The Crimson petal and the white by Michel Faber

TWENTY-THREE

Sugar's bed, just right for the woman who slept in it previously, is too small for her. During her long first night in the Rackham house, during a sleep that's tainted by the fitful barking of a distant dog, Sugar dreams all sorts of queer things. A while before dawn, she tosses one time too many, and a gangly naked leg swings out from under the sheets, dangling in the chill air, before bumping against the flank of her suitcase. In Sugar's dream, this is translated into the callused fingers of a man, seizing her calf, crawling up her flesh towards her groin.

"You needn't shiver any more," says Mrs

Castaway. "A kind gentleman has come to keep you warm."

Sugar tries to curl into a ball, bumps her ankle on an unfamiliar bedpost, and wakes.

For a few moments she's quite lost in her new room, this dark little chamber high above the ground, having grown so used to the spacious ground-floor quarters in Priory Close, always gently illumined by the streetlight. She could almost be back in her old bedroom at Mrs Castaway's, except that that was a good deal bigger than this. Also, there's a peculiar smell under the bed, an earthy, damp smell, that reminds her of the rot in the first house she ever lived in-the hovel in Church Lane.

Sugar leans over the edge of the bed and scrabbles underneath, and her fingers brush against the filthy pile of Agnes's diaries. Ah yes, now she remembers. No sooner did the front door shut on Beatrice Cleave yesterday than she crept back down to the store-room and snatched the diaries while the snatching was good. Then, having stashed them under her bed, she hurried to attend to Sophie.

Ah, Sophie.

Sugar fumbles for a lucifer and lights two candles on her ugly yellow dresser, and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. I am a governess, she tells herself, as the world flickers into focus. Immediately she's conscious of a gripe in her innards, then a sharp stab of pain.

She's eaten almost nothing for days, nor moved her bowels. Anxiety has frozen her. Now, she's thawing out, and her belly is full of noises.

The clock says half past five. How long has she slept? Quite a while; she went to bed last night almost immediately after the child did, at the infant hour of seven. She expected William to come and join her then, and was determined to stay awake-she even considered giving her clitoris some attention to prepare herself-but within minutes of laying her head on the strange-smelling pillow she was gone. If William did come to see her -and there's no evidence that he did-he must have left her sleeping.

In her memory, Sugar retrieves the events of yesterday in reverse order from Sophie's bedtime-Sophie falling asleep, right before her eyes, as though obeying a command. Or perhaps only pretending? Sugar, too, knows how to fake unconsciousness, if there's something to be gained from it…

She's a little actress, I warn you, was one of Beatrice's parting wisdoms. She'll wrap you round her finger, if she's given half a chance.

Sugar recalls the gently breathing face of Sophie on the pillow, the crisp sheets and blankets only half-way up Sophie's stiff white nightgown, for Sugar was too shy to tuck them up to the child's neck.

What came before that? Hearing Sophie's prayers. A litany of God-blesses. Who and what did Sophie pray for? Sugar can't remember. The thought that she'll surely hear the same prayers again this evening is at once reassuring and perturbing.

But what happened before the prayers? Oh, yes, bathing Sophie in a tub next to her bed.

The child did it all herself, really, except for the towel draped over her tiny wet shoulders.

Sugar looked away, bashful, and, when the laundry-maid came to collect Miss Rackham's washing, blenched as if caught in a naughty act.

And before then? Ah yes, the business with the Gregory powder. Beatrice had stressed the absolute necessity of administering a nightly dose-indeed, her last words to Sugar before leaving the house were "Remember the Gregory powder!"-but the look of revulsion on the child's face as the vile spoonful approached her lips made Sugar lower the spoon at once.

"Would you rather not, Sophie?"'

"Nurse says I'll be sorry without it,

Miss."

"Well," Sugar responded, "let me know if you're sorry, and I'll give it to you then." And, to the child's relief, she tapped the horrid concoction of rhubarb, magnesia and ginger back into the tin.

There were no formal lessons yesterday, because Sugar was trying to find out what Sophie had learned in life so far. This turned out to be a great deal, and Sophie grew quite exhausted recalling and reciting it all. Bible stories and moral homilies made up the bulk, but there was also a fair amount of what Beatrice Cleave described as "general knowledge", such as which countries belong to England, and which ought to but don't. There were nursery rhymes, little poems about the importance of being virtuous, and Sophie's topic of greatest erudition, the elephants in India.

