by Michel Faber
‘Good girl …’ she murmurs, too softly for Sophie to hear. How delicious it is to hear one’s own words, doggerel or not, sung by another human being …
‘Henry the Third reigned second longest,
But his mind and health were not the strongest.
Edward Longshanks was almost wed,
Which might have saved the Scots bloodshed.’
‘Why, it’s little Sophie Rackham!’ cries an unfamiliar woman’s voice, and Sugar is roused to seek out the person that goes with it. There, at the gate of the park, stands Emmeline Fox, waving madly. How odd, to see a respectable woman waving so hard! And, as she waves, her ample bosom swings loosely inside her bodice, suggesting she hasn’t a corset on. Sugar is no expert when it comes to the finer details of respectability, but she does wonder if these things can be quite comme il faut …
‘Miss Sugar, unless I’m mistaken?’ says Mrs Fox, already crossing the distance between them.
‘Y-yes,’ says Sugar, rising from the bench. ‘And you are Mrs Fox, I believe.’
‘Yes, indeed I am. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’
‘O-oh, and I’m pleased to make yours,’ responds Sugar, two or three seconds later than she should. Mrs Fox, having strolled into arm’s reach, seems content to loiter there; if she’s noticed Sugar’s unease, she takes no notice of it. Instead, she nods towards Sophie, who, after a momentary pause, has resumed her marching and singing.
‘A novel approach to History. I might have disliked the discipline less myself, had I been given such rhymes.’
‘I wrote them for her,’ blurts Sugar.
Unnervingly, Mrs Fox looks her straight in the face, eyes slightly narrowed. ‘Well, clever you,’ she says, with a strange smile.
Sugar feels sweat prickling and trickling in the black armpits of her dress. What the devil is wrong with this woman? Are her wits cracked, or is it mischief?
‘I …I find that some of the books given to children are deadly,’ says Sugar, ransacking her brains for appropriate conversation. ‘They kill the desire to learn. But Sophie has a few good ones now, up-to-date ones that W–were bought by Mr Rackham, at my request. Although I must say’ (a breath of relief cools the perspiration on her brow, as she’s suddenly inspired by a memory) ‘that Sophie is still very fond of a book of fairy stories given her one Christmas, by her uncle Henry, who I believe was a dear friend of yours.’
Mrs Fox blinks and goes a little paler, as though she’s just been slapped, or kissed. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘He was.’
‘On the flyleaf,’ Sugar presses on, ‘he signed himself Your tiresome Uncle Henry?
Mrs Fox shakes her head and sighs, as though hearing a rumour made vicious by its passage from gossip to gossip. ‘He wasn’t in the least tiresome. He was the dearest man.’ And she sits heavily on the bench, without warning or formality.
Sugar sits down beside her, rather excited by the way the conversation is going — for she seems, after a shaky start, to have won the upper hand. After only a moment’s hesitation, she decides to kill two birds with one stone: show off her intimate knowledge of Sophie Rackham’s books, in case Mrs Fox should have any doubts as to her credentials as a governess — and pry.
‘Tell me, Mrs Fox, if it wouldn’t be prying: am I right to suppose that you were the “good friend” Henry Rackham referred to in his inscription? The friend who scolded him for giving Sophie a Bible when she was only three years old?’
Mrs Fox laughs sadly, but her eyes are bright, and they gaze at Sugar unwaveringly. ‘Yes, I did feel that three was a little young for Deuteronomy and Lamentations? she says. ‘And as for Lot’s daughters and Onan and all that business, well …a child deserves a few years of innocence, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Sugar, a trifle hazy on the particulars but in full agreement with the sentiment. Then, in case her ignorance has shown on her face, she assures Mrs Fox: ‘I do read to Sophie from the Bible, though. The thrilling stories: Noah and the Flood, the Prodigal Son, Daniel in the lion’s den …’
‘But not Sodom and Gomorrah,’ says Mrs Fox, leaning closer, never blinking.
‘No.’
‘Quite right,’ says Mrs Fox. ‘I walk the streets of our very own Sodom several days a week. It corrupts children as gladly as it corrupts anyone else.’
What a strange person Mrs Fox is, with her long ugly face and her searching eyes! Is she safe? Why does she stare so? Sugar suddenly wishes Sophie were sitting here between them, to keep the conversation sweet.
‘Sophie can join us, if you like, since you’ve known her so long. I’ll call her, shall I?’
