Captured Shadows (5 page)

"But we probably shouldn't drink gin together no more."

Archie arrived late to the studio the following Monday, unusually for him, and all morning he seemed quiet and distracted. I felt compelled many times to ask whether something was wrong – that is, something other than the obvious – but each time I took a breath to speak I changed my mind and left the words where they were, trapped and silent on my tongue. Our friendship, since that stilted conversation in the park, had become hesitant and strained as though we had travelled back in time to become near-strangers again, who spoke formally and never made jokes and certainly never touched. My hands wanted desperately to reach out for him, and not only for an embrace; I wished I could simply touch his arm to stop him as he passed me on the stairs, or tap his shoulder so he would turn and look at me, but all I had managed for days were fleeting glances, hastily turned aside whenever he caught me looking.

A while after midday, with barely a word having been exchanged between us throughout the last four hours, Archie slipped out of the front door and wandered away down the street. I watched him from the window, curious; there were deliveries that needed to be made, but he had gone out empty-handed. I thought perhaps he had picked up Mr Everett's habit of taking himself off for a walk when the studio was quiet, but ten minutes later he returned with a couple of hot baked potatoes from the seller on the corner and handed one of the steaming newspaper parcels to me just as I was retiring to the tiny back office to eat my usual bread and cheese.

"What's this for?" I said stupidly, and the smallest of smiles flickered onto Archie's mouth and disappeared again.

"For eating, idiot."

"Of course. I mean..."

My words faded to nothing. I had the feeling he knew what I meant, and that he chose the chair closest to mine in lieu of a verbal answer. The warmth of his thigh against mine was a terrible distraction, one that gave me a giddy sensation in my stomach of falling, and
I
ate my hot potato too quickly to disguise my discomfort and only made it worse by burning my mouth.

"Bet nobody's ever gave you a potato as a peace offering before, hey?"

"I didn't realise we were at war, Wilkes."

"Not war. Only..." His words faded as mine had earlier, then he repeated, "
Wilkes
," somewhat bitterly under his breath and began twisting his greasy piece of newspaper around itself until some of it tore. "You won't call me Archie? After, you know, everything?"

I was more careful with my newspaper pages, folding them slowly and neatly while inside me I scrambled madly for the right words. My sudden anger surprised me, and I carried on folding to see whether the feeling might disperse if I gave something else my full attention instead, until the paper was a thick, tiny cube and the grease from its compressed layers was dripping down my wrist to stain my cuff with ink and butter.

"After you've pretended not to know me for days?"

"Be fair, Jim, you've barely spoken to me either."

"Yes, because you've not spoken to
me
."

"Bleeding hell, is this what it's come to? I'm sorry, alright? I didn't know what to say to make it better so I never said a thing and that didn't work neither so I bought you a bloody potato and if
that
don't work I might just go and pick a bridge to fling myself off because I'm all out of ideas. This ain't something I done before, you know."

"This?" I echoed cautiously, wondering exactly which part of this he meant, and he made a vague sort of hand gesture between us.

"This. Fighting with my pal and trying to make it right."

"It's not something I'm particularly fluent in myself."

"In that case, can't we go back to how we was and forget all the boring awkward making amends?"

I couldn't decide which was worse: the thought that the last few days had affected him so little that he could talk about ignoring them as easily as one ignores other people's conversations in a crowded place, or the thought of letting this painful silence continue indefinitely. Perhaps he sensed it, for he leaned forward then with his elbows upon his knees and his fingers clutched in his hair, muttering oaths to himself.

"I'm doing this all wrong. I should have wrote a speech or something."

I began to say something – some clumsy reassurance, a fumbling argument, I don't remember anything but the unexpected movement of Archie shifting out of his chair and onto his knees on the floorboards in front of me. Somewhere deep down I felt a hot flicker of lust, for which I loathed myself the instant I saw the expression in his eyes; there was nothing lascivious about his action, I realised at once. It was desperation, and he was almost weeping with it.

