The Photographer of the Lost

by Caroline Scott

  *

  Back on the bus, he turns the pages of the album and shows Rachel the streets and the cellars where they lived. Francis liked to photograph the strange, fragile, left-behind domestic details that they found in the wrecked houses. There are china shepherdesses on a mantelpiece, stuffed finches under a glass dome and plumed hats on stands in the blown-out window of a milliner’s shop. The details are crisp and eloquent. He admires his brother’s sense of composition and the stories that these photographs tell. On the next page they are striking poses wearing the same millinery confections. Francis is grinning under tuile and paper flowers.

  ‘Is that your brother?’

  He nods. ‘Francis.’

  ‘You look alike.’

  ‘Is it the taste in hats?’

  ‘You’re wearing an ostrich feather.’ She grins and points. ‘Your face is the same shape. It’s the chin and the cheekbones.’

  ‘He looks like my father there – by which I’m not alluding to the hat.’

  ‘So he photographed your war and you drew it. I wonder if your eyes saw it all the same. Do you ever look back at your drawings?’

  ‘I don’t have them any longer. I lost everything in 1917.’ He looks at Rachel. ‘I lost my sketchbook, I mean.’

  ‘That must have felt like a big loss at the time, I imagine.’

  He watches the landscape rushing past the window. ‘There was a time when it felt important to me to put it all down on paper. It was just the way that I coped with what was going on around me, and I suppose that was easier than carrying things around in my head. When I lost all my papers, I realized that because I’d been drawing and writing it all down, I hadn’t quite committed it all properly to memory, I hadn’t really been living in that moment. I realize now that I sometimes remember things wrongly, you see. It’s as if my brain has chosen the wrong bits to keep and some of the important parts are missing.’

  ‘I think that’s called self-preservation,’ says Rachel, and pats his hand. She smiles slowly and he sees understanding in her smile.

  ‘Does Francis have your colouring?’ she asks then and her smile curls at the corner. ‘Your hair is terribly red. Like a fox in winter.’

  ‘I apologize for it.’

  ‘Like a stoat – or a weasel.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have stopped at the wintry fox?’

  It is starting to go dark as they walk back to the village. The evening light sharpens the lines of ploughed furrows. The air smells of turned-over soil.

  ‘You do believe he was killed?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Francis, your brother. You said that he was reported “Missing, believed killed”. Do you believe it?’

  ‘I know he was shot. I was there. I saw it. He had a gunshot wound to his chest. In 1917 I had no doubt, but his body was never recovered. When the dead and wounded were brought in, he wasn’t there.’

  ‘So there’s a chance?’

  ‘For four years I’ve gone around seizing the sleeves of half-familiar strangers and jumping at shadows. But, no, I’ve no proper reason to doubt any more now than I did in 1917. Time passes, we search, and still nothing surfaces. But that’s not enough for his wife.’

  ‘I understand. And I’m sorry,’ says Rachel.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ he replies.

  *

  The volume rises in the café that night. A party of French colonial troops, bright as lead soldiers in uniforms of bold red and blue, have pushed the tables together and are now singing something about Paris, beating a ragtime rhythm with their soup spoons. Their songs and their laughter are loud, and soon everyone in the café seems to be shouting. Rachel’s fingers tap along with the rhythm. Harry can see how she is drinking to try to forget, and forcing herself to smile at him over the rim of her glass. Only suddenly that effort of will seems to fail.

  ‘What am I doing, Harry? This is foolish, isn’t it? He’s not coming home. I’m never going to find him. You don’t think I will, do you?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’ He says it as kindly as he can. ‘But I do understand why you have to try.’

  Harry wonders: if he hadn’t come home, would Edie have come to look for him? Would she have made the journey to identify his eyes and his belt buckle?

  ‘If he is alive, why doesn’t he let me know?’

  ‘Maybe he can’t. Maybe he doesn’t remember where home is. Maybe he isn’t ready yet. I didn’t go home until a year after I was demobbed.’

  ‘But you did. You eventually did go home.’

  ‘Briefly. And then left again,’ he says. ‘It’s difficult. So much has changed. We have changed. There’s so much complication.’

  ‘David isn’t complicated.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’

  She turns her glass. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘I admire you for coming here. I understand your reasons and I think you’re brave, but would David really want you to spend the next decade of your life searching? To sacrifice whatever chance of happiness you might now have?’

  ‘I can’t mourn him,’ says Rachel. ‘I can’t wear black. I envy other women having a grave to go to, if I’m honest. I envy their knowing. They are putting it in stone now: the missing. It is as if it’s over, the balance sheet has now been totalled up and signed off, as if those that will be found have been found, as if they’ve decided now that it’s done.’

  ‘I don’t want you to have a graveside. I’ve got a list of thirteen names in my pocket. I have to send photographs of their graves to their families. Only I hate doing that. When my envelope arrives it will end their hope, won’t it? It will snuff it out – and what then? I wouldn’t wish a graveside on anyone.’ He moves cheese rinds around his plate and considers whether this is absolutely true.

