Chapter 70

Nothing happened of course. They got home and received pro-forma thank you notes from Rifkind and Butler. Everything about AIMS was an exercise in frustration and patience. So instead Andrew thought about women. He had gone to see Tony about booking the studio.

“Hey Andrew, I wasn’t sure I was going to see you again after those two clowns sabotaged your birthday shoot.”

“Not your fault Tony. I was annoyed with them but then remembered what you and Danny told me about favours owed and acknowledged. The whole idea of people who just take. I have dumped these two into that category. I am unlikely to see them again but if by some chance they needed a favour in the future then they would be shit out of luck. It is all I can do.”

“That is the right attitude. A couple of guys have had quiet words to me about them. Kenny in particular is on thin ice. Anyway, enough of them, how’s things?”

“Good, great in fact. I came in to ask how much it cost to rent the studio for a couple of hours, and if you would rent it to me.”

“Of course I’ll rent it to you. It is normally £20 an hour but I will give you two hours for the price of one.”

“Thank you. When is it available?”

Tony went and found his diary with the different bookings marked. He and Andrew agreed on an evening near the end of July.

“I am guessing Monica is going to model for you again?”

Andrew nodded.

“She was as upset as you were at those two. But I have a little money saved and I want to practice working with a model. I think it will be a slower pace. You know what I can be like, geeky and fastidious. I will play around with settings, lighting, shade, depth of field. All the while trying to deal with the fact it is Monica.”

Tony laughed.

“I was going to say you two are an odd pair of friends but you are not a normal fuckwit teenager. I am nearly 15 years older than you but I find you easy to chat to. And Monica has been modelling for us for more than four years now, since not long before you first met her. Yet she is friends with the schoolboy.”

“I know, it confuses me a lot to be honest. But then I give my head a shake and don’t question my good fortune.”

“You have that right. Do you think you are going to do more studio shoots, work with models?”

“I think I will see how this next shoot goes. If I burn through five or six rolls of film then I will need to review them and.”

Andrew stopped.

“I have to figure out why I am photographing her. It is extremely unlikely that any other model will be comfortable with me doing naked shots. So I need to think about who and why I am photographing someone. I am a reasonable photographer, know all the essentials and have learned some useful skills. But it is not going to be a career. I am going to be off to university in two years to study Physics or Engineering. Do you mind me asking you why you have the Friday night club?”

Tony opened his mouth to reply but then paused.

“I was going to say several things but I had to stop. Because I can seems a poor answer but it is probably the main one now. At first there were lots of reasons, improving my skills, learning to work with a model, but the club has been running twice a month on a Friday night for more than five years. I have packets and packets of prints and negatives of all the women I have shot. But half of them are scattered around the flat upstairs. It is not as if I am doing anything with them.

“All of us have our own businesses or are wealthy enough to enjoy this hobby. I think we all like taking pictures of naked women. Even the guys who are married. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. Once or twice when it has been the same two models for six months then there gets to be a sameness to the shots. That is what made the last shoot so annoying. Monica has been a model for nearly four years. We have shot her more than 25 or 30 times. It wasn’t like she was a new model. If anything we have started to use her less. There is only so many shots you can take of her tits and arse.

“Go on, you better get out of here before you have me questioning the whole club.”

Andrew laughed and shook Tony’s hand before heading out. That had been three weeks earlier and now the day of the shoot had arrived. And it was utterly different than the first attempt. Tony had let them into the studio before leaving them to it.

“Remember I am Monica. Be clear and demanding of what you want. You are the photographer and I will follow your direction. And don’t beat around the bush. If you want me to stick my tits or arse out then tell me. Don’t get all coy. Okay?”

“Yes dear.”

Andrew dodged out of the way of a swipe.

“Arse.”

“Yes, stick it out please.”

The two of them headed over to the sets laughing. Monica had the same dress on as at the first shoot three months earlier but when she got to the set she unbuttoned it, quickly removed it and stood naked in front of Andrew. She had been wearing no underwear.

“We will go through all the usual shots in the run up to this moment but I thought you should start here.”

Andrew had seen Monica naked four weeks earlier and yet this was infinitely more intimate. Andrew smiled as he realised how Monica wasn’t really following the photographer’s directions yet. And he wasn’t about to complain. But then the geek and scientist within him kicked in. There was a statuesque model standing naked in front of him so he started to work on composing the shots. At first he let Monica assume the poses but soon he was getting her to move her body for him. Andrew was drawn to her legs and arse. He really was turning into an arse man. Monica stood wearing heels and a smile, her back to Andrew but looking over her left shoulder at him.

“I don’t want bored indifference and I definitely don’t want feigned ecstasy either. I want to see the real you, the mischievous smile, that glint of wickedness that I know is lurking right below the surface. You are standing here naked in front of me, letting this 16 year old schoolboy photograph your magnificent body. Think about how many taboos you are breaking. Imagine the look on the faces of these old shrews that you work with.”

Andrew wondered if he would have to remove one of the lights. Monica seemed to radiate happiness, cheekiness, appropriate given the view, and Andrew felt the shots were much better. Finally Andrew got her back into some clothes and it was then that Andrew made an important discovery. Often women look even better when they are wearing clothes, either partially or fully. Huge amounts of it were in his mind. But when Monica put the dress back on, still wearing no underwear, that knowledge influenced how Andrew saw the shot, and how Monica as the model acted. From his time with Moira Andrew knew the mind was a powerful and important part of sexuality. That evening just confirmed it.

And the two of them had fun. Andrew took his time at certain points, and did take the time to play around with the lighting, noting down a lot of the settings as he tried different shots. It was clear to both of them that this was not going to be the only time they did this.

