The Crimson petal and the white

PART 2

The House of Ill Repute

The heir to Rackham Perfumeries, in a fresh suit of clothes and light-headed from lack of sleep, stands in his parlour staring out at the rain, wondering if what he's feeling is love. He has been rudely drenched, he has been overcharged by the cabman who brought him home, no one received him until the fourth pull of the bell, his bathwater was an age in coming, and now he is being kept waiting for his breakfast-but none of it matters. Out there, he thinks, is the girl of a lifetime.

He pulls harder on the sash, and the curtains part wider-as wide as they can go. But the torrential downpour that has followed him from the city all the way to Notting Hill is letting precious little sunlight show; rather, a quantum of paleness filters through the French windows, settling on the lamp-lit parlour like a layer of dust.

Half past nine, and the lamps still on! Ah, but it doesn't matter. The rain is beautiful: how beautiful rain can be! And think of all the muck it's washing off the streets! And think also: only a few miles south-east of here, housed under this self-same sky, in all probability still tucked up in bed, lies a naughty angel called Sugar. And inside her, glowing like silver on the lining of her womb, is.his seed.

He lights a cigarette and inserts it between his pursed lips, reconfirming the decision he made almost immediately after leaving Mrs Castaway's: that he must have Sugar entirely to himself. An idle dream? Not at all. He need only be rich, and wealth, great wealth, is his for the claiming.

A haze of smoke on his side of the glass; a panorama of rain on the other. He imagines the metropolis seen from a great height, all of it bound together not just in a shimmering web of rain but in his own web as well, the web of his destiny.

Yes, on this luminous grey day he will gather the Rackham empire into his grasp, while Sugar sleeps. Let her sleep, until the time is ripe for him to tug on a thread and wake her.

Obscure noises emanate from elsewhere in the house, not recognisable as footsteps and voices, scarcely audible above the din of the downpour. Rainy weather makes servants skittish, William has found. In fact, he's noticed it so often that he's toyed with the idea of writing an amusing article about it, for Punch, called "Servants and the Weather".

The silly creatures dash back and forth aimlessly, standing very still for a few moments and then jerking into motion, disappearing suddenly under the stairs or into a corridor-just like kittens. Amusing … but they've kept him waiting so long for his breakfast this morning that he could almost have written the article already.

A slight dizziness, caused no doubt by hunger, prompts him to sit in the nearest armchair. He stares down, through his tobacco fog, at the polished parlour floor, and notes that a tiny trickle of water has entered the room through the French windows, from the sheer force and persistence of the rain. It's advancing unevenly along the floorboards, inching its way towards him; it has a long way to go yet, trembling, waiting on another gust of wind. With nothing better to do, William sits entranced and watches its progress, laying a mental wager on whether, by the time Letty comes to announce that breakfast is served, this trickle will have reached the tip of his left slipper. If it hasn't, he'll… what shall he do? He'll greet Letty nicely. And if it has… he'll chastise her. Her fate, therefore, is in her own hands.

But when the servant finally comes, it isn't Letty, but Clara.

"If you please, sir," she says (managing to convey, in that delightful way she has, that she couldn't care less if he pleases or not), "Mrs Rackham will be joining you at breakfast this morning."

"Yes, I… what?"'

"Mrs Rackham, sir…"

"My-wife?"'

She looks at him as though he's an imbecile; what other Mrs Rackham could it be?

"Yes, sir."

"She's… quite well, then?"' "I can't see anything wrong with her, sir."

William ponders this, while his cigarette, forgotten between his fingers, slinks towards scorching him.

"Splendid!" he says. "What a pleasant surprise."

And so it is that William finds himself seated at a table laid for two, waiting for the empty chair opposite him to be filled. He blows on his tender burnt flesh, shakes his hand in the air.

He'd like to dunk his fingers into ice-cold wine or water, but there's only tea, and a small jug of milk which he (and… Agnes?) will need shortly.

The dining-room, built for a family of Biblical proportions, appears cheerlessly spacious. To compensate, some servant or other has over-stoked the fire, so that surplus warmth is getting stowed under the table, trapped by the heavy linen tablecloth. Better they had spent their meagre brainpower on drawing the curtains wider: it's none too bright in here.

Letty arrives, carrying a platter of toast and muffins. She looks flustered, poor creature. Not at all the way she looked months ago when he told her she'd be earning an extra two pounds a year "because Tilly isn't here anymore". No frown on her face then!

But he knows what the problem is: Agnes, as mistress of the house, was meant to decide exactly which tasks would devolve to which servants, and she's done no such thing. Instead, the servants seem to have carved up the new responsibilities themselves.

"Everything all right, Letty?"' he murmurs, as she pours him a cup of tea.

"Yes, Mr Rackham." A lock of her hair has fallen loose, and one white cuff of her sleeve is lower than the other. He decides to let it pass.

"Do dampen that fire a bit, Letty," he sighs, when she has finished arranging the toast in its rack and is about to leave. "We'll all burst into flames in a minute."

Letty blinks uncomprehendingly. She spends much of her time hurrying through draughty corridors, and her bedroom is in the attic, so warmth is not something with which she's too familiar.

Her gimcrack little hearth is prone to choking up, making her room colder still, and what with the recent increase of her duties, she hasn't had time to spoon out her flue.

William mops his brow with a napkin while the servant kneels to her task. Why has Agnes chosen this morning, of all mornings, to join him at breakfast? Has her lunacy granted her a glimmer of clairvoyance? A glimpse of him and Sugar in delicto? Lord knows she's slept peacefully through many adulteries, so is it his after-glow of elation she senses? Yes, that must be it: his elation is charging the house like static before a storm, and Agnes has been stimulated. One minute she was unconscious, her sick-room shrouded and still; the next, her eyes flipped open like a doll's, animated by the electric change in atmosphere.

Surreptitiously, William lifts the lid of the butter-dish, and scoops out a smidgen of the golden grease to soothe his fingers.

