‘Were you drunk?’
‘I, madam? No, madam!’
‘But Polly is inclined to drink? And in her cups she becomes reckless, does she not?’
Elinor looks at her cautiously: which is the better reply? ‘You think …’ She stops but her thoughts are a burst of panicked birds wheeling in all directions, and she is short of breath as she darts to catch hold of them all. ‘Well, she is no sort of drinker – but now you cannot think her actions were calculated – and perhaps she did not go willingly – all the wassail may have gone to her head – if Polly came to be repentant, what would you …?’ Her palms are wet: she clenches her apron in her fists. ‘You could forgive her, surely.’
‘But she has not returned,’ says Mrs Chappell.
‘She may be in some trouble,’ says Elinor, ‘that we do not know of.’
‘What trouble could ever have come to her? She has been kept safe, has she not? As you all have been. She has wanted for nothing, and I have given her my protection without stint.’
‘She may have been kidnapped,’ says Elinor. ‘Gypsies,’ she adds hopefully.
‘Kidnapped for what purpose?’
‘Oh, madam, such terrible things happen in this world! When a young girl with a good face disappears in such a way, six times out of seven it transpires they have been drugged and carried off by terrible old ladies who debauch them and keep them captive! And then sell their honour, and profit by it. This is a daily occurrence in this city; no girl is safe from it.’
Mrs Chappell snorts. ‘You never were an observant child. Kidnapped! Cast the notion from your head. She went of her own accord.’
‘But why would she simply leave …?’ She is thinking, but why would she leave me? She is thinking, but I did not know we had such secrets from one another. She is thinking, but our lives were identical; I did nothing that she did not do. Why then was she so dissatisfied when I was not? She begins, precipitously, to sob. ‘I know nothing, madam, nothing at all of this matter.’
SEVENTEEN
‘You ought never to have let him up in the first place,’ says Mrs Frost, knotting the last tie of Angelica’s gown.
‘I do as I please.’ Angelica has no intention of telling Mrs Frost anything of Georgie’s financial oversights; her reaction would be beyond tolerating.
Even so it pains her when her companion demands, ‘And your protector? Does he have no claim on your heart?’ Mrs Frost circles her, minutely adjusting the gathers in the muslin; her disapproval does not extend to leaving them less than perfect, as very well she might.
‘He has sole claim to it! He has no rivals for it! I only have the gentleman up because I am bored, criminally bored.’
‘You think nothing of propriety,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘You must always be entertained. Sit down; there is more to be done to your hair.’
‘You are forgetting I have no propriety.’ Angelica throws herself into her chair and leans her elbows on the dressing table, knocking trinkets and boxes without care. ‘I lost it long ago, and thus I am at liberty to be alone in rooms with strange gentlemen.’ She sighs. ‘You are no model of virtue yourself, Eliza, you know where your bread is buttered, that is all. I never saw you take Georgie’s side until now, when you believe your living depends on it.’
‘How dare you! I have been nothing but virtuous. Rectitude is ever my watchword; it wounds me to see you break your promises with such little provocation.’
‘Shut up, Eliza.’ For this lecture is hardly to be tolerated either.
‘No! Truly! I should like to see in your behaviour some inkling of female decency, but I begin to think your appetites are baser than they ought to be. I had thought you more restrained …’
Angelica casts her eyes to the heavens. ‘I am only taking your advice,’ she says, ‘remembering myself to the town; I do not closet myself away from those who might one day be of use to me.’
‘Now is the time for closeting,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘You jeopardise our position when you—’
‘Are you finished here?’ Angelica rises abruptly from the table. In doing so her hair delivers a soft clout to Mrs Frost’s chin, but she affects not to notice as she whisks the powdering cape from her shoulders. ‘Yes, I think I look very well. You have dressed me very fine. That is what you are good for. I go now to await my visitor.’ She stops before the mirror, smooths her dress. ‘Oh, by the by, I would have you pawn a gown or two. My sole protector keeps us so very comfortable.’
‘You are vexed today,’ he says.
