The Crimson petal and the white

THIRTY-ONE

There are too many people! Millions too many!

And they will not keep still! Lord, make them stop pushing and jostling for just one minute, freeze them like a tableau vivant, so that she can get by!

Sugar cowers in the doorway of Lamplough's Pharmacy in Regent Street, waiting for a parting in the sea of humanity that doesn't come. The relentless grinding din of traffic, the shouts of street vendors, the swirling babble of pedestrians, snorting horses, barking dogs: these are sounds that were familiar once upon a time, but no longer. A few months of seclusion have made her a stranger, How is it possible that for years she walked these streets lost in thought, daydreaming her novel, and was never once knocked down and trampled underfoot? How is it possible that there exist so many human beings squashed together in the same place, so many lives running concurrently with her own? These chattering women in dresses of licorice-stripe and purple, these swaggering swells, these Jews and Orientals, these tottering sandwichboard-men, these winking shop-keepers, these jaunty sailors and dour office workers, these beggars and prostitutes-every one of them lays claim to a share of Destiny every bit as generous as hers. There's only so much juice to be extracted from the world, and a ravenous multitude is brawling and scuffling to get it.

And the smells! Her habituation to the Rackham house and the tidy streets of Notting Hill has made her lily-livered: now her breath catches, her eyes water, from being forced to take in the overbearing stench of perfume and horse dung, freshly-baked cakes and old meat, burnt mutton-fat and chocolate, roast chestnuts and dog piss. The Rackham house, despite belonging to a perfumer, smells of nothing much, except cigar-smoke in the study and porridge in the school-room. Even its flower vases-enormous, pretentious copies of classical urns-stand empty now that the memorial bouquets from Agnes's well-wishers have gone the way of all flesh.

Misreading Sugar's mind, a pretty young flower-seller fetches a bouquet of shabby pink roses out of her rickety cart and waves the offering in Sugar's direction. The fact that she owns a trolley, and is bothering to make overtures to a female, probably means she really is a flower-seller and not a whore, but Sugar is unnerved all the same, and pricked into action. One deep gulp of breath, and she steps into the human stream, joining the rush of advancing bodies.

She purposely avoids seeing anyone's face and hopes the crowd will return the favour. (if she weren't so afraid of being knocked sprawling, she'd lower her black veil.) Every shop she passes, every narrow lane, may at any moment spew out someone who once knew her, someone who may point the finger and raucously hail the return of Sugar to her old stamping grounds.

Already she can't help noticing the regulars: there, outside Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms, stands Hugh Banton the organ grinder-has he seen her? Yes he has, the old dog!

But he gives no sign of recognising his "Little Toothsome" as she passes him by. And there!: shambling straight towards her: it's Nadir, the sandwichboard-man-but he passes her by without a second glance, clearly judging that a lady in crape is not about to attend the exhibition, "for the first time in England!", of a live Gorilla-ape.

Loitering in shop doorways and cab ranks are prostitutes Sugar knows only by sight, not by name. They regard her with listless indifference: she is a creature as alien to them as the monster advertised on Nadir's sandwich-board, but not nearly as interesting. The only thing about the black-clad newcomer that holds their attention for longer than an eye's-blink is her stilted gait.

Ah, if only they knew why Sugar is limping today! She's limping because, last night before going to bed, she lay on her back, lifted her legs as though preparing to be arse-fucked, and poured a tea-cupful of tepid water, sulphate of zinc and borax directly into her vagina. Then she swaddled herself in an improvised nappy and went to sleep, hoping that the chemicals, despite being rather stale after sitting unused in her suitcase for so long, still had some vim left in them. This morning, unrewarded by a miscarriage, she woke to find her vulva and inner thighs flame red, and so sore she could barely dress herself, let alone Sophie. At nine, clenching her jaw with the effort of appearing normal, she presented herself at William's study and asked his permission, as nonchalantly as she could manage, for her first day off.

"What for?"' he asked her-not in suspicion; more as if he couldn't imagine what desires she could have that were not met within the confines of his house.

"I need a new pair of boots, a world globe for Sophie, several other things…"

"Who'll take care of the child while you're gone?"' "She's quite self-reliant and trustworthy, I've found. And Rose will look in on her. And I'll be back by five."

William looked rather put out, pointedly shuffling the letters on his desk, which he'd opened and read, but to which his bandaged fingers still didn't permit him to reply. "That Brinsmead fellow has written back to me about the ambergris; he wants my answer by the third post."

"You gain nothing by jumping to his will," she said, feigning umbrage on his behalf.

"Who does he think he is, William? Which of you has the greater standing? A few days' wait will remind him you're doing him a favour, not he you."

To her relief, this did the trick, and within minutes she was walking out the front door, white-faced with determination not to limp until she was safely in the omnibus.

The pain is not quite so bad now; perhaps the Rackham's Cr@eme de Jeunesse she slathered on her groin is helping. What it fails to do for faces (despite the label's immoderate claims), perhaps it does, uncelebrated, for unmentionable parts. At all costs she must heal soon, or she'll have to refuse William when he wants her for a more carnal purpose than writing his correspondence.

Sugar limps into Silver Street, praying no one calls her name. The prostitutes here are a cruder sort than the ones on Regent Street, scavengers of men who can't afford the more expensive fare in The Stretch. Their facepaint is lurid, a mask of deathly white and blood red; they could be pantomime witches dolled up to scare children. How long has it been since her own face was dusted so? She distinctly remembers the powder's floury taste, the way it would permeate the air each time she dabbed the puff into the pot… but nowadays she's clean-scrubbed, with skin the texture of a well-peeled orange. Her daily observances in front of the looking-glass no longer include preening her eyelashes, painting her cheeks, plucking wayward hairs from her eyebrows, inspecting her tongue, and removing flakes of imperfection from her pouting lips; nowadays, she cursorily confirms that she looks tired and worried, then pins up her hair and starts work.

Mrs Castaway's house is in sight now, but Sugar hangs back, waiting for the coast to be clear. Stationed only a few yards from the doorstep is a man who witnessed her returning from The Fireside many times with her customers.

