Getting The Picture (6 page)

Mind you, he hasn't mentioned the photographs recently. You'll probably be relieved to hear that, but you were wrong about my reasons for having them done. Graham used to get those magazines, you know. I found them once under the mattress when he was away training, but I never told him I knew because I liked looking at them. Was that wrong of me? It wasn't that they gave me a thrill, or not for the reasons you might be thinking. I just liked to think about those women and how different their lives were from mine. I imagined what it must have been like to get dressed up like that and for no one to laugh at you. The opposite really. Sometimes I'd even do it, when I knew Graham was away and no one would catch me. I'd pose half dressed in front of the mirror. I never blamed Graham for preferring those women to me. Not then.

But suddenly I feel I need to have a quiet lie-down.

Yours aye,

Flo

39.
letter from martin morris to mo griffiths

Dear Mo,

I imagined him different. That's the truth. But when I'm with him now, do you know what the worst bit is? I think of you. Because I can't forget, Mo, and I don't believe you could either. So when I'm in the same room as him, I think of what it must have been like for you. I wonder whether maybe you sat with him like I did last night and if you couldn't bear to look at him either. And if all you could think of was me. Did you think of me when you were talking to him, Mo? When you cooked his dinner, did you think of the time I dressed you up in an apron and the yellow scarf around your head and said I was going to take your photo just like the perfect housewife? It was supposed to make you laugh but it didn't. Of course, it didn't. It wasn't bloody funny, was it?

But you can't blame me for being angry. You can't blame me for that. It was a wicked lie that you thought I would have harmed you. Remember that time when I begged you to come to the studio, and you said it was going to be the last time because it scared you when I got so intense.

If it scared you, what about me? After you'd left the studio that day, all I can remember is curling up in a ball and crying. The tears were still trying to get through even after they were all used up but I couldn't seem to let my body know that it was empty. A model called Heather found me the next morning. I'd told her to come in early because she had to go to the dentist later and after she'd got no reply, she tested the door, found it open and came up the stairs. They kept saying in the hospital that she'd saved my life and that I was ungrateful for turning my head away when she came to visit.

I kept calling out your name but no one knew who you were. I'd never said anything, you see, not even when I thought we were going to be together forever. You'd made me promise to be discreet. Heather even asked some of the other girls but they didn't think there was a model called Mo. Eventually they came to the conclusion that I must have been calling for Mahad and got him to come and pick me up. I wrote the first letter to you after I came out of the hospital. You wrote back at first, didn't you, two or three times, but then you begged me to stop. Trouble was that by then nothing could stop me writing to you but I still kept my promise. I didn't mail any of them. Well, just the one. I should have sent you them all. I wish I had bombarded you with my love. I wish I'd stormed around there and rescued you instead of just watching at a distance. As if you ever really thought I could harm you. So this is my plan. I am going to finally take your girls for my own just as I know you would have wanted. I am going to rescue them from George. All of them. Nell and Robyn, and even Angie in France. I am going to make them all safe. Florence Oliver is going to help me, not that she knows exactly what her involvement is going to be. You see, when I was taking photographs there was a certain type of woman who would always say they never wanted anyone to see their pictures. I could tell them a mile off. I don't know if I told you about this way I had of choosing my models. I'd go to clubs and leave some of my magazines lying about, and then I'd just hang around until a woman came over and picked one up. She'd circle for a bit maybe, but she wouldn't be able to resist. And that's when I'd start speaking to her. It never failed. Mrs. Oliver has that same spark about her as those women had. There's a desperate need in her to be noticed, however much she might resist. She won't mind me using her photographs.

I remember you saying once that George would always be covering your body up, not from jealousy but correctness. You see where I'm going, Mo. If George gets fond of Florence and he finds out I have photographs of her then he will hate it. I will have the final victory over all his rules and right behaviour. It will take a will of steel and a cold heart. But I'm learning. After fifty bloody years of just watching and waiting, it's time for some action.

M

40.
letter from nell griffiths to brenda lewis

Dear Brenda,

Thanks for such a helpful meeting yesterday. I am sorry that my father has caused you so much inconvenience. As you suggest, I will do everything I can to encourage him to enter more fully into the social life of Pilgrim House and to develop some more interests. I can see that more occupations will be healthy for him.

