by Michel Faber
‘I’ll be back soon,’ says Sugar. But, as she follows Letty out of the room, her confidence in the promise suddenly wavers. He wants me gone, she thinks. He’s found someone with French and German, who plays the piano. Then, lurching from unwarranted dread to unwarranted excitement, she thinks: No, he wants to kiss my throat and lift my skirts and fuck me. He’s had a cockstand since he woke up this morning, and can contain himself no longer.
The carpets all along the landing are wet under her feet, and smell of soap and wet fabric; Letty, having discharged her summons, rolls her sleeves up and returns to her bucket and sponge, leaving the governess to face the master alone. The water in Letty’s bucket is pink.
Heart beating hard in her breast, Sugar knocks at the door of William’s study, his sanctum sanctorum, which, in all the weeks she has been in his house, she has never entered.
‘Enter,’ he calls from within, and she obeys.
Sugar’s first thought when she sees him at his desk, clouded in smoke, leaning wearily forward, elbows pushing aside two molehills of correspondence, is that he resembles a man who has spent the night in drunken debauchery. His eyes are red and puffy, his hair is plastered with moisture, his beard and moustache are uncombed. He rises from his chair to greet her, and she notes dark speckles of water on his waistcoat, spilt from the rude splashing he’s given his face.
‘William, you look …so terribly tired! Surely you’re working too hard!’
He crosses the room — his shoes and trouser-legs are smeared with dirt –and, seizing her shoulders so abruptly it makes her flinch, he pulls her against his chest. Even as she responds to his embrace, wrapping her long thin arms around him and pressing her cheek against his, she’s tempted to rebuff him as a good governess should; all sorts of daft remonstrances spring to her mind: Unhand me, sir! Oh! Mercy! I shall swoon!, and so forth.
‘What’s wrong, my love?’ she whispers into his hair, hugging him tight, straining to let him feel the sharp edges of her hips through the layers of clothing that rustle between them. ‘Tell me your cares.’ Scarcely less hackneyed phrases, she knows, but what else can she say? All she wants is for this untidy room, with its confusion of papers and tobacco-stained wallpaper and carpets the colour of beef stew, to melt away, and for the two of them to be magically transported back to Priory Close, where soft warm sheets would wrap themselves around their naked bodies and William would gaze at her in wonder and say … ‘Ugh, this is a rotten, hopeless business.’
She catches her breath as he squeezes her even harder. ‘The … perfume business?’ she prompts him, knowing full well he means something else. ‘Agnes,’ he groans. ‘She has me at my wits’ end.’
The likelihood of William’s wits being nearer their end than those of his poor wife seems small, but there’s no doubting his distress. ‘What has she done?’
‘She was out in the snow last night, in her night-gown! Digging up her diaries — or trying to. Now she’s convinced they’ve been eaten by worms. I ordered the cursed things kept safe; no one seems to have any idea where they are.’
Sugar makes an inarticulate sound of sympathetic puzzlement.
‘And she’s wounded herself!’ exclaims William, shuddering in Sugar’s arms. ‘It’s horrible! She’s gashed both her feet with a spade. Never dug a hole in her life, poor baby. And with no shoes on! Ach!’ He shudders again, violently, at the thought of those dainty naked feet being penetrated, in one clumsy thrust, by the blunt wedge of metal. Sugar shudders too — the first helpless spasm they’ve shared that’s genuinely mutual.
‘How is she? What did you do?’ she cries, and William breaks away from their embrace, covering his face with his hands.
‘I fetched Doctor Curlew here, of course. Thank God he didn’t refuse … though he’ll have his pound of flesh from me for this … Amazing how a man can be in his overcoat and night-shirt, stitching a screaming woman’s flesh, and still look smug! Well he can look smug all he likes; Agnes is staying here! Am I to condemn my wife to a living Hell because she can’t use a spade? I’m not a beast yet!’
‘William, you’re beside yourself!’ Sugar cautions him, though her own voice trembles with disquiet. ‘You’ve done all you can for now; once you’ve slept, you’ll be able to think with a clearer head.’
He paces away from her, nodding and rubbing his hands.
‘Yes, yes,’ he says, frowning with the effort of banishing illogic from his brain. ‘I have a hold of myself now.’ He focuses on her with a strange stare, his eyes agleam. ‘Can you imagine who could possibly have taken those damn diaries?’
