The Crimson petal and the white

NINETEEN

"Wake up," hisses a stern voice.

"Remember where you are."

Sugar rouses with a start, having nodded off in her seat. Blinking in the multi-coloured sunlight beaming through the stained-glass windows, she sits up straight, smooths her dowdy skirts and adjusts her horrid shawl. The ancient wife next to her, her pious duty done, turns her dim eyes once more to the pulpit, where the faraway rector is still busy casting his oratory across the sea of pews.

Sugar glances at the other occupants of the free seats here in the back of the church, worried that they, too, noticed her falling asleep, but they appear oblivious. There's an imbecile boy, growing increasingly cross-eyed in his attempts to scratch his nose with his bottom teeth. Next to him, nearest the escape route to the sunny outdoors, sits a shovel-faced mother with two babes cradled one in each arm, which she jigs slowly and gently to ensure their slumber is uninterrupted.

In truth, much of the congregation is asleep, some with heads slung back and mouths open, others with chins sunk into their stiff, upturned collars, others leaning on the shoulders of relations. Sleep is almost irresistible, what with the hot weather, the tinted sunlight, and the rector's droning voice: a conspiracy of soporifics.

Surreptitiously, Sugar rubs her stiff neck and reminds herself what a fine idea it is to be here. William is away again (just for the day, this time, to Yarmouth), so what better way to spend her Sunday morning than to accompany the Rackham household to church?

Not that there are many Rackhams in evidence.

Their contingent has been sadly depleted since the honeymoon days of William's marriage, when William and Agnes would turn up along with Rackham Senior and all the servants, and clucking ladies of the congregation would hint to the mystified Agnes that she'd soon be bringing a lively family with her.

Yarmouth or no Yarmouth, William rarely attends anymore. Why should he listen to a windbag in a pulpit ranting about intangibles?

In the world of Business, nothing is discussed that can't be made real and viable: would that Religion could boast the same! So, usually it's Agnes who attends in his stead, along with whatever servants can be spared. But Agnes isn't here this morning, only her sour-faced maid. (clara's wide awake, not by virtue of greater piety but because she's seething with resentment at the way Letty, who's trusted to attend the evening service on her own, is in effect given Sundays off. She's likewise envious of Cheesman, who's free to wander around outside the church, smoking cigarettes and reading tombstones.

And why doesn't someone poke a parasol into that stupid scullery girl, Janey, to stop her snoring!) Sugar fidgets in the "poor pew" of the church, many rows behind a small, barely visible child who may or may not be the daughter of William Rackham. Whoever she is, she moves not a muscle throughout the service, and is almost wholly hidden inside a stiff brown coat and oversized hat. Sugar tries to convince herself there must be something to be learned from the few inches of blonde hair that peep out, but her eyes keep drooping shut. She longs for the next brace of hymns, because even though these require her to sing unfamiliar words to tunes she doesn't know, at least they jog her awake. Pitiless, the sermon saws on and on, a monotone that never reaches a crescendo.

At the far left of the front pew, a handsome but angry-looking man is fidgeting too. He's puffy-eyed and carelessly groomed, an odd sort of character to be at the forefront of the paying congregation.

Every now and then, when he disagrees with the rector, he takes a breath so deep that it's visible from the rear of the church, and very nearly audible from there, too.

The rector is vilifying a certain Sir Henry Thompson for heresies whose precise nature Sugar can't guess, having slept through a crucial part of the sermon, but she gathers that Thompson is espousing beliefs of a most foul and depraved kind and, what's worse, winning a large public to his side. The rector suggests accusingly that there might even lurk, within his congregation this very morning, souls already led astray by Sir Henry Thompson. Oh God, prays Sugar, please make him stop talking. But by the time her prayer is finally granted, all hope of a truce with God is lost.

After the last hymns are sung, the congregation disperses slowly, many lingering in their seats to peruse their church calendars. The dissolute-looking man from the front row is not one of them; he barges out, striking accidental blows against several persons as he blunders up the aisle. This man, Sugar realises as he passes close by her, must be William's older brother, the "dull, indecisive" one who's "been acting damned peculiar lately".

After Henry, an orderly procession of Notting Hill's smartest and holiest files up the aisle, the men baking stoically in their dark jackets, the ladies decked out in the latest fashion, denying themselves only the glitter of ostentatious jewellery. Straggling in their wake comes the child who may or may not be William's daughter, half-shrouded in the skirts of her matronly chaperone. She has Agnes's china-blue eyes, and William's lack of chin, and the yearning, defeated look of an impounded animal-the self-same look that William had on.his face, when she first appraised him in the smoky glow of The Fireside. Can a look prove paternity? Hardly conclusive: this child could be anybody's. But for a fraction of an instant, the little girl's eyes and Sugar's meet, and something is communicated. For the first time today in this house of purported divinity, a spark of spirit has leapt through the stagnant air.

It is you, isn't it? Sophie? she thinks, but the child is already gone.

As soon as she can safely do so, Sugar leaves her pew and follows the parishioners into the sunny churchyard. The little girl is being hurried -hustled, almost-towards the Rackhams' carriage. Cheesman, loitering beside a marble column with two life-size angels wrapped wantonly round it, discards his cigarette and grinds it underfoot.

With one Rackham whisked away, Sugar seeks out the sole remaining one: brother Henry -and finds she isn't the only woman pursuing him. A wan-faced invalid whom Sugar observed, before the service, being assisted to her pew seat by a servant, is now receiving the same assistance to leave the church. Leaning heavily on a walking stick, she waves to Henry and calls his name, obviously determined to catch up with him.

The effect on William's brother is galvanic. He jerks to attention, doffs his hat to smooth his unwashed hair flat against his head, replaces the hat with care, straightens his tie. Even through the coarse muslin of her veil, Sugar can see he's wrought a miracle on his face, banishing the anger and the bitter disaffection and replacing it with a mask of pitiful composure.

