‘I – you may call me that,’ he says.
‘You are the owner of the creature we observed upstairs?’
‘That’s so.’ He is not much surprised by her complexion – she is by no means the strangest person to walk the Exchange – but he wonders what is her provenance. She is the pride of a city-trading freedman and his Kentish wife, perhaps, or a sailor’s parting gift to Wapping, or the cherished bastard of a rich gentleman. By her peculiar gentility he knows that she was not amongst the poor wretches liberated from their shackles after the American war, no longer to starve in a Virginia slave cabin but in a glorious English garret. And if she ever was enchained herself, she does not wear that memory upon her person. Her white gown is very fine, for all its plainness (and what is this mania amongst the young for plain gowns? To his mind, a beautiful face is only enhanced by a beautiful ensemble, and where is the sense in a lady dressing as if she were a dairymaid?) and she has the healthy radiance of a girl who is fed properly and rested well. Her teeth are white and all her own, her hair powdered and frizzed, her eyes warm and clever. She looks upon him without timidity, as if she never doubted her fitness to approach him.
‘My name is Polly,’ she says, extending her hand with the confidence of a duchess. ‘Miss Polly Campbell. I am sent to fetch you over, if you’ll come.’ She bobs her head in the direction of where, he now sees, a gouty old woman sits surrounded by young girls in white muslin, who are sipping little bowls of coffee and wincing with displeasure. They make a peculiar scene amongst the dusty and bewigged old gentlemen, who look askance at them with mingled irritation and intrigue, and clerks who leer, and young ladies with their chaperones, who look, and twitch their lips, and look again. ‘We do not wish to impose upon your time,’ says Miss Polly Campbell, ‘but my mistress has something to discuss with you.’
‘I have a few moments,’ he says, deciding that his life cannot very well become any stranger.
‘Good evening to you,’ says the old woman as they approach. She is fastidiously turned out in green silk, which flashes with cold fire, and she wheezes with every breath so that the fabric strains over her tight-packed bosom. She has a great powdered thatch of a wig and no neck at all to speak of, although a large jewelled cross gleams in the crease of flesh where one might once have been. She extends a hand, encased in green knitted mittens, from which her fingers emerge strangely delicate, as the paws of a little rodent; pink and plumply tapered. It is possible that she might once have been beautiful. ‘Please,’ she says, ‘sit.’
And he sits, mutely, watched by his dull comrades.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she asks.
‘No,’ he says, but while he has never seen her face before in his life, he has seen her sort, and could take a fair guess at what she is.
‘Bet Chappell is my name. I run a – ah – an exclusive club, of sorts –’ the rings on her right hand clink together as she traces the whorls of the tabletop – ‘in St James’s.’ She watches his face closely. ‘King’s Place.’
‘By the palace?’
‘So near we string our washing line upon it.’ She wheezes at her own quip. ‘Before my present situation I owned a coffee-house for many years – not much like this one, I do concede – so you see I am in the business of entertaining people.’ The girls nod, folding their hands in their laps. ‘So, Mr Hancock, I’ve a proposal for you. Your mermaid – ’tis a marvel. Quite extraordinary. We were delighted, were we not, girls?’
‘Oh yes,’ they say, ‘we never saw the like. Never did.’
‘But –’ she holds up a hand – ‘it wants displaying to its best advantage. I notice that no effort has been made in that direction.’
He protests that it hardly needs displaying; that its qualities speak for themselves; but internally he agrees that he is disappointed his great discovery sits in a bare room at the top of an unadorned staircase. And if a beautiful woman wants a beautiful dress, why would not a marvellous creature want a marvellous setting?
‘Look,’ she says. ‘I see your strategy, if it may be called that. You display it in a place like this, and you can be sure your mermaid will be seen by the greatest volume of people. And each of them pays their money, and so you become rich. Perhaps.’
He waits to hear what she says next. She has such an authority about her as is shared by his sister Hester, who has all the good sense of a man, but where Hester lacks a man’s means, it is evident that Mrs Chappell is at no such disadvantage. And so she continues. ‘But you do not control what sort of people, Mr Hancock, and as far as I can make out you have no particular plans for reaching them. You simply hope that word will spread and the public appetite for this thing will sustain itself. But how long will that last for, d’ye think?’
