The Crimson petal and the white

EIGHT

Before we go on, though… Forgive me if I misjudge you, but I get the impression, from the way you're looking at the Rackhams' house-at its burnished staircases and its servant-infested passageways and its gaslit, ornately decorated rooms-that you think it's very old. On the contrary, it's quite new. So new that if, for example, William decides it really will not do to have a trickle of rain stealing through the French windows in the parlour, he only has to ferret out the business card of the carpenter who guaranteed the seal.

In the boyhood of Henry Calder Rackham, when Notting Hill was a still a rural hamlet in the parish of Kensington, cows grazed on the spot where you have seen, fifty years later, William and Agnes making their own less successful attempt to breakfast together.

Porto Bello was a farm, as was Notting

Barn. Wormwood Scrubs was scrub, and Shepherds Bush was a place where one might find shepherds. The raw materials of the Rackhams' dining-room were, in those days, still untouched in quarries and forests, and William's bachelor father was far too busy with his factories and his farms to give serious thought to housing, or even siring, an heir.

All the years leading up to his marriage, Henry Calder Rackham lived in a rather grand house in Westbourne, but liked to joke (especially when talking to intractable snobs whose friendship he couldn't win) that his true home was Paddington Station, for "a man's business is liable to go to the dogs every day that he don't go and see how his workers are getting on." Work has never been a dirty word to Henry Calder Rackham, although-bafflingly-this has never yet earned him the devotion of his own employees.

To those that toil in his factories, the sight of him pacing the iron ramps above their heads in his black suit and top hat falls short of inspiring solidarity. But then, perhaps he's a simple country man at heart… although the workers in his lavender fields don't seem to have warmed to him much either. Could it be they labour under the misapprehension that the sturdy rustic clothes he wears whenever he visits them are an affectation, rather than his preferred garb?

Another thing for which he feels he's been given too little credit is his passionate nature.

Gossips in both city and country were wont to mutter that he'd have more hope wooing a mechanical grinder than a human female.

Imagine their surprise, then, when he suddenly married a damn fine-looking woman!

Dumbstruck, they were, every time he showed her off.

Still, if the arrival of his wife took them unawares, her departure, nine years later, surprised no one. Indeed, her adultery seemed to be common knowledge long before he, its victim, learned of it; most galling, that. Then there was endless speculation about whether he disowned her, or if she ran off willingly. What did it matter? She evaporated from his life, leaving behind two infant boys. But, ever practical even in grief, he hired an additional servant to provide such services as his sons' mother had provided, and got on with his work.

Years went by, the boys grew up with no ill effects whatsoever, and business prospered, until eventually Rackham Senior must give some thought to where young Henry, his heir, was to live.

By this time, the 1850's, the prime parts of Notting Hill were rural no longer. The Potteries to the west of the town were still infested with gypsies and piggeries, and the abortive attempts to turn half the parish into a race-course had tainted the character of the whole area, but there were signs that the cluster of houses around Ladbroke Square might become desirable residences. And, by the late 1860's, sure enough, the locale was recognised as a place where prominent men who did not aspire to the very best Society might be satisfied to live. Also, it was handy for the railways, which Henry the Younger would be needing to use often, once he'd assumed control of the business.

So, Henry Senior bought his heir a large and handsome house in Chepstow Villas, barely ten years old and in tip-top condition. As for where William, the second son, would eventually live, well… that was for the boy himself to sort out.

Now the future is here, and the history of the Rackham empire has run contrary to prospectus. Henry Senior's side of the bargain has been amply fulfilled: he has, by a combination of robust charm and discreet money-lending, lodged himself in polite Society, counting magistrates, peers and all manner of gentlefolk among his friends. But Henry Junior, his first-born, is living like a monk in a pokey cottage near Brick Field, while William, having enjoyed the best education money could buy, is content to occupy the house in Chepstow Villas, playing the gentleman without the independent means to do so. It's years now since the boy left university, and he still hasn't earned a penny of his keep! Is this how William means to go on, leaving his old father burdened with responsibility, while he writes unpublished poems for his own amusement? It's high time he noticed that the R insignia is wrought into the very ironwork of the gates that surround him!

The house is showing signs of strain. The gardens are a disgrace, especially around the edges of the building and behind the kitchen. There's no carriage, no horse in the stable. The coachman's tiny bungalow, never yet inhabited by a coachman and converted by William, during a short-lived passion for painting, into a studio, now stands useless. The low greenhouses lie like glass coffins, filled to bursting with whatever weedy rubbish can grow without a gardener. All very regrettable, but only natural: Henry Senior, in his attempt to cure William, has inflicted on the household a series of traumatic shocks, and as a consequence all its servant blood has been drawn away from the peripheries to the beleaguered heart.

Inside, there's really nothing in particular to impress anyone, except a foreigner like you.

You may admire the many high-ceilinged rooms, the dark polished floors, the hundreds of pieces of furniture destined for the antiques shops of your own time, and most of all, you may be impressed by the dumb industry of the servants.

All these things are taken for granted here. To the Rackhams' dwindling circle of acquaintances, the house is tainted: it smells of cancelled soir`ees, dismal garden parties, the sound of Agnes breaking glass at dinner, embarrassed goodbyes, the glum exodus of guests. It smells of deserted rooms where tables stand groaning with delicacies, empty floors ringing with the heavy footfalls of a forsaken host. No, there's no reason why anyone should go back to the Rackhams' again, not after all that's happened.

In Agnes Rackham's bedroom, the curtains are thick and almost always drawn, a detail not lost on snoopers who peek across from Pembridge Mews. Those drawn curtains have unfortunate consequences within: Agnes's room must be lit all through the daylight hours, and smells very strongly of burnt candle-fat (she doesn't trust gas). Also, on those rare occasions when she ventures out and the candles are snuffed (for she has a fear of the house burning down) her room is dark as a tomb on her return.

