The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories

by Michel Faber

  That was six weeks ago. Six weeks was a long time in her new life. Once-cherished illusions and inhibitions were dying almost daily, and, just when she imagined that they must surely all have perished, a few more would fall. Each month, she was unrecognisable as the person she’d been the month before, and the month before that. Even her way of speaking sounded less well-educated, more common now than when she was a servant in a cosy middle-class house, as though the grime of street life had soiled her tongue, coarsening her vowels, nibbling the consonants away. The effort of refraining from saying ‘ain’t’, or of avoiding double negatives, seemed too wearisome now that there was no-one to impress. Only twelve months backwards in time, dressed in stiff calico and clutching an impressive set of silvery keys, she had dealt with tradesmen and bakers’ boys at the back door of her mistress’s house, and had felt herself superior to them as soon as they opened their mouths. The smallest difference in intonation served to define her place above them on the ladder. But she had descended that ladder with dizzying speed.

  Yet in another way, she was the stronger for her fall. Every day, she became more skilled and confident at taking the measure of a man in a single glance, and brushing him off if she suspected he was more trouble than he was worth. If the peculiar Mr Heaton had first accosted her yesterday instead of six weeks ago, she would have cold-shouldered him without hesitation. Yes, she was almost sure of that.

  But a month and a half ago, she’d still been finding her feet in the profession, and fearful that her fastidious tastes might render her destitute. After all, she wasn’t a fancy woman, kept in a smart house in St John’s Wood. She was a common streetwalker, seeking to earn enough for lodgings and food. What would become of her if she said no to every ugly man who propositioned her?

  Mr Heaton had not exactly propositioned her, in any case. He had merely asked her if, for a shilling, she would promise to let one of her fingernails grow.

  ‘Fingernails grow awful slow, sir,’ she’d said, once she’d got him to repeat the bizarre request. ‘Do you want to stand ’ere watching while it ’appens?’

  ‘No,’ he’d replied. ‘I’ll meet you here next week at the same time. If you’ve let the nail grow, I shall give you another shilling.’

  It seemed absurdly easy money. He specified the nail she was to let grow (middle finger, right hand), she gave him her word, he gave her a shilling, and she watched him limp away. Morning turned to afternoon, afternoon turned to evening, and Clara’s life went along its course. She spent the coin, forgot all about Mr Heaton. She forgot about him so thoroughly that she was loitering in the same spot the following week – and was mortified to see him approaching her once more.

  She hoped that she might, by sheer coincidence, have neglected to trim the nail they’d agreed upon. But, when she removed her glove at Mr Heaton’s request, the body part in question was down to the quick.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I must’ve bit it.’

  He looked melancholy, as if this identical circumstance had played itself out many times, with many other women.

  ‘I’ll give you another chance,’ he said. ‘And another shilling. But this time you must keep your promise.’

  ‘I surely will, sir,’ she’d pledged.

  Her promise proved damned difficult to keep. Although her former life as a lady’s maid was barely a year in the past, she seemed to have lost the knack of keeping in mind, during the routine activities of an average day, any responsibility that was not immediately obvious. Once upon a time, she’d been able to help her mistress plan a dinner party or sew a dress while not forgetting that at precisely five o’clock, she must remind her of some other thing. How extraordinary, to have been so disciplined! Nowadays, she could scarcely remember which services a customer had paid for, and often suspected that a man was helping himself to something extra.

  As for this affair with the fingernail, it was torture. Ten, twenty times a day she would find the nail between her lips, just about to be gnawed off by her small white teeth. With a grunt of annoyance she would pull her hand away. Ten, twenty times a day, she would be vaguely, uneasily aware that one of her nails was ill-matched to the other nine, and wonder why. Oh yes: Mr Heaton.

