The Crimson petal and the white

FOURTEEN

One sunny afternoon late in the April of 1875, in a vast rolling field of lavender, a scattered host of workers cease their toil for just a minute. Submerged knee-high in a lake of Lavandula, they stand idle with their hoes and slug-buckets, to stare at the beautiful young woman walking past them on the path dividing the acres.

"'Oo's that?"' they whisper to each other, eyes owlish with curiosity. "'Oo's that?"' But no one knows.

The lady wears a lavender dress; her white-gloved hands and bonneted head are like blossoms sprouting from her wrists and neck. The dress is intricately pleated and ruched, like unravelling rope, giving her the appearance of a life-sized corn dolly.

"An' 'oo's that wiv' 'er?"'

The woman does not walk alone or unencumbered. She's pushing, with the utmost care along the maze of paths, an indistinct burden in a wheelchair. It's an ancient, crippled man, well rugged up with blankets and shawls, his head muffled in a scarf, despite the mildness of the weather. And, next to the old man and the woman who wheels him, there walks a third visitor to the fields today: William Rackham, owner of all. He speaks frequently; the old man speaks from time to time; the woman says almost nothing; but the toilers in the field, row upon row, catch only a few words each before the procession moves on.

"'Oo d'yer fink she is?"' asks a sun-dried wife of her sun-dried husband.

"The old one's daughter, I'd say. Or grand-daughter. Likely the old one's rich.

Likely our Curly Bill wants to do business wiv 'im."

"'E'll 'ave to move fast, then. That old crock could cark it any minute."

"At least 'Opsom 'ad a pair o' legs to walk on."

And with that they return to work, drifting into separate currents of vegetation.

Yet, further on, more toilers stop and stare.

Nothing like this-a lady visitor to the fields-was ever seen in William's father's time;

Rackham Senior preferred to keep well-bred females out of the field, for fear their hearts might start bleeding. The last to visit was his own wife, twenty years ago, before the cuckolding.

"Oh but she's beautiful," sighs one swarthy toiler, squinting after the strange feminine silhouette.

"So would you be," spits a fellow drudge, "if you never done hard labour."

"Yarrr!" growls the old man in the wheelchair, his stench of stale clothing and haphazard hygiene much diluted by the fresh air and the acres of damp soil and lovingly tended lavender.

Sugar bows her head down as she continues to wheel him forward, her lips hovering near his scarf-shrouded skull, approximately where one of his ears must be.

"Now, now, Colonel Leek," she says. "Remember you're here to enjoy yourself."

But Colonel Leek is not enjoying himself, or so he would have Sugar believe. Only his lust for the promised reward-six shillings and more whisky in a day than Mrs Leek will let him have in a month-keeps him from outright mutiny. He's certainly not in the least interested in playing the part of anyone's grandfather.

"I need to pee."

"Do it in your pants," hisses Sugar sweetly. "Pretend you're at home."

"Oh, so kind-hearted, you are." He twists his head, exposing one rheumy malevolent eye and half a mottled, gummy mouth. "Too good for St Giles, eh, trollop?"' "Six shillings and whisky, remember-Grandfather."

And so they trundle on, with the sun beaming down on them, there in the pampered heartland of Rackham Perfumeries.

William Rackham walks aloof, unimpeachably proper, dressed in his stiff Sunday best despite it being Wednesday. Not for him his father's moleskin trousers and Wellington boots; a modern perfumery is ruled from the head, and kept in line with the pen. Everything that goes on in these fields, every stoop of a worker's back or pruning of the tiniest twig, is set in motion by his own thoughts and written requirements. Or so he has attempted to convey to his visitors.

He's aware, of course, that the liaison between Sugar and the old man is rather less amicable than she'd claimed, but he has forgiven her. Indeed, had she and Colonel Leek been sharing confidential affections, he might have felt a prick of jealousy. It's better this way: the old man's pneumonic mumbling is so gruff that the field-workers won't understand much of what they chance to overhear, and the fact that Sugar is wheeling him speaks louder than any declarations of kinship.

"Enjoy the sunshine, why don't you," she admonishes the Colonel as the three of them make their way up the gentle slope of Beehive Hill.

The old man coughs, giving the phlegm in his chest a slight jiggle.

"Sunlight is bad," he wheezes.

"It's the exact same stuff as breeds maggots in wounded soldiers' legs. And when there's no war on, it fades wallpaper."

Sugar presses forward, rolling this talking Sisyphus stone farther up the slope, flashing William a smile of reassurance. Pay him no heed, her smile says. You and I know the value of this place-and the significance of this grand day in our lives.

"It's as I thought: they'll feed on me like parasites, if I let them," mutters William. "They think I'll swallow any story they tell me."

Sugar cocks her head sympathetically, inviting him to explain.

"They swear they've been pruning the older bushes for weeks," he scoffs. "Since yesterday afternoon, more likely! You can't see how straggly they look?"'

Sugar glances back. To her, the workers appear stragglier and less well cared for than the lavender.

"It all looks magnificent to me," she says.

"They ought to be putting a damn sight more cuttings in," he assures her. "Now's the time when they'll root freely."

"Hurgh-hurgh-hurgh!" coughs the

Colonel.

"Your farm is much bigger than I dreamed it would be," remarks Sugar, to steer the conversation back to flattery. "There seems no end it."

"Ah, but," says Rackham, "it isn't all mine." Taking advantage of their elevation, he points downhill, to a long line of white-washed stakes all along one of the paths.

"Those mark the boundary of another farm.

Lavender grows best the more of it there is. The bees don't prefer one man's bush to another's. All in all, some half-dozen perfumeries own a portion of this land; my portion is forty acres."

"Forty acres!" Sugar has only the vaguest idea how much this is, but appreciates it's an enormous area compared to, say, Golden Square. Indeed, all the streets she's ever lived in, if they were dug out of their polluted foundations by a giant spade, could be dumped in the pillowy centre of this lavender paradise, and discreetly buried in soft brown earth, never to be seen again.

