The Crimson petal and the white

TWENTY-FIVE

"But we've discussed everyone except you, William," says Lady Bridgelow, as they stroll side by side on the glistening footpath.

"Your life is becoming shrouded in mystery, and I am so curious!"

William chuckles, momentarily relishing his status as enigma. But he wouldn't wish to keep Constance (as Lady Bridgelow insists he should refer to her) uninformed for long. She is, after all, his best friend-well, certainly of those with whom he can nowadays be seen in public.

The morning drizzle has cleared up, making way for a Sunday afternoon of exceptional mildness.

Pale though the sun is, there's real warmth in it, as it lights up the tiles of Notting Hill's rooftops and brings a corona of brilliance to the church spire. William is glad he came out today; with weather like this, his resolution to be seen in church more regularly promises to be quite painless.

"Did you find a governess for your daughter?"' enquires Lady Bridgelow.

"Yes, yes, I did, thank you."

"Because I know of an excellent girl available very soon-frightfully clever, placid as a lamb, father just gone bankrupt…"

"No, no, I'm sure the one I've employed is perfectly adequate."

Lady Bridgelow frowns slightly at this reminder of yet another unknown quantity in her friend's life.

"She's not a Rescue Society girl, is she?"'

William feels his cheeks and neck growing pink, and is grateful for his ever-more-plenteous beard and high collar.

"Certainly not: what makes you think that?"'

Lady Bridgelow casts a backwards glance over the ermine stole wrapped around her neck, as though absolute privacy is required for what she's about to divulge.

"Well, you've heard that Mrs Fox has returned to her old… profession, haven't you? And working harder than ever, I'm told.

Striving to convince ladies with any sort of servant problem at all, that one of these… reformed specimens is the solution. She knows better than to approach me; I had a Rescue Society girl in my kitchen, and was obliged to dismiss her after four months."

"Oh?"' Stability has finally returned to William's own household, at considerable cost in money and brain-racking; he hates the thought of anything going awry. "What went wrong?"' "Nothing I can mention in polite company," smirks Lady Bridgelow, miming, with a subtle sweep of her kid-gloved fingers through the air in front of her silky abdomen, a swollen arc.

"Am I polite company, Constance?"'

She smiles. "You are… sui generis, William. I feel I could discuss any subject with you."

"Oh, I hope you could."

Emboldened, she presses on: "Such a shame you couldn't attend the launch of Philip and Edward's new book. Did you know I was one of only five ladies there? Or four ladies, actually: Mrs Burnand was fetched out of the hall by her furious husband, in front of everyone!"

William gives her a grin, but is a little pained, wondering if he was justified in taking umbrage at the heavy-handed way his old friends scrawled the injunction "sans femme" on his own invitation.

"Well, Bodley and Ashwell's book is close to the bone," he sighs. "And I'm not wholly convinced by their statistics. If there were as many prostitutes in London as they claim, we'd be tripping over them…"

"Yes, yes, but let me tell you: Mrs Fox was there at the launch. She stood up from the crowd and commended the authors for helping to bring the problem to wider public notice-then scolded them for insufficient seriousness! "There is nothing to laugh about when a woman falls!" she said-and of course, everyone roared."

"Poor Mrs Fox. "Forgive her, Lord, for she knows not what she says"…"

Lady Bridgelow chuckles, a surprisingly earthy sound. "Ah, but one mustn't be unkind about other people's indiscretions, must one?"' she says. "I was speaking with Philip and Edward afterwards, and they mentioned how very concerned they are about your poor Agnes…"

William stiffens as he walks.

"Their concern's appreciated," he says,

"but happily unnecessary. Agnes has quite recovered."

"Not in church with us this morning, though…?"' murmurs Lady Bridgelow.

"No."

"But possibly attending Catholic Mass in Cricklewood?"' "Possibly." William knows very well she is. His wife's belief that she and her coachman share "a little secret" is a pitiable delusion. "She'll grow out of it, I trust."

Lady Bridgelow heaves a deep, elegiac sigh, and her eyes mist over.

"Aahh, trust," she echoes sadly, hinting at the slings and arrows she's had to endure in her life so far. Melancholy suits her face, lending her that faraway look that's come into vogue lately. However, she can't be glum for long, and bounces back with:

"Do you have anything extra-ordinary planned for Christmas?"' "Just the usual, I'm afraid," says William. "I really am a very boring fellow nowadays. I sleep, I eat breakfast, I conquer another part of the British Empire with my manufactures, I have dinner, and I go to bed.

Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone besides my banker should take the slightest bit of interest in me…"

"Oh but no, you must make room for me, too, William," she demurs. "Every great businessman needs a female friend. Especially if what he manufactures is of such value to females, hmm?"'

William struggles to keep his face composed, almost irresistibly tempted to beam. It hadn't occurred to him that Lady Bridgelow would ever use Rackham's. The new catalogues and placards must be having the desired effect…

"As for me," says Lady Bridgelow,

"I've achieved something of a coup for my next party, haven't I? Both Lord and Lady Unwin, together in the same country, at the same dinner table!"

"Yes, how did you manage it?"'

"If truth be told, sheer swiftness! I popped the question before anyone else had recovered from the surprise of Lord Unwin's return. I certainly can't claim my charms brought him back here; I think his wife decided they should celebrate Christmas in England en famille, and ordered him to put in an appearance -or else."

William has trouble imagining Lord Unwin being coerced in this way. "I'd have thought it would take more than that."

"Ah well, you must remember his current wife is not the submissive creature Agnes's mother was. And, of course, he has children of his own now. That is, of his own blood."

William responds with an empty hum; he's never met the current Lady Unwin. Not that the Rackhams haven't been invited to her house several times, but these invitations, in Agnes's view, might as well have issued from Beelzebub, and she invariably responded with a Regret Not Able To Attend. ("I'm sure she means you well, dear,"

William would counsel her, but Agnes has never forgiven her step-father's remarriage. The least he could have done was mourn, for the rest of his life, the saintly Violet Pigott, who "sacrificed her soul" to please him! Instead, the hoary beast rushed to marry this… this thing.) "I must admit," says William,

"I'm apprehensive about meeting the old man after all this time. When I petitioned him for Agnes's hand, I may've led him to expect that she'd be kept in grander style than… Well, you know the story of my fortunes, Constance. I always wondered if he thought badly of me…"

"Oh no, he's an old pussycat,"

Lady Bridgelow affirms, as they approach the corner of Chepstow Villas. "He and my poor Albert were friends, you know, and he did his best to dissuade Albert from all those imprudent … Well, you know the story of my fortunes, too. And when Albert died, Lord Unwin wrote me the sweetest letter. Not an unkind word in it.

And Albert did some foolish, foolish things, I assure you! He wasn't clever like you …"

Lady Bridgelow suddenly hushes in mid-flow: she and William no longer have the footpath to themselves. A tall scrawny woman in a plain black dress, with gangly arms and red hair that badly needs cutting, is advancing with a roly-poly child at her side.

"How do you do, Miss Sugar," William hails her, cool but cordial.

"Very well, thank you, sir," replies the scrawny woman. Her lips, deplorably, are flaked with dead skin, although she has comely enough eyes. Her demeanour is as dejected as one expects from a governess.

"A rather brighter day today," remarks

William, "than some we've had lately."

"Yes," agrees the governess, "to be sure." She reaches awkwardly for her pupil's hand, and grasps it. "I … I took Sophie out of doors because she's so very pale…"

"A lady can never be too pale nowadays," says Lady Bridgelow. "Rosy complexions seem to be a thing of the past, don't they, William?"'

Neither she nor William lower their attention to Sophie's level. Their gazes and their words pass through the air in a straight line to Miss Sugar, well above the child's head.

"I am finding Sophie," says the governess, transparently at a loss for any sophisticated conversation, "a most obedient and … um… hardworking little girl."

"How very agreeable for you," says Lady

Bridgelow.

"Very good, Sophie," condescends William, meeting his daughter's wide blue eyes for the merest instant before moving on.

Back at the house, in the suffocating warmth of the nursery, Sugar can barely control herself. Her body wants to tremble-to shake-with indignation, on her own behalf, and Sophie's. All her sinews and nerves are tingling with the undischarged desire to propel her body through the air, a whirling fury of claws and feet to tear that smug little bitch apart.

"Who was that lady, Sophie?"' she asks evenly, after a very deep breath.

Sophie is playing with the wooden animals of her toy Noah's ark-still her favourite Sunday activity, despite the permission Miss Sugar has given her to do whatever she pleases on the Sabbath. She shows no sign of anguish at how shabbily she's just been treated by her father and his companion; her cheeks are a little flushed, true, but the unaccustomed exercise and the blazing fire accounts for that.