  Who would’ve thought that a slightly longer middle fingernail could be such a bother? It was nothing spectacular to look at, perhaps half an inch in extra length. Yet it caught on the fabric of her bodice, dug into the flesh of her neck when she was buttoning up her collar, scratched her cheek when she raised her hand to fiddle with the curls of her fringe. The normally snug fit of her glove was ruined. Half an inch of nail, and it might as well be a beastly talon!

  After a day’s work (Clara preferred to do her business during the day and sleep at night) she would retire to her room in Mrs Porter’s lodging-house, and pay Mrs Porter’s maid-of-all-work to fill a bath, and then she would soak in the warm water until her hands went soft and dimpled. And the nail would become pliable, so pliable she could bend it against the tip of her finger. If she were to put it between her teeth, she knew it would tear away without the least resistance, and would taste of nothing at all, and she could swallow it, or spit it out if she wished. She sucked the nail, took it between her teeth the way some men took her nipple, but left it intact. God damn Mr Heaton! How much longer would he plague her?

  Each week he came to her at the corner of Great White Lion and Dudley Street, noted approvingly the growth of the nail, and gave her a shilling. Each week she resolved to tell him that she wanted no more shillings from him, that the length of her nail was too inconvenient. Each week she lost her nerve. Mr Heaton was so manifestly pleased with her for obeying him, and Clara couldn’t help feeling a matchstick glow of childish pride at having met his expectations.

  Men were not often pleased with Clara. She wasn’t likeable or charming or even especially polite. She offered her body with bad grace, stated her prices matter-of-factly, didn’t pretend to experience transports of joy when some red-faced fool was squirming against her. She scorned compliments; when one of her first customers told her she had the prettiest breasts he’d ever seen, she would probably have slapped him, had she not been attached to him at an awkward angle just then. The honeyed compliments of men always led to a slick of viscous liquid that would soil her clothing and need to be wiped away.

  Mr Heaton, however, had not yet laid a hand on her. His shilling was by far the easiest earnings of her week; she got it in thirty seconds flat. Clara wondered if he was a eunuch. His limping gait, the scars on his face … perhaps these were signs of a more serious injury. Clara disliked sick animals and her instincts told her to keep well away from such things. But Jesus Christ almighty: a shilling in thirty seconds, without a hand laid on her! She couldn’t justify rejecting such an offer, especially when other customers wasted hours of her time, haggled over prices, inflicted bruises on her flesh, made her itch. Each time she felt annoyed with Mr Heaton, she reminded herself that she’d had one, two, three, four, five, six shillings from him, for doing nothing. If she kept this lark up for twelve weeks, her accrued capital (ignoring for a moment that she spent each shilling as soon as she got it) would be a pound. A pound just for resisting the impulse to chew a fingernail! That couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

  But then she discovered the catch. Last week, she’d found out something about her crippled benefactor that transformed him from ‘Mr Heaton’ into ‘the Rat Man’.

  They met in the street as usual. Passersby squinted in bemusement and distaste as she ungloved her right hand and allowed him to inspect her middle finger. Her nail was ever-so-slightly chipped, where she’d caught it on a brick wall while servicing a customer in a hurry, but it was long, and Mr Heaton nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘Would you like to earn five shillings at a stroke?’ he asked her, as she was tugging her glove back on.

  She regarded him suspiciously. Was he going to ask her to allow four more of her nails to grow? This seemed the most obvious next proposal.

>   Instead, he said:

  ‘I want you to accompany me to a sporting event.’

  ‘I don’t understand much about sport, sir,’ she’d replied.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ he assured her. ‘Nobody would expect anything of you. All eyes will be on the action.’

  ‘Yours too?’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘Then what use would I be to you, sir?’

  He leaned in closer to her, closer than he’d ever ventured before. A respectable, fashionable mother, passing at that moment with her infant daughter toddling along beside, shielded the child’s face and hurried her along the footpath, so shocking was this public display of intimacy. The sparse beard on Mr Heaton’s chin almost brushed the shoulder of Clara’s dress as he spoke low into her ear.

  ‘The sporting event I have in mind is pit ratting. A publican of my acquaintance hosts a rat pit in Southwark on the last Thursday of every month. The next one is next week.’

