The Crimson petal and the white

SIXTEEN

"Between the bottomless gutter of damnation and the bright road to Paradise," cries a matronly voice, "stand we!"

Emmeline Fox cringes, and obscures her grimacing mouth behind her steamy tea-cup. Mrs Borlais is getting carried away again.

"We can but extend our hands-oh, let us pray that some desperate soul seizes hold of us!"

All around the meeting hall, the other members of the Rescue Society glance at each other, trying to determine whether their leader is calling them to prayer in the literal sense, or whether this is mere inspirational rhetoric. A dozen sensibly dressed ladies, most of them even less comely than the grey-faced Mrs Fox, reach a silent consensus, and their eyes remain open, their hands unsteepled. Outside the sooty windows of their Jermyn Street headquarters, London's unconverted millions teem, shadowy ungraspables flickering past the glass.

Mrs Nash approaches Mrs Fox, teapot in hand. A simple soul, is Mrs Nash; she's hoping that in this Refreshment interval between the Discussion and the Going-Forth there's enough time left to pour her fellow Rescuers another cup of tea.

But no: "Sisters, it's time we were on our way," declares Mrs Borlais, and she sets the example by waddling out into the vestibule. Among the seated there is a rustle of disinclination, not because they fear the challenge of evangelism but because Mrs Hibbert forgot the biscuits today and had to go out and buy some, which means that most of the Rescuers are only on their first biscuit-some yet to take their first bite. Now their leader beckons them to rise, what can they do? They may be about to wrestle with Vice in the dark cesspools of Shoreditch, but can they be so bold as to walk out into the street eating biscuits? No.

Mrs Borlais senses the wavering of enthusiasm, and takes it to be faint-heartedness.

"I implore you all to remember,

Sisters," she calls, "that saving a soul from damnation is a thousand times more worthwhile than wresting a body from the claws of a savage beast. If you saved a person from a savage beast, you'd feel the pride of it as long as you lived! Be proud, then, Sisters!"

Mrs Fox is first to stand behind Mrs Borlais, despite having no patience with such vainglorious stuff. In her opinion, the attitude of the Rescuer doesn't matter-whether she's proud or discouraged, zealous or weary. These things are transient. A million Christian people in the past felt pride, a million felt discouragement, and all that's left of them now is their souls, and the souls they were able to save. "The Rescue, not the Rescuer": this has always been Emmeline's motto, and should have been the motto of the Rescue Society, too, if she were its leader. Not that she ever would be: she was born to be a dissenter within a larger certainty, she knows that.

"Let's be off, then," she says breezily, to bridge the gap between savage beasts and uneaten biscuits.

They go then, the Rescuers, all eight of them.

United, as always, like soldiers in mufti.

Yet, less than an hour after the Going-Forth, Emmeline Fox has strayed away from the main group and is in delicate pursuit of a pregnant child in a foul-smelling cul-de-sac.

Sugar, for her part, is sitting in a spic-and-span, brightly lit tea-room in Westbourne Terrace, toying with a cold cup of the house speciality and a nibbled scone, eavesdropping on a servant. The servant sits at one table, eating and drinking merrily, gossiping with a chum; Sugar sits alone at another table, her unfocused eyes fixed on the reflection of the ceiling lamp floating in her tea, her back to the conversation, her ears burning.

Don't be judgemental: this is not the way Sugar usually occupies her Tuesday afternoons; in fact, it's her first time. No, really!

William Rackham is in Cardiff, you see, until Thursday, and Agnes Rackham is indisposed. So, rather than being idle, what's the harm in following Clara, Agnes's lady's-maid, on her afternoon off, and seeing what comes of it?

Indeed, it's proved well worthwhile so far.

Clara is a wonderfully loquacious creature, at least in the company of an Irish girl she calls (if Sugar hears rightly) "Shnide"-another lady's-maid, identically dressed. The tea-room is quiet, with only five customers; the ever-improving facilities of Paddington Terminus are bleeding it dry. Fortunately for Sugar, who might have had difficulty eavesdropping in the clinking hustle-bustle of the station, Clara and Shnide are agreed that it's much nicer here, away from all the smelly foreigners and children. Sugar sips very slowly at her tea, occasionally toys with a minuscule mirror-image of Clara and Shnide in her teaspoon, and lets the efflux of gossip and discontent flow into her ears.

This is what she learns: William Rackham is nasty piece of work, a tyrant.

His grasp on the workings of his household has metamorphosed from a limp-wristed dabble to an iron fist. Once upon a time he couldn't bear to look you in the face, now he "stares right through you". Last week he gave a speech about how other men as wealthy as himself would get themselves grander servants in a flash, but that he won't dream of it, for he knows how hard his own girls work to earn their keep. Of course now everyone below stairs is terrified.

But William Rackham isn't the worst of it: no, the brunt of Clara's spite is borne by her own mistress, a sly, two-faced creature who feigns illness and frailty one day, the better to bully her unsuspecting servants with a sudden display of bad temper and outrageous demands the next.

"Last December," complains Clara,

"I thought she was going to die. Now sometimes I think I will."

Clara is considering, she says, finding a new position with less difficult masters, but she's worried the Rackhams won't write her a good testimonial. "It would be just like them," she hisses. "If I'm good, they won't let me go; if I'm bad, they'll kick me into the gutter."

"Slaves, that's what we are," affirms

Shnide. "No better than slaves."

The conversation moves on to the topic of Clara's and Shnide's men friends; they each have a lover, it transpires. Sugar is taken aback to learn this: she's always forgetting that unattached women seek out male company when they've no need to. Pimps she can understand; rich benefactors, too. But friends? Friends with no money, living in lodging-houses, like Clara's Johnny and Shnide's Alfie? What can the attraction be? Sugar is all ears, but by the time the servants kiss and rise to leave, she's none the wiser. How can these two bundles of spite, this petty pair of gossips, profess "love" for anybody? (particularly if that body is a man's gross and dog-smelly one, hairy-faced, oily-headed, dirty-fingernailed …) "Mind what I said," says Shnide.

"Don't let him walk all over you."

