Double Exposure (2 page)

Two
Popcorn

The girl looks distraught.

The huge container of popcorn has slipped from her grasp, bouncing down from step to step on the marble-tiled staircase in a lightly salted white-yellow avalanche. The toddler hanging from her hand is crying and Adam who has paused in the act of tearing her ticket is struggling to suppress a smile.

For a moment the young mother stares down at the mess on the stairs and it is touch and go whether she will break and cry. Instead, she mumbles an incoherent apology and turns away, dragging the child towards the relative anonymity of the darkened theatre.

Mums and Bubs …

Great concept. A session for people saddled with ankle-biters and housework, to help them maintain a semblance of sanity. If they can survive the ordeal …

At the bottom of the stairs, Cain watches the girl go and stares up at the cascading mess. Then he turns and makes his way in behind the candy bar.

Filling up a large carton, he shakes the excess corn back into the hopper and grabs a mini Milky Way from the stand on the counter.

Inside the theatre the trailers are still running, and in the light from the screen he locates the young woman halfway up in a seat near the left-hand aisle. The kid is still crying and she is staring at the screen, her face frozen in an inscrutable expression.

Leaning down, he holds the carton out in front of her.

‘On the house.'

For a moment it seems as if she will refuse the offer, but then a look of gratitude replaces the wariness and the semblance of a smile creeps into the corners of her mouth.

There is a slight shudder in her intake of breath.

Dropping to a crouch, his eyes level with the little boy's face, he opens his palm with a magician's flourish, to reveal the small chocolate offering.

The boy regards him with suspicion, but the tears have stopped. He looks up at his mother for permission.

‘What's his name?' Cain asks the question without taking his eyes from the child.

‘Tyson.' She pauses, as if embarrassed. ‘His father named him. About the only thing he ever gave him.'

‘Want a chocolate, Tyson?' A slight pause, then the girl nods assent and smiles at the child, who imitates the nod and grabs the treat.

‘What do you say, Ty?' she prompts.

‘Tanks,' the child manages, while negotiating the wrapper of his prize. The girl reaches out and removes the paper, handing it back to him, then looks up. Cain has risen from his crouch and stands a little uncertainly in the aisle.

‘Thank you,' she says.

‘All part of the service.'

As the cliché slips out, he grimaces internally, hoping his embarrassment hasn't shown on his face, but her expression hasn't changed. He turns away, then back. ‘Enjoy the movie.'

At the bottom of the steps, he raises the nerve to look back. There is a smile on her face, as she ruffles the boy's hair and places an arm around his tiny shoulders, sliding down more comfortably in her seat.

As he leaves the theatre, the lights are dimming and the DreamWorks logo is fading up onto the screen behind its bank of blue-grey clouds.

‘I should take it out of your pay, you know.' Amy appears behind him as he sweeps the last of the popcorn into the dustpan and looks up at the shining staircase. ‘You're lucky Tim didn't see you.'

He turns to face her, leaning back against the chrome handrail.

‘Did you see her face, Aim? I thought she was going to lose it right there on the stairs. And bloody Adam wasn't helping.'

Amy places a hand on his arm.

‘I saw, babe. Good job. Just don't make a habit of it, eh?' She turns to go, then stops. ‘Could you relieve Shamerin at the ticket-booth for me? Just half an hour or so. I need her help in the office.'

‘The ticket-booth? Come on! Why can't I help in the office?'

She looks at him, smiling.

‘Cain, baby … You know I don't trust myself alone in a room with you. Take window two. The eftpos isn't working on one and I haven't checked the float on three yet. And no freebies – I don't care if they look like they're about to commit
seppuku. Capisce
?'

The
Mums and Bubs
exodus two hours later is a procession of strollers and chattering two-year-olds. Stocking the Snickers stand with miniature bars, Cain watches them file out through automatic doors. She is one of the last to leave, holding the little boy's hand and looking in her bag for something.

‘Hey, Tyson!'

The little boy turns. Cain checks both ways, then tosses one of the bars towards him. Miraculously, the boy manages to hold on to the airborne gift.