  ‘I don’t like rats, sir.’

  ‘You don’t have to like rats. They come to a bad end, anyway, and swiftly. Dogs dispatch them with lightning speed.’

  ‘I don’t like dogs neither, sir.’

  He winced, and his expression became somewhat supplicatory.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that. There will be two dogs there on Thursday. One of them is my own. Robbie is his name. He’s the most beautiful dog; a handsomer dog never walked the earth. His coat is smoother than sable.’

  ‘I won’t have to do nothing with the dog, I hope, sir?’

  ‘You can admire his skill. Or not, as you please. Your business will be with me.’

  ‘And what business will that be, sir?’

  ‘Nothing you won’t have done before.’

  ‘I was a respectable woman until this year, sir. There’s many things I’ve never done.’

  ‘Even so …’ He inclined his head and smiled a weary smile, as if to imply that any whore worth a pinch of salt would have this particular trick in her repertoire.

  An alarming thought entered Clara’s head.

  ‘I won’t have to … do it with you in front of the other people in the public house, will I?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, in gruff exasperation. ‘We will simply watch the rat-catching together. Fully clothed. The only thing I require of you is that you put your hand down the back of my trousers. No one will see it; I’ll wear a long overcoat that will preserve us from prying eyes. Not that there are likely to be any on us. The rat pit is a source of great excitement. You have no idea how wound up people can get.’

  Clara stared him straight in the face, which was her usual technique (now that she was a harlot of some experience) with untrustworthy customers. She focused on his pock-marked nose, trying not to be swayed by the feverish, imploring eyes on either side. She made an effort to riffle through his most recent utterances in reverse order, to retrieve the one that concerned her.

  ‘Down the back of your trousers?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When the … uh … performance is underway, you are to slip your hand into my clothing. I shan’t be wearing anything under my trousers. You will insert your middle finger into my rectum.’

  ‘Rectum, sir?’

  ‘My arse-hole.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘There is no “And then”. That’s all.’ He paused. ‘Five shillings.’

  Clara stared at his forehead. It was shiny and seemed to be throbbing, as if the flesh was desperate to sweat but too badly scarred to do so.

  ‘Blood makes me sick, sir.’

  ‘There’s scarcely any blood. It’s not like dogfights or cock-fights or bull-baiting. It’s efficient. It’s clean. It’s …’ He clenched his fists, frustrated by her lack of understanding. ‘It’s a privilege to behold it. Awe – that’s what it inspires. Awe. It’s a …’ He took a deep breath; the normal amount of air was not sufficient to convey the grandeur. ‘… an amazing demonstration of what happens when a superbly trained creature is pitted against a horde of vermin.’

  She had never heard him sound so passionate. She didn’t care for it.

  ‘The thing is, next Thursday is quite a full sort of day for me, sir.’

  He grabbed her gloved hands, there in the street, and squeezed them inside his own. His eyes were luminous with sincerity.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’ve given you a shilling a week, just to prepare for this. Don’t deny me. Everything depends on you. You’ll be finished in an hour.’

  ‘You frighten me, sir.’

  ‘Ten shillings, then.’

  Clara swallowed hard.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  Since then, Clara had put a great deal of thought into how she might renege on her promise without suffering unpleasant consequences.

  She considered spending Thursday entirely indoors, ironing her clothes, mending the seam in her camisole, and generally giving her body a rest. But there was no telling what the Rat Man might do if frustrated in this fashion. He might look for her every day afterwards.

  She considered brazening it out, telling him she’d had second thoughts, and showing him a middle finger neatly clipped. If he got angry, she could simply call for assistance, couldn’t she? London was crawling with policemen lately, as well as do-gooders of all kinds. Surely one of them would come to her rescue? ‘This man is making indecent propositions to me,’ she could plead. But perhaps this was not a very wise idea after all. She was known by sight to several local policemen. If there was a complaint against her from a gentleman (however ugly or scarred he might be), they would cheerfully throw her in prison.

