About the Book
On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls passionately in love with the mysterious and beautiful Marian. Back in the UK, Ian resolves to leave his wife for her – only to find Marian has disappeared, and the photographs of their brief time together have been savagely destroyed.
Searching desperately for her, Ian comes across a quiet Dorset churchyard. Here he meets a psychotherapist, who is looking for a missing client of hers: a woman who claims she is the reincarnation of Marian Esguard, who may have invented photography ten years before Fox Talbot.
But why is Marian Esguard unknown to history? And who and where is the woman Ian Jarrett has sacrificed everything for?
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Part One: Composition
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Part Two: Exposure
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three: Development
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Four: Exhibition
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
Also by Robert Goddard
Copyright
PART ONE
COMPOSITION
ONE
I WAS IN Vienna to take photographs. That was generally the reason I was anywhere then. Photographs were more than my livelihood. They were part of my life. The way light fell on a surface never failed to tug at my imagination. The way one picture, a single snapshot, could capture the essence of a time and place, a city, a war, a human being, was embedded in my consciousness. One day, one second, I might close the shutter on the perfect photograph. There was always the chance, so long as there was film in my camera. Finish one; load another; and keep looking, with eyes wide open. That was my code. Had been for a long time.
I’d come close once, in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War, when some weird aptness in the knotted shape of a smoke plume from a burning oil well made my picture the one newspapers and magazines all over the world suddenly wanted. Brief glory from an even briefer moment. Just luck, really. But they say you make your own – the bad as well as the good.
I went freelance after the Gulf, which should have been a clever move and would probably have worked out that way, but for life beyond the lens taking a few wrong turnings. The mid-Nineties weren’t quite the string of triumphs I’d foreseen when my defining image of the Gulf madness made it to the cover of Time magazine. That’s why I was in Vienna, rather than in Bosnia or Zaïre or anywhere even faintly newsworthy. But, still, I was taking photographs. And I was being paid to do it. It didn’t sound bad to me.
The assignment was actually a piece of happenstance. I’d done the London shots for a glossy coffee-table picture book: Four Cities in Four Seasons – London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, a European co-publishing venture that netted me a juicy commission to hang round moody eyefuls of my home city in spring, summer, autumn and winter. I’d given my own particular slant to daffodils in Hyde Park, heat haze and traffic fumes in Piccadilly, rain-sodden leaves in Berkeley Square and a snow-patched roofscape in WC1. I’d also reconciled myself to the best and truest of what I’d delivered being tossed aside. It was, after all, only a picture book. It wasn’t meant to challenge anyone’s preconceptions or make them see instead of look. And I wasn’t Bill Brandt. Any more than my French opposite number was Henri Cartier-Bresson.
It was just after an obliging cold snap over Christmas and New Year that I handed in my London-in-winter batch and got the message that Rudi Schüssner had walked out on the job in Vienna for reasons nobody seemed to think I needed to know about. Rather than call in someone new, they offered me the substitute’s role. The Austrian publishers had liked what they’d seen of my stuff, apparently. Besides, I was free, whereas the French and Italian photographers weren’t. And I was glad to go. Things at home weren’t great. They were a long way from that. A week snapping snowy Vienna didn’t have to be dressed up as a compliment to my artistry for me to go like a shot. Anyway, The Third Man had always been one of my favourite films.
They put me up at the Europa, on Neuer Markt, halfway between Stephansdom and the Staatsoper, right in the heart of the old city. I’d last been to Vienna for a long weekend with Faith before we were married: a midsummer tourist scramble round just about every palace and museum in the joint. It had been hot, hectic and none too memorable. I hadn’t even taken many photographs. On my own, in a cold hard January, it was going to be different, though. I knew that the moment I climbed off the shuttle bus from the airport and let my eyes and brain absorb the pinky-grey dome of light over the snow-sugared roofs of the city. I was going to enjoy myself here. I was going to take some great pictures.
The first day I didn’t even try. I rode the trams round the Ringstrasse, getting on and off as I pleased to sample the moods of the place. The weather was set, frozen like the vast baroque remnants of the redundant empire that had laid the city out. I hadn’t seen what Schüssner had done with spring, summer and autumn. I hadn’t wanted to. This was going to be my Vienna, not his. And it was going to give itself to me. I just had to let it come. A photograph is a moment. But you have to wait for the moment to arrive. So I bided my time and looked and looked until I could see clearly. And then I was ready.
Next morning, I was out at dawn. Snow flurries overnight meant Stephansplatz would be virginally white as well as virtually deserted. I hadn’t figured out how to cope with the cathedral in one shot. Its spire stretched like a giraffe’s neck into the silver-grey sky, but at ground level it was elephantine, squatting massively in the centre of the city. Probably there was no way to do it. I’d have to settle for something partial. In that weather, at that time, it could still be magical.
