Here's Looking at You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  It was the ‘eureka’ moments – where she felt like the first detective on the scene, finding the vital clue. Then she wasn’t merely consuming historical fact, she was adding to its sum.

  It felt like some kind of full circle, punch-the-air joy when lovely John Herbert, curator of Byzantine history at the British Museum, had got in touch and asked if she would help him put together an exhibition on Theodora. Her inner child, who’d stared up at that gilded, domed ceiling and been transported to another time, was dancing a jig.

  Anna was translating texts and helping to choose and caption the exhibits. She couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than getting to fiddle around with bits of the past, to raise the dead in some small way. Anna had only assisted with the odd aspect of exhibitions before, a good excuse to poke around at the British Museum.

  This was the first time she’d been a behind-the-scenes driving creative force. She’d worked late for months to prep for it, willingly.

  As she tripped off for her first meeting about Operation Theodora, she enjoyed every second of the walk through Bloomsbury, even beaming foolishly at passing strangers. This was a chocolate-box pretty part of the capital, the London of films and TV. Peaceful, wide streets, the green space of Russell Square, red phone boxes that were now historical monuments themselves, existing only for overseas tourists’ photographs, ransom demand calls and massage parlour business cards.

  She arrived at the back entrance of the museum, like a VIP. She signed in, with a nod of familiarity from the reception desk, and made her way to the meeting room. It was a blazing brilliant modern white, with desks arranged in a horseshoe, as if they were having a table read for a drama. Anna would’ve much preferred something full of careworn wood and leather that was reassuringly cluttered, dust motes dancing in cidery-yellow autumnal light. Order and fluoro-lighting reminded her too much of classrooms.

  John smiled benevolently at the sight of her.

  ‘Ah, the woman of the hour. Everyone, this is Anna Alessi from UCL. She’s our academic liaison and resident expert. You might think I’m the resident expert. However, I’m a glorified shopkeeper. She sources the products, checks what’s fit for purpose for sale, as it were …’

  As he spoke, Anna scanned the room, smiling and nodding hellos in turn, until her eyes met James Fraser’s.

  She almost physically started with surprise, and couldn’t be entirely sure whether she made a noise.

  Her bouncy cheerfulness stopped so abruptly it almost had a sound effect. She knew her face was a mask of repulsion but it was too late to rearrange it. What. The. Fuuuuccckkkkkkk …?

  James looked very disconcerted, if not quite as ruffled as she did.

  John was still talking: ‘… So this is James from our digital helpers over at Parlez. James is the project leader, and his colleague who handles the technical design and development, Parker …’

  Anna mumbled a vague greeting at a skinny twenty-something with asymmetric hair, and dropped with a thud into her seat.

  She fussed with getting the notes out of her bag as a way of not having to meet the eyes in the room. Her heart was making a ker-plunking noise. She could hear the valves pulsing, as if they were amplified.

  How in the hell had this happened? What sort of grotesque prank was being played on her this time?

  17

  As conversation continued and John outlined the themes of the exhibition, Anna joined the dots; John joking about the necessity of having ‘the digital johnnies’ as well as marketing and comms people at the initial get together to discuss the exhibition.

  At the reunion, Laurence saying of James ‘… digital agency, lots of big impressive clients.’

  It was a gruesome turn of events. And it wasn’t lost on Anna that if she’d swerved the reunion, she’d have the upper hand. He’d still have no idea who she was.

  So much for enlivening ideas about facing your demons. How long had that taken to bite her on the arse? Those demons weren’t meant to pitch up a few days later in navy John Smedley cardigans in professional interactions. Only this time, unlike the reunion, she’d been introduced with her surname. Would he realise who she was?

  Oh God, she hoped not. It was impossible to know if he’d figured anything out. All she could do was to try to look aloof, dignified and glacially in control.

