by Clare Clark
It was a tempting offer. Though a great number of their friends were writers and artists and composers, nobody in London seemed to talk about poetry any more or painting or music. Instead promising playwrights and eminent poets exchanged grim stories of the sufferings of the match girls in Hackney and the coal miners in Yorkshire. Conversations, which had once drawn deeply upon intuition and imagination, had become lists of statistics: slum populations, mortality rates, hours of schooling, pence per hour or per gross. The Irish question, universal suffrage, free secular education, trade unions, prison reform, the minimum wage and the eight-hour working day. They lectured, protested, organised meetings, argued for revolution, and bemoaned the exasperating ignorance and passivity of the English working man.
Naturally Maribel did all of these things too. No one knew the arguments better than she did. She lectured and protested and organised and she tried to be glad, because the cause was just and good and it was what all their friends were doing. But for all that she couldn’t help resenting it, just a little. There was no beauty in politics. It was all business.
‘Stay,’ Charlotte coaxed. ‘The Fabians will forgive you. One day. Or a week. I don’t have to be back in London until next Monday.’
There was a loud shriek from the end of the room. Arthur was chasing the little ones with handfuls of straw that he threatened to stuff down their necks. Ursie, her crown askew, stood on a chair shouting encouragement while, by the fireplace, Edward tossed coins with George and Bertie, who called out their bets as the shillings spun in the air. In the corner behind the piano William and Theo held Matilda by her ankles and swung her backwards and forwards with such vigour that it seemed certain she would fly. The little girl screamed with delight.
Maribel smiled at Charlotte and shook her head.
‘If only I could,’ she said.
Upstairs before dinner, while Edward played billiards with Arthur, Maribel took her writing case from the wardrobe and unlocked it. The envelope was thick, a rich creamy white, and slightly larger than was strictly conventional. The address was written in dark blue ink and placed, as it always had been, precisely in the centre of the envelope. The handwriting too was just the same, its letters slanted slightly to the right, the loops tucked neatly into themselves like hair ribbons.
She turned the envelope over, running her finger over its sealed edge. Mrs Edward Campbell Lowe. The last time they had seen one another, not one of those names had been hers. Very slowly she reached into the writing case, slid the silver letter opener from its leather pocket, and inserted it under the flap of the envelope. The paper sighed as she cut it. Inside was a single sheet of paper. Her fingers trembled as she drew it out.
My dear M,
I hope this letter finds you well.
The letter was very short. Maribel read it through three times, holding the paper with the tips of her fingers as though she meant to tear it in two.
I shall be in London at the end of May and would be most grateful if you would consent to see me. I would not ask if it were not of the greatest importance. Naturally you may be assured of my utmost discretion. I shall write again when I know my arrangements.
Your affectionate mother
Maribel looked at the letter for a long time. Then, returning it to its envelope, she slid it once more beneath the unused envelopes in her writing case. On the mantelpiece the clock struck the hour. She should bathe or she would be late for dinner.
Instead she sat on the window seat, looking out over the garden. The rain had stopped at last and the evening light was as pale and new as the inside of a shell. Somewhere a pigeon cooed. She fumbled her cigarette case from her pocket and snapped it open. The symmetry of the white cylinders, the way in which they fitted precisely into the silver case, was soothing somehow, a refutation of human error. Maribel had her cigarettes rolled for her at Benson & Hedges in Old Bond Street and sent over in packages of one hundred. Mr Hedges boasted to his customers that his rollers were the most dextrous in London, that they could produce forty immaculate cigarettes in a single minute. Maribel had never been able to imagine that. Her fingers shook as she set a cigarette between her lips, struck a match. She smoked fiercely, her shoulders hunched, drawing the smoke into her skull. When the smouldering tobacco threatened her fingers she used the stub to light another.
