The Crimson Petal and the White (99 page)

‘Mrs Ford’s?’

‘Expensive,’ sniffs Bodley, ‘for what you get.’

‘Yes, but prompt.’

‘Yes, but it’s in Panton Street. If fast service is what we’re after, we could pop in to Madame Audrey’s just around the corner.’

Listening to them, William realises that his fears were in vain: these men have already forgotten Sugar, forgotten her entirely. She is ancient history, her name erased by a hundred other names since; the girl who once seemed to shine like a beacon in the murky vastness of London has been reduced to a glimmering pinprick of light in amongst countless similar glimmers. Life goes on, and there is never an end to the people surging through it.

‘What about those three over there?’ says Bodley. ‘They have a cheerful air about ’em.’ He nods towards a trio of whores giggling in the window-light of a chandler’s shop. ‘I’m not in the mood for hoity-toity pretensions tonight, or misery.’

The two men walk over to the waving women, and William, fearful of being left stranded and unprotected, tags along. He tries to keep his eyes on the dark street to the left and right of the women, but he’s helplessly drawn to their vulgar display of lamp-lit taffeta and pink bosom. They’re a cheeky threesome, well-groomed in an overdressed way, with masses of hair spilling out from under their too-elaborate bonnets. William has the uneasy feeling he’s met them before.

‘Nice weather we’re ’avin’,’ simpers one.

‘You never ’ad no one like me, ducks,’ says another.

‘Nor me neither,’ says the third.

Are these the same three women who pestered him in The Fireside, when he first met Sugar? They look younger, thinner, and their dresses are less ornate, but there’s something about them … Dear Heaven, could Fate really throw up such a hideous coincidence? Does one of these powdered doxies have it on the tip of her tongue to hail him as ‘Mr Hunt’ and ask him how his books are faring, or demand to know how his tryst with Sugar ended?

‘In the mouth, how much?’ Bodley is enquiring of the woman with the fullest lips. She leans forward and murmurs in his ear, smoothly settling her forearms on his shoulders.

Within seconds, the transaction has begun. Ashwell, Bodley and an unwilling William have entered a shadowy cul-de-sac scarcely wide enough to accommodate the combined bulk of a squatting woman and a standing man. Ashwell watches Bodley being serviced, and gropes under the skirts of another woman while she strokes his exposed prick, whose size and firmness impress William, even at a glimpse, as demoralisingly superior to his own. The third woman stands with her back to William, facing out towards the open street, watching for unwanted company. By now William is certain – as certain as he can be – that he’s never seen these three women before. He stares at the back of the one keeping watch, and tries to imagine himself lifting up her bustle, pulling down her drawers, and fucking her, but she seems to him devoid of erotic allure, a darkened Madame Tussaud’s manikin of indifferently stitched dress material, a horse-hair bustle, a neck that’s too thick, a glinting spine of buttons one of which, annoyingly, dangles loose from its buttonhole. His manhood is soft and damp; he has left his best years far behind him; he will spend the rest of his life worrying about Rackham Perfumeries; his daughter will grow up ugly and unmarried and ungrateful, the laughing-stock of his dwindling circle; and then, one day, in the middle of penning a futile letter with his crippled hand, he’ll clutch at his heart and die. When did it all go wrong? It all went wrong when he married Agnes. It all went wrong when—

Suddenly he becomes aware of Bodley groaning in satisfaction. The woman is almost finished with him; as he approaches orgasm, he agitates one trembling hand in the air, and makes as if to clamp hold of the back of her head. She intercepts him in mid-swing, grabbing his arm first by the wrist, then curling her fingers inside his, so that she and Bodley are holding hands. It’s a peculiar gesture of control, of checkmated forces, which has the appearance of utmost tenderness and mutual urgency. William is instantly, powerfully aroused, and what seemed impossible a minute ago now feels imperative.

