by Michel Faber
Another thing for which he feels he’s been given too little credit is his passionate nature. Gossips in both city and country were wont to mutter that he’d have more hope wooing a mechanical grinder than a human female. Imagine their surprise, then, when he suddenly married a damn fine-looking woman! Dumbstruck, they were, every time he showed her off.
Still, if the arrival of his wife took them unawares, her departure, nine years later, surprised no one. Indeed, her adultery seemed to be common knowledge long before he, its victim, learned of it; most galling, that. Then there was endless speculation about whether he disowned her, or if she ran off willingly. What did it matter? She evaporated from his life, leaving behind two infant boys. But, ever practical even in grief, he hired an additional servant to provide such services as his sons’ mother had provided, and got on with his work.
Years went by, the boys grew up with no ill effects whatsoever, and business prospered, until eventually Rackham Senior must give some thought to where young Henry, his heir, was to live. By this time, the 1850s, the prime parts of Notting Hill were rural no longer. The Potteries to the west of the town were still infested with gypsies and piggeries, and the abortive attempts to turn half the parish into a race-course had tainted the character of the whole area, but there were signs that the cluster of houses around Ladbroke Square might become desirable residences. And, by the late 1860s, sure enough, the locale was recognised as a place where prominent men who did not aspire to the very best Society might be satisfied to live. Also, it was handy for the railways, which Henry the Younger would be needing to use often, once he’d assumed control of the business.
So, Henry Senior bought his heir a large and handsome house in Chepstow Villas, barely ten years old and in tip-top condition. As for where William, the second son, would eventually live, well … that was for the boy himselfto sort out.
Now the future is here, and the history of the Rackham empire has run contrary to prospectus. Henry Senior’s side of the bargain has been amply fulfilled: he has, by a combination of robust charm and discreet money-lending, lodged himself in polite Society, counting magistrates, peers and all manner of gentlefolk among his friends. But Henry Junior, his first-born, is living like a monk in a pokey cottage near Brick Field, while William, having enjoyed the best education money could buy, is content to occupy the house in Chepstow Villas, playing the gentleman without the independent means to do so. It’s years now since the boy left university, and he still hasn’t earned a penny of his keep! Is this how William means to go on, leaving his old father burdened with responsibility, while he writes unpublished poems for his own amusement? It’s high time he noticed that the ‘R’ insignia is wrought into the very ironwork of the gates that surround him!
The house is showing signs of strain. The gardens are a disgrace, especially around the edges of the building and behind the kitchen. There’s no carriage, no horse in the stable. The coachman’s tiny bungalow, never yet inhabited by a coachman and converted by William, during a short-lived passion for painting, into a studio, now stands useless. The low greenhouses lie like glass coffins, filled to bursting with whatever weedy rubbish can grow without a gardener. All very regrettable, but only natural: Henry Senior, in his attempt to cure William, has inflicted on the household a series of traumatic shocks, and as a consequence all its servant blood has been drawn away from the peripheries to the beleaguered heart.
Inside, there’s really nothing in particular to impress anyone, except a foreigner like you. You may admire the many high-ceilinged rooms, the dark polished floors, the hundreds of pieces of furniture destined for the antiques shops of your own time, and most of all, you may be impressed by the dumb industry of the servants. All these things are taken for granted here. To the Rackhams’ dwindling circle of acquaintances, the house is tainted: it smells of cancelled soirees, dismal garden parties, the sound of Agnes breaking glass at dinner, embarrassed goodbyes, the glum exodus of guests. It smells of deserted rooms where tables stand groaning with delicacies, empty floors ringing with the heavy footfalls of a forsaken host. No, there’s no reason why anyone should go back to the Rackhams’ again, not after all that’s happened.
In Agnes Rackham’s bedroom, the curtains are thick and almost always drawn, a detail not lost on snoopers who peek across from Pembridge Mews. Those drawn curtains have unfortunate consequences within: Agnes’s room must be lit all through the daylight hours, and smells very strongly of burnt candle-fat (she doesn’t trust gas). Also, on those rare occasions when she ventures out and the candles are snuffed (for she has a fear of the house burning down) her room is dark as a tomb on her return.
