by Clare Clark
‘Won’t you sit down?’ Edith said.
How many times had she said that to Maribel when they were children? As a girl Edith had only ever wanted to play house. Whenever it was her turn to choose the games, she had insisted upon endless wearisome tea parties with dusty water poured from the dollies’ teapot and oak leaves for sandwiches. When Maribel had on one occasion attempted to inject a little excitement into the proceedings by staging a fit, Edith, awash with tears, had declared her sister the cruellest creature the world had ever known.
Maribel perched on the edge of an overstuffed sofa and slowly peeled off her gloves. The room was stifling. On the stool before the empty grate a jug sweated, beads of moisture sliding over its belly. They might have been back home in Ellerton. Nothing would have changed there, of course. There would still be the fat dust-pink chesterfields crowded around the fireplace, the pink-trimmed curtains with their pattern of bloated roses, the fender stool embroidered with peacocks, the fringed lamps and the painted miniatures and the china shepherdesses and the poker with the handle shaped like a pine cone. Trapped there on tedious afternoons she and Ida had sometimes used the shepherdesses as puppets, setting them in dramatic tableaux along the mantelpiece, but the housemaid always put things back the way they had been before. Nothing in that house had ever changed. She had thought she would go mad with the overstuffed sameness of it, month after month, year after year, until she could hardly breathe.
‘You must be in need of refreshment,’ Mrs Bryant said. ‘Edith has had Cook make fresh lemonade. I can’t stomach tea in this weather, can you?’
‘Lemonade would be nice.’
Mrs Bryant poured.
‘Laurie writes that in India they drink tea all the time, despite the heat. And all those ghastly curries! I have to keep reminding myself he is a grown man and won’t get the stomach ache.’
Maribel took the glass. A grown man. When she had last seen Laurie he had been eleven years old, a thin, shy boy with a mop of unruly hair and a passion for toy soldiers. He had lain for hours in the nursery on his stomach, arranging them in lines. The others had made an eager audience for her performances, settling themselves cross-legged, the little ones in their laps, as, dressed in trailing chiffon, she was Cleopatra or Lady Hamilton or Héloïse whispering the secrets of her heart to Ida’s Abelard. Not Laurie. Even as she wept, Mark Antony’s dying body cradled in her arms, she could hear the boom from the back of Laurie’s throat as his heavy cannon decimated the massed ranks of Napoleon’s Imperial Army. Occasionally a small lead figure bounced dully off the wall.
‘Still, I suppose one should be grateful, if only for the sake of Her Majesty’s Golden Jubilee. Edith says there are all manner of celebrations planned so one must hope it holds. After such a long hot spell poor weather would be a terrible disappointment.’
Maribel sipped her lemonade. It was weak and over-sugared. She pushed the glass into the jostle of knick-knacks on the side table.
‘Mother,’ she said.
‘I imagine your husband has a good deal to do with the arrangements, being a Member of Parliament?’
Suddenly Maribel could endure it no longer. She flushed furiously, fifteen again.
‘Damn the Jubilee,’ she said.
‘Peggy!’
‘I mean it. Damn the Jubilee. Damn the weather. Damn the Queen while we are at it. All these years – you summon me here to talk to you and we waste time on this nonsense. Why can you not just get to the bloody point?’
Mrs Bryant touched her fingers to her brow.
‘Really, Peggy,’ she said faintly, ‘there is no call for such offensive language.’
‘Isn’t there? I have come here as you asked, as you demanded, at considerable risk to my husband’s reputation, not to mention his parliamentary career, and you prattle on about nothing as though we were at tea with the vicar. Well, damn it, Mother, say what you have to say and be done with it. And, by the way, my name is not Peggy. It’s Maribel.’
Furiously Maribel tore open her silk bag. Snapping open her cigarette case, she jammed a cigarette between her lips and struck a match. Edith stared at her sister, her pale eyes glazed. Maribel drew the smoke into her lungs and held it there, then tipped back her head, closing her eyes, and blew out a long, deliberate column of smoke. Her head was swimming, the knock of her heart rapid in her chest.
‘I cannot believe it,’ Mrs Bryant murmured faintly.
