The Woman in the Photograph

by Stephanie Butland

  ‘Good,’ Leonie says. The waitress brings her sandwich and she closes her handbag, puts it on the floor, ‘I’ll eat this, then we’ll split. Let’s see if we can get you arrested. It’s about time you saw the inside of a cell.’ She laughs, ‘I wish you could see your face!’

  *

  At the Royal Albert Hall, a police officer looks at her twice as she goes up the steps, but a smile gets her through. And Leonie doesn’t see her smiling, so that’s good, because she hasn’t got into trouble for appeasing the patriarchy.

  There are a lot of other women with suspiciously large handbags, coats that swamp them, ill-fitting dresses. They have obviously all decided to try to look like the kind of women who would be interested in a beauty contest. She realises that her chances of being arrested are not high. She had tried to look amused at the prospect, but the thought of it scares her. Which is shameful of her, really. She voted for the first time in June, and she’s been reading a book Leonie had given her about the suffragettes at the time. Standing in the polling booth, she’d tried to imagine what it was like to be imprisoned, force-fed, because of the strength of your principles. And she’d wondered whether she would ever really be brave enough to do the part that got the women arrested in the first place: civil disobedience, throwing bricks through windows, setting fires, resisting arrest. She hasn’t even brought lettuce to throw, and she’s terrified, her throat tight and her legs weak. But then again, there’s nothing to say that the suffragettes weren’t terrified. They did it anyway.

  There’s a chattering excitement filling the building as Vee and Leonie follow the curving corridor to their entrance. Of course, most of the people here have no thought of protest: they’re excited about the pageant, and have probably never thought that a beauty contest could be exploitative and wrong. The crowd thickens at their door to the stalls, and Vee finds herself pressed up against a man in black tie who winks at her. She pretends not to see, and tries not to think of the suffragettes.

  Vee has never been inside the Royal Albert Hall. The curves and detail of the interior of building, the sheer scale and beauty of it, from the red plush seats to the organ to the gilt on the carving on the ceiling, make her half-dizzy with awe. Leonie makes a joke about Albert’s massive organ, and someone behind chips in about patriarchal archetypes; Vee pretends to laugh, and tries for nonchalance, but cannot stop herself from gazing at the beauty of the place. She wishes she could photograph it, but there’s no point, not with this level of light. ‘Have you been here before?’ she asks Leonie.

  ‘All the fucking time,’ Leonie says, earning a tut from a different man, also in a tuxedo, sitting further along the row. ‘My parents were really into classical music. My sister Ursula and me used to get dragged along to what felt like every prom. And the occasional opera in between. Ursula still comes, because she’s a good girl, but I’ve got better things to do.’

  ‘It’s such a beautiful building, though.’

  Leonie shrugs. ‘If you like buildings designed for the wealthy to use to support the status quo, yeah, it’s the bomb.’

  Vee will never, ever get the hang of this. There’s too much of it – there are too many invisible-until-pointed-out-and-then-they-are-obvious ways that women have been oppressed. When she’s talking to her dad, in their mostly good-natured debates after watching What the Papers Say, or when she’s writing out an invoice, she feels liberated, competent, strong. She’s confident in marshalling her arguments for why she might not want to settle down and have children, and even if she does, that’s no reason why she shouldn’t have a career too. The Equal Pay Act, thanks to the Ford machinists, should make that easier.

  More than that, among some of her old friends from school, who are starting to settle down, she can talk about ambition, her own and theirs, and she makes a point of being a good sister to those who are thinking beyond what’s usual for them. She can point to Margaret Thatcher as one of many women doing important work and being taken seriously as they do it. Leonie would say one female Secretary of State is not enough, but to Vee’s friends she’s an object of speculation and strangeness. (What does her husband think? Surely her children suffer?) A Colchester local counsellor has admitted publicly that she’s a lesbian. Not ‘admitted’, that isn’t the right word for it. But the point is, the world is changing, and Vee is on board with the changes, and will fight for them, and even be something of a small trailblazer in her neck of the woods. Being the only female wedding photographer in Essex might not be all she wants, but it’s something. A start.

