She is in bed at the time – Mr Hancock having risen for the day – sitting up to watch the white clouds chase one another across the sky outside the window, and the thought leaps into her head very suddenly and perfectly formed. Everything becomes clear. She realises that beneath the surface of her mind she has been thinking and counting and puzzling for some time; that she knows her own symptoms perfectly well, and that the plain fact of her impending motherhood has sat unattended for quite long enough now.
She flops onto her back, resting her hand on her stomach – which has always been a plump little stomach, so there is little to discern, although she feels it well enough – and says to herself, this is absurd. In Dean Street she would have been more vigilant; she would have understood at once what was happening. In Dean Street I would never have allowed this to happen, she thinks, and feels stupid, because her instinct to obstruct this sort of development is no longer suitable for her situation. However, she cannot think how else to feel.
Angelica knows prophylaxis the way other girls know the catechism. She keeps a vinegared sponge in her cabinet and knows what to do with a cundum. She can time a gentleman’s withdrawal to the most exquisite second; she will accept his spending on whichever part of her person he most admires; in exceptional situations she will indulge in the Frenchman’s vice. In the event of an oversight she might calmly draw herself a scalding bath and a quart of gin, or in a case of greater urgency call in on Mrs Chappell to acquire from her a good purgative. If further aid were required, she would not find herself abandoned; every woman she knew had a little piece of advice, or a commiseratory glass of sack, and word would be passed round until the proper expert with the proper equipment were found. It would not be pleasant – and some times less pleasant than others – but it would all be settled after one small burst of activity and anxiety; all would be well, and all concluded to her own choosing.
Now, friendless and without the first idea of how to find a midwife specialising in live births, Angelica is out of her element. What shall I do? she panics, over and over, and can only conclude, I can do nothing. I must do nothing. She can only wait for this baby to be born. It agitates her, this lack of agency; she feels itchy and restless, she flops about in bed, and then she gets up and paces the room. If such a significant thing is really to occur, why does she not have more to do?
This, she realises, is the end of Angelica Neal, and the cementing of Mrs Hancock. She had anticipated only that marriage would deliver her from her old situation; in fact it has transplanted her to another, that knits itself under her very skin and alters her every day. More has slipped from her control than she had expected, and now she sees that as the months and years pass it will only slip further. She will never be simply her own self in the world again; the courtesan Angelica Neal, a personality all her own, is being parcelled up and claimed by connection upon connection. She is ‘wife of’ and ‘aunt of’; later she will be ‘mother of’ – perhaps some energetic young man whose achievements will never be traced back to she who birthed him. These claims upon her will only multiply – she will be mother-in-law, grandmother, widow, dependant – and accordingly her own person will be divided and divided and divided, until there is nothing left.
‘Well, I have done it now,’ she says.
She pulls her shawl around her and puts on her slippers, and trots down the stairs to her husband’s counting-house. She taps on the door.
‘Come in,’ he calls.
She opens the door. He is hunched over his desk as usual, wigless, absent-mindedly rubbing the cat under the chin. The little creature has squeezed her eyes shut in her pleasure, paws folded one over the other.
‘Good morning,’ says Angelica.
‘Good morning.’ He does not look up. He works his way around the cat’s jaw with the tips of his stained fingers, and then begins to stroke her behind her ears. She purrs thunderously.
Angelica’s stomach is a-flutter with nerves. ‘Are you ready for breakfast?’
‘Oh – ah, let me see.’ He rummages through his papers with one hand, the other never leaving the cat. ‘I am particularly busy today. Perhaps – perhaps I shall dine with you?’ He glances up to catch her eye apologetically. ‘So much to do, my dear.’
‘Mr Hancock,’ says Angelica more firmly. Then she realises that she does not know what to say. ‘What would you …?’ she tries. ‘I mean, if you were … I think that I …’
He turns round to look at her, his arm hooked over the back of his chair. ‘Spit it out,’ he says.
‘I hardly know how.’
‘’Tis not bad news?’
‘No, no. No, no, no. Good news. I venture you will like it very much.’ She realises that her face is hot; she is blushing, and her cheeks have leapt into a grin. The anticipation of his joy makes her feel giddy. ‘Mr Hancock,’ she tries again, clasping her hands behind her back, ‘Oh, sir, I am in for it!’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘I am in the way of increasing!’
‘You are—?’
‘A baby! We are going to have a baby!’
‘Oh!’ He rises from his seat in one movement; the cat flees and the ink bottle overturns. He takes Angelica in his arms, kissing her face and hair. ‘My little pigeon. My darling. What news. So clever.’
‘I am pleased,’ she says tentatively. Then she says again, ‘I am pleased,’ because it is true. She has made an unremarkable middling type of man weep with the most innocent joy; this is something to be pleased about. If she is to deliver a child, it might as well be to the sort of man who will dote on it.
‘When?’ he says, clasping her elbows.
‘In time for Christmas, I think.’
‘Oh, my dear. We shall be so happy. You and I, my little wife, and a child of our own. I could not want for more.’
‘Nor I,’ she says.
‘I told you I would make you happy. You are more than content, are you not?’
‘Oh, sir.’ She dabs her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘Of course.’
EIGHT
That very same night, Mr Hancock sends out for sugarplums and meat pies, and for neighbours to join in his pleasure in a private, friendly gathering. He also sends for his sister Hester, who, although she strives to be cordial, cannot help hissing to him upon her arrival, ‘How can you be sure ’tis yours?’
Those others in attendance are a motley group; from a nicer class of Deptford folk than those Mr Hancock has habitually gone amongst, for his star is rising. The tenants of Hancock Row are all there – or rather, the gentlemen are: the dancing master; the doctor; the fellow who has very lately opened a teawarehouse on Butt Lane itself. Jem Thorpe and the Master Shipwright are present also, frowning at the company. It used to be that there was only one sort of man in Deptford society: clever with his hands and with a mind for figures, whose living, if it did not come out of a ship, was no living at all. These land-locked leisured citizens are a breed quite apart. Where have they sprung from, and what can be made of them?
There is one thing they agree on, however: they have all, to a man, presented themselves alone without wives, sisters or children.
‘Say,’ says Mr Hancock, ‘what’s this? This company is very short of ladies.’ The new friends clutch their rummers and smile nervously, murmuring their apologies. ‘What?’ he asks. ‘Speak up, speak up! Not one of you can finish a sentence.’
Angelica, taking his elbow, steers him into a confiding huddle. ‘Their wives will not be about me,’ she whispers.
‘No! But that is absurd.’
She shrugs. ‘Perfectly sensible. I am not decent company.’
‘You are my wife, are you not?’
‘Aye, but …’ she sighs. ‘They will not wish to meet me. And their husbands will not wish it either,’ although when she turns around she finds them all craning and staring to see her, for they have heard of her, and seen her likeness shared around. ‘You may be certain that they are under the strictest instructions to remember everything they see, that they might describe it in great detail when they are home.’