by Clare Clark
The next time he saw Sir Douglas in the House, Edward approached him and offered his somewhat rusty skills as a batsman in the upcoming House of Commons cricket match. When Maddox accepted, Edward admitted that he had a favour to ask in return. An acquaintance of his wife’s cousin had some manner of business proposal in which he thought Sir Douglas might be interested and had asked if an introduction might be arranged. Edward confessed that, besides his understanding that the young man in question was considered something of an upstart, he knew next to nothing of the proposal and he understood perfectly if Sir Douglas did not wish to comply. Indeed, he urged him to decline immediately and put an end to the matter there and then. Edward had no doubt that the young man would manage quite well without Sir Douglas’s assistance.
It was not much of a gamble. Edward had known Sir Douglas for years. He knew quite well that, even if propriety had not required Maddox to concur, his vagueness as to the nature of the business venture on offer would prove irresistible. The third son of a Greenock barber, Sir Douglas had left school at fourteen to take up his vocation as a capitalist. The flash of profit drew him like a salmon.
‘May the dogs please now be put back to sleep?’ Edward asked Maribel when it was done. She smiled at him and adjusted his tie.
‘Can’t you hear the snoring already?’
Edward had a dinner in the City, something to do with the party. When he was gone Maribel sat down at her desk. She had meant to write a note to Charlotte, who, after considerable encouragement, had finally been persuaded to sit for her first photographic portrait, but somehow the words came out differently.
My dearest, dearest Ida,
You are in London. It is so sweet to write those words, to think that we are close again at last. Perhaps you are looking out of your window as I write and watching the swifts I can see making patterns in the sky. Perhaps you are walking along streets that I too walk along, looking into windows that I gaze into every day. Not seeing you is so much harder now that I know you are so close. There is so much I have to tell you. I never made it as an actress. For a while I thought – but life does not always come out as you hope. I don’t expect you are an elephant keeper either. Or Joan of Arc, for that matter. Do you remember you used to ask me if I’d forget you once I was famous and I promised that I wouldn’t? I never broke my promise, Ida. I forgot all about Peggy Bryant as soon as I was able and the dreadful Miss Phillips sooner than that but I never once forgot about you. My name is Maribel now and I am from Chile. It turned out that Sylvia was not who I was either. But you – you were always Ida.
She stopped, unable to continue. Then, very carefully, she capped her pen and stood, too quickly perhaps, because the light-headedness caused her to sway and she had to close her eyes to compose herself. It was the past, the great chasm of it, that did for her. It was always a mistake to look down.
She hadn’t thought of Miss Phillips for years. A temporary governess, hired hurriedly when Miss Finton’s mother was taken unexpectedly ill, Miss Phillips was a soft-voiced, soft-fingered sigher, much given to wandering about the house in bare feet, her mousy hair loose about her shoulders. Devoted to the poetry of Christina Rossetti, she had the girls study ‘Goblin Market’ and rhapsodised with breathy intensity about erotic desire and moral redemption. When she read Sonnets from the Portuguese aloud she wept. The boys laughed at her which made Maribel furious, both with them and with Miss Phillips who, for all her sensitivity, was unable to desist from idiotic pronouncements on the Beauty of Nature.
Still, Miss Phillips was the first person Maribel had ever met who shared her passion for the theatre. It was Miss Phillips who insisted upon taking Maribel to the Theatre Royal in York to see Henrietta Hodson as Imogen in Cymbeline, Miss Phillips who took her afterwards to the stage door and persuaded the doorman to let them pay their respects to the actress, Miss Phillips who confided to Miss Hodson that ‘dear little Peggy’ had ambitions to go on the stage. Maribel, struck dumb by the momentousness of the occasion, had hardly spoken. The tiny dressing room with its mirrored wall, the costumes hanging on the door of the press, the proximity of Miss Hodson in her wrapper who had until a few moments before been Imogen, the poetry of Shakespeare upon her lips, his breath in her chest – all these wrapped like ribbon around the intense magic of the play, shaping it into something real, something meant for her.
