The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

For a full twenty seconds he stares at her, dark-browed and wavering. Has she dared too much? He coughs, to clear his throat for whatever words may come.

  ‘My wife,’ he says, ‘is a madwoman.’

  Sugar cocks her head, in a mute gesture of aghastness, after considering and rejecting such declarations as ‘Really?’, ‘Well, fancy that!’ and ‘How dreadful!’ All her working life, men have been telling her their wives are mad, and still she hasn’t hit upon a serviceable way of responding.

  ‘She was a sweet, kind-hearted girl when we first married,’ he laments, ‘a credit to anyone. She had some odd ways, but who hasn’t? I couldn’t have known she’d become a candidate for an asylum; that, in my own home, she would …’ He stops short, closes his eyes in pain. ‘There was no happier girl when I first met her. Now she despises me.’

  ‘What a tragedy,’ breathes Sugar, venturing, hesitantly, to lay a condoling hand on his knee. It is accepted. ‘I imagine she’d love you still, if only she could.’

  ‘The maddening thing …I mean, the thing that puzzles me most, is that she changes from day to day. Some days she’s as normal as you or I, then suddenly she’ll do or say something wholly outrageous.’

  ‘Like …?’ Sugar’s voice is small and unobtrusive.

  ‘She believes she travels to a Catholic convent in her sleep. She believes she’s being watched by angels. They wave to her, she says.’

  Sugar lays her hot cheek against his waist, embracing him companion-ably, hoping the flush will fade before she has to show her face again. Caught spying outside the Rackham house, what else could she have done, when Mrs Rackham waved at her, but wave back?

  ‘Only last week she disgraced herself with a servant on the floor of our kitchen,’ William continues miserably. ‘The doctor had to come. He thinks I’m mad to keep her …He has no idea what a darling she used to be! Nowadays, Agnes spends half her life asleep — doped with potions, or simply lazy. I don’t know anymore, it’s beyond me … ‘

  Sugar strokes his knee, regularly and unsensually, the way she might stroke the head of a pet. Inside her pantalettes she feels a trickle of blood, but it appears tonight will not be the night when William Rackham’s attitude to the bleeding of women is revealed. ‘How long has … Agnes been this bad?’ she asks.

  ‘Ach! Who knows what she’s been hiding in her head since before she knew me! But … I’d have to say that her madness was less …’ (he clenches and unclenches his injured fist, grasping for the right word) ‘…full-flowered, before the child.’

  ‘Oh?’ Again, Sugar’s voice is weightless, a mouse’s tread. ‘You have a child?’

  ‘Just one, yes,’ William sighs. ‘A daughter, unfortunately.’

  A sharp twitch of indignation, too instantaneous for her to suppress, passes through Sugar’s cheek directly against William’s stomach; she hopes his clothing diffuses it. How strange, that she’s learnt to listen to all sorts of vile masculine harangues with perfect composure — diatribes against the female sex in general, her body as a cesspool of filth, her cunt as the mouth of Hell — but, every so often, a mild remark about the uselessness of a female child provokes her to fury. Teeth clenched, she holds her man tighter, to exorcise the anger in a vehement show of affection.

  ‘I suppose,’ she says, to break the silence that’s fallen, ‘your wife’s illness has lost her all her friends?’

  He sinks lower in the armchair, relaxing into her embrace. ‘Well you know, that’s the odd thing … I’d have thought so, but apparently it hasn’t. The Season’s round the corner, and invitations have poured in. Amazing, considering what she got up to last time she took part …’

  ‘What did she get up to?’

  ‘Oh … All sorts of things. Laughed when there was nothing to laugh about, didn’t laugh when there was. Shouted nonsense, warned people against invisible dangers. Crawled under a dinner table once, complaining the meat had blood in it. Fainted more times than I can remember. Oh God, the number of times I had to have her carted off …!’ She feels him shake his head. ‘And yet, here she is, forgiven. That’s Society for you!’

  She rubs her ear against his stomach. He has, by the sound of the gurglings within, eaten nothing: all the quicker will the drink loosen his tongue.

  ‘Have you considered,’ she says, ‘the possibility that the invitations have poured in on your account?’

