by Michel Faber
Henry smiles sadly, there in Bertie Fox’s chair. What is he to do? His desire to impress Mrs Fox is the only thing that may lend him the courage to take Holy Orders; yet, if he were to win Emmeline’s love, would he care a fig for anything else in the world? He was miserable all his life until he met her — could he resist the siren call of animal contentment if she were his? How shameful that he has always greeted the bounties of Providence with a heavy heart, but when given an opportunity to drink tea in the parlour of a pretty widow he feels such joy that he must suppress the urge to rock in his seat! God save from happiness the man who would better the world!
But what’s that sound? From upstairs, muffled by the floors and passageways of Mrs Fox’s little house …Is it … coughing? Yes: a horrifying, convulsive cough such as he has heard issuing from dark cellars in filthy slums… Can this be the same voice as he has grown to love?
For another couple of minutes, Henry sits waiting and listening, stiff with anxiety. Then Mrs Fox returns to the parlour, flushed in the cheeks, but otherwise quite well-looking and calm.
‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Henry,’ she says, in tones as smooth as linctus.
Agnes lowers the latest issue of The Illustrated London News to her lap, of ended and upset. An article has just informed her that the average Englishwoman has 21,917 days to live. Why, oh why must newspapers always be so disagreeable? Have they nothing better to do? The world is going to the dogs.
She rises, letting the newspaper fall to the floor, and walks to the window. After checking the sill for dirt (the first flying insects of the season have been spawned, unfortunately, and one cannot be too careful), she rests her hands on the edge and her hot clammy forehead against the frigid glass, and looks down into the garden. The old poplar tree is pimpled with buds, but afflicted also with green fungus; the lawn below is clean-shaven and, here and there, scraped down to the dark soil by scythe and hoe. It makes Agnes melancholy to see what Shears is doing to the garden. Not that she wasn’t thoroughly ashamed of the Rackham grounds as they were before he came, but now that they’ve been brought to heel, she misses the bright daisies around the trees and the dark green sprouts of sword-grass among the paving-stones, especially as nothing has been put in their place yet. Shears is waiting, he says, for the grass to grow back ‘right’.
Agnes can feel one of her bouts of tearfulness coming on, and grips the window-ledge hard to suppress it. But one by one, the tears for the daisies and the wild grass roll down her cheeks, and the more she blinks the more freely they flow.
21,917 days. Less in her case, as she’s been alive for so long already. How many days are left to her? She has forgotten all the arithmetic she ever knew; the challenge is impossible. Only one thing is clear: the days of her life are, in the cruellest and crudest sense, numbered.
It wasn’t always thus, she knows. Women in the time of Moses lived spans unheard-of now, at least in England. Even today, in the Orient and the further reaches of the Empire, there are to be found wise men (and wise women, surely?) who have solved the riddle of ageing and physical injury, and survived unscathed for generations. Their secrets are hinted at in the Spiritualism pamphlets Agnes has hidden inside her embroidery basket; there are authenticated drawings of miracles — holy men emerging spry and smiling from six months’ burial, exotic black gentlemen dancing on flames, and so forth. No doubt there exist other books — ancient manuals of forbidden knowledge — which explain all the techniques in detail. Everything that’s known to Man is published somewhere — but whether Mudie’s Circulating Library will let a curious woman see it is another matter.
Oh, but what use is there in thinking about it! She’s cursed, it’s all too late for her, God has turned his back, the garden is ruined, her head aches, none of her dresses is the right colour, Mrs Jerrold scorned to reply to her letter, her hair-brush is always thick with hair, the sky darkens ominously when she so much as dares to set foot outside the house. Choking, Agnes slides the window open and thrusts her twisted face into the fresh air.
In the grounds below, Janey the scullery maid appears from a door directly beneath Agnes’s window, to fetch a bucket-load of rich soil for the mushroom cellar. Agnes can see the flesh of the girl’s back straining at the buttons of her plain black dress, straining at the white knot of her pinafore’s bow. All at once she feels a flush of compassion for this poor little drudge in her employ. Two heavy tears fall from her eyes, straight down at the girl, but the wind blows them away before they reach the already retreating body.
