by Michel Faber
Again he casts a glance over each shoulder, to be satisfied that the motley scattering of street-sweepers, errand-boys, pampered dogs and ladies is out ofearshot. ‘Emmeline, I’ll come straight to the point. In Mrs Rackham’s letter to you, she mentioned a place she badly wished to go. Did she give any hint where she might imagine this place was? Geographically speaking?’
Emmeline hardly knows whether to be amused or mortified. ‘Well, you know, father, she was rather relying on me to tell her.’
‘And what did you advise?’
‘I never replied,’ says Emmeline. ‘You dissuaded me.’
Doctor Curlew nods, obviously disappointed. ‘God help her,’ he mutters, as a dray-horse and carriage jingle past, disgorging a long trail of tumbling turds.
‘I didn’t know Mrs Rackham was so far gone,’ says Emmeline. ‘In her head, I mean.’
Curlew checks the current whereabouts of the street-sweeper, but the fellow hasn’t budged, having set his sights on a different, more generous-looking couple approaching a different pile of ordure.
‘She ran away on Christmas night, too,’ he explains. ‘Half the Rackham household was out in the sleet and snow, searching for her until dawn. Eventually she was found hiding in the coach-house, by Miss Sugar, the governess.’
Emmeline’s ears prick up at the name: unusual though it is, she could swear she’s seen it in print only recently. But where?
‘What a lamentable business — I had no idea!’ she says. ‘But what about her husband, William — hasn’t he any suspicion where his wife might be?’
Doctor Curlew shakes his head.
‘Our champion of industry,’ he says, with weary sardonicism, ‘has only this morning been fetched home from a hospital in Somerset. He was attacked by bughunters in Frome.’
Emmeline snorts most indecorously. ‘Attacked by … what?’
‘Bughunters. Robbers who wait outside public houses, preying on helpless drunkards. Really, Emmeline, you’ve spent so long in the Rescue Society among London’s low-life, and never heard the term?’
‘I’ve heard other terms you may not have heard, Father,’ she retorts. ‘But how is Mr Rackham?’
Doctor Curlew sighs irritably. ‘He’s minus one silver watch, one overcoat, and a quantity of money; also he’s black and blue, with concussion, fogged vision, and a couple of broken fingers. One of the ruffians jumped on his right hand, it seems. He’s damned lucky to have escaped a knifing.’
Emmeline sees the butcher’s shop up ahead, a place where she’s lately become quite well-known. If she’d remembered to bring her purse, she could have bought Puss some breakfast. Perhaps the butcher will give her credit …
‘It sounds like a matter for the police,’ she says, slowing her pace, wondering how much longer her father means to walk with her before he accepts she’s of no use to him and leaves her to her own devices. If only she can have a few friendly words with the butcher, in private …
‘Rackham won’t hear of it. The poor fool is afraid of scandal.’
‘But surely, if his wife’s been missing for two days …’
‘Yes, yes, of course he’ll have to call the police, and soon. But in his mind they are the last resort.’
Emmeline dawdles to a standstill in front of a window crowded with upside-down lamb and piglet carcasses, the yawning slits of whose abdomens are adorned with strings of sausages.
‘Which means, I suppose,’ she says, ‘that I was the next-to-last?’
Doctor Curlew stares hard at the woman by his side, this carelessly dressed, indifferently groomed, scrawny package of flesh and bone which, thirty years ago, he created. She’s grown tall since then, and not very beautiful — a less than felicitous combination of his own long face and his wife’s knobbly, irregular skull. In a flash he recalls the date of her birth and her mother’s death — bloody events that occurred in the same bed, on the same night — and suddenly appreciates that despite her ill health Emmeline has reached a far greater age than her own mother ever did. Her mother died rosy-cheeked and uncomprehending, without these worry-wrinkles on her brow, these crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, that expression of weary wisdom and stoically endured grief.
He bows his head as the heavens open and heavy drops of rain begin to spatter down on the pair of them.
‘Pax, daughter,’ he sighs.
‘The police,’ says William. ‘I shall have t-t-to tell the p-police.’ And he winces in exasperation at this cursed stutter his cracked skull has inflicted on his tongue. As if his share of calamity weren’t generous enough already!
