The Crimson petal and the white

THIRTY-THREE

Sent up to her room in disgrace, Sugar indulges, at long last, in a tantrum. A solitary, silent tantrum, in the privacy of her drab little bed-chamber, but no less a tantrum for that.

How dare William tell her it's none of her business what hour he comes home! How dare he tell her the mud on his clothing is his own affair, and that he owes her no explanation! How dare he tell her he's perfectly capable of handling his own correspondence, and has no further need of her flatteries and her forgeries! How dare he tell her that instead of lurking in wait for his return from an innocent visit on old friends, she'd be much better off sleeping, as her eyes are constantly bloodshot and uglified by the dark rings under them!

Sugar kneels at her bedside in the candlelight, William's expensive Christmas gift of Shakespeare's Tragedies in her lap, and tears out the pages by the handful, illustrations and all, clawing at the fragile paper with her brittle, jagged nails. How thin and smooth the pages are, like the pages of a Bible or a dictionary, as if made from glazed starch, or the stuff that cigarettes are wrapped in.

She scrunches them inside her fist,

Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, Romeo and

Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, all of them shredding under her nails, useless blather about ancient aristocracies. She'd thought William bought them for her in recognition-in honour-of her intellect, a coded message in front of his servants that he knew her soul to be a much finer thing than theirs. Tripe! He's an empty vulgarian, a crass oaf who might as soon have bought her a gilded elephant's foot or a jewelled chamber-pot had his eye not been diverted by this "hand-tooled" assortment of Shakespeare. Damn him! This is what she thinks of his oily attempts to buy her gratitude!

As she rips and rends, her body convulses with infantile sobs, an incessant rapid spasming, and the tears run down her cheeks.

Does he think she's blind, and without a sense of smell? He stank of more than mud when he stumbled into the house, supported on either side by Bodley and Ashwell; he stank of cheap perfume, the sort worn by whores. He stank of sexual connection-a connection he'd probably say (in his favourite phrase lately) had "nothing to do with" her! Damn him, snoring off his debauches in that bedroom where she's never been invited! She ought to burst in on him with a knife, slit his belly open and watch the contents spill out in a torrent of gore!

After a while, her sobs subside, and her hands grow weary of clawing the pages. She slumps against her dresser, surrounded by crumpled wads of paper, her naked toes lost under them.

What if William should come in and find her like this?

She crawls forward on her knees and picks up the paper-balls, tossing them into the fireplace.

They're consumed at once, flaring for the merest instant before shrivelling into ash.

Better she should be burning Agnes's diaries than her Christmas gifts from William. The volumes of Shakespeare are harmless, whereas the diaries could betray her any day or night.

Where's the good in continuing to hide them under her bed, when she's gleaned all she can from them, and they can only cause trouble? Agnes won't be back to reclaim them, that's for certain.

Sugar fetches one of the diaries into the light.

Over the months, every speck of dried mud has been rubbed off, so that the delicate volume no longer looks as though it was rescued from a grave of damp earth, but merely looks ancient, like a relic of a bygone century. Sugar opens it, and the ruined fragments of its absurdly dainty padlock and silver chain dangle like jewellery over her knuckles.

Dear Diary,

I do hope we shall be good friends.

Sugar flips the pages, witnessing once more Agnes Pigott's struggles to be reconciled to her new name.

It's only what my governess calls an appelation, after all, for the conveniance of the World At Large. I am foolish to fret so. GOD knows what my real name is, doesn't He?

Sugar lays the diary to one side; she'll destroy all of them but this one, the very first, which is small enough to be hidden out of harm's way. She can't help thinking there would be something… evil about destroying the first words Agnes entrusted to posterity. It would be like pretending she never existed; or, no: that she began to exist only when her death provided the meat for a newspaper obituary.

Sugar extracts another diary from under the bed.

It happens to be the final Abbots Langley chronicle, written by a fifteen-year-old Agnes preparing to go home and nurse her mother back to health. Dried flower-petals flutter out of its pages to the floor, crimson and white, weightless. Agnes Unwin's valedictory poem reads thus:

Our happy joys of Sisterhood are done The Sun is through the redd'ning Heavens pushing Our little race of Learning now is run-For none can thwart the Future onward rushing!

Squaring her jaw, Sugar consigns the diary to the flames. It smoulders and hisses softly. She looks away.

Another diary is fetched from its hiding-place. Its first entry relates that there has been no reply from "the Swiss Post Office" on the matter of where to send Miss Eugenie Soon-To-Be-Schleswig's scrapbook of kittens. This volume, too, can go on the flames, when the first is consumed.

Sugar picks up a third volume.

Liebes Tagebuch… it announces on its opening page. Another for the fire.

She picks up a fourth volume. It dates from the early years of Agnes's marriage to William, and begins with an unreadable hallucination of demonic harassment, decorated in the margins with hieroglyphical eyes scrawled in clotted menstrual blood.

A few pages further on, a convalescing

Agnes reflects:

I had thought, while I was being schooled, that my old Life was being kept warm for me, like a favourite dish steaming under a silver cover, waiting for my return Home. I now know that this was a tragic dillusion. My step-father was plotting all the while, to kill my dear Mother inchmeal with his cruelty, and to sell my poor Self to the first man that would take me off his hands.

He chose William on purpose, I can see that now! Had he selected a suitor of a loftier Class, he would have been for ever running in to me, at the places where the Upper Ten Thousand meet. But he knew that William would drag me down from the heights, and that once I was sunk as low as I am now, he need never set eyes on me again!

Well, I'm glad! Yes, glad! He wasn't my father anyway. Admittance to the grandest Ball would not be reward enough to quell my revulsion at his company.

All through the ages it has been like this:

Females the pawns of male treachery. But one day, the Truth will be told.

