Jerusalem, 1920
The next day was difficult for Willie: the sky big and blue and there was no wind. In short, perfect weather for flying. The vista looked like an open book, pages flat, trees popped up.
‘Ellie,’ he said, ‘can we stop for a moment?’ The whisky residue was painful. It was possible that he might be sick.
‘Yes, I’m parking it over here anyway.’
There was a sign saying ‘Forbidden’ in four languages but they drove through regardless. Kalandia was a bleak, military airfield with limited resources. Like most airfields, in reality it was nothing more than a grubby expanse of land. The watchtower was manned by an old Effendi-type who peered at them suspiciously but, after checking paperwork, nodded them through. As they drove through the gates, Eleanora turned and looked over her shoulder. Another motor car was coming over the hill behind them and the black silhouetted heads inside bobbed as if on sticks.
‘Here’s Ashton, coming behind us now.’
The sky swelled as if expanding. Willie automatically patted his jacket pockets for his cigarette case but it wasn’t there. Eleanora drove to the edge of the airfield and brought the car to a stop. A sparrow landed, briefly, on the bonnet of the car, then flew away.
She turned to him.
‘What is it, Willie? Are you all right?’
He looked up at the cloudless sky where he knew images would begin to flicker, and indeed they did. Mackie’s face on fire. Other friends now dead – Simpson, Roberts, Hamilton, Jones, Whitby, Osborne, Turner – all burnt like crackling pig skin on an open fire. He put his head into his hands. He could feel her looking at him.
‘Listen.’ He turned in his seat and looked at her properly. ‘I haven’t been able to fly.’ His tongue felt as if it were covered in a thick, rough substance. He was sweating. ‘I don’t know if I can fly. Something – happened, and since then I just can’t.’
Eleanora’s hand touched his neck, traced it down to where the white shiny skin of the scar made its point around his Adam’s apple.
‘Because of this?’
‘This . . . I could fly again after this. It was more recently.’ The earth around them was rust-coloured. ‘Fact is,’ he said, ears red and cheeks on fire with shame, ‘I’ve been grounded . . . for more psychological reasons.’
He looked over to the olive-tree trunks, searching for a way to convey his bravery, because he needed her to know he could be brave. He had flown such a number of planes, had safely landed planes that had almost fallen apart in the sky, their storage batteries flung out of holders, the ribs of the wings ungluing in mid-air. He had looked all around his blasted room that morning for his logbook to show her the flights – though how that would help he didn’t know – but couldn’t find it. Whisky in the brain. She took his hand. He couldn’t stand her concerned expression.
‘Well, I really rather think Charles is expecting you to fly,’ she said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Just stall it a little. I can recover my nerve, I am sure I can.’
‘I’ll think of something.’
‘It is me who is supposed to rescue you,’ he said. ‘Not the other way round.’
‘Rescue me?’ She looked away from him when she said this. A feeling of physical longing, a magnetic impulse to stretch his hand out and touch her, so vivid and intense it shocked him.
‘You should be my wife,’ he said. She turned; he couldn’t read her face. He had said it now, so he continued. Reckless. ‘You married the wrong man. In the wrong city. I will always see you as my wife.’
There was a circle of fire around her, like those camping-trip games, making a fire ring up on the South Downs, gathering dry bracken and hopping in and out, feeling the flames kiss the hairs on the leg. He wants his wife: nothing immoral in that. Khaled Rasul’s face comes to his mind, but he blocks it. The circle of fire. He wants to tell her, everything. What? (A little girl called Ana? No, never that.) Spirals of confessions, as if she were a priest. Confessing what, exactly? Original sins. In Cairo he had been taken to the Lieutenant. Reported for drinking on duty. Hands shaking. Eyes red. Talking nonsense. You need a rest, Harrington. Grounded. Think about alcohol, Willie, and what it is doing to you. But it is not just that. You need to think about how you – what? – approach the world. Think about it. See it.
He was Category V. Discharge from draft: persons found to be totally and permanently physically or mentally unfit. Somehow, this had not filtered to Ashton. Jerusalem a backwater. The war over. Coming here had meant he hadn’t had to go back to England, in disgrace.
