The Crimson Petal and the White (23 page)

‘Mr Hunt?’

‘Mrs Rackham?’

Agnes Rackham, lying on her bed miles away, rolls onto her side so that Doctor Curlew can reach deeper inside her.

‘Good,’ he murmurs abstractedly. ‘Thank you.’ He is trying to find Agnes’s womb, which to his knowledge ought to be exactly four inches from the external aperture. His middle finger being exactly four inches long (for he has measured it), he is perplexed to be having no success.

‘You alluded to … complications I hadn’t considered?’ William prompts.

‘Many, many,’ sighs Mrs Castaway. Rather off-puttingly, she’s already busy with her cuttings, snipping into sheets of paper which, from where William sits, look like pages torn from books. ‘Another has just occurred to me: our house has, if not precisely an agreement, then certainly a … bond of mutual regard, with The Fireside. You know The Fireside? Oh, yes, of course.’ She takes her eyes off him again, and steers the scissors through a circuitous cut. ‘Now you, Mr Hunt, who are so appreciative of Sugar’s merits; you can well understand that she is considered an attraction – a draw-card, if you will – for The Fireside. At least, the proprietors seem to think so. So, we are doing them a favour, not strictly measurable in terms of money, but valuable nonetheless. Now, if Sugar were to … disappear – for how
ever flat
tering a reason, Mr Hunt – I’m sure The Fireside would feel itself the poorer, d’you see?’

A tiny human figure has taken shape, blank on William’s side, engraving-grey on Mrs Castaway’s.

She is mad
, he thinks, as he watches a haloed female saint, torn from a Papist picture-book, flutter to the table. How can one bargain with a madwoman? Might he convince her better if he revealed his true name? Which identity, from the point of view of a madwoman who cannibalises books for their Magdalens, might be the more impressive – an authentic heir to a renowned perfume concern, or a make-believe partner in a prestigious publishing house? And what the Devil does she mean about The Fireside? A simple bribe, or is he expected to buy the whole damn place?

Push the fellow to say, one time only, the word Yes
– that’s what his father keeps underlining in green ink.
All else is details
.

‘Madam, these are mere details, surely,’ he declares. ‘Couldn’t we…’ (a happy inspiration) ‘couldn’t we call Sugar herself downstairs? It’s
her
future that’s at stake here – with all due respect to the matters you’ve been raising, madam…’

Mrs Castaway picks up another scrap of paper. This one bears, on its blank reverse, the unmistakable stamp of a circulating library.

‘Mr Hunt, there is another thing you haven’t allowed for. You don’t consider the possibility that Sugar might prefer – forgive me, I don’t wish to cause you offence – that she might prefer
variety
.’

William lets this pass; he can tell that indignation is of no use.

‘Madam, I urge you – I implore you – allow Sugar to speak for herself.’

Give her over, give her over
, he thinks, staring hard into the madam’s eyes. He has never wished for anything more fervently than this; the fervour of his wishing astounds him. If he can have this one thing, he will ask God for nothing else, nothing, as long as he lives.

Mrs Castaway withdraws her fingers from the scissors, pushes her chair back, gets to her feet. Dangling from the ceiling are three silken ropes; she pulls one. Who does it summon? A strongman to eject him? Or Sugar? Mrs Castaway’s eyes give nothing away.

God almighty, this is a damn sight more difficult than winning Agnes’s hand in marriage, William thinks. If only this mad old bawd would be prepared to take a risk on him, the way Lord Unwin did!

Sitting there in Mrs Castaway’s bawdy-house, waiting for Sugar or a burly spoony-man to appear, he remembers being invited to see the pickled old aristocrat in his smoking-room, and there, over port, being read the terms of the marriage of Agnes Unwin to William Rackham, Esquire. The legalities were, he recalls, quite beyond him, so when Lord Unwin had finished and archly asked something like ‘Well, how does that suit?’ he’d not known what to say. ‘It means you’ve
got
her, God help you,’ Lord Unwin had spelled out, pouring him another drink.

Now here’s a shadow on the stairs… Is it…? Yes! It’s she! In a blue twilled dressing-gown and slippers, hair loose and tangled, still sleepy-eyed God bless her, and with a spattering of dark water-drops on the breast of her gown. His heart, so recently filled with murderous thoughts towards Mrs Castaway, is suddenly spilling over with tenderness.

