The French Photographer

by Natasha Lester

  ‘I thought you went with Martha?’ He sat up straight, alert.

  ‘I took her to the hospital yesterday. She’s ill.’

  ‘You drove back alone at night? Yesterday as well?’ Still that attentiveness, the attitude of his back like raised hackles.

  ‘I was fine.’

  ‘But you mightn’t have been. Jesus, Jess, you should have stayed at the press camp for the night.’

  She tried to interrupt, to protest that she didn’t feel like sharing with a pack of correspondents, not when the day had been so gruelling, but Dan didn’t let up.

  ‘Anything could have happened,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe enough yet to go driving at night alone. And it’s as slick as an ice-rink out there.’

  ‘Dan,’ she said gently, staring at him until he stopped. ‘If I’d been blown up it wouldn’t have mattered a damn if I was with someone or not. I’m not your responsibility. You have a whole battalion to worry about. You don’t have to worry about me too.’

  ‘If you’re not my responsibility then whose responsibility are you? SHAEF PR? They take such good care of you. Warren Stone? Damned if I’d leave you in his hands for more than a second.’

  ‘I’m responsible for myself,’ she stated. ‘I knew that when I decided to come out here.’

  ‘But you take that responsibility too lightly.’

  He was glaring at her but she knew the anger came from concern. That what she’d said to him that morning – I think of you as a friend first and the guy in charge second – was true for him too.

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘I take that responsibility very seriously. As seriously as you take your responsibility to yourself. I was aware of the risks posed by both the Germans and the roads and I was hyper-alert on the way back. Which is why I’m so filthy and tired now,’ she added ruefully. ‘I know how I’d feel if anything happened to you. So I’m extra careful if I’m ever in a jeep by myself.’

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Neither of them looked away. They stayed eye to eye, the sound of the shells falling far beyond like the subdued whimpers of a person trying not to cry. Then the anger relaxed from his face a little, but his eyes were still dark blue and unsmiling. ‘Your face is so dirty right now all I can see are the whites of your eyes.’

  She laughed and wiped a futile hand across her cheek. ‘What a day to have a clean bed. Now I have to take a freezing shower and then spend the next two hours trying to get warm. What I wouldn’t do for hot water.’

  Dan raised his eyebrows. ‘I have hot water.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘I didn’t know you didn’t. Fuck,’ he swore. ‘Sometimes I think being an officer just means being ignorant of the way things really are. I’m ordering you to go and use the shower on this floor. I will personally stand guard to make sure nobody else uses the bathroom while you’re in there.’ He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  She was marched to the bathroom where he pushed her in, along with a clean shirt of his that he’d grabbed on the way. She shut the door and could hear him, while she let the deliciously warm water run over her and the dirt wash away, redirecting anyone who wanted to use the bathroom, brooking no opposition.

  Eventually, she heard a knock on the door and Dan’s voice call out. ‘Jess? Are you all right in there?’

  She turned off the tap. ‘Sorry!’ she called back. ‘I’ll be out in a minute. It’s just that I haven’t felt hot water since Paris.’ She dried quickly, slipped on Dan’s shirt which was, she thought, perfectly decent, being longer than some of the playsuits she’d once modelled for Vogue, and stepped out of the bathroom.

  ‘We’d better get you tucked safely away before anyone sees you in that,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘I’m sure that, after today, they’ll all be staying well away or you’ll be getting them to wash my jeep next. Can I just have one last look?’

  ‘At what?’ he asked, following her down the hall.

  She pushed open the door to his room and crossed to the balcony. ‘At this,’ she said, pointing at the sky and sinking into the sofa.

  He sat down too, stretching his arm along the back of the sofa. Jess leaned her head against his shoulder. And Dan didn’t shift uncomfortably away or take it as an invitation to do anything else; he just reached over for the blanket folded on the arm of the sofa, draped it around her, dropped his arm to her shoulder and let her curl into his side while they passed the cognac glass back and forth and watched the electric sky erupt magnificently around them.

