The More Deceived

by David Roberts

  Edward said nothing. He thought there was something particularly erotic about making love on so respectable a piece of furniture as a chaise longue.

  When they had finished and lit cigarettes, he said, ‘We do love each other, then? I mean, I know I love you but . . . On the Queen Mary . . . it wasn’t something you regretted?’

  ‘Don’t let’s have this conversation,’ Verity begged him. ‘We go round and round in circles. Of course I love you. I’m not some tart who gets into bed with just anyone. Let’s change the subject, shall we?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I like going round and round in circles with you. I always think I might just understand it this time. However,’ he went on hurriedly, seeing a look in her eyes which he knew meant her patience was being tried, ‘you never told me where we are going, before dinner.’

  ‘Oh my God! Stop whatever it is you are doing . . .’ – he was in fact stroking her stomach – ‘and get up. We’re terribly late. We were late before this . . .’ She gestured at the chaise longue.

  ‘Well then, do we have to go at all?’ Edward replied, lying back lazily, admiring her neat posterior as it disappeared into the bathroom. ‘I bet it’s one of your Communist gatherings where I catch people sizing me up with a view to hanging me from a lamp post.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Or rather André is a Communist but it’s not a Party “do”,’ she called over the sound of running water.

  ‘André?’

  ‘André Kavan. He’s a photographer and he’s got this exhibition in Jermyn Street. That’s what we have to go and see. It’s opening today.’

  ‘What sort of photographer?’ Edward inquired suspiciously.

  ‘A great photographer. He has his stuff in Life. You’ll recognize it when you see it.’

  ‘He’s a war photographer? You met him in Spain?’

  ‘Not just war but, yes, his photographs of the war in Spain are amazing. It makes me want to give up writing. You know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words? Well, it’s true.’

  Edward, always jealous when he heard Verity enthusing about some man he did not know, wanted to ask if they were lovers and, as if reading his mind, she said, ‘And before you ask, he has a girlfriend – Gerda Meyer. She’s almost as good a photographer as he is. And she’s beautiful which is rather unfair. I expect you’ll fall for her the moment you see her. All the men do but be warned: she’d eat you for breakfast and have forgotten you by supper.’

  ‘I don’t need any such warning,’ Edward said with hauteur. ‘My heart is . . . well, you know where it is.’

  ‘It wasn’t your heart I was talking about,’ Verity said drily.

  ‘Really, V, wash your mouth out. When I think that, when I first knew you, you were pure as the driven snow. So how did you meet? On some ruined battlement?’

  ‘We met in the Ritz in Paris, if you must know. André’s a great friend of Belasco’s. We were all having dinner together.’

  Edward was wise enough to say nothing. Ben Belasco was an American novelist whom Verity had met when she first went to Spain and they had had a brief but intense affair. As far as Edward knew, that was all in the past. Certainly he was going to assume so.

  ‘So is Mr Kavan – your photographer friend – French?’ he asked instead.

  ‘No, he’s a Hungarian Jew. He was thrown out of Hungary by the Fascists. I suppose Paris is his home now but I think he has a Polish passport. He speaks about ten languages – all very badly. He’s a gypsy.’

  It was after seven when they reached the gallery but the party was still going strong. There were a lot of ‘Comrades’ present and Edward was rather proud to be escorting Verity. She was something of a star since her success with her Left Book Club bestseller and her reports from the front in the New Gazette. She had as many enemies as admirers, of course, who liked to gossip about her scandalous relationship with Lord Edward Corinth.

