The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  ‘My daughter has been abducted,’ William declares, ‘by Miss Sugar.’

  Mrs Fox’s eyes widen, but not nearly as much as such shocking news ought to widen them. Indeed, she looks half-asleep.

  ‘How … extraordinary,’ she breathes.

  ‘Extraordinary!’ he echoes, bewildered at her sang-froid. Why the devil doesn’t she swoon, or drop to her knees with her hands clasped to her bosom, or lift her feeble fist to her brow and cry ‘Oh!’?

  ‘She impressed me as such a nice, well-meaning girl.’

  Her placid leniency provokes him to anger. ‘You were deceived. She’s a madwoman, a vicious madwoman, and she has my daughter.’

  ‘They seemed fond of each other …’

  ‘Mrs Fox, I don’t wish to argue with you. I–I…’ He swallows hard, wondering if there’s a way to broach his intentions that doesn’t make him out to be an utter barbarian. There isn’t. ‘Mrs Fox, I wish to satisfy myself that Sugar — that Miss Sugar and my daughter are not in this house.’

  Emmeline’s lips part in astonishment.

  ‘I cannot consent to that,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Forgive me, Mrs Fox,’ he replies hoarsely, ‘but I must.’ And, before her glare of disapproval can unman him, he stumps past her, into the kitchen, where he immediately collides with an interlocked bale of Henry’s chairs. The room, small to begin with, is bizarrely cluttered with two of everything: two stoves, two crockery cupboards, two ice pails, two kettles, and so on and so on. There’s a bread-loaf with a knife stuck in it, and fifteen, twenty tins of salmon and corned beef, lined up like soldiers on a bench that’s been sponged clean but still shows rosy-yellow stains of blood. There’s barely room to stand, let alone conceal a tall woman and a substantial infant. The garden, clearly visible through the rain-washed kitchen window, is a wilderness of lush, inedible greenery.

  Already knowing himself to be in the wrong, but unable to stop, William lurches out of the kitchen and inspects the other rooms. Henry’s cat follows at his heels, excited by so much physical activity in a house whose pace is usually so sedate. William dodges the ricks of dusty furniture and does his best to avoid kicking boxes, mounds of books, neatly addressed parcels awaiting only postage stamps, bulbous sacks. Mrs Fox’s parlour shows evidence of devoted industry, with dozens of envelopes filled and ready for sending, a map of the metropolis spread open on the writing-desk, and numerous receptacles containing glue, ink, water, tea, and a dark-brown substance with a milky scum on top.

  He thunders up the stairs, blushing as much from shame as effort. At the door of the bedroom, a cardboard box is littered with cat turds. Inside, Mrs Fox’s bed is rumpled, and a pair of male trousers, much sullied by cat fur, lies prone on its coverlet. Hanging from a hat-stand is an immaculate and neatly ironed outfit of bodice, jacket and dress, in the sober colours that suit Mrs Fox best.

  William can bear it no longer; his fantasy of wrenching open a wardrobe and, with a cry of triumphal relief, pulling Sugar and his terrified daughter into the light has withered utterly. He returns downstairs, where Mrs Fox stands waiting for him, her face upturned, her eyes gleaming with reproach.

  ‘Mrs Fox,’ he says, feeling dirtier than the contents of the cardboard box on the landing. ‘I–I …How … This violation of your p-privacy. How can you ever f-forgive me?’

  She folds her arms around her chest, and squares her jaw.

  ‘It’s not for me to forgive you, Mr Rackham,’ she remarks coolly, as though merely reminding him that the Christian faith they nominally share is not of the Catholic brand.

  ‘I was … not in m-my right m-mind,’ pleads William, shuffling towards the front door, worried that — on top of everything else — he’ll step on Henry’s cat, which is cavorting around his ankles, biting his trousers. ‘I-is there n-nothing I can do to redeem m-m-myself in your estimation?’

  Mrs Fox blinks slowly, hugging her bosom harder. Her long face has, William notices belatedly, an odd beauty about it, and — God in heaven, can it be? — is that a smile teasing the corners of her lips?

