The Woman in the Photograph

by Stephanie Butland

  But apparently he couldn’t. He’d sat in silence, refusing to leave, until she went to bed. When she got up in the morning, he’d gone; she’d told her dad, and he’d been disappointed – ‘Barry’s a good lad’ – but told her it was up to her who she married. She didn’t feel up to explaining that she might decide not to get married at all.

  Finally, Barry got the message. And it seems like no one in Colchester has time for Vee, or a good word to say about her new friends and her new interests, which is a bit much, as they haven’t bothered to find anything out. She’s stopped seeing most of her old school friends because she’s sick of the snide comments about why she doesn’t wear makeup any more, and of how she’s ‘talking posh’. Vee has given up trying to explain that if she wants to work more widely she needs to be more neutral. She is sick of being scoffed at, or being told that Michael Caine isn’t too good for his accent. Yes, Vee says, but he wants to stand out. I want to blend in. ‘Blend in here, then,’ they say. She had tried photographing them, a few times, but it hasn’t really worked; they try to look posed, different to their everyday selves, and that’s the opposite of the images that Vee wants her camera to find. And now she doesn’t seem to be invited to the regular get-togethers. She doesn’t mind. Not really. But although she doesn’t miss her old life anymore, she’s lonely, sometimes, without it.

  ‘Hello, Veronica,’ says Barry. He doesn’t call her Vee any more.

  ‘Barry. How are you?’

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ he says, and then, his face trying to swallow a smile and failing, ‘I’m going out with someone tonight.’

  Vee waits long enough to check that she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t. That’s a relief. ‘Oh. That’s good.’

  ‘It’s Cathy,’ Barry adds, ‘my sister’s friend?’

  Cathy. Cathy. It takes Vee a moment to place her. ‘Works at the doctor’s?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Barry says.

  ‘I hope you have a good time. She’s always been lovely with Dad when he’s been in.’ You should help a sister out when you can, is what Leonie always says. She probably doesn’t mean helping a sister to get herself married to Barry, but if that’s what Cathy wants, more power to her, as far as Vee’s concerned.

  Barry nods. If he’d been looking for jealousy or disappointment in Vee, he hides it. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘London. To see Miss World.’

  ‘I though you didn’t approve of that sort of thing.’ Last year, she had refused to watch it, even though Barry’s mum had put on a buffet and invited everyone round to see it on their new colour TV.

  ‘I don’t,’ Vee says, and she gets in to the car and drives away.

  20 November 1970

  London

  It’s a crisp day, cold air and quiet, dull sky, and Vee arrives early to the cafe where she’s meeting Leonie, even though she knows Leonie will be late, because she always is. She had parked round the corner from Leonie’s Chelsea flat, and taken the bus to Oxford Street.

  It’s cool to sit in a cafe in Carnaby Street – Carnaby Street! – and feel as though she’s in the middle of where it’s all happening, even though the coolest thing is that Leonie will soon be here. Vee is full of fizz at the thought of her friend, and their plans for today. And she’s walked past boutiques that she wouldn’t dare go into, places like ‘Gear’ and ‘Pop’, where the stars shop; just passing the doors makes her feel special.

  She’s not special. Not special-looking, anyway. She has taken the odd self-portrait, watched as her face emerges from the chemical bath in her darkroom under the stairs. (Dad says she can convert the spare room, if she likes, now that she’s making a living from photography, but she sends her films away to be developed, most of the time, keeps the little darkroom for mucking about in. She likes the way it holds her younger selves, reminding her of how far she has come.) Looking at photographs of herself, she’s come to the conclusion that she is utterly unremarkable. Nothing is odd or wonky or out of proportion. Nothing like Leonie’s great, straight nose, her too-big eyes. Vee cannot wait to see her friend again.

  Leonie showed her, from the beginning, what was possible. The week after they met in Dagenham, Vee sent her the contact sheet of the photographs she took there, after they left the pub. She’d circled the ones she thought were best. Leonie had returned the contact sheet with different images circled, and they were the ones in which she was at least a third profile, her nose not minimised or made smaller by angle or light.

