Novel Documentation
IMPORTANT. novel documentation
of sugar, details, scenes, dialogue.
not finished quite yet. 300+ pages
to go still.
PART I [THE STREETS]
'I feel wretched' says Sugar quietly. 'God damn God and all His horrible filthy Creation.' Her face and voice are calm; she might be commenting on the weather. Her hazel eyes radiate - or appear to radiate - gentle good humour. 'Bring on Armageddon, what do you think?' pg. 29
(Here you see another reason w hy Sugar has done so well in her profession: her ability to recall the less than fascinating minutia of other people's lives). pg. 31
I can tell you the answers to simpler questions. How old is Sugar? Nineteen. How long has she been a prostitute? Six years. You do the arithmetic, and the answer is a disturbing one, especially when you consider that the girls of this time commonly don't pubesce until fifteen or sixteen. Yes, but then Sugar was always precocious - and remarkable. pg. 36
All the way to Silver Street, a paradise compared to Church Lane. pg. 36
She stays awake all night, even when there are no more men to be had; what's she doing in there with the lights on, if she's not sleeping? Also, she eats strange things - someone saw her eat a raw tomato once. She applies tooth poweder to her teeth after each meal, and rinses it with a watery liquid she buys in a bottle. She doesn't wear rouge, but keeps her cheeks terrible pale; and she never takes strong drink [...] What does she drink, then? Tea, cocoa, water - and judging by the way her lips are always peeling, in precious small quantities. pg. 37
Not only is Sugar able to read and write, she actually enjoys it [...] And not tuppeny books, either - big books, with more pages than even the cleverest girl in Church Lane could hope to finish. [...] Since moving to the West End, Sugar has taken to crossing Hyde Park, over the Serpentine into Knightsbridge, and paying frequent visits to the two Georgian houses in Trevor Square, which may look like high-class brothels, but are in fact a public library. She buys newspapers and journas too, even ones with hardly any pictures in them, even ones that say they're for gentlemen. pg. 37
Her main expense though, is clothes. Even by the standards of the West End, the qyality of Sugar's dresses is remarkable; in the squalor of St Giles, it was astonishing. [...] her policy is to save every sixpence until she can afford something that looks as though the finest lady's dressmaker might have made it especially for her. pg. 37 & 38
What does she do with them in there? [...] Once she has chosen her man, she'll submit to anything. If it's her cunt they want, they can have it, although mouth and rectum are her preferred orficies: less mess, and more peace of mind afterwards. [...] Her husky voice is the result of a knife-point being pressed to her throat just a little too hard when she was fifteen, by one of the few men she ever failed to satisfy. pg. 38
There is no rarer treasure in Sugar's profession than a virginal-looking girl who can surrender to a deluge of ordure and rise up smelling like roses, her eyes friendly as a spaniel's, her smile white as absolution. pg. 38
'That's different,' says Caroline. 'They're...you know...of kings and people like that.'
Sugar performs a chuckle of catty mischief from her encyclopedic repertoire of laughs. 'Kitty Bell had her portrait done, don't you remember, by that old goat from the Royal Academy who fell for her? It was even hung at an exhibition; Kitty and I went to see it. "Flower Seller", they called it' pg. 41
Unerringly she turns corners, ducks through alleyways, crosses busy streets with barely a glance, like a cat with an idea glowing in it's catty brain. pg. 44
'I can tell you 'o'll do it for you, sir'
'Oh yes?' He sits taut, ready to vent his fury on yet more whore-bluff. 'Some poxy hag in Bishopsgate?'
Alice seems genuinely abashed.
'Oh no, sir! A very 'igh-class girl in ever such a good 'ouse - in Silver Street, sir, just off The Stretch. Mrs Castaway is the madam there - and it's said this girl is the best girl in the 'ouse. She's the madam's own daughter, sir, and 'er name is Sugar.'
pgs. 76-80
She cocks her head slightly to one side, as if to ask, Well, what now? Her neck, William notices, is longer than the high collar of her bodice can hold. She has an Adam's apple, like a man. Yes, he has decided now: she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. pg. 109
Her long, lithe body, beguiling though it is, only complicates mattersm as she wears her attire like a second skin, seamless and, by implication, irremovable. pg. 109
She smiles. Her lips are extraordinarily dry, like white treebark. Why does this strike him as beautiful rather than ugly? It's beyond him. pg. 109
Sugar & William talk at The Fireside.
pgs. 110-112.
