Maximum Exposure: The Heartlands Series

by Harper, Jenny

  ‘Hello?’

  Ben had called Lizzie pretty much every week since he’d left Hailesbank. He’d nipped their relationship in the bud just in time for them to be able to pull it back to a real friendship. Any longer and Lizzie would have tipped too far into emotion, despite her firm ground rules.

  ‘Hello? Dave?’

  ‘Hi Ben.’ Dave’s deep voice boomed out of the phone. ‘Are you looking for Lizzie? She’s having a shower. I’ll give her a call.’

  There was a muffling of the tone and a distant sound of voices, then Dave came back. ‘She’ll be right here. How’s things?’

  ‘Brilliant. I’m sitting on a low wall by the harbour in a small town called Collioure.’

  ‘South-west France? I know it. Pretty little place. Bit of an artists’ colony.’

  ‘That’s the one. How’s things with you?’

  ‘Cool. Very cool, thanks. Listen, here’s Lizzie.’

  Was that a grin in Dave’s voice? The man sounded as though he was purring, like a lion in the sunshine, sated and hot and luxuriously sleepy. Ben knew that feeling. He’d felt the same way with Lizzie after … and she’d been having a shower. He grinned too. Well, well. He’d been right.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello, Lizzie Little.’ He laughed. ‘No need to ask how you are, I think I’m getting the picture, right?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Lizzie asked, her tone innocent.

  ‘Come on, Lizzie. Dave. You. It’s not difficult to figure.’

  Her laughter was rich and warm. ‘You’d never have guessed, would you? Him with his baggy cords and his tweed jackets and his beard. Not my type at all, hey?’

  It wasn’t jealousy that surged through Ben, he was delighted for Lizzie. What he was feeling was probably self-pity. Lizzie had found something special at last, while he was still waiting, uncertain about whether his own dream could ever be realised. ‘I’m so happy for you,’ he said gamely.

  ‘Bless you. How are you, anyway?’

  ‘Good. It’s blissful here. Lizzie, have you heard from Diz yet?’ He asked every time and every time he got the same answer.

  ‘Sorry. No. But I went round to see her folks yesterday and refused to leave until Janet gave me her contacts. Address and moby. Want them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Lizzie sounded stunned.

  He laughed. ‘Just kidding.’ He was already hooking his notebook and pen out of his pocket. ‘Give.’

  ‘Ha ha. Hang on –’

  He noted the details carefully and read them back.

  ‘When will you get to Nice, Ben?’

  ‘I still have to work my way along the coast and into Provence. Two weeks? Early September, perhaps.’

  ‘Will you call her?’

  ‘I’d rather try to see her if I can.’

  ‘I’m going to write to her this week. D’you want me to tell her you’re on the way?’

  ‘No,’ Ben said hurriedly. He needed to play this his own way. ‘No thanks, Lizzie.’

  ‘OK. Must go. I’m still dripping here and Dave’s cooking.’

  He pictured Lizzie in her dressing gown, long and lithe and sensual and had a frisson of regret, but it was his body responding, not his heart. ‘He’s a lucky man.’

  ‘Thanks, Ben. Bye for now. Let me know how you get on, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He cut the call and slipped the phone back in his pocket. The breeze had dropped and the sea was still, its vast blackness highlighted from horizon to shore by a streak of silver – the shimmering, reflected light of the moon. It lit his path as he stood and strolled back along the front to his hotel.

  His way was clear.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Madame?’

  Daisy’s heart was in her mouth as she stopped in front of Madame Prenier’s office and tapped lightly on the door, which was open. The Director was standing gazing out of the window. At the sound of Daisy’s timid knock, she swung round.

  ‘Mademoiselle Irvine! Bonjour. Good morning. Come in, please.’ She crossed the room quickly, her bouncy, energetic stride carrying her over the space in four quick movements. ‘What can I do for you today, hein? Is everything fine for you? You are not needing more equipment? Sit, please. Du café?’

