The Photographer's Wife

by Suzanne Joinson

  ‘We must go. I was stupid to have brought you here.’ Ihsan pushed Prue quickly through the door, and the men around them appeared to be laughing. Prue searched the room for the young boy with his father but they had all moved out towards the balcony to join in with the rest of the men who had begun to chant.

  Because of the very cold weather many places were closed but a small café run by a Christian from Smyrna was open. Ihsan ordered tea and then began to apologise to her, over and over.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ihsan. I didn’t feel unsafe.’ This was a lie. She added, ‘I shan’t tell my father, please don’t fret.’

  But Ihsan’s anxiety did not diminish; in fact it grew as they drank the tea. Morose, he sighed.

  ‘You must get rid of that picture, Prue. It is best if you give it to me. I really don’t think you should give it to your father.’

  It was resting on her knee. She had no intention of getting rid of it, but she nodded and then she said, ‘I shall keep it, but I won’t show him.’

  ‘No. I must take it.’

  She shook her head. ‘I won’t show him or say anything about the meeting.’

  There was a cluster of Carmelite flowers in a vase on the table, most nearly dead. Ihsan saw her looking at them and picked the one remaining fully alive bloom, letting a drip of water from the stem fall on to his sleeve. He stroked the lilac cross-shape of the flower as he regarded her. She thought he was going to pass it to her but he didn’t. There was nobody else in the café apart from them and the owner had disappeared. The table was not quite straight, so that one of her knees fitted under it and the other was wedged.

  ‘Ihsan, what did you mean when you said I bring information, there is method?’

  He looked at the table and then down at the floor. There was a pause.

  ‘Can I trust you, Prue?’ he said, with a solemn face, talking quietly.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I asked you to bring me some things from the pilot’s room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is for the cause of Great Syria. We have discussed this.’ She glanced down at the image on her knee: the flap and bruise on the small ribcage, the marks on the skin, the blurred imprint of a bullet in the shoulder. The strangeness of a face that looks asleep but is not. The sharp-looking bristles on the broom near the bodies. Who was the man, pushing their bodies with a broom? Laughing?

  ‘Is my father responsible for this?’

  ‘I’m afraid . . . he is. He has been sending his policemen in advance of land surveillance operations: surveys on who owns what, intelligence on the smallholdings, the moshavot, the fellahin, and if they don’t comply with this information gathering, then there is uproar. Fights. As you can see.’

  Prue longed to slide under the café table. The cloth was thick enough to conceal her completely. Down there, might it be possible to stop time, or rearrange it at least, so that it did not stomp forward but curled instead, in spirals, or wound around ladders? Back to a place where mothers were not lost, fathers were not found; where time was not something you move through but something you look through. Like one of Eleanora’s camera lenses. Like opera glasses.

  ‘Ihsan, do you know anything about the assassination attempt on my father?’

  ‘My dear, I was in there! That terrible man . . . If you want to play detective then I think you should have a look at the musicians who play in the Fast.’

  He sat up. ‘Are you hungry? Do you need to eat?’ She shook her head. ‘There is something in your face that reminds me of the hungriest days, the bad days when Jerusalem was starving. When the price of food was tremendous, when rations were impossible, when one couldn’t get shoe leather or tobacco. Oh those days, those days.’

  She said nothing; she had a feeling that little speech was not natural. An act. He touched her hand.

  ‘Prudence. You seem . . . a little . . . unprotected.’

  Her eyes were throbbing. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his small notebook with the leather cover, and gave her his fountain pen.

  ‘Use the shifra code and write down what is worrying you.’

  He watched her write, he had taught her well. She was quick, quite fluent now that she had been practising; it was so clear that he could read it upside down. What she wrote, in code, was: my father stole my letters, he did not send them to my mother. I am not sure who to trust. Ihsan read the words swiftly and he seemed not his usual springy, bouncy self today. He was calmer; sad even. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a tiny pipe that he liked to smoke rather than cigarettes, and he looked at her with an expression that she did not understand.

