The Crimson petal and the white

TWELVE

Henry Rackham, unaccustomed as he is to ecstasy, is so happy he could die. He is in Mrs Fox's house, sitting in the chair which must have been her husband's, eating cake.

"Excuse me just a moment, Henry" was the last thing she said, before removing her exquisite self from the parlour. In his mind's eye, she still stands before him, her ginger dress brightening the room, her gentle manner warming the air. The very atmosphere is reluctant to let her go.

"More tea, Mr Rackham?"'

Henry jerks, spilling cake crumbs into his lap. He'd forgotten about Mrs Fox's servant, Sarah; she'd ceased to exist for him.

Yet there she stands, inconspicuous against the papery clutter of Mrs Fox's belongings, a stacked tea-tray on her forearms, a hint of a smirk on her face. In that smirk, Henry can see reflected what a moonstruck booby he must appear.

"I have sufficient, thank you," he says.

All at once, his happiness has left him -or rather, he has pushed it to arm's length, the better to subject it to scrutiny. What is this happiness, really? Nothing more or less than captivation by a member of the fair sex. And captivation is a frightening thing.

Granted, he's not a Catholic: he could, if he wished, be both a clergyman and a husband. Mrs Fox, for her part, is a widow: that is, free. But, leaving aside the unlikelihood of her wanting a dull and awkward fellow like him, there remains, in Henry's mind, a religious obstacle.

This captivation… This infatuation… This love, if he dares call it that, in earshot of the Almighty… This love has the power to steal away so much time-whole hours and days-which might otherwise have been devoted to the work of God. Good works are frugal with time; love for a woman squanders it. It is possible to follow the example of Jesus on a dozen occasions in a single morning, and still have energy for more; yet dwelling upon the wishes-even the imagined wishes-of a beloved can swallow up all one's waking hours, and achieve nothing.

Henry knows! Too often, the time that elapses between one meeting with Mrs Fox and the next is a dream, a mere intermission. She need only smile at him, and he cherishes that smile to the exclusion of all else. Days pass, life goes on, yet the best part of him is given over to the memory of that smile. How can this be?

Henry sips his tea, uneasy under the gaze of Sarah. She gazes too directly, he feels; there's no hope of him picking the crumbs off his lap without her observing him at it.

What's wrong with the girl? Perhaps, when it comes to servants, the rehabilitated fallen can never be quite as discreet as those who never fell in the first place. Sweat breaks out on Henry's forehead, explicable (he hopes) by the steam rising from his tea-cup. This girl-this prot@eg@ee of the Rescue Society-is she essentially any different from the trollops he's seen in St Giles? Underneath her dowdy clothing, a quantity of naked flesh is contained, a living, breathing vessel of sinful history.

She's not beautiful, this Sarah-at least, not beautiful to him. She is a provocative reminder of the female sex in its fallen state, but as an individual she leaves him unmoved.

The thought of Mrs Fox's gloved hand clasped momentarily inside his own is far more seductive than any fantasy this rescued wanton can give rise to. And yet she's a similar age to Mrs Fox, a similar size, a similar shape… How is it possible for him to be entranced by the one, and indifferent to the other? What is God trying to teach him?

The servant walks away, and Henry attends to his trousers. What do the great Christian philosophers have to say on this matter? A woman, they remind him, flourishes and dies like a flower. A decade or two sees the passing of her beauty, a few decades more the passing of its beholders, and finally the woman herself returns to dust. Almighty God, by contrast, lives for ever, and is the author of all beauty, having shaped it in his hands in the very first week of Creation.

And yet, how much more difficult it is to love God with the passion that a beautiful woman inspires! Can this truly be a part of God's plan? Are desiccated woman-haters like MacLeish the only men suited for the cloth? And what's become of Mrs Fox? She said she'd only be a moment… the vision of her ginger dress has faded from the air in front of him, the warm traces of her voice have evaporated in the silence.

Henry smiles sadly, there in Bertie

Fox's chair. What is he to do? His desire to impress Mrs Fox is the only thing that may lend him the courage to take Holy Orders; yet, if he were to win Emmeline's love, would he care a fig for anything else in the world? He was miserable all his life until he met her-could he resist the siren call of animal contentment if she were his? How shameful that he has always greeted the bounties of Providence with a heavy heart, but when given an opportunity to drink tea in the parlour of a pretty widow he feels such joy that he must suppress the urge to rock in his seat! God save from happiness the man who would better the world!

But what's that sound? From upstairs, muffled by the floors and passageways of Mrs Fox's little house… Is it… coughing? Yes: a horrifying, convulsive cough such as he has heard issuing from dark cellars in filthy slums … Can this be the same voice as he has grown to love?

For another couple of minutes, Henry sits waiting and listening, stiff with anxiety. Then Mrs Fox returns to the parlour, flushed in the cheeks, but otherwise quite well-looking and calm.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,

Henry," she says, in tones as smooth as linctus.

Agnes lowers the latest issue of The

Illustrated London News to her lap, offended and upset. An article has just informed her that the average Englishwoman has 21,917 days to live. Why, oh why must newspapers always be so disagreeable? Have they nothing better to do?

The world is going to the dogs.

She rises, letting the newspaper fall to the floor, and walks to the window. After checking the sill for dirt (the first flying insects of the season have been spawned, unfortunately, and one cannot be too careful), she rests her hands on the edge and her hot clammy forehead against the frigid glass, and looks down into the garden. The old poplar tree is pimpled with buds, but afflicted also with green fungus; the lawn below is clean-shaven and, here and there, scraped down to the dark soil by scythe and hoe. It makes Agnes melancholy to see what Shears is doing to the garden. Not that she wasn't thoroughly ashamed of the Rackham grounds as they were before he came, but now that they've been brought to heel, she misses the bright daisies around the trees and the dark green sprouts of sword-grass among the paving-stones, especially as nothing has been put in their place yet. Shears is waiting, he says, for the grass to grow back "right".