  Except just when she thinks she’s got a handle on it, she admires the architecture of a building, and discovers a whole new level of oppression that hadn’t even occurred to her before. Leonie says she shouldn’t be ashamed of that, because it’s not her fault the patriarchy has normalised this shit. Vee loves the way Leonie talks, education and swearing in equal measure. And she loves that she says it’s always OK to ask questions, but it’s never OK to be deliberately ignorant.

  ‘Leonie?’ Her friend turns towards her; that face so photogenic. Vee is proud, every day, that one of her photographs is Leonie’s publicity photograph, appearing small and slightly blurred next to her articles in This Month and as the main image in a piece she wrote for the Telegraph about the impact of the Equal Pay Act for all women. Leonie looks a little bit distant – she’s probably still thinking about her meeting. Vee cannot imagine how disappointing it must be to have someone reject your book, especially such a book as Leonie is writing. And she knows that once the action starts, Leonie will be full-throatedly alive – her disappointments put aside for the sake of the sisterhood.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘What do you call it . . .’ Vee makes sure not to drop her voice, because there’s no shame in asking a question about sexuality ‘. . . what do you call it when a lesbian admits it? I mean, what’s the expression?’

  There’s an unhidden titter from the women sitting behind them. Leonie doesn’t turn around, but raises her right arm, lazily, rotates her hand, gives them the finger. ‘Telling other people is “coming out”. Admitting it to yourself doesn’t really have an expression. I suppose you’d call it waking up. Like, sexual awakening.’

  And then the lights go down, and there’s a cheer and applause, and it begins. Vee tries to keep her critical faculties alive, remember why she’s here. She knows with all of her heart that women are more than their measurements and have easily as much potential as the men who patronise them and, knowingly or unknowingly, exploit them.

  Vee is not going to be drawn into this.

  She is only here to protest.

  But oh, it’s captivating.

  There are the lights, and the whole sparkle of it, and, when the women start to emerge, the sheer shining beauty of them. The audience, too – the way the people sound, gasps and applause, so thrilled, so excited. Plus – Vee hadn’t thought about this, really, until now – beyond this dazzling room, full of thousands of people, there’s a whole world watching.

  Vee is holding her breath. She can’t take her eyes from the stage. And then, because she can’t help herself, she’s joining in the collective coo of approval when another beauty – no, not beauty, ‘woman who fits the conventional notion of beauty’ – walks onto the stage.

  And yes, it’s artifice, and yes, it’s conditioning, and yes, it’s wrong. But how Vee would love to take to those faces with her camera, sculpt the angles with light and shade, turn conventional beauty into something powerful and stripped back and stunning. Whichever beauty queen is now centre stage is simpering and smiling and talking about how much she loves the colour of her gown. She’s wearing high, strappy shoes which catch the light, and her hair is solidly in place in a pleat that looks as though it would survive the worst that the IRA could do. Vee imagines this woman barefoot, wearing a towelling bathrobe two sizes too big so that the only flesh on show is her face and neck, a triangle of throat, her hands and feet. Her hair would be wet – not damp, wet, hangin
g in rat tails around her face, the tops of her ears sticking out. The shape of her body – whatever stupid measurements they are spouting on the stage now, as though they are her worth – would be hidden by the thickness of the fabric. And she would not be smiling. Or pouting. Or come-hithering. She would be staring into the lens, fierce, with a look that said: I have no time for your men-rule-the-world bullshit. This is what I look like. This is me.

  There’s a line-up of all the women on the stage, and then they file off, to applause and cooing from the audience. Some of the women around them are applauding, presumably to avoid suspicion, although it’s hard – for Vee, at least – not to be pulled into genuine admiration. She remembers how her mother used to love to dress up, her one pair of high-heeled shoes always wrapped in their tissue and put back in their box after they were worn. Vee leans over to Leonie and says, ‘I’d love to take their photographs. Without makeup. Just women.’

  Leonie says, ‘Not “just”. And why not do it with other women? The ones that aren’t meeting a patriarchal notion of beauty? It’s a total waste.’