The odour of perfumed paper turning to punk begins to permeate the room. Sugar glances at the fireplace. The diary's shape is still intact, but glows livid orange at the edges. She fetches another from under the bed, and opens it at random. It's an entry she hasn't read before, undated, but its ink is rich blue and fresh-looking.

Dear Holy Sister,

I know You have been watching over me, and please dont think I'm not grateful. In my sleep You assure me All will be well, and I am comforted and rest in peace against your breast; yet on waking I am once again afraid, and all Your words melt away from me as if they were snowflakes fallen in the night. I yearn for our next meeting, a bodily meeting in the world outside my dreams. Will it be soon? Will it be soon? Make a mark upon this page-a touch of Your lips, a fingerprint, any sign of Your presence-and I will know not to give up Hope.

With a grunt of distress, Sugar throws the diary into the fireplace. Its impact sends a shower of sparks flying, and it comes to rest on top of the still-smouldering carcass of the other one, but standing precariously upright. This, as far as the scientific principle of ignition is concerned, is by far the more efficient posture: the pages are licked into flame at once.

She scrabbles under her bed once more, and what emerges is not another of Agnes's diaries, but her own novel. How her heart sinks to see it!

This raggedy thing, bulging out of its stiff cardboard jacket: it's the embodiment of futility. All its crossed-out titles-Scenes from the Streets, A Cry from the Streets, An Angry Cry from an Unmarked Grave, Women Against Men, Death in the House of Ill Repute, Who Has Now the Upper Hand?, The Phoenix, The Claws of the Phoenix, The Embrace of the Phoenix, All Ye Who Enter Here, The Wages of Sin, Come Kiss the Mouth of Hell, and, finally, The Fall and Rise of Sugar-are tainted by her own juvenile delusions.

She balances the sheaf of papers on its torn and frayed spine and allows it to fall open where it will.

"But I am a father!" pleads one of the novel's doomed males, struggling impotently against the bonds the heroine has tied around his wrists and ankles. "I have a son and a daughter, waiting for me at homeo!"

"Better you had thought of that before," said I, cutting through his shirt with my razor-sharp dress-making shears. Very intent I was upon my work, swivelling the scissors back and forth across his hairy belly.

"See?"' I said, holding up a limp scrap of white cotton in the shape of a butterfly, its two halves held together by a shirt-button. "Isn't that pretty?"' "For pity's sake, think of my children!"

I leaned upon his chest, digging my elbows as hard as I could into his flesh, while speaking directly into his face, so close that my hot breath caused his eyes to blink. "There is no hope for children in this world," I informed him, hissing with fury. "If male, they will become filthy swine like you. If female, they will be defiled by filthy swine like you. The best thing for children is not to be born; the next-best thing is to die while they are still innocent."

Sugar groans in shame at the ravings of her old self. She ought to throw them on the flames, but she can't. And the two sacrificed diaries of Agnes's are still burning oh-so-slowly, giving off a pungent smell and smothering the coals with a veil of wilting black card. There's simply too great a volume of illicit paper here; it would take hours, days, to burn it all, and the smoke and stench would attract attention from the household beyond. With a sigh of resignation, Sugar shoves her novel, and the handful of diaries she'd condemned to extinction, back under the bed.

In the middle of the night, from the heart of the dark, a hand is laid on Sugar's thigh and shakes her gently from her sleep. She groans anxiously, anticipating her mother's words: "You needn't shiver any more…" But her mother is silent.

Instead, a deep male voice whispers through the gloom.

"I'm sorry, Sugar," he is saying.

"Please forgive me."

She opens her eyes, but finds she's burrowed wholly under the sheets, her head wrapped up in linen, her arms wrapped around her abdomen.

Gasping, she emerges into the air, squinting into the radiance of an oil lamp.

"What? What?"' she mutters.

"Forgive me for my oafish behaviour," repeats William. "I wasn't myself."

Sugar sits up in bed and runs one hand through her tangled hair. Her palm is hot and sweaty, the hidden flesh of her belly feels suddenly cool for the lack of her hands upon it.

William places the lamp on top of her dresser, then sits at the foot of her bed, his brow and nose casting black shadows over his eyes and mouth as he speaks.

"I collapsed in town. Too much too drink. You must forgive me."

His voice, for all its imperative message, sounds flat and morbid, as if he's counselling her against thinking ill of the dead.

"Yes, yes of course, my love," she replies, leaning forward to take his hand.

"I've been considering your opinion," he continues dully, "that it would be beneficial for Sophie to have more… outings in the company of… of us both."

"Oh, yes?"' says Sugar. She notes the time on the clock above his head: it's half past two in the morning. What in God's name does he have in mind at this hour? A spin in the carriage, the three of them in their nightgowns, admiring the gas-lit streets of suburbia while Cheesman serenades them with a lewd ditty?

"So, I've a-arranged…" says William, extracting his hand from hers and fiddling with his beard as his stammer begins to take hold.

"I-I've arranged a visit to more-my so-soap factory. For you and So-Sophie. Tomorrow a-afternoon."

For an instant, Sugar's spirits are buoyed up on a wave of dizzy optimism almost indistinguishable from her usual morning nausea.

Everything is falling into place! He's seen the light at last! He's realised that the only way to snatch happiness from the jaws of misery is to stay together, and damn what the world thinks! Now is the moment to throw herself into his arms, guide the palm of his hand to the curve of her belly, and tell him that immortality for the Rackham name-his immortality-is assured. You think there are only two of us here in this room, she could say. But there are three!

Hesitating on the brink of this outburst, the words on the tip of her tongue, she seeks out his eyes in the inky shadows of his brow, and sees only a fugitive glint. Then the last thing he said begins to niggle at her wakening brain.

