Chapter 11

Andrew played the good grandson and escorted his Grandma to church. During the sermon he should have brought a notebook, he could have thought about stuff but instead he got elbowed, and sharply, by his grandmother for starting to dose off. Other than that minor faux pas he was duly paraded past all her friends and suitably cooed over. They walked back down the hill and then Andrew drove her for an early lunch at one of the large fancy hotels in the centre of Edinburgh, the Caledonian. It was these small things that she always loved. It wasn’t really her, she was perfectly happy having fish and chips out of a newspaper, but as an occasional treat it was perfect. Her friends would hear all about it at church the following week. But to balance such positive emotions Andrew decided to stop avoiding the issue of his family and talk to her. Okay he still avoided them but he did decide to talk.

“How often do you see Mum and Dad?”

“Every couple of weeks. Normally it is both of them, although sometimes it is just your Mum.”

“No point in being coy about this, what is the current situation with me?”

Her pursed lips pretty well summed it up.

“Andrew, you are just never mentioned. I talk about how you are doing with Davina and Nancy but with your own parents you are never mentioned. I don’t know how to fix this Andrew. I don’t think Gavin has seen either of his sisters since Christmas Day. None of us understand how it has got to this point and every time we mention it all it does is cause a fight.”

Grandma looked like she was about to cry so Andrew was feeling pretty good about himself.

“What do you think I should do Grandma? The issue comes across as Dad just plain not liking me. He makes these comments ‘you think you are better than us just because you have some money’. I don’t know how to counter that kind of argument, it isn’t really even an argument it is just a statement. You know I don’t think I am better, it just seems to be a means to push me away. I have written occasionally to Mum since I moved out but it is a travelogue of my life, there are no emotions, secrets, feelings, asking for advice. I am lucky that I have several older friends who can support me in that role. Brian Campbell, Jim Barnes and Freya Moray, and Tony Brown have all parented me. Tony and Brian have been surrogate father figures since I was a teenager. I am inclined to just let things be. If I thought there would be a mutual admission of fault, guilt, stupidity, stubbornness, whatever we call it, then I would be round there in a second. But I think that if I went back now there would be a blow up and it would be over. Christmas and birthday cards and not much else.”

That did make her cry, as Andrew knew it would, but it needed to be said. He had not had a remotely substantive conversation with his parents in more than two years. When he stopped and thought it, he wondered if he ever really had a substantive conversation with them. His hopes, his dreams, all the uncertainty and confusion over his life and where it was going? They knew nothing of it. His Grandma dabbed her eyes and looked sadly at him.

“I understand Andrew, I really do. You can’t go and see them this week, that would be too heartbreaking to contemplate. Maintain the letters and let us hope that time starts to heal this divide.”

Andrew was determinedly upbeat with his Grandma for the rest of lunch and helped her up the stairs to her flat when he returned her home. The little old lady clung to him for too long before he kissed her on the cheek and told her he would be round with fish and chips for her and Vi later in the week. At least she was smiling when he left.

He drove home and found a note from Suzanne saying she would be back for dinner around 7.30 and would bring take-out. Andrew needed to cheer up and the best couple for that were just a short walk away. A quick call round to their new flat, Julian’s old flat, and Andrew walked over to chat to Maggie and Tony. Andrew lifted Maggie off her feet and spun her round, and heartily shook Tony’s hand.

“Congratulations to you both. How are things?”

Tony let Maggie go first, it was her family that was the issue.

“Other than one aunt that won’t let it go, everyone has grudgingly agreed that it was probably the best solution. Everyone got a little annoyed rather than a few people getting into a right snit. The party will put everything to rest.”

She looked sad.

“The date that worked for all the family was St. Andrews’ Day, it falls on the Saturday night this year. But you won’t be back from Cambridge, will you?”

Andrew shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t want all your family telling me off for giving you the idea.”

They laughed but Andrew could tell they would have liked him to be there. He would check the term timetable when he got back to College.

“So, what colour horse would you like? Any car preferences?”

That did jolly them up as the three of them reminisced about Leslie and Julian’s wedding.

“The night was so busy and later we just forgot but the story we heard was that you had the horse in the garden of the hotel. Is that really true?”

Andrew nodded and explained, both about Sundar but also about the E-Type, Helena having to drive it, the whole run up to the day of the wedding.

“You bought Julian a car that you couldn’t drive?”

“In a complete emergency I could have crammed myself in, but my leg was rubbing against the steering wheel and was in the way of changing gear. It just seemed safer to let Helena drive it.”

“Well I am not a petrol head so you are off the hook.”

“Maybe I should get you a boat.”

There were no protestations, not one, just a dirty smile between the two of them.

“Oh Andrew, you shouldn’t.”

Maggie’s very fake denial had them all laughing.

“Well there is a dock at the bottom of the hill, so it seems a nice segue onto the house. What is the latest news?”

Both their faces lit up.

“It looks like we can get the deal as we hoped. The key for us was that they hadn’t dumped any chemicals or oil on the land in decades. They took deep testing samples and the land is amazingly clean. If there was anything there once upon a time it had leached under the railway and back to the dock. Which is owned by someone else. There is no way of knowing when it happened or anything. The only way to clean it up is if the railway line closes, which is not going to happen, or if the shipyard closes. That is almost a racing certainty but they have no money. Anyway, because there are no remediation issues we have planning permission to build the studio. The council’s only stipulation was that they wanted the south facing wall to blend into the area, not some ghastly concrete wall.”

