‘We shall have such fun,’ says Mrs Flowerday.
The infant begins to twist and whine. His face turns pink and grows pinker. His ears, in fact, are quite scarlet. He screws his face even tighter and snuffs once, twice. Miss Crawford bobs him on her knee and tots his fists about in her hands, but he will have none of it. He opens his mouth and his first cry comes in a great peal. ‘Oh, hush you, hush you, little fellow,’ whispers Miss Crawford, putting a finger into his mouth, but he has been duped this way before, and reels back from her. His fury bursts from him in a roar, his gums bone-hard. Miss Crawford looks up at Mrs Flowerday. ‘Nothing for it,’ she says.
The young mother is tugging at her stays, and fossicks beneath her fichu. ‘Oh, poor Baby,’ she cries over his lamentations, ‘is he hungry? Hand him over, Aunt, pass him here quickly,’ and he is handed across the table as if he were a plate of macaroons. Mrs Flowerday raises an eyebrow at Sukie. ‘You see,’ she says, ‘there are some things that she may never do for him,’ and hoists her left breast into the room. She claps the child upon it and the silence is immediate, except for her continued talking, which keeps time as she jogs him gently up and down. ‘Put him out to nurse, Mama said, the very moment he was born: certainly not, says I, nobody shall feed him but I myself.’
‘I put all my children out, and very happy we all were,’ says Mrs Crawford, looking on fondly as the child sucks and grunts, his fingers splayed upon his mother’s blue-veined bosom. ‘I should have been worn to a thread if I had nursed them myself. Countrywomen are more robust.’ She looks to Sukie as if she might have an opinion on it. ‘You would think, to hear her, that I had told her never to see him again. But a child during its first year is more of a burden than a pleasure: why not put him out of the house until he can walk and talk and make himself amusing?’
‘Nobody does that any more, Mama.’
‘And what of Mr Flowerday? He cannot want his wife always so encumbered.’
‘He is glad to have Baby about.’ Mrs Flowerday looks down upon her child’s drooping eyelids, and pauses for a moment, for her breath is taken by his feathered eyebrow and the perfect curve of his nose. ‘He says he never saw such a natural mother as I.’
And it is at this happiest – or unhappiest – of moments that Angelica, Mrs Hancock, casts open the door and flounces in to meet her neighbours.
Not since she left London has she looked so magnificent. Her hair is powdered to immense height and volume – how she has effected it with only the fumbling hands of Catty, cannot be guessed – and her gown is sheer to the point of vaporous, striped organza through which the blue satin of her undergown shines. Her lacquered shoes clack on the floor, and her cheeks are a-blush and her lips soft as roses. The women cannot but flutter, for she is exactly as their imaginings wish her to be: sweat breaks out on their palms, and they feel hot and cold at the same moment, and they do not know what shapes to make with their mouths. For they apprehend that before them, pulled up to the fullest of her height, stands a true and haughty whore of the first water. And they cannot think what to do.
SEVENTEEN
Mrs Flowerday’s eyes do not leave the person of Angelica Hancock even as she dumbly shifts her baby from one breast to the other. The child, feeling the nipple tugged from his mouth, lets out a little whimper, and Angelica’s lips open a fraction. She looks at the little frill of his cap, and his ear so perfectly and miniaturely moulded, and the crease of fat that forms behind his frail little neck as he burrows at the breast. Even from across the room she can smell him: he is warm and dry, fragrant as if he has been baked, a malty and milky little child.
Sukie rises. She puts her hand in Angelica’s; she says, ‘Come, will you not sit with us? We have all been waiting for you,’ but Angelica stands erect and apart. She remains for one moment longer, her chin up, surveying her audience, before she is satisfied by her opinion of them and walks with slow certainty to her seat. Her skirts hiss about her. Nobody moves until she has finished shaking them into place, so that not one fold will be crushed beneath her. Then she leans on her elbow to inspect Mrs Flowerday’s son.
‘I did not know you had a child,’ she said. ‘Sukie, you did not tell me there would be a child.’ Despite herself she cannot stop staring at it, the way one stares when a man is thrown from his horse, or a litter of kittens is consumed by its mother: she would look away but she cannot.
