And through all of those years, the internet had been making itself known, becoming stronger and faster, and women started to connect with each other in new ways, different ways. Vee had imagined a quiet retirement, gentle travels and quiet enjoyment of art and walking, but people who remembered her found her and contacted her via the agency that licensed her photographs. She had ignored them while she was teaching, but now her time expanded again. She got into the habit of day-to-day living: a walk, reading, galleries or films in the afternoon. She marched. She wrote to her MP when prompted by the Fawcett Society. She didn’t think she was unhappy.
She was invited to sponsor this or photograph that or come and join in here. She sponsored, but she didn’t show up to anything. Illness (non-specific) was her excuse, for a while, but she got better. She travelled again but she didn’t take her camera with her. Everywhere were people with digital cameras; it was The Future, newly arrived, and Vee ached for the days of light meter and darkroom, judgement and skill. She didn’t ache for friends, apart from the one she would never get back. It could have been that the part of her brain that cared about others, wanted to connect, was part of what she lost in the operating theatre with that first tumour. It could have been that it was never that big to begin with. All she was left with was tenderness where she knew the memories of her father’s death and Leonie’s were.
26 April 2018
Erica
Oh, Erica is proud. She was proud already, and then Vee came, and praised her, and she didn’t know how to add it to her bursting heart. As she looks along the space of the gallery, so well prepared and so true to her vision, and sees how many people are crowding round the images, she takes a breath and tells herself she has done a great job. This busy, buzzy space will, over the coming months, show thousands of people what a force Veronica Moon was, how far feminism has come and how much is still to do.
The tapping of the champagne flute, the expectant semi-silence that follows, brings Erica back to tonight. How can it be time for her speech, already? She’s nauseous with a sickness that is different to the one she fought this morning, not wanting Marcus to see it, throwing up quietly in the en-suite when he was downstairs unloading the dishwasher. They’ve had the first conversation about the pregnancy. Both of them were cautious. Neither of them is sure.
It wasn’t until Tuesday, after Vee left, that Erica admitted to herself that this is more than a retrospective: it’s a memorial. Veronica Moon leaves only photographs. But who will commemorate the person? Who will mourn? Erica can’t let herself think this now (if it is her, and not just her hormones, which is more than possible). She has to focus.
Fortunately – something Erica has learned in academia, watching presentations and later giving one or two, at conferences, then lecturing – silence reads as confidence. She takes a sip of water and glances at her notes. They are words, not sentences, because she will look worse if she loses her place and stumbles.
‘Good evening, and welcome,’ she begins. Marcus had suggested jokingly that she had better not say ‘ladies and gentlemen’ but actually, he was right. ‘We are here, at the opening of this exhibition of the work of Veronica Moon, to celebrate the contribution that she made to second wave feminism in the UK. She recorded it, yes, but she shaped it, by dint of being the success that she was.’
She raises her head and looks around. Vee is standing at the back of the crowd. No one has seen her. She gives Erica the smallest of smiles, the slightest of nods, and Erica wishes she still had a living mother. Breathe, Erica. She looks at her notes.
‘The feminist movement in this country has had many stars, many suns, many shining lights. But only one moon.’ There’s a hum of laughter around the space. Erica tries to make her voice come from her diaphragm, now, not the top of her chest. ‘I’m not going to say a lot about the work, because it speaks for itself. But I will talk about the moon.’ She wants to look at Vee, but knows that, if she does, everyone will turn to see where she is looking, and Vee won’t want that. So she shifts her gaze to the portrait of Leonie, just visible over the heads to the right. Oh, for an eighth of that woman’s confidence, a tenth of her ability to speak the truth as she saw it.
‘The moon is always with us, although sometimes it is hidden by the light or the shadows of other bodies. The moon shapes the tides and so shapes our experience of the world. The moon is connected, intimately, to the experience of women everywhere.’ This had looked cleverer on paper; the audience looks, if not bored, tolerant at best. Well, Erica is better on paper. That’s why she’s an academic, and now a curator. She keeps. She holds.
