The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  It’s not Caroline’s company that’s brought this on. Caroline, as you already know, is inconsequential; she asks nothing.

  No, what has tested Sugar so unbearably is this: having to be patient and kind all yesterday and last night, sitting up with a dying friend called Elizabeth in a fetid slum in Seven Dials. How long Elizabeth took to die, clutching Sugar’s hand all the while! Such a clammy, cool, claw-like hand it was too, for all those hours! At the thought of it, Sugar’s own hands sweat even more inside her gloves, itching and stinging against the powdered lining.

  But being a fallen woman has its small advantages, and she claims one of them now. The rules governing outdoor dress are clear, for those who can understand them: men may wear gloves or not wear gloves, as they please; poor shabby women must not wear them (the thought alone is ridiculous!) or the police are likely to demand where they got them; respectable women of the lower orders, especially those with babes in arms, can be forgiven for not wearing them; but ladies must wear them at all times, until safely indoors. Sugar is dressed like a lady, therefore she must on no account bare her extremities in public.

  Nevertheless, glove-tip by glove-tip, finger by finger, Sugar strips, even as she walks, the soft green leather off her hands. Unsheathed, her sweating white skin glistens in the sunshine. With a deep sigh of relief, indistinguishable from the one she uses when a man has done to her all he can do, she flexes in the cool air her intricately cracked and flaking fingers.

  Follow Sugar now into the great open space, the grandiose vacancy of Regent Street — admire those towering honeycombs of palatial buildings stretching into the fog of architectural infinity, those thousands of identically shaped windows tier upon tier; the glassy expanse of roadway swept clear of snow; all of it is a statement of intent: a declaration that in the bright future to come, places like St Giles and Soho, with their narrow labyrinths and tilting hovels and clammy, crumbling nooks infested with human flotsam, will be swept away, to be replaced by a new London that’s entirely like Regent Street, airy, regular and clean.

  The Stretch at this hour of morning is already alive with activity — not the insane profusion it will bear in the summer Season, but enough to impress you. Cabs are trotting backwards and forwards, thickly bearded gentlemen in dark clothing dash across their path, sandwich-board men patrol the gutters and, over there, a trio of street-sweepers are standing over a drain, cramming the accumulated porridge of snow-slush, dirt and horse-dung down through the grille with jabs of their brooms. Even as they toil, an equipage bristling with provincial businessmen jingles by, leaving a steamy festoon of turd in its wake.

  An omnibus is reined to a halt, and half a dozen passengers alight. One of them, a soberly dressed man of average height and build, is in an indecent hurry, and almost runs into the shit-spill: just in time he reels backwards, like a street clown performing for whinnying onlookers in Seven Dials. Mortified, he whips off his hat, and advances with a cringing gait. His hair, thus released into the atmosphere, is remarkable in how it sits, or more accurately jumps around, on his head. From the forehead down, he looks terribly serious, even anxious, as if he’s late for work and may expect a reprimand, but from the forehead up he is a comic delight: a flip-flopping crest of curly golden hair, like a small furry animal fallen out of the sky onto the head of a man, and determined to keep its purchase there no matter what.

  Sugar smiles, relieved to see something amusing in the world at last; then she hugs her parcel once more, and starts to idle along the Stretch. Just a few more minutes, here on the cobbled shore of London’s tomorrow, and she’ll be ready to go home.

  Leave Sugar to herself now; she longs to walk alone, anonymous. She’s already forgotten about the man with the ridiculous hair, whom you took to be just another passer-by, a flash of local colour distracting you from your quest to find the people you came here to meet. Stop daydreaming now; cross the shiny Rubicon of Regent Street, avoiding the traffic and the mounds of muck; and seek out that clownish man.

  Whatever you do, don’t let him melt into the crowd, for he’s really a very important man, and he’ll take you further than you can possibly imagine.

  THREE

  William Rackham, destined to be the head of Rackham Perfumeries but rather a disappointment at present, considers himself to be in desperate need of a new hat. That’s why he is hurrying so. That’s why you had better stop staring at the gently bobbing bustle of Sugar’s dress as she moves away from you, stop staring at her sharp shoulder-blades and wasp waist and the wisps of orange hair fluttering under her bonnet, and run after William Rackham instead.

