The Crimson Petal and the White (104 page)

Dear Brother, I’m confident this will interest you,

Henry.

On the window-sill, covered with cobwebs, yet another stack of books:
Ancient Wisdom Comprehensively Explained
, by Melampus Blyton,
Miracles and
Their Mechanisms
, by Mrs Tanner,
Primitive Christianity Identical with
Spiritualism
, by Dr Crowell, several novels by Florence Marryat, and a large number of much slimmer volumes, among them
The Ladies’ Hand-Book of
the Toilet, The Elixir of Beauty, How to Preserve Good Looks, and Health, Beauty
and the Toilet: Letters to Ladies from a Lady Doctor.
Sugar opens this last one, finds that Agnes has defaced the margins with remarks like:
Not in the least
effective!, No benefit whatso-ever! and Fraud!

I’m sorry, Agnes
, thinks Sugar, replacing the book on the pile.
I tried
.

A large wooden edifice like an outsize wardrobe, but backless and fastened directly to the wall, serves as a wooden mausoleum for Agnes’s less frequently worn dresses. When Sugar opens the doors, an aroma of lavender moth-repellent escapes. This wardrobe, Sugar’s certain, is as close as she can get to the school-room wall on the other side. She takes a deep breath, and steps in.

The splendid array of Agnes’s gowns hangs undisturbed and pungent. No moth could hope to survive within this wonderland of expensive cloth, this efflorescent interleaving of sleeves, bodices and bustled skirts, and indeed one such insect lies dead on the floor, inches away from a translucent bar of soap-shaped poison embossed, predictably enough, with the Rackham ‘
R
’.

All the Agneses Sugar remembers are here. She has followed these costumes – when they contained Agnes’s compact little body in their silky embrace – through crowded theatre foyers, sunny gardens and lantern-lit pavilions. Now here they hang; neat, incorrupt and empty. Impulsively Sugar buries her nose in the nearest bodice, to exclude the dominant odour of poison in favour of some faint residue of Agnes’s personal perfume, but there’s no escaping the heady odour of preservative. Released from Sugar’s grasp, the costume swings back on its hook with a squeak.

Sugar steps deeper into the shadowy recess, and her feet are entangled in soft whispery cloth. She bends down to investigate, picks up a voluminous jumble of purple velvet, is startled to find her own fingers poking through holes in it. The dress has been mutilated in ten, twenty, thirty places by scissors; cannibalised as if to provide fabric animals for a velvet Noah’s-ark tableau. The other dresses beneath it are similarly butchered. Why? She can’t imagine. It’s too late to understand Agnes now. Too late to understand anything.

At the very rear of the closet, Sugar lowers herself to a sitting position, her bad foot stretched out gingerly before her, her backside resting on a pillow of Agnes’s ruined gowns, her cheek and ear leaning against the wall. She shuts her eyes, and waits.

Half an hour later, when she’s nodding off to sleep, and almost sick from the reek of poisoned lavender, she hears what she’s come for: a strange woman’s voice from the school-room beyond, interspersed with William’s.

‘Stand straight, Sophie,’ he commands, benignly enough. ‘You aren’t a …’ A what? Inaudible, this last word. Sugar presses her ear harder to the wall, presses so hard it hurts.

‘Tell me, child, and don’t be shy,’ urges the strange woman’s voice. ‘What have you learned all this time?’

Sophie’s reply is too soft for Sugar to hear any of it, but (bless her!) it’s quite lengthy.

‘And have you any French, child?’

Silence for a few seconds, then William butts in:

‘French was not one of Miss Sugar’s accomplishments.’

‘And what about the piano, Sophie? Do you know where to put your fingers on the piano?’ Sugar pictures a face to match the voice: a sharp-nosed face, with crow-black eyes and a predatory mouth. So vivid is the picture that she imagines her own fist colliding with that sharp nose, snapping it into a bloody mash of splintered bone. ‘And do you know how to dance, child?’

Again William speaks up, mentioning Miss Sugar’s incompetence in this regard. Damn him! How she would love to shove a knife into his – But what’s this? He’s coming to her defence after all. He’s venturing to enquire if Sophie is not perhaps a little
young
to be initiated into such skills as piano-playing and dancing. Aren’t they useless, after all, until she’s nearer courting age?