Sugar turns to leave. The burden of rainwater having wholly evaporated, during the course of the evening, from her dress, she looks lighter in colour, all in green and pale grey. But sitting so long on her wet skirts has pressed anarchic pleats into them, crude tri-angles pointing up towards her hidden rump, and Rackham feels strangely protective towards her for her ignorance of this, wishing he could get Letty to iron Sugar's skirts for her and make them neat, before he removes them once and for all.
pg. 114
Watch your step. The words are still resounding in his head. Her voice...husky, yes...but such a musical tone, an ascending trio of notes, do re fa, an imperfect but delightful apreggio of feminine breath, an air played on the flute d'amour. What must a voice like that sound like in the crescendo of passion? pg. 116
In the dimness of the vestibule, the glow of the door they're approaching illuminates Sugar's mouth strangely, outlining the rough, peeling texture of her lips in pure white. William wants to feel those feathery lips closing around the shaft of his prick.
pg. 118
Describes the brothel, describes Sugar's room, William and Sugar engage in sex.
pgs. 118 -125
PART 2 [THE HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE]
So, bowing his head to Mrs Castaway's writing-desk, he watches her draw up the contract, on this, the twenty-fourth day of November, 1874. [...] He reads what's flowing from her pen, written in (to give her credit) a most elegant and fluent script... hereinafter known as 'the House'...
pg. 181
Up in Sugar's room, William unpins his collars while Sugar kneels at his feet. She nuzzles the flies of his trousers with her face.
'R-r-r-r-r', she purrs.
pg. 183
The bed's drapes are already tied back, like the theatre curtains. In the bed-head mirror, William watches his reflection being led, stumbling, towards the rumpled sheets that still smell of him and Sugar.
'My little cunt is dripping for you, Mr. Hunt,' she whispers.
pg. 183
Passion spent, William is able to examine his prize more closely, studying her in loving detail. She lies cradled in his arm, apparently asleep, her eyelashes still. He combs his fingers through her hair, admiring all the unexpected colours to be found in it, hidden inside the red: streaks of pure gold, wisps of blond, single strands of dark auburn. Her skin is like nothing he's ever seen: on every limb, and on her hips and belly, there are...what can he call them? Tiger stripes. Swirling geometric patterns of peeling dryness alternating with reddened flesh. They are symmetrical, as if scored on her skin by a painstaking aesthete, or an African savage. (Doctor Curlew, if he were here, could have told William, and Sugar for that matter, that she suffers from an unusually generalized psoriasis which, in places, cross the diagnostic line into a rarer and more spectacular condition called ichthyosis. [...] To Willaim, the patterns are beguiling, a fitting mark of her animal nature. She smells like an animal too: or what he images animals smell like, for he's no animal lover. Her sex is luxuriantly aromatic, her shame-hair twinkles with sweat and semen.
pg. 186
He lifts his head slightly to get a better view of her breasts. Supine, she's almost flat-chested, but her nipples are full and unmistakable female. (And, when she's the other way around, there's enough for him to hold onto.) In truth, he's delighted with every inch of her; she might almost be a thing designed for no purpose but to bring him to orgasm.
pgs. 186 - 187
A few minutes later she's in bed, looking overe what ahs has written. A new character has entered her story, and is suffering the same fate as all the others.
'Please,' he begged, tugging ineffectually at the silken bonds holding him fast to the bedposts. 'Let me go! I am an important man!' - and many more such pleas. I paid no heed to him, busying myself with my whet-stone and my dagger.
'But tell me, exalted Sir,' I said at last. 'Where is it your pleasure to have the blade enter you?'
To this, the man gave no reply, but his face turned ghastly grey.
'The embarassment of choices has taken your tongue,' I suggested. 'But never feat: I shall explain them all to you, and their exquisite effects...'
pgs. 244 - 245
'Mercy,' he pleaded once more.
William is gone, and Sugar sits at her desk, finishing the troublesome chapter at last.
I gripped the hilt of the dagger, but found I lacked the strength (the strength of will, perhaps, but also the strength of sinew, for slaughter a man is no easy labour) to plunge the knife into this fellow's flesh and do my worst. I had performed the act so many times before; but that night, it was beyond me.
And yet, the man must die: he could not be released now that I had entrapped him! What, dear Reader, was I to do?
I put away my knife, and instead fetched up a soft cotton cloth. My helpless paramour ceased his struggle against his bonds, an expression of relief manifesting on his face. Even when I up-ended the flask of foul-smelling liquid into the cloth, he did not lose hope, imagining perhaps that I was about to swab his fevered brow.
Holding my own breath as if in sympathy, I pressed the poison rag to his mouth, and nose, wholly sealing those orifices.
'Sweet dreams, my friend.'
pg. 269
'That's for me to know,' teases William gently, stroking her shoulder in the dimness of the cabin, 'and for you to find out.'
Sugar loathes pranks and riddles of all kinds. 'How exciting!' she breathes, and presses her nose to the window.
pg. 284
This man is changing my life, she thinks as the key turns and the door swings open. My life is being tossed like a coin.
pg. 286
She's wearing only her camisole now, and his trousers are bulging. He pushes her down on the mattress, and observes her eyes widen as she stares up at the canopy of the bed. [...] God almighty, her cunt is wetter than he's ever known it before! What a state she is in! And all because of him!
'But dear William,' she gasps as he enters her. 'There's no kitchen.
'Kitchen?' He's seconds away from bursting. 'You don't need a kitchen, you goose,' he groans. 'I'll...give you...all you need...' And he spurts his seed inside her.
pg. 289
PART 3 [THE PRIVATE ROOMS AND THE PUBLIC HAUNTS]
Thirteen, she thinks. I was thirteen. [...] You understand, Mrs Castaway told her long ago, that if we are to have a happy and harmonious house here, I can't treat you any differently from my other girls. We are in this together. In what, Mother?
pg. 308
One sunny afternoon late in the April of 1875, in a vast rolling field of lavender, a scattered host of workers cease their toil for just a minute. Submerged knee-high in a lake of Lavandula, they stand idle with their hoes and slug-buckets, to stare at the beautiful young woman walking past them on the path dividing the acres.
pg. 327
My name is Sugar - or if it isn't, I know no better.
