The Crimson Petal and the White (102 page)

William settles back in his seat, rubbing his knuckles ruefully. How perverse his daughter is! One cross word and she’s sullen for the rest of the day. Disheartening though it may be to admit it, it’s highly likely the child has inherited Agnes’s unforgiving streak.

As for Sugar, she’s dozing where she sits – actually dozing! Her head lolls backward, her mouth is slack, it’s frankly disagreeable to behold. Her dress is rumpled, her hair is haloed with loose wisps, her bonnet’s slightly askew. Sugar would do well to take a page from the book of Lady Bridgelow, who, from the moment she alighted from her carriage to the moment she waved William adieu, was immaculate and bright as a button. What an unusual person Constance is! A model of dignity and poise, and yet so full of life! A woman in a million …

‘Waterloo Bridge again, Sophie,’ says William, offering his daughter the marvels of the world’s greatest river a second time that day.

Sophie looks out of the window. Once more she rests her chin on her forearms and examines those turbulent waters in which even big boats don’t look quite safe.

Then, glancing up, she sees something genuinely miraculous: an elephant floating through the sky, an elephant keeping still as a statue.
SALMON’S TEA
is the message emblazoned on its bulbous flank, and it dawdles above the rooftops and chimneys on its way to those parts of the city where all the people are.

‘What do you think, Sophie?’ says William, squinting up at the balloon. ‘Should Rackham’s get one of those?’

That evening, while William makes a start on the day’s accumulated correspondence, the remainder of his household does its best to return to normal.

A few doors farther along the landing, Sugar has refused, as gracefully as she can, Rose’s offer to put Sophie to bed. Instead, she asks for a tub of hot water to be delivered to her own bedroom, a request which Rose has no difficulty understanding, having noted that Miss Sugar looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.

The day has been long, long, long. Oh God, how can a man be so blind to the needs of others? Cruelly oblivious to how much Sugar and Sophie yearned to go home, William protracted the outing to an unbearable length. First: lunch in a restaurant in the Strand, where Sugar almost fainted in the airless heat and was obliged to eat underdone lamb cutlets that William praised, from previous acquaintance, as divine; then a visit to a glover; then a visit to
another
glover, when the first one couldn’t provide Sophie with a soft enough kidskin; then a visit to a shoe-maker, where William was finally rewarded with a smile from his daughter, when she stood up in her new boots and took three steps to the looking-glass. If only he’d left it at that! But no, encouraged by that smile, he took her to Berry & Rudd, the wine merchants in James Street, to get her weighed on their great scales. ‘Six generations of royal families, both English and French, have been weighed on these, Sophie!’ he told her, while the proprietors leered in the background. ‘They’re only for persons of great consequence!’ Then, as a final treat, the promised climax to the afternoon: a visit to Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms.

‘What a jolly threesome we are today!’ he declared, for an instant the very image of his own father, dangerously over-filled with the gas of bonhomie at Christmas. Then, when Sophie was occupied with the earnest study of a dessert menu the size of her upper body, he leaned forward and murmured close to Sugar’s ear, ‘D’you think she’s happy now?’

‘Very happy, I’m sure,’ Sugar replied. Only when leaning forward in her seat was she made aware, by a sharp sting of pain, that the hair of her genitals was glued to her pantalettes with dried blood. ‘But I think she’s had enough.’

‘Enough of what?’

‘Enough pleasure for one day.’

Even when they were back in the Rackham house, the ordeal was not quite over. In a virtual replication of the aftermath of her
first
visit to the city weeks before, Sophie was violently ill, vomiting up the same mixture of cocoa, cake and undigested dinner, and then, inevitably, there were tears.

‘Are you sure, Miss Sugar,’ said Rose at bedtime, hesitating at the door of Miss Rackham’s room, ‘you wouldn’t like me to help you?’

‘No thank you, Rose,’ she said.

Whereupon –
finally
– seven hours and forty minutes after Sugar’s fall from a blood-spattered earthenware basin onto the floor of the latrine of the Rackham Soap Works – she and Sophie are allowed to go to bed.

Other than holding Sophie’s nightshift and handing it over, there’s nothing Sugar can do to assist; she leans heavily against the bed while the child undresses and climbs in.

