Polly drops her eyes and takes it. Its porcelain belly is hot against her palms, which on a cold day such as this is not unwelcome, but there is a great anger in her throat. ‘And what am I to do with it?’ she asks coldly.
‘Put it out of the window,’ says Elinor. ‘Here, pass it me, I shall do it.’
‘’Pon my word!’ Mrs Chappell mops between her legs with an edge of her petticoat, and rearranges her skirts to sedateness. ‘You certainly shall not! On a public road, in my own carriage, for any body to observe and chatter on later? No, Pol, it is not far, keep hold of it until we are set down.’
‘If only you had done so,’ growls Polly, but very quietly.
Elinor apprehends her friend’s rage. ‘Only round the corner,’ she comforts her, and puts a lid on the offending thing, ‘then you may leave it under the seat for the servants.’ Polly says nothing. Her lips are pressed tight, and although she holds the lid fast, she feels with each jolt of the carriage the abbess’s piss slop and jump in its shallow vessel. A trickle escapes and tickles her finger, but she closes her eyes and will not look. Elinor returns to the conversation. ‘At least the gentleman will see Mrs Neal well provided for,’ she says, ‘and that is all we can any of us hope for.’
‘No! Did you listen at all? He cannot afford her. Prick up your ears, girl, people speak for other reasons than to simply exercise their jaws. What you have the privilege to overhear, you ought to have the sense to make use of.’ She knits her fingers across her belly and sighs. ‘And no, Nell, simply being kept is not enough. How long will it last? Until he tires of her, or she him? Perpetuity, that is what you want. Dignity. A certain what-shall-I-call-it – a cachet.’
‘Love, though!’ says Elinor.
‘Oh, fools fall in love. Children, dogs, dotards. What you want, girls, if your time ever comes, is a gentleman who sees your rare value. An admirer, certainly – for what are you intended for, except to be admired? But ask yourself, can this gentleman appreciate me? He ought to prize you as he prizes his Sèvres, his antiquities, his best-bred hounds. You seek a gentleman who knows exactly what he has got in you; who understands the responsibility he has to you. You are ladies quite apart from the common water.’
‘And does Rockingham not …?’ asks Kitty.
‘Oh, he appreciates nothing. He is a mere boy! Any country slut has soft tits and a warm cunt; that is all he wants, whether or not he knows it. Mrs Neal is of no worth to him whatever, and if this affair transpires to the benefit of either party I shall be vastly surprised. You watch, girls; they will be the ruin of one another.’
They are returned, and all descend from the carriage with varying degrees of ease. Polly is last to alight; Simeon the footman comes to her assistance, and the sight of him with the dogs scampering at his heels puts her into a worse temper than before.
‘Here is a jar of piss,’ she says, holding it out to him as the others vanish within. ‘Pray dispose of it.’
He looks at it, and then at her. ‘I shall send a maid,’ he says.
She sniffs. ‘What? Too good for it?’
‘’Tis not in my duties.’
‘’Tis not in mine, and yet Gunderguts Chappell compelled me to carry it all the way back, and here I am holding it in my hands still.’ Being around him always makes her feel spiteful; it is something about the livery, how tidy he keeps it and how puffed up he is within it. And then Rockingham’s words have ruffled her – ‘your brothers’, as if she had a single thing in common with the Africans and the slaves and the indigent poor who clutter the streets.
He apprehends her fierce expression as boding no good at all. He does not like the way she clings with such loathing to the bourdaloue. ‘Pray put it down,’ he says. ‘I shall not report to her what you just called her. Here, let me assist you.’
But she remains crossly seated, holding the pot as if it were a weapon. ‘She should not treat me thus,’ she says. ‘She would not give it to Elinor or Kitty to hold. As if I were lowlier than them when I know it to be true that men will pay twice for me what they will for them.’
Simeon has access to the date books: the men pay more, he knows, but fewer of them choose her. ‘This is a good position,’ he says. ‘Be grateful.’
‘You speak as if I were a servant,’ she says.