Captain Jones’s words return to him: ‘Four thousand a year. I am being conservative.’ What had he expected? That this popularity would last for ever? He would not expect such a thing of his tea bowls, so why this? ‘It is clear,’ he says slowly, ‘that if I wish this thing to remain popular I cannot leave it to its own devices.’
‘There you have it! And I believe that the way to do this is not to court vast numbers of people, but a few people of quality. I shall be frank with you. I wish to hire your mermaid.’
‘Ah.’ He knows already that he will say yes.
‘It is all very well to delight the masses,’ Mrs Chappell continues, ‘but why run yourself to the bone pursuing their favour? To say nothing of retaining it. A circle of much greater influence opens to you, if you would enter it, for I shall bring your mermaid not to the Many, but to the Great.’
He observes that this is not a speech that has sprung immediately into her head, but one that she has been working up for some time. So this is no whim. She has been watching and thinking since the day she first saw it. ‘And what would be the benefit to you?’ he asks.
She smiles. ‘In my line of work,’ she says, ‘the competition is unparalleled. There must always be a novelty. And nobody else has a mermaid.’
This satisfies him. ‘What is your proposal?’
She presses her fingertips together – her rings clacketing – and touches them to her lips as if she were thinking deeply.
‘A week of festivities. Soirées, viewings, you know. Exclusive beyond your ken. All the great men will naturally come by. Royalty, probably. My parties are written up in all the magazines.’ She speaks nonchalantly but her small eyes glitter in their pouches. ‘On the first night there will be a specially devised performance by my own girls, in costumes designed by me for the occasion. I have not yet lit upon the details.’
‘And you will, what, charge entry?’
She swats at the youngest of her girls, who has dared to scratch at the nape of her neck. ‘No, no. Nothing of the sort. I am not exhibiting it; merely sharing it among friends. There will be a strict guest list. No tickets for sale.’
He is bewildered. ‘But I—’
‘Of course, of course.’ She clasps her little rat-hands impatiently. ‘You are not handing it over for nothing. I shall hire it from you.’
And now what? How will he know whether the sum she suggests is fair? In his daily work he has a nose for these dealings; the value of what he is selling is deep in the marrow of his bones, for has he not grown up all his life with it? Might it not reasonably be assumed that when his mother was heavy with him, and his father climbed into the bed beside her, his talk was of chinaware and investment, favourable winds and promising deals?
He never spoke of mermaids.
‘Two hundred pounds,’ she says. ‘For a week. You may name your dates; I shall in any case require time to prepare.’
Silence.
‘I have a question,’ he says.
‘Please.’ She bares her teeth, yellow as old ivory; they want a good rub with lemon juice. ‘Ask me.’
‘Since it pays to be clear on these matters.’ He drums his fingers on the table. ‘You are a procuress.’
‘Yes,’ she says. She does n
ot blink; she does not turn her face away. The girls are still as they ever were.
‘And yours is what is called a house of ill repute.’
‘Nobody calls my house that. I have an excellent reputation.’
He is thinking rapidly; he is so far from what he was a fortnight ago.
‘Was that your question?’ she asks.
‘No. I have one more.’ He narrows his eyes. He has heard of the equivocating ways of elves and witches, and this woman – although she is most decidedly of this world, for what other would have her? – strikes him as having the same talent to tempt men into unknowing bargains. ‘Once your week is done,’ he says, ‘the mermaid is still mine, and you will lay no other claim to it?’
‘That’s so. Two hundred pounds.’
Since nobody else in London is likely to supply her with a mermaid, he does not hesitate. ‘Three hundred,’ he says.
It is difficult to tell whether her wheeze is one of surprise or the natural spasm of her troubled lungs. She presses her handkerchief to her mouth, her thin lips purpling. ‘Three hundred pounds,’ she says, ‘very well. That is agreeable to me.’