But, then, there’s always been something magical about photography. It certainly seemed that way to the Victorian pioneers, before the chemistry of it was properly understood. Pictures develop and strengthen and hold by an agency of their own. You can stand, as Fox Talbot did, in a darkened room and watch a blank sheet of paper become a photograph. And even when you know why it happens you don’t lose the sense of its mystery. That stays with you for ever.
Perhaps that’s why what happened at Stephansplatz that morning failed in some strange way to surprise me. I’d brought the Hasselblad, but I didn’t take a tripod, though technically I should have. I’d always shied clear of accessories, arguing that all you needed to do the job were a good pair of eyes and a decent camera. Plus spontaneity, of course, which you don’t get fiddling with tripod legs. I just prowled round the square, looking for the right angle, for some way to give scale as well as atmosphere to the scene. I backed off to the north side, where there was some shelter from the wind, and took a decent shot of the snow slashing across the dark flank of the cathedral. But Schüssner could have managed that. I was looking for something more distinctive, something that would carry my own grace note.
I didn’t find it. It found me. With my eye to the camera, I tracked across to the blurred reflection of the cathedral’s west front in the glass façade of the Haas-Haus, then slowly down and back until the curve of Kärtnerstrasse was an empty white arena beyond the black prow of medieval buttressing, with a shop sign gleaming like a golden snowflake in the distance. Then, just as I steadied the camera, a figure stepped into view round the southern si
de of the cathedral, red coat buttoned up against the chill, and I had a piece of composition you’d die for. I pressed the shutter release and thanked my stars.
The figure was a woman, dressed in boots, overcoat, gloves, scarf and fur-trimmed hat. I’d have expected her to hurry across the square, head bowed. Instead, she stopped, turned and looked at me as I lowered the camera, then walked towards me. She was frowning, I saw as she approached. She almost seemed to be angry, her dark eyes seeking and challenging my gaze. My first impression was of a pale high-cheeked face framed by the soft black brim of the hat, of eyes that could see as far as they needed to – and quite possibly through whatever stood in their way.
‘Did you just take my photograph?’ she said. The voice was English, unaccented, surprisingly deep.
‘You were in the photograph I took,’ I replied. ‘It’s not quite the same thing.’
‘It is to me.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘I don’t like having my picture taken.’ Her nose was broad and flat, almost as if it had once been broken. Somehow that made her more striking still. That and the aggression in her eyes which camera-shyness didn’t seem to me to go anywhere near explaining. ‘Especially not by somebody I don’t know.’
‘That must be difficult for you. I expect you get a lot of requests.’
‘Funny,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘I thought I’d be safe in Vienna from smart-arse Londoners.’
‘In January, at dawn.’ I glanced round the square and nodded. ‘It was a good bet.’
There was a moment’s silence, when the only sound was the wind mewling round the cathedral and flapping the camera-strap against the collar of my coat. She should have walked away then, or I should. But neither of us moved. Incongruity turned towards fascination, and I realized I was no longer sure how this would end.
‘It’ll be a great picture,’ I said neutrally.
‘What makes you think so?’
‘I’m a professional. Trust me.’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘About the picture? Not really. About breakfast? Well, that’s a different matter. You can have it with your husband back at your hotel. Or with me at the Café Griensteidl. It’s on Michaelerplatz. Maybe you know it.’
‘Better than you know me, that’s for certain.’
‘You said you didn’t like having your picture taken by a stranger. This way I wouldn’t be one, would I? Not any more.’
‘What about your wife? Won’t she be expecting you?’
‘She’s not with me this trip.’
‘And my husband’s not with me. That’s how I can be sure of breakfasting alone.’
‘Please yourself.’
‘I will, thank you.’ And with that she did move, round on her heel and smartly away across the square.
I watched her until she’d vanished down the street beside the Haas-Haus, and wondered as soon as she was out of sight why in hell’s name I’d behaved as I had. Though she wouldn’t know it, it was actually way out of character. For a moment I’d very much wanted not to let our encounter fizzle into nothing beyond a figure in red in the background of a photograph. I’d wanted that with an acuteness I couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t just disquieting, it was positively eerie. As if I hadn’t any idea of what was really going on in my head.
I tried to shrug the sensation off as I made my way down Kärtnerstrasse to the Opera House and took some speculative shots of its snow-hazed bulk from various vantage points. But I was cold now and oddly dispirited. I carried on round to Heldenplatz and managed some perspective views of its wide-open arctic spaces. Then I gave up and retreated to the Griensteidl.
And there she was, waiting for me. She was at a table near the far end of the café, so tucked away that I didn’t see her until I went to grab a newspaper from the rack and recognized her coat and hat on the nearby stand. Then I glanced round and saw her, watching me quite calmly from a distant table.
‘You did know the place, then,’ I said as I joined her.