  She considered murdering the Rat Man, just to remove him from her life. But she had to admit that this seemed an excessive response to her fear of embarrassment, more the sort of response one might expect from a man than a woman. Also, she had no means of killing anyone, not even a knife. Was she supposed to strangle Mr Heaton in the street? The whole notion was daft, and she didn’t know why she’d even thought of it, other than the thrill it offered.

  She considered fleeing altogether, plying her trade in a different part of the city. Lord Jesus, one little nail grown half an inch, and here she was, planning to wrench herself away from St Giles just as she was getting the hang of it! But this, too, was mere fantasy. Her preferred lodgings were with Mrs Porter in Queen Street and there was a nice public house near the Broad Street junction where she had a growing reputation as a clean girl with not a mark on her. Also there was Dickie’s Chophouse in Seven Dials, where she could eat as much as she wanted, within reason, as long as she never spoke a word to Mr Dickie’s wife.

  No, she must keep her appointment with the Rat Man.

  Thursday came, and Clara rendezvoused with Mr Heaton in the usual place. Without further discussion, she fell into step with him as he limped briskly along Dudley Street. He was dressed in a voluminous, knee-length overcoat which made him look like an impresario. A down-at-heel impresario, perhaps: the coat was slightly moth-eaten. For the first time it occurred to Clara that her benefactor might not be especially wealthy. Could he ill afford the money he’d been giving her? She felt a twinge of conscience, and dealt with it the only way she knew.

  ‘I want my ten shillings now,’ she said.

  He handed them to her even as they walked. As if he’d been expecting this moment and had the coins already enclosed in his palm.

  How would they get to Southwark, she wondered? It must be quite far from here, as none of her prostitute friends knew of it. Did the Rat Man mean to take her on an exhausting march, or would they board an omnibus together, like husband and wife? She didn’t like the idea of hordes of strangers presuming that there must be an intimate relationship between herself and the Rat Man; she wished she’d fobbed him off with a simple fuck six weeks ago, instead of getting herself mixed up in this malarkey.

  ‘Is it far?’ she said.

  His arm jerked into the air, and she flinched in fear of being struck, but he was only hailing a
cab.

  ‘The Traveller’s Rest, Southwark,’ he said.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the cabbie. ‘Going for the special keg they keeps downstairs, are you sir?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I’m partial to a bit of that meself, sir. Very tasty.’

  Clara and Mr Heaton climbed into the cabin. Mr Heaton seemed not at all surprised that the cabbie knew the reputation of The Traveller’s Rest. For a moment, Clara caught a glimpse of a London which was vastly richer in attractions than she and her cronies had any notion of, and which other folk made it their business to explore. It was not a picture she had any desire to see. Indeed, the Rat Man seemed to specialise in showing her glimpses of things she would prefer to remain ignorant of.

  ‘How will I get home when it’s over?’

  The Rat Man smiled sadly. ‘I trust we’ll both agree when it’s over.’

  ‘But you don’t live where I live.’

  ‘I’ll take you home first.’

  Clara nodded, unconvinced. If she’d learned anything since her fall into prostitution, it was not to rely on the courtesy and generosity of others. The cab seemed to be travelling a very long way, and every clack of the horse’s hooves on the cobbles emphasised that she was farther and farther from the streets she knew. The ten shillings stowed in the pocket of her dress would do her no good if she was robbed and left for dead in a dark unfamiliar neighbourhood. To prevent that happening, she was now under pressure to remain on good terms with the Rat Man, to please him or at least not quarrel with him. She didn’t know if it was possible for them to spend a whole afternoon together, especially one involving rats and dogs, without quarrelling.

  ‘I hope we have understood each other about the nail,’ he said, his face turned away from her in the shadowy cabin.

  ‘The nail, sir?’

  ‘You mustn’t be gentle with it, you understand? You must push it as deep inside as your finger will go.’