Endurance Page 31

  ‘So you are married to your camera.’

  ‘Only when I am at work. But I will take a day off if you will be my guide at the pyramids.’

  Toni nodded and smiled. Despite the occasion I lacked the courage to take her hand.

  ●

  A day or so later we catch an early-morning tram to the pyramids at Giza. We leave the tram stop and, escaping all the pedlars and camel owners, we walk quickly away until it is just ourselves wandering across the dry plain under an enormous blue sky. There is a cold wind blowing strongly enough to swirl the white sand ahead of us.

  Today I am a sightseer, not a photographer, although like a tourist I have a vest-pocket Kodak. I am a free man, unencumbered by my usual paraphernalia.

  ‘But I wanted to be your assistant with the cine camera,’ protests Toni. ‘Have you taken enough film of Cairo?’

  ‘I have very little film left and no more time for developing. All my time is spent preparing for the exhibition and I’ve only a week to have my equipment on board.’

  ‘There is a boat? You are leaving Cairo?’

  ‘Well, yes, I have to be in London by May. I’ve received an embarkation notice.’

  ‘Frank, you didn’t mention this.’

  ‘The dates are not confirmed; with the U-boats no one ever knows the real departure time.’

  ‘I see. Thank you for telling me.’

  Silence descends and I wonder how I have brought this about and how to respond. Surely she knew I have been waiting to return to England.

  We keep walking, heading nowhere in particular but all the time overshadowed by Giza’s four-thousand-year-old stone monuments, the tombs of ancient kings. Our conversation has stopped without any accord as to where we are heading. Toni is not dressed for a lengthy expedition. Her silk dress billows under a coat and thick fur stole to keep out the chill desert air. A felt hat with flowers on the brim and a veil combine to prevent me seeing her expression. On the uneven stony ground she refuses my arm, despite the inadequacy of her petite shoes. My mind whirls for something to say but my imagination is defeated.

  Looking up, I can see we have passed the third, smaller pyramid of Menkaure. ‘We should turn around, Toni—I am not sure it is safe past here.’

  ‘Are you worried you won’t reach home safely? There are no Turk soldiers here.’

  ‘You know I meant safe for you.’

  ‘How could I know that!’

  I have wit enough to know there is no answer to this. We turn and continue our silent walk back the way we have come.

  We are soon back alongside the Great Pyramid, which towers several hundred feet above us. Toni is heading straight to the tram stop. Such a small distance and each step irreversible. A sense of urgency overwhelms me.

  ‘Please, Toni. At least let us sit awhile here so we can talk.’

  She turns towards the base of the Great Pyramid and I follow.

  The conversation does not go as I would have planned. But my own inchoate intentions have been developing slowly day by day. I want to return to England and I want the exhibition to proceed. With the Shackleton film stalled, it is essential the London exhibition be a success. And then I want to go home, hopefully with something to show for myself. I can’t go back to Australia with nothing more than when I left.

  I know I am incomplete and inadequate. I should be an equal of a Mawson or a Shackleton. I have a reputation but not an income. I have no business once the war ends and I have no supporters to help me, I wouldn’t ask nor expect any favours of Mawson, Shackleton or Bean. I have no wife or close family and receive only the occasional letter from my mother. I am the black sheep. I am the rolling stone that gathers no moss. I have never stayed still long enough. Other than my mother my life is devoid of family. There is never correspondence from my siblings and I send them none. I am lucky to be alive considering all I have done and I am not looking forward to taking my chances on a steamer back to England. I feel embarrassed about my age, my once-thick wiry hair is thinning and I am about to turn thirty-three, the age of Christ when he died. And now, once again, my chance to be married, to be together with someone, with Toni, is already falling apart.

  Toni is staring into the distance. The icy wind is creating little whirlies in the sand. Overwhelmed by my own anxieties, I have no insight into what she is thinking or how she feels about me. If I cannot change my departure what can I say.