Who is she referring to? Clara's

Johnny? Or William Rackham? Clara simpers as though she feels quite capable now of subjugating either man, or both. You simpleton! Sugar feels like shouting at her.

This true love of yours most likely has his cock stuck deep in a trollop! And William will throw you into the street like a rotten apple if you dare to defy him! Her anger is ferocious, having not existed a moment before; it bursts fully formed out of silent obscurity, like a fire in a shuttered warehouse. She bites her lip as the servants prattle their way out of the door, onto the sunny street; she squeezes her tea-cup in her hands, praying she doesn't shatter it, half-wishing she might.

"Nice cup of tea, was it?"' says the tea-room proprietor sarcastically soon after, as Sugar is paying her pittance for the privilege of eavesdropping in comfort for an hour.

Watch your step, hisses Sugar inside her hot skull. You need all the bloody custom you can get.

"Yes, thank you," she replies, and demurely inclines her head, the very picture of a lady.

A couple of hours later, Agnes Rackham is standing at the window of Clara's bedroom-not a place she normally haunts, but nowadays there's no telling when one's guardian angel is going to pop up, and these attic bedrooms make such excellent roosts from which to glimpse her.

Squinting through the glass, Agnes examines the sun-dappled trees under which her guardian angel sometimes materialises, on the eastern periphery of the Rackham grounds. There's no one to be seen there-well, no one of consequence. Shears is fussing about, tying metal wires around the stems of the flowers to make them grow straight, pulling up weeds and stuffing them into the pockets of his trousers. If only he would go away, perhaps her guardian angel would appear.

She's shy of strangers, Agnes has found.

Clara's bedroom smells unpleasantly of perfume. How odd that the girl should be scrupulously odourless while working, but that when she comes finally to bed, she should anoint herself with scent.

Agnes leaves the window and bends to sniff the servant's pillow. It stinks of something vulgar:

Hopsom's, perhaps, or one of Rackham's cheaper lines. How regrettable that William must put his name to such garbage; in the Future, if his star continues to rise, perhaps he'll produce only the most exquisite and exclusive perfumes-perfumes for princesses.

Agnes sways on her feet. The pain in her head is bad again; if she's not careful, she'll pitch forward and be found sleeping on Clara's bed, her face nestled in that pungent pillow.

She straightens, returns to the window. And there, under the sun-dappled trees, barely distinguishable through the incandescent lances of the freshly painted fence, moves the flickering form of her guardian angel. Within moments, it's gone, sucked back into the ether; there's not even time for a wave. But it was there.

Agnes hurries out of Clara's room, breathing deeply. Her heart flutters in her chest, her bosom tingles as if there's a hand pressed hard against each breast, the pain in her head is ebbing deliciously, dwindling to a small lump of coldness behind her left eye, quite bearable; the fist of ice lodged in her skull has melted to the size of a grape.

She descends the stairs-the dreary uncarpeted servants' stairs-to where the proper parts of the house begin. Hurrying to the parlour, she's surprised and delighted all over again by the new wallpaper there, and she takes a seat at the piano. Open before her is the sheet music of "Crocuses Ahoy!", marked with her own annotations to warn her when the demi-semiquavers are coming. She plays the opening bars, plays them again, plays them over and over. Softly and sweetly, using this piano phrase as accompaniment, she hums a new melody, her own, purely out of her head. The notes she sings, hesitant at first, resolve themselves into a fetching tune. How inventive she is today! Quite the little composer! She resolves to sing this song of hers as long as she can stand it, to send it as far as Heaven, to nag it into the memory of God, to make time pass until someone is summoned to write it down for her, and it's printed up nicely and ferried to the far corners of the earth, for women everywhere to sing. She sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board.

Later, when she's tired of composing, Agnes goes to her bedroom and plays with her new hats.

She parades them in front of the mirror, holding her head high, smoothing the wrinkles out of her silky hips. Reflected back at her she sees a confident young woman (this word is all the rage in the ladies' journals lately, so it must be safe to use), well-armoured in her shiny bodice; a proud, elegant woman with nothing to be ashamed of.

"I am again a beauty," she hears herself say.

She picks up the nearest of many hatboxes, lifts its lid and pulls out the mass of cr@epe paper. The glass eyes of a stuffed thrush twinkle emerald against the jade felt of the hat on which the bird is fixed. Agnes lifts the treasure from its box by the brim, and tentatively strokes the thrush's feathered shoulder. A year ago she would have been afraid of it, in case it came back to life on her head; now she's merely looking forward to showing it off in public, because it really will look awfully pretty.

"I am not afraid."

No, Agnes is not afraid-and lately has been proving as much, everywhere. Like a person contriving to pass a vicious dog by bailing it cheerily, she is able to walk into ballrooms and dining-halls that bristle with dangers, and simply sweep past them all. No doubt many of the ladies who call out to her so pleasantly are hiding sharp feminine hatreds with which they'd love to stab her, but Agnes doesn't care.

She's the equal of any of them!

Already she has a number of triumphs to her credit, because the Party that Lasts a Hundred Days is well underway, and Agnes Rackham is proving to be one of its unexpected luminaries, all the more fashionable for the slight frisson of risk posed to those jaded diversion-seekers who flit towards her light.

"Agnes Rackham? No really, dear: delightful! Yes, who'd have imagined it? But let me tell you about her dinner party! Everything was black and white: I mean everything, dear.

Black tables and chairs, white table-cloth, black candle-holders, white crockery, cutlery painted white, white napkins, black finger-bowls. Even the food was black and white, I tell you! There was sole, with blackened skin still on, and the mushrooms were black, and so was the baked pumpkin… in white sauce. Alfred was cross, though, that there was no red wine-only white! But he bucked up as the evening went on.

Mrs Rackham was so cheerful, she was singing to herself, in the sweetest voice. No one knew how to behave at first-should we just pretend we didn't hear?-but then Mr Cavanagh, the barrister, started singing "pom pom pom" in a baritone underneath her, like a tuba, and everyone decided it must be all right. And after dinner there were ices-with licorice sauce! By that time we were all feeling ever so unconventional, we were almost wicked, and no one minded a bit. Such a peculiar woman, is Mrs Rackham. But oh! such a delightful time we had. I almost fainted with amusement!"

