‘How’s it going with the new book?’ Neither Leonie’s book about women’s lives and sexuality, nor the next – about their relationship with food – have been published. And Leonie keeps writing.
Leonie knocks back her chaser. ‘A publisher I’ve been talking to really likes it.’
‘That’s fantastic! This is the one about what beauty is?’ Vee still reads everything Leonie writes. Even when they don’t see each other much, the envelopes come. Vee reads the photocopied typewritten pages, writes Leonie a letter about what she thinks, and posts it back. So she has read this latest of Leonie’s books about why all of women’s thinking about their looks, and their bodies, is wrong. Her friend is passionate about how everyone has got so used to seeing everything from the male perspective that there is almost no way to get away from it. So women who dress in order not to be sexualised are just as oppressed as those who wear pencil skirts and kitten heels, in Leonie’s view: no makeup is as bad as a full face of the stuff because it is a reaction against the way patriarchal society expects women to look. Therefore, it is just as dictated by the way men think women should look. And as for weight, ideas of fat and thin, sexy and overweight-therefore-unsexy – Leonie sees oppression in this, the time it takes to consider food, to decide whether to eat it, to label it ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Ursula, Leonie’s sister, goes to Weight Watchers and is always trying to persuade Leonie to join her. After these conversations, Leonie does an impression of her sister, weighing carrots and writing down calories in a notebook, that makes Vee feel sorry for them both.
Leonie’s outrage, her vision, her fury with the world in which she lives and with her sisters who don’t seem to see what she sees – these things blister the page. But somehow without Leonie there in person to make it all make sense, without her wit and her quick, clever eyes, the words feel like too much, the argument too uncompromising, and Leonie’s advice – to refuse the choices on offer to women, to refute them, to find a new way – doesn’t actually help her when she needs to buy some new trousers.
But Leonie has been told, time and again, that this is why even the readers who want to love her work struggle with it. Even her articles for Spare Rib have been poorly received. Fen had suggested, tentatively, that women might interpret her writing as Leonie telling them how to look instead of the patriarchy dictating to them. The only place where she seems accessible is in her ‘Dear John’ columns for This Month magazine, which began as a three-month trial and have run without a break for more than a decade. Leonie has refused to listen to anyone who has tried to tell her that the tone she adopts in those articles is what will get her message across much more effectively than her more strident writing. She says she doesn’t see why she should sugar the pill.
And then, last year, Fat is a Feminist Issue came out, and the putative interest that there had been from a publisher in Leonie’s work on the body disappeared. Vee had argued that it was only a question of time and finding someone who wasn’t afraid of her words. Leonie had, grudgingly, agreed to keep trying. And now, here they are. Vee really couldn’t be more pleased. She wants the world to have access to Leonie’s mind. And, more than that, she wants Leonie to be happy. ‘You’re going to be published! That’s such good news, Leonie.’
‘I’m not going to be published,’ Leonie says. ‘They said no.’
‘Why?’
Leonie shrugs, chins wobbling and shoulders sagging. ‘I’m a polemicist. Not an apologist.’
Vee nods. She’s just about to try to point out that there might be another way, an in-between, when Leonie adds, ‘Or I might not be good enough.’
‘Leonie! No! You know you deserve this. It’s like you said. They publish a few women and then they think they’ve done. But—’
Leonie cuts across her with a shrug, ‘I even tried Virago. They don’t want me.’
‘What? Why?’
‘They don’t like me. I’m not their kind of feminist.’
Vee has a shelf of Virago books. She hasn’t read all of them, admittedly, but what Leonie says seems unlikely. There seems to be room for all voices. Surely that’s the point.
‘Did they say that?’
Leonie gives another shrug, one that Vee recognises as meaning ‘I decline to answer’, then says, ‘Anyway. I’m pregnant.’
Vee feels her face struggle to hide her shock, mask it with something closer to surprise. ‘You’re having a baby?’ Oh, Christ. ‘I mean – are you going to keep it?’
‘I am,’ Leonie says.
‘That’s—’ Vee cannot stop her gaze from landing on the empty glasses. ‘That’s surprising.’