"Tomorrow afternoon…" she echoes. "You mean … today?"' "Yes."

She blinks repeatedly. Her eyelids feel like they're lined with grit. "Couldn't it be another day?"' she suggests, very soft, to keep her voice sweet. "You'd benefit from a lie-in, don't you think, after… well, after the night you've had?"' "Yes," he concedes, "but this visit was a-a-arranged qu-quite some time ago."

Sugar, still blinking, strains to comprehend. "But surely it's for you to decide-"' "There's another people-person coming too.

So-someone whom I'm loath to i-inconvenience."

"Oh?"'

"Yes." He cannot look her in the eye.

"I see."

"I… I hoped you would."

He reaches out to touch her. The aroma of alcohol still exudes from his pores, released in a waft from his armpits as he leans across the bed to lay his palm on her shoulder. His stubby fingers smell of semen and the perfume of street-walkers.

"I haven't told you o-often enough," he says hoarsely, "will-what a treasure you are."

She sighs, and squeezes his hand briefly, letting it go before he has a chance to lock his fingers into hers.

"We'd better sleep, then," she says, turning her face away and dropping her cheek against the pillow. "My eyes, as you've pointed out, are bloodshot and ugly."

She keeps still, feigning cataleptic exhaustion, staring at his shadow on the wall. She sees the magnified black shape of his hand hovering in the space above her, trembling in its arrested impulse to soothe the anger from her flesh.

The stale air of her little bedroom, already muggy with burnt writing-paper, burnt book-binding thread, and the scent of betrayal, grows intolerable with the tension of his yearning to make amends. If she could force herself to sit up for just one second, ruffle his hair and kiss him on the forehead, that would probably do the trick. She nuzzles her cheek harder into her pillow, and closes her fist under it.

"Good night," says William, getting to his feet. She doesn't reply. He picks up the lamp and carries its light out of her room, closing the door gently behind him.

Next day, shortly after lunch, Sophie emerges from the school-room, ready to accompany her father and Miss Sugar to the factory where soap is made. Her face has been washed with that same soap this morning, by Rose (for Miss Sugar is slightly too crippled to wash and dress anyone just at the moment). Rose has a different way of combing and pinning Sophie's hair and when Miss Sugar sees it she looks as though she wants to take the pins out and begin from the beginning. But she can't because Rose is watching and Father is waiting and Miss Sugar is wrestling with her crutch, trying to walk in such a way as to pretend she hardly needs it and is just taking it along in case she gets tired.

Sophie has been thinking a lot about Miss Sugar lately. She has come to the conclusion that Miss Sugar has another life beyond her duties as a governess and a secretary to Father, and that this other life is rather complicated and unhappy.

This conclusion came to her quite suddenly, a few days ago, when Sophie peeked through the crack in her school-room door and witnessed her governess being carried up the stairs by Papa and Rose. Once long ago, on an occasion when Sophie disobeyed Nurse's command not to peek out of the nursery door, she saw her Mama being carried up those same stairs, looking remarkably similar to Miss Sugar: unladylike, all rumpled skirts and dangly limbs, with only the whites of her eyes showing. There exist, Sophie has decided, two Miss Sugars: the self-possessed custodian of all knowledge, and an overgrown child in trouble.

When the time comes to descend the stairs, Miss Sugar attempts two or three steps with the crutch, then hands the crutch to Sophie to hold while she leans heavily on the banister the rest of the way. Her face has no expression on it except for a half or perhaps a quarter smile (sophie has just been introduced to fractions) and she gets to the bottom without showing much effort, although her forehead is twinkly with sweat.

"No, I'm quite all right," she says to Father as he looks her up and down. He nods and allows Letty to dress him in his overcoat, then strides out of the door without a backward glance.

Father is seated inside the carriage before you can say Jack Robinson. Sophie and Miss Sugar approach more slowly, the governess limping across the carriage-way with that same quarter-smile on her reddening face. Cheesman stares at her with his big head tilted to one side, his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat. His eyes and Miss Sugar's meet, and Sophie understands at once that Miss Sugar hates him.

"'Ere now, Miss Sophie," says Cheesman when Sophie comes within arm's length and, reaching down, he snatches her off the carriage-way, through the cabin door and onto her seat, with a single sweep of his strong arms.

"Allow me, Miss Sugar," he grins, as if he means to sweep her up too, but he merely extends a steadying hand as Miss Sugar climbs into the cabin. She's almost safely inside, when she sways back a little-and instantly Cheesman's hands are on her waist, then they disappear behind her bottom. A rustling sound issues from Miss Sugar's horse-hair bustle as the coachman pushes her up.

"Take care, Cheesman," hisses

Miss Sugar as she claws the coach's upholstery and pulls herself inside.

"Oh, I always do, Miss Sugar," he replies, bowing so that his smirk is hidden in the upturned collars of his coat.

In a jiffy, they're on the move, with horse-harness jingling and the ground shaking the frame of the carriage. They're going all the way to a place called Lambeth! Miss Sugar has shown it to her on a map (not a very good or clear map, it must be admitted; it seems that the persons who make school-books are more interested in drawing ancient Mesopotamia at the time of Asshurbanipal than the London of today).

Anyway, Lambeth is on the other side of the River Thames, the side that doesn't have the Rackham house and the church and the park and the fountain and Mister Scofield and Tophie's photography shop and Lockheart's Cocoa Rooms where she ate the cake that made her sick, and all the rest of the known world.

"You are turned out very nicely,

Sophie," says her Father. She blushes with pleasure, even though Miss Sugar frowns and looks down at her own shoes. One of those shoes is very tight, swollen by the sore foot inside.

The leather is stretched and shiny, like a ham.