Nice one, kid …

The remnant of a smile is fading from the girl's face, as she moves on through the doorway and the mechanism slides the doors closed behind her.

Standing behind the ice-cream counter, assembling popcorn cartons, Nilgun shakes her head and smiles to herself.

Three
Living out loud

12 July 1991

‘There is no explanation, Mrs Eveson. At present, science really has no way of accounting for your son's giftedness. Some children just … have it.' Dr Coleman shrugs and picks up the sheet of drawing paper from the desk in front of him. ‘For a four-year-old, it's a truly remarkable talent. Does he always draw horses?'

Ruth Eveson takes the sheet from the paediatrician's hand and stares down at the pencil-sketch of a galloping stallion that she watched her son produce from memory a few minutes earlier.

‘No. Not always. He does like animals, but he'll draw just about anything that catches his eye. A piece of furniture, a tree. His brother.'

‘Ah, yes. Cain. He shows no particular talent at drawing, you say?'

The two boys sit like identical bookends at the extremities of the bulky sofa that fills the far wall and seems out of place in the otherwise sterile confines of the room. For a moment the question hangs unanswered, as the symmetry and the absurdity of the image register at a level somewhere beneath the conscious.

Then she realises that he is waiting for a response.

‘No … None. He talks more than Chris, and he seems to make friends more easily, but no special talents. His horses look like garbage bins on sticks. What I don't understand is, if they're identical … I mean, if Chris can do … this …'

‘Why can't Cain? The simple truth is that we just don't know. As I said, we don't understand a whole lot about where true giftedness comes from. Two boys with identical genes, in an identical environment … and with vastly different talents.

‘The important trick is to try not to compare them. And above all to treat them as individuals. In everything.

‘Let them find their own centre and their own identities and encourage them to be friends as well as brothers. Twins share a special bond, and as long as they don't become obsessed with their sameness it can be a special blessing to know that there is someone in the world who is closer to you than any other human being can ever hope to be.'

He takes the drawing from her hand and studies it closely, shaking his head.

‘Amazing … What we need to do now is talk about how we can best nurture his talent – without destroying it in the process.'

As the two adults turn towards the desk, Chris slides across the cushions of the huge sofa and slips his arm around his brother's shoulders …

*

One o'clock.

In the shadows on the far side of the street, the old man sleeps slumped against the brick wall, a halo of graffiti framing his bowed head, colours bleached to shadings of grey in the gloom. Through the viewfinder the composition is perfect. The weak shaft, struggling down from a dirty streetlight, highlights the crumpled coat and the texture of the filthy woollen hat, and the old man's trolley casts a long, complex shadow onto the pavement at his feet.

All his worldly possessions. The detritus of a shattered life …

Chris straightens and steps away from the tripod for a moment. The street is silent. A slight breeze chills him and he closes the zipper on his jacket, then bends again.

Another look through the viewfinder, a slight adjustment of the focus.

The gentlest of pressure on the shutter-release …

For a second, as the shutter opens for its long exposure, the view through the lens is lost and he is staring at nothing. Then the mechanism clicks and the old man reappears, unmoving still.

He could be dead …

The thought surfaces, but he shakes it off.

Before he leaves, he slides money into the old man's pocket.

One-forty.

Beside the fountain, the young man stops, and holding his hand the girl turns to face him. They are silhouetted against the water and the spray hangs on the air around them, in an illuminated mist.

By a trick of the light, the girl's eyes shine in the highlighted darkness of her face and the expression in them is magic.

The shutter freezes them in the half-moment before the kiss and as he closes his eyes; something in the perfection of the image reminds him of a line from the old poem, mostly forgotten, read once in the lazy lethargy of a Friday afternoon English class. And a couple more times in the silent evening.

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal …

Beside the fountain, oblivious to his presence, the kiss is given and received and they move on.

So much for poetry …

Two-fifteen.

Neon.

Garish and pulsating at the top of the long hill, the Coke sign slides slowly out of focus as he adjusts the depth of field. The girl deserves her dominance in the centre of the frame.

