPORT SEXUEL.”

  Unexpectedly, surprising even herself, she laughs out loud. At first she snorts, then she chuckles and then she cackles like a witch. Tears of laughter start to stream down her cheeks. She knows it’s inappropriate but she just can’t help herself. “You’re trying to tell me that my husband died, drunk and drugged, while he was making love to some hooker?” she says, through the strange wheezy laughter. “Is that it?”

  “Mrs Marsden,” the policeman says. “I’m sorry but you have to understand, I’m only translating what the French coroner wrote. That’s all I’m doing here.”

  “Oh dear,” Barbara says, looking away and wiping her face on her sleeve. “There’s been a mixup my love. He liked a drink but the rest… that’s not my Tony. That’s not Tony at all.”

  “Maybe,” the policeman says, doubtfully. He scans the form. “It’s unlikely but you never know… the woman, his assistant… she was supposed to have… you know… identified the body, at the coroner’s office.”

  “His assistant?”

  He nods and pulls a pocketbook out. “Yeah. A certain Diane Darbott?” he says. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Barbara continues to laugh, but slowly, over the course of half a minute, the pattern of her laughter changes. It becomes harsher, more raucous, before finally morphing into a spout of uncontrollable sobbing.

  “Mrs Marsden?” the young man says. “Mrs Marsden! Please. Jesus!”

  Eventually, hesitantly, he puts one arm around her shoulders and Barbara, unable to do anything else, shifts her body towards him. She presses her face into the coarse blue material of his uniform and, onto the chest of an unknown twenty-something constable, she lets herself sob.

  ***

  The funeral is well attended. That’s what people say, isn’t it? Well attended.

  Everyone is there except Diane. Diane who could be back in America or locked in some stinking jail in France. Barbara doesn’t know and she doesn’t much care. Though if she’s honest with herself, she has a vague preference for the latter.

  She glides through the proceedings in a daze, listening to people who think they knew him, watching the coffin slide into the floor in a dream of loss. She thanks people on the outside of the bubble for having come. She shrugs when someone asks if Diane “knows.” “She needs to be informed,” the man says. “They were very close.”

  “I’m sure she knows,” Barbara replies without flinching.

  She’s polite and neutral and calm, because this is the only way she knows to get through this. Jonathan, likewise, is stoney and grey and self-restrained. Only Sophie cries, uncontrollably. Sophie cries enough for everyone.

  Back at the house, Barbara serves perfect little sandwiches and tiny tomato tartlets. She listens to people laughing at stories from Tony’s short life and tries not to hate them for owning bits of it she knows nothing about. She’s been to funerals before. These things happen.

  She eyes the package – his things, delivered in their absence, signed for by a neighbour – and tries to just get through this day without embarrassing herself. Because that could so easily happen. She could lose control and things could get messy. Truths could slip out if emotions run riot and the children must be protected. And that means that she has to bear this secret alone.

  Once everyone has gone and leftovers have been wrapped in cling-film, once the kids have gone to bed and curtains have been drawn, she drags the package to the lounge. She takes a pair of scissors and cuts through the twine.

  She rips off the brown paper revealing Tony’s suitcase, then breaks the wax police seal and opens the clasps.

  First up comes his jumper. His big grey jumper. She sniffs it. She caresses it. She allows herself, unwitnessed, a brief, fond memory. Because of course, it wasn’t all bad. Because no matter how he died, there is still loss. There is still, unexpected, unbearable, heartbreaking loss.

  Then layer by layer she removes items from the suitcase. There are no surprises, no wafts of perfume, no condoms, no women’s knickers…

  In the middle she finds his camera, the Pentax, rolled in some trousers and, protected in the Pentax bag, his beloved Rollei. Both have been emptied of their film.

  And finally, at the bottom – perhaps someone hoped she’d never find it – is a large envelope stamped Gendarmerie Nationale.

  In it she finds a series of contact sheets. The French police must have developed his films. She pulls them from the sleeve and notes the negatives languishing at the bottom.

  Being contact prints, not enlargements, the images are small but she can still make out their content – blurry facile snapshots of Paris.

  A woman, on a bridge (not Diane, thankfully). Two women in a bar, smoking (still not Diane). A dog, a tram, a train… The Eiffel Tower in the rain.

  And then, at the back, a final sheet of square, black and white images taken with the Rollei – nudes, beautifully photographed. A woman’s armpit against a white, crumpled sheet, a blurred shot of long black hair in motion – possibly Diane’s – and then Diane, definitely Diane this time, naked, one arm thrown above her head, reclining on a chaise longue. Tony has never, to Barbara’s knowledge, photographed nudes before. And she can tell, even from these small prints, that they’re beautiful – perhaps, ironically, the best photos he has ever taken.

  Despite the fact that her chest feels tight, she continues to work her way through the images. She has to look, just once. It’s like all the rest. She has to get it over with. That, as the new head of this family, is her job.

