The Crimson petal and the white

THIRTY

MRS. AGNES RACKHAM, wife of the Perfume Manufacturer whose products bear that name, was found drowned in the Thames on Friday.

Although convalescing from rheumatic fever, she had made the journey from her Notting Hill residence to attend a concert at the Music School in Lambeth Palace, and a misunderstanding resulted in her being separated from her companions.

Strong winds, slippery conditions on Lambeth Pier and Mrs. Rackham's delicate health were the reasons given by the police for the fatal accident. This tragedy comes only four months after Henry Rackham, Mrs. Rackham's brother-in-law, lost his life in a house fire. A funeral service will be held for Mrs. Rackham at her parish church of St.

Mark's, Notting Hill, on Thursday at eleven o'clock.

Sugar hunches over the chamber-pot, stares down into its glossy porcelain interior, and inserts three fingers in her mouth. It takes a lot to make her gag, and her fingernails are scratching her gullet before she's rewarded with a retch. But nothing substantial comes, only saliva.

Damn! For the last week, or even longer-let's say, ever since Agnes's disappearance-she's been sick most mornings, obliged to excuse herself from the school-room when the lessons are scarcely underway, to vomit up her breakfast. (small wonder, what with her dread of Agnes being apprehended, her fears for her own part in the affair being discovered, the hazards of William's terrible moods, and the sheer fatigue caused by working-hours that start at dawn and end at midnight!) Today she's worried that if she doesn't get her vomit over with now, in privacy, it will demand satisfaction of her later, in public, where she has nowhere to hide.

She looks up at the clock; the funeral coaches are due to arrive any minute; her breakfast is determined to stay just where it is. She rises to her feet, and is dismayed to note that the heavy crape of her mourning dress is already wrinkled. The horrid stuff creases at the slightest opportunity, the bodice is so tight it pinches her ribs when she breathes, and the double-stitched seam where the bodice joins the skirts is chafing her hips. Could the seamstresses at Peter Robinson's have made a mistake? The box in which these clothes were dispatched has her measurements pencilled on the lid, exactly as she stated them on the order slip William had her complete, but the garments are a poor fit.

Sugar has never been to a funeral before, though she's read about them. In her former life, dead prostitutes simply disappeared, without fuss or ceremony; one day there'd be a corpse lying in a darkened room, the next day there'd be sunlight beaming in on an empty mattress, and bed-linen hanging out on the ropes between the houses. Where did the bodies go? Sugar was never told. Oh, there was that time when poor little Sarah McTigue was sold to a student doctor, but that wouldn't have happened very often, surely? Maybe all the dead whores were clandestinely dumped in the Thames.

One thing was certain: they didn't have funerals.

"Must Sophie go?"' she dared to ask William when he first gave the command. "Isn't it unusual for a child-"' "I don't care if I put the world's not-nose out of joint!" he retorted, colouring up at once. "A-Agnes was a Rackham.

There are damn from-few of us left, and we should all be there to more-mourn her."

"Could she perhaps go to the church service, but not to the graveyard?"' "All of it, all of it.

A-Agnes was more-my wife, and Sophie is more-my daughter. They say from-females at a from-funeral bring a risk of will-weeping. What's wrong with will-weeping at a from-funeral? Someone has died, for God's sake! Now stop people-paltering and write your more-measurements on this slip…"

Sugar breathes shallowly, biliously, in her tight dress. For the dozenth time, she unfolds the torn-out newspaper page and re-reads the announcement of Agnes's death. Every word of it is engraved on her memory, but still there's something eerily authoritative about the actual print; the lies are stamped indelibly into the very fibres of the paper. Thousands of replications of this tragic little story, about the convalescing lady undone by her love of musical divertissements, have spilled from the printing presses and been disseminated into thousands of households. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword; it has killed Agnes Rackham and consigned her to History.

To prevent herself re-reading Agnes's death notice yet again, Sugar picks up one of her splendid volumes of Shakespeare. Truth to tell, she's barely peeked in them since receiving them, having been so preoccupied with children's schoolbooks and stolen diaries. It's high time she exercised the more… literary muscles of her brain.

She flips through the pages, searching for Titus Andronicus, which she used to think was unjustly underestimated-in fact, she recalls defending its gory frenzy for the benefit of a certain George W. Hunt when she first met him in The Fireside. Having found Titus now, she can't make head nor tail of it; she must have been mad. William did tell her, on that first night, that she would come around to King Lear in the end-and he was right. She flips through the pages, reading no more than a word here and there, pausing only to look at the illustrations.

What's happened to her intellect? Has caring for Sophie softened her brain? She who once regarded the million words of Clarissa as a banquet, and would devour the latest book by Elizabeth Eiloart or Matilda Houston in a single sitting… Here she is, staring stupidly at an engraving of Lady Macbeth standing poised to jump off a parapet, as if this leather-bound compendium of literature were nothing more than a picture book for infants.

From outside the window comes the sound of horses' hoofs and a crunching of gravel: the funeral coaches have arrived. She ought to return to the school-room immediately, and show herself ready and able to chaperone Miss Rackham, but she looks through the window-pane first, leaning as close as she can short of pressing her nose to the glass. No doubt Sophie is doing the same.

There are two coaches-and-fours visible below.

One of the horses is directly under her bedroom window, fidgeting and snorting. In a more mischievous past she might have thrown a missile down on its nodding, befeathered head, or even aimed for the sable top hats of the coachmen perched behind. She can make out at least six sombre officiaries taking turns to poke their heads out of the coaches' curtained windows. Every detail is monochrome: men, horses and harness, woodwork, wheels and upholstery, even the carriage-way gravel from which the last snow has melted: all black. Thoughtlessly Sugar wipes at the breath-clouded window-pane with her sleeve, then desists when she realises two things with a jolt: that crape is not waterproof, but leaves a grey smear on wet glass; and that the men down below may think she's waving to them.