  ‘I have this for you, Ihsan.’ She dug her hand into her bag and then put the book she had taken from Willie’s room on the table.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s his pilot’s logbook.’

  Ihsan picked up the book, and gently turned the pages. Inside were columns and lists in William Harrington’s handwriting.

  ‘How interesting. Read it to me?’ he said, handing it back to her. Prue looked up at the motionless fans that hung over their table like a threat. ‘If you want. “A2. Take-off. Landings. Emergencies. Medium turns.”’ She stopped. Ihsan’s eyes were unfocused, a little dreamy.

  ‘Does it say where he’s flown to?’

  ‘Algiers – Gibraltar – Rabat – Gibraltar – Algiers – Elmas – Naples – Bari.’

  ‘Imagine. All those cities: hopping from one to another.’

  She continued to read. ‘Drama – Salonika – Algiers – Tunis – Malta – Algiers – Elmas – Naples.’

  Khartoum. Wadi Hafa. Amaza. Fayid. El Adem. Malta. Rome. Ishmailia. Bayid. Fayid. Malakal. Juba. Nairobi. Asmara. Castel Benito. Luqa. Port Sudan. Heliopolis. Mogadishu. Hargeisa. Mosul.

  ‘Thank you, Prue.’ He took the book from her and leant forward. ‘It is for the greatest cause. You understand?’

  ‘Ihsan,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ He sometimes looked like a cat when he sat up erect. She had not given him the photographs. She had decided to keep them. Instead, she pulled out the large piece of paper from her father’s desk. She had folded it up and carried it with her.

  ‘What is this? Blank pages?’

  ‘Look.’ Once it was flattened, she took her pencil and very lightly rubbed it over the corner. The indented marks of her father’s plans appeared, magical white lines in the shade.

  ‘Now this,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘is extremely interesting.’

  It was important to do it lightly; too much pressure and the indentation was lost. It was possible to see everything: the plan for the city, the notes, and the outlines. It was a design for Jaffa Gate. The words emerged. Demolition of the Clock Tower, Jaffa Gate.

  ‘Our beloved clock tower?’ Ihsan said, shaking his head. He began to talk in a different way. He got up from his chair and stood behind Prue as she continued the shading. This map is more than a map. It is a change. It is a political statement. It is an intention. It is a way of altering a city and making it something other. It is a stamp. It is an outrage. It can’t be allowed. It can’t happen. What right? What consideration for an intervention like this? Overlaid across the drawing of Jaffa Gate was a grid, and Prue could see that the world was built this way: stones, blocks, and laid-out maps. She was good at the shading. She even managed to bring into relief notes at the bottom of the page. The Pro-Jerusalem Society recommends the demolition of the clock tower built during the mayorship of Faidallah al-Alami to celebrate twenty-five years’ rule of Sultan Abdul-Hamid and designed in a ‘Franco-Arab’ style that is not conducive to the 400-year-old form of the Jaffa Gate walls.

  No. Ihsan stamped on the floor: was he angry with her? He was a small man, she could see, even though she was smaller, and when cross, when bouncing up and down in shock and outrage, he shrunk even more; he became slight, like the Arthur Rackham illustrations of fairies, and she couldn’t be sure, looking at him, if he was a benevolent fairy or a malevolent one.

/>   When she left Ihsan she had the feeling she had tipped everything out of herself, emptied herself of secrets and betrayed everyone around her. She felt the underlying unease, of which she had been aware in the Al-Muntada meeting, begin to increase and take over. All his words began to swing and judder in her mind. Who to trust? Her mother, Irish, always said this. Coming from Monaghan, which is as English as Irish gets, she said she was born confused. I can’t trust the Irish at home and the English hate me. Prue’s mind in circles, her father’s face coming towards her in the room: Can I draw you, Prue? Then turning away again.

