The Crimson Petal and the White (50 page)

‘How long is it since your last confession?’

Agnes’s heart thuds against her breast (which, in her mind’s eye, has become bosomless) as these words pass through the grille; it thuds not because she’s alarmed by the question or by the answer she’ll have to give, but rather because she hopes so fervently that the voice is the same one that reproved and absolved her all those years before. Is it? Is it? She can’t tell from eight short words.

‘Thirteen years, Father,’ she whispers. Sensational admission!

‘Why so long, child?’ Her ear is almost touching the screen, and still she can’t tell for sure if she knows the voice.

‘I was very young, Father,’ she explains, her lips almost brushing against the lattice, ‘and my father … I mean, not
you
, Father … and not my
Heavenly
Father … and not my—’

‘Yes, yes,’ the voice hurries her along testily, and with that, Agnes knows beyond any doubt that it’s
he
! Father Scanlon himself!

‘My
step
-father made us Anglicans,’ she sums up excitedly.

‘And your step-father is now dead?’ surmises Father Scanlon.

‘No, Father, he’s abroad. But I’m grown up now, and old enough to know my mind.’

‘Very well, child. Do you remember how to confess?’

‘Oh
yes
, Father,’ exclaims Agnes, disappointed that the priest doesn’t share her view of the intervening years as mere blinks of an eye. She almost (to show him what’s what) launches into the
Confiteor
in Latin, for she rote-learnt it once, but she bites her tongue and plumps for English.

‘I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech blessed Mary, ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy’ (here Father Scanlon coughs and sniffs) ‘Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and you, Father, to pray to the Lord God for me.’

A tuneless hum from the other side of the screen invites her to confess. Agnes has come prepared for this moment and removes from her new reticule a leaf of writing-paper onto which she has the previous evening noted all her sins, in order of their appearance in her diaries for the last thirteen years. She clears her throat delicately.

‘These are my sins. On the 12th of June, 1862, I gave away a ring that had been given to me by a friend. On the 21st of June of that same year, I told that friend, when she questioned me, that I still had the ring. On the third of October, 1869, at a time when all our roses had a blight, I stole a perfect rose from a neighbour’s garden and, later that day, I threw it away, lest someone ask me where I got it. On the 25th of January, 1873, I purposely stepped on an insect that meant me no harm. On the 14th of June 1875 – last week, in fact – while suffering a headache, I spoke harshly to a policeman, saying he was no use at all, and ought to be dismissed.’

‘Yes?’ the priest prompts her, just as he used to when she was a child.

‘That’s all, Father,’ she assures him.

‘All the sins you’ve committed in thirteen years?’

‘Why, yes, Father.’

The priest sighs and shifts audibly in his chair.

‘Come, child,’ he says. ‘There must be more.’

‘If there are, Father, I do not know of them.’

Again the priest sighs, louder this time. ‘Indiscretions?’ he suggests. ‘The sin of pride?’

‘I may have missed a few incidents,’ concedes Agnes. ‘Sometimes I’ve been too sleepy or unwell to keep my diary as I should.’

‘Very well then …’ mutters the priest. ‘Restitution, restitution … There’s very little you can do after such a lapse of time. If you still have the friend whose ring you gave away, tell her you did so and ask her forgiveness. As for the flower …’ (he groans) ‘forget about the flower. As for the insect, you’re free to step on as many as you please; they’re under your dominion, as the Bible makes clear. If you can find the policeman you insulted, apologise. Now: penance. For the lie and the harsh words, say three
Hail Marys
. And do try to examine your soul more deeply. Very few of us live through thirteen years committing nary a sin.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ whispers Agnes, folding the leaf of paper tightly in her palm, leaning forward for her absolution.

‘
Dominus noster Iesus Christus te absolvat
,’ mumbles the old voice, ‘
et ego
auctoritate ipsius te absolvo
…’ Tears seep out of Agnes’s closed eyelids and trickle one after the other down her cheeks. ‘…
ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis
,
in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen
.’