She would have to tell Edward, of course. She could not meet her mother without telling Edward. And if she refused to meet her? She was not sure that she could make that decision without him either. She had told him a little of her family at the very beginning, of course, recounted foolish stories from her childhood as everyone did, but they were few and quickly forgotten. By that time the past was ancient history and dull history at that. It had nothing to do with her, with what she had become. She was a different person by then.
When other people enquired about her name or her family or remarked upon her unusual accent, she only shrugged and offered the briefest of explanations. Maria Isabel Constanza de la Flamandière was such a mouthful that she had always been known simply as Maribel. The only child of a French father and a Spanish mother, she had spent her girlhood in Chile where she had spoken both languages, French in conversation with her parents, a clumsy local version of her mother’s tongue with the servants and shopkeepers. At the age of twelve she had been sent to live with her father’s sister in Paris, where she attended a convent school which she disliked. In Paris she had met Edward. That was that, the extent of her history. Even the most persistent of questioners could not draw her further.
The story of her chance encounter with Edward was, by contrast, well known to everyone in their circle. One sunny May afternoon, aged only just eighteen, she had been walking in the Champs-Elysées when she was almost knocked off her feet by an unruly black horse. Its handsome rider had dismounted to beg her forgiveness and, in the sweet breathlessness of those first moments, their lives had been altered for ever. The daze of that Parisian afternoon had intensified into an impassioned courtship, conducted in secret, and then an elopement. Five weeks later in London she and Edward had been married.
They had honeymooned in Texas and in Mexico. Back in London with an eavesdropping servant to consider, they never talked of her family again. She had never confessed to Edward that, on their return from America, she had written a letter to her mother. She could think of no way to tell him, no explanation for her recklessness. At the time she had not concerned herself with reasons. When she had unpacked their boxes and discovered the notices of their wedding, cut from the London newspapers and sent to them by Edward’s mother, she had folded them into a single sheet of writing paper on which she had scribbled a short note.
Mother,
Given the circumstances of our parting I thought you would be glad to know that, despite your steadfast belief that I would disgrace you, I am now married. We are currently resident at the above address in London, although we travel tomorrow to the family seat in Scotland. How provoking for you that you will not be able to boast about it. I would ask you not to reply to this letter but I should not wish you to worry unnecessarily.
M
She had posted the letter before she had had time to think better of it. That had been nearly ten years ago. Her mother had respected her wishes. She had not replied. Maribel had known that she would not. No doubt that was why she had risked writing in the first place, because there was no danger of the consequences. Her mother was a woman of irreproachable respectability whose abhorrence of scandal was as vital in her as blood. In ten years she had not written so much as a postcard.
And now, out of the blue, this. Her mother disliked travelling. She would not make the journey to London unless her business was urgent. As for her suggestion that they meet, it was frankly inexplicable. What was so important that it could not be said in a letter?
2
THE HANSOM DREW to a stop at the south end of Halkin Street. Edward swung open the door and stepped down, holding his arm out for his mother. She took it,
smiling at him as he helped her out.
‘Goodnight, my dear Teddy.’
‘Goodnight, Mother. I am sorry you did not enjoy the play much.’
‘Yes, well, I suppose I am glad to have seen it. The newspapers were right in one regard. It was an extremely dramatic production.’
‘Wasn’t it? There were moments when I was sure we would all go up in smoke.’
‘But still lacklustre, for all the modern wizardry. A poor translation, of course. Faust is not a pantomime. All those bangs and whizzes might stop the heart but in the end it is Goethe’s poetry that chills the soul.’
In the cab Maribel rolled her eyes. She did not disagree with her mother-in-law’s analysis. She just wished that for once Vivien would simply say thank you and be done with it.
‘I wish we could have given you dinner,’ Edward said, pulling the bell. ‘Blasted vote.’
‘Dearest, at my great age, the digestion is glad of the respite.’
‘For an intelligent woman you talk a great deal of nonsense.’
The front door opened, the light spilling over the pavement. As Edward kissed her cheek, Vivien Campbell Lowe pressed his face against hers, her fingers pale against the red-gold blaze of his whiskers.
