He called Stewart that afternoon. In the background was the heavy thud of a jackhammer working through cement.
‘Hey, Stew, it’s Andrew. How are you?’
‘Andrew? Good, man, just at work.’ He imagined Stewart on site, in his hard hat and business shirt.
‘Just wondering if you’ve got time for a beer before I head back to Berlin?’
‘We’re busy over the weekend, mate. Could we make it next week instead?’
‘Next week should be okay; I’ll let you know the day. How about you come over to my apartment in Darlinghurst? I’ll be there for a few days before I fly back.’
‘Sure, man, sounds good.’ Stewart sounded friendly but distracted, and Andrew couldn’t bring himself to say that all he really wanted from Stewart were the contact details for Kirsten’s parents. He didn’t feel he could ask for those details over the telephone.
•
On Saturday morning, he called Pippa to find out Phoebe’s dress size. That afternoon, he walked around level six at David Jones. Among the racks of small clothing, the shorts and jumpsuits in pastels for babies and primary colours for toddlers, he felt conspicuous. He felt large and grotesque, as if with every move he might be about to knock something from its place.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ a woman asked. She was wearing a black jacket and a pencil skirt that made her movements look restricted. Her eyebrows were drawn at two sharp angles over her eyes.
‘Oh, I’m looking for a dress,’ he said.
‘Did you have anything particular in mind?’
‘Well, I’m thinking of an off-white colour.’
‘Well, let me see. How old is your daughter?’
‘Oh, it’s not for my daughter. But she’s eleven.’ His cheeks flushed with a heat that felt visible. The woman’s face went blank, as though she was trying to find some other reason for him to be looking at dresses for girls. ‘It’s for a photo shoot. I have to take a young girl’s photograph,’ he said and she looked at him as though she’d just bitten into something she didn’t like the taste of very much.
‘I see.’ She led him around the shop floor and showed him some dresses, lifting the plastic hangers from their stands and holding the dresses against her body to show him how they might look, but she turned her face away from him as she spoke. Her mouth was set in a serious line.
In the end, he settled on a cream dress with a lace collar. He thought the texture would prevent the photograph from appearing too flat. As he walked away from the counter after paying for it, he could feel the woman’s eyes on him, aware that the world was less forgiving of him than it had once been, less prepared to assume his good intentions.
•
He had booked the studio for Monday and Tuesday. He woke early on Monday morning and packed his equipment into the car he had hired. The morning light was sparse and cast no shadows. At the studio, he had already set up the screen and lighting. He’d used his old lights and screens, the first equipment he’d ever owned, and the pieces had a battered look about them, scarred from overuse. The walls and floor of the room he’d hired were concrete, and the echoes of him shifting equipment returned to him off the walls. Until he had his equipment unpacked, until he had the lights arranged in the way he wanted, he could not work, he felt uneasy. When the studio was finally set up, he could believe that it might happen, that the idea he had for the photograph might become something tangible and real.
He took the parts of his camera from the case, twisting the cool metal lens until it snapped into place. His movements were quick and reflexive, like a soldier assembling a gun. He had started taking photos in quick succession, to check the lights and the set-up. It settled him, being reminded of how the camera could give attention to things, ordinary things, objects which are usually given little regard.
He set the camera up on a tripod and held the lens in his hand until he felt it turn warm. He always waited for this moment, when his camera felt like an extension of his own hands. The camera made a crunch when he pushed the button down; there was something so certain about that sound. The jolt of the flash each time he pressed the button, striking the walls with its white, sanitised light. No matter what else was happening in his life, he could always count on what the camera would do; it would always take the world, flip it upside down and restore it again the right way up on paper.
He’d asked Pippa to arrive at ten, to give him time to set up and talk to the assistant he’d hired for the day, a woman who had been recommended to him by a photographer he’d been in a group show with. He would need her to monitor the laptop for the test shots on the digital camera, changing the film in his camera, holding up light screens and moving lights. But fifteen minutes early, he heard a knock on the metal roller door to the studio, the clash of metal as the door shook in its frame.
