The French Photographer

by Natasha Lester

  She stopped suddenly. ‘Sorry, I’m giving you an art history lecture. It’s just that …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘It feels a bit unreal,’ Josh said, lowering himself down beside her to sift through the crate.

  ‘Exactly. It’s an art historian’s dream to come across something like this and here I am standing in the middle of it, photographs in hand, and I don’t quite know what to make of it.’ D’Arcy hesitated, but then her habit of candour made her keep going. ‘I studied war photography and it was thought these negatives had been lost. All the reproductions have been made from the print held by Vogue, not the negatives.’

  ‘You know so much about it. Why aren’t you …’

  He stopped but D’Arcy knew exactly what he’d been about to say. Why aren’t you a curator? Why waste an art history degree on being an art handler? It was what everyone asked her, mostly because so few people had ever heard of an art handler and had no real idea what she did. But he knew, and he still thought he had to ask the question.

  She riffled through the box so she didn’t have to look at him and be disappointed that he held the same prejudices as everyone else. ‘There are too many people to answer to as a curator,’ she said crisply. ‘Boards, the public, the media: being a curator sometimes seems much less about the art than it is about making everyone happy. And then there’s the pencil skirts. I prefer the freedom of being an art handler. And the wardrobe.’

  He started to interrupt and she expected he would offer a platitude, say that he hadn’t meant to imply that curatorship was the only real job to which an art historian should aspire, but she didn’t give him the chance. ‘And the reason I know so much about it is because I once thought I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker,’ she said. ‘That was my art. I studied media, as well as art history at uni. One of the documentaries I made was about what happened to women artists after the war. Women who’d been working as camouflage and propaganda artists, or war photographers, women who’d put their creative ambitions on hold to serve their country and who, once the war was over, were brushed aside as the men returned and took their jobs and reoccupied the artistic world. I’d read a piece in Art Monthly that resurrected Linda Nochlin’s 1970s essay. You know the one: “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” So I made a documentary arguing both that there had been great women artists and why they’d been overlooked and unremembered.’

  D’Arcy drew in a breath. God, that was all such a long time ago. When she’d been a passionate art student and had thought she could be a filmmaker. Even writing her fellowship application hadn’t excited as much feeling in her as that speech just had. Regret squeezed her heart in its unfamiliar fist – how easily she’d cast her artistic aspirations aside like thousands of other female artists before her.

  ‘You wanted to resurrect the documentary for the Jessica May Fellowship,’ Josh said quietly.

  Shit! She must have left the bloody email open on his computer.

  ‘I wasn’t prying,’ he said. ‘I closed it down as soon as I realised it was something of yours but it was impossible not to see some of it. They were right; it is a good idea for a documentary.’

  ‘I felt it deserved more thought than my amateur abilities had lent it ten years ago,’ she said. ‘But that’s not going to happen now. Another reason for me to continue as “just” an art handler,’ she finished sarcastically.

  ‘I wasn’t going to ask why you weren’t a curator,’ Josh said. ‘I was going to ask you why you didn’t write about art instead of travel. But as soon as I thought it, I knew the answer. I bet travel pieces pay a lot more. And more than documentaries, which won’t pay you anything until you get a backer. I’m not judging you for spending your time doing the things that pay. I just think you’re good at making the theory come to life when you talk about it so I expect you’d write about it well too. Or film it well.’

  ‘Thanks.’ D’Arcy managed a quick smile.

  ‘You know that Walter Lippmann quote? The one that goes: Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination today, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that.’

  ‘They seem utterly real,’ she finished the quote for him.

