Chapter 12

Andrew’s relaxing Saturday afternoon was followed by a relaxing Sunday afternoon. He sat with Maggie and Tony amazed at the pace of their progress.

“That program of yours is bloody fantastic. I will tell you all the details in a second, but Elspeth says hi and is both delighted and mad at you at the same time.”

Andrew looked confused. More than normal.

“She works here several afternoons a week now, helping to get all of the old photo sessions entered into the program. She loves looking at the pictures as she works away and I wouldn’t be surprised if she did another shoot. That is why she loves and hates you. Donnie loved the albums and the picture. As in ‘worried she is going to end up with a fourth kid’ loved it. But she is moaning that she is putting on more weight because he always has her baking.”

They all laughed.

“She wasn’t joking. The kids have been sent to the grandparents a lot and Donnie ‘helps’ her in the kitchen.”

This was starting to stray into too much information territory. Yet Andrew was also delighted to hear that her fantasy was playing out perfectly for her. It had clearly spiced up her life and her marriage.

“But it is amazing some of the things we have discovered when we run some of the reports. Even just going back through all those drawers and drawers of negatives and prints has been a revelation. The best thing we found was Maggie’s third ever shoot. Check it out.”

Maggie at 19 had absurd hair, seemingly modelled after Brian May in the Bohemian Rhapsody video. The smile was nervous but Andrew recognised her familiar body. Looking at the pictures also reinforced his reputation as an arse man. In the photos Maggie looked fine but in the intervening years her arse had filled out wonderfully. She was significantly more attractive currently, in Andrew’s opinion, than she was then.

“I used to be worried that my arse was getting bigger and clearly it has, yet you take more photos of it than my tits.”

What was noticeable was that Tony was smiling and nodding, not just Andrew. Reluctantly they moved on from Maggie’s backside.

“That was a nice find, for the nostalgia value as much as anything else. But the program also has been good at highlighting clothes that have been used a lot, some that have been hardly worn. Just a whole lot of different things.”

“Will it help going forward?”

“Absolutely. We tried it last week. Tony booked a model from Glasgow and she came through for the whole day. So he was able to get four sets over the course of the day. Two of the outfits she brought herself but the other two were stuff Tony had that hadn’t been worn for years. Shooting like that gives us four chances to sell some work. If one set sells then there may be a chance to sell another later, to the same company or to a competitor. But we can also see what sells, certain styles.”

Andrew was impressed by Maggie’s passion. And commercial sense. Tony followed on.

“Once we sell some sets then we can start to get a feel for what is popular, and likely to sell. Look, we took your advice and flew down to Amsterdam for a weekend, to check it out. We risked it and brought back a bunch of magazines and a couple of videos, and we got away with it. So we have seen what is published over there, got some addresses. It gives us more options. Potentially.”

The two of them had been busy, but it was with a focus. Maggie carried on.

“The program is a way to manage all the shoots. You gave us so many different fields, sets, props, costume, everything. If Tony shoots four or even five sets with a model in one day, then it is important that they all look different. And that the model the following week is not in the same couple of sets, wearing the same nightie or whatever. I don’t want to sell one set from a shoot I want to sell all of them, and they have to be different.”

Maggie had a drive that was fascinating to see. They had started to shoot multiple sets on the same day. They had illegally smuggled in European adult magazines to see what the shoots were like and to get addresses and contact details for the publishers. And that was all fine, Andrew could see Tony doing all that, perhaps not with the fervour of Maggie. But Maggie liked things to be organised, and was only one step below being diagnosed with OCD. She was the one who wanted all the old shoots, amateur as well as the few professional ones, catalogued. Andrew had designed a simple, yet powerful, program for her so that all the details of the old, current and prospective shoots could be captured. She had learned from Tony, maybe that was why they were so well suited together, about maximising the return from the assets. Tony had the shop, darkroom, studio and workshops, and was now working more and more as a photographer. Maggie was applying the same thing to the production process of the photographs, the look, the clothes, the sets, as well as things where they overlapped and dovetailed with Tony. How experienced was the model, what were her limits? Even things like whether the shoot would be better with Tony or Andrew as the photographer.

All of that was the ‘science’ of the shoot, the mechanics, the technical details. What was going to make or break their business was the ‘art’ of it. How Tony captured the model, the indescribable yet obvious essence of the shoot. However organised they were, selling the photographs would require that intangible extra. It was exciting and daunting. It was approaching 4.00 and Tony had a workshop that would run for a couple of hours. All the talk so far had been about the photography business.

“Hell, we have been talking about photography so much that I forgot to tell you. Mhairi Connelly called on Friday and two thick envelopes of documents were sent over. Hillier’s got Archie to agree a value of £376,000. The cheque for £188,000 has been transferred to the lawyers and will be released when the final papers are signed.”

Andrew nodded happily and shook Tony’s hand.

“The land is worth more than that, we got a deal. I will spend up to £12,000 clearing the site so that it is free and clear and we have both invested an even £200,000.”

Tony didn’t fight that, so Andrew knew that it was the right thing to do. He took his envelope and would look at it the following week. He very occasionally called Mhairi at home and would do so from Cambridge to get the land purchase finalised. Tony had to rush off so Andrew told him he would see him in a month and left him to get ready.

