The Crimson petal and the white

I

The next entry, undated and obviously scribbled in furious haste, fills a double page overleaf.

My dearest, most beloved Saint Teresa,

Is it such a great Sin to hate my father if he is not my True father? I hate him so, I hate him until my teeth bite holes in my lips. He is an evil man and has cast a Spell over Mama to make her forget our dear Papa and she looks at him like a dog waiting for meat. She cannot see what I see-the cruelity in his eyes and his smile which is not a smile. I dont know what is to become of us because he has forbiden us to go to Church-the True Church-and instead he has taken us to his church and it is a shameless frord. Hardly anyone is properly dressed and everything is so common, they even have a Book Of Common Prayer. I dont suppose, dear Saint Teresa, that You have ever seen inside one of these places. There is only emptyness where Our Lady ort to be standing, and there is nothing to take home except a beging letter about the Clock-Tower Fund. Lord Unwin says everything is the same as my old Church except that they are speaking the Queens English, but he does not understand (or perhaps he pretends not to) that if even one small word of a Spell is left out or pernounced wrong it doesnt work at all, as in "Columbine's Enchanted Forest" when Columbine forgets to say "zabda hanifah" and she loses her wings. Lord Unwin hates the Church and Our Lady and all the Saints, he says "No more of that jibrish in this house" and by jibrish he means You, Saint Teresa.

Why do You not speak to me any more? Are the walls of this unhappy new house a shield against Your voice? I cannot believe he is stronger than Y. If You cannot speak to me aloud, perhaps You could wisper to me when Miss Pitt takes me out walking, or perhaps You could cause Your answer to appear on this page by the morning (or the next page if there is no room left.) I shall leave the pen in the ink, but please do not spill as Miss Pitt (my new governess) is very strict.

Oh yes, You need to know what my questions are, they are, Where has my own dear Papa gone and when am I to see him again? And, How much longer is this evil man to have Mama and me in his power?

He says I am to go to a School for Young Ladies as soon as can be aranged. I am very frightened of this as it will mean leaving Mama, and I have heard that schooling is a thing that takes many years.

Also I dont wish to be a Young Lady because they are not permited to play with hoops any more and must get married instead.

The remainder of the diary consists of blank pages, creamy and secretive. Sugar feels another barb of pain burrowing through her guts, and sits on the chamber-pot again. Foulness sputters out of her, scalding her as it goes. She hugs herself, shivering, biting her lips so she won't exclaim blasphemies or obscenities.

Instead, in between cramps, she breathes deeply and deliberately. I am a governess.

A little while later, at half past six,

Rose brings her a cup of tea. Sugar is fully dressed by then, her unruly abundant hair wound into a tight chignon, her body sheathed in black. The room is tidied, the diaries invisible-stashed under the bed, wrapped in the same shabby old dress she used as a disguise on her visit to the Rackhams' church. God knows why she kept that dress-she needs no disguises now! But she did, and it's come in useful after all.

"Morning, Miss Sugar," says Rose, her nose wrinkling only momentarily at the diarrhoea stench still flavouring the air. "I-I didn't know what biscuit you might like." And she proffers a plate containing three different ones.

"Thank you, Rose," says Sugar, moved almost to tears by how friendly the servant is being. Either Rose hasn't read any novels, or she's under strict injunctions from her master to be amiable.

"That's very kind of you. I wonder if you could advise me on opening this window? I've tried, and can't manage it."

"It's painted shut, Miss, from the outside." Rose inclines her head apologetically. (the whole house is afflicted with minor inconveniences following the recent orgy of improvements.) "I'll ask Mr Rackham to ask the gardener to climb up and fix it for you, Miss."

"No need, no need." Sugar is determined not to cause William the slightest bother, lest he feel that a governess from a more conventional source would have been less troublesome.

When he comes up to see her, let it be because he desires her, not because he must face the consequences of hurried renovations. Nodding encouragingly at Rose, Sugar takes a sip of lukewarm tea and a bite of biscuit.

"Qwor!" her stomach exclaims, as the servant turns to leave.

Minutes later, in a bedroom virtually identical to her own, Sugar wakes Sophie, and finds her drenched with urine. The little girl, confused and squinting in the lamp-light, is trapped in a swaddle of night-gown and bed-sheet clinging to her wet flesh, as though a pitcherful of piss has been poured on her body from knee to chest.

"Uh… Goodness me, Sophie," says Sugar, after biting her tongue on several coarser responses.

"I'm sorry, Miss," says the child.

"I'm bad." Her tone is matter-of-fact, not cringing or pitiful; she might be reciting a titbit of general knowledge that escaped her memory the day before.

The metal tub of warm water is already stationed by the bed, deposited there by whoever does the work of little Christopher in the Rackham household.

