The Crimson Petal and the White (14 page)

‘If yer like snow and rain,’ mutters one of the others, idly picking up folds of her dress and making them stand up in little mountain peaks of serge.

‘Special tastes, our Mr ’Unt’s got, remember.’

‘All set for Christmas, are yer, sir?’

‘Fancy unwrappin’ a present early?’ Pink fingers pluck suggestively at a shawl, and William glances once again at the door.

‘Maybe she won’t come,’ suggests the boldest whore. ‘Sugar, I mean.’

‘Sshhh, don’t tease him.’

‘You’d be better off with me, ducks. I know a thing or two about lidderature. I’ve ’ad all the great names. I’ve ’ad Charles Dickens.’

‘Ain’t ’e dead?’

‘Not the bit
I
sucked on, dear.’

‘Dead five years or more. Hignorant, you are.’

‘It was ’im, I tell yer. I didn’t say it was last week, did I?’ She sniffs pathetically. ‘I was no more than a babe.’

The others snicker. Then, as if by a mutually understood signal, they all three turn serious, and lean their faces towards him, fetchingly tilted. They look just like yesterday’s counterfeit ‘twins’, with an extra sibling added, an inedible third scoop of gateau.

‘All three of us together, for the one price,’ says the soothsayer, licking her lips. ‘How about it?’

‘Awf—’ stammers Rackham, ‘awfully tempting, I’m sure. But you see …’

At that moment The Fireside’s door swings open and in walks a solitary woman. A whiff of fresh air comes in with her, as well as the sound of wild weather outside, cut off in mid-howl by the sealing of the door, like a cry stifled under a hand. The pall of cigar smoke parts momentarily, then mingles with the smell of rain.

The woman is all in black – no, dark green. Green darkened by the downpour. Her shoulders are drenched, the fabric of her bodice clinging tight to her prominent collar-bones, and her thin arms are sheathed in dappled chlorella. A sprinkling of unabsorbed water still glistens on her simple bonnet and on the filmy grey veil that hangs from it. Her abundant hair, not flame-red just now but black and orange like neglected coal embers, is all disordered, and loose curls of it are dripping.

For an instant she quivers, irritably, like a dog, then regains her composure. Turning to the bar, she greets the publican, unheard over the clamour of conversation, and raises her arms to lift her veil. Sharp shoulder-blades writhe inside wet fabric as she bares her face, unseen as yet by Rackham. There is a long stain of wetness all down her back, shaped like a tongue or an arrowhead, pointing down towards her skirts.

‘Who’s that?’ asks William.

The three whores sigh almost in unison.

‘That’s her, ducks.’

‘Go to it, Mr ’Unt.’ Appy criticisin’.’

Sugar has turned, and is scanning The Fireside for a place to sit. The boldest whore, the soothsayer, stands up and waves, motioning her over to William’s table.

‘Sugar dear! Over here! Meet … Mr ’Unt.’

Sugar walks directly to William’s table, as if it was her destination from the first. Although she must be responding to the whore’s hello, she doesn’t acknowledge her, and sets her sights on Rackham alone. Almost within arm’s reach, she calmly regards William with those hazel eyes which, as promised in
More Sprees in London
, do indeed appear golden – at least in the lights of The Fireside.

‘Good evening, Mr Hunt.’ Her voice is not overly feminine, rather hoarse even, but wholly free of class coarseness. ‘I don’t wish to interrupt you and your friends.’

‘We was just leavin’,’ says the soothsayer, rising and, as if on strings, pulling up her companions with her. ‘It’s
you
’e’s after.’ And with that, gathering their surplus of taffeta together, they retreat.

Don’t bother even to glance after them; they are persons of no consequence (is there no end to them?), and they have outlived their use. William stares at the woman he has come for, unable to decide whether her face is annoyingly imperfect (mouth too wide, eyes too far apart, dry skin, freckles) or the most beautiful he has ever seen. With every passing second, he is closer to making up his mind.

At his request, Sugar sits down at his side, her wet skirts rustling and squeaking, her upper body smelling of fresh rain and fresh sweat. She has been running, it seems – something that no reputable woman would ever, ever do. But the flush it has brought to her cheeks is damned attractive, and she smells divine. Several locks of hair have come loose from her elaborately styled fringe, and these sway in front of her eyes. With a languid motion of one gloved hand, she gently pushes them aside, to the furry edges of her eyebrows. She smiles, sharing with William the rueful understanding that there is a limit to what one may hope for once one’s plans have gone awry.

