by Michel Faber
All she need do is make it impossible for Rackham to discard her, before he even begins to think of doing so. She must weave herself inextricably into the pattern of his life, so that he comes to regard her not as a mere dalliance, but as a friend, as precious as a sibling. Of course, to earn such a place in his life, she must know everything, everything about William Rackham; she must know him better than his wife knows him, better than he knows himself.
How to begin? Well, waiting for him in the empty silence of her rooms is emphatically not the answer: it merely tempts Fate to sweep her into the gutter. She must act, and act at once!
In the spectral glow of another overcast mid-morning, with a storm predicted, Agnes Rackham stands at her bedroom window, blinking hard. The apparition has vanished. It will return. But for now it’s gone.
Not since her childhood visions of her favourite saint, Saint Teresa of Avila, has she felt this way. It all went wrong after that terrible day when Lord Unwin told her he was her father now, and there’d be no more Virgin Marys, no more crucifixes, no more rosaries and no more Confessions for her. How fervently she prayed then, for the strength to preserve the flame of her faith against the huffing and puffing of this big bad Protestant wolf. Alas, at ten years old she was poorly equipped to fight like a martyr. Any resistance to her step-father’s edicts was crushed by a new nurse from the Anglican camp, and there was no help from Mother, who seemed wholly under her new husband’s evil spell. Agnes’s desperate calls to Saint Teresa, which once were intimate conversations, soon sounded like the lonesome whisperings of a child frightened of the dark.
Now, thirteen years later, it looks as though something divine and mysterious is afoot once more. Miracles are in the air.
She wanders through the upper floors of the Rackham house, entering each room except the Ones Into Which She Must Never Go. The servants are all downstairs working, so their rooms are conveniently vacant: Agnes enters them one by one and stands at their tiny windows, looking out into the Rackham grounds from half a dozen vantage points. Letty’s window, in particular, has a nice view of the mews behind Chepstow Villas. The apparition doesn’t manifest, though.
Dreamily, Agnes returns to her own bedroom. And there, out of her own window, in the side lane not fifty yards away, she sees it again! Yes! Yes! A woman in white, standing sentinel, gazing directly at the Rackham house through the wrought-iron railings. This time, before the apparition has a chance to disappear into the ether, Agnes raises her hand and waves.
For several seconds, the woman in white stands motionless and unresponsive, but Agnes waves on and on, energetically wiggling her hand like a toy rattle on her flimsy wrist. Finally, the woman in white waves back, with a gesture so delicate and hesitant she might never have waved at a human being before. A boom of thunder penetrates the clouds. The woman in white melts away into the trees.
By lunchtime, Agnes’s excitement has scarcely abated; extreme joy pulses in her wrists and her temples. The elements outside are wild in sympathy, sending lashings of rain against the windows and whoops of wind down the chimneys, urging her to whirl freely with arms flung wide. Yet she knows she must control herself and be demure, she must act as though the world is just the same today as it was yesterday, for her husband is a man and if there’s one thing men despise it’s happiness in its raw state. So, chairs scrape and dishes clink as she and William seat themselves in their appointed places at the dining-room table, murmuring thanks for what they are about to receive. Precious little light gets through the storm’s watery shimmer and, though Letty has parted the curtains as far as they will go, it isn’t enough, and finally a trinity of flaming candles must be set down between the Rackhams to clarify their radically different meals.
‘I have a guardian angel, dear,’ says Agnes as soon as the servants have finished serving up — before she’s even speared her first cube of cold pigeon breast out of its nest of lettuce and artichoke bottoms.
‘A what, dear?’ William is even more preoccupied than usual, having been (he keeps declaring to anyone in range) up to his ears in work.
‘A guardian angel,’ affirms Agnes, glowing with pleasure.
William looks up from his own plate, piled high with hot pigeon pie and buttered potato waffles.
‘You’re referring to Clara?’ he guesses, really in no mood for playful feminine effusions when he has the problem of Hopsom & Co. to solve.
‘You don’t understand, dear,’ insists Agnes, leaning forward, radiant, her food quite forgotten in the urgency of sharing her vision. ‘I have a real guardian angel. A divine spirit. She is watching over our house — over us — every instant.’