Let's leave William now, and follow Letty out of the dining-room. She herself is of no consequence, but on her way towards the long subterranean passage to the kitchen, she catches sight of Agnes coming down the stairs-and Agnes is one of the people you came here to meet. It will be so much better if you have a chance to observe her now, before she composes herself for her husband.

Here, then, is Agnes Rackham, gingerly descending a spiral of stairs, breathing shallowly, frowning, biting her lip. As she reluctantly entrusts her weight to each carpeted step, she clutches the banister with one white-knuckled hand, while the other hand is laid on her breastbone, just under the mandarin collar of her morning-gown. It's Prussian blue velvet, that gown, and so ample in comparison to her dainty body that its hems threaten to ensnare the toes of her soft grey slippers, and send her tumbling.

You wonder if you've seen her somewhere before: indeed you have. She is a high-Victorian ideal; perfection itself at the time William married her, ever-so-slightly quaint now that the Seventies are half-way over. The shapes and demeanours now at the height of fashion are not Agnes's, but she remains an ideal nonetheless; her ubiquity cannot be erased overnight. She graces a thousand paintings, ten thousand old postcards, a hundred thousand tins of soap. She is a paragon of porcelain femininity, five foot two with eyes of blue, her blonde hair smooth and fine, her mouth like a tiny pink vulva, pristine.

"Good morning, Letty," she says, pausing at the banister while she speaks the words.

With the challenge of facing her husband still ahead, there's no point tempting Fate, on this hazardous descent, by talking and walking at the same time.

William jumps to attention when his wife arrives.

"Agnes, dear!" he says, hastening to pull her chair out from the table.

"No fuss, please, William," she replies.

Thus begins the fight, the old fight, to establish which of them has the superior claim to being normal. There is a standard to which all reasonable humans conform: which of them falls short more noticeably? Which will be found most wanting by the impartial judge hovering invisibly in the space between them? The starting-gun has been fired.

Having seated his wife, William walks stiffly back to his own chair. So deathly quiet do they sit then that they can hear, not far outside the room, anxious female voices hissing. Something about Cook throwing fits, and a disagreement between the hissers (letty and Clara?) about which of them has more arms.

Agnes calmly butters a muffin, ignoring the to-do on her behalf. She takes a bite, confirms the thing is made of leftover breadcrumbs, replaces it on the plate. A slice of Sally Lunn, still warm from its swaddling of serviette, is more to her liking.

A minute or two later, a perspiring

Letty arrives at the Rackhams' table.

"If you please…" she simpers, curtseying as well as she can manage with two large, heavy-laden trays balanced, trembling, one on each arm.

"Thank you, Letty," says Agnes, leaning back, observing the reaction of her husband as the food is unloaded, dish by dish, onto the table: a proper breakfast, the sort that gets served only when the mistress of the house is on hand to inspire it.

Eggs still steaming, rashers of bacon crisp enough to spread butter with, sausages cooked so evenly that there isn't a line on them, mushrooms brown as loam, roulades, fritters, kidneys grilled to perfection: all this and more is set before the Rackhams.

"Well, I hope you've an appetite today, my dear," quips William.

"Oh yes," Agnes assures him.

"You're feeling well, then?"' "Quite well, thank you." She decapitates an egg: inside it is saffron-yellow and as soft as anyone could possibly want.

"You're looking very well," observes

William.

"Thank you." She searches the walls for inspiration to go on. And, though there's no window visible from where she sits, she thinks of the rain which kept her company all night, stroking against her own window upstairs. "It must be the weather," she muses, "that has made me so well. It's very strange weather, don't you think?"' "Mmm," agrees William. "Very wet, but not nearly so cold. Don't you find?"' "True, the frozenness is gone. If there is such a word as frozenness." (what a relief!

On the damp foundations of the weather, a spindly conversation has been built.) "Well, my dear, if there isn't such a word, you've just done the English language a good turn."

Agnes smiles, but unfortunately William is looking down just then, investigating if his roulade is beef or mutton. So, she prolongs the smile until he looks up and notices it-by which time, although her lips are shaped exactly the same, there's something indefinably amiss.

"I take it you heard the… disagreement?"' remarks William, pointing vaguely towards where the hissing occurred.

"I heard nothing, dear. Only the din of the rain."

"I think the servants are lacking guidance in who should be doing what, now that Tilly is gone."

"Poor girl. I liked her."

"They look to you, my dear, for that guidance."

"Oh, William," she sighs. "It's all so complicated and tiresome. They know perfectly well what needs doing; can't they sort it out amongst themselves?"' Then she smiles again, happy to have retrieved a useful memory from their shared past. "Isn't that what you always used to talk about: Socialism?"'

William pouts irritably. Socialism is not the same thing as letting one's servants muddle towards anarchy. But never mind, never mind: on a day like today, it's not worth worrying over. Soon the servant question, at least in William Rackham's household, will be resolved beyond any ambiguity.

A more immediate problem: the conversation is dying.

William racks his brains for something to interest his wife, but finds only Sugar there, Sugar in every nook and corner. Surely, in the three or four weeks since he last breakfasted with Agnes, he's met someone they both know!

"I… I ran into Bodley and Ashwell, on… Tuesday, I b'lieve it was."

Agnes inclines her head to one side, doing her best to pay attention and be interested. She detests Bodley and Ashwell, but here's a valuable opportunity to get in practice for the coming London Season, during which she will be required to do a great deal of talking to, and feigning interest in, people she detests.

"Well now," she says. "What are they up to?"' "They've written a book," says William. "It's about prayer, the efficacy of prayer. I imagine it will cause quite a stir."

"They'll enjoy that, I'm sure." Agnes selects some mushrooms for a slice of toast, lays them on in careful formation. Small morsels of time are consumed, with an indigestible eternity remaining.

"Henry didn't come to visit us last

Sunday," she remarks, "nor the week before." She waits a moment for her husband to take up the thread, then adds, "I do like him, don't you?"'

William blinks, discomfited. What is she getting at, discussing his brother as though he were an amusing fellow they met at a party? Or is she implying she cares more for Henry than he does?

