The Crimson petal and the white

SEVENTEEN

Handsome and high-minded Henry Rackham, who once upon a time seemed destined to become the Rackham of Rackham Perfumeries, and now is merely the brother of that eminent man, stands alone in a turd-strewn street, his rain-dappled topcoat steaming faintly in the afternoon sun, waiting for a prostitute.

No, it's not as bad as it appears: he's waiting for a particular prostitute.

No, no, still you misunderstand! He hopes to speak with the woman he met here a few weeks ago, in order to… in order to bring their conversation to a more fitting conclusion. Or, as Mrs Fox might put it (she being a champion of plain speaking), to make amends for being such an ass.

Having given the matter much thought, he has decided that his mistake, and therewith his sin, was not that he spoke to this woman in the first place. No, his sin came later. Everything was going so well until he was distracted by fleshly curiosity, and then, provoked by his prurience, she lifted her skirts and… well, the rest is branded on his memory, like a dark triangular stigma on the pale flesh of his brain. But he was as much to blame as she, and in any case the question remains: what now? She is a soul in peril, and it would be a mockery of Christ's teaching if no one ever spoke to her but bad men, and she were shunned by decent Christians.

This is why he's standing here in Church Lane, St Giles. His hamper of food he has already given away to urchins (genuinely hungry urchins, he tries to reassure himself) and his shoes have already sunk several times into ordure. He has refused the offer of a feeble, ferret-like man to clean his shoes for him; instead, he has knelt in the street and done the job himself, attempting while doing so to engage the ferret-like man in conversation about God. (no success; the man snorted in bemusement and walked off.) Several individuals have called out to him,

"Hay, parson!" and laughed, melting into dark doorways and windows as soon as he's turned around. So far, no one has attempted to attack or rob him. From such small acorns, ministries may grow.

So, Henry waits on the corner of Church Lane and Arthur Street, sweltering in the sun, squinting at the passers-by. In the short time he has been standing here, four prostitutes-or women he assumes to be such-have spoken to him.

They have (respectively) offered him punnets of watercress, directions, a nice shady place to rest, and "the most reliefsome cuddle in London". To which his replies have been (respectively) "No thank you", "No thank you", "No thank you", and "No thank you, God forgive you". He is waiting for the woman in the terracotta dress. Once he has made good his sin with her, he can begin to consider others.

At last she comes, but looking so different that if it weren't for her heart-shaped face being still vivid in his mind, he would have let her walk by.

As it is, he has to lean forward and peer closely to make sure it's really the same person. She has different clothes on, you see, a phenomenon that rather fazes him, for in his mind she had become a symbolic creature, fixed in appearance like a painting hung in church.

Nevertheless, pink shawl and shabby blue dress aside, it's she, gingerly negotiating the mucky cobbles as before. Henry clears his throat.

The woman (yes, her pretty upturned nose is unmistakable!) doesn't notice him, or at least feigns not to, until they're almost touching. But then she cocks her head towards his, anoints him with her gaze, and smiles broadly.

"'Ello, sir," she says. "More questions?"' "Yes," he replies at once, in a firm voice. "If you'll permit me."

"For two shillin's, I'll permit damn near anyfink, sir," she teases him.

"Anyfink you can put to me, anyhow."

Henry's jaw stiffens. Is she implying he's less manly than other men? Or merely that he's less depraved? And why is her Cockney accent so strong? Last time they spoke, there was a Northern cadence to it…

She tugs at his sleeve in amiable reproach, as though already well familiar with his tendency for wool-gathering and determined to stop it getting out of hand. "But let's not do it in the street this time," she suggests. "Let's talk in a nice quiet room."

"By all means," agrees Henry at once, and it's her turn to be surprised. A queer expression crosses her face, half-protective, half-fearful-but only for a moment.

"That's us agreed, then," she says.

He walks at her side, and she leads him along, frequently checking his progress as she might an unreliable dog's. Does she think he's a simpleton? He oughtn't to care what she thinks. God alone will understand why he has accepted her invitation.

"It ain't fancy," she says, ushering him towards a decaying Georgian house. Henry's impression, at a glance, is of a fa@cade the colour and texture of pork rind; the crumbling stucco might be blisters of mould. But before he can examine it too carefully, she has pulled him across a yard littered with chicken feathers, through a doorway and into a dim vestibule. He, Henry Rackham, would-be pastor of this parish, has crossed the threshold of a whore-house.

There are Turkish carpets underfoot, but they are threadbare, and the floorboards sigh softly beneath them. The walls of the corridor are concave on one side and convex on the other; striped wallpaper bulges and wrinkles like ill-fitting clothing, medallioned with framed prints whose glass is opaque with fog. Radiating from deeper inside the house is a smell of stale humidity, suggestive of… suggestive of all manner of things Henry Rackham has never known.

"Plenty of fresh air upstairs," says the woman at his side, clearly worried he'll leave her yet. If she only knew how salutary it is for him to be confronted with this squalor! On more than one occasion, he's asked Mrs Fox to describe to him what a house of ill repute is really like and, despite her frankness, he's still pictured it through a rosy tint of bacchanalian fantasy. Nothing-not common sense, not conscientious study of reports, not Mrs Fox's word-has been able to banish from his mind the vision of a bawdy-house as a sumptuous grotto of sensual delight. Now, sobered by the smell of truth, he steps into the receiving room: a dismal parlour, a gloomy gallimaufry of exhausted furniture and jaundiced ornamental crockery and military paraphernalia, lit by oil-lamps despite the sunshine straining to penetrate thick curtains the colour of bacon.

Blocking the passage to the staircase sits a ruined old man in a wheelchair, his human features almost entirely obscured by scarves and knitted coverlets.