The corners of William’s mouth twitch in a grimace of disappointment which he manfully attempts to convert into a smile. He’d been under the impression Agnes was much improved, after the fiasco on the kitchen floor and two days fast asleep on Curlew’s horse dope.
‘Well,’ he sighs, ‘I hope she doesn’t come in and steal the new cutlery.’
There is a pause while William cuts his pie and concentrates on conveying it to his mouth without soiling his now luxuriant beard. Thus occupied, he fails to notice that the atmosphere in the room has undergone a chemical change every bit as remarkable as the transition from crushed flower-petals to oily perfume pomade.
‘I think she’s probably from the Convent of Health,’ Agnes declares tremulously, pushing her all-but-undisturbed plate aside, napkin clenched in one white fist.
‘The Convent of Health?’ William looks up, chewing. In the distorting light of the new silver candelabrum (perhaps fractionally too big for their dining table?), his wife’s eyes appear to be unequal in size — the right slightly rounder and shinier than the left.
‘You know:’ she says, ‘the place I go when I’m asleep.’
‘I–I confess I wasn’t aware where you’ve been going,’ he says, grinning uneasily, ‘when you’re asleep.’
‘The nuns there are really angels,’ Agnes remarks, as if to lay an old misconception to rest. ‘I’ve suspected that for a long time.’
‘Aggie …’ says William, in a gently warning tone. ‘Perhaps a different subject now?’
‘She waved to me,’ persists Agnes, trembling with indignation. ‘I waved to her, and she waved back.’
William slaps his knife and fork onto the table and fixes her with his sternest paternal stare: his tolerance is near its limit.
‘Does she have wings, this guardian angel?’ he enquires sarcastically.
‘Of course she has wings,’ Agnes hisses back. ‘What do you take me for?’ But, in his eyes, she can see the answer. ‘You don’t believe me, do you, William?’
‘No, dear,’ he sighs, ‘I don’t believe you.’
The pulse in her temples is clearly visible now, like an insect trapped between translucent flesh and swelling skull.
‘You don’t believe in anything, do you?’ she says, in a low, ugly voice he’s never heard from her before.
‘I–I beg your pardon, dear?’ he stammers.
‘You believe in nothing,’ she says, glaring at him through the candle-flame, her voice harsher with each successive syllable, all trace of its lilting musicality lost in a snarl of disgust. ‘Nothing except William Rackham.’ She bares her perfect teeth. ‘What a fraud you are, what a fool.’
‘I beg your pardon, dear!?’ He’s too astonished to be angry; in truth, he is afraid, for this new voice of hers is as strange and shocking in her rosebud mouth as the growl ofa dog, or a Pentecostal torrent of tongues.
‘Beg all you like–fool,” she spits. ‘You make me sick.’
He springs to his feet, scattering food and cutlery everywhere. The candelabrum topples with a crash of flame, molten wax and silver, provoking from him a bellow of alarm as he pounces on the candles, dousing them with a smack of his palm.
By the time he’s reassured that there isn’t going to be an inferno, Agnes is already on the floor, lying not in her usual swoon of decorous recline, but in a twis
ted rag-doll sprawl of slack limbs and exposed petticoats, as if a crack marksman has just shot her through the spine.
In the shadowy porch of 22 Priory Close, in response to his first pull on the bell, the door swings open and William Rackham is welcomed inside. For a moment he’s dazzled, failing to recognise the white-clad woman before him; Sugar’s hair hangs newly washed and dark against the snowy silk of her bodice, and her normally pale cheeks are blushing. He has caught her unawares, in fragrant disarray, preparing herself for him.
‘Come in, come in,’ she implores, for the fierce rain at his back is slanted almost horizontal, pelting past him into the hall.
‘High time I stopped this foolishness and got a coachman,’ he mutters as she ushers him inside. ‘This is intolerable …’ He shies in surprise as she jumps to his aid, cooing nurturingly, laying her hands on his shoulders to help him remove his waterlogged ulster.
