by Michel Faber
Luxury.
Sugar slides deeper under the covers, her manuscript weighing heavy on her breast. It’s a rag-bag of a thing, made up of many different sized papers, sandwiched in a stiff cardboard folder on which are inscribed many titles, all crossed out. Underneath this inky roll-call of erasures, one thing survives:
‘by “Sugar”?
Her story chronicles the life of a young prostitute with waist-length red hair and hazel eyes, working in the same house as her own mother, a forbidding creature called Mrs Jettison. Allowing for a few flights of fancy — the murders, for instance — it’s the story of her own life — well, her early life in Church Lane, at least. It’s the story of a naked, weeping child rolled into a ball under a blood-stained blanket, cursing the universe. It’s a tale of embraces charged with hatred and kisses laced with disgust, of practised submission and the secret longing for vengeance. It’s an inventory of brutish men, a jostling queue of human refuse, filthy, gin-stinking, whisky-stinking, ale-stinking, scabrous, oily-nailed, slime-toothed, squint-eyed, senile, cadaverous, obese, stump-legged, hairy-arsed, monster-cocked — all waiting their turn to root out the last surviving morsel of innocence and devour it.
Is there any good fortune in this story? None! Good fortune, of the William Rackham kind, would spoil everything. The heroine must see only poverty and degradation; she must never move from Church Lane to Silver Street, and no man must ever offer her anything she wants — most especially, rescue into an easier life. Otherwise this novel, conceived as a cry of unappeasable anger, risks becoming one of those ‘Reader, I married him’ romances she so detests.
No, one thing is certain: her story must not have a happy ending. Her heroine takes revenge on the men she hates; yet the world remains in the hands of men, and such revenge cannot be tolerated. Her story’s ending, therefore, is one of the few things Sugar has planned in advance, and it’s death for the heroine. She accepts it as inevitable, and trusts that her readers will too.
Her readers? Why, yes! She has every intention of submitting the manuscript for publication once it’s finished. But who on Earth would publish it, you may protest, and who would read it? Sugar doesn’t know, but she’s confident it has a fighting chance. Meritless pornography gets published, and so do respectable novels politely calling for social reform (why, only a couple of years ago, Wilkie Collins published a novel called The New Magdalen, a feeble, cringing affair in which a prostitute called Mercy Merrick hopes for redemption …A book to throw against the wall in anger, but its success proves that the public is ready to read about women who’ve seen more than one prick in their lives …) Yes, there must be receptive minds out there in the world, hungry for the unprettified truth — especially in the more sophisticated and permissive future that’s just around the corner. Why, she may even be able to live by her writing: A couple of hundred faithful readers would be sufficient; she’s not coveting success on the scale of Rhoda Broughton’s.
She snorts, startled awake again. Her manuscript has slid off her breast, spilling pages onto the bed-clothes. Page one is uppermost.
All men are the same, it says. If there is one thing I have learned in my time on this Earth, it is this. All men are the same.
How can I assert this with such conviction? Surely I have not known all the men there are to know? On the contrary, dear reader, perhaps I have!
My name is Sugar …
Sugar sleeps.
Henry Rackham removes the wrapping-paper from the red hearts, dark livers and pale pink necks of chicken he has bought from the pet-meat man, and throws a few morsels to the kitchen floor. His cat pounces instantly, seizing the meat in her mouth, her sleek shoulders convulsed with the effort of swallowing. Once upon a time, Henry would murmur pleas of restraint, for fear she’d make herself sick; now he looks on, acquiescent in the ravenous face of Nature. He knows that in a few minutes, she’ll be lying in front of the fire, as serene and innocent as the moon. She will purr at his touch, licking his hand which, although he has washed it, still smells — to her — of his gift of bloody flesh.
What is there to be learned from cats? thinks Henry. Perhaps that all creatures can be peaceable and kind — if they’re not hungry.
But how to explain the iniquity of those who have sufficient to eat? They hunger in a different way, perhaps. They are starving for grace, for respect, for the forgiveness of God. Feed them on that, and they will lie down with the Lamb.
