Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

These days, though, there was seldom any requirement to lie outright. She could not even pretend it was for Charlotte that she lied, that it was a kindness. The truth was that the truth was impossible. Impossible for her and, in particular, impossible for Edward. She was obliged to lie, she knew that, but she could not bear Charlotte to be kind to her for it.

  She took up the teapot and poured herself another cup of tea. Edward looked up over his newspaper and held out his cup. Now, she thought, was the time to tell him about her mother.

  ‘So how was the famous Buffalo Bill?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Do you know, I was ready to dislike him thoroughly. I had pictured him in cahoots with the despicable Senator Dawes, trailing around Europe like a freak-show proprietor with his stolen Indians in cages while busily selling off the red man’s lands to the railroads.’

  ‘And?’ Maribel asked.

  ‘It proved quite impossible. The gentleman – and he is a gentleman, for all his American habits – is simply too amusing. His adventures have to be heard to be believed.’

  ‘You were very late.’

  Edward laughed. ‘There is a rumour that the wives of the Garrick Club have been driven so much to distraction by their husbands staying out all night that they have sent Cody a letter with all their signatures, asking that he forbear from telling any stories after midnight. I am inclined to believe it. The tales of his adventures in the Wild West exceed the imaginings of the wildest Fenimore Cooper.’

  ‘And the stolen Indians?’

  ‘The truth is that Cody is a great champion of the Indians. The few that survived Custer are a great deal better off with him than they are on the reservations. At least Cody is teaching them a little of the world they are now required to live in. They are fairly paid, well fed, clean. They have proper medical care. If only we could say the same of the miners or the dockers or any other working man in this country for that matter.’

  Maribel rolled her eyes. ‘You sound as though you have swallowed one of their advertisements.’

  ‘Cody is extremely plausible,’ Edward said with a grin. ‘Though I am convinced he goes to bed in curl-papers. Nobody has ringlets like that naturally.’

  ‘It is his diamonds I am envious of. I hear they are perfectly enormous.’

  ‘You will have the chance to see them for yourself on Friday. Cody has invited us to the opening performance of the show.’

  Maribel looked at him, dismayed.

  ‘Must we go?’ she said. ‘On Friday you will only just be back from Scotland. I had hoped to have you to myself for once.’

  ‘You have been complaining recently that life has become so dull. I thought you might think it diverting.’

  ‘Me? Watching cowboys galloping about and shooting at one another? No, Red. You should think it diverting. I think I should find it rather tedious.’

  Edward hesitated. Then, draining his teacup, he stood.

  ‘I should go,’ he said.

  ‘I am due in Committee at ten.’ ‘When will you be back?’ ‘I’m not sure. I may have to go to Croydon. A League rally. I promised Hyndman I’d be there if there was no late vote.’

  ‘Croydon? But we are dining with the Pagets.’

  ‘Oh Lord, are we? I’m sorry. You’ll have to send my apologies. Better still, apologise for both of us. You always say you find the Pagets tiresome.’

  ‘They are better than no company at all. Red, truly, if I have to spend another evening here alone I shall go stark staring mad.’

  ‘I thought you were writing.’

  ‘I am failing to write. It takes up just as much time and is ten times as exhausting.’

  ‘It will come.’

  ‘Will it? I have written nothing for months, or nothing I wasn’t ashamed of afterwards. And I am tired of you always, always being out. There are things – I hardly see you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to.’

  ‘You find time for the Wild West.’

  ‘To which we are to go together, if you remember.’

  ‘You know as well as I that I shan’t see you from one end of the evening to the other. Croydon, for heaven’s sake? I shall forget what you look like.’

  ‘Then use the time you have. If you won’t write, draw my portrait. Take my photograph. I don’t know the last time I saw you with your camera.’

  ‘That’s because the camera is broken. It was never much use anyway.’

  ‘And what about you? Are you broken too?’ Edward snapped. Then he sighed. ‘We make of our lives what we are able, Bo. Don’t waste yours being angry with me.’

