MADDY
“Riiiiiight… Now, we both prefer monochrome, but you mentioned colour. Shall we get the pudding served, so we can clear the table to look at your portfolio?”

He hoovered up the ice cream I offered, so it wasn’t long before the table was cleared, dishes left soaking for the moment. That was what I normally did, but he didn’t need to know any of that. His portfolio was a large folder of paper prints, and one set caught my eye, as while it looked monochrome, there was a tiny dot of colour down near the bottom edge. I stood on the brake several times, but we got there, and in summary, the bite-sized chunks made perfect sense. I could feel the commas and full stops reasserting themselves in his speech.

“That was a winter walk on Snowdon. With the low cloud and the snow, it looks monochrome, but there were a few walkers out. That was someone’s woolly hat, in really bright orange”

“Was that where you got the idea for those Standing photos?”

“Stanage. It’s in the Peak District and… Yes. The rock’s naturally a sort of grey colour, but a lot of the climbers wear stuff even brighter than that woolly hat. To get the shots of them at the top, I had to lie down in the heather to avoid getting any in the frame. Grey sky, grey rock, bright colours popping out”

“Why are they all off to one side?”

“Rule of thirds, sort of. And it makes them look small against the architecture”

“Sorry?”

“The clouds and rock. Like the Organ Loft images, compared to your church organ I bought a copy of that one and one I call ‘Shoulder and Hip’ and”

“Neil”

“Sorry”

“Stress? What is it?”

He actually blushed, which was sweet.

“That’s you in the photo, isn’t it? Um, not wearing clothes?”

I nodded, and for once he bounced straight back.

“I saw the spotlights and the mirror when I came out of the bathroom. Is that where you did it?”

Another blush.

“I meant, is that where you took the pictures?”

“Yes, it was”

“Can I see how?”

For a second, I wondered if he was suggesting I strip off, but he was speaking clearly and the blush was absent.

“Shall we finish your selection first, Neil? These ones look really weird, unearthly sort of thing”

“Ramshaw Rocks, near Leek. Nd this one’s from The Roaches, which are nearby”

I couldn’t help the ‘fuck!’ that burst from my lips.

“He’s bloody upside down! And no, Neil: no comment about him only being sideways”

The most natural laugh I had heard so far.

“That’s a climb called ‘Sloth’. I abseiled to the side of it.”

“I can see why!”

“It’s not that hard, really”

He was clearly in his own world in more ways than one.

“Come on. I’ll show you how my silhouette system works. Had more than enough frights for one day”

I led us up to my little studio, feeling oddly pretentious as I thought the word, and explained how I set up the spotlights, using the mirror to assess the image, camera locked to a tripod aligned with the cheval glass and on a long cable for remote shutter release, taking a burst of five shots each time to improve the odds of getting a decent image. I turned to see what Neil thought, and caught him mid-blush once more.

“What’s embarrassing you, Neil? I don’t want you stressed if we can avoid it”

Once again, he started breathing deeply, which was clearly another of his calming rituals, and then ducked his head.

“It really is embarrassing. It’s the photo, that ‘shoulder and hip’ and it’s a really great composition, but it’s you and you’re naked in it and I’m standing next to you and”

Hand up.

“Neil… Neil, are you saying you find that picture erotic? Simple answer rules”

The longest and deepest of breaths.

“Not just that”

“What else?”

“It’s very erotic. And I’m standing next to it. To her. To you. Sorry. I better leave”

He was gone before I could think of a way of stopping him, and I then spent the night awake as I tried to work out why I wanted to stop him at all.

NEIL
I could feel my face burning as I dragged my lid on after stuffing my Rukkas into the top box and setting my portfolio rather more carefully into a side case. I was on the bike and rolling before remembering to zip up my jacket. How had I let my mouth run away like that? I knew the answer, of course, but my shame was distracting me, along with the pressure in my trousers. I was praying she hadn’t spotted the bulge, but I knew from that burning sensation that she must have spotted the blush.

