‘Why would you say that?’ Her box is still on her lap; she folds her fingers around the knobbled case of her scissors. ‘You are not allowed to be in here,’ she persists.
‘I know people,’ he says, drawing from his waistcoat pocket a little piece of paper. ‘Here. Addresses. If you wish to leave, they will help you.’
He holds it forth for her but she does not rise to take it. ‘How dare you?’ she says. ‘To come in here where you have no right! To talk to me in such a way?’
He holds up his hands, the paper pinched between his fingers.
‘Ever since you came here you have presumed a kinship between us that frankly, sir, insults me. And these people, who give aid to slaves, to runaways. Why do you think they would help me?
‘They help the black poor, our brothers—’
That word again! ‘I’ve no brothers. I am not poor.’
He looks at her, clutching her box to her chest. ‘I suppose that is where you keep all your money? Come, now, ain’t this enslavement of a sort? You, here, unwaged, with no prospect of leaving …?’
‘And Nell and Kitty and the other girls, you’d call them slaves also? Could they make use of this address?’
He shakes his head. ‘I have tried my best with you.’ She does not guess what effort it has been for him to come to her thus; he perceives that elsewhere in the world he is categorically her inferior, for he guessed from the first day he saw her what she is: the child of some chosen woman, picked from the fields to share her master’s bed and wear the clothes that please him, and to bear infants who will be cherished despite their skin, and whose father will put gold rings in their ears and lace at their wrists and books in their hands, while lamenting that he cannot do better by them. In Carolina, Simeon himself had been a mere house slave, valued but uncherished. He tries again: ‘Here in London, this is a fine place for us.’
‘Us,’ she mocks, and rolls her dark eyes, not seeing how it strains Simeon to speak on so coolly.
‘The living is good; the conversation is good. I have friends who, if you were to meet them—’
‘I do not wish to,’ she says. ‘By all means seek your own satisfaction in this life; who am I to stop you if you wish to join up with others of your race in one great mass? I do not see the advantage. I want to mix with all people …’
‘… with the white people …’
‘… and be judged only on my own merit; I wish for them to converse with me and come to know me, and accept me on my own account and nobody else’s.’
‘Then you will be nothing but a curiosity.’
‘Better than joining a mob. ’Tis a very fine thought, sir, but one unfortunate cannot help another; if they could all we girls here would have a vastly different life.’
‘We have comradeship,’ rejoins he. ‘It is not nothing to commune with others who understand our own experience.’
‘But nobody does,’ she says firmly. ‘What in your life is comparable to anything in mine? If you believe the colour of our skin – or the ancestry you suppose we share – bonds us, you are stupider even than I thought.’ She bends once more over her meagre effects and dons her spectacles before turning her face coolly upon him. ‘Thank you, Simeon, you may go now.’
He looks her in the eye and makes sure she watches as he puts the paper down on the washstand. ‘I thank you for your time,’ he says.
She sits quite still while he departs. As he descends the stairs, she presses her hand to her heart, which is pounding. When she is quite sure he is gone, she gets up and locks the door fast behind him.
Ay me!
Once I was we. Roiling in the water beyond light, we heard our sisters’ calls upon us. That was how we knew we were alive. Far away, they were, an age away, but our voices swam together, our songs wrapped tight one around the other. Our every thought had its own chorus; to speak was to be agreed with, replied to; to hear was to respond. However far distant we were, we were a shoal, a one, our voices darting and swathing and weaving together for drowned mariners to hear. We enclosed everything that descended. We shoaled towards it and about it, our singing cradled the curved backs of corpses whose fingers were drawn upwards as if still reaching; and we poured into the mouths of cracked vessels, and we crept with the barnacles over prized booty.
We investigated everything that came, and whispered to one another across the depths:
this is a man, linen-wrapped
this is a great ship ruptured
this is a chain come adrift
these are the bodies of children, flayed
this is blood, here in the water
And we knew everything, all the doings of the water.
