Free Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark Page B

making space inside oneself for whatever might be said in return. When I smoke, I become more – myself. The essence of myself. It is as though the smoking concentrates the me-ness, distils whatever I am thinking, whatever I am feeling, to something more powerful, something closer to poetry.’
    She faltered, fearful that he might laugh. He did not laugh. He looked at her, his milky eyes bright and curiously still. Above his ears his hair was faintly streaked with grey.
    ‘So you smoke to feel more deeply yourself ?’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I think I do. Is that strange?’
    ‘No. I think it is – wonderful.’
    Behind her a man in an evening cape staggered, knocking her elbow and upsetting her glass of champagne. Maribel gave a little cry of surprise.
    ‘For God’s sake, man, what do you think you are doing?’ Webster shouted, putting out a protective arm. Beside them several people stopped talking and looked round curiously. A balding man with a sweaty face nudged the gentleman next to him, jerking a thumb towards Webster. The man in the cape doffed his hat and performed a jerking little dance to his companion, who laughed uproariously and dragged him away through the crowd. There was a pause. Then the buzz of conversation resumed.
    ‘Are you hurt?’ Webster asked Maribel.
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘Shall I fetch you some more champagne?’
    ‘No, thank you. I have had plenty.’
    ‘Not so many vices, then.’
    She smiled awkwardly. It had unsettled her to realise how many people there were in the room, how many pairs of eyes. She had barely remembered they were there.
    ‘I am monopolising you,’ she said.
    ‘I was hoping you would not notice.’
    ‘I should find my husband.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘You know I interviewed him for the
Chronicle
, when he was first elected to Parliament,’ Webster said. ‘Your husband.’
    ‘I remember.’
    She did remember, too. The notion of an interview, a contrivance which Webster had imported from America, was still a new one and Edward had accepted Webster’s invitation to converse as much from curiosity as inclination. Webster was then only just out of prison and something of a novelty himself. The two men had eaten a jovial lunch together at Webster’s club and afterwards smoked cigars. On perhaps two occasions Webster had jotted a brief note in a leather book. According to Edward he had talked at least as much as he had listened. The article that followed was largely favourable, though in Edward’s opinion it bore only a glancing relationship to the conversation that had actually taken place.
    ‘Honest portrait, my eye!’ he had declared. ‘It is no more than a frame in which to paint the innumerable virtues of Booth and the Salvation Army, an opinion I can hardly object to but on which I do not think I spoke a single sentence during the full length of our lunch. Not to mention the religious feeling with which he credits me. Still, one has to admire the dash of his prose. There is more life to his sketch of me than I could dream of mustering in reality.’
    ‘He impressed me a great deal,’ Webster said. ‘It is easy to be a radical when you have nothing. Quite aside from the ethics of the thing, it is a matter of simple self-interest. But a gentleman like your husband, with whom God has blessed all he could conceivably want for happiness on this earth, well . . .’
    His smile was reluctant, a private smile for one. Maribel felt the prickle of it in the soles of her feet.
    ‘Alfred Webster, as I live and breathe.’
    Webster turned. Behind him stood a wizened gentleman with shrewd eyes and grey hair and whiskers so unruly they might have been scribbled by a child. Webster clapped him on the shoulder. His smile was broad, public, bland with the amiability of the clubbable businessman. Dropping her cigarette Maribel arranged her face into politeness.
    ‘George Fording, what in the name of the Devil are you doing here? I thought you were dead.’
    ‘I knew