The Crimson petal and the white

NINE

Come with me now, away from the filthy city streets, away from rooms that stink of fear and deceit, away from contracts forged in mucky cynicism. Love exists. Come with me to church.

It's a cold but sunny Sunday morning, four months later. The air is pure, with nothing added to it but a subtle scent of rain and, here and there, a sparrow in flight. All along the path to the church, the dark wet grass is dotted with tiny white buds that will soon be daffodils.

Maturer blossoms are to be found-(what? Sugar? Why are you thinking about Sugar? Don't worry about her anymore; she's spoken for! And try also to put William from your mind. Everything is in hand, I assure you.

A series of increasingly cordial letters have been exchanged between father and son; the transfer of power was smooth. Oh, to begin with, the old man was a doubting Thomas, and mistrusted William's detailed description of the Rackham company, the duties of its director, and the exact manner in which William meant to discharge these duties, as nothing more than a ploy to wheedle the wherewithal for an extravagant Christmas. Soon enough, however, the old man was convinced that a birth scarcely less miraculous than the Saviour's had occurred: the advent of William Rackham, captain of industry. Now everything has been made sweet, and William's humiliations are a thing of the past, so let's not dwell on them any longer.) As I was saying, maturer blossoms are to be found inside the church: in translucent grey vases, and on the bonnets of some of the congregation.

Not only flowers, but also stuffed birds and butterflies on the headgear of the more fashionable ladies here. They file out of the pews, eyeing each other's dresses and bonnets, and only that peculiar soul Emmeline Fox is unadorned.

She holds her head as high as if she were beautiful, and holds her body as if she were strong. Walking at her side, as always, is Henry Rackham, the man who should by rights have been the Rackham of Rackham Perfumeries, but who (as everybody knows by now) has lost that claim for good.

Henry is a handsome man, taller than average-well, taller than his brother, anyway-bluer of eye and firmer of chin. Also, unlike his brother, his hair-no less gold-sits on his head most decorously, and his midriff is trim. In earlier years, before it became obvious he had no intention of claiming his birthright, he was sought out by a succession of eligible young ladies, each of whom found him to be a decent if over-serious man, each of whom hinted that the inheritor of a large concern would need a devoted wife, and each of whom melted away from him as soon as he spoke disparagingly of money.

One of these ladies (present in church today, newly married to Arthur Gillow, the Ice Chest manufacturer) even kissed him on the brow, to see if it cured his shyness.

This is not the love I spoke of. The love I spoke of is real. It is the love of two friends for their God, and for each other.

Henry approaches the vestibule of his church -well, not a church of his own, sadly, but the church he attends-and sniffs the fresh air wafting in from outside. He has no interest in perfume, except to note that each week there seems to be more of it within these walls. Today it emanates as strongly from those ladies (within earshot of the rector) who are speaking of Scriptural matters, as from those, farther away, discussing the coming London Season.

He and Mrs Fox are loath to linger now that the service is over, scorning the opportunity to gossip with Notting Hill's other churchgoers.

They shake the rector's hand, Henry commends him on his refutation of Darwinism, and they are on their way. The gossips stare after them but, having been thus snubbed every Sunday for months, don't bother passing comment. So much has already been said about Henry Rackham and Mrs Fox, that if neither of them will rise to the bait, despite everyone's best efforts to whisper as clearly as possible, well, what's the use?

Henry and Mrs Fox walk gingerly down the steep gravel path that leads to the churchyard, each using a furled umbrella as a walking stick, rather than taking each other by the arm.

At the bottom of the slope the path curves sharply, running along the churchyard for a while before becoming part of the main road; that's the way they walk, with butter-yellow tombstones to the right of them, and black-trunked evergreens to the left.

"How beautiful this morning is," says

Emmeline Fox. (no, she means it! No, she is not making conversation! Your time in the streets and in houses of ill repute has made you cynical; it's a beautiful Sunday morning, and here is someone expressing her delight.) She is full of the love of God's creation, full to overflowing. The glories of God are copious, endless; they enter her from all directions… (what are you thinking? You've definitely been too long in the wrong company!) "Beautiful, yes," agrees Henry Rackham. He looks around, inviting the glory of Nature to flood into him, but Nature is reluctant to comply. He squints into the green-tinted light, yearning to feel the same as his enraptured companion.

The problem is, although the sun is beaming through the trees just like in Dyce's painting of George Herbert in Bemerton, it fails to impress him half as much as the quilting on Mrs Fox's bodice. And, although lively new sparrows are rustling through the leaves and hopping across the cobblestones, they cannot compete with Mrs Fox's grace as she walks. And as for the falling of light, that phenomenon is most admirable on her face.

How handsome she is! She dresses like an angel-an angel in grey serge. Try as he might to "consider the lilies of the field", they are too common and gaudy for him; he cannot prefer them to Mrs Fox's sober finery. Her voice, too, is low and musical, like… like a softly-played bassoon; so much more soothing than the twitterings of sparrows or other women.

"Have I lost you, Henry?"' she says suddenly.

He blushes. "Do go on, Mrs Fox. I was merely admiring… the miracle of God's creation."

Mrs Fox hooks the handle of her umbrella on her belt so she can lift both her gloved hands up to her forehead. The steep slope of the path has made her perspire; she dabs her skin under the thick frizz of her hair.

"I was merely saying," she says, "that I wish all this fighting over our origins would come to an end-any sort of end."

"Pardon me, Mrs Fox, but what do you mean, "any sort of end"?"' Henry's questions to her are always gently posed, for fear of offending her.

"Well," she sighs, "If only it could be resolved once and for all where we come from: from Adam, or from Mr Darwin's apes."

Henry stops in his tracks, amazed. Each time they meet, just when he least expects it, she unveils something like this.

"But my dear Mrs Fox-you cannot be serious!"

She looks aside at him, licks her lips, but says nothing to soothe his alarm.

"My dear Mrs Fox," he begins again, blinking at the sun-dappled road ahead of them.

"The difference between belief in the one descent rather than the other is the difference… why, between Faith and Atheism!"

