The French Photographer

by Natasha Lester

  Then he kissed her, lips brushing hers. ‘There are three words I want so much to say to you, Jess. But in my experience, every time someone over here says those words, something terrible happens to one of them not long after.’ He drew back and studied her face.

  It hurt just looking at him, hurt to see what he felt, which she recognised because she felt it too; she knew he was right and that if either of them said it, they’d be cursed by the words. They’d seen too many young lovers – nurses and soldiers, WACs and soldiers, Frenchwomen and soldiers – declare their love for one another and then wake up the next morning to find their love was as ill-fated as Romeo and Juliet’s, a tragedy playing out off the stage and on the battlefields of the European Theatre.

  She swallowed and blinked. ‘Then don’t say it.’ She laid her palm along his cheek. ‘Instead I’m going to say …’ She hesitated, searching for something, some alternative that could possibly express what had happened between them. ‘I know you,’ she said at last. ‘Because I do. Better than anything or anyone.’

  He kissed her again, long and searchingly, then whispered the same words – I know you – in her ear.

  When he broke off she saw that his eyes shone as brightly as hers with the knowledge that they had both exposed their already fragile hearts to a brutality of the kind they had, despite every savage act they’d witnessed, never imagined.

  He jumped out of bed, threw on his clothes and only said, ‘I can’t say goodbye,’ before he left the room and she grabbed hold of his pillow and held it against her body, breathing in the faintest scent of him, barely able to catch her breath between sobs.

  Twenty-two

  Jess rolled into Munich in her jeep just after Dan’s division did. The city was synonymous with Hitler; it was well known to be his preferred headquarters, and the mood among the troops was buoyant. Surely if they were in Hitler’s city, the war would be over soon. Surely nobody else would die now.

  The irony of dying so near the end was uppermost in everyone’s minds – all the more reason, Jess thought, to not say those words to Dan and to not let him say them to her.

  As she followed Dan’s jeep to Prinzregentenplatz 16, Hitler’s apartment, anger surged through her. How dare Hitler run away to Berchtesgarten? How dare he not step into the street and see what he’d done? The women at the camp, the graves spread across Europe as thickly as blades of grass? How dare he be so craven? How could there be any justice, if justice was at all possible now?

  She pulled up at the apartment and stepped inside with Dan. Her eyes saw but her mind barely registered the SS guards’ quarters on the first floor, the bomb shelters in the basement, the library, the small conference room in which everyone from Churchill to Franco to Mussolini had once sat. The plaster cast of Hitler’s hands, which Jennings bumped into and let smash onto the floor.

  Most of the troops filtered out after a short time, hands full of crystal and cutlery engraved with the letters AH, linens and silver too; sweethearts across America destined to eat for the rest of their lives using Adolf Hitler’s spoon, or sleeping on Adolf Hitler’s sheets. Dan began setting the battalion to task, turning the place into their HQ. Maps were spread out on Hitler’s desk, someone sat in the chair once occupied by Hitler’s ass and a chorus of laughter ensued.

  Jess pushed on, upstairs, past the out-of-tune piano on which a GI was playing a bastardised version of ‘Königgrätzer Marsch’, past the switchboard that had a direct line to Berchtesgarten; Jennings tried it but nobody answered. She walked through Hitler’s almost girlish chintz bedroom and into the pristine bathroom. Everything was spotless, tiles polished, no black spots of mould, the towels and bathmat a plush white, a colour Jess couldn’t remember seeing for the longest time because who had the time or the soap or the bleach required to bring things to such a state of purity? The anger roiled stronger than ever.

  She walked back out into the bedroom and picked up a framed photograph of the Führer. She took this into the bathroom, propping it up against the wall on the far side of the bathtub rim. Then she stood with her filthy paratroop boots on the white bathmat, marking it brown and muddy and soiled.

  She set her camera down on the vanity and was undoing the buttons of her shirt, water splashing warm and clean into the bath, when Dan came in.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she slipped off her shirt.

  ‘Using Hitler’s bath,’ she said calmly. ‘And you’re just in time to photograph it. You don’t need to shut the door. I don’t care who sees me.’

