by Clare Clark
At Earls Court the sky threatened rain. Work on dismantling the Wild West showground had already begun. The air was coarse with the scream of saws, the whack of mallets against wood. The great backdrop to the main arena with its rolling prairie and distant mountain ranges had been taken down, and from beyond the piled-up foothills of rock and trees that embanked the performance area, the terraces of Earls Court huddled uneasily, their roofs tugged low over their small windows. In the camp the tepees too had been dismantled and were being scrubbed clean. Where the tents had been pitched there were circles of soot-blackened stones.
The tent provided for Maribel on her previous visit was no longer in evidence. Instead she was accommodated in a room in the box tent that housed the Wild West offices. The chairs were made of buffalo hide and on the wall hung a feathered war-bonnet and several newspaper articles, framed in gilt. One was a poem in the style of Longfellow ‘from the mouth of Punchiwatha’. She glanced idly at the final verse as she prepared her camera.
To the Queen too the papooses,
Dusky little Indian babies,
Were presented, and she touched them
Gently with a royal finger
That the squaws, the happy mothers,
Might go back upon Kee-way-din,
On the Home wind o’er the water,
To the land of the Ojibways,
To the land of the Dacotahs,
To the Mountains of the Prairie,
Singing gaily all the praises
Of the Gentile Queen and Empress,
And the wonders of the North Land.
Once again Mr Molloy, the translator, had been assigned to her as guide. Several times, as they walked around the showground, she thought she glimpsed ahead of her the diminutive figure of Dr Coffin and each time her heart jumped into her mouth. It was never him. Once it was a boy carrying planks of wood, once a woman, an Indian squaw, squarely built and wrapped in a blue blanket. Neither resembled him in the least. And yet, though she dreaded seeing him, she hoped for it too, even willed it. It required a concerted effort not to ask Mr Molloy about him. When they passed close to the sanatorium her heart beat so rapidly she could hardly catch her breath.
She forced herself to concentrate on her work. She took several photographs of the Indian squaws on their hands and knees scouring their tents, the chimneys of Earls Court belching behind them, and several more of the fierce-faced men who squatted on their haunches, watching as their women worked. She photographed four braves playing poker amid the ruins of the encampment, and three Englishwomen with brooms and dusters, their hair tied up in handkerchiefs, cleaning out the Deadwood stagecoach. Several of the more elaborate tableaux, such as an Indian brave tearing down a large Wild West poster, she had planned in advance. Extracting a copy of one of the thousands of penny dreadfuls relating the exploits of Buffalo Bill from her bag, she had Molloy instruct one of the smaller Indian children to hold it up in front of his face as though he meant to read it, its lurid cover upside down. Another of the children posed in Mr Molloy’s derby hat.
She worked methodically and with care but there was a flatness to the photographs, or to herself, that she could not lift. It was not just that she was distracted, nor that the day was over-cast. With its great sets dismantled, its camps struck, the Wild West and its occupants had a sad provisional atmosphere. The undulating prairies with their pioneering spirit and their herds of wild buffalo had shrunk to heaps of London rubble, the mighty Indian warriors to a ragtag of refugees.
‘That’s it?’ Molloy asked when she began to pack up her equipment.
‘That’s it.’
Molloy shrugged. ‘OK.’
They walked back towards the tent. Outside an Indian waited. He was very tall and broad-shouldered, with waist-length black hair parted in the middle and tied back in a ponytail. His face, bare of warpaint, might have been carved from mahogany. Most striking of all, he wore, in place of the habitual Indian costume, a dark tweed suit and a shirt with a stiff collar. The knot of his tie was askew and loose as a schoolboy’s. She could see his collar stud.
‘Who is that?’ Maribel murmured, reaching for her camera.
‘That’s Black Elk. His father’s cousin was Crazy Horse, the Lakota chief who led the Indians against Custer at Little Bighorn.’
‘Crazy Horse was murdered by the army, wasn’t he?’
Molloy twisted his mouth.
‘Opinion differs about that but, yes, he died in custody.’
‘And Black Elk is compelled to capitulate to his murderers fourteen times a week? How can he endure it?’
Molloy shrugged again. ‘He insisted upon it. He told Cody that he had had a dream in which his tribe were allowed to return to their lands. He said that if he could only travel to the world of the Wasichu, the white man, he might discover the secret that would help them.’
‘And has he?’
‘Somehow I doubt it, don’t you?’
Maribel was silent.
‘Do you want to take his picture?’ Molloy asked.
She weighed her camera in her hands for a moment, imagining the shot. There was something about the Indian in his English clothes that was both outlandish and immensely dignified. One of the newspapers had recently reported the story of a band of Umatilla Indians who had set upon a photographer at their reservation and broken his camera because they feared that, if he took their portraits, their souls would be trapped in the photographs for ever.
‘No,’ she said.
As she entered the tent she turned. The Indian was looking at her, or beyond her, his dark eyes grave in his mahogany face. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking.
Burke came to bid her goodbye.
‘I have asked Mr Molloy to accompany you to the train station,’ he said. ‘Unless you wish him to find you a cab?’
‘The train will be fine.’
