‘Madam!’ She crouches beside her. The abbess’s skin is cold and dewy, but her eyelids flutter over the rheumy orbs beneath. ‘Do you need your salts?’
‘Water,’ she croaks, and Elinor pours it with terrible trembling, so that its dropples fall to the carpet and stain her slippers. Once Mrs Chappell has sipped, coughed, sipped and gulped, she looks a little better. ‘I’ll have no more of your worrying, miss,’ she says. ‘You are to go out of this room and make those gentlemen forget they were ever disappointed.’
‘But Polly!’
‘Leave that in my hands,’ says Mrs Chappell.
‘Will she be got back?’
‘You assume we shall be so fortunate as to find her. If she has gone into the rookeries we’ll not see her face again – and if we did she would be welcome in my house no longer. You would do well to forget she was your friend.’
He dreams, one night, of grey seawater, its surface leaping, its depth incomparable. Beneath its surface, very far below, he sees a black shadow, vaster than any thing he can even conceive of. Its scale is not of this world, it is bigger than factories or mountains, bigger than the growing ships that tower over his little Deptford home. The shifting tugging water obscures its shape, but its largeness is such that his breath aches in his throat and his fingertips tingle. And all the time it is coming towards him.
In his dream this dark creature rises and rises up to the surface, its pace stately but gathering speed, until its shadow is all that can be seen beneath the water. It must shortly crash through the waves, scattering white wings of foam in its triumphant upsurge into his own realm, to loom into the sky and block out the sun.
But before it does so, he wakes up.
It is morning and the room is full of pale light, the dream hanging upon Mr Hancock still, a heavy sadness across his chest and shoulders. He has seen his own smallness, the futility of all of his doings. He rubs his eyes, massages his sternum to ease the knot of grief that has formed inside him. When he sits up, he sees that there by his bed stands a grave pale boy of eight years old, his dark curls lying on his shoulders.
Mr Hancock cries out. He kicks the bedclothes aside. He reaches, grasps, his heart thundering. But nobody is there.
NINETEEN
‘Mr Hancock?’ Mrs Neal turns restlessly, and lays her face upon her arm. ‘Were you ever in love?’
He tugs at his cravat. He feels that Henry has walked beside him all the day, and many hours after waking, his mind is still so distracted that the word love on the lips of a beautiful woman puts him in mind of nothing that it ought, but instead lays in his arms once more the weight of his little boy, Henry, as he had cradled him that one and only morning. The child was already dead at that time, his poor blood crisping at the jag in his head that the instruments had made. ‘That is scarcely a thing to complain of,’ the surgeon had said (not his fault – nobody to be blamed – they had paid for the best). ‘If the infant had been any faster stuck I would have been obliged to bring it forth in pieces; be glad you’ve something to honestly bury.’ And that was something to be grateful for, was it not, for despite his wound and his lips going greyer, and his tiny shoulder strangely crushed, this long-awaited Henry looked as perfect as any living child. Mr Hancock remembers Henry’s shawled body in the crook of his arm as if he carried it there still: he thinks, it will be the last thing I feel before I die.
But he can say nothing of this to Angelica, who knows, after all, no atom of such suffering. So he knuckles his brow and, ‘Aye, yes,’ he says, ‘I had a wife. Mary was her name. That is a long time ago.’
‘And what happened to Mary?’
He says not a word.
‘Forgive me,’ she says. ‘It ain’t my business.’
He is about to nod and turn his talk to other things, but then he thinks of how she had so unwillingly wept before him, the memory of which he has been holding at arm’s length since last he saw her. He never speaks of Mary, certainly never of his son, but he has seen a tender part of Angelica Neal’s soul, one she would not have volunteered to him, and it is in this spirit of transaction that he offers her his own story. ‘We were married four years,’ he says, ‘and were very content, but we had no child, although we sorely desired it. And when she at last took one, there were no two more joyful people than we.’
