The Photographer's Wife

by Suzanne Joinson

  ‘Well,’ Charles said, finally dressed. ‘He’s done it now, the flaming idiot.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘McLaughlin,’ Wicklow said, ‘who else?’

  ‘I want the full report.’ Ashton poured himself another glassful of whisky and drank it in one. He walked towards the window, and looked down on Jerusalem. Willie, if he could, would erase the night before. Instead he had done as she asked and now they could never go back.

  ‘Of late,’ Wicklow was saying, ‘Lofty has become obsessed with tracking down and punishing a particular band of criminal outlaws who have been committing robberies and attacks along the Jericho and Jaffa roads.’

  He continued with the full story.

  The outlaws had been menacing everyone: shopkeepers, travellers and villagers. Lofty and members of the gendarmerie followed the trail towards Wadi Farrar but achieved nothing and returned to barracks frustrated.

  The gendarmerie, just a few Irish and English officers in charge of a fleet of native officials, were in a confab about what to do when an elderly shopkeeper came up to the gates. His face a mess of bruises and blood, he had clearly recently been beaten and was in an agitated state. Through an interpreter he explained that many years ago he had stood bail for the outlaw in question, Mohammed Al-Din, but had never been paid back money owed to him. When the shopkeeper heard that Al-Din was running a criminal gang from caves between Lifta and Nebi Samuel, he had set up a meeting through contacts in Jerusalem’s Old City and visited the cave to request at least part repayment. When the meeting took place, however, all he received was a beating. Because of this, he had told Lofty and his colleagues, he wanted to betray his enemy and was prepared to instruct the British as to his whereabouts, as long as he would be given a reward for his pains.

  As Wicklow spoke, he wiped the stuff that formed part of his disguise from his face with one of Ashton’s towels and Willie realised, from the shimmer of the white of his eyes, that he had used kohl in the manner of the women of the souk. The intelligence officer, now back in the guise of a slick, rather slippery Englishman, threw the towel on to a chair, stood erect and smiled. The transformation was impressive.

  Willie didn’t know much about the gendarmerie, apart from the fact that they had a reputation for vicious retribution. They were the muscle of the British administration and the colonial staff in Governance House, who did not like to talk about them much in polite society, preferring antiquities. The gendarmerie looked like a joke but apparently they terrified everyone.

  ‘Are they under your command?’ Willie asked.

  ‘Storrs’s, really, but I’ve been asking them to bring in the information about the specifics of land ownership in the region. So many wild, unmanaged areas.’

  ‘So you are able to tell them what to do, what not to do?’ Willie said. A wave of nausea, exhaustion, regret, despair; all of those threads, webbed together. Wicklow was watching him closely, his too-blue eyes on him, predatory.

  ‘Yes. I’m authorised to do that.’

  ‘Wicklow, how did you come across all of this information?’ Ashton said.

  Wicklow looked coy, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That little tête-à-tête with Khaled Rasul at dinner.’

  Willie pulled an uncomfortable cushion out from behind him and threw it on to the floor. He was surprised.

  ‘Rasul?’

  ‘Yes. We discussed those photographs you gave me, actually.’

  ‘I don’t think I quite gave them.’

  Ashton, eyebrows raised, looked confused. ‘Photographs?’

  ‘Actually, it was Eleanora who suggested I talk to Rasul.’

  ‘Eleanora?’ A line of saliva from her lip as his hand punched deep into the softest part of her; it was an intimacy he did not want to remember.

  ‘Yes, she was there.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, when I had dinner with Ashton and Elspeth.’

  This was before she had come to his rooms in the night, then. Why did she not say anything about this? She had not mentioned Wicklow to him. Willie looked at the man, perky, punchy, in front of him. he said to the room, generally: ‘I know him. I knew him, rather, in Salonika.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lofty.’

  Both men turned towards him. Wicklow’s eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘No,’ Willie said, casually. ‘It took me a moment to place him. He’s had endless rounds of malaria fever. He’s a madman.’

  You’re a treacherous fucking cunt. Call yourself an Englishman.