  She swung one of the large, comfortable leather chairs round so that Daisy could sit and instead of retreating behind her desk, took the other guest chair. The office, like every other room in the museum, was floored in white Carrera marble, its cement walls also whitewashed. In this building, light streamed in everywhere from floor to ceiling glass windows, except, of course, in the many rooms where protection from sunlight was vital for the conservation of the objects, or where carefully designed lighting was necessary to bring out the best in the valuable pieces of the collection. It was calming and at the same time uplifting. Daisy thought back to the offices of The Herald and how she’d seen them, as if for the first time, on the day that Jay Bond had walked through the door and started criticising everything. It seemed like a lifetime away. She’d been a different person then. Now here she was, in Nice, in a world-class museum, in the Director’s office, and about to pitch an ambitious idea that she had thought up and developed all by herself. Go for it, Daisy.

  ‘Madame la Directrice, I have an idea. Vous permettez? May I explain?’

  ‘Of course. At La Musée Jaune we welcome innovation and creativity.’

  Daisy took a deep breath. ‘The reception area. You have a space we are not really using,’ she started. The foyer of the museum was, like the rest of the building, generous in size, floored in the same white marble and with the same white walls, but all it housed was a desk for the payment of entry fees and for inquiries, along with a couple of stands for leaflets and brochures and three huge ferns. Daisy had always felt that it was wasted space. ‘I was thinking, we could have an exhibition there. Not of our objects, but on the walls. Photographs.’

  ‘Photographs of the objects from the Collection?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe sometimes. But maybe other things too. We could invite guest photographers from around the world and ask them to interpret the space in their own way. Maybe sell prints too, in the shop.’

  Madame Prenier looked thoughtful. ‘Why not? Bon. And you have an idea of how we should start, yes?’

  Here came the self-promotion bit. Daisy lifted her portfolio and unzipped the case.

  ‘Yes. Forgive me. I have some photographs. People and places. A statement, I hope, about my own work.’ Carefully, Daisy laid them out, one by one. Over the last few weeks she had spent a great deal of time on this project, working late at the museum, in her own time, to hand print the images to the standard she wanted.

  An old image – Lizzie Little, her hair pulled back and twisted behind her head, secured by a clasp so that the ends stuck out, framing her face like a halo. She was draped in silks and velvets from her workroom and she was looking up at something outside her window, a rapt expression on her face. The light was soft and the acute angle highlighted the structure of her face perfectly. It was an old photo, but one that Daisy had always loved. It had been taken spontaneously one day when she’d been fooling around with the Herald camera and she’d downloaded it and stored it carefully.

  An even older photograph – older by almost ten years. A picture Daisy had taken when she had still been at school. The day she’d seen Jack Hedderwick for the very first time. It was a naïve photograph, she could appreciate that now, but it was part of her personal journey and she still loved it. She’d caught Jack asleep by the river, his perfect body framed by the leaves and the branches of a tree, his soft blond hair slightly ruffled by the breeze. A youthful Adonis.

  Snow outside Kelso. The day she’d had to stay over with Jay Bond. The fields stretching into the distance, vast and white, a few sheep staring puzzled at the camera and in the distance, her car, nose buried deep in the snowdrift. A powerful story in a single image.

  The butcher with his sausages. ‘T
he last link in the chain.’ For some reason, of all the pictures Daisy had taken at The Herald, this one had pleased her the most. Somehow it captured so many emotions in one image – the character of the man, his sadness, the context in which he operated. And besides, it was a great composition and it appealed to her aesthetic senses.

  A more recent image – a potter she had visited in a small village outside of Eze, his hands thick with clay as he spun his wheel, his face inches from the pot as he checked its thickness. She loved this image for its rich textural quality.

  The olive grove in front of Renoir’s Villa des Collettes, just along the coast. The vines, gnarled and twisted, the ground between them stony and arid. A sense of heat and stillness and utter peacefulness.