Why hadn’t I just lied? How much had I in the flat? Not a clue, for once, so I decided I better make sure it was enough, and I ended up back at Asda, where I realised that I couldn’t risk bottles in hard cases, so I ended up with e three litre box of wine, six bottles of Old Peculier and three bath towels to wrap them in.

I could still taste the lamb, even after the ice cream, as it was repeating a little due to the state of my nerves setting my guts churning. Shit. There was an edition of a logic puzzle magazine at the magazine rack, along with a couple of camera magazines I hadn’t read, and as I spent far too much money I could feel my stomach settling a little.

Back onto the bike, and home, and I turned the lock on my dark room door, putting the key into my sock drawer so that I wouldn’t end up trying to develop the Stanage shots whilst inebriated. I had nothing planned for the following day, and I intended to get drunk so quickly that I would lose relevant function before…

I recovered the key, and put ‘shoulder and hip’ into the dark room before repeating the key trick. No. Not giving into that temptation, not now that I knew her.

Had known her, rather. There was no way I would ever be able to face her again. I got up once more to add my laptop and phone to the contents of the dark room, just to be safe.

The mid-morning sun was full on my face through the uncurtained window, the previous day’s rain having blown through on its way towards Lincoln and the North Sea, who were welcome to it. I checked the clock, finding the time to be nearly eleven thirty, so more late morning than mid. I was still fully dressed, lying on top of the bedclothes with half of the duvet folded across my middle.

Tea. Orange juice, tea and paracetamol. I could spend the evening in focus after an afternoon of hangover recovery, and do some justice to the black, white, colour pictures I had taken at Stanage. I had a bowl of milky cereal to help settle my stomach, wincing as I saw how much inroad I had made into the wine after killing all six bottles of OP, and after unlocking the dark room I recovered my laptop and started checking prices on a new lens I had seen featured in an article in one of the magazines, one of the few clear memories I had from the night’s debauch.

And without any conscious intent, I found myself back on Maddy’s website, and three more prints somehow ordered themselves, all of them of the same type as the one I had hidden in my dark room.

MADDY
That was the last I saw or heard from Neil for quite a while, though I found myself thinking about him almost obsessively. I couldn’t work out exactly what I felt, but a huge amount of it was an almost crippling sense of combined shame and sympathy.

He had shot out of my house, clearly covering a stiffy, and my dirty little mind had gloated, remembering Clare’s little comments about hand shandies and pocket billiards, before another part of me slapped that down.

He was, in the end, almost crippled, in a way that didn’t show unless you spoke to him: invisibly disabled, that was it. What sort of personal life, intimate relationships, could he have had if a silhouette of my hip had him so aroused he was floored by shame? You are an utter bitch, I told myself, far from the first time, while that nastier part of me tried to remember how big the bulge had been.

Fucking hormones!

Bollocks to that. I had two photography conventions lined up for the coming week, as well as a meeting that Leo had arranged with a possible technical customer. My least favourite work, to be honest, because everything had to be precisely lined up, trade marks to the fore, and this particular slice of ennui was a producer of computer motherboards, oh god. My passion for photography was driven by my artistic sensitivity, not as a simple record. A person’s portrait can be tweaked so many ways, especially if there is a strong interpersonal relationship; old machinery may be shot in so many styles of lighting, and of course there was my chiaroscuro work, but, shit.

Electronic components. On a flat surface. With a fixed camera and no shadows if at all possible. Square in the frame. Sod that for a game of artistic soldiers, but at least it paid a large part of my bills. And it filled my time usefully when the weeks span round to the awkward days of my personal Cape Horn.

That thought tickled me, lifting me a small way from my sense of failure and shame with one young man. Rounding the Horn, oh yes, but without the Kenneths, Hugh or Betty.

Two weeks went by without incident, although involving far too many mother boards and inline water filters as well as the work I really, REALLY hated, which was electrical components for a bloody mail order parts catalogue.