"Oh Henry, it isn't, really it isn't." Her voice is impatient now, passionate, alerting him to the fact that she's about to talk of her work with the Rescue Society.

"If only you could know the wretches I work among! You'd see that the debate that rages in our churches and town halls means nothing to them. It's seen as a spat between one set of stuffed shirts and another. "I know all about it, miss," they say.

"We're to choose who was our grandparents: two monkeys or two naked innocents in a garden."

And they laugh, for both strike them as equally ridiculous."

"In their eyes, perhaps, but not in the eyes of God."

"Yes but Henry, can't you see that they will not be brought to God by seeing us quarrelling. We must accept that they don't care where life comes from.

What is far more important to address is that they despise our faith. They, Henry, who were once the backbone of the Church, in the days when the world was not yet blighted with cities and factories. How it saddens me to think of them as they were then, tilling the land, simple and devout … Look there!"

She points to a meadow some distance away which, on closer scrutiny, is a site of swarming industry. There are tiny workmen, cartloads of timber and earth, and a giant machine of mysterious function.

"Another house, I suppose," sighs Mrs Fox, turning her back on it and leaning her bustle against a stile. "First come the houses, then the shops, then finally…" (she rolls her eyes at the impiety of Commerce) "the Universal Provider." She rubs her gloved hands along her thin arms, shivering. "Still, I suppose your father will be pleased."

"My… father?"' Henry is slow to catch her drift; the only father to whom he gives regular thought is in Heaven.

"Yes," prompts Mrs Fox. "More houses, more people-more business, yes?"'

Henry leans gingerly against the nearest stile to hers. Discomfited though he is by his connection with the arch-profiteer who gave him his name, he feels constrained to defend him.

"My father likes Nature as much as anyone," he points out. "I'm sure he doesn't want any more of it despoiled.

Anyway, perhaps you haven't heard? He's stepped down from the directorship of Rackham's, and William has taken charge."

"Oh? Is he ill?"'

Henry, unsure which Rackham she has in mind, replies: "My father's fit as a whale.

As for William, I don't know what's come over him."

Mrs Fox smiles. The essential and irreconcilable differences between Henry and his brother are a source of secret pleasure to her.

"How very unexpected," she declares. "I always took your brother to be a man full of plans, but not much fruition."

Henry blushes again, aware he's the sibling of a profligate, a ne'er-do-well. What has he, Henry, achieved in life? Does Mrs Fox look down her nose at him, too, for his failure to grasp his destiny? (and why are people always remarking that her nose is long? It's the perfect length for her face!) She's still leaning against the stile, head back, eyes shut, so near to him that he can hear her breathing and see the breath coming out of her parted lips.

He indulges a fantasy, despising himself for it, but indulging all the same. He imagines himself a vicar, digging in the rich dark earth of a vicarage garden, with Emmeline at his side, golden in the sunlight, holding a seedling tree ready for planting. "Tell me when," she says to him.

With effort, he leaves this blissful day-dream, and focuses on reality. Mrs Fox's demeanour has changed. She looks less spirited than before-almost dejected. A simple sequence of expressions, this, incalculably common in human history, yet they wrench at his heart.

"You look sad," he finally succeeds in saying.

"Oh Henry," she sighs, "There's no stopping what has been begun; you know that, don't you?"' "But-begun?"' "The march of progress. The triumph of the machine. We are on a fast train to the twentieth century. The past cannot be restored."

Henry ponders this for a moment, but finds he cares little for the past or the future as abstracts.

Only two things glow clear in his brain: the fantasy of digging the vicarage garden with Mrs Fox, and the urgent desire to remove her unhappiness from her.

"The past is more than pasture," he suggests, wincing at his own unintended wit.

"It's standards of conduct, too. Don't you think we can keep those if we wish?"' "Oh, it would be nice to think so. But the modern world seduces righteousness, Henry-in every conceivable way."

He blushes, thinking of her flock of prostitutes, but she means more than that.

"Last week," she says, "I was in the city, on my way to visit a wretched family I'd visited before, to plead with them once more to listen to the words of their Saviour. I was tired, I felt disinclined to walk far. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in the Underground Railway, pulled by an engine, mesmerised by the alternation of darkness and light, speeding through the earth at the cost of a sixpence. I spoke to no one;

I might as well have been a ghost. I enjoyed it so much, I missed my stop, and never saw the family."

"I… I confess I don't quite divine the point you are making."

"This is how our world will end, Henry! We're foolish to imagine the Last Days will be ushered in by a giant Antichrist brandishing a bloody battle-axe. The Antichrist is our own desires, Henry. With my sixpence, I absolved myself utterly of responsibility-for the welfare of the poor filthy wretches who slaved to dig out that railway, for the grotesque sum of money spent on it, for the violation of the earth that ought to be solid beneath my feet. I sat in my carriage, admiring the dark tunnels flashing by me, not having the foggiest notion where I was, mindless of everything except my pleasure. I ceased to be, in any meaningful sense, God's creature."

"You are being hard on yourself. A single ride in the Underground isn't going to hasten Armageddon."

"I'm not so sure," she says, a smile tempting her lips. "I think we're moving towards such a strange time. A time when all our moral choices will be complicated and compromised by our love of progress." She looks up into the sky, as if checking her facts with God.

"I can see the world descending into chaos, and us just watching, not sure what we should, or could, have done about it."

"And yet you work for the Rescue Society!"

"Because I must do something while I still can.

Each soul is still incalculably precious."

Henry strives to recall how they reached this point. While he agrees wholeheartedly that each soul is precious, just now he can't help noticing that the stiles against which he and Mrs Fox have been leaning are cold and damp, and that Mrs Fox is protected from feeling this by her bustle whereas he is not. Politely he suggests they walk on.

"Forgive me, Henry," she says, jerking stiffly into motion. "Have I made us late again?

My mind wanders while my body takes root."

"Not at all! And I was a little tired myself!"

