IMAGE AND REALITY

What does a picture mean to you? No, not a farm-cart rolling through a ford, or an old ship with a fiery sunset behind it, but a picture of someone you can recognise - Keanu Reeves, maybe, or Leonardo di Caprio. If you like them, you'll put them up somewhere you can look at them all the time. In the old days, when schoolchildren by and large stayed in one classroom all day and the teachers moved round (which, if you think about it, was a lot quicker) you would have had a desk of your very own and you might even have pinned pictures of your favourite people on the inside of the lid. No one would have interfered, provided you didn't open it during the lesson, except to get a book out, of course, and maybe a little glimpse of Liam Gallagher would have helped you concentrate better on your French – or maybe not.

If you don't like these people, then maybe you'll scribble moustaches or rude words or big ears or vampire's fangs on their pictures wherever you see them, or maybe you'll tear them down and stamp on them or rip them up. In some ways, you're doing that to the person in the picture, even though you wouldn't – or couldn't – in real life.

Native Americans (who used to be called Red Indians, though their skins weren't exactly red, and they were anything but Indians) were very scared of cameras. They thought that white men who took pictures of them were stealing their souls, because they were walking away with their images, with their likenesses. That didn't worry them with mirrors (yes, they had mirrors, highly polished bronze ones, before white men came and sold them cheap glass ones whose silvering came off at the slightest excuse), nor did it worry them when they saw their reflections in still pools or bowls of water. Those images didn't last. They were only there for as long as you were looking at them. Look away, or ruffle the surface of the water by just blowing on it, and they were gone, and the person whose image it was was free to go on living and change and be different and carry their own image around with them. They didn't have to leave it as a hostage in someone else's hands, or worry in case it might be stolen. They didn't have to compare themselves now with the way they were then, the way we do.

We love images. Maybe we love them even more than reality. They're certainly a lot easier to deal with. You can cut them out and stick them where you want to and keep them in your pocket and make them your slaves, which you can't usually do with real people. Real people say things like: "Why didn't you call me last night?" "We haven't been out together in a week!" "You've forgotten my birthday again!" "You're such a messy eater!" "Your breath smells!" "You're not going to wear those ragged old jeans, are you?" But images just sit and smile and smile. Not much conversation, of course, but at least they don't say things you'd rather not hear.

And they don't change. They don't suddenly decide to stop being your best friend for no reason. Though not changing isn't necessarily something positive.

Everybody changes, after all. Bits of us drop off and new bits grow. Not big bits, but skin and hair and nails. The nails we have to cut, and the hair, too, mostly, but the skin really does just drop off and floats around in the air, where you can see it when the sun shines, and it settles on surfaces as dust. That doesn't happen to images. And it's not always nice, when we've changed, to be confronted and compared with something that hasn't.

You can see it when parents go through the photo album they started when you were a baby. If you're really unlucky, there may even be a video of you saying your first words or just rolling around naked and gurgling. Then there's that dreamy look in your parents' eyes when they remember how much better behaved, how much less of a worry you were at the age of three than you are now, how much less demanding, how much cheaper... Terrifying things, photographs. Yet people want them - for all the reasons I've just explained. Not always photographs of themselves, but certainly photographs of others. And the school helps to organise it. That's what a school is for: to organise things. Not always to make sure that everything happens that should happen, but at least to provide the framework so that it can.

If you were really looking for someone to blame for what happened to Louise and Amy, then it would probably have to be the supply teacher, because, although he was a teacher, he didn't know everything. For instance, when he called the register that morning he didn't know all the right abbreviations for the class's first names. They didn't resent it too much, and they muddled through. And then he started calling out the names of people who hadn't paid for something or other – only of course they had, but the list hadn't been changed, only he couldn't know that. But they told him, and he believed them, so that was all right. And finally, in the bottom of the plastic wallet that held the register and notes excusing absence and bulletins two months old and notices about school teams who'd played their last match three months before, he found a piece of paper fresh as the day it was written (whenever that might have been, because it didn't have a date) telling Louise to go at once to the Hall to have her photograph taken. He was happy about that, because it was a simple instruction and he could pass it on and he was sure about its being carried out.

Louise was a little puzzled, because no one else was being sent to the photographer, and in fact there hadn't been a photographer in the school for a few months, and you always knew when there was one, because he was in the hall all day and everyone went past between lessons and had a gawp at whoever was having their soul stolen at the time. Still, although this was a day with long registration, there was no assembly in the hall, so she went along to see what was happening.

