The Crimson Petal and the White (12 page)

William rummages through the papers, and at the bottom of the pile he finds what appears to be a more substantial document bound into sturdy pamphlet form. To his astonishment, it proves to be
More Sprees in London
– Hints for Men about Town, with advice for greenhorns
. So this is where it’s been hiding!

He lays it on his lap, turns it over and opens it. The pocket in the back still contains half a dozen condoms made of animal intestine. They’ve dried out now, poor withered things, like pressed leaves or flowers. In his prime, in France, they were a daily necessity. The whores swore by them, in a manner that was friendly but allowed for no excuses. ‘
Mieux pour nous, mieux
pour vous
.’ Ah, those girls, those times! Far away and long ago.

William flips through the pages. He bypasses the ‘Trotters’ section (street girls) and flicks through ‘Hocks’ (the cheapest brothels). ‘Prime Rump’, at the back of the book, is out of his range, being the class of establishment where one is expected to call for first-rate wines on top of everything else. Thankfully, Mrs Castaway’s is listed in ‘Mid Loin (For Moderate Spenders)’.

This Good Lady’s Establishment contains an Embarrassment of Pulchritude, viz,
Miss Lester, Miss Howlett, and Miss Sugar. These Ladies may be found at home
from the middle of the afternoon; after six o’clock they are wont to take Entertainment
at ‘The Fireside’, an unpretentious but convivial place for Nocturnals, and will leave
with any suitable Escort at a time of mutual choosing
.

Miss Lester is of middling stature, with
…

William pursues Miss Lester no further, but proceeds directly to:

We can presume that ‘Sugar’ was not the name our third Lady bore at her christening,
but it is the name under which she rejoices now, should any man wish to
baptize her further. She is an eager Devotee of every known Pleasure. Her sole purpose
is to put the demanding Connoisseur at his ease and far Exceed his expectations. She
boasts tresses of fiery red which may fall to the midriff, hazel eyes of rare penetration,
and (despite some angularity) a graceful enough carriage. She is especially
accomplished in the Art of Conversation, and is most assuredly a fit companion for
any True Gentleman. Her one shortcoming, which to Some may well be a piquant
virtue, is that her Bosom scarcely exceeds the size of a child’s. She will ask for 15s.,
but will perform Marvels for a guinea
.

William feels for his watch in his waistcoat pocket and fingers it into his palm. For a long time he stares at it, then folds warm fingers shut, enclosing the golden time-piece ticking in his fist.

‘I’d better make a start,’ he says to himself.

But hours later, Letty, alerted by a loud, unidentifiable snore in the stillness of the night, tiptoes into the study and finds William asleep in his chair.

‘Mr Rackham?’ she whispers, ever-so-gently. ‘Mr Rackham?’

He snores on, his big pale hands hanging loose at his sides, his golden hair ruffled and wayward, like an urchin’s. Letty, at a loss what to do, tiptoes out again. Obviously, her master has been working too hard today.

FIVE

T
he following evening, William alights from a cab in Silver Street, ready to stride across the threshold of his destiny and claim whatever lies on the other side. His travails begin immediately.

‘I ain’t hacquainted wiv the pertickler plice,’ says the cabman, when William asks him to point out Mrs Castaway’s. ‘Somewhere in back a’ vese buildins ’ere, I speck.’ And with his whip he makes a sweeping motion across the entire street, a crowded thoroughfare with a wide assortment of humanity on show, but no giant bills advertising Mrs Castaway’s or sandwichboard-men saddled with signs saying ‘This Way To Sugar’. William turns back to the cabman to complain, but the blackguard’s already driving off, having pocketed a more generous fare than he deserves.

God damn it! Is there
never
such a thing as value for money? Does it always have to be a king’s ransom … But no, William has thought all this before. Nothing is gained by thinking it all again. Sugar is waiting for him very nearby: all he need do is make enquiries.

Silver Street is crawling with hawkers, barrow-boys and curious pedestrians straying eastwards from The Stretch. William raises his hand to his brow, to survey the likeliest prospects, but before he can choose, he’s accosted by a tiny lad selling cigars.