  When Edward had gone Maribel rose and went to her desk, taking from its pigeonhole the book of marbled Venetian paper in which she jotted ideas for poems. She turned the pages. Scribbled sideways across one leaf was a list, written some months before at Inverallich, headed ‘Champs-Elysées’:

  flash of silver bit

  white scum frothing on arched neck

  hooves like arrowheads slicing sky

  metaphor for love: coiled sinew, glint of iron

  peril bare contained

  Edward was right. One made of one’s life what one was able. Taking out a sheet of writing paper she scribbled a note to the Pagets, pleading a head cold. That afternoon, when she was returned from calling on the Wildes, she took her mother’s letter from her writing case and propped it against the mirror on her dressing table. There was no purpose in waiting for the right moment. There would be no right moment. The best one could do was to try not to be afraid.

  She was sitting at her dressing table when Edward came home that night, brushing her hair in front of the mirror. She heard the click of the front door, the low murmur of voices as Alice took his coat and hat. She reached for her wrap but before she had put her arms into it he knocked at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  She reached out a hand towards him as he opened the door. Under one arm he carried a large package. He set it down on the dressing table beside her and leaned down to kiss her on the top of her head. Glancing at the envelope containing her mother’s letter she caught his hand and pressed it against her cheek. He smiled at her in the mirror.

  ‘What a nice surprise,’ she said. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘Early? It’s past eleven.’

  ‘That’s early for you.’ She kissed his fingers. ‘I am sorry I was so ill-tempered this morning. You were right. I had no right to be cross with you.’

  ‘I am not so sure. I have neglected you horribly.’

  ‘In the pursuit of a better, juster world. I should stop complaining.’

  ‘Have you been working?’

  Maribel shrugged. ‘Something like that.’

  Putting down her hairbrush she turned to face him.

  ‘Edward, dearest, there is something I have to talk to you about.’

  ‘Is anybody dead?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Then can it wait till morning? I brought you something.’ Picking up the package he deposited it in her lap.

  ‘For me?’ she said.

  ‘For you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Why don’t you open it and see?’

  She smiled excitedly as she slid off the string, tearing the paper a little as she unwrapped it. Inside was a wooden box, E. & H.T. Anthony stamped in black letters on the top. She lifted the lid and gasped.

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘It’s rather fine, isn’t it? It’s American. The latest design.’

  Very gently she took the camera out of its box. Perhaps ten inches square, a little more in depth, it was made of polished mahogany with exquisitely worked brass fittings and bellows of dark green leather. The lens protruded from its glossy face like the tip of a telescope. She held it in her lap, stroking the smooth wood with her thumb. She knew without asking that they could not afford it.

  ‘It’s so small,’ she said.

  ‘They call it a field camera. It’s designed to be portable.’

 
‘It’s beautiful. Almost too beautiful to use.’

  ‘If you say that I shall take it back.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘No. But I thought you would like it.’

  ‘I love it. Thank you.’

  She tilted her head up to kiss his cheek. Gently he took the camera from her lap and placed it back on the dressing table. Then, turning her to face him, he kissed her deeply on the mouth, his long fingers loosening the ribbons at her neck, slipping the silk from her shoulders. She sighed as his lips moved down the slope of her neck to her collarbone, finding the dip at the base of her throat, the tilt of her breastbone. She was tired, her body unresponsive, but it was several weeks since he had come to her and she had missed him. She clasped his head, burying her fingers in his red-gold hair, straining to stir in herself the heat of old desire. In the morning she would tell him about the letter. She closed her eyes as his tongue flickered between her breasts and over the cool skin of her belly, his hands tracing the curve of her hips and buttocks, the soft slopes of her thighs, easing her legs apart. She let them fall open. He pressed his forehead against her belly and the push of his tongue was hot and urgent.

