The Crimson petal and the white

PART 4

The Bosom of the Family

All through the long night, a thousand gallons of rain distilled indiscriminately from the effluvia of London's streets and the sweet exhalations of faraway lakes are tossed down upon the house in Chepstow Villas. One bedroom window glimmers in the darkness like a ship's beacon, and whenever the torrent intensifies, this lonely light wavers, as though the house is floating off its foundations. At dawn, however, the Rackham residence is unmoved, the dark clouds are exhausted, and a pale new sky is allowed to venture through. The storm, for now, is over.

Still the house and its grounds are steeped in the glimmering residue of the deluge. The carriage-way streams, its fine black gravel floating, grain by grain, towards the gates.

Around the house proper, bright water spouts from drainpipes and leaks down the outer walls, washing over windows already as immaculate as they can be.

In the garden, every leaf glistens in the glow of sunrise, and every branch hangs low; a spade which was driven securely into the earth the day before leans to one side and topples.

In the subterranean kitchen, a bleary-eyed Janey mops at the puddles which, during the night, have trickled in through the grimy steam-vents, the scullery window and the stairwell. She stokes up the coppers with fresh coal, so the floors will dry and her fingers will thaw by the time she has to do anything complicated with them. Though she can't see the daylight yet, she hears, by and by, the birds begin to sing.

If Sugar were standing in the lane just off Pembridge Crescent, in that bowered spot where she waved to Mrs Rackham months ago, she would see Agnes standing at the bedroom window already, gazing out at the world through the sparkling glass.

For Agnes slept most of yesterday's daylight hours away, and has been wakeful through the hours of darkness since, waiting for the sun to follow her example. At the North Pole (if she's to trust what books tell her) it's day all the time, never night, which certainly would be agreeable.

But what she can't quite understand is: does that mean that Time itself stands still there? And if it doesn't, does one's numerical age, at least, never increase? She wonders which would be preferable: never changing because nothing ever changes, or growing hoary while remaining twenty-three forever. A conundrum to exercise the brain.

Wary of risking a headache at the very start of the day, Agnes lays the North Pole aside and instead moves through her dim and silent house, descending the stairs and padding through the passage-ways, until she reaches the warmth and brightness of the already industrious kitchen. The servants there are not surprised to see her, for she pays a visit every morning lately; they know she hasn't come to complain, so they carry on with their work. Amid a haze of delicious steam, the new kitchenmaid, What's-her-name, is removing a fresh batch of Vienna bread from the oven; Cook is forking sheep's tongues out of their bowl of marinade, selecting only those whose shape and size are likely to meet with the master's approval.

Agnes passes straight through to the scullery, where Janey is scrubbing out the wooden sink, having already finished with the stone one. The girl stands on tiptoe, her rump gyrating with effort; in her endeavour to keep the noise of her grunts and umphhs as soft as she can, she doesn't notice Mrs Rackham's approach.

"Where's Puss?"'

Janey jerks as if something has poked her, but recovers quickly.

"'Every's be'ind the copper, ma'am," she says, pointing her swollen red hand. Why, you wonder, does she refer to Henry's cat as "he"? Because Henry's cat, despite the reputation that went before him, is male. On the morning of his arrival in the Rackham kitchen, Cook lifted him up by the tail to check his sex -something that poor Henry Rackham evidently never did.

Agnes kneels on the spotless stone floor in front of the largest of the boilers.

"I can't see him," she says, peering into the shadows.

Janey is prepared for this: she fetches a dish into which the kitchenmaid has doled a few rabbit and chicken hearts, necks and kidneys, and sets it down near the copper. Puss emerges at once, blinking sleepily.

"Darling Puss," says Agnes, stroking his back, smooth as a muff and as hot as bread from the oven.

"Don't eat that," she advises him, when he sniffs at the dark clammy meat. "It's dirty. Janey, fetch some cream."

The girl obeys, and Agnes continues to stroke the cat's back, pushing him down on his belly, inches short of the bowl, in a slow rhythm of teasing restraint.

"Your new mistress is coming today," she says. "Yes she is. You're a heart-breaker, aren't you? But I'll give you up, yes I will. I'll be brave, and content myself with memories of you. You little charmer, you."

And she strokes him away from his offal one more time.

"Ah!" she sings in delight, as Janey returns with a china bowl. "Here's your lovely, clean, white cream. Show me what you do with that."

On her last morning in Priory Close,

Sugar sits shivering at her writing-desk, staring through the rain-specked French windows at her little garden. The imminence of leaving it behind renders it, all of a sudden, inexpressibly precious, even though she's done nothing to take care of it while living here: the soil has been scattered out of its orderly bed by weeks of heavy rain, the azaleas hang brown and rotten on their stalks, and a slimy heap of fallen leaves is banked up against the window-glass. Ah, but it's my garden, she thinks, knowing she's being ridiculous.

Indeed there's scarcely an inch of these rooms of hers that doesn't inspire some nostalgia, some pang of loss, in spite of all the dissatisfaction and anxiety she's endured here.

All those lonely hours pacing the floor, and now she's sorry to leave! Madness.

Sugar shivers continually. She doused the fires too long ago, for the sake of not delaying William when he comes, and her rooms have grown cold. They seem colder still for being stripped of ornaments and decorations, and the pallid autumn light, mingling uneasily with the gas-lamps, worsens the denuded look of the walls. Sugar's hands are chilled white, her bloodless wrists poking out of inky sleeves; she blows on her knuckles, and her breath is lukewarm and damp.

All in black she sits, her mourning bonnet already fastened, her gloves ready in her lap.

Everything she wishes to take along with her is already, at William's request, gathered in the front room for easy portage; the rest he'll no doubt dispose of somehow. Anything even slightly soiled-sheets, towels, clothing, no matter how expensive-she has already thrown out into the streets, for deserving scavengers to find. (the rain will have soaked everything, but with a bit of patience, some poor devil can surely redeem them.) In the discussion she and William had about the removal, no mention was made of the bed, though Sugar imagines her new quarters will be very small indeed. Will there be enough leg-room, she wonders, for her and William to do all they're accustomed to doing? At the thought of her naked feet bursting out through the windows of a tiny steepled attic, Alice in Wonderland-style, she sniggers in suppressed hysteria.

What in God's name has she volunteered for?

In a few hours, she'll be solely responsible for Sophie Rackham-What on earth is she going to do with her? She's an imposter, a fraud so outrageously transparent that… that even a child could see through it! Axioms, dictums and golden rules are what's wanted in a teacher, but when Sugar racks her brains for some, what does she find?

An occasion, five years ago perhaps, when her mother was called to her bedside shortly after the departure of a customer endowed like a horse.