He and Sugar are in his study, quite late in the evening of the 30th of December. If the servants wish to gossip, they’ll no doubt feel free, but there’s no impropriety here, damn it: the governess is merely lending her services after-hours as a secretary, while the master’s injuries render him unfit to write his own correspondence. Lord Almighty, why can’t he make use of the only properly literate woman in his household without a busybody like Clara suspecting him of debauches? Let her poke her sticky nose in here if she dares, and she’ll find no goings-on but the rustling of papers!
‘What d’you think, hmm?’ he challenges Sugar, from across the room. (He’s stretched out on an ottoman, his head wreathed in bandages, his puffy, purplish face embroidered with black designs of dry blood, his right hand noosed in a sling, while Sugar sits erect at his desk, pen poised over an as-yet-undictated letter.) ‘You’re damn silent.’
Sugar considers carefully before responding. She’s found him awfully peevish since his return from Somerset; the knock on the head hasn’t done him any good. Her initial elation at being trusted with his correspondence, at being installed in his very own chair at the polished walnut helm of Rackham Perfumeries, has been spoilt by his frighteningly volatile moods. Even the thrill of receiving his blessing to forge the Rackham signature, after she and William agreed this would be preferable to the infantile botch he made of his name left-handed, was not quite so thrilling once she was scolded for taking too long over it.
‘Police? You know best, William,’ she says. ‘Although I must admit I can’t see how Agnes could have got very far. A woman hobbling on injured feet, without even a dress on, if we’re to believe Clara …’
‘It’s been th-three days!’ he exclaims, as if this proves, or refutes, everything.
Sugar picks through various courses of action she could recommend, but unfortunately most of them carry some risk, great or small, of Agnes being found.
‘Well…’ she suggests, ‘instead of hordes of bobbies, and notices in the newspapers, could you perhaps engage a detective?’ (She knows nothing about detectives beyond what she’s read in The Moonstone, but she hopes the bumbling Seegraves outnumber the clever Cuffs.)
‘Damned if I do, damned if I don’t!’ William cries, his left hand reaching for a handful of hair to squeeze, and finding only bandage.
‘I–I’m sorry, my love?’
‘If I th-throw Agnes’s predicament into the public domain, her disgrace will be unim-m-wwginable. Her name — and mine — will be ridiculed from here to …to … Tunisia! But if I’m discreet, and another day passes, and sh-she’s in deadly danger …!’
‘But what danger can she be in?’ argues Sugar in her mildest, most reasonable tone. ‘Ifshe succumbed to the cold on the night she ran away, she … well, she can’t come to any more harm now, and all that remains is to find her body. And if she’s alive, that can only mean someone has taken her in. Which means she’ll remain safe for a little while longer while discreet investi–’
‘She’s my w-w-wife, damn it!’ he yells. ‘My wife?
Sugar bows her head at once, hoping his fury dies down before the servants or Sophie get wind of it. The page of Rackham stationery under her hands says ‘Dear Mr Woolworth’ and nothing more; a droplet of ink has fallen unnoticed off her pen and stained the letterhead.
‘Can’t you appreciate A-Agnes may be in urgent need of rescue?? William rails, wa
ving his good hand accusingly at the world outside.
‘But William, as I’ve just said …’
‘It’s not a simple ch-choice between her being dead or alive — th-there is a fate w-w-worse than death!’
Sugar raises her head, incredulous.
‘Don’t play the in-innocent with me!’ he rages. ‘Even as we speak, some f-foul old hag like your Mrs Castaway may be in-in-installing her in a f-filthy bawdy-house!’
Sugar bites her lip, and turns away from him, facing the tobacco-stained wallpaper. She breathes regularly and doesn’t wipe the tears off her cheeks, but lets them trickle down her chin and into the collar of her dress.
‘I’m sure,’ she says, when she can trust her voice not to betray her, ‘that Agnes is too frail and unwell to …to be made use ofas you fear.’
‘Haven’t you read More Sprees in L-London?? he demands, quick as a whiplash. ‘There’s a n-nice little trade in dying girls — or have you forgotten!’ And he utters a sharp groan of disgust, as though the eggshell of his innocence has only just this minute been smashed, allowing the offensive stink of human depravity to invade his nostrils.
