Matthew Plampin - Illumination

‘Tell me, Monsieur,’ Clem asked, ‘what particular composition do you have in mind? The action seems a touch too distant to me.’

Besson just waved vaguely at the landscape before taking a mallet and tent pegs from his canvas sack. There was something hurried about his actions; this was a man eager to dispense with a chore.

‘How many images is Mr Inglis planning to include?’

The photographer crouched to knock in a peg. ‘Who can say what that fool might want?’

Clem smiled. ‘He’s an old acquaintance of my mother’s, you know.’

‘They are opponents. It is plain. He plans to keep her close to make sure she does not get ahead of him.’

The smile faded. ‘Yes, well, you may be onto something there …’

‘Both are here to feast on our defeat, our misery.’ Besson moved from one corner of the tent to another. He sounded more sad than angry. ‘Vultures on the carcass of France.’

‘I suppose that I am a vulture too then, Monsieur Besson?’

‘I don’t know what you are,’ Besson said. He drove the final peg all the way into the ground with a single blow from his mallet. ‘What are you?’

Clem raised his hands, indicating his harmlessness. ‘Merely a brother, Monsieur, motivated by concern for his sister. She lives in Montmartre – that’s why we came. Why I came, at least. And I thought I’d be long gone by now, believe me.’ A shell sparked in the distance, the sound of the blast reaching them a second later. ‘I certainly never imagined that I’d be seeing anything like this.’

The photographer walked around his tent: basic enough, but it would serve. He took in the view for a few moments, then he set up a tripod, attached his Dallmeyer and slotted in a focusing screen.

‘She is not with you, though, this sister,’ he said, ducking under the hood to operate the sliding-box mechanism. ‘Could you not find her?’

‘Oh, we found her all right, tucked in the seediest corner of the seediest dive – and having a bloody whale of a time.’ Clem’s laugh rang hollow. ‘We thought that she might have need of us, Monsieur, but it swiftly transpired that she very much did not . There’s a man involved, you understand. Some red from the provinces named Jean-Jacques Allix.’

The hood was whipped back. Besson looked at him with new interest. ‘I know of him. I have heard him speak.’ He made a connection. ‘Your sister is his Anglaise . The painter.’

‘That she is.’ Clem drew on his cigarette. ‘I suppose she must cut a pretty distinctive figure.’

‘ Plein-air painters are becoming common in Montmartre. It is a cheap place to live.’ Besson worked a leather cap over the camera lens and picked up the doctor’s bag. The faintest patch of colour had appeared on his cheek. ‘But a woman, and a foreigner as well – this is not so common.’

‘Have you actually met Hannah, Monsieur Besson? Are you two acquainted?’

‘Yes – no.’ The photographer started for the tent, avoiding Clem’s eye as he passed. ‘We have spoken on a couple of occasions. Only pleasantries. I see her, though, in the lanes and gardens. At her easel.’

Besson was talking quickly, as if attempting to deny something. Clem hid his amusement. It could safely be asserted that this photographer numbered among his sister’s Parisian admirers; the poor cove couldn’t even begin to disguise it. He turned to the tent. Besson was kneeling within, frowning slightly as he mixed his solutions. Keen to advance the conversation, sensing that he’d given himself away, he asked about Clem and Elizabeth’s original plan.

‘You meant to leave today, did you not, but have been trapped in with us.’ The Frenchman slid a glass negative plate from its case. ‘Why did you arrive in Paris so late, Mr Pardy? Surely you could have come for your sister a week ago. Why take such a risk?’

‘We wouldn’t have come at all had we not been summoned. Han is not overly fond of surprise visits.’

Clem paused; he tapped off a half-inch of ash and gave Besson the whole sad story, from the arrival of the letter in St John’s Wood to their restitution in the Grand Hotel that morning. He’d never been one for holding things back; and besides, he’d gained a definite impression that this fellow might be able to help. The photographer was pretty astute, that much was clear, despite his curtness. His perspective, as a resident of Montmartre who knew a little of Hannah’s life, could be exactly what was required.

If any original observations occurred to Monsieur Besson, however, he kept them to himself. While Clem rambled on he set about preparing his negative plate, coating it with treacle-like collodion, dipping it in silver nitrate and transporting it carefully to the camera.

‘It is good that you are still here, Monsieur,’ he said when Clem had finished, as he pushed in the plate. ‘Your sister may have need of you yet.’

Clem remembered his minute-long exchange with Hannah the previous evening. ‘She would disagree with you there, old man,’ he replied with a rueful chuckle. ‘She would most certainly disagree.’

Besson said no more. Taking off the lens cap, he wordlessly counted down the five seconds needed for an exposure; then he replaced the cap, slid out the plate and retreated again to his tent.

A cry rose from the gates, down in front of their position. Between the houses and the fortifications, Clem could see a dozen or so French infantrymen being led back into the city. They were young, as was every regular soldier in Paris it seemed, and they were plainly under arrest, their hands bound and their faces raw and bloody. Some had placards around their necks; they were deserters, those who’d fled under fire, being returned for punishment. The crowd jeered and spat, throwing whatever bits of rubbish they could find. Clem dropped his cigarette into the dirt and scraped over it with his boot. The battle had been brought disconcertingly close.

Besson emerged from the tent with the dripping negative in his hand. The image captured on the glass was visible against the pale canvas of the tent-flap. It was a failure, the contrast too strong: black rooftops and fortifications in the foreground with little else but whiteness beyond. Besson flexed his wrist and spun the plate towards the railway line, where it shattered against an iron track. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat down heavily on the grass.

‘It is no use. I am no photographer.’

‘Come now,’ said Clem, trying to be consolatory, ‘you know the process well enough. And you have this fine camera.’

‘It is not mine. I borrowed it. I needed the money.’ Besson winced. ‘Foolish.’

‘But you’re an associate of the great Nadar, are you not? Surely that counts for something?’

‘Not with photographs. I let the idiot Inglis think this so that he would employ me. My association with Nadar is in a very different sphere.’ Besson pushed back his hat and with some pride said, ‘I am an aérostier , Monsieur. A member of the Société d’Aviation .’

Clem was dumbstruck. Why the devil hadn’t he realised this sooner? It was virtually bloody signposted . The brittle Monsieur Besson had a clear scientific leaning, yet was also practical in manner and rather weather-beaten: the exact type drawn to ballooning. That strange suit had obviously been made to withstand the mishaps commonly endured by the aeronautical gentleman. The sketch he’d been working on in the cab had been of a gas valve for a balloon.

And then there was his link with Nadar, who had once been quite a name in ballooning circles, almost as prominent as he was among photographers. An exhibition of his innovations at the Crystal Palace a few years ago had inspired in Clem a brief mania for all things air-bound; a bundle of designs for winged dirigibles was still stowed under his bed in St John’s Wood. At the peak of his accomplishments, however, Nadar had been forcibly and very publicly removed from the heavens. There had been an accident on the North Sea coast, with serious injuries – Madame Nadar had only just escaped with her life. Many had chosen to regard it as divine punishment for hubris; Nadar had gone back to his photographs like a man chastened.