Mrs Neal puts her fist under her chin, listening. It is too late for him to stop: he feels as the boys who line up on the jetty on hot days, to fling themselves into the still and tepid water. He remembers well how it was to jump; the moment his feet left the boards and the time stopped to nothing, and he knew that there was no altering his trajectory. His heart quickens. He has not spoken these words often enough for them to have lost their sting, and to recount his loss even at the distance of fifteen years is to relive it.
‘This story does not end happily,’ he warns her. ‘Mrs Hancock was brought to bed and she laboured for days, but finally she was tired and could do no more. Perhaps she was too old.’ He tries to smile. ‘But women a good deal older than she labour safely every day of the week. Perhaps it was her physiology.’
‘Some women are ill suited,’ says Mrs Neal sympathetically.
‘If I had known it! I would have put all thoughts of children away from me, and been grateful for our lot.’ Poor Henry, whose face was swollen and cruelly bruised, his eyes closed in a perpetual frown, keeping to himself the secret of whether they were to be blue or brown or grey – were it better that he had never been conceived at all?
‘Oh no, but you cannot have foreseen. Well, what happened?’
‘There is no more to say. I buried my wife and my son – I am glad they lie together.’
‘I had hoped the child had perhaps lived,’ says Mrs Neal.
And where would you be now, Henry Hancock? A young man, slender like his mother, Mr Hancock thinks, and most assuredly with her dark hair, for he already had it on the day he was born. Yes, he thinks, he would have gone to the navy, and this is a happy thought, and proud. If he had lived and grown, he would not now remain at his father’s side; the pain of parting would have been delayed, but never avoided. It may be that at this moment Henry Hancock is not dead but only very far away, with the breeze of a foreign ocean stirring those brown curls. ‘Some say that in such circumstances it were better the child died,’ he says, ‘leaving me free to start my life anew.’
‘Not I,’ says Angelica. ‘A living child is always good fortune.’ She furrows her brow and casts the full light of her blue eyes upon him. ‘These are very sad things that have befallen you.’
‘No worse than anybody else’s lot.’
‘Maybe so; that is not to say it does not cause you pain.’
‘I am advised to forget,’ he says, ‘but if I did not have the pain, I would have no memory of them at all.’
Her face is still cupped in her hand; she sits up straighter and says, ‘Shall I tell you my opinion on it?’
He is never to hear it, for at this very moment the door flies open and all the room is taken up by the gentleman in the blue coat. He is very handsome. He looks at Mr Hancock and says only:
‘Get out.’
‘Georgie!’ cries Angelica. ‘What are you about?’
Rockingham seizes Mr Hancock by the arm and pulls him to his feet. ‘Leave,’ he says. His face is so close Mr Hancock can see the white cap of a pimple glowing on his chin. Turning back to Mrs Neal he says, ‘What am I about? When you have brought a man in here?’
‘I am doing nothing wrong! We are only sitting, only talking.’ She looks to Mr Hancock.
‘That’s so,’ he says. ‘I meant nothing by it.’
‘You give them your society!’ he spits. ‘That is how it starts, you told me so yourself.’ He turns again to Mr Hancock. ‘You fool. What do you think she can do for you?’
‘I am leaving.’ He backs from the room, hands raised. ‘I am leaving, think no more of me.’
‘And what have you to say for yourself?’ Mrs Neal cries. ‘Sending m
e no word – troubles that I was by no means prepared for – you who abandoned me!’ She has begun to gabble now. ‘So what can you blame me? Another soul to hear my unhappiness –’ she darts a glance over her shoulder to Mr Hancock on the landing – ‘which cannot be borne alone. Listen to me, sir, you and I have a great deal to discuss …’
As Mr Hancock retreats, the door to Mrs Neal’s apartment slams. On the street he looks up again: her windows show nothing, but he thinks he hears her voice, talking anxiously on.
TWENTY
‘It should not have been like this,’ she says, composing herself, for if she is not conciliatory all must be lost. ‘I had plans to celebrate your return, Georgie, you ought to have sent me word you were coming.’
He throws himself onto the sopha and it shuttles back some six inches with his weight. ‘And give you warning?’ he mutters, but the retort has no spirit to it. Something is amiss, she thinks. This is a knowledge she has held concealed from herself for some time; there is no disowning it now.