‘Oh God!’ cries Bodley as he spends. The girl keeps hold of him, squeezing his hand tight, nuzzling her brow against his belly. Only when Bodley slumps against the alley wall does she let him go and tip her head back, licking her lips.

Now! The moment is now! William steps forward, fetching his swollen manhood out of his trousers.

‘Now me!’ he commands hoarsely, his whole body prickling with anxious sweat, for already he can feel his organ’s rigid flesh begin to lose its charge of blood. Mercifully, the prostitute delays no longer than an eye’s-blink before taking him in her mouth and clapping her palms on his buttocks. William sways, momentarily off-balance; oh God, a pratfall at this juncture would be the end of him! But it’s all right, she has him secure, her fingers dig into his flesh, her mouth and tongue are expert.

‘Go on, sir, stick it in,’ says another female voice from behind him, addressing Ashwell. ‘You can afford it, sir, and you won’t be sorry.’

‘I haven’t a sheath on me.’

‘I take good care of meself, sir. I’ve been to the doctor only last week, sir, and he says I’m clean as a kitten.’

‘Even so …’ says Ashwell, panting, ‘let it spill …’

‘It’s a fine silky cunt I ’ave, sir. A connoisseur’s cunt.’

‘Even so …’

William, dizzy with mounting excitement, cannot understand Ashwell’s qualms. Fuck the girl and have done with it! Fuck all the females in the world while the fucking is good! He feels as though he could spend like a geyser, filling first one woman, then the next, in their mouths, their cunts, their arses, leaving a great mound of them lolling and rumpled … Ah!

A few seconds later William Rackham is lying flat on the ground, uncon scious, with five people standing over him.

‘Give him air,’ says Ashwell.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ says one of the whores anxiously.

‘Too much to drink,’ says Bodley, but he sounds none too sure.

‘He was given a terrible beating by bughunters not so long ago,’ says Ashwell. ‘They cracked his head open, I believe.’

‘Oh, poor lamb!’ coos the woman with the full lips. ‘Will ’e be like this always?’

‘Come on, Bodley, help me with him.’

The two men seize their friend under the armpits, and heave him a few inches off the ground. Taking umbrage at being ignored, the ringleader whore tugs at their sleeves, to regain the gentlemen’s attention before they become too preoccupied.

‘I’ve only been paid for one,’ she reminds them. ‘Fair’s fair.’

‘And I ain’t been paid at all,’ bleats the girl who kept watch, as though, of the three, the most debauched use has been made of her. The third woman frowns, unable to think how to add her voice to the grievances, given that Ashwell was interrupted before reaching the fulfilment he’d paid for.

‘Here’s … here’s …’ Ashwell claws a handful of coins, mostly shillings, from his pocket, and pushes them into her hands, while the other two crane their necks to see. ‘You can do the arithmetic between you, can’t you?’ Fretful now about the unconscious Rackham, he has no appetite for haggling. Christ almighty: first Henry, then Agnes … If there’s one more death in this wretched family … ! And what a beastly stroke of fate, if those eminent swells Philip Bodley and Edward Ashwell should be forced to inaugurate their new career as publishers by carrying a corpse through the streets of Soho in search of the nearest police station!

‘Bill! Bill! Are you with us?’ Ashwell barks, patting William roughly on the cheek.

‘I … I’m with you,’ Rackham replies, whereupon, from the mouths of five onlookers – yes, even from the whores, for they’ve not found it in their hearts to scarper – issues a profound and wholly mutual sigh of relief.

‘Well …’ says the eldest woman, adjusting her bonnet and casting an eye on the flickering lights of the thoroughfare. ‘Good night, then, all.’ And she leads her sisters out of the dark.

For another few seconds Bodley and Ashwell loiter in the cul-de-sac, tidying their clothing, combing their hair, using each other as a mirror. You’ll not see them again, so take a good last look at them now.

‘Take me home,’ groans a voice from somewhere near their trouser-cuffs. ‘I want to go to bed.’