‘I found out too late to do anything else,’ Leonie says, ‘which means there’s no point in stopping now.’ Vee notices the cigarette ends in the ashtray. She hopes they aren’t Leonie’s, but they probably are. Still, women need to respect women in their choices. And the pack on the table are menthol cigarettes, at least.
‘I suppose you don’t want to commit to a book until you know how it all works out.’
Leonie shakes her head. ‘When I said I was keeping it,’ she says, ‘I just meant, I was too late to get rid of it. I would have done, but I realised too late. My periods are, like, crazy.’
A man who has just sat down at the next table double-takes as he overhears this, and raises a disapproving/amused eyebrow at his friend. Leonie tips back her chair, flicks his pint over and says in a voice that’s a growl, ‘Women bleed. Be grateful.’
‘Bitch,’ the man says, jumping out of the way of the beer pouring onto the floor, then, as it hits his shoes, ‘Fat cow.’
‘You betcha,’ Leonie says. This is why Vee should never, ever put her camera away. The man’s face, outraged and, beneath, perplexed as to how he is powerless in this moment, is a picture, except it isn’t, because she’s missed it.
‘So, are you thinking of putting it up for adoption?’
Leonie rubs at her eyes, then yawns. Vee suspects she’s hiding tears, and makes sure not to look. If Leonie is going to talk to her about this, she needs to keep things cool, steady; if her friend suspects her of being emotional she’ll shut the conversation down as swiftly as she knocked over that pint.
Leonie concentrates on folding up the empty crisp packet. ‘I suppose. It’s a faff. I might leave it on a step somewhere.’ Oh, no. This can’t be happening. Leonie might be right about there being too many children in the world, but—
Leonie puts a hand over Vee’s. ‘Your face! Of course I wouldn’t leave it on a step. Just because I don’t want a baby doesn’t make me—’ she pauses, ‘subhuman.’
‘You might feel differently about it when it’s here,’ Vee offers. Even as she’s saying it, she knows these are the wrong words. But she doesn’t know how to be helpful. Leonie does everything differently.
‘Why would I?’
‘Well, people do.’ Any other conversation like this would be about maternal instinct, hormones, bonds, but Leonie wouldn’t accept that, and Vee is not sure that she does, either. She closes her mouth again but it’s too late. Leonie has read her thoughts, or seen the M for ‘motherhood’ her mouth had been beginning to make, and extrapolated from there. Photographers have to be ordinary, uninteresting, if they are to fade far enough from the subject’s notice to get them to be their true selves. But Vee would like to say one surprising thing, sometime.
‘Maternal instinct? Which makes women no longer want to leave the home or do anything except serve their families? Fuck that,’ Leonie says.
‘I didn’t say anything!’
‘You were going to.’ There really is no point in arguing with Leonie, because – well, because she is Leonie, but also, because she’s right. ‘There’s no such thing as maternal instinct. It’s just another bullshit construct designed to keep women down and I’m not buying it.’
Vee nods and takes a drink. She has no desire for a child, certainly, or for the relationship she would have assumed would go with it.
Leonie adds, ‘There ar
e some primitive tribes where people don’t know who children belong to. They are born and then they’re fed by whichever tit is closest. Nobody can tell you who came out of who else.’
Vee sometimes wonders whether there’s a tribe to fit every argument. She doesn’t say so, though. She doesn’t want to talk about hypothetical babies. She needs to know more about the one at the table, midway through its second pint of cider.
‘When’s it due?’
‘In three months. I just found out last week. I can’t get a late abortion. Don’t fancy throwing myself down the stairs.’
This has to be, at least partly, bravado. ‘But—’
‘But what?’
‘I don’t know, Leonie. Would the father want it?’
‘No. And why would I give it to a man?’
‘If there’s no such thing as maternal instinct, why wouldn’t you?’
Leonie smiles, such a broad warm smile, and Vee wishes that she saw it more often. ‘I always forget you can be fun to be with, Ms Big-Shot Photographer.’
‘Thank you.’ Vee bobs her head, to show she knows this is well meant, and Leonie sits back in her chair. She’s definitely pink around the eyes. Vee squeezes her arm, smiles into her face. But Leonie looks away.