‘That may be true, sir,’ admits the new governess sweetly, ‘but it is my belief that they have a virtue in themselves. Some teachers underestimate how much a child can learn, and how early she can learn it. I believe that if a little girl can be encouraged to flower a few years earlier than the rest … Why then, all the better!’

Sugar bites her lip and placates herself with fantasies of hacking this woman to gory fragments.

‘Would you like to play a tune on the piano, Sophie? It really is simpler than you could possibly imagine. I can teach you one in five minutes. Would you like that, Sophie?’

She’s shoving herself forward, this woman: showing off everything she has to offer, begging to be the one chosen. Sophie’s reply is inaudible, but what else can the child say but yes? William, Sophie and the new governess leave the school-room, and descend the stairs. The pact has been made; there’s no pulling out of it now; it’s like the moment when a man takes a whore by the hand.

A minute later, Sugar stands at the door of the storage-room, listening for what happens next. She hasn’t long to wait: an unfamiliar sound strikes up from the parlour: a simple two-finger melody. It’s played first in a confident, deliberate manner, three or four times over, then copied, haltingly and imprecisely, by hands that must be Sophie’s.

The tune? Well, it’s not ‘Hearts of Oak’, but it might as well be. As surely as Sugar used to know it was time to leave The Fireside when ‘Hearts of Oak’ was sung, she knows that this melody Sophie is playing on the piano is her cue to leave the Rackham house forever.

Sugar returns to her bedroom and begins packing at once. What’s the point of waiting until the first of March for the hammer to fall, when the minuscule hammers inside the parlour piano have already delivered the blow? Every hour that she remains offers William sixty opportunities to humiliate and torment her; every minute that she must teach Sophie under the looming shadow of their imminent separation is unbearable.

She’ll survive, she’ll find a way to keep off the streets. The ten pounds William gave her yesterday was an insult, a mockery of what she’s done for his daughter, but hidden in her dressing-cabinet she has plenty of money. Plenty! Crammed amid the jumble of stockings and underwear are the crumpled envelopes she accumulated during her sojourn in Priory Close. So generous was William then, and so disinclined was she to waste money on anything unconnected with winning his love, that she spent only a fraction of the wages that his bank, regular as clockwork, posted to her. Most of these envelopes, coming to light as she scrabbles them out from under frivolous unmentionables she hasn’t worn in months, are unopened, and crackle with a fortune beyond the imaginings of servants. Why, even the loose coins she’s carelessly tossed into these drawers amount to more than the likes of Janey would earn in a full year.

Stowing her hoard of cash into safe places – her purse for the coins, a pocket of an overcoat for the bank-notes – she appreciates for the first time that she’s spent less since coming to live in the Rackham house than she spent in her first forty-eight hours in Priory Close. To the prostitute she was then, these sums seemed no great fortune, a flow of largesse which could be swallowed up any day by the purchase of a particularly sumptuous dress or a few too many restaurant meals. Now, looking at all this money through the eyes of a respectable woman, she realises it’s wealth enough to launch her into any future she chooses, if only she’s frugal and finds some work. It’s wealth enough to take her to the ends of the Earth.

As Sugar packs, she wrestles with her conscience. Should she,
can
she, tell Sophie the truth? Is it merciful, or is it cruel, not to explain the circumstances of her departure? Will Sophie suffer terribly from being deprived of the chance to say goodbye? Sugar frets, half-convinced she’s genuinely considering changing her mind, but deeper inside she knows she has no intention of telling the truth. Instead, she continues to pack as if by brute instinct, and the voice of reason is lost like a sparrow-cheep in a gale.

One travelling case is all she needs. The crates of clothes that William organised to be fetched from Mrs Castaway’s are still in storage somewhere, in a place whose whereabouts he never did get around to telling her. Not that it matters: she doesn’t want them now. They’re whore’s weeds, the lavish plumage of a demi-monde. The dress she has on, and one or two others (this dark-green one, her favourite): that’s all she needs. A couple of shifts, some clean pantalettes, stockings, a spare pair of shoes: a suitcase is soon full. Her wretched novel and Agnes’s diaries she stuffs into a tartan bag.

She lifts the suitcase in one hand – her good side – and loops the bag over the shoulder of the arm that must lean on the cane. She takes three or four steps, shambling like a circus animal forced to walk on hind-legs at the threat of a whip. Then she hangs her head, lowers her unmanageable burdens to the floor, and weeps.