  Verity was looking smart in a navy-blue coat with a wide belt covering the slightly creased little black dress which she liked so much. She loved hats and her navy lacquered straw hat with its white ribbon seemed to Edward just perfect. He could hardly believe that she was, in some indefinable way, ‘his’. As she disappeared into the crowd to greet old friends, he was left on his own. He glanced at the photographs on the walls and then looked more closely. They were remarkable. Taken very close up, they were almost indecently intimate but, as he peered at them, the images became grainy and began to dissolve. They revealed faces wrenched out of their normal expressions by the horror of war. There were old women with babies in their laps and dishevelled younger women running across a square staring up at the sky from which it was obvious bombs were raining down. One particularly chilling image was of a Spanish soldier, head thrown back, one hand stretched out, his gun – some sort of rifle – falling to the ground. When Edward looked closer, he was shocked to see that this was a picture of a man caught at the moment of his death. There was no visible enemy, no blood, no gaping wound but there could be no other interpretation. A bullet had checked him as he ran and stopped him dead. Edward saw that the photograph was captioned ‘Soldier falling’.

  He was distracted by someone calling his name. He turned to see a flaxen-haired man of his own age. Edward’s polite smile left his face as he recognized one of his least favourite people, one David Griffiths-Jones. He was Welsh but that in itself would not have prejudiced him in Edward’s eyes. There was much more: he was a published poet much admired by left-wing critics; he was a senior figure in the Communist Party and was well known in Spain as a ruthless organizer and committed Stalinist. Worst of all, he had been Verity’s first lover and, though he had abandoned her when it had suited him, Edward still feared his malign influence over her.

  ‘Corinth! Still slumming, I see. Do you think we workers at the coal face have a certain glamour or is it mere inverted snobbery? I certainly never expected to see you here. Do you know our André? But, of course, I am being stupid. Verity must have brought you. Where is she? Ah! I think I see her hat. So you two are still . . . friends?’

  ‘Still friends, yes. How is it in Spain? I gather Madrid is shortly to fall to the rebels.’

  ‘The reports of Madrid’s imminent demise are, I am pleased to say, an exaggeration. Comrades from all over the world have rallied to her defence. The legitimate government will prevail despite the cretinous behaviour of the so-called democracies. Thank goodness for Comrade Stalin!’

  David was being disingenuous as usual. There was no chance of Madrid withstanding General Franco’s onslaught for very much longer. Moreover, the ramshackle alliance of anarchists and left-wing parties which had made up the Popular Front – the elected government of Spain before the civil war – could never be glued back together. Like Humpty Dumpty, that alliance was shattered beyond repair. If, by some miracle, Franco failed to win the war, a Communist regime would seize control of the country, taking its orders direct from Moscow. This was the reality and the reason neither France nor Britain would come out in support of either side.

  ‘Have you met my friend Guy, by the way? He was up at Trinity with you, or was he a year or two after your time?’

  ‘Guy!’ Edward said, grasping the hand of a man with blue eyes and tight wavy hair. He had a boyish, healthy look and a charming smile that made Edward smile back but his fingernails, Edward noted, were dirty and badly bitten and, at a second glance, he wondered if his high colour was not fuelled by alcohol.

  ‘Trinity and, before Cambridge, we were inky boys at Eton together, though we were not in the same house,’ Guy cut in. ‘But our paths haven’t crossed since we came down from the University. I don’t remember you being a Marxist, Corinth?’

  ‘No, certainly not. As David says, I am here with a girl, Verity Browne. Do you know her?’

  ‘We all know Verity,’ Guy said smoothly. Seeing Edward’s face fall, he added, ‘But don’t worry, Corinth. Don’t you remember? Even at Cambridge my sexual preferences did not incline towards the female
of the species.’

  Edward was taken aback. He did remember now that Guy Baron was spoken of as ‘one of those’ but he never expected him to admit it so openly. He was spared from having to answer by Verity’s reappearance. She had in tow a black-haired, black-eyed young man – in his late twenties or early thirties, Edward guessed – with an engaging grin and the dishevelled air of the artist. His shirt – vaguely military in style – was half in and half out of his black trousers and torn at the elbow. He was deeply tanned. Edward was immediately alarmed. True, Verity had talked about a girlfriend but this young man looked as though he might not attach much value to the idea of monogamy.

  ‘This is André, only we call him “Bandi”. Don’t you think he’s the most wonderful photographer? Oh, Bandi, this is Lord Edward Corinth.’