  Afterwards he fell almost immediately asleep. Maribel slept too, though at about four o’clock she woke and slipped out of bed to smoke a cigarette. On the dark-smudged pillow Edward slept on, his mouth slightly open and his hair tumbled like a child’s. Maribel watched him, the jolt of the cigarette bright in her, and the desire that earlier had eluded her flared like a match in her.

  In Mexico they had made love almost every night, biting back their cries so as not to waken the dogs. There had been a hunger to her then, a wantonness she had not known she possessed. On the dusty afternoons, as the heavy sun thickened the air and the mules drowsed with their heads low, she imagined him against her and the thought had quickened her breath and set her blood to racing until she burned like the night sky, her skin alive with one hundred thousand white-hot pinpricks of light. She had not known it was possible to feel that way about a man, that a sideways glance might cause her heart to turn over, the taste of his name on her tongue enough to melt her flesh. At the house on the Calle de León, for the sake of discretion, the Señora had assigned the gentlemen names of her own choosing. Edward she had introduced as Santiago.

  ‘Sylvia,’ he had said, taking Maribel’s hand. ‘What a pretty name,’ and he had given her a private smile as though he told her a secret. She had not smiled back. Names might mean nothing in a place of that kind but it was discourteous to draw attention to the pretence.

  Privately, of course, the girls gave the regular men names of their own. There was Bisabuelo, the ancient lantern-jawed count, and Apestoso, who smelled like an old dog, and Sudoroso, whose perspiration gathered in his eyebrows and scattered like raindrops when he neared the end. Angélique’s nicknames were always the unkindest. Her most regular client she called Chinga, or Dog-fuck.

  Sometimes, late at night, when the work was over and the lights in the drawing room extinguished, she and Angélique had sat on the balcony, the long windows open behind them, smoking cigarettes to discourage the mosquitoes. Below them, in the courtyard, the fountain sang quietly to itself in the darkness. Angélique was from Marseilles, or so she said. She was saving up her money until she had enough to buy a place of her own. Maribel had not liked Angélique much. She had dark eyes and a full mouth and a body that swelled like ripe fruit inside its skin. Her mother had been a great beauty but her father died and her mother’s new husband had difficulty remembering which bedroom was his. Angélique had been obliged to leave. When she talked of men she made scissors with her fingers.

  Edward had come to the house every other day for three weeks. Then he went away. Though she did not admit it Maribel missed him, the clean pallor of his skin, the way he talked to her afterwards, as though she were a real person.

  A month later he returned and took her away. He had sat beside her as the train bore them towards Paris and, when she let her head rest sleepily upon his shoulder, he had kissed her forehead and told her that no man had ever been happier. In Paris he had invented the story of their accidental meeting, not for him, he was clear about that, but for the rest of them, who were foolish and would never understand. Maribel had thought the tale implausible, had asked how anyone would believe that Edward of all people, who had been riding since before he could walk, had lost control of his horse on a busy thoroughfare, but Edward had told her no one would ever think of such a thing.

  He was right, of course. Nobody did. Edward said it was because it was a delightful story and the truth was that most people desired to be delighted. It was the rare cynic who disdained the enchantment of propitious happenstance, where the fate of a beautiful woman might be decided by a chance meeting. Their set was young and gifted and they did not give a spoon for the finer points of Maribel’s bloodline. Theirs was a new generation, who spurned the dusty hierarchies of their forefathers and disdained their titles. As for Edward, he was charming and clever and capricious, a gentleman whose pampas swagger was never quite obscured by his elegant tailoring. At Ascot he wore his gaucho knife under his dress suit. Maribel was exactly the variety of exotic bloom with whom a man like he would fall hopelessly in love.

  Only Edward’s mother had showed little inclination to be charmed by the romance of her son’s courtship. Edward had taken Maribel to meet Vivien when they had been married three days. He had sat on the arm of his mother’s chair, Vivien’s hand on his sleeve, while Maribel stared at the floor and answered her new mother-in-law’s questions in monosyllables. In the cab going home the two of them had quarrelled for the first time. Edward had accused Maribel of sullenness, of discourtesy. He demanded to know how his mother was supposed to love her new daughter-in-law if she refused even to look her in the eye. For her part Maribel pronounced Edward cruel and disloyal. She said that it was wicked for a man to care more for his mother than his wife, wicked and unnatural. Both had declared the other impossible. Edward had gone to his club and returned home very late. In the dark refuge of their bed he had held her and her tears had fallen on his face and oiled his dark red whiskers.

