The Crimson Petal and the White (60 page)

Contrary to her custom, Agnes has announced she’ll join the brothers for dinner. A disquieting prospect? Not at all, William tells himself: Agnes has always had a soft spot for Henry, and she’s in a delightful mood this evening, giggling and singing as she supervises the hanging of the winter curtains.

‘I know it’s a tall order in the circumstances, but let’s not mention Mrs Fox, shall we?’ he suggests, as the minutes tick towards Henry’s expected arrival.

‘I’ll pretend the Season’s still in full swing, dear,’ Agnes winks at him, almost coquettishly, ‘and say absolutely nothing about
anything
.’

Only a little late, Henry makes his flustered appearance, and has no sooner been divested of his rain-spattered hat and coat than William claps a fraternal arm around his shoulders and leads him straight to the dining-room. There, Henry is confronted with a vision of Elysian abundance: warmth, illumination, roses everywhere, napkins splayed like peacocks’ tails, and a pretty new maid lowering a tureen of golden soup onto the table. Already seated, smiling up at him through a gaudy halo of flowers and silver cutlery, is Mrs Rackham, dressed in colours of peach and cream.

‘My apologies,’ says Henry. ‘I was … ah …’

‘Sit down, Henry, sit
down
,’ William gestures magnanimously. ‘We’re not clock-watchers here.’

‘I almost didn’t come,’ says Henry, blinking in the effulgence.

‘Then we’re all the gladder that you did,’ beams Agnes.

It’s not until Henry has been seated in front of the filled wine-glass, gleaming plates, snow-white serviettes, and candelabrum, all of which combine to cast a bright light on his face, that William realises how shabby his brother looks. Henry’s hair, urgently in need of barbering, is tucked behind his ears, except for one lock that swings to and fro across his sweaty brow. Neither soap nor oil seem to have been applied for some time. William next takes stock of Henry’s clothes, which have a rumpled, baggy look about them, as though he’s been crawling around like Nebuchadnezzar, or become a great deal thinner, or both. One of the pins on his shirt-collar, made visible by a skew-whiff cravat, glints irritatingly in the candle-light, making William want to reach over and adjust it. Instead, the dinner begins.

Henry spoons the duckling consommé into his mouth without so much as looking at it, preferring to stare, with bloodshot eyes, into an invisible mirror of torment hanging somewhere to the left of William’s shoulder.

‘I shouldn’t be eating, gorging myself like this,’ he remarks, to no one in particular, as he spoons on like an automaton. ‘There are folk in Scotland subsisting on seaweed.’

‘Oh, but there’s really no fat in this soup at all,’ Agnes assures him. ‘It’s ever so well strained.’ An awkward silence threatens to ensue, punctured only by the sound of Henry slurping.
Is this
, thinks Agnes,
the real
reason why he wasn’t invited anywhere during the Season?
‘As for seaweed,’ she continues, struck by inspiration, ‘we were served some, weren’t we William, at Mrs Alderton’s, in a sauce? With scallops and swordfish. Most peculiar taste, the nibble I had. I was so glad it was served
à la Russe
, or I’d’ve had to slip a plateful of it under the table.’

William frowns, suddenly recalling his embarrassment at Mrs Cuthbert’s dinner party two years ago, when that lady’s dog threw itself under the white damask tablecloth, very near Agnes’s place, and began golloping loudly.

‘Society is closed to me,’ Henry declares lugubriously, as his soup bowl is spirited away by a servant. ‘I don’t mean balls and dinner parties, I mean
Society – our
society – the community of souls we’re all supposed to be a part of. There is nothing I can do for anyone, no part for me to play.’

‘Oh dear,’ says Agnes, regarding her brother-in-law with wide sympathetic eyes as the main course is carried into the room. ‘But weren’t you hoping to become a clergyman?’

‘Hoping!’ cries Henry, in a scathing tone devoid of hope.

‘You’d be awfully good at it, I’m sure,’ Agnes persists.

Henry’s jaw sets rigid, just in time for a sizzling thigh of braised grouse to be forked onto his plate.

‘Better than that tiresome Doctor Crane,’ Agnes adds. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why I bother nowadays. He’s always warning me against things I haven’t the least notion of doing …’

And so the evening goes on, forkful by forkful, with Agnes shouldering the greatest burden of conversation (fortified by frequent sips of red wine), while William gazes in growing dismay at the pathetic figure his brother has become.

