The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  ‘Yes.’

  William scratches the back of his head in bemusement. He wishes there were a fire he could stir with the poker, rather than this ridiculous philodendron.

  ‘This is … a rehearsal, perhaps, for your future career? You have your eye on St Giles as your parish?’

  Henry laughs mirthlessly. ‘I am a mad fool, playing with fire,’ he says, enunciating the words with bitter emphasis, ‘and if I don’t come to my senses, I’ll be consumed.’ His fists are clenched, and his eyes shine angrily — almost as if it’s William, not his own desires, threatening his safety.

  ‘Well …urm …’ frowns William, crossing and uncrossing his legs. ‘I’ve always known you to be a sensible chap. I’m sure you don’t lack … resolve. And anyway, you’ll find that infatuations tend to run their course. What enthrals us today may have no hold on us tomorrow. Urm … These prostitutes, now. What are they to you?’

  But Henry is staring sightlessly ahead of him, haunted.

  ‘They’re only children, some of them: children!’

  ‘Well, yes … It’s a disgrace, as I’ve often said … ‘

  ‘And they stare at me as if I were to blame for their misery.’

  ‘Well, yes, they’re very good at that … ‘

  ‘I try to convince myself that it’s pity that moves me, that I wish only to help them, as Mrs …as others help them. That I wish only to let them know I don’t despise them, that I believe they are God’s creatures just as I am. But, when I return home, and I lie in my bed, ready for sleep, it’s not any vision of aiding these wretched women that fills my mind. It’s a vision of an embrace.’

  ‘An embrace?’ Lord, here it is at last: the meat of the matter!

  ‘I see myself embracing them … all of them at once; they are all embodied in one faceless woman. I shouldn’t call her faceless, for she has a face, but it’s … many women’s faces at once. Can you understand that? She is their …’ (a comparison with the Trinity occurs to him, but he bites his tongue on the brink of blasphemy) ‘… their common body.’

  William rubs his eyes irritably. He’s tired; he slept badly in the guesthouse in Dundee, and slept badly on the train, and he’s been working late hours since his return.

  ‘So …’ he rejoins, determined now, if it kills him, to get his brother to the point. ‘What exactly do you picture yourself doing to this… common body?’

  Henry raises his face, suffused with an alarming glow of inspiration (or is it merely the sun beaming through the window at last?).

  ‘The embrace is all!’ he declares. ‘I feel I could hold this woman for a lifetime — pressed close to me — quite still, and doing nothing else but holding, and reassuring her that everything will be all right from now on. I swear it’s not Lust!’ He laughs incredulously. ‘I know what Lust feels like, and this is different…’ He looks across at William, loses courage as a result. ‘Or perhaps that’s what I delude myselfto believe.’

  William offers a smile which he hopes may pass for sympathy. This must be what it’s like, he thinks, for Catholic priests when they have to endure the confessions of the very young. Reams of lurid wrapping-paper to be removed from a giant parcel of guilt, only to reveal a tiny trifle inside.

  ‘So …’ he sighs. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, brother?’

  Henry leans back in his chair, apparently exhausted. ‘You have done it already, William, merely by listening to my ravings. I know I am a fool and a hypocrite, trying to dress my sins up as virtue. You see, I was on my way to St Giles today — instead, I stopped here.’

  William grunts, nonplussed. All things considered, he would rather Henry had pursued his original inclination, and left his overburdened brother in peace. This visit has swallowed up valuable time. The freshly signed contract with those damned Jewish jute merchants, which seemed such a good idea up in Dundee, is looking less advantageous the more he thinks about it, and he needs every spare minute to reconsider it before those damned crates of sacking start arriving on the damned wharf.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to have been of some use to you, Henry,’ he mutters. Then his glance falls on Henry’s bulbous Gladstone bag, which has been sitting at his brother’s side, stuffed to bursting like a burglar’s swag. ‘But what, if you don’t mind me asking, is all this?’

  For one last time before he leaves, Henry blushes. Wordlessly, he unfastens the bag and allows its jumble of contents to protrude into the light. A Dutch cheese, some apples and carrots, a loaf of bread, a fat cylinder of smoked sausage, tins of cocoa and biscuits.

  William stares into his brother’s face, utterly baffled.