And yet, as William has reminded her several times, this farm is only one tributary of his empire. There are other farms in other places, each devoted to a single bloom; there are even whaling boats on the Atlantic harvesting ambergris and spermaceti for Rackham Perfumeries. Sugar surveys the great lake of lavender before her, and measures it against a pomander of petals such as she might be able to hold in her hand. So much luxury, in such excess!

An essence she might purchase in a tiny phial for a considerable sum is so abundant, here at its source, that it's no doubt poured roughly into barrels and the overspills trampled into mud-or so she fancies. The concept is magical and indecent, like a vision of jewellers wading ankle-deep in gems, crunching them underfoot, shovelling them into sacks.

"But really, Colonel," she implores the old man beneath her, half-teasing, half-impassioned. "This is all so… so glorious. Can't you admit, at least, that it makes a nice change from Mrs Leek's?"' "Ah? A nice change?"' The old man fidgets furiously in his squeaking seat, straining to retrieve some salient facts from his encyclopaedic memory for disasters.

"Granville's Combined Orchards, burnt to a cinder, two and a half year ago!" he proclaims in triumph. "Twelve dead!

Lucifer factory in Goeteborg, Sweden, 27th of last month: forty-four burnt to death and nine mortally injured! Cotton plantation in Virginia last Christmas, down to ash in half a day, savages and all!" He pauses, swivels his gaze around to William Rackham, and leers, "What a bonfire all this-'d make, eh?"' "Actually, sir," William replies with lofty condescension, "it does indeed make a splendid bonfire, every year. My fields are divided, you see, according to the age of the plants on them. Some are in their fifth year, exhausted, and will be burnt at the end of October. I can assure you the fire is big enough to make all Mitcham smell of lavender."

"Oh, how wonderful!" cries Sugar.

"How I should love to be here then!"

William blushes with pride, there on the hillock, his chin pushed out in the direction of his empire. What a miracle he has wrought-he, so recently an effete idler in straitened circumstances-now master of this vast farm with its quaint brown workers moving amongst the lavender like field mice. The sounds of industry belong to him too, plus the smells of a million flowers, plus even the sky immediately above, for if he doesn't own these things, who does? Oh, granted, God is still supposed to own everything, but where's the line to be drawn? Only a crackpot would insist on God's ownership of Paddington Station or a mound of cow-dung-why quibble, then, with William Rackham's ownership of this farm, and everything above and below it?

William recalls the verses of Scripture his father was fond of quoting to the dubious young Henry: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (rackham Senior would lay emphasis on this word) "and have dominion over every thing that moveth upon the earth."

So vividly does William recall this statement that he feels almost reinstated in the tiny body he occupied at seven years old, on the occasion of his own first visit to this farm, dawdling behind his older brother. Their father, dark-haired and big then, chose the lavender fields as that part of the empire which might appeal most to the boy who would one day inherit.

"And are these ladies and gentlemen p'mitted to take home any of the lavender they harvest, Father?"' Clear as a bell across the years comes Henry's childish voice-yes, Henry's, for William would never, even at the age of seven, have asked such a stupid question.

"They don't need to take any home,"

Henry Calder Rackham enlightened his first-born indulgently. "They reek of it just by working in it."

"That is a very pleasant reward, I think." (what an ass Henry was, always!) Their father guffawed. "They won't work for that alone, boy. They must have wages as well." The expression of incredulity on Henry's face ought to have alerted the old man that he had the wrong son earmarked for heir. But no matter, no matter … Time upraises all who are worthy.

"Yaarr!"

Ignoring the bestial grousing of Colonel Leek, William surveys his fields once more before descending Beehive Hill. Everything is identical to how it was when he was a boy-although these workers cannot be the same workers who toiled in Henry Calder Rackham's domain twenty-one years ago, for men and women, too, like enfeebled fifth-year plants, are uprooted and destroyed when they are exhausted.

A wrinkled, thick-set girl carrying on her back a sack of branches passes close by William and his guests, nodding in grim sycophancy.

"You were telling us about the fifth-year plants, Mr Rackham," comes the voice of Sugar.

"Yes," he loudly replies, as a second sack-bearer follows the first. "Some perfumeries harvest their lavender a sixth year.

Not Rackham's."

"And how soon after planting is the lavender ready to be used, sir?"' "When the plants are in their second year-though they are not at their best until the third."

"And how much lavender water will be produced, sir?"' "Oh, several thousand gallons."

"Isn't that an astonishing thought, grandfather?"'

Sugar asks the old man.

"Eh? Grandfather? You don't even know who your grandfather was!"

Sugar cranes her head to confirm that the sack-bearers are out of earshot. "You're going to get us all into mischief," she chides Colonel Leek in a feral whisper, jerking the handles of his wheelchair warningly. "I'd've had less bother from a beggar off the street."

The old man bares his teeth and shakes his hideous head free of its swaddlings. "What of it!" he sneers. "That's what comes of subterfuge. Charades! Fancy dress! Har!

Did I ever tell you about Lieutenant Carp, who I served with in the last great war?"' (by this he doesn't mean the war against the Ashantees, or even the Indian Mutiny, but the Crimean.) "There's subterfuge for ye! Carp dressed up in a lady's cloak and bonnet, and tried to cross over the enemy lines-the wind blew the cloak up over his head and there he was, hobbling around with his musket dangling between his legs. I've never seen a man shot so many times.

HurffHurffHur! Subterfuge!"

This outburst causes a few heads to pop up in the surrounding fields.

"A most diverting anecdote, sir," says William frigidly.

"Don't mind him, William," says

Sugar. "He'll be asleep soon. He always sleeps in the afternoon."

Colonel Leek churns his grizzled jaw in indignation. "That was years ago, trollop, when I weren't well! I'm better now!"

Sugar bends low over him, one hand digging her thinly-gloved claws into his right shoulder, the other gently caressing his left.

"Whisssky," she sings into his ear.

"Whisssssky."

Minutes later, when Colonel Leek is slumped in his chair, snoring, William Rackham and Sugar stand in the shade of an oak, watching the industry from a distance. Sugar is radiant, and not merely from the unaccustomed exercise of pushing the wheelchair; she's deeply happy. All her life, she's considered herself a city creature, and assumed that the countryside (imagined only through monochrome engravings and romantic poetry) had nothing to offer her. This conception she now casts off with joyful abandon.