  Vee would love to snap the young women at the next table, one in a skirt that brushes the floor, the other in a mini-dress and knee-high boots, as they pour tea into brown mugs and talk in hushed tones about what they are planning for tomorrow night. She almost asks if they’d mind being photographed, but Leonie might arrive at any moment.

  Vee will have to use flash tonight, and it’s not her preferred approach. It never feels quite right to her. It’s not so bad using it indoors, when she has time to set up, to place reflectors and bounce the sharp explosion of light from the flashbulb away from the subject, and back again: she can control for harshness. Tonight won’t be like that. But the important thing is that she will be there and she will be making a record of what women can do. (Once you realise you’re living in a world designed for white men, you see discrimination, assumption, everywhere. Leonie says she and the others don’t see the half of it, either, because they’re white women, and that protects them from a lot of what’s going down for other sisters.)

  The last time Leonie and Vee saw each other was three months ago, at the first Women’s Liberation Movement meeting. Vee had felt for the first time as if she belonged among the women she saw around her. They were all so different – races, ages, colours, roles in the world. But what they had in common was that they all knew they deserved their places. None of them was better than the other. Each deserved a chance, equal with each other, equal with the men. It had been a buzz. A high.

  She’d stayed over at Leonie’s flat that night, gone home the next day with a sick hangover and a determination to do more photojournalism. (She’d said yes to the beer, passed on the joint.) But Leonie has been quiet since – no notes scribbled on the back of fliers, shoved in envelopes and posted to her – and Vee has not yet worked out how to do the job she wants to do without her friend. So it’s been back to weddings and christenings, and wishing she had the courage to take smiling brides aside and say: remember you have power of your own.

  The cafe door opens. Vee’s heart gives a glad leap. It always does, when she sees Leonie.

  ‘Hey, sister,’ Leonie says, and hugs Vee, tight. She smells of lavender, as usual, and there is cold air coming off her. She sits, then puts her head in her hands for a moment before looking up with a smile. Only a small one. ‘Meeting went on.’

  Leonie never apologises. Vee isn’t sure if it’s personality, rudeness, posh-girl confidence, or being liberated. ‘That’s OK,’ she says.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Vee thinks about mentioning having seen Barry, but it really doesn’t seem that important, now. Even if she did think about him most of the way on the drive. Or at least think about how her life would have been certain, if she had stayed with him. Unengaged, and with no real desire to find someone, life has become a nebulous, unlimited, and therefore frightening thing. She’s never talked to Leonie much about Barry. It was as though part of her already knew that marrying him wasn’t going to happen, so she didn’t waste her breath on it.

  ‘Was your meeting about your book? How did it go?’ One of the best things about last year for Vee was when Leonie sent her the typed pages of the book she was writing, and asked her what she thought. Vee had thought, simply, that this was the most amazing thing she had ever read. It should have been hard going, because it was about complicated things – politics, the economy, history, all the reasons women are kept down. But Leonie’s wit and sharpness had struck sparks in the air around her as she read. Vee had never been muc
h of a reader, but she stayed up until she had finished the last page. She’d sent back a note, the next day, full of praise and enthusiasm, which Leonie hadn’t replied to.

  The waitress comes over; Leonie orders a cheese sandwich and coffee. Vee asks for a second coffee. ‘It was – not cool,’ she says, pulling a face that shows her bottom teeth, narrows her eyes, ‘The lowdown is, I’m before my time. Which is a big fat no.’

  ‘Is it really? Or do you just have to wait? Until time catches up?’ One of the few things Vee and her father still agree on (now that marriage, careers and the women’s movement cause disagreements every time they come up) is how you Never Give Up. And it’s just not possible that people can’t see how fantastic Leonie is.

  Leonie makes a laugh-shaped noise. ‘Oh, my little ray of sunshine. I wish. No, it really was a big fat no. The world isn’t ready for me. I don’t see why the world can’t have a go. At least put it out there and see, you know? Someone took a punt on Betty Friedan. And on Kate Millett. They believed Robin Morgan when she said she could edit Sisterhood is Powerful.’ She sighs. ‘I should move to the States. Your best way of being a published feminist here is to be Sylvia fucking Plath. Or Stevie Smith.’

