The Crimson petal and the white

TEN

Agnes Rackham's bedroom, whose windows are never opened and whose door is always closed, fills up every night with her breath. One by one, her exhalations trickle off her pillow onto the floor; then, breath by breath, they rise, piling on top of each other like invisible feathers, until they're nestling against the ceiling, growing denser by the hour.

It's morning now, and you can scarcely believe you are in a bedroom: it feels more like the world's smallest factory, which has been working all night for no purpose but to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide. You turn instinctively to the curtains; they're drawn, and as motionless as sculpture. A skewer-thin shaft of sunlight penetrates the dimness, through a slit in the velvet. It falls on Agnes's diary, open at yesterday's page, and illuminates a single line of her handwriting.

Really must get out more, she exhorts herself, in tiny indigo letters you must squint to read.

You glance over to the bed, where you expect to see her body still huddled under the eiderdown. She is gone.

Agnes Rackham has a new routine. Every morning, if she can possibly manage it, she takes a walk in the street outside her house, alone. She is going to get well if it kills her.

The Season is drawing nigh, and there's frighteningly little time left to regain certain essential skills-like being able to walk, unsupported, further distances than are found inside her own home. Participating in Society is not a thing one can do naturally; one has to rehearse for it. Half a dozen circuits of a ballroom, if added end to end, could stretch to a mile.

So, Agnes is taking walks. And, surprisingly, Doctor Curlew has judged her decision a good one, as he says she's deficient in corpuscles. Unopposed, then, several mornings a week, she is escorted to the front gate by Clara, whereaf, parasol in hand, she totters out onto the footpath all by herself, listening anxiously for hoof-beats on the deserted cobbled street.

The mongrel dog which has made its camp at the Rackham front gate is there to meet her almost every time, but Agnes doesn't fear him.

He's never given her any cause to, never once barked at her. Whenever she shuffles by, braced against the ferocious breezes that flap her skirts and pull her parasol askew, the dog reassures her, with lashings of his tail or a benevolent yawn, that he's friendly. He reminds her of an outsized Sunday roast, so roly-poly in his dark brown flesh, and his eyes are more benign than those of anyone she knows.

Admittedly, she once almost soiled her boots on his droppings; she was disgusted with him then, but didn't let her disdain show, in case it hurt his feelings-or provoked him to viciousness.

Another time, she saw him licking at a part of him that was red as a flayed finger, but she didn't recognise the organ, taking it to be an appendage peculiar to dogs, a sort of fin or spine, which in this dog's case had become painfully inflamed. She swept by him with an awkward smile of pity.

As for creatures of the human variety,

Agnes meets very few. Notting Hill, though not nearly as quiet as it used to be, is by the same token not yet part of the metropolis.

If one chooses one's streets with care, one can concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without the additional challenge of meeting other pedestrians. Kensington Park Road is the busiest, for it's along this thoroughfare that the omnibus goes. She avoids it if she can.

Every morning, she walks a little farther. Every day, she gets a little stronger. Five new dresses are finished, with a sixth on the way. The garden looks awfully nice, thanks to Shears. And William is in such a good mood all the time, although (she can't help noticing) he does look quite a lot older all of a sudden, what with the beard and the moustache.

They haven't breakfasted together since her last collapse, but they've fallen into the habit of seeing each other at luncheon. It's altogether safer, Agnes feels. And the morning walk gives her a healthy appetite, so she doesn't risk the embarrassment of toying with a half-eaten morsel while William wolfs his portion and asks her if she is all right.

Today, they both eat with equal relish. Cook has outdone herself with an extraordinary galantine made of pork loin layered with ham, cooked tongue, mushrooms and sausage. It's a most elegant looking thing, and so delicious they have to call Letty back to the table twice, to cut more slices.

"I wonder what this is," murmurs William, winkling an object out of the aspic.

"It's a fragment of pistachio kernel, dear," Agnes informs him, proud to know something he doesn't.

"Fancy that," he says, startling her by holding the glistening smithereen under his nose and giving it a good sniff. He's sniffing everything lately: new plants in the garden, wallpaper paste, paint, napkins, notepaper, his own fingers, even plain water. "My nose must become my most sensitive organ, dear," he'll tell her, before launching into an explanation of the almost imperceptible but (in the perfume business) crucial difference between one flower petal and another. Agnes is pleased he's so determined to master the subtleties of his profession, especially since it has made them suddenly so much more comfortably off, but she hopes he'll not be sniffing everything during the Season, when they're in mixed company.

"Oh, did I tell you?"' William tells her. "I'm going to see The Great Flatelli this evening."

"Something to do with perfume, dear?"'

He smirks. "You might say that." Then, digging into his plum suet pudding, he sets her straight. "No, dear. He's a performer."

"Anyone I should know about?"'

"I very much doubt it. He's on at the

Lumley Music Hall."

"Oh, well then."

There should be no need to say more, but Agnes is nagged by her awareness of being out of touch. After a minute she adds: "The Lumley is still the Lumley, isn't it?"' "What do you mean, dear?"' "I mean, it hasn't been… elevated in any way?"' "Elevated?"' "Brought higher… Become more fashionable …" The word "class" eludes her.

"I should think not. I expect I'll be surrounded by men in cloth caps and women with teeth missing."

"Well, if that appeals to you…" she says, making a face. The suet pudding is too rich for her, and she's starting to feel bilious after all the galantine, but a small slice of the luncheon cake is irresistible.

"Man cannot live on high culture alone," quips William.

Agnes chews her cake. It, too, is richer than she expected, and she's nagged by the suspicion that there's something she should know.

"If you…" she hesitates. "If you see anyone there… at the Lumley… I mean anyone important, that I'm likely to meet in the Season… Do tell me, won't you?"' "Of course, dear." He lifts a slice of the luncheon cake to his nose and sniffs.

"Currants, raisins, orange peel, steeped in sherry. Almonds. Nutmeg.

Caraway… Vanilla." He grins, as if expecting applause.

Agnes smiles wanly.