She must make sure this isn't the last time she walks under these grand blue skies and on this soft, verdant earth. Here is air she means to breathe more often.

"Oh, William," she says, "will you bring me here again, for the great bonfire?"' "Yes, of course I shall," he says, for he can recognise the glow of happiness when he sees it, and he knows he is the author of that glow.

"Do you promise?"'

"Yes, you have my word."

Content, she turns to look towards the north-east: there's a swathe of rain far, far away, sprouting a rainbow. William stares at her from behind, his hand shielding his eyes against the sun.

His mistress's long skirts rustle gently in the breeze, her shoulder-blades poke through the tight fabric of her dress as she lifts her arm to shield her face. All at once he recalls how her breasts feel against his palms, the bruising sharpness of her hips on his own softer belly, the thrilling touch of her rough, cracked hands on his prick. He recalls the lushness of her hair when she's naked, the tiger textures on her skin like diagrams for his own fingers, showing him where to hold her waist or her arse as he slides inside. He longs to embrace her, wishes he could have his lavender fields empty for half an hour while he lies with Sugar on a verge of grass. What's kept him from going to see her every night? What man worthy of the name wouldn't have that exquisite body next to his as often as possible? Yes, he will, he must, go to see her much oftener in future-but not today; he has a lot to do today.

Sugar turns, and there are tears in her eyes.

The journey back to London, in the chartered coach-and-four, is purgatorially long, and the rain, so far away when Sugar stood in Rackham's fields, has met them half-way and now beats on the roof. The coach travels slower for the bad weather, and makes mysterious stops in villages and hamlets along the way, where the coachman dismounts and disappears for two, five, ten minutes at a time. Returning, he fiddles with the horses' bridles, combs the excess water from their hair, checks that the old fellow's wheelchair is still safe and snug under the tarpaulin on the roof, performs actions against the undercarriage that make the cabin shake. Haste is not his watchword.

Inside the cabin, Sugar shivers, and grits her teeth to stop them chattering. She's still in her lavender dress and nothing more, not even a shawl.

Knowing she'd be wheeling Colonel Leek about today, and keen to make an enchanting impression on William, she did without extra layers of clothing; now she's suffering the lack. The last thing she wants to do is snuggle close to the old man for warmth; he smells vile and, deprived of the support of his wheelchair's arm-rests, he's liable to keel into her lap.

"Collapse of bridge in heavy rain,

Hawick, 1867," he growls into the chilly, darkening space between them. "Three dead, not including livestock."

Sugar hugs herself and looks out of the mud-spattered, rain-swept window. The countryside, so colourful and miraculous when she walked at William's side on the lavender farm, has turned grey and godforsaken, like a hundred square miles of Hyde Park gone to seed, without any lights or gay pedestrians.

The coach jogs slowly onwards, towards a lost metropolis.

"Urp," belches Colonel Leek. The unsubtle fragrance of whisky and fermented digestive juices spreads in the bitter air.

A train might have been mercifully swift, not to mention (although William did mention it) a great deal cheaper, but the old man's infirmity would have caused no end of bother at various stations along the way, and he'd still have needed a coach to take him to Charing Cross and again at the Mitcham end, so engaging a coach for the whole journey seemed more sensible. Seemed.

"I give it six months," Colonel Leek is saying, "and you'll be out on yer arse."

"I didn't ask your opinion," retorts

Sugar. (cunning old blackguard: he's fired an arrow straight into the heart of her anxiety. William Rackham should be sitting here next to her just now, whiling the hours away with lively conversation, warming her hands inside his: why, oh why, didn't he accompany her?) The Colonel clears his glutinous windpipe for another recitation. "Fanny Gresham-in 1834, mistress of Anstey the shipping magnate, abode Mayfair; in 1835, discarded, abode Holloway Prison. Jane Hubble, known as Natasha-in 1852, mistress of Lord Finbar, abode Admiralty House; in 1853, corpse, abode Thames estuary…"

"Spare me the details, Colonel."

"Noooobody spared nothing, never!" he barks. "That's what I've learned in a long life walking this earth."

"If you were still walking, old man, we'd be on a train and back in London by now."

There is a pause while the insult sinks in.

"Enjoy the scenery, trollop," he sneers, nodding his gargoyle head towards her streaming window. "Makes a nice change, eh?

Glo-o-orious."

Sugar turns away from him, and hugs herself tighter. William cares for her, yes he does. Said he loves her, even-said it while drunk, admittedly, but not roaring drunk. And he allowed her to come to his farm, even though he could easily, once sober, have declared the subject closed. And he's promised to let her come again, at the end of October, which is… almost seven months in the future.

She tries to take heart from the sheer number of Rackham's employees. He is reconciled to a large amount of money flowing out from his personal fortune every week; it's not as if Sugar's upkeep is an isolated and conspicuous drain on his resources. She must regard herself, not as living out of his pocket, but as part of a grand tapestry of profit and expenditure that's been generations in the making. All she need do is spin out her own stitches in that tapestry, weave herself an inextricable figure in it. Already she's made marvellous progress: just think: a month ago she was a common prostitute! In half a year, who knows…

"He's a wind-bag," snarls Colonel Leek from inside his mulch of scarves, "and a coward. A nasty piece of work."

"Who?"' says Sugar irritably, wishing she were as snugly wrapped as he, but without the added ingredients.

"Your perfumer."

"He's no worse than most," she retorts. "Kinder-hearted than you."

"Horse-piss," cackles the old salt.

"The thought of his own fat self at the top of the tree, that's what he loves. He'd kill for advancement, can't you see? He'd fill a dirty puddle with you, to save his shoes."

"You don't know a thing about him," she snaps. "What would someone like you understand of his world?"'

Provoked to rage, the Colonel rears up so alarmingly that Sugar fears he'll pitch head-first onto the cabin floor. "I weren't always an old spoony-man, you little bed-rat," he wheezes, "I've lived more lives than you'll ever dream of!"