‘Are you any good?’ Miss Hodson had asked and when Maribel stammered that, yes, she thought she was, the actress had pursed her mouth as though she meant to apply lipstick.
‘It is a hard profession. Few enjoy success.’
‘I shall,’ Maribel said fiercely. ‘I must.’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘It is all I have ever wanted. It is only when I am acting that I feel – real.’
Miss Hodson had given her a hard look, her head on one side.
‘Then you must act,’ she said. ‘You have the looks for it, at any rate.’
‘What should I do? How should I start?’
Miss Hodson had shrugged.
‘By starting. For God’s sake don’t rot out here in the provinces. Go to London. Go to the theatres. Persuade them to give you a try. If you really want to be an actress you have to act.’
‘Like you.’
‘Like me.’ Miss Hodson had smiled. Then on impulse, she had taken a card from a silk purse on her dressing table. The card had her name on it and the address of a theatre in London. ‘Here. When you make it to London look me up. I know a good many people. I might be able to help you.’
Some weeks later Miss Phillips had been dismissed by Maribel’s mother, who declared that she could no longer endure her unpinned hair and extemporaneous outbursts of weeping. Miss Phillips had written to Maribel a few days later, a secretive letter that she begged Maribel not to mention to Mrs Bryant, filled with impassioned quotations and declarations of sisterly love.
My own dear girl, hold tightly to your dreams. This world we must live in is a cold place, cruel and careless. Do not let it crush you. Think of me when your spirits fail and let my faith in you be the wings that raise you upward. I believe in you, my sweet fairy, and always shall. I shall not let you fall.
Maribel had thought she meant it. Three months later she had crept downstairs on a grey pre-dawn morning. When she saw Ida’s mud-caked boots on a sheet of newspaper outside the pantry door her nerve had almost failed her. Then she thought of Miss Phillips’s letter with the address in Praed Street carefully printed at the top and Miss Hodson’s card and her carefully saved money and she turned the key and ran across the lawn to the woods, as she and Ida had done so many times. Two weeks earlier Lizzie had been married. When Lizzie had changed into her honeymoon clothes she had clung to her mother, her face white with apprehension, and her mother had patted her cheek and told her to be brave and obey her husband. Later on the station platform, as the train bearing the newlyweds pulled away, Mrs Bryant had turned to Maribel with a look of brisk self-satisfaction.
‘You next,’ she had said.
It had rained all the way to London. The droplets raced across the window, cross-hatching Maribel’s reflection, her face pale beneath her felt hat. There were smears on the glass. It was very early. All the way to London she had sat there, her shoulders hunched, terrified that someone would recognise her. More than once a train screamed as it passed on the other track, steam streaming behind it like a rain-soaked flag, dashing for home, and she had tried not to think of Ida waking up, finding her gone.
Miss Phillips’s house in Praed Street turned out to be an attic room in the decaying home of a decaying old lady with whom Miss Phillips had found a post as companion. Miss Phillips looked smaller in London than she had at Ellerton. Her hair was tangled, her dress not quite clean. When she saw Maribel she had wailed and wrung her hands and threatened to write to her mother, though Maribel was quite sure that she would not. Miss Phillips was a coward. Maribel had walked away without saying goodbye.
Maribel breathed in,
inhaling steadiness, the familiar warm smell of the flat. Then, dragging her desk chair to the small rosewood cabinet behind the door, she stood on it, reaching in to slide the wooden cigar box from its place at the back of the highest shelf. The box was battered, unvarnished, clumsily inked on its top in Spanish. As well as a small iron hook it was tightly tied with string.
Unpicking the knots, Maribel opened it. Inside, on top of several faded photographs, was a folded pile of letters perhaps half an inch thick. The letters were in her own hand, its loops and curlicues practised over and over in the ink-scented chill of a Yorkshire schoolroom. Carefully she placed her new letter on top of the pile and closed the box. The string was frayed. It was difficult to make a neat job of retying it.