Less than half a mile to the west of the Rackham house, Mrs Emmeline Fox, dressed for going out but still in her kitchen, is coughing into a handkerchief. The weather doesn't agree with her today; there's something oppressive in the atmosphere that's giving her a headache and a tight chest. She'll have to make sure she's rallied by tomorrow, though, or she'll miss the rounds with the Rescue Society.

She considers nipping over to her father's house and asking him for a draught of medicine, but decides this would only worry him. Besides, who knows what emergencies he might need to attend to with his satchel of drugs and implements? For Emmeline's father is Doctor James Curlew, and he's a busy man.

Instead, she swallows a spoonful of liver salts followed by a sip of hot cocoa to take the taste away. The cocoa has the additional effect of warming her up, not just her cold hands as they cradle the cup, nor even her sensitive stomach hidden away in her belly, but the whole of her body. In fact, all of a sudden, she's too warm: her forehead prickles with sweat and her arms feel stifled inside her tight sleeves. Hastily, she passes through the kitchen door and into the garden.

Her house is bigger than Henry's, and her garden more substantial, though rather overgrown since its heyday when her husband pottered about in it.

He had a taste for the bizarre, did Bertram, always trying to grow exotic vegetables for the table, which he'd give to the cook they had in those days.

There are scorzonera growing here yet, half-hidden by weeds, and some strangled roots of salsify. Father sends his gardener round from time to time, to slash the worst of it away and expose the paving for Emmeline to walk on, but the weeds are busy all summer and merely lie waiting in winter. They're coming to life again now, lush green, while the great coffin-shaped enclosure in which Bertie grew those monstrous man-sized celeries (what were they called-cardoons?) is dense with dull exhausted earth.

Always indifferent, was Bertie, to anything that endures, fascinated instead by the ephemeral and the spectacular. A good man, though. The house they shared is too big for her alone, but she stays on for his sake-for the sake of his memory. He did so little that was memorable, and never spoke his profounder thoughts (if indeed he had any); the best way of recalling the marriage is to remain in his house.

Now she stands in the garden, her hands still cradling her cup of cocoa, her feverish brow cooled by the breeze. She'll be better very shortly. She is not ill. She ought to have opened the windows last night, to air the house after the unseasonal warmth of the day before. This headache is her own fault.

She drinks the rest of the cocoa. Already, it's perking her up, giving her a feeling of heightened alertness. What makes it do that? It must have a secret ingredient, she reckons, that adds to her sluggish blood a squirt of analeptic or even a stimulant. In her own small way, she's scarcely better than the dope fiends she sees in the course of her work with the Rescue Society-the addled morphine slaves, who can keep their attention on the words of Christ for no longer than two minutes before their pink eyes start rolling sideways. She smiles, tilting her head back in the breeze, pressing the rim of the cup against her chin. Emmeline Fox: cocoa fiend. She can imagine herself on the cover of a tuppenny dreadful, a masked villain dressed in men's trousers and a cape, evading police by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, her superhuman strength deriving entirely from the evil cacao seed. The earthbound constables stretch their stubby arms impotently towards her, open-mouthed in their rage and frustration. Only God can bring her down.

She opens her eyes, shivers. The sweat in her armpits has turned cold; there's a damp chill on her spine. Her windpipe itches, tempting her to cough, cough, cough. She refuses; she knows where that leads.

Back inside the house, she rinses out the milk-pan, wipes the stovetop, puts away the cocoa things. Few women of her acquaintance would have the faintest idea how to perform such tasks, even assuming they were forced at knife-point to attempt them; Mrs Fox performs them without thinking. Her maid-of-all-work, Sarah, doesn't live with her and won't be back till tomorrow, but Mrs Fox has a policy of helping the girl as much as she can. She and Sarah are, she feels, more like aunt and niece than mistress and servant.

Oh, Mrs Fox knows there is gossip about her, generated by ladies who judge her to be a disgrace to polite society, a sansculotte in disguise, a Jacobin with an ugly face.

They would sweep her-or, preferably, have her swept-out of their sight if they could.

Such ill will from her sisters saddens Mrs Fox, but she makes no special effort to placate it nor to challenge it, for it is not in the households of fashionable ladies that she longs to be welcomed, but rather in the wretched homes of the poor.

In any case, all this fuss about a little work!

In the future, she believes, all women will have some useful employment. The present system cannot endure; it goes against God and good sense. One cannot educate the lower classes, nourish them with better food and unpolluted water, improve their housing and their morals, and all the while expect them to continue aspiring to nothing but servitude. Nor can one fill newspapers with outrageous disclosures of human misery and expect no one to be outraged into action. If the same streets and rookeries are named daily, and if every detail of our brothers' and sisters' suffering is published, is it not inevitable that a growing army of Christians will roll their sleeves up and demand to render assistance? Even those ladies and gentlemen untroubled by conscience will, Mrs Fox is convinced, find their supply of servants drying up soon enough, and all but the wealthiest of them will then have to acquaint themselves with such exotic objects as mops and dishcloths.

By next century, predicts Mrs Fox, buttering a slice of bread, women like me will no longer be regarded as freaks. England will be full of ladies who labour for a fairer society, and who keep no servants under their roof at all. (her own maid, Sarah, lives with an ailing grandfather, and comes in every other day to do the heavy work, for a fair wage which saves her from slipping back into prostitution. She's worth her weight in gold, is Sarah, but even such as she will disappear in time, as prostitution is eradicated.) Emmeline wonders if a short walk would be good for her chest. She has a bag full of woollen gloves and another full of socks to deliver to Mrs Lavers, who's organising something next month for the destitute of Ireland. (Fenian! the gossips would no doubt say, or Papist!) The Lavers' house is only a few minutes away, and she could carry a bag on each arm, providing they were of roughly equal weight.

All the rooms in Mrs Fox's home except her own small bed-chamber are cluttered with boxes, bags, books and parcels. Indeed her house is the unofficial warehouse of the Rescue Society, and of several other charities besides. Emmeline ascends the stairs, pokes her nose into what used to be the master bedroom, and confirms that what she's looking for isn't in there.

On the landing, rather precariously balanced, is a stack of New Testaments translated into… into… She cannot recall the language just at the moment; a man from the Bible Dissemination Society is coming back for them shortly.

