This particular morning, however, she had woken without its help, simply because she was feeling nervous. She had no idea of how to model or act, and yet she knew, in a way, that both might be necessary. She had no idea what sort of clothes to wear, and yet they too, she realized, were equally necessary to making the photo session a success. The previous evening she had laid out what she had imagined were the sort of clothes that a young woman who was devoted to her Bible (and knew her Jezebel from her Delilah) might wear. Full black skirt, plain white shirt, borrowed from the second Mrs Saxby, and dark stockings and buckled shoes.
The French student look, Bobbie called it, but the former Miss Moncrieff, now Mrs Saxby, disagreed.
‘No, Bobbie dear, not French student. French students look a little louche and such like. No, with your long brown hair and your English rose complexion, you have the look of a girl who has been brought up to go to prayer meetings. You have the natural look, I am happy to say, nothing artificial about you. Quite appropriate. I’m glad my stockings fit you all right,’ she added.
‘They’re just a bit, well, itchy,’ Bobbie confessed.
‘I’m not surprised. I knitted them in the war, but I never got round to wearing them.’
They both stared down at Bobbie’s legs. Her legs did actually look what Mrs Saxby called ‘quite appropriate’ in the former Miss Moncrieff’s fine hand-knitted stockings.
‘Well, top marks, Roberta. And never mind what anyone else thinks about posing for photographs, dear, there is nothing that I know of in the Bible to say it is wrong. Provided, of course, that it is decorous. I just hope my stockings will stay up. I mean that is a worry, dear, for you are yards thinner than I am, or was. And though they are not fashionable at the moment it has to be said that they might one day be modish.’
She left Bobbie to finish checking her appearance in front of the mirror, brushing her hair for perhaps the hundredth time. Staring yet again at her own image, hating it, and yet not knowing what to do about it. The fact was that she was far too thin, and she and Mrs Saxby both knew it. They had even talked about it the previous evening, both coming to the inevitable conclusion that it really did not matter. Or, more to the point, that there was very little that either of them could do about it.
‘The Duchess of Windsor is very thin, dear.’
‘I am afraid I do not look like the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs Saxby. She scares me. She reminds me of the bad queen in Snow White.’
‘I expect you’ll put on weight soon,’ came the encouraging remark.
‘Yes, Miss M – I mean, Mrs Saxby – but not, it has to be said, by tomorrow. That would be a Biblical miracle on a vast scale, wouldn’t you say?’
They had both laughed at that, and as she watched the former Miss Moncrieff laughing Bobbie had wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time, at the change that marriage had brought about in her. Gone were the cardigans with the moss-stitch cuffs and collars, gone was the hairstyle drawn to such a tight conclusion at the back of her neck that it would make Bobbie wince just to look at her. Instead, like the Major, Mrs Saxby had turned quite Bohemian, affecting floral blouses with elaborate shoulder gathers and billowing sleeves caught up in deep cuffs. Her long silver or gold earrings rang and sang as she moved about their sitting room, and her long grey hair was worn in a vast plait around her head, round and round, giving her face the inevitable plump look of a happy Victorian lady. Her watch strap, which used to leave a mark whenever she took it off to type, had been replaced by an old fob watch on a bow which she pinned to the front of her blouses, she wore large rings, and you could always hear when she was coming into a room because the charms on her gold bracelet announced her arrival long before she was seen.
She once referred to her sea change when she was watching the Major from their first floor sitting room window, remarking gaily, ‘We just wish, the Major and I, that we had become Bohemians before, Bobbie dear, we do really.’
And now the car was there and everything was happening very fast as everything always seems to when you are nervous, Bobbie found.
And the driver, a professional chauffeur from some hire car firm, was bowing, and the front of his cap was catching the sun, so he looked, just for a few seconds, to Bobbie anyway, as if he might have been sent down from Olympus to fetch her, and somehow it made her nerves worse, and she minded more than ever that she was too thin and had never posed for photographs before. She found herself wishing, again and again, that the chauffeur would get lost, or that he would be found not to know the address, or that the place where the photographs were to be taken – a deserted building in the middle of Kensington Gardens – would be found to be full of other people, all busy taking their photos, so that the whole thing would prove to be a complete fiasco.
