The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  ‘Are you cold, Sophie?’ she asks, when the child lies shivering in the crisp sheets.

  ‘N-not very m-much, M-miss.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Rose about getting you another blanket. Your bedding is quite wrong for this time of year.’

  Sophie looks up at her in wonder: to the great inventory of things Miss Sugar understands, must now be added the precise relation between bed-linen and the seasons.

  Half past eight. The Rackham house is muffled in darkness, quiet and orderly. Even Clara would be satisfied, if she weren’t already resting in her room, nose stuck in a periodical called The Servant. Mrs Rackham is downstairs in the parlour, re-reading a novel called Lady Antonie’s Abduction — not strictly a book of arcane philosophy, she’ll admit, but a rattling good read nonetheless, especially when one has a headache. William is in Plymouth — or Portsmouth — something-mouth, anyway. Overnight excursions of this kind — ever-more-frequent — are essential, my dear, if the Rackham name is to be spread far and wide.

  The key-holes on the landing, should Clara feel inclined to inspect them, reveal nothing that would annoy her. All the rooms are dark except the governess’s, whose light is demure and static. That’s how Clara prefers the inhabitants of the Rackham house: asleep, like Miss Sophie, or reading in bed, like Miss Sugar.

  Sugar rubs her eyes, determined to finish another of Agnes’s diaries. If nothing else, the task will keep her awake until midnight, when she’ll put Sophie on the pot as usual. The child needs less and less prompting each time; before long, a whisper from the doorway will do it, and soon after that, perhaps just the memory of a whisper. The history of the world and the function of the universe may take a little longer for Sophie to grasp, but Sugar is determined to get her house-trained before the year is out.

  In the diaries, Agnes Unwin has just turned sixteen.

  How proud Mama should have been of me, she reflects wistfully. Although I suppose she looks down upon me from Limbo — if she can recognise me from the top of my head, at such a distance. Exactly what Mrs Unwin might be proud of in her daughter is left unspecified, though Agnes has become (if she does say so herself) very beautiful.

  Whenever I am tempted to despair, she declares, by the cruelty of Fate and my loneliness in this God-forsaken house, I count my blessings. Principle among which, my hair and eyes …

  Grief and menarche have made of Miss Unwin a most peculiar little creature, demented and conventional by turns. When not bleeding, she divides attention more or less equally among clothes, garden parties, balls, shoes, hats, and secret rituals for maintaining a spotless Catholic soul while going through the motions of Anglican observance. She shuns the sun, avoids all but the feeblest exercise, eats like a bird, and seems in good health, mostly.

  Each time she’s struck down by her ‘affliction’ — which comes at erratic intervals — she regards it as a life-threatening illness caused by evil spirits. The day before the bleeding starts, she’ll be complaining that there was

  indisputably a finger-mark on the inside of the soup tureen at the Grimshaws; the day after, she bids farewell to all earthly affairs and devotes her few remaining hours to fasting and prayer. Demons creep out from wherever they have been hiding, hungry for her blood. Agnes, terrified they’ll crawl into bed with her, keeps herself awake with smelling-salts (‘I think I may have sniffed too deeply and too often last night, as I began to imagine I had twenty fingers and a third eye’). She refuses to allow her servants to dispose of the soiled napkins, for fear the demons will scavenge them; instead she burns the bloodied wads of cotton in the fireplace, causing an almighty stench which Lord Unwin is forever summoning chimneysweeps to investigate.

  Lord Unwin, for all Agnes’s efforts to malign him, fails to live up to his reputation for monstrosity; indeed, to Sugar he appears an innocuous enough step-father. He doesn’t beat her; he doesn’t starve her (she does that for herself, while he cajoles her ‘most cruelly’ to put some meat on her bones); he chaperones her to concerts and dinner parties. An indulgent if not attentive guardian, he funds his step-daughter’s most wanton extravagances without objection.

  On one matter only he will not bend: Agnes is to attend Anglican worship. And not only that: she’s to attend as the sole representative of the Unwins, for he himself is disinclined to put in an appearance. ‘Faith is a woman’s province, Aggie dear,’ he tells her, and she must go and suffer horrid songs that aren’t even in Latin.

