The Crimson Petal and the White (22 page)

Agnes sighs. In reality, more years than she can bear to remember have passed since her first Season, and her ambitions for the next one are modest. Her dream of moving among the Upper Ten Thousand, which seemed perfectly achievable when she was Lord Unwin’s step-daughter, has receded now it’s clear that William, if he has any future at all, will never be the famous author she once imagined he would be. He’ll be the head of a perfumery – when he finally stirs himself to accept the responsibility – and then, if he gets very, very rich, he may ascend slowly through the social firmament. But until then, the lower reaches of fashionable Society are the best the Rackhams can hope for. Agnes knows that. She doesn’t like it, but she knows it, and she’s determined to make the most of it.

So, what is she looking forward to? She has no wish to be considered beautiful by men. Such things lead only to unhappiness. Nor is she hoping for the admiration of other women; from them she expects only polite nonchalance, and spiteful gossip behind her back. To be honest, she doesn’t really imagine engaging in intercourse of
any
sort next Season; on the contrary, she intends to glide through the entire affair barely noticing anyone, speaking only the emptiest formulae, and listening to nothing that requires more than the shallowest attention. This, she’s learned from past experience, is by far the safest course. More than anything, she yearns for the bliss of being tolerated outside the confines of her own bedroom, dressed in nicer clothes than her much-stained, much-laundered nightgowns.

‘You know, ma’am,’ says Clara, ‘Mrs Whymper will turn green when she sees you in this dress. I met her maid in town, and she said Mrs Whymper is pining to wear this style, but she’s grown too fat for it.’

Agnes laughs childishly, knowing full well that this is almost certainly a lie. (Clara is always fabricating such things.) She is feeling better by the minute; the pain is fading from her head; she might even ask Clara to open the curtains …

But then comes the knock at the door.

Clara has no choice but to let her share of the dress slither to the floor, leaving her mistress marooned in silk. She gets up and, with an apologetic smile, hurries to admit the doctor. A long shadow flows into the room.

‘Good day to you Mrs Rackham,’ the doctor says, moving smoothly in. The perfumed air of this female sanctum is tainted by his unmistakable smell, displaced by his towering bulk. He deposits his satchel on the floor next to Agnes’s bed and perches on the edge of the mattress, nodding to Clara. That nod means Clara is dismissed; that nod is a command.

Agnes, having turned her chair away from the sewing-machine and towards the doctor, knows, as she watches Clara leave, that the trap is shut, but still she can’t help trying to wriggle against its jaws.

‘I’m sorry you have been made to come all this way,’ she says. ‘Because unfortunately – I mean, fortunately for
me
, but not for you – I’m quite well now. As you can see.’

The good doctor makes no reply.

‘It was kind of my husband to summon you, I’m sure…’

The doctor’s brow wrinkles. He is not one to let an inconsistency pass unquestioned. ‘Oh, but William gave me to understand that you yourself insisted on my being summoned.’

‘Yes, well, I’m sure I’m very sorry,’ says Agnes, noting with horror his habit of cocking his head slightly at anything she tells him, as if he’s loath to miss even one of her preposterous lies. ‘I suppose, in that moment of feeling so unwell, I … I feared the worst. At any rate, I’m quite myself now.’

Doctor Curlew rests his handsomely sculpted beard on his interlocking hands.

‘You look very pale to me, Mrs Rackham, if I may say so.’

Agnes attempts to hide her rising panic with a coy half-smile. ‘Ah, but that may be face powder, mayn’t it?’

Doctor Curlew looks puzzled. Agnes knows that look well, considers it to be the nastiest, most maddening of all the looks in his repertoire.

‘But had I not cautioned you,’ he says, ‘against the use of cosmetics, for the sake of your skin?’

Agnes sighs. ‘Yes, Doctor, you had.’

‘In fact, I thought—’

‘—that they’d all been disposed of, yes,’ she says.

‘So …’

‘So, yes,’ she sighs, ‘it cannot be powder on my face.’

The doctor presses his fingertips to his beard and inhales deeply.

‘Please, Mrs Rackham,’ he reasons. ‘I know you don’t like to be examined. But what you like and what’s good for you are not always the same thing. Many a dire turn in an otherwise manageable illness can be averted if it’s seen to immediately.’