  Conversation moved on, with John doing most of the talking. He concluded, ‘And now I should hand over to James, who will take us through plans for the exhibition’s multi-channel strategy …’

  The academics in the room looked politely blank while Parker put both hands on his hair and shaped it into a quiff.

  ‘Erm, yeah, thanks …’ James said, clearing his throat. ‘Obviously, the principal thing we’ll be designing is the official exhibition app for iOS and Android devices and so on. This is key in giving the show a higher profile and will help with media coverage.’

  He looked round the room and Anna thought sourly, hardly any need for this pitch spiel, when you’ve already been hired. She sensed he was nervous but she had no interest in empathising.

  ‘The app will include a lot of imagery from the show, and text from yourselves. Rather than merely transpose the material from the exhibition, we want to make the app hold real unique value, with original content. We were thinking of some talking heads …’

  ‘That’s experts, talking, not Talking Heads the old music,’ Parker said, tucking his pen behind his ear and grinning widely.

  ‘Old,’ John Herbert chuckled.

  ‘Yes. Thanks, Parker,’ James said, eyes narrowing. ‘And we want to build an A.R. layer for the exhibition, with digital versions of the artefacts we don’t have or can’t move here. What we thought we’d do is take personalities from the mosaics, and use actors in costume to film recreations of interactions. We can have them walking about the space. A virtual Theodora and Justinian and so on.’

  Anna’s nerves overcame her and she spoke before she could stop herself.

  ‘It’s not going to be all rotating 3D scans of people’s heads, like “Wooh, heads”’ – she made a gesture with her hands, thinking, I have no idea what I’m on about either, but I sound a bit angry so people won’t dare laugh – ‘And no text, is it?’

  There was usually a small tension between academics and designers over such issues and Anna was minded to make it a larger one.

  ‘We’ll have space for captions with each artefact. Written by yourselves,’ James said, making an ‘I am taking you very seriously’ business face.

  ‘How many words?’

  ‘Around 150 or so.’

  ‘That’s not a lot.’

  ‘I think people have a limit for how much information they can take in per artefact.’

  ‘We were thinking the show might attract quite a few “readers”,’ Anna said, caustically.

  ‘Our research suggests people start skimming after 150,’ James said, tapping his pen on his pad.

  ‘Well, what does actors titting about really add? Do people need reminding what people look like? We haven’t evolved significantly since Theodora and Justinian. They didn’t have prehensile features.’

  James blinked.

  ‘It’s a way of making the artefacts more vivid. The emphasis with what we do is on the experiential.’

  Experiential. These people always brought their made-up words.

  ‘No, I mean it’ll get in the way of looking at the mosaics, which are the point of the thing aren’t they?’ Anna said. ‘Won’t it mean visitors spend their time playing on video games, instead of looking at the exhibits?’

  James put his head on one side and made a ‘trying to find a respectful way to answer a question I think is stupid’ face.

  ‘It’s an “as well as” not an “instead of”. To help people visualise the world and bring the scene alive. We’ll tag the videos to objects so people can choose to watch the sequences if they’re interested.’ James paused. ‘It’s a modern way of engaging visitors.’

  ‘Ah,
that’s the thing about history. It’s not modern.’

  ‘But the people going to see this are. Are you doing without electricity as well?’

  James only half-phrased this as a joke and all the backs in the room stiffened. Except for Parker’s.

  ‘The point of the app is that it’s something different to the exhibition itself, something that complements it,’ James said, aiming for an air of finality.

  ‘I don’t understand why the emphasis is on recreating stuff that isn’t there, to distract people from stuff that is there. It’s as if the artefacts aren’t interesting enough in themselves.’

  ‘It’s about narrative. People are principally going to be interested in Theodora as a person, right? She’s the focus of the exhibition. Along with Justinian. They’re the story.’ James was matching Anna in vigour now. It was that kind of terse politeness that strained at the leash to romp into full-blown rude.

  ‘Yes but that’s not to turn the show into a Ye Olde Posh and Becks power couple.’

