The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

by Imogen Hermes Gowar

  ‘And how is it come to be,’ says Angelica, ‘that you are in St James’s?’

  Mrs Frost brightens. ‘I have a house there,’ she says.

  ‘A house? You mean you have a position in a house?’

  ‘I have a house. ’Tis mine. I rent it.’

  ‘An entire house?’ Angelica says.

  Mrs Frost inclines her head, just fractionally, and the light catches her brooch again. At such an angle, there is no mistaking its design. It is a perfect Cupid’s arrow.

  Is this a trick? A joke? Angelica cannot ask; she has too anxious a sense that this is what Mrs Frost wants. Instead she pursues her own questions: ‘But what do you want with a whole house?’

  ‘To keep my girls in.’ Mrs Frost lets the silence spin out for a second or two. ‘In fact,’ she continues, ‘I met one off the stagecoach this very morning.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Fifteen years of age. A beautiful complexion. ’Tis a shame she cannot read a word, and she carries herself very poorly, but she has a fine voice and a very delicate manner, a rare quality. She will respond to training very well, once she leaves off crying.’

  ‘Eliza, I did not expect you to resort to this.’

  ‘I am surprised you have heard nothing of it. ’Tis a very new venture, to be sure, but it has attracted a good deal of notice.’

  ‘I do not read those scurrilous magazines. Why would I?’

  ‘So you will not know that my Lolly is so sought after I sold her first time for fifty guineas. Fifty guineas, Mrs Hancock.’

  ‘You have risen so quickly.’

  ‘I had experience enough.’

  This, of course, is so. Was she not at Angelica’s elbow for every moment of her life; had it not been her business to know everything of the world, and everybody in it? Angelica shakes her head. ‘But this house, this fine house you say you have, after we were quite penniless. We had nothing. How did you come by the money?’

  Mrs Frost does not look the slightest bit uncomfortable. ‘I had a little capital.’

  I had no capital, Angelica thinks. I had nothing at all. But she cannot say it. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth as she tries, instead, ‘You were always clever with money. Cleverer than I.’

  ‘You had your own talents.’

  ‘You kept my books so well.’ She spits her words out, eyes narrowing, but Mrs Frost just smiles and sips her tea. She will not own it; it is as if it has not happened. It is as if she has not come here wearing Angelica’s own jewellery.

  They sit.

  ‘I believe,’ says Angelica, ‘that you came here with the intention of communicating certain things to me. Is there anything else you desire me to know?’ Did you scheme this all along, she wants to demand, or did the opportunity merely present itself?

  ‘No,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘I believe you perceive things just as they are. Oh – and I suppose you have not heard – our old friend, Mrs Chappell.’

  ‘What of her?’ Angelica feels a sudden chill. ‘Is she well?’

  ‘Well enough. She has been in trouble, though. The law.’ She delivers her news with relish but Angelica wafts it away.

  ‘The usual charges? Bless you, Frost, you have so very much to learn about this game. She’ll pay the fine and that will be the end of it.’

  Mrs Frost cuts her eyes nastily. ‘I cannot share your confidence. She is not so much in favour as she once was.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Angelica looks at her askance. ‘Mrs Chappell will always have her protectors. Her influence is unrivalled.’

  Downstairs the clock is striking six. The front door goes, and Mr Hancock is stamping and hallooing in the hall. ‘Your husband is home.’

  He is coming up the stairs, calling, ‘Angelica! Angelica! Mrs Hancock, where be you?’

  ‘In here,’ she tries to say, but her voice falters. She feels quite overcome. He throws open the door and he is all a-fluster, his excitement hanging around him in a horsey-smelling halo of sweat. One of the knees of his breeches is torn wide open, and black blood is caked on his porky knee. He claps her on the shoulder and kisses the frill of her cap. There is a long smear of what might be soot on his cheek.

  ‘Good news,’ he cries. ‘Good news, my little pigeon!’

  ‘Mrs Frost is here,’ says Angelica.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Frost, good evening.’

