Beautiful Lies

by Clare Clark

  ‘I saw his photographs in the darkroom,’ she said casually. ‘So many prints all the same.’ She took up a position in front of the curtain, her shoulders thrown back and her hands upon her waist. ‘One would have thought he would have tired of the same pose.’

  Thomas ducked his head. ‘Camera was set up for it. On a clock. Had to use a mark to hold the focus.’

  Maribel looked at the floor. ‘I think I see it. Just here?’

  ‘A little to the left, maybe. It was a matter of the light.’

  ‘A clock. How fascinating. But I am wasting your time. I did not come here to gossip.’ She set down her portfolio and untied the ribbons. ‘I came to talk about this.’

  When he saw Mr Pidgeon’s family portrait Thomas grinned.

  ‘Fine, ain’t it?’ he said.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ Maribel said. ‘I wondered, do you think you might be able to tell me a little about it? I would pay you for your time, of course.’

  Tentative at first, in the warmth of Maribel’s interest Thomas opened like a flower. His knowledge was extensive, his eyes and curiosity sharp, and he grew animated, gesticulating with his hands as he talked of exposure times and emulsions and gelatin bloom. Maribel scribbled notes, possessed in turn by agitation at the multiplicity of difficulties that Thomas described and by a determination so feverish she could hardly keep up with her own hand. The difficulties would have to take care of themselves. When at last she bid goodbye to Thomas she returned the portfolio to the darkroom and locked the door. Slipping the key into her pocket she descended once again to the street.

  Alice looked up, surprised, from her housework as Maribel hurried into the flat.

  ‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’

  Maribel did not answer. In the bedroom she rummaged together powder puff, hairbrush, pins, a jewelled comb, a pair of paste earrings, a pinkish salve she sometimes wore on her lips, bundling them all into her satchel. She glanced around the room, then on impulse stuffed her silk wrap in on top. She buckled the bursting satchel and snatched up her camera.

  ‘I shall not be back for lunch,’ she called out to Alice as she let the door slam behind her. Less than twenty minutes later a hansom deposited her at the entrance to Green Park. It was before midday and, though the nocturnal haunts of the park would not awake for many hours, near to the place where she had tried to photograph the girl in the scarlet dress she found an old woman slumped on a bench, a bottle ill-concealed beneath her shawl and a basket of grimy artificial flowers tucked under one arm.

  At first the old woman was unwilling to answer Maribel’s enquiries, but once she realised that Maribel was not from the Refuge and was prepared to enrich her by sixpence, she proved perfectly obliging and directed her to a low type of inn in an alley off Bury Street. The door stood propped open, and from inside came the sour smell of spilled beer. Maribel lit a cigarette, drawing the courage of it deep into her lungs. In the window of the house next door a green blind had been pulled down. In faded black letters it read ‘LODGINGS FOR SINGLE MEN 6d’.

  The girl in the scarlet dress was both less intoxicated and less forthcoming than she had been on the occasion of their previous meeting. She gave her name as Betsey, though the slight squint of her eyes as she said it suggested that it was not a name she was accustomed to. She leaned against the jamb of the inn door, smoking one of Maribel’s cigarettes, and the swell of her pregnant belly lifted her grimy skirt almost to her ankles, displaying a battered pair of men’s boots. Her pinched face was opaque as she listened to the proposal that Maribel put to her, her eyes narrowed against the smoke, her sharp little jaw moving in rhythmic circles like a cow’s. It was only when Maribel mentioned a hansom to Turks Row that she screwed up her face, pinching out the smoked cigarette between two dirty fingers and throwing it like a dart into the gutter.

  ‘’Ow gulpy d’you fink I am? I knows a forriner when I ’ears one. ’Ow’s I to know you ain’t abductin’ me?’

  ‘For pity’s sake, do I look like a criminal?’

  The girl shrugged. Maribel glanced down at her old work dress. It was very shabby.

  ‘We’ll take the omnibus,’ she said desperately. ‘I can hardly kidnap you on the omnibus.’

  The girl said nothing but sucked on her teeth, her hands pressed against the curve of her back as though it hurt her. She was very near her time.

  ‘I’ll only need two hours, three at the most,’ Maribel said. ‘You’ll be back by nightfall.’

  ‘Why me? What’s so special ’bout me?’

  ‘It was your idea in the first place.’