He's a sheet-music seller, and at this moment he's performing a clumsy, lurching dance while playing his accordion, grimacing like a lunatic as he stamps on the cobble-stones.

"Gorilla Quadrille!" he rasps by way of explanation when he's finished, and snatches aloft a copy of the music. (from where Sugar stands, the illustration on the front remarkably resembles the Rackham figurehead.) Three young swells amble up to the music seller, applaud, and encourage him to repeat his performance, but he shrugs evasively; he doesn't dance for the fun of it.

"Any ladies of your hacquaintance play the piano, guvnors?"' he whines. "My music costs next to nuffing."

"Here's a shilling," laughs the swellest of the swells, shoving the coin into the music seller's coat pocket with a jab of his slender fingers. "And you may keep your grubby sheets of paper-Just do your dance for us again."

The music seller cringes over his instrument, and acts the gorilla one more time, his teeth bared in an obsequious grin. Sugar watches until the swells have had their fun and swan off in search of other titillations; when they do, the music seller dashes in the opposite direction to spend his shilling, and Sugar is free to approach her former home.

Heart in her throat, she steps up to Mrs Castaway's door, and raises her hand to grasp the old iron door-knocker and tap out the code:

Sugar here, unaccompanied. But the familiar cast-iron Cerberus has been removed, and its screw-holes neatly filled with sawdust and shellac. There's no bell, either, so Sugar is obliged to knock her gloved knuckles against the hard lacquered wood.

The waiting is awful, and the scrape of the latch is worse. She keeps her eyes low, expecting to see Christopher, but when the door swings open, the space where the boy's pink face ought to be is occupied by the crotch of a man's smartly-tailored trousers. Hastily looking up, past the stylish waistcoat and the silken cravat, Sugar opens her mouth to explain herself, only to be struck speechless by the realisation that this man's face is in fact a woman's. Oh, granted, the hair is cut short, oiled, and combed close to the scalp, but there's no mistaking the physiognomy.

Amelia Crozier-for it is she-appraises her visitor's confusion with a feline smirk. "I think," she suggests, "you have mistaken your way." With every word she speaks, a furling haze of cigarette smoke leaks out through her lips and nostrils.

"No… no… I…" Sugar falters. "I was wondering what became of the little boy who used to answer the door."

Miss Crozier raises one dark, fastidiously plucked eyebrow. "No little boys ever come here," she says. "Only big boys."

From inside-presumably the parlour-Jennifer Pearce's voice rings out. "Little boys is it he wants? Give him Mrs Talbot's address!"

Miss Crozier turns her back on Sugar, serenely rude. The fine-clipped hair in the nape of her neck resembles greased duck's-down.

"It's not a man here, my dear!" she calls. "It's a lady in black."

"Oh, it's not the Rescue Society, I trust," exclaims Miss Pearce, mock-exasperated, from within. "Please, spare us."

Sensing that the two Sapphists can, and will, keep up this sport as long as it amuses them, Sugar decides it's time to identify herself, loath as she is to lose the halo of virtue they've so unhesitatingly ascribed to her.

"My name is Sugar," she announces loudly, reclaiming Miss Crozier's attention. "I lived here once. My more-"' "Why, Sugar!" exclaims Amelia, her face lighting up with a wholly feminine animation.

"I would never have guessed! You look nothing like you did when I saw you last!"

"Nor do you," counters Sugar with a strained smile.

"Ah, yes," grins Miss Crozier, running her hands over the tailored contours of her suit. "Clothes do make the man-or woman -don't they? But come in, dear, come in.

Someone was asking for you only a couple of days ago. You see, your fame endures!"

Stiffly, Sugar steps over the threshold and is escorted into Mrs Castaway's parlour, or rather, the parlour that once was Mrs Castaway's.

Jennifer Pearce has transformed it from an old woman's cluttered grotesquerie into a showpiece of fashionable bareness, worthy of an expensive ladies' journal from across the English Channel.

"Welcome, welcome!"

With Mrs Castaway's desk gone, and the old woman's jumbled display of Magdalen pictures removed from the freshly-papered pale pink walls, the room appears much bigger. In place of the pictures, there's nothing, except for two rice-paper fans painted with oriental designs. A spiky green houseplant has pride of place next to the sofa on which Jennifer Pearce reclines, and a delicate chiffonier of honey-coloured wood presumably serves (in the absence of any other suitable receptacle) as the repository of money. Amelia Crozier's interrupted cigarette lies on a silver cigar stand with a waist-high stem, emitting a slender cord of smoke that shivers when the door is slammed shut.

"Do sit down, dear," sings Jennifer Pearce, swinging her legs off the sofa in a flurry of satiny skirts. She scrutinises Sugar from tip to toe, and pats the couch.

"See? I've cleared a nice warm spot for you."

"I'll stand, thank you," says Sugar. The ribald mockery to which these women would subject her if she let on that she's too sore to sit doesn't bear thinking about.

"The better to see all the changes we've made, hmm?"' says Jennifer Pearce, leaning back on the sofa again.

It's obvious to Sugar by now that Jennifer has promoted herself from being the luminary whore of the Castaway house to being its procuress. Everything about her suggests the status of madam, from her elaborate dress that looks as if it couldn't be removed without at least an hour's notice, to her languidly supercilious expression. Perhaps the most telling proof is her hands: the fingers are thorny with jewel-encrusted rings. Pornography may describe the penis as a sword, staff or truncheon, but there's nothing like a fistful of spiky jewellery to make a man's fragile flesh shrink in fear.

"May I have a word with Amy?"' says

Sugar.

Miss Pearce locks her fingers together, with a soft clicking of rings. "Alas: like Mrs Castaway, no longer with us." Then, when she observes the look of shock on Sugar's face, she smiles, and unhurriedly corrects the misunderstanding. "Oh no, my dear, I don't mean in the same way that Mrs Castaway is no longer with us. I mean, she's gone to a better place."

Amelia laughs-a horrid nasal whinny.

"However you put it, Jen, it still sounds like death."