  None of this was about her naked body, which felt, right then, asexual. It was about making a statement to the world.

  She took off the rest of her clothes and dumped them on the stool. She left her boots, cloddish and stout, on the delicate bathmat. Then she sank into the water, only her bare shoulders and grimy face visible above the rim.

  ‘The Rollei’s there,’ she said to Dan. ‘You know how to use it. Make sure you get him,’ she pointed to the photograph of Hitler, ‘in the shot. And me. And my boots. And the dirt I’ve left on his heretofore undefiled room.’

  She picked up a washcloth and rubbed it across her shoulderblades, watching muck bleed into the white cloth. And Dan did as she asked him, taking a series of shots that didn’t diminish her anger, but perhaps showed the world something of how she, and everyone else, must feel.

  The photograph caused a sensation. It was reproduced everywhere, featuring in all her fellow correspondents’ newspapers. And this time, nobody accused her of using her feminine wiles to get the shot. Who would want to see a haggard male journalist in a bathtub? She’d used her looks and her body, she knew – even though all that was visible was her naked back and shoulders – to say, on behalf of all those who could not, We are the victors. To give Hitler the finger, preserved in an image for all time, inescapable. And when Warren Stone bawled her out in front of the entire press camp, stopping just short of calling her a slut, every person there leapt to her defence. Which didn’t endear her to Warren, as she well knew.

  His parting shot, delivered with that omnipresent and awful smile, was to say, ‘For those of you wondering how to gain access to the best stories, just be sure to slip a Lieutenant Colonel into your trousers.’

  He couldn’t know. If Warren Stone ever found out how she felt about Dan and how Dan felt about her, then … She didn’t want to contemplate the end to that sentence. Still, Warren didn’t ascribe to her any feelings beyond that of a courtesan’s so perhaps she and Dan were safe. Of course letting Dan photograph her naked was, to anyone with a brain, close to a confession.

  But the worry over how much Warren knew was forgotten amidst the sudden whooping cheer that drowned out the sounds of the typewriters clacking, the poker game, and the correspondents’ chatter.

  ‘Hitler’s dead!’ came the shout from a PRO on the telephone. ‘Topped himself, alongside Eva Braun.’

  ‘About bloody time,’ Lee Carson muttered and the laughter following that understatement was uproarious, an intense rush of relief that rebounded through every person gathered there. Except that, inconceivably, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz had exhorted the German Army to continue to do their duty at their posts.

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ the PRO concluded.

  But the party started anyway. Every typewriter in the copy room was put away. Every map was rolled up. Someone thought to stick lilac boughs in water jugs, the correspondents with the best connections provided the cognac and schnapps, and everyone put on their best and cleanest uniforms.

  It wasn’t long before General Collins filed in, along with his staff, the intelligence officers; even the censors joined in the fun. Jess watched, alert, as the officers came too, looking for Dan but not finding him. She was just walking back to the party from the ablution facilities when she felt a hand on her arm and someone dragged her into one of the many dark hallways. The hand belonged to a scent she’d know anywhere, a combination of army soap, and the slightest hint of cologne – sandalwood and ci
trus. And the arms, arms she’d most definitely kissed, circled around her and drew her close.

  Dan’s voice murmured in her ear, ‘Sorry about the ambush.’

  He kissed her, long and deeply, the kind of kiss that made her stomach clench and her skin flush. She worked her hands under his shirt and felt his intake of breath when her fingers trailed unrelentingly up his body. He dived his hand down to the hem of her skirt, found his way underneath and was tracing a path up her thigh when they both heard, very close by, ‘Sir!’

  Neither moved, Jess’s hands still resting on his chest, his fingers still touching her thigh, both of them hoping it was a different ‘Sir’ being sought, not Dan.

  ‘Lieutenant Colonel Hallworth!’ The sound came again and they both looked at one another.

  ‘You’re going to have to move your hands or I’ll never be able to leave,’ he whispered.

  ‘Move them here?’ Jess whispered back, shifting her hands down his chest to the waistband of his trousers where she slipped the tips of her fingers inside.

