The Crimson Petal and the White (16 page)

‘Everything to your liking, Mr Hunt?’

‘It will be,’ he grins, narrowing his eyes meaningfully, ‘soon enough.’

He reclines on the mattress, tests its firmness and softness with his elbows. Thirty seconds later he is fast asleep.

To fall asleep in the bed-chamber of a prostitute, unless you are the prostitute herself, is, as a general rule, either impossible or impermissible. Rackham has, in the past, been roughly taken in hand and brought to orgasm or, if that wasn’t practical, to the brothel’s back door and discharged into the chill of the night, shoved towards his own bed, however far away that might be.

Yet, Rackham sleeps on.

Sugar does not sleep with him. She sits at an escritoire near the window, fully dressed (though she has removed her gloves), writing. Her cracked and peeling fingers grip the pen tight. A journal not unlike a business ledger is scratched quietly, with long silences between certain words.

Rackham snores.

Just before dawn, Rackham wakes. He is sprawled on his back, his head sunk unpillowed into the soft surface of the undisturbed bed. He cranes his head further back, looking up towards the bed-head. Alarmingly, another man stares back at him, a wild-eyed, tousle-haired fellow reaching towards him across the sheets, keen (it would seem) to recommence abominable acts.

William sits up with a start, and so does the stranger. Mystery solved: the entire bed-head is a massive mirror.

The bed’s drapes have been fully drawn, veiling him inside. Just as well: to his shame and consternation, he finds that his trousers are sodden with urine. This is what’s woken him – not the emission from his bladder
per
se
, which must have happened hours ago, but a maddening itch in his clammy groins. He peers into the mirror again, compiling a mental inventory of the damage. He doesn’t seem to have vomited, nor is he queasy now. His head throbs considerably less than he expected (The Fireside’s ale must agree with him – or perhaps he’s still drunk … What time is it? Why the devil hasn’t he been expelled?). His hair has come loose again, standing up from his scalp like greasy sheep’s wool. He digs into a trouser pocket for a comb, finds only a tangle of sopping undergarments.

God Almighty, how is he going to get out of this
?

He crawls to the foot of the bed, peeks through a gap in the drapes. A cast-iron stand is right outside, cradling a pewter ice bucket. The neck of a full wine-bottle rests against the rim, re-corked with the screw still in. On the floor, well out of his reach, lies the waistcoat that contains his watch. He can even see its silver chain, trailing out of the flaccid fob-pocket. (If this had been France, he wouldn’t be seeing that chain, he has to admit.)

Where is Sugar? He holds his breath, listening hard. All he hears, apart from an unidentifiable scratching, is the sudden rustle of the hearth’s contents, the sound of unstable half-burnt coals and embers collapsing.

Only one wall is visible through the slit in the veil. Fortunately it’s the one with the window in it, offering valuable clues to the time of night. The panes are almost opaque with frost – thick frost such as accumulates over many hours. Beyond the frost, the sky is black and indigo, or seems so in contrast to the undimmed interior. The curtains stir almost imperceptibly: despite the freeze, Sugar has left the window open just the tiniest crack. But where is she? William leans further forward, nudging the fabric with his nose, insinuating one eye into the open.

Sugar’s room is … homely. The walls are simply painted, a uniform flesh-pink as opposed to the rococo excesses of the parlour downstairs. A few small, framed prints, much faded from exposure, hang at strategic intervals. The furnishings are decent, comprising a freshly upholstered couch, two armchairs that don’t quite match, and (he pushes his face further forward still) an escritoire complete with pens, inkwell, and … (he blinks in disbelief) Sugar herself, hunched over, lost in concentration.

‘Ah … forgive me,’ he announces.

She looks up, lowers her pen, and smiles – a disarming, companionable smile. She’s dog-tired, he can tell.

‘Good morning, Mr Hunt,’ she says.

‘Oh Lord …’ he sighs, awkwardly running his hands through his hair. ‘What … what time is it?’

She consults a clock beyond his range of vision. Her own hair, he suddenly notices, is absolutely glorious, a lush corona of golden-orange curls: she has taken the trouble to brush and shape it while he slept.

‘Half past five.’ She pouts roguishly. ‘If anyone else is still up, they’ll be much impressed by your prowess.’

William moves to dismount from the bed, then stiffens, blushing.

‘I … I hardly know how to tell you this. I … I have… suffered a most regrettable, a most shameful loss of … ah … control.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she says, matter-of-factly, getting to her feet. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it for you.’