"Our door is always open to him, my dear," he says. "Perhaps he finds us insufficiently devout."

Agnes sighs. "I'm being as devout as I possibly can," she says, "in the circumstances."

William thinks better of pursuing this subject; it can only lead to trouble. Instead, he eats his sausage while it's still warm.

Inside his mind, a naked woman with flame-red hair is lying face-down on a bed, semen glistening white on her crimson-lipped vulva.

It occurs to him that he has not yet seen her breasts. Staring deeper into his thoughts, he wills her to turn, to rotate at the waist, but nothing happens-until Agnes breaks the silence.

"I wonder if…" She puts one nervous hand to her forehead, then, catching herself, slides it over to her cheek. "If this weather were to go for ever… Raining, I mean… Rain would become normal, and dry skies something rather queer?"'

Her husband stares at her, demonstrating his willingness to wait as long as it may take for her to resume making sense.

"I mean," she continues, inhaling deeply,

"What I imagine is… The whole world might so… fit itself around constant rain, that when a dry day finally came, hu-husbands and wives … sitting at breakfast just like this… might find it awf-awfully strange."

William frowns, stops chewing sausage for a second, then lets it pass. He cuts himself another mouthful; in the luminous dimness of the rain-shrouded dining-room, a silver knife scrapes against porcelain.

"Mmm," he says. The hum is all-purpose, incorporating agreement, bemusement, a warning, a mouthful of sausage-whatever Agnes cares to glean from it.

"Do go on, dear," she urges him weakly.

Again William racks his brains for news of mutual acquaintances.

"Doctor Curlew…" he begins, but this is not the best of subjects to share with Agnes, so he changes it as smoothly as he can.

"Doctor Curlew was telling me about his daughter, Emmeline. She… she doesn't ever wish to remarry, he says."

"Oh? What does she wish to do?"' "She spends almost all her time with the Women's Rescue Society."

"Working, then?"' Disapproval acts like a tonic on Agnes's voice, giving it much-needed flavour.

"Well, yes, I suppose it can hardly be called anything else…"

"Of course not."

"… for although it's a Charity, and she's a volunteer, she's expected to do… well, whatever she's asked to. The way Curlew describes it, I understand she spends entire days at the Refuge or even on the streets themselves, and that when she visits him afterwards, her clothes fairly stink."

"That's hardly surprising-ugh!"

"They claim an amazing rate of success, though, to be fair-at least so the doctor tells me."

Agnes peers longingly over his shoulder, as if hoping a giant-sized parent might come rushing in to restore decorum.

"Really, William-"' she squirms.

"Such a topic. And at the break'-fast table."

"H'm, yes…" Her husband nods apologetically. "It is rather… h'm." And he takes a sip of his tea. "And yet…

And yet it is an evil that we must face, don't you think? As a nation, without quailing."

"What?"' Agnes is forlornly hoping the topic will disappear if she loses the thread of it irretrievably enough. "What evil?"' "Prostitution." He enunciates the word clearly, gazing directly into her eyes, knowing, God damn it, that he is being cruel. In the back of his mind, a kinder William Rackham watches impotently as his wife is penetrated by that single elongated word, its four slick syllables barbed midway with t's. Agnes's cameo face goes white as she gulps for air.

"You know," she pipes, "when I looked out of my window this morning, the rose bushes-their branches-were jogging up and down so-like an umbrella opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and…" She shuts her lips tight, as if swallowing back the risk of infinite repetition. "I thought-I mean, when I say I thought, I don't mean I actually believed -but they seemed as if they were sinking into the ground.

Flapping like big green insects being sucked down into a quicksand of grass." Finished, she sits primly in her chair and folds her hands in her lap, like a child who has just recited a verse to the best of her ability.

"Are you quite well, my dear?"'

"Quite well, thank you, William."

A pause, then William perseveres.

"The question is, Is reform the answer? Or even possible? Oh, the Rescue Society may claim some of these women now live respectably, but who knows for certain?

Temptation is a powerful thing. If a reformed wanton knows very well she can earn as much in an afternoon as a seamstress earns in a month, how steadfast will she be in honest work? Can you imagine, Agnes, sewing a great mound of cotton shifts for a pittance, when if you will but remove your own shift for a few minutes…"

"William, please!"

A trickle of remorse stings his conscience.

Agnes's fingers are gripping the tablecloth, wrinkling the linen.

"I'm sorry, dear. Forgive me. I'm forgetting you haven't been well."

Agnes accepts his apology with a quirk of the lips that could be a smile-or a flinch.

"Do let's talk about something else," she says, almost in a whisper. "Let me pour you some more tea."

Before he can protest that a servant should be summoned to perform this task, she has grasped the teapot's handle in her fist, her wrist shaking with the effort of lifting it. He rears up in his seat to help her, but she's already standing, her petite frame poised to support the massive china pot.

"Today is a special day," she says, leaning over William's tea-cup. "I intend," (slowly pouring) "to put my heads together-Cook and I-our heads together, to bake you your favourite chocolate and cherry cake, that you haven't had in so long."

William is touched by this-touched to his soul.

"Oh, Aggie," he says. "That would be simply wonderful."

The vision of her standing there, so small and frail, pouring his tea, suddenly overwhelms him.

How despicably, how unfairly, he has treated her! Not just this morning, but ever since she first began to loathe him. Is it really her fault that she turned against his love, began to treat him as if he were a brute, turned him, finally, into a brute? He ought to have conceded that she was a flower not designed to open, a hothouse creation, no less beautiful, no less worth having. He should have admired her, praised her, cared for her and, at close of day, let her be. Moved almost to tears, he reaches out his hand across the table.

Abruptly, Agnes's arm begins to shake, with mechanical vehemence, and the spout of the teapot rattles loudly against the rim of William's cup. In an instant the cup has jumped out of its saucer, and the white of the tablecloth erupts with brown liquid.

