Uphill All The Way

by Sue Moorcroft

  'Indoor/outdoor shoot,' he said, pulling away before she'd even got her seatbelt fastened. His right hand had some kind of aid around it that helped him grip the steering wheel, and the car had column gears so that his left hand didn't have to dip to a traditional gear stick and leave his right hand in charge of the wheel on its own.

  'Is that significant?'

  'It means we have to carry more equipment. We're heading for a village called Bulkington, north of Coventry. I know it's A14, M6, but can you look at the route from there, for me? The map book's under your seat.'

  Blearily, she found the page, and glanced at the network marked in blue, green, red, orange and white that denoted the country's roads. She yawned, and tried to focus, her head twice its usual weight. 'Looks like you take the M69 off the M6, and it's just off that.'

  'Sounds easy enough. Find something on the radio that you want to listen to, then have another rummage through the biggest equipment case. Make sure you remember how to change memory cards, grip, tripod etc.'

  She dragged the case off the back seat with an inward sigh.

  It would have been nice to relax the journey away. Not sleep, of course not, that would be an unprofessional way for a photographer's assistant to behave. And, also, she'd probably snore with her mouth open or something equally cringe-making.

  But playing with memory cards wasn't interesting, and she yawned prodigiously all the way up the A14 as they progressed slowly through the morning traffic.

  Eventually, he took pity. 'How about a coffee stop?'

  Another face-wrenching, eye-watering yawn. 'Coffee would be brilliant. I'm sleepy.'

  'You don't say.'

  They bought coffee in big cardboard beakers and parked themselves outside the service station on a bench, the idea being that fresh air might wake Judith up. And, by the time she'd drained her cup, she was awake.

  'Better get on.' She looked at her watch. A proportion of the time Adam had built in for traffic hold ups had drained away.

  Which proved to be a problem when they finally turned onto the M69 and Judith got the map out again to navigate them through the A roads. She could focus now on the multi-coloured strands that denoted the roads on which they travelled. She found Bulkington, close to the M69, with her finger.

  Her heart sank. 'Oh hell! We can't get off the M69, it's one of those places where the roads cross but there's no junction.' And, as he sighed, she added, 'Sorry,' her face heating uncomfortably.

  'Brilliant,' he muttered. 'OK, we can't turn on the motorway, so what's our best solution?'

  He was obviously irritated, but at least he hadn't yanked the car onto the hard shoulder and snatched the map from her hands, as Tom would have done. Mortified, she studied the map with a degree of care that would have been useful in the first place. 'At the next junction you can turn right onto the A5, then take the first right. The road curls back beneath the motorway.'

  'That doesn't sound too bad.' But he flicked a glance at the dashboard clock, and moved purposefully into the outside lane. Just as they encountered the first signs indicating roadworks.

  They were late arriving, but only by about 15 minutes. Judith had to ring ahead on Adam's mobile to apologise, still hot with embarrassment at making a silly, uncharacteristic mistake. 'Don't you worry, dear, we won't be ready anyway,' was the comforting response from Jillie Lasyencko, the mother of the impressive brood.

  And she was right.

  They arrived at the two council houses knocked together to find one of the eldest girls gone to the shop in a huff and the other not back after staying out all night. Jillie Lasyencko displayed a spectacular quantity of breast through her open dress as she fed the baby, there was a decided whiff of nappy, and a handful of the thirteen Lasyencko offspring raced around screeching in excitement. Having once been two dwellings, the house had two front doors and two back allowing plenty of permutations of racing in and out of the property.

  'You're going to earn your stripes organising this crowd.' Adam began to unload his gear from the car.

  From this Judith assumed he was prepared to set up his equipment if she took charge of the personnel. 'I'm not changing the nappy. I'll sort the rest.'

  'Fine. Smells don't show up on images.' He grabbed cases in either hand, propped a tripod on his shoulder and took the path to the left front door.

  If Judith had been tired before the shoot, she was going to be exhausted after. As Adam opened his cases, she grabbed the two oldest-looking Lasyenckos available, one male, one female, both gothic. 'You look like the guys with the authority. How do I go about organising the tinies so we can get this photo shoot underway?'

