The Crimson Petal and the White (75 page)

While claiming his attentions to be ‘most worrisome’, Agnes describes her pursuer thus:

He is robust but yet he has a fine-boned face and hands, and abundant curly hair
of gold. His eyes have an insouicant sparkle to them, and he looks at everyone too
directly, though he affects not to be aware of this. He dresses as few men Nowadays
dare to dress, in check trousers, canary-yellow waistcoat, hunting caps, and suchlike.
I have only seen him once in sober Blacks (and a handsome figure he cuts too!) but
when I asked him why he does not wear them more often, he replied, “Black is for
Sundays, Funerals and dull men. What have I to fear from dressing as I do? That
I might be refused admission to Churches, Funerals, or the company of dull men?
Why then, I will go about in deerstalker and dressing-gown!”

His father is a man of Business – this he does not conceal. “It is my father’s
affair how he makes his way in the world, and mine how I make mine.” I cannot
determine to my satisfaction from what source he derives his income: perhaps it is
from his Writings. He is certainly ineligible to appear very high on my list of
Suitors
.

This half-hearted attempt to be severe fails to impress Sugar, for not only does she already know how the story ends, but also she can’t help noticing that the half-dozen barely differentiated suitors of earlier months have all but vanished from the diary, and more ink is expended on William Rackham than ever was spilt for any of them. Before long, Agnes is recording entire conversations from hello to adieu, rushing to transcribe them immediately afterwards so that none of the man’s sagacious pronouncements will be lost or misquoted. By Autumn 1868, those entries in which William features have grown so vivid they read like episodes from a novel:

“Let us have done with this small talk,” he said suddenly, extending a forefinger to either side of my open fan, and clapping it shut right in front of my nose.
I was frightened, but he was smiling. “In ten years,” he said, “Will either of us
remember any of it?”

I was all a’blush, but my wits did not desert me. “I do not presume we shall
have each others aqcaintance in ten years,” I said
.

Hereupon he clapped his hand to his breast, as though I had shot him through
the heart. Loath to offend him, I hastened to add – “In any case, I confess I’ve nothing but small talk to offer you: it is all I have been taught. I am untravelled, and a
most uninteresting and shallow little thing, compared to you.”

I hoped to flatter him with this speech, but he took it very
seriously, and insisted,
“Oh, but you are more interesting and less shallow than any young lady I know!
There are desires deep within you, which no one can imagine – no one but me. You
move as one young lady among other young ladies, but you are not
really
one of them.
You are different, and whats more,
I can tell that you know it
.”

“Mr Rackham!” – was all I could say – he had made me blush so. Whereupon
he did a most peculiar thing, namely he reached forward, took the edges of my fan
once more, and spread it open, so that my face was hidden from him. I heard his voice
explain it thus:

“
Now, I see that I was wrong to shine my light into the secrets of your soul:
it has frightened you, and I would not frighten you for all the world. Let us return,
then, to small talk. Look over there, Agnes, at the Garnett girls, and the hats they
are wearing. I saw you coveting those hats earlier this afternoon – yes I did, theres
no use denying it. Well, covet them no longer! I was in Paris not two weeks ago,
and everyone there agrees that the moment for those hats has passed.”

This encounter is a turning-point in Agnes’s feelings for William Rackham; hereafter, she ponders his every word like a devoted disciple. No remark of his, however lighthearted, can be without deeper significance and, when he deigns to be wise, he is wiser than anyone she’s ever met. Knowledgeable about a host of religions, he sums up their shortcomings with
such
a fine phrase – something about there being ‘more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of by their philosophy’. (Ah, if only she hadn’t eaten dinner before writing her diary, she might have recalled it exact!) He attends Anglican worship when he attends any, but he’s of the heretical opinion that English religion has been in a shambles ever since Henry VIII – a conviction Agnes naturally shares. He’s expert in the identification of flowers, can predict the weather, knows the stuffs from which women’s garments are made, and is a personal friend of several artists regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy. What a man! Only the precise sources of his income remain difficult to map, but, as Agnes puts it:

He is an Author, a Scholar, a Man of Science, and cleverer than any Statesman.
Why should he not be undecided which path to follow, when he may yet follow them
all? I feel my heart thump in my breast when I draw near to him, and am enfeebled when we part. Though I am sure I should repel him if he dared lay his hands
upon me, I half wish that he would do it, and sometimes in idle moments after he
has left me I fancy I can feel his arms clasped around me. Each morning I wake
wishing that the first thing I saw was his face, and when I go to bed at night, the
first face I see in my dreams is his. Am I going mad?