Bills, Gibson, and payment thereof. That trip to Durham was coming soon, and if I managed to get the hotel I had my eye on, I was anticipating some brilliant sunrise and sunset shots of the cathedral.

Two weeks indeed, and I checked the sales summary on my website, eyes blurred after several hundred too many shots of resistors or inertia switches or bloody dilithium crystals for my mental wellbeing, and started to relax. I had made a couple of hundred sales of physical prints in the previous fortnight, and while that wasn’t a huge quantity, it certainly gave me some nice wiggle room. Leo handled that side of things for me, as there was no way I could personally print so many A4 and A3 copies. I started my usual scan down the sales reports, looking for patterns in purchaser locations and popularity of images, and spotted a little nugget buried among the others.

Three sales in this town, all nudes, including one where part of my breast had popped into view when I had pressed the shutter release just as the postie had dropped a couple of heavy magazines through the letter box, making me jump. Right… email address…

‘[email protected]’. If that wasn’t ‘my’ Neil, then I had just entered the Twilight Zone. What to do?

NEIL
I managed to pull myself together after a few days, though I still found it confusing each time I looked the prints. I had framed them all, and hung them on the dark room rather than elsewhere, so that they might inspire me at work, even if I couldn’t see them properly, rather than distracting me in ways I didn’t want to confront.

I was heading towards the Dales for some caving, without my diving rig this time, but with a full set of photo gear as I intended to stop off in York and Tadcaster for some architectural work. The weather was set fair for a change, and I decided to take the Kwak for a change. The plan was a complicated one, with two days in Hawes exploring some of the pots there, as well as getting some pics of the karst scenery, before heading up into the top end of Weardale, where they had done a lot of hushing. More than two thousand feet up in the Pennines they had mined lead by filling dammed pools before releasing a flood to strip the surface layers of the ground to reveal galena, from which they would smelt out lead, as well as some silver. One of the eroded gullies is said to be one hundred feet deep, and there are lots of old industrial relics on the slopes. All grist to my own personal mill, I thought, before realising the unconscious pun.

The ride was actually quite pleasant, the Kwak handling the winding Dales roads nicely, and I got some seriously useful shots around and under Buttertubs, including a few very satisfying colour shots down the Pass itself and some waterfall effects after I had abseiled partway into one of the Tubs, jumaring back out. The limestone pavement to the South West swallowed four rolls of film, metaphorically, and for the rest of the week I was booked into a bed and breakfast in Garrigill, a short walk from the George and Dragon. That area had always fascinated me when looking at the map, because all three of the area’s main rivers, Tyne, Wear and Tees, started almost at the same spot. No caving, but plenty of huge skies and windblown rushes interspersed with boggy pools of slime.

My sort of country. I rode out one day through Alston to Hartside for some mixed film and digital long shots of the Lake District, and then took a seat in the pub for a sober meal and the use of their wifi. I had mail.

Did I have mail.

‘Hi Neil. I know this is the Neil I met because this is the contact mail on your website. Please believe I am NOT stalking you! I really like your work, and absolutely enjoyed our session swapping tips and experiences. I think our tastes are almost identical, so I will say that I have had a horrible time doing catalogue work for electrical component retailers. I am NOT going into any more detail because it would bring back memories of how boring it is. But it pays my mortgage.

Now, please believe that this is not a complaint. I was disappointed when you left so abruptly. Not angry, not disappointed in YOU, just a little surprised. You had done so much for me that day, and I enjoyed the evening we managed, as I have said.

I saw that you had bought some of my prints, and want to say that if you want any others, please just ask. How could I dare to charge you after your chivalry?

Now comes my own embarrassing bit. With what you said, I worked out why you felt you had to rush off, and I am neither angry, nor offended, but flattered, that a handsome younger man found me that attractive. I have issues of my own that get in the way of any more than casual relationships. To be honest, any relationships at all have been like hens’ teeth in my life. I will explain at some point, but that sort of requires that we communicate.

