The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

by Imogen Hermes Gowar

  ‘When we receive a report, we must—’

  ‘I do not know when it was that your people began paying any attention to reports concerning me,’ she sighs, and reaches for Mrs Hancock’s handsome invitation. ‘Now, look, we have so many engagements – a party in two days’ time that I am loath to miss – d’ye remember this girl of mine, Mrs Neal as was? Now her life took a peculiar turn. I am most anxious to know how she has made out; if this nonsense of yours holds me up I shall be most vexed. A mermaid party, now what do you think that can be? Her husband has a mania for them; I wonder what sort of freakish beast they have acquired this time. It cannot be that mummified waif they touted about before, for I hear Prinny threw that on the fire.’

  ‘These reports—’ ventures Mr Trevithick.

  ‘It was stuffed with sawdust all along, you know,’ muses Mrs Chappell. ‘But then so is Mrs Fitzherbert’s head, and it has not put him off her.’

  ‘Madam, the things that are being said of you—’

  ‘Oh, you will never prove a thing,’ she says, reading the invitation again with a smile of pride. Mr Trevithick steps aside to draw her attention to the flagellation machine which sits in the corner awaiting its weekly polish. ‘That signifies nothing,’ she says.

  ‘And the numerous women and very likely several men we shall find running about upstairs in a state of undress.’

  ‘Hardly ever in the morning,’ she says. ‘You ought to have come after six on a Tuesday if you had wanted a compelling argument for moral correction.’

  ‘There ain’t a drawer in the house that hasn’t a cundum in’t,’ he says. Upstairs his men can be heard marching from room to room, punctuated by cries of irritation from the disturbed girls. ‘Now, Bet,’ he says half jestingly, ‘I warn you it may be serious this time.’

  ‘I do not believe you,’ she chuckles, turning back to her breakfast. ‘I have friends who will never allow that to happen.’

  He shakes his head, and is very truly sorry. ‘You must have angered somebody.’

  ‘Angered? Never! They are all faithful visitors.’ She still chuckles, but her countenance assumes the colour and humidity of cold pease pottage. ‘But – we have always had an agreement.’

  ‘The wheel turns … That ugliness at Twelfth Night when the girl of yours ran away – and you would give no compensation.’

  ‘Well, why should I have? She was under their care when she went missing. If there were any justice in the world, ’twould have been them compensating me. She was one of my best,’ she says with some regret. ‘Could truly have been something – an exotic of her kind does not appear more than once in a blue moon. Not that she would have been taken up by anybody so very important – not that any aristocracy would pledge his troth to a lady of her complexion – but she was a valuable asset nonetheless, Mr Trevithick.’

  ‘Well, that’s as maybe, but it don’t do to get on the wrong side of people of that sort.’

  Mrs Chappell is shaking her head in wonder. ‘I cannot credit it,’ she says. ‘Thirty years I have been at this address. We are a beloved institution.’ She turns in her chair, as best she can without disturbing her foot. ‘What is become of this city?’

  ‘Ah, it’s not what it was.’ He tuts and lights his pipe. ‘Have a bite to eat, Bet, you might as well.’

  Aloft, a shriek, a crash and a bellow, followed by sounds of pursuit. Young Kitty is shortly borne into the room, swiping and squirming in a manner perfectly commensurate with her feline name, by a warden whose wig has been knocked off and who sports on his brow a bleeding gash. ‘She hit me!’ he cries. ‘Brought a clothes rail down on my head, so she did!’

  ‘Kitty!’

  The girl brings her lips back in a snarl. ‘I’ll not let them hurt you.’ When she is set down she darts to Mrs Chappell’s side and clings fiercely to her hand.

  ‘There, there. You are a good girl.’ Above there are sounds of further struggle; thuds and scampering, and the curses of the men. ‘Saints alive, they’ll do somebody a mischief. Call them off, call them off,’ she says to Mr Trevithick. ‘Tell them I demand it.’ She gives Kitty’s shoulder an affectionate shake. ‘They are bound to be upset; they love the seaside.’

  He ventures upstairs and the furore first escalates, then abates. When he descends again with his men, they drive before them four of Mrs Chappell’s girls in various stages of sullen undress, their gowns ripped, their hair tousled, and their bosoms heaving with the exertion of their fight. ‘That’s the lot of them,’ says one of the officers with considerable pride, ‘along with a gentleman wearing only a pair of stays. Ought we to bring him in?’