"Sevenpence for use of the room," he mumbles, addressing no one in particular. Henry bridles, but his prostitute bats her eyelashes at him apologetically, as if she couldn't have guessed he'd be so ignorant as to imagine she had a room of her own.

"It's only Sevenpence, sir," she whispers, "To a man like you…"

Even as Henry is fetching the coins out of his trouser pocket, the truth is dawning on him: this woman is a convenience of the poor, for the poor.

She's not meant for his consumption; possibly no gentleman of his class has ever set foot in this crumbling, malodorous lair. The very clothes on his back are worth more than anything in the room-furniture, crockery, war medals and all.

"I don't have Sevenpence, here's a shilling," he mutters shamefacedly as he hands the coins down. A gnarled claw closes on the money, and a woolly muzzle of scarf sags off the fellow's face, revealing a swollen strawberry of a nose, varicose cheeks and a disgustingly gummy mouth.

"Don't be expecting change," the old man wheezes, emitting an oral flatus of ulcer and alcohol, and abruptly wheels out of the way, allowing Henry and the prostitute to pass through.

"So," says Henry, taking a deep breath as they begin to mount the stairs together.

"What's your name?"'

"Caroline, sir," she replies. "And watch yer step, sir-the ones wiv the nails in are a bit chancy."

Two shillings buys Henry twenty minutes.

Caroline sits on the edge of her bed, having given Henry her solemn promise not to do anything mischievous. Henry remains standing, stationed at the open window. He scarcely looks at Caroline as he asks his questions; instead he appears to be addressing the blackened rooftops and debris-strewn pathways of Church Lane. Every so often, he turns to look at her for half a second, and she smiles. He smiles back, for politeness' sake. His smile, she thinks, is an unexpectedly sweet thing to behold. Her bed, he thinks, is like a manger lined with rags.

In his twenty minutes, Henry learns a good deal about the different kinds of prostitute, and their habitats. Caroline is a "street girl" who lodges in a house for whose use she (or preferably her customer) pays rent every time she enters. She assures him, though, that the mean and gloomy appearance of this place is entirely due to the "tight" nature of its owner, Mrs Leek, and that there are other such lodging-houses whose owners take "a real interest". In fact, she knows of one house in particular that's owned by the mother of one of its girls. It's "like a palace, sir"-not that Caroline has ever been there-nor to a palace, neither-but she can imagine it must be true, because the same madam used to run a house in Church Lane, just three doors along from here, that's got a bad sort of people in it now, but when Mrs Castaway was there, you could eat off the floors it was so clean. And the daughter has since become the mistress of a very rich man, but even when she lived here she was always like a princess-not that Caroline has ever seen a princess in the flesh, but she's seen pictures, and this girl Sugar looked no worse. So you see what can be done when the folk in charge takes an interest. Take Caroline's bedroom, now: it's nothing to be proud of, she knows. "But if it was you, sir, workin' 'ere, wiv 'im downstairs and the place smellin' so bad of damp, would you be fagged polishin' the bedknobs and puttin' posies in a vase? I don't fink so."

Henry enquires about brothels, and learns that they too are "a mixed bag". Some are "prisons, sir, prisons", where bullies and old hags keep the wretched girls "'alf naked and 'alf starved". Others are owned by "the importantest people", and the girls "don't get out of bed except for bishops and kings" (a statement Henry needs to ponder momentarily.) One thing is clear to him: the neat distinctions made by books don't mean much in the real world. There is a hierarchy, yes, but not of categories, rather of individual houses, even individual prostitutes, and the mobility that's possible between one social division and the next is remarkable.

He learns more about Caroline, too, in the twenty minutes his two shillings have bought him.

To his dismay, she has nothing but contempt for the virtue she once possessed. Virtue don't pay the rent, she sneers; if those folk who so value virtue in a woman had been prepared to house, feed and clothe her instead of just spectating on her pitiful struggles, she might have remained virtuous much longer.

And Heaven? What's Caroline's opinion of Heaven? Well, she doesn't see herself going there, but nor does she see herself going to Hell, which is only for really "bad" people. About God and Jesus she has no opinions, but she considers the Devil "useful" if he really does punish the wicked, and she hopes that the wicked people she's known, particularly the owner of a certain dress-making firm, may suffer dreadful tortures after their deaths, though she has a feeling they'll skip out of it somehow.

"And would you ever consider returning home?"' says Henry, when her weariness of so much talking has brought her Northern accent once more to the fore.

"Home? Where's that?"' she snaps.

"Yorkshire, I'd say," says Henry gently.

"You been there?"'

"I've visited."

The bed creaks as she stands up from it. He can tell from her peevish sigh that his twenty minutes are, in her rough innumerate estimation, up.

"I fink they've got all the whores they need in Yorkshire, sir," she says bitterly.

In parting, they're awkward with each other, each aware that Henry has crossed a boundary, that he has caused pain. Henry is mortified to be leaving her with this shadow of grief on her face: for all that he came here hoping to put the fear of God into her, he can't bear to have caused her the prick of homesickness. She's such a cheerful soul by nature, he can tell; how despicable of him to rob her of her smile! She, for her part, doesn't know how to send him on his way, poor duffer. Kissing him would violate their agreement, but shutting her bedroom door on his earnestly frowning face seems awful harsh.

"Come on, sir, I'll see you down the stairs," she says, softening.

A minute later, Henry Rackham stands in the alley, staring up at the house he has just left, at the upstairs window through whose filthy glass he has looked with his own eyes. A weight has lifted from his shoulders, a weight so burdensome that to be rid of it makes him almost giddy. Christ Jesus stands by his side here in the alley, and God is looking down from Heaven.