I have put my mobile number at the foot of this mail, but don’t feel pressured to use it. It would be nice to hear your voice again so that I know you are okay, and I promise not to complain if you hit me with verbal diarea (sp?).

Maddy Gibson’

I sat for a few minutes as my pie and mash cooled down, then closed down my email and opened my own website. As I had suspected, she had left a few comments on some of my images, so I looked up my sales page, and as I had suspected, she had bought five of them, matching my own purchases shot for shot. The only difference was that I do not offer nudes, and at that thought a little corner of my mind giggled and wondered if she had been disappointed. Before I realised it, my hands were at the keyboard, and a return mail was off and running.

MADDY
I was in one of those odd tea shops, near Old Elvet Bridge, where cold drinks are served in empty jam jars instead of glasses. I had taken a room to the West of the Cathedral, my window looking across the river to the towering Cathedral and the sprawl of the Castle. I had calculated that I would have the twin bonuses of the morning sun haloing the stone giants and the evenings giving me a warmer, brighter glow. That all depended on decent weather, of course, but so far my first two days were holding up. I had booked a walk around the inside of the massive church for the following day, complete with a photography permit. There was a price to pay, of course, and that involved a couple of formal portraits. Ah, well: at least they weren’t going to be of thermostats or nipple clamps.

What on Earth? Sodding HRT cycle! I took another bite of my posh ham, artisan cheese and suspicious mushroom toasty just as my phone bleeped. I had mail, apparently. I opened up the screen, and it wasn’t from Tom Hanks.

‘Hello Maddy
Thank you. I have been so worried I had offended you with what I said. Yes you are attractive but I am not right, not completely.

I have now edited this message seven times before sending it. Unsurprisingly I have no idea how to talk to women but I did enjoy the evening before I disgraced myself. I will say the same thing to you, that you do not have to pay to get copies of my pictures. It’s only fair.

I am away from home right now so here are some digital pictures from today’s lunch stop

Neil’

I opened the first of the attached images, and laughed out loud, for he had added a caption: ‘The other sort of MAMIL’, A pub car park, clearly, filled with motorbikes and lots of people in full sets of leathers. I did a quick search for MAMIL, getting ‘Middle Aged Male In Lycra’ with rather a lot of pictures of less-than-svelte sports cyclists, before I finally got the joke: ‘In Leather’.

The other images were zoomed and unzoomed shots of the same scene, and I immediately recognised them. I started typing.

‘You’re at Hartside! I’m in Durham!’

I hit ‘send’, then immediately typed another.

‘I’m on a break doing my own stuff on and in the Cathedral. Do you take portraits? I have to take a couple in exchange for a permit to shoot in the Cathedral. If you do one it gives us more time to explore’

Sent, and then then my sensible head kicked in. I typed as quickly as I could, in case I had frightened him off already.

‘Sorry if I’m making assumptions but if you are that close and I have a permit for the castle and the church I am sure I can talk them into letting you in with me, especially if you do one of the portraits. And I think it would be a real shame if you missed the chance on this one. I have another offer as well, and that’s the Roman Wall. I could drive you’

No reply. So much for that idea, then. I packed up my bits, leaving half of my toastie, and headed back to my little hotel.

NEIL
I closed my laptop before stowing it in its padded holder in the top case, fastening my lid and setting off back through Alston The town has a microclimate, as it sits in a dip between the summits of two high passes, Hartside at one thousand eight hundred and seventy feet, and Wearheads at two thousand and twenty four. I had been out to the hushings at Great Dun Fell, reputedly the highest metalled road in Britain. It had been a good day, the early mistiness and then overcast allowing some very moody shots, followed by clearer skies and an awful lot of colour from MAMILs of both types. I intended to wander down to the George after I was back, but decided to check my mail again using my B and B’s free wifi.

Three messages, all from Maddy. I read through them quickly before lying back on the bed, stunned. So close…Did I want to do a portrait? I could handle that.

