Photographing Fairies: A Novel

by Steve Szilagyi

  If it was still raining later, I could borrow an umbrella. Maybe Esmirelda had one.

  Chapter Twelve

  How I Got a New Darkroom

  Thin sheets of rain swept across the gloomy little square. Where I stood was relatively dry, but just a few feet ahead, raindrops danced and puddled around the cobblestones. Separate waters combined into larger streams. All were gathered noisily by a mouthlike grate in the curb. Across the square, shops and houses squatted humbly in the dripping wet, inspiring pity like soaking cats. To my right, the stones of the church were stained with damp; brief cataracts gushed from gutters and spattered on the pavement.

  With the departure of Constable Walsmear, there was not a soul on the square. As the rain diminished, however, I saw a figure in white, rising out of the churchyard. It was not an apparition. It was Rev. Drain. He was dressed in white shorts and a white singlet. With services ended, and his congregation dispersed, he was obviously taking the opportunity for a little exercise. The rain didn’t seem to faze him. As I watched, he threw himself onto the ground. Then he picked himself up again, and repeated the exercise. That finished, he began running in place. He kicked his knees higher and higher. When he seemed to have built up a nice head of steam, he shot off among the headstones.

  As Drain was doing all this, his wife made an appearance in the doorway of the church. She could not see him. He could not see her. She folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe. As she gazed into the rain, I was reminded of rural housewives, such as you spot from passing trains. You sometimes see them standing just so, dreaming.

  Drain, meanwhile, ran several circuits of the graveyard. Then he leaped up and chinned himself on the high, wrought-iron gate. I waited for him to tire, or at least to slow down. He did not. After an appalling number of chin-ups, he dropped to earth and, without skipping a beat, shot off across the square. He ran right past where I stood. I could see his face contorted with pain. His eyes, however, glittered with pleasure. They took no notice of me. He was in a world of his own.

  I looked back toward the church. Linda no longer stood in the doorway.

  Soon, the rain abated; the sky glowed with pearlescence. I had a strange and sudden impulse. In obedience to it, I dashed across the square and up the steps of the church. There was no one in the dim foyer. I pushed open the doors. As I walked down the main aisle, I at first saw no one. But a brief rustle drew my eyes to the altar.

  “Hello.”

  It was Linda. She was lying on a stack of pillows piled in front of the altar. She looked quite comfortable. There was an illustrated magazine on her lap and a box of chocolates at her side. A shoe dangled from one foot. She flipped it off her toes. It rolled down the aisle toward me. I picked it up.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Just showing off.”

  “Showing off your — legs?” I ventured, ascending the altar steps and setting the shoe down beside her.

  Linda sat up straight. “I’m covered, aren’t I?” She checked; she was. “I’m showing off,” she said. “How irreverent I can be. Lounging on the altar. I can get away with that, you know. I’m the minister’s wife. Aren’t these pillows nice? I’d like to take them for the house.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said, sitting down beside her. “Now’s the time for you to do this sort of thing. When you can be alone. It’s not like any of your parishioners are going to come back in here. Imagine if they did. Seeing you stretched out here like an odalisque.”

  “A what?”

  “From the seraglio.”

  “Oh — ”

  “No. I’m sure your parishioners have had — if you’ll forgive me — a bellyful of church this morning. And so, I think, have you and your husband. He’s off running and exercising. You’re eating chocolates and reading magazines. You’re both resting up before the cycle begins again for next week’s service.”

  Linda looked down at where I was sitting. “You’re getting that pillow wet.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  Water was dripping off my tweed coat.

  “Take that thing off,” she said. “And tell me why you came back to church. Prayer?”

  “Uh. No. I just wondered — uh — if you knew where I could get some photographic chemicals. If there was any place in town — ”

  “The chemist. Across the square. He’s the local photographer. I’m sure he’s got some in stock.”

  “Ah, good.”

  “Got a nice darkroom all picked out?”

  “Not really.”

  “Can Mr. Cole give you something at the Starry Night?”

  “Well, he rather objects to the smell of the chemicals.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad. So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “I wish we had a spare room at the vicarage. Unfortunately — say, why not put your darkroom in here?”

  “In the church?”

  “Yes. Down in the cellar.”

  “Churches have cellars?”

  “This one does. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Linda picked herself up and led me behind the altar. I peeped out at the church from behind the candles. Backstage.

  “Look.” Linda bent down. There was a kind of wooden hatch in the floor, hidden by the altar from the rest of the church. The back wall came right up to the edge of the opening. A bit of rope was stuck in the hatch. Linda pulled it, and the hatch came away.

  A puff of dry, stale air blew into our faces.

  “Down here?” I asked, a little incredulously.

  “Um hm. There’s a ladder down there somewhere. Let me see. There it is. I’ll go down first.”

  “Don’t you want a light?”

  “There should be a lamp down at the bottom. What I need is a match.”

  “I have a box. Here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re really going down there?”

  “I’ve done it before. I just have to find the top of the ladder — ah, there it is — with my foot. Once I’ve got my foot planted . . . Here we are. All right then. Down we go.”