He thought about the land he had just bought. There was a karmic quality to the whole, but more of a negative karmic effect for Archie McGuire. Ignoring the personal morality issue of fucking around on his wife, he had been bad mouthing Maggie, and Tony by association, behind their backs. And why? Because Maggie turned down his overtures years ago. But it was a constant reinforcement of Maggie’s concerns about being judged for her modelling. The lady herself shook him out of his thoughts.

“Let’s get out of here. It is still nice so why don’t we go to the Park.”

Queen’s Park was the royal park that surrounded Arthur’s Seat and was 10 minutes away. They bundled up and headed over. Maggie’s earlier exuberance was gone and she appeared pensive.

“Do you think I am pushing too hard? Trying to do too much?”

Andrew considered everything they had spent so far.

“The only really large spend was on the computer. The rest is your time, and paying for Elspeth’s time to sort through all the old photographs. Where things will start to get dicey is if you keep paying models but don’t sell anything. But the studio is used a lot, so is the darkroom, maybe not as much but still. And the shop is profitable. Keep track of what you are spending, every week and every month. Be disciplined and don’t buy any other clothes or props, stuff for the sets until you sell some work. Work hard but don’t spend too much money.”

Andrew could see Maggie relax slightly beside him.

“Thanks. I need to calm down every now and then. I am fizzing with ideas and they all cost money.”

“Are you going to give up your job?”

“Definitely not. I am learning a lot. I started there straight out of school, just turned 17. I was in the typing pool when I started. But I persevered and have had a couple of opportunities. Some of it is luck, a couple of the old battleaxes who had been there since the war finally retired but I have also proved myself. I got into the secretarial pool and had a bunch of junior people that I worked for. But last year I got another promotion and now I am one of the two secretaries in the Planning Department. And I have been in a lot of more important meetings, taking minutes, or just there in case they need something. I have learned a lot, and I think I will learn more the longer I work there. The people in the Department treat me well, a lot better than most of the other departments. It was when I was in one of the planning meetings that I first heard them talking about a partnership. After the meeting I asked a bunch of questions to make sure I had the minutes down right, but it was as much for my own education as anything.”

“Do you think there are enough hours to work all day and then do several more in the evening on the photography business? Will you not run out of energy?”

“My day job is not very stressful, so I am not knackered when I get home. I suppose I think about you some nights when I am tired.”

“Me?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. You completed a university degree while you were at school. And it is not as if you are not busy while you are down at Cambridge either. But you had a goal and you worked towards it. I am doing the same thing. There must have been nights when you didn’t want to do another question or work at your computer. Yet you did. I do the same thing. And right now there is plenty to catch up on, but it is fun I suppose. Tony and I will sit and go through some of the sets. Talk about when it was, things like that. There have been some faces that I haven’t seen in years staring from those pages. And there are eye-opening moments as well. Tony has been photographing women for more than 15 years. So there are some interesting sets buried in there. We talked about finding my first set for him, my third set ever. But we also found the first set that he shot with Naomi, it must have been about a month later. To see the change in her is amazing. She was shy in that first set, had her hand in front of her pussy half the time. Now look at her.”

“Did it take you back, to when you started?”

Maggie nodded.

“Coming up on 8 years ago. Aye, it did.”

“Do you remember why you started to model, wanted to be a model?”

Maggie thought. Andrew heard her sigh.

“That is long and complicated.”

She paused and sighed again, before clearly coming to a decision.

“Why not. I developed early, before I was ready to deal with my body, and with boys. I had been an anonymous kid in primary school but in the summer between 1^st and 2^nd year I popped, summer of 1971. When I got back to school suddenly I was little miss popular all because I had filled a bra over the summer. But being popular was fun and a couple of older guys really liked me. Or at least I thought so. I lost my virginity before I was 14. The guy was two years older ahead of me, so in 4^th year. My body got me boyfriends, lifts, I was able to go to parties, I was bought drinks. As long as I put out. Pretty quickly I developed an instinct and made sure that if I was going to get fucked in the back seat of a Cortina then I was going to be treated nicely first. Nobody got something for nothing. So I understood the power of my body as I progressed through senior school. But of course I was also the subject of much bitchiness as well, both women and men. You know the names, slut, slag, bitch, tart, even whore. And I wasn’t a saint, who are we kidding, but a good number of the people bitching at me were just as bad. It was this that made me very careful about being judged. Because I spent most of senior school being judged.

“In amongst all this confusion there were a ton of other things. Every time I was naked with a guy he was always impressed. Although I had big tits I was slim. I was lucky, I was careful what I ate but the rest of it is pure luck. But for three, four years every time I took my clothes off I was praised, complimented, appreciated. And I came to like it, almost need it. And the last main thing is life all around us, society I suppose. Millions of men look at the Page 3 women every day. There are loads of men’s magazines full of naked women. But it is more than that. Lots of adverts, lots of shows on the television, movies, fashion magazines, everywhere you look there are pretty women, in various stages of undress. You know this, that was you in Paris eight months ago.