‘Oh, I am sorry!’ Maribel exclaimed. ‘Where are my manners? Mother, Edith, would you like a cigarette?’
Edith’s eyes grew rounder. She glanced at her mother, who waved a disgusted hand at the smoke, her lips tightening into a thin white line.
‘I had thought that marriage might civilise you. I see that I was mistaken. A lady smoking tobacco at all is shocking enough but in your sister’s good parlour? Edith will never be rid of the smell. It is just like you to spoil things for everyone else. You always did.’
‘Mother,’ Edith said in a small voice, ‘it doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters a great deal. It is unspeakably discourteous. I am quite sure Hubert would not tolerate it for a moment.’
Edith hung her head, mottled circles of red flaring in her cheeks. Her neck was blotchy. Maribel stared at her cigarette, watching the red smoulder climb the paper. She took a fierce pull and then another. The scarlet flared. Then, leaning forward, she crushed it against the empty grate and threw it into the fireplace. It winked its red eye dully and exhaled a grey curl of smoke.
There was a silence.
‘Forgive me, Edith. I should not wish to cause difficulties with your husband. Now, Mother, perhaps you might tell me why you have asked me here.’
Mrs Bryant bowed her head for a moment, her lips pursed, one finger toying with her pearl and ruby ring. Then, patting her hair, she sat up a little straighter.
‘Edith’s husband is in insurance,’ she said stiffly. ‘Coulson Brown, no less. Edith was very fortunate. After what happened – well, it was not easy for any of them. There was no mixing with other young people after that, not for a long while.’
Maribel looked over at the Negro, who fixed her with his glassy gaze. Ida was the only one she had ever considered. If she had thought of the others at all after she left it had been to picture them like horses on a carousel, rising and falling forever in the same stifling circle of trap rides and tea parties and whist evenings. She had disdained their conformity, their stupid contentment, and she had comforted herself always, even on the worst days, that at least she was not them, crushed slowly to death beneath a creeping and relentless onslaught of tedium. She had not once stopped to think what difficulties they might have suffered by her running away.
‘Mother was ill for months,’ Edith added. ‘They said it was the shock.’
There was another silence. From behind its fortifications on the mantel the marble clock clicked and whirred, gathering itself to strike midday.
‘Well, heavens,’ Mrs Bryant said. ‘What gloomy talk and on so fine a morning. Perhaps it will be cool enough to walk out this afternoon, Edith. It would be pleasant to take a little air. More lemonade, Peggy?’
Maribel shook her head. She felt weary all of a sudden, oppressed by the whole wretched rigmarole.
‘Mother, if you have something to tell me, I insist that you say it. Otherwise I shall leave and I shall never so much as open a letter from you ever again. You may be sure of it.’
Mrs Bryant bit her lip. Clasping her hands tightly in her lap she glanced at Edith. Edith looked away. ‘Very well,’ Mrs Bryant said, her back straighter than ever. ‘I – well, yes. There was one thing. We thought, I thought – well, it seemed foolish not to ask, really, with everything so long in the past and your husband a Member of Parliament and Scottish too. I mean, it is not such a big place, is it, Scotland, and I am sure they must be acquainted, how could they not be? And family is family, after all, whatever water flows under the bridge.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea wha
t you are talking about.’
‘Hubert, Edith’s Hubert, is an insurance broker. As I think I mentioned. Shipping. Doing well. Very well. In the main.’
Edith tittered. Her mother glared at her.
‘Sorry,’ Edith said and put a hand over her mouth.
‘For many months he has been working to secure the business of the Maddox shipping line on its route to Cape Colony. The company has the mail contract, you see, between London and wherever it is that mail goes to in Africa. It seemed that the arrangements were as good as finalised. Mr Coulson had gone so far as to offer Hubert a partnership on the strength of it. A partnership, can you imagine!