Unfortunately the driver proved to be entirely competent, and he delivered Bobbie to the deserted building with time to spare.
It was, or had been, an old orangery, but was now wrecked by the bombing, and yet to be restored. Clutching the Holy Bible supplied by the Holy Bible Company, courtesy of Mr Singh, Bobbie in her black clothes and home-knitted stockings moved slowly and reluctantly towards the group of people she could see standing about with cameras and lights, her face alternating between scarlet and quite white with nerves, her teeth chattering.
‘Yes, the electricity is still working, would you believe? Not even Hitler’s bombing was that accurate. So that is fine. Hold that there! No, not like that – like this! Oh, and be a good fellow and go and fetch us some coffee from the back of the car, would you? Could someone tell me when we are to be blessed with the presence of the blasted model?’
There was something about the owner of the voice that Bobbie, long before she saw him, knew, for absolute certain, was familiar. Long before she saw his bright blond hair, or noticed how tall he had grown, or anything else, Bobbie just knew it was Teddy. But whereas before, when she had first seen Julian at Baileys Court, she had hoped so much that the man with the fascinating smile would turn out to be Teddy, now she found her heart sinking. Teddy of all people! Here and waiting to photograph her, of all people! It was almost a nightmare to find Teddy waiting to take a picture of her, Bobbie Murray, who when he last saw her was looking like Milly Molly Mandy, fresh from the caring hands of Mrs Dingwall. Of all the bad luck. As if it was not bad enough never to have done this sort of thing before, but to find that the photographer was Teddy Mowbray of all people! Teddy, who was always so dreadfully spoilt by the aunts and Miranda, to be fetching up photographing her, Bobbie Murray, with a Bible of all things. He would laugh his socks off.
Before she opened her mouth to say, as coolly as possible, ‘Here is the blasted model, Teddy Mowbray. The model, so-called, is behind you,’ Bobbie was quite sure that she already hated the grown-up Teddy.
For his part, hearing her words, Teddy turned round slowly, and Bobbie stared up at him. At first he did not even recognize his fellow evacuee, but Teddy being Teddy, as soon as he did his face lit up, and he positively jumped across the room, whooping and seizing Bobbie’s hands to swing her round and round, finishing by sweeping her off the ground and hugging her in front of all the amazed people standing around with the permanently bored expressions of people who are waiting to work.
‘Bobbie, I can not believe this is true, I can’t believe it’s you,’ Teddy kept saying. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Well, it is true, and it is me,’ Bobbie kept replying, with her usual pragmatism. ‘And frankly, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be, why it’s so surprising. Why wouldn’t it be true, for goodness’ sake? England is not such a big place, after all. Not so big that people like us would not find each other again, is it? In fact, we were really rather doomed to meet again, when I come to think of it.’
‘Still the same old crusty Bobbie, thank heavens. Gracious, you have not changed at all!’ Teddy put his arm round her and hugged her again.
‘Thanks.’
‘Except goodness me, you are so much prettier. My God, the las
t time I saw you, frankly you looked too terrible to contemplate. I would not have known you. Now. Well. Wow! I really never would have thought it. I mean when we were at Mellaston, it was always Miranda who was the beauty, not you.’
He stood back, finally staring at Bobbie with professional detachment, and then gave a satisfied grunt. ‘When we were at Mellaston, you were quite the ugly duckling, you know.’
‘Oh, Teddy, do stop! Talk about not changing, it’s you that hasn’t changed at all. Still putting your foot in your mouth, or someone else’s.’
But Teddy went on blithely, ‘And guess what? I have found Miranda too – my long-lost big sister, who adopted me. So now we have found you, we are a threesome again. How about that?’
After this news of course Bobbie just had to give in and come off it, and join in the general Teddy-type enthusiasm, because it was one thing finding Teddy, but if Teddy had found Miranda, then that really was too good to be true.
She stopped in her tracks, suddenly realizing something for the first time, the thought only slowly dawning, as it always did with her.