  ‘My account?’ He heaves a sigh that lifts her head a full three inches. ‘I’ve never been one for balls and picnics and dinner parties. I’d rather make my own amusement. In any case, I’m monstrously busy this year, and can’t think where I’m going to find the time.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you think there’ll be people who’ve been watching your … your extraordinary rise? You’ve become a very great man, William, very swiftly. Great men are wanted everywhere. These invitations … well, people can’t very well invite you and not your wife, can they?’

  William lays his arm down the length of her back, his hand nestling on the swell of her bustle. She’s convinced him, she can tell.

  ‘What a simpleton I am …’ he muses, his voice rich with brandy and tran-quillised anxiety. ‘Not to have appreciated how things have changed …’

  ‘You must be mindful of who your true friends are,’ Sugar advises him, as she begins once more to caress the lap of his trousers. ‘The richer you become, the more people will stop at nothing to curry favour with you.’

  He groans, and guides her head towards his lap.

  Afterwards, when his hard-won cockstand has shrivelled to a stub, Sugar presses on, in the hope of getting more out of him.

  ‘How I’ve yearned for that divine taste,’ she gloats, to prevent his bolstered spirits sagging likewise. ‘You were gone so long! Didn’t you have a thought to spare for your little concubine, stranded here without fresh clothes for days, starving for you?’

  ‘I’ve been up to my ears …’ But she laughs and butts in on his apology, kissing his ears with comical rapidity, a flurry of impish kisses to let him know he hasn’t hurt her feelings at all. He snortles, ticklish, his double chin visible through his beard as he cringes. ‘Being at the helm of a business is more time-consuming than I could have imagined. The Hopsom affair was only one of the things on my plate in the last few days. And the coming weeks are scarcely less busy. Soon I’ll have to go to my lavender fields in Mitcham, and sort out why there’s–’

  ‘Lavender fields?’ she interjects excitedly.

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Where the lavender actually grows?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course …’

  ‘Oh, William! How I’d love to see such a sight! Do you know I’ve never seen anything growing except what’s in the parks of London?’ She drops onto her haunches, as low to the floor as possible, so he can gaze down on her enraptured face. ‘A field full of lavender! To you it may be the most ordinary thing in the world, but for your little Sugar it’s like a fairy story! Oh, William, couldn’t you take me?’

  He squirms, smiling and frowning at the same time. Misgivings struggle to manifest in a brain soggy with alcohol and sensual satiation.

  ‘Nothing would give me more pleasure, sweet thing that you are …’ he slurs. ‘But think of the risk of scandal: you, an unknown young woman, walking alone with me in my fields, for all the workers to see …’

  ‘But isn’t this place on the other side of England?’

  ‘Mitcham? It’s down in Surrey, dear…’ He grins, to see the undiminished ignorance in her face. ‘Quite close enough for gossip.’

  ‘I needn’t be alone, then!’ she declares eagerly. ‘I could be escorted by another man. O-or rather–’ she notes the flicker of mistrust in his brow ‘–I could escort someone else: a-an old man. Yes, yes: I know just the person, a lame old man I could pass off as my grandfather. He’s deaf and blind –well, almost. He’d be no trouble. I could just … wheel him along with us, like a baby in a perambulator.’

  Rackham blinks at her in a goggle of incredulity.r />
  ‘You’re not in earnest, surely?’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious!’ she cries. ‘Oh, William, say you will!’

  He lurches to his feet, laughing at his own clumsiness, at the delirious absurdity of a brandy-tinted universe.

  ‘I mustn’t fall asleep here,’ he mumbles, fastening his trousers. ‘Hopsom is coming to see me in the morning … ‘

  ‘Say yes, William,’ pleads Sugar, helping him tuck his shirt in. ‘To me, I mean.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he says, swaying in front of the chair that holds his ulster, still faintly steaming. ‘When I’m not so drunk!’

  And he hoists his coat by the collar, allowing her to help him wriggle his arms into its obstinate sleeves. The garment is heavy, searingly hot on the outside, humid on the inside, with a peculiar smell; William and Sugar giggle, foreheads together, at the sheer unpleasantness of it.

  ‘I love you!’ he laughs, and she embraces him tight, pressing her cheek against his bristly jaw.

