The Crimson petal and the white

THIRTY-TWO

Sophie Rackham stands perched on a stool by the window and wiggles her bottom slightly, to test if the stool wobbles. It does, a little.

Carefully, because she can't see below her skirt, she shifts her feet for balance, until she's secure.

I am going to grow bigger than my Mama, she thinks, not defiantly, nor competitively, but because she has fathomed that her body is different in nature from her mother's, and not destined to be petite. It's as if she was fed a morsel of Alice's Wonderland cake when she was a baby, and instead of shooting up to the ceiling in seconds, she is expanding the tiniest amount each minute of her life, an expansion that won't stop until she's very big indeed-as big as Miss Sugar, or her father.

Soon, she won't need this stool to look out at the world. Soon, Miss Sugar-or someone -will have to arrange for her to get new shoes, new underwear, new everything, because she's growing so big that almost none of her clothes fit her comfortably.

Perhaps she'll be taken into the city again, where there exist whole shops devoted to the selling of a single object, and each day they manage to sell one, because of the marvellous abundance of people endlessly surging through the streets.

Sophie lifts her spyglass, curling her fingers around the ridges of its telescoped design. She extends it to its full length of fourteen inches and peers out at Chepstow Villas. Pedestrians are few; nothing much is happening. Not like in the city.

Behind her, the handle of the school-room door squeaks. Can this be Miss Sugar returning already, even though she's only just gone to help Papa with his letters? Sophie can't turn too quickly in case she falls off the stool; if her spyglass shattered she would suffer seven hundred and seventy-seven years of bad luck, she's decided.

"Hello, Sophie," says a deep male voice.

Sophie is amazed to see her father standing in the doorway. The last time he visited her here, Beatrice was still her nurse, and Mama was at the sea-side. She wonders whether curtsying would make a good impression on him, but a wobble of the stool dissuades her.

"Hello, Papa."

He closes the door behind him, crosses the room and waits for her to step down onto the carpet. Nothing remotely like this has ever happened before. She blinks in his shadow, looking up at his frowning, smiling bearded face.

"I have something for you," he says, his hands hidden behind his back.

Sophie's thrill of anticipation is tempered with fear; she can't help wondering if her father has come to tell her she's to be removed to a home for naughty girls, the way her nurse used to threaten he might.

"Here, then." He hands her a picture-frame the size of a large book.

Enclosed behind the glass is the photograph of her taken by the man who claimed to be able to balance elephants on his nose. The Sophie Rackham captured by him is noble and colourless, all greys and blacks, like a statue, but awfully dignified and grown-up looking. The fake backdrop has turned into a real room, and the young lady's eyes are beautiful and lifelike, with tiny lights glowing inside them.

What a beautiful picture! If it had colours, it would be a painting.

"Thank you, Papa," she says.

Her father smiles down at her, his lips forming the smile-shape jerkily, as though he's unaccustomed to using the stiff muscles involved.

Without speaking, he reveals another framed photograph from behind his back: a picture of himself this time, standing in front of the painted mountains and sky, gazing into the future.

"What do you think?"' he asks her.

Sophie can barely believe her ears. Her father has never asked her what she thinks before, about anything. How is it possible that the universe could permit this? He is old and she is young, he is big and she is small, he is male and she is female, he is her father and she is only his daughter.

"It's very good, isn't it, Papa?"' she says. She wants to tell him how real the illusion is, of him standing in front of those mountains, but she doesn't trust herself not to get tongue-tied and betrayed by her puny vocabulary.

Nevertheless, he seems to guess what she's thinking.

"Queer, isn't it, the way will-we know that this photograph was made in an upstairs room in a crowded street, and yet here am I, standing in the will-wilds of Nature. But that's what we must all do, Sophie: present ourselves in the best light. That's will-what A-A-Art is for. And History too." His stutter is getting worse as his ability to condescend to her level of discourse reaches the end of its rope. He's about to leave, she can tell.

"What about the other picture, Papa?"' she can't help asking as he takes a step backward. "The one of us all?"' "It… it wasn't a success," he says, with a pained look. "People-Perhaps we'll go back one day, and try another. But I can't people-promise."

And, without further conversation or parting words, he turns on his heel and walks stiltedly out of the room.

Sophie stares at the closed door, and hugs her portrait to her chest. She can scarcely wait to show Miss Sugar.

Late that night, when Sophie has long been asleep and even the servants are going to bed, Sugar and William are still discussing business by lamplight in the master's study. It's a never-exhausted subject, whose intricacy continues to deepen even when they're too tired to speak of it anymore. A year ago, if someone had asked Sugar what the running of a perfumery might involve, she'd have replied: Grow some flowers, get them harvested, mix them up in a potage, add the essence to bottles of water or cakes of soap, affix a paper label to the results, and trundle it to shops by the cartload.

Now, such abstruse questions as whether that swindler Crawley can be trusted to estimate the cost of converting beam engines from twelve to sixteen horsepower, or whether it's worth sinking more money into wooing the port authorities at Hull, can easily swallow up twenty minutes each, before the first item of unanswered correspondence is even lifted off the pile. Sugar has come to think that all professions are like this: simple to outsiders, inextricably complex to those within.

Even whores, after all, can prattle about their trade for hours.

William is in a strange mood tonight. Not his usual bad-tempered self; more reasonable, and yet melancholy with it. The challenges of business, to which his response in the early days of his directorship was rash enthusiasm, and more recently pugnacious defiance, seem suddenly to have sapped his spirit. "Useless",

"profitless", "futile": these are words he resorts to frequently, with a heavy sigh, burdening Sugar with the task of re-inflating his confidence. "Do you really think so?"' he says, when she reassures him that Rackham's star is still on the rise. "What a little optimist you are."