"That's sweet of you, Henry," she says, gaining her stride once more. "And you know, I really meant what I said about Darwin. The Church has been wrong before, after all-on details of science, I mean. Didn't it once maintain that the Sun revolved around the Earth?-and put people to death for suggesting otherwise? Now every school-book tells us that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Does it really matter? I shouldn't be surprised if the women I work with still believe it's the other way around. It's not my business to set them straight on cosmology, or the origin of man. I'm fighting to save them from the death of their bodies and souls!" Even as she walks, she clenches one delicate fist to her breast. "Oh, if you could only know the state of moral anarchy in which they exist…!"

To his shame, Henry longs to know the state of moral anarchy in which Mrs Fox's prostitutes exist. Ah, the depravity she must be witness to! It's all he can do to refrain from asking her questions which, under the guise of an interest in urban sanitation, goggle for a glimpse of something else entirely. Sometimes he must clench the muscles in his jaw, to bite back a demand that she reveal more.

The strange thing is: even when he has himself firmly under control, and is communing with Mrs Fox on an unsullied plane, she herself moves the conversation-innocently, no doubt-into more sensual regions.

Not so long ago, for example, he and Mrs Fox were dawdling by the Serpentine, discussing the Afterlife.

"You know, Henry," she was saying, "I often doubt there is a Hell. Death itself is so cruel. Oh, I don't mean the sort of death you and I are likely to suffer, but the sort of death so often suffered by those wretches I work among.

Our doctrine would have us believe they're bound for Hell, but what is Hell for such as they? When I see a woman dying of a vile disease, bitterly regretting every minute she's spent on this earth, I wonder if she hasn't already endured the worst."

"But surely the righteous must have their reward!" he protested, alarmed at her heresy, not because he feared God would be angry with her (god couldn't fail to appreciate her good intentions) but in case the wrath of the Church should fall upon her exquisite head.

"Isn't Heaven reward enough," she protested in turn, "without needing to see the damned punished?"' "Of course, of course it is," he said hastily. "I didn't mean that I wish to see sinners suffer. But there are righteous folk who do; and surely in Heaven, we can't have any of the souls feeling resentful…"

Emmeline was leaning forward over the edge of the Serpentine's bank, waving at a fat, grey duck, which disappeared underwater.

"I don't know that our resurrected souls will have the capacity to feel resentment," she said.

"A sense of… unfairness, then."

She smiled, her face lit up by reflections off the rippling lake.

"Those seem awfully queer things for resurrected souls to be feeling." And she extended one silky arm over the water, wiggling her fingers to attract whatever might be underneath.

"But… they must be capable of feeling something …" Henry persisted. "We aren't Orientalists, expecting to disappear into our deity like a puff of smoke." She seemed however to be no longer listening, staring at the brilliant water, waiting for the duck to resurface. He cleared his throat. "What do you think, Mrs Fox? What will souls in Heaven feel?"' "Oh," said Emmeline, eyes mysterious in the sun-dappled shade under her hat-brim, and mouth licked brilliant as the leaves on the water, "I should think… Love. The most wonderful… endless… perfect…

Love."

That's how she always did it! With just a few words and a certain quality of voice, she artlessly penetrated his Platonic armour, and he was helpless with impure thoughts. All sorts of lurid scenarios would flash into his mind like tableaux vivants: Mrs Fox's skirts catching on the branches of a tree, and being torn right off; Mrs Fox being attacked by a degenerate ruffian, who might succeed in baring her bosom before Henry smote him down; Mrs Fox's clothing catching fire, necessitating his prompt action; Mrs Fox sleepwalking to his house, in the night, for him to restore to dignity with his own dressing-gown.

Once he was roused like this, prurience would start to whisper in his ear. He would press Mrs Fox to describe her work with fallen women, knowing perfectly well that while there were some things he wished to know, there were others he wished only to imagine.

"What… what do these poor creatures wear?"' he asked her on one such occasion, when they were walking in St James's Park.

"The latest fashions, more or less," she replied, suspecting nothing. "Some affect a more old-fashioned appearance. I've seen several with their hair still parted down the middle, without a fringe.

In general I should guess their colours are a few months behind, though I'm hardly the best judge of such things. Why do you ask?"' "Their attire… It isn't… loose?"' "Loose?"' "They don't… flaunt their bodies?"'

She became pensive, giving the question serious thought. Eventually she replied, "I suppose they do. But it isn't with their attire so much as with the way they wear it. A dress which on me might appear perfectly decent, might be a Jezebel's costume on them. The way they stand, and sit, and move, and walk, can be indecent in the extreme."

Henry wondered how a whore might sit, that was so shamefully different from the method employed by a decent woman. How might she stand, and how might she move? Fortunately, on that particular occasion, he was saved from himself (however dubious the rescue) by Bodley and Ashwell, running across the park towards them.

Now, on this sunny Sunday morning, with the God-given miracle of Spring in evidence all around them, Henry Rackham is once more in turmoil under his stiff clothes. Mrs Fox has cried, "Oh, if you could only know the state of moral anarchy in which they exist…!" and he is desperate to know. So, he asks her to elaborate, and she does.

As they stroll on, she recounts one of her Rescue Society stories. (there are never any unclothed bodies in these stories, never any embraces, but still he listens with ears aflame.) She speaks of a time not long ago, when she and her sisters in the Society were admitted into a bawdy-house, and found there a girl who quite plainly was not long for this world. When Mrs Fox expressed concern over the girl's health, the madam retorted that the girl was in good hands-better than any doctor's-and that, if truth be told, Mrs Fox didn't look so well herself, and would she like to lie down in one of the spare rooms?

"I was shocked, I must admit, at her perversity."

"Yes, quite," mutters Henry. "A most sly and licentious suggestion."

"No, no, it wasn't that that shocked me.

It was her rejection of Medicine! What a topsy-turvy state these people are in: God and doctors bad; prostitution good!"

Henry grunts sympathetically. In his head, a vision of topsy-turviness is made flesh: a squirming heap of pink women flipping over and over, like frogs in a pond.

"Do I look ill to you?"' Mrs Fox asks suddenly.

"Not at all!" he exclaims.

