Free The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber Page B

is not alluded to) a profusion of manufactures. These are artfully displayed against painted trompe-l’oeils of their settings in rooms of a fashionable house. Clara is moving past the dining-room display just now, a thick pane of glass separating her from the sumptuously laid table of silverware, china and wine-filled glasses. In the painted backdrop behind the table, a hearth glows convincingly with life-like flame and, to the side, poking through a slit in a real curtain, two porcelain hands with white cuffs and a hint of black sleeve hold aloft a papier-mâché roast.
    So impressive are these displays, so diverting, that William almost careers into a headlong fall. There are hooks jutting out of the wall at ankle-level, provided for the tethering of dogs, and he very nearly trips. It’s just as well Clara has already entered Billington & Joy’s great white doors slightly ahead of him, at his instruction. How she would adore to see him fall!
    Once inside, William tries to catch sight of her, but she’s already lost in the wonderland of mirrored brightness. Glass and crystal are everywhere, mirrors hung at every interval, to multiply the galaxy of chandeliered gas-light. Even what is not glass or crystal is polished as if it were; the floor shines, the lacquered counters shimmer, even the hair of the serving staff is brilliant with Macassar oil, and the sheer profusion of merchandise is a little dazzling too.
    Mind you, as well as selling many elegant and indispensable things, Billington & Joy also sells magnetic brushes for curing bilious headaches in five minutes, galvanic chain-bands for imparting life-giving impulses, and glazed mugs with the Queen’s face scowling out of them in bas-relief, but even these objects seem already to have the status of eccentric museum exhibits, as though showcased for public wonderment alone. The whole effect, indeed, is so suggestive of the great Crystal Palace Exhibition on which the store is modelled, that some visitors, in their awe, are reluctant to buy anything, lest they mar the display. The fact that no prices are attached only adds to their timorousness, for they fear to ask and discover themselves insufficiently affluent.
    Therefore less is sold than might be sold – but at least not much gets stolen. To the urchins and thieves of Church Lane, Billington & Joy is Heaven – that is, not for the likes of them. They could no more hope to pass through its great white doors than through the eye of a needle.
    As for breakages, the most fragile displays endure safely for months at a time, because even prosperous children are rarely seen here, and on a tight leash when they are. Also, more crucially, the evolution of ladies’ fashions has meant that stylish female shoppers can move through a shop without knocking things over. Indeed, it would be fair to say that Billington & Joy, and other establishments of its kind, have expanded in celebration of the crinoline’s demise. The modern woman has been streamlined to permit her to spend freely.
    Once more before mounting the stairs to the hat department, William looks around the store for Clara. Though she was a dozen footsteps ahead of him at most, she has disappeared like a rodent. The only thing resembling a servant he can see is the dummy serving-maid behind the display curtain, but there’s nothing to her except disembodied plaster arms that end abruptly at the elbows, mounted on metal stands.
    Clara’s errand, which she is to complete unsupervised while William Rackham chooses his new hat, is to procure for her mistress eighteen yards of ochre silk, plus matching trimmings, to be made into a dress when Mrs Rackham feels well enough to apply herself to the pattern and the machine. Clara likes this errand very much. In performing it, she experiences not only the thrill of saying, ‘Well, my man, I’ll need eighteen yards of it,’ and handling all that money, but she also executes a neat swindle whereby an additional item is