Beautiful Lies (55 page)

‘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.’

I
T 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.
’

She was obliged to wait more than thirty minutes before Mr Webster finally came to the office. He brought with him like a gust of warm air the noise and hubbub of the newspaper, which filled the room as he stood on the threshold, issuing instructions to a man with a hasty pencil and a frown between his eyebrows. When Maribel half rose from her chair he raised a hand in a gesture which was at least as much command as apology. The young man with the pencil scribbled, then set the pencil behind his ear. Webster nodded. Then, turning to Maribel, he fixed her with his milky eyes.

‘Mrs Campbell Lowe,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

The sarcasm in his voice was unmistakable. Maribel smiled coldly.

‘No doubt I have come at a bad time,’ she said. ‘I should have made an appointment, except that this really can’t wait.’

Webster crossed his arms. ‘If you have something to say, say it. I am in a hurry.’

‘Very well.’

Leaning down Maribel took up her portfolio and loosened the ribbons. Her heart thumped in her chest but her hands were steady. Carefully she drew out a print and laid it on the table.

‘I have come about this,’ she said.

Webster frowned and took a step towards the desk. Maribel watched his face, impatience giving way to puzzlement and then to a furious disbelief as he snatched up the print.

‘What the Devil –’

‘I thought you should like to see it,’ she said evenly.

Webster wheeled round. He brandished the photograph, his mouth working, then cast it from him as though it were poisoned. It made a low swoop before landing beneath Maribel’s upright chair. She bent down and picked it up.

‘It is rather good of the girl, I think,’ she said. ‘Less flattering of you, perhaps, but then your resemblance to Oliver Cromwell was never particularly marked.’

Breathing heavily, Webster snatched the picture from her hand. He smelled strongly of carbolic soap and stale breath. His milky eyes bulged like marbles.

‘What kind of filthy trickery is this?’

‘Trickery?’

‘This – this obscenity, what in the name of the Devil is it?’

‘It is you, Mr Webster. You and a naked woman, but not, I think, your wife?’

For a moment Maribel thought that Mr Webster might strike her.

‘If you touch me I shall scream,’ she said, in the same conversational tone. ‘I can’t imagine you would want me to scream.’

Webster looked at her, his face contorted.

‘This is a libel. The man in that – you know as well as I that it is not me.’

‘Oh, but it is, Mr Webster.’ She proffered the photograph to him. ‘Take a closer look. The costume is foolish, of course, but see how you look directly at the camera. There can be no mistaking you.’

Webster took the photograph from her. He stared at it, his jaw working. Then, very slowly, he tore it in two and dropped the pieces on to the floor. Maribel said nothing. Sliding her hand into her portfolio, she drew out another identical print.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I should tell you that I have made a number of copies. I took the precaution of sealing them in envelopes addressed to several prominent gentlemen of my husband’s acquaintance who I think might take an interest in such a photograph. My maid has instructions to post them if I am not home by eight.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Goodness, that does not leave us much time, does it?’

Webster’s neck was scarlet. Slowly, a muscle jumping in his cheek, he tore the two pieces of print into tiny scraps.

‘No one will believe you,’ he hissed. ‘The picture is a fake and you know it.’

‘A fake, is it?’ Maribel studied the print in her hands, her head on one side. ‘And yet it looks so real.’

‘Of course it’s a damned fake. What sort of madness is this? I have never seen that – that harlot before in my life.’

‘Come now, Mr Webster, be reasonable. You are a married man, I understand that. The last thing you want is a scandal. You say you do not know this woman but, you see, I find that rather hard to believe. I happen to have this rather damning photograph.’ She rose from her chair and walked to the door of his office, her hand on the porcelain handle. ‘Perhaps we should consult your underlings. See what they think of the evidence.’

‘Evidence? That? It is nothing but a concoction of lies! I tell you, I have never seen that woman before.’

‘So you say. And yet here you are and here she is and from her condition one would have to assume that you are – to put it delicately – rather more than passing acquaintances.’

He lunged at her, his hands splayed, his arms jerking like a puppet’s, but Maribel was too quick for him. Turning the handle of the door she threw it open. The dammed-up clamour of the newspaper office cascaded over them. At a desk beyond the door, an island in a sea of hurrying people, a clerk looked up from his papers. Maribel nodded at him. In the pool of light from his brass lamp his hands were yellow as wax. Then she closed the door. Webster twisted away, slamming his fist against the wall. The framed letters shook.

‘I would be grateful, Mr Webster, if you could conduct yourself with a little more propriety,’ she said. ‘Now perhaps we can get down to business. I am here to make a deal.’

‘I don’t make deals with the Devil.’

‘Oh, I think you will in this case. You really don’t have a choice, do you?’