"Well, at any rate," she says, "it makes me ill in here" (palm on her breast) "to think of the poor girls in that evil woman's clutches, and to imagine how cruelly they must be treated."

Henry, doing his very best not to imagine how those poor girls might be treated, is relieved to observe a distraction coming up Union Street towards them.

"Look there, Mrs Fox," he says.

"Isn't that someone we know?"'

A short, plump lady sumptuously dressed in purple with black trimmings-the last tokens of mourning-is trotting towards them.

Almost a whole bird's-worth of dyed feathers jigs up and down on her bonnet, and her parasol is of Continental proportions.

"You know her, perhaps," says Mrs Fox.

"I'm sure I've never met her." (in point of fact, there are two women walking towards them, but the servant is of no consequence and doesn't warrant a name.) "Good morning, Lady Bridgelow," says Henry, as soon as she's within hailing distance.

By way of response, she removes one purple-gloved hand from her black muff and motions it demurely.

"Good morning to you, Mr Rackham." With eyes slightly narrowed she regards Mrs Fox. "I do not believe I am acquainted with your companion."

"Allow me to introduce Mrs Emmeline

Fox."

"Enchant@ee." The lady nods, smiles, and without hesitation she and her lady's-maid pass, their black boots ticking on the cobblestones.

Henry waits until they are out of earshot, then turns to Mrs Fox and says, "You have been slighted." His voice is choked with vexation.

"I'm sure I'll survive, Henry.

Remember I'm accustomed to having doors slammed in my face, and foul language thrown at me. And look! Here we are at William Street. Is it a message from Providence, d'you think, to turn right and visit your brother?"'

Henry frowns, uneasy as always to hear her flirting with what more judgemental souls might consider blasphemy.

"I imagine it was from William's house that Lady Bridgelow came."

"Certainly not from church," remarks Mrs Fox. "But tell me, Henry: I didn't know your brother was apt to receive visits from the aristocracy."

"Well, they are neighbours, after a fashion." (it's all coming back to him now;

William has told him a great deal about this person, as though he ought to be fearfully interested in her.) "Neighbours? There must be a dozen houses in between."

"Yes, but…" Henry strains to recall the last conversation he had with his brother. Suicide was part of it, was it not? "Oh yes: William is the only one who doesn't hold it against her that her husband did away with himself."

"Did away with himself?"'

"Yes, shot himself I believe."

"Poor man. Couldn't he simply have divorced her instead?"' "Mrs Fox!"

A small dog stationed just outside the gate to William Rackham's property raises its mongrel head in hope, then begins to lick its genitals, unaware that this is not the way to earn respect.

"Don't look, Mrs Fox," urges

Henry, as he ushers her through.

Emmeline turns, but sees only a dog appealing to her with soulful brown eyes as the gate shuts in its face. Poor thing, she thinks.

"Could it be William's?"' she says as they walk up the Rackham path together.

"William has no pets I know of."

"He might have got one since we last visited."

"In which case I don't imagine he'd settle for a mongrel."

Henry stands at his brother's front door (the door that could have been his own, garlanded with an ornate brass R), and pulls the bell.

Even before the cord stops swinging, he is aware that much has changed in the Rackham house since he visited, sans Mrs Fox, several weeks ago. Maybe it's the way the brass R gleams, transmuted almost into gold by vigorous polishing. Maybe it's the way the doorbell is answered in seconds rather than minutes, or the way Letty greets them so avidly, as though a fresh coat of obsequiousness has just been applied to her. Behind her, inside the receiving hall, everything is on show, sparkling and dust-free.

"Come in, come in!" exclaims William

Rackham, half-way up the stairs, waving jovially. Henry scarcely recognises him: a dark curly fungus is sprouting from William's upper lip and chin, while the hair on his head has been cut even shorter, plastered flat to his scalp. Far from wearing his Sunday best, he's in a weekday suit minus the jacket, plus an ankle-length dressing-gown with quilted lapels. At his extremities, he brandishes a magnifying glass, a cigar, and the most peculiar two-tone shoes. Yet it's his beaming smile that is the most conspicuous novelty.

Thus begins the great exhibition. Mind you don't slip on the newly waxed floor!

"Step this way, step this way."

Guided by the master of the house, brother Henry and his companion are shown everything. The melancholy atmosphere of the Rackham home, which had become like a characteristic odour, has been banished. All the windows have been replaced; the old steps have been removed from the garden; new French windows have been screwed into the parlour door. The whole place smells of paint, wallpaper paste and fresh air. To Henry's mortification, there are three workmen still at large in the hall, pasting up the last few strips of a new wallpaper, under the critical eye of Agnes, who has left her bed in order to supervise.

And did Henry not notice that the fence around the grounds is no longer rusty brown but fresh rose-pink? No? Ha! Ha! In a world of his own, this brother of mine, as always! And what about the grounds themselves? What a difference, eh? The gardener's name is Shears-really! Isn't that exquisite? Shears! Ha! Ha! A little mule of a man: just the fellow to bring the unruly wilds around the greenhouse back into Man's dominion.

Nor are the house and its environs the only things subject to reform. William Rackham has a great many other fish to fry, or at least to be fried for him. The servants, for example.

Everything that was wrong has been set to rights.

Janey has been relieved of her extra duties and is a simple scullery maid again, overjoyed no doubt to be responsible only for mops, rags and brushes. A new kitchen-maid has been hired, who'll also assist Letty in some of her duties, so that Letty can be more prompt in her attention to the needs of visitors and the family. There's another housemaid on the way too. William now has a pretty full complement of females; he can't hire any more until he lives in a much grander house (the future, the future!) He could hire another male, but he's undecided what kind. The gardener is an impressive acquisition, and moreover essential, but the idea of a manservant doesn't particularly appeal. A coachman? Hmm… yes, but actually he's holding off hiring one of those until he gets a coach. And who knows? He may not get a coach after all. He's too busy nowadays to waste time riding around showing off. Though perhaps if Agnes has a need in the coming Season, he'll buy her a coach then.