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  This startles her. ‘Don’t be silly, Frank. You are about to leave.’

  ‘We could be married before I leave. I could speak to your father.’

  ‘Don’t say things you don’t mean.’

  ‘Toni, I have to return to England. You could come with me.’

  ‘Frank, I cannot just walk out on the cast and Monsieur Bandmann. You haven’t thought about this.’

  ‘I am not good at thinking about these things. How could I be, if I don’t know your answer? What do you say, Toni: will you marry me?’

  ‘And where would we live? Tell me that.’

  ‘Australia, of course.’

  ‘But your family have never even seen me.’

  ‘Toni, my ma would be over the moon if I was married.’

  ‘You don’t know that. I am a foreigner.’

  ‘My mother’s parents were French. But would you leave Cairo?’

  ‘There is nothing for me in Cairo except the company. I could leave Cairo, but . . . I don’t know.’

  Toni is avoiding my gaze and staring shyly at the ground. I am so impatient I leap to my feet and, reaching down, I seize Toni around the waist and lift her high up onto one of the stones of the Great Pyramid so her feet dangle helplessly.

  ‘I am not letting you down until you give your answer!’

  ‘Frank, put me down!’

  ‘I have to have an answer, Toni.’

  ‘Are you sure? Do you mean what you are saying?’

  ‘I could not be more certain. You would make me the happiest man in the world.’

  ‘Then I will marry you.’

  I lift her down and we kiss and hold each other for what seems a long time. It must be the desert sand, for we both have tears in our eyes. Toni produces a handkerchief and dabs her cheeks and mine. After a few minutes my awkwardness returns. We sit down beside each other, looking out across the sands. Now I really have no idea what to say. Toni cries into her handkerchief and I hold her hands in mine.

  16

  London, May 1918

  Arrangements were quickly put in place and on 11 April Toni and I were married by the Catholic chaplain at the AIF barracks in Cairo. I wore my Light Horse uniform. Toni floated before my eyes in a dark satin dress. We had a few days’ honeymoon aboard a boat on the Nile before racing back to Cairo and then, after a short, distressing farewell at Port Said, I joined a convoy to England, leaving my new bride to await my return.

  Once on board, I wrote letters to Toni and Ma, tried to catch up on sleep and started thinking about how I could earn a living to support a wife and family. I had no interest in running photographic studios. Cinefilm production seemed the most likely prospect, but would not produce any immediate income. I needed to exhibit my existing work. I needed to meet with Perris and find out the latest with the Shackleton film and whether I could secure the Australian rights, and perhaps also to the Ponting film. The subject that remained foremost in the public imagination was the war, ahead of all else, including Antarctica. Providing the forthcoming exhibition of AIF photographs was a success, my reputation back home should have a solid base. The exhibition was in the centre of London and surely would draw in the crowds. Due to constant travelling, I had never before been able to arrange a major showing of my work. All I then needed was the rights to run an Australian tour of the exhibition. This would be the only collection of photographs by the Australian official war photographer and would be in demand in each state capital. Not only that, but I was the obvious person to show the pictures in Australia and to provide commenta
ry. For as long as the war dragged on and for some time afterwards there would be an appetite for film and photographs of the conflict. The most immediate threat to my plans was the constant U-boat menace.

  It may in part have been the bliss of being a newlywed, but I had cause to be excited. If my luck held in running the gauntlet with U-boats, then the commercial success in Australia of my AIF photographs seemed assured. The Mawson and Shackleton expeditions had made my reputation as a photographer, and I was now on my way to an international exhibition of my latest work. I would be famous in my own right, whatever Shackleton did with his film. And what’s more, I had a beautiful wife waiting for me.

  My success was hard earned. I had taken risks to see things that few others would ever see. However, what I failed to see was that it was not just German U-boats that could thwart my plans, but people on my own side of this conflict.