‘Ah, no,’ he says sorrowfully. ‘I work in guineas.’
Her eyes are very sharp upon his face before she begins to grin. ‘We understand one another, you and I. We are cut from the same cloth.’
I sincerely believe we are not, he thinks. You chose this. I am only following what Fate has thrown my way. But he smiles and shakes her hand warmly.
TEN
After taking the girls for their daily ride around the park (‘It is healthful, and it is instructive. If it proves also to be effective advertising, that is all to the good’), Mrs Chappell has made it her habit to drop in on Angelica and scrutinise her for poor decisions.
‘No trouble,’ she says as the girls lower her into her seat, ‘it is practically on our way home.’
‘If practically means utterly out of your way,’ sniffs Angelica, resentfully up betimes. She was borne home from the Pantheon not five hours earlier, her feet bruised from dancing and her voice hoarse from laughing, and now lolling in her Turkish wrap turns her peevish attention to the Tête-à-Tête page of Town and Country Magazine On the table a china pot of chocolate keeps warm over its flame, and the dresser is loaded with vases of peonies and tulips: these heavy fragrances, the one earthy, the other airy, more or less conceal the sour hint of piss that emanates from a gilt cage of snow-white mice. They sleep all in a tussle, their raspberry-pip eyes closed, twitching and squeaking in their mouse-dreams. It is a day of great sunshine again. The shadows of pigeons flicker across the walls, and the open window lets in the hiss of the breeze through the trees in Soho Square.
Angelica, pale and creased, feels it all as an assault; the light too bright, the girls too ebullient. ‘How can I make a success of myself when you do not allow me my rest?’ She squints over her magazine. ‘Oh, here is our Bel, look,’ she says, shaking the creases from smudged likenesses of Mrs Fortescue and her noble lover. ‘Heaven forfend we might be allowed to forget her for one moment. A wonder, ain’t it, that the press are so disgusted by this to-do and yet continue to devote whole pages to it.’
‘She has done well for herself,’ Mrs Chappell nods.
‘And so will I,’ says Angelica, not without pugnacity. The blackest and hairiest and plumpest of the dogs, who had lain meekly with his nose between his paws, springs at once to his feet and utters a yip of warning.
‘There, now, Fox does not like your tone,’ says the abbess, hauling him onto her lap and tussling his tufty face. ‘I meant nothing by it. In fact, I have a task for you on that score.’
The girls, who sleep eight hours a night and know better than to touch the Madeira they pour out for their visitors, are devoid of languor, rustling and nudging, whispering, ‘Oh, tell her! Tell her! Tell her!’
Angelica stretches. The sunlight glows rosy through her fingertips. ‘What have you to tell me?’
‘I have secured for us the most remarkable spectacle in London. To be displayed for one week only at my house. The strangest freak of nature I ever saw.’
‘And you bedded Chesterfield.’
‘You must have heard about it,’ says Polly. ‘The veriest oddity. ‘’Tis in all the papers.’
‘Oh! It must be the pig that can do sums.’
‘The pig may be a marvel at reading minds, but until it achieves mastery over its own bowels I cannot allow it on my Carrara again,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘We are all very disappointed.’
‘Guess again,’ trills Elinor.
‘How should I know?’ She groans and wedges her fists into her eyes, but the girls are gazing at her expectantly. ‘Very well. I suppose it is some sort of creature.’
‘It is!’ they rejoice, and Kitty rocks in silent joy.
‘Why must you make such noise?’ She rolls over on the chaise and wedges her face into the cold cushions. ‘Why cannot you be still and leave me be?’
‘But you have almost discovered it,’ says Elinor blithely: in her life before her fall she was a dogged smaller sister, and the habits come back to her with little prompting. ‘Think of a creature. A magical creature.’
‘A unicorn, then,’ Angelica mumbles through satin.
‘Nonsense,’ snaps Mrs Chappell. ‘A unicorn! As if a man would travel to the other side of the world for a creature native to our own land. You are not even ashamed of your ignorance.’
‘I never saw one here,’ says Angelica.
‘Because they favour virgins, and there isn’t a one of those left as far as Kent.’
