The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  All right, it’s true that the gardener put in an appearance this morning, which lifted William’s burden for a while, but a damn short while it was. Ten minutes, and Shears had already fled what he plainly regarded as a rampant superabundance of femaleness, for the safety of his outhouse. Cheesman would’ve been more use, but he’s gone altogether — visiting his mother, a likely story.

  So, with a parlour full of the fairer sex, all constrained by good manners to carouse as demurely as possible, the coming of Henry Calder Rackham — a roly-poly old man full of good-natured bombast — offers nothing less than William’s rescue. Bluster on, old man! This is just what’s required, to while away the long hours till dinner.

  Mind you, the day has gone very well so far. Rather better, to be honest, than in previous years, when Agnes (beautiful though she invariably looked) was apt to sour the frivolity with damn queer remarks — remarks intended, he could only presume, to lift Christmas up from its nadir of commercialism and restore its proper religious significance.

  ‘Have you ever wondered why we don’t celebrate Childermas anymore?’ she enquired one year, her gift from William lying half-unwrapped and forgotten in her lap.

  ‘Childermas, dear?’

  ‘Yes: the day that King Herod slaughtered the Innocents.’ This year, thank God, such conversations have not arisen. And, regrettable though the circumstances may be, the absence of Agnes from the festivities has made possible one happy benefit: the presence of her daughter downstairs. Yes, after years of strictly segregated Christmases, with Sophie being smuggled her presents and lukewarm portions of Christmas dinner in the nursery while the rest of the family fussed around the mistress downstairs, the child finally has her chance. Which is a jolly good thing, William thinks, and not before time! She’s a pleasant little creature, with a most winsome smile, and far too big now to be treated like a baby. Besides, despite his willingness, in years gone by, to play along with Agnes’s notion of Christmas as a ritual for grown-ups, he’s always secretly thought there’s something melancholy about a Christmas tree without a child frolicking in front of it.

  Last year, the opening of the presents was blighted by all manner of restraints — odious economies, the dark cloud of Henry Calder Rackham’s mistrust of his son, Agnes’s haughty contempt for anything that smacked of cheapness or make-do, and the servants’ fidgetings of unrest and ingratitude.

  This year, the same ceremony, conducted with all the household on their knees in front of the Christmas tree in an ever-burgeoning froth of coloured paper, has proved highly satisfactory. Freed from the shackles of his debt, William decided to be a fountain of generosity. (To the dubious Lady Bridgelow, when she warned him of the perils of spoiling one’s servants, he replied: ‘You have too little faith in human nature, Constance!’) Thus, while Lady Bridgelow has no doubt upheld convention and given her female servants a parcel containing the fabrics for making a new uniform, his female servants received a parcel containing their new uniform ready-made (honestly, why oblige the poor biddies to sew their own clothes, when ready-made is the way of the future?). Not only this, but each servant received extra parcels which, instead of containing the sort of mundane objects they might have expected — kitchen implements for the cook, a new scrubbing brush for the scullery maid, and so forth — contained out-and-out luxuries. God Almighty, he’s a rich man now: does he really need to solicit a sour and grudging ‘thank-you-sir’ for the derisory gift of a soup-ladle or a wash-pail, when he can sit back and enjoy an expression of genuine, unfeigned pleasure?

  So, this morning, each girl got (to her considerable astonishment) a box of chocolate bon-bons, a pair of kid gloves, a bronze-plated buttonhook, and a delicate Oriental fan. The gloves were, he feels, an especially inspired gesture; they demonstrate that William Rackham is a master who appreciates that his servants are not mere household fixtures and drudges, but women who might wish to enjoy some sort of life on their afternoons off, in the world out there.