How relieved he feels! If there weren't so much muck on the cobbles just here, he would sink to his knees in grateful prayer. For she-the woman Caroline-touched his hand as he was leaving, and she looked into his face, and he felt no lust for her whatsoever-not for her, not for any of her kind. The love he felt for her, as he returned her smile, was the same love he feels for any man, woman or child in peril; she was a poor thing suspended unawares above the Abyss.

Nothing is impossible now, between him and all the Carolines of this vast metropolis! Let other men seek to win their bodies; he and Mrs Fox will strive to win their souls!

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned."

With these words, delivered in a girlish rush, Agnes Rackham makes the leap back into the body which last sat here thirteen years ago.

Unconsciously she hunches her shoulders to negate the few inches she's grown, and so put before her eyes exactly that part of the confessional grille she always stared at as a child. The grille is unchanged in every vividly remembered detail: its wooden lattice-work is neither more nor less polished, its curtain of gold-threaded hemp neither more nor less frayed.

"How long is it since your last confession?"'

Agnes's heart thuds against her breast (which, in her mind's eye, has become bosomless) as these words pass through the grille; it thuds not because she's alarmed by the question or by the answer she'll have to give, but rather because she hopes so fervently that the voice is the same one that reproved and absolved her all those years before. Is it? Is it? She can't tell from eight short words.

"Thirteen years, Father," she whispers.

Sensational admission!

"Why so long, child?"' Her ear is almost touching the screen, and still she can't tell for sure if she knows the voice.

"I was very young, Father," she explains, her lips almost brushing against the lattice, "and my father… I mean, not you, Father… and not my Heavenly Father… and not my-"' "Yes, yes," the voice hurries her along testily, and with that, Agnes knows beyond any doubt that it's he! Father Scanlon himself!

"My step-father made us Anglicans," she sums up excitedly.

"And your step-father is now dead?"' surmises Father Scanlon.

"No, Father, he's abroad. But I'm grown up now, and old enough to know my mind."

"Very well, child. Do you remember how to confess?"' "Oh yes, Father," exclaims Agnes, disappointed that the priest doesn't share her view of the intervening years as mere blinks of an eye.

She almost (to show him what's what) launches into the Confiteor in Latin, for she rote-learnt it once, but she bites her tongue and plumps for English.

"I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints and to you, Father, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech blessed Mary, ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy" (here Father Scanlon coughs and sniffs) "Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and you, Father, to pray to the Lord God for me."

A tuneless hum from the other side of the screen invites her to confess. Agnes has come prepared for this moment and removes from her new reticule a leaf of writing-paper onto which she has the previous evening noted all her sins, in order of their appearance in her diaries for the last thirteen years. She clears her throat delicately.

"These are my sins. On the 12th of June, 1862, I gave away a ring that had been given to me by a friend. On the 21st of June of that same year, I told that friend, when she questioned me, that I still had the ring. On the third of October, 1869, at a time when all our roses had a blight, I stole a perfect rose from a neighbour's garden and, later that day, I threw it away, lest someone ask me where I got it. On the 25th of January, 1873, I purposely stepped on an insect that meant me no harm.

On the 14th of June 1875-last week, in fact-while suffering a headache, I spoke harshly to a policeman, saying he was no use at all, and ought to be dismissed."

"Yes?"' the priest prompts her, just as he used to when she was a child.

"That's all, Father," she assures him.

"All the sins you've committed in thirteen years?"' "Why, yes, Father."

The priest sighs and shifts audibly in his chair.

"Come, child," he says. "There must be more."

"If there are, Father, I do not know of them."

Again the priest sighs, louder this time.

"Indiscretions?"' he suggests. "The sin of pride?"' "I may have missed a few incidents," concedes Agnes. "Sometimes I've been too sleepy or unwell to keep my diary as I should."

"Very well then…" mutters the priest.

"Restitution, restitution… There's very little you can do after such a lapse of time. If you still have the friend whose ring you gave away, tell her you did so and ask her forgiveness. As for the flower…" (he groans) "forget about the flower. As for the insect, you're free to step on as many as you please; they're under your dominion, as the Bible makes clear. If you can find the policeman you insulted, apologise. Now: penance. For the lie and the harsh words, say three Hail Marys. And do try to examine your soul more deeply. Very few of us live through thirteen years committing nary a sin."

"Thank you, Father," whispers Agnes, folding the leaf of paper tightly in her palm, leaning forward for her absolution.

"Dominus noster Iesus Christus te absolvat," mumbles the old voice,

"et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo…" Tears seep out of Agnes's closed eyelids and trickle one after the other down her cheeks. "… ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen."

Agnes Rackham glides out of the confessional lighter than air, and hurriedly takes a seat in the back pews. For her illicit visit here this afternoon she has worn a veil and a plain charcoal-grey dress: a very different outfit from those she's been showing off at Seasonal Occasions to be sure, but then here in Saint Teresa's, Cricklewood, her attitude to being recognised is very different too. The back pews, far removed from the regular congregation, far from the altar and the candelabras, are so dark that when Agnes squeezes between them she almost trips on a prayer cushion not replaced in its pouch. Far above her head, the ceiling has been freshly painted sky-blue, and dotted with golden stars whose light is illusory.

Now Agnes sits contented in the gloom, her face in the shadow of an overhanging cornice.

The service is about to begin; Father Scanlon has emerged from the back of the confessional and walks towards the pulpit. He lifts the purple stole off his shoulders and hands it to one of the altar-boys in exchange for a different one.

He's hardly changed at all! His most important feature-the wart on his brow-is as large as ever.

Enchanted, she watches the preparations for Mass, wishing she could participate, knowing she can't. The fact that she knows no one in the congregation is no guarantee that no one knows her (she's the wife of William Rackham, the William Rackham, after all), and she can't afford to provoke gossip. The time isn't ripe for the World to learn of her return to the True Faith.