The socks and gloves are nowhere to be found, and she returns downstairs to butter another slice of bread-all she has in the house that's ready to eat. Usually on a Monday, there's a quantity of left-over Sunday roast, but yesterday Mrs Fox let Sarah eat as much as she liked, not expecting the girl to have the appetite of a labrador.

To those above me, she thinks, as she chews her bread, I am a pitiable widow, paddling in the shallows of penury; to those below, I am a pampered creature in paradise. All of us are at once objects of repugnance and of envy.

All of us except the very poorest, those who have nothing below them but the sewage pit of Hell.

Freshly determined to find the socks and gloves, Emmeline searches in earnest. She even puts on her bonnet, to solemnise her intentions in case she's tempted to give up.

To her delight, however, she finds the bags almost immediately, stacked on top of one another in a wardrobe. But pulling them out disturbs dust, and before she can steel herself against it, she's coughing, coughing, coughing. She coughs until she's on her knees, tears running down her cheeks, her trembling hands pressing her handkerchief hard against her mouth. Then, when it's over, she rests on the foot of the stairs, rocking herself for comfort, staring at the square of light beaming through the frosted glass in her front door.

Mrs Fox does not consider herself ill. In her estimation she is as healthy as any woman with a naturally weak chest can expect to be. Nor, while we're on the subject of her disadvantages, does she consider herself ugly.

God gave her a long face, but it's a face she's satisfied with. It reminds her of Disraeli, but softer. It didn't stop her getting a husband, did it? And if she never has another, well, one husband is enough. And, returning to the subject of health, despite Bertie's ruddy cheeks and ready grin, in the end it wasn't her health that failed but his. Which just goes to prove that it's not gossips who decide the span of human life, but God.

Breathing carefully, she rises to her feet and walks over to the bags. She grasps one in each hand and tests their weight. Equal. She carries them to the door, pausing only a moment to check her hair in the glass before leaving.

A world away to the east, Henry Rackham walks the streets too. (what a day this is for walking! You couldn't have predicted how healthy you'd become, could you, following these people around?) Henry is walking along a street where he has never walked before, a winding, shadowy street where he must watch his step lest his shoes slip in shit, where he must keep an eye on every alley and subterranean stairwell lest he be accosted.

He walks stiffly, his determination only slightly stronger than his fear; he can only hope (for he has, in the circumstances, no right to pray) that no one of his acquaintance sees him entering this evil-smelling maze.

Henry knows which days Mrs Fox works for the Rescue Society and which days she's at home; her schedule is engraved on his memory, and on Mondays she rests. That is why he has chosen today to be walking in St Giles, just the sort of place where she might minister. He suppresses a cough against the stench, and wades deeper.

Within minutes, all pretence of decency is gone; the solidity and straight lines of Oxford Street are invisible and already half-forgotten, erased from the mind by a nightmare vision of subsidence-subsidence of the roadway itself, of the ramshackle houses shored on either side, of the flesh and moral character of the squalid inhabitants.

Truly, thinks Henry, this quarter of the city is an outer rim of Hell, a virtual holding area for the charnel-house. The newspapers say it is much improved since the Fifties, but how can that be? Already he has seen a severed dog's head rotting in the gutter, its protruding tongue swollen with lice; he has seen half-naked infants throwing cobble-stones at each other, their haggard faces distorted by rage and glee; he has seen a host of spectres staring out of broken windows, their eyes hollow, their sex indeterminate, their flesh scarcely less grey than the rags that clothe them. A disturbing number of them seem to be housed underground, in basements accessible only by obscure stairwells or, in some cases, rickety ladders. Wet washing hangs from window to window, speckled with soot; here and there a tattered bed-sheet flaps in the breeze, like a flag whose distinguishing marks are posies of faded bloodstain brown.

Henry Rackham has come here with one purpose in mind: to make a difference. Not the kind of difference Mrs Fox makes, but a difference nonetheless.

Mere minutes after his arrival, he is approached by an ugly woman of middle age, or perhaps younger, wearing a voluminous dress in the Regency style, but much darned and patched. She is bare-headed and bare-necked, and her smile as she greets him displays all her remaining teeth: is she therefore a prostitute?

"Spare a few pennies, sir, for a poor nunfortunate."

A beggar, then.

"Is it food you need?"' says Henry, wary of being taken for a dupe. He aches to be generous, but fancies he detects a whiff of alcohol on her breath.

"You said it, sir. Food is the fing I want. 'Ungry, I am. I've 'ad nuffink since yesty." Her eyes shine greedily; she wrings her swollen hands.

"Shall I…" He hesitates, resisting her predatory gaze, which tugs at his soul as if it were a juicy worm. "Shall I accompany you to a place where food is sold? I'll buy you whatever you wish."

"Oh no, sir," she replies, apparently scandalised. "My reputation, sir, is precious to me. I've got children to fink of."

"Children?"' He hadn't imagined she would have children; she looks too unlike the plump unwrinkled mothers he sees in church.

"I've five children, sir," she assures him, her hands hovering in the air as if she might seize hold of his arm at any moment.

"Five; and two of 'em's babes, and they's awful squally, and me 'usband can't torrelate it, sir, on account of his sleep.

So 'e whacks 'em, sir, whacks 'em in their cots, till they's quiet. And I was finkin', sir, if I could 'ave a few pennies from your kind self, sir, I could dose me babies wiv some Muvver's Blessing from the pharmasiss, sir, and they'd sleep like angels."

Henry's hand is already in his pocket when the horror of it strikes him.

"But… but you must dissuade your husband from striking your children!" he declares. "He could do them terrible harm…"

"Ah, yes, sir, but 'e's sich a tired soul, what wiv workin' all day, 'e needs 'is sleep at night, and the babes is awful squally, as I said; when one falls quiet the others set to screamin', an' it's impostible, sir, wiv six of 'em."

"Six? You said you had five just now."

"Six, sir. But one's so quiet, you 'ardly know she's there."