"All right, I'm sorry," she says hastily. "Here, drink some more of this." And she offers him the whisky bottle.

"I've had enough," he groans, settling back into his mulch of knitwear.

Sugar looks down at the bottle, whose contents are trembling and twinkling in the vibrating gloom. "You've hardly drunk any."

"A little goes a long way," the old man mutters, subdued after his outburst. "Drink some yerself, it'll stop yer shivering."

Sugar calls to mind his method of sucking whisky from the neck of the bottle, his toothless mouth closed round the smooth glassy teat. "No, thank you."

"I've wiped the end."

"Ugh," shudders Sugar helplessly.

"That's right, trollop," he sneers.

"Don't let anything dirty pass yer lips!"

Sugar utters a sharp moan of annoyance, almost identical to the one she uses for ecstasy, and folds her arms hard against her bosom. Mouth clamped shut to muffle the sound of chattering teeth, she counts to twenty; then, still angry, she counts the months of the year. She met William Rackham in November; now, in April, she is his mistress, with her own rooms and money enough to buy whatever she wishes. April, May, June… Why isn't he here with her in this coach? There's nothing she wishes to buy except his enduring passion for her…

Colonel Leek begins to snore loudly, a gross embodiment of all the sounds and smells of St Giles. She must never go back there, never.

But what if Rackham tires of her? Only a few days ago, he came to visit her (after not visiting her for three days) and their union was so hurried he didn't even trouble to undress her. ("I'm expected at my solicitor's in an hour," he explained. "You told me that Grinling fellow sounded slippery and by God you were right.") And what about the time before that? What a peculiar mood he was in! The way he asked her if she liked the ornaments he'd chosen for her and, having encouraged her to confess she didn't care for the swan on the mantelpiece, jovially snapped its porcelain neck. She laughed along with him, but what the devil was he playing at? Was he granting her greater licence to be candid-or was he letting her know he's a man who'll happily break the neck of anything that has outlived its usefulness?

Her rooms in Marylebone, towards which this coach is ferrying her so painfully slowly, ought to glow in her anticipation like a fire-lit haven, but that's not how she envisages them. They are dead rooms, waiting to be inspired by the vivacity of conversation, the heat of coupling. When she's there alone, loitering in the silence, washing her hair over and over, forcing herself to study books without the remotest sensational appeal, she feels surrounded by a gas-lit halo of unease. She can say aloud, as often and as loudly as she pleases, "This is mine," but she'll hear no reply.

The crates containing her belongings were finally delivered, but she's already thrown most of their contents away-books she'll never read again, pamphlets whose marginal scribbles would enrage William if he chanced upon them. What's the use of keeping these things stowed in her cupboards and wardrobes, attracting silverfish (ugh!) when they might as well be gunpowder waiting to blow up in her face? She worries enough as it is, about William discovering her novel.

Each time she leaves the house, she frets he'll come and rummage through all her nooks and drawers. Only when she's nearly sick with hunger does she hurry into the streets, conceding that if she waits any longer for him to visit, she's liable to starve. In the hotels and restaurants where she takes her meals, the attendants serve her wordlessly, as if biding their time before they see her no more.

If only she could remember exactly how many glasses of brandy William had in him when he said he loved her!

"Arghl-grrnugh," groans Colonel Leek, convulsing in dreams of long ago. "Come out with it, man!… What's the story on my legs? I'll have a limp, yes?… need a walking stick, is that it? Arghl… Speak, damn you… Unff… Unff… Speak …"

In the morning, the rain has passed away and church bells chime. Lying half-uncovered in a tangle of sunlit bed-sheets, bathed in creamy yellow brilliance streaming through the window, Henry Rackham wakes from nightmares of erotic disgrace. God has wrought a perfect new day regardless; the divine imperative for renewal is proof against whatever evils may have transpired during the hours of darkness. God never loses heart, despite the baseness of Man…

Henry disentwines himself from the sheets, which are wet with the same substance that pollutes his night-shirt. He strips naked, shocked as always by the bestiality of the body thus revealed, for he's an exceptionally hairy specimen, and the hair on his body is darker and wirier than the soft blond fleece on his head. It's sexual incontinence that makes all this coarse hair grow, Henry knows. Adam and Eve were hairless in Paradise, and so are the ideal physiques of antiquity and such nudes as Modern Art permits. were he ever to find himself in a gathering of unclothed men, his own ape-like form would mark him out as a habitual self-abuser, a beast in the making. There is a grain of truth in Darwin's heresy: for, though humankind did not evolve from animals, each human has the potential to devolve into a savage.

The church bells toll on as Henry shambles to his bathroom. Funeral service? Not a wedding, surely, at this early hour. One day, the bells will toll for him… Will he, by then, finally be ready?

He sponges himself clean with a cloth dipped in cold water: flesh like his doesn't deserve pampering. His body hair has thickened, over the years, into patterns which, when moistened, lie plastered around his abdomen and thighs like Gothic designs. His penis hangs gross and distended, like a reptile head, and his testicles writhe irritably as he washes them; nothing could bear less resemblance to the compressed, seashell-smooth pudenda of classical statuary.

Bodley and Ashwell have assured him that lewd women can be hairy too-so perhaps it's thanks to his old schoolchums that his dreams are so full of hirsute nymphs. Can he blame Bodley and Ashwell though, for the way Mrs Fox, in his sleeping fantasies, disports herself like a succubus, laughing as she seizes hold of his phallus and guides it between her legs, where it slips through warm wet fur…?

Oh, if only I could grow up! he laments, as, even now, his genitals stir in excitement. What man of my age still behaves as if pubescence is newly upon him? When, oh when, will First Corinthians 1311 come true for me? My friends advise me to take orders without delay, lest I begin "too old": Lord, if they only knew! I am a little boy trapped inside a monstrous, degraded husk…

Half-dressed now, naked only from the waist up, Henry sits heavily in his chair before the hearth, tired before his day even starts. He longs for someone to bring him a cup of tea and a hot breakfast, but… no, he cannot employ a servant. He could easily afford one-his father is more generous than rumour gives him credit for-but no, a servant is out of the question. Think of it: a flesh-and-blood woman in his house, sleeping under the same roof, undressing for bed, bathing naked in a tub…! As if things weren't bad enough already.

