Alex Scarrow: A thousand suns

After clearing immigration at JFK, he’d headed for a barber, yearning to feel the smoothness of his chin once more and lose the dead weight of his long, greasy hair tied up carelessly in a ponytail.

As the interminably itchy and aggravating facial hair was whisked away by the barber, Chris had been shocked by how thin his face had become. The last few months of existing on a basic hi-sugar diet and spending all day long in the freezing winds of the South Atlantic seemed to have robbed his face of any spare fat. He knew if his mother could have seen him then, she’d have scolded him for not eating properly.

Chris’s focus extended beyond his reflection in the glass towards a trim, silver-haired woman moving swiftly. He watched her weave her slight frame across the open-plan floor of the Features Section through a labyrinth of shoulder-high partitions towards the conference room. She was moving quickly and purposefully towards him, not a woman you’d ever want to risk keeping waiting, he fancied. Clearly she was running late with her own strictly imposed schedule. Chris had time enough to hurriedly straighten a couple of the pictures before Elaine Swisson, the deputy editor of News Fortnite, pushed open the door to the conference room and entered.

‘Hey, Chris, how’s my favourite little cockney urchin doing?’ she said with a no-nonsense Brooklyn accent.

Chris had once described Elaine to a friend by asking him to visualise Susan Sarandon’s older, more aggressive sister. He wasn’t sure whether the actress even had an older sister, but if she did, Elaine should be her.

But that was perhaps a little unkind. Sure, he’d seen her chew out a member of her staff here at the magazine once before, and she had a reputation for being an incredibly harsh negotiator with his agency, but for Chris, she seemed to find a warmer centre, inside the sharp edges of her business persona.

‘I’m fine, a little tired… but otherwise fine,’ Chris answered.

‘Yeah?’ She appraised him. ‘You look a lot like shit. Bad flight back?’

‘It was okay. It didn’t crash, which is always a good thing.’

Elaine smiled. ‘Cute. How was South Georgia?’

Chris could quite happily never go there again. Cold, wet and rough. It really hadn’t been one of his better assignments. ‘Weather wasn’t particularly great,’ he answered flatly.

‘Oh, surely no worse than an English summer?’

Chris smiled. She wasn’t exactly the world’s most ardent Anglophile. Elaine had spent several years in London working for a sister publication. As far as Chris had worked out, the only thing she’d liked about her time in the city was the money she was being paid to tolerate it. There were many things over there that she casually described as ‘second-rate’ or ‘third-world’ to the irritation of her English colleagues, such as the ineffectual London Underground, the blandness of pub grub, the appalling cost of living and, of course, the miserable bloody weather, moans that any self-respecting Brit would happily indulge with her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was American and quite happy to go on to say how much better things were back home.

Chris had first met her while he was tentatively starting out on his freelance career after five years of relatively secure employment for MetroLife, one of the seedier, freebie-tabloids in the capital. After delivering promptly on a couple of assignments, she had begun requesting him by name through the agency Chris had signed up with. After she had returned to New York, he still found she was specifically requesting him and putting a decent amount of work his way, despite having any number of good photographers on her doorstep to choose from.

Somehow she had managed to erase from her mind the fact that he was one of those wet-fart Limeys. It had probably helped that he’d moved away from the east end of London, used a New York-based agency and worked on watering down his estuary accent a little.

Or maybe she just wasn’t as anti-Brit as she made out.

Elaine smiled warmly at him.

Or maybe she just wants to mother me.

Chris hadn’t failed to notice he tended to bring that instinct out in the older women he worked with.

‘It’s good to see you again, Chris. Shall we take a look-see? ’

She leaned over the conference table and studied the spread of pictures. There were images of a whaling station abandoned in the 1920s. Fantastic images, some in black and white, some in colour but desaturated and monochromatic. Images of beached whaling ships, their plate metal hulls rusted, exposing ribcages of corroded steel. Images of the station itself, interiors such as the dormitory huts and the canteen, complete with tin plates and cutlery laid out on a communal table ready for a meal that was never to take place.

Nature, it seemed, had wasted little time in commandeering the station, and eighty years of undisturbed invasion had produced stunning compositions of lichen-covered toilet seats and beds and whale-rendering equipment playing host to communities of terns and puffins.

Some in colour, some in black and white, but all of them beautiful. Elaine made no comment until she had viewed all the images on the table.

‘These are stunning, Chris… absolutely remarkable.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I think we can easily syndicate these. I can think of three other periodicals off the top of my head that will take ’em. They’re gorgeous.’

‘Thanks. It was a pretty good assignment,’ he said, momentarily forgetting the cold, miserable discomfort on the island.

Elaine looked up from the photos. ‘Tired?’

‘I am a bit. It was a long flight yesterday, and then I was up late working on these.’

‘You need a break?’

‘I’d love a break. But then I guess the assignment you’re going to tell me about would have to go to some other young, hungry freelancer who might just do a better job.’

She laughed. ‘That’s how we like you guys, paranoid and competitive.’

‘Yeah, well, I guess we can’t afford not to be.’

‘So, you sure you’re ready for another?’

‘I just need a couple of good nights’ sleep, a few warm baths and I’ll be good to go.’

‘Okay, well, the good news is it’s not the other side of the world this time, it’s local.’

‘And the bad news?’

‘The bad news is… it’s another cold one.’ Elaine stuck out her bottom lip in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry it’s not a photo-story in Florida or LA, but, if it’s any consolation, I think this one could be a reputation-maker for you. You want to hear about it?’

Chris nodded.

‘We tend to comb through local newspapers for our human-interest stories, which is how we came across this one. It was in the Trenton Herald, which is a local rag that serves Newport and a few towns up the Rhode Island coast. There’s a small seaside town, Port Lawrence. No big deal, a few thousand people, a couple of diners and a few seasonal attractions. They’ve got a small commercial fishing fleet that still operates out of the town. It’s the real Amityville deal, old shutterboard huts, quiet inbred locals who view the rest of the world as outsiders, fishing nets strung across cobbled streets… you get the idea? Anyway, one of their trawlers snagged its nets on a wreck some five miles out from the coastline — ’

‘Wreck? Are we talking an underwater shoot?’

She nodded. ‘Why?… are you not keen on that?’

He’d done underwater before, several times, but always within the luxury of warmer latitudes. After his spell on South Georgia, throwing himself into the bitter cold of the Atlantic, albeit insulated within a dry suit, simply didn’t appeal to him right now.

Pass up this job, and they could easily find someone else.