  The two men shook hands. ‘I haven’t yet had a chance of looking at your photographs except the ones just behind me here. The crush, don’t y’know, but I am very impressed. Where did you take this one of the falling soldier? It’s an extraordinary image.’

  ‘Outside Madrid,’ André answered laconically.

  ‘Amid so much horror,’ Edward tried again, ‘do you not want to do something – apart from taking photographs, I mean?’

  ‘Do something?’ the young man repeated in his complicated accent, a ripe mixture of several Continental languages. ‘What do you suggest I do?’

  ‘I am sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude but, if you see a child in pain, don’t you want to do more than take a photograph?’ Edward knew he was being gauche but he could not stop himself. The photographer seemed too good to be true. He needed taking down a peg or two. ‘Don’t you want to intervene?’

  André was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I do intervene. These photographs,’ he waved his hand at the wall, ‘they “intervene”. They say that here is pain and suffering. The innocent always suffer. Even you must have noticed,’ he added with studied insolence. ‘But why should I bother . . . bah!’

  He turned away and was soon engrossed in conversation with Guy Baron. Verity looked at Edward in amazement. ‘What did you do that for? I thought the one thing you were was polite but I see I was wrong.’

  Before he could defend himself, she had flounced off. Edward’s heart sank. What had possessed him? They were amazing photographs and all he had needed to do was say so. Instead he had accused the photographer of being a heartless voyeur. It was inexcusable and he ought to apologize. He sighed. It was going to be one of those evenings when he could do nothing right. He had visualized a romantic dinner at Gennaro’s with the girl he loved and then perhaps, if he were lucky, back to bed. Now she would leave for Spain and there would be bad blood between them. He must do something to put matters right.

  He looked around wildly for something he might do and found himself looking into the green eyes of a flame-haired girl who was offering him a cigarette and laughing. ‘I guess you need this.’ She had a slight American accent and Edward was immediately charmed. ‘Bandi can be a mite touchy about his art.’

  ‘Bandi? Oh, you mean Kavan.’

  ‘Yes, André. Some of us call him Bandi. Don’t ask me why.’

  Edward was always attracted to redheads and this one with her monkey face and freckles, her slightly twisted smile and the wicked gleam in her eye was – as black-haired Verity had forecast – hard to resist.

  ‘Can photography be an art?’ he asked in genuine surprise.

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s get into that. It’s true a few years ago Bandi was just another news photographer but things have changed since his stuff started appearing in Life. But you have to admit, they are good.’

  ‘I haven’t seen much of them yet but, as I tried to tell him, the ones I have seen are remarkable. I wonder, however, if my response is adequate? That’s why I asked you if they were art. It might alter how I feel about them.’

  ‘How do you feel about them?’

  ‘I suppose I want better captions.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning when I look at these pictures I feel sympathy and, in a general way, I would like to do something about the pain they expose – heal the wounded, stop the bombs and soothe the frightened child – but I know, after a good dinner tonight, I will hardly remember them. Only if Verity talks about her experiences in Spain and I argue with her will these photographs start to be important to me. Only with words to back them up will these images mean something. I’m sorry, I’m being pompous. Verity would have stopped me ages ago.’

  ‘Someone said that a photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.’

  ‘Yes, that’s good. I’m not sure what it means, but it feels right. You must be Gerda Meyer? Verity told me about you. To be accurate, she told me I wasn’t to fall for you but you are going to have to help by not looking at me like that.’

  Gerda turned away her head. ‘Sorry! Was I staring? I suppose I was surprised. From what Verity told me, I was expecting to see a silly-ass, music-hall aristocrat with nothing in his face but a monocle.’

  Edward found himself laughing again. ‘Perhaps it was unwise of Verity to talk to each of us about the other. It leads to . . . expectations. Let’s complete the introductions though. Perhaps you mistake me for someone else. I’m Edward Corinth.’ They shook hands solemnly. ‘You were in Spain with Verity? At the siege of Toledo?’

  ‘With Bandi, really. We’re lovers – at least some of the time.’ She laughed. ‘Have I shocked you?’