The invalid, still escorted by a maidservant, moves not as a lame person does (that characteristic three-legged step), but bears down upon her walking stick as if it were a railing at the edge of a vertiginous cliff. She's as pale and thin as a stripped branch, and the left hand which hangs over the servant's arm looks very like a twig; the right, wrapped tightly around the handle of her cane, looks more like a knotted root. In the torrid heat that's giving everyone around her pink or (in the case of some of the more elaborately dressed ladies) red faces, hers is white, with two mottled crimson blushes on her cheeks that flare and fade with each step.

Poor doomed soul, thinks Sugar, for she recognises consumption when she sees it. But no sooner has this droplet of compassion leaked into her veins than she feels a gush of guilt flowing after it: Why don't you go back to Mrs Castaway's and visit Katy, you coward?

She'll be in a worse may than this stranger-if she isn't dead already.

"Ah! Henry! were you hoping to escape from me?"'

The consumptive has managed to shake the servant from her side and walks alone, striving to make it look easy. The sight of her hunched shoulders and tightly interlocking fingers shocks Henry out of his standstill, and he rushes to her side, almost clipping Sugar across the bosom as he passes.

"Mrs Fox, allow me," he says, extending his arms like heavy tools he's unused to wielding. Mrs Fox declines the offer with a polite shake of her head.

"No, Henry," she reassures him, pausing to rest. "This stick makes me quite steady … once I'm out of danger of being jostled."

Henry glares over Mrs Fox's shoulder, indignant at all the wicked, contemptible people who might jostle her, including (nearest of all) Sugar. His arms, prevented from grasping Mrs Fox's, hang at his sides, useless.

"You shouldn't be putting yourself at such risk," he protests.

"Risk! Pfff!" scoffs Mrs Fox.

"Ask a destitute prostitute… under the

Adelphi Arches… what risk is…"

"I'd rather not," says Henry. "And I'd rather you were resting at home."

But Mrs Fox, now that she's stopped moving, is regaining her breath by sheer force of will, sucking it up, as it were, from the ground through her stick.

"I shall come to church," she declares, "as long as I'm able. After all, the church has one great advantage over the Rescue Society-it won't send me a letter telling me not to come anymore."

"Yes, but you're to rest, your father said."

"Rest? My father wants me to go travelling!"

"Travelling?"' Henry's face contorts with hope and fear and incomprehension. "Where to?"' "Folkestone Sands," she sniffs.

"By all accounts an Eden for invalids-or is it a Sheol?"' "Mrs Fox, please!" Henry glances uneasily about him, in case the rector is nearby. There's only an anonymous veiled woman in shabby clothes, turning slowly and hesitantly as if unsure of her bearings.

"Come, Henry, let's walk together," says Mrs Fox.

Henry is aghast. "Not all the way…?"'

"Yes, all the way-to my father's carriage," she ribs him. "Come on, Henry. There are folk who walk five miles to work every morning."

Henry, provoked beyond endurance, begins to exclaim, "Not if…", but manages to bite his tongue on any mention of fatal illness. "Not on a Sunday," he substitutes miserably.

They resume walking, down the old path, the shaded avenue of trees, away from the sunlit congregation, followed by the veiled woman in the shabby clothes. Discreet distance and Mrs Fox's breathlessness make Sugar miss some of what's said; the words are turned to whispers on the breeze, like fluffs of scattered dandelion. But Mrs Fox's shoulder-blades, straining and swivelling under the fabric of her dress, speak loud and clear.

"What does it profit me," she pants,

"to lie still and alone in my bed, when I could be here in the mild weather, in good company…" (a few words go astray) "… the chance to sing the Lord's praises…" (a few more).

The mention of "mild" weather sends a chill of pity down Sugar's spine, for she's blinking droplets of sweat from her eyelashes behind her veil. The heat is punishing, and Sugar regrets denying herself-in her pauper's disguise -the luxury of a parasol. What frigid blood must be coursing through this woman's emaciated frame!

"… this lovely day… indoors I should be cold and miserable…"

Henry looks up into the fierce sky, willing the sun to be as mild as she believes it to be.

"… something intrinsically morbid about lying in bed, under white sheets, don't you think?"' Mrs Fox presses on.

"Let's talk of something else," pleads Henry. The graveyard is to their left, the headstones flickering through the trees.

"Well, then…" pants Mrs Fox.

"What did you think of the sermon?"'

Henry looks over his shoulder to make sure that the rector is not on their tail, but he sees only the shabbily dressed woman and, some distance behind her on the path, Doctor Curlew's maid.

"I thought the greater part of it was… very fine," he mutters. "But I could've done without the attack on Sir Henry Thompson."

"True, Henry, quite true," gasps Mrs

Fox. "Thompson bravely addresses an evil…" (several words lost) "… time to admit to ourselves… very notion of burial… belongs to a smaller world… than ours has become…" She stops a moment, sways on her stick, and waves one arm at the graveyard.

"A modest, suburban churchyard like this… gives no clue to what will happen… when the population swells… Have you read… excellent book… What Horror Brews Beneath Our Feet?"'

If there's a reply to this question, Sugar doesn't hear it.

"You ought to, Henry… you ought to. It will open your eyes. There could be no more eloquent… favour of cremation. The author describes… old graveyards of London … before they were all shut… noxious vapours … visible to the naked eye…"

By now, her speech is painful to hear, and Henry Rackham casts frequent, agitated glances over his shoulder, not at Sugar but at the servant, who he plainly wishes would come and take matters in hand.

"God made us…" Mrs Fox wheezes, "from a handful of dust… so I fail to see… why some people think Him incapable… of resurrecting us… from an urnful… of ash."

"Mrs Fox, please don't speak any more."

"And how substantial… I should like to know … do the champions of burial… think we are… after six months… in the soil?"'

Mercifully, the servant chooses this moment to bustle past Sugar and take the invalid firmly by the arm.

"Begging your pardon, Mr Rackham," she says, as Mrs Fox half-collapses against her. He nods and smiles a ghastly smile, a smile of impotence, a smile that acknowledges he's less eligible to take her in his arms than an elderly housemaid.