Agnes can feel one of her bouts of tearfulness coming on, and grips the window-ledge hard to suppress it. But one by one, the tears for the daisies and the wild grass roll down her cheeks, and the more she blinks the more freely they flow. 21,917 days. Less in her case, as she's been alive for so long already. How many days are left to her? She has forgotten all the arithmetic she ever knew; the challenge is impossible. Only one thing is clear: the days of her life are, in the cruellest and crudest sense, numbered.

It wasn't always thus, she knows. Women in the time of Moses lived spans unheard-of now, at least in England. Even today, in the Orient and the further reaches of the Empire, there are to be found wise men (and wise women, surely?) who have solved the riddle of ageing and physical injury, and survived unscathed for generations. Their secrets are hinted at in the Spiritualism pamphlets Agnes has hidden inside her embroidery basket; there are authenticated drawings of miracles-holy men emerging spry and smiling from six months' burial, exotic black gentlemen dancing on flames, and so forth.

No doubt there exist other books-ancient manuals of forbidden knowledge-which explain all the techniques in detail. Everything that's known to Man is published somewere-but whether Mudie's Circulating Library will let a curious woman see it is another matter.

Oh, but what use is there in thinking about it!

She's cursed, it's all too late for her, God has turned his back, the garden is ruined, her head aches, none of her dresses is the right colour, Mrs Jerrold scorned to reply to her letter, her hair-brush is always thick with hair, the sky darkens ominously when she so much as dares to set foot outside the house. Choking, Agnes slides the window open and thrusts her twisted face into the fresh air.

In the grounds below, Janey the scullery maid appears from a door directly beneath Agnes's window, to fetch a bucket-load of rich soil for the mushroom cellar. Agnes can see the flesh of the girl's back straining at the buttons of her plain black dress, straining at the white knot of her pinafore's bow. All at once she feels a flush of compassion for this poor little drudge in her employ. Two heavy tears fall from her eyes, straight down at the girl, but the wind blows them away before they reach the already retreating body.

It's only when Mrs Rackham draws back from the window-sill, and adjusts her legs for balance, that she appreciates she has begun to bleed.

Of Mrs Rackham's subsequent behaviour her husband will soon be informed, but in those few minutes before it comes to the attention of the servants, William sits oblivious in his study, not having thought about Agnes for hours.

Although he has illness very much on his mind, it doesn't happen to be his wife's. A worry has been planted in his brain, and is growing there at an alarming rate-a weed of anxiety.

Sugar's innocent jest about cholera has reminded him of some grim statistics: every day, the diseases bred in the unhygienic conditions of inner London claim a certain number of lives-not least those of prostitutes. Yes, Sugar appears fresh as a rose, but by her own admission it isn't easy; all around her is filth and damp and decay. Who knows what foulness her stable-mates bring into the house? Who knows what contagions hang around the walls of Mrs Castaway's, threatening to seep into Sugar's bedroom? She deserves better-and so, of course, does he.

Must he tramp through a quagmire of dung to reach his lover? It's clear what he must do-how simple the solution is! He has the funds, after all! Why, in the past two months, according to the books, sales of lavender water alone-An erratic knocking at his door interrupts his calculations.

"Come in," he calls.

The door swings open, and an agitated

Letty is revealed.

"Oh Mr Rackham sir, I'm sorry sir, but, oh, Mr Rackham…" Her eyes swivel about in their sockets, looking back and forth from William to the stairs she's just run up; her body sways obsequiously.

"Well?"' prompts William. "What is it, Letty?"' "It's Mrs Rackham, sir," she pipes. "Doctor Curlew has already been sent for, sir, but… I thought you might wish to see for yourself… we closed the door at once … nothing's been disturbed…"

"Oh for goodness' sake!" exclaims William, as exasperated by all this intrigue as he is unnerved by it. "Show me this disaster." And he follows Letty hurriedly downstairs, buttoning his waistcoat as he goes.

In Mrs Fox's parlour, Mrs Fox is doing a rather impolite thing in plain view of her visitor. She is folding sheets of paper from a stack in her lap, inserting them in envelopes, and licking the edges, all the while continuing her conversation. The first time Henry Rackham witnessed this, months ago, he was no less taken aback than if she'd raised a mirror to her face and begun picking her teeth; now, he's used to it.

There are simply not enough hours in the day for all of her activities, so some must be performed simultaneously.

"May I help you?"' Henry suggests.

"Please," she says, and hands him half the stack.

"What are these?"'

"Bible verses," she says. "For night shelters."

"Oh." He glances at a sheet before folding it. The words of Psalm 31 are instantly recognisable: "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly …" and so on, up to the exhortation to be of good courage. Mrs Fox's handwriting is remarkably legible, given the number of times she's had to transcribe the same few passages.

Henry folds, inserts, licks, presses tight.

"But can the unfortunates in the night shelters read?"' he asks.

"Destitution can come to anyone," she says, folding, folding. "In any case, these verses are for the wardens and the visiting nurses to read aloud. They walk up and down the long aisles of beds, you know, reciting anything they think might comfort the sleepless."

"Noble work."

"You could do it, Henry, if you wished. They won't let me-they say they couldn't guarantee my safety. As if that were in anyone's hands but God's."

Silence falls, except for the whispery sound of their folding and licking. The wordless simplicity of this shared activity is, to Henry, almost unbearably satisfying; he would be happy to spend the next fifty years sitting here in Mrs Fox's parlour, helping her with her correspondence. Sadly, there are only so many night shelters in Britain, and the envelopes are soon filled. Mrs Fox squints and licks her lips, miming her disgust at the acrid taste on her pink tongue-on his tongue, too.

"Cocoa is the answer," she assures him.