Mind you, there's nothing like the prestige that comes with male servants. Female servants aren't the same: any shop-keeper or pennywise matron can afford one or two. Still, the gardener's a grand beginning, isn't he? The lawns will be rescued from anarchy yet!

Yes, William Rackham is a changed man: that's plain. He has now the air of a man for whom there's never enough time in the day: a twenty-four hour man. It's an Augean labour, this perfume business, but someone's got to do it, now that the old man is on the way out. (what? No, Father's quite well, it was just a figure of speech.) But it's a big job, that's the point, a seven-day-a-week job. (don't scowl, dear brother: again, just a manner of speaking. How was church? Would've loved to attend, but had these workmen to supervise. What?

The Sabbath? Oh, quite, quite. But the job was only a few sheets short of being finished, and these fellows begged to come today and be done with it. Jews, I shouldn't wonder.) To discourage his brother from censure, William launches into a panegyric on perfume: the miracle of its mysterious mechanisms.

Scents, like sounds (he explains) stroke our olfactory nerve in exquisite and exact degrees. There's an octave of odours like an octave in music. The top note is what we notice when the headiest element dies off the handkerchief; the middle note, or modifier, provides full, solid character to the fragrance; then, once the more volatile substances have flown, the base, or end, note is left resonating: and what is that end note, brother? Lavender, if you please!

Expansively, William plays the host to Henry and Mrs Fox. Tea and cake are served, perfectly on time, perfectly presented. And, while his guests make appreciative noises, he sizes them up in comparison to himself.

Of Mrs Fox he thinks: Ashwell's right -her face is just like a greyhound's. I wonder if she's as ill as she looks.

And of his brother Henry: How ill-at-ease he appears, as if he has boils on his bum.

Strange that it's come to this, when, of the two of us, it was always Henry who cut the better figure… yet here we are on this sunny Sunday afternoon, and lo and behold: it's left to me to demonstrate how a man may subjugate Life and make it do his bidding.

"Thank you both for paying this visit," he says to them, when it's time they were going.

Mrs Fox, thoughtlessly usurping Henry's right to speak first, replies, "Not at all, Mr Rackham. The energy with which you've pursued the improvements to your house, why, it's… startling. The world sorely needs such energy-especially in other arenas."

"You are too kind," says William.

"Yes, too kind," echoes Agnes, adding these three words to the approximately twenty she's contributed to the conversation.

Beautifully turned out though she is, in powder blue and black, she hasn't yet regained the knack of conversing with the world.

"I hope," says William as he passes his guests into Letty's care, "that you find enjoyable diversions for the rest of the day."

Henry, bristling at this suggestion that he and Mrs Fox might seek to use God's day for selfish entertainment, replies, "I'm sure Mrs Fox and I will spend it as… fittingly as we can."

And on this note, Henry and Mrs Fox are shown out.

Quiet descends on the Rackham house-or at least, such quiet as can prevail with the paperers packing up their tools in the hall.

William, a little hoarse from his performance, lights a cigarette. Agnes sits nearby, staring with unfocused eyes at a biscuit she will not eat.

The oxalate of cerium pill she swallowed with her tea is already disagreeing with her.

After a good five minutes, she says:

"It's Sunday, then?"'

"Yes, dear."

"I thought it was Saturday."

"Sunday, dear."

Another long pause follows.

Surreptitiously, Agnes scratches at her wrists, which have grown unaccustomed to the tight sleeves of daywear and the texture of anything but cotton. She clasps her hands together, to stop herself scratching any more. Then:

"Are they really Jews?"'

"Who, dear?"'

"The workmen here today."

"With what I'm paying them extra," snorts William, "they might as well be.

But you know it pains me to keep my precious little wife waiting for anything she deserves."

Agnes lowers her face and plays with her tiny fingers, confused. Her renovated husband is going to take getting used to. And, if she's going to take part in the Season this year, she'll have to get a firmer grip on what day it is.

Having said goodbye to Mrs Fox and watched her walk away, Henry returns to his own modest home in Gorham Place, on the very brink of Pottery-and-Piggery-land. The meeting with William has left him flustered, despite Mrs Fox's sensible parting advice not to judge his brother too harshly for his vulgar and impious behaviour. "He's just a boy with a new toy," she counselled him, and no doubt she's right, but still … what an embarrassment. And what a relief to go back to his own house, his own small retreat, where nothing ever changes, and everything is plain and functional, and there isn't a servant to be seen (except himself, servant to the Lord).

In truth, Henry's house is a little shabbier than modest. It's among the smallest in the district, with no grounds except a minuscule back garden, and a bedroom whose opposite walls can be touched by the fingertips of a man extending his arms Christ-wise. It's also poorly sealed and draughty, and at nights the smell of boiling pig fat is wont to come in through the windows, but this has never troubled Henry. The great mass of mankind must make do with much worse.

In any case, he's suspicious of too much comfort-it breeds thoughtlessness. Kneeling at his hearth, he prepares a nest of kindling, lights it, ladles lumps of coal into it one by one.

Thus is he reminded of what he's taking from God's earth, and of how each twig and coal-lump is a privilege-an advantage he has over the unfortunates who shiver their lives away in perpetual subterranean damp. To help the reluctant flame rise, he adds a few pages from old copies of the Illustrated London News, screwing up engravings of rail disasters, fashionable ice-skaters and visiting Negro potentates. An article extolling the miracle of electricity crumples in his fist; he has read it and was not impressed. "Professor Gallup astounded the audience with tales of a future in which we shall scarcely be able to distinguish day from night, and there will be nothing we do that is not dependent on electric machinery." A vision of Hell.

As soon as the fire grows warm, Henry's cat saunters into the room from parts unknown. Her name is simply Puss, scrupulously to avoid treating her too much like a human being, or perhaps to soften the blow of her inevitable loss. She lies down on the ember-blackened rug, and allows her master to stroke her furry flank.

Soon, Henry has settled into a typical

Sunday afternoon. While Puss sleeps in the sitting-room, he sits in the adjacent study, reading the Bible. Regrettably, the walls that divide his sanctum sanctorum from the outside world are thin, and true silence is difficult to come by. Life goes on, and isn't shy to let him know it.

