by Clare Clark
‘The Muse?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Miss Russell draws from life, of course, but, though those works are of course most accomplished, they are not, in my opinion, her very best pictures. They are too rooted in this world, too – too corporeal.’
‘You disapprove of naked bodies, Miss Woolley?’ Maribel asked.
Miss Woolley’s neck flushed pink.
‘That’s not at all what I meant. It is only that – well, Florence creates her very finest work, in my opinion, not from observation but from a place beyond our understanding.’
‘You mean the imagination?’
‘I mean the next world. The realm of the dear departed.’
As Maribel opened her mouth Charlotte shot her a warning look.
‘The dear departed,’ she echoed politely. ‘How fascinating.’
‘Have you ever attended a séance, Mrs Charterhouse?’ Miss Woolley asked, her pink eyes brightening as she tucked her handkerchief back into her sleeve.
Charlotte shook her head.
‘Oh, you should. You really should. It is quite something, you know. Why, only last week, Lady Ashworth conversed with her son, Gerald, the one who died of the measles when he was just a boy. The eagerness of the child, the endearments, it was too tender. “Darling Mama,” he said, over and over, “don’t cry, darling Mama.” We were all quite undone.’
Maribel rolled her eyes incredulously at Charlotte, who ignored her.
‘Was it a comfort to her?’ Charlotte asked Miss Woolley gently.
‘Oh yes, what a comfort! To know that our loved ones are near us, waiting for us, that death takes them not from us but only into another room? I –’ She broke off and fumbled once again for her handkerchief.
‘Forgive me,’ Charlotte said. ‘I have upset you.’
‘Not at all. It is just that I – I lost both my parents last year. If they could only find a way through to me – to feel their presence near, to hear their voices, it would be such a consolation.’
‘Of course it would.’
Miss Woolley put her hand flat upon her breastbone, drawing in a deep breath. Then she smiled bravely.
‘You have not suffered as I have, I hope, Mrs Charterhouse?’
‘My parents are too busy disparaging Mr Gladstone to allow for infirmity,’ Charlotte said. ‘Conclusive proof that it is outrage, not Salt Regal, that is the great tonic.’
‘And you, Mrs Campbell Lowe? Do you still have your parents?’
‘No,’ Maribel said sharply. ‘Both my parents are dead.’
‘You poor dear. Do you miss them awfully?’
‘I manage. It was a long time ago.’
Miss Woolley reached out and patted Maribel’s hand. ‘Tragic circumstances, I suppose?’ she asked, her brow furrowed with sympathy.
Maribel crossed her arms. ‘A carriage accident.’
‘So fearfully common on the Continent, I fear. You are from Spain, are you not?’
‘Chile.’
‘But your father was Spanish?’
‘My mother. My father was French.’
‘Goodness. And you have never attempted to summon either of them?’
‘Summon them?’
‘Through spirit communication.’
‘Good God, no. I’d rather put pins in my eyes.’
‘Maribel,’ Charlotte said reprovingly.
‘For heaven’s sake, Charlotte, you think just as I do. All that table-tilting and tapped-out messages and lamps switched on and off with strings beneath the cloth. It is the lowest form of charlatanry.’
‘I say, now, come on!’ squeaked Miss Woolley.
‘Miss Woolley, science has yet to reveal many of God’s great mysteries. But if the spirits of the dead could truly be summoned to speak with us, souls who have passed through the veil of death into the glorious mystery of the next world, do you not think that they would find something more momentous to relate to the living than “dearest Mama” and “kiss Dolly for me”? There’s only one thing more deplorable than the imposture of the swindlers who conduct such gatherings and that’s the feather-headed folly of those who attend them.’
Her hands on her hips, Maribel thrust out her chin. Her heart was beating fast and her cheeks were hot. She had not known her feelings on the subject were half so fierce. The result was startling and not a little triumphant.
Miss Woolley drew herself up to her full height.