She steps back from the window, shoves the chamber-pot back under the bed, snatches her gloves out of the Peter Robinson's box, and hurries to rejoin Sophie.

Sophie is at the window of the school-room, peering down at the horses and carriages with her spyglass. The French doll stands in the corner, its pink ball gown and bare arms more or less hidden under a makeshift cape of black tissue-paper, its plumed hat crudely disguised under a shawl fashioned from a black handkerchief. Sophie's own mourning-clothes are not so flimsy; they encase her diminutive body like a black cocoon.

"They have come for us, Miss," she says, without turning.

"I'm a little frightened, Sophie," says Sugar, her black-gloved hand hovering in the air near Sophie's shoulder, hesitating to stroke it. "Are you a little frightened, too?"' Ever since being told of her mama's death, the child has neither wept nor misbehaved, instead exhibiting a stoicism too breezy to be true. Surely one cannot lose one's mother and feel nothing?

"Nurse told me all about funerals,

Miss," says Sophie, pivoting on her heel to face her governess. She lowers the spyglass and collapses its ridged metal skin, with an oiled click, to the shortest length.

"We shan't have to do anything, only watch."

Sugar bends to re-tie the ribbon of Sophie's bonnet, hoping that the gentleness with which her fingers brush against Sophie's throat will reassure the child that she need only give a sign -the merest sign-of distress, and Miss Sugar will give her all the sympathy and affection she craves. But the over-gentle tying of a ribbon communicates no such thing: it only makes a knot that's too loose, as though the governess is too clumsy and weak-fingered to dress a child properly.

"What a sad beginning this is to the year!" sighs Sugar, but Sophie doesn't nibble at the hook.

"Yes, Miss," she says, in deference to the greater authority of her guardian.

A pit four feet wide, six feet long and six feet deep has been dug in the dark, moist earth, and it is around this neat cavity that the throng of Agnes Rackham's acquaintance is gathered. They stand shoulder to shoulder, or very nearly, allowing for the minimum proper distance between one body and another. Doctor Crane stands at the grave's head, conducting the proceedings in his trumpustuous voice. He's already delivered a long sermon in the church beforehand; now it appears he's going to deliver it all over again, for the benefit of the additional mourners who've turned up for this stage of Mrs Rackham's send-off.

The slender and petite coffin, swathed in black velvet and garlanded with white blossoms, has been carried to the graveside by the undertaker's assistants (the pallbearers being no more than an escort of honour) and now lies waiting on the rector's word. It has a pregnant aura about it, as though it might burst open at any moment to discharge a living person, or the corpse of someone other than the deceased, or even a spill of potatoes. Such are the macabre fancies of quite a few of the mourners-not just those two who have reason to doubt that the casket contains Agnes Rackham. ("It was she? You're sure?"' Sugar asked William as soon as he returned from Pitchcott Mortuary.

"I… yes, I'm sh-sh-sure," he replied, eyes glassy, sweat twinkling in his beard. "As sh-sh-sh… as certain as I can-can be."

"What was she wearing?"' Anything, please, but a shabby dark-blue dress with a grey apron front, and a pale-blue cloak…

"Shall-she was not-naked."

"But was she found naked?"' "God almighty, d'you this-think I will-would ask such a question? Ach, if you could have seen will-will-what I have so-seen today…!"

"What have you seen, William? What have you seen?"'

But he only shuddered, and screwed his eyes tight, and left the state of Agnes's body to Sugar's imagination. "Oh God, I pray this-this is the end of it!"

Whereupon she stepped forward and embraced him, inhaling the vile odour with which his clothing was permeated. She stroked his clammy back, murmured assurances in his ear, saying yes, yes, this was indeed the end of it, and it was Agnes he saw, and thousands of people are drowned every year, more lives are lost that way than from almost any other cause, it said so in the newspaper only a week ago, and think of the weather on the night Agnes ran away, and her perilously delicate state.

On and on she prattled, until his sobbing and shuddering subsided, and he was still.) Now he stands erect and solemn, a waxwork at the graveside, his face the instantly identifiable emblem of Rackham Perfumeries set atop the dark column of his mourning-suit.

His facial injuries are disguised under a film of Rackham cosmetics expertly applied by Sugar, and his right hand-the only part of him that cannot be clothed according to strict convention-is sheathed in a loose black mitten and supported in a black sling. Underneath the tight circumference of his hat, his head throbs to a dolorous rhythm.

Unlike Henry's funeral, which was conducted in the rain, Agnes's ceremony is blessed with a clear sky, a lukewarm sun and a mild breeze. Two birds chirrup in the bare trees above, discussing the progress of Winter and the possibility that they will live to see Spring. The mourners fail to interest them; this jostling assembly of black creatures may have the attentive, hungry look of crows, and some of them are even festooned with feathers, but they've congregated in the wrong place, the silly things: there's no food here, not a crumb.

Just for curiosity's sake, though, who has come today? What human beings have made the journey from their comfortable nests to witness Agnes Rackham being committed to the earth?

Well, Lord Unwin of course-although what he would have done had he not happened to be vacationing in England, and had instead been in his more accustomed haunts of Italy or Tunisia, is anyone's guess. Nevertheless, he's here, and his beautiful wife too, although she and Mrs Rackham regrettably never met.

Henry Calder Rackham is the patriarch on William's side, a less distinguished looking specimen than Agnes's step-father, true, but not bad for his age. Poor man: the prospects of a grandson have grown dimmer the older he's become; first he had two sons, one determined to be a bachelor clergyman and the other determined to be a bachelor profligate; then one son was dead and the other married to a woman whose child-bearing efforts stopped short of a male; now even she is gone. Well may he look glum.

