The expert leaves, murmuring about the precision of the dorsal; the impossibility that the spine could be so fused; the skill required to create such a creature exceeds, surely, the artfulness of Man. He has been caught out before, when he declared that infant lions arrive in the world as puffballs, and he is anxious of attracting any more derision to himself.
Every day, the takings amount to twenty pounds or more. Mr Hancock is gripped by a sort of exhilarated helplessness: events sweep him onward whether he wills it or no, and he gratefully abandons himself to Providence. He has not the requisite canniness to steer his situation, and it is with relief that he says to himself, all this before me is uncharted.
On the eleventh day, he is passing through the downstairs room of the Pineapple, when a tall and lovely mulatto girl of about seventeen approaches him, smiling. ‘Are you the mermaid man?’ she asks.
‘I – you may call me that,’ he says.
‘You are the owner of the creature we observed upstairs?’
‘That’s so.’ He is not much surprised by her complexion – she is by no means the strangest person to walk the Exchange – but he wonders what is her provenance. She is the pride of a city-trading freedman and his Kentish wife, perhaps, or a sailor’s parting gift to Wapping, or the cherished bastard of a rich gentleman. By her peculiar gentility he knows that she was not amongst the poor wretches liberated from their shackles after the American war, no longer to starve in a Virginia slave cabin but in a glorious English garret. And if she ever was enchained herself, she does not wear that memory upon her person. Her white gown is very fine, for all its plainness (and what is this mania amongst the young for plain gowns? To his mind, a beautiful face is only enhanced by a beautiful ensemble, and where is the sense in a lady dressing as if she were a dairymaid?) and she has the healthy radiance of a girl who is fed properly and rested well. Her teeth are white and all her own, her hair powdered and frizzed, her eyes warm and clever. She looks upon him without timidity, as if she never doubted her fitness to approach him.
‘My name is Polly,’ she says, extending her hand with the confidence of a duchess. ‘Miss Polly Campbell. I am sent to fetch you over, if you’ll come.’ She bobs her head in the direction of where, he now sees, a gouty old woman sits surrounded by young girls in white muslin, who are sipping little bowls of coffee and wincing with displeasure. They make a peculiar scene amongst the dusty and bewigged old gentlemen, who look askance at them with mingled irritation and intrigue, and clerks who leer, and young ladies with their chaperones, who look, and twitch their lips, and look again. ‘We do not wish to impose upon your time,’ says Miss Polly Campbell, ‘but my mistress has something to discuss with you.’
‘I have a few moments,’ he says, deciding that his life cannot very well become any stranger.
‘Good evening to you,’ says the old woman as they approach. She is fastidiously turned out in green silk, which flashes with cold fire, and she wheezes with every breath so that the fabric strains over her tight-packed bosom. She has a great powdered thatch of a wig and no neck at all to speak of, although a large jewelled cross gleams in the crease of flesh where one might once have been. She extends a hand, encased in green knitted mittens, from which her fingers emerge strangely delicate, as the paws of a little rodent; pink and plumply tapered. It is possible that she might once have been beautiful. ‘Please,’ she says, ‘sit.’
And he sits, mutely, watched by his dull comrades.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she asks.
‘No,’ he says, but while he has never seen her face before in his life, he has seen her sort, and could take a fair guess at what she is.
‘Bet Chappell is my name. I run a – ah – an exclusive club, of sorts –’ the rings on her right hand clink together as she traces the whorls of the tabletop – ‘in St James’s.’ She watches his face closely. ‘King’s Place.’
‘By the palace?’
‘So near we string our washing line upon it.’ She wheezes at her own quip. ‘Before my present situation I owned a coffee-house for many years – not much like this one, I do concede – so you see I am in the business of entertaining people.’ The girls nod, folding their hands in their laps. ‘So, Mr Hancock, I’ve a proposal for you. Your mermaid – ’tis a marvel. Quite extraordinary. We were delighted, were we not, girls?’
‘Oh yes,’ they say, ‘we never saw the like. Never did.’
‘But –’ she holds up a hand – ‘it wants displaying to its best advantage. I notice that no effort has been made in that direction.’
He protests that it hardly needs displaying; that its qualities speak for themselves; but internally he agrees that he is disappointed his great discovery sits in a bare room at the top of an unadorned staircase. And if a beautiful woman wants a beautiful dress, why would not a marvellous creature want a marvellous setting?
‘Look,’ she says. ‘I see your strategy, if it may be called that. You display it in a place like this, and you can be sure your mermaid will be seen by the greatest volume of people. And each of them pays their money, and so you become rich. Perhaps.’
He waits to hear what she says next. She has such an authority about her as is shared by his sister Hester, who has all the good sense of a man, but where Hester lacks a man’s means, it is evident that Mrs Chappell is at no such disadvantage. And so she continues. ‘But you do not control what sort of people, Mr Hancock, and as far as I can make out you have no particular plans for reaching them. You simply hope that word will spread and the public appetite for this thing will sustain itself. But how long will that last for, d’ye think?’
Captain Jones’s words return to him: ‘Four thousand a year. I am being conservative.’ What had he expected? That this popularity would last for ever? He would not expect such a thing of his tea bowls, so why this? ‘It is clear,’ he says slowly, ‘that if I wish this thing to remain popular I cannot leave it to its own devices.’
‘There you have it! And I believe that the way to do this is not to court vast numbers of people, but a few people of quality. I shall be frank with you. I wish to hire your mermaid.’
‘Ah.’ He knows already that he will say yes.
‘It is all very well to delight the masses,’ Mrs Chappell continues, ‘but why run yourself to the bone pursuing their favour? To say nothing of retaining it. A circle of much greater influence opens to you, if you would enter it, for I shall bring your mermaid not to the Many, but to the Great.’
He observes that this is not a speech that has sprung immediately into her head, but one that she has been working up for some time. So this is no whim. She has been watching and thinking since the day she first saw it. ‘And what would be the benefit to you?’ he asks.
She smiles. ‘In my line of work,’ she says, ‘the competition is unparalleled. There must always be a novelty. And nobody else has a mermaid.’
This satisfies him. ‘What is your proposal?’
She presses her fingertips together – her rings clacketing – and touches them to her lips as if she were thinking deeply.
‘A week of festivities. Soirées, viewings, you know. Exclusive beyond your ken. All the great men will naturally come by. Royalty, probably. My parties are written up in all the magazines.’ She speaks nonchalantly but her small eyes glitter in their pouches. ‘On the first night there will be a specially devised performance by my own girls, in costumes designed by me for the occasion. I have not yet lit upon the details.’
‘And you will, what, charge entry?’
She swats at the youngest of her girls, who has dared to scratch at the nape of her neck. ‘No, no. Nothing of the sort. I am not exhibiting it; merely sharing it among friends. There will be a strict guest list. No tickets for sale.’
He is bewildered. ‘But I—’