She comes to sit beside him but he looks up at her with such a peculiar expression that she stops short. ‘What is wrong?’ she asks, but before he can draw breath she stumbles on, ‘If it is about the bills, I already know.’ She takes her place next to him, but she feels at once that the small ways in which he holds his body and responds to her movements have changed. She cannot say it, but she knows. Still she blunders, ‘But it will be all right. I am not angry. It was just a horrid – a very slight – shock. If you had warned me, I would hardly have been upset at all …’
‘I am giving you up,’ he says.
‘No,’ she says.
‘It is hardly your choice,’ he snorts. ‘If I am leaving, I am leaving. It is merely a case of my walking out of the room.’
‘But I …’ She wishes now that she had not let Mr Hancock quit the room. Then he would have had no polite opportunity to say these words, or if he had exploded it would have been for another reason swiftly explained away; all would have stayed just as it was. ‘About the money,’ she ventures, ‘we can find a way.’
He is shaking his head, and snorting as if she were absurd. She has never known such coldness from him. ‘There is no other way than this. Do not reason with me; you will look a fool.’
‘But how can you leave me?’ she demands. She would like to choose the safety of rage, but she needs his favour too much to show anything but the most even emotions. She takes a breath, and touches her hand to his cuff: ‘I am as good as your wife.’
Her fingers tremble there for one aching second, then two. It is all the sensation she has; she is praying that it may stay there for ever. But he draws his arm away.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You are my mistress. And you are immoderate in your spending, and intemperate in your demeanour, and in short you have ruined me. I cannot pay the debts you have run up.’
‘With your permission! It is your recklessness as much as anything …’
He stands. ‘I need a woman with a fortune, not one who will leech me dry.’
‘Please, George.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Talk to me. Is this your choice or your family’s? Do they wish you to marry someone else? For you know that is not insurmountable; nobody is faithful now-a-days; you need not relinquish me.’ He stares ahead, impassive; he has learned from Mrs Frost that Angelica cannot tolerate being ignored. She gabbles on, ‘I shall make no demands on you. I shall not be jealous. We might carry on as we did before.’
‘We might,’ he says. ‘If I were not sick of you.’
She can say nothing to this. Inside her there spreads a great emptiness, which is better perhaps than feeling. ‘Then I have no argument,’ she says carefully. ‘I suppose your family will pay your debts.’
‘As if it is any of your business.’
‘They ought also to pay mine. You promised to keep me and you bade me pass my bills to you; I had no knowledge at all that I was living on tick.’
‘They’re debts in your name, ain’t they? You take care of them. Do not tell me you have forgotten how.’
She does not remember what else he says. She is at one moment entirely numb, and also in agony, as if great fists were twisting at her viscera. She knows she follows him about the apartment while he collects the last of his possessions. Mrs Frost, returning from an errand, looks on impassively. It is she who sees him out; Angelica goes to the window and watches him as he strides the length of Dean Street. The flower-girls and drapers’ assistants and beribboned whores approach and lay their hands on him, or walk alongside him a little way, but he never looks back.
She watches until he is out of sight, with a blacking at the edges of her vision and a rush of cold all across her body, as if she were drowning. She might be lost at sea; there is a great cold void beneath her, and she fears she is not strong enough to avoid being sucked under. Am I dying? It may be so. She closes her eyes and swallows hard; then she pulls away from the window and says aloud, ‘No, no. This won’t do.’
And so to action. She goes at once to her dressing table, and whisks open one drawer after another, to seek within them their finest pieces: the necklace of millefiore medallions; her golden armlet; the earrings set with rubies. She takes out her patch-box and his snuff-box; she seizes the best of the candlesticks, and the books, and ransacks her box of lace to choose which cuffs and fichus she can best do without. She sighs mightily as she does so, for every scrap she seizes up is as delightful to behold as it was the day she chose it; the beauty of each stitched flower and star and swag is enough to make her ache. She had not tired of owning them yet; the glee that they are really hers has not abated, and yet she is packing them gently into a basket to be taken away.
