The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  Agnes struggles to speak, but her tongue is a nerveless gobbet of meat in her mouth. She can only groan as she feels strong hands under her shoulders and her knees, the hands of the two sinewy old men who do the fetching and carrying for the nuns at the Convent of Health. They lift her up, as easily as if she were a tiny babe, and lay her gently on a stretcher.

  Agnes’s response? A regrettable one. She convulses, opens her mouth wide, and unleashes a gush of scalding yellow vomit all over her rescuers.

  Clara Tillotson, seeing her name being pencilled into the policeman’s notebook, begins to shed tears of indignation and fear.

  ‘She told me to leave her,’ she pleads. ‘She wanted me to buy her one of these.’ And she displays, for the officer’s inspection, a wire-and-plywood plaything with a brass key in its back.

  Mrs Rackham has just been lifted onto a stretcher by two strong men borrowed from the bathing-machine company. A doctor has already laid his palm on her clammy forehead and measured the temperature inside her mouth. Diagnosing bilious headache and possible phthisis, he’s judged there’s no urgent need for her to go to hospital, but that she must rest inside her hotel room out of the sun.

  ‘Next of kin?’ enquires the policeman of Clara as the strongmen carry the unconscious Agnes away.

  ‘William Rackham,’ snuffles the servant.

  ‘The William Rackham?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ snivels Clara, staring anxiously at the dark stain of vomit left behind on the sand, terrorised by what that stain might mean for her future employment.

  ‘Rackham’s Perfumes? “One bottle lasts a year”?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Clara knows nothing of her master’s products; her mistress scorns them.

  ‘You’re in communication with him, miss?’

  Clara blows her nose in her handkerchief. Whatever can he mean? Does he think she can fly through space, reaching Notting Hill in the wink of an eye, to announce the news at William’s upstairs window? Nevertheless, she nods.

  ‘Good,’ the policeman replies, closing his notebook. ‘I’ll leave the matter in your hands, then.’

  The sky has become overcast, threatening rain. Dawdling infants are being tugged away from sandcastles by their parents; promenading dandies are heading for cover; oddly costumed nereids are emerging from the sea and disappearing into bathing-machines; vendors are trundling their wares back and forth at increasing speed, hoarse from shouting assurances to the retreating multitude that everything is almost for nothing.

  Mrs Fox has long ago returned to her hotel, complaining that all this rest is tiring her to death. She’s wholly unaware Mrs Rackham is even in Folkestone and, far from having been the Samaritan who found Agnes lying insensible by the water’s edge, is fated to return to London without having once glimpsed her.

  And Sugar? Was it Sugar, then, whom Agnes saw walking towards her on the topsy-turvy world? No, Sugar is in her rooms in Priory Close, forcing herselfto plough on through The Art of Perfumery, by G.W. Septimus Piesse. The largest body of water in her immediate vicinity is her undrained bathtub. There’s not an inch of space in her poor brain for Mrs Rackham, crammed as it is with facts about lavender and essential oils. Will it ever benefit her to know that pine-apple oil is nothing more than butyrate of ethyloxide? Is there any point in memorising the recipe of rose cold cream (one pound of almond oil, one pound of rose water, half a drachm of otto of roses, and one ounce of sperm and white wax)? She wonders what kind of man can write about sperm and think only of whales.

  ‘Holy Christ,’ she mutters as she catches herself losing consciousness and the book falls shut between her thighs. ‘Wake up!’

  TWENTY

  ‘So, how was the seaside?’ enquires Lady Bridgelow, noiselessly replacing her tea-cup in its saucer. ‘I didn’t go this year: every resort has been invaded by riff-raff. Ah, thank you, Rose.’

  Rose, the Rackhams’ new parlour-maid, is pouring more tea, straight into Mrs Bridgelow’s cup from above. The servant’s hand is steady as she holds the heavy pot aloft, her wrist ruddy-fleshed against the white cuff, and smelling of carbolic: Lady Bridgelow approves of that.

  It’s a bright, chilly afternoon early in September, several weeks after William brought home from Folkestone Sands a wife who was thinner and ten times more peculiar than when she was dispatched, and who is, at this very moment, hiding upstairs, resolutely ‘not in’ to visitors.