She looks back at her notes. She’s written, ‘re-centring’. She can certainly speak to that. She puts a hand to her belly and breathes.
‘When I began this project, it was because I found treasure in my mother’s attic. Leonie Barratt’s box of clippings and mementos of Veronica Moon’s work. Even though this was not, strictly, my specialism, and even though historians must always be wary of the pull of the personal, I could not stop thinking about Veronica Moon, about Leonie Barratt, about all of the other women in the photographs. They deserve to be seen. And heard.
‘We have work to do, in this world, in making sure women’s voices are heard. One look at the news, or half an hour of TV, remind us that women are still talked over the top of, sidelined, ignored, and oppressed.
‘By recognising, remembering and re-centring the women who showed their faces and raised their voices, in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, we can be part of the change the world still needs. Veronica Moon is an example to us all of how to see women in the world: strong, capable, powerful, and equal.’
The applause surprises her; she looks around, smiles, waits for it to stop.
She finds Vee’s face at the back of the crowd. ‘It’s been a pleasure and an honour to curate this exhibition and, in doing so, to spend time with the incomparable, unforgettable Veronica Moon. Thank you.’
Marcus catches her eye across the room, smiles. He looks proud of her. For now, that’s enough.
And then she sees Veronica approaching through the crowd. Others notice, and the applause starts up again, warmer than politeness. Vee is wearing a long T-shirt over leggings, both a dark denim-ish grey, and shoes that Erica hasn’t seen her in before, a kind of clog, thick-soled, in mustard-coloured leather. No makeup, of course; short hair brushed back as usual, curling behind her ears. Erica has not been able to spot where the scar from Vee’s previous surgery is, but she knows it must be at the place where her hair kinks, above her left ear, because that’s where her hand goes, when she’s anxious, when she’s talking about being ill.
Vee makes her way to Erica’s side without smiling, without looking left or right. She steps forward, holding the podium with both hands, leaning forward. Erica raises her mobile, takes a photograph of Vee, and then a few of the people watching her. The images won’t be anything special, but suddenly she feels the need for her own record, just for her, that she is here, that she is watching this woman at what is almost certain to be her last public appearance. She feels a grim sort of protectiveness; wonders if anyone else in the room sees how frail Vee is, how unwell. It feels that the room holds its breath. Not just the people here, but those in the photographs too.
Vee seems small. She breathes in, out, and then she looks forward and starts to speak.
*
Vee hasn’t really much of an idea of what she wants to say. She wasn’t going to say anything at all. Was going to slip away.
But then, listening to Erica, she was hit with the knowledge that this is, without any doubt – she will not think of the shadow of doubt, of the shadow of anything, for fear of inviting darkness behind her eyes – this is her last chance to be heard. She used to think that her photographs were her voice. She used to think it didn’t matter if she was misunderstood. And then came Erica.
She looks across at the younger woman – what does it matter if she’s madeup to the nines? It’s her fine brain that
matters. And she feels panic, panic because she has never spoken publicly, because she cannot trust her brain, because Erica has spent months applying herself to the words all around them tonight. The faces turned towards her are full of surprise, expectation, waiting. It would make a great photograph. But she cannot talk. She never could. If she had been able to, she might have saved her name, long ago.
Erica leans forward, and says quietly, ‘Tell us what you remember.’
Yes. She can do that.
‘This is what I remember,’ she begins. Her voice feels thin in her throat and she has a sense of the room leaning in to her. That won’t do. She straightens, tightens her hold, begins again.
‘This is what I remember. I remember that, in 1968, I was a young woman from Essex who knew what a camera could do, but not a lot else. I had a feeling, though, that I was worth more than the world was telling me I was worth. I could—’ Her mouth has too much saliva, from the drugs, and a tang of metal. ‘I could taste it. So I went to see what some women at Dagenham were doing to change the world. And, thanks to Leonie Barratt, I joined in.