‘I am very grateful to you, Sophie,’ she says hoarsely. ‘You are my little rescuer.’ As soon as the words have left her lips, she despises herself for making light of the child’s courage. It’s the sort of patronising remark William might make, treating Sophie as if she were a clever little dog performing an amusing trick.

Sophie lays her head back on her pillow. Her cheeks are mottled with exhaustion, her nose bright red. She hasn’t even said her prayers. Her lips twitch to ask a question.

‘What’s an imbecile, Miss?’

Sugar strokes Sophie’s hair, smoothing it back from her hot forehead.

‘It’s a person who’s very stupid,’ she replies. Burning to ask a couple of questions of her own –
Did you look into the water
-
closet’s basin before you
pulled the handle to flush it? And what did you see
? – she manages to resist. ‘Your father didn’t mean to call you that,’ she says. ‘He was angry. And he hasn’t been well.’

Sophie shuts her eyes. She doesn’t want to hear any more about grown-ups who aren’t well. It’s high time the universe was restored to its normal function.

‘You mustn’t worry about anything, little one,’ says Sugar, blinking tears off her eye-lashes. ‘Everything will be all right now.’

Sophie turns her head aside, burying her cheek deep in her pillow.

‘You won’t fall down again, will you, Miss Sugar?’ she demands, in a strange tone between a sulk and a croon.

‘I’ll be very careful from now on, Sophie. I promise.’

She touches Sophie lightly on the shoulder, a forlorn gesture before turning to leave, but suddenly the child rears up in bed and throws her arms tight around Sugar’s neck.

‘Don’t die, Miss Sugar! Don’t die!’ she wails, as Sugar, poorly balanced, almost pitches headlong into the child’s bed.

‘I won’t die,’ she swears, staggering, kissing Sophie’s hair. ‘I won’t die, I promise!’

Not ten minutes later, with Sophie soundly asleep, Sugar sits in a large tub of steaming warm water in front of the fire. The room no longer smells of burnt paper and glue, but of lavender soap and wet earth: Rose, God bless her, has finally managed to prise the window open, breaking the stubborn seal of paint.

Sugar washes thoroughly, repetitiously, doggedly. She squeezes spongefuls of soothing water over her back and bosom, squeezes the sea creature’s porous skeleton until it’s like a damp powder puff, then presses it to her eyes. The rims are sore from weeping: she really must stop.

Every now and then she looks down, fearing what she might see, but there’s a reassuring film of suds that disguises the pinkish tinge of the water, and any clots of blood have either sunk to the bottom or are hidden inside the froth. Her injured foot is very swollen, she knows, but it’s invisible to her, and she fancies it hurts less than it ought to. Her cracked ribs (she strokes a lathered palm over them) are almost healed, the bruises vivid. The worst is over, the crisis has passed.

She reclines into the tub as deeply as its circumference allows, snivelling again. She bites her lower lip until the flesh throbs, and finally she has her sorrow under control; the convulsing water settles into stillness – or as still as water can be with a living body in it. In the opaque moat that shimmers between her legs, every heartbeat makes the water quiver like the lapping of a tide.

A few doors along the landing, at the same time as Sugar is taking herself to bed, William opens a letter from Doctor Curlew that begins thus:

Dear Rackham,

I’ve deliberated long and hard whether to write or keep silent. I don’t doubt you
are sick to death of my “meddling”. Nevertheless there is something I could scarcely
fail to notice when I attended your daughter’s governess after her mishap, and my
resolution to hold my tongue about it has caused me no little botheration since …

This preamble is longer than the story itself, which takes only one sentence to tell.

* * *

In Sugar’s bed, in the dark, many people are under the sheets with her, talking to her in her sleep.

Tell us a story, Shush, in that fancy voice of yours.

What sort of story
? she asks, peering into the dappled waters of her dream, trying to put names to the indistinct faces submerged beneath.

Something with revenge in it
, the voices giggle, irredeemably coarse, doomed to live out their lives in Hell.
And bad words. Bad words sound funny
when
you
say them, Sugar.

The giggles echo and re-echo, accumulating on top of one another until they’re a cacophony. Sugar swims away from them, swims through the streets of an underwater city, and even in her dream she thinks this odd because she has never learned to swim. Yet it seems a skill that comes without teaching, and she can do it without taking her night-gown off, propelling her body through sewer-like alleyways and bright transparent thoroughfares. If this is London, its population has floated away like debris, and has ended up somewhere far above, a scum of human flotsam tarnishing the sky. Only those people who are of consequence to Sugar have remained below, it seems.

