The Crimson Petal and the White (95 page)

A typical day, in this future of theirs, would begin with him lounging in a wicker chair in his sunlit courtyard, checking the proofs of his latest publication, and dealing with correspondence from his readers (the admirers would get a cordial reply, the detractors would be instantly destroyed with his cigar-tip). And he’d have no shortage of detractors, for his fearless opinions would ruffle many feathers! On the lawn beside him, a pile of ash would smoulder, of all the bores who needn’t have bothered to send him their complaints. Agnes would come gliding across the grass at around noon, resplendent in lilac, and scold him serenely for making the gardener’s life a trial.

Slumped in his parlour now, in January 1876, a man bereaved, William winces in pain at these recollected dreams. What a fool he was! How little he understood himself! How little he understood Agnes! How tragically he underestimated the ruthlessness with which his father would humiliate them both during the tenderest years of their marriage! From the outset, every portent was already pointing towards Pitchcott Mortuary, and the wretched woman on that slab!

As he lapses once more into a doze, he sees Agnes before him, as she was on their wedding night. He lifts her night-dress: she is quite the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Yet she is rigid with fear, and gooseflesh forms on her perfect skin. So many months he’s spent praising the beauty of her eyes, to her obvious delight; but much as he’d like to spend two hundred years adoring each breast, and thirty thousand on all the rest, he yearns for a more spontaneous union, a mutual celebration of their love. Should he quote poetry to her? Call her his America, his new-found-land? Shyness and unease dry his tongue; the look of dumb horror on his wife’s face obliges him to continue in silence. With only his own laboured breath for company, he presses on, hoping she might, by some magical process of communion, or emotional osmosis, be inspired to share in his ecstasy; that the eruption of his passion might be followed by a warm balm of mutual relief.

‘William?’

He jerks awake, confused. Sugar is standing before him in the parlour, her mourning-clothes shining wet, her bonnet dripping rain-water, her face apologetic.

‘I didn’t achieve anything,’ she confesses. ‘Please don’t be annoyed with me.’

He straightens up in his seat, rubbing his eyes with the fingers of his good hand. There’s a crick in his neck, his head aches and, swaddled inside his trousers, his prick is slackening in its sticky, humid nest of pubic hair.

‘No matter,’ he groans. ‘You need only tell me w-what you want, and I can arrange it for you.’

Three days later, during the writing of a letter to Henry Calder Rackham, which Sugar has been instructed, after some hesitation, to begin ‘Dear Father’, William suddenly enquires,

‘Can you use a sewing-m-machine?’

She looks up. She’d thought she was ready for anything today: her sore privates have cleared up enough for her to contemplate the act of love, provided it’s done gently; her stomach has just this morning ceased convulsing from the effects of the wormwood and tansy tincture, and she’s giving her poor body a much-needed rest before trying, as a last-ditch resort, the pennyroyal and brewer’s yeast.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ve never handled one.’

He nods, disappointed. ‘Can you sew the usual w-way?’

Sugar lays the pen on the blotter, and tries to judge from his face how kindly he might take to a joke. ‘Skill with a needle and thread,’ she says, ‘was never the greatest of my talents.’

He doesn’t smile, but nods again. ‘It wouldn’t be possible, then, for you to a-alter a dress of A-Agnes’s, so that it fit you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says, much alarmed. ‘Even if I were a seamstress, I … well, our shapes … they’re very different … uh, weren’t they?’

‘Pity,’ he says, and leaves her to stew in her unease for several minutes. What the devil is he getting at? Does he suspect her of something? He was away in the city yesterday, for the first time since the funeral, and in the evening made no mention of where he’d been … To the police, perhaps?

At last he rouses himself from his reverie and, in a clear and authoritative tone, with scarcely any stammer, declares: ‘I have arranged for us all to go on a l-little outing together.’

‘Us … all?’

‘You, me and Sophie.’

‘Oh.’

‘On Thursday, we’ll go to the city, and have our photographs taken. You’ll have to wear your m-mourning-clothes on the way there, but please take along with you a cheerful and pretty dress, and another for Sophie. There’s a changing room at the photographer’s, I’ve checked.’

‘Oh.’ She waits for an explanation, but he’s already turned his head as if the subject is closed. She lifts the pen from the maculated blotter. ‘Is there any particular dress you’d like me to wear?’

‘One that’s as attractive as possible,’ William replies, ‘w-while still looking completely respectable.’

