The Crimson Petal and the White (85 page)

‘Who’s that?’ gasps Sugar.

‘Oh, tradesmen and spongers,’ he replies, ‘turning up for their Christmas boxes. They’ll have to come back later, when Rose is ready to face the world.’

‘You’re sure … ?’ she asks, as the ringing persists.

‘Yes, yes,’ he retorts irritably. ‘Agnes is being watched by Clara just now – watched as close as I’m watching you.’

‘But I thought you said you gave all the servants leave to—’

‘All except Clara, of course! If the little minx won’t do what’s needful for Agnes to sleep, and won’t lock her up either, the least she can do is stay in the room with her!’ The callousness of his own words provokes a twitch of mortification in him, and he adds: ‘But can’t you see that this is no way for a household to be run!’

‘I’m sorry, William,’ she says, stroking his shoulders. ‘I can only play my part as well as I’m able.’

To her relief, this does the trick. He holds her tight, uttering little grunts of distress, until the tension begins to leave his body, and he’s ready to confess.

‘I need …’ he whispers urgently, conspiratorially, into her ear, ‘your advice. I have a decision to make. The most difficult decision of my life.’

‘Yes, my love?’

He squeezes her waist, clears his throat, and then the words come rushing out, almost in a gabble. ‘Agnes is mad, she’s been mad for years, and the situation is unmanageable, and the long and short of it is … well, I believe she ought to be put away.’

‘Away?’

‘In an asylum.’

‘Oh.’ She resumes stroking his shoulders, but he’s so prickly with guilt that her momentary pause has already struck him like a slap to the face.

‘She can be
cured
there,’ he argues with the passion of unconviction. ‘They have doctors and nurses in constant attendance. She’ll come home a new woman.’

‘So … when have you arranged … ?’

‘I’ve put this off years too long! The twenty-eighth, God damn it! Doctor Curlew has offered to … uh … escort Agnes to the place. Labaube Sanatorium, it’s called.’ In a strangely cloying tone, he adds: ‘In Wiltshire.’ – as though mention of the locality ought to be enough to banish any doubt of the asylum’s salurious credentials.

‘Then your decision is already made,’ says Sugar. ‘What advice did you hope to get from me?’

‘I need to know …’ He groans, nuzzles his face into her neck. ‘I need to know … that it’s … that I’m not a …’ She feels his brow furrow against her skin, feels the twitchof his jaw push through her clothing. ‘I need to know that I’m not a monster!’ he cries, racked by a spasm of

anguish.

With the lightest, tenderest touch, Sugar strokes his hair and cossets his head with kisses. ‘There now,’ she croons. ‘You have done your best, my love. Your
very
best: always, since you first met her, I’m sure. You … you are a
good
man.’

He utters a loud groan, of misery and relief. This is what he wanted from her from the beginning; this is why he summoned her out of the nursery. Sugar holds him tight as he sags against her, and her heart fills with shame; she knows that no degradation to which she has ever consented, no abasement she’s ever pretended to enjoy, can compare in lowness to this.

‘What if Clara tells Agnes of your plans?’ It’s a loathsome question, but she must ask it, and she’s so steeped in perfidy already, does it really make any difference? There’s a bilious taste of conspiracy on her tongue – the poisonous, lip-licking saliva of a Lady Macbeth.

‘She doesn’t know,’ William mutters into her hair. ‘I haven’t informed her.’

‘But what if, come the twenty-eighth—?’

He breaks their embrace, and begins immediately to pace back and forth, his eyes glassy, his shoulders hunched, his hands wringing each other in agitation.

‘I’m giving Clara a few days off,’ he says. ‘I owe her Lord knows how many free afternoons, not to mention some good nights’ sleep.’ He looks to the window, and blinks hard. ‘And – and I shall be gone too, on the twenty-eighth. God forgive me, Sugar, I can’t bear to be here when Agnes is taken. So, I’ll … I’ll attend to some business. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. There’s a man in Somerset who claims he’s invented a method of enfleurage that requires no alcohol. He’s been sending me letters for months, inviting me to come and see the proof for myself. Most likely he’s a fraud, but … Ach, I’ll give him an hour of my time. And when I return … Well … by then it will be December twenty-ninth.’

Sugar’s imagination glows with two vivid pictures, side by side. In one, William is being led into the luridly lit lair of a leering mountebank, surrounded by beakers bubbling and frothing. In the other, Agnes is arm-in-arm with Doctor Curlew, the man her diary describes as Satan’s lackey, the Demon Inquisitor and the Leech Master; captor and captive are walking like father and bride towards a waiting carriage …

‘But … what if Agnes should
resist
the doctor?’

