by Michel Faber
He shuts his eyes tight, but the apparitions continue to come: a tall thin woman wrapped in green silk, hurrying through the rain without a bonnet or umbrella. For an instant, as she passes under a street-lamp, her luxuriant surplus of hair glows orange like a flame, and he fancies her smell is flicked towards him on the breeze, like no other odour on earth. Even as she passes, she trails her fingers behind her, wiggling them as if inviting him to take hold. Trust me, she appears to be telling him, and Lord, how he longs to trust her again, to press his feverish face between her breasts. But no: it’s Sophie she’s beckoning to — his daughter, unrecognisably filthy, dressed in rags, a barefoot guttersnipe from a cautionary slide-show. Steady, steady: it’s only a fantasy, a trick of the imagination: he’ll have her back yet, safe in the bosom of the family.
Next to pass is a grisly female phantasm, a naked corpse of white flesh much disfigured with crimson gashes and lavender bruises. Her chest gapes open, revealing a palpitating heart between her full breasts, and she dances gracefully on the smutty cobble-stones. Though his eyes are still shut, William turns his face away and buries it in the soft shoulder beside his cheek.
‘Don’t go to sleep on me, sir,’ Caroline warns him amiably, adjusting her stance, squeezing him hard until he rouses. He looks into her face again; it’s not quite so impassive now; he detects a weary half-smile. Her shawl has slipped, and the sweat of exertion twinkles in the hollows of her collarbones; her flesh, though firm, reveals some wrinkles at the neck. Peeping up from the swell of her left breast is a vivid scar, an old burn or scald, shaped like an arrowhead. There’s a story behind that scar, no doubt, if she had a mind to tell it.
Ach, how warm she is, and how firmly her hand is pressed in the small of his back! How thick and glossy her hair is, for a woman no longer young! Now that they’ve been at rest here for a while, he’s aware of her body breathing against his own — how divinely she breathes! Helplessly, he adjusts the rhythm of his own inhalations to coincide with hers. They stand together under the street-lamp, veiled inside a gently swirling column of light, their short shadows joined indistinguishably, a strange black chimera cast upon the cobbles, female on the left side, male on the right.
‘You really are m-m-most kind,’ he tells her, longing to be lying down in a cosy bed. ‘I don’t know how to–’
‘Here’s yer cab, sir!’ Caroline says cheerfully, patting his arse as rescue comes trundling into view at last. And before he has a chance to make her life too complicated, she nimbly slips from his embrace and hurries back towards Church Lane, out of his reach, out of yours.
‘Goodbye!’ sings her voice, for her body is already gone, blotted into the unreadable darkness.
And to you also: goodbye.
An abrupt parting, I know, but that’s the way it always is, isn’t it? You imagine you can make it last for ever, then suddenly it’s over. I’m glad you chose me, even so; I hope I satisfied all your desires, or at least showed you a good time. How very long we’ve been together, and how very much we’ve lived through, and still I don’t even know your name!
But now it’s time to let me go.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I was far too young in the 1870s to pay proper attention to everything I should, so this account is no doubt riddled with inaccuracies. In fact, The Crimson Petal would have been complete and utter fiction had I not been aided in my researches by a great many people. I thank them for sharing their memories with me, and accept responsibility for any falsehoods that remain. Some of these, like the re-scheduling of the Abbots Ripton rail disaster and the shameless embezzlement of what properly belongs to Le Petomane, are deliberate; others are mere ignorance, from which the following erudite folk were powerless to save me:
Chris Baggs, Clare Bainbridge, Paul Barlow, Francis Barnard, Lucinda Becker, Cynthia Behrman, Gemma Bentley, Alex Bernson, Marjorie Bloy, Nancy Booth, Nicola Bown, Trev Broughton, Arthur Burns, Jamie Byng, Rosemary Campbell, Roger Cline, Ken Collins, Betty Cortus, Eileen M. Curran, Frederick Denny, Patrizia di Bello, Jonathan Dore, Gail Edwards, K. Eldron, Marguerite Finnigan, Holly Forsythe, Judy Geater, Grayson Gerrard, Sheldon Goldfarb, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Valerie Gorman, Jill Grey, Lesley Hall, Beth Harris, Kay Heath, Sarah J. Heidt, Toni Johnson-Woods, Ellen Jordan, Iveta Jusova, Katie Karrick, Gillian Kemp, Andrew King, Ivo Klaver, Patrick Leary, Paul Lewis, Janet Loengard, Margot Louis, Michael Martin, Chris Ann Matteo, Liz McCausland, Hugh MacDougall, Kirsten MacLeod, Deborah McMillion, Terry L. Meyers, Sally Mitchell, Ellen Moody, Barbara Mortimer, Jess Nevins, Rosemary Oakeshott, Judy Oberhausen, Jeanne Peterson, Siân Preece, Angela Richardson, Cynthia Rogerson, Mario Rups, Herb Schlossberg, Barbara Schulz, Malcolm Shifrin, Helen Simpson, Carolyn Smith, Rebecca Steinitz, Matthew Sweet, Ruth Symes, Carol L. Thomas, George H. Thomson, Maria Torres, Audrey Verdin, Trina Wallace, Robert Ward, Stephen Wildman, Peter Wilkins, Perry Willett, Chris Willis, Michael Wolff and Karen Wolven.