  It was damned interesting observing each girl’s essential nature asserting itself once the first flush of surprise had faded. Clara promptly restored the suspicious glint to her eye, the obstinate set to her mouth, and requested leave to attend to Mrs Rackham. Rose stacked her gifts carefully at her side, and resumed her vigilance of the party, in case anything should go wrong. Poor Janey continued to fondle and stare at her gifts, overwhelmed by their exoticism and by the implication that a dogsbody like her could possibly make use of them. Letty, ever the placid simpleton, hugged her treasures in the lap of her skirt and looked around in wonder, as if it had only just become clear to her that she needn’t worry her head about anything anymore, ever. The new kitchenmaid, Harriet, and the laundrymaid, whose Irish name he can neither spell nor pronounce, both betrayed a sly impatience to indulge in their windfalls, an eagerness to gobble chocolates or go gallivanting down the street with their kid gloves on. By contrast, Cook (not a girl anymore, admittedly) made a show of good-humoured incomprehension, as if to say, ‘Mercy! What could a person of my age and station possibly do with such things?’ But she was flattered, he could tell … her sex made sure of that.

  Sugar was a trickier challenge. How to reward her for all she’s done, without arousing the suspicions of the others? For a time he considered the possibility of celebrating a second, clandestine Christmas alone with her in her bedroom, but as the day drew near he decided this would entail too great a risk — not of detection, but of his responsibilities crowding in on him, claiming every spare moment.

  No, better to honour her publicly. But with what? By all means, for appearances’ sake, she should get her own kid gloves, bon-bons, buttonhook and fan, but what more could he give her that wouldn’t set the others’ tongues wagging, while doing justice to her unique qualities? This morning, in front of the Christmas tree, with all the household looking on, he was proud to see the wisdom of his choice thoroughly confirmed.

  Sugar, when Letty handed her the mysterious box, was surprised enough by how big and heavy it was, but when she removed its red wrapping-paper and hefted its contents into the light, her eyes widened further still, and her mouth fell open. Ah, thought William, a response like that can’t be faked! Straining to keep his own face impassive, he watched her gape, speechless, at the leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare, each manufactured to the highest standards — the tragedies a dark maroon tooled with gold, the comedies a rich umber tooled with black, and the histories pure black tooled with silver. The other servants stared too, of course — the illiterate ones in bafflement, the readers in something closer to envy. But not quite envy — for what joy would they get from a set of Shakespeare, if it were theirs? And what more sensible, what more defensible gift could there be, than books for a governess to share with her pupil?

  Sugar, of course, knew better. Choked with emotion, she could barely speak her thanks.

  As for what to give Sophie …nowthat was an even thornier problem. After much soul-searching, William decided that this year, the convention of presenting Sophie with a gift ‘from Mama’ should be suspended. In previous years, Beatrice Cleave took care of this little subterfuge, at Christmases and birthdays, and the child was none the wiser. This year, several things conspired against it: his disinclination to burden Sugar further, Doctor Curlew’s stern disapproval of the custom, Agnes’s absence from the celebrations, and an uneasy sense that Sophie has surely grown too old to believe such a threadbare lie.

  So: no gift ‘from Mama’. Doctor Curlew has assured him there’ll come a time when Agnes, cured of her delusions, will give her daughter something far more precious than any gaudy parcel. Maybe so, maybe so … but this morning, William made sure that Sophie wasn’t starved of gaudy parcels.

  In recognition of how much she’s grown, he gave her gloves of her own, delicate pigskin miniatures to make her feel like a little lady. A turtle-shell hair-brush, too, he gave her, and a whale-bone hairclip, an ivory-handled mirror, and a chamois purse to put them in.

  All the
se things she received with evident wonderment and pleasure. Her greatest amazement, however, came when she unwrapped the largest parcel under the tree, and found it to contain a surpassingly beautiful doll. Everyone in the room gasped and cooed to see it: a sumptuous French construction dressed as if for the theatre, with an alabaster-pale bisque head and an elaborately curled mohair wig topped with an ostrich-plush hat. In one hand it held a blue fan; in the other, nothing. Its satin gown (lower-cut in the bodice than any English doll’s) ballooned out below the wasp waist, a rosy pink hemmed with white plush. Most unusually of all, the doll was mounted, by means of firmly glued shoe-soles, on a wheeled trolley, allowing it to be trundled back and forth across the floor.

  ‘By gad,’ William’s father ruefully exclaimed, ‘this is a class above the cheap nigger doll I got her a few years ago, ain’t it?’