I am what you would call a Fallen Woman, but I assure you I did not
fall - I was pushed. Vile man, eternal Adam, I indict you!
Sugar bites her lip in embarrassment, so hard she draws blood.
pg. 362
Sugar is tortured by the yearning to tell him everything, to expose her oldest and deepest scars, to begin with Mrs Castaway's little game, when Sugar was still a toddler, of creeping up to the cot and, with a flourish, pulling the sheets off Sugar's half-frozen body. 'That's what God does,' her mother would say, in the same grossly amplified whisper she used for storytelling. 'He loves to do that.' 'I'm cold, Mama!' Sugar would cry. And Mrs Castaway would stand in the moonlight, the sheets clutched to her bosom, and she'd cup a hand to her ear. 'I wonder,' she'd say, 'if God heard that. He has trouble hearing female voices, you know...'
pg. 451
But Sugar weeps on and on. It's the first time since she was a child - a very young child, before her mother began to wear red and call herself Mrs Castaway - that she's wept like this on the bosom of a female.
pg. 520
In a flash, she reviews all the males she's known in her life: a dark void where her father ought to be; a couple of giant, angry-faced landlords who made her mother cry (in the very early days before her mother expunged tears from her repertoire); the 'kind gentleman' who came to keep her warm on the night of her deflowering; and all the men since, an indistinct procession of half-naked flesh, like a carnival of freak composed not of two conjoined bodies, but hundreds. She recalls a one-legged customer, for the way his stump banged aginst her knee; she recalls the thin lips of a man who almost strangled her, before Amy came to the rescue; she recalls a slope-headed idiot with breasts bigger than hers; she recalls shoulders thick with hair and eyes opaque with cataracts; she recalls pricks the size of beans and pricks the size of cucumbers, pricks with purple heads, pricks bent in the middle, pricks distinguished by birthmarks and welts and tattoos and the scars of attempted self-castration. In The Fall and Rise of Sugar, there are pieces of many men she's known, all butchered with the knife of revenge. Dear Heaven, hasn't she known any male she doesn't loathe?
pg. 525
PART 4 [THE BOSOM OF THE FAMILY]
On her last morning in Priory Close, Sugar sits shivering at her writing-desk, staring through the rain-specked French windows at her little garden. The imminence of leaving it behind renders it, all of a sudden, inexpressibly precious, even though she's done nothing to take care of it while living here: the soil has been scattered out of its orderly bed by weeks of heavy rain, the azaleas hang brown and rotten on their stalks, and a slimy heap of fallen leaves is banked up against the window-glass. Ah, but it's my garden she thinks, knowing she's being ridiculous.
pg. 535
She glances sideways as they mount the stairs no: is this bearded gentleman really the same person as her baby-faced George W. Hunt, who, less than a year ago, begged her to let him be 'debased'?
'There's nothing I won't submit to,' she assured him then, 'with the utmost pleasure.'
pg. 541
Sugar calls to mind the frantic way he grips her when he's fucking her from behind, his hands bearing down on her shoulders as if in the wild hope of collapsing their two bodies into one - as if, with a sudden, fantastical contraction of flesh, she might be concertina'd into his groin, or he disappear completely into hers.
pg. 575
[...] but there's no escape from the memory of her own inflamed genitals, examined in a cracked mirror in Church Lane, the moment the fat old man with the hairy hands finally left her alone. I have a clever middle finger, yes I have! was what he'd told her, as he poked and prodded between her legs. A most frolicsome little fellow! He loves to play with little girls, and make them happier than they've ever been!
pg. 580
She reads on. Fairy stories are a novelty for her; Mrs Castaway didn't approve of them, because they encourage the belief that everything turns out exactly as it should, whereas 'You'll find out soon enough, child, that nothing ever does.' Mrs Castaway preferred to nuture the infant Sugar on folk tales (the nastier the better), selected episodes from the Old Testament (Sugar can still list each of Job's trials), and true-life accounts: indeed, anything with a full complement of undeserved suffering and apparently motiveless deeds.
pg. 583
'I've missed you, too,' she says, laying her cheek against his shoulder. The odour of masculine desire is faintly perceptible, escaping from the almost hermetic seal of his shirtcollar. His prick hardens against te soft pressure of her thigh.
'There's nothing I can do,' he says hoarsely, 'about the dimensions of this room.'
'Of course not, my love, I wasn't complaining,' she coos in his ear. 'I'll get used to this little bed soon enough. It wants only to be...' (she shifts one hand to his groin, and traces the shape of his erection with her fingertips) 'christened.'