Sugar sits silent, waiting for him to speak again, but his tantrum appears to have passed, his shoulders have slumped, and after a few minutes she begins to wonder if he’s slipped into a doze.
‘William?’ she says meekly. ‘Shall we reply to Mr Woolworth now?’
Farewell then, 1875.
If there are any rituals of celebration, in the Rackham house, on the 31st of December, they are conducted in secret, and emphatically do not involve the master. Other households all over the metropolis — indeed, throughout the civilised world — may be abuzz with New Year expectancy, but in the house in Chepstow Villas the commencement of a fresh calendar is of pale significance compared to the event everyone is waiting for. Life hangs suspended between two eras: the time before Mrs Rackham’s disappearance, and the time — whenever that may come — when her fate is discovered, and the house can exhale its painfully bated breath.
On the first day of January, 1876, the servants busy themselves with their tasks as though it’s a day like any other. Baking-pans are greased for loaves that may or may not be required; linen is ironed and added to stacks of superfluous bedding; a quantity of duck flesh which has sprouted maggots has had to be given to Shears for compost, but otherwise efficiency rules. Even Clara walks purposefully up and down the stairs, and in and out of Mrs Rackham’s bedroom, warning the other servants, with one scowl from her sour face, that they’d better refrain from asking why.
By contrast, no one could accuse the governess of being surplus to requirements; the first half of New Year’s Day finds her fully occupied with her new routine: lessons with Miss Sophie in the morning, a hasty lunch, and then two hours of work for the master in his study.
Sugar and William get down to business without niceties or preambles. The cogs of industry pause for no man or woman; there’s no use pleading that one’s fingers are broken or that one’s head hurts or that one’s wife is missing; accounts must be paid, errant suppliers must be pursued, the failure of Rackham’s Millefleur Sachets must be unflinchingly confronted.
Sugar writes letters to a number of So-and-So Esquires, gently counsels William to amend the often belligerent and wounded tone of his dictation, and does her best to ensure the letters don’t ramble into incoherence. Almost without thinking she translates phrases like ‘L-let him chew on that, the scoundrel!’ as ‘Yours, ever’, and corrects his arithmetic whenever his patience with numbers is exhausted. Already today he has indulged in one furious outburst against a lampblack manufacturer in West Ham, and now slumps on the ottoman, snoring stertorously through his swollen, blood-clogged nose.
‘William?’ says Sugar softly, but he doesn’t hear, and she’s learned that rousing him with a loud voice makes him very cross indeed, whereas if she lets him sleep he tends to absolve her with a mild reproach.
To help time pass until William’s discomforts wake him, or until she must return to Sophie, Sugar reads The Illustrated London News, turning the pages in silence. She’s aware that the police have by now been alerted to Agnes’s disappearance, but William’s request for utmost discretion has evidently been honoured, for the newspaper makes no mention of Mrs Rackham. Instead, the sensational news of the day is what’s dubbed (as if already legendary) The Great Northern Railway Disaster. An engraving, ‘based upon a sketch hastily made by a survivor of the accident’, depicts a squad of burly men in thick coats congregating around an overturned carriage of The Flying Scotsman. The engraver’s lack of skill, or perhaps his surfeit of delicacy, makes the rescuers look like postmen offloading sacks of mail, and conveys nothing of the true horror of the event. Thirteen persons dead, twenty-four severely injured, in a dreadful collision at Abbots Ripton, north of Peterborough. A signal frozen into the ‘Off’ position signal is blamed. A calamity to make Colonel Leek’s juices surge!
Sugar thinks of Agnes, of course; pictures her being extracted, broken and disembowelled, from the wreckage. Is it conceivable that Agnes took so long to make the journey from Notting Hill to the city, and that she would then have boarded this Edinburgh-bound train? Sugar is at a disadvantage, having no idea what destination Agnes chose once she arrived – if she arrived — at Paddington Station; ‘Read the boards, and the right name will reveal itself to you’ was the only advice the ‘Holy Sister’ gave — the only advice she could give, given Sugar’s ignorance of railways and where they go. What if Agnes was charmed by the ecclesiastical ring of ‘Abbots Ripton’, and made up her mind to alight there?
