Chapter 2

Since there were no pictures during that part of the story Maggie carried on chatting to Ara and Suzanne while Andrew and Tony prepared lunch.

“I didn’t shoot for anybody, other than Tony on our own, for about five months. And it was only looking back on it later that I could make sense of it. Over the late summer we had started to spend a lot of time together and after that shoot with Andrew we became a couple. To ourselves as much as anyone else. We had probably been a couple for weeks, if not at least a month, before that shoot. But then I had an odd time thinking about being in a serious relationship but still modelling nude. The nude is unnecessary with me, I only every modelled nude. And for a time either side of Christmas I didn’t model because I thought that is what I should do. That is what ‘they’, whoever ‘they’ were, expected. I shouldn’t be letting other men see me naked. None of this was from Tony, and in fact that when it was just the two of us, be it in the bedroom or the studio, we still took lots of pictures. But I missed being a model. And so I had this internal conflict about these two things. It came to a head one Friday night, I had come over to the flat and Tony had nipped downstairs to get the camera club started. This was the camera club that I had posed for regularly for years. But it took several conversations and a lot of wine for me to tell Tony that I wanted to keep modelling. And of course he didn’t care. You tell your story love.”

Lunch was ready so everyone sat round the table tucking in, and after Tony had made a dent in his lunch he carried on the tale.

“I had gone out with models over the years and on the few occasions when I had gone out with a non-model, when she found out that I shot nudes on a Friday night she would dump me. I had never thought about getting married, I was just a typical man and assumed that I would get married one day, I never worried about the details. But after being dumped for photographing nude models I did wonder how it was going to happen. I don’t think I ever consciously thought that I would end up marrying a model. But at the same time I wasn’t prepared to stop photographing them for any of the women that I dated, even although it was just amateur stuff then.”

Tony shrugged.

“I wasn’t going out with Maggie because she was a model and she was not jealous, instead she was missing it. So as she said we had a few conversations and she told me all this.”

Tony smiled ruefully.

“When I was younger there was so much stupid bragging, showing off. I was ‘banging the model’. But now I had to deal with the reality that someone I was serious with, and serious about, was going to model again. And I had to be okay with her being nude in front of other men. But when I stopped and thought about the situation, it didn’t bother me. Rather than bragging out loud, now I had this internal voice, often saying the same thing but I was honest enough to realise that it wasn’t just that I was okay with it, putting up with it, I was pleased and excited by the whole idea. But as Maggie said it was months later before I understood it all.”

Suzanne grabbed a bottle of wine and three glasses and led everyone back up to the living room. Tony and Andrew grabbed fresh beers. Maggie took over the tale.

“So after all that I said to Andrew that I would model again for him. I explained why, I gave him the short version, and he understood. He was my friend, he knew that I loved to pose so he did his usual shrug of the shoulders and just asked if I wanted it to be outdoors or in the studio.”

Rather than say anything else Maggie watched as Tony laid out the Torphin Quarry shoot, the first one.

“Where is this Andrew?”

Suzanne was trying to place the location.

“Above the quarry at Torphin.”

She nodded but her and Ara were skimming over the pictures.

“We have taken our time telling you about how we got to this point but it was the start. Tony was there and although I had been much more explicit with Tony when we were on our own, that it was Andrew photographing me rather than Tony made an enormous difference. I remember going back to the flat and attacking him for hours. It freaked me out slightly how much it turned me on. I started modelling for other groups but it had nothing like the same intensity, even when Tony was there. All the best shoots were with Andrew. So from then on, we shot during the breaks between his terms. This shoot here was Easter 1983 and so we didn’t do any shoots until after Andrew had finished school.”

Tony laid out Cramond Island and Craigmillar Castle shoots, and then the shoot at Harry’s Farm.

“These are all outside. Did you stop shooting in the studio?”

“Yes, until right at the end of the year.”

“Why all the outside shoots?”

“I loved the thrill of it, the chance that we might be spotted, I might be spotted. I remember we were splashing out to Cramond before the tide was all the way out that morning at first light. We shot for more than an hour and only met another person when we got back to the car. Just for a second I thought that it would have been fun to have been caught, or for him to have seen me pulling on my top from a distance. Then at the end of the summer once he came back from a trip to Rome.”

Maggie stopped as Suzanne preened. Ara started tickling her.

“Yes, Andrew got distracted for a while.”

They all laughed.

“Then we did one of my favourite shoots. But again it was outside but right in the city.”

Tony laid out the Blackford Hill shoot.

“You look incredibly. I don’t know happy, passionate, you just seem to jump out of the photograph.”

“I know. Andrew had bought me the coat and boots. I didn’t know before that morning. So I stripped in the car park up beside the observatory and then walked like that to where we could shoot. But you see those shots? Well the main reason I am so into it was that Andrew had Tony positioned right behind me. Andrew is shooting me from the side but Tony was standing staring right at me. I knew Tony was there, what he could see, that was hardly a big deal given some of our personal shots but there was something about the mental aspect of it that just got to me. So again the three of us together was something incredible. And once again when Tony got me back to the flat I didn’t let him out of bed for hours. It was becoming a pattern. If anything Tony and I were feeling guilty. Andrew would get us all revved up and then it was ‘see yah’.”

Again everyone laughed on cue.

“But September 1983 was when things changed and we were all more honest with each other. We did this shoot down at a hidden little beach in East Lothian. It was practically deserted, and we were away from the few people that were there that day.”

Tony showed them the first set. But then he laid out the second set. Ara and Suzanne tennis-matched between the other three.

