Honor hardly paid attention to their destination because suddenly they were rushing right by the turrets and archthat formed the entrance to Arundel Castle, crenellations and chimneys soaring behind, and her eyes didn’t seem to be able to unglue themselves from the solid chunk of history the others were streaming past without a glance. To cross the road she shuffled crab-wise, gazing at the gatehouse and the slot windows where once archers must have defended the person and family of Roger de Montgomery when he built the first castle there, after Hastings. AfterHastingsfor Crissakes! Almost an entiremillenniumago. Holy freakin’ Joe, couldn’t these peoplesee?
Oblivious to being towed along by one elbow, she mentally ticked off the buildings rising behind the gatehouse — Norman keep, medieval barbican, and, towering behind like something out of Disney, the gothic Victorian castle. It was like European History 101 and she could hardly breathe for excitement. ‘Holy crap,’ she whispered.
Lily swung on her. ‘Do you want us to leave you behind?’ she demanded, like a mother threatening a dragging child.
Honor jumped, guiltily. ‘I was just looking.’
‘Only, you can stay and gawp if you want.’ Lily began to pant as she picked up the pace. ‘But the rest of us have to get to the location because if Ian gets pissed off we’ll all have a bad day. So if you’re coming, comeon.’
Oh well, the castle would still be there later . . . With one final awed stare Honor gave in to the pressure and hustled with the others. Already, she could see a blue van pulled over by a long stone bridge that spanned the river in three graceful arches. Olivia sprang into the open back doors. Lily and Ettie got busy amongst the boxes and Leon stood around, looking lost.
Grimly, Ian inspected the location. ‘This is going to be a pain in the arse. A giant pain in the arse. The client wants the bridge but what about the fucking traffic?’ Somehow, he arranged his equipment out of the way of the traffic and, finally, placed his model in an alcove, in the eye of the camera.
And Martyn became somebody else.
He reduced his focus until it was all on the photographer, who brought his light meter up close to Martyn’s skin and gave Ettie curt instructions to stand for arm-aching periods holding aloft a light box or a big white disc which she could somehow, with a dextrous twist, fold down into a smaller circle in three layers. Lily and Leon ran in between shots with powder and wax and, so far as Honor could make out, still made no difference to Martyn’s appearance.
Martyn did a lot of leaning, turning and staring. Honor had had some idea that he would strike poses and hold them but, in fact, he was rarely still. In contrast to his snapping and snarling at the crew, Ian talked to Martyn like a cowboy gentling a horse. Martyn worked hard to give the photographer what he wanted, occasionally with a fleeting smile at a joke. But the camera shutter whirred when he was unsmiling, as if the smiles were only to let his glower relax.
The shoot began interesting but slid slowly and surely into tedium. Martyn kept appearing from the back of the van in various jeans and shirt combinations; sleeves rolled up, sleeves rolled down, but shirt always sexily open around his torso; leaning or sitting on the bridge parapet with the lichen and the moss, then moving down by the glassily gliding water and the reflections of the sky. The reflections, at least, Ian approved, and he spent what felt like years over them.
Crew attention was on Martyn and when Honor volunteered, ‘I guess that’s the River Arun,’ it was met with such eye-rolling apathy that she kept to herself the rest of her knowledge about Arundel for centuries having been a thriving port, and tried to work out where the docks would have been, instead.
Ian’s voice began to take on the rhythms of a relaxation tape. ‘Look down . . . then up. Again. Again. Now left . . . and front. Again. Try right. And front. This time, when you look down,don’t come up so far . . . and up — stop! Let’s try that again. Wait. Let’s wait for the fucking sun.’
‘He’s really intense, the camera loves him,’ breathed Leon from several yards behind the camera.
Lily unbent enough to giggle. ‘What’s not to love?’ And Leon shivered and smiled for the first time.
At the end of a couple of hours Honor had turned her attention to the town, which looked as if a giant child had opened a toy box marked ‘historic buildings’ and jumbled them all together on the hillside.
But, just as she was preparing to abandon the shoot and cross back into the town that she was itching to explore, the crew all got busy stowing the equipment back in the van. Ian stretched and yawned. ‘Next stop, the castle grounds. And you’d better all find a way to squash into the van because we’ve only got a crew pass.’
Honor’s desire to leave vanished.
Martyn looked her way, apparently not as unaware of her presence as he’d seemed. ‘Honor, you can squash in the front with me,’ which earned her an affronted look from Lily, who had to crawl into the back with the racks of clothes, photography equipment and the rest of the crew. Martyn took Honor’s hand and stepped up into the cab all in one motion, hoisting her on to the seat by his side as if she were a doll. She looked at his face curiously. The make-up was so subtle she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t watched it being applied. He smelled a little different to usual; powder and hair wax. Other than that he was still Martyn. More remote than she was used to and sitting oddly at the centre of everyone’s attention. But still Martyn.
Still warm, as his hand proved when it lingered on her leg as he reached past her to shut the heavy door. She glimpsed his smile. Then he turned back to listen to what Ian was sayingabout the light and the grey clouds just beginning to move in over the clutter of buildings on the brow of the hill.
Apart from a member of staff who showed them to a roped-off area of greensward in the lee of one of the massive curtain walls, Arundel Castle took no notice of the photography crew in its grounds. The van burst open and spilled its cramped cargo of crew, arms full of equipment, clothes and collective backs to turn on any tourists hovering at the distant ropes, treating the castle as a huge prop that might as well have been made of cardboard as majestic grey stone gathered over centuries.
‘This is better!’ Ian kept saying, brandishing his light meter. ‘We’ve probably got an hour before it clouds right up and I think we’ll get the best stuff, here. I like the light and we don’t have to keep stopping for fucking traffic.’ In the comparative peace and quiet of the castle grounds, he became almost jovial.
Martyn no longer bothered to squeeze himself into the back of the van to change his clothes. He stripped off his shirt to exhibit a body that deserved to be looked at and Honor felt her breath stick. The sun poured over him, defining every line, and it took her a moment to remember how to fill her lungs.
And then he unsnapped the waist of the dark indigo jeans and eased the two halves open and she forgot again, her eyes helpless but to follow to where the faint arrow of hair pointed.
Oh, whoa . . .
‘Let’s work with the wind and get your hair across your face.’ Ian was again behind his tripod. ‘Don’t quite turn all the way back — yes! Exactly like that! Let’s have that again . . . again. OK, now over here.’ With an anxious glance at the sky, he kneeled, and then lay, on the ground and shot up past Martyn with a tower soaring into the sky behind him, doing a lot of squirming and rolling and making Martyn laugh.
‘Next,’ said Olivia. ‘Half into the jeans.’
Without comment, Martyn undid the jeans the rest of the way and shucked them down to his thighs, showing mid-grey trunks. Olivia fussed around, arranging denim between his thighs as he said something that made her giggle. Yup. Honor had definitely pursued the wrong career.
‘Last set,’ Ian said, some time later, relief in his voice, ‘the tattoo.’
Honor edged closer to watch as Lily took handfuls of wipes then a towel to Martyn’s torso, removing the powder. Then Martyn propped his hands against the side of the van, presenting his naked back to Lily, who opened an alcohol wipe to clean his lower back, then took out a coiled sheet of white shiny paper and began to press it on to his skin, slowly and painstakingly.