  ‘What are you about?’ asks Mrs Chappell, jabbing her fork at the girls. ‘Fighting so!’

  ‘Biting, screaming, throwing chairs …’ chips in Mr Trevithick.

  ‘Oh, but they left off soon enough. Twenty years ago they would have torn a man limb from limb by now. You’re soft,’ she says to her girls.

  ‘When Lucy Fletcher coshed the gentleman with a rolling pin!’ Mr Trevithick recalls fondly, and Mrs Chappell rocks in her seat, wheezing her appreciation.

  ‘I shall never forget it. And the night the ladies of Mrs Scott’s set fire to the whole place rather than let it be taken.’ She glances at the girls. ‘Now that is a course of action I do not advise.’

  ‘The quality’s not what it was,’ agrees Mr Trevithick. ‘The young ladies now got no spirit in them.’

  ‘Well, that’s the fault of the gentlemen. They demand good manners. Refinement. How would I sustain a cohort of screaming hell-bitches if nobody’d ever pay me for ’em?’

  ‘Ah, ’tis a sorry time for whoring. Not like our youth.’

  ‘We’ll not see those days again. But I’ve kept you long enough,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to do your job.’ She offers her wrists and Mr Trevithick manacles them very gently before her, with so much slack as to curtail her movements very little indeed.

  ‘Not too tight? No? Not rubbing?’

  ‘Very comfortable. I’m much obliged to you. Come, girls, help me.’ One of her white-clad mob stoops to lift her bad leg gently from its stool; another comes to her chair to help her rise. Mr Trevithick offers his arm and Mrs Chappell seizes it with both hands and hauls herself up, all the blood in her face so that her eyes fairly pop.

  ‘Is he taking you away?’ asks Kitty, most afraid.

  ‘Oh, do not take alarm. The gentleman is only doing his duty, and once justice is served we should go unmolested by it for a good long time. Confound it; I hate to be in court, all the mob crowding in to look upon one, throwing their orange peels and making up their dreadful ditties. If I had aspired to entertain so I should have taken to the boards. Well, if I am to be looked at, I shall need my rouge. Fetch it, Kitty.’

  ‘Anything for your comfort?’ asks Mr Trevithick. ‘It may be a long day.’

  ‘Aye, of course. My cushion too, Kitty, and my pills, and my book. There’s a good girl.’ She squeezes the child’s hand with her little shackled claw. ‘I shall be out within the day, you may depend on it.’

  As Mr Trevithick guides her out of the breakfast room he says, ‘’Tis a shame, Bet, that it’s come to this. I hope you are not detained too long.’

  ‘Ah, I shall be out again in a twinkling,’ she says. ‘And I am glad it was you who came for me; I have not seen you in a great long time. Tell me, how does Mrs Trevithick?’

  I have been borne a great distance. This dull thud of nothing encloses me yet, but somewhere above the water is the burble and twitch of animal life. I am crushed here in this egg – I long to expand, and to rush, and to leap, oh! I strain – and I listen. And I am still. And I turn over, the better to feel their voices and movements quiver upon my being.

  Out there, souls flicker. And I would call out to them, if they can hear me: come hither, come hither. Touch me again with your speaking. The hectic crowded feeling of being: I would drink it all in. Brimming with things that swell, and make me flip over on m
yself: elation and jealousy and spasms of love. The sensation I know is the one from the sea, when I jostled among and beside and through and about a chorus of knowings that were all my own. The drowned ones who slipped down through the water breathed out globes of grief and rage, which flew up towards the air; we shivered at their passing.

  There is the thud of a heart that attracts me especially. A young one – I know this sort – all wondering like the dark-eyed calves that totter into streams; an ebullient soul which might expand vastly if it were not constrained. I like this young and joyful voice upon me, smooth as milk. Come here, I call, come here, come closer.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Pilloried!’ repeats Mrs Chappell, clinging to Mr Trevithick’s arm. ‘I cannot credit it – sincerely I cannot. What have I done to deserve this?’

  The constable shakes his head. ‘A very usual punishment, Bet.’

  ‘Aye, for some! Lady so-and-so, with her gambling den – she did not get the pillory. She is too good for it, and yet I am not?’

