Chapter Eighteen Tom
Chapter Eighteen
Tom
The photos were selected and Ralph was at the gallery with Tom, helping to put everything up. He forgot how it felt when you
first walked into the room and all the walls were empty. He stood just inside the doorway, stopping to prop up a couple of
frames, and then he closed his eyes and leaned back on his heels, taking a deep breath in through his nose and out through
his mouth.
“Mind out, mate,” Ralph said, barging past him carrying another two frames and completely destroying the moment.
“Sure you can’t carry more than two with those new arms of yours?”
“Could have carried the whole lot with one, but you also know how clumsy I am.”
Tom smiled, immediately jumping to at least three different memories of Ralph tripping over invisible steps.
“True. Appreciate you being so safety conscious.”
They carried the rest of the frames in from Ralph’s car and then he disappeared to find a parking spot, leaving Tom alone.
To some people, success was being the named photographer on a cover shoot for a big magazine or being the only person called on to take portrait photos of the women’s England football team.
It was the all-expenses trip abroad in the five-star hotel and the giant pay checks for a day’s work.
Those things were all part of the job for Tom—great parts, obviously—but this was the moment he lived for, and he’d forgotten, until today, that it was.
He was grateful to Daisy for prompting him to do this, for reminding him about something he got so much joy from.
He thought back to the last exhibition and how different that one had felt, a memory arriving that he’d somehow pushed away. Blocked, even.
He and Sophie had got a taxi back after, and she had been drunk. More drunk than he’d possibly ever seen her in their fifteen
years together. Her eyes weren’t able to focus, and it took her a painfully long time to put the key in the front lock of
the flat they were renting at the time, while refusing all attempts at help.
She’d been quiet in the taxi and Tom hadn’t dared ask her what was wrong, but as the front door slammed unnecessarily hard
against the wall behind it, he had to.
“What’s going on, Soph?” he asked, his voice light. He’d sold six of his twenty pictures at that private viewing. It was,
by anyone’s measure, a huge success. She’d come up to him at one point earlier in the night, handing him a glass of champagne
and raising her own to meet it. Telling him how amazing he was and how proud she was. Where had that Sophie gone between then
and arriving home?
“Nothing,” she said, her voice slurring.
“Okay,” he said, shrugging. He knew it would do no good to get into it anyway.
She snorted. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“You said nothing’s wrong. If I choose not to believe you, it’ll be annoying.”
She sneered. “Ignoring it is more annoying, believe me.”
“So what’s wrong?” he asked again, confused. He was so tired. Had been so full of excitement at his exhibition.
“Just I do nothing but support you and it’s fucking exhausting sometimes. What about me? What about my acting career?” She weaved her way toward the armchair, sitting down. “What about
all the auditions I miss out on because I’m following you around the fucking world while you take photos of skinny models?”
She pulled one of her black heels off, flinging it onto the ground. “You’re out there becoming Mister Tom Riley and Sophie
Greenless is just fading away into nothing.” She reached for the other shoe, but missed. “I had plans to become someone when I met you and I look back and I don’t even recognize that version of myself. She’s just gone. She’s got nothing.
She’s gone backward.” Finally she grasped the other shoe and pulled it off, falling back.
Tom blinked to erase the memory as Ralph returned, bragging about the amazing park he’d found.
“Oh bloody hell. How can Mister Gray Cloud have arrived now of all moments?”
Tom shook his head, standing tall. “He hasn’t. He’s going. I’m . . . showing him out.” He sort of fluttered his hands toward
the direction of the door as Ralph followed them with his gaze.
“Good. Because this is huge! I mean so was the last one, but that was commissioned work. This is your own stuff. It’s amazing.
Proud of you, man.” Ralph walked forward, slapping Tom on the back, and Tom pretended to stumble all the way to the ground
from the force of Ralph’s new muscles.
“Okay, what’s going where?”
They sat down on the floor, the tinny sounds of Fleetwood Mac playing from Ralph’s phone, and tore all the brown paper and Bubble Wrap off the framed photos.
One by one they carried them and rested them against the wall, so Tom could scan them all in turn.
He’d laid in bed thinking about where they might go so many times, but it was different seeing them in the space like this.
Everything could change. Each time he thought about it he imagined Daisy looking around the room.
What she’d make of his work and the exhibition as a whole, considering it was happening because of her.