Jennifer Pearce pouts gentle censure at her companion, and continues: "Amy came to feel that our house had become rather too… specialised for her talents. So, she took those talents elsewhere. The name of the place escapes me…" (she sighs) "There are so many houses nowadays, it's a job keeping up with them all."

Suddenly her expression sharpens, and she leans forward on the sofa, with a whispering of many-layered skirts. "To be frank with you, Sugar, Amy's departure, and the fact that I am no longer working on what one might call the factory floor, leaves us two girls down. Girls who enjoy giving men the punishment they deserve.

I don't suppose you are looking for a new home?"' "I have one, thank you," says Sugar evenly. "I came here to… to ask about my … about Mrs Castaway. How did she die?"'

Jennifer Pearce settles back into her seat once more, and her eyelids droop half-shut.

"In her sleep, dear."

Sugar waits for more, but none is forthcoming.

Amelia Crozier picks up her cigarette from the tray, judges it too short to be elegant, and drops it down the hollow stem of the stand. The room is so quiet that the sound of the papery stub hitting the metal base is audible.

"Did… did she leave anything for me?

A letter, a message?"'

"No," says Jennifer Pearce casually.

"Nothing."

Another silence falls. Amelia extracts, from a pocket in the lining of her jacket, a silver cigarette case, her elegant wrist brushing the swell of bosom beneath her waistcoat.

"And… what happened to her?"' Sugar asks. "After she was found, I mean."

Jennifer Pearce's eyes glaze over, as though she's being interrogated about events that happened before she was born, or even before the advent of recorded history. "Undertakers took her away," she says doubtfully.

"Isn't that right, my love?"'

"I think so," says Amelia, and applies a lucifer-flame to the tip of a fresh cigarette. "Rookes, Brookes, some name like that…"

Sugar looks from one face to the other, and understands there's no point asking any more questions.

"I must go," she says, her fingers tightening on her handbag with its burthen of medicinal poisons.

"So sorry we couldn't help you," says the sleepy-eyed madam who, in the next edition of More Sprees in London, will doubtless be listed as "Mrs Pearce". "And do spread the good word about us, won't you, if you meet any girls who are looking for a change."

All the way to Regent Circus, Sugar tells herself what to do next. It's most important that she doesn't leave the city without buying some new boots, and a world globe, and whatever other items may convince William she spent her day purposefully. Yet the idea of walking into a shop and conversing with a shop-keeper about the shape of her feet seems as fantastic as jumping over the moon. She glances at signs and hoardings, and occasionally pauses in front of a window display, trying to imagine how a Venetian glass manufacturer or a professor of music or a hair doctor could help her get home from her shopping trip with something to show.

Other pedestrians bear down on her constantly, weaving around her, making a play of almost bumping into her and exclaiming "Oh! I beg your pardon!" when they plainly mean "Can't you decide if you're going into this stationers or not!" Her eyes swim with tears; she'd counted on being able to use the toilet in Mrs Castaway's, and now she burns for relief.

"Ooh! Watch your step!" says a fat old woman, also in mourning, but grumpy with it.

She looks a little like Mrs Castaway. A little.

Sugar dawdles in front of a suitcase-maker's shop. In its window, a travelling case is exhibited, clasped wide open by means of invisible wires, to show off its luxuriously quilted interior. Nestled inside it like a huge pearl, signifying that the ownership of such a superb suitcase makes the world one's oyster, sits… a world globe.

All she need do is walk into this shop and ask if they'd consider selling the globe; they can easily buy another, for a fraction of what she's willing to pay for this one; the entire transaction ought to be over in five minutes, or five seconds if they say no. She balls her fists and cranes her chin forward; the soles of her boots seem glued to the footpath; it's no use. She walks on.

She reaches Oxford Street just as the Bayswater-bound omnibus pulls away. Even if she were prepared to treat the onlookers of Regent Circus to the bizarre spectacle of a woman in mourning running after an omnibus, she's far too sore to run. She ought to have bought the globe; or else, she should not have loitered like an imbecile in front of cigar importers and court dressmakers. Everything she does will be wrong today; she's doomed to make one bad decision after another. What has she achieved since leaving the Rackham house? Nothing, only buying the medicines in Lamplough's, and it's too late for all that, too late. And while she's away from the house, William will be maddened with suspicion, and he'll search her room, and find Agnes's diaries… and oh God: her novel. Yes, at this moment, William is probably sitting on her bed, his jaw stiff with rage as he reads the manuscript, a hundred pages written in the same hand that drafts his tactful replies to business associates, but here describing the desperate entreaties of doomed men as a vengeful whore called Sugar cuts their balls off.

Amy tells me you're writing a novel, dear.

I wouldn't believe everything Amy tells you, Mother.

You know no one in the world will ever read it, don't you, blossom?

It amuses me, Mother.

Good. A girl needs amusement. Toddle upstairs now, and put in a happy ending for me, won't you?

The pain in Sugar's bladder has grown unbearable. She crosses the Circus because she has a notion there's a public lavatory on the other side; when she gets there, she discovers it's a men's urinal. She looks back towards Oxford Street, and observes another omnibus trotting past. Between her legs, the Cr@eme de Jeunesse has turned disgustingly slimy and her flesh throbs in pain, as if she's been abused by a party of men who refuse to stop and refuse to leave and refuse to pay. Oh, don't snivel so, hisses Mrs Castaway.

You don't know what suffering is.

Sugar stands in the street, weeping and sobbing and shaking. A hundred passers-by avoid her, regarding her with pity and disapproval, letting her know with their expressions that she's chosen a most inconvenient spot for this performance; All Souls'

Church is nearby, or she could have availed herself of a park, or even a disused graveyard, if she'd been prepared to walk half a mile.

Finally, a man approaches her-an uncommonly fat, clownish-looking man, with a bulbous nose, furzy white hair, and fearsome great eyebrows like crushed mice. He edges towards her shyly, wringing his hands.

"There, there," he says. "It's not as bad as all that, is it?"'