In the meantime, I am enclosing a small donation to the staff social fund. I hope that you will be able to use it as a way of saying thank you for looking after my father so well.

I was also grateful to have the chance to talk to Steve Jenkins. He is, as you said, an asset to the home, particularly with his experience of personal training and his charitable volunteering. I will consider his suggestion of coming in to talk about my work but will have to think first of an angle that might be interesting to the residents. My father finds my job as a trend forecaster hard to understand, but I would very much like to give something back for all the kindness you have shown my family.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Nell Baker

41.
email from nell baker to angie griffiths

Brenda suggested we persuade Dad to take up some hobbies. Any ideas? I was wondering about forced marches and double-column accounting. ‘Does he have any friends who might like to visit him?' she asked. I was about to say something sarcastic about whether she could imagine anyone wanting to visit Dad, but then I couldn't do it. ‘He has his family,' I said. She gave me a funny look then, but it's probably because she knew I was protecting him. Why do we always do that? I wonder if it's because people normally just see the one side of him, but it's easy to forget how we used to go to him when we were in trouble. Mum was for the good times but you could always rely on Dad to sort things out, couldn't you? He'd get out that notepad of his, get you to tell him the facts, turn it into an action list and suddenly things seemed doable.

He's drawn up a work schedule for Robyn. She was furious at first, but when I went into her bedroom I noticed she'd pinned it up by her bed. ‘Are you going to follow it?' I asked. It's fairly ridiculous. Up at six every morning, bed at eight thirty. You can imagine. ‘No,' she said, ‘but it's so granddad, isn't it?'

She was right. It was. He drives us all mad, but I could still see the comfort for her in having a chart like that to look at.

42.
letter from florence oliver to lizzie corn

Dear Lizzie,

I am wiped out. Shattered. Susan Reed had her family around again today. They were allowed to have their dinner with us and you should have heard the shouting. I like a bit of life, as you know, but it made my head hurt. No one said anything, not even when the smallest boy started throwing his mashed potato around.

When I went into the dining room to look for Martin later, Sophi and Steve were wiping all the mess from the walls. ‘If it's not one end of the age scale causing trouble, it's the other,' Sophi said, when she saw me standing there. She's come in for work experience before she goes to university. Uni, they call it now, just as she's called Sophi. ‘What happened to the e?' I asked her once. ‘E's too much trouble,' she said, and she drew me a picture of her name with a smiley face over the i. She's a lively girl, although not particularly favoured in the looks department. Unlike Steve. He's a tonic.

I couldn't help thinking of you during dinner. Not about the kids, I'm sure Brian and Amy are much better behaved, but you and me. We were such mice, weren't we? Remember when we first met and we'd sit together at those army dinners when the men would get drunk and start playing silly buggers. We spent such a long time just smiling at each other, but then once we got talking we couldn't stop. Maybe that's what Graham and Frank were scared of, us spilling the beans about them. Divide and rule, and all that. It would be about the only bloody thing they were scared of.

Anyway, that's all oil under the bridge. I went to the sitting room after our noisy lunch because I thought I'd sit down quietly for a bit, and Helen Elliott came up. ‘We were wondering if you'd like to play Scrabble,' she said. I had to think a bit before I got her meaning. Ever since she started going around with Lady F, she clips her words like that poor girl in the hat who got dirt in her eye in that silly train film. I knew Helen only asked me because Martin has been paying me attention. It's the sort of thing other women notice.

‘Don't mind if I do,' I said.

‘Those children made an awful racket, didn't they?' she said as we walked over to where Lady F was sitting.

‘I suppose we're used to quiet when we eat our dinner,' I said.

‘Lunch,' she corrected me, but so quickly I knew she couldn't help it. I pretended I hadn't heard her, but when she took her seat next to Lady F and the Scrabble board was all set up, I said I was feeling a little headachy so would they pardon me? And then I came up to my room and started writing this letter. I don't think she meant any harm, Lizzie, but even so, I'm tired of worrying about saying the wrong thing. I don't think I'm even supposed to say pardon anymore but they're all just words, clipped or not. Now, let's be more cheery. It's nearly spring and I will be with you soon. Do you think Laurie will put the extra bed in your room again? Although it's tight, we're cosy like that, aren't we? Two peas in a pod. Remember last year and we stayed up talking all night. I can't wait to tell you all about Martin. I wonder what you will make of him.