"Introibo ad altare Dei," announces Father Scanlon, and the ritual begins.

Agnes looks on from the shadows, mouthing along with the Latin. In spirit she projects herself into the candle-lit centre of attention; when the priest bows down to kiss the altar, she inclines her own head; his every signing of the Cross she duplicates over her own breast; her mouth waters at the touch of imaginary bread and wine; her wet lips part to let God in.

"Dominus vobiscum," she whispers, in rapturous unison with Father Scanlon.

"Et cum spirito tuo."

Afterwards, when the church is empty, Agnes ventures out into the light, in order to be alone with the religious bric-a-brac of her childhood.

She dawdles past the seats where she and her mother sat, which, although different people sat in them today, are still identifiable by nicks and blemishes in the wood.

All the fixtures are just as they were, except for a new mosaic in the apse depicting Mary's heavenly coronation that's far too bright and gets Her nose wrong. The plaque of the Assumption behind the altar is reassuringly unchanged, with Our Lady floating away from the pudgy, clutching hands of the hideous cherubs swarming around Her feet.

Agnes wonders how long it will be before she's bold enough to snub Anglicanism publicly and reserve a private seat for herself here, in the light near the altar. Not very long, she hopes.

Only, she doesn't know whom to ask, and how much it would cost, and whether it's paid for weekly or yearly. That's the sort of thing William would be good for, if she could only trust him.

First things first, though: she must do something to reduce the number of days her mother languishes in Purgatory. Has anyone else pleaded for Violet Unwin since her death? Probably not. On the evidence of her funeral, attended only by Lord Unwin's Anglican cronies, she had no Catholic friends left.

Agnes has always assumed her mother will be in Purgatory a very long time, as punishment for marrying Lord Unwin in the first place, and then for allowing him to rob her and Agnes of their religion. Strong interventions are needed.

Opening her new purse under the light of the altar's candelabra, she removes, from amongst the face-powder shells, smelling salts and button-hooks, a much creased and tarnished Prayer card, on one side of which is printed an engraving of Jesus, and on the other an indulgenced prayer, guaranteed to shave days, weeks or even months off the sentence. Agnes reads the instructions. The requirement that she should just have received communion God will probably waive in the circumstances; in all other respects she's eligible: she's made Confession, she's standing before a crucifix, and she knows by heart the words of the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be to the Father for the Pope. She recites these, slowly and distinctly, and then reads the prayer on the card.

"… They have pierced my hands and feet," she concludes. "They have numbered all my bones." Closing her eyes, she waits for the tingling in her palms and soles which always accompanied the reading of this prayer when, as a child, she used it to plead for dimly remembered aunts and favourite historical figures.

To fix an extra wing on her prayer, she walks over to the nave where the votive candles sit, and lights one. The hundred-holed brass tray looks just as it should; the very gobs of melted wax around the holes seem not to have been scraped off since she stood here last.

Agnes next stands under the pulpit, which she never dared do as a child, for the top of it is carved in the shape of a massive eagle, with the Bible resting across its back and spread wings, and its head pointing straight down at the onlooker.

Fearlessly, or very nearly fearlessly, Agnes stares up into the bird's dull wooden eyes.

Just then the church bell begins to toll, and Agnes must stare into the eagle's eyes all the harder, for it's at just such a signal that magical creatures come to life. Cling, Cling, Cling, goes the bell, but the carved bird doesn't stir, and when the tolling stops, Agnes looks away.

She'd like to visit the crucified Christ behind the pulpit, to verify her recollection that it was the middle finger on His left hand that was broken and glued back in place, but she knows time is getting on, and she must go home. William may be wondering what's become of her.

As she walks up the far aisle, she reacquaints herself with the sequence of paintings of Christ's journey to Golgotha hanging high upon the walls. Only, she's passing under them in reverse order, from the Deposition to the Judgement Before Pilate. These dismal images, too, have remained unchanged for thirteen years, retaining all their varnished menace. As a child, she was afraid of these scenes of suffering set against grim, storm-laden skies: she used to shut her eyes against the glistening mark of the birch-whip on the ghastly grey skin, the slender trickles of dark blood from the thorn-pricked forehead, and most especially, the nailing of Christ's right hand. In those days, she only needed to glimpse, by accident, the mallet in mid-swing, for her own hand to spasm into a fist, and she'd have to wrap it protectively in a fold of her skirts.

Today she sees the paintings very differently, for she's since suffered many tortures of her own, and knows there are worse things than an agonising death. Moreover, she understands what she was never able to understand as a child: namely, why, if Jesus was magic, did He let Himself be murdered? Now she envies the haloed martyour, for He was a creature, like Psycho and the Mussulman mystics in the Spiritualist books, who could be killed and then return to life intact. (in Christ's case, not quite intact, she has to admit, as He had those holes in His feet and hands, but then that would be less of a misfortune for a man than a woman.) She pauses in the doorway to the vestibule and briefly contemplates, before leaving, the face of Jesus as Pilate condemns him. Yes, there's no mistaking it: the serene, almost smug equanimity of one who knows: "I cannot be destroyed." It's exactly the same expression as is on the face of the African chieftain on the burning pyre were-engraving made by an eyewitness, or so the author of Miracle and Their Mechanisms, currently under her bed, assures her.) So many people in history have survived death, and here's she, for all her devoted study into the matter, still excluded from that elite! Why? She's not asking for fame-she's not the son of God, after all-no one need even know she's done it, she'd be ever so discreet!

But she mustn't spoil this wonderful day with sorry thoughts. Not when she's had absolution, and mouthed Latin in unison with her childhood priest. She hurries out of the church, looking neither right nor left, resisting the temptation to linger amongst the displays of religious merchandise and compare, as she used to, one painted miniature with another, trying to decide which was the very best Lamb, the very best Virgin, the very best Christ, and so on. She must return to Notting Hill, and have a little rest.