She pads over to the hearth, where a kettle has been gently simmering on a grate above the embers. She sloshes a brilliant arc of steaming water into an earthenware tureen which, by the sound of it, is already partly filled, and carries it over to the bed. The skin of her hands, he notes, is dry and cracked, like peeling bark, yet the fingers are exquisitely formed. Michelangelo fingers, ringed with an exotic blight.

‘Take your wet things off, please, Mr Hunt,’ she says, kneeling on the floor, her skirts spreading out all around her. The tureen is almost brim-full of sudsy liquid, a sea sponge bobbing around in it like a peeled potato. Apparently Sugar has been waiting for this moment.

‘Really, Miss Sugar,’ William mumbles. ‘This is quite beyond… How can I possibly expect you—’

She looks up at him, half-closes her eyes, shakes her head slowly, mimes the swollen-lipped supplication: ‘Shu-u-u-sh.’

Together they manage to remove his trousers and underbreeches. The sharp stink of stewed piss wafts up, inches from Sugar’s nose, but she doesn’t flinch. For the all the effect the stench has on her unblinking gaze, her serene brow, her secret half-smile, it might as well be perfume.

‘Lie back, Mr Hunt,’ she croons. ‘Everything will be set to rights soon.’

With the utmost gentleness, she washes him while he reclines, astounded, on the bed. A touch of her rough-textured knuckles is enough to make him part his legs wider, as she dabs the warm soapy sponge into his groin. She frowns in sympathy, to see excoriation in the clefts.

‘Poor baby,’ she murmurs.

The bed-sheets beneath him are soaked, so she nudges him to wriggle further up. Then, with a brushed cotton cloth wrapped around one hand like a mitten, she mops and dabs him dry. Nothing escapes her attention, even the ticklish hollow of his umbilicus. His penis she squeezes gently in her soft cottony palm, progressing in tiny increments as if its sheer length calls for a measure of patience.

‘Really, Miss Sugar …’ he protests again, but he has no words to follow.

‘No “Miss” needed,’ she corrects him, tossing the cloth aside. ‘Just Sugar.’ And she lowers her face to his perfumed belly and kisses his navel. He gasps as one of her knuckles pushes between the powdered cheeks of his arse, gently corkscrewing into him. A moment later, she lays her cheek on his thigh, hair sprawling all over his stomach, and secretes the whole of his sex into her mouth. Once she has it there, she lies still, neither sucking nor licking: just still, as if keeping him safe. All the while, she massages his anus, using her free hand to stroke his belly. His prick grows hard against her tongue, and when it’s nestling snug she begins to suck, placidly, almost absentmindedly, as a child might suck its own thumb.

‘No,’ groans William, but of course he means the opposite.

Minute upon minute she lies on his thigh, milking him, slyly inserting her middle finger into his anus, deeper and deeper, pushing past the sphincter. When he comes, she feels the contractions squeezing her finger first, then clamps her lips firm around his cock as the warm gruel squirts into her throat. She swallows hard, sucks, swallows again. Slowly she extracts her finger, sucking still, sucking until there’s nothing left to suck.

Later, the two of them discuss remuneration.

Dawn is on the horizon, a tarnished halo over Soho. The first horses are passing along Silver Street, their harnesses jingling, their hooves drubbing on the cobbles. Inside Sugar’s bed-chamber, the gas-lamps are beginning to cast the faintly unreal hue so characteristic of artificial light when a natural alternative lies in wait. A subtle haze of steam is rising from a dark wad of male clothing, suspended on a rack near the fire.

The owner of those trousers and the owner of that rack are engaged in polite dispute over what the night’s transpirations, considered
in toto
, have been worth. Rackham is inclined to be generous; he fears he has imposed on her while he slept.

‘A man needs his sleep,’ demurs Sugar. ‘And it would have been cruel to condemn you to in such a state. Besides, I occupied myself quite usefully while I was waiting.’

‘You were waiting?’

‘Of course I was waiting. You are a very interesting man, Mr Hunt.’

‘Interesting?’ William can scarcely believe his ears.

She smiles, exposing pearly-white teeth. Her lips are red now, no longer so dry. ‘Very interesting.’

‘Nevertheless I feel I must pay you for the time I lay here like a drunken fool. And for my disgraceful … incontinence. Unintentional though it was.’

‘Whatever you wish,’ she concedes graciously.