‘Hi,’ Pippa said, standing with a hand on her hip, her sunglasses still covering her eyes. Pippa was not much taller than her daughter and from a distance, in a certain light, the two of them might have been sisters. Phoebe was wearing jeans, standing behind her mother, and when she emerged, he noticed something new about her, an expression that hid some submerged anger that must have been directed at him. This was the conflict people felt when they had their photograph taken: curious to see an image of themselves, yet aware that a camera isn’t always kind.
‘I’m afraid today and tomorrow could be very boring for you,’ he said to Phoebe as he led them into the studio. ‘Photography is a lot of fiddling. Taking the picture is actually the quickest part. And you should drink as much water as you can because the lights can be hot to stand under.’ He unscrewed the plastic lid from a bottle of water and handed it to her. She hesitated before she took it from him.
The assistant arrived ten minutes late, a short, sturdy woman with dark hair. She was carrying a large coffee in her hand. When he shook her hand, her grip was firm. He directed her to the laptop, then produced the dress he had chosen for Phoebe. The dress had a low neckline. He had the idea that he would include her shoulders in the shot; he wanted to expose the tenderness of her young skin.
Phoebe and Pippa went to the bathroom together so Phoebe could get changed and a wave of nerves took hold of him; he was aware of how easy it would be for things to go wrong. The difference between success and failure in his profession was a very fine line.
Pippa came out first. She moved close to him and spoke in a low voice. ‘So, you are going to give us the chance to look at the photographs first, aren’t you? Before they’re exhibited?’ Her voice rose in pitch as she spoke.
He nodded. ‘I can give you a week, but then I’ll need to send them to my gallery. The exhibition is in March and I can’t keep the gallery waiting.’
‘Okay, a week should be enough time to decide.’ She turned her head as Phoebe walked out of the bathroom. The girl had her hands folded over her chest.
‘Is it the right size?’ he asked.
‘It’s a bit baggy,’ Pippa said, straightening the dress across Phoebe’s shoulders from behind.
‘That’s okay, I can fix it with clips at the back,’ he said.
‘It looks gay,’ Phoebe said, looking at the concrete floor with the hostility of a person who resents doing something they don’t understand. In her eyes were needles of doubt.
‘Phoebe!’ Pippa said. ‘Sorry, she picks up that sort of language from school.’
‘Do you mind?’ he said, moving towards her. ‘I’ll pull the tags off.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder and felt her melt beneath him, like a small animal that offers no resistance to being held. He broke the plastic tags in his hands.
‘Take a seat on the stool there if you wouldn’t mind, Phoebe,’ he said.
In her dress, under the lights, her limbs were pale, skinny and as supple as green wood.
‘Okay, Phoebe, could you put your hands on your lap for me?’ He demonstrated for her.
She arranged her hands, but she still looked prim, like someone who should have been wearing a shirt buttoned all the way up to her chin.
‘I’ll take a few test shots. The light will be quite bright at first.’ There was a blitz from the strobe and the slow whine of the recharge. He checked the test shots on his laptop behind him.
‘I need to sharpen the focus,’ he said over his shoulder to the assistant, who was kneeling in front of the laptop.
He closed the aperture down and focused on Phoebe’s eyes.
‘Okay, looking at the floor for me,’ he said. ‘And push your shoulders back.’
She sat slumped, the way all self-conscious children did, defending herself against the world. Phoebe looked towards her mother and then did what he’d asked. He took a few shots that way. While he was talking to his assistant again, checking the pictures on the larger screen, Pippa had moved closer to Phoebe. He stepped back behind the camera and her presence in front of the lens sent a ripple of annoyance through him. He was so used to being in control of the situation.
‘Okay, Phoebe, could you look over to the right for me? At the wall and then slowly turn your head and look at the camera.’
She looked at her mother again.
‘It’s okay, Phoeb,’ Pippa said. He could hear the strain in her voice as she tried to sound reassuring.