I find myself an I. An only. How has this come to be? I am enclosed. I cry out and my cry cannot swim, cannot speed away from me; it bounces back. It is trapped with me, and with it I explore the space I find myself in, but truly it is no space at all. I am caught in a bubble, in a box, in a vessel, and there is no expanse any more, across which my sisters’ voices reach me. I do not hear them call at all, I cannot ask them, what is this? For they do not know where I am, and I am all alone.
I cry out and there is a dull nothing.
I cry out and hear my own voice back.
TWELVE
January 1786
Polly and Nell, hired to celebrate Twelfth Night in a great house at Portland Square, arrive that afternoon in as voluble and merry a mood as might be desired. Their hair has already been dressed under Mrs Chappell’s own direction, and they find great hilarity in the crackle and rustle of the brown paper bound all about their persons, to protect their fine gowns against the journey. The young men – who are fourteen in number, and boisterous, and admiring of the ladies although they do not dare lay finger upon them yet – gather delightedly in the hall, in the well-mannered excitement of a pack of hunting hounds, to greet their female playmates. Elinor would by instinct plunge head first into the party; she leans from the carriage as it approaches, and halloos into the brisk cold air, but Polly places a hand on her arm and says loudly for the coachman, ‘We’ll not descend here in view of the street; we wish to go first to our rooms.’ Mrs Chappell’s instruction is clear in her mind: ‘Do not go along with any amusement they demand of you; you are not their servant or their whore. Refuse them a small thing immediately: that will help train them.’
‘Only allow us a little time to compose ourselves,’ Elinor calls as the carriage bowls past the bloods’ faces arrayed at the window, ‘then you will have our undivided attention,’ and they speed away to the mews beyond.
The house, where they are ushered through the back door and into the now empty hallway, is every bit as marvellous as Mrs Chappell’s. ‘Perhaps nicer,’ Polly remarks, ‘for there is no mistaking real cultivation of taste,’ by which she means that the antiquities at Portland Square are cut from real marble and their members a fraction of the comparative size. The entire place smells of cloves and oranges, and roasting meats, and the resiny boughs that adorn the walls; in one of the grand front parlours the men can be heard whooping and guffawing. ‘Quickly, Nell, do not let them see us so,’ whispers Polly, and indeed their paper robes are not only a peculiar sight but one markedly lacking in allure.
To the consternation of the panting footmen labouring with their trunk behind, they rustle at double speed up the great staircase to the top of the house, where they find their own adjoining rooms. ‘I like to have a quiet place to retire to,’ says Polly, divesting herself of her papers and fluffing her hair as the footmen leave, perspiring.
‘I like it all,’ says Elinor, testing the tautness of her mattress. ‘D’ye think there will be much retiring?’
‘No,’ and they snigger together. ‘And look, Nell, we have our own bell pull.’
‘What is it for? Is’t really for us?’
‘Of course. We are guests here. Shall I call for something?’ They jig with excitement. ‘Oh, I dare not! They have only just left us alone!’
‘Go on!’
Polly yanks it with all her might and then skips back, her hand clapped to her mouth. ‘I did it! Oh, what shall I say, what shall I say?’
‘Someone comes!’ cries Elinor.
‘Remarkable prompt. Oh, you talk, I dare not.’ The step of the servant on the stair is clearly audible. ‘I shall hide!’ whispers Polly. ‘If I must look upon them, I think I shall die laughing.’ She darts into the other room, and only a tuft of her powdered hair peeps about the door frame when the footman attends once again, somewhat discomposed from his second ascent.
‘You rang for me, madam?’
‘I did.’ Elinor’s voice quakes – how will she maintain her composure? ‘Now, we are hungry and thirsty after our travelling. Would you bring us please a little Portugal wine – it must be very good, I will know at once – and a bowl of oranges? A big bowl.’
From behind Polly’s door there comes a squeak. If Elinor’s face twitches it is only for the briefest moment; she smiles most bland, and inclines her head in gratitude to the servant.
‘Certainly,’ he says. ‘Is there anything else you would have brought up? To save your ringing again?’