  The girl scowled suspiciously. ‘What you talkin’ ’bout?’

  ‘In the park, don’t you remember? You made me an offer.’

  ‘What offer?’

  ‘Cock Lane for a shilling.’

  39

  MARIBEL WAS OBLIGED TO offer a good deal more than a shilling, and half the money upfront, before the girl was finally persuaded to return with her to Turks Row. As the omnibus neared Sloane Square Maribel lifted the shawl from around her shoulders and arranged it over her bonnet like a hood, obscuring her face. The girl eyed her suspiciously but said nothing. On Sloane Avenue Maribel slipped her arm through the girl’s, clamping her to her side, and hustled her to the narrow entrance to the studio.

  Thomas answered her knock almost immediately.

  ‘The darkroom key,’ he said anxiously. ‘Please tell me you have it?’

  ‘Silly me,’ Maribel said, fishing in her pocket. ‘I must have taken it by mistake. Let me fetch some plates. Then you can have it back. Go on, don’t be shy.’

  She pushed the girl ahead of her into the studio. Thomas said nothing but a notch appeared between his eyebrows.

  ‘Thomas, this is – Violet. Violet has kindly consented to pose for me this afternoon so perhaps you might set up the lights for me while I get her ready?’

  It took longer than Maribel expected to dress Betsey’s hair. It was matted and oily and the girl yelped furiously several times as Maribel yanked at the knots. Once it was combed out, however, it proved to be rather fine, a dark lustrous chestnut with a slight wave. The girl pouted admiringly at herself in the mirror as Maribel set about dressing it. She tried to remember how Alice did it, the roll of hair at the nape of the neck that gave the arrangement volume, the way she licked her finger and wrapped the hair around it to hold a curl. The effect needed to be elegant, any wantonness in it no more than the shiver of an almost-dimple, a glance held a second too long. Titian or Giorgione, never Francisco de Goya. Several times, as the hair slipped, escaping the pins, she wondered if perhaps she was mad, if the whole idea was preposterous. It would never work. But still she kept twisting and rolling and pinning. It was too late to stop now. Besides, it was always better to do something.

  The final result, while hardly up to Alice’s standards, was not unsatisfactory.

  ‘Come and stand over here, Violet,’ she said and Betsey rose clumsily, her swollen belly making her awkward. Since arriving at the studio the girl had been very quiet, the rolling boil of pugnacity reduced to a simmering wariness. Now she stood before the long pale curtain like a defendant in the dock, the belligerence of her expression not quite concealing her apprehension. On the swell of her stomach her hands clenched in fists.

  ‘See this mark? I want you here, just six inches or so to the left. A little more towards that wall, that’s right. And try to relax. Let your shoulders drop. Imagine you have only just been woken, that you are still half asleep.’

  She tilted Betsey’s head, adjusting her curls with one finger so that a ringlet brushed against her cheek. The hair would do. The difficulty was Betsey’s face. It was too bony to be pretty, the nose too narrow, the jaw too sharp. Her lips were thin, her mouth hardly more than a slit. There was none of the childlike softness of seduction about Betsey. Hers was a face for haggling and for disappointment.

  Maribel thought of the photographer in the crimson studio, the appraising way he had s
tudied her with his head on one side.

  ‘Turn away,’ she said.

  ‘Look back over your shoulder.’ Betsey scowled, jutted her chin. Maribel bit her lip. She thought of Victor’s hand on her shoulder, the scorched caramel burn of the brandy on her tongue.

  ‘Thomas,’ she said, ‘we need flowers. Might you be an angel and run out for them?’

  ‘There’s no need for that, ma’am. We have several silk –’

  ‘Fresh,’ Maribel interrupted smoothly. ‘Perhaps it is the scent but they quite change the mood of a composition.’ She extracted a crown from her purse and handed it to Thomas. ‘White roses. And freesias. They must be white.’

  ‘It is a bit early in the year for roses, ma’am.’

  ‘Thomas, please. Roses and freesias. I don’t care if you have to go to Timbuktu and back for them.’

  Thomas opened his mouth to say something. Then, closing it, he nodded.

  As soon as the door closed behind him she bolted it from the inside. Then she went to the cupboard behind the door and opened it.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ she said. ‘There’s sherry.’

  When Betsey took the glass she cocked her little finger and downed the contents in a single gulp. Then she made a face.

