The Crimson petal and the white

PART 5

The World at Large

Basking in the warmth of Heaven, she floats weightless and naked, far far above the factory chimneys and church spires of the world, in the upper reaches of a sultry sky. It's an intoxicatingly fragrant atmosphere, surging and eddying with huge, gentle waves of wind and pillowy clouds-nothing like the motionless, transparent oblivion she'd always imagined Paradise would be. It's more like a breathable ocean, and she treads the heavy air, narrowing the distance between her body and that of her man who's flying beside her. When she's close enough, she spreads her thighs, wraps her arms and legs around him, and opens her lips to receive the incarnation of his love.

"Yes, oh yes," she whispers, and embraces the small of his back to take more of him inside; she kisses him tenderly; their sexes are cleaved together; they are one flesh. A swirl of cloud folds around their conjoined bodies like a blanket as they drift through the balmy waves of eternity, borne along, like swimmers, by rhythmic currents and their own urgent thrusts.

"Who would ever have thought it could be like this?"' she says.

"Don't talk now," he sighs, as he shifts his hands down from her shoulder-blades to the cheeks of her behind. "You're always talking."

She laughs, knowing it's true. The pressure of his chest against her bosom is at once comforting and arousing; her nipples are swollen, her birth passage sucks and swallows in its hunger for his seed. On a great flank of cloud they roll and wreathe, until her passion rushes through her body like a fire and she thrashes her head from side to side, gasping with joy…

"Emmeline!"

Despite her convulsions of ecstasy, she still has the presence of mind to recognise that the voice comes not from Henry, whose inarticulate breath heaves hot in her hair, but from another, unseen source.

"Emmeline, are you there!"

How peculiar, she thinks, as the clouds unfurl and she pitches backwards through the sky, plummeting towards earth. If it's God calling, surely He knows perfectly well I'm here?

"Emmeline, can you hear me!"

She lands in her bed-a remarkably soft landing, given the dizzying speed of her descent-and sits up, panting, while the racket at her front door continues.

"Emmeline!"

Lord save her, it's her father. She leaps out of bed, sending Puss tumbling onto his back, all four paws flailing. She looks around the bedroom for something to cover her nakedness, but all she can find is Henry's coat and shirt, which-along with several other items of Henry's clothing from the Tuttle and Son sack-she's been taking into bed with her lately, for consolation.

She throws the warm, rumpled coat over her shoulders like a cape, ties the arms of the shirt around her midriff for an apron, and runs downstairs.

"Yes, I'm here, Father," she calls through the oblong barrier of wood and frosted glass.

"I-I'm sorry I didn't hear, I was … working." The sunlight is quite strong; she guesses it must be eleven o'clock at least-far too late to admit to having been asleep.

"Emmeline, forgive me for disturbing you," her father says, "but it's an urgent matter."

"I… I'm sorry, Father, but I can't let you in." What's wrong with the man! She doesn't receive visitors anymore-surely that's understood between them! "Couldn't I come and see you a little later this morning? Or afternoon?"'

The distorted shape of his head, crowned with the dark top hat, looms closer to the glass.

"Emmeline…!" His tone suggests he's not at all pleased to be a public spectacle, hammering at his daughter's door in plain view of passers-by. "A woman's life may depend on it."

Emmeline considers this for a moment.

Melodrama, she knows, is not in her father's nature, so a woman's life probably is at risk.

"Uh… please, if you could wait a few minutes, I… I'll come out…"

She rushes back upstairs and dresses faster than she ever has before-donning pantalettes, camisole, dress, coatee, stockings, garters, shoes, gloves and bonnet in much the same time that Lady Bridgelow might deliberate over the placement of a single hairpin.

"I'm ready, Father," she pants at the front door, "to walk with you." His silhouette steps back, and she slips out of her house, locking its dusty chaos securely behind her, taking a deep breath of the fresh, cold air. She feels her father's eyes upon her as she turns the key, but he refrains from comment.

"There!" she says brightly. "We're on our way."

She turns to face him; he's immaculate, as always, but his frown tells her that she, regrettably, is not. He's a handsome and dignified old fellow, yes he is, although his face is lined with care. So much illness in the world, and only an old man with a satchel to combat it … If there was one thing in that pitiful letter from Mrs Rackham that convinced Emmeline the poor woman's mind had snapped like a collarbone, it was the reference to Doctor Curlew's evil nature; in Emmeline's eyes, her father is the archetype of benevolence, a mender of bones and a dresser of wounds, whereas the best she can do, in emulation of his philanthropic example, is write letters to politicians and argue with prostitutes.

All this she thinks in an instant, as he towers over her on the footpath outside her house; then she sees the twitch of impatience in his bearing, and the nervous way he looks up and down the street, and she appreciates that something is very badly amiss.

"What is it, Father? What's wrong?"'

He motions for them to start walking along the footpath, away from an apparition a few doors down-a nosy old gossip garnished with stuffed blue tits and fox-fur.

"Emmeline," he declares, as they proceed apace, leaving their pursuer straggling behind, "what I'm telling you is a secret, but it can't remain a secret much longer: Mrs Rackham is missing. She was to've been taken to a sanatorium yesterday morning. I arrived at her house to escort her-and she was gone.

Vanished."

