The Photographer's Wife (26 page)

“Yes, she’s a fairly well known fashion model.”

Claire nods and flips quickly through the remaining shots. “Yes,” she says, when she reaches the end. “Yes, they’re nice. Really nice.”

“Thanks,” Sophie says.
Nice. Ouch!

“So!” Claire says, returning to her own side of the desk. “I had a look at our database and as far as I can see we only have one photograph of your father’s. Does that sound about right to you?”

“I actually didn’t know you had
any,”
Sophie admits. “Do you know what it’s of?”

“A demonstration – an abortion demonstration, I believe. If that means anything to you?”

“Sure. It’s quite a famous one; it won the best photo-journalism prize that year.”

Claire nods and her smile fades and is replaced with something similar to concern. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again and works her jaw a little before saying, “I’m sorry, Sophie. But if you didn’t know we had any of your father’s work, then I’m a little confused about why you’re here today.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I assumed you wanted to organise a loan.”

“A loan?”

“Of your father’s work. For your retrospective. But as we only have the one...”

“Oh God, no!” Sophie says. “As I say, I didn’t know... so it didn’t cross my mind.”

“Right.”

“No, I...” Sophie clears her throat, a little mortified that she is going to have to spell out the reason for her visit. She had hoped that it was obvious. “I thought the concept might interest the National Gallery,” she says.

“Interest us?”

“I thought you, the National, might want to host the retrospective.”

Claire’s eyebrows have risen almost to her hairline, but they now fall as recognition slides across her features. “Oh, I
see...”
she says.

“He would have been eighty next year, so I... we thought that it was a perfect opportunity. And we thought the National was the perfect venue.”

Claire nods slowly. “Um,” she says. “Yes. Of course.”

Sophie fiddles with the folder to fill a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.

“Then that would be, twenty-thirteen?” Claire finally says. “The anniversary?”

“Yes.”

She pulls a strange face as if constraining a grin and then shrugs as she explains, “I’m afraid to tell you, Sophie, that we schedule our exhibitions at the National many years in advance. So if your father’s work
was
something we wanted to show, I’m afraid we’d need two or three years notice. At least.”

“Oh,” Sophie says. “Well, there’s no reason it would
have
to be twenty-thirteen. Twenty-fourteen, or twenty-fifteen would be fine. Perhaps even later.”

“Yes... Look, Sophie.” And Sophie knows that tone of voice. And she knows that this isn’t going to work. “To be perfectly honest here, I can’t see the trustees going for it,” Claire says.

“OK. Fair enough. Why would that be?” Sophie asks, trying to sound neither hurt, nor belligerent.

“If he had been an art photographer...” Claire says. “But he wasn’t, Sophie, was he? He was a journalist. A very good one but a photojournalist all the same.”

Sophie runs her tongue across her teeth, but no, she can’t help herself. “Claire,” she says. “Look, I’m not sure how well you know the photography world. But perhaps I could chat to Dr Penny about this? It was him I was expecting to meet today.”

“I’m afraid Dr Penny delegated this to me,” Claire says. “I’m so sorry we’ve been talking at crossed purposes. If I had known, I could have spared you the time.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “And now I’m afraid that
I’m
running out of time.”

“The thing is,” Sophie says, aware that she’s sounding desperate now but unable to leave without a final push, “there
were
no art photographers in the fifties and sixties. It wasn’t recognised as an art form by any of the art schools until the seventies. So...”

“I’m actually quite aware of that,” Claire says, smiling tightly. “My art history’s not too rusty. Now, I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to go. If I can help you in any other way, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Claire slides a business card across the desk and by the time Sophie has slipped it into her pocket, picked up her folder and stood up, Claire is holding her office door open.

“Oh well, thanks for your time anyway,” Sophie says.

“You’re welcome. Any time. You remember the way out, right?”

“I do.”

“Goodbye then,” Claire says. “And good luck with your retrospective.”

Once Sophie reaches the street, she pauses to catch her breath. She has, she realises, broken out in a cold sweat. She wonders if Claire spotted that. As she reaches into her pocket for a tissue, the business card falls to the floor. She wipes her brow, then stoops to pick it up. “Claire Freeman M.A. FRPS,” it reads. “Curator of Photography, National Gallery.”