  I mouth the words, but don’t sing them, she assures her diary, like one prostitute assuring another that she’ll suck but not swallow.

  Aside from this weekly humiliation, and the curse that attacks her innards every few months, Agnes’s sense of herself as the miraculous survivor of a million horrific onslaughts seems rather at odds with reality. She is constantly being invited to garden parties, balls and picnics by the all the right people, and having an ‘immensely pleasant’ time there. By her own account, she has at least half a dozen suitors, whom Lord Unwin neither encourages nor opposes, so she maintains a coy flirtation with all of them. None of these suitors, as far as Sugar can tell from the scanty descriptions, is a professional man: rosy-cheeked aristocrats all.

  Elton is sweet, and manly too, says Agnes at one point. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, in order to punt our little Boat. He did frown terribly, but we went almost in a straight line, and when we chose our spot, he helped us all back onto the bank.

  To read one of these accounts is to have read them all. It’s a high-born world, a world in which ambitious merchants who arrange meetings with sweaty dock-workers in Yarmouth, or argue over the cost of burlap, simply don’t exist. That is to say, a world in which men such as William Rackham are inconceivable.

  From downstairs, in the world of November 30th, 1875, comes the muted toll of the doorbell, then:

  ‘Willi-a-a-am, you blackguard, show yourself!’

  This bellowing male voice, bursting the silence of the Rackham household, makes Sugar jump.

  ‘Coward! Poltroon! Draw your sword and come out of hiding!’

  A different, but equally loud, male voice. There are intruders downstairs! Sugar slips out of bed and kneels at her bedroom door, opening it a crack to peer through. She can see nothing except the silhouetted bars of the landing’s balustrade, and the gaudy glow of the chandelier. Still, the voices are more distinct: Philip Bodley and Edward Ashwell, uproariously drunk.

  ‘What d’you mean, he’s in Yarmouth? Hiding under his bed, more like! Avoiding his old friends! We demand shatish … shatisfaction!’

  For another thirty seconds or so, Rose’s flustered pleas are intermingled with Bodley and Ashwell’s jovial blustering, then — to everyone’s surprise — Mrs Rackham arrives on the scene.

  ‘Do let Rose take your coats, gentlemen,’ she says sweetly, her breathy lilt amplified by the acoustics of the receiving hall. ‘I’ll try to entertain you as best I can, not being my husband.’

  A remarkable invitation, given how fastidiously Agnes has avoided Bodley and Ashwell in the past. It certainly has the effect of quietening the two men, reducing them to snorts and mumbles.

  ‘I hear,’ says Agnes, ‘that you have another book about to …ah … issue forth?’

  ‘Tuesday next, Mrs Rackham. Our best yet!’ ‘How very gratifying for you, I’m sure. What’s it called?’ ‘Oh, um … its title is p’raps not fit for the ears of a lady …’ ‘Nonsense, gentlemen. I’m not quite the fragile flower William thinks I am.’

  ‘Well …’ (self-conscious clearing of throats) ‘The War with the Great Social Evil — Who is Winning?’ (inebriated snigger).

  ‘How interesting,’ coos Agnes, ‘that it should be possible for you to have so many books published, and none of them novels, but merely your own opinions! You really must tell me how you manage it. Is there a particular publisher who likes to help you? You know, I’ve become awfully interested in this subject lately …’

  The voices grow more muffled; Agnes is leading
the men towards her parlour.

  ‘The subject of … the Great Social Evil?’ enquires Ashwell incredulously.

  ‘No no no,’ trills Agnes coquettishly, as she passes under the stairs, ‘the subject ofpublication And they are gone.

  For a couple more minutes Sugar kneels at her bedroom door, but the house is quiet again, and cold air is draughting through the crack, bringing gooseflesh to her barely covered arms and chest. Scarcely able to believe what she’s just witnessed, Sugar returns to bed and takes up Agnes Unwin’s diaries where she left them.

  She reads on, with one ear cocked for further developments down below, breathing shallowly in case one of the men should raise his voice. She tries to be disciplined and read every word, but her patience with Agnes’s exhaustive cataloguing of balls and dressmakers has snapped, or perhaps the presence of Bodley and Ashwell downstairs has spoiled her concentration. Whatever the reason, she skims, looking for tell-tale signs of something more interesting: the clotty, minuscule handwriting of madness, for instance.

