The Crimson petal and the white

TWENTY-SEVEN

"Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, one and all!"

Thus blusters Henry Calder Rackham upon entering his son's house, as if he were Old Father Christmas himself, or at the very least Charles Dickens bellowing from a rostrum.

"Merry Christmas to you, Father,"

William responds, embarrassed already, not just because of his father's jovial effusion, but also because of the difficulty the maid is having divesting the old man of his coat. Like Lord Unwin, Henry Calder Rackham appears to have made an abrupt transition from portliness to fat, during the same passage of time in which William has transformed himself from an effete good-for-nothing into a captain of industry.

"Ah, that smell," rhapsodises the elder Rackham. "I can tell already this visit will prove my undoing!" And with that, he allows himself to be ushered into his son's parlour, where he receives a warm welcome from the servants.

"Hrrmph! Haven't seen you before!" he says to the new ones, and "Ah!: you're-No, don't tell me!" he says to the old ones, but they take it in good part, and within minutes he's the ring-leader, commandeering the rituals of fun and sentiment. "Where are the crackers? Where are the crackers?"' he demands, rubbing his hands, and lo! the crackers are fetched forth.

The progress of Time, which had rather slowed down since the opening of the gifts this morning, speeds up once more, as William's father devotes himself single-mindedly to the playing of parlour games.

"Splendid! Splendid! Whatever next?"' he cries, as William watches in bemusement, unable to reconcile the festive buffoon with the stubborn old tyrant who made this house such a miserable place for so long.

Odd twinge of embarrassment notwithstanding, William feels quite tolerant of-even grateful for-his father's vulgarity today; it serves to keep the Christmas spirit buoyant whenever this terrible business with Agnes might have dragged it down. Everyone here is acutely aware (well, everyone except the likes of Janey) that the mistress of the house lies senseless upstairs, and that the master is sick at heart. He's done his best not to mope, but every so often the pity of Agnes's plight attacks him with a vengeance, and a pall of silence threatens to descend over the celebrations. You'd think a bevy of women could keep a house humming amiably for a day! But no: a male is needed, and William is tired of being that male.

All right, it's true that the gardener put in an appearance this morning, which lifted William's burden for a while, but a damn short while it was. Ten minutes, and Shears had already fled what he plainly regarded as a rampant superabundance of femaleness, for the safety of his outhouse. Cheesman would've been more use, but he's gone alt-visiting his mother, a likely story.

So, with a parlour full of the fairer sex, all constrained by good manners to carouse as demurely as possible, the coming of Henry Calder Rackham-a roly-poly old man full of good-natured bombast-offers nothing less than William's rescue. Bluster on, old man! This is just what's required, to while away the long hours till dinner.

Mind you, the day has gone very well so far. Rather better, to be honest, than in previous years, when Agnes (beautiful though she invariably looked) was apt to sour the frivolity with damn queer remarks-remarks intended, he could only presume, to lift Christmas up from its nadir of commercialism and restore its proper religious significance.

"Have you ever wondered why we don't celebrate Childermas anymore?"' she enquired one year, her gift from William lying half-unwrapped and forgotten in her lap.

"Childermas, dear?"' "Yes: the day that King Herod slaughtered the Innocents."

This year, thank God, such conversations have not arisen. And, regrettable though the circumstances may be, the absence of Agnes from the festivities has made possible one happy benefit: the presence of her daughter downstairs.

Yes, after years of strictly segregated Christmases, with Sophie being smuggled her presents and lukewarm portions of Christmas dinner in the nursery while the rest of the family fussed around the mistress downstairs, the child finally has her chance. Which is a jolly good thing, William thinks, and not before time! She's a pleasant little creature, with a most winsome smile, and far too big now to be treated like a baby.

Besides, despite his willingness, in years gone by, to play along with Agnes's notion of Christmas as a ritual for grown-ups, he's always secretly thought there's something melancholy about a Christmas tree without a child frolicking in front of it.

Last year, the opening of the presents was blighted by all manner of restraints-odious economies, the dark cloud of Henry Calder Rackham's mistrust of his son, Agnes's haughty contempt for anything that smacked of cheapness or make-do, and the servants' fidgetings of unrest and ingratitude.

This year, the same ceremony, conducted with all the household on their knees in front of the Christmas tree in an ever-burgeoning froth of coloured paper, has proved highly satisfactory. Freed from the shackles of his debt, William decided to be a fountain of generosity. (to the dubious Lady Bridgelow, when she warned him of the perils of spoiling one's servants, he replied: "You have too little faith in human nature, Constance!") Thus, while Lady Bridgelow has no doubt upheld convention and given her female servants a parcel containing the fabrics for making a new uniform,.his female servants received a parcel containing their new uniform ready-made (honestly, why oblige the poor biddies to sew their own clothes, when ready-made is the way of the future?). Not only this, but each servant received extra parcels which, instead of containing the sort of mundane objects they might have expected-kitchen implements for the cook, a new scrubbing brush for the scullery maid, and so forth-contained out-and-out luxuries. God Almighty, he's a rich man now: does he really need to solicit a sour and grudging "thank-you-sir" for the derisory gift of a soup-ladle or a wash-pail, when he can sit back and enjoy an expression of genuine, unfeigned pleasure?

So, this morning, each girl got (to her considerable astonishment) a box of chocolate bon-bons, a pair of kid gloves, a bronze-plated button-hook, and a delicate Oriental fan. The gloves were, he feels, an especially inspired gesture; they demonstrate that William Rackham is a master who appreciates that his servants are not mere household fixtures and drudges, but women who might wish to enjoy some sort of life on their afternoons off, in the world out there.