At every sound that betrays someone nearby spending the Sabbath in ways other than those approved by God, Henry frowns in disappointment. He does nothing on the Lord's day but attend church twice, visit his brother, converse with Mrs Fox (if the opportunity arises), and read pious literature. But listen there, through the window!

Isn't that the sound of a large object being loaded onto a cart, with shouted instructions? And isn't that the excited barking of a dog, encouraged by the whistle of its owner? And listen there! Wasn't that a child yelping "Hoop-la"? Has the whole world become a mob of Sunday workers and merry-makers, dancing behind his brother William into a fog of self-gratification?

For Henry, the Sabbath is something far more profound than a test of obedience. Like so many of God's laws, it appears stern and arbitrary when really it's as kind and wise as a mother's nurture. (not that Henry has very clear memories of maternal love, his own mother having vanished from his childhood like a snowman on a rainy night, but he's read testimonials.) The frantic pace of modern life permits us not a moment's peace; only by obeying the fourth Commandment are we enfolded in the blessed embrace of stillness. And let it not be said that Henry is too much the scholar to appreciate the urge to run with a dog or kick a ball; he is a man who once swam across the Cam fully-clothed in December on a dare, who rowed like a demon, fenced like a fiend, and ran cross-country as though powered by steam. But what did such exertions win him?

His name inscribed on silver-plated trophies; the ruin of many shoes; the admiration of cronies he'd rather forget. The firm handshake of Bodley, congratulating him on a fine afternoon's cricket. ("Top-notch sportsman, that Rackham!

Frightful bore when he gasses about the ills of the world, but get him off that subject and he's as decent a chap as ever lived!") Henry hopes God will forgive him for playing foolish games while England burned, and for accepting the friendship of blasphemers. Now he reads the Bible, murmuring the words to himself until the combined strength of his voice and the Lord's drowns out the noise of Sabbath-breakers.

During the week, Henry is still a restless man. He chops firewood into smaller pieces than he needs; he walks to Mrs Fox's street in Bayswater in case she should emerge from her house at the precise moment that he strolls past, then carries on to Hyde Park and beyond; it's nothing for him to walk all the way to Kensal Green Cemetery on no particular errand. But on Sunday, he rests, and he reads the Bible, and he wishes all men and women would do the same.

Let us leave Henry to his Book of

Nehemiah now, and rejoin William

Rackham in his hive of industry. He is wandering around his severely pruned grounds, smoking a pipe-oh no, that's not William, is it?

It's another short-haired man of middling stature: Shears, the gardener. Where's William, then? The workmen have departed, and Mrs Rackham has retired upstairs. Where is the man of the house? Gone to town, if you ask Letty.

Sundays in the heart of London can be quite entertaining-more lively, anyway, than in Notting Hill. We find William walking in the Embankment Gardens, watching a variety of impious souls at play. In defiance of the by-laws, there are people boating on the Thames, fishing, playing football, flying pigeons.

He's not implicated in their activities, as he merely walks a straight path through them, but they do amuse him in passing. No one could possibly mistake him for one of these poor toilers filling their one free day with strenuous pleasure; he's set apart by his superior attire and his purposeful stride.

What an agreeable circus the world is! he thinks, watching here the antics of the pigeon-fanciers, and there the struggles of weekend swells to launch their giggling lady-loves upon the Thames's dark waters.

He has, after so long, rediscovered the simple pleasure of being a spectator rather than (what to call it?) a… an introspectator (jolly good, yes, he must use that somewhere).

No more brooding! Instead, look outward!

Excellent mottos for any man, especially one whose bank has suddenly changed its tune from reproach to rapprochement. The experience of seeing his debts vaporise and his assets multiply, nought by nought and acre by acre, has taken William's mind off himself.

Or, more precisely, he no longer seeks himself within himself; instead, he watches William Rackham, head of Rackham Perfumeries, doing this and doing that, causing effects, achieving results.

On another path from William's rides a man on a velocipede, the perspiration on his forehead brilliant in the sunlight, his eyes bulging with concentration on the path before him. His cap is jammed tight onto his head to discourage it blowing off, and under its brim there flaps a clownish fuzz of wind-mussed hair. Poor deluded fellow! He'd be better off getting it cut short, as the head of Rackham Perfumeries has done. Long hair is an affectation from a bygone age: this is the look of tomorrow.

As he walks, William touches his sideboards; they're joining up nicely with his newly-grown moustache and beard which, unlike the hair on his scalp, are not blond, but a rich dark brown. It isn't vanity that makes him look forward to seeing himself in a mirror: it's the lushness of the brown he likes, in a more abstract aesthetic sense; it needn't even be hair, it could be tobacco, tree-bark, a fresh coat of paint.

A football rolls onto the path before him, and without a second thought he shoots it back to the players with a swift kick: shoe-shines, after all, he can now afford by the thousand.

He's pleased, too, that the police have been bribed, with shillings and free beer, to allow a few ale-houses to break the Sabbath, for he finds he's getting thirsty walking. Perhaps he should have got a cab all the way to the bottling factory, rather than taking this detour through the park, but the weather was so superb, it seemed a shame to waste it. Then there's the matter of his digestion: he ate rather too much at lunch, and this constitutional will hasten an evacuation.

If there's one thing he doesn't want this afternoon, it's to be lying in Sugar's arms with a chamber pot full of his own faeces stinking under the bed. (could he arrange to have a water closet installed in her room? Ah: the future, the future.) The last half-mile to the bottling factory is a half-mile too far: he commandeers a cab.

No sense tiring himself out and, besides, the factory is in unappealing surroundings. On either side of it, grimy rented lock-ups for costermongers' barrows and, all along the street, slimy remains of fruit and vegetables too far gone for scavenging.

However, in amongst the filth nestles this haven, a little castle of ingenious industry disguised in an unassuming outer mantle of blackened red brick. When Rackham the Elder recently took Rackham the Younger on a tour of all three of the Rackham factories, it was this bottling factory that interested William most.