  Linda was being cheery. But she was also biting her lip as she disappeared down the hole.

  “Hello?” I called down after her.

  A light flared in the blackness. It dimmed, then grew robust.

  “Come on, then,” said Linda, in flickering, foreshortened silhouette.

  “Okay.”

  In a second, we were standing together in a cramped little room. Its walls were of tightly fitted stone blocks.

  “Oh, Linda,” I said. “This is far too small.”

  “This isn’t it,” she said. “Look behind you.”

  She raised the lamp. Through a narrow opening, I could see another room.

  “In there?” I asked.

  “Take the lamp.”

  She handed it to me.

  Feeling like I was entering the tomb of an unknown pharaoh, I squeezed through the door. Linda followed. The light from the lamp revealed a much larger room, walled with the same tightly fitted stone blocks.

  “It’s very clean,” I observed.

  “Dennis comes down here and sweeps up,” she said. “Esmirelda won’t come down here.”

  “Dennis? Esmirelda?”

  “Dennis is our handyman. Esmirelda comes and cleans up the rest of the church. Maybe you met her. At the Starry Night?”

  “Oh, I did. Yes. I met her. Yes. Yes, indeed. Why won’t she come down here?”

  “Superstitious, I suppose. She’s a very simple girl. Not as simple as Dennis. But — ”

  “What kind of room is this?” I asked.

  “No one knows for sure. It was filled with dirt for centuries. About twenty years ago, some amateur archaeologists came in and dug it out. They found some medieval pins and buttons. A pot. A few bones.”


  “Human?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Why does anyone come down here?”

  “Well, we keep meaning to store things down here. Someday we will. Recently, I was going to put in a potter’s wheel.”

  “You’re a potter?”

  “I was taking a class. I had plans to set up a studio down here. Got it all figured out how to run the electricity in and all. But, well, I sort of lost interest. It’s devilish hard, you know, making those pots.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I know I’m artistic. I’ve just got to find the right means of expression.”

  “You’ve got to keep looking, I suppose.”

  “Maybe I should have stuck with photography. What do you think?”

  I didn’t answer. “This is an interesting room,” I said. “But it wouldn’t do for what I need. Where’s the electricity? Where’s the running water?”

  “We’ve got all that upstairs. Dennis could run a wire down here. And look — ” Linda walked into a shadowy corner and pulled something. A wooden panel fell down. Daylight streamed in through a barred window near the ceiling.

  “Now it feels like a dungeon,” I said.

  “Maybe that’s what it was,” Linda said. “In any case, you can run a hose with a spigot down from upstairs. It’s all very simple.”

  “What about a drain — well, you know what I mean.”

  “There’s a drain there on the floor.”

  “Rats?”

  “Do you prefer them?”

  “No!”

  “I never saw one down here.”

  “It is clean,” I said. “What happened to all the dirt?”

  “Archaeologists are very thorough.”

  “I’ll say. What’ll you charge me?”

  “Nothing, of course.”

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “Maybe you can teach me a little about developing pictures?”

  “I’d be glad to. Will this be all right with your husband?”

  “If it makes me happy, it will make him happy.”

  “I mean, will it be considered — you know — proper?”

  “Proper?” Linda recoiled in mock horror. “Do you mean, will people talk?” She laughed. “Really, Mr. Castle. It’s not as if we would be having an affair.”

  “No — ” I sputtered. “Nothing like — that is — ”

  “You must be thinking of the old joke: “Let’s go into the darkroom, my dear. We’ll see what develops.’“

  “Really, Mrs. Drain, I didn’t — ”

  “We shan’t worry what vulgar people think,” she said, pursing her lips adorably.

  “I’m afraid you misunderstood me,” I said. “What I meant was, would your husband, the deacons, or the verger or anyone object to using this sacred edifice for — uh, secular purposes?”

  “Oh, heavens, Mr. Castle. It’s Sunday. My husband is stripped down to his shorts running around Burkinwell in the rain. People are more tolerant than you’d ever imagine. So what do you say to my offer?”

  “Hmmm, I’d have to — ”

  “Your answer is yes, yes, yes. Go back to that nasty old Starry Night and get your nasty old trunk and haul it down here as soon as you can. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can get to work. Celebrate the beauty of Burkinwell, Mr. Castle. That’s what you’re here for — aren’t you?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  How I Photographed the Innkeeper

  Cole stood behind the bar of the Starry Night. He was the only one in the room. As I came in, he slammed his hand around the tap handle, for all the world like a railroad engineer grabbing the throttle of a locomotive. A pint glass was rapidly filled and sloshed down on the bar before me. I went for my money, but Cole said, “No, no, no.” He took the rag off his belt and dabbed assiduously at the puddle of ale around the cup. “Enjoy it on me,” he said.