  ‘He has been drinking,’ smirks Mrs Frost. But Angelica does not care. She cannot get close enough to her husband, her foolish, honest husband. She is scooting around him, dusting him down, taking his coat from his shoulders and shaking it out.

  ‘What have you been at? What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘Whisht! It don’t signify. I lost my footing.’

  ‘And your knuckles!’ She drops her voice to an uxorial whisper. ‘Have you been brawling?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort!’

  ‘I must go,’ says Mrs Frost. She looks delighted.

  Mr Hancock remembers himself. ‘I have been most improper,’ he says, crestfallen. ‘I have burst in on you ladies when I ought to have kept to myself.’

  ‘Not at all,’ says Mrs Frost, rising. ‘It is time I left.’

  ‘Will you stay to dine?’ says Mr Hancock.

  ‘I have an engagement. I came only to look in on your wife.’

  ‘I shall see you out.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hancock, please see her out,’ says Angelica. ‘Goodbye, Eliza.’

  Mr Hancock clatters down the stairs, taking with him the great waft of Mrs Frost. Angelica waits on the threshold of the parlour, dithering, her hand raised to her breastbone. She hears the front door close, then her husband calling:

  ‘Angelica! My little wife. Come to me, let me tell you about your new home.’

  ‘What are you about, Mr Hancock?’ She trots down the dark stairs. ‘Some candles want lighting down here.’

  ‘I have bought you that house, my angel. I inspected it most carefully, and it is just so. Very grand! I wish you would excuse my bursting in. I felt my news could not wait, but I do see that it was not a gentlemanly action. It is in the countryside above Greenwich, Mrs Hancock. Exactly to your tastes. À la mode, my dear, à la mode.’

  ‘You have truly bought a house?’

  He smells of the alehouse, and there is sawdust stuck to his boots. ‘Truly,’ he says.

  ‘Well, why did you not announce it while that horrid woman was here? I should have liked to see her face. Ha! That would have given her something to chew over. You are certain it is all ours? You are certain it is so grand?’

  ‘Of course, of course. You will be astounded.’ He takes off his hat and his wig, and scrubs his palms over his bristly scalp. ‘Ah! Better,’ he says, sliding his thumbs under the straining waistband of his breeches, ‘and better yet if I had something to drink –’ rapping his stick against the floor so it might be heard all over the house – ‘Bridget! Where is Bridget?’

  ‘Stop your banging. Come and sit by the fire; I shall fetch us something.’

  And so the erstwhile Angelica Neal, in her caraco and her cap, trots willingly into the pantry to bring her husband small beer and cold boiled beef. She bolts the shutters and lights the candles, and comes to the dark wood table in the dining room with two pewter plates and a loaf of bread. Mr Hancock stokes up the fire and unrolls the plan of the house on the table, weighing down one corner with a candlestick and another with the mustard pot. He and his wife sit elbow to elbow, eating their beef and supping their beer.

  ‘Here is the dining room,’ says Mr Hancock, tracing a greasy paw over it, ‘and here the music room, and the staircase. I had thought these rooms here for your own personal use, but you might choose different when you see them for yourself. They are very proper, my dear, not showy at all, you need not worry.’

  ‘I do not mind a little show. Where it is tasteful.’

  The candlelight and the patter of rain on the flagged yard outside are soporific: Angelica leans against her husband’s shoulder, with his stout arm ar
ound her and his fingers palping at her waist. She is more certain of her feelings now. And since there is nobody else to tell, she turns to her husband and murmurs:

  ‘I do not want to see that woman again.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Mrs Frost. I do not think she is a good person.’

  ‘She was your dear friend.’ He blinks his blond eyelashes but he is not arguing with her. He wants to hear what she has to say. She flops her head back against him.

  ‘She spent ten years reminding me I ought to be other than I am. She disdained me when I was not respectable, and now that I am, she sneers at me.’

  ‘She sneered at you in this house? In the house you are mistress of?’

  ‘She wishes to see me as a failure. She wishes to make me ashamed. And shall I tell you one other thing?’

  ‘Go on.’ He slips his fingers under her cap and strokes the hair over her ear.

  ‘When I was ruined. When I married you. I do now believe that I was not quite ruined.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you not see the change in her? She is rich.’