Emmeline, although listening attentively, is also looking for clues in the sky and in the behaviour of other pedestrians as to what time of day it might be. "Visiting a friend, perhaps?"' she suggests.

"Out of the question."

"Why? Hasn't she any friends?"' The sky is darkening: it can't be twilight yet, surely?

No: those are rainclouds up there, gathering to discharge their burden.

"I think you fail to grasp the situation. She fled her house in the middle of the night, in a state of utter derangement. All her clothing-every dress, jacket, coat and blouse-is accounted for, except one pair of shoes and some articles of underwear; in other words, she took to the streets near-naked. Quite possibly she has frozen to death."

Emmeline knows she ought to be dumbstruck with sympathy, but her instinct for argument gets the better of her. "Taking to the streets near-naked in winter," she remarks, "is something many women do without dying of it, Father."

Again he casts a glance over each shoulder, to be satisfied that the motley scattering of street-sweepers, errand-boys, pampered dogs and ladies is out of earshot. "Emmeline, I'll come straight to the point. In Mrs Rackham's letter to you, she mentioned a place she badly wished to go. Did she give any hint where she might imagine this place was?

Geographically speaking?"'

Emmeline hardly knows whether to be amused or mortified. "Well, you know, father, she was rather relying on me to tell her."

"And what did you advise?"'

"I never replied," says Emmeline.

"You dissuaded me."

Doctor Curlew nods, obviously disappointed. "God help her," he mutters, as a dray-horse and carriage jingle past, disgorging a long trail of tumbling turds.

"I didn't know Mrs Rackham was so far gone," says Emmeline. "In her head, I mean."

Curlew checks the current whereabouts of the street-sweeper, but the fellow hasn't budged, having set his sights on a different, more generous-looking couple approaching a different pile of ordure.

"She ran away on Christmas night, too," he explains. "Half the Rackham household was out in the sleet and snow, searching for her until dawn. Eventually she was found hiding in the coach-house, by Miss Sugar, the governess."

Emmeline's ears prick up at the name: unusual though it is, she could swear she's seen it in print only recently. But where?

"What a lamentable business-I had no idea!" she says. "But what about her husband, William-hasn't he any suspicion where his wife might be?"'

Doctor Curlew shakes his head.

"Our champion of industry," he says, with weary sardonicism, "has only this morning been fetched home from a hospital in Somerset. He was attacked by bughunters in Frome."

Emmeline snorts most indecorously.

"Attacked by… what?"'

"Bughunters. Robbers who wait outside public houses, preying on helpless drunkards. Really, Emmeline, you've spent so long in the Rescue Society among London's low-life, and never heard the term?"' "I've heard other terms you may not have heard, Father," she retorts. "But how is Mr Rackham?"'

Doctor Curlew sighs irritably.

"He's minus one silver watch, one overcoat, and a quantity of money; also he's black and blue, with concussion, fogged vision, and a couple of broken fingers. One of the ruffians jumped on his right hand, it seems. He's damned lucky to have escaped a knifing."

Emmeline sees the butcher's shop up ahead, a place where she's lately become quite well-known. If she'd remembered to bring her purse, she could have bought Puss some breakfast.

Perhaps the butcher will give her credit…

"It sounds like a matter for the police," she says, slowing her pace, wondering how much longer her father means to walk with her before he accepts she's of no use to him and leaves her to her own devices. If only she can have a few friendly words with the butcher, in private…

"Rackham won't hear of it. The poor fool is afraid of scandal."

"But surely, if his wife's been missing for two days…"

"Yes, yes, of course he'll have to call the police, and soon. But in his mind they are the last resort."

Emmeline dawdles to a standstill in front of a window crowded with upside-down lamb and piglet carcasses, the yawning slits of whose abdomens are adorned with strings of sausages.

"Which means, I suppose," she says,

"that I was the next-to-last?"'

Doctor Curlew stares hard at the woman by his side, this carelessly dressed, indifferently groomed, scrawny package of flesh and bone which, thirty years ago, he created. She's grown tall since then, and not very beautiful-a less than felicitous combination of his own long face and his wife's knobbly, irregular skull. In a flash he recalls the date of her birth and her mother's death-bloody events that occurred in the same bed, on the same night-and suddenly appreciates that despite her ill health Emmeline has reached a far greater age than her own mother ever did. Her mother died rosy-cheeked and uncomprehending, without these worry-wrinkles on her brow, these crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes, that expression of weary wisdom and stoically endured grief.

He bows his head as the heavens open and heavy drops of rain begin to spatter down on the pair of them.

"Pax, daughter," he sighs.

"The police," says William. "I shall have that-that-to tell the people-police." And he winces in exasperation at this cursed stutter his cracked skull has inflicted on his tongue. As if his share of calamity weren't generous enough already!

He and Sugar are in his study, quite late in the evening of the 30th of December. If the servants wish to gossip, they'll no doubt feel free, but there's no impropriety here, damn it: the governess is merely lending her services after-hours as a secretary, while the master's injuries render him unfit to write his own correspondence. Lord Almighty, why can't he make use of the only properly literate woman in his household without a busybody like Clara suspecting him of debauches? Let her poke her sticky nose in here if she dares, and she'll find no goings-on but the rustling of papers!