  ‘I’ve always thought it needed amending again,’ he continued. ‘To say that film has the kind of authority over imagination which photographs had yesterday.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She shrugged, wanting to move the focus away from herself. She’d shared more with Josh about her once lofty aspirations and her past than she’d shared with any man ever. ‘Why do you think …’

  ‘These photos are here?’ Josh shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You don’t think …’ D’Arcy had started to say: You don’t think your photographer is Jessica May? But she stopped herself in time. Just because the photographer Josh agented had chosen to be anonymous, it didn’t follow that she was a formerly famous war photographer. Even if she did have a formerly famous photographer’s archive in her home. That Jessica May had known the person whose chateau D’Arcy was now standing in, as Josh had suggested, was the more realistic option; the other was the stuff of Hollywood movies. And Josh’s surprise at finding the photos was genuine; if his client was Jessica May, then surely she would have apprised him of that fact?

  ‘We’re going to find a new photographer in each box?’ Josh quipped, finishing her sentence in a way different to that which she’d intended.

  ‘You’ve been sitting on a collection of a once famous photographers’ work all this time and not known about it? I doubt it. But let’s take a look.’ Perhaps there would be something in the boxes that made the reason these photographs were here, and the relationship between Jessica May and The Photographer, clear.

  The next box was marked in English – ‘Unpublished’. On the top were more pictures from the Easter service, the ones that hadn’t made it into Vogue if the label on the box was right. Then more of the unsettling, cadaverous women whom D’Arcy almost didn’t want to look at, but she knew that was the point. You should never look away from the things that make you uncomfortable. ‘These are from one of the concentration camps,’ she said quietly, and Josh took them from her, studying them carefully, as if paying tribute to the courage of these barely alive survivors.

  ‘You know that, before the camps were discovered, people didn’t believe they existed,’ D’Arcy said. ‘Photographs like this made them a reality. And people saw the pictures and thought they understood what it must have been like, as if the photos were reality. As if looking upon the feelings of the women was some kind of surrogate way of actually feeling their pain. It’s what we do now: look at a picture of a tragedy in a newspaper and say, how awful, before we turn ruthlessly to the next page.’

  ‘What’s the answer?’ Josh asked. ‘To not photograph? Then nobody would know anything.’

  ‘I know. I think that’s why I’ve always admired the photographer’s work. Because it seems to ask the viewer to stop and to feel, not just to stop and to look.’

  ‘Maybe you should be her agent instead of me.’ He frowned. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve stopped and felt, or even looked, when I’ve come here to visit her. Always too damn busy, like everyone is these days.’

  They were both quiet for a moment, reflecting on what they’d discussed, and D’Arcy realised she was glad Josh was with her. When he let his guard drop, he was the most interesting man she’d met in a long time. And it was nice to share this discovery with someone like him, who was as intrigued as she.

  D’Arcy dug a little deeper into the box and pulled out two more pictures. It was the same man and the same little girl from the iconic shot. One of the prints in her hand was taken moments before the embrace as the girl flew towards the man, arms outstretched; the other one was taken moments after. The first one was blurred and it was easy to see why it hadn’t been published but D’Arcy liked it regardless. The blurring underscored the animation of the little girl’s body and the way she felt about the man.<
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  In the second shot, the man held the girl up high in the air. D’Arcy could now see that the girl wore an olive drab jacket that obviously had been made for her to look like the nurses’ dress uniforms. On the lapels, instead of the nurses’ insignia, someone had hand-stitched a name. It was the name that made D’Arcy gasp. Victorine.

  ‘What is it?’ Josh glanced across at her quizzically.

  D’Arcy shook her head. ‘The little girl has the same name as my mother. I’ve never come across anyone else called Victorine in my life.’ She shrugged. ‘But I guess during the war it could have been a popular name.’

  Josh plucked the photograph from her hand and, as he did so, D’Arcy caught a glimpse of writing on the back. She tipped her head to the side to read it.

  Dan Hallworth and Victorine Hallworth. 1944.

  This time, she was incapable of gasping. She simply stared, then felt her hand reach out to touch the words, running a finger over them as if she had made some mistake and the real words would soon become apparent beneath her gesture of erasure.

