The Crimson Petal and the White (65 page)

‘Unavoidable delay,’ he declares laconically.

After this, he doesn’t speak another word, preferring to supervise his coachman in the loading of luggage onto the roof of the brougham. Sugar, neither instructed to wait nor invited to leave, loiters in the hallway, as stiff as the coat-stand, while Cheesman lumbers in and out, a smirk on his face. Out of the corner of her eye, as she pulls on her tight black gloves, she can see him lifting one of her suitcases onto his broad shoulders, and fancies she can hear him sniffing for incriminating smells. If so, he sniffs in vain, for the rooms have a strangely sterile air.

When the loading is finished, William gestures for her to leave, and she follows him out into the street.

‘Mind your step, miss,’ advises the cheerful Cheesman as, moments later, she clambers into the Rackham carriage, assisted ever-so-fleetingly by his hands on her rear end. She turns to stare daggers at him, but he’s gone.

‘I’m so glad to see you,’ whispers Sugar to her rescuer, settling her rustling excess of black skirts on the seat opposite him.

For answer William lays one index finger against his lips, and raises his bushy eyebrows towards the spot above their heads where Cheesman is taking up the reins.

‘Save it,’ he cautions her softly, ‘till later.’

The great front door of the Rackham house opens a crack, then opens wider as the servant sees her master and the new governess. The hinges squeak, because this door was installed only last week: a massive showpiece of ornamental inlays and an elaborately carved ‘R’.

‘Letty,’ announces William Rackham augustly. ‘This is Miss Sugar.’

The servant curtsies – ‘How d’you do, miss’ – but receives no reply. ‘Welcome to the Rackham house,’ proclaims the man himself. ‘I hope, no, I
trust,
you’ll be happy here.’

Sugar crosses the threshold into the hall, and is immediately surrounded by the trappings of wealth. Above her head hangs a colossal chandelier, lit up by the sunshine beaming in through the windows. Vases of flowers so enormous and so liberally supplemented by green foliage that they resemble shrubs, stand on polished tables on either side of the great stairwell. On the walls, wherever a few square feet are not otherwise occupied, hang paintings of rural idylls in fine frames. Near the archway of the corridor leading to the dining-room and parlour, a grandfather clock swings its golden pendulum, its tock clearly audible – as are Sugar’s hesitant footsteps on the polished tile floor. Her eyes follow the spiral of mahogany banisters up to the L-shaped landing; somewhere up there, she knows, is
her
room, on the same level, thrillingly, as the Rackhams’.

‘What a beautiful house,’ she says, too overwhelmed to know if she means it. Her employer is gesturing in welcome; housemaids are scurrying all about; her predecessor’s luggage is stacked up in the hall; all this fuss is caused by
her
, and makes her feel like the heroine of a novel by Samuel Richardson or those Bell sisters, whose name isn’t Bell at all but what is it? Her brain resounds with Bell, Bell, Bell … the true name escapes her …

‘Miss Sugar?’

‘Yes, yes, forgive me,’ she says, jerking into motion again. ‘I was merely admiring …’

‘Allow me to show you your room,’ says William. ‘Letty, Cheesman will help you carry the luggage in.’

Together they ascend the staircase, their hands sliding along a polished banister each, a decorous space between their bodies, the tread of their feet muffled by the carpeted steps. Sugar remembers the many ascents she and William made on the stairs at Mrs Castaway’s; remembers especially the very first, when William was an idler in reduced circumstances, a miserable cringing creature with a fierce desire to see the whole universe flung to its knees before him. She glances sideways as they mount the stairs now: is this bearded gentleman really the same person as her baby-faced George W. Hunt, who, less than a year ago, begged her to let him be ‘debased’?

‘There is nothing I won’t submit to,’ she assured him then, ‘with the utmost pleasure.’

‘This is your room,’ declares William when, having led her along the landing, he ushers her through a door already set ajar.

It’s even smaller than she’d expected, and plainer. Tucked under the single window, a narrow wooden bed, neatly made up with a quilt and flannel blankets. A pale-yellow birchwood chest of drawers with white china handles and a hinged mirror perched on top. One stool and one comfortable-looking armchair. A tiny table. For any more furniture than this, there simply isn’t the space. Picture-hooks dot the faded blue wallpaper like squashed insects; an ugly ceramic vase stands empty by the hearth. On the bare floorboards, not entirely covering them, lies a large rug, tolerably well-made, but no Persian splendour like the ones downstairs.