‘No, don’t,’ Mrs Fox replies at once, in a not unfriendly but remarkably firm tone. ‘Sophie and I aren’t nearly as well acquainted as you suppose. When Henry and I used to visit the Rackham house, she was never in evidence; one would scarcely have guessed she existed. I only used to see her at church, and then only at services not attended by Mrs Rackham. The coincidence — or whatever is the opposite of co-incidence, I perhaps should say — grew very curious after a while.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean.’
‘I mean, Miss Sugar, that it was plain Mrs Rackham was no lover of children. Or, to speak even plainer, that she appeared not to acknowledge the existence of her own daughter.’
‘It’s not for me to judge what went on in Mrs Rackham’s head,’ says Sugar. ‘I saw little of her; she was already unwell when I came into the household. But…’ (Mrs Fox’s raised eyebrow is an intimidating thing: it suggests that any governess professing ignorance of the facts must be either stupid or lying) ‘But I do believe you are right.’
‘And what about you, Miss Sugar?’ says Mrs Fox, laying her hands on her knees and leaning forward, in an attitude of getting down to business. ‘You like children, I trust?’
‘Oh, yes. I am certainly very fond of Sophie.’
‘Yes, that’s easily seen. Is she the first pupil you’ve had?’
‘No,’ replies Sugar, her face composed, her mind spinning like a Catherine wheel. ‘Before Sophie I took care of a little boy. Called Christopher. In Dundee.’ (William’s long-running battle with the jute merchants has branded plenty of names and facts about Dundee on her memory, should she be challenged to quote them; God forgive her for claiming to have done anything for Christopher, when, far from nurturing the poor child, she’s left him in the lion’s den …)
‘Dundee?’ echoes Mrs Fox. ‘What an awfully long way for you to come. Although you don’t sound like a Scotchwoman — more like a Londoner, I’d say.’
‘I’ve lived in quite a few places.’ ‘Yes, I’m sure you have.’
There follows an awkward pause, during which Sugar wonders what on earth became of the upper hand she thought she had. The only way to regain it, she decides, is to go on the offensive.
‘I’m so pleased you decided to go out walking on the same morning as Sophie and me,’ she says. ‘I believe you were recently in very poor health?’
Mrs Fox tips her head to one side and smiles wearily. ‘Very poor, very poor,’ she concedes, in a sing-song tone. ‘But I’m sure I suffered less than those who watched me suffer. They were convinced I’d die, you see, whereas I knew I wouldn’t. Now here I am’ — she waves an open hand, as if signalling an invisible queue of people to pass ahead of her – ‘witnessing a pressing crowd of unfortunates blunder to their graves.’
But you don’t understand: Agnes is alive! thinks Sugar, indignant. ‘A crowd?’ she demurs. ‘I admit it’s awful, two members of the same family, but really …!’
‘Oh no, I didn’t mean the Rackhams,’ says Mrs Fox. ‘Oh dear now, I do apologise. I thought you would know that I work for the Rescue Society.’
‘The Rescue Society? I confess I’ve never heard of it.’
Mrs Fox laughs, an odd throaty sound. ‘Ah, Miss Sugar, how crestfallen, how mortified, some of my colleagues would be to hear you say that! However, I shall tell you: we are an organisation of l
adies that reforms, or at least tries to reform, prostitutes.’ Again the mercilessly direct stare. ‘Forgive me if that word offends you.’
‘No, no, not at all,’ says Sugar, though she feels the heat of a blush on her cheeks. ‘Please go on; I should like to know more.’
Mrs Fox looks theatrically to heaven, and declares (wryly or in earnest, Sugar cannot tell), ‘Ah! the voice of our sex’s future!’ She leans still closer to Sugar on the bench, inspired it seems to even greater intimacy. ‘I pray a time will come, when all educated women will be anxious to discuss this subject, without hypocrisy or evasion.’
‘I-I hope so too,’ stammers Sugar, longing for Sophie to come to her aid, even if it’s with a wail of distress following a fall. But Sophie is still marching around the fountain, by no means finished with the kings of England.
‘… Wat Tyler’s mob and Wycliffe’s Scripture,
We find in the reign of the second Richard.’
‘Prostitution is certainly a terrible problem,’ says Sugar, keeping her face turned towards Sophie. ‘But can you — can your Rescue Society — really hope ever to stamp it out?’
