The Crimson Petal and the White (57 page)

‘What shall I do about my friend Henry, Mr Seagull?’ she murmurs as he begins to peck the cake to pieces. ‘Or are you
Mrs
Seagull? Or Miss? I don’t suppose such distinctions matter much in your society, do they?’

She shuts her eyes and concentrates on not coughing. Stowed at the bottom of her basket, under Bodley and Ashwell’s book, is a crumpled handkerchief glutinous with blood – fragments of her lungs, her father would have her believe, though she’d always imagined lungs to be airy bellows, pale translucent balloons. No matter: the blood is real enough, and she can’t afford to lose any more of it.

Tickle by tickle, the temptation to cough ebbs away. But a more serious temptation is not so easily put behind her: her thoughts of Henry. How she wishes he were here by her side! How idyllic it would have been, if she could have whiled away the train journey conversing with him, rather than making small talk with Laura! And how much better it would be if, whenever she felt herself weakening at the knees, it were
he
rather than her father’s elderly servant who rushed to embrace her! His strong fingers would slot perfectly into the hollows between her ribs. He’d carry her in his arms if need be. He could lay her down gently on a bed as if she were his cat.

I desire him
.

There, it’s said, if not aloud. It doesn’t need to be said aloud: God hears. And her fleshly desire, while not condemned by God, is (as Saint Paul made perfectly clear in his letter to the Corinthians) nothing to be proud of. Nor does the fact that she and Henry aren’t about to commit any indecency mean there’s no cause for concern. Who’s to say that Matthew 5:28 doesn’t apply as much to the widowed as the married, and to females as much as males? In ancient Galilee, the womenfolk would doubtless have been burdened with housework and children, and scarcely at leisure to attend lectures by itinerant prophets; might it not have been the case, then, that from His vantage-point on the mount, Jesus saw only men?

‘Whosoever looketh on a woman in lust …’ If Jesus had seen any women in that crowd, He’d surely have added, ‘or on a man’. Which has serious implications for Emmeline, because if it’s possible to commit adultery in one’s heart, why not fornication as well? Bad Christians are wont to interpret Scripture to excuse their own shortcomings; good Christians ought to do the opposite, reading fearlessly between the lines to catch a glimpse of the admonishing frown of a loving but disappointed Almighty. She’s a fornicator, then, in her heart.

For yes, she desires Henry, and not just as a strong pair of hands to catch her when she swoons. She craves the weight of his body on hers; the press of his chest against her bosom; she longs to see him stripped of his dark carapace of clothes, and to discover the secret shape of his hips, first under her palms, then clasped between her legs. There, it’s said. The words, unvoiced, glow like miraculous writing on the walls of her heart – that little temple into which God is always looking. Her very soul should be a mirror in which God may see Himself reflected, but now … now He’s as likely to see the face of Henry Rackham instead. That adorable face …

Emmeline opens her eyes and sits up straighter, before she adds idolatry to her sins. The hunchbacked seagull glances up at her, wondering if she has designs on his succulent lump of grub. Satisfied, he resumes his feast.

There’s only one sure way to solve this problem, thinks Emmeline, and that’s to marry Henry. Fornication, imagined or otherwise, cannot exist between husband and wife. And yet, marrying Henry would be a wicked, selfish misuse of her dearest friend, for Henry doesn’t wish to marry: he’s said so many times. How much plainer can he make it that he desires nothing more from her than friendship?

‘The flesh is selfish,’ he told her once, during one of their post-sermon conversations, ‘while the spirit is generous. It frightens me to think how easily one can spend an entire lifetime gratifying animal appetites.’

‘Oh, I’m sure God won’t mind if you spend just a
few
more minutes walking with me in the sunshine,’ she replied, playfully, for he was in a grim mood that day, and she hoped to jolly him out of it.

‘How I despise my idleness!’ he lamented, deaf to her charms. ‘I’ve so little time left!’

‘Oh but really, Henry,’ she said. ‘What a thing for a man of thirty to say! You’ve a virtual eternity to achieve your ambitions!’

‘Eternity!’ he echoed mournfully. ‘What a grand word! I take it we aren’t Reincarnationists, believing ourselves to have as many lifetimes as we please.’