Sugar, knowing she ought to be grateful he isn't angry with her, is perversely tempted to snap at him. After what she's endured with Sophie today, she has grievances of her own, and is in no mood to be his encouraging angel. When will someone reassure her that everything is going to be all right?

I'm carrying your child, William, she's tempted to tell him. A boy, I'm sure.

The heir you want so badly, for Rackham Perfumeries. No one need know it's yours, except we two. You could say you got me from the Rescue Society, not knowing I was already with child. You could say I'm a good governess to Sophie and you can't bring yourself to condemn me for sins committed in my former life. You've always said you don't give a damn what other people think. And in years to come, when your son has taken after you, and tongues have stopped wagging, we could be married.

It's a gift from Fate, don't you see?

"I think you should leave things as they are," she advises, pulling herself back to the realities of beam engines. "In order to recoup your investment, you'd have to see ten years of good harvests and no expansion from your competitors. The risks are too great."

This reminder of his rivals darkens

William's mood even further.

"Ach, they'll leave me flapping my arms in the wind from their coattails, Sugar," he says, half-heartedly miming the motion from where he sits slumped on the ottoman. "The twentieth century belongs to Pears and Yardley, I can feel it in my bones."

Sugar chews her lower lip and suppresses an irritable sigh. If only she could set him to work drawing pictures of Australian kangaroos, or give him simpler sums to do!

Would he reward her with a big smile then?

"Let's worry about the rest of our own century first, William," she suggests.

"It's what we're living in, after all."

To signal the importance of dealing with the correspondence item by item, in the order that it comes, she takes the next envelope off the pile and recites the sender's name. "Philip Bodley."

"Leave that," groans William, allowing himself to slide further towards horizontal.

"It's nothing to do with you. With Rackham's, I mean."

"It's not trouble, though, is it?"' she murmurs sympathetically, trying to let him know with her voice that he can share his most secret woes with her, and she'll fortify him, like the best wife in the world.

"Trouble or not, it doesn't concern you," he points out, not belligerently, but with mournful resignation. "Remember I do have some sort of life beyond this desk, my love."

She takes the endearment at face value, or does her best to. After all, he's alluding to how indispensable she is to his business, isn't he? She picks up the next envelope.

"Finnegan and Co, Tynemouth."

He covers his face with his palms.

"Tell me the worst," he groans.

She reads the letter aloud, pausing only when William's snorts of annoyance and mutters of scepticism prevent him from hearing the words.

Then, while he's digesting the missive, she sits silent behind his desk, breathing shallowly, feeling the ominous distension against her tender stomach, feeling the gorge of aggrieved pride inching upwards.

"Sophie was impossible this afternoon," she finally blurts.

William, preoccupied with the Solomonic challenge of deciding whether bone-idle dockhands are truly to blame for the delays in unloading shipments at Tynemouth or whether his supplier is lying to him again, blinks uncomprehendingly.

"Sophie? Impossible?"'

Sugar takes a deep breath, and the seams of her dress press in on her swollen bosom and belly. In a flash, she recalls Sophie's excitement following the visit her father paid on her; her preening pride in the photograph; her babbly happiness and scatter-brained inattentiveness that gradually gave way, as the afternoon wore on, to tearful frustration at getting sums wrong and failing to memorise the names of flowers; her poor appetite at dinner-time and hungry fretfulness at bedtime; her general air of having been pumped full of a foreign substance she couldn't digest.

"She claims you told her we're all going to go back to the photographers again, very soon," says Sugar.

"I… I said no such thing," objects William, frowning as he comes to the conclusion that life is a morass of misconstruance and treachery: even one's own child, as soon as one makes a generous gesture, calls trouble down upon one's head!

"She insists that you promised," says

Sugar.

"Well, she's more-mistaken."

Sugar rubs her tired eyes. The flesh of her fingers is so rough, and the flesh of her eyelids so tender, she feels she could do herself an injury.

"I think," she says, "that if you mean to pay more attention to Sophie, it might be better to do it while I'm present."

William rears up on his elbows and glowers at her, incredulous. First Sophie and now Sugar! How fertile with complications and inconvenience females can be!

"Are you telling me," he enquires tersely, "will-when and under will-what circumstances I shall-should see my own daughter?"'

Sugar tips her head in submission, softens her tone as much as she can. "Oh no, William, please don't think that. You're doing wonderfully well, and I admire you for it."

Still he glowers; dear Christ, what else can she say? Should she keep her mouth shut now, or is there anything useful she can do with it? My my, you've learned a dictionary full of words, haven't you, dear? Mrs Castaway taunts her from the past. And only two of them will do you the slightest bit of good in this life: "Yes", and "Money".

Sugar takes another deep breath.

"Agnes's requirements made things so difficult for you," she commiserates, "for so many years, and now it's awkward, I know. And Sophie really is terribly grateful for any interest you show in her, and so am I. I only wonder if it might be possible for you… for us … to be together a little more often. As a… as a family. So to speak."

She swallows hard, fearful that she's gone too far. But wasn't it he who wanted a photograph of the three of them together? What was that picture leading to, if not to this?

"I'm doing all I people-possibly can," he warns her, "to keep this will-wretched household functioning."

His self-pity tempts her to shoot back a volley of her own, but she manages to resist; he's clenching his fists, his knuckles are white, his face is white, she ought to have known better, their future is about to shatter like a glass flung against a wall, God let her find the right words and she'll never ask for anything more. With a rustle of skirts she slips from behind the desk and kneels at his side, laying her hand solicitously over his.

