Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

  ‘But that’s unconscionable.’

  ‘Mrs Burwood is no longer on speaking terms with her sister-in-law. Miss Burwood for her part refuses to see me. The damage is irreparable.’

  They were both silent. Mr Pidgeon exhaled heavily, smoothing the lapels of his coat with the palms of his hands. Then he extended his right hand.

  ‘Goodbye then, madam. It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance and I wish you every success with your photographic endeavours.’

  For a moment Maribel hesitated. Then she took his hand and shook it. It was regrettable, but his admissions, as they both knew, made the necessity of finding another darkroom even more pressing. There would be no escaping the awkwardness between them now.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Pidgeon. I shall return the key when I am finished.’

  From the bottom of the stairs came the slam of a door. A cacophony of children’s chatter filled the stairwell.

  ‘Children,’ an exhausted voice protested. ‘Children, please.’

  Maribel gave Mr Pidgeon a small smile.

  ‘Bonne chance,’ she murmured.

  He shook his head, raising his eyes to heaven, and hurried to the head of the stairs to greet them.

  21

  THE FOLLOWING DAY SHE lunched with Charlotte in Piccadilly. An exhibition of Old Masters, several of which had never before been shown in England, had recently opened at the Royal Academy and Maribel, eager for distraction in Edward’s absence, had persuaded Charlotte to go with her. They met at Vaizey’s, a tea shop in the Oriental style in a narrow street off St James’s Square. Convenient not only for the Academy but for the shopping emporia of Regent Street, it was one of a handful in the vicinity considered respectable for ladies lunching without a gentleman escort. The room was attractive, arranged into alcoves colonnaded with narrow pillars, while, in its centre, above an extravagant arrangement of ferns, an octagonal glass cupola trimmed with filigreed brass sifted onto the polished floor the pale grey light of the autumn afternoon. The coffered ceiling was gilded and painted with stars. As befitted its clientele, the restaurant was staffed entirely by women.

  Charlotte and Maribel followed their waitress to a table in the far corner of the room. Around them feathered and beribboned bonnets ducked and swayed like a meadow of exotic flowers. Although the baby was not due for another three months Charlotte had already grown fat and she sighed with pleasure as she sat down, smoothing her starched napkin over the jut of her stomach.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘My feet are so swollen I can barely get my boots on.’ Taking the menu from the waitress she opened it, running her finger down the page.

  ‘Shall we have roast chicken?’ she asked Maribel. ‘I have the most atrocious craving for roast chicken. Heaven knows what that signifies about the baby.’

  ‘That it is unlikely that it is a chicken?’

  ‘One can but hope. Although a chicken might stand a better chance of mastering Latin than Georgie.’

  ‘Talking of Georgie, I brought this.’ From her bag Maribel extracted a copy of her photograph of the Indian child reading his upside-down adventure story. ‘I thought he might think it amusing.’

  The waitress cleared her throat. Charlotte smiled at her.

  ‘Oysters, I think,’ she said. ‘And then most assuredly roast chicken. Oh, and ginger beer.’ She eyed Maribel across the table. ‘You agree, don’t you, dearest? If we don’t decide now we never shall.’

  ‘That sounds perfect.’

  Charlotte handed the menu back to the waitress and held out her hand for the photograph.

  ‘But that’s wonderful! And fearfully funny with him clutching his penny dreadful. Georgie will be tickled pink.’ She turned the photograph over. ‘The photographer’s stamp. You used it.’

  ‘Of course I used it. I use it all the time.’

  Charlotte smiled, her gaze moving idly over the room. Suddenly she ducked, raising the photograph between them like a fan.

  ‘Don’t look now but there is Esther Allbright lunching with Lady Coningham. Let’s pray they don’t see us. Americans are so extraordinary about pregnancy. The agonies they suffer trying not to notice, you would think it was syphilis.’

  Maribel glanced over.

  ‘I think you are safe there. From what I hear Esther Allbright is so nearsighted she only recognises her own husband at two paces.’

  She nodded towards a wan-faced lady seated alone at a small table near the entrance to the kitchen. As she studied the menu, the lady frowned, jotting with a pencil in a small notebook by her knife. Her hands were small and pink as a mouse’s paws.