The hall was dark. She couldn't tell why. Perhaps the curtains were drawn. A cloud must have just moved away from the sun, though, because now there was suddenly a shaft of brilliant light crossing the whole of the space. She could see little specks of dust dancing in it. Because of the light, the shadows in the far corner by the door to the stage looked even darker. In fact, they almost began to take on a shape, though it wasn't one she exactly recognised. If it was any shape at all, it was the shape of a black curtain, except that the stage didn't have any curtains like that. Then she knew what it was: it was the sort of cloth that old-fashioned photographers used to put over their heads to keep out the light when they were looking at the back of their cameras, where they could see the picture they were going to take before they took it, upside down, projected on a ground glass screen.

Then the photographer straightened up, and there wasn't any black curtain there any more, and certainly not one of those big box cameras on a wooden tripod. There was just a man with a neatly trimmed, very pointed black beard, and bright eyes, and wearing something that might have been a very smart black suit with a scarlet waistcoat, or might have been a cloak with a scarlet lining, she couldn't quite tell.

"What do you want?" he said, and as he spoke, he shifted from foot to foot, and she could see that he had a slight limp, but was used to concealing it.

"I want you to take my photograph," said Louise.

"Ah," said the man, "but you don't just want me to take the photograph, you also want me to give the photograph to you – isn't that so?"

"Ye-es," said Louise, not certain where this was leading. There's always something slightly dodgy about photographers, she thought. "I don't expect you just to give it to me," she added, "we'll pay for it."

"Oh yes, you'll pay," said the man. "Everyone always does. But I have to take something first."

She was waiting for him to tell her to come closer, to get into position, to smile, to hold it, to do the same again – but he said none of those things. Instead, there was a kind of flash that blinded her, and she realised that she'd taken two steps down the stairs into the hall, and ended up right in the sunbeam and been blinded by it, and then she put her head through the other side of it, as it were, and looked across to the far corner, and saw the man's head bowing down, and his white face disappearing into the black folds of whatever it was he was wearing, and then there was nothing there at all, except shadows, and as she took two steps nearer, even those disappeared, because somebody opened the door from the stage and light spilled out and down the steps, washing all the darkness away.

It was then she realised that she was holding something in her hand, a piece of card, A5 size, wrapped in a folded piece of plain A4 paper. It must be the photograph, she thought, but how...

Only that was when the bell rang, so she didn't have time to think, because her teacher for first lesson was very strict and she didn't dare be late. As she reached the corridor, she ran into Amy, her best friend, who was in a different group for this subject, and was in their tutor room.

"Can you put this in your locker to keep it safe?" asked Louise, and put the photograph in her hand. Because she was in such a hurry, she didn't realise that Amy shouldn't have been in the corridor at all. She was there, because the supply teacher had found some more notices in the register about a sponsored swim, and because there had been one short he was taking Amy with him to the photocopier to make a copy of the last one to give to Louise. (Amy was a very good friend like that, and had reminded the supply teacher that Louise would need one.)

But when they got to the photocopier it was sitting blinking at them sadly, saying that it had no more A4 paper left. Photocopiers are like certain kinds of dogs. They always make messes and they always look as though they're very sorry about it. But it doesn't stop them always making messes. However, photocopiers are not as lovable as dogs, and they don't squeal when they get kicked, and they don't have big soulful eyes, so the people they annoy tend to slam their lids quite hard, though it doesn't do any more good in the way of stopping them doing it again than it does if you scold the dogs and threaten not to feed them for a month.

The supply teacher was inventive, though, if nothing else, and he noticed that the girl beside him (Amy, that is, though he didn’t know her name) was holding just what he needed, namely a piece of A4 paper, even if it was folded in two. So he asked her if he could have it, and Amy didn't see why not, so she gave it to him, and he opened the right tray and put it in, and the machine told him he would have to wait. Well, he couldn't wait, because he had to go off and take a class (Louise's class, in fact, so she needn't actually have worried about being late) so he tapped in the right code ready, and set it for one copy and told Amy to put the sheet on the glass and wait for the machine to work.

So far, so good. Amy was never quite sure what went wrong. If she'd shut the lid, it wouldn't have happened, but she hadn't been told to do that - in fact, the flash of the photocopying blinded her for a moment or two. Maybe her hands slipped, because she was pressing the paper she had to copy down too hard... Anyway, when the sheet of A4 came out, it hadn't got anything about the sponsored swim on it, but it did have two black and white images of Amy's hands. Still, she had no time to worry about that, and she could always get a spare copy of the notice for Louise from the office, so she ran off to her first lesson.

