The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  With much assistance, Agnes gets to her knees. In the darkness, it’s impossible to tell if the glistening muck on Mrs Rackham’s nose, chin and bosom is blood or mud or both.

  ‘Don’t look in my face,’ commands Sugar gently, clasping Agnes’s shoulders and raising her to her feet. ‘I will help you, but don’t look in my face.’

  Moment by moment, the reality of her predicament is seeping into Agnes’s reviving brain.

  ‘Dear Heaven, I-I’m … filthy? she shudders. ‘I’m covered in f-filth? Her tiny hands flutter ineffectually over her bodice and fall into the lap of her soiled skirts. ‘H-how can I be seen like this? How am I to get home?’ Roused by an instinct for entreaty, she turns her face towards her rescuer’s, but Sugar pulls back.

  ‘Don’t look in my face,’ she says again, squeezing Agnes’s shoulders tightly. ‘I will help you. Wait here.’ And she runs off, back into the lights of Bow Street.

  Once more in the mainstream of human traffic, Sugar looks around her, examining each person critically: can anyone in this swirling, chattering swarm supply what she’s after? Those coffee-sellers over there, wreathed in the steam of their stall …? No, too shabby, in their burlap caps and stained smocks … Those ladies waiting to cross the street, twirling their parasols and preening their furry stoles while the carriages trundle past? No, they’re fresh from the Opera House; Agnes might know them; and in any case they would sooner die than … That soldier, with his fine black cape? No, he would insist on summoning the authorities … That woman over there with the long purple shawl — she’s surely a prostitute, and would only make trouble …

  ‘Oh! Miss! Excuse me!’ calls Sugar, hurrying to accost a matronly woman lugging a basket of over-ripe strawberries. The woman, poor and dowdy, Irish or half-wit by the look of her, nevertheless has one asset (besides her load of squashy fruit): she wears a pale blue mantle, a huge old-fashioned thing that covers her from neck to ankle.

  ‘Mout-waterin’ strawberries,’ she replies, squinting ingratiatingly.

  ‘Your cloak,’ says Sugar, unclasping her purse and scrabbling inside it for the brightest coins. ‘Sell it to me. I’ll give you ten shillings for it.’

  Even as Sugar is extracting the coins, six, seven, eight, the woman begins to cringe away, licking her lips nervously.

  ‘I’m in earnest!’ protests Sugar, pulling out more shillings and letting the light catch them in her gloved palms.

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ you ain’t, ma’am,’ says the woman, half-curtseying, her bloodshot eyes rolling in confusion. ‘But see, ma’am, me clothes ain’t for sale. Mout-waterin’–’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ cries Sugar in exasperation. Any second now, Agnes could be discovered cowering in the dark by one of the alley’s scavenging regulars; she could be having her throat slit by a grunting man in search of necklaces and silver lockets! ‘This cloak of yours — it’s cheap old cotton — you can buy something better in Petticoat Lane any day of the week!’

  ‘Yes, yes ma’am,’ pleads the drudge, clutching her mantle at the throat. ‘But tonight I’m awful cold, and under this cloak I’ve only a shivery t’in dress.’

  ‘For God’s sake? hisses Sugar, half-hysterical with impatience as Agnes’s head (in her imaginings) is sawn free of her gushing neck by a serrated blade. ‘Ten shillings! Look at it!’ She extends her hand, shoving the shiny new coins almost against the woman’s nose.

  In another instant the exchange is made. The strawberry-seller takes the money, and Sugar divests her of her cloak, revealing bare arms underneath, a gauzy skirt, and a sagging, bulging bodice much stained with breast-milk. A wince of disgust, too, is then belatedly included in the bargain. Without another word, Sugar walks away, folding the mantle against her own discreet velvety bosom as she retraces her steps to the alley.

  Agnes is exactly in the spot where she was left to stand; indeed, she appears not to have moved a muscle, as though petrified by fairytale magic. Obediently, without being reminded, she averts her face as her guardian angel approaches, a tall, almost masculine silhouette with a mysterious pale glow shimmering in front of its torso. The rats which have been circling Agnes’s skirts, sniffing at her soft leather shoes, take fright and scurry off into the blackness.

  ‘I’ve brought you something,’ says Sugar, drawing up to Agnes’s side. ‘Stay still, and I’ll wrap it around you.’