Outside, darkness has fallen. For a moment, she's in a quandary how she'll get home: then she remembers. William's marvellous gift: her very own brougham. She still can't quite believe she owns it, but there it stands, waiting outside the stonemason's workshop opposite the church. Its dark-brown horses turn their blinkered heads placidly at her approach, and in the driver's seat, wreathed in smoke from his pipe, sits…

"Cheesman?"' she calls, but softly, almost to herself, for she's still experimenting with her ownership of him.

"Cheesman!" she calls again, this time loud enough for him to hear. "Back to the house, please."

"Very well, Mrs Rackham" is his reply, and within moments she's snug inside the coach, rubbing her shoulders shyly against its upholstery as the horses jerk into motion. What a fine brougham it is! It's grander than Mrs Bridgelow's, and hers cost l180, according to William. A major expenditure, then, but well worth it-and not before time, either, because there isn't much of the Season left.

She has forgiven William for not consulting her; it really is a faultless brougham, and Cheesman could hardly be bettered (he's taller and handsomer than Mrs Bridgelow's coachman, for a start). And it was evidently terribly important to William to keep it a surprise. What a surprise it was indeed, when, a week ago, she mentioned she had an errand in the city and asked him if he knew when the next omnibus was due, and he said, "Why not take the brougham, my dear?"' "Why, whose brougham?"' she naturally enquired.

"Yours and mine, my dear," he said, and, taking her by the hand, led her to see her birthday gift.

Now the miraculous Cheesman is taking her home-this human birthday present of hers, a man of few words, a discreet fellow on whom she already knows she can rely. Last Sunday he took her to Church-English Church-in Notting Hill, and next Sunday he'll do so again, but tonight he's taken her to Mass, and she can tell he'll do that again, too. Why, she could probably command him to take her to a Mosque or a Synagogue, and he'd tap the horses' flanks with his folded whip, and they'd be off!

Tomorrow he'll take her to the Royal Opera House, where Madame Adelina Patti is singing Dinorah. Everyone will see her (agnes, that is, not Madame Patti) alighting from her new brougham. Who's that? people will whisper, as a Cinderella-like figure emerges from the burnished body of the carriage, white skirts tumbling out like froth… Euphoric with anticipation, still tingling from the thrill of Father Scanlon's absolution, and rocked in the bosom of her very own brougham, Agnes dozes, her cheek resting against the tasselled velvet pillow William has given her for just that purpose, as the horses bear her homewards.

That the Rackhams now possess a brougham is no secret from Sugar. She helped William choose it, from a folio of designs, and advised him on what his wife's needs and desires might be.

Yes, thank God, the tide has turned, and Rackham is once again paying her regular visits. He can no longer stand being dragged from one pompous spectacle to another, he says, when he has so much work to do. He has shown his face in all the right places, he's suffered Royal Institution lectures about pterodactyls, he's suffered Hamlet in Italian, and now, by Heaven, he's endured enough for the sake of Society.

Lord knows, half of these events he's only attended because he was afraid Agnes might take one of her "turns", and he'd have to step in.

But she seems to have got over whatever was possessing her, she's not fainting or having fits in public anymore, in fact she's behaving perfectly, so he's damned if he's going to chaperone her to every concert, play, garden party, charity banquet, horse race, pleasure garden, flower show and exhibition from now till September. Half a dozen workers at the Mitcham farm were killed on Tuesday, in a poisoning incident wholly unrelated to Rackham Perfumeries, but it meant police enquiries, and where was he at the time?

Snoring his head off at the Lyceum, that's where, while a fat Thespian in a cardboard crown pretended to be succumbing to poison. What an abject lesson, if any were needed, in the necessity to draw a line between make-believe and reality! From now on, he'll accompany Agnes only to what's absolutely unavoidable.

Oh, and yes, of course, he's missed

Sugar dreadfully. More than he can say.

Sugar glows with happiness, reassured by the fervour of his embrace, the effusion of renewed intimacy between them. She was afraid she'd lost her grip, but no, he's confiding in her more than ever. Her fears were all in vain; she's securely woven into the tapestry of his life.

"Ach, what would I have done without you!" he sighs, as they lie in each other's arms, warm and sated. Sugar pulls the bed-clothes up over his chest, to tuck him in, and as she does so she releases a whiff of their love-making from under the soft sheets, for there's scarcely an inch of her he hasn't reclaimed.

The business with Hopsom has ended well, with Hopsom more or less satisfied and Rackham's reputation intact-thanks, in no small measure, to Sugar's excellent advice. The new Rackham's catalogue is a great success, purged entirely of the old man's crude turns of phrase, and now so much improved by Sugar's elegant suggestions that there's been a notable increase in orders from the gentry. Even a few weeks ago, William was still saying things like "But this can be of no interest to you" or "Forgive me: what a subject!"; now, he speaks freely of his business plans and anxieties, and it's plain her opinion is worth gold to him.

"Don't be envious of Pears, dear heart," she murmurs soothingly to him one night, when, in a flush of melancholy after his passion is spent, he confesses how small he feels in comparison with that industrial colossus.

"They have land and suppliers you don't have, and that's that. Why not turn your thoughts to the things about Pears you can compete with, like… well, like the pretty illustrations on their posters and labels. They're very popular, you know: I'll wager half the reason so many people are partial to Pears is the appeal of those pictures."

"Rackham's does use illustrations," he reminds her, wiping the damp hair on his chest with a handful of bedsheet. "A fellow in Glasgow paints them, and we have them engraved.

Costs a fortune, too."