“Would you model for me again, every couple of months, while I work on improving my skills?”

“Of course I will. You know that I enjoy this. So sometime in September once you are back at school?”

“Yes. Would you like me turn up in my school uniform, maybe wear it while I am shooting?”

“Stop it, you are so bad. Of course you need to wear your uniform. You can’t wander round the studio with nothing on, that is my job.”

Andrew had been trying to tease Monica and make her blush, but his attempt rebounded and he flushed at her retort.

“I should know better than to cross swords with you.”

“You keep your sword to yourself.”

It was the full stop to the session, as both of them were laughing, Andrew while fanning his blushing face.

“I surrender.”

A very naked Monica came up to him and kissed him gently on the cheek before going through to the little changing room and getting dressed. Five minutes later the two of them were standing chatting to Tony.

“I heard a lot of laughter in there tonight. It sounded like it went well.”

“It is different when there is only one photographer. I hadn’t realised how I never stopped when it is the lot of you. There is always someone shouting instructions. Tonight when Andrew had to rewind his film and load a new roll then there was a pause. Moving a light, changing settings, it was more, I am not sure what; the whole session was relaxed and fun, but maybe it was nothing more than not as frantic.”

As usual they walked over to George IV Bridge to get their separate buses home.

“Thank you for that tonight Andrew.”

“Should it not be me thanking you?”

“Nah, I had a great time. I loved it when you told me to just be myself. I could see you wanting to tell me to be Maggie not Monica. You didn’t need to say it, I understood what you meant. I have been doing those, what did you call them, feigned ecstasy faces for most of my shoots for, well forever. I don’t think I have smiled as much or laughed as much in a session since I started modelling. You made it fun. And then there are all the subtle and blatant undercurrents to the shoot as well. Again, you used the right words. I am breaking a lot of taboos doing these shoots, and I love it. Anyway off and get your bus and stop corrupting us poor older women.”

They both laughed but then Maggie pulled Andrew down and kissed him. She was tasting forbidden fruit and they both knew it.

“Enjoy your summer Andrew.”

Andrew spent the journey home rationalising monthly photo sessions. He needed a long shower when he got home.

The following week Andrew met up with Julian and they talked about the future.

“It is the end of July, the agreed upon time to see where we are with JA and whether it makes sense to keep trying with Jullesand. What do you think?”

“The way that Leslie talked when she was explaining the program, I know that the program that will be successful, we just have to get our foot in the door somewhere. Plus I am learning a ton. The database techniques in the latest course are great. We can use all of them on the program, free up space to store more data. I want to keep going. What about you two?”

“We are the same, we want to continue. I agree with you about Leslie’s presentation. I think we will be able to sell some software. For me personally it is the opportunity to put the techniques from the course into practice. It is also a way to make money. The most significant way to make money that I will have for many years. What about the future? I have two more years of school. Do we commit each year and see how that year goes? I have no idea where I am going to university, I am not 100% convinced that I even need to go to university.”

“You are thinking about working in the computer industry full time? And not even go to university? Wow. Although I always tend to forget that you are at university already. You would have a degree at 18.”

Julian stopped and thought for a minute.

“I like the idea of a review every year. Unless things go badly, I would assume we have two more years before we get to the crunch. Let’s see what happens. I think we should go hard at it for the next year and see how we do.”

They were agreed. Andrew confirmed this with Leslie and on the first Saturday in August in 1981, almost exactly two and a half years after Faith died Andrew finally told someone the whole truth. Leslie was there and it was a pretty raw hour. They talked about the two months at the infirmary, talked about Friday January 26, 1979 the day their paths diverged, and talked about the aftermath of Faith’s death. The goal to make a difference, fund research to find a cure for cancer. How much money they wanted to make. The only thing that neither of them talked about was the final weekend. Andrew didn’t know that he could talk about that with anyone. Julian got pretty upset at the points where they got upset, especially the Friday where Andrew got the all clear and Faith got a death sentence.

“Fuck me guys, that is the.” Words failed him. “Saddest, most moving, most inspiring thing I have ever heard. Andrew, you go to dinner with the Campbells every week. You lived and their daughter died and they have you round to dinner every week?”

“It goes back to the conversations in the last days of Faith’s life. I hold her memory dear, I try to live a life she would be proud of. That is why I am so driven, in some ways I am trying to cram in two lives. Leslie’s mum and dad came to see the fire and the bond that Leslie and I have and they support it. Brian is my financial advisor, everything I do with money I discuss with him first. So there you go. The only other people who know this are our parents, no one else. We thought that you deserved to know the truth. It will also help you understand my mercenary tendencies.”

“First of all thank you for trusting me. That is a pretty intense story and I can understand why you have never even hinted at it. I know that everyone is amazed at the strength of the relationship between the two of you and that the story as normally presented just does not seem to adequately explain it. I will go and think about the company and what we are trying to do if we succeed. You have given me a lot to think about.”

The following weekend was when Andrew was going to showcase his prowess with a hockey stick. When Dave found out why he was missing work at the Food Bank the following week he laughed but did Andrew a favour and did not tell Gord. He would never have heard the end of it. Julian called on the Monday morning and told Andrew he would be over to collect him within the hour. When he arrived he was excited.

“Bring all your camera stuff. June agreed to take some photographs. Are you free this afternoon?”

“Bloody hell, calm down. Yes I am free all day. Let me get my gear and some rolls of film.”

Twenty minutes later they were on our way. Julian was going to drop Andrew off at his house and then go and collect June. He wanted to do the shoot at the house. Julian’s mum was already away and his dad was leaving to play golf shortly. Andrew laughed at his enthusiasm and then remembered his own excitement during the shoot with Tanvi. Never mind the shoots with Monica.