The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

by Imogen Hermes Gowar

  ‘This is exactly our duty. What, you thought you would be at your leisure because you are kept? Your work is hardly begun.’

  ‘I had better remained where I was,’ says Angelica, pulling her straw hat down over her face. Sunlight speckles through its weave; she shades her eyes.

  Onward they walk to the first of the plum trees, whose perfumed boughs droop with the weight of their fruit.

  ‘We have plums enough,’ says Angelica. ‘I am sick of the sight of them.’

  ‘Well, be sick. They are hardly into their season, and we must preserve a good many more before winter.’ The girls set the ladder up against a tree. ‘Help us?’ asks Sukie. ‘You need not climb, dear, just pick the ones closest to hand.’

  Angelica says nothing. She turns her face towards where Greenwich might be, but the basin of land beneath them is filled up still with the dawn’s mist, and she does not see the spire of Alfege’s, or the domes of the naval hospital, or even a single ship’s mast, except through a veil of haze. The river, with its gilded barques and swift clippers, has been vanished all away, and she is alone on her hillside.

  ‘Come.’ Sukie takes her arm. She does not like the maids to see her aunt so devilled: they have a cruel way of watching. ‘Collect those that have already fallen if you prefer. That’s an easy task.’

  ‘Don’t it feel worse out here?’ Angelica asks. For a tide of particular sorrow has taken her. She sighs as if she could empty her whole heart. Another breeze rushes up the hill, and she must sigh again; she feels the sorrow filling her lungs.

  Sukie shakes her head. The maids lack a certain sprightliness of manner, she thinks, but then her aunt is a most subduing influence. It is hard to guard one’s own happinesses against one who is so very much in denial of them. Sukie thinks, it takes all I have even to affect happiness in her presence. She will suck it all from me; I cannot fight her much longer. Is this how it is always to be? Aloud, she says not a word.

  The plums at the trees’ feet are some of them reduced to sludge, and their brandied smell is thick upon the air. ‘Ugh,’ says Angelica, ‘they are rotted away.’

  ‘Not all of them.’ If Sukie is impatient, her voice hardly betrays it. ‘See? These are good.’ She nudges one with the side of her patten, and it rolls, flesh tender and true on all its faces. Flies green as opals rise peevishly. ‘We must gather them up before any more go bad.’

  But Angelica cannot be entreated. ‘A fatuous endeavour,’ she says. ‘Everything is rotting.’

  ‘Then will you go to the raspberry patch? See if the heat has ripened any,’ persists Sukie, who would find true pleasure in the flourishing of her land, were she permitted. To walk out into birdsong and the damp-soil air, and discover what secret doings the plants have been about overnight … She feels as if she were a child who has discovered an elf-land. And yet she knows that Angelica is best appealed to through her appetite, and adds rashly, ‘There may be enough to make a little tart. Or to garnish a fine duck, if Cook is disposed to roast it.’

  ‘The more you try to please me,’ says Angelica, ‘the less you succeed.’ She starts back towards the house, the trills of a blackbird knitting about her. Behind her, the girls snort with laughter and are up the tree with a swish of branches. They pass the plums from hand to hand and lay them in their baskets as gently as eggs, watching the scene through the leaves.

  ‘She has such queer moments,’ Sukie explains, but the girls extend no friendliness to her, only roll their eyes at one another. Wishing for a friend, she seizes up her skirts and pursues Angelica up the hill through the long dry grass.

  ‘Mrs Hancock!’ she admonishes.

  ‘Oh, leave me be.’

  ‘You are mistress of this house; why do you give it none of your time?’

  Angelica is walking fast, up the steps to the French windows, her arms clasped about herself. ‘And what will you do now,’ persists Sukie, pushing her hat away from her face so it dangles on its ribbon between her shoulder blades, ‘but go back to your chamber and lie on your silly bed and read your silly books, or some other nonsense thing that benefits nobody? Do you ever look beyond yourself?’ She follows her into the atrium, where the marble floor gleams. ‘You got what you wanted,’ she says, and her voice echoes up the stairs. ‘He gave you all this. And still you keep secrets from him. Still you are not happy.’