"James, just tell me once and I'll never ask you again, I swear it. Are you completely against doing them pictures?"

I stared at him then, unable to form the words to ask why he was so anxious to take part in Mr Everett's scheme suddenly, after all that had been broken between us by the mere mention of the idea before. Archie stared back earnestly, green eyes glimmering behind tears that somehow seemed to well and well without quite gathering the weight to fall from his lashes, and I felt the squeeze of his hand on my own; I remember feeling irrationally embarrassed by the inky, greasy mess upon my palm, as though that were the first thing that ought to have troubled me about our situation.

"Well?" he said eventually, when I remained shocked and silent. All I could do was shake my head: not to confirm or deny, but in some attempt to express how utterly dumbfounded I was by his change of heart.

"
Why
?" I managed eventually, and Archie's breath left him in a long, shuddering sigh as he dropped his eyes from mine, instead looking at our hands where they rested on my knee.

We sprang apart then, startled by the bell sounding above the front door, and Archie sat back on his heels and rubbed his eyes hard with his cuff, swearing fiercely under his breath. "Will you go?" he pleaded quietly. I ached to touch him again, his hand, his flushed cheeks, his wet eyes, his trembling chin, any part of him I could reach, but I couldn't trust myself to let him go if I did and somehow my voice came out sounding harder than I meant it to.

"Of course. Wash your face and join us when you're ready."

I left him so I might greet the customers and lead them to the sunny studio at the top of the building, untainted by the parts of our work that only ever operated underground and after dark. Within minutes Archie was there too, calm and professional, assisting me with the family's portrait and showing them where to stand, pulling funny faces to make the little girls giggle, as though he hadn't just been on his knees in tears, begging me for an impossible favour.

Later, when the family had left and Archie had gone to deliver a parcel of photographs, I found myself alone in the building and crushed, it felt, beneath the weight of my thoughts. I ascended the stairs to the platform on the roof, hoping the cool breeze and the weak sunlight might help my head not to hurt as much as it did, and there I sat against the wall with my knees drawn up to my body and my forehead resting upon them, breathing into the little space there so that the wool of my trousers became warm and almost damp. I didn't know how much time I had passed like that, but it was enough that when I raised my face again the wind chilled my heated skin and I had to half-close my eyes against the light of the sun which suddenly seemed overwhelming. It was footsteps that had roused me, and all I could do was wait where I was for Archie to join me and for things to become painful and strange again.

"Why are you on the floor?" he asked quietly, but instead of waiting for an answer he joined me and sat as I had before, hiding his face between his arms and knees. This time I felt reckless, made rash by confusion and longing and the warmth of his body beside mine, and I dropped my head to rest upon his shoulder. For a moment he stiffened in surprise; then he relaxed, slowly, and I felt his cheek and jaw press to my hair.

"You'll get oil on your face."

"I don't care."

Silence again. I felt as though I ought to prompt him to speak, to ask him what he was thinking back there in the office and why the matter of Mr Everett's photographs was so urgent to him, but I was frightened of disturbing this fragile new sense of peace between us. I only listened to him breathe. The sound was quiet, barely there at all, but still it seemed to blot out the noise of the streets below us.

After a long while he began to talk.

"Annie's sick. She's got asthma. It's been bad forever, seems as though she spends half her life gasping for breath. Bess had it too, and Tommy, but it ain't so bad for them no more so I expect Annie might grow out of it when she's older, but then there's days like Saturday when she faints and turns blue from not being able to breathe and all I can think is what's the use of hoping she might get better when she's older when every day I'm scared out my wits she won't even live past five. And I just thought, what if there was some money for a change and she could get out of London for a while and go somewhere nice where the air ain't all made of chimney smoke and fog? I don't know if it'd even help, but it couldn't hurt. And I couldn't think of no other way to make money than, you know,
that
. I shouldn't've said. I'm sorry I mentioned it, truly I am. I know it weren't fair to ask it of you, James."