She walks him a few steps backward, sits down on the edge of the bed, and frees his cock from his trousers, taking it immediately into her mouth. For a few moments he stands silent as a statue, then begins to groan and - thank God - stroke her hair with clumsy but unmistakable tenderness. I have him still, she thinks.
pg. 587
When he begins to thrust, she lies back on the mattress and pulls her dressing-gown up over her bosom. With a muffled cry he falls inside her; and, contrary to her fears, her cunt gives him a welcome more lubricious than she could have organised with half an hour of preparation.
'Yes, my love, spend, spend,' she whispers, as he pushes to a climax. She wraps her legs and arms tightly around him, peppering his neck with kisses, some of which are artfully calculated, some heartfelt, but how many of each, she has no way of knowing. 'You are my man,' she assures him, as the cleft between her buttocks runs warm and wet.
pg. 587
'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat.
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked into the stars above,
And sang to a small cigar,
'O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'
pg. 597
Sugar has never forgotten the day in Church Lane when, as a child of seven, she made the mistake of reciting, once too often in Mrs Castaway's hearing, a favourite nursery rhyme.
'No, my poppet,' Mrs Castaway said, in the gently tone she reserved for threats. 'We've had enough of that now, haven't we?' This was always her mother's final word on any matter, and so the nursery rhyme was dead, dead as a cockroach stamped underfoot.
'It's time,' announced Mrs Castaway, 'you learned some grown-up poetry.' Standing at the bookcase, she ran her fingers - already red-nailed by then - along the spines. 'Not Wordsworth and such,' she murmured, 'for then you might get a taste for mountains and rivers, mightn't you, and we shan't ever live anywhere near those...' With a smile, she extracted two volumes, weighing them in her hands. 'Here, child. Try Pope. No, better still: try Rochester.'
Sugar took the dusty book away with her into a corner, and how earnestly she studied it! But she found that with every line she read, she entirely forgot what little she'd understood of the last one, leaving only an odour of male superiority clinging to her brain.
'Is there any other poetry you like, Mother?' she ventured to ask when, shamed by her own stupidity, she handed back the volume.
'I never said I liked poetry, did I?' rejoined Mrs Castaway sourly, replacing the Rochester in the bookshelf with a hard shove, so that the book hit the wall behind. 'Hateful stuff.'
pg. 597-598
'And when his prick comes out all bloody, you say, "Oh, sir, you have taken my maidenhood!" And weep a little, if you can.'
So speaks the long-forgotten voice of Sadie, a prostitute at Mrs Castaway's in the Church Lane days, instructing Sugar how to make the most of the curse while she's still young.
'What if he doesn't believe me?'
'Of course he'll believe you. You're shaved smooth as a baby, and you've nothing on your chest - what's to betray you?'
'What if he's seen me before?'
'No chance. For deflowerings, Mrs Castaway does her soliciting outside of London. Madams all over England spread the word, put a whisper in ears that are willing to hear. He'll be a merchant or a clergyman, this fellow, and he'll towk lahhk thaaht.'
'What if I bleed before he even comes into me?'
'Do I have to teach you every little thing? Just keep yourself as clean as a whistle! If he's slow to start, bid him to look at something amusing outside your window, and give yourself a quick wipe while his face is turned.'
'Nothing outside my window is amusing.'
To which Sadie's response was a raised eyebrow, as if to say, I can see why your mother calls you ungrateful.
pg. 602
Sugar closes Agnes's diary, irritated by the need to blow her nose. Watery snot dampers her handkerchief, along with the tears on her cheeks. It's November the 30th, 1875, and Sadie's been dead for years, murdered not long after she left Mrs Castaway's for Mrs Watt's.
pg. 602
'You need only ask,' he assured her, in that distant part of her life, little more than a month ago, when she was his mistress in rooms that smelled of perfume baths and fresh sweat.
pg. 603
From downstairs, in the world of November 30th, 1875, comes the muted toll of the doorbell, then:...
pg. 605
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 handsome figure 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 me. What have I to fear from dressing as I do? That I might be refused to 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.
pg. 609
The euphemism, her own coinage, sounds prissy on her lips - those lips which until recently exhorted William to fill her cunt with spunk.
pg. 613
'Not only that, little one,' says Sugar, suddenly remembering the date. 'It's December. The last month of the year, the one that brings us Winter and Christmas. And when December is over, what comes then, Sophie?'
Sugar waits, willing to accept either 'January' or '1876'. The house creaks in the heavy rain, infiltrated by all sorts of mysterious noises louder than the soft breaths of a child. When it's clear no answer is going to come, she blows out the candle.
pg. 614
"Have pity! Have pity!" she yammered, as she felt a sharp object probing the tightly-clenced hole between her buttocks - a cold, leathery protuberance bristling with hair.
"What's that? What's that?" she cried in terror.
"Don't you recognize it? It's the snout of a stoat," replies Sugar, twisting the sharp head of the ermine stole in her fist. "The poor creature is sure to be happier up your arse than around your neck..."
pg. 620
'William, please, your anguish is blinding you to who I am. I'm your Sugar, don't you see? I'm the woman who has listened to your woes, advised you, helped you write letters you dreaded writing...How many times have I proved there's nothing I won't do for you?' She snatches his slack hand and guids it to her bosom, then down to her belly, a gesture she hopes will rouse his desire, but which he condones with dumb bemusement, as if she's using him to make the sign of the cross.
pg. 633
of sugar, details, scenes, dialogue.
not finished quite yet. 300+ pages
to go still.