This is what we find on the morning when Agnes returns from her brave attempt at a connubial breakfast. She and her lady's-maid stand at the bedroom door, breathing heavily from the long ascent of the stairs. Clara cannot, at one and the same time, carry a candle and support her mistress, so the door is elbowed open, and the pair of them shuffle inside, lacking bearings in the gloom. By sheer chance, just as the door of Agnes's bedroom is opened, the main door downstairs is slammed shut, so that Agnes actually hears her husband leaving the house. Where to? she wonders, as she's led into a room that has become unrecognisable since she was last in it.

The white bed looms unambiguous, but what's that in the corner? A skeleton half-smothered in bandages? And next to that… a large dog?

Clara lights an oil-lamp, and the mysterious figures are clarified: a cast-iron dressmaker's dummy swathed in strips of dress material and, standing at the ready like a silver-plated Doberman, the sewing-machine.

"Give me your hands, Mrs Rackham."

Agnes shuffles to obey, but not like an old woman-more like a child being taken back to bed after a nightmare.

"Everything will be all right now, Mrs

Rackham." Clara pulls back the bedclothes. "You can have a peaceful little rest now." To the tune of these and other perfunctory soothings, Clara undresses her mistress and puts her to bed. Then she gives Agnes her favourite brush, and Agnes automatically begins to groom her hair, worrying at the tangles caused by her fall.

"How do I look?"'

Clara, who is folding her mistress's dressing-gown to pillow-slip size, pauses to make her appraisal.

"Beautiful," she says, smiling,

"ma'am."

Her smile is insincere. All her smiles are; Agnes knows that. But they're offered ungrudgingly in the line of duty, and have no harm hidden behind them, and Agnes knows this too, and is grateful. Between her and her maid there's an understanding that in return for life-long employment, Clara will satisfy any whim, be witness to any fiasco, without ever complaining. She will be a comfort from dawn to midnight, and occasionally at sticky moments in between. She will be a confidante to anything Agnes might confide, no matter how daft, and, if asked to forget it an hour later, will scrub it entirely from her mind as if it were a careless spill of milk.

Most importantly, she will aid and abet her mistress in the disobeying of all orders given by those two evil men, Doctor Curlew or William Rackham.

For Agnes, life with Clara provides her with a game she can play in perfect safety, a regimen of gentle exercise with a benign familiar. With Clara's help, she will re-learn the social skills she sorely needs for the London Season. For example, she sometimes bids Clara pretend to be this lady or that, and together they act out little dramas, so that Agnes can practise her responses. Not that Clara's play-acting is terribly convincing, but Agnes doesn't mind. Too real an imitation might unnerve her.

Heartened now by the sensation of soft tidy hair on her head, she lays down her brush and settles back against the pillows.

"Clara: my new toilet book," she commands softly. The servant hands over the volume, and Agnes opens it to the chapter entitled "Defending Yourself Against the Enemy"-the enemy in this case being old age. She rubs her cheeks and temples, obeying as closely as possible the text's instructions, although she has trouble rubbing "in a direction contrary to that which the wrinkles threaten to take", because she hasn't any wrinkles yet. "Change hands in case of fatigue", says the book-and she's certainly fatigued. But how, if she only has two hands, can she change them? And how does she know if she's touching herself correctly, with the right amount of "firm, gentle pressure"; and what are the consequences of not using a lubricant, as the writer recommends? Books never address what one really needs to know.

Too weary to continue her exercises, she turns the page to see what's next.

The skin of the face wrinkles for the same reason and by the same mechanisms that the skin of an apple wrinkles. The pulp of the fruit under the skin shrinks and contracts as the juices dry up …

Agnes claps shut the book at once.

"Take it away, Clara," she says.

"Yes, ma'am." Clara knows what to do: there's a special room farther along the landing, where unwanted things go.

Next, Agnes glances surreptitiously at the sewing machine.

Clara misses nothing. "P'raps, ma'am," she says, "we might carry on with your new dress? The most difficult part is over, isn't it, ma'am?"'

Agnes's face lights up. What a blessing that there is something to do, something with which to fill the time -at a time like this. After all, she's not forgotten that very soon she'll have to receive Doctor Curlew.

For the love of God, why did she reject William's offer to stop Beatrice fetching him?

He was willing to do it-willing to rush through the house, onto the street if need be, to undo the message! And she refused him! Madness! But, lying there on the floor, she had, for a brief moment, an intoxicating power over him-the power to scorn his offer of the olive branch. Standing up to him like that-admittedly, while lying at his feet -was revenge of sorts.

Agnes stares at the half-finished dress, imagines it wreathing her own body like silken armour. She smiles shyly at Clara, gets a smile in return.

"Yes," she says, "I do believe

I'm well enough to go on."

Within minutes, the whirring of the sewing-machine is muffling the ticking of the clock. With each seam and tuck they complete, the two women interrupt their labours, remove the dress from the machine, replace it on the dummy. Over and over, the sexless frame is clothed anew, each time appearing a little more shapely, a little more feminine.

"We are weaving magic!" chortles Mrs Rackham, almost forgetting that Doctor Curlew is on his way, satchel swinging in his gloved fist.

But her sewing is more than mere distraction. She needs at least four more dresses if she's to have any hope of taking part in the Season next year and, by Goodness, next year she shall take part. For, if there's one thing that has shaken Agnes's faith in her own sanity, it was being unable to participate in the Season this year. And if there's one thing that can restore her faith, it is (so to speak) redressing that lapse.

