by Michel Faber
Instead, as always, she acquiesces, and takes her position on the bed. The good doctor has opened the curtains, so that the sun can shine upon his work. Agnes fixes her attention on a clutch of extinguished candles, counting the drips of hardened wax on their shafts. She loses count, starts again, loses count again, all the while trying to ignore the electric apprehension travelling up through her body from her toes to the roots of her hair, as Doctor Curlew lifts her dressing-gown over her legs.
William Rackham, meanwhile, first knocks, then rings at the door of Mrs Castaway’s, and waits impatiently for it to be opened. Wet gusts of wind tug at his trouser-legs; overdressed trollops eye him as they sweep by. His scalp prickles from all the oil he has combed through his hair. A minute passes: why, this is as bad as his own house!
After another minute, the sound of unlatching. A narrow slit offers him a glimpse of a female eye, glittering with mistrust.
‘Sugar’s not free.’ The unfriendly voice of Amy Howlett. ‘P’raps you’d care to come back later.’
‘As a matter of fact, I wish to speak with your … Mrs Castaway,’ says William. ‘Strictly a business matter.’
‘There’s no matters here,’ the girl sneers, ‘but business matters.’
His mind boggling at how any man could kiss and embrace a creature so cynical, William tries again: ‘I insist … I’ve something of great interest, I’m sure, to Mrs Castaway.’
Whereupon Miss Howlett swings the door wide, her back already turned.
In Mrs Castaway’s parlour, everything is much as it was when William –when Mr Hunt last paid a visit. Just as before, he’s struck by the scores of Mary Magdalen prints on the walls, the blazing fire, and Mrs Castaway herself, seated at her desk, dressed all in scarlet. Of Miss Lester and her ‘cello, this time, there’s no sign; her chair stands empty. Amy Howlett slouches back into her seat, settles with a wumph of wrinkled skirts, and slyly watches his approach. Hands hanging at her sides, head tilted back, she sucks smoke, then does a most startling thing: she opens her lips and performs a juggling trick with the cigarette adhering to the end of her tongue, almost swallowing it, then catching it, still lit, between her teeth. She sucks again. Her eyes do not blink.
‘I do hope you’ll try to forgive Amy’s manners,’ sighs Mrs Castaway, motioning William towards an armchair. ‘Her ways have great charm for some of our visitors.’
Amy smirks.
‘I’m sure I don’t mean to cause offence, Mr …Mr …’ Stuck for his name, she abandons her stab at good behaviour, and looks away with a shrug.
‘Hunt,’ says William. ‘George W. Hunt.’
Mrs Castaway narrows her eyes, narrows them so much that the bloodshot whites almost entirely disappear, leaving the dark bits shining like sucked licorice. She is bigger than he remembered, more formidable.
‘So, what can we do for you, Mr Hunt?’ she croons, her painted mouth puckering with the vowels. ‘We hadn’t expected you back so soon.’
William takes a deep breath, leans forward, and launches into his proposal. He speaks earnestly, quickly, nervously. His Mr Hunt is a shy man, but a rich one. The source of his wealth? Oh, he’s a somewhat retiring, not to say sleeping, partner in a giant publishing firm, gross income £2o,ooo a year, titles too numerous to name, but works by Macaulay, Kenelm Digby, Le Fanu and William Ainsworth are among them. As a matter of fact, he has an appointment to see his old chum Wilkie — Wilkie Collins — in …(he pulls his silver watch into view) four hours from now. But first …
He argues his case and, as well as arguing, he takes care to ask questions. Asking questions (or so Henry Calder Rackham keeps emphasising in the correspondence William has only just read) is essential in bending a prospective partner to one’s will. Ask questions, urges the old man, express simpathy for the differculties of the fellow you wish to do business with, then demen-strateyou have the answer. William steams ahead, sweat forming on his brow, words pouring from his lips. Leave no silence for the other fellow to fill with quarms, that’s another thing the old man harps on. William leaves no silence. Look into the other fellows eyes. William looks into Mrs Castaway’s eyes and, as the minutes pass, he judges he’s getting through. She is increasingly frank when it comes to surrendering figures; she nods gravely when he tells her how he means to swell them.