It was damned interesting observing each girl's essential nature asserting itself once the first flush of surprise had faded. Clara promptly restored the suspicious glint to her eye, the obstinate set to her mouth, and requested leave to attend to Mrs Rackham. Rose stacked her gifts carefully at her side, and resumed her vigilance of the party, in case anything should go wrong. Poor Janey continued to fondle and stare at her gifts, overwhelmed by their exoticism and by the implication that a dogsbody like her could possibly make use of them. Letty, ever the placid simpleton, hugged her treasures in the lap of her skirt and looked around in wonder, as if it had only just become clear to her that she needn't worry her head about anything anymore, ever. The new kitchenmaid, Harriet, and the laundrymaid, whose Irish name he can neither spell nor pronounce, both betrayed a sly impatience to indulge in their windfalls, an eagerness to gobble chocolates or go gallivanting down the street with their kid gloves on. By contrast, Cook (not a girl anymore, admittedly) made a show of good-humoured incomprehension, as if to say,

"Mercy! What could a person of my age and station possibly do with such things?"' But she was flattered, he could tell… her sex made sure of that.

Sugar was a trickier challenge. How to reward her for all she's done, without arousing the suspicions of the others? For a time he considered the possibility of celebrating a second, clandestine Christmas alone with her in her bedroom, but as the day drew near he decided this would entail too great a risk-not of detection, but of his responsibilities crowding in on him, claiming every spare moment.

No, better to honour her publicly. But with what? By all means, for appearances' sake, she should get her own kid gloves, bon-bons, button-hook and fan, but what more could he give her that wouldn't set the others' tongues wagging, while doing justice to her unique qualities?

This morning, in front of the Christmas tree, with all the household looking on, he was proud to see the wisdom of his choice thoroughly confirmed.

Sugar, when Letty handed her the mysterious box, was surprised enough by how big and heavy it was, but when she removed its red wrapping-paper and hefted its contents into the light, her eyes widened further still, and her mouth fell open.

Ah, thought William, a response like that can't be faked! Straining to keep his own face impassive, he watched her gape, speechless, at the leather-bound volumes of Shakespeare, each manufactured to the highest standards -the tragedies a dark maroon tooled with gold, the comedies a rich umber tooled with black, and the histories pure black tooled with silver. The other servants stared too, of course-the illiterate ones in bafflement, the readers in something closer to envy. But not quite envy-for what joy would they get from a set of Shakespeare, if it were theirs? And what more sensible, what more defensible gift could there be, than books for a governess to share with her pupil?

Sugar, of course, knew better. Choked with emotion, she could barely speak her thanks.

As for what to give Sophie… now that was an even thornier problem. After much soul-searching, William decided that this year, the convention of presenting Sophie with a gift "from Mama" should be suspended. In previous years, Beatrice Cleave took care of this little subterfuge, at Christmases and birthdays, and the child was none the wiser. This year, several things conspired against it: his disinclination to burden Sugar further, Doctor Curlew's stern disapproval of the custom, Agnes's absence from the celebrations, and an uneasy sense that Sophie has surely grown too old to believe such a threadbare lie.

So: no gift "from Mama". Doctor Curlew has assured him there'll come a time when Agnes, cured of her delusions, will give her daughter something far more precious than any gaudy parcel. Maybe so, maybe so… but this morning, William made sure that Sophie wasn't starved of gaudy parcels.

In recognition of how much she's grown, he gave her gloves of her own, delicate pigskin miniatures to make her feel like a little lady. A turtleshell hair-brush, too, he gave her, and a whale-bone hairclip, an ivory-handled mirror, and a chamois purse to put them in.

All these things she received with evident wonderment and pleasure. Her greatest amazement, however, came when she unwrapped the largest parcel under the tree, and found it to contain a surpassingly beautiful doll. Everyone in the room gasped and cooed to see it: a sumptuous French construction dressed as if for the theatre, with an alabaster-pale bisque head and an elaborately curled mohair wig topped with an ostrich-plush hat. In one hand it held a blue fan; in the other, nothing. Its satin gown (lower-cut in the bodice than any English doll's) ballooned out below the wasp waist, a rosy pink hemmed with white plush.

Most unusually of all, the doll was mounted, by means of firmly glued shoe-soles, on a wheeled trolley, allowing it to be trundled back and forth across the floor.

"By gad," William's father ruefully exclaimed, "this is a class above the cheap nigger doll I got her a few years ago, ain't it?"'

But Henry Calder Rackham had a surprise up his sleeve-or rather, under his chair, and he produced a cylinder wrapped in plain brown paper and string (which William had taken to be a bottle of wine) and handed it to Sophie, as soon as her wits were recovered from the shock of her father's generosity.

"There, dear," the old man said. "I think you'll find this is a superior thing to a lump of old rag from a tea-chest…" And he leaned back in satisfaction as Sophie unwrapped … a steely-grey spyglass.

Once again, there were gasps and murmurs among the servants, of wonderment and incredulity. What could this thing be? A bottle jack? A kaleidoscope? A fancy receptacle for knitting-needles? William knew at once, but was privately of the opinion that a spyglass is hardly the thing to give to a young miss. And, as the awed Sophie turned the apparatus over in her hands, he also noted that the metal was somewhat pitted and scratched.

"This ain't a toy, Sophie," the old man said. "It's a precision instrument, entrusted to me by an explorer I once met.

Let me show you how it works!" And, crawling on his knees, he traversed the ribbon-strewn carpet to Sophie's side, and demonstrated the telescope's function. Within seconds she was swivelling the thing to and fro, her expression flickering between radiant joy and frustration as she focused on deliriously vague wallpaper and monstrous disembodied eyes.

And William himself? What did he get?

