The Crimson Petal and the White

  I was most especially delighted with my bosom, so small and smooth, my lower parts, free of gross hair, and of course my face, with all the cares erased. I must say, I was relieved she was asleep, as I dont think I should have had the courage to look myself in the eyes.

  Overcome at last with fear — or satisfaction — I left the room and ran back to my cell as fast as my feet could carry me!

  Sugar turns the page, but this ecstatic episode was evidently as much of The Illuminated Thoughts & Preturnatural Reflections of Agnes Pigott as Agnes managed to write before arriving at her fateful decision to dig her old diaries back out of the ground.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ says William, for he’s perched on the rim of his desk, and Sugar stands in front of him in his study, holding the open ledger.

  ‘I–I don’t know,’ she says, still trying to guess what his summons here this morning might have in store for her. Both she and William are mortally tired, and surely have better things to do with their fagged brains than dissect Agnes’s ravings. ‘She … she tells a story quite well, doesn’t she?’

  William stares at her in bafflement, his eyes smarting pink. Even as he opens his mouth to speak, his stomach emits a growl, for he’s given the servants — those of them who were disturbed in the night — leave to sleep late.

  ‘Are you making a joke?’ he says.

  Sugar closes the ledger and hugs it to her breast. ‘No … No, of course not, but … This account, it’s… it’s a dream, isn’t it? A record of a dream …’

  William grimaces irritably. ‘And the rest of it? The earlier part? The …’ (he quotes the word with exaggerated distaste) ‘lessons?’

  Sugar shuts her eyes and breathes deep, plagued by a temptation to laugh, or to tell William to leave his damned wife alone.

  ‘Well … you know I’m not the most religious of people,’ she sighs, ‘so I really can’t judge–’

  ‘Madness!‘ he explodes, slamming the palm of his hand against the desk. ‘Complete lunacy! Can’t you see that!’

  She flinches, takes an instinctive step backwards. Has he ever spoken so harshly to her before? She wonders if she should burst into tears, and plead ‘You f-frightened me’ in a tremulous voice so that he’ll enfold her penitently in his arms. A quick glance at those arms, and the fists at the ends of them, dissuades her.

  ‘Look — look at these!’ he rages, pointing to a precarious stack of books and pamphlets on his desk, all of whose covers are concealed under curious hand-made jackets of wallpaper or cloth. He snatches up the topmost, yanks it open to its title page, and loudly, jeeringly recites: ‘From Matter to Spirit: The Result of Ten Tears’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, with Advice for Neophytes, by Celia E. De Foy!’ He flings it from his hand like an unsalvage-ably soiled handkerchief, and snatches up another. ‘A Finger in the Wound of Christ: Probings into Scriptural Arcana by Dr Tibet!’ He flings that away also. ‘I searched Agnes’s bedroom, to remove anything she might use to cause herself a mischief. And what did I find? Two dozen of these vile objects, hidden inside Agnes’s sewing-baskets! Solicited from as far afield as America, or stolen — yes stolen — from a spiritualist lending library in Southampton Row! Books that no sane man would publish, and no sane woman would read!’

  Sugar blinks dumbly, unable to appreciate the point of this tirade, but shaken by its vehemence. The stack of books and pamphlets, as if likewise unnerved, suddenly collapses, spilling across William’s desk. One tract falls onto the carpet, a hymnal-sized little thing snugly clad in lace.

  ‘William — what do you want of me?’ she asks, straining to keep her voice innocent of exasperation. ‘You’ve called me in here, while Sophie sits idle in the school-room, to look at these things of Agnes’s you’ve … confiscated. I agree that they’re proof of …of a severely muddled mind. But how can I help you?’

  William runs a hand through his hair, then grabs a handful of it and squeezes it hard against his skull, a fretful gesture she last saw him exhibiting during his dispute with the jute merchants of Dundee.

  ‘Clara has told me,’ he groans, ‘that she absolutely refuses to give Agnes any more … medicine.’

  Sugar bites her tongue on several replies, none of them very respectful to men who wish to keep their wives doped to the gills; she breathes deep, and manages to say instead: ‘Is that such a calamity, William? Agnes was walking fairly well, I thought, when I escorted her back to the house. The worst of the danger is probably past, don’t you think?’