"I don't know, Miss."

"How often does she visit your father?"'

Sophie looks up from shepherding the giraffes, her brow knotting in bafflement. A historical question about the succession of Mesopotamian monarchs would be an easier challenge than this.

"But you've seen her before?"' pursues

Sugar, her voice tightening.

Sophie ponders for a while. "Sometimes I hear the servants 'nounce her," she says.

Sugar lapses into a sulk. For the first time in months, she itches for pen and paper, to write a fiction of revenge like the ones in her novel.

Only this time, the victim wouldn't be a man, but a horrid little pug-dog of a woman, bound with twine at her wrists and ankles.

"Have pity! Have pity!" she yammered, as she felt a sharp object probing the tightly-clenched hole between her buttocks-a cold, leathery protuberance bristling with hair.

"What's that? What's that?" she cried in terror.

"Don't you recognise it? It's the snout of a stoat," replied Sugar, twisting the sharp head of the ermine stole in her fist. "The poor creature is sure to be happier up your arse than around your neck…"

"Did you hear," pipes up Sophie,

"what my father said, Miss? He said I am a good girl."

Sugar is jolted from her fantasy of revenge, and is confused to see a happy smile on the child's face, a sheen of pride in her eyes.

"He didn't say that," she snaps, before she can stop herself.

Sophie's look of contentment evaporates, and her brow creases-a change that serves only to emphasise her resemblance to William. She turns her head away, taking refuge in the less dangerous world of her playthings. Held erect in her tiny hand, Noah begins to ascend the gangplank of the Ark with slow, dignified hops.

"But my dear Rackham, if you'll forgive me saying so: you are still evading the subject."

"Am I?"' says William. It's Monday morning, and he's entertaining a guest in his smoking-room. Cigars are already lit, and William uncorks the port-bottle with a thwipp. "Perhaps we aren't agreed," he says, "on what the subject is. I am asking you for advice on how to hasten my wife's progress back to full health, here in her own home. You seem intent on cataloguing the merits and demerits of mad-houses from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth."

Doctor Curlew grunts. His effusion of information was only natural, provoked by Rackham's pretence to know something about lunatic asylums that he doesn't. In fact, Doctor Curlew has probably spent more time in mad-houses than any sane man; as a young physician, in the years before he decided that surgery was not his forte, he performed many operNs on asylum inmates, and learned a great deal besides scalpelling techniques. He knows the good asylums from the bad; knows which of them are nothing but glorified prisons, or boarding-houses with medical pretensions-or, at the other end of the scale, first-class hospitals devoted to the increase of knowledge and the full recovery of the patient.

He has observed many times that hysterical ladies, so degraded as to be no use to man or beast, may effect miraculous recoveries once removed from the circle of indulgent fuss-pots on whom their illness feeds.

Knowing all this, Doctor Curlew can predict with authority that, in her own house, Agnes Rackham is doomed. What hope for recovery has she, when she not only has a permissive husband, but is pampered by obsequious and gullible servants?

"There's no virtue, Rackham," he says, "in keeping a sick person at home.

No one blames a man for sending his wife to a hospital when she breaks a leg or gets smallpox. This is no different, I tell you."

William sips unhappily at his port.

"I do wonder," he muses, "if there isn't something physically the matter with her …"

"I've investigated her inside out. There's nothing wrong that won't correct itself if she's properly handled."

"Sometimes, when she's behaving very badly, just before she collapses, I could swear one eye is bigger than the other…"

"Humphh. I imagine she's having trouble looking you straight in the face. I'm sure any woman would, during such a performance."

Abruptly, the fuggy silence of the smoking-room is penetrated by the pure tones of a piano, fingered most fetchingly in the parlour nearby. After a fluent prelude, Agnes begins to sing, serene and joyful as a bird. The look of wistful sentimentality that softens William's features makes Curlew want to groan with frustration.

"Rackham," he argues, "you really must rid yourself of this fond notion that your wife is a well person who suffers occasional bouts of illness, rather than a sick person who occasionally has a good day. Tell me: if one of the machines that bottle your perfumes was running amok, breaking all the glass and spraying scent everywhere, and it was doing it time after time, and then, just as you summoned a fellow to repair it, it seemed to cure itself, would you assume the fault was gone, and no repairs were necessary?"' "Human beings are not machines."

An odd philosophy, Curlew refrains from remarking, for an industrialist.