FRPS. Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society! M.A. A Masters in art! Curator of photography!

Sophie hears her own voice saying,
I’m not sure how well you know the photography world
and breaks out in a cold sweat all over again. “Oh God!” she mutters. “Oh Sophie!”

***

Sophie heaves the carrier bags onto the kitchen worktop and exhales sharply. Brett appears in the doorway behind her looking, for some reason, pleased with himself. He stretches his arms and hangs there on the door jamb grinning at her. “Food,” he says. “Great! I’m starving.”

Sophie glances sideways at him, raises one eyebrow and begins unpacking. When Brett sidles to her side and peers into one of the bags, Sophie slaps his hand away.

“Someone’s in a bossy mood,” Brett says. “I like.”

“I don’t,” Sophie mumbles, ripping the packaging from a stack of yoghurts and adding them to the refrigerator.

“Did I do something bad, Mistress?” Brett says, which is so,
so
the wrong reply, right here, right now, that Sophie wonders if Brett has any idea who she is at all.

“You...” Sophie pauses and sighs. “You
could
actually help me here,” she continues once she has wrestled her voice under control. “And you could even do some shopping of your own from time to time instead of waiting at home with your tongue hanging out like some untrained puppy.”

“Hum,” Brett says, now starting to ineffectually lift things from a bag and place them in a even less practical pile on the counter. “Someone’s not in the best of moods.”

“No,” Sophie says. “Someone isn’t.”

“I can take you out to dinner if you want,” Brett offers. “But shopping’s not really in my DNA.”

Sophie pauses, a tube of toothpaste in one hand. “It’s not in your DNA?”

Brett shakes his head forlornly.

“And how about cleaning?” Sophie asks, brandishing the tube at him. “Is cleaning in your DNA?”

“No, not really. Which is why I pay a cleaner, I suppose.”

“Right,” Sophie says. “I
don’t
have a cleaner. So if you could just pick up some of your shit from time to time, that would be great.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Brett says.

“And stop with the bloody Mistress business, OK?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Brett mugs.

Sophie groans and shakes her head in despair. When Brett delicately reaches out to touch her shoulder, she shrugs so that his hand falls away.

“Did you not have a good day, sweetheart?” Brett asks, in a more genuine tone of voice.

“No, Brett. I did
not
have a good day.”

“The National?”

“It was appalling. It makes my teeth hurt to even think about it.”

“OK...” Brett says, now folding his arms defensively. When faced with one of Sophie’s occasional bad moods, Brett moves quickly from concern, through compassion, to irritation. The crossed arms signal his intermediary stage. “So, how about I take you to dinner and you tell me all about it,” he says.

“I have no desire whatsoever to talk about it,” Sophie says. “And I don’t want to go out to dinner either.”

“Would you like me to leave?” Brett asks. “Is that it?”

Sophie shrugs and shakes her head. “I’m not sure what I want, to be honest,” she admits.

“How about a hug?” Brett asks, uncrossing his arms and scratching his ear. “Sometimes hugs are good at times like this.”

And because Sophie can tell from his voice that this is the last chance before he moves into combat mode, before he says something like, “Well, if you’re going to be like that, fuck you,” and because that really isn’t what she wants, she drags herself back from the brink. “OK,” she says. “Let’s try a hug.”

Later, as the tuna fries and as she prepares a salad, Sophie thinks about her mood and attempts to decode her harshness towards Brett. The problem is that her meeting at the National has spilled over and tainted everything else. Her moods have always been this way, so she has some understanding of her own processes, even if she still struggles to control them.

On a good day,
everything
seems good. On a good day, she knows that eventually she’ll break into the world of art-house photography, that her father’s retrospective will be an unqualified success, and that suited, naughty Brett with his spicy bedroom tastes, his never-ending list of wonderful restaurants, and his almost unlimited connections in the art world, is the perfect man for her. But on a
bad
day, like today, she knows just as surely that the retrospective will never happen, that she’s a rubbish photographer who just happened to have a famous father and that blobby, overweight, conceited Brett is too lazy around the house and too pervy in bed for her to ever build a proper relationship with him. And that none of it really matters because in forty years they will both be dead anyway.