‘Would you want it?’ she asks, a moment later.
‘Want what?’
‘The baby. If you want it, you can have it.’
‘Are you serious?’ Leonie looks serious. This can’t be how it works, legally, Vee thinks, but that’s hardly the point.
‘Why not?’ Leonie lights a cigarette. ‘You’re my friend. When we first met, you were all set to marry whatshisname. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have been up the stick within a year of the wedding.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair.’ Leonie doesn’t mean it. It’s just her way of dealing with a world that she feels is unfair to her. ‘I didn’t know any better. I’d only just met you.’
Leonie nods. After a moment of silence she asks, ‘So, do you?’
Vee was up late last night sorting out her invoices, up early this morning to get ready for the Thatcher shoot. She must be misunderstanding. Leonie can’t mean . . . ‘Do I what?’
Leonie takes a breath, says slowly, ‘Do you want the baby? You can afford it. Nannies and whatever. Or you can just take it to work with you. It wouldn’t really make an impact on your life.’
No, she does mean it. This conversation really is happening. Vee takes a breath, a drink, a bite of sausage roll, just for the sake of making some space in her head and her heart. Does she want a baby? Need one? Her dad sometimes talks about how she’ll be ‘all on her own when I’ve gone’. She doesn’t think she minds. But she closes her eyes and thinks about the space in her body where, theoretically, her child could grow. It feels the same as it always does: a blank, rather than a yearning. Vee opted out of relationships somewhere around 1975, when the man she was seeing said that she loved her camera more than she loved him. She’d protested, but he was right. Darkrooms were better than dinner. Publication was better than sex. Being able to buy her own house with money she had earned was the proudest moment of her life. And, then, she had Leonie to love.
Vee has a vision of herself on a shoot, baby strapped to her front in one of those sling things, or maybe in a pram next to her, wailing and waving its arms as she tries to get a CEO to drop their professional guard, or a woman famous for her looks to stop posing and just be. It wouldn’t work. And anyway, if she did want a baby, she’d decide. Not hope that someone would give her a child the way her dad loads her car with the extra potatoes from the allotment. She says, gently, ‘I’m like you, Leonie. I don’t want – I’ve never really wanted a child. I just assumed that I would because that’s what the world told me.’ Thinks: you’re the one who showed me how to think differently about all that. She almost says so, but she doesn’t trust her voice to keep steady if she tries. And what they really need to talk about is Leonie. ‘You’re really serious? About giving it away?’
‘Oh, I’m serious, sister. What would I do with this?’ She puts a hand on her belly, briefly, and then takes it away, as though the child within has shaken her off.
‘And you’d give it to me?’
‘If you wanted it. So long as you promised not to give it to fucking Thatcher.’ Vee laughs, despite herself. But another feeling follows. In three months from now she could be responsible for another human being. If she wanted to be.
The old, gentle smile appears on Leonie’s face. She’s the woman Vee met at Dagenham, less scary than she is now, less unpredictable. ‘What is it, Vee?’
‘I don’t know.’ Vee is flooded with something. It’s definitely not need; she has never wanted a child. This feeling is more a spinning sense of the magnitude of all she has so casually declined. No relationship, and therefore no child, because she has photographs to take. And here she is: photographing the Prime Minister, known and respected in her industry, working to support her sisters, going home alone, and not minding. Society wants her to think that she is lonely, but she isn’t. She’s solitary. She’s an observer. She’s stepping outside the assumptions that the patriarchy makes about what women need. It’s not the same as being lonely.
Best to point the lens away from this. ‘You’d give me your child? Really?’
‘Isn’t it better to decide myself where it should go? Instead of leaving it on a hospital step?’ Leonie indicates her belly, which Vee can see now is a different shape, even under her friend’s shapeless, too-big top, the fat that she seems to have deliberately cultivated, over the years, to make a point.
