Shooting Butterflies (42 page)

‘Use you?'

‘Use
me
. Make me your model for the exhibition, for your celebration of life. C'mon, you know you want to. I can see it in your eyes sometimes, that hungry glint like a lioness who's just spotted a plump and lonesome antelope. Work is your other love. I stopped being the jealous type when I was told I had three months to live. So enjoy. Use me. Combine us, if you like. I'm
dying. You can't change that. You're a photographer; it's your job to document. So do your job. I'm a fading lens-louse; it's my job to be photographed. Catch me while you can. Let me do
my
job.' He was smiling, talking brave, being flip, but he could not disguise the pleading in his eyes. Next he was looking at her, serious, thoughtful. ‘I like the idea of being part of this exhibition. You said it was important; big London gallery, that type of thing?' He grinned again. ‘I mean, I have my standards. I wouldn't go wasting my dying on any old hick-town exhibit, but this will be good. Even the title is great.' He made a sweeping gesture as if describing his name in lights. ‘
A Celebration of Life: One Man's Final Journey
.'

Grace looked at him. ‘That's not funny,' she said, but she was smiling too; it was a while since she had seen him so … well, so alive.

‘It's bloody funny. But
I'm
serious. Come over here.' He patted the side of the bed. ‘Comfortable? So, I'm sick but I'm not blind. I'm changing. It's like one of those speeded-up nature films when they show a bud grow and open, blossom, wilt and die all in a matter of seconds. So I might not make a very convincing flower but look at me.' She did and to her shame she was already weighing up the possibilities in her mind, framing her pictures, thinking light and backgrounds. She had to look away. What's wrong with me? she thought. What kind of freak am I?

He grabbed her hand and put it to his eyes. ‘It's kinda interesting. Don't tell me that for you, as a photographer, it isn't, the way the journey marks my face with each passing day, because I won't believe you. I know you, Grace. And I like the irony; a celebration of life. Or maybe there's no irony. Maybe dying is the ultimate celebration of life.'

‘And that's the kind of pseud's statement that I love you for,' she said, trying not to cry. Every day she saw the distance grow between them, the distance between the one who was going, and the one who would be left behind. It was his journey and all she could do was watch him go. ‘Jefferson, I'm sorry to be making this about me …'

‘That's all right, sweetheart; familiarity is comforting for the sick.'

‘I don't know if I can do it, that's all.'

‘I know it's tough watching me dying,' Jefferson said. ‘Not as hard as actually
doing
the dying, but tough nevertheless. That's why I want you to use the camera. It'll help you and actually – far more importantly – it'll help me. It will be something we
are
doing together. Anyway, I've told you before, I like to watch you work.'

Grace got up and fetched the Hasselblad. ‘I shall take a shot of you now because you are looking particularly gorgeous.'

‘Ah well.' He struck a pose, hand to the back of his head. ‘Death becomes me.'

He was asleep on the porch, his head tilted backwards, the skin tight over his collarbone, half his face in full light. Careful not to disturb him, she set up a white cardboard reflector on his shadow side, but a flock of terns, flying by so low she could distinguish the faint rose hue of their under-plumage, woke him. Still woozy, not quite focusing, he smiled at her as she pressed the shutter.

Saturday morning and just getting out of bed made him so out of breath he had to lie straight back down again. Every gulp of air sounded like it had to fight its way down into his lungs, and when Grace laid her head on his poor chest every breath rattled; but he pointed at the camera on the bedside table. She shook her head violently. ‘I'm calling Joy,' she said. It was his turn to shake his head. He pointed again at the Leica.

‘Don't chicken out on me now,' he whispered. ‘This isn't pretty, but we're doing good work, remember, not Hollywood schlock.'

She sighed and got the camera. Blue eyes faded like an old shirt that had gone through the wash too many times, white close-cropped hair, a complexion tinged with a grey that no sun could disguise, grooves and lines; a man who was still young. So this was to be her job now: documenting the disintegration of the man she adored. She looked away, blinking, fixing a breezy smile.