  ‘Justinian Bieber,’ Parker said, guffawing. Everyone in the room dead-eyed him.

  ‘We’re coming at this from different angles but our aims are the same,’ John intervened. ‘Wait until you see it, Anna. The Royal Manuscripts app was really something, I’ll get James to show it to you.’

  James nodded. Anna simmered.

  ‘We’re drawing up some questions on the themes of the exhibition, to help us develop our side in line with your vision for the key messages of the show.’

  Key messages! Like it was an ad campaign. Buy Zantium! That’s all these digital gits were, Anna thought. Advertisers, with a big shiny social media sheen pasted over the top. Might as well be flogging chamois leathers as the artefacts of the sixth century. James Fraser did look like Don Draper from Mad Men.

  James cleared his throat. ‘We were playing around with a “medieval bling” theme for the digital pre-launch presence …’

  ‘Bling?’ Anna said, her intonation holding the word between finger and thumb, at arm’s length.

  ‘Yes …’ James said, but this time had the decency to look embarrassed.

  ‘You know, bling, like, big rocks, baller ass, fly, dope …’ Parker began.

  ‘We were thinking it was an accessible way to represent the wealth of the period,’ James cut in, desperately. ‘Obviously we can work on this in tandem with you.’

  ‘The “whore” angle is strong for grabbing attention, but causes problems with your younger, school age demographic,’ Parker said, in a solemn tone that made it sound as if he was quoting someone else.

  School. Anna’s throat tightened.

  ‘We’ve been throwing ideas around, nothing’s set in stone,’ James said.

  ‘Not sure about the use of the word “whore” really,’ John the curator said, mildly. ‘It’s a bit of a value judgement about a female.’

  ‘Yes. It’s not as if you’d ever call a show Genghis Khan: Mongol Warlord, Massive Shagger,’ Anna said.

  Parker looked as if he might be about to try to answer a rhetorical question.

  ‘We want to stress that Theodora was an amazing, ambitious woman. Not some … hooker who got lucky with the right husband,’ Anna continued. ‘It was more burlesque dancing anyway. She was an entertainer …’

  This was pushing it. Theodora’s sex life was pretty darn rococo. But Anna wasn’t going to have her beloved heroine casually slut-shamed by a man wearing an Acid House smiley earring, named after a Thunderbird.

  ‘Oh right. I was going by her Wikipedia page, and there was something on there about a party trick with barley on her … down there, and geese pecking it off? Quite rad,’ Parker said.

  James rubbed his eyes in a way that might have been an attempt to put his face in his hands.

  ‘Oh well, I bow to the knowledge of someone who’s been on Wikipedia,’ Anna said to Parker. The tension in the room reached snapping point.

  ‘If we could meet up to film a Q and A soon, that’d be helpful,’ James said, stony faced, with a near-sarcastic emphasis on ‘helpful’.

  ‘Yes I think it’d help, Anna, if you and James touched base over a coffee soon,’ John said, nervously. ‘Make sure we’re all happy with the direction. I have a feeling this is going to turn out to be a very fruitful collaboration.’

  Anna gave James a look that said she’d rather touch his prostate than his base, and the meeting was over.

  18

  Anna flew back to UCL as if she had the wind at her heels. But this time she wasn’t buoyed by joy, but borne aloft by the kinetic energy of outrage.

  Had James Fraser recognised her? It was impossible to tell. Her instincts said not – there was no dawning of the light writ across his features at any point. But that didn’t mean much.

  Now he had her surname and he’d seen her at the reunion. If the penny hadn’t dropped yet, it would soon. It was teetering, wobbling, right about to roll. Alessi. She might be Anna not Aureliana, but her full name was unusual. It alliterated, it was memorable. No doubt about it, the bells would soon chime.

  He’d have a look of triumphal malignity on his face at their next encounter, and conclude by saying: ‘It’s come back to me, I do know you …’

  Technically, of course, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if he could use that information in any way that harmed her professionally, beyond embarrassing gossiping with the exhibition team. It was hard to explain why it felt so catastrophic.