‘Where is Papa taking us, Miss?’ says Sophie on the morning of the big day.

‘I’ve told you already: to a photographer’s studio,’ sighs Sugar, trying not to let her displeasure at the child’s excitement show.

‘Is it a big place, Miss?’

Oh, be quiet: you’re just babbling for the sake of it.
‘I don’t know, Sophie, I’ve never been there.’

‘May I wear my new whale-bone hair clip, Miss?’

‘Certainly, dear.’

‘And shall I take my shammy bag, Miss?’

The mere sound of you, little precious,
suggests Mrs Castaway,
is becoming
tedious in the extreme.
‘I … Yes, I don’t see why not.’

Decked out in mourning, with a change of clothing packed in a tartan travelling case that once belonged to Mrs Rackham, Sugar and Sophie venture out into the carriage-way, where the coach and horse stand waiting for them.

‘Where’s Papa?’ says Sophie, as Cheesman lifts her into the cabin.

‘Putting his toys away, I expect, Miss Sophie,’ winks the coachman.

Sugar climbs hurriedly in, while Cheesman is busy with the case and before he has a chance to lay his hands on her.

‘Mind how you go, Miss Sugar!’ he says, delivering the words like the concluding line of a bawdy song.

William emerges from the front door, fastening a dark-grey overcoat over his favourite brown jacket. Once all the buttons are done up, it will take a sharp-eyed pedestrian indeed to spot that he’s not in strict mourning.

‘Let’s be off, Cheesman!’ he calls, when he’s climbed into the cabin with his daughter and Miss Sugar – and, to his daughter’s delight, his word instantaneously becomes fact: the horses begin to trot, and the carriage rolls along the gravel, up the path towards the big wide world. The adventure is beginning: this is page one.

Inside, the three passengers examine each other as best they can while affecting not to be staring: a tricky feat, given that they are seated with knees almost touching, the male on one seat, the two females opposite.

William notes how wan and ill-at-ease Sugar appears, how there are pale blue circles under her eyes, how her sensuous mouth twitches with a nervous half-smile, how unflattering her mourning dress is. Never mind: at the photographers it will cease to matter.

Sugar appreciates that William has, in appearance at least, fully recovered from his injuries. A couple of white scars line his forehead and cheek, and his gloves are slightly oversized, but otherwise he looks as good as new – better even, because he’s lost his paunch during his convalescence, and his face is thinner too, giving him cheekbones where he had none before. Really, it was unfair of her to compare his face to the caricature on the ‘Gorilla Quadrille’; he may not be the handsome fellow his brother was, but he does have a touch of distinction now, courtesy of his suffering. His temper and his stammer are likewise improving, and he’s still sharing his correspondence with her, despite the fact that his fingers have healed sufficiently for him to manage the task alone. So … So there really is no reason to loathe and fear him, is there?

Sophie’s corporeal form sits still and behaves impeccably, because that’s what children
ought
to do, but in truth she’s beside herself with excitement. Here she is, inside the family carriage for the first time, going to the city for the first time, in the company of her father, with whom she’s never gone out before. The challenge of absorbing all these things is so great she scarcely knows where to begin. Her father’s face impresses her as old and wise, like the face on the Rackham labels, but when he turns towards the window or licks his red lips, he looks like a younger person with a beard stuck on. In the street, gentlemen and ladies stroll, each one of them different, adding up to hundreds and hundreds. A horse and carriage passes on the other side of the road, a polished wooden and metal cabin full of mysterious strangers, pulled by an animal with hoofs. Yet Sophie understands that the two carriages, at the moment of passing, are like mirror-images of each other; to those mysterious strangers,
she
is the dark mystery, and
they
are the Sophies. Does her father understand this? Does Miss Sugar?

‘You’ve grown so big,’ remarks William, out of the blue. ‘You’ve sh-shot up in no time at all. How have you m-managed it, hmm?’

Sophie keeps her eyes on her father’s knees: this question is like the ones in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
: impossible to answer.

‘Has Miss Sugar been keeping you busy?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Good, good.’

Again he is calling her good, just like he did on that day when the lady with the face like the Cheshire Cat was at his side!

‘Sophie likes nothing better than learning,’ remarks Miss Sugar.

‘Very good,’ says William, clasping and unclasping his hands in his lap. ‘Can you tell me w-where the Bay of Biscay is, Sophie?’

Sophie freezes. The one and only necessary fact of life, and she hasn’t been prepared for it!