Letty has led her master through passages he has not seen more than a half dozen times since taking on the house that bears his name; passages made for servants to scuttle along. Now she and William Rackham stand at the kitchen door.

By dumb show she communicates to him that, if neither of them makes the slightest noise, and if they enter the kitchen with the utmost stealth, they're likely to observe an extraordinary thing.

William, sorely tempted to cast aside this foolishness and shove on through, resists the temptation and does as Letty suggests.

Noiselessly, like a stage curtain parting, the door is nudged open, to reveal not just the harshly-lit, high-ceilinged cell in which all his food is prepared, but also (when he lowers his eyes) two women engaged in an act which shouldn't have shocked him in the least-had not one of the women been his wife.

For there, side by side on the stone floor, are Agnes and the scullery-maid Janey, both with their backs to him and their arses in the air, crawling along on their hands and knees, dipping scrubbing-brushes by turns into a large pail of soapy water. And conversing while they're at it.

Agnes scrubs with a less practised rhythm than Janey but with equal vigour, the tendons in her tiny hands standing out. The hems of her skirts are plastered to the wet floor, her bustled rear rocks to and fro, her slippered feet squirm for purchase.

"Well, ma'am," Janey is saying.

"I tries to wash every dish the same, but the fing is, you don't expeck fingerbowls to be all that dirty, do yer?"' "No, no, of course not," pants Agnes as she scrubs.

"Well, neiver did I," rejoins the girl. "Neiver did I. And so there I was, with Cook shoutin' and bawlin' at me, and wavin' these fingerbowls at me, and I carn't deny as they 'ad a cake o' grease all under 'em, but honest to crikey, ma'am, it was fingerbowls, and Cook must know they's normally always so clean…"

"Yes, yes," sympathises the mistress.

"You poor girl."

"And this… This 'ere's blood," comments Janey, referring to an old stain on the wooden duckboard she and Mrs Rackham have before them now. "Spilt ever so long ago but you can still see it, no matter 'ow many times I've scrubbed it."

Mrs Rackham hunkers over to look, her shoulder touching Janey's.

"Let me try," she urges breathlessly.

William chooses this moment to intervene. He strides into the kitchen, his shoes striking sharply on the wet floor, straight towards Agnes, who turns, still on her hands and knees, to face him. Janey doesn't turn, but squats petrified, like a dog caught in an act that warrants a beating.

"Hello, William," says Agnes calmly, blinking at a strand of hair dangling in front of one sweaty eyebrow. "Is Doctor Curlew here yet?"'

But William doesn't respond with the impotent exasperation she expects. Instead, he reaches down and, sweeping one arm under her bustle and another against her back, he heaves her up, with a mighty grunt of effort, off the floor. As she slumps bewildered against his chest, he loudly declares,

"Doctor Curlew was sent for without my authority. I'll let him give you a sleeping draught, then ask him to leave. He's here too often and too long, in my opinion-and what good has it done you?"'

And with that, he carries her out of the kitchen and through the several doors and passageways to the stairs.

"Inform me when Doctor Curlew arrives," he orders the mortified Clara, who emerges from the shadows to trot up the stairs beside him. "Tell him: a sleeping draught, no more! I shall be in my study."

And that, once his wife is safely laid in her bed, is where William Rackham goes.

"You know, Henry," muses Mrs Fox as she surveys the teetering pile of addressed envelopes between them, "I feel blessed never to have had children."

Henry almost inhales his mouthful of cocoa.

"Oh? Why is that?"'

Mrs Fox leans back in her chair, allowing her face to be lit by a muted ray of sunlight filtering through the curtains. There are mauve veins on her temples that Henry has never noticed before, and a red flush on her Adam's apple-if women have Adam's apples, which he's not sure they do.

"I sometimes think I've only a finite measure of…" she closes her eyes, searching for the word "… of juice in me, to give to the world. If I'd had children, I would've given most of it to them, I imagine, whereas now…"

She gestures at the philanthropic clutter all about, the charitable chaos of her house, half rueful, half contented.

"Does this mean," ventures Henry, "that you believe all Christian women ought to remain childless?"' "Oh, I'd never say "ought"," she replies. "All the same, what an enormous power for Good it would unleash, don't you think?"' "But what of the Lord's commandment, "Be fruitful and multiply"?"'

She smiles and looks out of the window, her eyes narrowed against the flickering afternoon light.

It's probably only the clouds, but if one uses one's imagination, there might be a vast army marching past the house, numberless hordes blotting out the sun, a million-spoked wheel of bodies.

"I think there's been quite enough multiplication, don't you?"' Mrs Fox sighs. "We have filled the world up awfully well, haven't we, with frightened and hungry humans. The challenge now is what to do with them all…"

"Still, the miracle of new life…"

"Oh, Henry, if you could but see…"

She is poised to speak of her experiences with the Rescue Society, but decides against it; evocations of pox-raddled infants stowed in prostitutes' cupboards and dead babies decomposing in the Thames are, over cocoa, too indecorous even for her.

"Honestly, Henry," she says instead.

"There's nothing so very exceptional about bearing children.

Acts of genuine charity, on the other hand…

Perhaps you ought to try to see good works as eggs, and we women as hens. Fertilised, eggs are useless except to produce more chickens, but what a useful thing is a pure egg! And how very many eggs one hen can come up with!"

Henry blushes to the tips of his ears, the crimson flesh contrasting fetchingly with the gold of his hair. "You are joking, surely."

"Certainly not," she smiles. "Haven't you heard how your friends Bodley and Ashwell sum me up? I'm serious to the bone." And she reclines suddenly in her chair, her head lolling back in apparent exhaustion. Henry watches, worried and fascinated, as she breathes deep, her bosom swelling out through her bodice, a subtle protuberance on either side growing visible through the soft fabric.

"More-Mrs Fox?"' he stammers. "Are you all right?"'

