The Crimson Petal and the White

by Michel Faber

  To whom it may concern.

  I, William Rackham, am pleased to introduce Miss Elizabeth Sugar, who was in my employ for five months from November 3rd, 1875 to March 1st, 1876, in the capacity of governess to my six-year-old daughter. I have no doubt that Miss Sugar discharged her duties with the greatest competence, sensitivity and enthusiasm. Under her management, my daughter has blossomed into a young lady.

  Miss Sugar’s decision to leave my employ is, I am given to understand, due to a close relative’s ill-health and in no way derogates from my satisfaction with her abilities. Indeed, I can hardly recommend her too highly.

  Yours,

  William Rackham

  This letter, too, Sugar re-folds along its original creases, and returns to its envelope. She sucks her thumb one last time, but the cut is already healing. She places both letters on top of her dresser, and hobbles over to the window, where she transfers her weight from the crutch to the window-sill. Down in the Rackham grounds, Shears is happily pottering, fussing around saplings that have survived the winter. With a snicker-snack of his metal namesake he severs a loop of twine that was holding a slender trunk aligned with a stake: it needs no such mollycoddling anymore. Visibly proud, he stands back, fists poised on his leather-aproned hips.

  Sugar, after some consideration, decides that driving her fists through the glass of the window-panes would land her in terrible bother and give her only momentary relief from her anguish. Instead, she fetches pen and paper and, still standing, with the window-sill serving as a writing-desk, she forces herself to be reasonable.

  Dear William,

  Forgive me saying so, but you are mistaken. I was briefly afflicted with a painful

  swelling, which has since passed, and I now have my monthly courses, as you can discover to your own satisfaction if you come to me.

  Your loving Sugar

  She reads and re-reads this missive, listening to its tone reverberate in her head. Will William take it the right way? In his state of alarm, will he interpret the phrase ‘as you can discover to your own satisfaction’ as argumentative, or can she rely on him to perceive the bawdy suggestion behind it? She draws a deep breath, counselling herself that of all the things she has ever written, this must not fail to hit the mark. Would the saucy humour be clearer if she inserted the word ‘perfect’ between ‘own’ and ‘satisfaction’? On the other hand, is sauciness what’s needed here, or should she substitute a more soothing, blandishing tone?

  Within seconds, she realises she’s far too agitated to write a second message, and that she had better deliver this one before she does something foolish. So, she folds the paper in half, limps out onto the landing, proceeds straight to William’s door, and slips the letter under it.

  In the afternoon, governess and pupil perform arithmetic, check that the achievements of the fifteenth century are not already forgotten, and make a start on mineralogy. The hands of the clock advance fraction by fraction, as the map of the world is lit up, little by little, by the progress of the sun through the sky. A window-shaped beam of sunlight glows on the pastel seas and autumnal continents, clarifying some, obscuring others in shadow.

  Sugar has chosen the topic of mineralogy at random from Mangnall’s Questions, judging it to be a safe, unemotional subject that will satisfy Sophie’s need for orderly tangibles. She recites the principal metals, and has Sophie repeat them: gold, silver, platina, quicksilver, copper, iron, lead, tin, aluminium. Gold the heaviest; tin the lightest; iron the most useful.

  Looking ahead to the next question, What are the principal Properties of Metals?, Sugar already wishes she’d prepared for the lesson as usual, and lets slip a small groan of exasperation.

  ‘It will take me a little while to translate these words into language you can understand, dear,’ she explains, turning away from Sophie’s upturned, expectant face.

  ‘Are they not in English, Miss?’

  ‘Yes, but I must make them simpler for you.’

  A flash of offence crosses Sophie’s face. ‘Let me try to understand them, Miss.’

  Sugar knows she ought to decline this challenge with a soft, tactful answer, but can’t think of one just now. Instead, in a dry, oratorical voice, she reads aloud:

  ‘Brilliancy, opacity, weight, malleability, ductility, porosity, solubility.’ There is a pause.

  ‘Weight is how heavy things are, Miss,’ says Sophie.