  It was an uncomfortable, nerve-racking voyage to England. One of the passengers ran a book on how many ships the convoy would lose on the way out of the Mediterranean, how many before the Irish Coast. I did not relax from the U-boat threat until we entered the Thames. By the time I disembarked and reached my room at the Imperial Hotel, I had a severe head cold and fever and went to bed with the shakes. The next day my voice had gone and I was completely disabled for the meeting I had planned with Perris.

  London remained full of uniforms. The U-boat campaign meant ongoing shortages. Coupons and rationing were an accepted part of life. Nocturnal air raids continued. In the lengthening evenings, crowds congregated outside the tube stations waiting for the sirens: the old and the young, mothers with babes in arms and children clinging to their skirts. At my hotel there was a letter waiting from Leslie Blake. As usual it gave no clue as to which sector of the front he was writing from. ‘This conflict will continue through yet another Christmas,’ he wrote. ‘I am not sure I can last that long.’

  I had been told to report to the High Commission staff at the newly built, but as yet officially unopened, Australia House on the Strand in London. It was a most grand and undoubtedly expensive building, considering we were in the middle of a terrible war. Each of the Australian states had their own floor full of bureaucrats. It was a Buckingham Palace for colonials. Humiliatingly, I had to introduce my mute self by writing notes to the various clerks and was eventually collected by a Captain Smart, who was in charge of preparations for the exhibition, which would open on 25 May. He escorted me to Grafton Galleries for an inspection of the wall space, and then to Raines and Co., where I was ecstatic to see the enlargements of my prints, some of them more than twenty feet long. However we had little more than two weeks in which to finalise picture selection, printing, framing, placement, signage and labelling. There were also projectors to be installed for lantern slides as well as the printing of guidebooks for the exhibition. I had thought from my cables with Bean that the work was more advanced.

  Smart allocated me a room at Australia House and I reviewed the prints which had been made. Despite my written instructions, the photographic plates I had identified had not been printed, and locating them proved nigh impossible. Instead, I found images printed from plates I had not selected and which I regarded as inferior versions. Print sizes were completely messed up, which necessitated compromise or reprinting. As a result, and despite my laryngitis and feeling I had one foot in the grave, I had no alternative but to work day and night to save the exhibition. I was not prepared to have the bureaucracy ruin a year’s work.

  One week before the opening I received the colour reproductions of my Palestine photographs from the Paget Plate Company. These were most gratifying. They captured the very colours and light of the Middle East. Nowhere had I seen realistic colour reproduction as accurate and engaging.

  The Sunday before the opening I had managed to get to bed before midnight only to be awakened by the clamour of air-raid sirens, followed closely by the booming of antiaircraft guns. I listened to voices in the corridor as the top-floor guests evacuated. I stayed in my sickbed. Through cracks in the curtains I could see searchlights combing the night sky. Bombs began to fall, closer than I expected, but it was by then too late to move.

  Blasts from nearby explosions rocked the hotel and I heard the shattering of glass downstairs. After two hours the guns and bombing finally stopped and I slept.

  Three days out from the exhibition opening and still not a single picture was hung. With my voice recovered, I tore strips off Captain Not-Very-Smart. I insisted on changes which meant hanging a number of temporary substitute pictures until new reproductions arrived. I doubted the exhibition would be finished to my satisfaction for a further week. Others who were less fastidious may well have accepted the selections made by the High Commission staff. Captain Smart insisted they had done their best with the instructions they had. However, when I thought of the risks Wilkins and I had taken to get the perfect shot, and the sacrifices of the soldiers themselves, I could not live with myself knowing the prints were not as they should be. Nor did I want to be associated with the exhibition in its state of unreadiness. Smart looked distraught when I told him, ‘Near enough is not good enough. I’m afraid the High Commission will have to conduct the official opening without me.’ I had not been invited to speak and, in any case, was unwilling to give my blessing to the chaotic and incomplete arrangements presided over by Captain Not-Very-Smart and the High Commission rabble.

