The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

by Imogen Hermes Gowar

  ‘Dying was the best thing he could have done,’ she says to Mrs Frost, as a peace offering. ‘And just in time for the season.’

  Her companion remains silent.

  Angelica is not to be deterred. ‘I am entirely independent now.’

  ‘That is what troubles me.’ Mrs Frost is tight-lipped still but she advances again on Angelica’s hair.

  ‘What fun I shall have, indebted to nobody!’

  ‘Supported by nobody.’

  ‘Oh, Eliza.’ Angelica can feel her friend’s cool fingers upon her scalp; she pulls free and twists in the chair to look up into her face. ‘Three years I have seen nobody! No society, no parties, no fun. Kept, in a dull little parlour.’

  ‘He kept you very generously.’

  ‘And I am not ungrateful. But I made sacrifices, you know: that artist who put my picture in the Academy. He would have painted me a hundred times if the duke had not forbidden him. May I not now enjoy a little wildness?’

  ‘Hold still or I shall never be done.’

  Angelica leans back in her chair. ‘I have been in more precarious positions than this. I have been all alone in the world since I was only fourteen.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Mrs Frost – before she was Mrs Frost – had swept the grates at Mrs Elizabeth Chappell’s celebrated Temple of Venus, while Angelica Neal – before she was Angelica Neal – danced naked.

  ‘Well, don’t it follow? If one man can settle on me, so will others. But now is the time to be out in society; I must place myself in the right circles; show my face everywhere until it is well known again, for really that is what is vital. None of the very great courtesans are especially beautiful, you know, or not many of them. I am beautiful, am I not?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Angelica says. ‘I will be a success.’ She sinks her teeth into a peach and sits back to watch her reflection chew and swallow.

  ‘I only wonder—’

  ‘I do believe that men find me more attractive than ever,’ Angelica plunges on. ‘I need not be a mercenary, fawning over any body who will have me. I am in a position to make my own choice.’

  ‘But will you not—’

  ‘I think the blue ribbon for my hair.’

  Outside on the street there is a great commotion. Bouncing along the cobbles comes a sky-blue landau emblazoned on each side with a bare-breasted golden sphinx. Angelica jumps up. ‘She is here! Take off your apron. No, put it back on. I won’t have you mistaken for one of the party.’ She flies to the window, divesting herself of her powdering robe’s smocky folds as she goes.

  The sun is sinking, infusing the street below with a honeyish haze. In the landau, amongst a clutch of young ladies in white muslin, rides Mrs Chappell herself, the abbess of King’s Place. She is built like an armchair, more upholstered than clothed, her bolster of a bosom heaving beneath cream taffeta and gold frogging. When the landau comes to a halt she staggers to her feet, arms outspread and rings a-twinkle. Two negroes in sky-blue livery hop from the footplates to help her descend.

  ‘New servants again, poor dupes,’ says Angelica, watching them each taking an elbow while the girls heave at the swags adorning her vast rump. ‘They don’t know yet that she pays them half what they are worth.’ The landau is remarkable well sprung and Mrs Chappell lurches onto the cobbles in a flash of starched lace: several tiny dogs scamper forth; the girls spill after them; and all together they caper in the street, a festival of plumed tails and plumed hats as Mrs Chappell staggers in her footmen’s grip. ‘Canny of her, to employ those blacks so lately arrived from America that they mistake their own value. Imagine, Eliza! Delivered from bondage to her employ.’

  These shining visitors to Dean Street do not go unmarked. A washerwoman with a bundle on her back hisses through her teeth, but her apprentice, hair scraped up under her cap, stands stock-still and stares. Four boys set up a whooping, and men raise their hats or lean on the handles of their barrows and grin. The girls dimple smugly, swishing their skirts this way and that, their fans in constant motion: they incline their necks and turn out the white skin of their forearms. Angelica hauls the window open and leans out, shading her eyes with one hand. ‘My dear Mrs Chappell!’ she calls, which sets the girls off fluttering ever more vigorously, and turns all heads up to the window. The sun blazes in Angelica’s hair. ‘How kind of you to visit me!’

  ‘Polly!’ barks Mrs Chappell. ‘Kitty! Elinor!’ and the girls stand to attention, fans waving, bright-eyed.

