The Crimson Petal and the White (83 page)

‘Go on, Sophie dear,’ he commands her gently, as Rackham Senior seizes the opportunity to snap up another raisin.

Sophie jerks into obedience, squealing with fear and excitement as she snatches a raisin from the flames. Furtively she examines the tiny fruit between her fingers and, finding no flames on its dark wrinkled flesh, transfers it cautiously into her mouth, while the older Rackhams go after the rest.

The next game is dinner, and William’s father tackles it with the same gusto. As course follows course, he eats as much as Lord Unwin did at Lady Bridgelow’s party, allowing for the differences in the fare. (The Rackhams’ cook is no enthusiast for what she calls ‘recipes learned from savages’, but what she does turn her hand to is delicious, and Henry Calder Rackham is its ideal consumer.) Turkey, quails, roast beef, oyster patties, mince pies, Christmas pudding, port jelly, apple hedgehog – all these are put before him, and all vanish inside his chuckling frame.

Small wonder, then, that when the time comes for after-dinner amusements, and he sits beside the magic lantern to feed the painted slides into the brass slot, he takes advantage of the dark and the fact that everyone’s attention is directed elsewhere, to unbutton his waistcoat and trousers.

‘
A little flower-girl am I
,’ he recites breathily, for Sophie’s benefit, from the subtitles as the image glows on the parlour wall: a plump-cheeked poppet in rags, posed on a fake London street corner lovingly beautified by the tiny paintbrushes of the magic lantern company’s workers.

‘
I’ll sell you pretty posies
Of buttercups and daffodils
Nothing so rich as roses.
’

The child dies, of course, in the eighth slide. Already angelic when she was hawking her daffodils, she appears only marginally more radiant when a pair of sweet seraphs catch her swooning body and point her towards Heaven.

William, more accustomed to the pornographic slide shows put on by Bodley and Ashwell, is rather bored, but hides it, for his father has gone to the bother of buying three sets, and has already apologised
sotto voce
beforehand (‘So few of these damned things are suitable for children, y’know: they’ve nearly all got murder and infidelity in ’em.’)

A second magic lantern story, about heroism during a shipwreck, follows close upon the first, and is well received by all the family, despite the fact that it has no parts for females in it. The third and last, a woeful tale of a young watercress-seller who dies trying to save her dipsomaniac father, reduces Letty and Janey to helpless sobs, and ends with the word ‘TEMPERANCE!’ glowing on the parlour wall – a slightly irksome conclusion to the proceedings, since William and his father are by now looking forward to a strong drink.

‘Good night, little Sophie,’ says William, as Rose rekindles the lamps and the magic lantern is extinguished. For an instant Sugar hesitates, uncomprehending, then realises with a jolt that the Christmas celebrations have come to an end – for child and governess, at least.

‘Yes, goodnight, little Sophie,’ says Henry Calder Rackham, spreading an unused table napkin over his lap. ‘Run up to your fine new toys now – before a thief comes and steals ’em!’

Sugar casts a glance around the parlour, and notices that the presents have already been removed, every scrap of wrapping-paper cleaned away, even the tiniest curls of stray tinsel picked up from the carpets. Apart from Rose, who’s uncorking the liquor, the servants have melted back into the recesses of the Rackham house, each to her own function. The male Rackhams are slumped, heavy-lidded, in their chairs, tired out from administering so much pleasure.

Lingering momentarily in the threshold of the room, with Sophie’s hand clasped in hers, Sugar looks over to Rose, and succeeds in catching her eye, but the servant is unresponsive; she lowers her head to concentrate on the unveiling of a tray of rum slices. Whatever intimacy she and Sugar have shared, whatever foolhardy acts they enjoyed together, a line has now been drawn between them.

‘Good night,’ says Sugar, too quietly to be heard, and she escorts Sophie out to the stairs, and up into the silent parts of the house, where their gifts await them, leaning against their bedroom doors in the dark.

Putting Sophie to bed is out of the question; the child is too excited, and there are miraculous new toys to play with. While Sugar looks on, unsure how to behave, Sophie kneels on the floor, face to face with the French doll, and wheels the creature gently back and forth. In the dim yellowish light of her bedroom, it looks more mysterious than it did downstairs in the parlour; more mysterious, and yet also more realistic, like a real lady who’s just emerged from a ball or a theatre, venturing across the carpeted street in search of her private carriage.