"What d'you think, hmm?"' he challenges Sugar, from across the room. (he's stretched out on an ottoman, his head wreathed in bandages, his puffy, purplish face embroidered with black designs of dry blood, his right hand noosed in a sling, while Sugar sits erect at his desk, pen poised over an as-yet-undictated letter.) "You're damn silent."

Sugar considers carefully before responding.

She's found him awfully peevish since his return from Somerset; the knock on the head hasn't done him any good. Her initial elation at being trusted with his correspondence, at being installed in his very own chair at the polished walnut helm of Rackham Perfumeries, has been spoilt by his frighteningly volatile moods. Even the thrill of receiving his blessing to forge the Rackham signature, after she and William agreed this would be preferable to the infantile botch he made of his name left-handed, was not quite so thrilling once she was scolded for taking too long over it.

"Police? You know best, William," she says. "Although I must admit I can't see how Agnes could have got very far. A woman hobbling on injured feet, without even a dress on, if we're to believe Clara…"

"It's been this-three days!" he exclaims, as if this proves, or refutes, everything.

Sugar picks through various courses of action she could recommend, but unfortunately most of them carry some risk, great or small, of Agnes being found.

"Well…" she suggests, "instead of hordes of bobbies, and notices in the newspapers, could you perhaps engage a detective?"' (she knows nothing about detectives beyond what she's read in The Moonstone, but she hopes the bumbling Seagraves outnumber the clever Cuffs.) "Damned if I do, damned if I don't!" William cries, his left hand reaching for a handful of hair to squeeze, and finding only bandage.

"I-I'm sorry, my love?"'

"If I this-throw Agnes's predicament into the public domain, her disgrace will be unim-more-mag-inable. Her name-and mine-will be ridiculed from here to… to… Tunisia!

But if I'm discreet, and another day passes, and shall-she's in deadly danger…!"

"But what danger can she be in?"' argues Sugar in her mildest, most reasonable tone.

"If she succumbed to the cold on the night she ran away, she… well, she can't come to any more harm now, and all that remains is to find her body. And if she's alive, that can only mean someone has taken her in. Which means she'll remain safe for a little while longer while discreet investi-"' "She's my will-will-wife, damn it!" he yells. "My wife!"

Sugar bows her head at once, hoping his fury dies down before the servants or Sophie get wind of it. The page of Rackham stationery under her hands says "Dear Mr Woolworth" and nothing more; a droplet of ink has fallen unnoticed off her pen and stained the letterhead.

"Can't you appreciate A-Agnes may be in urgent need of rescue?"' William rails, waving his good hand accusingly at the world outside.

"But William, as I've just said…"

"It's not a simple child-choice between her being dead or alive-this-there is a fate will-will-worse than death!"

Sugar raises her head, incredulous.

"Don't play the in-innocent with me!" he rages. "Even as we speak, some from-foul old hag like your Mrs Castaway may be in-in-installing her in a from-filthy bawdy-house!"

Sugar bites her lip, and turns away from him, facing the tobacco-stained wallpaper. She breathes regularly and doesn't wipe the tears off her cheeks, but lets them trickle down her chin and into the collar of her dress.

"I'm sure," she says, when she can trust her voice not to betray her, "that Agnes is too frail and unwell to… to be made use of as you fear."

"Haven't you read More Sprees in Like-London?"' he demands, quick as a whiplash. "There's a not-nice little trade in dying girls-or have you forgotten!" And he utters a sharp groan of disgust, as though the eggshell of his innocence has only just this minute been smashed, allowing the offensive stink of human depravity to invade his nostrils.

Sugar sits silent, waiting for him to speak again, but his tantrum appears to have passed, his shoulders have slumped, and after a few minutes she begins to wonder if he's slipped into a doze.

"William?"' she says meekly. "Shall we reply to Mr Woolworth now?"'

Farewell then, 1875.

If there are any rituals of celebration, in the Rackham house, on the 31st of December, they are conducted in secret, and emphatically do not involve the master. Other households all over the metropolis-indeed, throughout the civilised world-may be abuzz with New Year expectancy, but in the house in Chepstow Villas the commencement of a fresh calendar is of pale significance compared to the event everyone is waiting for. Life hangs suspended between two eras: the time before Mrs Rackham's disappearance, and the time-whenever that may come-when her fate is discovered, and the house can exhale its painfully bated breath.

On the first day of January, 1876, the servants busy themselves with their tasks as though it's a day like any other. Baking-pans are greased for loaves that may or may not be required; linen is ironed and added to stacks of superfluous bedding; a quantity of duck flesh which has sprouted maggots has had to be given to Shears for compost, but otherwise efficiency rules. Even Clara walks purposefully up and down the stairs, and in and out of Mrs Rackham's bedroom, warning the other servants, with one scowl from her sour face, that they'd better refrain from asking why.

By contrast, no one could accuse the governess of being surplus to requirements; the first half of New Year's Day finds her fully occupied with her new routine: lessons with Miss Sophie in the morning, a hasty lunch, and then two hours of work for the master in his study.

Sugar and William get down to business without niceties or preambles. The cogs of industry pause for no man or woman; there's no use pleading that one's fingers are broken or that one's head hurts or that one's wife is missing; accounts must be paid, errant suppliers must be pursued, the failure of Rackham's Millefleur Sachets must be unflinchingly confronted.