Clara
? calls a voice from a nearby, quite the loveliest and most musical voice Sugar has ever heard.

No
,
Agnes
, she replies, turning a corner.
I’m not Clara.

Who are you, then?

Don’t look in my face. I will help you, but don’t look in my face.

Agnes is lying supine on the cobbles of a narrow lane, naked, her flesh white as marble. One thin arm is draped across her bosom, the other crosses it downwards, hiding her pubic triangle under her childish hand.

Here
, says Sugar, shedding her night-gown and draping it over Agnes.
Let this be our secret.

Bless you, bless you
, says Agnes, and suddenly the watery world of London disappears, and the two of them are in bed together, warm and dry, tucked up snug as sisters, gazing into each other’s faces.

William says you are a fantasy,
murmurs Agnes, reaching forward to touch Sugar’s flesh, to banish her doubt.
A trick of my imagination.

Never mind what William says.

Please, my dear Sister: tell me your name.

Sugar feels a hand between her legs, gently cupping the sore part.

My name is Sugar
, she says.

THIRTY-FOUR

T
here is no name written on either of the two envelopes that Sugar finds slipped under the door of her bedroom the following day; one is blank, the other marked ‘To Whom It May Concern’.

It’s half past twelve in the afternoon. She has just returned from the morning’s lessons in the school-room, where Sophie let her know from the outset that there must be no disruption, distraction or idleness to spoil the serious business of learning. Yesterday was all very interesting, but today must be different – or rather, today must be the same as any other day.

‘The fifteenth century,’ recited Sophie, with the air of one who has been entrusted with the responsibility for saving that epoch from slatternly neglect, ‘was an age of five principal events: printing was invented; Consternople was taken by the Turks; there was in England a civil war that lasted thirty years; the Spaniards drove the Moors back to Africa; and America was discovered by Christopher … Christopher …’ At which point she looked up at Sugar, wanting nothing more nor less than the name of an Italian explorer.

‘Columbus, Sophie.’

All morning, despite being tempted a dozen times to burst into tears, and despite the steady leak of blood into the makeshift chauffoir pinned to her pantaloons, Sugar has been the perfect governess, playing the role exactly as her pupil required. And, in a fitting conclusion to the morning’s business, she and Sophie have just shared a meal of sieved vegetables and milky rice pudding, the blandest lunch they’ve yet been served, evidence that someone must have informed the kitchen staff of Miss Rackham’s distressed digestion. The disappointed look that Sugar and Sophie exchanged when Rose put this steaming pap in front of them was by far the most intimate moment they’ve shared since the day began.

Now Sugar returns to her room, anticipating the blessed relief of removing the blood-stained cloth from between her legs and replacing it with a clean one. Last night’s washtub, sadly, has been removed, although she could hardly have expected Rose to leave it sitting there, a body of cold water with a glutinous red sediment on the bottom.

Postponing her creature comforts for a minute, she stoops clumsily to pick up the envelopes. The unmarked one, she expects, is a note from Rose informing her, in case she hadn’t noticed, that the window is unsealed. Sugar opens the envelope, and finds a bank-note for ten pounds and an unsigned message scrawled on plain paper. In a majuscule, childish script that might have been written left-handed, it says:

It has come to my notice that you are with child. It is therefore impossible for
you to remain as my daughter’s governess. Your wages are enclosed; please be prepared
to leave your room, with all belongings and effects, on the first of March of this
year (1/3/76). I hope the Letter of Introduction (see other envelope) may be of
some use to you in the future; you will note I have taken a liberty re your identity.
The fact is that in my opinion, if you are to get anywhere in life, it is necessary to
have a proper name. So, I have given you one.

Further discussion of this matter is out of the question. Do not attempt to come
and see me. Kindly keep to your room whenever the house is visited.

Sugar re-folds the sheet of paper in its original order of creases and, with some difficulty, for her fingers have become cold and numb, she replaces it in its envelope. Then she opens the lavender-tinted envelope marked ‘To Whom It May Concern’, sliding her thumb along its flap to avoid tearing its formal integrity. The sharp edge of the paper cuts her flesh, but she doesn’t feel it; she worries only that she’ll stain the envelope or its contents. Balanced on her crutch, licking her thumb every few seconds before the hair-fine line of blood has a chance to well into a loose droplet, she extracts the letter and reads it. It is written, with care, on Rackham letterhead, and signed with William’s name, as neatly as any of her forgeries.

