Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

  Maribel, who had begged Henry and Charlotte to attend so that she might not have to stand alone in a deserted room, was astonished to find the gallery crowded with people. Near the door a huddle of newspapermen crowded around Mr Edridge, who opined on the importance in photography of noble and dignified subjects, such as mountains and cathedrals. He had introduced himself to Maribel that afternoon as the pictures were being hung and had been unable to conceal his surprise that her work had been included. She had been unable to discern whether he considered it shocking or only rather infra dig.

  Henry pushed through the throng towards her, a glass of cup in each hand. He was dressed formally, in white tie and tails. Onyx studs gleamed in his starched shirt front.

  ‘You look as though you could do with one of these,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps both.’

  Maribel laughed and took one of the glasses gratefully.

  ‘Is Teddy here?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘He’s on his way back from the Black Country. He had to speak at a meeting of chain-makers.’

  ‘But he is coming?’

  ‘Oh yes. He cabled last night. He plans to come straight from the station.’

  She touched her hand to her pocket, feeling the corners of the folded paper there. That afternoon Edward had sent a second telegram, directly to the gallery. She had opened it reluctantly, certain that he had been detained. It read only THINKING OF YOU SHALL BRING MOON.

  ‘Which ones are yours?’ Henry asked, looking around him. She gestured towards the back wall. He craned his neck, raising himself on tiptoes.

  ‘I can see only hats. Shall we?’

  ‘In a minute,’ she said, sipping her drink. ‘There’s no hope of lifting a glass in that crush.’

  ‘Have you sold many?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. From what I gather, this lot have come to sneer, not buy.’

  ‘What nonsense. Once they see your work they won’t be able to help themselves.’

  Maribel smiled and shook her head. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it. Although I can’t stay, I’m afraid. I have promised faithfully that tonight I won’t be late.’

  ‘It must be something special if you are prepared to make a promise like that.’

  ‘Buffalo Bill is back in town and Berkeley Levett has been prevailed upon to host a farewell dinner. It would appear that the Prince of Wales wants one last chance to win back some of the family inheritance before the old cowboy hightails it home to the prairie.’

  ‘The Wild West is finally going home?’

  ‘Not home exactly. They have a summer season booked in New York City.’

  ‘No peace for the wicked, then.’

  ‘No, but then Cody is very serious about his wickedness.’

  Maribel smiled. Henry leaned closer, lowering his voice.

  ‘He has asked me to keep an eye out for his Miss Clemmons while he is gone. It would seem that he is not entirely convinced of her affections.’

  ‘He is hardly entitled to them, given that he already has a wife.’

  ‘If he finances her new show, as she is pressing him to do, he will be entitled to them several times over. That creature is perfectly shameless. I know quite well she has had other gentleman friends while Cody’s been out of town. Trouble is, one can’t quite bear to tell him. He’s as smitten as a schoolboy.’

  Maribel’s glass was empty. Henry took it from her, setting it with his on the ledge of a nearby window.

  ‘Sharpen your elbows,’ he said. ‘We are going in.’

  It was nearly eight o’clock when the crowd began to thin. Maribel looked about her, searching those faces who remained. Near the door the Wildes conversed with the Mansfields, Oscar paying not the least attention to Constance’s repeated blandishments that they should leave, and Jane Morris smiled at a gentleman that Maribel did not know.

  At the back of the gallery a handful of people still examined her photographs. She scanned them quickly, looking for Charlotte. The Ferrixao boy returned her gaze impassively. Until today she had not been sure whether it was right to include him in the exhibition. The picture was the best she had ever taken but, as she had watched the photographs being hung, she could not evade the feeling that she had betrayed him, that, to serve her own vanity and commercial advantage, she had offered up to public scrutiny something precious and profoundly private.

  On the other side of the gallery, beside a huge print of Whitby Abbey, Edward leaned back a little from Mr Edridge, who, in full flood, swept his arms about him in great arcs. Edward looked tired, travel-worn. There was no sign of Charlotte.

