“Can everyone stand still, please!” Neil shouted. It was clear they couldn’t. He was facing his fourteenth lot of mini-monsters that day, all decked out in matching maroon sweaters and all fidgeting more than a sack full of fidgety ferrets for the sole purpose of taking the time-honored “class photo.”
He didn’t know what was worse, trying to snap bunch after bunch of motley urchins or the mammoth task of getting a whole school to smile and stand still both at once. Neil tugged at his tie, which seemed to be getting tighter by the minute. It was a hot, muggy day, one of the few that punctuate the blossoming days of spring, the ones that are usually welcome unless you happen to be standing outside on a shadeless school playing field trying to take photographs of hot, bored and petulant pupils dripping in their unnecessary sweaters.
The children had all been sorted according to descending order of height so that when he eventually managed to record this for posterity on film, it would make a wonderful photograph that would, no doubt, then spend the next thirty years gathering dust in someone’s loft until it was thrown in the bin by an overzealous spouse on a spring-cleaning mission. Life was constantly cruel.
“Tallest two in the middle, please!” The teachers herded the chosen pair forward and into place standing on the benches that had been purloined, as they were every year, from the gym equipment corner—a ragtag of broken sports gear hidden behind a 1970s psychedelic curtain in the far reaches of the assembly hall. “Next two! One on either side.”
Daylight, his patience and his life were rapidly running out while Neil tried to capture this snapshot moment in the lives of years One, Two and Three of The Bleeding Heart of Bernadette Lower School. And it wasn’t just Bernadette’s heart that was bleeding. His own heart was being put through the mangle day after day, doing this. It wasn’t what he wanted. He knew that. He wanted to take photographs of women draped seductively over chaise longues deep in chenille throws, wearing skimpy designer frocks that didn’t cover their bottoms. He wanted to capture on film similarly semi-clad females running through the edge of the surf on some secluded Seychelles beach. He wanted to be snapping starlets as they arrived at film premières in Leicester Square or, preferably, LA. What he did not want was snot-nosed brats in Bermondsey, Balham or Brixton.
During his reverie, the children had been filing in a disorderly manner onto the benches. “Back row, stand up. Nice and tall,” Neil instructed. “Middle row. Sit up. Come on—sit up. Nice and straight now. Fingers out of noses. Good. Good.” He looked through his camera. “Front row, cross legs. All the same way. Right foot over left. Left. Left. This one. This one. Like this.” Neil crossed his legs. “Good. Good. Stay like that. Fingers out of noses.” He checked the setup again. “Those of you with no front teeth, remember to try to keep your lips together when you smile. You don’t want to look back at this when you’re sixty and see nothing but a big hole in your face.” Neil emulated a smile with his lips closed together. The class giggled.
“Are we all ready? Sir! The gentleman at the back in the middle. Tongue inside your head where it belongs, please!” The tongue was duly retracted. “Back row, stand up straight. Hands behind backs not in noses.” Neil looked up and attempted a grin, which, at this stage in the day, probably came out as a snarl. Fingers were also hastily retracted. “Middle row, sit up. Gentleman at the end! You can find what’s in your ear later. Front row. Listen to me. Listen to me. Arms folded, like this.” Neil folded his arms. “One on top of the other. Like this.” The front row, it seemed, were not blessed with lightning dexterity or coordination. “Like this. See?” He folded his arms again. It was better, he’d learned through bitter experience, to give them something to do with their hands. That way they were less likely to explore bodily orifices with them—either their own or their neighbor’s. “Good. Good. Are we ready?”
It was on days like these when he wondered why on earth he wanted to settle down and produce more of these little horrors of his own. What was the attraction of children anyway? Every school he went to they all looked absolutely identical—scruffy, bad-mannered, and with hair that needed combing. Only the color of the sweaters changed or the design of the school badge. There was always a class clown, always a bully and always the poorly dressed little boy or girl with a patch over one side of their glasses and an unhealthily pale complexion who tugged at his heart-strings.
He had been doing this for more years than he cared to admit, and in that time he had watched the children grow year by year. It was strange watching them race through life from a distance. You could tell the girls who would break hearts and the ones who would get their hearts broken. You could tell the ones who would be pregnant and out of school by the time they were sixteen. You could spot which boys would be accountants and which would turn out to be criminals. You could even tell the ones which would be criminally inclined accountants. And despite all the downsides, he did want a family of his own, and it wasn’t just because he was keen on the conception part. He’d always envied Ed and Alicia. They seemed to be the perfect family, and it was gut-wrenching to see how quickly it had all disappeared.