‘This is what I remember about the women’s movement. It was a fierce, furious beast, and it was sure that it would win. It didn’t compromise and it didn’t care. It invited the world to smell its hairy armpits and to mock its dungarees and it didn’t matter because women knew we were right.’
‘Hell yeah!’ shouts one of the sisters, Kiki maybe, or Fen, from the back, and although Vee appreciates it, she can’t acknowledge it, can’t do anything but keep her eyes on the top of the podium. There’s the soft steadiness of Erica’s presence to her left. She doesn’t look at her; feeling her there is enough.
‘This is what I remember about Leonie Barratt. She was the cleverest woman I knew – the cleverest woman any of us knew. We let her down because we didn’t see that she was right. If we had listened to her more closely, we might not be where we are now. We might not be living—’ Her throat constricts around the ‘living’, cutting it off at the end, as though to remind Vee that she is barely living at all, or perhaps that she barely has been. Try again, Vee. Not every shot is a winner. ‘We might not be living in a world of Me Too and women’s reproductive rights being rolled back, if we’d listened to Leonie. We might have closed the gender pay gap by now. We might have men who can look after a baby without the world treating them as though they are superheroes.’
There’s applause, sudden and loud, as Vee draws breath. She could swear she smells lavender. Her back aches; her legs are telling her there’s not much standing left in them. She doesn’t always trust what her body says but this she believes.
‘And this is what I remember about the night Leonie Barratt died.’
The room inhales, and Vee looks up, over the heads of those who are waiting to hear what she will say. She looks into the photograph of her friend’s face, the cat-got-the-cream laziness in her half-smile. Leonie, who never apologised. Vee never learned what power there was in that. ‘I remember – nothing. But there are some things that I know. I know that I would never deliberately do anything to hurt Leonie, and she would never have done anything to hurt me. I know that Leonie Barratt and Veronica Moon deserve better than being reduced to one image, on one day. I know that for as long as we keep obsessing over the details of how things look, we will never solve the bigger problem of how the world needs to be.’
There’s applause, again, loud, again, and although it’s meant to show Vee how much support there is for her, for her words, it feels like an attack, each palm meeting palm another brain cell lighting up in agony as it dies.
*
Erica thinks Vee might be gripping harder at the podium, might be wincing, but it’s hard to judge whether the discomfort is at being so publicly on view, or something else. Vee inhales; it’s audible from where Erica stands.
She steps forward, and Vee takes her arm. Together they make their way through the crowd, and out.
In the half-dark away from the gallery lights, Vee looks as though she is already a shadow. Erica has seen this greyness on her before, when she’s in pain.
‘Can I bring you anything?’
There is a tiny shake of the head in response, as though Vee’s skull is balanced on her neck, rather than attached to it. Erica notices the blister pack of tablets, the glass of water, on the table.
‘Would you like to take some of these tablets now?’
A tiny nod. She pushes two pills from the pack, puts them in Vee’s palm, and passes her the glass. Vee swallows the medication with the practised gulp of the long-term patient; Erica takes the glass from her shaking hand, returns it to the table, sits in a chair next to her, and waits. How much did it cost Vee to say those words? How right she is. Whatever Erica does now, about Marcus, the baby, everything, will be different because she met Veronica Moon.
Ten minutes pass, and then Vee opens her eyes, nods to Erica: permission to speak, an acknowledgement that things are better, for the moment.
‘You’ve given me much more than you needed to,’ Erica says, as softly as she can to still be heard above the noise and chatter from the party beyond the door. ‘And I can see what it’s cost you. Why?’
‘Because . . .’ but there’s a pause, and it gets longer, and it’s as though Vee isn’t even in the room anymore.