Having inspected the damage, Mrs Castaway decided that her daughter's torn flesh would heal without stitches and, even as she was shutting up the medicine chest, gave this excellent advice for avoiding "bloodshed down below":

"Just remember: everything hurts more if you resist."

"They say," says Mrs Agnes Rackham to Mrs Emmeline Fox, "that your recovery is nothing short of miraculous."

Mrs Fox murmurs thanks as she accepts cocoa and a slice of cake from Rose.

"Miracles are rare," she gently but firmly reminds her host, "and God tends to save them for when nothing else will do. I prefer to think I was simply nursed back to health."

But Agnes is having none of it. Here before her sits a woman whom she last saw limping painfully through the grounds of the church like a grotesque memento mori, causing an illicit susurrus of disgust and pity. Now, Mrs Fox looks in remarkable fettle, especially around the face; the skull that was so ghoulishly intent on disclosing itself is snugly clothed in flesh, the eye-sockets are no longer hollow. Indeed she looks almost pretty! And, let's not forget, she walked in without the aid of a stick, carrying herself with that confidence (as unmistakable as it is mysterious) that there is at one's disposal enough breath and strength to last the whole day.

"You've been in the Convent of Health, haven't you?"' whispers Agnes.

"No, Saint Bartholomew's

Hospital," Mrs Fox replies. "You wrote to me there, as I'm sure you recall …?"' But Emmeline isn't sure at all, because to be frank she's finding Mrs Rackham's wits a little on the scattered side today. For example, there are suitcases in the hall, and a mound of hatboxes and furled umbrellas and so forth, clearly indicating that a member of the household is about to leave, but when tactfully questioned about this, Mrs Rackham appeared not to hear.

"Perhaps I came at an inconvenient time?"'

Emmeline fishes again. "Those suitcases in the hall…"

"Not at all," says Agnes. "We have hours yet."

"Hours before what?"'

But Mrs Rackham has the same response to crude explicitness as she has to more delicate probing.

"Hours before we might be interrupted," she assures her guest, "by anything that doesn't concern us."

Rose offers the silver plate, and Mrs

Rackham picks a slice of cake from the extreme left-hand side where, according to prior arrangement, the thinnest specimens are always laid. The slice in her fingers, a survivor of many abortive hot-knifings in the kitchen below, is so slender that the parlour lamp-light shines right through the fruit.

"Come now, Mrs Fox," she simpers, nibbling her moist little rasher. "Are you saying you were snatched from the jaws of… You-Know-What, by nothing more extraordinary than good nursing?"'

Emmeline is beginning to wonder if, during the long months of her indisposition, the rules of casual intercourse have radically changed: what a strange little t@ete-@a-t@ete this is! Still, she'll give as good as she gets.

"I never went about declaring I had consumption.

Other people said I had it, and I didn't contradict them. There are more important things to lock horns over, don't you think?"' "Henry told us he most definitely saw you on your deathbed," says Mrs Rackham, undaunted.

Mrs Fox blinks incredulously, and for a moment seems in danger of some sort of outburst. Then she leans her head back against her chair and lets her big grey eyes grow moist.

"Henry saw me at my worst, it's true," she sighs. "Perhaps it would have been better for him if I'd disappeared for a while, and come back when it was all over." Staring over the railing of tragedy into that misty valley of the recent past where Henry can still be spied, Emmeline fails to notice Agnes nodding childishly, electrified by this apparent admission of supernatural powers. "I did tell him, though, that I'd get better. I remember telling him about what I call the calendar of my days, that God has put inside me. I don't know exactly how many pages it has, but I can feel there are many more left than people thought."

By this point, Agnes is nearly squirming with excitement. Oh, to have such a magic calendar inside herself, and be able to verify (contrary to the estimate of that horrid newspaper article she simply can't erase from her mind) that she has more than 21,917 days on the earth! Does she dare demand the secret, here and now, in her parlour on a chilly mid-morning at the beginning of November? No, she must tread softly, she can tell: Mrs Fox has that cryptic look about her, that Agnes recognises from portraits of mystics and death-survivors throughout the ages.

Why, in a book hidden under her embroidery, The Illustrated Proofs of Spiritualism, there's an engraving, done directly from a photograph, of an American Redskin gentleman sporting a "necklace" of poisonous snakes, and his face bears an uncanny resemblance to Mrs Fox's!

"But do tell me," says Agnes, "what have you brought in your parcel?"'

With an effort, Mrs Fox retrieves herself from her reverie, and fetches up the heavy paper package that's been leaning against the leg of her chair.

"Books," she says, removing a pristine-looking volume and handing it over to Mrs Rackham. One by one she proffers them: slim treatises with such titles as Christian Piety in Daily Intercourse, The Bone Men's Folly, and Carlyism and Christian Doctrine: Friends or Foes?

"My goodness," says Agnes, trying to sound grateful despite her disappointment, for these books don't appear to promise anything she wants to know. "This is awfully generous of you …"

"If you turn to the fly-leaves," explains Mrs Fox, "you'll see that generosity has nothing to do with it. These books belong to your husband -or at least, they're inscribed to him, as gifts from Henry. I can't imagine how they came to be back among Henry's things, but I thought I should return them."

An awkward moment ensues, and Agnes decides she's learned as much as she's likely to learn during this particular visit.

"Well," she says brightly, "shall we go down to the kitchen now, and see what we may find waiting for you there?"'

More than two hours after Sugar first considers the possibility that William has thought better of the whole idea, and an hour after she's wept copious tears of dread and self-pity, convinced she'll never see him again, the Rackham carriage jingles to a stop in front of the building, and William knocks for her.

"Unavoidable delay," he declares laconically.

After this, he doesn't speak another word, preferring to supervise his coachman in the loading of luggage onto the roof of the brougham. Sugar, neither instructed to wait nor invited to leave, loiters in the hallway, as stiff as the coat-stand, while Cheesman lumbers in and out, a smirk on his face. Out of the corner of her eye, as she pulls on her tight black gloves, she can see him lifting one of her suitcases onto his broad shoulders, and fancies she can hear him sniffing for incriminating smells. If so, he sniffs in vain, for the rooms have a strangely sterile air.

When the loading is finished, William gestures for her to leave, and she follows him out into the street.

"Mind your step, miss," advises the cheerful Cheesman as, moments later, she clambers into the Rackham carriage, assisted ever-so-fleetingly by his hands on her rear end.

She turns to stare daggers at him, but he's gone.

"I'm so glad to see you," whispers Sugar to her rescuer, settling her rustling excess of black skirts on the seat opposite him.

For answer William lays one index finger against his lips, and raises his bushy eyebrows towards the spot above their heads where Cheesman is taking up the reins.

