Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

  ‘Hush your fussing. I am quite well.’

  ‘Perhaps you should see a doctor, just to be sure.’

  ‘I don’t need to see a doctor.’

  Charlotte shook her head. Then she grinned. ‘Did I tell you that the medical officer assigned to Buffalo Billeries is a Dr Coffin? The boys think it killing.’

  Maribel stared at her. ‘Dr Coffin? Are you sure?’

  Charlotte giggled. ‘Isn’t it marvellous? A Yorkshireman, apparently. I know Northerners have a reputation for bluntness but one might have hoped someone would have had a quiet word in the man’s ear. I mean, it hardly inspires confidence, does it?’

  That night Maribel pleaded a headache. When Edward had gone she sat at her desk for a long time, a sliced apple on a plate beside her. It was Alice’s night off and in the dining room tomorrow’s breakfast table was already laid. When the slices of apple were parchment brown she took out a sheet of writing paper from one of the desk’s many compartments and set it on the blotter in front of her.

  My dearest sister, she wrote. I wish –

  She stopped, the pen nib resting on the page, her gaze fixed somewhere above the paper, and the past moved in her like blood. She had never told Edward about the child. She had told him most of what had happened and no doubt a good deal more than she should have, but she had known better than to talk of the child. What would there have been to say? A whitewashed room with an iron bedstead and a wooden crucifix on one wall and orange trees beyond the window. Around the perimeter of the walled garden a circle worn by her feet in the dusty earth, round and round. The days measured out by bells. The old woman who brought her her food and waited while she ate. The silence. When at last it came it took a very long time. They had to use forceps and she thought she would die. Afterwards she expected they would take it away. She did not want to see it. All that mattered was that it was over. She had to get back to Victor, to London. She had already lost so much time.

  Instead they brought it to her to nurse. She had refused, pulling the sheet over herself, turning her face away. The old woman had waited until she was quiet and then put the infant on her breast. It was a boy. His skin was olive-toned like his father’s, his head covered in downy black hair. His fingers clenched into tiny fists. When she held him his skull fitted perfectly into the cup of her hand.

  She nursed him for nearly three months. There was a sickness in the village and no wet nurse could be found. He was a strong child, always hungry. Sometimes when he sucked she could feel the pull of him in the curve of her spine. She did not name him, or not out loud, but she grew accustomed to the weight, the warmth of him, the way he opened one sleepy eye to watch her as he fed. Once he pulled away from her breast, the milk gleaming on his chin, and he smiled at her. A few days later the old woman took him away. She did not know what was to become of him. Perhaps the old woman would have told her, she was not unkind, but she did not ask. She could not. She asked only how soon she could leave. When her breasts filled with unwanted milk the ache in her spine was unendurable.

  They took her to Victor’s remote country estate in Galicia. She was ill for a long time. Victor was in America with Iolanthe and nobody at Valquilla mentioned the baby. The house was crumbling, the ochre plaster peeling from the walls, but the furniture was dark and smooth and heavy. The walls were covered with paintings of Victor’s frowning ancestors. The days were warm and slow, the nights endless. The cook, who was from Chile, baked alfajores and arroz con leche, soft, sweet foods to tempt her appetite. She sat on the wide terraza beneath the grape vines, her toes bare, the shadows playing on the pale straw of her wide-brimmed hat, and waited for the pain to go away. There was a mark on the underside of her finger where the gold ring had pressed.

  Victor’s Iolanthe was a smash. He married his Phyllis in New York City. The actress, an American, had blonde curls and a heart-shaped face and sufficient celebrity for Maribel to have seen her picture once in a periodical. The newly-weds planned to honeymoon in Europe: France, Italy, the lakes of Switzerland. Apparently the actress did not care for Spain. The house in Galicia was to be packed up, its staff dispersed. It was understood that by the time the happy couple sailed for America in the autumn Maribel would be gone.

