by Michel Faber
The food would’ve been awfully convenient, though. Just think of it all, steaming and sizzling on silver dishes, course after course … Not that she condones the gluttony to which the privileged classes fall prey in this once-holy festival; not that she fails to appreciate the terrible chasm between those who stuff their bloated bellies with a mountain of meat and those who stand shivering in line for a dish of watery soup. Her appetites are modest: sit her down at a Christmas banquet, and she’d have a slice of chicken or turkey and some roast vegetables, then nothing else until the pudding. A gourmand she most certainly is not. It’s only that hot meals — especially roast ones — are such a colossal bother to prepare for oneself.
‘Poor Puss,’ she croons, stroking him from head to tail. ‘You’d be very happy with a couple of nice juicy turtle-doves, wouldn’t you? Or a partridge in a pear tree? Let’s see what I can find for you.’
She rummages in the kitchen, but there’s nothing. The unwashed chopping-board has a sheen of fish oil on it that keeps him occupied for two minutes, but the leftover portion of ham hash she can’t find anywhere is, she suddenly recalls, inside her own stomach. Henry once said: ‘It’s frightening to think how easily one can spend an entire lifetime gratifying animal appetites.’ She, perhaps, will spend the rest of her life remembering all the things Henry said.
‘Now!’ her cat chastises her, and she’s forced to concede that good intentions are no substitute for action; so, she fetches her boots for another foray outdoors. Christmas or no Christmas, there will undoubtedly be meat for sale somewhere, if she’s willing to descend through the strata of society to find it. Decent folk may have shut their shops in honour of the infant Jesus, but the poor have hungry mouths to feed, and every day is the same to them. Emmeline buttons up her boots and slaps dust from the hem of her skirt, sending Puss skittering under a stockpile of chairs. She fetches her purse and checks how much money she has left. Plenty.
Mrs Rackham’s letter is still stowed in the bottom of her purse, getting rather mulched now amongst the coins and biscuit-crumbs. Will she reply, after what her father said this morning? She doubts it.
She wonders if she has betrayed Mrs Rackham, by discussing her case with the very man whom she so vehemently mistrusts. In her own defence, she can only plead that she did her best not to betray the wretched woman’s confidence, by soliciting her father’s professional opinion on the delusions of insane females generally.
Naturally he demanded at once, ‘Why do you want to know?’ Blunt and undiplomatic as ever! But she could hardly expect him to beat about the bush, when she wholly lacks that facility herself.
‘Oh, curiosity merely,’ she replied, aiming for, and probably missing by a mile, the insouciant manner of other women she’s met. ‘I don’t like to be ignorant.’
‘And what do you want to know in particular??
Still she kept Mrs Rackham’s secret. ‘Well … for example: what is the best way to convince a madwoman that an opinion she holds is mad?’ ‘You can’t convince her,’ he shot back.
‘Oh.’ In earlier times, that might have been the end of the conversation, but her father is less brusque these days, since he almost lost her. The stimulus of her illness has brought his love for her (which Emmeline has never doubted) closer to the surface of his skin, like a blush of infection, and he’s not quite managed to regain his chill composure since.
‘There’s nothing gained by it, my dear,’ he explained this morning. ‘What’s the use ofa person with a diseased mind being induced to say, “Yes, I admit I suffer from delusions?” An hour later she’ll only insist the opposite. It’s her diseased brain itself that must be cured, so that she’s no longer capable ofsuffering delusions. Consider the man with a broken arm: whether he denies or admits it’s broken makes no difference to the treatment required.’
‘How good, then, are the chances of a cure?’
‘Pretty decent if the woman’s of mature age, and was tolerably levelheaded until — for example — the grief of a tragic loss attacked her senses. If she’s been entertaining delusions since early girlhood, slim, I’d say.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I think my curiosity is satisfied. Thank you.’
Her disappointment with the efficacy of science must have pricked him, because he added, ‘One day, I expect pharmaceutics will offer a cure for even the severest mental illnesses. A vaccination, if you like. We’ll see all manner of wonders in the next century, I’m quite convinced.’
‘Small comfort to those now suffering.’