Its deceptive exterior, once entered, revealed a magical interior: a miniature Crystal Palace of glass and metal, in constant movement like a carousel. It had a superhuman allure which, to his surprise, was not incompatible with the highest aesthetic principles.

Ever since that first visit, William has been wondering what the place looks like when it's empty of workers and its machinery is still.

Standing at last before the massive iron gate of the factory, he feels a thrill as he slides the key in. Another few steps, and he slides a second key into the great double doors.

His factory is as spacious and dark and quiet as a church. Seeing it without his father by his side, and without the distraction of the workers and the steam, he understands for the first time the sheer scale of what he has inherited. He treads reverently across the plaza-sized, sawdust-covered floor, staring up at the great balconies, the sloping chutes and jar-slides, the columnar pipes from furnace to ceiling, the dark grilles and gleaming tables; all the giant sculptures in perfume's honour. What beauty there is in the evenly spaced patterns of rivets, the precise geometry of pylon and crosspiece, the thousands of tiny glass bottles standing at the ready.

What a playground this would have been for him when he was a boy! But his father only ever brought Henry here as a child, never William. And what did the infant Henry think of this palace, the crown of the empire laid out for him? William can't recall his brother ever mentioning the visit.

No doubt Henry, even then, was aspiring to shrines of a different kind.

"Ach, I had high hopes for that boy." (thus William's father confessed when he and William were walking here together.) "He had brains and brawn in plentiful supply, and I thought he might mature into… well, something better than a parson, anyway."

A distillation of Henry's pious spirit into a more useful essence, eh? William thought of saying, but, knowing his father to be impervious to metaphor, he let it pass. Instead, he plumped for platitudinous diplomacy.

"Never mind, Father. We all mature in different ways. All for the best, eh? Here's to the future!" And he laid a hand on his father's back, a gesture of intimacy so rare and so bold that neither of them quite knew what to do with it.

Fortunately the guilt of having allowed his son to suffer a miserable Christmas when he ought by rights to have rescued him was still fresh in the old man's mind, and he patted William's shoulder in return.

Now, alone, William wanders out into the yard behind his factory and surveys the mounds of coal, the massive carts with their reins and bridles lying in tangled heaps. He reaches out a gloved hand and touches, as one might touch a monument in a public park, a stack of crates ready for filling. What a pity it must all lie idle on a Sunday! Oh, not that William doubts that the workers need some rest and religion one day a week, but what a pity all the same. A short story is born in his brain then, called "The Impious Automata", in which an inventor devises mechanical men to perform factory work on a Sunday. In the end, mechanical parsons roll into the factory and persuade the mechanical workers to observe the Sabbath. Ha!

Suddenly William is startled by a loud clatter behind him. He turns at once, only to find (once he's lowered his eyes to the ground) a small dog emerging from behind an unsoundly-stacked pile of firewood. It looks very like the dog that loiters around the Rackham house, except that it's a bitch.

The animal is nothing to William, but he's concerned it might cause mischief to his property. So he picks up one of the numerous charred pokers littering the grounds, and brandishes it threateningly. The dog flees in a cloud of sawdust and dirt. William's satisfaction at this result turns to chagrin when he realises that his own scrupulous locking of all doors and gates behind him has left the trespassing creature no escape.

Consulting his watch, William decides he's hungry, and makes his way back to the main gate. He half hopes to find the dog waiting there, meekly resigned to expulsion, but it's nowhere to be seen, and with some regret he shuts it inside with a clank of the key.

In her upstairs room at Mrs Castaway's,

Sugar is writing her novel. In the room adjacent, Amy Howlett is inserting the handle of a Chinese fan into the anus of a schoolmaster who comes every Sunday for just this purpose. Downstairs, Christopher is playing rummy with Katy Lester, the cards laid out on a soft stack of ironed bed-sheets. Mrs Castaway is dozing, slumped at her desk, the sheen of viscous glue on her scrapbook slowly drying to a matt glaze. The noise from Silver Street is so muted that Sugar can hear the schoolmaster's frenzied babbling. She strains to hear the words, but their sense doesn't survive the passage through the wall.

Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier.

Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn't; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway's warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise.

Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom.

Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk.

Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word. The nib of the pen has dried out and the scrawl passes from inkless invisibility to clotted stain, but she'll make it more legible later. Into the wardrobe with it just now! Time enough left over for a quick piss, which she can immediately hurl out the window: her Mr Hunt is sensitive to bad smells, she's noticed.

Hours later, many hours later, William Rackham wakes from dreamless sleep in a warm and aromatic bed. He's sluggish and content, though rather confused about where he is and what time it might be. There is gas-light overhead, but suffused through gauzy fabric, and through the window he sees only darkness. A rustling of paper alerts him to the fact that he's not alone.

"What the Devil?"' he mumbles.

Next to him in the bed, a body. He lifts his head, finds Sugar propped up on the pillows, apparently reading The London Journal. She has a camisole on, and there are ink stains on her fingers, but otherwise she is exactly as she was when he last saw her.

"What time is it?"'

She leans right out of the bed, exposing the whole of her rump. Her flaky ichthyosis patterns radiate across the flesh of each buttock like scars from a thousand flagellations, but in perfect symmetry, as though inflicted by a deranged aesthete.

Rolling back to him, she hands him his waistcoat, from whose flaccid fob-pocket his watch-chain dangles.

"God almighty," he says when he consults the time-piece. "It's ten o'clock. At night!"

She pouts, strokes his cheek with one peeling, inky hand.

"You work too hard," she croons. "That's what it is. You don't get enough rest."

Rackham blinks dazedly and rakes through his hair, startled (before he remembers) how little remains of it.

"I-I must go home," he says.

Sugar lifts one long naked leg and rests it on the knee of the other, displaying her cunt to him.

"I hope," she smiles, "this is your home away from home."

In the Rackham house, several clocks chime eleven. Everyone is in bed, except here and there a servant, still toiling to clean away the last fragments of dirt, wood-shavings, and other evidence of men's labour. It has been a noisy Sunday, but quiet reigns at last.

