‘No!’
‘Yeah, don’t you recognise him?’
Mirren plumped a lip. ‘Nope.’ She was aware of Adrian’s critical glances as she gave the old man his drinks and took his money which he picked out in coins from a little leather purse like her late grandfather had. That wasn’t the only thing about the old man that reminded Mirren of her grandfather. The beard, the jolly round cheeks and his twinkling eyes took her back to happy days as a child when her mum’s father had wrapped them both up in his love and devotion. Happier days, when her mum wasn’t wracked with addiction and her dad still lived at home. But she didn’t want to think about that.
As soon as she could, she was back beside Adrian. ‘You’ll strain your face gurning at the poor old fellow like that. Seriously, what’s wrong with you?’
Adrian said nothing, drained his drink and made ready to leave. ‘Twelve o’clock on Tuesday the first, remember? Don’t be late, you might keep Ferdinand from his lunchtime nap.’
‘I’ll be there.’
He nodded, pulling his black jacket on and flattening his hair under a black peaked cap that framed his dark brows and cheekbones in a way that made Mirren want to sigh.
‘Adrian?’ Their eyes met for a beat she wished she could sustain. ‘Thank you. I mean it. You’re a good friend.’
‘Yes, I am.’ The flash of his teeth in a stunningly squared smile called to a traitorous place inside her and she fought to control muscle and nerve telling her to smile back, to lean across the bar and reach for his lapel, to speak to him in a low voice about wanting him. The old Mirren would have done all these things, but thankfully her resistance wasn’t put to the test because he was suddenly gone, leaving her watching in his wake as the crowds parted to let him pass then closed in again.
Chapter Twenty
‘O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?’
(Sonnet 65)
The courier van had only just pulled away from St.Ninian’s but Kelsey was already cross-legged on her bed pushing aside the clutter of books and catalogues all explaining the finer points of curating photographic exhibitions which she’d spent the morning poring over. She tore at the cardboard packages and pulled free the large glossy prints in their protective cellophane.
It had taken days for her collection of negatives and contact strips to arrive from her mum in Scotland and then she’d gone through the careful process of selecting the perfect images to send to the developers. She wouldn’t let herself think about how much it had cost; it was an unavoidable expense and an investment in her business. These images wouldn’t just bedisplayedin her new floating gallery; they’d be on sale too. The shots had to be perfect, and they were.
Every photographer has one; a list of those stand-out images where their skill, the lighting conditions and their subject come together to create something magical, the very best examples of their craft stretching back years. Kelsey had drawn her greatest hits together for the first time and the sight of them in her hands now made her heart soar.
The first out the packaging were old images from the only other exhibition she’d taken part in, back when she was in the university camera society, back when she had a group of happy, creative mates endlessly talking about f-stops, film-processing and double exposures, way back before she met Fran and let all her dreams slide, prioritising instead his ambitions.
These Scottish semi-rural landscapes, taken ten years ago now, captured where she was from, the very heart of her. A fisherman repairing his nets on the quayside near Mirren and Preston’s old flat; shining, striped mackerel in their iced trays fresh off the morning boats on the Firth; a combine harvester in the fields throwing dust and chaff into a clear August sky with the ruins of the Victorian pit head in the far distance. Then there was a black and white shot of a younger version of her mum standing in her kitchen behind Grandad in the chair, a towel around his shoulders, having his hair cut. Another taken in the little ice cream parlour at North Berwick she’d visited with her grandparents, the flavours laid out in their tubs like a pastel paint palette. Looking at it now she could almost taste the mint choc chip ice cream and feel the summer sun making it melt in her cone.
Photographs could always do that for her; send her right back to the moment they were taken, preserved forever. A lens makes everyone a traveller in time.
She was looking now at a shot of Mari pushing Calum in his buggy outside John Menzies on Princes Street and could swear she detected her mum’s Chanel No.5, and somehow this shot of Mirren’s back as she looked out over Edinburgh castle ramparts had conjured up the distinctive smells of roasted malt from the North British Distillery and the smoke from the castle’s one o’clock gun.
She peered closely at another familiar old image and smiled; a picture of an English garden. She’d only ever seen the photo in nineties’ five-by-four gloss but as a ten-inch matt enlargement she noticed for the first time the slightest blurring at its furthest depths. It was hardly surprising it wasn’t perfectly focused, since this was the very first shot she ever took, with her dad’s camera, under his instruction, standing peering over the hedge at the boundary of Shakespeare’s birthplace as a thirteen-year-old Anglophile, already lost to the romance of theatre and history and, unbeknown to her, about to become a vintage camera enthusiast.
Her father wasn’t in the picture, he wasn’t in any of the exhibition shots in fact, but he was present in every single depression of the shutter button and in the very light itself as it worked in chemical reaction upon sensitive film. All of these early pictures recorded her love for him and how it was the very makings of her.
Then there were the newer ones. Confetti thrown in the air against a blue sky at Norma’s wedding, abstract and colourful. A number of pictures of Blythe from the day they met, her violet eyes contrasting wonderfully with her white hair and the pink paper flower at her ear. Kelsey knew these would look just right hung alongside the headshot of Jonathan in silky monochrome which she stalled over now, wanting to press her fingertips to his accent mark eyebrows and the strong lines of his temples and jaw.
She grabbed for her phone and typed.
Only twenty-three sleeps! I’ll be opening the first door on the studio advent calendar tomorrow. I can’t wait to see you! Not long now. I love you, x
Off flew the words into the ether. Even though she was missing Jonathan, she knew how to love someone she couldn’t see every day; her dad had taught her a little about that.
Just as she was opening another text box to send a chaser of a love heart emoji, she heard Mirren’s knock on the door. Actually, it was more of a kick somewhere near ground level.
‘Coming! Don’t you have your key?’ Kelsey called. It had been two days since they’d seen each other, Mirren was so busy at the Yorick and had seemingly settled in to the barge’s living quarters very happily indeed. The tension of being cooped up together was long forgotten now they each had a little more space and a lot more privacy. Kelsey greeted her with a grin as she let Mirren in. ‘Woah, what’s all this?’