When Doctor Curlew arrives at William Rackham's study, he finds himself greeted politely but without deference. This confirms in his mind the changes he's noticed in the Rackham household (and his place in it) over the last four or five visits. Gone are the armchair chats, the proffered cigars, the upward gaze of respect. Today Doctor Curlew feels as if he's been summoned as a mere dispenser of medicines, rather than invited as an eminent scholar of mental frailty.

"She will sleep now," he says.

"Good," says Rackham. "You'll forgive me if we don't discuss the details of my wife's latest relapse. If relapse it is."

"As you wish."

Forgive me also, thinks William, if I send you on your way before you suggest to me again that Agnes belongs in an asylum. I am a rich man and there is nothing I can't take care of in my own home. If Agnes goes mad and needs nurses, I shall employ them. If one day she is so beyond reason as to need strongmen to restrain her, I can afford them, too. I am above any man's pity, doctor: watch your place.

William informs the doctor of the change henceforth from weekly to monthly visits, thanks him for coming, and hands him into Letty's care. He fancies, as Curlew is leaving, that he spots a glimmer of humiliation in the doctor's face -fancies mistakenly, for men like Doctor Curlew have so many human mirrors reflecting their importance back at them that when one mirror shows a less flattering image they simply turn to another. The doctor's next patient is an old woman who worships him; he'll look in the Rackhams' mirror again another time, when the light is different. Agnes Rackham is doomed; he need only wait.

With Curlew safely dispatched, William considers looking in on his wife, to make sure she's sleeping peacefully, but decides against it, for he knows she hates him coming into her bedroom.

Nevertheless he wishes her well, and even conjures up a picture of her face wearing a tranquil expression.

Oddly enough, ever since he's known Sugar he has been able to spare Agnes many more affectionate and indulgent thoughts than before; she no longer weighs upon him as a burden, but rather as a sort of challenge. Just as the mastery of Rackham Perfumeries, once an odious impossibility, has become, with Sugar's encouragement, an interesting adventure, the vanquishing of Agnes's ills may likewise be a test of his powers. He knows what his little wife holds dear: he'll give her as much of it as she desires. He knows what she hates: he'll spare her the worst.

Serene and resolute, William returns to the work at hand: calculating exactly what's needed if he's to remove Sugar from the hazards of her current lodgings.

While her husband ponders the details, Agnes Rackham, brim-full of morphine, sleeps. A railway carriage, specially prepared for an Invalid, stands waiting in her dreams, wreathed in steam. She's tucked up inside it already, in a darling little bed by the window, and her head is raised up on pillows so that she can look out. The Station Master knocks at her window and asks her if she's all right and she replies "I am". Then the whistle blows, and she's on her way to the Convent of Health.

A fortnight later, we find William Rackham making his final inspection of the place where he intends, from this evening onwards, to spend as much time as his busy life will allow. The last of the hired men has left, having installed the last of the furniture; William is free now to survey the whole effect, and judge if these smart rooms in Priory Close, Marylebone, truly look as if they're worth the small fortune he's spent on them.

He loiters in the front passage, fussily rearranging a bunch of red roses in their crystal vase, clipping the stems of individual blooms where necessary, to achieve the perfect arrangement. He hasn't paid this much attention to aesthetic niceties since his dandy days at Cambridge. Sugar brings out the…

Well, to be frank, she brings out the "everything" in him. These elegant rooms are a fitting place for her-a jewel box to house the treasure she is.

The agreement with Mrs Castaway is already signed. The old woman complied without opposition; indeed, what else could she do?

He's now ten times the man he was when he made the original contract with her, months ago-and she, by contrast, has diminished. In the creamy mid-morning sunshine of his most recent visit to her, she appeared less fearsome than in the red glare of firelight, her garish clothing paler, decked with motes of dust that swirled visibly in the sunbeams. He showed her receipts from the best furniture-makers, drapers, tilers, glass merchants, and many other craftsmen employed by George Hunt, Esq., as well as a bank account in Mr Hunt's name to the value of a thousand pounds. (of course William knows he could, if he wished, abandon this pantomime now, but, seeing as it's effortless to maintain, why not spare himself the embarrassment? And as for the bank account in George W. Hunt's name-well, that might prove a damn good idea in its own right, if his researches into taxation are not mistaken!) Mrs Castaway seemed mightily impressed with him, anyway, whatever name he bore, and she needed little persuasion (apart from an additional wad of money) to tear up the old contract and release Sugar into his sole proprietorship.

"I have cared for her as best I could, in the circumstances" were her final words. "I have faith that you will do the same-to our everlasting benefit."

Now, inspecting the rooms in Priory Close, William banishes the memory of her horrible, waxen, wrinkled old face, by confirming that everything is in order here-flawless and perfect.

He assures himself of his love-nest's ideal location, its ideally appointed interior, its harmonious compromise between male and female tastes. He sits in each of the chairs and the chaise-longue, taking stock of all he can survey of the decor from each vantage point.

He opens and closes all the little doors, windows, lids and ledges of all the cupboards, bookcases and whatnots to make sure they don't stick or creak.

The bathroom is a cause for concern. Has he done the right thing in having it plumbed for a hot bath? The pipes are ugly, resembling the elephantine apparatus in one of the Rackham factories; mightn't Sugar have been happier with a freestanding and opulent washtub? Ah, but he wants her to be clean, and these new "Ardent" bathtubs are the very latest thing. The instructions for operating the hot water geyser may be a little complicated, and there is the risk of explosion, it's true, but Sugar is a clever girl, and won't allow herself to be blown to Kingdom Come by a bath, he's sure. And these new "Ardent" designs are the safest yet. "In the future, everyone will have one of these," the salesman said. (to which William, tempted to give the fellow a lesson in business, almost responded: "No, no, no, say rather: the common mortal will always wash in a glorified slop-pail-only the most fashionable and fortunate will have one of these.") Then he walks slowly into the bedroom and, for the tenth time, scrutinises the bed, feeling the sheets and coverlets between his fingers, reclining momentarily against the pillows to take note of the prints on the walls (chinoiserie, not pornography) and the way the wallpaper's pattern glows in the light. All of it, he dares to be sure, will meet with her approval.

