‘Would you actually turn that job down? Or just put your bunny ears on and take the shot?’
‘Leonie,’ Vee says, and then just to get the conversation away, onto different ground, ‘Paul. Is he the . . .’ She pauses, to choose the right word, and Leonie jumps in, primed for annoyance, ‘The what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It did a minute ago.’
And this is why people leave marriages, Vee supposes. It’s easier than it used to be, to get out of a miserable relationship. It’s acceptable to be divorced (at least in London, though she wouldn’t fancy the chances of her friends back home), and though the sisters are claiming this as a victory for women taking their power, taking control, Vee suspects that many splits are nothing to do with women realising how oppressed they are. Divorce is surely more likely to be born of one too many conversations like this, bickering and unkind. It’s so strange, the way you get to know someone well enough to antagonise them, and at some point, you choose to do that. Whereas you used to choose to support them, because you know them well enough to do that, too. ‘Is he the what? Go on, ask.’
Vee sighs, ‘Is he the father?’
‘Of who?’
‘Oh, come on, Leonie.’ Vee gets up. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘No, because your fucking career takes up all your time.’
‘OK.’ Vee holds up her hands, an ‘anything for peace’ gesture. ‘Is Paul the father of the baby you—’
The hesitation is tiny but Leonie’s on it. ‘Come on, Miss Unflinching Lens. Say the a-word.’
‘Ms. Not “Miss”,’ Vee says. It’s worth a try – Leonie can sometimes be diffused this way – but she doesn’t laugh. She’s paler than usual, her hair greasy. Left to herself she eats badly, and Vee hasn’t been around to cook, much. She always makes sure the fruit bowl is full even though she knows that’s a pretty redundant exercise. Leonie likes pizza from the restaurant round the corner, rice pudding eaten from the tin with a spoon, French Fancies, cheese. She eats bananas, sometimes, and the occasional apple, though she says they are too much work.
Leonie glares. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘Is Paul the father of the baby you got rid of?’
‘Can you do it less judgementally?’
‘What have I got wrong? Baby? Got rid of?’ Vee slides a look at her watch. They need to leave in an hour, at the most. It’s going to be a long evening in more ways than one. Leonie is bound to want to go to the after-party. Vee’s not a great one for the theatre, or parties, come to that, but this will be her first cover shoot and she feels as though she should make the most of the evening. She’d like there to be time for photographs outside the theatre, before it gets too busy. She doesn’t really know how famous Alison Steadman is. She’s well known enough to be on the cover of a magazine. Hopefully, anonymous enough still to stand in the street, the corner of a poster for the show in shot.
‘Paul might be the genetic father of the foetus I aborted. He might not. I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Well,’ Vee says, and then doesn’t really know what to add. She stands up, thinks about wiping the table down, but the mood Leonie’s in, she’d probably get a lecture on not subjugating herself.
‘It was only an abortion. And mine. You’d think it had been you, the way you’ve gone on about it. I couldn’t care less.’
Leonie had cared, very much, on the day of the abortion, holding tight to Vee’s hand, tears in her eyes. It could have just been the physical pain. Leonie would say she has no right to assume anything else. But the not washing, the constant eating, in the three weeks since would suggest a deeper misery.
‘We need to leave at six. Do you want to have a shower before I use the bathroom?’
‘Where are we going?’
Vee sighs. She knows Leonie knows this. ‘Hampstead Theatre. A play. Abigail’s Party.’ Leonie hates public transport with a passion, so she adds, ‘I’m driving. I’m photographing one of the actresses for This Month.’
A sigh, out-of-proportion deep. ‘That’s tonight?’
‘Yes.’
That shake of the head that Vee is so familiar with. ‘I don’t think I can, Vee. I’m not up to it. You know.’
If Vee doesn’t say something there’s a risk she will bite through her tongue. ‘You said you’d come. I could have asked someone else but you said you wanted to come.’
Leonie shrugs. ‘I have to read this,’ she says, putting her hand on a book that’s been sitting on the kitchen table for a week, a proof copy of something called The Women’s Room. ‘I’m reviewing it for Spare Rib.’