  ‘They always say they’re hungry,’ Henry explains.

  Later, much later, when brother Henry has gone home and the sun has long since set and the first draft of an important letter has been written, William lays his cheek on a warm pillow — a pillow with just the right amount of firmness, just the right amount of yield. Sleep follows inevitably.

  A gentle, feminine hand strokes his cheek as he nuzzles deeper into the cotton-covered mound of duck feathers. Even in sleep, he knows it’s not his mother. His mother has gone away. ‘She’s turned into a bad woman,’ Father says, and so she’s gone, gone to live with other bad people, and William and Henry must be brave boys. So who is this female stroking him? It must be his nurse.

  He burrows deeper into slumber, his head penetrating the shell of dreams. Instantly the room where he lies sleeping expands to a vast size, encompassing the whole universe, or at least all the known world. Ships sail into the docks, groaning with jute bags he doesn’t want: that’s bad, and the gloomy sky overhead reflects this. But, elsewhere, the sun is shining on his lavender fields, which this year are bound to surrender a juicier crop than they ever did in his father’s time. All over England, in shops and homes alike, the unmistakable ‘R’ insignia is on prominent display. Aristocratic ladies, all of whom bear a remarkable resemblance to Lady Bridgelow, are perusing Rackham’s Spring catalogue, uttering discreet sounds of approval over each item.

  A loud snort — his own snore — half-rouses him. His prick is stiff, lolling aimlessly under the blankets, lost. He turns, huddles against the long hot body of the female, fitting himself against her back, comforting himself against her buttocks. With one arm, he hugs her close to him, breathes the perfume from her hair, sleeps on and on.

  In the morning, William Rackham realises that this is the first time in six years he has slept all night with a woman at his side. So many women he’s fucked, and so many nights he’s slept, and yet so rarely the twain have met!

  ‘Do you know,’ he muses to Sugar, before he’s even fully awake, ‘this is the first time in six years I’ve slept all night with a woman at my side.’

  Sugar kisses his shoulder. Almost says, ‘You poor thing,’ but thinks better of it.

  ‘Well, was it worth the wait?’ she murmurs.

  He returns the kiss, ruffles her red mane. Through the fog of his contentment, the cares of his diurnal existence struggle to surface. Dundee. Dundee. A wrinkle dawns on his brow as he recalls the freshly penned letter he brought to show Sugar last night.

  ‘I should get up,’ he says, raising himself onto his elbows.

  ‘It’s an hour at least before the post gets collected,’ remarks Sugar calmly, as if, for her, reading his thoughts is the most natural thing in the world. ‘I have stamps and envelopes here. Rest your head a little longer.’

  He falls back on his pillow, befuddled. Can it really be as early as that? Silver Street is so noisy, with carts and dogs and chattering pedestrians, it feels like mid-morning. And what sort of creature is he in bed with, who can hold in her head the fine print of his contract with a firm ofjute merchants, while stretching her naked body like a cat?

  ‘The tone of my letter …’ he frets. ‘Are you sure it’s not too fawning? They’ll understand my meaning, won’t they?’

  ‘It’s clear as crystal,’ she says, sitting up to comb her hair.

  ‘
But not too clear? They can make trouble for me, these fellows, if I get on the wrong side of them.’

  ‘It’s exactly right,’ she assures him, dragging the metal teeth in slow rhythm through her tangled orange halo. ‘All it needed was a softer word here and there.’ (She’s referring to the changes he made, on her advice, before they went to bed.)

  He turns on his side, watches her as she combs. With every flex of her muscles, the tiger-stripe patterns of her peculiar skin condition move ever-so-slightly — on her hips, on her thighs, on her back. With every sweep of her comb, a luxuriant mass of hair falls against her pale flesh, only to be swept up again a moment later. He clears his throat to tell her how …how very fond he is growing of her.

  Then he notices the smell.

  ‘Paghh …’ he grimaces, sitting bolt upright. ‘Is there a chamber-pot under the bed?’

  Without hesitation, Sugar stops combing, bends over the edge of the mattress, and fetches out the ceramic tureen.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, tipping it sideways for his inspection. ‘But it’s empty.’