  Majik Jamelsky, photographed lying in her bed, a soft white sheet draped only across his privates, the rest of his nut-brown body gleaming and gently curved and of startling beauty. It was her favourite of all the images she had taken. Laughing and giggling, she had perched a chair on top of her small table and clambered up so that she had a vantage point high above him and could photograph the whole length of him, spread-eagled on her bed with total abandonment. The result had been a picture of astonishing sensuality and powerful beauty.

  Lastly, for good measure, Majik playing his guitar, caressing the instrument like a naked woman, his raw sexuality leaping from the image with a force that was almost tangible.

  Twenty images in total. Scotland and France. Man and woman. Place and object. And a way of looking at things that was all her own, printed only in a rich, deep black on white, all colour removed. The effect was intense.

  ‘Phewww.’ She could hear Madame Prenier’s breath whistling out from between her teeth. ‘Can I buy tickets?’

  She was staring at Majik. Who wouldn’t? Daisy, who had seen him only a handful of times since taking the photographs, had understood that Majik was not her man, would never be her man. He was just as her first impressions of him had been – an exotic hummingbird, flitting from fragrant flower to honeyed calyx and back again, elusive and utterly beautiful. She had been privileged to know him and to experience his generous and bountiful love. He had gifted her these images. Whatever happened to them both in the years to come, Majik Jamelsky would remain forever young in her memory.

  ‘Do you like them?’ she asked, her nerves wound taut.

  Slowly, Madame Prenier sifted back through the images. ‘They would need to be bigger – and framed.’

  Daisy’s heart stopped for a fraction, then restarted. She did like them. ‘I can get that done.’

  ‘Non.’

  She didn’t like them. Again Daisy’s heart seemed to stop beating.

  ‘We will get them framed in the workshop. They must be done just so. What date is it, let me see …’ she consulted an ingenious hand-carved wooden calendar on her desk, ‘… we could start the exhibition in two weeks’ time, yes? The beginning of September? We must do it while the season is still strong, but of course, the promotion will be only minimal. A poster – this one I think.’ She lifted the image of Majik on the bed. ‘The usual distribution. It will be enough because all who come here will see the exhibition. And of course,’ she smiled at Daisy, ‘you must talk to the programme team about your ideas for other photographes, yes?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Daisy said breathlessly, as the Director’s words sank in. ‘Thank you so much!’

  She seized the Director’s hand and pumped it up and down excitedly, repeating over and over again, ‘Thank you, oh thank you, thank you,’ as the smile on la directrice’s face widened and became a laugh.

  So it was that the first thing that Ben Gillies saw when he walked into the Musée Jaune on the third of September, was an entrancing image of Lizzie Little in the room with which he was so familiar and a young Jack Hedderwick, looking like the shepherd who’d lost his sheep and didn’t know where to find them – and didn’t care either. And a spectacular photograph of a striking young man with whom the photographer clearly had a rather intimate relationship.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. Daisy was here. Nothing could be more certain. If she’d scrawled the words in scarlet letters six feet high it couldn’t have been clearer. Reluctantly, Ben worked his way round the foyer, examining each image. They were good photographs. Not great – excellent. The more recent ones showed real promise. Even Lizzie’s photo was good. It had captured the essence of the woman and at the same time, fixed her firmly in the context of her work and her vision. Because that was what Lizzie was all about – touch and feel and the senses, just as the soft folds of the velvets and silks showed.

  When he came to the final two images – ‘Majik sleeping’ and ‘Air of Majik’, it was hard not to see the pictures in the same way. This was a man who was all about grace and beauty and self-absorption, though there was nothing arrogant in the cast of his features. ‘Majik sleeping’ was an essay in loveliness, there was poetry in the folds of the sheet, in the lines of the body and in ‘Air of Majik’ she had utterly captured what made the man tick – his music. It made Ben long to be able to hear the kind of sound this Majik played, because it made you understand that it would touch your soul.

  Fuck it.

  The Daisy Irvine that had taken that picture was not the Daisy Irvine he knew. He was used to her comfortableness behind her camera, but this displayed a self-confidence that was not familiar to Ben. She’d moved on. She wasn’t hiding, here in Nice, as he’d thought. She had grown up. There would be no room for him in this photographer’s life.