‘New dress?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she admits, blushing deeper still. ‘I bought it with the money you sent.’ Her attempt to hang his coat on the coat-stand fails instantly, as the sodden garment topples the dainty pole. She catches it in her arms as the metal clatters to the floor. ‘I didn’t mean to be extravagant,’ she frets, lifting the coat above her head, and hooking its furry collar over a light fitting. ‘It’s just that my old clothes haven’t come yet.’
Rackham smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand.
‘Ach! Forgive me!’ he groans. ‘I’ve been up to my ears in work.’
‘William, your hand …’ She grasps it, turning the palm up to reveal scalds and fresh blisters. ‘Oooh, how awful for you …’ And, tenderly, she kisses the burns with her soft dry lips.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘A mishap with some candles. But how could I have left you in this state for so long … I’ll get those crates sent first thing tomorrow. Ifyou knew what I’ve had on my mind …!’
With a wet thud, his ulster falls again.
‘Damn it all!’ he explodes. ‘I should’ve bought you a decent coat-stand. Damn Jew said it was sturdier than it looked. Flimsy rubbish!’ He kicks the recumbent sculpture where it lies, triggering a buzz of vibrating brass.
‘No matter, no matter,’ Sugar hastily reassures him, scooping the coat off the floor and bearing it into the sitting-room. A fire is blazing in the hearth; the straight-backed chair from the writing-desk makes a good drying frame, she’s found.
Rackham follows on, embarrassed that this exquisite creature in white silk should be doing work more suited to a shapeless drudge in calico and black. How lovely she is! He wants to seize hold of her and …and … well, to be honest, he doesn’t want to do anything to her tonight. Rather, he wishes she would gather his head to her breast — her fully-clothed, silky white breast — and merely, gently, stroke his hair.
‘I’m a poor excuse for a benefactor,’ he sighs, as she arranges his coat on the makeshift rack. ‘I leave you stranded without fresh clothes, for days. Then I shamble through your door, as though I’ve just been dredged from the Thames — and within moments I’m making an ass of myself, kicking the place down … ‘
Sugar straightens, looks her Rackham square in the eyes for the first time since his arrival. There’s something wrong, she realises now: something weightier than rickety coat-stands or a spate of bad weather. His contorted face, his stooping posture … He might almost be the William Rackham she met in The Fireside on that first night, hunched and mistrustful like a recently whipped dog — except that tonight he smells of less easily definable desires.
‘Something is troubling you,’ she says, in her softest, most respectful voice. ‘You aren’t a man to concern himself with trifles.’
‘Ach, it’s nothing, nothing,’ he replies, eyes downcast. (How perceptive she is! Is his very soul naked to her gaze?) ‘Business?’
He sits heavily in an armchair, blinking dazedly at the glass of brandy hovering before him — exactly what he wanted. He accepts it from her hand, and she glides backwards to the other armchair.
‘Business, yes,’ he says.
He begins with a heavy heart, sighing deeply in expectation of having to explain the most fundamental principles. But, to his amazement, she needs no such thing; she understands! Within minutes he and Sugar are discussing the Hopsom dilemma — in detail — quite as if she were a business ally.
‘But how can you know all this?’ he interjects at one point.
‘I’ve made a start on the books you put on my shelves,’ she grins. (Yes, indeed she has: screeds of closely-printed tedium, made bearable only by the anticipation of an opportunity like this one.)
Rackham shakes his head in awe. ‘Am I … dreaming you?’
She stretches slightly in her seat and breathes deep, allowing her bosom to swell into view. ‘Oh, I’m very real,’ she reminds him.
And to the dilemma of Hopsom & Co. they promptly return. Sugar manages her side of the discussion better than she could have hoped, but then everything William knows of perfumery seems to have been cribbed from books and nothing from experience. Anyhow, the underlying principles of commerce are so simple, even an imbecile could understand them: convince your customers you’re generous when in fact you’re forcing them to pay dear for what you have produced cheap. Conversation with a boring man likewise has its underlying principles. Principle One: humbly apologise for your ignorance, even when you know what he’s about to explain. Principle Two: at the point when he grows weary of explaining, appear to grasp everything in an instant.