"Yes, but fashions change so terribly quickly, William. For instance, the engraving in The Illustrated London News just now: with all due respect to your man in Glasgow, the girl's hair is already out of style. She has her frisette gummed to her forehead, instead of hanging soft and free. Women notice these things …"

She has her palm cupped over his genitals, can feel his balls moving in their pouch as his manhood comes slowly back to life. He accepts that she's right, she can tell.

"I'll help you with your illustrations,

William," she croons. "The Rackham woman will be as modern as tomorrow."

In the days that follow, true to his word, William leaves the burly-burly of the Season more and more to his wife, and spends the time thus freed with Sugar, or with the affairs of Rackham Perfumeries, or (preferably) both at once. Three times in one week she has him in her bed, including an entire night sleeping side by side! Nor is he in any hurry to leave in the morning; she has bought provisions of shaving soap, razors, cheese, anything he might fancy while he emerges from his nest of slumber.

One particular Friday, though, he has to go to Birmingham, to investigate an insolvent box factory whose asking price is almost too good to be true. And so, on the night that William must spend in a Brummie guesthouse, Sugar accompanies Agnes to the Royal Opera House, to see Meyerbeer's Dinorah.

The two of them meet in the foyer-or as nearly as Sugar dares. In the swarming pre-performance crowd, only one body stands between the two women at any given moment, as Sugar hides now behind this person, now that one, peeking over stiff black shoulders and puff sleeves.

Mrs Rackham is dressed all in bone-white and olive green and, if truth be told, looks exceedingly wan. She smiles at anyone who might be watching her, but her eyes are glazed, her grip on her fan is rather tight, and she walks with an ever-so-slight totter.

"Delightful to see you!" she chirps to Mrs This and Mrs That, but her heart clearly isn't in it and, making her excuses after only a few seconds of conversation, she retreats into the crowd.

By seven o'clock she's already in her seat for the performance, thus abdicating the chance to display her finery to serried rows of captive onlookers.

Instead, she massages her temples with her gloved fingers, and waits.

Two hours later, when it's all over,

Agnes applauds feebly while all around her erupt in jubilation. Amid cries of "Encore!" she squeezes out of her aisle and hurries towards the exit. Sugar follows at once, although she is a little worried that the people in her own aisle will conclude that she hasn't enjoyed herself. She has! It was majestic, superb! Can she applaud and cry "Encore!" while stumbling past people's knees, stepping on their feet in her haste to pursue the fleeing Mrs Rackham? No, that would be too absurd; she'll just have to make a bad impression.

In the entrance-hall, a surprising number of opera-goers have already rendezvoused. These are the jaded @elite, the barons and baronesses sleepy with boredom, the monocled critics lighting each other's cigars, the frivolous young things impatient to flit on to other entertainments, the senile dowagers too sore to sit longer. A noisy babble is discussing cabs, the weather, mutual friends; masculine voices can be heard pooh-poohing the performance, comparing it unfavourably with Dinorahs seen in other countries in other years; feminine voices are decrying Adelina Patti's dress sense, while epicene ones are just as loudly praising it.

Through this throng, Agnes Rackham attempts to make her escape.

"Ah! Agnes!" cries an obese lady in a claret-hued, eye-catchingly horrid satin dress. "Opinion, please!"

Agnes freezes in her tracks, and turns to face her captor.

"I haven't any opinion," she protests in an uncharacteristically low and unmusical voice.

"I merely wanted some air…"

"Goodness, yes, you do look peakish!" exclaims Mrs So-and-S. "Are you sure you're getting enough to eat, my dear?"'

Standing close behind Agnes, Sugar observes a shudder travelling down the buttons of her back. There is a pause, during which the hubbub quietens, perhaps by mere coincidence rather than general curiosity about Mrs Rackham's response.

"You are fat, and ugly, and I've never liked you." The words ring out distinctly, in a harsh monotone unrecognisable as Agnes's, issuing from somewhere much deeper than her piccolo throat.

It's a voice that makes the hairs stand up on the nape of Sugar's neck, and transfixes Mrs So-and-So like the snarl of a savage dog.

"Your husband disgusts me," Agnes goes on, "with his slobbering red lips and his old man's teeth. Your concern for me is false and poisonous. Your chin has hairs on it. Fat people shouldn't ever wear satin." And with that, she turns on her heel and hurries out of the hall, one white-gloved hand pressed hard against her forehead.

Sugar hurries after, passing close by the mortified Mrs So-and-So and her slack-mouthed entourage, who cringe backwards as if the rules of the game are now so topsy-turvy that an attack from a total stranger would be no surprise.

"Excuse me," wheezes Sugar as she leaves them gawping.

Her haste is justified: Agnes doesn't even stop at the cloakroom, but rushes directly out of the building onto the gas-lit street. The doorman has barely enough time to retract his rubbery neck from the open door before Sugar slips through the space herself, brushing his nose with the velvet shoulder of her dress.

"Pardon me!" they ejaculate simultaneously, to the wind.

Sugar peers into the jostling confusion of Bow Street, a populous glut of hawkers, harlots, foreigners and decent folk. For a moment she fears she's lost Agnes in the kaleidoscope, especially as there's a constant stream of horse-drawn traffic camouflaging one side of the road from the other. But she needn't have worried: Mrs Rackham, lacking the dark green coat and black parapluie she's failed to redeem from the cloakroom, is easy to spot; her white skirts sweep along the dark footpath and weave through the pedestrians.

Sugar has only to follow the lightest object, and trust that it's Agnes.

The pursuit lasts less than half a minute; Mrs Rackham ducks sideways out of Bow Street into a narrow alley, the sort that's used by whores and thieves for their convenience-or by gentlemen in need of a piss. Indeed, the instant that Sugar slips inside its murky aperture, she's assailed by the smell of human waste and the sound of furtive footsteps making themselves scarce.

