by Michel Faber
William is touched by this — touched to his soul.
‘Oh, Aggie,’ he says. ‘That would be simply wonderful.’
The vision of her standing there, so small and frail, pouring his tea, suddenly overwhelms him. How despicably, how unfairly, he has treated her! Not just this morning, but ever since she first began to loathe him. Is it really her fault that she turned against his love, began to treat him as if he were a brute, turned him, finally, into a brute? He ought to have conceded that she was a flower not designed to open, a hothouse creation, no less beautiful, no less worth having. He should have admired her, praised her, cared for her and, at close of day, let her be. Moved almost to tears, he reaches out his hand across the table.
Abruptly, Agnes’s arm begins to shake, with mechanical vehemence, and the spout of the teapot rattles loudly against the rim of William’s cup. In an instant the cup has jumped out of its saucer, and the white of the tablecloth erupts with brown liquid.
William leaps from his seat, but Agnes’s hand has already shivered out of the teapot’s grip, and she totters away from the table, eyes wild. The shoulders around which he tries to cast a comforting arm seem to convulse and deflate and, with a retching cry, she falls to the floor. Or sinks to the carpet, if you will. Whatever way she gets there, she lands without a thump, and her glassy blue eyes are open.
William stares down in disbelief, though this is not the first time he’s seen her sprawled at his feet; he is sick with concern, and hatred too, for he suspects she conspired in her collapse. She, in turn, stares up at him, bizarrely calm now that she can fall no farther. Her hair is still neat, her body is arranged as if for sleep. Shallow breaths, lifting her bosom, reveal that the body underneath the blue dressing-gown is more adult than its tiny size suggests.
‘I made a mistake, getting up today,’ she reflects, spiritlessly, her gaze drifting from her husband to the plaster rosettes on the ceiling. ‘I thought I could, but I couldn’t.’
Fortuitously — for the Rackhams at least — it’s at this moment that Janey enters the room, sent to clear the breakfast table.
‘Janey!’ William barks. ‘Run to Doctor Curlew’s house and tell him to come at once.’
The girl curtseys, primed to obey, but she’s stopped in her tracks by the sound of her mistress’s voice coming up from the floor.
‘Janey can’t go,’ the recumbent Mrs Rackham points out, a little wheezy from carpet dust. ‘She’s needed in the kitchen. And Letty will be busy with the beds now. Janey, tell Beatrice she’s to go; she’s the only one we can spare.’
‘Yes ‘m.’
‘And call Clara to me.’
‘Yes ‘m.’ Without waiting for a word from the master, the girl hurries off.
William Rackham dawdles near his wife, awkwardly flexing his hands. Once upon a time, when Agnes’s illness was still new, he used to lift her up into his arms, and carry her from room to room. Now he knows that merely picking her up is not enough. He clears his throat, straining to find a way of demonstrating his remorse and his forgiveness.
‘You aren’t hurt, are you, my dear? I mean, in your bones? Should I even have called for Doctor Curlew, d’you think? I did it without thinking, in my …my agitation. But I daresay you don’t need a doctor, now. Do you?’ He holds it out to her: a tempting offer, for her to take or leave as she chooses.
‘It’s kind of you to think so,’ she responds wearily. ‘But it’s too late now.’
‘Nonsense. I can call the girl back.’
‘Out of the question. As if it weren’t bad enough, what’s become of this household, without you running about in your slippers, chasing after a servant.’
And she turns her head away from him, towards the door through which rescue will come.
Clara arrives a few seconds later. She takes one look at her master, and another at Mrs Rackham. It’s only natural, this appraisal: natural to link, with a glance, the upright man and the supine woman. And yet William detects something more in Clara’s glance, a glower of accusation, which outrages him: he has never struck anyone in his life! And if he ever does, by God this insolent little beast is likely to be the first!
Clara, however, is already ignoring him; she’s pulling Agnes to her feet (or is Agnes rising by her own efforts? — the deed is done with remarkably little fuss) and, shoulder to shoulder, the two women walk out of the room.
Now, who shall we follow? William or Agnes? The master or the mistress? On this momentous day, the master.
Agnes’s collapse, though dramatic, is of no great significance; she has collapsed before and will collapse again.