  ‘It ain’t gin,’ she said but she closed her eyes a little, savouring the warmth of the alcohol as it spread through her chest. Taking her silk wrap from her satchel Maribel handed it to Betsey.

  ‘Go and put this on,’ she said.

  Betsey eyed her consideringly, then reached out and touched the robe, gauging the stuff between finger and thumb. The girl’s hands were grimy, her fingernails torn, and Maribel had to resist the urge to snatch the wrap away. She had bought it in Paris the previous season for a price she had done her best to forget. The heavy silk gleamed, its opalescent folds as unctuous as cream.

  ‘I’m goin’ to want it,’ Betsey said. ‘You know, after.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  Betsey shrugged.

  ‘Then I’ll just be gettin’ off,’ she said and she reached up, fumbling at the pins in her hair.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Maribel cried. ‘We agreed your price.’

  ‘Price just changed. Take it or leave it.’

  The two women stared at each other. Maribel was the first to look away. They did not have much time.

  ‘Very well. You can have the stinking wrap. But that had better be the end of it, do you hear me, or you won’t get another farthing.’

  The threat sounded hollow, even to her own ears, but Betsey nodded to herself, a satisfied smirk on her thin lips. She scooped the silk wrap into her arms.

  ‘’Ow about another?’ she said, jerking her head at the sherry decanter.

  ‘Later,’ Maribel said. She gestured towards the screen in the far corner of the studio. ‘You can change behind there.’

  Betsey let her smirk spread across her face. Then, yanking at the lacing on her dress, she tugged it from her shoulders and let it fall. Maribel caught a glimpse of heavy blue-veined breasts, pale brown nipples, the marbled sheen of her drum-tight belly. She flushed and looked away. Betsey reached out and, gripping Maribel’s wrist, twisted her hand around to press her breast. With a strangled cry Maribel snatched her hand away.

  ‘Come on,’ Betsey said. ‘It’s what you want, ain’t it? Why else you send the boy away?’

  Her tone was two parts wheedling, one part menace. Stepping out of the mess of her skirts she came round to stand in front of Maribel, one hip thrust sideways. A dark line ran like a shaft of an arrow over the stretch of her swollen belly to the pelted point between her thighs.

  ‘What I want is for you to stand over there,’ Maribel said tightly. ‘Exactly where I showed you.’

  Betsey cupped her breasts in her raw hands, pressing them upwards. ‘Flesh and blood’s better than dirty pictures,’ she said.

  Maribel shook her head. ‘Not this time. Now get over there. We haven’t much time.’

  It was peculiar how quickly the girl’s nakedness became ordinary. Turning Betsey’s back to the camera Maribel arranged the robe so that it draped from the crook of her elbows, the neckline falling to reveal the base of her spine and, below that, the cleft of her buttocks. She brought Betsey’s face around, tucking her chin behind her shoulder, so that she looked out from under her eyelashes. The sherry had blurred her gaze a little. Her jaw was loose, her arms slack by her sides. Maribel took her hands and folded them together in front of her. Then she bent and moved her right foot out a little so that, beyond the ivory folds of silk, it was just possible to see the crest of her pregnant belly.

  ‘Look towards the screen,’ Maribel said. ‘Imagine that the man you desire most in the world is standing in front of you, right there where the mark is on the floor. But you cannot touch him. And he cannot touch you. You have to make love to him with your eyes.’

  So many years and yet the photographer’s words came as readily to her lips as the Lord’s Prayer. Betsey sniggered.

  ‘What ballsack of a john pays for eyes?’ she said.

  Maribel picked up the decanter and refilled Betsey’s glass. Then she poured a large one for herself.

  ‘To dirty pictures,’ she said, raising her glass. Swallowing a large gulp she reached for her camera and slid the first plate carefully inside. There was no way of knowing whether the drape of the curtain was right, or the tilt of the light, no way of knowing with any accuracy how it would come out. There was no way of knowing if it would work at all.

  ‘You desire him,’ she said. ‘With all your body and soul you desire him. No man has ever made you feel as you feel now, liquid with the longing to touch him, to feel the kiss of his hands on your naked skin. The desire in you is so strong it burns in you like a fire. Every nerve in your body prickles with the nearness of him. You can feel the warmth of his breath on your skin. The blood in your veins is electric with it.’

