‘What would you have me do? I shall never own another mermaid,’ he says weakly.
‘Fie, for shame! I am glad that our poor father did not live to see this.’
He ought to raise his voice to her now, for she has no right. And yet he cannot treat her as what she is, a woman past her usefulness, yoked to another man’s fortune and with many sons and daughters to attend to her interests before he should be prevailed upon. He cradles his tea bowl on his lap and watches her as she talks, transfixed as a hen by a serpent. Gold wire glints behind her teeth, and she talks on and on – ‘uncommon misfortune’; ‘an insult, when one thinks of it’; ‘outraged’ – only pausing each second sentence when her plate slips sideways across her palate and she adjusts it with a discreet smack of her chops. Then she concludes, ‘And I’ll wager you will not make even a penny by it.’
‘I already have.’
‘Pardon?’
‘It has been extremely lucrative.’
She snorts and pours herself more tea with vigour disproportionate to the task. A few drops spatter the cloth, and he watches them soak slowly into it. ‘It will never pay off your losses,’ Hester says.
‘’Tis halfway to doing so already.’
Sukie nods. ‘I have seen the books, Mama. ’Tis true.’ Or near enough, her eyes admit to his across the table; Mrs Chappell’s contribution is still the larger part of their takings.
‘You have not had it three weeks!’
He taps his temple. ‘I made the best of what I was delivered. You forget I am a canny businessman.’
‘I merely hope you do not forget your duty to your kin,’ sniffs Hester, taking another and sharper look at the quality of the floorcloth, the clock, the marble-painted mantelpiece. ‘Or perhaps in your good fortune you have decided the Hancock family numbers only one.’
‘I know the size of my family,’ he says wearily. A man without the immediate demands of wife and children finds himself called upon for a multitude of little wants elsewhere. He has three sisters living, each with more children than she can be expected to raise up on only her husband’s fortune.
‘A dowry for our Sukie,’ he says, ‘so she may better choose her husband. And did I not find Rachel’s boy a place in our office, and settle a sum upon your Jonathan, to invest as he pleased, to be thus freer in choosing a wife?’
‘Humph,’ she says, and no more.
‘And I am investing in land, and in property,’ he continues smoothly, ‘to better protect my earnings. The sea is a treacherous place for a fortune.’
‘And yet our father managed it, and his father before him,’ she says, with remarkable confidence for a woman who chose a brewer for her husband.
‘I do not mean to be what our father was,’ he says, and as he speaks he realises that he means it. ‘I mean to be better. It is time to elevate ourselves; this is the moment for a man to climb.’
‘Poppycock! Where do you mean to climb?’
‘I hardly care.’ The scales are falling from his eyes day by day, and he sees now that he has spent the greater part of his life at the periphery of things; an obscure planet through whose weak and inconstant orbit pass sisters and nieces and maids and housekeepers, before each is drawn away to her proper calling. This is no way for a man to be, whose natural place is as the axle to a wheel. ‘I have lived an unexamined life,’ he says. ‘And I have now been shown a great thing. I would be a fool to want no more for myself.’
She is affronted, more than anything, that these words were said aloud. For Hester Lippard has toiled her whole life to be the sun at the centre of her life’s orrery, the power that compels all others to move in their tight circuits about her. She has never detected this desire in her brother, and now she feels a shiver as if he has trod on the turf of her grave.
‘A fool to seek beyond your place,’ she says. ‘Ambition is a dangerous thing.’
‘We all must die one day. I ought not to leave the world just as I found it.’
‘All the more reason to lead a prudent life, and protect those left behind.’
‘I leave nobody behind,’ he says. ‘They are all before me still. I must advance.’
TWELVE
In their airy parlour in King’s Place, Polly Campbell and Elinor Bewlay bend over their needlework. Mrs Chappell has retired to her apartment for an apnoeic doze, and her young charges are attended by her powder-blue footmen, who move without sound about the room and out again, seeing to their serene duties. At the window, little pale-eyed Kitty pores over her chapbook prompted by Madame Parmentier: ‘Our f-ar-ther,’ she intones, ‘w-ho-o … who art in …’
‘Do you think Mrs Neal is stooping?’ Polly Campbell muses.
‘Hmm?’ Elinor licks a fresh thread for her needle.
