The Crimson Petal and the White (35 page)

For there, side by side on the stone floor, are Agnes and the scullery-maid Janey, both with their backs to him and their arses in the air, crawling along on their hands and knees, dipping scrubbing-brushes by turns into a large pail of soapy water. And conversing while they’re at it.

Agnes scrubs with a less practised rhythm than Janey but with equal vigour, the tendons in her tiny hands standing out. The hems of her skirts are plastered to the wet floor, her bustled rear rocks to and fro, her slippered feet squirm for purchase.

‘Well, ma’am,’ Janey is saying. ‘I
tries
to wash every dish the same, but the fing is, you don’t expeck
fingerbowls
to be all that dirty, do yer?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ pants Agnes as she scrubs.

‘Well, neiver did I,’ rejoins the girl. ‘Neiver did I. And so there I was, with Cook shoutin’ and bawlin’ at me, and wavin’ these fingerbowls at me, and I carn’t deny as they ’ad a cake o’ grease all under ’em, but honest to crikey, ma’am, it was fingerbowls, and Cook must
know
they’s normally always so
clean
…’

‘Yes, yes,’ sympathises the mistress. ‘You poor girl.’

‘And this … This ’ere’s blood,’ comments Janey, referring to an old stain on the wooden duckboard she and Mrs Rackham have before them now. ‘Spilt ever so long ago but you can still see it, no matter ’ow many times I’ve scrubbed it.’

Mrs Rackham hunkers over to look, her shoulder touching Janey’s.

‘Let
me
try,’ she urges breathlessly.

William chooses this moment to intervene. He strides into the kitchen, his shoes striking sharply on the wet floor, straight towards Agnes, who turns, still on her hands and knees, to face him. Janey doesn’t turn, but squats petrified, like a dog caught in an act that warrants a beating.

‘Hello, William,’ says Agnes calmly, blinking at a strand of hair dangling in front of one sweaty eyebrow. ‘Is Doctor Curlew here yet?’

But William doesn’t respond with the impotent exasperation she expects. Instead, he reaches down and, sweeping one arm under her bustle and another against her back, he heaves her up, with a mighty grunt of effort, off the floor. As she slumps bewildered against his chest, he loudly declares,

‘Doctor Curlew was sent for without my authority. I’ll let him give you a sleeping draught, then ask him to leave. He’s here too often and too long, in my opinion – and what good has it done you?’

And with that, he carries her out of the kitchen and through the several doors and passageways to the stairs.

‘Inform me when Doctor Curlew arrives,’ he orders the mortified Clara, who emerges from the shadows to trot up the stairs beside him. ‘Tell him: a sleeping draught, no more! I shall be in my study.’

And that, once his wife is safely laid in her bed, is where William Rackham goes.

‘You know, Henry,’ muses Mrs Fox as she surveys the teetering pile of addressed envelopes between them, ‘I feel blessed never to have had children.’

Henry almost inhales his mouthful of cocoa. ‘Oh? Why is that?’

Mrs Fox leans back in her chair, allowing her face to be lit by a muted ray of sunlight filtering through the curtains. There are mauve veins on her temples that Henry has never noticed before, and a red flush on her Adam’s apple – if women
have
Adam’s apples, which he’s not sure they do.

‘I sometimes think I’ve only a finite measure of …’ she closes her eyes, searching for the word ‘… of
juice
in me, to give to the world. If I’d had children, I would’ve given most of it to them, I imagine, whereas now …’ She gestures at the philanthropic clutter all about, the charitable chaos of her house, half rueful, half contented.

‘Does this mean,’ ventures Henry, ‘that you believe all Christian women ought to remain childless?’

‘Oh, I’d never say “ought”,’ she replies. ‘All the same, what an enormous power for Good it would unleash, don’t you think?’

‘But what of the Lord’s commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply”?’

She smiles and looks out of the window, her eyes narrowed against the flickering afternoon light. It’s probably only the clouds, but if one uses one’s imagination, there might be a vast army marching past the house, numberless hordes blotting out the sun, a million-spoked wheel of bodies.