‘My husband’s house – my house – is in Braintree,’ gabbles Mrs Flowerday, ‘and Mama attended me there, but my lying-in was so fiendish boring that as soon as I was fit to travel I brought Baby a-visiting.’ The queenly Mrs Hancock does not remark upon this, so she finishes lamely, ‘And here we shall stay some weeks more, I hope.’
‘She missed her mama,’ crows Mrs Crawford. ‘She is married so short a time, dear little girl, she cannot but miss her family.’
‘And Greenwich,’ says Mrs Flowerday, ‘for I had such society in Greenwich before I married, and my husband courted me there so prettily – I was the sensation of the season – and the countryside is rotten dull. Blasted dull.’
‘Now, Caro,’ warns Mrs Crawford, but her daughter begins to chatter again, explaining that Baby is in fact no trouble on long journeys, certainly no more than a lapdog – and in fact less trouble than a lapdog since he stays where he is put – he even seems to enjoy the rhythm of the carriage, bless his dear heart, and she must beg leave to recount an anecdote of a funny expression he once made, and to describe the extraordinary smallness of his toes, and to recount the many arguments she and Mr Flowerday engaged in while deciding if it were to be William Edward or Edward William. And all the while Angelica is staring at the back of his little capped head with awful fascination. Her heart feels small and dense, as if it were dough clenched tight in a fist. She meant her dress as a charm against fear and dismay, as it always was before: she wished to be once more Angelica Neal, who prospered and was gay, but although the gown is the same it seems the lady has altered.
Still, Angelica Hancock shares with Angelica Neal the knowledge that it is better always to be fierce than to be sad, just as it is always better to fight than to run. Therefore, when Mrs Flowerday stops to draw breath, Angelica interjects:
‘Do you not find it tedious?’
Poor Mrs Flowerday’s eyes widen. ‘Tedious! Why no! Why, I …! Perhaps when you have children of your own …’
‘Who says I have no children?’
‘If you did,’ says Mrs Flowerday with triumphant finality, ‘you would not say they were tedious.’
Mrs Flowerday, for all her talk, has sharp eyes. She is herself no stranger to the Tête-à-Tête section of Town and Country magazine: she is well acquainted with what affairs this splendid woman has left behind her. And she is not so very beautiful, for all that, she thinks to herself. She looks tired for a woman of such notorious leisure. She had hoped she might be coarser in her manners and speech, but Mrs Chappell’s training is thorough and deep-ingrained: Angelica cannot be faulted in any respect of taste, or conversation, or appearance, although Mrs Flowerday had not thought it quite usual to dress up so for tea. But things may well be different in town; Lord knows it is long enough since Mrs Flowerday herself has had the pleasure of going there.
Most of all, as her child’s muscular jaw grinds down upon her nipple, and she curls her toes in her shoes to keep from crying out with the pain of it, Caroline Flowerday is watching Angelica Hancock in order to ascertain whether this is a woman who might ever tempt a man like Mr Flowerday to forget his duties. Her lovely bosom, her translucent gown, the graceful way she moves her hands in speech and the musical prettiness of her voice: is this what he would spend his money on, if he had the opportunity? Is this the sort of woman he might keep in London (for how can she be sure he does not?), in rooms furnished from the Crawford dowry? Are the ties of desire as binding as the tie of a little shared child, and of the prosperous future promised therein?
‘Surprising,’ she says, ‘that you and Mr H. have none yet.’
Mrs Hancock is silent for a moment. ‘We have only been married half a year,’ she says.
‘Half a year! It did not take me nearly so long! But then you are a little older than me.’ The baby is drifting into sleep, the movement of his lips slackening to nothing. She looks down at him proudly, and nudges his cheek, which sets him off sucking energetically again, his eyelashes brushing his cheek. ‘Look at him go! The dear little pup.’ She looks up. ‘It was a fine wedding. We had a procession all across the heath, and all the children from hereabouts waved ribbon wands, and the horses had flowers plaited into their manes. I suppose yours was splendid.’
‘In my old parish church.’ Angelica remembers the cold flagstones of St Anne’s, the names of the dead carved deep on the floor of the chancel where they stepped. ‘We felt no need to make a spectacle of our feelings.’ She wore white kid gloves: even so she felt his hand tremble in hers. It is as slim a splinter of memory as any from her childhood; it feels nothing to do with the life she has now.