"Well," he sighs, to the accompaniment of Agnes's angelic trills, "if you won't consider an asylum, there are some immediate measures I urge you to take. First, stop her going to Mass. Being a Catholic is no crime, but your wife was an Anglican when she married you and an Anglican she should still be. If her faith in the Roman Church were anything more than a delusion, she'd be trying to convert you, not pleasuring herself with secret excursions to Cricklewood.

Secondly, it's high time Agnes admitted she's a mother. This absurd pantomime of avoidance has gone on far too long. If you won't consider what's best for Agnes, think of your daughter, now that she's old enough to ask questions.

Being deprived of a mother's love can't be doing her any good, don't you see?"'

William nods slowly. Unpalatable though the truth may be, there's no gainsaying the superior wisdom of a man who knows his profession. A mother cannot deny her offspring forever without some harm coming of it: that's a fact.

"It seems like only a few months ago she was a babe in arms," he mutters in Agnes's defence, calling to mind his occasional glimpses of the infant Sophie swaddled in Beatrice's embrace. But the child has grown like a weed, and he has to concede that yesterday, when he met Sugar and Sophie in the street, he was taken aback by his daughter's look of watchful intelligence.

"I don't wish to distress Agnes unnecessarily," he says.

"With what's at stake here,

Rackham," pronounces the doctor, "a modicum of your wife's distress may prove a cheap price to pay."

William grimaces assent; the negotiations are concluded, both parties having conceded some ground while appearing to stand firm. Breathing easier, the host offers his guest more port.

"Now tell me, Doctor," he says.

"How is your daughter?"'

Emmeline Fox stoops to pick up the cat turds at the top of the stairs with her fingers. The droppings are quite dry, after all, and she can wash her hands as soon as she's disposed of Puss's mess. Honestly, the fuss some people make about dirt. They should be obliged to live for a day in a Shoreditch slum, where slime drips down the walls and children are disfigured by rat bites…!

Emmeline squats to her task, her loose hair falling over her face-the more shit she picks up, the more she finds. Puss really has been very naughty. If he doesn't mend his ways soon, she'll have to banish him from her bed and make him sleep out of doors.

"Do you hear that, Puss?"' she says, as if the casual inspection of her thoughts is another of his bad habits. He doesn't deign to reply.

She tosses the turds into a cardboard box that used to contain stationery, and now contains about a fortnight's worth of cat droppings. The whole caboodle will be tipped into a hole in the garden, as soon as she buys a spade, which she certainly will do this morning, and never mind the stares of the ironmonger.

She descends the dusty stairs in her bare feet; indeed, she's altogether naked. The convention of dressing for bed has ceased to make sense to her and, despite the approach of winter, she doesn't miss her night-gowns at all. She scarcely feels the cold; her extremities can be bone white and she'll be unaware of suffering. What do the fortunate know of cold, anyway, snug in their well-heated houses?

Not that her own house is terribly well-heated just now. She's forgotten to bring the coal in, and all the hearths need cleaning. It really is high time she replaced Sarah; three months without a servant is taking its toll. There are plenty of good girls to be had through the Rescue Society; she need only tidy the place a little so as not to make too bad an impression.

Emmeline washes with a flannel (she had a proper bath only yesterday) and dons her work clothes-that is, the smart but practical dress she wears when visiting the poor. Her stomach growls, reminding her not to leave the house without eating, as she too often does.

In the kitchen, she squeezes between Henry's stove and her own, to fetch the bread from the cupboard overhead. The loaf still has the knife stuck in it, which is just as well, since she's mislaid a lot of cutlery lately. There's no butter, but there's a bounteous supply of tinned meat and fish, a wonderful boon for the independent woman. She considers the Belgravian Ox Tongues, but plumps for salmon. Fish oil, she's read, is good for the brain.

Henry's cat comes padding in, making ingratiating noises and butting his head against Emmeline's skirt.

"Wait, wait," she scolds him, as she rummages for a clean cup to make herself a hot drink. Then she remembers she has no milk, and without milk she dislikes both tea and cocoa.

No matter; soon enough, Mrs Nash will pour her a nice cup of tea at the meeting hall.

"Here, you shameless thing," she says, emptying the remainder of the salmon directly onto the kitchen floor. "Always taking advantage of me… Why don't you go out and get some honest work, hmm? I ought to call you Spoony-Puss."