William wrings his hands all the more nervously. ‘It would’ve been so much better,’ he laments, ‘if Clara hadn’t been difficult about the laudanum. Agnes is wide awake and on the alert now. She tastes everything that’s given to her with the tip of her tongue, like a cat …’ And he casts a glance at the ceiling, recriminating whatever baneful power may lurk in the skies above, for sowing such mischief. ‘But Curlew will have men with him. Four strong men.’

‘Four?’ The vision of Agnes’s wasted little body set upon by five hulking strangers makes Sugar’s flesh creep.

William stops pacing and looks at her directly, his tortured bloodshot eyes imploring her to indulge just one more little outrage, to bestow upon him, with her silence, with her complaisance, just one more illicit blessing.

‘Should there be any unpleasantness,’ he maintains, fumbling for a handkerchief to dab the sweat on his brow, ‘the extra men will only ensure that the event proceeds with … dignity.’

‘Of course,’ Sugar hears herself say. Downstairs, the doorbell rings, and rings again.

‘God damn it!’ William barks. ‘When I told Rose she could sleep, I didn’t mean all day!’

A couple of minutes later, when Sugar returns to the school-room, all is not well. She knew it wouldn’t be, and it isn’t.

Sophie has left her desk, and now stands on a foot-stool facing the window, immobile, apparently unaware of her governess re-entering the room. She peers through her spyglass at the world outside – a world which consists of nothing very spectacular, just a leaden grey sky and a few flickering hints of pedestrians and vehicles through the camouflage of Shears’s ivy on the Rackham palisades. To a girl with a spyglass, however, even these indistinct phenomena can be engrossing, if she has nothing better to do; for who knows how long her governess – despite solemn announcements about how much needs to be learned before the new year – means to leave her like this?

So, Sophie has turned her back on the promises of grown-ups, and is conducting her own investigations. Several odd-looking men have come through the gate this morning, rung the doorbell, and gone away again. Rose seems not to be doing any work today at all! The gardener came out and smoked one of those funny white snippets that are not cigars; then he left the Rackham premises and disappeared up the road, walking extremely slowly and gingerly. Cheesman has returned from his Mama, walking in the same peculiar manner as Shears – indeed, the two men narrowly avoided each other at the front gate. The kitchen servant with the ugly red arms hasn’t been out yet, to empty her buckets. There was no proper breakfast this morning – no porridge or cocoa – only bread-and-butter, water, and Christmas pudding. And what a muddle over the gifts! First Miss Sugar said the Christmas gifts should stay in the bedroom, so as not to be a distraction to the lessons, then she changed her mind – why? Which is right – the gifts in the bedroom, or the gifts in the school-room? And what about Australia? Miss Sugar was going to make a start on New South Wales, but nothing has come of it.

All in all, the universe is in a state of confusion. Sophie adjusts the lens of her spyglass, sets her mouth, and continues her surveillance. The universe may right itself any moment – or explode into chaos.

The moment she walks into the room, Sugar can sense these dissatisfactions emanating from the little girl, even though Sophie’s back is turned; a child’s disquiet is as potent as a damp fart. But Sugar smells something else too: a
real
smell, pungent and alarming. Christ, something is burning here!

She crosses over to the fireplace, and there, smouldering on the livid bed of coal, lies Sophie’s nigger doll, its legs already reduced to ash, its tunic shrivelled like over-crisped bacon, its teeth still grinning white as sluggish flames lick around its sizzling black head.

‘Sophie!’ cries Sugar accusingly, too exhausted to soften the sharpness of her tone; the effort of being well behaved with William has leeched every last ounce of tact from her. ‘What have you done!’

Sophie stiffens, lowers the spyglass, and turns slowly on her stool. Her face is disfigured by apprehension and guilt, but in her pout there’s defiance too.

‘I’m burning the nigger doll, Miss,’ she says. Then, in anticipation of her governess making an appeal to her childish credulity, she adds: ‘He’s not alive, Miss. He’s just old rag and biscuit.’

Sugar looks down at the disintegrating little carcass, and is torn between the urge to snatch it up in her hands, and the urge to prod the horrid thing with a poker so it stops smouldering and burns properly. She turns back to Sophie and opens her mouth to speak, but she catches sight of the beautiful French
poupée
standing witness on the other side of the room, towering over Noah’s ark with its plumed hat, its smug impassive face oriented directly towards the fireplace, and the words die in her throat.