  Wicklow regarded Willie for a moment and looked as if he was making an internal judgement or mental cross-reference, then he continued with the outline of his report.

  Lofty, being Lofty, did not promise the shopkeeper a reward for his information. Instead, he instantly handcuffed the man, mounted him on a horse. He was strapped on and told that he would be shot dead if he did not take them to the cave and that there was no hope of a reward. He was warned that if he was leading them into an ambush he would be the first man shot.

  They all arrived at the foot of the Moab hills at dawn, and advanced slowly up towards what they thought was the mouth of a cave. As they approached, one of Al-Din’s men came running and screaming towards the British, gesturing back into the cave and betraying his own leader: ‘He is in there. Come and get him.’ That man was shot through the back by Al-Din himself. Apparently, what then followed was, as Wicklow put it, ‘a good old-fashioned shoot-out’. The native officer working with Lofty shouted for Al-Din to surrender but all he did was fire shots out towards them. They all took cover behind various rocks, having left their horses in the valley. The British threw a couple of grenades, a native officer had the idea of climbing up on to an outcrop above the cave; he crept above and then shot the outlaw in the head.

  There was silence in the room.

  ‘He was very well armed, by all accounts.’

  ‘But what with?’ Ashton asked.

  ‘Two revolvers. A British service rifle, over four hundred rounds of ammunition and two more hand grenades in his knapsack.’

  ‘So what is the situation now?’ Ashton pressed both thumbs on to his eyebrows and rubbed the grey-white hair of them. Wicklow drained the last of his drink, and carried on.

  ‘Discovering that the whole village was involved in harbouring the outlaws, providing bread, whatever they needed, Lofty has taken it upon himself to send out “a suitable message” to other villages who might consider similar activities.’

  ‘Well, what does that mean?’ Ashton said.

  ‘Eleanora didn’t know, but she said we must go. Today.’

  ‘We need to do something,’ Ashton said, ‘before news of it trickles out and causes major rioting. We need to bloody stop him. God knows what he might do to the women.’

  Ashton stood at the window looking down at the street with the air of a man not in a particular hurry. Perhaps he did not take seriously the comment about Lofty and the women; it seemed that Wicklow, perhaps, had some understanding of that. Ashton stiffened, then, and turned.

  ‘Which village did you say?’

  ‘Lifta.’

  ‘But that makes no sense whatsoever; Eleanora has taken Frau Baum with her to do a photograph with the American Colony there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  A pain, in Willie’s right eye, difficult to ignore.

  ‘Yes. They wanted Eleanora to dress up the thing; you know, make it look authentic. Actually, come to think of it, it was Eleanora’s idea. She convinced the Colony it would work.’

  ‘Eleanora went, you say?’ Willie said. ‘Even though she passed on the message and knew what was happening nearby?’

  Wicklow frowned. ‘I would say she insisted, certainly suggested, that we go. Yes, come to think of it, I did hear her invite everyone to the photography excursion. Khaled himself was insistent too; they made rather a team.’

  Jerusalem, 1920

  Eleanora hadn’t wanted Prue at the photographi
c staging of Moses in the bulrushes, but Prue was up and bright and dressed and foisted herself upon them, knowing from Frau Baum that a motor car was arranged to take them as far as possible and then they would walk, or travel on horses which were to be collected from a farm. Lars and his team from the American Colony photography department were meeting them there. Eleanora had raised her eyebrows when she saw Prue, but she had said nothing, and now, by late morning, Prue assumed she was allowed to be present.

  Most of the snow was gone from Jerusalem, but there were still stubborn icy patches outside the city. There was birdsong all around but Prue couldn’t see the birds to identify them so it was as if the trees were singing to themselves.

  Prue wandered into the makeshift tent that Lars had erected. Eleanora was crouching near her Gladstone bag, pulling items out – handkerchief, pillbox, pen – and evidently not finding what she was looking for. They were on the outskirts of the village of Lifta, just west of Jerusalem. All Prue wanted was to see the villa. She had been promised a walk there with Frau Baum as soon as the photograph had been taken but it was all going on for an interminably long time.