‘Best cigars, sir, tuppenny a piece, real Cubers, lights for nuffing.’

William looks down – steeply down – at the half-dozen miserable specimens in the boy’s grubby fingers. The likelihood that they’re genuinely smuggled from Cuba, rather than from a pickpocketed cigar-case, is small indeed.

‘I don’t need cigars. I’ll give you tuppence if you tell me where Mrs Castaway’s is.’

The lad’s wizened little face screws up with disappointment at not knowing this lucrative piece of information. Tuppence for nothing, if he only knew one thing! His mouth opens to utter a lie.

‘Never mind, never mind,’ says William. He’s always been ill-at-ease around small children, especially when they want something from him. ‘Here’s a penny.’ And he hands it over.

‘God bless you, sir.’

Ruffled by this exchange, William hesitates towards a pipe-smoking pedestrian, then loses nerve and cringes back. He can’t go asking every passer-by for directions to a whorehouse: what will they take him for? If he were back in Cambridge, or in France, a bachelor without a care in the world, he might have cried his request for all ears to hear, without a hint of a blush on his cheeks. Fearless, he was then! Oh, see what penury and the cares of marriage have done to him! He hurries along the footpath, his eyes scanning the lamp-lit house-fronts for clues.
More Sprees
supplied no exact address for Mrs Castaway’s, implying either that it ought to be known to every serious sophisticate, or that Silver Street is a nondescript strip in which an establishment as illustrious as Mrs Castaway’s must shine out like a pearl on a chain. It does no such thing.

He spies a girl in a doorway who impresses him as a whore, though she has a babe in arms.

‘Do you know where Mrs Castaway’s is?’ he asks her, after a quick to-and-fro glance.

‘Never ’eard of her, sir.’

William walks on before she can speak more, then stops under a street-lamp to consult his watch. It’s almost six o’clock; yes! he knows what he’ll do: he’ll go to The Fireside and hope that Sugar turns up there, as she is ‘wont’ to do! Or if she doesn’t, someone there will know where Mrs Castaway’s is. Steady, Rackham: a rational mind can solve all problems.

He proceeds straight to the nearest public house, and peers up at its inn-sign. No luck. He walks a few dozen steps farther, to the next pub on the next corner. Again, no luck. He makes the mistake of pausing to scratch the back of his head, and is immediately hailed by a street vendor with a bulging knapsack. A cheerful-looking old rogue, whose woollen-gloved fist bristles with pencils.

‘Beau’iful pencils, sir,’ he cries, his mouth full of donkeyish teeth so black-edged he might almost have been scribbling on them in his idle moments. ‘Stay sharp seven times longer than the usual kind.’

‘No, thank you,’ says William. ‘I’ll give you sixpence if you tell me where The Fireside is.’

‘The Fireside?’ echoes the cheap-john, grinning and frowning at the same time. ‘I’ve ’eard of it, I’ve surely ’eard of it.’ Stowing the pencils in his coat pocket, he extracts a shiny tin salver from his knapsack, a glittering oval like a Roman gladiator’s puny shield, and wiggles it to catch the lamp-light. ‘While I rummages me brains, sir, would you cast yer eye over this tea-tray, nuffing inferior to silver.’

‘I don’t need a tea-tray,’ says Rackham. ‘Especially not one made of—’

‘Yer muvver, then, sir. Fink ’ow a tray like this would bring a sparkle to ’er eye.’

‘I don’t have a mother,’ retorts William testily.

‘Everyone’s got a muvver, sir,’ grins the cheap-john, as though enlightening an innocent imbecile with the facts of generation.

William is dumbstruck with offence; it’s bad enough that this ugly ruffian imagines himself to be addressing a person who might be tempted by the rubbish in that grubby knapsack, but does he expect an explanation of the Rackham family history too?

‘Here’s a bargain,’ leers the old man, ‘I’ll frow in a pocket-comb. Very best Britannia metal.’