Downstairs, an almighty crash. Glassware or china – gruff exclamations of surprise – the smack of a door against a wall, sending a jolt right through the house.

‘Out with you! Out of my sight!’ screams Agnes. In an instant, Sugar is kneeling at her door again, face pressed to the crack. Shadows and light are gyrating below the landing, as a scuffle spills out into the receiving hall. So violently was the parlour door flung open that the chandelier in the hall still sways gently under the ceiling.

‘Mrs Rackham!’ protests one of the men. ‘There’s no need …’

A loud clatter and an alarming
spoinggg
: the hat-stand being thrown across the floor. ‘Don’t tell
me
what there’s a need for, you fat drunken dog!’ Agnes cries. ‘You are useless and … and ridiculous, the pair of you!’

‘My dear Mrs Rackham …’

‘Nothing is dear to you except filth! Muck-sniffers! Sewer-rats! Your hair smells like rotten banana! Your skulls are full of slime! Get out of my house!’

‘Yesh, yesh …’ mutters one of the men.

‘Our coats, Bodley …’ his companion reminds him, as a harsh influx of icy air barges into the house.

‘Coats!’ cries Agnes witheringly. ‘Your fat oily skins will keep you warm! That, and your prostitutes!’

‘Ah, Rose – there you are!’ says Ashwell, in a stab at genial good grace. ‘I think your mistress may be … ah … having one of her turns …’

‘I am
not
having “one of my turns”!’ rages Agnes. ‘I’m merely trying to rid my house of some garbage before I step in it! No, don’t touch them, Rose: if you knew where they have been … !’

Bodley, the drunker of the two, can bear the provocation no longer. ‘
If
I may shay so, Mrs Rackham,’ he declaims, ‘your a-ashitude is half the reason why proshtishushion is shpreading so … so muchly! If inshtead of inshulting us, you took the chubble to read our researches on the shubject …’

‘You conceited fool – you think I don’t even know what prostitutes are!’ shrieks Agnes, discordant harmonics of her voice seeming to ring out from every metal and glass surface in the house. ‘Well, I
do!
They are sly, common women who will stoop to kiss your ugly faces for money! Hah! Why don’t you kiss each
other
for
nothing
, you apes!’

And with that, Bodley and Ashwell flee, the front door slams, Agnes utters one last throaty cry of frustration, and there’s a muffled thud of flesh on the hall floor.

After a few moments’ silence, Rose’s voice pipes up, thin and anxious. ‘Miss Tillotson! Miss Tillotson!’ Still on her hands and knees, Sugar scuttles backwards from the crack in her door, and jumps into bed like a good girl.

* * *

‘A night like this …’ (pant) ‘is worth ten shillings alone,’ complains a voice on the stairs.

‘Watch her fingers,’ whines another.

With no master in the house to carry the insensible Agnes upstairs, the task is being shouldered by Rose, Letty and Clara. They take a long time over it, too, puffing and grunting, but eventually the procession passes Sugar’s room and, soon afterwards, silence is restored.

Sugar waits as long as she can bear for everyone to be asleep. Enthralling though this fiasco has been, it must not undo her good work with Sophie. Off to bed, everyone, and let a poor governess come out to play!

