by Michel Faber
‘Beatrice has lived very modestly,’ admits William, closing the door behind them. ‘I don’t necessarily mean you to do the same — though you’ll appreciate there are limits to what a governess can be seen to possess.’
Just kiss me, she thinks, offering him her hand — which, after an eye’s-blink ofhesitation, he takes and squeezes, as he might a business associate’s.
‘I can live as modestly as anyone,’ she tells him, drawing solace from the memory — the very recent memory — of his trembling fingers clasped on her naked hips.
There’s a knock on the door, and William extracts his hand, to let the servants in — whereupon, without another word, he strides out of the room. In comes Letty, staggering lopsidedly through the door with Sugar’s heavy Gladstone bag, which contains, among other things, the manuscript of her novel. At the sight of the servant pulled askew by this distended luggage, Sugar rushes over and tries to take the burden from her.
‘Ooh, it’s all right, miss, really it is,’ the girl cries, flustered by what’s evidently a shocking breach of decorum. Sugar steps back, confused: if she’s so superior in rank to the household servants, where does she get her deep-seated notion that governesses are lowly and despised? From novels, she supposes — but aren’t novels truth dressed up in fancy clothes?
The clomp of a big man’s boots and the grunt of a big man’s exertion can be heard coming up the stairs, and Letty hurries out of the room to make way for Cheesman. He lumbers in with a suitcase hugged to his chest.
‘Just say where you want it, miss,’ he grins, ‘and I’ll put it there.’
Sugar casts a glance over her tiny room, which already seems cluttered up by the presence of one bag.
‘On the bed,’ she gestures, aware that of all responses this is the most likely to tickle Cheesman’s bawdy imagination, but … well, there’s really nowhere else for the suitcase to go, if she’s to have space to unpack it.
‘Best place, I grant yer, miss.’
Sugar appraises him as he staggers past and deposits her case, with exaggerated gentleness, on the bed. He’s tall, and seems taller for his knee-length, brass-buttoned greatcoat, his wiry frame, and his long fingers. He has a long, pock-marked face with a saddle-hump of a chin, tough wayward eyebrows, curly dark hair subjugated by oil and comb, and a mouthful of straight white teeth, clearly his proudest and (given his origins) most unusual possession. Despite the thick greatcoat, his male arrogance pokes out from him like an invisible goad, for women to blunder against. Even as he turns to face her, one eyebrow cockily raised, and says ‘Will ‘at be all, miss?’ she’s already made up her mind how she’ll handle him.
‘All for the moment.’ Her tone is prim, but her face and body are artfully arranged to suggest that she might, in spite of herself, desire him: it’s an intricate pose, first learned from a whore called Lizzie and perfected in mirrors: a combination of fear, disdain and helpless arousal which men of his sort are convinced they inspire wherever they go.
The twinkle-eyed smirk on Cheesman’s face as he’s leaving reassures her she’s chosen wisely. She can’t hope to erase what he already knows; to him, she’ll always be William’s whore, never Sophie’s governess, so he may as well cherish the delusion that one day he’ll add her to his roll-call of conquests. All she need do is maintain the delicate balance between repulsion and attraction, and he’ll be charmed enough not to wish her harm, without ever going so far as to risk his position.
Good, she thinks, suppressing a flutter of panic, that’s Cheesman taken care of — as if each member of the Rackham household is nothing more than a problem to be solved.
She walks across to the bed and, leaning her palms on the suitcase, peers through the window. Nothing much to be seen out there: an empty, rain-sodden swathe of the Rackham grounds … but then, she doesn’t need to spy anymore, does she? No! All her labours have been repaid, all her careful cultivation of William rewarded, and here she is, ensconced in the Rackham household, with the blessing of both William and Agnes! There’s really no reason for her guts to be churning …
‘Miss Sugar?’
She flinches, but it’s only what’s-her-name — Letty — at the door again. Such a good-natured face Letty has — a friendly face. She’ll have no trouble with Letty, no, she’ll …
‘Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham invites you to tea.’