Who else has come? Well, moving on to the other sex: Lady Bridgelow, as well as a great many ladies of Agnes's acquaintance, among them Mrs Canham, Mrs Battersleigh, Mrs Amphlett, Mrs Maxwell, Mrs Fitzhugh, Mrs Gooch, Mrs Marr-and is that Mrs Abernethy over there? Oh dear, one really should know. It looks like Mrs Abernethy, but wasn't Mrs Abernethy supposed to have moved to India? Only after this ceremony is concluded will it be possible to clear up these little mysteries.

And that child? Who is that child, standing in front of her whey-faced scarecrow of a governess? Sophie Rackham, is it? Some of the ladies gathered here today were aware that Mrs Rackham had a daughter, others not. They stare at the little girl inquisitively, noting the similarity to the father's bone structure, though she has her mother's eyes.

What a curious funeral this is!

So many women, and hardly any men! Did Mrs Rackham have no male relations? No brothers, cousins, nephews? Apparently not. There are rumoured to be several living uncles, but they're … well, they're Catholics, and not of the decently discreet sort, but firebrands and crackpots.

What about Doctor Curlew, Mrs

Rackham's physician? Mightn't one expect him to be here? Ah, but he's in Antwerp, adding his views to a symposium on myxoedema. That's his daughter, Mrs Emmeline Fox, standing inconspicuously at the back of the crowd. Another widow! My goodness, have you ever been to a funeral before that had so many widows and widowers in attendance! Even Lady Unwin isn't the original Lady Unwin, you know-no, even Agnes Rackham's mother wasn't that-there was another, a third, that is to say a first, Lady Unwin, who died almost the instant she was married, and then, within a matter of weeks, Lord Unwin met Violet Pigott, you know, who was herself a widow-are you keeping up? Really, it was all rather a scandal, best left forgotten in the mists of history, especially on a solemn occasion such as the one for which we're gathered here today, at which gossip is unseemly, and besides, Violet Pigott was twirling her parasol at Lord Unwin when his poor wife's body was barely cold, and who knows what errors of judgement a newly widowed man may make in the madness of his grief?

Anyway, all that's in the past, and we won't speak of it any more, especially as none of us is acquainted with the full facts, not even Mrs Fitzhugh, whose older sister knew the first Lady Unwin intimately. She's the one wearing the black feather boa, and will certainly be attending Mrs Barr's party tomorrow afternoon, an informal affair for ladies only.

But where were we? Ah yes, Mrs Fox.

She's looking well, isn't she? Half a year ago, there was every expectation that she should attend no more funerals except her own; and here she is, proving you never can tell. were she and Mrs Rackham particularly well acquainted, though?

The two of them never appeared in public together, as far as anyone can recall. Perhaps she's here as a representative of her father? She looks regretful, but-dare one say it?-ever-so-slightly disapproving. She's a staunch advocate of cremation, did you know? Doctor Crane can't abide her; she stood up during one of his sermons once and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but that isn't true!" Can you imagine that?

I wish I had been there…

Anyway, here she is, keeping her counsel while Doctor Crane speaks. She's dry-eyed and dignified-indeed, all the ladies are dry-eyed and dignified, a credit to the occasion. Mrs Gooch ventures a snivel at one point, but perceives herself to be alone in it, and instantly desists.

And the men? How are they bearing up? William Rackham's expression is one of pained bewilderment; no doubt his wife's death is a wound whose true severity has yet to register upon him. Lord Unwin's grief is so well controlled that it almost resembles boredom. Henry Calder Rackham stands still and melancholy, his attention never wavering from the rector, his chest expanding with a deep, silent sigh each time a pause in the oration is broken by a fresh salvo.

Doctor Crane's monologue appears to be reaching its climax: he's just made a tantalising reference to "ashes and dust", which must surely mean the coffin will very soon be lowered into the hole. Ashes and dust, he reminds his congregation, are our only material remains, but compared to our spiritual remains they mean nothing. In the harsh glare of physical death, our soul stands revealed as the original essence from which a small, almost insignificant particle-the body-has been shed. Mrs Rackham's corporeal form is no loss to her, for she lives on, not only in the memory of her character and deeds, to which all those gathered here can no doubt attest, but, more importantly, in the bosom of her heavenly Father.

Remembered with fondness by all who were blessed to know her-the world's loss was Heaven's gain, reads the inscription on the tombstone, almost identical to the one on Henry's stone nearby, for how can a man in the throes of bereavement compose clever new words? Did they expect a metaphysical poem from him, in the style of Herbert? Is there anyone here who could have done better, in his shoes? Death is too obscene for pretty verses.

William stares at the coffin as the undertaker's assistants lift it onto the ropes.

His jaw is rigid as he resists the temptation to dab the sweat on his brow, for fear that the patina of Rackham's Foundation Cream and Rackham's Peach Blush will come off on his handkerchief, unveiling the scabs and bruises. The time has come: the slender, lustrously varnished box is finally lowered into the grave, and Doctor Crane intones his age-old incantation to help it on its way. William is not comforted; "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is all very fine as graveside oratory, but from a brutally scientific point of view, ash is the stuff of cremation, not burial.

The corpse inside this casket is already well advanced in its metamorphosis, as William knows from having seen it on the mortuary slab, but its end product will not be ash; it will be a liquid, or at most an unguent.

Indeed, in William's mind, the corpse has already deteriorated from what he saw last week and, as the coffin descends smoothly into the pit, he pictures the lacerated and putrid flesh wobbling like jelly within. He swallows hard, to suppress a groan of horror. How strange, the way he can't believe that anything solid of Agnes remains, whereas his brother Henry-who has lain in the ground for months and must therefore, logically, be in a far worse state -he pictures mummified, firm as a log.