Sugar writes letters to a number of So-and-So Esquires, gently counsels William to amend the often belligerent and wounded tone of his dictation, and does her best to ensure the letters don't ramble into incoherence. Almost without thinking she translates phrases like "Like-let him chew on that, the scoundrel!" as "Yours, ever", and corrects his arithmetic whenever his patience with numbers is exhausted. Already today he has indulged in one furious outburst against a lampblack manufacturer in West Ham, and now slumps on the ottoman, snoring stertorously through his swollen, blood-clogged nose.

"William?"' says Sugar softly, but he doesn't hear, and she's learned that rousing him with a loud voice makes him very cross indeed, whereas if she lets him sleep he tends to absolve her with a mild reproach.

To help time pass until William's discomforts wake him, or until she must return to Sophie, Sugar reads The Illustrated London News, turning the pages in silence.

She's aware that the police have by now been alerted to Agnes's disappearance, but William's request for utmost discretion has evidently been honoured, for the newspaper makes no mention of Mrs Rackham. Instead, the sensational news of the day is what's dubbed (as if already legendary) The Great Northern Railway Disaster. An engraving, "based upon a sketch hastily made by a survivor of the accident", depicts a squad of burly men in thick coats congregating around an overturned carriage of The Flying Scotsman. The engraver's lack of skill, or perhaps his surfeit of delicacy, makes the rescuers look like postmen offloading sacks of mail, and conveys nothing of the true horror of the event. Thirteen persons dead, twenty-four severely injured, in a dreadful collision at Abbots Ripton, north of Peterborough. A signal frozen into the "Off" position signal is blamed. A calamity to make Colonel Leek's juices surge!

Sugar thinks of Agnes, of course; pictures her being extracted, broken and disembowelled, from the wreckage. Is it conceivable that Agnes took so long to make the journey from Notting Hill to the city, and that she would then have boarded this Edinburgh-bound train? Sugar is at a disadvantage, having no idea what destination Agnes chose once she arrived-if she arrived-at Paddington Station; "Read the boards, and the right name will reveal itself to you" was the only advice the "Holy Sister" gave-the only advice she could give, given Sugar's ignorance of railways and where they go. What if Agnes was charmed by the ecclesiastical ring of "Abbots Ripton", and made up her mind to alight there?

Printed underneath the article is a footnote entitled "The Safety of Rail Travel":

In 1873, 17,246 persons met with violent deaths, averaging 750 per million.

Of these 1,290 were due to railways, 990 to mining, and 6,070 to other mechanical causes; 3,232 were drowned, 1,519 were killed by horses or conveyances, and 1,132 by machinery of various kinds; the rest by falls, burns, suffocation, and other events to which we are liable daily.

While William snores and groans in uneasy dreams, Sugar pictures Agnes falling down a mine-shaft, Agnes floating face-down in a filthy pond, Agnes being scooped screaming into a threshing-machine, Agnes disappearing under the trampling hooves and grinding wheels of a horse and carriage, Agnes pitching headlong off a cliff, Agnes writhing in agony as her body is consumed by flames.

Perhaps she would've been better off in Labaube Sanatorium, after all…

But no. Agnes wasn't on that train, nor has she suffered any of these gruesome fates.

She has done exactly what her Holy Sister told her to. By the evening of the 28th, she was already far out of harm's way, safely housed in a pastoral sanctuary. Imagine a simple farmer toiling in his field, doing… doing whatever it is that farmers do in their fields. He spies a strange woman coming through the corn, or wheat, or whatever; a shabbily dressed, limping woman on the point of collapse. What does she seek? The convent, she says, and swoons at his feet. The farmer carries her to his house, where his wife is stirring a pot of soup…

"Nff! Nff!" moans William, fighting off phantasmagoric attackers with his free hand.

Sugar imagines an alternative story for Agnes: a bewildered Mrs Rackham stumbles out of a rural railway station, by the light of the moon, into a sinister village square, and is instantly set upon by a gang of ruffians, who rob her of the money Sugar gave her, then rip the clothes from her body, wrench her legs apart, and …

The clock chimes two. It's time for

Sophie Rackham's afternoon lessons.

"Excuse me, William," she murmurs, and his whole body jerks.

As the days pass, and the new year that dare not speak its name ventures uneasily forward, it seems the only member of the Rackham household to remain unaffected by Agnes's absence is Sophie. No doubt the child has feelings on the matter, hidden somewhere within her compact, tightly-buttoned frame, but in her articulate responses she betrays nothing more than curiosity.

"Has my Mama still run away?"' she asks each morning, with somewhat blurry grammar and an unreadable expression to match.

"Yes, Sophie," her governess replies, catechism-style, whereaf the day's work begins.

In a topsy-turvy contrast that's not lost on Sugar, Sophie's behaviour is the very epitome of studious calm, patience and maturity, while William Rackham sulks and stammers and bawls, and falls asleep in mid-task, like a querulous infant. Sophie applies herself to the study of Australia with the earnestness of one who might expect to live there shortly, and she memorises the prejudices of ancient English monarchs as though this is quite the most useful information a six-year-old girl could arm herself with.

Even in play, she seems determined to atone for her sinful excesses at Christmas. The gorgeous French doll, which might have expected a busy schedule of social activities, is made to spend a great deal of its time standing in a corner, meditating upon its own vanity, while Sophie sits quietly at her desk drawing with her crayons, producing sketch after sketch depicting a brown-skinned menial mounted on an elephant, each more lovingly rendered than the last.

