Chapter 01

Friday July 10, 1987 was the start of a fascinating weekend for all five people involved. Andrew met Maggie and Tony without a problem at King’s Cross. They piled in the car, with a lot more luggage than Andrew expected for the weekend. Ara and Suzanne were up and casually dressed when they got back to the house. They both hugged Tony in greeting before leading Maggie away to show her the house. Tony looked at Andrew and they shrugged before heading to the kitchen and fresh coffee. The luggage could wait.

“This place is bigger than it looks like from the outside. Deep.”

The male version of the house tour was over. The two of them took their coffees out onto the little back patio.

“How are things?”

“Generally good. We had a photographer try and steal from the new studio, that was a real mess. Sheila challenged him on it and he made the mistake of getting aggressive with her. He shoved her out the way and tried to just leave. She stumbled and went down hard. Fortunately it looked a lot worse than it actually was but when the Police turned up it looked like he had done her over. So he got charged with GBH as well as theft. I don’t know that it will stick but we’ll see.”

“Is she all right? Did she quit?”

“Nah, she shook it off and was fine. She was annoyed that she tripped over the light stand. But as you can imagine it disrupted the studio for the week. But the actual businesses are doing really well. The shop is busy, it isn’t growing much, it seems to be steady. But we have captured a lot of the local market for serious amateurs. We have the three studios and the two darkrooms so that generates and drives a lot of sales through the store. We get tourist traffic and the usual Christmas rush but the day to day is serving the photography community in the city. Or a good chunk of it.”

Tony took a sip of coffee.

“I wondered if the three Edinburgh studios would be less busy with the new studio. But they are only off a tiny little bit, and are still making serious money for us. This time next year the two smaller studios will have paid off everything we spent, at least according to Alex.”

“She is obviously still there. Is she enjoying the job?”

“Loving it. All the different strands to the businesses keep her nice and busy, which she likes, but there is the flexibility of the part time work. She gets on with Maggie and Elspeth really well. In fact, she gets on with Leslie and Creighton as well. By the end of the summer we will have taken over more than a third of the ground floor at your offices. Elspeth, her three part time helpers, Maggie, Alex, plus the storeroom.”

Tony shook his head.

“We will come back to all that in a minute.”

“So the shop, studios and darkrooms are all making us money. I have two assistants now and I think this pair are going to last. I went through two or three of them in the first four months but these two might work. They are a father and son. Both serious amateurs, I see a lot of myself in the son. He got the photography bug from his dad and he listens. The father is a former miner, laid off over a year ago. But he has a good eye and despite being older than me has a good manner with the models. So the three of us are working away. If all three of us were working then it would be 15 days of shoots a week. We are probably running around eight at the moment. But we couldn’t shoot all day every day because of all the set up and preparation. Even four days is pushing it. But they are locals from Kirkcaldy and are there every day and we are making it work.”

Tony paused again for more coffee. Andrew sat listening carefully as Tony talked about the details of running the business not the high level sweep that he often got.

“Elspeth hired another assistant because she is driving a lot of the shoots now. We have done three shoots in the big studio already. Can you believe she had us shooting a coach in there? Most of the shots are normally just in a car park or a standard garage. That was a tough couple of days, fun but hard work. But the client was happy and we got well paid. It is funny, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have taken the shoot if I had spoken to them. But Elspeth just assumes I can shoot anything and thought nothing of it. I am sure we will come unstuck at some point but it did make me laugh that she had unquestioning faith in my abilities even if I was unsure. But she keeps us busy. And that is the key. The father is Fergus and the son is Joe. Fergus works with me all the time but Elspeth talked to loads of estate agents all the way from Dunfermline to St Andrews and so Joe is out a lot of the time taking photos for different estate agents, especially at the weekend. It is ideal for him, easy to shoot, but it gives him a sense of responsibility. It is all these little things that mean we are making good money. Elspeth is a bloody genius at all that stuff.”

Andrew smiled. The two sides of Elspeth Robertson could not be more different.

“What is the nature of the pictures? Are you doing much nude work?”

