The Crimson Petal and the White (28 page)

Agnes, too, has drifted off. One tiny, upturned hand slips off the pillow and glides towards the edge of the bed. Then, one of William’s hands, in sleep, begins to move towards the edge of
his
bed, in Agnes’s direction. Soon their hands are in perfect alignment, so that, if this really were a doll’s house, we could imagine removing not only the roof, but some of the internal walls as well, and sliding the two bedrooms into each other, joining the couple’s hands like the clasp of a necklace.

But then William Rackham begins to dream, and flips over onto his other side.

TEN

A
gnes Rackham’s bedroom, whose windows are never opened and whose door is always closed, fills up every night with her breath. One by one, her exhalations trickle off her pillow onto the floor; then, breath by breath, they rise, piling on top of each other like invisible feathers, until they’re nestling against the ceiling, growing denser by the hour.

It’s morning now, and you can scarcely believe you are in a bedroom: it feels more like the world’s smallest factory, which has been working all night for no purpose but to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide. You turn instinctively to the curtains; they’re drawn, and as motionless as sculpture. A skewer-thin shaft of sunlight penetrates the dimness, through a slit in the velvet. It falls on Agnes’s diary, open at yesterday’s page, and illuminates a single line of her handwriting.

Really must get out more
, she exhorts herself, in tiny indigo letters you must squint to read.

You glance over to the bed, where you expect to see her body still huddled under the eiderdown. She is gone.

Agnes Rackham has a new routine. Every morning, if she can possibly manage it, she takes a walk in the street outside her house, alone. She is going to get well if it kills her.

The Season is drawing nigh, and there’s frighteningly little time left to regain certain essential skills – like being able to walk, unsupported, further distances than are found inside her own home. Participating in Society is not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it. Half a dozen circuits of a ballroom, if added end to end, could stretch to a mile.

So, Agnes is taking walks. And, surprisingly, Doctor Curlew has judged her decision a good one, as he says she’s deficient in corpuscles. Unopposed, then, several mornings a week, she is escorted to the front gate by Clara, whereafter, parasol in hand, she totters out onto the footpath all by herself, listening anxiously for hoof-beats on the deserted cobbled street.

The mongrel dog which has made its camp at the Rackham front gate is there to meet her almost every time, but Agnes doesn’t fear him. He’s never given her any cause to, never once barked at her. Whenever she shuffles by, braced against the
ferocious
breezes that flap her skirts and pull her parasol askew, the dog reassures her, with lashings of his tail or a benevolent yawn, that he’s friendly. He reminds her of an outsized Sunday roast, so roly-poly in his dark brown flesh, and his eyes are more benign than those of anyone she knows. Admittedly, she once almost soiled her boots on his droppings; she was disgusted with him then, but didn’t let her disdain show, in case it hurt his feelings – or provoked him to viciousness. Another time, she saw him licking at a part of him that was red as a flayed finger, but she didn’t recognise the organ, taking it to be an appendage peculiar to dogs, a sort of fin or spine, which in this dog’s case had become painfully inflamed. She swept by him with an awkward smile of pity.

As for creatures of the human variety, Agnes meets very few. Notting Hill, though not nearly as quiet as it used to be, is by the same token not yet part of the metropolis. If one chooses one’s streets with care, one can concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without the additional challenge of meeting other pedestrians. Kensington Park Road is the busiest, for it’s along this thoroughfare that the omnibus goes. She avoids it if she can.

Every morning, she walks a little farther. Every day, she gets a little stronger. Five new dresses are finished, with a sixth on the way. The garden looks awfully nice, thanks to Shears. And William is in
such
a good mood all the time, although (she can’t help noticing) he does look quite a lot older all of a sudden, what with the beard and the moustache.

They haven’t breakfasted together since her last collapse, but they’ve fallen into the habit of seeing each other at luncheon. It’s altogether safer, Agnes feels. And the morning walk gives her a healthy appetite, so she doesn’t risk the embarrassment of toying with a half-eaten morsel while William wolfs his portion and asks her if she is all right.

Today, they both eat with equal relish. Cook has outdone herself with an extraordinary galantine made of pork loin layered with ham, cooked tongue, mushrooms and sausage. It’s a most elegant looking thing, and so delicious they have to call Letty back to the table twice, to cut more slices.

‘I wonder what
this
is,’ murmurs William, winkling an object out of the aspic.