Ten minutes later, Miss Sugar is stiffly seated amongst the dense bric-a-brac of the parlour, with a tea-cup in her hand and a servant dressed in the same mourning garb as herself hovering around with a tray of cake, while William Rackham holds forth on the history of Notting Hill. Yes, the history of Notting Hill. On and on he speechifies, like Doctor Crane in his pulpit, the words pouring out with mechanical relentlessness – which families were first to build in Chepstow Villas, how much Portobello Farm was sold for, when precisely Kensington Gravel Pits Gate changed its name to Notting Hill Gate, and so on.
‘And you’ll be interested to know there’s a free library, opened only last year, in High Street. How many parishes can boast that?
Sugar listens as attentively as she can, but her brain is beginning to revolve like a cauliflower in fast-boiling water. The air of unreality is bad enough while the parlour-maid is in the room with them, but, to Sugar’s bewilderment, William fails to drop the facade when Rose retreats, and carries right on lecturing.
‘… from sheep to shop-keepers in two generations!’
He pauses for effect and, not knowing what else to do, Sugar smiles. Would calling him ‘William’ summon him back from wherever he’s hiding, or would that land her in trouble?
‘Those suitcases in the hall …’ she begins.
‘Beatrice Cleave’s,’ he says, lowering his voice, at last, to a more intimate tone.
‘I’m keeping her waiting, then?’ Another small flutter of panic must be suppressed, at the thought of the woman she has come here to supplant — a woman who, in Sugar’s imagination, has metamorphosed from nonentity to fearsomely competent matron — and a canny judge of frauds to boot.
‘Let her wait,’ sniffs William, glancing up at the ceiling resentfully. ‘Her timing in leaving my employ could scarcely have been more inconvenient; I’m sure she can twiddle her thumbs for a few more minutes while you drink your tea.’
‘Mmm.’ Sugar brings the tea to her lips, though it’s too hot to drink.
William rises from his armchair and begins to pace back and forth, stroking the pockets of his waistcoat. ‘Beatrice will tell you all you need to know about my daughter,’ he says, ‘and more, I don’t doubt. If she begins to drive you mad, mention trains, that’s my advice — she has one to catch.’
‘And Agnes?’
William stops dead, hands arrested in mid-stroke.
‘What about Agnes?’ he says, narrowing his eyes.
‘Will Agnes be …ah … looking in on us?’ It seems to Sugar a perfectly reasonable question — might not Mrs Rackham have a stipulation or two regarding the upbringing of her own daughter? But William is amazed.
‘Us?’ he echoes.
‘Me and Beatrice, and … Sophie.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he says, as if the conversation has veered into the realm of miracles. ‘No.’
Sugar nods, though she doesn’t understand, and sips the scalding tea as quickly as she can, in between bites of cake. A raisin falls from the fragment she holds in her fingers and instantly disappears in the dark pattern of the carpet. A clock, discreet up till now, begins to tick loudly.
After some deliberation, William clears his throat and addresses her with sotto voce seriousness. ‘There’s something I’d hoped wouldn’t need saying. I’d hoped it would be obvious, or else that I could trust Beatrice to tell you. But in the event that neither–’
At that instant, however, their privacy is interrupted by Letty, who ventures through the door and, realising she’s not welcome, immediately begins to twitch and tremble with the tics of obeisance.
‘What is it, Letty?�
�� snaps William, glaring her half to death.
‘Begging your pardon, sir, it’s Shears, sir. Wanting to speak with you, sir. He’s found something in the garden, sir, of Mrs Rackham’s.’
‘Lord almighty, Letty!’ growls William. ‘Shears knows what to do with that damn bird … ‘
‘It’s something else, sir,’ she cringes.
William clenches his fists; it seems quite possible he’ll fly into a rage and chase the servant from the room. But then, all of a sudden, his shoulders slump, he breathes deep, and turns to face his guest.
‘Please excuse me, Miss Sugar,’ he says — and is gone.
Left behind among the bric-a-brac, Sugar sits still as a vase, straining her ears to hear what’s amiss. She doesn’t dare leave her seat, but angles her head, dog-like, for any words that might leak into the parlour from the hallway, the source of the fuss.
‘What the devil are these?’ William is demanding impatiently, his resonant baritone rendered harsh by the acoustics. The gardener’s answering voice is unclear — a tenor grumble, disdaining to compete with the volume of his questioner’s outcry. ‘What? Buried!?’ exclaims William. ‘Well, who buried them?’ (Another muted response, this time from a duet of Shears and Letty). ‘Fetch Clara!’ commands William. ‘Ach, look at this floor …!’