‘But how peculiar nothing has happened,’ says Mrs Flowerday. ‘We were not a minute alone before—’
‘Now then, children come when they come,’ says Mrs Crawford, but she has taken a practical and sociable interest in the bearing of children for close to thirty years, and sees the opportunity to dispense advice. ‘I suppose this is your first marriage,’ she says with matronly authority. ‘You would be surprised how many young brides are inexperienced in these matters.’
‘Mama,’ says Mrs Flowerday warningly. ‘Do you not recall our talk this morning?’
Even Sukie puts aside her anxiety and leans forward, rapt at the escalation of the conversation.
Angelica considers. Her face is serene and lovely, but it has a rigidity to it that only her niece sees. ‘That’s so, Mrs Crawford, no man but Mr Hancock ever called me his wife. But I cannot think that inexperience is to blame. I had more men than I can keep count of, you know. And the number of babies whose beginnings I was compelled to end – well, it cannot have done me any good.’ She does not drop her face. She almost smirks as Mrs Crawford sets down her tea bowl with hands so unsteady it dances on the saucer.
‘Ah,’ says the old lady, fumbling with her handkerchief, and, ‘Ahem.’ She takes a breath, and brightens. ‘But we are all ladies together now – surely it makes no odds to me what your past transgressions might be, since you are repentant now; and as I always say, let it be God’s concern how harshly He will come to judge you, for it is not mine.’
‘I had best warn you, I am a woman of great wickedness. I was a celebrated whore for ten years,’ says Angelica triumphantly.
But Mrs Crawford is dogged in her piety. ‘It’s remarked that I am uncommon in my liberality, but those are my principles.’ She clasps her hands, returning gratefully to her topic, for she is convinced she may yet discover a helpful insight into the Hancocks’ childlessness. ‘What of your husband’s history? At his age he was surely not a bachelor!’
‘A widower,’ Angelica says.
‘Oho! Hear that, Jenny?’ Mrs Crawford nudges her sister-in-law. ‘A widower! That is something for you to think on. For all the men you missed out on the first time round will be in want of a new wife before too long.’ She chuckles and pats her hands together. ‘A widower, Mrs Hancock, a fine choice. A good steady sort of a husband, less inflamed by romantic passions, which mark my words can be more troublesome than enjoyable. His character revealed and his fortune already made, which bypasses many of the trials one comes upon in the early years of marriage.’
‘And less need of a bridal portion, which is so troublesome in broadcasting a lady’s value to the world,’ adds Mrs Flowerday.
‘Yes, a very practical choice,’ says her mother. ‘I always think second wives are more of a practical necessity; the first is the true partner.’
‘But this is the importance of a dowry,’ says Mrs Flowerday. ‘’Tis what yokes man and wife equally. When my Edward has one of his foolish ideas, I tell him, sir, do you recall through whose beneficence this will be paid for? That gives him pause.’ The child is flopping in her arms like a drunk. She passes him back to her aunt to be winded, and tucks her breast back into her gown. Thus straightened, she smiles at Angelica. ‘Of course, when a gentleman is as wealthy as your Mr Hancock, there is nothing to stop him from taking any bride he chooses, however obscure or poorly thought of.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Nothing but propriety.’
‘I hope you do not mind my saying so,’ says Angelica kindly, ‘for I am sure you mean nothing by it, but, Mrs Flowerday, your choice of conversation gives the impression of small-mindedness. Spiteful, some might read you. Perhaps even vulgar. Which I am sure cannot be the effect you intended.’ She squeezes Mrs Flowerday’s hand. ‘I tell you this as a friend,’ she says, ‘and as a woman just a little older than you.’
Mrs Crawford shuffles contentedly in her seat, pleased that a lady so metropolitan would condescend with her insights. Jane Crawford, mopping a milky rime from her charge’s lips, says nothing still, but for the first time a great smile springs across her lips, until she buries her face in the child’s soft neck and it is hidden again.
‘And now,’ says Angelica, ‘has Baby run through his entire repertoire or is there more? I’ll gladly sit and watch him for another hour – his performance is quite equal to anything I saw Garrick do – but if there is to be a song or a tragic piece next, I may need a short interlude in which to compose myself.’
