In his boyhood he scampered ahead of his sisters amongst those tramping feet, with the admonishments of Hester harsh in his ears, but their father rarely came with them and their mother was dead beyond remembrance. The girls – Grace and Dorrie, Rachel and Susan – sometimes ran too, matching their steps to his. They ran altogether like pups in a pack, so hard that their lungs ached with the joy of it, but Hester was right to call them back to her.
‘Stay with me,’ she hissed, a skinny girl, as tidy then as she is now. ‘Walk nicely. They will say we have no order.’
‘They run,’ he said, spreading his hand at the children vanishing down the lane, the dust clouding behind them.
‘They have mothers.’
And he and Philip (whose skin was tight as a bladder by the time he washed up in the creek all blue and fish-nibbled) and Rachel (who was spirited off to Bristol, no more to see her family), and Grace (who, delivering her first child, bled and bled, and bled away), and Dorrie and Susan and even Hester grew quiet and took one another’s hands. Still they capered, but they doubted themselves, and could not skip and leap as carelessly as the other children.
Sukie has gone for the day: at morning prayers, her favourite spotted kerchief was already knotted about her shoulders, and as he intoned her feet jigged on the floorboards to run and meet her own sisters at the turnpike. She has been skittish of late, like the cat when she is out of temper, eyeing him suspiciously and saying nothing. This, he knows, is since the sale of the mermaid.
‘Oh,’ she had said when he told her.
‘Is that all? I had thought you would be pleased.’
She shrugged, and brought her thumbnail to her mouth.
‘It is a lot of money,’ he explained to her as she made for the door.
Turning, she said in a most accusatory manner, ‘I helped you.’
‘Aye, you did – you are a fine little helper. And now I have done my part too.’ But she is out of the door. ‘It was mine to sell,’ he called after her.
He hopes her day out might restore her cheer.
From somewhere in the house, Mr Hancock hears a strange twittering. He scratches on with his letter, but there is the sound again. A gurgle, fast suppressed. He puts down his pen. Venturing from his counting-house and into the hall, the gurgling becomes a giggling, and is joined by others to make a little chorus. The kitchen is dark and cold, made darker yet by the brightness of the open yard door, where Bridget leans against her broom, her back to the room. Her cot is still tumbled in the corner, its blankets thrown back to reveal the dent in the tick where she slept. There are breadcrumbs on the table, and a splash of milk, and dishes unwashed.
He crosses the room until he is only a few feet away from the yard door, and still Bridget does not notice, so deep is she in mirthful conversation with a knot of young girls who have gathered outside. They have let their good shawls drop from their elbows, guiltily enjoying the sunshine upon their forearms, and they have blacked their brows most startling. While maids they certainly are, they are also a diminutive masquerade of the town’s ladies, each being dressed faithfully but imperfectly in her mistress’s cast-off clothes. He recognises the blue tabby gown favoured by the doctor’s late wife; the black-and-red trim of the mantua Mrs Lawlor had been so proud of until she caught its cuff on a candle; the sprigged skirt worn and discarded by all four of the Master Shipwright’s daughters. Poor Bridget, he thinks, to find herself so poorly clothed. It is a wonder she has not run away.
‘What’s afoot?’ he asks, and the giggling stops. Bridget hardly turns at his approach, but the little mummers outside crane over her shoulder at him.
‘Good morning, sir,’ bob the girls one, two, three. ‘And a fine morning it is,’ says the bravest of them.
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘and what brings you here?’
‘Come to say good day, aren’t we?’ says Mrs Lawlor’s girl, flirting her patched mantua. ‘We’re off to Greenwich.’
Bridget sighs heavily.
‘Back by six, sir,’ says the girl in the blue tabby, which scrinches along her flanks with its imperfect adjustments.
‘All of them going,’ says Bridget. ‘Their masters are out, and they at their liberty.’ The girls nod eagerly, and she turns her eyes balefully upon him.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘but I am still here. And Bridget was off all Thursday afternoon and evening, were you not?’
‘My mother had need of me,’ she protests. ‘I was not at my leisure.’