Burke reached out and shook her warmly by the hand.
‘Goodbye, ma’am. It has been a pleasure.’
‘Goodbye, Major Burke, and thank you. Oh, I almost forgot.’ She pulled out an envelope of photographs. ‘I brought some of my pictures. I thought they might make a souvenir for the Indians.’
‘What a kind thought. I shall make sure they get them.’
‘And my husband sent this for Colonel Cody.’
Burke smiled as she handed him Edward’s copy of the Times.
‘It’s a fine piece, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You have already seen it?’
‘I’ve seen all of today’s newspapers, ma’am. That’s my job. Thirty-odd morning editions in the city and we’re in twenty-nine. Still, the London Times is something special. Bill will get a kick out of that.’
‘London will be lost without you. What will the newspapers write about once you are gone?’
Major Burke grinned.
‘I’m sure they’ll think of something.’
Outside Mr Molloy was waiting for her, his hat tipped over his eyes. He straightened up as he saw her, relieving her of the heavier of her two bags.
‘Will the doctors travel with you to Birmingham?’ Maribel asked as they passed through the iron gates of the Wild West for the last time. Outside the ticket office was boarded up. The popcorn stalls were gone.
‘I don’t know,’ Molloy said. ‘Why?’
‘I just wondered.’
There was a silence.
‘I keep thinking of Black Elk,’ she said. ‘About the dream that told him he had to come here.’
‘It was a vision.’
‘Is that different?’
‘Black Elk would say so.’
‘What would he say?’
‘The Lakota think that, when a man has a vision, he enters the world behind this one where the spirits of all things live. Black Elk would say that world is the real one, and everything in this world is only a shadow.’
‘That’s not really so different from what Christians believe.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Are you not a Christian, Mr Molloy?’
‘Me? I’m not really one for religion. I believe what I know, what I see with my own eyes.’
‘And what is that, if I may ask?’
‘That Black Elk’s people are starving in the reservations. That the less real this world is for them the better.’
20
‘EDWARD, DEAR, AT LAST!’
Vivien’s delight was plain, as was her irritation. It was past nine o’clock and they had been obliged to begin dinner without him. Maribel smiled up at him and, as he passed her chair, he gently brushed her shoulder with the back of his hand. He smelled of cold fog.
‘Apologies, Mother, everyone,’ Edward said, taking the proffered seat beside her and accepting a plate of soup. The other guests were already eating poached pheasant with celery. ‘Thank you. It has been something of a week.’
‘Already? But it is only Tuesday.’
‘Don’t say that or I shall never make it to Saturday.’
‘Oh, Mr Lowe, but you must,’ said the American dowager on his other side. ‘It is you we are all coming to see.’
‘Mrs Rasmussen is throwing a party on Saturday afternoon at Green’s hotel,’ Vivien explained. ‘Apparently the main dining room has several French windows that look out directly over the square.’
‘Well, I am not in London long,’ Mrs Rasmussen said. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss all the action.’
‘Then march with us, Mrs Rasmussen,’ Edward teased. ‘We should be glad to furnish you with a flag.’
The old lady laughed girlishly, shaking her jowls.
‘It’s a tempting offer. I’ve always rather hankered after a flag.’
‘Consider it yours.’
It had finally happened. After months of concerted pressure on the Home Secretary, Warren had finally got his way. The previous Friday, the Commissioner of Police had issued a proclamation summarily announcing that from henceforth it was unlawful to hold public meetings in Trafalgar Square. The ban was in response to a meeting called in the square by the Metropolitan Radical Federation to demand the release of William O’Brien, the Irish MP imprisoned for his part in inciting a rent strike in Cork, a peaceful rally at which the police had opened fire, killing three people. A coroner’s jury in Dublin had found the police responsible for all three deaths but the men were never prosecuted. Instead it was O’Brien who had been tried and found guilty. His continued incarceration was for many a sharp reminder of the capacity of a despotic state to exceed its powers.
The protest might ordinarily have been expected to bring out only the usual band of hardliners and troublemakers. Warren’s ban, however, carried forward on a building tide of public anxiety about law and order, had done for the Socialists what months of half-hearted compromises had failed to do. It unified them. The great wave of outrage that bore down on them drowned out the bitterest of quarrels. Differences in politics, in principle, in temperament, the faults and failings and festering splits which had been picked over with such obsessive meticulousness, all these were abandoned. For the first time in almost a decade the radicals of London, and a fair number of Liberals too, found themselves bound in common cause. Edward was euphoric.
Henry’s old friend Charles de Vere leaned across the table.
‘Surely you are not serious, Teddy, old chap,’ he said. ‘A Member of Parliament attending an illegal demonstration? Won’t you be in the most fearful hot water?’
‘For what? It is the Commissioner of Police who defies the law, not to mention morality, decency and the fundamental rights of a civilised society. When a British government attempts to outlaw its people’s right to peaceful protest what else is a man to do but peacefully protest?’
‘Do you honestly believe that the lowest elements of London will be content with that? Last year’s protests were intended to be peaceful, remember? Those ruffians broke every window in my club.’