  Pages rustle over one another, full of words, empty of meaning, and the months flutter by. It’s not until July 1868 that Agnes Unwin first mentions William Rackham. Ah, but what a mention it is!

  I have today been introduced to the most extraordinary person, the seventeen-year-old writes. Part barbarian, part oracle, part swell!

  Yes, much to Sugar’s bafflement, here is William, the dashing young dandy, fresh from continental travels, flamboyant and full of mystery. Tall, too! (Although, to a woman as tiny as Agnes, perhaps all men are tall). Still, whatever William’s true height in inches, he stands out signally from those pea-brained sons of the peerage to whom Agnes is more accustomed.

  This vigorous young Rackham moves in Miss Unwin’s circle with presumptuous nerve, apparently fearless, despite his dubious credentials, of being snubbed. He has the knack of strolling through a crowd and disarranging it so that it regroups in half-reluctant crescents around him, whereupon he pushes (by means of superior wit) the other males to the periphery, leaving a preponderance of young females for him to entertain with tales of France and Morocco. It’s from within this covey of ladies that Agnes prefers, at first, to experience him, to prevent his fierce aura shining exclusively on her blushing face. But, in a turn of events that Agnes bemoans as tellementgenant!, Rackham selects her out of all her set, and finds ways of getting her alone. Lest her dear diary accuse her of complicity in this, Agnes emphatically denies any, complaining that whenever William Rackham is about, her companions abruptly move off without her, and there he’ll be, grinning like the cat that got the cream!

  While claiming his attentions to be ‘most worrisome’, Agnes describes her pursuer thus:

  He is robust but yet he has a fine-boned face and hands, and abundant curly hair of gold. His eyes have an insouicant sparkle to them, and he looks at everyone too directly, though he affects not to be aware of this. He dresses as few men Nowadays dare to dress, in check trousers, canary-yellow waistcoat, hunting caps, and suchlike. I have only seen him once in sober Blacks (and a handsomefigure he cuts too!) but when I asked him why he does not wear them more often, he replied, “Black is for Sundays, Funerals and dull men. What have I to fear from dressing as I do? That I might be refused admission to

  Churches, Funerals, or the company of dull men? Why then, I will go about in deerstalker and dressing-gown!”

  His father is a man of Business — this he does not conceal. “It is my father’s affair how he makes his way in the world, and mine how I make mine.” I cannot determine to my satisfaction from what source he derives his income: perhaps it is from his Writings. He is certainly ineligible to appear very high on my list of Suitors.

  This half-hearted attempt to be severe fails to impress Sugar, for not only does she already know how the story ends, but also she can’t help noticing that the half-dozen barely differentiated suitors of earlier months have all but vanished from the diary, and more ink is expended on William Rackham than ever was spilt for any of them. Before long, Agnes is recording entire conversations from hello to adieu, rushing to transcribe them immediately afterwards so that none of the man’s sagacious pronouncements will be lost or misquoted. By Autumn 1868, those entries in which William features have grown so vivid they read like episodes from a novel:

  “Let us have done with this small talk,” he said suddenly, extending a forefinger to either side of my open fan, and clapping it shut right in front of my nose. I was frightened, but he was smiling. “In ten years,” he said, “ Will either of us remember any of it?”

  I was all ablush, but my wits did not desert me. “I do not presume we shall have each others aqcaintance in ten years,” I said.

  Hereupon he clapped his hand to his breast, as though I had shot him through the heart. Loath to offend him, I hastened to add – “In any case, I confess I’ve nothing but small talk to offer you: it is all I have been taught. I am untravelled, and a most uninteresting and shallow little thing, compared to you.”

  I hoped to flatter him with this speech, but he took it very seriously, and insisted, “Oh, but you are more interesting and less shallow than any young lady I know! There are desires deep within you, which no one can imagine — no one but me. You move as one young lady among other young ladies, but you are not really one of them. You are different, and whats more, I can tell that you know it.”