Henry's cat cocks its head. "Miaow?"'

Emmeline must hurry now; she slept later than she thought, having stayed awake most of the night writing dozens of replicas of the same letter urging the governors of local schools not to forsake the children hiding in the rookeries. If she doesn't leave soon, she'll miss the tea and biscuits.

Where is her bonnet? Oh yes: it's hung on Henry's bed-frame, which still stands upright against the wall of the sitting-room. (she did find a home for the mattress, courtesy of Mrs Emerson's recent appeal for bedding, but the iron frame was judged too heavy.) With a couple of hat-pins, and a ribbon tied under her chin, Emmeline transforms herself into Mrs Fox, ready for the fray.

Just as she's about to open her front door, a letter whispers through the slit, and falls at her feet. She stuffs it into her purse, and dashes.

Comfortably seated at the Rescue Society's meeting hall, cup of tea at her elbow, Mrs Fox opens the envelope. A single sheet, obsessively folded into a tiny square, falls onto the table. Mrs Fox smooths it out before her, and squints at its Lilliputian script.

Time is fast running out, it says. I know that you are a good and kind person, despite your Father's dark Allegiences. (i too had an evil father, so I sympathise) I know that you have already claimed your Second Body. People say that you are not pretty and that your Complexion is bad but they do not look beneath at the beauty of your Soul.

How radiant that Soul must be, knowing its fleshly home is Immortal! As for me, my earth born flesh is showing dreadful signs of decay, and I cannot bear the thought of being trapped in it for much longer. I happen to know that my Second Body is waiting for me at the Convent of Health. Please, please, please divulge to me where the Convent is. I am ready to go, but I fear my Guardian Angel expects me to be patient and wait until the Bitter End. You are my only hope. Please grant me the Secret Knowledge I crave.

In the name of the regard we held in common for Henry, I beseech you, Agnes R.

Mrs Fox folds the letter back into its envelope. All around her, the refreshments are being cleared away and her sisters are putting on their coats and gloves. Mrs Rackham's plea will have to wait, in favour of lost souls nearer to hand.

That evening, resting on her bed with Puss purring against her thigh, Mrs Fox re-reads the letter.

She's in irritable spirits; her afternoon with the Rescue Society has not been a success.

The streets of Shoreditch are rich veins of Godless destitution, true, but devilishly difficult to penetrate: the residents are hostile, and most doors slam shut at the approach of a Rescuer. There was one whore who consented to speak to Mrs Fox, but she was in a state of inebriation so severe that serious discussion was impossible.

"You'd make a good whore yerself!" the giggling trollop assured her. "I c'n tell! You ain't wearin' a corset, are yer?

I c'n see yer teats!"

Mrs Fox tried to explain that she'd been very ill, and had found it difficult to breathe when constrained by a stiff carapace; and that, in any case, modesty has nothing to do with corsets, for decent women existed long before such garments were invented… But the whore was having none of it.

"You ain't 'ad children, by the looks of yer," she chortled, tickling Emmeline under the swell of her bosom. "Men like that."

Now Emmeline slumps on her bed, footsore, grimy, with particles of soot gritting on her tongue, and (bother!) still no milk for cocoa. And if that weren't bad enough, here, again, is this letter in which Agnes Rackham begs her for the secret of physical immortality.

How to reply?

With the truth, of course, however unwanted it may be. Emmeline fetches pen and paper, and scrawls the following:

Dear Mrs Rackham,

I am sorry to tell you that you are mistaken. None of us can hope to be immortal unless it be in the spirit through Christ (see Romans 67-10; 1 Corinthians 1522 and most particularly 1550). If I can help you in any other way, I will do it gladly.

Yours sincerely,

E. Fox She folds this note into an envelope, seals it and, almost in the same motion, tears it to shreds.

The vision of Mrs Rackham receiving the letter in an ecstasy of anticipation, only to find a rebuttal and a few Scriptural references, is too pitiful.

Perhaps sending a book would be more use? It would obviate the need for a personal rebuff, and might be more effective in dispelling the miasma of Mrs Rackham's delusion. Emmeline leaps off the bed and begins to fossick in the dusty, furry piles of books that litter her house, searching for The Ruined Temple, an autobiography written by an evangelist with a wasting disease, which she lent to Henry when he was making such a fuss about her own decline. It was a slim volume, with a distinctive spine, but she cannot, for the life of her, find it, and the dust she raises provokes her to a frenzy of sneezing.