Novelties like the black-and-white dinner party are the hallmark of Agnes's growing fame. Her head is crowded with innovations; the only problem is vetting them to cram the very best into the limited number of scheduled opportunities. The cinnamon-scented candles? The idea for the blindfolds and the parcels? They'll have to wait until the 24th and the 29th respectively…

In all things she is the modernest of the modern.

The backs of her dresses are perfect curving slopes, their line unbroken by bows and flounces.

She's heard a rumour that the days of the cuirass bodice are numbered and that the polonaise is about to return: if and when it does, she's ready! As for hats, she's given all her old ones to Miss Jordan, to do something charitable with. Her new chapeaux are festooned with humming-birds, sparrows and canaries; the grey velvet one (earmarked for an appearance at the Royal Albert Hall on June 12th) features a turtle-dove, which is sure to elicit gasps. (what the gaspers won't realise is that these large fowl actually weigh quite lightly on the head! Something happens to the creatures when they're stuffed, Agnes doesn't know what, but the result of it is that one could easily support half a dozen stuffed doves on one's head, though of course that would be vulgar -a single dove is sufficient.) As for the Prussian blue hat with the pigeon, well… her instinctive good taste has caused her to have second thoughts. After much deliberation she's decided to have the pigeon removed and replaced with a blue tit, because… well, there's something common about pigeons, however expensively they are stuffed.

Ah! Decisions, decisions! But it's not her intrepid judgement alone that's making her shine so brightly this Season: luck is with her also. In no respect is this more obvious than the hair colour that's currently in fashion: her own! She already possesses the blonde tresses that everyone so desperately desires, as well as an excellent store of hair-pieces, allowing her to construct the elaborate styles that are de rigueur in the Best P. All her rivals are having terrible trouble obtaining blonde, since most of what's sold to wig factories is dark stuff from French peasant girls.

As for her figure: another stroke of luck!

The near-skeletal arms and waist given her by her illness are exactly what the times require; in fact, she's a good few ounces ahead. While other ladies are torturing themselves with starvation diets, she has inherited la ligne effortlessly. Is it any wonder, then, that she still doesn't eat much, even now that she's well enough? Gorging herself when she has the thinnest waist she's ever had would be criminal, and the Queen, God bless her, is a chastening example of what happens to a lady of small stature who overindulges. A segment of fruit and a slice or two of cold meat are quite filling, she's found, especially in conjunction with a dose of that sweet blue tincture recommended by Mrs Gooch. Alone in bed at night, Agnes takes especial pleasure in counting her ribs.

Last week she tried on a dress that she and Clara made on the sewing-machine in December -and its waist and arms were wrinkled and baggy! So, rather than trying to fix it, she's given it up for dead, and started afresh with a proper dressmaker.

What extravagance! But there's no longer any question of economy: William is a rich man now, and his allowance to her seems limitless. The disapproving stares and cautioning words of previous years are gone without a trace; he even suggests expenditures to her, and smiles benignly whenever she ushers a procession of parcels up the stairs.

He's doing his best, is William, to make amends-Agnes has to admit that. Nothing can ever atone for the pain she's suffered, but… Well, there's no doubt he's providing for her now. And he looks really quite presentable with his new beard, and he's dressing smartly.

She's noticed too that he's perfected the knack, essential in the right circles, of behaving as if he made his fortune long ago, rather than being in the midst of making it. Puffing serenely on a cigar, leaning his head back as if contemplating an enquiry from the ether, he radiates the power his wealth confers upon him, but speaks not a word about Rackham Perfumeries, rather about books and paintings and the wars in Europe. (not that Agnes cares a feather for wars in Europe: let them burn Paris to the ground, and she'll design her own dresses!) All sorts of well-connected people, at recent gatherings, seem drawn to William's corner of the room. Imagine that! William Rackham, the overgrown university student, the idler: a success!

As for her own performance in public, she's doing splendidly, better than she could have hoped. She hasn't collapsed once, and there have been no incidents such as occurred in past Seasons, when a perfectly normal remark or action was spitefully misconstrued by others, and she was in disgrace. She's learned a lot from that: she's learned to keep an eye on herself at all times.

Agnes peers into her wardrobe mirror, her favourite because it can be swivelled to any angle and, if she kneels and looks up into it, she can see herself as though from above. Since almost everyone in the world is taller than she, this is invaluable. She kneels now, and looks up, and there she beholds what God or the folk in the Royal Albert Hall's balconies might look upon: a most fetching specimen, a credit to her sex. She opens wide her china-blue eyes, to banish a frown line from her forehead.

Pass, says a voice from behind the looking-glass.

Prostrated so close to the carpet's complicated Turkish pattern she feels faint again, and staggers to her feet. A few breaths of cool air at the windowsill are all she needs to keep the head-spin at bay.

Which reminds her: how ideal is the itinerary of this year's Season! Why, it might have been devised solely for her! Very few of her assignations are spent cooped up in crowded rooms; instead she's almost always out of doors, in gardens and courtyards and streets and pavilions.

The fresh air alone is a tonic, and whenever she feels faint she can seize hold of something solid and pretend to be admiring the view. And when all eyes are raised to watch a fireworks display, no one notices one small pill disappearing between her lips!

She doesn't mind having to attend operas and concerts, for although these confine her indoors they leave her mind free to wander, except during the intervals. Propped up in her seat next to her husband, she leaves her body unattended, her spirit floating up above, looking down at herself from the chandeliers. (it's a remarkable view, for others no less than for Agnes. Lately, she's using a novelty fabric in her dresses and gloves that glows in dim light. Thus, when the theatre or the opera house turns dark in anticipation of the tragedy on stage, Agnes Rackham remains visible. The patrons in the balconies observe her white hand raising tiny binoculars to her face, and Mrs Rackham is seen to shed a sympathetic tear, for the binoculars are in fact disguised smelling-salts, and quite pungent when held near the eyes.) In this fashion, Agnes has sat through Wagner's Lohengrin at the Royal Italian Opera, Meyerbeer's The Huguenots, and Verdi's Requiem, conducted by the alarmingly foreign Signor Verdi himself, at the Royal Albert Hall.

