What might a camera capture other than a simple image? In the chaos and darkness of war, one photographer finds a terrifying answer…
London, 1992
“Wilding had a cottage on the highland moors. He was Scottish, you know, by pedigree, although he grew up mostly near London.” Sir Peregrine waved his cigar to indicate the city outside his comfortable West London club.
“That’s where I last saw him, that cottage he called Mousefoot Farm. Wasn’t a farm, mind you. Just a patch of rather tangled garden snatched up against a stone house with a massive red deer rack over the door, and that wild, rugged land all about. Bit isolated and rough for a man with a dicky leg, I always thought. Never understood how the man’s wife could bear it out there, and I suppose she’d had enough of it, at that. When our gang was last assembled there, she’d come down to London to live in civilized style. Wilding, though, he was another story. He’d seen enough of the world of men.”
The young man seated across from him in deep leather comfort leaned forward, his long arms on his long thighs, his eyes burning with interest. His name was Bradley Connors, and he found himself in London on his first photography assignment for Travel Candy Magazine, an in-flight photo teaser aimed at stimulating the appetites of jaded jetsetters. He was barely twenty-three years old, in love with the romance of the world, and could not imagine having seen enough of anything.
Sir Peregrine Randall, edging towards eighty, had a better grasp on ennui and disgust with his own kind. Still, he liked his little vices of smoke and bourbon, and he liked the quiet, manly coddling of his club. He even enjoyed the company of his fellow members, mostly sober old sorts who were as world-weary as he, and the occasional young up-and-comer for zest.
This boy, Connors, for instance – he’d known the kid’s grandfather quite well back in their youth. He could see the ghost of his friend in the young man’s intense gaze and easy smile. Billy had been a wartime photographer, like Wilding, but that was where the similarity ended. While Billy Connors had been a competent hand with a camera, he had not possessed the magic way of seeing into subjects that had characterized Wilding’s work.
Billy had gone on to other pursuits after the war, happy enough to leave photography to Wilding. He’d been at Mousefoot that last time they were all together, and no doubt would have shared the story with his grandson if he’d had the chance. But Billy Connors had died in a plane crash over the American Rockies while this lad was still wearing nappies.
“I’d appreciate hearing anything you can tell me about Charles Emory Wilding, sir,” Connors said. “He’s the reason I became a photographer. I have some journals my grandfather kept, and they mention him often as a genius with both camera and darkroom. Of course, I’ve studied Mr. Wilding’s body of work, and I agree.”
Connors hesitated before continuing in a low voice. “The journals imply that Wilding gave up photography and disappeared because of some … madness.”
“Inspired you, did he?”
Sir Peregrine chuckled and pressed the bell on the cocktail table beside his chair. If he was going to tell this story—and he was, indeed, going to tell it—he’d need another knock of bourbon. Hell, the lad would probably need one.
“Good old Charlie, he was a strange duck but solid and true as an iron rod. You could do worse for a hero, and the man had a wizard’s touch with that camera. Was never without it. I think he even slept with it, another reason the wife took herself off, I guess.”
Markham, the club attendant, made his appearance, and Sir Peregrine gave his order for two stout tumblers of Woodford Reserve, waving away Connors’ protest. Markham departed, and Sir Peregrine brandished his cigar at the snapping fire in the fireplace and at the plush January snow outside the window drawing down night and silence on London.
“See that, my boy? We’ve all the makings of an evening fit for ghostly tales, and what better setting for speaking of the dead. For in my heart, I know Charlie’s gone. Certainly, your own grandfather is no longer with us, and he was there the night I heard the story I’m about to tell. Heard it from Charlie’s own lips, and whatever we may think of it, Charlie believed its truth to his core.”
The bourbon arrived on a silver tray, accompanied by an assortment of nuts, cheeses, and dark chocolates. Sir Peregrine lifted his glass and inhaled the rich complexity of the bouquet.
“Go on, son,” he encouraged Connors, and settled more comfortably into his chair to tell his tale.
***
“We went to Mousefoot in the autumn, 1955. Your grandparents were getting ready to go back to America, Rex Stephenson was planning a trip to Australia (where he eventually settled), and I was desperate to get away from London. The city was still something of a wreck from the bombing, but rebuilding was in full swing, and I’d been working with an architectural firm, so immersed in it all, I’d barely come up for air. Your grandfather, Billy … he’d been working with me, but home was calling him.
“When Wilding sent out his invitations to join him at Mousefoot Farm, we thought it a cracking idea. A jaunt up the Scottish Highlands, away from the bustle and noise, was just what we needed, especially as it would be the last gathering of our old gang from the war days for quite some time. The last time we’d ever see some of them again, as it turned out. You never can predict such things, son.”
For a moment, Sir Peregrine wore a pensive face as he sipped his bourbon.
“We assembled there on a Thursday. A week without the ladies, although Wilding’s wife had put her personal boycott on Mousefoot months earlier. The cottage had already reverted to that slightly shabby bachelor comfort it had enjoyed before their marriage. Wilding was a meticulous man in the darkroom but dusting and mirror-polishing were not his forte. The great room was a wild chaos of books, cameras in various stages of disassemble, pipes, and stacks of photographic prints among sagging leather furniture and tartan throws. The fireplace smoked a bit, but as it was large enough to count as a room itself, it heated the place so efficiently the windows were often open, and so a little smoke was no trouble.