  ‘Thank you, Mr Rackham,’ she says suavely. ‘I’ll give your offer serious thought. After all, a man of your resources is ideally matched with the many worthy things that need doing in this world.’ She gestures towards the philanthropic jumble of her house. ‘I’ve taken on more work than I can manage, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. So … Yes, Mr Rackham, I look forward to your assistance in the future.’

  And, unorthodox to the last, she — not he — opens the door, and bids him good day.

  ‘Miaow!’ concurs Henry’s cat, prostrating himself happily at his mistress’s feet.

  Chastened to the point where he would welcome a thunderbolt from heaven to blast him painlessly to a cinder, William returns to his own house. Have the police called? No, the police haven’t called. Does he want his luncheon warmed? No, he does not want his luncheon warmed. Coffee, bring him coffee.

  Unendurable though the tension is, he has no choice but to endure it, and to carry on his business as normal. More mail has arrived, none of it regarding Sugar or his daughter. One letter is from Grover Pankey, Esq., calling him ill-bred, and severing all connexion with him. So deranged are William’s spirits that he considers challenging Pankey to a duel: the ugly old cur is probably a crack shot, and would put William out of his misery with one puff from his pistol. But no, he must keep his head about him, and make overtures to that Cheadle fellow in Glamorgan. Cheadle’s ivory pots are light as sea-shells, but strong enough to survive being squeezed hard in one’s fist. William knows: he’s tried it.

  He tears open a letter with an unfamiliar name and address on the back: Mrs F. De Lusignan, 2, Fir-street, Sydenham.

  Dear Mr Rackham, the good lady hails him,

  My hair went grey through trouble and sickness, but one bottle of your Raven Oil brought it back to a splendid black, as nice as it was in my young days. All my friends remark upon it. You may make what use you like of this letter.

  William blinks stupidly, poised on the brink of laughter and convulsive weeping. This is the sort of devout testimonial he and Sugar have invented out of thin air for Rackham advertisements, and here it is: 100 per cent genuine. Mrs F. De Lusignan, admiring her dyed hair in a looking-glass in

  Sydenham, God bless her! She deserves a whole box of Raven Oil — or perhaps that’s what she’s tickling him for.

  The remainder of the mail is strictly business, yet he forces himself to chew through it, each finished letter wearying him a little more like a spoonful of ash swallowed with the greatest difficulty. But then, in the middle of replying to Miss Baynton in the Toilet Department of Harrod’s, he suddenly realises, in a blinding flash of revelation, where Sugar must have gone, and where, even now, his daughter tremblingly awaits her fate.

  By the time William finally reaches Mrs Leek’s house in Church Lane, St Giles, the sun is low in the sky, casting an incongruous golden glow on the ancient, ramshackle buildings. The convoluted exoskeletons of iron piping shine like monstrous necklaces, the poultices of stucco are butter-yellow on the walls, the clothes-lines flap their ragged burden like courtly pennants. Even the cracked attic windows tilting skew-whiff under the roofs blaze with reflected light — a light that’s doomed to fade in a matter of minutes.

  However, William is not inclined to admire the view. His immediate concern is whether the address from which a coachman, once upon a time, was instructed to pick up an old man in a wheelchair for the onward journey to Rackham’s lavender farm in Mitcham, is the self-same address at whose door he stands now, rapping the blistered wood with his fist. He only has Sugar’s word, after all, that the old man really lived here, and this is not the sort of street where a well-dressed man can safely ask for directions.

  After an eternity, the door swings open, and there, squinting through clouded pince-nez in the gloom, sits Colonel Leek.

  ‘Forgotten something?’ he wheezes, taking William to be a recently departed customer. Then: ‘Oh, it’s yon
.’

  ‘May I come in?’ says William, concerned that even now, Sugar may be shepherding Sophie through the filthy interior of this house towards a back exit.

  ‘Oh, by all means, by all means? declares the old man, with exaggerated politesse. ‘We’d be honoured. A man as exalted as you, sir. Mr Forty Acres! Glorious, glorious …’ And he spins on his axles, then wheels himself along a rancid runway of carpet that sighs with damp. ‘1813: prospects for farmers never better! 1814,1815,1816: frosts the like of which was never seen before, ruined crops from shore to shore, bankruptcy aplenty! Adam Tipton, of South Carolina, known in 1863 as the Cotton King! In 1864, after the coming of the weevil, found with a bullet in his brain!’