"Servants are a boon for every growing boy,"

Bodley once told him, in one of those encounters whose sole object was to send the adolescent Henry fleeing under a cloud of his peers' laughter. "Especially when they come straight from the country. Sun-ripened, clean and fresh."

Henry's cat comes padding in now, making exotic attempts at conversation as she butts her head against his calves. He has nothing for her, the last of the meat having spoiled.

"Can you not wait?"' he mutters, but the innocent animal looks at him as though he's feather-brained.

His own stomach churns noisily. Perhaps a very old servant would be safe? But how old would she have to be? Fifty? Mightn't the butcher's wife-the one who saves the best scraps for Henry's puss and always has a smile for him-be fifty? And yet he's been known to wonder what she might look like naked.

Seventy, then?

He looks down at the fire, at his overzealously-darned socks sheathing his big feet like tubers caked with earth. He gazes at his own bare arms, folded across his chest. His own nipples, framed thus, are of no sensual interest to him-yet identical knobbles of flesh, imagined on a female chest, have the power to drive him to self-pollution. were his own breasts enlarged with milk he would recoil in disgust-yet, imagined on a woman, those same bladders of flesh become fantastically attractive. And what about the paintings at the Royal Academy exhibitions-the Magdalens and the classical heroines and the martyred saints-he doesn't care who they're supposed to be, as long as their flesh is on show! The way he stares at them, the other gallery visitors must take him for a connoisseur-or perhaps they perceive perfectly well that he's ogling rose-nippled breasts and pearly thighs. And yet, what is he really staring at? A layer of pink paint! A layer of dried oil covered with varnish-and he'll stand before it, for minutes at a time, willing a silvery wisp of drapery to slip from between a woman's legs, wishing he could grasp hold of it and tear it out of the way, revealing… revealing what? A triangle of canvas? For a triangle of inanimate canvas he is willing to risk his immortal soul! All the so-called-mysteries of the Christian faith, the enigmas beyond human reason, are not so very difficult to understand if one applies oneself, but this…!

Henry's cat is not to be denied, and begins to cry, having learned that this is the best way to rouse him from concerns not relevant to the feline world. Within fifteen minutes, Henry has been driven from his house, fully dressed, combed and shaved, in search of meat.

On his return, he feels more his own master.

The brisk walk and the fresh air have done him good; his clothes have warmed on his body and become part of him, a decorous second skin rather than an ill-fitting disguise. The streets and buildings of Notting Hill were familiar and immutable, reminding him that the real world bears little resemblance to the fluid, shape-shifting locales of his dreams. The bracing impact of stone under his walking feet: that's the truth, not his insubstantial phantasms. Most heartening of all, he has seen the butcher's wife and, thank God, not coveted her. She smiled at him, handed him the cat scraps and some ox tongue for himself, and he didn't imagine her wantonly disrobing to reveal the body of a goddess. She was the butcher's wife: nothing less, nothing more.

"Here, puss," he says, throwing the animal its breakfast on the kitchen floor.

"Let me think, now."

Henry ponders while he prepares an omelette, almost from memory, with the merest glance at the ancient copy of Mrs Rundell's New System of Domestic Cookery (a gift from Mrs Fox, with the name Emmeline Fox inscribed in faded schoolgirl copperplate on the flyleaf and, added in dark indigo ink above the name, in a plainer and more confident hand, To my valued Friend Henry Rackham, Christmas 1874, from…). He sprinkles the required herbs over the sizzling puddle of whisked egg before it cooks too much, then becomes so absorbed in the curlicued signature of Mrs Fox's younger self that he burns, slightly, the bottom of the omelette before he can fold it. It is still perfectly good.

London's destitute would be grateful for far worse.

"It's quite simple, puss," he explains to his saucer-eyed familiar as he eats. "The marriage of man and woman produces offspring.

It's been going on for thousands of years. It's like plants and flowers growing when the rain falls. A necessary, God-given process; nothing whatsoever to do with fevers, lusts and lubricious dreams."

Henry's cat looks up at him, unconvinced.

"To a man with a mission, the propagation of humankind shouldn't occupy more than a passing thought." He forks a wedge of egg into his mouth and chews. "In any case," he adds when the mouthful has gone down, "the one woman I might wish to marry has no wish to marry again."

Henry's cat cocks its head. "Miaow?"'

With a sigh, he throws a morsel of omelette at her furry feet.

"Hoi! Parson!"

The words, though shouted, are barely audible, sucked in and swallowed up by the dark orifices of the street-the gaping windows, decrepit alleys, broken trapdoors and bottomless pits. A grizzled man of indeter minate age, who has been watching Henry's progress for some time, rises up from a smoky subterranean stairwell like Lazarus from the grave. His filthy gnarled hands grip the rope that hangs in place of the missing handrail; his bloodshot, wolf-browed eyes are narrowed with suspicion. "Lookin' for anybody in pertickler?"' "Perhaps for you, sir," answers Henry, summoning all his nerve as he walks closer, for this man is heavily muscled, and already in his shirtsleeves, so there's little to inhibit fisticuffs. "But why do you call me "Parson"?"' "You look like one." The grizzled man draws abreast with Henry, hands on the hips of his mud-coloured trousers. In the darkness of the stairwell behind him, a dog mutters in frustration, claws scrabbling at stone and rotten wood, unable to follow its master up the vertiginous steps to the surface world.

"Well, I'm not a parson," says Henry, regretfully. "Forgive my boldness, sir, but you have the look of a man who has suffered much. Indeed, of a man who is suffering still. If it's not too much of an imposition, will you tell me your story?"'

The man's eyes narrow even tighter, radically rearranging the whiskers of his eyebrows.

With one massive, calloused hand he smooths down his hair, which is being blown across his forehead by a foul breeze.

"You ain't a norfer, are ye?"' he says.

Henry repeats the strange word to himself silently, straining to divine its meaning.

"I beg your pardon?"' he's obliged to ask.