  ‘Yes, Sophie,’ Sugar replies, contritely ready to supply the explanations that eluded her before. ‘Brilliancy means that they shine; opacity that we can’t see through them; malleability that we can beat them into any shape we wish; ductility …I don’t know myself what that is, I shall have to find it in a dictionary. Porosity means that it has tiny holes in it, although that doesn’t sound right, does it, for metals? Solubility …’

  Sugar shuts her mouth, observing at a glance that this faltering, head-scratching variety of teaching is not to Sophie’s taste at all. Instead, she skips ahead to the part where Mrs Mangnall cites the discovery of an inexhaustible abundance of gold in Australia, which allows Sugar to extemporise a description of a poor gold-digger, hacking at the hard ground while his hungry wife and children look hopelessly on, until one day …!

  ‘Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?’ enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.

  ‘One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,’ says Sugar. ‘It saves time and paper.’ Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, ‘If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?’

  Sophie answers without hesitation.

  ‘I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand.’

  Back in her bedroom during the hiatus between the end of the day’s lessons and dinner, Sugar is shocked to find no reply to her message. How is this possible? All she can think of is that William’s mind has been put at rest but that, in his selfishness, he sees no urgency to let her know. Again she seizes hold of pen and paper, and writes:

  Dear William,

  Please — every hour I wait for your reply is a torture — please give me your reassurance that our household can go on as before. Stability is what we all need now — Rackham Perfumeries no less than Sophie and myself. Please remember that I am devoted to assisting you and sparing you inconvenience.

  Your loving Sugar

  Re-reading this communiqué, she frowns. One too many ‘pleases’, perhaps. And William may not take kindly to the suggestion that he’s torturing her. But, again, she hasn’t the heart to compose another version. As before, she hurries to the door of his study and slips the letter under it.

  Dinner for Sugar and Sophie consists of mercilessly sieved rhubarb soup, poached fillet of salmon and a serving of rather watery jelly; Cook is still worried, evidently, that little Miss Rackham’s digestion has not yet recovered its equilibrium.

  Afterwards, Rose brings a cup of tea to wash the dinner down — full strength for Miss Sugar, two-thirds milk for Miss Rackham — and Sugar, having taken one sip, excuses herself for a minute. While the piping-hot tea cools, she might as well check her room, to see if William has finally been jogged from his self-absorption.

  She leaves the school-room, hurries along the landing, opens the door of her bedroom. There’s nothing in there that wasn’t there before.

  She returns to the school-room, and resumes drinking her tea. Her hands are trembling ever-so-slightly; she’s convinced that William is, or was, on the very point of responding, but that he’s been delayed by unforeseen demands, or by the chore of eating his own dinner. If she can only make the next hour pass quickly, she’ll save herself futile fretting.

  Sophie, although more settled than she was at the beginning of the day, is not overly sociable now that the lessons are over; she has move
d to the far corner of the room and is playing with her doll, trying, with the insertion of crumpled balls of paper under its skirts, to change the outmoded crinoline into a bustle. Sugar can tell, from her expression of earnest concentration, that she wishes to be left alone until bedtime. What to do, to make the time pass? Twiddle her thumbs in her bedroom? Read what’s left of Shakespeare? Prepare for tomorrow’s lessons?

  Suddenly inspired, Sugar picks up the dishes, cutlery and tea-cups, arranges them in as stable a stack as she can devise, and hobbles out of the room with them, leaving her crutch leaning against the doorjamb. She has plenty of time; no one will be watching how slowly she descends the stairs.

  She grips the banister with one hand, resting her whole forearm hard against the polished wood; her other hand grips the dishes, pressing the sharp rim of the dinner-plates under her breast. Then, one stair at a time, she escorts her body downwards, alternating one painful swivel of the injured foot with a heavy painless step of the good one. With each six-inch drop, the crockery rattles slightly, but she keeps the stack balanced.

  Once she’s safe on the ground floor, she advances carefully along the hall, pleased at the steady if inelegant rhythm of her progress. Without mishap, she passes through a succession of doors until, finally, she crosses the threshold of the kitchen.