This is what we find on the morning when Agnes returns from her brave attempt at a connubial breakfast. She and her lady’s-maid stand at the bedroom door, breathing heavily from the long ascent of the stairs. Clara cannot, at one and the same time, carry a candle and support her mistress, so the door is elbowed open, and the pair of them shuffle inside, lacking bearings in the gloom. By sheer chance, just as the door of Agnes’s bedroom is opened, the main door downstairs is slammed shut, so that Agnes actually hears her husband leaving the house. Where to? she wonders, as she’s led into a room that has become unrecognisable since she was last in it.
The white bed looms unambiguous, but what’s that in the corner? A skeleton half-smothered in bandages? And next to that …a large dog?
Clara lights an oil-lamp, and the mysterious figures are clarified: a cast-iron dressmaker’s dummy swathed in strips of dress material and, standing at the ready like a silver-plated Doberman, the sewing-machine.
‘Give me your hands, Mrs Rackham.’
Agnes shuffles to obey, but not like an old woman — more like a child being taken back to bed after a nightmare.
‘Everything will be all right now, Mrs Rackham.’ Clara pulls back the bedclothes. ‘You can have a peaceful little rest now.’ To the tune of these and other perfunctory soothings, Clara undresses her mistress and puts her to bed. Then she gives Agnes her favourite brush, and Agnes automatically begins to groom her hair, worrying at the tangles caused by her fall. ‘How do I look?’
Clara, who is folding her mistress’s dressing-gown to pillow-slip size, pauses to make her appraisal.
‘Beautiful,’ she says, smiling, ‘ma’am.’
Her smile is insincere. All her smiles are; Agnes knows that. But they’re offered ungrudgingly in the line of duty, and have no harm hidden behind them, and Agnes knows this too, and is grateful. Between her and her maid there’s an understanding that in return for life-long employment, Clara will satisfy any whim, be witness to any fiasco, without ever complaining. She will be a comfort from dawn to midnight, and occasionally at sticky moments in between. She will be a confidante to anything Agnes might confide, no matter how daft, and, if asked to forget it an hour later, will scrub it entirely from her mind as if it were a careless spill of milk.
Most importantly, she will aid and abet her mistress in the disobeying of all orders given by those two evil men, Doctor Curlew or William Rackham.
For Agnes, life with Clara provides her with a game she can play in perfect safety, a regimen of gentle exercise with a benign familiar. With Clara’s help, she will re-learn the social skills she sorely needs for the London Season. For example, she sometimes bids Clara pretend to be this lady or that, and together they act out little dramas, so that Agnes can practise her responses. Not that Clara’s play-acting is terribly convincing, but Agnes doesn’t mind. Too real an imitation might unnerve her.
Heartened now by the sensation of soft tidy hair on her head, she lays down her brush and settles back against the pillows.
‘Clara: my new toilet book,’ she commands softly. The servant hands over the volume, and Agnes opens it to the chapter entitled ‘Defending Yourself Against the Enemy’ — the enemy in this case being old age. She rubs her cheeks and temples, obeying as closely as possible the text’s instructions, although she has trouble rubbing ‘in a direction contr
ary to that which the wrinkles threaten to take’, because she hasn’t any wrinkles yet. ‘Change hands in case of fatigue’, says the book — and she’s certainly fatigued. But how, if she only has two hands, can she change them? And how does she know if she’s touching herself correctly, with the right amount of ‘firm, gentle pressure’; and what are the consequences of not using a lubricant, as the writer recommends? Books never address what one really needs to know.
Too weary to continue her exercises, she turns the page to see what’s next.
The skin of the face wrinkles for the same reason and by the same mechanisms that the skin of an apple wrinkles. The pulp of the fruit under the skin shrinks and contracts as the juices dry up …
Agnes claps shut the book at once.