It's true that from birth she has been groomed to do nothing especially well except appear in public looking beautiful. But that's not the reason she's making these splendid dresses, these elaborate constructs in which she hopes to sweep across other people's floors. Taking part in the Season is, to her, the One Thing that will prove beyond doubt that she isn't mad. For, in her uncertainty where exactly the borderline between sanity and madness is supposed to lie, Agnes has chosen a line for herself. If she can only keep on the right side of it, she will be sane, first in the eyes of the world, then in her husband's, and finally even in Doctor Curlew's.

And in her own eyes? In her own eyes she is neither sane nor insane; she is simply Agnes… Agnes Pigott, if you don't mind. Look into her heart, and you will see a pretty picture, like a prayer-card depicting the girlhood of the Virgin. It's Agnes, but not as we know her: it's an Agnes who's ageless, changeless, spotless, no step-daughter of any Unwin, no wife of any Rackham. Her hair is silkier, her dresses frillier, her bosom subsided to nothing, her very first Season still to come.

Agnes sighs. In reality, more years than she can bear to remember have passed since her first Season, and her ambitions for the next one are modest. Her dream of moving among the Upper Ten Thousand, which seemed perfectly achievable when she was Lord Unwin's step-daughter, has receded now it's clear that William, if he has any future at all, will never be the famous author she once imagined he would be. He'll be the head of a perfumery-when he finally stirs himself to accept the responsibility-and then, if he gets very, very rich, he may ascend slowly through the social firmament. But until then, the lower reaches of fashionable Society are the best the Rackhams can hope for. Agnes knows that. She doesn't like it, but she knows it, and she's determined to make the most of it.

So, what is she looking forward to? She has no wish to be considered beautiful by men. Such things lead only to unhappiness. Nor is she hoping for the admiration of other women; from them she expects only polite nonchalance, and spiteful gossip behind her back. To be honest, she doesn't really imagine engaging in intercourse of any sort next Season; on the contrary, she intends to glide through the entire affair barely noticing anyone, speaking only the emptiest formulae, and listening to nothing that requires more than the shallowest attention. This, she's learned from past experience, is by far the safest course. More than anything, she yearns for the bliss of being tolerated outside the confines of her own bedroom, dressed in nicer clothes than her much-stained, much-laundered nightgowns.

"You know, ma'am," says Clara, "Mrs Whymper will turn green when she sees you in this dress. I met her maid in town, and she said Mrs Whymper is pining to wear this style, but she's grown too fat for it."

Agnes laughs childishly, knowing full well that this is almost certainly a lie. (clara is always fabricating such things.) She is feeling better by the minute; the pain is fading from her head; she might even ask Clara to open the curtains…

But then comes the knock at the door.

Clara has no choice but to let her share of the dress slither to the floor, leaving her mistress marooned in silk. She gets up and, with an apologetic smile, hurries to admit the doctor. A long shadow flows into the room.

"Good day to you Mrs Rackham," the doctor says, moving smoothly in. The perfumed air of this female sanctum is tainted by his unmistakable smell, displaced by his towering bulk. He deposits his satchel on the floor next to Agnes's bed and perches on the edge of the mattress, nodding to Clara. That nod means Clara is dismissed; that nod is a command.

Agnes, having turned her chair away from the sewing-machine and towards the doctor, knows, as she watches Clara leave, that the trap is shut, but still she can't help trying to wriggle against its jaws.

"I'm sorry you have been made to come all this way," she says. "Because unfortunately-I mean, fortunately for me, but not for you-I'm quite well now. As you can see."

The good doctor makes no reply.

"It was kind of my husband to summon you, I'm sure…"

The doctor's brow wrinkles. He is not one to let an inconsistency pass unquestioned.

"Oh, but William gave me to understand that you yourself insisted on my being summoned."

"Yes, well, I'm sure I'm very sorry," says Agnes, noting with horror his habit of cocking his head slightly at anything she tells him, as if he's loath to miss even one of her preposterous lies. "I suppose, in that moment of feeling so unwell, I… I feared the worst. At any rate, I'm quite myself now."

Doctor Curlew rests his handsomely sculpted beard on his interlocking hands.

"You look very pale to me, Mrs Rackham, if I may say so."

Agnes attempts to hide her rising panic with a coy half-smile. "Ah, but that may be face powder, mayn't it?"'

Doctor Curlew looks puzzled. Agnes knows that look well, considers it to be the nastiest, most maddening of all the looks in his repertoire.

"But had I not cautioned you," he says,

"against the use of cosmetics, for the sake of your skin?"'

Agnes sighs. "Yes, Doctor, you had."

"In fact, I thought-"'

"-t they'd all been disposed of, yes," she says.

"So…"

"So, yes," she sighs, "it cannot be powder on my face."

The doctor presses his fingertips to his beard and inhales deeply.

"Please, Mrs Rackham," he reasons. "I know you don't like to be examined.

But what you like and what's good for you are not always the same thing. Many a dire turn in an otherwise manageable illness can be averted if it's seen to immediately."

Agnes leans back in her chair, allowing her eyes to fall shut. There is nothing she can say that hasn't failed many times before. I am too tired to be examined. "Too tired? Then you must be ill." I am too ill to be examined. "But the examination will make you better." You examine me every week; what harm can it do to leave it undone just once? "You can't mean that; only a madwoman would willingly let her health decline." I am not a madwoman! "Of course not. That's why I'm asking your permission, rather than ignoring your wishes as I would ignore those of an asylum inmate." But I am too tired… And so on.