  ‘I shall be there unless I am actually in labour,’ she had promised, patting her huge belly. Perhaps the baby was indeed on its way. It was due any day. Perhaps at this very moment Charlotte clamped the hand of the nurse, her back arched and her screams pressed into the pillow so that she might not frighten the little ones upstairs. It was too silly to worry about her, of course, who had more children than the old woman in the shoe. Knowing Charlotte she would be telling the doctor his business and dictating the next day’s menus as she laboured. All the same Maribel was distracted, her smile uncertain as she shook Mr More’s hand and congratulated him upon the attendance.

  ‘Madam, it is not my work they have come to see,’ More said, raising her fingers to his lips. ‘Thank you for entrusting my modest gallery with your immodest talent. May we enjoy a long and profitable partnership.’

  His expansive manner hung loosely on him, a borrowed suit several sizes too large. Over the toothy clutter of his smile he scanned the room, his eyes pale and narrow.

  ‘Ah,’ he purred, his outstretched arm nudging Maribel to one side. ‘Mr Webster, what a pleasure. You are acquainted, perhaps, with Mrs Campbell Lowe?’

  Maribel’s heart shrivelled.

  ‘Mr Webster,’ she said curtly.

  ‘Madam.’

  His eyes held hers, cold and opaque. Like a dead fish, she thought. The idea that she had ever thought him charming sent a chill down her spine.

  ‘So,’ Mr More said, rubbing his hands, ‘have you seen anything you like?’

  Webster did not take his eyes from Maribel.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘Then I must insist on showing you Mrs Campbell Lowe’s work. She has real talent. It won’t be long before she is at least as well known for her photographs as for her husband.’

  ‘What a distressing thought.’

  Mr More smiled nervously.

  ‘You must let me introduce you to Mr Edridge,’ he suggested. ‘His views would interest your readers, I think.’

  ‘No, thank you. That chap there, in the brown coat, he’s one of mine. Talk to him if it’s publicity you’re after.’

  ‘Publicity? Heavens, are all newspapermen such cynics?’

  It was intended as a joke but Webster did not smile. Maribel felt a lick of fear at the base of her throat.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, if you will excuse me –’

  Webster stepped a little closer, blocking her path. ‘It astounds me, you know,’ he said, his tone almost conversational, ‘the insatiable hunger you people have for notoriety.’

  Maribel swallowed. Beside her Mr More rolled his eyes. This was a conversation he enjoyed.

  ‘I am surprised at you,’ she said, struggling for civility. ‘I had thought as a photographer yourself you might be less old-fashioned.’

  ‘A photographer?’ More said eagerly. ‘How marvellous. What are your subjects?’

  Maribel had made sure to stay away from Turks Row on the days that Mr Pidgeon had rented the studio to Webster. When at last she returned she had found some thirty portraits of Webster drying on the rack. The photographs differed little in pose or composition. In all of them he looked directly at the camera, dressed in a white collar and a heavy jerkin. In the crook of one arm, he held a wooden staff. Though Webster had not gone so far as to shave his whiskers there was no avoiding the allusion to th
e famous Walker portrait: God’s Englishman, Oliver Cromwell.

  ‘Mr Webster is his own favourite study,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Webster?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have thought of exhibiting your work but if you were ever looking for a gallery I would consider it a privilege, a man of your reputation . . .’ More tailed off as Webster turned his fishy gaze to glare at him, holding up one palm in mock surrender. ‘Now is not the right time, I see. But if you change your mind –’ Extracting a card from his pocket he pressed it into Webster’s hand. Webster dropped it.

  ‘Go away,’ Webster said.

  More laughed nervously.

  ‘Well, you know where to find me,’ he muttered, backing away. Webster watched him go. Then he turned back to Maribel. His fish eyes gleamed with disgust.

  ‘So you would be a famous artist?’ He spat out the word as though it were poisoned. ‘The hubris is breathtaking.’

  ‘Why did you come here, Mr Webster? Was it simply for the pleasure of insulting me?’