"Orfer," repeats the man. "A fellow as writes books about poor men that poor men can't read."

"No, no, nothing of the kind," Henry hastens to reassure him, and this seems to earn him better favour, for the man steps back. "What I am is… I am a person who knows too little about the poor, as do all of us who aren't poor ourselves. Perhaps you could teach me what, in your opinion, I need to know."

The man grins, leans his head to one side, and scratches his chin.

"Will you give me money?"' he enquires.

Henry sets his jaw, knowing he must be firm on this question if he's ever to be a clergyman, for he'll no doubt be asked it many times.

"Not without first knowing your situation."

The grizzled man throws back his head and laughs.

"Well, well!" he declares. "There you 'ave the plight of the poor man in a nutshell.

The likes of you gets money gived to you no matter how lazy and wicked you are, and the likes of us must press our old trousers, and 'ang curtains on our broken winders, and sing 'ymns while we shines yet shoes, before you'll give us a penny!" And he laughs again, opening his mouth so wide that Henry catches a glimpse of blackened molars within.

"But," protests Henry, "haven't you any work?"'

The man grows serious at this, and once again his eyes narrow.

"I might 'ave," he shrugs. "'Ave you?"'

This is a challenge Henry has been expecting, and he's determined not to be so easily shamed. "You take me for someone who's never done a day's hard labour," he says, "and you are right. But I can't help the class I was born into, any more than you can. May we not, even so, speak man to man?"' This sets the other scratching his chin again, until it begins to grow quite red.

"You're a queer fish, ain't you?"' he mutters.

"Perhaps I am," says Henry, smiling for the first time since he opened his mouth. "Now, will you tell me what you think I should know?"'

Thus begins Henry's initiation-the surrender of his religious virginity. Thus begins, in earnest, his response to the Call.

For an hour or more the two men stand there, in the squalor of St Giles, while a faint miasma rises towards the sun, and the gutters release their aroma like soup coming to the boil. Other men, women and dogs pass by from time to time; several of these make overtures to join the conversation, but are coarsely rebuffed by the grizzled man.

"You've got me well and truly cranked up now," he confesses to Henry under his breath, then bawls once more at loitering "busybodies" to wait their "own bloody turn" with "the Parson".

"But I'm not a parson," protests Henry each time another gawker is dispatched.

"Listen to me, I'm just gettin' to the guts of it now," growls the grizzled man, and lectures on. He has a very great deal to say on a large number of topics, but Henry knows that it's not the particulars but the root principles that are important. Much of what this man says can be found, in pr@ecis, in books and pamphlets, but solutions that appear obvious under Henry's study-lamp at home don't seem to apply here. To a man like Henry, for whom righteousness is a high ideal, it comes as a shock to learn that to men such as this poor wretch, righteousness is worthless, while vice appears not merely attractive but essential to survival.

Clearly, anyone who means to fight for the souls of these people won't get far without first understanding this, and Henry is grateful to learn the lesson so early.

"We shall speak again, sir," he promises, after the man finally runs out of things to say. "I am indebted to you, for all you've told me.

Thank you, sir." And, tipping his hat, he steps back and takes his leave of his bemused informant.

Walking on, farther down Church Lane,

Henry spies a quartet of small boys, huddled conspiratorially near the side door of a drinking-house. Emboldened by his success with the grizzled man, he hails them with the cheery greeting, "Hello boys! What are you doing?"' but their response is disappointing: they disappear like rats.

Next he sees a woman turning into the street from the better parts beyond-a respectable-looking woman in Henry's estimation, wearing a terracotta dress. She negotiates the cobbles carefully, eyes downcast. Gingerly she steps, avoiding the dog filth, but when she spots Henry, she lifts the hems of her skirts higher than he's ever seen hems lifted-revealing not just the toes, but the whole buttoned shank of her boots, and a glimpse of frilly calf as well. She smiles at him, as if to say, "In a street full of ordure, what's a body to do?"'

Henry's first thought is to walk past her as quickly as possible, but then he reminds himself that if he's ever to realise his destiny, he must not ignore opportunities like this one. Filling his chest with breath and squaring his shoulders, he steps forward.

No sooner has he uttered his first words of greeting than Rackham finds himself smothered with kisses.

"Ho!" he laughs, as his ears and cheeks and eyes and throat are grazed, with exuberant speed, by Sugar's moistened lips. "What have I done to deserve this?"' "You know very well," she says, pressing her hands tight against his back, straining to make an impression through the layers of his clothing. "You've changed everything."

William shakes off his ulster and hangs it on the massive cast-iron coat-stand that was delivered here yesterday. "You mean, this?"' he teases, nudging the unyielding framework to remind her how flimsy its discarded predecessor was.

"You know what I mean," she says, stepping backwards towards the bedroom. She is wearing her green dress, the one she wore when she met him, its mildew painstakingly cleaned off with matchsticks, cotton wool and Rackham's Universal Solvent. "I'll never forget my day at your lavender farm."

"Nor shall I," he says, following her.

"Your Colonel Leek would linger in anyone's memory."

She flinches in embarrassment. "Oh William, I'm so sorry: I thought he'd be better behaved-he did promise me." She sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in her lap, head slightly downcast, so that her abundant fringe falls over her eyes. "Can you forgive me? I know so few men, that's the problem."

William sits beside her, laying one of his big hands over hers.

"Ach, he's no worse than some of the hopeless drunkards I have to deal with in my business affairs. The world is full of repugnant old blackguards."

"He's the nearest thing to a grandfather I ever had," she reflects ruefully, "when I was a little girl." Is this the right moment for winning his sympathy? She glances sideways, to judge if her arrow was wide of the mark, but there's compassion in his face, and the redoubled pressure of his hand on hers lets her know she has reached his heart.

"Your childhood years," he says, "must have been Hell on earth."

She nods and, without having to will it, real tears fall from her eyes. But what if William is one of those men who cannot abide a woman weeping?

What does she think she's up to? Something has gone awry inside her breast, where such decisions are made; a valve of self-control has failed, and she feels herself borne on a spillage of unfiltered feeling.