‘Now
where
can that fellow be?’ murmurs Sophie in an affected, helpless voice, turning the doll three hundred and sixty degrees. ‘I
told
him to wait for me here …’

She picks up the spyglass, extends it to its full length, lifts it to her right eye.

‘I’ll find him with
this
,’ she declares, in a more boyish, confident tone. ‘Even if he’s far, far away.’ And she inspects the environs, focusing on likely prospects – a knot in the wood of the skirting-board, a dangling curtain-sash, the blurry skirts of her governess.

Suddenly serious, she looks up at Sugar and says,

‘Do you think I could be an explorer, Miss?’

‘An explorer?’

‘When I’m older, Miss.’

‘I … I don’t see why not.’ Sugar wishes Sophie would make a mention – indeed, make just a
small
fuss – of the little book that’s lying neglected on the floor, inscribed on its flyleaf
To Sophie, from Miss Sugar, Christmas
1875
. ‘It mightn’t be permitted, Miss,’ reflects the child, wrinkling her brow. ‘A lady explorer.’

‘These are modern times, Sophie dear,’ sighs Sugar. ‘Women can do all sorts of things nowadays.’

Sophie’s forehead wrinkles deeper still, as the irreconcilable faiths of her nurse and her governess collide in her over-taxed brain. ‘Perhaps,’ she muses, ‘I could explore places the gentlemen explorers don’t wish to explore.’

A noise drifts up from somewhere outside the house: a procession of strangers is tramping up the Rackham path, singing ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’, their rough voices indistinct in the gusty night. Sophie walks over to the window, stands on tiptoe, and tries to peer down into the dark, but sees nothing.

‘
More
people,’ she declares, in a fanciful ‘well-I-never!’ tone, like a fairy-tale hostess who has invited half a dozen guests, only to be deluged by a thousand. Sugar realises the child is deliriously tired and ought to be steered towards sleep after all.

‘Come, Sophie,’ she says. ‘Time for bed. Your bath can wait until tomorrow. And I’m sure you will need a whole fresh day to get properly acquainted with all your gifts.’

Sophie totters away from the window and surrenders herself into Sugar’s hands. Though she doesn’t resist the undressing, she’s less helpful than usual, and stares dumbly ahead of her while her clothes are stripped off her unbending limbs. There’s an odd, haunted expression on her face, a hint of wounded affront in her naked body as Sugar prods her gently to raise her arms for the night-gown.

‘
Now bring us some figgy pudding

Now bring us some figgy pudding

And a cup of good cheer …
’ the carol-singers are chanting below.

‘There’s no use anyone waking my Mama now, is there, Miss?’ Sophie blurts out. ‘She has missed everything.’

Sugar pulls back the bed-sheets, removes the warming-pan Letty has nestled there, and pats the hot spot.

‘
We won’t go until we’ve got some,
We won’t go until we’ve got some
…’

‘She’s not very well, Sophie,’ Sugar says.

‘I think she’ll die soon,’ decides Sophie, as she climbs into bed. ‘And then they’ll put her in the ground.’

Downstairs, a door slams, and the voices are silent – presumably satisfied. Sugar, trying not to show the nauseous chill that the child’s words have injected into her blood, tucks Sophie up and straightens her pillow. Mindful of first impressions in the morning to come, she gathers up the gifts and arranges them carefully on top of the dresser, standing the queenly French doll next to the slumped form of the grinning nigger manikin. Sophie’s new purse, hair-brush, hairclip and mirror she lays in a row, punctuated with the spyglass stood on its end. Finally, she displays, upright, the book.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, it says. But Sophie has already fallen down the rabbit-hole of unconsciousness, into an uneasy wonderland of her own.

Rap-rap.

‘Miss Sugar?’

Rap-rap-rap.

‘Miss Sugar?’

Rap-rap-rap-
rap
.

‘Miss Sugar!’

She sits bolt upright in her bed, gasping in terror and confusion as the brute who has ‘come to keep her warm’ is whisked off her childish body and she’s left alone once more – older, bigger, elsewhere, in the dark.

‘Wh-who is it?’ she calls into the blackness.

‘Clara, Miss.’

Sugar rubs her eyes with the rough heels of her palms, thinking that if she blinks hard enough, she’ll see sunlight. ‘Have … have I slept too long?’