  Agnes’s shoulders quiver as the cloak falls around her. She utters a cry that’s little more than a breath, unidentifiable as pleasure, pain or fear. One hand fumbles at her breast, uncertain where to grasp the unfamiliar garment …or no! — it’s not that at all: she is crossing herself.

  ‘… Holy Ghost…’ she whispers tremulously.

  ‘Now,’ declares Sugar, clasping Agnes by the elbows, through the pale fabric of the mantle. ‘I am going to tell you what to do. You must walk out of here, and turn right. Are you listening?’

  Agnes nods, with a sound remarkably like the erotic whimper Sugar performs when a man’s hard prick is nuzzling for entry.

  ‘When you are back on the street, walk a short way, just a hundred paces or so,’ continues Sugar, pushing Agnes gently towards the light, step by step. ‘Turn right again at the flower-seller’s barrow: that’s where Cheesman is waiting for you. I’ll be watching you to see that you’re safe.’ Leaning forward over Agnes’s shoulder, she steals a glimpse of where the smear of mud and blood glistens, and wipes it off with a dab of her dark sleeve.

  ‘Bless you, bless you,’ says Agnes, tottering ahead, yet tilting backward, her internal plumb-line knocked askew. ‘William s-says you are a f-fantasy, a trick of my im-m-magination.’

  ‘Never mind what William says.’ How Agnes trembles in her grasp! Like a small child … Not that Sugar has any experience, outside novels, of what a trembling child feels like. ‘Remember, turn right at the flower barrow.’

  ‘This beautiful w-w-white robe,’ says Agnes, gaining courage and better balance as she goes on. ‘I s’pose he’ll say it’s a f-fantasy too …’

  ‘Don’t tell him anything. Let this be our secret.’

  ‘S-secret?’ They have reached the mouth of the alley, and still the world streams by, as though they’re invisible figments of another dimension.

  ‘Yes,’ says Sugar, inspired, in a flash, with just the words she needs. ‘You must understand, Agnes: angels aren’t permitted to do … what I’ve done for you. I could get into terrible trouble.’

  ‘W-with Our Lady?’

  ‘Our …?’ What the devil does Agnes mean? Sugar hesitates, until a vision glows in her mind of Mrs Castaway’s picture albums, with their lurid host of pasteglazed Madonnas. ‘Yes, Our Lady.’

  ‘Oh! Bless you!’ At this cry of Agnes’s, a passing dandy pauses momentarily in his stride; Mrs Rackham’s nose has re-entered the flowing current of Life.

  ‘Walk, Agnes,’ commands Sugar, and gives her a gentle shove.

  Mrs Rackham toddles into Bow Street, in the correct direction, straight as a machine. She looks neither right not left, despite a sudden commotion elsewhere in Bow Street involving police and gesticulating bystanders; she completes the requisite hundred paces to the cab rank, and turns right just as instructed. Only then does Sugar leave her vantage-point and follow on; by the time she reaches the flower barrow and peeks round the corner, Mrs Rackham has been safely installed in her brougham, Cheesman is climbing up the side, and the horses are snorting in anticipation of the journey.

  ‘Thank God,’ says Sugar under her breath, and reels back in sudden weariness. Now for a cab of her own.

  The commotion in Bow Street is over, more or less. The dense pack of onlookers is dispersing from the scene of the incident. Two policemen are carrying a stretcher between them, in which sags a human-sized shape snugly wrapped in a white sheet. Carefully, but mindful of the obstruction they’re causing to traffic, they load their flaccid burden into a canopied cart, and wave a signal of send-off.

  It’s not until two hours later, when
Sugar has returned to the stillness of her rooms in Priory Close, and she’s reclining in her warm bath, staring up at the steam-shrouded ceiling, that the thought comes to her:

  That body was the strawberry-seller.

  She winces, lifts her head out of the water. Such is the weight of her wet hair that she’s almost pulled back under by it, her lathery elbows slipping on the smooth enamel of the tub.

  Nonsense, she thinks. It was a drunkard. A beggar.

  With a jug of fresh water she rinses herself, standing up in the bath. Eddying around her knees, the soapy water is grey with the soot of the city’s foul air.