‘You have had your freedom for the week, ’tis not my lookout what you used it for.’
The girls fall quiet.
‘But may I not …?’ Bridget gestures to the girls, the dresses, the sunlight, as if drawing his notice to what he might otherwise have overlooked.
He steps back from the door to let the girls see inside. ‘Crumbs,’ he says, ‘on the table.’ He tries to be jovial, but it takes an effort to keep the tremble from his voice. This is not his sphere: his dominion over Bridget ought to be at great remove, as God’s dominion over His subjects, with many intercessors before the one is necessitated to confront the other. And yet in this house there is not one intercessor, and so he goes on. ‘And her bed not touched since she left it – my dear young ladies, I trust none amongst you left your duties undone before you took your liberty?’
The maids are mute, Bridget too, an angry pink spot burning on each of her cheeks.
A fool, he thinks as his heart pounds, to be afraid of a mere girl.
But he cannot afford mutiny. And Sukie’s disappointment if Bridget were to quit his service, and the trouble of finding a new maid – for he has not the privilege of the circle of Deptford ladies, who advise one another which girls are reliable and how to train those that are not – even to think of it is to sense defeat.
‘Will you be sure and do your work the moment you are back?’ he asks Bridget. ‘And leave the kitchen as clean as Mrs Lippard would expect to discover it, were she to arrive tomorrow?’
The girls ripple their pleasure, but Bridget merely nods, already tugging her apron loose. ‘Of course,’ she says, and leans her broom against the wall. She retrieves from beneath the carver chair Sukie’s sprigged jacket, all screwed into a ball, and shoves an arm into its sleeve.
‘Well?’ he says as she knots its tapes across her stays.
‘Hmm?’
‘You’ve no thank-you for my kindness?’
She looks at him then, briefly and quizzingly. ‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘thank you, thank you, much obliged,’ fading away as she steps out of the door and closes it behind her. It becomes dark in the kitchen. Without, a shriek of laughter.
He takes himself back to his desk, and is much displeased.
FOUR
Mr Rockingham has observed, of course, that the austere Mrs Frost seems to have taken a dislike to him; he needed no more evidence than the tone in her voice when – the third consecutive night he spent in Angelica’s bed – she said, ‘Oh. Are you are still here?’ And now, a week later, he curls once more next to his lady while her erstwhile companion taps in vain at the door.
They are playing spillikins on a lacquered tray they have brought into the bed for that purpose, for as a pair their tastes lean towards the infantile and the trifling. He is resting his palm on the spot where Angelica’s hip becomes her thigh, and she is making a great flirtatious show of extracting a stick from the heap on the tray – a fatuous endeavour since they slide in all directions every time she giggles – when Mrs Frost taps again.
‘What is it?’ calls Angelica.
‘I need to speak to you.’
Angelica groans.
‘Tell her to go away,’ whispers George, inveigling a finger beneath her chemise.
‘In a moment,’ says Angelica. ‘Perhaps she has something to say for herself.’ She rolls over, and calls out, ‘What do you want?’
‘Come out here. I wish to speak with you.’
‘Whatever you have to say, it may be said in front of Georgie.’
The door opens a crack, and a small slice of Mrs Frost’s face appears at it. Angelica and her lover loll like sun-drunk seals on the shore, his hand half within her chemise. Mrs Frost fixes her eye to the wall somewhere to the left of the bed and says, ‘Mrs Chappell has sent a chair for you. You’re wanted at King’s Place.’
Angelica pauses. ‘Well! That is interesting!’ She has not seen Mrs Chappell since their disagreement over the removal of the mermaid, and her pride does not permit her to recognise the conciliatory nature of the sedan. ‘I shan’t go,’ she says briefly. She taps her index finger upon George’s lower lip. ‘She don’t deserve me.’
‘Are you certain you—’
‘Go away!’
The door closes abruptly. Without, Mrs Frost waits a moment. ‘The chair is here,’ she says.
‘For pity’s sake.’ Angelica rises and draws her wrap about her. ‘Take your turn,’ she says to Rockingham, nudging the tray of sticks towards him. ‘I trust you to play fairly.’ She pads in her bare feet out into the corridor, where Mrs Frost is waiting. ‘What are you thinking?’ she hisses.