Is she mad to imagine that Doctor Curlew is bullying her? That he's taking liberties no physician should? She's so out of touch with the world at large-has she missed momentous changes in the way doctors address their patients? Is the Queen herself bullied and threatened by her physician? She'd dismiss him, surely? How wonderful it would be to tell Doctor Curlew that she doesn't require his services any more, that he is dismissed.

Instead, as always, she acquiesces, and takes her position on the bed. The good doctor has opened the curtains, so that the sun can shine upon his work. Agnes fixes her attention on a clutch of extinguished candles, counting the drips of hardened wax on their shafts. She loses count, starts again, loses count again, all the while trying to ignore the electric apprehension travelling up through her body from her toes to the roots of her hair, as Doctor Curlew lifts her dressing-gown over her legs.

William Rackham, meanwhile, first knocks, then rings at the door of Mrs Castaway's, and waits impatiently for it to be opened. Wet gusts of wind tug at his trouser-legs; overdressed trollops eye him as they sweep by. His scalp prickles from all the oil he has combed through his hair. A minute passes: why, this is as bad as his own house!

After another minute, the sound of unlatching. A narrow slit offers him a glimpse of a female eye, glittering with mistrust.

"Sugar's not free." The unfriendly voice of Amy Howlett. "P'raps you'd care to come back later."

"As a matter of fact, I wish to speak with your… Mrs Castaway," says William.

"Strictly a business matter."

"There's no matters here," the girl sneers, "but business matters."

His mind boggling at how any man could kiss and embrace a creature so cynical, William tries again: "I insist… I've something of great interest, I'm sure, to Mrs Castaway."

Whereupon Miss Howlett swings the door wide, her back already turned.

In Mrs Castaway's parlour, everything is much as it was when William-when Mr Hunt last paid a visit. Just as before, he's struck by the scores of Mary Magdalen prints on the walls, the blazing fire, and Mrs Castaway herself, seated at her desk, dressed all in scarlet. Of Miss Lester and her 'cello, this time, there's no sign; her chair stands empty.

Amy Howlett slouches back into her seat, settles with a wumph of wrinkled skirts, and slyly watches his approach. Hands hanging at her sides, head tilted back, she sucks smoke, then does a most startling thing: she opens her lips and performs a juggling trick with the cigarette adhering to the end of her tongue, almost swallowing it, then catching it, still lit, between her teeth. She sucks again. Her eyes do not blink.

"I do hope you'll try to forgive Amy's manners," sighs Mrs Castaway, motioning William towards an armchair. "Her ways have great charm for some of our visitors."

Amy smirks.

"I'm sure I don't mean to cause offence, Mr… Mr…" Stuck for his name, she abandons her stab at good behaviour, and looks away with a shrug.

"Hunt," says William. "George

W. Hunt."

Mrs Castaway narrows her eyes, narrows them so much that the bloodshot whites almost entirely disappear, leaving the dark bits shining like sucked licorice. She is bigger than he remembered, more formidable.

"So, what can we do for you, Mr Hunt?"' she croons, her painted mouth puckering with the vowels. "We hadn't expected you back so soon."

William takes a deep breath, leans forward, and launches into his proposal. He speaks earnestly, quickly, nervously. His Mr Hunt is a shy man, but a rich one. The source of his wealth? Oh, he's a somewhat retiring, not to say sleeping, partner in a giant publishing firm, gross income l20,000 a year, titles too numerous to name, but works by Macaulay, Kenelm Digby, Le Fanu and William Ainsworth are among them.

As a matter of fact, he has an appointment to see his old chum Wilkie-Wilkie Collins-in… (he pulls his silver watch into view) four hours from now. But first…

He argues his case and, as well as arguing, he takes care to ask questions. Asking questions (or so Henry Calder Rackham keeps emphasising in the correspondence William has only just read) is essential in bending a prospective partner to one's will. Ask questions, urges the old man, express smpathy for the differculties of the fellow you wish to do business with, then demenstrate you have the answer. William steams ahead, sweat forming on his brow, words pouring from his lips. Leave no silence for the other fellow to fill with quarms, that's another thing the old man harps on. William leaves no silence.

Look into the other fellows eyes. William looks into Mrs Castaway's eyes and, as the minutes pass, he judges he's getting through.

She is increasingly frank when it comes to surrendering figures; she nods gravely when he tells her how he means to swell them.

"So," he sums up at last.

"Exclusive patronage of Sugar by me: will you consider it?"'

To which Mrs Castaway replies, "I'm sorry, Mr Hunt. No."

Shocked, William looks to Amy Howlett, as if expecting she'll leap to his defence. Amy, however, is slumped in her chair, picking at her fingernails, her sharp eyes, for the moment, benignly crossed.

"But whyever not?"' he cries, striving to keep his voice down, for fear of being collared by a hidden strongman. "I can't imagine any cause for objection." (what would Henry Calder Rackham advise? Say back to the fellow what the fellows just told you.) "You've told me that in an average evening, Sugar entertains one or two, at most three, gentlemen. Now, I am offering to meet whatever you say are the costs to you of those three engagements. Sugar I will pay whatever she considers fair. The profit to you remains the same, only it comes from one man and not several."

Mrs Castaway, instead of clapping her wrinkled hand to her forehead in belated epiphany, responds to William's plea in a way that unnerves him. She begins to rummage in one of her desk drawers, and extracts a sheaf of unruly papers. Then she slips her fingers into the handles of her big brass scissors, and exercises the blades experimentally.

"These matters are more complex than you might think, Mr Hunt," she murmurs, spreading the papers out before her on the desk. Her eyes flicker, dividing attention between William and the task she's plainly impatient to resume.

"To begin with, we are a small house and arithmetic is against us. If one third of what we're reputed to offer is perpetually unavailable-"'

A ring of the doorbell makes them both quiver.