She's working her way through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland too, a chapter at a time, re-reading each episode over and over until she has either memorised it or understood it, whichever comes first. It's quite the strangest tale she's ever read, but there must be a reason why her governess has given it to her, and the more she reads it, the more accustomed she grows to its terrors, until the animals seem almost as friendly as Mr Lear's. Judging from the illustrations in the later parts she hasn't read yet, the story may be heading for a violent end, but she'll find out when she gets there, and the final three words are "happy summer days", which can't be too bad. Some of the drawings in it she likes very much, like the one of Alice swimming with the Mouse (the only time her face looks carefree), and also the one which has the power to make her laugh out loud every time she sees it, of the uncommonly fat man spinning through the air. It must surely have been executed by a wizard, that drawing-a pattern of inky lines that works as a magic spell, acting directly upon her belly to call forth a hiccup of laughter no matter how hard she tries to resist. As for the part where Alice says "Who in the world am I?

Ah, that's the great puzzle!",

Sophie must take a deep breath whenever she re-reads it, so alarmed is she by this quotation from her most secret thoughts.

"I'm so glad you're enjoying your Christmas book, Sophie," says Miss Sugar, catching her at it once again.

"Very much, Miss," Sophie assures her.

"You are being a very good girl, doing all this reading and sketching while I help your father."

Sophie blushes and bows her head. The desire to be good is not what impels her to draw her poor nigger doll riding on an elephant, nor is it why she reads Alice's adventures and mouths "EAT ME" and "DRINK ME" when no one is listening. She does these things because she is powerless to do otherwise; a mysterious voice, which she doubts is God's, urges her to do them.

"Is it New Zealand's turn yet,

Miss?"' she enquires hopefully.

On the eighth day of Agnes's absence,

Sugar notes that Sophie doesn't bother to ask if her Mama has still run away. A week, it seems, is the maximum time that the child believes a person could possibly remain missing before being discovered. No game of hide and seek could be drawn out to such length, no naughty deed could escape punishment so long. Mrs Agnes Rackham has gone to live in a different house, and that's that.

"Is Papa's hand still sore?"' Sophie asks instead, when she and Sugar have finished eating their lunch and Sugar is about to leave for the study.

"Yes, Sophie."

"He should kiss it and then hold it like this," the child says, demonstrating the manoeuvre with her own right hand and left armpit. "That's what I do." And she gives Sugar an odd suppliant look, as if hoping that her governess will dutifully pass this remedy on to her grateful father.

Sugar does no such thing, of course, when she reports for work in William's study. His visible injuries may be healing quickly, but his temper is worse than ever, and his stutter-to his utter fury-shows no sign of diminishing.

Quaint advice from his daughter is not what he wants to hear.

With third and fourth posts still to be delivered, a daunting pile of correspondence has already accumulated, but precious little work gets done today, for William digresses constantly, bemoaning the treachery and disloyalty of his business associates. He also reminisces about Agnes -one moment asserting that the house is a mere shell without her, and that he'd give anything to hear her sweet voice singing in the parlour; the next that he has endured seven long years of suffering, and is surely entitled to an answer now.

"What answer, my love?"' says Sugar.

"Do I have a will-will-wife, or don't I?"' he groans. "Seven years I-I've been a-a-asking myself that quite-question. You cannot know the torment, of will-will-wishing only to be a husband, and being taken from-for everything else under the sun: an ogre, a from-fraud, a from-fool, a gaoler, a will-well-dressed prop to be so-seen will-with in the So-So-Season-God damn this so-stutter!"

"It's worse when you excite yourself,

William. When you're calm, it's hardly there at all." Is this too arrant a lie? No, he appears to have swallowed it.

Stutter aside, Rackham is definitely on the mend. His sling hangs unused around his neck, and he no longer slumps snoring on the ottoman, but regularly lurches to his feet, to pace the floor. His vision is almost back to normal, and each time he wipes his liberally perspiring face with his handkerchief, more flakes of dried blood are dislodged, revealing pink new flesh underneath.

"Shall we return to business, my love?"'

Sugar suggests, and he grunts assent. For a few short minutes he's composed, humming indulgently as she reads back the letters, nodding his approval of the figures, but then some unfortunate turn of phrase offends him, and the flimsy casing of his temper bursts again.

"Tell the but-blackguard to hang himself with his own from-from-flax!" he exclaims, and, ten minutes later, about a different merchant: "The dirty so-so-swine: he won't get away with this!" To such outbursts, Sugar has learned to respond with a long, tactful pause, before suggesting a more emollient wording.

But if William's reaction to business correspondents is immoderate, it's the soul of rationality compared to his reaction to visiting cards left by women of Agnes's acquaintance.

"Mrs Gooch? She has a like-lot to answer for! There's more gin and opium swilling in her fat hide than in have-half a dozen Child-Cheapside sluts put together. What does the ugly cow will-want, to invite Agnes to one of her so-s@eances?"' "It's a simple calling card, William," says Sugar. "Left as a courtesy."

"God damn the will-woman! If she's so-so clairvoyant, shall-she should know better than to come so-sniffing around here!"