‘Beatrice has lived very modestly,’ admits William, closing the door behind them. ‘I don’t necessarily mean
you
to do the same – though you’ll appreciate there are limits to what a governess can be seen to possess.’

Just kiss me
, she thinks, offering him her hand – which, after an eye’s-blink of hesitation, he takes and squeezes, as he might a business associate’s.

‘I can live as modestly as anyone,’ she tells him, drawing solace from the memory – the very
recent
memory – of his trembling fingers clasped on her naked hips.

There’s a knock on the door, and William extracts his hand, to let the servants in – whereupon, without another word, he strides out of the room. In comes Letty, staggering lopsidedly through the door with Sugar’s heavy Gladstone bag, which contains, among other things, the manuscript of her novel. At the sight of the servant pulled askew by this distended luggage, Sugar rushes over and tries to take the burden from her.

‘Ooh, it’s all right, miss,
really
it is,’ the girl cries, flustered by what’s evidently a shocking breach of decorum. Sugar steps back, confused: if she’s so superior in rank to the household servants, where does she get her deep-seated notion that governesses are lowly and despised? From novels, she supposes – but aren’t novels truth dressed up in fancy clothes?

The clomp of a big man’s boots and the grunt of a big man’s exertion can be heard coming up the stairs, and Letty hurries out of the room to make way for Cheesman. He lumbers in with a suitcase hugged to his chest.

‘Just say where you want it, miss,’ he grins, ‘and I’ll put it there.’

Sugar casts a glance over her tiny room, which already seems cluttered up by the presence of one bag.

‘On the bed,’ she gestures, aware that of all responses this is the most likely to tickle Cheesman’s bawdy imagination, but … well, there’s really nowhere else for the suitcase to go, if she’s to have space to unpack it.

‘Best place, I grant yer, miss.’

Sugar appraises him as he staggers past and deposits her case, with exaggerated gentleness, on the bed. He’s tall, and seems taller for his knee-length, brass-buttoned greatcoat, his wiry frame, and his long fingers. He has a long, pock-marked face with a saddle-hump of a chin, tough wayward eyebrows, curly dark hair subjugated by oil and comb, and a mouthful of straight white teeth, clearly his proudest and (given his origins) most unusual possession. Despite the thick greatcoat, his male arrogance pokes out from him like an invisible goad, for women to blunder against. Even as he turns to face her, one eyebrow cockily raised, and says ‘Will ’at be all, miss?’ she’s already made up her mind how she’ll handle him.

‘All for the moment.’ Her tone is prim, but her face and body are artfully arranged to suggest that she might, in spite of herself, desire him: it’s an intricate pose, first learned from a whore called Lizzie and perfected in mirrors: a combination of fear, disdain and helpless arousal which men of his sort are convinced they inspire wherever they go.

The twinkle-eyed smirk on Cheesman’s face as he’s leaving reassures her she’s chosen wisely. She can’t hope to erase what he already knows; to him, she’ll always be William’s whore, never Sophie’s governess, so he may as well cherish the delusion that one day he’ll add her to his roll-call of conquests. All she need do is maintain the delicate balance between repulsion and attraction, and he’ll be charmed enough not to wish her harm, without ever going so far as to risk his position.

Good
, she thinks, suppressing a flutter of panic,
that’s Cheesman taken care
of
– as if each member of the Rackham household is nothing more than a problem to be solved.

She walks across to the bed and, leaning her palms on the suitcase, peers through the window. Nothing much to be seen out there: an empty, rain-sodden swathe of the Rackham grounds … but then, she doesn’t need to spy anymore, does she? No! All her labours have been repaid, all her careful cultivation of William rewarded, and here she is, ensconced in the Rackham household, with the blessing of both William and Agnes! There’s really no reason for her guts to be churning …

‘Miss Sugar?’

She flinches, but it’s only what’s-her-name – Letty – at the door again. Such a good-natured face Letty has – a friendly face. She’ll have no trouble with Letty, no, she’ll …

‘Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham invites you to tea.’