"Save it," he cautions her softly,

"till later."

The great front door of the Rackham house opens a crack, then opens wider as the servant sees her master and the new governess. The hinges squeak, because this door was installed only last week: a massive showpiece of ornamental inlays and an elaborately carved R.

"Letty," announces William

Rackham augustly. "This is Miss

Sugar."

The servant curtsies-"How d'you do, miss"-but receives no reply.

"Welcome to the Rackham house," proclaims the man himself. "I hope, no, I trust, you'll be happy here."

Sugar crosses the threshold into the hall, and is immediately surrounded by the trappings of wealth.

Above her head hangs a colossal chandelier, lit up by the sunshine beaming in through the windows.

Vases of flowers so enormous and so liberally supplemented by green foliage that they resemble shrubs, stand on polished tables on either side of the great stairwell. On the walls, wherever a few square feet are not otherwise occupied, hang paintings of rural idylls in fine frames.

Near the archway of the corridor leading to the dining-room and parlour, a grandfather clock swings its golden pendulum, its tock clearly audible -as are Sugar's hesitant footsteps on the polished tile floor. Her eyes follow the spiral of mahogany banisters up to the L-shaped landing; somewhere up there, she knows, is her room, on the same level, thrillingly, as the Rackhams'.

"What a beautiful house," she says, too overwhelmed to know if she means it. Her employer is gesturing in welcome; housemaids are scurrying all about; her predecessor's luggage is stacked up in the hall; all this fuss is caused by her, and makes her feel like the heroine of a novel by Samuel Richardson or those Bell sisters, whose name isn't Bell at all but what is it? Her brain resounds with Bell, Bell, Bell… the true name escapes her…

"Miss Sugar?"'

"Yes, yes, forgive me," she says, jerking into motion again. "I was merely admiring …"

"Allow me to show you your room," says

William. "Letty, Cheesman will help you carry the luggage in."

Together they ascend the staircase, their hands sliding along a polished banister each, a decorous space between their bodies, the tread of their feet muffled by the carpeted steps. Sugar remembers the many ascents she and William made on the stairs at Mrs Castaway's; remembers especially the very first, when William was an idler in reduced circumstances, a miserable cringing creature with a fierce desire to see the whole universe flung to its knees before him. She glances sideways as they mount the stairs now: is this bearded gentleman really the same person as her baby-faced George W.

Hunt, who, less than a year ago, begged her to let him be "debased"?

"There is nothing I won't submit to," she assured him then, "with the utmost pleasure."

"This is your room," declares William when, having led her along the landing, he ushers her through a door already set ajar.

It's even smaller than she'd expected, and plainer. Tucked under the single window, a narrow wooden bed, neatly made up with a quilt and flannel blankets. A pale-yellow birchwood chest of drawers with white china handles and a hinged mirror perched on top. One stool and one comfortable-looking armchair. A tiny table. For any more furniture than this, there simply isn't the space. Picture-hooks dot the faded blue wallpaper like squashed insects; an ugly ceramic vase stands empty by the hearth.

On the bare floorboards, not entirely covering them, lies a large rug, tolerably well-made, but no Persian splendour like the ones downstairs.

"Beatrice has lived very modestly," admits William, closing the door behind them.

"I don't necessarily mean you to do the same -though you'll appreciate there are limits to what a governess can be seen to possess."

Just kiss me, she thinks, offering him her hand-which, after an eye's-blink of hesitation, he takes and squeezes, as he might a business associate's.

"I can live as modestly as anyone," she tells him, drawing solace from the memory-the very recent memory-of his trembling fingers clasped on her naked hips.

There's a knock on the door, and William extracts his hand, to let the servants in-whereupon, without another word, he strides out of the room. In comes Letty, staggering lopsidedly through the door with Sugar's heavy Gladstone bag, which contains, among other things, the manuscript of her novel. At the sight of the servant pulled askew by this distended luggage, Sugar rushes over and tries to take the burden from her.

"Ooh, it's all right, miss, really it is," the girl cries, flustered by what's evidently a shocking breach of decorum. Sugar steps back, confused: if she's so superior in rank to the household servants, where does she get her deep-seated notion that governesses are lowly and despised? From novels, she supposes -but aren't novels truth dressed up in fancy clothes?

The clomp of a big man's boots and the grunt of a big man's exertion can be heard coming up the stairs, and Letty hurries out of the room to make way for Cheesman. He lumbers in with a suitcase hugged to his chest.

"Just say where you want it, miss," he grins, "and I'll put it there."

Sugar casts a glance over her tiny room, which already seems cluttered up by the presence of one bag.

"On the bed," she gestures, aware that of all responses this is the most likely to tickle Cheesman's bawdy imagination, but… well, there's really nowhere else for the suitcase to go, if she's to have space to unpack it.

"Best place, I grant yer, miss."

Sugar appraises him as he staggers past and deposits her case, with exaggerated gentleness, on the bed. He's tall, and seems taller for his knee-length, brass-buttoned greatcoat, his wiry frame, and his long fingers. He has a long, pock-marked face with a saddle-hump of a chin, tough wayward eyebrows, curly dark hair subjugated by oil and comb, and a mouthful of straight white teeth, clearly his proudest and (given his origins) most unusual possession. Despite the thick greatcoat, his male arrogance pokes out from him like an invisible goad, for women to blunder against. Even as he turns to face her, one eyebrow cockily raised, and says "Will 'at be all, miss?"' she's already made up her mind how she'll handle him.

"All for the moment." Her tone is prim, but her face and body are artfully arranged to suggest that she might, in spite of herself, desire him: it's an intricate pose, first learned from a whore called Lizzie and perfected in mirrors: a combination of fear, disdain and helpless arousal which men of his sort are convinced they inspire wherever they go.

The twinkle-eyed smirk on Cheesman's face as he's leaving reassures her she's chosen wisely. She can't hope to erase what he already knows; to him, she'll always be William's whore, never Sophie's governess, so he may as well cherish the delusion that one day he'll add her to his roll-call of conquests.

All she need do is maintain the delicate balance between repulsion and attraction, and he'll be charmed enough not to wish her harm, without ever going so far as to risk his position.

Good, she thinks, suppressing a flutter of panic, that's Cheesman taken care of-as if each member of the Rackham household is nothing more than a problem to be solved.

She walks across to the bed and, leaning her palms on the suitcase, peers through the window. Nothing much to be seen out there: an empty, rain-sodden swathe of the Rackham grounds… but then, she doesn't need to spy anymore, does she?

No! All her labours have been repaid, all her careful cultivation of William rewarded, and here she is, ensconced in the Rackham household, with the blessing of both William and Agnes! There's really no reason for her guts to be churning…

"Miss Sugar?"'