‘I think there’s been quite enough multiplication, don’t you?’ Mrs Fox sighs. ‘We have filled the world up awfully well, haven’t we, with frightened and hungry humans. The challenge now is what to
do
with them all …’

‘Still, the miracle of new life …’

‘Oh, Henry, if you could but see …’ She is poised to speak of her experiences with the Rescue Society, but decides against it; evocations of pox-raddled infants stowed in prostitutes’ cupboards and dead babies decomposing in the Thames are, over cocoa, too indecorous even for her.

‘Honestly, Henry,’ she says instead. ‘There’s nothing so very exceptional about bearing children. Acts of genuine charity, on the other hand … Perhaps you ought to try to see good works as eggs, and we women as hens. Fertilised, eggs are useless except to produce more chickens, but what a useful thing is a pure egg! And how very many eggs one hen can come up with!’

Henry blushes to the tips of his ears, the crimson flesh contrasting fetchingly with the gold of his hair. ‘You are joking, surely.’

‘Certainly not,’ she smiles. ‘Haven’t you heard how your friends Bodley and Ashwell sum me up? I’m serious to the bone.’ And she reclines suddenly in her chair, her head lolling back in apparent exhaustion. Henry watches, worried and fascinated, as she breathes deep, her bosom swelling out through her bodice, a subtle protuberance on either side growing visible through the soft fabric.

‘M-Mrs Fox?’ he stammers. ‘Are you all right?’

When Doctor Curlew arrives at William Rackham’s study, he finds himself greeted politely but without deference. This confirms in his mind the changes he’s noticed in the Rackham household (and his place in it) over the last four or five visits. Gone are the armchair chats, the proffered cigars, the upward gaze of respect. Today Doctor Curlew feels as if he’s been summoned as a mere dispenser of medicines, rather than invited as an eminent scholar of mental frailty.

‘She will sleep now,’ he says.

‘Good,’ says Rackham. ‘You’ll forgive me if we don’t discuss the details of my wife’s latest relapse. If relapse it is.’

‘As you wish.’

Forgive me also
, thinks William,
if I send you on your way before you suggest
to me again that Agnes belongs in an asylum. I am a rich man and there is nothing I can’t take care of in my own home. If Agnes goes mad and needs nurses, I
shall employ them. If one day she is so beyond reason as to need strongmen to restrain
her, I can afford them, too. I am above any man’s pity, doctor: watch your place.

William informs the doctor of the change henceforth from weekly to monthly visits, thanks him for coming, and hands him into Letty’s care. He fancies, as Curlew is leaving, that he spots a glimmer of humiliation in the doctor’s face – fancies mistakenly, for men like Doctor Curlew have so many human mirrors reflecting their importance back at them that when one mirror shows a less flattering image they simply turn to another. The doctor’s next patient is an old woman who worships him; he’ll look in the Rackhams’ mirror again another time, when the light is different. Agnes Rackham is doomed; he need only wait.

With Curlew safely dispatched, William considers looking in on his wife, to make sure she’s sleeping peacefully, but decides against it, for he knows she hates him coming into her bedroom. Nevertheless he wishes her well, and even conjures up a picture of her face wearing a tranquil expression.

Oddly enough, ever since he’s known Sugar he has been able to spare Agnes many more affectionate and indulgent thoughts than before; she no longer weighs upon him as a burden, but rather as a sort of challenge. Just as the mastery of Rackham Perfumeries, once an odious impossibility, has become, with Sugar’s encouragement, an interesting adventure, the vanquishing of Agnes’s ills may likewise be a test of his powers. He knows what his little wife holds dear: he’ll give her as much of it as she desires. He knows what she hates: he’ll spare her the worst.

Serene and resolute, William returns to the work at hand: calculating exactly what’s needed if he’s to remove Sugar from the hazards of her current lodgings.

While her husband ponders the details, Agnes Rackham, brim-full of morphine, sleeps. A railway carriage, specially prepared for an Invalid, stands waiting in her dreams, wreathed in steam. She’s tucked up inside it already, in a darling little bed by the window, and her head is raised up on pillows so that she can look out. The Station Master knocks at her window and asks her if she’s all right and she replies ‘I am’. Then the whistle blows, and she’s on her way to the Convent of Health.

A fortnight later, we find William Rackham making his final inspection of the place where he intends, from this evening onwards, to spend as much time as his busy life will allow. The last of the hired men has left, having installed the last of the furniture; William is free now to survey the whole effect, and judge if these smart rooms in Priory Close, Marylebone, truly look as if they’re worth the small fortune he’s spent on them.