‘I know less than I pretend.’ The anger was gone from her eyes, but their intensity was undimmed. Her hair was short, expertly cropped in some fashionable bob, and an engagement ring sparkled beside the wedding ring on her left hand as she trailed it round her coffee cup. ‘Like you, I imagine.’
‘Why do I get the feeling that you are like me – in lots of ways?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know what you mean.’
‘I’m sorry if I … said anything stupid back there.’
‘Why be sorry? If you’d been more polite maybe I wouldn’t be here now.’
‘I usually am, you know. Polite.’
‘Promise me you won’t be … with me.’
‘All right. That’s easy.’
‘No, it isn’t. Polite means dishonest. Impolite means honest. And honest isn’t easy.’
The waiter came over and I ordered coffee and a croissant. The uncertainty was delicious now. Just what were we talking about?
‘My name’s Marian Esguard.’
‘Esguard? That’s unusual.’
‘My husband’s an unusual man.’
‘He seems a negligent one to me.’
‘You don’t know him. And that’s good. That’s actually great. I can’t remember when I last talked this much to somebody who didn’t know him.’
‘Shall we keep it that way, then?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled faintly for the first time. It warmed her eyes. There was a sudden sense of exuberance, of joy, on a short leash. ‘Who are you?’
‘Ian Jarrett.’
‘A photographer.’
‘Right. Here for the winter light.’
‘And you’re wondering what I’m here for.’
‘No. Unless you want me to.’
‘I told you to be impolite.’
‘But just how impolite? That’s the question.’
‘A question for you to answer, not me.’
‘You can at least tell me what brings you here.’
‘I’m not sure. Boredom. Desperation. The need to get away. The need to think.’
My breakfast arrived. She watched me sip some coffee. Then she reached across the table, tore an end off my croissant and ate it, slowly and studiously.
‘Hungry?’
‘I think I must be.’
‘Have it all.’
‘You never can, in my experience.’
‘Nor mine.’
‘But there are always new experiences.’
‘So there are.’
‘Tell me, Ian, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’
‘I killed somebody once.’ Hearing myself say what I never normally volunteered was more of a shock to me than it seemed to be to her. ‘Hit a pedestrian late one night about five years ago while I was driving home.’
‘An accident?’
‘Oh yes. And I was sober, too. But I still killed them.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to them, does it? The fact that you didn’t mean to do it.’
‘You talk as if you know the feeling.’
‘I do. When I was a child I goaded a schoolfriend into walking out onto a frozen canal. The ice broke. She fell through and drowned. An accident. But she stayed dead.’
‘That must have been worse. At least I didn’t know the pedestrian I hit.’
‘I never told anyone I’d encouraged her to do it. Never a soul. Till now.’
‘Why tell me?’
‘Because …’ She hesitated, searching my face, it seemed, for some kind of reassurance. ‘Because I want us to do anything we want. And nothing we don’t.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I am.’ She looked straight at me, unblinkingly direct. ‘Are you?’
‘Anything and nothing?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Whatever that means?’
‘Whatever.’
That was the last moment when I could have laughed it off and put u
p some kind of social smokescreen. But then the moment passed. And all I did was nod slowly in agreement and return the frankness of her gaze.
‘Staying in Vienna long?’
‘Long enough.’
She smiled, more broadly than before. ‘That makes two of us, then.’
‘I thought I might go out to Schönbrunn this morning. Take some pictures of the palace and the park. Why don’t you come with me?’
‘I shouldn’t. For all kinds of reasons.’
‘But you will?’
‘Oh, I expect so, don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure I know what to expect.’
‘Neither am I.’ She drained her cup and replaced it in the saucer with exaggerated care. ‘Isn’t that why we’re going?’
I don’t know why I thought of Schönbrunn. I hadn’t really been intending to go there that morning. But it was bound to be quiet so far from the centre on a freezing-cold weekday. We both needed time, before the next step caught up with us.
And it was quiet. The palace floated silently in its snow-covered park like some vast yellow ghost, so remote from the dusty, tourist-choked clamour I remembered that my visit with Faith could almost have lain in the future rather than in the past.
‘They say Franz Josef preferred it here to the Hofburg,’ I said as we walked out slowly behind the palace through the snow-blanked gardens towards the Neptune Fountain and the colonnade of the Gloriette on the hilltop beyond. ‘He kept his mistress in a villa near by.’
‘You obviously know Vienna better than I do,’ said Marian. ‘Who’s Franz Josef?’
‘You must have heard of him. The famous Austrian Emperor. The old fellow with the walrus moustache and the chestful of medals.’
‘You’ve lost me. But I’m no historian.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘No. You’re a photographer. So shouldn’t you be taking photographs?’
‘Later. Just at the moment I don’t seem able to concentrate.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘You need to be alone. Is that it?’
‘Maybe I need to be. But I don’t want to be.’
‘Sorry if I’m distracting you from your work.’
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