“Exactly. Do you know what Andrew’s instruction was? Don’t say anything but tell me what Tony is doing. That was all. The dirty old man over there cottoned on quicker than I did. Andrew is leaning back in the sand dunes, Tony and I are behind the windbreak and I was looking right down the beach, seeing all the people further away. And it was a wonderful moment. It all came together; public but not too public; my ever growing feelings for Tony; and a photographer that often seems to understand me better than I know myself. As you can see, it didn’t take long.”

“Wow.”

Ara didn’t need to say much else.

“So once I had calmed down we sat and chatted. Monica the model was canned forever that day. I had to be honest and accept that it was me Maggie that was there that day. After the shoot I remember I lay out on the sand chatting to the two of them and I didn’t bother putting any clothes back on. It suddenly seemed to be pointless. Andrew asked if I knew that everyone else would stay away from us would I have shot out in the open? And some of the thoughts and secret desires about being seen all made sense. I didn’t want to be recognised, to be known, but I did want to be seen. That was a significant breakthrough.”

It was Tony’s turn again.

“Then a week later at his party we found out about the previous four years of Andrew’s life. The secret life. And it just exploded our minds. There we were on the Sunday afternoon on Seacliff beach, photographing that. Then six days later we find out what he and Leslie and Julian had achieved. And on top of all that he was a millionaire. This was the scrawny 12 year old that started helping me in the shop because of my broken ankle. We have spent all morning talking about his journey as a photographer, as our friend, and then we had that thrown at us. It was interesting having our own prejudices and assumptions dissolve in front of us. It wasn’t like he made the money within the previous month. It was nearly a year earlier and he hadn’t changed. It really did force us to confront some of our own biases. But he was just Andrew. And it was hugely significant for us as individuals and as a couple. We had agreed to take him down to Cambridge and we chatted about most of it on the journey. It was a nice quiet time. And it just reinforced how he hadn’t changed. Then when we got to Cambridge he took us into the Great Court at Trinity College and happily showed us around. Again another myth debunked. We were only there for an hour or so but it was fascinating and daunting at the same time. In fact he got the most dangerous prop he ever bought there. Patience, we will show you the pictures.”

“On the car journey south when we were talking about future shoots Andrew suggested that Tony and I scout out locations beside train tracks. Standing beside the track the train will be past in mere seconds and although people might see a naked woman they would never be able to recognise me. That kept us busy all autumn.”

“You stood naked as a train went past?”

“You will see the pictures in a minute.”

Tony laid out the train photos from the spot at the end of the runway at Edinburgh Airport.

“So people saw you?”

“They must have done. But shortly after that we were on a train heading down to Newcastle and there was a family in the carriage and it was only then that I realised that kids might have seen me. So we stopped that. The train was going so fast it would have been nothing but a pink blur but it didn’t seem right.”

But then Maggie produced a couple of scraps of paper. Andrew realised it was the infamous list of shoots they discussed on the car journey north.

“What is this?”

“These are all the suggestions that Andrew made for shoots for the three of us.”

“All of these? How many have you done?”

“Three quarters of them, probably more.”

“Really?!”

Ara was looking at all the different shoots.

“Bloody hell.”

Suddenly she stopped and thought.

“I was thinking about all the places you have been naked, all the photographs that Andrew has taken of you. But then I realised that is probably the easy part. It is thinking about all those ideas in the first place.”

“Andrew is a good photographer, and clearly with just the three of us he is brilliant. But it is the ideas that he comes up with that are the difference. That pleated jacket that I wore on Blackford Hill, he saw a tourist wearing it and thought it would be a great piece of clothing for a shoot. If the two of you are going to model for Andrew that is going to be the best part. Wondering what he has thought of next.”

Rather than look embarrassed both Suzanne and Ara looked excited at the prospect.

“I know we are dragging out the story of us, and all these shoots, but it is only when you hear the story behind them and stop and look at them you realise how amazing so many of them are. I mean look at these.”

Ara and Suzanne slid off the couch and knelt down on the floor in front of the coffee table in stunned silence as Tony laid out the pictures from Camusdarach Beach.

“You shot on the beach where they filmed Local Hero?”

“Bloody freezing it was. December 14^th, 15^th, somewhere around there.”

“How did you find it?”

Maggie laughed.

“Tell them.”

“I had dinner one night at College and randomly there was a post grad marine biologist at the table. He told us all about it, and gave me reasonable directions. It was a risk, with both the weather and potentially people but we had a wonderful time.”

“These are totally amazing. You are walking exactly where the actors were, where it was shot. What was it like?”

Maggie thought for a second.

“Relaxing. There was no one there. But there were lots of other emotions. I was loving it. I had those a moment when I imagined the two actors walking on the beach, being filmed, and there I was in the background, spinning around at the edge of the water, completely naked. Again a lovely little fantasy but it was things like that. And I was grateful to both Tony and Andrew for doing all this for me. And my thoughts on that were all over the place. I could show Tony how grateful I was but Andrew, we often wondered what he got out of it.”

Maggie smiled with pursed lips. Tony cleared the first set of prints and then laid out the second set that taken when Maggie was in the rocks. The very first time she had been more explicit. Neither Suzanne or Ara said anything but did look at Maggie.

“That was part of my journey. I never posed like that when I was modelling, I wasn’t comfortable posing that explicitly. But I had a lot of suppressed fantasies. Andrew and his camera became proxies for an audience. Until this afternoon no one has ever seen these pictures and the ones I will show you shortly. I wanted to pose like that, but I was afraid of being judged. I knew that Andrew wouldn’t care or judge and so I let my fantasies start to leak out.”