  Minutes passed. ‘Did you really mean what you said this morning?’ Dan asked eventually.

  Jess’s mind cast back through the day to her dawn conversation with Dan and she smiled ruefully. ‘About not having sex for more than twelve months? Yes.’

  ‘You’re worse off than I am, then,’ he said, staring at the sky. ‘I swore off it in Italy.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I was doing it to forget. But to lose yourself in someone so completely that you do actually forget is more intimate than any physical act. I didn’t want to be that intimate with any of the women I knew.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jess breathed as she felt her eyelids drop sleepily over her eyes. ‘That’s it exactly.’

  She woke with a jolt some time later. Dan’s head was resting back, his eyes closed, face young and peaceful. She remembered their conversation and knew, without doubt, that falling asleep tucked into Dan’s side was the most intimate thing she’d ever done and that she should leave now before she ruined it.

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Hallworth,’ she whispered before she turned to walk away.

  And she just heard the words, whispered faintly behind her, ‘My pleasure, Captain May,’ as she left his room.

  The next day she woke to the sound of a knock and a note slipped under her door. It was from Dan. You have the bathroom from 7.30 a.m. She checked her watch. It was 7.25. She jumped out of bed, uncaring that she was in her pyjamas, gathered what she needed and raced down the stairs and along the hallway, passing Dan with a grin. At the bathroom, she discovered a sign on the door that read: Reserved for Captain May from 7.30 a.m. to 7.45 a.m. every day.

  ‘Who the hell is Captain May and why does he get bathroom privileges,’ she heard another officer say.

  She turned on her model smile. ‘I’m Captain May,’ she said. ‘I think I get bathroom privileges because Lieutenant Colonel Hallworth is worried that if I share the bathroom with you, I might set other parts of your anatomy aflutter than just your heart.’

  The officer’s mouth dropped open and he blushed crimson from his hairline all the way down his neck, struck absolutely speechless. Jess heard Dan explode with laughter behind them before she pushed open the bathroom door, took her shower and made sure to use no more than her allotted fifteen minutes.

  It might have seemed a frivolous thing to do in the middle of a war but as the Germans pushed back into the Ardennes, Jess decided that everyone needed a party. How else would anyone have the energy to move into 1945, still fighting, still far from home, still without really knowing when it might all come to an end? And over everyone hung the knowledge that Dan’s division would be called out of reserve very soon as the battle in the Ardennes pounded on.

  The party would be held on Christmas Day, she decided, and she worked, huddled in front of the tiny camp heater she’d been carrying around since Italy, to make it happen. Jennings helped her; he’d sprained his wrist tripping over a guy rope and Dan had asked Jess to keep him as busy as she could so he’d at least make the year’s end without further injury.

  As much as the men groaned when she cajoled and persuaded them to help her get everything ready, she knew they were as excited as children about a birthday party. She’d put the J Club misadventures behind her; grudges caused wars whereas forgiveness stopped them and if she couldn’t practise a little of that herself, how could she expect nations to?

  But then came the orders
from HQ; Dan’s division would mobilise at dawn. So they moved Christmas forward by a few days, Jess promising Dan that she would go to Paris as soon as he left for the Ardennes so that somebody would be with Victorine. Then she commanded everyone to wash and meet her in the chateau’s scullery, which she’d set up as the change room. Once the men were suitably clean, she told them to don their outfits, while she decorously stepped out to allow them privacy – although as Sparrow called out, they might all prefer it if she watched. He said it without meanness though, the J Club antics having ended all such innuendo.

  ‘But imagine what it would do to my eyes,’ she said teasingly.

  The hum from the ballroom-turned-mess, a large and magnificent columned space with soft grey walls lined with boiserie – onto which had been painted scenes depicting a child charmed by the magical and aberrant beech trees – suggested that quite a gathering of people were waiting. The mess tables had been dragged to the sides and were now adorned with soldiers flirting with WACs and with nurses who’d been allowed out of the hospital for a few hours. Many correspondents, never wanting to miss a party, had travelled across from Paris or the press camps and were draped over benches, drinks in hand, chatting.

