The Photographer's Wife

by Nick Alexander

  “Oh,” Sophie says. “Well, there’s no reason it would have to be twenty-thirteen. Twenty-fourteen, or twenty-fifteen would be fine. Perhaps even later.”

  “Yes... Look, Sophie.” And Sophie knows that tone of voice. And she knows that this isn’t going to work. “To be perfectly honest here, I can’t see the trustees going for it,” Claire says.

  “OK. Fair enough. Why would that be?” Sophie asks, trying to sound neither hurt, nor belligerent.

  “If he had been an art photographer...” Claire says. “But he wasn’t, Sophie, was he? He was a journalist. A very good one but a photojournalist all the same.”

  Sophie runs her tongue across her teeth, but no, she can’t help herself. “Claire,” she says. “Look, I’m not sure how well you know the photography world. But perhaps I could chat to Dr Penny about this? It was him I was expecting to meet today.”

  “I’m afraid Dr Penny delegated this to me,” Claire says. “I’m so sorry we’ve been talking at crossed purposes. If I had known, I could have spared you the time.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “And now I’m afraid that I’m running out of time.”

  “The thing is,” Sophie says, aware that she’s sounding desperate now but unable to leave without a final push, “there were no art photographers in the fifties and sixties. It wasn’t recognised as an art form by any of the art schools until the seventies. So...”

  “I’m actually quite aware of that,” Claire says, smiling tightly. “My art history’s not too rusty. Now, I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to go. If I can help you in any other way, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Claire slides a business card across the desk and by the time Sophie has slipped it into her pocket, picked up her folder and stood up, Claire is holding her office door open.

  “Oh well, thanks for your time anyway,” Sophie says.

  “You’re welcome. Any time. You remember the way out, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Goodbye then,” Claire says. “And good luck with your retrospective.”

  Once Sophie reaches the street, she pauses to catch her breath. She has, she realises, broken out in a cold sweat. She wonders if Claire spotted that. As she reaches into her pocket for a tissue, the business card falls to the floor. She wipes her brow, then stoops to pick it up. “Claire Freeman M.A. FRPS,” it reads. “Curator of Photography, National Gallery.”

  FRPS. Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society! M.A. A Masters in art! Curator of photography!

  Sophie hears her own voice saying, I’m not sure how well you know the photography world and breaks out in a cold sweat all over again. “Oh God!” she mutters. “Oh Sophie!”

  ***

  Sophie heaves the carrier bags onto the kitchen worktop and exhales sharply. Brett appears in the doorway behind her looking, for some reason, pleased with himself. He stretches his arms and hangs there on the door jamb grinning at her. “Food,” he says. “Great! I’m starving.”

  Sophie glances sideways at him, raises one eyebrow and begins unpacking. When Brett sidles to her side and peers into one of the bags, Sophie slaps his hand away.

  “Someone’s in a bossy mood,” Brett says. “I like.”

  “I don’t,” Sophie mumbles, ripping the packaging from a stack of yoghurts and adding them to the refrigerator.

  “Did I do something bad, Mistress?” Brett says, which is so, so the wrong reply, right here, right now, that Sophie wonders if Brett has any idea who she is at all.

  “You...” Sophie pauses and sighs. “You could actually help me here,” she continues once she has wrestled her voice under control. “And you could even do some shopping of your own from time to time instead of waiting at home with your tongue hanging out like some untrained puppy.”

  “Hum,” Brett says, now starting to ineffectually lift things from a bag and place them in a even less practical pile on the counter. “Someone’s not in the best of moods.”

  “No,” Sophie says. “Someone isn’t.”

  “I can take you out to dinner if you want,” Brett offers. “But shopping’s not really in my DNA.”

  Sophie pauses, a tube of toothpaste in one hand. “It’s not in your DNA?”

  Brett shakes his head forlornly.

  “And how about cleaning?” Sophie asks, brandishing the tube at him. “Is cleaning in your DNA?”

  “No, not really. Which is why I pay a cleaner, I suppose.”