He loiters in the front passage, fussily rearranging a bunch of red roses in their crystal vase, clipping the stems of individual blooms where necessary, to achieve the perfect arrangement. He hasn’t paid this much attention to aesthetic niceties since his dandy days at Cambridge. Sugar brings out the … Well, to be frank, she brings out the ‘everything’ in him. These elegant rooms are a fitting place for her – a jewel box to house the treasure she is.

The agreement with Mrs Castaway is already signed. The old woman complied without opposition; indeed, what else could she do? He’s now ten times the man he was when he made the original contract with her, months ago – and she, by contrast, has diminished. In the creamy mid-morning sunshine of his most recent visit to her, she appeared less fearsome than in the red glare of firelight, her garish clothing paler, decked with motes of dust that swirled visibly in the sunbeams. He showed her receipts from the best furniture-makers, drapers, tilers, glass merchants, and many other craftsmen employed by George Hunt, Esq., as well as a bank account in Mr Hunt’s name to the value of a thousand pounds. (Of course William knows he could, if he wished, abandon this pantomime now, but, seeing as it’s effortless to maintain, why not spare himself the embarrassment? And as for the bank account in George W. Hunt’s name – well, that might prove a damn good idea in its own right, if his researches into taxation are not mistaken!)

Mrs Castaway seemed mightily impressed with him, anyway, whatever name he bore, and she needed little persuasion (apart from an additional wad of money) to tear up the old contract and release Sugar into his sole proprietorship.

‘I have cared for her as best I could, in the circumstances’ were her final words. ‘I have faith that you will do the same – to our everlasting benefit.’

Now, inspecting the rooms in Priory Close, William banishes the memory of her horrible, waxen, wrinkled old face, by confirming that everything is in order here – flawless and perfect. He assures himself of his love-nest’s ideal location, its ideally appointed interior, its harmonious compromise between male and female tastes. He sits in each of the chairs and the
chaise-longue
, taking stock of all he can survey of the decor from each vantage point. He opens and closes all the little doors, windows, lids and ledges of all the cupboards, bookcases and whatnots to make sure they don’t stick or creak.

The bathroom is a cause for concern. Has he done the right thing in having it plumbed for a hot bath? The pipes are ugly, resembling the elephantine apparatus in one of the Rackham factories; mightn’t Sugar have been happier with a freestanding and opulent washtub? Ah, but he wants her to be clean, and these new ‘Ardent’ bathtubs are the very latest thing. The instructions for operating the hot water geyser may be a little complicated, and there
is
the risk of explosion, it’s true, but Sugar is a clever girl, and won’t allow herself to be blown to Kingdom Come by a bath, he’s sure. And these new ‘Ardent’ designs are the safest yet. ‘In the future, everyone will have one of these,’ the salesman said. (To which William, tempted to give the fellow a lesson in business, almost responded: ‘No, no, no, say rather: the common mortal will always wash in a glorified slop-pail – only the most fashionable and fortunate will have one of
these
.’)

Then he walks slowly into the bedroom and, for the tenth time, scrutinises the bed, feeling the sheets and coverlets between his fingers, reclining momentarily against the pillows to take note of the prints on the walls (
chinoiserie
, not pornography) and the way the wallpaper’s pattern glows in the light. All of it, he dares to be sure, will meet with her approval.

From the outside, the house is unremarkable; virtually identical to those on either side. The door into the front passage faces the street, but is half-hidden inside a dark guard-box of a porch, affording shelter from the scrutiny of the neighbours. There are no lodgers upstairs, as William has leased both floors and decided, for discretion’s sake (though he could get a pretty penny for them in rent!), to leave the upper rooms empty.

William consults his watch. It is nine o’clock, on the evening of March seventeenth, 1875. Nothing remains but to visit Mrs Castaway’s one last time, and fetch Sugar to her new home.

Henry Rackham is out walking in the half-developed fringes of civilisation, walking after bedtime, walking in the dark. He is not by nature a night owl, is Henry; he’s the kind of man who wakes as soon as the sun rises and who has trouble suppressing his yawns once it sets. Yet tonight he has left his warm bed, hastily pulled some clothing over his night-shirt, and covered his dishevelled appearance with a long winter coat – and gone out walking.