‘Good Lord,’ Greville said, when he saw the magazine. ‘Are you sure this was her choice? She looks like she’s got wheels. Not really Beau Monde at all.’
Miss Veronica Presser at the North Boxhurst fete, © Beau Monde Publications Ltd, 1928.
‘She did say “What fun!” when I took the picture.’
‘And you chose to interpret “What fun!” as “That’s my favourite.”’
‘It seemed implicit. You know: the message she was trying to convey.’
‘You can be very impetuous, Amory. I warned you.’
‘True. Still—’
‘Still, it’s the best photograph I’ve seen in Beau Monde for a year. Very natural-looking. Better than mine.’
‘Thank you, Greville. I’ve learned everything from you. Everything.’
We were in the drawing room of his flat. The evening sun was blazing obliquely in and a misty amber light seemed to fuzz and blur the windows overlooking the gardens, casting everything in the room in a golden fantastical hue.
‘Still seeing young Lockwood?’ Greville asked.
‘From time to time.’
‘He seems much — I don’t know — neater, cleaner. Altogether more presentable.’
I had made Lockwood bathe — I supervised the first bath, I scrubbed him down — bought him some decent brilliantine (Del Rosa’s ‘English Musk’) and several changes of shirts and, Greville was not to know this, thrown out his grey greasy sheets and provided him with freshly laundered ones that I brought with me when I stayed and took away to re-launder when I left.
‘I never liked that blue flannel shirt of his,’ I said. ‘I think he’d wear it a week at a time.’
Greville laughed — his rare baritone boom that erupted when he found something genuinely funny.
‘Amory Clay, what have I done to you?’
Beau Monde sacked me a week later, the result of a vehement litigious complaint from Lord Presser himself. His daughter was a laughing stock, he claimed, she was mortified, humiliated. The entire print run of the June 1928 issue was recalled and pulped at the cost of several hundred pounds. I was sacrificed instantly, in the hope Lord Presser would be mollified. Furthermore the editor of Beau Monde, one Augustin Brownlee, made it clear that they would spread the word amongst Beau Monde’s competitors. My perfidy would be made plain, my abject unprofessionalism everywhere advertised. I would never work for a society magazine again.
‘I think it’s a good photo, like a real person, not some stuffed doll,’ Lockwood said, loyal to the end. I had sought solace with him for a night above the darkroom. He was sitting on the narrow bed, naked, watching me dress.
‘I’m unemployable,’ I said. ‘All because some stupid fucking heiress lost her sense of humour.’ I was picking up Greville’s bad habits.
‘Surely Mr Reade-Hill can—’
‘He got me the Beau Monde job. I was his special recommendation. They’re not exactly wildly happy with him, either.’
I buttoned on my brassiere and, as I reached for my slip, I felt Lockwood come up behind me, take me in his arms, his hands cupping my breasts, squeezing.
‘I love your bobbies, Amory, so round and—’
‘They’re my breasts, Lockwood! Don’t use these expressions. You know I don’t like them.’ He favoured strange slang words for body parts and types of lovemaking: bobbies, chum, the path, butter-churning, Jack and the beanstalk. . He was from St Albans and I wondered if it was some arcane Hertfordshire patois that he used.
He returned to the bed, unperturbed. Very little ruffled the even, placid surface of his nature. He loved me with unusual intensity, that I did know.
‘I’m out of a job, Lockwood. I’m jobless.’
‘You’ll get a job. Nothing’s going to stop you, Amory. Nothing.’
My mother looked at me blankly, unpityingly. From the barn I could hear Peggy playing endless scales on her piano. It was beginning to give me a headache.
‘Why don’t you meet a nice young man?’ my mother said. ‘Then you wouldn’t need to be a photographer. Meet a lawyer or a soldier or a — I don’t know — even a journalist. Or. .’ she thought, ‘or a vicar. An alderman, a brewer—’
‘No thank you, Mother. No more professions.’
I wandered out into the garden, thinking. Greville had said I could always come back to work as his assistant, but, when I had left to set up on my own, he had hired a replacement, a young Frenchman called Bruno Desjardins (whom I think Greville rather lusted after) and there really wouldn’t have been much for me to do. Apart from Beau Monde all my work was for other society magazines — the Young Woman’s Companion, Modern Messenger, the London Gazette, and so on — and all those doors would be closed to me now. There were newspapers — but I could hardly present myself as a photo-journalist. And there was portrait work — but you needed a studio for that and clients didn’t exactly rush to your door if you had no reputation at all.
I saw three guinea pigs scurry under a laurel bush. Yes, I could always take photos of people’s pets. I felt sick: I would never stoop so low. And anyway, there were no good photographs of animals. Photography wasn’t about taking pictures of animals, it was about—
‘Oh. It’s you.’
‘Hello, Xan.’
Xan came round the edge of the shrubbery with a guinea pig in each hand. He was tall for his age, twelve, and had a distinctly watchful air about him as if he didn’t trust you, or was expecting you to make some kind of violent movement towards him. He looked grubby, needing a long soak in a bath.
‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.
‘Freeing some guinea pigs. I’ve got too many.’
‘How many?’
‘Over a hundred. But they don’t seem to want to leave the garden.’ He walked to the boundary hedge and set down his two newly liberated rodents. They sat there, noses twitching. Then he kicked earth at them and they ran into hiding.
‘Why don’t you sell them to a pet shop?’ I said. ‘Make some money.’
‘That would be immoral.’
‘Oh. Right.’
He looked at me with hostility.
‘Why are you here?’ he said.
‘Aren’t I allowed to come and see my family?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘How very gracious of you, Marjorie.’
‘Don’t call me Marjorie.’
He wandered off back to the garden shed.
I crossed the lawn to the barn. Peggy had stopped playing scales and the door was ajar. When the door was shut no one was allowed to disturb her. I knocked and went in. Peggy was sitting at the piano doing exercises with her hands, making fists and shooting her fingers out.
‘Hello, Peggoty.’
She turned and smiled — at least one member of my family was pleased to see me. We kissed and I noticed how pretty she was becoming — dark-haired and big-eyed with a perfectly straight thin nose. My father’s nose, the Clay nose, not the Reade-Hill nose that I had. She fitted a cut-down ruler between her thumb and little finger of her right hand, stretching them apart, painfully.
‘What’re you doing? That looks like torture.’
‘My hands are too small. I haven’t a full-octave spread. Madame Duplessis says I’ll never make a successful concert pianist if I can’t cover an octave.’