The Photographer of the Lost

by Caroline Scott

  Swallows streak down the railway lines and she remembers how Francis had given her a brooch on the day that he came home. As he had stooped to kiss her in the doorway, he had placed it in her palm, folding his hand around hers. She can feel the brief sharpness of that grip as she thinks about it now, and that was what had caused her to withdraw from that awkward embrace. Their lips hadn’t met. And so it was.

  ‘For you,’ he had said. ‘Are you pleased with it?’

  When she had opened her fingers there was a silver swallow in her hand, set with paste stones and a ruby eye. Somebody else’s fingerprints were tarnished into the metal, and there was something about that glittering red eye that she didn’t like. She had nodded and thanked him, but she can’t recall that she has ever worn the brooch. Was that a mistake? Did he see that she didn’t like it? Was that where it all went wrong?

  She remembers that last week with Francis strangely, almost as if it is not her own life that she is recalling, but a story that she once read, or a play that she’s seen. It feels second-hand, as if during those days she hadn’t been living at the surface. The images that she brings to mind now are slightly out of focus and she can’t remember all of the words. What she recalls most clearly about that week is the tension, and when she forces her mind back there, she can feel it again.

  It wasn’t that she had expected it to be easy. After all, it had been more than two years, and she already knew from the voice in his letters, or rather the lack of voice, that something wasn’t right. She wasn’t fool enough to have imagined things would be the way they had been before, that they would instantly fall into laughter and easy intimacy, but she had at least expected that they would be close together. And, as she had prepared for his visit, she had wanted to be close to him; to wash his skin and ease his aches, to soothe him and care for him, to show him that he was loved, and that he had all of this to come home to. She had also wanted him to talk to her. To tell her what was troubling him. To share. To unburden himself. Did it all go wrong because she didn’t ask the right questions? Or was it that first awkward touch on the doorstep that spoiled everything that came after?

  The platform clock ticks. Its gilt hands move around the Roman numerals too fast. It was not Francis’ fault that there was dirt down his fingernails, she told herself, and that he hadn’t washed his hair all week, but she had found herself not wanting to be close to him. Every room in the house smelled of him, a sweet-sour smell that his skin had never had before, and she had to lean out of the windows to breathe. She was glad that he didn’t try to touch her after that first difficult moment. She can’t recall that she touched him. When she lay at this stranger’s side, she couldn’t sleep and the hands on the bedroom clock had moved so terribly slowly.

  The railway tracks in Poperinghe stretch east and west. She is seven miles – one train stop – from Ypres, where he now might be. If she steps onto the next train, will she have to lie at his side again? Will she have to listen to his breath and launder his shirts and put her hands through his hair? There was a time, before all this began, when she had liked to put her face to Francis’ neck and breathe him in, when she couldn’t keep her fingers away from his strong white shoulders and the glossed curl of his hair. There was a time when she couldn’t lie close enough to him. The man who had left her house in 1914 knew the names of all the birds and the trees, and she loved him for that. He read books about ancient civilizations and African countries. He whispered poems in her ear and plaited her hair. But that was not the man who had come home in September 1917. Could all those fundamental parts of him really have permanently disappeared? What had happened to all that they had shared? How had they moved so far apart?

  When he had walked in, Francis had brought strangeness into the house and she had found herself moving around him. She could no longer predict the reactions of the man she’d lived with since she was seventeen. There was something wild and unknowable about this version of Francis. The look that he gave her when she asked him if he wanted to talk about Will. The way his lip curled when she laid a blanket over him. It wasn’t that he had raised a hand to her, or even raised his voice, but she saw the flinch on his face. The trigger. She no longer knew how he would react to anything she said, and so fewer and fewer words had passed between them. What might he need to say to her now? She looks at her watch.

  She has never told anyone how difficult it was, that last week with Francis, because it makes her sound like a terrible woman. A terrible wife. How could she admit to anyone how difficult she had found it to be with him? That she didn’t know how to speak to him? That she felt some relief when the week ended and he went back? How can she tell anyone how she opened all of the windows after he went, and scrubbed the floors, and boiled the bedsheets? How could she admit to anyone that she had been frightened of that man and how she felt about him?

  If there is a chance that she might see him again, that it might be true, which version of himself is he now? Could that strong young man with the carefree grin and the whispered poems ever really return? But she has seen the cemeteries and the smashed villages now, what the war has done to this country, and finally realizes that Francis was like that because of all of this. And how can that ever be reversed? How could they ever go back to what they were?

  When she had first opened that envelope and seen the photograph she had dropped it. The image sent a shock through her fingers and she had gone into the kitchen and shut the door on it. She has had four years of getting used to his death, was absolutely certain that was what it was. It was silent. It was settled. She hadn’t doubted it. What did it mean now, though? He had pushed his way in through the letter box. What did he want to happen next?

  A guard steps out onto the platform and touches his cap to her. The church bells have stopped ringing.