Sugar waits. There are several other calling cards on the silver tray Rose has brought in. "Would you rather," she suggests, "I made no mention of mail that doesn't concern Rackham Perfumeries?"' "No!" he yells. "I will-want to know everything! Tell me everything, d'you hear!"

Ten days after Agnes's disappearance, when the sun peeps through the clouds, Sugar decides to take Sophie out into the garden for her afternoon lessons.

It's not a very pretty or comfortable garden just now -full of discoloured snow, slush and mud, and only the hardiest plants growing-but it makes a change from the house, whose interior is stormy with bad temper and apprehension, from the empyrean thunderbolts of the master to the draughty squalls below stairs.

Now that hopes are fading for Mrs Rackham's safety, the servants have exchanged one anxiety for another: instead of worrying about the brouhaha the mistress will cause when she's fetched home, they've become infected with the fear of their own dismissal. For, if Mrs Rackham doesn't come home, the Rackham household will have too many servants. Clara will be the first casualty, but she may not be the only one; Mr Rackham is in a constant foul temper and makes threats and accusations of incompetence to any girl who fails to anticipate his whims.

Letty has been in tears several times already, and the excitable new kitchenmaid, after being provoked to retort "I 'ain't got yer blessed wife!", was ordered to pack her bags yesterday, only to be reprieved hours later with a gruff retraction.

All in all, it's an unhappy household, pregnant with foreboding. So, out into the grounds Miss Sugar and Miss Rackham go, well rugged up in serge winter-wear, fur-lined boots, and gloves. There's a whole world beyond the Rackham walls, if only one dresses warmly.

First they visit the stable, where Sugar endures an insolent stare from Cheesman in exchange for Sophie's shy smile as she strokes the flank of a horse.

"Don't let that governess of yours get up to any naughty tricks, will you Miss Sophie!" calls Cheesman jovially as they leave.

Next they visit the greenhouses, under the watchful eye of Shears, who won't let them touch anything. Inside the glass receptacles, obscured by a fog of condensation, unseasonal vegetables are being nurtured-the first fruits of Shears's grand plan to have "everything, all year round".

"What are you learning today, Miss Sophie?"' says the gardener, nodding towards the history book her governess hugs to her breast.

"Henry the Eighth," replies the child.

"Very good, very good," says Shears, who sees no point in schooling except to read instructions on bottles of poison. "Never know when he might come in handy."

Social calls over and done with, Sugar and Sophie cross over to the perimeter of the Rackham grounds, and begin to make the rounds of its fences, exactly as Sugar used to do when she was spying on the house, except on a different side of the metal railings. Seeing the house now, without being obliged to squint through a barrier of wrought-iron, Sugar reminds herself that she once ached to know what lay inside those walls, and now she knows. Cheesman can be as insolent as he likes: she's come further than she could ever have dreamed, and she'll go further yet.

As they walk, Sugar relates the story of Henry VIII, as sensationally as she can, and with not the slightest qualm about embellishing. Indeed, she must discipline herself not to reproduce too much of the protagonists' conversation, for fear of straining Sophie's seemingly limitless credulity. The history of this dangerous king, with its simple plot and six complementary episodes, so much resembles a fairy-tale that Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves could almost be the Three Little Pigs or the Three Bears.

"If Henry the Eighth wanted a son so badly, Miss," asks Sophie, "why didn't he marry a lady who already had one?"' "Because the son must be his own."

"But wouldn't any lady's son belong to him, Miss, as soon as he married her?"' "Yes, but to be a true heir, the son must be of the king's own blood."

"Is that what babies are made of,

Miss?"' enquires Sophie, there at the perimeter of the Rackham grounds, on the eighth of January 1876, at half past two in the afternoon. "Blood?"'

Sugar opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it again.

One squirt of slime from the man, one fishy egg in the woman, and behold: they shall call his name Emmanuel, prompts Mrs Castaway helpfully.

Sugar passes a hand across her forehead.

"Uh… no, dear, babies aren't made of blood."

"How are they made, then, Miss?"'

For a moment Sugar considers wild fabrications involving elves and fairies. Discounting these, she next remembers God, but the notion of God being responsible for conjuring individual infants into being, when He shows so little interest in their subsequent welfare, seems even more absurd.

"Well, Sophie," she says, "the way it happens is… uh… babies are grown."

"Like plants?"' says Sophie, peering over the lawn at the coffin-like glasshouses and cucumber-frames littering Shears's domain.

"Yes, a little like plants, I suppose."

"Is that why Uncle Henry was put in the ground, Miss, when he was dead? To grow babies?"' "No, no, Sophie dear," says Sugar hastily, astonished at the child's ability to uncork the genies of death, birth and generation all at once. "Babies are grown in… they are grown in…"

It's no use. No words will come, and even if they did, they'd mean nothing to the child.

Sugar considers reaching down and touching Sophie on the belly; recoils from the thought.

"In here," she says, laying one gloved palm on her own stomach. Sophie stares dumbly at the ten splayed fingers for a few seconds before asking the inevitable question.

"How, Miss?"'

"If I had a husband," says Sugar, proceeding with caution, "he could… plant a seed in me, and I might grow a child."

"Where do the husbands get the seeds,

Miss?"' "They make them. They're clever that way.

