The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  ‘… and showed them engravings of the paintings … ‘

  ‘… and then asked them their opinion!’ Bodley contorts his face in a caricature of donkeyish intellect, and pretends to be examining an engraving held at arm’s length. ‘Wot you say dis one’s name wos? Afferdighty?’

  ‘A Greek lady, sir,’ mock-explains Ashwell, instantly playing the straight man to Bodley’s buffoon. ‘A goddess.’

  ‘Greek? Blimey. Where’s ‘er black moustache, then?’

  Whereupon Bodley re-composes his face into a different character, a more thoughtful man, scratching his head doubtfully. ‘Whe-e-ell, maybe I’m hignorant — but this Afferdighty ‘as got mighty queer dugs in my hopinion. She’s got ‘em where I never seen dugs on any woman down my street — an’ I seen plenty!’

  Rackham laughs uproariously — a good belly laugh such as he’s not enjoyed since … well, not since he was last out with his friends.

  ‘But why on earth,’ he demands, ‘are your usual publishers refusing to publish this one? It’ll make them just as much money, I’m sure!’

  ‘That’s precisely the problem,’ smirks Bodley.

  ‘Every one of our books has lost money!’ declares Ashwell proudly.

  ‘No!’ protests William.

  ‘Yes!’ cries Ashwell. ‘Oodles!’ And he laughs like a hyena.

  William reels to one side, misjudging his footing on the cobbles, and Bodley catches him. He’s a little drunker than he’d thought.

  ‘Lost money? But that’s impossible!’ he insists. ‘I’ve met so many people who’ve read your books … ‘

  ‘Oh, no doubt you’ve met every single one of ‘em,’ says Ashwell breezily. Not twenty feet away, a gin-sozzled old woman slaps her elfin pigeon-chested husband hard against his sparse-haired skull. He falls like a ninepin, to a scattered chorus of guffaws.

  ‘The Great Social Evil will recoup its costs, in time,’ qualifies Bodley, ‘thanks to masturbating students and frustrated widows like Emmeline Fox …’

  ‘But nobody bought The Efficacy of Prayer except the miserable old nincompoops we quoted in it.’

  William is still grinning, but his mind, honed by his long year’s experience as a businessman, is having some difficulty with the sums.

  ‘So let me see if I understand you,’ he says. ‘Instead of letting a publisher lose money, you mean to lose money yourselves …’

  Bodley and Ashwell make identical dismissive hand gestures, to show they’ve considered this matter carefully.

  ‘We’ll publish pornography too,’ declares Ashwell, ‘to cover the losses incurred by our worthier books. Pornography of the rankest order. The demand is immense, Bill; the whole of England is desperate for sodomy!’ ‘Yes, the arse-whole!’ puns Bodley.

  ‘We’ll publish a guide for men-about-town that’s updated each month!’ continues Ashwell, his cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. ‘Not like that damned useless More Sprees, which gives you a cockstand reading about some girl, and you go to the house, only to find she’s dead, or the place has gone to the dogs, or it’s full of Pentecostals!’

  William’s smile fades. The reference to More Sprees in London has reminded him of another reason why he and his chums became estranged in the first place: Bodley and Ashwell were aware of a prostitute called Sugar, a prostitute who abruptly disappeared from circulation. What might they think if they visited the Rackham house and heard the name ‘Miss Sugar’ mentioned by a servant? Highly unlikely, but still William changes the subject.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I’ve been chained to my desk so long, it’s bliss to be out on the town with my old friends.’ (His stutter, he notes, is completely gone: all it takes is a few drinks and the right company!)

  ‘Fidus Achates!’ cries Bodley, slapping William on the back. ‘Remember the time the bullers chased us all the way from Parker’s Piece to our set?’

  ‘Remember the time the proctor found that pretty slut Lizzie sleeping in the Master’s Lodge?’

  ‘Happy days, happy days,’ says William, though he has no memory of the incident.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ beams Ashwell. ‘But these days can be every bit as happy, Bill, if you let ‘em. Your perfume business is locomoting along at fearsome speed, I hear. You don’t need to be stoking it every minute of the day, what?’

  ‘Ah, you’d be surprised,’ sighs William. ‘Everything threatens to fall apart constantly. Everything. Constantly! Nothing in this damn world takes care of itself.’

  ‘Steady man, steady. Some things are wonderfully uncomplicated. Shove any old cock into any old cunt, and the rest happens automatically.’