‘Aye, and what if I am?’ She slumps on her sopha, picking at the varnish on its scrolled woodwork, and the light from the window touches one cheek but not the other. Now and then she turns her face towards the glass, a despondent little gaze that lingers on, and ends finally with a sigh, and which puts him in mind of Sukie when her friends do not call by for her. ‘There is a great deal in my life that is vexatious.’
He shrugs. ‘You may be as you are. I am not so cheerfully disposed myself.’ And this is so. He slept badly. Since the Unicorn completed its creep along the west coast and struck out past Ireland, he has had no word from Captain Tysoe Jones. It being such an unusual voyage, he cannot guess when next he might have news, but the coldness of the winter has sown dreams in his head of crooked and cured mer-children: they squawk to him from dark cradles; when he looses their swaddling, he finds their little bodies crushed to a handful of dead leaves.
‘What can be wrong in your world?’ she asks.
‘Well, what is wrong in yours?’
She scowls. ‘No mermaid, for one thing.’
‘Patience,’ he says shortly.
‘A virtue I have very little of, today.’ She looks again towards the window. ‘Forgive me, sir, I have a great deal on my mind. I am waiting for something – it may never transpire – but my fortune depends upon events that take place far away, which I can neither know anything of nor do a single thing to alter.’
‘I have lived all my life that way,’ he says.
She looks at him askance, purses her lips. ‘Well, I am not used to it. If it don’t happen under my nose, or by my own hand, why ought it to affect me?’
‘Providence,’ he shrugs. ‘We live in a great world but may only see one tiny corner of it.’
‘I cannot be at ease with it.’ She begins to bite her thumbnail, then takes it from her mouth guiltily, and slaps a cushion instead. ‘Why nothing in the meantime?’ she demands. ‘Can you not acquire me some little amusement now? No mermaid – why not the skin of a selkie? They can be got in Scotland very easy; there is nothing to prevent you.’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘I could not give you that in good faith, for then the poor lady would never return to her kin.’
‘I don’t care,’ she retorts. ‘It’s a luxury few enough of us have in this life.’ A movement from the back rooms catches her eye and she breaks off; here is Mrs Frost scuttling through, clutching several gowns to herself, their skirts hung over one arm, their jackets the other. He sees the bright chenille border of the flower-garden Angelica wore when they met first. ‘You see?’ says Angelica. ‘There go my sealskins.’
‘What is she doing with them?’
Mrs Neal looks away. What expression is on her face he cannot see, but some of the animation leaves her body. ‘Oh,’ she says, and any light that was once in her voice is fading, ‘they are to be laid up in lavender.’ She smiles then, as if she has solved a problem, and returns to her seat. Her arms are spread on the cushions, wrist-upward: her skin is white and her veins are lilac. ‘I have so many gowns this season,’ she continues, ‘I cannot fit them all in here. There is simply not enough room for all the luxuries I possess. Besides –’ she tips her head back so her pale throat shows – ‘I tire of them.’
Mrs Frost snorts, which he does not much like, but she is already out of the door. ‘I am taking them to her uncle’s,’ she calls mockingly over her shoulder.
‘Pay her no heed,’ snaps Angelica. ‘She is sent to vex me; or pe
rhaps it is vice versa, she does not like me much of late.’
‘I did not know you had an uncle in this city. You said you had none.’
She grimaces. ‘It is a turn of phrase.’
He stops and thinks. ‘Oh, I see.’ He steeples his fingers. ‘Are you comfortable in your household economy, Mrs Neal? Are you amply provided for?’ He knows he should not have asked; so perfectly does her face close up that he would not have been surprised if it had been accompanied by the sound of a slammed door. Her body closes up too; she buries her hands under the fold of her shawl, but he can see the nervous movement of her twisting fingers. ‘Forgive me,’ he says. ‘It was indelicate.’
‘You would not have asked that of any other lady,’ she says.
‘No, I believe I would not have.’ But is this not Mrs Neal’s very problem? Since their last meeting he has been nagged by the thought of her as an ordinary woman, and once a girl as deserving of protection as his own Sukie, or Bridget, or any daughter of straitened means. She is a woman out of place, this Angelica Neal, a piece fallen loose from a great machine. Her concerns are not those of other women. ‘I should not have opened my mouth,’ he concedes.