A strange impasse settles between them, there in the sordid public street. He has a coin enclosed in his palm, hesitating. She licks her lips, afraid to say more, in case she prejudices his generosity.

"Children don't weep for mischief's sake," says Henry, still wrestling with the vision of innocent babies battered in their cots. "Your husband must understand that. Children weep because they're hungry, or sad."

"You said it, sir," she eagerly agrees, nodding her head, staring deep into his eyes. "You understand. 'Ungry, they are. And awful, awful sa-ad."

Henry sighs, letting go of his suspicions.

There can be no charity without trust, or at least the willingness to take a risk. All right, so this woman has recently touched strong drink and is, in her manner, crudely ingratiating: what of it? Kindness will not spoil her further; nor is her family, whatever their true number may be, to blame for her sins.

"Here," he says, transferring the money into her trembling grasp. "Mind you use it for food."

"Fank you, fank you, sir," she crows.

"Wiv dis small coin, as is nuffink to you, sir, you've jest put a fine meal on the table for a poor widder and her family-jest fink on that, sir!"

Henry thinks on it, frowning, as she scurries into a dark cleft between two buildings.

"Widow?"' he mutters, but she is gone.

In a more ideal world, Henry should have had a few minutes' grace in which to reflect upon this encounter and consider what to do next, for he is troubled by a jostle of conflicting emotions. However, the glint of his money has been observed by other citizens of the street, no less clearly than if it were a firework exploding in the sky above. From every nook and corner, ragged humans begin to converge upon him, their verminous eyes aglow with cunning. Henry strides forward, unnerved and yet at the same time queerly reckless. There's a substance coursing through his bloodstream, transforming his fear into something else altogether: a feeling of exaggerated readiness, of unaccustomed one-ness with his body.

First to reach him is a weasel-like fellow with a grotesque limp. In one bony hand he clutches a tanning-knife, held aloft so that Henry can see it-but almost as if it's an innocuous article the newcomer has carelessly forgotten, and he is merely returning it. The air, for Henry, is charged not with danger but with a hallucinatory whiff of farce.

"Gi-hive me yer mu-huny," the little man wheezes, grimacing like a chimpanzee, brandishing the grimy blade an arm's length from Henry's chest.

Henry stares into his assailant's eyes.

The fellow is a head shorter then he, and half his weight.

"God forgive you," growls Rackham, raising his fists, which compare favourably, in size, with the thief's stunted skull. "And God forgive me too, for if you step any closer I swear I'll knock you down."

Gurning fearsomely, the fellow backs off, almost stumbles on a loose cobble, turns and limps away. Several other denizens of St Giles halt their advance on Rackham and retreat likewise, deciding that he is not, in one way or another, the soft touch he appeared to be.

Only one person is not dissuaded; only one person continues to approach. It's a scrawny young woman, dressed in what to Henry looks like a white night-dress, a man's black overcoat, and a lace curtain for a shawl. Like the beggar-woman, she's bare-beaded, but her elfin face is fresher, and her hair is red. She steps boldly into Henry's path, and unknots her shawl with a casual motion, revealing a freckled sternum.

"My hand is yours for a shillin', sir," she declares, "and any other part of me for two shillin's."

There, it's said. She stands in his shadow and waits.

A feeling of wholly unexpected calm descends upon Henry Rackham, a disembodied serenity such as he's never experienced before, even at the threshold of dreamless sleep. This is the moment he has long dreaded and desired, his own initiation into the sensual underworld that Mrs Fox negotiates with such dignity and aplomb. So often in his imaginings he has seen this girl (or a girl vaguely like her); now here she stands before him, in the flesh. And, to his relief, he finds her to be not a siren at all, but a mere child-a child with crusts on her eyelids and a graze on her chin.

How he feared, before summoning the courage to come here today, that his good intentions were nothing but a sham, a fragile delusion preserved only by an accident of geography. How haunted he was by the anxiety that, if God should ever bless him with a parish of his own, his first act in exploring its poorer streets would be to fall upon just such a defenceless wretch as stands before him now, and violate her. But here she is: a prostitute, a harlot, an abandoned creature who has just given him explicit permission to do with her exactly as he wishes. And what does he wish? She breathes shallowly, lips parted, looking up at him in his shadow, awaiting his approval, unaware that she has already passed on to him a gift of incalculable value-a reflection of his own nature. He knows now:

Whatever he desires, whatever his sinful heart lusts after, it is not this small carcass of scuffed flesh and bone.

"Your body parts aren't yours to sell, miss," he says, gently. "They belong together, and the whole belongs to God."

"My 'ole belongs to anyone that's got two shillin's, sir," she insists.

He winces and digs his hand into his pocket.

"Here," he says, handing her two shillings. "And I'll tell you what I want for it."

She cocks her head, a flicker of apprehension disturbing the dead calm of her eyes.

"I want you…" He hesitates, knowing this world is too intractably wicked, and he too lacking in moral authority, for him to command her to "Go and sin no more". Instead, he does his best to smile and appear less stern. "I want you to regard these two shillings as an act that's no longer necessary…" (even as the words leave his mouth, her puzzled expression lets him know he is losing her.) "Ah… I mean, in lieu of whatever you might otherwise have done to earn it…" (still she frowns, uncomprehending, her bottom lip disappearing under her top teeth.) "What I mean is… For goodness' sake, miss, whatever you were going to do, don't do it!"

Instantly she grins from ear to ear.

"Understood, sir!" And she saunters away -with rather more of a swing to her undercarriage than he's ever observed on a decent woman.

By now, Henry has had enough. He is tired, and longs for the safety and decorum of his own study in Gorham Place. The burst of adrenalin which enabled him to defend himself against the weasel man has ebbed now, and the foreign admixtures of emotion left in its wake are no longer exhilarating but merely befuddling.

With a heavy tread, he walks back towards the better part of town, where he'll be able to hail an omnibus and begin the daunting task of disentangling what he has learned today. However, as he hurries through the labyrinthine streets, peering briefly into every alley and cul-de-sac in case it offers an early escape from St Giles, he happens to catch sight of… is it not? Yes, it's the beggar-woman he gave money for food-the widow with the violent husband and five, or six, children.

