She giggles, but he thinks not mockingly, rather in appreciation. ‘Much obliged! I am always in want of small and delicious things. Here, would you fetch me a plate?’ She wafts her hand towards the cabinet, and he rises gingerly to pick one out. All her dishes are beautiful in the absurd – New Hall, figured with pink roses, not Chinese but as close in quality as could be hoped for – but only imperfectly clean, with tidelines where dishwater has been allowed to dry upon them.
‘By the by, I came to tell you I have ordered your mermaid,’ he says more casually than he feels, as he passes her a plate, and she puts the tarts on it one by one, taking each gently between finger and thumb. Ever since Tysoe Jones left London he has thought, what are the chances? The scheme is doomed; he will never have another such creature in his lifetime. But now, sitting at last so close to this lady, in such extravagant surroundings, he feels an inclination to boast, and when she chortles he is pleased.
‘I look forward to receiving it,’ she says, looking to the mantelpiece. ‘That’s where I’ll put it. I mean to have it mounted in such a way that it can easily be got down, to be passed around and remarked upon.’ She stops and looks directly at him; there is that deep and simmering look in her eyes. ‘I shall owe you something, I think.’
He opens his mouth to speak but she draws back as if he has reached out to her, and springs to her feet. ‘Then perhaps I shall start a collection,’ she continues, and paces the hearth with her sheer gown all sighing. Is she teasing him? Her eyes twinkle. ‘What other curiosities can you get for me?’
‘One thing at a time,’ he says.
‘No, no,’ she says, and he sees her bosom tremble, delicate as pastry cream. ‘Everything at once! That’s how I want it. Elf arrows, bound in silver so they do no harm. An elephant to ride about on. A manticore, a centicore, a gryphon.’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘they are not to be found in the places I send my boats.’
‘Then spread your net wider, sir.’ She tilts her head like a bright little bird.
‘Ah, no.’ Now he has begun bragging he finds he cannot stop: ‘I mean to cease trading in a few years; I have an income from my investments large enough to see me at leisure to the end of my days.’
‘Very fine for you.’
‘Enough, in fact, that I have made a donation to a ragged school, and I mean to build almshouses.’ His charity hitherto has been as vigorous as any other man loyal to his parish: his failings in the matter of progeny are not reflected in his contributions to the maintenance of Deptford’s churches and widows, his Valentine’s Day coins to its poor children; the generous purses he keeps ready for a journeyman carpenter whose tools have been stolen, or newlyweds whose house is burnt down.
‘Oh,’ says Angelica, with some interest. ‘You do not keep it all to yourself?’
‘Certainly not.’ He cannot think what wealth would be without these gestures, which are not so much obligations of his financial improvement, but signifiers of it. From his earliest memory he never owned so much as a farthing that he did not seek to share with his neighbour, for the purpose of money is to be spread about. ‘I’ve no children, no wife. What would I do with it all?’
She shrugs. ‘There must be something you are in need of.’
‘No. No, I am content.’ He holds the tea bowl in the curve of his palm and swirls it gently. ‘Although I’ve nothing so fine as this in my house.’
She drains her own. ‘That is where the fun starts,’ she says, and licks the moisture from her lips. ‘In the purchase of fine things.’
He looks about himself: the sheer quantity of goods in the room defies inventory; there is such a clamour of textures and colours, of good taste and bad, all the parts combining to an effect that is overwhelming to the senses and yet speaks plainly to his merchant’s heart: here is wealth – for the moment. A lady secure in her income may purchase a new tea set each season, but to buy three at once is an economy of anxiety, which seeks to anticipate every loss, every breakage, every change of whim the years might bring.
‘I see you do not let your own money sit idle,’ he says.
‘It were best spent. You cannot ever know what tomorrow will bring; you might be ruined, and never enjoy the splendours you could have had.’
‘They await us all in the next world,’ he says, which thing is rather a sprite of a belief, since it seems most real when he does not look directly at it.
‘I am told by those with authority in the matter that they do not await me.’ This puts him out of his ease.
‘Repentance,’ he hazards, ‘is always possible.’
