‘Oh –’ he has forgot his gift; he produces a parcel of coarse little tarts, and hands them over to her – ‘these are for you.’
She giggles, but he thinks not mockingly, rather in appreciation. ‘Much obliged! I am always in want of small and delicious things. Here, would you fetch me a plate?’ She wafts her hand towards the cabinet, and he rises gingerly to pick one out. All her dishes are beautiful in the absurd – New Hall, figured with pink roses, not Chinese but as close in quality as could be hoped for – but only imperfectly clean, with tidelines where dishwater has been allowed to dry upon them.
‘By the by, I came to tell you I have ordered your mermaid,’ he says more casually than he feels, as he passes her a plate, and she puts the tarts on it one by one, taking each gently between finger and thumb. Ever since Tysoe Jones left London he has thought, what are the chances? The scheme is doomed; he will never have another such creature in his lifetime. But now, sitting at last so close to this lady, in such extravagant surroundings, he feels an inclination to boast, and when she chortles he is pleased.
‘I look forward to receiving it,’ she says, looking to the mantelpiece. ‘That’s where I’ll put it. I mean to have it mounted in such a way that it can easily be got down, to be passed around and remarked upon.’ She stops and looks directly at him; there is that deep and simmering look in her eyes. ‘I shall owe you something, I think.’
He opens his mouth to speak but she draws back as if he has reached out to her, and springs to her feet. ‘Then perhaps I shall start a collection,’ she continues, and paces the hearth with her sheer gown all sighing. Is she teasing him? Her eyes twinkle. ‘What other curiosities can you get for me?’
‘One thing at a time,’ he says.
‘No, no,’ she says, and he sees her bosom tremble, delicate as pastry cream. ‘Everything at once! That’s how I want it. Elf arrows, bound in silver so they do no harm. An elephant to ride about on. A manticore, a centicore, a gryphon.’
‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘they are not to be found in the places I send my boats.’
‘Then spread your net wider, sir.’ She tilts her head like a bright little bird.
‘Ah, no.’ Now he has begun bragging he finds he cannot stop: ‘I mean to cease trading in a few years; I have an income from my investments large enough to see me at leisure to the end of my days.’
‘Very fine for you.’
‘Enough, in fact, that I have made a donation to a ragged school, and I mean to build almshouses.’ His charity hitherto has been as vigorous as any other man loyal to his parish: his failings in the matter of progeny are not reflected in his contributions to the maintenance of Deptford’s churches and widows, his Valentine’s Day coins to its poor children; the generous purses he keeps ready for a journeyman carpenter whose tools have been stolen, or newlyweds whose house is burnt down.
‘Oh,’ says Angelica, with some interest. ‘You do not keep it all to yourself?’
‘Certainly not.’ He cannot think what wealth would be without these gestures, which are not so much obligations of his financial improvement, but signifiers of it. From his earliest memory he never owned so much as a farthing that he did not seek to share with his neighbour, for the purpose of money is to be spread about. ‘I’ve no children, no wife. What would I do with it all?’
She shrugs. ‘There must be something you are in need of.’
‘No. No, I am content.’ He holds the tea bowl in the curve of his palm and swirls it gently. ‘Although I’ve nothing so fine as this in my house.’
She drains her own. ‘That is where the fun starts,’ she says, and licks the moisture from her lips. ‘In the purchase of fine things.’
He looks about himself: the sheer quantity of goods in the room defies inventory; there is such a clamour of textures and colours, of good taste and bad, all the parts combining to an effect that is overwhelming to the senses and yet speaks plainly to his merchant’s heart: here is wealth – for the moment. A lady secure in her income may purchase a new tea set each season, but to buy three at once is an economy of anxiety, which seeks to anticipate every loss, every breakage, every change of whim the years might bring.
‘I see you do not let your own money sit idle,’ he says.
‘It were best spent. You cannot ever know what tomorrow will bring; you might be ruined, and never enjoy the splendours you could have had.’
‘They await us all in the next world,’ he says, which thing is rather a sprite of a belief, since it seems most real when he does not look directly at it.
‘I am told by those with authority in the matter that they do not await me.’ This puts him out of his ease.
‘Repentance,’ he hazards, ‘is always possible.’
‘Aye, and how would I support myself then? Besides, a woman who makes her own wage must always be found wanting; my mother sought a blameless living and still found great shame in it.’
‘Why was your mother compelled to work?’
She frowns very prettily, as if she wavered to tell him. ‘My father,’ she says, and then breathes, so that the two words sit alone in the room with them for a moment; then she continues, ‘went to seek our fortune in the colonies.’
‘And left you unsupported.’
‘He was gone longer than he had thought. The sea, you know,’ and he nods in sympathy which is what she desires of him. ‘And so we were forced to look for genteel work – sewing and such, and when it was not enough my mother sought to teach a school. And the people in our town did not like that. “How can you use his name thus?” they asked her. “How can you so broadcast that he has left you unprovided for? Where is your loyalty?”’
Mr Hancock watches her with a stirring of new interest. She sounds all at once a breed in common with his own sisters and nieces; he had perceived her as a different sort of woman, to be weighed on other scales, but perhaps this is not so. ‘He did wrong,’ he says.
‘Oh, he was an adventurer,’ she says with a gleam of pride. ‘He had concerns beyond our ken.’
‘Still, good men do not forget their dependants.’ She looks to him very fragile in her white gown, her face only lightly powdered and her hair falling from its bindings in natural yellow curls. And how ordinary she looks, her skin like any other woman’s skin, and her eyelashes and her movements; he could imagine her on a street like his own, amongst the women of his own society. ‘Where were your uncles, grandfathers? Your mother’s plight should have been their responsibility.’
She shakes her head. ‘Nobody.’ Then stumbles on; she seems surprised by what she says but it comes with a great urgency and trouble. ‘And when you are a poor woman, and unprotected, you are near as well a whore, even if you have not fallen yet. If one small thing goes awry, of course you must be tempted to it. Everybody knows that the moment will come some day; however honourable you are the taint of it is already on you. Eventually one feels one has no choice.’
The more she talks the more comprehensible to him she becomes. ‘Did your father return?’ he asks.
She presses her lips together and looks out of the window, the cool light turning her eyes palest grey. ‘How long should I have waited to find out? I came to London, to seek my fortune.’
How grateful he is that his sisters are all married and his nieces protected by webs of property and connection. Sukie, out on her own, would she …? She is sensible, he assures himself, her skills and education will help her – but then he has heard of the ways in which girls are duped; drugged; raped.
‘Don’t look so sorrowful!’ she says. ‘My situation is a matter of economy. What shall I be, all on my own, a poor woman who is ashamed of herself, or a rich one who is not?’
It may be another folly of his to feel such sympathy for her, but pragmatism is a quality he and his kind admire in a woman, and he nods a wondering approval. ‘I daresay you have behaved with prudence. And chastity is not a woman’s only virtue,’ he adds generously.