‘So,’ he sums up at last. ‘Exclusive patronage of Sugar by me: will you consider it?’
To which Mrs Castaway replies, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Hunt. No.’
Shocked, William looks to Amy Howlett, as if expecting she’ll leap to his defence. Amy, however, is slumped in her chair, picking at her fingernails, her sharp eyes, for the moment, benignly crossed.
‘But whyever not?’ he cries, striving to keep his voice down, for fear of being collared by a hidden strongman. ‘I can’t imagine any cause for objection.’ (What would Henry Calder Rackham advise? Say back to the fellow what the fellows just told you.) ‘You’ve told me that in an average evening, Sugar entertains one or two, at most three, gentlemen. Now, I am offering to meet whatever you say are the costs to you of those three engagements. Sugar I will pay whatever she considers fair. The profit to you remains the same, only it comes from one man and not several.’
Mrs Castaway, instead of clapping her wrinkled hand to her forehead in belated epiphany, responds to William’s plea in a way that unnerves him. She begins to rummage in one of her desk drawers, and extracts a sheaf of unruly papers. Then she slips her fingers into the handles of her big brass scissors, and exercises the blades experimentally.
‘These matters are more complex than you might think, Mr Hunt,’ she murmurs, spreading the papers out before her on the desk. Her eyes flicker, dividing attention between William and the task she’s plainly impatient to resume. ‘To begin with, we are a small house and arithmetic is against us. If one third of what we’re reputed to offer is perpetually unavailable–’
A ring of the doorbell makes them both quiver.
Amy Howlett groans, looks up at the ceiling. ‘Where is that boy?’ she sighs, then jerks up from her chair.
‘Mr Hunt, I must apologise,’ says Mrs Castaway as Amy flounces off, once again, to do the sleeping Christopher’s work. ‘One of our little customs here is that no gentleman should ever be seen by another. So, if you’d be kind enough to step into the next room’ (she points with the shears) ‘for just a moment …’
She nods maternally, and he obeys.
‘The pain,’ Doctor Curlew is saying just then, ‘lies entirely in the resistance.’
He wipes his fingers with a white handkerchief, pockets it, bends down to try a second time. She makes him work hard, does Mrs Rackham, for his fee.
Not Sugar, not Sugar, you blackguard, you swine, thinks William, as he stands squirming in the next room, his ear pressed to the door. She’s not available. You’ve changed your mind. Your cockstand’s gone soft.
‘… early in the day …’ he hears Mrs Castaway saying. ‘… Sugar …’ is the masculine reply.
The hairs on William’s neck tingle with loathing. He is tempted to rush out of his hiding-place and attack his rival, battering him right through the floor.
‘… no shortage of alternative delights …’
His heart beats vehemently; his future, he feels, is poised on a vertiginous edge, waiting to be rescued or cast down. How can it be? A couple of days ago, Sugar didn’t even exist. Now here he stands with fists clenched, half-willing to kill for her!
But it appears bloodshed won’t be necessary after all. The man in the parlour has been fobbed off with Miss Howlett. Serves him right, the blackguard. William hopes she thrashes him within an inch of his life, for daring to ask for Sugar.
‘… no wine, then … appreciate you are in a hurry … like a thousand-and-one nights squeezed into a few minutes …’
William hears the music of transaction. Strange how speech can be almost inaudible through a closed door, while the sound of coins chinking together is so clear!
‘Mr
Hunt?’
Thank God.
Only now does William notice what sort of room he’s been hiding in: a tiny infirmary, well stocked with bandages and jars of medicine. Also bottles of strong spirits, abortifacients marked with crossbones and infant skulls, and perfumed antiseptics manufactured by … manufactured by … (he peers closer, just in case he should spot the rose insignia or the ornamental ‘R’)… Beechams.
‘Mr Hunt?’
‘Mrs Rackham?’
Agnes Rackham, lying on her bed miles away, rolls onto her side so that Doctor Curlew can reach deeper inside her.
‘Good,’ he murmurs abstractedly. ‘Thank you.’ He is trying to find Agnes’s womb, which to his knowledge ought to be exactly four inches from the external aperture. His middle finger being exactly four inches long (for he has measured it), he is perplexed to be having no success.
‘You alluded to … complications I hadn’t considered?’ William prompts.