  Every bully and bughunter in Bow Street would’ve seen her take those coins. A half-dressed woman at night, with ten shillings on her …

  She steps out, wraps her body in her favourite snow-white towel, quite the best thing to be had in Peter Robinson’s on her last shopping expedition there. If she goes to bed now, her hair will dry in the wrong shape; she really ought to dry it in front of the fire, brushing it constantly so it achieves the airy fullness that William so much admires. She has all day tomorrow to sleep in; he’ll still be en route from Birmingham.

  Old starvelings drop dead in London every day of the week. Drunkards fall under the wheels of carriages. It wasn’t the strawberry-seller. She’s snoring in her bed, with ten shillings under her pillow.

  Sugar squats naked in front of the hearth, allows her damp mane to tumble down across her face, and begins brushing, brushing, brushing. Necklace-thin rivulets of water trickle down her arms and shoulders, evaporating in the heat from the fire. Outside, a stiff breeze has sprung up, whistling and whooping around the building, blowing innocuous debris against the French windows in the study. The chimney harrumphs; the wooden skeleton of the house, concealed beneath the plaster and wallpaper, creaks.

  Finally, something to make her jump out of her skin: a knock at the front door. Extravagant imagination? No: there it is again! William? Who else could it be but William? She springs to her feet, half in panic, half in excitement. Why is he back so soon? What about the box factory? ‘I got half-way to Birmingham and thought better of it,’ she anticipates him explaining. ‘Nothing good can be so cheap.’ Jesus, where has she left her night-dress?

  On impulse, she runs to the door naked. Why not? He’ll be startled and delighted to see her thus, his bold and guileless courtesan, a freshly-unwrapped gift of soft clean flesh, fragrant with Rackham perfume. He’ll scarcely be able to contain himself while she dances him playfully backwards towards the bedroom …

  She opens the door, unleashing a great gust of biting air onto her instantly goose-pimpled flesh. Outside, waiting in her ink-black porch, there is no one.

  EIGHTEEN

  Henry Rackham pulls a second time on the bell-cord, one hand fingering the calling card he fears he may have to leave instead of being permitted to visit Mrs Fox in person. Can it really be true that in the brief time since he saw her last she’s become mortally ill? The brass plaque on her father’s door, which once seemed merely informative, is suddenly suggestive of a universe in which sickness and fatality reign supreme: JAMES CURLEW, PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.

  The door is opened by the doctor’s elderly housemaid. Henry removes his hat and presses it to his chest, unable even to speak.

  ‘Please come in, Mr Rackham.’

  Ushered into the hallway, he catches sight of Doctor Curlew almost disappearing at the top of the stairs, and can barely resist rudely shaking off the servant as she fusses with his coat.

  ‘Doctor!’ he cries, yanking his arms clear of the sleeves.

  Curlew halts on the top stair, turns and begins to walk back down, silently, with no acknowledgement of his visitor, but rather as if he has forgotten something.

  ‘Sir,’ calls Henry. ‘How … how is Mrs Fox?’

  Curlew comes to a stop well above Henry’s head.

  ‘It’s confirmed: she has consumption,’ he remarks emptily. ‘What else can I say?’

  Henry grasps two struts of the banister in his big hands, and looks up into the doctor’s heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Is there nothing …?’ he pleads. ‘I’ve read about …I think they were called … pulmonic wafers?’

  The doctor laughs, more to himselfthan at Henry.

  ‘All rubbish, Rackham. Trinkets and lolly-water. I daresay your prayers might have more practical effect.’

  ‘May I see her?’ entreats Henry. ‘I’d do my utmost not to tax her …’

  Curlew resumes his ascent, casting the burden of hospitality carelessly downstairs to his housemaid. ‘Yes, yes, by all means,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘As she’ll tell you herself, she feels perfectly well.’ And with that, he’s gone.

  The servant leads Henry through the austere corridors and Spartan drawing-room of the doctor’s house — a house which, in marked contrast to his brother William’s, is wholly unfeminised. There is no relief from sub-fusc utilitarianism until he reaches the French windows that open up onto the garden, where Nature has been permitted to embroider the bare earth ever so slightly. Through the immaculately transparent glass, Henry looks out on a sunlit square of clipped lawn bordered with neat evergreen shrubs and, in the middle of it, the most important person in the world save Jesus Christ.