‘Why, Mr Hunt,’ says Sugar, softly, pausing half-way down, ‘What a pleasure to see you again so soon.’ She motions apologetically at her
déshabillé
. A draught on the stairs sends strands of her hair floating across her cheeks and naked neck. How could he not have noticed before how abnormally thin that neck is? And her lips: they’re so pale and dry, like scraps of lace – she doesn’t drink enough! How he’d love to rub salve into her lips, while she kissed his fingers…!

‘Mr Hunt has a proposition to make to you, Sugar,’ says Mrs Castaway. ‘Mr Hunt?’

Old witch! She hasn’t even asked Sugar to take a seat – as if his offer is so preposterous the girl will be sure to refuse it before she reaches the bottom of the stairs. But a look passes between him and Sugar that gives him courage; it’s a look that says,
We know each other, don’t we, you
and I
?

Courteously, he bids her be seated, and she is seated, in Miss Lester’s chair. He repeats his little oration, but this time, freed from the odious necessity of addressing Mrs Castaway, he speaks directly into Sugar’s face (her eyes are still sleepy; she licks her lips with a sharp red tongue, the same tongue that … Concentrate, Rackham!). He speaks less nervously than before; when repeating the fictions he’s spun around George W. Hunt, he shares with her a secret smile, a mutual understanding of something that’s already part of their intimate history. But when it comes to the arithmetic, he is emphatic and precise. For diplomacy’s sake, he mentions Mrs Castaway’s misgivings, and absorbs them into his account. Everyone, he declares reassuringly, is going to be the richer for this; no one will suffer the slightest inconvenience.

‘But you haven’t yet said,’ objects the old woman from across the room. ‘What will you pay Sugar?’

William flinches. The question seems to him crassly indelicate – and none of her business, either. This is not a low brothel!

‘I will pay her,’ he says, ‘whatever makes her happy.’ And he nods almost imperceptibly in Sugar’s direction, to show her he means it.

Sugar blinks several times, runs one hand through the unruly orange fleece of her hair. The barrage of facts and figures has left her a little dazed, as if she’s woken up this morning to a discussion of John Stuart Mill’s
Principles of Political Economy
rather than to a boiled egg. At last she opens her mouth to speak.

‘All right, Mr Hunt,’ she says, with a sly smile. ‘I am willing.’

Yes! She said yes! Rackham can scarcely contain himself. But he must, he must. Childish enthusiasm would ill become him; he’s supposed to be a publisher!

So, bowing his head to Mrs Castaway’s writing-desk, he watches her draw up the contract,
on this, the twenty-fourth day of November, 1874
. A waste of ink and effort: if only she knew that he’d sign anything, including a sheet of paper inscribed with just that one word, Anything! But she wants more. He reads what’s flowing from her pen, written in (to give her credit) a most elegant and fluent script …
hereinafter known as ‘the House’
… God almighty! She’s going to pull the wool over his eyes, he can tell … but what does it matter? Measured against the wealth that will soon be his, the reach of her avarice will be Lilliputian.

In any case, if he should decide to renege, what could she possibly do? Pursue an imaginary man through the courts of Whoredom? Regina hears the case of ‘Castaway’ versus ‘Hunt’? Stop scribbling, woman, and leave room for the signatures!

Looking back on it now, the contract for Agnes’s hand was extraordinarily
laissez-faire
– much less demanding of him than this one here. In a marriage settlement, one might expect a degree of parental protectiveness, but Lord Unwin showed (now that William reflects on it) precious little for Agnes. Her dowry was no great fortune – nothing a young woman couldn’t spend within a year or two – and no date was set for William’s own succession to independent means. No mention, either, of how large a wardrobe of fashionable clothes William was obliged to ensure his wife maintained, or how Agnes’s style of life was supposed to be safeguarded. For all that Lord Unwin seemed to care, his new son-in-law could dispose of Agnes’s clothes, her jewellery, her books, her servants. Short of saying so, he was washing his hands of her – no doubt because he already knew (crafty old sot!) what poison was eating away at his step-daughter’s sanity.

Faintly through the house, the slam of a door resounds: Miss Howlett’s man, leaving. William looks askance at Sugar, but she’s sunk into the armchair, her head nestled in the crook of her arm, eyes closed. The sleeve of her dressing-gown has fallen, exposing the white flesh of her forearm, bruised blue with finger-marks. His own, surely –
or are they
? With a jolt, he realises that this contract depends not merely on these women’s trust in him, but his trust in them. What’s to stop them conducting business as usual behind his back? Nothing, unless he takes care to be unpredictable, never letting them know the hour of his coming … Mad, he must be mad – yet a smile tempts the corners of his mouth as he signs, with a flourish, a false name to this bargain struck with a madam and a whore.