  ‘You would think, with all you have to hide, that you would have the sense to keep a lower profile. But you people are all the same, aren’t you? You think, because you are born with silver spoons clutched in your aristocratic little mouths, that the world will continue to fawn all over you the way it always has, that it will worship you like gods, however low you stoop.’

  ‘I should like you to leave now.’

  ‘Should you? And if I don’t?’

  ‘Then I shall scream. And Edward will have you thrown out.’

  ‘Ah, he will enjoy that, won’t he? The champion of the working man with his great Scottish estates. The Socialist campaigner whose finest act has been to conspire with his degenerate, adulterous, inbred upper-class friends to discredit me, the only Socialist newspaper editor in London.’

  ‘Don’t you think you might stand a better chance of keeping your position if you displayed the slightest trace of honour or integrity?’

  ‘You dare to talk to me of honour? You people disgust me. For centuries you have hidden behind your titles, dispensing justice and making the laws for the ordinary people to obey, dismissing the virtues of decency and modesty and Godliness as nothing but useful curbs on the excesses of the poor working man, gags along with his pipe and his Bible and his slack-jawed forelock-tugging that will keep him quiet while you lie and cheat and squander the spoils of his miserable labour on abominations that would sicken the Devil himself. Well, let me tell you something. The world is changing. Once perhaps the gentlemen of the press were your lapdogs and your lackeys. Well, no longer. Don’t think you can rely upon me to keep your shameful secrets. Your powerful friends can threaten me all they like. I shall not be silenced. The Lord cares nothing for wealth or rank. He cares for Truth and I, madam, am His humble servant, however foul His task.’

  His face was so close that she could smell the stale coffee on his breath. She gazed at the sheen of sweat on his flushed cheeks, the spittle caught in white beads at the corners of his mouth, and she thought that she might faint. She put a hand out behind her, feeling the cool steadiness of the wall.

  ‘I know about you Campbell Lowes,’ he hissed. ‘I know about all of you.’

  ‘Mr Webster.’

  Dizzily Maribel looked up. Edward stood beside Webster, a frown creasing his brow. Webster did not reply. Setting his jaw he pushed past Edward and was gone.

  ‘What on earth was all that about?’ Edward asked. Maribel shook her head. It felt unsteady on her neck.

  ‘I – I am not sure.’

  ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that he bought something?’

  Maribel shook her head. ‘I don’t think there is any chance of that.’

  The last guests were dispersing. Across the emptying room, Mr More bid a group of gentlemen goodnight.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, old boy,’ she heard one declare jovially as he put on his hat. ‘It’s the Emperor’s new clothes with knobs on.’

  Maribel’s legs trembled and suddenly she felt close to tears. She took Edward’s arm.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve had enough of the limelight?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Then let me get the toast of London her coat.’

  Edward took her to dinner at the Savoy Grill. She would rather have gone home but he would not hear of it. As soon as they were seated he ordered champagne. Maribel drank several glasses too quickly and smoked several cigarettes, trying to dull the trembling that persisted in her arms and legs, to blot out the image of Webster’s fish eyes, the hatred in his twisted mouth. She had thought he had forgotten her. She had been a fool. He had not forgotten. All this time he had been hoarding their secrets like a miser, groping with his filthy hands in the darkest, most private recesses of their lives. He hated them, there was no doubting it now. He hated them and he meant to have revenge.

  The waiter refilled her glass, emptying the bottle. Edward nodded at him to bring another and raised his glass. Forcing herself to smile she raised hers too and touched it to his.

  ‘To a triumphant exhibition,’ he said. ‘May there be many more.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  She set the glass to her lips, wrinkling her nose against the fizz of the bubbles. Her head felt fizzy too and the sick feeling in her stomach had been superseded with a kind of dull pitch, like the rocking of a boat. Tipping up the glass she emptied it in a single swallow.

  ‘Steady on, there,’ Edward said gently.

