by Michel Faber
‘Sophie,’ she whispers, having crossed over to the fountain. ‘Sophie, wake up.’
The child, slumped like a rag-doll, head lolling on one shoulder, jerks awake at once, eyes rolling in astonishment that she could have been caught napping. Sugar gets her own apology in first:
‘Forgive me, Sophie, I was talking to that lady for much too long.’ It must be nearly midday, Sugar reckons; they’d better hurry back to the house, or William may be angry to be deprived of his secretary, or his lover, or his nursemaid, or whatever combination of the three he needs today. ‘Now tell me, little one, how far did you get with your kings of England?’
Sophie opens her mouth to answer, then her eyes grow wide.
‘Did someone hit you, Miss?’
Sugar’s hands flutter nervously to her face. ‘N-no, Sophie. My nose started bleeding, that’s all.’
Sophie is quite excited by this revelation. ‘That’s happened to me too, Miss!’ she says, in a tone suggesting that such an occurrence is a thrilling, ghoulish adventure.
‘Really, dear?’ says Sugar, straining to recall, through the fog of her own anxious preoccupations, the incident Sophie’s referring to. ‘When?’
‘It was before,’ says the child, after a moment’s reflection.
‘Before what?’
Sophie accepts her governess’s hand to help her to her feet; the arse-end of her bulky black dress is damp, creased, and plastered with fragments of soil, twig and grass.
‘Before my Papa bought you for me, Miss,’ she says, and Sugar’s hand, poised to slap the dirt off Sophie’ backside, freezes in mid-air.
THIRTY-ONE
There are too many people! Millions too many! And they will not keep still! Lord, make them stop pushing and jostling for just one minute, freeze them like a tableau vivant, so that she can get by!
Sugar cowers in the doorway of Lamplough’s Pharmacy in Regent Street, waiting for a parting in the sea of humanity that doesn’t come. The relentless grinding din of traffic, the shouts of street vendors, the swirling babble of pedestrians, snorting horses, barking dogs: these are sounds that were familiar once upon a time, but no longer. A few months of seclusion have made her a stranger.
How is it possible that for years she walked these streets lost in thought, daydreaming her novel, and was never once knocked down and trampled underfoot? How is it possible that there exist so many human beings squashed together in the same place, so many lives running concurrently with her own? These chattering women in dresses of licorice-stripe and purple, these swaggering swells, these Jews and Orientals, these tottering sandwichboard-men, these winking shop-keepers, these jaunty sailors and dour office workers, these beggars and prostitutes — every one of them lays claim to a share of Destiny every bit as generous as hers. There’s only so much juice to be extracted from the world, and a ravenous multitude is brawling and scuffling to get it.
And the smells! Her habituation to the Rackham house and the tidy streets of Notting Hill has made her lily-livered: now her breath catches, her eyes water, from being forced to take in the overbearing stench of perfume and horse dung, freshly-baked cakes and old meat, burnt mutton-fat and chocolate, roast chestnuts and dog piss. The Rackham house, despite belonging to a perfumer, smells of nothing much, except cigar-smoke in the study and porridge in the school-room. Even its flower vases — enormous, pretentious copies of classical urns — stand empty now that the memorial bouquets from Agnes’s well-wishers have gone the way of all flesh.
Misreading Sugar’s mind, a pretty young flower-seller fetches a bouquet ofshabby pink roses out of her rickety cart and waves the offering in Sugar’s direction. The fact that she owns a trolley, and is bothering to make overtures to a female, probably means she really is a flower-seller and not a whore, but Sugar is unnerved all the same, and pricked into action. One deep gulp of breath, and she steps into the human stream, joining the rush of advancing bodies.
She purposely avoids seeing anyone’s face and hopes the crowd will return the favour. (If she weren’t so afraid of being knocked sprawling, she’d lower her black veil.) Every shop she passes, every narrow lane, may at any moment spew out someone who once knew her, someone who may point the finger and raucously hail the return of Sugar to her old stamping grounds.
Already she can’t help noticing the regulars: there, outside Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms, stands Hugh Banton the organ grinder — has he seen her? Yes he has, the old dog! But he gives no sign of recognising his ‘Little Toothsome’ as she passes him by. And there!: shambling straight towards her: it’s Nadir, the sandwichboard-man — but he passes her by without a second glance, clearly judging that a lady in crape is not about to attend the exhibition, ‘for the first time in England!’, of a live Gorilla-ape.