  The male sighed. 'Yeah. Us as usual.' But he turned the older half of the family with practised ease to subduing the younger half, combing hair, washing faces and doing up top buttons or hair ribbons, snapping out instructions. The twins returned sheepishly from their sulks and high jinks respectively and disappeared upstairs to get ready. The baby burped without decorating his blue outfit or his mother's black-and-violet dress, Jillie thrust her breasts away, and Pete Lasyencko, the man of the house, emerged from the lavatory with the Daily Express.

  And they were set for a shoot in the vast sitting room that had been made from most of the ground floor of one of the original houses.

  Adam took Judith aside. 'I normally do my best to co-ordinate everyone so that we don't have horrible colour clashes on the page. But we need to work fast while we have their attention. So do your best - and at least get that girl with the cochineal hair to stand away from the lad with the blue plume. Blast, that tall boy's got a black eye, look. Turn him three-quarters on so it's hidden. Pull the curtains and we'll work entirely with flash, bloody sun beams into this room from all angles.' And so it went on, Adam reeling off what he wanted, what he envisaged and how he was going to get it, and Judith fielding toddlers as they made a break for freedom and getting teenaged girls to pause in their chewing and smile!

  While he worked, Judith noticed, Adam managed to forget about keeping his damaged hand out of sight. He used it as he needed it, and adapted over what he had to.

  Adam managed the Herculean task of completing the shoot before everyone got totally cheesed off, with a mixture of his charm and Judith's bullying.

  Then they had to get all the gear back in the car, trying to avoid too much 'help' from over enthusiastic and sticky young hands. But, eventually, they were able to shut themselves back in the car and drive away.

  And when Judith woke up, she was in Lavender Row.

  Groaning, she flexed her stiff neck. Her mouth was dry, her eyes were gritty, and her hair was flattened over one eye. 'Are we home?'

  'Yes, wake up. I'll show you how I download the pix.' Adam threw the splint from his hand into the centre console, apparently as fresh as he had been at seven this morning. 'And then run you through the paperwork.'

  'Paperwork?' She trailed indoors behind him.

  He pushed into the sitting room. 'My assistant does most of my paperwork. And some phone calls. It's in the day rate, OK? I need an invoice for the month, so you mark the days you work in that black diary, and at the end of the month type an invoice on the computer, print it out and put it on that pile.'

  She blinked at her temporary assistant status being so casually extended. 'But you'll be advertising, soon?'

  'Yes, yes. Now, downloading the images isn't rocket science, but it does have to be done correctly or you can lose the work or mess up the settings on the camera...'

  And when she finally left, after he'd shown her how to download and organise the images, explained his computer system and then carried his camera stuff upstairs while she raised invoices and posted them to the appropriate spreadsheet - the paperwork was a doddle because Adam was organised and everything was up to date - it was turned six o'clock. She was now going on shoots with him on Tuesday (a donkey sanctuary), Friday (girl who'd done well in Pop Idol revisiting her old school), and Thursday and Friday of next week (a couple who'd m
arried each other three times and a windmill turned sumptuous dwelling).

  'Just until I advertise,' as he repeated.

  So she ought to be able to keep the wolf from the door while she looked around for something else.

  Although it didn't alter the fact that she'd still lost a rather substantial nest egg.

  And Giorgio.

  Weary from her busy day, pain swept through her anew, making her limbs weighty and slow. She drove home in a fog of misery. And then, groan, groan, she discovered that Molly and Frankie were engaged in a teeth-clenched row. Just when all she wanted to do was flop down. Creeping upstairs, she showered, shut herself away in her room with her radio and book and tried to ignore increasingly unignorable shouts and slams. Eventually, she put on her shoes and slipped back out of the front door.

  Not having an abundance of places to go, she opted for visiting her mother.

  One of the carers in a lilac overall showed Judith to Wilma's pink-and-white room, where she'd sought the comfort of Coronation Street. 'Hello, dear,' said Wilma uncertainly, rocking her tubular aluminium walking stick on its three grey rubber feet. 'I'd forgotten you were coming. I haven't put my lipstick on.'