‘I’m not a businessman by nature, I’m more of an artist,’ William says, with a stoical sigh. ‘But in the end, that may be all to the good. The born businessman is unadventurous, fearful of changing the way things are, if they’re ticking along. The born artist is prepared to dare? Softly bleating these words, he strikes her as the last person to dare anything. What’s wrong with him tonight? At least he’s swallowing the brandy …
The real problem with Hopsom, after all her gentle probings and reassurances, at last comes out in the open. And what a puny little problem it is! The company is a minor manufacturer of toiletries, dwarfed by Rackham’s as Rackham’s is dwarfed by Pears. Until now, it has not sold lavender in any form, but William was recently approached by Mr Hopsom, with a view to the leasing of some of Rackham’s lavender-producing farmland, if there’s any to spare. William promised to consider it, but no sooner was Hopsom out the door than he conceived a notion much more radical than the mere leasing of land. Instead, why shouldn’t Rackham supply Hopsom with lavender in its fully refined forms — soaps, waters, oils, talcums and so on –at a price much lower than what it would cost Hopsom to produce the same items in his own much smaller factories? Hopsom could then sell them under the Hopsom name. And what, asks Sugar, would be the advantage to Rackham of such an arrangement? Why, it would solve the problem of what to do with crops and manufactures that turn out … how shall we say it? … less than perfect. Every year an unconscionable amount of harvested lavender is thrown away, which might just as well be refined for what it’s worth. Also it seems a waste to discard finished products (soaps and so forth) that are a mite misshapen, or have pock-marks or streaks of undis-solved colour.
Not that the lavender produce passed on to Hopsom would necessarily be inferior; to the contrary, every effort would be made, as always, to ensure that all crops were perfect, and every manufacture flawless. It might well be that, nine times out of ten, there would be no difference anyone could tell between (for example) the lavender water bearing Hopsom’s label and that which bore Rackham’s.
Ah, but … ah, but … What of that one-in-ten eventuality? What if (just for the sake of argument) Hopsom’s found itself in receipt of a quantity of substandard perfume, or if a newly-delivered crate of soaps should contain, by an accident of bad luck, a disproportionate number of visibly deformed specimens? What if (to speak plainly) Mr Hopsom should consider himself short-changed, and complain? Indeed, what if (driven — just for the sake of ar
gument — by a perverse ingratitude for the generous terms on which his company had been given the goods) he tried to drag Rackham’s name through the mud?
‘You needn’t worry any more, William: I have your answer,’ says Sugar.
‘There cannot be a satisfactory answer,’ he moans, accepting his fourth glass of brandy. ‘Everything depends on chance …’
‘Not at all, not at all,’ she placates him. ‘This Mr Hopsom: do you happen to know if his Christian name is Matthew?’
‘Matthew, yes,’ says William, frowning with the effort of imagining where, in his cast-off books, she could possibly have gleaned such a fact.
‘Known to some as “Horsey” Hopsom?’
‘Why … yes.’
Sugar chuckles wickedly, and swoops across the room to kneel at his feet.
‘Then if Mr Hopsom ever causes you any bother,’ she says, propping her thin white arms on one dark trouser-leg, ‘I suggest you whisper two short words in his ear.’ And, leaning closer still to him, slapping his thigh in a gentle pantomime of rhythmic chastisement, she whispers, ‘Amy Howlett.’
William looks into her bright eyes with a mixture of mistrust and wonderment for several seconds, then laughs out loud. ‘By God,’ he cries. ‘This really is the limit!’
‘Not at all,’ murmurs Sugar, nuzzling her cheek into his lap. ‘There are no limits to the heights that can be attained by a man like you … ‘
She moves her palm onto the spot where his sex should, by now, be swelling to erection, but it seems she’s misjudged him. The conversation has gone surpassingly well: the Hopsom’s problem is solved: and yet … and yet Rackham fidgets under her touch, awkward and unready.
‘Dear William,’ she commiserates, falling back, clasping her hands demurely in the lap of her own billowing skirts. ‘You are still troubled. Yes you are: I can tell. What on earth can be the matter? What terrible thing has upset you so?’