Several minutes pass before the voice of Clara, indistinct in word but unmistakably humiliated in tone, is added to the medley. Her muffled account becomes more quavery the more she’s interrupted. ‘“Clean slate”?’ William challenges her. ‘What d’you mean, “clean slate”?’ The girl’s reply, whatever it is, fails to impress him, and he blasphemes. Eventually, the voice of Shears is heard again, just as Clara begins to weep, or sneeze, or both. ‘No, no, no,’ groans William, irritably dismissing the gardener’s suggestion. ‘She’ll want them back soon enough. Put them somewhere safe and dry …’ (More murmurs ensue.) ‘I don’t know, anywhere out of the way of visitors! Must I make every damn decision in this world?’ Whereupon he leaves the matter in their hands and, with an emphatic tread that Sugar can feel through the floorboards, returns to the parlour.
‘Trouble, my love?’ she yearns to say when he steps back into the room, but he looks so unlike the man whose lips have kissed her belly that she doesn’t dare, and merely looks up at him questioningly.
‘Agnes’s diaries …’ William explains, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘A dozen or more. Agnes … buried them in the garden. Or obliged Clara to bury them for her …’ His eyes glaze over as he pictures the act — the servant in her mourning dress, huffing and puffing with a spade; the hole; the wet black earth closing over the cloth-bound journals. ‘Can you imagine?’
Sugar frowns sympathetically, hoping that’s what’s wanted. ‘Why would she do such a thing?’
William collapses into his armchair, staring at his knees. ‘She told Clara she’s … “finished with the past”! “Starting afresh”! “Clean slate”!’ Before Sugar’s eyes, his incredulity is turning to distress; he shakes his head again, and on the lines of his brow is written, for anyone to read: Is there another husband in England who endures what I endure?
If they were in Priory Close now, she would take him in her arms and stroke the back of his head; she’d pull him to her breast and remind him that there can be such a thing as a woman who does only what her man requires: nothing less, nothing else. But here in the Rackham parlour, with the loudly ticking clock and the framed horticultural prints and the embroidered doilies and the PerSian carpet in which a raisin is lost …
‘I believe there was something you wanted to tell me?’ she says. ‘Before we were interrupted?’
He passes a hand across his mouth and composes himself, without the benefit of her comforting arms.
‘Yes,’ he says, leaning as close to her as decorum will permit. ‘What I wanted to say to you is this: It would be best if… for the next little while … indeed, until I tell you different…’ He’s squeezing one hand inside the other, praying for inspiration to reveal a truth without having to strip it naked. ‘It would be best if Sophie were taken care of in such a way that Agnes was …ah … troubled as little as possible. In fact, if you can ensure that whenever Agnes is up and about … that is, in …’ (he gestures vaguely at the house in general) ‘she … that is, Agnes …is …ah … free to go about her business without … ‘
Sugar can stand it no longer. ‘You mean,’ she clarifies, ‘that Agnes is not to set eyes on Sophie.’
‘Precisely.’ His relief is patent, but almost immediately marred by fresh embarrassment; he’d like to redeem his wife, it seems, from the stigma of unreason. ‘I’m not saying that if Agnes catches a glimpse of you and Sophie walking down the stairs it’s the end of the world, or that you’re expected to keep my daughter prisoner in the nursery, but …’
‘Discretion,’ she sums up, groping her way back into his confidence, willing him to draw comfort from her decisive tone and her mild-eyed, dispassionate gaze.
‘Precisely.’ He leans back against the chair and breathes like a man whose tooth has been pulled with less pain and bloodshed than he’d feared.
‘Now, it’s time,’ he says, when the clock’s ticking becomes intrusive once more, ‘that the reins of power were handed over, don’t you think?’
In the bedroom of Sophie Rackham, an atmosphere of austere severity prevails. Except for the child-sized bed tucked in one dim corner, it might be a cell within a nunnery — a nunnery founded by an order that long ago forswore all pastimes but prayer and silent contemplation. No picture hangs on the wall, no ornament or plaything is anywhere in evidence; in fact, not a speck of dust — much less a toy — mars the perfection of the darkly polished surfaces. A dozen or so books stand stock-straight in a bookcase the height and breadth of a coffin, each tome looking uncompromisingly difficult.