  She reclines in a wicker rocking-chair, fully dressed for company, with a tightly-buttoned bodice, boots rather than slippers, and elaborately coiffed hair — more elaborate, in fact, than usual. Nestled in her lap is an upright and open book, into which she gazes intently. She is more beautiful than ever before.

  ‘Mrs Fox?’

  ‘Henry!’ she cries delightedly, dropping her book on the grass beside her. ‘How very nice to see you! I was going mad with boredom.’

  Henry walks out to her, incredulous that Doctor Curlew can so confidently write a death sentence for one who’s the very embodiment of life. They don’t know everything, these medical men! Couldn’t there be some mistake? But Mrs Fox, observing the confusion on his face, mercilessly sets him straight.

  ‘I’m in a bad way, Henry,’ she says, smiling. ‘That’s why I’m sitting still, for once! This morning I’ve even had my feet up, which is about the limit of what I can submit to with good grace. Do sit down, Henry: the grass is quite dry.’

  Henry does as he’s told, even though she’s mistaken and the seat of his trousers instantly begins to dampen.

  ‘Well now,’ she carries on, in an odd tone, a mixture of breezy cheer and bitter fatigue. ‘What other news do I have for you? You may already have heard that I’ve been … how can I put it?… delicately expelled from the Rescue Society. It was decided, by my fellow Rescuers, that I’d grown too feeble to perform my duties. There was one day, you see, when the walk from Liverpool Street Station to a house of ill repute exhausted me, and I had to rest on the front steps while the others went inside. I made myself as useful as I could, by having strong words with the spoony-man, but my sisters plainly felt I’d let them down. So, this Tuesday past, they sent me a letter, suggesting I restrict my efforts to corresponding with Parliamentarians. All the Rescuers wish me the speediest of recoveries, in the most florid of terms. In the meantime, they obviously wish me to be bored to death.’

  Unnerved by the ease with which she allows this obscene word to pass through her lips, Henry can scarcely bring himself to press her for more details. ‘Has your father,’ he ventures, ‘discussed with you … what exactly it is, or might be, that you …ah … have?’

  ‘Oh Henry, how you pussyfoot, as always!’ she chides him affectionately. ‘I have consumption. Or so I’m told, and I’ve no reason to doubt it.’ A glow of fervency is ignited in her eyes, the same glow as when she argues points of faith with him on their walks after church. ‘Where I differ from the general opinion, including my learned father’s, is that I know I’m not destined to die — at least not yet. I have, inside me, a sort of … how can I describe it? A sort of calendar of my days, put there by God, and on each leaf of that calendar is wri
tten what errands and appointments I have in His service. I don’t claim to know precisely how many pages there are, nor would I wish to know, but I can feel somehow that the calendar is quite thick still, and certainly not the slim portion of pages everyone supposes. So, I’ve consumption, have I? Very well, I have consumption. But I shall survive it.’

  ‘Oh, brave spirit!’ cries Henry, suddenly on his knees, grasping her hand.

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ she retorts, but locks her cool fingers into his, squeezing gently. ‘God means to keep me busy, that’s all.’

  For a minute they are both silent. Their hands are clasped, channelling naked and inarticulate feelings back and forth between them; that which innocent impulse has joined together, propriety cannot yet put asunder. The garden basks in sunshine, and a large black butterfly appears from beyond the high fences around the garden, fluttering over the shrubs in search of a flower. Mrs Fox withdraws her fingers from Henry’s with sufficient grace to make clear that no rejection is implied, and rests her hand on her breast.

  ‘Now tell me, Henry,’ she says, inhaling deeply. ‘What’s new in your life?’

  ‘In my life?’ He blinks, dazed by the heady indulgence of touching her flesh. ‘I …ah …’ But then it all comes back to him, and he finds his tongue. ‘Quite a lot is new, I’m pleased to say. I’ve been’ — he blushes, casting his eyes to the grass between his knees – ‘conducting researches into the poor and the wretched, with a view to preparing myself, at last, for …’ He blushes deeper, then grins. ‘Well, you know what.’

  ‘You’ve read the Mayhew I lent you, then?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve done more than that. I … I’ve also begun, just in these last few weeks, to conduct conversations with the poor and wretched themselves, in the streets where they live.’

  ‘Oh, Henry, have you really?’ Her pride in him could scarcely be more evident if he’d told her he met the Queen and saved her from assassins. ‘Tell me, tell me, what happened?’