Captured Shadows (2 page)

Archie had been with us for two months or so on the day that Mr Everett stopped me on the staircase with a finger to his lips and beckoned me into his office. It was such a funny way to behave about a secret, somehow I think I anticipated his words before he spoke them.

"You're good chums with Wilkes, aren't you, Jim?"

"Yes, sir, I believe so. We get along very well."

"And you find him trustworthy?"

"You trust him with deliveries," I reminded him. "And taking people's money."

"So I do," Mr Everett said, mumbling the words quietly as though speaking to himself and not replying to me. He always had such a strange, impatient look on his face when he was thinking, as though he were staring hard into the distance for his first glimpse of an overdue train. "Might we trust him with our more delicate operations, do you think? He wouldn't run and tell all his pals and cause us problems?"

"I think he'll be glad of the extra work, sir."

"Yes, yes, quite," he said absently, searching through the drawers in the desk for something and holding it up to show me with a triumphant
ha!
"Take this – and here's another one, take them both and play the sleuth for me, will you? I want to be sure he's not utterly scandalised by the notion of naked tarts before I invite him along."

I took both of the photographs he was holding out to me and tucked them into my pocket, then decided to chance my luck with a winning smile and, "Might I have a couple of your cigarettes? It'll be an excuse to talk to him, you see."

"The cheek of boys today!" he exclaimed, but his eyes were glimmering with humour and he gave me twice what I asked for from his little Egyptian tin so I knew he didn't mind.

I found Archie sweeping the floor in the upstairs studio and stood there in the doorway waving my handful of cigarettes until he looked up and noticed me, a smile breaking over his face as he abandoned the broom. "Good man, Sinnett," he said, "it's as
if
you read my thoughts."

Smoking indoors was forbidden, there was too high a risk of accidentally lighting all the flash powders somehow and making the building blow up like a skyrocket, so we stood in the little paved area that was set into the rooftop, where frames full of glass negatives and paper were left to develop in the dull grey morning light, and I lit both our cigarettes from the same match. It was an excuse, although a convoluted one, to take Mr Everett's photographs from my pocket, pretending I had only remembered they were in there when I returned the match box.

"Wilkes, look at this," I said casually, handing him one of the pictures. When he looked at it his eyebrows flew up high and he stared at me in shock for a moment before he started laughing, holding the cigarette in the corner of his lips so he could bring the photograph nearer to his face and study it more closely. This one was May Tunney, one of Mr Everett's favourite girls to photograph, pale and unclothed against a plain sack-cloth backdrop that made the dark hair on her head and at the fork of her legs look black in contrast. She had her arms raised in the air and her hands clasped above her head so that her bosom was lifted higher and the stretched skin of her bare stomach turned her navel into a dark little line.

"Ain't she a beauty?" he said, marvelling, eyes scrutinising every bit of her. I felt a sudden flush of heat skitter across my skin then, one I could never account for until much later on when I had accepted certain things about my feelings for him.

"What about this one?"

He laughed again at the second picture, sounding startled and nervous, and when he took it from me he dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his shoe to free both of his hands. This one showed Sally Blacksmith positioned on her hands and knees at the open end of a threadbare couch; there was a man on the cushions in front of her wearing only a shirt and she had her mouth closed tight around his prick, while behind her another man had gathered up her skirts into a bundle at her waist and was holding her by the bare hips as he fucked her.

"Good Lord, Sinnett, I never expected
you
to..." He fell silent and stared at me while I tried to decide whether or not to be offended. "Where did you get these?"

"I shan't tell you now, since you think I oughtn't to have them. Give them back."

"Not until you tell me where you got them." He held them above my head tauntingly; I was an inch or two taller than he, but when I made a move to grab at the pictures he danced away, grinning like a fool. "Ain't we mates? You can tell me, I won't snitch."

"You wouldn't believe me." I made another lunge for him and his laughter tumbled out, bright and sharp, as infectious as a plague.

"I'll believe you, I swear."

"I took them."

Then he went silent, statue-still in front of me with the most comical expression of surprise and disbelief on his face. "No you never!"