The footsteps are certainly not Agnes's: a short distance into the alley, Mrs Rackham lies sprawled face-down and dead-still, in the muck and the grit. Her skirts glow in the dark like a mound of snow that has miraculously survived the coming of Spring.

"Damn…" breathes Sugar, paralysed with alarm and indecision. She looks backwards, and verifies that from the point of view of the passers-by in Bow Street five yards behind her, she's in another world, a shadowy limbo; she and Agnes have left the lamp-lit mainstream, which flows on without them, oblivious. Then again, Sugar knows very well that Scotland Yard is not far around the corner, and if there's any place in London where she's liable to be grabbed by a couple of uniformed runners and asked what exactly she knows about this lady lying lifeless at her feet, it's here.

"Agnes?"' No response from the motionless body. Mrs Rackham's left foot is twisted at a crazy angle and her right arm is slung wide, as if she fell from a great height.

"Agnes?"' Sugar kneels at the body's side. She reaches her hand into the darkness under the soft blonde hair and cups one of Agnes's cheeks in her palm, feeling the warmth of it-the fleshy heat of it-smooth and alive like her own naked bosom. She lifts Agnes's face off the cold, gritty cobbles, and her fingers tingle.

"Agnes?"' The mouth against Sugar's hand comes to life and murmurs wordlessly against her fingers, seeking, it seems, to suck her thumb.

"Agnes, wake up!"

Mrs Rackham twitches like a cat haunted with dreams, and her limbs flail feebly in the dirt.

"Clara?"' she whimpers.

"No," whispers Sugar, leaning close to Agnes's ear. "You're not home yet."

With much assistance, Agnes gets to her knees. In the darkness, it's impossible to tell if the glistening muck on Mrs Rackham's nose, chin and bosom is blood or mud or both.

"Don't look in my face," commands Sugar gently, clasping Agnes's shoulders and raising her to her feet. "I will help you, but don't look in my face."

Moment by moment, the reality of her predicament is seeping into Agnes's reviving brain.

"Dear Heaven, I-I'm… filthy!" she shudders. "I'm covered in from-filth!"

Her tiny hands flutter ineffectually over her bodice and fall into the lap of her soiled skirts. "Have-how can I be seen like this? How am I to get home?"' Roused by an instinct for entreaty, she turns her face towards her rescuer's, but Sugar pulls back.

"Don't look in my face," she says again, squeezing Agnes's shoulders tightly.

"I will help you. Wait here." And she runs off, back into the lights of Bow Street.

Once more in the mainstream of human traffic, Sugar looks around her, examining each person critically: can anyone in this swirling, chattering swarm supply what she's after? Those coffee-sellers over there, wreathed in the steam of their stall…? No, too shabby, in their burlap caps and stained smocks… Those ladies waiting to cross the street, twirling their parasols and preening their furry stoles while the carriages trundle past? No, they're fresh from the Opera House; Agnes might know them; and in any case they would sooner die than… That soldier, with his fine black cape? No, he would insist on summoning the authorities… That woman over there with the long purple shawl-she's surely a prostitute, and would only make trouble…

"Oh! Miss! Excuse me!" calls Sugar, hurrying to accost a matronly woman lugging a basket of over-ripe strawberries.

The woman, poor and dowdy, Irish or half-wit by the look of her, nevertheless has one asset (besides her load of squashy fruit): she wears a pale blue mantle, a huge old-fashioned thing that covers her from neck to ankle.

"Mout-waterin' strawberries," she replies, squinting ingratiatingly.

"Your cloak," says Sugar, unclasping her purse and scrabbling inside it for the brightest coins. "Sell it to me. I'll give you ten shillings for it."

Even as Sugar is extracting the coins, six, seven, eight, the woman begins to cringe away, licking her lips nervously.

"I'm in earnest!" protests Sugar, pulling out more shillings and letting the light catch them in her gloved palms.

"I ain't sayin' you ain't, ma'am," says the woman, half-curtseying, her bloodshot eyes rolling in confusion. "But see, ma'am, me clothes ain't for sale.

Mout-waterin'-"' "What's wrong with you?"' cries Sugar in exasperation. Any second now, Agnes could be discovered cowering in the dark by one of the alley's scavenging regulars; she could be having her throat slit by a grunting man in search of necklaces and silver lockets! "This cloak of yours-it's cheap old cotton-you can buy something better in Petticoat Lane any day of the week!"

"Yes, yes ma'am," pleads the drudge, clutching her mantle at the throat. "But tonight I'm awful cold, and under this cloak I've only a shivery t'in dress."

"For God's sake," hisses Sugar, half-hysterical with impatience as Agnes's head (in her imaginings) is sawn free of her gushing neck by a serrated blade. "Ten shillings! Look at it!" She extends her hand, shoving the shiny new coins almost against the woman's nose.

In another instant the exchange is made. The strawberry-seller takes the money, and Sugar divests her of her cloak, revealing bare arms underneath, a gauzy skirt, and a sagging, bulging bodice much stained with breast-milk. A wince of disgust, too, is then belatedly included in the bargain. Without another word, Sugar walks away, folding the mantle against her own discreet velvety bosom as she retraces her steps to the alley.

Agnes is exactly in the spot where she was left to stand; indeed, she appears not to have moved a muscle, as though petrified by fairytale magic. Obediently, without being reminded, she averts her face as her guardian angel approaches, a tall, almost masculine silhouette with a mysterious pale glow shimmering in front of its torso. The rats which have been circling Agnes's skirts, sniffing at her soft leather shoes, take fright and scurry off into the blackness.

"I've brought you something," says Sugar, drawing up to Agnes's side. "Stay still, and I'll wrap it around you."