But Rackham is unable to divide the night’s events into discrete services; to categorise them thus cheapens them somehow. Instead, gauchely, he fingers a number of coins out of his purse, heavy coins of a greater value than some of this city’s inhabitants – say, the denizens of Church Lane – ever set eyes on.

‘I – is this enough?’ he asks, conferring the silver pieces into her palm.

‘Exactly right,’ she replies, closing her hand. ‘Including a little extra’ (she winks) ‘for the sleeping.’

Outside, something massive is being delivered to the rear of a shop. Weary male voices chant ‘One, two, free!’, followed by a chain-clanking thump. William walks over to the window, naked from the waist down, and tries to descry through the frosty panes what’s happening out there, but he can’t make it out.

‘You know,’ he muses, ‘I haven’t even seen you naked.’

‘Next time,’ says Sugar.

He knows he ought to go home, but he’s loath to leave. Besides, his trousers may not be dry yet. Solemnly, to buy another few minutes, he examines the prints on Sugar’s walls, dawdling past them as he might at a Royal Academy exhibition. They are pornographic, depicting eighteenth-century gentlemen (his father’s grandfathers, so to speak) contentedly fucking the harlots of their day. The men are amiable duffers, ruddy-faced and fat; the women are plump too, with Raphael breasts, puff sleeves, and faces like sheep. Phalluses twice the size of his are shown entering freakishly extruded vaginas, and yet the effect is no more erotic than a Bible illustration. In Rackham’s judgement, these pictures are (what’s the word he’s looking for?) …
feeble
.

‘You don’t like them, do you?’ Sugar’s husky voice, at his shoulder.

‘Not much. They’re rather second-rate, I think.’

‘Oh, without a doubt, you’re right,’ she says, wrapping one arm around his waist. ‘They’ve been hanging there forever. They’re insipid. In fact, I know the right word for them: feeble.’

He gapes at her, dumbfounded. Are his thoughts as naked to her as his legs and genitals?

‘I’ll replace them with something better,’ she promises wistfully, ‘if I can ever afford it.’ Then she turns away, as though discouraged by the yawning gulf that separates her from being able to afford top-notch pornographic prints.

All of a sudden a far more vivid image springs into Rackham’s mind: a recollection of Sugar just as she was when he first woke from his sleep: Sugar sitting hunched at the escritoire, scribbling, at half past five in the morning. His heart is jabbed with the awareness of her poverty – what could she possibly have been doing? Sweated labour of some kind, but what? Is there such a thing as secretarial piece-work? He’s never read of it (it surely merits an article in one of the monthly reviews, along the lines of
Outrage Uncovered in the Very Heart of Our Fair City!
) but why else would a girl be toiling over a copy-book in the middle of the night? Doesn’t she earn enough as a… as a prostitute, to keep body and soul together? Perhaps she’s undervalued; perhaps most men spurn her, on account of her small breasts, her skin ailment, her masculine intellect. Well, it’s their loss, thinks Rackham.
Honi soit qui mal y pense!

This stab of sympathy he feels for Sugar he could never feel for the Drury Lane ‘twins’, much less for the shabby trollops who accost him in alleyways; those creatures are indivisible from the muck that surrounds them, like rats. One’s heart does not go out to rats. But to see Sugar – this clever, beautiful young woman who shares his own low opinion of Matthew Arnold, and many things besides – slaving over an ink-stained ledger late at night, pricks his conscience. If the accounts of Rackham Perfumeries are cruel drudgery for a man of his temperament, what must this girl, barely past adolescence, brimful of life and promise, be suffering as she scribbles? How difficult Life is for those who deserve better!

‘I must be going,’ he says, brushing her cheek with his hand. ‘But before I do, I … I have something more to give you.’

‘Oh?’ She raises her eyebrows, raises her own hand to grasp his.

‘On the bed.’ Explanation or command, her response is the same; she clambers onto the bed, boots and all, on her knees. William climbs after her, gathering up the skirts of her dress in big soft handfuls, tossing the silken greenery onto her back. The horse-hair hump of her bustle makes the pile absurdly large, so bulky it obscures her reflection in the bed-head.

‘I can’t see your face,’ he says.

Even as he pulls her pantalettes down, she lifts her head high, straining as if for a Lamarckian feat of evolution, her jaw trembling slightly, her mouth falling open with effort. Over the mound of scrumpled dress material, he sees all this and more reflected back at him in the glass.