William, on the other hand, proceeds directly to his study and, once seated there, does something he’s never done before. He reads his father’s papers, and he re-reads them, and then he ponders them, peering out into the rain, until he begins to understand them. He has been shocked into a state of acute wakefulness; he is ready. The pages of Rackham Perfumeries’ history glow on the desk before him, veined with vertical shadows: rivulets of rain running down his window. He reads, pen poised. This is the day, the stormy and significant day, when he will bring his unruly future to heel.
Fearlessly, he opens his mind to the mathematics of manure, the arithmetic of acreage, the delicate balances between distillation and dilution. If he encounters a word that’s nonsense to him, he roots it out in the reference books his father has thoughtfully provided, such as A Lexicon of Profitable Vegetation and The Cultivator’s Cyclopaedia of Perfumes and Essences. As of last night, ignorance of the inner workings of Rackham Perfumeries is a luxury he can no longer afford.
Of course he wants to put Agnes out of her misery. Each time a new economy is imposed — another servant lost, another extravagance denied — she takes a turn for the worse. A coachman and carriage would do more to woo her back to health than any of Curlew’s prescriptions.
But Agnes is not at the heart of why he squints over his father’s smudged and faded handwriting, tolerating his father’s crude provincial spelling and crude provincial mind, puzzling over the technicalities of extracting juice from dry leaves. At the heart lies this: if he’s to have Sugar all to himself, the privilege is going to cost him dear. A small fortune, probably, which he has no choice but to defray with a large fortune.
He pauses in his labours, rubs his eyes, itchy from lack of rest. He flips backwards through the handwritten essay his father has prepared for his illumination, and re-reads a paragraph or two. There’s a missing link in the life cycle of lavender as his father chronicles it (if life cycle is the correct term for what happens to a flower after it is cut). Here on this page, the newly filtered oil is described as having an undesirable ‘still smell’; on the next page, the smell is apparently gone, with no mention of how it was removed. William passes one hand through his hair, feels it standing up from his scalp, ignores the feeling.
Still smell — quo vadis? he jots in the margin, determined to survive this ordeal with his sense of humour intact.
Downstairs in the dining-room, Janey has an important task of her own. She is to remove all evidence of what Miss Tillotson described as a ‘disaster’ on the breakfast table. Janey, too downtrodden to dare ask what exactly this word means (she’d always thought it had something to do with the Navy) has come here prepared for the worst, with bucket and mop, her pinafore weighed down with rags and brushes. She finds an abandoned but perfectly lovely-looking breakfast and, on closer examination, one spilled tea-cup. No debris on the floor. Only what Janey herself has brought in, on the bottom of her bucket: a few crumbs of dirt from the uncarpeted nether regions of the Rackham house.
Hesitantly, the girl reaches for a slice of cold bacon, one of three still glistening on the silver dish. She takes it between her stubby fingers, and begins to nibble on it. Theft. But the wrath of God shows no interest in coming down upon her head, so she grows bolder, and eats the whole rasher. It’s so delicious she wishes she could post one home to her brother. Next, a muffin, washed down wit
h a sip of stewed tea. Mrs Rackham’s uneaten kidneys she leaves alone, not sure what they are. Her own diet is what Cook decides will agree with her.
Wicked just like everyone says she is, Janey lowers her weary body into Mrs Rackham’s chair. Though only nineteen, she has legs as dense and varicose as rolled pork, and any opportunity to rest them is bliss. Her hands are lobster-red, in vivid contrast to white china as she inserts her finger into the handle of her mistress’s cup. Shyly, she extends her pinkie, testing to see if this makes any difference to the way the cup lifts.
But this is as much as God is willing to tolerate. A bell tolls, making her jump.
* * *
‘Come in, Letty,’ says Rackham, but he’s wrong: it’s Clara again. What are these servants playing at? Has the house descended into utter chaos while he’s been toiling here? But then he remembers: he himself has sent Letty on an errand to the stationers, fifteen minutes ago. ‘I suppose Doctor Curlew has arrived?’
Wrong again. Clara explains to him that there is no sign yet of Beatrice and the good doctor, but that, instead, Mr Bodley and Mr Ashwell have come to visit. They are (quotes Clara with conscientious disdain) challenging him to a duel, acting as each other’s seconds, and demanding that Rackham choose his weapon.