  But Henry Calder Rackham had a surprise up his sleeve — or rather, under his chair, and he produced a cylinder wrapped in plain brown paper and string (which William had taken to be a bottle of wine) and handed it to Sophie, as soon as her wits were recovered from the shock of her father’s generosity.

  ‘There, dear,’ the old man said. ‘I think you’ll find this is a superior thing to a lump of old rag from a tea-chest…’ And he leaned back in satisfaction as Sophie unwrapped … a steely-grey spyglass.

  Once again, there were gasps and murmurs among the servants, of wonderment and incredulity. What could this thing be? A bottle jack? A kaleidoscope? A fancy receptacle for knitting-needles? William knew at once, but was privately of the opinion that a spyglass is hardly the thing to give to a young miss. And, as the awed Sophie turned the apparatus over in her hands, he also noted that the metal was somewhat pitted and scratched.

  ‘This ain’t a toy, Sophie,’ the old man said. ‘It’s a precision instrument, entrusted to me by an explorer I once met. Let me show you how it works!’ And, crawling on his knees, he traversed the ribbon-strewn carpet to

  Sophie’s side, and demonstrated the telescope’s function. Within seconds she was swivelling the thing to and fro, her expression flickering between radiant joy and frustration as she focused on deliriously vague wallpaper and monstrous disembodied eyes.

  And William himself? What did he get? He struggles to remember …Ah yes: a lace coverlet for a cigar-box, embroidered by Sophie (unless her governess helped her, in which case Sugar’s skills as a seamstress leave a lot to be desired!) with a facsimile of his own face, copied directly from a Rackham soap-wrapper. Oh, and also: a quantity of middling-quality cigars, courtesy of his father. That, Lord help him, was the sum total of his Christmas bounty! Pitiful, but such is the fate of a man with a pack of servants, one small female child, a brother gone to an early grave, a mother cast out in disgrace, a father without a generous bone in his body, two old chums whom he has offended, and a wife who cannot be trusted while she’s awake. What other man in England is in such a predicament? God willing, it won’t last forever.

  ‘Musical chairs!’ exclaims Henry Calder Rackham, clapping his hands with a fleshy whup-whup-whup. ‘Who’s for musical chairs?’

  Some distance from the Rackhams, in a modest house stacked to the ceilings with rubbish and surplus furniture, Emmeline Fox sits eating fruit mince while her cat purrs at her naked feet.

  Before you jump to conclusions: it’s only her feet that are naked today; the rest of her is fully, unimpeachably dressed — indeed, she still wears her bonnet, for she’s been out and about. A visit to her father, to give him his Christmas present — a pointless exercise, since he celebrates nothing and desires nothing, but he’s her father, and she’s his daughter, so there it is. Every year they give each other a book, destined to remain unread, and wish each other a merry Christmas, though Doctor Curlew doesn’t believe in Christ, and Emmeline doesn’t believe that her Saviour was born on the 25th of December. Such are the silly compromises we make, to preserve peace with those of our own blood.

  Since returning from her father’s house, she hasn’t bothered to take anything off except her boots, which were pinching her toes. Once upon a time it was a mystery to her, how the dirt-poor could go barefoot in all weathers and appear to mind so little — indeed, how the tireless efforts of Mrs Timperley to collect shoes from the more fortunate and distribute them among the unshod never seemed to reduce the number of bare feet in London by even a single pair. Now she knows: feet that have grown used to nakedness are no longer happy in shoes. One might as well press shoes upon a cat.

  ‘Do you fancy a pair of smart black boots, Puss?’ she asks her companion, tickling his furry cheek. ‘Just like in the story?’