  ‘An incident such as last night’s, and you suggest the danger is past?’

  ‘I meant, to the healing of the wounds in her feet.’

  William lowers his gaze. Only now does Sugar detect a furtiveness in his bearing, a dog-like shame she hasn’t observed in him since he first lifted her skirts at Mrs Castaway’s and entreated her to submit to what other whores had refused. What does he want of her now?

  ‘Even so,’ he mumbles, ‘Clara — a servant in my employ — has openly defied me. I instructed her to give Agnes that medicine until … until further notice, and she refuses to do it.’

  Sugar feels her face beginning to contort with reproach, and hastily smooths it as best she can. ‘Clara is Agnes’s maid, William,’ she reminds him. ‘You must ask yourself, how can she possibly fulfil that function if Agnes doesn’t trust her?’

  ‘A very good question,’ remarks William, with a portentous nod, as if it’s only too clear to him how untenable Clara’s employment has become. ‘She has also refused, point-blank, to lock Agnes’s door.’

  ‘While she’s attending to Agnes?’

  ‘No, after.’

  Sugar tries to insert this wedge of information into her mind, but it’s just a little too big to fit through the aperture. ‘You mean, you want — uh, the plan is … for Agnes to be kept a …’ (she swallows hard) ‘locked up in her bedroom?’

  Face burning, William turns away from her; he waves one arm indignantly towards the window, his stiff fore-finger stabbing the air. ‘Are we to be fetching her out of the coach-house, or from God knows where else, every night of the week?’

  Sugar hugs the ledger tighter to her breast; she wishes she could put it down, but feels she’d be unwise to take her eyes off William even for an instant. What does he really want? What act of extravagant submission would deflate the anger from his pumped-up frame? Does he need to batter her with his fists, before exerting his remorse between her legs?

  ‘Agnes seems … very placid just now, don’t you think?’ she suggests gently. ‘When I brought her in from the cold, all she talked about was how much she was looking forward to a warm bath and a cup of tea. “Home is home,” she said.’

  He glowers at her in stark mistrust. A hundred lies he’s swallowed; lies about the superior size of his prick to other men’s, the erotic potency of his chest hair, the inevitability of Rackham’s one day being the foremost manufacturer of toiletries in England; but this — this he cannot believe.

  For a moment she fears he’ll seize her by the shoulders to shake the truth out of her, but then he slumps back against the desk, and wipes his face with his hands.

  ‘How did you know where to find her, anyway?’ he enquires, in a calmer tone. It’s a question he didn’t get around to asking hours ago, when he arrived back at the house at dawn, soaked to the skin, wild with worry, only to discover his wife tucked up and dozy in her bed. (‘My goodness, William, what a state you are in’ was Agnes’s sole comment before letting her eyelids droop shut again.) heard her calling,’ Sugar replies. How much longer does William intend to keep her here? Sophie is waiting in the school-room, rather distractible and peevish today, craving the familiar routine of lessons, yet resisting it … There’ll be trouble — tears, at the very least — if normality isn’t restored soon …

  ‘It’s … exceedingly important,’ declares William, ‘that she doesn’t run away in the next few days.’

  Sugar’s self-control cannot bear the weight any longer, and she sn
aps. ‘William, why are you telling me this? I thought you wanted me to have nothing to do with Agnes. Am I to be her warden now? Is she to sit in a corner of the school-room while I teach Sophie, to make sure she behaves?’ Even as the words slip out of her lips, she regrets them; a man requires constant, tireless flattery to keep him from turning nasty; one careless remark can make his fragile forbearance shrivel. If a girl’s going to be sharp-tongued, she’s better off making a career of it, like Amy Howlett.

  ‘Oh, William, please forgive me,’ she implores, covering her face with her hands. ‘I’m so very tired. And so are you, I’m sure.’

  At last he crosses the floor to embrace her: a hard clinch. Agnes’s ledger falls to the floor; their cheeks collide, bone against bone. Each of them squeezes harder as the other responds in kind, until they’re quite breathless. Downstairs, the doorbell rings.

  ‘Who’s that?’ gasps Sugar.

  ‘Oh, tradesmen and spongers,’ he replies, ‘turning up for their Christmas boxes. They’ll have to come back later, when Rose is ready to face the world.’