  ‘What about that one, though?’ she said. ‘What can she be writing so furiously? Do you think she is working out what she can afford to eat?’

  Charlotte considered the woman for a moment.

  ‘Her hat is new. And look at that pearl brooch. No, she means to set up a rival restaurant. She is taking notes on the menu so that she can steal the best dishes.’

  ‘Either that or she is setting it to music. Something jovially Continental, with a part for a squeezebox.’

  ‘Now that is just silly. Her hair is much too neatly pinned for a composer and look at how cross she is. I have it. She is writing the definitive New Woman novel. A Table for One. It will be a devastating critique of female education, marriage, the shackles of motherhood and the emancipation of fish with parsley sauce.’

  It was a thoroughly cheerful lunch. Afterwards the two women made their way arm in arm along Duke Street towards the Academy under the canopy of Charlotte’s umbrella. The afternoon was still and the fine rain hung in the air in veils. At Piccadilly the traffic was at a standstill. They picked their way cautiously between the carriages.

  ‘You know, we could skip the exhibition and go to Burlington Arcade,’ Charlotte suggested as they reached the other side. ‘I’ve had over three hundred years to see Titian’s Charles V. Another week or so won’t hurt.’

  Maribel shook her head.

  ‘You will not corrupt me,’ she said. ‘I promised Edward faithfully I would not go shopping.’

  ‘You had no business making promises like that without consulting me first.’

  ‘It is for your own good. If you so much as glimpsed the horrors of our estate accounts you would go into labour on the spot.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse.’

  Charlotte clicked her tongue, squeezing Maribel’s arm. ‘For heaven’s sake don’t say anything to Arthur,’ Maribel said. ‘Edward would never forgive me.’

  ‘Not a word, I promise.’

  At the junction with Bond Street they stopped as a dray inveigled itself into a gap large enough for a two-wheeled trap. An omnibus driver shouted angrily, brandishing his whip.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to shop,’ Charlotte said. ‘You could carry my packages.’

  ‘That’s quite enough from you, young lady. We are going to see these paintings if I have to carry you in myself.’

  Despite the respectful notices the exhibition had received in the newspapers the gallery was almost empty. Charlotte had gone on ahead and, apart from an elderly man in a homburg hat and spectacles, Maribel was quite alone. She stood in front of Rubens’s Fall of Man, her head on one side as she considered the painting. She remembered Oscar’s friend Rex Whistler telling her that, as an old man in his fifties, the widowed Rubens had married a girl of just sixteen years old and it was her voluptuous figure that had served as the model for the most famous works of his career. She wondered if this picture was one of those. There was something in the way that Adam reached for Eve, his hand at her breast, his thumb brushing her nipple as she stretched up to pluck the apple, that spoke not just of warning but of unashamed desire.

  A woman came to stand beside her. Maribel moved a little to her right, not taking her eyes from the painting. A tousle-headed Cupid leaned down from the branches of the tree, holding out the apple to Eve in a plump fist. Magnificent in her nakedness, Eve gazed back at the infant, h
er hand extended, her expression dazed with love, oblivious to Adam and his admonitions. Around the apple their fingers touched. In this way, Rubens seemed to be saying, Adam is expelled from Paradise and every man after him, shut out by the impregnable intimacy of mother and child.

  The woman beside her was standing very close, her breathing shallow as a spaniel’s. Maribel felt a shimmer of irritation.

  ‘Peg – I mean, Maribel?’

  Maribel turned. The woman was Edith, one hand over her mouth. Her eyes were very round. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ she hissed in a stage whisper. ‘I saw you in the other room but I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Edith.’ Furtively Maribel glanced about. The man in the homburg was gone. In the frame of an open doorway she could see an elderly couple conversing in the adjacent room, a guard in uniform staring slack-jawed at the floor.

  ‘Are you here alone?’ Edith asked.

  ‘With a friend. I should go.’

  ‘Must you really?’

  ‘She might come back at any moment. It would not do to have to explain.’

  ‘No. No, of course not. I can’t believe you’re here. Who would have imagined?’