  To be fair, though, it’s not only Agnes Rackham that’s queer lately: the weather, having turned warm unseasonably early this year, has been just as unseasonably cold since the end of August, as if to retract an undeserved generosity. Most days, radiant morning sunshine has paled to grey by noon, and nippy breezes hint at what the elements may have in mind. Leaves are falling by the cart-load from the trees, nights are drawing in, and all over England landscape painters are retreating from the overcast countryside in disgust. Those of William’s business acquaintances who own orchards have been forced to organise early harvests, for the fruit hangs precariously, virtually falling into the reapers’ hands, while even an hour’s delay finds it bruised and rotting on the ground. Thank God the lavender’s already harvested. Sugar was disappointed not to see it being done, but there are only so many things a man can arrange when he has the Season and a volatile wife to juggle. The bonfire of the fifth-year plants at the end of October — he’ll take her to see that, she has his word.

  At the Rackham residence in Notting Hill, servants above and below stairs are preparing for an autumn which may, if it pleases, treat England roughly: the thick curtains have been taken out of mothballs; the pantry is chock-full of tinned lobsters, sardines, salmon, turtle and so on; fruits and vegetables have been squirrelled away in the underground store-house; the chimneys have been scoured; Janey has caught an inconvenient disease from cleaning the ovens; Cheesman has inspected the roof and doors of the carriage for possible leaks; and Letty and Rose have removed the summer decorations from the fireplaces and substituted dry logs. Shears, muttering and fussing from dawn to dusk, is best avoided.

  Lady Bridgelow, too, has accepted that summer has flown, and has adapted her apparel accordingly, looking a little older — though not much older — than her twenty-nine years; she is well rugged up in a serge coat-dress, to ensure that her health remains (as she likes to describe it) ‘uninterrupted’. William is tubby with clothing, as well as the extra fat he’s accumulated during the Season. His by now thick and square-barbered beard hangs over his cravat, and he wears a woollen waistcoat, heavy tweed trousers, and a tweed coat which he’s tried unobtrusively to unbutton but can’t wrestle with any more in front of his visitor.

  ‘I can’t speak for the other seaside resorts,’ he says, in reply to her question. ‘But Folkestone has become a circus, from what I saw. It’s the fault of the railways, of course.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s modern times,’ says Lady Bridgelow philosophically, breaking a sugared biscuit in half. ‘Those of us who have our own carriages will simply have to seek out a paradise that the common herd haven’t yet discovered.’ Whereupon she consumes her sweet morsel with deft rapidity, so as not to let her turn to speak go by. ‘I’ve never been able to understand the lure of the seaside, anyway — except for convalescents.’

  ‘Yes, quite,’ says William, handing his empty tea-cup up to Rose.

  ‘How is your wife?’ commiserates Lady Bridgelow over the rim of her full one.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing serious,’ he sighs. ‘She’s caught a chill, I suspect.’

  ‘She’s much missed at church,’ Lady Bridgelow assures him.

  William smiles, pained. It’s common knowledge now that Agnes attends Catholic Mass almost every Sunday, and yet he hasn’t the heart to forbid it. Deplorable though her apostasy is, and embarrassing though it is for him to sense his neighbours’ disapproval, he wants Agnes to be happy, and she’s never happier than when she’s permitted to ride off to Cricklewood and be a little Papist.

  How he’d hope
d she would come back from the seaside plumper and more sensible! But she stayed only eight days of the fortnight he paid for and, instead of travelling quietly back to London on the train with Clara, she sent him a postcard complaining that the hotel had Americans in it, and the drinking water was full of organisms, and he must come and fetch her at once. In the name of all that is Holy, I beg of you, Please!, she signed the postcard, an otherwise cheerful picture of a donkey with a conical seashell fixed to its head, inscribed Unicorn, Folkestone Sands. Mortified at the thought of the postman reading another such missive, William travelled to Folkestone with all speed, only to find there a perfectly composed, apparently contented Agnes who treated him like an unexpected guest whom she was too gracious to turn away.

  ‘How has she been?’ he enquired surreptitiously of Clara, as he and the servant stood watching Agnes’s absurd suitcases being humped out of the hotel by grunting porters.