Loitering in shop doorways and cab ranks are prostitutes Sugar knows only by sight, not by name. They regard her with listless indifference: she is a creature as alien to them as the monster advertised on Nadir’s sandwich-board, but not nearly as interesting. The only thing about the black-clad newcomer that holds their attention for longer than an eye’s-blink is her stilted gait.
Ah, if only they knew why Sugar is limping today! She’s limping because, last night before going to bed, she lay on her back, lifted her legs as though preparing to be arse-fucked, and poured a tea-cupful of tepid water, sulphate of zinc and borax directly into her vagina. Then she swaddled herself in an improvised nappy and went to sleep, hoping that the chemicals, despite being rather stale after sitting unused in her suitcase for so long, still had some vim left in them. This morning, unrewarded by a miscarriage, she woke to find her vulva and inner thighs flame red, and so sore she could barely dress herself, let alone Sophie. At nine, clenching her jaw with the effort of appearing normal, she presented herself at William’s study and asked his permission, as nonchalantly as she could manage, for her first day off”.
‘What for?’ he asked her — not in suspicion; more as if he couldn’t imagine what desires she could have that were not met within the confines of his house.
‘I need a new pair of boots, a world globe for Sophie, several other things … ‘
‘Who’ll take care of the child while you’re gone?’
‘She’s quite self-reliant and trustworthy, I’ve found. And Rose will look in on her. And I’ll be back by five.’
William looked rather put out, pointedly shuffling the letters on his desk, which he’d opened and read, but to which his bandaged fingers still didn’t permit him to reply. ‘That Brinsmead fellow has written back to me about the ambergris; he wants my answer by the third post.’
‘You gain nothing by jumping to his will,’ she said, feigning umbrage on his behalf. ‘Who does he think he is, William? Which of you has the greater standing? A few days’ wait will remind him you’re doing him a favour, not he you.’
To her relief, this did the trick, and within minutes she was walking out the front door, white-faced with determination not to limp until she was safely in the omnibus.
The pain is not quite so bad now; perhaps the Rackham’s Creme de Jeunesse she slathered on her groin is helping. What it fails to do for faces (despite the label’s immoderate claims), perhaps it does, uncelebrated, for unmentionable parts. At all costs she must heal soon, or she’ll have to refuse William when he wants her for a more carnal purpose than writing his correspondence.
Sugar limps into Silver Street, praying no one calls her name. The prostitutes here are a cruder sort than the ones on Regent Street, scavengers of men who can’t afford the more expensive fare in The Stretch. Their face-paint is lurid, a mask of deathly white and blood red; they could be pantomime witches dolled up to scare children. How long has it been since her own face was dusted so? She distinctly remembers the powder’s floury taste, the way it would permeate the air each time she dabbed the puff into the pot … but nowadays she’s clean-scrubbed, with skin the texture of a well-peeled orange. Her daily observances in front of the looking-glass no longer include preenin
g her eyelashes, painting her cheeks, plucking wayward hairs from her eyebrows, inspecting her tongue, and removing flakes of imperfection from her pouting lips; nowadays, she cursorily confirms that she looks tired and worried, then pins up her hair and starts work.
Mrs Castaway’s house is in sight now, but Sugar hangs back, waiting for the coast to be clear. Stationed only a few yards from the doorstep is a man who witnessed her returning from The Fireside many times with her customers. He’s a sheet-music seller, and at this moment he’s performing a clumsy, lurching dance while playing his accordion, grimacing like a lunatic as he stamps on the cobble-stones.
‘ Gorilla Quadrille!‘ he rasps by way of explanation when he’s finished, and snatches aloft a copy of the music. (From where Sugar stands, the illustration on the front remarkably resembles the Rackham figurehead.) Three young swells amble up to the music seller, applaud, and encourage him to repeat his performance, but he shrugs evasively; he doesn’t dance for the fun of it.
‘Any ladies of your hacquaintance play the piano, guvnors?’ he whines. ‘My music costs next to nuffing.’