‘I
have
a pocket-comb,’ says William, whereupon, to his mortification, the cheap-john raises one wiry eyebrow in disbelief. ‘What I
don’t
have,’ he growls, his scalp prickling nervously under its mop of unruly hair, ‘is reliable directions to The Fireside.’

‘I’m still finkin’, sir, still finkin’,’ the old scoundrel assures him, shoving the tea-tray back into his sack and rooting around in its nether reaches up to his armpit.

And what’s this? Dear Heaven, it’s beginning to rain! Great heavy raindrops are being tossed down from the sky, hitting the shoulders of William’s coat so hard that they spatter up against his jaw and into his ears, and he realises that, in his eagerness to reach his goal, he has left lying inside the cab an almost-new parapluie for the cabman to sell in his idle hours. In an instant, William’s mood darkens to despair: this is Fate, this is God’s will: the rain, the lost umbrella, the alien indifference of a street he doesn’t know, the mockery of strangers, the obstinate cruelty of his own father, the damnable ache in his shoulder from sleeping half the night in his chair …

(A truly modern man, William Rackham is what might be called a superstitious atheist Christian; that is, he believes in a God who, while He may no longer be responsible for the sun rising, the saving of the Queen or the provision of daily bread, is still the prime suspect when anything goes wrong.)

Another street vendor approaches William, attracted by the smell of unfulfilled desires. ‘The Fireside!’ he says, elbowing the other cheap-john aside. He’s dressed in a flaccid grey jacket and corduroy trousers, with a frayed billycock on his lugubrious head. ‘Let me ’elp you, sir!’

William glances at what the fellow is selling: dog collars, a dozen of them arrayed all up his shabby grey arm. God damn it, will it be necessary to buy a dog collar in order to be pointed in the right direction?

But ‘That way, sir,’ says the fellow. ‘Carry on, all the way up Silver Street. Then you’ll see the Lion Brewery: that’s New Street. Then turn …’ – he clenches alternate fists, reminding himself of the difference between right and left, and the dog collars slide down to his gnarly wrist – ‘right, until you comes to ’Usband Street. And that’s where it is.’

‘Thank you, my man,’ says William, and gives him the sixpence.

The dog-collar seller tips his billycock and disappears, but his luckless companion, having fetched a small black object out of his knapsack, lingers.

‘You look like a gentleman of business, sir,’ he chirrups. ‘Can I interest you in a diary? It’s for 1875, sir, what’s comin’ upon us fast as a train. It’s got an almanac in the back, a golden string for marking your place, and everyfing you’d wish to find in a diary is in it, sir.’

William ignores the fellow and strides up Silver Street.

‘Pair of larvely scissors to cut all yer bits off, sir!’ the man yells after him.

The impertinence runs off William’s back like the rain. Nothing can injure him now; his mood has lifted; he is on the right track at last. The world has consented to be friendly after all. The lights shine brighter, and he hears music, whisked into carillon incoherence by the wind. From one direction come the cries of the pedlars, from another come flurries of excited chatter. He sees the flash of gathered skirts as women hurry through the gaslit drizzle; he smells roasting meats, wine, and even perfume. Doors open and close, open and close, each time releasing a gust of music, a glimpse of orange-yellow conviviality, a haze of smoke. He’ll get his way now, he’s sure of it: God has relented. Yesterday William Rackham was humbled by two Drury Lane trollops; tonight he will snatch victory from the orifice of defeat.

Ah, but what if Sugar, too, should refuse him?

Kill her
, is his first thought.

Immediately he feels a stab of shame. What a base and unworthy impulse! Is this how low the goad of his own suffering has driven him? To the contemplation of murder? He is by nature a gentle and sympathetic soul: if this girl, this Sugar, refuses, she refuses, and that’s that.

If she refuses, what will he do? What
can
he do? Where can he find the woman who’ll do what he requires? It’s out of the question for him to go roaming of St Giles – some ruffian will bash him on the skull. Nor should he even contemplate loitering in the parks after dark, where ageing dryads specialise in the rankest depravities – and the rankest diseases. No, what he needs is the surrender of a woman befitting his own station, in surroundings of comfort and taste – his humiliation in Drury Lane has taught him
that
much.