  I kept working feverishly to finish the pictures. It was a great relief to hear that the opening was well attended by numerous dignitaries and politicians. An AIF military band played. As I expected, the large composite battle scenes received the greatest accolades among the one hundred and thirty or so photographs. As insisted on by Bean, the exhibition notes explained that The Raid: An episode during the Battle of Zonnebeke combined twelve negatives in its depiction of two waves of infantry going ‘over the top’ amid Bosche shelling and with aircraft bombing the German lines.

  The newspaper reviews were very favourable and confirmed the exhibition was in the vanguard of modern photographic technique. Numbers increased from several hundred a day to over a thousand. Each half-hourly showing of the colour lantern slides received applause. However, some of the AIF lecturers for the slides were woeful amateurs who knew nothing of photography and either could not be heard or made up their own inane commentary.

  My work on the photographs was not long finished when, in early June, who should come through the gallery door but George Wilkins.

  ‘Congratulations, old boy,’ he cried, shaking my hand warmly. ‘So Palestine had its compensations after all. When do we get to meet the lucky lady?’

  ‘Soon enough. I thought you’d never make it here.’

  ‘Left Boulogne this morning. Bean’s gone to GHQ—he’ll be here tomorrow, though.’

  My eye caught sight of a newly minted medallion on Wilkins’ tunic. ‘What’s this then, new silverware? Military Cross . . . you’re the one to be congratulated. Well done!’

  ‘Thanks, Frank; not sure I deserve it compared to the things we did together. Bean put me up for it. Actually, he told me he put both our names up.’

  ‘Really? Well, Charlie probably wants to tell me personally. Last I heard you were injured again, George. No good having medals unless you’re alive to wear them. How is France?’

  ‘Pretty grim,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The Germans control the Paris–Amiens railway line. They could take Paris if they wanted. I don’t think anyone knows what will happen.’ He grabbed my arm. ‘Show me around. Are any of these photographs of your wedding?’

  Wilkins was his usual unassuming self and well deserved the MC. But his citation was for the time we worked side by side in Flanders. We had both risked our lives to obtain pictures under heavy shellfire. The bias and string-pulling that went on in the army was despicable.

  The following afternoon, Bean came to find me in my room at Australia House. He wore a permanent frown and looked an old man. I was non-committal when he asked about
my plans now I was married.

  ‘Well, you should be pleased with the exhibition, Hurley. It has had good numbers through. The press like it.’ I knew he would never admit that almost all the talk was about my composite enlargements. They were the pictures that excited public interest; no one had seen anything like them. They dominated the rooms where they hung.

  ‘They said it’s superior to the British and Canadian exhibitions,’ I told him.

  ‘Quite so. Look, Captain Smart told me about the opening. He was genuinely bewildered by your concerns, you know.’

  ‘I can believe that. Anyhow, I fixed it.’

  ‘You certainly did. The trouble is, Hurley, the exhibition is for the AIF. It wasn’t meant to be the Frank Hurley show.’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? Well, it looks like a bloody advertisement. The AIF recruited two official photographers, but it’s your name on just about every picture.’

  ‘Well that’s hardly surprising; I was the senior photographer. George would be the first to admit he doesn’t have my skill.’

  ‘But if it’s his photograph, it should have his name on it.’

  ‘That’s something your Captain Smart was handling.’

  ‘I would have thought you might notice your name on a photograph that wasn’t yours.’

  ‘Look here, Bean, I don’t need to steal photographs taken by George. And I certainly do not want my name associated with someone else’s photograph.’

  The next day I raised with Bean what the plans were for showing the pictures to the Australian public.

  He was enthusiastic. ‘They are entitled see their diggers in action as soon as can be arranged. I need to see how best to do it. You know, Hurley, I am working to establish a permanent memorial.’

  I seized my opportunity. ‘I would like to offer to tour the exhibition in the capital cities. You need someone who knows how to look after the prints and I can help with lecturing. The prints would ultimately be part of your memorial.’