Agnes Rackham glides out of the confessional lighter than air, and hurriedly takes a seat in the back pews. For her illicit visit here this afternoon she has worn a veil and a plain charcoal-grey dress: a very different outfit from those she’s been showing off at Seasonal Occasions to be sure, but then here in Saint Teresa’s, Cricklewood, her attitude to being recognised is very different too. The back pews, far removed from the regular congregation, far from the altar and the candelabras, are so dark that when Agnes squeezes between them she almost trips on a prayer cushion not replaced in its pouch. Far above her head, the ceiling has been freshly painted sky-blue, and dotted with golden stars whose light is illusory.

Now Agnes sits contented in the gloom, her face in the shadow of an overhanging cornice. The service is about to begin; Father Scanlon has emerged from the back of the confessional and walks towards the pulpit. He lifts the purple stole off his shoulders and hands it to one of the altar-boys in exchange for a different one. He’s hardly changed at all! His most important feature – the wart on his brow – is as large as ever.

Enchanted, she watches the preparations for Mass, wishing she could participate, knowing she can’t. The fact that she knows no one in the congregation is no guarantee that no one knows her (she’s the wife of William Rackham,
the
William Rackham, after all), and she can’t afford to provoke gossip.
The
time isn’t ripe for the World to learn of her return to the True Faith.

‘
Introibo ad altare Dei
,’ announces Father Scanlon, and the ritual begins. Agnes looks on from the shadows, mouthing along with the Latin. In spirit she projects herself into the candle-lit centre of attention; when the priest bows down to kiss the altar, she inclines her own head; his every signing of the Cross she duplicates over her own breast; her mouth waters at the touch of imaginary bread and wine; her wet lips part to let God in.

‘
Dominus vobiscum
,’ she whispers, in rapturous unison with Father Scanlon. ‘
Et cum spirito tuo
.’

Afterwards, when the church is empty, Agnes ventures out into the light, in order to be alone with the religious bric-a-brac of her childhood. She dawdles past the seats where she and her mother sat, which, although different people sat in them today, are still identifiable by nicks and blemishes in the wood. All the fixtures are just as they were, except for a new mosaic in the apse depicting Mary’s heavenly coronation that’s far too bright and gets Her nose wrong. The plaque of the Assumption behind the altar is reassuringly unchanged, with Our Lady floating away from the pudgy, clutching hands of the hideous cherubs swarming around Her feet.

Agnes wonders how long it will be before she’s bold enough to snub Anglicanism publicly and reserve a private seat for herself here, in the light near the altar. Not very long, she hopes. Only, she doesn’t know whom to ask, and how much it would cost, and whether it’s paid for weekly or yearly. That’s the sort of thing William would be good for, if she could only trust him.

First things first, though: she must do something to reduce the number of days her mother languishes in Purgatory. Has anyone else pleaded for Violet Unwin since her death? Probably not. On the evidence of her funeral, attended only by Lord Unwin’s Anglican cronies, she had no Catholic friends left.

Agnes has always assumed her mother will be in Purgatory a very long time, as punishment for marrying Lord Unwin in the first place, and then for allowing him to rob her and Agnes of their religion. Strong interventions are needed.

Opening her new purse under the light of the altar’s candelabra, she removes, from amongst the face-powder shells, smelling salts and buttonhooks, a much creased and tarnished Prayer card, on one side of which is printed an engraving of Jesus, and on the other an indulgenced prayer, guaranteed to shave days, weeks or even months off the sentence. Agnes reads the instructions. The requirement that she should just have received communion God will probably waive in the circumstances; in all other respects she’s eligible: she’s made Confession, she’s standing before a crucifix, and she knows by heart the words of the
Our Father, Hail Mary
and
Glory be to the Father for the Pope
. She recites these, slowly and distinctly, and then reads the prayer on the card.

‘… They have pierced my hands and feet,’ she concludes. ‘They have numbered all my bones.’ Closing her eyes, she waits for the tingling in her palms and soles which always accompanied the reading of this prayer when, as a child, she used it to plead for dimly remembered aunts and favourite historical figures.

To fix an extra wing on her prayer, she walks over to the nave where the votive candles sit, and lights one. The hundred-holed brass tray looks just as it should; the very gobs of melted wax around the holes seem not to have been scraped off since she stood here last.