William leaps from his seat, but Agnes's hand has already shivered out of the teapot's grip, and she totters away from the table, eyes wild. The shoulders around which he tries to cast a comforting arm seem to convulse and deflate and, with a retching cry, she falls to the floor. Or sinks to the carpet, if you will. Whatever way she gets there, she lands without a thump, and her glassy blue eyes are open.

William stares down in disbelief, though this is not the first time he's seen her sprawled at his feet; he is sick with concern, and hatred too, for he suspects she conspired in her collapse.

She, in turn, stares up at him, bizarrely calm now that she can fall no farther. Her hair is still neat, her body is arranged as if for sleep. Shallow breaths, lifting her bosom, reveal that the body underneath the blue dressing-gown is more adult than its tiny size suggests.

"I made a mistake, getting up today," she reflects, spiritlessly, her gaze drifting from her husband to the plaster rosettes on the ceiling.

"I thought I could, but I couldn't."

Fortuitously-for the Rackhams at least-it's at this moment that Janey enters the room, sent to clear the breakfast table.

"Janey!" William barks. "Run to Doctor Curlew's house and tell him to come at once."

The girl curtseys, primed to obey, but she's stopped in her tracks by the sound of her mistress's voice coming up from the floor.

"Janey can't go," the recumbent Mrs Rackham points out, a little wheezy from carpet dust. "She's needed in the kitchen. And Letty will be busy with the beds now. Janey, tell Beatrice she's to go; she's the only one we can spare."

"Yes 'm."

"And call Clara to me."

"Yes 'm." Without waiting for a word from the master, the girl hurries off.

William Rackham dawdles near his wife, awkwardly flexing his hands. Once upon a time, when Agnes's illness was still new, he used to lift her up into his arms, and carry her from room to room. Now he knows that merely picking her up is not enough. He clears his throat, straining to find a way of demonstrating his remorse and his forgiveness.

"You aren't hurt, are you, my dear? I mean, in your bones? Should I even have called for Doctor Curlew, d'you think? I did it without thinking, in my… my agitation. But I daresay you don't need a doctor, now. Do you?"' He holds it out to her: a tempting offer, for her to take or leave as she chooses.

"It's kind of you to think so," she responds wearily. "But it's too late now."

"Nonsense. I can call the girl back."

"Out of the question. As if it weren't bad enough, what's become of this household, without you running about in your slippers, chasing after a servant."

And she turns her head away from him, towards the door through which rescue will come.

Clara arrives a few seconds later. She takes one look at her master, and another at Mrs Rackham. It's only natural, this appraisal: natural to link, with a glance, the upright man and the supine woman. And yet William detects something more in Clara's glance, a glower of accusation, which outrages him: he has never struck anyone in his life! And if he ever does, by God this insolent little beast is likely to be the first!

Clara, however, is already ignoring him; she's pulling Agnes to her feet (or is Agnes rising by her own efforts?-the deed is done with remarkably little fuss) and, shoulder to shoulder, the two women walk out of the room.

Now, who shall we follow? William or Agnes? The master or the mistress? On this momentous day, the master.

Agnes's collapse, though dramatic, is of no great significance; she has collapsed before and will collapse again.

William, on the other hand, proceeds directly to his study and, once seated there, does something he's never done before. He reads his father's papers, and he re-reads them, and then he ponders them, peering out into the rain, until he begins to understand them. He has been shocked into a state of acute wakefulness; he is ready. The pages of Rackham Perfumeries' history glow on the desk before him, veined with vertical shadows: rivulets of rain running down his window. He reads, pen poised. This is the day, the stormy and significant day, when he will bring his unruly future to heel.

Fearlessly, he opens his mind to the mathematics of manure, the arithmetic of acreage, the delicate balances between distillation and dilution.

If he encounters a word that's nonsense to him, he roots it out in the reference books his father has thoughtfully provided, such as A Lexicon of Profitable Vegetation and The Cultivator's Cyclopaedia of Perfumes and Essences. As of last night, ignorance of the inner workings of Rackham Perfumeries is a luxury he can no longer afford.

Of course he wants to put Agnes out of her misery. Each time a new economy is imposed -another servant lost, another extravagance denied-she takes a turn for the worse. A coachman and carriage would do more to woo her back to health than any of Curlew's prescriptions.

But Agnes is not at the heart of why he squints over his father's smudged and faded handwriting, tolerating his father's crude provincial spelling and crude provincial mind, puzzling over the technicalities of extracting juice from dry leaves. At the heart lies this: if he's to have Sugar all to himself, the privilege is going to cost him dear. A small fortune, probably, which he has no choice but to defray with a large fortune.

He pauses in his labours, rubs his eyes, itchy from lack of rest. He flips backwards through the handwritten essay his father has prepared for his illumination, and re-reads a paragraph or two. There's a missing link in the life cycle of lavender as his father chronicles it (if life cycle is the correct term for what happens to a flower after it is cut). Here on this page, the newly filtered oil is described as having an undesirable "still smell"; on the next page, the smell is apparently gone, with no mention of how it was removed. William passes one hand through his hair, feels it standing up from his scalp, ignores the feeling.

Still smell-quo vadis? he jots in the margin, determined to survive this ordeal with his sense of humour intact.

Downstairs in the dining-room, Janey has an important task of her own. She is to remove all evidence of what Miss Tillotson described as a "disaster" on the breakfast table. Janey, too downtrodden to dare ask what exactly this word means (she'd always thought it had something to do with the Navy) has come here prepared for the worst, with bucket and mop, her pinafore weighed down with rags and brushes. She finds an abandoned but perfectly lovely-looking breakfast and, on closer examination, one spilled tea-cup. No debris on the floor. Only what Janey herself has brought in, on the bottom of her bucket: a few crumbs of dirt from the uncarpeted nether regions of the Rackham house.

Hesitantly, the girl reaches for a slice of cold bacon, one of three still glistening on the silver dish. She takes it between her stubby fingers, and begins to nibble on it. Theft. But the wrath of God shows no interest in coming down upon her head, so she grows bolder, and eats the whole rasher. It's so delicious she wishes she could post one home to her brother. Next, a muffin, washed down with a sip of stewed tea. Mrs Rackham's uneaten kidneys she leaves alone, not sure what they are. Her own diet is what Cook decides will agree with her.