Sugar helps Sophie out of bed, assists her to remove her nightgown in such a way as not to rub her face in her own pee. The rest, the child does herself. Her stocky body and spindly arms disappear under a frothy lather of Rackham's Bath Soap (still Supreme in its Bubble Production Far Beyond the Capacities of Other Soaps!, until such time as Sugar's suggested rephrasing is adopted.) "Very good, Sophie," she says, looking away. The hairs on the nape of her neck tingle as she notices a pair of eyes glinting in the darkness: Sophie's doll, slumped louchely on top of the dresser, its chin buried in its chest, its painted teeth grinning. Sugar and the manikin stare at each other until the bathwater has gone quiet, then she turns back to Sophie. The child is standing ready to be dried, her shoulder-blades quaking with cold, and Sugar wraps a towel around them; but, as she does so, she catches a glimpse of the smooth infantile vulva between Sophie's legs, the firm, clearly defined sex glistening with water-and helplessly imagines a swollen, mauve-headed prick shoving its way inside.

"I'm sorry, Miss," says Sophie when she hears her governess grunt in distress.

"You've done nothing wrong, dear," says Sugar, looking away towards the window as the child finishes drying. The sun appears to be on the rise, or at least the night is receding, and in Sugar's lap, a very small petticoat lies ready.

At half past eight, after they've eaten the bowls of porridge Rose has brought up to them, Sugar escorts Sophie to what used to be, until yesterday, the nursery. They tiptoe past dark, closed doors behind which are hidden the personal effects, and possibly the bodies as well, of William and Agnes Rackham respectively. Quiet as mice or burglars, they proceed to the end of the landing and let themselves into the unlit room where slate and rocking horse stand at the ready.

A servant has stoked a fire in the hearth, raising the temperature of the air to a bearable chill. While Sugar lights the lamps, Sophie walks directly to the writing-desk and sits down, her tightly-shod feet dangling a few inches short of the floor.

"Dictation first, I think," says Sugar, as her intestines continue to make loud noises.

"A few words at random, just to see how well you can write when you're still half asleep!"

The humour is lost on Sophie; she appears to regard this as a genuine attempt to catch her out when she's least prepared. Still, she lays a blank sheet of paper on the writing-desk before her, and sits attentively, waiting for the first humiliation.

"Cat," declares Miss Sugar.

Face bowed to the page, Sophie inscribes the word, her tiny hand gripping the pen awkwardly, her big eyes gleaming as she strives to make the inky calligraphy perfect and beautiful.

"Dog."

A fresh dip in the ink. A wince of disappointment as a dark blob disfigures the initial d-this was the intended trap, no doubt!

A second attempt.

"Master."

Again the child writes the letters, painstakingly but (as far as Sugar can judge upside-down) with no apparent uncertainty about spelling. Which of them is being made a fool of here?

"Mistress-no… ah… Girl."

Virgin, suggests a phantom prompter in Sugar's head, a sly devil with the voice of Mrs Castaway. Virgin.

"Ah…" (she looks around for inspiration) "window."

Kept intact especially for you, sir.

"Door."

Whore.

The sun is shining brighter now, lightening the shadows of the schoolroom, warming the stale air.

Sugar dabs her damp forehead with the black fabric of her sleeve. She hadn't thought dictation could be such hard work.

All morning, Sophie Rackham does as she is told. She writes, she reads aloud, she listens to an Aesop fable and regurgitates the moral. Her first formal history lesson is a model of compliance; Miss Sugar recites the facts five or six times, and Sophie repeats them until she has them engraved, or at least pencilled, on her memory. Thus does Sophie learn that in the first century, London was founded by the Romans, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, and Rome was burnt in the reign of Nero. Memorisation of these bare facts is a mere ten minutes' work, mostly spent correcting Sophie's tendency to pronounce the Holy City "Juice'lem".

However, the remainder of the morning flies by, as Sugar lays Mangnall's book aside and attempts to answer Sophie's questions arising from her lesson, such as: Where was London before the Romans found it; Why didn't Titus care for Juice'lem; and How could Rome catch fire if it was raining? Then, as soon as she's mopped up these enigmas (in the case of Titus, with an improvisation of pure fiction), Sugar tackles the more fundamental questions, like What is a century and how does a person know he's living in one; and Are there elephants in London.

"Have you seen any elephants there?"' teases Sugar.

"I've never been, Miss," says the child.

At midday, when Sophie is scheduled to adjourn her lessons and play for a couple of hours, Sugar is free to do the same. The ritual, common in other households, of a child being brought downstairs, immaculately dressed and on its best behaviour, to eat lunch or dinner with its parents, is unknown in the Rackham house.

The bright morning sunshine has been replaced by rain. Rose brings them their portion of the lunch that's being served down below (to whom? Sugar wonders) and disappears again. Lessons aren't due to resume until two, and Sugar is longing for the respite, if only for the opportunity to remedy her physical discomforts-numb, half-frozen feet, armpits clammy with sweat, a sore and itchy arsehole. While she eats her carrot pudding, she searches her vocabulary for an alternative to "arsehole"-not "anus", which still sounds coarse, but some elusive word that's wholly innocuous and refined, that could be spoken in elegant company. No success.