  He couldn’t stop the surprised yelp of a laugh, which was loud, definitely loud enough to give them away.

  ‘That you, Sir?’ Jennings’ voice was close, just around the corner.

  Dan ripped himself away and walked back in the direction of the party, while Jess waited for a few seconds, long enough to hear Jennings’ voice say, ‘You all right, Sir? You look flushed,’ at which she grinned, but then sobered up, realising there was another man in the hallway now.

  He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Jess’s direction.

  Warren Stone. How much had he seen?

  He answered her unspoken question.

  ‘Last time,’ he drawled, ‘I accused you of sleeping with the Lieutenant Colonel, you made me look like a fool. But who’s the fool now? Won’t you hate it, now the press camp has mostly forgiven you for being a woman, if they find out you really have parlayed your sexual favours to get every single one of your pictures and your stories?’

  What could she say? Because of the way the system worked, some women – Martha, Iris, Lee, perhaps herself – were able to transmit more newsworthy stories than the other women as their relationships came with a side-serve of access. But that wasn’t why they had those relationships. If she had something to throw at Warren, she would. But besides praying that his cigarette butt might catch alight and singe his always polished shoes, Jess had no ammunition.

  He handed her a sheet of paper. She took it from him reluctantly before she realised it was hers, that it was a page of notes she’d transcribed from the conversation she’d had with Marie-Laure and her mother. ‘Where did you get this?’ she asked coldly.

  ‘When the table was cleared for the party, this ended up on the floor,’ Warren replied. ‘Lucky I found it. I didn’t realise you were so interested in rape.’

  Jess shivered. She wanted to walk away but turning her back on Warren Stone right now took more courage than she possessed.

  Thank God for Marty, who must have spotted Warren heading the same way as Jess and Dan and come to warn her. ‘Your drink’s getting warm,’ she said to Jess when she came upon her. Then she rounded on Warren. ‘For God’s sake, leave her alone. The war’s nearly over. You won’t have to look at her for much longer. Or maybe that’s the problem?’

  ‘Let’s just go,’ Jess said to Martha, not wanting to hear what Warren might say in reply.

  The day after the party, desperate to get out of the press camp and away from Warren, Jess went looking for a story. She drove to the outskirts of the city, where she met a young woman who rent her heart a little more. Jess had stopped to refill her water canteen at the woman’s house, which the woman allowed, but she was most insistent that Jess not have anything more.

  ‘I have a special pass,’ the woman said in German. ‘I have already provided food and shelter to the American soldiers and they gave me a pass to prove I have done what I needed to. They said I should show it to other soldiers who stop here.’

  ‘A pass?’ Jess asked, brow furrowed. ‘Can you show me?’ No such pass existed, as far as she knew.

  The woman, who was pretty – blonde, blue-eyed, shapely, about sixteen – went off to get her pass. She held it out to Jess.

  As Jess read the words, she wanted to be sick. To whom it may concern, you are now looking at the best piece in Germany.

  The girl didn’t have a word of English and she obviously had no idea what it said or that any American soldier she showed it to might well do … what?

  ‘Did the man who gave you this …’ Jess faltered. ‘Was he kind? Or did he hurt you?’

  ‘The Americans saved us,’ the girl said simply.

  They can take anything they want. The unsaid words sparked like a flashbulb providing an illumination neither Jess nor the girl desired.

  What to do except photograph both the girl and the note, to write it all down, to save it for the piece Jess still hadn’t written. The piece that taunted Jess for her cowardice. The piece that made her as craven as any Nazi.

  She drove furiously back into Munich, stopping at headquarters on Prinzregentenplatz, where Jennings let her have a desk and didn’t ask her why she wanted to write the story there instead of at the press camp. Dan found her just as she’d finished. She showed him what she’d written.

  Dan sighed as he read her words. ‘A woman came to headquarters this morning and asked me if she had the right to refuse a soldier who wanted her daughters.’

  Jess’s mouth fell open.