To whom it may concern.

I, William Rackham, am pleased to introduce Miss Elizabeth Sugar, who was
in my employ for five months from November 3rd, 1875 to March 1st, 1876, in the
capacity of governess to my six-year-old daughter. I have no doubt that Miss Sugar
discharged her duties with the greatest competence, sensitivity and enthusiasm. Under
her management, my daughter has blossomed into a young lady.

Miss Sugar’s decision to leave my employ is, I am given to understand, due to a
close relative’s ill-health and in no way derogates from my satisfaction with her abilities.
Indeed, I can hardly recommend her too highly
.

Yours,

William Rackham

This letter, too, Sugar re-folds along its original creases, and returns to its envelope. She sucks her thumb one last time, but the cut is already healing. She places both letters on top of her dresser, and hobbles over to the window, where she transfers her weight from the crutch to the windowsill. Down in the Rackham grounds, Shears is happily pottering, fussing around saplings that have survived the winter. With a snicker-snack of his metal namesake he severs a loop of twine that was holding a slender trunk aligned with a stake: it needs no such mollycoddling anymore. Visibly proud, he stands back, fists poised on his leather-aproned hips.

Sugar, after some consideration, decides that driving her fists through the glass of the window-panes would land her in terrible bother and give her only momentary relief from her anguish. Instead, she fetches pen and paper and, still standing, with the window-sill serving as a writing-desk, she forces herself to be reasonable.

Dear William,

Forgive me saying so, but you are mistaken. I was briefly afflicted with a painful
swelling, which has since passed, and I now have my monthly courses, as you can
discover to your own satisfaction if you come to me.

Your loving Sugar

She reads and re-reads this missive, listening to its tone reverberate in her head. Will William take it the right way? In his state of alarm, will he interpret the phrase ‘as you can discover to your own satisfaction’ as argumentative, or can she rely on him to perceive the bawdy suggestion behind it? She draws a deep breath, counselling herself that of all the things she has ever written,
this
must not fail to hit the mark. Would the saucy humour be clearer if she inserted the word ‘perfect’ between ‘own’ and ‘satisfaction’? On the other hand, is sauciness what’s needed here, or should she substitute a more soothing, blandishing tone?

Within seconds, she realises she’s far too agitated to write a second message, and that she had better deliver this one before she does something foolish. So, she folds the paper in half, limps out onto the landing, proceeds straight to William’s door, and slips the letter under it.

In the afternoon, governess and pupil perform arithmetic, check that the achievements of the fifteenth century are not already forgotten, and make a start on mineralogy. The hands of the clock advance fraction by fraction, as the map of the world is lit up, little by little, by the progress of the sun through the sky. A window-shaped beam of sunlight glows on the pastel seas and autumnal continents, clarifying some, obscuring others in shadow.

Sugar has chosen the topic of mineralogy at random from Mangnall’s
Questions
, judging it to be a safe, unemotional subject that will satisfy Sophie’s need for orderly tangibles. She recites the principal metals, and has Sophie repeat them: gold, silver, platina, quicksilver, copper, iron, lead, tin, aluminium. Gold the heaviest; tin the lightest; iron the most useful.

Looking ahead to the next question,
What are the principal Properties of
Metals
?, Sugar already wishes she’d prepared for the lesson as usual, and lets slip a small groan of exasperation.

‘It will take me a little while to translate these words into language you can understand, dear,’ she explains, turning away from Sophie’s upturned, expectant face.

‘Are they not in English, Miss?’

‘Yes, but I must make them simpler for you.’

A flash of offence crosses Sophie’s face. ‘Let me try to understand them, Miss.’

Sugar knows she ought to decline this challenge with a soft, tactful answer, but can’t think of one just now. Instead, in a dry, oratorical voice, she reads aloud:

‘Brilliancy, opacity, weight, malleability, ductility, porosity, solubility.’

There is a pause.

‘Weight is how heavy things are, Miss,’ says Sophie.

