‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen!’ Mrs Frost repeats rapturously. ‘What an age to be!’ Angelica has never seen her so fawning, and yet that false ebullience is nevertheless familiar.
‘’Tis tolerable,’ says Sukie suspiciously. Angelica tries to convey with her eyes the message, she is not at all how I remembered her, but it is lost in the awkward air between them. Instead she tries speech.
‘We are going to take tea,’ she says to Sukie. ‘Will you join us?’
‘Oh!’ says Mrs Frost. ‘That would be delightful. I wish to discover everything about you.’
Sukie regards Mrs Frost as if she were a mad dog. ‘Thank you, no,’ she says. ‘I am not at leisure to do any such thing.’
‘Of course you have a little time,’ pleads Angelica. ‘And as a lady of this house it’s only right you take your place at its tea table.’
‘You’ll forgive me if I do not,’ says Sukie, and whisks up the stairs. From a safe perch on the next landing, she stares at Mrs Frost, and mouths consternation at Angelica, who throws her a scowl in exchange and ushers their visitor into the parlour.
This room, at least, is nothing at all to be ashamed of for she oversaw its decoration herself, in elegant colours she knows to be fashionable, with a painted floorcloth certainly a notch or two finer than those in certain of their old lodgings. There is nothing offensive about the place; perhaps this is why Mrs Frost is so offended. She makes a great show of balancing herself on her chair, tussling layers of skirt and petticoat first this way and then that way. ‘’Tis all right for you,’ she says, ‘in just a little plain dress. These chairs are not designed for great gowns.’
‘No,’ says Angelica pleasantly, ‘they are not. You are very grand, Eliza. I think the world is treating you well.’ She is studying her friend’s face. It is formidably painted – eyebrows, cheeks, lips – so there is not one vulnerable spot, not one inch of her skin left bare. I used to share a bed with this woman, Angelica thinks. She remembers the soft pale skin at the tops of her arms, just losing its firmness; the little creases at the corners of her mouth. The one whisker that grows from under her chin and which Angelica had to pluck for her.
‘London has been kind to me,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘I have brought you something to remember it by.’
The parcel she hands over is tied up with red string and smells of orange blossom. Angelica presses her nose against it. Her eyes close; the corners of her lips twitch. ‘Millefruits,’ she whispers. She tugs the knots loose and the strings slither to the floor. Gold tissue paper crackles as it falls open: the sweetmeats inside are crisp and pale, emanating perfume and toasted sugar.
‘And bane bread here too,’ she squeaks, fossicking out a little golden sliver baked so hard as to almost be fired. She presses it to her lips for a second before slipping it between her strong back teeth. It cracks, sharp and clean, and she lets it soften a moment on her tongue. Crumbs of cinnamon and nutmeg melt away from shards of almond. ‘I used to eat these in bed.’ She is blushing with pleasure, bringing up her shoulders and wrinkling her still-pretty nose as if a lover is kissing her neck.
‘When did you last taste these things?’
She wants me to say, not since my marriage. She wants me to tell her that I am sadder for it.
‘You forget how carefully Mr Hancock learned my tastes.’ She tries to recall her old heavy-lidded smile and fit it to her face. ‘You forget I know how to ask for things.’
‘You married him. He is no longer under any imperative to give you them.’
‘He gives because it pleases him.’ She nibbles again at her biscuit. Cinnamon and almonds between her teeth; the gust of rosewater and starch from Mrs Frost’s person. The ghost-Angelica, the Angelica she used to be, is standing right at her side. If she were to shuffle just a little this way she would be back in her body again, looking out through her eyes.
Bridget comes with the hot water.
‘Have you no sweet wine?’ Mrs Frost holds her biscuit but does not bite into it. ‘My teeth cost too much to risk in such a way.’
Angelica no longer wants to sip Madeira with her friend. ‘There is only beer in the house,’ she says.
‘No!’
‘We find tea strong enough.’
She waits for Bridget to leave before she takes out her bunch of keys. One key unlocks the cabinet where are kept the tea bowls and the tea caddy; another unlocks the caddy itself. Mrs Frost watches in amusement. ‘What a housewife you are.’
‘That is what I chose.’ She knows that the tea bowls, eggshell porcelain with pink roses and the mysterious glyphs of their Chinese artists, are a match for anything in the grandest houses: they ought to be, since Mr Hancock supplies them all. She need not be ashamed of the tea either. ‘This we receive direct from the quayside. Mr Hancock is intimate friends with a gentleman from the Company. What do you think of it?’
They sip in silence. A brooch sparkles at Mrs Frost’s throat when she swallows, almost hidden by her necktie. The stones in it are good, not paste.
‘And how is it come to be,’ says Angelica, ‘that you are in St James’s?’
Mrs Frost brightens. ‘I have a house there,’ she says.
‘A house? You mean you have a position in a house?’
‘I have a house. ’Tis mine. I rent it.’
‘An entire house?’ Angelica says.
Mrs Frost inclines her head, just fractionally, and the light catches her brooch again. At such an angle, there is no mistaking its design. It is a perfect Cupid’s arrow.
Is this a trick? A joke? Angelica cannot ask; she has too anxious a sense that this is what Mrs Frost wants. Instead she pursues her own questions: ‘But what do you want with a whole house?’
‘To keep my girls in.’ Mrs Frost lets the silence spin out for a second or two. ‘In fact,’ she continues, ‘I met one off the stagecoach this very morning.’
‘A girl?’
‘Fifteen years of age. A beautiful complexion. ’Tis a shame she cannot read a word, and she carries herself very poorly, but she has a fine voice and a very delicate manner, a rare quality. She will respond to training very well, once she leaves off crying.’
‘Eliza, I did not expect you to resort to this.’
‘I am surprised you have heard nothing of it. ’Tis a very new venture, to be sure, but it has attracted a good deal of notice.’
‘I do not read those scurrilous magazines. Why would I?’
‘So you will not know that my Lolly is so sought after I sold her first time for fifty guineas. Fifty guineas, Mrs Hancock.’
‘You have risen so quickly.’
‘I had experience enough.’
This, of course, is so. Was she not at Angelica’s elbow for every moment of her life; had it not been her business to know everything of the world, and everybody in it? Angelica shakes her head. ‘But this house, this fine house you say you have, after we were quite penniless. We had nothing. How did you come by the money?’
Mrs Frost does not look the slightest bit uncomfortable. ‘I had a little capital.’
I had no capital, Angelica thinks. I had nothing at all. But she cannot say it. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth as she tries, instead, ‘You were always clever with money. Cleverer than I.’
‘You had your own talents.’
‘You kept my books so well.’ She spits her words out, eyes narrowing, but Mrs Frost just smiles and sips her tea. She will not own it; it is as if it has not happened. It is as if she has not come here wearing Angelica’s own jewellery.
They sit.
‘I believe,’ says Angelica, ‘that you came here with the intention of communicating certain things to me. Is there anything else you desire me to know?’ Did you scheme this all along, she wants to demand, or did the opportunity merely present itself?
‘No,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘I believe you perceive things just as they are. Oh – and I suppose you have not heard – our old friend, Mrs Chappell.’