‘I am reminding you of your duties,’ says Mrs Frost primly. Angelica seizes her elbow and fairly shoves her into the living room.
‘You have no right,’ she whispers furiously. ‘I have told you before; if Georgie is here you send callers away. No questions.’
‘Mrs Chappell may send for you as she pleases.’
‘Even after she was so fearful rude to me? I should think not.’
‘Do not disoblige her. She wishes to keep you in the fold, and you ought to be grateful for it. To be seen at her house – to hold your assignations there – ’tis a privilege …’
‘One I do not need,’ says Angelica. ‘Mr Rockingham is the sole recipient of my attention. Send the chair away; tell old Mother Chappell I’ll not pander to her any longer.’
‘And how are we to eat?’ demands Mrs Frost.
‘Oh, histrionics! How are we to eat! When have we ever gone hungry?’
‘We may yet.’
‘No, we may not. George takes care of us. And, Eliza, I know what you are about. You pretend your concern is with the money, and oh, how sensible and prudent you are, but that is not the case, is it? It is because he claims a greater part of me than you do.’
‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘You are jealous.’
‘I am trying to protect you.’
‘You! Protect me! I am the protector. I give you good clothes and a place to sleep in return for really very few demands on your time, and yet all you do is defy me. I think you forget sometimes where you would be without me.’
‘You are turning away good connections,’ entreats Mrs Frost.
‘On the shelf,’ Angelica taunts her. ‘That is where you would be. On the shelf like a pawned shortgown.’
Mrs Frost will not be provoked. ‘You are isolating yourself; you must stay in the favour of the world, and when you shut yourself away you—’
Angelica digs her nails into her palms. Her face is hot and her ears ring. ‘What would you have me be?’ she demands. ‘First I am putting myself about like a common drab, in your opinion, and I must find myself a respectable keeper; now I am true to one gentleman and you say I ought to be less discriminating. Which is it?’
Mrs Frost does not betray much anger, but her face is notably without colour. ‘How many nights this week have you gone out?’
‘I was out until dawn on Wednesday.’
‘With Mr Rockingham. You are never without him. You do not respond to invitations – you do not repay Mrs Chappell’s kindness; you are not at home to men who might really help you, who would further you in the world.’
‘I don’t want furthering. I want to be happy.’
‘You have chose the wrong man. This happiness is not of a sort worth having.’
‘Oh, get you gone, Eliza Frost. Get you gone. As if you would know anything at all about it.’
She flounces back to her chamber, her hair bouncing down her back, wiping her face on the sleeve of her chemise. Within, Rockingham sits up in the bed.
‘What is wrong, dear heart?’ he asks, and she sets about weeping again, noisily and messily. ‘Oh, come here, you poor creature,’ and he opens his arms up to her.
She gets onto the bed on her knees, and wilts against him. ‘She wants me to give you up,’ she sobs.
‘Is that what she said?’
‘Almost in so many words!’
‘And what did you tell her?’
She sits back, wiping her eyes. ‘Of course I said no. Of course. What pleasure would there be in this world for me without you?’
He wipes her tears with his thumb, which is no match for them. ‘Here,’ he says, and mops her face with the bedsheet. ‘Why don’t she want me with you?’
‘Oh, she is a sad, ignorant husk of a woman.’ She sniffs hard. ‘And also she is afraid about money.’
He frowns. ‘With reason?’
‘She thinks – well, ’tis a small thing really – she thinks that if you were not here I would see more men. And we would be – we would be better off.’
‘Do you see other men?’ His face shows true surprise.
Looking all askance at him, she tries to laugh it away. ‘I hardly have the time! You would know, would you not, if I were entertaining others?’
‘But you would see them.’ He withdraws his hand from hers as if it were a glowing ember.
What else would I do? she thinks. How else does he imagine I pay my way? Aloud she says only, ‘No, no. No!’ With nothing to cling to, she knots the tear-damp bedsheets about her fingers. ‘Not if I did not need the money.’