She'll have to purify her words and thoughts, though, if she's to be a fit governess. However little interest William may have shown in his daughter until now, he certainly won't want her learning coarse language.

"Be good, Sophie," she says, as she prepares to shut the child in the nursery-the school-room, rather.

"Be Good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever," recites Sophie, playfully seizing her chance to complete the poem, like a catechism. "Do Noble things, not dream them all day long; And so make Life, Death, and that vast For-ever, One glad, sweet Song."

"Very good, Sophie," says Sugar, and closes the door.

Back in her own room, the chamber-pot has been emptied and cleaned, and lavender essence has been sprayed in the air. The bed is made with fresh sheets and pillow-cases, and Sugar's hair-brush, pin-box, buttonhook and so forth have been tidied into a neat pattern on the blanket. The swaddle of diaries under the bed hasn't been disturbed, thank God. A decanter of water has been placed on the dresser, as well as a clean glass and a folded slip of paper.

Sugar snatches up the note, thinking it must surely be from William. It's from Rose, and says, Shears will see to the window-Rose.

She undresses, washes the parts that need washing, and puts on the burgundy-coloured dressing-gown with the quilted breast that William particularly likes. She sits on the bed, her feet wrapped in a blanket, and waits.

Tempting though it is to read Agnes's diaries, she can't risk it, because when William comes-as he surely must-he may not knock before entering, and what would she say then? Even if he did knock, the diaries are dirty, and cleaning the soil off her hands would take time…

The clock ticks. The rain patters against the window, desists for a while, then returns. Her toes thaw one by one. William doesn't come.

Sugar calls to mind the frantic way he grips her when he's fucking her from behind, his hands bearing down on her shoulders as if in the wild hope of collapsing their two bodies into one-as if, with a sudden, fantastical contraction of flesh, she might be concertina'd into his groin, or he disappear completely into hers.

At ten minutes to two, she gets dressed again, buttoning herself into her black governess garb and hanging her burgundy gown back in the wardrobe. She has remembered, to her relief, that it's Wednesday-William's day for checking what proportion of the goods he's ordered during the previous week has in fact turned up at the docks. By now, he'll be in Air Street, frowning over dispatch notices, already formulating letters in his head that she'll help him write when his annoyance has cooled. It's a dreary task, but it must be done.

The remainder of the day passes quickly. Sophie, Sugar discovers, loves to be read to. So, in amongst more rote-learning from Mangnall's Questions, and more disentanglement of confusions arising from that venerable book, Sugar reads aloud from Aesop, acting out the animals in different voices. At one point, after a particularly spirited duck-quack, she glances across at Sophie and thinks she detects a twitch of the lips that might be a hastily suppressed smile. Certainly the child's eyes are wide and bright, and she barely breathes for fear of missing a single word.

"Whisssss'-kers," says Sugar, gaining courage.

Shortly before four, there's a grinding and a jingling in the grounds below, and Sugar and Sophie go to the window to see the carriage emerging from the coach-house. Mrs Rackham, it seems, is going out to take her tea at another lady's "At Home", or perhaps intending to flit to several such. Darkness is already descending, and the weather is drizzly, but when Agnes hurries out of the parlour onto the carriage-way she is resplendent in pink, and her matching parasol looks luminous in the twilight. Cheesman gathers her into the cabin, and she's borne away.

"I should prob'ly get sick," says Sophie, nose pressed against the windowpane,

"if I had a ride in that."

At seven, after a roast dinner and another hour or two spent in her bedroom waiting for William, Sugar returns to Sophie to discharge the last of her responsibilities.

She can't help thinking it's futile to bathe Sophie at bedtime when, in all likelihood, it will need to be done again in the morning, but Sophie seems used to it and Sugar is loath to unravel established routines so soon. So, she goes through the ritual, and wraps the sweet-smelling child in her plain white night-dress.

"God bless Papa and Mama," says Sophie, kneeling at the side of her bed, her tiny hands arranged in a steeple on the coverlet. "God bless Nurse." So incantatory is her tone that it hardly seems to matter that of this triumvirate, two have scant involvement in Sophie's life and the third has abandoned her to suckle a new baby called Barrett. Father, Mother and Nurse are folkloric fixtures like Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or Great Huge Bear, Middle Bear and Little Small Wee Bear.

"… and I am grateful that I am a little girl in England with a home and a bed, and God bless the little black children in Africa, who have no beds, and God bless all the little yellow children in China, who are made to eat rats…"

Sugar's eyes, focused on Sophie's pale bare feet poking out from the hem of her night-dress, slowly cross. Whatever qualms she may have about embellishing, with sentimental and unhistorical anecdotes, the decision by Constantine the Great to stop the persecution of the Christians, she's clearly doing no more than following in Beatrice Cleave's footsteps.