He had loved flying, but in the end it was a terrible loneliness and a contradiction. When he was called up for a flight he would sit in the cockpit feeling as if he had an attack of the flu. Or as if his bones had walked a thousand miles. It was his body’s way of telling him not to risk it again, he supposed, and each flight, every single one, involved this internal battle. It made no difference if he was flying with a co-pilot or solo and on his last flight in Cairo he had flown drunk, blotto as an owl. Forced landing. The machine on the ground, taxiing, a ditch, struts of the undercarriage snapping, whole thing over, on its back. Angels: Bring me my bow of burning gold. Piss.
The surgeon: you were born under a lucky star to have survived twice.
I beg to differ.
‘I can deal with Charles,’ she said, and she pulled out her lipstick, reapplied it slowly. He was horrifically cold. He shivered all over and looked at her. She was always turning away: caution and grace, but where was the substance of her? He couldn’t hold on to her. She was like smoke.
‘Here it comes,’ Charles shouted, pointing his fly swat up at the sky. Frau Baum next to him, both shielding eyes from the sun. The aircraft was a Sopwith Strutter, a two-seater. It looked like a gnat in the sky and came towards them like a bad memory in the night, descending quickly.
‘Nice landing,’ Charles applauded.
The pilot emerged in full Sibleys, climbed out and saluted them, his face bright from exertion and success. To make matters worse, it was a chap Willie had once met in Cairo. A young Etonian with a bright-blond moustache, eyes red and bloodshot from the flight. Willie let Charles, Frau Baum and Eleanora surround the pilot, shake hands, clap him on the back, until it was no longer possible not to walk forward and arrange his own face as it should be. He couldn’t remember the man’s name but he blustered through it. Ashton was at the aircraft, touching its nose, stroking the propellers. He called over to Willie, ‘Have you had a look at it yet? Bloody beauty, what is it?’
Willie spoke without looking at it, ‘Sopwith. Topnotch.’
Anderson.
That was his name; it came to him now. Willie had spent an evening with him in Shepheard’s once, talking the ears off one another all night, competitive bad-taste jokes. Ach. Have you heard the one about the faithless widow? Ach. Heard the one about the dead brother? Anderson eyed Eleanora professionally, up and down, a once-over, registered a glance back to Willie. Willie turned away from the group, looked over at the watchtower.
‘Charles, a terrible thing,’ Eleanora said, pulling off her sunglasses, opening her eyes wide. ‘I had a problem with my camera equipment, it was all in a dreadful muddle, so I couldn’t get it together accurately, so difficult without Khaled. Ihsan and I have been going through the studio, and well, it’s all rather a mess, and I’m afraid to say I haven’t been able to rig up the camera for the photographs from the aeroplane in time.’
Ashton flapped at the air. ‘But, my dear, we’ve been looking forward to this day so much. Reconnaissance. A clear, bird’s-eye view. A different sense of the horizon – so humbling, to see the earth below and the city we exist in so small. I’ve been desperate for it, I really have.’ He gave her a disapproving look. She sniffed a little.
‘Will you forgive me, Charles?’ Eleanora said, and Willie could see she was making herself as bright and charming as possible and he knew what that comment about her husband must have cost her.
&n
bsp; ‘I will have the equipment ready soon, I promise,’ she said.
‘Might you go up for a spin for the hell of it?’ Charles asked Willie, capitulating.
‘No,’ Willie summoned a calm flat voice. ‘I’ll wait for Eleanora. No sense in wasting fuel.’
‘Oh well, rather a blow.’ Ashton put his hand to his forehead, shielding off the sun. ‘That’s that then.’
Frau Baum turned to the pilot and said, sweetly, to move things on: ‘Anderson, so you flew against the Fokkers, did you?’
‘I bloody did.’
Night of bombs, near and far. Called out of bed at five, patrol the skies, ended up feeling sorry for the Huns, God help ’em, having to fly a Pfalz! Willie, unable to listen, walked over to a cedar tree on the edge of the airfield, leant against its trunk and attempted to get the noises in his head straightened out. Now that the immediate threat of having to fly was gone he thought the ringing in the ears might fade, but it did not. In fact, it grew worse. A clamouring, a rushing. I soon heard I was getting another piece of ribbon for my efforts . . . He was grateful to Eleanora, but mortified. Willie scraped the palm of his hand against the tree bark and propelled himself forward to them.