  Jess nodded to Private Ronnie Page, a new recruit, to whom she’d assigned gramophone duties, and as the music lifted through the room, she sent out her first model – Sparrow in a dress Jess had fashioned from a couple of threadbare American flags. He was greeted by laughter and a resounding cheer, which rose louder and longer as another private followed, dressed in one of the Edwardian ballgowns she’d found in trunks in the attic. He executed a perfect twirl at the end of the area of floor designated as the runway and Jess grinned, sure now that she’d been right. That everyone did need a night that veered close to the ridiculous, a night that was certain to make even the hardiest soldier discover he was still capable of smiling.

  After that she sent out Jennings; he’d found an old suit in the attic and she’d helped him affix onto it the black-and-white United States Army-issue chocolate bar packets, which stated that he should be consumed slowly or dissolved as a beverage. Howls of laughter followed him around the ballroom. When he managed – of course he managed; it was Jennings, the man who injured himself just getting out of bed – to slip and land on his backside, the hoots escalated and Jennings joined in.

  Then there was a private in a coat made of bandages donated by the nurses, a shirt fashioned from camouflage netting, a hysterical hat made from ration boxes, and a handful of other outfits that the men had helped her to make with good humour. The merriment sewn into each costume was made manifest in the room and she could see that everyone had actually forgotten, for a moment, why they were all there. Her eyes, roaming the happy faces, caught Dan’s and he smiled and gave her a thumbs-up.

  She slipped back into the scullery and changed into her own gown; she’d stitched together whatever fragments of fabric she could find from ripped or threadbare or no longer usable US Army shirts and trousers and coats and jackets and made a patchwork of a khaki dress. But the dress was as close as her sewing skills would allow it to be to the one she wore in the photograph from Vogue that many of the men had pinned over their beds: the floor-sweeping Lelong princess gown with a full skirt, the bodice that left her back bare, her neck long, her arms fluid by her sides.

  She’d washed her hair that day and now she brushed it to shining, not minding that it was cut shorter than ever, realising that she looked all the better for it, the features of her face – her dark brown eyes, her full lips, her strong cheekbones – accentuated, and she was startled for a moment into thinking that somebody else had stepped up to the mirror: the Jessica May of two years before who’d never looked anything other than nonpareil, a stark contrast to the often filthy woman in combat trousers she’d become.

  She brushed powder over her face, swept mascara onto her lashes, rouged her cheeks and outlined her lips in red, then took her turn to parade through the ballroom as the finale of the show.

  She expected the hooting and cheers, she expected the laughter as they realised she’d turned a picture of herself, a picture that so many of them revered, into a caricature. Instead what greeted her was silence. Only the gramophone played on, a ridiculously melodramatic turn-of-the-century operetta screeching into the room. But not a sound escaped from any of the men as she strolled in, her body easy and relaxed as it swung into the model’s walk that came back to her as naturally as breathing, as she strode to the centre of the room, one hand on her hip, eyes sweeping the silent faces. Her smile, which had been bright and full, faded, then fell as she waited for something, anything that would rescue her from this awful silence.

  After a very long moment, she put both hands on her hips. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Is the back of my skirt tucked into my knickers or something equally jaw-dropping?’

  Then the burst of laughter she’d been expecting rushed through the room and the cheers began, the clapping and roaring reaching a peak so great that Jess wondered if the applause could be heard all the way over in Germany.

  She put her smile back on as she finished her turn about the room, but she still carried a knot in her stomach as she wondered what on earth she’d done, what rule she’d broken, to strike them all so dumb.

  At the end she curtsied and summoned the other models over to take a bow, after which she expected they’d remove their ridiculous garb and change into their uniforms, but no one did. WACs and soldiers alike came over to examine each one, exclaiming over the chocolate wrappers, touching the ration boxes, commenting on Sparrow’s hairy legs protruding from his patriotic frock of flags.

