by Michel Faber
As for creatures of the human variety, Agnes meets very few. Notting Hill, though not nearly as quiet as it used to be, is by the same token not yet part of the metropolis. If one chooses one’s streets with care, one can concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without the additional challenge of meeting other pedestrians. Kensington Park Road is the busiest, for it’s along this thoroughfare that the omnibus goes. She avoids it if she can.
Every morning, she walks a little farther. Every day, she gets a little stronger. Five new dresses are finished, with a sixth on the way. The garden looks awfully nice, thanks to Shears. And William is in such a good mood all the time, although (she can’t help noticing) he does look quite a lot older all of a sudden, what with the beard and the moustache.
They haven’t breakfasted together since her last collapse, but they’ve fallen into the habit of seeing each other at luncheon. It’s altogether safer, Agnes feels. And the morning walk gives her a healthy appetite, so she doesn’t risk the embarrassment of toying with a half-eaten morsel while William wolfs his portion and asks her if she is all right.
Today, they both eat with equal relish. Cook has outdone herself with an extraordinary galantine made of pork loin layered with ham, cooked tongue, mushrooms and sausage. It’s a most elegant looking thing, and so delicious they have to call Letty back to the table twice, to cut more slices.
‘I wonder what this is,’ murmurs William, winkling an object out of the aspic.
‘It’s a fragment of pistachio kernel, dear,’ Agnes informs him, proud to know something he doesn’t.
‘Fancy that,’ he says, startling her by holding the glistening smithereen under his nose and giving it a good sniff. He’s sniffing everything lately: new plants in the garden, wallpaper paste, paint, napkins, notepaper, his own fingers, even plain water. ‘My nose must become my most sensitive organ, dear,’ he’ll tell her, before launching into an explanation of the almost imperceptible but (in the perfume business) crucial difference between one flower petal and another. Agnes is pleased he’s so determined to master the subtleties of his profession, especially since it has made them suddenly so much more comfortably off, but she hopes he’ll not be sniffing everything during the Season, when they’re in mixed company.
‘Oh, did I tell you?’ William tells her. ‘I’m going to see The Great Flatelli this evening.’
‘Something to do with perfume, dear?’
He smirks. ‘You might say that.’ Then, digging into his plum suet pudding, he sets her straight. ‘No, dear. He’s a performer.’ ‘Anyone I should know about?’
‘I very much doubt it. He’s on at the Lumley Music Hall.’ ‘Oh, well then.’
There should be no need to say more, but Agnes is nagged by her awareness of being out of touch. After a minute she adds: ‘The Lumley is still the Lumley, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean, dear?’
‘I mean, it hasn’t been … elevated in any way?’
‘Elevated?’
‘Brought higher … Become more fashionable …’ The word ‘class’ eludes her.
‘I should think not. I expect I’ll be surrounded by men in cloth caps and women with teeth missing.’
‘Well, if that appeals to you …’ she says, making a face. The suet pudding is too rich for her, and she’s starting to feel bilious after all the galantine, but a small slice of the luncheon cake is irresistible.
‘Man cannot live on high culture alone,’ quips William.
Agnes chews her cake. It, too, is richer than she expected, and she’s nagged by the suspicion that there’s something she should know.
‘If you …’ she hesitates. ‘If you see anyone there …at the Lumley …I mean anyone important, that I’m likely to meet in the Season …Do tell me, won’t you?’
‘Of course, dear.’ He lifts a slice of the luncheon cake to his nose and sniffs. ‘Currants, raisins, orange peel, steeped in sherry. Almonds. Nutmeg. Caraway … Vanilla.’ He grins, as if expecting applause.
Agnes smiles wanly.
Less than half a mile to the west of the Rackham house, Mrs Emmeline Fox, dressed for going out but still in her kitchen, is coughing into a handkerchief. The weather doesn’t agree with her today; there’s something oppressive in the atmosphere that’s giving her a headache and a tight chest. She’ll have to make sure she’s rallied by tomorrow, though, or she’ll miss the rounds with the Rescue Society.
