The Crimson Petal and the White (51 page)

She has forgiven William for not consulting her; it really is a faultless brougham, and Cheesman could hardly be bettered (he’s taller and handsomer than Mrs Bridgelow’s coachman, for a start). And it was evidently terribly important to William to keep it a surprise. What a surprise it was indeed, when, a week ago, she mentioned she had an errand in the city and asked him if he knew when the next omnibus was due, and he said, ‘Why not take the brougham, my dear?’

‘Why, whose brougham?’ she naturally enquired.

‘Yours and mine, my dear,’ he said, and, taking her by the hand, led her to see her birthday gift.

Now the miraculous Cheesman is taking her home – this human birthday present of hers, a man of few words, a discreet fellow on whom she already knows she can rely. Last Sunday he took her to Church –
English
Church – in Notting Hill, and next Sunday he’ll do so again, but tonight he’s taken her to Mass, and she can tell he’ll do
that
again, too. Why, she could probably command him to take her to a Mosque or a Synagogue, and he’d tap the horses’ flanks with his folded whip, and they’d be off!

Tomorrow he’ll take her to the Royal Opera House, where Madame Adelina Patti is singing
Dinorah
. Everyone will see her (Agnes, that is, not Madame Patti) alighting from her new brougham.
Who’s that
? people will whisper, as a Cinderella-like figure emerges from the burnished body of the carriage, white skirts tumbling out like froth … Euphoric with anticipation, still tingling from the thrill of Father Scanlon’s absolution, and rocked in the bosom of her very own brougham, Agnes dozes, her cheek resting against the tasselled velvet pillow William has given her for just that purpose, as the horses bear her homewards.

That the Rackhams now possess a brougham is no secret from Sugar. She helped William choose it, from a folio of designs, and advised him on what his wife’s needs and desires might be.

Yes, thank God, the tide has turned, and Rackham is once again paying her regular visits. He can no longer stand being dragged from one pompous spectacle to another, he says, when he has so much work to do. He has shown his face in all the right places, he’s suffered Royal Institution lectures about pterodactyls, he’s suffered
Hamlet
in Italian, and now, by Heaven, he’s endured enough for the sake of Society.

Lord knows, half of these events he’s only attended because he was afraid Agnes might take one of her ‘turns’, and he’d have to step in. But she seems to have got over whatever was possessing her, she’s not fainting or having fits in public anymore, in fact she’s behaving perfectly, so he’s damned if he’s going to chaperone her to every concert, play, garden party, charity banquet, horse race, pleasure garden, flower show and exhibition from now till September. Half a dozen workers at the Mitcham farm were killed on Tuesday, in a poisoning incident wholly unrelated to Rackham Perfumeries, but it meant police enquiries, and where was he at the time? Snoring his head off at the Lyceum, that’s where, while a fat Thespian in a cardboard crown pretended to be succumbing to poison. What an abject lesson, if any were needed, in the necessity to draw a line between make-believe and reality! From now on, he’ll accompany Agnes only to what’s absolutely unavoidable.

Oh, and yes, of course, he’s missed Sugar dreadfully. More than he can say.

Sugar glows with happiness, reassured by the fervour of his embrace, the effusion of renewed intimacy between them. She was afraid she’d lost her grip, but no, he’s confiding in her more than ever. Her fears were all in vain; she’s securely woven into the tapestry of his life.

‘Ach, what would I have done without you!’ he sighs, as they lie in each other’s arms, warm and sated. Sugar pulls the bed-clothes up over his chest, to tuck him in, and as she does so she releases a whiff of their love-making from under the soft sheets, for there’s scarcely an inch of her he hasn’t reclaimed.

The business with Hopsom has ended well, with Hopsom more or less satisfied and Rackham’s reputation intact – thanks, in no small measure, to Sugar’s excellent advice. The new Rackham’s catalogue is a great success, purged entirely of the old man’s crude turns of phrase, and now so much improved by Sugar’s elegant suggestions that there’s been a notable increase in orders from the gentry. Even a few weeks ago, William was still saying things like ‘But this can be of no interest to you’ or ‘Forgive me: what a subject!’; now, he speaks freely of his business plans and anxieties, and it’s plain her opinion is worth gold to him.

‘Don’t be envious of Pears, dear heart,’ she murmurs soothingly to him one night, when, in a flush of melancholy after his passion is spent, he confesses how small he feels in comparison with that industrial colossus. ‘They have land and suppliers you don’t have, and that’s that. Why not turn your thoughts to the things about Pears you
can
compete with, like … well, like the pretty illustrations on their posters and labels. They’re
very
popular, you know: I’ll wager half the reason so many people are partial to Pears is the appeal of those pictures.’