It’s only when Mrs Rackham draws back from the window-sill, and adjusts her legs for balance, that she appreciates she has begun to bleed.
Of Mrs Rackham’s subsequent behaviour her husband will soon be informed, but in those few minutes before it comes to the attention of the servants, William sits oblivious in his study, not having thought about Agnes for hours.
Although he has illness very much on his mind, it doesn’t happen to be his wife’s. A worry has been planted in his brain, and is growing there at an alarming rate — a weed of anxiety. Sugar’s innocent jest about cholera has reminded him of some grim statistics: every day, the diseases bred in the unhygienic conditions of inner London claim a certain number of lives — not least those of prostitutes. Yes, Sugar appears fresh as a rose, but by her own admission it isn’t easy; all around her is filth and damp and decay. Who knows what foulness her stable-mates bring into the house? Who knows what contagions hang around the walls of Mrs Castaway’s, threatening to seep into Sugar’s bedroom? She deserves better — and so, of course, does he. Must he tramp through a quagmire of dung to reach his lover? It’s clear what he must do — how simple the solution is! He has the funds, after all!
Why, in the past two months, according to the books, sales of lavender water alone–
An erratic knocking at his door interrupts his calculations. ‘Come in,’ he calls.
The door swings open, and an agitated Letty is revealed.
‘Oh Mr Rackham sir, I’m sorry sir, but, oh, Mr Rackham …’ Her eyes swivel about in their sockets, looking back and forth from William to the stairs she’s just run up; her body sways obsequiously.
‘Well?’ prompts William. ‘What is it, Letty?’
‘It’s Mrs Rackham, sir,’ she pipes. ‘Doctor Curlew has already been sent for, sir, but …I thought you might wish to see for yourself …we closed the door at once … nothing’s been disturbed …’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake!’ exclaims William, as exasperated by all this intrigue as he is unnerved by it. ‘Show me this disaster.’ And he follows Letty hurriedly downstairs, buttoning his waistcoat as he goes.
In Mrs Fox’s parlour, Mrs Fox is doing a rather impolite thing in plain view of her visitor. She is folding sheets of paper from a stack in her lap, inserting them in envelopes, and licking the edges, all the while continuing her conversation. The first time Henry Rackham witnessed this, months ago, he was no less taken aback than if she’d raised a mirror to her face and begun picking her teeth; now, he’s used to it. There are simply not enough hours in the day for all of her activities, so some must be performed simultaneously.
‘May I help you?’ Henry suggests.
‘Please,’ she says, and hands him half the stack.
‘What are these?’
‘Bible verses,’ she says. ‘For night shelters.’
‘Oh.’ He glances at a sheet before folding it. The words of Psalm 31 are instantly recognisable: ‘Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly …’ and so on, up to the exhortation to be of good courage. Mrs Fox’s handwriting is remarkably legible, given the number of times she’s had to transcribe the same few passages.
Henry folds, inserts, licks, presses tight.
‘But can the unfortunates in the night shelters read?’ he asks.
‘Destitution can come to anyone,’ she says, folding, folding. ‘In any case, these verses are for the wardens a
nd the visiting nurses to read aloud. They walk up and down the long aisles of beds, you know, reciting anything they think might comfort the sleepless.’
‘Noble work.’
‘You could do it, Henry, if you wished. They won’t let me — they say they couldn’t guarantee my safety. As if that were in anyone’s hands but God’s.’
Silence falls, except for the whispery sound of their folding and licking. The wordless simplicity of this shared activity is, to Henry, almost unbearably satisfying; he would be happy to spend the next fifty years sitting here in Mrs Fox’s parlour, helping her with her correspondence. Sadly, there are only so many night shelters in Britain, and the envelopes are soon filled. Mrs Fox squints and licks her lips, miming her disgust at the acrid taste on her pink tongue — on his tongue, too.
‘Cocoa is the answer,’ she assures him.
Letty has led her master through passages he has not seen more than a half dozen times since taking on the house that bears his name; passages made for servants to scuttle along. Now she and William Rackham stand at the kitchen door. By dumb show she communicates to him that, if neither of them makes the slightest noise, and if they enter the kitchen with the utmost stealth, they’re likely to observe an extraordinary thing.
