Chapter 5

Andrew goofed around the last week of his holidays, helped by the fact his father had returned to his school in preparation for the new school year. But it was a week of doing very little, hanging out with Mike and Charlie, playing a bit of footie, just being a normal kid. Mike, being a year older and already in high school, tried to lord it over the other two. Andrew had always found him to be tiresome but had put up with it, everyone playing their assigned roles. But after two weeks of Grant, and to a lesser extent the other men he had worked with, he just tuned out Mike’s posturing. A couple of times he just cycled off, leaving the pair of them. Even three months ago such behaviour would have been unthinkable. He wasn’t looking forward to school, he wasn’t dreading it either, rather it was just something that was there. It was not much of a challenge academically but the social interactions, the time in the playground at lunch and break, they were more problematic. Andrew idly wondered if he would cope better after a summer of working. He didn’t know.

As Heriot’s was a private school they had a school uniform so Andrew met his mother in the city centre after she finished work and was bought a new blazer and several new shirts. He had not shown any sign of a growth spurt yet so the trousers and shoes would last another term at least. It was a rare time when he spent time on his own with his mother. Over the summer Andrew had figured out his father, the lack of relationship, the preference for Rowan. But he was no further forward with his mother. She was the driving force behind his attending private school but often it seemed like it was for her own benefit as much as his. Andrew found himself silently observing her, something he was doing in ever more situations, and there was a lot of snobbery in his mother. He didn’t know if it was a good thing or bad thing, it just was. But he survived the evening without incident and was ready for the new school year.

George Heriot’s covered all 13 years of school education so although Andrew was moving to the senior school, physically he was going to the same campus, just the classrooms differed. So there were no first day jitters. As with all children moving to high school, the biggest difference was moving between classrooms for the different subjects rather than being in the same classroom with one teacher all day. The one thing that was different was that Andrew stopped trying so hard, trying to fit in, putting up with shit just to hang out with the ‘cool kids’. He didn’t even realise that he took a step back, withdrew from contact. All the posturing, the snide remarks, even the threats from 12 year olds, they just didn’t faze him anymore. The previous term he had endured it. Now when some mouthy guy in his year or the year above was posturing Andrew thought about Grant and had to stop himself laughing. After working for two weeks with him and five weeks in total with older working class men, all this stuff was just moronic. There was no physical bullying or hassling at Heriot’s. It was a collection of middle-class kids whose parents were overwhelmingly professionals. So for the first time in his life Andrew stood up to some of the people in his class and his year. He didn’t make a fuss but he was no longer a doormat. Things had changed.

He thought about it a lot when he was out running. He ran most days except Saturday when he was working. Spending five weeks working with the removal men had been tough, both mentally and physically but he had learned a lot. As part of a team of three there was nowhere to hide, and so he had toughened up. He hadn’t got into any kind of altercation but he had definitely taken more than his share of shit.

One consequence of this new attitude was that he spent more time alone. He still hung out with Charlie some of the time but Mike was getting to be a bore, and he avoided him more and more. It was the same at school, he drifted away from the group of guys in his class that he used to hang out with. Now he was on the fringes of the group and had often been picked on so it was not much of a loss. It was at this time that he discovered the school library and so several days each week he would finish his lunch and then spend the last 30 minutes sitting reading quietly. John Cuttington had given Andrew several books over the last couple of years from the classic action adventure authors. Andrew had books by Alastair McLean, Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum and the original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. All perfect for a 12 year old boy, good guys and bad guys with the good guys ultimately prevailing. This was his refuge for the first month of term.

Classes for Andrew were straightforward, he found most subjects easy. But his thoughts of three months earlier of making more of an effort in class? They had faded away, he was happy to hide in class. At the end of primary school he had selected Latin as his language, for reasons that already were vague and fuzzy. Within a month he was regretting this choice but it was too late to change. Tony had rudimentary French and it had helped with some of the tourists in the shop over the summer. Andrew saw the practical benefit but he had already selected Latin. It wasn’t yet October and he was silently berating himself. The rest of his classes were, for the most part, interesting. The one that changed the year for him was Chemistry. His teacher was an émigré South African with a strong accent who was obsessed with safety. Maybe all 1^st year Chemistry teachers are the same but Mr. Edwards was relentless and vigilant. So Andrew learned about safety precautions, ventilation, eye protection, and also gloves at times. Even while he was in the class Andrew was thinking about the work in the darkroom. He had seen the warning labels on the bottles of the various chemicals but it was only now that he realised their import. The darkroom had an extractor fan which Andrew never used because it rattled over the music he had been listening to. In the third week of term they started the first experiments and got to use the equipment, finally. It was a nothing experiment, it was more to teach the scientific method than anything else. But one of the parts was to check temperatures. You heated a liquid to a certain temperature but not higher. And right there in his first year chemistry classroom were lots of scientific thermometers. Once the experiment was over Andrew was washing the equipment and left the thermometer in a glass jar while he washed the other equipment. When he went to grab it he yanked his hand away, the water was very hot. Looking down at the scale he saw that the temperature was nearly 50°, well in excess of what was needed for colour film developing. He finished packing up but his mind was elsewhere.