  Prue had spoken to Garo the concierge once, about Jerusalem. He had a hare-lip, his top lip tugging upwards as if it had been threaded and the cotton was being pulled. She liked it. She had asked him where he was from, in her first week here. She could not ever tell, in Jerusalem, who was foreign and who native, whose family belonged here from generations and who was recently arrived. It simply was not possible to understand, from dress or skin colour or age or religious robes and hats or anything. It was the most confusing mix of people. ‘Armenia,’ he had said. ‘We have been chased from our homes. The Greeks are chased from their homes. The Turks are chased from theirs. The Jews are chased from everywhere. The Arabs are chased from this land and the British are on the top of the pile.’ He laughed when he said this but she had not understood the joke.

  Without intending to, she had drifted towards Eleanora’s road deep in the Christian part of the souk. The feeling of unease was more powerful still, and she was aware of her heartbeat, of the shape of her eyes, of her bones itchy, under her skin. But perhaps she had intended to gravitate towards Eleanora because it occurred to her that she wanted, very much, to see her. Before the pilot came, they had been friends. That was a true thing; Prue did not believe she had invented that. They had shared the baklavas together, drunk tea, talked. This and that. This and that. There was the paperweight, with the seahorse. It was just: the weather kept changing here. She must tell Eleanora that she had seen her husband. That he was in Jerusalem again. But surely she must know? He must have been home to her? They would soon be celebrating together and happy.

  When she arrived at Khaled Rasul’s studio she saw that Eleanora had taken down the picture of Damascus Gate that previously decorated the large front window space and in its place hung a print of a photograph from the time when Prue was ‘assistant for the day’ with the giggling Muslim sisters Lamia and Thuriya. In a vast golden frame, there was a picture of Prue. The label underneath the photograph said, An English Child in Jerusalem. Prue looked at herself. A serious face, miserable, even, and something in the way she sat that showed how eager she was to please, how desperate she was to be liked and how much she failed at that endeavour. she abhorred her own childishness. That day Eleanora had hired an Ottoman palace on Mount of Olives Street. It had a grand downstairs area, but on the upper floors it was shabby, the paint fading, and not much furniture. They used the largest room, with a great circular window and broken shutters. At first, the usual formal photographs of the sisters. Thuriya and Lamia had arrived wearing their best dresses, in the Jerusalem style with dropped hips and excessive buttons that did not seem to have button holes. Matching white stockings and black shoes. Lamia was prettier, taller, a pointed face. Thuriya had more of a square face, a natural scowl, but she was funny, silly, whereas Lamia was shy. They held carnations, which Eleanora finally prised from them, and after a while they had both become giggly, and Eleanora opened a bag: dressing-up clothes, stoles, furs, beads.

  ‘Jump! Jump!’ Eleanora had called out, her camera on the tripod in the middle of the room, taking photograph after photograph. Some were staged: stand here, stand there, sit here, and wear this. Prue sometimes assisting, sometimes in the photograph. Eleanora in them too, sitting on a chair, holding a cat up to her face, pushing her nose into the fur. She had dragged a table into the middle of the room and asked each girl to jump, to run, to move fast. She remembered Eleanora saying, ‘Legs become simultaneously sculptural and architectural,’ and Prue wrote it down: t-h-e-a-r-c-h-i-t-e-c-t-u-r-e-o-f-l-e-g-s. From all of those joyous, raucous photographs, Eleanora had chosen this sad one of Prue sitting still. Even though clothed, reserved, seeing herself in the window of the studio made Prue feel naked, as if she had taken off her dress and shoes, all of it, ribbons from her hair. She did not know why.

  At the studio, the door was open but there was nobody in the front area where a customer, if he so wished, could come in and order a portrait.

  Prue stepped inside. It was dark, and full of all the materials and clobber used for portraits. She moved slowly. She was creeping, again. She should call out, she should make it clear that she was there, but she did not. Instead, she continued, as quietly as possible, across the stone floor. She opened the door at the back and crept through into the house. She knew her way well enough. There was no sign of Samia but there was the sound from upstairs of things being shunted about. She moved up the curved stone stairwell that led to the main floor. She was four steps from the top. She heard the tingling of a bell. It was a fairy-like sound and then Eleanora’s voice:

  ‘The old kitchen bell, and what’s this? An eagle?’

  ‘Don’t you remember it? It was the insignia on that great huge range in the Pentrohobyn kitchen. I prised it off with a knife once.’ The pilot.