  “Right,” Sophie says. “I don’t have a cleaner. So if you could just pick up some of your shit from time to time, that would be great.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Brett says.

  “And stop with the bloody Mistress business, OK?”

  “Yes, Mistress,” Brett mugs.

  Sophie groans and shakes her head in despair. When Brett delicately reaches out to touch her shoulder, she shrugs so that his hand falls away.

  “Did you not have a good day, sweetheart?” Brett asks, in a more genuine tone of voice.

  “No, Brett. I did not have a good day.”

  “The National?”

  “It was appalling. It makes my teeth hurt to even think about it.”

  “OK...” Brett says, now folding his arms defensively. When faced with one of Sophie’s occasional bad moods, Brett moves quickly from concern, through compassion, to irritation. The crossed arms signal his intermediary stage. “So, how about I take you to dinner and you tell me all about it,” he says.

  “I have no desire whatsoever to talk about it,” Sophie says. “And I don’t want to go out to dinner either.”

  “Would you like me to leave?” Brett asks. “Is that it?”

  Sophie shrugs and shakes her head. “I’m not sure what I want, to be honest,” she admits.

  “How about a hug?” Brett asks, uncrossing his arms and scratching his ear. “Sometimes hugs are good at times like this.”

  And because Sophie can tell from his voice that this is the last chance before he moves into combat mode, before he says something like, “Well, if you’re going to be like that, fuck you,” and because that really isn’t what she wants, she drags herself back from the brink. “OK,” she says. “Let’s try a hug.”

  Later, as the tuna fries and as she prepares a salad, Sophie thinks about her mood and attempts to decode her harshness towards Brett. The problem is that her meeting at the National has spilled over and tainted everything else. Her moods have always been this way, so she has some understanding of her own processes, even if she still struggles to control them.

  On a good day, everything seems good. On a good day, she knows that eventually she’ll break into the world of art-house photography, that her father’s retrospective will be an unqualified success, and that suited, naughty Brett with his spicy bedroom tastes, his never-ending list of wonderful restaurants, and his almost unlimited connections in the art world, is the perfect man for her. But on a bad day, like today, she knows just as surely that the retrospective will never happen, that she’s a rubbish photographer who just happened to have a famous father and that blobby, overweight, conceited Brett is too lazy around the house and too pervy in bed for her to ever build a proper relationship with him. And that none of it really matters because in forty years they will both be dead anyway.

  Maybe she’s bipolar and she’s on a downswing. Can one be a “bit” bipolar? It’s not the first time the thought has crossed her mind. Then again, maybe she’s just immature. Perhaps a calm sense of wisdom will manage to catch up with her one day, just before she finally turns to dust.

  Once dinner is served, Sophie does tell Brett about the meeting.

  “You should always research the staff list before meetings like that,” Brett comments. “It’s ever so important to understand who you’re meeting.”

  “Thanks, Brett,” Sophie says, sarcastically. “I think I got that.”

  “Anyway, cheer up,” Brett says. “There are other galleries.”

  “Such as?”

  “We went through this. The
re’s the V and A...”

  “They said ‘no’.”

  “They did?”

  Sophie nods as she picks up her fork and starts to draw circles in the raspberry vinaigrette remaining on her plate. “They replied by post. Polite. But no.”

  “Brett wrinkles his nose. “There’s the Wapping project.”

  “They said no too. I spoke to what’s-her-name?”

  “Jules Wright?”

  “That’s her. She was lovely. But definitive. It’s a ‘no’.”

  “You should have let me phone her, maybe.”

  “I waited for you to phone her. You didn’t.”

  “I was going to but... anyway... Oh, and I spoke to my contact at the Tate. But he doesn’t think they’ll go for it either.”

  “You see? It’s a disaster.”

  “It’ll just have to be a private gallery then,” Brett says. “But that’s OK, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it’ll have to be.”

  “The work would need to be on sale to make it worth their while. Would that be a problem for your folks?”

  Sophie shakes her head. “It might even boost Mum’s interest in the whole thing a bit.”

  “You reckon?”

  “There’s really no telling with Mum. But she’s never shown any signs of being allergic to money.”