‘Take it away, Clara,’ she says.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Clara knows what to do: there’s a special room farther along the landing, where unwanted things go.
Next, Agnes glances surreptitiously at the sewing machine.
Clara misses nothing. ‘P’raps, ma’am,’ she says, ‘we might carry on with your new dress? The most difficult part is over, isn’t it, ma’am?’
Agnes’s face lights up. What a blessing that there is something to do, something with which to fill the time — at a time like this. After all, she’s not forgotten that very soon she’ll have to receive Doctor Curlew.
For the love of God, why did she reject William’s offer to stop Beatrice fetching him? He was willing to do it — willing to rush through the house, onto the street if need be, to undo the message! And she refused him! Madness! But, lying there on the floor, she had, for a brief moment, an intoxicating power over him — the power to scorn his offer of the olive branch. Standing up to him like that — admittedly, while lying at his feet — was revenge of sorts.
Agnes stares at the half-finished dress, imagines it wreathing her own body like silken armour. She smiles shyly at Clara, gets a smile in return.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I do believe I’m well enough to go on.’
* * *
Within minutes, the whirring of the sewing-machine is muffling the ticking of the clock. With each seam and tuck they complete, the two women interrupt their labours, remove the dress from the machine, replace it on the dummy. Over and over, the sexless frame is clothed anew, each time appearing a little more shapely, a little more feminine.
‘We are weaving magic!’ chortles Mrs Rackham, almost forgetting that Doctor Curlew is on his way, satchel swinging in his gloved fist.
But her sewing is more than mere distraction. She needs at least four more dresses if she’s to have any hope of taking part in the Season next year and, by Goodness, next year she shall take part. For, ifthere’s one thing that has shaken Agnes’s faith in her own sanity, it was being unable to participate in the Season this year. And if there’s one thing that can restore her faith, it is (so to speak) redressing that lapse.
It’s true that from birth she has been groomed to do nothing especially well except appear in public looking beautiful. But that’s not the reason she’s making these splendid dresses, these elaborate constructs in which she hopes to sweep across other people’s floors. Taking part in the Season is, to her, the One Thing that will prove beyond doubt that she isn’t mad. For, in her uncertainty where exactly the borderline between sanity and madness is supposed to lie, Agnes has chosen a line for herself. If she can only keep on the right side of it, she will be sane, first in the eyes of the world, then in her husband’s, and finally even in Doctor Curlew’s.
And in her own eyes? In her own eyes she is neither sane nor insane; she is simply Agnes … Agnes Pigott, if you don’t mind. Look into her heart, and you will see a pretty picture, like a prayer-card depicting the girlhood of the Virgin. It’s Agnes, but not as we know her: it’s an Agnes who’s ageless, changeless, spotless, no step-daughter of any Unwin, no wife of any Rackham. Her hair is silkier, her dresses frillier, her bosom subsided to nothing, her very first Season still to come.
Agnes sighs. In reality, more years than she can bear to remember have passed since her first Season, and her ambitions for the next one are modest. Her dream of moving among the Upper Ten Thousand, which seemed perfectly achievable when she was Lord Unwin’s step-daughter, has receded now it’s clear that William, if he has any future at all, will never be the famous author she once imagined he would be. He’ll be the head of a perfumery — when he finally stirs himself to accept the responsibility — and then, if he gets very, very rich, he may ascend slowly through the social firmament. But until then, the lower reaches of fashionable Society are the best the Rackhams can hope for. Agnes knows that. She doesn’t like it, but she knows it, and she’s determined to make the most of it.
So, what is she looking forward to? She has no wish to be considered beautiful by men. Such things lead only to unhappiness. Nor is she hoping for the admiration of other women; from them she expects only polite nonchalance, and spiteful gossip behind her back. To be honest, she doesn’t really imagine engaging in intercourse of any sort next Season; on the contrary, she intends to glide through the entire affair barely noticing anyone, speaking only the emptiest formulae, and listening to nothing that requires more than the shallowest attention. This, she’s learned from past experience, is by far the safest course. More than anything, she yearns for the bliss of being tolerated outside the confines of her own bedroom, dressed in nicer clothes than her much-stained, much-laundered night-gowns.