  She had dealt with school by moving forward and never looking back. She boxed her inappropriately titled Forever Friends diaries and banished all reminders to the loft. She changed her forename. And eventually, she’d changed her appearance.

  She’d walked into the reunion knowing she could walk out again at any time she chose. And she’d never imagined he’d be there in the first place.

  This turn of events felt like a taunt from above at her audacity. God saying: if you want to mess with the order of things, I’ll mess with you right back.

  To have the monster tear through the paper screen like this, someone who knew who she used to be – and him, of all people – working with her in the present? It was a merging of realities she never, ever thought she’d have to face. She was near-tearful at how she could be so improbably unlucky. Of all the gin joints in all the world …

  ‘Faster than a speeding bullet!’ Patrick called after Anna as she stomped through reception.

  She felt pathetically, overwhelmingly grateful for the sight of him. Someone who would never judge her, never snicker, never betray and ridicule her. These were her kind of people. This was a safe haven, where you were assessed only on your brainpower. Only your essays got marked. Not your circumference, or your income, or your cool, or your clothes.

  ‘Meeting go well? Eager to get stuck straight into exploring Dora?’

  ‘Patrick, I’ve had a complete nightmare,’ she said, trying not to sound wobbly, and not entirely succeeding.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he said, instantly concerned, hand on her arm.

  Anna glanced over at Jan the receptionist. She had ears the size of cabbage leaves for scandal.

  ‘Time for a quick coffee? Walk in Russell Square?’

  Patrick checked his wristwatch. ‘For you. Any time.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Anna said, and Patrick looked gratified at the extravagant emotion over a latte. ‘I don’t mean to sound dramatic.’

  Once they were settled on a park bench with takeout coffees, Anna began. ‘You know I said I had a bad time at school? Guess who the lead from the digital company working on the Theodora show is? Only a thundering anus who bullied me.’

  ‘He bullied you?’ Patrick fiddled with his sugar packet.

  ‘Yes. I saw him at the reunion. It was worse … he was worse to me than I explained. In the past, I mean.’

  ‘Oh dear, Anna. Did he …? Were you …?’ Patrick avoided her eyes. Anna realised he might’ve misconstrued what she was going to reveal.

  ‘Oh no, I left that school wh
en I was sixteen, I wasn’t … I was a …’

  Anna felt herself colour and Patrick nodded, relieved, and put his hand on her arm.

  ‘I was different at school,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘I was … a lot bigger.’

  Patrick’s face was one set in extreme concern. She’d forgotten his hugely protective streak. A streak in the same way the M1 had a middle lane streak.

  ‘This man was particularly cruel to me. He tricked me into appearing on stage with him and then half the school pelted me with sweets and called me names.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Patrick said.

  ‘He didn’t recognise me at the reunion. But now he knows my surname. Patrick, I’m dreading having to see him again. He’s going to bring it up and I’m going to end up crying. And work’s always been a safe place where I didn’t have to deal with that stuff, you know. I don’t want to be too dramatic about having a new identity, but … I do feel like someone in witness protection who’s had the mobsters show up.’

  ‘This is awful.’ Patrick paused. ‘And terribly odd timing. Do you think it’s got anything to do with you going to the reunion?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s complete coincidence. Imagine. What a one-two punch. Not had to see this idiot for sixteen years and then twice in two weeks.’

  Anna made a ‘huh’ noise and sipped coffee.

  ‘Part of me thinks I should resign from the Theodora show. But I so want to be part of it, and I can’t think of a plausible excuse.’

  ‘Oh you must work on it, Anna. You told me it was the greatest moment of your career so far. You can’t let this dickhead ruin it for you. And, like we said. It’s potentially going to do you a lot of good round here.’

  A pause.

  ‘Why not get him moved off it?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘How? I can hardly go to John Herbert and say: “He was nasty to me at school.”’