I wondered afterwards how I might have responded had he not said
James
at the end. It was my name on his mouth that made me reply as I did – not the selfless desire to help a sick child, but the sound of my name on his lips and tongue, a quiet susurrating whisper spoken
close to my ear
, the formality of my Christian name turned into something secret and private like a plaited curl of lovers' hair hidden inside a locket.

I feel I might do anything in the world for you if you only asked
was what I wanted to say, but the connection between Archie and me on that rooftop seemed far too fragile for grand, romantic statements. Instead I said, as carelessly as I could manage, "Don't take Mr Everett's first offer. I'm certain we can haggle a better price for services as rare as ours," and Archie's broken, tearful laugh rang out to the sky.

When Mr Everett arrived later that day to prepare for the evening's work, Archie and I asked for a moment to speak with him.

We knew, of course, what we were in for by agreeing to his proposition. What we didn't quite expect was his avaricious decision that there was no time like the present.

"Don't lace it so tightly this time," Archie said, when I went to tie his corset as I usually did for the girls. He was scared, I could tell he was scared out of his wits no matter how hard he was trying to cover it with cheerfulness and jokes, and for a moment I let myself slip my arms around his narrow waist from where I was standing behind him. My hands lay there on the flat of Archie's stomach, fingers splayed across the brocade of his corset so I could feel the thrumming warmth of skin beneath the fabric, and I pressed gently until he let out a shaking sigh and leaned back against me. After a few seconds of contact he seemed to gather his courage and stepped away again so I could get at the laces.

"I'll be careful," I said softly, wishing we were anywhere else in the world but there.

"I know you will."

I didn't want to look at Mr Everett setting up the furniture in front of the painted backdrop, or Donald and Albert playing cards at the other end of the room while they waited for their turn, and I especially didn't want to look at May and Sally who were sitting on the table in their undergarments, swinging their legs and talking in low voices – about us, I suspected – so I kept my eyes on Archie's back instead, the fine brush of hairs there and the way his freckles looked like constellations. After I knotted Archie's corset I reached behind myself to tighten my own, pulling blindly at the laces and making a messy, haphazard bow. It felt strange, even drawn in as loosely as it was, like being trapped somewhere dark and slowly suffocating.

We didn't speak for a while after that. Words felt wrong, as though the sound of them would make this awful night happen more quickly than it already was. Standing there in silence, it was as though the possibility of this not happening was still available to us to reach out and take. Discussing it would make it real, and I couldn't bear that, not yet.

I wished I could say to Archie,
please don't think I don't want to. I do want to, but not here. Not like this
– but, fearful of how he might reply, I stayed silent and waited for Archie to speak first, which he never did.

I remembered the night last week, the reflected image of the two of us in the tall looking-glass and how all the queasy fear and awkwardness from before had seemed to melt away like smoke. It seemed unthinkable that so much could change in only seven days.

"I want a drink," Archie muttered abruptly, knifing through the silence between us and shredding it to ribbons. He stepped around me and went over to the table where the girls were, stealing the bottle of wine they had and drinking straight from its neck. Sally clipped him lightly round the ear for it, laughing, then refilled the cup she'd been drinking from and brought it over to where I was still standing, awkward and embarrassed in my frills and whalebone.

"I think Mr Everett's almost ready to start," she said, offering me the cup of wine and watching me with dark, concerned eyes while I drank half of it in a swallow.

I couldn't think of anything to say except a miserable, muted, "Yes."

"Do you want a hand?"

I couldn't think what she meant, until she raised her eyebrows and glanced down below my waist, and then I realised all in a flood of hot humiliation. I knew it shouldn't have come as a surprise – I'd been present at enough of these sessions to have seen how things were done, after all – and yet the shock was still there, this terrible sense of my life taking unwanted turns, as though driven by a mad coachman who refused to listen to reason.