"Oh, William, please let's not call this household wretched. You have achieved great things this year, magnificent things."

Heart thumping, she slides her arm around his neck, but thank God, he doesn't push her aside or explode into a rage. "Of course what befell Agnes was a tragedy," she presses on, stroking his shoulder, "but it was a mercy too, in a way, wasn't it? All that worry and… and scandal, for all those years, and now at last you're free of it." He is slackening; first one of his hands, then the other, settles on her waist. What a narrow escape she's had! "And Rackham's is having such a superb year," she goes on. "Half the problems we're facing are caused by its growth, we mustn't forget that. And it's a happy household you have here, honestly it is. All the servants are very friendly to me, William, and I can assure you, from what I've overheard, they're quite contented, and they think the world of you…"

He gazes up into her face, confused, sorrowful, needy, like a masterless dog. She kisses him on the mouth, strokes the insides of his thighs, nuzzles her knobbly wrist against his soft genital bulge.

"Remember what I told you when we first met, my love," she whispers. "I will do anything you ask of me. Anything."

Gently, he restrains her arm as she begins to gather up her skirts.

"It's late," he sighs. "We should be in bed."

She takes hold of his hand and guides it through the warm cottony layers towards her naked flesh. "My opinion exactly." If he can only feel what's between her legs for one second, she'll have him. More than any other incitement, it's a woman's juices he finds irresistible.

"No, I'm serious," he says.

"Look at the time."

Obediently, she consults the clock, and while her head is turned, he wriggles away from her embrace. It's half past eleven. At Mrs Castaway's, half past eleven was the peak of evening trade. Even in Priory Close, William would sometimes visit her as late as midnight, bringing life and noise into her quiescent rooms as he barged in from the street, his overcoat dappled with rain, his voice rich with desire. So closely attuned were they then, that she could tell by the way he embraced her exactly which orifice he would plump for.

"Oh, Lord, I'm tired," he groans, as the grandfather clock tolls the half-hour.

"No more correspondence, please. Back into the breach tomorrow, eh?"'

Sugar kisses him on the forehead.

"Whatever you say, William," she says.

Next morning, Sugar prepares Sophie as usual. She helps her dress, breakfasts with her, installs her at her writing-desk in the school-room. Mere minutes into the lesson, an upsurge of nausea prompts Sugar to hurry out the door, taking deep breaths of an atmosphere that is suddenly stiflingly suffused with the flavour of oversweet porridge and chloral. She pauses on the landing, so dizzy she doubts she can reach her bedroom before vomiting, but then the constitution of the air seems to change, and the urgency passes.

She stands poised at the top of the staircase.

The stairs are quite still, although the walls and ceiling continue to revolve slowly. An optical illusion. The light is dim this morning, and the traces of Agnes's blood wholly invisible.

How many steps has this staircase? Many, many.

The receiving hall is far, far below. Sugar stands poised. Her hands are laid one over the other, cradling the curve of her belly. She forces herself to remove them. The house breathes in and out.

It wants to help her; it knows the trouble she's in; it knows what's best for her. She steps forward, then notices she's cradling her belly again. She spreads her arms wide, like wings, and the blood in her head pumps so hard that the gas-lights pulse in sympathy. She closes her eyes, and lets herself fall.

"Mr Rackham! Mr Rackham!" (Bam, bam, bam, on his study door.) "Mr Rackham! Mr Rackham!" (Bam, bam, bam!) William bounds out from behind his desk, and opens up so abruptly that Letty almost raps her knuckles against his heaving chest.

"Oh, Mr Rackham!" she squeaks frantically. "Miss Sugar's fallen downstairs!"

He pushes past her, strides across the landing and looks down the long, long swath of carpeted steps. The body of Sugar lies sprawled far below, a tangle of black skirts, white underclothing, loose red hair and splayed limbs. She's motionless as a doll.

With one hand sliding on the banister to prevent a similar accident befalling him, William leaps down the stairs two and three at a time.

A short while later, Sugar's plunge through unconsciousness ends with a gentle slap to her cheek. She's lying on her own bed, with William standing over her. The last thing she can remember is flying through space, ecstatic with terror.

"How did I get here?"'

William's face, though careworn, is not angry. In fact, she detects a faint glow of loving concern for her-or of exertion.

"Rose and I carried you," he says.

Sugar looks around for Rose, but no, she's alone with her lover… her employer… whatever he is to her now.

"I lost my footing," she pleads.

"Will-we're an accident-prone household, to be sure," he jokes mirthlessly.

Sugar tries to lift herself up on her elbows, but is made helpless by a stab of pain like a knife through her ribs. She cranes her head forward, chin on breastbone, and notices two things: her hair has come loose from its pins, untidy masses of it falling all around her face; and her skirts are rucked up, exposing her underwear.

"The servants," she frets. "Did they see me disordered like this?"'

William laughs despite himself. "You do will-worry about some queer things, Sugar."

She laughs too, and tears spring to her eyes.

It's such a relief to hear him speak her name.

She pictures him as he might have been a few minutes ago, carrying her upstairs in his arms-then reminds herself that he didn't manage it alone, and that the ascent was most probably blundering and undignified.

"I'm so sorry, William. I… I lost…"

"Doctor Curlew is on his way."

Sugar feels a chill at the thought of

Doctor Curlew, whom she knows only from

Agnes's diaries, hurrying towards her. She imagines him gliding along the street, supernaturally fast, his eyes glowing like candles, his taloned hands disguised in gloves, his black bag teeming with maggots. Robbed of Mrs Rackham, his intended prey, he'll make do with torturing Sugar instead.

