When all of a sudden she hears his voice softly without, she thinks her heart must crash out of her body; she thinks the blood pounds so hard in her veins it must rupture them one by one. She can barely stand for shaking, but she stumbles to the door and hears Mrs Frost’s voice: ‘Greatly distressed – no time – let her be.’
Angelica throws open her door. In the living room Mr Rockingham looks as sorry as she, his hat in his hands, and his face all drawn and tired.
‘Good day, sir,’ she says, and it is an agony to look upon him; she does not know if he is hers; she thinks she will not bear it if he has only come to take himself away again.
He looks at her, and looks, and parts his lips helplessly. His poor bruised eyes are fixed upon her face, and he reaches out his hands. ‘I have barely slept while we were parted,’ he croaks.
‘Huh! At the gaming table all night, I suppose,’ says Mrs Frost.
‘Go away, Eliza,’ whispers Angelica.
‘You can tell it by the stink of him,’ says her friend. ‘He has been carousing, not pining. Open your eyes, madam.’
Angelica is gazing steadily at her lieutenant. She swallows hard. ‘I said, go away.’
They lie on their naked bellies side by side, and Mr Rockingham strokes his hand down Angelica’s back. He fits his fingers into the valley of her spine; on either side her flesh swells warm and soft to her hips, her waist, her ribs. Her eyes are closed; there is a little gloss of sweat in the crook of her elbow, where she pillows her face. Her curls are bound safely but the pleats of her cap are crushed: the corner of her mouth twitches upward.
‘Why do you keep that woman with you,’ asks Georgie, ‘when you and she are so at odds?’
She sighs, and her eyelids flutter. ‘We are more often in accord,’ she whispers. ‘She is my most beloved friend.’ She is not the first woman to confuse ‘beloved’ with ‘necessary’.
‘You are too loyal.’
‘No, no.’ She turns to him, pulling her knees up to her chest and blinking sweetly. ‘We have known one another a long time, since I first arrived in London.’ She will not tell him of the days they were maids together in a magistrate’s house, for she likes to screw her history tight inside her bosom. The past is the past, and beyond helping: it strikes her as unseemly – untidy, unnecessary – to air it. Nor, therefore, will she tell him that it was Mrs Frost who first encouraged her into the Temple of Venus, and thence King’s Place. When she remembers their being girls, racked with laughter at one another’s hilarity, or crushed into a narrow bed as dawn broke, whispering their secrets to one another, she feels such warmth. And so she only says, ‘She was kind to me when there was no other soul to remember me.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Perhaps she is sadder now than she once was –’ she cannot have George think she chooses her friends carelessly – ‘and so her good qualities are not as evident to you as they are to me. You do not know the hardships an abandoned wife must endure.’
‘Abandoned!’ says Rockingham. ‘Stuff and nonsense. She can hardly want for her husband, you treat her so well.’
‘If I could do more, I would,’ says Angelica with pride. ‘She might have gone her own way, might she not, when my protector died and I was penniless? And she did not. She found me this place and she has got me well set.’ She closes her eyes again, and hooks her fingers through his. ‘She has helped me in all kinds of ways. You cannot imagine.’
Still he persists. ‘But she does not help you now.’ He is stung more by her tender history with Mrs Frost than by her mention of her old lover.
‘Maybe not.’
‘And besides –’ he presses his body to hers, dragging the sheet over their heads – ‘you have me now. I am here to help you. I am your friend. And I mean to be your keeper too.’
These words fizz in her blood. ‘Really?’
‘Truly.’ He takes her face in his hands. ‘You need struggle no longer. You need not see other men. I shall pay for you.’
‘Oh!’
‘Anything, anything you need. Say the word.’ He seizes her wrists and she feels him growing hard again. She is overwhelmed with him; her fingertips brush his hair; his breath is on her cheek; their noses touch, their teeth, their eyelashes. ‘I shall never have you want for so much as a pin,’ he says.
‘You are so kind. My love, my love,’ and such heat and an aching in her heart she does not know what to do with, as if she were bewitched.
‘And you will be mine,’ he whispers, hooking one thigh between hers so that they fall open; she draws him into her arms. ‘All and entirely my own. Oh! My dear one!’
But here is Mrs Frost tapping at the door. ‘Angelica,’ she insists. ‘Angelica, come out. You are wanted here.’
Rockingham lets out a groan and flops onto his back. ‘That woman!’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ says Angelica. ‘She is overbearing in the extreme.’ She sits up. ‘Shall I go to her, then?’
‘No, no,’ he caresses. ‘Stay here with me.’
‘I think I must, or she will never be easy.’ Angelica rises naked from the bed and opens the door in her perfect undress. ‘What now, Spindleshanks?’ she demands. She has a delightful plump body, classical in its proportions – although her legs are a little too short – and while some years have passed since she caught the painterly eye of Mr Romney in King’s Place, she remains testament to his good taste.
Mrs Frost will not look at her; she fixes her gaze upon the door handle. ‘There is a man here to see you.’
Angelica leans against the door frame, her arm behind her head. Her breasts rise pacifically. ‘There is a man already here to see me,’ she says. ‘I know not how else to convey to you that I am indisposed.’
‘He has been here before. Again and again. You may know him – he says he is the mermaid man.’
She laughs. ‘The mermaid man! Georgie, mark this! That gentleman who brought us together – the man who discovered the horrid little sea-sprite – is waiting to see me. Well, he could not tolerate me before, so I wonder what has changed.’ She claps her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! Does he believe he can afford me now? What did I hear, that the thing is sold? He means to trade one curiosity in for another; Eliza, what fun! Did you bring him inside?’
‘No, he is still on the street.’
‘That’s as well. For what am I to tell him? Do I oblige dear George, and closet myself from all men but him? Or do I take your advice, Eliza, and make myself available to any body with a few pounds in his pocket?’ She passes by her friend, who flinches from her, and goes into the living room. The flesh on the backs of her thighs quivers as she moves. ‘Who do I please? Or do I, perhaps, form a compromise?’ She feels pleasantly giddy to be undressed in that room of her own volition; and indeed, before her lieutenant began visiting her she was rarely ever so undressed at all. A man who is pleased to collect up the pins as he strips her is a rare jewel.
She throws her shawl about her shoulders as she goes to the open window – ‘I am not, after all, a peep show’ – and leans out to view the street, her hands on the window ledge. The stout and shabby Mr Hancock stands below expectantly.
‘Ahoy!’ she cries. ‘The maritime wonder!’ She lets her shawl slip off one shoulder, and bolsters her bosom on her crossed arms.
‘I – ah – ahoy.’
‘He does not know what to do with himself!’ she crows over her shoulder. To the street she calls, ‘You find me otherwise engaged. What brings you to my doorstep after such an absence?’
‘I wished to see you,’ he says. ‘You see, many things have occurred and I found myself – I mean to say, I thought – I wondered if …’
‘You seek an audience?’
With the lightest of gestures she beckons Rockingham over, and he hovers just within the window frame to spy upon her unprepossessing suitor, who now nods vigorously. ‘Yes,’ Mr Hancock calls. ‘That is it. Exactly so. You have hit upon it.’
She twists a strand of hair sorrowfully about her finger, catching Georgie’s smirking eye before continuing, ‘Oh, sir. My prices have risen since I was offered to you for nothing.’
‘What do you ask? I mean only to – only to sit with you.’