The Crimson Petal and the White

  She stands poised at the top of the staircase. The stairs are quite still, although the walls and ceiling continue to revolve slowly. An optical illusion. The light is dim this morning, and the traces of Agnes’s blood wholly invisible. How many steps has this staircase? Many, many. The receiving hall is far, far below. Sugar stands poised. Her hands are laid one over the other, cradling the curve of her belly. She forces herself to remove them. The house breathes in and out. It wants to help her; it knows the trouble she’s in; it knows what’s best for her. She steps forward, then notices she’s cradling her belly again. She spreads her arms wide, like wings, and the blood in her head pumps so hard that the gas-lights pulse in sympathy. She closes her eyes, and lets herself fall.

  ‘Mr Rackham! Mr Rackham!’ (Bam, bam, bam, on his study door.) ‘Mr Rackham! Mr Rackham!’ (Bam, bam, bam!)

  William bounds out from behind his desk, and opens up so abruptly that Letty almost raps her knuckles against his heaving chest.

  ‘Oh, Mr Rackham!’ she squeaks frantically. ‘Miss Sugar’s fallen downstairs!’

  He pushes past her, strides across the landing and looks down the long, long swath of carpeted steps. The body of Sugar lies sprawled far below, a tangle of black skirts, white underclothing, loose red hair and splayed limbs. She’s motionless as a doll.

  With one hand sliding on the banister to prevent a similar accident befalling him, William leaps down the stairs two and three at a time.

  A short while later, Sugar’s plunge through unconsciousness ends with a gentle slap to her cheek. She’s lying on her own bed, with William standing over her. The last thing she can remember is flying through space, ecstatic with terror.

  ‘How did I get here?’

  William’s face, though careworn, is not angry. In fact, she detects a faint glow of loving concern for her — or of exertion. ‘Rose and I carried you,’ he says.

  Sugar looks around for Rose, but no, she’s alone with her lover …her employer … whatever he is to her now. ‘I lost my footing,’ she pleads.

  ‘W-we’re an accident-prone household, to be sure,’ he jokes mirthlessly.

  Sugar tries to lift herself up on her elbows, but is made helpless by a stab of pain like a knife through her ribs. She cranes her head forward, chin on breastbone, and notices two things: her hair has come loose from its pins, untidy masses of it falling all around her face; and her skirts are rucked up, exposing her underwear.

  ‘The servants,’ she frets. ‘Did they see me disordered like this?’

  William laughs despite himself. ‘You do w-worry about some queer things, Sugar.’

  She laughs too, and tears spring to her eyes. It’s such a relief to hear him speak her name. She pictures him as he might have been a few minutes ago, carrying her upstairs in his arms — then reminds herselfthat he didn’t manage it alone, and that the ascent was most probably blundering and undignified.

  ‘I’m so sorry, William. lost …’

  ‘Doctor Curlew is on his way.’

  Sugar feels a chill at the thought of Doctor Curlew, whom she knows only from Agnes’s diaries, hurrying towards her. She imagines him gliding along the street, supernaturally fast, his eyes glowing like candles, his taloned hands disguised in gloves, his black bag teeming with maggots. Robbed of Mrs Rackham, his intended prey, he’ll make do with torturing Sugar instead.

  ‘I-is that necessary?’ she says. ‘Look: I’m all right.’ She lifts her arms and legs and wriggles them slightly, panting with pain, to which William’s response is a glare of pity and distaste, as if she were a giant cockroach, or raving mad.

  ‘Don’t move from this bed,’ he commands her, an edge of steel in his voice.

  Sugar lies waiting, breathing shallowly to keep on the right side of the pain. What damage has she done in one moment of insanity? Her right ankle is stiff and sore, and she can feel her heart’s pulse beating in it; her ribcage feels broken, as if splinters of sharp white bone are needling the soft red membranes of her organs. And for what? Has she ever known a woman who induced a miscarriage by falling downstairs? It’s another fiction, a fairytale that whores tell each other … Harriet Paley miscarried after being beaten black and blue, but that was different: William’s hardly likely to punch and kick her in the belly, is he? (Although he does sometimes get a look in his eye that makes her wonder ifhe’s considering it …)

  There’s a knock at her door, the knob turns, and a tall man walks into her bedroom.