PART I [THE STREETS]
'I feel wretched' says Sugar quietly. 'God damn God and all His horrible filthy Creation.' Her face and voice are calm; she might be commenting on the weather. Her hazel eyes radiate - or appear to radiate - gentle good humour. 'Bring on Armageddon, what do you think?' pg. 29
(Here you see another reason w hy Sugar has done so well in her profession: her ability to recall the less than fascinating minutia of other people's lives). pg. 31
I can tell you the answers to simpler questions. How old is Sugar? Nineteen. How long has she been a prostitute? Six years. You do the arithmetic, and the answer is a disturbing one, especially when you consider that the girls of this time commonly don't pubesce until fifteen or sixteen. Yes, but then Sugar was always precocious - and remarkable. pg. 36
All the way to Silver Street, a paradise compared to Church Lane. pg. 36
She stays awake all night, even when there are no more men to be had; what's she doing in there with the lights on, if she's not sleeping? Also, she eats strange things - someone saw her eat a raw tomato once. She applies tooth poweder to her teeth after each meal, and rinses it with a watery liquid she buys in a bottle. She doesn't wear rouge, but keeps her cheeks terrible pale; and she never takes strong drink [...] What does she drink, then? Tea, cocoa, water - and judging by the way her lips are always peeling, in precious small quantities. pg. 37
Not only is Sugar able to read and write, she actually enjoys it [...] And not tuppeny books, either - big books, with more pages than even the cleverest girl in Church Lane could hope to finish. [...] Since moving to the West End, Sugar has taken to crossing Hyde Park, over the Serpentine into Knightsbridge, and paying frequent visits to the two Georgian houses in Trevor Square, which may look like high-class brothels, but are in fact a public library. She buys newspapers and journas too, even ones with hardly any pictures in them, even ones that say they're for gentlemen. pg. 37
Her main expense though, is clothes. Even by the standards of the West End, the qyality of Sugar's dresses is remarkable; in the squalor of St Giles, it was astonishing. [...] her policy is to save every sixpence until she can afford something that looks as though the finest lady's dressmaker might have made it especially for her. pg. 37 & 38
What does she do with them in there? [...] Once she has chosen her man, she'll submit to anything. If it's her cunt they want, they can have it, although mouth and rectum are her preferred orficies: less mess, and more peace of mind afterwards. [...] Her husky voice is the result of a knife-point being pressed to her throat just a little too hard when she was fifteen, by one of the few men she ever failed to satisfy. pg. 38
There is no rarer treasure in Sugar's profession than a virginal-looking girl who can surrender to a deluge of ordure and rise up smelling like roses, her eyes friendly as a spaniel's, her smile white as absolution. pg. 38
'That's different,' says Caroline. 'They're...you know...of kings and people like that.'
Sugar performs a chuckle of catty mischief from her encyclopedic repertoire of laughs. 'Kitty Bell had her portrait done, don't you remember, by that old goat from the Royal Academy who fell for her? It was even hung at an exhibition; Kitty and I went to see it. "Flower Seller", they called it' pg. 41
Unerringly she turns corners, ducks through alleyways, crosses busy streets with barely a glance, like a cat with an idea glowing in it's catty brain. pg. 44
'I can tell you 'o'll do it for you, sir'
'Oh yes?' He sits taut, ready to vent his fury on yet more whore-bluff. 'Some poxy hag in Bishopsgate?'
Alice seems genuinely abashed.
'Oh no, sir! A very 'igh-class girl in ever such a good 'ouse - in Silver Street, sir, just off The Stretch. Mrs Castaway is the madam there - and it's said this girl is the best girl in the 'ouse. She's the madam's own daughter, sir, and 'er name is Sugar.'
pgs. 76-80
She cocks her head slightly to one side, as if to ask, Well, what now? Her neck, William notices, is longer than the high collar of her bodice can hold. She has an Adam's apple, like a man. Yes, he has decided now: she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. pg. 109
Her long, lithe body, beguiling though it is, only complicates mattersm as she wears her attire like a second skin, seamless and, by implication, irremovable. pg. 109
She smiles. Her lips are extraordinarily dry, like white treebark. Why does this strike him as beautiful rather than ugly? It's beyond him. pg. 109
Sugar & William talk at The Fireside.
pgs. 110-112.
Sugar turns to leave. The burden of rainwater having wholly evaporated, during the course of the evening, from her dress, she looks lighter in colour, all in green and pale grey. But sitting so long on her wet skirts has pressed anarchic pleats into them, crude tri-angles pointing up towards her hidden rump, and Rackham feels strangely protective towards her for her ignorance of this, wishing he could get Letty to iron Sugar's skirts for her and make them neat, before he removes them once and for all.
pg. 114
Watch your step. The words are still resounding in his head. Her voice...husky, yes...but such a musical tone, an ascending trio of notes, do re fa, an imperfect but delightful apreggio of feminine breath, an air played on the flute d'amour. What must a voice like that sound like in the crescendo of passion? pg. 116
In the dimness of the vestibule, the glow of the door they're approaching illuminates Sugar's mouth strangely, outlining the rough, peeling texture of her lips in pure white. William wants to feel those feathery lips closing around the shaft of his prick.
pg. 118
Describes the brothel, describes Sugar's room, William and Sugar engage in sex.
pgs. 118 -125
PART 2 [THE HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE]
So, bowing his head to Mrs Castaway's writing-desk, he watches her draw up the contract, on this, the twenty-fourth day of November, 1874. [...] He reads what's flowing from her pen, written in (to give her credit) a most elegant and fluent script... hereinafter known as 'the House'...
pg. 181
Up in Sugar's room, William unpins his collars while Sugar kneels at his feet. She nuzzles the flies of his trousers with her face.