  ‘So she has had help from somewhere.’

  ‘Yes, from my own purse! She kept all my accounts. She ran my house. She had not a penny of her own – she would have been on the street if I had not helped her – so how is it that when I became destitute she had a nest egg?’

  ‘It don’t mean she took it from you.’

  ‘She was wearing my pin today. My diamond pin. Cool as cream cheese, she was, coming into my house wearing my old jewels. She never cared for me and she cares for me now even less.’

  ‘Now, my girl.’

  ‘She is a hypocrite,’ says Angelica with finality. ‘I will not speak of her again.’ She folds her arms on the table and rests her chin on them. ‘Tell me more about our house.’

  ‘It has a folly,’ he says. ‘A summer house.’

  ‘Oh! I shall enjoy that. I can eat ices in it.’

  ‘And, underneath the summer house, the most curious thing.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A shell grotto.’

  She clasps her hands and opens her eyes wide. ‘Grand indeed!’

  ‘I knew you would be pleased. It even has a little pool in it, which must be fed by the spring. The agent said that the place had no function, but I know better. It is for our mermaid.’

  ‘Our mermaid that has not yet been vouchsafed to us. Our little fakement.’

  ‘This is a sign.’

  ‘I am content with only a grotto. I shall be its nymph. If only Mrs Frost knew! She has no grotto. What else does this house have?’

  ‘There is a fruit orchard. You will eat plums all summer. And there are stables, with a phaeton for me to drive you in. There are many bedrooms.’

  ‘But I want no visitors,’ she says. ‘No visitors at all. I want only us.’

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘No.’ Her heart is agitated. Who would come? Mrs Chappell, Bel Fortescue? To sneer?

  ‘No children?’

  He says it just too sharply. He does not mean to fix his eyes so firmly upon her, but he cannot help it. She does not know what to do with her expression. She has never been in such a position. She does not know how to have any feelings about it at all.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she says, and knows she has said something near enough to the right thing, for he clasps her hand tightly.

  Inside Angelica, something is multiplying.

  ‘What of the expense?’ she demands. She likes it when he talks and she listens; she sprawls further over the table, sinking her cheek into the cradle of her own arms. His gruff voice is not musical but his words are beyond soothing to her. ‘All settled,’ he is saying, ‘all taken care of … paid in full … nothing else to trouble ourselves with … all straightforward now, I should venture.’ While he talks, she reaches up to rub her knuckles fondly and firmly over his bristly jowls, and yawns, and smiles, and thinks, is it really so unlikely that she might find herself in love with him?

  FIVE

  He takes Angelica up to the heath. High up in the sky a kite is swooping, its beribboned tail flying out behind it, and on the tender grass beneath it, children caper and whoop. The wind catches Angelica’s skirts so she is nearly a kite herself, tottering along the drive as the breeze tries to snatch her up. Her hair flies over her eyes and she puts up both arms to keep her hat on her head, but standing in front of her new home she laughs and laughs.

  He sends an order with the Eagle for monogrammed porcelain. He sends an order with the Angel for good chintz. He sends Angelica and Sukie out to choose new silverware.

  The spring, which began as one warm bright day – followed after a week of rain by another – has extended into a whole unbroken string of them, and there are now moments that Mr Hancock becomes agitated for the fate of Captain Tysoe Jones’s venture upon the Unicorn. Why does it take so long to return? Sometimes he puts his hands on his desk and leans forward, out of the open window, scanning the bobbing masts of the ships beyond the Deptford rooftops and praying that all is well. At night he dreams of Javanese mermaids, teeming in the black water of his own grotto as if they spawned there. Or else he dreams of a buxom fish-tailed beauty, with sticks of coral in her swirling yellow hair and her bosom languidly rising with the movement of a warm tide. In his dreams she lies in a bathtub of mother-of-pearl, and when he lifts her out she is slippery and heavy, a cold dead weight slithering through his arms. In his dream he picks her up and staggers across a shell-shaped room with her in a kind of ungainly caper, she always dragging him to the floor while her dampness seeps through his shirt and the smell of oysters envelops them both. When she turns her cool wet face to his, it is always Angelica’s that he sees.