Henry walks noiselessly in his thick knitted socks, into his sitting-room, and kneels at the hearth. Sure enough, no sooner has he stirred the fire than his cat comes to join him, purring and ready for sleep. Out of the blue he finds himself remembering, as he often does, his first meeting with Mrs Fox — or at least the first time he became aware of her. Inconceivable though it now seems that he could have failed to notice a woman of her beauty, she claims she was worshipping alongside him for weeks before the incident he so clearly recalls.
It was in 1872, in August of that year. She shone a bright fresh light into what had until then been the camera obscura of the North Kensington Prayer and Discussion Assembly. She was like the answer to his prayers, for he harboured in his heart the conviction that Christ never intended Christianity to be quite as Jesuitical as the N.K.P.D.A. would have it.
It was Trevor MacLeish who provoked her to make herself manifest on that day in August. A Bachelor of Science, and always abreast of the most recent developments in that sphere, he voiced his misgivings on the manner of receiving Holy Communion. ‘It has been conclusively proven,’ he said, ‘that disease may be communicated from person to person when utensils and especially when drinking vessels are shared.’ He argued for a new procedure of drinking Communion wine out of a number of individual cups, as many as there were Communicants. Someone asked if the wiping of a cup’s rim were not sufficient to remove the Bacteria, but MacLeish insisted that it was impervious to such measures.
In fact, MacLeish had brought to the Assembly a petition on this matter, addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury no less, and lacking only signatures. Henry was glum at the prospect of signing, believing the whole affair to be ridiculous, but fearing to say so, in case he were accused of Papist primitivism. Then up spoke a young lady, new to their midst, a Mrs Fox by name, saying,
‘Really, gentlemen, this is a quibble, refuted by the Bible.’
MacLeish’s countenance fell, but at Mrs Fox’s direction, Bibles were opened to Luke, Chapter 11, vv. 37–41, and she read the lines aloud without even being invited to do so, putting especial emphasis on the words: ‘Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.’
To see MacLeish folding his petition under the table, face red as a beetroot, was a pleasure; to be alerted to Mrs Fox’s existence, a delight. That a person of the fair sex, and one additionally hampered in her religious growth by her beauty, should be so well versed in the Bible, was almost a miracle. Henry yearned to hear her speak again. He loves to hear her still.
The next time William visits Sugar, he brings with him two publications, both promised when last they met.
‘Oh! You remembered!’ she cries, with a puppyish embrace. She’s dressed as if going out, in dark blue and black silk, not a hair out of place, not a crease out of line. Her soft sleeves whisper and rustle as she squeezes her arms around his waist, her hair is fragrant and slightly damp.
He notices, over her shoulder, that her bedroom is immaculately tidy: she always keeps it so for him. There are pale rectangles on the wallpaper, unstained by smoke, where those feeble pornographic prints used to hang, and although it’s months since they disappeared, their absence never fails to thrill him, for it was to please him that Sugar removed them. How did she put it? Ah yes: ‘This room is no one’s business now but yours and mine!’ A golden tongue she has, in more ways than one.
He seizes her by her bony shoulders and pushes her, affectionately, to arm’s-length. She grins at him, twice
as beautiful as last time. Dozens of times he’s seen her, and each time it’s as if he’s seen her only dimly before, and this is the fully-lit reality! Her mouth is fuller, her nose is more perfect, her eyes are brighter, and her eyebrows have (how could he not have noticed this before?) bristles of dark purple within the auburn.
‘Yes, yes of course I remembered,’ he grins back. ‘My God, you are a lovely thing.’
She lowers her face, blushing. Yes, that’s a blush, he’ll swear — and no one can fake a blush! She’s genuinely flattered, he can tell!
‘Which first?’ he says, pulling both of the promised pamphlets into view.
‘Whichever you wish,’ she says, stepping back towards the bed.
He hands her his newly-cut copy of Mr Philip Bodley and Mr Edward Ashwell’s book, The Efficacy of Prayer. This little tome, he explains, has already caused a sensation, principally among the dozens of clergymen with whom Bodley, son of Bishop Bodley, conducted his ‘informal’ chats. Libel actions aplenty have been threatened but as the book discloses initials and localities only (Reverend H. of Stepney: ‘Why God should deem it so essential I suffer lumbago I cannot hope to understand’*) they’re likely to come to nothing.