THIRTY-THREE

S
ent up to her room in disgrace, Sugar indulges, at long last, in a tantrum. A solitary, silent tantrum, in the privacy of her drab little bed-chamber, but no less a tantrum for that.

How dare William tell her it’s none of her business what hour he comes home! How dare he tell her the mud on his clothing is his own affair, and that he owes her no explanation! How dare he tell her he’s perfectly capable of handling his own correspondence, and has no further need of her flatteries and her forgeries! How dare he tell her that instead of lurking in wait for his return from an innocent visit on old friends, she’d be much better off sleeping, as her eyes are constantly bloodshot and uglified by the dark rings under them!

Sugar kneels at her bedside in the candlelight, William’s expensive Christmas gift of Shakespeare’s
Tragedies
in her lap, and tears out the pages by the handful, illustrations and all, clawing at the fragile paper with her brittle, jagged nails. How thin and smooth the pages are, like the pages of a Bible or a dictionary, as if made from glazed starch, or the stuff that cigarettes are wrapped in. She scrunches them inside her fist,
Macbeth, Lear,
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra
, all of them shredding under her nails, useless blather about ancient aristocracies. She’d thought William bought them for her in recognition – in
honour
– of her intellect, a coded message in front of his servants that he knew her soul to be a much finer thing than theirs. Tripe! He’s an empty vulgarian, a crass oaf who might as soon have bought her a gilded elephant’s foot or a jewelled chamber-pot had his eye not been diverted by this ‘hand-tooled’ assortment of Shakespeare. Damn him!
This
is what she thinks of his oily attempts to buy her gratitude!

As she rips and rends, her body convulses with infantile sobs, an incessant rapid spasming, and the tears run down her cheeks. Does he think she’s blind, and without a sense of smell? He stank of more than mud when he stumbled into the house, supported on either side by Bodley and Ashwell; he stank of cheap perfume, the sort worn by whores. He stank of sexual connection – a connection he’d probably say (in his favourite phrase lately) had ‘nothing to do with’ her! Damn him, snoring off his debauches in that bedroom where she’s never been invited! She ought to burst in on him with a knife, slit his belly open and watch the contents spill out in a torrent of gore!

After a while, her sobs subside, and her hands grow weary of clawing the pages. She slumps against her dresser, surrounded by crumpled wads of paper, her naked toes lost under them. What if William should come in and find her like this? She crawls forward on her knees and picks up the paper-balls, tossing them into the fireplace. They’re consumed at once, flaring for the merest instant before shrivelling into ash.

Better she should be burning Agnes’s diaries than her Christmas gifts from William. The volumes of Shakespeare are harmless, whereas the diaries could betray her any day or night. Where’s the good in continuing to hide them under her bed, when she’s gleaned all she can from them, and they can only cause trouble? Agnes won’t be back to reclaim them, that’s for certain.

Sugar fetches one of the diaries into the light. Over the months, every speck of dried mud has been rubbed off, so that the delicate volume no longer looks as though it was rescued from a grave of damp earth, but merely looks ancient, like a relic of a bygone century. Sugar opens it, and the ruined fragments of its absurdly dainty padlock and silver chain dangle like jewellery over her knuckles.

Dear Diary,

I do hope we shall be good friends.

Sugar flips the pages, witnessing once more Agnes Pigott’s struggles to be reconciled to her new name.

It’s only what my governess calls an appelation, after all, for the conveniance of the
World At Large. I am foolish to fret so.
GOD
knows what my real name is
,
doesn’t He?

Sugar lays the diary to one side; she’ll destroy all of them but
this
one, the very first, which is small enough to be hidden out of harm’s way. She can’t help thinking there would be something …
evil
about destroying the first words Agnes entrusted to posterity. It would be like pretending she never existed; or, no: that she began to exist only when her death provided the meat for a newspaper obituary.