Sugar checks the time. A quarter to midnight – surely the last of the servants must be in the Land of Nod by now. They have to rise again early in the morning: they ought to keep that in mind, if they know what’s good for them. Clara especially, with her sullen mouth and her glittering suspicious eyes – she should give those a rest until tomorrow, the poisonous little shrew. Lay her nasty pock-marked cheek on her pillow and let the world turn without her for a few hours …

Ten minutes to twelve. Sugar tiptoes along the frigid landing towards Sophie’s bedroom. All the hearths in the house have cooled, and the warmth has ceased to rise; the rafters creak in the wind and there’s a pattering of hail on the roof. Sugar slips inside Sophie’s room like a ghost, but finds the child already sitting erect in bed, eyes wide in the candlelight.

‘Bad dream, Sophie?’ enquires Sugar gently, taming the unstable shadows by settling the candle on top of the dresser, right next to the nigger doll, which, she notes, has been swaddled in a white knitted scarf.

‘My Mama,’ announces Sophie, in a queer didactic tone, ‘has fits, Miss. She’s awful rude, and she shouts, and then she falls over.’

‘It’s all right, Sophie,’ says Sugar, knowing it’s not all right, but unable to come up with a better reassurance. ‘Have you … done your doings yet?’ The euphemism, her own coinage, sounds prissy on her lips – those lips which until recently exhorted William to fill her cunt with spunk.

Sophie clambers out of her bed and squats obediently on the pot. Euphemisms are all she knows; and, if Sugar can manage it, they’re all she ever
will
know.

‘Nurse told me,’ quotes Sophie as a puppyish squirt of piss hisses onto the porcelain, ‘that my Mama will end her days in a mad-house.’ A moment later she adds (just in case her governess’s encyclopaedic knowledge is missing this one lurid titbit): ‘A house where they keep mad people, Miss.’

Ugly old tattle-tale, die and rot in Hell
, thinks Sugar. ‘What an unkind remark for your Nurse to make,’ she says.

‘But Mama
will
have to go there, won’t she, Miss?’ persists the child as she’s helped back into bed.

Sugar sighs. ‘Sophie, the middle of the night, when we should all be sleeping, is not the time to worry about such things.’

‘What time is it, Miss?’ asks the child, wide awake.

Sugar glances at the clock on the mantel.

‘A minute to midnight.’ She tucks the blanket up to Sophie’s neck. The room is so cold her hands are trembling. Yet the child’s eyes are imploring her not to go.

‘I have to get back into my own bed now, Sophie.’

‘Yes, Miss. Is it tomorrow yet?’

Sugar checks, considers lying. ‘Not quite yet,’ she admits. ‘Here, let me show you the clock.’ She fetches the heavy time-piece from the mantel; it’s steel-grey, pitted, and shaped like a jelly-mould, a most unsightly thing. She cradles it in her hands and lets Sophie watch the seconds ticking away under its jaundiced glass face. The wind howls outside, overriding the mechanism of the time-piece.

‘
Now
it’s tomorrow,’ Sophie declares, relieved, as if an unpleasant disagreement has been settled to universal satisfaction.

‘Not only that, little one,’ says Sugar, suddenly remembering the date. ‘It’s December. The last month of the year, the one that brings us Winter and Christmas. And when December is over, what comes then, Sophie?’

Sugar waits, willing to accept either ‘January’ or ‘1876’. The house creaks in the heavy rain, infiltrated by all sorts of mysterious noises louder than the soft breaths of a child. When it’s clear no answer is going to come, she blows out the candle.

TWENTY-FIVE

‘B
ut we’ve discussed everyone except
you,
William,’ says Lady Bridgelow, as they stroll side by side on the glistening footpath. ‘Your life is becoming shrouded in mystery, and I am so curious!’ William chuckles, momentarily relishing his status as enigma. But he wouldn’t wish to keep Constance (as Lady Bridgelow insists he should refer to her) uninformed for long. She is, after all, his best friend – well, certainly of those with whom he can nowadays be seen in public.

The morning drizzle has cleared up, making way for a Sunday afternoon of exceptional mildness. Pale though the sun is, there’s real warmth in it, as it lights up the tiles of Notting Hill’s rooftops and brings a corona of brilliance to the church spire. William is glad he came out today; with weather like this, his resolution to be seen in church more regularly promises to be quite painless.