‘Aye, and how would I support myself then? Besides, a woman who makes her own wage must always be found wanting; my mother sought a blameless living and still found great shame in it.’
‘Why was your mother compelled to work?’
She frowns very prettily, as if she wavered to tell him. ‘My father,’ she says, and then breathes, so that the two words sit alone in the room with them for a moment; then she continues, ‘went to seek our fortune in the colonies.’
‘And left you unsupported.’
‘He was gone longer than he had thought. The sea, you know,’ and he nods in sympathy which is what she desires of him. ‘And so we were forced to look for genteel work – sewing and such, and when it was not enough my mother sought to teach a school. And the people in our town did not like that. “How can you use his name thus?” they asked her. “How can you so broadcast that he has left you unprovided for? Where is your loyalty?”’
Mr Hancock watches her with a stirring of new interest. She sounds all at once a breed in common with his own sisters and nieces; he had perceived her as a different sort of woman, to be weighed on other scales, but perhaps this is not so. ‘He did wrong,’ he says.
‘Oh, he was an adventurer,’ she says with a gleam of pride. ‘He had concerns beyond our ken.’
‘Still, good men do not forget their dependants.’ She looks to him very fragile in her white gown, her face only lightly powdered and her hair falling from its bindings in natural yellow curls. And how ordinary she looks, her skin like any other woman’s skin, and her eyelashes and her movements; he could imagine her on a street like his own, amongst the women of his own society. ‘Where were your uncles, grandfathers? Your mother’s plight should have been their responsibility.’
She shakes her head. ‘Nobody.’ Then stumbles on; she seems surprised by what she says but it comes with a great urgency and trouble. ‘And when you are a poor woman, and unprotected, you are near as well a whore, even if you have not fallen yet. If one small thing goes awry, of course you must be tempted to it. Everybody knows that the moment will come some day; however honourable you are the taint of it is already on you. Eventually one feels one has no choice.’
The more she talks the more comprehensible to him she becomes. ‘Did your father return?’ he asks.
She presses her lips together and looks out of the window, the cool light turning her eyes palest grey. ‘How long should I have waited to find out? I came to London, to seek my fortune.’
How grateful he is that his sisters are all married and his nieces protected by webs of property and connection. Sukie, out on her own, would she …? She is sensible, he assures himself, her skills and education will help her – but then he has heard of the ways in which girls are duped; drugged; raped.
‘Don’t look so sorrowful!’ she says. ‘My situation is a matter of economy. What shall I be, all on my own, a poor woman who is ashamed of herself, or a rich one who is not?’
It may be another folly of his to feel such sympathy for her, but pragmatism is a quality he and his kind admire in a woman, and he nods a wondering approval. ‘I daresay you have behaved with prudence. And chastity is not a woman’s only virtue,’ he adds generously.
‘Although it is her chiefest.’
‘Females have little enough of their own in the first place,’ he says, weighing the thought to see whether he believes it. ‘Many good wom
en are coerced into things they are not easy with; I do believe that redemption is possible.’
‘When I marry –’ she offers up an enigmatic little twitch of the lip – ‘perhaps it will be. Repentance is much easier when one is of comfortable means. For now –’ waving her hand across her cluttered room – ‘I enjoy my earthly glamours. But, sir, the hour for tea is over.’
He dons hat and coat most meekly. Then he fumbles; holds out a banknote as a token of his gentility. ‘Where do I put this?’ he asks.
‘Back in your pocket, sir.’
‘But—’
‘I have asked nothing of you,’ she says softly.
‘No.’ And in fact he has not expected any transaction, only that, if he be the quality of gentleman who may visit and sit with a celebrated courtesan, he must also be the quality that can afford it. ‘A gift,’ he says.
‘No, no.’ They stand apart a little longer. Her eyes are all downcast, and her mouth has a droop to it. ‘I do not need reward for every ordinary meeting I have.’
‘Permit me,’ he says, and takes her hand. ‘I mean you the warmest friendship.’
She sighs. ‘Even the warmest friendship has conditions to it.’ But as she shakes his hand she brightens. ‘You may visit me again,’ she says. ‘I would like that.’