  ‘Prue, would you pass me that chair?’ Prue did as instructed, moving mechanically. She was working hard to avoid looking directly at Eleanora, but it was impossible not to notice that there was something unusual about the way Eleanora sat herself down, heavier than normal. When she pulled out her compact, covered in filigree silver, Prue saw that she was shaking as she checked herself in the mirror.

  Prue went to the edge of the tent and looked out. The two handmaidens were shivering next to a stream that apparently drained down from Lifta’s spring in the Wadi al-Shami. Through the magic of photography this stream was going to be transformed into the Nile and the wooden doll that was currently poking out of the basket was Moses and it would be a joint bestseller for the American Colony and Eleanora. They would sell a million copies to the never-ending flow of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem looking for themselves and everybody would be happy. May a plague come down on you all, Prue thought: locusts and wasps and famine and thunder.

  ‘I wonder, Prue, if you could pass me a drink?’ Prue turned back behind her. Eleanora inside the tent seemed diminished, gesturing over to the water bottle that Frau Baum had left on the table near the haversacks.

  ‘Of course.’

  Prue gave up not looking at her and inspected her instead. Eyelids: purple-pink, vulnerable. Neck: wilting. Sweat on her face, she kept rubbing her forehead. Prue was about to ask: Are you all right, what is happening? But Lars shouted, ‘Eleanora, where is the baby’s basket?’

  Prue replied for her, ‘It’s here.’ She picked up the woven basket with the doll inside and went out to where Lamia and Thuriya, forlorn handmaidens, were waiting. Lamia was adjusting her sandal. Both sisters were wrapped in beige robes as they stood next to faux-marble steps which were tilting. Eleanora walked towards them, frowning, and went over to the tripod. She bent her head under the camera hood and looked down into the viewfinder.

  ‘It’s no good. It’s not right.’

  ‘Is it the light perhaps?’ Lars, very serious, very concentrated, did not bother to speak to Prue ever.

  ‘No, no.’

  Prue watched it all in a . . . what was it? In another place? Perhaps she was a girl in one of Eleanora’s photographs, who had been left in a room with time moving, ticking, and consequently she was faded, blurred? Normally, like a family dog, she would hop under everyone’s feet, become involved, position herself so that they must acknowledge her (and that way she would become real ), but today she was on a high wall looking down at them and they were barely aware of her. The mysterious bird-voices continued coming from the dead-winter tree bark.

  ‘I wonder if another handmaiden might help?’ Prue was pushed into the scene and Eleanora leant forward and undid her hair. It was strange to have Eleanora’s fingers moving her hair about, touching her scalp.

  ‘Would you mind taking off your shoes?’

  Prue was placid. They could do what they wanted with her. Barefooted, wrapped in a beige robe that swaddled her dress, she was put in front of the sisters.

  ‘Stand there, and look down towards the reeds.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Lars called, his head popping up from the camera hood. ‘That is supremely improved.’

  Thuriya whispered behind her in Arabic that she was starving and that the Ingliz were raving lunatics.

  ‘That is true,’ Prue said. She did not feel like meeting the eye that was looking at her through the camera lens; instead, she gazed at the stones at the bottom of the silt water and wondered if they were red, or Jewish, or golden.

  ‘We’ve got it, I’m sure,’ Lars said, turning round and clapping his hands to applaud himself, but Eleanora was not behind him; she was walking back towards the tent.

  ‘Prue,’ Eleanora said, when Prue came in, looking for the white cheese and the dark Palestinian bread that Frau Baum had brought along.

  ‘Yes?’

  Eleanora was pale and then she came close to Prue and took her hands, both of them, and held them tightly. Eleanora’s own hands were freezing. ‘A little bit later they will all be going to Lifta. I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘But I want to see the villa. I am going up there with Frau Baum.’

  ‘It’s been arranged. For a reason. It will be dangerous; is there a way you can trust me?’

  ‘Trust you, Eleanora?’

  ‘With Khaled, they are going to . . . it’s your father, you see, and the things he does, to the people here, the things he allows.’

  ‘Do you mean the clock tower?’