'R-r-r-r-r', she purrs.
pg. 183
The bed's drapes are already tied back, like the theatre curtains. In the bed-head mirror, William watches his reflection being led, stumbling, towards the rumpled sheets that still smell of him and Sugar.
'My little cunt is dripping for you, Mr. Hunt,' she whispers.
pg. 183
Passion spent, William is able to examine his prize more closely, studying her in loving detail. She lies cradled in his arm, apparently asleep, her eyelashes still. He combs his fingers through her hair, admiring all the unexpected colours to be found in it, hidden inside the red: streaks of pure gold, wisps of blond, single strands of dark auburn. Her skin is like nothing he's ever seen: on every limb, and on her hips and belly, there are...what can he call them? Tiger stripes. Swirling geometric patterns of peeling dryness alternating with reddened flesh. They are symmetrical, as if scored on her skin by a painstaking aesthete, or an African savage. (Doctor Curlew, if he were here, could have told William, and Sugar for that matter, that she suffers from an unusually generalized psoriasis which, in places, cross the diagnostic line into a rarer and more spectacular condition called ichthyosis. [...] To Willaim, the patterns are beguiling, a fitting mark of her animal nature. She smells like an animal too: or what he images animals smell like, for he's no animal lover. Her sex is luxuriantly aromatic, her shame-hair twinkles with sweat and semen.
pg. 186
He lifts his head slightly to get a better view of her breasts. Supine, she's almost flat-chested, but her nipples are full and unmistakable female. (And, when she's the other way around, there's enough for him to hold onto.) In truth, he's delighted with every inch of her; she might almost be a thing designed for no purpose but to bring him to orgasm.
pgs. 186 - 187
A few minutes later she's in bed, looking overe what ahs has written. A new character has entered her story, and is suffering the same fate as all the others.
'Please,' he begged, tugging ineffectually at the silken bonds holding him fast to the bedposts. 'Let me go! I am an important man!' - and many more such pleas. I paid no heed to him, busying myself with my whet-stone and my dagger.
'But tell me, exalted Sir,' I said at last. 'Where is it your pleasure to have the blade enter you?'
To this, the man gave no reply, but his face turned ghastly grey.
'The embarassment of choices has taken your tongue,' I suggested. 'But never feat: I shall explain them all to you, and their exquisite effects...'
pgs. 244 - 245
'Mercy,' he pleaded once more.
William is gone, and Sugar sits at her desk, finishing the troublesome chapter at last.
I gripped the hilt of the dagger, but found I lacked the strength (the strength of will, perhaps, but also the strength of sinew, for slaughter a man is no easy labour) to plunge the knife into this fellow's flesh and do my worst. I had performed the act so many times before; but that night, it was beyond me.
And yet, the man must die: he could not be released now that I had entrapped him! What, dear Reader, was I to do?
I put away my knife, and instead fetched up a soft cotton cloth. My helpless paramour ceased his struggle against his bonds, an expression of relief manifesting on his face. Even when I up-ended the flask of foul-smelling liquid into the cloth, he did not lose hope, imagining perhaps that I was about to swab his fevered brow.
Holding my own breath as if in sympathy, I pressed the poison rag to his mouth, and nose, wholly sealing those orifices.
'Sweet dreams, my friend.'
pg. 269
'That's for me to know,' teases William gently, stroking her shoulder in the dimness of the cabin, 'and for you to find out.'
Sugar loathes pranks and riddles of all kinds. 'How exciting!' she breathes, and presses her nose to the window.
pg. 284
This man is changing my life, she thinks as the key turns and the door swings open. My life is being tossed like a coin.
pg. 286
She's wearing only her camisole now, and his trousers are bulging. He pushes her down on the mattress, and observes her eyes widen as she stares up at the canopy of the bed. [...] God almighty, her cunt is wetter than he's ever known it before! What a state she is in! And all because of him!
'But dear William,' she gasps as he enters her. 'There's no kitchen.
'Kitchen?' He's seconds away from bursting. 'You don't need a kitchen, you goose,' he groans. 'I'll...give you...all you need...' And he spurts his seed inside her.
pg. 289
PART 3 [THE PRIVATE ROOMS AND THE PUBLIC HAUNTS]
Thirteen, she thinks. I was thirteen. [...] You understand, Mrs Castaway told her long ago, that if we are to have a happy and harmonious house here, I can't treat you any differently from my other girls. We are in this together. In what, Mother?
pg. 308
One sunny afternoon late in the April of 1875, in a vast rolling field of lavender, a scattered host of workers cease their toil for just a minute. Submerged knee-high in a lake of Lavandula, they stand idle with their hoes and slug-buckets, to stare at the beautiful young woman walking past them on the path dividing the acres.
pg. 327
My name is Sugar - or if it isn't, I know no better.