"Of course, of course," he says, and stands watching as the two spindly women-whom he could, if required, lift off the ground, one in each hand-totter away together, step by feeble step.

Immobile as a pillar, Henry Rackham waits until they're safely installed in the doctor's sombre carriage, then turns back to face the church. Sugar lurches into motion and walks past him, shame-faced behind her veil, for he must surely know she's been spying on his agony.

"Good morning," she says.

"Morning," he croaks, his arm jerking a few inches towards his hat, before it falls rudely back towards the ground.

"Oh, but he's a thorn in my flesh!" groans William, mock-despairingly, in Sugar's bed that evening. "Why did he have to choose me as the victim of his intimacies?"' "Perhaps he has no one else," says Sugar. Then, risking a touch of intimacy herself, she adds: "And you are his brother."

They're lying with the blanket thrown wide, their hot damp bodies exposed to the cooling air.

Despite his concern over Henry, William is in rather a good mood, as confident as a basking lion surrounded by lionesses and a steaming recent kill.

His trip to Yarmouth was a resounding success: he and an importer called Grover Pankey got along famously, smoked cigars on the beachfront, and struck a deal to supply Rackham Perfumeries with dirt-cheap ivory pots for the dearer balsams.

During the act (the act of love with Sugar, not the deal with Pankey), William was still full of his achievement, and it lent him a grace she didn't know he could possess. He caressed her breasts with uncommon tenderness, and kissed her navel with the softest touch of his lips, over and over: at that, something inside her opened up, a hard, hidden shell that was hitherto closed to him.

He's not the worst man in the world, she thinks; he might even be among the least vicious-and he's grown genuinely fond of her body, treating it like a living thing, rather than (as in the beginning) a void into which he angrily cast his seed.

"I am his brother," sighs William,

"and it pains me to see him so wretched. But how can I help him? Everything I urge him to do, he rejects as impossible; everything he does instead, provokes me to annoyance. I come back from Yarmouth, in high spirits and pleased as Punch to have missed another of Doctor Crane's boring sermons, and within minutes Henry's in my parlour, reciting the whole damned thing to me!"

To give Sugar the flavour of what he's had to endure, William sums up the rector's tirade against cremation.

"And what does Henry think?"' says Sugar, when his two-minute pr@ecis of her own hour-long ordeal is finished.

"Ha! Crippled with indecision, as usual!" cries William. "His head, he said, is with cremation, but his heart's with burial."

Sugar represses the impulse to share with William the image that springs into her imagination, of a corpse being carved up by two solemn officials, whereupon one carries the severed head off towards a furnace, and the other bears the bloody heart away on a spade.

"And you?"' she prompts.

"I told him I'm a burial man myself, but not for any far-fetched religious reasons.

What hoops the pious jump through to make simple things complicated! I've half a mind to write an essay on the subject…" Hugging her closer as the sweat on their skins evaporates, he explains that the superiority of burial has nothing to do with religion at all, but with social and economic realities. Grieving friends and relations need to feel that the dead man is going forth from them in the body he had when they last saw him alive; his decay ought to be slow, as slow as the decay of their memories of him. To blast someone to a cinder when, in the minds of his loved ones, he's still large as life, is perverse. And besides, what's to become of all the grave-diggers? Have the cremationists thought of that? And what about the hearse-drivers, the funeral footmen and so forth?

Burial generates more industry, and keeps more men gainfully employed, than most folk could imagine. Why, even Rackham Perfumeries would suffer if it were abolished, for there'd no longer be any call for Rackham's scented coffin sachets, nor the cosmetics Rackham's sells to undertakers.

"And what did Agnes make of all this?"' enquires Sugar lightly, hoping to find out, without needing to ask, why Mrs Rackham wasn't at church this morning.

"Missed the whole thing, thank God. She's at the seaside."

"The seaside?"'

"Yes, Folkestone Sands."

Sugar lifts herself up onto one elbow, and pulls the covers gently up over William's chest, trying to decide how brazenly she can pry.

"What's she doing there?"'

"Fattening herself up with cake and hokey-pokey, I hope." He closes his eyes and draws a deep breath. "Keeping out of trouble."

"Why? What trouble has she been in?"'

But William is not in the mood to tell Sugar about Lady Harrington's ball, and the spectacle of his wife being carried out of a crowded ballroom by two blushing young naval officers, leaving behind her on the burnished floor a long glistening trail of yellow vomit-not to mention a grievously scandalised hostess. He might have told Sugar if the incident had been a simple case of illness, but Agnes, in the minutes leading up to her collapse, said outrageous things to Lady Harrington, ignoring his whispered cautions. Even in the carriage on the way home, she was unrepentant, her speech slurred, her eyes wild and glinting in the dark, as she lolled back and forth on the seat opposite him.

"Lady Harrington will never forgive this, you know," he'd said, torn between the desire to slap her face so hard that it twirled three hundred and sixty degrees, and the longing to enfold her in his arms and stroke the wet hair off her face.

"Ach, we don't need her," Agnes sniffed. "She looks like a duck."

This made him laugh, despite his mortification; and, in a sense, she was right, and not just about Lady Harrington's appearance. Ever since the ascent of William's fortunes to their current altitude, minor aristocrats-the sort whose own fortunes are ravaged by gambling and drink, and whose estates are covertly crumbling into ruin-have been tripping over themselves to court him.

"That's no excuse," he chided his wife,

"for insulting one's host."

"Host, host, host, host," Agnes coughed wearily, eerily, as the carriage continued to jingle through the dark. "Holy Ghost…"

"William?"'

The voice is Sugar's, and she lies naked in the bed next to him, summoning him back to the present.

"Hmm?"' he responds, blinking. "Ah … yes. Agnes. She's not in any trouble really, in particular. Feminine frailty."