But what's this? A thick pamphlet she can't recall ever seeing before. On its reverse, commendations from such authorities as "A. E., of Bloomsbury": For lovers of pleasure, this is nothing less than the bible! On the front, in embossed black print: More Sprees in London-Hints for Men About Town, with advice for greenhorns. She opens the book, and finds it inscribed on the flyleaf to Henry, from Philip and Edward, with an additional note:

Your future parish? Good luck!

Emmeline winces in pain at Bodley and

Ashwell's cruel prank and, to her own astonishment, hot tears spring to her eyes, falling onto the pamphlet. Through a haze of weeping, she flips through the pages, some of which are dog-eared, presumably to mark particular prostitutes whom Bodley and Ashwell were keen to sample.

Mrs Fox leans her head back, embarrassed at her incontinence of snivelling.

She'll study this horrid little book in detail later; it may, for all the grief it's causing her now, prove to be a blessing in disguise. She must regard it… yes, that's it: she must regard it as an invaluable inventory of the women whom she'll do her utmost to find and rescue. Yes, some good will come of this after all!

"Your cup of tea, Miss."

Sugar jerks awake from troubled dreams, blinking in the half-light. She looks up: a figure she doesn't recognise is looming over her bed, holding a tea-cup in one hand, and a burning lamp in the other, for the day has barely begun. As she hauls herself up onto her elbows, disentangling her arms from the bed-clothes, she senses a weight on her legs, and finds an open diary nestled face-down on her left thigh.

Damn! She can only hope the servant takes it to be a schoolbook, or a diary of Miss Sugar's own, rather than stolen property.

"Uh… thank you… Rose," she croaks, her throat parched, her vision blurred.

"What… uh…"

"Half past six, Miss, on a fine

Tuesday morning."

"Fine?"' Sugar cranes her head towards the dark window in which Rose's lamp is reflected in a halo of frost.

"I mean only to say, Miss, that it's stopped snowing."

"Ah, yes…" Sugar rubs her eyes.

"I'm sure I'd sleep all day if it weren't for you." Instantly she regrets this limp gesture of ingratiation, which only makes her seem a slattern. Keep your mouth shut until you've woken up, she cautions herself.

When Rose and her lamp have made their exit, the first feeble glimmerings of dawn edge into Sugar's room. If she squints hard, she can discern strange white shapes suspended outside her window, like ghosts hovering absolutely immobile, twenty feet above the ground. A rustling gust of wind, and the ghosts begin to disintegrate at the edges, their white extremities falling out of sight. Snow in the trees, powdery and evanescent.

Shivering, Sugar takes a swig of tea from the absurdly dainty cup. How strange she still finds it, this ritual of being served tea at the crack of dawn by a servant, instead of waking at ten or eleven with the sun beaming on her face. In an instant, she's transported back in time-not to Priory Close, but farther still-to the top floor of Mrs Castaway's, with the pigeons cooing in the rafters, the sun mercilessly golden, and little Christopher knocking for the dirty linen.

You should have taken Christopher with you, a reproachful voice hisses in her sluggish brain. Mrs Castaway's is no place for a child.

She bites her biscuit, spilling a flurry of crumbs on the breast of her night-gown. He's a boy child, she tells herself. He'll grow into a man like all the rest of them. And the world is made for men.

She drains her tea, a mere swallow's worth, barely enough to wet her dry tongue. Why is she so tired? What happened yesterday? The last thing she can remember, before falling into a long, confused dream in which a woman shrieked and wailed in a howling wind, is Agnes Unwin's announcement that she's engaged to marry William Rackham.

The diary has fallen shut in Sugar's lap.

She opens it again, thumbs its soil-stained pages, finds the part where she lost consciousness.

I am Engaged to Marry a man, writes

Agnes, and I scarcely know Who he is.

How terrifying! Of course I am awfully well aqcuainted with him-so well that I could write a book of all the clever things he says.

But Who is he really, this William Rackham, and what does he want of me that he doesnt have already? O, I pray I dont bore him! He smiles and calls me his odd little sprite-but am I singular enough for a man of his disposition?

When I think of marrying, it is like thinking of diving into dark waters. But do dark waters become any clearer if one stares into them for years and years before diving? (oh dear: perhaps I oughtnt to have used this comparison, since I am not a swimmer!) But I mstnt fret. All things are possible for two persons in love. And it will be unutterably sweet not to be Agnes Unwin anymore! I can hardly wait!!!