  Six weeks prior to the day that Francis had boarded his leave train at this station, she had danced on the lawn of the hospital with Harry. She remembers Harry’s breath on her cheek, the creases at the corners of his mouth when he smiled, the shadows of his eyelashes, the nape of his neck, and how she hadn’t wanted him to have to come back here. She had felt so fiercely protective of Harry at that instant. So close to him. She had watched him walk up the drive and wished that she didn’t have to walk away. Would she be feeling different now if she had Harry’s hand to hold?

  She hears the tracks begin to vibrate with the approach of the east-bound train. The lines hum and rattle and she feels it through the soles of her feet and in her chest. The Ypres train comes into sight and she sees Francis’ face there waiting at the other end.

  It is her duty to stand in that square, to hold the photograph to the skyline and to know that she has matched it up. It would be the right thing to do, the proper thing to do, and surely what Francis meant when he put that photograph in an envelope. But how can the right thing feel so wrong?

  She puts herself back in a room where he is curled in a tangle of damp bedsheets. The animal sound of his breath and the smell of his sweat fill the room. She can taste it. She is standing on the platform of Poperinghe station, but she can hear the awful liquid rattle of Francis’ breathing and feel the hot dampness of those sheets on her own clothes. The guard blows his whistle and panic surges through her body.

  32

  Harry

  Vimy Ridge, August 1921

  Location image order: Miss Esme Stewart requests general photographs of Vimy Ridge. Her brother, Captain Albert Stewart (13th Brigade), was reported missing, believed killed, 10/04/1917. Remains yet to be identified.

  ‘I wasn’t certain whether you’d still be here. When I phoned your hotel, I fully expected them to tell me that you’d gone.’

  ‘I honestly start to think that I’ll still be here in a hundred years’ time,’ says Rachel.

  Harry hadn’t known whether, or how, to say it down the telephone. Now that he’s here, standing at her side, he’s even more unsure of where, or indeed if, to start.

  ‘I leave David’s details
with everyone I meet.’

  ‘That’s good of you,’ she says.

  They’re walking together up the ridge. The grass is thin and the white chalk below shows through. He remembers reading how it had snowed on the ninth of April 1917, as the Allied attack had been launched. Though the gradient does not seem aggressive, he has to take a break and catch his breath. Rachel puffs her cheeks out and puts a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’m so glad you stopped. I didn’t want to be the one to wave the white flag first.’

  ‘It’s deceptive, isn’t it? That or I’m very out of practice.’

  He looks at Rachel West’s ringed fingers on his arm and thinks about Daniel East’s hands twisting the wire. His image is inside Harry’s camera. Is it enough, though, this coincidence of pliers and eyes and compass points to raise her hopes? She smiles at him. If he were to say it, would he take the smile from her face? Would it be giving her false hope, sending her in the wrong direction?

  ‘You’ve been here before?’

  She nods. ‘Only last week.’

  She pulls her wind-blown hair from her eyes and he recalls the pull of those same fingers through his hair. He wasn’t sure that she would turn up, but she shows no apparent embarrassment. She doesn’t avoid his eyes or his questions. Her straight gaze makes him start to question the scene that he recalls. Did it really happen? Might it have been a dream?

  ‘You should have said. I wouldn’t have dragged you back had I known.’

  She shrugs. ‘I’m glad to revisit with someone to talk to. It makes a change from talking to myself.’

  It was not inconvenient to come here. Meeting her fitted in with the other tasks that he had to do. When he had spoken to her on the telephone he had felt sure that it was meant and right that he tell her, but now he is no longer so certain of what he saw, or what he ought to say.

  ‘The family asked me to take general photographs of the ridge,’ he explains. ‘That was the brief. Only it seems excessively brief. “General” seems a bit too general, don’t you think? I don’t know where to start.’

  When they turn and look behind them the road is long and straight, tapering out in the haze on the skyline. There are other groups advancing up the hill, tourists in plimsolls and pilgrims in black. The slope is pitted with shell holes and crumbling earthworks. The village below looks like a feature that someone has tried to scratch off a canvas.

  ‘I can see for miles,’ says Rachel. ‘You can see why they had to take it.’

  The plain below is flat. There is the smudge of an industrial town in the distance and a stretching scar (not a neat cut – it resembles something troublesomely healed) that might perhaps once have been the front line. He takes the view looking back down towards the village.

  ‘It’s the man’s sister who has asked for the photographs?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t met or corresponded with her. My employer passed this request on. All I know is that her brother was reported missing here in April 1917.’

  He wishes that Mr Lee’s instructions weren’t so scant and unspecific. The landscape framed in his viewfinder might have no relation to the whereabouts of Captain Albert Stewart. He has no idea where precisely the line was on the tenth of April 1917. He doesn’t want to palm Miss Esme Stewart off with a meaningless image. It is too important for that.

  ‘Perhaps she just wants a sense of the place?’ Rachel suggests.

  ‘I suppose. But what direction am I meant to point the camera in? I might be completely off the mark. Would you want a photograph of it if you couldn’t get here?’

  ‘Yes. I might,’ she replies. ‘I’d want to know the lay of the land, so that I could imagine it correctly.’

  He wonders what Miss Esme Stewart imagines. He looks down at the scabbed slope and considers whether he ought to show it to her at its worst, or whether to try to select kinder angles. Would it be kindness to show Rachel the image inside his camera? Could he not be completely off the mark there too?