  ‘Judges now-a-days – no sense, Bet.’

  ‘And younger than they used to be! Did you mark that?’ She shakes her head as they descend the steps of the court with agonising slowness. ‘Why was the fine not enough for them?’

  ‘They want to make an example of you. Keep the others in check. You must own that it is your turn. I have done what I can, and rushed it through – if we go now there will be no time for a crowd to gather. And then you are at liberty to go to your party.’

  ‘As if I shall still be inclined to.’ At the foot of the stairs Mrs Chappell must pause to regain her breath. ‘A shame,’ she wheezes at length, ‘to make such a spectacle of an old woman! To mock her!’ She allows herself to be led to Mr Trevithick’s carriage, and expounds breathlessly as he and his men heave her in. ‘Aye, that is what crowds like – to pelt a poor chained-up old woman with filth. What will my girls say? ’Twill break their hearts in two.’

  ‘Now, it may not be so bad,’ says Trevithick, taking his seat beside her. ‘You don’t know; you may have a kind crowd.’

  Mrs Chappell curls her lip. ‘Not these days. They’re a nasty mob, this generation. Look at America. We are all brutes deep down, they say; well, some folk seem to have given up hiding it.’

  ‘Do not fret. Go with dignity – do your time – ’twill all be over.’

  The carriage doors are closed and it moves off. It is not the smooth ride Mrs Chappell is accustomed to; she wobbles on the seat and winces at her many pains. Her little hands scrabble at Mr Trevithick’s cuff. ‘I cannot do it,’ she whispers. ‘I cannot stand all those hours, locked up like they must have me,’ and he nods sadly, knowing this to be the truth.

  ‘Well, you need not,’ he says. ‘You may lie down for it. Can you manage that? To lie down for the three hours?’

  She expels a juddering lungful of air. ‘I am loath to. But I can.’

  ‘There’s your spirit. There’s your dignity.’ Mrs Chappell is to be pilloried at Charing Cross; as the carriage inches along the crush of Swallow Street, more passers-by turn to stare, and indeed the traffic is so slow that one man, on foot, keeps alongside them for some time without breaking into a jog; he scowls through the window at Mrs Chappell and mouths words that, to judge by his expression, are not complimentary.

  ‘We should have travelled more discreetly,’ says the abbess. ‘This was bound to happen.’

  ‘I had not thought any body would know you,’ says Mr Trevithick, and he pulls the blind down.

  ‘If you know me, they know me,’ she snaps. ‘Besides, any woman they see escorted to the pillory, they will draw their own conclusions. Hypocrites!’ she exclaims. ‘Who let their own daughters starve almost to death, or put them in cruel marriages, or slake their lust upon them most unnaturally. To think I do any worse by them. ’Tis an insult! The girls that come to me – and, mark me, their own parents bring them often enough – suffer worse abuses in their own homes than they ever will with me.’

  ‘Now, but not all parents are bad parents! You must understand their outrage …’

  A muted thump without; somebody has brought their fist upon the window, but provoked more by opportunity than strong principle. The groom calls, ‘Hi, no more of that! My horses will take fright.’ And there are apologies, diminishing as the vehicle moves onward. Mrs Chappell groans.

  ‘At moments such as this I feel my years,’ she says. ‘Had I the money I’d retire tomorrow.’

  Mr Trevithick laughs. ‘I think you’ve enough, dear lady!’

  ‘Enough for today. One can never be certain of the future – and who have I to depend on but my own self?’ The road widens and the carriage passes beneath the blind eyes of some dead king, mounted for ever on his horse. A great hammering on the body of the carriage makes them both leap from their skins. ‘Heavens! How dare they!’

  Mr Trevithick raises the blind an inch and, having peeped out, immediately reels back.

  ‘What is it?’

  He mops his brow. ‘There are a great many of them out there,’ he says faintly. The whisper has spread that a monstrous bawd has been apprehended, aye, that squelch-gutted sow who in her youth turned the heads of half of London and who, in her vile dotage, pimps the virginity of decent girls to fill her own coffers. Not only that, but this superannuated harridan, no good now for rutting or for childbearing and thus superfluous to society, has the sympathetic ear of politicians (and even more sensitive parts of them besides), and an establishment where gadabout princes fritter away the allowances paid from the pocket of John Bull himself.