"I-is that necessary?"' she says. "Look:

I'm all right." She lifts her arms and legs and wriggles them slightly, panting with pain, to which William's response is a glare of pity and distaste, as if she were a giant cockroach, or raving mad.

"Don't move from this bed," he commands her, an edge of steel in his voice.

Sugar lies waiting, breathing shallowly to keep on the right side of the pain. What damage has she done in one moment of insanity? Her right ankle is stiff and sore, and she can feel her heart's pulse beating in it; her ribcage feels broken, as if splinters of sharp white bone are needling the soft red membranes of her organs. And for what? Has she ever known a woman who induced a miscarriage by falling downstairs? It's another fiction, a fairytale that whores tell each other…

Harriet Paley miscarried after being beaten black and blue, but that was different: William's hardly likely to punch and kick her in the belly, is he? (although he does sometimes get a look in his eye that makes her wonder if he's considering it…) There's a knock at her door, the knob turns, and a tall man walks into her bedroom.

"Miss Sugar is it?"' he says, in an affable, businesslike tone. "I'm Doctor Curlew: please allow me…"

Holding his bag before him like a diplomatic gift, he steps towards her, with scuffed leather shoes that are not cloven, eyes that do not glow, and wisps of grey in his beard. Far from resembling the Devil, he much resembles Emmeline Fox, though the long face looks handsomer on him than it does on her.

"Do you recall," he asks respectfully as he kneels at her bedside, "how far you fell, and what part of your person took the brunt?"' "No, I don't recall," she says, recalling the uncanny, attenuated second when her spirit floated free of her body, suspended in the air, while a lifeless dummy of flesh and cloth began to tumble down the steps.

"It all happened so suddenly."

Doctor Curlew opens his bag and removes a sharp metallic instrument, which proves to be a buttonhook. "Please allow me, Miss," he murmurs, and she nods permission.

With callused but gentle hands, Doctor

Curlew proceeds to examine his patient, manifestly uninterested in anything except the state of her bones beneath the flesh. He removes or rolls up her clothing one item at a time, and replaces each in turn, except for her right boot. When he pulls down her pantalettes and lays his palms on her naked belly, Sugar blushes crimson, but he merely prods her with his thumbs, satisfies himself that she's not in pain there, and digresses to her hips, instructing her, in a dispassionate tone, to attempt various movements.

"You are fortunate," he pronounces at last. "It's not uncommon for people to break their arms or even their necks falling off a chair.

You have fallen down a staircase, and all you have to show for it is two cracked ribs that will heal themselves in time, and a number of bruises of which you may not be aware yet, but soon will be. You also have a sprained, but not broken, ankle. By tomorrow morning it will have swollen to the size of my fist…" (he holds up his loosely curled fist for her appraisal) "and I don't expect you'll be able to move it then as you can still move it now.

Don't let this alarm you."

Curlew reaches into his bag, withdraws a large roll of thick white bandage, and plucks off the paper-clip that holds it snug.

"I am going to bind your ankle tightly with this bandage," he explains, as he lifts her leg off the bed and onto his knee, ignoring her gasps. "I must ask you not to remove the binding, no matter how tempted you may be. It will grow tighter as your injury swells, and you may imagine it's about to burst. I assure you that's impossible."

When he's finished with her leg, Doctor Curlew pulls down her dress as if it were a blanket or a shroud.

"Don't do anything foolish," he says as he rises, "keep to your bed as much as possible, and you'll make a good recovery."

"But… but I have duties to perform," protests Sugar feebly, hoisting herself up.

He looks down at her, a twinkle in his dark eyes, as though entertaining a suspicion that the duties for which William Rackham has engaged her can all be performed horizontally.

"I'll arrange," he reassures her solemnly, "for you to be equipped with a crutch."

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

"No bother at all."

And, with a click of his satchel, the man who's identified, in the diaries hidden under Sugar's bed, as the Demon Inquisitor, the Leech Master, Belial, and the Usher of Maggots, bids her a polite good day and, pausing only to waggle one finger in a gesture of remember: keep out of mischief, leaves her in peace.

Exactly as Doctor Curlew predicted,

Sugar wakes up on the morning after her fall grievously tempted to remove the binding from her foot. She does so at once, and feels much better.

Before long, however, her liberated foot swells to half the size again of the uninjured one, and she's unable to rest it on the floor without severe pain, let alone walk on it. Limping is all but impossible, and hopping is out of the question for, quite apart from the indignity, the exertion makes her bruises hurt more. Dragging her body around the room by sheer force of will, she has to admit she can't possibly be a governess to Sophie in this state.

Before her fear can grow into a panic, it's quelled by the arrival of a gift from her master, delivered to her door by Rose: a dark-lacquered pinewood crutch. Whether William already owned it or has purchased it especially for her she dares not ask. But she hobbles back and forth, three-legged, and marvels how a simple tool can change the world, making light of dark prospects and turning calamity into inconvenience. A staff of wood with a crossbar, and she's upright again! A miracle. Shortly after lunch, having missed only half a day of Sophie's lessons, she emerges from her room with her books under one arm and the crutch under the other, ready to discharge her duties.

She knows Sophie well enough by now not to be surprised to find her sitting at her writing-table in the school-room, as patiently as if it were four minutes and not four hours since Rose delivered her there. The mark of Rose's grooming is unmistakable: a certain way of brushing and pinning the hair, different from Sugar's, that makes Sophie look more like Agnes. On the table before her is arranged the sole evidence of her morning's idleness: drawings of houses, half a dozen of them, in blue pencil with red windows and grey smoke. Sophie covers them with her palms, as if caught in an act of mischief, as if she ought instead to have been deeply immersed in the Moorish Wars.