‘Here’s a shilling,’ laughs the swellest of the swells, shoving the coin into the music seller’s coat pocket with a jab ofhis slender fingers. ‘And you may keep your grubby sheets of paper — Just do your dance for us again.’
The music seller cringes over his instrument, and acts the gorilla one more time, his teeth bared in an obsequious grin. Sugar watches until the swells have had their fun and swan off in search of other titillations; when they do, the music seller dashes in the opposite direction to spend his shilling, and Sugar is free to approach her former home.
Heart in her throat, she steps up to Mrs Castaway’s door, and raises her hand to grasp the old iron door-knocker and tap out the code: Sugar here, unaccompanied. But the familiar cast-iron Cerberus has been removed, and its screw-holes neatly filled with sawdust and shellac. There’s no bell, either, so Sugar is obliged to knock her gloved knuckles against the hard lacquered wood.
The waiting is awful, and the scrape of the latch is worse. She keeps her eyes low, expecting to see Christopher, but when the door swings open, the space where the boy’s pink face ought to be is occupied by the crotch of a man’s smartly-tailored trousers. Hastily looking up, past the stylish waistcoat and the silken cravat, Sugar opens her mouth to explain herself, only to be struck speechless by the realisation that this man’s face is in fact a woman’s. Oh, granted, the hair is cut short, oiled, and combed close to the scalp, but there’s no mistaking the physiognomy.
Amelia Crozier — for it is she — appraises her visitor’s confusion with a feline smirk. ‘I think,’ she suggests, ‘you have mistaken your way.’ With every word she speaks, a furling haze of cigarette smoke leaks out through her lips and nostrils.
‘No …no …I …’ Sugar falters. ‘I was wondering what became of the little boy who used to answer the door.’
Miss Crozier raises one dark, fastidiously plucked eyebrow. ‘No little boys ever come here,’ she says. ‘Only big boys.’
From inside — presumably the parlour — Jennifer Pearce’s voice rings out. ‘Little boys is it he wants? Give him Mrs Talbot’s address!’
Miss Crozier turns her back on Sugar, serenely rude. The fine-clipped hair in the nape of her neck resembles greased duck’s-down.
‘It’s not a man here, my dear!’ she calls. ‘It’s a lady in black.’
‘Oh, it’s not the Rescue Society, I trust,’ exclaims Miss Pearce, mock-exasperated, from within. ‘Please, spare us.’
Sensing that the two Sapphists can, and will, keep up this sport as long as it amuses them, Sugar decides it’s time to identify herself, loath as she is to lose the halo of virtue they’ve so unhesitatingly ascribed to her.
‘My name is Sugar,’ she announces loudly, reclaiming Miss Crozier’s attention. ‘I lived here once. My m–’
‘Why, Sugar!’ exclaims Amelia, her face lighting up with a wholly feminine animation. ‘I would never have guessed! You look nothing like you did when I saw you last!’
‘Nor do you,’ counters Sugar with a strained smile.
‘Ah, yes,’ grins Miss Crozier, running her hands over the tailored contours of her suit. ‘Clothes do make the man — or woman — don’t they? But come in, dear, come in. Someone was asking for you only a couple of days ago. You see, your fame endures!’
Stiffly, Sugar steps over the threshold and is escorted into Mrs Castaway’s parlour, or rather, the parlour that once was Mrs Castaway’s. Jennifer Pearce has transformed it from an old woman’s cluttered grotes-querie into a showpiece of fashionable bareness, worthy of an expensive ladies’ journal from across the English Channel.
‘Welcome, welcome!’
With Mrs Castaway’s desk gone, and the old woman’s jumbled display of Magdalen pictures removed from the freshly-papered pale pink walls, the room appears much bigger. In place of the pictures, there’s nothing, except for two rice-paper fans painted with oriental designs. A spiky green house-plant has pride of place next to the sofa on which Jennifer Pearce reclines, and a delicate chiffonier of honey-coloured wood presumably serves (in the absence of any other suitable receptacle) as the repository of money. Amelia Crozier’s interrupted cigarette lies on a silver cigar stand with a waist-high stem, emitting a slender cord of smoke that shivers when the door is slammed shut.