A great deal of rubbish has already been deposited in Sophie's skull, and there's more to follow.

"Shall I… shall I read you a bedtime story?"' says Sugar, as she's tucking Sophie in, pulling the sheets up to the child's chin.

"Thank you, Miss."

But by the time Sugar has fetched a book, it's too late.

In her own bed that night, after she's finally given up waiting for William, Sugar lays out a selection of Agnes's diaries before her on the blanket, one nestled in her lap, several others within easy reach. If she should hear William at her door, she's decided what she'll do: blow out the bedside candle and, under cover of darkness, toss the diaries back under the bed. Then, if he's in the state she expects he'll be in, he's scarcely likely to notice, even by the light of a rekindled candle, that her hands are grubby. She'll wipe them at her leisure, when his face is safely nuzzled between her breasts.

Agnes's next attempt at keeping her memoirs after the tirade against her step-father and his fiendish plan to have her schooled, is dated 2 September 1861, on the maiden page of a fresh volume grandly inscribed Abbots Langley School for Girls. The misery she'd expected to suffer if she were sent to such a place is nowhere in evidence; for, not only does she render the name of the school with a proud flourish, but she also decorates the page margins with elaborate watercolour reproductions of the school's hollyhock laurel emblem and its motto, Comme Il Faut.

Addressing herself once more to "Dear

Diary" rather than "Saint Teresa" or some other supernatural correspondent, the ten-year-old Agnes thus commences an unbroken record of her six years at school.

Well, here am I in Abbots Langley (near Hampstead). Miss Warkworth and Miss Barr (the headmistresses) say that no girl is permited to leave here until "finished", but do not be alarmed, dear Diary, for by this they mean Clever and Beautiful. I have been thinking deeply on this and have decided that it would be a good thing if I was Clever and Beautiful because then I should marry well, to an Officer of the True Faith. I should describe my Papa to him and he would say,

"Why, I have seen the very man fighting in distant lands!" and directly after we were married he would go on a Quest to find him. Mama and I should live together in his house, waiting for him and Papa to return.

I do not know how Miss Warkworth and Miss Barr and the other mistresses mean to "finish" me, but I have seen some of the older girls who have been at Abbots Langley for years, and they look most pleased with themselves and are some of them very Tall and Graceful. In evening dress I am sure they would look just like Ladies in paintings with a fine Officer by their side.

I have been instaled in my room, which I must share with two other girls. (there are, I think, thirty all together. I was very worried about this before I came, for I knew I should have to live with strange girls who might be cruel and was almost sick with dread at the thought of being at their mercy.

But the two girls in my room are not so bad after all. One is named Letitia (i think that is how it is spelt) and though she is a little older than me and says she comes of better family, she has been made so teribly ugly by a Disease that she lacks the spirit to put on airs. The other girl has wept and snifled since her arrival but said nothing.

At Dinner some other girls (whom I first took for school-mistresses, they looked so old -I suppose they are almost finished) tried to make me reveal who my Father was and I would not tell them, because I feared they would make fun of Papa. But then another spoke up, "I know who her father is-He is Lord Unwin", and that struck them all very quiet! Perhaps I betrayed Papa a little by not speaking up for him as my True father, but dont you think I should be glad of what small benefit I recieve from being now the stepdaughter of Lord Unwin? Whether it is wrong or not, I am greatful for whatever helps me suffer less, for I hate to suffer. Every scratch and gash upon my heart is there yet, not the slightest bit healed, making me fear that the next injury will be my last. If only I could be spared any more wounds, I should arrive safe into Marriage, and after that I should be free of all care. Wish me luck! (I can speak freely to you, dear Diary, for it is only the letters I send by the Post that I must give up unsealed to Miss Barr.) I have more to tell, but Miss Wick (of whom more tomorrow) has just called by, warning us that we must put out the lights. And so, dear Diary, I must put you under lock and key, and ask you not to worry over me yet, for it seems I may survive my education after all!

Your loving Friend,

Agnes.

Sugar reads another twenty or thirty pages before succumbing to exhaustion-and, to be honest, the odourless, deadly gas of boredom.

Agnes's promise that there should be "more tomorrow" of Miss Wick is faithfully kept, and indeed Miss Wick, and all the other Misses whom Agnes lacks the literary talent to bring to life, rear their featureless heads not just tomorrow, but tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

In her final minutes of wakefulness, Sugar wishes she could float through the Rackham house like a ghost and see its inhabitants now, as they really are. She wishes she could pass through the heavy wooden door of William's study and see what he's up to; wishes she could peer into his very brain and winkle out his reasons for avoiding her. She wishes she could see Agnes, the real flesh-and-blood Agnes whom she has touched and smelled, doing whatever it is that Agnes does in her room at night… Even the sight of Mrs Rackham sleeping would, Sugar's sure, reveal more than these ancient soil-stained reminiscences!