  ‘Monsieur? You are entering the museum? There is a special display today of contemporary American ceramics, very beautiful.’ The girl at the desk was smiling at him.

  Ben shook his head.

  ‘No. Thank you. Not today.’

  He swung round on his heel and left the building, unpadlocked the bike he had hired for the week, and freewheeled off down the hill. Not today. Would he go back again? That, thought Ben as he entered the narrow streets of the old town, was something he would have to consider very carefully.

  The exhibition’s first review, in the local newspaper, was hugely congratulatory. ‘Magnifique’. ‘Images extraordinaire.’ ‘Jeune photograph écossaise.’ Daisy, walking home that evening, felt as though she was still on cloud nine. It was more than she had expected, much more. At the museum, everyone had been kind. Madame Prenier was delighted because the exhibition had drawn in more visitors. At last, Daisy thought, she had achieved something all by herself. She didn’t have the prospect of her father’s negative reaction to face – a thought that lifted her spirits even further. She was beginning to realise, after all these long years, just how his influence had dragged her down.

  She turned across the square near the sea and into the narrow streets of the old town. She loved the hustle and bustle, the lively atmosphere. In the warmth, people lingered, mingled, smiled. In Hailesbank, in September, people would be donning their sweaters, pulling on an extra layer, hurrying out of the wind to the comfort of their homes.

  At the end of the street, a van squeezed through a small gap between a badly parked car and a shop window and accelerated. A bicycle was moving towards it on the wrong side of the road. Seconds later, Daisy was watching in horror as the van hit the cyclist, throwing his body up in the air and onto the tarmac with a sickening thud.

  ‘Jesu!’

  ‘Merde!’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’

  Around her, she was aware of cries of alarm, of people hurrying to the spot. For some reason, though, she couldn’t move. Something in the shape of the body, the merest glimpse of the colour of the hair was familiar. As the van driver emerged and the crowds encircled the cyclist, she knew, with awful certainty, that the man who had just been thrown from the bicycle at the end of the street was Ben Gillies.

  She stumbled forward. The cyclist was lumbering unsteadily to his feet. Her heart was hammering. The strangeness of him being in Nice had not even struck her. All she knew was that Ben was here – and he w
as hurt.

  ‘Ben?’ A voice came from somewhere and she realised that it was hers. ‘Are you all right?’ Someone had picked the bike up off the road and was attempting to straighten the wheel. Amazingly, Ben located her face in the crowd. The smile was shaky, but real. ‘Remind me to revise the Highway Code next time I try to cycle in France, will you? Listen, can you tell this guy I’m OK? And that it was my fault and I’m sorry?’ Ben was looking at the van driver, who was still clearly shaken.

  Her French came confidently, fluently, she didn’t know quite how. The crowds retreated, the van driver, satisfied that his vehicle and his victim were unmarked, moved on, and Daisy was alone with Ben Gillies, in Nice, on a balmy September evening.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, her whole expression a question.

  ‘Hi Diz.’

  Chapter Ten

  The bicycle squeaked and bumped as they worked their way through the streets.

  ‘I’ll take it back in the morning and complain they should make them with round wheels, not square,’ said Ben, turning to humour in his awkwardness.

  ‘The fall hasn’t injected sense into you, then.’

  There was so much he wanted to say. Above all, he needed to explain why he was here – but could he do that? After seeing the exhibition? Now that she was with him, he felt like a shy schoolboy. His arrival had hardly been cool.

  The image of ‘Majik sleeping’ was burned onto his retina. The Majik of the photograph was unarguably exquisite. By comparison he felt sturdy, plain, and very, very Scottish. How could he compete with the attractiveness of the long, elegant limbs, the fine lines of the face, the beguiling seductiveness of the dark, dark eyes?

  ‘You didn’t warn me you were coming.’

  ‘I was worried you wouldn’t want to see me.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  Ben studiously watched the traffic, but he was conscious of her gaze on him. Directness. That was what was needed. ‘You’ve hardly been communicative since you disappeared.’