‘Ah,’ he smiled, ‘now that’s where you’re wrong, my girl. The intractably insane are intractable precisely because it suits them to be so. They don’t wish to be rescued! In which respect — if you’ll forgive me saying so — they’re very like your fallen women.’
‘Pax, father,’ she warned him. ‘I ought to be going. Thank you for the gift. Merry Christmas.’
But, worried that they would part on a sour note, he made a last gesture of appeasement.
‘Please tell me, Emmeline: why these questions? I might have something better to offer you if I knew a little more …’
She hesitated, and thought carefully before speaking — though as always, not carefully enough.
‘A lady has written to me, begging for the secret of eternal life. Eternal physical life, that is. She seems convinced that I know the location of a place where her …ah … immortal body is being kept waiting for her.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ her father said then, in a low and confidential tone, ‘to be concerned for Mrs Rackham. I can only assure you that she will soon be in the very best of hands.’
‘Now!’ howls Puss, digging his claws into her skirts.
‘Yes, yes, I’m going,’ Emmeline responds.
Night has fallen on the Rackham house and, as far as William is concerned, Christmas is still ticking along as agreeably as possible, in the circumstances.
His father’s call for a game of musical chairs causes a moment of awkwardness when the aroused volunteers suddenly remember that no one can play the piano — at least, no one present in their midst. However, Sugar saves the day — God bless her — with her devilish clever suggestion to use a music box instead. Sighs of relief all round, and the machine works a treat! William selects Clara to raise and lower its lid, on the assumption that this activity will suit her better than jostling for seats with her fellow servants — and he’s right. Why, is that a grin he sees twitching on her lips, when Letty almost falls? She certainly has a knack, whenever she flips the box shut, for cutting a musical note clean in half, foiling the quickest listener. The one player who gets a seat every time, despite his stiff joints, is Henry Calder Rackham, for he doesn’t mind whose hips he brushes against, or how rudely.
The old man is also a dab hand at Snapdragon, the next game on the agenda. When the lights are extinguished and the bowl of brandy is lit, three generations of Rackhams stand ready to plunge their hands into the flames. Henry Calder Rackham is first, his short wrinkled fingers darting into the flickering spirit in the blink of an eye, and almost as quickly tossing the raisin into his mouth.
‘Don’t be frightened, little one,’ he urges his grand-daughter. ‘You won’t get hurt if you’re quick enough.’
But Sophie hesitates, staring in fascination at the big shallow dish of blue flame, and William, fearing the spirit might burn itself out while she dithers, plucks out a raisin of his own.
‘Go on, Sophie dear,’ he commands her gently, as Rackham Senior seizes the opportunity to snap up another raisin.
Sophie jerks into obedience, squealing with fear and excitement as she snatches a raisin from the flames. Furtively she examines the tiny fruit between her fingers and, finding no flames on its dark wrinkled flesh, transfers it cautiously into her mouth, while the older Rackhams go after the rest.
The next game is dinner, and William’s father tackles it with the same gusto. As course follows course, he eats as much as Lord Unwin did at Lady Bridgelo
w’s party, allowing for the differences in the fare. (The Rackhams’ cook is no enthusiast for what she calls ‘recipes learned from savages’, but what she does turn her hand to is delicious, and Henry Calder Rackham is its ideal consumer.) Turkey, quails, roast beef, oyster patties, mince pies, Christmas pudding, port jelly, apple hedgehog — all these are put before him, and all vanish inside his chuckling frame.
Small wonder, then, that when the time comes for after-dinner amusements, and he sits beside the magic lantern to feed the painted slides into the brass slot, he takes advantage of the dark and the fact that everyone’s attention is directed elsewhere, to unbutton his waistcoat and trousers.
‘A little flower-girl am I,’ he recites breathily, for Sophie’s benefit, from the subtitles as the image glows on the parlour wall: a plump-cheeked poppet in rags, posed on a fake London street corner lovingly beautified by the tiny paintbrushes of the magic lantern company’s workers.
‘I’ll sell you pretty posies
Of buttercups and daffodils
Nothing so rich as roses.’