She was present and accounted for, too, at Mr Henry Irving's Hamlet at the Lyceum, but enjoyed the appetiser, Mrs Compton's Fish out of Water, rather more, though she knew better than to mention this to anyone. For variety's sake, and so that she could bring it up in conversation, Agnes also went to see Signor Salvani's Hamlet, all in Italian, at the Theatre Royal, and found this to be an altogether superior experience, particularly the sword-play which was conspicuously more vigorous, and the Ophelia who was rather vulgar, and therefore deserved to die more than the English one. (agnes still shudders at the memory of being confronted, on a visit to an art gallery years ago, with that terrifying painting by Millais: the shock of seeing an innocent young lady of her own age and complexion-though thankfully not blonde -drowned, dead, open-eyed, with a crowd of men standing before her, admiring how well she was "done".) Alone in her bedroom, Agnes crosses herself, then looks around nervously, in case anyone has seen her do it.

"Clara?"' she says, experimentally, but

Clara is still away, gossiping with Mrs

Maxwell's girl Sinead no doubt, or whatever else she can find to occupy her afternoon off.

I must think about getting a maidservant who's closer to me in wit, thinks Agnes, all of a sudden. Honestly, when I tried to explain the significance of Psycho, she hadn't the foggiest idea what I was talking about. (for the benefit of those unlucky souls who missed it: Agnes is recalling here the premier exhibition, at the Lyceum, of "Psycho", a child-sized mechanical figure which, in the words of the programme, danced and performed tricks "without the aid of wires or confederates".) For Agnes, seeing Psycho has been the highlight of her Season's theatre-going so far.

Indeed, so deeply moved was she by the demonstration that she hardly heard the muttered complaints of Bodley and Ashwell from somewhere to the left of her husband. She was utterly convinced that Psycho was independent of the gentleman who stood by him on the stage, and that his life came from an unseen Elsewhere. The conjuring tricks he performed with his noiselessly revolving limbs meant nothing to her in themselves; rather, she was electrified by the realisation that this little mechanical man was immortal. Whereas her own soul must be consigned to Limbo should her body happen to be destroyed (in a fire, for instance, such as might break out in this very theatre!) Psycho would endure. Even if he were crushed flat, he could simply be melted down and re-cast, and his animating soul would simply slip back inside. Oh, lucky creature!

Agnes stands at her window now, a handkerchief clasped inside her fist as she scans the grounds' perimeter for signs of her guardian angel. Shears waves to her from the hydrangea beds. Agnes smiles, then casts her eyes down at her fist. She opens it, and the handkerchief blossoms out of her palm, unharmed. Oh, to be like that handkerchief!

Agnes has been thinking a great deal about Death and Resurrection lately. Queer topics to be pondering amidst the hurly-burly of the Season, but she can't help it: it's her philosophical turn of mind. She can be cheerful, and sing enchantingly for guests, but really, is there anything in Life as important as what happens to one's body after Death?

Whisper it not, but Agnes is suspicious of Heaven as conventional religion describes it; she has no wish for any posthumous paradise of wraiths. What she wants is to wake up, corporeal, in the Convent of Health, ready to begin a better life. Almost every night she dreams the same dream, in which she walks through the ivy-laden portcullis of the convent, no longer Agnes Rackham of Chepstow Villas, Notting Hill, but not a ghost either.

How nice it would be to speak of these things with her brother-in-law, Henry. In several of the spiritualist books hidden under her bed, there is mention of a Heaven on Earth. Biblical scriptures promise (or so the authors claim) that the virtuous will one day claim their resurrected bodies… Surely Henry could tell her more, knowing so much about the Bible and other mystical works! (and besides, she likes him.

He's not like most Anglicans she knows; he has an indefinably Catholic sort of air about him. He reminds her, just a little, of the Saints and the Martyrs. William told her once that the reason Henry isn't a clergyman yet is that he doesn't consider himself sufficiently pure and high-minded for it, but she suspects that that's all nonsense, and the real problem is that Anglicanism isn't pure and high-minded enough for Henry.) "Is Henry invited to this?"' she keeps asking William, each time they attend a party.

"No," William keeps replying, or,

"Damned if I know," or, "If he was,

I doubt he'll have come." And sure enough, Henry Rackham is never there.

"What about here?"' Agnes persists, at public events that are open to all.

"Absolutely any-one can come to this."

"Henry detests opera," William will mutter, grumpy to have yet more of his valuable time wasted by social obligations. Or, "Henry disapproves of histrionics. Can't say I blame him, either."

"Chin up, William dear: there's Mrs

Abernethy."

And, determined to make the best of things, Agnes draws a deep breath, clutches her binocular smelling-salts to her bosom, and files in through the glittering vestibule to take her place among… well, if not the Upper Ten Thousand, then certainly the Upper Twenty.

Much as Agnes might wish to turn her head, by chance, at one of the Season's events and see Henry Rackham making his way towards her, her wish is never granted. Yet she does have one faithful fellow-traveller, if only she knew it: one person who presses through crowds to get close to her, who braves blustery weather to attend the same theatres as she, who pays high prices to sit near her and watch her glow gently under subdued lighting.

Sugar is having her first Season.

Not legitimately, of course; not in the sense that the Best People are having one. But, to the limit of her capabilities, to the fullest extent that money can buy, she is participating. Some doors and thresholds are only for the select few, the haloed gentlefolk with invitations from Mrs So-and-So and Baroness What-Have-Y. Whenever the Rackhams pass through one of these, Sugar cannot follow. But when they attend anything less exclusive, particularly in the open air or a large venue that admits a chattering throng, Sugar is sure to be dawdling in the Rackhams' wake, soaking up the atmosphere, revolving slowly in the crowd like flotsam in the slip-stream of a barge.