‘Only then the manager or director or whatever he was of the Maddox Mail Packet Company passed away quite unexpectedly. Such terrible luck. The new man’s a Boer, if you can believe it, and Hubert says there’s no talking sense with him. Apparently Boers have no idea at all how things are done here in England. He fears that it must all come to naught, all his months and months of hard work, unless of course he can secure an interview with Sir Douglas Maddox himself. Hubert is certain that it would be a small matter to convince him of the wisdom of it. But Sir Douglas is a very busy man who would not usually concern himself with matters of this kind and Hubert has no letters of introduction. So, you see, he finds himself in an impossible situation.’
Maribel watched a fat drop of lemonade quiver on the lip of the jug and then fall. She thought bleakly of Edward’s admonitions of courage.
‘That’s it?’ she said. ‘You want my husband to help Edith’s husband to get his name on the company stationery?’
‘I hardly think that is the way to describe a position on the board of Coulson Brown. But yes, I know Hubert would be very grateful if you were able to – to oil the wheels a little. You must know Sir Douglas, after all? I understand his constituency borders your husband’s. One must assume you are acquainted.’
‘We are acquainted.’
‘You see, I knew it. Just a letter, that’s all I ask. Hubert doesn’t need to know a thing, just that an acquaintance of mine turned out to be a cousin of yours.’
‘On my mother’s side, I suppose?’
Mrs Bryant looked flustered. ‘If you wish.’
‘And that is it? That is the entire reason you asked me here?’ ‘Well, it is pleasant to see you, naturally, but yes, that is why I took the liberty of insisting. It matters so to Hubert and there are the children to think of. I knew you would want to help your sister if you were able. I have no more appeals up my sleeve, I assure you.’
She laughed, an artificial tinkle. Maribel gaped at her. A letter of introduction for her aspiring son-in-law. It was so preposterous it was almost funny.
‘Why on earth could you not have asked me this in a letter?’ she demanded.
Mrs Bryant looked aghast. ‘A letter, on such a delicate matter? It would have been quite unseemly.’
‘More unseemly than risking my husband’s career?’
‘Come, Peggy, we have been the souls of discretion. Nobody need ever know you were here.’
‘But you would gamble with my husband’s future, for Edith’s husband’s sake.’
‘Heavens, well, I never meant for – it was simply that –’
‘I’m glad she didn’t write,’ Edith said softly. ‘I am glad you came.’
Startled, Maribel turned to look at her sister. Edith’s pale eyes were pink, her nose pinker still. Between her fingers she twisted a handkerchief.
‘Lizzie always thought you had gone to America to be a famous actress,’ Edith said. ‘But Laurie – Laurie said he thought you were dead.’
‘That will do, Edith,’ Mrs Bryant said.
Maribel thought of Laurence’s tin soldiers, scattered by the force of his cannon.
‘Laurie would have had us all dead every day by teatime,’ she said. ‘As for Lizzie –’
Edith’s face twitched. She bit her lip, twisting her handkerchief into a knot.
‘Edith,’ Maribel said, ‘would you see me out?’
Standing, Maribel touched her cheek briefly to her mother’s. The smell of rose water had faded. She noticed the crow’s feet at the corners of her mother’s eyes, the way the loose skin crinkled around the curve of her ear. Her jawline was downy and dusty with powder.
‘Goodbye, Mother,’ she said.
‘You will ask your husband, won’t you? About Sir Douglas?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘We would be so grateful if you would.’
‘I said I would think about it. You will have to be content with that.’
Mrs Bryant hesitated. Then she nodded.
‘Very well. Thank you, my dear.’
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Maribel picked up her gloves.
‘Take care of yourself, Peggy,’ her mother said.
‘Maribel.’
‘Yes, well. We old aren’t good at change.’
It was strange, Maribel thought, knowing that you looked at someone for the last time. When she had left Yorkshire she had been too young to think of it.
In the hallway she kissed Edith.
‘I will do what I can,’ she said.
‘I know you will.’
Maribel pulled on her gloves, busying herself with the buttons.
‘Tell me about Ida.’
‘Ida? She married a doctor, an associate of Father’s at the hospital. She is Mrs Maitland Coffin now.’
‘Her husband is Dr Coffin?’
‘Yes, but you mustn’t laugh. She hates it when people laugh.’
Maribel said nothing. The Ida she remembered would have thought Dr Coffin uncommonly funny.
‘They live in London too,’ Edith said.