"I'm sorry, Miss."

"Nothing to be sorry about, Sophie," sighs Sugar, slumping on her crutch in disappointment. Mad though it was to hope for, she would have preferred to be received with a yelp of relief and an outburst of childish kisses. "Here, Sophie," she says, twitching one shoulder,

"take these books from under my arm. I'm afraid I shall drop them any moment."

Sophie leaps up from her seat to obey, without showing any sign of having noticed her governess's disability. She reaches up to extract the books clamped in Sugar's armpit, and her fingers bumble against Sugar's bosom as she does so, grazing the nipple through the fabric. Sugar adjusts her centre of gravity and gasps at the pain in her foot.

"Thank you," she says.

Back in her place, Sophie waits for guidance. Her determination to pretend there's nothing different about her governess today is obvious; when Sugar sways on her crutch and clumsily lowers herself into a chair, the child averts her eyes in order not to witness the inelegant spectacle.

"For goodness' sake, Sophie," cries Sugar, "aren't you a little curious to know what's happened to me?"' "Yes, Miss."

"Well then, if you are curious, why don't you ask?"' "I…" Sophie frowns, and looks down into her lap. It's as though she's been tricked by a cleverer opponent, manoeuvred into a trap of logic in the name of education. "Rose told me you fell down the stairs, Miss, and that I mustn't stare…"

Sugar shuts her eyes tight, and tries to summon what she'll need to get through the afternoon.

Please hold me, Sophie, she thinks.

Please hold me.

But what she says is: "The doctor says

I'll be better in no time."

"Yes, Miss."

Sugar peers across at the drawings on Sophie's writing-table. Each of the emblematic houses has depictions of three human figures drawn alongside it: one small, two big. Even from Sugar's upside-down perspective, the man in the dark suit and top hat is unmistakably William, and the puppet-sized girl with too few fingers is Sophie. But who is the female parent? The drawing has a heart-shaped face and blue eyes like Agnes, but is tall, as tall as William, and the lines of her abundant hair are sketched in red. For an instant Sugar is thrilled, then she notices that Sophie hasn't a yellow colouring-pencil on the table, only red, blue and grey. Also, who's to say that all grown-ups aren't the same height to her?

"All right then," Miss Sugar declares, clasping her hands together. "Arithmetic."

That afternoon, William Rackham answers his own correspondence. He answers it in a painstaking, rather clumsy hand: but he manages.

By folding his crooked ring finger over his middle one, he keeps its tip from smudging the ink, and by holding the pen almost vertical between his thumb and forefinger, he can achieve quite a bit of fluency.

I have read your letter, he writes. And now I'm damn well replying to it, he thinks.

The direct connection between his brain and his pen has been restored, however torturously.

But never mind the discomfort. What a blessing it is to be independent-and what a relief to be able to tell that blackguard Pankey exactly what's what, without Sugar taking all the sting out of his words. Some people deserve to be stung! Grover Pankey especially! If Rackham Perfumeries is to survive into the next century and beyond, it will need a strong hand at the helm now-a hand that doesn't stand for nonsense. How dare Pankey suggest that ivory is bound to crack when it's carved as thin as Rackham's pots require?

Perhaps you have lately engaged the services of a lower class of elephant, he scrawls.

The pots you showed me in Yarmouth were sturdy enough. I suggest you return to that pedigree of beast.

Yours…

Ah well, perhaps not "yours" much longer. But there's more than one ivory merchant in the world, Mr Grover Hanky-Pankey!

William signs his name, and frowns. The signature looks wrong, a childish approximation of his old one, inferior even to Sugar's sleepiest forgery. Well, what of it? The way he signed his name before he took control of Rackham Perfumeries was different from the way he signed it after, and the signature on letters he wrote as a schoolboy bore little relation to the signature on his wedding certificate. Life goes on. Change, as the Prime Minister himself has said, is constant.

He seals the letter, and is gripped by the urge to post it at once, to hurry out to Portobello Road and slip it into the nearest pillar-box, in case Sugar should come unexpectedly into the room and spy the letter lying here. The fresh air would do him good, anyhow. Ever since the hullabaloo yesterday he's been restless, searching for a good reason to leave the gloom of his house, to walk down a public street with a spring in his step.

Should he stay or should he go?

For a little while longer he delays, and the satisfaction of tearing into Pankey evaporates like essence of tuberose flying off a handkerchief.

He reflects on the long, hard journey he has made since taking the reins of this perfumery.

Again the vision of William Rackham the author and critic returns to haunt him, and he feels a pang of regret for the man who never was, the man whose pen was feared and admired and who set fire to boring correspondents with the tip of his cigar. That man had perfectly formed fingers, long golden hair, a radiant wife, a keen nose not for tainted jasmine but for the great Art and Literature of the Future. Instead, here he is, a widower, a stammerer, grunting with the effort of penning his own signature on letters to merchants he loathes. The bonds he once enjoyed with his family, friends and fellow travellers: all altered beyond recognition. Altered beyond rescue? If he doesn't make amends now while he still has the chance, a once-intimate relationship will sour into estrangement or even hostility.

So, he swallows his pride, leaves the house, commandeers Cheesman for a ride into the city, and travels direct to Torrington Mews, Bloomsbury, in the hope of catching Mr Philip Bodley at home.