‘For she has not so much as seen the gentleman – if gentleman he may be called – and now she must escort him all evening? I had expected her not to capitulate so easy.’
Elinor shrugs. ‘She is not so different from us.’
‘Oh, she is. Utterly so. She can disoblige any body she chooses.’
‘She’s not so well set in the world as you think. She still needs Mrs Chappell’s favour. And Mrs Chappell needs Mr Hancock’s favour, so you see Mrs Neal is quite trapped.’
‘Oh, Nell, but he is only a tradesman! Did you mark the patch of his wig that the moths had chewed through? And his horrid baggy jacket, with its patched elbows?’
‘Money’s money.’
‘A woman in her position ought to be above that. I would not lower myself.’ Polly is working on a little sampler, intricate with birds and creeping vines. In some other country, in the cool of the big house, her mother had her sewing fancy-work as soon as she could hold a needle. In the fields beyond the louvred shutters, women chanted as they worked, and Poll’s mother hummed along without thinking. Her gold ring glinted and her needle plunged in and out of the canvas. This is what Polly remembers. ‘I’ve an eye for the peerage,’ she says now.
‘Oh! They are all in debt! Gambling it away, the lot of them, drinking and stinking, and their wives are as bad. Devonshire borrows to clear his lady’s debts and she borrows from Prinny to pay him back, although of course the money seldom reaches his pocket; they are all so mired in this horrid business they will never be free of it.’
‘No!’
Elinor tucks her hair behind her ear and looks up from her work with the light of marvellous secrets in her eyes. ‘I have the confidence of men who know,’ she whispers, ‘and I believe that silly couple owe about the region of sixty thou’, all told.’
Polly lets out a low whistle, and Madame Parmentier’s head swivels to her.
‘I am surprised at such a coarse mannerism in you,’ she snaps, and Polly presses her lips together before she smirks. ‘Do not let me hear it again.’
The girls’ eyes meet in mutual amusement. They are smug to have outgrown the jurisdiction of their old nursemaid, but even so they bend their heads over their work until they are sure she has returned her attention to Kitty’s halting catechism.
‘If they cannot even keep their wives, what hope is there for a mistress? I got into this line of work to avoid a spell in the Fleet. Now guess how much debt – hum, let me see – Mr Moses Garrard has.’
‘The Jew?’
‘Well, that don’t signify. For the sake of this question you might equally consider any modest tradesman who has done well. For they have no title, and were born to inherit no more land than we ourselves –’ and at this Polly bites her tongue, for what does Elinor know how much land might be her birthright? – ‘but what they do have is spotless credit, and you may trust they always will. The wealth of the peerage is a fairy glamour sustained by our banks, but a self-made man will have satisfied himself that every penny in his account is truly there.’
‘It’s a wonder you do not pursue this mermaid man yourself.’
‘What! Me? Certainly not. He is a grotesque.’
‘A grotesque of fortune and influence.’
‘I am speaking generally. Once, you know, the whore and the Israelite passed their lives furtive and obscure; now the one may lie with a prince and the other ascend to a peerage.’
‘In which case what might I attain?’ This ought to be a private thought, but Polly says it aloud.
‘You, the mulatto harlot? Your fate is unmapped.’ Elinor Bewlay once thought herself monstrous for her red hair; beside the freakish Polly, with her brown skin and the hints of gold in her tight negro curls, she discovers herself a veritable mild-as-milk Madonna.
‘Perhaps,’ says Polly. She thinks for a little longer. ‘I would gladly take up with a Portugal Jew. I find them admirable courteous.’
‘I suppose you put them in mind of Moorish ladies,’ says Elinor, ‘who they must miss.’
‘Whom,’ interjects Kitty from across the room, and sits back well pleased with herself.
‘As if they ever met a Moorish lady on Threadneedle Street,’ scoffs Polly. ‘As if you know what a Moorish lady looks like. You are horrid ignorant sometimes, Elinor Bewlay.’
‘And you are merely horrid.’ Elinor may appear as placid as a little red cow, but she has lived a year with Polly and knows how to provoke her. ‘As if it matters whether you are really a Moorish lady; you are an object of indulgence, you will be whatever they think you to be.’ She is not malicious, merely bored, and she conceals her delight as Polly’s dusky cheek grows red, and her eyes begin to shine.
