‘Of course, of course.’ She clasps her little rat-hands impatiently. ‘You are not handing it over for nothing. I shall hire it from you.’
And now what? How will he know whether the sum she suggests is fair? In his daily work he has a nose for these dealings; the value of what he is selling is deep in the marrow of his bones, for has he not grown up all his life with it? Might it not reasonably be assumed that when his mother was heavy with him, and his father climbed into the bed beside her, his talk was of chinaware and investment, favourable winds and promising deals?
He never spoke of mermaids.
‘Two hundred pounds,’ she says. ‘For a week. You may name your dates; I shall in any case require time to prepare.’
Silence.
‘I have a question,’ he says.
‘Please.’ She bares her teeth, yellow as old ivory; they want a good rub with lemon juice. ‘Ask me.’
‘Since it pays to be clear on these matters.’ He drums his fingers on the table. ‘You are a procuress.’
‘Yes,’ she says. She does not blink; she does not turn her face away. The girls are still as they ever were.
‘And yours is what is called a house of ill repute.’
‘Nobody calls my house that. I have an excellent reputation.’
He is thinking rapidly; he is so far from what he was a fortnight ago.
‘Was that your question?’ she asks.
‘No. I have one more.’ He narrows his eyes. He has heard of the equivocating ways of elves and witches, and this woman – although she is most decidedly of this world, for what other would have her? – strikes him as having the same talent to tempt men into unknowing bargains. ‘Once your week is done,’ he says, ‘the mermaid is still mine, and you will lay no other claim to it?’
‘That’s so. Two hundred pounds.’
Since nobody else in London is likely to supply her with a mermaid, he does not hesitate. ‘Three hundred,’ he says.
It is difficult to tell whether her wheeze is one of surprise or the natural spasm of her troubled lungs. She presses her handkerchief to her mouth, her thin lips purpling. ‘Three hundred pounds,’ she says, ‘very well. That is agreeable to me.’
‘Ah, no,’ he says sorrowfully. ‘I work in guineas.’
Her eyes are very sharp upon his face before she begins to grin. ‘We understand one another, you and I. We are cut from the same cloth.’
I sincerely believe we are not, he thinks. You chose this. I am only following what Fate has thrown my way. But he smiles and shakes her hand warmly.
TEN
After taking the girls for their daily ride around the park (‘It is healthful, and it is instructive. If it proves also to be effective advertising, that is all to the good’), Mrs Chappell has made it her habit to drop in on Angelica and scrutinise her for poor decisions.
‘No trouble,’ she says as the girls lower her into her seat, ‘it is practically on our way home.’
‘If practically means utterly out of your way,’ sniffs Angelica, resentfully up betimes. She was borne home from the Pantheon not five hours earlier, her feet bruised from dancing and her voice hoarse from laughing, and now lolling in her Turkish wrap turns her peevish attention to the Tête-à-Tête page of Town and Country Magazine On the table a china pot of chocolate keeps warm over its flame, and the dresser is loaded with vases of peonies and tulips: these heavy fragrances, the one earthy, the other airy, more or less conceal the sour hint of piss that emanates from a gilt cage of snow-white mice. They sleep all in a tussle, their raspberry-pip eyes closed, twitching and squeaking in their mouse-dreams. It is a day of great sunshine again. The shadows of pigeons flicker across the walls, and the open window lets in the hiss of the breeze through the trees in Soho Square.
Angelica, pale and creased, feels it all as an assault; the light too bright, the girls too ebullient. ‘How can I make a success of myself when you do not allow me my rest?’ She squints over her magazine. ‘Oh, here is our Bel, look,’ she says, shaking the creases from smudged likenesses of Mrs Fortescue and her noble lover. ‘Heaven forfend we might be allowed to forget her for one moment. A wonder, ain’t it, that the press are so disgusted by this to-do and yet continue to devote whole pages to it.’
‘She has done well for herself,’ Mrs Chappell nods.
‘And so will I,’ says Angelica, not without pugnacity. The blackest and hairiest and plumpest of the dogs, who had lain meekly with his nose between his paws, springs at once to his feet and utters a yip of warning.
‘There, now, Fox does not like your tone,’ says the abbess, hauling him onto her lap and tussling his tufty face. ‘I meant nothing by it. In fact, I have a task for you on that score.’
The girls, who sleep eight hours a night and know better than to touch the Madeira they pour out for their visitors, are devoid of languor, rustling and nudging, whispering, ‘Oh, tell her! Tell her! Tell her!’
Angelica stretches. The sunlight glows rosy through her fingertips. ‘What have you to tell me?’
‘I have secured for us the most remarkable spectacle in London. To be displayed for one week only at my house. The strangest freak of nature I ever saw.’
‘And you bedded Chesterfield.’
‘You must have heard about it,’ says Polly. ‘The veriest oddity. ‘’Tis in all the papers.’
‘Oh! It must be the pig that can do sums.’
‘The pig may be a marvel at reading minds, but until it achieves mastery over its own bowels I cannot allow it on my Carrara again,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘We are all very disappointed.’
‘Guess again,’ trills Elinor.
‘How should I know?’ She groans and wedges her fists into her eyes, but the girls are gazing at her expectantly. ‘Very well. I suppose it is some sort of creature.’
‘It is!’ they rejoice, and Kitty rocks in silent joy.
‘Why must you make such noise?’ She rolls over on the chaise and wedges her face into the cold cushions. ‘Why cannot you be still and leave me be?’
‘But you have almost discovered it,’ says Elinor blithely: in her life before her fall she was a dogged smaller sister, and the habits come back to her with little prompting. ‘Think of a creature. A magical creature.’
‘A unicorn, then,’ Angelica mumbles through satin.
‘Nonsense,’ snaps Mrs Chappell. ‘A unicorn! As if a man would travel to the other side of the world for a creature native to our own land. You are not even ashamed of your ignorance.’
‘I never saw one here,’ says Angelica.
‘Because they favour virgins, and there isn’t a one of those left as far as Kent.’
Kitty cannot hold it in any more, although she is forbidden conversation: the exclamation pops from her like a cork. ‘’E’s got a mermaid, miss!’
Mrs Chappell swipes her fan at her with such ferocity she might knock the nose off her face, but Kitty, a lifelong expert at dodging blows, has already darted away.
‘A mermaid?’ repeats Angelica.
‘Yes!’
‘A horrid mermaid!’ crows Polly. ‘We have seen it.’
‘And it is nothing like what you expect a mermaid to be.’
‘Well, it is only an infant.’
‘An ugly infant,’ Kitty adds, and claps her hand over her mouth under Mrs Chappell’s glare.
‘But so were you, Kitty, and we are assured you will blossom quite beautiful.’
‘Sharp teeth like a kitten’s.’
‘And dried-up. Brown. Dead.’
‘Dead!’
They hold their saucers sedately but their eyes are very bright, and they talk faster than their mouths can keep up, at one moment all in unison and the next vying against one another. The dogs catch their energy and emerge from their skirts, scampering round the chaise with their claws clattering on the floorboards.
‘That is enough,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘It is clear you are not fit to be taken visiting. In future I shall leave you at home for more of Madame Parmentier’s lessons in walking.’