Vee
‘Because . . .’ Because what, though? Because the new tumour was already back? Because her thoughts weren’t trustworthy? Because she still thinks she owes Leonie something? Owes this child a mother? (Strange thought.) When she first went to meet Erica, in January, it was only going to be a courtesy: she was going to let her get on with it. She had no intention of getting involved. Something changed.
‘You should be proud,’ Erica says.
‘Everything comes around.’
‘But you know you were good?’ Erica has the same obstinate tone as Leonie when she’s making a point. Vee smiles and it feels as though it comes from somewhere, is a real smile, a feeling that has never changed; she could be sixteen, in the darkroom her dad made for her, watching an image swim to the surface of the paper as it develops.
‘I know I was good.’
‘Good.’
Vee closes her eyes and then she is aware of Erica leaning towards her, hovering a hand over her arm, not touching it, ‘You’re shaking, Veronica.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Is that all?’
In her head, Vee says: yes, Erica, that’s all. Don’t fuss. What comes out of her mouth is different, ‘I think so. I don’t know.’
‘You’re not usually uncertain.’ There’s no malice in Erica’s tone; it’s observation, and it’s fair enough. Well, there it is. You reap as you sow. ‘You should have seen the way people were looking at your work. Before you came out.’
There was something that Vee needed to say to Erica, to give her; she can’t remember what. There’s a mushrooming of noise in the gallery, laughter, the gradual raising of voices over other voices so that soon everyone will be shouting over everyone without realising they are doing it. Each notch in volume is a notch of pain.
She needs to remember the thing for Erica. And then she can go home and be done with all of this.
‘They love the contact sheets,’ Erica continues, with the chattering brightness of a woman at a deathbed: anything but silence. ‘I suppose a lot of people don’t know what they are. And it’s a reminder of old times, for the rest.’
That’s what she’s been trying to remember. ‘In my bag,’ Vee says. She cannot open her eyes, now; she hurts, skull and spine, at the very thought of light.
There’s the sound of the zip of Vee’s bag pulling back. ‘What do you need? Do you have more painkillers in here?’
‘There’s an envelope for you,’ Vee says.
It’s A4, board-backed, and Vee checked more than once that she had put the right things in it, and that she had put it into her bag. She found an empty mug in the fridge this morning, and has left her key in
the front door more than once over the last week. She hears Erica tear at the paper flap; a chair scrapes as she sits. ‘What are these?’
‘Look,’ Vee says. Erica has the power over the images now.
There is a rustling sound. Erica is taking out the two contact sheets. If Vee can’t speak of this – and she doesn’t dare, in case she is wrong – then the images can.
The first contact sheet is the film of Leonie and Erica on the day Leonie died. Vee hadn’t looked at these photographs for years. They had been a shock when she developed them, in her own darkroom, sometime during her recovery from surgery. Her world had lurched and pitched as she watched the images bloom through the liquid in the chemical bath. She saw love, affection, a bond. She saw a mother and daughter. Or, she thought she did. In the photographs, the roundness of Leonie’s body made it look as though she was curving herself in, around Erica, an animal with her young. In one image, Erica looked simply, joyously happy; about to laugh, not yet moving, so caught in uncoerced delight. The expression on Leonie’s face matches it.
Vee cannot remember taking these, and when she looked at them they didn’t seem right. She saw love, but she felt something more complicated. It could be that the ill-feeling was hers, though, and the photograph was true. In another image, the two of them were looking at each other, their faces almost mirror-images. The bridge of Erica’s nose was slightly less pronounced than that of Leonie’s; Leonie’s chin was jowlish and lost to comparison. But the relationship was clear. You might, if you had been told it often enough, believe that you were looking at an aunt and her niece. But if you came to this photograph cold there would be no question that you were looking at a mother and daughter. And a mother and daughter who adored each other, at that.
But Vee has never really trusted the photographs she took on the day Leonie died. Nothing in her other memories of Leonie – nothing in her writing – suggested she could love a child, or would want to. And yet, here is something you could class as evidence that she did.
The Woman in the Photograph Page 28