  “Well then,” Brett says. “I’ll have a word with my friend Mike Rowes. He knows Jean Jopling.”

  “And who might Jean Jopling be, dare I ask?”

  “Um, she’s a bit of a nobody. She just owns White Cube.”

  “Oh. Wow! Oh Brett! That would be great.”

  “See, I’m not entirely useless,” Brett says.

  “No, I know that,” Sophie replies, forcing a smile, her first today. “And I was grateful for that meeting today. Even if I did fuck it up.”

  “It probably made no difference,” Brett says, generously. “It probably would have been a ‘no’ anyway. It was always gonna be a long shot.”

  “I wish you’d said that before I went. I wouldn’t have been so disappointed.”

  “I didn’t want to put you off before you even got there.”

  “That’s fair enough, I suppose,” Sophie says.

  “And I’m sorry about the cleaning and shopping,” Brett says. “I can pay for a cleaner for here if you want.”

  “No, thanks. And I was being a bit unfair there. I don’t do much at your place either. So I’m sorry too. I’m just having a bad day.”

  “All the same,” Brett says. “I’d fully understand if you wanted to punish me.”

  Sophie is flooded anew with negative thoughts. Because the sex with Brett has been getting weirder and weirder, the scenarios more and more complex, and the hardware required to get him hard, ever more extensive. It’s like owning a car with an ever-evolving ignition procedure. And Sophie can’t help but think that she will inevitably reach a point where she takes the car back and says, “I can’t be bothered with this. Can you give me something simpler? Can you give me something that just starts at the turn of a key?”

  “Do you think we’ll ever just have plain old sex again?” she asks.

  Brett looks surprised. He actually leans towards her as if he has misheard. “I’m sorry?” he says.

  “I mean, you know... without all the accoutrements,” Sophie says. “Or is normal sex off the menu forever more?”

  Brett frowns, swallows, then licks his lips. “You are in a weird mood tonight,” he says.

  “I know I am. But the question stands.”

  “Then the answer is, of course we can. We can have any kind of sex you want.”

  “Good,” Sophie says.

  “I’m your sex slave. I’m entirely at your command. All you have to do is say.”

  Sophie stares into Brett’s eyes and exhales slowly. She feels like she has just had a revelation. She thinks she has just seen the future and it is Brett-less. She wonders if she should just give in to her instinct to blow it all up right here, right now. It would be so easy.

  Brett, however, has sensed the danger of the moment. “OK, sorry,” he says, determined to defuse the situation. “That was a stupid thing to say. You’re tired. You’re cranky. And you’ve had a bad day.”

  Sophie nods vaguely.

  “And you just want a kiss and a cuddle and a nice, gentle, every-day bang. Am I right?”

  Sophie thinks, Wow, that was close. She clears her throat. “Yes. That’s about the sum of it,” she says.

  Brett stands. “Come,” he says, holding out one hand.

  And more because she lacks the energy for a fight than anything else, Sophie, lets herself take it and allows herself to be led from the room.

  1968 - Hackney, London.

  Barbara is making fish pie. She leans in to smooth the potato topping with a fork and struggles to lose herself in the task. For today there is something strange going on, something she can’t quite put her finger on and doesn’t want to think too deeply about.

  Diane is coming to dinner tonight, bringing her new boyfriend to meet them – a first – and there is a sense of anticipation hanging in the air which seems, somehow, out of proportion to the event, which ultimately is nothing more than a simple meal of fish pie shared with friends. Even Jonathan, unusually, inexplicably clinging to her knees as she works, appears to sense it.

  Tony, who has nipped out for “some booze”, seems both excited and irritated in equal measure and Barbara’s suspicion that he’s going to get blind drunk adds to her feelings of apprehension. She’s noticed in the past a certain nervousness which manifests just before he starts a bender, as if the alcohol were a safety valve that stops him imploding. And it’s been a while since the last time... Tonight could be one of those nights.