William, sorely tempted to cast aside this foolishness and shove on through, resists the temptation and does as Letty suggests. Noiselessly, like a stage curtain parting, the door is nudged open, to reveal not just the harshly-lit, high-ceilinged cell in which all his food is prepared, but also (when he lowers his eyes) two women engaged in an act which shouldn’t have shocked him in the least — had not one of the women been his wife.
For there, side by side on the stone floor, are Agnes and the scullery-maid Janey, both with their backs to him and their arses in the air, crawling along on their hands and knees, dipping scrubbing-brushes by turns into a large pail of soapy water. And conversing while they’re at it.
Agnes scrubs with a less practised rhythm than Janey but with equal vigour, the tendons in her tiny hands standing out. The hems of her skirts are plastered to the wet floor, her bustled rear rocks to and fro, her slippered feet squirm for purchase.
‘Well, ma’am,’ Janey is saying. ‘I tries to wash every dish the same, but the fing is, you don’t expeck fingerbowls to be all that dirty, do yer?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ pants Agnes as she scrubs.
‘Well, neiver did I,’ rejoins the girl. ‘Neiver did I. And so there I was, with Cook shoutin’ and bawlin’ at me, and wavin’ these fingerbowls at me, and I carn’t deny as they ‘ad a cake o’ grease all under ‘em, but honest to crikey, ma’am, it was fingerbowls, and Cook must know they’s normally always so clean
‘Yes, yes,’ sympathises the mistress. ‘You poor girl.’
‘And this … This ‘ere’s blood,’ comments Janey, referring to an old stain on the wooden duckboard she and Mrs Rackham have before them now. ‘Spilt ever so long ago but you can still see it, no matter ‘ow many times I’ve scrubbed it.’
Mrs Rackham hunkers over to look, her shoulder touching Janey’s.
‘Let me try,’ she urges breathlessly.
William chooses this moment to intervene. He strides into the kitchen, his shoes striking sharply on the wet floor, straight towards Agnes, who turns, still on her hands and knees, to face him. Janey doesn’t turn, but squats petrified, like a dog caught in an act that warrants a beating.
‘Hello, William,’ says Agnes calmly, blinking at a strand of hair dangling in front of one sweaty eyebrow. ‘Is Doctor Curlew here yet?’
But William doesn’t respond with the impotent exasperation she expects. Instead, he reaches down and, sweeping one arm under her bustle and another against her back, he heaves her up, with a mighty grunt of effort, off the floor. As she slumps bewildered against his chest, he loudly declares, ‘Doctor Curlew was sent for without my authority. I’ll let him give you a sleeping draught, then ask him to leave. He’s here too often and too long, in my opinion — and what good has it done you?’
And with that, he carries her out of the kitchen and through the several doors and passageways to the stairs.
‘Inform me when Doctor Curlew arrives,’ he orders the mortified Clara, who emerges from the shadows to trot up the stairs beside him. ‘Tell him: a sleeping draught, no more! I shall be in my study.’
And that, once his wife is safely laid in her bed, is where William Rackham goes.
‘You know, Henry,’ muses Mrs Fox as she surveys the teetering pile of addressed envelopes between them, ‘I feel blessed never to have had children.’
Henry almost inhales his mouthful of cocoa. ‘Oh? Why is that?’
Mrs Fox leans back in her chair, allowing her face to be lit by a muted ray of sunlight filtering through the curtains. There are mauve veins on her temples that Henry has never noticed before, and a red flush on her Adam’s apple — if women have Adam’s apples, which he’s not sure they do.
‘I sometimes think I’ve only a finite measure of…’ she closes her eyes, searching for the word ‘’…ofjuice in me, to give to the world. If I’d had children, I would’ve given most of it to them, I imagine, whereas now …’ She gestures at the philanthropic clutter all about, the charitable chaos of her house, half rueful, half contented.
‘Does this mean,’ ventures Henry, ‘that you believe all Christian women ought to remain childless?’