‘You may call it folly, Mrs Campbell Lowe,’ she said loftily. ‘I call it faith. It is fashionable to deride matters of faith these days, especially in political circles, but when the ignorant and the cynical dismiss new schools of study as no more than cheap subjects for sarcasm, I call it bigotry. It is like the Hindu prince who denied the existence of ice because water, in his experience, never became solid. It is one thing to demand rational proof, quite another to disbelieve everything outside one’s own limited realm of experience.’ Miss Woolley pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. The tips of her ears were a dark hot pink. ‘You believe in bacteria, I suppose, though your eye cannot discern them? What conceit is it then that permits you to deny the existence of the spirits, which is only another form of life you cannot see?’
‘The existence of the microscope? The growth of cultures in the laboratory? Controlled experiments? As far as I am aware, the Royal Society continues to favour empirical research and data collection over the science of table-tilting and levitation.’
Mrs Gallop bustled across the room towards them. Charlotte greeted her thankfully, drawing her into their midst.
‘How kind you are to have invited us,’ she said. ‘It has been a most stimulating afternoon.’
Mrs Gallop nodded. ‘Miss Woolley, I hate to interrupt so fervent a discussion but Miss Russell says she is ready to leave.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I shall be there directly.’
‘Goodbye, Miss Woolley,’ Charlotte said. ‘It was a pleasure to see you again.’
Miss Woolley leaned close, turning her shoulders away from Maribel.
‘If you were to be interested in joining our Circle?’ she murmured. ‘I think you would find it most illuminating.’
‘How kind,’ Charlotte said.
‘Then I shall send you an invitation to our next meeting. Miss Russell will be there, of course, and doubtless you will be acquainted with several others in our group. Do you know the Misses Elliott? Such impressive women. I have heard others remark upon the brusqueness of their manner but I find them both perfect sweethearts.’
‘Miss Woolley?’ Mrs Gallop prompted.
‘Goodness, listen to me rattling on. Do forgive me, Mrs Gallop. As my father used to say, “Evaline, when you get on your high horse, you will gallop off – that is, canter off –”’
Charlotte and Maribel watched as Mrs Gallop steered the flustered Miss Woolley away across the drawing room.
‘The tigress roused,’ Charlotte said, shaking her head.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Maribel protested. ‘She talked such deplorable rot.’
‘Not you, dearest. Her.’
‘Her?’
‘The Miss Woolleys of this world are formidable when provoked.’
‘I did not notice.’
‘You never do.’
‘That isn’t true!’
‘I wonder if I might go,’ Charlotte mused. ‘To her Circle.’
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘Why not? If it’s good enough for Mr Gladstone it’s good enough for me.’
‘The Grand Old Man is a member of the Society for Psychical Research, not a practitioner of imbecilic conjuring tricks.’
‘It’s just a bit of fun. Arthur would adore it, if one could only make him behave. Besides, who knows? There may be more to it than meets the eye. Perhaps Great-Uncle Julius will come back from the other side and finally confess to me where he left the key to the ice house.’
Maribel smiled.
‘Don’t you find it intriguing?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Not even a little bi
t?’
‘Not even the slightest littlest bit.’
The tea party was breaking up when the two women took their leave. It was a warm evening, one of the first of the season, and the moon floated like a pale wafer in the darkening sky. Along the river the trees were ghostly with blossom. When the Charterhouses’ coachman saw them he jumped down from his box, opening the door of the brougham with a half-bow. Charlotte smiled at him.
‘Thank you, John,’ she said.
‘Is Edward in town tonight?’ she asked when they were settled inside.
‘Yes, but not at home. He is dining with Buffalo Bill.’
‘Really?’
‘Apparently Mr Gladstone thought the Wild West quite the thing so he invited Buffalo Bill to the House. Why he accepted I cannot imagine. The debate on the Crimes Bill is hardly likely to be a thrilling display of derring-do, and the dinners are indigestible.’
Charlotte laughed.