She flinches, but it's only what's-her-name-Letty-at the door again. Such a good-natured face Letty has-a friendly face. She'll have no trouble with Letty, no, she'll…

"Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham invites you to tea."

Ten minutes later, Miss Sugar is stiffly seated amongst the dense bric-a-brac of the parlour, with a tea-cup in her hand and a servant dressed in the same mourning garb as herself hovering around with a tray of cake, while William Rackham holds forth on the history of Notting Hill. Yes, the history of Notting Hill.

On and on he speechifies, like Doctor Crane in his pulpit, the words pouring out with mechanical relentlessness-which families were first to build in Chepstow Villas, how much Portobello Farm was sold for, when precisely Kensington Gravel Pits Gate changed its name to Notting Hill Gate, and so on.

"And you'll be interested to know there's a free library, opened only last year, in High Street. How many parishes can boast that?"'

Sugar listens as attentively as she can, but her brain is beginning to revolve like a cauliflower in fast-boiling water. The air of unreality is bad enough while the parlour-maid is in the room with them, but, to Sugar's bewilderment, William fails to drop the fa@cade when Rose retreats, and carries right on lecturing.

"… from sheep to shop-keepers in two generations!"

He pauses for effect and, not knowing what else to do, Sugar smiles. Would calling him "William" summon him back from wherever he's hiding, or would that land her in trouble?

"Those suitcases in the hall…" she begins.

"Beatrice Cleave's," he says, lowering his voice, at last, to a more intimate tone.

"I'm keeping her waiting, then?"' Another small flutter of panic must be suppressed, at the thought of the woman she has come here to supplant-a woman who, in Sugar's imagination, has metamorphosed from nonentity to fearsomely competent matron-and a canny judge of frauds to boot.

"Let her wait," sniffs William, glancing up at the ceiling resentfully. "Her timing in leaving my employ could scarcely have been more inconvenient; I'm sure she can twiddle her thumbs for a few more minutes while you drink your tea."

"Mmm." Sugar brings the tea to her lips, though it's too hot to drink.

William rises from his armchair and begins to pace back and forth, stroking the pockets of his waistcoat. "Beatrice will tell you all you need to know about my daughter," he says, "and more, I don't doubt. If she begins to drive you mad, mention trains, that's my advice-she has one to catch."

"And Agnes?"'

William stops dead, hands arrested in mid-stroke.

"What about Agnes?"' he says, narrowing his eyes.

"Will Agnes be… ah… looking in on us?"' It seems to Sugar a perfectly reasonable question-might not Mrs Rackham have a stipulation or two regarding the upbringing of her own daughter? But William is amazed.

"Us?"' he echoes.

"Me and Beatrice, and… Sophie."

"I don't think so," he says, as if the conversation has veered into the realm of miracles.

"No."

Sugar nods, though she doesn't understand, and sips the scalding tea as quickly as she can, in between bites of cake. A raisin falls from the fragment she holds in her fingers and instantly disappears in the dark pattern of the carpet. A clock, discreet up till now, begins to tick loudly.

After some deliberation, William clears his throat and addresses her with sotto voce seriousness. "There's something I'd hoped wouldn't need saying. I'd hoped it would be obvious, or else that I could trust Beatrice to tell you. But in the event that neither-"'

At that instant, however, their privacy is interrupted by Letty, who ventures through the door and, realising she's not welcome, immediately begins to twitch and tremble with the tics of obeisance.

"What is it, Letty?"' snaps

William, glaring her half to death.

"Begging your pardon, sir, it's Shears, sir. Wanting to speak with you, sir. He's found something in the garden, sir, of Mrs Rackham's."

"Lord almighty, Letty! growls William. "Shears knows what to do with that damn bird…"

"It's something else, sir," she cringes.

William clenches his fists; it seems quite possible he'll fly into a rage and chase the servant from the room. But then, all of a sudden, his shoulders slump, he breathes deep, and turns to face his guest.

"Please excuse me, Miss Sugar," he says-and is gone.

Left behind among the bric-a-brac, Sugar sits still as a vase, straining her ears to hear what's amiss. She doesn't dare leave her seat, but angles her head, dog-like, for any words that might leak into the parlour from the hallway, the source of the fuss.

"What the devil are these?"' William is demanding impatiently, his resonant baritone rendered harsh by the acoustics. The gardener's answering voice is unclear-a tenor grumble, disdaining to compete with the volume of his questioner's outcry. "What? Buried!?"' exclaims William. "Well, who buried them?"' (another muted response, this time from a duet of Shears and Letty). "Fetch Clara!" commands William. "Ach, look at this floor …!"

Several minutes pass before the voice of Clara, indistinct in word but unmistakably humiliated in tone, is added to the medley. Her muffled account becomes more quavery the more she's interrupted. "Clean slate"?"' William challenges her. "What d'you mean, "clean slate"?"' The girl's reply, whatever it is, fails to impress him, and he blasphemes.

Eventually, the voice of Shears is heard again, just as Clara begins to weep, or sneeze, or both. "No, no, no," groans William, irritably dismissing the gardener's suggestion.

"She'll want them back soon enough. Put them somewhere safe and dry…" (more murmurs ensue.) "I don't know, anywhere out of the way of visitors! Must I make every damn decision in this world?"' Whereupon he leaves the matter in their hands and, with an emphatic tread that Sugar can feel through the floorboards, returns to the parlour.

"Trouble, my love?"' she yearns to say when he steps back into the room, but he looks so unlike the man whose lips have kissed her belly that she doesn't dare, and merely looks up at him questioningly.

"Agnes's diaries…" William explains, shaking his head in disbelief. "A dozen or more. Agnes… buried them in the garden. Or obliged Clara to bury them for her …" His eyes glaze over as he pictures the act-the servant in her mourning dress, huffing and puffing with a spade; the hole; the wet black earth closing over the cloth-bound journals. "Can you imagine?"'

Sugar frowns sympathetically, hoping that's what's wanted. "Why would she do such a thing?"'

William collapses into his armchair, staring at his knees.

"She told Clara she's… "finished with the past"! "Starting afresh"! "Clean slate"!"

Before Sugar's eyes, his incredulity is turning to distress; he shakes his head again, and on the lines of his brow is written, for anyone to read:

Is there another husband in England who endures what I endure?

If they were in Priory Close now, she would take him in her arms and stroke the back of his head; she'd pull him to her breast and remind him that there can be such a thing as a woman who does only what her man requires: nothing less, nothing else. But here in the Rackham parlour, with the loudly ticking clock and the framed horticultural prints and the embroidered doilies and the Persian carpet in which a raisin is lost…

"I believe there was something you wanted to tell me?"' she says. "Before we were interrupted?"'