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ Angelica shakes her jacket from her shoulders and lets it fall to the floor as she storms on. She does not look back; she makes for her rooms.

  ‘You have burdened me with it enough that it might as well be my business. This is not my own house and yet I can account for every last bolster in it, while you—’

  Angelica’s impatience erupts. ‘Nebbiting, yepping thingsnitch! On and on you go, Sukie Lippard, you’ve tongue enough for two sets of teeth! If you wish to make such footling your life, then so be it! I am glad to say it is not mine, nor ever will be; trouble me with it no more.’

  Sukie stands at the foot of the stairs, her hat tossed back and her hands on her hips, her mother’s attitude. ‘But it is your life,’ she says. ‘It must be. Or what are you?’

  Upstairs, Angelica’s door slams.

  FIFTEEN

  Mr Hancock has watched it all from the back window: the women in their straw hats and drab everyday gowns, going about their work with some animation. Could this be the same Angelica Neal he married? At this distance she is a woman as ordinary-looking as any other, not the shining and laughing ornament he had imagined keeping in his house. And that whisper again: it can never be, the feeling of great loss, as if the soft and lavish wife he chose has already died and it is only her shell carrying on. That distant shore he once envisaged is a mirage: what he thought were lush mountains are only churning clouds.

  When she bursts into the room not moments later, he is unprepared for her storm of misery. ‘Oh, I cannot bear it!’ she cries. ‘There will be visitors coming and I cannot think – I do not know how to speak to them at all. They will come to mock me, I am sure of it.’

  ‘Who would mock you?’ he asks. ‘These are people like us. You would do well to socialise with them; they are people of a finer water, as we ourselves are now. I have chose the most splendid woman in London, and I have put her in an entirely splendid house – what can they find to laugh at?’

  ‘Oh, as many things as there are inches of my body. You, sir, are perhaps their sort, or will shortly become so, but you have made a poor choice of wife. I can only hold you back.’

  He thinks, for the first time, is she touched by the same thing as I am myself? This fascinating melancholy that draws me back and back – perhaps its miasma has infected her too?

  She begins to weep. Her tears are fat as pearls. ‘Because I am so filled with apprehension,’ she says. ‘I see that I shall fail you in the tasks you ask of me; I shall disappoint you in multitude ways. I cannot cook or sew or brew; I am afraid I cannot appear pleasantly to our neighbours of this class and match their manners, for I have no education in them.’ She draws breath and seems to compose herself. ‘I am fearful afraid, sir.’

  At this he feels he might break down weeping; this is the moment he should tell her of the mermaid, whose grief and largeness seems to seize him more each day. But he is afraid what will happen if he takes the cap off such a secret. ‘I am here,’ he says weakly. Then he reaches through the great fog to observe at last what is true: ‘I have neglected you,’ he says.

  ‘And I you.’ She looks up at him with the purest expression of grief he has ever seen in his life, so that he kneels down before her and puts his chin on her knees. She takes off his wig and strokes her hands across his stubbly head, which movement both soothes her and eases him. It is something like having his hair stroked by his mother, although he little remembers her; she explores the corners of his skull as it terminates behind his ears, and kneads her fingertips over his crown. If their joy has been spoilt, it is by his bringing the creature into it. He draws breath but cannot s
peak it. He remains there some minutes longer, submitting to her touch which he has not known for what seems a great long time.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ she says presently.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She speaks so quietly she might as well be only moving her lips, but he catches her words: ‘I lost the child.’

  And ah! There it is. The feeling again of something snatched from his grip.

  He feels a tickle on his cheek and looks up. A lock of her hair has slipped loose and wavers in the air between her face and his. His poor wife who has hitherto brisked about life is sad and fading already.

  ‘I have neglected you,’ he says.

  ‘No. No.’ The crease between her eyebrows never fades now. ‘What could you have done?’

  He rises so his forehead is pressed against hers. ‘I could have helped you – that is something. I have been so absorbed in …’ but he cannot say it. Instead he embraces his wife, breathing in her scent of apple-leaves and house-dust. He hears the sharp snatch of her breath, the shudder of grief that runs through her. ‘There, there, my poor little pigeon. ’Tis all right.’ He pulls away to look into her blotchy swollen face. Her lips are wet and wobbly like a child’s.