  ‘I’ve come to see Sugar,’ blurts William, following on behind. Maybe if he states his wish forthrightly, like a no-nonsense requisition, he’ll jolt the old blackguard into divulging more than he should.

  ‘She never came back for me, the trollop,’ scoffs Colonel Leek. ‘A woman’s promise is like a Pathan’s ceasefire. I never got my snuff, never got a second look at your glorious lavender farm, sir.’

  ‘I thought you disliked the experience,’ remarks William, momentarily peering up the ill-lit stairwell before stepping across the threshold of the parlour. ‘I seem to recall you complaining you were as good as … abducted?

  ‘Och, it made a nice change,’ bleats the old man, showing neither discomposure nor inclination to nibble at the bait. He has come to rest in a snug corner of the room, adding his shabby bulk to the general clutter of outmoded china and military junk. ‘My very first lavender farm! Powerful educa-a-aytional.’ He bares dark ruminant teeth in an ingratiating leer.

  A woman has descended the creaking stairs and now pokes her face into the room. She’s a pretty little thing, no spring chicken but well-preserved, with a good-humoured kindly face and a shapely body, clad in the fashionable colours of two Seasons ago.

  ‘Was you lookin’ for me, sir?’ she enquires of the stranger, somewhat surprised at the phenomenon of trade coming to her rather than she soliciting it.

  ‘I’m looking for Sugar,’ says William. ‘A regular visitor to this house, I believe.’

  The woman shrugs sadly. ‘That was a long time ago, sir. Sugar’s found a rich man to take care of ‘er.’

  William Rackham stands straight and balls his fists. ‘She has stolen my daughter.’

  Caroline ponders a moment, wondering if this man means what he says, or if ‘stolen my daughter’ is one of those fancy turns of phrase that educated people use to signify some loftier notion. ‘Your daughter, sir?’

  ‘My daughter has been abducted. Taken by your friend Sugar.’

  ‘Did you know,’ interjects Colonel Leek with lugubrious enthusiasm, ‘that of every ten persons drowned in England and Wales, six will be children aged ten years or less?’

  Caroline watches the well-dressed stranger’s eyes widen in offence, and just as she’s thinking how much he reminds her of someone she once knew, she twigs that this fellow is the perfumer Rackham, the brother of her gentle parson. The memory of that sweet man fetches her a sly blow in the pit of her stomach, for she’s had no warning, and memories can be cruel when they give you no warning. She flinches, claps one hand protectively to her breast, and cannot meet the accusing glower of the man who stands before her.

  ‘I’ll not be taken for a fool!’ yells Rackham. ‘You know more than you admit to, I can tell!’

  ‘Please, sir …’ she says, turning her head away.

  As surely as if a lid had been lifted from a vat, William detects the heady stench of a secret that can no longer be kept hidden. At last he’s on the right track! At last this affair is moving towards the explosive denouement he has been craving — the revelation, the release of tension, that will shake the universe in one fierce convulsion, and then allow everything to fall back into its rightful place, restored to normality! With a grunt of determination, he pushes past the woman, strides out of the parlour, and begins to stamp up the stairs.

  ‘Yaaarrr! Sevenpence!’ shouts Colonel Leek, clawing the air after him. ‘Watch yer step, sir!’ shouts Caroline. ‘Some o’ them stairs–’ But already it’s too late.

  Night has fallen over St Giles, over London, over England, over a fair fraction of the world. Lamp-lighters are roaming the streets, solemnly igniting, like an army of Catholic worshippers, innumerable votive candles fifteen feet in height. It’s a magical sight, for anyone looking down on it from above, which, sadly, no one is.

  Yes, night has fallen, and only those creatures who are of no consequence are still working. Chop-houses are coming to life, serving ox cheeks and potatoes to slop-shop drudges. Taverns, ale-houses and gin palaces are humming with custom. The respectable shop-keepers are shutting up their premises, locking the stanchions and bolting the latches; they snuff out the lights, condemning their unsold merchandise to the penance of another dismal night of self-contemplation. In the lower reaches of society, poorer, shabbier creatures labour on in their homes, gluing matchboxes, sewing trousers, making tin toys by candlelight, pushing neighbours’ washing through the mangle, squatting over basins with their skirts rucked up to their shoulders. Let them toil, let them grub, let them disappear into obscurity, you haven’t time to see any more.