‘Blow it,’ he said. ‘I will take her up for a spin regardless.’ He walked towards the Sopwith and patted the wing, ran his hand along the nose and the long slicing plane of one of the propellers. He looked over his shoulder at Eleanora whose eyebrows were raised.
Ashton smiled. ‘Hurrah, old boy.’
‘Willie, why don’t you wait until we have all the photographic equipment in place? It will be better, I think?’ Eleanora said.
Anderson had white-blond eyebrows that moved ferociously as he spoke.
‘Might be an idea to give the beast a once-over from a mechanic, though, eh?’ He looked doubtfully towards the desolate watchtower. Eleanora shook her head slightly.
‘My dear, you do not need to worry,’ Ashton said, seeing Eleanora’s face. ‘He is the best pilot in the region, I have it on the utmost reliable authority.’
He has invented that. He wants to believe that.
Willie squatted beneath the undercarriage of the Sopwith pretending to examine it. The sound in his ears was the same as a ground-strafer; it was all one, a roaring. Eleanora came behind him and crouched down, close.
‘There is something wrong with my eyes,’ he said, wiping along the lower rim of his right eye.
‘It’s called crying, Willie.’
She took his hand, held it against her lips. He stood up. He looked at the sky and the bright sun. It was nearly noon, he guessed.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.
He helped to fasten her in first, her long thin legs folded neatly underneath the seat. The mount where the guns were usually positioned was there, but no gun. She would have her back to Willie and look at the places they were flying from; he would be staring into the future. Anderson stood near, smiling, smug and knowing. He knew what flying a girl in the sky meant and his smirks irritated Willie whose eyes were now dry.
‘Be good to be up in the air again, heh?’ Anderson said, and leant forward, gesturing over to Eleanora. ‘Impress the lady, eh?’
‘Better than sitting around here all day,’ Willie even managed a smile and climbed into the cockpit. The sky was very bright; Anderson moved backwards away from the machine.
‘Feeling all right?’ he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Yes!’ Her voice in his ear. I’m giving you my life, she was saying by flying with him. To drop, to land, to carry; to do with what you like. He pulled his goggles over his face. He put his right hand on the stick, left on the throttle. He was shaking, but curiously, his ear-whistles had stopped.
As the Sopwith lifted there was the inevitable trigger in his loins, but perhaps because of Eleanora’s proximity he controlled it. The fear did not go – it expanded, through his stomach and oesophagus – but when fully airborne he settled into a feeling of pure tension that at least was consistent. His skin, his muscles, his skeleton were all electrified by the sensation of flying again. He wished he could touch Eleanora, or ask her: what do you make of the clouds up here? The world is different, is it not? The sky around him, left and right, but he did not need to look for enemies here. He remembered how Knefler, one of the German pilots, would use the light from the sun as a shield, and how he had learnt that trick from him. That was the stupidity of it: they taught one another the techniques, and she was with him, behind him. He could no longer call out to her, she wouldn’t hear him.
The land shrank beneath them. He checked his rev counter, all well, apart from his turbulent stomach, and it was difficult to hold back flying memories. He recalled sitting in a hangar on the Cairo airfield waiting for one of the men, Whitby, to come back. Whitby had been called on duty to fly to Haifa and had been gone for five hours when he should have been back in three. Willie didn’t know him, particularly. Had only spoken to him once, an abstract conversation about how he liked to eat his baked beans cold rather than heated up. Told Willie that it used to annoy his wife dreadfully. Willie had replied, Why did you eat baked beans with your wife? Oh I don’t know, summertime in her family’s cottage. No cook about. She thought them rather common food so it was a bit of a joke. That was the only exchange of words Willie had ever had with Whitby but he never came back. Five hours became twelve.
Concentrate: he was looking straight ahead now. The explosion, the hollow dense heart of it. Flames through the floor, through the cockpit, a tunnel of cold air, the sky not sky but a ceiling, a trap.