Kitty cannot hold it in any more, although she is forbidden conversation: the exclamation pops from her like a cork. ‘’E’s got a mermaid, miss!’
Mrs Chappell swipes her fan at her with such ferocity she might knock the nose off her face, but Kitty, a lifelong expert at dodging blows, has already darted away.
‘A mermaid?’ repeats Angelica.
‘Yes!’
‘A horrid mermaid!’ crows Polly. ‘We have seen it.’
‘And it is nothing like what you expect a mermaid to be.’
‘Well, it is only an infant.’
‘An ugly infant,’ Kitty adds, and claps her hand over her mouth under Mrs Chappell’s glare.
‘But so were you, Kitty, and we are assured you will blossom quite beautiful.’
‘Sharp teeth like a kitten’s.’
‘And dried-up. Brown. Dead.’
‘Dead!’
They hold their saucers sedately but their eyes are very bright, and they talk faster than their mouths can keep up, at one moment all in unison and the next vying against one another. The dogs catch their energy and emerge from their skirts, scampering round the chaise with their claws clattering on the floorboards.
‘That is enough,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘It is clear you are not fit to be taken visiting. In future I shall leave you at home for more of Madame Parmentier’s lessons in walking.’
The girls subside.
‘It don’t sound like any mermaid I ever heard of before,’ says Angelica. For she was once a little child in Portsea, and there was held on a warm lap while sailors, joyful in their homecoming, danced and sang. And this small Angelica was bright-eyed in the firelight, her thumb in her mouth and her finger hooked over her nose, as they raised their voices to tell of the fair pretty maid who lured good men into oblivion.
It was the very jauntiest of all their songs, but, ‘Not that one,’ had said the owner of the lap, her voice a-buzz against Angelica’s infant cheek. ‘Not on a night so rough as this. ’Tis bad luck.’
‘Ah, love,’ said the sailors, ‘but aren’t we home now? So what is there to fear?’
‘There are other boats out there yet. There will be other voyages.’ The men fell silent, but in the days that followed the children of the town took up the tune. They trooped wind-whipped along the sea wall, clutching sticks and dolls in their cold-raw hands, and singing the forbidden song of the mermaid. The gre
y waves crashed below and they raised their voices to chant, ‘And three times round went our gallant ship, and she sank to the bottom of the sea, the sea, the sea …’
But Angelica’s recollections of her childhood are as slender as a vision, or a dream. They come to her in slivers, so prism-bright and peculiar as to make her shudder, for they seem to be from a life lived by somebody else.
Still, she says, ‘I have always wanted to see a mermaid for myself.’
‘And so you shall.’ Mrs Chappell pats her shoulder. ‘Its appearance is not what one might first expect, to be sure, but it is all the more convincing for that. We would not want Science confused with Art.’
‘How did you secure such a thing?’ asks Angelica.
‘From some wretched merchant, some cit,’ Elinor interrupts, ‘who is showing it off in the most dismal manner one can imagine. He has not the first idea what he has got.’
‘Oh, now, Nell, you mis-speak. He is not so bad.’
‘Aye, I mis-speak, for he ain’t even a cit. He is from Deptford, not a Londoner, and greener even than our Kitty here.’
‘Kitty is a sly little bitch,’ says Polly. ‘This gentleman is meek as a lamb – this newly-anointed gentleman, I may say, for is a veritable mushroom, sprung up overnight. He has a fortune now that he did not have this time last week and it increases by the day.’
Angelica sits up. ‘And what do you mean to do with him?’
‘Why, take him into hand,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘He is an innocent in this world.’ Her pup Fox turns three times about in her lap, and she rubs its ear between her thumb and forefinger. ‘He is lucky to have met me.’
Angelica snorts. ‘Poor man. It will not last. Somebody will arrive next week with a wild boy or a dog that can climb up ladders, and his little bauble will be all forgotten.’
‘But when the sun shines, we will make hay,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘I mean to hold a week of soirées and balls.’
‘Unlike you. You have favoured a more sober, discreet approach of late.’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 8