The French Photographer

by Natasha Lester

  She remembered the way she’d curled into him on the sofa on his balcony. She remembered opening the door to his room to find him shaving, bare-chested, and the image made her close her eyes and feel the press of that same chest, unbearably covered now, against hers. There had been so many times he could have taken advantage of her, and even now Dan was so careful not to trespass onto her body without being certain it was what she wanted. She felt her heart crack a little at the tenderness his restraint implied.

  The song played irresistibly on. Jess was aware of nothing around them, nothing beyond Dan’s thumb brushing up and down in minute movements on her back, and a longing to do the same to him: to feel his bare skin beneath her hand. She lifted her head so that her forehead brushed his cheek; he lowered his head in response and she whispered into his ear, ‘Dan.’

  At the same time, he said her name – ‘Jess’ – and his voice matched hers.

  ‘It’s my turn!’

  Jess gasped as Jennings’ eager words crashed over her like a grenade, making her and Dan jump apart, the moment fragmenting into dust around them.

  She hadn’t danced with Jennings and he had helped sew chocolate wrappers onto a suit so it was only fair that she say yes to him and, besides, the song had ended and she hadn’t danced with any other man twice, so Dan stepped away.

  Jess had no idea what song she and Jennings danced to, nor whom she danced with after that, unable to escape because she was a woman and a rarity and also the star of the show and they would all notice if she went missing; she only knew that what she’d been about to say to Dan was, ‘Come upstairs with me. Now,’ and that as her eyes searched the room desperately for him, he had gone.

  Gone to the killing field of the Ardennes. And she hadn’t had time to say to him, ‘Make sure you come back alive.’

  PART FOUR

  D’Arcy

  Sixteen

  ‘So tell me what you do know,’ Josh said, eyes following D’Arcy’s to the ceiling of the attic room in which they sat, cognac in one hand, inconceivable photographs in the other.

  ‘Not much,’ D’Arcy admitted, gripping her glass. ‘My mother, Victorine, was born in France. Her father died in the war, she told me, and she was raised by relatives, who put her into boarding school when she was a child; she rarely saw them after that. Once she finished school, she became a reporter, then editor for a magazine in Paris, worked her way up and ended up in Australia running the Asia-Pacific arm of World Media Group. I have no idea how she could be in this picture and I have no idea why your photographer might have it.’

  She paused. ‘Anyway, it’s my problem, not yours. Your mother isn’t the one mysteriously appearing in famous photographs.’

  ‘If it concerns the photographer, then it is my business. So let’s break it down,’ Josh said, in his crisp, business-like voice which D’Arcy treasured at that moment because it made the problem seem impersonal, solvable, separate from her. ‘How did your mother end up with the name Hallworth? It’s not French. And how did she find her way to Australia; it’s not an obvious leap from working on a magazine in France.’

  ‘More cognac first.’

  D’Arcy held out her glass, unsure which of Josh’s questions to tackle first. She started with the story she knew best, although it was as full of tiny holes as a round of mimolette cheese. ‘I always thought she came to Australia because of some sort of failed love affair. She never really said why but her move to Australia coincided with my birth, which is why I put it down to love gone wrong. And she was given the name Hallworth because her father was an American GI. Another love affair gone wrong: her mother fell pregnant with Victorine while unwed. Hence Victorine was put into boarding school and the family kept her at more than arm’s-length. She was just one of the many illegitimate children borne by a Frenchwoman to a US soldier in a war zone. And as she never really knew her family, they didn’t keep in touch once her schooling had finished.’

  ‘And your father? Victorine didn’t marry him or she just didn’t take his name?’

  D’Arcy hesitated, sipping the cognac. She hardly knew this man sitting beside her and he was asking her things she rarely talked about. Yes, she’d been happy to have sex with him but, somehow, that seemed far less intimate than this discussion. She kept it brief. ‘Neither. I don’t know too much about him. Like I said, I assumed my mother had her heart broken by him. She told me that she hadn’t been able to tell my father about me because by the time she knew she was having a baby, he was no longer in France. Maybe he was a tourist passing through, and it was the seventies, so texts and emails didn’t exist. I never knew him so I never missed him. My mother is redoubtable; she’s more than enough of a parent to be both mother and father,’ she finished firmly.