  ‘Miss Sugar!’ says Rose in great surprise. She’s been caught red-handed eating a leftover triangle of toast and butter, her legitimate supper not being due for another few hours. Her sleeves are rolled up, and she leans against the great slab-like table in the centre of the room. Harriet, the kitchenmaid, is farther back, fashioning some ox tongues into the required shape for glazing. Through the scullery door the dowdy skirt, wet shoes and swollen ankles of Janey can be glimpsed as she scrubs in the sink.

  ‘I thought I’d return these,’ says Sugar, proffering the dirty dishes. ‘To save you the trouble.’

  Rose looks flabbergasted, as if she’s just witnessed a flamboyant somersault by a stark naked acrobat who now stands waiting for applause.

  ‘Much obliged, Miss Sugar,’ she says, and swallows the half-chewed bread.

  ‘Please, call me Sugar,’ says Sugar, handing the plates over. ‘We’ve worked together on quite a few things by now, haven’t we, Rose?’ She considers reminding Rose specifically of Christmas, and the way they were both powdered up to the elbows in flour, but judges that this might appear a little fawning.

  ‘Yes, Miss Sugar.’

  Harriet and Rose exchange nervous glances. The kitchenmaid doesn’t know whether to stand to attention with her hands folded across her apron, or continue moulding and pinioning the ox tongues, one of which has unrolled and threatens to stiffen in quite the wrong shape.

  ‘How hard you all work!’ remarks Sugar, determined to break the ice. ‘Wi–why, Mr Rackham can scarcely imagine, I’m sure, how constant your labours are.’

  Rose watches with widening eyes while the governess limps all the way into the kitchen and lowers herselfstiffly into a chair. Both Rose and Harriet are only too well aware that their labours have been far from ‘constant’ since the death of Mrs Rackham and the total cessation of dinner parties; indeed, unless the master marries again in the near future, he must soon come to the conclusion that he’s employing more servants than he needs.

  ‘We’ve no complaints, Miss Sugar.’

  There is a pause. Sugar looks around the kitchen in the harsh mortuary light. Harriet has folded her hands, allowing the ox tongue to do what it will. Rose is folding her sleeves down to her wrists, her lips pursed in an apprehensive half-smile. Janey’s rump gyrates as she scrubs dishes, the haphazard pleats of her skirts swaying to and fro.

  ‘So,’ Sugar pipes up, as companionably as she can manage, ‘what are you all going to have for supper? And where’s Cook? And do you all eat here, at the table? I expect you get interrupted by bells at the worst possible moment.’

  Rose’s eyes go in and out of focus as she swallows this indigestible quadruple spoonful of questions.

  ‘Cook’s gone upstairs, and … and we’ll have some jelly, Miss. And there’s roast beef left from yesterday, and … And would you like some plum cake, Miss Sugar?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Sugar. ‘If you can spare it.’

  The plum cake is fetched, and the servants stand by and watch the governess eat. Janey, finished stowing the dishes in the racks, comes to the doorway to see what’s going on in the wider world.

  ‘Hello, Janey,’ says Sugar, in between bites of plum cake. ‘We haven’t seen each other since Christmas, have we? What a shame it is, don’t you think, the way one part of the household is hidden from the other?’

  Janey blushes so red that her cheeks almost match the colour of her lob-sterish hands and forearms. She half-curtsies, her eyes bulging, but utters not a sound. Having landed in mischief twice already for incidents involving members of the Rackham household with whom she oughtn’t to have had any intimacy — first Miss Sophie, on the day she got a bloody nose, and then poor mad Mrs Rackham, on the day she barged into the scullery offering to help — she’s determined to stay out of trouble this time.

  ‘Well,’ says Sugar brightly, when she’s consumed her last morsel of plum cake and the servants are still staring at her in mistrust and bafflement. ‘I suppose I must be going. Sophie’s bedtime shortly. Goodbye, Rose; goodbye, Harriet; goodbye, Janey.’