The argument is spinning faster in Pol’s head than it is in the room, where all are mighty unconcerned. ‘My father was a Scotsman,’ she spits, as Mrs Chappell returns from her rest, ‘and yet nobody once prevailed upon me to dance a reel. But you –’ flinging down her sewing and wheeling round on the startled abbess – ‘would have me play a houri one night and a hottentot the next.’
‘I endeavour to appeal to all tastes,’ soothes Mrs Chappell, unruffled, ‘but in all my years no man has yet asked for a reel. When the time comes, I shall be sure to recommend you, dear Pol.’
Elinor gurgles with laughter and young Kitty smirks along with her, her mouth prudently closed. ‘Scotch or African, what does it signify?’ asks Elinor. ‘So you’ve hill savages on both sides, what’s there to be proud of in that?’
Polly seizes her furled fan and lunges to strike her across the cheek with it – ‘I will have satisfaction!’ – and Elinor is convulsed, quite weeping with mirth, her eyes scrunched tight and her fists clutching sheaves of her skirt.
‘Oh, my!’ she gasps, ‘Oh, my, what a caper. What a reel.’
‘That is enough,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘The devil is in you girls today.’ She turns to Madame Parmentier. ‘Is this the week they all bleed?’ Of the girls she asks, ‘What is going on here?’
‘She would disdain a man of trade,’ says Elinor.
‘She would deny my dignity,’ snaps Polly.
‘Upon the soul of the Magdalene, you are the silliest girls I ever took charge of. Forget your dignity. You can discover it again when you have made your fortune. As for disdain, there’s no place for it here. This world elevates the industrious man, and if you are canny it will elevate you. Disdain! Dignity! I never heard of such squabbles. Now, are you able to put this aside?’
The girls are silent as a pair of mules.
‘Yes? For I had come to bring you good news. Our mermaid is arrived.’
Kitty, at this, pushes back her chair and bounds over, a pantomime of mute excitement.
‘Simeon!’ barks Mrs Chappell, and in clips the taller of her two footmen, bearing on a cushion the grim little corpse. The girls twitter and crowd, but in their clean safe home it looks more an oddity than a thing of fear. Polly flicks its nose with an impertinent finger, and they all reel back chortling. She does not look Simeon in the eye, for he inspires in her an irritation she can barely express in words.
‘I mean to put it in the little room off my great salon,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘And to drape the place as if it were an underwater grotto, with sunken treasure and garlands of pearls. And all you girls will be decked out as sirens, and I shall have you seduce the assembly with your song.’
They are silent for a little moment. They look at the creature. ‘Do you not think,’ says Elinor, ‘that it is – well, quite a different sort of mermaid? From the sort you would dress it up as?’
‘Not the seductress sort,’ adds Polly.
‘I have eyes,’ says Mrs Chappell.
‘And so do our visitors. I think they will apprehend that it is a grotesque. A little imp.’
‘Not like us.’
Mrs Chappell eyes them severely. ‘None of you has yet offered me a seat,’ she says. ‘My suffering is never at the forefront of your mind. Attend to me, if you please.’ They take her elbows and support her to the sopha. ‘It don’t signify what it looks like. What do people want of a mermaid?’ she demands, spreading her shawl about her shoulders. ‘A beautiful siren? Or a malevolent little beast?’
The girls say nothing.
‘You know which. So which should we give them? The mermaid as it is or the mermaid as they would wish it to be?’
‘But look at it,’ says Polly.
Mrs Chappell takes from her waist a little tin of lavender comfits. She pops one in her mouth. ‘Fan me,’ she says. Young Kitty sets up an assiduous fluttering. ‘They’ve their whole lives to stare ugliness in the face,’ she says. ‘I will not have them do so in my establishment. I mean this to be the most lavish and extraordinary event I have ever put on. Now, Polly, my little orator, will you recite me the last sonnet you got by heart?’
‘In Latin or in English, madam? Or French?’
‘English, English. I am bilious today, my stomach will tolerate nothing but the purest Shakespeare. And, Elinor, you might play awhile for me, at least until the tea is brought in. Kitty! Enough of your wafting. Rub my feet.’
Samuel, the second footman, appears in the door. ‘Miss Polly,’ he says. ‘One waits for you below.’