‘And what will you do while he whoops in his warpaint?’
‘I shall have supper on a tray in front of the fire and try to write.’
‘That sounds perfectly dismal. Come home with me. We have only Arthur’s brother with us tonight and he would love to see you.’
Maribel shook her head. Though she did rather dread the prospect of yet another evening alone she was not equal to the demands of the Charterhouse household. One had to be in particularly vigorous humour to enjoy the clamour at Chester Square, the swarm of children and guests, Arthur’s jokes and pranks and insufferable gusto.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But not tonight.’
Charlotte made a face. Maribel squeezed her friend’s hand. She knew that Charlotte worried about her, pitied her even. Charlotte could not imagine a life without children.
The sun had set and along the Embankment the strings of electrical lights were slowly coming into bloom. Maribel gazed out of the window, watching the tilt and dip of the brougham’s side lantern, idly tracing the shape of the buttoned seat with one gloved finger. She could not help envying Charlotte the carriage. Though even her mother-in-law had to acknowledge the considerable efforts Maribel had made to coax a profit from the estate at Inverallich, there would never be money for a brougham. Edward had no interest in business and not the least aptitude for it either. It took hardly five minutes with the estate accountants to reduce him to peevishness. Arthur Charterhouse, however, who hadn’t a cultured bone in his body, seemed to make money simply by looking at it.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she had said to Edward, the very first time they stayed with the Charterhouses at Oakwood. They had been married less than a month. ‘The two of you have absolutely nothing in common.’
Edward had simply shrugged. ‘We have known each other almost all our lives.’
‘He took an egg out of my ear at breakfast this morning.’
‘You should be flattered. He doesn’t do that to everybody.’
‘When Mrs Luckhurst tried to talk to him about In Memoriam he claimed that the only form of poetry he has any time for is the limerick. Is it really possible to love a man like that?’
Edward had smiled, then, and kissed her, very tenderly.
‘Dearest Bo, when one has known someone all one’s life as I have known Arthur, one doesn’t choose to love them. It’s simply too late to stop.’ He tipped her chin up, so that the tips of their noses touched. ‘Just wait and see.’
‘But he is such a fool!’
‘Arthur plays the fool. It doesn’t make him one.’
Maribel shook her head. ‘It’s her I feel for. If you had to be married to him you wouldn’t last a day.’
‘Charlotte is quite content. As for me, after all these years, I love Arthur quite as much for his faults as his finer qualities. Could you not try to do the same?’
She had thought he asked the impossible. It turned out that she was wrong. She still winced a little when Arthur slid down the banisters, it was true, but she had grown fond of him and not just for Edward’s sake. It was because of Arthur that she had Charlotte. For Charlotte she would have forgiven him a good deal more than banisters.
***
They were almost at the park when Charlotte reached out and touched Maribel on the wrist.
‘Do you think of them much?’ she said softly. ‘Your parents.’
‘My parents?’
‘It’s only that you never talk about them,’ Charlotte said. ‘I wondered if you thought of them, if you even remembered them. You were so young.’
Maribel was silent. She could hear the coachman shifting on the box above them, the jangle of harness, the clatter of the horse’s hooves as they passed under Marble Arch.
‘I was twelve,’ she said at last. ‘That is not so young.’
She fumbled for her cigarettes, slid a match from its silver matchbox. The scraped match bloomed orange.
‘What do you remember?’ Charlotte asked.
Maribel closed her eyes, drawing the smoke inside her. She did not want to lie to Charlotte.
‘She always smelled of orange blossom,’ she said.
Charlotte smiled. ‘What else?’
‘She was beautiful,’ Maribel said and suddenly she could almost imagine her, seated in the shade of the grape vine at Valquilla, her toes bare, the shadows playing on the pale straw of her wide-brimmed hat. ‘She was beautiful and clever and she was always laughing. She hated to wear shoes. She used to sing lullabies to me when I couldn’t sleep. Arroz con leche me quiero casar.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means “Rice pudding, I want to get married.”’