‘I am Sophie’s nurse,’ says Beatrice Cleave, in a tone that demands congratulation — or commiseration. ‘Six years I’ve been here.’
Hysteria tickles Sugar’s brain, tempting her to reply: ‘Enchantee! I am William Rackham’s mistress, and I’ve been here forty-five minutes.’ But she swallows hard, and says, ‘Miss Sugar.’
‘I have been both a wet-and a dry-nurse to this child,’ says the amply bosomed but otherwise starchy-looking Beatrice, ‘and I’ve seen the fortunes of this family rise and fall and rise again.’
Sugar can’t think what to reply to this, other than to reassure Beatrice that if her milk has dried up for good, she can always get a job at Mrs Gill’s house in Jermyn Street, which specialises in large-breasted whores.
‘Time flies,’ she says, looking around a little more.
This bedroom is, despite first impressions, exactly the same dimensions as her own bedroom next door; it only appears bigger, because there’s so little in it. Sophie sits perched on a large, straight-backed chair, a miserable waxen poppet dressed up in the sombre-est, tightest, Sundayest clothes Sugar has ever seen, like a figure in a Temperance Society diorama. She has not been introduced. She is merely the subject under discussion. She gazes at the floor or, for variety, at her shoes.
‘You will find,’ says Beatrice, ‘that in the main Sophie is a well-meaning child. There’s no malice in her, although she’d rather stand gaping at the window than do most anything else. You will also find, I hope, that she isn’t stupid, although her mind is very easily jolted off its rails.’
Sugar casts a glance at Sophie to see how she takes these criticisms, but the little girl is still studying the wax on the floorboards.
‘There’s times,’ Beatrice continues, ‘when she behaves like a baby, and her reason deserts her. Not a pretty sight. At such times, she requires firm handling, if she’s not to become just like…’ Beatrice stops short, even though she’s about to flit the Rackham household forever. ‘Just like a Bedlamite.’
Sugar nods politely, hoping her face isn’t betraying her growing dislike of the woman with the hard black bosom, thin lips and unexpectedly well-educated
speech. The Beatrice she’d imagined, when William first mentioned his daughter’s nurse, was a different breed altogether — a stouter version of Caroline perhaps, all smiles and provincial heritage, or else a doting, cuddly Cockney, much given to sentimental excess. Sugar even feared a last-minute orgy of weeping and embraces, with a frantic Sophie clutching the skirts of her roly-poly protectress amid lamentations of ‘My babe!’ and so forth.
Instead, here are three figures dressed in mourning keeping resolutely to their places in a chilly room, and the closest Beatrice gets to holding Sophie Rackham is with her sidelong glance, like a ventriloquist willing a relinquished doll to stay put and not keel over. Rosy-cheeked nurses voluptuous with natural love? Another romantic preconception it seems, got from reading too many novels, doomed to wither in the face of harsh reality.
‘She wets the bed, you know,’ says Beatrice. ‘Every night.’ And she raises one eyebrow, a stoical invitation for Sugar to appreciate the sheer scale of bother this must have caused during these six years past.
‘How … unfortunate,’ says Sugar, again glancing at Sophie. The child seems lost beyond recall in the enchanted world of her shoe-buckles.
‘In summer it’s not so hard to deal with,’ says Beatrice. ‘In winter, it’s a nightmare. If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you the best place for drying bed-sheets indoors.’
‘Mm, yes, I’d be grateful,’ says Sugar, suddenly gripped by the strangest desire to slap Beatrice Cleave across the face, over and over, with a piss-soaked slipper.
‘It’s a small mercy,’ Beatrice carries on, ‘but at least Sophie is not one of those children who hate water. If anything, she’s overly fond of being washed. Which puts me in mind …’ Her eyes gleam inquisitively as she examines Sugar’s skinny build. ‘I expect you and Mr Rackham have discussed exactly which tasks you’ll be answerable for? I have been nurse and teacher and goodness knows what else, these past six years, and thought nothing of it, but I can understand that you, being a governess, may not be willing to do …certain things.’