  ‘Aren’t they poets?’

  ‘Exactly. You’re not allowed a voice of your own, here. Not if you’re trying to be factual. You have to be poetic. So the powers that be, the MEN, can write it all off as . . .’ she twists her face into a simper, ‘feelings. Which they can then ignore. Some of the sisters are talking about setting up a magazine, but—’ She makes a gesture that encompasses despair and impatience.

  ‘I’m sorry, Leonie.’ Vee doesn’t know how hard it is to get a book published but she knows for a fact that Leonie is good enough.

  ‘I know you are.’ There’s a real smile, this time, and Vee feels her face light in return. Then Leonie remembers something else. ‘Or Australia. There’s a book you need to read by a sister called Germaine Greer. It’s interesting. She’s right about quite a lot of things. Maybe half of it.’

  ‘Is that good? That she’s getting some of it right?’ The thought of Leonie in America or Australia – how much would a plane ticket be? – gives Vee a sort of indigestion of the heart.

  ‘Yes and no,’ Leonie says, ‘good for consciousness raising. Bad because now the patriarchy can point at her and say, but we’ve published a book about woman and sexuality and how we men hold women back. Why do you need another one, darling? You keep writing your pretty words, by all means, but the position of the woman with unpalatable truths about female bodies is taken.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘The thing is, the establishment holding me back – I’m used to that, you know? But the sisters should be behind me.’ Leonie shakes her head. She looks as though she might cry. ‘They should be willing to try. The editor I talked to today – she’s a woman. She’s a friend of Jo, you know Jo?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vee probably does. She hasn’t spent enough time with the feminist crowd to be able to put all the names to all of the faces.

  ‘So I hoped, y’know? I thought, an editor, a woman, one of us. But it looks like she only got there by playing it safe. Not drawing attention to the fact that she’s a woman. Jeez! This is so not cool. If we only do what’s safe—’

  Leonie is getting louder. People are looking round. Vee knows she shouldn’t feel as though there is anything wrong with making a noise. ‘What didn’t she like? This friend of Jo’s?’

  Leonie glares. ‘That’s the question I asked. Not that I would change it. But she just said it “wasn’t right” and  “wasn’t for them”. Coward.’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ Vee says, and adds, ‘but you are the bravest person I know, you know, so . . .’

  The glare is replaced by a smile, but not a nice one. ‘Well, that’s something. Braver than all the housewives in Essex.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Leonie. That’s not fair.’ Leonie has taught her to stick up for herself, for the validity of her own experience. Well, time for her to see what a good job she has done.

  Leonie, who has her head in her hands, looks at Vee from under her fringe, eyes tired, mouth a frown, and for a second it looks as though she is going to get up and leave. But instead she shakes her head – it looks as though she cut her hair using a bowl as a guide, and it doesn’t suit her – and says, ‘I need to get some bread of my own from somewhere. It’s not cool to live off my trust fund. If I can make a living I can give more money away, to the sisters who need it.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  A sigh. ‘I might teach a night class. Kiki was asking me if I wanted to do it. I don’t, really, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  Vee nods. Leonie has no idea of how lucky she is, how her life is full of possibility. Every time she doesn’t get what she wants, she asks one of her posh friends for help – and she gets it. She has the trust fund, too, though Vee isn’t completely clear on what that is. She does know that Leonie has a degree in something called PPE, and might do a ‘doctorate’, which is nothing to do with medicine. And that she spends a lot of her time – when she isn’t writing – organising, volunteering, and helping women.

  ‘Sounds good.’