Maybe she’s bipolar and she’s on a downswing. Can one be a “bit” bipolar? It’s not the first time the thought has crossed her mind. Then again, maybe she’s just immature. Perhaps a calm sense of wisdom will manage to catch up with her one day, just before she finally turns to dust.

Once dinner is served, Sophie does tell Brett about the meeting.

“You should always research the staff list before meetings like that,” Brett comments. “It’s ever so important to understand who you’re meeting.”

“Thanks, Brett,” Sophie says, sarcastically. “I think I got that.”

“Anyway, cheer up,” Brett says. “There are other galleries.”

“Such as?”

“We went through this. There’s the V and A...”

“They said ‘no’.”

“They did?”

Sophie nods as she picks up her fork and starts to draw circles in the raspberry vinaigrette remaining on her plate. “They replied by post. Polite. But no.”

“Brett wrinkles his nose. “There’s the Wapping project.”

“They said no too. I spoke to what’s-her-name?”

“Jules Wright?”

“That’s her. She was lovely. But definitive. It’s a ‘no’.”

“You should have let me phone her, maybe.”

“I
waited
for you to phone her. You didn’t.”

“I was going to but... anyway... Oh, and I spoke to my contact at the Tate. But he doesn’t think they’ll go for it either.”

“You see? It’s a disaster.”

“It’ll just have to be a private gallery then,” Brett says. “But that’s OK, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it’ll have to be.”

“The work would need to be on sale to make it worth their while. Would that be a problem for your folks?”

Sophie shakes her head. “It might even boost Mum’s interest in the whole thing a bit.”

“You reckon?”

“There’s really no telling with Mum. But she’s never shown any signs of being allergic to money.”

“Well then,” Brett says. “I’ll have a word with my friend Mike Rowes. He knows Jean Jopling.”

“And who might Jean Jopling be, dare I ask?”

“Um, she’s a bit of a nobody. She just owns White Cube.”

“Oh. Wow! Oh Brett! That would be great.”

“See, I’m not entirely useless,” Brett says.

“No, I know that,” Sophie replies, forcing a smile, her first today. “And I was grateful for that meeting today. Even if I did fuck it up.”

“It probably made no difference,” Brett says, generously. “It probably would have been a ‘no’ anyway. It was always gonna be a long shot.”

“I wish you’d said that before I went. I wouldn’t have been so disappointed.”

“I didn’t want to put you off before you even got there.”

“That’s fair enough, I suppose,” Sophie says.

“And I’m sorry about the cleaning and shopping,” Brett says. “I can pay for a cleaner for here if you want.”

“No, thanks. And I was being a bit unfair there. I don’t do much at your place either. So I’m sorry too. I’m just having a bad day.”

“All the same,” Brett says. “I’d fully understand if you wanted to punish me.”

Sophie is flooded anew with negative thoughts. Because the sex with Brett has been getting weirder and weirder, the scenarios more and more complex, and the hardware required to get
him
hard, ever more extensive. It’s like owning a car with an ever-evolving ignition procedure. And Sophie can’t help but think that she will inevitably reach a point where she takes the car back and says, “I can’t be bothered with this. Can you give me something simpler? Can you give me something that just starts at the turn of a key?”

“Do you think we’ll ever just have plain old sex again?” she asks.

Brett looks surprised. He actually leans towards her as if he has misheard. “I’m sorry?” he says.

“I mean, you know... without all the accoutrements,” Sophie says. “Or is normal sex off the menu forever more?”

Brett frowns, swallows, then licks his lips. “You
are
in a weird mood tonight,” he says.

“I know I am. But the question stands.”

“Then the answer is, of course we can. We can have any kind of sex you want.”

“Good,” Sophie says.

“I’m your sex slave. I’m entirely at your command. All you have to do is say.”

Sophie stares into Brett’s eyes and exhales slowly. She feels like she has just had a revelation. She thinks she has just seen the future and it is Brett-less. She wonders if she should just give in to her instinct to blow it all up right here, right now. It would be so easy.