Edward Spires had never looked bad in a photograph. You could scour the internet, and he would look AI-good in every image you saw. There were no shots of him mid-yawn, or grimacing, or with eyes half-closed, or his mouth open. His expression was coolly challenging, exquisitely pensive, goofily charming, or broodily handsome, never ugly or ridiculous or awkward. There was no record of him looking anything other than attractive.
There was a reason for this, and it was not, as some people mused, because he was a robot or had, in fact, been generated by AI. It was because Edward had started out as a professional model. For a long time, his job had been to pose. He had spent hours practising facial expressions in the mirror, until he knew which angles suited him best, how to tilt his head just so, and how much to narrow or widen his eyes. Eventually his proprioception was so attuned, he could achieve the right tension in even the tiniest facial muscle to conjure the expression he needed.
His face being above criticism, and critics being what they are, they directed their attention to his clothing. When he attended an awards ceremony in a custom-tailored formal black dinner jacket, the photograph was captioned ‘Edward Spires. Yawn.’ But when his stylist agreed to shake things up and put him in an emerald-green suit which made his eyes sparkle like a jungle cat’s, one fashion commentator quipped, ‘Somebody please tell Edward Spires that St Patrick’s day was last month’. Even when he was snapped in the streets in running gear or jeans, he was routinely described as dull. Edward was the brand ambassador for a big Italian fashion label, and he worried that this perceived lack of cool would impact his earnings if the label dropped him. But also, he had to admit, it simply irked him.
And yet Edward was not just beautiful, but successful. He had transitioned from modelling to acting – not stage acting, of course, but films and television. Even so, he was never given parts which required him to do any real acting. There was no shouting, no tears, no agony, no genuine hilarity. But he was very good at playing unruffled, glamorous characters. Not even the critics cared that he was typecast, because in those parts Edward was utterly brilliant. So, Edward was leading a charmed life. Along with his looks and a lucrative career, he owned houses in LA, New York and London, and had a delightful girlfriend who did interior design for wealthy individuals in Dubai. The only blip on this otherwise blessed existence was the regular mockery for looking like a Ken doll.
‘Oh Eddie, just suck it up,’ his sister Maeve said. She was a sturdy little woman with wiry hair and an unremarkable face. It was an understatement to say that Edward had got all the looks. ‘Who cares about your clothing? Rupert wanders around in moth-eaten jumpers half the time and doesn’t even notice.’
Rupert was Maeve’s husband. He was a farmer in Norfolk and very nice indeed. Edward said he would be happy to wear a jumper with holes in it – holes made by artisans as part of a statement on sustainability, or holes that had been visibly mended with Sashiko-inspired stitching, but holes created by the gnawing of insects, not on your life.
Maeve laughed. ‘Why not come up to Norfolk for Rupert’s shoot? Less glamour and more mud. It’ll do you good.’
By ‘shoot’, Maeve meant a weekend spent shooting pheasants, and nothing to do with cameras, but Edward still took a second to adjust.
‘I can’t kill birds! In this climate I’ll be absolutely pilloried,’ Edward said.
‘Who’d know? And the shooting clothes are right up your street,’ Maeve said slyly. ‘Go to Purdey and take a look. You’d be very dapper in plus fours.’
Edward’s girlfriend was in Dubai working on the interior of a boutique hotel and his next filming was not for a few months, so a weekend in the countryside appealed. He went to Purdey and also to Berretta, and Maeve was right, so he spent a happy afternoon acquiring the full outfit: boots, plus fours, a fitted jacket and a Barbour, along with a flat tweed cap. He also bought ear-defenders and a leather bag for cartridges. The gun he would borrow from Rupert. He looked so handsome, that the sales assistant called the manager and the two practically swooned.
‘Where’s the shoot?’ the blushing assistant asked cheekily. The manager gave her a quelling look and she subsided before having the gall to ask for a selfie from their famous customer.
‘Er, Norfolk,’ Edward replied vaguely, smoothing down the fine tweed of the jacket. ‘Family.’
Maeve and Rupert’s house was not small, but it wasn’t lavish, and Edward found himself sleeping in Maeve’s son’s bedroom and sharing a bathroom with several other guests. Maeve’s elderly Jack Russell, Bertie, took an inexplicable shine to him and insisted on sleeping on Edward’s bed. He growled every time Edward turned over, so Edward was tired when he appeared, perfectly turned out, for breakfast in the morning.