Anxious to attract as little attention as possible, Sugar has adopted a strict policy of sober dress. Her wardrobe, once so sumptuous in its greens, blues and bronzes, has faded to shades of grey and brown; she walks on the stylish side of mourning. Against such dusky hues, the redness of her hair is a curse rather than a blessing, and her skin appears pale and sickly. Everyone calls her "madam", and cabbies help her dismount as if she might snap her ankles on the unaccustomed hardness of the street. Only a few days ago, an urchin boy in Piccadilly Circus offered to wipe her wet umbrella dry on his grubby shirt for a ha'penny, and she was so taken aback she gave him sixpence.

It's most peculiar, this respectability; especially since, wherever she follows the Rackhams, she's by no means the only whore in the crowd. Theatres, opera houses, sporting fields and pleasure gardens are favourite haunts of the better-class harlots during the Season, and there's no shortage of stray gentlemen loitering on balconies and behind marquees wishing to be rescued from boredom.

Amy Howlett used to go once upon a time, before she grew too short-tempered to endure all the waiting.

Face hidden behind a fan, or behind her veil, Sugar plays the game-and enjoys it. Why has she never done this before? Granted, the allowance she gets from Rackham is more than she ever earned at Mrs Castaway's, but she can hardly claim to have been too poor to set foot in a concert hall until now. Yet all those years she shut herself away in her upstairs room, like a prisoner!

Oh, all right, yes, she did write a novel-or most of a novel-but even so, would an outing to the theatre have been so terribly frivolous? How odd to recall that in her book,

"Sugar" solicits a victim in the Haymarket after a performance of Measure for Measure-a play Sugar has read and re-read in candle-lit silence but never bothered to cross a few streets to see in the flesh.

What can she have been thinking of all this time?

Well, she's making up for it now. Following the Rackhams on their itinerary, she has been to every theatre and opera house in London several times over-or so it seems to her. In the crowded cloakrooms of these gilded palaces she removes her cape or coat, and stares all about her at the authentic ladies doing likewise.

Do they notice her staring? And if so, can any of them imagine that she's more accustomed to the company of women dressed only in corsets and pantalettes, powdering the bruises on their naked breasts?

But no, they accept her unquestioningly, these wealthy women, and this pleases Sugar more than she could have thought possible. She'd expected to despise them as she's always despised them but, up close, her hatred fails her. In fact, if truth be told, Sugar feels a thrill, a thrill almost of affection, whenever one of these ladies makes any sort of deferential gesture towards her … A smile of courtesy, say, at the hat-stands, a murmur of "After you" in the lavatories, a backwards step conceding her right-of-way on a carpeted staircase… Such ephemeral tokens of respect make Sugar tingle with satisfaction.

And what about when she's weaving through crowds of Regent Street shoppers during the three o'clock chaos in pursuit of Agnes Rackham?

She's continually brushing against chattering, parcel-carrying ladies, and finding herself showered with apologies. In Billington and Joy, shop-walkers flock around her, begging to assist her, and she must retreat from them in case Agnes should turn around to catch a glimpse of her rival! Smiling behind her veil, Sugar tries to deflect fuss by protesting she's merely the chaperone of a young lady elsewhere in the store.

And by God's hairy bollocks, they seem to believe her!

Yes, Sugar is enjoying the Season so far.

Its hurly-burly isn't tiring her a bit; in fact, it makes for a nice change. All those lonely, empty days in her rooms at Priory Close have cured her of desire for solitude; the lure of silence, so attractive when she was younger, has faded. Now she's ready for action.

Not that there's much action in some of her assignations with the Rackhams. Plays and concerts can be a trifle on the long side, especially when entirely in Italian and when the seats aren't so soft. Sugar's hindquarters have gone to sleep a number of times during the marathon histrionics of bewhiskered Hamlets and Malvolios, or the heroic trilling of top-heavy matrons. Yet, though her arse may have slept, her attention has remained awake, taking frequent stock of the Rackhams sitting near her.

William's most commonly manifested emotion during the more long-winded spectacles is boredom; he reads his programme, stifles yawns, and allows his eyes to wander from the people in the aisles to the chandeliers above. On more than one occasion he has looked straight at Sugar, blindly ignorant of who she is, seeing her only as a bonnet in the dimness, a nondescript dress amongst surplus finery. Sometimes he snoozes, but mostly he's fidgeting his way through the Season.

Agnes, by contrast, is keenly attentive to every instant of every performance, lifting her opera glasses frequently, smiling when required, and applauding with the nervous rapidity of a cat scratching at a flea. In between times, she sits still, and her face shines pellucid and enigmatic, like a statue of a transfigured saint. Is she enjoying herself? How can Sugar tell? Pleasure is on the inside, and the easiest thing in the world to fake.

Sugar's pleasure is real enough, though. It must be, since no one is watching her and she feels it nonetheless.

Most precious of her discoveries in this, her first Season, is good music. All her life she's been indifferent to music, or hostile to it.

Music for her has always been unbearably tainted by poverty, religiosity, drunkenness and disease: the ingratiating warble of beggars, the wheeze of organs ground by monkeys, the tankard-swinging ballads in The Fireside, the sanctimonious toll of church bells. As for Katy Lester's 'cello-playing at Mrs Castaway's all those years-she realises only now how much she loathed it. "Very beautiful, Katy," she used to say, whenever the girl had finished playing some lugubrious air or other. What she really should have said was, "I'm glad you're down here with us rather than upstairs with a man, but can you please stop scraping that damned catgut?"'

In this first Season, Sugar is hearing music as if she's never heard the stuff before. Grand, uplifting, inspiring music played by large ensembles on gleaming instruments she can't put a name to. Removed from the forlornness of Mrs Castaway's parlour or the shabbiness of the streets, and marshalled together for no other purpose than to make a joyful noise: this is how it should be. Even the 'cellos look impressive when it isn't Katy Lester playing them; instead of just one scuffed old instrument, pitted by cinders from the hearth, there are eight of them, burnished to a rich lustre, all being bowed with great zest and precision.

How strange it is to see a row of men-indeed, a whole orchestra full of men-intent on an activity that's not only innocent but… noble.