‘Leonie. Those are not the choices! Adoption agencies would match—’
Leonie starts to laugh, a great shaking sound: ‘Your face. I’m not an idiot. I have heard of adoption agencies. I’ll give it to one of them. They can sort it out.’ Leonie sighs, and looks straight into Vee’s eyes for the first time since she told her she was pregnant. Her gaze has been not quite direct, up until then. ‘I just didn’t want it to go to a complete fucking idiot.’
Tread gently, Vee. ‘You do care then? A bit?’
‘I care about the world. And the world doesn’t need another kid brought up to be an entitled patriarchal idiot. I should be able to stop that from happening. If I can find a non-entitled, non-patriarchal, non-idiot.’
‘I can see the sense in that.’ But, as far as Vee can tell, Leonie thinks most of the people on the planet are in thrall to the patriarchy. And she must feel something for this baby. There might be no such thing as maternity, but surely there is human-ness?
‘You really don’t fancy it?’
‘No.’ Vee is sure of herself this time. ‘No, I definitely don’t. But I’m glad you don’t think I’m a tool of the patriarchy.’
‘Not all of the time. Do you want another drink?’ Leonie hauls herself to standing.
Vee can leave dropping off the films until tomorrow. Leonie needs her more. When her friend comes back from the bar – more crisps, more cider – she asks, ‘Did you ever read Fear of Flying?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ve read The Women’s Room.’ Vee starts to search her memory for what she thought about it. She remembers it was a fat book, and she read it on a flight to Kuala Lumpur, when she was on the way to Australia to photograph Barry Humphreys as Dame Edna Everage for the Spectator. She thinks she might have got bored somewhere in the middle of the story. It had definitely made her glad to be single.
But Leonie doesn’t want to talk about The Women’s Room. ‘Well, if this’ – she nods downwards – ‘is a girl, I’m going to call her Erica. After Erica Jong.’
‘Who?’ Vee definitely knows the name. Leonie narrows her lips, her eyes, somewhere between impatience and disappointment in Vee’s failure to keep up. ‘She wrote Fear of Flying. Which I gave to you when it came out in 1973. And you definitely didn’t read it, because I found it in the flat when you moved out. It hadn’t been opened.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Sure you are.�
� Leonie leans back, and says, as though she’s delivering a great punchline, ‘If you’d read it you’d know I’m calling this kid Erica because she is a result of a zipless fuck.’
Vee almost asks whether she knows who the father is, but she doesn’t trust herself to do it without sounding prim. Instead, she offers, ‘I can help you to find an adoption agency. If you like.’
‘Thanks. But there’s no hurry. I’m going to talk to my sister. She might be useful for once in her life.’ Ursula, organised and serene, seems to Vee to be exactly the sort of person to deal with adoption agencies on Leonie’s behalf. The responsibility for Leonie that was starting to descend on her dissolves.
16 May 1979
Pimlico, London
Vic Whistler asked for the shoot to be at his home, and Vee agreed, not least because she’s been asked to shoot DJs at work before and the lighting in a radio studio is not impossible, but it’s not easy. Small, sealed, dark-ish spaces are a pain to light, even if you like using flash, and there’s never enough room for the kit. So she’s done shoots outside the buildings, with the signs in the background, and there have been interruptions and distractions, plenty of them, not least from the young women who see DJs as some sort of accessible pop star. It’s taken twice as long as it needs to, and she’s gone home feeling ragged and unsure about what she’s got. There’s always been a good photograph in there, but she likes to feel more certain.
Vic opens the door in a shirt open to the waist; a medallion sits mid-chest, nestling among curling hair. He’s tall. His smile is white as bones. ‘The famous Veronica Moon,’ he says, and reaches out a hand to shake hers, ‘a delight to meet you. I see you even made my friend Squires look presentable, and he’s got a face like a baboon’s rear end.’
Vee has listened to Whistler’s show twice this week, to get a sense of what to expect. He’s the next big thing, hence the profile in Smash Hits and the cover shot she’s been sent to take. She can’t see it, personally – his sense of humour seems quite puerile to her, and the music too much of a mix to make comfortable background listening, but maybe that’s the point. (Surely, at thirty, she isn’t old enough to be unable to understand the young?)
The Woman in the Photograph Page 17