She knew it was foolish, foolish to write and even more foolish to keep the letters, but she could not help it. She had written her first letter to Ida when she had first come to London and somehow she had never broken the habit of it. For thirteen years she had written to her sister, sometimes at length, sometimes a scribble hardly three lines long. She had never sent any of them, of course – most were not even finished – but somehow, through the writing and the keeping of them, better than no letters at all.
‘Remind me why I agreed to this?’ Edward said a week later as he sat at breakfast, dressed in a newly acquired set of white flannels.
‘Because you are a man of your word,’ Maribel replied, pouring tea. ‘And because it is entirely your fault I visited Milton Terrace in the first place.’
Edward frowned slightly, jerking his head towards the door. Maribel nodded, conceding the warning. In all the years she had been with them Alice had never shown herself to be anything but trustworthy but she was still a servant. It was important to be careful. Edward tapped his paper.
‘This is funny. It says here that the gossip columnist of the Referee, who goes by the soubriquet of Dagonet and clearly has a jester’s sense of humour, offered a prize of a portrait of the Queen to any British newspaper last week that did not once mention the words “Jubilee” or “Buffalo Bill”. Apparently he did not receive a single entry.’
Maribel smiled and held out the toast rack. He took a slice, setting it on his plate, and reached for the butter dish.
‘You know, I think I shall encourage you to play cricket more often,’ she said, considering him. ‘The costume becomes you.’
‘Do not push your luck, Mrs L. This is a once-in-a-lifetime favour which I have no intention ever of repeating.’
‘You old curmudgeon. I have a sneaking feeling you are rather looking forward to it.’
‘Soothe your conscience with as many sweet deceptions as you like. You will suffer a thousand agonies of remorse when I return with a fistful of broken fingers and a black eye.’
‘Perhaps you will bowl someone for a century. Or bat a duck or something.’
‘Your grasp of the game is impressive but I fear the black eye is infinitely more likely. I suppose I should be grateful that it is June and not the depths of the rugby football season. Six months in plaster of Paris would have been a kindness too far.’
For all his complaining there was no mistaking Edward’s cheerfulness as he kissed her goodbye. She watched him stroll up the sunlit street towards the cab rank at Sloane Square, the canvas holdall containing his schoolboy bat and pads slung over one shoulder. It had transpired that his mother had kept them all this time, not in one of the damp attics at Inverallich as Edward had suspected, but at the bottom of a wardrobe in Halkin Street. When Edward had pulled them out the pads had been a little discoloured but the bat was true. He had struck at an imaginary ball and Vivien had laughed, raising an artfully darkened eyebrow.
‘Edward has always derided team sports,’ she had said to Maribel afterwards, as they drank their soup. ‘It did not stop him from being an exceptional cricketer. Considerably better than Henry, though Henry was much the keener. It would seem that if one is blessed with ability enough, one can achieve excellence without enthusiasm. Edward played in the First XI from the age of fourteen, though he was never captain, unlike Henry. They do not allow boys like Edward to be captain.’
Alice put her head round the door.
‘Are you done, ma’am?’ she asked.
Maribel nodded.
‘Thank you, Alice,’ she said. ‘And Mrs Charterhouse will be calling this morning. We shall need refreshments.’
‘Anything in particular, ma’am? We’ve not much in.’
‘Something cold to drink. It is so hot already.’
‘I’d do lemonade only there’s not enough lemons,’ Alice said, stacking the dirty breakfast dishes onto her tray. ‘I suppose I could go out.’
‘Definitely not lemonade,’ Maribel said firmly. ‘Ginger beer from the barrow on Elizabeth Street. And some strawberries too, if you can find some. It is just the kind of day for strawberries.’
Strawberries were an extravagance but Charlotte loved them. She loved ginger beer too. It pleased Maribel to picture her friend’s pleasure. Besides, the news from Inverallich was good. The apple orchards continued well and, with the improvements finally completed, the farms might at last be coaxed into something resembling a profit. She hummed to herself as she set a chair in the window bay and scrambled onto it, reaching up to drape a length of muslin over the curtain rail so that it strained the morning sunlight into a pale pool on the carpet. Several times she took the chair from the window and put it back again.