  ‘I told her that of course she had the right,’ Dan continued. ‘So she asked to have her complaint recorded: two soldiers entered her apartment last night and told her they were going to amuse themselves with her daughters. She wanted to throw them out but they had guns and she didn’t know if it was perhaps a new rule, that the soldiers could do what they wanted. I took down what she said and passed the complaint on to Major Thompson, CO of the company I thought the men were from.’

  ‘And?’ Jess whispered, fearing what he would say next.

  ‘Major Thompson handed it back to me. He’s not in my battalion and therefore not my subordinate, so there was nothing more I could do. Of course I told his CO as well but I expect Thompson has picked up his habits from his commanding officer.’

  They stared at one another, words having become meaningless in this exchange of horrors about which nothing could be done. Dan stroked her cheek. ‘Let’s get something to eat,’ he said.

  On the way into town, Jess had to slow down for a group of British Auxiliary Territorial Service girls, most likely newly arrived given the way they were standing on the street, pointing at the Frauenkirche as if they were tourists on a holiday. Jess envied their laughter; that Munich had an air of spectacle about it, that they did not understand what lay beneath the smoking ruins.

  The women were oblivious to everything around them and Dan reached over for the horn. ‘Glad somebody thinks it’s a day for sightseeing,’ he said tetchily.

  At the blare of the horn, the women turned and Jess gasped. She pressed her foot to the brake much too quickly and Dan looked across at her quizzically as he was jolted forward. ‘Jesus, Jess. That’s the kind of thing Jennings would do.’

  ‘Amelia?’ Jess called to one of the women who stared at Jess in her helmet, goggles and army uniform and Jess realised where the confusion must lie. She took off her helmet, took off her googles, raked a hand through her hair and smiled. ‘It’s Jess.’

  ‘Jessica May! I don’t believe it,’ Amelia gasped. ‘Look at you. What are you doing riding around in jeeps with …’ She paused and looked over at Dan and simpered in a way Jess remembered from boarding school. ‘Handsome men.’

  The stony look on Dan’s face at the women who were treating Munich like a vacation didn’t soften in the light of Amelia’s smile.

  Jess jumped out of the jeep and embraced Amelia, who was wearing stockings of all things, immaculate stockings, unladdered stockings and Jess couldn’t remember the last
time she’d seen a pair of legs clad like that in silk. Amelia’s brown hair sat in curls around her shoulders and her ATS hat was perched on top of an enormous and probably stylish, Jess thought wryly – it had been so long since she’d considered style that she really had no idea – Victory roll.

  ‘When did you arrive?’ Jess asked. ‘And since when are you in the ATS?’

  ‘A few days ago,’ Amelia said airily. ‘I wanted to come earlier but thought it best to wait until the danger had all but cleared.’

  Jess didn’t have to look behind her to know that Dan was rolling his eyes. She turned to him and said, ‘Sorry, I’m being rude. Amelia Cosgrove, this is Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hallworth with the US Army.’

  Amelia’s smile was beautiful and lipsticked with red and Jess felt another twinge of envy that stockings and cosmetics had become things she barely remembered, that dirt and blood were more her style of decoration and that Amelia was looking at Dan as if she’d like to eat him up.

  ‘Hallworth,’ Amelia mused. ‘Not related to Walter Hallworth by any chance?’

  Dan grimaced. ‘He’s my father.’

  It was Jess’s turn to gasp. ‘You’re Walter Hallworth’s son?’ she said incredulously. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘You never asked. Besides,’ he said more quietly, ‘I liked that you didn’t know.’

  Jess could do nothing but stare at him. Walter Hallworth owned one of the largest newspaper companies in Manhattan. And Dan had never once let on, in all the stream of articles and photographs and correspondents he’d seen and met, that he could have been doing something like it too, something safer, rather than putting his body into battle and doing his best to protect his men each and every day.

  Amelia laughed. ‘You’re still as unworldly as ever, Jess. You know,’ she said to Dan, ‘on our morning promenades at boarding school, Jess would walk right past a Rothschild but wink at the impoverished pianist from the jazz club.’

  Jess interrupted. ‘What happened to your husband?’ she asked, noticing Amelia wasn’t wearing a wedding band.