Agnes leans back in her chair, allowing her eyes to fall shut. There is nothing she can say that hasn’t failed many times before.
I am too tired to
be examined
. ‘Too tired? Then you must be ill.’
I am too ill to be examined
. ‘But the examination will make you better.’
You examine me every week; what
harm can it do to leave it undone just once
? ‘You can’t mean that; only a madwoman would willingly let her health decline.’
I am not a madwoman!
‘Of course not. That’s why I’m asking your permission, rather than ignoring your wishes as I would ignore those of an asylum inmate.’
But I am too
tired
… And so on.

Is she mad to imagine that Doctor Curlew is bullying her? That he’s taking liberties no physician should? She’s so out of touch with the world at large – has she missed momentous changes in the way doctors address their patients? Is the Queen herself bullied and threatened by
her
physician? She’d dismiss him, surely? How wonderful it would be to tell Doctor Curlew that she doesn’t require his services any more, that he is
dismissed
.

Instead, as always, she acquiesces, and takes her position on the bed. The good doctor has opened the curtains, so that the sun can shine upon his work. Agnes fixes her attention on a clutch of extinguished candles, counting the drips of hardened wax on their shafts. She loses count, starts again, loses count again, all the while trying to ignore the electric apprehension travelling up through her body from her toes to the roots of her hair, as Doctor Curlew lifts her dressing-gown over her legs.

William Rackham, meanwhile, first knocks, then rings at the door of Mrs Castaway’s, and waits impatiently for it to be opened. Wet gusts of wind tug at his trouser-legs; overdressed trollops eye him as they sweep by. His scalp prickles from all the oil he has combed through his hair. A minute passes: why, this is as bad as his own house!

After another minute, the sound of unlatching. A narrow slit offers him a glimpse of a female eye, glittering with mistrust.

‘Sugar’s not free.’ The unfriendly voice of Amy Howlett. ‘P’raps you’d care to come back later.’

‘As a matter of fact, I wish to speak with your … Mrs Castaway,’ says William. ‘Strictly a business matter.’

‘There’s no matters here,’ the girl sneers, ‘but business matters.’

His mind boggling at how any man could kiss and embrace a creature so cynical, William tries again: ‘I insist … I’ve something of great interest, I’m sure, to Mrs Castaway.’

Whereupon Miss Howlett swings the door wide, her back already turned.

In Mrs Castaway’s parlour, everything is much as it was when William – when
Mr Hunt
last paid a visit. Just as before, he’s struck by the scores of Mary Magdalen prints on the walls, the blazing fire, and Mrs Castaway herself, seated at her desk, dressed all in scarlet. Of Miss Lester and her ’cello, this time, there’s no sign; her chair stands empty. Amy Howlett slouches back into her seat, settles with a
wumph
of wrinkled skirts, and slyly watches his approach. Hands hanging at her sides, head tilted back, she sucks smoke, then does a most startling thing: she opens her lips and performs a juggling trick with the cigarette adhering to the end of her tongue, almost swallowing it, then catching it, still lit, between her teeth. She sucks again. Her eyes do not blink.

‘I
do
hope you’ll try to forgive Amy’s manners,’ sighs Mrs Castaway, motioning William towards an armchair. ‘Her ways have great charm for some of our visitors.’

Amy smirks.

‘I’m sure I don’t mean to cause offence, Mr … Mr …’ Stuck for his name, she abandons her stab at good behaviour, and looks away with a shrug.

‘Hunt,’ says William. ‘George W. Hunt.’

Mrs Castaway narrows her eyes, narrows them so much that the bloodshot whites almost entirely disappear, leaving the dark bits shining like sucked licorice. She is bigger than he remembered, more formidable.

‘So, what can we do for you, Mr Hunt?’ she croons, her painted mouth puckering with the vowels. ‘We hadn’t expected you back so soon.’

William takes a deep breath, leans forward, and launches into his proposal. He speaks earnestly, quickly, nervously. His Mr Hunt is a shy man, but a rich one. The source of his wealth? Oh, he’s a somewhat retiring, not to say sleeping, partner in a giant publishing firm, gross income£20,000 a year, titles too numerous to name, but works by Macaulay, Kenelm Digby, Le Fanu and William Ainsworth are among them. As a matter of fact, he has an appointment to see his old chum Wilkie – Wilkie Collins – in … (he pulls his silver watch into view) four hours from now. But first …

He argues his case and, as well as arguing, he takes care to ask questions. Asking questions (or so Henry Calder Rackham keeps emphasising in the correspondence William has only just read) is essential in bending a prospective partner to one’s will.
Ask questions,
urges the old man,
express
simpathy for the differculties of the fellow you wish to do business with, then demenstrate you have the answer
. William steams ahead, sweat forming on his brow, words pouring from his lips.
Leave no silence for the other fellow to fill with
quarms, that’s another thing the old man harps on. William leaves no silence.
Look into the other fellows eyes
. William looks into Mrs Castaway’s eyes and, as the minutes pass, he judges he’s getting through. She is increasingly frank when it comes to surrendering figures; she nods gravely when he tells her how he means to swell them.