Miss Sugar needs new shoes, or at least one. Sophie needs new shoes, too; her feet are very pinched, even though she hasn't fallen downstairs or anything of that sort: only grown bigger, from age. Wouldn't it be good if Miss Sugar suggested a visit to a shoe shop, after the visit to Papa's soap factory? If time is short, it would be a sensibler place to go than a Cocoa Room, because food ceases to exist as soon as you swallow it, whereas a well-fitting pair of shoes is a lasting boon for the feet.

"And after you've seen my factory, we'll go to Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms," says Father, nodding across to Sophie with his eyes exaggeratedly wide. "You'll like that, won't you?"' "Yes, Papa," Sophie says.

Merely to be addressed by him is a privilege worth any disappointment.

"I have told that fool Paltock he's to sort himself out by the thirty-first of this month," he goes on. "It was high time, don't you think?"'

Sophie ponders this for a moment, then realises that her role in the conversation has come to an end.

Miss Sugar draws a deep breath and looks out of the window.

"You know best, I'm sure," she says.

"When I say "that fool", I didn't call him that in my letter, of course."

"No, I should hope not." Sugar pauses, chewing at tiny flakes of dry skin on her lips. Then: "He'll transfer his allegiances to your competitors without the slightest scruple, I'm sure, and at a time when it inconveniences you to the maximum degree."

"All the more reason to give him a nudge now, before the Season."

Sophie turns her head to the window. If her father should feel any further need to speak to her, he'll no doubt summon her attention.

The journey through the city is wonderfully interesting. Apart from Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, whose trees she recognises in passing, and the big marble arch, everything is new to her.

Cheesman has been instructed "not to get us snarled in traffic", and so he steers the carriage through all sorts of unfamiliar thoroughfares, re-joining Oxford Street only when unavoidable. When he comes to the so-called circus at which, on their previous outing, Sophie was disappointed not to witness any lions or elephants, he doesn't turn right towards the bright commotion, but keeps going straight.

Soon the buildings and shops are looking neither grand nor cheerful-indeed, they look shabby, and so do the people on the footpaths. All the men bear a strange resemblance to Mr Woburn the knife-sharpener who comes to the Rackham house, and all the women look like Letty except not as neat and clean, and nobody sings or shouts or whistles or declares they've something that only costs a ha'penny and is worth half a crown. They move like dreary phantoms through the grey chill, and when they lift their faces to note the passing of the Rackham carriage, their eyes are black as coals.

The paving under the wheels of the carriage becomes more and more uneven, and the streets narrower. The houses now are in a frightful state, all jumbled together and falling apart, with long sagging lines of people's underclothes and bed-sheets hung in plain view, as if no one here is the least bit ashamed of wetting the bed. There's a horrid smell of dirty things, substances that Shears might use to make plants grow or kill them, and the women and children have hardly any clothes on.

As they rattle through the worst street yet, Sophie notices a little girl standing barefoot by a large iron bucket. The child, dressed in a buttonless blouse so large that its ragged hem clings to her filthy ankles, taps the bucket idly with a stick. Yet, although in these respects the girl is as different from Sophie as the trolls in Uncle Henry's fairytale book, their faces-the girl's face, and Sophie's face-share such a striking resemblance that Sophie is agog, and leans her head out of the carriage window to stare.

The urchin child, finding herself the object of unwelcome attention, reaches down into her bucket andwitha single unhesitating motion hurls a small missile. Sophie doesn't pull her head back; she can't quite believe that the dark thing flashing through the air exists in the same world as her own body and the carriage in which she sits; rather, she's entranced by the expression of stubborn malevolence on her twin's face… entranced for an instant only. Then the projectile hits her right between the eyes.

"What the devil…!" yelps William, as his daughter sprawls backwards onto the cabin floor.

"Sophie!" cries Sugar, lurching violently as Cheesman reins the carriage to a halt. She scoops the child into her arms, relieved to see only bewilderment, no blood. No serious harm has been done, thank God: there's a mucky brown mark on Sophie's brow, and in her flailings for balance she has (with the unerring bad luck that attends such mishaps) squashed the fallen dog turd between her palm and the toe of Father's left shoe.

Instinctively, Sugar grabs the nearest loose cloth-the embroidered antimacassar from the seat next to William's-and begins to wipe Sophie's face with it.

"Haven't you got a handkerchief!" barks William, in a state of furious agitation. His fists are clenched, his chest heaves, he thrusts his angry face out of the window, but the urchin has vanished like a rat. Then, noticing that Sophie's hand is still dark with dogshit, he recoils against the wall of the cabin, away from any further besmirching.

"Stop thrashing about, you stupid child!" he yells. "Sugar, take her glove off first!

God almighty, can't you see…!" The two females, cowed by his rage, fumble to obey.

"And what were you doing," he bawls at Sophie, "poking your head out like that, like an imbecile? Have you no sense whatsoever?"'

He's trembling, and Sugar knows his outburst is as much from distress as anything else; his nerves have never quite recovered from his beating. She cleans Sophie as best she can, while William jumps out of the cabin and washes his shoe, with the help of a rag supplied by Cheesman.

"A splash of beer's the remedy for that, sir," chirrups the coachman. "I always keep some 'andy for just such a purpose."

While the men are busy, Sugar examines Sophie's face. The child is sobbing almost imperceptibly, her breaths shallow and quick, but there are no tears, and not so much as a whimper of complaint.

"Are you hurt, Sophie?"' whispers Sugar, licking the tip of her thumb and wiping one vestigial smudge of muck from the child's pale flesh.

Sophie juts her jaw forward, and her eyes blink hard.

"No, Miss."

For the continuation of the journey, Sophie sits as still as a waxwork or a parcel, responding only to the joltings of the carriage wheels. William, once his explosion of temper has settled, becomes aware of what he's done, and shows his contrition with such offerings as "Well, that was a not-narow escape, will-wasn't it, Sophie?"' and "We shall-shall have to get you some not-new gloves now, shall-shan't we?"'-all delivered in a jolly tone that's pitiful and irritating in equal measure.