Agnes's shoulders quiver as the cloak falls around her. She utters a cry that's little more than a breath, unidentifiable as pleasure, pain or fear. One hand fumbles at her breast, uncertain where to grasp the unfamiliar garment… or no!-it's not that at all: she is crossing herself.

"… Holy Ghost…" she whispers tremulously.

"Now," declares Sugar, clasping Agnes by the elbows, through the pale fabric of the mantle.

"I am going to tell you what to do. You must walk out of here, and turn right. Are you listening?"'

Agnes nods, with a sound remarkably like the erotic whimper Sugar performs when a man's hard prick is nuzzling for entry.

"When you are back on the street, walk a short way, just a hundred paces or so," continues Sugar, pushing Agnes gently towards the light, step by step. "Turn right again at the flower-seller's barrow: that's where Cheesman is waiting for you. I'll be watching you to see that you're safe." Leaning forward over Agnes's shoulder, she steals a glimpse of where the smear of mud and blood glistens, and wipes it off with a dab of her dark sleeve.

"Bless you, bless you," says Agnes, tottering ahead, yet tilting backward, her internal plumb-line knocked askew.

"William so-says you are a from-fantasy, a trick of my im-more-magination."

"Never mind what William says." How Agnes trembles in her grasp! Like a small child … Not that Sugar has any experience, outside novels, of what a trembling child feels like.

"Remember, turn right at the flower barrow."

"This beautiful will-will-white robe," says Agnes, gaining courage and better balance as she goes on. "I s'pose he'll say it's a from-fantasy too…"

"Don't tell him anything. Let this be our secret."

"So-secret?"' They have reached the mouth of the alley, and still the world streams by, as though they're invisible figments of another dimension.

"Yes," says Sugar, inspired, in a flash, with just the words she needs. "You must understand, Agnes: angels aren't permitted to do… what I've done for you. I could get into terrible trouble."

"Will-with Our Lady?"'

"Our…?"' What the devil does

Agnes mean? Sugar hesitates, until a vision glows in her mind of Mrs Castaway's picture albums, with their lurid host of paste-glazed Madonnas. "Yes, Our Lady."

"Oh! Bless you!" At this cry of Agnes's, a passing dandy pauses momentarily in his stride; Mrs Rackham's nose has re-entered the flowing current of Life.

"Walk, Agnes," commands Sugar, and gives her a gentle shove.

Mrs Rackham toddles into Bow Street, in the correct direction, straight as a machine.

She looks neither right nor left, despite a sudden commotion elsewhere in Bow Street involving police and gesticulating bystanders; she completes the requisite hundred paces to the cab rank, and turns right just as instructed. Only then does Sugar leave her vantage-point and follow on; by the time she reaches the flower barrow and peeks round the corner, Mrs Rackham has been safely installed in her brougham, Cheesman is climbing up the side, and the horses are snorting in anticipation of the journey.

"Thank God," says Sugar under her breath, and reels back in sudden weariness. Now for a cab of her own.

The commotion in Bow Street is over, more or less. The dense pack of onlookers is dispersing from the scene of the incident. Two policemen are carrying a stretcher between them, in which sags a human-sized shape snugly wrapped in a white sheet. Carefully, but mindful of the obstruction they're causing to traffic, they load their flaccid burden into a canopied cart, and wave a signal of send-off.

It's not until two hours later, when Sugar has returned to the stillness of her rooms in Priory Close, and she's reclining in her warm bath, staring up at the steam-shrouded ceiling, that the thought comes to her:

That body was the strawberry-seller.

She winces, lifts her head out of the water.

Such is the weight of her wet hair that she's almost pulled back under by it, her lathery elbows slipping on the smooth enamel of the tub.

Nonsense, she thinks. It was a drunkard. A beggar.

With a jug of fresh water she rinses herself, standing up in the bath. Eddying around her knees, the soapy water is grey with the soot of the city's foul air.

Every bully and bughunter in Bow Street would've seen her take those coins. A half-dressed woman at night, with ten shillings on her…

She steps out, wraps her body in her favourite snow-white towel, quite the best thing to be had in Peter Robinson's on her last shopping expedition there. If she goes to bed now, her hair will dry in the wrong shape; she really ought to dry it in front of the fire, brushing it constantly so it achieves the airy fullness that William so much admires. She has all day tomorrow to sleep in; he'll still be en route from Birmingham.

Old starvelings drop dead in London every day of the week. Drunkards fall under the wheels of carriages. It wasn't the strawberry-seller. She's snoring in her bed, with ten shillings under her pillow.

Sugar squats naked in front of the hearth, allows her damp mane to tumble down across her face, and begins brushing, brushing, brushing.

Necklace-thin rivulets of water trickle down her arms and shoulders, evaporating in the heat from the fire. Outside, a stiff breeze has sprung up, whistling and whooping around the building, blowing innocuous debris against the French windows in the study. The chimney harrumphs; the wooden skeleton of the house, concealed beneath the plaster and wallpaper, creaks.

Finally, something to make her jump out of her skin: a knock at the front door.

Extravagant imagination? No: there it is again!

William? Who else could it be but William? She springs to her feet, half in panic, half in excitement. Why is he back so soon? What about the box factory? "I got halfway to Birmingham and thought better of it," she anticipates him explaining.

"Nothing good can be so cheap." Jesus, where has she left her night-dress?

On impulse, she runs to the door naked.

Why not? He'll be startled and delighted to see her thus, his bold and guileless courtesan, a freshly-unwrapped gift of soft clean flesh, fragrant with Rackham perfume. He'll scarcely be able to contain himself while she dances him playfully backwards towards the bedroom…

She opens the door, unleashing a great gust of biting air onto her instantly goose-pimpled flesh. Outside, waiting in her ink-black porch, there is no one.