I laughed, only because I didn't know how else to respond. I certainly didn't feel like laughing. "Why not?" I said, rendered helpless by the ticking of time, distracted by the sight of Archie submitting to May's fingers across the room. I sat on the footstool Mr Everett had placed in front of the backdrop and let her touch me, her hands easing my legs apart and then slipping between the layers of cotton where they split beneath me.

She was careful at first, holding my prick in her palm as though tes
ting its weight, as passionless
as feeling pieces of fruit at the market. I closed my eyes against a sudden, horrifying urge to cry when Sally slipped to her knees in front of me, but all she did was place a gentle kiss on my bare leg, just above the top of the stocking there.

"Things ain't that bad, you know, not once you get used to it," she said kindly. She started to stroke me gently and I tried, I honestly did, because if we had to do this thing at all then I at least wanted it to be over sooner rather than later, but nothing much happened and after a few minutes of work Sally stopped and sat back on her heels. I opened my eyes to see her looking at me sorrowfully, and that made me sicker than anything yet – the pity, the knowledge that once this happened I could never go back, like her. I thought of all those people who came to Mr Everett's studio, the number of times they'd told me how excited they were to be photographed, the way I always smiled at their enthusiasm and talked to them about why I loved my job as much as I did. But it was so much more than a job; it was the existence of photography at all, the science and wonder of it.
Like alchemy
, I always said,
or some sort of inconceivable magic. Like painting people with light. Capturing shadows in
salt and silver
.

You'll have this picture forever
, I told them.
In a hundred years your grandchildren's children will still have this picture. It's like a life after death.

Photographs last longer than we do.

And that was the danger, I thought, slumped miserably on the footstool while a prostitute pitied me and Archie kept giving me glances I didn't want to acknowledge. You could immortalise yourself on glass plates and paper positives more accurately than the greatest artist in the world could ever paint you, send your image out in the world to be sweated over by strangers – this instant of madness to help a desperate, begging friend was beyond the limits of my control now, and the thought of it was like being crushed.

"Come along, Archie, Jim."

Mr Everett. Sally gave me another quick, commiserating smile, and retired to the table where May and Archie were, taking the now empty wine bottle out of his hands and giving him a little shove towards the painted backdrop in front of the camera. He moved reluctantly, not quite meeting my eyes now the time had come. He'd had more luck getting ready, standing up at half-mast against the fabric of his drawers from the touch of May's hands, and above the top of his loose corset I could see the little dark spots of his nipples, made somehow more obscene by being half-hidden.

"Archie, lad, why don't you sit on Jim's knee? Lift up your drawers first, let's see you."

He moved to obey, taking a few deep breaths and going red in the face when he lifted the fabric and revealed himself through the wide split, and somehow that was the moment when things changed. He sat down awkwardly, half seated on a sliver of footstool beside me with one leg hooked over my thigh, indecent and ungainly but too embarrassed to move to make it better. I could see Archie's hand, fingers clamped tightly around a frill of lace on his drawers and how he had bitten all the nails down until some of them had bled. I took his hand, then, pushing my own shame aside and only wanting to ease my friend's. I uncramped Archie's raw fingers from the handful of lace and, courage swelling up from who knows where, brought our clasped hands to my mouth to kiss each one in turn, flinching from the bright explosion of the flash as Mr Everett exposed the plate.

"I wish I never said anything," Archie mumbled, muffling the words with a thumbnail in his mouth until I pulled that hand to me and began kissing him there as well – not for the benefit of the camera, but because Archie's voice was wavering and tearful and I didn't know how else to help. "James, I'm so sorry, it ain't fair, you shouldn't—"

"It's for Annie," I said firmly, but in a low voice that didn't reach the others, telling myself as much as I was telling Archie. "If you can think of any other way to make as much money as she needs then would you please just tell me and we'll run away and do it right now."

That made him laugh, a bright and unexpected sound in the awfulness of the situation we were in, and he leaned back against my chest like earlier – only now, of course, we were being watched by five pairs of eyes and the lens of a camera, expectant and leering in a way that no box on legs had any right to be, and whatever magic there had been in front of the looking-glass or in that tentative moment of contact on the roof was gone.