‘You must go,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, my dear boy. Take care of him, Maribel. Try to keep him out of trouble.’
Maribel shook her head. ‘You know as well as I that there is no possibility of that.’
Vivien smiled, a different smile than the one she reserved for her son.
‘He looks tired,’ she said.
‘Doesn’t he?’
The two women eyed each other for a moment. Then, touching the tips of her fingers to her lips, Maribel blew her mother-inlaw a kiss.
‘Goodnight, Vivien.’
‘Goodnight. I shall expect you for eight o’clock on Friday.’ ‘I shall look forward to it.’
The courtesy came easily enough. Vivien Campbell Lowe might be provoking but she was a faultless hostess and dinner at her pretty house was mostly very agreeable. Edward’s father had suffered from violent fits and, as his behaviour had grown increasingly erratic, Vivien had abandoned the moors and mountains of Argyllshire for the cosmopolitan society of London. There she had established a salon in the Parisian style to which she invited writers and artists and, as soon as he was old enough, Edward and the more charming of his circle. By the time of her husband’s death when Edward was twenty she was well accustomed to the life of the prosperous widow. As she grew older her friends grew younger and, even now, she was often to be found at the parties that Edward and Maribel attended, dressed in the dramatic jewel-coloured velvets that flattered her complexion. She was vain of her dark hair and disdained hats, preferring to adorn her carefully arranged coiffures with feathers or diamond clasps. Sometimes when she conversed with her mother-in-law Maribel found herself peering at her, eyes narrowed a little, in the hope of finding the first traces of grey.
‘Go inside,’ Edward said gently to his mother. ‘You’ll make me late.’
Vivien lingered, smoothing the hair from her son’s brow. She had never remarried, though Maribel was sure that there must have been offers. Instead Edward paid her a pension he could ill afford and, along with Henry, his bachelor brother, escorted her on those occasions when the absence of a husband might prove awkward. Edward worried about her, living alone with only the servants for company, but it seemed to Maribel that she had everything sewn up very nicely.
‘My beautiful boy,’ Vivien murmured. Then, patting him like a child, she shooed him out towards the waiting hansom. ‘Till Friday.’
‘Till Friday.’
As the driver snapped his reins Maribel lit a cigarette. Beside her Edward stretched out his long legs and yawned, sweeping away the smoke with the back of his tapered white fingers. His narrow face was drawn. She frowned at him.
‘Must you really go back to the House?’ she asked. ‘Surely this week they have had their pound of flesh.’
‘Please, Bo, not tonight.’
‘It is you I am concerned for. Your mother is right. You look exhausted.’
‘Not so exhausted I can’t put flies in the Home Secretary’s ointment. Honestly, Bo, something has to be done. If Matthews has his way it won’t be long before twelve people in a dining room constitutes an infringement of the law.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Maribel said. ‘Even the Mr Podsnaps want England a free country.’
‘Free for a man to starve in – that is a privilege the government is eager to preserve – but not, apparently, if he would rather hold a public meeting. If he is poor and a Socialist, or worse still Irish, then God help him. For such men Mr Matthews espouses freedom in the Russian style.’
Maribel tipped her head back, releasing a stream of smoke from her mouth. It clung to the darkness like hair.
‘You work too hard.’
‘And you smoke too much. We must bear our burdens bravely.’
Maribel smiled. She might begrudge the incessant demands of Edward’s political life but she was not foolish enough to believe that anything she or anyone else could say would alter him one iota. Edward Campbell Lowe was a radical in his blood and in his bones – his father’s father had campaigned with Wilberforce for the freedom of slaves, while his maternal grandfather had famously made a bonfire with a valuable portrait of the Marquess of Bute because, he had declared, it was more than a man could stomach to encounter a Tory every morning before breakfast. Even Edward’s own father, whom no one liked to talk about, had espoused tyrannicide and knew the Corn Law Rhymes by heart. He had also gone mad. He had died in an asylum, bequeathing to Edward his Scottish titles and estates and debts totalling nearly one hundred thousand pounds.