I’m indebted to Patrick Leary for setting up the excellent VICTORIA internet discussion group, and to Cathy Edgar for directing me to it.
Mindful of the necessity to keep this book nice and slim, I can’t list all the publications I’ve consulted, though special mention must be made of Jennifer Davies’ The Victorian Kitchen. Thanks to all the folk who’ve written about the era, and especially to those who photographed and painted it.
Several brave souls volunteered to read the manuscript. Kenneth Fielden’s sound advice at an early stage steered me away from blind alleys and pitfalls, and gave me a push in the right direction. Mary Ellen Kappler read the text in weekly instalments sent through the ether, and worked more closely on it than I had any right to expect. Her rare combination of scholarship and insight was not merely useful but inspirational.
Thanks also to my editor Judy Moir, who combed through the manuscript with the same care, dedication and good humour that she has shown in editing my previous books.
Most of all I’d like to thank my wife Eva for her incisive criticisms of The Crimson Petal in its radically different drafts over the years. Her high expectations and her ability to communicate her vision of the book’s potential have enriched it no end.
Michel Faber
April, 2002
About the Author
MICHEL FABER’S first novel, Under the Skin, was a finalist for Britain’s
Whitbread Award and nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Award 2002.
It was hailed by the New York Times as “remarkable” and the Wall
Street Journal as “original and unsettling … an Animal Farm for
the new century.” He is also the author of an acclaimed
collection of stories, Some Rain Must Fall, and two
novellas, The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps and
The Courage Consort. Born in Holland, raised
in Australia, Michel Faber now lives
in the Scottish Highlands.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for
THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE
“A book so vigorous and preternaturally delightful that a stylish brio enlivens even its weather reports. In a big, sexy, bravura novel that is destined to be surpassingly popular, Mr. Faber has set forth monumental ambitions … There is as much Bonfire of the Vanities as Dickens here … Wildly entertaining.”
The New York Times
“[Faber] has mastered storytelling … I love this writer.”
National Post
“Ever since last fall readers have been watching for another knockdown, breakout book … It’s here … Don’t wait for the movie. Read The Crimson Petal and the White right now, while it’s still a living, laughing, sweating, coruscating mass of gorgeous words. And that’s why a book like this is even better than sex.”
Time
“Nothing could have prepared readers for the sweep and subtlety of The Crimson Petal and the White.”
The New York Times Book Review
/> “Massive but enthralling … fascinating characters … Such a richness of detail, that it’s almost impossible to put down.”
Toronto Star
“This is an unputdownable book; there is no choice but to give in to this most unbelievably pleasurable of narrative rides. From Pointillism to broad brushstroke bravura, the prose seems to be on some benign, timed-release speed: its pace is unflagging, its onward rush irresistible … Faber’s take on the 19thcentury English novel is a heady and intoxicating mixture of affection, respect and scabrous resistance.”
The Times (London)
“The intimate relationship one develops with the characters after reading for 834 pages is much more satisfying than the mere one-night-stand promise of other novels.”
People
“Unputdownable.”
The Guardian (UK)
“This year’s most entertaining novel.”
The Boston Globe
“[A] bulging, bawdy Victorian epic … Cocky and brilliant, amused and angry … rightfully earning comparisons to observer extraordinaire Charles Dickens.”
Entertainment Weekly
“A meticulously crafted, come-hither look at extreme alienation, sexual volition and zeal … We are escorted through the story to the allure of the unfamiliar — a world of streets … rooms of sultry and scurrilous sex … Faber’s approach here is engaging.”
Books in Canada
“Faber’s bawdy, brilliant second novel tells an intricate tale of love and ambition and paints a new portrait of Victorian England and its citizens in prose crackling with insight and bravado … Faber’s central characters … shine with life, the superb plot draws on a wealth of research and briskly moves through the lives of each character — whether major or minor, upstairs or downstairs –gathering force until the fates of all are revealed. A marvelous story of erotic love, sin, familial conflicts and class prejudice, this is a deeply entertaining masterwork that will hold readers captive until the final page.”
Publishers Weekly
“A novel of real contrasts: rich and poor, true and false, men and women. [Faber] creates a particularly stark juxtaposition of the lives led by men, and the lives led by women, a century and a quarter ago. While he also shows the stellar distances between the classes, it is the difference between men and women of all classes that is the core of the novel.”
Edmonton Journal
“Smelling salts at the ready, girls.”
Elle
Copyright
The Crimson Petal and the White
© 2002 by Michel Faber.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40158-6
First HarperPerennialCanada paperback edition
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National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Faber, Michel
The crimson petal and the white / Michel Faber.
ISBN 0-00-200527-1 (bound). –
ISBN 0-00-639217-2 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PR6056.A23C74 2002 823’.914 C2002-902401-3
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