‘I say, Teddy, do you realize – I mean, I’ve suddenly realized we might, after all these years, the three of us might be together again?’
‘Yup, Bobbie, I do.’ Teddy gave her another quick hug, and his eyes were so genuinely warm, it was suddenly all Bobbie could do not to burst into tears with the relief of suddenly finding him again, with the whole fantastic marvel of it all. It might be that now, at last, they would be safe again, as they had seemed to be at Mellaston, all those years ago.
‘Now. To work. I have to create such a shot of you with the Holy Book that people all over London will be talking about it. Now how do I do that, I wonder? No, don’t tell me. I have all sorts of ideas. I say, so much better being out of doors, don’t you think?’
He gestured around him, appreciating the early morning summer light, the odd jagged landscape that bombed, abandoned, and broken buildings create, and then looked down at Bobbie.
‘Destruction is the setting, d’you see? And you are in the middle, but holding the Holy Book, the symbol of hope, of goodness.’ He paused, looking around him as if inhaling the atmosphere. ‘Of course, although we will put you over there in the middle, we will fill in the spaces around you. Such things as, say, a robin pecking at some crumbs on the ground over there – not a real one naturally – and then this side a hothouse flower, I thought, sort of stretching up towards where the roof used to be. Meanwhile—’ He clapped his hands. ‘Meanwhile, Ruth! I say!’ He turned and grinned back at Bobbie. ‘How very biblical to be clapping my hands and shouting for Ruth. RUTH! Ah, there you are. Ruth, clothes please. Costumes. And in three seconds flat. None of your moaning, please. Good, now hold them up against Miss Murray, would you, Ruth? Hold them up and I will choose.’
Ruth had arrived on the shoot with a suitcase full of clothes. Odd clothes, crazy clothes, every kind of clothes, but all in black or white.
‘Come on, Bobbie Murray.’ Teddy tugged at her hand again. ‘Time to dress you up as a young, pure, but voracious Bible reader. We are going to wow the billboards with these shots. Everyone is going to want to know who – but who – is that girl reading the Bible. Maybe you will even set a fashion for holy ways and Bible readings, who knows?’
Bobbie smiled back at Teddy. He was as irrepressible as ever.
And of course, she did not believe him.
The reason she was smiling was because she had suddenly remembered just about everything about Teddy. It was as if she had been handed a parcel with a label that said Teddy and quickly unwrapping it had found the contents exactly as she had remembered, an old present re-gifted to her.
She remembered how he was always eating things that he should not, and how the aunts were always having to make him sick with one of their odd mixtures that they kept for such exigencies on the larder shelf. She remembered how often she and Miranda had to rush him to the bathroom. She remembered too how much he had hated Mrs Eglantine because of how tactless she had always been about him, and how he would narrow his eyes behind her back, trying to make sure that she felt his loathing of her, and how Miranda and she would laugh, silently but hysterically, at the sight of this small boy with his flaxen hair, willing the Billeting Officer to feel his hatred. And now, looking as if he had just parachuted in, here he was, just the same old Teddy really, but wearing a smart straw hat, sleeves rolled up, building a set to photograph Bobbie, the ugly duckling of Mellaston, with a Bible.
Finally Bobbie remembered Dill saying, ‘Well, dear, that’s the war, throws up all sorts of stories you wouldn’t believe, else you wouldn’t be here with me now, would you, dear?’
The costume which eventually satisfied Teddy – and it was some time before he really was satisfied – was shockingly opulent. He did not have to announce that this was actually quite purposeful, because, after all that time choosing, everyone on the set that summer morning knew, without any doubt at all, that it had to be.
The costume included a vast, black ball skirt, made of masses of black satin, atop which Teddy wanted Bobbie to wear a Quaker shirt, plain to the point of absurdity, white and starched. Indeed the collar points were so rigid that an onlooker might imagine that to brush against them would be to hurt herself.
Finally, as he stared at her through the camera lens, Teddy called to Bobbie, laughing, ‘You look like a member of some new and very opulent order. The Order of the Terribly Righteous.’