  Outside, the storm has passed. Night has composed itself over Priory Close, stilling the rain, snuffing the wind. The black sky glitters with stars, the slick streets shine like silver in the lamp-light. The full moon, siren to all lunatics from the rookeries of Shoreditch to the regal bed-chambers of Westminster, winks on the chimneyed horizon.

  ‘Watch your step, dear heart!’ calls Sugar from the glowing vestibule of this, his home away from home.

  Chepstow Villas, once William’s cab has jingled off, is silent as a churchyard, and the Rackham house looms tall as a monument — a grand pretentious gravestone for an illustrious family that reached the end of its line. William shivers, with cold and with annoyance at the amplified creak of his front gate as he pushes through. He is half-sober now, in a most lugubrious mood, dispirited by the cheerless welcome of his own abode. Even the dog that likes to haunt the front gates has retired, and the path through the austerely shorn grounds glows eerie in the moonlight. A glimpse of the empty coach-house, half-hidden and sinister under the trees, reminds him of yet another item on his long list of things to be done.

  He rings the doorbell once, but, conceding the lateness of the hour, he fumbles for his key. Feeble light filters through the ornamental window above the architrave — just enough to cast a shadow over his fingers as he bends his head closer to his damned elusive pockets. (Lord Almighty! If his company manufactured clothing instead of perfumes, there’d be some changes made!)

  Just as he’s found the key and is on the point of inserting it successfully in the key-hole, the door swings open, and he’s greeted by a puffy-eyed Letty, woken no doubt from vertical slumber. Even in the light of the single candle she holds, he can see her left cheek is red and wrinkled from the sleeve of her uniform; no doubt she observes equally well his swollen red nose and sweaty brow.

  ‘Where’s Clara?’ he says, when she has helped him off with his coat. (Her hands are stronger than Sugar’s, yet less effective.) ‘Gone to bed, Mr Rackham.’

  ‘Good. You do the same, Letty.’ He has one more responsibility to discharge before he goes to bed, and it will be a damn sight easier with Clara out of the way.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Rackham.’

  He watches her ascend the stairs, waits for her to be stowed in her attic hutch. Then he follows on behind, straight to Agnes’s bedroom.

  The chamber, when he enters it, is airless and oppressive — like a sealed glass jar, he thinks. When he first courted Agnes, she ran girlishly across the green lawns of Regent’s Park, a flurry of bright skirts in the breeze; now her terrain is this thickly curtained sepulchre. He sniffs warily; were he not already so brandied, he might detect the scent of rubbing alcohol spilled on the carpet by a novice doctor attempting to saturate a cotton swab.

  Walking towards the bed, candle held high, William sees his wife’s face half-buried in the over-sized, over-plumped pillows. Her lips convulse feebly as she registers his approach; her insubstantial eyelashes flutter.

  ‘Clara?’ she whimpers.

  ‘It’s me. William.’

  Agnes’s eyes flip half-open, exposing sightless whites in which her revolving china-blue irises appear and disappear like fish. Plainly, she’s doped half-way to fairyland, levitating through the labyrinths of whatever convents or castles she likes to frequent.

  ‘Where’s Clara?’

  ‘She’s just outside the door,’ he lies. How she fears to be alone with him! How she loathes his touch! His pity for her is so strong he yearns to wave a magic wand over her and banish her frailties forever; his resentment is equally strong, so that if he indeed held a wand, he might just as likely bring it crashing down on her head, exploding her pathetic egg-shell skull.

  ‘How are you feeling now, dear?’

  She turns her face in his direction; her eyes focus for a second, then close wearily.

  ‘Like a lost bonnet floating along a dark river,’ she murmurs. The old music is back in her voice: what a beautiful voice she has, even when it’s talking nonsense.

  ‘Do you remember what you said to me?’ he says, holding the candle closer, ‘before you fell into a faint?’

  ‘No, dear,’ she sighs, turning her face away, burrowing nose-first into a warm white depression already filled with her own hair. ‘Was it very bad?’

  ‘Yes, it was very bad.’

  ‘I’m sorry, William, so awfully sorry.’ Her voice is muffled by her cottony nest. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘In sickness and in health, Aggie: that’s the vow I made.’

  For another minute or two he stands there, her apology travelling slowly down his gullet like a shot of brandy, warming his insides by degrees. Then, accepting it as the best outcome he can hope for, he turns, at last, to leave.

