‘She enjoyed meeting you,’ he was saying, as Eshan read his newspaper in the pub.
‘And me her,’ Eshan murmured without raising his eyes. ‘Anyone would.’
It cheered Brian to hear her praised. ‘She’s pretty, eh?’
‘No, beautiful.’
‘Yes, that’s it, you’ve got the right word.’
He picked up his phone. ‘She wants to ask you a favour. Can she join us?’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Of course, you’ve got to put the kids to bed, but I think you’ll find it an interesting favour.’
Laura arrived within fifteen minutes. She sat down at their table and began.
‘What we want is for you to photograph us.’
Eshan nodded. Laura glanced at Brian. ‘Naked. Or we could wear things. Rings through our belly buttons or something. But anyway — making love.’ Eshan looked at her. ‘You photograph us fucking,’ she concluded. ‘Do you see?’
Eshan didn’t know what to say.
She asked, ‘What about it?’
‘I am not a pornographer.’
It must have sounded pompous. She gave him an amused look.
‘I’ve seen your stuff, and we haven’t the nerve for pornography. It isn’t even beauty we want. And I know you don’t go for that.’
‘No. What is it?’
‘You see, we go to bed and eat crackers and drink wine and caress one another and chatter all day. We’ve both been through terrible things in our lives, you see. Now we want to capture this summer moment — I mean we want you to capture it for us.’
‘To look back on?’
She said, ‘I suppose that is it. We all know love doesn’t last.’
‘Is that right?’ said Eshan.
Brian added, ‘It might be replaced by something else.’
‘But this terrible passion and suspicion … and the intensity of it … will get domesticated.’ She went on, ‘I think that when one has an idea, even if it is a queer one, one should follow it through, don’t you?’
Eshan supposed he agreed with this.
Laura kissed Brian and said to him, ‘Eshan’s up for it.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Brian.
Eshan had picked up his things, said goodbye and reached the door, before he returned.
‘Why me?’
She was looking up at him.
‘Why? Brian has run into you with your children. You’re a kind father, a normal man, and you will surely understand what we want.’ Eshan looked at Brian, who had maintained a neutral expression. She said, ‘But … if it’s all too much, let’s forget it.’
It was an idea they’d conceived frivolously. He would give her the chance to drop the whole thing. She should call in the morning.
He thought it over in bed. When Laura made the request, though excited, she hadn’t seemed mad or over-ebullient. It was vanity, of course, but a touching, naive vanity, not a grand one; and he was, more than ever, all for naivety. Laura was, too, a woman anyone would want to look at.
*
An old upright piano and guitar; painted canvases leaning against the wall; club fliers, rolling papers, pills, a razor blade, beer bottles empty and full, standing on a chest of drawers. Leaning against this, a long mirror. The bed, its linen white, was in the centre of the room.
Laura pulled the curtains, and then half-opened them again.
‘Will you have enough light?’
‘I’ll manage,’ Eshan whispered.
Brian went to shave. Then, while Eshan unpacked his things, he plucked at the guitar with his mouth open, and drank beer. The three of them spoke in low voices and were solicitous of one another, as if they were about to do something dangerous but delicate, like planting a bomb.
A young man, covered in spots, wandered into the room.
‘Get out now and go to bed,’ Laura said. ‘You’ve got chickenpox. Everyone here had it?’ she asked.
They all laughed. It was better then. She put a chair against the door. They watched her arrange herself on the bed. Eshan photographed her back; he photographed her face. She took her clothes off. The breeze from the open window caressed her. She stretched out her fingers to Brian.
He walked over to her and they pressed their faces together. Eshan photographed that. She undressed him. Eshan shot his discomfort.
Soon they were taking up different positions, adjusting their heads, putting their hands here and there for each shot. Brian began to smile as if he fancied himself as a model.
‘It’s very sweet, but it ain’t going to work,’ Eshan told them. ‘There’s nothing there. It’s dead.’
‘He might be right,’ Laura told Brian. ‘We’re going to have to pretend he’s not here.’
Eshan said, ‘I’ll put film in the camera now, then.’
*
Eshan didn’t go to bed but carried his things through the dark city back to his studio. He developed the material as quickly as he could and when it was done went home. His wife and children were having breakfast, laughing and arguing as usual. He walked in and his children kept asking him to take off his coat. He felt like a criminal, though the only laws he’d broken were his own, and he wasn’t sure which ones they were.
Unusually he had the pictures with him and he went through them several times as he ate his toast, keeping them away from the children.
‘Please, can I see?’ His wife put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t hide them. It’s a long time since you’ve shown me your work. You live such a secret life.’
‘Do I?’
‘Sometimes I think you’re not doing anything at all over there but just sitting.’
She looked at the photographs and then closed the folder.
‘You stayed out all night without getting in touch. What have you been doing?’
‘Taking pictures.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that. Who are these people, Eshan?’
‘People I met in the pub. They asked me to photograph them.’
They went into the kitchen and she closed the door. She could be very disapproving, and she didn’t like mysteries.
‘And you did this?’
‘You know I like to start somewhere and finish somewhere else. It wasn’t an orgy.’
‘Are you going to publish or sell them?’
‘No. They paid me. And that’s it.’
He got up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to work.’
‘Is this the same kind of thing you’ll be doing today?’
‘Ha ha ha.’
He tried to resume his routine but couldn’t work, or even listen to music or read the papers. He could only look at the pictures. They were not pornography, being too crude and unembellished for that. He had omitted nothing human. All the same, the images gave him a dry mouth, exciting and distressing him at the same time. He wouldn’t be able to start anything else until the material was out of the studio.
He thought Brian would have gone back to his place, but wasn’t certain. However, he couldn’t persuade himself to ring first. He took a chance and walked all the way back there again. He was exhausted but was careful to cross the road where he crossed it before.
She came to the door in her dressing gown, and was surprised to see him. He said he’d brought the stuff round, and proffered the folder as evidence.
He went past her and up the stairs. She tugged her dressing gown around herself, as if he hadn’t seen her body before. Upstairs they sat on the broken sofa. She was reluctant to look at the stuff, but knew she had to. She held up the contact sheets, turning them this way and that, repeatedly.
‘Is that what you wanted?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is that what you do on a good day?’
‘I should thank you for the lovely job you’ve done. I don’t know what I can do in return.’ He looked at her. She said, ‘How about a drum lesson?’