Lastly, she imagines floating into Sophie's room, and murmuring in the child's ear the gentle suggestion that she hop out of bed and use the pot one more time. No supernatural fantasy, this: she could, if she chose, make it come true. How happy Sophie would be, waking next morning in a dry bed! Sugar breathes deeply, gathering her nerve to throw the warm bedclothes aside and hurry barefoot through the dark to Sophie's room. A minute or two of discomfort is all she'll have to endure to complete this mission of mercy-yes!

She's up, she's tiptoeing along the landing, candle in hand!

But, like those childhood dreams she can still recall, when she'd be convinced she was leaving her bed to use the pot, only to discover, as soon as she let go, that she was wetting herself inside a humid cocoon of bedding, the mission of mercy occurs in her sleep only, and its happy ending is trapped like a moth in her snoring head.

Next morning, in the cold light of dawn, while the wind whoops and fleers and a chatter of sleet harasses the eastern windows of the Rackham house, Sugar tiptoes up to Sophie's bed, pulls back the covers, and finds the child steeped in urine as usual.

"I'm sorry, Miss."

What to reply? "Well, we've no other sheets, and it's raining outside, and I'll soon be entertaining visitors who won't appreciate your dirty smell in their noses-so what do you suggest we do, hmm, my little sorry poppet?"'

The words echo in Sugar's memory, tempting her to speak them aloud, with that same teasing, affectionately bitter tone Mrs Castaway used fifteen years ago. How quickly they spring to the tip of Sugar's tongue! She bites them back in horror.

"Nothing to be sorry about, Sophie.

Let's get you clean."

Sophie wrestles with her night-dress, whose sodden fabric sucks at her flesh inch by inch, plastered to the contours of her ribs. Sugar comes to the rescue, tugging the horrid thing free of Sophie's arms and rolling it into a wad, disguising with a cough her sharp intake of breath as the acid urine stings the cracks in her palms and fingers. She can't help noticing, when the naked child steps from her sour-smelling bed into the tub, that Sophie's vulva is an angry red.

"Wash well, Sophie," she advises airily, looking away into the shadows, but there's no escape from the memory of her own inflamed genitals, examined in a cracked mirror in Church Lane, the moment the fat old man with the hairy hands finally left her alone. I have a clever middle finger, yes I have! was what he'd told her, as he poked and prodded between her legs.

A most frolicsome little fellow! He loves to play with little girls, and make them happier than they've ever been!

"Finished, Miss," says Sophie, her legs trembling with cold, her lamp-lit shoulders smouldering with steam.

Sugar wraps the towel around Sophie's shoulders, half-lifts her out of the tub, and helps her dry everywhere, dabbing at the clefts.

Then, just before the pantalettes go on, she sprinkles some Rackham's Snow Dust between Sophie's legs, and pats the talc gently onto the sore flesh. The smell of lavender flavours the air between them; the child's sex has been powdered pale as a whore's face, with a thin red mouth, only to disappear inside white cotton in a faint puff of talcum.

After Sugar has buttoned Sophie into an ill-fitting blue dress and straightened her white pinafore, she pulls the bed-sheet from the mattress (lined with a waxed undersheet, just like her own bed at Mrs Castaway's!) and pushes it into the bathwater to soak. Is there a reason, she wonders, why the bed-sheet must be washed immediately and hung to dry in that nasty little room downstairs, while Sophie's night-dress and indeed all the other laundry in the house is taken care of in the normal way by the servants? Was there perhaps, once upon a time, a complaint from the laundry-maid that a daily load of soiled linen was an intolerable imposition? Or was this ritual Beatrice Cleave's idea, with no purpose but to remind Sophie how much bother she caused her long-suffering nurse?

"I wonder what would happen," muses Sugar as she sploshes up to her elbows in the tepid yellowish water, "if we put this sheet with the other things to be washed." She scoops the tangle of heavy linen up and begins to wring it, waiting for Sophie's response.

"It's too full of dirtiness,

Miss," says the child, solemn in her r@ole of introducing a newcomer to the unchallengeable realities of the Rackham domain. "My bad smell would be spread into the good parts of the house, onto the nice clean beds, ev'ywhere."

"Did your Nurse tell you that?"'

Sophie hesitates; the day's interrogations have evidently begun, and she must be careful to answer correctly.

"No, Miss. It's… common knowledge."

Sugar lets the matter drop, wrings the sheet as dry as she can. She leaves Sophie to comb her hair, and carries the wad of damp linen out of the room, to follow in Beatrice Cleave's footsteps one more time.

The landing is still quite gloomy, but the receiving-hall below is thinly covered with milky daylight, and the sun's overspill extends half-way up the stairs, making the second part of Sugar's descent more confident than the first. What would William think, if he met her hurrying through his house like this, carrying a wad of wet whiffy linen before her? A vain conjecture, since she meets no one. Although she knows the nether regions of the Rackham house must be a hive of industry at this hour, none of it is audible, and she feels like the only soul haunting its luxurious passageways. The silence is such that she hears the carpet underfoot, the barely perceptible squirm of its dense-woven pile as she walks upon it.