‘Did you find a governess for your daughter?’ enquires Lady Bridgelow.

‘Yes, yes, I did, thank you.’

‘Because I know of an excellent girl available very soon – frightfully clever, placid as a lamb, father just gone bankrupt …’

‘No, no, I’m sure the one I’ve employed is perfectly adequate.’

Lady Bridgelow frowns slightly at this reminder of yet another unknown quantity in her friend’s life.

‘She’s not a Rescue Society girl, is she?’

William feels his cheeks and neck growing pink, and is grateful for his ever-more-plenteous beard and high collar.

‘Certainly not: what makes you think that?’

Lady Bridgelow casts a backwards glance over the ermine stole wrapped around her neck, as though absolute privacy is required for what she’s about to divulge.

‘Well, you’ve heard that Mrs Fox has returned to her old …
profession
, haven’t you? And working harder than ever, I’m told. Striving to convince ladies with
any
sort of servant problem at all, that one of these … reformed specimens is the solution. She knows better than to approach
me
; I had a Rescue Society girl in my kitchen, and was obliged to dismiss her after four months.’

‘Oh?’ Stability has finally returned to William’s own household, at considerable cost in money and brain-racking; he hates the thought of anything going awry. ‘What went wrong?’

‘Nothing I can mention in polite company,’ smirks Lady Bridgelow, miming, with a subtle sweep of her kid-gloved fingers through the air in front of her silky abdomen, a swollen arc.

‘Am
I
polite company, Constance?’

She smiles. ‘You are …
sui generis,
William. I feel I could discuss
any
subject with you.’

‘Oh, I hope you could.’

Emboldened, she presses on: ‘Such a shame you couldn’t attend the launch of Philip and Edward’s new book. Did you know I was one of only
five
ladies there? Or
four
ladies, actually: Mrs Burnand was fetched out of the hall by her
furious
husband, in front of everyone!’

William gives her a grin, but is a little pained, wondering if he was justified in taking umbrage at the heavy-handed way his old friends scrawled the injunction ‘
sans femme’
on his own invitation.

‘Well, Bodley and Ashwell’s book is close to the bone,’ he sighs. ‘And I’m not wholly convinced by their statistics. If there were as many prostitutes in London as they claim, we’d be tripping over them …’

‘Yes, yes, but let me tell you: Mrs Fox was there at the launch. She stood up from the crowd and commended the authors for helping to bring the problem to wider public notice – then scolded them for insufficient seriousness! “There is nothing to laugh about when a woman falls!” she said – and of course, everyone roared.’

‘Poor Mrs Fox. “Forgive her, Lord, for she knows not what she says” …’

Lady Bridgelow chuckles, a surprisingly earthy sound. ‘Ah, but one mustn’t be unkind about other people’s indiscretions, must one?’ she says. ‘I was speaking with Philip and Edward afterwards, and they mentioned how very concerned they are about your poor Agnes …’

William stiffens as he walks.

‘Their concern’s appreciated,’ he says, ‘but happily unnecessary. Agnes has quite recovered.’

‘Not in church with us this morning, though … ?’ murmurs Lady Bridgelow.

‘No.’

‘But possibly attending Catholic Mass in Cricklewood?’

‘Possibly.’ William knows very well she is. His wife’s belief that she and her coachman share ‘a little secret’ is a pitiable delusion. ‘She’ll grow out of it, I trust.’

Lady Bridgelow heaves a deep, elegiac sigh, and her eyes mist over. ‘Aahh, trust,’ she echoes sadly, hinting at the slings and arrows she’s had to endure in her life so far. Melancholy suits her face, lending her that faraway look that’s come into vogue lately. However, she can’t be glum for long, and bounces back with:

‘Do you have anything extra-ordinary planned for Christmas?’