  ‘You are not angry with me?’ she asks.

  ‘No. Not at all.’ How can he be? He feels nothing at all, only a dull vindication: of course this would happen. Of course no happiness could come to us. He cannot recall, in this moment of confirmation, the emotion of kindness, but he recalls its words and how they are used, and he reaches deeply for them now as he presses her hands in his. ‘This is a small sorrow sent to try us, that is all. Am I not your husband?’

  ‘You are. A good husband.’

  ‘There. And so I would never be angry with you for such a sad thing.’

  She smiles damply and he thinks, she is not the woman I met. And he thinks, she can only get older henceforth; and the older one gets the narrower one’s opportunities for happiness become. And he thinks, so what will be next? Will he come in one day to find her laid out dead? He squeezes her fiercely to him for a moment.

  ‘I am relieved,’ she says with some surprise. ‘I do feel as if some weight has fallen from me. I could not tell you, but now that I have …’ She draws a deep quivering breath. ‘Yes, ’tis better.’ She stands, throws back her shoulders: she seems taller than she has in many months. ‘Perhaps I am more myself.’

  He stares out of the window. He feels as if he were on a ship in the middle of a great ocean, too far from home to turn about, but so distant from the strange shore ahead that his craft will be buffeted apart by the waves before it reaches it.

  ‘Mr Hancock,’ she whispers.

  And he turns and sees her, golden as a beacon.

  SIXTEEN

  Those visiting are the ladies of the Crawford family, their fortune forged in a pin factory. Mrs Crawford, a matron with a voice so loud that Sukie, taking air at the open library window, hears it quite clearly as she watches the party arrive – ‘Well, you would think they would have had it painted, would you not, for that is the first thing I always do on acquiring a new home’ – is accompanied by her daughter Mrs Flowerday, whose step is sprightly and whose curls bounce under her cape, and also Miss Crawford, a sister of the husband, narrow-shouldered and fidgeting. ‘Mama,’ says Mrs Flowerday, ‘now be kind – not everybody has your instinct, and particularly not this lady. She is from quite a different world.’ Miss Crawford says nothing, but then she is overburdened by some great unseasonable armful of rabbit fur and wool calamanco.

  Sukie, still stung by Angelica’s earlier rebuke, is inclined to closet herself for the rest of the day. But if I have displeased her, she frets, she may want me here no longer. I must endeavour to do better. And thus she steels herself to play hostess, and leaves the room in sedate haste. On the landing she taps on Angelica’s door.

  ‘They are arrived,’ she says as the bell rings.

  ‘Hmm,’ from within.

  ‘You will come down, will you not?’ Oh, do not abandon me to these strangers’ scrutiny!

  ‘By and by.’

  ‘They are here now.’ A scuffle of whispers behind the door. ‘Have you Catty in there with you? I’ve been looking for her all day.’

  ‘She is helping me get ready,’ says Angelica crossly. ‘If you want me, and you want me decent, you will have to wait.’

  The women’s voices are loud at the door; they are on the step.

  ‘I suppose I’ve no choice,’ sniffs Sukie. She puts her palm flat on the door, and adds in a softer tone, ‘Only do not leave me alone with them too long.’

  The bell is jangling, and she scoots down the stairs as the footman crosses the atrium. ‘Give me time,’ she hisses to him. ‘Send for hot water.’

  In the parlour, tarts and tea bowls are laid out, just as she oversaw them. The light is poor, but it collects itself within each bowl, to beam through the porcelain like so many bottle-caught glow-worms. Sukie has only a moment to arrange herself before the door opens and her visitors arrive in such a chaffing of cloth and clacking of shoes and clucking of voices that her thoughts desert her. She is kissed and inspected, and smiles most prettily, but the eyes of Mrs Crawford and her daughter are everywhere; they look from the tea bowls to the wallpaper to the bookcase with such goggling energy they risk snapping their necks.

  Mrs Flowerday, a powdered young bride, takes her by the elbows to look her up and down. ‘And you are Miss Hancock?’ she says. ‘Not Mrs.’