He passes a hand across his mouth and composes himself, without the benefit of her comforting arms.

"Yes," he says, leaning as close to her as decorum will permit. "What I wanted to say to you is this: It would be best if… for the next little while… indeed, until I tell you different…" He's squeezing one hand inside the other, praying for inspiration to reveal a truth without having to strip it naked. "It would be best if Sophie were taken care of in such a way that Agnes was… ah… troubled as little as possible. In fact, if you can ensure that whenever Agnes is up and about… that is, in…" (he gestures vaguely at the house in general) "she… that is, Agnes… is… ah … free to go about her business without…"

Sugar can stand it no longer. "You mean," she clarifies, "that Agnes is not to set eyes on Sophie."

"Precisely." His relief is patent, but almost immediately marred by fresh embarrassment; he'd like to redeem his wife, it seems, from the stigma of unreason. "I'm not saying that if Agnes catches a glimpse of you and Sophie walking down the stairs it's the end of the world, or that you're expected to keep my daughter prisoner in the nursery, but…"

"Discretion," she sums up, groping her way back into his confidence, willing him to draw comfort from her decisive tone and her mild-eyed, dispassionate gaze.

"Precisely." He leans back against the chair and breathes like a man whose tooth has been pulled with less pain and bloodshed than he'd feared.

"Now, it's time," he says, when the clock's ticking becomes intrusive once more,

"that the reins of power were handed over, don't you think?"'

In the bedroom of Sophie Rackham, an atmosphere of austere severity prevails.

Except for the child-sized bed tucked in one dim corner, it might be a cell within a nunnery-a nunnery founded by an order that long ago forswore all pastimes but prayer and silent contemplation.

No picture hangs on the wall, no ornament or plaything is anywhere in evidence; in fact, not a speck of dust-much less a toy-mars the perfection of the darkly polished surfaces. A dozen or so books stand stock-straight in a bookcase the height and breadth of a coffin, each tome looking uncompromisingly difficult.

"I am Sophie's nurse," says

Beatrice Cleave, in a tone that demands congratulation-or commiseration. "Six years I've been here."

Hysteria tickles Sugar's brain, tempting her to reply: "Enchant@ee! I am William Rackham's mistress, and I've been here forty-five minutes." But she swallows hard, and says, "Miss Sugar."

"I have been both a wet- and a dry-nurse to this child," says the amply bosomed but otherwise starchy-looking Beatrice, "and I've seen the fortunes of this family rise and fall and rise again."

Sugar can't think what to reply to this, other than to reassure Beatrice that if her milk has dried up for good, she can always get a job at Mrs Gill's house in Jermyn Street, which specialises in large-breasted whores.

"Time flies," she says, looking around a little more.

This bedroom is, despite first impressions, exactly the same dimensions as her own bedroom next door; it only appears bigger, because there's so little in it. Sophie sits perched on a large, straight-backed chair, a miserable waxen poppet dressed up in the sombre-est, tightest, Sundayest clothes Sugar has ever seen, like a figure in a Temperance Society diorama. She has not been introduced. She is merely the subject under discussion. She gazes at the floor or, for variety, at her shoes.

"You will find," says Beatrice, "that in the main Sophie is a well-meaning child. There's no malice in her, although she'd rather stand gaping at the window than do most anything else. You will also find, I hope, that she isn't stupid, although her mind is very easily jolted off its rails."

Sugar casts a glance at Sophie to see how she takes these criticisms, but the little girl is still studying the wax on the floorboards.

"There's times," Beatrice continues, "when she behaves like a baby, and her reason deserts her. Not a pretty sight. At such times, she requires firm handling, if she's not to become just like…" Beatrice stops short, even though she's about to flit the Rackham household forever.

"Just like a Bedlamite."

Sugar nods politely, hoping her face isn't betraying her growing dislike of the woman with the hard black bosom, thin lips and unexpectedly well-educated speech. The Beatrice she'd imagined, when William first mentioned his daughter's nurse, was a different breed alt-a stouter version of Caroline perhaps, all smiles and provincial heritage, or else a doting, cuddly Cockney, much given to sentimental excess. Sugar even feared a last-minute orgy of weeping and embraces, with a frantic Sophie clutching the skirts of her roly-poly protectress amid lamentations of "My babe!" and so forth.

Instead, here are three figures dressed in mourning keeping resolutely to their places in a chilly room, and the closest Beatrice gets to holding Sophie Rackham is with her sidelong glance, like a ventriloquist willing a relinquished doll to stay put and not keel over.

Rosy-cheeked nurses voluptuous with natural love? Another romantic preconception it seems, got from reading too many novels, doomed to wither in the face of harsh reality.

"She wets the bed, you know," says Beatrice. "Every night." And she raises one eyebrow, a stoical invitation for Sugar to appreciate the sheer scale of bother this must have caused during these six years past.

"How… unfortunate," says Sugar, again glancing at Sophie. The child seems lost beyond recall in the enchanted world of her shoe-buckles.

"In summer it's not so hard to deal with," says Beatrice. "In winter, it's a nightmare. If you'll come with me, I'll show you the best place for drying bed-sheets indoors."

"Mm, yes, I'd be grateful," says Sugar, suddenly gripped by the strangest desire to slap Beatrice Cleave across the face, over and over, with a piss-soaked slipper.

"It's a small mercy," Beatrice carries on, "but at least Sophie is not one of those children who hate water. If anything, she's overly fond of being washed. Which puts me in mind …" Her eyes gleam inquisitively as she examines Sugar's skinny build. "I expect you and Mr Rackham have discussed exactly which tasks you'll be answerable for? I have been nurse and teacher and goodness knows what else, these past six years, and thought nothing of it, but I can understand that you, being a governess, may not be willing to do… certain things."

Sugar opens her mouth, but finds her tongue momentarily useless; she hadn't imagined, nor did William warn her, that Sophie would have any needs whatsoever beyond tutelage.

"I… we agreed… W- Mr Rackham and I," she stammers, "that I'll care for Sophie in all respects."

Beatrice raises her eyebrow again, her gaze steady despite the rain of invisible blows she's receiving from the urine-soaked slipper.

"You can always insist on a nursery-maid being hired," she says, in a tone that suggests this would be a most excellent idea, and that Mr Rackham is deplorably remiss not to have arranged it already. "There's money pouring into this house, Miss Sugar-pouring in. A new front door was installed only last week, did you know?"'

Sugar shakes her head and, as Beatrice launches into a nuisance-by-nuisance, screw-by-screw account of the door's investiture, she begins seriously to consider how to raise the subject of trains without appearing daft.