He reaches for his shirt and, slipping out of the bed, begins to dress. "I've high hopes for her spell at Folkestone Sands, actually. Sea air is said to cure all sorts of stubborn ailments. And if her illness persists, I may follow the advice of Lady Bridgelow-a friend of mine-and send her abroad."

"Abroad?"' Sugar's hazel eyes are wide. "But where?"'

He pauses for a moment, his underbreeches half pulled up, his prick still wet with their love-making, his swollen scrotum dangling in the heat.

"I'll cross that bridge," he cautions her gently, "if and when I come to it."

Even before the train begins to slacken speed in preparation for its arrival at Folkestone Station, the sharp smell of the sea is already drifting through the carriage windows, and the cries of seagulls can be heard over the staccato racket.

"Ah now, madam, smell that," enthuses the servant, raising the window-blind by its tassel and sniffing deeply at the open window. "It's a tonic, no doubt about it."

Mrs Fox closes her book into the lap of her skirt and smiles.

"It smells most agreeable, Laura,

I'll give you that. But then, so does roast pork, and that's never yet cured anybody of anything."

And yet, Mrs Fox can't deny that the sea air is bracing. The salty breeze is opening tiny, hitherto-closed passages between her nose and her head, and the effect is so exhilarating she's unable to read any more of her book. Before slipping it back into the basket by her side, she appraises the title once more: The Efficacy of Prayer, by Philip Bodley and Edward Ashwell. What a tiresome book it is!-wholly missing the point that prayer is not some magic spell through which one hopes to achieve ends without effort, but a way of giving thanks, after one has given one's all to a worthwhile labour, for God's companionship at one's side. How like men-well, most men-is this finicky cynicism, this Socratic sleight-of-hand; how typical of them to gloat over statistics when outside their windows a million human beings wave in desperate need of rescue.

With a jolt, the rapidity of the steam-chugs decreases, and the grind of brakes announces the train's arrival at the station. Colourful blurs flash past the windows. A whistle blows.

"Folk-stooooone!"

Emmeline sits waiting in her carriage while the other passengers squeeze through the narrow corridor. Sad though she is to admit it, her health is now such that she wouldn't dare insert her feeble body into such a crush of stronger ones.

Ruefully she recalls how once, along with her fellow Rescuers, she pushed through a crowd of shouting, foot-stamping onlookers to a street brawl and, finding the brawlers to be husband and wife, pulled them apart with her bare-well, gloved-hands. How amazed those two looked, panting and bloodied-how strangely they regarded each other!

The carriage shudders under the heavy tread of porters on its roof, unloading bags and cases; the furious blasts of steam from the several engines mingle with the chaos of voices. In the crowd, fat cabbies race one another to the wealthiest-looking of the travellers, while porters limp and lurch with enormous suitcases in their hands and beach umbrellas under their arms.

Children are everywhere: boys in felt caps and redundant overcoats, girls in miniature replicas of the previous decade's adult fashions. Round and round their mothers and nannies they bumble and dance, made clumsy by baskets, buckets and spades. Emmeline sees one excited lass twirl into the path of a sailor and get bowled to the ground. Yet, instead of howling, the child scrambles to her feet, her joy too robust to be punctured by one small mishap. Ah, what a blessing, to be able to fall and get up again!

Pricked by envy, Emmeline watches and watches.

When the sea of humanity has washed out of the great portals into the brilliant boulevard beyond, Laura picks up Mrs Fox's suitcase and parasol, and waddles out onto the platform.

Emmeline leans but lightly on her stick as she follows, for she's been resting all the way from London; in fact she feels quite well, and it's only the pitying stares of the railway guards that remind her how naked to the world her illness is.

Her father has reserved rooms in the hotel most nearly adjacent to the sands, and had sent medicines on ahead, to lie in wait for her at her unfamiliar bedside. As far as Emmeline's nourishment is concerned, Laura has been instructed to eat as often as she fancies-oftener, even-so that Mrs Fox can be tempted to accompany her in a meal, whether it be purchased from a strolling vendor on the sands or from the bill of fare at the hotel's dining-hall. The principal aim, however, is for Mrs Fox to rest as many hours as she can bear, reclining in a quiet spot near the sea. On no account is she to stray into the bathing areas and join those adventurous souls who actually wade in the water. If she grows intolerably bored, she may, with Doctor Curlew's blessing, watch these daring women springing from their rented bathing-machines fully attired in their swimming-costumes, bound for the sensational shallows.

But she is to remain among the dry majority, in that safe area where children build their castles out of the reach of the tide.

The dry majority is swelling in number every minute, proliferating in the hot sun. As Laura and Mrs Fox walk along the paved boulevard leading to the sands, they're passed by scores of men and women dressed as if for a day at the races. Some carry collapsible chairs under their arms, others books or even writing-desks. There seems to be one hawker for every ten innocent vacationers. Dray-horses pull bathing-machines towards the ladies' bathing area and, following on behind, a quartet of brass players toot hymns to the rhythm of a shaken coin-cup.

"There's a nice spot," says Laura when she and Mrs Fox have half-descended the great stone steps that eventually bury themselves in the sand, but Mrs Fox doesn't raise her eyes, being too concerned with her footing and the placing of her stick. The challenge of walking on sand-not easy even for a well person-is beyond her unassisted capabilities, and reluctantly she accepts Laura's arm. Hyperventilating the sea air, she begins to grow light-headed, and perceives the merry-makers and money-makers all around her as though they're figments of a dream, liable to disappear as soon as she blinks, leaving her on an empty beach.

The last few yards to Laura's chosen niche involve several near run-ins with heavily-laden vendors. One of them is selling parasols; another, toy boats; a third, wooden wind-up birds that he loudly claims can fly; and a fourth, slices of plum pudding wrapped in tissue paper, over which he furiously waves one hand, to discourage the audacious seagulls circling overhead.

"This is the place, ma'am," says Laura, as they walk into the shade of a grassy knoll. Gratefully, Mrs Fox lowers her body to the ground, resting her back against the incline. The horizon tilts giddily, an untrustworthy boundary between a vast blue sky and an aquamarine ocean.