  Two hands, overlaid on top of a book; some fingers fiddling with an earring; a headless, generous, hairless nude (too curvy to be Diane) standing in front of a rainy Parisian window, a cigarette smouldering in one hand. Another image of a woman, Diane again, kneeling before her. The woman still has the cigarette in one hand but is holding the back of Diane’s head with the other, actively pulling her in.

  Barbara turns away – a reflex, like pulling a hand from the flame. Like pulling herself from the shame.

  She sees the fireplace and, still in reflex mode, scoops up the sheets of images and crosses the room to kneel before it. She lights the corner of the first sheet with a match, then slowly piles the others on top. The flames flicker and rise. A smell of burning chemicals fills the air.

  She returns for the envelope, then casts it on top.

  She wonders where Diane is now. Not that it would help but she’d like to slap her. She’d like to slap her hard, or punch her perhaps. She’d like to hear Diane struggle to justify herself and then push her from a Parisian bridge.

  She tries to imagine what Diane would say.

  “There were no drugs. They were just photographs. He’s an artist,” she’d say, as if this excused everything. Or perhaps she’d just
deny it all.

  “But you didn’t even come to his funeral,” Barbara would say. “Explain that.”

  She reaches out and snatches the envelope from the flames but it’s already smouldering so she tips the negatives onto the carpet before returning the envelope to the grate.

  What little power she has over Diane is tied to possessing these negatives, she realises. And with the way their lives have become entwined, Barbara may just need that one day. Sophie, after all, needs to be protected. She shuffles the negatives together and then holding them by the edges – not because she respects their content but because this is how Diane, herself, taught her to hold them – she stands.

  She glances back at the prints, now almost entirely consumed, then refills and closes the suitcase before dragging it down to the cellar. She hides it behind Jonathan’s old go-kart, then returns to the lounge where only a few smouldering cinders remain.

  There. All done. Tomorrow, we can begin pretending that he really was who we all thought he was, she thinks.

  2013 - Bermondsey, London.

  When Barbara comes to, she finds herself in Sarah Stone’s swivelling, reclining, office chair. Sophie is holding her hand and Jonathan is peering in at her. She struggles to focus on their faces, then raises one hand to touch the back of her scalp.

  “You hit your head on the wall when you fell,” Jonathan explains. “You fainted, Mum.”

  “How do you feel?” Sophie asks.

  Barbara blinks repeatedly. “I think I’m OK,” she says. “I don’t know what came over me. The heat, I think.”

  “It’s exactly twenty-one degrees,” Sarah Stone says, perhaps fearing a law-suit. “But we’ve called for an ambulance, so they’ll be able to check you out.”

  “I don’t need an ambulance.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Jonathan says.

  “Really, I’m fine.” Barbara attempts to sit up but the sprung chair somehow resists this so she gives up and sinks back into the padded leather.

  “Can I get you anything, Mum?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. Really. It was just a little fainting fit. These things happen as you get older.”

  “You should get back to the exhibition,” Jonathan tells Sophie. “I’ll stay here with Mum till the ambulance arrives.”

  “I don’t need an ambulance!” Barbara says again.

  One of the waitresses appears in the doorway. She points vaguely over her shoulder. “Some man,” she says.

  “Is it the ambulance?”

  The girl frowns.

  “Is it some kind of doctor?” Sarah paraphrases.

  The girl shakes her head. “No. The man… he want to buy photograph,” she says in a thick Slavic accent.

  “Oh, OK. I’ll go. Actually, you’d better come too, just in case,” she tells Sophie. “If you’re sure you’re OK, Barbara?”

  Barbara waves them away. “I’m fine!”

  Once she is alone with Jonathan, Barbara beckons at him to come closer, “I need you to do something for me, son. Something important.”

  “Sure Mum. Anything.”

  “I need you to make her leave. She has to leave. Don’t let her talk to Sophie, OK?”

  “Diane?”

  “Yes.”

  “She left already, I think. But why?”

  “Please don’t ask questions. Just make sure she’s gone.”

  Jonathan stands. He pulls a face. “OK,” he says. “If you say so. Will you be OK, or do you–”

  “For God’s sake. I’m fine!”

  “Right. OK. Back in a tick.”

  “If she’s there, just walk her to the door, OK? She’s very, very drunk, so anything she says…”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  In the corridor outside, Jonathan finds a huddle of Barbara’s contemporaries waiting for news. “How is she?” Phil asks.

  “She’s OK. Um, Phil, do you know, is Diane still here?”

  Phil shakes his head. “No, sorry. She left a while back.”

  “OK,” Jonathan says, turning back. “That’s fine then.”

  When Sophie steps back into the gallery, Brett beckons to her, so she and Sarah Stone cross to join him. “This is Jack Miles,” Brett says. “He’s interested in owning one of these.” He points to Tony’s photo of a punk boarding a train. “That’s doable, right?”