‘You can take a couple of hours off.’ Vee doesn’t feel like letting this go, tonight. Even after this almost-decade of being part of the movement, she’s still more comfortable with Leonie by her side. Plus, she’s wretched with jet-lag from last week and flying to India to photograph Mother Teresa, and being with someone else will make this evening better than a chore. ‘Come on, Leonie. It will be a laugh.’
‘Did a woman write it?’
Vee unpins the tickets from the corkboard on the wall and looks at the detail. ‘No. Mike Leigh?’
‘Well, a woman wrote this’ – Leonie waves the book – ‘so she wins. Anyway. I’m really not up to it.’
And Vee just can’t be bothered, anymore. Almost seven years of living with someone who bends the rules to suit themselves is, all of a sudden, too much. ‘You’re well enough to shag some idiot who can’t read a DO NOT OPEN sign on my darkroom door. Take some responsibility, Leonie. You’re not ill. You just can’t be bothered.’
‘I’m not well,’ Leonie says, in a voice on the edge of whining, ‘and you have no right to say what’s going on in my body—’
For once, Vee interrupts. ‘I think I have the right to call you on the bullshit you talk so you never have to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you think I want to do this tonight when I’ve been at a shoot since eleven and I’ve got another one that starts at eight in the morning? Do you think I never get sick of being “that bird photographer”, like I’m a freak show? Do you think I like ironing my clothes? Do you think I never get tired of the endlessness of this stupid fight?’
‘You’ve been a feminist for, what, less than ten years and you’re tired of it? Tired of being able to work a camera without your tits getting in the way? Well, sorry making a living off the back of the rest of us isn’t enough for you.’ Vee has seen this malice in Leonie before, directed at men who talk over the top of her, women who think feminism might be complicated, or different, to the way Leonie sees it. This is the first time it’s been hurled in her direction, and it stings.
Especially because, ‘I didn’t mean that fight, Leonie. I meant this fight. The one we’re having. Me selling out, you being keeper of the flame or whatever it is that you think only you can do.’
‘I’m what?’ Leonie’s gaze is focused, hard.
May as well say it. ‘The rest of us are – getting on. Finding ways to work in the world. You sit in here and you judge us and tell us where we’re going wrong. Especially the ones who are successful.’
Leonie makes a sound, something like a hiss, ‘I’m not successful? By whose standards?’
Vee forces herself not to look away. ‘I mean you’ve retreated, because you haven’t got what you want. You should keep saying what you’re saying, and I think we need someone like you. But you seem to be giving up. On your book—’
‘I’m not giving up on that,’ but even the way she says it is half-hearted. ‘It’s just that every fucking idea I have, someone beats me to it. Germaine, so bloody cutting that people say she’s witty, she screwed my chances of getting the first one published, even though it was about so much more than sex. Now Orbach, diet book for pleasing yourself instead of the patriarchy, but she still wants us all to be thin. So nobody wants a feminist book on women’s bodies or sexuality now because Germaine and Susie have written theirs. Like they are the only ones we n
eed. Because, one woman’s voice, or two, and we’re done. One woman Secretary of State at a time, one newspaper editor, a couple of QCs. Well done, feminism.’
Vee thinks of the shelf of books they have, written by their sisters, talking about women and their lives in essays, polemics, poems and prose. She decides against mentioning them. She needs to leave soon. ‘The column – you’re a voice, Leonie. You should be proud of that.’
‘Yeah. You of all people know that what I always wanted to be was the acceptable voice of feminism. Come on, Vee. I deserve better.’
They usually have this argument drunk, jokingly. Now, in the sober late-afternoon light, it feels different. Vee wants nothing more than to smile, apologise, and have them settle in to their happy old roles of mentor and student. But those days have gone, and anyway, Vee deserves better too. ‘You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face. You won’t compromise and that means you can think of yourself as a glorious failure, beaten down by the patriarchy, whereas actually . . .’ Leonie’s gaze doesn’t flinch, daring her to go on, and this time, she is damn well going to dare. ‘Whereas actually you just can’t get off your arse and get on with it, like the rest of us do.’