“That is fantastic, so what is left to do?”

“Paperwork. The ex-pat in South Africa has only just signed off so we have the property purchase to make. The council want money in escrow as good faith that we are going to build. And because they are worried about the slope they want us to start as soon as.”

Andrew nodded but was thinking.

“Do you have an accountant that advises you?”

They shook their heads, smiling at the question.

“I am in the office tomorrow and will talk to Creighton. I am going to ask him if he will advise you on all this. We will have to see if he is okay working with both of us.”

Maggie and Tony looked confused.

“Why?”

“Who buys the property? Obviously we do, but how? Personally? Through a company? With the partnership? All that kind of crap is important. The plan is to buy the whole property then sell you the half with the house, right?”

They nodded.

“It goes back to all the values we discussed at the start of the summer. If you buy something from me worth more than you are paying for it, then there are all sorts of tax rules. And no, I have no idea what they all are. But Creighton has been handling all that for me for nearly six years. He knows where I want to end up and he tells me what I have to do to get there. I sign where he tells me.”

They were both smart, they got immediately the issue of paying £50,000 for Andrew’s half of the house when it was worth £125,000. They parked that and talked about the studio.

“We got preliminary drawings done. We will have an over height ground floor space and then two floors of indoor space, one with windows on the south side and a half floor as the top floor with the remaining space being patio or terrace. A fence with a hedge shields it from the house so it is not overlooked, even from the attic of the house, and it doesn’t interfere with the views out over the Forth. And it would be wired for all four floors to be used as studios at the same time. But it would also be an empty shell.”

“So hold that thought for a minute. How is the business doing?”

Maggie sat back and Tony smiled as he started talking.

“Really well. Incredibly well is probably a better way of saying it. There are so many different things. So the original studio is still booked about 75% of the time, even with the two new studios upstairs it is still busy. And the time that is not booked is mostly the weekday mornings. I would venture that 75% is about as fully booked as it can be. Because the two smaller studios are already booked more than half the time. Of course it is evenings and weekends but it showed there was a pent up demand. A guy like me, owns his own shop in Glasgow but doesn’t have a studio space, well he has booked the kitchen and living room set every Saturday. He paid a deposit for the whole year. He is then selling the blocks of time to his customers, his friends. He is doing the same thing as I was. He is getting dark room bookings and supplies as well as film purchases through his shop. So the new studios are already making money. We will recover what we spent on them much quicker than we thought. The shop is doing well, although it is just ticking over compared to the rest of the business. But Stacey is running it well and there are no problems. It is still making good money. Then there are the old photographs and prints.”

Tony laughed.

“Andrew, you wouldn’t believe what it is like some days. It is like a pensioners day out. Elspeth’s mother often has two or three friends with her, widows, widowers, there is one couple. But they sit and patiently go through all these old photographs. And it is a trip down memory lane for them. Now it is ridiculously unproductive in one sense as they sit and gab about an old photograph. But it is amazing what they have discovered, who they have discovered. So I give them a fair few quid every week but I think they would do it for nothing. It is getting them all out of their houses. They are chatting away and getting to reminisce. Elspeth will sit with them once a week and enter everything they have sorted out into the computer. And it is making us such easy money. Nothing like the pictures of Monroe but there is a constant stream of sales. And that is where Elspeth has been bloody amazing. She phones everybody and even if she gets the knockback she still makes sure that they all know about us. And she covers all the different kinds of photographs. The old vintage ones, they are mainly to the mainstream press, papers and magazines. All the glamour stuff, well the list is endless for that stuff, and then the nudes, she talks to the publishers not just in London and around there, but she has started talking to people on the continent. She is a hurricane. We have increased her pay already and we will need to pay her a bonus at the end of the year.”

Maggie was nodding emphatically as Tony was talking.

“She is loving the responsibility. She didn’t talk about the doctor’s office at first but she has told me that she was treated like the village idiot, because of the way she spoke, the way she looked. The doctors hardly acknowledged her and the other three receptionists were right snobby bitches. They belittled her and gave her all the crap to do. She has totally blossomed here, loves the job and she and Donnie spend a lot of time in the dark room.”

“So she got him a camera for his birthday?”

Maggie nodded.

“Apparently the two of them are as bad as each other. The rumour is that she got Stacey to show her how to use the remote release cable and now there are actions shots. She is worse than me!”

Andrew smiled. It was quite the change.

“She still wants you to do shoots with her.”

“Really?”

“She has some of the same traits as me. She is never going to be in a magazine, she is never going to model for other people, but she loves that she is daring enough to pose for you. They both do. Just a heads up.”

Andrew shrugged. If she wanted to pose, he would photograph her. He smiled at the thought.

“So with Elspeth constantly trying to sell our shoots, and starting to be very successful, I am busy a lot of the time. I am travelling more. I have been to Newcastle twice, Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow a bunch of times, and have my first trip to Liverpool next month.”

“You are shooting there?”

“Yes, a lot of models don’t want to travel up to Edinburgh so I am going to them. There is at least one studio in each of the cities and they don’t care where the photographer is from, they just want to see the colour of your money. But it makes you realise how spoiled we are here. The sets are plain and sure the model can change her clothes, the colour of her stockings, all that, but a plain set is a plain set.”