  ‘Goodbye, Edith.’

  Edith’s mouth snapped shut and her shoulders sagged.

  ‘You’re right, of course. Goodbye, Peggy. I mean, Maribel. Sorry. It is only that I . . .’

  Maribel hesitated. Then she leaned forward and gave her sister a fleeting kiss on the cheek.

  ‘It was nice to see you, Edith,’ she said.

  ‘I am here with Ida.’

  Maribel froze.

  ‘I thought she needed cheering up, getting out, you know, well, she’s been so gloomy lately, one can’t seem to snap her out of it, but the silly thing only went and dropped her gloves. A brand-new pair apparently. Well, of course when I saw how upset she was I said I would buy her another pair, Horace wouldn’t mind, he wouldn’t ever have to know, but she got quite angry with me about it, I can’t think why, and she stormed off. I imagine she went back to the entrance hall to see if anyone has handed them in. Perhaps this is her now.’

  Flustered, she glanced over Maribel’s shoulder. Maribel pressed her hands together, her eyes on the parquet floor. Her heart was tight as a fist. A double-chinned matron bustled past, a pale young girl trailing three paces behind her.

  ‘Eyes ahead, Eugenia,’ the matron commanded. ‘There is nothing for us in here.’

  The parquet was in need of a polish. Abruptly the thought of seeing Ida filled Maribel with panic. It was too sudden, too soon. She was not ready.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said.

  ‘May I tell her I saw you? I mean, I know it is supposed to be a secret but –’

  ‘Goodbye, Edith.’

  She fled. She found Charlotte seated on an upright chair in the atrium, her hands crossed demurely over her swollen stomach and her eyes half closed. She blinked sleepily at Maribel.

  ‘Dearest, whatever is the matter?’

  ‘We have to go.’

  Charlotte frowned, hauling herself awkwardly out of her chair.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. I need some air, that’s all. Come on.’

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Hang on a moment. I have to fetch my umbrella.’

  The cloakroom attendant was an elderly man with a luxurious white moustache. Maribel shifted from foot to foot as he took Charlotte’s ticket, enquiring after the exhibition and lamenting the inclemency of the weather. When at last he brought the umbrella she had to stop herself from snatching it out of his hands.

  Outside the rain had grown heavy. Beneath the arches of the Academy Charlotte paused to raise her umbrella.

  ‘Wait,’ she called to Maribel. ‘You will get soaked.’

  Maribel turned impatiently.

  ‘Then hurry up.’

  The shallow stone steps were greasy with rain. In her haste Charlotte lost her footing and fell heavily. She cried out, a sharp yelp of shock and pain, her bag and umbrella tumbling from her grasp.

  ‘Charlotte!’ Maribel exclaimed, stricken. Snatching up her skirts she flew to where Charlotte lay sprawled across the steps, her right arm bent awkwardly to one side. Her face was very white. She tried to raise her head.

  ‘My arm,’ she whimpered.

  Maribel nodded, kneeling beside her.

  ‘I know,’ she said, stroking her hair. ‘Just don’t move, darling. You mustn’t move.’

  ‘The baby –’

  ‘Oh God, Charlotte. It’s not coming, is it?’

  Charlotte shook her head and gasped, her face tightening with pain. Rain spangled her hair, her skirts, her pinched face. Maribel cast frantically about her. The courtyard was deserted, the rain falling in broad sweeps. Beside her Charlotte whimpered and closed her eyes. Maribel felt the panic clotting her chest.

  ‘Help!’ she cried. ‘Somebody, please help!’

  The rain sighed and thickened. It was growing dark.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she whispered to Charlotte. ‘I’m going for help.’

  Charlotte whimpered again. The angle of her arm was sickening. Maribel stroked her forehead, her hand trembling, and scrambled to her feet. Stumbling a little she ran to the door of the Academy, flinging it open. It was bright in the lobby, the gas lamps lit. The old man in the cloakroom looked up.

  ‘Fetch a doctor,’ she cried. ‘There’s been an accident.’

  ‘An accident? What kind of accident?’

  Maribel turned. In the lobby two ladies stood close together, their faces shadowy beneath the raised hoods of their cloaks. The one who had spoken held a furled umbrella. Her hands were bare. The other was Edith.