  He grunts, impressed by her masculine continence, never guessing that she slipped away from his side during the night, performed a number of watery procedures, and disposed of the results. Instead, preoccupied with the task at hand — at nostril — William continues his search for the true source of the stench. He stumbles barefoot out of the bed, following his sensitive nose from one end of Sugar’s bedroom to the other. He’s embarrassed to find that the stink emanates from the soles of his own shoes, lying where he kicked them off the night before.

  ‘I must have stepped in dog’s mess on the way here,’ he frowns, disproportionately shamed by the stiff sludge he can neither clean nor endure. ‘There aren’t enough lamps out there, damn it.’ He’s pulling on his socks now, looking for his trousers, preparing to take his disgraced shoes away with him, away from Sugar’s immaculate boudoir.

  ‘The city is a filthy place,’ Sugar affirms, unobtrusively wrapping her body in a milk-white dressing-gown. ‘There’s muck on the ground, muck in the water, muck in the air. I find, even on the short walk between here and The Fireside – used to find, I should say, shouldn’t I? — a layer of black grime settles on one’s skin.’

  William, buttoning himself into his shirt, appraises her fresh face, her bright eyes — the white gown.

  ‘Well, you look very clean to me, I must say.’

  ‘I do my best,’ she smiles, folding the creamy sleeves across her breast. ‘Though a little of your Rackham’s Bath Sweetener wouldn’t go amiss, I suppose. And do you have anything to purify drinking water? You don’t want to see me carried off by cholera!’

  Bull’s-eye, she thinks, as a shudder passes through him.

  ‘I wonder, though,’ she goes on, in a dreamy, musing tone. ‘Don’t you ever get fed up, William, with living in the city? Don’t you ever wish you lived somewhere pleasanter and cleaner?’ She pauses, ready to feed him specifics (‘like Notting Hill, perhaps, or Bayswater …’) but biting her tongue on the words in case he should come out with them first.

  ‘Well, actually, I live in Notting Hill,’ he confesses.

  Sugar allows her face to light up with the merest fraction of the joy she feels at this triumph in winning his confidence.

  ‘Oh, how agreeable!’ she cries. ‘It’s the ideal place, don’t you think? Close to the heart of things, but so much more civilised.’

  ‘It’s all right, I suppose …’ he says, fastening his collars. ‘Some might call it unfashionable.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s unfashionable at all! There are some grand parts to Notting Hill; everybody knows that. The streets between Westbourne Grove and Pembridge Square, for example, have a reputation for being awfully desirable.’

  ‘But that’s precisely where I live!’

  At this, she throws her head back and chuckles, a rough low sound from her long white throat. In all things (says that chuckle) William Rackham can be depended upon to choose the best. ‘I ought to have guessed,’ she says.

  ‘You guess damn near everything else,’ he retorts ruefully.

  She examines his eyes, weighs his tone, confirms he isn’t angry with her, merely impressed. ‘Feminine intuition,’ she winks. ‘I feel it, somehow.’ (Her hands caress her bosom, stray down to her abdomen.) ‘Deep inside me.’

  Then, judging she must let him go, she swings off the bed and walks over to the escritoire, from which all her own papers have been removed, leaving nothing but William’s letter to the jute merchants. ‘Now, we had better get this ready for the post.’

  Fully dressed but for the shoes, William joins her at the writing-desk. Sugar stands demurely at his shoulder and watches as he re-reads the letter, watches as he judges it satisfactory, watches as he folds it into the envelope she hands him, watches as he addresses it and, without attempting to obscure her view, writes his home address on the reverse. Only then does she close her eyes in satisfaction. What so recently were the fruits of stealth have now been given to her freely. Nothing now remains for her to do but sink her teeth in.

  * * *

  ‘Mercy,’ he pleaded once more.

  William is gone, and Sugar sits at her desk, finishing the troublesome chapter at last.

  I gripped the hilt of the dagger, but found I lacked the strength (the strength of will, perhaps, but also the strength of sinew, for slaughtering a man is no easy labour) to plunge the knife into this fellow’s flesh and do my worst. I had performed the act so many times before; but that night, it was beyond me.

  And yet, the man must die: he could not be released now that I had entrapped him! What, dear Reader, was I to do?

  I put away my knife, and instead fetched up a soft cotton cloth. My helpless paramour ceased his struggle against his bonds, an expression of relief manifesting on his face. Even when I up-ended the flask of foul-smelling liquid into the cloth, he did not lose hope, imagining perhaps that I was about to swab his fevered brow.