‘Rackham’s
does
use illustrations,’ he reminds her, wiping the damp hair on his chest with a handful of bedsheet. ‘A fellow in Glasgow paints them, and we have them engraved. Costs a fortune, too.’

‘Yes, but fashions change so terribly quickly, William. For instance, the engraving in
The Illustrated London News
just now: with all due respect to your man in Glasgow, the girl’s hair is already out of style. She has her frisette gummed to her forehead, instead of hanging soft and free. Women notice these things …’

She has her palm cupped over his genitals, can feel his balls moving in their pouch as his manhood comes slowly back to life. He accepts that she’s right, she can tell.

‘I’ll help you with your illustrations, William,’ she croons. ‘The Rackham woman will be as modern as tomorrow.’

In the days that follow, true to his word, William leaves the hurly-burly of the Season more and more to his wife, and spends the time thus freed with Sugar, or with the affairs of Rackham Perfumeries, or (preferably) both at once. Three times in one week she has him in her bed, including an entire night sleeping side by side! Nor is he in any hurry to leave in the morning; she has bought provisions of shaving soap, razors, cheese, anything he might fancy while he emerges from his nest of slumber.

One particular Friday, though, he has to go to Birmingham, to investigate an insolvent box factory whose asking price is almost too good to be true. And so, on the night that William must spend in a Brummie guesthouse, Sugar accompanies Agnes to the Royal Opera House, to see Meyerbeer’s
Dinorah
.

The two of them meet in the foyer – or as nearly as Sugar dares. In the swarming pre-performance crowd, only one body stands between the two women at any given moment, as Sugar hides now behind this person, now that one, peeking over stiff black shoulders and puff sleeves.

Mrs Rackham is dressed all in bone-white and olive green and, if truth be told, looks exceedingly wan. She smiles at anyone who might be watching her, but her eyes are glazed, her grip on her fan is rather tight, and she walks with an ever-so-slight totter.

‘Delightful to see you!’ she chirps to Mrs This and Mrs That, but her heart clearly isn’t in it and, making her excuses after only a few seconds of conversation, she retreats into the crowd. By seven o’clock she’s already in her seat for the performance, thus abdicating the chance to display her finery to serried rows of captive onlookers. Instead, she massages her temples with her gloved fingers, and waits.

Two hours later, when it’s all over, Agnes applauds feebly while all around her erupt in jubilation. Amid cries of ‘Encore!’ she squeezes out of her aisle and hurries towards the exit. Sugar follows at once, although she is a
little
worried that the people in her own aisle will conclude that she hasn’t enjoyed herself. She has! It was majestic, superb! Can she applaud and cry ‘Encore!’ while stumbling past people’s knees, stepping on their feet in her haste to pursue the fleeing Mrs Rackham? No, that would be too absurd; she’ll just have to make a bad impression.

In the entrance-hall, a surprising number of opera-goers have already rendezvoused. These are the jaded élite, the barons and baronesses sleepy with boredom, the monocled critics lighting each other’s cigars, the frivolous young things impatient to flit on to other entertainments, the senile dowagers too sore to sit longer. A noisy babble is discussing cabs, the weather, mutual friends; masculine voices can be heard pooh-poohing the performance, comparing it unfavourably with
Dinorahs
seen in other countries in other years; feminine voices are decrying Adelina Patti’s dress sense, while epicene ones are just as loudly praising it. Through this throng, Agnes Rackham attempts to make her escape.

‘Ah! Agnes!’ cries an obese lady in a claret-hued, eye-catchingly horrid satin dress. ‘Opinion, please!’

Agnes freezes in her tracks, and turns to face her captor.

‘I haven’t any opinion,’ she protests in an uncharacteristically low and unmusical voice. ‘I merely wanted some air …’

‘Goodness, yes, you
do
look peakish!’ exclaims Mrs So-and-So. ‘Are you sure you’re getting enough to eat, my dear?’

Standing close behind Agnes, Sugar observes a shudder travelling down the buttons of her back. There is a pause, during which the hubbub quietens, perhaps by mere coincidence rather than general curiosity about Mrs Rackham’s response.