"Yes, Papa," says Sophie quietly, displaying her good manners but nothing more.

Her gaze is unfocused; or rather, it is focused upon some layer of the cosmos that's invisible to gross creatures called William Rackham. Never has her resemblance to Agnes been as remarkable as it is now.

"Look, Sophie!" says William.

"We're about to cross Waterloo Bridge!"

Obediently, Sophie looks out of the window, her head pulled well back from the aperture.

After a minute or two, though-to William's palpable relief-the magic of a vast body of water viewed from a great height does its work, and Sophie leans forward, her elbow resting on the window-ledge.

"What do you see, hmm?"' says

William, clownishly attentive. "Barges,

I expect?"'

"Yes, Papa," says Sophie, staring down into the churning grey-green expanse. It's scarcely recognisable as the neat blue ribbon on the map that Miss Sugar showed her this morning, but if this bridge they're crossing is Waterloo Bridge then they must be very near Waterloo Station, where her Mama got lost while searching for the Music School. Sophie peers down into the distant water and wonders which bit of it, exactly, is the bit where her mother sank under the waves and drank more water than a living body can hold.

Outside the iron gates of the Rackham soap factory in Lambeth, a carriage stands waiting, shackled to two placid grey horses.

In this coach, behold: Lady Bridgelow.

Ensconced snugly in the burnished cabin, like an aquamarine pearl in a four-wheeled shell, she draws all eyes to her even before she alights.

"Lord, look at that smoke…" tuts William, as he steps out of his own carriage and peers regretfully into a sky tainted with the murky efflux from Doulton and Co, Stiff and Sons, and various other potteries, glass-makers, breweries and soap-makers in the neighbourhood.

He guiltily appraises his own chimneys, and is reassured to note that the smoke issuing from them is wispy and clean.

"Oh, William, there you are!" Inside the coach, a pale starfish of pigskin fingers wiggles.

Approaching Lady Bridgelow after he's motioned the watchman to throw the gates wide, William apologises profusely for any inconvenience she may have suffered, to which she responds by insisting that it's her fault for arriving earlier than they'd agreed.

"I've been looking forward to it so much, you see," she trills, allowing herself to be helped out onto the footpath.

"Difficult for me to believe…" says

William, gesturing vaguely at the utilitarian ugliness of the factory's immediate locale, so different from the glittering pleasure gardens he imagines are Lady Bridgelow's natural habitat.

"Oh, so you doubt my word!" she teases him, feigning offence with a limp diminutive hand laid on her satiny blue breast. "No but really, William, you mustn't take me for an old relic. I've no desire to spend the rest of my days pining for things that are about to pass into history. Honestly, can you imagine me following a herd of doddery aristocrats around the countryside while they shoot pheasants and bemoan the evils of Reform Bills? A fate worse than death!"

"Well," says William, bowing in mock-obeisance, "If I can save you from such a fate, by showing you my humble factory…"

"Nothing would amuse me more!"

And they proceed through the gates. (what about Sugar, you ask? Oh well, yes, she enters too, hobbling on her crutch, with Sophie close by her side. How odd that Lady Bridgelow, for all her playful repudiation of patrician snobbery, appears not even to have noticed the governess's existence-or perhaps her innate grace and tact don't permit her to remark on the misfortune of a person's physical disability. Yes, that must be the reason: she doesn't wish to embarrass the hapless governess by enquiring how she came by her unsightly limp.) Sugar watches in dismay as William and Lady Bridgelow walk side by side, cutting a path through the toadies and sycophants who cringe to give them room. By contrast, those same employees edge inwards again after Mr Rackham and his distinguished guest have passed, as though primed to eject from the premises any interlopers who might be skulking in their wake. Sugar does her best to walk tall and hold her head high, putting as little weight as possible on her crutch, but she's plagued by the additional pain of indigestion, and it's all she can do not to grip her stomach and whimper.

The factory itself, when the little party enters its fiercely lit interior, is nothing like Sugar had anticipated. She'd pictured a building of grand proportions, a cavernous, echoing structure like a railway station or a church, filled with monstrous machines that hum and gleam.

She'd imagined the processes happening invisibly inside tubes and vessels, each feeding the other, while dwarfish human attendants oiled the moving parts. But Rackham's Soap Factory isn't that sort of set-up at all; it's an intimate affair, conducted under ceilings as low as a tavern's, with so much polished wood on show that it might almost be The Fireside.

Stunted girls with pinched faces and red hands-a dozen of them, like manufactured replicas of Janey the scullery maid-are working in an atmosphere thick with the mingled odours of lavender, carnation, rose and almond. They wear rustic wooden clogs with roughened soles, for the stone floors are iced with a waxy, pellucid patina of soap.

"Watch your step!" says

William, as he escorts his visitors into his fragrant domain. Under the glowing lights, his face is scarcely recognisable; his skin is golden, his lips silver, as he assumes the role of the master of ceremonies.

Forgetting his reticence, free of his stutter, he points here, he points there, and explains everything.

"Of course, what you see here is not strictly soap manufacture-that's a dirty business, not worthy of a perfumer. The correct word for our far more fragrant procedures is re-melting." He enunciates the word with exaggerated clarity, as if he expects his guests to scribble it on a notepad. Lady Bridgelow swivels her head in polite wonder; Sophie looks from her Papa to Lady Bridgelow and back to her Papa, puzzling over the mysterious chemistry that imbues the atmosphere between them.