  ‘Eliza,’ hisses Angelica, ‘we must move this table.’ Mrs Frost starts heaping ribbons and jewels upon it.

  ‘A flying visit,’ calls Mrs Chappell, pressing her hand to her bosom with the effort of projection.

  ‘Come up, come up!’ cries Angelica, the attention of Dean Street pinned upon her. ‘Have a saucer of tea.’ She pulls back from the window. ‘Christ, Eliza! Have we any tea?’

  Mrs Frost whips from her bosom a twist of pink paper. ‘We always have tea.’

  ‘Oh, you are an angel. A darling. What would I do without you?’ Angelica seizes one end of the table. Mrs Frost the other, and thusly they bear it between them, shuffling as if they were hobbled so as not to dislodge its slew of trinkets. The fruits in the bowl bounce and tremble, and the mirror rattles on its stand.

  ‘You know what she is come for,’ Angelica pants. ‘And are we in accord?’

  ‘I have made my opinion plain.’ Mrs Frost attempts primness, but she is trotting backwards while carrying a laden table, and must keep flicking glances over her shoulder to avoid reversing into the wall.

  ‘Give me time and I will set your mind at ease.’ In the dressing room, they manoeuvre the table around Mrs Frost’s hard little cot. ‘Hurry, hurry! Put it anywhere, we shall have time to straighten up when they have gone. Now run, run, and let them in. Remember to wipe the saucers before you pass them around, Maria dusts like a slut.’

  Mrs Frost vanishes swift as a will-o’-the-wisp, but Angelica lingers in the gloomy dressing room, pondering herself in the mirror. From a distance she looks well – small and elegant – and she goes closer, pressing her palm against the tabletop to lean in. The glass is cold and her breath makes a little fog which blooms and shrinks across her reflection. She watches her pupils expand and contract, studies the edges of her lips which are chafed pink from the business of the afternoon. The skin around her eyes is as white and unlined as the inside of an eggshell, but she has a tiny crease in each cheek like the indent of a fingernail, and one between her eyebrows which deepens when she frowns at it. She can hear the girls giggling in the corridor downstairs, and Mrs Chappell’s admonishments: ‘What giddiness! Such unruliness in the street – did I teach you to behave in such a way?’

  ‘No, Mrs Chappell.’

  Angelica cracks her knuckles. She goes back into the parlour and chooses a chair to recline on, spreading her skirts out carefully.

  ‘And will you be proud of yourselves, when some clever soul puts it into print? When it’s written up in Town and Country that Mrs Chappell’s nuns, the cream of England’s girlhood, play leapfrog in the street like a mob of brewers’ daughters? Well, I never, well, I never. Come, Nell, I must lean on you, these stairs are beyond my powers today.’

  Breathing stertorously she enters Angelica’s apartment, supported by the red-headed Elinor Bewlay.

  ‘Oh, dear Mrs Chappell!’ Angelica cries. ‘So glad – so pleased. What a pleasure to see you.’ This is by no means untrue: Mrs Chappell is as near a thing to a parent as Angelica knows, and it should not be supposed that their line of trade diminishes their affection. Bawds are not, after all, the only mothers to profit by their daughters.

  ‘Sit me down, girls, sit me down,’ snorts Mrs Chappell, and she labours towards a tiny japanned chair, with Angelica and Miss Bewlay clutching at her arms like girls struggling with a marquee in a high wind.

  ‘Not that one!’ gasps Mrs Frost, her eyes darting in horror between the chair’s spindly legs and Mrs Chappell’s
bulk.

  ‘Over here!’ squeaks dark-eyed Polly, the quadroon, dragging an armchair from the corner and sliding it into Mrs Chappell’s path at the last possible moment. The bawd, although sizeable, enhances her natural bulk with a vast cork bum beneath her petticoats, which emits a cloud of dust and a hollow thud as it hits the seat. She subsides with a long wheeze. Winded, she flaps her hands at her left foot, and Polly lifts it gently to rest on a stool.

  ‘My dear,’ huffs Mrs Chappell when she has found her breath. Her lips are mauve. ‘My Angelica. We are just returned from Bath. I cut our stay short – I had to satisfy myself that you were well settled. I did not sleep for worrying, is that not so, girls? You cannot imagine my distress at the lodgings I heard you took.’