Wicked just like everyone says she is, Janey lowers her weary body into Mrs Rackham's chair. Though only nineteen, she has legs as dense and varicose as rolled pork, and any opportunity to rest them is bliss. Her hands are lobster-red, in vivid contrast to white china as she inserts her finger into the handle of her mistress's cup. Shyly, she extends her pinkie, testing to see if this makes any difference to the way the cup lifts.

But this is as much as God is willing to tolerate. A bell tolls, making her jump.

"Come in, Letty," says Rackham, but he's wrong: it's Clara again. What are these servants playing at? Has the house descended into utter chaos while he's been toiling here? But then he remembers: he himself has sent Letty on an errand to the stationers, fifteen minutes ago.

"I suppose Doctor Curlew has arrived?"'

Wrong again. Clara explains to him that there is no sign yet of Beatrice and the good doctor, but that, instead, Mr Bodley and Mr Ashwell have come to visit. They are (quotes Clara with conscientious disdain) challenging him to a duel, acting as each other's seconds, and demanding that Rackham choose his weapon.

"I'll see them shortly," he says.

"Bid them make themselves at home."

If there's one thing that Bodley and Ashwell can be relied upon to do, it's to make themselves at home.

When William reaches a natural breathing-space in his work and goes downstairs, he finds them sunk deep in the smoking-room armchairs, languidly kicking each other's feet in competition for the privilege of resting them on the bald head of a stuffed tiger skin.

"Ave, Rackhamus!" hails

Ashwell, the old school greeting.

"By God, Bill," exclaims Bodley.

"Your eyes look worse than mine! Been fucking all night?"' "Yes, but I'm turning over a new leaf," William volleys back. He's ready for this! On a day like today, whatever God may send to frustrate him-lack of sleep, burnt fingers, Agnes on the floor, a mound of dreary documents to plough through, the wit of his bachelor friends-he will not allow his glow of triumph to be overshadowed.

It helps that in Bodley and Ashwell's company, he is forever an honorary bachelor.

As far as they're concerned, Agnes does not exist until William mentions her.

Admittedly, here in the Rackham house, her existence is more difficult to deny than in the streets of London or Paris, for there are reminders of her everywhere. The antimacassars on the chairs were crocheted by her; the tablecloths are adorned by her embroidery; and under every vase, candle-holder and knick-knack is likely to lie some finely wrought doily or place-mat beautified by Mrs Rackham's handicraft.

Even the cedar cigar case owes its little embroidered jacket (in five colours of thread, replete with silken tassels) to Agnes. But ("Cigar, Bodley?"') William is so accustomed to his wife's rococo icing on every exposed surface that he has become blind to it.

In a sense, this policy of Bodley and

Ashwell's-of denying Mrs Rackham's existence-is considerate rather than callous. It tactfully lets the marriage rest for as long as it needs to, like an invalid whose recovery cannot be hurried. William is grateful to them, really he is, for their willingness to act the part of the three wise monkeys (well, two), seeing no evil, hearing no evil, and… well, he doesn't know if they speak evil of Agnes when they're in other company. He hopes not.

"But you must tell us," says Ashwell, after they've been chin-wagging and smoking for a few minutes. "You must tell us the secret of Mrs Fox. Come now, Bill: what are her virtues?-besides Virtue, I mean."

Bodley interposes: "Can a woman who works with prostitutes be virtuous?"

"Surely the prime requisite, hmm?"' says Ashwell, "for a woman thus employed?"' "But contact with Vice corrupts!" protests Bodley. "Haven't you found?"'

William flicks his cigar into the hearth.

"I'm sure Mrs Fox is proof against all evil. God's deputy in a bonnet. That's the impression Henry gave me, from the day he first met her. Well, not the actual day, I suppose, since he doesn't visit me very often." William leans back in his chair and stares at the ceiling, the better to read any bygone conversations that might still be floating up there.

"She's so good, William"-that's what he kept saying to me. "So very good. She'll make some lucky man a saint of a wife."

"Yes, but what does he think of her rubbing shoulders with whores?"' "He hasn't told me. I can't imagine he likes it much."

"Poor Henry. The dark shadow of Sin comes between him and his love."

William wags his finger in mock disapproval. "Now now, Bodley, you know Henry would be horribly offended to hear that word used in connection with his feelings for Mrs Fox."

"What word? Sin?"'

"No no, Love!" chides William.

"Any suggestion that he's in love with

Mrs Emmeline Fox…"

"Agh, it's as plain as the nose on his face," scoffs Ashwell. "What does he imagine brings them together so often? The irresistible charm of debating Scripture?"' "Yes, yes, precisely that!" exclaims William. "You must remember they're both furiously devout. Every whisper of reform or lapse in the Church, here in England or abroad, is of unbearable interest to them." ("Then why don't they want to hear about our new book?"' mutters Bodley.) "As for Mrs Fox's work with the Rescue Society, the way Henry describes it, she does it all for God. You know: souls brought back to the fold…"

"No no, old chap," corrects Bodley. "Souls to the bosom; sheep to the fold."

"As for Henry," perseveres William,

"He's still hell-bent on becoming a parson.

Or is it a vicar, or a rector, or a curate? The more he explains the distinctions, the less difference I can see."

"Tithes," says Bodley with a wink, "and what proportion of 'em you can pocket."

Ashwell snorts and produces from inside his coat a squashed clump of Turkish Delight wrapped in tissue paper. "It's too absurd," he mumbles, after taking a bite and re-pocketing the remainder. "A fine manly specimen like Henry-best rower in our set, champion swimmer, I can still see him running around Midsummer Common stripped to the waist.

What's he thinking of, shuffling alongside a sickly widow? Don't tell me it's her snow-white soul-I know a man on heat when I smell one!"

"But how can he stand the sight of her?"' groans Bodley. "She looks like a greyhound! That long, leathery face, and that wrinkled forehead-and always so terribly attentive, just like a dog listening for commands."

