Captured Shadows (3 page)

By about one o'clock we had finished enough plates to keep us busy for days, and the room seemed as unpleasantly hot as the worst of July. The others left for their boarding-houses, Mr Everett took his carriage to deliver the previous week's photographs to a man in St. John's Wood, and Archie and I stayed behind to tidy the studio, bribed with the promise of having the next morning off. In the amber warmth of the gas lamps I began to gather the costumes, smoothing the creased linen as I laid petticoats and drawers over my arm. I could hear the tinkling sound of glass, Archie pouring the last of the gin for himself, and even though my back was turned I could see like a vision the way his hair was glowing gold in the dim sooty light, the shadows
the lamps
must surely be casting across his forehead and under his chin. I shivered, not from the cold, and
a strange g
urgling fear in my stomach made me take my drink in one, wincing as I swallowed and wiping my wet mouth on the back of my hand, wiping my hand on the hem of the drawers that were still warm from Sally's skin.

"Are you alright?" Archie asked, oblivious and laughing, not really caring. He drained his own glass as well, as though we were taking part in some kind of race, and the heels of his boots clicked a drumbeat against the floorboards as he crossed the room to stand at my elbow like a hangman.

"Are
you
alright, you mean?" I said. I spoke it quietly so the words wouldn't wobble, tried to make a joke of things, tried to stand my ground like a man and not step away because stepping away from Archie would, somehow, be worse than stepping closer, although I knew I couldn't do that either.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Your first time photographing... you know." I felt my cheeks reddening like a stupid schoolboy and turned away slightly, heaving my heap of clothing onto the table and pulling a cotton chemise free so I could fold it neatly, but Archie
only
laughed again and nudged me gently with his shoulder as though he were sharing some wonderful joke instead of condemning me to god knows what kind of torture, because this really was it now; this was that point where you stumble on a staircase and for an endless, terrifying moment you don't know whether you're going to fall or catch your footing. Those moments feel so long and dreadful that when you finally tip too far it's almost a relief, no matter how badly you know you're going to break yourself by the end.

"I've got six brothers and sisters, remember," Archie said as he unwound linen sleeves and cotton legs from around each other and began folding, grinning sideways at me like some evil Cruikshank caricature of a fallen angel, "and we've only got one bedroom for all of us and our mother and father as well. I've seen skin. I ain't scared of it. Bleeding hell, would you look at the size of this woman's waist!"

At that I turned against all my better judgement to look at Archie, and found him holding the drawers to himself in disbelief. The knot in the drawstring had stuck, tightening more with every effort to unfasten it so that in the end, not wanting to wait for a pair of scissors, May had managed to wriggle them down over her hips while the string was still tied, scraping her skin red with the friction of the fabric. The murky, greyish cotton looked as pale as paper between the dark of Archie's waistcoat and the ink blots and chemical stains on his long fingers where he'd splayed them against the fabric and pressed it to his front.

"I bet I couldn't get one bleeding leg in there!"

"I bet you could," I said by accident.

I almost cringed then at the look on Archie's face: momentarily scandalised, then fighting a smile as the amusement brimmed up and made his green eyes glint.

"What do you bet?"

I felt as though I'd been walloped in the gut, as though I couldn't get enough breath. My heart clenched and released behind my ribcage, a trapped bird beating at the bars, and when I answered my mouth tripped over the words as clumsy as a drunk. "What do you want?"

"We could open another bottle of gin," Archie suggested, already pulling at his waistcoat, "and if we get in trouble you tell Mr Everett it was you."

"He wouldn't notice anyway, he never counts them, he doesn't know what's props and what's real."

"So go on, then, open one up."

His bare skin shone in the lamplight
as he undressed
, shadowed softly where the bumps of his spine and ribs showed, the dimples above his loosened waistband as he started to remove his trousers, the sliding shift of muscles moving in his arms and back.

I swallowed, feeling as though the click it made in my dry throat must be loud enough to hear in Greenwich, and turned my attention to pouring out the gin without clattering and spilling. I drank a glassful quickly, too distracted by the burn of it in my throat to notice that Archie had turned around until I heard his voice. "Looks like I was wrong, I can fit in these after all."