  Jess moved around the room until she found Dan. She looked up at him quizzically. ‘What the hell did I do this time? My skirt definitely wasn’t tucked into my knickers so it can’t have been that.’

  Dan shook his head. ‘No. It was just …’

  He paused as if he really didn’t want to tell her and she almost shook her head and said, Don’t bother, not wanting this night to be ruined by hearing of some other wickedness wrongly attributed to her. He looked away as he spoke and Jess stared at the ground.

  ‘I don’t think anyone realised what had been right under our noses for so long,’ Dan said eventually. ‘You looked … stunning. As if you’d arrived from another world. A bewitching stranger. Someone more than worth fighting for.’

  She dragged her eyes away from the floor to gape at him, speechless, until he continued.

  ‘And then you opened your mouth and spoke to us just like Jess would,’ Dan grinned, ‘and we remembered that behind the apparition was someone we knew. Someone we’re all glad to have here with us. Cheers.’ He raised his glass and clinked it against hers, then moved away to clap Sparrow on the back, leaving Jess to recover her power of speech, to be reminded by Jennings that she was supposed to be taking photographs, to wonder why on earth Dan’s words – you looked stunning – had unsettled her so much.

  Once she’d snapped as many pictures as film allowed, the gramophone was put to full use, nobody caring that the dusty collection of records wasn’t exactly up to jazz club standards.

  For more than an hour she whirled around the ballroom floor with one or another of the men, surprised at how light she felt, the heaviness of war momentarily lifted by the glee in the room. It had become abnormal, she realised, for so many people to be so outwardly happy and that in itself was a reminder that they were all, every one of them, clinging to a kind of amnesia for as long as they could hold off the dawn and re-mobilisation.

  At the end of every song, her partner changed, and each man ceded way graciously to the next – no arguing, no jealousy, no jeers – until she saw Dan tap her partner on the shoulder and say to her, ‘Surely it’s my turn now.’

  She smiled. ‘I think it must be.’

  Private Page moved back, stammering, and she couldn’t help kissing his cheek – which only made him stammer all the more – because he’d been as sweet as candy floss at a summer fair
, talking to her about his kid sister, who ordinarily liked to follow him around at home and he’d wondered what she did now that he wasn’t there to shadow. Page scrambled over to the gramophone to set down the next recording, which was the oh so slow and oh so treacly ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, sung by Irene Dunne.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Jess said wryly. ‘I’m sure you’d prefer a nurse for this one.’

  Dan shook his head. ‘I think I’m safer with you.’

  She laughed. ‘And vice versa. I’m not sure Private Page would know what to do with himself if this had played while I was dancing with him.’

  ‘Then let’s show him.’

  With that, Dan placed a hand on her back, on the skin left bare by her dress. One of Jess’s hands reached up to his shoulder and their other hands clasped together.

  For a long moment there was nothing beyond Dunne’s operatic voice soaring through the room, the entire congregation of people suddenly silent for this one slow dance in a ballroom in a chateau in the midst of a war zone, somewhere in France.

  Then the bubble of conversation began to rise once more.

  Except for Jess and Dan.

  When does friend become man? When is the touch of a hand transformed into a caress? When does amity turn instead to desire?

  In a ballroom in a chateau in the midst of a war zone, somewhere in France.

  As they danced, Dan’s fingers uncurled so the flat of his palm rested against her bare back, and then she felt his thumb stroke her skin ever so lightly, a whisper that she could choose to ignore if it meant nothing to her. Instead, she shivered, her whole body reacting to his touch as it spread out like the aftershock of an explosion, everywhere.

  She knew he’d noticed because he did it again and her response was the same: a shudder that she couldn’t control, other than to step closer, her body against his. His hand at her back held her more tightly, drawing her in so that nothing separated them except the thin and seductive notes of the music.