“One day every two weeks, sometimes not even that. You called it when you said there just weren’t going to be enough models. It is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about now that you are settled here.”

“Let’s save that until Maggie gets here as well. It is something that I have some thoughts and ideas about as well.”

“Good. Okay, what else. When Maggie starts she is going to look at expanding the business. Carefully so that we don’t blow a lot of money or make a stupid mistake but we are looking to try and duplicate some of what we have done in Edinburgh in other cities.”

“Where?”

“The three obvious ones are Glasgow, Newcastle and Leeds.”

The first two were obvious but Andrew was surprised at the third.

“Leeds?”

“Easy to get to on the train. There are two direct trains a day and if you switch at York there are more than half a dozen. But it is only three hours away and it is the largest city down there that is easy to get to. It is twice as big as Newcastle and not that much smaller than Glasgow. So we are going to look at the possibilities in each of those three. Maggie has a good idea about Glasgow already so we will see. She is going to spend a couple of days in each of Newcastle and Leeds, checking out all the shops and studios, just getting a sense of the local scene.”

Tony shrugged and Andrew smiled. Another empire being built.

“How about all the old photographs?”

“Ticking over nicely. Alex keeps a really close eye on that. But there is a steady stream of small sales. There has been nothing like the Marilyn Monroe pictures but just loads of £50 here and £100 here. Even with the extra costs we are still making silly money.”

“What do you mean the extra costs?”

“Remember Maggie is paying two students to categorise and file all the pictures. Both the current students are on the Library Studies course at Strathclyde University. It is like she is building a library of pictures.”

“I hadn’t realised we were still doing that.”

“I thought it was a bit OCD to be honest, you know how she can get. But it is incredibly helpful for Elspeth and Dolly and the other two in getting sales. Like I said Alex watches it like a hawk, more than any other part of the business but it is really profitable.”

“How many employees do you have now?”

“We Andrew, we. This is your business too.”

Tony thought for a moment.

“Four including me in Fife, four at the shop, Stu running the studios and darkrooms in Edinburgh, Elspeth and three more, Alex, Maggie, and five pensioners. What is that? 20 people. Although half of them are part time or less.”

“That is really impressive. Remember when it was you and Stacey and a part-timer?

Their reflections were interrupted by the belated arrival of the ladies.

“This place is really big. It can’t be much smaller than our place, or Leslie and Julian’s. Yet you would never guess it from the front.”

“It is pretty big. You were away for a while, there isn’t that much to see.”

“Oh we were chatting as much as looking at the house.”

Andrew looked at Ara and Suzanne. They had a mischievous air about them.

“You will never guess what Maggie and Tony brought with them?”

Andrew was afraid to speculate.

“They brought all your photos.”

He hadn’t expected that. In fact, the phrase ‘all your photos’ was not one he ever thought about.

“We talked, what, three weeks ago, about our history and how we ended up with our current arrangement. And although everyone was incredibly understanding and accepting of what we did I thought that I would make sure. There is talking about it and then there is seeing it.”

“Are you okay with showing the photos?”

Maggie laughed. Pityingly.

“Andrew, you are Tony and I’s closest friend. We have friends we have known for much longer but think about what the three of us have done for the last five or six years. I don’t want anything to come between you and Suzanne and Arabella. Plus you know what I am like, I am a complete show-off.”

“And we offered a trade. Maggie and Tony have heard all about your modelling shoots but I can’t believe you have never shown them any. So we have the tape we showed Nikki and Fran a couple of weeks ago.”

Suzanne giggled.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

They all laughed at the pre-pubescent phrase.

They made fresh coffee and then trooped upstairs to the living room. And once again got to see the difference between talking about something, even in detail, and then seeing it on the screen. All of the commercials, in total, ran to nearly an hour and so Maggie and Tony got to see more than 100 of them back to back to back, an endless procession. And other than the very first photo shoots, the two days that were the genesis of everything, they were all there. The very first commercial had Heloise smacking his arse back in December 1984 and the very last, Andrew making very free with his hands on Eve, was shot that previous February.