  “Mr Rackham!” — was all I could say — he had made me blush so. Whereupon he did a most peculiar thing, namely he reached forward, took the edges of my fan once more,

  and spread it open, so that my face was hidden from him. I heard his voice explain it thus: “Now, I see that I was wrong to shine my light into the secrets of your soul: it has frightened you, and I would not frighten you for all the world. Let us return, then, to small talk. Look over there, Agnes, at the Garnett girls, and the hats they are wearing. I saw you coveting those hats earlier this afternoon — yes I did, theres no use denying it. Well, covet them no longer! I was in Paris not two weeks ago, and everyone there agrees that the momentfor those hats has passed.”

  This encounter is a turning-point in Agnes’s feelings for William Rackham; hereafter, she ponders his every word like a devoted disciple. No remark of his, however lighthearted, can be without deeper significance and, when he deigns to be wise, he is wiser than anyone she’s ever met. Knowledgeable about a host of religions, he sums up their shortcomings with such a fine phrase — something about there being ‘more in Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of by their philosophy’. (Ah, if only she hadn’t eaten dinner before writing her diary, she might have recalled it exact!) He attends Anglican worship when he attends any, but he’s of the heretical opinion that English religion has been in a shambles ever since Henry VIII — a conviction Agnes naturally shares. He’s expert in the identification of flowers, can predict the weather, knows the stuffs from which women’s garments are made, and is a personal friend of several artists regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy. What a man! Only the precise sources of his income remain difficult to map, but, as Agnes puts it:

  He is an Author, a Scholar, a Man of Science, and cleverer than any Statesman. Why should he not be undecided which path to follow, when he may yet follow them all? I feel my heart thump in my breast when I draw near to him, and am enfeebled when we part. Though I am sure I should repel him if he dared lay his hands upon me, I half wish that he would do it, and sometimes in idle moments after he has left me I fancy I can feel his arms clasped around me. Each morning I wake wishing that the first thing I saw was his face, and when I go to bed at night, the first face I see in my dreams is his. Am I going mad?

  Downstairs, an almighty crash. Glassware or china — gruff exclamations of surprise — the smack of a door against a wall, sending a jolt right through the house.

  ‘Out with you! Out of my sight!’ screams Agnes.

  In an instant, Sugar is kneeling at her door again, face pressed to the crack. Shadows and light are gyrating below the landing, as
a scuffle spills out into the receiving hall. So violently was the parlour door flung open that the chandelier in the hall still sways gently under the ceiling.

  ‘Mrs Rackham!’ protests one of the men. ‘There’s no need …’

  A loud clatter and an alarming spoinggg: the hat-stand being thrown across the floor. ‘Don’t tell me what there’s a need for, you fat drunken dog!’ Agnes cries. ‘You are useless and … and ridiculous, the pair of you!’

  ‘My dear Mrs Rackham …’

  ‘Nothing is dear to you except filth! Muck-sniffers! Sewer-rats! Your hair smells like rotten banana! Your skulls are full of slime! Get out of my house!’

  ‘Yesh, yesh …’ mutters one of the men.

  ‘Our coats, Bodley …’ his companion reminds him, as a harsh influx of icy air barges into the house.

  ‘Coats!’ cries Agnes witheringly. ‘Your fat oily skins will keep you warm! That, and your prostitutes!’

  ‘Ah, Rose — there you are!’ says Ashwell, in a stab at genial good grace. ‘I think your mistress may be …ah …having one of her turns … ‘

  ‘I am not having “one of my turns”!’ rages Agnes. ‘I’m merely trying to rid my house of some garbage before I step in it! No, don’t touch them, Rose: if you knew where they have been …!’

  Bodley, the drunker of the two, can bear the provocation no longer. ‘If I may shay so, Mrs Rackham,’ he declaims, ‘your a-ashitude is halfthe reason why proshtishushion is shpreading so …so muchly! If inshtead of inshulting us, you took the chubble to read our researches on the shubject … ‘

  ‘You conceited fool — you think I don’t even know what prostitutes are!’ shrieks Agnes, discordant harmonics of her voice seeming to ring out from every metal and glass surface in the house. ‘Well, I do! They are sly, common women who will stoop to kiss your ugly faces for money! Hah! Why don’t you kiss each other for nothing, you apes!’

  And with that, Bodley and Ashwell flee, the front door slams, Agnes utters one last throaty cry of frustration, and there’s a muffled thud of flesh on the hall floor.