The bars of soap, which Sugar had imagined tumbling fully-formed out of a chute or a nozzle at the very end of a complex automaton, exist only as puddles of gelatinous ooze, twinkling in wooden moulds. Wire frames are poised above the aromatic goo, to guillotine it into rectangles when it stiffens. Each mould contains a different colour of mucus, with a different scent.

"This yellow one is-or will be-Rackham's Honeysuckle," says William. "It relieves itching, and the demand for it has grown five-fold this year." He dips a finger into the glimmering emulsion, and reveals two distinct layers. "This cream that's risen, we skim off. It's pure alkali, which in my father's day was allowed to remain, thus making the soap irritating to sensitive skin."

He moves on to a different mould, whose contents are bluish and sweet-smelling.

"And here we have what will become Rackham's Puressence, a blend of sage, lavender and sandalwood oil. And here" (moving on again) "is Rackham's Jeunesse Eternelle. The green colour comes from cucumber, and the lemon and chamomile act as an astringent, restoring smoothness to the face."

Next he takes them to the curing chamber, where hundreds of bars of soap lie nestled on beds of metal and oak.

"A full twenty-one days they'll lie here, and not a day less!" declares Rackham, as if malicious whisperers have claimed otherwise.

In the wrapping room, twenty girls in lavender smocks sit at a massive table, ten on either side, overseen by a vulpine fellow who paces slowly around them, his ginger-haired hands hooked in his waistcoat pockets. The girls lean forward in formation, their brows almost touching as they enfold the soap in waxed paper parcels. Each of the parcels is printed with an engraving of William Rackham's benevolent visage, as well as a minuscule text authored by Sugar one late night in May, while she and William sat side by side in bed.

"Good morning, girls!" says William, and they respond in chorus: "Good morning, Mr Rackham."

"Often they sing to themselves," says William to Lady Bridgelow and his other guests, with a wink. "But we've made them shy, you see."

He approaches the table, and gives the lavender lassies a smile. "Let's hear a song, girls. This is my little daughter come to see you, and a very fine lady as well. You needn't be bashful; we're moving on to the crating hall now, and shan't be watching you, but if we could only hear your sweet voices, why, that would be capital."

Then, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial tone, he murmurs, "Do your best for me," while rolling his eyes meaningfully in the direction of Sophie, to appeal to their collective maternal nature.

William and his visitors then proceed to a large vestibule at the rear of the factory, where sinewy shirt-sleeved men are packing loose piles of finished soaps into flimsy wooden caskets. Sure enough, no sooner have Lady Bridgelow, Sugar and Sophie stepped across the threshold than a melodious chanting starts up in the room they've just left: first one timorous voice, then three, then a dozen.

"Lavender's blue, diddle diddle,

Rosemary's green, diddle diddle,

When I am king, diddle diddle, you shall be queen…"

"And here," says William, pointing at two massive doors beyond which, through a crack, they can glimpse the world outside, "is where the factory ends-and the rest of the story begins."

Sugar, who has been preoccupied with the triple challenge of keeping her limp as unobtrusive as possible, restraining her urge to groan as her stomach gripes wickedly, and suppressing the temptation to punch Lady Bridgelow's simpering face, becomes aware of a discreet tugging at her skirts.

"Yes, what is it, Sophie?"' she whispers, bending down clumsily to allow the child to whisper in her ear.

"I need to do a piddle, Miss," says the child.

Keep it in, can't you? thinks Sugar, but then she realises that she, too, is bursting to go.

"Pardon me, Mr Rackham," she says. "Is there, on the premises, a room with… washing facilities?"'

William blinks in disbelief: is this some sort of obtuse enquiry about soap production, a gauche attempt to reprise her performance in his lavender fields, or is she requesting a formal tour of the factory's water-closets? Then, mercifully, he understands, and commandeers an employee to show Miss Sugar and Miss Sophie the way to the conveniences, while Lady Bridgelow affects a consuming interest in the list of far-flung destinations chalked upon the delivery slate. ("I heard one say, diddle diddle since I came hither that you and I, diddle diddle, must lie together…") Lady Bridgelow ignores the child's indiscretion with the grace of one whose pedigree exempts her from such gross frailties.

Instead, she picks up an individual soap and studies the curious text on its wrapper.

The employees' latrine has a much more modern and streamlined appearance, in Sophie and Sugar's eyes, than the rest of the soapworks. A row of identical white glazed stoneware pedestals, each attached to a brilliant metal cistern bracketed under the ceiling, exhibit themselves like a phalanx of futuristic mechanisms, all proudly engraved with the name of their maker. The seats are a rich brown, glossy with lacquer, brand new it seems; but then, according to the address inscribed on all the cisterns, the Doulton factory is only a few hundred yards down the road.

The pedestals are so tall that Sophie, having clambered onto one, dangles her feet in space, several inches from the eggshell-blue ceramic floor. Sugar turns her back and walks a few steps farther along, studying the wall-tiles while Sophie's pee trickles into the bowl. The pain in her guts is so sharp now that it catches her breath and makes her shiver; she longs to relieve herself, but the prospect of doing it in front of the child worries her, and she wonders if, by superhuman force of will, she can wait until later.

Merely piddling in Sophie's presence wouldn't be so bad: a shared intimacy that might compensate, to some extent, for the erosion of dignity.

But the pangs in her bowels are fearsome, and she's loath to unleash a noisy flux of stink into the room, for that would ruin beyond repair the image of Miss Sugar the serene custodian of knowledge, and brand upon Sophie's mind (and nose!) the gross reality of… of Miss Sugar the sick animal.

Hugging herself tight and biting her lip to suppress the cramps, she stares at the wall.

A disgruntled employee has attempted to gouge a message into the ceramic:

W.r. is but the hardness of the surface has proved too obdurate.