  ‘You’ve been working further east?’ she asks.

  ‘North-east of here. I was in Épehy yesterday. Four years ago, I thought that I might never leave. I was injured there,’ he clarifies as he looks up at Rachel. ‘It was sobering to go back.’

  ‘And who would be visiting your grave?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He considers: would Edie make that journey? Would she have come to look for him? Would it have mattered to her to know the lay of that land? ‘But instead I ended up on an ambulance train to England.’

  ‘Come on,’ says Rachel.

  A family is having a picnic at the top. They have laid out a blanket and are passing sandwiches and a thermos flask. A man in pinstriped trousers is pointing. Children look bored. There are circles of sweat under the father’s pointing arms.

  ‘There’s going to be a Canadian memorial up here,’ she says. ‘I’ve read about it. They’ve launched a competition to design a monument.’

  Harry thinks about Gabriel, once again struck by the enormity of the task of designing a memorial, of capturing and commemorating an experience in stone, to be seen for miles and forever more. It seems so much more epic than framing it in a camera lens.

  ‘That’s quite a responsibility,’ he says.

  They walk along the top of the ridge. The children behind are now tumbling and giggling over a game of leapfrog. The father is still pointing. Harry circles, taking photographs until the film comes to an end.

  ‘This heat,’ she says.

  They sit down and take in the view. Harry leans into the sharp grass and shuts his eyes to the glare. The camera is heavy on his chest and the white light throbs through his closed eyes. He is very aware of the image of the wreath-maker inside his camera. How can a chemical reaction between light and silver salts be such a weighty thing?

  ‘You’ll get sunburnt,’ says Rachel’s voice. ‘I can see you sizzling. I can almost hear you sizzling. You’ll be like a lobster by this evening.’

  A headache is beginning to throb. He feels slightly too large for his own skin. ‘Is a lobster better than a weasel?’

  He sits up and she hands him a bottle of lemonade, apologizing for the fact that it’s not cold. It hits the back of his parched throat, sweet and sharp. Rachel wipes the top of the bottle before she puts it to her own lips. Did his lips really once touch hers? Did he really dream the scene in his hotel room? He’s not sure that his memory hasn’t started to play tricks. A horse and cart struggles to the top of the slope and sets up selling ice-cream wafers.

  ‘The things you can buy on a battlefield these days.’

  He shelters the camera under his jacket while he changes over the film. As he puts the used reel in his pocket he is very conscious of the face of the man imprinted on it.

  ‘You look furtive,’ observes Rachel.

  ‘Just keeping it out of the sun. If the light gets in it will all disappear.’

  ‘It seems almost callous that the sun should shine, doesn’t it?’ Rachel asks. ‘Almost cruel. It’s not weather for loss or regret. If only the light could make it all disappear.’

  ‘Will you show me your photograph of David again?’

  He’s unsure about the wisdom of his words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Rachel looks at him, as if measuring the question.

  ‘Yes.’ She reaches into her bag. ‘Why?’ She holds the card out towards him. He knows that her fingers won’t release it until he has given her an answer.

  ‘I’m travelling a lot. I’m seeing a lot of faces.’

  Her fingers let go. She nods as if his answer makes sufficient sense. ‘Of course.’

  It is a much younger man in the photograph. He would like to compare this image side by side with the one of Daniel East. There is some similarity around the eyes. He is not sure that it is enough, though. He looks up at Rachel. It’s not enough.

  ‘Thank you.’ He hands her the photograph and watches as she smiles at the young man’s face. Her left hand abstractedly plucks at daisies.

  �
�I’m the one who should be saying thank you.’

  They walk on and he photographs the country below. Where within that stretching plain is Captain Albert Stewart? Will he ever surface and point out landmarks for his sister? Will his features ever turn up on a stranger’s photographic film? A couple are picnicking in the shade of one of the shell holes. At first he is careful to keep them out of his shot, but then he finds his lens focusing in on them. The girl is laughing as the man gently places a daisy chain around her neck.

  ‘I would rather see him in a shell hole with another woman than not ever see him again at all.’

  He turns to Rachel. She is shielding the sun from her eyes with her hand. Are there tears in the shadow of her hand?

  ‘Sometimes when I wake up he’s breathing at my side. Just for a moment. I hear his footsteps on the floor above. I smell his cigarette when I walk into a room. I can’t believe that I’ll never see him again.’

  Harry shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I used to smell his shirt collars, you know. That’s stupid, isn’t it? I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. I could breathe him in, though – bring him close. But now he’s fading. Now he’s barely there.’

  Harry thinks about a pair of pale eyes caught on his camera film and imagines them fading. He wants to give that news to her, wants to bring David close, but he’s not certain that he can hand her that fragile hope.

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot – your handkerchief. I had it laundered.’

  He looks down at Francis’ embroidered initials.

  ‘Your journey hasn’t crossed with your sister-in-law’s?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should try to contact her.’

  ‘It’s been four weeks since I received her postcard. I don’t know where she is. She might be at home again by now.’