Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

‘I think I should.’

  Nodding firmly, she bustled up the steps. Across the courtyard a figure in a dark slick coat hurried, an umbrella held aloft. Then he vanished. Maribel smoothed Charlotte’s hair from her forehead.

  ‘It won’t be long now, dearest,’ she murmured. ‘The doctor is on his way.’

  She stroked Charlotte’s damp cheek with a curled finger. Charlotte closed her eyes.

  ‘I think she’s fainted again,’ she said.

  ‘Bloody doctor,’ Ida said, scowling into the darkness. ‘Where the devil is he?’

  Immediately Maribel was in the orchard at Ellerton, Ida beside her crossly rattling the bucket of pony nuts for the fat little Shetland that hid when you called it.

  ‘Oh, Ida,’ she whispered, swallowing the lump in her throat. ‘You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I told that idiot doorman that we needed someone straight away. I couldn’t have made it plainer.’

  ‘When Edith told me you were in London – forgive me.’ With the back of one hand Maribel brushed away the tears that spilled from her eyes. ‘It’s just – Oh, Ida, your baby. I’m so very sorry. I wish I’d had the chance to meet her.’

  Ida made a strangled noise. She bent down, busying herself with the umbrellas.

  ‘Ida, look at me, please. If you knew how many times I wished I had taken you with me . . .’

  For a moment there was silence. Maribel held tight to Charlotte’s hand. Then Ida exhaled sharply.

  ‘Peggy, please –’

  ‘We were going to have a house in Regent’s Park, do you remember?’

  ‘Were we? Mother always did say we children talked a lot of nonsense.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was nonsense.’

  ‘No. Well.’

  Abruptly there came the sound of voices. The door opened, spilling light into the darkening night.

  ‘I have him,’ called Edith triumphantly. ‘I have the doctor.’

  Ida raised her hand.

  ‘Over here,’ she called. Then she knelt down next to Charlotte, two fingers feeling for the pulse in her wrist. ‘The doctor’s here now. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Write to me,’ Maribel whispered and she folded her card into Ida’s free hand. ‘Promise you’ll write to me.’

  Ida did not reply. Gently she adjusted the shawl beneath Charlotte’s head. Then, smoothing her skirts, she stood.

  ‘Goodness me, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d never come.’

  22

  CHARLOTTE LAY IN BED, propped up with pillows, her arm in its casing of plaster of Paris set on a velvet cushion by her side. She was pale with a bruised look about the eyes, but the doctor had assured Arthur that she was as comfortable as could be expected. She had broken the radius, he explained, one of the two bones which ran from elbow to wrist, and the break would take some weeks to heal. Morphine pills would ease the pain. As for the baby, it was quite unharmed.

  ‘She is to rest,’ Arthur said, wagging a finger at his wife. ‘Do not let her tell you otherwise. There will be no sledding down the staircase for a month or two.’

  Charlotte held out her good hand to Maribel.

  ‘Dearest,’ she said.

  ‘Look at you.’

  ‘I know. The children call me the Egyptian mummy.’

  ‘Perhaps if you were to paint the cast it would look more cheerful?’ Arthur suggested. ‘Something uplifting. Florence Nightingale with her lamp, perhaps, or the dying moments of Admiral Nelson. Ursie is longing to try out her new watercolours.’

  ‘Please make my husband go to his office,’ Charlotte said, pressing Maribel’s hand.

  ‘Do you hear her, Maribel? She would have me thrown out of my own home!’

  ‘You know quite well you want nothing more,’ Charlotte protested. ‘You maraud around a sickroom like a tiger in a zoo.’

  Arthur smiled.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I shall be home in time for tea.’

  ‘You are the dearest man in the world but you shall do no such thing. I know how busy you are at present. We shall manage very well without you.’

  ‘In that, Mrs Arthur Charterhouse, you are sorely mistaken. We have great plans for your entertainment, the children and I. If you cannot come downstairs then it is our considered opinion that downstairs will have to come to you.’ He kissed her tenderly on the cheek. ‘Take care of my wife, Maribel.’

  ‘I shall do my best.’