"I'm sure Sophie won't be any trouble," she says, in Beatrice's pause for breath after a pair of "swindling" carpenters have (according to the nurse's reckoning) been paid for one oblong of carved wood much the same sum as would employ a nursery-maid for a year. "I'm sure you've reared her so well that nothing remains but for me to… ah… carry on your good work."

Beatrice frowns, momentarily dumbstruck, praise having succeeded where the invisible slipper failed. But, before Sugar can follow through with a pointed allusion to long journeys and precious time, the nurse recovers.

"Come and I'll show you where Sophie's wet bedding can be hung," she says. Whereupon, as she and Sugar move towards the door, she addresses her first words directly to the child: "Stay here, Sophie." The black-shrouded manikin, still perched motionless on the high-backed chair, merely blinks her big blue Agnes eyes, and doesn't even dare turn her head to watch them go.

All the way downstairs, Beatrice speaks of Sophie-or rather, of Sophie's clumsiness, Sophie's deficiencies in posture, Sophie's forgetfulness, the unreasoning prejudice Sophie has against certain perfectly suitable items of clothing, and the great importance of not weakening in one's stand on Sophie and broccoli. As they walk through the sumptuously decorated corridors below stairs, Beatrice shares with the new governess an inventory of what Sophie can be granted if she's good, and what she can be denied if she's "not so good". This inventory is so exhaustive that it isn't finished-only interrupted-by their arrival in a claustrophobic storeroom adjacent to the kitchen.

"It was built as a wine cellar," explains Beatrice, as they're enveloped in warmth and the pleasant smell of evaporated linen-soap, "but then Mr Rackham ran out of wine, and hadn't the means to replace it." She casts Sugar a meaningful glance. "This was a few years ago, of course-before the change came over him."

Sugar nods, oddly perturbed by the knowledge that she was that change. Beatrice is removing a cotton bed-sheet from a long copper pipe which, for no divinable purpose, connects one wall with the other.

"Then he got a craze for photo-graphy," she goes on, folding the rectangle of linen against her breast, "and for a while it was what you call a "darkroom". But then he had an accident with some poison, and the smell never went no matter how much the floors were sluiced out, and then a man came and said it was the fault of damp, and so this boiler pipe was passed through…" She halts in mid-explication, her eyes narrowing. "Hello, what's this?"'

On the floor, in one shadowy corner, lies a heap of what appears to be garbage. It proves, on closer inspection, to be wet and muddy papers, in the form of notebooks or diaries.

"I must have a word with whoever's responsible," she sniffs. "This room is not a cesspit."

"Ah, but you have a train to catch," blurts Sugar. "Don't you? Please, leave the matter in my hands." And, like an answered prayer, a nearby grandfather clock goes bong, bong, bong and bong again.

When Beatrice Cleave is finally gone, and her belongings have been removed from the hallway, and the servants are no longer standing at the windows watching the carriage dwindle out of sight, Sugar returns, alone, to the bedroom where Sophie was told to "stay". What else can she do?

She'd expected William to seek her out after the nurse's departure and give her a more fulsome welcome, but he's melted away, and she can hardly go poking her nose into all the rooms of the house in search of him, can she? No. With every carpeted stair she mounts, she appreciates ever more sharply that her brief hour of grace is over.

She's not a visitor here anymore, but… a governess.

Even as she opens the bedroom door, she's preparing for a dismal sight, a sight to sink her heart and send a shiver down her spine: the sight of Sophie Rackham sitting bolt upright on that stiff-backed chair, like an eerie museum specimen not quite killed by taxidermy, rigid with fear and mistrust, her huge eyes staring straight into Sugar's soul, and expecting… what?

But this, when Sugar enters, is not the sight that greets her. Little Sophie, although she most assuredly did stay where she was told, has found the long wait far too long, and fallen asleep in her seat. Her posture, so maligned by Beatrice, is indisputably poor just now, as she lies slumped and skew-whiff, her head lolling against one shoulder, her skirts rucked and wrinkled, one arm lying limp in her lap and the other dangling in space. A wisp of her blonde hair flutters as she breathes and, clearly evident on the black material of her tightly-buttoned bodice, there's a patch that's blacker than the rest, from drool.

Sugar approaches softly, and kneels, so that her face is level with the slumbering child's. In sleep, with cheeks puffy and lower lip protruding, it's obvious that Sophie's face has failed to replicate Agnes's beauty; as soon as those big china-blue eyes are shut, there's nothing of the mother left, only William's chin and brow and nose. How sad, that unless the Rackham fortune intervenes, spinsterhood can already, at the age of six, be foretold in this girl's flesh and bones! Her torso, too, is William's, puppyish enough now, but carrying the seeds of stockiness. Why not let her sleep? suggests a tempting voice of cowardice and compassion. Let her sleep for ever.

But Sugar, knowing she must wake her, kneels and waits, wishing that the proximity of her breath would somehow be enough to do the job.

"Sophie?"' she whispers.

With a wet snortle, the child begins to convulse into consciousness and, for one priceless instant, the universe offers Sugar a gift: the chance to be the first thing that a newly-woken spirit encounters, before there's any time for fear or prejudice.

Sophie is blinking in confusion, too befuddled to recognise whose face is hovering near-a far less fundamental concern, for someone freshly yanked out of the womb of dreams, than how this world compares to the one she's left. What's it like, this waking life? No sooner has it dawned on the girl that she's most likely committed some terrible sin, and can expect to be punished, than Sugar reaches out a hand and lays it gently on her shoulder, saying,

"It's all right, Sophie. You fell asleep, that's all."

Stiff and sore, Sophie allows herself to be helped off the chair, and Sugar decides, then and there, that being a governess is not going to be as hard as she feared. Flushed with relief, she makes her first mistake.

"We've met before," she says. "Do you remember?"'

Sophie, striving with all her might to compose herself into that strange new animal, a pupil, looks perplexed. Here's the inaugural question from her governess, and it's a puzzler-maybe even a trick, to catch her out!

"No, Miss," she admits. Her voice is Agnes's exactly, but softer and less finely modulated-still musical, but more a mournful little bell than an oboe d'amore.

"In church," Sugar prompts her. "I looked at you, and you looked back." (even as she says it, it does sound rather a flimsy experience.) Sophie bites her bottom lip. A hundred times her nurse has told her she ought to pay more attention in church, and here's the retribution!

"Don't 'member, Miss." Words spoken in infant despair, in the shadow of a dunce's cap.

"No matter, no matter," says Sugar, and raises herself off her knees.

Only when they're both standing up straight does the scale of things become disconcertingly obvious:

Sophie's head scarcely reaches her waist.

"Well now," Sugar presses on, making her second mistake, "I'm so glad Beatrice is gone, aren't you?"' Her tone, she hopes, is playfully conspiratorial, like one child to another, to leave no doubt where her sympathies lie.

