The Crimson Petal and the White (63 page)

‘Please, not for my sake,’ says Sugar, eyeing the meagre pile of fuel in the wicker basket. ‘It’s a waste of wood if … if you’re going out directly.’

But Caroline is squatting at the hearth already, stocking it with quick and practised hands. ‘I’ve got me customers to fink of,’ she says. ‘Can’t ’ave ’em runnin’ away, sayin’ the room’s too cold, can I? That gets the Colonel paid, but it don’t pay me.’

‘As long as it’s not on my account,’ says Sugar, immediately regretting this mercenary turn of phrase, and hoping only that Caroline is too obtuse to notice. Irritable, wishing she’d made her escape sooner, she hides the beaker of cocoa under the chair. (Well, it’s gone
cold
now: why should she force herself to drink cold cocoa – cold
nasty
cocoa? Honestly, it tastes like rat poison … )

But her humiliation isn’t over yet. Caroline’s skill in lighting the fire sets a chastening example, reminding Sugar of her own method: to sacrifice great quantities of kindling, handful after handful of delicate dry virgin wood, until sheer attrition sets the larger chocks aflame. Caroline builds a frugal edifice, with tattooed slivers of packing crate and splinters of old furniture, and with a single lucifer makes it crackle and fizz into life. With her back still to Sugar, she resumes their conversation.

‘So, what’s it like to be old man Rackham’s mistress, then?’

Sugar flushes hot red to the roots of her hair. Betrayed! But by whom? The Colonel, probably … His vow is worth nothing, the old pig …

‘How did you find out?’

‘I’m not daft, Shush,’ says Caroline wryly, still coaxing the flames through the wood. ‘You told me you was kept by a rich man; and then my poor parson said ’e could find me work with Rackham’s; and today you tell me you knew my parson too … And o’course I know one of the Rackhams got burnt to death in ’is house not long ago …’

‘But how did you know that?’ persists Sugar. Caroline’s not a reader, and the sky over Church Lane is so palled-over with foulness that the whole of Notting Hill could burn down without anyone here noticing the smoke.

‘Some
misfortunes,’ sighs Caroline, ‘I can’t ’
elp
but ’ear about.’ She points theatrically downwards, through the floor, through the woodwormy honeycomb of Mrs Leek’s house to the parlour where the Colonel sits with his newspapers.

‘But why do you call my … my companion “Old Man Rackham”?’

‘Well,’ e’s ancient, ain’t ’e? Me own mother ’ad some Rackham’s perfume, as I recall, for special occasions.’ She narrows her eyes at a memory as distant as the moon. ‘“One bottle lasts a year”!’

‘No, no,’ says Sugar, (making a mental note to advise William to expunge that vulgar motto from Rackham advertising) ‘it’s not the father, but the son I’m … kept by. The surviving son, that is. He took the reins of the business only this year.’

‘And ’ow does ’e treat yer?’

‘Well …’ Sugar gestures at the abundant skirts of her expensive finery. ‘As you can see …’

‘Clothes don’t mean nuffink,’ shrugs Caroline. ‘’E might beat you with a poker, or make you lick ’is shoes.’

‘No, no,’ says Sugar hastily. ‘I–I’ve no complaints.’ Nagged all of a sudden by the need to empty her bladder, she yearns to be gone (she’ll piss outside, not in here!). But Caroline, God bless her, hasn’t finished yet.

‘Oh, Shush: what
mighty
good luck!’

Sugar squirms in her seat. ‘I wish every woman’s luck could be the same.’

‘Don’t
I
wish it too!’ Caroline laughs. ‘But a woman needs graces and ’complishments to rope in that sort of fortune. Sluts like me, now … we ain’t got what it takes to please a gentleman – except on
’ere’
(she pats the bed-sheets) ‘for a short spell.’ Her eyes go slightly crossed with pleasure, as she realises she’s thought of something genuinely clever to say. ‘That’s the word for it, ain’t it Shush: a spell, like a magic spell. If I can catch ’em while their cock’s stiff, they’re in me power. Me voice sounds to ’em like music, me walk is like an angel on the clouds, me bosom makes ’em fink of their own dear Nurse, and they looks deep into me eyes like they can see Paradise through ’em. But as soon as their cock goes soft …’ She snorts, miming the end of passion with one limp-wristed hand. ‘My, but don’t they take offence at me coarse tongue! And me slattern’s walk! And me saggy dugs! And when they looks a second time at me face, don’t they just see the grubbiest little trollop they ever made the mistake of touchin’ without gloves on!’ Caroline grins in cheerful defiance, and looks to her friend for the same; instead she’s startled to witness Sugar covering her face with her hands and bursting into tears.