FOURTEEN
In the Portland Square house there is a vast basin of wassail highly spiced and bobbing with apples, and there is music from a fiddle and a pipe. More girls have been delivered from Mrs Rawson’s, amongst them Miss Clark who is a whisper over four feet tall and famed for the extraordinary tininess of her feet, and a pretty black-eyed Malay maiden in a silk turban. ‘Oh, we shall have a fine time of it,’ says Elinor, and seizing Polly’s hand draws her into the room, where the men let up a great cheer. ‘A dance! A dance!’ Elinor cries, and dance they do, until the room grows hot as an oven and Polly must throw herself down into the window seat, panting and laughing.
A young gentleman comes to sit by her. ‘Are you tired?’ he asks.
‘Only hot,’ she says, and indeed her brow is wet with perspiration. She takes out her handkerchief and dabs it upon herself; when she looks up she sees him watching with peculiar interest. ‘What is it?’ she asks sharply, but he shakes his head and looks quickly down at his shoes. She dabs again, and watches as he darts a look at the handkerchief upon her skin.
She touches her own cheek and holds her fingers up for him to see. ‘’Tis my skin,’ she says sharply. ‘It does not come off.’
He colours deeply and still will not look her in the eye. ‘Only that one never sees ladies of your complexion about the town.’
‘You do not go to the right places,’ she rejoins.
‘We were very glad to have secured you for this party,’ he says, taking her hand, ‘for not a one of us have ever tried it with a negro before now.’
All of a sudden her mouth is a stopped bottle ready to pop. To restrain herself, she looks about for Elinor, nods towards her. ‘And why did you order Miss Bewlay?’
‘The sorrel-pated one?’ He leans in confidingly. ‘We hear they are most unnatural in their appetites.’
She laughs aloud but the pressure in her head is not relieved. ‘Rarities, are we? To add to your collection?’
And he grins with relief, not seeing her anger. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘oh yes, that is exactly it. You are a woman entirely out of the common water; we all desire to sample every sort of woman there is in the world.’
‘What an education it will be,’ she says, and rises.
Elinor, just seized jokeously up into the arms of young Mr Hammond, the host of the party, sees her: ‘Are you going outside?’ she calls. ‘Wait for me, dear.’
‘Let us all go,’ says Mr Hammond. ‘It is fiendish hot in here.’
And out onto the terrace they go, Polly casting about for a glimpse of Elinor’s bright hair, but she is leaning against the parapet lost in conversation with some young blood, and does not look up. Polly, standing yet amongst the group, bethinks herself to regain her composure with a stroll, and surveys the dark garden, its paths mapped out with twinkling lights. There is a little round hut at its centre, with a weathervane atop it, and a pretty lattice up which a dark vine grows. Is it a place she might sit quietly for a little? Or too secluded? She would not like a gentleman to be inspired to follow her there. ‘Is it a summer house?’ she asks, and the men guffaw.
‘It is the necessary!’ they say. ‘Is it not artfully done? You never did suspect.’
‘So clever,’ she says.
The young man who first spoke to her has reappeared at her side; now he seizes her wrist, a gesture she finds quite startling. Caressing her fingers with great earnestness, he says, ‘Madam, may I ask you a great favour?’
‘I think you are going to either way,’ she says.
‘What I said before – we are all in dispute amongst one another as to who will have you first.’ He looks over at Mr Hammond, who is regaling Elinor Bewlay with an anecdote she finds irresistibly hilarious. ‘Now, I believe I was the first to talk to you …’
‘Sir,’ she smiles. ‘There is no first. There are no turns; I am not a toy to be passed about. I am an item of great value and rarity which few men are fortunate enough to ever possess. If you want me, you will earn me. Excuse me, please,’ and she gestures to the little rustic necessary. ‘I must avail myself of your summer house.’