From the outside, the house is unremarkable; virtually identical to those on either side. The door into the front passage faces the street, but is half-hidden inside a dark guard-box of a porch, affording shelter from the scrutiny of the neighbours. There are no lodgers upstairs, as William has leased both floors and decided, for discretion's sake (though he could get a pretty penny for them in rent!), to leave the upper rooms empty.

William consults his watch. It is nine o'clock, on the evening of March seventeenth, 1875.

Nothing remains but to visit Mrs Castaway's one last time, and fetch Sugar to her new home.

Henry Rackham is out walking in the half-developed fringes of civilisation, walking after bedtime, walking in the dark. He is not by nature a night owl, is Henry; he's the kind of man who wakes as soon as the sun rises and who has trouble suppressing his yawns once it sets. Yet tonight he has left his warm bed, hastily pulled some clothing over his night-shirt, and covered his dishevelled appearance with a long winter coat-and gone out walking.

For the first couple of miles there are lanes with houses and streetlamps, but these become sparser and sparser until they finally give way to the flickering campfires of distant gypsies, the eerie halo emanating from the Great Western Railway, and the natural illumination provided by God. A full moon shines down on him as he forges ahead. His enormous shadow runs along beside him, jumping nimbly over the uneven ground like a swarm of black rats. He ignores it, concentrating on his own clumsy feet, striding restlessly forward in unlaced shoes.

I am a monster, he is thinking.

In spite of the chill air and the challenge of finding his way through the dark, he still sees Emmeline Fox before his mind's eye-or whatever eye it is that can see her thus, splayed supine in a pillowy bower, naked and abandoned, inviting him to fall upon her. The vision is scarcely less vivid now than it was when he first cast his bed-sheets aside and repulsed the advances of lubricious sleep. Yet, for all its luminescent clarity, the picture of his dear friend is damnably false. He has never, in God's reality, glimpsed any of Mrs Fox's flesh except her face and hands; anything below the neck and above the wrists is his own wicked fantasy. He has given her a body of his own design, stitched seamlessly together from painted nudes of Greek goddesses and water nymphs, and grosser parts supplied to him by the Devil. Only the face is her own.

But, Yes! she whispers, her ghostly pale arms reaching languidly into the space between them.

Yes.

Henry presses against the wooden railings of a low bridge over Grand Junction Canal, unbuttons his clothes, and cries for release.

"Where," murmurs Sugar, "are we going?"'

The cab has rattled past all the likely places William might have intended for them to go when he commanded her (most unusually!) to dress for "a little jaunt". At first she thought he might have in mind a visit to The Fireside, for sentimental reasons; he's been queerly sentimental lately, reminiscing about their affaire as if they've known each other for years. But no, when she saw the cab waiting, she knew they weren't going to The Fireside. And now they've passed all the best pubs and eating houses, and have turned up the wrong road for the Cremorne Gardens.

"That's for me to know," teases William gently, stroking her shoulder in the dimness of the cabin, "and you to find out."

Sugar loathes pranks and riddles of all kinds. "How exciting!" she breathes, and presses her nose to the window.

William finds this child-like curiosity adorable -and a most pleasing contrast to the way the newly-married Agnes behaved on the day he took her to her new home. Agnes looked behind her all the way, however much he implored her not to; Sugar is looking ahead with naked anticipation. Agnes was so irksome (snivelling and fretting) that he wished he could knock her insensible, not to wake until snugly ensconced in the new house; Sugar he wants to lift onto his lap, right here in the cab, so that the vibrations of the carriage on the bumpy road help her ride his cockstand. But, apart from stroking her shoulder, he does nothing: this is a momentous occasion in her life-in both their lives-and must not be spoiled.

Meanwhile, Sugar sits watching the dark, eyes wide. Is William taking her to his home in Notting Hill? No, they've turned right at Edgware Road, instead of carrying straight on. Is he taking her to some deserted place outside the city, the better to murder her and dump her corpse? In her own novel she's described so many such murders that the possibility seems quite real to her; in any case, don't prostitutes die at the hands of their men all the time? Only last week, according to Amy, a woman was found headless and "interfered with" on Hampstead Heath…

One sideways glance at Rackham reassures her: he's radiant with smugness and desire. So, she returns her nose to the glass, realigning her mouth with the expanding crest of condensation she has breathed there.

At the end of the journey, she is made to alight in a dark close, a very modern-looking terrace whose fa@cades are all identical.

Inadequate lamplight is intercepted by a pair of massive stately trees, each with branches of Gothic complication. As the cab rattles away into the distance, a cemetery quiet descends, and Sugar is led by the arm into the pitch-black porch of one of these strange new buildings.

William Rackham is at her side, an obscure figure in the darkness; she can hear his breathing and the rustle of her skirts as he brushes against them in his search for the key-hole. How quiet it is here, for her to be able to hear such things! What sort of place is this, that leaves its air so vacant? All of a sudden she's under the sway of an unknown, but potent, emotion. Her heart thuds, her legs grow weak and begin to tremble-almost as if she were about to be murdered after all. A match is struck with a sound like fabric tearing; she sees William's face illuminated in the lucifer's flicker as he bends to unlock the door. His bewhiskered features are utterly unfamiliar to her.

This man is changing my life, she thinks as the key turns and the door swings open. My life is being tossed like a coin.

William lights the hallway lamp and instructs Sugar to stand underneath it while he hurries into each of the dark rooms beyond, lighting their lamps too. Then he returns and takes her gently by the arm.

"This," says, extending his arm theatrically, "is yours. All yours."