"St Giles has a terrible reputation," offers William.

"It used to be a lot worse," she says,

"before they cut it in half with New Oxford Street." For some reason this strikes her as unbearably funny, and she snorts with laughter, wetting the tip of her nose with snot. What's wrong with her? She'll disgust him… but no, he's handing her his handkerchief, an eminently pickpocketable square of white silk, monogrammed, for her to blow her nose in.

"Do you… do you have any sisters?"' he asks, awkwardly. "Or brothers?"'

She shakes her head, burying her face in the soft cloth, regaining her composure.

"Alone," she says, hoping that her tears have not entirely washed away the subtle brown pigment with which she defines her pale orange eyelashes.

"And you?"'

"Me?"'

"Do you have any sisters?"'

"None," he says, with obvious regret.

"My father married late, and lost his wife early."

"Lost?"' "She disgraced him, and he cast her off."

Back in control of herself now, Sugar resists the temptation to pry into the facts of the matter, judging that she'll be granted the answers to a greater number of questions if she probes less boldly.

"How sad," she says. "And your wife Agnes: has she a large family?"' "No," replies William, "smaller even than mine. Her natural father died when she was a young girl, her mother when she came out of school. Her step-father is a lord: lives abroad, travels a great deal, has married a lady I've never met. As for siblings, Agnes should have had three or four sisters, but they all died in childbirth. She herself barely survived."

"That's why she's sickly, perhaps?"'

William's eyes flash with pain, as Agnes's voice, hoarse with demented hatred, yells You make me sick! inside his skull: "Perhaps," he sighs.

Sugar strokes his hand, insinuates her fingers up his sleeve, pressing her rough flesh against his wrists in a motion she knows arouses him-if he's to be aroused at all.

"I do have one brother, though," he adds briskly.

"A brother? Really?"' she says, as though William must be awfully clever or resourceful to have furnished himself with such a thing. "What sort of man is he?"'

William falls back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "What sort of man?"' he echoes, as she lays her head on his chest.

"Now there's a question…"

"'Ello, sir," the prostitute calls, in a friendly but offhand manner, as though eager to please but just as content to be refused. "Want a nice girl-not expensive?"'

She is pretty, and in much better condition than the freckled girl who, weeks ago in these same streets, told him her hand was his for a shilling. Yet, to Henry's great relief, his response to this smart little temptress is no different from his response to her shabbier counterpart: he feels pity. The longings that plague him when he walks side by side with Mrs Fox are far from his mind now; he desires only to make a good account of himself, and learn as much from this poor creature as he learned from the grizzled man.

"I wish… only to talk with you," he assures her. "I am a gentleman."

"Oh, good, sir," affirms the woman.

"I don't speak to any man as ain't a gentleman. But let's speak in my 'ouse. If you'll come with me, sir, it ain't very far." Her speech is common, but not Cockney: possibly she's a ruined maidservant from the country, or some other victim of rural circumstance.

"No, stay," he cautions her. "I meant what I said just now: I wish only to talk with you."

Mistrust, absent from her face while she took him for a partner in crime, now creases her brow.

"Oh, I ain't very good at talkin', sir," she says, casting a glance over her shoulder. "I'll not keep you."

"No, no," Henry remonstrates, guessing the reason for her reluctance. "I'll pay you for your time. Whatever is your usual fee, I will pay."

She cocks her head quizzically then, like a child who has been promised something she's old enough to know is improbable.

"One shillin', please," she proposes.

Without hesitation Henry puts his hand into his waistcoat pocket, produces not one but two shillings, and holds them out to her.

"Come along then, sir," she says, folding the coins into her small hand. "I'll take you where we can talk to our 'earts' content."

"No, no," protests Henry. "Here in the street is quite satisfactory."

She laughs, raucously and without covering her mouth. (mrs Fox is right: there is no mistaking a fallen woman.) "Very well, sir. What do you wish to 'ear?"'

He draws a deep breath, knowing she thinks him a fool, praying for the grace to transcend foolishness. She has clasped her hands behind her back, the better to show him her body no doubt.

She is bosomy, but thin in the waist-very like the women used in advertisements for shoe polish, or his brother's perfumes for that matter. Yet she is nothing to him but an unfortunate in peril of perdition. His heart beats hard in his breast, but only with fear that she'll use her pretty tongue to mock his faith or his sincerity, and leave him stammering in the wake of her scornful departure.

Apart from his heartbeat, he is unaware of his body; it might as well be a column of smoke, or a pedestal for his soul.

"You are… a prostitute," he confirms.

"Yes, sir." She clasps her hands tighter, and stands straighter, like a schoolgirl under interrogation.

"And when did you lose your virtue?"' "When I was sixteen, sir, to me 'usband."

"To your husband, you say?"' he replies, moved by her ignorance of moral science. "Why, you didn't lose it, then!"

She shakes her head, smiling as before. "I weren't married to 'im then, sir. We was married in shame, as they say."

Is she making fun of him? Henry squares his jaw, resolved to demonstrate he knows a thing or two about prostitutes. "You later left him," he suggests. "Or were you cast out?"' "You might say as I was cast out, sir. 'Every died."

"And what is it that keeps you in this life?

Would you say it was bad company? Or

Society's door being closed to you? Or… lust?"' "Lust, definitely, sir," she replies. "The lust to eat. If a day goes by an' I ain't 'ad a bite, I crave it, sir. Food, that is, sir." She shrugs, pouts, and licks her lips. "Weak, that's me."

Henry begins to blush: she's no fool, this woman-cleverer than he, perhaps. Is there a future for a clergyman whose wits are duller than those of his parishioners? (mrs Fox assures him his brain is as sharp as anyone's and that he would make a wonderful vicar, but she is too kind…) Surely, for a man with a mind as run-of-the-mill as his to be any use at shepherding a parish, he'd need to be blessed with exceptional purity of spirit, a divine simplicity of…

"'Ave you finished with me already, sir?"' "Uh… no!" With a start, he returns his attention to his prostitute's eyes-eyes which (he notices suddenly) are the same colour as Mrs Fox's, and very nearly the same shape.