  Josh shifted a little closer to her, putting down his glass, casting his eyes over the figure of the girl in the photograph who bore the same name as D’Arcy’s mother. ‘You don’t seem like someone who’s afraid to ask questions, nor like someone who has no natural curiosity. It all sounds like a made-up story. Did you never ask any more?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ D’Arcy said quietly. And then the truth came out, a truth that was a thousand times more intimate than kissing. ‘I adore my mother. But she looked so sad every time I asked her about it. More than sad; she looked as if I were tearing out her heart, piece by agonising piece. I didn’t want to be the one to make her look like that. So I stopped asking.’

  Then D’Arcy stood in one quick motion. She’d told him more about her mother, and also herself, than she’d ever said to anyone. It was making her eyes a little too damp. ‘Sorry. You’re not interested in my personal wallowing. You should go to bed. I’ll be back to sawing in the morning.’ Her voice sounded convincing, as if she really would just pick up her saw and get on with the job like none of this had happened.

  He put out a hand to halt her. ‘I’ll talk to the photographer. Ask if she’ll see you. Maybe she has some answers for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, before she hurried back to her room and sat on her balcony, staring unseeing at the resplendent gardens spotlit by the full moon, and the dark coil of canal that lay just beyond.

  When she awoke the next morning, D’Arcy had to check the carriage clock on the bedside table several times before she would believe what it said. Nine o’clock! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept until nine o’clock. She’d fallen into bed at dawn after sitting awake for hours, thinking about her mother, debating whether she should just call her. Victorine’s always practical tone would offer up a simple explanation: Victorine wasn’t the girl in the photograph. It was just a very big and very startling coincidence of names.

  D’Arcy leapt out of bed and threw herself into the shower. She had work to do. Sleeping in until nine o’clock was taking the wallowing too far. She threw on a black 1950s sundress, a find from a vintage store; it had spaghetti straps, a fitted bodice and a full skirt made bell-shaped by polka-dot crinoline petticoats that peeped out at the hem.

  Célie, who either had an intuition as to when her guests woke up, or simply heard the clanging of the water pipes, knocked and brought in the same delicious breakfast tray as yesterday.

  ‘I really should just grab the croissant and the coffee and go downstairs and start work,’ D’Arcy said regretfully.

  Célie shook her head. ‘Breakfast is meant to be enjoyed. Here is the paper. Sit outside and relax. You look tired. And Josh hasn’t started work yet.’

  It wasn’t hard to be convinced. Once outside, she realised it was a warm day already, the sky clear blue and untroubled. It was the perfect day, in fact, to sit on the balcony of a chateau in France and sip coffee and read newspapers and do very little. But of course she wasn’t on holiday.

  She stared at her phone and thought again about calling her mother but the time difference wouldn’t be right. Then she heard the low hum of voices and saw Josh and an elderly woman strolling back up from the canal.

  The woman held onto Josh’s
arm and he walked slowly, keeping pace with her. She was tall, even though her shoulders were rounded a little with age, and her face was shielded by large Bardot-esque sunglasses. Her silver hair was cut into an elegant and classic bob, waving gently at the ends. She wore white trousers and a fun but modish update on the striped Breton top, with gauzy sleeves and a raw hem.

  D’Arcy realised she was holding her breath, as if she thought that simply inhaling would make them realise she could see this woman who must be the photographer. Then the woman looked up at D’Arcy’s balcony and smiled. D’Arcy froze, unable to smile or wave or do anything other than stare, stupidly, as the woman and Josh walked closer to the house where she could no longer see them.

  After several long moments, D’Arcy roused herself, her mind whirling. Why had the photographer let D’Arcy see her? What was going on? And did it have anything to do with what she and Josh had found the night before?