She's sitting in the open doorway of a slum, side-on to public view, her skirts puddling over the filthy summit of a half-dozen stone steps. Behind her, just inside the house, slouches a man with hair as black and coarse as the bristles on a chimney-brush. He wears a knitted waistcoat, a blue scarf and a military jacket, and loose trousers against which the woman casually leans her head. The two of them are sharing a brand-new bottle of spirits, handing it back and forth between them, guzzling with great satisfaction.

Henry stops in his tracks and gapes at the scene, played out not twenty feet from his nose.

Too dismayed to approach the couple, too outraged to flee, he stands his ground, fists clenched. The woman, in between gulps, notices his arrival and, recognising him at once, exclaims, "Look, Dug! It's our saviour!" The pair of them convulse with laughter, wheezing and spluttering, their lips agleam with alcohol.

Speechless, Henry stands, cheeks burning, the nails of his fingers piercing the flesh of his palms, so hard does he clench his fists.

"Make 'im go away, Dug," says the woman, evidently finding her enjoyment of the spirits hampered by this scowling booby. "Make 'im go away."

Clumsily, the bristly man climbs over her skirts, almost pitching forward onto the steps, and positions himself in front of his companion.

"Yaarr!!" he shouts. When this has no immediate effect on the intruder, he turns and yanks his trousers down, baring his bony pale buttocks to Henry's astounded gaze. He turns again, trousers slumped around his ankles, and assesses the effect upon the interloper. What next? Not suspecting that Henry is transfixed less by fear than by the sight of a stranger's penis, he snatches this flaccid organ from its thatch of black hair and begins to spray urine into the air.

Henry Rackham, several yards out of reach, leaps backwards nevertheless, with a cry of disgust.

The woman cries out too, her hilarity souring abruptly into fury as the steaming liquid spatters back onto her skirts.

"Yer splashin' me, yer bloody fool!"

In moments the pair of them are fighting, he slapping her fiercely around the ears, she jabbing and kicking his legs. He attempts to control her struggles by stamping one boot down on her skirts while he hauls up his trousers; without hesitation, she clubs him with the gin bottle, a vigorous overarm blow against his bony forehead that sends him sprawling down the steps.

"Christ!" she cries, as a long silvery arc of spilled alcohol hits the ground. The (miraculously unbroken) flask is hastily turned upright, and, while the man writhes at her feet clutching his bloody forehead, she shoves the bottle's glistening neck deep into her mouth and sucks hard on what's left.

For Henry, the ghastly spell is broken, and he is finally able to turn his back on these, the first poor people he has ever been intimate with, and lurch towards home.

Sitting in the Lumley Music Hall that evening, surrounded by men in cloth caps and women with teeth missing, William Rackham savours the fact that he can once more show himself in a place like this without fearing to be mistaken for a lesser being than he is. Now that the foundations of his wealth have solidified, and his ascension to directorship has become common knowledge (at least among those who make it their business to know "who's who"), he can scarcely go anywhere without someone whispering,

"That's William Rackham." And, now that every stitch of his clothing is of the finest quality and the latest style, he can rest assured that even those humble souls who are ignorant of his identity must recognise him as a well-to-do gentleman-a gentleman who is sampling, for diversion's sake, the entertainments of the not-so-well-to-do.

Of course, he's not the only one here tonight who's slumming. The Lumley's audience is a curate's omelette of mostly plain folk seasoned with a speckling of well-to-do gentlemen.

But William likes to think he stands out by virtue of his beaver-skin frock-coat, his doe-skin trousers and especially his new top hat, the shortest one in the place. (no, no, not his old new hat, his new new hat-can't you see it's shorter? And it's not a Billington and Joy job, either: Staniforth's, "Hatters of Distinction since 1732", if you please.) The Lumley isn't the kind of place where hats and cloaks are taken at the door, which makes it a sticky proposition for the overdressed, but at least it allows comparison of finery. Even so, it's difficult to estimate how many persons of William's own class are here tonight, as the hall is full, and any overview of the crowd is obscured by a froth of dowdy bonnets. The evening's proceedings are by now well advanced and, in the warmth generated by the audience and hundreds of gas-lights, common men are removing jackets to reveal bare shirts, while the females fan themselves with cheap paper and plywood.

The row immediately in front of William holds no such females-regrettably enough, for Rackham wouldn't mind catching a surplus breeze from a fluttering fan. He is, after all, not immune to what the ruder folk are feeling; his forehead is subject to the same sweat, and inside his layers of clothing he's beginning to simmer. Perspiration prickles in his new beard, giving rise to itches he must resist the urge to scratch. Too many bodies crammed into one establishment! Couldn't some have been turned away?

His new ulster hangs from the back of his seat, and his new cane lies across his knees, for he can imagine how desirable its silver knob might be to a thief. He also prefers to hold on to his triple-striped dog-skin gloves, even while applauding, unaware that this makes him look as if he's beating a helpless rodent to death.

To the left of him sit Bodley and Ashwell.

They, too, are overdressed, though less so than Rackham, for they know the Lumley better.

They, too, are secure in their distinction from the common herd; slightly bored, they were, on Mount Parnassus, and so they thought, well, why not saunter down and see what's on at the Lumley? And, having studied the bill, they really are looking forward to the Great Flatelli-"The Sensation of Sensations: The Magician of Emissions: Hear Him and Swoon!! All Italy Scandalised! France at his Feet! A One-Man Wind Ensemble!!!"

Already they've sat through a pretty but unfashionably plump girl singing humorous ballads, followed by the "London debut" of Mr Epiderm, an old man with the curious ability to pull his skin out from his naked torso in elastic handfuls, and suspend heavy objects from it by means of metal pegs. It's now a quarter past eight and the Great Flatelli has still not appeared. William and his two friends add their voices to the mutterings that accompany the efforts of a dapper little man on the faraway stage to reproduce the sounds of a bird being stalked, pursued and devoured by a variety of animals.

"Bring on Flatelli!" a brutish voice shouts, prompting William to reflect on how handy common people can be, when one wants something impolite said, Other hecklers join the cause, and the animal impressionist flails on under a thick cloud of ill-will.