I am what you would call a Fallen Woman, but I assure you I did not
fall - I was pushed. Vile man, eternal Adam, I indict you!
Sugar bites her lip in embarrassment, so hard she draws blood.
pg. 362
Sugar is tortured by the yearning to tell him everything, to expose her oldest and deepest scars, to begin with Mrs Castaway's little game, when Sugar was still a toddler, of creeping up to the cot and, with a flourish, pulling the sheets off Sugar's half-frozen body. 'That's what God does,' her mother would say, in the same grossly amplified whisper she used for storytelling. 'He loves to do that.' 'I'm cold, Mama!' Sugar would cry. And Mrs Castaway would stand in the moonlight, the sheets clutched to her bosom, and she'd cup a hand to her ear. 'I wonder,' she'd say, 'if God heard that. He has trouble hearing female voices, you know...'
pg. 451
But Sugar weeps on and on. It's the first time since she was a child - a very young child, before her mother began to wear red and call herself Mrs Castaway - that she's wept like this on the bosom of a female.
pg. 520
In a flash, she reviews all the males she's known in her life: a dark void where her father ought to be; a couple of giant, angry-faced landlords who made her mother cry (in the very early days before her mother expunged tears from her repertoire); the 'kind gentleman' who came to keep her warm on the night of her deflowering; and all the men since, an indistinct procession of half-naked flesh, like a carnival of freak composed not of two conjoined bodies, but hundreds. She recalls a one-legged customer, for the way his stump banged aginst her knee; she recalls the thin lips of a man who almost strangled her, before Amy came to the rescue; she recalls a slope-headed idiot with breasts bigger than hers; she recalls shoulders thick with hair and eyes opaque with cataracts; she recalls pricks the size of beans and pricks the size of cucumbers, pricks with purple heads, pricks bent in the middle, pricks distinguished by birthmarks and welts and tattoos and the scars of attempted self-castration. In The Fall and Rise of Sugar, there are pieces of many men she's known, all butchered with the knife of revenge. Dear Heaven, hasn't she known any male she doesn't loathe?
pg. 525
PART 4 [THE BOSOM OF THE FAMILY]
On her last morning in Priory Close, Sugar sits shivering at her writing-desk, staring through the rain-specked French windows at her little garden. The imminence of leaving it behind renders it, all of a sudden, inexpressibly precious, even though she's done nothing to take care of it while living here: the soil has been scattered out of its orderly bed by weeks of heavy rain, the azaleas hang brown and rotten on their stalks, and a slimy heap of fallen leaves is banked up against the window-glass. Ah, but it's my garden she thinks, knowing she's being ridiculous.
pg. 535
She glances sideways as they mount the stairs no: is this bearded gentleman really the same person as her baby-faced George W. Hunt, who, less than a year ago, begged her to let him be 'debased'?
'There's nothing I won't submit to,' she assured him then, 'with the utmost pleasure.'
pg. 541
Sugar calls to mind the frantic way he grips her when he's fucking her from behind, his hands bearing down on her shoulders as if in the wild hope of collapsing their two bodies into one - as if, with a sudden, fantastical contraction of flesh, she might be concertina'd into his groin, or he disappear completely into hers.
pg. 575
[...] but there's no escape from the memory of her own inflamed genitals, examined in a cracked mirror in Church Lane, the moment the fat old man with the hairy hands finally left her alone. I have a clever middle finger, yes I have! was what he'd told her, as he poked and prodded between her legs. A most frolicsome little fellow! He loves to play with little girls, and make them happier than they've ever been!
pg. 580
She reads on. Fairy stories are a novelty for her; Mrs Castaway didn't approve of them, because they encourage the belief that everything turns out exactly as it should, whereas 'You'll find out soon enough, child, that nothing ever does.' Mrs Castaway preferred to nuture the infant Sugar on folk tales (the nastier the better), selected episodes from the Old Testament (Sugar can still list each of Job's trials), and true-life accounts: indeed, anything with a full complement of undeserved suffering and apparently motiveless deeds.
pg. 583
'I've missed you, too,' she says, laying her cheek against his shoulder. The odour of masculine desire is faintly perceptible, escaping from the almost hermetic seal of his shirtcollar. His prick hardens against te soft pressure of her thigh.
'There's nothing I can do,' he says hoarsely, 'about the dimensions of this room.'
'Of course not, my love, I wasn't complaining,' she coos in his ear. 'I'll get used to this little bed soon enough. It wants only to be...' (she shifts one hand to his groin, and traces the shape of his erection with her fingertips) 'christened.'
She walks him a few steps backward, sits down on the edge of the bed, and frees his cock from his trousers, taking it immediately into her mouth. For a few moments he stands silent as a statue, then begins to groan and - thank God - stroke her hair with clumsy but unmistakable tenderness. I have him still, she thinks.
pg. 587
When he begins to thrust, she lies back on the mattress and pulls her dressing-gown up over her bosom. With a muffled cry he falls inside her; and, contrary to her fears, her cunt gives him a welcome more lubricious than she could have organised with half an hour of preparation.