‘Many, many,’ sighs Mrs Castaway. Rather off-puttingly, she’s already busy with her cuttings, snipping into sheets of paper which, from where William sits, look like pages torn from books. ‘Another has just occurred to me: our house has, if not precisely an agreement, then certainly a … bond of mutual regard, with The Fireside. You know The Fireside? Oh, yes, of course.’ She takes her eyes off him again, and steers the scissors through a circuitous cut. ‘Now you, Mr Hunt, who are so appreciative of Sugar’s merits; you can well understand that she is considered an attraction — a draw-card, if you will — for The Fireside. At least, the proprietors seem to think so. So, we are doing them a favour, not strictly measurable in terms of money, but valuable nonetheless. Now, if Sugar were to … disappear — for however flattering a reason, Mr Hunt — I’m sure The Fireside would feel itself the poorer, d’you see?’
A tiny human figure has taken shape, blank on William’s side, engraving-grey on Mrs Castaway’s.
She is mad, he thinks, as he watches a haloed female saint, torn from a Papist picture-book, flutter to the table. How can one bargain with a madwoman? Might he convince her better if he revealed his true name? Which identity, from the point of view of a madwoman who cannibalises books for their Magdalens, might be the more impressive — an authentic heir to a renowned perfume concern, or a make-believe partner in a prestigious publishing house? And what the Devil does she mean about The Fireside? A simple bribe, or is he expected to buy the whole damn place?
Push the fellow to say, one time only, the word Yes — that’s what his father keeps underlining in green ink. All else is details.
‘Madam, these are mere details, surely,’ he declares. ‘Couldn’t we …’ (a happy inspiration) ‘couldn’t we call Sugar herself downstairs? It’s her future that’s at stake here — with all due respect to the matters you’ve been raising, madam …’
Mrs Castaway picks up another scrap of paper. This one bears, on its blank reverse, the unmistakable stamp of a circulating library.
‘Mr Hunt, there is another thing you haven’t allowed for. You don’t consider the possibility that Sugar might prefer — forgive me, I don’t wish to cause you offence — that she might prefer variety.’
William lets this pass; he can tell that indignation is of no use.
‘Madam, I urge you — I implore you — allow Sugar to speak for herself.’
Give her over, give her over, he thinks, staring hard into the madam’s eyes. He has never wished for anything more fervently than this; the fervour of his wishing astounds him. If he can have this one thing, he will ask God for nothing else, nothing, as long as he lives.
Mrs Castaway withdraws her fingers from the scissors, pushes her chair back, gets to her feet. Dangling from the ceiling are three silken ropes; she pulls one. Who does it summon? A strongman to eject him? Or Sugar? Mrs Castaway’s eyes give nothing away.
God almighty, this is a damn sight more difficult than winning Agnes’s hand in marriage, William thinks. If only this mad old bawd would be prepared to take a risk on him, the way Lord Unwin did!
Sitting there in Mrs Castaway’s bawdy-house, waiting for Sugar or a burly spoony-man to appear, he remembers being invited to see the pickled old aristocrat in his smoking-room, and there, over port, being read the terms of the marriage of Agnes Unwin to William Rackham, Esquire. The legalities were, he recalls, quite beyond him, so when Lord Unwin had finished and archly asked something like ‘Well, how does that suit?’ he’d not known what to say. ‘It means you’ve got her, God help you,’ Lord Unwin had spelled out, pouring him another drink.
Now here’s a shadow on the stairs …Is it …? Yes! It’s she! In a blue twilled dressing-gown and slippers, hair loose and tangled, still sleepy-eyed God bless her, and with a spattering of dark water-drops on the breast of her gown. His heart, so recently filled with murderous thoughts towards Mrs Castaway, is suddenly spilling over with tenderness.
‘Why, Mr Hunt,’ says Sugar, softly, pausing half-way down, ‘What a pleasure to see you again so soon.’ She motions apologetically at her deshabille. A draught on the stairs sends strands of her hair floating across her cheeks and naked neck. How could he not have noticed before how abnormally thin that neck is? And her lips: they’re so pale and dry, like scraps of lace — she doesn’t drink enough! How he’d love to rub salve into her lips, while she kissed his fingers …!