  She had remained at Valquilla as long as she was able. It was a particularly hot summer, the sunlight thick as treacle on the stone steps to the terraza. She no longer liked to sit beneath the grape vines but there was nowhere else for her to go. Inside the high-ceilinged rooms the furniture that could not be moved was covered with dust sheets. There were marks on the walls where the pictures had hung. At night the darkness pressed into the hole inside her, muscular as a snake. She suffered from paralysing stomach cramps. When autumn came and the house was finally closed up she travelled to Madrid, where Victor had arranged for a sum of money to be made over to her. The heat made her stupid. She wondered afterwards if the lawyer had cheated her. The money did not last long.

  She had managed. She was resourceful and it no longer seemed to matter much what happened to her. A year later, she met Edward and returned with him to England. It was almost a happy story, in the end. In London a doctor told her she would not have more children. She had known he was right. That part of her was shrivelled, desiccated, the soft pink flesh shrunken yellow-tight. When she bled, which was not often, the flow was sparse and brown. The fierce spark of life was not in her. But the child? The thought that he might be dead was unendurable.

  Maribel gazed down at the paper, the pen in her hand. Then with elaborate care, she wrote his name. Then she wrote it again, more urgently this time, and again and again, scrawling it in great loops across the page until the paper was almost entirely black, and as she wrote Ida leaned close, her arms caught around her bony knees and her frown fierce with concentration.

  When there was no more room on the page she stopped. She felt spent, bereft. Her hand was shaking. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she knew what she had to do. She set the letter to Ida aside. Then she took a fresh sheet of paper and, inscribing the date at the top of the page, began, very quickly, to write.

  11

  EDWARD PEERED AT THE post, squinting at the envelopes as he sorted them. In recent months he had grown long-sighted, holding the Times at arm’s length to read it as Maribel’s father once had. The oculist had prescribed spectacles but Edward refused to wear them. This small vanity touched Maribel. She had not thought a man of his intellect would object to growing old.

  When she had refilled his teacup she took her letters and flicked through them. Edward had already provided her with the address of Colonel Cody’s lodgings on Regent Street, and the letter, duly stamped, waited on the hall table for Alice to take to the post. If she was lucky, Maribel thought, she might have an answer by the end of the week. During his time in London Buffalo Bill had acquired something of a reputation for punctiliousness. Besides, she hoped that her proposition might intrigue him. In her letter she had taken care to assure him that she would be delighted to grant him permission to use any of the photographs he wished without charge for publicity purposes and if one thing was certain it was Cody’s enthusiasm for publicity. She had pointed out that, while Major Burke was eager to describe the Wild West not as a show but as living history, its scenes scrupulously recreated from real-life events, the only photographs she had seen of the braves were posed, stilted things, rigid with artifice. With their careful props and painted backdrops they resembled theatre bills or cigarette cards. It would be quite another thing to capture the Indians in their camps and tepees, going about the everyday business of tending their horses and their weapons, of smoking their pipes and applying their warpaint, while their squaws cooked or cradled their papooses. Such an undertaking might be managed in a matter of days and with a minimum of disruption or inconvenience.

  Maribel had slept fitfully. A little after dawn she had risen and, in her nightgown, had written another brief note, this time to Henry, beseeching him to be a dear and do what he coul
d to persuade his new American friend to indulge her. Tell him I am a precociously talented amateur, she coaxed, and that, as the wife of a Member of Parliament, I have tremendous influence with the newspapers. Please feel no obligation to cleave too closely to the facts. As Buffalo Bill knows all too well, the truth is often improved by some judicious embellishment.

  As she sealed the letter she had wondered, as she had several times during the night, whether it might not be a much simpler matter to write to Edith and ask her for Ida’s address. Except that it was impossible to imagine that it would end there. Edith, ever alert to opportunity, would surely insist upon a part in whatever followed. She would squeeze herself into the space between them, as she had squeezed herself into the gap beneath the rhododendron bush at the bottom of the garden, noisily clamouring for attention, and everything would be spoiled.

  ‘Must we go up to Scotland as soon as the House goes into recess?’ she said, fiddling with her unopened envelopes. Edward did not look up.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Do you have reason to stay?’