Suddenly she must-absolutely must-sit down. Her stomach is skewered with agony, and every inch of her skin prickles with cold sweat; the flesh of her buttocks, bared in desperate haste as she claws handfuls of her dress onto her bent back and yanks down her pantalettes, is wet and slippery as a peeled pear. She lets herself drop heavily onto the seat, andwitha stifled cry of anguish she slumps forward, her bonnet falling to the tiled floor, her hair unravelling after it. Blood and other hot, slick material erupts and slithers between her thighs.

"Oh God!" she cries. "God help me…!" and a flush of dizziness seems to flip her upside down before she loses consciousness altogether.

A moment later-surely only a moment later?-she wakes on the floor, sprawled on the chilly damp tiles, her thighs slimy, her heartbeat shaking her body, her ankle throbbing as if caught in a steel trap. Craning her head, she sees Sophie cowering in a corner, face white as the stoneware, eyes huge and terrified.

"Help me, Sophie!" she calls, in an anxious hiss.

The child jerks forward, like a doll pulled by a string, but her expression is contorted by impotence.

"I-I'll go and fetch someone, Miss," she stammers, pointing at the door, beyond which lurk all the strong men and serviceable ladies with which her Papa's factory is so well-stocked.

"No! No! Sophie, please," begs Sugar in a frantic whisper, thrusting up her hands as she flounders in a tangle of her own skirts. "You must try."

For another instant, Sophie looks to the outside world for rescue. Then she runs forwards, seizes her governess by the wrists, and heaves with all her strength.

"Well," says William, when the goodbyes have been spoken and Lady Bridgelow has been borne away. "How did you like that, Sophie?"' "It was most wondrous, Papa," replies the child, in a spiritless voice.

They're seated in the Rackham carriage, their clothing exhaling the sweet scent of soap into the confines of the cabin, their knees almost touching, as Cheesman ferries them away from Lambeth. The visit has been a resounding success, at least in the estimation of Lady Bridgelow, who confided in William that she'd never had an experience that thrilled quite so many of her senses at once, and she could well imagine how it might overwhelm a person in less than robust health. Now he is left with Sugar, who does indeed look green around the gills, and Sophie, who looks as if she's been subjected to an ordeal rather than given the treat of her life.

William settles back in his seat, rubbing his knuckles ruefully. How perverse his daughter is! One cross word and she's sullen for the rest of the day. Disheartening though it may be to admit it, it's highly likely the child has inherited Agnes's unforgiving streak.

As for Sugar, she's dozing where she sits-actually dozing! Her head lolls backward, her mouth is slack, it's frankly disagreeable to behold. Her dress is rumpled, her hair is haloed with loose wisps, her bonnet's slightly askew. Sugar would do well to take a page from the book of Lady Bridgelow, who, from the moment she alighted from her carriage to the moment she waved William adieu, was immaculate and bright as a button. What an unusual person Constance is! A model of dignity and poise, and yet so full of life! A woman in a million…

"Waterloo Bridge again, Sophie," says William, offering his daughter the marvels of the world's greatest river a second time that day.

Sophie looks out of the window. Once more she rests her chin on her forearms and examines those turbulent waters in which even big boats don't look quite safe.

Then, glancing up, she sees something genuinely miraculous: an elephant floating through the sky, an elephant keeping still as a statue.

SALMON'S TEA is the message emblazoned on its bulbous flank, and it dawdles above the rooftops and chimneys on its way to those parts of the city where all the people are.

"What do you think, Sophie?"' says

William, squinting up at the balloon.

"Should Rackham's get one of those?"'

That evening, while William makes a start on the day's accumulated correspondence, the remainder of his household does its best to return to normal.

A few doors farther along the landing, Sugar has refused, as gracefully as she can, Rose's offer to put Sophie to bed. Instead, she asks for a tub of hot water to be delivered to her own bedroom, a request which Rose has no difficulty understanding, having noted that Miss Sugar looks like she's been dragged through a hedge backwards.

The day has been long, long, long. Oh God, how can a man be so blind to the needs of others? Cruelly oblivious to how much Sugar and Sophie yearned to go home, William protracted the outing to an unbearable length. First: lunch in a restaurant in the Strand, where Sugar almost fainted in the airless heat and was obliged to eat underdone lamb cutlets that William praised, from previous acquaintance, as divine; then a visit to a glover; then a visit to another glover, when the first one couldn't provide Sophie with a soft enough kidskin; then a visit to a shoe-maker, where William was finally rewarded with a smile from his daughter, when she stood up in her new boots and took three steps to the looking-glass. If only he'd left it at that! But no, encouraged by that smile, he took her to Berry and Rudd, the wine merchants in James Street, to get her weighed on their great scales. "Six generations of royal families, both English and French, have been weighed on these, Sophie!" he told her, while the proprietors leered in the background.

"They're only for persons of great consequence!" Then, as a final treat, the promised climax to the afternoon: a visit to Lockhart's Cocoa Rooms.

"What a jolly threesome we are today!" he declared, for an instant the very image of his own father, dangerously over-filled with the gas of bonhomie at Christmas. Then, when Sophie was occupied with the earnest study of a dessert menu the size of her upper body, he leaned forward and murmured close to Sugar's ear, "D'you think she's happy now?"' "Very happy, I'm sure," Sugar replied. Only when leaning forward in her seat was she made aware, by a sharp sting of pain, that the hair of her genitals was glued to her pantalettes with dried blood. "But I think she's had enough."

"Enough of what?"'

"Enough pleasure for one day."

Even when they were back in the Rackham house, the ordeal was not quite over. In a virtual replication of the aftermath of her first visit to the city weeks before, Sophie was violently ill, vomiting up the same mixture of cocoa, cake and undigested dinner, and then, inevitably, there were tears.