  ‘You’ve gone very white,’ Josh said, putting the photo down. ‘Are you okay?’ He touched her arm, concern evident on his face.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She closed her eyes and opened them again. Then picked up the photograph. Turned it over. But the words were still there: Dan Hallworth and Victorine Hallworth. 1944.

  ‘Victorine Hallworth is my mother’s name.’ D’Arcy’s voice sounded as fragile as the Wood White butterfly’s wings, as if it would take off and desert her at any moment. There might be other Victorines in the world, but was there more than one Victorine Hallworth of around the same age as her mother?

  ‘That’s a very strange coincidence.’ Josh’s words came out heavily, dropping like thunderclouds into the room. ‘Who’s Dan Hallworth?’

  ‘I have no idea. Well, actually, I do have some idea but it doesn’t make any sense.’ She put the photograph down. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘I’ll be right back.’ Josh vanished through the doors and D’Arcy sank to the floor, knees hugged tight against her chest. Her mind circled around and around the words – Dan Hallworth and Victorine Hallworth. 1944 – and came up with a long list of unanswerable questions.

  ‘Cognac?’

  D’Arcy jumped at the sound of Josh’s voice. He’d returned with a decanter and two glasses. She nodded.

  Josh sat down beside her, much less awkwardly than she imagined he might be on a dusty floor beside a woman in a mini-dress who needed cognac to restore the colour to her cheeks. He poured them both a drink.

  ‘Which mystery do we start with?’ he asked, as if he wanted to help.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, swallowing the cognac and staring at the ceiling. ‘I just don’t know.’

  PART THREE

  Jess

  The pattern of liberation is not decorative. There are the gay squiggles of wine and song. There is the beautiful overall colour of freedom, but there is ruin and destruction. There are problems and mistakes, disappointed hopes and broken promises.

  – Lee Miller

  Ten

  LONDON, MAY 1944

  As May wore on, Jess and Martha, still shackled to London by the Public Relations Office, made it their business to sit in the bar at the Savoy almost every minute of every day so they could eavesdrop on any conversation that might give them a clue as to what was going on and how to get themselves attached to the invasion fleet. Martha was also doing her best to avoid Hemingway, who was at the Dorchester, thankfully, but he’d developed a nasty habit of accosting her in hallways and remonstrating with her in loud and drunken fury. All the more reason to get back over to the Continent, Jess reasoned.

  It was in the bar that they first heard about parachute school.

  ‘I wonder why we haven’t been invited to parachute school,’ Jess said, smiling sweetly at the two correspondents who were having the conversation that had piqued Martha and Jess’s interest.

  Martha stood up and slid into the booth beside the men. ‘I have a story for you,’ she said.

  The men looked from Martha to Jess, and Jess knew they were trying to decide which one they’d have the most chance of bedding later if this went the way they thought it would. It won’t, Jess wanted to say, but she and Martha needed information and if that meant trading on the fact that they were women, then that’s what they’d do; it was the mere fact of being women that meant they had to resort to it in the first place.

  ‘Did you know,’ Martha said flirtatiously, smiling her beautiful smile, her pale blonde hair curling sweetly around her face, ‘that the powers that be have just ordered eight gross of rubbers for the correspondents?’

  ‘Only for the photographers,’ Jess said, turning on her magazine smile and trying not to laugh. It was true; more than one thousand rubbers had been ordered for the press, but it was to protect the films they would take in France, rather than their nether regions. ‘Perhaps you should learn to take pictures, Marty, so you’ll be as well equipped as me.’

  ‘Perhaps I should,’ Martha said. ‘I don’t suppose either of you gentlemen are photographers?’

  The men replied in the negative, clearly regretful and also titillated by the conversation.

  Martha sighed dramatically. ‘Too bad. But perhaps you have some other interesting stories to share. How about I buy everyone a whiskey and you tell us a little more about parachute school.’

  Marty and Jess had seated themselves strategically. The correspondents they’d chosen were as callow as children on their first day at school, having arrived in London the previous week. They still thought free whiskey and two women were prizes worth having and had no idea the prize came with a price. And they’d probably heard Warren’s stories about Jess and hoped that a bedroom digestif might be the outcome of this cosy chat.