Five hours later, William Rackham is a happy man. Yes, for the first time since Agnes's death, or even-yes, why not admit it?-long before, he is a truly happy man.

The passage of a mere five hours has ferried him from the brink of despond to the shore of contentment.

He's strolling along a narrow street in Soho, after sundown, slightly drunk, accosted from all sides by pedlars, urchins and whores wanting his money for grubby goods not worth tuppence. Their leering, gap-toothed faces and gesticulating sleeves ought to fill him with anxiety, given how recently he was beaten half to death by just such ruffians in the dark streets of Frome. But no, he's unafraid of being attacked; he is fearless, for he has his friends with him. Yes, not just Bodley, but Ashwell as well! There's really nothing, nothing in this world, quite as comforting as the company of men whom one has known since boyhood.

"We're founding our own publishing house, Bill," says Ashwell, his head swivelling in curiosity as he's passed by a hawker wearing twelve hats, with two others twirling on his fingers.

Bodley thrusts the pommel of his cane playfully at one of the prostitutes waving at them from the doorways. A small half-asleep boy, minding a cart of worthless jugs and pots he's been instructed to sell, flinches for fear the cane is a projectile about to smack into his snot-encrusted nose.

"We couldn't find anyone willing to publish our next book-"' Bodley explains.

"-..Art As Understood by the Working

Man-"'

"-s we're going to damn well publish it ourselves."

"Art as…? Publish it yourselves…? But why…?"' asks William, shaking his head in amused befuddlement. "From the title, it sounds to be a… a less contentious book than your previous ones…"

"Don't you believe it!" crows Ashwell.

"It's a brilliantly simple idea!" declares Bodley. "We got hold of a wide variety of rude working folk-chimneysweeps, fish merchants, kitchen-maids, tobacconists, match-sellers, and so forth-and we read them bits of Ruskin's Academy Notes…"

"… and showed them engravings of the paintings …"

"… and then asked them their opinion!"

Bodley contorts his face in a caricature of donkeyish intellect, and pretends to be examining an engraving held at arm's length.

"Wot you say dis one's name wos?

Afferdighty?"'

"A Greek lady, sir," mock-explains Ashwell, instantly playing the straight man to Bodley's buffoon. "A goddess."

"Greek? Blimey. Where's 'er black moustache, then?"'

Whereupon Bodley re-composes his face into a different character, a more thoughtful man, scratching his head doubtfully. "Whe-every-ell, maybe I'm hignorant-but this Afferdighty 'as got mighty queer dugs in my hopinion. She's got 'em where I never seen dugs on any woman down my street-an' I seen plenty!"

Rackham laughs uproariously-a good belly laugh such as he's not enjoyed since… well, not since he was last out with his friends.

"But why on earth," he demands, "are your usual publishers refusing to publish this one?

It'll make them just as much money, I'm sure!"

"That's precisely the problem," smirks

Bodley.

"Every one of our books has lost money!" declares Ashwell proudly.

"No!" protests William.

"Yes!" cries Ashwell.

"Oodles!" And he laughs like a hyena.

William reels to one side, misjudging his footing on the cobbles, and Bodley catches him.

He's a little drunker than he'd thought.

"Lost money? But that's impossible!" he insists. "I've met so many people who've read your books…"

"Oh, no doubt you've met every single one of 'em," says Ashwell breezily. Not twenty feet away, a gin-sozzled old woman slaps her elfin pigeon-chested husband hard against his sparse-haired skull. He falls like a ninepin, to a scattered chorus of guffaws.

"The Great Social Evil will recoup its costs, in time," qualifies Bodley,

"thanks to masturbating students and frustrated widows like Emmeline Fox…"

"But nobody bought The Efficacy of Prayer except the miserable old nincompoops we quoted in it."

William is still grinning, but his mind, honed by his long year's experience as a businessman, is having some difficulty with the sums.

"So let me see if I understand you," he says. "Instead of letting a publisher lose money, you mean to lose money yourselves…"

Bodley and Ashwell make identical dismissive hand gestures, to show they've considered this matter carefully.

"We'll publish pornography too," declares Ashwell, "to cover the losses incurred by our worthier books. Pornography of the rankest order. The demand is immense, Bill; the whole of England is desperate for sodomy!"

"Yes, the arse-whole!" puns Bodley.

"We'll publish a guide for men-about-town that's updated each month!" continues Ashwell, his cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. "Not like that damned useless More Sprees, which gives you a cockstand reading about some girl, and you go to the house, only to find she's dead, or the place has gone to the dogs, or it's full of Pentecostals!"

William's smile fades. The reference to More Sprees in London has reminded him of another reason why he and his chums became estranged in the first place: Bodley and Ashwell were aware of a prostitute called Sugar, a prostitute who abruptly disappeared from circulation. What might they think if they visited the Rackham house and heard the name "Miss Sugar" mentioned by a servant?

Highly unlikely, but still William changes the subject.

"You know," he says, "I've been chained to my desk so long, it's bliss to be out on the town with my old friends." (his stutter, he notes, is completely gone: all it takes is a few drinks and the right company!) "Fidus Achates!" cries Bodley, slapping William on the back. "Remember the time the bullers chased us all the way from Parker's Piece to our set?"' "Remember the time the proctor found that pretty slut Lizzie sleeping in the Master's Lodge?"' "Happy days, happy days," says William, though he has no memory of the incident.

"That's the spirit," beams Ashwell. "But these days can be every bit as happy, Bill, if you let 'em. Your perfume business is locomoting along at fearsome speed, I hear. You don't need to be stoking it every minute of the day, what?"' "Ah, you'd be surprised," sighs William. "Everything threatens to fall apart constantly. Everything. Constantly! Nothing in this damn world takes care of itself."