"Come now," cautions William. "Aren't you placing too much importance on physical beauty?"' "Yes but damn it, William-would you marry a widow who looked like a dog?"' "But Henry has no intention of marrying Emmeline Fox!"

"Oooh! Scandalous!" mugs Bodley, clapping his hands to his cheeks.

"I can vouch for the fact," pronounces William, "that my brother wants nothing from Mrs Fox but conversation."

"Oh yes," sneers Ashwell, removing his coat, warming to his theme. "Converlessa-tion.

Conversation while they go on walks together in the park, or in cosy tea rooms in town, or by the sea, gazing into each other's eyes constantly. I heard they even went boating on the Thames-in order to discuss Thessalonians, no doubt."

"No doubt," insists William.

Ashwell shrugs. "And this mad desire to be a parson: how long has he had that?"' "Oh, years and years."

"I never noticed it at Cambridge-did you, Bodley?"' "Beg pardon?"' Bodley is rummaging in the pockets of Ashwell's discarded coat, looking for the Turkish Delight.

"Father forbade the idea ever to be discussed,"

William explains. "So Henry wished for it in secret-though it wasn't much of a secret from me, I'm sorry to say. He was always frightfully pious, even when we were small. Always lamented that we were a prayers-once-a-day family and not a prayers-twice-a-day family."

"He should've counted his blessings," muses Bodley. ("He was counting his blessings," quips Ashwell.) "We had prayers twice a day in our house. I owe my atheism to it.

Once a day fosters piety, and poor fools like Henry wanting to be clerics."

"It's been a great disappointment to my father, at any rate," says William. "He assumed for so long that it would be Henry, his precious namesake, who took the business over.

And instead, of course," (he stares them straight in the eye) "it will be me."

Bodley and Ashwell are struck silent, visibly surprised to hear him talking this way about Rackham Perfumeries, usually another unmentionable subject. Well, let them be surprised! Let them gain an inkling of the change that has come over him since yesterday!

He longs to tell them about Sugar, of course; to sing her praises and (all right: yes) revenge himself a little for the last few years, when Bodley and Ashwell's lives seemed always so gay in comparison with his own. But he can imagine only too well their response: "Well then, let's try this Sugar!" And what could he do then? Retract everything? Begin falsely dispraising her, like a stammering old peasant trying to persuade a pillaging soldier that his daughter isn't worth raping? Futile. To such as Bodley and Ashwell, all female treasures are in the public domain.

"So," he questions them instead, "have you heard anything more about that amazing girl you were describing to me?"' "Amazing girl?"' "The fierce one-with the riding crop-supposed to be the illegitimate daughter of somebody or other…"

"Lucy Fitzroy!" Bodley and

Ashwell ejaculate simultaneously.

"Yes, by God, odd you should mention that," says Ashwell. The two of them turn to each other and raise an eyebrow each, their signal to slip into alternating raconteuring.

"Yes, damned odd."

"We got the news about her, oh, barely three hours after we told you about her in the first place, didn't we, Bodley?"' "Two and three-quarter hours, no more."

"The news?"' prompts William.

"What news?"'

"Not a very happy tale," says Ashwell.

"One of Lucy's admirers took to her, apparently."

"Took to her?"' echoes William, his own feelings for Sugar causing him to construe the phrase benignly.

"Yes," says Bodley. "With her own riding crop."

"Beat her very severely."

"Particularly about the face and mouth."

"I understand all the fight's gone out of her now."

Bodley, noticing his cigar has gone out, removes it from his lips and examines its potential momentarily before tossing it into the fire.

"Well, as you can imagine," he says.

"Madam Georgina doesn't have high hopes.

Even if she's willing to wait, there will be scars."

Ashwell, eyes downcast, is picking at the lint on his trousers. "Poor girl," he laments.

"Yes," smirks Bodley. "How are the fighty maulen!"

At this, Ashwell and Rackham both wince.

"Bodley!" one of them cries. "That's appalling!"

Bodley grins and blushes at the chastisement like a schoolboy.

Just then the door of the smoking-room flies open and Janey bursts across the threshold, panting and distressed.

"I-I'm sorry," she says, tottering on tiptoes in the doorway, as if a great filthy flood were surging against her back, threatening to spill past her into this smoky masculine domain.

"What is it, Janey!" (the girl's looking at Bodley, damn it: doesn't she even know which man is her master?) "Sir-if you please-I mean-"'

Janey bobs up and down in a nervous dance, less a curtsey than a pantomime of needing to pee. "Oh, sir-your daughter-she's-she's all bloody, Mr Rackham!"

"My daughter? All bloody? Good Lord, what? All bloody where?"'

Janey cringes in an ecstasy of anxiety.

"All over, sir!" she wails.

"Well… uh…" flusters William, astounded that this emergency has landed in .his lap rather than someone else's. "Why isn't … uh… what's-her-name…"

Janey, feeling herself accused, is almost in a frenzy. "Nurse ain't 'ere, sir, she went to fetch Doctor Curlew. And I can't find Miss Playfair, she must 'ave gone out too, and Miss Tillotson, she won't-"' "Yes, yes, I see now." Social humiliation burns on Rackham's shoulders like Hercules' fatal shirt of Nessus.

Inescapably, there are too few servants in his house just now, and those that are left are the wrong kind for this emergency, and-more embarrassing even than this-he has a wife who, alas, does not function. Therefore-guests or no guests-he must step down and see to this matter himself.

"My friends, I am sorry…" he begins, but Ashwell, sensitive to William's plight, takes the mood of the moment in hand and commands the sobbing Janey thus:

"Well, don't just stand there,

Janey-bring the child down here."

"Yes!" Bodley chips in. "This is just what's needed on a rainy morning: drama, bloodshed-and feminine charm."

At a nod from William the servant runs off, and yes, now they hear it: the animal wail of a child. Muted at first, then (presumably when the door of the nursery is opened) distinctly audible, even above the rain. Louder and louder it grows, heralding the child's progress down the stairs, until finally it is very loud indeed, and accompanied by a descant of anxious whisperings and shushings.