He struggles to remember… Ah yes: a lace coverlet for a cigar-box, embroidered by Sophie (unless her governess helped her, in which case Sugar's skills as a seamstress leave a lot to be desired!) with a facsimile of his own face, copied directly from a Rackham soap-wrapper. Oh, and also: a quantity of middling-quality cigars, courtesy of his father. That, Lord help him, was the sum total of his Christmas bounty! Pitiful, but such is the fate of a man with a pack of servants, one small female child, a brother gone to an early grave, a mother cast out in disgrace, a father without a generous bone in his body, two old chums whom he has offended, and a wife who cannot be trusted while she's awake. What other man in England is in such a predicament? God willing, it won't last forever.

"Musical chairs!" exclaims Henry Calder Rackham, clapping his hands with a fleshy whup-whup-whup. "Who's for musical chairs?"'

Some distance from the Rackhams, in a modest house stacked to the ceilings with rubbish and surplus furniture, Emmeline Fox sits eating fruit mince while her cat purrs at her naked feet.

Before you jump to conclusions: it's only her feet that are naked today; the rest of her is fully, unimpeachably dressed-indeed, she still wears her bonnet, for she's been out and about. A visit to her father, to give him his Christmas present-a pointless exercise, since he celebrates nothing and desires nothing, but he's her father, and she's his daughter, so there it is. Every year they give each other a book, destined to remain unread, and wish each other a merry Christmas, though Doctor Curlew doesn't believe in Christ, and Emmeline doesn't believe that her Saviour was born on the 25th of December. Such are the silly compromises we make, to preserve peace with those of our own blood.

Since returning from her father's house, she hasn't bothered to take anything off except her boots, which were pinching her toes. Once upon a time it was a mystery to her, how the dirt-poor could go barefoot in all weathers and appear to mind so little -indeed, how the tireless efforts of Mrs Timperley to collect shoes from the more fortunate and distribute them among the unshod never seemed to reduce the number of bare feet in London by even a single pair. Now she knows: feet that have grown used to nakedness are no longer happy in shoes. One might as well press shoes upon a cat.

"Do you fancy a pair of smart black boots, Puss?"' she asks her companion, tickling his furry cheek. "Just like in the story?"'

They're sitting together in the spot she likes best-half-way up the stairs. Christmas Day is half over, and her beloved Henry is three months dead. Three months by the calendar, three blinks of God's eye, three eternities within the veiled confines of Emmeline's house, where no one but she is permitted to enter anymore. Three French hens, Four collie birds, Five gold rings… improbable proofs of true love, extolled in ebullient singing voices from the house next door. How is it she can hear these folk so clearly today? She's never heard them before… A high-pitched female voice and, underpinning it perfectly, the sonorous baritone of a male…

Three months since Henry walked the earth, three months since he was buried inside it. The longer he's gone, the more she thinks of him; and the more she thinks of him, the more those thoughts swell with feeling. Compared to him, all other men are selfish and sly; compared to Henry's upright and muscular form, the shapes of other men appear cringing and grotesque. How it hurts her-like a claw squeezing her tender heart in a callous grip-to imagine him liquefying in the grave, his dear face mingling with the clay, his skull, once the home of so much passion and sincerity, an empty shell for worms to squirm in. She knows she's a fool to indulge such gross phantasms, to torture herself so, when she ought to be anticipating the joyful day she and Henry are reunited… But will the Second Coming occur in her lifetime? She very much doubts it. A thousand years may pass before she sees his face again.

Last Christmas Day, they walked the streets, side by side, and discussed the Gospels while everyone else was indoors playing parlour games. Henry had just read… what had he just read? He was always in a state of just having read something, bursting to share it with her before it passed out of his mind… Oh yes, an essay by a scholar of Greek, settling once and for all (said Henry) the centuries-old dispute over the meaning of Matthew 1, verse 25. The Catholics were wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt; the new scholarship confirmed that when Saint Matthew said "till" he meant "till"; and Henry wished the newspapers would have the moral backbone to advertise these momentous findings, instead of filling their pages with lurid accounts of murders and endorsements for hair-dye.

And she? How did she respond to his earnest idealism? Why, the way she always did! By arguing with him, poor man. She said the dispute would never be settled, as no one who believed that a virgin could bear a child was going to take a blind bit of notice of a Greek scholar, and anyway, it didn't matter to her, because when it came to the Gospels, she much preferred Mark and John, sensible men who had better things to do than discuss the fettle of Mary's private parts.

"But you do believe, though, don't you,"

Henry said, with that adorable frown of worry on his forehead, "that our Saviour was conceived out of the Holy Ghost?"'

In response to which, she'd brazenly changed the subject, as she so often did. "For me," she asserted, "the real story doesn't begin until later, in the River Jordan."

Lord! How Henry knit his brow at such moments! How earnestly he laboured to reassure himself she wasn't a blasphemer against the faith that had brought them together. Did she enjoy teasing him?

Yes, she must have enjoyed it. So many sunny afternoons she sent him on his way home perplexed, when she ought to have kissed him, thrown her arms around him, pressed her cheek against his, told him she worshipped him…

She wipes her face on her sleeve, and trusts that God will understand.

"Now?"' enquires her cat, butting his furry head against her naked ankle. She hasn't fed him since this morning, and the closed curtains downstairs are glowing amber from a sun poised to disappear in twilight.

"Do you eat fruit mince, Puss?"' she asks, offering him a gooey spoonful from the big glass jar in her lap. He sniffs it, even touches it with his nose, but… no.

"Pity," she murmurs. "There's rather a lot of it."

It's Mrs Borlais's surplus fruit mince; each member of the Rescue Society got a jar of it, on the understanding that it would fill Christmas tarts. No doubt her fellow Rescuers took up the challenge, either with their own hands or via their servants, but Emmeline's pie-making days are lost in the mists of her marriage to Bertie. The raw mixture is very tasty, though. She spoons it from the jar into her mouth, dollop after dollop, knowing it will most likely make her sick or give her the runs, but relishing its spicy sweetness.