‘It’s a fragment of pistachio kernel, dear,’ Agnes informs him, proud to know something he doesn’t.

‘Fancy that,’ he says, startling her by holding the glistening smithereen under his nose and giving it a good sniff. He’s sniffing everything lately: new plants in the garden, wallpaper paste, paint, napkins, notepaper, his own fingers, even plain water. ‘My nose must become my most sensitive organ, dear,’ he’ll tell her, before launching into an explanation of the almost imperceptible but (in the perfume business) crucial difference between one flower petal and another. Agnes is pleased he’s so determined to master the subtleties of his profession, especially since it has made them suddenly so much more comfortably off, but she hopes he’ll not be sniffing everything during the Season, when they’re in mixed company.

‘Oh, did I tell you?’ William tells her. ‘I’m going to see The Great Flatelli this evening.’

‘Something to do with perfume, dear?’

He smirks. ‘You might say that.’ Then, digging into his plum suet pudding, he sets her straight. ‘No, dear. He’s a performer.’

‘Anyone I should know about?’

‘I very much doubt it. He’s on at the Lumley Music Hall.’

‘Oh, well then.’

There should be no need to say more, but Agnes is nagged by her awareness of being out of touch. After a minute she adds: ‘The Lumley
is
still the Lumley, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean, dear?’

‘I mean, it hasn’t been … elevated in any way?’

‘Elevated?’

‘Brought higher … Become more fashionable …’ The word ‘class’ eludes her.

‘I should think not. I expect I’ll be surrounded by men in cloth caps and women with teeth missing.’

‘Well, if that appeals to you …’ she says, making a face. The suet pudding is too rich for her, and she’s starting to feel bilious after all the galantine, but a small slice of the luncheon cake is irresistible.

‘Man cannot live on high culture alone,’ quips William.

Agnes chews her cake. It, too, is richer than she expected, and she’s nagged by the suspicion that there’s something she should know.

‘If you …’ she hesitates. ‘If you
see
anyone there … at the Lumley … I mean anyone important, that I’m likely to meet in the Season … Do tell me, won’t you?’

‘Of course, dear.’ He lifts a slice of the luncheon cake to his nose and sniffs. ‘Currants, raisins, orange peel, steeped in sherry. Almonds. Nutmeg. Caraway … Vanilla.’ He grins, as if expecting applause.

Agnes smiles wanly.

Less than half a mile to the west of the Rackham house, Mrs Emmeline Fox, dressed for going out but still in her kitchen, is coughing into a handkerchief. The weather doesn’t agree with her today; there’s something oppressive in the atmosphere that’s giving her a headache and a tight chest. She’ll have to make sure she’s rallied by tomorrow, though, or she’ll miss the rounds with the Rescue Society.

She considers nipping over to her father’s house and asking him for a draught of medicine, but decides this would only worry him. Besides, who knows what emergencies he might need to attend to with his satchel of drugs and implements? For Emmeline’s father is Doctor James Curlew, and he’s a busy man.

Instead, she swallows a spoonful of liver salts followed by a sip of hot cocoa to take the taste away. The cocoa has the additional effect of warming her up, not just her cold hands as they cradle the cup, nor even her sensitive stomach hidden away in her belly, but the whole of her body. In fact, all of a sudden, she’s
too
warm: her forehead prickles with sweat and her arms feel stifled inside her tight sleeves. Hastily, she passes through the kitchen door and into the garden.

Her house is bigger than Henry’s, and her garden more substantial, though rather overgrown since its heyday when her husband pottered about in it. He had a taste for the bizarre, did Bertram, always trying to grow exotic vegetables for the table, which he’d give to the cook they had in those days. There are scorzonera growing here yet, half-hidden by weeds, and some strangled roots of salsify. Father sends his gardener round from time to time, to slash the worst of it away and expose the paving for Emmeline to walk on, but the weeds are busy all summer and merely lie waiting in winter. They’re coming to life again now, lush green, while the great coffin-shaped enclosure in which Bertie grew those monstrous man-sized celeries (what were they called – cardoons?) is dense with dull exhausted earth.

Always indifferent, was Bertie, to anything that endures, fascinated instead by the ephemeral and the spectacular. A good man, though. The house they shared is too big for her alone, but she stays on for his sake – for the sake of his memory. He did so little that was memorable, and never spoke his profounder thoughts (if indeed he had any); the best way of recalling the marriage is to remain in his house.