Sophie looks up at her-such a distance between their faces!-and pleads, "I don't know, Miss." Her brow is creased with anxiety; her tiny hands are clasped tight in front of her skirts, and this queer new world, now that she's fully awake, is a dangerous place after all.

What to do? What to do? Bailing up, from the well of books she's read, whatever she can find on the subject of children, Sugar asks, "Do you have a doll?"' An inane question, she reckons, but it lights an unexpected spark in Sophie's eyes.

"In the nursery, Miss."

"The nursery?"' Sugar is reminded with a jolt that she hasn't been there. The very place where she'll be teaching Sophie, and she's yet to see it! Granted, in Beatrice's lecture on the proper maintenance of the Rackham child, the nursery was frequently referred to, but somehow Beatrice ended up leaving the house without having gone so far as to show the governess "what I expect you'll be calling the school-room now".

Maybe she would have, if only Sugar hadn't mentioned trains and sent her scurrying.

"Take me there, then," she says, offering, after a moment's hesitation, her hand. Will it be accepted? To her great relief, Sophie takes hold.

At the first touch of the child's warm fingers, Sugar feels something she would never have guessed she could feel: the thrill of flesh against unfamiliar flesh. She, who has been fingered by a thousand strangers, and grown insensible to all but the crudest probings, now experiences a tingle, almost a shock, of tactile initiation; and with that shock comes shyness. How gross her own fingers are in comparison with Sophie's! Is the child disgusted by the cracked and horny surface of Sugar's skin?

How snugly or loosely should their hands clasp?

And who will decide when they let go?

"Lead the way," she says, as they step out.

Once again, the Rackham house seems deserted, less a home than a hushed emporium of clocks, mirrors, lights, paintings, and a dozen different wallpapers. The nursery is tucked away in the tail of the landing's L-shape, and on the way to it Sugar and Sophie pass several closed doors.

"That's Father's thinking room," whispers Sophie, unasked.

"And the next one?"'

"I don't know, Miss."

"And what about the first door, back there?"' "That's where Mother lives."

The nursery, when they step inside it, is quite a heartening sight, at least by contrast with Sophie's bedroom. It's a fair size, with a larger than average window, an assortment of cabinets and trunks, a writing desk, and some toys-indeed, more toys than Sugar ever possessed. Over here are some painted wooden animals for a Noah's ark (the ark itself not in evidence), over there is a crudely-fashioned but generously proportioned doll's house with a few bits of dolls' furniture in it. In the far corner, a rocking horse with a hand-knitted "saddle", and a stack of gaily-coloured baskets filled with knick-knacks too small to identify. A dull green writing-slate, unsullied by chalk, stands ready on four wooden legs, purchased specially for this new chapter in Sophie Rackham's life.

"And your doll?"'

Sophie opens a trunk, and fetches out a flaccid rag-doll with a dark brown head, a grinning nigger on whose threadbare cotton chest is embroidered the word "Twinings". He could hardly be more hideous, but Sophie handles him tenderly, with a hint of sadness, as if conceding that he's ever-so-slightly less alive than she'd like to think he is.

"My grandpapa gave him to me," she explains. "He's supposed to sit on top of an elephant, but the tea weren't empty yet."

Sugar ponders this for a second or two, then lets it go.

"Why do you keep him in a trunk?"' she asks. "Wouldn't you like to take him to bed?"' "Nurse says I'm not to have a smelly old doll in my good clean room, Miss," Sophie replies, a note of grievance creeping into her stoicism. "And when he's in here, she don't like to look at his black face."

This is the opportunity Sugar has been waiting for, to redeem herself.

"But it must be very gloomy and dreadful inside that trunk," she protests. "And surely he must get lonely!"

Sophie's eyes have grown larger even than normal; she's teetering on the brink of trust.

"I don't know, Miss," she says.

Again Sugar kneels, on the pretext of examining the doll more closely, but really to allow Sophie to read her face. "We'll find a better use for this trunk," she says, helpfully tucking one of the doll's dangling legs into the crook of Sophie's arm. "Now, what's your doll's name?"'

Another puzzler. "I don't know, Miss.

My grandpapa never said."

"So what do you call him?"'

"I don't call him any name, Miss."

Sophie chews her lip, in case such rudeness, even to a creature made of biscuit and rag, warrants a scolding.

"I think you should give him a name," declares Sugar. "A handsome English name. And he may live in your room from now on."

For just a few seconds longer, Sophie looks doubtful, but when the extraordinary new governess nods her head in reassurance, she draws a deep breath and cries,

"Thank you, Miss!"

In joy, she's not so plain after all.

A few dozen streets away, while Sophie is introducing Miss Sugar, item by item, to the wonders of her nursery, Emmeline Fox is sitting half-way up her stairs, taking a rest before continuing. She's done rather a lot today, for a woman still not wholly well, and it's a kind of bliss to sit here, one's head nuzzled in the carpeted hollow of a stair, breathing in silence.

Is there still a wheeze in her windpipe? Perhaps a slight one. But she has definitely, as Mrs Rackham put it, escaped the jaws of You-Know-What. How sweet it is, and how tiresome too, to feel the ache of exhaustion in one's legs, the hard edge of a stair against one's shoulder-blades, the pulse of her heart in the veins of one's temples. She has been given this body, this poor vehicle of bone and sinew, for a while longer; pray God she uses it well.

The visit to Mrs Rackham was awfully tiring, especially the walk home, carrying the cat (a solid creature, no featherweight!) in its wicker basket through the streets of Notting Hill. No doubt her decision to do without a cab, or even her servant Sarah, will keep the gossips prattling-all the more so, if any of them should learn the truth, that Sarah has gone back to prostitution, her "ailing grandfather" having landed himself calamitously in debt at horse races throughout the Season.

Another girl, likewise from the Rescue

Society's stable of rehabilitated strumpets, is supposed to be starting next Wednesday, but Emmeline wants to tidy the house a little before then, so as not to discourage the girl at the outset of a respectable career. So, that's what she's doing now: getting things in order.

Well, not right now, of course; right now she's sitting halfway up the stairs, watching the passing of ghostly pedestrians through the frosted glass of the front door below.

The delivery of Henry's worldly goods, especially since it was effected while she was in Saint Bartholomew's and unable to supervise the workmen, has pushed this little house of hers over a line-the line, to be frank, between clutter and chaos. There's not a room where there's enough free space remaining for one to… well, swing a cat, as they say. Certainly Puss has, since his arrival, been most intrigued and confused, roaming up and down the stairs, in one door and out the other, reacquainting himself with his master's furniture and his master's contraptions, all stacked and crammed in unfamiliar places.

