‘What of her?’ Angelica feels a sudden chill. ‘Is she well?’
‘Well enough. She has been in trouble, though. The law.’ She delivers her news with relish but Angelica wafts it away.
‘The usual charges? Bless you, Frost, you have so very much to learn about this game. She’ll pay the fine and that will be the end of it.’
Mrs Frost cuts her eyes nastily. ‘I cannot share your confidence. She is not so much in favour as she once was.’
‘Nonsense.’ Angelica looks at her askance. ‘Mrs Chappell will always have her protectors. Her influence is unrivalled.’
Downstairs the clock is striking six. The front door goes, and Mr Hancock is stamping and hallooing in the hall. ‘Your husband is home.’
He is coming up the stairs, calling, ‘Angelica! Angelica! Mrs Hancock, where be you?’
‘In here,’ she tries to say, but her voice falters. She feels quite overcome. He throws open the door and he is all a-fluster, his excitement hanging around him in a horsey-smelling halo of sweat. One of the knees of his breeches is torn wide open, and black blood is caked on his porky knee. He claps her on the shoulder and kisses the frill of her cap. There is a long smear of what might be soot on his cheek.
‘Good news,’ he cries. ‘Good news, my little pigeon!’
‘Mrs Frost is here,’ says Angelica.
‘Good evening, Mrs Frost, good evening.’
‘He has been drinking,’ smirks Mrs Frost. But Angelica does not care. She cannot get close enough to her husband, her foolish, honest husband. She is scooting around him, dusting him down, taking his coat from his shoulders and shaking it out.
‘What have you been at? What have you done to yourself?’
‘Whisht! It don’t signify. I lost my footing.’
‘And your knuckles!’ She drops her voice to an uxorial whisper. ‘Have you been brawling?’
‘Nothing of the sort!’
‘I must go,’ says Mrs Frost. She looks delighted.
Mr Hancock remembers himself. ‘I have been most improper,’ he says, crestfallen. ‘I have burst in on you ladies when I ought to have kept to myself.’
‘Not at all,’ says Mrs Frost, rising. ‘It is time I left.’
‘Will you stay to dine?’ says Mr Hancock.
‘I have an engagement. I came only to look in on your wife.’
‘I shall see you out.’
‘Yes, Mr Hancock, please see her out,’ says Angelica. ‘Goodbye, Eliza.’
Mr Hancock clatters down the stairs, taking with him the great waft of Mrs Frost. Angelica waits on the threshold of the parlour, dithering, her hand raised to her breastbone. She hears the front door close, then her husband calling:
‘Angelica! My little wife. Come to me, let me tell you about your new home.’
‘What are you about, Mr Hancock?’ She trots down the dark stairs. ‘Some candles want lighting down here.’
‘I have bought you that house, my angel. I inspected it most carefully, and it is just so. Very grand! I wish you would excuse my bursting in. I felt my news could not wait, but I do see that it was not a gentlemanly action. It is in the countryside above Greenwich, Mrs Hancock. Exactly to your tastes. à la mode, my dear, à la mode.’
‘You have truly bought a house?’
He smells of the alehouse, and there is sawdust stuck to his boots. ‘Truly,’ he says.
‘Well, why did you not announce it while that horrid woman was here? I should have liked to see her face. Ha! That would have given her something to chew over. You are certain it is all ours? You are certain it is so grand?’
‘Of course, of course. You will be astounded.’ He takes off his hat and his wig, and scrubs his palms over his bristly scalp. ‘Ah! Better,’ he says, sliding his thumbs under the straining waistband of his breeches, ‘and better yet if I had something to drink –’ rapping his stick against the floor so it might be heard all over the house – ‘Bridget! Where is Bridget?’
‘Stop your banging. Come and sit by the fire; I shall fetch us something.’
And so the erstwhile Angelica Neal, in her caraco and her cap, trots willingly into the pantry to bring her husband small beer and cold boiled beef. She bolts the shutters and lights the candles, and comes to the dark wood table in the dining room with two pewter plates and a loaf of bread. Mr Hancock stokes up the fire and unrolls the plan of the house on the table, weighing down one corner with a candlestick and another with the mustard pot. He and his wife sit elbow to elbow, eating their beef and supping their beer.
‘Here is the dining room,’ says Mr Hancock, tracing a greasy paw over it, ‘and here the music room, and the staircase. I had thought these rooms here for your own personal use, but you might choose different when you see them for yourself. They are very proper, my dear, not showy at all, you need not worry.’
‘I do not mind a little show. Where it is tasteful.’
The candlelight and the patter of rain on the flagged yard outside are soporific: Angelica leans against her husband’s shoulder, with his stout arm around her and his fingers palping at her waist. She is more certain of her feelings now. And since there is nobody else to tell, she turns to her husband and murmurs:
‘I do not want to see that woman again.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Mrs Frost. I do not think she is a good person.’
‘She was your dear friend.’ He blinks his blond eyelashes but he is not arguing with her. He wants to hear what she has to say. She flops her head back against him.
‘She spent ten years reminding me I ought to be other than I am. She disdained me when I was not respectable, and now that I am, she sneers at me.’
‘She sneered at you in this house? In the house you are mistress of?’
‘She wishes to see me as a failure. She wishes to make me ashamed. And shall I tell you one other thing?’
‘Go on.’ He slips his fingers under her cap and strokes the hair over her ear.
‘When I was ruined. When I married you. I do now believe that I was not quite ruined.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you not see the change in her? She is rich.’
‘So she has had help from somewhere.’
‘Yes, from my own purse! She kept all my accounts. She ran my house. She had not a penny of her own – she would have been on the street if I had not helped her – so how is it that when I became destitute she had a nest egg?’
‘It don’t mean she took it from you.’
‘She was wearing my pin today. My diamond pin. Cool as cream cheese, she was, coming into my house wearing my old jewels. She never cared for me and she cares for me now even less.’
‘Now, my girl.’
‘She is a hypocrite,’ says Angelica with finality. ‘I will not speak of her again.’ She folds her arms on the table and rests her chin on them. ‘Tell me more about our house.’
‘It has a folly,’ he says. ‘A summer house.’
‘Oh! I shall enjoy that. I can eat ices in it.’
‘And, underneath the summer house, the most curious thing.’
‘What is it?’
‘A shell grotto.’
She clasps her hands and opens her eyes wide. ‘Grand indeed!’
‘I knew you would be pleased. It even has a little pool in it, which must be fed by the spring. The agent said that the place had no function, but I know better. It is for our mermaid.’
‘Our mermaid that has not yet been vouchsafed to us. Our little fakement.’
‘This is a sign.’
‘I am content with only a grotto. I shall be its nymph. If only Mrs Frost knew! She has no grotto. What else does this house have?’
‘There is a fruit orchard. You will eat plums all summer. And there are stables, with a phaeton for me to drive you in. There are many bedrooms.’
‘But I want no visitors,’ she says. ‘No visitors at all. I want only us.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘No.’ Her heart is agitated. Who would come? Mrs Chappell, Bel Fortescue? To sneer?
‘No children?’
He says it just too sharply. He does not mean to fix his eyes so firmly upon her, but he cannot help it. She does not know what to do with her expression. She has never been in such a position. She does not know how to have any feelings about it at all.