Captured Shadows (8 page)

I felt the sickening urge to hurt him in return, but couldn't think of a way to do it now he appeared to hate me. Half-heartedly I said, "This city and the people in it won't even know you've gone, I assure you," and sat back in my chair to pick up the scattered photographs I had been wrapping before we lost our tempers.

When Mr Everett came into the room half an hour later, as characteristically oblivious as ever, he began to talk about how much Mr Whitlock was willing to pay for photographs of us fucking – he always said the word with such relish, as though he enjoyed the sound of it more than the act itself – and I glanced at Archie, wondering how we were going to decline without causing a fight with Mr Everett as well as between ourselves. Instead I found him staring back at me coolly, then he raised one eyebrow in a way I presumed he had learned from Percival and asked, "Well, what do you say, Sinnett? For the money? Or would you rather stay behind the camera?"

"For the money," I agreed in a tone just as icy, stubbornly unwilling to let him win, although really it felt as though we had both lost.

Archie left before I did to deliver some photographs on his way home, and I had every intention of going home myself, but my walk back to Bloomsbury took me through the Seven Dials and I lingered there a while when usually I hurried; I craved the noise that night to keep myself from getting lost in my thoughts. The bustle of bodies and carriages were distracting in a way that was almost comforting, girls with painted faces and men brawling in the doorways of pubs while their mates watched and cheered. After dark the Dials became a place of danger, where throats were slit for copper coins or for no reason at all, and in the winter when the nights fell early I took the longer way home down Regent Street and across to the Tottenham Court Road to avoid it; but in the summer the place seemed different, as though the pickpockets and thugs on the street felt as faint as vampires in the long hours of sunlight and chose to stay hidden instead. There were flowers everywhere, window-boxes full of every colour there was, and hundreds of birds in painted cages being peddled by bellowing street sellers.

Although Mr Everett would have been horrified to hear it, I found myself with a certain level of fame among the people there. In the dark I was another faceless target for the thieves; in the light, I became a strange sort of hope. The girls there, all rouged cheeks and vivid clothes and long loose hair, knew what Sally and May did on the evenings they never showed up on the streets to sell themselves; whenever I passed through the Dials I could hear them whispering behind me and see their longing glances, not to have me but to have what they thought I could offer them. Sometimes the bolder girls fell into step with me, striking up a conversation which they inelegantly twisted into a request for a job, or I found myself with a rough little hand in mine and the earnest, pleading face of a girl close to my own as she asked
am I pretty enough, Mr Sinnett?
no matter how many times I tried to explain that I was merely a sort of apprentice with no say in the business.

That night the first girl to notice me was Sally, and I was glad to see her. The work she did for Mr Everett had elevated her status within the community of the Dials from anonymous street girl to a sort of tribal queen – "the Mayoress of Whores," May said once when I was helping them out of their clothes for a photograph, carmined lips staining her cup of wine as she drank a toast to her friend, and Sally laughed as though it were all in jest but she could never hide the pride in her eyes – and the girls always listened when she told them to leave me alone.

I crossed the street when she waved to me, sidestepping a drunk emptying his stomach into the gutter. "You staying for a beer, love?" she asked me as I tipped my hat to the girls she was standing with – and the idea was suddenly there in my head, fully-formed as though it had been my plan all along.

"Might I have a word with you? In private?"

A couple of the girls started tittering at that, falling silent when Sally turned her cool stare on them. She took my arm so I could help her down from the pub window-ledge where she was sitting and she led me back across the street into a narrow gap between two buildings. Somewhere at the back there was a couple fumbling and laughing, the inebriated man trying to lift the girl's skirt and
only
getting himself tangled; I tried to ignore them and leaned in close to Sally, speaking quickly and quietly before I could convince myself it was a terrible idea.

"Mr Everett wants me and Archie to do more pictures."

"Of course he does, he knows a good thing when he's got it. What's the matter, you lost your nerve after all this time?"

"I don't mind it."

"I bet you're getting more money for it than me. Mind you, that's just the way, ain't it? You bloody Mary-Anns get more money out here on the street too."