The odd little store-room with the copper pipe spanned between its walls is warm as an oven half an hour after a cake has been removed.

All trace of mud and mucky water has been scrupulously cleaned from the corner where Agnes's diaries lay in those few hours before Sugar snatched them; and, contrary to her fears, there is, in the diaries' place, no stern notice to the effect that theft will be punished with instant dismissal.

Sugar hangs the bed-sheet over the copper pipe. Only now does she notice that the talcum powder trapped in the cracks of her palms has mingled with bathwater, delineating the freakish convolutions of her skin with a network of creamy lines. Clots and smears of this perfumed slime also cling to the bed-sheet, resembling thick male seed.

William, where are you? she thinks.

The morning is spent on the Roman Empire and dictation, with two fairy stories as a treat.

Sugar recites them from a slim cloth-covered book whose spine is frayed and whose pages are much-thumbed. Illustrated and with Revised Morals, proclaims the title page, along with a hand-written inscription:

Dear Sophie, A good friend of mine has scolded me for giving you the Bible last Christmas, saying you are too young for it yet. I hope you will enjoy this little book almost as much.

Fond wishes from your tiresome Uncle Henry.

"Do you remember your Uncle Henry?"' enquires Sugar lightly, in between exotic enchantments and supernatural rescues.

"They put him in the ground," says Sophie, after a few moments' wrinkle-browed thought.

Sugar reads on. Fairy stories are a novelty for her; Mrs Castaway didn't approve of them, because they encourage the belief that everything turns out exactly as it should, whereas "You'll find out soon enough, child, that nothing ever does." Mrs Castaway preferred to nurture the infant Sugar on folk tales (the nastier the better), selected episodes from the Old Testament (sugar can still list each of Job's trials), and true-life accounts: indeed, anything with a full complement of undeserved suffering and apparently motiveless deeds.

At midday, when Rose brings Sugar and Sophie their share of luncheon, she brings a message too. Mrs Rackham is entertaining visitors downstairs, and wishes to show them-the visitors, that is-the house. Mr Rackham therefore requests that Mrs Rackham be left wholly undisturbed in this objective.

Wholly undisturbed, you understand. "And if you fancy, there's more galantine, and I'll bring up the cake shortly," adds Rose, to sweeten the bitterness of their imprisonment.

Silence settles over governess and pupil when the servant has left. True to the pattern of this November, the morning sun fades away and the room dims, its windows rattling in the wind. The slap of raindrops sharpens into the clatter of hailstones.

"Well, these visitors are much the poorer," says Sugar at last, "for not seeing your lovely nursery-your lovely school-room, I should say. It's the cheerfulest room in the house, and your toys are very interesting."

There is another pause.

"Mother hasn't seen me since my birthday," says Sophie, staring at the pistachio kernel on her plate, wondering if, under this strange new post-Beatrice regime, she may go unpunished for refusing to eat this bit of her galantine.

"When was your birthday?"' enquires the governess.

"I don't know, Miss. Nurse knows."

"I'll ask your father."

Sophie looks at Sugar wide-eyed, impressed at the easy familiarity the governess seems to have with the exalted and shadowy figures of the adult world.

Sugar picks up the Mangnall and opens it at random. "… commonly called the "Complutensian Polyglot", from Complutum, the Latin name for Alcala," is what her eyes light upon. Instantly she resolves to tell Sophie a story from The Bible instead, embellished with her own character glosses and evocations of Galilean fashions of dress, followed perhaps by a little more Aesop.

"What happened on your birthday?"' she asks Sophie, in an even tone, as she leafs backwards and forwards through the Bible. "Did you do something wicked?"'

Sophie gives the question some thought, her frowning, slightly pudgy face flickering with silvery-grey light from the hail-spattered window. "I don't 'member, Miss," she says at last.

Sugar hums amiably, as if to say, "No matter". She's decided against Job, considers doing Esther until she sees how thick it is with murder and the purification of virgins, and then gets ensnarled in Nehemiah, whose endless lists are even more boring than Agnes Unwin's. She looks around the room for inspiration, and spots the painted wooden animals jostled in a corner.

"The story," she declares, closing the book, "of Noah's flood."

That evening, after Sophie has been laid to rest, Sugar returns to her own room for the long night.

William is in the house, she knows, and Agnes has gone out visiting: ideal conditions for him to pay a visit on his paramour. Secreted here in a dingy, box-like little chamber with ugly wallpaper disfigured by pictureless picture-hooks, she disports herself on the bed, her breasts perfumed under the quilted fabric of her burgundy dressing-gown.

An hour passes, boredom begins to set in, and Sugar pulls Agnes's diaries out from under the bed. The rain batters against the window.

