The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  “Not the negatives. She kept the negatives. But they were terrible. I couldn’t use any of them.”

  Diane offers her the joint again but Sophie declines this time, so she simply stubs it out on the pavement beside her instead. “I don’t know why. Because we were wasted, I expect.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Even mine were pretty bad. But your father was fighting with that dreadful camera as well. So…”

  “Was it really that bad?”

  “It was pretty lousy. And in Tony’s hands, it was a nightmare.”

  “Why do you say, ‘you expect?’ Didn’t you even see them?”

  “The police took the films when he died. Evidence. They got them developed, I think. But I never saw them. I spent three nights in prison, then got expelled. Were there any… um… black and white ones?” Diane fiddles with a strand of wig. “Any taken perhaps with the Rollei?”

  Sophie shakes her head. “Just blurred colour shots of the Eiffel Tower and rubbish like that. So why did you go to prison?”

  “Again. It’s best not to go there.”

  “But it wasn’t because they suspected–”

  “Drugs,” Diane interrupts. “We had drugs on us. The French cops didn’t seem to like that much. Funny that.”

  “God,” Sophie says. “So he was just too stoned to work properly? Is that the reason?”

  “Plus, as I say, the camera was pretty terrible, the light was rubbish – it was grey – and to be honest, with a few lucky exceptions, he just wasn’t as good as everyone thought he was.”

  “Aw, come on. You can’t say that. Not about Dad.”

  “I loved him, Sophie. I loved your father more than anyone I ever loved. But he was no great shakes as a photographer. His real skill was getting everyone else to help him out. Barbara was just as good. Better maybe.”

  “Mum? Don’t be daft.”

  Diane nods. “She took good shots, Barbara did. Including a few that got credited to your father. She was good in the darkroom too. I taught her. Don’t look so surprised. Barbara’s many things but she’s not stupid.”

  “I always thought she just kind of held Dad back, really,” Sophie says. “So this is all a bit weird.”

  Diane laughs again. “Tony wouldn’t have done anything without Barbara,” she says. “He was a wild one, your father was. Out of control. Barbara was the only person who could keep his feet on the ground. Well, almost on the ground.”

  Sophie screws up her features as she struggles to grasp this entirely new vision of her parents’ relationship. “You really think so?”

  “I know so. She dressed him, fed him, mopped up his puke, took some of his best shots, developed his god-damned photos when he couldn’t get them right…”

  “Wow,” Sophie says, still struggling to understand. “I never knew that. She never talks much about him, really.”

  “Did you even ask her?”

  “No,” Sophie says thoughtfully. “No, maybe not.”

  “Barbara’s a saint. Really. A bloody saint. I don’t know how she put up with it all. He was good to me, that’s for sure, but as a husband, well, he was a horror, really.”

  “Don’t say that,” Sophie says. “Dad was everything to me.”

  “He was everything to me, too,” Diane says. “But that doesn’t change the truth. He was a lousy husband and a pretty lousy photographer most of the time. And without Barbara behind him, he wouldn’t have…” Her voice peters out now and her eyes move to focus on something behind Sophie, something she has spotted lurking in the shadows.

  When Sophie turns to look too, Brett steps into the pool of light from the streetlamp. He looks strange, his expression smooth and unreadable. “Brett?” Sophie says.

  "So, this is the boyfriend, huh?” Diane asks.

  “Yes. Um, how long have you been there, Brett?”

  Brett raises his shoulders. “Not long,” he says. He points back at the gallery. “The, um, paramedics are here. They came in the side way. You should go.”

  “Sure,” Sophie says. “Can I just get your number, Diane? I’d love to talk about all of this some other time.”

  “Of course,” Diane says. “I’d love to spend more time with you, Sophie.”

  “You go, honey,” Brett tells her. “Your mum’s waiting for you. I’ll get Diane’s details for you.”

  ***

  Once Barbara has ferociously seen off the ambulance men, Jonathan whisks her off, still protesting, to his place in Surrey.

