‘Oh, you are not one bit sorry! What has got into you?’
Angelica is upstairs in the bedroom, pinning closed the bodice of her plain rust-coloured gown, Bridget having quit her to answer the door. She has been in the house only ten days, but she has already overseen the repainting of the dark bedroom panelling, and replaced the curtains and the hangings of the ancient bed with new ones of shining moreen; fine, to be sure, but not extravagant. In the shadow of growing ships she is in the midst of a sort of convalescence, sleeping early and long, and eating plain and honest foods like an invalid or a little child. Her dress is neat; her countenance natural; she lives very quiet and blameless in this sturdy ship-built house. Nothing is as grand as she has been accustomed to, but none of it can be taken from her: sometimes she walks from room to room touching the panelled walls, the heavy furniture, the whorled glass in the windows. She touches them lightly with the tips of her fingers, and thinks, this is mine, and this, and this. She may walk from her parlour (she has had it done in almond-green) into Mr Hancock’s counting-house any time it pleases her, and see his strongbox and his ledgers and his own buff-coloured back hunched over his desk, and although he does not make her feel the way certain other men have, it is sufficient that he is pleased by her; he wishes her there; he has chosen her as part of his home. The querulous agitation of her time in London has almost fallen away from her now; she has not felt moved to write to her friends, and she is grateful to have heard nothing from them.
From two flights below, she hears the hectoring tones of a woman’s voice, and is in no doubt as to whom it might belong. She has not yet met Mrs Lippard, but from Mr Hancock’s description and Sukie Lippard’s demeanour she has surmised precisely what sort of woman she is.
‘Sukie!’ Mrs Lippard barks. ‘Susanna!’ and Angelica hears her stir in the parlour below.
I shall go down too, she thinks to herself, and make myself agreeable to this lady. She fluffs her hair and ties her apron, and proceeds downstairs. Sukie is coming onto the landing, book in hand.
‘Is that your mother?’ Angelica asks.
‘How did you guess? Will you come down to meet her?’
Angelica is not yet decided about Sukie, and principally because Sukie seems not yet decided about her. She finds she can do nothing in the girl’s presence without scrutiny; whatever she gleans from watching this newcomer butter a roll or read a book, shake the dust from her cape or close the shutters, she voices none of it. There is no mistaking she has seen more than Angelica had intended to show her, and this is discomfiting.
‘What have you told her about me?’ she ventures now. Sukie walks before her down the stairs; Angelica cannot see her expression.
‘I? I don’t tell her a thing.’
‘Sukie.’ Hester Lippard stands at the foot of the stairs. ‘You condescend to join us.’
‘I was in the parlour,’ says Sukie. ‘The fire is burning. Why do you not come up?’
‘Oh, may I? Dare I? Is’t not her house now?’ as Angelica comes into sight. She turns back to Mr Hancock. ‘This is your jade? All these years you resist the expense and trouble of bringing a wife into the house and yet you will install a mistress?’
‘She is not my mistress,’ says Mr Hancock. ‘She is my wife.’
Angelica has never seen the blood leave a person’s face with such rapidity. Mrs Lippard, in the first place less than ruddy, becomes positively green. ‘You are not serious,’ she whispers.
Angelica descends the last few steps with her arms outstretched. ‘Good afternoon, Sister,’ she cries. ‘I rejoice in calling you my relation. I have heard so much about you and it seems it is all perfectly true.’
Hester is not so numb as to demur a response. ‘You are not much like your picture. But then you are clothed.’
Angelica knows about women and their empire-building. She knows also that a woman in perfect control of her fate never resorts to rudeness, and this gives her a small glow of satisfaction. She clasps Mrs Lippard’s hand and smiles her most honeyed of smiles. Sukie is dumbstruck; she can only snigger with shock.
‘I do not know what you are laughing for,’ says her mother. ‘’Tis your portion he is throwing away; all the fortune your grandfather spent so long building up, and we shall never see any of it once she is done.’
‘I have made a great deal of money on my own account lately,’ interjects Mr Hancock.
‘Whatever you make, she’ll spend double,’ snaps Mrs Lippard, and returns at once to her interrogation. ‘Married when? How can this be?’
‘Three days ago. Quietly, before breakfast—’
‘Oh, this is too much. A legal marriage?’
‘Aye.’
‘I don’t think so. No banns were read. I’d have heard of’t at once.’
‘Oh,’ interjects Angelica, ‘we wed by licence. So much faster. And how vulgar, to have one’s private business broadcast for gossip.’
‘Proud, are you, to have private business not fit to be spoken of in church?’ Hester returns her attention to Mr Hancock. ‘So she snared you well and truly! Paying honest money to rush this wedding through; I suppose you did not pause to wonder how many husbands this whore may already have.’
‘Will you stand for that?’ his wife demands. ‘You’ll let her offend my honour so?’
All the women stare at him: Sukie quite rapt – echoed by the half of Bridget’s face peeping round the kitchen door – Hester and Angelica twins of female affront. He has been afraid of Hester’s wrath since infancy, but that of his new wife is yet untested. Her eyes have a virago flash to them. Her hair seems to puff itself larger; her skirts prickle.
Hester, seeing his hesitation, warms to her theme. ‘Where is her bridal portion? How is she a helpmeet when she brings you only debts? And you will raise up the bastard children you get on her from your pocket alone? How will—’
He has heard quite enough. ‘No, I’ll not stand for it,’ he snaps. ‘Mrs Lippard, you dishonour my wife. It will not do.’
‘Oh! I like that! I dishonour her?’ Hester affects to reel in shock; Angelica claps her hands and clasps them under her chin.
‘And yourself too,’ says Mr Hancock, spurred on by his wife’s pleasure, ‘speaking so rudely of a lady who has welcomed you into her home.’
A vein in Mrs Lippard’s temple is twitching. ‘So be it. If you won’t eject this woman from the house, I have no choice but to remove my daughter from it.’
The entire company gasps.
‘Now, Hester, there is no need for that.’
‘Come, Sukie,’ says Mrs Lippard as if he never spoke at all, making to seize her daughter’s arm, ‘I am taking you home.’ Sukie lets out a little shriek and, breaking free, scampers back up the staircase. Mrs Lippard turns to Mr Hancock. ‘She’ll stay not a minute longer. I’ll have no daughter of mine in so poisonous an environment.’
‘She does not want to go,’ says Angelica, but Mrs Lippard sets off up the stairs in pursuit of her daughter. A great clattering and scuffling ensues as Sukie ascends further; their skirts may be seen flapping between the banisters.
‘Christ –’ Angelica pats about her person for her fan; finding that she has none, she wafts herself with her hands – ‘I had expected a quieter life for myself.’ Upstairs mother and daughter can be heard squabbling furiously. ‘Well?’ Mr Hancock remains where he is, frozen it seems. ‘Are you going to settle this?’
‘This is not for me to meddle in.’
‘Meddling! You are the man, are you not? Your word will settle this.’
He looks at her helplessly. ‘Let her have what she wants.’
‘And what about you?’
‘Hush!’ He squirms in his awkwardness. ‘I’d not lose Sukie for anything, but my sister is not to be reasoned with at moments such as these. Far better to give her what she wants and retrieve the child another day.’