Sugar extracts another diary from under the bed. It happens to be the final Abbots Langley chronicle, written by a fifteen-year-old Agnes preparing to go home and nurse her mother back to health. Dried flower-petals flutter out of its pages to the floor, crimson and white, weightless. Agnes Unwin’s valedictory poem reads thus:

Our happy Joys of Sisterhood are done

The Sun is through the
redd’ning
Heavens pushing

Our little race of Learning now is run –

For none can thwart the Future onward rushing!

Squaring her jaw, Sugar consigns the diary to the flames. It smoulders and hisses softly. She looks away.

Another diary is fetched from its hiding-place. Its first entry relates that there has been no reply from ‘the Swiss Post Office’ on the matter of where to send Miss Eugenie Soon-To-Be-Schleswig’s scrapbook of kittens. This volume, too, can go on the flames, when the first is consumed.

Sugar picks up a third volume.
Liebes Tagebuch
… it announces on its opening page. Another for the fire.

She picks up a fourth volume. It dates from the early years of Agnes’s marriage to William, and begins with an unreadable hallucination of demonic harassment, decorated in the margins with hieroglyphical eyes scrawled in clotted menstrual blood.

A few pages further on, a convalescing Agnes reflects:

I had thought, while I was being schooled, that my old Life was being kept warm
for me, like a favourite dish steaming under a silver cover, waiting for my return
Home. I now know that this was a tragic dillusion. My step-father was plotting
all the while, to kill my dear Mother inchmeal with his cruelty, and to sell my poor
Self to the first man that would take me off his hands. He chose William
on
purpose
,
I can see that now! Had he selected a suitor of a loftier Class, he would
have been for ever running in to me, at the places where the Upper Ten Thousand
meet. But he
knew that William would drag me down from the heights, and that
once I was sunk as low as I am now, he need never set eyes on me again!

Well, I’m glad! Yes, glad! He wasn’t my father anyway. Admittance to the
grandest Ball would not be reward enough to quell my
revulsion
at his company
.

All through the ages it has been like this: Females the pawns of male treachery. But one day, the Truth will be told.

The odour of perfumed paper turning to punk begins to permeate the room. Sugar glances at the fireplace. The diary’s shape is still intact, but glows livid orange at the edges. She fetches another from under the bed, and opens it at random. It’s an entry she hasn’t read before, undated, but its ink is rich blue and fresh-looking.

Dear Holy Sister,

I know You have been watching over me, and please dont think I’m not grate
ful. In my sleep You assure me All will be well, and I am comforted and rest in
peace against your breast; yet on waking I am once again afraid, and all Your words
melt away from me as if they were snowflakes fallen in the night. I yearn for our
next meeting, a bodily meeting in the world outside my dreams. Will it be soon?
Will it be soon? Make a mark upon this page – a touch of Your lips, a finger
print, any sign of Your presence – and I will know not to give up Hope.

With a grunt of distress, Sugar throws the diary into the fireplace. Its impact sends a shower of sparks flying, and it comes to rest on top of the still-smouldering carcass of the other one, but standing precariously upright. This, as far as the scientific principle of ignition is concerned, is by far the more efficient posture: the pages are licked into flame at once.

She scrabbles under her bed once more, and what emerges is not another of Agnes’s diaries, but her own novel. How her heart sinks to see it! This raggedy thing, bulging out of its stiff cardboard jacket: it’s the embodiment of futility. All its crossed-out titles –
Scenes from the Streets, A Cry from
the Streets, An Angry Cry from an Unmarked Grave, Women Against Men, Death
in the House of Ill Repute, Who Has Now the Upper Hand?, The Phoenix, The
Claws of the Phoenix, The Embrace of the Phoenix, All Ye Who Enter Here, The
Wages of Sin, Come Kiss the Mouth of Hell,
and, finally,
The Fall and Rise of
Sugar
– are tainted by her own juvenile delusions.

She balances the sheaf of papers on its torn and frayed spine and allows it to fall open where it will.

