Martha leaned back in her chair, pointed her cigarette in Jess’s direction and said exactly what Jess was thinking. ‘You don’t need me,’ Martha said. ‘You’ve got Jess.’
‘Yes. Send me,’ Jess said, turning to Bel as her restlessness fell away, replaced by an animation she hadn’t felt for a long time.
Bel laughed. ‘I appreciate you trying to cheer me up but –’
‘I’m serious.’ Jess put down her glass and eyeballed Bel. ‘I can be Vogue’s correspondent.’
‘I’m not sending you into a war zone. It’s ridiculous.’ Bel took a large sip of champagne, then said, ‘Brilliant, but ridiculous.’
Jess felt the chink in Bel’s Mainbocher armour. ‘It is brilliant. And I’m asking to go into a war zone; you’re not sending me. There are other women over there.’
Bel arched her eyebrows. ‘About two of them.’
‘So with me, there’ll be three. Lucky number three.’
‘Actually, you’re about right,’ Martha said. ‘Margaret Bourke-White’s the only female photojournalist I know of in the Mediterranean. There are a couple of other correspondents like me. But that’s all.’
This time, Bel’s eyebrows performed such a feat of acrobatics that Jess had to stifle a laugh. ‘I was joking when I said two!’ Bel protested.
‘I want to do this.’ Jess kept her voice level. ‘I need to do this. Please.’
Bel gesticulated at the waiter for more champagne. ‘How on earth am I going to get you accredited? Former model, Emile’s lover – or are you? I can see he’s finding comfort in another girl’s lips just over there – unconventional as all get-out. I’ve heard the woman at the passport office is as easy to get past as Hitler. She’s never going to let a model, who I’m sure she imagines will sleep only on silk sheets at the finest hotels, go to a war zone.’
‘You’re selling me short,’ Jess said. ‘You know what my childhood was like, that I’ve lived in tents, slept under the stars, roughed it in a way that probably most of the men going to war couldn’t even imagine.’
‘When I landed in Spain in ’37 to report the war over there, I’d never slept in a tent,’ Martha added. ‘Or seen a man shot. I survived. Best way to learn is to throw yourself into the thick of it, bombs and all.’
Bel inhaled smoke, breathed it out, inhaled again. ‘If only you weren’t so damn right,’ she said to Jess. ‘You would be perfect. And I’ve always known you wouldn’t be a model forever.’ She reached out and squeezed Jess’s hand. ‘Martha, you’ve been over there. Shouldn’t I try harder to dissuade her?’
‘On the contrary,’ Martha replied. ‘If you do, we’ll only hear stories of men, told by men. Given I’m married to the biggest chauvinist in the country, I have a vested interest in opening up the discourse.’
‘You’re the only person in the world who would make me feel like I was doing her a favour if I said yes to sending her into a war zone,’ Bel said to Jess.
‘Let’s try,’ Jess said. ‘We can only fail spectacularly.’
Two
We can only fail spectacularly. The words rang in Jess’s mind as she sat, in early 1943 – bureaucracy was unfamiliar with the concept of speed – at the State Department offices for one of the meetings that would decide her future. Remove all objections, she told herself as she stared at the ticking clock, more nervous than she’d ever been at any go-see.
At a go-see, she knew there was nothing she could do that hadn’t already been done. Her portfolio had been shot, she had the face and body that she’d been blessed with – dark brown eyes that every photographer she’d ever worked with said they could never do justice to, naturally waving blonde hair that sat a couple of inches above her shoulders, and a figure that had curves in all the right places. But, with this interview at the State Department, everything depended on what she said, not on the way she looked. Perhaps on the way she smiled too – how much would be too much in the eyes of a woman holding all the power to grant Jess a passport to Europe?
Stop it, she told herself, studying the demure and practical Stella Designs black crepe tuxedo trousers and the prim and subdued white cotton shirt she’d paired them with – Stella too, because only Stella shirts came with the white peony over the left breast, which made the outfit more like herself than the person she was pretending to be.