‘I’ll see them shortly,’ he says. ‘Bid them make themselves at home.’
If there’s one thing that Bodley and Ashwell can be relied upon to do, it’s to make themselves at home. When William reaches a natural breathing-space in his work and goes downstairs, he finds them sunk deep in the smoking-room armchairs, languidly kicking each other’s feet in competition for the privilege of resting them on the bald head of a stuffed tiger skin.
‘Ave, Rackhamus! hails Ashwell, the old school greeting.
‘By God, Bill,’ exclaims Bodley. ‘Your eyes look worse than mine! Been fucking all night?’
‘Yes, but I’m turning over a new leaf,’ William volleys back. He’s ready for this! On a day like today, whatever God may send to frustrate him — lack of sleep, burnt fingers, Agnes on the floor, a mound of dreary documents to plough through, the wit of his bachelor friends — he will not allow his glow of triumph to be overshadowed.
It helps that in Bodley and Ashwell’s company, he is forever an honorary bachelor. As far as they’re concerned, Agnes does not exist until William mentions her. Admittedly, here in the Rackham house, her existence is more difficult to deny than in the streets of London or Paris, for there are reminders of her everywhere. The antimacassars on the chairs were crocheted by her; the tablecloths are adorned by her embroidery; and under every vase, candle-holder and knick-knack is likely to lie some finely wrought doily or place-mat beautified by Mrs Rackham’s handicraft. Even the cedar cigar case owes its little embroidered jacket (in five colours of thread, replete with silken tassels) to Agnes. But (‘Cigar, Bodley?’) William is so accustomed to his wife’s rococo icing on every exposed surface that he has become blind to it.
In a sense, this policy of Bodley and Ashwell’s — of denying Mrs Rackham’s existence — is considerate rather than callous. It tactfully lets the marriage rest for as long as it needs to, like an invalid whose recovery cannot be hurried. William is grateful to them, really he is, for their willingness to act the part of the three wise monkeys (well, two), seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and … well, he doesn’t know if they speak evil of Agnes when they’re in other company. He hopes not.
‘But you must tell us,’ says Ashwell, after they’ve been chin-wagging and smoking for a few minutes. ‘You must tell us the secret of Mrs Fox. Come now, Bill: what are her virtues? — besides Virtue, I mean.’
Bodley interposes: ‘Can a woman who works with prostitutes be virtuous?”
‘Surely the prime requisite, hmm?’ says Ashwell, ‘for a woman thus employed?’
‘But contact with Vice corrupts!’ protests Bodley. ‘Haven’t you found?’
William flicks his cigar into the hearth. ‘I’m sure Mrs Fox is proof against all evil. God’s deputy in a bonnet. That’s the impression Henry gave me, from the day he first met her. Well, not the actual day, I suppose, since he doesn’t visit me very often.’ William leans back in his chair and stares at the ceiling, the better to read any bygone conversations that might still be floating up there. “‘She’s so good, William”– that’s what he kept saying to me. “So very good. She’ll make some lucky man a saint of a wife.” ‘
‘Yes, but what does he think of her rubbing shoulders with whores?’
‘He hasn’t told me. I can’t imagine he likes it much.’
‘Poor Henry. The dark shadow of Sin comes between him and his love.”
William wags his finger in mock disapproval. ‘Now now, Bodley, you know Henry would be horribly offended to hear that word used in connection with his feelings for Mrs Fox.’
‘What word? Sin?’
‘No no, Love!’ chides William. ‘Any suggestion that he’s in love with Mrs Emmeline Fox …’
‘Agh, it’s as plain as the nose on his face,’ scoffs Ashwell. ‘What does he imagine brings them together so often? The irresistible charm of debating Scripture?’
‘Yes, yes, precisely that!’ exclaims William. ‘You must remember they’re both furiously devout. Every whisper of reform or lapse in the Church, here in England or abroad, is of unbearable interest to them.’ (‘Then why don’t they want to hear about our new book?’ mutters Bodley.) ‘As for Mrs Fox’s work with the Rescue Society, the way Henry describes it, she does it all for God. You know: souls brought back to the fold …’
‘No no, old chap,’ corrects Bodley. ‘Souls to the bosom; sheep to the fold.’