‘Not at all. You are singularly positioned to become something else entirely.’ He is turning his gloved hands over one way and the other in front of his eyes, inspecting them for smuts. ‘I mean only to be a friend to you,’ he says.
‘I would advise you to abandon that ambition.’
‘Only there are not so many of us in these parts,’ he says.
‘Us?’ Her nostrils twitch with annoyance; she shakes her head and pulls her pelisse around her as if she were about to leap from the carriage. ‘No, no, sir,’ she says as he darts forward to take her hand, ‘you and I are not the same at all.’
She does not know why she does it. One moment she is holding the bordaloue still in her lap, the next her arms shunt back as if they were sprung, and the vessel tips forward. Its lid falls first; its contents hurtle sparkling behind it.
Simeon lets out a cry, and leaps back, but there is no avoiding it. The urine splashes off the pavement; it soaks his stockings and spatters up his breeches, and sends the dogs capering in terror back into the house, a trail of wet paw-prints behind them. Even Polly, elevated within the carriage, is not spared; it catches the edge of her pelisse and the hem of her gown. Shards of porcelain zing in all directions, like an egg dropped.
‘What have you done?’ cries Simeon, dancing on the spot for sheer horror, the drops flying from his calves. Seeing that his gloves are also caught he utters some inchoate disgust and shakes one hand, then the other. Fragments of the pot are scattered across the steaming flagstones. ‘Mrs Chappell will have you pay for this,’ he says, more in reproach than anger.
‘I do not care.’ Now she does jump down, and strides past him towards the house, her little slippers dancing smartly around the pool.
Simeon, alone, hooks his thumb beneath the cuff of one glove, and peels it from his hand with great fastidiousness. He lets it drop to the pavement, then flings down the other. He tuts, nudging them with his toe, but when he turns around he sees that Polly has not gone into the house. She is standing by the railings, watching him. There is a peculiar dark look about her, as if she might be about to run.
‘Go on,’ he says, and is relieved when she turns reluctantly again to the door. ‘Go on, inside. You’re not to loiter about out here – do not make it worse.’
TEN
December 1785
‘I do not understand why you have to go now,’ says Angelica, following Rockingham into the parlour. ‘It is so nearly Christmas. The entire Ton is only just arrived; everybody is here. There is so much fun to be had! So many parties!’ Well might she be wistful: this is the first season she has been in London for some years. There are new dances to learn, new faces to acquaint herself with; new amusements at every turn. And then she misses her old circle: the rupture between herself and Mrs Chappell is not mended, and Rockingham will not let her very near his own friends. It is my life with the duke all over again, she thinks crossly, and then knocks the thought from herself. It is not like that.
Now he says tersely, ‘I’ve no choice.’ He is dressed for the road, having received an unmannerly letter from his uncle summoning him in the most muscular of tones to appear before him. ‘Still I cannot think who has written at such length to him about my dealings with you,’ Rockingham says as he strides about in search of his watch – his handkerchief – his pocketbook. ‘Somebody has dripped poison in his ear.’
‘Who could wish us harm?’ says Angelica, only lately out of bed, with her curls in her cap and her wrap pulled tightly against the cold.
‘You are sure not one of your old beaux? Trying to get me off the scene?’
‘No, no!’ She follows him, and presses into him so the folds of his travelling cloak fall about her.
He smells of wool and of horses, and of the pastries and parched meats that must accompany a long journey. Outside the sky is lowering and dark, and what little light survives it is lead grey and dismal.
‘Hmm.’ He rests his chin on the top of her head. ‘Well, ’tis a damnable nuisance. The old fool has been well and truly convinced that you are leading me astray, and yet it is I who must make it right. Who would write to him so?’
‘It must be one of his old friends in Parliament. Brr,’ she shivers, nestling closer and drawing her arms around his waist, ‘’tis colder than Greenland. How will I stay warm all alone in my bed?’