Printed underneath the article is a footnote entitled ‘The Safety of Rail Travel’:
In 1873,17,246 persons met with violent deaths, averaging 750 per million. Of these 1,290 were due to railways, 990 to mining, and 6,070 to other mechanical causes; 3,232 were drowned, 1,519 were killed by horses or conveyances, and 1,132 by machinery of various kinds; the rest by falls, burns, suffocation, and other events to which we are liable daily.
While William snores and groans in uneasy dreams, Sugar pictures Agnes falling down a mine-shaft, Agnes floating face-down in a filthy pond, Agnes being scooped screaming into a threshing-machine, Agnes disappearing under the trampling hooves and grinding wheels of a horse and carriage, Agnes pitching headlong off a cliff, Agnes writhing in agony as her body is consumed by flames. Perhaps she would’ve been better off in Labaube Sanatorium, after all …
But no. Agnes wasn’t on that train, nor has she suffered any of these gruesome fates. She has done exactly what her Holy Sister told her to. By the evening of the 28 th, she was already far out of harm’s way, safely housed in a pastoral sanctuary. Imagine a simple farmer toiling in his field, doing … doing whatever it is that farmers do in their fields. He spies a strange woman coming through the corn, or wheat, or whatever; a shabbily dressed, limping woman on the point of collapse. What does she seek? The convent, she says, and swoons at his feet. The farmer carries her to his house, where his wife is stirring a pot of soup …
‘Nff! Nff!’ moans William, fighting off phantasmagoric attackers with his free hand.
Sugar imagines an alternative story for Agnes: a bewildered Mrs Rackham stumbles out of a rural railway station, by the light of the moon, into a sinister village square, and is instantly set upon by a gang of ruffians, who rob her of the money Sugar gave her, then rip the clothes from her body, wrench her legs apart, and …
The clock chimes two. It’s time for Sophie Rackham’s afternoon lessons.
‘Excuse me, William,’ she murmurs, and his whole body jerks.
As the days pass, and the new year that dare not speak its name ventures uneasily forward, it seems the only member of the Rackham household to remain unaffected by Agnes’s absence is Sophie. No doubt the child has feelings on the matter, hidden somewhere within her compact, tightly-buttoned frame, but in her articulate responses she betrays nothing more than curiosity.
‘Has my Mama still
run away?’ she asks each morning, with somewhat blurry grammar and an unreadable expression to match.
‘Yes, Sophie,’ her governess replies, catechism-style, whereafter the day’s work begins.
In a topsy-turvy contrast that’s not lost on Sugar, Sophie’s behaviour is the very epitome of studious calm, patience and maturity, while William Rackham sulks and stammers and bawls, and falls asleep in mid-task, like a querulous infant. Sophie applies herself to the study of Australia with the earnestness of one who might expect to live there shortly, and she memorises the prejudices of ancient English monarchs as though this is quite the most useful information a six-year-old girl could arm herself with.
Even in play, she seems determined to atone for her sinful excesses at Christmas. The gorgeous French doll, which might have expected a busy schedule of social activities, is made to spend a great deal of its time standing in a corner, meditating upon its own vanity, while Sophie sits quietly at her desk drawing with her crayons, producing sketch after sketch depicting a brown-skinned menial mounted on an elephant, each more lovingly rendered than the last.
She’s working her way through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland too, a chapter at a time, re-reading each episode over and over until she has either memorised it or understood it, whichever comes first. It’s quite the strangest tale she’s ever read, but there must be a reason why her governess has given it to her, and the more she reads it, the more accustomed she grows to its terrors, until the animals seem almost as friendly as Mr Lear’s. Judging from the illustrations in the later parts she hasn’t read yet, the story may be heading for a violent end, but she’ll find out when she gets there, and the final three words are ‘happy summer days’, which can’t be too bad. Some of the drawings in it she likes very much, like the one of Alice swimming with the Mouse (the only time her face looks carefree), and also the one which has the power to make her laugh out loud every time she sees it, of the uncommonly fat man spinning through the air. It must surely have been executed by a wizard, that drawing — a pattern of inky lines that works as a magic spell, acting directly upon her belly to call forth a hiccup of laughter no matter how hard she tries to resist. As for the part where Alice says ‘Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’, Sophie must take a deep breath whenever she re-reads it, so alarmed is she by this quotation from her most secret thoughts.