‘Not in my lifetime,’ replies Mrs Fox, ‘but perhaps in hers.’
Sugar is tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the notion, but then she sees Sophie stamping into view, singing,
‘Henry the Fourth slept with his crown
While Arundel put the lollies down,’ and suddenly catches such a strong whiff of innocence that she’s half-convinced Mrs Fox’s dream might yet come to pass.
‘The greatest obstacle,’ Mrs Fox declares, ‘is the persistence of lies. Principally the foul and cowardly lie, that the root of prostitution is women’s wickedness. I’ve heard this a thousand times, even from the mouths of prostitutes themselves!’
‘What is the root, then? Is it men’s wickedness?’
Mrs Fox’s grey complexion is growing rosier by the second; she’s warming to her topic. ‘Only insofar as men make the laws that determine what a woman may and may not do. And laws are not merely a matter of what’s in the statute books! The sermon of a clergyman who has no love in his heart, that is law; the way our sex is demeaned and made trivial in newspapers, in novels, even on the labels of the tiniest items of household produce, that is law. And, most of all, poverty is law. If a man falls on hard times, a five-pound note and a new suit of clothes can restore him to respectability, but if a woman falls …!’ She puffs with exasperation, cheeks flushed, quite worked up now. Her bosom swells and subsides in rapid respiration, nipples showing with every breath. ‘A woman is expected to remain in the gutter. You know, Miss Sugar, I’ve never yet met a prostitute who would not have preferred to be something else. If only she could?
‘But how,’ says Sugar, quailing once more under that stare, and blushing from her hairline to her collar, ‘does your Society go about …uh … rescuing a prostitute?’
‘We visit the brothels, the houses of ill repute, the streets … the parks … wherever prostitutes are found, and we warn them — if we’re given the chance — of the fate that awaits them.’
Sugar nods attentively, rather glad, in retrospect, that she never stirred from her bed on those mornings when the Rescue Society used to call on Mrs Castaway’s.
‘We offer them refuge, though sadly we’ve precious few houses available for this purpose,’ continues Mrs Fox. ‘If only this country’s half-empty churches could be used more sensibly! But no matter, we do what we can with the beds available … And what do we do then? Well, if the girls have a trade, we do our utmost to restore them to it, with letters of recommendation. I’ve written many such. If they have no trade, we see to it they’re taught a useful skill, like needlework or cooking. There are servants in some of the best households who got there by way of the Rescue Society.’
‘Goodness.’
Mrs Fox sighs. ‘Of course, it says very little for our society — English society, I mean — that the best we can offer a young woman is respectable servitude. But we can only address one evil at a time. And the urgency is great. Each day, prostitutes are dying.’
‘But what of?’ enquires Sugar, provoked to curiosity, even though she knows the answers already.
‘Disease, childbirth, murder, suicide,’ Mrs Fox replies, enunciating each with due care. ‘“Too late”: that’s the wretched phrase that haunts our efforts. I visited a house of prostitution only yesterday, a place known as Mrs Castaway’s, looking for a particular girl I’d read about in a vile publication called More Sprees In London. I found that the girl was long gone, and that Mrs Castaway had died.’
Sugar’s guts turn to stone; only the cast-iron seat of the bench stops her body emptying its heavy innards onto the ground beneath.
‘Died?’ she whispers.
‘Died,’ confirms Mrs Fox, her big grey eyes sensitive to every tiny flicker of reaction in her quarry. ‘Died …of what?’
‘The new madam didn’t tell me. Our conversation was cut short by the door slamming in my face.’
Sugar cannot endure Mrs Fox’s gaze anymore. She lowers her head, giddy and sick, and stares into the crumpled blackness of her own lap. What to do? What to say? If life were one of Rose’s tuppenny Gem Pocket books, she could stab Mrs Fox through the heart with a dagger, and enlist Sophie’s help in burying the corpse; or she could fall at Mrs Fox’s feet and beg her not to divulge her secret. Instead, she continues to stare into her lap, breathing shallowly, until she becomes aware of something bubbling in her nostrils, and, wiping her nose, finds her glove slicked with bright-red blood.
A white handkerchief appears in front of her eyes, held in Mrs Fox’s own rather dingy and wrinkled glove. Bewildered, Sugar takes it, and blows her nose. At once she feels deliriously giddy, and sways where she sits, and the handkerchief is transformed, with miraculously suddenness, from a soft warm square of white cotton to a sopping-wet rag of chilly crimson.