‘Eliza,’ she calls, ‘help me.’ When Mrs Frost comes to the doorway she hands her the basket. ‘Pawn it,’ she says. ‘Sell it. Whatever is best. And this. And this.’
‘Is this necessary?’ asks Mrs Frost.
‘You keep the books! You tell me.’ She is rummaging through a drawer full of fans, throwing them onto the carpet one by one without looking at them. Then she starts on the linens. ‘They will call in their debts if they know he has left me, and I have no way of paying. It must be hundreds that I owe – thousands. There will be bailiffs.’ She wheels around, her skirts heaving: her composure flees her. ‘Must they find out? Perhaps they need not know.’ She paces the floor, twisting her fingers relentlessly, and her speech ascends and ascends into hectic gibberage as she continues, ‘Oh, perhaps if we ask him – a few weeks’ grace – to let nobody know he does not protect me – he might find it in his heart, if he understood – I shall go away for a while – the countryside? – where?’
Her agitation is such that Mrs Frost becomes almost afraid; she will do herself a mischief, she thinks, and, to still her, seizes her first by the shoulders and then wraps her in her arms. Her body is rigid; there is panic in its every fibre. ‘I think not,’ says Mrs Frost gently. ‘He will not help us any more. He is gone.’
Angelica clings to her for a short while and then breaks free, shaking herself down. ‘Well, then,’ she says with resolve. ‘If you do not want me to go to prison, you will help me.’
‘Surely there is somebody you can appeal to,’ says Mrs Frost.
‘Who, Eliza? I have no admirers left. I have given my attention to no one else, and now I –’ her voice trembles and she gasps but does not sob – ‘and now I am back where I began,’ she finishes. ‘Only a good deal stouter. And the line on my forehead is there all the time, and not only when I frown. I know how it goes when a woman my age is abandoned. The bailiffs come, and she must needs return to the nunnery to open her legs; and the men she gets are of less and less consequence each year that she ages, until she is quite abandoned, and ruined, ruined, ruined. Oh, Eliza! That cannot be my fate! Not so soon! I feel no older than fifteen – how have I come to this?’
‘It may not be as bad as you think,’ says Mrs Frost with distaste. ‘If I take these things away, it will be in the faithful hope that w
e shall have it all back a month from now.’ She is glad to see Angelica brought to her knees; it makes her feel far softer towards her. She is moved again to touch her; she smooths her friend’s shoulders. ‘All will be well,’ she says. ‘You are young yet; you are beautiful.’
Angelica knuckles her forehead. ‘I fear I have mis-stepped. I am twenty-seven. If I were to have peaked, should I not have done so by now? Indeed, I was on a good trajectory. To have followed the duke with Rockingham, to have so misplayed my hand when I was most desirable – oh, I am a fool!’
Mrs Frost, however vindicated she may feel, betrays nothing of it. ‘That young whelp is no one at all; an aberration you will recover from. The whole affair will be forgotten in six months. You will climb yet, I am certain.’
Angelica tries to smile. ‘Thank you. My dear friend. My truest friend.’
‘I hope I shall always be so.’ A thought strikes her. ‘I shall send for Mrs Chappell.’
‘Oh!’ Angelica feels in sore need of a mother – any sort will do – but she knits her brow. ‘No,’ she says. ‘What a stupid idea; as if I would want her to see what has befallen me.’
‘Perhaps she may help?’
‘Perhaps she may dance a gavotte. Certainly not. The thing to do is make as little of this episode as possible. So he has tired of me – what do I care? Let the world see it makes no great difference to me.’ She begins to survey the room more coolly, and rifles its contents for value with her eyes alone. ‘After all, there is no need to strip the place bare,’ she says. ‘I shall be in need of a certain level of splendour, for my entertaining.’ Her voice again falters with a new burst of shame. ‘Only take these jewels I have set aside, Eliza. They are of greatest value. Go back to the jeweller and tell them – tell them I am displeased! The quality is not what I had been promised. Demand that they return what I paid.’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 27