  William grunts agreement, but in his heart he’s far from sure. Lately, he has come to dread Sugar’s overtures of love, for his pego has remained flaccid when he would most wish to have use of it. Is it still in working order? It gets stiff at inconvenient times, particularly in his sleep, but lets him down when the moment is ripe. How much longer can he keep Sugar ignorant of the fact that he’s ceased, it seems, to be fully a man? How many more nights can he plead exhaustion or the lateness of the hour?

  ‘If I don’t keep my wits about me,’ he complains, ‘Rackham Perfumeries will be extinct by the time the century’s out. And it’s not as if I have anyone to pass it on to.’

  Ashwell pauses to buy an apple from a girl he likes the look of. He gives her sixpence, much more than she’s asking, and she bows, almost spilling her remaining apples out of her basket.

  ‘Thank you, poppet,’ he winks, biting into the firm flesh, and walks on. ‘So…’ he remarks to William, his mouth mumbly with pulp, ‘So you don’t want to marry Constance, is that it?’

  William stops in his tracks, astounded.

  ‘Constance?’

  ‘Our dear Lady Bridgelow,’ says Ashwell, making the effort to enunciate clearly, as if Rackham’s bafflement may be nothing more than a problem with diction.

  William sways forward, contemplates the ground, his vision blurring in and out of focus. A criss-cross pattern of furry muck is stuck to the cobbles, either horse-dung with a high quotient of thistles or the much-dispersed vestiges of a squashed dog’s pelt.

  ‘I … I wasn’t aware that Constance had any desire to marry me.’

  Bodley and Ashwell groan good-naturedly, and Bodley grabs him by the shoulder of his coat, jerking it in exasperation.

  ‘Come on, Bill, d’you expect her to get down on her bended knee and ask you herself? She has her pride.’

  William digests this as they walk on. They’ve turned the corner into King Street, a somewhat wider thoroughfare. Prostitutes on both sides wave to them, confident that this evening’s policeman has been amply persuaded to spend his energies on pickpockets and brawlers.

  ‘Best fuck in London ‘ere!’ shouts a tipsy trollop.

  ‘Getcher roast chestnuts ‘ere!’ bawls a man on the opposite footpath.

  Bodley pauses, not for the chestnuts or the trollop, but because he’s just stepped on something squishy. He lifts his left shoe and peers down at the sole, trying to determine whether the thing — now mingled with the oily mud between the cobblestones — was a turd or merely a lump of rotten fruit.

  ‘What do you think, Philip?’ says Ashwell, grinning over his shoulder at the drunken lass who’s still blowing him kisses. ‘Ready for a bit of fun?’

  ‘Always, Edward, always. What about the lovely Apollonia?’ As an aside to William, he explains: ‘We’ve found a cracker of a girl, Bill, an absolute cracker — a woolly-haired African. She’s at Mrs Jardine’s house. Her cunt is dark purple, like a passionfruit, and they’ve taught her to speak like a debutante from Belgravia: it’s the most comical thing!’

  ‘Try her while the trying’s good, Bill: she’ll be snaffled by some diplomat or ambassador soon, and disappear into the bowels of Westminster!’

  Bodley and Ashwell stand topper to topper and consult their fob-watches, briefly conferring over the possibility of going to Mrs Jardine’s, but they soon agree that A
pollonia is unlikely to be available at this hour. In any case, William gets the impression that, despite singing the praises of her exotic flavour, they’ve sampled it too recently, and hanker for something different.

  ‘So what do you fancy?’ says Ashwell. ‘Mrs Terence’s is nearby …’

  ‘It’s half past nine,’ says Bodley. ‘Bess and … whatsername — the Welsh one — will be taken, and I don’t much care for the others. And you know what Mrs Terence is like: she won’t let you leave once you’re in.’

  ‘Mrs Ford’s?’

  ‘Expensive,’ sniffs Bodley, ‘for what you get.’ ‘Yes, but prompt.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s in Panton Street. If fast service is what we’re after, we could pop in to Madame Audrey’s just around the corner.’

  Listening to them, William realises that his fears were in vain: these men have already forgotten Sugar, forgotten her entirely. She is ancient history, her name erased by a hundred other names since; the girl who once seemed to shine like a beacon in the murky vastness of London has been reduced to a glimmering pinprick of light in amongst countless similar glimmers. Life goes on, and there is never an end to the people surging through it.