Finally, at twenty-five to nine, the trumpeted Italian is brought on, to unanimous approval.

"Buona sera, London!" he bellows, scooping applause out of the air with his open hands and pressing it to his chest like invisible bouquets. Despite his oiled black moustache and black frock-coat, he's suspiciously tall for an Italian, and his continental accent, when the clapping has faded and he begins his preamble, rings false in the ears of such sophisticates as Ashwell. ("Jew. Wager anything you like: Jew," he mutters to William.) "My hunusual eenstrument," the great Flatelli is explaining, 'ees 'ere be'ind me. I tike eet wiz me airvrywhere I go." (titters from the audience as he casts a pantomime glance over his shoulder.) "Eet rhequires no blowing, touching, squeezing…" (alto guffaws from a coterie of homosexuals at the back of the hall.) "But eet is a vairy dell-icayte sound. I ask-a you to leesten vairy vairy carefooly. My first-a piece is a be-oo-tifool old-a Eenglish … air. Eetsacalled "Greensleeves"."

Index finger pressed to his lips to enforce absolute hush, Flatelli bends at the waist. A solemn-faced associate wheels a large brass amplification funnel, mounted on a trolley, across the stage until its burnished mouth is almost touching the great man's backside.

One final flourish (a ceremonial flipping up of the frock-coat's tails) and the farting begins.

For several seconds, the unmistakable tune of "Greensleeves" vibrates in the air, as accurate, in its reedy way, as anything played on comb-and-paper or even (stretching it a bit) bassoon. Then the laughter starts, swelling from a suppressed murmur to a raucous rumble, and William and his companions, seated far from the front, must lean forward, concentrating intently.

At the chime of ten, in a house otherwise deathly quiet, Agnes Rackham is lying in bed. She knows, even without consulting the servants, that her husband has not yet returned from the city; she's abnormally sensitive to the shutting of any door in the house, feeling the vibration, she fancies, through the floor or the legs of her bed. She lies in darkness and silence, thinking, merely thinking.

In Agnes's head, inside her skull, an inch or two behind her left eye, nestles a tumour the size of a quail's egg. She has no inkling it's there. It nestles innocently; her hospitable head makes room for it without demur, as if such a diminutive guest could not possibly cause any trouble. It sleeps, soft and perfectly oval. No one will ever find it.

Roentgen photography is twenty years in the future, and Doctor Curlew, whatever parts of Agnes Rackham he may examine, is not about to go digging in her eye-socket with a scalpel.

Only you and I know of this tumour's existence. It is our little secret.

Agnes Rackham has a little secret of her own. She is lonely. In the closed-curtained, airless chamber of her room, in the thick invisible fog of perfume and her own exhaled breath, she is suffocating with loneliness. Looking back over her day, she can recall nothing that nourished her forlorn heart, only her greedy stomach which gets quite enough as it is-more than is good for it. At supper she ate (over-ate) alone, at dinner she ate (much too much) alone, tea and breakfast she couldn't face for biliousness, luncheon she shared with William, but felt even lonelier than when he wasn't there-and she ate too much, again.

Nor has this been a lonelier day than most: every day of her life is much the same. All through the long hours of sewing and staring out the window at what the gardener is up to, of making up her mind whether she'll comb her own hair or have Clara comb it for her, she is longing for true companionship and suffering the lack of it. Doctor Curlew has never diagnosed this secret disease of hers, though she's sure it makes her a great deal sicker than anything he claims to have found. What would he do, if he knew? What could he prescribe for her, to ease the pain of lying awake at night in an unkind world with not a soul to love her?

Oh, granted: her dreams, when they finally take her in, welcome her with open arms, but in the insomniac hours before sleep she lies marooned in her queen-sized bed, like the Lady of Shalott launched upon a dark lake in a vessel twice the size it need be.

What Agnes craves is not a man, nor even a female lover. She knows nothing of her body's interior, nothing; and there is nothing she wants to know. Her loneliness, though it aches, is not particularly physical; it hangs in the air, weighs on the furniture, permeates the bed-linen. If only there could be someone next to her in this great raft of a bed, someone who liked and trusted her, and whom she liked and trusted in turn! There is no such person in the world. Dear Clara is paid to be agreeable; when her day's work is done, she hurries upstairs for a well-earned rest from Mrs Rackham. The other servants have little to do with her; they fear her and, unbeknownst to them, she is a little afraid of them, too. A dog is out of the question; maybe she'll get a kitten, if there's a variety without claws? William's brother Henry is terribly nice (she's thinking of possible friends now, not of someone to share her bed) but altogether too serious; Agnes likes to keep her mind on pleasant things, not on all the problems of the world.

As for William, he's lost her trust forever.

Whatever he does now, however wealthy he makes her, however courteously he addresses her over luncheon, however much freedom he offers her to accumulate more dresses, bonnets and shoes, however hard he tries to win her forgiveness, she can never forgive. One who sups with the Devil must use a long spoon; Agnes Rackham's spoon, in supping with her husband, is the length of an oar.

With so little hope of friendship in her waking life, is it any wonder that Agnes prefers the company of the nuns at the Convent of Health? They welcome her and care for her, without any reward but to see her smile. One nun in particular has such a sweet, kind face… Yet Agnes's visits to the Convent of Health are always over so soon: restricted, by an ungenerous God, to her short hours of sleep. The journey to the Convent, by train through an eternity of countryside, sometimes takes most of the night, so that the time left for the nuns to nurse her is pitifully brief-a few minutes only, before waking. On other nights, the journey there seems to take hardly any time at all-an express locomotive pulls her through a green blur-and she's enveloped in the Holy Sisters' care before her tears have even sunk into the pillow. But on those nights, the return journey must be long indeed, for by the time she reaches morning, she has forgotten everything.

Agnes doesn't believe there is any such thing as a dream. In her philosophy, there are events that happen when one is awake, and others that happen when one is sleeping. She is aware that some people-men, in particular-take a dim view of what happens when the eyes are closed and the sheets are still, but she has no such doubts. To dismiss the night's events as unreal would be to credit herself with the power of invention, and she knows instinctively that she is powerless to create. Creation out of nothing: only God can do that. How like men, in their monstrous conceit and their shameless blasphemy, to disagree! How like them to disown half their lives, saying none of it exists, it's all phantasmagoria!

