Deptford, at the foot of the hill and on the edge of the water, is not fresh and wind-tossed but chilly and damp, and in the Hancock house the cold lingers in the corners, seeping through the floorboards and collecting in empty rooms the way cobwebs will. Mrs Hancock has taken herself into the kitchen to keep warm, pulling a shawl around her shoulders and dragging her chair right up to the fire. She stretches her legs towards the warmth so that her honest camlet skirt rucks up around her calves; and her stockings, clean enough and only slightly darned, twitch with the contented wiggling of her toes. She is knitting a little piece of lace, nodding over her work with her lips pursed, and as she tips her head forward it might be observed that on the nape of her neck, between her plain lawn collar and her plain lawn cap, a few strands of golden hair drift in the updraught. Other than this, there is little to identify her as Dean Street’s brightest diamond, except for the startlingly poor quality of her knitting.
Now, as Angelica sits by the fire she thinks, Eliza will be pleased to see what I have made of myself. Sensible Mrs Frost will approve of Angelica’s modest clothes and quiet industry. I am comfortable, she imagines telling her. I feel very much myself. For although she is the least self-conscious she has ever been in her life, Angelica has a feeling that her errant trajectory has at last converged with its intended course. Anybody observing her at this moment would immediately apprehend that she was once a rector’s daughter, or if not a rector’s daughter then the child of a gentleman farmer, or the better-regarded of a flourishing town’s two tailors, for while she is unwilling to cast her mind back to her origins, not one fibre of her body has forgotten them. She sits like the middling-class wife she was born to be, industrious even in repose, earnest and calm and scrubbed.
‘No need to change my dress,’ she says aloud to the girls, absorbed in the industry of the kitchen. ‘No need to stand on ceremony.’ She looks forward to leading Mrs Frost around her house: kitchen and parlour, counting-house and bedroom, over which she alone has oversight. How very neat it will all be, how Mrs Frost’s face will be wreathed in smiles. I knew you would do well, my dove. I knew you would come right.
‘Are the stairs swept?’ she asks Bridget. ‘Have you stoked up the fire in the parlour? I want it welcoming for our visitor. Go now! Go!’
‘And what am I to do?’ asks Sukie crossly. ‘I am a lady of this house too. If you have a fine visitor for tea, I ought to be included in the party.’
Angelica hesitates. She is uncertain what to expect of her meeting with Mrs Frost; she does not want it overseen by Sukie’s bright eyes. ‘You will be bored.’
‘Pah! Pshaw! Bored! I know what you—’
‘You know nothing. I am an old lady now; I am no longer interesting. You should have met me five years ago.’
‘But what shall I write to my mother? If I cannot send her an interesting bulletin soon, I think she will come here herself.’
‘What notes have you so far?’
‘That you did not curry the last of the duck as you should have, but fed it to the cat by hand. Which was wasteful and indulgent. And also that when you scrubbed the linen press you did not change the papers that had lain on its shelves, but only put the old ones back after you were done—’
‘That is quite enough for one missive. Do not part with all your best gossip at once; keep her hungry for the next instalment.’
‘But may I not join you?’
‘No.’
Sukie’s face darkens. She is an amenable creature, but since she was so nearly snatched back by her mother, she has displayed a certain nervousness, and is readier to see the necessary compartmenting of their life together as a purposeful exclusion. ‘Next time,’ Angelica placates her, but she is already flouncing from the room.
On the threshold she turns and draws breath, but her courage confounds her and she says nothing.
‘Sukie,’ says Angelica, ‘you are wanted here.’
‘Not by him.’
‘Aye, by Mr Hancock too.’
‘He has you now.’
Angelica feels rather a pang. ‘He would be very grieved to hear you say that.’ She reaches out a hand. ‘Here, come sit with me. We shall talk on it.’
Sukie shakes her head, and closes the door. As her steps recede up the staircase, Angelica drops her lace into her lap and turns her face to the fire. Trailing her fingers for the cat to butt up against, she feels so tired she can hardly move. She does not know yet that the brief, blunt but affectionate ministrations of her husband have put her in a particular condition. As yet, its flourishing is of no greater significance than the first shoot of club moss taking root on a stone wall, and although Angelica feels stout and sleepy and tight at the seams, it has not so far occurred to her to wonder why this might be.
First she hears Mrs Frost – a loud and insistent rapping at the front door; the scamper of Bridget on the stairs – then she smells her. A great thick floral cloud wafts all the way through to Angelica in the kitchen, as if somebody has dropped a bottle of jasmine absolute, or dumped all the deadheads of Ranelagh on the hall floor.
Perhaps it is not her. She never wore a scent. She never wore so much.
‘I am here to see your mistress,’ comes Mrs Frost’s clipped little voice.
‘Here I am,’ Angelica calls, stopping to pinch her cheeks in the mirror of the kettle, ‘here I am,’ but when she comes into the front hall she sees that the Mrs Frost who has arrived is not the Mrs Frost of her memory. She is painted and rouged, black and scarlet and white, and her silk skirt crackles lightning bright, and her voluminous fichu quivers and froths, and her puffed-up hair wafts lavender powder every which way. It tumbles and rolls like a snowstorm. Bridget sneezes.
‘Eliza,’ says Angelica. ‘As narrow a maypole as ever you were.’ She tries to stand back.
Mrs Frost’s blowsy aura makes her large; the hallway is full of her as she cries out, ‘Ah! Is that little Angelica? Dear, I would not have known you.’
Do not look at me that way, Angelica wants to snap. But she is so surprised – by Mrs Frost’s cold, appraising eyes, by her own sudden anger – that she says nothing.
Mrs Frost looks about the hall. ‘Why is it so dark in here? Why all this brown paint?’
‘It is convenient.’
‘I know you, Angelica.’ She speaks playfully. ‘You love bright colours. You cannot be happy without a papered wall.’
‘What, and then to scrub the place every day? No, thank you kindly.’
Mrs Frost stares at her as if appalled, as if she has said something indecent, which surprises Angelica for she had meant to flaunt her domestic good sense to her old friend’s wonder and approval. She lifts up her chin, feeling insolent as a schoolgirl. So I sweep my own house.
‘Bridget,’ she says, ‘we are going to my parlour. Boil some water for our tea. Come this way, Mrs Frost.’
At the foot of the stairs, they pass the closed door of Mr Hancock’s office. Angelica no longer has any inclination to show it off to her friend, for what is there to show off? A comical old strongbox with black rivets; a jumble of papers and ribbons and broken sealing wax; the unsavoury possibility of abandoned beer bottles, reeking pipe dottle. Going up the stairs she clutches a hank of her skirt tight in each hand that she might climb faster; the wool is wadding in her damp palms, it will crease most certainly, but the fog of Mrs Frost chases behind her.
On the landing they meet Sukie, taking her book upstairs.
‘And who is this?’ asks Mrs Frost. ‘You did not tell me there was a Miss Hancock, Angelica dear.’ Sukie wrinkles her nose.
‘My husband has no children. This is his niece, Miss Lippard.’
‘Ah, but I see the resemblance.’ Mrs Frost seizes Sukie’s hand. ‘Enchanted! And you are how old, my dear?’