  Feeling a little orphaned, Sophie goes in search of Brett. She could do with a hug and some reassurance.

  It’s gone ten pm now and the crowd in the gallery is dwindling. Even Brett is nowhere to be seen.

  Sophie chats briefly to Sarah Stone, who informs her that they have sold fifteen books and nine prints, though only three are hers. She says goodbye to Phil, a goodbye which, considering his age and health, feels final and emotional. And then noting that the remaining people in the room are involved in their own private conversations, Sophie heads back outside to see if she can cadge a cigarette. She’s feeling a little over-emotional. Perhaps a forbidden cigarette might calm her nerves.

  It’s positively cold outside now – a wind has got up – and only a single smoker remains, one of the waitresses.

  When Sophie approaches her, she looks concerned. “I am needed inside?” she asks.

  Sophie laughs. “No,” she says. “I was just wondering if I could scrounge a ciggy?”

  “The girls looks confused, then, belatedly understands. “Oh, you want cigarette?” she says. “I’m sorry. Is last one. Here.” She proffers her own half-consumed cigarette, which Sophie politely denies.

  “I’m supposed to be giving up anyway,” she says. “It’s just… it’s been an emotional evening.”

  “Your dead father,” the girl says with an abruptness that only lack of vocabulary can excuse.

  “Exactly. All his old friends too. Plus the ones who couldn’t come because, you know, they died as well. It’s a lot to handle.”

  “Yes,” the girl says. “I understand this. My own mother. She die too.”

  Sophie takes a deep breath of the night air and then shivers. “I’ll head back in,” she says. “It’s too cold for me out here.”

  “I come too,” the girl replies, stubbing out the cigarette on a wall. “Otherwise the agency, they make trouble.” Sophie likes the way she rolls the R in trouble and is just about to ask her where she’s from when she spots two figures in the distance. “Actually, go in,” she tells the girl. “I’m just going to see who that is.”

  Worried that one of the people in the shadows might be Diane, too stoned to even realise how cold it is, Sophie heads back across the plaza. As she reaches the figures however, she realises that they are in fact Brett and Malcolm.

  “Really!” Brett is saying. “That’s amazing.”

  “Yes,” Malcolm replies. “That was taken with a high power zoom, whereas Tony, of course, was still using that old twin lens of his.” Malcolm spots Sophie at this point and pulls an amusing, embarrassed grimace. “Hello Sophe,” he says. “I was just telling your chap here all the family secrets.”

  “Were you indeed?” Sophie replies in a parental voice. “That’s very naughty, Malcolm.”

  “Well, Brett’s family now, isn’t he?”

  “Of course I am,” Brett says, chuckling smoothly.

  “Anyway, I’d better be going,” Malcolm says, spotting a dash of actual reproach in Sophie’s eyes. “I was meant to be home an hour ago; your chap here has kept me talking so long, I’m half frozen.”

  Again, Sophie says goodbye and again, despite promises to meet up, it feels poignant. It’s almost like she’s saying goodbye to her father all over again.

  As they head back into the exhibition, she asks, “What exactly did Malcolm tell you?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” Brett says. “The same old stuff. How Phil took the ship pic. How Diane took the festival one. You know, babe.�
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  “Don’t you even think about using any of that,” Sophie says.

  Brett chuckles again. “Hey,” he says. “It’s like the man said. I’m family now.”

  On their way back in, they cross paths with more stragglers in the process of leaving, so Sophie pauses to say a few more goodbyes. With the end of the private view approaching, she feels even sadder – almost overcome by sadness.

  In the gallery, only three visitors remain. “So how long do you need to stay, hon?” Brett asks.

  “I need to chat to that guy over there,” Sophie says, nodding towards the man who purchased a print, the man whose name she has already forgotten, “But then I’m out of here. I’m shattered.”

  “You want me to wait? So we can share a cab?”

  Sophie shakes her head. “Actually,” she says, “would you mind very much if I went to Jon’s place instead?”

  “You’re still worried about your ma, huh?”