  ‘Miss Sugar is it?’ he says, in an affable, businesslike tone. ‘I’m Doctor Curlew: please allow me …’

  Holding his bag before him like a diplomatic gift, he steps towards her, with scuffed leather shoes that are not cloven, eyes that do not glow, and wisps of grey in his beard. Far from resembling the Devil, he much resembles Emmeline Fox, though the long face looks handsomer on him than it does on her.

  ‘Do you recall,’ he asks respectfully as he kneels at her bedside, ‘how far you fell, and what part of your person took the brunt?’

  ‘No, I don’t recall,’ she says, recalling the uncanny, attenuated second when her spirit floated free of her body, suspended in the air, while a lifeless dummy of flesh and cloth began to tumble down the steps. ‘It all happened so suddenly.’

  Doctor Curlew opens his bag and removes a sharp metallic instrument, which proves to be a buttonhook. ‘Please allow me, Miss,’ he murmurs, and she nods permission.

  With callused but gentle hands, Doctor Curlew proceeds to examine his patient, manifestly uninterested in anything except the state of her bones beneath the flesh. He removes or rolls up her clothing one item at a time, and replaces each in turn, except for her right boot. When he pulls down her pantalettes and lays his palms on her naked belly, Sugar blushes crimson, but he merely prods her with his thumbs, satisfies himself that she’s not in pain there, and digresses to her hips, instructing her, in a dispassionate tone, to attempt various movements.

  ‘You are fortunate,’ he pronounces at last. ‘It’s not uncommon for people to break their arms or even their necks falling off a chair. You have fallen down a staircase, and all you have to show for it is two cracked ribs that will heal themselves in time, and a number of bruises of which you may not be aware yet, but soon will be. You also have a sprained, but not broken, ankle. By tomorrow morning it will have swollen to the size of my fist …’ (he holds up his loosely curled fist for her appraisal) ‘and I don’t expect you’ll be able to move it then as you can still move it now. Don’t let this alarm you.’

  Curlew reaches into his bag, withdraws a large roll of thick white bandage, and plucks off the paper-clip that holds it snug.

  ‘I am going to bind your ankle tightly with this bandage,’ he explains, as he lifts her leg off the bed and onto his knee, ignoring her gasps. ‘I must ask you not to remove the binding, no matter how tempted you may be. It will grow tighter as your injury swells, and you may imagine it’s about to burst. I assure you that’s impossible.’

  When he’s finished with her leg, Doctor Curlew pulls down her dress as if it were a blanket or a shroud.

  ‘Don’t do anything foolish,’ he says as he rises, ‘keep to your bed as much as possible, and you’ll make a good recovery.’

  ‘But … but I have duties to perform,’ protests Sugar feebly, hoisting herself up.

  He looks down at her, a twinkle in his dark eyes, as though entertaining a suspicion that the duties for which William Rackham has engaged her can all be performed horizontally.

  ‘I’ll arrange,’ he reassures her solemnly, ‘for you to be equipped with a crutch.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ ‘No bother at all.’

  And, with a click of his satchel, the man who’s identified, in the diaries hidden under Sugar’s bed, as the Demon Inquisitor, the Leech Master, Belial, and the Usher of Maggots, bids her a polite good day and, pausing only to waggle one finger in a gesture of remember: keep out of mischief, leaves her in peace.

  Exactly as Doctor Curlew pre
dicted, Sugar wakes up on the morning after her fall grievously tempted to remove the binding from her foot. She does so at once, and feels much better.

  Before long, however, her liberated foot swells to half the size again of the uninjured one, and she’s unable to rest it on the floor without severe pain, let alone walk on it. Limping is all but impossible, and hopping is out of the question for, quite apart from the indignity, the exertion makes her bruises hurt more. Dragging her body around the room by sheer force of will, she has to admit she can’t possibly be a governess to Sophie in this state.