‘We haven’t done Spain yet,’ explains her governess. ‘Sophie has been learning all about the colonies.’

‘Very good, very good,’ says William, returning his attention to the window. A building they’re passing is adorned with a large painted design advertising Pears’ soap, causing him to frown.

The photographers’ studio is on the top floor of an address in Conduit Street, not so very far away, as the crow flies, from the house of Mrs Castaway. The bronze plaque says
Tovey & Scholefield (A.R.S.A.)
,
Photographers and
Artists
. Half-way up the gloomy stairs hangs a framed photographic portrait of a callow, cupid-lipped soldier, much retouched, cradling his rifle like a bouquet of flowers.
Perished in the Crimea; IMMORTAL in the memory of those
who loved him,
explains the inscription, before adding, at a discreet remove,
INQUIRE WITHIN
.

Within, the Rackhams are met by a tall, mustachioed individual dressed in a frock-coat. ‘Good day, sir, madam,’ he says.

He and William have plainly met before, and Sugar is left to guess who is Scholefield and who is Tovey – this man who resembles an impresario, or the bird-boned, shirt-sleeved fellow who can be seen, through a crack in the reception-room door, pouring a colourless fluid from a small bottle into a larger one. The walls are crowded with framed photographs of men, women and children, singly and in family assortments, all without fault or blemish, and also one really enormous painting of a plump lady dressed in Regency finery, complete with hounds and a basket overflowing with still-life debris. In one corner, superimposed on the tail-plumes of a dead pheasant, glows the signature
E. H. Scholefield, 1859.

‘Look, Sophie,’ says Sugar. ‘This picture was painted by this very gentleman who stands before us.’

‘Indeed it was,’ says Scholefield. ‘But I forsook my first love – and abundant commissions from ladies just like this one – to champion the Art of photography. For it was my belief that every new Art, if it’s to
be
an Art, needs a measure of … Artistic midwifery.’ A second too late, he remembers he’s delivering his spiel to a person of the weaker sex. ‘If you’ll forgive the phrase.’

Without delay, Sugar and Sophie are shown into a small room with a wash-basin, two full-length mirrors, and an ornamental queensware water-closet. The walls bristle with clothes-hooks and hat-pegs. A single, barred window looks out on the rooftop that connects Tovey & Scholefield’s establishment with the dermatologist’s next door.

The travelling case is opened up and its sumptuously coloured, silky, pillowy cargo is pulled into the light. Sugar helps Sophie out of her mourning and into her prettiest blue dress with the gold brocade buttons. Her hair is re-brushed and the whalebone clip slid into place.

‘Turn your back, now, Sophie,’ says Miss Sugar.

Sophie obeys, but wherever she looks there’s a mirror, reflecting back and forth in an endless rebound. Disturbed at the prospect of seeing Miss Sugar in her underwear, Sophie gazes into her Mama’s travelling case. A crumpled handbill advertising
Psycho, the Sensation of the London Season,
exhibited exclusively at the Folkestone Pavilion!
gives her something to ponder while the body of her governess is disrobed all around her. Over and over she reads the price, the times of exhibition, the disclaimer about ladies of a nervous disposition, while catching unwilling half-glimpses of Miss Sugar’s underwear, the swell of pink flesh above the neckline of her chemise, naked arms wrestling with a flaccid construction of dark green silk.

Sophie lifts the handbill up to her nose, sniffing it in case it smells of the sea. She fancies it does, but maybe it’s only her imagination.

Tovey and Scholefield’s studio proper, when Sugar and Sophie emerge into it, is not very large – no bigger, perhaps, than the Rackhams’ dining-room – but it makes ingenious use of three of its walls, dressing them up as backdrops for every conceivable requirement. One wall is a
trompe-l’ail
landscape for men to pose in front of – forests, mountains, a brooding sky and, as an optional extra, moveable classical pillars. Another wall functions as the rear of a sitting-room, papered in the latest style. The third wall is subdivided into three different backdrops side by side; on the extreme left, a floor-to-ceiling library bookcase from whose shelves the posing client can select a leather-bound volume and pretend to be reading it – as long as he doesn’t stand too far to the right, for then he’ll step across the ‘library’ boundary and find himself framed in front of a cottage window decorated with lace curtains. This country idyll is likewise a very narrow slice of life, scarcely an inch wider than the diameter of an old-style crinoline, and gives way to another scene, that of an infant’s nursery papered with robins and crescent moons.