She walks – and this part of her journey is clearly observed by several onlookers – down the brick path bordered by ankle-height box hedges, and circles the wall of the building until she finds its door. It is dark within, a mere snib of candle yet burning, and a draught comes up from the three apertures over the soil, which smells of nothing at all but fresh sawdust and dried lavender. Polly, whose skirts would prevent her from using them even if she needed to, rests for a moment on the edge of the bench, and ruffles her fingers in her hair, which she suspects of wilting. Christ, the things we must tolerate. She thinks that later she will tell Elinor about it; ‘“Most unnatural in your appetites,”’ she will mimic, and surely they will laugh together, but still she cannot find much mirth.
She closes her eyes. She could sit here all night; without, the noise of the party goes on – the men are laughing immoderately at something – and she hears Elinor’s high and joyful shriek. Must I return? she thinks. Oh, I must.
She sidles out quietly, hoping to peep at the company and better prepare herself to rejoin their merriment, but as she looks to her right something catches her eye. It is a door in the high wall, a plain little wooden door just wide enough for a gardener to pass through, and it stands ajar.
Beyond it – what? She does not know.
She glances again at the group, but they are playing and shouting without thought for her. Elinor has snatched something from one of the men, and as he lunges to retrieve it she skips away, and darts into the house holding it aloft.
‘After her!’ they cry. ‘Catch the little hussy,’ and several tussle, jammed in the narrow doorway in their pursuit of her. Nobody is looking back into the dark garden. Polly looks down at her white dress; if it catches their eye … but she knows what she will do.
She takes up her skirts in each hand and walks fast and purposeful along the path to the little door. It is no more than ten steps, and she is out, in a narrow alley flanked on either side by tall walls. Her instinct is to turn right, and thus walk in the opposite direction to the house she has escaped: she goes briskly with her head held up, but does not run. The brick paving gives out to thin gravel, and she smells it all with such gemmed clarity, the wet stone and the moss between the pebbles. Though she cannot see beyond the deep walls of her little channel, the moon rides high above her, and the slice of its radiance that falls upon her is lovelier than she ever knew before. She comes to a mews of stables and strides its length without fear, although she is terrible exposed: straw wafts beneath her feet, and horses groan and fart in their sleep; she smells the huff of their breath so brightly t
hat it is almost as if their flanks are under her hands, silk this way, coarse the other. She continues only to walk, tugging her shawl up over her head, and pulling its warmth as far around her body as possible. It is fearful cold, the sort that gets down to the bone, and already frost has begun to spangle the ground and the walls, and the air is sharp as knives. No matter.
She reaches a grand paved square, and now she is afraid, but she says to herself, I shall not think about it; I shall think about it later if I must, and takes a breath and crosses it. Her steps ring out. Each house sits dark behind railings. The servants are fastening all the shutters, and behind the doors she hears the drawing home of many bolts, but some houses are sites of merrymaking like the one she has left; their windows flicker brightly and there are hoots and songs within. If somebody were to see her, on a festival night such as this, would they perceive immediately that something was afoot? A girl alone – a black girl, indeed – hurrying in the dark. Her dress is not that of a servant. What will she say if she is challenged? She cannot think; she shakes her head; she bustles onward as if with great purpose. Thus she goes quite unobserved through square after ordered square. A nightwatchman turns his head when he hears her footsteps, but onward she scurries, and in the rays of his lantern the frost makes a great burst of stars upon stars.
FIFTEEN
The next day, the streets being clear of snow nor so treacherously icy as they might be, Angelica determines to take her carriage out. It arrives filled with rugs, and all the seats warmed, and a great bag of feathers for her feet. She rides immediately to the home of Bel Fortescue (Countess, to acknowledge her legal due, although not many do). Arriving in such splendour she is able, almost, to close her eyes to the high concealing walls of her friend’s home, the wide courtyard within, the pillared and porticoed façade where Bel awaits. It does not take a great effort to disregard the many pruned bay trees there, nor the liveried servants all in Bel’s employ, for she is confidently assured that when Rockingham comes into his fortune, she too will live this way. And so it is as equals that she confides in Bel, ‘Money is so tiresome, do you not find? The amount of running about Georgie has to do simply to get what is his – why, it is almost not worth having it.’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 24