‘You know, ma’am,’ says Clara, ‘Mrs Whymper will turn green when she sees you in this dress. I met her maid in town, and she said Mrs Whymper is pining to wear this style, but she’s grown too fat for it.’
Agnes laughs childishly, knowing full well that this is almost certainly a lie. (Clara is always fabricating such things.) She is feeling better by the minute; the pain is fading from her head; she might even ask Clara to open the curtains …
But then comes the knock at the door.
Clara has no choice but to let her share of the dress slither to the floor, leaving her mistress marooned in silk. She gets up and, with an apologetic smile, hurries to admit the doctor. A long shadow flows into the room.
‘Good day to you Mrs Rackham,’ the doctor says, moving smoothly in. The perfumed air of this female sanctum is tainted by his unmistakable smell, displaced by his towering bulk. He deposits his satchel on the floor next to Agnes’s bed and perches on the edge of the mattress, nodding to Clara. That nod means Clara is dismissed; that nod is a command.
Agnes, having turned her chair away from the sewing-machine and towards the doctor, knows, as she watches Clara leave, that the trap is shut, but still she can’t help trying to wriggle against its jaws.
‘I’m sorry you have been made to come all this way,’ she says. ‘Because unfortunately — I mean, fortunately for me, but not for you — I’m quite well now. As you can see.’
The good doctor makes no reply.
‘It was kind of my husband to summon you, I’m sure …’
The doctor’s brow wrinkles. He is not one to let an inconsistency pass unquestioned. ‘Oh, but William gave me to understand that you yourself insisted on my being summoned.’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure I’m very sorry,’ says Agnes, noting with horror his habit of cocking his head slightly at anything she tells him, as if he’s loath to miss even one of her preposterous lies. ‘I suppose, in that moment of feeling so unwell, feared the worst. At any rate, I’m quite myself now.’
Doctor Curlew rests his handsomely sculpted beard on his interlocking hands.
‘You look very pale to me, Mrs Rackham, if I may say so.’
Agnes attempts to hide her rising panic with a coy half-smile. ‘Ah, but that may be face powder, mayn’t it?’
Doctor Curlew looks puzzled. Agnes knows that look well, considers it to be the nastiest, most maddening of all the looks in his repertoire.
‘But had I not cautioned you,’ he says, ‘against the use of cosmetics, for the sake
of your skin?’
Agnes sighs. ‘Yes, Doctor, you had.’
‘In fact, I thought–’
‘–that they’d all been disposed of, yes,’ she says. ‘So …’
‘So, yes,’ she sighs, ‘it cannot be powder on my face.’
The doctor presses his fingertips to his beard and inhales deeply.
‘Please, Mrs Rackham,’ he reasons. ‘I know you don’t like to be examined. But what you like and what’s good for you are not always the same thing. Many a dire turn in an otherwise manageable illness can be averted if it’s seen to immediately.’
Agnes leans back in her chair, allowing her eyes to fall shut. There is nothing she can say that hasn’t failed many times before. I am too tired to be examined. ‘Too tired? Then you must be ill.’ I am too ill to be examined. ‘But the examination will make you better.’ You examine me every week; what harm can it do to leave it undone just once? ‘You can’t mean that; only a madwoman would willingly let her health decline.’ I am not a madwoman! ‘Of course not. That’s why I’m asking your permission, rather than ignoring your wishes as I would ignore those of an asylum inmate.’ But I am too tired … And so on.
Is she mad to imagine that Doctor Curlew is bullying her? That he’s taking liberties no physician should? She’s so out of touch with the world at large — has she missed momentous changes in the way doctors address their patients? Is the Queen herself bullied and threatened by her physician? She’d dismiss him, surely? How wonderful it would be to tell Doctor Curlew that she doesn’t require his services any more, that he is dismissed.