This was not now: this was then.
He did it. (Smoke in his lungs.) Not now. (Mackie’s face on fire.) Not now. Through it all: Eleanora.
Willie’s landing was nowhere near as smooth as Anderson’s drop had been. At the end of it, engine shuddering, he climbed out of the Sopwith and turned to help Eleanora. Her face was flushed as she pulled the goggles off; she smiled, shook her hair. He immediately asked Ashton for a cigarette.
‘Good stuff. Think of the photographs,’ Ashton said. ‘How did the Holy City look from up there? A heavenly perspective, eh?’
‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Changes everything.’ She had understood exactly. She was holding in her hand her camera, a snapshot brownie; she handed it to Ashton.
‘Do take a photograph of us, Charles?’
She beckoned Willie to stand next to her, looking at him with clear eyes.
‘Closer,’ Ashton shouted. Willie’s hands moved around her waist, the slimness of her body sending an electric shock through him. She was smiling towards Ashton. When she was concentrating, in her darkroom, with her slides, with the chemicals, bringing the images to life, he knew she must look like that: fully applied, attentive. She was a person who could make everyone around her disappear, who became only herself. She owned light, controlled it, and he guessed that each morning began for her by looking at the sky without fear.
They waved goodbye finally, Willie shaking off Anderson who wanted to come back to the bar, and when they walked towards the car he said, ‘I’ll drive?’
‘All right. I thought you might have had enough steering of machines today?’
‘Feel like it, if you don’t mind.’
He became brighter in the eye, sharper in the ear and drove as if he might continue with Eleanora onwards to Ramleh or Baghdad or Baalbek or even Constantinople. The vegetation around them was wintry, but a few green stalks were coming up through the rust and the yellow colours. She was struggling with her scarf around her head, and turned to him, shouted over the wind.
‘I loved flying.’
‘Of course, you were meant to fly.’ On the dip of a hill he increased the speed slightly.
‘You weren’t nervous after all?’
‘Not when it came to it.’
‘Slow down?’ He stopped the car, abruptly, and did not bother to pull over and park. It was possible to see the stretch of road leading down through the valley and onwards to nowhere. Ther
e was no sign of any other motor cars; not a soul in any direction around them. Finches hopped near the side of the road. They sat silently for a moment; his hands on the steering wheel looked to him like dead birds. Then he took hold of her face and kissed her. There was peace, for a turn of the world, but when he looked at her eyes he saw all of her bad dreams. Her fingernails scraped along her dress, as if she wanted to scratch at herself. Part of him fell away with desire, but, underneath it, surprisingly, there was resistance in him. He did not want to be lost in her. Her cheek rested on his; he could feel the light breath from her nostrils.
‘You were stupid to come here,’ she said.
‘Was I?’ She sighed.
‘Look,’ he started, ‘whatever it is that is the trouble, your father, and worries about what they’ll say at home, me, any of it, we can arrange things. I’m confident that –’
She put her hand on his mouth. Stopped him talking.
‘Khaled wants a child, but I was serious when I told him that I do not want children. He won’t accept it. That is where we are.’
She said it calmly. Willie knew why she was frightened: her own mother had died giving birth to her; what bigger haunting is there than that? Why would she possibly want to re-create the same risk? But what did this – Khaled not accepting – have to do with him, Willie? She was shaking her head, turning from him, back towards Khaled Rasul, a man who lived inside a walnut frame, she was climbing back inside a photograph. He opened the motor-car door. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘I’ll walk.’
Two minutes later she drove past him. She did not slow down or look at him. His feet very quickly objected to the walk; his shoes too tight, the air cold, sharp. His knees cracked and it seemed to him that he had always been walking towards Eleanora, only to walk away again.
London, 1927
My new husband is naked as a baby, his penis soft and reduced almost to nothing. He puts his hand on the windowpane and looks down on London as if he is a giant who owns it, as if the bridges and the cobbled stones and the ships coming along the Thames from India and China and Russia all belong to him. He tells me that men in the square are hanging trails of lanterns from the plane-tree branches because soon it will be Christmas.
The Photographer's Wife Page 13