  Before her fear can grow into a panic, it’s quelled by the arrival of a gift from her master, delivered to her door by Rose: a dark-lacquered pine-wood crutch. Whether William already owned it or has purchased it especially for her she dares not ask. But she hobbles back and forth, three-legged, and marvels how a simple tool can change the world, making light of dark prospects and turning calamity into inconvenience. A staff of wood with a crossbar, and she’s upright again! A miracle. Shortly after lunch, having missed only half a day of Sophie’s lessons, she emerges from her room with her books under one arm and the crutch under the other, ready to discharge her duties.

  She knows Sophie well enough by now not to be surprised to find her sitting at her writing-table in the school-room, as patiently as if it were four minutes and not four hours since Rose delivered her there. The mark of Rose’s grooming is unmistakable: a certain way of brushing and pinning the hair, different from Sugar’s, that makes Sophie look more like Agnes. On the table before her is arranged the sole evidence of her morning’s idleness: drawings of houses, half a dozen of them, in blue pencil with red windows and grey smoke. Sophie covers them with her palms, as if caught in an act of mischief, as if she ought instead to have been deeply immersed in the Moorish Wars.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about, Sophie,’ sighs Sugar, slumping on her crutch in disappointment. Mad though it was to hope for, she would have preferred to be received with a yelp of relief and an outburst of childish kisses.

  ‘Here, Sophie,’ she says, twitching one shoulder, ‘take these books from under my arm. I’m afraid I shall drop them any moment.’

  Sophie leaps up from her seat to obey, without showing any sign of having noticed her governess’s disability. She reaches up to extract the books clamped in Sugar’s armpit, and her fingers bumble against Sugar’s bosom as she does so, grazing the nipple through the fabric. Sugar adjusts her centre of gravity and gasps at the pain in her foot.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  Back in her place, Sophie waits for guidance. Her determination to pretend there’s nothing different about her governess today is obvious; when Sugar sways on her crutch and clumsily lowers herself into a chair, the child averts her eyes in order not to witness the inelegant spectacle.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Sophie,’ cries Sugar, ‘aren’t you a little curious to know what’s happened to me?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Well then, if you are curious, why don’t you ask?’

  ‘I…’ Sophie frowns, and looks down into her lap. It’s as though she’s been tricked by a cleverer opponent, manoeuvred into a trap of logic in the name of education. ‘Rose told me you fell down the stairs, Miss, and that I mustn’t stare … ‘

  Sugar shuts her eyes tight, and tries to summon what she’ll need to get through the afternoon. Please hold me, Sophie, she thinks. Please hold me. But what she says is: ‘The doctor says I’ll be better in no time.’ ‘Yes, Miss.’

  Sugar peers across at the drawings on Sophie’s writing-table. Each of the emblematic houses has depictions of three human figures drawn alongside it: one small, two big. Even from Sugar’s upside-down perspective, the man in the dark suit and top hat is unmistakably William, and the puppet-sized girl with too few fingers is Sophie. But who is the female parent? The drawing has a heart-shaped face and blue eyes like Agnes, but is tall, as tall as William, and the lines of her abundant hair are sketched in red. For an instant Sugar is thrilled, then she notices that Sophie hasn’t a yellow colouring-pencil on the table, only red, blue and grey. Also, who’s to say that all grown-ups aren’t the same height to her?

  ‘All right then,’ Miss Sugar declares, clasping her hands together. ‘Arithmetic.’

  That afternoon, William Rackham answers his own correspondence. He answers it in a painstaking, rather clumsy hand: but he manages. By folding his crooked ring finger over his middle one, he keeps its tip from smudging the ink, and by holding the pen almost vertical between his thumb and forefinger, he can achieve quite a bit of fluency.

  I have read your letter, he writes. And now I’m damn well replying to it, he thinks. The direct connection between his brain and his pen has been restored, however torturously.

  But never mind the discomfort. What a blessing it is to be independent –and what a relief to be able to tell that blackguard Pankey exactly what’s what, without Sugar taking all the sting out of his words. Some people deserve to be stung! Grover Pankey especially! If Rackham Perfumeries is to survive into the next century and beyond, it will need a strong hand at the helm now — a hand that doesn’t stand for nonsense. How dare Pankey suggest that ivory is bound to crack when it’s carved as thin as Rackham’s pots require?