Her father will soon be sitting down to Christmas dinner with his doctor friends. For politeness' sake, and perhaps because he has some inkling of her domestic circumstances of late, he did invite her repeatedly to join them, but she declined. And so she ought! The last time she attended a dinner with her father's friends, she shamed him terribly by lecturing them on the reasons why prostitutes shun doctors, and then urging them to donate their services gratis to desperate women once a week. If she'd accompanied him today, she would no doubt have muttered "Pleased to make your acquaintance" a couple of times, suffered small talk for ten minutes or so, then reverted to type. She knows herself too well.

The food would've been awfully convenient, though. Just think of it all, steaming and sizzling on silver dishes, course after course… Not that she condones the gluttony to which the privileged classes fall prey in this once-holy festival; not that she fails to appreciate the terrible chasm between those who stuff their bloated bellies with a mountain of meat and those who stand shivering in line for a dish of watery soup. Her appetites are modest: sit her down at a Christmas banquet, and she'd have a slice of chicken or turkey and some roast vegetables, then nothing else until the pudding. A gourmand she most certainly is not. It's only that hot meals -especially roast ones-are such a colossal bother to prepare for oneself.

"Poor Puss," she croons, stroking him from head to tail. "You'd be very happy with a couple of nice juicy turtle-doves, wouldn't you?

Or a partridge in a pear tree? Let's see what I can find for you."

She rummages in the kitchen, but there's nothing.

The unwashed chopping-board has a sheen of fish oil on it that keeps him occupied for two minutes, but the leftover portion of ham hash she can't find anywhere is, she suddenly recalls, inside her own stomach. Henry once said:

"It's frightening to think how easily one can spend an entire lifetime gratifying animal appetites." She, perhaps, will spend the rest of her life remembering all the things Henry said.

"Now!" her cat chastises her, and she's forced to concede that good intentions are no substitute for action; so, she fetches her boots for another foray outdoors. Christmas or no Christmas, there will undoubtedly be meat for sale somewhere, if she's willing to descend through the strata of society to find it. Decent folk may have shut their shops in honour of the infant Jesus, but the poor have hungry mouths to feed, and every day is the same to them. Emmeline buttons up her boots and slaps dust from the hem of her skirt, sending Puss skittering under a stockpile of chairs.

She fetches her purse and checks how much money she has left. Plenty.

Mrs Rackham's letter is still stowed in the bottom of her purse, getting rather mulched now amongst the coins and biscuit-crumbs. Will she reply, after what her father said this morning? She doubts it.

She wonders if she has betrayed Mrs Rackham, by discussing her case with the very man whom she so vehemently mistrusts. In her own defence, she can only plead that she did her best not to betray the wretched woman's confidence, by soliciting her father's professional opinion on the delusions of insane females generally.

Naturally he demanded at once, "Why do you want to know?"' Blunt and undiplomatic as ever! But she could hardly expect him to beat about the bush, when she wholly lacks that facility herself.

"Oh, curiosity merely," she replied, aiming for, and probably missing by a mile, the insouciant manner of other women she's met.

"I don't like to be ignorant."

"And what do you want to know in particular?"'

Still she kept Mrs Rackham's secret.

"Well… for example: what is the best way to convince a madwoman that an opinion she holds is mad?"' "You can't convince her," he shot back.

"Oh." In earlier times, that might have been the end of the conversation, but her father is less brusque these days, since he almost lost her. The stimulus of her illness has brought his love for her (which Emmeline has never doubted) closer to the surface of his skin, like a blush of infection, and he's not quite managed to regain his chill composure since.

"There's nothing gained by it, my dear," he explained this morning. "What's the use of a person with a diseased mind being induced to say,

"Yes, I admit I suffer from delusions?"

An hour later she'll only insist the opposite. It's her diseased brain itself that must be cured, so that she's no longer capable of suffering delusions. Consider the man with a broken arm: whether he denies or admits it's broken makes no difference to the treatment required."

"How good, then, are the chances of a cure?"' "Pretty decent if the woman's of mature age, and was tolerably levelheaded until-for example-the grief of a tragic loss attacked her senses. If she's been entertaining delusions since early girlhood, slim, I'd say."

"I see," she said. "I think my curiosity is satisfied. Thank you."

Her disappointment with the efficacy of science must have pricked him, because he added, "One day, I expect pharmaceutics will offer a cure for even the severest mental illnesses. A vaccination, if you like. We'll see all manner of wonders in the next century, I'm quite convinced."

"Small comfort to those now suffering."

"Ah," he smiled, "now that's where you're wrong, my girl. The intractably insane are intractable precisely because it suits them to be so. They don't wish to be rescued! In which respect-if you'll forgive me saying so-they're very like your fallen women."

"Pax, father," she warned him. "I ought to be going. Thank you for the gift. Merry Christmas."

But, worried that they would part on a sour note, he made a last gesture of appeasement.

"Please tell me, Emmeline: why these questions? I might have something better to offer you if I knew a little more…"

She hesitated, and thought carefully before speaking -though as always, not carefully enough.

"A lady has written to me, begging for the secret of eternal life. Eternal physical life, that is. She seems convinced that I know the location of a place where her… ah… immortal body is being kept waiting for her."

"It's very kind of you," her father said then, in a low and confidential tone, "to be concerned for Mrs Rackham. I can only assure you that she will soon be in the very best of hands."

"Now!" howls Puss, digging his claws into her skirts.

"Yes, yes, I'm going," Emmeline responds.

Night has fallen on the Rackham house and, as far as William is concerned, Christmas is still ticking along as agreeably as possible, in the circumstances.