Of particular concern to him is the bewildering phenomenon of Henry's bed, which stands upright against the wall of the sitting-room, its mattress slumped drunkenly against the iron framework, no use to man or beast. At least half a dozen times since Emmeline released him into her house, he has attempted to draw this to her attention, in the clear hope that she'll put it right.

Emmeline has to admit that her house looks more like a Cheapside junk shop now.

In the kitchen, there are two of everything: two stoves, two crockery cupboards, two ice-pails, two stock-pots, two kettles, two bainmaries, and so on and so on-even two spice racks, Henry's selection almost identical to hers. All very unfortunate, given that she's no better at cooking than she ever was, and even less inclined to improve.

Throughout the house, chairs and stools are stacked two- and three-high, some precariously, others inextricably, but by far the greatest source of muddle is the superabundance of books:

Henry's volumes added to her own. In every room, and in the passages as well, great piles of them, some stacked logically, sandcastle-style, from large up to small, others stacked the other way round, tempting gravity and the caressing snout of Henry's cat. Nor can she blame the men from the salvage company for the haphazard stacking: it was she who removed these books from their boxes, only to see what had survived the fire, and what hadn't.

Her skills in the storage of physical objects, however, leave a lot to be desired, and already there have been several spills. The never-particularly-stable tower of New Testaments, which the man from the Bible Dissemination Society never did come back for, has sprawled all over the landing, and some unlucky exemplars have even fallen through the banisters onto the floor below.

Somewhat neater-looking, but more disheartening, are the bags of clothing. Not Emmeline's usual store of uncollected donations-the woollen gloves and darned socks and carefully mended bedding destined for the destitute of London and beyond-but Henry's clothes. Three bags full, lying unopened in her bedroom, tied with string and stamped Tuttle and Son.

Puss is dawdling around her skirts, miaowing, doing his best to butt her legs through the voluminous barrier of her skirts. Before he goes so far as to crawl underneath, Emmeline gets to her feet. How tired she is! It's only afternoon, but she yearns to sleep. Not a doze, either, but a long, dark sleep to separate one day from the next. Impiously, she wishes God would relax the rules just this once and allow night to fall a few hours prematurely. The imbalance could be made up next day, couldn't it, with a few extra hours of light?

Stiff-so stiff that she almost wants her walking stick again-Emmeline shuffles to the kitchen, assuming that Puss, having taken the measure of the place, is now ready for some food.

"Is that what you want, Puss?"' she asks, as he hesitates on the kitchen threshold, sniffing at the dirty bristles of a broom.

What to give him? Now that she's installed him in her home, she's going to have to put some serious thought into how to persuade him to stay. An inspection of her cupboards and cool-chests confirms that, as well as having no cream, she has no raw meat, for she hasn't been cooking lately, preferring to take her meals in restaurants (yes, deplorable, she knows: all those gaunt-cheeked families eking out their sustenance from scraps of mutton and crusts of bread, and here's she, dining like a courtesan! But without Sarah's help she just hasn't been up to the challenge of cooking, and anyway, the stove that's connected to the flue is the one that's now out of reach.) Rather a shame she can't take Puss with her to a restaurant, and order his dish along with hers… precisely the kind of common-sense solution that people can always be relied upon to reject out of hand. Ah! how English society hates pragmatism! Not the sort of pragmatism that gets factories built, but the sort that makes the life of its citizens more agreeable! Something to be discussed with Henry, when next she…

With a sigh, she opens another cupboard and extracts a hunk of Leicester cheese, her own staple when the maid's away. Puss yowls encouragingly.

"I don't suppose cats eat cheese?"' she says, tossing a small piece between his paws, but he pounces on the morsel and devours it with great relish. Another preconception disproved; she learns something new each day.

Leaning against the superfluous oven, she feeds Puss the cheese, fragment by fragment, until he's had enough, or is too thirsty to go on.

She leads him to a dish of water, which he contemplates without enthusiasm; tomorrow she'll buy him some milk.

She ought to eat something herself; she's had nothing today except bread, some cheese, tea, and Mrs Rackham's fruit-cake. Her normal appetites have yet to be restored, and she still hasn't recovered from the unpleasant discovery, on her return from hospital, of a box marked "PERISHABLES" whose contents, after a brief sojourn at the warehouse of Tuttle and Son and then a rather longer one here, were perished indeed.

She leans across a jumble of copper saucepans to open another cupboard, where she thinks she might have left a tin of biscuits.

Instead, she finds another cache of books. A few minutes later, or maybe fifteen, having leafed through Mrs Rundell's New System of Domestic Cookery, and stared a while at the inscription on its flyleaf, To my valued Friend Henry Rackham, Christmas 1874, she climbs the stairs, step by painful step.

On the landing, very near the door to her bedroom, she spies two small dark-brown objects which appear from a distance to be cigars, but which prove at closer quarters to be faeces, and very smelly too. Emmeline closes her eyes and feels tears leak out; she cannot, cannot, cannot walk up and down the stairs again. Instead, she fetches a handkerchief from her bedside, from a box full of them, belonging to those days not so long ago, when she could be seized, at any time of day or night, with an irresistible desire to cough blood.

Gingerly, she wraps the cat's mess in the soft cotton, folding it round and round until it's a kind of pomander. Parceled thus, it can surely wait till morning.

In her shambles of a bedroom, she begins to undress, then, when she's half-unbuttoned, suddenly realises why she can't locate her night-dress. After a rather too vigorous attempt this morning to scrub an old bloodstain from it, she was obliged to mend a rip in the fabric, and-Lord help her sieve-like memory -she's left it downstairs, slung over the back of a chair. Cannot, cannot, cannot. Just this once, she'll have to sleep in her underthings.

She struggles out of her dress and petticoat, clumsy-fingered with fatigue, but, once reduced to her chemise and pantalettes, becomes belatedly aware that she's clammy with sweat, plagued by itches in her armpits, groin, and the cleft of her behind. Swaying on her feet, she briefly considers praying for the strength to go downstairs and dispose of the cat dung, fetch her night-dress, and boil some water for a wash, but decides that this would be an unworthy claim on God's attention. Instead, she strips off her remaining clothing and, with a gasp of relief, crawls naked and feverish between the sheets.

Only the very wicked or the very sick, she thinks, go to bed in the daytime. Tomorrow she must conserve her energies better, and not overtax this body which she so very nearly lost.

The sheets are heavenly against her flesh, sweet numbness is spreading through her limbs, and although the sanction of nightfall is still a long way off, she feels herself drifting into sleep, only vaguely aware of a gentle commotion next to her in the bed which, only when she wakes next morning, she will discover to be Puss, by then nestled, in a state of perfect contentment, at her feet.