'Yes, my love, spend, spend,' she whispers, as he pushes to a climax. She wraps her legs and arms tightly around him, peppering his neck with kisses, some of which are artfully calculated, some heartfelt, but how many of each, she has no way of knowing. 'You are my man,' she assures him, as the cleft between her buttocks runs warm and wet.
pg. 587
'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat.
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked into the stars above,
And sang to a small cigar,
'O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'
pg. 597
Sugar has never forgotten the day in Church Lane when, as a child of seven, she made the mistake of reciting, once too often in Mrs Castaway's hearing, a favourite nursery rhyme.
'No, my poppet,' Mrs Castaway said, in the gently tone she reserved for threats. 'We've had enough of that now, haven't we?' This was always her mother's final word on any matter, and so the nursery rhyme was dead, dead as a cockroach stamped underfoot.
'It's time,' announced Mrs Castaway, 'you learned some grown-up poetry.' Standing at the bookcase, she ran her fingers - already red-nailed by then - along the spines. 'Not Wordsworth and such,' she murmured, 'for then you might get a taste for mountains and rivers, mightn't you, and we shan't ever live anywhere near those...' With a smile, she extracted two volumes, weighing them in her hands. 'Here, child. Try Pope. No, better still: try Rochester.'
Sugar took the dusty book away with her into a corner, and how earnestly she studied it! But she found that with every line she read, she entirely forgot what little she'd understood of the last one, leaving only an odour of male superiority clinging to her brain.
'Is there any other poetry you like, Mother?' she ventured to ask when, shamed by her own stupidity, she handed back the volume.
'I never said I liked poetry, did I?' rejoined Mrs Castaway sourly, replacing the Rochester in the bookshelf with a hard shove, so that the book hit the wall behind. 'Hateful stuff.'
pg. 597-598
'And when his prick comes out all bloody, you say, "Oh, sir, you have taken my maidenhood!" And weep a little, if you can.'
So speaks the long-forgotten voice of Sadie, a prostitute at Mrs Castaway's in the Church Lane days, instructing Sugar how to make the most of the curse while she's still young.
'What if he doesn't believe me?'
'Of course he'll believe you. You're shaved smooth as a baby, and you've nothing on your chest - what's to betray you?'
'What if he's seen me before?'
'No chance. For deflowerings, Mrs Castaway does her soliciting outside of London. Madams all over England spread the word, put a whisper in ears that are willing to hear. He'll be a merchant or a clergyman, this fellow, and he'll towk lahhk thaaht.'
'What if I bleed before he even comes into me?'
'Do I have to teach you every little thing? Just keep yourself as clean as a whistle! If he's slow to start, bid him to look at something amusing outside your window, and give yourself a quick wipe while his face is turned.'
'Nothing outside my window is amusing.'
To which Sadie's response was a raised eyebrow, as if to say, I can see why your mother calls you ungrateful.
pg. 602
Sugar closes Agnes's diary, irritated by the need to blow her nose. Watery snot dampers her handkerchief, along with the tears on her cheeks. It's November the 30th, 1875, and Sadie's been dead for years, murdered not long after she left Mrs Castaway's for Mrs Watt's.
pg. 602
'You need only ask,' he assured her, in that distant part of her life, little more than a month ago, when she was his mistress in rooms that smelled of perfume baths and fresh sweat.
pg. 603
From downstairs, in the world of November 30th, 1875, comes the muted toll of the doorbell, then:...
pg. 605
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 handsome figure 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 me. What have I to fear from dressing as I do? That I might be refused to 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.
pg. 609
The euphemism, her own coinage, sounds prissy on her lips - those lips which until recently exhorted William to fill her cunt with spunk.
pg. 613
'Not only that, little one,' says Sugar, suddenly remembering the date. 'It's December. The last month of the year, the one that brings us Winter and Christmas. And when December is over, what comes then, Sophie?'
Sugar waits, willing to accept either 'January' or '1876'. The house creaks in the heavy rain, infiltrated by all sorts of mysterious noises louder than the soft breaths of a child. When it's clear no answer is going to come, she blows out the candle.
pg. 614
"Have pity! Have pity!" she yammered, as she felt a sharp object probing the tightly-clenced hole between her buttocks - a cold, leathery protuberance bristling with hair.
"What's that? What's that?" she cried in terror.
"Don't you recognize it? It's the snout of a stoat," replies Sugar, twisting the sharp head of the ermine stole in her fist. "The poor creature is sure to be happier up your arse than around your neck..."
pg. 620
'William, please, your anguish is blinding you to who I am. I'm your Sugar, don't you see? I'm the woman who has listened to your woes, advised you, helped you write letters you dreaded writing...How many times have I proved there's nothing I won't do for you?' She snatches his slack hand and guids it to her bosom, then down to her belly, a gesture she hopes will rouse his desire, but which he condones with dumb bemusement, as if she's using him to make the sign of the cross.
pg. 633