He is unbuckling his trousers, and she makes to guide him but he pushes her hand away and, bracing one elbow across her chest, presses himself upon her. He holds her so hard against the wall that she thinks he will do her a mischief; his arm holding her shoulders too far back, bruising, she thinks, her breastbone. When she wriggles to seek greater comfort for herself, he curses and holds her tighter. Her head knocks against the wall behind her as he fucks; she would raise an arm to cushion behind it but cannot risk his patience. And will it not be done in a trice? she says to herself. And then the sixpence will be my own. And so she remains there, the back of her head bumping the wall, wondering how this all has come to be. When she walked from Mrs Chappell’s care it was as if she – all unknowing – passed through a door into a world that, although it is like London, is nothing at all like London, and its natives nothing at all like the Londoners she knew before. Some bewitchment, she thinks, a glamour. The man is pounding at her faster now; she hears his teeth click with the determination and the breath all rough in his throat. He has seen his quarry and he is closing in on it. Or perhaps – and this thought comes to her with some surprise – it was my old life that was the glamour. Feather beds and courteous gentlemen; hot milk for breakfast; riches beyond riches, there for the taking. How can that have been real? How could I have credited such good fortune?
When he is done, she walks alone up the alley. Her knees feel wobbly and her sex hot and smarting; his leavings trickle down the inside of her thigh, warm at first but cold where the air begins to touch it. She stops to mop herself with her petticoats, and stooping smells the roe-and-fungus fug of strange men’s spending, all crusting in the folds of her silver-spangled gown. Perhaps I shall hang for this, she thinks. The petticoats alone worth fifteen shillings. Milk for breakfast! I must have been dreaming, and her stomach rumbles. She stops to lean against the wall, bending as if she would vomit, but she only spits, and closes her eyes against the spinning world. To comfort herself, she reaches through her skirt and into the pocket that hangs upon her bare hip, to touch once again the scrap of paper that bears Simeon’s neat hand. She had not thought to make use of it, but now, brought low, the mere kindness of his intentions is a balm to her, and she draws it forth, although it is too dark to make out those small and crooked letters of his. Does he think of me? she wonders, pulling her scanty shawl about herself, and then, as she returns to her place on the street, shaking out her shimmering skirts, is now the moment I go on to the place he directs me?
Ah! How many worlds there are contained upon the earth, and how many will she pass through before she reaches the next?
TWENTY-TWO
A week later, a remarkable letter is delivered to Mr Hancock’s office, which has travelled by stage all the way from Oban. He tears it open all unsuspecting, to find the flamboyant hand of Tysoe Jones unfurling like creeping ivy all over the page. It reads:
Dear Friend,
Wonder of wonders! Forgive me if I do not stand on Ceremony, but I have such Marvellous things to tell you that I cannot think how to begin this Letter. I would prefer to plunge immediately into my Story – would you not prefer this also?
I made enquiries and befriended the crew of a whaling ship far north of the Scottish isles, and on my third day out with them we came upon a true Mermaid. She had been caught up in the Nets of a fishing-boat, which mistook her at first for a school of Herring, so vast and glinting was she. They hauled her aboard all silver & shining, but no sooner had they done so, then she burst the Net and sprang out again. They catching her once more, she shrieked up and down the Bay like a Mistral, dragging the Boat behind her, and she continued in this manner all through the Night, until finally at dawn she was exhausted.
She is very large & fine, and nothing indeed like you have ever seen in your life, and yet there is no mistaking what she is.
Yours,
Capt Tysoe Jones
He thinks for a moment that he may faint, but then he recovers himself. He does not stop to put on his hat, or file away his letters, or check his diary. He simply rises from his chair, pulls on his coat, and leaves the office.
He has never walked so fast in his life. He ought to hail a hansom but it would save no time; the roads are crammed as ever. Instead he weaves between wagons and sedan chairs and yoked milkmaids, trotting so vigorously he fears his heart will burst. He is taken unawares by a half-wild pigling – a lean little thing with coarse black hair – which gallops from a yard and into his knee: its weight sends him reeling, and he staggers at the burst of pain, but the pig goes on, shrieking hoarsely, leaving a smear of something foul on his breeches.