  ‘Well, what’s to be done?’

  ‘Nothing, madam, nothing – they will tire, I am sure.’

  ‘A disproportionate response,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘As if there were a man among them who had not paid for it once in his life, or a woman who has not taken money.’

  But a thundering breaks out on either side of the carriage, and all about it, and it shudders and rocks this way until it is fairly fit to overbalance. Men’s hands slam against the window glass, and their voices are loud and harsh: ‘Bitch! Bitch! We know what you are.’

  ‘Can we not drive on?’ Mrs Chappell has drawn her manacled hands up to her face, clinging at her shawl.

  ‘We are blocked in,’ he says. ‘There is nowhere to go.’ But because he is more heroic, or less wise, than he looks, he opens his door and leans forth. ‘Gentlemen!’ he cries. ‘Gentlemen, please! I see that you are angry.’

  ‘Give us the woman!’ shouts one man.

  ‘Give us the bawd! She wants setting to rights.’

  ‘Now, gentlemen, I – I – I – do you see that she is being at this very moment brought to justice? Get back – get back – let us pass—’

  But a great howling and jeering and booing rises up. The men’s faces are purple with rage, and they are men of every sort – not only toothless and scabbed beggars but journeymen in decent clean shirts, and clerks, and fathers with their children on their shoulders, shaking their fists and shrieking along. ‘No justice! A fine – a moment’s glimpse on the pillory – what’s that to her?’

  ‘You protect her!’

  ‘Who protects our daughters?’

  ‘Please! I must assure you—’

  ‘Let’s hear no more of this,’ says a young man standing nearest, and he knocks Mr Trevithick down into the dirt. Then all the mob crushes about the open door of the carriage, a hydra of snarling spitting yellow-teethed faces that burst in upon Mrs Chappell, and their hands seize upon her.

  At first she does not move much, for her great weight keeps her pinned to the seat. Merely, as they drag at her, her clothes are superficially rent. ‘Off!’ She slaps at their hands. ‘Begone!’ But first their force is such that she topples sideways onto the seat, and then it is a small matter of seizing at her wherever she can be seized – her elbow, her upper arm, in the finger-hold ribs of her stays – and although she struggles, she is hauled out into the street.

  She falls immediately to
her knees, her hand palm down in the warm shit of some lately herded creature; struggling to her feet she cannot put weight on the swollen one; she grimaces but does not make a sound. There are razor blades in her ankle, she feels, pins riven deep into the joint of her toe, and every part of her body has men’s hands on it, who shove and drag and pinch.

  ‘To the pillory with this fat bitch,’ somebody cries, and it is with their cruel assistance that she rises; she stumps and totters like a captured bear, swinging her head first this way, then that. ‘Move!’ and somebody slaps her about the head. ‘Faster!’ but her thighs obstruct one another, her lungs burn, she cannot breathe. Somebody boxes her ears, and off comes her wig, to the roar of the crowd. Her scalp gleams through meagre wisps of grey hair.

  ‘Have mercy,’ she mumbles, ‘have pity. I have done nothing.’

  But they are a great glee of noise; they pummel and shove her off the road and into the square. More and more are following now, women too, with their babies on their breasts, cheering and whooping.

  ‘We are taking her to the pillory! Come, come, see her punishment.’ A rotten plum is flung; it bursts upon her temple into a tawny sludge, and its vinegared juice drips down into her eye.

  Somewhere far away Mr Trevithick is shouting, ‘No, no! I demand you cease this at once!’ but it is to no avail. The first thing being flung signals for a veritable hail of objects: apples clout her, an egg explodes into shards upon her shoulder; there are pebbles, and her blood is gummed upon her. A flower-girl’s rush basket pounds her temple; it smells of violets but sends her staggering, and she is afraid. She cannot control the momentum of her own feet; her limbs untrained in flight are heavy and weak, and will not do as she bids them. All about her is a rage of laughter, and darkness intrudes on the corners of her vision; there are white sparks dancing before her eyes; her chest is rent by sawing breaths which seem to bring her no air at all. And her foot, oh, her foot, the fire in it is white hot, and it will find no purchase and support none of her weight. She stumbles, slips, is face down, eye to eye with the toes of many shoes. She has ceased to think, only to do; her blood is composed of pure panic.