She took ten shots and with each one she got more absorbed in her work until he was simply a part of the scene: a bed with the bedclothes tossed to one side, bright light from the sea, a rose in a vase, closed eyes, open mouth, a nose set in deep furrows, hands clasping a sheet. She knew these shots were good. When she went
downstairs to phone Joy she felt sick; as if she had pigged out on her favourite food or spent more money than she could afford.

Joy was over within the hour. She said the patches weren't enough and put him on a subcutaneous drip, showing Grace how to check that it was clean and not blocked, telling her how to manage it.

‘That's it,' he said. ‘I'm going into hospital. I'm not having you care for me, not like this.'

‘Would he be more comfortable in hospital?' Grace turned to Joy.

The nurse shook her head. ‘Not really. This is a bad day. I'll get Doctor Howard to call in later.' She turned to Jefferson. ‘You might well be off the drip again tomorrow.'

‘I'm not staying here,' he insisted.

Grace sat down next to him on the bed. ‘Go into hospital then, but I won't be able to work there. It just won't be right; the hospital light, the institutional aspect of it all. It just won't work.'

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the look on the nurse's face; surprised, suddenly disapproving.

Downstairs Grace said, ‘It's as if he's ashamed of being sick, and I can't bear it.'

‘It's hard being the one receiving all the care. It's easier dealing with us professionals. The patient knows we get paid. You, he can't pay.'

‘He's trying to.' And Grace explained about the photographs. ‘I know he doesn't want to go into hospital. He says he does because he can't bear thinking he's a burden, so I talk about the photographs; nothing else convinces him that he is not.'

Joy listened and then she said, ‘I suppose I can see his point.'

‘But?'

‘Well, to be honest with you, Grace, I find it harder to understand how you can do it, take all those pictures. I'm a nurse. I see people dying all the time and I have to stand back from the person and do my job. But he's your husband.' She looked away. ‘I shouldn't have said that. We're all different.'

‘That's true.' Grace sighed. ‘In fact, there are times when I wonder whether I'm part of the same species.'

‘If you feel that way, don't do it. You must have plenty of snaps of him by now and you can find another way of making him feel less beholden.'

Grace looked at her. ‘Do you know, the worst of it is I don't want to.' She got to her feet and walked over to the window, looking out at the maple tree. She wondered if they, any of them, would be there to see its leaves turn.

Grace made another call to Jefferson's old law firm, asking if they had managed to get in touch with Cherry, if there had been any progress on the court order forcing her to give him access to his children. ‘He needs his daughters. Please do this for him.'

Jefferson slept and while he slept Grace went for a walk. Autumn was approaching; the growing surf told her so although the air was warm and the terns remained, leaving only for their fishing trips to that point on the horizon where the sky melts into the sea.

‘Stop posing.' Grace laughed. He was sitting up in bed with the rose she had picked for his breakfast tray stuck behind his ear. A little earlier she had been in to change his morphine patch. He hated her doing anything of that nature, saying, ‘I'm not your patient, I'm your lover.' But there he was now, fluttering his eyelashes, tossing his head, trying to make her laugh. ‘OK, Carmen,' she said, grinning at him. ‘Do your worst.'

‘See,' he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. ‘You're OK,' he said.

‘No!' She lowered the camera.

‘Don't look so stricken, my darling Grace. You're not a hypocrite? I'm a man who has to ask for help to go to the toilet, for Christ's sake. Can't you see how much better it makes me feel to think I am of some use?'

She looked at him and then she smiled. ‘There are moments when you are in control of your equipment, and your subject. Then the camera ceases to be something mechanical, a piece of machinery, and becomes a part of you; your extended eye. It's a good feeling. In fact, it's a great feeling.'

Jefferson sighed, not the heavy sinking kind, but a contented sigh
that rose like a tiny feather propelled on a breath. ‘And it was my doing just now. I gave you that feeling.'

‘Oh yes, you gave it to me.'

There were times when he could not bear to be touched. ‘And I've told you, stop looking at me like that.'

‘Like what? Please, like what?'