Seeing 100 commercials in a row was a deluge. And Maggie, even Tony to an extent, looked drowned by them. Andrew, Suzanne and Ara sat quietly for several moments while the two of them tried to make sense of it all. Maggie summed it up perfectly.

“Andrew must love you both very much. That is an absurd amount of temptation. Of beautiful, sexy, naked temptation.”

Interestingly she went over and hugged both women. She sat back down and just stared at Andrew.

“Part of the reason for my initial silence was I had so many thoughts going through my head. Snippets of conversations that we have had over the years. Why I modelled, why I didn’t want the photos published, why you were even photographing me. And although I had heard you talk about all these shoots it still didn’t register what it would actually look like. What did you think love?”

She looked over at Tony.

“The way you just said it is right. We heard you talk about all these shoots every break but Mags is right, it just didn’t register. There was a disconnect between what we heard and that. I mean I have never shot a male model so I can only personalise this, but bloody hell Andrew.”

He shook his head.

“This isn’t even stills, it is film or video. You got naked in what, 95% of all these shoots. I can’t even begin to imagine what that is like. I am perfectly happy to let a woman undress in front of me but I couldn’t do that in a million years.”

They all laughed at his honesty.

“Half of those women are older than I am Andrew. That might be the most disconcerting thing of all. You know I talk about your hungry eyes when we are shooting but it wasn’t just hungry eyes on some of the commercials it was a hungry mouth and hungry hands. Good lord.”

She sat back in her chair and took a sip of cold coffee.

“Do you think that knowing me contributed to you modelling?”

“Of course. It was nearly seven years between when I first met you and starting to model. But the key thing for my modelling, at least initially, was that the woman had seen me at the pool. Sure I was down to my swim trunks or underwear but she had already seen me like that in a perfectly normal, socially acceptable way. So that was key. But being blasé enough about the nudity to just go for it. Yeah, that is mostly you. What’s the big deal?”

“That is a good transition. As you know we brought down all the photographs Andrew took of me going all the way back to the first trial shoot. I even got to keep my clothes on for that one.”

Obligatory laughter. Ara interrupted.

“We have all day, nobody is in a rush, so can you tell us the background to how you modelled for Andrew?”

It was going to be a rare glimpse into Andrew’s life pre-cancer.

“It was the summer of 1977 when we first met. Tony had hired Andrew to help in the shop because he was on crutches. Remind me why love?”

“I fractured my ankle in a car crash. I was hit by a drunk driver, and I was lucky. He caught the engine block and the wheel arch. It was the wheel arch being stoved in that bust up my ankle. Half a second later he would have hit the door square. Like I said I was lucky. But I was on crutches for weeks, months.”

“So in 1977 I was 19, and had been modelling for about a year. I went into the store one day and met Andrew for the first time. Like all 12 year olds he had no idea what colour my eyes were.”

More laughter.

“And having had hundreds of teenage boys stare at the girls I busted him on it. He blushed scarlet, Tony and I laughed about it and I was on my way. No big deal. Except that clever clogs over there figured out how to develop colour film. It is a straightforward process with one huge catch. Everything has to be done at an insanely precise temperature. Andrew figured out the missing piece of the process and started developing film from my modelling sessions, all the modelling sessions. Remember he was 12.”

On cue Ara and Suzanne looked at Andrew, horrified. He managed not to smirk, although Tony wasn’t so discreet.

“Exactly. So I found this out and came barging into the store one day kicking up a fuss. It wasn’t right that a 12 year old was developing nude modelling sessions. Of course I then had to eat a whole ration of shit when Andrew showed me that he only developed the negatives. He didn’t print out the pictures from them. All I knew about the darkroom was the film went in and prints came out. That it was a two stage process was news to me. He showed me negatives from my shoot literally the night before. So I knew it was me and that I was naked. But on a tiny yellow tinged negative it was impossible to tell. Hubby over there had a bigger smirk on his face than he does right now when I came back out of the darkroom.”