  “I need to get butter from the fridge,” she tells Jonathan, ruffling his hair. He giggles and positions one foot on each of hers, clasps her thighs and says, “Go on then.” Together, they toddle to the fridge, then back across the kitchen with Jonathan making robot noises throughout.

  Barbara cuts tiny chunks of butter and distributes them across the top of the sculpted potato topping and wonders if Tony will still get drunk once neither Phil (who has moved to Scotland) nor Diane are available. She can’t help but sense that Diane’s finding a boyfriend is a new beginning for her and Tony as well. And she doesn’t want to make a false move. She doesn’t want to miss that boat.

  ***

  They arrive at six-thirty. Richard is a tall, skinny, nervous-looking man. His eyes dart across their faces as if searching for something, then continue around the room as if collecting details for a police report. But he’s a good looking guy. He reminds Barbara of Dirk Bogarde in Doctor at Sea. Her eyes flick across his crisp, white shirt and his neatly knotted tie, and she wishes, briefly, that Tony dressed better.

  Richard isn’t the kind of person she expected Diane to end up with at all, but then again – and she notices this now – Diane’s transformation from arty tomboy to elegant damsel is no longer a work in progress. Even the eyebrows have been plucked into submission. Tonight she’s wearing an expensive if simple v-neck black dress over a white, large collared blouse, with white heeled sandals. Next to impeccably suited Richard/Dirk, they look like they have just fallen out of the latest Hollywood movie. Barbara feels distinctly frumpy in comparison and vows to make some new, more fashionable clothes for herself.

  Tony is shaking Richard’s hand now, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. “So you’re the famous Richard we’ve heard so much about!” he is saying, which is strange, because Barbara hasn’t heard anything about Richard at all.

  They moved to this new, larger, rented flat three weeks ago, and the dining-room, which smells of paint, is still very much under construction. Barbara painted the walls a turquoise blue less than forty-eight hours ago and found the floral lampshade in a second hand shop just this morning. Tony says he doesn’t like the tone of blue and he hates the lampshade, and in truth, Barbara isn’t that keen on the o
verall result herself. It’s not as she imagined it in her mind’s eye but then so few things in life ever really are. Still, it’s better than entertaining surrounded by peeling wallpaper beneath a bare lightbulb. The camping table, borrowed from next door, has been covered with a tablecloth and looks fine, and they have three chairs now, so only Tony has to sit on a crate.

  “So you’re an architect, I hear,” Tony says, revealing that he really has heard things about Richard. “That must be interesting.”

  “Yes,” Richard replies. “And you’re another photographer, so Diane tells me.”

  “Not really,” Tony says. “Not like Diane. Just amateur stuff, really.”

  Diane laughs. “That’s not true,” she says. “He’s had photos published in the Mirror. He’s good, isn’t he Barbara?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “I only had a few published,” Tony says. “I’m just a delivery guy, really.”

  “Delivery!” Richard says, attempting to make his voice sound enthusiastic. “At least you’re out and about! I spend all day in an office. It’s dreadful.”

  His valiant attempt at making Tony’s humble employment sound interesting has the opposite effect to that intended, and hangs in the air, momentarily embarrassing everyone. “I’m going to give it up though,” Tony says, after an awkward silence. “I’m going to move into photography full time. That’s the plan. I’m going to do an evening class.”

  Barbara feels his pain and despite the fact that this has never been mentioned before, and despite the fact that she doubts his ability to do what he’s suggesting, she says, “You should. I keep saying it. You’re easily good enough.”

  Tony glances at her in surprise. “Well, thank you!” he says.

  Barbara serves halved grapefruits with glacé cherry hearts, followed by the fish pie. Tony, Diane and Richard devour the food as if they have never eaten before; they wash all of this down with numerous bottles of pale ale, yet despite the food hitting the spot and despite the alcohol, the atmosphere at the table remains chilled. Barbara can’t quite put her finger on what’s wrong, but the conversation remains stilted, the silences frequent and painful. By the time she serves the apple crumble, she’s exhausted from the simple effort of trying to find things to say, so when Jonathan, next door, cries out, it’s with a genuine sense of relief that she scuttles off to tend to him.