  ‘And no smoking in the sickroom, do you hear me?’ he added, raising a warning finger. ‘You shall not poison Charlotte in her own bed.’

  ‘Goodbye, dearest.’

  The door clicked shut behind him. Charlotte sighed, closing her eyes.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ Maribel asked.

  ‘Just a little tired.’

  ‘Shall I leave you?’

  ‘No. I am just resting for a moment. Then we shall have Hannah bring tea.’

  Maribel watched as Charlotte’s face slackened and her breathing grew deeper. On the counterpane her good hand turned slowly outwards, the fingers uncurling like a flower. Then, setting the package of books she had brought for Charlotte on the bedside table, she tiptoed over to the wing-backed chair. She was in no hurry. In her pocket she had She, the new novel by H. Rider Haggard, which she had purchased with not a little shame and the certain knowledge that many of their circle dismissed it as drivel. She settled herself, opening the book with a sigh of pleasure.

  ‘Did she tell you who she was?’ Charlotte murmured some time later.

  Maribel dragged herself away from the lost kingdom of Kôr.

  ‘What is that, dearest?’

  ‘The lady at the Academy. The one who helped me. Did she tell you her name?’

  Maribel folded her hands, running the tips of her thumbs over her lips. The sudden urge for a cigarette made her cough. She pressed a palm to her chest.

  ‘Her name? Let me think. No, I don’t believe she did. Does it matter?’

  Charlotte blinked and tried to sit up, sending a spasm of pain skittering across her face.

  ‘Do you need something?’ Maribel asked anxiously. ‘A pill? Something to drink? Shall I call for Hannah?’

  ‘Stop fussing. You are as bad as Arthur.’

  ‘Perhaps I could dance for you. Pull an egg out of your ear. Recite a poem.’ She struck a pose. ‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Some water then?’

  ‘Very well. But only if you promise it will shut you up.’

  Maribel held out the glass and Charlotte drank. Then she leaned back against the pillows. The effort had clearly tired her.

  ‘I just wish I had the lady’s name,’ she said. ‘I still have her shawl.’

  ‘What, here?’

  ‘Not in this room, obviously. I think Hannah took it for laundering.’

  It was a strange feeling, knowing that something of Ida’s was here, in the house.

  ‘Do you think perhaps if I enquired at the Academy?’ Charlotte said. ‘She might have left an address. It was not a good shawl. Still, one ought to return it. I understand she was very kind.’

  ‘Yes. She was.’

  Charlotte sighed, smiling wearily at Maribel.

  ‘Dearest Maribel. What a clumsy muff I am. What in heaven would I have done if you had not been there to rescue me?’

  ‘If I had not been in so much of a hurry you would not have fallen in the first place.’

  ‘Of course I would. Look at me. I don’t need your help to trip over my own feet.’

  ‘I am sorry, all the same.’

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  Hannah put her head into the room.

  ‘The doctor’s here to see you, ma’am.’

  ‘Very well. Show him up.’

  ‘I should go,’ Maribel said. ‘I shall come again tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you for the books. When I asked Arthur for something
he brought Beowulf.’

  Maribel grinned.

  ‘You can have She as soon as I am done with it.’ She hesitated, her wrap bundled in her arms. ‘I shall be in Piccadilly later. Shall I enquire for you, about the shawl lady?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a bother?’

  ‘No bother at all.’

  ‘Well, then, yes, thank you.’

  When Maribel bent to kiss her, Charlotte caught her hand, her pale face tender.

  ‘Yesterday at the exhibition,’ she said. ‘Something frightened you. What was it?’

  ‘Frightened me?’ Maribel shrugged. ‘I remember thinking that very bloody St Sebastian by what’s-his-name rather gruesome.’

  When Charlotte did not smile Maribel made a face.

  ‘Oh, Charlotte!’ she remonstrated. ‘With all that’s happened, yesterday feels two lifetimes ago. How on earth can you expect me to remember?’