  ‘It is only that, if Colonel Cody does grant me permission to photograph the Indians, there will not be a great deal of time.’

  ‘But, Bo, the arrangements are all made. Can the Indians not wait until we are back?’

  ‘Perhaps. But then there’s Paris for dress fittings, and the likelihood of poorer weather. And they are not here much longer. They go to Europe, I think. Charlotte said something about a show in the Coliseum.’

  Edward raised an eyebrow.

  ‘That glorious monument to imperial power and cruelty? Isn’t that a little too ironic for comfort?’

  ‘Fortunately the Americans haven’t the faintest grasp of Old World history.’ She did not pursue the matter of delaying their departure. Edward did not appreciate being pestered. ‘Have you time for another cup?’

  ‘No, I should be going,’ Edward said, folding his napkin and setting it on the table. ‘I am due to meet Hyndman in less than an hour.’

  ‘Again?’ When Edward did not answer she frowned. ‘You won’t be late tonight, will you? I promised your mother we should call for her on our way to the Burfords’.’

  ‘I shall have to meet you there. I have appointments this afternoon.’

  ‘At the House?’

  Edward pushed back his chair.

  ‘I am lunching with Alfred Webster, did I tell you?’

  Maribel hesitated. It disconcerted her, the frequency with which Mr Webster seemed into insinuate himself into ordinary conversations. It was almost as if he pursued her. Impatiently she shook her head.

  ‘No. No, you didn’t.’

  ‘He claims to support our position on paid work for those seeking poor relief, says his paper has influence with the vestries. With luck he might be persuaded to side with us on the Eight Hour Bill.’

  ‘I thought you disliked him.’

  ‘I do, but, since he will write on the subject whatever my opinion of him, I may as well endeavour to persuade him to our point of view. Things are bad, Bo. Wages are falling so fast that the numbers of the unemployed increase literally week by week. It seems to astonish the government that men cannot be induced to starve working when they have the liberty to starve idle. When winter comes, it will be worse than last year. Perhaps Webster can do what we cannot and force the Tories to open their eyes before the storms break.’ Edward dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Don’t worry about Mother. I shall not be late, I promise.’

  Maribel nodded but did not get up. She stayed at the table, cradling her teacup, as Edward moved about in the hallway, gathering his things. She heard him say something to Alice, then the click of the flat door as it closed behind him.

  When her tea was finished she set down the cup and began to open the post. Among the bills there was a letter from Mr Pidgeon, written in tiny and precise copperplate, begging her pardon for offending her and beseeching her to return to the studio. When Alice came in to clear the breakfast table Maribel took her letters to her desk to answer them. She sat there for some minutes, her pen uncapped, the fingers of her left hand tapping out a pattern on the paper. Then she set down her pen.

  ‘Alice,’ she called, putting on her hat, ‘I am going out for some air. I shall take the letters with me.’

  She meant to walk to the park. The sun was shining but, though the sky was cloudless, there was a pleasant breeze and it was not oppressively warm. She would take a turn around the bandstand, she decided, and perhaps a cup of tea at the tea rooms by the Serpentine. It would be soothing to watch the brightly coloured boats on the water, to listen to the distant laughter and the plash of oars. In her bag, along with her cigarettes, she carried a book of poetry and a notebook and pencil. Perhaps she might write a little.

  At the corner of Sloane Square she hesitated. Then she crossed to the centre of the square to the cab stand and hired a hansom. It was not yet ten o’clock when she reached Earls Court. The cab set Maribel down at the entrance to the American Exhibition, where a clutch of slack-faced tourists milled irresolutely at the turnstiles. A large sign above the ticket kiosks declared the exhibition’s opening hours to be ‘10.30 A.M. TO 10.30 P.M. DAILY, 1s ADMISSION’. Behind the sign the track of the switchback railway, the exhibition’s main attraction, stretched vertiginously into the sky, while, beside the kiosks, a woman in a white apron sold refreshments from a wooden barrow bearing the legend ‘AMERICAN SODA POP’ in scarlet letters. There was a flurry as the wooden blinds of the kiosk windows lifted like eyes opening, and the tourists, also appearing to rouse themselves from sleep, arranged themselves into an orderly queue.