‘Just the usual, I’m afraid,’ says William. ‘I really am a very boring fellow nowadays. I sleep, I eat breakfast, I conquer another part of the British Empire with my manufactures, I have dinner, and I go to bed. Honestly, I can’t imagine why anyone besides my banker should take the slightest bit of interest in me …’

‘Oh but no, you must make room for me, too, William,’ she demurs. ‘Every great businessman needs a female friend. Especially if what he manufactures is of such value to females, hmm?’

William struggles to keep his face composed, almost irresistibly tempted to beam. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lady Bridgelow would ever use Rackham’s. The new catalogues and placards must be having the desired effect …

‘As for me,’ says Lady Bridgelow, ‘I’ve achieved something of a coup for my next party, haven’t I? Both Lord
and
Lady Unwin, together in the same country, at the same dinner table!’

‘Yes, how did you manage it?’

‘If truth be told, sheer swiftness! I popped the question before anyone else had recovered from the surprise of Lord Unwin’s return. I certainly can’t claim
my
charms brought him back here; I think his wife decided they should celebrate Christmas in England en famille, and ordered him to put in an appearance – or else.’

William has trouble imagining Lord Unwin being coerced in this way. ‘I’d have thought it would take more than that.’

‘Ah well, you must remember his current wife is not the submissive creature Agnes’s mother was. And, of course, he has children of his own now. That is, of his own blood.’

William responds with an empty hum; he’s never met the current Lady Unwin. Not that the Rackhams haven’t been invited to her house several times, but these invitations, in Agnes’s view, might as well have issued from Beelzebub, and she invariably responded with a
Regret Not Able To Attend
.

(‘I’m sure she means you well, dear,’ William would counsel her, but Agnes has never forgiven her step-father’s remarriage. The
least
he could have done was mourn, for the rest of his life, the saintly Violet Pigott, who ‘sacrificed her soul’ to please him! Instead, the hoary beast rushed to marry this … this
thing.)

‘I must admit,’ says William, ‘I’m apprehensive about meeting the old man after all this time. When I petitioned him for Agnes’s hand, I may’ve led him to expect that she’d be kept in grander style than … Well,
you
know the story of my fortunes, Constance. I always wondered if he thought badly of me …’

‘Oh no, he’s an old pussycat,’ Lady Bridgelow affirms, as they approach the corner of Chepstow Villas. ‘He and my poor Albert were friends, you know, and he did his best to dissuade Albert from all those imprudent … Well,
you
know the story of
my
fortunes, too. And when Albert died, Lord Unwin wrote me the
sweetest
letter. Not an unkind word in it. And Albert did some foolish, foolish things, I assure you! He wasn’t clever like
you
…’

Lady Bridgelow suddenly hushes in mid-flow: she and William no longer have the footpath to themselves. A tall scrawny woman in a plain black dress, with gangly arms and red hair that badly needs cutting, is advancing with a roly-poly child at her side.

‘How do you do, Miss Sugar,’ William hails her, cool but cordial.

‘Very well, thank you, sir,’ replies the scrawny woman. Her lips, deplorably, are flaked with dead skin, although she has comely enough eyes. Her demeanour is as dejected as one expects from a governess.

‘A rather brighter day today,’ remarks William, ‘than some we’ve had lately.’

‘Yes,’ agrees the governess, ‘to be sure.’ She reaches awkwardly for her pupil’s hand, and grasps it. ‘I … I took Sophie out of doors because she’s so very pale …’

‘A lady can never be too pale nowadays,’ says Lady Bridgelow. ‘Rosy complexions seem to be a thing of the past, don’t they, William?’

Neither she nor William lower their attention to Sophie’s level. Their gazes and their words pass through the air in a straight line to Miss Sugar, well above the child’s head.

‘I am finding Sophie,’ says the governess, transparently at a loss for any sophisticated conversation, ‘a most obedient and … um … hardworking little girl.’

‘How very agreeable for you,’ says Lady Bridgelow.

‘Very good, Sophie,’ condescends William, meeting his daughter’s wide blue eyes for the merest instant before moving on.

Back at the house, in the suffocating warmth of the nursery, Sugar can barely control herself. Her body wants to tremble – to shake – with indignation, on her own behalf, and Sophie’s. All her sinews and nerves are tingling with the undischarged desire to propel her body through the air, a whirling fury of claws and feet to tear that smug little bitch apart.