‘Shush!’ she exclaims in bewilderment, rushing to Sugar’s side and laying one arm over the girl’s convulsing back. ‘What’s the matter, what’ve I said?’

‘I’m no longer your friend!’ sobs Sugar, the words muffled inside her palms. ‘I’ve become a stranger to you, and I hate this place, I hate it. Oh, Caddie, how can you stand to see me? You’re poor; I live in luxury. You’re trapped; I’m free. You’re open-hearted; I’m full of secrets. I’m so full of schemes and plots, nothing interests me if it doesn’t concern the Rackhams. Every word I speak I look up and down twice before it leaves my mouth. Nothing I say comes from my heart …’ Her palms roll into fists and she knuckles her rage into her wet cheeks. ‘Even these tears are false. I
choose
to shed them, to make myself feel better. I’m false! False! False to the bone!’

‘Enough, girl,’ soothes Caroline, gathering Sugar’s head and shoulders against her breast. ‘Enough. We are what we are. What you can’t feel … well, it’s lost, it’s gone, and that’s all there is to it. Cryin’ don’t bring back maidenheads.’

But Sugar weeps on and on. It’s the first time since she was a child – a very
young
child, before her mother began to wear red and call herself Mrs Castaway – that she’s wept like this on the bosom of a female.

‘Oh Caddie,’ she snivels. ‘You’re better than I deserve.’

‘But still not good enough, eh?’ teases the older woman, poking her sharply in the ribs. ‘See? I can read yer thoughts, girl, read ’em right through yer skull. And I ’ave to say, without no lie’ – she pauses for effect

– ‘I’ve read worse.’

In the darkening room, as the warmth from the fire begins to spread, the two of them keep hold of one another, for as long as it takes Sugar to regain her composure, and Caroline to get a sore back from bending.

‘Ugh!’ says the older woman in mock-complaint, removing her arm from the younger. ‘You’ve done me back in, you ’ave. Worse than a man that wants it wiv me arse ’n’ legs in the air.’

‘I–I really must go,’ says Sugar, the ache in her bladder returning with a vengeance. ‘It’s getting late.’

‘So it is, so it is. Now, where’s me shoes?’ Caroline fetches her boots out from under the bed, innocently flashing Sugar a teasing glimpse of a chamber-pot. She slaps the dirt from her feet, and pulls her boots on. ‘But one more question,’ she says, as she begins to button them up. ‘I’m always finkin’ to ask you this just after you’re away. That time I saw you in that paper shop in Greek Street – remember? And you were buyin’ all that writin’ paper.’ Undreds ’n’ ’undreds ’n’ ’undreds of sheets. Now, what was that all about?’

Sugar dabs her eyes, tender from weeping. She could weep all over again, with a touch more provocation. ‘Did I never tell you? I’m … I
was
… writing a book.’

‘A book?’ echoes Caroline incredulously. ‘God’s oath? A
real
book, like … like …’ (she looks all around the room, but there’s not a book to be seen, save for the tobacco-tin-sized New Testament her parson once gave her, now blocking a mouse-hole in the skirting-board) ‘like the ones in bookshops?’

‘Yes,’ sighs Sugar. ‘Like the ones in bookshops.’

‘And what ’appened: did you finish it?’

‘No.’ That’s all Sugar has the will to say, but she can see in Caroline’s expression that it’s not enough. ‘But …’ she improvises, ‘I’m going to start a new one soon. A better one, I hope.’

‘Will I be in it?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ says Sugar miserably. ‘I’m only thinking about it. Caddie, I need to … use your pot.’

‘Under the bed, my dear.’

‘Without you looking at me.’ Sugar is blushing again, ashamed this time of feeling ashamed. In their early years together, she and Caroline were like beasts in a degenerate Eden; if ever the need had arisen, they could have lain shoulder to shoulder, naked, and spread their legs for the likes of Bodley and Ashwell. Now, her body is no one’s business but her own – and William’s.

Caroline gives her an odd look, but lets it pass. Briskly, she shifts from bed to chair, and continues buttoning up her boots while Sugar squats out of sight.

Silence falls, at least in Caroline’s room: outside in Church Lane, life creaks and hoots and jabbers on; two men begin to quarrel, shouting in what sounds like a foreign language, and a harsh-voiced woman laughs. Sugar strains and strains to let go, knees and fists trembling, but nothing will come.

‘Talk to me,’ she pleads.

‘What about?’

‘Anything.’

Caroline ponders for a second, while outside, someone yells ‘Whore!’ and the laughter disappears into an unseen stairwell.

‘The Colonel wants more than whisky this time,’ she says. ‘’E wants snuff.’