‘Let’s have our afternoon lessons outside today,’ she suggests to Sophie, not long afterward. ‘The house is stuffy, and the air is fresh.’

Sophie springs up from her writing-desk, visibly cheered by the prospect. She hastens to dress for an outing; education
en plein air
is what she likes best, especially if it involves a visit to the fountain, or a glimpse of ducks, rooks, dogs, cats, or indeed any breed of creature other than human.

‘I’m ready, Miss,’ she declares in a trice, and so she is, needing only a small adjustment to the tilt and fastening of her bonnet.

‘Go downstairs, little one; I’ll follow on behind.’

Sophie does as she’s told, and Sugar lingers in the school-room for a little while longer, gathering together the necessaries for the lesson, and a few other items besides, which she shoves into a leather satchel. Then she descends the stairs, her cane clacking against the banisters as she goes.

Outside, the weather is windy, rather bleak, but not bitter. The sky is dim, steel-grey, imbued with the sort of light that makes everything, be it grassy lawn, cobbled street, iron fence or human flesh, appear as shades of the same colour.

Sugar would have preferred to walk directly out of the front gate, but unlucky coincidence has placed Shears there, hard at work transplanting a rose bush so that passers-by can no longer reach through the railings and steal the flowers of his labour. He has his back to Sugar and Sophie but, being a sociable soul, he’ll no doubt turn and speak to them if they try to pass him, and Sugar doesn’t want that. So, with a gentle tug at Sophie’s wrist, she makes a
volte-face
and they move around the side of the house.

‘Are we going with Cheesman, Miss?’ Sophie enquires, a logical question in view of the carriage-way looming up. The coachman and the horse are out of sight, but the unshackled coach stands in front of its little house, twinkling with soapy water, ready for another foray into the dirty, smoky world beyond the Rackham confines.

‘No, dear,’ replies Sugar without looking down, her eyes fixed on the mews gate to the right of the stable. ‘This way is nicer, that’s all.’

The gate is bolted, but not locked; the padlock hangs open on its loop, thank God. Clumsily juggling her walking stick and Sophie’s hand, Sugar removes the lock and slides the long iron rod out of its shaft.

‘Good afternoon to yer, Miss Sugar.’

With a violent start Sugar spins around on her good heel, almost overbalancing from the weight of her bags – the tartan Gladstone on one shoulder, the satchel on her other arm. Cheesman is standing very close, his stubbly face impassive except for an impudent gleam in his eyes. In the dreary light, and without the sartorial props of his greatcoat and hat, he looks shabby and thin; the chill breeze has blown several locks of his hair, stiff with stale oil, over his shining forehead, and there are circular tankard stains in the lap of his trousers.

‘Good afternoon to
you
, Cheesman,’ Sugar nods dismissively, her voice vinegar.

‘I’ll open the gate for yer, Miss,’ offers the coachman, extending a thickly-haired hand and forearm, ‘if you and Miss Rackham would care to take yerselves to the carriage.’

For an instant Sugar considers taking him up on his offer. A ride in the carriage would be easier than walking, and now that Cheesman has accosted her anyway, she may as well make use of him. He could deliver them to the nearest park, and they could proceed from there … Yes, for an instant Sugar reconsiders, but when she looks again at the man himself, she sees the dark grime under the fingernails of the hand he extends towards her, and remembers how he dug those fingers into her waist and bustle not so long ago.

‘I shan’t be needing you, Cheesman,’ she says firmly, gathering Sophie against her hip. ‘We’re not going far.’

Cheesman retracts his arm and, positioning his palm on the back of his hairy neck in a caricature of bemusement, he appraises Sugar from head to foot.

‘Big ’eavy bags yer got there, Miss,’ he remarks, squinting at her misshapen Gladstone, ‘if I may say so.’ Eaps of fings in there, for a short walk.’

‘I’ve told you, Cheesman,’ insists Sugar, a quaver of anxiousness skewing the flint-edge of her voice. ‘We’ve just decided to stretch our legs a little.’

Cheesman lowers his eyes to the level of Sugar’s skirts and leers. ‘I don’t see as
your
legs need any stretchin’, Miss Sugar.’

Anger lends Sugar courage. ‘You’re impertinent, Cheesman,’ she snaps. ‘I shall speak to Mr Rackham about you immediately on my return.’