‘Do sit down, dear,’ sings Jennifer Pearce, swinging her legs off the sofa in a flurry of satiny skirts. She scrutinises Sugar from tip to toe, and pats the couch. ‘See? I’ve cleared a nice warm spot for you.’
‘I’ll stand, thank you,’ says Sugar. The ribald mockery to which these women would subject her if she let on that she’s too sore to sit doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘The better to see all the changes we’ve made, hmm?’ says Jennifer Pearce, leaning back on the sofa again.
It’s obvious to Sugar by now that Jennifer has promoted herself from being the luminary whore of the Castaway house to being its procuress. Everything about her suggests the status of madam, from her elaborate dress that looks as if it couldn’t be removed without at least an hour’s notice, to her languidly supercilious expression. Perhaps the most telling proof is her hands: the fingers are thorny with jewel-encrusted rings. Pornography may describe the penis as a sword, staff or truncheon, but there’s nothing like a fistful of spiky jewellery to make a man’s fragile flesh shrink in fear.
‘May I have a word with Amy?’ says Sugar.
Miss Pearce locks her fingers together, with a soft clicking of rings. ‘Alas: like Mrs Castaway, no longer with us.’ Then, when she observes the look of shock on Sugar’s face, she smiles, and unhurriedly corrects the misunderstanding. ‘Oh no, my dear, I don’t mean in the same way that Mrs Castaway is no longer with us. I mean, she’s gone to a better place.’
Amelia laughs — a horrid nasal whinny. ‘However you put it, Jen, it still sounds like death.’
Jennifer Pearce pouts gentle censure at her companion, and continues: ‘Amy came to feel that our house had become rather too … specialised for her talents. So, she took those talents elsewhere. The name of the place escapes me …’ (she sighs) ‘There are so many houses nowadays, it’s a job keeping up with them all.’
Suddenly her expression sharpens, and she leans forward on the sofa, with a whispering of many-layered skirts. ‘To be frank with you, Sugar, Amy’s departure, and the fact that I am no longer working on what one might call the factory floor, leaves us two girls down. Girls who enjoy giving men the punishment they deserve. I don’t suppose you are looking for a new home?’
‘I have one, thank you,’ says Sugar evenly. ‘I came here to …to ask about my … about Mrs Castaway. How did she die?’
Jennifer Pearce settles back into her seat once more, and her eyelids droop half-shut.
‘In her sleep, dear.’
Sugar waits for more, but none is forthcoming. Amelia Crozier picks up her cigarette from the tray, judges it too short to
be elegant, and drops it down the hollow stem of the stand. The room is so quiet that the sound of the papery stub hitting the metal base is audible.
‘Did … did she leave anything for me? A letter, a message?’
‘No,’ says Jennifer Pearce casually. ‘Nothing.’
Another silence falls. Amelia extracts, from a pocket in the lining of her jacket, a silver cigarette case, her elegant wrist brushing the swell of bosom beneath her waistcoat.
‘And … what happened to her?’ Sugar asks. ‘After she was found, I mean.’
Jennifer Pearce’s eyes glaze over, as though she’s being interrogated about events that happened before she was born, or even before the advent of recorded history. ‘Undertakers took her away,’ she says doubtfully. ‘Isn’t that right, my love?’
‘I think so,’ says Amelia, and applies a lucifer-flame to the tip of a fresh cigarette. ‘Rookes, Brookes, some name like that …’
Sugar looks from one face to the other, and understands there’s no point asking any more questions.
‘I must go,’ she says, her fingers tightening on her handbag with its burthen of medicinal poisons.
‘So sorry we couldn’t help you,’ says the sleepy-eyed madam who, in the next edition of More Sprees in London, will doubtless be listed as ‘Mrs Pearce’. ‘And do spread the good word about us, won’t you, if you meet any girls who are looking for a change.’ All the way to Regent Circus, Sugar tells herself what to do next. It’s most important that she doesn’t leave the city without buying some new boots, and a world globe, and whatever other items may convince William she spent her day purposefully. Yet the idea of walking into a shop and conversing with a shop-keeper about the shape of her feet seems as fantastic as jumping over the moon. She glances at signs and hoardings, and occasionally pauses in front of a window display, trying to imagine how a Venetian glass manufacturer or a professor of music or a hair doctor could help her get home from her shopping trip with something to show.