  ‘You’re sure …?’ she asks, as the ringing persists.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he retorts irritably. ‘Agnes is being watched by Clara just now –watched as close as I’m watching you.’

  ‘But I thought you said you gave all the servants leave to–’

  ‘All except Clara, of course! If the little minx won’t do what’s needful for Agnes to sleep, and won’t lock her up either, the least she can do is stay in the room with her!’ The callousness of his own words provokes a twitch of mortification in him, and he adds: ‘But can’t you see that this is no way for a household to be run!’

  ‘I’m sorry, William,’ she says, stroking his shoulders. ‘I can only play my part as well as I’m able.’

  To her relief, this does the trick. He holds her tight, uttering little grunts of distress, until the tension begins to leave his body, and he’s ready to confess.

  ‘I need …’ he whispers urgently, conspiratorially, into her ear, ‘your advice. I have a decision to make. The most difficult decision of my life.’ ‘Yes, my love?’

  He squeezes her waist, clears his throat, and then the words come rushing out, almost in a gabble. ‘Agnes is mad, she’s been mad for years, and the situation is unmanageable, and the long and short of it is … well, I believe she ought to be put away.’

  ‘Away?’

  ‘In an asylum.’

  ‘Oh.’ She resumes stroking his shoulders, but he’s so prickly with guilt that her momentary pause has already struck him like a slap to the face.

  ‘She can be cured there,’ he argues with the passion of unconviction. ‘They have doctors and nurses in constant attendance. She’ll come home a new woman.’

  ‘So … when have you arranged …?’

  ‘I’ve put this off years too long! The twenty-eighth, God damn it! Doctor Curlew has offered to …uh … escort Agnes to the place. Labaube Sanatorium, it’s called.’ In a strangely cloying tone, he adds: ‘In Wiltshire.’ — as though mention of the locality ought to be enough to banish any doubt of the asylum’s salubrious credentials.

  ‘Then your decision is already made,’ says Sugar. ‘What advice did you hope to get from me?’

  ‘I need to know …’ He groans, nuzzles his face into her neck. ‘I need to know … that it’s … that I’m not a …’ She feels his brow furrow against her skin, feels the twitch of his jaw push through her clothing. ‘I need to know that I’m not a monster!’ he cries, racked by a spasm of anguish.

  With the lightest, tenderest touch, Sugar strokes his hair and cossets his head with kisses. ‘There now,’ she croons. ‘You have done your best, my love. Your very best: always, since you first met her, I’m sure. You …you are a good man.’

  He utters a loud groan, of misery and relief. This is what he wanted from her from the beginning; this is why he summoned her out of the nursery. Sugar holds him tight as he sags against her, and her heart fills with shame; she knows that no degradation to which she has ever consented, no abasement she’s ever pretended to enjoy, can compare in lowness to this.

  ‘What if Clara tells Agnes of your plans?’ It’s a loathsome question, but she must ask it, and she’s so steeped in perfidy already, does it really make any difference? There’s a bilious taste of conspiracy on her tongue — the poisonous, lip-licking saliva of a Lady Macbeth.

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ William mutters into her hair. ‘I haven’t informed her.’

  ‘But what if, come the twenty-eighth–?’

  He breaks their embrace, and begins immediately to pace back and forth, his eyes glassy, his shoulders hunched, his hands wringing each other in agitation.

  ‘I’m giving Clara a few days off,’ he says. ‘I owe her Lord knows how many free afternoons, not to mention some good nights’ sleep.’ He looks to the window, and blinks hard. ‘And — and I shall be gone too, on the twenty-eighth. God forgive me, Sugar, I can’t bear to be here when Agnes is taken.

  So, I’ll … I’ll attend to some business. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. There’s a man in Somerset who claims he’s invented a method of enfleurage that requires no alcohol. He’s been sending me letters for months, inviting me to come and see the proof for myself. Most likely he’s a fraud, but … Ach, I’ll give him an hour of my time. And when I return … Well …by then it will be December twenty-ninth.’