She considers nipping over to her father’s house and asking him for a draught of medicine, but decides this would only worry him. Besides, who knows what emergencies he might need to attend to with his satchel of drugs and implements? For Emmeline’s father is Doctor James Curlew, and he’s a busy man.
Instead, she swallows a spoonful of liver salts followed by a sip of hot cocoa to take the taste away. The cocoa has the additional effect of warming her up, not just her cold hands as they cradle the cup, nor even her sensitive stomach hidden away in her belly, but the whole of her body. In fact, all of a sudden, she’s too warm: her forehead prickles with sweat and her arms feel stifled inside her tight sleeves. Hastily, she passes through the kitchen door and into the garden.
Her house is bigger than Henry’s, and her garden more substantial, though rather overgrown since its heyday when her husband pottered about in it. He had a taste for the bizarre, did Bertram, always trying to grow exotic vegetables for the table, which he’d give to the cook they had in those days. There are scorzonera growing here yet, half-hidden by weeds, and some strangled roots of salsify. Father sends his gardener round from time to time, to slash the worst of it away and expose the paving for Emmeline to walk on, but the weeds are busy all summer and merely lie waiting in winter. They’re coming to life again now, lush green, while the great coffin-shaped enclosure in which Bertie grew those monstrous man-sized celeries (what were they called — cardoons?) is dense with dull exhausted earth.
Always indifferent, was Bertie, to anything that endures, fascinated instead by the ephemeral and the spectacular. A good man, though. The house they shared is too big for her alone, but she stays on for his sake — for the sake of his memory. He did so little that was memorable, and never spoke his profounder thoughts (if indeed he had any); the best way of recalling the marriage is to remain in his house.
Now she stands in the garden, her hands still cradling her cup of cocoa, her feverish brow cooled by the breeze. She’ll be better very shortly. She is not ill. She ought to have opened the windows last night, to air the house after the unseasonal warmth of the day before. This headache is her own fault.
She drinks the rest of the cocoa. Already, it’s perking her up, giving her a feeling of heightened alertness. What makes it do that? It must have a secret ingredient, she reckons, that adds to her sluggish blood a squirt of analeptic or even a stimulant. In her own small way, she’s scarcely better than the dope fiends she sees in the course of her work with the Rescue Society — the addled morphine slaves, who can keep their attention on the words of Christ for no longer than two minutes before their pink eyes start rolling sideways. She smiles, tilting her head back in the breeze, pressing the rim of the cup against her chin. Emmeline Fox: cocoa fiend. She can imagine herself on the cover of a tuppenny dreadful, a masked villain dressed in men’s trousers and a cape, evading police by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, her superhuman strength deriving entirely from the evil cacao seed. The earth-bound constables stretch their stubby arms impotently towards her, open-mouthed in their rage and frustration. Only God can bring her down.
She opens her eyes, shivers. The sweat in her armpits has turned cold; there’s a damp chill on her spine. Her windpipe itches, tempting her to cough, cough, cough. She refuses; she knows where that leads.
Back inside the house, she rinses out the milk-pan, wipes the stove-top, puts away the cocoa things. Few women of her acquaintance would have the faintest idea how to perform such tasks, even assuming they were forced at knife-point to attempt them; Mrs Fox performs them without
thinking. Her maid-of-all-work, Sarah, doesn’t live with her and won’t be back till tomorrow, but Mrs Fox has a policy of helping the girl as much as she can. She and Sarah are, she feels, more like aunt and niece than mistress and servant.
Oh, Mrs Fox knows there is gossip about her, generated by ladies who judge her to be a disgrace to polite society, a sansculotte in disguise, a Jacobin with an ugly face. They would sweep her — or, preferably, have her swept — out of their sight if they could.
Such ill will from her sisters saddens Mrs Fox, but she makes no special efiort to placate it nor to challenge it, for it is not in the households of fashionable ladies that she longs to be welcomed, but rather in the wretched homes of the poor.