"Please, Miss Sophie," whines Janey as she escorts into the smoking-room William and Agnes's only begotten infant.

"Please." But Miss Sophie Rackham cannot be persuaded to scream any softer.

Despite all the din, you are intrigued: fancy William being a father! All this time you've spent with him, in the most intimate of circumstances, and you'd no idea! What does this daughter of his look like? How old is she?

Three? Six? But you can't tell. Her features are distorted and obscured by blood and weeping. There's a bulge under her bloodstained pinafore, which Sophie cradles through the cloth with one bloody hand, to keep it all in, but two flaccid rag-doll legs have slipped out already, dangling their crudely stitched feet. Sophie clutches and clutches, trying to gather the legs up, shrieking all the while. Blood bubbles out of her face, dripping off her tangled mop of blonde hair, spattering the Persian carpet and her pale, bare toes.

"What on Earth," gasps William, but Bodley has already sprung up from his chair, waved Janey away, and knelt before the gory child, cupping the back of her skull in his hands.

"Which-what's wrong with her, Bodley?"'

There is a terrible pause, then Bodley gravely announces: "I'm afraid it's … epistaxis! A proboscidiferous haemorrhage! Quickly, child: who is to have custody of the doll?"'

William collapses back into his chair, struck by relief and anger. "Bodley!" he yells over Sophie's ceaseless wailing. "This is no laughing matter. A child's life is a fragile thing!"

"Nonsense," tushes Bodley, still on his knees before the child. "A biff on the nose, is it then? How did you get that, hmm? Sophie?"'

She screams on, so he tugs the legs of her doll to get her attention. Encouraged by her reaction, he lifts her pinafore, exposing her toy.

"Now, Sophie," he cautions, "you must put your little friend down. You're frightening him to death!" Instantly the pitch of Sophie's wailing drops considerably, and Bodley pushes through. "From the way you're weeping he must think he's about to be orphaned-left all alone!

Come now, put him down-or no, give him to me for a moment. Look, his eyes are wide with fright!" The doll, a Hindoo boy with "Twinings" embroidered on his chest, is indeed wide-eyed, his chocolate-brown bisque head disturbingly lifelike in comparison with his limp rag body, a soft hemp skeleton swathed in cotton clout suggestive of smock and pantalettes. Sophie looks her coolie in the face, sees the fear there-and hands him over to the gentleman.

"Now," Bodley goes on, "you must prove to him that you're really all right, which you can't do with all that blood on your face." (sophie's wailing has been reduced to a snivel, though her nose is still bubbling crimson.) "Ashwell, give me your handkerchief."

"My handkerchief?"'

"Be reasonable, Ashwell; mine is still fashionable." Never taking his eyes off Sophie, and holding her doll in one arm, he extends his other arm behind him, wiggling the fingers impatiently until the handkerchief is surrendered. Then he sets to, mopping and dabbing at Sophie's face, so vigorously that she sways on her feet. As he wipes, he catches sight of Janey out of the corner of his eye, and instructs her, in a sing-song school-masterly tone:

"Come now, Janey. I shall need a wet cloth presently, shan't I?"'

The servant gapes, too dazed to move.

"Wet cloth," simplifies Bodley patiently. "Two parts cloth, one part water."

A nod from William frees Janey to run off on this errand, even as the handkerchief begins to unmask the features of his only child. She is merely sniffling now, lifting her head in rhythm with the stranger's strokes against her face, trusting him instinctively.

"Look!" says Bodley, directing her attention to the Hindoo boy. "He feels much better, don't you see?"'

Sophie nods, the last tears rolling out of her enormous red-rimmed eyes, and stretches out her arms for her doll.

"All right," judges Bodley. "But mind! You mustn't get him all bloody." He takes a fold of her pinafore between two fingers and holds it up so she can see how wet it is.

Without demur, she allows him to lift the offending garment over her head; he has it off with a swift one-handed motion.

"There now," he says, tenderly.

Janey returns with the wet flannel, and makes as if to wipe Sophie's face with it, but Bodley takes the cloth from her and performs the task himself. Sophie Rackham, her features now uncamouflaged and her cheeks less swollen, is revealed a plain, serious-looking child, certainly no candidate for a Pears' Soap advertisement-or a Rackhams' one, at that.

Her large eyes are china blue, but protruding and cheerless, and her curly blonde hair hangs limp. More than anything else she has the air of a domestic pet bought for a child who has since died; an obsolete pet that is given food, lodging, and even the occasional pat of affection, but no reason for living at all.

"Your little friend has a stain on him; we must wash it off," Bodley is saying to her. "Every second counts."

She lays her tiny hand on his, and together they sponge at the blood on the Hindoo's back; she would do anything for this sympathetic stranger, anything.

"I once knew of a doll who got cranberry sauce all over her hair," he tells her, "and no one saw to it until much too late. By then, it was hard as tar-with the consequence that her hair had to be shaved off, and she caught pneumonia."

Sophie looks at him anxiously, too shy to ask the question.

"No, she didn't die," says Bodley. "But she has remained, from that day onward, entirely bald." And he raises his eyebrows as far as they will go, pouting in mock disappointment at the idea of one's eyebrows being the only hairs left on one's head. Sophie chuckles.

This chuckle, and the screams she came in with, are the only sounds you are going to hear her utter, here in her father's smoking-room. Nurse is always telling her she knows nothing, but she knows that well-behaved children are neither seen nor heard.

Already she has caused a fuss for which she will no doubt be punished; she must become silent and invisible as soon as possible, to placate what's coming to her.