  ‘She needs a doctor,’ Maribel said faintly. ‘She fell. On the steps. She’s pregnant. I think she may have broken her arm.’

  ‘Is someone with her?’

  It was Ida. She looked no different than she had at ten years old. Perhaps there were lines about the mouth, a faint dustiness to her skin, but it was her, her heart-shaped face, her freckled nose, her bright brown eyes with the flecks like pollen around the pupils. There was no mark upon her to show that she had borne a child, that she had lost a child. She was barely more than a child herself. Maribel stared at her sister and she wanted only to fall into her arms, to weep, to kiss her precious face and stroke her hair and breathe in her Ida smell until her lungs burst. She had never held Ida, except during a performance. In those days they had neither of them had much time for caresses.

  Maribel shook her head.

  ‘There’s nobody,’ she whispered. ‘Please come.’

  Ida nodded, raising her umbrella to the cloakroom attendant.

  ‘A doctor at the double, if you please. You have brandy? Then once the doctor is summoned, please fetch it and bring it out. Edith, come with me.’

  Edith nodded, her mouth open, as Ida followed Maribel out into the rain.

  ‘You have not tried to move her, I hope?’

  ‘No.’

  On the stone steps Charlotte had closed her eyes. Her lips were white, her breathing shallow. Bundling up her skirts Maribel sat beside her, taking her good hand in hers. It was damp and very cold. She set it against her cheek and tried not to pretend that it was Ida’s.

  ‘Hold on, darling,’ she said, the tears spiking in her throat. ‘Just hold on. The doctor will be here any moment, I promise you.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ Edith asked in a loud whisper. ‘Is it a concussion?’

  ‘She has fainted,’ Ida said briskly. ‘And she is extremely wet.’

  ‘I have salts,’ Edith offered and she slipped her hands inside her cloak, fumbling with the clasp of her bag. Ida shook her head.

  ‘It is the pain. She is better off as she is. Are those hers?’ She pointed to the bag and the umbrella at the bottom of the steps. ‘Bring them here. And Edith? Open this.’

  She had alwa
ys been practical, Maribel thought, even as a child. She watched as Ida handed Edith her own umbrella and unfastened her cloak, laying it over Charlotte like a blanket. Underneath the cloak Ida wore a paisley shawl, pinned with a brooch. She undid the brooch, carefully sheathing the pin before slipping it into her pocket, and rolled the shawl into a pillow which she slid beneath Charlotte’s head. Charlotte stirred, whimpering quietly. Ida murmured re assurances as she took the two umbrellas from Maribel and Edith, propping them against the steps to create a canopy. ‘You’ll get wet,’ Edith said.

  Ida shrugged and handed Maribel Charlotte’s bag. She did not look at her.

  ‘My arm is not broken,’ she said.

  Maribel hugged the bag on her lap and gazed down at her friend’s damp, white face, the tails of hair plastered on her forehead. Her breathing was shallow and capillaries sketched faint purple lines in the translucent skin of her eyelids.

  ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ she asked pleadingly.

  ‘The doctor will be here soon.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  Ida crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing briskly at her upper arms with the palms of her hands.

  ‘That is a matter for the doctor.’

  Maribel looked up at her sister. Drops of rainwater clung like lace to the brim of her ugly brown hat.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Ida. About what happened.’

  Ida did not answer. They waited in silence. After a time Charlotte’s eyelids fluttered and she moaned softly to herself. Very gently Maribel stroked her face, her hair, and still the doctor did not come.

  ‘Where is that fool with the brandy?’ Edith said after a while. ‘I can’t imagine why it’s taking so long.’

  No one answered. Edith pleated the edge of her cloak between her fingers.

  ‘Immediately, that was the instruction,’ she went on. ‘An ignoramus could not have failed to grasp the urgency of the situation. A doctor, then brandy.’

  It was quite dark now. The gaslights in the courtyard fringed the rain with gold.

  ‘Perhaps I should . . .’ Edith said, gesturing towards the lobby.

  ‘Yes,’ Ida said. ‘Why don’t you?’