  Judith kissed her mother's soft cheek. 'You haven't forgotten, Mum. There was nothing arranged. I just thought I'd like to see you. Is that OK?' She sat down in an orange plastic chair, massaging an ache above her left eye. Sleep was beckoning madly, but it wasn't going to happen for a couple of hours chez O'Malley.

  'Of course! It's lovely to see you.' Wilma agitated her stick some more, and sucked her teeth. 'What shall we talk about? I haven't really had a chance to think of anything to say.'

  How odd that her mother should need notice to gather together the ingredients of a conversation with her daughter. Had Judith been very self-absorbed not to notice how her mother's world had shrunk? She must make more effort. 'I've got a temporary job.' It would probably be easier for Wilma if Judith began the conversational ball rolling. 'I'm a temporary photographer's assistant.'

  Wilma laughed. 'A temporary assistant? You? Does your employer realise that you'll be bossing everyone about in no time?'

  Settling in the chair, Judith got herself comfortable. 'That doesn't sound like me at all! Anyway, it's just one bloke. The one who rents my house, Adam Leblond, he was two years above me and Mel at school. It's just till he gets someone more suitable. What's new with you?'

  Wilma gave the matter some thought. She wore no powder, and her skin looked duller than usual. 'Nice lunch, today,' she offered. 'Beans.'

  'Green beans?'

  'Yes, I don't like baked beans. And a chop and new potatoes. Very fresh and tasty. They look after us lovely, here.'

  'That's good.' Judith cast around for more material for discussion. 'Have you read your paper today?'

  'Most of it. And done the crossword, the crossword's my favourite, I always leave it till last. And the problem page.' Wilma explained how she and her friends at The Cottage all bought different newspapers and passed them around during the day. Florrie had read out a problem from a magazine today, ever so racy, and only from a girl of seventeen. They'd all giggled and been embarrassed.

  Despite her good intentions, Judith's mind began to wander. Giorgio in a stark white hospital room, his gaze not meeting hers. Sliema Z Bus Tours in liquidation.

  Wilma grasped Judith's wrist gently, regaining her attention. 'Today there was one from a woman who was awfully worried about her daughter.'

  She blinked. 'Sorry?'

  'A problem, m'duck, on the problem page.'

  Like many people, Judith only skimmed problem pages for the snigger-worthy and the salacious. 'Oh?'

  Wilma went on, adjusting her glasses that had the fancy designs up the side and flexing her fingers on the handle of her stick. 'She's middle-aged, the daughter, and a very competent person - on the outside. But she's thin as a rake and awfully upset. Something horrible's obviously happened, but she hasn't told the mother what it is. Which is quite all right. The daughter has always bottled up her problems and solved them herself, right from when she was a tiny girl. But it doesn't stop the mother worrying.'

  Hot tears pricked Judith's eyes.

  Wilma shuffled in her seat so that she could lean forward and take both of Judith's hands in her cool fingers, leaving the stick standing alone on its three feet. The light overhead reflected on the lenses of her spectacles, making her expression particularly earnest. 'But she will get over things, duck. However horrible whatever it is that's happened. It's just that the road to recovery is uphill all the way.'

  Chapter Ten

  Judith had cried off Moll's traditional Yorkshire pud meal (and the traditional washing up that followed). Things had calmed down in the O'Malley household in recent days, but still Judith liked to be out as much as possible. Moll had refused point blank to talk things over, putting on a smile. 'We're fine, don't worry about us.'

  The Sunday stroll took Judith through a park, where she watched a football match, and to Hannah's Pantry, where she drank latte, and she managed to keep occupied until lunchtime. She determined to get in touch with her old friends and get back in the swim of her English life. But Sunday lunchtime probably wasn't the moment for dropping in, when roasts would be out of the oven for carving and gravy thickening on the hob.