  One of the men leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. ‘The public relations guys are in a jam. There are more correspondents wanting to go with the invasion fleet than there are places. So they thought they could drop some of the men in by parachute. You need to do five training jumps, so they’re sending any man who’s interested to parachute school in a village called Chilton Foliat.’

  ‘So that’s where Joe Dearing vanished to,’ Martha mused, the Collier’s photographer having been missing for a couple of days on sanctioned business.

  ‘You haven’t heard the best part,’ the other man jumped in, eyeing Jess, and she let him sit closer than was comfortable because she was as keen as Martha to hear the rest. ‘Bob Capa had a party on the weekend and he and Bill Landry and Larry LeSueur got themselves as full as bedbugs on champagne,’ he said. ‘They signed a contract with one of the PROs at the party, saying they’d go with him at eleven the next morning to do their training jumps. Only the press guy turns up to collect them and there’s no sign of Bob or Bill or Larry. He phones Bill who says he sprained his ankle. He phones Larry who says the same. He can’t find Bob anywhere. So –’

  ‘Three places allocated to train male correspondents to handle parachute jumps in preparation for the invasion went to waste because they were drunk,’ Martha finished. ‘Good to see they take their responsibilities so seriously.’

  ‘Sorry fellas,’ Jess said, finishing her whiskey and standing up. ‘But we have somewhere to be.’

  The men were not polite in their remonstrances to the women as they walked away, causing Marty to add fuel to the fire by blowing them a kiss. Jess led the way to her room where she bashed out a letter on her typewriter, and then she and Martha went upstairs and banged on Warren’s door.

  He opened it with a smile when he saw who it was. ‘Two at once?’ he said loudly, no doubt hoping anyone in the rooms beside would hear. ‘That’s too much even for me.’

  ‘This,’ Jess said, ignoring the jibe, ‘is a letter officially requesting permission for Martha and me to begin parachute training in preparation for the invasion. I have a copy here for SHAEF PR, filling them in on details of wasted p
arachute training places, requesting your documented response within a week.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, and this time when he looked at her, his exasperating smile was gone. ‘Don’t send it to SHAEF PR.’

  As he spoke, Jess saw the flicker of humanity in Warren; he didn’t want her telling tales to his bosses at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, tales that might make the PR men in charge believe that Warren Stone couldn’t handle two little women like Jess and Martha.

  But any compassion she might once have made herself muster for Warren had abandoned her at the port in Naples, where it remained with the line of men who all had copies of Vogue, provided for them by Warren, to taunt her with.

  ‘I have to,’ she said quietly.

  And then she turned around and stalked off, leaving even Martha’s experienced mouth hanging open.

  Warren made them cool their already frozen heels for a week. The only burst of sunshine was a letter from Dan, with whom Jess had entered into a correspondence, by way of Victorine. Victorine had wanted to send Jess some pictures, Dan had explained the first time she’d received an envelope addressed in unfamiliar handwriting. Inside was a child’s drawing in smudged black ink of a little girl reading what looked like a book. On closer inspection, Jess realised the squiggly lines on the front of the book were awkward letters spelling Vogue.

  Jess had written back to both Victorine and Dan, and he’d replied. He’d written that, on returning to England, his company had been put through more training, then finally quarantined somewhere – of course he couldn’t tell her where. But Jess knew the US Army had very few battle-experienced soldiers, besides the men from Italy. It was obvious to her that those men would be relied upon to teach the unblooded what to do when faced with an enemy more implacable than anyone had initially anticipated. And that Dan, as a paratrooper, would be among the very first men in France, parachuted in hours before any amphibious assault, attempting to secure strategic targets that would allow the infantry to advance. In the hands of all the too-young men like Dan, about to jump out of a plane and into the abyss, the future rested. If they couldn’t do what they were meant to, what would happen to the world?