  ‘But this limbo! What use is hope to me? I can’t move backwards and I can’t move forwards.’

  ‘I know. I do understand that.’

  ‘I shall end in bitterness and secreted sweet sherry.’ She turns tragic eyes to him and laughs. The amusement in her face glimmers only momentarily.

  ‘I sincerely hope not.’

  She stares at him. ‘Why are you helping me?’

  He takes a mouthful of wine and considers. ‘In part because, if I were David, if I were out there alive and lost, I would want you to find me; in part because you remind me of my sister-in-law; and in part because I’m living in limbo too.’

  ‘You’re a kind man, Mr Blythe. I do, however, suspect that you are perhaps a ghost.’

  ‘Perhaps I am.’

  ‘I also think that you should forgive yourself and move forward too.’

  He smiles at her and shakes his head, not sure how to otherwise reply.

  ‘So when you’ve crossed off your thirteen names, will you go home again?’

  ‘I don’t know. If I’m honest, I’m not sure where home is any longer.’ He had said the same to Edie eighteen months ago.

  ‘Do you mean to just keep on moving, then?’ she had asked. They had stood side by side in silence in the doorway of the house in which he had always lived.

  ‘I’m not sure. There are too many memories here.’

  ‘Can you force yourself to forget?’

  He had replied that he meant to try.

  ‘And do you mean to forget me too?’

  He remembers, four years ago, a letter that he had written to Edie and not sent. He had asked her to forget him then. And to forgive him. Eighteen months ago he had asked it again.

  ‘Why was it so complicated?’ asks Rachel.

  ‘I felt guilty. Why should I have survived? Why, when others didn’t, did I have the right to come home? How did the odds work out in my favour? My brother William had an apprenticeship to come back to. Francis had a wife.’ He looks from his wine glass to Rachel’s face. ‘It didn’t seem fair that I was the one who came through, and I don’t know what I’m meant to do next.’

  ‘Is Francis’ wife the woman who you write to?’

  ‘
Edie,’ he nodded.

  ‘Am I wrong in supposing that she’s part of the complication?’

  ‘She always has been,’ he replies.

  8

  Harry

  Arras, August 1921

  Harry dreams about the eyes and noses that night, the mouths and chins piecing together into faces, the faces with parts missing and Francis incomplete. He wakes up sweating in the strange yellow room. Its shadows lurch about him for a second, with the eyes and the mouths, and then the rapping at the door comes again. He rubs the nightmare from his eyes.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Rachel is in the corridor. She looks as if she is about to speak but can’t remember what she meant to say.

  ‘Are you all right? Did I wake you?’

  Has he screamed again? When the nightmares wake wives and babies he normally moves on. He has spent the past twelve months moving on. The nightmares keep him moving.

  Still Rachel doesn’t speak.

  ‘I had a bad dream. What a fool.’ He sees the shadows under her eyes. ‘Are you quite well? You look as if you’ve woken from a nightmare too.’

  She seems to consider the question. ‘Can I come in?’

  He lights the bedside lamp, wishing it had more power to push away the shadows. Her white nightdress is barely a glow around the lines of her body. He sits on the bed and looks at his hands. ‘I dreamed about the faces,’ he says, in need of something to say. ‘The faces that you told me about in the catalogues.’

  ‘Don’t, Harry.’ She stands in front of him. ‘Please don’t speak.’

  She begins to unbutton the nightdress. He sees her collarbone and her angular shoulders and the locket at her throat, its glimmer accentuating the quickening rhythm of her breath. The dress falls to her feet. She stands naked in front of him and bends, then, to put her mouth to his. Rachel’s pale lips touch Harry’s. Her mouth is soft, hesitant and then insistent. He sees her closed eyes and closes his own. And it is Edie’s mouth then. It is Edie’s voice that says his name in his ear. It is her skin, her scent, her touch, as he has imagined it all, and everything else falls away. Her fingers pull him to her, twist and tug in his hair – but suddenly the illusion breaks, and they are Rachel West’s fingers once more, her ringed fingers that have stirred lost property, that have touched the buckles and cigarette cases and postcards. He sees Rachel’s hands turn the combs and razors and Francis’ penknife.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says. He stands, pushes her away. ‘Rachel, don’t.’ He turns his back to her. ‘You don’t mean this.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t.’ He turns to her and sees she has covered her eyes with her ringed fingers. ‘You’re upset and I just happen to be the person in the next room.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘It is. You’re married.’

  ‘Am I?’ She looks up. ‘Or am I a widow? Or, worse, abandoned? Who is he with? You must have had that thought yourself.’ Her dark eyes shimmer. ‘And now you don’t want me.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want you.’ He studies the pattern of the yellow wallpaper as she steps back into the nightdress. ‘I can’t do this because you’ll regret it. I know that. If you did this you wouldn’t forgive yourself, and I like you enough that I wouldn’t want you to feel that way.’

  ‘But you think he’s dead, don’t you?’

  ‘Do you want me to say it?’

  She looks down. ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘You could find him tomorrow and then how would you feel about this?’ He nods at her white dress. He finds it hard to look at her. ‘Your telephone might ring next week. There might be a knock at your door. He might be there on your doorstep when you get home.’