"Are you sure, Miss Sugar," said Rose at bedtime, hesitating at the door of Miss Rackham's room, "you wouldn't like me to help you?"' "No thank you, Rose," she said.

Whereupon-finally-seven hours and forty minutes after Sugar's fall from a blood-spattered earthenware basin onto the floor of the latrine of the Rackham Soap Works-she and Sophie are allowed to go to bed.

Other than holding Sophie's nightshift and handing it over, there's nothing Sugar can do to assist; she leans heavily against the bed while the child undresses and climbs in.

"I am very grateful to you, Sophie," she says hoarsely. "You are my little rescuer."

As soon as the words have left her lips, she despises herself for making light of the child's courage. It's the sort of patronising remark William might make, treating Sophie as if she were a clever little dog performing an amusing trick.

Sophie lays her head back on her pillow. Her cheeks are mottled with exhaustion, her nose bright red. She hasn't even said her prayers. Her lips twitch to ask a question.

"What's an imbecile, Miss?"'

Sugar strokes Sophie's hair, smoothing it back from her hot forehead.

"It's a person who's very stupid," she replies. Burning to ask a couple of questions of her own-Did you look into the water-closet's basin before you pulled the handle to flush it? And what did you see?-she manages to resist. "Your father didn't mean to call you that," she says.

"He was angry. And he hasn't been well."

Sophie shuts her eyes. She doesn't want to hear any more about grown-ups who aren't well. It's high time the universe was restored to its normal function.

"You mustn't worry about anything, little one," says Sugar, blinking tears off her eye-lashes. "Everything will be all right now."

Sophie turns her head aside, burying her cheek deep in her pillow.

"You won't fall down again, will you, Miss Sugar?"' she demands, in a strange tone between a sulk and a croon.

"I'll be very careful from now on, Sophie.

I promise."

She touches Sophie lightly on the shoulder, a forlorn gesture before turning to leave, but suddenly the child rears up in bed and throws her arms tight around Sugar's neck.

"Don't die, Miss Sugar! Don't die!" she wails, as Sugar, poorly balanced, almost pitches headlong into the child's bed.

"I won't die," she swears, staggering, kissing Sophie's hair. "I won't die, I promise!"

Not ten minutes later, with Sophie soundly asleep, Sugar sits in a large tub of steaming warm water in front of the fire. The room no longer smells of burnt paper and glue, but of lavender soap and wet earth: Rose, God bless her, has finally managed to prise the window open, breaking the stubborn seal of paint.

Sugar washes thoroughly, repetitiously, doggedly. She squeezes spongefuls of soothing water over her back and bosom, squeezes the sea creature's porous skeleton until it's like a damp powder puff, then presses it to her eyes. The rims are sore from weeping: she really must stop.

Every now and then she looks down, fearing what she might see, but there's a reassuring film of suds that disguises the pinkish tinge of the water, and any clots of blood have either sunk to the bottom or are hidden inside the froth. Her injured foot is very swollen, she knows, but it's invisible to her, and she fancies it hurts less than it ought to. Her cracked ribs (she strokes a lathered palm over them) are almost healed, the bruises vivid. The worst is over, the crisis has passed.

She reclines into the tub as deeply as its circumference allows, snivelling again. She bites her lower lip until the flesh throbs, and finally she has her sorrow under control; the convulsing water settles into stillness-or as still as water can be with a living body in it. In the opaque moat that shimmers between her legs, every heartbeat makes the water quiver like the lapping of a tide.

A few doors along the landing, at the same time as Sugar is taking herself to bed, William opens a letter from Doctor Curlew that begins thus:

Dear Rackham,

I've deliberated long and hard whether to write or keep silent. I don't doubt you are sick to death of my "meddling".

Nevertheless there is something I could scarcely fail to notice when I attended your daughter's governess after her mishap, and my resolution to hold my tongue about it has caused me no little botheration since…

This preamble is longer than the story itself, which takes only one sentence to tell.

In Sugar's bed, in the dark, many people are under the sheets with her, talking to her in her sleep.

Tell us a story, Shush, in that fancy voice of yours.

What sort of story? she asks, peering into the dappled waters of her dream, trying to put names to the indistinct faces submerged beneath.

Something with revenge in it, the voices giggle, irredeemably coarse, doomed to live out their lives in Hell. And bad words. Bad words sound funny when you say them, Sugar.

The giggles echo and re-echo, accumulating on top of one another until they're a cacophony. Sugar swims away from them, swims through the streets of an underwater city, and even in her dream she thinks this odd because she has never learned to swim. Yet it seems a skill that comes without teaching, and she can do it without taking her night-gown off, propelling her body through sewer-like alleyways and bright transparent thoroughfares. If this is London, its population has floated away like debris, and has ended up somewhere far above, a scum of human flotsam tarnishing the sky. Only those people who are of consequence to Sugar have remained below, it seems.

Clara? calls a voice from a nearby, quite the loveliest and most musical voice Sugar has ever heard.

No, Agnes, she replies, turning a corner. I'm not Clara.

Who are you, then?

Don't look in my face. I will help you, but don't look in my face.

Agnes is lying supine on the cobbles of a narrow lane, naked, her flesh white as marble.

One thin arm is draped across her bosom, the other crosses it downwards, hiding her pubic triangle under her childish hand.

Here, says Sugar, shedding her night-gown and draping it over Agnes. Let this be our secret.

Bless you, bless you, says Agnes, and suddenly the watery world of London disappears, and the two of them are in bed together, warm and dry, tucked up snug as sisters, gazing into each other's faces.

William says you are a fantasy, murmurs Agnes, reaching forward to touch Sugar's flesh, to banish her doubt. A trick of my imagination.

Never mind what William says.

Please, my dear Sister: tell me your name.

Sugar feels a hand between her legs, gently cupping the sore part.

My name is Sugar, she says.