Ten minutes later, Miss Sugar is stiffly seated amongst the dense bric-a-brac of the parlour, with a tea-cup in her hand and a servant dressed in the same mourning garb as herself hovering around with a tray of cake, while William Rackham holds forth on the history of Notting Hill. Yes, the history of Notting Hill. On and on he speechifies, like Doctor Crane in his pulpit, the words pouring out with mechanical relentlessness –
which
families were first to build in Chepstow Villas,
how much
Portobello Farm was sold for,
when
precisely Kensington Gravel Pits Gate changed its name to Notting Hill Gate, and so on.

‘And you’ll be interested to know there’s a free library, opened only last year, in High Street. How many parishes can boast
that
?’

Sugar listens as attentively as she can, but her brain is beginning to revolve like a cauliflower in fast-boiling water. The air of unreality is bad enough while the parlour-maid is in the room with them, but, to Sugar’s bewilderment, William fails to drop the façade when Rose retreats, and carries right on lecturing.

‘… from sheep to shop-keepers in two generations!’

He pauses for effect and, not knowing what else to do, Sugar smiles. Would calling him ‘William’ summon him back from wherever he’s hiding, or would that land her in trouble?

‘Those suitcases in the hall …’ she begins.

‘Beatrice Cleave’s,’ he says, lowering his voice, at last, to a more intimate tone.

‘I’m keeping her waiting, then?’ Another small flutter of panic must be suppressed, at the thought of the woman she has come here to supplant – a woman who, in Sugar’s imagination, has metamorphosed from nonentity to fearsomely competent matron – and a canny judge of frauds to boot.

‘Let her wait,’ sniffs William, glancing up at the ceiling resentfully. ‘Her timing in leaving my employ could scarcely have been more inconvenient; I’m sure she can twiddle her thumbs for a few more minutes while you drink your tea.’

‘Mmm.’ Sugar brings the tea to her lips, though it’s too hot to drink.

William rises from his armchair and begins to pace back and forth, stroking the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘Beatrice will tell you all you need to know about my daughter,’ he says, ‘and more, I don’t doubt. If she begins to drive you mad, mention trains, that’s my advice – she has one to catch.’

‘And Agnes?’

William stops dead, hands arrested in mid-stroke.

‘What
about
Agnes?’ he says, narrowing his eyes.

‘Will Agnes be … ah … looking in on us?’ It seems to Sugar a perfectly reasonable question – might not Mrs Rackham have a stipulation or two regarding the upbringing of her own daughter? But William is amazed.

‘Us?’ he echoes.

‘Me and Beatrice, and … Sophie.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he says, as if the conversation has veered into the realm of miracles. ‘No.’

Sugar nods, though she doesn’t understand, and sips the scalding tea as quickly as she can, in between bites of cake. A raisin falls from the fragment she holds in her fingers and instantly disappears in the dark pattern of the carpet. A clock, discreet up till now, begins to tick loudly.

After some deliberation, William clears his throat and addresses her with
sotto voce
seriousness. ‘There’s something I’d hoped wouldn’t need saying. I’d hoped it would be obvious, or else that I could trust Beatrice to tell you. But in the event that neither—’

At that instant, however, their privacy is interrupted by Letty, who ventures through the door and, realising she’s not welcome, immediately begins to twitch and tremble with the tics of obeisance.

‘What
is
it, Letty?’ snaps William, glaring her half to death.

‘Begging your pardon, sir, it’s Shears, sir. Wanting to speak with you, sir. He’s found something in the garden, sir, of Mrs Rackham’s.’

‘Lord almighty, Letty!’ growls William. ‘Shears knows what to do with that damn bird …’

‘It’s something
else
, sir,’ she cringes.

William clenches his fists; it seems quite possible he’ll fly into a rage and chase the servant from the room. But then, all of a sudden, his shoulders slump, he breathes deep, and turns to face his guest.

‘Please excuse me, Miss Sugar,’ he says – and is gone.

Left behind among the bric-a-brac, Sugar sits still as a vase, straining her ears to hear what’s amiss. She doesn’t dare leave her seat, but angles her head, dog-like, for any words that might leak into the parlour from the hallway, the source of the fuss.

‘What the devil are these?’ William is demanding impatiently, his resonant baritone rendered harsh by the acoustics. The gardener’s answering voice is unclear – a tenor grumble, disdaining to compete with the volume of his questioner’s outcry. ‘
What
? Buried!?’ exclaims William. ‘Well, who buried them?’ (Another muted response, this time from a duet of Shears and Letty). ‘Fetch Clara!’ commands William. ‘Ach, look at this floor … !’