‘A hundred.’
Mr Hancock turns away; the footman watches him attentively for his next parry but none comes. He puts his head on one side; a smile of gentle bafflement splits his face.
‘Surely, sir,’ he says, ‘that’s acceptable to you?’
‘I want my mermaid back,’ says Mr Hancock, and turns to walk away, pushing out onto the street.
The footman follows with some effort, dodging amongst the convocation of businessmen and recalling to himself the next part of his script. ‘If ’tis influence you want,’ he pants, ‘connections, why, she can help you …’
This gives Mr Hancock a moment’s pause. He looks at Simeon with renewed interest. ‘Say,’ he clears his throat, ‘you move about the town a great deal, one fine house to another, do you not?’
‘I do.’ Simeon wonders at this change of tack but determines to humour the gentleman.
‘Then what would you say will be the next most fashionable neighbourhood? If a man were to build houses – if he had money, perhaps, but had never speculated in London before – where ought he to build?’
Simeon conceals a smile at this hobnail bumpkin with his threadbare wig, and endeavours to respond kindly. ‘Perhaps Snow Hill, sir, or out on the Mile-End Road: a great many sea-captains and merchants in those parts are wanting great houses.
Mr Hancock shakes his head crossly. ‘No, no no. I wish to build houses for fine people. No cits, no trade. Leisure.’
‘Forgive me. A fashionable neighbourhood in town? I would say Mary-le-Bone, north-west of here. Fine clean air. Halfway into the country already.’
‘That is where you would build?’
‘I daren’t think of such a thing.’ Simeon puffs up his chest. ‘But I shall have a tavern there some day, God willing. A fine pretty situation it is.’
‘Mary-le-Bone,’ repeats Mr Hancock. ‘Much obliged to you. Much obliged. Mary-le-Bone.’ Then he claps his hat back onto his head. ‘As to the trouble with the mermaid, I regret you are wasting your time. I’ll be wanting it back. Relay to your mistress—’
‘Mrs Neal!’ blurts Simeon. And this does stop Mr Hancock in his tracks.
‘What of her?’ He touches his unthinking fingers to his lower lip.
This is Simeon’s last card, and he is sorely aware of it. Angelica’s tools of persuasion are very different from his own, and may in this case achieve better results; either way, he will be glad to palm this trouble off. ‘She desires to see you,’ he says.
Mr Hancock shuffles his feet. ‘She …?’ He shakes his head. ‘No. No, I do not think so.’
‘Aye, yes!’ says Simeon. ‘Very eagerly. Will you not visit her this evening?’
‘I cannot.’
‘Sir, do you know how often Mrs Neal requests the company of a gentleman? Almost never. They present themselves to her. But she waits upon you. You should go to her.’
Mr Hancock sighs. ‘This is all part of your mistress’s persuasions.’
Simeon shrugs. It is a fair hand; no need to overplay it. ‘She waits upon you. Go or do not; here is where she may be found.’ He takes from inside his jacket a card upon which is already written (in Mrs Chappell’s own hand, although Mr Hancock does not know it) the address of Angelica’s rooms. ‘Take it.’ He holds it out.
Mr Hancock eyes it. ‘I have work to attend to.’
‘Take it! Take it! What harm can it do? And then I shall leave you be.’
Truly, what choice does Mr Hancock have? With shaking hand and faltering heart, he reaches out and accepts Angelica Neal’s summons.
TWENTY
Simeon, once he has watched Mr Hancock vanish amongst the crowd of his own sort, sets off apace. He is a figure of some interest, he knows, for his livery is the colour of heaven and he is half a head taller than most about him, but this – he observes – is due in part to their own slouching. If they would take some pride in themselves, he thinks, they would not look so much at me.
As it is, some jeer. ‘Young prince! Young prince!’ calls an apprentice. ‘Mr Snowball, pick up your feet!’ And yes, he must tread most scrupulously across the filth, wincing with disgust as he strides over the channel of effluvium that runs down the centre of the roadway. He passes the seafarers’ hall, within whiff of the water, with alleys here and there that afford him a glimpse of great white sails. He passes the workshops of the cordwainers, the print shops at St Paul’s, the fruit wagons of St Clement’s, and everywhere he goes, with his quick, light step and his head held high, every pair of eyes in the great population of the streets sees that here is an important man; knows by his finery that he must be the most favoured messenger of an influential house. Simeon, swatting soot from one shoulder, strides onward.
He skirts the edge of St Giles, a low sort of a place where he might come by an accident at the wrong end of a blade. He hurries past an old Lascar begging on the street, who raises the leg of his pantaloon to show a great ulcer embedded like a yolk in the twiggy bone beneath. The man is naked beneath his jacket, and his dark skin slack and meagre over his ribcage. His eyeballs have a discoloured look to them, as if they had have been dipped in tea, and the corners of his lips are pale and scurfy. Simeon himself was never a sailor, but he perceives that this man will not join another crew. ‘Brother,’ calls the Lascar, holding out his bowl, ‘brother, help me,’ but Simeon wrinkles his nose. He thinks how he might describe this later to his friends, the footmen and grocers and cabinetmakers of his own race, with their elegant wool jackets and embroidered waistcoats and powdered hair. He puzzles over what words he might use, but he knows he will say nothing. For how can it be said? And what good will speaking it do? He strides away from the Lascar without looking back, but the memory of him will crouch in Simeon’s belly for quite some time longer.
Do not imagine that he betrays any perturbation in his demeanour. He arrives at Dean Street cool as a china dog, and there is Mrs Frost’s peevish face half lost in darkness behind the first-floor window. When she sees him, she raises it open and leans out at once.
‘I’ve a message for Mrs Neal,’ he says.
‘Well then, you have wasted your journey, for she ain’t returned from King’s Place.’
‘I am sent from there.’ He gestures to his blue jacket, in case it has escaped her notice, but Mrs Frost’s expression does not alter. ‘Come down. I shall not shout it.’
She vanishes smartly, and in seconds emerges from the front door, like an automaton in a novelty clock. ‘What is it then?’ she snaps. She does not waste her courtesy on servants.
‘Mrs Neal met with a gentleman last night,’ says Simeon, ‘and my mistress is anxious to persuade him of something. I bade him call here on her behalf, that Mrs Neal may flatter him as I may not.’
‘So I must expect a gentleman?’
‘Yes, and obstruct him by no means. He must be free to unburden himself; he is troubled by some business with my mistress.’
Mrs Frost harrumphs. ‘Mrs Neal has her own interests to attend to. How many more favours does Mrs Chappell expect?’
‘’Tis all the one favour.’
‘Well, it makes a great many demands on her time.’
He spreads his hands. ‘Take it up with my mistress. Or with yours.’
‘My mistress! Impudence! She is not my employer, she is my friend.’