‘M-mightn’t Sophie’s old nurse have taken them with her? Weren’t they dug up just before she left?’
William shakes his head, about to object that Beatrice Cleave regarded Agnes with barely concealed disdain; then it occurs to him that this is precisely why she might have relished the chance to cause trouble.
‘I’ll write to Mrs Barrett, and get her room searched,’ he declares.
‘No, no, my love,’ says Sugar, alarmed by how easily her soiled and ill-gotten secrets could, if his suspicion turned to her, be hauled out from under her little bed. ‘If she did it for mischief, she’ll have thrown them in the nearest river. And besides, is a pile of old diaries what Agnes needs just now? Surely she needs rest and tender care?’
He paces back to his desk, opening and shutting his hands nervously. ‘Rest and tender care. Yes, damn it. If only she could sleep until her injuries have healed! I’ll get something from a doctor — not Curlew, damn him — a pill or a potion … Clara can make sure she’s given it religiously, every night …No excuses. No excuses, d’you hear!’
His voice has warped from acquiescence to rage in the course of a few seconds. Sugar rushes to his side and lays her rough palm against his contorted face.
‘William, please: your anguish is blinding you to who I am. I’m your Sugar, don’t you see? I’m the woman who has listened to your woes, advised you, helped you write letters you dreaded writing … How many times have I proved there’s nothing I won’t do for you?’ She snatches his slack hand and guides it to her bosom, then down to her belly, a gesture she hopes will rouse his desire, but which he condones with dumb bemusement, as if she’s using him to make the sign of the cross.
‘William,’ she pleads. ‘Remember Hopsom’s? The long nights we spent …?’
Finally his expression softens. His overheated skull, it seems, is filling with the cool balm of remembered intimacy: the way she helped him sail through a stormy patch in Rackham Perfumeries’ growth when bad counsel might have sunk him.
‘My angel,’ he sighs, contrite. To Sugar’s great relief, he leans forward and kisses her full on the mouth; his tongue is dry and tastes of brandy and dyspepsia, but at least he’s kissing her. Taking courage, she strokes his hair, his shoulders, his back, breathing quicker, almost wanting him, wanting him to want her.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he says, breaking free of her again. ‘I have something to show you.’ His prick is bulging up through his trousers, but it’s not that; no, he isn’t quite ready for that. Instead, he rummages in the chaos of papers on his desk and pulls out a folded copy of The Times.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen this?’ he says, rapidly leafing through it — past the news, past the weddings and engagements, until he’s found the page he wants to show her. There, prominently placed in the midst of small advertisements for blood purifiers and homoeopaths, is a large announcement featuring an engraving of William Rackham’s face circled by a wreath of holly.
A Merry Christmas Season, Anticipating A Most Happy New Year
FROM
RACKHAM’S
PURVEYORS OF FINE PERFUMES AND TOILETRIES
Sugar reads the greeting several times over, racking her brains for compliments. How strange it feels to be shown one of William’s ideas as a fait accompli, without having been consulted beforehand!
‘Very striking,’ she says. ‘And well-worded. Yes, awfully good.�
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‘It’s a way of getting my Christmas greeting in the newspaper well in advance,’ he explains, ‘before my rivals put theirs in, you see?’
‘Mm,’ she says. ‘They’ll be wishing they’d thought of it, won’t they?’ Flaring in Sugar’s imagination, over and over, is the sickening picture of Agnes thrusting a filthy spade downwards in the dark, and the blade gashing into the pale flesh of her feet.
‘No doubt they’ll be wise to me next Christmas,’ William is saying. ‘But this year, the advantage is mine.’
‘You’ll think of something even cleverer next year,’ Sugar assures him. ‘I’ll help you.’
They kiss again, and this time he seems ready to proceed. She slides her hand inside his trousers, and his cock is stiffening even as she gropes for it.
‘When are you going to put me out of my misery?’ she purrs into his ear, managing to modulate a tremor of hysteria into a trill of lust. Yet, when she lifts her leg to climb onto him, she’s surprised to feel how wet her sex is. William is behaving like a brute, it’s true, but he’s deranged by worry, and his heart’s in the right place, she’s sure, and — thank God — he still desires her. If she can only fuck him now, and hear his helpless groan of surrender as he spends, everything can still be all right.