  ***

  The attendant at the Royal Academy was apologetic. No one had notified them about a lost shawl. Maribel left Charlotte’s address in case the lady should ask for it and went home. Later that afternoon she wrote to Edith. She thanked her for her kindnesses and assured her that the patient and her unborn child were recovering well. She wrote of Charlotte’s wish to thank her Good Samaritans and to return Ida’s shawl and suggested that, to be quite certain to avoid any difficulties, both Edith and Ida write directly to the Academy on headed writing paper, enquiring after the injured woman. In this way the addresses might be secured without any connection being made between themselves and Maribel.

  Mother has been through enough, she wrote. We must think of Mother.

  She paused, her pen hovering above the paper. Then, in a rapid scrawl, she drew the letter to a close.

  I shall not write again. Should we ever cross paths again I think it best we do not speak. If you would be kind enough to send Ida’s address by return I will write the same to her.

  M

  23

  THE SUNDAY OF THE protest was a bleak day even for November, with a hard ground frost and a raw north-easterly wind. By midday the low sky threatened rain. In St James’s Park the trees were bare, the lawns clotted with mud, and the few ducks on the pond huddled together as the icy breeze whipped the water into peaks. As Maribel’s hansom edged around the perimeter wall of Buckingham Palace towards the Mall, the crush of traffic slowed and then stopped altogether. Maribel was required to make the last part of her journey by foot.

  Four days had passed and she had heard nothing from Ida. Each morning, as Alice brought the post to the breakfast table, she had allowed her hopes to rise but to no avail. Ida was grieving, of course. She mourned her lost child. Maribel knew how grief unhooked one’s will, made the smallest action unimaginable. She tried not to think of Ida’s brisk efficiency at the Academy. Ida would write when she was ready, when the pain had cleared enough to permit her to imagine a future. Maribel could wait, at least until she received Ida’s address from Edith. It exasperated her that Edith did not write. It was her own fault, Maribel thought bitterly as she forced her way through the crush towards the elaborate facade of Green’s hotel. Her letter had both requested an answer and forbidden it. She could almost picture the confusion tugging at Edith’s foolish mouth as she tried to decipher what was required of her. Maribel did not dare write again. Meanwhile she closed her eyes, summoning again the memory of Ida’s hand closing around her card on the steps of the Academy, and wished with all the clench-faced determination of a child for Ida to uncurl her fingers and relent.

  The crowds on the pavements, though thick, were orderly, but at Green’s security was tight. A barrier had been erected in front of the revolving glass doors of the hotel and Maribel was required to show her invitation to the policeman there and again to a uniformed doorman in the lobby before she was permitted to enter the lift which would take her to the first floor. The rooms that Mrs Rasmussen had taken for her party were elegant and spacious with high ceilings and three pairs of French windows, through which it was possible to see Nelson’s Column and the slate-grey dome of the National Gallery. Half-circles of upright gilt chairs had been arranged in front of the windows for spectators but as yet they were mostly unoccupied. It was still early. The Socialist marchers, whose intention was to converge upon the square from all directions simultaneously, were not expected for another half-hour at least.

  Mrs Rasmussen greeted Maribel warmly, a snuffle-nosed dog clamped beneath one arm. She attempted to steer her towards a group of people gathered around the fireplace but instead Maribel took a champagne saucer from a waiter in white gloves and crossed the room to the windows. They opened onto a dropping-flecked stone balcony but, when she tried the handle of one, she found it locked. It hardly mattered. Even through the glass the window afforded an almost uninterrupted view of Trafalgar Square. Like most Americans Mrs Rasmussen understood the value of spectacle.

  The prospect that greeted her did nothing to ease Maribel’s anxiety. The sunken area at the centre of the square had been closed and ranks of mounted police in heavy cloaks scored strict black lines over the mouths of all the streets that emptied into it. Along its southern side, below the window in which Maribel stood, a line of grim-faced policemen stood four deep, their elbows touching. On the other three sides she could make out two ranks of helmets, tightly massed, while to the north, beneath the impervious facade of the National Gallery, further masses of policemen stopped up the steps that led from the street to the fountains. It was impossible to imagine how the marchers might breach such stalwart defences.