‘So,’ he sums up at last. ‘Exclusive patronage of Sugar by me: will you consider it?’

To which Mrs Castaway replies, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hunt. No.’

Shocked, William looks to Amy Howlett, as if expecting she’ll leap to his defence. Amy, however, is slumped in her chair, picking at her fingernails, her sharp eyes, for the moment, benignly crossed.

‘But whyever not?’ he cries, striving to keep his voice down, for fear of being collared by a hidden strongman. ‘I can’t imagine any cause for objection.’ (What would Henry Calder Rackham advise?
Say back to the
fellow what the fellows just told you
.) ‘You’ve told me that in an average evening, Sugar entertains one or two, at most three, gentlemen. Now, I am offering to meet whatever you say are the costs to you of those three engagements. Sugar I will pay whatever she considers fair. The profit to you remains the same, only it comes from one man and not several.’

Mrs Castaway, instead of clapping her wrinkled hand to her forehead in belated epiphany, responds to William’s plea in a way that unnerves him. She begins to rummage in one of her desk drawers, and extracts a sheaf of unruly papers. Then she slips her fingers into the handles of her big brass scissors, and exercises the blades experimentally.

‘These matters are more complex than you might think, Mr Hunt,’ she murmurs, spreading the papers out before her on the desk. Her eyes flicker, dividing attention between William and the task she’s plainly impatient to resume. ‘To begin with, we are a small house and arithmetic is against us. If one third of what we’re reputed to offer is perpetually unavailable—’

A ring of the doorbell makes them both quiver.

Amy Howlett groans, looks up at the ceiling. ‘Where
is
that boy?’ she sighs, then jerks up from her chair.

‘Mr Hunt, I must apologise,’ says Mrs Castaway as Amy flounces off, once again, to do the sleeping Christopher’s work. ‘One of our little customs here is that no gentleman should ever be seen by another. So, if you’d be kind enough to step into the next room’ (she points with the shears) ‘for
just
a moment …’

She nods maternally, and he obeys.

‘The pain,’ Doctor Curlew is saying just then, ‘lies entirely in the resistance.’

He wipes his fingers with a white handkerchief, pockets it, bends down to try a second time. She makes him work hard, does Mrs Rackham, for his fee.

Not Sugar, not Sugar, you blackguard, you swine
, thinks William, as he stands squirming in the next room, his ear pressed to the door.
She’s not available.
You’ve changed your mind. Your cockstand’s gone soft
.

‘… early in the day …’ he hears Mrs Castaway saying.

‘… Sugar …’ is the masculine reply.

The hairs on William’s neck tingle with loathing. He is tempted to rush out of his hiding-place and attack his rival, battering him right through the floor.

‘… no shortage of alternative delights…’

His heart beats vehemently; his future, he feels, is poised on a vertiginous edge, waiting to be rescued or cast down. How can it be? A couple of days ago, Sugar didn’t even exist. Now here he stands with fists clenched, half-willing to kill for her!

But it appears bloodshed won’t be necessary after all. The man in the parlour has been fobbed off with Miss Howlett. Serves him right, the blackguard. William hopes she thrashes him within an inch of his life, for daring to ask for Sugar.

‘… no wine, then … appreciate you are in a hurry … like a thousand-and-one nights squeezed into a few minutes …’

William hears the music of transaction. Strange how speech can be almost inaudible through a closed door, while the sound of coins chinking together is so clear!

‘Mr Hunt?’

Thank God.

Only now does William notice what sort of room he’s been hiding in: a tiny infirmary, well stocked with bandages and jars of medicine. Also bottles of strong spirits, abortifacients marked with crossbones and infant skulls, and perfumed antiseptics manufactured by … manufactured by … (he peers closer, just in case he should spot the rose insignia or the ornamental ‘R’) … Beechams.