‘As for Henry,’ perseveres William, ‘He’s still hell-bent on becoming a parson. Or is it a vicar, or a rector, or a curate? The more he explains the distinctions, the less difference I can see.’
‘Tithes,’ says Bodley with a wink, ‘and what proportion of ‘em you can pocket.’
Ashwell snorts and produces from inside his coat a squashed clump of Turkish Delight wrapped in tissue paper. ‘It’s too absurd,’ he mumbles, after taking a bite and re-pocketing the remainder. ‘A fine manly specimen like Henry — best rower in our set, champion swimmer, I can still see him running around Midsummer Common stripped to the waist. What’s he thinking of, shuffling alongside a sickly widow? Don’t tell me it’s her snow-white soul — I know a man on heat when I smell one!’
‘But how can he stand the sight of her?’ groans Bodley. ‘She looks like a greyhound! That long, leathery face, and that wrinkled forehead — and always so terribly attentive, just like a dog listening for commands.’
‘Come now,’ cautions William. ‘Aren’t you placing too much importance on physical beauty?’
‘Yes but damn it, William — would you marry a widow who looked like a dog?’
‘But Henry has no intention of marrying Emmeline Fox!’
‘Oooh! Scandalous!’ mugs Bodley, clapping his hands to his cheeks.
‘I can vouch for the fact,’ pronounces William, ‘that my brother wants nothing from Mrs Fox but conversation.’
‘Oh yes,’ sneers Ashwell, removing his coat, warming to his theme. ‘Conversation. Conversation while they go on walks together in the park, or in cosy tea rooms in town, or by the sea, gazing into each other’s eyes constantly. I heard they even went boating on the Thames — in order to discuss Thessalonians, no doubt.’
‘No doubt,” insists William.
Ashwell shrugs. ‘And this mad desire to be a parson: how long has he had that?’
‘Oh, years and years.’
‘I never noticed it at Cambridge — did you, Bodley?’
‘Beg pardon?’ Bodley is rummaging in the pockets of Ashwell’s discarded coat, looking for the Turkish Delight.
‘Father forbade the idea ever to be discussed,’ William explains. ‘So Henry wished for it in secret — though it wasn’t much of a secret from me, I’m sorry to say. He was always frightfully pious, even when we were sm
all. Always lamented that we were a prayers-once-a-day family and not a prayers-twice-a-day family.’
‘He should’ve counted his blessings,’ muses Bodley. (‘He was counting his blessings,’ quips Ashwell.) ‘We had prayers twice a day in our house. I owe my atheism to it. Once a day fosters piety, and poor fools like Henry wanting to be clerics.’
‘It’s been a great disappointment to my father, at any rate,’ says William. ‘He assumed for so long that it would be Henry, his precious namesake, who took the business over. And instead, of course,’ (he stares them straight in the eye) ‘it will be me.’
Bodley and Ashwell are struck silent, visibly surprised to hear him talking this way about Rackham Perfumeries, usually another unmentionable subject. Well, let them be surprised! Let them gain an inkling of the change that has come over him since yesterday!
He longs to tell them about Sugar, of course; to sing her praises and (all right: yes) revenge himself a little for the last few years, when Bodley and Ashwell’s lives seemed always so gay in comparison with his own. But he can imagine only too well their response: ‘Well then, let’s try this Sugar!’ And what could he do then? Retract everything? Begin falsely dispraising her, like a stammering old peasant trying to persuade a pillaging soldier that his daughter isn’t worth raping? Futile. To such as Bodley and Ashwell, all female treasures are in the public domain.
‘So,’ he questions them instead, ‘have you heard anything more about that amazing girl you were describing to me?’
‘Amazing girl?’
‘The fierce one — with the riding crop — supposed to be the illegitimate daughter of somebody or other … ‘
‘Lucy Fitzroy!’ Bodley and Ashwell ejaculate simultaneously.
‘Yes, by God, odd you should mention that,’ says Ashwell. The two of them turn to each other and raise an eyebrow each, their signal to slip into alternating raconteuring.
‘Yes, damned odd.’
‘We got the news about her, oh, barely three hours after we told you about her in the first place, didn’t we, Bodley?’ ‘Two and three-quarter hours, no more.’ ‘The news?’ prompts William. ‘What news?’