These fellows have nothing on their minds except making music. Can that really be? So many men together, and no evil? She watches them cradle their instruments gently, watches them hastily turn the pages on their music stands in the momentary pauses between blowings or bowings, while above and beyond them the glorious sound goes on and on.

"Bravo!" she cries along with everyone else when it's over. So great is her excitement that she has forgotten what she came here for; standing among a jubilant crowd on her five-shilling balcony, she claps her hands and stares raptly at the performers on stage, not at William and Agnes in their 10's. 6d. arena seats directly beneath her.

This spontaneous display, this abandon, has become part of Sugar's repertoire only gradually. At the very first concert she attended with the Rackhams, she was too shy to open her mouth while all around her were shouting; indeed, she was barely able to applaud. But, finale after finale, she's learned to lose herself, and by now she has a taste for it. The other night, just as the final cymbal clash of The Huguenots resonated around the rafters of the Royal Albert Hall, Sugar leapt up from her seat and cheered as loud as anything and, glancing to the left of her, she caught the eye of a bewhiskered old man, similarly moved. In that single instant they understood everything they needed to about each other; they were as intimate as it is possible to be; and they would most likely never see each other again.

"Bravo!" yelled the old gentleman, and she bravoed with him, not daring to look at him again in case their spark of communion should fizzle out.

Of course she knows she's surrounded by people who would, if the truth of her station were obvious, edge away from her in fear of being polluted. She is filth in their midst. Never mind that plenty of these decent ladies resemble prostitutes a good deal more than she does; never mind that this throng is full of Mrs So-and-Sos who are garishly dressed, whiffy with scent, scarred with powdered blemishes-still it's she, unfailingly demure and freshly washed, who's the secret obscenity here. She might as well be a mound of excrement fashioned into human shape. They smile at her, the Mrs So-and-Sos; they apologise when they brush against her skirts, only because they don't know her. Oh, the bliss of being among people who don't know her!

"Isn't this divine?"' enthuses a wrinkly matron in the seat next to Sugar at the Royal Albert Hall. Her eyes are pink from her husband's cigar smoke, her greying hair is supplemented with several not-quite-matching blonde hairpieces. "All the way from Italy!"

The lady is referring to Signor Verdi on the stage below them, an impish old rogue who is at this moment pointing his stubby baton at the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society, conjuring them to stand, inviting the audience to applaud their efforts to sing his brand-new Requiem.

"Yes, divine," replies Sugar. It's a word that tastes strange on her lips, but not offensive. Signor Verdi has moved her-not just with the tunes of his Requiem, but with the dawning understanding that this monumental work of music, this architecture of sounds to rival the Royal Albert Hall itself, was written on smudgy sheets of paper by a single person: an old Italian fellow with hair in his eyes. The rumble of double-basses that reverberated in her abdomen was caused directly by him putting pen to paper, probably late at night as he sat in his shirt-sleeves, Signora Verdi snoring in the next room. It's a kind of male power she hasn't thought about before, a power sublimely uninterested in subjugating her or putting her to use or putting her in prison, a power whose sole aim is to make the air vibrate with pleasure.

So, yes, "Divine," she says to the wrinkly matron with the ill-matching hair-pieces, and is rewarded with a smile.

Only then, as the applause fades and the more elderly members of the audience stand to leave, does Sugar realise she has forgotten about the Rackhams. Are they still in the building? No sign of them. Perhaps she has missed a highly significant moment, a dumbshow between William and Agnes that would have spoken volumes, had she only witnessed it. Perhaps Agnes did something unforgivable in public.

In time, Sugar decides that being a little distracted in the presence of great music is not such a bad thing. She can't spy on the Rackhams every minute of every day; some things are bound to escape her. And she's awfully dedicated, really: Let there be no music-or bad music-and she'll watch the Rackhams with scarcely a blink, even if on stage there are fierce actors posturing with swords, or metal manikins dancing on invisible strings.

What does she learn, staring down on the Rackhams as they watch these performances? Not much.

William is hardly going to leap up from his seat in St James's Hall and shout his deepest fears to all and sundry, while Agnes, despite the outrageous behaviour of which William insists she is capable, refrains from running amok even in the most Gothic of buildings. Nevertheless Sugar is convinced that if she can only share the Rackhams' public life -see what they see, hear what they hear-she's bound to share their private life as well. And there's no telling when something William has seen at one of these concerts or plays will come back to him in their shared bed. Mr Walter Farquhar's Prometheus in Albion, for example, at the end of which William was unusually wide-awake and yelling bravo… If she can ferret out the poem on which it's based, and profess a love for it, he could tell her about the play and she could introduce him to the poem: what a cosy t@ete-@a-t@ete that would make!

At yet another premiere, she watches William file out of the theatre with Agnes at his side. Is she leaning on his arm? She must be tired or unwell; it can't be affection.

Take her home and put her to bed,

William, for God's sake, Sugar thinks, then come and see me. But no sooner have the Rackhams stepped out of the auditorium than they're ushered into the company of smiling strangers, and Sugar spends the night alone.

By far the best and most rewarding spying, which makes her feel as if she's genuinely intimate with the Rackhams, is to be had at open-air events, and the weather this year is unusually good. Even after sundown it's mild, and the nights are lent the illusion of warmth by fairy lanterns, and by the braziers and stoves of street vendors, the glow of pub windows, and swarms of sumptuously dressed ladies everywhere. (well, not everywhere, of course. Church Lane, St Giles, is no doubt as dark and filthy as always. But who'd want to go there?) At the Grand Garden F@ete on Muswell Hill, half a crown admits Sugar to the moonlit grounds of the new Alexandra Palace mere seconds after William and Agnes have passed through the gates. (only vulgar people come during the day.) Thereafter, as long as she doesn't venture too close to the lanterns hung from the trees, she can walk almost directly behind the Rackhams without being recognised.

Sugar has been following William and Agnes for several weeks now. She knows the slope of William's shoulders and the wiggle of his backside like… well, like the back of her hand.