Amy Howlett groans, looks up at the ceiling. "Where is that boy?"' she sighs, then jerks up from her chair.

"Mr Hunt, I must apologise," says

Mrs Castaway as Amy flounces off, once again, to do the sleeping Christopher's work. "One of our little customs here is that no gentleman should ever be seen by another. So, if you'd be kind enough to step into the next room" (she points with the shears) "for just a moment…"

She nods maternally, and he obeys.

"The pain," Doctor Curlew is saying just then, "lies entirely in the resistance."

He wipes his fingers with a white handkerchief, pockets it, bends down to try a second time.

She makes him work hard, does Mrs

Rackham, for his fee.

Not Sugar, not Sugar, you blackguard, you swine, thinks William, as he stands squirming in the next room, his ear pressed to the door.

She's not available. You've changed your mind.

Your cockstand's gone soft.

"… early in the day…" he hears Mrs

Castaway saying.

"… Sugar…" is the masculine reply.

The hairs on William's neck tingle with loathing. He is tempted to rush out of his hiding-place and attack his rival, battering him right through the floor.

"… no shortage of alternative delights…"

His heart beats vehemently; his future, he feels, is poised on a vertiginous edge, waiting to be rescued or cast down. How can it be? A couple of days ago, Sugar didn't even exist. Now here he stands with fists clenched, half-willing to kill for her!

But it appears bloodshed won't be necessary after all. The man in the parlour has been fobbed off with Miss Howlett. Serves him right, the blackguard. William hopes she thrashes him within an inch of his life, for daring to ask for Sugar.

"… no wine, then… appreciate you are in a hurry… like a thousand-and-one nights squeezed into a few minutes…"

William hears the music of transaction.

Strange how speech can be almost inaudible through a closed door, while the sound of coins chinking together is so clear!

"Mr Hunt?"'

Thank God.

Only now does William notice what sort of room he's been hiding in: a tiny infirmary, well stocked with bandages and jars of medicine. Also bottles of strong spirits, abortifacients marked with crossbones and infant skulls, and perfumed antiseptics manufactured by… manufactured by… (he peers closer, just in case he should spot the rose insignia or the ornamental R)…

Beechams.

"Mr Hunt?"'

"Mrs Rackham?"'

Agnes Rackham, lying on her bed miles away, rolls onto her side so that Doctor Curlew can reach deeper inside her.

"Good," he murmurs abstractedly.

"Thank you." He is trying to find Agnes's womb, which to his knowledge ought to be exactly four inches from the external aperture. His middle finger being exactly four inches long (for he has measured it), he is perplexed to be having no success.

"You alluded to… complications I hadn't considered?"' William prompts.

"Many, many," sighs Mrs Castaway. Rather off-puttingly, she's already busy with her cuttings, snipping into sheets of paper which, from where William sits, look like pages torn from books. "Another has just occurred to me: our house has, if not precisely an agreement, then certainly a… bond of mutual regard, with The Fireside. You know The Fireside?

Oh, yes, of course." She takes her eyes off him again, and steers the scissors through a circuitous cut. "Now you, Mr Hunt, who are so appreciative of Sugar's merits; you can well understand that she is considered an attraction-a draw-card, if you will-for The Fireside.

At least, the proprietors seem to think so.

So, we are doing them a favour, not strictly measurable in terms of money, but valuable nonetheless. Now, if Sugar were to… disappear -for how.ever flat-tering a reason, Mr Hunt -I'm sure The Fireside would feel itself the poorer, d'you see?"'

A tiny human figure has taken shape, blank on William's side, engraving-grey on Mrs Castaway's.

She is mad, he thinks, as he watches a haloed female saint, torn from a Papist picture-book, flutter to the table. How can one bargain with a madwoman? Might he convince her better if he revealed his true name? Which identity, from the point of view of a madwoman who cannibalises books for their Magdalens, might be the more impressive-an authentic heir to a renowned perfume concern, or a make-believe partner in a prestigious publishing house? And what the Devil does she mean about The Fireside? A simple bribe, or is he expected to buy the whole damn place?

Push the fellow to say, one time only, the word Yes-that's what his father keeps underlining in green ink. All else is details.

"Madam, these are mere details, surely," he declares. "Couldn't we…" (a happy inspiration) "couldn't we call Sugar herself downstairs? It's her future that's at stake here-with all due respect to the matters you've been raising, madam…"

Mrs Castaway picks up another scrap of paper. This one bears, on its blank reverse, the unmistakable stamp of a circulating library.

"Mr Hunt, there is another thing you haven't allowed for. You don't consider the possibility that Sugar might prefer-forgive me, I don't wish to cause you offence-that she might prefer variety."

William lets this pass; he can tell that indignation is of no use.

"Madam, I urge you-I implore you-allow Sugar to speak for herself."

Give her over, give her over, he thinks, staring hard into the madam's eyes. He has never wished for anything more fervently than this; the fervour of his wishing astounds him. If he can have this one thing, he will ask God for nothing else, nothing, as long as he lives.

Mrs Castaway withdraws her fingers from the scissors, pushes her chair back, gets to her feet. Dangling from the ceiling are three silken ropes; she pulls one. Who does it summon?

A strongman to eject him? Or Sugar? Mrs

Castaway's eyes give nothing away.

God almighty, this is a damn sight more difficult than winning Agnes's hand in marriage, William thinks. If only this mad old bawd would be prepared to take a risk on him, the way Lord Unwin did!

