‘For you.’ Bridget brings it to her. ‘There is a boy outside awaits your reply.’
The paper is heavy and stiff, impossible to stuff into a pocket and forget about. Angelica brings it up to her face to better inspect it. ‘I do not recognise the seal.’ She slides her thumb under it. ‘This is unusual. Who is writing to me?’
Her heart makes a little squeeze: what if it is somebody from her past, a man, what if it is her George (her George! Her George!), what can he want with her, oh, what does he say? Bridget is hovering with idle interest; Mr Hancock is staring out of the window and tapping his teeth, but surely he must see any moment …
My dear Girl,
(But the writing is not his; it is rapid and neat and free of error. The creamy paper shows neither blotch nor smear. This is not young George Rockingham’s work.) Forgive me my long silence. I think of you often and fondly, and now find myself at leisure to visit you. If it be agreeable to you I shall arrive at four o’clock today for Tea.
Your old friend,
Eliza Frost
‘Mrs Frost.’ The words tip out of Angelica on a great exhale. ‘Mrs Frost has written to me.’
‘Is that so?’ says Mr Hancock.
‘She puts her address as St James’s, look. I think she will have very easily got herself a good position. What would you wager? That she is a housekeeper now? That is a job to suit her. I wonder if her employers know she is using their boy for her own errands.’
Angelica now being a wife, with all the necessary equipage, she keeps a silver pencil chained to her waist. Licking the nib, she hesitates.
‘What shall I say?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘She wants to visit me this afternoon. What shall I tell her?’
‘Well, tell her yes.’
‘She never wrote to me before.’
‘Perhaps she was not at liberty to do so.’ Mr Hancock is not paying much attention. Angelica swallows to shift the bitter taste in the back of her throat. Why now? She puts her pencil down.
She has a half-feeling, a bad feeling. If she were able to pin this feeling down and regard it properly, she might see that the thought of seeing Mrs Frost makes her nervous. But Angelica’s head is full of many feelings that she is unable to inspect.
She picks up her pencil again. Aloud, she says, ‘I would like to see Mrs Frost again. She was my dear companion. She understood my hair.’
THREE
Mr Hancock meets with Mrs Brierley’s agent on the edge of Blackheath, a wind-churned yellow plateau that drops away into the trees towards Greenwich. ‘Fashionable,’ remarks the agent, who has heard of Mr Hancock and believes he has identified him as a man out of his depth.
‘Very fashionable,’ Mr Hancock agrees, ‘which will please my wife. She likes to be in society.’
‘I daresay,’ murmurs the agent; adding with absolute courtesy, ‘The barracks are only across the heath.’
Does Mr Hancock hesitate? Perhaps his attention is only plucked away by the flight of a jay from one tree to another. For a moment his eyes track it, and then his big red face crinkles with pleasure.
‘Such unspoilt countryside,’ he remarks. ‘Very pleasant. Very fine.’ He stands for some moments looking about himself, with his fists wedged in his pockets, the wind whipping at his old stuff jacket. Then he turns his eyes mildly back to the agent. ‘Let us see if this house is fit for Mrs Hancock. Lead the way, sir.’
They go through the gate and up the drive. The house Mr Hancock will buy is white and square, with five bays most regularly spaced. The agent means to open the front door with a flourish, but the lock is stiff and the hinges in want of oil, and after a struggle he manages it with more of a clatter and a heave. He ushers Mr Hancock into a large atrium with a chequerboard floor and dove-grey panelling. If he had hoped to dazzle this drab, paunchy man, he must be disappointed, for Mr Hancock goes undazzled: he follows his guide through high-ceilinged rooms, their steps loud amongst the dust sheets, and is inscrutable.
‘Elegant proportions,’ the agent prompts him from time to time, or, ‘No expense spared. à la mode, à la mode,’ but Mr Hancock knows this already, and at any rate is not very interested. He remembers Angelica’s instruction – ‘just as we are’, blotting the butter from her wrist – but he cannot help but inspect the house as he would some consignment of Macao porcelain: not as a consumer but as a gatekeeper. In such a situation, Mr Hancock’s first thought is never, do I like it? but only, is it correct? And since he sees that it is indeed correct, that this house – with its library, its stables, its six fine bedrooms, not to mention the fleshy ladies painted on the music-room ceiling – is exactly the sort of house Angelica Hancock, the wife of a rich gentleman merchant, might be expected to own, this leads him to his next question: is it quality? He taps away at the skirting boards and gets down on his hams to inspect the parquet, and he asks tiresome questions that the agent cannot answer. ‘The marble, it’s Italian? What workshop made the bedroom set? Will these stains come out?’
‘We might offer you a good price for Mr Brierley’s horses and phaeton,’ says the agent recklessly, but Mr Hancock grunts, ‘Yes, yes, we shall need those,’ and goes back to checking the French windows for draughts. ‘I hope the kitchen is well appointed. An unhappy cook is a bad cook.’ This pearl of wisdom is one of Hester’s.
Finally, they process through the garden-room doors to the steps at the back of the house. It is a cool bright day but the marble has taken the sun, so that a warm haze wavers around Mr Hancock’s stockings and brings out the sweat in the crooks of his knees. The lawn slopes steeply away from the house until it is swallowed up by trees, and the view towards Greenwich – of treetops and fields – is hazy and blue-tinged. On the horizon, the Thames glitters, white sails puffing across its surface as vague as angels.
‘Well?’ says the agent.
‘It all seems in order.’
‘I might direct your attention to the folly,’ says the agent, pointing to a tiny Palladian temple that crouches half-concealed by the underbrush. ‘Not just any folly,’ he continues, ‘for once inside – no, I shall show you. Come.’
The grass is soft and dense under Mr Hancock’s boots. It is the correct type of grass, he observes, not prickly and faded such as animals are grazed upon, but lush as new-dyed wool. For a moment he sees it lapping a child’s bare feet. ‘What grass is this?’ he asks. ‘Where can the seeds be got?’
‘Why, only grass,’ says the agent in surprise. He must not know the other sort: for him, all grass is for lounging on. Nobody has tended to it for some time, and as the lawn inclines towards the folly’s shaded corner the grass grows longer, closing with a velvety swish around the men’s ankles, still earth-cold at its roots, so Mr Hancock’s shoes come up stained with dew and mud. What he sees, in his mind’s eye, is a child’s feet – running feet, running under the hem of a white nightgown, running alongside him through the hissing grass. He hears a little gust of excited breath, and catches the flash of rosy toes, and thinks, although it has never occurred to him before, this is the life I might have given my Henry. In the other version of his life, in a garden like this one, a child is hurtling down the hill and into his arms: he feels its meagre weight thud into his chest, its hot cheeks against his face, its delicate ribs and pounding heart against his palms.