Deborah wasn’t sure what Dominique Shaw meant. She looked at the cover of the book for a moment. The publisher had chosen an inoffensive image: one of the many elderly people who regularly fed the birds in St. James’s Park. Peaked cap on his head, he was standing on the bridge over the pond, hand extended, bird on his palm. It was his deeply lined cheeks that had interested her, how the lines mapped the distance from the eyes to his lips, which were very chapped. The photograph wasn’t one she would have chosen for the cover of the book, but she understood the reasoning behind it. One did want the prospective buyer to pick it up and open it. A photo of someone sleeping rough in the Strand wasn’t likely to be as effective.
Deborah said, “D’you mean getting people to pose? I did ask them. I told them I wanted to make a portrait and, to be honest, most people are willing to have their picture taken if they’re approached and given the reason. Not everyone, of course. There were some people who said no, absolutely not. A few unpleasant remarks here and there, but one can’t be put off by that. Those who were happy to let me shoot them where they were . . . ? If they had an address, I sent them a copy of the photo I chose to use in the book.”
“And what they said to you.” Mr. Oh was speaking. “Their remarks that you’ve included?”
“How did you get them to talk to you like this?” the woman Narissa asked.
“Oh. Right.” Deborah opened the book and leafed through a few of the pages as she spoke. “The thing about taking someone’s photograph is to get them not to think about the fact that I’m taking their photograph. People stiffen up in front of a camera. It’s human nature. They think they’re supposed to pose, and suddenly they’re not who they really are. So the photographer has to devise a way to catch them in a moment when they . . . I suppose you’d say in a moment when they reveal themselves. Every photographer has to do this. It’s easy enough if I can catch them unaware of being photographed in the first place. But for something like this—I mean for a book or for any formal portrait, really—one can’t do that. So most photographers talk to them as they shoot.”
“Tell them to relax, tell them to smile, tell them what?” Dominique Shaw asked.
Deborah saw how the undersecretary had misunderstood her explanation. She said, “I don’t tell them anything. I ask them to tell me. I listen to them and I respond and they carry on. For this”—she indicated the book—“I asked them to tell me about their experiences in London, about how they felt about living in London, about what London feels like for them, about the place where the picture was taken. Naturally, everyone had a different answer. It was the exploration of the answer that ended up giving me the moments I was looking for.”
The founder of Orchid House said, “Wha’s this, then? D’you think you have a special gift for getting people to talk to you?”
Deborah smiled as she shook her head. “Lord no. I’m completely inarticulate if the subject veers away from photography, dogs, or cats. I can do gardening, I suppose, but only if it deals with weeding and only if I don’t have to identify the weed. For this”—again she indicated the book—“I settled on the same questions in advance and I asked them as I took the pictures. Then we went from there. I built on what they gave me as answers. Whenever people hit on the subject that triggers them, their faces alter.”
“And that’s when you take the picture?”
“No, no. That’s what I’m looking for, but I take the pictures all along. For a book like this . . . I culled through . . . I don’t know . . . p’rhaps three thousand portraits?”
There was a silence round the table. Glances were exchanged. Deborah’s conclusion was that she certainly hadn’t been called here for reasons having to do with London Voices, but she still couldn’t work out what they wanted with her. Finally, the undersecretary spoke.
“Well, you’ve done quite a job with the book,” she said. “Congratulations. We have a project we’d like to talk to you about.”
“Something to do with education?” Deborah asked.
“Yes. But I daresay not in the way you might be thinking of it.”
MAYVILLE ESTATE
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Tanimola Bankole had been clinging to the hope that the fourth straight week of misery-inducing summer heat would disrupt his father’s train of thought, which had been steaming along the railway track of Tani’s irresponsibility for the last thirty-seven minutes. This wasn’t a new subject for Abeo Bankole. Tani’s father was fully capable of banging on, both in English and in his native Yoruba, for forty-five minutes, and he’d done just that on more than one occasion. He saw it as his paternal obligation to make certain Tani fully took up the mantle of manhood as defined by Abeo, and Tani could do this only by embracing all of manhood’s attendant duties, also as defined by Abeo. At the same time, he saw it as Tani’s filial obligation to listen to, to remember, and to obey his father in all things. The first of the three, Tani generally managed. It was the second and third that caused him trouble.