  ‘I’ve no complaints, sir,’ Clara replied, with a face on her like someone who’s just spent a week in a pillory, pelted ceaselessly with rotten fruit.

  On her return home, Agnes lost no time making it clear that the seaside had failed utterly to work its salubrious magic on her, at least not in the way that Doctor Curlew had hoped. No sooner were the souvenirs of Folkestone unpacked than Agnes concocted a new caprice — a foolish ritual which, regrettably, has already become a firm habit. Each morning, before breakfast, she attempts to launch a clockwork flying toy from the sill of her bedroom window. That the clicking automaton falls like a stone, and that its beak has broken off and its left wing is splintered, have failed to discourage Agnes from her ritual. Each morning, after breakfast, Shears finds the thing buried up to its neck in his newly-turned earth, or entangled in a bush, and he delivers it back into the house without a word. (Well may he keep silent! — his protests did him no good at all during the Season, when Mrs Rackham denuded his rose-bushes in order to make a ‘red carpet’ of flower petals for her dinner guests.)

  ‘Poor woman,’ clucks Lady Bridgelow. ‘I do pity her so. We who have uninterrupted health ought to be more thankful for our good fortune. Certainly my husband always urged me to be thankful for it, when he was alive.’ At this her eyes glaze over, and she allows her head to sink back against the antimacassar, as if she were gazing at a ghostly vision of her husband. ‘Aahh … poor Albert,’ she sighs, allowing Rose to serve her a slice of ginger cake. ‘How lonely it sometimes is without him … especially when I know I’ve so much of my life to live yet …’

  Then with a sudden movement, she’s erect once more, clear-eyed and firm-chinned. ‘Still, I mustn’t pine, must I? I’ve my son, after all, in whom Albert lives on. Such a wonderful close resemblance, too! You know, I wonder …If the poor man were still here … and if I bore him a second son tomorrow, would the boy resemble the father just as astoundingly? You know, I suspect so!… But you must excuse my prattling. I can only plead that you’ll be liable to the same foolishness by and by, when you’ve a son of your own.’ She pats her knees as if they are lapdogs to be roused from slumber. ‘Well now, I’ve kept you far too long from your affairs. Please forgive me.’

  ‘No, no,’ says William, as she rises to leave. ‘It was a pleasure, a pleasure.’

  He speaks sincerely: she’s always welcome in his parlour, and he’s sorry to escort her out of it. She’s not a bit like other titled people he’s met: for all her lofty connections, there’s something appealingly impish about her, which he fancies he sees even in the way she trots down his front steps and contrives, before her coachman can clamber down from his perch, to hop unassisted into her carriage. Once more she waves, as she gathers her skirts into the cabin, and then she’s gone.

  The most agreeable thing about her, William decides, as he watches her coach trundle down the carriage-way, is how openly she associates with him, even under the eyes of her own exalted set. She’s never held it against him that he has what she delicately calls a ‘concern’; indeed she often says that the future belongs to industry. He only wishes she wouldn’t be so solicitous after Agnes — especially since, to his chagrin, this generosity of heart is not reciprocated.

  ‘I trust her no farther than I can throw her,’ Agnes only recently declared, during one of her ever-more-frequent lapses of inhibition. (A drastic insult, this, given the flimsiness of Agnes’s arms.) The fact that she denied all knowledge of the remark later, when her fit was past, is neither here nor there.

  But Agnes will get better, he’s sure she will — almost sure. After all, apart from the usual ‘wooden bird’ incident this morning, nothing unfortunate has happened today, has it? and it’s almost midday …

  William stands in the receiving hall, pensive now that his visitor has departed and the house is quiet again. Whenever she calls upon him, Lady Bridgelow brings with her a hum of benign normalcy that fades, alas, as soon as she steps out of the door, leaving the air once again volatile with uncertainty. Yes, the place is silent, but what does that silence mean? Is Agnes sewing quietly upstairs, or hatching another outburst? Is she snoozing the sleep of the innocent, or sprawled in a delirious swoon? William listens uneasily, holding his breath at the foot of the stairs.

