‘After her!’ they cry. ‘Catch the little hussy,’ and several tussle, jammed in the narrow doorway in their pursuit of her. Nobody is looking back into the dark garden. Polly looks down at her white dress; if it catches their eye … but she knows what she will do.
She takes up her skirts in each hand and walks fast and purposeful along the path to the little door. It is no more than ten steps, and she is out, in a narrow alley flanked on either side by tall walls. Her instinct is to turn right, and thus walk in the opposite direction to the house she has escaped: she goes briskly with her head held up, but does not run. The brick paving gives out to thin gravel, and she smells it all with such gemmed clarity, the wet stone and the moss between the pebbles. Though she cannot see beyond the deep walls of her little channel, the moon rides high above her, and the slice of its radiance that falls upon her is lovelier than she ever knew before. She comes to a mews of stables and strides its length without fear, although she is terrible exposed: straw wafts beneath her feet, and horses groan and fart in their sleep; she smells the huff of their breath so brightly that it is almost as if their flanks are under her hands, silk this way, coarse the other. She continues only to walk, tugging her shawl up over her head, and pulling its warmth as far around her body as possible. It is fearful cold, the sort that gets down to the bone, and already frost has begun to spangle the ground and the walls, and the air is sharp as knives. No matter.
She reaches a grand paved square, and now she is afraid, but she says to herself, I shall not think about it; I shall think about it later if I must, and takes a breath and crosses it. Her steps ring out. Each house sits dark behind railings. The servants are fastening all the shutters, and behind the doors she hears the drawing home of many bolts, but some houses are sites of merrymaking like the one she has left; their windows flicker brightly and there are hoots and songs within. If somebody were to see her, on a festival night such as this, would they perceive immediately that something was afoot? A girl alone – a black girl, indeed – hurrying in the dark. Her dress is not that of a servant. What will she say if she is challenged? She cannot think; she shakes her head; she bustles onward as if with great purpose. Thus she goes quite unobserved through square after ordered square. A nightwatchman turns his head when he hears her footsteps, but onward she scurries, and in the rays of his lantern the frost makes a great burst of stars upon stars.
FIFTEEN
The next day, the streets being clear of snow nor so treacherously icy as they might be, Angelica determines to take her carriage out. It arrives filled with rugs, and all the seats warmed, and a great bag of feathers for her feet. She rides immediately to the home of Bel Fortescue (Countess, to acknowledge her legal due, although not many do). Arriving in such splendour she is able, almost, to close her eyes to the high concealing walls of her friend’s home, the wide courtyard within, the pillared and porticoed fa?ade where Bel awaits. It does not take a great effort to disregard the many pruned bay trees there, nor the liveried servants all in Bel’s employ, for she is confidently assured that when Rockingham comes into his fortune, she too will live this way. And so it is as equals that she confides in Bel, ‘Money is so tiresome, do you not find? The amount of running about Georgie has to do simply to get what is his – why, it is almost not worth having it.’
Countess Bel raises an eyebrow. ‘I hope he receives it soon, for your sake.’
‘I would take him if he had no income at all,’ says Angelica stoutly. ‘You do not know what it is like. You cannot imagine – that is the problem – nobody can. It is a very rare thing we have together. We are matched as souls, as Beatrice and Dante, Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Iseult …’ Her reading is slender; here she falters. ‘I could have no other, whatever situation we were thrown into.’
‘And him? Does he have any other?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Well, you must make quite sure; he is not bound to you. It is different for men.’
‘Not for him,’ Angelica says with resolution. ‘I forgive you your incredulity, for very few people are fortunate enough to understand what Georgie and I share.’
In Berkeley Square, Angelica puffs up the white muslin spilling over the lapels of her redingote, and despite the cold lets her cape hang open. She has fastened Rockingham’s diamond dart at her throat, and likes to be sure it is seen. Bel, taking her arm as they stroll, persists. ‘Has he settled something on you yet?’
‘Everybody is always asking! That is what he has gone away for. ‘’Tis a shame he was obliged to leave when the town is so lively. Perhaps you recall, Bel, what a nuisance it is to be in demand, and of course the minute I am left unprotected for one second the whole world descends – they would have me if they could.’
‘Is that so?’ Bel’s forbearance is one of her greatest strengths. Whatever she thinks, she does not betray it as Angelica goes on. ‘There is a gentleman – the mermaid man, do you remember him? – he has visited me once, and insists he will come again this afternoon.’
Her friend frowns. ‘You do not let him touch you, do you?’
‘By no means! And he would never try.’ A few days have passed, but she remains no less perplexed by the manner in which her interview with Mr Hancock ended. The money he offered would have improved her situation, and yet she had refused it without thought. If she had done so out of loyalty to Rockingham she would be congratulating herself on her own virtue: in fact, she having rejected it for her own sake, and for Mr Hancock’s, she feels a certain guilty flutter. She has stooped to conversation with a man whose station is so different from her lover’s, who is sympathetic to concerns he cannot conceive of; who compels her to remember the particular facts of her history that were better forgotten. She would like to have been born full-formed and pristine from sea-foam. To have strode such treacherous and demeaning paths to become Angelica Neal is displeasing to her. ‘He knows about Georgie,’ she says appeasingly, and steers them towards the confectioner’s window.
‘As long as he is content with a friendship,’ Bel pursues. ‘He did not seem to me the sort of man who understood such codes.’
Angelica gurgles with amusement. ‘If he ever gets any sort of look in his eye,’ she says, ‘I lean right in close, like so, and tell him, “I want a mermaid.” I let my breath touch his cheek and I say, “Where is my mermaid, Mr Hancock?” The poor fool has only sent a boat out to find one for me.’ This scene is purely imagined, but it is well to have a response prepared for every possibility. In the face of her friend’s silence, she babbles in haste, ‘Come, now, Bel, there is hardly a Christian wife who has not been driven to much worse at least once in her life, and really you see it is out of loyalty to Georgie, for if I cared only for security I would leave him.’ She leads her friend into the fragrant shop, assuring her, ‘In every other particular we are as faithful to one another as a pair of turtle doves.’ Her eye is already straying to the tower of millefruits on the counter, and her steps follow it forthwith. To the starched apron behind the counter, she says, ‘Half a pound of those, if you please. Charge it to Rockingham’s account.’
The woman has begun to scoop the biscuits into a sheet of folded tissue paper, but she stops when she hears this. ‘No, ma’am,’ she says. ‘We give him no credit here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No credit. We require cash on this account.’
Angelica draws herself up to her full height. ‘I suppose,’ she says acidly, ‘you do not know who I am.’
The woman regards her with cool pale eyes. ‘Oh, I know who you are, madam. ’Tis only that your keeper’s name is no good here. He’s a bill a foot long to settle up.’