The difference between men and women is nowhere plainer, thinks Agnes, than in the novels they write. The men always pretend they are making everything up, that all the persons in the story are mere puppets of their imagination, when Agnes knows that the novelist has invented nothing. He has merely patchworked many truths together, collecting accounts from newspapers, consulting real soldiers or fruit-sellers or convicts or dying little girls-whatever his story may require. The lady novelists are far more honest: Dear Reader, they say, This is what happened to me.

For this reason, Agnes much prefers novels written by ladies. She gets The London Journal and The Leisure Hour every week, bringing her all the latest instalments from the pens of Clementine Montagu, Mrs Oliphant, Pierce Egan (not a man, surely?), Mrs Harriet Lewis, and all the rest. As a special treat, Mudie's Circulating Library brings her bound volumes of Mrs Riddell and Eliza Lynn Linton, so she can read a whole story without delay.

Even when Agnes is not bedridden, novels are such a boon, for they bring a steady supply of noble and attractive human beings into her life which, it must be said, the world at large is not generous with. A sympathetic heroine, she finds, is almost as good as a friend of flesh and blood. (what a repulsive expression "flesh and blood" is, though, when one thinks about it!) Lately, Agnes Rackham hasn't much time for reading. All her waking hours are spent preparing for the Season. Chiefly she's in thrall to her sewing-machine, constructing dress after dress, or else leafing through magazines in search of patterns. Acres of material have passed under the needle already; acres more are still to be done.

Nine complete dresses hang on frames in her dressing-room; a tenth stands in the darkness of her bedroom, still half-finished on the dummy.

Ten won't be nearly enough, of course. How sincere is William really when he says she has his blessing to have "any number of dresses" made for her by a dressmaker? What number does he have in mind? Is he aware how much she would cost him if she took him at his word? She dreads a return to the kind of intercourse they were having not so long ago, with him irritable and intolerant of the needs of her sex, barely able to control his exasperation and his disapproval, while she is perpetually close to tears.

It's a pity she can't do what many other ladies with sewing-machines are doing just now-altering beyond recognition gowns they wore in previous Seasons. In an afternoon of madness on New Year's Day, inspired by a novelty sewing pattern she chanced to find in a magazine, she ruined all her best dresses. She remembers clearly (how odd the things one remembers, and the things one forgets!) the fatal text: "Fabric remnants and outmoded curtains need not lie idle. Turn them into an Effortless Amusement for you and a Delight for your Children." Neat diagrams and simple instructions imparted the knack of fashioning,

"with only a quarter-hour's stitching apiece", life-like, three-dimensional humming-birds.

An irresistible mania, whose intensity she's even now chilled to recall, gripped her then.

She had no remnants in the house, yet the desire to turn remnants into humming-birds raged in her like a fever. Despite Clara's pleas that if Madam could only wait until morning, she could have a pile of remnants from Whiteley's in Bayswater, the torture of waiting even a single minute was unbearable. So, she fell upon her "old" dresses-"I shan't be wearing these again," she insisted-and sliced into them with her dressmaking shears.

By nightfall, the floor was a chaos of cannibalised ballgowns and bodices, and dozens of humming-birds had been made: soft satin birds, drooping like sick things; hard spry birds made of stiff petticoat; white silken birds trembling in the breeze from Agnes's furious pedalling of the sewing-machine; dark velvet birds sitting quite still. Odd, how some of her dresses were ruined instantly, as if the scissors had punctured them like a bladder, while others more or less kept their shape and were merely… disfigured. To these she returned again and again with her scissors, to make more birds.

"I must," sighs Agnes into her pillow now, "have been mad."

Her eyelids flutter shut in the darkness.

Somewhere nearby, a train whistle blows. The sun rises-not slowly, according to its usual custom, but in a few seconds, as if fuelled by gas. The big wide world glows green and blue, the colours of travel, and everything disagreeable disappears.

Outside Agnes's bedroom, in what men and historians like to call "the real world", the night is not yet over. In the poorer streets, the grocer, the cheese-monger and the chop-house man haven't shut up shop; their customers are match-sellers and cress-sellers and street-walkers, come to claim their reward for long hours of standing in the cold. Beggar children come too, pestering the merchants for unsaleable fragments of ham or Dutch cheese to take back home for Father's supper. And for Father, there are countless drinking-houses open all night.

It is through the streets of this "real" world-not far from the Lumley Music Hall-that three well-to-do, slightly drunk gentlemen, Messrs Bodley, Ashwell and Rackham, stroll, march and stagger. They scarcely notice the dark, the cold and the drizzle, except to note that their half-shouted altercation doesn't echo as it should.

"Caput mortuum!" cries Bodley, resorting to the old school insults.

"Bathybius!" retorts Ashwell.

"Stone-deaf cretin!" bawls Bodley.

"Unswabbed haven of earwax!" hisses

Ashwell. "It was "The Collier's

Daughter", and nothing will convince me otherwise."

"It was "Weep Not, My Pretty

Bride", or I'm a Christ-killer. Shall I sing the chorus for you, idiot?"' "What difference would that make, fool? You'd have to fart it to convince me!"

William Rackham has not contributed a word to the debate, content merely to watch.

"What is your opinion, Bill?"' says

Bodley.

Rackham scowls in annoyance: he was so keen to show off his new cane tonight that he left his umbrella at home, and now the rain is setting in. "God only knows," he shrugs. "The whole thing was a damn fiasco. I could barely hear a thing. The Lumley was quite the wrong place for such a performance. It should've been somewhere small and intimate. And with an audience well-bred enough to behave themselves."

Bodley strikes himself on the forehead with his palm, and reels back.

"Lord Rackham has spoken!" he proclaims. "Tremble, impresarios!"

"A church," says Ashwell. "That's the place for the Great Flatelli, eh, Bill?