For a moment everything is silent and motionless, a tableau vivant made up of three elets: a man, a woman, and a vase of red roses.

Then, "Oh William!" the astonished Sugar exclaims, as Rackham leads her into the sitting-room. "Oh, dear God!" All the way here, she's been preparing herself to play-act, whatever his little surprise should prove to be; but now there's no need for play-acting, as she reels in stupefaction.

"You're trembling," he observes, cupping her hand inside both of his, to authenticate the phenomenon. "Why are you trembling?"' "Oh William!" Her eyes are wet as she looks back and forth between him and the unbelievably sumptuous room. "Oh William!"

At first he's taken aback by this display of gratitude, shyly distrusting it in a way that he's never distrusted her displays of lust. As soon as he realises she's genuinely overwhelmed, he swells with pride, to have been the engineer of such a transport of delight. She seems in danger of swooning, so he takes her by the shoulders and turns her to face him.

Adroitly he unknots the silken ribbon under her chin and, as he lifts her hat off, eases the pins out of her hair, so that her mass of golden-ochre curls spills down like newly-shorn wool out of a basket. He feels a pain in his heart: if only this instant could be spun out forever!

"Well?"' he demands, teasingly. "Aren't you going to explore your new home?"' "Oh yes!" cries the girl, springing away from him. He watches, beaming, as she dances around the room, acquainting herself physically with everything, laying claim to objects and surfaces with a touch of her palm, then dashing through the door to the next room. As she does so, William can't help recalling Agnes moving through the house in Chepstow Villas on her first day like a sick and petulant child, blind to everything, oblivious to all his preparations.

"I hope I've thought of everything," he murmurs into her ear, having caught up with her as she stands, entranced, at the writing-desk in the study. She accepts his kisses in a daze, staring down at her reflection in the varnished wood.

"What is this room?"' she asks.

He caresses her neck with his bearded jaw.

"Sewing-room, dressing-room, study-whatever you like. I didn't put much in it-thought you might need a thing or two from your old room at Mrs Castaway's."

"She knows?"'

"Of course she knows. It's all arranged."

Sugar's face goes white. Nightmare visions are suddenly before her: a vision of an old woman in blood-red dress, mounting the staircase to Sugar's bedroom; a vision of a cupboard door swinging open to reveal the white manuscript of The Fall and Rise of Sugar. Mrs Castaway mustn't touch those pages! In those pages, a madam called "Mrs Jettison" is blamed for many, many things-principally the violation of her own innocent daughter, the intrepid heroine.

"My room… my old room…" she falters. "What… what arrangements…"

"Don't worry," Rackham laughs.

"I have your privacy very much in mind. Nothing will be touched until you remove it. I'll arrange for that too, whenever you wish." And he strokes her face, to soothe some colour back into it.

Bewildered, Sugar walks over to the French windows, watching her quartered reflection approach the glass. The panes are at fractionally different angles, so the four portions of her image don't quite meet, until she moves so near to the glass that she becomes transparent and disappears altogether. Outside, there's a tiny walled-in garden, difficult to make out in the darkness, but abundant with… well, some sort of greenery-living proof that her new home is at ground level, in far more verdant surrounds than Silver Street. Her doubts fall away from her, and the exhilaration returns.

"Oh, William," she cries once more.

"Is all this really for me alone?"'

"Yes, yes," he laughs. "For us alone. I've leased it for a lifetime."

"Oh, William!"

And she's off again, tearing off her gloves and dropping them on the floor in order to run her hands along the spines of the books in the bookcase and the embossed candy-stripe of the wallpaper. She skips from room to room with William following on behind, and in each she performs the same dance of celebration and tactile acquaintance. Such cart-loads of things Rackham has bought for her!

The place is crammed with bric-a-brac: useless, useful, ugly, beautiful, ingenious, impractical: and all, as far as she can tell, expensive.

"Let me show you, let me show you!" he keeps saying. "There's a bath, with warm water.

It's simple to use. Even a child…"

And he demonstrates the procedures for enjoying all the luxury of the modern age without the risk of mishaps.

"Repeat the sequence," he urges her, for she's rather dazed. "Show me you understand." And she does, she does.

As the wealth that William has invested in her sinks into Sugar's brain, she moves faster and faster, whirling from room to room, from table to cabinet to bookcase, sliding her back against the walls like an animal in heat. Instead of words she utters such a variety of appreciative squeals and moans that William seizes her wrist and leads her to the bed, a king-sized monster even more arabesque than the one they know so intimately.

He catches her appraising the bed-head, quizzical, even as she unbuttons her boots: there's no looking-glass affixed there, no reflection except what the polished grain of dark wood offers. William frowns, wondering if he's made the right decision: he couldn't bring himself to have a mirror rudely screwed into the lustrous teak. Oh, he considered it, calling to mind how much he liked to see, in the mirror on Sugar's old bed, his stiff manhood disappearing into her and emerging wet and slick. He even went so far as to say to the furniture-maker,

"I wonder, my good man, if it would be possible…"

But then he changed his mind in mid-sentence, and concluded, "… to carve a small, ornamental R just here, near the top?"'

Now William carefully examines Sugar's face, even as she prepares her body for him.

"Do you miss the looking-glass?"' he asks her.

She laughs. "What do I need to look at myself for, when I have you to look at me?"'

She's wearing only her camisole now, and his trousers are bulging. He pushes her down on the mattress, and observes her eyes widen as she stares up at the canopy of the bed-yes, that's finest Belgian lace! It's as much as William can manage, to resist the temptation to tell her everything: the trouble he went to in choosing the furnishings, the rare and elusive objects he found, the bargains he struck…

But it's better this way, not to puncture the fairytale magic of his gift.

God almighty, her cunt is wetter than he's ever known it before! What a state she is in! And all because of him!

"But dear William," she gasps as he enters her. "There's no kitchen."