‘Walnuts. I should like some walnuts, and a copy of the afternoon paper.’
‘Any one in particular?’
She considers. ‘All of them.’ There is a discernible quiver to her delivery; she must gabble quickly if she is to survive the interview. ‘And a jug of hot chocolate and that will be quite everything, thank you very kindly and goodbye.’ She slams the door upon him and leans upon it, weeping with hilarity; Polly staggers from the other room, scarlet in the face; she has stuffed her fist in her mouth to keep from howling, but now they lean upon one another and laugh until they cannot breathe. ‘Walnuts!’ gasps Polly. ‘Walnuts and newspapers!’
‘I like walnuts,’ says Elinor.
There is a jovial holiday air to the afternoon: when their food has arrived – on polished trays with thick linen napkins, which they are ashamed to receive, knowing themselves so naughty – they kick off their shoes and perch carefully on Elinor’s bed, spreading out their skirts and patting nervously at their hair, cracking nuts and reading aloud to one another. Seldom are they left so entirely to their own devices, and they drowse most happily for an hour.
‘We are treated so nice here, Nell,’ Polly sighs. ‘Perhaps we should never go back,’ a remark which – if she had known then what she was later to discover – Elinor might have marked as of particular significance. But having no talent for prophecy, she merely murmurs and cracks another nut.
THIRTEEN
The day of Twelfth Night. Rockingham has been gone two weeks, and Angelica is bored. She and Mrs Frost have indeed embarked upon the work of cutting out the parts of a new gown, and they have pushed the furniture to the sides of the room. The floor is spread with ivory damask, and Mrs Frost kneels there: shrik goes the steel of the scissors through its gleaming fibres; shrik shrik shrik. Outside, there is laughter on the pavement, and the smell of hot brandy and plum cakes. At night they hear merrymaking, but Angelica and her companion go obediently nowhere. Now Angelica stands up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘How much longer must we continue?’ she asks.
‘Until ’tis finished,’ Mrs Frost murmurs.
‘I cannot remember a time before I was making this dress! And it is no more done than it was when we began!’
‘Wait until we get to the stitching.’
‘You can do that. I am finished.’
‘You desired a decent pastime. Well, here it is. Won’t your George be delighted when he sees your industry?’
‘Women of consequence do not make their own dresses.’ She flings down her scissors. ‘Oh, what can I do?’
‘Read a book.’
‘I have read them all.’
‘Take up a magazine.’
‘Their nonsense bores me. I want some society, Eliza!’
‘Wait awhile and I will play you at knucklebones again.’
‘Ah!’ She shrieks with mirth that slips into horror. ‘No, no, I can bear it no more! What is there to do?’
‘He did not forbid riding in the park, did he?’
‘Ugh, too cold. And I do not suppose I could go to the theatre without prevailing upon a gentleman for a box. Why has he not rented me a box for my own?’
‘He’ll not have you looked at. We could visit somewhere new. A menagerie, perhaps. The Academy.’
Angelica groans. ‘What point would there be? All the effort and discomfort of getting there, and then we should only have to come back. It all palls without Georgie.’ She crosses sadly to the window and twitches the curtains back to observe the quiet street. ‘In the whole of this city the best you offer me is knucklebones.’
From below, a faint call of ‘Ahoy’.
‘Who’s that?’ Angelica looks up and down the street, and sees trotting along it Mr Jonah Hancock, cloaked in dark green, puffing frozen clouds of breath. ‘The mermaid man! Well, it has been some time!’ She pushes up the sash and leans out. ‘Halloo! What are you doing abroad this cold day?’
Inside the room, Mrs Frost says, ‘Angelica, no. What are you thinking?’
‘I had business,’ says Mr Hancock. ‘And in passing by I thought to see how you did.’
‘What business? Nobody has done a stroke of work in weeks.’ She leans out further, most merry to see a friendly face. ‘Where’s my mermaid?’
‘Angelica!’ snaps Mrs Frost.