‘Miss Jessica May,’ a voice called out.
Jessica stood, straightened her back and then realised she was striding down the hall like a model on a catwalk. She tried to correct herself but then couldn’t remember how to walk normally so, in the end, she marched on, hoping to God they’d think she had military precision rather than modelistic pretensions.
‘You may sit.’ A tall woman – tall enough to have been a damn good model – gestured to a chair.
Jess sat down, and arranged her face in a way that she hoped indicated strength, hardiness and determination.
‘I thought I should explain myself,’ she began. ‘I know I must seem an unusual candidate for a passport to Europe to work as a photojournalist. But I possess many advantages that I’m sure some of the men currently over there reporting the war do not. My parents were paleobotanists, you see, and I led a somewhat peripatetic childhood. We followed plant fossils around the world; I lived in or visited South America, the northern territories of Australia, Tahiti and then we made our way to Europe after my parents’ work began to receive recognition. I lived in France for ten years; I speak the language fluently.’ She felt her voice relax as she spoke, confident of her bona fides.
She went on. ‘As soon as I was old enough, I became my parents’ photographer every summer and often during term time; if they thought they were on the trail of a discovery, my parents would simply take me along, put the Rolleiflex in my hand and ask me to capture whatever they’d found. Since then, I’ve studied at Parsons and received more training in photography from Emile Robard.’
As she spoke, images appeared and disappeared in her mind like a shutter opening and closing: fern fossils fronding delicately over rock, cotyledons puncturing the surface of a stone, the barest tracing of Zamites leaves carved into limestone. And then pictures of herself, very few, taken on the rare occasions her mother picked up the camera, showing a Jessica yet to grow into her gangly limbs and too-large smile, her blonde hair a ferocious tangle down her back, skin tanned to a then-unfashionable brownness, nose freckled by the sun.
More snapshots: Jess playing in mud, scrambling over rocks until her kneecaps were bereft of skin, swimming in the lakes and rivers even though her parents were warned about parasites and crocodiles. Her mother wearing a floppy hat, stained by mud and dust, grinning at Jess. Happy, always so happy to have her hands in the dirt, to prise away stories of a time long past, to clatter out papers and findings on the old typewriter. And her father, the quieter of the two, not quite of this world, his head always in the past, dreaming, perhaps imagining Ginkgoales into being.
It was an unorthodox childhood of intermittent schooling, of having to grasp German, Italian and French; she had to either learn the language or be excluded from playing with the other children during the short spells she had at various schools. Her education was propped up by as much reading as her parents were able to obtain books to supply. And so Jess’s life had formed from two seemingly opposite sources: the mysteries of what the ground held and the stories recorded in books. Which meant she’d always done well at English, History and Science but had never had any interest in or flair for Mathematics.
‘May I speak?’ The woman’s voice was smoothly polite and Jess blinked, shutting out the past and cursing herself for being so distracted.
‘Europe is at war; you’ve photographed plants,’ the woman stated.
Jess realised that she hadn’t even waited for the woman to introduce herself; that she’d barged in and, rather than confidently stating her qualifications, probably arrogantly confirmed everything the woman might assume about models – that they were used to having the floor and though
t far too highly of themselves.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. Should she admit to nerves? They’d hardly send someone into a war zone if they suffered from nerves in an office in broad daylight. ‘I’ve photographed more than plants. I had some pictures and articles published in French Vogue in 1939, showing the exodus of Americans out of Paris. American Vogue have also published my work about female camouflage and propaganda artists.’
Jess stopped speaking. She waited. And waited. And waited.
She was used to being appraised; she couldn’t walk into a party or a club without feeling dozens of pairs of eyes wash over her. But this was different. This was scrutiny of a kind so intense she could feel herself melting back into her chair, looking down at her lap, not wanting the woman to find anything within her that made her the wrong choice of person to be granted a passport.