‘I had not …’ He gazes at her face in stupefaction. ‘I did not think …’
’Tis always the way, she thinks. Treat them as if they are the centre of the world, and they do not hesitate to believe it. A charmed life these men lead, if they have never needed to look beneath the surface of things.
Knowing his next emotion will be anger, she grasps about for something to say. ‘It can’t be helped,’ she tries. ‘You must understand my circumstances. Of course I would not gain a moment’s pleasure from other men’s society; of course it would wound me horribly, and all the while my heart would break at my betrayal of you.’ This is untrue. Angelica has no particular feelings about spending an evening of mutual flattery with a stranger: on the whole she finds it enjoyable. Besides, she knows that to privilege desire in one particular man’s bosom is not to extinguish it from all others – there is no mutual exclusivity in attraction, and therefore it is no crime to encourage it wherever it appears – but she has come upon few men who appreciate this argument.
‘And what would you do with them?’ he demands. ‘Would you – would you lie with them? As you do with me?’
‘No!’ (Perhaps.) She folds her arms across her naked bosom and says coldly, ‘I am no whore, sir, no mercenary. Pray do not think me so base.’
‘What, then? What do you do with them that they pay you for so handsomely?’
She shrugs. ‘They have my company. That is all. I play a little music; I make conversation. They may escort me to plays and parties, if they desire it and if I am amenable to being seen about with them.’
He had thought she smiled upon nobody the way she did him. ‘You might as well open your legs to them.’
She begins to weep again, having over the course of her career developed a great knack for pathos. ‘Oh, how can you say it? Georgie, how can you? I allow them to be near me, that is all, a privilege you enjoy gratis.’ Raising her swimming eyes to him she sees he is gazing steadfast out of the window. ‘And if they bring me presents,’ she continues tremulously, ‘it is because they know with what great difficulty a woman survives in this city, and not with the expectation of any favour. That I only bestow upon the one man I truly love.’ But her words are in vain: he rises from the bed, and she has a glimpse of his glorious buttocks before he pulls his shirt on. ‘Smelly o
ld men,’ she says, ascending again into a lament, ‘who fart in their sleep and talk about their years in the cavalry! Do you think I enjoy a moment of it?’
‘So do not do it.’ He buttons his breeches.
‘I have no other way of keeping myself together.’ She wipes her eyes on her wrist and adds in a scandalised whisper, ‘Some of them have hair that grows from the tips of their noses.’
‘What decent woman finds she must keep herself together at all?’ he demands. ‘The very fact that you must support yourself is a judgement on you. I am going.’
‘But where?’ She rises now, in true fear. ‘Wait for me –’ she gathers up her clothes – ‘wait! I shall come with you.’
‘Do not follow me. I can’t bear to be seen with you.’
FIVE
In the evening, the families returning in tired straggles, the lovers still unaccounted for in the hedgerows, Jem Thorpe arrives at Mr Hancock’s door. He puts his palm flat upon its frame, his other fist propped loosely upon his hip. He looks as he is: a man at the end of a day of leisure, still and smiling, as if the sunshine his skin took up now sits warmly within him.
‘I came,’ he says. ‘Like you asked of me. I’m at liberty to build your houses, and my boys eager to start.’ He reaches up and pats the belly of one of the twin cherubs flanking the lintel, put there by his grandfather and fluttering still.
‘Oh,’ says Mr Hancock, who in the absence of the girls from the house has been compelled to get his dinner from the pie shop, and now guiltily shakes crumbs from his cuffs, ‘there will be no need.’
Mr Thorpe is as a man still awaiting an answer. He stands a moment longer, blinks, and says, ‘Why’s that, then?’
Mr Hancock shrugs. Above him, the cherubs are frozen in their joy, flourishing scrolled paper and compasses, ready to draft edifices as yet unthought-of.
‘If you mean no longer to put up any houses,’ says Mr Thorpe, ‘I would strongly counsel you to change your mind.’ He puffs with enthusiasm. ‘Now is the time, sir. So many are in want of a genteel sort of living, and you are in a fine position to supply it.’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 18