Perhaps it's just as well that Shears has not yet climbed up and broken the paint-seal, for that wind-swept water looks as though it would love to get in.

Back in Abbots Langley, in a revamped cloister stocked to the ceiling with adolescent girls, Agnes Unwin's education goes on and on. As far as Sugar can tell (reading between the lines of Agnes's breathless but soporific account) hard study is no longer much on the menu, supplanted by an increasing stress on ladylike "accomplishments". On such subjects as Geography or English Agnes has nothing to say, but she records her elation at receiving praise for her needlepoint, or the misery of going for walks in the school grounds accompanied by a teacher of German or French and having to do conjugations on demand. As the years pass, Agnes never achieves more than mediocrity in any academic pursuit, earning many a P (for "Pretty well") in her copybook, but Music and Dancing are an almost effortless joy to her. One of the few vividly evoked pictures in Agnes's narrative is of being seated at one of the music room's pianos with her best friend Laetitia two octaves to the left of her, playing at the tap of a baton the same tune that four other girls at two other pianos are playing likewise. Her poor spelling never attracts anything harsher than a tut-tut of reproof, while in Arithmetic, she's often spared penalty for mistakes, as long as the calligraphy of the sums is perfectly formed.

Although Agnes misses not a single day of her journal, Sugar is unable to show the same diligence, and skips pages here and there.

Where's her reward for risking being caught red-handed -grubby-handed-by William, should he burst in and find her reading his wife's stolen diaries? And dear God, how much of this school-room froth can she swallow? Where is the real Agnes in all this? Where is the flesh and blood woman who lives farther down the landing, that strange and troubled creature who is William's wife and Sophie's mother? The Agnes in these diaries is a mere fairytale contrivance, as far-fetched as Snow White.

A knock at her door makes her jerk violently, sending the diary flying off her lap.

In a couple of frenzied seconds she's retrieved it and shoved it under her bed, wiped her hands on the rug, and licked her lips three times to give them a glisten.

"Yes?"' she says.

Her door swings open, and there stands

William, fully dressed, immaculately groomed, much as a business associate might expect to see him standing in the doorway of an office. On his face, nothing readable.

"Come in, sir," she bids him, doing her best to modulate her tone half-way between solemn deference and seductive purr.

He walks inside, and shuts the door behind him.

"I've been fearsomely busy," he says.

"Christmas is almost upon us."

The absurdity of this statement, combined with her own tightly-screwed nerves, brings her to the edge of hilarity.

"I'm at your service…" she says, squeezing one sharp-nailed fist behind her back, using the pain to remind her that whatever she may be about to do with William-discuss the finer points of Rackham merchandising, pull him to her breast-it won't be improved by shrieks of hysterical laughter.

"I think I have it under control," he says.

"The orders for bottled perfumes are even worse than I feared, but the toiletries are thriving."

Sugar squeezes her fist so hard that her vision blurs with tears.

"How are you getting on?"' William enquires, his tone simultaneously breezy and glum. "Tell the truth, now: you rue the day you came, I shouldn't wonder."

"Not at all," she protests, blinking.

"Sophie is a well-behaved little thing, and a willing pupil."

His face darkens subtly; this is not a topic he relishes.

"You have a weary look-especially under your eyes," he says.

With effort, she shows him a fresher and livelier face, but it's not necessary: he wasn't complaining, only expressing concern. And what a relief, that he remembers what her eyes ought to look like!

"Shall I hire a nursery-maid for you?"' he offers. His voice is a queer mixture, as subtle a blend of elements as any perfume: there's disappointment, as though he too had cherished a dream that as soon as she crossed the threshold into his house they'd embark on a life of uninterrupted carnal bliss; there's sheepishness, as if he knows he's to blame for what's happened instead; there's contrition, for any nuisance she's endured in his daughter's company; there's dread, at the prospect of finding an additional servant when he has a thousand other things to do; there's pity, at the sight of her tying in Beatrice Cleave's utilitarian little bed; there's affection, as if he wishes he could restore the sparkle to her eyes with a single caress; and, yes, there's desire. A sentence of eight words only, and it's suffused with all these nuances, evaporating like the notes that make up the octave of a well-crafted bouquet.

"No, thank you," says Sugar. "There's no need, really there isn't. I haven't slept very well yet, it's true, but I'm sure it's the new bed. I do miss our old one in Priory Close: it was such a pleasure to sleep in, wasn't it?"'

He inclines his head-not quite a nod; a gesture of concession. It's all Sugar requires; at once, she steps forward and embraces him, clasping her palms well down his back, lifting one thigh to nuzzle between his trouser-legs.

"I've missed you, too," she says, laying her cheek against his shoulder. The odour of masculine desire is faintly perceptible, escaping from the almost hermetic seal of his shirtcollar. His prick hardens against the soft pressure of her thigh.