  All the time she was taking photographs she continued to talk in this way. At first Betsey laughed, muttering sneeringly under her breath, but as Maribel’s low voice curled around the studio like cigarette smoke, relentless and hypnotic, Betsey’s sneer softened. The alcohol and the warmth of the lights and the music of Maribel’s voice eased the clench between her shoulder blades and tempered the sharp corners of her face. Maribel went on talking. She talked as she bent to the camera, as she opened the shutter, as she adjusted Betsey’s hair or her robe or her stance. She talked as she changed the plates. When Betsey began to tire she gave her a third glass of sherry and took another for herself and all the time she kept talking, talking, as though to stop would be to give up hope.

  By the time she heard Thomas’s footfalls on the stone steps she had taken eleven plates. It would have to do. She glanced towards the door, checking the bolt, and thrust the remainder of the unused plates in her satchel.

  ‘Quickly,’ she hissed at Betsey. ‘Get dressed.’

  Betsey gawped at her, glassy-eyed.

  ‘Hurry,’ Maribel said and she pulled the wrap from her shoulders, shoving her towards the dress that lay where Betsey had dropped it on the floor. Thomas’s key scraped in the lock. Bundling the wrap into a knot, Maribel shoved it into her satchel and fastened the straps.

  ‘’Ey, that’s mine!’ Betsey protested.

  ‘Later,’ Maribel said, gathering up the decanter and glasses and putting them back into the cupboard. ‘Not here. Now get dressed.’

  The door rattled but did not open. There was a silence. Then Thomas started banging.

  ‘Ma’am? Are you in there?’

  ‘Come in, Thomas,’ she said, yanking the scarlet dress up around Betsey’s shoulders. ‘Now do yourself up, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I think the door is bolted,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Oh, I am sorry. Give me a moment to finish this last shot and I’ll let you in.’

  She grabbed Betsey’s greasy shawl, and threw it at her along with her battered green bonnet. She pushed her towards the chair
by the screen.

  ‘Sit there,’ she muttered. ‘Put your head in your hands.’

  Then, picking up her camera, she went to the door and drew the bolt. Thomas held out a bunch of tired-looking roses. Maribel took them. They smelled of coal dust and dirty water. She smiled and handed them back to Thomas.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I fear our model is taken ill. I am going to have to accompany her home. Keep these, why don’t you? For your trouble.’ She picked up her satchel. ‘Come on now, Violet. Steady as you go. I shall keep the darkroom key, Thomas, if I may. There is still a little work I have to do.’

  40

  IT REQUIRED CONSIDERABLE INSISTENCE on her part before Maribel was admitted to the office of Mr Webster. Although it was a little after six in the evening and the street outside was crowded with weary-faced people making for home, the newspaper office was as busy as an anthill. As a clerk conducted her along a dingy passage, a man pushed past her, his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a large sheet of cardboard held like a shield over his chest. His untied shoelaces darted behind his boots as though trying to catch him up. She glimpsed a large room like a schoolroom, crowded with desks half partitioned by low carrels and stacks of papers, before the clerk showed her into a shabby office. The room was small and very spartan in its design. A desk with a green-shaded brass lamp took up almost all the available space. The floor was uncarpeted, the walls mostly obscured behind rows of shelves laden with books and ledgers and piles and piles of paper tied with black ribbon. The chair behind the desk was upholstered in worn leather.

  Maribel sat down on a scuffed upright chair. She held her portfolio tightly on her lap. The clerk shut the door. From somewhere upstairs she could hear the asthmatic wheeze of machinery. Restlessly she looked about her. The window gave out onto no more than a narrow well, its brick walls streaked with damp. Behind the desk hung a number of framed letters and photographs. She hesitated, then rose to take a closer look. The letters were mostly several years old, their ink faded, and while two or three were extravagantly complimentary, heaping praise upon Mr Webster for his moral courage, the same number again were vituperative in their condemnation of his exposures. The photographs all had Webster in them. There was one of him with General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon, another with Buffalo Bill, a third, rather blurred, with Mr Gladstone. On the desk, in a gilt frame, there was a studio portrait of Webster dressed in prison uniform, the arrows on the jacket like the prints of inky-footed birds. A narrow slot cut into the mount contained a typewritten quotation: ‘This is our comfort, God is in Heaven, and He doth what pleaseth Him; His and only His counsel shall stand, whatsoever the designs of men and the fury of the people be.’