‘Ugh.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Early again.’ To the women: ‘Am I presentable?’
‘Here – come here,’ beckons Mrs Chappell, spitting on her handkerchief; seizing Polly’s chin she scrubs at a smut on her cheek. The girl bends to her as springy as a willow wand. ‘Captain Tremaine, is it? Your usual Thursday afternoon? I would have him come sit with us for a while but I cannot trust you girls to maintain any conversational niceness today. Now, that plain cap won’t do. Where is your turban?’
Polly’s brow lowers. ‘It is troublesome.’
‘Well, you cannot be the Queen of Carthage without it. Now, make haste, upstairs. The robe laid out in the dressing room is the one I wish you to wear. And will you try – try – to have him gone by six; you will want time to dress again.’
‘The sooner I go, the sooner ’tis done,’ protests Polly, pulling away. As she rustles past the piano, Elinor cannot help whispering, ‘Which are you, then? A beautiful siren or a malevolent little beast?’ and Polly cannot help delivering a sharp nip to her persecutor’s forearm.
‘That is what I thought,’ says Elinor.
THIRTEEN
‘Where are you going?’ asks Sukie, which surprises Mr Hancock. It is mid-afternoon, and he is busy in his counting-house, drawing on a pipe as he tots up the cost of his proposed new building works.
‘Why, nowhere. I am busy.’
‘But later. Bridget has your good cuffs all starched and pressed. You are going somewhere.’
He shifts his pipe stem from one side of his mouth to the other, and bends over his books. Tonight the mermaid will be revealed at Mrs Chappell’s house, a place Sukie cannot even know of, much less visit. Indeed, he has told her nothing of its removal from Murray’s keeping, but this makes it all the worse, for she is confused, and alert to clues. He regrets that it will not be displayed in a place whose grandeur equals its probity, where he could bring her to see the fine people, and be admired by them as the niece of the mermaid man. How breathlessly she would have reported on it
to her mother and her sisters; how proud she would have been that she, and she alone, had been so favoured by fortune. Instead she scurries down the dark stairs of his house; eyes his dress and demeanour enquiringly; lingers outside his office door. ‘I wish you would tell me,’ she says, this girl of fourteen, with her hands on her hips. ‘I was a help to you before, was I not? I could come with you again.’
‘Who is master of this house?’ he snaps.
She takes a little step back. ‘Oh. I merely—’
He has never raised his voice to her before: her face is as stupefied as if he had raised his hand.
‘You are prying,’ he says. ‘’Tis not seemly. And what use would the knowledge be to you? My place is out there –’ he waves his arms across to the window, the dockyard beyond – ‘and yours is in here. I go out, you stay in. I do my duty, you do yours; then ’tis all harmonious. Do you understand?’
She has a thunderous scowl on her. I have indulged her to a dangerous degree, he realises. She thinks too much of herself. Aloud he says, ‘Susanna, if you mean to keep a place in any household, do not overreach it. I’ll have no more of your presuming.’ Her bottom lip quivers. Please God do not let her weep in front of me. ‘I am on my own business,’ he says more gently. ‘It’s not for you.’ Will she answer him back? His authority will not take much more challenging. ‘Get you gone,’ he says softly. ‘Lay out my fine linens and brush my best jacket. I am wanted in London at nine tonight.’
For his own whoring, Mr Hancock naturally inclines towards the upstairs room of a genial tavern, where the passing girls are almost incidental to the gaming table, buxom and giddy, confident in their cups and at their cards. Even if he were to regularly frequent whorehouses – and he never has, not in the first dark years of his bereavement, and not now that they stretch before and behind him – Mrs Chappell’s nunnery is like nothing he has known. It is in a narrow courtyard off King Street, and both outside and in is as grand as any ducal residence – indeed, it might be one, being in such proximity to Court – and the roads not only paved, but additionally so clean as to have been fairly scrubbed. The people he sees strolling or riding between park and palace are very grand – ladies in shimmering court dresses, and their men tall and modish in blue and buff – and walk without fear of abuse or soil. The women do not pick their skirts up to keep them from the filthy gutters; the men do not look nervously about them for bareheaded urchins who would pelt them with mud and worse. Mr Hancock, borne from the barber’s in a chair to keep the marks of the city from his good clothes, feels a glorious relief.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 10