The child dies, of course, in the eighth slide. Already angelic when she was hawking her daffodils, she appears only marginally more radiant when a pair of sweet seraphs catch her swooning body and point her towards Heaven.
William, more accustomed to the pornographic slide shows put on by Bodley and Ashwell, is rather bored, but hides it, for his father has gone to the bother of buying three sets, and has already apologised sotto voce beforehand (‘So few of these damned things are suitable for children, y’know: they’ve nearly all got murder and infidelity in ‘em.’)
A second magic lantern story, about heroism during a shipwreck, follows close upon the first, and is well received by all the family, despite the fact that it has no parts for females in it. The third and last, a woeful tale of a young watercress-seller who dies trying to save her dipsomaniac father, reduces Letty and Janey to helpless sobs, and ends with the word ‘TEMPERANCE!’ glowing on the parlour wall — a slightly irksome conclusion to the proceedings, since William and his father are by now looking forward to a strong drink.
‘Good night, little Sophie,’ says William, as Rose rekindles the lamps and the magic lantern is extinguished. For an instant Sugar hesitates, uncomprehending, then realises with a jolt that the Christmas celebrations have come to an end — for child and governess, at least.
‘Yes, goodnight, little Sophie,’ says Henry Calder Rackham, spreading an unused table napkin over his lap. ‘Run up to your fine new toys now — before a thief comes and steals ‘em!’
Sugar casts a glance around the parlour, and notices that the presents have already been removed, every scrap of wrapping-paper cleaned away, even the tiniest curls of stray tinsel picked up from the carpets. Apart from Rose, who’s uncorking the liquor, the servants have melted back into the recesses of the Rackham house, each to her own function. The male Rackhams are slumped, heavy-lidded, in their chairs, tired out from administering so much pleasure.
Lingering momentarily in the threshold of the room, with Sophie’s hand clasped in hers, Sugar looks over to Rose, and succeeds in catching her eye, but the servant is unresponsive; she lowers her head to concentrate on the unveiling of a tray of rum slices. Whatever intimacy she and Sugar have shared, whatever foolhardy acts they enjoyed together, a line has now been drawn between them.
‘Good night,’ says Sugar, too quietly to be heard, and she escorts Sophie out to the stairs, and up into the silent parts of the house, where their gifts await them, leaning against their bedroom doors in the dark.
Putting Sophie to bed is out of the question; the child is too excited, and there are miraculous new toys to play with. While Sugar looks on, unsure how to behave, Sophie kneels on the floor, face to face with the French doll, and wheels the creature gently back and forth. In the dim yellowish light of her bedroom, it looks more mysterious than it did downstairs in the parlour; more mysterious, and yet also more realistic, like a real lady who’s just emerged from a ball or a theatre, venturing across the carpeted street in search of her private carriage.
‘Now where can that fellow be?’ murmurs Sophie in an affected, helpless voice, turning the doll three hundred and sixty degrees. ‘I told him to wait for me here … ‘
She picks up the spyglass, extends it to its full length, lifts it to her right eye.
‘I’ll find him with this,’ she declares, in a more boyish, confident tone. ‘Even if he’s far, far away.’ And she inspects the environs, focusing on likely prospects — a knot in the wood of the skirting-board, a dangling curtain-sash, the blurry skirts of her governess.
Suddenly serious, she looks up at Sugar and says,
‘Do you think I could be an explorer, Miss?’
‘An explorer?’
‘When I’m older, Miss.’
‘I … I don’t see why not.’ Sugar wishes Sophie would make a mention — indeed, make just a small fuss — of the little book that’s lying neglected on the floor, inscribed on its flyleaf To Sophie, from Miss Sugar, Christmas 1875.
‘It mightn’t be permitted, Miss,’ reflects the child, wrinkling her brow. ‘A lady explorer.’
‘These are modern times, Sophie dear,’ sighs Sugar. ‘Women can do all sorts ofthings nowadays.’
Sophie’s forehead wrinkles deeper still, as the irreconcilable faiths of her nurse and her governess collide in her over-taxed brain. ‘Perhaps,’ she muses, ‘I could explore places the gentlemen explorers don’t wish to explore.’