"My Mama didn't go to bed at all," complains Sophie, befuddled and whimpery, as Sugar helps her into her clothes. "She was outside in the garden, shouting, all night, Miss."

"Perhaps you dreamed it, Sophie," suggests Sugar uneasily. The sheer effort of facing the day, of getting dressed and groomed by seven o'clock so that she can help Sophie do the same, has pushed her nightmare into the past; the tormented wailing has been muffled to a murmur. Now, when she tries to recall it, the woman's voice is no longer solitary, but accompanied by others, male and female. Oh yes, and there's a vague impression of a ruckus on the stairs.

"Nurse says that weeping and making a fuss fools no one," Sophie remarks out of the blue, pouting like an imbecile as Sugar brushes her hair, teetering in her tight little shoes each time the comb snags her scalp. She's not quite awake yet, that's plain.

"We all must do our best, Sophie," says Sugar, "to be brave."

At half past nine, shortly after the day's lessons have begun, the lonely privacy of the school-room is interrupted by a knock on the door. Normally, once the breakfast dishes have been removed, no one disturbs them until lunch, but here is Letty appearing in the doorway, empty-handed and solemn.

"Mr Rackham would like to see you, Miss

Sugar," she says.

"See… me?"' Sugar blinks uncomprehendingly.

"In his study, Miss." Letty's face is benign, but not very rewarding to read; if there are any woman-to-woman confidences written on it, they're written too faintly for Sugar to decipher.

Sophie looks up from her writing-desk, waiting to learn what turn the world will take next.

With a nod and a hand gesture, Sugar signals for work to continue on the naming and drawing of musical instruments, having just convinced Sophie that her sketch of the violin with the droopy neck can stay, rather than be ripped out of her copy-book and portrayed afresh. Sophie bows down to her task again, pressing her ruler onto a half-drawn violoncello as if it's twitching to slither from her grasp.

"I'll be back soon," says Sugar.

But, as she follows Letty out of the room, her confidence in the promise suddenly wavers. He wants me gone, she thinks. He's found someone with French and German, who plays the piano. Then, lurching from unwarranted dread to unwarranted excitement, she thinks: No, he wants to kiss my throat and lift my skirts and fuck me. He's had a cockstand since he woke up this morning, and can contain himself no longer.

The carpets all along the landing are wet under her feet, and smell of soap and wet fabric;

Letty, having discharged her summons, rolls her sleeves up and returns to her bucket and sponge, leaving the governess to face the master alone. The water in Letty's bucket is pink.

Heart beating hard in her breast, Sugar knocks at the door of William's study, his sanctum sanctorum, which, in all the weeks she has been in his house, she has never entered.

"Enter," he calls from within, and she obeys.

Sugar's first thought when she sees him at his desk, clouded in smoke, leaning wearily forward, elbows pushing aside two molehills of correspondence, is that he resembles a man who has spent the night in drunken debauchery. His eyes are red and puffy, his hair is plastered with moisture, his beard and moustache are uncombed.

He rises from his chair to greet her, and she notes dark speckles of water on his waistcoat, spilt from the rude splashing he's given his face.

"William, you look… so terribly tired! Surely you're working too hard!"

He crosses the room-his shoes and trouser-legs are smeared with dirt-and, seizing her shoulders so abruptly it makes her flinch, he pulls her against his chest. Even as she responds to his embrace, wrapping her long thin arms around him and pressing her cheek against his, she's tempted to rebuff him as a good governess should; all sorts of daft remonstrances spring to her mind: Unhand me, sir! Oh!

Mercy! I shall swoon!, and so forth.

"What's wrong, my love?"' she whispers into his hair, hugging him tight, straining to let him feel the sharp edges of her hips through the layers of clothing that rustle between them. "Tell me your cares." Scarcely less hackneyed phrases, she knows, but what else can she say?

All she wants is for this untidy room, with its confusion of papers and tobacco-stained wallpaper and carpets the colour of beef stew, to melt away, and for the two of them to be magically transported back to Priory Close, where soft warm sheets would wrap themselves around their naked bodies and William would gaze at her in wonder and say …

"Ugh, this is a rotten, hopeless business."

She catches her breath as he squeezes her even harder. "The… perfume business?"' she prompts him, knowing full well he means something else.

"Agnes," he groans. "She has me at my wits' end."