Even in the grave, his brother puts up a wooden resistance to corruption, a stiff integrity, whereas (in William's imaginings) Agnes's volatility, her typically female instability, condemns her to alchemical dissolution.

He looks away; he can't bear it. Tears sting his eyes; is there anyone here today who doesn't secretly believe he drove his wife to suicide? They despise him, all these women, all these gossipy "intimates"; in their hearts, they blame him; who can he turn to? He cannot look to Sugar, for she stands with Sophie, and he can't face the thought of what's to be done with Agnes's child now that all hope of her having a mother is gone. Instead, in desperation, he looks to Lady Bridgelow, and is amazed -and deeply moved-to see that her eyes, too, are shining. You brave, brave man, she is saying. Not aloud, of course, but in every other way possible. He shuts his eyes tight, and sways on his feet, and listens to the sound of soil falling on soil.

Eventually there's a gentle tug on his arm.

He opens his eyes, half-expecting to see a female face, but it's one of the officiaries.

"This way, if you please, sir."

William gapes, uncomprehending.

The officiary points to the world beyond the churchyard with a black-gloved hand. "The carriages are waiting for you, sir."

"Yes… I… ah…" he stammers, then claps shut his mouth. All day, he has dreaded having to speak, to account for himself and stutter out the reasons why Agnes is not alive and well. Suddenly he appreciates he's not required to say anything. He is excused. There are no questions. It's time to go home.

Next day, Clara Tillotson is dismissed.

Or, to put it more diplomatically, she is sent on her way with Rackham's blessing, to find employment in a household whose master is not a widower.

"In the changed circumstances": that's the phrase William used, when breaking the news to her. Of course, it was hardly news, and she knew very well what was coming, so why couldn't she have spared him the nuisance and simply disappeared overnight, taking her wasp waist and her sharp little snout with her? Ah yes: because she needed a letter of recommendation. Couldn't he have left one out in the hall for her, dangling by a ribbon from the hat-stand?

No, of course he couldn't. Much as he despises the girl, he was obliged to endure one more encounter with her.

Mind you, on her final day of employment in the Rackham house, Clara's demeanour undergoes a remarkable transformation; she's as sweet as a flower-seller and as servile as a shoeblack.

Why, she almost smiled! Early in the morning, she has exercised that skill so highly valued in a lady's-maid: packing clothes and other belongings into a suitcase so that they'll emerge at their destination uncreased and undamaged. The sum total of her possessions fills fewer cases than Agnes took to Folkestone Sands; to be precise, one trunk, one small tartan suitcase, and a hat-box.

Rackham doesn't see her off; in fact, when the cab arrives to fetch her, not one member of the household can spare a minute to come and wave her goodbye. Only Cheesman is on hand, helpful and cheerful, lifting her cases for her, loudly assuring her that today is the first day of a new life, laying his sinewy paw against the small of her back as she steps into the coach. Caught between conflicting desires to weep against his chest and spit in his face, Clara does nothing, allows him to flick the hem of her skirt out of harm's way as he shuts the cabin door, and sits stony-faced as the vehicle jerks into motion.

In her reticule, in her lap, nestles William Rackham's letter of recommendation, which she hasn't yet read. The etiquette of applications for employment is such that there's a subtle but distinct advantage in handing over a sealed, virgin envelope, thus suggesting one's supreme confidence that it can contain nothing less than the highest praise. Once Clara is settled at her sister's place, she'll have plenty of leisure to steam the envelope open-at which time she'll discover that Rackham describes her as being of average intelligence, admirably loyal to her mistress if less than ideally so to her master, a canny and competent lady's-maid whose lack of a sweet temperament need not be an obstacle to loyal service to a compatible employer. Then Clara will blaze with fury, and lament her lost chance to tell that pompous, vulgar bully Rackham precisely what she thinks of him, and her sister will tactfully agree, knowing in her heart that Clara wouldn't have dared utter a peep, in case Rackham snatched the letter back again and tore her future to pieces on the doorstep.

"A pox on that house!" Clara will cry.

"I hope everyone in it dies and rots in

Hell!"

Yes, that's what she'll say later. But for now, she bites her lower lip, counts the trees as her cab trundles past Kensington Gardens, and wonders if the ghost of Mrs Rackham will haunt her for stealing a few small items of jewellery. What would a ghost care about a few bracelets and earrings, especially ones she scarcely ever wore and which she probably wouldn't even have missed while she was alive? If there's any justice in the world, nothing will come of this theft, except a little much-needed money. Ah, but the dead are rumoured to be vengeful… Clara hopes that Mrs Rackham, wherever she may be, remembers the long years during which her lady's-maid was her only ally against her detestable husband, and that she can find it in her ethereal heart to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

It's unseasonably mild weather, and the sun shines as brightly as anyone could want, the day that Sugar turns twenty.

Despite the fact that January 19th is by rights the heart of Winter, the last vestiges of slush have been swept off the streets, birds sing in the trees, and high above Sugar's head the sky is lavender-blue and the clouds eggshell-white, like a colour plate in a children's story-book. Beneath her feet the grass of the public garden is wet, but not with snow or rain, only melted frost, scarcely enough to dampen her boots. The only firm evidence of the season is the long tongue of opaque ice that hangs from the mouth of a stone dragon perched on the rim of the garden's empty fountain, but even this icicle glimmers and perspires, slowly yielding to a great thaw.

On a day just like this, thinks Sugar, I was born.

Sophie looks up at the stone dragon, then up at her governess, wordlessly requesting permission to examine the monster closer. Sugar nods assent and, with some difficulty (for her mourning-clothes are extremely tight and stiff) Sophie clambers up onto the fountain's edge, steadied by her governess's hands. The child finds her balance, one mittened hand pressed to the dragon's bone-grey flank. Not very elegant, these old woolly mittens of hers, but the tiny pigskin gloves her father gave her at Christmas never did fit, and when Miss Sugar tried to put them on a glove-stretcher for grown-ups, one of them burst.