"I did. And please keep your voice down," I added, glancing down at the neighbour's open window; needless to say, the people in the milliner's and the tobacconist's to either side of us were unaware of all that we did, and that was not something I wished to change. "Listen, Wilkes—" Here he stepped closer, leaning close enough that I could lower my voice to little more than a murmur. "Sometimes we take these pictures and sell them to people Mr Everett knows. Sometimes people ask him for something in particular, a certain type or girl or a certain type of act, and we do those instead. They're quite peculiar sometimes, these requests. One gentleman wanted pictures of a man tied down over a couch and two girls whipping him with switches. We had to pay Bert double for that one, he still complains about it three years later. Then there's another gent who only ever wants pictures of girls kissing each other on the... well, you know."

"Muffs?"

"Yes."

"You're pulling my leg."

"Why on earth would I do that?"

"I dunno." Archie was silent for a long moment then, staring back down at the photographs in his hand and finally back up at me; he still looked shocked, as though he had been slapped around the face, but there was an odd, feverish sort of excitement and curiosity in his eyes as well. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Mr Everett wants you to help. But you mustn't tell anybody. I can trust you to keep it quiet, can't I?"

"Yes, of course." Then he started laughing again, covering his mouth and trying to keep quiet until I shoved him down the steps and back through the door next to the darkroom. "Forgive me, Sinnett, I don't know why I'm laughing, it ain't even funny. It's just...
you
. I never would have guessed it in a thousand years. You're so respectable."

"Shut up. Haven't you any work to do?"

"I'll finish sweeping up, but I'm keeping these." The photographs disappeared into his pocket and he hooted ridiculous laughter all the way down the corridor in a way that, try as I might, I couldn't feel offended by. He was laughing at me, yes, but there was good humour in it and a strange new sort of camaraderie I had never felt before. I always thought of that as the moment when we became true friends, somehow: the day I shocked him with scandalous photographs and he laughed at me until he was out of sight and nothing but disembodied glee like Mr Carroll's Cheshire Cat.

The day of the photographs was foul, rain like knives and a wind that could somehow blow a man's hat off and send it rolling down the street and yet still not be strong enough to shift the lurking fog. The only people who came in all day were a few flustered gentlemen collecting their photographs and two boys with messages of cancellation from people who had arranged to have their portraits taken.

"Ain't it quiet?" Archie asked for what felt like the fiftieth time. He was bored, leaning his elbow on the counter and his face in his hand so the flesh of his cheek became distorted around his eye and he watched me with only one, as I watched him back over the top of my book.

"It is when you're not complaining."

"I ain't complaining! I'm
observing
."

"You don't have to keep observing the same thing. I heard you at ten o'clock this morning, and every fifteen minutes since."

"That's cos nothing's changed."

"It'll change soon enough, they'll be here any minute and we can get started."

He sat up straighter then, a multitude of emotions jostling for place in his eyes; he sounded anxious when he spoke, but his cheeks were tinged pink with excitement and curiosity. "What's it like?"

"What?"

"Being in a room with all them people, you know, doing things?"

I had been helping Mr Everett with his work for so long, I could barely remember how I had felt during my first time. I know I was seventeen, I know I stuttered and mumbled every time one of the girls spoke to me, which of course only made them speak to me even more to tease, but other than that it seemed as though every time had blended together and I wasn't sure how to answer.

"It's dull," I said, quite honestly. "It stops being shocking. I hear myself giving these dreadful instructions so casually, things I would die rather than say outside of these walls, and it never seems strange any more. And Mr Everett gets so frustrated sometimes." Here I fell into a terrible impersonation of my mentor that made Archie smile. "'Albert, lad, the girl can't even feel you, drive in deeper – deeper, I say! Now out! Now stop and hold it there and don't move, nobody's going to pay money to look at a blurred picture of your credentials!'"

"I would've laughed so much if he'd walked in just then."

I checked behind myself quickly to make sure
we were still alone,
and Archie laughed at me anyway until I put my book away and jabbed him hard in the ribs with my finger to make him stop; he just clutched himself at the sore spot then, still laughing, and I gave up and merely looked at him instead, the brightness in his eyes and the shape of his mouth and the way his laughter was making his throat vibrate above his collar, wondering at the strangeness of my attraction to him, fully-clothed and annoying me, while the naked men and women I photographed felt like nothing more than the wooden manikins in the drawing-lessons I had taken at school.

"Stop playing the fool," I demanded before the heat rose enough in my cheeks to give me away, "and come and help me get the studio ready."

