Chapter 77

The start of 1982 was as great as the end of the previous year. Andrew had surprised Maggie and given her an envelope of money. Before she could misinterpret what it meant he had explained, inevitably blushing.

“When I am photographing you I am always drawn to your legs and arse. I don’t know why I am wired that way but I have to accept that I am. So I would like you to go shopping and buy whatever you want as long as it highlights those features.”

“So you don’t like me for my mind?”

Andrew knew that Maggie was toying with him.

“If you could dress your mind in a short tight skirt then yes.”

Maggie whacked his arm and laughed at him.

“Do you have any preferences?”

“No, you know what looks good on you. The last time when you lowered your skirt, holy moly. You need no help from me, surprise me.”

“Will your heart cope with it?”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Do you want to come shopping with me? You could have a say. This feels like a delayed Christmas shopping trip.”

Andrew hadn’t considered this, never having been dragged shopping by a woman before.

“You have this distinction in your own mind about who you are day to day, Maggie, versus your model identity, Monica. Although it is Maggie that is shopping, you will be shopping for Monica. Fuck, even for me that was an incoherent sentence. What I am trying to say is that I don’t want to go shopping with you for clothes for Monica. When you are Monica I can talk about your legs and arse, as if that is all that is important. If I was out shopping with you it seems wrong, like I shouldn’t be thinking of you that way. Which is just fucked up because you are the same person.”

Andrew shook his head. He doubted any of that made any sense. He was surprised when Maggie smiled and patted his hand.

“Modelling is a job, a role, like acting in some ways. It is surprising, but in a good way, that you see Monica as a role I play rather than my whole being. But I understand what you are trying to say. I will go shopping and find a few things to blow your mind. Normally it is all lacy bras and tight tops. It is a different challenge to dress the other side of me. All before you undress me again.”

Andrew had to laugh with her. Every time he chatted with Maggie she teased him, and he obligingly blushed. When he went to see Tony to book the studio Tony asked an unexpected question.

“Can I see the photos that you take at the sessions with Monica? Have you talked to her about showing them to other people?”

“We haven’t really talked about it. She knows that I develop them here but I have never asked her. Why?”

“I will hear the two of you when you are in here, you can’t hear any of the words, but the general sounds carry upstairs to the flat. There is a lot of laughter between the two of you and Monica made a throwaway comment a couple of weeks ago. It was almost under her breath but she compared the session we had just finished with one of yours and not favourably. I don’t remember the exact words but it was something like ‘these sessions are a lot more fun with Andrew’, something like that. Like I said it was a mutter under her breath and I think I was the only person to hear it. So I wanted to see the prints and see if there was a difference.”

“I can ask her. I don’t really know the rules about showing pictures to other people. Do you have to ask the model?”

Even as he was saying that Andrew remembered that he had shown some of the photographs to Leslie already.

“No, they are your pictures you can do with them what you want. It is only if they are going to be published in any way that you have to get a model release form. That allows you the photographer the right to try and sell the pictures. It is how the professional industry works, all the stuff you see in the top shelf magazines. The model knows why she is being photographed, the photographer is trying to sell them and it protects everyone. Look at someone like Monica. None of us could submit her photo to the Sun for instance as a potential Page 3 girl. Even if we did they would want a release from the model before they would accept the photo and use it. Otherwise can you imagine her reaction if one day her dad opens the paper and there is his daughter and she had no idea it was going to happen. Some of the models we have used over the years have been professionals and know that the pictures could be published. But most of the women are amateurs or semi-professional at best. Family life, family members and people at work don’t know they do this. That is why the modelling fees are quite small, we are photographing them but they know we can’t do anything with the photographs, they are for our own use. If we wanted to use the photos commercially then the modelling fee would be higher, effectively you are paying to get the model to sign the release form.”

Another layer of mystery was peeled away. Andrew had considered none of this.

“Wow, there is a lot to consider.”

“Exactly. So you can show the photos to anyone you want, they are your photos, but most of us check that the model is okay with that. Nearly all are but it is a courtesy.”