Sitting there in Mrs Castaway's bawdy-house, waiting for Sugar or a burly spoony-man to appear, he remembers being invited to see the pickled old aristocrat in his smoking-room, and there, over port, being read the terms of the marriage of Agnes Unwin to William Rackham, Esquire. The legalities were, he recalls, quite beyond him, so when Lord Unwin had finished and archly asked something like "Well, how does that suit?"' he'd not known what to say. "It means you've got her, God help you," Lord Unwin had spelled out, pouring him another drink.

Now here's a shadow on the stairs… Is it …? Yes! It's she! In a blue twilled dressing-gown and slippers, hair loose and tangled, still sleepy-eyed God bless her, andwitha spattering of dark water-drops on the breast of her gown. His heart, so recently filled with murderous thoughts towards Mrs Castaway, is suddenly spilling over with tenderness.

"Why, Mr Hunt," says Sugar, softly, pausing half-way down, "What a pleasure to see you again so soon." She motions apologetically at her d@eshabill`e. A draught on the stairs sends strands of her hair floating across her cheeks and naked neck. How could he not have noticed before how abnormally thin that neck is? And her lips: they're so pale and dry, like scraps of lace-she doesn't drink enough! How he'd love to rub salve into her lips, while she kissed his fingers…!

"Mr Hunt has a proposition to make to you, Sugar," says Mrs Castaway. "Mr Hunt?"'

Old witch! She hasn't even asked Sugar to take a seat-as if his offer is so preposterous the girl will be sure to refuse it before she reaches the bottom of the stairs. But a look passes between him and Sugar that gives him courage; it's a look that says, We know each other, don't we, you and I?

Courteously, he bids her be seated, and she is seated, in Miss Lester's chair. He repeats his little oration, but this time, freed from the odious necessity of addressing Mrs Castaway, he speaks directly into Sugar's face (her eyes are still sleepy; she licks her lips with a sharp red tongue, the same tongue that … Concentrate, Rackham!). He speaks less nervously than before; when repeating the fictions he's spun around George W.

Hunt, he shares with her a secret smile, a mutual understanding of something that's already part of their intimate history. But when it comes to the arithmetic, he is emphatic and precise. For diplomacy's sake, he mentions Mrs Castaway's misgivings, and absorbs them into his account. Everyone, he declares reassuringly, is going to be the richer for this; no one will suffer the slightest inconvenience.

"But you haven't yet said," objects the old woman from across the room. "What will you pay Sugar?"'

William flinches. The question seems to him crassly indelicate-and none of her business, either. This is not a low brothel!

"I will pay her," he says, "whatever makes her happy." And he nods almost imperceptibly in Sugar's direction, to show her he means it.

Sugar blinks several times, runs one hand through the unruly orange fleece of her hair. The barrage of facts and figures has left her a little dazed, as if she's woken up this morning to a discussion of John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy rather than to a boiled egg. At last she opens her mouth to speak.

"All right, Mr Hunt," she says, with a sly smile. "I am willing."

Yes! She said yes! Rackham can scarcely contain himself. But he must, he must. Childish enthusiasm would ill become him; he's supposed to be a publisher!

So, bowing his head to Mrs Castaway's writing-desk, he watches her draw up the contract, on this, the twenty-fourth day of November, 1874. A waste of ink and effort: if only she knew that he'd sign anything, including a sheet of paper inscribed with just that one word, Anything! But she wants more. He reads what's flowing from her pen, written in (to give her credit) a most elegant and fluent script … hereinafter known as "the House"…

God almighty! She's going to pull the wool over his eyes, he can tell… but what does it matter? Measured against the wealth that will soon be his, the reach of her avarice will be Lilliputian.

In any case, if he should decide to renege, what could she possibly do? Pursue an imaginary man through the courts of Whoredom?

Regina hears the case of "Castaway" versus "Hunt"? Stop scribbling, woman, and leave room for the signatures!

Looking back on it now, the contract for Agnes's hand was extraordinarily laissez-faire-much less demanding of him than this one here. In a marriage settlement, one might expect a degree of parental protectiveness, but Lord Unwin showed (now that William reflects on it) precious little for Agnes. Her dowry was no great fortune-nothing a young woman couldn't spend within a year or two -and no date was set for William's own succession to independent means. No mention, either, of how large a wardrobe of fashionable clothes William was obliged to ensure his wife maintained, or how Agnes's style of life was supposed to be safeguarded. For all that Lord Unwin seemed to care, his new son-in-law could dispose of Agnes's clothes, her jewellery, her books, her servants. Short of saying so, he was washing his hands of her-no doubt because he already knew (crafty old sot!) what poison was eating away at his step-daughter's sanity.

Faintly through the house, the slam of a door resounds: Miss Howlett's man, leaving.

William looks askance at Sugar, but she's sunk into the armchair, her head nestled in the crook of her arm, eyes closed. The sleeve of her dressing-gown has fallen, exposing the white flesh of her forearm, bruised blue with finger-marks. His own, surely-or are they?

With a jolt, he realises that this contract depends not merely on these women's trust in him, but his trust in them. What's to stop them conducting business as usual behind his back? Nothing, unless he takes care to be unpredictable, never letting them know the hour of his coming… Mad, he must be mad-yet a smile tempts the corners of his mouth as he signs, with a flourish, a false name to this bargain struck with a madam and a whore.

"It gives me great pleasure," he says, bringing to light the ten guineas which the sale of some of Agnes's long-unused possessions has raised, "to solemnise our agreement."

Mrs Castaway accepts the money, and her face appears, all of a sudden, ancient and weary.

"I'm sure you can imagine greater pleasures than signing your name, Mr Hunt," she says.

"Wake up, Sugar dear."

Agnes stares at the small ivory knobs on the bedside cabinet, taking careful note of every tiny nick and scratch in each one. The shadow of the doctor's head falls across her face; his fingers are not inside her anymore.