Her pantalettes are around her ankles, she’s lowering her arse into his lap, she gasps with relief as the head of his prick nudges into her — when suddenly there’s a sharp rap at the door. Without a moment’s hesitation she catapults off his body, yanking up her drawers even as she regains her balance. William is busy likewise. Their mutuality, their synchronicity, as they straighten their clothing and rearrange their bodies into decorous poses, is as instinctive and fluent as any act of eroticism.
‘Enter!’ says Rackham hoarsely.
It’s Letty again, looking embarrassed this time — not because of her master and the governess, whose interrupted discussion is plainly a model of propriety, but because of the onerous burden of the message she has to deliver.
‘It’s … Mrs Rackham, sir,’ she cringes. ‘She wants you, sir.’ ‘Wants me?’
‘Yes, sir. As a matter of urgency, sir.’
William stares across the room with his heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes, reluctant to concede the hardness of his luck.
‘Very well, Letty,’ he says. ‘I’ll be there directly.’
The servant retreats, and William steps out from behind his desk, fingering his tie and the collars of his shirt.
‘How flattering,’ he murmurs sardonically to Sugar as he trudges past her, ‘to be wanted by so many women at once.’
Agnes’s bedroom, so often darkened in the daylight hours, is ominously bright, its curtains parted to admit the maximum amount of sun. Mrs Rackham should be doped insensible, but she’s fully conscious, sitting bolt upright in bed, a spotless fresh night-gown buttoned up to her chin, with a big bulge half-way down the bed, where her heavily bandaged feet are shrouded under the sheets. Her face is calm, although there are a few scratches on her cheek from her scuffle with her husband, Shears and Rose in their attempts to drag her back into the house. Her improbably blue eyes are rimmed with red. All these things William notices the instant he walks into her room. These things, and the fact that Clara is standing sentinel by the bed-head, a guard of honour at her mistress’s side.
‘All right, Clara,’ says William, ‘you may go.’
The servant curtsies negligibly, a mere twitch of the torso.
‘Mrs Rackham says I am to stay, sir.’
‘She’s my maid, William,’ Agnes reminds him. ‘I think I’m entitled to one person in my house who has my best interests at heart.’
William squares his shoulders. ‘Agnes …’ he begins to warn, then thinks better of it. ‘What would you like to discuss?’
Agnes takes a long, deep breath. ‘I have just suffered a most humiliating rebuff,’ she says, ‘from my own coachman.’
‘Cheesman?’
‘I believe we have only one coachman, William, unless you have others squirrelled away for your own amusement.’
Was that a smirk on Clara’s face? Damn her impudence, the snotty little minx. He’ll see her on the street yet, for this …
‘Has Cheesman been impertinent to you, my dear?’ enquires William with the utmost politesse.
‘He’s as well-bred as a creature of his sort can be,’ demurs Mrs Rackham. ‘My humiliation is your doing.’
‘My doing?’
‘Cheesman says that he’s been forbidden to take me to church.’
‘It’s Tuesday, my d–’
‘My church,’ snaps Agnes. ‘In Cricklewood.’
William shuts his eyes for a moment, the better to imagine Clara banished into destitution, or spontaneously combusting on the spot.
‘Well …’ he sighs, ‘it’s actually on Doctor Curlew’s orders, my dear.’
Agnes repeats the words, giving each one the fastidiously disdainful attention it deserves. ‘Doctor. Curlew’s. Orders.’
‘Yes,’ says William, marvelling at how it can be, that he, William Rackham, a man who has no difficulty turning aside the wrath of a loutish dock-worker, should so lose his nerve when faced with the displeasure of his elfin wife. How did the sweet nature with which she once delighted him turn so bitter? ‘Doctor Curlew feels that it’s not good for your health to be pursuing …ah …to be of a faith other than …ah …’
‘I need a miracle, William,’ she says, speaking very distinctly, as though to an exceptionally slow-witted child. ‘A miracle of healing. I need to pray in a church which God recognises, and which Our Lady and Her angels are known to visit. Do you recall ever witnessing a miracle in your church, William?’