She knows exactly how much Agnes's hips sway (hardly at all) and how rapidly her bustle bobs up and down (v). In any crowd, especially of pedestrians, Agnes Rackham is likely to be the woman least mistakable for a prostitute. Every inch of her diminutive body speaks of containment and untouchability. How beautiful she is! Her skin isn't rough and freckled like Sugar's, but smooth as a newly unwrapped tablet of soap. Her hair is the colour a woman's hair ought to be, and fine as embroidery silk. Her shape is so perfect-How can Sugar walk behind her and not feel like a monster? Her own flat chest compared with Agnes's pretty bosom; her own masculine paws, freakishly large compared with Agnes's dainty hands; her own gait-half-man, half-slut-compared with Agnes's graceful locomotion.

And, of course, that voice. Even when speaking the most humdrum words ("No thank you, William," or "You have some sugar on your moustache"), she sounds as though she's singing softly to herself. Oh, to have a voice like that! Not hoarse and low, but smooth and lilting. How can anyone with such a voice possibly be the burdensome nuisance that William makes her out to be?

Walking behind the Rackhams so often, Sugar has learned to read the signs of their personal disharmony. Their bodies, even when fully clothed, are anathema to each other. And yet they are occasionally, unavoidably, arm in arm. On these occasions William escorts his wife nervously, as if fearful she might fall to bits at his side and cause all eyes to turn on him and the mess he has made on a public footpath. Agnes, for her part, glides irrelative to him, a mechanism that cannot be hurried. Then again, whenever something in the distance attracts her attention-a lady she simply must speak to, for example-she tends to accelerate and pull him along, like a railway car whose mail-hook has accidentally become hitched to the sleeve of a gentleman.

At one juncture in the Grand Garden

F@ete, a large blue balloon is floating overhead, high above the marquees, inspiring excited gesticulations from the crowd. Agnes notices nothing. Sugar observes William speaking down to his wife, urging her to look up at the moonlit curiosity. But though Agnes nods, as if to say, "That's nice, dear", she doesn't deign to raise her head. It will take more than a floating blue balloon, it seems, to win back her approval.

Even more remarkable is the incident at the Sandown Park Races-another superb opportunity to be the Rackhams' shadow, and in broad daylight.

Of Sandown Park itself Sugar sees precious little, as it's utterly aswarm with spectators.

Half of London's population, drawn from all classes, seems to be here (well, excluding the desperately poor, Sugar has to admit… but besides them, everybody). There's scarcely an inch of ground not trampled by the surging horde of men, women, children and dogs. Sugar catches only the most fleeting glimpse of what has ostensibly brought people here: race-horses and their riders. The stocky old nags and ponies pulling the carts of refreshments move in ignorance of the fact that somewhere nearby, equines of a superior caste are prancing or possibly even galloping like the wind. Every now and then, a cry goes up and Sugar thinks the race has begun, or been won, but then one knot of the crowd untangles slightly and the commotion is revealed to be something else: a fainting, an eruption of fisticuffs, a carriage rolling over someone's foot.

But, little though she sees of the races, Sugar does see a lot of the Rackhams. Agnes, as petite as any jockey, stands well back from the throng for fear of getting trampled. Poor William! How impotently he flexes his hands! How beseechingly he looks to the heavens for a loan of some charm to melt his wife's heart!

Maybe he yearns to lift her up onto his shoulders, like a small child, for a better look…

Instead, he keeps insinuating his own bulky body into the crowd, hoping thereby to clear a space for Agnes to toddle in. Even if she never sees the horses, she might, with his help, catch a glimpse of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and he's sure she'd like that!

"It's diabolical this year!" William exclaims, in an ingratiating attempt to voice her own thoughts. But she turns her face away from him, a glint of terror in her eyes, appalled at his casual invocation of the demonic forces all around them.

So, the Rackhams remain on the fringes, and Sugar, instead of watching horses race, watches the pas de deux of a married couple. The wife huddling close to her protector, yet shrinking from his touch; the husband stiff with gallantry and annoyance, despairing of finding room in the rudely jostling real world for a creature so fragile. There seems no limit to the repertoire of movements for expressing this subtle discord between them.

After a while, Sugar becomes aware of another dancer on the fringes of the crowd: a pickpocket. At first she takes him for a dandy, a foppish character too timid to risk himself in the thick of the mob, but then she observes the poise with which he hovers behind each person, the almost lascivious pleasure with which he sidles close to them and then withdraws, like a pollinating insect or the world's gentlest rapist. He is, without a doubt, having a sublimely satisfactory day.

It ought not to trouble Sugar in the slightest when the rogue's leisurely progress brings him closer and closer to William and Agnes; after all, they can easily afford to get robbed, and their reactions to such a misfortune can only add to Sugar's store of knowledge. She verifies with a glance that Agnes's soft pink purse is, in accordance with the very latest fashion, hung at the back of her dress, a godsend to thieves. Mrs Rackham is therefore (as they say in the trade) asking for it.

So, why shouldn't Sugar simply stand back and enjoy witnessing a true professional at work?

This fellow's a damn sight more graceful than the ballet dancers at the Crystal Palace last week…

And yet, and yet… The pressure of conscience as Sugar watches the tooler's approach is almost unbearable, like a blunt knife held hard to her throat. She must warn Mrs Rackham! How can she not warn Mrs Rackham! How can she just stand here, a mute accomplice to this parasite? Sugar clears her throat, unheard in the hubbub of the crowd, and rehearses what she'll shout to Agnes. Her voice will be all the uglier for shouting. Who on earth is that common female, bawling so hoarsely at me, Agnes will think…

It's too late; the moment has come and gone.

The pickpocket has floated past Mrs Rackham's skirts, pausing for an instant only. In that instant, Sugar knows, he has sliced her purse wide open with a blade as sharp as a surgical scalpel, and scooped out whatever he fancied. William he leaves unmolested; he's got enough watches already, probably.

Queasy with shame, Sugar watches the pickpocket dance his way gently through the crowd, until he's lost to view. Many people are rearing up on their toes now, erect as can be, craning their necks: the race is almost finished. William makes one last desultory attempt to clear a path for Agnes and usher her into the front line; his hand hovers awkwardly at her back, hesitating to touch her. It's then that he notices her purse, hanging limp like the skin of a burst balloon. He bends and whispers in her ear.