To which Sugar's response is a helpless, snot-nosed giggle that rapidly develops, despite her efforts to control it, into paroxysmal sobs of laughter.

"That's my girl," says the old man, squinting benignly. "That's what I like to hear." And he waddles back into the crowd, nodding to himself.

The head of Rackham Perfumeries, muddle-headed from his afternoon nap, stands in his parlour staring at the piano, wondering if he'll ever hear it played again. He lifts its melancholy lid and strokes the keys with his good hand, his fingertips brushing the same ivory surfaces that Agnes's fingertips were the last to touch: intimacy of a kind.

But his touch is too heavy: one of the keys triggers the hidden hammer and strikes a solitary resounding note, and he stands back, embarrassed, in case a servant comes and investigates.

He walks over to the window and pulls the sash, parting the curtains as wide as they can go. It's raining: how dismal. Sugar is out there somewhere, without an umbrella he shouldn't wonder.

Better she'd stayed at home and helped with the correspondence; the second post has been delivered, and it appears Woolworth has indisputable proof that Henry Calder Rackham never paid the l500 that was owing, thus putting William at one corner of a damn awkward triangle.

A vision of the naked woman on the mortuary slab flickers in his brain. Agnes, in other words. She's resting peacefully now, he trusts.

The rain intensifies, pelting down, turning into hail, tittering against the French windows, sighing into the grass.

He fumbles to light a cigar. His broken fingers are healing slowly; one of them has set a little crooked, but it's a deformity only he and Sugar are likely to notice.

Obscure noises emanate from elsewhere in the house, not recognisable as footsteps and voices, scarcely audible above the downpour. Will he ever write that article for Punch, about rain making servants skittish? Probably not: during this last year he hasn't written a single word that was not directly related to his business.

Anything philosophical or playful has been postponed into oblivion. He's gained an empire, but what has he lost?

A slight dizziness prompts him to take a seat in the nearest armchair. Is it the concussion?

No, he's hungry. Rose didn't disturb his sleep at lunch; he need only ring for her and she'll bring him something. She could fetch The Times from his study, too; he's only glanced at it so far, to verify that the news of the day concerns a gorilla, and not Agnes Rackham being found alive.

Foolishness. He'll know that his head has fully recovered from its battering when such daft fantasies cease to plague him. Agnes is gone forever; she exists only in his memories; there isn't even a photograph of them together, more's the pity, except for the wedding portraits taken by that blackguard of an Italian, in which Agnes's face is a blur. Panzetta, that was the fellow's name, and he had the impudence to charge a fortune too…

He reclines in the armchair, and stares out into the rain. Through the shimmering veil of years he glimpses Agnes caught in a summer shower, hurrying under the shelter of a pavilion, her pink dress and white hat emphasising the healthy flush of her rain-flecked cheeks. He remembers running at her side, and being light-headed with pleasure to have shared this moment with her, to have been the man-out of all her suitors -who saw her like this, a radiantly beautiful girl on the very brink of ripeness, flushed rosy-pink, skin twinkling with rain, panting like a deer.

She never once snubbed him, he recalls now. Never once! Not even when she was surrounded by her other suitors, rich well-connected fellows all, whose lips were wont to curl at the very sight of a manufacturer's son. But they hadn't a chance with Agnes, these effeminate boobies. Agnes appeared only intermittently aware of their presence, as if she might at any moment wander off and leave them stranded, like pets someone had unwisely left in her care.

But she never wandered off from the company of William Rackham. He wasn't boring: that was the difference. All those other fellows liked nothing better than to hear the sound of their own voices; he preferred the sound of hers. Nor was it solely the music of that voice that charmed him; she was less stupid than the other girls he knew. Oh, granted, she was ignorant about the usual topics girls are ignorant about (broadly, anything of consequence), but he could tell she had an unusual and original mind.

Most strikingly, she had an instinct for metaphysics that her flimsy education had left entirely uncultivated; she truly did "see a World in a grain of sand, and a Heaven in a wild flower."

Recalling these things in his parlour as the rain begins to ease and his head droops back onto one of Agnes's embroidered antimacassars, William suddenly sneezes. This, too, reminds him of his radiant Agnes Unwin-in particular, how irritatingly, delightfully, superstitious she was. When he asked why she always exclaimed the words "God bless you!" so promptly-and loudly-whenever anyone sneezed, she explained that during that momentary convulsion, the invisible demons that fly all about us may seize their chance to enter. Only if a considerate bystander blesses us in the name of God, when we're too busy crying "Achoo" to bless ourselves, can we be sure we haven't been invaded.

"Well, I see I owe you my life, then," he commended her.

"You're laughing at me," she retorted mildly. "But God should bless people. It's what He's supposed to be for, isn't it?"' "Oh, Miss Unwin, you must be careful. People will accuse you of taking God's name in vain."

"They already do! But…" (a charming smile played on her lips) "they only say so because of the demons inside them."

"From all the unblessed sneezes."

"Precisely."

At which William laughed out loud: damn it, this girl was funny! It only required a special sort of man to perceive her gently mischievous brand of wit. Each time he met her, she came out with more of it, always delivered in a teasing, solemn tone before breaking out into a smile behind her fan; and on the feathery foundations of their banter, they built their engagement.

He desired her, of course. He dreamed of her, lost seed over her. And yet in his heart of hearts, or loin of loins, he had no urgent designs upon her; there was, after all, a whole class of women provided especially for that purpose. When he imagined Agnes and himself married, his vision was scarcely physical at all; he pictured the two of them lying asleep in each other's arms in an enormous white raft of a bed.

When they were newly engaged, she confided to him how afraid she was of losing her figure-by which he took her to mean, through childbirth. Immediately he decided he would take precautions, and spare her this burden. "Children?"' he declared, relishing the thought of flouting yet another convention, for in those days he cared not a button for the petty expectations of fathers and other busybodies.

"Too many of them in the world already! People have children because they want immortality, but they're fooling themselves, because the little monsters are something else, not oneself. If people want immortality, they should claim it on their own behalf!"