‘I would break a few windows myself to protect the fundamental right of the people to freedom of speech,’ Edward said. ‘We cannot allow Warren’s cavalier disregard of English constitutional law to go unchallenged.’
‘You cannot challenge it in Parliament, through the proper channels?’
‘When the Home Secretary himself shows not the faintest regard for the proper channels, as you call them, one must assume that they have ceased to serve any functional purpose.’
‘The Home Secretary does have the small advantage of several thousand police,’ Vivien pointed out.
‘And the Household Guard, if the Telegraph is to be believed,’ Charles added.
‘But we have the Fourth Estate,’ Edward countered. ‘Gascoigne at the Post and Webster at the Chronicle have both come out in favour. The Easter Sunday rally in Hyde Park drew nearly one hundred and fifty thousand people. With the newspapers behind us Hyndman reckons we should get double that. They will not disperse us so easily.’
‘Three hundred thousand people,’ Maribel said faintly. She had never imagined it would be so many.
‘It will be a most extraordinary spectacle,’ Mrs Rasmussen said. ‘You are quite right to march, Mr Lowe. A man’s right to free speech should be inalienable.’
‘I hope you mean to ride in on Pampa,’ Charles said. ‘I can see you now, gaucho cloak tossed over one shoulder, bridle jangling like a Christmas tree.’
‘I imagine I shall walk,’ Edward said, smiling, but Maribel winced. Even on foot, she knew that his participation would provoke the House. There were already too many Members, even among his own party, who considered him an agitator and an egotist. His participation in the march would, for many, be another proof of his incorrigible exhibitionism.
‘You will join my little party, I hope,’ Mrs Rasmussen said to Maribel. ‘We will provide you with sandwiches and a first-class view of the proceedings.’
‘That’s most kind, but I am not sure –’
‘But of course she will come,’ Edward said. ‘Mrs Rasmussen and I shall wave at you with our flags.’
Mrs Rasmussen laughed giddily.
‘Mr Lowe, truly, you are too much.’
Edward smiled at her. Then he leaned across the table towards Maribel.
‘Please, Bo. This is our moment, the one we have been waiting for. They shan’t stop us, you know. We shall reclaim Trafalgar Square for the people.’
Edward’s face was lit like a boy’s. It filled her with tenderness and a sinking sense of foreboding.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know you shall.’
Even Edward knew well enough to keep a low profile during the preparations for the march. The following morning he travelled north to Carlisle. From there he would go to Newcastle and then to Stoke-on-Trent before returning to London early on Sunday morning. It had been recommended that Maribel accompany him. The provincial party faithful liked wives.
Instead, after Edward had left for the station, Maribel went to Turks Row. Though several days had passed since her visit to the Wild West she had not yet had the opportunity to develop the plates and she was curious to see how they had turned out.
To her surprise it was Mr Pidgeon who answered the door when she knocked for the key. It was the first time Maribel had seen him since their contretemps about the photograph. He looked old and tired, his mouth bracketed with deep parentheses. Unhooking the key from its nail, he passed it to her through the gap. The silence was awkward.
‘No Thomas here today?’ Maribel asked, for something to say.
‘He’s busy,’ he said. ‘We have a family due shortly. Eleven children.’
‘Heavens. That poor mother.’
The photographer did not answer.
‘Well then, I shan’t keep you.’ She lingered, weighing the key in her hand. ‘You know, I saw that photograph you showed me in the Chronicle. The widow. I was surprised. I thought you told me not everything in life was for sale.’
Mr Pidgeon frowned but still he said nothing. He turned away.
‘Is that what would have happ
ened to my photograph, if you and Mr Webster had persuaded me to sell?’ Maribel demanded. ‘Would it have been published in his newspaper?’
‘Now hold on –’
‘You attempted to deceive me, Mr Pidgeon. To take advantage of me.’
‘Madam –’
Maribel shook her head.
‘I think perhaps it would be best if I found another darkroom. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Pidgeon closed his eyes, massaging the arch of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
‘If that is what you wish,’ he said.
‘You have not left me much choice in the matter.’
‘And today?’
‘I am here now. I haven’t time to take the plates elsewhere.’
‘Very well.’
‘Send me the account of whatever expenses are outstanding. I shall put the key back through the door when I am finished.’
He watched as she turned and walked away down the corridor towards the darkroom.
‘What Webster did was unpardonable,’ he said quietly. ‘It was beyond the pale.’
Maribel hesitated. She did not turn round. ‘He told us that his wife had lost her mother. That the photograph would be a comfort. Afterwards he claimed that he had acted “in the public interest”. He said that Mrs Burwood had an obligation to share her experiences with the nation, that glimpses into the next world were a gift to us all. Doubtless he was also aware that impoverished widows are not in a pos ition to sue.’
‘Are you saying that the photograph was printed without her permission?’
‘Mrs Burwood’s sister-in-law shared the photograph with our group in confidence. It was not easy for her. The spirit was her dead brother, to whom she had been greatly attached. She wept when – It was a family matter, a private family matter.’
‘And the widow?’
‘She knew nothing of Mr Webster’s intentions until after the photograph had been published. He has since furnished her with a small cheque by way of reparation.’