"Steady man, steady. Some things are wonderfully uncomplicated. Shove any old cock into any old cunt, and the rest happens automatically."

William grunts agreement, but in his heart he's far from sure. Lately, he has come to dread Sugar's overtures of love, for his pego has remained flaccid when he would most wish to have use of it. Is it still in working order? It gets stiff at inconvenient times, particularly in his sleep, but lets him down when the moment is ripe. How much longer can he keep Sugar ignorant of the fact that he's ceased, it seems, to be fully a man? How many more nights can he plead exhaustion or the lateness of the hour?

"If I don't keep my wits about me," he complains, "Rackham Perfumeries will be extinct by the time the century's out. And it's not as if I have anyone to pass it on to."

Ashwell pauses to buy an apple from a girl he likes the look of. He gives her sixpence, much more than she's asking, and she bows, almost spilling her remaining apples out of her basket.

"Thank you, poppet," he winks, biting into the firm flesh, and walks on. "So…" he remarks to William, his mouth mumbly with pulp, "So you don't want to marry Constance, is that it?"'

William stops in his tracks, astounded.

"Constance?"'

"Our dear Lady Bridgelow," says

Ashwell, making the effort to enunciate clearly, as if Rackham's bafflement may be nothing more than a problem with diction.

William sways forward, contemplates the ground, his vision blurring in and out of focus. A criss-cross pattern of furry muck is stuck to the cobbles, either horse-dung with a high quotient of thistles or the much-dispersed vestiges of a squashed dog's pelt.

"I… I wasn't aware that Constance had any desire to marry me."

Bodley and Ashwell groan good-naturedly, and Bodley grabs him by the shoulder of his coat, jerking it in exasperation.

"Come on, Bill, d'you expect her to get down on her bended knee and ask you herself? She has her pride."

William digests this as they walk on.

They've turned the corner into King Street, a somewhat wider thoroughfare. Prostitutes on both sides wave to them, confident that this evening's policeman has been amply persuaded to spend his energies on pickpockets and brawlers.

"Best fuck in London 'ere!" shouts a tipsy trollop.

"Getcher roast chestnuts 'ere!" bawls a man on the opposite footpath.

Bodley pauses, not for the chestnuts or the trollop, but because he's just stepped on something squishy. He lifts his left shoe and peers down at the sole, trying to determine whether the thing -now mingled with the oily mud between the cobblestones-was a turd or merely a lump of rotten fruit.

"What do you think, Philip?"' says Ashwell, grinning over his shoulder at the drunken lass who's still blowing him kisses. "Ready for a bit of fun?"' "Always, Edward, always. What about the lovely Apollonia?"' As an aside to William, he explains: "We've found a cracker of a girl, Bill, an absolute cracker-a woolly-haired African. She's at Mrs Jardine's house. Her cunt is dark purple, like a passionfruit, and they've taught her to speak like a debutante from Belgravia: it's the most comical thing!"

"Try her while the trying's good, Bill: she'll be snaffled by some diplomat or ambassador soon, and disappear into the bowels of Westminster!"

Bodley and Ashwell stand topper to topper and consult their fob-watches, briefly conferring over the possibility of going to Mrs Jardine's, but they soon agree that Apollonia is unlikely to be available at this hour. In any case, William gets the impression that, despite singing the praises of her exotic flavour, they've sampled it too recently, and hanker for something different.

"So what do you fancy?"' says Ashwell.

"Mrs Terence's is nearby…"

"It's half past nine," says Bodley.

"Bess and… whatsername-the Welsh one-will be taken, and I don't much care for the others. And you know what Mrs Terence is like: she won't let you leave once you're in."

"Mrs Ford's?"'

"Expensive," sniffs Bodley, "for what you get."

"Yes, but prompt."

"Yes, but it's in Panton Street. If fast service is what we're after, we could pop in to Madame Audrey's just around the corner."

Listening to them, William realises that his fears were in vain: these men have already forgotten Sugar, forgotten her entirely. She is ancient history, her name erased by a hundred other names since; the girl who once seemed to shine like a beacon in the murky vastness of London has been reduced to a glimmering pinprick of light in amongst countless similar glimmers. Life goes on, and there is never an end to the people surging through it.

"What about those three over there?"' says Bodley. "They have a cheerful air about 'em."

He nods towards a trio of whores giggling in the window-light of a chandler's shop. "I'm not in the mood for hoity-toity pretensions tonight, or misery."

The two men walk over to the waving women, and William, fearful of being left stranded and unprotected, tags along. He tries to keep his eyes on the dark street to the left and right of the women, but he's helplessly drawn to their vulgar display of lamp-lit taffeta and pink bosom. They're a cheeky threesome, well-groomed in an overdressed way, with masses of hair spilling out from under their too-elaborate bonnets. William has the uneasy feeling he's met them before.

"Nice weather we're 'avin'," simpers one.

"You never 'ad no one like me, ducks," says another.

"Nor me neither," says the third.

Are these the same three women who pestered him in The Fireside, when he first met Sugar?

They look younger, thinner, and their dresses are less ornate, but there's something about them…

Dear Heaven, could Fate really throw up such a hideous coincidence? Does one of these powdered doxies have it on the tip of her tongue to hail him as "Mr Hunt" and ask him how his books are faring, or demand to know how his tryst with Sugar ended?

"In the mouth, how much?"' Bodley is enquiring of the woman with the fullest lips. She leans forward and murmurs in his ear, smoothly settling her forearms on his shoulders.