‘Aye, assuredly you should not.’ She rises, dropping her shawl onto the sopha. ‘I find I have forgotten an engagement, Mr Hancock, and am very much delayed in my preparations for it. I must ask you to take your leave of me.’
But he does not move. He dares instead to keep watching her. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You are distressed. What is your trouble?’
She shakes her head, but her lip is quivering and her eyes one wink away from overflowing.
‘Now, come,’ and he drops to an ungainly knee beside her couch. But Angelica has pulled down her chin, and her shoulders are quaking.
‘I do not mean to cry,’ she hiccoughs. ‘Do not look at me, sir, I beg you – oh, pay me no mind.’
He cannot think what to say, and there is nothing to do but decently avert his eyes from her evident embarrassment, all the while patting her arm and hazarding expressions of bland comfort. ‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know, ’tis a hard thing to maintain oneself in this world. A very hard thing,’ until she wilts altogether, her back bent and her head in her hands, and her shoulders heave with awful sobs. ‘There, there,’ he whispers, placing his hand more firmly upon her sleeve. And while she does not raise her head, and her tears fall afresh into her lap, her hand creeps out from beneath the tumble of her hair, and rests, trembling, upon his own.
EIGHTEEN
There is a knock and the secretary of Mr Hammond, whose house party has been so sadly spoilt, puts his head around. ‘Mrs Chappell,’ he says, and bows. ‘What news?’
‘None,’ she grunts. ‘And there’ll be none until I have finished interviewing my girl.’
‘So make haste,’ he says, darting a quick look at Elinor’s tear-stained face. ‘You must appreciate a situation of this sort is most distressing for all involved: not the atmosphere one wants, for a celebration. Puts a bad taste in the mouth.’
‘It is hardly on me,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘I have lost a valuable asset.’
‘Quite so, quite so. But we will be expecting our money back.’
‘Money?’ quavers Elinor.
‘Yes, miss,’ says the secretary. ‘Two hundred guineas. I’ve a good mind to ask for the entire sum returned, for there is no coming back from this: the week is ruined.’
‘Now, now, no need, no need,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘It may seem so now, but I shall send another girl – this will be swiftly forgotten, I assure you, there is nothing like a little music and revelry to restore good humour to any party.’
‘Two hundred guineas?’ asks Elinor in stupefaction.
‘Vulgar, Elinor!’ snaps Mrs Chappell. ‘The money is the thing of least significance.’
‘A hundred up front for her, a hundred for you,’ says the secretary. ‘And the same sum to be paid again if the thing went off to my master’s satisfaction, which of course it has not. Well, I shall leave you to decide between yourselves how this may be made good,’ and he brisks away.
As the door clicks to behind him, Nell turns to Mrs Chappell for verification, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. ‘I had not thought it would be so much. Were we to see any of it?’
‘The cost of living is very high,’ says Mrs Chappell.
‘Well! But two hundred apiece, surely you—’
‘And it is brought no lower when girls make off with clothes that do not belong to them,’ the bawd continues. ‘What dress did you say it was? The white, with spangles? That alone cost me five guineas. Then petticoats, fifteen shillings; stockings, half a crown; then stays and shoes and shawl and pockets – what was in her pockets, by the by? Coins, I’ll wager – to say nothing of her jewellery … it all comes to well over ten guineas’ worth of apparel she has stole from me. Twice that, perhaps.’
‘Oh, come, not stole,’ says Elinor.
‘Then what? She has taken what is not hers. Those clothes were my own property. Oh, this is a beast of a situation we find ourselves in: Polly was an excellent earner, and an asset to the house. How could you have let her get away?’
‘I!’ Elinor trembles. ‘I never would have if I had known!’
‘And I shall never find her on my own.’ Mrs Chappell rests her chin on her fist. ‘If she has made her way into the streets she may as well be lost for ever.’ Then she raises her head to meet Elinor’s eye. ‘But with this man Hammond’s aid … his father knows every constable in London.’