"Leave me alone… for a minute," she gasps, with a fawning smile that promises good behavior.

"Of course, ma'am," says Laura.

"I'll go fetch us something to eat," and before Mrs Fox can protest, she's hurrying back towards the hurly-burly.

Later that afternoon, when a large slice of plum cake lies half-buried in the sand beside her skirts, and Laura has been persuaded to go and watch an exhibition of "Psycho, the Amazing Mechanical Man (sensation of the London Season!)"' at the nearby Folkestone Pavilions Mrs Fox lies staring up at the azure sky. The sound of children's voices has long ago become indistinguishable from the cries of sea-birds, and all of it is swallowed up by the grand and soothing sound of the waves.

She didn't want to come, no, she didn't want to come, but now that she's here she is content, for it's so much easier here to think. The tortuous mazes through which her thoughts have been running lately are left behind in the polluted metropolis.

Here, by the great eternal sea, she can, at last, think straight.

A seagull wanders cautiously towards her over the sand, attracted by the wedge of cake, but mistrustful of human wickedness. Emmeline picks up the sticky, gritty slice and gently tosses it at the bird's feet.

"What shall I do about my friend Henry, Mr Seagull?"' she murmurs as he begins to peck the cake to pieces. "Or are you Mrs Seagull? Or Miss? I don't suppose such distinctions matter much in your society, do they?"'

She shuts her eyes and concentrates on not coughing. Stowed at the bottom of her basket, under Bodley and Ashwell's book, is a crumpled handkerchief glutinous with blood-fragments of her lungs, her father would have her believe, though she'd always imagined lungs to be airy bellows, pale translucent balloons. No matter: the blood is real enough, and she can't afford to lose any more of it.

Tickle by tickle, the temptation to cough ebbs away. But a more serious temptation is not so easily put behind her: her thoughts of Henry. How she wishes he were here by her side! How idyllic it would have been, if she could have whiled away the train journey conversing with him, rather than making small talk with Laura! And how much better it would be if, whenever she felt herself weakening at the knees, it were he rather than her father's elderly servant who rushed to embrace her! His strong fingers would slot perfectly into the hollows between her ribs. He'd carry her in his arms if need be. He could lay her down gently on a bed as if she were his cat.

I desire him.

There, it's said, if not aloud. It doesn't need to be said aloud: God hears. And her fleshly desire, while not condemned by God, is (as Saint Paul made perfectly clear in his letter to the Corinthians) nothing to be proud of.

Nor does the fact that she and Henry aren't about to commit any indecency mean there's no cause for concern. Who's to say that Matthew 528 doesn't apply as much to the widowed as the married, and to females as much as males? In ancient Galilee, the womenfolk would doubtless have been burdened with housework and children, and scarcely at leisure to attend lectures by itinerant prophets; might it not have been the case, then, that from His vantage-point on the mount, Jesus saw only men?

"Whosoever looketh on a woman in lust …" If Jesus had seen any women in that crowd, He'd surely have added, "or on a man". Which has serious implications for Emmeline, because if it's possible to commit adultery in one's heart, why not fornication as well? Bad Christians are wont to interpret Scripture to excuse their own shortcomings; good Christians ought to do the opposite, reading fearlessly between the lines to catch a glimpse of the admonishing frown of a loving but disappointed Almighty. She's a fornicator, then, in her heart.

For yes, she desires Henry, and not just as a strong pair of hands to catch her when she swoons.

She craves the weight of his body on hers; the press of his chest against her bosom; she longs to see him stripped of his dark carapace of clothes, and to discover the secret shape of his hips, first under her palms, then clasped between her legs. There, it's said. The words, unvoiced, glow like miraculous writing on the walls of her heart-that little temple into which God is always looking. Her very soul should be a mirror in which God may see Himself reflected, but now… now He's as likely to see the face of Henry Rackham instead. That adorable face…

Emmeline opens her eyes and sits up straighter, before she adds idolatry to her sins.

The hunchbacked seagull glances up at her, wondering if she has designs on his succulent lump of grub. Satisfied, he resumes his feast.

There's only one sure way to solve this problem, thinks Emmeline, and that's to marry Henry. Fornication, imagined or otherwise, cannot exist between husband and wife. And yet, marrying Henry would be a wicked, selfish misuse of her dearest friend, for Henry doesn't wish to marry: he's said so many times. How much plainer can he make it that he desires nothing more from her than friendship?

"The flesh is selfish," he told her once, during one of their post-sermon conversations,

"while the spirit is generous. It frightens me to think how easily one can spend an entire lifetime gratifying animal appetites."

"Oh, I'm sure God won't mind if you spend just a few more minutes walking with me in the sunshine," she replied, playfully, for he was in a grim mood that day, and she hoped to jolly him out of it.

"How I despise my idleness!" he lamented, deaf to her charms. "I've so little time left!"

"Oh but really, Henry," she said. "What a thing for a man of thirty to say! You've a virtual eternity to achieve your ambitions!"

"Eternity!" he echoed mournfully.

"What a grand word! I take it we aren't Reincarnationists, believing ourselves to have as many lifetimes as we please."

"One lifetime is enough," she assured him.

"Indeed, in the opinion of some of the wretched creatures I meet in the course of my work, one lifetime is intolerably long…"

But once Henry was started on this subject, he was loath to stop; the evils of procrastination inspired rhetoric in him worthy of the finest sermons, and boded extremely well for his future as a churchman.

"Yes, time is experienced differently," he conceded, "by different people: but God's own clock runs with fearsome precision. When we're children, each minute of our lives is crammed full of achievement; we are born, learn to walk, and speak, and a thousand other things, in a few short years. But what we fail to grasp is that the challenges of maturity are of a different order from the challenges of infancy. Faced with the challenge of building a new church, we may feel just as we did when we built our first sandcastle, but ten years later the first stone may still not be laid." (how strange, thinks Emmeline, to be recollecting these words while she sits on a sandy beach, watching little boys build sand-castles!) "And so it is," Henry concluded, "with all our grand hopes, all our ambitions to achieve what this poor world is crying out for: decades flow by, while we trust in Eternity!"