Sophie leans her face right under the dragon's stone jaws, and shyly extends her pink tongue towards the glistening spike of ice.

"Don't do that, Sophie! It's dirty."

The child pulls back as sharply as if she's been smacked.

"I'll tell you what to do instead: why not break it off?"' Dismayed by how easy it is to frighten a child, Sugar is keen to restore Sophie's cheerful spirits. "Go on: give it a whack!"

Hesitantly Sophie extends her mitt and pats the great gob of ice, to no effect. Then, after more encouragement from her governess, she fetches it a biff, and it snaps off. A feeble trickle of ochre-stained water gurgles out of the exposed iron spout.

"There you are, Sophie!" says Sugar.

"You've got it started."

Under the watchful eye of her governess, Sophie walks the imaginary tightrope of the fountain's rim. The full skirts of her mourning-dress make it hard for her to see her own feet, but she advances slowly and solemnly, her arms extended, wing-like, for balance.

Is it permissible, according to the rules of mourning, for a bereaved daughter to be taken out in public mere days after the funeral? Sugar hasn't the faintest idea, but who's to reprimand her if it isn't? The Rackham servants don't say boo to a goose, and William has secluded himself so absolutely in his study-a grief-stricken widower for all the world to see, or rather not see-that he's hardly in a position to know what she gets up to when she's not with him.

And if he should discover the truth, what of it?

Must she and Sophie skulk in a darkened house, stifling in an atmosphere where laughter is forbidden and black the order of the day from breakfast to bedtime? No! She refuses to creep around under a pall! Sophie's lessons will be conducted out of doors as often as possible, in the public parks and gardens of Notting Hill. The poor child has spent quite enough of her life hidden away like a squalid secret.

"Time for your History rhymes, little one,"

Sugar announces, and Sophie's face lights up. If there's one thing she likes better than play, it's work. She looks down at the ground, preparing to leap off the fountain-edge; it's just a few inches farther than she can easily manage in her stiff clothes. What to do?

All of a sudden, Sugar rushes forward, scoops the child into her arms and swings her to the ground in one dizzying, playful swoop. It's over in a couple of seconds at most, the space of a single breath, but in that long moment Sugar feels more physical joy than she's felt in a lifetime of embraces. The soles of Sophie's dangling feet brush the wet grass, and she lands; Sugar releases her, gasping. Thank God, thank God, the child looks tickled pink: clearly this act has her blessing to happen again sometime.

Lately, Sugar has been confounded, even disturbed, by how intensely physical her feelings for Sophie have become. What began, on her arrival in the Rackham house, as a determination to do her hapless pupil no harm, has seeped from her head into her bloodstream and now pumps around her body, transmuted into a different impulse entirely: the desire to infuse Sophie with happiness.

On this nineteenth day of January, standing in a public park on the morning of her twentieth birthday, her whole body still tingling from Sophie's embrace, Sugar imagines the two of them in bed together wearing identical white night-gowns, Sophie fast asleep, her cheek nestled in the hollow between Sugar's breasts-a vision that would have been ridiculous a year ago, not least because she had so little bosom to speak of. But her bosom feels bigger nowadays, as though an over-long adolescence has finally ended, and she's now a woman.

Sophie begins to tramp slowly round the fountain, in a heavy-footed, ceremonial rhythm, and recites her rhymes:

"William the First made the Domesday

Book,

William Rufus was shot by a brook,

Henry the First rendered Aesop's fables, But to crown his daughter he was unable."

"Very good, Sophie," says Sugar, stepping back. "Practise by yourself, and come to me if you get stuck."

Sophie continues to march and chant, adding her own instinctive melody to the words, so that the poem becomes a song. Her arms, stiff with crape, beat time against her sides.

"Stephen and Maude waged civil war,

Until the end of 1154.

Henry, called Plantagenet,

Had troubles with children and Thomas B'cket."

Sugar walks away from the fountain and takes a seat on a cast-iron bench about twenty feet farther on. The sound of the chant fills her with pride, for these rhymes are Sugar's own invention; she devised them as a mnemonic for Sophie, who in her History lessons was finding it difficult to tell one scheming, bloodthirsty king of England apart from another, especially since so many of them are called William and Henry. These little verses, paltry though they are, represent Sugar's first literary scribbles since she pronounced her novel dead.

Ach, yes, she knows it's pitiable, but they've ignited in her a candle-flame of hope that she may yet be a writer. And why not write for children? Catch them young, and you shape their souls…

Did she ever seriously believe that any grown-up person would read her novel, throw off the chains of prejudice, and share her righteous anger? Anger against what, anyway? She can barely recall…

"Coeur de Lion was abroad all the time,

Died of an arrow in 1199.

John was qua'lsome, murd'rous and mean,

But the Charter was signed in 1216."

Sugar leans back on her seat, stretching out her legs and wriggling the toes inside her boots to discourage them from freezing; all the rest of her is warm. She lets the focus of her eyes grow hazy, so that Sophie tramps past as a black blur every time she rounds the fountain.

"Good girl…" she murmurs, too softly for Sophie to hear. How delicious it is to hear one's own words, doggerel or not, sung by another human being…

"Henry the Third reigned second longest, But his mind and health were not the strongest.

Edward Longshanks was almost wed,

Which might have saved the Scots bloodshed."

"Why, it's little Sophie Rackham!" cries an unfamiliar woman's voice, and Sugar is roused to seek out the person that goes with it. There, at the gate of the park, stands Emmeline Fox, waving madly. How odd, to see a respectable woman waving so hard! And, as she waves, her ample bosom swings loosely inside her bodice, suggesting she hasn't a corset on. Sugar is no expert when it comes to the finer details of respectability, but she does wonder if these things can be quite comme il faut…

"Miss Sugar, unless I'm mistaken?"' says Mrs Fox, already crossing the distance between them.

