I catch myself clenching my teeth as I inspect the first print. No captions, only titles–I would insist on that, as any explanation would be too final. Every time I look, I compose something different for those little grey cards Greg imagines for the blank wall space adjoining each photograph. 10th September — The Chapel.
It’s still called that, in gleaming letters above a new glass door, though it hasn’t been a church for years. The music ended abruptly, though it’s still turning deep in my belly. The idea of what might grow from the dark tonight kept me here as the revelers headed homeward.
Some of them posed for me, throwing sultry twists. Some glanced at my camera, some moved out of sight, unnerved. A man jeered and thrust obscenely when I mimed taking his photograph, but he couldn’t match the sway and suggestion of the girls.
I took a shot at him anyway, from my hip. Only a furtive wink of the shutter, as he began to lose interest, and there’s the gleam of his tongue and teeth in my hands, the shine on forehead, eyelids. The mist and the lights form a sickly aureole around his head.
I startle when Greg taps his fingers on my arm.
Come on, he says. You can make yourself useful. He jerks his head at the trays of wrapped appetisers on the trestle table; he’s setting out rows of new champagne glasses. He spent months wooing me away from that other studio in town, in his soft-voiced, offhand way.
Not with flattery, but prickly bloody-mindedness. Greg’s so far from the upholstered and beaming Valerie, with her be-ringed fingers and her gift for lulling frazzled couples into paying more than they planned to have their union reduced to glossy 4×6.
I’ve never asked, but I’m certain wedding photography was never his ambition. But we’re successful enough to fund the new shop and his grand plans for my pictures. Greg, curt and scruffy, never asks where I go to take them, never gives any sign that he recognises the clubs and bars, most named for their past lives: temple, church, ministry, tower.
That’s why I said yes, in the end, despite longer hours and less money. He knows I’ll show him the latest set, fresh from the darkroom, without having to ask.
I flick at the nearest bouquet of oyster-coloured balloons clustered in a corner with a finger, run my hand over a vase of white roses as Valerie opens the doors. I hide behind the digital camera, documenting the event while Valerie and Greg mingle with the couples admiring the artfully displayed albums. Most don’t give me a second glance.
One of the prospective brides catches my eye, her fiancé in conversation with Greg. Safe behind the lens, I’ve time to collect names. He’s Noah, she’s Amelia, like me. They look like they could be brother and sister, as the young couples now often do, with matching mannerisms and haircuts.
Amelia’s eyes follow me, alighting on the subjects I choose for each image: the balloons, the flowers, the champagne, a curl of ribbon on white linen. When she looks away, I notice the tattoo on the inside of her wrist. A small, dark crescent moon.
What’s this one? Greg asks me when the party’s over, reviewing my evening’s work on his laptop. The image is clear, enough to pick out the radial creases in her skin. I reach under his arm, standing behind him and click delete. He offers to drive me home after we review my night’s work. Greg’s thorny manner hides a certain kind of chivalry, one which I imagine he owes to someone in the family he never talks about. I feel a flare of affection for him, but, as usual, I don’t accept. I’d brought the other cameras, the tripod with me. I sold the car, and like to walk, like to return to my flat, with its 70s textured ceilings and dim bare bulbs, too tired to think or sleep.
I feel a little guilty about this one. A row of girls before a wall of smudged, cracked mirror in the toilets, reapplying makeup. Some of them well over thirty, but girls nonetheless. It’s reassuring, that they all make the same wide-eyed, pursed-lipped grimaces. I didn’t ask them to pose–I’d perfected gunslinger-stealth, with the camera slung low on its strap behind my back. Most of them too blurred to be useful. I’ve never liked the current mania for pin-sharpness. Instead, I try for a little out of focus, a little bleached, a little grainy.
I stowed the camera, the flash, the macrolens in my old denim bag, as the group left the toilets. I noticed someone watching me in the mirror, as she washed her hands. Blue-black hair cut into a heavy fringe, thin brows, the full-cheeked face and tiny, deceptive mouth of a porcelain doll.
My stomach clenched when I stood next to her and caught the tattoo at her wrist. She had a sweetish smell about her, like burning leaves. You’re the woman from the photographer’s, she said.
I washed my hands, though I didn’t need to, in the grimed sink next to hers. I look down at them, the skin now flecked, translucent and too taut over the bones. My hands wither, while the rest coarsens and thickens in the mirror each day.
Why do you do that? She asked, with a voice I might have expected from her older sister, or even her mother. Why take pictures here?
Because I don’t know what else to do, I could have said. Because I can’t sleep. Because I hate these places, with their thumping noise and sticky floors.
I said nothing. I realised, later, that I had not congratulated Amelia on her engagement, nor had she seemed to expect it.
I can hear Valerie busy behind me, the next day, clearing the remnants of lunch at her desk. D’you want to come out for some air, love?
That’s her genteel way of bumming a cigarette, round the back of the shop, away from the ‘no smoking’ signs. Her warmth makes me want to weep, or beat her bloody.
I hide in the back room, not feeling able to school my expression. When I emerge, it’s time to re-open the shop and there he is. Waiting on the step outside is a man, not too tall, with a sun tattoo at the top of his spine and dyed blue-black hair. With hands large enough to crush my skull.
Valerie’s not here, but I spot her set of keys on the counter. The man turns and bestows a perfect smile when I open the door for him.
I’m–we’re–looking for the lady I spoke to the other night. Val, was it? My fiancée’ll be here in a minute, she’s just parking the car. We wanted to sort out dates.
He must see something in my face; he falters, but then breaks into a smile again when Valerie re-appears, reminds her of his name. Noah. With that, I find I can’t be here. Valerie calls after me, when I walk out of the shop, and I’m sorry to let her down but not enough to turn back.
Valerie calls after me, querulous around apologies to young Noah. Amelia? Amelia, are you alright?
I don’t hear the rest, walking toward my flat. I’m more than halfway before I think to check the pockets of my jeans for my keys. Relieved, I grasp them for the rest of the journey. The flat looks different in daylight, and it takes me longer than usual to find the shoebox in my bedroom, filled with old letters, postcards and photographs. There’s a layer of dust on the top, and I almost don’t want to disturb it. I take the lid off the box, tip the lot onto the kitchen floor, and sit heavily on the cold tiles. I don’t know how long I sit there. When I stand, I feel the old bruise on my hip.
I’ve kept them all this long, though I’m the one who left in the night. All the photographs he took of me. He liked to take pictures of me in front of the mirror, fiddling with my hair. There’s one of me wearing almost nothing, and I look too young – I’d been trying on dresses. He had a wonderful eye. Strange phrase, that, for the ability to find and frame an image, too literal–summoning a lonely, disembodied eye in a cold vacuum of space. I’d begun it as a hobby of sorts, feeling excluded by his talent.
The first he knew of it was when I’d gone, and stolen his camera. It was one he hardly used, that I’d kept hidden. I don’t know if he ever missed it.
Photos by Cameron Russell.
