The food is light and delicate, the sort girls eat so that they might have the strength to dance all night: syllabubs on cold slates; liqueur-flavoured jellies, and strawberries and melons and millefruits; and a great heaped centrepiece of butter-yellow pineapples, whose flesh both fresh and roasted perfumes the room and draws a crowd eccentric in its composition. Even its members are surprised by one another, having reasonably expected that a careful hostess takes pains to segregate her guests for the sake of delicacy, but they concede without a word spoken that this is really no different from any night at the pleasure gardens, where those of all walks of life are thrown together and yet succeed in speaking to nobody outside their own sort. Besides! This is a mermaid party – a most amphibious thing – who amongst them does not have the right to witness such a marvel? In fact it might be observed that the grotto becomes a very menagerie, a Wunderkammer of all the classifications of human, who pace warily together, and watch with interest as each curiosity reveals its own habits as to feeding, and dancing, and drinking, and conversation. Shipwrights hold forth beneath the gleaming white statues and fill their pockets with thin-sliced beef sandwiches; Greenwich’s most rakish young couples are there, men and women equally adorned in flounced stocks and wafting ostrich feathers. Newly landed gentlemen whose money comes from ships or coal or cloth fall speechless in the presence of ladies whose faces once graced print-shop windows, and a needle-slim governess of a woman leads six white-clad beauties soberly amongst the trees, their little plumed dogs trotting behind. Mrs Hancock, low-born, the plaything of aristocracy and wife of a gentleman merchant, has run wantonly riot with her own address book and drawn all to her in the name of Curiosity.
There is even a rumour that the Countess of D—herself has been there – aye, truly! – in a gown much more voluminous than is her usual taste. So few attested to having seen her, and so briefly, that it can hardly be credited as fact – and yet what other small dark lady can it have been who walked slowly with Mrs Hancock down the lawn to the most secluded part of the garden, their arms around one another’s waists, their heads nodding together in sincere and private conversation?
Another visitor, nobody sees at all. There is a young man in a deep blue lieutenant’s jacket, a perfect homme-comme-il-faut, who comes on foot across the heath with his hat in his hand the better for the breeze to cool his black curls. Perhaps he hears the music, or sees the lights bobbing in the trees, but he stops at the top of the Hancocks’ drive, and looks to where it curves towards the trees. He stands there for a long time, but ventures no further, and presently he replaces his hat on his head and turns away.
But what of the promised mermaid? Well!! There is the great joke. For nobody could forget that celebrated, hideous Hancock mermaid that so dominated the early part of the season; who amongst them had not gathered about the crooked-limbed sharp-toothed little form, or gazed upon its likeness in pamphlets and papers and posters? And who amongst them had not shuddered at it? Clever Mrs Hancock knows that the beauty of truth has only a limited appeal, and that repulsion’s special frisson is best left to the freak show. Instead she has given her guests the mermaid that they most desire: it is there in the lustrous glim of her mussel-shell grotto and the illuminations that writhe and flicker across its walls, in its dancing fish-tanks and fizzing wine and the strange phosphorescent sparks that swirl in the green-lit pool. The vulgar quotidian is given no quarter here: all is beautiful and hazed as a dream.
The shortest night of the year never passed more quickly. And that summer’s morning, as the last carriage straggles away across the heath, Mr and Mrs Hancock lock the door of their grotto with a sigh.
‘It could not have gone better,’ says Mr Hancock.
‘No, indeed.’ Angelica’s hair is awry and her face smudged. ‘I can scarce believe that I managed such a thing.’
‘I can believe it,’ says her husband stoutly, closing his eyes to the milky morning breeze. ‘You and I, together – we succeed at what we please. And yet,’ he frowns, ‘after I have spent a fortune getting mermaids, the people were most pleased by no mermaid at all.’
‘Huh,’ she nudges him and takes his hand, ‘they’d not have liked the real one much, would they? A grotto – a light show – strings of pearls – if that don’t amount to a true marvel I do not know what does. We live in a modern age, sir: the things that are wrought may be quite as extraordinary as those that are found.’
Mr Hancock turns his face to the house, its stucco lit pink by the dawn. ‘Are you ready for breakfast?’ he asks, and they walk hand in hand up the hill, the ghosts running happy about them.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel was coaxed into the world by Rebecca Stott and Henry Sutton, who in the face of all my qualms insisted it must exist. Richard Beard and Katy Darby, educators after the Jean Brodie school, led me out.
I was lucky to start writing The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock in the company of wonderful first readers in my Novel History cohort, as well as Sarah Young whose patience and kindness were second to none, and Sophia Veltfort, who first commanded the mermaid to speak. Charlotte Bearn, Robyn Drummond, and Adam Rowles all bore me up with their enthusiasm as early readers of the full manuscript, and Dani Redd combed over it with a keen yet sympathetic eye I never deserved. Paula Cocozza’s advice and camaraderie were real gifts as I prepared to send it into the world, and Rose Tomaszewska was generous with her friendship, trade secrets and cheerleading from beginning to end.
I have had the startling good fortune to be encouraged and supported by truly wonderful institutions. My MA was made possible by the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Prize scholarship: the team behind the MsLexia First Novel Prize bolstered my confidence, and I will never forget the immense joy and privilege of attending the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers’ Award. That accolade made everything feel possible, and I am proud to be a part of Deborah’s legacy. Every writer knows what a fight it can be to make the act of writing possible. I couldn’t have done it without Jan Sutton, a wonderful employer and sounding-board while I began this novel; Sue Hill, who created work for me when I had none; Penny Freeman and Peter Hudson who lent me their cottage one blissful summer; and Nicky, Eve, Lene, Niall, Rachinta, Holly and Séamus, in whose box room I wrote eighty thousand words.
I wish I could give individual thanks to every historian I read during my research. If I lived and breathed the eighteenth century, it was only because you made it possible: your work gave me treasures every day, rewarded my enquiry and encouraged my empathy. However, I must particularly thank Dr Margaret R Hunt who took time to answer my pretty rookie questions, and Fiona Sinclair, who unfailingly filled me with knowledge, enthusiasm, and cake.
Thank you Karolina Sutton, a dauntless agent and wonderful companion on this adventure; and my editor Liz Foley for her patience, insight, and rock-solid support. I could not have chosen better in either case: thank you, thank you, for always seeing the book I wanted this to be.
If my parents had not made me a reader, I’d be no sort of writer at all. I must furthermore thank my mother for instilling in me these unorthodox tastes, and my father for making me proud to be a smart girl. Mandy Lee Jandrell always took me seriously as a maker, which meant the world. Thank you Oscar for every now and then – entirely unbidden – assuring me I was a good writer. You are a good brother. Agnes, my love: books will take you everywhere.
Thank you to Jamie for all the times my writing came before our relationship. If you thought that was the wrong order, you never let on. I can’t tell you how proud I am to have made such a match: my heart is full.
Finally, to Simon and Maddi. They had faith in me before I had any in myself, and I am delighted to dedicate this novel to them.
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Copyright © Imogen Hermes Gowar 2018
Cover illustration and design © Suzanne Dean, incorporates eighteenth-century textile and pattern details © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Imogen Hermes Gowar has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2018
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 43