  ‘For a very brief time,’ objects Angelica. ‘There was a financial misunderstanding.’ She glances over at the girls, who perch together on the sopha, watching the conversation with their heads cocked. Their skin is free from blemish, and their little bodies neat as mannequins beneath their spotless Perdita gowns, delivered from nakedness by a whisper of white muslin and the slenderest of drawstrings.

  ‘I have not introduced you to my Kitty,’ says Mrs Chappell. She stretches out her hands to the smallest of the girls. ‘Stand up, you.’

  Kitty makes a studied curtsey. She is a spindly dazed-looking creature, with a long neck and large pale eyes, greyish like the rim on skimmed milk, her eyebrows dabbed on a shade too dark.

  ‘Thin,’ says Angelica.

  ‘But an elegant frame,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘We are feeding her up. I found her down at Billingsgate, covered in fish scales and reeking like low tide, ain’t that right, girl? Turn around, then. Let Mrs Neal look at you.’

  The girl’s skirt makes a hushing sound: the scent of petitgrain rises up from its folds. She moves slowly and carefully. In the corner, Mrs Frost pours the tea, a musical arc, and Polly and Elinor pass out the bowls as their abbess talks in laboured snatches. She breathes as if she were singing an opera, exhaling through each phrase before sucking in another desperate lungful and plunging onwards. ‘They told me she’d had smallpox. Very small pox indeed, says I, there’s not a mark on her. Quality, this one. See how she holds herself. I did not teach her that: ’tis her natural bearing. Show her your ankles, Kitty.’

  Kitty lifts her hem. Her feet are small and narrow, in little silver slippers.

  ‘Does she speak?’ asks Angelica.

  ‘That is our next task,’ grunts Mrs Chappell. ‘She’s a mouth like low tide too. She’ll not open it again until I give her leave.’

  They fall quiet in their assessment of the child; or at least they leave off speaking, for Mrs Chappell wheezes like a set of bagpipes even in repose.

  ‘She will be a deal of work,’ remarks Angelica.

  ‘I like them this way. The middling girls are the ones as cause me trouble. Been sent off to a dame school. Taught the pianoforte. Got their own ideas about what delicate manners are. Give me street urchin over tradesman’s daughter, every time. Save me undoing somebody else’s work.’

  ‘I was a tradesman’s daughter.’

  ‘And look at you! Not one thing nor another. You chase every fancy that comes upon you. I can hardly bear to discover what has become of you from one week to the next; if you’re set to be married, or running a few good visitors. Or you are reduced to a streetwalker –’ she is breathless for a moment, fixing Angelica sternly with a pouchy wet eye – ‘which is not what I trained you for.’

  ‘I never did such a thing,’ protests Angelica.

  ‘I hear what I hear.’

  ‘I may on occasion have happened to walk in the street. But which of us has not been driven to that?’

  ‘Not my girls. Do you consider how your reputation reflects on mine?’ She clears her throat and moves on to business. ‘Here, Mrs Neal, I know that your misfortune is through no fault of your own, and that you are thought well of by many of our best gentlemen. Ever since your bereavement they have been asking after you. “Where is our favourite little blonde?” they say. “Where is our dear playmate with the beautiful voice?” What can I tell them?’ She presses Angelica’s hand to her crêped bosom.

  ‘You can tell them my address,’ says Angelica. ‘You see that I am well set up here. And so near the square, ’tis terrible genteel.’

  ‘Oh, Angelica, but you all alone! It grieves my heart to see you unprotected. My dear girl, we have room for you in the nunnery – we will always have room. Will you not consider returning to us?’

  The girls Polly, Elinor and Kitty have been exposed to a level of training more rigorous and exclusive than near any in the world, but when they feel themselves free from scrutiny they retreat into childhood, and now they bounce gently on the sopha, buoyed by one another’s fidgeting. They are impressed by Angelica’s glamour, and want her as an elder sister, to sing duets with them and teach them new ways with their hair. Late at night, when the men are at last stupefied, perhaps she will pass out cups of chocolate and tell tales of her own scandalous girlhood. They watch as Mrs Chappell leans forward to put a hand on Angelica’s. ‘It would be a weight off my mind to have you under my roof once more.’