‘Yeah, the sisters thank you for those photos you took of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and George Best.’
‘I haven’t got the luxury of a family flat and a trust fund. I have to work.’
‘That’s right, poor you. You were forced to sell out.’
‘It makes sense for some of us to be on the inside.’
‘Pissing out on the rest of us?’
Vee’s camera bag isn’t packed, she needs to change; she hasn’t got time for this. ‘I need to go and get ready, Leonie.’
‘That’s it, you walk away.’ Leonie’s sneering has become her default position. The friend Vee moved in with – nurturing, helpful, inspiring – is someone she rarely sees, these days. And she misses her.
‘I’m doing my job.’
‘You’re letting everyone down. And we trusted you. We let you in.’
‘For crying out loud, Leonie.’ Actually, she is not taking this, not this time. ‘You never used to be so . . . elitist. You made me feel like your equal. There were plenty of women who would have laughed me away because I didn’t know how to be a feminist, but you didn’t laugh. You knew what I needed.’ Vee rarely cries, and yet here are tears. ‘I know everything you did for me. And now it’s – it’s this? Just because I don’t do what you’re doing? Just because I’m not—’ the word is out before she can make it stop, ‘failing?’
There have even been times when Vee has wondered whether Leonie is trying to sabotage her. Yesterday was not the first time her darkroom door has been opened by accident. She almost missed the chance to photograph Judi Dench last month, because Leonie didn’t pass a message on. Sometimes her keys are in places where she knows she didn’t leave them. It is starting to look like sabotage, at worst; at best, a plea for the kind of help that Vee isn’t qualified to give and Leonie isn’t prepared to accept.
But Leonie says nothing. After a moment, she gets up, goes to the fridge, and takes out the cheese that Vee bought.
Vee doesn’t comment. She steps round Leonie, towards the door, and asks, ‘You’re definitely not coming?’
‘I’m not up to it,’ Leonie says, ‘whether you believe me or not.’
There’s a cue here for Vee, and she knows it. Sit, talk, reassure. Make Leonie feel better. It’s what a friend should do. What a sister should do. But this time she’s not going to do it. She has her camera bag to pack, rush-hour to negotiate. ‘Suit yourself,’ she says. And she locks the darkroom from the outside before she leaves.
15 May 1977
‘LEAVE THEM, TREASURE,’ STANLEY SAYS, as Vee gets up and goes to the kitchen with the plates, ‘I’ll clear up when you’ve gone. You’ve got better things to do than washing up now, anyway.’
He doesn’t mean it to sound the way it does, Vee knows. He’s proud of her. ‘I can do it, Dad,’ she says.
‘I know you can,’ he replies, and then he picks up the magazine she brought to show him, with her latest shoot in it. ‘Mother Teresa. Who’d have thought. My girl going all the way to India to take a photo.’
‘I can’t really believe it, either,’ Vee says. There’s always a slight shock when she meets anyone famous, and another when she realises that she is there to photograph them, and for the length of time that takes, the two of them will be something like equal. (Some people do as she asks; others ignore her. The best subjects are the ones between, who have their own sense of what they should be, but can respect a different opinion.) Every job – even the tricky ones, too little time or not enough light, an assistant or a journalist hurrying things along or interrupting – seems too good to be true. Part of Veronica thinks her luck will run out, one day, and each job will be her last. Her diary is filling up with commitments for the next three months, though. All she has to do it keep at it. Keep doing a good job. Just like her father always says: do your best and keep doing it.
‘She’s a saint, for sure,’ he says, now, looking at the photograph, again. Vee caught her mid-yawn, hand midway to her mouth, eyes looking downwards, brow furrowed, as though she is puzzled by this most human reaction, as though she has never known tiredness before. Vee had asked her if she needed to rest. She’d shaken her head, smiling, as if to say, what does it matter what I feel. The images Veronica caught then, three in quick succession, were her favourites, and the picture editor had liked them too, printing them in a column down the side of the text of the interview. The yawn is on the facing page, between headline and byline. Vee’s name, in tiny capitals, runs up the side of the photograph.