Agnes turns away from the throng of spectators, her face white as marble.

She takes a few steps forward, away from the commotion, and comes to a halt on a bare patch of ground about ten feet from Sugar, whose veiled and parasol'd presence she ignores. Her eyes are wide open, staring fixedly at emptiness, and brimming with tears. A great, ecstatic cheer goes up behind her; caps are thrown in the air and top hats are waved.

William hurries to Agnes's side, enfolds her shoulders in his comforting arm.

"Come on, tell me, what have you lost?"' he implores her, a little gruffly, patently keen to replace it and have done with this fuss.

"The photograph of my mother," says Agnes, shivering under his hands. "The rest doesn't matter."

"What photograph?"' says William, bemused, as if she has just confessed to carrying a stuffed zebra or a cast-iron cheese press in her reticule.

"The photograph of my mother," says Agnes, her cheeks shining with tears. "In a locket frame. I carry it everywhere."

William opens his mouth to protest the folly of this, thinks better of it. After a few seconds he volunteers, "I'll find the photographer. If he's an orderly sort of fellow, he may have the original plates…"

"Oh, don't be such an idiot,

William," says Agnes, closing her swollen eyes. "It was a photograph made long before we met. You didn't even exist, then."

William removes his palms from her shoulders, lays one behind his head, and looks back at the crowd while he digests Agnes's devastating logic. The race is over, and already a number of smartly-dressed onlookers are walking off towards their waiting broughams and cabs. Another occasion to be seen at has been ticked off the Season's calendar, and the fashionable ladies, as they disperse, glance surreptitiously at the hems of their dresses in case the race-course grounds have soiled them.

"Let's go home, dear," says

William.

Agnes stands frozen in her small square of no-man's-land, still weeping.

"Home?"' she echoes, as if she can't imagine what fantastical place he might mean.

"Yes," says William, leading his little wife towards the exit, past the dawdling woman with the cheap parasol. "This way."

And so the Rackhams hail their cab, and Sugar hails hers. So often it has ended like this: so often that by now it's become almost routine. The Rackhams take their leave from some Season event or other, headed for "home", and Sugar, their shadow, hurries back to her own rooms in Priory Close, gambling that tonight will be the night that William comes. She cannot be forever walking twenty steps behind him, or haunting the perimeters of his house and gardens; sometimes, she must be where he expects her to be, ready to receive him.

So far, her instincts for when to follow and when to dash back to Priory Close haven't been what you'd call unerring. In three weeks, William has come to visit her twice. On one occasion, she was caught completely unprepared, having only just walked in the door, still smelling of the same smoky theatre he himself had come from. (after a moment's hesitation, she decided honesty was the safest policy, and encouraged him to marvel at the coincidence of them both attending the same play. It was quite an agreeable conversation, really, followed by a fuck as passionate as any Rackham has ever spent on her.) On the other occasion, Sugar returned to her rooms to find a handwritten note on the floor of her receiving hall:

Heartbroken, I can no longer wait;

Was I untimely, or You too late? (for days afterwards, she puzzled over this doggerel, subjecting it to exhaustive exegesis, straining to guess the author's true feelings.) Now, returning from her day at the races, Sugar lets herself into her unlit love nest, instantly annoyed at the quiet that allows her to hear her own breathing. She has a headache; she tears the ugly bonnet from her head, pulls the combs from her hair, and runs her fingers through. The severe parting in the middle of her scalp has been in place so long that it hurts to disturb it.

Sweat has eaten away at the tender flesh behind her ears. Her face, she notes in the hallway mirror, is dusky with grime.

While the bath is filling, Sugar ferrets about for something to eat. She hasn't eaten all day, except for an apple in the morning, a cream bun she devoured in the cab on the way to Sandown Park, and a single bite of sausage at the race-course. That sausage, bought sizzling hot from a stall, was a mistake: it looked just like the bangers she used to love when she lived in Church Lane, when Mr Bing the sausage man used to wheel his steaming cart from door to door, and she and Caroline would haul themselves out of bed and buy the biggest, fattiest, sootiest specimens they could get. But the sausage today didn't taste like Mr Bing's bangers; it tasted like pig offal fried in dirty paraffin. Honestly, who could possibly digest such garbage? She spat it out, and felt bilious for hours.

Now she's hungry. Starving! And there's never anything to eat in these damn rooms of hers! The whole place smells faintly of lavender soap when it should smell of food and wine and love-making. (in her peevish mood, nothing will satisfy her short of William sound asleep in her bed while she devours juicy mouthfuls of hot roast chicken. As for where that chicken is supposed to come from, well… if Rackham can arrange for half a dozen Japanese quince trees to be delivered to his garden in Notting Hill, surely he could manage one chicken in Marylebone…!) In the study, on the writing-table where her novel never lies, there sits a fist-sized lump of bread. It's all that's left of the loaf she bought on Friday, at a street stall on the way back from the Crystal Palace. The woman selling it squinted at Sugar in surprise, for her regular clientele was down-and-outs, not ladies in long furry capes.

The bath is filled now. Sugar munches on the stale bread (its shape is awfully peculiar -have mice been at it, perhaps?-best not to think about it) and swallows convulsively to get it down her throat. Is this the life of luxury to which she thought she was graduating when she left Mrs Castaway's? And what about the way William crowed when he was twirling around the lamp-post?

"Safe from all of you"-that's what he said…

"No one else will ever touch her"-so why in God's name doesn't he come and touch her himself!

Is he fed up with his prize already? And that damned note: Was I untimely, or You too late? What did he mean?

Sugar takes her bath. As usual, she stays in it for far too long, chiding herself with empty threats, sinking deeper and deeper under the sudsy scum, keeping very still so that the cold water doesn't tickle her. It's late at night before she's out, near midnight before her hair is dry. She sits on her immaculate king-size bed, fragrant and clean, dressed in a snow-white shift.

Come on, you swine, she thinks. Rescue me.