‘You are fat, and ugly, and I’ve never liked you.’ The words ring out distinctly, in a harsh monotone unrecognisable as Agnes’s, issuing from somewhere much deeper than her piccolo throat. It’s a voice that makes the hairs stand up on the nape of Sugar’s neck, and transfixes Mrs So-and-So like the snarl of a savage dog. ‘Your husband disgusts me,’ Agnes goes on, ‘with his slobbering red lips and his old man’s teeth. Your concern for me is false and poisonous. Your chin has hairs on it. Fat people shouldn’t ever wear satin.’ And with that, she turns on her heel and hurries out of the hall, one white-gloved hand pressed hard against her forehead.

Sugar hurries after, passing close by the mortified Mrs So-and-So and her slack-mouthed entourage, who cringe backwards as if the rules of the game are now so topsy-turvy that an attack from a total stranger would be no surprise.

‘Excuse me,’ wheezes Sugar as she leaves them gawping.

Her haste is justified: Agnes doesn’t even stop at the cloakroom, but rushes directly out of the building onto the gas-lit street. The doorman has barely enough time to retract his rubbery neck from the open door before Sugar slips through the space herself, brushing his nose with the velvet shoulder of her dress.

‘Pardon me!’ they ejaculate simultaneously, to the wind.

Sugar peers into the jostling confusion of Bow Street, a populous glut of hawkers, harlots, foreigners and decent folk. For a moment she fears she’s lost Agnes in the kaleidoscope, especially as there’s a constant stream of horse-drawn traffic camouflaging one side of the road from the other. But she needn’t have worried: Mrs Rackham, lacking the dark green coat and black parapluie she’s failed to redeem from the cloakroom, is easy to spot; her white skirts sweep along the dark footpath and weave through the pedestrians. Sugar has only to follow the lightest object, and trust that it’s Agnes.

The pursuit lasts less than half a minute; Mrs Rackham ducks sideways out of Bow Street into a narrow alley, the sort that’s used by whores and thieves for their convenience – or by gentlemen in need of a piss. Indeed, the instant that Sugar slips inside its murky aperture, she’s assailed by the smell of human waste and the sound of furtive footsteps making themselves scarce.

The footsteps are certainly not Agnes’s: a short distance into the alley, Mrs Rackham lies sprawled face-down and dead-still, in the muck and the grit. Her skirts glow in the dark like a mound of snow that has miraculously survived the coming of Spring.

‘
Damn
…’ breathes Sugar, paralysed with alarm and indecision. She looks backwards, and verifies that from the point of view of the passersby in Bow Street five yards behind her, she’s in another world, a shadowy limbo; she and Agnes have left the lamp-lit mainstream, which flows on without them, oblivious. Then again, Sugar knows very well that Scotland Yard is not far around the corner, and if there’s any place in London where she’s liable to be grabbed by a couple of uniformed runners and asked what exactly she knows about this lady lying lifeless at her feet, it’s here.

‘Agnes?’ No response from the motionless body. Mrs Rackham’s left foot is twisted at a crazy angle and her right arm is slung wide, as if she fell from a great height.

‘Agnes?’ Sugar kneels at the body’s side. She reaches her hand into the darkness under the soft blonde hair and cups one of Agnes’s cheeks in her palm, feeling the warmth of it – the fleshy
heat
of it – smooth and alive like her own naked bosom. She lifts Agnes’s face off the cold, gritty cobbles, and her fingers tingle.

‘Agnes?’ The mouth against Sugar’s hand comes to life and murmurs wordlessly against her fingers, seeking, it seems, to suck her thumb. ‘Agnes, wake up!’

Mrs Rackham twitches like a cat haunted with dreams, and her limbs flail feebly in the dirt.

‘Clara?’ she whimpers.

‘No,’ whispers Sugar, leaning close to Agnes’s ear. ‘You’re not home yet.’

With much assistance, Agnes gets to her knees. In the darkness, it’s impossible to tell if the glistening muck on Mrs Rackham’s nose, chin and bosom is blood or mud or both.

‘Don’t look in my face,’ commands Sugar gently, clasping Agnes’s shoulders and raising her to her feet. ‘I will help you, but don’t look in my face.’

Moment by moment, the reality of her predicament is seeping into Agnes’s reviving brain.

‘Dear Heaven, I-I’m …
filthy
!’ she shudders. ‘I’m covered in f-
filth
!’ Her tiny hands flutter ineffectually over her bodice and fall into the lap of her soiled skirts. ‘H-how can I be seen like this? How am I to get home?’ Roused by an instinct for entreaty, she turns her face towards her rescuer’s, but Sugar pulls back.