At Cadogan Gardens Maribel stepped down from the cab. Edward made to accompany her but she shook her head, standing on tiptoes to kiss him tenderly on the cheek. He smiled at her, his hair fiery in the gaslight. He had always been a beautiful man.
‘Goodnight, Red,’ she said softly.
‘Goodnight.’
Edward leaned forward, knocking on the roof of the cab with his cane. The cabman slapped the reins and the horse coughed and moved off, its metalled hooves ringing against the cobbles. Fumbling her keys from her evening bag, Maribel hurried up the shallow stone steps of the mansion block and pushed open the heavy front door.
She wished that Edward did not make it his business to provoke people so. As soon as he had taken possession of his seat he had taken up every unpopular cause he could conceive of, including the wholesale reform of the parliamentary system. In the afternoons he liked to caracole in Rotten Row. As a young man he had spent several years as a gaucho in Argentina and he rode with the gaucho’s swagger, his bridle arm held high in the Spanish-Moorish fashion, his horse’s harness jingling with silver. Neither his radicalism nor his riding ingratiated him with his fellow Members in the House.
There was a narrow slice of light beneath the door at the foot of the stairs. Maribel closed the front door gently, taking care that it did not slam. Once or twice, when they had first come, Edward had failed in this duty and, like a child’s jack-inthe-box, Lady Wingate had leaped out from behind her front door to berate him. Edward found these encounters diverting. He claimed that, by provoking the acceleration of blood through Lady Wingate’s coarsening arteries, he was performing a duty of medical care, but Maribel had no appetite for the old lady’s implacable irascibility. She hurried on tiptoe across the wide tiled hall.
As she reached the stairs, the door to Lady Wingate’s flat banged open.
‘Mrs Campbell Lowe.’
Maribel sighed. She stopped, one hand on the banister.
‘Good evening, Lady Wingate.’
The old woman glared at her. She was dressed in a dark green velvet evening gown with a huge and rather tarnished diamond pin on the shoulder. The dress was low-cut, revealing a good deal of wrinkled décolletage.
‘Must you make such an infernal racket?’ she deman
ded. ‘I can barely hear myself think.’
‘I’m sorry. I tried to be extra careful with the door this time.’
‘Bang, bang, bang, that door, day and night. Anyone would think it was a pheasant shoot. I don’t suppose they have pheasant shoots where you come from, do they?’
‘In Chile? No.’
‘I told my son a flat was a modern abomination. A house, that’s the respectable way to live. Not all piled up one on top of the other like plates. We, thank heavens, are not the French.’
Maribel said nothing. The old lady made a low whistling noise to herself and patted her velvet arms.
‘No husband tonight?’
‘Not tonight. There is a vote at the House.’
‘So I shall have the pleasure of being woken by him later.’
‘I am sure he will be very quiet.’
Lady Wingate harrumphed, clicking her false teeth.
‘My mother would never have allowed my brother to put her in a flat. Not while she was of sound mind. She was of the opinion that only paupers and prisoners managed without stairs.’
‘Well. The world changes.’
‘The vote for women, now that would really have her turning in her grave. Silly old bat.’
Maribel smiled. ‘I should be getting along. I am sorry I disturbed you. Goodnight, Lady Wingate.’
Lady Wingate harrumphed again and did not reply. She stood in her doorway, seemingly lost in thought, as Maribel climbed the stairs to the first floor. As she crossed the landing Maribel looked down. The old lady’s door was still open, her shadow a grey smudge on the black-and-white floor. In all the years of their acquaintance she had never once invited them inside her flat and they had certainly never asked her upstairs to theirs. It was the joy of modern mansion blocks. They came unfettered by the tiresome domestic obligations of ordinary houses. Nobody in a flat considered themselves to have neighbours.
