When Mr Hancock makes no move to help her, the dark-haired lieutenant reaches down to take Angelica’s hand. ‘Do not trouble yourself,’ she snaps, ruffled as a cat who has fallen off a fence.
‘Forgive me,’ says Mr Hancock, leaping belatedly to her assistance, but what with her great heavy skirts and her stays which prevent the necessary bending, she flounders there, and rises not at all. The men stand in a semicircle watching, one giggling helplessly, while she slumps on the floor, the merchant heaving on her arm with much perspiration.
After some minutes of this the lieutenant steps in again – ‘You must permit me’ – and he taking one of Angelica’s arms and Mr Hancock the other, they hoist her to her feet in a moment.
‘She is launched!’ cries one of the men.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ says another, and they rollick away with a great huzzah.
‘Are you hurt?’ says Mr Hancock, but Angelica, shaking out her skirts and fluffing out her hair, is only rageful.
‘Close the door, for pity’s sake,’ she snaps. ‘Do not make me any more of a spectacle.’
‘Am I to stay?’ he ventures, but she is too busy patting herself down to answer, grumbling.
‘And who invited them, after all, such horrid tars? This vulgar sort of revelry would never have been tolerated in this establishment ten years back; the company is not what it was –’ and at this moment she shoots him a look of such particular venom that he supposes he ought to leave her alone. Then again he is afraid to be out in that thronged room unescorted. Choosing to take his chances on a ruffled woman over a supercilious crowd, he shuts the door – bolts it for good measure – and they are alone in the mermaid’s grotto.
In fact, it is very well done. Mrs Chappell has somehow contrived to bring in an array of great glass fish tanks, with gilt chasing, full of green water and pearly fish. There are green and blue shades on all the candles, so what little light there is has a queer underwater coolness to it, and the walls are swagged and draped with raw silk and strings of pearls. The mermaid itself is raised up on a plinth, surrounded by branches of red and white coral, and the flickering candlelight gives the impression of movement, as if the coral were fluttering and the infant mermaid squirming. Somewhere in the room, a little fountain is splashing.
And then there is the singing.
He sees no girls in the room but their voices weave around him in a high wordless melody, as if all the sirens had banded together to lure him to their shores. The noises of the party without melt into oblivion.
‘Oh,’ says Angelica. She has composed herself, and her eyes are upon the crooked little mermaid. ‘So this is what they look like.’ In the shifting light she is soft around the edges.
When she becomes aware of his gaze, she smiles as if she has never been put out in the first place. ‘Do you like it?’ she asks.
‘I do,’ he says, and she advances upon him across the room, her silks sighing.
‘Come,’ she says, ‘I wish to look more closely,’ and taking his hand leads him to stand before the creature. Although he affects a face of grave study, he has looked upon the mermaid far too many times to apprehend anything new about it, and his eyes rest upon it without seeing it at all. He cannot think, with her so close to him – and leaning in ever closer – of anything besides her. Every single nerve in his fingers aches and sings as she caresses them; she is so close that her arm presses against his, and the warmth of her body, the suggestion of her skin, is a shock to him. The invisible singing rises gently, and he thinks, this is not the music of mermaids but of angels. She puts her face up to his, very serious, so pretty that he wishes to press his lips to the little crease between her brows. But he does not move. Her lips are just parted; her eyes seek his.
With her body so near to him, he already feels he is about to die, but then she makes a little wriggle and her stays slip down her bosom. Either she is very expert in what she does, or there is an ingenuity to her clothes that is lacking in other women’s, for she does it in a single swift movement and all the while looking perfectly at him. She only exposes another inch of herself, but her breasts strain against the band of chenille flowers, and the smell of vanilla and roses rises into the room, along with another smell, what he thinks must be that of her own body, something like that sharp and flowery scent that rises off the skin of orchard fruit – plums or peaches – a sun-warmed fragrance, a kind of promise. There is no slackness to what he sees of her breasts; they are full and pale, seamed with one or two pearly lines, quivering just fractionally in time with her pulse.
‘Here,’ she whispers and, lifting his hand, places it squarely upon her bosom. For a moment, his bare skin upon hers, he is lost. Her breasts are pressed together by her stays, faintly damp with her sweat, and they yield with a little spring to his fingertips. If he were bolder he would run hands over them, and press and squeeze and fill his palms with them, but he is quite simply petrified.
He stands stock-still, as if a small boy caught in the act of misdemeanour, but he cannot remove his hand from her body. She is as soft as – well, what is there to compare it to? She is not soft like velvet or silk, nor like lambswool. She is soft as human flesh, that is all, fair warm skin blanketed over a vale of womanly fat, and somewhere deep underneath it all are her tendons and muscles, her hot blood, her pumping heart.
‘My soul!’ he whispers, and there is a little falter in the singing, comparable to a giggle.
In the swimming green light she looks up into his face with a peculiar expression: mischief or adoration.
‘What I wish you to do to me …’ she whispers, and it is all he can do to control himself.
They press together a little longer. Her hair drifts around both their faces in the upgust from the candles. The mermaid hunches darkly under its glass dome, but neither one of them is thinking of it.
‘But the night is very young,’ Angelica is murmuring, interspersing her words with little wet kisses on his lips and his face. Her kisses are firm and delicate, like her mouth: he can feel the particular arch of her upper lip even as she presses it against him. ‘We have already spent too long locked up together, when others are hammering to take their place in here.’ She takes his hand again. ‘Will you rejoin the party with me?’
He wants to pull her back to him: he puts his hands on her waist and cannot help then but to run them down her back and over her hips, up to her breasts; there is something compelling about the shape of her body, its symmetry, its dimensions, the very glide of her, that he thinks he could spend all day touching and never tire of.
‘Come along,’ she says again, tugging him towards her. He is hard as a yardstick.
‘May I not …?’ he asks. ‘Here, where it is private. I could be quick.’
‘I daresay you could,’ and there is a little flicker of he-knows-not-what in her eyes. Perhaps he has mis-spoke, but he has always had the impression they are grateful when a gentleman is quick. She pulls away, as if it is easy for her. ‘Outside there is a party all for your sake. Mrs Chappell has laid on many splendid things that you have not yet seen – and I wish to dance.’ She is unbolting the door but before she throws it wide she looks up at him one more time with those wide eyes of hers, and says, ‘When you take your pleasure with me, sir, I mean to take my time about it.’
He sees a flash of white teeth upon her lower lip. Then she is all sunny mischief. ‘Come!’ she says. ‘The entertainment begins.’
FOURTEEN