Now she stands in the garden, her hands still cradling her cup of cocoa, her feverish brow cooled by the breeze. She’ll be better very shortly. She is not ill. She ought to have opened the windows last night, to air the house after the unseasonal warmth of the day before. This headache is her own fault.

She drinks the rest of the cocoa. Already, it’s perking her up, giving her a feeling of heightened alertness. What makes it do that? It must have a secret ingredient, she reckons, that adds to her sluggish blood a squirt of analeptic or even a stimulant. In her own small way, she’s scarcely better than the dope fiends she sees in the course of her work with the Rescue Society – the addled morphine slaves, who can keep their attention on the words of Christ for no longer than two minutes before their pink eyes start rolling sideways. She smiles, tilting her head back in the breeze, pressing the rim of the cup against her chin. Emmeline Fox: cocoa fiend. She can imagine herself on the cover of a tuppenny dreadful, a masked villain dressed in men’s trousers and a cape, evading police by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, her superhuman strength deriving entirely from the evil cacao seed. The earthbound constables stretch their stubby arms impotently towards her, open-mouthed in their rage and frustration. Only God can bring her down.

She opens her eyes, shivers. The sweat in her armpits has turned cold; there’s a damp chill on her spine. Her windpipe itches, tempting her to cough, cough, cough. She refuses; she knows where that leads.

Back inside the house, she rinses out the milk-pan, wipes the stove-top, puts away the cocoa things. Few women of her acquaintance would have the faintest idea how to perform such tasks, even assuming they were forced at knife-point to attempt them; Mrs Fox performs them without thinking. Her maid-of-all-work, Sarah, doesn’t live with her and won’t be back till tomorrow, but Mrs Fox has a policy of helping the girl as much as she can. She and Sarah are, she feels, more like aunt and niece than mistress and servant.

Oh, Mrs Fox knows there is gossip about her, generated by ladies who judge her to be a disgrace to polite society, a
sansculotte
in disguise, a Jacobin with an ugly face. They would sweep her – or, preferably, have her swept – out of their sight if they could.

Such ill will from her sisters saddens Mrs Fox, but she makes no special effort to placate it nor to challenge it, for it is not in the households of fashionable ladies that she longs to be welcomed, but rather in the wretched homes of the poor.

In any case, all this
fuss
about a little work! In the future, she believes, all women will have some useful employment. The present system cannot endure; it goes against God and good sense. One cannot educate the lower classes, nourish them with better food and unpolluted water, improve their housing and their morals, and all the while expect them to continue aspiring to nothing but servitude. Nor can one fill newspapers with outrageous disclosures of human misery and expect no one to be outraged into action. If the same streets and rookeries are named daily, and if every detail of our brothers’ and sisters’ suffering is published, is it not inevitable that a growing army of Christians will roll their sleeves up and demand to render assistance? Even those ladies and gentlemen untroubled by conscience will, Mrs Fox is convinced, find their supply of servants drying up soon enough, and all but the wealthiest of them will then have to acquaint themselves with such exotic objects as mops and dishcloths.

By next century, predicts Mrs Fox, buttering a slice of bread, women like me will no longer be regarded as freaks. England will be
full
of ladies who labour for a fairer society, and who keep no servants under their roof at all. (Her own maid, Sarah, lives with an ailing grandfather, and comes in every other day to do the heavy work, for a fair wage which saves her from slipping back into prostitution. She’s worth her weight in gold, is Sarah, but even such as she will disappear in time, as prostitution is eradicated.)

Emmeline wonders if a short walk would be good for her chest. She has a bag full of woollen gloves and another full of socks to deliver to Mrs Lavers, who’s organising something next month for the destitute of Ireland. (
Fenian
! the gossips would no doubt say, or
Papist
!) The Lavers’ house is only a few minutes away, and she could carry a bag on each arm, providing they were of roughly equal weight.

All the rooms in Mrs Fox’s home except her own small bed-chamber are cluttered with boxes, bags, books and parcels. Indeed her house is the unofficial warehouse of the Rescue Society, and of several other charities besides. Emmeline ascends the stairs, pokes her nose into what used to be the master bedroom, and confirms that what she’s looking for isn’t in there. On the landing, rather precariously balanced, is a stack of New Testaments translated into … into … She cannot recall the language just at the moment; a man from the Bible Dissemination Society is coming back for them shortly.