  Maribel never asked whether Vivien knew the truth. On the whole she thought it unlikely. Even if Edward had tried to tell her, it was not in Vivien Campbell Lowe’s nature to hear things that she preferred not to know. Edward knew that better than anyone. Though he had written to Vivien weekly during their time in America he had never once alluded directly to his new wife.

  Whatever she knew, the older Mrs Campbell Lowe kept it to herself. She had no desire to attach scandal to the family. Perhaps if Maribel had proved a treasure hunter, she might have sought a way to disgrace her. Along with her unswerving conviction in her own judgement Vivien had friends in Paris. It would have been a matter of little difficulty to establish the non-existence of Maribel’s aunt. But there was no treasure to hunt, only debts, and Maribel, unlike Edward, showed some adroitness in the management of money. It was because of Maribel that the estate at Inverallich had at last been persuaded to yield a profit. She could be frugal too, when required, and her frugality never showed. Vivien Campbell Lowe might disapprove of her daughter-in-law, she might even dislike her, but she could not fault her conduct. Besides, she was ambitious for her son. If Maribel was exposed it would mean the end of his parliamentary career.

  Maribel’s cigarette was burned to a nub. She took a final long inhalation and put it out. In the bed Edward turned over, flinging an arm across her empty pillow. In the Calle de León gentlemen had not been permitted to stay the night. On the train to Paris Maribel had leaned against Edward and it seemed to her a kind of miracle that they had found each other in such a place where the imitation of pleasure was sold by the hour. She wore a new dress she had purchased for herself with the money he had paid her, a pale grey silk that flattered her dark hair and pale skin, and on her finger his grandmother’s sapphire ring. When she removed her gloves she set her hand on his
, admiring the flash of the stone, hardly daring to believe that, from this day and for the rest of their lives, neither of them would ever again have anything to do with those kind of establishments and, at the same time, unable to shake off the fear that the squalid circumstances of their meeting could not be so easily dismissed, that the disgrace of it would leak like a slow poison into the flesh of their marriage. That he would, in time, find himself ashamed of her.

  On both counts, it seemed, she had been mistaken. In all the years of their marriage he had never once alluded to the Señora or to the Calle de León. He had never, in anger or in spite, used the shame of her past against her, never attached any judgement to her situation or to those of other women in similar predicaments. In Parliament, during the debates about the Crimes Bill, he had shown both compassion and practical concern for the safety of girls obliged to work in brothels. Nor was his interest limited to the legislation. She was aware that, since they had been married, he had continued, with more or less regularity, to avail himself of the services such women took it upon themselves to provide.

  Edward was discreet but she always knew. The act lifted his mood, much as riding one of his horses did, sharpening his appetite and invigorating his spirits. In the beginning, she had tortured herself with imagining him there, summoning precise pictures in her head of the padded silk headboard, the shaded lamps, the silver-stoppered decanter of whisky on a tray on the dressing table. He would frequent the kind of establishment that prided itself upon its discretion, a place that, insofar as such things were possible, might almost be thought of as respectable.

  Edward would be a favoured client, of course, as he had been at the house on the Calle de León, because he was both courte ous and appreciative. He would treat the girls as he treated his horses, with consideration and a connoisseur’s eye, delighting in the line of a limb, a particular freshness of spirit. Edward might excoriate the failings of his fellow Members in the House but he was not a hypocrite. From boyhood he had determined to make a joyful business of life, to embrace its pleasures as willingly as its responsibilities. He did not censure or condemn the private conduct of others, nor did he speak as other men spoke of the high standard set by his own conscience. He had no wish to play Moses.