I started to protest –
don't call me that, I'm not
– then shut my mouth. There was a difference, I thought, and an immense one, between us and the renters out on the streets with their brash laughter and sharp tongues, but not one I could explain to her; I couldn't explain it to anybody, not even myself. I wanted to tell her everything – the way Archie and I had fallen into friendship long before anything as complicated as love started to overthrow all good reason; his habit of slipping his fingers through the back of my hair as though afraid I might pull away from his kisses, as though he still believed I might want to; how I couldn't remember a single moment in my entire life when I had been happier, or more afraid now that he was treating me so coldly – but I couldn't find the words, and besides I thought she might laugh at me.

Instead she looked concerned, searching my eyes with hers. "I'm only teasing, love. I do alright for myself. I'd want more money too if I had to do them things you do every night. I don't mind it now and then, but God Almighty it don't half hurt sometimes."

"I don't... I mean, I've never..."

"Oh," she said slowly, realising what was unsaid. "Sorry, Jim, we all thought you was that way inclined else why'd Mr Everett ask you to do it in the first place? It ain't the kind of thing you suggest to a chap if he ain't gave no indication he'd want to."

"Well, I..." Again my words failed me, and I clenched my fists inside my pockets, where I'd shoved them in an attempt to look casual. "It's a long story and not entirely mine to tell. Archie needed the money for something. He asked me... he wanted my help."

She was smiling when I made myself look at her, not much with her mouth but it was sparkling in her blue eyes. "You're sweet on him, ain't you?" she asked, and something in her tone and the way she grasped my arm made me feel drunk, suddenly, giddy and careless enough to let the secret tumble out.

"Is a fish sweet on swimming?"

"God help whatever poor sod you land on when you fall off your cloud," she said, shaking her head in a pantomime of despair. "So what do you want me to do about it?"

"Could you perhaps..." I lost my hold on the words for a moment and paused, embarrassed, before trying again. "I don't know what to do. Could you explain some things?"

"I can do better than that, love, I'll get some of the lads to show you if you like. You'll have to pay 'em, of course, but it ain't that much."

Sally shooed one of the other girls away from her previous spot on the window-ledge when we made our way back to the others, and sent another of them inside the pub to fetch the lads she spoke of, introducing them to me as one after the other they tumbled half-drunk out of the door. Sid was a lad some years younger than me, and Jacky younger still, but I felt small and stupid in the presence of their noisy chatter and braying laughter and the comfortable, casual way one of them stood with his arm slung across the shoulders of the other. They looked me up and down, grinning at each other as though speaking some silent language only they knew, then the taller of them – Sid, dark gypsy curls and a coat of faded blue velvet – said to me, "If you want us both, sir, you have to pay us both, even if you don't
use
us both."

"How much?" I blurted, when what I really meant to say was
I don't want you, I want your advice
.

Jacky – sharp Liverpool accent, vivid red hair and a face full of freckles – pretended to count on his fingers. "A fiver apiece," he said, then tried to duck away from the sharp slap Sally aimed at his ear.

"I know you ain't never had more than two in your whole miserable life, you little shit, and even that was pure luck you managed to find the one old chap in London stupid enough to give you it. Mr Sinnett's a friend of mine. Say no if you like, but don't rob him blind on his first go."

His first go. That seemed to get them interested. Jacky's arm slipped off Sid's shoulders and they both stepped closer, staring at me as though I were something fascinating in a shop window.

"I've got no money." I had to stop myself from taking a step back. "About three bob and a couple of farthings. I was... merely curious about the rates."

"Jim," Sally said behind me, disapproving. It struck me as funny somehow and I tried not to let it show.

"You're the feller what takes the pictures, ain't you?" Sid asked suddenly. Jacky's eyes widened and his mouth silently made the shape of the sound
ohh
. "How about you give us the three bob now, then come back another time and take our picture to make up the rest?"

There was a part of me that protested and kicked and spat and shouted
no, this is a dreadful idea
– but it must have been a very small part, not nearly big enough to hold me back when Sid took my arm to lead me into a house across the street and Jacky slipped his hand into my pocket to take the
three
shillings.