  Sugar’s imagination glows with two vivid pictures, side by side. In one, William is being led into the luridly lit lair of a leering mountebank, surrounded by beakers bubbling and frothing. In the other, Agnes is arm-inarm with Doctor Curlew, the man her diary describes as Satan’s lackey, the Demon Inquisitor and the Leech Master; captor and captive are walking like father and bride towards a waiting carriage …

  ‘But … what if Agnes should resist the doctor?’

  William wrings his hands all the more nervously. ‘It would’ve been so much better,’ he laments, ‘if Clara hadn’t been difficult about the laudanum. Agnes is wide awake and on the alert now. She tastes everything that’s given to her with the tip of her tongue, like a cat…’ And he casts a glance at the ceiling, recriminating whatever baneful power may lurk in the skies above, for sowing such mischief. ‘But Curlew will have men with him. Four strong men.’

  ‘Four?’ The vision of Agnes’s wasted little body set upon by five hulking strangers makes Sugar’s flesh creep.

  William stops pacing and looks at her directly, his tortured bloodshot eyes imploring her to indulge just one more little outrage, to bestow upon him, with her silence, with her complaisance, just one more illicit blessing.

  ‘Should there be any unpleasantness,’ he maintains, fumbling for a handkerchief to dab the sweat on his brow, ‘the extra men will only ensure that the event proceeds with … dignity.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sugar hears herself say. Downstairs, the doorbell rings, and rings again.

  ‘God damn it!’ William barks. ‘When I told Rose she could sleep, I didn’t mean all day!’ A couple of minutes later, when Sugar returns to the school-room, all is not well. She knew it wouldn’t be, and it isn’t.

  Sophie has left her desk, and now stands on a foot-stool facing the window, immobile, apparently unaware of her governess re-entering the room. She peers through her spyglass at the world outside — a world which consists of nothing very spectacular, just a leaden grey sky and a few flickering hints of pedestrians and vehicles through the camouflage of Shears’s ivy on the Rackham palisades. To a girl with a spyglass, however, even these indistinct phenomena can be engrossing, ifshe has nothing better to do; for who knows how long her governess — despite solemn announcements about how much needs to be learned before the new year — means to leave her like this?

  So, Sophie has turned her back on the promises of grown-ups, and is conducting her own investigations. Several odd-looking men have come through the gate this morning, rung the doorbell, and gone away again. Rose seems not to be doing any work today at all! The
gardener came out and smoked one of those funny white snippets that are not cigars; then he left the Rackham premises and disappeared up the road, walking extremely slowly and gingerly. Cheesman has returned from his Mama, walking in the same peculiar manner as Shears — indeed, the two men narrowly avoided each other at the front gate. The kitchen servant with the ugly red arms hasn’t been out yet, to empty her buckets. There was no proper breakfast this morning — no porridge or cocoa — only bread-and-butter, water, and Christmas pudding. And what a muddle over the gifts! First Miss Sugar said the Christmas gifts should stay in the bedroom, so as not to be a distraction to the lessons, then she changed her mind — why? Which is right — the gifts in the bedroom, or the gifts in the school-room? And what about Australia? Miss Sugar was going to make a start on New South Wales, but nothing has come of it.

  All in all, the universe is in a state of confusion. Sophie adjusts the lens of her spyglass, sets her mouth, and continues her surveillance. The universe may right itself any moment — or explode into chaos.

  The moment she walks into the room, Sugar can sense these dissatisfactions emanating from the little girl, even though Sophie’s back is turned; a child’s disquiet is as potent as a damp fart. But Sugar smells something else too: a real smell, pungent and alarming. Christ, something is burning here!

  She crosses over to the fireplace, and there, smouldering on the livid bed of coal, lies Sophie’s nigger doll, its legs already reduced to ash, its tunic shrivelled like over-crisped bacon, its teeth still grinning white as sluggish flames lick around its sizzling black head.

  ‘Sophie!’ cries Sugar accusingly, too exhausted to soften the sharpness of her tone; the effort of being well behaved with William has leeched every last ounce oftact from her. ‘What have you done!’

  Sophie stiffens, lowers the spyglass, and turns slowly on her stool. Her face is disfigured by apprehension and guilt, but in her pout there’s defiance too.

  ‘I’m burning the nigger doll, Miss,’ she says. Then, in anticipation of her governess making an appeal to her childish credulity, she adds: ‘He’s not alive, Miss. He’s just old rag and biscuit.’