  ‘And a weight in your purse, to advertise my services,’ Angelica says, smiling her finest.

  Mrs Chappell is an expert in frank conversation, but usually on her own terms. ‘Certainly not,’ she splutters. ‘Certainly that is not my first concern. And what of it? ’Tis protection I offer you, first and foremost. Think of it, dear. A dedicated physician; a steady flow of the right sort of men; the wrong sort gain no admission. No bills. No bailiffs.’ She is watching Angelica carefully, intent as a she-cat at hunt. ‘It is a dangerous city we live in.’ She pats Angelica’s hand once more and continues jovially, ‘And when you find a new protector – well, say no more. You will be released from my service in a moment.’

  In the corner, Mrs Frost’s face is a picture of desperation. She is trying to catch Angelica’s eye, but Angelica cannot look at her. She thinks, I am not so young as these girls. I have only a few seasons left to show myself at my best.

  At length, she says, ‘I knew you would ask me back. And, madam, I am grateful for your remembrance of me. You are a true friend.’

  ‘I mean only to help you, my pet.’

  Angelica swallows. ‘Then may I direct your help to where it is most needed?’

  This is a request not many mothers are receptive to. Mrs Chappell hems.

  ‘As a prudent businesswoman,’ says Angelica, ‘I trust you have carefully considered where my value lies. Is it in my continued presence in your house? Or is it in my rising in the world?’

  She pauses. She watches the pulse quivering in Mrs Chappell’s jowls. The girls look on, complacently fed and clothed. Mrs Frost has taken her seat on the little stool by the door. Now Angelica sees her press her hand to her bosom, in fact to the hidden pocket in her stomacher, where she keeps her dwindling pad of banknotes.

  ‘I propose a middle way,’ she says. Nobody speaks. The next leap is a great one for her, but she waits three, four seconds before continuing slowly. ‘I mean to trade on my own bottom. ’Tis the right moment for me, surely you see that.’

  Mrs Chappell considers. Her tongue – surprisingly pink, surprisingly wet – flicks briefly across her grey lips. She says nothing.

  ‘As a friend,’ Angelica continues, ‘I will do you the favour of appearing at your house. You may have it known that you can send a chair for me any time it pleases the company, but in return I want my liberty. I trust that the next few years of my life may be very fruitful: I have proved myself a good mistress, and for the right gentleman I can be so again, if I am free to receive him.’

  ‘You think you are able to make your way alone?’

  ‘Not all alone. Madam, I shall need your help. But you launched me in this world; would you not have me press on? And to what would I owe my success, if not your methods?’

  The abbess’s smile is slow in coming, but when it doe
s she fairly beams. Her gums are pale and expansive, her teeth as yellow and oblong and all-of-a-type as the keys of a harpsichord.

  ‘I have trained you well,’ she crows. ‘You are no mere whore – you are a woman of substance, as I always hope my girls will be, as fine a little frigate as ever I launched on London town. Kitty, Elinor, Polly – especially you, Polly – mark this. You have the opportunity to ascend, girls, and ascend you must. Ambition! Always ambition! No streetwalkers, mine.’

  Angelica’s heart pounds under her stays. For a moment the world swims around her: she has never dared talk back before. After Mrs Chappell and her girls have left, waving and calling out endearments, she flings herself down on the sopha in jubilation.

  ‘This proves it,’ she says to Mrs Frost, who is clearing away the tea things in quick, jerky movements, her head down. ‘She cannot afford to make an enemy of me. She gives me my way.’

  ‘You should not have rejected her,’ says Mrs Frost. Her lips are tight, her words little.

  ‘Eliza?’ Angelica sits up. She tries to peer into her friend’s face, but she will have none. ‘Oh, Eliza, you are angry with me.’

  ‘You might have considered our security,’ spits Mrs Frost.

  ‘We are secure. Or we will be. If I did not believe so before, I do now; Mother Chappell has an instinct for success.’ She does not like her friend’s brand of cold, tense rage: she rises and follows her across the room, beseeching, ‘My dear, my dove, sit down here with me. Come, come.’ She takes Mrs Frost by the shoulders and tries to steer her to the couch, but she is rigid as a Dutch doll under her cotton and calamanco. ‘I swear to you I will keep us safe. We are on the up, you and I.’