Smallish crowd, everyone on their best behaviour, superb acoustics…"

William spits into the gutter, whose sodden contents are just beginning to move. "I'm glad you two are so easy to please. In my view, we've been shamefully short-changed tonight. Think of the poorer folk, who can ill afford to waste their wages on such a… such a puffed-up swindle!"

"D'you hear that, Ashwell? Think of the poorer folk!"

"Toiling all week to hear a good fart, and what do they get?"' "Fuck-all!"

"I'm going home," says Rackham, peering through the gas-lit drizzle for a cab.

"Aww, no, Bill, don't leave us all alo-o-o-ne."

"No, damn it, I'm going home. It's cold and it's raining."

"There are plenty of warm dry places for a man to crawl into, aren't there, Ashwell?"' "Warm and wet, heh-heh-heh."

Inspired, Bodley unbuttons his overcoat and begins to rummage in the pockets within. "I just so happen to have on my person…

Bear with me, friends, while I fumble…"-he whips out a crumpled tract the size of a cheap New Testament and waves it in the lamp-light-"A brand, spanking new edition of More Sprees in London. A year in the making, no expense spared, all lies guaranteed true, all virgins guaranteed intact. I've been studying it ass… assiduously. Some of the houses have moved up a few rungs since the last edition. There was one in particular…" (he flips the already dog-eared pages) "Ah! yes, this one here: Mrs Castaway's. Silver Street."

"A hop, skip and a jump away!" says

Ashwell.

"Sugar," declares Bodley. "That's the girl: Sugar. Words can't do her justice, it says here. Luxury for the price of mediocrity.

A treasure. On and on in that vein. And the house is awarded four stars."

"Four stars! Let's go this minute!"

Ashwell wheels round and waves his cane in the air. "Cab! Cab! Where's a cab!"

For a moment William's blood runs cold, as he imagines Sugar has betrayed him and is conducting business as usual. Then he reminds himself what a catalogue of fictions More Sprees is. The Sugar who exists in its pages is not the real one he knows.

While Bodley and Ashwell lurch backwards and forwards in the rain, singing "Cab!" and "Sugar!" in silly voices, William thinks of her as she was when he last saw her-only three days ago. He remembers the look on her face when he disabused her of her ignorance. "I am William Rackham," he told her. "The head of Rackham Perfumeries." Why shouldn't she know?

Once he'd let the cat out of the bag, however, and lapped up Sugar's surprise and admiration, he wished he had more cats to let out, to receive more of the same. Guessing that her good fortune must seem to her like a dream, he made it more real by telling her that anything she might desire (in the way of perfumes, cosmetics and soaps) was hers for the asking. To which she responded, naturally enough, with a request for a Rackham's brochure.

"Cab! Cab!" Ashwell is yelling still.

"Come, stout companions, let's try around the corner!"

"Steady on, Ashwell," cautions William, "Have you considered the possibility this girl you want may not be available?"' "Damn it, Bill; where's your sense of adventure? Let's take our chances!"

"Our chances?"' "Three men; three holes-the arithmetic of it is perfect!"

William smiles and shakes his head.

"My friends," he says, bowing mock-solemnly. "I wish you the best of luck finding this… what's her name?… this Sugar.

I regret I'm too tired to go with you. You can tell me all about it when next we meet!"

"Agreed!" cries Bodley. "Au revoir!" And he reels off on Ashwell's arm, singing "Off to Mrs Castaway's! Off to Mrs Castaway's!" all the way to the corner.

"Au revoir!" William calls out after them, but they're already gone.

The drizzle is drizzle no longer; heavy raindrops splash against his ulster, threatening to turn it into a water-logged burden, and there's still no cab in sight. Yet, oddly, his irritable mood is passing from him now that he's alone;

Bodley and Ashwell, always such a tonic for him in the past, were tonight more like a dose of cod liver oil. What a tiresome thing it is to be a sober man among soused companions! Perhaps he should've drunk more, but damn it, he didn't wish to … Why drink half a dozen glasses when two are enough to warm the stomach? And why reel from woman to woman when one is enough to satisfy the loins? Or is he merely getting old?

"Are you needin' a numbrella, good sir?"'

A female voice at his side. He whirls to face her; she is young and shabbily dressed, with comely brown eyes, well-shaped eyebrows, too spade-like a jaw-quite fuckable, really, all things considered. She shelters under an umbrella that's ragged and skeletal, but holds in her free hand a much more substantial looking one, furled.

"I suppose I am," says Rackham.

"Show me what you have there."

"Jus' one left, good sir," she replies apologetically, rolling her eyes at the weather as if to say, "I had dozens to begin with, but they've all been bought."

William examines the parapluie, weighing it in his hands, running one gloved finger along its ivory handle, peeking into its waxy black folds. "Very handsome," he murmurs. "And belonging, if I read this label correctly, to a Mr Giles Gordon. How peculiar that he should have discarded it! You know, miss, his address is so nearby, we could even ask him how well this umbrella served him, couldn't we?"'

The girl bites her lip, her pretty eyebrows contorted in agitation.

"Please, sir," she whines. "Me ol' man give me that umbrella. I don't want no trouble. I don't usually do this sort o' fing, it's just the umbrella came me way, and …" She gestures helplessly, as if trusting him to understand the economics of it: a high-class umbrella is worth more than a low-class woman.

For a moment she and he are locked in an impasse. Her free hand squirms against her bosom: protective, suggestive.

Then, "Here," he says gruffly, handing her a few coins-less than the umbrella is worth, but more than she would have dared ask him for her body. "You're too sweet a girl to go to gaol on my account."

"Oh, fank you sir," she cries, and runs off into the nearest alley.

William frowns, wondering if he's done the right thing. With gloriously perverse timing, a cab rolls jingling round the corner, rendering his purchase futile; nor does he want another man's parapluie lying about his house. With a pang of regret, he tosses the thing away: perhaps the girl will find it again, or if she doesn't, well… nothing goes to waste in these streets.

"What's yer pleasure, guv?"' yells the cabman.

Home, Rackham is thinking, as he seizes hold of the hand-grip and pulls himself up out of the muck.