  ‘Of beauty?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not beauty. That’s patriarchy in action. Brains. It’s a waste of brains. And time. How long does it take them to do whatever they do to their eyebrows? Or starve? Worry about every damn thing they put in their mouths?’ Vee thinks of the photographs she has already seen in the press, of a woman in a swimsuit smiling as a man with a tape measure wraps it around her hips, takes a reading. Leonie is right. Well, she’s always right. But Vee is the one who can see a different way to portray beauty. Or perhaps, a different kind of beauty to portray.

  She doesn’t think the protest will really happen. There is something so impossible-seeming about disrupting a live television broadcast, and one with the word ‘World’ in it. Marching in the streets, yes. Going out on strike, yes. Invading a public space, or not doing something you were expected to do: Vee sees no reason why the fight should not take place on these battlegrounds. But there was something so audacious about this idea that she could barely believe it would happen. When Leonie had first told her about it, Vee had thought she was joking. They were at the opening of an exhibition of artwork made by a collective of women protesting against the Vietnam War. Vee was photographing the art, the artists, and the lighting in the gallery was a nightmare so she hadn’t really paid attention to what Leonie was saying. The details had arrived in the post a week later, and Vee had copied them into her diary, but she still hadn’t quite believed it. She had imagined it would be like those schoolgirl schemes, the ones where everyone is definitely going to stand up and walk out the next time they are given extra homework, or everyone was without question going to refuse to come to school the day after Amanda Johnson got the slipper for forgetting her PE kit three weeks running, when everyone knew she only did that because her mother didn’t believe in bras and she was more afraid of the boys’ laughter than she was of the teacher’s ire.

  And then it begins.

  And she’s part of it.

  She is so angry when she hears what Bob Hope says at the beginning of his turn on stage – ‘It’s like a cattle market back there, I’ve been backstage checking out some calves’ – that when the football rattle goes off, it feels like immediate and glorious justice to be on her feet, bellowing at the wrongness of it, and she wishes she had brought more than her camera. And then Leonie gives her a flour bomb, and she hurls it, joining in the chant of ‘We’re not beautiful! We’re not ugly! We are angry!’ For once, she is in the thick of it, and there is nowhere else in the world she would rather be. The air is full of fury and flour, shouting and screams; the security guards and police are there soon, but not soon enough. This is action. This is real. Vee and Leonie are part of a movement that is changing the world.

  The man who tutted at Leonie’s swearing earlier barks a sharp, ‘I say! That’s enough!’ Vee, turning to glance at his purpling, indignant face, feels something else within her fall into place, lock, make her stronger. She’s not just here to protest about the way women are portrayed. It’s about the whole damn world. The beauty queens only parade because the men in bow-ties want to look at them. The women who are with the men in bow-ties have been made to think that this is OK. No one here believes they are doing anything wrong. Everyone is brainwashed. And among the confusion and the shouting, under the disapproving gaze of the people who came here to watch the show, and the blank eyes of the television cameras, Veronica Moon gets it. Really, properly. Not in words, but in feelings. She might not know everything, but she understands. She unclips her camera lens cap, puts the viewfinder to her eye.

  Shoved and shunted from the building with the other shouting protestors a few minutes later, Vee finds herself next to a grinning Leonie, and because she cannot express, exactly, what it is that she has felt, she blurts, ‘I love you.’ Leonie seems not to hear.

  *

  Leonie drinks a lot, fast, as they stand in the street outside the Café de Paris two hours later. Hip-flasks filled with brandy and whisky are being passed from hand to hand. Vee sips – she likes the warmth the alcohol brings, but she wants to keep her wits about her, just in case she does get arrested. The police seem benign, good-humoured almost, chatting to some of the quieter protesters who are asking them about their wives, their sisters, talking about how beauty contests undermine the women in their lives. The police don’t appear to be taking them seriously, but you never know. Some of it might sink in.

  Vee feels overwhelmed, still, by her sudden understanding of how much work there is to do. Feeling around in her handbag for her hanky, her fingers find instead her lipstick, and she pulls it out and throws it in the gutter. She’ll never wear makeup again.