"Their ears are smaller," stated the child, after many other revelations.

"Smaller than what?"' Sugar enquired.

"I don't know, Miss," confessed Sophie after a dumbfounded pause. "Nurse knows."

Throughout the afternoon, as fact piled upon fiction in an ever greater muddle, Sugar repeatedly smiled and said, "Very good, Sophie." She didn't know what else to say, and it seemed the right thing to be telling the child anyway. Judging by Sophie's response-an ever-brighter glow of pride and relief-the words "good" and "Sophie" had all-too-rarely been coupled in the same sentence. Sugar spooned them into the child's mouth like an illicit gift of bon-bons, enough to make her gloriously sick.

So much for yesterday. Today, Sophie's formal education must begin. Dressing the lamb before the kill, as Mrs Castaway once put it, when Sugar dared to ask what, exactly, education is.

In the early morning gloom, by candle-light, Sugar opens the book handed to her, like a sacred chalice, by Beatrice. "Purchased by Mr Rackham himself, this was," the nurse said. "Everything Sophie should know is in it."

Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People is its title, and very thick and densely printed it is too. The author's name, Richmal Mangnall, sounds like the growl of a dog refusing to surrender a ball from its mouth.

Sugar examines the first question, concerning the ancient monarchies that were founded after the Deluge, but gets stuck because she isn't sure how to pronounce "Chaldean" and is loath to start Sophie's tuition off on the wrong foot. She reads further and, by the time she gets to "What were the Amphictyonies or Amphictyonic confederations?"', she's fairly certain that some of this material is not yet within the scope of Sophie's brain. She decides to skip a few thousand years-or, say rather, a dozen pages -and begin after the birth of Jesus, whom Sophie at least has heard of.

That's settled, then. Sugar lays Mangnall's Questions to one side and fetches Agnes's diaries out from their hiding-place.

To her surprise, they are (she notices now) locked, each grimy volume banded shut with a hasp and a tiny brass padlock. Specks of soil fall into her lap as she strains to tear one of them open, but its dainty fastening proves stronger than it looks. Eventually, pricked by conscience, Sugar forces the lock by thrusting the point of a knife into it until the mechanism yields.

At random, the pages fall open, to reveal Agnes in 1869, as follows:

I am gripped by terror today-I feel certain there is a great trial in store for me, greater even than I have endured yet… Just this minute Clara has come in to tell me that Doctor Curlew is on his way, to "help me out of my misery". Whatever can he mean? I know that the last time he was here I complained bitterly, and I may have said that after so many months of Illness I wished for nothing but Death, but I didn't mean it! His black bag frightens me-it has knives in it, and leeches. I have begged Clara to stop him doing me any mischief if I should swoon, but she doesn't appear to listen, and prattles that everyone is very worried about "the baby"-how very late it is, and that it must come soon. Whose baby can this be? I wish William would keep me better informed about whom he invites to this house…

A barb of pain burrows down through Sugar's guts. With a groan she perches on the chamber-pot and doubles over, her loose hair piling up in the lap of her night-gown, her forehead resting on her knees, prickling with sweat. She balls her fists, but nothing comes, and the spasm passes.

Back in bed, she takes up Agnes's diary again, and flicks to the entry she saw before, expecting to learn, on the page following, how Sophie arrived into the world. But the very next entry after the one describing Agnes's unenlightened labour begins thus:

Have just returned from Mrs Hotten's house, where I had my first dinner "out" since regaining my Health. Either the Hottens are most peculiar people, or manners have flipped Topsey-Turvey during my time of Illness. Mr Hotten put his napkin on his chest, and I was expected to eat my melon with a spoon. There were no asparagus tongs, and one of my potatoes had a "bone" in it. Everyone talked ceaselessly about the Barings, and made jokes about the cost of a Peerage. Mrs Hotten laughed with her mouth open. All evening I was either a'ghast or else bored. I shan't go again. When will Mrs Cecil reply to my invitation, I wonder?

And so on, and so on. Sugar flips through the pages: more and more of the same. Where is William?

Where is Sophie? Their names don't appear.

Agnes goes to parties, presumably with her husband at her side; she returns home, presumably to her infant daughter.

At Mrs Amphlett's, I saw Mrs

Forge, Mrs Tippett, Mrs Lott, Mrs

Potter, Mrs Ousby… Such roll-calls fill the pages, stitched together with a tireless embroidery of I, I, I, I, I, I,