  They’re sitting together in the spot she likes best — half-way up the stairs. Christmas Day is half over, and her beloved Henry is three months dead. Three months by the calendar, three blinks of God’s eye, three eternities within the veiled confines of Emmeline’s house, where no one but she is permitted to enter anymore. Three French hens, Four collie birds, Five gold rings… improbable proofs of true love, extolled in ebullient singing voices from the house next door. How is it she can hear these folk so clearly today? She’s never heard them before …A high-pitched female voice and, underpinning it perfectly, the sonorous baritone of a male …

  Three months since Henry walked the earth, three months since he was buried inside it. The longer he’s gone, the more she thinks of him; and the more she thinks of him, the more those thoughts swell with feeling. Compared to him, all other men are selfish and sly; compared to Henry’s upright and muscular form, the shapes of other men appear cringing and grotesque. How it hurts her — like a claw squeezing her tender heart in a callous grip — to imagine him liquefying in the grave, his dear face mingling with the clay, his skull, once the home of so much passion and sincerity, an empty shell for worms to squirm in. She knows she’s a fool to indulge such gross phantasms, to torture herself so, when she ought to be anticipating the joyful day she and Henry are reunited … But will the Second Coming occur in her lifetime? She very much doubts it. A thousand years may pass before she sees his face again.

  Last Christmas Day, they walked the streets, side by side, and discussed the Gospels while everyone else was indoors playing parlour games. Henry had just read … what had he just read? He was always in a state ofjust having read something, bursting to share it with her before it passed out of his mind …Oh yes, an essay by a scholar of Greek, settling once and for all (said Henry) the centuries-old dispute over the meaning of Matthew I, verse 25. The Catholics were wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt; the new scholarship confirmed that when Saint Matthew said ‘till’ he meant ‘till’; and Henry wished the newspapers would have the moral backbone to advertise these momentous findings, instead of filling their pages with lurid accounts of murders and endorsements for hair-dye.

  And she? How did she respond to his earnest idealism? Why, the way she always did! By arguing with him, poor man. She said the dispute would never be settled, as no one who believed that a virgin could bear a child was going to take a blind bit of notice of a Greek scholar, and anyway, it didn’t matter to her, because when it came to the Gospels, she much preferred Mark and John, sensible men who had better things to do than discuss the fettle of Mary’s private parts.

  ‘But you do believe, though, don’t you,’ Henry said, with that adorable frown of worry on his forehead, ‘that our Saviour was conceived out of the

  Holy Ghost?’

  In response to which, she’d brazenly changed the subject, as she so often did. ‘For me,’ she asserted, ‘the real story doesn’t begin until later, in the River Jordan.’

  Lord! How Henry knit his brow at such moments! How earnestly he laboured to reassure himself she wasn’t a blasphemer against the faith that had brought them together. Did she enjoy teasing him? Yes, she must have enjoyed it. So many sunny afternoons she sent him on his way home perplexed, when she ought to have kissed him, thrown her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his, told him she worshipped him …

&nbs
p; She wipes her face on her sleeve, and trusts that God will understand.

  ‘Now?’ enquires her cat, butting his furry head against her naked ankle. She hasn’t fed him since this morning, and the closed curtains downstairs are glowing amber from a sun poised to disappear in twilight.

  ‘Do you eat fruit mince, Puss?’ she asks, offering him a gooey spoonful from the big glass jar in her lap. He sniffs it, even touches it with his nose, but …no.

  ‘Pity,’ she murmurs. ‘There’s rather a lot of it.’

  It’s Mrs Borlais’s surplus fruit mince; each member of the Rescue Society got a jar of it, on the understanding that it would fill Christmas tarts. No doubt her fellow Rescuers took up the challenge, either with their own hands or via their servants, but Emmeline’s pie-making days are lost in the mists of her marriage to Bertie. The raw mixture is very tasty, though. She spoons it from the jar into her mouth, dollop after dollop, knowing it will most likely make her sick or give her the runs, but relishing its spicy sweetness.

  Her father will soon be sitting down to Christmas dinner with his doctor friends. For politeness’ sake, and perhaps because he has some inkling of her domestic circumstances of late, he did invite her repeatedly to join them, but she declined. And so she ought! The last time she attended a dinner with her father’s friends, she shamed him terribly by lecturing them on the reasons why prostitutes shun doctors, and then urging them to donate their services gratis to desperate women once a week. If she’d accompanied him today, she would no doubt have muttered ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance’ a couple of times, suffered small talk for ten minutes or so, then reverted to type. She knows herself too well.