"Yes, but for goodness' sake, Henry," she strove to remind him, "no single Christian can achieve everything. We can only do our best."

"Precisely!" he cried. "And I see what's your best, and what is mine, and I'm ashamed!"

Basking in the golden sun of Folkestone

Sands, Emmeline smiles at the memory of Henry's serious face on that afternoon; his dear face, contorted with the passion of idealism. How she would love to kiss that face, to stroke the wrinkles of earnestness from his brow, to pull him into the here-and-now with an embrace as strong as her enfeebled arms can muster…

But to return to the subject at hand: marriage.

If she and Henry did marry, why should their friendship suffer any change? Couldn't it remain just as it is now, except that they'd live in the same house? (it would have to be her house, though, not his; they couldn't both fit into his!) He could have the bedroom next to hers, if he wouldn't mind clearing the mess out of it (when is Mrs Lavers going to come and collect those bags of donated clothes? And will those men from the African Bible Society ever return?) In her current state, having a man about the place would be rather practical-as well as delightful, if that man were Henry. He could bring the coal in, for a start, and help her with her correspondence. And, if she was dog-tired at bedtime, he could carry her up the stairs and, with the utmost gentleness, lay her…

She smiles ruefully at the sheer persistence of her ignoble cravings. This illness of hers, whatever it is, has failed to bring her any closer to God, despite all those pretty engravings she's always seeing, of consumptive females lying in haloed beds with angels hovering overhead. Maybe it's not consumption she's got, but some sort of hysterical affliction? To put it bluntly, is she on the road to Bedlam?

Instead of floating towards the ethereal portals of Heaven, she seems to be growing ever more gross, like an animal, coughing blood, sprouting pimples on her neck and shoulders, sweating profusely from every pore and, whenever she rouses from a daydream of Henry Rackham, finding herself in need of a good wash between the legs…

Disgraceful! And yet, she's never been terribly good at feeling shame. Faced with a choice between self-flagellation and making amends, she'll always choose the more constructive course.

So… what if she and Henry were to cleave together as man and wife? Would that be such a terrible thing?

If Henry's fear is that his ministry would be derailed by fatherhood, well then, she's barren, as the childlessness of her marriage to Bertie proved.

How, though, do marriages come to be proposed?

What, exactly, is the procedure for crossing the line between courteous nod and nestling together in a warm bed, till death us do part? Poor old Bertie went down on his knee, but he'd been pursuing her since her schooldays. If marriage is the farthest thing from Henry's mind, he's not likely to propose it, is he, and she can't very well propose it, can she? Not because it would offend convention (she's so tired of convention!), but because it might offend Henry, and make him think less of her. To lose his respect would be a crueller blow than she could bear, at least in her frail condition just now.

"Then I must wait," she says aloud.

"Until I'm better."

At the sound of her voice, the seagull runs off, leaving the last crumbs behind, and Emmeline allows her head to fall back against the grassy knoll, knocking her bonnet askew, so that the pins prick her scalp. All of a sudden her skin is crawling with irritation, and she tears the bonnet from her head. Then she settles back, crooning with relief at how snugly her bare, damp skull fits into the warm hollow behind it.

The decision she's made about Henry spreads through her body like the effects of a medicine or a hearty meal, all the more satisfying because neither medicine nor food has had much effect on her lately. What a superb restorative firm resolve is! The weariness is already draining from her limbs into the sand beneath her.

The seagull, reassured that her squawk was an aberration, walks back and resumes pecking at the sandy cake. He lifts his head while jerking a crumb farther down into his gullet, as though nodding in agreement with her decision. Yes, she must wait until she's better, and then… and then take her life into her hands, by offering it to Henry Rackham.

"And will he say yes, Mr Seagull?"' she asks, but the seagull spreads its wings and, leaping up from a fluster of sand, flies off towards the sea.

In another part of Folkestone Sands, propped up against another rock, Agnes Rackham yelps in fright as a loudly clicking wooden bird crashes at her feet. She pulls her legs in, crushing the lady's journal she's been reading into her lap, and gathers her skirts tight around her.

Clara, who, unlike her mistress, has not been engrossed in the study of "The Season:

Who Shone Brightest, When, and Where", saw the projectile coming, and merely blinks when it hits the ground. Calmly, without fuss, as if to rub her mistress's nose in her own nervous debility, she reaches over and picks up the bird by one of its plywood-and-paper wings.

"It's only a toy, ma'am," she says sweetly.

"A toy?"' echoes Agnes in wonder as she uncoils.

"Yes, ma'am," affirms Clara, holding aloft the bird, whose clicking wings have by now wound to a stop, for Agnes's inspection. It's a flimsy construction, with carelessly painted features, animated by a brass key and a tiny metal motor. "There's a man selling them from a cart. We passed him on the way."

Agnes turns to look in the direction Clara indicates, but sees only a small boy of six or seven, dressed in a blue cotton seaside suit and a straw boater, capering around the cliff's curve. He skids to a halt in front of the strange lady and the servant who holds his toy in her hands.

"Please miss," he pipes. "That's my flying bird."

"Well, then," scolds Clara, "you should take better care where you throw it."

"I'm sorry, miss," pleads the little boy, "but it won't fly straight," and he nervously scratches at his left calf with his tightly-laced right shoe. The servant is glowering at him, so he prefers to look at the lady with the big blue eyes, who's smiling.

"Ach, poor lad," says Agnes.

"Don't fret; she won't bite you." And she motions to Clara to hand her the toy.

Agnes is rather fond of children, actually, as long as they're not babies, and as long as they are someone else's, and as long as they're administered in small doses. Small boys in particular can be charming.

"Does it really fly?"' she asks this one.

"Well…" frowns the lad, reluctant to besmirch the bird's reputation. "The man who sells 'em made one fly very well, and said they all could do the same, but I've one, and my brother has one too, and neither of them flies much.