‘Truly?’
‘Truly.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘Your mother had an unfair advantage,’ she said. ‘Even nursery food sounds charming in Spanish.’
‘My mother loved sweet things. Arroz con leche and almond cakes and alfajores, little tiny pastries filled with caramel. My father used to call her Jijona. Jijona was a kind of soft turròn. Nougat.’
Maribel took a long drag of her cigarette and dropped the butt to the floor, crushing it out beneath her foot. Charlotte looked at her. Then, leaning over, she took Maribel’s hand between hers.
‘I wish I had known her,’ she said.
Maribel did not reply. The two women sat together in silence, their fingers entwined, swaying a little as the carriage negotiated the uneven flagstones, and in her lap Maribel’s other hand made a fist, as though it might squeeze the falsehoods into something true.
4
EDWARD WAS NOT RETURNED from his dinner when Maribel retired to bed at eleven. A little after two in the morning she woke to the soft pad of Edward’s shoes on the hall carpet, the click of his dressing-room door. She thought of getting up, of going to him, but the sleep was too strong in her and she only turned over and closed her eyes. She dreamed of her mother, who squatted like a Buddha among Buffalo Bill’s warpainted Indians and instructed Edward to shoot glass balls from the sky. In the morning, her head aching, she met Edward coming out of the bathroom and she knew she could not wait until after Scotland. When she kissed him he smelled of tooth powder and soap.
It was their habit to eat breakfast together in companionable silence, Maribel with a book propped up against the toast rack, Edward intent upon the newspaper. Occasionally Edward remarked upon a particularly interesting article but for the most part they communicated only through long-established habits, Maribel pouring tea, Edward buttering toast for them both. When they had finished eating, it was Alice’s habit to clear the dirty plates before bringing in a second pot of tea and the first postal delivery of the day, which she placed at Edward’s elbow. Edward would grimace at the paper, sigh and set it down. Flipping quickly through the envelopes, he set those addressed to himself to one side and passed the remainder to Maribel, who smoked a cigarette while they opened their letters.
On this particular morning, most of Maribel’s were tradesmen’s accounts: the greengrocer, the butcher, the laundry. There were several invit
ations, one of them in the careless scrawl of Edward’s brother Henry. Maribel was very fond of Henry, an army officer who shared all of Edward’s dash and none of his seriousness. Henry, who had nothing of the bohemian in him and was suspicious of any nation that did not play cricket, had never raised an eyebrow at the unusual circumstances of their marriage. The very first time they had met he had kissed her warmly and told Edward he was one lucky beggar. It had been Henry who had insisted on taking them to the Café Royal and toasting them with champagne, Henry who had decided, on his behalf and his mother’s, that Maribel was to be welcomed wholeheartedly into the family. Henry did not believe in complications. As a result he seldom encountered any.
There was a note from Charlotte too, written in haste the previous evening.
I wished you had come back with me last night rather than going home to an empty flat. When we parted you seemed so sad and far away. I feared you would spend the evening gazing into the fire and thinking melancholy thoughts and that it would be all my fault. Forgive me, dearest, for pressing you to remember. My affection for you makes me greedy. I need to remind myself that there are certain secrets you are allowed to keep.
Biting her lip Maribel slid the letter back into its envelope. The generosity of Charlotte’s apology made her ashamed. She had grown so accustomed to her own secrets she no longer thought of them as secrets. They were judicious omissions, discreet approximations. They rounded up the numbers. She told herself that she was not so very different from anyone else. It was a truth universally acknowledged, after all, that the details of other people’s lives were ineffably tedious, especially when they insisted upon a fastidious regard for the facts. During those long hours spent at the Charterhouses’ dining table as Arthur and his friends reminisced about their schooldays, she had many times been tempted to hurl the nutcracker across the room or stab herself in the back of the hand with the cheese knife, anything to create a diversion.