Perched on the edge of the mattress, Sugar leafs through the slim volume, quickly appraising its thrust. She knows men like Bodley and Ashwell. They talk loudly, are subject to fits of sniggering, and pretend they wish to deflower virgins when what they secretly desire is a milky cuddle from a fat matron.
(If, at a conservative estimate, 2,500,000 British infants per day pray for the health of their mamas and papas, can we conclude, from current mortality rates, that the Almighty’s juvenile applicants would be better advised to safeguard their parents by other means?)
Oh yes, she knows men like this all right. They’re always half-drunk, half-stiff, they beaver away endlessly, they can’t spend, they won’t leave. Must she praise their handiwork now? Sugar re-plays, in her uncanny memory, the way William has talked about these friends of his, these cronies from his fading youth. Can she take a risk?
She smiles. ‘How perfectly …’ (she consults his face, decides to gamble) ‘childish.’
For a moment William’s brow creases; he hovers on the brink of disapproval — maybe even anger. Then he permits himself to savour his own superiority to his friends, his annoyance with their immature shenanigans. The air between him and Sugar is suddenly sweet with lovers’ concord.
‘Yes,’ he says, almost in wonder. ‘Isn’t it?’
She arranges herself more comfortably, leaning one elbow on the mattress, allowing her hip to rise up through her trailing skirts. ‘Have they nothing better to do, do you think?’
‘No, nothing,’ he affirms. How odd that he never realised this before! His two oldest friends, and there’s a gulf between him and them — a gulf he could bridge only if he resumed being as idle as they, or if they found something purposeful to do. What an insight! And it comes out of the mouth of this entrancing young woman whom it has been his good fortune to win.
Truly, these are strange and significant times in his personal history.
A little shyly, in exchange for the Bodley and Ashwell book she’s plainly losing patience with, he hands her the Winter 1874 catalogue of Rackham manufactures. (The Spring one isn’t ready.) Again Sugar surprises him, by looking him square in the eyes, and saying, ‘But tell me, William … how is business?’
No woman has ever asked him this question. It is a great deal more transgressive than talk of cocks and cunts. ‘Oh … splendid, splendid,’ he replies.
‘No, really,’ she says. ‘How is it? The competition must be frightful.’ He blinks, nonplussed; clears his throat. ‘Well, uh … Rackham’s is on the ascendant, I’d venture to say.’ ‘And your rivals?’
‘Pears and Yardley are unassailable, Rimmel and Rowland are in good health. Nisbett had a bad Season last year, and may be in decline. Hinton is ailing, perhaps fatally … ‘
How queer this conversation is becoming! Is there no limit to what’s possible between him and Sugar? First literature, now this!
‘Good,’ she smirks. ‘Here’s to the decline of your rivals: may they expire one by one.’ And she opens the catalogue and begins browsing. William sits close beside her, one arm around her back, his knees pressing into the warmth of her skirts.
‘The end of Winter is always a good time for sales of soaps, bath oils and the like,’ he informs her, to fill the silence.
‘Oh?’ she says. ‘I suppose it’s because people aren’t so reluctant to wash.’
He chuckles. They’ve been together for fifteen minutes already, and are both still fully clothed, as proper a pair as any married couple.
‘Maybe so,’ he says. ‘Mainly it’s due to the London season. Ladies like to stock up early, so that when May comes and they have to brave the crowds, they’ve nothing left to buy but big things in showy parcels.’
Sugar reads on attentively. When Rackham strokes her cheek, she nudges her face against his hand affectionately and kisses his fingers, but her eyes don’t leave the pages of the catalogue. Even when William kneels at her feet and lifts her skirts, she reads on, shifting forward on the bed to allow him greater freedom, but otherwise pretending not to notice what’s happening to her. It is a game that Rackham finds arousing. Through the layers of soft fabric that shroud him in darkness, he hears, at once muffled and sharp, the sound of a page being turned; closer to his face, he smells the odour of female excitement.
When it’s over, and she’s belly-down on the bed, she is still reading. She reads aloud, reciting the entries, breathless from her exertions.