‘He came from a tea chest, Miss,’ Sophie continues. ‘And there was s’posed to be an elephant under him, Miss, that’s missing, and that’s why he won’t stand up, and anyway he’s black and proper dolls aren’t black, are they, Miss? And he was all dirty and stained, Miss, from the time he got blood spilt on him.’

The room is growing hazy with smoke, and both child and governess are rubbing their eyes, irritable, near tears.

‘But Sophie, to throw him on the fire like this …’ Sugar begins, but she can’t go on; the word ‘wicked’ just won’t come. It burns in her mind, branded there by Mrs Castaway:
Wicked is what we can’t help being, little one.
The word was invented to describe us. Men love to wallow in sin; we are the sin they
wallow in.

‘You ought to have asked me,’ she mutters, grasping the poker at last; they’ll start coughing soon, and if the smoke seeps out into the rest of the house there’ll be trouble.

Sophie watches the familiar contours of her doll being stirred into fiery oblivion. ‘He was mine, though, wasn’t he, Miss?’ she says, her bottom lip trembling, her eyes blinking and shiny. ‘To do with as I pleased?’

‘Yes, Sophie,’ sighs Sugar, as the flames grow brighter and the grinning head slowly rolls over into the body’s ash. ‘He was.’ She knows she ought to put this incident behind her without delay, and return to the lesson, but a riposte comes to her in a belated flash, and she’s too weak to resist it.

‘A
poor
child might have wanted him,’ she says, poking the ashes with rough emphasis. ‘A wretched poor child that hasn’t
any
dolls to play with.’

At once, Sophie erupts into a fit of weeping so loud it makes the hair on Sugar’s neck stand on end. The child jumps off her stool and collapses straight onto her rump, screaming and screaming, helpless in a puddle of petticoat. Her face, within moments, is a swollen lump of red meat, slimy with tears, snot and saliva.

Sugar stands watching, buffeted by the ferocity of the little girl’s grief. She sways on her feet, wishing this were only a dream, and she could escape it simply by turning over in bed. She wishes she had the courage to embrace Sophie, now when she’s at her ugliest and most detestable, and that such an embrace could soothe all the hurt and the despicable notions from the child’s convulsing body. But she hasn’t the courage; that bawling red face is frightening as well as repulsive; and if there’s one thing that would shatter Sugar’s nerve today, it would be a shove of rebuff from Sophie. So, she stands silent, her ears ringing, her teeth clenched hard inside her jaw.

After several minutes, the door of the school-room opens – presumably after an unheard knock – and Clara pokes her sharp snout in.

‘Can I be of assistance, Miss Sugar?’ she calls over the din.

‘I doubt it, Clara,’ says Sugar, even as Sophie’s wailing abruptly reduces in volume. ‘Too much excitement at Christmas, I think …’

Sophie’s hullabaloo ebbs to a hacking sob, and Clara’s face hardens into a white mask of indignation and disapproval – how
dare
this beastly child, for the flimsiest of reasons, cause such a noise.

‘Tell Mama I’m sorry!’ snivels Sophie.

Clara shoots Sugar a glance that seems to say
Is it you who’s putting such
stupid thoughts in her head
?, then hurries back to her mistress. The door clicks shut, and the school-room is once more full of smoke-haze and sniffling.

‘Please get up now, Sophie,’ says Sugar, praying that the child will obey without further fuss. And she does.

The long remainder of the second day of Christmas, the day of inexplicable turtle-doves and invisible preparations for journeys, passes like a dream that has, in its inscrutable wisdom, decided to stop short of being a nightmare, sinking instead into a state of benign confusion.

Following her tantrum, Sophie becomes calm and tractable. She devotes her attention to New South Wales and the names of different breeds of sheep; she memorises the oceans between her house in England and the continent of Australia. She remarks that Australia looks like a brooch pinned onto the Indian and Pacific Oceans; Sugar suggests that it more closely resembles the head of a Scotch terrier, with a spiked collar. Sophie confesses she has never seen a terrier. A lesson for the future.

Normal function returns to the Rackham house as its servants rise from their beds and resume their work. Lunch is delivered to the school-room – hot slices of roast beef, turnip and potato, served at one o’clock sharp – and although the dessert is Christmas pudding again, instead of something reassuringly normal like suet or rice, at least it’s hot this time, with custard and a neat sprinkle of cinnamon. Clearly, the universe is edging back from the brink of dissolution.