His father's call for a game of musical chairs causes a moment of awkwardness when the aroused volunteers suddenly remember that no one can play the piano-at least, no one present in their midst. However, Sugar saves the day-God bless her-with her devilish clever suggestion to use a music box instead. Sighs of relief all round, and the machine works a treat! William selects Clara to raise and lower its lid, on the assumption that this activity will suit her better than jostling for seats with her fellow servants-and he's right. Why, is that a grin he sees twitching on her lips, when Letty almost falls? She certainly has a knack, whenever she flips the box shut, for cutting a musical note clean in half, foiling the quickest listener.

The one player who gets a seat every time, despite his stiff joints, is Henry Calder Rackham, for he doesn't mind whose hips he brushes against, or how rudely.

The old man is also a dab hand at Snapdragon, the next game on the agenda.

When the lights are extinguished and the bowl of brandy is lit, three generations of Rackhams stand ready to plunge their hands into the flames. Henry Calder Rackham is first, his short wrinkled fingers darting into the flickering spirit in the blink of an eye, and almost as quickly tossing the raisin into his mouth.

"Don't be frightened, little one," he urges his grand-daughter. "You won't get hurt if you're quick enough."

But Sophie hesitates, staring in fascination at the big shallow dish of blue flame, and William, fearing the spirit might burn itself out while she dithers, plucks out a raisin of his own.

"Go on, Sophie dear," he commands her gently, as Rackham Senior seizes the opportunity to snap up another raisin.

Sophie jerks into obedience, squealing with fear and excitement as she snatches a raisin from the flames. Furtively she examines the tiny fruit between her fingers and, finding no flames on its dark wrinkled flesh, transfers it cautiously into her mouth, while the older Rackhams go after the rest.

The next game is dinner, and William's father tackles it with the same gusto. As course follows course, he eats as much as Lord Unwin did at Lady Bridgelow's party, allowing for the differences in the fare. (the Rackhams' cook is no enthusiast for what she calls "recipes learned from savages", but what she does turn her hand to is delicious, and Henry Calder Rackham is its ideal consumer.) Turkey, quails, roast beef, oyster patties, mince pies, Christmas pudding, port jelly, apple hedgehog-all these are put before him, and all vanish inside his chuckling frame.

Small wonder, then, that when the time comes for after-dinner amusements, and he sits beside the magic lantern to feed the painted slides into the brass slot, he takes advantage of the dark and the fact that everyone's attention is directed elsewhere, to unbutton his waistcoat and trousers.

"A little flower-girl am I," he recites breathily, for Sophie's benefit, from the subtitles as the image glows on the parlour wall: a plump-cheeked poppet in rags, posed on a fake London street corner lovingly beautified by the tiny paintbrushes of the magic lantern company's workers.

"I'll sell you pretty posies

Of buttercups and daffodils

Nothing so rich as roses."

The child dies, of course, in the eighth slide.

Already angelic when she was hawking her daffodils, she appears only marginally more radiant when a pair of sweet seraphs catch her swooning body and point her towards Heaven.

William, more accustomed to the pornographic slide shows put on by Bodley and Ashwell, is rather bored, but hides it, for his father has gone to the bother of buying three sets, and has already apologised sotto voce beforehand ("So few of these damned things are suitable for children, y'know: they've nearly all got murder and infidelity in 'em.") A second magic lantern story, about heroism during a shipwreck, follows close upon the first, and is well received by all the family, despite the fact that it has no parts for females in it. The third and last, a woeful tale of a young watercress-seller who dies trying to save her dipsomaniac father, reduces Letty and Janey to helpless sobs, and ends with the word "TEMPERANCE!" glowing on the parlour wall-a slightly irksome conclusion to the proceedings, since William and his father are by now looking forward to a strong drink.

"Good night, little Sophie," says William, as Rose rekindles the lamps and the magic lantern is extinguished. For an instant Sugar hesitates, uncomprehending, then realises with a jolt that the Christmas celebrations have come to an end-for child and governess, at least.

"Yes, goodnight, little Sophie," says Henry Calder Rackham, spreading an unused table napkin over his lap. "Run up to your fine new toys now-before a thief comes and steals 'em!"

Sugar casts a glance around the parlour, and notices that the presents have already been removed, every scrap of wrapping-paper cleaned away, even the tiniest curls of stray tinsel picked up from the carpets. Apart from Rose, who's uncorking the liquor, the servants have melted back into the recesses of the Rackham house, each to her own function. The male Rackhams are slumped, heavy-lidded, in their chairs, tired out from administering so much pleasure.

Lingering momentarily in the threshold of the room, with Sophie's hand clasped in hers, Sugar looks over to Rose, and succeeds in catching her eye, but the servant is unresponsive; she lowers her head to concentrate on the unveiling of a tray of rum slices. Whatever intimacy she and Sugar have shared, whatever foolhardy acts they enjoyed together, a line has now been drawn between them.

"Good night," says Sugar, too quietly to be heard, and she escorts Sophie out to the stairs, and up into the silent parts of the house, where their gifts await them, leaning against their bedroom doors in the dark.

Putting Sophie to bed is out of the question; the child is too excited, and there are miraculous new toys to play with. While Sugar looks on, unsure how to behave, Sophie kneels on the floor, face to face with the French doll, and wheels the creature gently back and forth. In the dim yellowish light of her bedroom, it looks more mysterious than it did downstairs in the parlour; more mysterious, and yet also more realistic, like a real lady who's just emerged from a ball or a theatre, venturing across the carpeted street in search of her private carriage.

"Now where can that fellow be?"' murmurs Sophie in an affected, helpless voice, turning the doll three hundred and sixty degrees. "I told him to wait for me here …"

She picks up the spyglass, extends it to its full length, lifts it to her right eye.

"I'll find him with this," she declares, in a more boyish, confident tone. "Even if he's far, far away." And she inspects the environs, focusing on likely prospects-a knot in the wood of the skirting-board, a dangling curtain-sash, the blurry skirts of her governess.