The thought of it inflames him; she permits him to press his hands over her waist and slide them up her ribcage to her breasts. ‘Confound it!’ he sighs. ‘I desire to leave you as little as you desire me gone – but this is the only way. In person I can convince my uncle of anything. Perhaps this is fortuitous; I shall persuade him to increase my allowance …’
‘… and we may take our own house?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ He kisses the tip of her nose.
‘At last!’ Her three Dean Street rooms are crammed with luxury of every sort. The curtains are heavy brocade, riotously worked with birds and flowers, with a great fringed pelmet overhanging, and her cabinet has more glasses in it than she can possibly drink from, their slender stems marvellously wrought with twisted strands of white glass, fine as lace; and rummers etched with roses; and jelly-glasses crammed into every corner, stickily collecting fluff and soot. There are shawls flung on every chair as if once she has discarded one she will not wear it again; a mahogany box spills lovely painted slides which would shine upon the walls, if their radiant surfaces were not cracked and blotched; a clavichord sheds sheets of music of every sort. Views of Greece and Italy jostle the walls; flowers wilt; fans lie crushed. Mr Rockingham’s love is measured out in countless trinkets and sweetmeats and scent bottles, and Angelica hoards them all, and sends out for more.
‘You must be patient,’ he says. ‘These delicate matters take some tiptoeing around. I shall be gone a few weeks, perhaps a month, if you can bear to be without me so long?’
‘A month? Oh, but that is …’ She crushes herself against his chest, speechless at the prospect. ‘And you would have me spend Christmas all alone.’
‘We’ll have fun together all the year – what’s Christmas to us?’
‘Why, only the best part!’
He tips her chin up to his face. ‘Trust me, my angel. Endure this for me.’
‘I shall miss you,’ she whispers.
‘And I you, poor darling. But think what it will do for us!’ He steers her towards the window. ‘And look, what I leave you with in my absence.’ Yonder in the frosty street is a carriage painted shining almond green, and its doors have angels painted upon them. It is hitched up to two handsome greys, who stamp and shiver in the cold.
‘Oh, Georgie!’
‘You shall have the hire of it, if you like it.’ He waves a hand imperiously and the coachman flicks his whip; the carriage moves onward. ‘I could not leave you with no transport of your own, on such a cold winter. You’ll travel by chair no more.’
‘I never saw the like!’ She rode in better when she was kept by the late duke, but there is no profit in saying so. ‘Oh, how will I thank you?’
‘I have conditions,’ he says.
A moment in which she studies her own fingernails. Then, ‘Aye, name them.’
‘You may ride out all you like,’ he says, ‘but not to any of the pleasure gardens—’
‘Ah! In midwinter?’
‘Not to the Pantheon, then, smart-mouth, nor to any parties at all. I shall have you go nowhere there is drinking and gambling and dancing.’
‘No dancing? Now, Georgie, allow me a little fun – you would not grudge me a night or two’s society? And all through Christmas! All through Twelfth Night, I am to go nowhere?’
‘I’ll not have you catch other men’s eyes. This is a licentious time of year.’
‘But my eyes are all for you.’
He is not to be moved; she sees it from the shape of his mouth. ‘I am paying for the carriage; ’tis mine really,’ he says. ‘So I choose where you go.’
She sighs. ‘Very well. No dancing, no merrymaking. And am I allowed to be sociable at all? May I visit my female friends, go on errands?’
‘As much as you like. I would have you happy.’ He takes her hands in his and traces her fingers as he always has. ‘Only, I remember in what circumstances I first came upon you.’
She draws down her brow, but her lips smile on. ‘I remember too,’ she says, and tightens the twine of her fingers about his. ‘And so may I impose any conditions on your behaviour?’
He chuckles. ‘You jokeous creature.’ Then serious again, pulls her to him and whispers, ‘Do not forget me.’
‘Never!’