"Kitchen?"' He's seconds away from bursting. "You don't need a kitchen, you goose," he groans. "I'll… give you … all you need…" And he spurts his seed inside her.

Afterwards, Sugar lies in his arms, kissing his chest a hundred times, asking forgiveness for appearing preoccupied at such a delicate moment. She was overwhelmed, she says, by his generosity-still is.

It's too much to take in all at once, her poor head is in a spin, but her cunt knows what's what, as he can attest! And if he bears any regret that his climax was a solitary one, unaccompanied (for the first time since they met) by the simultaneous eruption of her own ecstasy, well, she's more than willing to wait until his manhood has revived. Or if he prefers, shall she take it in her mouth? The taste of it alone is enough, she assures him, to bring her to the brink of ecstasy.

No, William sighs, it's all right. He is tired; this has been a weighty day for him too. And she was right to wonder how she's to get fed in this new home of hers. But it's all taken care of. He-or rather his bank-will post her a weekly allowance, more than sufficient for her independence. There are a number of excellent establishments on Marylebone Road, including breakfast rooms at the Aldsworth Hotel that he has no hesitation recommending; the omelettes there are especially good. The Warwick is superb for fish: does she like fish?

Yes, she adores fish. What fish in particular? Oh, all fish. And she's not to worry about keeping her rooms clean, either, or the laundry: he'll procure a girl for her …

"Oh no, William, that really isn't necessary," Sugar protests. "I am really very domesticated, you know, when I want to be." (completely untrue, she inwardly concedes-she's never done a stroke of housework in her life. But if these rooms are to be her own, let them truly be her own!) Indeed, as she and William lie on their newly christened bed together, she's growing increasingly desperate to be alone. This gift of his… She won't be able to believe it exists until he disappears and it fails to disappear with him. What can she do to make him go! Her kisses on his chest increase in frequency, like a nervous tic; she pecks softly in a line towards his genitals, hoping to force the issue one way or the other.

"I must go," he says, patting her between the shoulder-blades.

"So soon?"' she croons.

"Duty calls." He is already donning his shirt. "In any case, I expect you'll be wanting to get familiar with your little nest."

"Our little nest," she demurs. (There are your trousers, you fool! There!) Minutes later, as he's stroking her goodbye, she kisses his fingers, and says, "It's as if all my birthdays have come at once."

"Dear Heaven!" Rackham declares. "I don't even know when your birthday is!"

Sugar smiles as she selects, from the jumble of contending responses in her head, the perfect sentence to send him on his way, les mots justes for the closure of this transaction.

"This will be my birthday from now on," she says.

After the door shuts, Sugar lies unmoving for a minute or two, in case William returns.

Then, slowly, she swings her legs over the side of the bed, finds her feet on the unfamiliar floor, and stands up. Her camisole, much rumpled, falls down over her breasts.

Pensively she smooths it with her palms, wondering if William's boast that he has thought of "everything" includes such a thing as an iron.

Item by item she re-dresses herself. With a tiny clothes-brush from her reticule she brushes her skirts, which come up nicely. Exchanging the clothes-brush for a hand-mirror, she tidies her hair a little, and peels a flake or two of skin from her dry lips before leaving the bedroom.

"Slowly, slow-ly," she cautions herself, aloud. "You've all the time in the world now."

First of all she goes to… her study.

Yes, her study. She stands at the French windows, looking out at the garden. In the morning it will be sunlit, won't it, and dew will be twinkling on the neat beds of grass and the exotic plants she doesn't have names for. Through her one little window at Mrs Castaway's, there was never anything to see except dirty roof-tops and impatient human traffic; here, she has grass and… pretty green stuff.

The red roses in the hallway are another matter: they get up her nose, quite literally.

How long ought she leave them there in that vase, before tossing them in the garbage where they belong? Always she has detested cut flowers, and roses in particular: their smell and the way they fall apart when past their bloom. The flowers she can tolerate -hyacinths, lilies, orchids-die firm on their stems, in one piece to the last.

Still, the bouquet is an emblem of the care with which William Rackham has prepared this place for her. What a lot of trouble he has gone to: how richly he has repaid the trouble she has gone to in cultivating him! The more she explores her rooms, the more evidence she finds of his thoughtfulness: the glove-stretcher and the glove-powderer, the shoe tree and the ring stand, the bellows for the fire, the bedwarming pans. Did he really think of all these things, or did he simply blunder through a Regent Street emporium and buy every damn thing in sight? Certainly there are some queer objects lying about. A magnetic brush, still in its box, claims to curl hair and cure bilious headaches. An expertly stuffed ermine lies curled up in front of her wardrobe as though waiting to be skinned, made into a stole, and hung up inside. Ornaments of silver, glass, pottery and brass jostle one another on the mantelpieces. Two dressing-tables stand side by side, one larger than the other but less attractively finished, inviting the conclusion that Rackham, after buying the one, had second thoughts and bought the other as well, leaving the final choice to her. Does this signal his blessing on any changes she wishes to make? Too soon to tell.

Damn those roses! They're filling the whole place with their stink… but no, that's not possible, not from one vase of blooms. There's a mysterious surfeit of perfume in the atmosphere, as if the entire building has been sponged with scented soap. Sugar wrenches the French windows open, and fresh night air shoots up her nostrils.

She pokes her face out into the dark, breathing deeply, sniffing the subtle odour of wet grass and the unsubtle absence of all those smells she's so accustomed to: meat and fish, the droppings of cart-horses and ponies, sullied water gurgling down drainpipes.

A warm reflux of semen trickles down her thighs and into her pantalettes as she stands sniffing; she winces, clutches herself, pushes the windows shut with her free hand. What to do next?

Wouldn't it be astonishing if she opened the door of this wardrobe here and found, just where she needed it to be, the big silvery bowl and the box of poison powders? She opens the wardrobe door.

Empty.