Sugar laughs, and under her yellow canopy of skirt, thank God, a muffled trickle begins. ‘I’ll get him snuff.’

‘It ’as to be
Indian
snuff,’ e says. Dark, sticky stuff just like ’e ’ad in Delhi, durin’ the mutiny.’

‘If money can buy it, I can get it.’ Sugar stands up, tears of relief on her face and, having concealed the evidence, steals around to the other side of the bed.

‘You know,’ Caroline prattles on, ‘I’d
like
to be in a book. Long as it was written by a friend, o’course.’

‘Why, Caddie?’

‘Well, stands to reason, dunnit: an enemy would make you out to be a right cow—’

‘No, I meant why would you like to be in a book?’

‘Well …’ Caroline’s eyes glaze over. ‘You know I always fancied ’avin’ me portrait painted. If I can’t ’ave that …’ She shrugs, suddenly coy. ‘It’s a crack at immortality, innit?’ At the sight of Sugar’s face, she emits a raucous hack of laughter. ‘Ha! Didn’t fink I’d know a word like that, did yer?’ She laughs again, then it fades to a sad, sad smile, as the last traces of Henry Rackham’s spirit spiral up the chimney. ‘Learnt it off a friend o’ mine.’

To break the melancholy mood, she winks at Sugar and says, ‘Well, I must start work, dear, or the men of this parish’ll ’ave nobody to fuck but their wives.’

And with that, the two of them kiss goodbye, and Sugar descends the dismal stairs alone, leaving Caroline to select the finishing touches of her evening attire.

‘Watch yer step!’ the older woman calls. ‘Some of them stairs are rotten!’

‘I know!’ Sugar calls back, and indeed, she used to know exactly which ones could be trusted and which had had too many heavy men tread on them. Now, she clings to the banister and walks at the edge, tensed to catch herself if the wood gives way.

‘The gathering storm,’ wheezes Colonel Leek, wheeling out of the shadows below, ‘of disaster!’

Safely on firm ground, or what passes for such in the Leeks’ mouldering house, Sugar has no inclination to stand listening to the old man’s ravings, or to be with his unmistakable smell any sooner than she has to be.

‘Honestly, Colonel, if this is how you mean to behave on your next visit to the farm …’ she warns him as she squeezes by, gathering her skirts clear of his oily wheelchair. Far from being chastened, however, he takes umbrage and, with a groan of exertion, begins to follow her across the room. She quickens her retreat, hoping to leave him stranded, but he pursues her all the way down the passage, his elbows scuffing against the narrow walls, his chair’s cast-iron framework rattling and squeaking as he wheels himself laboriously along.

‘Autumn!’ he barks at her heels. ‘Autumn brings with it a rash of new calamities! Miss Delvinia Clough, stabbed in the heart by an unapprehended assailant, at Penzance railway station! Three persons in Derry crushed by a collapsing new building! Henry Rackham, brother of the perfumer, burnt to death in his own house! Do
you
expect to escape what’s drawing nigh?’

‘Yes, you old wretch,’ hisses Sugar, annoyed at him for having exposed, unintentionally or not, her mysterious George Hunt as a fiction. ‘Yes, I expect to escape this minute!’ Whereupon she wrenches open the door and runs out of the house without looking back.

‘And this time, you needn’t bother to bring that … that old man,’ says William, when next they meet.

‘Oh, but it’s no bother,’ says Sugar. ‘It’s all arranged. He’ll be a lamb, you can rest assured.’

They are sitting together on the ottoman in the front room in Priory Close, fully clothed, as decorous as you please. William has no time for fornication just now; on the carpet at his feet lie two small, crinkled sheets of wrapping-paper and half a dozen intricately purfled paper borders, and his final decision must be made in time for the next post. Sugar has advised him that the gold-and-olive trimming looks the best, and he’s inclined to agree with her, though the blue-and-emerald has a fresh, clean appearance, and would be a damn sight cheaper per thousand wrappers. As for the paper itself, they’re agreed that the thinner one hugs the shape of the soap very nicely, and they’ve experimented with handling it roughly, and found that it only tears under conditions to which no reasonable shopkeeper would subject it. That’s
that
decided, then; he need only choose the pattern of the trimming, and to this end he’s looking away from the options for a minute, and trusting that his instincts will guide him when he looks again.

‘No,’ he insists, ‘the old man can stay home.’

Sugar sees the glint of steel in his eyes and, for an instant, fears what that glint might mean for her. Is this the beginning of a chill between them? Surely not – only a minute ago he was telling her, with a crooked smile, that she’s become his ‘right-hand man’. So: if it’s merely the Colonel that’s in disgrace, what other men does she know who’d come to Mitcham with her, to lend her a whiff of respectability in the eyes of the workers?