He'd consulted her face then, fearful that his resolve to win enduring fame through his writings might impress her as vainglorious, but she looked deeply pleased.

In dreams, both waking and sleeping, he would imagine himself and Agnes together, not just as newlyweds, but in their mature years, when their reputation would have achieved its zenith.

"There go the Rackhams," envious onlookers would say, as they strolled through St James's Park. "He has just published another book."

"Yes, and she has just returned from Paris, where I'm told she had thirty dresses made for her, by five different dress-makers!"

A typical day, in this future of theirs, would begin with him lounging in a wicker chair in his sunlit courtyard, checking the proofs of his latest publication, and dealing with correspondence from his readers (the admirers would get a cordial reply, the detractors would be instantly destroyed with his cigar-tip). And he'd have no shortage of detractors, for his fearless opinions would ruffle many feathers! On the lawn beside him, a pile of ash would smoulder, of all the bores who needn't have bothered to send him their complaints. Agnes would come gliding across the grass at around noon, resplendent in lilac, and scold him serenely for making the gardener's life a trial.

Slumped in his parlour now, in January 1876, a man bereaved, William winces in pain at these recollected dreams. What a fool he was! How little he understood himself! How little he understood Agnes! How tragically he underestimated the ruthlessness with which his father would humiliate them both during the tenderest years of their marriage! From the outset, every portent was already pointing towards Pitchcott Mortuary, and the wretched woman on that slab!

As he lapses once more into a doze, he sees Agnes before him, as she was on their wedding night. He lifts her night-dress: she is quite the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Yet she is rigid with fear, and gooseflesh forms on her perfect skin. So many months he's spent praising the beauty of her eyes, to her obvious delight; but much as he'd like to spend two hundred years adoring each breast, and thirty thousand on all the rest, he yearns for a more spontaneous union, a mutual celebration of their love.

Should he quote poetry to her? Call her his America, his new-found-land? Shyness and unease dry his tongue; the look of dumb horror on his wife's face obliges him to continue in silence. With only his own laboured breath for company, he presses on, hoping she might, by some magical process of communion, or emotional osmosis, be inspired to share in his ecstasy; that the eruption of his passion might be followed by a warm balm of mutual relief.

"William?"'

He jerks awake, confused. Sugar is standing before him in the parlour, her mourning-clothes shining wet, her bonnet dripping rain-water, her face apologetic.

"I didn't achieve anything," she confesses. "Please don't be annoyed with me."

He straightens up in his seat, rubbing his eyes with the fingers of his good hand. There's a crick in his neck, his head aches and, swaddled inside his trousers, his prick is slackening in its sticky, humid nest of pubic hair.

"No matter," he groans. "You need only tell me will-what you want, and I can arrange it for you."

Three days later, during the writing of a letter to Henry Calder Rackham, which Sugar has been instructed, after some hesitation, to begin "Dear Father", William suddenly enquires,

"Can you use a sewing-more-machine?"'

She looks up. She'd thought she was ready for anything today: her sore privates have cleared up enough for her to contemplate the act of love, provided it's done gently; her stomach has just this morning ceased convulsing from the effects of the wormwood and tansy tincture, and she's giving her poor body a much-needed rest before trying, as a last-ditch resort, the pennyroyal and brewer's yeast.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I've never handled one."

He nods, disappointed. "Can you sew the usual will-way?"'

Sugar lays the pen on the blotter, and tries to judge from his face how kindly he might take to a joke. "Skill with a needle and thread," she says, "was never the greatest of my talents."

He doesn't smile, but nods again. "It wouldn't be possible, then, for you to a-alter a dress of A-Agnes's, so that it fit you?"' "I don't think so," she says, much alarmed. "Even if I were a seamstress, I… well, our shapes… they're very different… uh, weren't they?"' "Pity," he says, and leaves her to stew in her unease for several minutes. What the devil is he getting at? Does he suspect her of something? He was away in the city yesterday, for the first time since the funeral, and in the evening made no mention of where he'd been… To the police, perhaps?

At last he rouses himself from his reverie and, in a clear and authoritative tone, with scarcely any stammer, declares: "I have arranged for us all to go on a like-little outing together."

"Us… all?"'

"You, me and Sophie."

"Oh."

"On Thursday, we'll go to the city, and have our photographs taken. You'll have to wear your more-mourning-clothes on the way there, but please take along with you a cheerful and pretty dress, and another for Sophie. There's a changing room at the photographer's, I've checked."

"Oh." She waits for an explanation, but he's already turned his head as if the subject is closed. She lifts the pen from the maculated blotter. "Is there any particular dress you'd like me to wear?"' "One that's as attractive as possible,"

William replies, "will-while still looking completely respectable."

"Where is Papa taking us, Miss?"' says

Sophie on the morning of the big day.

"I've told you already: to a photographer's studio," sighs Sugar, trying not to let her displeasure at the child's excitement show.

"Is it a big place, Miss?"'

Oh, be quiet: you're just babbling for the sake of it. "I don't know, Sophie, I've never been there."

"May I wear my new whale-bone hair clip, Miss?"' "Certainly, dear."

"And shall I take my shammy bag,

Miss?"'

The mere sound of you, little precious, suggests Mrs Castaway, is becoming tedious in the extreme. "I… Yes, I don't see why not."

Decked out in mourning, with a change of clothing packed in a tartan travelling case that once belonged to Mrs Rackham, Sugar and Sophie venture out into the carriage-way, where the coach and horse stand waiting for them.

"Where's Papa?"' says Sophie, as

Cheesman lifts her into the cabin.

"Putting his toys away, I expect,

Miss Sophie," winks the coachman.

Sugar climbs hurriedly in, while Cheesman is busy with the case and before he has a chance to lay his hands on her.

"Mind how you go, Miss Sugar!" he says, delivering the words like the concluding line of a bawdy song.

William emerges from the front door, fastening a dark-grey overcoat over his favourite brown jacket. Once all the buttons are done up, it will take a sharp-eyed pedestrian indeed to spot that he's not in strict mourning.