Did I want to see the Wall, again? Of course I did, and snooping around that huge cathedral, with official permission, oh yes indeed.

Did I want to see Maddy again? That was a much harder question, because it brought another one with it. Did I want to see her? Yes. Could I handle it? There, I had no idea at all. My hand found my phone by itself.

“Hello, who is this?”

“Maddy?”

“NEIL? How great to hear you again! Where are you? Still at Hartside?”

“No, I’m in Garrigill. It’s near Alston, and all three of the local rivers rise near it and---”

“Neil. Neil. Breathe. Okay?”

“Sorry”

“Not a problem. Did you get all of my messages?”

“Just the first one, when I was at Hartside. I didn’t get the others till I got back to me room”

“Right. What did you think of my suggestion?”

“I can do portraits”

“I know you can, Neil. What about the Wall?”

“That would be good, but I’m puzzled. How will you drive me?”

There was a short silence on the line, and a hint of a whispered ‘shit’, before she spoke again.

“I don’t know, really. I thought I’d look at hiring a car, but, well, I hadn’t really thought it through, had I?”

Not just me, then.

My next question, “What clothes do you have with you?”, brought a bark of happy laughter, which confused me.

“What did I say?”

“I am so, so sorry, Neil. It was just… have you ever watched any Mel Brooks films?”

“Young Frankenstein”

“Monochrome, yeah. Fits. One of his others, it plays on a cliché. The man—and this is not you, okay? Just explaining. The dirty phone caller who growls ‘tell me what you’re wearing’ to the woman at home alone”

I felt the blush, but before I could apologise, she was talking again.

“You’ll have a plan, am I right?”

More breathing control as I felt the sweat bursting from my palms.

“I meant do you have outdoor things? Boots? Waterproofs?”

Calm, Neil.

“A helmet?”

MADDY
Shit. Of course! I had been juggling my available funds, looking to see where I could fit in the cost of a hire car without needing to cut spending somewhere inessential, such as on groceries. Why was I so keen to see this man again? It wasn’t just his eyes, that was for sure.

“I have my usual walking kit, Neil, and I could get a helmet. I’m pretty sure of that. What’s the plan?”

“Hire cars are expensive. I have my bike. If what you describe is what you had when I picked you up before, it’ll be fine. You just need a helmet”

“You’d… sorry. I was going to ask if you would do that, and then, well, you’ve already done it. Right. Cathedral job’s in two days. I have another four before I have to head back. What about you?”

“The same. Where are you?”

I gave him the hotel address, and he grunted something.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“Could I… I don’t want to risk upsetting or frightening you. Please don’t think that. I ‘m just curious, and I mean nothing more than that. I would just like to ask some questions that might be a bit personal, and I don’t want you thinking the wrong things. Do you mind?”

He was silent for a long time, before his next words.

“Are you trying to be nice to me, Maddy?”

For fuck’s sake: what the hell had people done to the poor bastard?

“Yes, Neil. I’m doing my best, okay?”

“Then ask, and I’ll try and do mine”

“Okay. You said I was good looking. I don’t often get told that. Could you please tell me if you still think that?”

I could now hear his breathing, but I really didn’t believe he was in Clare Country right then.

“Yes. Yes I do”

His voice was softer, but still clear.

“Neil?”

“Yes?”

“My turn, okay? You have absolutely lovely eyes, and when you smile, I…”

Inspiration, just the once, grabbed my mouth immediately, rather than a couple of hours later.

“When you smile, it lights up the room. What can I do to make you smile more often?”

He was silent for even longer, just the shushing of his breath, but I caught a catch in it, the poor bastard.

“Maddy?”

“Yes?”

“Find a helmet. I will take us along the Wall. Your job is to do the research for the best spots”

And then he cut the call.

I settled down in bed, later that evening, and started counting my blessings. There seemed to be far more in my bag than Neil held in his.