Over and over, Henry alludes – when he can bestir himself to speak at all – to the gross futility of all endeavour, at least where his own worthless person is concerned. His voice is erratic, dropping to a mumble at times, then swelling with bitter vehemence, or even sarcasm – shockingly unlike him. All the while, his big hands are busy cutting the grouse into smaller and smaller pieces which, to William’s annoyance, he then mashes into the vegetables and leaves uneaten.

‘You are kinder than I deserve,’ he sighs, in response to yet more warm encouragement from his hostess. ‘You and … and Mrs Fox see me in a very different light from what I know to be true …’

Agnes shoots a glance at William, her bright eyes pleading permission to mention the forbidden woman. He writes restraint over and over on his wrinkled brow, but she’s unable to read the lines, and immediately exclaims: ‘Mrs Fox is quite right, Henry: quite right! You’re a man of rare sincerity, in matters of faith: I know it! I’ve a special intuition about these things; I can see an aura around people’s heads – no, don’t frown at me, William. It’s true! Faith shines out of people like … like the haze around a gas-lamp. No, William, it’s
true
.’ She leans across the table towards Henry, her bosom almost touching her uneaten food, her face disconcertingly close to a flaming candelabrum, and engages him mock-conspiratorially.
‘Look
at your brother over there, shushing me furiously. He hasn’t a God-fearing bone in his—’ She stops short, and smiles demurely. ‘But honestly, Henry, you mustn’t think so ill of yourself. You’re more devout than anybody I know.’

Henry squirms in embarrassment. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘I’m sure your food is getting cold.’

Agnes ignores this; she’s in her own home and can eat as little as she pleases – which is very little indeed. ‘Once upon a time,’ she pursues, ‘William told me a story. He said that when you were a boy, you heard a sermon which insisted that nowadays, in modern times, God speaks only through the Scriptures, not directly into our ears. William said you were so angry about this sermon that you starved yourself, and denied yourself sleep, just like the prophets of old, only to hear God speak!’ She clasps her tiny hands, and smiles, and nods, thus wordlessly letting him know that she has done the same, and felt, as reward, the breath of the divine whisper on the back of her neck.

Henry fixes his brother with a glare of anguish.

‘We are all of us foolish when we’re young,’ offers William, perspiring freely, and wishing something or someone would breeze into the room and cause half of these damn candles to expire at once. ‘I myself recall saying, when I was a lad, that only men without an ounce of imagination or feeling could possibly become businessmen …’

This manful confession fails to impress Agnes, who has pushed her plates out of her way, and now leans on the tablecloth, the better to continue her heart-to-heart with Henry.

‘I like you, Henry,’ she says, slurring the words ever-so-slightly. ‘I’ve always liked you. You should have been a Catholic. Have you ever considered becoming a Catholic, Henry?’

Mortified, Henry can do nothing but churn his fruit mousse into a browny-yellow porridge with his spoon.

‘A change is as good as a holiday,’ Agnes assures him, taking another sip of wine. ‘Or even better. I had a holiday not long ago, and I wasn’t happy at all …’

At this, William grunts in disapproval and, deciding that intervention can be postponed no longer, reaches across the table to shift aside the candelabrum that separates him from his wife.

‘Perhaps you’ve had enough wine, dear?’ he suggests, in a firm voice.

‘Not at all,’ says Agnes, half-fractious, half-winsome. ‘That salty grouse has made me thirsty.’ And she pecks another sip from the edge of her glass, kissing the red liquid with her rosebud lips.

‘We have water on the table, dear, in that decanter,’ William reminds her.

‘Thank you dear …’ she says, but she never wavers from staring at Henry, smiling and nodding as if to say,
Yes, yes, it’s all right, I understand
everything, you needn’t hold back with me
.

‘I hear, on the grapevine,’ remarks William rather desperately, ‘that Doctor Crane is considering buying the house that was formerly lived in by … ah … what
was
their name?’

Agnes chimes in, not with the missing name, but with another defamation of the minister.

‘I do hate to go to church and be scolded, don’t you?’ she asks Henry, pouting. ‘What is one a grown-up for, with all its nasty disenchantments, if not to make up one’s own mind?’

And so it goes on, for another five or ten long, long minutes, while mute servants clear away the dishes, leaving only the wine and the three ill-matched Rackhams. Finally Agnes flags, her head slumping down towards the crook of her elbow, her cheek almost brushing the fabric of her sleeve. The progress of her brow towards her forearm is slow but sure.

‘Are you falling asleep, my dear?’ says William.

‘Resting my eyes,’ she murmurs.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to rest them on a pillow?’