  Eleanora shook her head, a dart of confusion on her face, and then looked down. Prue followed her line of sight. Blood was dripping over the lion-shaped buckle on Eleanora’s shoe.

  ‘Eleanora, you’re hurt?’

  They both stared at the gentle red dripping which did not make its way down the ankle and shoe with any urgency.

  It’s because of me. The curl of smoke and the wisp of paper.

  Outside the tent, Prue could see that the sky was thickening into a violet shadow and Frau Baum was talking to Lars. She was about to call them when Eleanora let out a cry and fell forward towards Prue, who stepped backwards and did not catch her.

  Prue ran so fast that she was almost flying, and by the end, by the bottom of the valley, she really was flying. She landed in a heap in a patch of browning snow and it took a moment for her senses to steady.

  In front of her was a path. Frau Baum had said earlier that to get to the villa they would need to go down to the base of the valley and then follow that alternative path uphill. Prue wiped down her dress and walked.

  Think nothing.

  That did not work well. As she walked her hands hung down by her thighs. She was very quickly hot, no longer concerned by the cold, sharp air. After some time the path entered a dense area of elderly olive trees.

  Here, the air had a displaced feel, as if recently breathed. The path was steep, the icy soil cracked underfoot. There were stone houses on a higher ridge, all made from the pale, nearly white Jerusalem stone. Prue glanced about, as if Canon Brown might have chosen today of all days to return to his house and was at a window, waiting for her. Her breath, as she walked, became rhythmical. Is a death a person’s fault? For example: if her father had found a way to force her mother to go into the Graylingwell place and then, very soon afterwards, she dies, is that her father’s fault? Or: if a person makes a wish, before a candle, and a baby does not become itself properly, instead turns into blood and drips away, is that the person’s fault?

  Prue carried on through a natural archway of trees and on the other side, in a clearing, an old man was working in a garden. He was digging a circle into the ground around the outside of a tree. Prue tried to remember from her Leaves of the Levant book which tree it was. Walnut, possibly, with the wide, wagging leaves, and she remembered that her father had told her that the word
walnut comes from the Anglo-Saxon wealh, and that means far away, foreign, but what was it called here, in Arabic? Where it is not foreign or far away? She did not know and then remembered it. Wadi al Jouz near Jerusalem was valley of the walnuts. Jouz, but in Egypt it was the eye of the camel. The earth was frozen so each time the old man put the spade into the ground there was a cracking noise. He heaved and huffed too and if he was aware of her watching he didn’t let on. Finally, she called out in Arabic: ‘Hello. How are you? Do you work here?’

  The old man stood up and regarded her for as many minutes as he liked to take. ‘My family have worked on this land for ever,’ he said. She could not tell if he thought she was impertinent or not.

  ‘Is Canon Brown’s house near here?’ From his eyes she could see he didn’t understand. Then she said, ‘The man with the music, the musical organ?’

  But she did not know the word for hymn in Arabic. Church-singing? The gardener was chewing something – leaves, perhaps – and he spat the leaves on to the earth and leant on his spade and looked away, at a sparrow which was near his foot, hopping, and then fluttered off.

  He shook his head and pointed at some trees further up the hill. ‘The music man has been living there.’

  ‘Where?’

  She turned away from him and through the branches, up on the higher path, there was a square stone house that looked as if it were mushrooming out of the limestone; as if it were made up of a million carcasses of creatures, crushed skeletons, and then covered with sand.

  ‘My family’s house,’ he said.

  ‘It’s your house?’ He nodded, and looked all around.

  ‘My garden, my orchard, my wadi.’

  ‘May I go in?’ she asked, as politely as possible.

  He shrugged and she was unsure for a moment what to do. Then, when he seemed no longer interested in her, she walked away but he called to her, ‘There is a man in there, asleep.’ He said it fast, in Arabic, so she asked him to repeat it, to try to understand. Man. Asleep, in the house.

  ‘Oh. I see.’ Though she did not. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  True, there were boots on the tiled floor, well-worn, massive and crusted around the heel. The fire had been recently lit but was down to embers. The house was warm, and Prue’s fingertips and wet cold toes flared with the sudden change of temperature and began to prickle.