"You-yes," says Sugar, rising from the bench. "And you are Mrs Fox, I believe."

"Yes, indeed I am. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"O-oh, and I'm pleased to make yours," responds Sugar, two or three seconds later than she should. Mrs Fox, having strolled into arm's reach, seems content to loiter there; if she's noticed Sugar's unease, she takes no notice of it. Instead, she nods towards Sophie, who, after a momentary pause, has resumed her marching and singing.

"A novel approach to History. I might have disliked the discipline less myself, had I been given such rhymes."

"I wrote them for her," blurts Sugar.

Unnervingly, Mrs Fox looks her straight in the face, eyes slightly narrowed. "Well, clever you," she says, with a strange smile.

Sugar feels sweat prickling and trickling in the black armpits of her dress. What the devil is wrong with this woman? Are her wits cracked, or is it mischief?

"I… I find that some of the books given to children are deadly," says Sugar, ransacking her brains for appropriate conversation. "They kill the desire to learn. But Sophie has a few good ones now, up-to-date ones that will-were bought by Mr Rackham, at my request. Although I must say" (a breath of relief cools the perspiration on her brow, as she's suddenly inspired by a memory) "that Sophie is still very fond of a book of fairy stories given her one Christmas, by her uncle Henry, who I believe was a dear friend of yours."

Mrs Fox blinks and goes a little paler, as though she's just been slapped, or kissed.

"Yes," she says. "He was."

"On the flyleaf," Sugar presses on,

"he signed himself Your tiresome Uncle

Henry."

Mrs Fox shakes her head and sighs, as though hearing a rumour made vicious by its passage from gossip to gossip. "He wasn't in the least tiresome. He was the dearest man."

And she sits heavily on the bench, without warning or formality.

Sugar sits down beside her, rather excited by the way the conversation is going-for she seems, after a shaky start, to have won the upper hand. After only a moment's hesitation, she decides to kill two birds with one stone: show off her intimate knowledge of Sophie Rackham's books, in case Mrs Fox should have any doubts as to her credentials as a governess-and pry.

"Tell me, Mrs Fox, if it wouldn't be prying: am I right to suppose that you were the "good friend" Henry Rackham referred to in his inscription? The friend who scolded him for giving Sophie a Bible when she was only three years old?"'

Mrs Fox laughs sadly, but her eyes are bright, and they gaze at Sugar unwaveringly.

"Yes, I did feel that three was a little young for Deuteronomy and Lamentations," she says.

"And as for Lot's daughters and Onan and all that business, well… a child deserves a few years of innocence, wouldn't you agree?"' "Oh yes," says Sugar, a trifle hazy on the particulars but in full agreement with the sentiment. Then, in case her ignorance has shown on her face, she assures Mrs Fox: "I do read to Sophie from the Bible, though. The thrilling stories: Noah and the Flood, the Prodigal Son, Daniel in the lion's den …"

"But not Sodom and Gomorrah," says Mrs Fox, leaning closer, never blinking.

"No."

"Quite right," says Mrs Fox. "I walk the streets of our very own Sodom several days a week. It corrupts children as gladly as it corrupts anyone else."

What a strange person Mrs Fox is, with her long ugly face and her searching eyes! Is she safe? Why does she stare so? Sugar suddenly wishes Sophie were sitting here between them, to keep the conversation sweet.

"Sophie can join us, if you like, since you've known her so long. I'll call her, shall I?"' "No, don't," Mrs Fox replies at once, in a not unfriendly but remarkably firm tone. "Sophie and I aren't nearly as well acquainted as you suppose. When Henry and I used to visit the Rackham house, she was never in evidence; one would scarcely have guessed she existed. I only used to see her at church, and then only at services not attended by Mrs Rackham. The co-incidence-or whatever is the opposite of co-incidence, I perhaps should say-grew very curious after a while."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

"I mean, Miss Sugar, that it was plain Mrs Rackham was no lover of children. Or, to speak even plainer, that she appeared not to acknowledge the existence of her own daughter."

"It's not for me to judge what went on in Mrs Rackham's head," says Sugar.

"I saw little of her; she was already unwell when I came into the household. But…" (mrs Fox's raised eyebrow is an intimidating thing: it suggests that any governess professing ignorance of the facts must be either stupid or lying) "But I do believe you are right."

"And what about you, Miss Sugar?"' says Mrs Fox, laying her hands on her knees and leaning forward, in an attitude of getting down to business. "You like children, I trust?"' "Oh, yes. I am certainly very fond of Sophie."

"Yes, that's easily seen. Is she the first pupil you've had?"' "No," replies Sugar, her face composed, her mind spinning like a catherine wheel.

"Before Sophie I took care of a little boy.

Called Christopher. In Dundee." (william's long-running battle with the jute merchants has branded plenty of names and facts about Dundee on her memory, should she be challenged to quote them; God forgive her for claiming to have done anything for Christopher, when, far from nurturing the poor child, she's left him in the lion's den…) "Dundee?"' echoes Mrs Fox. "What an awfully long way for you to come. Although you don't sound like a Scotchwoman-more like a Londoner, I'd say."

"I've lived in quite a few places."

"Yes, I'm sure you have."

There follows an awkward pause, during which Sugar wonders what on earth became of the upper hand she thought she had. The only way to regain it, she decides, is to go on the offensive.

"I'm so pleased you decided to go out walking on the same morning as Sophie and me," she says. "I believe you were recently in very poor health?"'

Mrs Fox tips her head to one side and smiles wearily. "Very poor, very poor," she concedes, in a sing-song tone. "But I'm sure I suffered less than those who watched me suffer.