"There's nothing I can do," he says hoarsely, "about the dimensions of this room."

"Of course not, my love, I wasn't complaining," she coos in his ear. "I'll get used to this little bed soon enough. It wants only to be…" (she shifts one hand to his groin, and traces the shape of his erection with her fingertips) "christened."

She walks him a few steps backward, sits down on the edge of the bed, and frees his cock from his trousers, taking it immediately in her mouth. For a few moments he stands silent as a statue, then begins to groan and-thank God-stroke her hair with clumsy but unmistakable tenderness. I have him still, she thinks.

When he begins to thrust, she lies back on the mattress and pulls her dressing-gown up over her bosom. With a muffled cry he falls inside her; and, contrary to her fears, her cunt gives him a welcome more lubricious than she could have organised with half an hour of preparation.

"Yes, my love, spend, spend," she whispers, as he pushes to a climax. She wraps her legs and arms tightly around him, peppering his neck with kisses, some of which are artfully calculated, some heartfelt, but how many of each, she has no way of knowing. "You are my man," she assures him, as the cleft between her buttocks runs warm and wet.

A few minutes later, lacking a source of washing water, she is cleaning his groin with a handtowel dipped in a drinking glass.

"Remember the first time?"' she murmurs mischievously.

He tries to grin, but it turns into a mortified wince. "What a disgrace I was then," he sighs, staring up at the ceiling.

"Oh, I knew you were a great man in the making," she soothes him, as the rain finally stops and silence settles around the Rackham house.

Dried and dressed, William lies in her arms, though there's barely room for the two of them on the bed.

"This business of mine…" he muses regretfully. "Rackham Perfumeries, I mean… I lose hours, days, entire weeks of my life to it."

"It's your father's fault," says Sugar, echoing an old complaint of his as though it were an impetuous outburst of her own. "If he'd built the company on more well-reasoned foundations…"

"Exactly so. But it means I spend an eternity unearthing his mistakes and shoring up his … his…"

"Flimsy architecture."

"Exactly. And all the while neglecting" (he reaches up to stroke her face, and one of his legs falls off the side of the narrow mattress) "the pleasures of life."

"That's why I'm here," she says.

"To remind you." She wonders if this is the moment to ask him if she's permitted to knock at the door of.his room, rather than waiting for him to knock at hers, but the crunching of gravel on the carriage-way outside, under wheels and hoofs, alerts them both to Agnes's return.

"She's better lately, isn't she?"' asks Sugar, as William rises to his feet.

"Lord knows. Yes, conceivably." He smooths his hair back over his scalp, preparing to leave.

"When is Sophie's birthday?"' asks Sugar, loath to let him go without learning one small thing about this strange household she has come to, this warren of secret rooms whose inhabitants so rarely seem to recognise each other's existence.

He frowns, consulting a mental inventory already over-full with burdensome particulars.

"August the… August the something."

"Oh, that's not so bad, then," says

Sugar.

"How so?"'

"Sophie told me Agnes has kept away from her since her birthday."

William regards her with the oddest look, a mixture of annoyance, shame, and a sadness deeper than she'd ever imagined could reside in him.

"By "birthday"," he says, "Sophie means the day of her birth. The day she was born." He opens Sugar's door, impatient lest his wife should, on this night of all nights, be quicker than usual in dismounting from the carriage. "In this house," he sums up wearily, "Agnes is childless."

And with that, he steps out onto the landing, makes a stern hand gesture as if to say "Stay!" and shuts her in.

Many hours later, when Sugar has been lying awake, in the dark, for as long as she can bear, and the Rackham house has grown so still she's sure everyone in it is shut into one room or other, she gets up out of bed and lights a candle.

Barefoot, carrying the waxy flame in her hand, she pads out onto the landing. So tiny she feels, tiptoeing through the gloom of this grand and cryptic residence, but her shadow, as she passes the doors forbidden to her, is huge.

Silent as a wolf or a fairytale ghost, she slips into Sophie's bedroom, and creeps up to the little girl's bedside. William's daughter sleeps deeply, her eyelids quivering infinitesimally with the strain of keeping those enormous Agnes eyes veiled with skin. She breathes through her mouth, occasionally moving her lips as if responding to a dreamed or remembered stimulus.

"Wake up, Sophie," whispers Sugar.

"Wake up."

Sophie's eyes flutter open; her china-blue irises revolve in delirium, like those of a baby doped into a coma by Godfrey's Cordial or Street's Infant Quietness or some other brand of laudanum. Sugar pulls the chamber-pot out from under the bed.

"Jump out for a minute," says Sugar, sliding her hand down the warm, dry back of Sophie's night-dress and pulling her heavy little body upright. "Just for a minute."

Sophie struggles to obey, inept, her eyes wild with confusion at the extremity of the darkness.

Sugar takes hold of the smooth infant hands inside her own cracked and peeling palms, and lifts them into space. "Trust me," she whispers.