Clara’s hands, until now folded behind her back, move to her front — an innocuous fidget which nonetheless strikes William as a gesture of mockery.
‘I…’ (he gropes for a rueful quip to steer the conversation into less turbulent waters) ‘I probably wasn’t paying enough attention, I must confess.’
‘Confess?’ hisses Agnes, her eyes opening to their widest circumference. ‘Yes, I agree you must confess. But you never will, will you?’
‘Agnes…’ Once more he braces himself for a quarrel; once more he resists the goad. ‘Can’t we discuss this after you’re better? Whether your church is Catholic or Anglican, you’re in no fit state to visit either of them now. Your poor feet need rest and cosseting.’ A shrewd line of reasoning suddenly occurs to him: ‘And after all, how would you feel, Agnes, being carried into church like a piece of heavy baggage, with everyone watching?’
This appeal to Agnes’s social sensibilities evaporates in the air, blasted by a look of indignation. ‘I shouldn’t feel like a piece of baggage,’ she quavers. ‘I should feel … divine. Anyway, I’m not heavy: how dare you say so.’
William realises that his wife, for all her apparent composure, is in the grip of delirium. Arguing further with her is futile, and will only prolong Clara’s entertainment.
‘Agnes,’ he declares gruffly, ‘I … I will not allow it. You’d be a laughing stock, and me along with you. You’re to remain at home, until–’
With a cry of anguish, she casts the bed-sheets aside, and crawls along the mattress to the foot of the bed, with the scurrying agility of an urchin. She grips the brass curlicues of the bed-frame, and wails to him, tears springing onto her cheeks.
‘You promised me! To love, cherish and honour me! “I don’t care a fig for what the world thinks,” you said. “Those other girls are dull to the bone,” you said. “My odd little sprite,” you used to call me! “What our society fears, it calls eccentric” — that was another of your fine sayings. “The future can only be interesting if we have the courage to be interesting — and that means putting the world’s nose out ofjoint!” ‘
William stands slack-jawed with astonishment. He’d thought the night he’s just endured was the bizarrest ordeal of his life, but this… this is worse. To have his youthful pretensions, his
callowest pronouncements, resurrected from oblivion, and flung back at him from his wife’s mouth!
‘I … I’m looking after you as best I can,’ he pleads. ‘You’re ill, and I want to take care of you.’
‘Take care of me?’ she exclaims. ‘When have you ever taken care of me? Look! Look! What do you propose to do about this?’
She throws herself back on her rear, lifts her night-dress, and frantically starts unwrapping the bandages from her feet.
‘Agnes! No!’ He lurches over to her, and seizes her wrists, but her hands continue to squirm and writhe near her ankles. Tentacles of bloodstained bandage unfurl from her feet, and there’s a glimpse of bruised blue flesh, and a sticky occlusion of crimson. He also can’t help glimpsing, between the stick-thin legs that Agnes has so unthinkingly uncovered, the blonde wisps of her sex.
‘Please, Agnes,’ he whispers, striving to remind her, with furious nods ofhis brow, the mute witness of Clara behind them. ‘Not in front ofa servant…!’ She laughs hysterically, a terrible, bestial sound.
‘My body is turning into … raw meat,’ she cries, in outrage and disbelief, ‘my soul is almost lost, and you are concerned about the servants? She struggles desperately against his restraining grip, while her feet churn into the bed-clothes and blood begins to smear the snowy linen. Her bosom presses against his arm; he’s reminded of the fullness of her breasts compared to Sugar’s, the cherubic compactness of her body, how fervently he once anticipated the blessed day when he could have it in his arms at last …
Abruptly Agnes stops fighting him. They are shoulder to shoulder, almost nose to nose. Panting and red-faced, spittle on her chin, she fixes him with a stare of righteous disgust.
‘You are hurting me,’ she says softly. ‘Go play with someone else.’
He releases her wrists, and she crawls to the head of the bed, trailing ribbons of tainted bandage. In the wink of an eye, she’s back under the covers, her head on the pillow, her cheek resting on one palm. She sighs stoically, like a child being pestered after bedtime.
‘I…’ he stammers, but no words come. He turns to Clara, imploring her, with a gesture of impotence, not to misuse the power this incident has delivered into her hands.