‘No, lean back,’ comes Mrs Fox’s voice, as Sugar slumps forward. ‘It’s better when you lean back.’ And she lays a firm, gentle hand on Sugar’s breast and pushes, until Sugar’s head is tilted as far back as it will go, dangling in space, her shoulder-blades pressed painfully hard against the iron bench, her face blinking up into the blue of the sky. Blood is filling her head, trickling into her gullet, tickling her windpipe.
‘Try to breathe normally, or you’ll faint,’ says Mrs Fox, when Sugar begins to pant and gasp. ‘Trust me; I know.’
Sugar does as she’s told, and continues to stare up into the sky, her left hand pressed, with the handkerchief, to her nose, her right — incredibly –enfolded inside Mrs Fox’s. Hard, bony fingers give her a reassuring squeeze through the two layers of goatskin that separate their naked flesh.
‘Miss Sugar, forgive me,’ says the voice at her side. ‘I see now that you must have been very fond of your old madam. In my arrogance, I failed to imagine that possibility. In fact, I failed to imagine all sorts of things.’
Sugar’s head is tilted so far back now that she sees pedestrians walking along Pembridge Square past the park, upside down. A topsy-turvy mother suspended from the ceiling of the world pulls a topsy-turvy little boy along, scolding him for staring at the lady with the blood on her face.
‘Sophie,’ murmurs Sugar anxiously. ‘I don’t hear Sophie anymore.’
‘She’s all right,’ Mrs Fox assures her. ‘She’s fallen asleep against the fountain.’
Sugar blinks. Tears tickle her ears and dampen the hair at her temples. She licks her bloodied lips, working up the courage to ask her fate.
‘Miss Sugar, please forgive me,’ says Mrs Fox. ‘I’m a coward. If I’d been brave enough, I would have spared you this game of cat-and-mouse, and told you at once what person I took you to be. And if by chance I was mistaken, you’d have discounted me as a madwoman, and that would have been the end of it.’
Sugar lifts her head, cautiously, still clutching the blood-soaked handkerchief to her nose. ‘So … what is the end of it? And who do you take me t
o be?’
Mrs Fox is facing away, peering across the park at the sleeping form of Sophie. Her profile is strong-jawed and quite attractive, although Sugar can’t help noticing that there’s a bright cinnamon smear of earwax stuck in a curlicue of her ear. ‘I take you to be,’ says Mrs Fox, ‘a young woman who has found her calling, and means to be true to it, whatever her former means of livelihood may have been. That’s as much as the Rescue Society can hope for the girls it puts into good homes, and many of them, sadly, return to the streets. You won’t return to the streets, will you, Miss Sugar?’ ‘I would sooner die.’
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ says Mrs Fox, looking, all of a sudden, profoundly tired. ‘God is not as bloodthirsty as all that.’
‘Oh! Your handkerchief…’ cries Sugar, reminded of the ruined scrap of gory cloth dangling from her fist.
‘I have a big box of them at home,’ sighs Mrs Fox, rising to her feet. ‘The legacy of my failing to die of consumption. Goodbye, Miss Sugar. No doubt we’ll meet again.’ She has already begun to walk away.
‘I … I hope so,’ responds Sugar, at a loss for what else to say.
‘Of course we shall,’ says Mrs Fox, turning once to wave, much more decorously than she did before. ‘It’s a small world.’
When Mrs Fox has gone, Sugar wipes her face, conscious that there’s dried blood on her cheeks and lips and chin. She tries to sponge up some wetness from the grass, with little success, as the sun has evaporated the melted frost. The blood-stained handkerchief reminds her of something she’s done her best not to think about these last few weeks: the fact that not a drop of menstrual blood has issued from her for several months now.
She gets to her feet, and sways, still dizzy. She’s dead, she thinks. Damn her; she’s dead.
She tries to picture Mrs Castaway dead, but it’s impossible. Her mother always looked like a corpse, reanimated and painted luridly for some obscene or sacrilegious purpose. How could death alter her? The best Sugar can do is to tip the picture sideways, changing Mrs Castaway’s orientation from vertical to horizontal. Her pink eyes are open; her hand is extended, palm-up, for coins. ‘Come, sir? she says, ready to usher another gentleman to the girl of his dreams.