“Okay, thanks for all that Tony. Given that Monica has modelled for you tens of times I presume it won’t be an issue but I will check.”

The shoot itself was sheer torture. Andrew did take some shots of Monica from the front but two thirds of the shots were of her back. There was a lot of checking of seams on her stockings, smoothing her legs, making sure the stockings were sitting right. Monica’s calves were tight in the heels she was wearing and her thighs and bum were breathtaking. As Andrew was taking the different shots he was considering the intricacies of the male mind. Monica had finished the previous set naked, not even wearing her heels just a smile. But then he had watched her redress, clip on the suspender belt, attach the stockings, pull a tiny pair of knickers over her great arse. And it was captivating. He thought getting a woman naked was the epitome of sexiness, there could be nothing sexier. But that year Andrew was repeated shown he was completely wrong. Oddly he was fascinated by the pale skin at the top of her stockings. The contrast between the dark band at the end of the stocking and the skin beneath. Now pale Scottish skin just makes this contrast more stark but his eye was always drawn to it. And he didn’t know why, he just was. That shoot, in contrast to the last two, was more serious. Not uncomfortable serious but rather there was an air of sexual tension. The feedback loop between the two of them had been amplified even more. Monica knew that she was fulfilling and feeding into Andrew’s fantasies, however nascent and Andrew was in a state of almost constant arousal at the vision in front of him. At the end of the session Monica walked over to Andrew wearing stockings and nothing else and kissed him long and hard before going to get changed and dressed. They walked to their bus stops as usual.

“I have been modelling for nearly five years but it is never as charged as that normally. I don’t know that I can explain it but you know how to bring out something within me.”

Maggie shrugged just like Andrew had done so many times before.

“Are you uncomfortable with the shoots?”

“No not at all. What I have found is that the other shoots are less. Oh I don’t know, less rewarding, satisfying, intense. Something like that. And I don’t want them to be intense. I don’t think I could cope with every shoot being like tonight. I think part of it is that I am fighting between Monica and Maggie with you. On my other shoots I am Monica, there to model and I know that they don’t know about or care about Maggie Fife. With you because we have become friends outside the studio I have these mix of thoughts going through my head. Just little things like how you didn’t want to come shopping with me as Maggie because you needed to see me as Monica in, and out of, the clothes. Bizarrely your consideration was in my head tonight. Shit, I don’t know what it means. The truth is the person who treats me, in both my personas, the best is a 16 year old schoolboy. And that seems wrong.”

Andrew didn’t know what to say to that.

“I didn’t mean to bring the mood down. I had an amazing time tonight but it has given me a lot to think about.”

Maggie then said the phrase Suzanne had mentioned less than a month earlier.

“I didn’t use to think this much until I met you. There I was the wise and savvy model, full of life experiences, ready to tease and toy with the school boy. And what happens. I end up thinking about modelling and men and desires and the reality of being one person while acting as a second, very different, person. Bad Andrew.”

Andrew thought he was learning so much from Maggie. Who knew that it was working both ways?

When he returned to school things were great for the first couple of weeks. Andrew didn’t know the exact moment that term two started to go awry because it was a just a lot of small things that went wrong. Even in his own mind that was overly dramatic because nothing terrible happened but the smooth calmness of term one slowly faded.

The start of the second term was always a strain because it coincided with first Faith’s birthday and then, a month later, her death. Both days had evolved into occasions where Andrew remembered her in his own way. He thought about Faith on her birthday but it was not nearly as significant as the anniversary of her death. The day fell on a Wednesday that year and as usual his mum took him over to Mortonhall and dropped him off at the Garden of Remembrance, although that year she left him there to get a bus into town once he was finished. It was always a day where Andrew went through so many emotions. There was sadness and grief at her loss. The sadness was exacerbated by the realisation that it was already three years since her death. Only his parents, after the blow up with Dr. Jindal, and Leslie knew how much the visit to the hospice haunted him. It was never talked about, even Leslie steered well clear of it. Andrew had a hatred for cancer based on that day that was a physical thing. He had that day locked away in his mind because the hatred turned to rage, as his dad had witnessed. February 4^th was the only day that Andrew actively thought about Faith’s cancer and what it did to her at the end; he let it out and raged against it. He needed to release that tension, let the coiled spring in his memory decompress, those few minutes every year were a necessary catharsis. As the rage faded, the resolve increased. The final part of his morning of remembrance was the renewal of the plan and goals. Most importantly to make a difference. However determined Andrew was at the end of the day, it was still an unsettling time and added to the other issues going on in his life.