  You hesitate. Sugar is going home, to a bawdy-house with the most peculiar name of ‘Mrs Castaway’s’. You’d like to see the insides of such a place, wouldn’t you? Why should you miss whatever is about to happen, just to pursue this stranger, this … man? Admittedly his bouncing mop of golden hair was comical, but he was otherwise not very fascinating — especially compared to this woman you’re only just getting to know.

  But William Rackham is destined to be the head of Rackham Perfumeries. Head of Rackham Perfumeries! If you want to get on, you can’t aflord to linger in the company of whores. You must find it in you to become extraordinarily interested in why William Rackham considers himself to be in desperate need of a new hat. I will help you as much as I can.

  His old hat he carries in his hand as he walks along, for he’d rather go bareheaded in a world of hatted men than wear it a minute longer, so ashamed is he of its unfashionable tallness and its frayed brim. Of course, whether he wears it or doesn’t wear it, people will be staring at him in pity, just as they stared at him in the omnibus …do they truly imagine he can’t see them smirking? Oh God! How is it possible things have come to this! Life has conspired … but no, he has no right to make so all-embracing an accusation … Rather say, there are unfriendly elements in Life conspiring against him, and he can’t yet see his way clear to victory.

  In the end, though, he will triumph; he must triumph, because his happiness is, he believes, essential to a larger scheme of things. Not that he necessarily deserves to be happier than other men, no. Rather, his fate is a sort of … a sort of hinge on which much else depends, and if he should be crushed by misfortune, something greater will collapse along with him, and surely Life wouldn’t risk that.

  William Rackham has come …

  (Are you still paying attention?)

  William Rackham has come into the city because he knows that in Regent Street he can put an end to his humiliation by buying a new hat. Which isn’t to imply he couldn’t buy just as good a hat at Whiteley’s in Bayswater and save himself the journey, but he has an ulterior reason for coming here, or two ulterior reasons. Firstly, he’d rather not be seen in Whiteley’s, which he’s been heard to disparage, in the course of those smart dinner parties to which he always used to be invited, as hopelessly vulgar. (Where he’s heading now is vulgar too, of course, but he’s less likely to meet anyone he knows.) Secondly, he wishes to keep a careful eye on Clara, his wife’s lady’s-maid.

  Why? Oh, it’s all very sordid and complicated. Having recently forced himself to make a few calculations of his household’s expenses, William Rackham has concluded that his servants are stealing from him — and not just the odd candle or rasher of bacon, but on an outrageous scale. No doubt they’re taking advantage of his wife’s illness and his own disinclination to dwell on his financial woes, but they’re damned mistaken if they think he notices nothing. Damned mistaken!

  And so, yesterday afternoon, as soon as his wife finished describing to Clara what she wished bought in London the next morning, William (eavesdropping outside the door) smelled avarice. Watching Clara descend the stairs, looking down on her from the shadowy landing, he fancied he could see plans for embezzlement already simmering in her stocky little body, simmering towards the boil.

  ‘I trust Clara with my life,’ Agnes objected, with typical exaggeration, when he told her privately of his misgivings. />
  ‘That may be so,’ he said. ‘But I don’t trust her with my money.’ An uneasy moment followed then, as Agnes’s face was subtly contorted by the temptation to point out that the money wasn’t his but his father’s, and that if he would only comply with his father’s demands, they’d have a lot more of it. She behaved herself, though, and William felt moved to reward her with a compromise. Clara would be trusted with the actual purchase, but William would, by sheer ‘chance’, accompany her into the city.

  And so it is that the master and the lady’s-maid have travelled down from Notting Hill together on the omnibus, a cab being ‘out of the question, of course’ — not (Rackham hoped the servant would understand) because he can ill afford cabs nowadays, but because people might gossip.