  Holding my own breath as if in sympathy, I pressed the poison rag to his mouth and nose, wholly sealing those orifices.

  ‘Sweet dreams, my friend.’

  TWELVE

  Henry Rackham, unaccustomed as he is to ecstasy, is so happy he could die. He is in Mrs Fox’s house, sitting in the chair which must have been her husband’s, eating cake.

  ‘Excuse me just a moment, Henry’ was the last thing she said, before removing her exquisite self from the parlour. In his mind’s eye, she still stands before him, her ginger dress brightening the room, her gentle manner warming the air. The very atmosphere is reluctant to let her go.

  ‘More tea, Mr Rackham?’

  Henry jerks, spilling cake crumbs into his lap. He’d forgotten about Mrs Fox’s servant, Sarah; she’d ceased to exist for him. Yet there she stands, inconspicuous against the papery clutter of Mrs Fox’s belongings, a stacked tea-tray on her forearms, a hint of a smirk on her face. In that smirk, Henry can see reflected what a moonstruck booby he must appear.

  ‘I have sufficient, thank you,’ he says.

  All at once, his happiness has left him — or rather, he has pushed it to arm’s length, the better to subject it to scrutiny. What is this happiness, really? Nothing more or less than captivation by a member of the fair sex. And captivation is a frightening thing.

  Granted, he’s not a Catholic: he could, if he wished, be both a clergyman and a husband. Mrs Fox, for her part, is a widow: that is, free. But, leaving aside the unlikelihood of her wanting a dull and awkward fellow like him, there remains, in Henry’s mind, a religious obstacle.

  This captivation … This infatuation … This love, if he dares call it that, in earshot of the Almighty … This love has the power to steal away so much time — whole hours and days — which might otherwise have been devoted to the work of God. Good works are frugal with time; love for a woman squanders it. It is possible to follow the example of Jesus on a dozen occasions in a single morning, and still have energy for more; yet dwelling upo
n the wishes — even the imagined wishes — of a beloved can swallow up all one’s waking hours, and achieve nothing.

  Henry knows! Too often, the time that elapses between one meeting with Mrs Fox and the next is a dream, a mere intermission. She need only smile at him, and he cherishes that smile to the exclusion of all else. Days pass, life goes on, yet the best part of him is given over to the memory of that smile. How can this be?

  Henry sips his tea, uneasy under the gaze of Sarah. She gazes too directly, he feels; there’s no hope of him picking the crumbs off his lap without her observing him at it. What’s wrong with the girl? Perhaps, when it comes to servants, the rehabilitated fallen can never be quite as discreet as those who never fell in the first place. Sweat breaks out on Henry’s forehead, explicable (he hopes) by the steam rising from his tea-cup. This girl — this protegee of the Rescue Society — is she essentially any different from the trollops he’s seen in St Giles? Underneath her dowdy clothing, a quantity of naked flesh is contained, a living, breathing vessel of sinful history.

  She’s not beautiful, this Sarah — at least, not beautiful to him. She is a provocative reminder of the female sex in its fallen state, but as an individual she leaves him unmoved. The thought of Mrs Fox’s gloved hand clasped momentarily inside his own is far more seductive than any fantasy this rescued wanton can give rise to. And yet she’s a similar age to Mrs Fox, a similar size, a similar shape … How is it possible for him to be entranced by the one, and indifferent to the other? What is God trying to teach him?

  The servant walks away, and Henry attends to his trousers. What do the great Christian philosophers have to say on this matter? A woman, they remind him, flourishes and dies like a flower. A decade or two sees the passing of her beauty, a few decades more the passing of its beholders, and finally the woman herself returns to dust. Almighty God, by contrast, lives for ever, and is the author of all beauty, having shaped it in his hands in the very first week of Creation.

  And yet, how much more difficult it is to love God with the passion that a beautiful woman inspires! Can this truly be a part of God’s plan? Are desiccated woman-haters like MacLeish the only men suited for the cloth? And what’s become of Mrs Fox? She said she’d only be a moment… the vision of her ginger dress has faded from the air in front of him, the warm traces of her voice have evaporated in the silence.