‘I feel like I am dressed for bed,’ Charlotte complained when Alice showed her into the drawing room. She frowned at the unfamiliar bareness of the room, the furniture pushed back against the walls, the half-drawn curtain. ‘My goodness, you are in earnest.’
‘Did you ever doubt it?’ Maribel asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘No. But I hoped.’
Maribel smiled, exhaling a long, satisfied stream of smoke.
‘Hope is never enough,’ she said and she nodded at Alice. ‘If anyone calls we are not in. We shall take refreshments at noon. By then Mrs Charterhouse will be in need of distraction.’
‘I am in need of it now,’ Charlotte said. ‘However, I am ready to do my duty. Is Edward at the House?’
‘Edward is playing cricket.’
‘Cricket? Edward? Are you sure?’
‘I am afraid so. Now take off that bonnet. It hides too much of your face.’
‘You are fearfully bossy,’ Charlotte said, but she reached up obligingly and began to unpin her hat. ‘Will you be nicer to me once we begin?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, should you?’
Charlotte smiled. Maribel took her friend’s bonnet and set it on top of a pile of papers on the writing desk. As commanded, Charlotte had worn the embroidered blue dress with the trumpet sleeves and her dark hair hung in a plait down her back. In the heat her pale skin glowed pink. She looked, as Maribel had hoped, like an untroubled Lady Macbeth. On impulse, she kissed her friend on the cheek.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Now come and stand here. In the window.’
‘I thought you said I was to sit.’
‘You are. But you will stand to do it.’
Charlotte looked about her curiously.
‘Is that really the camera? It is so small.’
‘Welcome to the future.’
There was a pause while Maribel fiddled with the tripod, adjusting the height. The lit cigarette hung from between her lips and she squinted through the smoke.
‘Cricket, though,’ Charlotte said. ‘I cannot imagine Edward in a team.’
‘Vivien says he was rather good.’
‘Your mother-in-law, so moderate in her praise? I find that almost harder to imagine than Edward on a cricket pitch.’
Maribel laughed. ‘What she really said was that he was the hero of the First XI.’
‘Do you think mothers cannot help it? In ten years’ time shall I be boasting to my boys’ wives about their skill with a hoop or their astonishing aptitude for Musical Statues?’
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‘With luck they will have acquired some other skills by then.’
Charlotte sighed.
‘I doubt it. Not one of them seems in the least interested in books or schoolwork or anything at all except balls and cowboys and giving one another bruises. Truly, Maribel, I tear my hair out over them. Why is it that women hanker so after sons? I swear a single day spent at Chester Square would cure them of their delusions.’
Maribel did not answer. She frowned, peering at the tripod.
‘Dearest, I am sorry,’ Charlotte murmured. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘Charlotte, do be quiet,’ Maribel said briskly, putting out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. She bent down, looking at her friend through the viewfinder. ‘You know perfectly well that Edward and I are quite happy as we are and a great deal happier than most. Now turn to the left a little. A little more. Yes, like that. And stop talking.’
It was work that steadied her, work that drew a curtain over the flash and glint of memory and softened its sharp edges. For the first time in weeks Maribel was grateful for the unfaltering brilliance of the morning. Other amateur photographers used professional studios where the electrical lights gave a more predictable result, but they were expensive and, besides, Maribel disliked the flattening effect of artificial illumination. She disliked too the sense of occasion imposed by a studio, the atmosphere of anxiety and expectation that stiffened limbs and fixed expressions. Maribel was no more interested in formal composition in photography than she was in poetic tropes. The complexities of construction overworked it, so that the resulting work was dense and heavy. It was Maribel’s belief that it was necessary to come at both poetry and photographs obliquely, to make their creation as much of an accident as possible. It was not about pressing images into a preordained shape. It was about capturing a moment of unconsciousness, something fleeting and true. She could quite see why Livingstone’s savages considered photography to be stealing. Perhaps poetry was stealing too.