The first was the father of a new student who had transferred to Heriot’s mid-year, which was unusual but not unique. She joined the 2^nd eleven and there was no issue until the second weekend of the term when he was assisting Mrs. Hendricks. Once her father found out that there was a male pupil assisting the hockey team he complained. To everyone. Now the fact he had no evidence did not in any way stop him from speculating about all the possible sins that may happen by having a young, male assistant coach. Andrew stayed clear of it all and would not engage him in conversation. Andrew just didn’t get what the father’s issue was. He changed separately, trained in full view of the two teachers every Thursday and in full view of 20 plus parents every weekend. The father relented eventually but it soured the experience for most of the term. It was also difficult for his daughter, Sandra, as she was utterly blameless. The rest of the team did not really warm to her because of this and all her father ended up doing was making his daughter’s life at school more difficult than necessary. Nothing came of any of it but it made the whole term unnecessarily tense.

Andrew also got a wakeup call when he had back to back ‘C’s for the first two modules of the 8th course of the degree. This course was all about computer architecture design and ways of increasing memory. The modules he struggled with were relating to bank switching, a technique of increasing the memory available on the computer beyond what the processor could directly access. Andrew struggled with this aspect of the course and two ‘C’s to start did not fill him with confidence. This was the penultimate hardware focused module with three of the remaining four all software related. This was a course to survive but he hated getting ‘C’s.

The last emotional piece was that Ara kept intruding on his thoughts. He just could not shake the feeling that something was not right there, but also was unsure if trying to talk to her was the right thing to do. The result was an emotional loose tooth that never fell out, and Andrew was afraid of a visit to the dentist. He had no reason to try and see her, and life that term was busy and about to get much busier. It was inexplicable but real, there was a connection there that Andrew had never felt with anyone else.

This was the winter that the AIMS software finally started to show some success. However, that it was successful in Germany which made no sense at first. Andrew had not spoken to Mhairi for more than three months which might have been a record. Then in late January there was a message at home, asking Andrew to join Julian and Leslie at a meeting at Mhairi’s office. The following week she told them the latest strange event.

“I got a letter from the procurement section of the Finance Department of the Government of North Rhine-Westphalia.”

As an opening line it had their attention.

“By methods that are not completely clear, they have seen the version of AIMS that you sold to the government here. They have asked if you can make a German language version of AIMS. If so, then they have indicated they will place an evaluation order of 100 copies. They do not talk about what the order will be if the program passes evaluation but I got my secretary to look up the basic facts in the encyclopaedia. Now these stats are five years old but North Rhine-Westphalia is the most important state in West Germany. It has quarter of the people and quarter of the economy. This is huge.”

Leslie responded first.

“I will ask the obvious question. How the hell did the North Rhine-Westphalia government find out about the program, and even if they did, how do they make contact with us?”

The four of them looked at each other for a while as they thought about this. It was Julian who started to piece it together first.

“We sold it to the government, the British government. What does the government have in Germany?”

Light dawned on their faces.

“The Army.”

“Exactly. The British Army of the Rhine is stationed in that part of Germany. There is a link somehow between the Army and the Germans.”

“So now we can assume we know the how, it still leaves us with the issue of translating the software.”

Leslie was thinking ahead. Julian and Andrew looked at each other.

“The source code would stay in English.” Andrew thought out loud. “Obviously the input screens and report writing would be translated but anything else?”