In any case, all this fuss about a little work! In the future, she believes, all women will have some useful employment. The present system cannot endure; it goes against God and good sense. One cannot educate the lower classes, nourish them with better food and unpolluted water, improve their housing and their morals, and all the while expect them to continue aspiring to nothing but servitude. Nor can one fill newspapers with outrageous disclosures of human misery and expect no one to be outraged into action. If the same streets and rookeries are named daily, and if every detail of our brothers’ and sisters’ suffering is published, is it not inevitable that a growing army of Christians will roll their sleeves up and demand to render assistance? Even those ladies and gentlemen untroubled by conscience will, Mrs Fox is convinced, find their supply of servants drying up soon enough, and all but the wealthiest of them will then have to acquaint themselves with such exotic objects as mops and dishcloths.
By next century, predicts Mrs Fox, buttering a slice of bread, women like me will no longer be regarded as freaks. England will be full of ladies who labour for a fairer society, and who keep no servants under their roof at all. (Her own maid, Sarah, lives with an ailing grandfather, and comes in every other day to do the heavy work, for a fair wage which saves her from slipping back into prostitution. She’s worth her weight in gold, is Sarah, but even such as she will disappear in time, as prostitution is eradicated.)
Emmeline wonders if a short walk would be good for her chest. She has a bag full of woollen gloves and another full of socks to deliver to Mrs Lavers, who’s organising something next month for the destitute of Ireland. (Fenian! the gossips would no doubt say, or Papist!) The Lavers’ house is only a few minutes away, and she could carry a bag on each arm, providing they were of roughly equal weight.
All the rooms in Mrs Fox’s home except her own small bed-chamber are cluttered with boxes, bags, books and parcels. Indeed her house is the unofficial warehouse of the Rescue Society, and of several other charities besides. Emmeline ascends the stairs, pokes her nose into what used to be the master bedroom, and confirms that what she’s looking for isn’t in there. On the landing, rather precariously balanced, is a stack of New Testaments translated into … into … She cannot recall the language just at the moment; a man from the Bible Dissemination Society is coming back for them shortly.
The socks and gloves are nowhere to be found, and she returns downstairs to butter another slice of bread — all she has in the house that’s ready to eat.
Usually on a Monday, there’s a quantity of left-over Sunday roast, but yesterday Mrs Fox let Sarah eat as much as she liked, not expecting the girl to have the appetite of a labrador.
To those above me, she thinks, as she chews her bread, I am a pitiable widow, paddling in the shallows of penury; to those below, I am a pampered creature in paradise. All of us are at once objects of repugnance and of envy. All of us except the very poorest, those who have nothing below them but the sewage pit of Hell.
Freshly determined to find the socks and gloves, Emmeline searches in earnest. She even puts on her bonnet, to solemnise her intentions in case she’s tempted to give up. To her delight, however, she finds the bags almost immediately, stacked on top of one another in a wardrobe. But pulling them out disturbs dust, and before she can steel herself against it, she’s coughing, coughing, coughing. She coughs until she’s on her knees, tears running down her cheeks, her trembling hands pressing her handkerchief hard against her mouth. Then, when it’s over, she rests on the foot of the stairs, rocking herself for comfort, staring at the square of light beaming through the frosted glass in her front door.
Mrs Fox does not consider herself ill. In her estimation she is as healthy as any woman with a naturally weak chest can expect to be. Nor, while we’re on the subject of her disadvantages, does she consider herself ugly. God gave her a long face, but it’s a face she’s satisfied with. It reminds her of Disraeli, but softer. It didn’t stop her getting a husband, did it? And if she never has another, well, one husband is enough. And, returning to the subject of health, despite Bertie’s ruddy cheeks and ready grin, in the end it wasn’t her health that failed but his. Which just goes to prove that it’s not gossips who decide the span of human life, but God.
Breathing carefully, she rises to her feet and walks over to the bags. She grasps one in each hand and tests their weight. Equal. She carries them to the door, pausing only a moment to check her hair in the glass before leaving.
A world away to the east, Henry Rackham walks the streets too. (What a day this is for walking! You couldn’t have predicted how healthy you’d become, could you, following these people around?)