  Sophie shrugs. “A bit. But more, it’s just, well… I kind of feel we need to be together tonight. As a family. Not only for her but for me too. If that makes any sense.”

  Brett nods. “Sure. Whatever. You want me to come?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “How you gonna get out there, babe?”

  “I’ll just get a taxi. I’m too tired to think about anything else.”

  “It’ll cost an arm and a leg to get to Surrey.”

  “I’m too tired to care about that either.”

  “Fair enough,” Brett says. “Your call.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind though?”

  “No, that works for me too, to be honest. I still have some work to do on Sunday’s centre spread.”

  “I thought that was all done and dusted,” Sophie says.

  “Oh, it kinda is. But I had a few ideas tonight,” Brett says. “Nothing major. Just tweaks. You know how it is.”

  2013 - Guildford, Surrey.

  By the time Sophie gets to Guildford, the entire household is asleep. When she sees the darkened frontage from the taxi, she almost considers returning to London and heading to Brett’s rather than waking them. But after all, she texted that she was coming. She can imagine Judy groaning at the announcement, nagging at Jon to come to bed all the same. Yes, it’s not her fault if Jonathan has become someone who’s asleep by midnight.

  She pays the taxi driver and throws stones at the window until a bleary-eyed Jonathan appears at the front door. They didn’t see the text, he claims. But they don’t mind either. As long as she doesn’t wake Dylan they don’t, at any rate.

  He fixes her up with sheets and a blanket – their mother is in with Dylan – and then before returning to bed, kisses her on the top of the head like she was five again.

  Sophie lies staring at the lounge ceiling and wishes that she had gone to Brett’s instead. She tries to digest the evening’s revelations. That her father had a lifelong mistress. That he was a ‘wild one’. That he partied. That he was perhaps – because she can’t really believe this one – no great shakes as a photographer. That her mother, who she so long resented, was the rock he apparently leaned upon.

  Like some barely remembered identikit photo, she’s finding it difficult to picture her father this evening. She’s having trouble creating a cohesive feeling about who he really was as well. And with so much of her own identity, both personal and professional, being tied up with his, she has a worrying sensation of not knowing who she is either. Do the questions over his career make her own limited success more or less of an achievement, she wonders. Perhaps they simply make the limited nature of her success more normal, less unexpected? Is she simply a mediocre photographer from mediocre stock?

  Does his infidelity to her mother with Diane, who Sophie occasionally wished was her mother, make him a better father to her or a worse one?

  What to do with all of this new information, as well? Is there even anyone she can discuss it with? With Jonathan perhaps? With her mother? With Brett?

  And what about that other strange sensation, lurking at the back of her mind, that feeling that she has missed something, that she has heard and recorded a major clue, yet has no idea what it relates to, nor any idea how to hunt for it.

  A noise awakens her and she rolls over to see a dim glow coming from the kitchen. She pulls the sheet around her like a toga then pads across the deep-pile carpet.

  “Mum,” she says gently, from the doorway.

  Barbara, who had been peering into the refrigerator, visibly jumps. “Ooh!” she exhales. “Gosh, I didn’t even know you were here.”

  “I didn’t want to go home alone,” Sophie says. “Not after all that.”

  Barbara nods thoughtfully. “Yes. I know what you mean. Dylan woke me.”

  “Is he awake?”

  “No. He just made some gurgling noises but it woke me all the same.”

  “How come you’re in with him?”

  Barbara shrugs. “Judy works in mysterious ways, her wonders to perform.” She waves a carton at her daughter. “Milk?”

  Sophie smiles. She literally hasn’t drunk a glass of milk since she left home. “OK,” she says.

  They sit on opposite stools at the fold-out kitchen table. They sip their milk in the dim glow from the counter-lights and talk in hushed tones. It feels nice. It feels intimate.

  "So, were you happy with it?” Barbara asks.

  Sophie nods. “I guess,” she says.

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “I didn’t expect it to be so emotional to be honest, Mum. I didn’t prepare myself enough for that aspect of the whole thing.”