Suddenly serious, she looks up at Sugar and says,

"Do you think I could be an explorer,

Miss?"'

"An explorer?"'

"When I'm older, Miss."

"I… I don't see why not." Sugar wishes Sophie would make a mention-indeed, make just a small fuss-of the little book that's lying neglected on the floor, inscribed on its flyleaf To Sophie, from Miss Sugar, Christmas 1875.

"It mightn't be permitted, Miss," reflects the child, wrinkling her brow. "A lady explorer."

"These are modern times, Sophie dear," sighs Sugar. "Women can do all sorts of things nowadays."

Sophie's forehead wrinkles deeper still, as the irreconcilable faiths of her nurse and her governess collide in her over-taxed brain.

"Perhaps," she muses, "I could explore places the gentlemen explorers don't wish to explore."

A noise drifts up from somewhere outside the house: a procession of strangers is tramping up the Rackham path, singing "We wish you a Merry Christmas", their rough voices indistinct in the gusty night. Sophie walks over to the window, stands on tiptoe, and tries to peer down into the dark, but sees nothing.

"More people," she declares, in a fanciful "well-I-never!" tone, like a fairy-tale hostess who has invited half a dozen guests, only to be deluged by a thousand.

Sugar realises the child is deliriously tired and ought to be steered towards sleep after all.

"Come, Sophie," she says. "Time for bed. Your bath can wait until tomorrow. And I'm sure you will need a whole fresh day to get properly acquainted with all your gifts."

Sophie totters away from the window and surrenders herself into Sugar's hands. Though she doesn't resist the undressing, she's less helpful than usual, and stares dumbly ahead of her while her clothes are stripped off her unbending limbs. There's an odd, haunted expression on her face, a hint of wounded affront in her naked body as Sugar prods her gently to raise her arms for the night-gown.

"Now bring us some figgy pudding

Now bring us some figgy pudding

And a cup of good cheer…" the carol-singers are chanting below.

"There's no use anyone waking my Mama now, is there, Miss?"' Sophie blurts out.

"She has missed everything."

Sugar pulls back the bed-sheets, removes the warming-pan Letty has nestled there, and pats the hot spot.

"We won't go until we've got some,

We won't go until we've got some…"

"She's not very well, Sophie," Sugar says.

"I think she'll die soon," decides Sophie, as she climbs into bed. "And then they'll put her in the ground."

Downstairs, a door slams, and the voices are silent-presumably satisfied. Sugar, trying not to show the nauseous chill that the child's words have injected into her blood, tucks Sophie up and straightens her pillow. Mindful of first impressions in the morning to come, she gathers up the gifts and arranges them carefully on top of the dresser, standing the queenly French doll next to the slumped form of the grinning nigger manikin.

Sophie's new purse, hair-brush, hairclip and mirror she lays in a row, punctuated with the spyglass stood on its end. Finally, she displays, upright, the book.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, it says. But Sophie has already fallen down the rabbit-hole of unconsciousness, into an uneasy wonderland of her own.

Rap-rap.

"Miss Sugar?"'

Rap-rap-rap.

"Miss Sugar?"'

Rap-rap-rap-rap.

"Miss Sugar!"

She sits bolt upright in her bed, gasping in terror and confusion as the brute who has "come to keep her warm" is whisked off her childish body and she's left alone once more-older, bigger, elsewhere, in the dark.

"Which-who is it?"' she calls into the blackness.

"Clara, Miss."

Sugar rubs her eyes with the rough heels of her palms, thinking that if she blinks hard enough, she'll see sunlight. "Have… have I slept too long?"' "Please, Miss Sugar, Mr Rackham says I'm to come in."

The door swings open, and the servant steps inside, lamp held high, uniform rumpled, head haloed with unbrushed hair. Clara's face, normally inscrutable or smug, is distorted by wavering shadows and a look of naked fear.

"I'm to make sure no one's come into your bedroom, Miss."

Sugar blinks dumbly, through the orange fuzz of her own disordered hair. She motions consent for Clara to reconnoitre the geography of her tiny room, and the girl immediately hoists her lamp towards the four corners, here, there, here, there, sending the light and shadow veering dramatically. In her solemn thoroughness she looks like a Papist officiating a censer ritual.

"F'give me, Miss," she mumbles, opening Sugar's wardrobe a crack.

"Is Sophie all right?"' says Sugar, having by now lit her own bedside lamp. The time, she notes, is 3 a.m.

Clara doesn't reply, except with an extravagant curtsy, so low as to be fit for a queen. Only at the last possible instant does Sugar realise it's not a curtsy at all, but that the servant is preparing to look under the bed.

"Let me help you!" she says hastily, and dangles over the side, her mass of uncombed hair tumbling to the floor.

Supported on one elbow, she sweeps her other arm into the shadowy space under her bed, thwacking the diaries against one another to emphasise their status as non-human debris.

"Apologies, Miss," mutters Clara, and hurries from the room.

As soon as she's gone, Sugar jumps out of bed and gets dressed. The house, she hears now, is in a state of whispery, flustery commotion.

Doors are opening and shutting, and, through the crack in her door, she can see lights grow brighter in sudden increments. Hurry, hurry: her hair is impossible, she ought to've had it cut weeks ago, but who's to cut it? All trace of the original frizzed fringe is gone, and only the use of a dozen pins and a cluster of clasps keeps the mess under control. Where are her shoes?

Why is her bodice so difficult to button up? Her chemise must be rucked underneath…

"Darkroom!" shouts William from somewhere below. "Are you deaf?"'

A female voice, unidentifiable and small, pleads that all the rooms are dark.

"No! No!" cries William, clearly in a state of great agitation. "The room that used to be… Ach, it was before your time!" And his heavy tread thumps down the hallway.