He was greeted by a crowd of cheerful men, chomping bacon and eggs while dogs of various sizes flopped about the room, waiting for the day’s excitement. Edward felt his first quiver of misgiving. Everyone was so hearty, so ruddy-faced and keen. He glanced down at the dandyish jacket, layered over his honed pectorals, and felt like an impostor.
But he relaxed when Maeve plonked a plate of breakfast in front of him and said, ‘I told you you’d love all the kit! You look fab! Come on Bertie, leave Edward alone.’
But Bertie insisted on scrabbling onto Edward’s lap, clawing at his expensive plus fours and sniffing rudely at the bacon. Edward slipped him the fattiest bit and ate around the egg yolks.
After breakfast, they posed on the lawn for the pre-shoot photograph. It was roundly agreed when people looked at Edward, both then and for years afterwards, that a more perfect image of English youth in the finest of countryside attire had never been seen before and never would again.
Then the men set out through the crisp cold air, tramping towards the first drive. The sky was an icy blue pierced by the spiky tips of the line of trees in the woods bordering the field where the men arranged themselves in a line. Edward shivered as he loaded the shotgun. He knew how to shoot, he’d done it as a boy, but not for many years, and he dreaded the whispered comments, ‘all the gear and no idea’ that would inevitably result if he couldn’t hit a thing. His heart was beating like a gong in his chest. Bertie skipped about his feet as the distant cries of the beaters got nearer and nearer. Bertie knew what was about to happen, and suddenly Edward was glad of his company.
The first birds took to the air, flapping jerkily as they rose into the sky. Edward raised the barrel and took aim. The muffled sound of gunshots penetrated his ear defenders, and clouds of mist seemed to waft at the edges of his vision. Time slowed as a single cock bird glided into the blue at the end of his barrel, its plumage gold, indigo, green and purple, shimmering in the winter sunlight, and its tail feathers streaming out behind it like a fluttering train. It was the most beautiful thing Edward had ever seen. It sailed over him, dazzling in its glory, and flew on into the safety of the woods.
The shriek of a whistle pierced the air. The drive was over. Edward lowered the barrel and broke open the gun.
‘Bad luck, old boy,’ the smiling man nearest him said. ‘You missed a big one.’
But Edward had not missed. He had not pulled the trigger. He simply could not kill that lovely creature.
Edward did not walk on to the next drive. Claiming a bad stomach, he trudged back to the house alone, Bertie trotting reproachfully after him. It began to rain, penetrating the layers of handwoven tweed and dripping down his neck. His plus fours were ripped on a stile and, when he jumped down, he sank into a patch of mud which sucked off one of his boots. He slipped while trying to extricate himself and faceplanted into the mud. The Jack Russell, driven to a pitch of hysteria by these antics, barked manically and urinated on Edward’s leg. It was a while before Edward succeeded in clambering out of the mud, but he could not retrieve his boot without risking falling again, so he limped back towards the house with one stockinged foot. The house had lovely views, but it meant you had to climb a hill to get to it. The rain pelted down. Half-way up, Bertie sat down and refused to move, so Edward was obliged to pick up the tired little dog and carry him. When Maeve opened the door, Edward was unrecognisable. She couldn’t help laughing, and Edward found himself laughing too.
After several cups of tea and a hot shower, Edward went back to London. But his humiliation was far from over. The sales assistant had been garrulous in her excitement about their famous customer, and someone had told someone else who had told a journalist. It wasn’t difficult to work out that Edward Spires had a sister who lived in Norfolk and where she was, and so it was a cold, wet but supremely smug photographer crouching in the bushes who snapped the only photographs of Edward Spires looking bad: Edward flailing in mud, Edward being peed on by a dog, Edward limping, an agonised grimace on his face, with only one boot and the ratty dog in his arms.
There was an outcry, of course, about blood sports, and for a while Edward thought he might be cancelled. He also feared the Italian fashion house would drop him, for he could not have created a scenario where he looked more foolish had he tried. But, far from it, ‘È un uomo!’ they cried, unperturbed. For weeks the mortifying photographs were everywhere, but eventually the fuss subsided. And then, strangely, the tide turned. Looking like an idiot seemed to have helped Edward’s reputation. Carrying an obviously old and deeply unattractive dog made the public love him. And, swayed by this shift in attitude, the photographer let it be known that Edward hadn’t actually shot anything.
Under the next photograph of him, smiling peerlessly in a superbly cut black dinner jacket, the caption read, ‘The gorgeous Edward Spires – and wearing two shoes! Yummy!’
Philippa Hall is co-editor of Funny Pearls.