It is a curious thing that while the mermaid has been so celebrated – both on the lips of citizens and in their broadsheets – Mrs Hester Lippard has been utterly silent. In his more hopeful hours Mr Hancock permits himself to believe that perhaps news of his strange cargo has bypassed her entirely; it is more likely that her opinions are too numerous and blistering to entrust to folded white paper. By the first Thursday of the month, the day of her accustomed visit, the absence of her correspondence is as tense as the air before a summer storm.
Dreading the conversation which must follow, he takes a hansom all the way from Clerkenwell, an expense that weighs heavy on his conscience despite his new wealth, and – the traffic on the Strand being as it is – takes very little time off the journey. He knots his fingers and drums his feet on the boards as the cab rattles down Butt Lane – Mr Hancock bouncing about in the carriage like a pea in a hatbox – through a vista of gentle green fields. The new-built houses here are marvellous genteel: they stand alone, or in terraces of two or three, with large windows and an aspect across pleasant orchards and market gardens to the haze of London on the far horizon. Mr Hancock, agitated as he is, must cluck with pleasure as he passes Hancock Row, now let out to comfortable sea-captains and shipwrights and even a dancing-master at very satisfactory profit. There will be more of this sort now, he thinks. Hancock Street! The most exclusive address in Deptford.
As they approach the dockyards, the houses become smaller and more densely built; low dwellings with clapboard fronts and papered windows. A mere fifty feet from Mr Hancock’s own street, a group of shipbuilders idle at the crossing. Two are peeling off from their comrades, returning to their homes where there must be bread and bacon laid out on the table, and wives waiting to pour a draught of beer. But they linger even so, touching the brims of their hats laconically to the coachman while one finishes a story and all laugh together in their comradely circle.
The coachman makes to touch his whip to the horse’s flank, but Mr Hancock raps on the roof and leans out of the window.
‘Hold back so they may pass,’ he calls.
‘Why, they are not going anywhere,’ says the driver. ‘’Tis my right of way.’
‘Not here. They cross in their own time.’ In Deptford, traffic makes way for shipbuilders just as they say in Hindoostan the cattle are permitted to wander and lie where they will, no matter the industry about them. ‘The world depends on fine strong ships,’ Mr Hancock says cheerfully as the horse stamps and snorts on its tight rein. ‘The skill of those good men fills every belly in London.’
‘I fill my own belly,’ mutters the driver, but he waits as the good men now take their leave of one another, stopping in the middle of the road to raise a farewell hand.
‘Obliged to ye,’ they nod as they pass, betraying yet no urgency.
Mr Hancock, his elbow hooked over the window frame, catches the eye of their leader Jem Thorpe, whose masterpiece some twenty years back was the cabin of the lamented Calliope. His wig is flecked with sawdust, and he swings a string bag of the wood trimmings swept up from the workshop floor.
‘Jem!’ calls Mr Hancock. He cannot help himself; the thought of Hancock Street is too beguiling to keep a secret. ‘Hallo there! Jem! How’s trade?’
‘Steady.’ He holds his hat up to shade his eyes. ‘For now.’
‘Aye, there’s a rare thing.’ Mr Hancock does not like to leave Hester unsupervised in his house to stalk about his parlour, peering at his china and his tobacco and the spines of his books in her hawkish manner. She may by now have found her way into the counting-house and be running her finger down the entries in his ledger. He loathes her oversight of his house, but he dreads also being with her; he ought to hurry back, but a conversation such as this one – authoritative, masculine – may serve to bolster his pride before she sets about dismantling it. ‘And the Admiralty are seeing you right?’
‘Tsk! Worse than ever!’ Jem steps up conspiratorially. ‘Ever a-snibbeting over wages and perks and hours. The best shipbuilders in the world, we are; they cannot get a better job from anybody but they would not pay us what we are worth.’
‘It was always the way,’ Mr Hancock nods sagely.
‘We should have downed tools ten years ago, when Woolwich did.’
Mr Hancock shudders. ‘That was a bad time.’ His neighbours’ passionate unionising fills him with anxiety; perhaps, indeed, the order of things is not satisfactory, but order must nevertheless be maintained. If not, what is there?
‘Aye,’ says Jem, ‘very bad, to crush citizens who speak their minds rather than pay them any heed.’ He spits into the dirt at his feet. ‘It’s not only those at the top who keep things as there are – power’s a contract drawn up between all classes of men. There’ll be trouble yet, you’ll see.’
‘Well.’ Mr Hancock drums his fingers on the sill. ‘Are you averse to bringing your work ashore?’
Mr Thorpe considers. ‘House-building, is it? For you? I suppose you are speculating again.’
‘Indeed! For I have come upon some money I did not expect.’ He waits for Jem Thorpe to pursue this tantalising hint, but he only smiles, and inveigles his fingers under the edge of his wig to meet an itch. ‘Building is the best investment in our modern times,’ Mr Hancock blusters on. ‘Unlike ships, you will always find houses in the same spot you left them. You ought to do it yourself.’
‘I, a landlord? I shall have to think on that.’ One of the horses snorts and tosses its head. Jem studies his nails. ‘Very well, sir, when my work dries up you may expect me.’
‘Whenever you are at your liberty.’
‘And my team …’
‘I leave that to your discretion.’ The shipwrights are a loyal tribe; one does not prosper without his brothers. This accounts for their Wesleyan tendencies.
‘Good.’ Mr Thorpe clears his throat. ‘Thank you, Mr Hancock. This sets my mind a little easier.’
‘Think nothing of it. God go with you, Jem Thorpe.’
‘And with you, I’m sure. Good day.’ Mr Thorpe turns off down the lane, striding firmly over the rutted mud and greasy puddles, swinging his wood chips to steady himself.
‘Now drive,’ says Mr Hancock, rapping his cane on the cab ceiling, ‘for I am in a fearsome hurry. Buck up now, sir, for the love of Christ!’
And they draw up to Union Street, which was – until the arrival of the stucco palaces on Butt Lane – the very finest address in Deptford. Lintels carved with swirling foliage and precarious cherubs protrude one by one by one from uniform brick fronts in the most pleasing rhythm, but the driver remains undazzled. In London there are streets upon streets of such harmonious proportion; any common weaver or pickle-bottler might live in such a place.
‘Two shillings sixpence,’ snaps the driver.
‘And worth every farthing. Allow me to …’ He digs in his case and retrieves his tiny brass scales, true to a grain of sand and certainly to a clipped coin. ‘Now just one moment …’ He sits bolt upright in the back of the coach, furrowing his brow and willing his scales true with such fervency that his eyes start to cross.
‘I’ll take my chance on the coin,’ says the driver.
‘’Tis as much for your own benefit as for mine,’ says the merchant. ‘You earned the full payment for your troubles, did you not?’
‘I’d not argue with that.’
Eventually the balance is weighed and paid to the satisfaction of all parties, and Mr Hancock may at last quit the coach, and the coachman quit Deptford, vowing never to cross the river again in his life.
In the house, he hears his sister’s voice before he sees her.
‘A mermaid?’ she barks. She stands at the turn of the staircase, her dress shrouded in a coarse linen work-apron, her hands on her hips. ‘A mermaid! What were you thinking?’
‘How did you find out?’ he asks weakly.
‘As if it could have passed me by! Mr Lippard saw it in the Gazette the very morning it came in. Now did you know anything of this? says he. It cannot be, says I, for the Hancocks are respectable people …’
‘I know,’ he sighs. ‘Sister, it was hardly my choice.’