  Maribel set down her glass. He reached out a hand, placing it over hers. She looked at his dear face and the tears prickled in her eyes. She blinked them away. She would tell him, she knew she would have to tell him, but she would not tell him here. Not tonight. Tonight he smiled at her across the snowy tablecloth and the light of the candles caught in the honeyed gleam of the champagne and set points of light dancing in his eyes and it was possible to imagine that life could always be like this, a perfect symphony of white and gold.

  ‘I am very proud of you, you know,’ he said.

  A waiter brought Dover sole on a broad platter. They watched as he deftly peeled the fish’s spine away from the delicate flesh.

  ‘I wonder how many you sold.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘That’s hardly likely. The place was positively heaving.’

  ‘I don’t think they were there to buy. One gentleman I spoke to asked me very politely how I dared to peddle the principles of Socialism when they would destroy the very fabric of the Empire. He seemed to think my work some kind of political propaganda.’

  ‘Dear God.’

  ‘It made me think the pictures must be clumsier than I had imagined.’

  ‘Nonsense. The clumsiness is all with him. Those dyed-inthe-wool Tories only ever consider the appearance of a man. They never look at his face, let alone into his soul. You do.’

  She had not expected his praise to move her so. She sipped at her champagne, swallowing the lump that rose in her throat. Edward took another mouthful of fish.

  ‘That boy,’ he asked. ‘The one with the eyes. Who is he?’

  Maribel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just a boy. One of the stone-pickers at Ferrixao.’

  ‘I think of all of your photographs it is the most arresting.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I was struck by him all over again tonight, the astonishing candour of his expression, as though he is giving himself to the camera, to you, without reservation. He meets one’s gaze and one cannot bear to look away. It is as though there is a connection, a bond that has been created between him and oneself. To break it seems – this will sound overblown, I know, but I mean it truly – it feels like a kind of sacrilege.’

  Something tightened in Maribel’s chest. She reached out and took his hand in hers.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Edward raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he set it down and took another mouthful of sole.

 
; ‘Eat,’ he urged. ‘The fish is delicious.’

  Obediently Maribel stubbed out her cigarette and picked up her fork. Edward chewed thoughtfully, leaning back to allow the sommelier to top up their glasses.

  ‘I found myself wondering what it was that you said to the boy that made him trust you so.’

  ‘Nothing at all. That is just how he was.’

  ‘It was really that simple?’

  ‘I think – I think that we understood one another. I saw something in him – something that I recognised. Does that sound overblown too?’

  ‘No. Not overblown at all.’

  Maribel smiled. I loved him, she wanted to say, but she did not. Instead she raised her glass to Edward.

  ‘To understanding,’ she said, and when his glass touched hers the note was high and pure as ice.

  36

  ‘SHE IS PERFECTLY SWEET,’ Maribel said, peering at the scrunch-faced bundle in Charlotte’s arms. Tufts of black hair stuck up from beneath the knitted bonnet; around her nose and wisps of eyebrow the skin was red and scaly. As Maribel watched she yawned, squeezing her eyes tight, and settled back to sleep. Her mouth was round and puckered as a kiss. Maribel patted her awkwardly, feeling the warmth of her, the tiny completeness. When she took her hand away it was as though she left something of herself behind.

  Shaking the smuts from her skirts she settled herself awkwardly on the side of the bed. She wished now that she had gone home to change. The heavy dun wool of her walking costume, the stout solidity of her shoes, did not belong here among the silk and the lace and spotless white linen. They sullied the wholesome cleanliness of the air, dragging in on soles and hems not only the grime of the city but its crudity. The previous afternoon, in this very costume, she had tried to photograph a girl in Green Park. The girl had worn a scarlet dress trimmed with black lace and a purple shawl and on her head a battered bonnet of green velvet. Though it was hardly five o’clock in the afternoon, she called out to the men who passed by, a hard little laugh in her voice and her pert chest pushed out, her hands tugging suggestively at her skirts. Beneath the slackened criss-cross of her lacings, her belly was round with child.