The likelihood of William's wits being nearer their end than those of his poor wife seems small, but there's no doubting his distress.

"What has she done?"' "She was out in the snow last night, in her night-gown! Digging up her diaries-or trying to. Now she's convinced they've been eaten by worms. I ordered the cursed things kept safe; no one seems to have any idea where they are."

Sugar makes an inarticulate sound of sympathetic puzzlement.

"And she's wounded herself!" exclaims William, shuddering in Sugar's arms. "It's horrible! She's gashed both her feet with a spade. Never dug a hole in her life, poor baby. And with no shoes on! Ach!" He shudders again, violently, at the thought of those dainty naked feet being penetrated, in one clumsy thrust, by the blunt wedge of metal. Sugar shudders too-the first helpless spasm they've shared that's genuinely mutual.

"How is she? What did you do?"' she cries, and William breaks away from their embrace, covering his face with his hands.

"I fetched Doctor Curlew here, of course. Thank God he didn't refuse… though he'll have his pound of flesh from me for this…

Amazing how a man can be in his overcoat and night-shirt, stitching a screaming woman's flesh, and still look smug! Well he can look smug all he likes; Agnes is staying here!

Am I to condemn my wife to a living Hell because she can't use a spade? I'm not a beast yet!"

"William, you're beside yourself!" Sugar cautions him, though her own voice trembles with disquiet. "You've done all you can for now; once you've slept, you'll be able to think with a clearer head."

He paces away from her, nodding and rubbing his hands.

"Yes, yes," he says, frowning with the effort of banishing illogic from his brain. "I have a hold of myself now." He focuses on her with a strange stare, his eyes agleam. "Can you imagine who could possibly have taken those damn diaries?"' "More-mightn't Sophie's old nurse have taken them with her? Weren't they dug up just before she left?"'

William shakes his head, about to object that Beatrice Cleave regarded Agnes with barely concealed disdain; then it occurs to him that this is precisely why she might have relished the chance to cause trouble.

"I'll write to Mrs Barrett, and get her room searched," he declares.

"No, no, my love," says Sugar, alarmed by how easily her soiled and ill-gotten secrets could, if his suspicion turned to her, be hauled out from under her little bed. "If she did it for mischief, she'll have thrown them in the nearest river. And besides, is a pile of old diaries what Agnes needs just now? Surely she needs rest and tender care?"'

He paces back to his desk, opening and shutting his hands nervously. "Rest and tender care. Yes, damn it. If only she could sleep until her injuries have healed! I'll get something from a doctor-not Curlew, damn him-a pill or a potion… Clara can make sure she's given it religiously, every night … No excuses. No excuses, d'you hear!"

His voice has warped from acquiescence to rage in the course of a few seconds. Sugar rushes to his side and lays her rough palm against his contorted face.

"William, please: your anguish is blinding you to who I am. I'm your Sugar, don't you see? I'm the woman who has listened to your woes, advised you, helped you write letters you dreaded writing… How many times have I proved there's nothing I won't do for you?"' She snatches his slack hand and guides it to her bosom, then down to her belly, a gesture she hopes will rouse his desire, but which he condones with dumb bemusement, as if she's using him to make the sign of the cross.

"William," she pleads. "Remember

Hopsom's? The long nights we spent…?"'

Finally his expression softens. His overheated skull, it seems, is filling with the cool balm of remembered intimacy: the way she helped him sail through a stormy patch in Rackham Perfumeries' growth when bad counsel might have sunk him.

"My angel," he sighs, contrite.

To Sugar's great relief, he leans forward and kisses her full on the mouth; his tongue is dry and tastes of brandy and dyspepsia, but at least he's kissing her.

Taking courage, she strokes his hair, his shoulders, his back, breathing quicker, almost wanting him, wanting him to want her.

"Oh, by the way," he says, breaking free of her again. "I have something to show you." His prick is bulging up through his trousers, but it's not that; no, he isn't quite ready for that. Instead, he rummages in the chaos of papers on his desk and pulls out a folded copy of The Times.

"I don't suppose you've seen this?"' he says, rapidly leafing through it-past the news, past the weddings and engagements, until he's found the page he wants to show her. There, prominently placed in the midst of small advertisements for blood purifiers and homoeopaths, is a large announcement featuring an engraving of William Rackham's face circled by a wreath of holly.

A Merry Christmas Season,

Anticipating A Most

Happy New Year