  She took a sip of her champagne, feeling the fizz of it on her tongue. The party was filling up and the room was stuffy and uncomfortably warm. Behind her she could hear Mrs Rasmussen’s tinkling laugh as she greeted her guests, the muffled yaps of her adenoidal dog. Waiters moved around the room, filling glasses, offering sandwiches and savouries. The time was drawing nearer. Below the hotel balcony a substantial crowd was gathered about the police perimeter, among them a considerable number of women and children. Many were ragged but a great many more were not. Groups of gentlemen in whiskers and good coats clustered on steps and in porches, gazing about them with the detached curiosity of tourists. Several carried pairs of binoculars on leather straps around their necks. The noise of the crowd seeped through the gaps in the window frames like the sound of the sea.

  She craned her neck, combing the crowd for his hat, but she could not make out Edward among the swarms of men. Perhaps he meant to lead one of the groups of marchers with their banners and their drums. She did not know. He had left Cadogan Mansions several hours earlier, telling her only as he snatched up his hat that he was to meet John Burns and that they would march on the square together.

  The electricity in him had frightened Maribel. It was Burns who had spoken with great violence at the demonstration in the square nearly two years before, Burns who had notoriously unfurled a red flag and waved it above his head, shouting that ‘unless we get bread they must get lead’. It was Burns who had declared hanging too good for landlords and capitalists and had incited the mob to smash windows and plunder shops. If Edward had chosen Burns as his companion, it was blood that he wanted. In the centre of the square, circled like wagons, were three windowless Black Marias.

  ‘Mr Webster,’ Mrs Rasmussen trilled behind her. ‘How good of you to come.’

  Maribel turned too abruptly, spilling her champagne. She brushed ineffectually at her skirts as the dark stain feathered and spread. Immediately a waiter materialised at her elbow, brandishing a linen napkin and a bottle with which to refill her glass. She waved him away impatiently, glancing over her shoulder. Mr Webster was watching her. He smiled at her over Mrs Rasmussen’s head, touching the tips of his fingers to his forehead in a kind of salute. Frowning, she looked quickly away, fumbling for her cigarettes. If Edward had known Mr Webster was invited he would not have let her come. That morning, when he had left the flat, jabbing his fingers into his gloves, Edward had seen the copy of the
City Chronicle on the hall table. Snatching up his hat he had swept it to the floor.

  ‘That stupid sensationalist bastard,’ he had said bitterly. ‘He will have blood on his hands tonight.’

  He had slammed the door behind him as he left, the force of it fluttering the scattered pages of the newspaper. Maribel had not picked it up. She could not bring herself to touch it.

  ‘Mrs Campbell Lowe, how nice to see you. Is it begun?’

  Maribel turned to see Lady Worsley standing behind her, a cup of tea in one gloved hand. The two women greeted one another affectionately, gazing side by side down into the square. The crowd was growing restless. Men jostled and shouted. A small boy wormed his way through the crush and threw a stone at a policeman.

  ‘Are you quite well?’ Lady Worsley asked. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘No ghost. Just Mr Webster.’

  ‘Ah. That would do it.’

  ‘I don’t know how he has the nerve to show his face. I am only glad Edward is not here. I don’t think I have ever seen him so angry.’

  Lady Worsley shook her head.

  ‘He brought the page with him, did you see? In case any of us should have missed it.’

  She nodded towards the fireplace. Propped on the mantel in a large gilt frame was the front page of the previous day’s Chronicle. Its headline trumpeted in large bold capitals quite legible even from the distance of the window: ONWARD, CHRIST IAN SOLDIERS.

  Maribel’s jaw clenched and the squirm in her stomach hardened into a knot. For days the Socialists had worked tirelessly, rallying working men and women from across the metropolis. This would be, they proclaimed, the largest demonstration of its kind ever seen in London. From suburbs around the capital, from Peckham and Bermondsey, from Battersea and Deptford and Clerkenwell, tens of thousands of men and women and children would march unarmed to defy the Commissioner’s arbitrary decree and defend their constitutional right to public protest. The tide of opinion was so strong that the Home Secretary himself had been forced formally to address the House on the matter, offering an assurance that bona fide meetings would not be interfered with.