A noise drifts up from somewhere outside the house: a procession of strangers is tramping up the Rackham path, singing ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’, their rough voices indistinct in the gusty night. Sophie walks over to the window, stands on tiptoe, and tries to peer down into the dark, but sees nothing.
‘More people,’ she declares, in a fanciful ‘well-I-never!’ tone, like a fairytale hostess who has invited half a dozen guests, only to be deluged by a thousand. Sugar realises the child is deliriously tired and ought to be steered towards sleep after all.
‘Come, Sophie,’ she says. ‘Time for bed. Your bath can wait until tomorrow. And I’m sure you will need a whole fresh day to get properly acquainted with all your gifts.’
Sophie totters away from the window and surrenders herself into Sugar’s hands. Though she doesn’t resist the undressing, she’s less helpful than usual, and stares dumbly ahead of her while her clothes are stripped off her unbending limbs. There’s an odd, haunted expression on her face, a hint of wounded affront in her naked body as Sugar prods her gently to raise her arms for the night-gown.
‘Now bring us some figgy pudding
Now bring us some figgy pudding
And a cup of good cheer …’ the carol-singers are chanting below.
‘There’s no use anyone waking my Mama now, is there, Miss?’ Sophie blurts out. ‘She has missed everything.’
Sugar pulls back the bed-sheets, removes the warming-pan Letty has nestled there, and pats the hot spot.
‘We won’t go until we’ve got some,
We won’t go until we’ve got some
‘She’s not very well, Sophie,’ Sugar says.
‘I think she’ll die soon,’ decides Sophie, as she climbs into bed. ‘And then they’ll put her in the ground.’
Downstairs, a door slams, and the voices are silent — presumably satisfied. Sugar, trying not to show the nauseous chill that the child’s words have injected into her blood, tucks Sophie up and straightens her pillow. Mindful of first impressions in the morning to come, she gathers up the gifts and arranges them carefully on top of the dresser, standing the queenly French doll next to the slumped form of the grinning nigger manikin. Sophie’s new purse, hair-brush, hairclip and mirror she lays in a row, punctuated with the spyglass stood on its end. Finally, she displays, upright, the book.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it says. But Sophie has already fallen down the rabbit-hole of unconsciousness, into an uneasy wonderland of her own
.
Rap-rap.
‘Miss Sugar?’ Rap-rap-rap. ‘Miss Sugar?’
Rap-rap-rap-rap. ‘Miss Sugar!’
She sits bolt upright in her bed, gasping in terror and confusion as the brute who has ‘come to keep her warm’ is whisked off her childish body and she’s left alone once more — older, bigger, elsewhere, in the dark.
‘Wh-who is it?’ she calls into the blackness.
‘Clara, Miss.’
Sugar rubs her eyes with the rough heels of her palms, thinking that if she blinks hard enough, she’ll see sunlight. ‘Have … have I slept too long?’
‘Please, Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham says I’m to come in.’
The door swings open, and the servant steps inside, lamp held high, uniform rumpled, head haloed with unbrushed hair. Clara’s face, normally inscrutable or smug, is distorted by wavering shadows and a look of naked fear.
‘I’m to make sure no one’s come into your bedroom, Miss.’
Sugar blinks dumbly, through the orange fuzz ofher own disordered hair. She motions consent for Clara to reconnoitre the geography of her tiny room, and the girl immediately hoists her lamp towards the four corners, here, there, here, there, sending the light and shadow veering dramatically. In her solemn thoroughness she looks like a Papist officiating a censer ritual.
‘F’give me, Miss,’ she mumbles, opening Sugar’s wardrobe a crack.
‘Is Sophie all right?’ says Sugar, having by now lit her own bedside lamp. The time, she notes, is 3 a.m.
Clara doesn’t reply, except with an extravagant curtsy, so low as to be fit for a queen. Only at the last possible instant does Sugar realise it’s not a curtsy at all, but that the servant is preparing to look under the bed.
‘Let me help you!’ she says hastily, and dangles over the side, her mass of uncombed hair tumbling to the floor. Supported on one elbow, she sweeps her other arm into the shadowy space under her bed, thwacking the diaries against one another to emphasise their status as non-human debris.