‘
But I am a father!
’ pleads one of the novel’s doomed males, struggling impotently against the bonds the heroine has tied around his wrists and ankles. ‘
I have a son and a daughter, waiting for me at home!
’

‘
Better you had thought of that before,’ said I, cutting through his shirt with
my razor-sharp dress-making shears. Very intent I was upon my work, swivelling the
scissors back and forth across his hairy belly.

‘See?’ I said, holding up a limp scrap of white cotton in the shape of a butterfly, its two halves held together by a shirt-button. ‘Isn’t that pretty?’

‘For pity’s sake, think of my children!’

I leaned upon his chest, digging my elbows as hard as I could into his flesh,
while speaking directly into his face, so close that my hot breath caused his eyes to
blink. ‘There is no hope for children in this world,’ I informed him, hissing with
fury. ‘If male, they will become filthy swine like you. If female, they will be defiled
by filthy swine like you. The best thing for children is not to be born; the next-best
thing is to die while they are still innocent.’

Sugar groans in shame at the ravings of her old self. She ought to throw them on the flames, but she can’t. And the two sacrificed diaries of Agnes’s are still burning oh-so-slowly, giving off a pungent smell and smothering the coals with a veil of wilting black card. There’s simply too great a volume of illicit paper here; it would take hours, days, to burn it all, and the smoke and stench would attract attention from the household beyond. With a sigh of resignation, Sugar shoves her novel, and the handful of diaries she’d condemned to extinction, back under the bed.

In the middle of the night, from the heart of the dark, a hand is laid on Sugar’s thigh and shakes her gently from her sleep. She groans anxiously, anticipating her mother’s words: ‘You needn’t shiver any more …’ But her mother is silent. Instead, a deep male voice whispers through the gloom.

‘I’m sorry, Sugar,’ he is saying. ‘Please forgive me.’

She opens her eyes, but finds she’s burrowed wholly under the sheets, her head wrapped up in linen, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. Gasping, she emerges into the air, squinting into the radiance of an oil lamp.

‘What? What?’ she mutters.

‘Forgive me for my oafish behaviour,’ repeats William. ‘I wasn’t myself.’

Sugar sits up in bed and runs one hand through her tangled hair. Her palm is hot and sweaty, the hidden flesh of her belly feels suddenly cool for the lack of her hands upon it. William places the lamp on top of her dresser, then sits at the foot of her bed, his brow and nose casting black shadows over his eyes and mouth as he speaks.

‘I collapsed in town. Too much to drink. You must forgive me.’

His voice, for all its imperative message, sounds flat and morbid, as if he’s counselling her against thinking ill of the dead.

‘Yes, yes of course, my love,’ she replies, leaning forward to take his hand.

‘I’ve been considering your opinion,’ he continues dully, ‘that it would be beneficial for Sophie to have more … outings in the company of … of us both.’

‘Oh, yes?’ says Sugar. She notes the time on the clock above his head: it’s half past two in the morning. What in God’s name does he have in mind at this hour? A spin in the carriage, the three of them in their nightgowns, admiring the gas-lit streets of suburbia while Cheesman serenades them with a lewd ditty?

‘So, I’ve a-arranged …’ says William, extracting his hand from hers and fiddling with his beard as his stammer begins to take hold. ‘I-I’ve arranged a visit to m-my s-soap factory. For you and S-Sophie. Tomorrow a-afternoon.’

For an instant, Sugar’s spirits are buoyed up on a wave of dizzy optimism almost indistinguishable from her usual morning nausea. Everything is falling into place! He’s seen the light at last! He’s realised that the only way to snatch happiness from the jaws of misery is to stay together, and damn what the world thinks!
Now
is the moment to throw herself into his arms, guide the palm of his hand to the curve of her belly, and tell him that immortality for the Rackham name –
his
immortality – is assured.
You think there are only two of us here in this room,
she could say.
But there are three!

Hesitating on the brink of this outburst, the words on the tip of her tongue, she seeks out his eyes in the inky shadows of his brow, and sees only a fugitive glint. Then the last thing he said begins to niggle at her wakening brain.