He makes the suggestion with not much hope that the words will reach her; or, if they do, he’s half-expecting a peevish rebuff. Instead, she slowly turns her face up to him, her china-blue eyes fluttering closed, and says, ‘Ye-e-es … I’d like that …’

Nonplussed, William pushes his chair back from the table and folds his napkin in his lap.

‘Shall I … shall I ring for Clara to accompany you?’

Agnes abruptly shores herself up in her seat, blinks once or twice, and bestows upon William a smile of perfect condescension.

‘I don’t need Clara to put me to bed, silly,’ she ribs him, rising unsteadily to her feet. ‘What’s she to do, carry me up the stairs?’ Whereupon, pausing only to say goodnight to her guest, Mrs Rackham steps gracefully back from the table, turns on her heel and, with scarcely a sway, pads out of the room.

‘Well, I’ll be damned …’ mutters William, too flabbergasted to bite his tongue on the blasphemy. In the event, his pious brother seems not to have noticed.

‘She is dying, Bill,’ Henry says, staring hard into space.

‘What?’ says William, rather taken aback by this suggestion. ‘She’s a touch the worse for drink, that’s all …’

‘Mrs
Fox
,’ says Henry, summoning up, from the depths of his torment, a voice such as might be expected from him in a public debate. ‘She’s dying. Dying. The life is bleeding out of her, each day, before my very eyes … And soon – next week, tomorrow, the day
after
tomorrow, for we cannot know the day or hour, can we? – I shall knock at her father’s door, and a servant will tell me she’s dead.’ Each word is spoken with sour clarity, each word is like a pinch of the fingers extinguishing a feeble flame of hope.

‘Steady on, steady on,’ sighs William, feeling suddenly exhausted now that Agnes has removed herself from the fray.

‘Yes, death will come like a thief in the night, won’t he?’ Henry sneers, continuing his debate with an invisible apologist. ‘That’s how Scripture tells us Christ will come, isn’t it?’ He seizes his wine-glass and downs the contents at a gulp, grimacing scornfully. ‘Tales to excite little boys and girls. Trinkets and lolly-water …’

William strives, with all his fast-dwindling forbearance, to keep an outburst of exasperation in check.

‘You speak as if the poor woman’s in the grave already: she’s not dead yet!’ he says. ‘And while she lives, she’s a human being, with needs and wishes that may yet be fulfilled.’

‘There’s nothing—’

‘For pity’s sake, Henry! Stop reciting this same verse over and over! We are talking of a woman who’s … preparing to say farewell to this earthly life, and you have been her dearest friend. Are you telling me there’s nothing you could do that would make the slightest difference to her feelings?’

This, at last, seems to penetrate Henry’s black shell of grief.

‘She … she stares into my soul, Bill,’ he whispers, haunted by the memory. ‘Her eyes … Her imploring eyes … What does she want from me? What does she want?’

‘God almighty!’ explodes William, able to endure it no longer. ‘How can you be so stupid? She wants a fucking!’ He rears up from his chair and shoves his face close to Henry’s. ‘Take her to bed, you fool: she’s waiting for you! Marry her tomorrow! Marry her
tonight,
if you can wake a clergyman!’ With every second, his excitement increases, inflamed by his brother’s look of righteous outrage. ‘You miserable prig! Don’t you know that fucking is a pleasure, and women feel it too? Your Mrs Fox can’t fail to have noticed
that
in her labours for the Rescue Society. Why not let her feel that pleasure just once herself, before she dies!’

With a crash of wine-glasses and a quiver of candle-flames Henry jumps to his feet, his face white with fury, his huge fists clenched.

‘You will permit me to leave,’ he whispers fiercely.

‘Yes, leave!’ yells William, with an exaggerated gesture towards the door. ‘Go back to your shabby little house and dream that the world is nobler and purer than it really is. But Henry, you’re an ass and a hypocrite.’ (The words are gushing out of him now, released from years of self-restraint.) ‘The man hasn’t been born,’ he rails, ‘who isn’t wild to know what’s between a woman’s legs. All the Patriarchs and Ecclesiastics who sing the praises of chastity and abstinence: chasing cunt, the lot of ’em! And why not? Why indulge in self-abuse when there are women in the world to save us from it? I’ve had dozens,
hundreds
of whores; if I’ve a cock-stand, I need only snap my fingers, and within the hour I’m satisfied. And as for
you
, brother, looking as if you couldn’t tell a prostitute from a prayer-cushion:
don’t
think I don’t know what you get up to.
Oh
yes, your … your escapades, your so-called “conversations”, are the talk of whores all over London!’