"You didn't have to take off your shirt to try on a pair of drawers, you harlot," I said as I handed Archie a brimming glass, trying to make a joke of it. This was just for fun, we were only play-acting like people in a pantomime, being foolish because we'd been drinking, nothing more. Nothing more.

"It'd feel more strange, I reckon, wearing these and a man's shirt at the same time. I have to confess, by the way, these ain't that same pair I had before. Couldn't get that tied string over my bum."

Watching Archie drink, bare-chested and wearing white frills from hip to knee, I could feel the hold I had on my senses growing pathetically weaker and weaker. It was an odd sort of sensation; part bad, the terrible fear of being found out and the revulsion I felt for these urges sticking in my throat like a pieces of bread I hadn't chewed enough, but in some strange way it almost felt good as well – that dark, private pleasure of holding a secret that nobody else knows. My skin prickled with warmth, and perspiration blotted on my collar; it was like being drunk without drinking enough.

"You look absurd," was all I could manage in reply. It earned me a sly sideways look from Archie; a smile with a raised eyebrow and the outward breath of a laugh, as though he didn't want to make the sound properly and shatter the sudden stillness of the room.

"It's quite nice, though. Nice and free. More room to move."

"You only say that because you're not wearing a corset," I said. Immediately that familiar stab of nausea came, the one that gripped me every time I realised I'd spoken before thinking again the way I always seemed to do when Archie was around. I resumed folding the costumes, sliding the heaps of fabric onto their shelves as though everything were normal, but then Archie's voice piped up behind me, laughing and teasing, and ruined everything.

"James – do you bet I can fit in one of those as well?"

I could never tell, even years later, whether Archie was teasing because
he knew
or just because that was his way, and Archie always claimed he couldn't remember; but at the time, on that night in the studio when Archie dressed in May and Sally's clothes and wore them better than the girls ever did, I thought he must. How could he not know? The air between us felt queasy and breathless and full of exhilarated promise, like the mo
ment at the apex of a swing when
you hover weightless between the leaves of the tree the ropes are tied to before plummeting back towards the ground.

"Will you let me take your picture?"

I said it on a sudden whim, needing to break this cloying tension or go mad. If I focused on the idea that all this was in fun then I knew I could be professional, I could calm the roaring of my blood in my ears. It was the same as with anybody, with Donald and Albert and the other men I photographed for Mr Everett in their scenes with Sally and the girls; I found I could force my mind away from shadowy unformed thoughts and abstract desires at the sight of them posing and instead turn my attention to the camera – to the weight of the glass plates and the bright explosion of magnesium, the held-breath, careful moment of exposure and the undiminished wonder I still felt at seeing the highlights and shadows of the scene swim into existence in the dish of chemicals, like conjuring forth ghosts that still lived.

"Lace me up," Archie said, laughing quietly and breathless. The gin made him loose-limbed and brazen, and he twined his bare arms languidly around a pillar we used as a prop when Mr Everett set up scenes of Ancient Greece so I could get at the dangling strings of the corset he'd already wrapped around his body. It was a green one, a glowing emerald contrast to the burnished gold of Archie's hair and the dirty white of his drawers, with scrolls of darker green embroidery between the strips of whalebone. My hands had been steady for Sally and May earlier in the evening and they were just as steady now, firm with familiarity, briskly tightening the laces and forcing girlish curves into Archie's waist and hips. He was the one gasping now, grumbling mildly at the constriction but still laughing as I tightened every crossed cord, drawing the eyelets as close as I could before tying the knot at the narrowest part of his new waist. Archie always laughed about everything, as though nothing in the world ever upset or appalled him the way it did me, but the breathlessness of it now made me pause, suddenly, and wonder for the first time how much of all this was a mask.

"Can you breathe?"

"Barely."

"Shall I loosen it?"

"No."

Archie stood up straight, slipping a few fingertips beneath the bottom edge of the corset and adjusting the way it was pressing into his hips. His face was flushed as if with fever, stained pink along his cheekbones and showing in the brightness of his eyes. I could see him considering the looking-glass in the corner of the room, angled so that his reflection was hidden from view from where he was, and watched him take a tentative half-step toward it before standing motionless and uncertain again, one hand still clutching the painted wooden pillar.