‘Like you're expecting me to drop down dead any moment.' Before she had a chance to say anything he changed his expression from disgruntled to smiling. ‘Of course that's exactly what you are expecting, but it makes me uneasy, that's all. I feel like I have to hurry up and oblige.'

Grace looked at him and did not smile back. ‘That was cruel.'

‘It was a joke.'

‘It was cruel.'

He put his hand out, willing her to let him take hers. ‘I'm sorry. Forgive me. Dying puts me in a bad mood, that's all. And I want you around; all the time, just not hovering, anxious and un-Gracelike. Go fetch your camera, my darling. I feel a heroic air coming on.'

‘You're an idiot.' But she did what she was told.

‘Look at you; you're making love to me with that camera.' Then he paused before saying, ‘I've got ugly?'

‘No.'

‘But I look so old. A couple of weeks ago I was forty. Yesterday, looking in the mirror, I thought, I'm giving late fifties a run for its money. So tell me, my dearest love, how old am I today? And please don't give me the one about you're only as old as you feel.'

Grace sat down at the foot of the bed. ‘To me you are always beautiful …'

‘Peleease. Don't give me that bullshit.'

‘…
and
never more so than now because … because each day I see it more clearly; your soul.' She raised her hand. ‘No, don't snigger. I'm serious. Until … well, until I got to watch someone, you …' She paused.

‘… dying.'

She smiled weakly. ‘Yes … until then, I didn't believe there was such a thing as the soul, not in the sense of something outside
the physical body something that wasn't just the bits of DNA and brain chemicals and whatever that makes our personality. But I know now that I was wrong. The soul is there, a separate entity that will go on after our physical presence has ceased.' She put her hand lightly on his cheek, on the flesh sunk back against the bones. ‘I can't say that right now it's much of a comfort because I'm selfish and I want you, all of you, with me, where I can feel you and speak to you and hear you … but it will be, won't it? It is for you, isn't it?'

‘If you tell me you have captured my immortal soul on camera then I am comforted. Not enough to stop me being angry at dying when I'm only just forty or desperate that soon I shall not see you again, but comforted to a degree. So you see,' he smiled, ‘we've done a good job.'

‘I love watching you work. You're all precision, like a ballet dancer.'

Grace shot him a quizzical look. ‘Ballet dancer? Me? Hardly.'

‘All right, maybe ballet is not quite the right word, but you
are
different when you're working, and I like it. You act differently according to which camera you're using, too.' He looked pleased with himself for having made the observation. ‘With the Leica you're all loose and easy, like you're hanging out with an old buddy. You keep it with you all the time. With the Hasselblad you're reverential and, as soon as you've got your shot, you put it away.'

One morning when he was too tired to sit up, he asked her, ‘How's my soul today?'

‘It's good.'

‘And the bone structure?'

Grace put the camera to her eyes to hide the tears.

He was lying on his back beneath the thin cotton sheet, palms facing skywards in the pose of a sleeping infant. His breathing was rapid, as if he had been running, but his face was peaceful. The lace curtains at the window softened and diffused the fiery light of the hot afternoon, leaving him to sleep. She had not been able to protect him or to make him well. So she did what she could do and caught his suffering humanity on rolls of film. The bed framed his sleeping form and the window was reflected on the white wall behind. The camera was raised to her eye but she lowered it again as, for a moment, she could not hear his breath. But no, there it was again, rapid, shallow, telling her he was with her yet; for a little while longer he was there and hers. In a moment she would go and lie down next to him, hold him and tell him how much she loved him. Beg him to stay a little while longer. She heard a faint cough. He opened his eyes and looked straight at her: alert, alive. She adjusted the focal length, determined the shutter speed and the aperture. Then his chest shuddered, sending a fine spray from his lips, and his eyes widened. She did not go to him, not straight away. She took her picture first. By the time she reached his side and took his hand, he had died.

Nell Gordon:
As Al Alvarez said, ‘A great work of art is a kind of suicide.' So, are Grace Shield's award-winning photographs art? And if they are, did she commit professional suicide in the process?