When he was back behind the lens he saw again why he wanted to photograph the girl. The left side of her face drooped, as though that half of her face had been anaesthetised, but the other side of her face remained unaffected. He thought whatever it was that made her face that way must have happened when she was young, because she didn’t appear to be aware of it. Her eyes were green rather than hazel, a colour without impurity, like glass held against light.
The sound of the flash recharging whined in the room, a piercing sound like a defibrillator, resonating somewhere deep in his ear. He had come to dread that sound, the sound of expectation, of the camera waiting for him to take the next photograph, for his next moment of inspiration.
It was difficult work that day. Phoebe’s expression was reluctant; she looked at the camera as though she suspected it of wanting to cause her harm.
‘Okay, could you just relax your face for me?’ he said. When the right half of her face tensed it gave her a strange, slanted appearance. ‘And look at the lens like you’re looking straight through me and pretend I’m not here at all.’ She smiled self-consciously. He stood and felt a twinge in his lower back. He tried not to allow his frustration to show.
‘Now stand up,’ he said. ‘And just let your arms flop out. Shake your legs and relax. Pretend we aren’t even in a studio, pretend we’re at home. In your lounge room.’ She smiled and looked at Pippa, who nodded.
Around twelve he stopped, clapped his hands and said, ‘Okay, who’s hungry? Should we go out and get some lunch?’ He wanted them to eat together, to share simple food and ordinary, lunchtime conversation. He would ask Phoebe about school and try to ascertain if she had any sense of the way the world saw her. He would muster his charm and try to find some way to make her trust him.
But Pippa looked at Phoebe carefully after he spoke, as though she could see something in her that he could not, some small, invisible complaint. The silent communication that takes place between a parent and child, flowing on the currents of their moods. He thought of how his own mother knew him, but also chose not to know him, of the things she understood about him that no-one else knew and of what she wilfully overlooked.
‘I think I’ll take Phoebe down to Broadway. We’ll get some sushi while we’re there. She likes sushi. I need to buy some groceries anyway.’ He took his wallet from his pocket and tried to give her some money for their lunch, but Pippa refused to take it.
He stayed at the studio and didn’t eat lunch. He rarely ate when he was taking photographs, existing instead in a state of heightened anxiety. His assistant went out and came back with a sandwich.
When Phoebe and her mother came back after lunch he continued working, but by three in the afternoon, Phoebe started to yawn and slouch and he knew that he had pushed her as far as he could that day. Her posture became tight, drawing in on herself. Ordinarily this was the part of the day when his shots started to work, the models relaxed and the threat of what the camera might take from them receded to the back of their minds.
‘Okay, Phoebe,’ he said and stood. His lower back felt stiff and he continued to feel hunched while standing upright. ‘You can get changed now. We’ll start again tomorrow morning.’ She stood up quickly, tugging at the dress as she moved towards the bathroom to get changed. Her sudden relief at finishing made her appear taller.
As he watched them go, part of him felt that by allowing her to leave he was giving up. He wanted to keep her there and try to extract the image he needed from her, but she was a child and he couldn’t place on her the expectations he had of himself. He told the assistant she could leave for the day too, then he stayed on in the studio alone, scrolling through the photos he’d taken, but he knew he had nothing he could use. There was always this sickness at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to make it work, when he had to entertain the possibility of abandoning his idea. It was a sort of floating, the feeling of returning slowly to earth from a great height, like a cinder caught in a current of cool air.
•
Outside the studio a blue light had fallen, shadows were starting to swallow the day. He walked down the lane and out onto Broadway, where the cars surged forward with the change of lights. The people walking past were young, university students, carrying books and wearing backpacks. He remembered that age and to him it didn’t even seem so long ago. He had sped away from that age too quickly, without really being aware of what he was moving away from. All his life, he had been racing and it was only now he wondered what place it was he had hoped to reach so quickly.
At that age, the future had seemed large, unknown and daunting, but now it was the past that billowed up behind him, rising like a cloud of dust.