Beautiful Lies (51 page)

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 the 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.

‘S
HE 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.

When Maribel had asked if she might take her picture, the girl’s sharp face had shrivelled. Her skin was greasy and pimpled, her eyes hard as chips of glass. There was a sore at the corner of her mouth. When she spat on the ground the smell of drink on her was very strong.

‘Cost yer sixpence,’ she had said, ‘or a shillin’ for Cock Lane,’ and she cackled and hitched up her skirts so high that Maribel caught a glimpse of felted hair, dark against pale thighs. The girl’s jeers had echoed in her ears as she hurried away.

‘How are you feeling?’ Maribel asked Charlotte. She was glad to see that her friend seemed comfortable and that she had a little colour in her cheeks. Arthur had declared the birth an easy one but a husband’s view of such matters was seldom reliable.

‘Never better. I can’t tell you what heaven it is not to be pregnant.’

Maribel raised an eyebrow. ‘I shall be sure to remind you of that in six months,’ she said and Charlotte laughed and gazed down at the baby in her arms, her laughter softening into a smile of such fierce and private tenderness that it pierced Maribel’s heart. ‘An ounce of mother is worth a pound of priest,’ Maribel murmured.

‘Who said that?’

‘It’s an old Spanish proverb.’

‘Or so your mother told you.’

Maribel smiled.

‘Helena Mary Gwendolen Charterhouse,’ Charlotte murmured, tracing the curve of the infant’s cheek with the back of her finger. ‘Such a big name for a little girl.’

‘The older ones must be thrilled to have a new sister.’

‘Not a bit. As Kitty asked me, what good is a baby who can’t play? This one will be nothing but a nuisance until she is old enough to eat pretend cake and withstand the medical attentions of Doctor Ursie, or Nursula as the children have taken to calling her.’

Maribel laughed. ‘She still harbours ambitions to be the next Elizabeth Garrett Anderson?’

‘I hope that Dr Anderson’s interest in medical matters extends beyond a passion for bandaging. Ursie should have been born in ancient Egypt. Mummification would be her idea of perfect heaven.’

The baby began to whimper. Charlotte crooned at her, rocking her in her arms, but the infant did not quiet. A nurse, all starched skirts and self-importance, bustled into the room.

‘It’s time for Baby’s bottle, madam. May I?’

When Charlotte hesitated, the nurse bent down and scooped the child from her arms.

‘Come now, missy,’ she chided as she whisked the infant from the room. ‘You will give poor Mother a headache with that infernal racket.’

Charlotte watched them go.

‘Don’t look so pitiful,’ Maribel said. ‘You’ll be pregnant again before you know it.’

Charlotte mock-pouted, swiping at her friend with the back of her hand.

‘There are rules about teasing a woman who is still in childbed, you know.’

‘I didn’t. How soon can you get up?’

Charlotte laughed and rang for tea. Without the child in her arms, the soft vagueness that had enveloped her seemed to recede a little. Maribel lit a cigarette, holding the smoke in her lungs, savouring the shiver of it in her chest, in the backs of her knees.

‘Ah,’ she said, tipping back her head and exhaling. ‘That’s better.’

Charlotte waved impatiently at the plume of smoke. ‘Just don’t let Arthur catch you,’ she said. ‘Now tell me about the opening. I can’t tell you how maddening it was to miss your moment of triumph. I want to know everything.’