‘And what would you have me do?’ she asks Sukie after their guests have departed, at speed and with many lamentations. ‘There is no point in my trying to be what I am not; I am a fraud and all can see it. Why would I not conduct myself as I know how?’
‘You were very rude,’ says Sukie.
‘Pish posh! They would have me stare at a baby for two hours. What was there to be done?’
‘Think of your husband, the impression that this gives …’
‘Oh, my husband!’ She curls her lovely lip, the most Angelica Neal expression she has shewn for a year. ‘Why am I always to think of him when he never thinks of me? Miss Sukie, if he did not intend to give a certain impression, he ought not to have married me in the first place.’
‘I’ve no argument to that,’ says Sukie. ‘You never got him under false pretences.’ She feels rather excited at the prospect of real glamour residing in this house; the meek Mrs Hancock who arrived in Deptford at last restored to her splendour. ‘I will look over the books,’ she says, ‘and find the wages for a proper hairdresser. ’Tis criminal that you are attended by nobody, and do not look as you ought.’
‘Oh, Sukie, Sukie, dear heart.’ Angelica kisses her face. ‘You understand me. I never felt so much myself as I did this afternoon.’
EIGHTEEN
By night-time, with her face wiped clean and her hair sheathed in its muslin cap, she feels less certain. The afternoon was as a masquerade ball: the words spoke from behind a mask may be bolder than those uttered barefaced, but this need not mean they are more honest. She stews in the bed, small and lost. By the time Mr Hancock enters it is the very dead of night, and no light whatever intrudes the room, but he has memorised his steps well. Angelica listens to him moving about; by this sound she judges he is putting his wig on its stand; by this he is removing his jacket, and then his breeches. When he comes to the bed this time, she does not pretend to be asleep. Her bravery persists; she sits up from her pillow and pins her eyes upon his shadow.
‘You are awake,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
He nods, but says no more. His silhouetted profile shows clearly his downturned mouth, his cheeks with the grim slackness one observes in a death mask. What has happened to him, that he has grown so grave and thin? He raises his arms, and the movement of his fingers tells her he is unpinning the jabot at his throat. She bides in quiet agony at how changed he is, how all his affection seems evaporated, and when he puts on his nightcap she resolves to pursue the matter.
‘Sir,’ she says.
‘Would it be different?’ She waits. She does not like this question – she does not care to hear its answer; already the weight of truth is heavy and tight in her stomach. She is glad she cannot see him. ‘If I had had the child, would things here be different?’
He pulls back in perplexion, or surprise. ‘Why. Of course. Everything would be different.’
And then he gets into the bed beside her and they say no more.
Later in the night, as dawn approaches, he stirs. Angelica’s slow breathing fills the room, in and out pacific as tides. Poor child, he thinks, but nonetheless he cannot stop thinking of the mermaid, her great voluptuous sorrow rolling over in the vat. And although his wife’s tears lie heavy still on his heart, he cannot help but go from the bed.
Why do I do this? he asks himself as he makes his way through the silent house, the air of the vast staircase dancing with secrets of its own.
Why not stay with her? Because the call to leave is so beguiling. This is how a man feels at the top of a great tower; he is afraid of the abyss beneath him, but still he must look upon it, and still step towards the parapet. He passes through the dining room and out of the glass doors onto the steps. The garden is a-rustle, the lawn a dark triangle stretching down to the white smudge of the summer house, and he strides out towards it.
He pauses a moment behind the columns of the folly to let the silence settle. Satisfied, he unlocks the little rough door that leads down to the grotto, but when it creaks open he hears most distinctly a sound that makes his ears prick up, and the bristles on his neck quiver.
A door, slammed.
It comes from inside the house. He steps backwards into the shadows, but even so he sees one window become illuminated. The glow of light travels from one first-floor window to the next, and then vanishes again.
My wife, he thinks. Perhaps she is hungry, and goes to the kitchen to find an apple or a lump of cheese. She will not come out here. He hunches like a gravestone. He can hear his own breathing fearful loud, and the trembling and ringing of the vat. Do not come out here, he orders Angelica. Do not, do not.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 38