‘Mr Hunt has a proposition to make to you, Sugar,’ says Mrs Castaway. ‘Mr Hunt?’
Old witch! She hasn’t even asked Sugar to take a seat — as if his offer is so preposterous the girl will be sure to refuse it before she reaches the bottom of the stairs. But a look passes between him and Sugar that gives him courage; it’s a look that says, We know each other, don’t we, you and If
Courteously, he bids her be seated, and she is seated, in Miss Lester’s chair. He repeats his little oration, but this time, freed from the odious necessity of addressing Mrs Castaway, he speaks directly into Sugar’s face (her eyes are still sleepy; she licks her lips with a sharp red tongue, the same tongue that … Concentrate, Rackham!). He speaks less nervously than before; when repeating the fictions he’s spun around George W. Hunt, he shares with her a secret smile, a mutual understanding of something that’s already part of their intimate history. But when it comes to the arithmetic, he is emphatic and precise. For diplomacy’s sake, he mentions Mrs Castaway’s misgivings, and absorbs them into his account. Everyone, he declares reassuringly, is going to be the richer for this; no one will suffer the slightest inconvenience.
‘But you haven’t yet said,’ objects the old woman from across the room. ‘What will you pay Sugar?’
William flinches. The question seems to him crassly indelicate — and none of her business, either. This is not a low brothel!
‘I will pay her,’ he says, ‘whatever makes her happy.’ And he nods almost imperceptibly in Sugar’s direction, to show her he means it.
Sugar blinks several times, runs one hand through the unruly orange fleece of her hair. The barrage of facts and figures has left her a little dazed, as if she’s woken up this morning to a discussion of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy rather than to a boiled egg. At last she opens her mouth to speak.
‘All right, Mr Hunt,’ she says, with a sly smile. ‘I am willing.’
Yes! She said yes! Rackham can scarcely contain himself. But he must, he must. Childish enthusiasm would ill become him; he’s supposed to be a publisher!
So, bowing his head to Mrs Castaway’s writing-desk, he watches her draw up the contract, on this, the twenty-fourth day of November, 1874. A waste of ink and effort: if only she knew that he’d sign anything, including a sheet of paper inscribed with just that one word, Anything! But she wants more. He reads what’s flowing from her pen, written in (to give her credit) a most elegant and fluent script … hereinafter known as ‘the House’… God almighty! She’s going to pull the wool over his eyes, he can tell … but what does it matter? Measured against the wealth that will soon be his, the reach of her
avarice will be Lilliputian.
In any case, if he should decide to renege, what could she possibly do? Pursue an imaginary man through the courts of Whoredom? Regina hears the case of ‘Castaway’ versus ‘Hunt’? Stop scribbling, woman, and leave room for the signatures!
Looking back on it now, the contract for Agnes’s hand was extraordinarily laissez-faire — much less demanding of him than this one here. In a marriage settlement, one might expect a degree of parental protective-ness, but Lord Unwin showed (now that William reflects on it) precious little for Agnes. Her dowry was no great fortune — nothing a young woman couldn’t spend within a year or two — and no date was set for William’s own succession to independent means. No mention, either, of how large a wardrobe of fashionable clothes William was obliged to ensure his wife maintained, or how Agnes’s style of life was supposed to be safeguarded. For all that Lord Unwin seemed to care, his new son-in-law could dispose of Agnes’s clothes, her jewellery, her books, her servants. Short of saying so, he was washing his hands of her — no doubt because he already knew (crafty old sot!) what poison was eating away at his stepdaughter’s sanity.
Faintly through the house, the slam of a door resounds: Miss Howlett’s man, leaving. William looks askance at Sugar, but she’s sunk into the armchair, her head nestled in the crook of her arm, eyes closed. The sleeve of her dressing-gown has fallen, exposing the white flesh of her forearm, bruised blue with finger-marks. His own, surely – or are they? With a jolt, he realises that this contract depends not merely on these women’s trust in him, but his trust in them. What’s to stop them conducting business as usual behind his back? Nothing, unless he takes care to be unpredictable, never letting them know the hour of his coming … Mad, he must be mad — yet a smile tempts the corners of his mouth as he signs, with a flourish, a false name to this bargain struck with a madam and a whore.