Page 70 of Broken Beyond Repair
“Stunning.” Sydney gulped, only able to see the afterimage of Beatrice in her underwear.
“Then let’s get this over and done with,” Beatrice said, hobbling from the room.
The entrance hall was buzzing with people and photographic equipment. As Beatrice made her way down the stairs, assisted by Sydney, everyone turned to look up at her.
Gasps filled the air.
“Annabel. What a delight to be working with you again,” Beatrice called out.
The photographer met her on the stairs, and they shared a tight embrace. “Beatrice,” Annabel crooned. “It’s been a while, but you’ve barely aged. How on earth do you do it?”
Beatrice scoffed. “Nonsense.”
“Right! Let’s have that boot off. Makeup! If we can have a final check, please.”
Several people swooped around them, brushing Beatrice’s face, clicking light meters at her, and teasing her curled hair into position. Once they’d dispersed, Sydney removed the boot from Beatrice’s leg and saw it for the first time. The skin was discoloured in places, agitated and dry. Ensuring Beatrice was steady on the stair and secured onto the handrail, she backed away and joined everyone else in admiring the beauty from the entrance hall.
The shutter of the camera clicked away as Annabel played with several angles. After discussions with her technician and much gesticulating at a laptop, Annabel said, “Come down a step please. That glorious window of yours is working against us.”
A woman shot forward and rearranged the bottom of the dress.
“Let’s try not looking at the camera this time. We’re going for demure. Tilt your head down and to the right a little.”
Beatrice did as instructed, only for her eyes to drift back up and settle on Sydney. Both sets of eyes locked onto each other.
“Hold that.” The camera clicked furiously. “Perfect, Beatrice. Perfect.”
The intensity of her stare bored into the very heart of Sydney. Blood rushed through her, leaving her light-headed. Beatrice’s face relaxed and her lips curled up as the intensity increased, exciting the photographer further as another set of clicks resounded through the room. Sydney knew she couldn’t look away; breaking the hold could cause Beatrice to lose her pose. She wasn’t even sure if it was possible to look away. Would her eyes move even if she forced them?
“Beautiful,” Annabel shouted. After another round of clicking, she turned to the technician behind her and checked their laptop. “That’s the one. Thank you, everyone.” She turned to her model and bowed. “Beatrice, you are art itself.”
The photographer was spot-on.
The entrance hall transformed into a flurry of activity with lights coming down and black cases coming from nowhere. It was free and clear of people within fifteen minutes, when Sydney closed the door on everyone but Alison, who assisted Beatrice back to her room to undress. Sydney was grateful that someone else would have to deal with that zip, yet also a little disappointed it wasn’t her. It was difficult enough zipping her up. Unzipping would have broken her, or at least the friendship they’d begun to build.
She returned to her position at the kitchen table, choosing not to relocate to the secluded turret despite Alex’s return last week. With the days edging away from her, she wanted to be in Beatrice’s company as much as possible. Now that she’d laid down the bulk of the words for Beatrice’s childhood, it was merely a case of editing, which required a certain level of concentration to rearrange words, just not as much as actually finding some.
Time rolled on, and neither Alison nor Beatrice made an appearance. Was there anything more to their friendship? They’d been in her room for some time now,undressing. Alison was unmarried, according to Beatrice; all her life, one would assume. Was there more to Alison’s kindness over the years? Was it driven by something deeper?
Sydney dropped her head into her hands. She was unsure if Alison even knew about Beatrice’s inclinations. It was churlish of her to assume that something was going on above her, much less to give into jealousy.
“I’m off, Sydney,” Alison said, suddenly appearing in the kitchen. “It was nice to see you again.”
Sydney got to her feet. “I’ll see you out,” She crossed the entrance hall and opened the door.
Alison turned on the doorstep and placed a hand on Sydney’s arm.
“Whatever it is you’re doing, Sydney, keep at it, won’t you?”
With that she was gone, leaving Sydney to ponder her meaning. What was she doing, and with what? The book? Beatrice? Both? Keeping at anything she was doing was going to be an impossibility when it was taken from her shortly.
Back at her desk, Sydney tapped at the side of her keyboard, partly in time to the music filling her headphones, partly with frustration at not being able to structure a sentence.
The difficulty was writing it in the first-person perspective. She was a third-person writer, and first-person was a completely different kettle of fish. Not only that, the voice she was writing wasn’t of her own creation; it was a real person. Putting herself in Beatrice’s shoes day after day was challenging, but she had to allow her tone, diction, and syntax to flow through her to create an authentic piece, something that was often missing from ghostwritten autobiographies.
Rereading all her earlier work, she’d realised she’d used the voice of the harder, stonier Beatrice that she’d first met. Beatrice had changed in her eyes. She wasn’t the same person she’d met at Biggin Hill or made assumptions about early on and chastised for her rudeness. She’d discovered the real Beatrice, one that could be humorous, caring, and forgiving. Yes, she could be cold, demanding, impatient, and at times abrasive. Weren’t those terms really caution, perfectionism, determination, and defensiveness in a clever disguise? Beatrice was a product of those around her, of her experiences — as was Sydney. As were Alex’s bullies.
From what she understood of Beatrice, she’d not loved or felt loved in so long — if at all. She’d never experienced parental love, true love, or even loved as a mother, yet to Sydney, she was a loveable woman. She knew she could love her for everything she was, not the image Beatrice built of herself.