"Let's be off, Cheesman!" he calls, when he's climbed into the cabin with his daughter and Miss Sugar-and, to his daughter's delight, his word instantaneously becomes fact: the horses begin to trot, and the carriage rolls along the gravel, up the path towards the big wide world. The adventure is beginning: this is page one.

Inside, the three passengers examine each other as best they can while affecting not to be staring: a tricky feat, given that they are seated with knees almost touching, the male on one seat, the two females opposite.

William notes how wan and ill-at-ease

Sugar appears, how there are pale blue circles under her eyes, how her sensuous mouth twitches with a nervous half-smile, how unflattering her mourning dress is. Never mind: at the photographers it will cease to matter.

Sugar appreciates that William has, in appearance at least, fully recovered from his injuries. A couple of white scars line his forehead and cheek, and his gloves are slightly oversized, but otherwise he looks as good as new -better even, because he's lost his paunch during his convalescence, and his face is thinner too, giving him cheekbones where he had none before.

Really, it was unfair of her to compare his face to the caricature on the "Gorilla Quadrille"; he may not be the handsome fellow his brother was, but he does have a touch of distinction now, courtesy of his suffering. His temper and his stammer are likewise improving, and he's still sharing his correspondence with her, despite the fact that his fingers have healed sufficiently for him to manage the task alone. So… So there really is no reason to loathe and fear him, is there?

Sophie's corporeal form sits still and behaves impeccably, because that's what children ought to do, but in truth she's beside herself with excitement.

Here she is, inside the family carriage for the first time, going to the city for the first time, in the company of her father, with whom she's never gone out before. The challenge of absorbing all these things is so great she scarcely knows where to begin. Her father's face impresses her as old and wise, like the face on the Rackham labels, but when he turns towards the window or licks his red lips, he looks like a younger person with a beard stuck on. In the street, gentlemen and ladies stroll, each one of them different, adding up to hundreds and hundreds. A horse and carriage passes on the other side of the road, a polished wooden and metal cabin full of mysterious strangers, pulled by an animal with hoofs. Yet Sophie understands that the two carriages, at the moment of passing, are like mirror-images of each other; to those mysterious strangers, she is the dark mystery, and they are the Sophies. Does her father understand this? Does Miss Sugar?

"You've grown so big," remarks William, out of the blue. "You've shall-shot up in no time at all. How have you more-managed it, hmm?"'

Sophie keeps her eyes on her father's knees: this question is like the ones in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: impossible to answer.

"Has Miss Sugar been keeping you busy?"' "Yes, Papa."

"Good, good."

Again he is calling her good, just like he did on that day when the lady with the face like the Cheshire Cat was at his side!

"Sophie likes nothing better than learning," remarks Miss Sugar.

"Very good," says William, clasping and unclasping his hands in his lap. "Can you tell me will-where the Bay of Biscay is, Sophie?"'

Sophie freezes. The one and only necessary fact of life, and she hasn't been prepared for it!

"We haven't done Spain yet," explains her governess. "Sophie has been learning all about the colonies."

"Very good, very good," says William, returning his attention to the window. A building they're passing is adorned with a large painted design advertising Pears' soap, causing him to frown.

The photographers' studio is on the top floor of an address in Conduit Street, not so very far away, as the crow flies, from the house of Mrs Castaway. The bronze plaque says Tovey and Scholefield (a.r.s.a.), Photographers and Artists. Half-way up the gloomy stairs hangs a framed photographic portrait of a callow, cupid-lipped soldier, much retouched, cradling his rifle like a bouquet of flowers. Perished in Kabul; IMMORTAL in the memory of those who loved him, explains the inscription, before adding, at a discreet remove, INQUIRE WITHIN.

Within, the Rackhams are met by a tall, mustachioed individual dressed in a frock-coat. "Good day, sir, madam," he says.

He and William have plainly met before, and Sugar is left to guess who is Scholefield and who is Tovey-this man who resembles an impresario, or the bird-boned, shirt-sleeved fellow who can be seen, through a crack in the reception-room door, pouring a colourless fluid from a small bottle into a larger one. The walls are crowded with framed photographs of men, women and children, singly and in family assortments, all without fault or blemish, and also one really enormous painting of a plump lady dressed in Regency finery, complete with hounds and a basket overflowing with still-life debris. In one corner, superimposed on the tail-plumes of a dead pheasant, glows the signature E.

H. Scholefield, 1859.

"Look, Sophie," says Sugar. "This picture was painted by this very gentleman who stands before us."

"Indeed it was," says Scholefield.

"But I forsook my first love-and abundant commissions from ladies just like this one-to champion the Art of photography. For it was my belief that every new Art, if it's to be an Art, needs a measure of… Artistic midwifery." A second too late, he remembers he's delivering his spiel to a person of the weaker sex. "If you'll forgive the phrase."

Without delay, Sugar and Sophie are shown into a small room with a wash-basin, two full-length mirrors, and an ornamental queensware watercloset. The walls bristle with clothes-hooks and hat-pegs. A single, barred window looks out on the rooftop that connects Tovey and Scholefield's establishment with the dermatologist's next door.

The travelling case is opened up and its sumptuously coloured, silky, pillowy cargo is pulled into the light. Sugar helps Sophie out of her mourning and into her prettiest blue dress with the gold brocade buttons. Her hair is re-brushed and the whalebone clip slid into place.

"Turn your back, now, Sophie," says

Miss Sugar.

Sophie obeys, but wherever she looks there's a mirror, reflecting back and forth in an endless rebound. Disturbed at the prospect of seeing Miss Sugar in her underwear, Sophie gazes into her Mama's travelling case. A crumpled handbill advertising Psycho, the Sensation of the London Season, exhibited exclusively at the Folkestone Pavilion! gives her something to ponder while the body of her governess is disrobed all around her. Over and over she reads the price, the times of exhibition, the disclaimer about ladies of a nervous disposition, while catching unwilling half-glimpses of Miss Sugar's underwear, the swell of pink flesh above the neckline of her chemise, naked arms wrestling with a flaccid construction of dark green silk.