  Within seconds, his questions are unexpectedly answered: from very nearby, as prettily as any man could want, comes the sound of nimble fingers fondling the keys of a piano. Agnes Rackham is musical today! The house brightens at once, becoming a home to all those who dwell in it. William unclenches his fists, and smiles.

  Curlew can speak the word ‘asylum’ as often as he likes: William Rackham doesn’t admit defeat so easily! And besides, what about husbandly compassion? William is aware that from October onwards, there’ll be an engraving of his likeness stamped on every item of Rackham produce (a fine idea of Sugar’s) and, for this purpose, he has chosen a photograph that shows him in a kindly, even fatherly light. What would the ladies who buy Rackham’s toiletries think, if they learned that the man responsible for their sweet-smelling indulgences, and who seeks to disseminate his benign face into every household in the land, had condemned his own wife to a mad-house? No, Agnes deserves another chance — in fact, a hundred, a thousand other chances! She’s his wife, damn it, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health.

  ‘Call Cheesman,’ he tells Letty, during those precious minutes while the piano melody is still charming, before its obsessive arpeggios start to grate. ‘I’m going out.’

  Henry Rackham, mere seconds after his paroxysm has passed, and before the bitter reflux of remorse has fully returned him to his senses, lurches in surprise at the sound of his front door being knocked upon. Who the devil …? Nobody visits him, nobody! It must be some mistake.

  Hastily, he cleans himself and does his best to look decent, though in his hurry he can’t find his slippers and, badgered by the persistent knocking, he shambles to the door in socks.

  On the footpath near his doorstep, when he opens up, is a baffling vision of female beauty: two fresh-faced young women, twins perhaps, barely out of girlhood, dressed identically in grey with pink bonnets and paletots. They stand behind a hooded carriage resembling a flower-barrow or an outsize perambulator, but with neither flowers nor babies in it.

  ‘Please, sir,’ says one. ‘We’re here on behalf of the freezing, starving women and children of Skye.’

  Henry gapes at them uncomprehendingly, as a chilly breeze whips into his house and alerts him, too late, to the unsavoury excess of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘The Isle of Skye, sir,’ explains the other girl, in a lilting tone indistinguishable from her sister’s. ‘In Scotland. Many families have been forced off their land, sir, and are liable to perish this coming winter, which threatens to be a bad one. Have you any clothes you don’t need?’

  Henry blinks like an idiot, already blushing in the foreknowledge that whatever he says, he’s doomed to say with a stammer.

  ‘I–I’ve given all my u-unwanted clothes to …ah …a lady who’s a-active in a number of charities.’ The g
irls regard him with mild incredulity, as though they’re well accustomed to being fobbed off with fictions of this kind but too well-bred to challenge them. ‘Mrs Emmeline Fox,’ he adds miserably, in case the name might illuminate everything.

  ‘Last winter,’ says the first girl, ‘the island folk were reduced to eating dulse.’

  ‘Seaweed, sir,’ glosses the second, observing his bafflement.

  The first girl expands her pretty bosom with a deep breath, and opens her mouth to speak again, but this is as much as Henry can stand.

  ‘Will you accept money?’ he asks hoarsely, as his cat ventures onto the scene, butting her head against his ankles, calling attention to his unshod feet.

  The twins look at each other as if this proposition has never been made to them before and they’re at a perfect loss how they could possibly respond.

  ‘We wouldn’t dream of pressing on you, sir …’ says one, casting her gaze to the footpath, but Henry seizes on this as consent, and rummages in his trouser pockets.

  ‘Here,’ he says, pulling out a palmful of coins, along with the pulverised remains of newspaper clippings and forgotten postage stamps. ‘Is two shillings enough, do you think?’ He winces at the memory of what else this same sum can buy. ‘No, take three.’ He weeds out the bright shillings from the chaf of farthings, pennies and debris.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ say the girls in unison, as the nearest reaches out her gloved hand. ‘We shan’t trouble you again, sir.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ he says and, to his great relief, they trundle their barrow away, their bustles bobbing in accord.

  Henry shuts the door and returns to his warm front room, the only comfortable room in his house. On the floor by the hearth lies a handkerchief, screwed up into a ball. He knows without unwrapping it — for he threw it down only minutes ago — that it is glutinous with the slime of his own seed.