‘Who was that lady, Sophie?’ she asks evenly, after a very deep breath.

Sophie is playing with the wooden animals of her toy Noah’s ark – still her favourite Sunday activity, despite the permission Miss Sugar has given her to do whatever she pleases on the Sabbath. She shows no sign of anguish at how shabbily she’s just been treated by her father and his companion; her cheeks are a little flushed, true, but the unaccustomed exercise and the blazing fire accounts for that.

‘I don’t know, Miss.’

‘How often does she visit your father?’

Sophie looks up from shepherding the giraffes, her brow knotting in bafflement. A historical question about the succession of Mesopotamian monarchs would be an easier challenge than this.

‘But you’ve seen her before?’ pursues Sugar, her voice tightening.

Sophie ponders for a while. ‘Sometimes I hear the servants ’nounce her,’ she says.

Sugar lapses into a sulk. For the first time in months, she itches for pen and paper, to write a fiction of revenge like the ones in her novel.

Only this time, the victim wouldn’t be a man, but a horrid little pug-dog of a woman, bound with twine at her wrists and ankles.

“
Have pity! Have pity!” she yammered, as she felt a sharp object probing the tightly
-
clenched hole between her buttocks – a cold, leathery protuberance bristling with hair
.

“What’s that? What’s that?” she cried in terror.

“
Don’t you recognise it? It’s the snout of a stoat,” replied Sugar, twisting the
sharp head of the ermine stole in her fist. “The poor creature is sure to be happier
up your arse than around your neck
… ”

‘Did you hear,’ pipes up Sophie, ‘what my father said, Miss? He said I am a good girl.’

Sugar is jolted from her fantasy of revenge, and is confused to see a happy smile on the child’s face, a sheen of pride in her eyes.

‘He didn’t say that,’ she snaps, before she can stop herself.

Sophie’s look of contentment evaporates, and her brow creases – a change that serves only to emphasise her resemblance to William. She turns her head away, taking refuge in the less dangerous world of her playthings. Held erect in her tiny hand, Noah begins to ascend the gangplank of the Ark with slow, dignified hops.

‘But my dear Rackham, if you’ll forgive me saying so: you are still evading the subject.’

‘Am I?’ says William. It’s Monday morning, and he’s entertaining a guest in his smoking-room. Cigars are already lit, and William uncorks the port-bottle with a
thwipp
. ‘Perhaps we aren’t agreed,’ he says, ‘on what the subject
is
. I am asking you for advice on how to hasten my wife’s progress back to full health, here in her own home. You seem intent on cataloguing the merits and demerits of mad-houses from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth.’

Doctor Curlew grunts. His effusion of information was only natural, provoked by Rackham’s pretence to know something about lunatic asylums that
he
doesn’t. In fact, Doctor Curlew has probably spent more time in mad-houses than any sane man; as a young physician, in the years before he decided that surgery was not his
forte
, he performed many operations on asylum inmates, and learned a great deal besides scalpelling techniques. He knows the good asylums from the bad; knows which of them are nothing but glorified prisons, or boarding-houses with medical pretensions – or, at the other end of the scale, first-class hospitals devoted to the increase of knowledge and the full recovery of the patient. He has observed many times that hysterical ladies, so degraded as to be no use to man or beast, may effect miraculous recoveries once removed from the circle of indulgent fuss-pots on whom their illness feeds.

Knowing all this, Doctor Curlew can predict with authority that, in her own house, Agnes Rackham is doomed. What hope for recovery has she, when she not only has a permissive husband, but is pampered by obsequious and gullible servants?

‘There’s no virtue, Rackham,’ he says, ‘in keeping a sick person at home. No one blames a man for sending his wife to a hospital when she breaks a leg or gets smallpox.
This
is no different, I tell you.’

William sips unhappily at his port. ‘I do wonder,’ he muses, ‘if there isn’t something
physically
the matter with her …’