‘Oh, I’d never say “ought”,’ she replies. ‘All the same, what an enormous power for Good it would unleash, don’t you think?’
‘But what of the Lord’s commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply”?’
She smiles and looks out of the window, her eyes narrowed against the flickering afternoon light. It’s probably only the clouds, but if one uses one’s imagination, there might be a vast army marching past the house, numberless hordes blotting out the sun, a million-spoked wheel of bodies.
‘I think there’s been quite enough multiplication, don’t you?’ Mrs Fox sighs. ‘We have filled the world up awfully well, haven’t we, with frightened and hungry humans. The challenge now is what to do with them all…’ ‘Still, the miracle of new life …’
‘Oh, Henry, if you could but see …’ She is poised to speak of her experiences with the Rescue Society, but decides against it; evocations of pox-raddled infants stowed in prostitutes’ cupboards and dead babies decomposing in the Thames are, over cocoa, too indecorous even for her.
‘Honestly, Henry,’ she says instead. ‘There’s nothing so very exceptional about bearing children. Acts of genuine charity, on the other hand … Perhaps you ought to try to see good works as eggs, and we women as hens. Fertilised, eggs are useless except to produce more chickens, but what a useful thing is a pure egg! And how very many eggs one hen can come up with!’
Henry blushes to the tips of his ears, the crimson flesh contrasting fetchingly with the gold of his hair. ‘You are joking, surely.’
‘Certainly not,’ she smiles. ‘Haven’t you heard how your friends Bodley and Ashwell sum me up? I’m serious to the bone.’ And she reclines suddenly in her chair, her head lolling back in apparent exhaustion. Henry watches, worried and fascinated, as she breathes deep, her bosom swelling out through her bodice, a subtle protuberance on either side growing visible through the soft fabric.
‘M-Mrs Fox?’ he stammers. ‘Are you all right?’
When Doctor Curlew arrives at William Rackham’s study, he finds himself greeted politely but without deference. This confirms in his mind the changes he’s noticed in the Rackham household (and his place in it) over the last four or five visits. Gone are the armchair chats, the proffered cigars, the upward gaze of respect. Today Doctor Curlew feels as if he’s been summoned as a mere dispenser of medicines, rather than invited as an eminent scholar of mental frailty. ‘She will sleep now,’ he says.
‘Good,’ says Rackham. ‘You’ll forgive me if we don’t discuss the details of my wife’s latest relapse. If relapse it is.’
&nb
sp; ‘As you wish.’
Forgive me also, thinks William, if I send you on your way before you suggest to me again that Agnes belongs in an asylum. I am a rich man and there is nothing I can’t take care of in my own home. If Agnes goes mad and needs nurses, I shall employ them. If one day she is so beyond reason as to need strongmen to restrain her, I can afford them, too. I am above any man’s pity, doctor: watch your place.
William informs the doctor of the change henceforth from weekly to monthly visits, thanks him for coming, and hands him into Letty’s care. He fancies, as Curlew is leaving, that he spots a glimmer of humiliation in the doctor’s face — fancies mistakenly, for men like Doctor Curlew have so many human mirrors reflecting their importance back at them that when one mirror shows a less flattering image they simply turn to another. The doctor’s next patient is an old woman who worships him; he’ll look in the Rackhams’ mirror again another time, when the light is different. Agnes Rackham is doomed; he need only wait.
With Curlew safely dispatched, William considers looking in on his wife, to make sure she’s sleeping peacefully, but decides against it, for he knows she hates him coming into her bedroom. Nevertheless he wishes her well, and even conjures up a picture of her face wearing a tranquil expression.
Oddly enough, ever since he’s known Sugar he has been able to spare Agnes many more affectionate and indulgent thoughts than before; she no longer weighs upon him as a burden, but rather as a sort of challenge. Just as the mastery of Rackham Perfumeries, once an odious impossibility, has become, with Sugar’s encouragement, an interesting adventure, the vanquishing of Agnes’s ills may likewise be a test of his powers. He knows what his little wife holds dear: he’ll give her as much of it as she desires. He knows what she hates: he’ll spare her the worst.