‘One lifetime is enough,’ she assured him. ‘Indeed, in the opinion of some of the wretched creatures I meet in the course of my work, one lifetime is intolerably long …’

But once Henry was started on this subject, he was loath to stop; the evils of procrastination inspired rhetoric in him worthy of the finest sermons, and boded extremely well for his future as a churchman.

‘Yes, time is experienced differently,’ he conceded, ‘by different people: but God’s own clock runs with fearsome precision. When we’re children, each minute of our lives is crammed full of achievement; we are born, learn to walk, and speak, and a thousand other things, in a few short years. But what we fail to grasp is that the challenges of maturity are of a different order from the challenges of infancy. Faced with the challenge of building a new church, we may feel just as we did when we built our first sand-castle, but ten years later the first stone may still not be laid.’ (How strange, thinks Emmeline, to be recollecting these words while she sits on a sandy beach, watching little boys build sand-castles!) ‘And so it is,’ Henry concluded, ‘with
all
our grand hopes, all our ambitions to achieve what this poor world is crying out for: decades flow by, while we trust in Eternity!’

‘Yes, but for goodness’ sake, Henry,’ she strove to remind him, ‘no single Christian can achieve everything. We can only do our best.’

‘Precisely!’ he cried. ‘And I see what’s
your
best, and what is mine, and I’m ashamed!’

Basking in the golden sun of Folkestone Sands, Emmeline smiles at the memory of Henry’s serious face on that afternoon; his dear face, contorted with the passion of idealism. How she would love to kiss that face, to stroke the wrinkles of earnestness from his brow, to pull him into the here-and-now with an embrace as strong as her enfeebled arms can muster …

But to return to the subject at hand: marriage.

If she and Henry
did
marry, why should their friendship suffer any change? Couldn’t it remain just as it is now, except that they’d live in the same house? (It would have to be
her
house, though, not his; they couldn’t both fit into his!) He could have the bedroom next to hers, if he wouldn’t mind clearing the mess out of it (When
is
Mrs Lavers going to come and collect those bags of donated clothes? And will those men from the African Bible Society ever return?) In her current state, having a man about the place would be rather practical – as well as delightful, if that man were Henry. He could bring the coal in, for a start, and help her with her correspondence. And, if she was dog-tired at bedtime, he could carry her up the stairs and, with the utmost gentleness, lay her …

She smiles ruefully at the sheer persistence of her ignoble cravings. This illness of hers, whatever it is, has failed to bring her any closer to God, despite all those pretty engravings she’s always seeing, of consumptive females lying in haloed beds with angels hovering overhead. Maybe it’s not consumption she’s got, but some sort of hysterical affliction? To put it bluntly, is she on the road to Bedlam? Instead of floating towards the ethereal portals of Heaven, she seems to be growing ever more gross, like an animal, coughing blood, sprouting pimples on her neck and shoulders, sweating profusely from every pore and, whenever she rouses from a daydream of Henry Rackham, finding herself in need of a good wash between the legs …

Disgraceful! And yet, she’s never been terribly good at feeling shame. Faced with a choice between self-flagellation and making amends, she’ll always choose the more constructive course. So … what
if
she and Henry were to cleave together as man and wife? Would that be such a terrible thing? If Henry’s fear is that his ministry would be derailed by fatherhood, well then, she’s barren, as the childlessness of her marriage to Bertie proved.

How, though, do marriages come to be proposed? What, exactly, is the procedure for crossing the line between courteous nod and nestling together in a warm bed, till death us do part? Poor old Bertie went down on his knee, but he’d been pursuing her since her schooldays. If marriage is the farthest thing from Henry’s mind,
he’
s not likely to propose it, is he, and
she
can’t very well propose it, can she? Not because it would offend convention (she’s so tired of convention!), but because it might offend Henry, and make him think less of her. To lose his respect would be a crueller blow than she could bear, at least in her frail condition just now.

‘Then I must wait,’ she says aloud. ‘Until I’m better.’

At the sound of her voice, the seagull runs off, leaving the last crumbs behind, and Emmeline allows her head to fall back against the grassy knoll, knocking her bonnet askew, so that the pins prick her scalp. All of a sudden her skin is crawling with irritation, and she tears the bonnet from her head. Then she settles back, crooning with relief at how snugly her bare, damp skull fits into the warm hollow behind it.