  Maribel did not join them. Instead she followed the boundaries of the exhibition site until she reached the entrance to the Wild West showground. The tall iron gates were locked, several chains slung about the palings, and beyond them the broad boulevard that led to the arena was deserted, the grass trampled to brown dust. There was a sudden noisy wheeze and then the rattle and shriek of a railway engine, unnervingly close. Maribel grasped the handles of her bag more tightly and straightened her spine. Inside the gates, on either side of the entrance way, were small wooden huts, each with a split door like a stable. In one, visible through the open upper door, sat a uniformed guard, his chair tipped up on its back legs. He pursed his lips, whistling softly under his breath. Maribel gestured through the bars, brandishing her letter.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I have a letter here for Colonel Cody. I should like to deliver it to him personally.’

  The guard blinked, jerking forward as he rocked his chair back onto four legs. Opening the lower door of the hut he walked over to the gate.

  ‘Do you have an appointment, ma’am?’

  ‘Not exactly. But perhaps you might tell him that Mrs Campbell Lowe is here to see him. I am happy to wait.’

  The guard grinned. ‘Then I hope you brought sandwiches, ma’am. First show’s not till three and Mr Bill ain’t never here till lunchtime.’

  She hesitated, one hand on the iron gate. For the first time she wondered exactly what it was she was doing here.

  ‘If it’s a letter you can leave it with me,’ the guard offered. ‘I’ll make sure he gets it soon as he gets in.’

  Maribel fingered the envelope, then shook her head.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  Slowly she turned away from the gate. By the deserted cab stand there was a pillar box. Pushing the letter through the slot she followed the painted finger that pointed towards the Underground Railway. The broad path skirted the Wild West camp and, beyond the high fences, the sky was criss-crossed with the clustered poles of tepees. At a distrustful distance, and half hidden by a newly planted coppice of trees, a terrace of yellow houses huddled in the dust, their small windows and low roofs lending them a sullen air.

  Somewhere, in a house in a street not far from this one, Ida sat, stood, slept, ate. Charlotte had told Maribel that Dr Coffin was not in fact an angel of death but so fierce a proponent of hygiene that he inspe
cted every tent in the camp daily and had the Indians turn out their beds for ventilation at half past seven sharp every morning. Such a regime surely demanded that he be lodged close by. Maribel felt the skin on her arms tighten. She walked faster.

  The railings became a whitewashed wall of planks. People had carved their initials into the wood, hearts pierced with arrows. The name FANNY was gouged in uneven capitals. She could hear voices, the stamps and whinnies of horses. Beyond the wall the railings began again. She was almost at the station when she saw two patched-up boys squeeze themselves through a gap in the palings. They dragged behind them a small dog on a piece of string.

  The taller one eyed her as she passed, his face sharp with calculation. There was no one else about.

  ‘Penny to spare, miss?’ he called out.

  She hesitated, slowing her pace. The boys glanced at one another.

  ‘Tuppence if you got it,’ added the other hastily.

  Maribel stopped, turning to face them. The boys’ eyes travelled over her, taking in the silk dress, the garnet brooch on her collar.

  ‘Have you boys proper business with the Wild West?’ she asked. ‘Or were you trespassing?’

  ‘Trespassing, miss?’ the taller boy said with great affront. ‘Course we wasn’t trespassing. Me mum works at one of the stalls inside, don’t she? Selling programmes and that. We was bringing her her dinner.’

  ‘Do you do that often?’

  ‘Most every day. Me or me brother.’

  ‘So you know the doctor then? The one who takes care of the Indians?’

  ‘S’pose.’

  ‘Well, do you or don’t you?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’ll give you a shilling if you can tell me where he lives,’ Maribel said.

  The boys exchanged another look.

  ‘Awright,’ the taller boy said and he jerked his head left, tugging at the dog, whose nose was buried in a patch of groundsel. ‘’S up there. Ward Street, number 16. Third street on the right.’