Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark Page B

Maria Isabel Constancia de la Flamandière. The details of her new childhood were shaped in part by practical considerations – she spoke good French and, because of Victor, tolerable Spanish, and Chile, unlike France or Spain, was conveniently far away – but also by the shape of things as she had always wished them, as they were meant to have been. Maribel’s Spanish mother had died tragically young but she had lived as life should be lived, joyfully and without restraint. On sleeply summer afternoons she had held her only daughter in her lap and stroked her hair and told her mischievous stories about the starchy matrons of Buenos Aires, whose priggishness was surpassed only by the English.
    ‘How is Ida?’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.
    Mrs Bryant’s mouth pinched.
    ‘Your brothers and sisters are all quite well, thank you for asking, and your father too, though he suffers these days with his ankles.’ She frowned, her head on one side. ‘Surely you don’t need to keep up that peculiar accent? There is no one here but us.’
    ‘Mother –’ Edith giggled.
    ‘Goodness, Edith, I suggest it only for your sister’s sake. One would think she’d be glad to have the chance to drop the pretence. Be herself for an hour or two. It’s hardly as if you and I don’t know who she is.’
    Maribel shook her head.
    ‘Actually, you don’t have the slightest idea,’ she said, her Continental lilt more pronounced than it had been for years. ‘You never did.’
    There was a silence. Edith shifted from foot to foot. Then Mrs Bryant sighed, fanning herself with one hand.
    ‘It’s unspeakably warm, isn’t it? I wonder how long it can hold. Edith, won’t you invite us to sit down? You can’t want us cluttering up your hall all morning.’
    ‘I don’t mind,’ Edith said and, thrusting out a hand, she clumsily squeezed Maribel’s arm. Maribel flinched. With a strangled gasp, Edith pushed past her mother and, shoulders hunched, scurried down the narrow hall towards the parlour.
    Despite the brightness of the day the room was dim, the windows obscured by heavy curtains with stiff fringes, and crowded with rugs and sofas and footstools and tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl and papier-mâché screens and spindly-legged chairs upholstered with spaniels in needlepoint. Beside silk-swathed standard lamps and vases bristling with bunches of dried grasses and peacock feathers, claw-footed tables were laden with glass bowls in pastel shades, each filled to the brim with waxen fruit or marble eggs or flowers made from seashells. Between these curiosities prowled a small menagerie of birds and animals in glass cases, while from his place beside the fireplace a large Negro boy stared at Maribel with beady glass eyes, clutching at his arsenic-green draperies. Above him on the mantel a green marble clock of similarly poisonous hue could just be discerned behind a barricade of porcelain figurines, brass candlesticks, ornamental plates and fans decorated with découpage. The coal scuttle bore a picture of Warwick Castle.
    ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Edith said.
    How many times had she said that to Maribel when they were children? As a girl Edith had only ever wanted to play house. Whenever it was her turn to choose the games, she had insisted upon endless wearisome tea parties with dusty water poured from the dollies’ teapot and oak leaves for sandwiches. When Maribel had on one occasion attempted to inject a little excitement into the proceedings by staging a fit, Edith, awash with tears, had declared her sister the cruellest creature the world had ever known.
    Maribel perched on the edge of an overstuffed sofa and slowly peeled off her gloves. The room was stifling. On the stool before the empty grate a jug sweated, beads of moisture sliding over its belly. They might have been back home in Ellerton. Nothing would have changed there, of course. There would still be the fat dust-pink chesterfields crowded around the