Things seemed to move very quickly after that, and yet somehow with more clarity; I noticed all manner of irrelevant things in the room, the frayed shape of a grey cobweb in the corner and the odd distorted effect of an uneven pane of glass in the window, avoiding a glance at the large bed for as long as possible. Jacky was sitting on the edge of it when I finally looked, unfastening his collar and stepping hard on the backs of his battered shoes with his toes to prise them off. Sid was behind me, closing and locking the door, then I felt his breath ghosting against my cheek when he rested his chin on my shoulder and put his arms around me. Immediately I felt a strange sensation – part desire, as though my body had become accustomed to reacting this way to another man's touch, and part a revulsion that was almost physical. I twisted away from him, trying to do it gently so as not to hurt his feelings, but he was smirking at me and looking at Jacky as though encouraging him to do so as well. I don't think he had any feelings to hurt, or if he did they were hidden deeper than diamonds.

"I'd rather watch you two."

Sid raised his eyebrows but said, "Suit yourself," and dragged a wooden chair from the corner into the middle of the room, clattering it down near the foot of the bed and gesturing for me to sit down before he shrugged out of his jacket and went to join Jacky. "So, Mr Sinnett, what exactly do you wanna see?"

"Oh... anything."

Jacky grinned at that and began helping Sid out of the rest of his clothes, both of them turning sly glances on me every few seconds to make sure I was still paying attention, while I sat there with my fingers clamped painfully around the chair's wooden arms and my heart thudding uneasily in my chest.

It seems absurd but it was the first time, I think, that I made a real connection between the work I did in the studio and the work Sally and her renter pals did on the streets. The photographs were rather dull and methodical, putting the models into unlikely positions that looked good in pictures but only made them laugh and grumble in person as they stretched and cramped and grew weary with holding still. Much of the time the men never got as far as spending because Mr Everett thought it a waste of time; if the spunk went in the girl, he said, it wouldn't show up in the pictures, and if it went on her powdered pale skin it would barely show up in the pictures either, so why waste plates? But the renters and street girls, Sid and Sally and all the others, cared little for how they looked during the act and instead strove for the finish like horses on a racetrack. We were opposite sides of the same coin, I finally admitted to myself, feeling a sort of horrified fascination as I watched Jacky and Sid touch each other, and now I couldn't even feel this vague sense of superiority any longer: the moment I agreed to perform with Archie in front of Mr Everett's camera, I became one of them.

I managed to stutter something about having to be somewhere else and put my two farthings on a table by the door as I left, since I had no intention of ever returning to photograph them. I doubt they cared; I could hear them laughing even as I made my way downstairs. Sally was there in the hallway, sitting astride the polished wooden handrail with her bum resting against the finial on the newel post. She startled me, I felt as though I jumped a mile in the air, but the sight of her in such an odd place made me laugh, suddenly, and I felt lighter as though something heavy had been lifted from my shoulders.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"Sliding," she said, a slight blush in her cheeks at being caught. "Nothing naughty. It's quicker than walking. Didn't want you to know I was listening at the door, but now you know."

"Why were you listening?" I descended the last few steps and let her place her hand on my shoulder, helping her gather her skirts so they wouldn't get caught on the finial as she dismounted.

"Wanted to make sure they weren't taking you for the wrong sort of ride. Jacky's alright but I don't trust Sid as far as I can spit."

"How far can you spit?"

"I'd show you," she said with a grin, "if I were your type."

I laughed, then, in a way that seemed incongruous with the frustration and misery I felt over my fight with Archie; something about Sally's constant teasing felt familiar, almost comforting. I remembered Tennyson's mournful reminder that
'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
but in that moment I wished fervently that Archie had saved Mr Everett from that horse and then faded quietly out of our lives, for this inexplicable anger we suddenly felt for one another was almost too painful to bear.

"I've never needed a drink so badly before," I said to her. "Will you escort me to the pub? I fear for my virtue out there alone."