  ‘I could also find him dead tomorrow.’

  He supposes that she may be right. ‘I can’t do this to you. I can’t do this to your husband. I can’t take that chance.’

  ‘Even though you think he’s dead?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You told me to get on with my life.’

  ‘I didn’t mean this.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She turns to go, her shoulders hunched now. ‘I’m sorry, Harry. That wasn’t fair of me. It’s all such a dreadful mess.’

  It’s the second time today that he has heard the phrase. She stares at him in the doorway. Her dark eyes are solemn. Her hands close around the Forget Me Not locket.

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  He thinks of the last time he saw Francis’ face. He thinks of his mother framing photographs of her dead sons, draping them in black crêpe to confirm that they weren’t coming home. He thinks of Edie watching a rectangle of station, waiting for him to step into that space. Has he walked away again and left another absence? He doesn’t know whether he should be here. He doesn’t know where he should be. But he knows that he couldn’t assume the space that David West has left.

  ‘Don’t not tell her,’ says Rachel. ‘Don’t leave it too late.’

  9

  Edie

  Lancashire, March 1920

  She hadn’t expected it to be him at the door. Although more than a year had passed, maybe because of that, Edie wasn’t ready for him to be there. And, as she looked at the expression on Harry’s face, she could see that he wasn’t ready either. As they stood there in the doorway, wordlessly taking in one another’s faces, her mind went back through his last letter, through all those enveloped words to the winter of 1918. Had their silence really stretched for so long? Why had he chosen to break it now?

  ‘It was an impulse thing,’ he said, as she stepped aside and watched his feet crossing the threshold. ‘I saw a girl with red hair.’ He paused. ‘She was walking down Euston Road, and then went into King’s Cross station, and I suddenly realized that I was following her. Of course, it wasn’t you, but for a moment it might have been. And I thought then, as I stood in the station and looked up at the departures board, that it was time I came home. You don’t mind that I’m here, do you?’

  She shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t follow strange women. That sort of thing will get you into trouble.’

  It was a relief when at last he smiled.

  ‘It’s very odd to be standing here and looking at you again.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ she said.

  *

  They were lined up on the mantelpiece, Margaret Blythe’s soldier sons: three in a row, with potted hyacinths in between them. Edie stood behind Harry and watched his face in the mirror as he looked at the framed photographs of his brothers. Francis’ image was still draped in black ribbons. Somehow, although this was Harry’s house now, she hadn’t expected him to be standing here and seeing that.

  ‘I remember that day,’ he said. ‘We went to a photographic studio in Morecambe. We decided to have it done proper since we were finally in uniform.’

  ‘I remember them coming in the post and your mother going out to buy the frames.’

  All three brothers were making the same pose, a plaster balustrade to their left and a backdrop that was painted ferns and soft green shadows, like some sort of Victorian fairy glen. Edie lived with these images every day, these three smiling, long-ago khaki boys, but realized, as Harry turned Francis’ photograph to the light, that she hadn’t actually looked at them closely for a long time.

  ‘I’d forgotten about it. I’d forgotten these photographs existed.’ He turned towards her. ‘You know, it feels such a long time since I last looked them in the eye. Were the ribbons my mother’s too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s so decisive. So absolute.’

  ‘And shouldn’t it be?’ She watched him as he touched the black ribbons. ‘Is it wrong? You’re the one best positioned to judge that.’

  ‘No. Of course. She wasn’t wrong. But it surprised me to see that she was so sure. That she felt he was so definitely dead.’

  ‘She ran out of hope. I wish you could have come to her funeral. I wish you could have got leave for that.’

  ‘It wa
s too late by the time they told me. You know that. I would have been here if I could.’

  ‘It didn’t seem fair that none of you were here. Fair to her, I mean. That there wasn’t one of you to see her go into the ground.’

  He turned Francis’ picture in his hands, as if he expected to find something on the reverse, and then returned it to its place on the mantelpiece. ‘This is Francis’ house now, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Only it’s not, is it?’ she replied, then paused. ‘I didn’t know whether I was meant to put black ribbons on you too.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have written, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You’ve got heather in your buttonhole.’

  ‘A woman pressed it on me in town.’

  She looked at the man Harry had become. She could see Francis’ 1914 face in Harry’s mirrored features, that man who had packed a bag and told her that he would be home by the next spring. Only six springs had passed and Francis hadn’t come home. When she looked at Harry’s reflection, she saw glimmers of the golden boy who had whispered lines of poetry at her through library shelves, but Harry’s eyes connected with hers then and he was resolutely himself again. When she looked at Harry’s face she could still see traces of the young man who had so wanted to go to art college, and who spent his Saturday afternoons drawing her face. Only six springs had left a sadness on Harry’s face. Those were still his gentle green eyes, his patient smile, but there was also a melancholy there now, casting a different shadow over his features.

  ‘Heather for luck,’ she said. ‘Is that why I don’t need to bring home a black ribbon for you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I believe in luck.’