We throw 'em as high as we can, but as a rule they fall imme'atly to the ground. May I go now, ma'am? My Mama thought I should return directly."

"Very good, young sir," smiles Agnes.

"Honestly spoken. Here is your toy."

A child made happy: how simple it is! She sends the lad on his way with a benevolent wave, and no sooner has he gone than she turns to Clara and says,

"Go and buy me one of those birds. And a sweetmeat for yourself, if you fancy."

"Yes ma'am, thank you ma'am," says the servant, and hurries off on her errand, the bustle of her navy-blue skirt shedding sand with every step.

Agnes waits until Clara's out of sight, then reaches across to the book Clara has left lying on a blanket, curious as to what a servant might read. Ah: it's a novel:

Jane Eyre. Agnes has read this one herself, from Mudie's, despite Doctor Curlew's injunctions against it. To see this dog-eared volume in Clara's possession gives Agnes a chill, for there's something very wicked about a lady's-maid savouring this horrid tale of a wife driven mad by illness and shut up in a tower by her husband while he attempts to marry another woman. With a twitch of her lips she replaces the book on the blanket.

As she straightens, the pain returns to her head, throbbing behind her left eye. How strange that this evil sensation has the gall to persist, when so many of Mrs Gooch's pink pills have been sent to quash it! All the way from London in the train, she's been swallowing them, while Clara sat dozing. Now she fondles her reticule, tempted to take a swig of laudanum from the little bottle that's pretending to be lavender water. But no, she must save it for when she's absolutely at her wits' end.

Think sweet, light thoughts, she urges herself. Heavy cogitation, she's found, makes the pain worse. If she can clear her head of worry, and let nothing remain inside her brain but cheerful memories and a sense of what the Hindoo mystics call "Nirvana", she may yet snatch relief from the jaws of wretchedness.

So much in life to be thankful for… A highly successful Season… A coach and coachman of her own… A guardian angel who will risk God's censure to defend her from harm… The end, at last, of her terrifying issues of blood… A long-overdue reunion with the True Religion of her childhood…

As the pain mounts, Agnes tries to picture herself attending Mass, sitting in the candle-lit hush of the old church listening to dear Father Scanlon. It's difficult, with so much distraction from laughing children, the roar of the waves, and the gruff entreaties of vendors, but she manages it, if only for a moment, by wilfully mishearing the gabble of the donkey-ride man as a Latin chant. Then a barrel organ starts up and the spell is broken.

Poor misguided William… If he's so concerned about her health, he would have done her more good, instead of sending her to the beach to bake like a biscuit, to ensconce her for a week in church-her church, that is. How content she is whenever she's nestled in that cosy sanctuary! And how dreary it is on those alternate Sundays when, to avoid gossip, she must sit among Anglicans and endure a sermon by that insufferable Doctor Crane… He's always railing against people she's never heard of, and there's no music in his voice at all, and he sings the hymns quite out of tune-honestly, what sort of nincompoops do they allow to become clergymen these days? It's high time she publicly declared her return to the True Faith. Surely she's wealthy enough now to get away with it? Who'd dare lay a hand on her and say no? Especially now she has a guardian angel looking out for her…

She peers along the bright seashore, shielding her eyes with one hand, hoping against hope that amongst the children and the donkeys and the rows of bathing-machines she may spy the tall apparition of her Holy Sister walking towards her. But no. She was foolish to wish for it. It's one thing for her Holy Sister to slip out of the Convent and rendezvous with her in the labyrinths of London, into which even God must have trouble seeing; quite another for Her to visit Agnes on Folkestone Sands, where there's no escaping Heavenly surveillance…

Ach, why didn't she bring her diary? She left it at home, for fear of getting it wet or some such nonsense… If she had it here with her, she could flip through the pages and be comforted by the marks of her Holy Sister's fingers. For, each night, while Agnes sleeps, her Holy Sister reads her diary, by the light of Her own supernal aura, and leaves faint fingerprints on the pages. (not that her Holy Sister's fingers are in any way unclean, of course: it's Her inner power that causes it.) (and no, she's not imagining it-for sometimes she goes to sleep with the diary closed, and wakes to find it open, or vice versa.) How long has William arranged to keep her here, anyway? She doesn't even know! The hotel manager knows, but she, the person concerned, is kept in ignorance! She's not the "strong-minded" sort, but this is a flagrant abuse of the rights of women. Is she expected to sit by the seashore for weeks on end, while her complexion darkens and her supply of medicine dwindles to nothing?

But no: think sweet, light thoughts.

How nice it would be to write a letter to her Holy Sister, and post it, and get a letter back. Is it too much to ask that her Holy Sister reveal to her the secret location of the Convent of Health? Yes, she knows it's too much to ask. If she's a good girl, she'll be told in the end. All will be well.

On Agnes's tongue, a sudden bitter taste. She licks her lips, looks down at her hands, which are cradling the little bottle of laudanum. Hastily, in case Clara is near, she replaces it in her reticule. What naughty hands she has, to fetch out the precious liquid while she's busy thinking, and feed it into her mouth so brazenly! How much has she swallowed? It really will be awfully bad if she's lying unconscious on the sand when Clara returns.

With a groan of effort, she stands up and tries to slap the sand off her skirts. How harsh the grains are against her palms-almost as sharp as glass-which is what sand is manufactured into, isn't it, or was William gulling her when he told her that? She examines the soft pale flesh of her hands, half-expecting to see an intricate pattern of bloody grazes, but no, either William was lying, or she's made of tougher stuff than she thought.

A walk, she's decided, will ventilate her head, and keep her awake. All this sitting in the sun is quite sleep-inducing, and has also made her far too hot under the tighter parts of her dress.

She trusts that at the very edge of the sea (assuming the recipe of oceans hasn't been changed since last she visited) the air will be damp with spray, like a cool, salty mist: that's just what she needs.