‘Yes, Sophie,’ Sugar replies, contritely ready to supply the explanations that eluded her before. ‘Brilliancy means that they shine; opacity that we can’t see through them; malleability that we can beat them into any shape we wish; ductility … I don’t know myself what that is, I shall have to find it in a dictionary. Porosity means that it has tiny holes in it, although that doesn’t sound right, does it, for metals? Solubility …’

Sugar shuts her mouth, observing at a glance that this faltering, head-scratching variety of teaching is not to Sophie’s taste at all. Instead, she skips ahead to the part where Mrs Mangnall cites the discovery of an inexhaustible abundance of gold in Australia, which allows Sugar to extemporise a description of a poor gold-digger, hacking at the hard ground while his hungry wife and children look hopelessly on, until one day … !

‘Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?’ enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.

‘One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,’ says Sugar. ‘It saves time and paper.’ Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, ‘If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?’

Sophie answers without hesitation.

‘I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand.’

Back in her bedroom during the hiatus between the end of the day’s lessons and dinner, Sugar is shocked to find no reply to her message. How is this possible? All she can think of is that William’s mind has been put at rest but that, in his selfishness, he sees no urgency to let her know. Again she seizes hold of pen and paper, and writes:

Dear William,

Please – every hour I wait for your reply is a torture – please give me your
reassurance that our household can go on as before. Stability is what we all need now
– Rackham Perfumeries no less than Sophie and myself. Please remember that I am
devoted to assisting you and sparing you inconvenience.

Your loving Sugar

Re-reading this communiqué, she frowns. One too many ‘pleases’, perhaps. And William may not take kindly to the suggestion that he’s torturing her. But, again, she hasn’t the heart to compose another version. As before, she hurries to the door of his study and slips the letter under it.

Dinner for Sugar and Sophie consists of mercilessly sieved rhubarb soup, poached fillet of salmon and a serving of rather watery jelly; Cook is still worried, evidently, that little Miss Rackham’s digestion has not yet recovered its equilibrium.

Afterwards, Rose brings a cup of tea to wash the dinner down – full strength for Miss Sugar, two-thirds milk for Miss Rackham – and Sugar, having taken one sip, excuses herself for a minute. While the piping-hot tea cools, she might as well check her room, to see if William has finally been jogged from his self-absorption.

She leaves the school-room, hurries along the landing, opens the door of her bedroom. There’s nothing in there that wasn’t there before.

She returns to the school-room, and resumes drinking her tea. Her hands are trembling ever-so-slightly; she’s convinced that William is, or was, on the very point of responding, but that he’s been delayed by unforeseen demands, or by the chore of eating his own dinner. If she can only make the next hour pass quickly, she’ll save herself futile fretting.

Sophie, although more settled than she was at the beginning of the day, is not overly sociable now that the lessons are over; she has moved to the far corner of the room and is playing with her doll, trying, with the insertion of crumpled balls of paper under its skirts, to change the outmoded crinoline into a bustle. Sugar can tell, from her expression of earnest concentration, that she wishes to be left alone until bedtime. What to do, to make the time pass? Twiddle her thumbs in her bedroom? Read what’s left of Shakespeare? Prepare for tomorrow’s lessons?

Suddenly inspired, Sugar picks up the dishes, cutlery and tea-cups, arranges them in as stable a stack as she can devise, and hobbles out of the room with them, leaving her crutch leaning against the doorjamb. She has plenty of time; no one will be watching how slowly she descends the stairs.

She grips the banister with one hand, resting her whole forearm hard against the polished wood; her other hand grips the dishes, pressing the sharp rim of the dinner-plates under her breast. Then, one stair at a time, she escorts her body downwards, alternating one painful swivel of the injured foot with a heavy painless step of the good one. With each six-inch drop, the crockery rattles slightly, but she keeps the stack balanced.

Once she’s safe on the ground floor, she advances carefully along the hall, pleased at the steady if inelegant rhythm of her progress. Without mishap, she passes through a succession of doors until, finally, she crosses the threshold of the kitchen.

‘Miss Sugar!’ says Rose in great surprise. She’s been caught red-handed eating a leftover triangle of toast and butter, her legitimate supper not being due for another few hours. Her sleeves are rolled up, and she leans against the great slab-like table in the centre of the room. Harriet, the kitchenmaid, is farther back, fashioning some ox tongues into the required shape for glazing. Through the scullery door the dowdy skirt, wet shoes and swollen ankles of Janey can be glimpsed as she scrubs in the sink.