grey.’
Christopher takes a swig from the bottle. Do not be scandalised: he’s had strong drink all his life, and wine is cleaner than water.
No palace hath He but a shed, No cradle but a manger mean: Yet o’er that peerless Infant’s Head A new and wondrous star is seen …
‘Here, have a mouse,’ says Sugar, setting one of the sweet dough fancies on the floor in front of him. ‘They’re not very good. Scarcely fit for mice to eat.’
Christopher, having scoffed his Christmas meal, takes a cautious nibble at the confectionery.
‘Nuffink wrong wiv it,’ he pronounces, and bites the creature in half.
Sugar is relieved he likes it; she’d meant to give him some chocolates, but her own greed got the better of her, and she ate them all while waiting for the meal to be cooked. There is a limit to human generosity, even at Christmas.
‘That’s me finished,’ says Christopher suddenly. ‘Give me them pillercases.’
Sugar stares at him uncomprehending for a moment, then removes the pillow-slips from her pillows and hands them to the boy.
‘Forgot,’ he remarks. It’s not clear which of them he is blaming for the oversight.
Somewhat awkwardly, he walks to the door, hesitates, then ducks back to claim his angel card with the moving wings.
‘I’ll bring it back,’ he assures her.
Sugar yearns to tell him there is no need, it’s his, and that he should’ve had chocolates if she weren’t such a greedy, hard-hearted girl; that he should’ve had a pile of proper presents if his mother hadn’t been Amy; that he should’ve had a decent home and a father and nice clothes and schooling if the world weren’t such a pitiless and grubby place. She imagines herself embracing him, pressing him hard against her bosom, peppering his head with kisses – all the expressions of unfeigned affection she has read about in stories.
‘No need,’ she says hoarsely.
When Christopher has disappeared downstairs, Sugar lies back on her bed. The stripped pillows still smell of hair-oil and alcohol; only the passing of time will get rid of it. Outside, the evangelist has given up and moved on; thank God for small mercies. The snow has started again, tentatively, with the lightest possible flakes. All over London, these feathery wisps are settling on the rooftops of rich and poor alike, melting instantly where there is warmth, accumulating into a soft white blanket where there is none.
It is almost time to open your eyes; the twenty-first century is waiting for you, and you’ve been among prostitutes and strange children for too long. Come away now. Sugar is tired, even though it’s the middle of the day. Tonight her work will begin anew, so where’s the harm in taking a snooze while things are quiet? Half-asleep already, she leans in front of the looking-glass, wipes her face clean with a damp cloth, and sticks her tongue out.
Fancy that: her tongue is pink and healthy-looking. How quickly the human body recovers from its abuses! It’s a miracle, hallelujah. Merry Christmas now, and sweet dreams.
Clara had found the Rat Man repulsive from the outset, but, because she found all of her customers repulsive, this had seemed insufficient reason to spurn his advances. Looking back on it, she regretted her lack of discrimination, and blamed it on her inexperience as a prostitute. In the menagerie of maleness, two kinds of repulsive existed: repulsive-ugly and repulsive-peculiar. The Rat Man was repulsive-peculiar.
Not that he wasn’t ugly, too. His teeth were brown, his eyes were bloodshot, his beard was wispy and his nose was pock-marked. He walked with a limp, and the pinkish-grey skin of his forehead was strangely scarred, as if someone had poured a kettle of scalding water onto his brow when he was a baby. Altogether he would have been a pitiable case, if Clara had been the pitying kind. The world was too undeserving, however, for Clara to give pity away for nothing. Ugly, scarred men were none the less men, and thus despicable.
‘Call me Mr Heaton,’ he’d said, with a formal bow. It was almost comical, him standing there in Great White Lion Street, leaning on his cane, treating her as though she were a prospective pupil of the pianoforte, rather than a whore.
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