Agnes makes her way to the water and strolls along the brink of the tide, where the sand is wet and dark. Gracefully, as if she's engaged in a courtly dance, she sidesteps each wave of silvery froth as it spills ashore, accustoming herself to the rhythm. But the sea is an awkward dancing partner, and starts to get its movements wrong, and before long the tide comes in too far. A shallow swirl of water surges over her boots, seeping into the thin leather, trickling through the eyelets, dragging at the hems of her skirts.

No great calamity… There are two big suitcases of dresses and shoes waiting for her in the hotel. And the cold water between her toes is a not unpleasant shock that travels instantly up to her brain, pricking her awake-not that she's asleep, you understand, for how can one sleep while dancing at the edge of the waves?

However, just in case she should trip on a stone half-hidden inside the sand, and drown before she has time to appreciate that she's fallen (for who knows how quickly such things happen?), Agnes starts walking away from the tide, back to… back to… back to wherever it is she's come from. Her waterlogged skirts weigh heavy, too heavy to carry far. The sensible thing would be to stop here, spread her skirts out on the sand, and walk again when they've dried.

For an instant she shuts her eyes, and in that instant the world turns upside-down, earth and sky changing places. The ground-above her now-whips invisible tendrils around her, gathers her tight against itself, securely woven against its great warm belly so she won't plummet into nothingness. She hangs suspended from the topsy-turvy terra firma like a moth on a ceiling, gazing down into a vast formless void of brilliant blue.

She goggles, half-blinded, into the face of the deep. If the ground loosed its bonds and let her go, she would fall for all eternity, a rag doll plunging down a bottomless well.

Dizzy and frightened, Agnes turns her head aside, and presses her cheek against the moist ground, nudging her cheekbone into the sand, closing one eye against the light. Slowly, mercifully, the universe begins to revolve again, righting itself, anti-clockwise. And, in the distance, a vision is advancing towards her, a vision of a nun in a black dress and a white coif and veil. With every step this woman takes, the landscape grows greener around her, and the glassy shimmer is diffused to a pastel verdancy. Moss spreads over the sands like a green blush and, leaf by leaf, a forest subtly materialises to cover the sky. The shrieks of seagulls and children grow softer, and metamorphose into the trilling and twittering of thrushes; the immense sound of the ocean is tamed, until all that's left is the faint gurgle of a rural stream. By the time her Holy Sister is close enough to be recognised beyond doubt, Folkestone Sands has disappeared entirely, and in its stead is the far more familiar landscape of her dreams: the tranquil environs of the Convent of Health.

"Oh, Agnes," declares her Holy Sister in affectionate exasperation. "Are you here again?

What's to become of you!" And she steps back to allow a pair of shadowy figures to approach.

Agnes struggles to speak, but her tongue is a nerveless gobbet of meat in her mouth. She can only groan as she feels strong hands under her shoulders and her knees, the hands of the two sinewy old men who do the fetching and carrying for the nuns at the Convent of Health. They lift her up, as easily as if she were a tiny babe, and lay her gently on a stretcher.

Agnes's response? A regrettable one.

She convulses, opens her mouth wide, and unleashes a gush of scalding yellow vomit all over her rescuers.

Clara Tillotson, seeing her name being pencilled into the policeman's notebook, begins to shed tears of indignation and fear.

"She told me to leave her," she pleads.

"She wanted me to buy her one of these." And she displays, for the officer's inspection, a wire-and-plywood plaything with a brass key in its back.

Mrs Rackham has just been lifted onto a stretcher by two strong men borrowed from the bathing-machine company. A doctor has already laid his palm on her clammy forehead and measured the temperature inside her mouth.

Diagnosing bilious headache and possible phthisis, he's judged there's no urgent need for her to go to hospital, but that she must rest inside her hotel room out of the sun.

"Next of kin?"' enquires the policeman of Clara as the strongmen carry the unconscious Agnes away.

"William Rackham," snuffles the servant.

"The William Rackham?"'

"I don't know," snivels Clara, staring anxiously at the dark stain of vomit left behind on the sand, terrorised by what that stain might mean for her future employment.

"Rackham's Perfumes? "One bottle lasts a year"?"' "I suppose so." Clara knows nothing of her master's products; her mistress scorns them.

"You're in communication with him, miss?"'

Clara blows her nose in her handkerchief.

Whatever can he mean? Does he think she can fly through space, reaching Notting Hill in the wink of an eye, to announce the news at William's upstairs window? Nevertheless, she nods.

"Good," the policeman replies, closing his notebook. "I'll leave the matter in your hands, then."

The sky has become overcast, threatening rain.

Dawdling infants are being tugged away from sandcastles by their parents; promenading dandies are heading for cover; oddly costumed nereids are emerging from the sea and disappearing into bathing-machines; vendors are trundling their wares back and forth at increasing speed, hoarse from shouting assurances to the retreating multitude that everything is almost for nothing.

Mrs Fox has long ago returned to her hotel, complaining that all this rest is tiring her to death. She's wholly unaware Mrs Rackham is even in Folkestone and, far from having been the Samaritan who found Agnes lying insensible by the water's edge, is fated to return to London without having once glimpsed her.

And Sugar? Was it Sugar, then, whom Agnes saw walking towards her on the topsy-turvy world? No, Sugar is in her rooms in Priory Close, forcing herself to plough on through The Art of Perfumery, by G. W. Septimus Piesse.

The largest body of water in her immediate vicinity is her undrained bathtub. There's not an inch of space in her poor brain for Mrs Rackham, crammed as it is with facts about lavender and essential oils. Will it ever benefit her to know that pine-apple oil is nothing more than butyrate of ethyloxide? Is there any point in memorising the recipe of rose cold cream (one pound of almond oil, one pound of rose water, half a drachm of otto of roses, and one ounce of sperm and white wax)? She wonders what kind of man can write about sperm and think only of whales.

"Holy Christ," she mutters as she catches herself losing consciousness and the book falls shut between her thighs. "Wake up!"