"I'm afraid all is not as it should be."

The words come to Agnes like overheard chatter from a railway platform opposite one's own. She is beginning to dream, her eyes shutting and her face shiny with perspiration, a dream she has already dreamed many times in her sleep, but never before while awake. The dream of the journey…

But Doctor Curlew is speaking, trying to summon her back. Gently but firmly he prods a spot on Mrs Rackham's naked abdomen.

"You feel this spot here? where I touch? That is where your womb has moved, much higher up than it ought to be, which is more… here." His finger slides down towards the motte of blonde hair at which Agnes has glanced perhaps twenty times in her whole life, each time with shame. This time, however, there is no shame to feel, for the doctor's finger is sliding (as she perceives it in her dream) not on her body, but on a surface somewhere beyond it: a windowpane perhaps. She's in a train, and as it moves away from the station, someone on the platform outside is putting his finger against the window of her compartment.

Agnes closes her eyes.

Up in Sugar's room, William unpins his collars while Sugar kneels at his feet.

She nuzzles the flies of his trousers with her face.

"Rather-rather-rather-rather-rather," she purrs.

The buttons of William's shirt are stiff; he has worn his best to impress Mrs Castaway. While struggling to undo them, he glances at the escritoire, which is covered in papers as before. Masculine-looking papers, not leaves of tinted rice-paper and floral-patterned envelopes, not a bound volume of recipes and homilies illustrated with prissy watercolours, not puzzles or brain-teasers from the popular press. No, these papers lie on Sugar's desk in untidy stacks, scrawled and blotted on, crumpled, in amongst candle-stubs. And, on top of them all, a printed pamphlet, dense with text, scored in the margins with India-ink annotations.

"Whatever you're working on there, I can see it's no easy labour," he remarks.

"Nothing to interest a man," she murmurs, clawing gently at his buttocks with both hands.

"Come, take me."

The bed's drapes are already tied back, like theatre curtains. In the bed-head mirror, William watches his reflection being led, stumbling, towards the rumpled sheets that still smell of him and Sugar.

"My little cunt is dripping for you, Mr

Hunt," she whispers.

"No, call me William, really," he says. "And please let me reassure you: you don't have to work at anything anymore, except …"

"Mmm, yes," she says, pulling him onto the bed next to her. She gathers up the soft, loose fabric of her dressing-gown and tosses it over his head; he squirms, but she sheaths him snugly inside, trapping him against her midriff. His breath is hot and humid on her flesh; she feels him burrowing upwards, heading for the light at her neck.

"Oooh, not yet," she croons, holding him back through the fabric. "My breasts are burning for you."

He begins to lick-gently, thank God.

She's had men go after her nipples as if ducking for apples in a barrel. This one's lips are soft, his tongue is smooth, his teeth are barely noticeable. Harmless as any man can be, and with plenty of ready money. If he wants her name on a contract, well, why not?

But Holy Jesus, she'll have to keep him from seeing what's on her writing-desk. Her mother caught her by surprise, that's for sure, by pulling on the cord so early. Dead to the world she was, in a dream buried deep inside her pillow. How could she be expected, in her sleepy state, to think of clearing her desk? Getting herself downstairs without breaking her neck was as much as she could manage. And what for? No one could blame her, surely, for failing to guess it was to pledge eternal fidelity to a man…

Still, she'll have to be more careful in future: her papers can't be in the open like this, for him to sniff at. What's uppermost on her desk just now?

She tries to picture it as she lifts her gown, to give her man some air… Could it be that horrid little pamphlet concerning… oh Lord, yes! She blenches at the thought of what, if she hadn't led him away, he might have stuck his nose into.

Open on her escritoire lies a medical tract, stolen from the public library's reading room in Trevor Square. The text itself would be no surprise to him; he's likely to have seen it all before:

No woman can be a serious thinker, without injury to her function as the conceiver and mother of children.

Too often, the female "intellectual" is a youthful invalid or virtual hermaphrodite, who might otherwise have been a healthy wife.

Let us close our ears, then, to siren voices offering us a quantity of female intellectual work at the price of a puny, enfeebled and sickly race. Healthy serviceable wombs are of more use to the Future than any amount of feminine scribbling.

No, it's not the text, but Sugar's handwritten comments in the margins that her new benefactor must at all costs not see:

Pompous oaf! here; Tyranny! there;

Wrong, wrong, wrong! over there and, scrawled under the conclusion in angry blotted ink:

We'll see about that, you poxy old fool!

There's a new century coming soon, and you and your kind will be DEAD!

As Doctor Curlew rummages in the compartments of his satchel for the leech box, he spies, under his patient's bed, the cover of a journal not sanctioned by him. (it's the London Periodical Review, which Agnes is reading for the perfectly innocent reason that she wishes to know what she's supposed to think of the new paintings she's not been able to see, the new poetry she hasn't read, and the recent history she hasn't witnessed, in case, next Season, she is put on the spot for an opinion.) "Pardon me, Mrs Rackham," he says, still unaware that she no longer hears him.

He has the offending item in his hand, and holds it up for her unseeing eyes to recognise. "Is this your journal?"'

He doesn't wait for a reply; his admonition is impervious to excuses. Nor would it have made any difference if the item had not been the London Periodical Review but Mrs Henry Wood's The Shadow of Ashlydyat or some such rubbish. Excessively thrilling reading, excessively taxing reading, excessively pathetic reading, too much washing, too much sun, tight corsets, ice-cream, asparagus, foot-warmers: these and many more are causes of the womb's distress. But no matter, he has a remedy.