Sophie lifts the handbill up to her nose, sniffing it in case it smells of the sea. She fancies it does, but maybe it's only her imagination.

Tovey and Scholefield's studio proper, when Sugar and Sophie emerge into it, is not very large -no bigger, perhaps, than the Rackhams' dining-room-but it makes ingenious use of three of its walls, dressing them up as backdrops for every conceivable requirement. One wall is a trompe-l'oeil landscape for men to pose in front of-forests, mountains, a brooding sky and, as an optional extra, moveable classical pillars. Another wall functions as the rear of a sitting-room, papered in the latest style. The third wall is subdivided into three different backdrops side by side; on the extreme left, a floor-to-ceiling library bookcase from whose shelves the posing client can select a leather-bound volume and pretend to be reading it-as long as he doesn't stand too far to the right, for then he'll step across the "library" boundary and find himself framed in front of a cottage window decorated with lace curtains. This country idyll is likewise a very narrow slice of life, scarcely an inch wider than the diameter of an old-style crinoline, and gives way to another scene, that of an infant's nursery papered with robins and crescent moons.

It's in front of this nursery backdrop-evidently the least often used-that most of the studio's props are to be found: not just the rocking-horse, toy locomotive, miniature writing-desk and high-backed stool that belong to the nursery, but a jumble of other accessories to the other backdrops, like a mountaineer's walking-staff (for Artists and Philosophers), a large papier-m`ach`e vase glued to a plywood pedestal, various clocks hung on brass stands, two rifles, an enormous ring of keys suspended by a chain around the neck of a bust of Shakespeare, bundles of ostrich feathers, footstools of various sizes, the fa@cade of a grandfather clock, and many other less easily identifiable things. To Sophie's horrified fascination, there's even a stuffed, soulful-eyed spaniel which can be made to sit without demur at any master's feet.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sugar observes William appraising her and Sophie. He looks slightly ill-at-ease, as if fretting that unforeseen complications may spoil the day's business, but he doesn't look disappointed with the outfits; and if he recognises that she's wearing the same dress she wore when he first met her, he betrays no sign. The hitherto elusive Tovey takes his place behind the camera stilts and casts the hulking mechanism's thick black cape over his head and shoulders. Thus he remains shrouded for the remainder of the Rackhams' visit, his buttocks occasionally swinging, wagtail-like, under the light-proof fabric, his feet as deliberately placed as the legs of his tripod.

The exposures are made in a matter of minutes. Scholefield has dissuaded William from his original intention to have only one picture made; four can be accomplished in a single sitting, and needn't be paid for or enlarged unless they give complete satisfaction.

So, William stands in front of the painted skyline and gazes into what Scholefield describes as "the distance", a point which, in the confines of the studio, can be no further than the ventilation grille. Scholefield raises one fist, slowly, and rhapsodises: "On the horizon, bursting through the clouds: the sun!"

Rackham peers instinctively, and Tovey seizes the moment.

Next, William is persuaded to stand in front of the bookcase, holding a copy of Rudimentary Optics splayed open in his hands. "Ah yes, that notorious chapter!" remarks Scholefield, peeking at the text as he gently pushes the book a little closer to the customer's face. "Who would think that a tome as dry as this could contain such saucy revelations!"

William's glassy expression becomes suddenly keen as he begins to read in earnest, and, again, Tovey doesn't hesitate to act.

"Ach, my little joke," says

Scholefield, hanging his head in mock penitence. His manner is growing more flamboyant the longer he has his customers in his command; he might almost be tippling whisky from a hip-flask, or taking furtive sniffs of nitrous oxide.

Sitting on the sidelines with Sophie awaiting her turn, Sugar wonders if there's another room to this studio, a secret chamber furnished for pornography. When Tovey and Scholefield are left to themselves at the end of a working day, is it only respectably-clad gentlemen and ladies they develop, or do they also pull naked prostitutes from the malodorous darkroom fluids, and peg them up to dry? What could be more Artistic, after all, than a set of card-sized photographs sold in a package labelled "For the Use of Artists Only"?

"And now, your charming little girl," announces Scholefield, and with balletic efficiency he clears away the props from in front of the fake nursery, until only the toys remain. After an instant's hesitation, he removes the locomotive; then, after deliberating slightly longer, he judges that Mr Rackham is not the sort of father who would adore to see his child perched side-saddle on a rocking horse, so he removes that as well. He leads Sophie to a spindly table and shows her how to pose next to it, surveys the scene with a nimble step backwards, and then leaps forward again, to remove the superfluous stool.

"I shall now summon an elephant down from the sky," he declares, raising his hands portentously, "and balance it on the tip of my nose!"

Sophie does not raise her chin or open her eyes any wider; she only thinks of the part in Alice's Adventures where the Cat says,

"We're all mad here." Is London full of mad photographers and sandwichboard-men who look like the playing-card courtiers of the Queen of Hearts?

"Elephants having failed to come," says Scholefield, noting that Tovey has not yet made an exposure, "I shall, in disappointment, screw off my own head."

This alarming promise, accompanied by a stylised gesture towards its consummation, succeeds only in putting a frown on Sophie's face.

"The gentleman wants you to lift your chin, Sophie dear," says Sugar softly, "and keep your eyes open without blinking."

Sophie does as she's told, and Mr

Tovey gets what he wants at once.

For the group photograph, William, Sugar and Sophie are posed in the simulacrum of the perfect sitting-room: Mr Rackham stands in the centre, Miss Rackham stands in front of him and slightly to the left, her head reaching his watch-chain, and the unnamed lady sits on an elegant chair to the right. Together they form a pyramid, more or less, with Mr Rackham's head at its apex, and the skirts of Miss Rackham and the lady combining at the base.

"Ideal, ideal," says Scholefield.