"What now, Mr Everett?"

"Lift Jim's drawers, if you please. And a hand on him. You too, Jim, put your hand on Archie. No, the other hand or you hide yourself too much. There, yes. And look down at each other – hold still."

I couldn't see Archie's face but I could hear his quick, light breathing. For a second or two I kept my eyes fixed on a loop of pulled thread in the cotton by my wrist, not wanting to see my hand wrapped around Archie or, even worse, Archie's hand wrapped around me. Already I could feel myself hot and hardening at the touch – but then I felt the twitch of Archie's prick in my grasp as well and embarrassment seemed rather pointless. I found myself looking, but not at my hand; instead I looked at Archie's face and found his green eyes gazing back, startlingly
bright
and full of
a
strange
sort of emotion that I couldn't quite
identify
but knew was no longer that desperate sorrow from before.

"By God, that's it!" Mr Everett exclaimed. The flash powders burst again, dazzling the edges of my vision when I looked towards the camera. "No, not at me – at Archie, if you please. Keep your hand on him there, and look into his eyes."

The footstool was cramped, not big enough for both of us. There seemed to be too many limbs all of a sudden, draped legs in their black stockings and bare white arms all over the place, and a rush of shivers fled through my body when Archie moved his hand slightly, looking at me like a question which I answered with a barely-there nod.

I had never been touched like this before, only by my own hands in the dead of night on the times when the blankets rubbed against me in such a maddening way that I knew I would never fall asleep without taking care of things. Doing this work for Mr Everett had taken away all of the mystery and most of the longing; instead, bare skin had become a business, just another prop to be methodically posed and captured to plates.

Not now, not here on the wrong side of the camera, and not with Archie. I could feel the little hairs on my arms standing up, taste the trace of sweat when I licked my lips, and beneath the press of my palm and my curled fingers the flesh there seemed to throb and harden, swelling in my grasp as my own was doing in Archie's.

"I can't look at you like this and not kiss you," Archie said softly. His free hand came up, slipping over the side of my neck and into the hair that lay, damp with perspiration, against my nape. "Can I say things like that?"

"I think we're beyond impropriety now." I moved, bringing my face closer to Archie's but not to kiss him, not yet; I just rested my forehead there against the blond of Archie's temple as the flash tray ignited again and Mr Everett called instructions I didn't want to follow.

* * *

"All right, lads, I'm out of plates. You can get changed now."

"What," Albert said, only now looking up from his card game, "you mean
out
of plates? I hope we're still getting paid, Mr Everett, else it's a whole lost evening."

The discussion grew heated across the room, but Archie and I stayed where we were, arms round each other's waists, pricks still stiffened and ruining the drape of our drawers. I let him go, reluctance making me linger, and Archie said, bewildered, "Is that it?"

"What?"

"Do we wait for this—" he gestured down at us "—to go down, put our trousers on, go home?"

"That's what they do," I said, nodding at Albert and Donald who were still arguing for payment with Mr Everett, and Sally and May who had joined in as well. "It's a job. I mean," I added quietly, "for
them
it is."

Archie softened at that. "But not for you?" he asked, hopeful and not quite meeting my eyes until I drew him closer, catching a little noise in my throat at the pressure between us, and kissed his flushed cheek.

"Come with me."

We slipped out of the room unnoticed, and I led Archie by the hand through the darkened hallway and outside into the walled yard where the privy stood in the corner, an unpleasant brick prison with a creaking wooden door. As it closed behind us Archie's hands were already in my hair, holding my head close as though frightened I might change my mind, kissing me in the darkness but missing my lips, landing wetly on my chin instead. He laughed at himself, not embarrassed but exhilarated, and with his fingers he found my mouth so he could tell where to aim the next kiss. This one landed true and I felt almost faint under his touch, back pressed against the rough wooden door and blood thundering through my pulses, parting my lips under the press of Archie's and feeling the velvet slide of his tongue.