He clears his throat, and asks: "Would you leave this life if you had work?"' "This is work, sir," she grins. "'Ard work."

"Well, yes…" he agrees, but then,

"No…" he disagrees, "But …" He frowns, dumbstruck. That old cynic MacLeish (he now recalls) once spoke of the futility of arguing with the poor. "More education," MacLeish declared, "is precisely what they don't need. Already they can outfox philosophers and do circus tricks with logic. They're too clever by half!" But Mrs Fox refuted him, yes she did…

What was it she said?

The prostitute cocks her head and leans closer to him, in an effort to see through the dreamy sheen in his unfocused eyes. Impishly, she waves her tiny hand at him, as though from a distant shore.

"You're a strange one, ain't you?"' she says. "A ninnocent. I like you."

Henry feels a fresh rush of blood to his cheeks, much more copious than the last. It throbs across his entire face, even reaching the tips of his ears-what an ass he must look!

"I-I know a man," he stammers, "a man who owns a business. A very great concern, that's growing larger as we speak. I… I could arrange…" (for hasn't William been saying he needs more workers and quickly?) "…

I'm sure I could arrange for you to be given employment."

To his dismay, her smile vanishes from her face and, for the first time since they met, she looks as if she despises him. All at once he's afraid of her; afraid like any man of losing the approving sparkle in a woman's eyes; afraid, simply, of letting her go. He yearns to convey to her the glad tidings of God's generosity in times of need, to inspire her with proof of how the grimmest circumstance can be lightened by faith. The desire chokes him, but he knows that words are not enough, especially.his feeble words.

If only he could transmit God's grace through his hands, and galvanise her with a touch!

"What sort of work?"' demands the prostitute. "Factory work?"' "Well… yes, I suppose so."

"Sir," she declares indignantly.

"I've 'ad work in a factory, and I know that to earn two shillin's like these" (she holds up the coins he has given her) "I should 'ave to work many long hours, breakin' my back in stink and danger, with never a minute to rest, and 'ardly no sleep."

"But you wouldn't be damned!" blurts Henry in desperation. No sooner is the word "damned" past his lips, than he receives his own punishment: the prostitute looks away and irritably thrusts his coins into a slit in her skirts, obviously deciding she's given him as much time as he deserves. Fixing her gaze on the far end of the street, she remarks, "Parson's tricks, sir, just parson's tricks, all that." She glances back at him suspiciously.

"You're a parson, ain't you?"'

"No, no, I'm not," he says.

"Don't believe you," she sniffs.

"No, really, I'm not," he pleads, recalling Saint Peter and the cock crow.

"Well, you ought to be," she says, reaching forward to touch, gently, his tightly-knotted necktie, as if her fingertips could conjure it into a clergyman's collar.

"God bless you!" he cries.

There's a moment's pause while his ejaculation hangs in the air. Then the prostitute bends forward, resting her hands on her knees, and begins to giggle. She giggles for half a minute or more.

"You're a character, sir," she wheezes, shoulders shaking. "But I must go…"

"Wait!" he implores her, his head belatedly crowded with vital questions, questions he could not forgive himself for failing to put to her. "Do you believe you have a soul?"' "A soul?"' she echoes incredulously.

"A ghost inside me, with wings on? Well …" She opens her mouth to speak, her lips curved in mockery; then, observing his plaintive expression, she swallows her spite, and softens the blow. "Anything you-'ve got," she sighs, "I've got too, I'm sure."

She smooths down the front of her dress, her hands sliding over the contours of her belly.

"Now, I must be goin'. Last question, gentlemen, please!"

Henry sways on his feet, horrified to find himself in the grip of Evil. Only a few minutes ago, he was in the Lord's hands: what's become of him now? His self-possession is gone, and he might as well be thrashing in the clammy grip of a dream. One last question his pretty prostitute will answer; one last question, and what shall it be? Aghast, he hears his voice speak:

"Are you… are you hairy?"'

She squints in puzzlement. "Hairy, sir?"' "On your body." He waves his hand vaguely at her bodice and skirts. "Do you have hair?"' "Hair, sir?"' she grins mischievously.

"Why, of course, sir: same as you!" And at once she grabs hold of her skirts and gathers them up under her bosom, holding the rucked material with one hand while, with the other, she pulls down the front of her pantalettes, exposing the dark pubic triangle.

Loud laughter sounds from elsewhere in the street as Henry stares for a long instant, shuts his eyes, and turns his back on her. His upbringing makes it almost impossible for him to turn his back on a woman without first politely concluding the conversation, but he manages. Head aflame, he stumbles stiffly down the street, as if her sex is buried deep in his flesh like a sword.

"I only wanted an answer!" he yells hoarsely over his shoulder, as more and more of Church Lane's elusive and subterranean voices join in the laughter without even understanding its cause.

"Jesus, sir!" she calls after him.

"You ought to get summat for your extra shillin'!"

"So there you have it," says William, as Sugar strokes her hands through the thick fur of his chest. "As different from me as night from day. But not a bad fellow all the same. And who knows?

He may yet astound us, and seize his destiny."

Sugar pauses in her encouragements to William's growing manhood. "You mean… seize Rackham Perfumeries?"' "No, no, that's mine now, forever; no one can take it away," he says-though his erection, unnerved by the thought, falters and requires reassurance. "No, I meant Henry may yet seize… I don't know, whatever a man of his sort wishes to seize, I suppose …" He groans as Sugar mounts him.

This is the safe course, she's found. Through all the years, with all the men, this is what she's learned: a wilted man is an unhappy man, and unhappy men can be dangerous. Sheathe them in a warm hole, and they'll perk up. Whenever the cockstand is uncertain, whenever strong drink has taken its toll, whenever sadness or worry lie heavy on a man's heart, whenever doubt attacks his soul, whenever he glimpses his own nakedness and finds himself ugly or absurd, whenever he sees his manhood and is struck by the morbid fear that this may be the last time it rises from its patch of hair, then the only safe course is to cultivate its growth so it can sway unsupported for an instant-just long enough for it to be stowed snugly inside. Thereafter, Nature takes over.