Doctor Curlew appraises for a moment the patch of white skin behind one of Agnes's ears, then places, with precision, the first of the leeches there. Agnes chooses this inopportune moment to venture out of her dream, in case the real world should, in the interim, have become safe again. She observes the leech being conveyed through the air towards her, clamped in the tongs. Before she can retreat into unconsciousness she has felt the cold touch of the instrument behind her ear, and though she cannot feel the leech begin to suck, she nevertheless imagines a watery spiral of blood swimming up through her innards towards her head, like a crimson worm in a viscous medium. But then she's back in her dream and, by the time Doctor Curlew applies the second leech, the passenger train is again in motion.

Gently, the doctor's hands turn her head one hundred and eighty degrees on the pillow, for the process must be repeated on the other side.

"Excuse me, Mrs Rackham."

Agnes doesn't stir: her journey has vaulted forward to its end. Two old men are carrying her stretcher from the railway terminus, deep in the heart of the countryside, to the gates of the Convent of Health. A nun rushes to open the gates, giant iron gates that rustle with ivy and hollyhock. The old men gently put the stretcher down on the sunlit grass and doff their caps. The nun kneels beside Agnes and lays a cool palm on her brow.

"Dear, dear child," she chides in loving exasperation. "What are we going to do with you?"'

Passion spent, William is able to examine his prize more closely, studying her in loving detail. She lies cradled in his arm, apparently asleep, her eyelashes still. He combs his fingers through her hair, admiring all the unexpected colours to be found in it, hidden inside the red: streaks of pure gold, wisps of blond, single strands of dark auburn. Her skin is like nothing he's ever seen: on every limb, and on her hips and belly, there are… what can he call them? Tiger stripes. Swirling geometric patterns of peeling dryness alternating with reddened flesh. They are symmetrical, as if scored on her skin by a painstaking aesthete, or an African savage. (doctor Curlew, if he were here, could have told William, and Sugar for that matter, that she suffers from an unusually generalised psoriasis which, in places, crosses the diagnostic line into a rarer and more spectacular condition called ichthyosis. He might prescribe expensive ointments which would have no more effect on the cracks in Sugar's hands or the flaky stripes on her thighs than the cheap oil she's already using.) To William, the patterns are beguiling, a fitting mark of her animal nature. She smells like an animal too: or what he imagines animals smell like, for he's no animal lover. Her sex is luxuriantly aromatic, her shame-hair twinkles with sweat and semen.

He lifts his head slightly to get a better view of her breasts. Supine, she's almost flat-chested, but her nipples are full and unmistakably female. (and, when she's the other way around, there's enough for him to hold onto.) In truth, he's delighted with every inch of her; she might almost be a thing designed for no purpose but to bring him to orgasm.

He squeezes her shoulders, to rouse her enough for a question he has been wanting to ask her for the best part of an hour.

"Sugar?"'

"Mmm?"'

"Do you… Do you like me?"'

She laughs throatily, turns her head against his, nuzzles his cheek.

"Oh William, yessss," she says.

"You're my rescuer, aren't you? My champion …" She cups his genitals in her rough palm. "I can scarcely believe my good fortune."

He stretches, closes his eyes in languor. She chews surreptitiously at her peeling lips, worrying at a wedge-shaped flake of skin that's almost, but not quite, ready to come off. She must leave it alone, or it'll bleed.

How much money will she ask for this time? His big soft hand is on her breast, his heart is beating against her sharp shoulder-blade. On his face, an expression of happiness. It occurs to her-well, no, she suspected it from the moment she first looked in his eyes-that for all his transgressive posturing he is an infant searching for a warm bed to sleep in. If she will but smooth his greasy golden curls of his sweaty brow, he'll give her anything she asks for in return.

He's breathing deeply now, almost unconscious, when there's a soft, hesitant knock at the door.

"What the devil?"' he mutters.

But Sugar knows that knock.

"Christopher!" she calls, sotto voce. "What's up?"' "I'm very sorry," comes the child's voice through the key-hole. "But I've a message from Mrs Castaway. For the gentleman. To remind 'im-in case it's slipped 'is mind, like-of 'is appointment. With a Mister Wilkie Collins."

William turns to Sugar and smiles sheepishly.

"Duty calls," he says.

Several hours later, Agnes Rackham feels the small feminine hands of Clara stroking her mechanically through the bedclothes, but she's too deeply inside her dream to recognise them.

The dream, having reached its heavenly conclusion, has started again from the very beginning. She's on her way to the Convent of Health: a train compartment has been specially prepared for her, to look as much like her own room as possible; she lies in a berth by the window, and on the walls there is proper wallpaper, and framed portraits of her mother and father.

She raises herself up from her pillow to look out onto the platform, which is bustling with activity, with passengers rushing to and fro, luggage-boys tottering under suitcases, pigeons fluttering up to the domed ceiling high above and, on the far platform nearest the street, the cab-horses stamping impatiently. The unsavoury man who had tapped on her window with his finger is gone, and in his place, a smiling old stationmaster strolls up and calls to her through the glass,

"Are you all right, Miss?"'

"Yes, thank you," she replies, settling back into her pillow. Outside, a whistle is blown, and with nary a jolt the train rolls into motion.

An hour or so later still, William Rackham, ensconced in his study, rummages in the drawers of his desk and realises, with a slight shock, that there are no more Rackham papers he hasn't read. He has finally ploughed through them all; he has extracted their essence. A large, leather-bound notebook lies open, and in it, in his own squarish handwriting, a number of unanswered questions. He'll have answers to those questions soon enough.

Light-headed with Madeira and achievement, he tears the brown wrapper off a virgin parcel of Rackham Perfumeries letterhead, extracts a sheet, positions it carefully on the desk, secures it with his elbow, dips pen in ink, and writes under the company's rose insignia:

Dear Father,