There is embracing, and a few tears shed by both parties, and then he must away, leaving Angelica alone in her crammed living room, clasping and unclasping her hands. She has not been left to her own devices for a great long time; the hours fairly loom before her. How can they be filled? She hardly knows what time is if it were not spent with him, or preparing to meet him, or subsiding after he has gone: now she paces a little, her old nervous habit, and puts more coal on the fire, lump by lump, and crouches to watch it begin to gleam red seams of heat. Outside, the sky is thick and greenish black, and moment by moment it seems to sink down upon the street, like a lid shut. It will not be long before the weather engulfs them entirely, and so she is relieved when Mrs Frost returns from the mysterious errands that running a house necessitate, her cheeks and nose shining pink and her hair all of a tousle under her windswept cape.
‘He is gone,’ Angelica says tragically, and totters as if into a swoon.
‘And not a moment too soon,’ says Mrs Frost, righting her briskly. ‘When will we know?’
‘I cannot bear it! To be without him so long! What am I to do? I think my heart will break.’
‘Will he send us word of his arrangements as to money?’ persists Mrs Frost, drawing close to the fire and stretching her fingers to it. ‘Oh my,’ she sighs, flexing them in its heat, ‘there ain’t a drop of blood in my hands; how they do ache.’
‘You and your mercenary heart! He undertakes a great long journey to plead our case, and settle all so that we may be happy for a good long time, and all you must yap is, “When shall we know, when shall we know?” I cannot say, Eliza! For he left my house not fifteen minutes ago! Where is your gratitude that he is gone at all?’
‘Gratitude don’t pay our way.’
‘I never said it did. He has left us twenty pounds under the fruit bowl.’
‘Well, and what good is that to us?’ Nevertheless, she snatches it up and presses it into her bosom. ‘When he is gone who knows how long?’
‘A month, merely,’ says Angelica, but she quails within. ‘If we are very good, and quiet, and keep to ourselves, twenty pounds will see us for twice that time. We do not pay Maria even ten pounds in a year.’
‘I should like to see you live as Maria does.’
‘I need nothing, if I have him. Let us show him how faithfully we wait for him, Eliza; buy me some magazines, and some books; we shall cut out a new dress if you will help me, and pay nothing to a seamstress.’
The sky is rent; the snow tumbles from it and patters now against the window. Even if they had desired it there would be no leaving the house today. ‘A frightful winter,’ says Mrs Frost, and she draws the curtains against it.
ELEVEN
Polly is in the little top room she shares with Elinor, which in a different house might be the maids’ room. The beds are neat and narrow, and she has drawn from beneath hers the box in which she keeps her scant possessions. It holds not a coin, not so much as a single gemstone – Mrs Chappell would know at once if it did – but many items of inscrutable value. Two little novels and three broad ribbons, rolled tight and pinned, well sui
ted for barter or bribery in her female universe. Her own box of pins, and her own scissors in their shagreen case; her spectacles and her pencil. There is also a dirty pair of kid gloves, crushed into a ball; each time she opens the box she turns them over with a cluck of irritation, but she will not throw them out. She had thought them very fine the day she arrived in the house; they are the most raw totem of her folly, and too powerful to allow out of her possession. Then there is a little prayer book wrapped in a spotted handkerchief. Although she has not opened it in some long time, it has her mother’s name writ carefully inside. Her hand aspired to the easy flow and loop of a gentlewoman, but the effect is ruined by the blots where the pen has hesitated at the top of the ‘L’, the crooked turns of ‘C’ and ‘Y’.
A tap on the door.
‘I am busy,’ she says, for it is only six, and she had hoped for some time longer before being required again.
Simeon puts his head around the door. ‘A moment of your time,’ he says.
‘You are not allowed here.’
‘Just one moment.’
He steps into the room, and she watches him crossly. He looks nervously to the landing; then pushes the door to, and she cannot help but shrink into herself when it clicks shut behind him.
‘What do you want?’ she asks, and every fibre of her being is fierce at their being alone in the room; she feels the closing of the latch as if it were a hand clamped about her wrist.
‘Yesterday,’ he says, all unaware of her dis-ease. ‘At the carriage. When you …’
‘The piss,’ she says, and at mention of it he brushes at his livery as if filth still clung upon it. She sits up straighter. ‘What of it?’
‘I saw how you looked.’ He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘If you ever wanted to leave this place …’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 22