  Edward shook his head. ‘You are a photographer too, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think so but Bandi can be rather dismissive. You must know from Verity how difficult it is being a woman and a war reporter. Do you want to see some of my photographs? No one else does. They’re over there in the corner.’

  ‘Of course. I would like that very much.’

  He followed Gerda across the room. A sequence of about thirty photographs of what was clearly a Spanish village devastated by war met his gaze.

  ‘Not cheerful, I’m afraid, but it is necessary to tell the truth especially the truth no one wants to hear.’

  Edward was transfixed. Beneath photographs of jubilant troops at Barcelona’s train station captioned ‘Off to fight the Insurgents at the Aragon Front’ were pictures of what looked like a whole village in flight – men, women and children, most on donkeys but some in or on ramshackle vehicles, all with that bewildered look of refugees turned out of their homes by the brutal hand of war. The contrast seemed to say it all. How war shatters illusions, destroys lives and brings – not much-vaunted freedom – but despair.

  ‘It was a place called Cerro Muriano. I took them a few months ago. It makes one sick to the stomach, doesn’t it?’

  ’I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. They are magnificent. They wrench at your heart.’

  ‘There are many worse scenes,’ she said grimly. ‘Dead bodies and so much grief but I didn’t think them suitable for a fashionable London art gallery.’

  ‘And for people like me to gawp at,’ he said looking at her.

  ‘That too,’ she agreed.

  Edward turned back to the black-and-white images on the wall and saw a group photograph of soldiers – some arm in arm – standing on or leaning against an armoured vehicle. ‘Isn’t that David?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘David Griffiths-Jones? Yes, of course, you know him, don’t you? He’s very good-looking, don’t you think?’

  Edward looked at her suspiciously. He thought he might be being teased. He was. He smiled. ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘But you don’t like him?’

  ‘No, I don’t like him’ he agreed. ‘I expect he sees this whole exhibition in terms not of art but propaganda. You have to admit, powerful as they are, these photographs provide a one-sided view of the war. There’s no room here for any atrocities carried out by Republican troops.’

  ‘We can’t be on both sides of the fence. My pictures aren’t faked if that’s what you’re getting at.’

&
nbsp; She sounded angry but Edward was imperturbable. He liked this girl but he did not like the feeling that he was being manipulated. Perhaps it was the presence of Griffiths-Jones, so pleased with himself, which made the hair on the back of his head stand up. ‘I didn’t say they were. I simply said that there are other atrocities which have not been photographed.’

  ‘It’s not my job to be “balanced” or “fair”,’ Gerda said, going red about the ears. ‘I just take photographs of what I see.’

  She spoke fiercely and Edward was quick to apologize.

  ‘Forgive me. It’s just what I said. Give me the context and I’ll read these images and make sense of them. I admire your photographs and the courage it took to get them but in this place, surrounded by so many Comrades, I feel as if I am being told what to think and feel.’

  He waited for her to stalk off or slap his face and watched as she thought about doing both of these things but then her irrepressible smile lit up her face.

  ‘I can see why Verity finds you so irritating but it’s probably why she respects you. You just refuse to toe the Party line, don’t you?’

  Edward did not answer but turned once more to the photographs.

  ‘And that face. I know it . . . Who is that?’

  ‘You’ve just been talking to him – Guy Baron.’

  ‘Of course! How stupid of me. He was fighting in Spain?’

  ‘No. He was just over for a few days “observing” but he rather fancied himself in fighting gear. I gave him a gun to hold and took his photograph. He was frightfully pleased.’

  ‘So David’s a friend of yours?’ he said.

  ‘Not really. He doesn’t have “friends”, you know – just comrades. Anyway, he’s a bit ruthless for me. There was this pal of mine – an English writer. He wasn’t very good at fighting. In fact they called him a coward. He wanted to leave the front line. David had a long talk with him and persuaded him to go back to the fighting. Secretly, he arranged for him to go to a place where he would be certain to be killed.’