  Josh. D’Arcy remembered their kiss. What would he be like today? Embarrassed? Professional? Would he kiss her again? She shook her head. Josh was probably one distraction too many at the moment.

  But she still found herself looking for him when she stepped into the salon de grisailles. He was already there, talking on the phone. She thought maybe his eyes flickered with something like gladness when he saw her so she risked a smile, picked up her tools and went out to the terrace to work where she wouldn’t disturb him.

  It was meditative and soothing, the push and pull of the saw through the wood, the hammering of nails into crates, ticking off each artwork on her list. As the sun ran warm fingers over her shoulders, she managed to forget all of her worries and fears and questions about her mother, forget everything except the artworks.

  She reached for a set of images, her favourites of the photographer’s works, a series showing children doing distinctly unchildlike things: two boys aged about ten, with curly blond heads and brightly coloured T-shirts, one smoking a cigarette, holding it in a way that suggested much practise, the boy beside him with his mouth wrapped around a lollipop; a boy lying on the ground, curled up in pain, holding his stomach, a girl in a white dress skipping away with a smug smile on her face; the child in the candy-striped dress, tights and patent Mary Jane shoes, head lost in the big seventies dome-shaped hairdryer, her mother beside her, oblivious, reading a magazine with a picture of the Queen on the cover; a group of adults at a protest march, bearing banners with uncensored slogans, the focus on the mouths of the adults, open in rage, screaming out their protest, and a child smiling beatifically beside them.

  D’Arcy knew from her studies that the photographer had never tried for the iconic shot, that she preferred to gather a series of images that each spoke to the other, posing questions in one, answering them in another, the theme emerging from the collection, not the single image. She picked up the final photograph in this set: a homage to Diane Arbus’s iconic close-up of the sobbing child. It showed a child the way one might expect to see them represented in a book of fairytales: blonde curls, blue eyes, soft cheeks, but there was a look of such potent concentration in the intense close-up of the child’s face that it was impossible to think of innocence and unworldliness and naiveté. She looked as if she knew far too much and the effect was visceral and unsettling, like a slap to the cheek.

  D’Arcy started at the sound of a throat clearing. ‘You look lost in another world. I wasn’t sure whether to disturb you,’ Josh said, leaning in the doorway, having made a concession to the weather by rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, which perfectly matched his eyes.

  And D’Arcy ruefully conceded that it hadn’t been the wine or the ambience of the evening before; he was a very sexy man and her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the lips that had kissed her. He, on the other hand, was having a hard time looking at her and at first D’Arcy thought he was being a dick again, pretending they’d shared nothing more than a meal. Then, with a sudden flash of insight, she wondered if, despite the air of confidence and coolness in his business dealings, he might be a little shy.

  She held out the picture to see what he would do: remain in the doorway where he had the upper hand, or come closer, where she suspected he might feel decidedly less comfortable. He chose a position halfway, stopping to pour himself some water.

  ‘I’ve only ever seen this reproduced in books,’ she said of the shot she was holding. ‘It was powerful even then. But holding it is,’ she hesitated, ‘violent almost. The girl’s stare is so forceful even though you know she had no intention of it being so. It’s like everything she’s thinking is just there, and you catch a glimpse of it, then it slips away.’ She smiled. ‘There I go being the lecturer again. I just mean that I almost don’t want to pack this one. It’s like the picture of the child we found last night.’ She stopped. ‘It’s like the picture of the child we found last night,’ she said again.

  She stared at Josh, certain he’d think she was drawing a bow so long it would stretch all the way back to Sydney. She’d dismissed the thought last night as foolish, the effect of sitting in an attic near midnight drinking cognac and discussing the mysteries of the past. But now, in the light of day, she couldn’t shake it. And nobody knew what had happened to Jessica May. So it was possible. ‘Maybe your photographer has Jessica May’s photographs because she is Jessica May.’