Henry the Eighth wasn't quite so clever, it seems." And with that, the conversation is steered back into the tranquil waters of Tudor history-or so Sugar thinks.

But, hours later, when Sophie has been bathed and powdered and put into bed, and Sugar is tucking the blanket up to her chin and playfully arranging the halo of wispy blond hair on the pillow all around her sleepy head, there is one more thing to be fathomed before the extinguishing of the light.

"I came out of Mama, then."

Sugar stiffens. "Yes," she says warily.

"And Mama came out of…"

"Her Mama," concedes Sugar.

"And her Mama came out of her Mama, and her Mama came out of her Mama, and her Mama came out of her Mama…" The child is on the verge of sleep, repeating the words like nonsense verse.

"Yes, Sophie. All the way back through history."

Without knowing why, Sugar suddenly longs to crawl into bed with Sophie, to hug her tight and be hugged in return, to kiss Sophie's face and hair, then clasp the child's head against her bosom and rock her gently until they're both asleep.

"All the way back to Adam and Eve?"' says Sophie.

"Yes."

"And who was Eve's mother?"'

Sugar is too tired, at this stage of the evening, to think of solutions to religious enigmas, especially since she knows William is waiting for her in his study, with another stockpile of Rackham correspondence and irritable outbursts. "Eve didn't have a mother," she sighs.

Sophie doesn't reply. Either she's fallen asleep, or this explanation strikes her as quite credible, given what she's learned of the world so far.

"Tell me," challenges William without warning, when Sugar is half-way through the scribing of a letter to Grover Pankey, concerning the brittleness of ivory. "Did you and A-Agnes ever become… intimate?"'

Sugar lifts her face, and carefully lays the fully-loaded pen on the blotter.

"Intimate?"'

"Yes, intimate," says Rackham.

"The police detectives, will-when they spoke with the servants, were particularly interested in so-so-special from-friendships."

"Police? Here in the house? When was this?"'

Even as she asks, she recalls Sophie standing at the school-room window with her spyglass, commenting on the departure of yet more "tradespersons" belatedly soliciting Christmas charity. "No one spoke to me."

"No," says William, turning his face away from her. "I this-thought it was best they left you alone, because you will-were occupied with Sophie, and in-in case you might-for will-whatever reason-already be known to the police."

Sugar stares across the desk at him. He's done his pacing for the evening, and has, for the last hour, been stretched out on the ottoman. All she can see is his turban of bandage, his by-now rather grubby sling, and his foreshortened legs, which he keeps crossing and uncrossing. It's difficult to believe that she ever was his lover, that she should have spent so many hours and nights in Priory Close bathing and perfuming her body especially for him.

"A-Agnes from-formed some damn peculiar attachments will-will-with will-women she barely knew.

Will-we've from-found out she wrote to Emmeline From-Fox begging her for the ad-address of Heaven."

"I didn't know your wife at all," says Sugar evenly.

"When the police in-interviewed Clara, she said A-Agnes insisted that the person who from-fetched her back from the coach-house was her guardian angel, always at her so-side, her only from-friend in all the world."

A chill of nauseous guilt travels down Sugar's spine, simultaneous with an almost uncontrollable urge to giggle-a combination which, despite her long experience of abnormal physical sensations, she has to admit she's never felt before.

"The whole affair took five minutes at most," she tells William. "I heard her calling, I found her in the coach-house, and I escorted her back into the house. I didn't say who I was, and she didn't ask."

"Yet she trusted you?"' "I suppose she had no reason to mistrust me," says Sugar, "never having met me."

William turns and looks directly into her eyes. She holds his gaze, unblinking, innocent, calling upon the same reserves that have in the past allowed her to persuade dangerous customers that she's more useful to them alive and yielding, than strangled and unco-operative.

The clock strikes half past the hour of ten, and William sags back against the ottoman.

"I mustn't keep you," he sighs.

Next day, having hurried to William's study shortly after lunch as usual, Sugar finds the room empty.

"William?"' she calls softly, as though he might spring, like a jack-in-the-box, from a cigar-case or a filing cabinet. But no: she's alone.

She takes her seat at the helm of

Rackham Perfumeries and waits for a few minutes, tidying stacks of paper, browsing through The Times. A new steamer is offering passage to America and back in twenty-five days, including visits to New York and Niagara Falls, leaving from Liverpool every Thursday.

Sol Aurine produces the golden tint so much admired for five shillings and sixpence. An article called "A Multitude of Mishaps" collects together the week's explosions, fires and other calamities for the benefit of Colonel Leek. There's a civil war in Spain, and another in Herzegovina.

France is in a delicate new state. Sugar finds herself wondering what a republican victory in the elections might mean to the French perfume industry.

Also on the desk is a small stack of unopened correspondence. Should she make a start on it before William has the chance to complicate matters with his bad temper? She could read what his business associates have to say, plan the appropriate response, and then, when William arrives, pretend to open the letters afresh, loudly slitting a different side of the envelope with the paper knife…

The clock ticks. After five minutes of idleness, she toys with the possibility of summoning a servant to the study and enquiring after William's whereabouts, but she can't quite muster the audacity to pull the bell-cord. Instead she leaves the study and goes downstairs, something she rarely does without Sophie in tow. Discoloured patches of the carpet appear under her shoes; she hadn't noticed them until now. Stains of Agnes's blood. No, not stains: the vigorously scrubbed absence of stains, leaving a blush of cleanness on surfaces otherwise subtly tarnished.