‘It is not my goal to allow women into a war zone.’ The woman said it matter-of-factly, politely even. But her words were a boot pushing down on the back of Jess’s neck, telling her that she should stay where she was, doing what she was doing; that being a clothes hanger with a nice smile was the right job for her.
Jess matched the woman’s pragmatic tone of voice. ‘I speak German. Not fluently, but certainly well enough to make myself understood, and to understand what’s being said. I also speak Italian. I wonder if you can tell me the names of any men you’ve given passports to in order to report the war who can speak French, German and Italian?’
The woman didn’t shift her gaze. ‘I cannot,’ she said.
And there it was, a tiny advantage, but an advantage nonetheless.
The woman finally let go of Jess’s eyes. ‘I will inform your editor at Vogue of my decision. It will take some time.’
She’d been dismissed. She’d either given it her best shot or her worst; it was hard to tell. If this didn’t work, she’d be back in a field, if she was lucky, or on a beach, or outside a steel-grey skyscraper wearing next season’s clothes, smiling as if she were happy, as unremarkable as a Jurassic fern leaf imprinted into volcanic rock by the years and then long forgotten.
Two months later she got her passport. The year was marching on and Jess had achieved nothing except to substantially reduce her savings, living off house model work for companies like Stella Designs. It was lucky she had her parents’ apartment and didn’t have to pay rent.
Then she had to be screened by the War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations Overseas Liaison Branch, who had the power to accredit her as a correspondent. Or not. Just getting the appointment took another month. And if she’d thought her parents were particularly skilled at uncovering secrets that the earth tried to hold on to, nothing prepared Jess for the rigour of the War Department. Martha had forewarned her. ‘By the time they’ve finished with you, you’ll feel like you’re sitting in front of them in your underwear.’
Which she did. They showed her a photograph of her mother; Jess couldn’t imagine how they’d got hold of it but, that night, when she returned to her apartment and looked through her boxes, it wasn’t in her photo album, which only proved that Emile was more of a bastard than she’d realised.
Just as she’d done the day she and Emile stepped off their ship in New York City to be greeted by the news of her parents’ death, Jess sat on the floor of the Greenwich Village apartment, weeping. Back then, she’d been watched over by the angelic forms of dust sheets and the brooding presence of Emile, standing in the doorway, not knowing what to do. Now she was alone. She hadn’t wept for such a long time. But seeing the photograph of her mother, knowing that she and her father and botany had never been enough for her, if what the War Department had said was true, brought back the grief.
Then she heard the ghost of her mother’s voice telling her to be practical, to stand up, to not wallow. To not let the War Department get to her. So, just as her mother had always been the one to find the best camping spot, to give everyone errands so that food would be cooked and supplies purchased, Jess scrubbed her cheeks dry with a Kleenex and took out her own supplies.
To start with, the Rolleiflex her mother had given her. Then she hunted around for the Leica Emile had bought for her birthday their first year in Manhattan. She preferred the Rollei but knew it would be an advantage to take two cameras with her.
She ran her hand over her typewriter; it had been her mother’s. Each night of her childhood, Jess had fallen asleep to the sound of keys striking paper, the lullaby of her youth. It wouldn’t do for Europe though. A baby Hermes would be just the ticket. How much paper could she feasibly take? Martha had said there were shortages across Europe. She made herself keep thinking along those lines – as if she was going – because the idea that she might have to stay working as a house model, waiting for advertisers to consent to her returning to the pages of magazines, had become unbearable.
A knock at the door startled her and she opened it to find Bel bearing a pot of soup and a bottle of wine.
‘The last supper,’ Bel said cheerily as she made her way into the kitchen. ‘I thought if we acted it out, it might come true.’
Jess managed a smile and took bowls and glasses out of the cupboard, then hugged her friend. ‘Thank you. What the hell will I do in Europe without you?’
‘You’ll find someone. You’re the kind of girl who always lands on her feet.’ Bel put the soup on the stove and they sat at the kitchen table, waiting for it to warm. ‘How did it go?’ Bel asked shrewdly, studying Jess’s face.