The state she’s in is certainly unladylike, but in all other respects she radiates surprisingly good breeding. And yet … a breed of what? She could be the daughter of foreign royalty, deposed in an unexpected revolt, driven through midnight forests in the pelting rain, head high, regal even while hair swirls round her face, shoulders erect while a wounded servant fusses to cover them with his fur-lined coat … (Do bear with William, if you can stand it, while he indulges himself a little here. He read a lot of racy French novels in the early Sixties when he was supposed to be studying the defeats of the Hittites.)

Sugar is starting to steam, a faint halo of vapour rising from her bonnet and outermost ringlets. She cocks her head slightly to one side, as if to ask, Well, what now? Her neck, William notices, is longer than the high collar of her bodice can hold. She has an Adam’s apple, like a man. Yes, he has decided now: she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

To his bemusement, he’s made shy by her demeanour; she appears so
much
the lady that it’s difficult to imagine how he could possibly soil that status. Her long, lithe body, beguiling though it is, only complicates matters, as she wears her attire like a second skin, seamless and, by implication, irremovable.

The way he phrases his dilemma is this: ‘I don’t know that I deserve this honour.’

Sugar leans forward slightly and, in a low tone, as if making a comment about a mutual acquaintance who has just walked in, says, ‘Don’t worry, sir. You have made the right choice. I’ll do anything you ask of me.’

A simple exchange, murmured above the babble of a crowded drinking-house, but was there ever a marriage vow more explicit?

A serving-maid comes to deliver the drink Sugar ordered at the bar. Colourless, transparent and with scarcely any bubbles, it can’t be beer. And if it’s gin, the perennial favourite of whores, William can’t smell it. Could it possibly be … water?

‘What am I to call you?’ wonders William, resting his chin on his locked hands the way he used to do as a student. ‘There must be more to your name than …’

She smiles. Her lips are extraordinarily dry, like white tree-bark. Why does this strike him as beautiful rather than ugly? It’s beyond him.

‘Sugar is all there is to my name, Mr Hunt. Unless there’s another name you particularly wish to know me by?’

‘No, no,’ William assures her. ‘Sugar it is.’

‘What’s in a name, after all?’ she remarks, and raises one furry eyebrow. Can it be that she’s quoting Shakespeare? Coincidence, surely, but how sweet she smells!

The Fireside’s tenor has resumed warbling. William feels the place becoming warmer and friendlier; the lights seem to burn more golden, the shadows turn a rich dark brown, and everyone in the great room seems to be smiling bright-eyed at a companion. The door swings open frequently now, admitting smarter and smarter folk. The noise of their arrivals, the chatter, and the singing which strains to soar above it, grows into such a din that William and Sugar must lean close to one another’s faces in order to converse.

Gazing into her eyes, which are so large and shiny that he sees his face reflected, William Rackham rediscovers the elusive joy of being William Rackham. There is a will-o’-the-wisp of behaviours, alcohol-fuelled and fragile, that he singles out as being his
true
self, quite distinct from the thickening physical lump he sees in the looking-glass every morning. The mirror cannot lie, and yet it does, it does! It cannot reflect the flame-like destinies trapped inside the frustrated soul. For William
ought
to have been a Keats, a Bulwer Lytton, or even a Chatterton, but instead is transmogrifying, outwardly at least, into a gross copy of his own father. Rare indeed are the moments when he can illuminate a captivated audience with the glow of his youthful promise.

He and Sugar speak, and Rackham comes to life. He has been dead these past few years, dead! Only now can he admit that he has been underground, hiding in fear from anyone worth knowing, deliberately avoiding bright company. Any company, in fact, in which he might be tempted or called upon to … well, let’s put it this way: what is audacious promise in a golden-haired youth can be mocked, in a man with greying sideboards and an incipient triple chin, as mere gasbagging. For a long time now, William has made do with his internal monologues, his fantasies on park benches and the lavatory, immune from the risk of sniggers and yawns.