‘Please, Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham says I’m to come in.’

The door swings open, and the servant steps inside, lamp held high, uniform rumpled, head haloed with unbrushed hair. Clara’s face, normally inscrutable or smug, is distorted by wavering shadows and a look of naked fear.

‘I’m to make sure no one’s come into your bedroom, Miss.’

Sugar blinks dumbly, through the orange fuzz of her own disordered hair. She motions consent for Clara to reconnoitre the geography of her tiny room, and the girl immediately hoists her lamp towards the four corners, here, there, here, there, sending the light and shadow veering dramatically. In her solemn thoroughness she looks like a Papist officiating a censer ritual.

‘F’give me, Miss,’ she mumbles, opening Sugar’s wardrobe a crack.

‘Is Sophie all right?’ says Sugar, having by now lit her own bedside lamp. The time, she notes, is 3 a.m.

Clara doesn’t reply, except with an extravagant curtsy, so low as to be fit for a queen. Only at the last possible instant does Sugar realise it’s not a curtsy at all, but that the servant is preparing to look under the bed.

‘Let me help you!’ she says hastily, and dangles over the side, her mass of uncombed hair tumbling to the floor. Supported on one elbow, she sweeps her other arm into the shadowy space under her bed, thwacking the diaries against one another to emphasise their status as non-human debris.

‘Apologies, Miss,’ mutters Clara, and hurries from the room.

As soon as she’s gone, Sugar jumps out of bed and gets dressed. The house, she hears now, is in a state of whispery, flustery commotion. Doors are opening and shutting, and, through the crack in her door, she can see lights grow brighter in sudden increments. Hurry, hurry: her hair is impossible, she ought to’ve had it cut weeks ago, but who’s to cut it? All trace of the original frizzed fringe is gone, and only the use of a dozen pins and a cluster of clasps keeps the mess under control. Where are her shoes? Why is her bodice so difficult to button up? Her chemise must be rucked under neath …

‘Darkroom!’ shouts William from somewhere below. ‘Are you deaf?’

A female voice, unidentifiable and small, pleads that
all
the rooms are dark.

‘No! No!’ cries William, clearly in a state of great agitation. ‘The room that used to be … Ach, it was before your time!’ And his heavy tread thumps down the hallway.

Sugar is presentable now, more or less, and rushes out onto the landing, candle in hand. Her first port of call is Sophie’s room, but when she ventures inside, she finds the child sleeping deeply, or at least affecting to.

Only when Sugar is walking back along the landing does she notice how very peculiar and unusual it is, to see the door of Agnes’s bedroom ajar. She runs downstairs, following the noise of voices.

‘Oh, Mr Rackham, and on a night like this!’ cries Rose, the words reverberating queerly through the maze of passages leading to the rear of the house.

The rendezvous-point is the kitchen, in whose mausoleum frigidity a glum, sleepy-headed company has gathered. By no means the entire household: Cook has been left to snore upstairs, and the newer, less trustworthy servants, curious though they naturally are about the commotion, have been told to settle back under the covers and mind their own affairs. But fully dressed and shivering down here are William, Letty, Rose and Clara. Oh yes, and there stands Janey in the doorway of the scullery, in tears, humiliated by her failure to produce Mrs Rackham from out of the ice-chest or the meat larder, despite Miss Tillotson’s angry expectation that she should.

Letty hugs herself, her mulish teeth clenched to stop them chattering. The white bib of her uniform glistens with moisture: she’s braved the elements once already, to bang on the door of Shears’s little bungalow. But Shears is too drunk to be roused, and Cheesman has evidently been charmed by his ‘mother’ into staying the night, so once again William Rackham is the only male on hand to deal with the crisis.

He greets Sugar’s arrival with an unwelcoming scowl; his face looks ghastly in the light reflected off the chopping-table and the stone floor, both of which still shimmer from the liberal sponging they were given only a few hours ago.

‘She’s out
there
, sir,’ pleads Rose, her voice shaking with the urgency of what she dare not say to her master: that he is wasting precious time – perhaps even condemning his wife to death – by failing to move the search out of doors.

‘What about the cellar?’ William demands. ‘Letty, you were in and out of there in a flash.’

‘It was
empty
, Mr Rackham,’ the girl insists, her indignant whine ringing in the copper pans hung around the walls.