‘Not everyone thinks a lot of her.’ Leonie had been scathing: people like Mother Teresa are only called saints by the world because they tidy up the mess the world – by which she means men – makes.
‘I’m very proud of you, you know,’ Stanley adds, ‘people said all sorts when you moved away, that you’d be back when you got sick of London, that you thought you were too good for us, but I knew you would do what you’d set your mind to. And I knew you wouldn’t forget your roots.’
Vee looks away, thinking of how she’s worked to make her voice neutral, and how it’s been a month since she last drove out to Colchester, probably the longest time she’s ever not seen her dad. And she’s only really here because she needs something. She had meant to come three weeks ago but it was the weekend after Abigail’s Party, and Leonie had needed a lot of attention. Then, at 4 a.m., while Vee was aching with tiredness and Leonie was pouring another glass of Beaujolais, Vee had realised that what they both needed, really, was for Vee to move out. They were becoming – what was the word Kiki used to describe Jo and Bernard? – co-dependent. The next morning, long before Leonie would wake, Vee had been to see an estate agent. She’d had the presence of mind to bring a bank statement, so they did take her seriously. Now she’s seen a place, near the river in Battersea, which apparently is ‘up-and-coming’. Vee doesn’t really care whether it is or not. She has the knack of not being noticed, so her chances of getting home in one piece are pretty good. And if she can afford to buy the tiny mews house she’s seen, she’s not going to be able to do it up for a while, so it’s not going to look like much of a prospect to burglars. It’s been empty for eight months. It could be hers by the end of summer.
She’s more or less made up her mind to it. She just needs one thing.
‘OK.’ She puts the bowls down, and sits. Her father’s repertoire is limited, in shopping, as well as in cooking, so they have the same meals, over and over. Tinned peaches and custard on Sundays always makes her feel like a child again. She’s been eating it most Sundays for as long as she can remember. (Except in summer, when it’s fruit from the allotment, and evaporated milk.) The question she’s about to ask seems absurd, given that being here makes her feel eleven years old, inside. Still, if there’s one thing she’s learned from Leonie,
it’s that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And you’re entitled to ask. ‘Dad, I need a favour.’
‘Of course, Veronica.’ It’s painful, to see how his face lights at the prospect. Vee knows that he’s lonely, without her at home, even though he fills his days well enough, ‘What do you need, treasure?’
‘I’ve seen a little place I want to buy,’ she says, ‘and I’m earning good money. I’ve got enough for a deposit and I can pay the mortgage. But I can’t get a mortgage, without a man to guarantee it.’ She hears her voice waver, almost tearful, and she knows it’s not because of anything except the ridiculousness of the situation, that women are put in this position. But her father is bound to misinterpret the shake in her voice.
Stanley pats her hand. ‘What’s the hurry? You still might meet someone, you know.’
Please, Vee thinks, don’t tell me about Barry and his nice wife and his lovely kids, not again. In case he starts, she cuts in, ‘No, Dad, I really want to buy this place. As an investment.’
‘Investment, eh?’ He smiles, and then considers. ‘I thought you might come back here, one day. Live in this house. It will be yours when I go. You know that, girl. I won’t go on forever, and those sisters of your mother’s will get nothing from me.’
‘Dad, you’re not even sixty,’ Vee says, ‘and I’m working in London now. And all over. It’s not practical for me to be here.’ She thinks about saying that she would if she could, but her father isn’t stupid.
‘I suppose,’ he says, ‘you could always sell it. If you did meet someone. Or if you did decide to move back here.’
Vee nods. She can’t bring herself to agree out loud.
‘And you’re sure you can pay the mortgage? It’s a big step.’
‘I’m sure, Dad.’
Stanley rises, and before he picks up the bowls to take through to the kitchen, he rests one hand on his daughter’s head in absent-minded blessing, ‘Then you just bring me what you need signed, Veronica, and I’ll sign it.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
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