  A vain hope. The servant naturally chose to believe she was seeing yet more evidence of her master coming down in the world. (She’d also noticed how worn and outmoded his hat has become; in fact, she was the only person who’d noticed it, for he has been avoiding all his fashionable friends in shame.) Every change in the household routine, no matter how trifling, and every suggestion of economy, no matter how reasonable, Clara interprets as further proof that William Rackham is being squashed under his father’s boot like a slug.

  In her delight at his humiliation, it doesn’t occur to her that if he isn’t rescued from his predicament he might eventually be unable to keep her employed: her insights are of a different kind. She’s detected, for example, a cowardly retreat on the matter of the coachman, whose coming has been foretold for years, but who has never yet materialised. Lately there appears to be an unspoken agreement that there should be no further mention of this fabled advent. But Clara doesn’t forget! And what about Tilly, the downstairs housemaid? Dismissed for falling pregnant, she has never been replaced, with the result that Janey is doing far more than should be expected of a scullery maid. Rackham says it’s only temporary, but the months pass and nothing is done. Good lady’s-maids like Clara may be hard to find, but surely downstairs housemaids are plentiful as rats? Rackham could have one within the hour if he was willing to pay for it.

  All in all it’s a disgraceful situation, which Clara handles to the best of her abilities — that is, by making her displeasure felt in every way she can think of short of outright insolence.

  Hence the pained expression she maintained on her face all the way into London on the omnibus, an expression which the miserable Rackham didn’t even notice until the horses pulled the vehicle through Marble Arch. Perhaps all members of the female sex are sickly, he thought then, guessing that the servant must be in some sort of pain.

  Perhaps (he tried to reassure himself) my poor sick Agnes is not so unusual after all.

  William has deliberately made an early start in the city, so that he’ll have plenty of time to study, on his return home, the long-avoided progress papers and accounts of Rackham Perfumeries. (Or at least take them out of the envelopes his father sent them in.) Then tomorrow (perhaps) he will visit the lavender farm, if only to be seen there, so that report of it may reach the old man’s ears. It would probably be as well to ask the farm workers a few pertinent questions, if he can think of any. Reading the documents will help, no doubt — if it doesn’t drive him insane first.

  Madhouse or poorhouse: is that what his choices have been reduced to? Is there no way forward but to … to sell a false image of himself to his own father, faking enthusiasm for something loathsome? How, in the name of… But he mustn’t dwell on the deeper implications: that’s the curse of higher intellect. He must meet the day’s demands one by one. Buy a new hat. Keep an eye on Clara. Go home and make a start on those papers.

  William Rackham does not imagine he will master the family business in a day, no: his aims are modest. If he shows a little interest, his father may surrender a little more money. How long can it possibly take to read a few papers? One afternoon wasted on it ought to be enough, surely? Granted, he once opined in a Cambridge undergraduate magazine that ‘a single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny.’ But, as his recent haircut proves, the Cambridge life can’t last for ever. He’s made it last a good few years as it is.

  So, light-headed and blinking in the sun, legs still stiff from the long omnibus journey, William hurries along the Stretch. At his side, clutched in his gloved fingertips, swings the detestable hat; a few yards ahead of him walks his detested servant; and immediately behind him follows his shadow. Feel free, now, to follow him every bit as close as that shadow, for he is determined never to look back.

  There, up ahead, its grand mysterious interior glowing with a thousand lights, is the place where he’ll put an end to his misery. Buying a new hat should take no more than an hour or so, and Clara’s errand had better take less, if she knows what’s good for her. Straight in, get what’s wanted, then straight out, that’s how it’ll be. Back home by midday.

  William Rackham’s view of the enormous glass-fronted Billington & Joy emporium, unobstructed by the crowds through which he had to usher Agnes last time he was here, is panoramic. Dozens of display windows, huge by comparison with most shops’ humble panes, proclaim the store’s grand scale and modernity. Behind each of the windows is a showcase, offering for public admiration (the possibility of sale is not alluded to) a profusion of manufactures. These are artfully displayed against painted trornpe-Vceih of their settings in rooms of a fashionable house. Clara is moving past the dining-room display just now, a thick pane of glass separating her from the sumptuously laid table of silverware, china and wine-filled glasses. In the painted backdrop behind the table, a hearth glows convincingly with lifelike flame and, to the side, poking through a slit in a real curtain, two porcelain hands with white cuffs and a hint of black sleeve hold aloft a papier-mâché roast.

