‘What is afoot?’
She rises to her knees, hunting about for her handkerchief. ‘To be frank, sir, I believe I am ruined.’ She pats her face, then ventures a laugh. Mucus is trailing from her nose; she snatches it into her fist but more runs, and then her eyes fill up again. ‘I have been abandoned by a – by a most inconstant friend, and consequently my rent has gone unpaid, and I have creditors all over town that I knew nothing of until this week. Even Mrs Chappell –’ she stops to gulp breath like a landed mackerel – ‘even she has contributed to my penury. Even Eliza. They have hurled me into the jaws of my debtors! They offer me no assistance.’
‘Oh.’ He dithers in the doorway. From the bedroom can be heard those two ladies picking over what belongings remain.
‘There is a better bolster than that,’ comes Mrs Frost’s voice. ‘You see, that one has a mend to’t. But let me see, I believe there is another drawer of linen that may be of use to you …’
‘There,’ scowls Angelica, wiping her nose on a fistful of her own skirts. ‘What d’ye think of that? I might be dead – the vultures. They waste no time.’
‘Perhaps it were better if I left,’ he says.
Her raw swimming eyes are fixed on her hands, which she clasps in her lap. ‘No question of it,’ she sighs.
He retreats onto the landing. Within, he hears the soft slump of her collapsing back to the floorboards, and then a string of half-suppressed sobs. He wrings his hands, agonises in the unlit passage. Then he returns softly to her parlour. He crouches down beside her and presses his own handkerchief, large and coarse as a sail, into her small fist.
‘But who will look after you?’ he asks.
She shrugs, her face quite buried in the folds of cloth. ‘I shall fare quite well,’ she says. ‘There will be a way.’
‘You mean there is nobody?’
‘Look about yourself,’ she says. ‘Do you see any kind helper here? No. Rats from a sinking ship, sir. Even my faithful toadeater Frost has abandoned me.’
‘And what of your debts? Who pays those?’
‘Who but I myself?’
‘But you have no means to do so.’
‘Then I shall go to prison.’
He is a pecunious man; this is what it comes down to. The very word ‘debt’ strikes cold fear into his bones; it is a black spot, a curse, a dreadful reckoning. No man could hold his head up after being ruined, with everybody knowing what a judgement that was on him. Only death itself could be worse, and that by a slim margin. But it is not her fault; she has fallen out of the order of things, and the network of wages and inheritance that ought to keep her safe has failed her.
‘I shall pay your bills,’ he says.
She blows her nose fruitily. ‘You will?’ She nestles up against him, resting her head on his shoulder. When he puts his arm around her he feels again the delightful softness of her body, now freed from its stays. ‘My debts are very large, sir. It was hardly of my doing.’
‘It don’t signify. I can pay.’
She turns her wet face up to his; she is presently unlovely, it is true, but the redness about her eyes brings up the sharp blue of her irids. ‘Why would you do it?’ she asks.
Because it is obscene to him for a person to be ruined twice over, and if he may put right this imbalance in the world it were all to the good. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I have found you a mermaid.’
‘A mermaid!’ she scoffs, dabbing at her eyes and hiccoughing with the last of her tears. ‘You have done no such thing.’
‘I have.’ He pulls out the letter and she frowns to read it in haste while he rhapsodises, ‘It is a sign! Two mermaids in one lifetime, what do you reckon the odds to be on such a thing?’
‘It sounds an utter nonsense,’ she snorts. ‘What is this gibberage he has written? I expect when it arrives it is no more than a little dead monkey, like the one she rented from you, and which brought us to all this.’
‘No, no, nothing like that …’ Although he can barely credit it; a living mermaid, slick as a fish, strong as a whale, no grotesque mockery but the beast of London’s dreams, to be delivered to him and nobody else.
‘Who is this gentleman? He dupes you, that is certain. This is the language of a mountebank, make no mistake.’
‘I trust him implicitly,’ Mr Hancock bridles. ‘This creature is genuine, there is no doubt. And it will be yours.’
‘Why would I want it now? This affair has quite ruined my appetite for mermaids.’ Angelica gazes again across her denuded apartment, but catching sight of Mr Hancock’s face which is all at once utterly disconsolate, she is contrite. ‘Well, I don’t care.’ She sniffs hard, and sets about raking her fingers through her hair, until she looks altogether more herself. Her skin has lost its patchy look, and her eyes, although red-rimmed still, are bright and lively. ‘The very thing I asked of you, you have delivered to me, although I had thought it impossible.’ She squeezes his hand: her fingers are damp and hot. Then her bottom lip wobbles apparently without her bidding, and she chokes out, ‘Take me away from here, I beg of you.’
‘Yes, indeed, you must come home with me,’ he says. Then hesitates. ‘Do you know that my house is not grand? It is not at all like your current situation.’
‘My current situation! What do I have? What part of it was ever mine? Please, please, if you are certain you would have me, I do not care where you will take me.’
Mrs Frost and Mrs Chappell return, their arms full of goose-feather pillows. They incline their heads to Mr Hancock: Angelica shoots a glance at them but remains on her knees, clutching Mr Hancock’s hand. ‘I have one request,’ she says, ‘but it is an important one.’
‘Go on.’
She shoots a glance at her erstwhile friends, who stand in perturbation and disgust. ‘I need you to marry me.’
VOLUME III.
ONE
February 1786
‘Not possible,’ snaps Hester Lippard, who is wearing out the wheels of her carriage, she must so often fly to her brother’s house. She has not so much as removed her cape upon striding through his door, and remains immovable in the hall, which in-between place strikes him as a very unsatisfactory site for a row. ‘She’ll not live here.’
Mr Hancock is in jovial spirits, not easily damped. ‘Good afternoon, sister. How do you today?’
‘Ugh! Not a grain of contrition! I never had you for a rake, sir, but you have not only taken a whore, you have brought her under this roof and now lavish her with Hancock money.’ She looks about herself, seeking evidence of his debauch: an abandoned garter, perhaps, or a brimming punchbowl. ‘Fresh paint, do I smell?’
‘We have undertaken some improvements.’
‘Oh, she has got her feet under the table! What liberty to take with a house that is not even her own.’ She is such a conduit of rage it is a wonder she does not catch alight.
‘’Tis my house,’ he says mildly.
‘Our father’s! Our grandfather’s! What are you thinking, to bring such a serpent into the nest? I suppose you would have Sukie ruined; that matters nothing to you.’
‘There will be no ruination,’ he says.
‘You will ruin us all,’ she pronounces with relish.
‘Sister, you are not dependent on me.’
‘I cannot hold my head up in society. I cannot! You go from bad to worse – do you think Mr Lippard’s clients do not mark it? “He acquires a sideshow one day; a mistress the next. What sort of family do you come from, Mrs Lippard?” That is what they ask me. Furthermore, the lady our William has been working on these last six months – at considerable personal expense – has turned very cool towards him indeed, and I cannot but suspect that this is as a direct result of your conduct. And you know William’s troubles in catching the eye of any lady, let alone one with two hundred a year settled on her; if she does not accept him after all this, the blame will be on you.’
‘So be it,’ he says.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If that is how you will have it, I cannot help it.’