  Refined society basks in a warm atmosphere of gas and paraffin, and its servants are stoking fires for the comfort of those souls who’ll now while away the remaining hours till bedtime with embroidery, dining, scrapbook-pasting, letter-writing, novel-reading, parlour games, prayers. Formal calls of an intimate nature have ended with the toll of a bell, and the conversations thus interrupted, however interesting they may have grown, cannot be resumed until the appointed time tomorrow. Well-behaved infants are being led by nurses into the presence of their mothers, to be petted for an hour or two before being whisked upstairs again to waiting beds. Unmarried gentlemen like Bodley and Ashwell, not in the least disadvantaged by not having wives, are spreading napkins over their knees in the Café Royal, or reclining into armchairs at their clubs with a sherry. In the grandest houses, cooks, kitchenmaids and footmen are limbering up for the complicated challenge of delivering piping hot food through long draughty corridors to dining-rooms at exactly the correct junctures. In humbler households, small families accept what is set down before them, and thank God for it.

  In Church Lane, St Giles, where no Gods are being thanked, and no children are being bathed, and gas-lamps are few and far between, William Rackham is being led along in near-blackness, stumbling and limping on wet, mucky cobble-stones. He has his arm slung around the shoulder of a woman, and with every step, he groans in pain and mortification. One trouser-leg is torn and sopping-wet with blood.

  ‘I’m all right!’ he cries, rearing away from the woman, only to seize hold of her again when his injured leg fails to support him.

  ‘Just a little further, sir,’ pants Caroline. ‘We’re almost there.’

  ‘Hail me a cab,’ says William, blundering forward in a haze of his own spent breath. ‘All I need is a cab.’

  ‘Cabs don’t come ‘ere, sir,’ says Caroline. ‘Just a little further.’

  A sudden gust of wind is seeded with sleet, stinging William’s cheeks. His ears are throbbing, swollen, as though he’s been boxed across them by an angry parent.

  ‘Let me go!’ he groans, but it’s he who’s hanging on.

  ‘You need a doctor, sir,’ Caroline points out, taking his peevishness in her stride. ‘You’ll go to a doctor, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he groans, incredulous at how one rotten stair could have reduced him to this state.

  The lights of New Oxford Street shine up ahead. Muffled voices swirl through the wind, weary babble from the Horseshoe Brewery’s workers being discharged into the night. Their scarecrow silhouettes loom through the drizzle as they cross the boundary from Bloomsbury to where they belong.

  ‘Oi, parson!’ someone shouts, and there’s raucous laughter.

 
Caroline escorts William Rackham to the edge of the great thoroughfare, under a street-lamp, then tugs him back so that he doesn’t stumble into the gutter.

  ‘I’ll stay with you, sir,’ she says matter-of-factly, ‘till a cab comes. Else you’ll get yerself killed.’

  In the brighter light, William takes stock of his leg — ragged and revoltingly clammy with blood — and then of the woman beside him. Her face is impassive, a mask; she has every reason to despise him; yet here she is, showing him charity.

  ‘Here — take this,’ he says, clumsily pulling a handful of coins from his pocket — shillings, sovereigns, small change — and pressing them upon her. Wordlessly she accepts, and secretes the money in a slit in her skirts, but still she stays by his side.

  Shamed, he tries to stand on both feet, and a shock of pain shoots up through one leg, as if a vengeful phantom lurking underground has fired a bullet straight through his heel towards his heart. He reels, and feels the woman’s arm hard around his waist.

  Tears spring to his eyes; the lights of New Oxford Street blur to an ecto-plasmic shiver. His body shivers too, in fear of its own injuries: what sort of shape will he be in when this is all over? Is he destined to be a cripple, a figure of fun who lurches lamely from armchair to armchair, who writes like a child, and stutters like an imbecile? What has become of the man he once was? A wraith-like shadow passes by on the opposite side of the street, purposefully fleet, pallbearer-black.