Angelica shoots a glance behind her. All within is dismal. She is conscious of the need to keep him wanting, but very likely his devotion will compensate for any lapse in her. ‘What are you doing now?’ she asks.
He almost hugs himself. ‘Nothing – nothing at all. I am at my liberty.’
‘I cannot credit you,’ tuts Mrs Frost. ‘You do not know what is good for you.’
‘I know that I shall die of boredom if I continue thus,’ Angelica hisses. Leaning again from the window, she calls, ‘I am not quite prepared for company. If you return in twenty minutes I shall be better disposed. And just to talk, you understand? Come up to amuse me, and leave when I give the word.’
As she draws the window down, he bounds off proud as a crow in a gutter. A few times he has passed hopefully by here since their last encounter, but always the window was dark, or filled with the stern face of Mrs Frost, whose favour he does not dare attempt to solicit again. His contact with Mrs Neal herself is so little, in fact, that he does not know she has a keeper; it is gossiped all over town, but he, ignorant of how close their streams of commerce run, passes through taverns and coffee-houses alert to mention of this ship or that insurance, but never for the name of Angelica Neal. It does not occur to him that if he had wanted news of her he could have asked for it and had an answer from half a dozen different quarters – but no. He thinks Angelica Neal his own secret.
Any astute gentleman would have questions, but he is more now than he was when he first met her; his fortune is equal to any body’s, and so, therefore, is his right to be received by her. Besides, the vision of the crescent of her naked breast rising above the windowsill intrudes yet upon his mind, and the press of her fingers upon his, and how nearly, in the mermaid’s closet, they had …
Still, when he returns after pacing briskly around Soho Square for fifteen minutes, and is led wordlessly to Mrs Neal’s door by her companion, he wavers on the threshold.
‘Are you ready to receive me?’ he asks.
‘I am,’ Angelica Neal calls from her parlour. She is in her white gown, and her hair all shining under the starchiest cap he ever saw, with the most evenly crimped frill. ‘Come, sit with me,’ she says.
His approach is not without hesitation. And indeed he finds this room, which he has never been in before, quite peculiar. It is very warm, and elegantly proportioned, with large windows, but it is cluttered in every corner with luxury of all sorts.
‘You are well appointed here,’ he says. He has noticed the ivory threads strewn here and there on t
he Turkey carpet, but he does not imagine that only ten minutes earlier the beginnings of a dress had been laid out here, and that down the passage in Angelica’s bedroom, its components have been hastily heaped.
‘I like it.’ She looks at him expectantly. He seats himself in the chair opposite her, and folds one hand upon the other. ‘Good day,’ she says, and in the quiet room her voice is soft and pretty. There is a small round table at her elbow, set up with tea equipage, and she leans to pour hot water into the pot; her eyelashes brush her cheek most beguilingly.
‘Why do you bring me up here?’ he asks.
‘I had nobody to talk to,’ she says, and looks up to smile at him. ‘Besides, I desired to know you better. We met so briefly; I have been much caught up with life since I returned to London.’ She pours a cup and holds it out to him; he must rise to receive it, she being so distant. ‘I suppose your Christmas has been very busy.’
‘No,’ he says. Christmas is the time he feels most like a stray dog, and each year it stretches on a little longer, an endless procession of babies to hold and exclaim over, sweethearts clutching one another under the mistletoe, spouses grown content and old together. ‘I took my niece to her mother’s house, which pleased her but did not much please me.’
Angelica has not spent a Christmas with any of her blood since she was a girl of thirteen; in her maturity she has gone wherever she is summoned and admired, to be herself as much a part of the festivities as the gilded gingerbread or the riotous song. Thus she continues to perceive the celebrations in many ways as a child would: a hazy whirl of frumenty, hunt the thimble, plum pie, blind man’s buff and scorch-cased chestnuts: endless laughter and no anxiety; she expects to light every candle and dance beyond sunset, but not a moment of expense or resentment. And so she does not say anything.
‘Oh –’ he has forgot his gift; he produces a parcel of coarse little tarts, and hands them over to her – ‘these are for you.’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 23