Yet, even as Sophie stands mute, hunching her shoulders to take up less room, William is amazed at how big she's grown. It seems like only last week that Sophie was a newborn babe, sleeping invisibly in her cot, while elsewhere in the house, a feverish Agnes lay sobbing in hers. Why, she's not even a toddler anymore, she's a… what would one call it? a girl! But how is it possible that he hasn't noticed the transformation? It's not as if he doesn't see her often enough to note her progress -he glimpses her, oh… several times a week! But somehow, she never impressed him as being quite so… old. God almighty: he remembers now the day when his father gave that hideous doll to the baby Sophie-something he picked up on a trade visit to India, a Twinings mascot originally meant to sit astride a tin elephant filled with tea. Wasn't it on that same day that his father loudly declared, in front of the servants, that William had better start "boning up" on the perfume trade? Yes!

And this child, this plain-faced girl with blood on her feet, this overgrown infant whose back is turned to him as she and his old chum Philip Bodley indulge in foolishness together… she is the living embodiment of the years since; years of veiled threats and enforced economies. How he would like to be the sort of father depicted in ladies' journals, lifting his smiling tot like a trophy in the air while his adoring wife looks on! But he hasn't an adoring wife anymore, and his daughter is tainted by misery.

He clears his throat. "Janey," he says, "don't you think Mr Bodley has done quite enough?"'

Who to follow now? Janey, I suggest. Mr Bodley and Mr Ashwell are about to leave anyway, and William Rackham will then immediately resume his study of the Rackham papers.

He'll barely move for hours, so unless you are madly curious about the cost of unwoven Dundee jute as a cheap substitute for cotton wool, or the secrets of making potpourri-scented migraine sachets, you are likely to have a more interesting time with Janey and Sophie as they sit in the nursery, waiting for Beatrice to return.

Janey squats beside Sophie on the floor, clutching her abdomen, suffering the wickedest stomach pains she's ever had in her life. It must be the stolen morsels of the Rackhams' breakfast she ate… her punishment from God, a skewer going right through her guts. She rocks to and fro, arms wrapped around her knees, Sophie's blood-soaked pinafore folded in her lap. What on Earth is she supposed to do with it? Will she be punished by Cook for leaving the kitchen? Will she be punished by Nurse for allowing the Rackhams' child to come to harm? Punished by Miss Playfair, for rushing to investigate Sophie's screams instead of finishing the cleaning of the dining-room? Punished by Miss Tillotson for… whatever Miss Tillotson feels like punishing her for today? How did this happen to her, these bloody mishaps and tasks undone, and she to blame, and a thousand girls jostling to take her place? Oh please, let Mr Rackham not dismiss her! Where could she go? Home is too far away, and it's raining so hard! She'll end up on the streets, she will!

Her honour is all she has to her name, but she knows she's not brave enough to starve for it! But no, please no: she'll work harder for the Rackhams, yes she will, harder than she's ever worked before; she just needs a little more time to learn what her new duties actually are.

"Who was that man?"'

Janey turns towards the unfamiliar sound of Sophie Rackham's voice. She squints, trying not to look at Sophie's Bristol top spinning on the floor in front of the little girl's skirts, for fear it might make her feel more bilious.

"Beg pardon, Miss Sophie?"'

"Who was that man?"' the child repeats, as the top spins drunkenly on to its side.

"What man, Miss Sophie?"'

Janey's voice is squeezed thin with pain.

"The nice one."

Janey struggles to remember a nice man.

"I din't know nobody there, I never seen them before," she pleads. "Except Mr Rackham."

Sophie spins her top again. "He's my father, did you know?"' she says, frowning. She's keen to teach Janey the facts of life: servants deserve to learn things too, in her opinion. "And.his father, my father's father, is a very 'portnant man. He has a long beard, and he goes to India, Liv'pool, everywhere.

He's the same Rackham that you see on the soap and the perfume."

Janey's soap is made of leftover slivers from the kitchen, doled out by Cook on a weekly basis, and she has never in her life seen a bottle of perfume. She smiles and nods, in agony, pretending to understand.

"The nice man," Sophie tries again.

"Has he never come to the house before?"' "I don't know, Miss Rackham."

"Why not?"'

"I… I used to work all the time only in the scullery. Now I work in the kitchen too-and I bring out the food sometimes, and… and other fings. But I ain't… I ain't been out in the 'ouse much yet."

"Me neither." It's a shy pleasure, this illicit comradeship with the lowliest of servants.

Little Sophie peers directly into Janey's face, wondering if anything unusual is going to happen, now that they've shared such intimacy. This could be a special day, the beginning of a new life; why, this is the way friendships start in storybooks! Sophie opens her eyes as wide as she can and smiles, giving the servant permission to speak her heart, to propose (perhaps) a secret rendezvous after bedtime.

Janey smiles back, whey-faced, rocking on her heels. She opens her lips to speak, then suddenly pitches forward on her knees and spews a pale shawl of vomit onto the nursery floor. Two open-mouthed, silent-scream retches, and she spews again.

Bile, stewed tea, Cook's morning gruel and glimmering bits of bacon puddle out onto the polished boards.

Seconds later, the nursery door swings open: it's Beatrice, returning at last. In the rest of the Rackham house, as by a wave of a magic wand, everything is back to normal:

Doctor Curlew is climbing the stairs to Mrs Rackham's bedroom, Mr Rackham's old schoolfriends have left, Letty is back from the stationers, the rain is waning.

Only here in the nursery-where, by rights, everything should always be perfectly under control-is anything amiss: a revolting stench; Sophie dishevelled, tangle-haired, barefoot; the scullery maid on her hands and knees, with no bucket or mop in sight, stupidly staring down at a pool of sick in the middle of the room, and … what's this? Sophie's pinafore, covered in blood!

Growing erect with fury, Beatrice Cleave brings the full power of her basilisk stare to bear on the Rackham child, the bane of her life, the sinful creature who cannot be trusted for five minutes, the useless daughter of an undeserving heir to an unworthy fortune. Under the weight of that stare, little Sophie cowers, points a trembling, grubby finger at Janey.

"She done it."

Beatrice winces, but resolves to resume the war on the child's grammar later, after a few other mysteries have been solved.

"Now," she says, hands on hips, even as the first rays of sunshine flicker in through the nursery window, turning the pool of vomit silver and gold. "From the beginning…!"