At Dean Street he seeks out Angelica’s door, raising his stick to rap against it. But something is wrong. The door stands ajar, and from within emanates some sort of commotion: the pattering, it seems, of anxious feet; raised voices. He pushes the door open and steps into the little panelled hall. Nobody there, not even the sharp-faced Mrs Frost, usually so officious about what visitors make their way up the stairs.
He stands for a moment and listens. The running noise again, coming from overhead, and Angelica’s voice, cracked and hysterical: ‘Oh! What shall I do? What am I to do?’
‘Calm yourself!’ comes Mrs Frost’s voice, quite as shrill as Angelica’s.
‘But he told me he loved me! He gave me his word!’
‘And you did not secure an agreement – now that was careless,’ says another voice, quite calm. Mr Hancock recognises it as that of Mrs Chappell.
A flurry of sobs, and Mr Hancock can hold back no longer; he hurries up the stairs. When he enters Angelica’s parlour he finds it almost empty of furniture: the sopha is gone, and the wardrobes, the writing-table, the glasses, the golden mouse-cage, all vanished away. In its newly emptied state the room has a strange quality of sound in it: a hollow ringing. Here and there are little heaps of debris – crumpled dresses, piles of books – and Mrs Frost scuttles hither and thither cramming what she may of each heap into a large sack.
In the centre of the room stands Mrs Chappell, hands on doughty hips, looking down with distaste at Mrs Angelica Neal, who kneels at her feet in pitiful supplication. Her curls are knotted and wilting, and her chintz wrap falls open to reveal merely a chemise beneath it. Mr Hancock has never seen her in her loose clothes before: he tries not to stare, but he can see the outline of her bosom and her buttocks quite plainly through the thin fabric.
‘Oh, Mrs Chappell, dear Mrs Chappell,’ Angelica weeps, ‘take me back to King’s Place. I’ll give you everything I earn. I won’t begrudge you a penny. I’ll teach the girls for you, anything. Anything! Only save me from penury!’
‘I have no space for you.’
Angelica embarks on a fresh bout of sobs and wraps her arms around Mrs Chappell’s calves. ‘Save me!’ she whimpers. ‘You are the closest thing I ever had to a mother—’
‘Oh, spare me!’ the bawd snaps, shaking her off. ‘Even if I were your mother, you have exhausted my patience. No, you have let me down too often; you have been petulant and unreliable. I cannot have you in my house: every man knows you spend twice what he can lay on you. I am only here to choose what of your effects I might take for myself, which will go some way – only some way – towards recompensing me for the money I laid on you. This is the last favour I will do for you.’
‘… the money?’ asks Angelica. ‘But we are all settled. The duke, he bought me out.’
‘The money I donated to support you these last few months, since Mr Rockingham could not.’
‘But I do not … Eliza?’ Angelica turns to her.
‘We needed it,’ says Mrs Frost helplessly. ‘What could I do?’
‘You accepted money from her?’ And Angelica is quaking, her wrists and elbows gone to jelly, so that she subsides onto the floorboards. ‘Oh, Eliza, how could you have done it?’
‘With remarkable few scruples,’ Mrs Chappell interjects with relish. ‘And you owe me a hundred and twenty-five pounds, so you will appreciate my desire for recompense.’ She shuffles into the bedroom, Mrs Frost close behind her.
Angelica’s shoulders heave; she lowers her face to the floor and rests her brow there as if she were a Mosselman at prayer, and indeed she whispers, ‘Oh God, oh God, what is to be done?’
At last Mr Hancock ventures, ‘What has happened here?’
Angelica’s head whips up. Her face is damp and blotchy, her eyes very swollen.
‘Sir? Mr Hancock?’ she stammers, wiping her nose on the back of her wrist. She tries to smile, and gabbles, ‘Mr Jonah Hancock, the mermaid man, I was not expecting you.’