They were convinced I'd die, you see, whereas I knew I wouldn't. Now here I am"-she waves an open hand, as if signalling an invisible queue of people to pass ahead of her-"witnessing a pressing crowd of unfortunates blunder to their graves."

But you don't understand: Agnes is alive! thinks Sugar, indignant. "A crowd?"' she demurs. "I admit it's awful, two members of the same family, but really…!"

"Oh no, I didn't mean the

Rackhams," says Mrs Fox. "Oh dear now, I do apologise. I thought you would know that I work for the Rescue Society."

"The Rescue Society? I confess

I've never heard of it."

Mrs Fox laughs, an odd throaty sound.

"Ah, Miss Sugar, how crestfallen, how mortified, some of my colleagues would be to hear you say that! However, I shall tell you: we are an organisation of ladies that reforms, or at least tries to reform, prostitutes." Again the mercilessly direct stare. "Forgive me if that word offends you."

"No, no, not at all," says Sugar, though she feels the heat of a blush on her cheeks. "Please go on; I should like to know more."

Mrs Fox looks theatrically to heaven, and declares (wryly or in earnest, Sugar cannot tell), "Ah! the voice of our sex's future!" She leans still closer to Sugar on the bench, inspired it seems to even greater intimacy.

"I pray a time will come, when all educated women will be anxious to discuss this subject, without hypocrisy or evasion."

"I-I hope so too," stammers Sugar, longing for Sophie to come to her aid, even if it's with a wail of distress following a fall. But Sophie is still marching around the fountain, by no means finished with the kings of England.

"… Wat Tyler's mob and Wycliffe's

Scripture,

We find in the reign of the second

Richard."

"Prostitution is certainly a terrible problem," says Sugar, keeping her face turned towards Sophie. "But can you-can your Rescue Society-really hope ever to stamp it out?"' "Not in my lifetime," replies Mrs Fox, "but perhaps in hers."

Sugar is tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the notion, but then she sees Sophie stamping into view, singing,

"Henry the Fourth slept with his crown

While Arundel put the lollies down," and suddenly catches such a strong whiff of innocence that she's half-convinced Mrs Fox's dream might yet come to pass.

"The greatest obstacle," Mrs Fox declares, "is the persistence of lies. Principally the foul and cowardly lie, that the root of prostitution is women's wickedness. I've heard this a thousand times, even from the mouths of prostitutes themselves!"

"What is the root, then? Is it men's wickedness?"'

Mrs Fox's grey complexion is growing rosier by the second; she's warming to her topic.

"Only insofar as men make the laws that determine what a woman may and may not do. And laws are not merely a matter of what's in the statute books! The sermon of a clergyman who has no love in his heart, that is law; the way our sex is demeaned and made trivial in newspapers, in novels, even on the labels of the tiniest items of household produce, that is law. And, most of all, poverty is law.

If a man falls on hard times, a five-pound note and a new suit of clothes can restore him to respectability, but if a woman falls …!" She puffs with exasperation, cheeks flushed, quite worked up now. Her bosom swells and subsides in rapid respiration, nipples showing with every breath. "A woman is expected to remain in the gutter. You know, Miss Sugar, I've never yet met a prostitute who would not have preferred to be something else. If only she could."

"But how," says Sugar, quailing once more under that stare, and blushing from her hairline to her collar, "does your Society go about… uh… rescuing a prostitute?"' "We visit the brothels, the houses of ill repute, the streets… the parks… wherever prostitutes are found, and we warn them-if we're given the chance-of the fate that awaits them."

Sugar nods attentively, rather glad, in retrospect, that she never stirred from her bed on those mornings when the Rescue Society used to call on Mrs Castaway's.

"We offer them refuge, though sadly we've precious few houses available for this purpose," continues Mrs Fox. "If only this country's half-empty churches could be used more sensibly! But no matter, we do what we can with the beds available… And what do we do then? Well, if the girls have a trade, we do our utmost to restore them to it, with letters of recommendation. I've written many such. If they have no trade, we see to it they're taught a useful skill, like needlework or cooking. There are servants in some of the best households who got there by way of the Rescue Society."

"Goodness."

Mrs Fox sighs. "Of course, it says very little for our society-English society, I mean-that the best we can offer a young woman is respectable servitude. But we can only address one evil at a time. And the urgency is great. Each day, prostitutes are dying."

"But what of?"' enquires Sugar, provoked to curiosity, even though she knows the answers already.

"Disease, childbirth, murder, suicide,"

Mrs Fox replies, enunciating each with due care. "Too late": that's the wretched phrase that haunts our efforts. I visited a house of prostitution only yesterday, a place known as Mrs Castaway's, looking for a particular girl I'd read about in a vile publication called More Sprees In London. I found that the girl was long gone, and that Mrs Castaway had died."

Sugar's guts turn to stone; only the cast-iron seat of the bench stops her body emptying its heavy innards onto the ground beneath.

"Died?"' she whispers.

"Died," confirms Mrs Fox, her big grey eyes sensitive to every tiny flicker of reaction in her quarry.

"Died… of what?"'

"The new madam didn't tell me. Our conversation was cut short by the door slamming in my face."

Sugar cannot endure Mrs Fox's gaze anymore. She lowers her head, giddy and sick, and stares into the crumpled blackness of her own lap. What to do? What to say? If life were one of Rose's tuppenny Gem Pocket books, she could stab Mrs Fox through the heart with a dagger, and enlist Sophie's help in burying the corpse; or she could fall at Mrs Fox's feet and beg her not to divulge her secret.

Instead, she continues to stare into her lap, breathing shallowly, until she becomes aware of something bubbling in her nostrils, and, wiping her nose, finds her glove slicked with bright-red blood.