  Josh nodded. ‘I wondered that too. I spent hours googling her last night. I’d hardly heard of Jessica May, which seems crazy because her work is outstanding. I can’t believe she was forgotten after the war, that everyone uses one of her photos but nobody remembers who took it.’

  ‘Exactly!’ D’Arcy cried. ‘And she wasn’t the only one. Which is why –’

  ‘You wanted to make the documentary.’ Josh finished her sentence for her. ‘I wish you could find a way to do it. It’s worth making.’

  ‘Thanks,’ D’Arcy said, touched by his understanding.

  ‘And you’re right,’ he said. ‘The photos are similar. But only if you’re looking for similarities. Here.’ He handed her an envelope, in which she saw negatives, square and oversized, that must have been taken on an old Rolleiflex camera.

  ‘There’s a lightbox in there.’ Josh pointed to the salon.

  D’Arcy walked through, snapping on the light, bending down with the loupe, scanning each one. They were all of the same man – Dan Hallworth – in US Army uniform. A couple more of the girl, Victorine, including some at what looked like a picnic, a stream of water behind her, as well as a peculiarly twisted tree, like the ones painted into the panels in the room. A tree that looked as if it were reaching out to D’Arcy, pleading to her. She stepped back from the lightbox.

  ‘If you googled her,’ she said suddenly, to cover her attack of the heebie-jeebies, ‘then you must know if it is her. You would have seen pictures of her on the net. I know she’s sixty years older now but if she is Jessica May, she must look similar.’

  ‘She said she’d see you,’ Josh said, not answering her question. ‘But she’s my client, D’Arcy. I have to look out for her. If you ask her something and she doesn’t want to answer, you can’t push her, okay?’

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ D’Arcy felt a shiver prickle her skin, a mixture of both excitement and fear.

  ‘It’s not my place to tell you.’

  ‘I think you might be the only man in the world who’d put his client’s interests over making one of the biggest discoveries in the art world for years.’

  Josh started to speak but she held up her hand. ‘I meant it as a compliment,’ she said. ‘I can see why she has you as her agent.’

  He studied her face. ‘Are you going to ask her about your mother too?’

  ‘Of course,’ D’Arcy said breezily, as if that were of small concern in the light of the other revelation that might be made.

  ‘She has a sitting room up there. Second door on the left.’

  D’Arcy ascended the staircase, one half of her brain buzzing. What if the photographer really was Jessica May? What would D�
�Arcy do with that knowledge? Quiz her on the thinking behind every photograph from 1943 through to the present day at the very least. Ask her why she’d chosen to vanish. Tell her that the world needed to know she was still alive, needed to remember work that was so very important when it was taken, and was still important now, not just artistically, but in jolting the memory of a world that seemed too ready to fight at any provocation. The Photographer was a renowned artist; Jessica May could, once again, be similarly acclaimed.

  D’Arcy stopped before the door to settle herself before she knocked, knowing it was most likely she would say none of that. Instead, she would probably stare open-mouthed and be too awed to speak. If it were true.

  ‘Entrez!’ a voice that was lighter and clearer than D’Arcy expected called out.

  D’Arcy pushed open the door and came face to face with a woman who still held the trappings of a beautiful face in the cheekbones, only slightly attenuated by the lines age had etched into them, and in the large brown eyes. The woman smiled at D’Arcy from her chair, a warm smile, one that belonged in this place of beauty and exuberance.

  ‘Thank you for taking such good care of my work,’ the woman said in the voice that wasn’t at all blurred or slowed by age. ‘I’m sorry you expected more of it to have been packed. We did get someone in to begin the process but I found I couldn’t trust him to handle it the way I prefer. By all accounts, you’re doing a vastly better job.’

  ‘Thank you,’ D’Arcy said. ‘It honestly doesn’t feel much like work. Being so close to your photographs is what every art historian dreams of. I’ve been fed extremely well. The chateau is magnificent. And Josh has been very …’ she felt herself blush a little, ‘… kind.’