  ‘You thief.’ The bell was rung again. ‘You kept these things all that time? Carried them with you?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  Prue dropped down and sat on the steps. They couldn’t see her and she was not sure why she didn’t continue to walk up. She still had, clamped beneath her arm, the photograph of the dead child. She placed it beside her so that she could climb up one step, two. Little spy. Creep creep. Now she saw feet. The lion-shaped golden buckle on Eleanora’s shoes and Harrington’s bright black shoes, close together, facing each other.

  ‘Ellie. It’s clear enough to me. We should leave. Back to London and then arrange things from there.’

  There was silence, then Eleanora said: ‘It is not so simple, Willie. It is more complicated than that.’

  ‘Well I don’t see why. We can explain: you made a dreadful mistake.’

  ‘Who says it was a mistake?’

  ‘It can all be arranged, you cannot stay here.’

  ‘It is not so easy.’

  ‘I’m not saying it is easy, but –’

  ‘It is not easy because Khaled’s family’s prayers and wishes have finally worked and, you see, I am carrying his child.’

  Prue did not hear what his response was because she had already begun retreating down the stairs. If Eleanora caught her, sneaking, spying, she would despise her for ever. In order to leave the studio and house without them realising she was there Prue had to hold her breath until a ringing began in her head. She made her way to the door, and back through the front part of the studio as quickly as she could and it was only when outside again that she realised she had left the photograph on the cold bare steps.

  Jerusalem, 1920

  Prue was dressing for the evening meal when they came in: Frau Baum and her father. She thought at first they were going to say that war had been declared. They had the same look; she remembered it from when she was six: frowns, seriously sitting on the bed, shaking heads, but Ihsan had said if there is a war in Jerusalem then it was underground and that nobody was sure exactly who was the enemy, or who was fighting whom.

  In the end, though, it wasn’t that at all. They told her that her mother was dead. They took it in turns to sit on the bed and say the same phrase over and over. Your mother has choked on a piece of bread. She had accidentally swallowed a piece of bread the wrong way. The bread went down the wrong way. She had a terrible accident after eating a piece of bread.

  ‘In Graylingwell?’

  ‘In Graylingwell.’

  Frau Baum was wearing a long tan dress and peculiar shoes for dinner, with a flamboyant hat with yellow feathers sticking out of it. This ne
ws had obviously come in at an awkward time, which was quite like her mother who would have been pleased to have ruined their party. Prue was half-ready, her woollen navy dress not buttoned up, her hair loose. She picked up her camera and turned it over in her hands as they spoke of bread, and choking, and looked serious. For a second in her mind she saw the letters she had written, in her father’s drawer. She stopped listening and noticed through the window that there was something different about the sky.

  ‘Is there a storm?’

  They were both silent. Her father stood up, his knees cracking as he did so, and went over to the long window-door that opened on to her small balcony.

  ‘Yes, it’s snowing,’ he said.

  Did you hear what we said? they began again. She’s dead. Bread. Choked. Swallow.

  So it was snowing again. The last drift had melted very quickly. This explained the oddness of the light, and then she noticed another strange thing: her hands weren’t flapping. Prue went to the window, aware that she felt nothing. Apart from being quite light, weightless and unreal, but was that a feeling? Did it count?

  Her father, standing near her, moved his hand as if he were about to touch her shoulder. In the end he didn’t. Dear Prue, they were saying. You will be feeling some shock. They said other words. She couldn’t make them out, exactly. There was a day, oh so long ago now, when her nurse was washing her in a horrible old bathtub. The water was chilly and she was desperate to get out but then her mother came in. Look at your hair. You look like a mermaid. Her mother knelt down, and put her fingers in the water and tangled them into Prue’s long hair. Prue’s arms had been covered in scratches, long thick ones from the neighbour’s dog who kept jumping at her. Her hands were sore from where she had bitten the knuckles to stop the flapping. Her mother had looked at the hands, looked at the sore patch on the top of her right hand and started to cry, without explaining why, and so Prue began crying too to keep her company.