‘Rackham’s Lavender Milk. Rackham’s Lavender Puffs. Rackham’s Lavender Scented Moth Balls. Rackham’s Damask Rose Drops. Rackham’s Raven Oil…’ She squints at the fine print, rolling onto her side. ‘A high class and innocent Extract for giving instant and permanent Colour. Not a dye.’ She raises her eyebrows over the edge of the catalogue.
‘Of course it’s a dye,’ snorts William, at once embarrassed and slightly exhilarated by this frankness, this intimacy she’s drawing him into.
‘Rackham’s Snow Dust,’ Sugar continues. ‘Are malodorous feet your Achilles’ heel? Try Rackham’s Foot Balm. Not a soap. A Medicinal Preparation to Scientific Specifications. Rackham’s Aureoline. Produces the beautiful Golden Colour so much admired, ten shillings and sixpence, not a dye. Rackham’s Poudre Juvenile …’
William notes that her French accent is not at all bad: better than most. From the waist up, she’s as soignee as any lady he knows, reciting his company’s products like poetry; from the waist down …
‘Rackham’s Cough Remedy. Free of poisons of any kind. Rackham’s Bath Sweetener. One bottle lasts a year. Do your feet smell? To spare your blushes, use Rackham’s Sulphur Soap, does not contain lead, one shilling and sixpence … ‘
Suddenly he frets: is she mocking him? Her voice is a soft purr, without any audible trace of disrespect. Her legs are still open, displaying the white abundance of Rackham semen slowly leaking out. And yet …
‘Are you making fun of me?’ he asks.
She puts the catalogue down, leans over to stroke his head.
‘Of course not,’ she says. ‘All this is new to me. I want to learn.’
He sighs, flattered and shamed. ‘If you’re keen to fill gaps in your education, better you read Catullus than a Rackham catalogue.’
‘Oh, but you didn’t write this, did you, William?’ she says. ‘It was written in your father’s time, yes?’
‘By many hands, no doubt.’
‘None as elegant as yours, I’m sure.’ And she eyes him, a gentle challenge.
He reaches for his trousers. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘Oh, but I could help you. Make suggestions.’ She smiles lasciviously. ‘I’m awfully good at making suggestions.’ Fetching the catalogue up again, she lays her forefinger on one line of it. ‘Now, I happened to notice you flinching when I read th
e words “Do your feet smell?” A rather low phrase, I must agree.’
‘Ugh, yes,’ he groans, hearing the old man’s voice, picturing him writing those ugly words in that ridiculous green ink of his, tongue slightly protruding from his wrinkled mouth.
‘So let’s think of a phrase worthy of Rackham’s,’ says Sugar, tossing her skirts down to her ankles. ‘William Rackham’s, that is.’
Bemused, he opens his lips to protest. Swift as a bird, she swoops on him, laying one flaky finger on his mouth.
Shush, she mimes.
Miles away, the woman whom William vowed before God to love, honour and cherish is examining her face in a mirror. A tight, throbbing blemish has appeared on her forehead, just below the wispy golden hairline. Unthinkable, given how often and how carefully she sponges her face, but there it is.
On impulse, Agnes squeezes the pimple between her thumb and forefinger. Pain spreads across her brow like a flame, but the pimple stays intact, only angrier. She should have been patient, and applied some Rackham’s Blemish Balm. Now the thing is rooted fast.
In her hand-held mirror, she sees the fear in her eyes. She’s had this pimple before, in exactly the same place, and it has proved a harbinger of something much, much worse. But surely God will spare her, on the eve of the Season? She imagines she can feel her poor brain pulsing against the pink seashell of her inner ear.
Why, oh why, is her health so bad? She has harmed no one, done nothing. What is she doing in this frail and treacherous body? Once upon a time, when she wasn’t born yet, she must have had a choice between a number of different bodies in a number of different places, each destined to have its own retinue of friends, relations and enemies. Maybe this place, this body, caught her fancy for the silliest of reasons, and now here she is, stuck! Or maybe a mischievous imp distracted her when she was choosing …She imagines herself looking down, from Heaven, from the spirit world, at all the nice new bodies available, trying to decide whether Agnes Pigott might be an agreeable thing to be, while all around her other spirits jostled for their own return to human life. (Pray God Doctor Curlew never finds her hidden cache of books about Spiritualism and the Beyond. It’ll be the death of her if he does!)