‘They do?’
It was a shock, though she knew it should not be. It was just that she and Ida had always planned to come to London together. They had thought Regent’s Park the most suitable place for a house since it would be convenient both for the theatres and for the Royal Zoological Gardens. Their house was to have electric lighting and modern plumbing and wallpaper and a library full of novels, French as well as English as Jumbo the elephant had been brought up in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and Ida thought it would be comforting for him to be read to in his childhood language. The windows would look out over the park so that on fine days they could watch boys sailing their boats on the pond and hear the animals talking to each other. There would be two cats, Punch and Judy, both tortoiseshell, who would be encouraged to sleep on the sofas, and a freckled maid called Sally, and crumpets with honey for tea every day. It was important to eat well before a performance.
‘Yes,’ Edith said. ‘Not all that far from here, actually. I see her quite often.’
Ida was in London. Somewhere, quite near here, Ida was speaking, walking, breathing. The thought made her breathless.
Edith hiccupped.
‘What is it?’ Maribel demanded. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘I am not crying.’
‘Yes you are. What on earth is it? Is it Ida? Is something wrong with Ida?’
Edith shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut.
‘For heaven’s sake, Edith, spit it out!’
Edith looked up and the tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Peggy, I mean Maribel, I can’t bear it. I thought you were dead and yet here you are, standing right here in front of me, and then you will leave and I will never see you again.’
Maribel sighed. Then she patted Edith lightly on the arm. ‘It is for the best, you know,’ she said. ‘Think what harm it would do, if there was a scandal. Think of Mother and Father. Think of your husband.’
Edith sniffed. ‘But might we not meet again?’ she pleaded. ‘Here, in secret? I wouldn’t tell a soul.’
Maribel looked about her, at the grandfather clock and the paintings of ringlet-headed infants and the Chinese vases that crouched beneath their china hats like fat constables, and she shook her head.
‘I don’t think
so. But I shall think of you, of course.’
She turned away but Edith caught her by the arm, tugging at her sleeve. Her tear-stained face was swollen and shameless, like a child’s.
‘What happened, Peggy, after you left us? It was Miss Phillips, wasn’t it? You went to Miss Phillips.’
‘Goodbye, Edith.’
Outside the sun blazed in a bright blue sky and the air was thick as soup. Maribel paused at the bottom of the steps and put up her parasol. At the far end of the terrace a greengrocer wrestled a crate from his cart as his horse waited, its harness loose, its head low beneath its heavy collar. In the garden behind the wall birds sang.
Maribel opened the gate and began to walk in the direction of the High Street. She did not turn, and so she did not see Edith watching her from behind the door nor her mother, half concealed at the parlour window, one hand on the heavy drapes. She thought instead of Ida, who was twenty-five years old, a woman, and neither a saint nor an elephant keeper but only a wife, as Maribel was.
Maribel should never have gone to London without her. She should have waited. For thirteen years she had carried with her the weight of her betrayal, like rocks in her pockets. Now, at last, Ida had come. The thought quickened Maribel’s feet and her heart.
7
EDWARD WAS OUTRAGED, OF course. Maribel could not blame him. She knew the courage it had taken to urge her to go. His intimates would mostly have forgiven him the deception – they were men of the world, after all, and Maribel sufficiently unlike their own wives to allow for latitude – but in the House his provocations were tolerated only because of his standing as a man of the highest integrity in public life. If Maribel were to be exposed as a fraud and a liar the scandal would not only end his political career, it would profoundly threaten the work of the Radicals in Parliament. That he had risked their cause solely that he might promote the career of a man too incompetent to do it for himself made Edward furious.
For all his principles, however, Edward was not entirely devoid of common sense. He understood that the more rapidly he answered to Mrs Bryant’s demands the more quickly she would be dispatched. Besides, what she asked for might be granted easily enough. The machinery of the House, like that of his class, was oiled with quiet words and mutual favours, and, though Edward found the back-scratching distasteful, there was nothing unlawful in it. His only condition was that Maribel make it quite clear to her mother that this would be the end of it. There would be no more letters, no more secret rendezvous. Maribel had not the least difficulty conceding to his terms.