A white handkerchief appears in front of her eyes, held in Mrs Fox's own rather dingy and wrinkled glove. Bewildered, Sugar takes it, and blows her nose. At once she feels deliriously giddy, and sways where she sits, and the handkerchief is transformed, with miraculously suddenness, from a soft warm square of white cotton to a sopping-wet rag of chilly crimson.

"No, lean back," comes Mrs Fox's voice, as Sugar slumps forward. "It's better when you lean back." And she lays a firm, gentle hand on Sugar's breast and pushes, until Sugar's head is tilted as far back as it will go, dangling in space, her shoulder-blades pressed painfully hard against the iron bench, her face blinking up into the blue of the sky. Blood is filling her head, trickling into her gullet, tickling her windpipe.

"Try to breathe normally, or you'll faint," says Mrs Fox, when Sugar begins to pant and gasp. "Trust me; I know."

Sugar does as she's told, and continues to stare up into the sky, her left hand pressed, with the handkerchief, to her nose, her right-incredibly-enfolded inside Mrs Fox's. Hard, bony fingers give her a reassuring squeeze through the two layers of goatskin that separate their naked flesh.

"Miss Sugar, forgive me," says the voice at her side. "I see now that you must have been very fond of your old madam. In my arrogance, I failed to imagine that possibility. In fact, I failed to imagine all sorts of things."

Sugar's head is tilted so far back now that she sees pedestrians walking along Pembridge Square past the park, upside down. A topsy-turvy mother suspended from the ceiling of the world pulls a topsy-turvy little boy along, scolding him for staring at the lady with the blood on her face.

"Sophie," murmurs Sugar anxiously.

"I don't hear Sophie anymore."

"She's all right," Mrs Fox assures her. "She's fallen asleep against the fountain."

Sugar blinks. Tears tickle her ears and dampen the hair at her temples. She licks her bloodied lips, working up the courage to ask her fate.

"Miss Sugar, please forgive me," says Mrs Fox. "I'm a coward. If I'd been brave enough, I would have spared you this game of cat-and-mouse, and told you at once what person I took you to be. And if by chance I was mistaken, you'd have discounted me as a madwoman, and that would have been the end of it."

Sugar lifts her head, cautiously, still clutching the blood-soaked handkerchief to her nose. "So… what is the end of it? And who do you take me to be?"'

Mrs Fox is facing away, peering across the park at the sleeping form of Sophie. Her profile is strong-jawed and quite attractive, although Sugar can't help noticing that there's a bright cinnamon smear of earwax stuck in a curlicue of her ear. "I take you to be," says Mrs Fox, "a young woman who has found her calling, and means to be true to it, whatever her former means of livelihood may have been. That's as much as the Rescue Society can hope for the girls it puts into good homes, and many of them, sadly, return to the streets. You won't return to the streets, will you, Miss Sugar?"' "I would sooner die."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," says Mrs Fox, looking, all of a sudden, profoundly tired. "God is not as bloodthirsty as all that."

"Oh! Your handkerchief…" cries Sugar, reminded of the ruined scrap of gory cloth dangling from her fist.

"I have a big box of them at home," sighs Mrs Fox, rising to her feet. "The legacy of my failing to die of consumption.

Goodbye, Miss Sugar. No doubt we'll meet again." She has already begun to walk away.

"I… I hope so," responds

Sugar, at a loss for what else to say.

"Of course we shall," says Mrs Fox, turning once to wave, much more decorously than she did before. "It's a small world."

When Mrs Fox has gone, Sugar wipes her face, conscious that there's dried blood on her cheeks and lips and chin. She tries to sponge up some wetness from the grass, with little success, as the sun has evaporated the melted frost. The blood-stained handkerchief reminds her of something she's done her best not to think about these last few weeks: the fact that not a drop of menstrual blood has issued from her for several months now.

She gets to her feet, and sways, still dizzy.

She's dead, she thinks. Damn her; she's dead.

She tries to picture Mrs Castaway dead, but it's impossible. Her mother always looked like a corpse, reanimated and painted luridly for some obscene or sacrilegious purpose.

How could death alter her? The best Sugar can do is to tip the picture sideways, changing Mrs Castaway's orientation from vertical to horizontal. Her pink eyes are open; her hand is extended, palm-up, for coins. "Come, sir," she says, ready to usher another gentleman to the girl of his dreams.

"Sophie," she whispers, having crossed over to the fountain. "Sophie, wake up."

The child, slumped like a rag-doll, head lolling on one shoulder, jerks awake at once, eyes rolling in astonishment that she could have been caught napping. Sugar gets her own apology in first:

"Forgive me, Sophie, I was talking to that lady for much too long." It must be nearly midday, Sugar reckons; they'd better hurry back to the house, or William may be angry to be deprived of his secretary, or his lover, or his nursemaid, or whatever combination of the three he needs today. "Now tell me, little one, how far did you get with your kings of England?"'

Sophie opens her mouth to answer, then her eyes grow wide.

"Did someone hit you, Miss?"'

Sugar's hands flutter nervously to her face.

"Not-no, Sophie. My nose started bleeding, that's all."

Sophie is quite excited by this revelation.

"That's happened to me too, Miss!" she says, in a tone suggesting that such an occurrence is a thrilling, ghoulish adventure.

"Really, dear?"' says Sugar, straining to recall, through the fog of her own anxious preoccupations, the incident Sophie's referring to. "When?"' "It was before," says the child, after a moment's reflection.

"Before what?"'

Sophie accepts her governess's hand to help her to her feet; the arse-end of her bulky black dress is damp, creased, and plastered with fragments of soil, twig and grass.

"Before my Papa bought you for me, Miss," she says, and Sugar's hand, poised to slap the dirt off Sophie' backside, freezes in mid-air.