  ‘What about those three over there?’ says Bodley. ‘They have a cheerful air about ‘em.’ He nods towards a trio of whores giggling in the window-light of a chandler’s shop. ‘I’m not in the mood for hoity-toity pretensions tonight, or misery.’

  The two men walk over to the waving women, and William, fearful of being left stranded and unprotected, tags along. He tries to keep his eyes on the dark street to the left and right of the women, but he’s helplessly drawn to their vulgar display of lamp-lit taffeta and pink bosom. They’re a cheeky threesome, well-groomed in an overdressed way, with masses of hair spilling out from under their too-elaborate bonnets. William has the uneasy feeling he’s met them before.

  ‘Nice weather we’re ‘avin’,’ simpers one.

  ‘You never ‘ad no one like me, ducks,’ says another.

  ‘Nor me neither,’ says the third.

  Are these the same three women who pestered him in The Fireside, when he first met Sugar? They look younger, thinner, and their dresses are less ornate, but there’s something about them … Dear Heaven, could Fate really throw up such a hideous coincidence? Does one of these powdered doxies have it on the tip of her tongue to hail him as ‘Mr Hunt’ and ask him how his books are faring, or demand to know how his tryst with Sugar ended?

  ‘In the mouth, how much?’ Bodley is enquiring of the woman with the fullest lips. She leans forward and murmurs in his ear, smoothly settling her forearms on his shoulders.

  Within seconds, the transaction has begun. Ashwell, Bodley and an unwilling William have entered a shadowy cul-de-sac scarcely wide enough to accommodate the combined bulk of a squatting woman and a standing man. Ashwell watches Bodley being serviced, and gropes under the skirts of another woman while she strokes his exposed prick, whose size and firmness impress William, even at a glimpse, as demoralisingly superior to his own. The third woman stands with her back to William, facing out towards the open street, watching for unwanted company. By now William is certain — as certain as he can be — that he’s never seen these three women before. He stares at the back of the one keeping watch, and tries to imagine himself lifting up her bustle, pulling down her drawers, and fucking her, but she seems to him devoid of erotic allure, a darkened Madame Tussaud’s manikin of indifferently stitched dress material, a horse-hair bustle, a neck that’s too thick, a glinting spine of buttons one of which, annoyingly, dangles loose from its buttonhole. His manhood is soft and damp; he has left his best years far behind him; he will spend the rest of his life worrying about Rackham Perfumeries; his daughter will grow up ugly and unmarried and ungrateful, the laughing-stock of his dwindling circle; and then, one day, in the middle of penning a futile letter with his crippled hand, he’ll clutch at his heart and die. When did it all go wrong? It all went wrong when he married Agnes. It all went wrong when–

  Suddenly he becomes aware of Bodley groaning in satisfaction. The woman is almost finished with him; as he approaches orgasm, he agitates one trembling hand in the air, and makes as if to clamp hold of the back of her head. She intercepts him in mid-swing, grabbing his arm first by the wrist, then curling her fingers inside his, so that she and Bodley are holding hands. It’s a peculiar gesture of control, of checkmated forces, which has the appearance of utmost tenderness and mutual urgency. William is instantly, powerfully aroused, and what seemed impossible a minute ago now feels imperative.

  ‘Oh God!’ cries Bodley as he spends. The girl keeps hold of him, squeezing his hand tight, nuzzling her brow against his belly. Only when Bodley slumps against the alley wall does she let him go and tip her head back, licking her lips.

  Now! The moment is now! William steps forward, fetching his swollen manhood out of his trousers.

  ‘Now me!’ he commands hoarsely, his whole body prickling with anxious sweat, for already he can feel his organ’s rigid flesh begin to lose its charge of blood. Mercifully, the prostitute delays no longer than an eye’s-blink before taking him in her mouth and clapping her palms on his buttocks. William sways, momentarily off-balance; oh God, a pratfall at this juncture would be the end of him! But it’s all right, she has him secure, her fingers dig into his flesh, her mouth and tongue are expert.

  ‘Go on, sir, stick it in,’ says another female voice from behind him, addressing Ashwell. ‘You can afford it, sir, and you won’t be sorry.’

  ‘I haven’t a sheath on me.’

  ‘I take good care of meself, sir. I’ve been to the doctor only last week, sir, and he says I’m clean as a kitten.’