Yours aye,

Flo

43.
letter from martin morris to mo griffiths

Dear Mo,

You will be pleased to hear that Robyn and I have quite a little relationship going. She has even started to let me see some of her poems. All the usual stuff about teenage heartbreak and no one understanding her but I pretend to be interested.

‘You should think not just about what's in front of your eyes but what could be lying underneath,' I told her. ‘Look around you here. For instance, look at Annabel. What do you see?' She looked blank, and I told her how Annabel used to be an actress in the West End. How her waist measured only seventeen inches, and she'd lived in a house with four parrots, all of whom had been specially trained by admirers to tell her how beautiful she was every time she came into a room.

‘No!' Robyn said.

‘Yes,' I replied. I enjoyed her reaction. It made me remember how, every time I set up a shot, I would create a story for the model to walk into. Now, I'd tell them, imagine you live on a barge on the River Seine, you've just been feeding your croissant to the ducks and you hear me calling to you. I've been working all day, I'm tired, and you look up at me, concerned and wanting to take my burdens from me. And they'd look at the camera then but they wouldn't see the lens, or me behind it because they'd be on that boat. It always gave something special to the photograph. I want to teach Robyn about that. How there's always another world we can step into. A parallel life that's better than the one we live in, just waiting for us. After she'd gone, bug-eyed and keen to come back and have a gape at the beautiful, wasp-waisted Annabel who had so many lovers, I spent some time going through the old photographs I kept. I'd hemmed and hawed about getting rid of them when I came here, a fresh start and all that, but I'm glad now I didn't.

Apart from the fact you didn't like it, I'm not ashamed of what I did. I didn't just make women beautiful, I gave us all a glimpse of what we might be.

Sweethearts. That's what I used to call them. A sweetheart shot. You, of course, were my only proper sweetheart shot, the one who went straight to my heart.

Everyone's got photographs here, family members boxed up in frames and displayed on shelves or bedside tables, but mine are fresher. A burst of spring in our winter home. Some are just contact prints, only a few marked with red stars. I've been trying to work out how I picked the best ones because they all look perfect now. I guess I could afford to be choosy then.

Then. Hard to remember it was real. My photography and you. But I couldn't have both, could I? And then I didn't have either. It hurts to look at the photographs from the end, when I was drinking so heavily. I was never sure if I had put film in the camera or not. Better to stop when I did. I was lucky Mahad let me stay on in the studio and gave me work in the newsagent's. Of course, he knew what I'd been through firsthand. It makes a difference. All it takes now is a long deep look to remember the girls. Sue, Heather, Pauline, Jackie, Helen, Jenny. I didn't get close to all of them, but I can't help feeling soft inside when I look now. They make me feel alive. A world I can step inside.

And I got out of the business at the right time too. Wrong reasons, right time. When I think of what I saw in some of those magazines I had to stack up on the top shelf, it's hard to think mine were considered daring once. All the photographers I knew working at the same time as me treated the girls with respect. Sam Davies, over in Bromley, even married one of them and carried on using her in his magazine. A nice girl. I had hopes once that the two of you might become friends, the four of us going out together and doing all the normal stuff I knew you liked. It was Sam who got me into the collectors' market, right after you left. I think he felt sorry for me. It used to make me breathless how much money would change hands for those commissions, especially when I was asked for something particular. A favourite girl, maybe, in a special pose. The rules were always the same: only one picture printed, and the negative burned. I valued my life too much to disobey this, I'm not joking, but I'd always sneak a different pose of the girl during a session for my files. I planned on calling it a test shot if anyone had ever queried it. I had my own rules too. All the girls had to be of legal age, to be there of their own free will, and to agree to what they were being photographed doing. Oh, and I refused to let the client sit in on the shot. This was the rule that caused the most fuss, but it was the one I insisted on. I was producing a piece of art, not a peep show, and it meant that me, the girl, and the client all retained a certain respect for each other. Sometimes that respect was the only thing I had going for me.