He’d been to see his brother yesterday after Ed had phoned to say that Ali had gone again. It seemed that her fling with this Christian guy was more serious than Ed had first thought. His brother looked stretched and white-faced and suitably distraught, but Neil couldn’t help feeling that there was a certain family trait of stubbornness in Ed’s demeanor that wasn’t exactly helping the situation. It was ridiculous to stand by and watch them both destroy all they’d built up. Their kids were fantastic. Didn’t they deserve more than having two supposedly intelligent adults with locked horns damage their lives? Neil sighed to himself and realized that Year Two were getting restless. Perhaps he was better off single after all.
He held his hand aloft. “Everyone ready then? Stand up tall. Sit up straight. Nice smiles. After me! S-m-e-l-l-y-s-a-u-s-a-g-e-s!”
All of Year Two leaned forward. “SMELLY SAUSAGES!”
Before he could take the photo, his mobile rang. “Fuck,” he said, wishing he’d turned it off and ignoring the echoing chorus of fuckfuckfuck that had started in the front row who no longer had their arms folded.
“Neil Kingston.”
“Hi, Neil. It’s Jemma.”
Neil turned away from the children and tried to look suave down the phone. “Hi, Jemma.”
“Neil. Is this a bad time?”
“No. No. No. Not at all.” He glanced back at the children. “I was just doing a cover shoot for a magazine. Take five,” he said nonchalantly to the class of perplexed pupils, who had momentarily been replaced by a vision of Liz Hurley, chenille throws and a chaise longue. “What can I do for you?”
“Neil, I’m worried about Ed and Ali.”
“Me too,” he agreed sympathetically.
“This is a stupid, stupid situation.”
“I know. I told Ed exactly that yesterday.”
“And I told Alicia.”
“Good. Good.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“I don’t know. Only the pair of them can sort it out.”
“We can’t just sit back and watch them make such a mess of things.”
“We can’t?” Neil paused. “No. No. We can’t.”
“We must do something,” Jemma urged.
“You’re right. We must.”
“Let’s have dinner tomorrow night and decide what,” she said.
It had taken him several expensive dinners and months and months of smooth-talking to persuade one of the pretty bridesmaids he’d met at an unseasonal winter wedding to pose topless for him. He knew she’d be brilliant because when she was shivering in the cold outside the church, her nipples had stood out like champagne corks beneath her bridesmaid’s dress. It had taken all his concentration to even worry about getting the bride in the photographs. This was going to be the start of his burgeoning glamour portfolio and hers. His big chance. The appointed time she was going to get her bra off was tomorrow night at eight o’clock.
“You hadn’t got anything else arranged, had you?”
“N-n-o,” Neil stammered. “Dinner would be nice.”
“We’re not doing it to be nice, Neil. We’re doing it to save the marriage of your brainless brother and my stupid sister because they haven’t the sense to do it themselves.”
“Yes,” Neil said.
“Come to the shop at six o’clock. We can go across the road to Calzone’s or somewhere.”
“Right,” he agreed, entertaining the thought that if he really, really bolted down his food he might be able to have one bird in the hand and another one in the bush of his photographic studio. But then the bird in his hand would definitely be worth two in the bush, and his photographic career could go to hell for yet another night. Would Patrick Lichfield be so easily bought? Possibly not. Nevertheless, he would phone the accommodating bridesmaid, citing family crisis of the most extreme emergency, and hope she would understand and agree to get her bra off next week instead. Yeah, right.
“Thanks, Neil,” Jemma said. “You’re a darling.” And she blew a kiss down the phone just before she hung up.
Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. And Jemma might just be his. God, she was a wonderful woman. Vibrant, dynamic, successful and more than a little horny to boot. Every so often something surprising would occur, right out of the blue, that would lift you out of the mundane and ordinary and onto a slightly higher, more pleasant plane. He might be having dinner with Jemma to try to stop his brother and sister-in-law divorcing, but he was having dinner with Jemma, and that could only be embraced as a positive thing.
With a silly grin still plastered to his face, Neil turned round. Year Two had disintegrated into some sort of after-hours street brawl—the sort that usually happened on a Saturday night outside bars called The Shamrock or McLafferty’s. The boys on the back row were kicking the shit out of each other. The girls in the middle row were tearing each other’s hair out in handfuls. And the front row were all crying loudly due to misdemeanors that had been perpetrated while his back was turned. The headmistress, meanwhile, was heading across the playground to see what all the noise was about. And he’d still got this to go through with Year Three.
Neil closed his eyes and wished with all his being that he were somewhere else. When he opened them, he was still on a school playing field, camera poised and knee-deep in howling children. Just then, the sun went behind a particularly big, black cloud and it started to rain.
“Smellyfartingflippingfuckingsausages,” Neil muttered to himself.