  SIX

  A week before their removal to the new house, Angelica and the girls Sukie and Bridget climb up to the lumber room under the eaves at Union Street to sort through the Hancock family effects.

  ‘There is nothing here worth keeping,’ says Angelica. ‘Nothing of taste or value.’ She nudges a dusty wooden cradle with the toe of her slipper and sets it rocking. ‘We must throw it all out.’

  ‘My mother will not like to hear of that,’ says Sukie.

  ‘Your mother may deal with her own lumber room. This one is mine now, and I say it all must go.’

  ‘Some good woman will make use of these things,’ says Bridget thoughtfully.

  ‘Do you think so? ’Tis all quite ugly.’

  ‘But sturdy,’ says Bridget. ‘And nobody would disdain a good wool blanket like this one, or bedlinen when their own is worn through.’

  ‘Worn through? What, right through?’

  ‘So you can see daylight through the middle, in just the shape of the bodies that lay in ’em. In my mother’s house we cut’m down the worn part and stitched’m back together along the opposite sides. Get twice the wear that way. But these sheets are good, madam – these will do somebody for many years yet.’

  ‘Well! I never was so destitute as to cut my bedsheets in half. I never was.’ Angelica is impressed. ‘I kept body and soul together very adequate, all told.’

  ‘Aye, and how was that?’ asks Sukie. She and Bridget are both fearsomely interested in Mrs Hancock’s previous occupation.

  ‘That don’t signify,’ she sniffs. ‘I did what I must.’

  ‘Until Uncle rescued you.’

  ‘Rescued me?’ Angelica laughs. ‘Is that what you believe?’

  ‘Aye,’ says Sukie, ‘aye, rescued you, and now you may reform and be good.’

  Angelica feels not entirely easy. Certainly she was desperate – certainly she was glad to have him perceive himself as her rescuer – but never in her darkest hour did she imagine that she might not make her own way through tribulation. ‘A dubious hero he is—’ she says lightly.

  ‘Which is better, ma’am?’ Bridget interrupts. ‘Living here with us, or back in London with all the sweetmeats and the beaux?’

  ‘Each has their privations,
I daresay. It’s best wherever the living is easiest. Say, Bridget, these poor people who have no bedsheets. What have they done to find themselves in such a position of want?’

  ‘Why, nothing.’

  ‘Quite blameless?’

  ‘As blameless as any body can be, the world being what it is.’

  ‘Ah. That was their mistake. Do you know where they might be found?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Very near to here?’

  ‘Not ten minutes’ walk away.’

  ‘Well, Bridget, I trust you to identify some individuals of great want and take these things to them immediately. Sukie, you had better help her.’ Angelica is loading bales of linen and wool into her step-niece’s arms. ‘And when you are there, find a wagon, and have it call by here, and we shall put everything else on it.’

  Bridget staggers from the room, with her chin ratcheted as high as it will go above the pile of cloth in her arms, and Sukie follows her down.

  ‘Be careful on the stairs, girls.’

  Alone in the attic, Angelica smooths down her skirts. She feels pleased with herself, warmed by her own surprising beneficence. She has never given to the poor before; it is her first truly grand act. For when I am in the big house, she thinks, this will be usual for me. She imagines standing kindly on her doorstep, pressing shiny coins into the hands of a beggar boy and his blind mother. At Christmas she will send a ham to the almshouse. When she dies they will distribute mourning rings, and the orphan children will weep.

  Downstairs there is a knock on the door. Perhaps it is not the first knock, for it has a frustrated, impatient sound to it.

  ‘Confound them,’ she mutters. ‘I will not answer it.’

  But it may be the woman who sells the buns she likes.

  She thinks for a moment. Then she takes off down the stairs, tucking her hair into her cap as best she can. For a minute the knocking leaves off, but when she is on the final turn of the stairs it goes again.

  ‘Patience!’ she shouts, and throws the door open.

  Mrs Frost is there, all in lilac, with the tassels of a vast parasol quivering around her head like a carousel.