He turns the corner into New Street, cheered to see the Lion Brewery just where he was told it would be. In his head, he is already inventing his own Sugar, in advance of meeting the real one: he pictures her huge-eyed, slightly afraid, but compelled to submit. William passes this vision down to his penis, and it swells in anticipation.

Husband Street, when he comes to it, is a dubious place, an insalubrious place, but at least it’s cheerful. Or so it seems to him. Everyone’s smiling, the whores giggle, and even that toothless old beggar over there is smiling as she gums a saliva-covered apple.

There now: The Fireside. Is it
too
far beyond the pale? Should he turn back while he still can? As he narrows the distance between his quick-breathing breast and the lustrous, lantern-orange inn-sign that hangs from a cast-iron spike, he tells himself he mustn’t judge until he sees what it’s like inside.

‘
Upon the woild woild ocean
!’ sings a loud voice startlingly close to William’s left ear. ‘
Far away from ’ooome
!’

He turns his head to find himself waylaid by a sheet-music-seller, singing pugnaciously on: ‘’
Ow bitterly the sailor croid! Amid the surgin’ foooooam!
Missis play the pianner, sir?’

William tries to wave the music vendor aside with one gloved hand, but the fellow is not so easily deterred; he limps into William’s way, thrusting his plywood tray of songs out before him like a ripe bosom framed by décolletage.

‘Missis don’t play the pianner, then, sir?’

‘Not for years,’ says Rackham, annoyed to be reminded of Agnes at a time like this.

‘This tune’ll put ’er right back in the mood, sir,’ persists the music seller, and abruptly resumes his song:

‘
May God protect moi mother!

She will break ’er ’eart for me!

When she ’ears that Oi yam sleepin
’

In the deep, deep sea!
– Noice, eh sir? The very latest tune, sir.’ S called “The Shipwrecked Sailor”.’

William has been pressing closer to his objective, but this bothersome fellow has limped backwards along with him. At the very doorway of The Fireside, William glares him in the eye and says,

‘The latest tune? What nonsense. It’s “No Treasure Like a Mother” with different words.’

‘Nah, sir,’ the man begs to differ, waving a sheet of creamy paper, suitably embellished with nautical designs, in William’s face. ‘Entoirely different. Take it ’ome, sir, and you’ll see.’

‘I don’t wish to take it home,’ says William. ‘I wish to enter The Fireside, unaccompanied by
you
, sir, and to enjoy music
there
– without charge I might add.’

At this, the vendor steps aside theatrically, bows and grins. But not in defeat.

‘If you ’ear a tune you pertickly loike in there, sir, do tell me, won’t you sir: I’ll be
sure
to ’ave it.’ And with that he melts away, determined to make the most of the next hour, the next year, the next ten centuries plying his indispensable trade.

William Rackham closes his fist around the ornate brass bar of The Fireside’s door and swings it open, breathing deeply. The smell of good beer and the babble of friendly voices envelops him immediately and, stepping inside, he feels the cold flesh of his face tingle with warmth radiating from chandeliers and, yes, a roaring fireside. And what a surprise! The patrons aren’t shabby at all! Why, some of them are even smartly dressed! This is the sort of pub that a better sort of person is glad to discover, a well-kept secret in the midst of poverty, a gathering-place for those in the know. The regulars, many of whom clearly don’t live anywhere near Husband Street themselves, turn to look at William for a moment, then return to their conversations. They are merry, but not drunk; this is not the sort of place where patrons drink in silence waiting for the alcohol to do its job. William sighs with relief, removes his hat, and walks into the company of his peers.

‘
In, one by one, the casuals crawl
,’ a tenor voice greets him. ‘
In filthy tatters,
raiment called…
’

The singer is standing on a narrow strip of stage at the far end of the room, almost hidden behind the smoky throng of tables and patrons. His sombre evening dress is augmented by a crudely knotted red scarf meant to symbolise the neckerchief of a labourer. Striking a piteous pose, he sings to a florid piano accompaniment.