  Perhaps you have lately engaged the services of a lower class of elephant, he scrawls. The pots you showed me in Yarmouth were sturdy enough. I suggest you return to that pedigree of beast.

  Yours …

  Ah well, perhaps not ‘yours’ much longer. But there’s more than one ivory merchant in the world, Mr Grover Hanky-Pankey!

  William signs his name, and frowns. The signature looks wrong, a childish approximation of his old one, inferior even to Sugar’s sleepiest forgery. Well, what of it? The way he signed his name before he took control of Rackham Perfumeries was different from the way he signed it after, and the signature on letters he wrote as a schoolboy bore little relation to the signature on his wedding certificate. Life goes on. Change, as the Prime Minister himselfhas said, is constant.

  He seals the letter, and is gripped by the urge to post it at once, to hurry out to Portobello Road and slip it into the nearest pillar-box, in case Sugar should come unexpectedly into the room and spy the letter lying here. The fresh air would do him good, anyhow. Ever since the hullabaloo yesterday he’s been restless, searching for a good reason to leave the gloom of his house, to walk down a public street with a spring in his step. Should he stay or should he go?

  For a little while longer he delays, and the satisfaction of tearing into Pankey evaporates like essence of tuberose flying off a handkerchief. He reflects on the long, hard journey he has made since taking the reins of this perfumery. Again the vision of William Rackham the author and critic returns to haunt him, and he feels a pang of regret for the man who never was, the man whose pen was feared and admired and who set fire to boring correspondents with the tip of his cigar. That man had perfectly formed fingers, long golden hair, a radiant wife, a keen nose not for tainted jasmine but for the great Art and Literature of the future. Instead, here he is, a widower, a stammerer, grunting with the effort of penning his own signature on letters to merchants he loathes. The bonds he once enjoyed with his family, friends and fellow travellers: all altered beyond recognition. Altered beyond rescue? If he doesn’t make amends now while he still has the chance, a once-intimate relationship will sour into estrangement or even hostility.

  So, he swallows his pride, leaves the house, commandeers Cheesman for a ride into the city, and travels direct to Torrington Mews, Bloomsbury, in the hope of catching Mr Philip Bodley at home.

  Five hours later, William Rackham is a happy man. Yes, for the first time since Agnes’s death, or even — yes, why not admit it? — long before, he is a truly happy man. The passage of a mere five hours has ferried him from the brink of despond to the shore of contentment.

  He’s strolling along a narrow street in Soho, after sundown,
slightly drunk, accosted from all sides by pedlars, urchins and whores wanting his money for grubby goods not worth tuppence. Their leering, gap-toothed faces and gesticulating sleeves ought to fill him with anxiety, given how recently he was beaten half to death by just such ruffians in the dark streets of Frome. But no, he’s unafraid of being attacked; he is fearless, for he has his friends with him. Yes, not just Bodley, but Ashwell as well! There’s really nothing, nothing in this world, quite as comforting as the company of men whom one has known since boyhood.

  ‘We’re founding our own publishing house, Bill,’ says Ashwell, his head swivelling in curiosity as he’s passed by a hawker wearing twelve hats, with two others twirling on his fingers.

  Bodley thrusts the pommel of his cane playfully at one of the prostitutes waving at them from the doorways. A small half-asleep boy, minding a cart of worthless jugs and pots he’s been instructed to sell, flinches for fear the cane is a projectile about to smack into his snot-encrusted nose.

  ‘We couldn’t find anyone willing to publish our next book–’ Bodley explains.

  ‘–Art As Understood by the Working Man–‘

  ‘–so we’re going to damn well publish it ourselves.’

  ‘Art as …? Publish it yourselves …? But why …?’ asks William, shaking his head in amused befuddlement. ‘From the title, it sounds to be a …a less contentious book than your previous ones …’

  ‘Don’t you believe it!’ crows Ashwell.

  ‘It’s a brilliantly simple idea!’ declares Bodley. ‘We got hold of a wide variety of rude working folk — chimneysweeps, fish merchants, kitchen-maids, tobacconists, match-sellers, and so forth — and we read them bits of Ruskin’s Academy Notes