Agnes Rackham, sitting up in her bed, in darkness except for a window-square of moonlight draped across her knees like a luminous coverlet, wonders if God is angry. If so, she hopes He's angry with William, not with her.

Had she known sooner that it was Sunday, she would have tried harder to do nothing, or as close to nothing as possible.

The salmon she ate for supper lies heavy on her stomach. It was intended for William, really, but he didn't come home for supper so Letty was going to take the shiny little creature back to the kitchen, where Cook would've mashed it all up and made it into something else for breakfast -pasties or suchlike. It seemed a shame to waste the flawless fish body, so Agnes ate it. Smallish salmon though it was, it proved too big for her, yet she couldn't stop. She wanted to see the backbone clean against the plate.

Now here she lies, with stomach-ache.

Gluttony. On a Sunday.

Where is William? In the early days of their marriage, he hardly went out at all. Then he took to going out and coming back drunk. More recently he's been going out and coming back sober.

But where does he go? What is there to do out there in the cold, after the shops are shut? The Season hasn't even started yet…

There must be complicated engines that keep English civilisation humming, which men must minister to. Nothing happens of itself; even a simple grandfather clock, if left to carry on untended, runs down. Society as a whole would run down, she suspects, if men weren't oiling it constantly, winding it up, tinkering with it.

The doorbell sounds. He's come! Agnes pictures Letty hurrying, lamp-first, down the newly polished stairs and across the new hallway carpets to open the door for her master. It's so quiet she can hear her husband's voice in the hall: not the words, but the tone and the spirit. He sounds cheery and authoritative, as sober as a clergyman. Now he and Letty are on the stairs, and William is saying,

"Back to bed with you, you poor girl!"

Plainly, he's not wanting supper; a lucky thing, since his gluttonous wife has eaten the salmon.

Agnes cannot understand the change that has come over him. Only a few months ago, his late arrival home might have meant the sound of stumbling and cursing on the stairs. And what about the rages he used to get into whenever she mentioned money or his father? Gone entirely, as if they were nothing but a bad dream. Rackham the Elder and Rackham the Younger are suddenly thick as thieves, and she, Agnes, is well-off again, and wants for nothing except health.

She hears his footsteps-feels them, almost-passing her door. This is not unusual; they haven't slept together for years. Indeed, the fear that tonight he might break their unspoken agreement and enter her bedroom is, momentarily, as sharp as ever. And yet, she must admit he has been good lately-almost as charming as he ever was. He consults her in all things, hardly ever says anything cruel, and only yesterday he declared that she doesn't have to make her own dresses if the sewing-machine has ceased to amuse her: she can have them made for her, as before.

But it's good for her to make them, she knows that. It's discipline for the mind, and keeps her fingers nimble, and is less wearisome than tapestry work. Although, speaking of tapestry work: if there's more money now, could she enlist some help with her embroidered copy of Landseer's Monarch of the Glen? It would look frightfully impressive finished, but it's been on her conscience so long now that she can't think of it without being reminded of the worst months of her illness. The greater part of the stag is done, as well as the more interesting features of the landscape; it's only the thought of all that sky and all those mountains that makes her heart sink. Couldn't someone else do it for her? One of those seamstresses who advertise in the ladies' journals (ELSPETH, finishes woolwork, etc, at moderate prices. Address with editor) perhaps?

Yes, she'll raise the subject with William tomorrow.

Agnes's eyes are sore from lack of sleep. She looks at the pattern of the window on her eiderdown. The shadows of the window-frames, dividing the rectangle of light into four squares, suddenly appear to her like a Christian cross. Is it a sign? Is God cross with her for giving those workmen, those paperers, instructions? She only spoke; she didn't lift a finger herself! And if she'd kept silent, they would've put the dado rail back at quite the wrong height! And anyway, she didn't know it was Sunday, then!

Unnerved, she slips out of bed and draws the curtain, shutting out the cross, plunging the room into profound darkness. She leaps back under the eiderdown, pulls it up to her neck, and tries to pretend she's back in her old house, back in her innocent childhood. In the absence of visible evidence to the contrary, it should be easy to imagine nothing has changed in the years since she slept soundly in the bosom of her family.

But even in total darkness her memory of the old home is spoiled by reality. Try as she might, she cannot transport herself into her childhood as it ought to have been; she cannot purge Lord Unwin from her recollections and replace him with her real father. Every time she strives to envision her father's face, the familiar photograph refuses to come to life, and instead her step-father looms before her, sneering in gloomy silence.

Stifling a sob of fear, she seizes hold of a pillow from William's side of the bed and gathers it to her breast. She hugs it tightly, burying her face into its subtly perfumed linen.

All the lights in the house are now extinguished, except for one in William's study. All of the household, except for William, is under the sheets, like dolls in a doll's house. If the Rackham house were such a toy, and you could lift off its roof to peek inside, you would see William in shirt-sleeves at his desk, working on correspondence: nothing to interest you, I promise. In another compartment, at the far end of the landing, you would see a child's body huddled in a cot slightly too small for it: Sophie Rackham, who isn't yet of any consequence.

In another compartment still, you would see Agnes swaddled in white bedding, with only her blonde head showing, like a cake-crumb half-submerged in cream. And inside the upended roof held in your hand, the servants would be upside-down in their attic honeycombs, thrown along with their meagre belongings against the rafters.

William burns the midnight candle for a little while longer, before closing his ledger and stretching his short limbs. He is satisfied: another tedious Sunday has been endured with as much recreation and as little religion as possible. He discards his day clothes, puts on his night-shirt, extinguishes the light, and inserts himself between the sheets. Within minutes he is snoring gently.

Agnes, too, has drifted off. One tiny, upturned hand slips off the pillow and glides towards the edge of the bed. Then, one of William's hands, in sleep, begins to move towards the edge of.his bed, in Agnes's direction. Soon their hands are in perfect alignment, so that, if this really were a doll's house, we could imagine removing not only the roof, but some of the internal walls as well, and sliding the two bedrooms into each other, joining the couple's hands like the clasp of a necklace.

But then William Rackham begins to dream, and flips over onto his other side.