Within seconds, the transaction has begun.

Ashwell, Bodley and an unwilling William have entered a shadowy cul-de-sac scarcely wide enough to accommodate the combined bulk of a squatting woman and a standing man. Ashwell watches Bodley being serviced, and gropes under the skirts of another woman while she strokes his exposed prick, whose size and firmness impress William, even at a glimpse, as demoralisingly superior to his own. The third woman stands with her back to William, facing out towards the open street, watching for unwanted company. By now William is certain-as certain as he can be-that he's never seen these three women before. He stares at the back of the one keeping watch, and tries to imagine himself lifting up her bustle, pulling down her drawers, and fucking her, but she seems to him devoid of erotic allure, a darkened Madame Tussaud's manikin of indifferently stitched dress material, a horse-hair bustle, a neck that's too thick, a glinting spine of buttons one of which, annoyingly, dangles loose from its buttonhole. His manhood is soft and damp; he has left his best years far behind him; he will spend the rest of his life worrying about Rackham Perfumeries; his daughter will grow up ugly and unmarried and ungrateful, the laughing-stock of his dwindling circle; and then, one day, in the middle of penning a futile letter with his crippled hand, he'll clutch at his heart and die. When did it all go wrong? It all went wrong when he married Agnes. It all went wrong when-Suddenly he becomes aware of Bodley groaning in satisfaction. The woman is almost finished with him; as he approaches orgasm, he agitates one trembling hand in the air, and makes as if to clamp hold of the back of her head. She intercepts him in mid-swing, grabbing his arm first by the wrist, then curling her fingers inside his, so that she and Bodley are holding hands. It's a peculiar gesture of control, of checkmated forces, which has the appearance of utmost tenderness and mutual urgency. William is instantly, powerfully aroused, and what seemed impossible a minute ago now feels imperative.

"Oh God!" cries Bodley as he spends. The girl keeps hold of him, squeezing his hand tight, nuzzling her brow against his belly. Only when Bodley slumps against the alley wall does she let him go and tip her head back, licking her lips.

Now! The moment is now! William steps forward, fetching his swollen manhood out of his trousers.

"Now me!" he commands hoarsely, his whole body prickling with anxious sweat, for already he can feel his organ's rigid flesh begin to lose its charge of blood. Mercifully, the prostitute delays no longer than an eye's-blink before taking him in her mouth and clapping her palms on his buttocks. William sways, momentarily off-balance; oh God, a pratfall at this juncture would be the end of him! But it's all right, she has him secure, her fingers dig into his flesh, her mouth and tongue are expert.

"Go on, sir, stick it in," says another female voice from behind him, addressing Ashwell. "You can afford it, sir, and you won't be sorry."

"I haven't a sheath on me."

"I take good care of meself, sir.

I've been to the doctor only last week, sir, and he says I'm clean as a kitten."

"Even so…" says Ashwell, panting,

"let it spill…"

"It's a fine silky cunt I 'ave, sir. A connoisseur's cunt."

"Even so…"

William, dizzy with mounting excitement, cannot understand Ashwell's qualms. Fuck the girl and have done with it! Fuck all the females in the world while the fucking is good! He feels as though he could spend like a geyser, filling first one woman, then the next, in their mouths, their cunts, their arses, leaving a great mound of them lolling and rumpled… Ah!

A few seconds later William Rackham is lying flat on the ground, unconscious, with five people standing over him.

"Give him air," says Ashwell.

"What's the matter with him?"' says one of the whores anxiously.

"Too much to drink," says Bodley, but he sounds none too sure.

"He was given a terrible beating by bughunters not so long ago," says Ashwell. "They cracked his head open, I believe."

"Oh, poor lamb!" coos the woman with the full lips. "Will 'e be like this always?"' "Come on, Bodley, help me with him."

The two men seize their friend under the armpits, and heave him a few inches off the ground. Taking umbrage at being ignored, the ringleader whore tugs at their sleeves, to regain the gentlemen's attention before they become too preoccupied.

"I've only been paid for one," she reminds them. "Fair's fair."

"And I ain't been paid at all," bleats the girl who kept watch, as though, of the three, the most debauched use has been made of her. The third woman frowns, unable to think how to add her voice to the grievances, given that Ashwell was interrupted before reaching the fulfilment he'd paid for.

"Here's… here's…" Ashwell claws a handful of coins, mostly shillings, from his pocket, and pushes them into her hands, while the other two crane their necks to see. "You can do the arithmetic between you, can't you?"' Fretful now about the unconscious Rackham, he has no appetite for haggling. Christ almighty: first Henry, then Agnes… If there's one more death in this wretched family…! And what a beastly stroke of fate, if those eminent swells Philip Bodley and Edward Ashwell should be forced to inaugurate their new career as publishers by carrying a corpse through the streets of Soho in search of the nearest police station!

"Bill! Bill! Are you with us?"' Ashwell barks, patting William roughly on the cheek.

"I… I'm with you," Rackham replies, whereupon, from the mouths of five onlookers-yes, even from the whores, for they've not found it in their hearts to scarper-issues a profound and wholly mutual sigh of relief.

"Well…" says the eldest woman, adjusting her bonnet and casting an eye on the flickering lights of the thoroughfare. "Good night, then, all." And she leads her sisters out of the dark.

For another few seconds Bodley and Ashwell loiter in the cul-de-sac, tidying their clothing, combing their hair, using each other as a mirror. You'll not see them again, so take a good last look at them now.

"Take me home," groans a voice from somewhere near their trouser-cuffs. "I want to go to bed."