  The rain, which until then had stayed in the bruised clouds, began after she'd left the town centre on the way to the riverbank to have lunch at the coffee shop and watch the narrowboats. Big splats on the pavement to begin with, then faster, heavier, heavier, and cheered on by thunder. In seconds the rain was soaking her hair and bouncing up from the pavement and onto her bare ankles.

  She changed direction rapidly into her old neighbourhood - Leicester Road, the shop on the corner of Senwick Street, The Wells, where the May trees would have been decked with deep pink blossom a couple of months ago - and then Lavender Row. Her jeans were sticking coldly to her thighs as she turned the corner.

  She knew that Adam was away for the weekend, but she had her key. Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, and rain hissed from a smoke-grey sky, stinging her scalp and her face. Adam surely wouldn't mind if she sheltered from the storm.

  From this direction number 18 was out of sight around an elbow. As she neared, she frowned over the clamour of noise riding over even the noise of the rain. It sounded almost like a fairground with pounding music, shrieks, bellows, howls of laughter, girlish cries. A woman under a golf umbrella stopped and shook her head. 'It's been going on all night. All night! My husband wanted to call the police, but you don't want any retribution, do you? It might be our windows, next.' Pulling her thin blue mac more tightly around her, she scurried on her way.

  Judith listened. Thump-thump-thump-roar. Squeal.

  She rounded the bend.

  Almost every sliding sash window was open at number 18, and several had been smashed, letting curtains flutter out into the rain. Empty cans and bottles lay in the tiny frontage and glass was spattered in with the gravel.

  'My house!' she breathed.

  Dispensing with the formality of ringing the bell, she flew through the front door, pulling up short at a pool of vomit and a plump girl sprawled at the bottom of the stairs who looked suspiciously as if the vomit might belong to her.

  To avoid the mess, she picked her way past the girl and stamped upstairs. The house seemed to be shaking with the beat of the music and people bellowing to be heard over it. Cigarettes had been ground out on the carpet and the mixture of stenches made her want to gag.

  The bathroom door was locked. In the smallest bedroom two young men smoked joints and examined one of Adam's silver cases of camera equipment, clumsily, cans of beer between their feet.

  She moved swiftly on to the second room, evidently now Caleb's and decorated with posters and a litter of dropped clothes. There, a girl cried blue mascara noisily down her face while a lad slept crosswise on the bed. The room at the front that used to be hers - presumably now Adam's - hosted at least th
ree couples on the bed or the floor, one of which was awake and naked. 'For God's sake!' she protested, as she backed out hastily. 'This is my bloody bedroom!'

  Then a shock of splintering glass. She whirled and ran downstairs again, hurdling the vomit to get down the hall.

  In the kitchen, eyes wide, hair tumbled around his face, Caleb's lips were moving as he gazed from the broken glass in the back door to the broken glass in the door to the hall. Judith was almost upon him before she could distinguish the words over the music.

  'My old man will go mental. My old man will go mental.' Joint in one hand, vodka bottle in the other, he chanted the words like a mantra, shock stretching his face. Behind him, a lad with a short, square haircut was thumping on the cupboard doors with a fist, globs of blood flying from his lacerated arms. Presumably it was a similar action on the glass panels that had destroyed them.

  'Stop that!' Judith bellowed through the broken pane, fury coursing hotter and hotter through her body. 'That glass was original!'

  Swaying, Caleb turned his gaze and frowned as if trying to place her.

  A new sound broke through the music from the sitting room, sharp, staccato, metallic. Judith hurried in to find a bare-chested youth hitting the cast iron fire surround with a poker, and giggling as the inset tiles starred and shattered. A girl was retching into the seat of an armchair. Two men were having a beer-spitting competition, roaring with laughter as they spattered her back, and the computer. A further dozen or so people were comatose.

  Judith felt a bellow of anger swelling in her chest, but self-preservation stopped her attempting to disarm the poker-wielder. She contented herself with tearing the plug of the booming stereo out of its wall socket instead.

  Her ears rang in blessed relief at the silence.

  She stamped her way back to Caleb, who was still wearing an expression of comical dismay. 'This is my home,' she snapped. 'I'm calling the police!'