There was something going on with Daisy, but he wasn’t sure what and she hadn’t offered much else on it during their recent
bus journeys. She was all about him donning a Turkish cloak as mentioned in Orlando, or perhaps posting a photo of a writing book, stitched together with silk. Could he write poetry? Learn French? Start taking
late-night walks? She was full of ideas for him, while seemingly having none for herself. Instead the darkness in her eyes
was back and seemed to grow further at any mention of Zack. Either she wasn’t okay, or it was just who she was, and perhaps
he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did.
“Where do you want these two old ladies?” Ralph shouted.
“Their names are Rose and Deirdre, and I don’t know yet,” Tom replied, pulling himself away from thoughts of Daisy and back
into the gallery. Ralph had rearranged some photos so that Sophie was laughing directly ahead of him, making him jump.
“Yeah . . . and her,” Ralph said, nodding to the photo. “I’d thought this might be the one time she didn’t steal the show,
but apparently not.”
“Always stealing the show,” Tom said quietly, pushing away the ghost of the argument they’d had that time.
The two of them carted photos back and forth, holding them up in various places, before Tom would send Ralph wandering off
to show him how it looked somewhere else. He only nearly tripped once, holding the photo of the “Jesus Christ my sausages”
people at their picnic, and at that point he laughed so hard that Tom had wished he had more time, so he could add Ralph to
the collection. When Ralph laughed, his entire face screwed up and his eyes went so tiny that it was impossible not to join
in.
It was past midnight by the time everything was complete and Tom climbed into the passenger seat of Ralph’s car. He’d insisted on giving Tom a lift, claiming driving took no time in London at that time of night.
“Appreciate the help,” Tom said once Ralph had started the car.
“Of course,” he said, pulling out expertly onto Gower Street. “That’s what friends are for. You saw those photos though, right?”
“I did.”
“You can do anything. Get back out there and take photos that really mean something, the way you used to, before Sophie . . .” He looked left and right before pulling onto Euston Road. Tom waited,
but he didn’t finish the sentence.
“Before Sophie what?”
“Well she just got you into other work, didn’t she? Well-paid work, sure.”
“That wasn’t Sophie. That was me.” Tom stared out the window as they passed Euston and drove toward King’s Cross.
“Either way,” Ralph said. “Maybe it’s time to . . . get back out there.”
Tom eyed Ralph suspiciously. “Are we talking careers, or in general?”
“That, my friend,” Ralph said, reaching St. Pancras, “is up to you.”
Tom was physically exhausted when Ralph dropped him home, but mentally he couldn’t shut down.
Was it time to get back out there? He felt like he could continue donning cloaks and learning French and writing poetry for as long as it took, but he was sensing that perhaps his friends and family didn’t feel the same.
They’d started flinching when he mentioned Sophie’s name, shoulders sagging as he started up another theory of why she might not love him anymore.
Or maybe they were just fed up of him moping around and wanted him to do anything so long as it changed his current state of flux.
He seemed to be the only one who didn’t mind it.
Well, him and Daisy. And maybe Martha, but she was too young to really understand what he was going through.
She just accepted him however he was because she didn’t yet know that people were capable of change.
That being consistently yourself was a choice, and actually quite a difficult one.
It was so much easier to become someone different.
Someone other people wanted you to be. Martha was entirely authentic, and she didn’t think for a second about how that might impact the people around her.
There was something so tempting about that.
Tom ran again through the list of people coming to the private viewing the following night. He’d invited a lot of people he
knew in the industry. Clients who regularly hit him up for work. Any models or contacts who he knew liked his style and might
just buy a piece, although it wasn’t really about that for him, he realized now. For the first time ever, he didn’t really
care if he sold the pieces in terms of what it would mean for him financially. He only wanted people to see the work on a
larger scale and offer their opinion on it. He wanted people to walk into the room and light up at all the smiling faces the
way he had. Despite Ralph’s Gray Cloud nickname, he wanted to spread some joy with people. Maybe help them to realize that
no matter what they were going through or how hard things might seem, you were always able to find happiness if you searched
for it. He wanted the whole room to be full of joy tomorrow.
He’d put together a soundtrack of ceilidh music to play lightly in the background of one room, while in another it was one-liners
from TV shows like Friends and Frasier, with canned laughter erupting afterward.
In the third room, his favorite, he had an audio recording of the Dalai Lama describing his definition of happiness.
About how the purpose of life is to be happy and it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence over us.
How it is always possible to transform ourselves.
How everything comes down to love. And how great love, and great achievements, involve great risk.
It ended with his famous quote about how if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
It wasn’t really something Tom would have considered in the past, but then, he’d never come up with his own exhibition before.
It turned out that when he had full control over it, it was as much a lesson in life as it was a showcasing of his work. A
lesson, Tom thought, he should probably start listening to himself.