Agnes next stands under the pulpit, which she never dared do as a child, for the top of it is carved in the shape of a massive eagle, with the Bible resting across its back and spread wings, and its head pointing straight down at the onlooker. Fearlessly, or very nearly fearlessly, Agnes stares up into the bird’s dull wooden eyes.

Just then the church bell begins to toll, and Agnes must stare into the eagle’s eyes all the harder, for it’s at just such a signal that magical creatures come to life.
Cling, Cling, Cling
, goes the bell, but the carved bird doesn’t stir, and when the tolling stops, Agnes looks away.

She’d like to visit the crucified Christ behind the pulpit, to verify her recollection that it was the
middle
finger on His left hand that was broken and glued back in place, but she knows time is getting on, and she must go home. William may be wondering what’s become of her.

As she walks up the far aisle, she reacquaints herself with the sequence of paintings of Christ’s journey to Golgotha hanging high upon the walls. Only, she’s passing under them in reverse order, from the Deposition to the Judgement Before Pilate. These dismal images, too, have remained unchanged for thirteen years, retaining all their varnished menace. As a child, she was afraid of these scenes of suffering set against grim, storm-laden skies: she used to shut her eyes against the glistening mark of the birch-whip on the ghastly grey skin, the slender trickles of dark blood from the thorn-pricked forehead, and most especially, the nailing of Christ’s right hand. In those days, she only needed to glimpse, by accident, the mallet in mid-swing, for her own hand to spasm into a fist, and she’d have to wrap it protectively in a fold of her skirts.

Today she sees the paintings very differently, for she’s since suffered many tortures of her own, and knows there are worse things than an agonising death. Moreover, she understands what she was never able to understand as a child: namely,
why
, if Jesus was magic, did He let Himself be murdered? Now she envies the haloed martyr, for He was a creature, like Psycho and the Mussulman mystics in the Spiritualist books, who could be killed and then return to life intact. (In Christ’s case, not
quite
intact, she has to admit, as He had those holes in His feet and hands, but then that would be less of a misfortune for a man than a woman.)

She pauses in the doorway to the vestibule and briefly contemplates, before leaving, the face of Jesus as Pilate condemns him. Yes, there’s no mistaking it: the serene, almost smug equanimity of one who knows: ‘I cannot be destroyed.’ It’s exactly the same expression as is on the face of the African chieftain on the burning pyre (– engraving made by an eyewitness, or so the author of
Miracles and Their Mechanisms
, currently under her bed, assures her.) So many people in history have survived death, and here’s she, for all her devoted study into the matter, still excluded from that elite! Why? She’s not asking for fame – she’s not the son of God, after all – no one need even know she’s done it, she’d be ever so discreet!

But she mustn’t spoil this wonderful day with sorry thoughts. Not when she’s had absolution, and mouthed Latin in unison with her childhood priest. She hurries out of the church, looking neither right nor left, resisting the temptation to linger amongst the displays of religious merchandise and compare, as she used to, one painted miniature with another, trying to decide which was the very best Lamb, the very best Virgin, the very best Christ, and so on. She must return to Notting Hill, and have a little rest.

Outside, darkness has fallen. For a moment, she’s in a quandary how she’ll get home: then she remembers. William’s marvellous gift: her very own brougham. She still can’t
quite
believe she owns it, but there it stands, waiting outside the stonemason’s workshop opposite the church. Its dark-brown horses turn their blinkered heads placidly at her approach, and in the driver’s seat, wreathed in smoke from his pipe, sits …

‘Cheesman?’ she calls, but softly, almost to herself, for she’s still experimenting with her ownership of him.

‘Cheesman!’ she calls again, this time loud enough for him to hear. ‘Back to the house, please.’

‘Very well, Mrs Rackham’ is his reply, and within moments she’s snug inside the coach, rubbing her shoulders shyly against its upholstery as the horses jerk into motion. What a fine brougham it is! It’s grander than Mrs Bridgelow’s, and hers cost
£
180, according to William. A major expenditure, then, but well worth it – and not before time, either, because there isn’t much of the Season left.