Jess reached for a cigarette. ‘As badly as Martha said it would.’ She hesitated. ‘They showed me a picture of my mother. I took it in a club in Montmartre during one of my parents’ rare visits out of the field and into civilisation. I was at boarding school there and they picked me up on their way out for the night; I don’t think it ever occurred to them that Montmartre jazz clubs weren’t really the place for sixteen-year-old girls.’
Bel smiled. ‘Sounds like your parents were the kind every sixteen-year-old thought they wanted. I imagine the reality was a little different.’
‘I didn’t think so at the time but now …’ Jess pictured the photograph. Her mother sitting at a table in the club in the centre of a group of artistes, having always been a part of that circle; her college training had been in illustration and drawing as well as botany. In the background, her father stood by the bar, watching her mother as if she was the most precious thing in the world. He always sat at the edges, eyes fixed to her mother’s face, content to listen and admire. Jess used to sit with him until, later, it transpired that Jess could tell a better story than anyone – or so she’d thought at the time – and she took her place at the table. She’d soon understood that her moving into the centre actually coincided with her growing into her body and into her smile rather than her abilities as a raconteur.
‘I had my first gin when I was fifteen,’ Jess said to Bel, inhaling smoke deep into her lungs. ‘My first kiss that same night, and you could say that I quenched my curiosity of all things sexual by the time I was seventeen. My parents were either oblivious or had a different moral compass to most – I’ve never been sure – although I’m fairly certain my mother wasn’t faithful to my father.’
‘Which the War Department was only too happy to confirm,’ Bel said slowly, piecing together the story of what had happened that morning.
Jess nodded. ‘They listed the names of men my mother had had affairs with. And they listed the names of men I was suspected of sleeping with. They were trying to establish a pattern, they said. A pattern of licentiousness that would preclude me from ever being let loose among an army of men. Of course, their list of my paramours was long and hugely exaggerated.’
‘So you’re not going?’
‘I don’t know. I told them …’ She hesitated, wondering now how she’d ever had the bravado to retaliate when all she’d wanted to do was cry, because the irony of it all was that Jess might have lived openly with a man for three years but it was only one man; she would never chea
t on anyone, no matter what the War Department thought.
‘I hope you said something typically Jessica May and left their filthy mouths hanging open.’ Bel reached across the table for Jess’s hand.
Something typically Jessica May. It was the first time, sitting in the War Department offices, that she’d ever wanted to be anything other than typically Jessica May. But why should she change for a group of condescending men?
‘I said,’ Jess stood theatrically, hand on hip, ‘“My, my, it’s a wonder I have any energy left to apply to be a correspondent. Do you provide the men who apply with a list of their conquests? Or is that something you all drink to at the bar later? Perhaps I might write about this screening process for Vogue, seeing as how I apparently don’t have a reputation left to lose.”’
Bel laughed. ‘Bravo!’
Jess walked over to the stove to stir the soup. Of course she’d been dismissed after that, her threat hanging in the air like cheap perfume, tawdry but essential; if she capitulated, then how would she ever survive in the European Theatre of Operations?
‘Sometimes I feel like I’m always saying goodbye,’ Jess said suddenly, back turned to Bel. ‘It’s one of the things I remember about growing up. That I had to be funny and fabulous so I’d make friends and then, once I’d made the friends, we’d leave. Even when I was at boarding school in Paris, my parents would pull me out every few weeks when they needed photographs taken. Then I’d come back and, even though it was the same school, it was like starting again.’
Starting again. Which was what she’d be doing now if she was ever accredited by the War Department.
She continued. ‘There’s just one girl, Amelia – she was English – who I still write to. Her parents had left her at school when she was seven and she’d only seen them twice in nine years. We bonded over a certain kind of parental ignorance, although our parents were nothing alike. Her father was in the army and always away somewhere. My father had the social skills of a mollusc, so my mother thought that taking me to all their parties would teach me both how to look after myself and how to win people over.’
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