Sugar sits motionless, her hands demurely folded in her lap, her shoulders ramrod straight, and stares unblinking at Scholefield's raised finger. The hooded creature that is Tovey and his contraption has its eye open now; hidden chemicals are reacting, at this very instant, to the influx of light and a deepening impression of three carefully arranged human beings. She's aware of William breathing shallowly above her head. He still hasn't told her why they're doing this; she'd assumed he would have told her by now, but he hasn't. Dare she ask him, or is it one of those subjects that are liable to provoke him to a rage? How strange that an occasion which ought to fill her with hope for their shared future-a family portrait that installs her in the place of his wife-should arouse such foreboding in her.

What use can he possibly have in mind for this portrait? He can't display it, so what does he mean to do with it? Moon over it in private?

Give it to her as a gift? What in God's name is she doing here, and why does she feel worse than if she were being made to submit to naked indignities for the Use of Artists only?

"I think," says Scholefield, "we have quite finished, don't you, Mr Tovey?"'

To which his partner replies with a grunt.

Many hours later, back in Notting Hill, when night has fallen and all the excitement is over, the members of the Rackham household retire to bed, each to their own. All the lights in the house are extinguished, even the one in William's study.

William snores gently on his pillow, already dreaming. The largest of Pears' soap factories is ablaze, and he is watching the firemen labour hopelessly to save it. Permeating the dream is the extraordinary odour of burning soap, a smell he's never smelled in real life, and which, for all its unmistakable uniqueness in the dream, he'll forget the instant he wakes.

His daughter is fast asleep too, exhausted from her adventures and the distress of being scolded by Miss Sugar for being fractious and her after-dinner mishap in which she sicked up not just her beef stew but the cake and cocoa she had at Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms as well. The world is an awfully strange place, bigger and more crowded than she could ever have imagined, and full of phenomena even her governess quite clearly doesn't understand, but her father said she is a good girl, and the Bay of Biscay is in Spain, should he ever ask again. Tomorrow is another day, and she'll learn her lessons so well that Miss Sugar won't be in the least cross.

Sugar lies awake, chamber-pot clutched in her arms, spewing a vile mixture of pennyroyal and brewer's yeast. Yet, even in the midst of a spasm, when her mouth and nostrils are burning with poison, her physical misery is trifling compared to the sting of the words with which William sent her away from his study tonight: Mind your own business! If it were any affair of yours, don't you think I would have told you? Who do you think you are?

She crawls into bed, clutching her belly, afraid to whimper in case the noise should travel through the walls. Her stomach muscles are sore from convulsing; there can't be anything left in there.

Except…

For the first time since falling pregnant, Sugar imagines the baby as… a baby. Up until now, she's avoided seeing it so. It started as nothing more than a substanceless anxiety, an absence of menstruation; then it became a worm in the bud, a parasite which she hoped might be induced to pass out of her. Even when it clung on, she didn't imagine it as a living creature clinging for dear life; it was a mysterious object, growing and yet inert, a clump of fleshy matter inexplicably expanding in her guts. Now, as she lies in the godforsaken midnight, clutching her abdomen in her hands, she suddenly realises her hands are laid upon a life: she is harbouring a human being.

What is it like, this baby? Has it a face?

Yes, of course it must have a face. Is it a he or a she? Does it have any inkling how Sugar has mothered it so far? Is it contorted with fear, its skin scalded with sulphate of zinc and borax, its mouth gasping for clean nourishment amidst the poisons that swirl in Sugar's innards? Does it regret the day it was born, even though that day has yet to come?

Sugar removes her palms from her belly, and lays them on her feverish forehead. She must resist these thoughts. This baby-this creature-this tenacious clump of flesh-cannot be permitted to live. Her own life is at stake; if William finds out she's in the family way it will be the end, the end of everything. You won't go back on the streets, will you, Miss Sugar? That's what Mrs Fox said to her. And I would sooner die is what she promised in reply.

Sugar covers herself with a sheet in preparation for sleep; the nausea is ebbing and she's able to drink a sip of water to rinse the pennyroyal and gall from her tongue. Her abdomen is still sore from ribcage to groin, as though she's subjected rarely-used muscles to a regime of punishing exercise. She lays one palm on her belly; there's a heartbeat there. Her own heartbeat, of course; it's the same as the one in her breast and temples. The thing inside her probably hasn't a heart yet. Has it?

Scholefield and Tovey are awake too; in fact, despite the lateness of the hour, they haven't even left their premises in Conduit Street. Among other activities, they've been working on the Rackham pictures, attempting to produce miracles.

"The head's come out too small," mutters Tovey, squinting at a glistening female face that has just materialised in the gloom. "Don't you think the head's too small?"' "Yes," says Scholefield, "but it's useless for the purpose anyway. It's too bright; she looks as if she has a lamp burning inside her skull."

"Wouldn't it be simpler to photograph the three of them again, out of doors, in bright sunlight?"' "Yes, my love, it would be simpler," sighs Scholefield, "but out of the question."

They labour on, into the small hours of the morning. This commission of Rackham's is a much more difficult challenge than the usual business of superimposing a boy's face onto the body of a soldier, to give grieving parents an almost-authentic record of their missing son's military eminence. This Rackham assignment involves all but insuperable incompatibilities: a face from a photograph taken in brilliant sunlight, by an amateur whose opinion of his own skills is grossly inflated, must be rephotographed, enlarged to several times its size, and imposed on the shoulders of a woman done in the studio by professionals.

By three o'clock, they have the best result that they can manage, given the raw materials. Rackham will simply have to be satisfied with this, or, if he isn't, he can pay for the straightforward images of himself and his daughter, and forfeit the imperfect composite.

The photographers take themselves to bed in a little room adjoining the studio; it's far too late now for them to catch a cab back to their house in Clerkenwell. Suspended from a wire in the darkroom hangs their day's work: a fine photograph of William Rackham gazing into the Romantic eternity of a mountain summit, a fine photograph of William Rackham engrossed in the study of a book, a fine photograph of Sophie Rackham daydreaming in her nursery, and a most peculiar photograph of the Rackham family all together, with Agnes Rackham's head transplanted from a summer long ago, abnormally radiant, like one of those mysterious figures purported by spiritualists to be ghosts captured on the gelatin emulsion of film, which were never visible to the naked eye.