  “The worst for me was seeing all his old friends,” Barbara admits.

  “Phil and Malcolm? And Janet? All that lot?”

  “Janet was OK. She was Dave’s wife and everything but I always liked her. I always felt like she was my friend too. But the rest of them… I never saw them once after the funeral. So that was a bit difficult. That was really hard, actually.”

  "Why didn’t you stay in touch?”

  Barbara shrugs. “They were your father’s friends, not mine. They wanted to hang out with the big crazy artist, not the big crazy artist’s stay-at-home wife.”

  Sophie nods. Though she can now see how cruel this is, she understands. For most of her childhood she felt pretty much the same way.

  “Someone told me that you were good with a camera,” Sophie says. “In the darkroom too. I don’t think I knew that, did I?”

  “Oh, I only dabbled, really. Who told you that?”

  “It was Diane, actually.”

  “Really,” Barbara says, in a faux-disinterested voice. “Did she, um, say much else?”

  “No, not really,” Sophie lies, unsure even as she does so, quite why.

  Barbara nods and sips her milk.

  “You don’t like her much, do you?” Sophie asks.

  Barbara shrugs. “She’s OK, I suppose. If you like those arty types.”

  "There isn’t some other reason you don’t like her? There wasn’t some big falling out?”

  Barbara frowns. “Not at all. Anyway, what sort of falling out?”

  “I don’t know. Just a funny feeling I had.”

  “No, we were never that close. And she moved to America years ago. So we completely lost touch. I didn’t even know she was still alive.”

  “No,” Sophie says. “Right.”

  “Anyway, I think I’m going to have another attempt at sleeping now,” Barbara says, standing. “I expect Dylan will have us all awake soon. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “OK.”

  “Oh, and well done for the exhibition. I didn’t say anything but I thought it was really very good. And I thought your photos were the nicest of all. By a long shot.”

  “Thanks Mum.”

  “Night night.”

  The next morning, it’s all, “Dylan this,” and, “Dylan that.’ No one mentions the exhibition once. It’s as if it never happened and, after l
etting Sophie have the briefest of cuddles with her new nephew, Jon and Judy rush off to a meeting with the paediatrician.

  After a quiet breakfast, Sophie accompanies her mother to the station. They share a train as far as Clapham Junction where Barbara swaps for the Eastbourne line.

  The atmosphere during the journey is strained, as if their inability to discuss the elephant in the room is stealing the oxygen of every other possible subject matter, so Sophie finds herself feeling relieved when their ways finally part.

  She is supposed to call into the gallery by lunch time but as she needs to change, she heads home first.

  As she inserts her key in the lock, a queer feeling comes over her. She pauses and sniffs the air like a wild animal as she attempts to work out what strange vibration she is picking up.

  She wonders, briefly, if she has been burgled in her absence, and scans the door jamb for traces of forced entry before, deciding that her nerves must just be jangled, she opens the door and steps inside.

  It’s there again – the strange feeling. She stands on the threshold and scans the room. Everything looks tidy. Everything looks normal. She closes the door behind her.

  She makes a cup of tea and, standing looking out of the window, she sips at it, occasionally glancing back into the room, just in case. The sensation that something is wrong, that the air within the room is perhaps the wrong shape, remains.

  Once she has finished her tea, she moves to the bathroom where, still peering through the bubbles for hidden assailants, she showers and washes her hair. The powerful jet from the shower-head washes away the feeling and by the time she steps onto the bathmat she has all but forgotten her strange sense of unease.

  She wipes clear a patch of the misted mirror and stares at herself. She looks older this morning. Of course, like most women, she often thinks she looks older than she should. When you’re competing with all the Photoshopped beauties on the billboards, it’s impossible to feel any other way. But today, she really does look older. It’s as if she has moved from one of those categories you see on forms to another. No longer 25-44. Now 44-60 perhaps.

  “Nothing a bit of makeup can’t fix,” she mutters, attempting to force a positive attitude.