‘Tsk! Hark at yourself.’ She climbs into bed beside him, and after a moment he turns to her admiringly.
‘Indeed, Mrs Hancock, you may effect all sorts of things that I, a man, may not.’
‘Huh. And think what you may do, that I may not.’
‘You have a delicacy to you that I cannot emulate, and an understanding. I did not see Mrs Lippard so placid as she was today in many years. I am glad to have you here.’ Indeed, he thinks, it becomes clearer by the day that he ought to have had a wife years ago. It seems to him that what they achieve together is much more than double what they might alone.
‘Oh, I am accustomed to her sort,’ says Angelica. ‘It is easy to please her – every body wants the same thing, when it comes to it.’ She bites her nail and wriggles deeper under the covers. ‘But she was right on one count, sir: you did choose me over Sukie, and I wish you had not.’
‘You are my wife, and she is not even my daughter. If her mother wished to remove her, what was I to do?’
‘The child has been moved about according to convenience for years, I believe; she ought to have one place where she lives and is part of the household.’
‘Soft-hearted! If there’s work to be done in one house and she sits idle in another, where is the sense in it? Until she has a family of her own, she must make herself useful in this one.’
‘But you are soft-hearted,’ says Angelica, nudging herself beneath the crook of his arm. ‘I do not think you would be without her.’ She will not confide in him that she needs Sukie very much; that the girl knows a great deal about the running of a house while she herself knows nothing at all.
‘But what of your promise to educate and refine her?’ he scoffs.
‘An investment. The cleverer she is the better she will marry. Good returns, one day.’ She is yawning now, her head a weight she is less inclined to hold up. ‘I shall find tutors for her.’
He hesitates. The cat creeps from beneath the bed and springs up upon it; she wades across the bedclothes at their feet. ‘Not the – not the same ones as teach – as teach Mrs Chappell’s charges?’ he asks nervously.
The cat is turning round in circles, kneading the counterpane, and Angelica feels the spirit of Bel Fortescue rise up in her: ain’t it all to the same end? Instead she shakes her head. ‘You’ve nothing to fear, sir. Here –’ and rolling over turns her face frankly to his – ‘you did a fine thing today; you defended your household. Eventually. Is that not an auspicious beginning to our marriage?’ This she means most sincerely; it is a novelty and a relief that the man who now keeps her refuses to deny her. She could not have borne another turncoat of Rockingham’s sort. She clasps his hand above the covers and pats it gently; they smile at one another, the very picture of mercantile happiness. ‘Let us waste no more of the candle,’ she says.
TWO
March 1786
It happens that a gentleman named Mr Brierley is one day caught in flagrante with his horse-boy, or some say his horse, but either way such prurient interest in the dealings of strangers has no place in this story. It only signifies at all because after this Mr Brierley hanged himself, the extent of his debts was revealed, and his widow put his house and all its contents up for sale for a very reasonable price. This news catches the ear of Mr Hancock as he goes about his business one morning.
‘I shall buy it for you,’ he says to his wife at breakfast.
‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Not on my account. Not for me.’
She is remarkable pretty, he thinks, pink-cheeked and plump and comfortable in her sprigged white morning dress, and her habits are pretty too, for after his morning’s work she has him join her in her bedroom at ten or eleven for tea and hot rolls. He sits gingerly on one of the spindly chairs she has had brought in, with his legs splayed out one on either side of the tiny round table, and holds his tea bowl between finger and thumb, while Angelica – not long out of bed – helps herself to butter and marmalade. Breakfast is a novelty for her, she rarely having risen before noon in her old life, and he likes to watch the seriousness with which she eats warm bread and cold preserves.
‘I promised you better,’ he says. ‘I did not mean you to live in Deptford.’
‘Well, I am content.’
‘And for Sukie –’ who has not joined them; who is still, in fact, surly about him – ‘we must increase her opportunities to meet fine people and cultivate herself.’ Privately, he is anxious that now her head has been turned with Angelica’s promise of dancing lessons and French tutors, his niece will be satisfied with nothing less; he furthermore feels a certain guilt that he did not think to offer her such things himself. ‘We can do better,’ he says, ‘and we ought. I am not what I was, Mrs Hancock. I am a landowner now, and a landlord: my properties in Mary-le-bone go up at such a pace that I may soon remove myself from the business of the city entirely. ’Tis absurd,’ he persists, ‘for a man of my fortune to continue to live in a house like this, and more so now with a wife such as you. Every day I look at you sitting by the fire and I say to myself, a beautiful gem needs a beautiful setting.’
‘Oh, go on with you. I told you, I am perfectly content.’
‘Contentment is a start,’ says Mr Hancock, ‘but I shall make you happy. I shall give you everything you want.’
‘There is no such thing.’ She is buttering another roll. ‘There is always more to want.’
He is not sure what to reply. He smiles with his mouth half-open like a big dog confused by its mistress’s command: he waits amiably for her to say something more intelligible.
‘And how can I believe a thing you say,’ she teases, ‘when you have never yet produced the mermaid you promised me?’
‘You are impatient. The mermaid is impending. It is being brought home aboard the Unicorn.’
‘And where is the Unicorn now?’
‘Unaccounted for,’ he admits. ‘But this is not concerning. It was an unusual voyage for Jones. He must be on the home stretch by now.’ He must be, else where could he have got to?
‘Mermaids wreck ships,’ she says.
‘Don’t say such things,’ snaps Mr Hancock, rapping hard on the table. ‘Even in jest.’
‘Oh, don’t look at me so, you great thing. So I never had my mermaid, well, I never was Queen of France either, and yet here we are doing quite well for ourselves. That ship will come safely home, and whether it has a mermaid on board or no, it hardly signifies. I have married you after all. You buy a house, sir, if you wish, and I shall come with you and be very happy in it, I am sure.’
‘Sure! I have never been surer,’ he says, perking up. ‘I think you underestimate how much you will like it.’
She raises a hand to quiet him. Butter glistens on her wrist. She is frightened by strong emotion; the word happiness frightens her, the way love does. She wants nothing so volatile.
‘We must live within our means,’ she says.
‘That ain’t for you to worry about.’
‘Please, Mr Hancock. Do not get into debt. I’ve no need for grandeur; if we are to find a new house, let it suit us just as we are.’
‘You are a most sensible woman.’ And what a pleasant surprise to him is their harmony. The texture of those early days with Mary, which he did not know he had forgot, comes rushing back to him of late: it is the sensation, most of all, of not being habitually alone. The absent-minded reaching of her hand to his; the quiet clearing of her throat heard from another room; the half-surfacing from sleep when she rises to piss in the night. And having a listener, to hear a joke or trouble over a problem, and always take his part. Angelica is not Mary; nothing like; but the many acts of being a husband to this second wife remember the first to him, and make her vivid in his mind again.
There is a tap on the door and Bridget puts her head round it.
‘A letter here for you, missus,’ she says.
‘For me? Not for Mr Hancock?’