  “Oh yes, that’s a fabulous photo,” Sophie says. “We have some limited edition prints of this one available, don’t we Sarah?”

  “Sure,” Sarah says. “Come with me, Jack, and we can arrange all of that.”

  “I’d like to chat to you afterwards if that’s possible,” Jack tells Sophie.

  “Of course.”

  Once Sarah has led him off to the desk in the corner, Brett asks, “So how’s your ma?”

  “She’s OK, I think. She fainted but she seems fine now.”

  “That was some humdinger she was having with wig-lady,” Brett says.

  “With Diane?”

  Brett shrugs. “If the wig-lady is Diane, then yeah.”

  “Don’t call her that, Brett. What were they arguing about?”

  “Beats me. But your ma was bawling at her, and some. She told her to go.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Sophie spins on one heel to take in the room.

  “If you’re looking for her, she’s gone,” Brett says. “Almost as soon as it happened, in fact.”

  “How weird.”

  “She might still be out front, I guess. With the nicotine junkies.”

  “I’ll go check,” Sophie says. “I can watch out for the ambulance too.”

  She walks past the bookshop, crosses the lobby and steps out into the cool night air. The daylight has gone now and the concrete plaza is lit by the orange glow of the street lamps.

  A group of people from the exhibition are smoking just outside the door and Sophie suddenly wishes that she still smoked. She pauses, thinking of asking someone for a cigarette but then spots a small huddled figure on the far side of the esplanade. Unsure, initially, if it’s a tramp or Diane, she crosses the space as quietly as her heels will allow.

  Diane looks up as she approaches. She too is smoking and as Sophie reaches her, she smells the sweet, familiar odour of marijuana.

  “Diane? Tell me you’re not smoking dope in the street?”

  “Um,” Diane replies. “It helps with the pain. Is she OK?”

  “Mum? Yes, pretty much. She fainted. She banged her head too. But I think she’s OK. They called an ambulance, just in case.”

  Diane nods and breathes out smoke. “Good,” she says.

  Sophie checks the concrete tiles beside Diane. They look relatively clean. She sinks down beside her and leans against the wall. “Are you OK? Brett said you two were arguing?”

  Diane smiles. “Not really arguing.”

  “He said Mum told you to leave or something?”

  “Probably true. She’s not my number one fan.” Diane takes a deep drag on the joint then offers it to Sophie, who sighs and then capitulates. She takes a hit and it’s sweet, the way it should be – high quality grass, not the horrible resin Brett buys – and then as she exhales she says, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure. Fire away.”

  “Something personal?”

  “Anything,” Diane says.

  “Did you and Dad ever have, you know … ”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you ever have an affair? Because I always somehow thought you did. I always wondered.”

  Diane laughs, then coughs.

  “Is that funny?”

  “Well, we didn’t have an affair,” she says.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. Not an affair.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I don’t know why I thought that. Just a feeling, really.”

  Diane sighs. “The love of my life, is what he was,” she says quietly.

  Sophie turns to look at her in astonishment. “I’m sorry?”
<
br />   “Your father. He was the love of my life,” she says again.

  “Really?”

  “He was an amazing guy. Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “But then how come you didn’t…? Wasn’t he… I mean, didn’t you… God. How to put this? Did Dad not like you back? Or was he just very faithful to Mum?”

  Diane laughs and coughs again. “Oh, he liked me back plenty, honey.”

  "Then you did have a thing?”

  “Yeah. A thing. I suppose you could call it that.”

  Sophie is suddenly unsure how much more she wants to know. Strange and conflicting feelings are rising up within her, a mixture of outrage on her mother’s behalf, disgust at her father’s behaviour, and yet, and yet… She has always felt drawn to Diane. She’s somehow excited, glad even, to learn that her father had a secret, second life. “I knew it,” she says. “I knew there had been something between you two. When was that?”

  “Sixty-three to eighty-three,” Diane says. “Pretty much.”

  “What, the whole time?!”

  Diane nods. “Except seventy-seven. We had a break in seventy-seven.”

  “What happened in seventy seven?”

  “I got married. It didn’t last, though.”

  “Why not?”

  Diane pulls a face. “I was still in love with Tony, I guess.”

  “And what about Mum? Did she know?”

  Diane shrugs. “Barbara? You’d have to ask her. I can’t see how she could not know but then again…”

  “I just realised something,” Sophie says.

  “Yes?”

  “You were with him in Paris. When he died? That was you.”

  “You don’t want to know about that, sweetheart.”

  “But it was you, then?”

  “Yes. But–”

  “Just one thing.”

  “Really, Sophie. Don’t go there. It can only–”

  “Just one question,” Sophie insists. “It’s been driving me insane. The photos I saw, they were awful. Why were they so bad?”

  “The photos from Paris?”

  Sophie nods. “Yeah. The Pentax shots.”

  “God, I didn’t know they were still around. Barbara told everyone that she had burned them.”