  ‘William?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  Her face has surfaced again, glistening with tears now, frightened in the candlelight.

  ‘Am I still your little girl?’

  He grunts in pain from this wholly unexpected blow to his plexus of nostalgia. Droplets of scalding candle-fat patter onto an already blistered hand as his fists and eyes clench in unison.

  ‘Go to sleep, Precious,’ he advises her hoarsely, walking backwards out of the door. ‘Tomorrow is a brand-new day.’

  FOURTEEN

  One sunny afternoon late in the April of 1875, in a vast rolling field of lavender, a scattered host of workers cease their toil for just a minute. Submerged knee-high in a lake of Lavandula, they stand idle with their hoes and slug-buckets, to stare at the beautiful young woman walking past them on the path dividing the acres.

  ‘’Oo’s that?’ they whisper to each other, eyes owlish with curiosity. ‘’Oo’s that?’ But no one knows.

  The lady wears a lavender dress; her white-gloved hands and bonneted head are like blossoms sprouting from her wrists and neck. The dress is intricately pleated and ruched, like unravelling rope, giving her the appearance of a life-sized corn dolly.

  ‘An’ ‘oo’s that wiv’ ‘er?’

  The woman does not walk alone or unencumbered. She’s pushing, with the utmost care along the maze of paths, an indistinct burden in a wheelchair. It’s an ancient, crippled man, well rugged up with blankets and shawls, his head muffled in a scarf, despite the mildness of the weather. And, next to the old man and the woman who wheels him, there walks a third visitor to the fields today: William Rackham, owner of all. He speaks frequently; the old man speaks from time to time; the woman says almost nothing; but the toilers in the field, row upon row, catch only a few words each before the procession moves on.

  ‘’Oo d’yer fink she is?’ asks a sun-dried wife of her sun-dried husband.

  ‘The old one’s daughter, I’d say. Or grand-daughter. Likely the old one’s rich. Likely our Curly Bill wants to do business wiv ‘im.’

  ‘’E’ll ‘ave to move fast, then. That old crock could cark it any minute.’

  ‘At least ‘Opsom ‘ad a pair o’ legs to walk on.’

  A
nd with that they return to work, drifting into separate currents of vegetation.

  Yet, further on, more toilers stop and stare. Nothing like this — a lady visitor to the fields — was ever seen in William’s father’s time; Rackham Senior preferred to keep well-bred females out of the field, for fear their hearts might start bleeding. The last to visit was his own wife, twenty years ago, before the cuckolding.

  ‘Oh but she’s beautiful,’ sighs one swarthy toiler, squinting after the strange feminine silhouette.

  ‘So would you be,’ spits a fellow drudge, ‘if you never done hard labour.’

  ‘Yarrr!’ growls the old man in the wheelchair, his stench of stale clothing and haphazard hygiene much diluted by the fresh air and the acres of damp soil and lovingly tended lavender.

  Sugar bows her head down as she continues to wheel him forward, her lips hovering near his scarf-shrouded skull, approximately where one of his ears must be.

  ‘Now, now, Colonel Leek,’ she says. ‘Remember you’re here to enjoy yourself.’

  But Colonel Leek is not enjoying himself, or so he would have Sugar believe. Only his lust for the promised reward — six shillings and more whisky in a day than Mrs Leek will let him have in a month — keeps him from outright mutiny. He’s certainly not in the least interested in playing the part of anyone’s grandfather.

  ‘I need to pee.’

  ‘Do it in your pants,’ hisses Sugar sweetly. ‘Pretend you’re at home.’

  ‘Oh, so kind-hearted, you are.’ He twists his head, exposing one rheumy malevolent eye and half a mottled, gummy mouth. ‘Too good for St Giles, eh, trollop?’

  ‘Six shillings and whisky, remember – Grandfather?

  And so they trundle on, with the sun beaming down on them, there in the pampered heartland of Rackham Perfumeries.

  William Rackham walks aloof, unimpeachably proper, dressed in his stiff Sunday best despite it being Wednesday. Not for him his father’s mole-skin trousers and Wellington boots; a modern perfumery is ruled from the head, and kept in line with the pen. Everything that goes on in these fields, every stoop of a worker’s back or pruning of the tiniest twig, is set in motion by his own thoughts and written requirements. Or so he has attempted to convey to his visitors.