And during the first lesson, Louise had more fun than Amy - if you can call it fun. Because the supply teacher was in charge, and not the strict teacher they usually had, they messed about. And messing about meant, among other things, drawing on each other's faces. Louise and the boy beside her gave as good as they got, so it wasn't fair that when the teacher noticed he moved Louise and threatened her with a detention, because she didn't have any marks on her face. She'd only done it in self-defence, and she was going to argue – but then she caught sight of herself in the shiny inside lid of her pencil-tin, and it was right, she didn't have any marks on her face, even though she could feel the skin stinging where the boy's ballpoint had gone across it. The boy couldn't believe it either, and he made several more marks on his own face and hands, seeing whether his pens still wrote. The teacher noticed those, and concluded he must have made all the marks on himself, so he apologised to Louise, and gave the boy a detention instead.

Amy, meanwhile, had suddenly found all kinds of black stains on her hands, and couldn't imagine where they'd come from. She showed them to Louise in the next lesson, but the teacher kept them working so hard they didn't have time to talk, and it was just at the start of break, when she went to get out her snack, that Amy found a bottle of ink in her bag had leaked all over the photocopy of her hands that she'd stuck in there. Louise wanted to ask about her photograph, which she hadn't had a chance to look at, but Amy was in a temper, and pulled the ink bottle and the piece of paper out of her bag and threw them in the waste-bin and went off to see if any of the teachers had something that could get the ink off her hands. So Louise just went to the toilets, and there she found some other girls who were trying out make-up that they'd brought in (but shouldn't have), and she tried some too, though she had to do it by guesswork, because they wouldn't let her in to see in the mirror, and then, surprise of surprises, a teacher came in, to see if anyone was smoking - it was a surprise because that usually happened at lunchtimes – and the teacher said to Louise, "Well, you're obviously just an innocent bystander, so you'd better run along," and Louise was amazed, because she knew she'd tried the lipstick and the blusher and the eye-shadow, and she couldn't imagine why it didn't show up, but she ran along anyway and counted her blessings.

In the next lesson, Amy was no fun at all, because she was still worrying about the stains on her hands – not just the old ones, but new pink ones that kept on appearing. Louise had been avoiding trouble so easily all morning that she found it hard to feel sympathetic, and could barely wait for lunch, in order to see her photograph. But when Amy gave her the key to her locker, and she got the photograph out and looked at it, it was her turn to be in a bad temper.

"Who have you let scribble all over my picture?" she asked in dismay. Amy, still rubbing and spitting, didn't answer. But then Louise looked more closely, and saw the lipstick and the blusher and the eye-shadow she'd put on at break-time, and the ballpoint lines she could just still feel on her skin.

"Amy," she said, "look at this!"

"Look at what?" said Amy grumpily, still rubbing at stains that wouldn't move.

"All these marks on my picture," said Louise, "they ought to be on me."

Amy thought for a minute. The stains on her hands had appeared before she ever put her hands into her bag where the ink had leaked. And the ink had run all over – what? – a picture of her hands... She went to the waste-bin, despite Louise's protests, and fished out the photocopy. It was quite a way down, and somebody had thrown a leaking bottle of cherryade on top of it. When she picked it out, the pink drops were running off it, as were some drops of the black ink. The photocopy wasn't stained at all.

It took them all the lesson after lunch to work out what had happened and what to do about it, and they could only really express it properly and fully after the bell had gone for the end of the day.

"So," said Louise, "mine shows the marks that ought to be on me."

"And mine," said Amy, "puts the marks on me that ought to be on it."

"One's positive," said Louise.

"And the other's negative," said Amy.

"So," said Louise, "they ought to cancel out."

"After all," said Amy, "they were together to start with."

As they were talking, they wandered into the hall. It was deserted, and strangely dark - the curtains were closed – perhaps there'd been a film-show – except for a sharp beam of sunlight, with dust-motes dancing in it, which shone almost straight into their eyes. Louise brought out her disfigured photograph and Amy wrapped her photocopy around it, and together they held the joint object out into the sunbeam, the way you light a piece of paper from a flame, carefully, without burning yourself. There was a kind of flash - though it may just have been the sunlight hitting a shiny part of the grand-piano - which blinded them both - and when they could see again, there was nothing in their hands, but perhaps a few more dust-motes dancing in the sunbeam.

"Look at your hands!" said Louise. "They're all clean!"

"And look at your face!" said Amy. "You're just like a Red Indian!"

And so she was, with all the ball-point and the make-up. But it was all right really, because Amy was there to help her get it off before they went home, since they were, after all, best friends.

10am - 9pm 29.i.2003