  ‘Even so …’ says Ashwell, panting, ‘let it spill …’ ‘It’s a fine silky cunt I ‘ave, sir. A connoisseur’s cunt.’ ‘Even so … ‘

  William, dizzy with mounting excitement, cannot understand Ashwell’s qualms. Fuck the girl and have done with it! Fuck all the females in the world while the fucking is good! He feels as though he could spend like a geyser, filling first one woman, then the next, in their mouths, their cunts, their arses, leaving a great mound of them lolling and rumpled …Ah!

  A few seconds later William Rackham is lying flat on the ground, unconscious, with five people standing over him. ‘Give him air,’ says Ashwell.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ says one of the whores anxiously.

  ‘Too much to drink,’ says Bodley, but he sounds none too sure.

  ‘He was given a terrible beating by bughunters not so long ago,’ says Ashwell. ‘They cracked his head open, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, poor lamb!’ coos the woman with the full lips. ‘Will ‘e be like this always?’

  ‘Come on, Bodley, help me with him.’

  The two men seize their friend under the armpits, and heave him a few inches off the ground. Taking umbrage at being ignored, the ringleader whore tugs at their sleeves, to regain the gentlemen’s attention before they become too preoccupied.

  ‘I’ve only been paid for one,’ she reminds them. ‘Fair’s fair.’

  ‘And I ain’t been paid at all,’ bleats the girl who kept watch, as though, of the three, the most debauched use has been made of her. The third woman frowns, unable to think how to add her voice to the grievances, given that Ashwell was interrupted before reaching the fulfilment he’d paid for.

  ‘Here’s … here’s…’ Ashwell claws a handful of coins, mostly shillings, from his pocket, and pushes them into her hands, while the other two crane their necks to see. ‘You can do the arithmetic between you, can’t you?’ Fretful now about the unconscious Rackham, he has no appetite for haggling. Christ almighty: first Henry, then Agnes …If there’s one more death in this wretched family …! And what a beastly stroke of fate, if those eminent swells Philip Bodley and Edward Ashwell should be forced to inaugurate their new career as publishers by carrying a corpse through the streets of Soho in search of the nearest police station!

  �
��Bill! Bill! Are you with us?’ Ashwell barks, patting William roughly on the cheek.

  ‘I … I’m with you,’ Rackham replies, whereupon, from the mouths of five onlookers — yes, even from the whores, for they’ve not found it in their hearts to scarper — issues a profound and wholly mutual sigh of relief.

  ‘Well…’ says the eldest woman, adjusting her bonnet and casting an eye on the flickering lights of the thoroughfare. ‘Good night, then, all.’ And she leads her sisters out of the dark.

  For another few seconds Bodley and Ashwell loiter in the cul-de-sac, tidying their clothing, combing their hair, using each other as a mirror. You’ll not see them again, so take a good last look at them now.

  ‘Take me home,’ groans a voice from somewhere near their trouser-cuffs. ‘I want to go to bed.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Sent up to her room in disgrace, Sugar indulges, at long last, in a tantrum. A solitary, silent tantrum, in the privacy of her drab little bed-chamber, but no less a tantrum for that.

  How dare William tell her it’s none of her business what hour he comes home! How dare he tell her the mud on his clothing is his own affair, and that he owes her no explanation! How dare he tell her he’s perfectly capable of handling his own correspondence, and has no further need of her flatteries and her forgeries! How dare he tell her that instead of lurking in wait for his return from an innocent visit on old friends, she’d be much better off sleeping, as her eyes are constantly bloodshot and uglified by the dark rings under them!

  Sugar kneels at her bedside in the candlelight, William’s expensive Christmas gift of Shakespeare’s Tragedies in her lap, and tears out the pages by the handful, illustrations and all, clawing at the fragile paper with her brittle, jagged nails. How thin and smooth the pages are, like the pages of a Bible or a dictionary, as if made from glazed starch, or the stuff that cigarettes are wrapped in. She scrunches them inside her fist, Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, all of them shredding under her nails, useless blather about ancient aristocracies. She’d thought William bought them for her in recognition — in honour — of her intellect, a coded message in front of his servants that he knew her soul to be a much finer thing than theirs. Tripe! He’s an empty vulgarian, a crass oaf who might as soon have bought her a gilded elephant’s foot or a jewelled chamber-pot had his eye not been diverted by this ‘hand-tooled’ assortment of Shakespeare. Damn him! This is what she thinks of his oily attempts to buy her gratitude!