Henry is walking along a street where he has never walked before, a winding, shadowy street where he must watch his step lest his shoes slip in shit, where he must keep an eye on every alley and subterranean stairwell lest he be accosted. He walks stiffly, his determination only slightly stronger than his fear; he can only hope (for he has, in the circumstances, no right to pray) that no one of his acquaintance sees him entering this evil-smelling maze.
Henry knows which days Mrs Fox works for the Rescue Society and which days she’s at home; her schedule is engraved on his memory, and on Mondays she rests. That is why he has chosen today to be walking in St Giles, just the sort of place where she might minister. He suppresses a cough against the stench, and wades deeper.
Within minutes, all pretence of decency is gone; the solidity and straight lines of Oxford Street are invisible and already half-forgotten, erased from the mind by a nightmare vision of subsidence — subsidence of the roadway itself, of the ramshackle houses shored on either side, of the flesh and moral character of the squalid inhabitants.
Truly, thinks Henry, this quarter of the city is an outer rim of Hell, a virtual holding area for the charnel-house. The newspapers say it is much improved since the Fifties, but how can that be? Already he has seen a severed dog’s head rotting in the gutter, its protruding tongue swollen with lice; he has seen half-naked infants throwing cobble-stones at each other, their haggard faces distorted by rage and glee; he has seen a host of spectres staring out of broken windows, their eyes hollow, their sex indeterminate, their flesh scarcely less grey than the rags that clothe them. A disturbing number of them seem to be housed underground, in basements accessible only by obscure stairwells or, in some cases, rickety ladders. Wet washing hangs from window to window, speckled with soot; here and there a tattered bed-sheet flaps in the breeze, like a flag whose distinguishing marks are posies of faded bloodstain brown.
Henry Rackham has come here with one purpose in mind: to make a difference. Not the kind of difference Mrs Fox makes, but a difference nonetheless.
Mere minutes after his arrival, he is approached by an ugly woman of middle age, or perhaps younger, wearing a voluminous dress in the Regency style, but much darned and patched. She is bare-headed and barenecked, and her smile as she greets him displays all her remaining teeth: is she therefore a prostitute?
‘Spare a few pennies, sir, for a poor nunfortunate.’
A beggar, then.
‘Is it food you need?’ says Henry, wary of being taken for a dupe. He aches to be generous, but fancies he detects a whiff of alcohol on her breath.
‘You said it, sir. Food is
the fing I want. ‘Ungry, I am. I’ve ‘ad nuffink since yesty.’ Her eyes shine greedily; she wrings her swollen hands.
‘Shall I…’ He hesitates, resisting her predatory gaze, which tugs at his soul as if it were a juicy worm. ‘Shall I accompany you to a place where food is sold? I’ll buy you whatever you wish.’
‘Oh no, sir,’ she replies, apparently scandalised. ‘My reputation, sir, is precious to me. I’ve got children to fink of.’
‘Children?’ He hadn’t imagined she would have children; she looks too unlike the plump unwrinkled mothers he sees in church.
‘I’ve five children, sir,’ she assures him, her hands hovering in the air as if she might seize hold of his arm at any moment. ‘Five; and two of ‘em’s babes, and they’s awful squally, and me ‘usband can’t torrelate it, sir, on account of his sleep. So ‘e whacks ‘em, sir, whacks ‘em in their cots, till they’s quiet. And I was finkin’, sir, if I could ‘ave a few pennies from your kind self, sir, I could dose me babies wiv some Muvver’s Blessing from the pharmasiss, sir, and they’d sleep like angels.’
Henry’s hand is already in his pocket when the horror of it strikes him.
‘But … but you must dissuade your husband from striking your children!’ he declares. ‘He could do them terrible harm …’
‘Ah, yes, sir, but ‘e’s sich a tired soul, what wiv workin’ all day, ‘e needs ‘is sleep at night, and the babes is awful squally, as I said; when one falls quiet the others set to screamin’, an’ it’s impostible, sir, wiv six of ‘em.’
‘Six? You said you had five just now.’
‘Six, sir. But one’s so quiet, you ‘ardly know she’s there.’
A strange impasse settles between them, there in the sordid public street. He has a coin enclosed in his palm, hesitating. She licks her lips, afraid to say more, in case she prejudices his generosity.