Tiptoeing, Sugar pokes her face into each of the rooms until she finds Rose-a rather startled and guilty-looking Rose, caught in the act of reading a tuppenny storybook by the parlour fire, with her feet on the coal-chest. In an instant, the easy familiarity they shared at Christmas shrivels like lace in a flame, and they are governess and housemaid.

"Mr Rackham had no appointments today, as far as I'm aware," says Sugar primly.

"I don't suppose you know…?"' "Mr Rackham was fetched early this morning, Miss Sugar," says Rose,

"by police."

"By… police," echoes Sugar, like a half-wit.

"Yes Miss Sugar," says Rose, clutching her book against her bosom, its lurid front cover obscured in favour of the back which, instead of a swooning slave-girl proclaims the wonders of Beecham's Pills. "They came for him at about nine o'clock."

"I see," says Sugar. "I don't suppose you know why, Rose?"'

Rose licks her lips nervously.

"Please don't tell anyone I said so, Miss, but I think Mrs Rackham has been found."

William Rackham signals, with nods of his head and inarticulate grunts, that the two police officers who've caught him can safely let him go. He is ready, once more, to stand on his own two feet; his moment of giddiness has passed, and he no longer needs to be supported under the armpits.

"If you can manage it, sir," advises the mortuary attendant, "concentrate your attention on the parts that are least corrupted."

William steps forward, looking all around him, confirming that he is in Hell-an echoing, hissing, phosphorescent factory chamber whose apparent purpose is to manufacture the dead.

Breathing the vile atmosphere-a vinegary, camphoric concoction kept at glacial temperature-more shallowly than he did when he was first brought in, he forces his chin to dip lower, and looks down at the naked corpse on the slab.

The body is Agnes's height, extremely thin, and female: that much he can swear to. A recent dousing of fresh water from the mortuary attendant's hose has given it a glassy sheen; it glistens and sparkles under the mercilessly bright lights overhead.

The face… the face is slack-jawed and half-rotten, an approximation of humanity, like a raw chicken carved into the shape of a face, an appalling culinary prank that was left uncooked.

Three holes yawn in it: a mouth without lips or tongue, and two eye-sockets empty of eyes; each orifice is half-full of water and shimmers with reflected light. William imagines Agnes floating under the sea, imagines fish swimming up to her open eyes and nibbling tentatively at the plum-like flesh of her china-blue irises-and he sways on his feet, to gruff cries of "Steady, steady!" on either side of him.

Attempting to take the attendant's advice, William searches for some part of the body that's in tolerably good condition. This woman's-or girl's-hair is darkened from its sousing, and matted; if he could see it dried and neatly combed, he'd be able to tell its true colour…

Her breasts are quite full, like Agnes's, but the space between them has suffered a deep injury against submarine rock, ploughing the flesh apart, exposing the sternum, altering the contours of the bosom. There seems no part of the carcass on which he can rest his eyes without being revolted by the unveiling of bloody bone through chafed flesh, or a luridly pigmented blight on what ought to be alabaster perfection. On the gnawed hands, a few of the fingers are more complete than others, but there's no wedding ring-a fact which the police inspector has already warned him means nothing, since every corpse dredged out of the Thames is bare of jewels by the time it reaches Pitchcott Mortuary, however gaudy it may have been when it first fell in.

William's eyes blur; his skull feels as though it will burst. What do these people want of him?

What answer are they waiting for? Faced with a body so disfigured, would any other husband be able to do better? Are there men who could identify their wives from three square inches of unblemished flesh-an uncorrupted curve of shoulder, the precise shape of her ankle? If so, these wives must surely have offered their husbands more opportunities for intimate acquaintance than Agnes ever offered him! Perhaps, if it were Sugar here on this slab…

"We understand, sir, if…" begins the police inspector, and William groans in panic: the moment of truth has come, and he mustn't be found wanting! One last time he surveys the corpse, and this time he focuses on the triangle of pubic hair and the mount of Venus from which it sprouts, a small haven of peachy flesh and delicate fleece which has escaped miraculously undamaged. He closes his eyes tight, and conjures forth the vision of Agnes on her wedding night, the only other occasion on which she lay exposed to his gaze in quite this pose.

"This is shall-she," he announces hoarsely.

"This is my wife."

The words, although his own voice has uttered them, deal him a ferocious blow: he reels as the fabric of his present and his past is wrenched asunder. The features of the woman on the slab swim out of focus, then sharpen fantastically, like a photograph emerging from developing fluid, until she is Agnes, and he cannot bear what has become of her. His Agnes, dead! His exquisite, angel-voiced bride, blighted, reduced to butcher's refuse on a slab. If she had died seven years ago when he was courting her, on that same sunny afternoon when he bade her sit perfectly still for his camera and she looked at him as if to say, Yes, I am yours; and if she had fallen into the Thames an hour later, and he had searched desperately for her all the seven years since, diving and diving in the same stretch of river; and if he had only just now pulled her lifeless body from the water, he could not have been more distressed than he is now.

Convulsed with sobs and stammering blasphemies, he allows the steady arms of other men to escort him from the mortuary, a widower.