"Tell me man to man," Archie said, chest moving rapidly where it was visible above the corset as if to compensate for the constraint around his lungs, "just how ridiculous do I look?"

Entirely
, I wanted to say.
Absolutely, completely, utterly downright ridiculous, but my god your waist looks like it's about nineteen inches all the way around and you're still doing a better job of breathing than I am.

But out loud I said, "No more ridiculous than the girls do, really," and something about the tensed way Archie was holding his shoulders seemed to relax at the words, as though the sound of them spoken out loud chased away his awareness of what he was doing and reminded him that this wasn't real, after all, this wasn't serious or awful or anything we shouldn't be toying with, although we both knew it was all of these things and more.

When Archie braved a glance at his reflection he made that gasping giddy little laugh sound again, and things felt easy and familiar like before. I even smiled myself when minutes earlier I had been gripped by an awful dread I thought was there to stay, watching Archie's horrified fascination reflected in the glass, the look on his face and the way he kept touching the pulled-in contours of his bound waist. He rested his hands there, palms pressed above the new swell of his hips and fingers pointing towards the centre of him, where beneath the cotton of the drawers I could see the faint outline of his prick making the fabric bump out in ways it never could for the prostitutes who usually wore them.

"Where do you want me?" he asked, meeting my eyes reflected in the glass, and I almost laughed at what a dangerous question that was.

"In front of the backdrop. Do you want a chair or something?"

"If I sit down I think I'll break in half." He winced as he walked, picking his way in bare feet across the floorboards that were scattered with his usual clothes. "It's pinching."

"It's a corset, you ninny."

"I should have a chemise or something on under it, it's rubbing me raw."

"Stand still, then."

Archie looked nervous
then
, fidgeting with his fingers curled around each other as he waited for directions that didn't come because I was busy spreading powders on the lighting tray that perched on a stand beside the loaded camera, the
little heap
of magnesium and potassium chlorate ready to explode
the dim room
in a flash at the touch of a lit taper.

"I've not had my picture taken since I was seven."

"It's not like having a tooth out, it doesn't hurt. Chin down a bit. And turn a bit to your – no, the other side. That's it. Don't move."

I lit the taper with a match and opened the shutter, touching the taper to the powder so it burned with a quick, bright flash like struck lightning that made Archie jump.

"That'll blur, you fool."

"Forgive me. I'll be still, take another one."

"I don't have any more plates."

"Then get me out of this corset before I break a rib." As he spoke he was fumbling behind his back at the strings, screwing up his face in a grimace and going back to the looking-glass in the corner where he contorted himself trying to look at his reflection over his shoulder, trying to see the trick to untangling the knot.

I had never felt less like helping a friend in need in my whole life, standing there by the camera and watching the sinuous shape of Archie's body twisting awkwardly in the whalebone and frills, but he said my name then in a plaintive, begging whine – Sinnett this time, not James – and I went to him, to stand in the heat of him and hide my face behind the back of his neck as I worked at the knot so neither of us had to see the reflection of my impossible desires. Even now, so many years later, I remember the thoughts whirling around my mind in those moments –
you're beautiful, I wish I could tell you
– and how even without speaking they must have been as plain as print in the reflection of my eyes, no matter how I tried to hide them, because Archie stopped laughing, suddenly, and spun on tiptoe on his bare, dirty feet to press his mouth against mine. The aim was hurried and clumsy and it made our noses bump, but even the watering eyes and the sore burn of impact weren't enough to make me pull away from him; instead, I closed my hands on his waist in a ring of fingers and thumbs that almost met around him and kissed him back, feeling the heaving of his corseted body breathing like bellows, straining and constricted but trying to get closer to me even so, while our tongues tangled and his fingers wound through my hair and curled around my beating wrist. He said my name again, stammered and fluttering against my mouth –
James, Jim, oh
– and I could taste gin and barley sugars on his tongue before a voice thundered, "What the blue blazes is this?" and dread lurched like vomit in my stomach.