The decision she’s made about Henry spreads through her body like the effects of a medicine or a hearty meal, all the more satisfying because neither medicine nor food has had much effect on her lately. What a superb restorative firm resolve is! The weariness is already draining from her limbs into the sand beneath her.

The seagull, reassured that her squawk was an aberration, walks back and resumes pecking at the sandy cake. He lifts his head while jerking a crumb farther down into his gullet, as though nodding in agreement with her decision. Yes, she must wait until she’s better, and then … and then take her life into her hands, by offering it to Henry Rackham.

‘And will he say yes, Mr Seagull?’ she asks, but the seagull spreads its wings and, leaping up from a fluster of sand, flies off towards the sea.

In another part of Folkestone Sands, propped up against another rock, Agnes Rackham yelps in fright as a loudly clicking wooden bird crashes at her feet. She pulls her legs in, crushing the lady’s journal she’s been reading into her lap, and gathers her skirts tight around her.

Clara, who, unlike her mistress, has not been engrossed in the study of ‘The Season: Who Shone Brightest, When, and Where’, saw the projectile coming, and merely blinks when it hits the ground. Calmly, without fuss, as if to rub her mistress’s nose in her own nervous debility, she reaches over and picks up the bird by one of its plywood-and-paper wings.

‘It’s only a toy, ma’am,’ she says sweetly.

‘A toy?’ echoes Agnes in wonder as she uncoils.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ affirms Clara, holding aloft the bird, whose clicking wings have by now wound to a stop, for Agnes’s inspection. It’s a flimsy construction, with carelessly painted features, animated by a brass key and a tiny metal motor. ‘There’s a man selling them from a cart. We passed him on the way.’

Agnes turns to look in the direction Clara indicates, but sees only a small boy of six or seven, dressed in a blue cotton seaside suit and a straw boater, capering around the cliff ’s curve. He skids to a halt in front of the strange lady and the servant who holds his toy in her hands.

‘Please miss,’ he pipes. ‘That’s my flying bird.’

‘Well, then,’ scolds Clara, ‘you should take better care where you throw it.’

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ pleads the little boy, ‘but it won’t fly straight,’ and he nervously scratches at his left calf with his tightly-laced right shoe. The servant is glowering at him, so he prefers to look at the lady with the big blue eyes, who’s smiling.

‘Ach, poor lad,’ says Agnes. ‘Don’t fret; she won’t bite you.’ And she motions to Clara to hand her the toy.

Agnes is rather fond of children, actually, as long as they’re not babies, and as long as they are someone else’s, and as long as they’re administered in small doses. Small boys in particular can be charming.

‘Does it
really
fly?’ she asks this one.

‘Well …’ frowns the lad, reluctant to besmirch the bird’s reputation. ‘The man who sells ’em made
one
fly very well, and said they all could do the same, but I’ve one, and my brother has one too, and neither of them flies much. We throw ’em as high as we can, but as a rule they fall imme’atly to the ground. May I go now, ma’am? My Mama thought I should return directly.”

‘Very good, young sir,’ smiles Agnes. ‘Honestly spoken. Here is your toy.’

A child made happy: how simple it is! She sends the lad on his way with a benevolent wave, and no sooner has he gone than she turns to Clara and says,

‘Go and buy me one of those birds. And a sweetmeat for yourself, if you fancy.’

‘Yes ma’am, thank you ma’am,’ says the servant, and hurries off on her errand, the bustle of her navy-blue skirt shedding sand with every step.

Agnes waits until Clara’s out of sight, then reaches across to the book Clara has left lying on a blanket, curious as to what a servant might read. Ah: it’s a novel:
Jane Eyre
. Agnes has read this one herself, from Mudie’s, despite Doctor Curlew’s injunctions against it. To see this dog-eared volume in Clara’s possession gives Agnes a chill, for there’s something very wicked about a lady’s-maid savouring this horrid tale of a wife driven mad by illness and shut up in a tower by her husband while he attempts to marry another woman. With a twitch of her lips she replaces the book on the blanket.

As she straightens, the pain returns to her head, throbbing behind her left eye. How strange that this evil sensation has the gall to persist, when so many of Mrs Gooch’s pink pills have been sent to quash it! All the way from London in the train, she’s been swallowing them, while Clara sat dozing. Now she fondles her reticule, tempted to take a swig of laudanum from the little bottle that’s pretending to be lavender water. But no, she must save it for when she’s absolutely at her wits’ end.