  So impressive are these displays, so diverting, that William almost careers into a headlong fall. There are hooks jutting out of the wall at ankle-level, provided for the tethering of dogs, and he very nearly trips. It’s just as well Clara has already entered Billington & Joy’s great white doors slightly ahead of him, at his instruction. How she would adore to see him fall!

  Once inside, William tries to catch sight of her, but she’s already lost in the wonderland of mirrored brightness. Glass and crystal are everywhere, mirrors hung at every interval, to multiply the galaxy of chandeliered gaslight. Even what is not glass or crystal is polished as if it were; the floor shines, the lacquered counters shimmer, even the hair of the serving staff is brilliant with Macassar oil, and the sheer profusion of merchandise is a little dazzling too.

  Mind you, as well as selling many elegant and indispensable things, Billington & Joy also sells magnetic brushes for curing bilious headaches in five minutes, galvanic chain-bands for imparting life-giving impulses, and glazed mugs with the Queen’s face scowling out of them in bas-relief, but even these objects seem already to have the status of eccentric museum exhibits, as though showcased for public wonderment alone. The whole effect, indeed, is so suggestive of the great Crystal Palace Exhibition on which the store is modelled, that some visitors, in their awe, are reluctant to buy anything, lest they mar the display. The fact that no prices are attached only adds to their timorousness, for they fear to ask and discover themselves insufficiently affluent.

  Therefore less is sold than might be sold — but at least not much gets stolen. To the urchins and thieves of Church Lane, Billington & Joy is Heaven — that is, not for the likes of them. They could no more hope to pass through its great white doors than through the eye of a needle.

  As for breakages, the most fragile displays endure safely for months at a time, because even prosperous children are rarely seen here, and on a tight leash when they are. Also, more crucially, the evolution of ladies’ fashions has meant that stylish female shoppers can move through a shop without knocking things over. Indeed, it would be fair to say that Billington & Joy, and other establishments of its kind, h
ave expanded in celebration of the crinoline’s demise. The modern woman has been streamlined to permit her to spend freely.

  Once more before mounting the stairs to the hat department, William looks around the store for Clara. Though she was a dozen footsteps ahead of him at most, she has disappeared like a rodent. The only thing resembling a servant he can see is the dummy serving-maid behind the display curtain, but there’s nothing to her except disembodied plaster arms that end abruptly at the elbows, mounted on metal stands.

  Clara’s errand, which she is to complete unsupervised while William Rackham chooses his new hat, is to procure for her mistress eighteen yards of ochre silk, plus matching trimmings, to be made into a dress when Mrs Rackham feels well enough to apply herself to the pattern and the machine. Clara likes this errand very much. In performing it, she experiences not only the thrill of saying, ‘Well, my man, I’ll need eighteen yards of it,’ and handling all that money, but she also executes a neat swindle whereby an additional item is bought — ostensibly for her mistress. This is the beauty of working for the Rackhams: he pays but has no stomach to understand what he’s paying for, she has needs but has no idea what they ought to cost, and the accounts disappear in a chasm between the two. And there’s no housekeeper! That’s the most convenient thing of all. There was a housekeeper once upon a time, a tubby Scotchwoman to whom Mrs Rackham attached herself, limpet-like, until it ended in tears: thereafter, a ban on the very subject.

  ‘We can run the house perfectly well between us, can’t we, Clara?’ Oh, yes, ma’am. We surely can!

  Clara already decided yesterday, while discussing the purchase of the dress material with Mrs Rackham (‘The prices lately, ma’am — you wouldn’t believe them!’) to buy herself a little something. A figure, if you must know.

  Clara hates her dowdy servant’s uniform fervently, and she knows only too well that for Christmas this year she’ll get exactly the same gift parcel she got last Christmas. Every year the same insult! — seven yards of double-width black merino, two yards of linen, and a striped skirt. Just what’s needed to make a new uniform — well, fancy that. Damn William Rackham and his stinginess — he deserves everything that befalls him!