  I thanked him and took a long quaff; longer than I might have taken had I been drinking at my own expense. Besides, I needed it. I’d just shed what felt like gallons of sweat hauling my trunk from the stable of the Starry Night to the cellar of St. Anastansias. It was an arduous feat of cartage. But I didn’t have to do it alone. When Cole saw me starting out, he’d ordered Esmirelda to help. She took the front. I took the rear. All the way down the road from the Starry Night to St. Anastansias, I watched her back: Her pale inner forearms were mottled with small bruises, and her haunches rolled sturdily under her thin dress. When we got to the church, I was ready to take the trunk on my back and carry it down the ladder one step at a time. Esmirelda came up with the idea of tying a rope to the trunk’s handle and lowering it down instead. It was a good idea. (Without it, I might be hobbling to the scaffold tomorrow on a cane; instead I’ll walk to the noose with a manly and erect bearing.)

  Once we got the trunk down to the cellar, Esmirelda put her hands on her hips. “A darkroom, eh?” she said, cocking her head knowingly. “You’ll have a good time here, you will. ‘Step into the darkroom, my dear. We’ll see what develops.’”

  “I certainly will,” I said, patting her hand as I slipped her a coin by way of emolument.

  She looked at it.

  “Is that enough?” I said, chilled. Her look was similar to that of Paolo and Shorty as they eyed my tip on the train.

  “Well,” she said. “We’ll see what develops.”

  She dropped the coin down her décolletage. It slipped down her dress and plopped between her feet. With a sigh, she bent from the waist to retrieve it, then went back up the ladder.

  Now, seated at the bar of the Starry Night, I could hear her creaking around upstairs.

  Cole, meanwhile, leaned his thick belly against the bar. “Yes, indeed,” said the proprietor. “Burkinwell. It’s a pretty little town. Quite a slice of England. And a good deal different from America, I’d wager, eh, Mr. Castle?”

  I dabbed my mouth with my handkerchief. “Very different,” I agreed. “Very.”

  “No wild Indians here,” he said “No Italians, eh? We do have our Gypsies, though. Every place has its curse.”

  “I suppose.”

  “But Burkinwell is quite picture-eskwee in its own way. There is much that is beautiful here. A famous painter stopped by here once, did you know that, Mr. Castle? He stayed right here at the Starry Night. ’Course, I’d never heard of him. But that Mrs. Drain told me he was quite well known in London.”

  “Who is that?”

  Cole told me the man’s name. To his immense satisfaction, it turned out to be somebody I knew — or had known quite well during my early years in London.

  “Yes indeed,” Cole said. “I was sitting here talking to this painter chap one afternoon — just like I’m talking to you now — and he says to me, ‘Mr. Cole, how do you feel about the barter system?’ ‘The barter system?’ says I. “That’s right,’ he says. ‘I’d like to propose a trade.’ ‘Propose away,’ I says. So he says ‘Mr. Cole, how would you like an original oil painting of the Starry Night?’ Well, I’m always looking for something nice to hang on the wall. ‘Very much so,’ I says. So he says, ‘I’ll trade you one for the price of my lodging.’ ‘Which you ain’t got,’ I says. And he says yes, he ain’t got it. So what do I got to lose? I tells him to go ahead. And so he sat outside and did an original oil painting of this very inn.”

  I looked around the room. There were many bad paintings there. But none in the style of my ex-acquaintance.

  “You won’t find it on the walls,” said Cole.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Here.” Cole rolled his eyeballs downward. Then he stepped back and began clattering under the bar. Some boxes and trays hit the floor. Finally, he came up with a canvas.

  “What do you think?” he asked, holding it up.

  “That’s his style,” I said.

/>   I grabbed my glass and drained it.

  “What do they call that style?” asked Cole.

  “I imagine he’s got a name for it,” I said. “I don’t, however, know what it is.”

  “But it doesn’t look like the Starry Night,” complained Cole. “It doesn’t look like anything.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” I said, gazing wistfully into the bottom of my glass. “It’s nonsense. Garbage. Trash.”

  “You mean it’s worthless?”

  “Quite the contrary,” I said. “Hold on to that painting. Someday you or your heirs will get a lot of money for it.”

  “I thought as much.” Cole gave me a canny wink. “Some of the lads hereabouts thought I’d been had. But not me. I’ll just hold on to this and have the last laugh, ha ha — ” Cole replaced the appalling thing in its dark hiding place “ — but in the meantime, I still don’t have a nice picture of the Starry Night.”

  “Don’t ask me to paint you one,” I said. “I hung up my paints and brushes a long time ago. Chaps like that fellow who did you that painting there were giving the business a bad name.”

  “Not a painting. A photograph. A nice, you know, big one. I couldn’t pay you. But you could drink free. What do you say?”

  Fifteen minutes later, I was setting up my tripod outside the Starry Night. The sky had cleared. The early evening sun slanted through the trees, A veinlike pattern of shadows lay across the Starry Night’s blank white face. Cole posed crookedly in the doorway.

  “Don’t you think I ought to put on my good clothes?” he said, fingering his apron string.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, snapping off several exposures. “You look perfect. The perfect English innkeeper. How old is this place, anyway?”

  “Old enough,” he said.

  I was about to pack up when Cole grabbed a broom and began sweeping the flagstones. This was so ‘picture-eskwee’ (as he might have said) that I couldn’t resist taking another series of shots.

  “How old is ‘old enough’?” I asked.