There wasn't much to do, we had only to prepare the camera and rearrange some furniture and set up a screen in the corner for the girls to use as a dressing-room, which always seemed rather odd to me considering how much of their bodies they were here to show off. Archie and I worked in silence; I could see he was anxious again, but couldn't think of a thing to say to reassure him.

I found some gin, in the end, and poured him a glass, which seemed to do the trick.

And I watched his throat, when I thought I might not be noticed, the pulse and slide of his drinking; I watched his hands, narrow fingers and bitten nails picking at the pasted paper label; I watched his mouth, pink and wet from the gin, form an O shape and blow across the top of the bottle to create a deep, ghostly wail. Our eyes kept meeting – I don't like to wonder what sort of absurd, lovesick expression was on my face, but his was merry and laughing as though this accidental meeting of eyes was amusing to him every time it happened. Once, after he'd helped me carry a couch to where the backdrop hung from a pole at the back of the studio, he nudged me with his elbow and asked, "Have I got ink on my
cheek
or something?" and I tried not to look at him after that, feeling giddy and embarrassed, but every direction I turned seemed to contain some part of him as though he
meant
for me not to escape him.

When May and Sally eventually appeared, exploding through the yard gate in a rustle of silk and rattle of jewellery, I made introductions immediately and then stood back against the wall with my own glass of gin, hoping rather cruelly that Archie would be forced to take his turn at feeling uncomfortable and out of place. They teased him just as badly as they'd teased me on my first time photographing them – asking for his help with boot buttons and corset laces, flinging stockings over the dividing screen and appearing around the side, half-clad and smirking, to retrieve them while he hastily averted his eyes from the bare white skin of their legs – until his cheeks were as red as mine felt. When they finally grew bored of the game and went outside to smoke a pair of cigarettes they'd begged from me, Archie only poured himself another drink and came to sit in the chair by my side.

"Ain't they a riot?" he said, grinning at the petticoats and stockings left draped over the screen in the corner. "My mother would flay me alive if she knew I—"

"You mustn't tell," I interrupted, although really I knew he wouldn't. "You promised."

"Not likely! I want to live beyond nineteen, thank you."

We could hear the murmur of their voices outside the half-open door and brief louder bursts of laughter. I knew I ought to call them back inside – Mr Everett didn't like them to be out in the open for any longer than was necessary, in case one of the neighbours stayed working late and saw them through a window – but every moment alone with Archie was more precious than gold to me and I let this one linger a while longer, feeling as though I could almost sense the heat of his arm on the side of my leg although we weren't quite touching.

"James," he said quietly then. His voice had a strange waver in it, breaking free from his bravado. It was the first time he had ever used my Christian name, and that coupled with his returning nervousness gave me such a sudden pang of love for him that my palms felt damp.

"Nobody calls me James," I said, attempting casual good humour that felt flat and dead in my mouth. "Everyone says Jim. Or Sinnett."

"I know." He looked at me sideways; I could sense his gaze on me for a long moment before I let myself return it, and when I did so the pinched nervousness in his face broke like a storm and made way for a brilliant smile. "It's like a secret, ain't it? Just mine and yours."

Before I could begin to think of something appropriate to say in response, and before Archie could continue whatever it was he had started to ask, Mr Everett's office door banged and he appeared in the studio, barking for the girls to get inside and grumbling about how Albert and Donald were always late. The strange moment passed and we snapped to attention like clockwork soldiers, wound up tight and going through the same repeated clockwork gestures as always. I kept watching Archie, partly because I always watched Archie but also because I was curious to see how he would fare in this new and strange situation. He only seemed to baulk once, when Donald, naked as a baby, clapped him on the shoulder as he passed by to get a drink while the girls took turns with their mouths on Albert in front of the camera, and even then it was only for a moment; he saw that I'd seen and turned crimson with the effort not to laugh, grimacing behind his hand and pretending to cough instead until the urge passed and he was perfectly calm again, cool and professional, rearranging bits of furniture as Mr Everett directed and running to find more plates for the camera as though these scenes were nothing more scandalous than the family portraits he was used to.

May, with her red lips stretched wide around Donald's prick, winked at me, and I jumped as though I'd been stung. Even Mr Everett laughed at me that time, which seemed rather unfair; I felt suddenly as though Archie had been here forever, doing the job I had done for five years, and I was the innocent new boy flung headlong into a world that frightened me.