Sixteen, maybe, but trying to appear older, short skirt slit provocatively at the side, innocence buried beneath a deep layer of make-up and nervous boredom, she stands, hips cocked, arm straight out, leaning against the pole.

No Standing …

Resisting the temptation of the cheap pun, he shifts the angle of the shot so that the sign is lost against the glare of the distant neon. His finger hovers on the trigger, waiting. He is using the 70x300, the medium lens, standing some distance down the hill, and she is still unaware of him.

Finally she moves her head, scanning the street for trade, and her eyes fix on him, staring directly into the camera lens, as the shutter opens. And closes.

And opens.

And closes.

She says nothing as he approaches, but her hand moves down across her bare stomach, smoothing the cheap material of her skirt in invitation.

‘Thanks,' he says and slips a twenty into her hand. She keeps hold of his fingers, the tip of her tongue wetting her lips. A challenge. But something in his eyes makes her release her grip.

‘Sure,' she replies and slides the note into her bra, watching his back all the way down the long hill.

Three o'clock.

The door opens and a flood of light pours across the bare boards of the living area. He steps inside, leaning the folded tripod against the wall. It slides slightly, catches the edge of the rug and stops.

In the bedroom, he drops the camera bag onto the empty surface of the dressing table and reaches into the pocket of his jacket for the three exposed rolls of film. For a moment they sit on the open palm of his hand, and he recalls the images they store. Then he places them carefully, one by one, onto the surface next to the bag.

He switches off the light, falls backwards onto the bed and feels his eyes slide closed. As sleep claims him, the eyes of the young prostitute are the last thing he remembers …

*

Chris's story

A long time ago in an interview, Pablo Picasso said: ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.'

Much as I admire Picasso, and I really do, I think perhaps this time he got the whole thing arse-about.

The real key is to find a way of not growing up in the first place.

From the time I was four or five, all I wanted to do was draw. To take the world around me and put it on paper. And I was good at it. Everyone said so and I knew it.

How could I not know it, with every significant other from my parents to my pre-school teacher, not to mention the special drawing tutor they found to nurture my ‘special talent', all reminding me of the fact every time I chose to commit something to paper?

But in the end, they all missed the point.

I didn't draw to impress them. Or to show off. I drew because I had no choice. Any more than a fish has a choice to swim. In the end, it was about holding on. To an image, a moment, an emotion. Like if I
couldn't
draw it, it might just disappear. Or maybe like it never really existed.

A bit obsessive, when you think about it.

When you're a kid, everything is new. Scary sometimes, confusing more often than not, but always new.

Most kids control the unknown with words. They learn the names of everything they come across and somehow the knowledge seems to give them a kind of mystical control over their environment. That was Cain's way.

Cain was always a creature of words.

And I was a creature of images.

And for that they called me a prodigy. For that they branded me as different.

I think it always made my mother uncomfortable, but naturally she never said anything. Why would she? How could she?

My mother is a creature of silences.

I remember reading once about a professor who specialised in the mind and genius and he said something which has worried me ever since.

‘Prodigies,' he said, ‘rarely achieve anything of lasting significance.' He went on to theorise that with a few notable exceptions – like a Mozart or a Beethoven – the genius that flowers too soon tends to reach its peak before it has anything really important to say.

Then again, maybe it's just that no one wants to listen when it's not cute and four years old and precocious any more.

Whatever …

I don't think all the attention hurt me all that much. Not really. Cain says it's probably what made me more independent – what enabled me to stand up to the General and tear holes in his controlling bullshit. But I'm not so sure. I just think I've always been a threat to him. To his ideas of structure and discipline.

I can still see the look on his face the day I walked out. The anger. The blustering. But underneath it all, the fear. Of me and what I represented.

A crack in the foundations of his control.

Emile Zola was a writer, but I liked what he had to say about the arts.

‘If you ask me what I came to do in this world,' he said, ‘I, the artist, I will answer you: “I am here to live out loud.”'

Maybe that's what my father can't stand.

Someone else being loud. Someone else expressing opinions.

My father is a creature of opinions …