Sugar is presentable now, more or less, and rushes out onto the landing, candle in hand. Her first port of call is Sophie's room, but when she ventures inside, she finds the child sleeping deeply, or at least affecting to.

Only when Sugar is walking back along the landing does she notice how very peculiar and unusual it is, to see the door of Agnes's bedroom ajar. She runs downstairs, following the noise of voices.

"Oh, Mr Rackham, and on a night like this!" cries Rose, the words reverberating queerly through the maze of passages leading to the rear of the house.

The rendezvous-point is the kitchen, in whose mausoleum frigidity a glum, sleepy-headed company has gathered. By no means the entire household: Cook has been left to snore upstairs, and the newer, less trustworthy servants, curious though they naturally are about the commotion, have been told to settle back under the covers and mind their own affairs. But fully dressed and shivering down here are William, Letty, Rose and Clara.

Oh yes, and there stands Janey in the doorway of the scullery, in tears, humiliated by her failure to produce Mrs Rackham from out of the ice-chest or the meat larder, despite Miss Tillotson's angry expectation that she should.

Letty hugs herself, her mulish teeth clenched to stop them chattering. The white bib of her uniform glistens with moisture: she's braved the elements once already, to bang on the door of Shears's little bungalow. But Shears is too drunk to be roused, and Cheesman has evidently been charmed by his "mother" into staying the night, so once again William Rackham is the only male on hand to deal with the crisis.

He greets Sugar's arrival with an unwelcoming scowl; his face looks ghastly in the light reflected off the chopping-table and the stone floor, both of which still shimmer from the liberal sponging they were given only a few hours ago.

"She's out there, sir," pleads Rose, her voice shaking with the urgency of what she dare not say to her master: that he is wasting precious time -perhaps even condemning his wife to death-by failing to move the search out of doors.

"What about the cellar?"' William demands.

"Letty, you were in and out of there in a flash."

"It was empty, Mr Rackham," the girl insists, her indignant whine ringing in the copper pans hung around the walls.

William runs his hands through his hair, and stares up at the windows, whose inky-black panes are spattered with sleet and garlanded with snow. This cannot be happening to him!

"Rose, fetch the storm-lanterns," he croaks, after an excruciating silence. "We must search the grounds." His eyes grow suddenly bright, as if a flame has belatedly kindled behind them-or a fever. "Put warm coats on, all of you! And gloves!"

A cursory inspection of the grounds confirms the worst: a trail of footsteps in the snow leading from the front door to the gate, and the gate swung wide open. The street-lamps of Chepstow Villas glow feeble in the drizzly gloom, each illuminating nothing more than a drab sphere of air suspended fifteen feet off the ground. The road is pitch black, with a hint, in the murk beyond, of unlit buildings and convoluted passageways. A woman in sombre clothing could quickly be lost in such a darkness.

"Is she in white, d'you know?"' asks William of Clara, when the company of searchers is ready to set off from the house. She regards him as if he's an imbecile, as if he has just enquired which of Mrs Rackham's ball gowns she has chosen to wear on this momentous occasion.

"I mean, is she in her night-dress,

God help her!" he snaps.

"I don't know, sir," Clara replies, scowling as she represses the desire to tell him that if Mrs Rackham has frozen to death, it probably happened while Clara was being forced to search for her in broom-cupboards and under the governess's bed.

Stiff-limbed in a bulky overcoat,

William blunders forward in a haze of his own breath and, in his footsteps, two women follow.

Since only three functioning storm-lanterns have been found, those three have been divided amongst William, Clara, and Rose. Letty and Janey are in such a state of agitation that they're useless anyway, and had better go back to bed, while Miss Sugar oughtn't to have troubled herself to get up in the first place.

Sugar stands at the front door and watches them go. Even as they pass through the Rackham gate and strike off in different directions, a hansom cab rattles by, raising the possibility that, despite the extreme lateness of the hour, Agnes may have hailed one, and be miles away by now, lost in a vast and intricate city, stumbling through unknown streets of unlit houses full of unknown people. Drunken laughter issues from the cab as it rolls past, a reminder that death from exposure is only one of several dangers awaiting a defenceless female in the world at large.

It occurs to Sugar, as she stands shivering on the porch, that the interior of the Rackham house is unguarded; assuming the other servants stay in bed as they're told, there's no one to observe her opening prohibited doors, no one to stop her poking about wherever she chooses. Loath to let such a golden opportunity go by, she pictures herself standing at William's study-desk perusing some secret document or other. Yes; she should hurry upstairs and make this lantern-slide fantasy come true… But no; her will is lacking; she's so weary of stealth; there is nothing more she wants to discover; she wishes only to be a member of the family, absolved of suspicion, cosily welcome, forever.

Suddenly, quite out of the blue-well, out of the black-she's assailed by the thought that Agnes is close by. The certainty of it infuses her brain like a religious belief, a Damascene conversion. What idiots William and the others are, following a will-o'-the-wisp of tracks made by carol singers too careless to shut the Rackham gate! Of course Agnes isn't out there in the streets, she's here, hiding near the house-very near!

Sugar rushes indoors to fetch a lamp, and emerges a couple of minutes later with a rather flimsy, puny type, better suited for lighting a few yards of carpeted passage between one bedroom and the next. Gingerly she carries it out into the wind and the wet, holding her palm above the open bulb to shield the trembling flame.

Sleet stings her cheeks, sharp little spits of it so cold they feel hot, like fiery cinders in the wind. She must surely be mad, yet she cannot turn back until she has found Agnes.

Where to look first, in this deadly serious game of hide and seek? She tramps onto the carriage-way, her boots going krift, krift, krift in the gravelly snow. No, no, says a voice in her head, as she makes her way along the flank of the Rackham house, past the bay windows of the parlour and the dining-room-No, not here; you're not even "warm".