In Sugar’s company, however, it’s different: he listens to himself talk, and is relieved to find that his own voice can still weave magic. Wreathed in the subtle haze of steam rising from her, Rackham holds forth: fluent, charming and intelligent, witty and full of sensibility. He imagines his face shining with youth, his hair smoothing itself out and flowing like Swinburne’s.

Sugar, for her part, has not a fault; she is scrupulously respectful, gently good-humoured, thoughtful and flattering. It’s even possible, thinks William, that she likes him. Surely her laughter is not the sort that can be faked, and surely the sparkle in her eyes – that same sparkle he inspired in Agnes long ago – cannot be counterfeited.

And, to William’s surprise and deep satisfaction, he and Sugar
do
converse about books after all, just as the whores mischievously predicted. Why, the girl’s a prodigy! She has an amazing knowledge of literature, lacking only Latin, Greek and the male’s instinctive grasp of what is major and minor. In terms of sum total of pages she seems to have read almost as much as he (although some of it, inevitably, is the sort of piffle written for and by her own sex – novels about timid governesses and so forth). Yet she’s well-versed in many of the authors he holds in high esteem – and she adores Swift! Swift, his favourite! To most women – Agnes among them, unfortunately – Swift is the name of a cough lozenge, or a bird to be worn stuffed on their bonnets. But Sugar … Sugar can even pronounce ‘Houyhnhnms’ – and God, doesn’t her mouth make a pretty shape when she does! And Smollett! She’s read
Peregrine Pickle
, and not only that, she can discuss it intelligently – certainly as intelligently as he could have done, at her age. (What is her age? No, he dares not ask.)

‘But that’s not possible!’ she protests demurely, when he confesses that he hasn’t yet read James Thomson’s
The City of Dreadful Night
, even now, a full year after its publication. ‘How terribly busy you must be, Mr Hunt, to be kept from such a pleasure so long!’

Rackham strains to recall the literary reviews.

‘Son of a sailor, wasn’t he?’ he ventures.

‘Orphan, orphan,’ she enthuses, as if it were the grandest thing in the world. ‘Became a teacher in a military asylum. But the poem is a miracle, Mr Hunt, a miracle!’

‘I’ll certainly endeavour to find time … no, I shall
make
time, to read it,’ he says, but she leans close to his ear and saves him the bother:

‘
Eyes of fire
,’ she recites in a throaty whisper, loud enough nonetheless to surmount the singing and the chatter all around them.

‘
Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire;

The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath

Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death;

Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold

Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold:

But I strode on austere;

No hope could have no fear
.’

Breathless with emotion, she lowers her eyes.

‘Grim poetry,’ comments William, ‘for such a beautiful young woman to have as a special favourite.’

Sugar smiles sadly.

‘Life can be grim,’ she says. ‘Especially when fit companions – like yourself, sir – are difficult to find.’

William is tempted to assure her that, in his opinion,
More Sprees in
London
has not praised her accomplishments anywhere near highly enough, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Instead, they talk on and on, about Truth and Beauty, and the works of Shakespeare, and whether there is any meaningful distinction to be made nowadays between a small hat and a bonnet.

‘Watch,’ says Sugar, and, with both her hands, pushes her bonnet well forward on her head. ‘Now it’s a hat! And watch again…’ – she pushes it well back – ‘Now it’s a bonnet!’

‘Magic,’ grins William. And indeed it is.

Sugar’s little demonstration of fashion’s absurdity has left her hair even more disordered than before. Her thick fringe, quite dry by now, has tumbled loose, obscuring her vision. William stares, half in disgust, half in adoration, as she pouts her lower lip as far as it will go and blows a puff of air upwards. Golden-red curls flutter off her forehead, and her eyes are unveiled once more, mildly shocking in how far apart they are,
perfect
in how far apart they are.

‘I feel as though we’re courting,’ he tells her, thinking that it may make her laugh.

Instead she says very solemnly, ‘Oh, Mr Hunt, it so flatters me that I should inspire such treatment.’

This last word hangs in the smoky air a moment, reminding William why he came here tonight, and why he sought out Sugar specially. He imagines afresh the treatment he was raring – still
is
raring, damn it – to mete out to a woman. Can he still ask
that
of her? He recalls the way she said she would do anything, anything he asked of her; re-savours the exquisite gravity of her assurance …