The photographer’s mark

This original prose fiction passage is set in the nineteenth century.

When Mr Bell went to dine, he left me in charge of the photographic rooms. I was only his assistant, but I placed myself behind the counter and opened the ledger as he did, with both hands and some ceremony. Before the afternoon was over, I expected to prove that his confidence in me had not been misplaced.

The rain had driven most people from the street when a woman entered. Her cuffs had been mended with darker thread, and the water from her skirt made a little pool upon the clean floor. She asked for the portrait of a boy named Hugh Ellison. Mr Bell, she said, had promised that it would be ready and that there would be no charge.

I requested her ticket. She had none.

“People who mislay tickets are often remarkably exact in remembering promises,” I said.

She did not appear to notice my meaning. Instead, she described the portrait: the boy was seated sideways, with one hand upon a toy ship, and a lock of hair had fallen across his left eye. The account was precise, but precision may be prepared in advance. I found the name in the ledger. Beside it, Mr Bell had drawn a small cross, though he had written no instruction that I could understand.

“Then I shall wait until he returns,” she said.

There was no anger in her voice, which irritated me more than anger might have done. She spoke as if her right to remain were settled. I told her that the rooms were closing and placed the portrait in the locked cupboard. For the first time, her composure failed. She put one hand on the counter and asked me, very quietly, not to send her away without it. I replied that feeling could not replace proof.

Mr Bell returned as she reached the door. He called her Mrs Ellison and went at once to the cupboard. The cross, he explained, was his own mark for a portrait already paid for and intended for private delivery. The boy had died before his mother could see the finished likeness.

I reminded him that I could not have known the meaning of a mark he had never explained. He agreed, although he looked at the chair in which Mrs Ellison had offered to wait. When she had gone, I entered the incident in my memorandum: no property released without authority. The sentence was perfectly accurate. Nevertheless, before the ink dried, I had blotted it twice.