She runs back to the bedroom, checks under the bed on both sides. No chamber-pot. What does Rackham think she is? A…? The word she's looking for, if it exists, eludes her … In any case, she's just remembered that she has a bathroom. Sweet Jesus, a bathroom! She stumbles there immediately.

It's an eerie little chamber, with a burnished wooden floor the colour of stewed tea, and shiny tricoloured walls-glazed bronze tiles on the dado, then a band of black wallpaper like a ribbon round the room, then a satiny coat of mustard-yellow paint up to the ceiling.

All this casts a most peculiar light on the ceramic bathtub, washbasin and lavatory.

Sugar sits on the privy. It's just like the one downstairs at Mrs Castaway's, except it smells absurdly of roses: an essence sprinkled in the water. I'll soon fix that, she thinks, and empties her aching bladder. She runs some water into the washbasin as she pisses, preparing to wash with a luxurious cotton towel.

Every horizontal surface, she notes, is crowded with Rackham produce: soaps of all sizes and colours, bath salts, bottles of unguent, pots of cream, canisters of powder.

The R's are all facing front, their orientation identical. She pictures William spending an age in here, arranging the containers thus, standing back to appraise the R's with narrowed eyes, and it makes her shiver in pleasure and fear. How he craves to please her! How insatiable is his need for recognition! She'll have to anoint herself with every damned thing here, and sing its praises to him afterwards, if she knows what's good for her.

But not tonight. Sugar flips the lavatory lever, and all her waste, magically, is swallowed into an underground Elsewhere.

Emerging from the bathroom, she notes that the rest of the place is still there, luxurious and silent, littered with shiny objects she's only just beginning to recognise as her own. Abruptly, her shoulders begin to shake and tears spring into her eyes.

"Oh dear God," she sobs, "I'm free!"

She bursts into motion once more, dashing from room to room again, but this time more badly behaved: not girlish, not squealing in musical delight, but rampaging like a gutter infant, grunting and crying in ugly jubilation.

"It's all mine! It's all for me!"

She snatches the roses from their vase, crushing their stems in her fist, and starts waving them around in a mad spilth of water. She whacks the blooms against the nearest doorjamb, crowing with angry satisfaction as the petals fly apart. She wheels about, whipping the disintegrating bouquet against the walls, until the floor is strewn with red and the stems are limp and splintered.

Then, ashamed and unnerved by her orgy, she stumbles over to the bookcase-the beautifully crafted, lustrously polished, glass-fronted, locked-with-a-brass-key bookcase that is hers, all hers-and swings its doors wide open. She selects from the shelves the most important-looking volume, carries it to the armchair in front of the fire, and, seating herself, begins to read. Or at least, pretends to; her mind has come too far adrift from its moorings for her to admit she's not actually reading.

One elbow on the chair's arm, she sits demurely; she is buzzing with demureness. One hand cradles the book in her lap, the other presses knuckles against her cheek in a cosmetic pose of support. Sugar stares at the printed page, but what she pictures before her glassy eyes is not the words but herself sitting alone in an elegant, well-furnished room, Sugar demurely reading a book, anchored to this room of her own by a heavy volume.

For a measureless time she sits like this, every so often turning a page. She watches, from somewhere on high, the pale, intricately patterned fingers moving over the minute print. But for the ichthyosis afflicting them, they might be the hands of a well-born lady (and might there not be ladies afflicted by this condition?) moving across the pages.

Sugar feels certain that somewhere, in a tranquil mansion, a genuine lady must at this very moment be sitting just as she is here, reading a book. The two of them are as one, reading together.

Eventually, however, the spell stretches thin, unfeasibly thin. She concedes she is not reading this book; that she has not the faintest idea what is in it nor even what it is called. In the same way as a painter, upon realising the light has failed, resignedly packs up his materials, Sugar shuts her book and lays it on the floor beside her chair. And, when she stands up, she finds she's preposterously weary, weak at the knees and damp with sweat from head to foot.

She staggers into the bedroom and sits heavily on the bed. A crystal jug of water and a glass tumbler stand side by side on the bedside table:

Sugar snatches up the jug and pours water directly into her mouth, heedless of spillage, two pints of it at least. When she's satisfied, she sinks back on the pillows, her neck and breast plastered with wet hair.

"Yes, I am free," she says again, but less ecstatically now. Her eyelids are falling shut; parts of her body feel numb, already asleep. She staggers to her feet in order to inspect the bedroom wardrobe. Empty. Of all the things Rackham has taken it upon himself to select for her, he has stopped short of nightwear. Couldn't he have told her, when he came to fetch her from Mrs Castaway's, to take a night-dress along!… Ah, but that would have given away his grand surprise.

Reeling with exhaustion, Sugar manages to extinguish all the lights and return to the bedroom, where she pulls off her clothing, lets it fall in a heap on the floor, and crawls into bed. After only a few moments, however, she crawls out again, her sleep-hungry body protesting against this delay at the very brink of sweet oblivion. Kneeling beside the bed, she lifts a corner of the sheet off the mattress, to verify what she knows already: that this bed, unlike her old bed at Mrs Castaway's, doesn't have several layers of clean sheets and waxed canvas. The sheet Rackham has soiled is the only sheet there is. She yanks it off the bed, and lays her naked body down on the bare mattress.

You can buy all the sheets you want tomorrow, she tells herself, as the warm luxurious covers settle over her. Gratefully she allows unconsciousness to spread up, like a tide, into her head. In the morning she will give thought to what she needs that Rackham hasn't provided; in the morning she will design the armour of an independent life.

In the morning she will discover she's forgotten to extinguish the fires, and the hearths will be black with exhausted ash, and there will be no warmth wafting up from Mrs Castaway's overheated parlour downstairs, and no Christopher waiting outside her door with a bucket of coals. Instead she will have to suffer, for the first time in her life, the unmitigated rawness of a new day.