  Every time the protesters start to feel cold, or tired, more women arrive with more placards – ‘Women Are People Too’, ‘Women Demand Liberation’ – and the chanting finds new strength with new voices. There’s euphoria everywhere at the disruption the action at the Royal Albert Hall has caused; speculation about how many millions of people might have seen the protest on television. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. Vee can’t begin to imagine it. She can imagine Barry’s mother’s face, though.

  What a thing to be part of. What a night to remember. Who’d have thought that she, Veronica Moon from Colchester, daughter of a carpenter and a part-time shop assistant, could be here, her voice one of many crying out for a new world? Yet here she is. Time to get to work, properly.

  But now the first excitement is over, Leonie – much more used to this kind of thing than Vee, of course – is on a real downer about her book being rejected. Once alcohol hits her system, her disappointment starts to show. She is telling the others around them about her book, about how she has been let down by her sisters, her words oppressed. She gets unsteady and goes to sit on a step.

  ‘You should take her home,’ Jo says to Vee, ‘she’s an ugly drunk.’ Vee looks across at Leonie, who is silent now, her head in her hands, probably not being hassled by the police because she looks like a tipsy old man in the half-hearted light from the street lamps. She’s tempted, for a moment, to photograph her. She tells herself not to – it wouldn’t be kind.

  She scans the crowd for faces she knows, and faces that look like the faces she is thinking about: old faces, tired faces, faces with double chins. Leonie has given her a set of keys to the flat, in case they were separated at the demo, so why not just get absorbed into the crowd, seek out the people whose names she knows and start with them? Kiki’s here, Fen and Jo too; they could be the place to begin. Leonie can fend for herself. Vee will catch up with her back at the flat.

  She glances back at Leonie, who hasn’t moved, her head still in her hands. She’ll be fine here. She has sisters all around her.

  But then Leonie looks up and around; as soon as she sees Vee, she smiles with unguarded relief. Vee smiles back. Nothing is more important than her friend. Help a sister out, Vee says to herself. Leonie first, photographs tomorrow.r />
  Leonie is quiet in the taxi. They are back at her flat within ten minutes; almost as soon as they arrive, Leonie goes out again, saying she’ll be back soon. It’s almost eleven – not late, not really, but it’s been a long day, and all Vee really wants to do is go to bed. But she does the washing-up and puts some things in the bin. She did the same the last time she was here. Leonie accused her of being indoctrinated by patriarchal values of what a woman’s role should be, but it’s really not that: it’s just a desire for order. She had framed it to Leonie as a characteristic of a photographer, not a woman, and Leonie bought it, though she grumbled that her cleaner sorts it all on Mondays so it was a waste of Vee’s energy.

  Leonie comes back half an hour later, with a bottle of wine and a pizza on a plate from the restaurant around the corner.

  ‘C’mon,’ she says, ignoring the cleaned-up kitchen table, ‘let’s eat on the sofa.’ Vee hasn’t eaten pizza before. She watches as Leonie folds a triangular slice over and eats it like a sort of hot sandwich, and does the same. Her fingertips sing at the heat, but she doesn’t mind – this doesn’t seem like a knife-and-fork meal. It’s delicious, tomato and cheese and slices of something black and round that is probably olive. Dad might like it. He likes cheese on toast.

  ‘I was hungry,’ Vee says, ‘I didn’t realise.’

  Leonie grins, and puts the plate on the floor. ‘I’ll look after you.’ She wraps her arms around Vee, who feels herself brace before she relaxes. Leonie feels it too: ‘Be cool. I’m not going to kiss you.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s just . . .’ Vee doesn’t have the vocabulary to tell Leonie about the way she thinks about her, sometimes, a feeling like she used to get with Barry. Though Barry had to work a lot harder than Leonie to give her that warmth in her belly. And how strange it is, because up until that local counsellor came out recently, Essex has always appeared to be a lesbian-free zone, and she had never ever thought of herself as someone who could love a woman. Not like that.