For the photograph Bobbie wore little to no make-up, certainly not discernible. To add emphasis to the overall naturalism Ruth put a little mascara on her eyelashes and a light application of lipstick on her mouth. Her hands were left free of nail varnish, and her long brown hair was wrapped around something that Ruth called a ‘mouse’ – a piece of thick horsehair which when set under the thick coil of shining brown hair bulked it out and gave it huge emphasis. In this way, Bobbie found, when she saw the photographs for the first time, Teddy had made her neck look longer and more slender, ‘gazelle-like’ was how he put it, and reduced the size of her features, while somehow emphasizing her eyes.
The session was an immediate success. It just felt so right somehow, as things that happen easily and quickly often do, and a week later found Teddy staring proudly at the photographs.
‘Am I a genius, or am I a genius?’ he asked of his two adopted sisters. ‘Is your brother not a genius? Of course he is. Your brother is going to be more famous than any photographer you care to name, if you could, which neither of you can, because neither of you knows the slightest thing about photography.’
Miranda, who had just finished recounting to Bobbie her terrible years with Allegra and her drinking in Norfolk, now remarked wryly to Bobbie, putting on an over-classy accent, ‘Still the same old modest Teddy-bags, what?’
But of course, placed carefully on the floor of the studio in Aubrey Close, with all of them staring down at them, under the brilliant lighting that the Victorians created for themselves to work in and under, the photographs did seem suddenly to have something. Certainly they did to the three joyous friends, now reunited under one roof, feeling as if they had never been apart, and at the same time knowing that because they had been separated they now appreciated each other, as Miranda said, ‘lots more’.
‘I can’t get over how you have changed. She has changed so much, hasn’t she? She has really changed.’ Teddy would keep saying that as he stared down at his photographs, but Miranda would have none of it.
‘She is still Bobbie, Ted. No matter what. I would always know that to be Bobbie. Just as you are still Ted, and I am still Miranda. We are still the same inside, it’s just the outside bits that have become different. You know, grown up, and in your particular case terrifically bumptious.’
Teddy turned round. ‘Stop giving out opinions, Miranda, and concentrate, will you? Concentrate on my genius, on the genius of your brother, your soon-to-be-famous brother, and your soon-to-be-incredibly-famous sister here.’
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br /> Obediently the two girls stared down once again at their brother’s photographs. He had arranged them in order of his own preference, and now they all began to discuss the varying merits of each photograph, eventually arriving at the one they all considered the best, their voices blending and murmuring as they had done when they were children, years before, at the old rectory at Mellaston, their eyes going from each other’s faces down to Teddy’s work, to the pictures which were, they all knew, going to be sensational, as why would they not be? And when all was said and done Miranda and Bobbie wanted those photographs to succeed for one reason only – for Ted.
They told a story, and that was what Teddy had wanted to achieve. He had not wanted to photograph just a girl with a Bible, as Mr Singh and the advertising company had ordered him to do – just a simple photograph with the Bible posed on the lap. No, he had wanted to make a statement, send a message that would be, of itself, in a way biblical. And it had to be admitted that he had succeeded magnificently. He had succeeded in taking a photograph that was more than arresting, it was memorable. It made you want to return to it over and over again. Even Bobbie, who could scarcely recognize herself, would stop by the old oak table where Teddy eventually placed them, and stare for a few seconds. The session with Bobbie and the Bible had, for some reason, worked, and in no more than a matter of minutes. That was, Teddy said, how everything good happened. In a matter of minutes, it was just a fact.
Three months later found Mr Singh re-reading the company press cuttings out loud, to a hushed, silent and appreciative audience. He was just about to start reading out his favourite, from one of the chicer glossy magazines.
‘All London is talking about the new advertisement for, of all things, the Holy Bible. That, in this day and age, an advertisement for the Good Book could create so much discussion says much both for the model and for the photographer.
The advertisement shows a young girl, in this case the newly fashionable model Bobbie Murray, set against the backdrop of a bombed Victorian conservatory. The whole effect is sumptuous, superb, and she an innocent caught in the maelstrom, with only her Bible as solace, a large black leather Bible with gold lettering placed fantastically against a voluminous, black satin skirt.
The Blue Note Page 29