  When Leonie heard how Vee had left her job, after Dagenham, she had been that friend to Vee in her turn. Vee had written her a letter, tried to make the argument with her boss sound funny, and as though she hadn’t minded being told to stay in her place. She’d left out the part about her dad going to see Bob behind her back and asking him to give her another chance, or Barry’s ‘maybe it’s for the best’ attitude. Leonie had seen through her bravado and written back to say she should come and have lunch with her and they would see what they could do. She had put money in the envelope for her train fare. Vee thinks the official word for this sort of thing is ‘patronage’. Leonie says sisters help their sisters, and it’s just what men have been doing for each other always, and that’s how the patriarchy keeps itself strong. Vee’s father calls it ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’, which Vee thinks is unfair. Because Leonie wouldn’t be much use to her – or she to Leonie – if she couldn’t take a decent photograph. Leonie had introduced her around, and she’s always the one who’s invited to take photographs at protests, meetings and marches. She doesn’t get paid for being there but she sometimes gets published: her photographs, grainy, in The Times and the Daily Express, make her the happiest she has been, and the fees puff her up with pride.

  ‘I’m going to write my next column about makeup, perception of beauty, how we should be enough without being expected to slap all that on our faces,’ Leonie says, and Vee thinks guiltily of the lipstick in the bottom of her bag. Old habits die hard, but she’s learning, sometimes the hard way. She wore a skirt to one of the first marches Leonie took her to. Leonie didn’t seem to notice, but another woman hissed at her. She always wears jeans now, when she’s going to do something with the women. She’s bought some dungarees but she doesn’t feel brave enough – or maybe qualified enough – to go out in them yet. She nods. Leonie adds, ‘So if you get any shots of anything I can use—’

  ‘I’ll give you first pick.’ Vee holds up her camera, grins. She loves the thought that she is going to be here, for this, and has a shiver of anxiety that adds to the excitement. She indicates her camera bag. ‘I’m ready.’

  Leonie laughs. Her moods come and go, fast flares of misery and brightness. The trick is to take each one as it comes. ‘You call that ready?’ She opens her handbag – it’s bigger than the one she usually carries, more old-fashioned, plain black leather with a metal zip across the top – and Vee peers inside.

  ‘What is that?’ There’s a strange smell, half-sweet half-dead, that makes her pull back her head in a hurry.

  ‘Probably the rotten tomatoes. The lettuce doesn’t really smell, but it’s slimy. I’ve had it in a plastic bag on the windowsill for two weeks.’

  Vee approaches the bag again, more cautiously, and puts in a hand,
picking up a small paper bag. ‘And what are these?’

  ‘Have you never seen a flour bomb?’ Leonie laughs again, ‘You should see the look on your face. I bet you’ve never even had detention, have you?’

  Vee shakes her head. ‘I was a proper goody-two-shoes,’ she says, ‘until I met you. You’ve led me astray.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ Leonie says, ‘that is cool.’ She kisses Vee, corner of the mouth: she often does it, and Vee has learned that it means nothing to Leonie, though it cannot help but feel sexual to her. Leonie is the only person who kisses her, now, and she’s ashamed by how much she treasures something Leonie does without thought.

  Leonie feels around in the side pocket of the handbag, then slaps two tickets down on the table: Miss World Pageant 1970. ‘We’re near the front. The signal is a football rattle.’

  For a moment Vee wants to get up, go home, put on some lipstick, knock on Barry’s door. She reminds herself that this is important work. They need to get noticed. They need to make people see what’s wrong with the world.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to get any decent shots inside, especially if there’s flour,’ she says, ‘but if not, we can look around outside, afterwards.’

  Leonie nods. ‘Bound to be a postman somewhere,’ she says, with a smile, and Vee feels the pleasure of this friendship like a stab. ‘There’s the protest outside the Albert Hall, and then outside the Café de Paris afterwards.’ She says it ‘Par-ee’, so it takes Vee a moment to work out where she means. Leonie is on the WLF committee, and always knows everything that’s planned. ‘And are you going to crash at mine?’

  ‘If that’s still . . . cool,’ Vee says, the word unwieldy on her tongue. Her father tells her off for using what he calls ‘hippie talk’, but she wants to fit in. It’s another way to move through the world without being noticed. And not being noticed is how you take a decent photograph. And taking decent photographs is what gets you noticed. Life is like taking photographs: to do it well, you have to understand it. Film, exposure and darkroom are easier to manage, and have more predictable results.