The Guilty Secret Read Online Free PDF

looked suitably disappointed, and proffered three hundred escudos. Jonathan offered two hundred. A bargain had been struck, and the photographer beamingly placed us on the second of the steps, Jonathan’s arms around my waist.
    The photographer’s head disappeared beneath the yellow drapery and then emerged almost immediately, making adjustments with a bit of rough wood that seemed to act as a light meter for him. Once more his head disappeared under the cloth his hands carefully inserted between slits.
    â€˜He isn’t really going to take a photograph with that, is he?’ I asked. ‘And how will we get it if he does? He’ll have to send it to us.’
    Finally the balding head emerged and Jonathan stepped down to ask how we received the photograph, did he want our address?
    The bald head shook vehemently. Lovingly he extricated a blank piece of card from the draped interior, dropping it into a solution of liquid that swirled in a narrow wooden box hanging at one end of his camera.
    â€˜I don’t believe it,’ Jonathan said laughing. ‘It isn’t a con. That thing is actually working and he’s developing a negative!’
    Unbelievingly we saw him lift the dripping, now dark piece of card, and position it carefully on a projection of wood in front of the camera’s lens.
    â€˜What’s he doing now?’
    â€˜Photographing the negative. This I just have to see to believe. Perhaps we should have given him the four hundred escudos he asked for. It would have been worth it for an experience like this!’
    There was much dipping of our would be photograph in a bucket of solution and then, triumphantly he lifted from its murky depths, a photograph, slightly more grey and white than black and white, but a photograph, taken in five minutes flat with a camera that resembled those that waited to photograph a much earlier generation against the pyramids or with one foot triumphantly on a shot tiger. And not only one photograph, but two. Still wet, but showing two people, arms around each other, laughing into each other’s eyes as if they were lovers. I wondered if the same thought struck Jonathan as he looked at his. If it did, he remained silent about it, saying only:-
    â€˜Get your camera from the car Jenny. If I don’t photograph this fellow and his camera no-one is ever going to believe me!’
    The photographer leant one arm proudly on his camera, the tripod swinging a trifle unsteadily, and beamed obligingly. Then we hurried into the car, the breeze, with nothing to stop it as it swirled in from the Atlantic, too chilly for comfort. As Jonathan swept round the curves of the steep hillside down into Viana I reflected that I was glad of seat belts, and that my nerves had certainly improved in the last few days.
    Once on the narrow road north, Jonathan’s driving slowed considerably. It had to. When a road is only twelve feet wide and oxen with horns with a five foot span amble down it, there is no alternative. The animals all looked well cared for, with glossy amber coats and ornate wooden harnesses. The old women or children leading them looked less well cared for, but all smiled as we slowed down, waiting till the oxen and the cart, usually full of hay and squealing toddlers had turned off into a farm track leaving the road clear again, or slowly easing round them, the children waving at us enthusiastically. Houses in delicate shades of pinks, greys and whites, their roofs the colour of deep peach, scattered the lush green fields and vines grew everywhere. Every cottage, no matter how humble, had its small piece of land and its vines.
    â€˜It all looks vaguely familiar,’ Jonathan said. ‘It reminds me of somewhere …’
    â€˜Ireland. Ireland with vines and oranges and olives and almonds.’
    â€˜And grapes. You’re right, Jenny Wren. Though I’ve never seen the women in Ireland washing by the river banks as they do