‘What are you going to do?’ quails Elinor. She wants very badly to go home. Oh, Pol, you have brought great trouble upon us.
‘Light a fire under them,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘Oh, dear! Don’t start so! I mean figuratively. Have him come back in; I know how to persuade him to find her.’
Nell totters to the door, rather numb, and finds the secretary helping himself to the hothouse grapes piled without. When he comes back into the room, Mrs Chappell has drawn herself very upright: only Elinor sees the way her right arm, propped on the table, trembles to support her pose.
‘Here, sir,’ the bawd barks, ‘tell this to your master: that I hold him responsible for the loss of an excellent servant.’
‘Oh, when they wish to go, they find a way.’
‘She has never expressed a desire to leave before. She was always quite content; Miss Bewlay here can vouch for that.’ Elinor nods weakly, and Mrs Chappell continues. ‘I cannot help wondering whether something untoward happened to her here.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘There is also the matter of the items of valuable clothing she fled with, which it is reasonable to expect him to replace.’
‘You cannot propose this is my master’s responsibility.’
‘Why not? It is due to his negligence that she has vanished.’
The secretary is baffled. ‘Now, madam, she is your employee …’
She holds up her hand. ‘I am not done speaking! I expect from Mr Hammond the full account owing on her; by which I do not mean only the cost of the items she took with her, or the sum he agreed to pay for her, but also the debts she ran up with me. Perhaps you do not apprehend that since this young woman came into my care two years since, I have clothed her and fed her, and trained her in every one of the arts that so delighted your master. You think all that can be effected at no cost to myself? You think I do this for the fun of it? Four hundred pounds I have invested in Miss Campbell’s care and education, and not a penny of it has she paid back. So how will I recoup it?’ Apprehending his expression, she shrugs. ‘One of your young bloods would demand no less if I had mislaid one of his racehorses. How is’t different?’
They stare at one another: the severity in Mrs Chappell’s face is startling, her mouth hardened to a mere crease in her face, her small eyes very bright. Elinor, daring to turn to the secretary, perceives that he is not entirely composed; he turns his face away too quickly, and makes for the door. When he reaches it, and his hand is safely on its knob, he says, ‘She is a se
rvant.’ Then, growing in bravery as he swings it open and sets one foot into the hall, ‘Not even that. A whore. And if she has robbed you, well, you should have expected no more of her.’
Mrs Chappell does not so much as twitch. ‘The debt is your master’s,’ she says coolly.
‘Do you risk making an enemy of him? He knows the men who wink their eye at your disorderly house …’
‘On whose authority do you threaten me?’ she asks. ‘I am protected. Always have been.’
‘I would not be so certain,’ he says.
‘If you can restore her to me, I shall have nothing at all to pursue,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘You tell your master that. It may yet all come to naught.’
Elinor’s heart is in her mouth as he closes the door behind him. She turns to the abbess, who leans more deeply upon the table, and closes her eyes briefly. ‘He was extremely displeased.’
‘Pah! And what does it signify? He don’t make the rules.’ She mops her brow with her scrap of handkerchief. ‘All the great men know they are bound to please me more than I am to please them; there ain’t a bawd in St James’s who matches the service I provide. We are safe.’
‘But what if—’
‘No ifs!’ Mrs Chappell’s joints ache, and her chest is heavy. She admits to herself that this to-do has agitated her more than it might have were she a younger woman. Is it possible I have overshot myself? she wonders. I am not as nimble in my mind as once I was. ‘Polly!’ she sighs. ‘I would not have thought it of her. Well, she was always saucy – never as biddable as I would have liked – but to have stole from me! Stole a gown! I would not have thought that of her at all.’
‘She had no other,’ wheedles Elinor. ‘Pray, what was she to—’
‘She was to remain in the house!’ thunders Mrs Chappell. ‘She was not to abandon my service as if she were no better than some wilful housemaid!’ Her voice vanishes to a croak, and she subsides in her chair, her hand to her breast, panting painfully. Her face is ashen, her lips blued, and Elinor takes alarm.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 26