“Billy and I found a driver with a battered Jeep in the nearest village and bumped and racketed over the moors on what I can only describe as a cow path to Wilding’s door. Stephenson had tramped in from the same village, a distance of some seven miles, and we found him lounging in the garden when we arrived. Wilding came to stand in his doorway as we roared up, puffing at his pipe while we dragged forth our rucksacks. He’d grown quite thin, his face all hollows and angles, and I wondered if he’d been ill.
‘Good of you blokes to come. You’re in time for pre-dinner cocktails,’ he drawled. ‘Stephenson has the jump on you.’
Leaning his head out around the doorjamb, he shouted into the garden. ‘Ho, Rex! Mix up some more of your special poison.’
Stephenson heaved himself out of the wicker basket chair he had sprawled in and went through to the kitchen to begin rattling bottles. Our taciturn driver turned the Jeep and went off in a belch of black smoke across the moor. We shook hands all around, heartily glad to be among such friends on a fine day. Inside, the late-day autumn sun drifted through the windowpanes like wafers of gold leaf and lay across the carpets Wilding had brought back with him from North Africa. A beef joint perfumed the air in savory fashion, spitted and roasting in the fireplace like the feast of a barbarian king. Neeps and tatties and a hunk of charred meat still red on the inside … no better fare for a man.
‘When did you learn to cook?’ I asked, clapping Wilding on the shoulder as Stephenson slouched in with our drinks.
Wilding gave me a smile that was more like a grimace of pain. ‘I’ve learned quite a few useful things, Perry, the least of which was how to feed myself.’
‘I’d like to hear about some of those things,’ Billy said, and I knew he meant the photography. He’d mostly given up his own camera work, but he’d followed Wilding’s career with interest.
Wilding gave him a queer, haunted look.
‘Would you, really? Well, maybe after dinner, I’ll tell you something that’ll leave you bloody gobsmacked. For now, drink up, and let’s hear the news from London.’
“The four of us draped ourselves over the leather sofa and chairs and got up a lively conversation, luxuriating in the impressive heat of the fire as the chill evening drew in purple against the cottage, and sipping the good whiskey that Stephenson had barely adulterated with simple syrup and bitters. We ate, drank, and made merry as though we were old school chums, as though it hadn’t been war that had brought us together. And why not? We had survived and made good lives for ourselves, although I was aware of a transient brooding fluttering about Wilding like a shadow. Several times, I had glanced over at him in his firelit corner and found him staring into the ether, a grim little smile on his lips and his head tilted as though he were listening for a whisper. I had just made up my mind to ask him what troubled him when Billy began quizzing him about the many cameras scattered about the room.
‘What are you shooting with these days? Any of these?’
Billy stood in front of a library table littered with cameras and lenses and all manner of photographic what-not.
‘Geez, Charlie,’ he said, ‘you’ve torn the guts out of them.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Wilding said. ‘I’m giving up making pictures.’
‘The hell you are,’ Stephenson exclaimed.
‘No, no, it’s true,’ Wilding said.
He began to fill his pipe with tobacco, not looking at any of us.
‘I’ve no more stomach for photography. I’m selling Mousefoot and leaving for America at the end of the year. Jane won’t be coming … she’s said she’s had enough, and I don’t blame her a bit.’
“Well, we were thrashed. Billy sat down hard in his chair. Several minutes ticked past during which all that was heard was the crackling of the fire. Wilding smoked in silence and offered nothing more in the way of explanation. I thought of his strange demeanor when we had arrived and his moody lapses all the evening, his eerie attentiveness to something unseen. I thought of his established withdrawal from the world, with more time spent at Mousefoot every year, fewer photographic assignments accepted. My wife and I had seen Jane in London. She had been charmingly vague about her husband and their plans, and while Evelyn had expressed the opinion that the marriage was on the rocks, I chose to interpret Jane’s glibness as nothing more than a distaste for Wilding’s isolated property. Now I feared that my friend might have fallen prey to some disease of the mind or spirit that had affected his reason.
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘what’s this all about? You’ve a brilliant career you’ve worked hard to build. Good god, man, you’ve risked your life for it. Surely you can’t mean to throw it away.’
‘Aye,’ Wilding said after a long moment during which we all stared at him in bafflement. ‘I’ve risked my life for it. Given my life to it, to be accurate. There’ll be no more pictures. What I’ve got on film to be developed is the last of it, all but what’s loaded in that.’
“He pointed at an old Zeiss Super Ikonta sitting alone on a shelf in a fussy Victorian curio cabinet. It was the camera he’d been issued as a freelance wartime photojournalist, the camera he’d taken with him into North Africa. It was the eye through which he had seen, and shown, the bloodshed and devastation of the war. I knew he’d retired it when he came home, switching to lighter, smaller cameras.
“Billy, always a quick, impulsive fellow, darted to the cabinet to stare in at the camera. His hand was on the door latch, and I felt a sudden cold douse of fear that he would take out the camera and turn it upon us. Funny, that. I haven’t thought of that in ages, and of course I didn’t believe the story Wilding told us that night, but I can remember that ridiculous icy moment of terror as if it happened yesterday.
“Wilding shot to his feet. ‘Don’t touch it! For god’s sake, get away from there.’
“Billy snatched back his hand as though the latch had burned him and turned an astonished gaze on Wilding. Stephenson, who’d been quiet all this time, sat up from his half-reclining position with a grim and alert look on his face.
‘I think you’d better tell us what this is all about, Charlie,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Wilding said, folding himself back onto his chair. ‘It’s time someone else knew, although I don’t expect you chaps to believe a word of it.’
This is what he told us …”
to be continued…
Well now I'm downright intrigued. Can't wait to continue it tomorrow!
Love it! I haven’t been to Egypt—except through Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. This story is transporting!