The insanely tight temperature range for the chemicals seemed to be the biggest issue with developing colour film. He had just, inadvertently, shown himself that hot water from the tap was sufficiently hot for the process. Tony had said he had bought a thermometer so what was the problem? Something to ask about on Saturday.

“Can I talk to you about the colour film developing?”

“Sure. Make my day more miserable why don’t you. What?”

“You said you had bought a thermometer, yes?”

“Aye, for all the good it did me.”

“Can I see it please?”

“Sure, it is in one of the drawers in the darkroom.”

Andrew retrieved the thermometer which although more basic than the one he had used at school, was still sufficiently accurate to measure the temperature needed for the developing.

“Can you explain how you used this please.”

Tony was eyeing him suspiciously.

“Why? I can’t get it to work.”

“I want to understand what you did. I am not trying to make you feel bad I am trying to understand why this is so ruddy difficult.”

Tony nodded.

“Sure. So I filled the sink with hot water from the tap and immersed the chemicals in it. Once I had them at 40° I waited and let them cool a touch. Once it dropped down to 39° I used the developer. Then while I was stirring the drum I used hot water from the kettle to top up the water in the sink. That is part of the issue I think, it fluctuates too much. One I had drained the developer then I did the same thing with the bleach and then the fixer. All three need to be at the same temperature. The stabiliser is not as sensitive. But when I removed the film from the drum it was shit. Nothing was correct, although oddly there were parts of some of the frames that weren’t too bad. But there was not one frame that was properly developed. And it was the same when there were several of us trying. A couple of guys dealt with keeping the chemicals at the right temperature but even then, when we took out the roll it hadn’t worked. Do you think we are doing something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Last week in chemistry class I was cleaning up and nearly scalded my hand with hot water from the tap. The thermometer I was about to wash showed that the water was at nearly 50°. So I don’t think you need to use the kettle. I was wondering if you just used hot water but mixed the hot and cold until it was coming out at 39° then just left it running, whether that would work. But you have just told me that you had people doing that for you, different method but the same outcome. We are missing something. I wonder if there is another step to the process?”

“That is what we all think. We have all been scouring the magazines but no one has found anything else that can help us. It is as if Kodak are keeping part of the process secret, so that everyone has to use their authorised processing plants.”

“For day to day stuff that makes sense. But your group is probably not the only one in the city and across the country thousands of guys must be dealing with the same issue. I mean how do all the top shelf magazines produce their photos?”

A loud silence echoed round the shop. Tony sighed.

“I don’t know.”

Andrew stumbled upon the missing piece the following day. He had not run in the morning but instead had gone running in the afternoon and as a result was hot and sweaty when he returned to the house. The first glass of water from the cold tap was fine but he wanted something even colder to quench his thirst. He took the ice cube tray out of the fridge and dumped a load into his glass before returning to the tap. But he stopped and looked at the glass. It was cold to his touch. The ice cubes had not just lowered the temperature of the water, they had lowered the temperature of the container. Was that it but the reverse? When the heated liquids were poured into the developing drum did some of the heat leach off? Did they need to warm the rolls of film and the drum up before adding the developer? The developer was being poured into the drum at the correct temperature but even the small drop in temperature due to the drum being colder was lowering the temperature of the developer to the point where it was not working properly. That was why Tony was getting partial frames but no consistency.

Although Andrew was tempted to rush round to the shop on Monday afternoon he waited all week. His Chemistry lab was on Thursday and he tried to model what he thought was happening. He got nowhere as there was not enough time at the end of the class. Still he was full of anticipation when he turned up at the shop on the Saturday morning.

“Morning. I have a roll of colour that I took this week that I would like to try and develop. Could I try please?”

Tony saw Andrew’s excited expression and paused.

“You think you can make it work?”

“I have an idea. Can I try and if it works I will show you?”

“You’re not just wasting my time?”

Andrew shook his head.

“Go on then.”

Smiling Andrew headed through the back to the darkroom. Once the roll of film was in the drum he opened the door and turned on the extractor fan. Then he pulled his school safety glasses from his bag and a pair of old Marigolds he had borrowed from under the sink. The first 10 or 12 minutes were spent fiddling with the taps in the sink before he got the temperature as close to 39° and stable as he could. He prepped all the solutions and had everything laid out and to hand before starting. He followed the procedure as laid out in the magazine with one exception. He filled the drum with hot water, at the same temperature as the chemicals, and warmed the film and drum up. Then he went through the rest of the process. 24 minutes later, with trembling hands, he opened the drum and unfurled the roll of film. Hanging one end on the clip he ran his fingers down the film several times to remove the excess water before clipping the weight to the bottom of the long roll of developed film. Looking at the negative it appeared to be the same as those shown in the magazines. He stepped out and went to find Tony.

“Go and have a look. It looks developed to me.”

He stayed at the till and dealt with a customer while Tony hobbled through to the darkroom. Two minutes later he came back through with a huge smile on his face.

“Fuck me. You clever little bastard. What did you do?”

Andrew explained about the ice cubes the previous weekend and how, because the drum was colder than the developer, it was leaching sufficient heat to stop the proper process. He told Tony that all he had done was pour hot water into the drum before he started to warm it up so that the developer stayed at the optimum temperature.