‘It gives me great pleasure,’ he says, bringing to light the ten guineas which the sale of some of Agnes’s long-unused possessions has raised, ‘to solemnise our agreement.’

Mrs Castaway accepts the money, and her face appears, all of a sudden, ancient and weary.

‘I’m sure you can imagine greater pleasures than signing your name, Mr Hunt,’ she says. ‘Wake up, Sugar dear.’

Agnes stares at the small ivory knobs on the bedside cabinet, taking careful note of every tiny nick and scratch in each one. The shadow of the doctor’s head falls across her face; his fingers are not inside her anymore.

‘I’m afraid all is not as it should be.’

The words come to Agnes like overheard chatter from a railway platform opposite one’s own. She is beginning to dream, her eyes shutting and her face shiny with perspiration, a dream she has already dreamed many times in her sleep, but never before while awake. The dream of the journey …

But Doctor Curlew is speaking, trying to summon her back. Gently but firmly he prods a spot on Mrs Rackham’s naked abdomen.

‘You feel this spot here? where I touch? That is where your womb has moved, much higher up than it ought to be, which is more … here.’ His finger slides down towards the motte of blonde hair at which Agnes has glanced perhaps twenty times in her whole life, each time with shame. This time, however, there is no shame to feel, for the doctor’s finger is sliding (as she perceives it in her dream) not on her body, but on a surface somewhere beyond it: a windowpane perhaps. She’s in a train, and as it moves away from the station, someone on the platform outside is putting his finger against the window of her compartment.

Agnes closes her eyes.

Up in Sugar’s room, William unpins his collars while Sugar kneels at his feet. She nuzzles the flies of his trousers with her face.

‘R-r-r-r-r,’ she purrs.

The buttons of William’s shirt are stiff; he has worn his best to impress Mrs Castaway. While struggling to undo them, he glances at the escritoire, which is covered in papers as before. Masculine-looking papers, not leaves of tinted rice-paper and floral-patterned envelopes, not a bound volume of recipes and homilies illustrated with prissy watercolours, not puzzles or brain-teasers from the popular press. No, these papers lie on Sugar’s desk in untidy stacks, scrawled and blotted on, crumpled, in amongst candle-stubs. And, on top of them all, a printed pamphlet, dense with text, scored in the margins with India-ink annotations.

‘Whatever you’re working on there, I can see it’s no easy labour,’ he remarks.

‘Nothing to interest a man,’ she murmurs, clawing gently at his buttocks with both hands. ‘Come, take me.’

The bed’s drapes are already tied back, like theatre curtains. In the bed-head mirror, William watches his reflection being led, stumbling, towards the rumpled sheets that still smell of him and Sugar.

‘My little cunt is dripping for you, Mr Hunt,’ she whispers.

‘No, call me William, really,’ he says. ‘And please let me reassure you: you don’t have to work at anything anymore, except …’

‘Mmm, yes,’ she says, pulling him onto the bed next to her. She gathers up the soft, loose fabric of her dressing-gown and tosses it over his head; he squirms, but she sheaths him snugly inside, trapping him against her midriff. His breath is hot and humid on her flesh; she feels him burrowing upwards, heading for the light at her neck.

‘Oooh, not yet,’ she croons, holding him back through the fabric. ‘My breasts are burning for you.’

He begins to lick – gently, thank God. She’s had men go after her nipples as if ducking for apples in a barrel. This one’s lips are soft, his tongue is smooth, his teeth are barely noticeable. Harmless as any man can be, and with plenty of ready money. If he wants her name on a contract, well, why not?

But Holy Jesus, she’ll have to keep him from seeing what’s on her writing-desk. Her mother caught her by surprise, that’s for sure, by pulling on the cord so early. Dead to the world she was, in a dream buried deep inside her pillow. How could she be expected, in her sleepy state, to think of clearing her desk? Getting herself downstairs without breaking her neck was as much as she could manage. And what for? No one could blame her, surely, for failing to guess it was to pledge eternal fidelity to a man …

Still, she’ll have to be more careful in future: her papers can’t be in the open like this, for him to sniff at. What’s uppermost on her desk just now? She tries to picture it as she lifts her gown, to give her man some air … Could it be that horrid little pamphlet concerning … oh Lord, yes! She blenches at the thought of what, if she hadn’t led him away, he might have stuck his nose into.