Move farther away from the house: yes: farther into the dark. Warmer, yes, warmer!

She ventures into unfamiliar parts of the Rackham grounds, beyond the vegetable glass-houses whose snow-covered carapaces gleam like marble sarcophagi in the dark. Every few steps, in her efforts to keep the lamp sheltered, she's distracted from her footing and almost stumbles, here on a garden tool, there on a coal-sack, but she reaches the stables without having fallen.

Very hot, the voice in her head commends her.

The coach-house doors are shut but not padlocked; so strong is the instinct that brought her here, that she presumes this fact before her eyes confirm it. She undoes the latch, tugs the doors open a crack and lifts her lamp into the aperture.

"Agnes?"'

No answer, except the burning of intuition in her breast. She opens the coach-house doors a little wider, and slips inside. The Rackhams' carriage stands immobile in the gloom, larger and taller than she remembered, oddly disquieting in its burnished, steel-studded bulk. A puddle of chains and leather straps drools from its prow.

Sugar walks up to the cabin window and lifts her lamp to the dark glass. Something pale stirs within.

"Agnes?"'

"My… Holy Sister…"

Sugar opens the door, and finds Agnes huddled on the floor of the cabin, her knees drawn up against her chin. That chin is speckled with vomit, and Agnes's eyes are heavy-lidded, blinking too feebly to expose more than a slit of milky white. In her frigid lethargy, she's passed beyond shivering, but at least she's not deathly blue: her lips, smeared with lubricant, are still rosebud-pink. Thank God she's wearing more than just her night-dress-not enough to keep her warm, but enough to discourage the cold from piercing her heart. A magenta dressing-gown, of thick silk in an oriental style, partly covers the white cotton night-dress, though the front has been buttoned clumsily, with most of the buttons in the wrong holes. Agnes's feet are bandaged up to the ankles, and additionally shod in loose knitted slippers, the wool sodden with melted snow and prickly with fragments of leaf and twig.

"Please," says Agnes, barely able to lift her head off her knees. "Tell me it's my time."

"Your time?"' "To go… to the Convent with you." And she licks at her lips, trying ineffectually to dislodge, with her listless tongue, a small glob of vomit stuck in the mouth-salve.

"Not-not yet," says Sugar, doing her best, in spite of her revulsion, to speak with the authority of an angel.

"They're poisoning me," whimpers Agnes. Her face nods down again, and damp strands of fine blonde hair slither off her shoulders, one by one. "Clara's in league with them. She gives me bread and milk… soaked in poison."

"Come out of here, Agnes," says Sugar, reaching into the cabin to stroke Agnes's arm, as if she were a wounded pet. "Can you walk?"'

But Agnes appears not to have heard. "They're fattening me up for sacrifice," she continues, in an anxious, high-pitched whisper. "A slow sacrifice… to last a lifetime. Each day, a different demon will come to eat my flesh."

"Nonsense, Agnes," says Sugar.

"You'll get well."

Agnes swivels her head towards the light.

Through a veil of hair, one eye blinks wide, bloodshot-blue.

"You've seen my feet?"' she says, with sudden, angry clarity. "Bruised fruit. And bruised fruit doesn't get well again."

"Don't be afraid, Agnes," says Sugar, though in truth she is very afraid herself, that the glare of Agnes's eye and the sharpness of Agnes's torment will cause her own nerve to crack. She takes a deep breath, as discreetly as an angel might, and declares, in a seductive voice she hopes is serenely trustworthy, "All will be well, I promise. Everything will turn out for the best."

But the assurance fails to impress Agnes, despite its fairytale flavour; it only reminds her of more nastiness.

"Worms have eaten my diaries," she moans. "My precious memories of Mama and Papa…"

"Worms haven't eaten your diaries,

Agnes. They're safe with me." Sugar leans into the cabin to stroke Agnes's arm again. "Even the Abbots Langley ones," she soothes, "with all their French dictation and Callisthenics.

All safe."

Agnes raises her head high, and utters a cry of relief. Her pale throat trembles with the breath of that cry, and her hair slithers back over her shoulders, revealing tears on her cheeks.

"Take me," she begs. "Please take me, before they do."

"Not yet, Agnes. The time isn't yet."

Sugar has set the lamp on the ground, and is hoisting herself gently and slowly into the cabin.

"Soon I'll help you get away from here.

Soon, I promise. But first you must get warm, in your nice soft bed, and rest."

She lays an arm around Agnes's back, then smoothly slides her fingers into Agnes's armpits, which are hot and damp with fever.

"Come," she says, and raises Mrs

Rackham up off the floor.

The walk back to the house is not quite the nightmare Sugar feared. True, they must make their way across the grounds without any light, because she can't support Agnes and carry a lantern at the same time. But the sleet and wind have eased off, leaving the air quiet and apprehensive under gravid snow-clouds. Also, Agnes is no dead weight: she has rallied somewhat, and limps and lurches alongside Sugar without complaint-like a drunken strumpet. And, now that the objective is the single monumental structure of the house, whose downstairs windows helpfully glow with lamp-light, the going is easier than when Sugar was groping into the inky unknown.

"William will be angry with me," Agnes frets, as they walk along the carriage-way, their four feet going krift, krift, krift and fro, fro, fro.

"He isn't here," says Sugar. "Nor is Clara."

Agnes looks at her rescuer in wonder, imagining William and Clara being rolled aside like the two halves of the Red Sea, their startled limbs waving impotently as the irresistible force of magic pushes them out of the picture. Then she stops in her tracks, and casts a critical glance over the house across whose threshold her guardian angel is about to lead her.

"You know, I've never liked this place," she remarks, in a distant, reflective tone, as snow-flakes begin once more to flutter down from above, twinkling on her head and shoulders. "It smells… It smells of people trying terribly hard to be happy, without the slightest success."