  And she heaves herself to her feet, wishing that she could ascend through the air, painlessly and instantaneously, like a spirit whisked away from the scene of its own corporeal demise; or else that the kitchen’s stone floor could open up and swallow her down into merciful extinction.

  On her return to her room, there’s a letter from William after all. If ‘letter’ is the right word for a note saying simply:

  No further discussion.

  Sugar crumples this note in her fist, and is again tempted to smash windows, scream her lungs raw, hammer on William’s door. But she knows this is not the way to change his mind. Instead, her hopes shift to Sophie. William has reckoned without his daughter. He has only the vaguest conception of the loyalty that’s developed between governess and child, and he’ll soon find out. Sophie will change his mind for him: men can never stand to be the cause of female weeping!

  At bedtime, Sugar tucks Sophie in as usual, and smooths her fine golden hair evenly over the pillow until it radiates like a picture-book illustration of the sun.

  ‘Sophie?’ she says, her voice hoarse with hesitation. The child looks up, aware at once that a matter more momentous than the sewing of dolls’ clothes is being raised. ‘Yes, Miss?’

  ‘Sophie, your father … Your father is likely to have some news for you. Quite soon, I think.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ says Sophie, blinking hard to keep sleep from claiming her before Miss Sugar arrives at the point.

  Sugar licks her lips, which are as dry and rough-textured as sackcloth. She’s loath to repeat William’s ultimatum aloud, for fear that this will give it an indelible reality, like writing in ink over pencil.

  ‘Most probably,’ she flounders, ‘he will have you brought to see him … And then he will tell you something.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ says Sophie, puzzled.

  ‘Well…’ Sugar presses on, summoning courage by taking hold of Sophie’s hands. ‘Well, when he does, I … I want you to tell him something, in return.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ promises Sophie.

  ‘I want you to tell him …’ wheezes Sugar, blinking against tears. ‘I want you to tell him … how you feel about me!’

  For answer, Sophie reaches up and embraces her just as she did yesterday, except that this time, to Sugar’s astonishment, she strokes and pats her governess’s hair in an infantile approximation of a mother’s tenderness. ‘Good night, Miss,’ she says sleepily. ‘And tomorrow: America.’

  There being nothing more she can do but wait, Sugar waits. William has retreated from a firm resolution before — many times. He has threatened to tell Swan & Edgar t
o go hang; he has threatened to travel to the East India docks and grab a certain merchant by the collar and shake him till he gibbers; he has threatened to tell Grover Pankey to use better elephants for his pots. All bluster. Ifshe leaves him alone, his tumescent resolve will wilt and shrivel to nothing. All it requires from her is … superhuman forbearance.

  The morning of the next day passes without incident. Everything is exactly as normal. The Pilgrims have landed on American soil, and made peace with the savages. Homesteads are being built from felled trees. The luncheon, when served, is less bland than yesterday’s: smoked haddock kedgeree, and more of the plum cake.

  On Sugar’s return to her room at midday, she finds a parcel waiting for her: a long, thin parcel, wrapped in brown paper and string. A conciliatory gift from William? No. A small carte-de-visite is attached to the end with string; she fetches it close to her eyes and reads what it has to say.

  Dear Miss Sugar,

  I heard about your misfortune from my father. Please accept this token of my good wishes. It needn’t be returned; I find I have no use for it anymore, and I hope that you will very soon be in the same position.

  Yours truly,

  Emmeline Fox

  Sugar unwraps the parcel, and brings to light a polished, sturdy walking-stick.

  On her return to the school-room, keen to show Sophie her new tool, which allows her to walk with a much more dignified gait than the crutch, Sugar finds the child huddled over her writing-desk, sobbing and weeping uncontrollably.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ she demands, her stick thumping against the floorboards as she limps across the room.

  ‘You’re going to be suh-suh-sent away? wails Sophie, almost accusingly.

  ‘Was William — your father … here just now?’ Sugar can’t help asking the question, even though she smells his hair-oil in the air.