  ‘I am Mr Hancock’s niece,’ she says. ‘Miss Lippard.’ Having so many elder sisters she is unused to the title, and furthermore does not know how much familiarity to extend to these women, so her own name leaves her lips as if it were a question: ‘Susanna?’ Her face feels hot. ‘Mrs Hancock will join us by and by.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mrs Flowerday emits a gurgle of laughter. ‘I thought you could not be her – I have heard so much about her beauty.’

  Miss Crawford is still carrying her great bundle, and now she begins to remove clouts from it one by one: fur followed by dense tabby, and calamanco and finally an embroidered shawl. The women gather about.

  ‘Oh! Little man! Are you awake?’

  ‘Did you have a long sleep? Oh yes, you did!’

  ‘Such a good boy to sleep so long!’

  For within the bundle is a screw-faced baby, his hair awry with sweat, who blinks irritably at the company and brings his paws up to his eyes. His wrists are mere creases and he has dimples for knuckles. ‘Our handsome fellow! Miss Lippard, you are honoured by Baby’s first visit!’

  ‘Oh,’ says Sukie. ‘Will you have some tea?’

  But even once seated, they fuss about the child, whom the spinster Miss Crawford bounces upon her knee; his little head lolls back upon her bosom.

  ‘I suppose he is your first,’ says Sukie to Mrs Flowerday.

  ‘Not only that, but my own first grandchild!’ says Mrs Crawford. ‘A wonder you could guess it! But do you know, when he was born I did not care for him at all. I only sought to satisfy myself that dear Caro was in no danger, for all infants are much of a muchness but there is only one Caroline. Or so I then thought.’ She leans over and seizes Baby’s cheek between thumb and forefinger. ‘Was I wrong, was I not wrong? Are you not the dearest princeling that ever there was?’ She turns back to Sukie. ‘I make a dote of him now, so all is forgiven.’

  A smile flickers across Miss Crawford’s face. She is something about forty, and handsome in an austere, big-nosed way: she holds the infant without anxiety, her eyes elsewhere. She barely marks it when he suddenly screws up his face and lets out a squall of effort, but lets him clasp his fists around her fingers with the placidity of habit. He braces his tiny feet upon her legs and arches his back to pull himself upright, his eyes goggling with the strain and a bubble of drool glistening on his slackening lips.

  ‘A fine strong fellow! A true Hercules! You would not guess he was only three months old,’ his mother and grandmother exclaim, but
Miss Crawford herself says nothing. She merely grips his fat wrists as he teeters on her lap, loose-strung as a puppet. ‘And our Jane has such a way with him, eh, Miss Lippard?’

  Mrs Flowerday dabs at the child’s wet lips as he collapses back upon her. ‘A shame she never was a mother.’

  ‘Well now, well, perhaps. But if every woman had a husband and children of her own, who would be spare to help her? There must be some old maids; God makes work enough for them.’

  The baby grunts in Miss Crawford’s arms. ‘You did not marry?’ Sukie asks her. It is an idiotic question but she wishes the lady would answer in her own words.

  ‘She was disappointed by a sailor,’ says Mrs Crawford in a hoarse stage whisper.

  ‘An officer in the East India Company,’ says Miss Crawford, drawing the child back to her chest.

  ‘Had her wait all her best years for him …’

  ‘He was posted abroad …’

  ‘And never returned for her …!’

  ‘He drowned.’

  ‘And so it is a comfort that we are able to supply her with occupation, although of course it cannot compare to holding one’s own child.’

  ‘She is so good I do not know how I shall get on without her,’ says Mrs Flowerday. ‘I mean to bring her back with me to Essex, and she can care for him all the time.’

  ‘And that will be a relief to my husband and me,’ says Mrs Crawford, ‘for of course we are devoted to her but the cost of living being as it is, it were better for everybody if she were in a situation in which she truly earned her keep. My husband feels most tenderly for her – but that is his weakness; she was his favourite sister even in childhood – and he swears he would keep her in comfort all her life merely for the satisfaction of doing so, but we must allow dear Jane her dignity, must we not? I should not like her to feel as if she were an object of charity.’

  ‘And so to Essex I go,’ says Miss Crawford.