‘But – will they never visit? You must have female society.’
Angelica has a great wish, all of a sudden, to see dear Bel, to ask her, how did you manage this? Bel would have an answer; Bel would be kind. But then, Bel’s cohort are all gentry, titled and landed. They are not the wives of middling provincial men; they are a breed quite apart. ‘Maybe they will unbend,’ she says. ‘I shall endeavour to be their sort. If I make a good impression tonight they cannot take against me, I am sure.’
Sukie, setting up the clavichord, watches them whisper together; her uncle’s eyes very fond upon his wife. She does not find Angelica onerous company, but she is crestfallen that Mr Hancock’s attention has so quickly been transferred; she had thought herself central to his life. That he seems so quickly to have forgot her is discomfiting.
‘Brandy!’ cries Mr Hancock, and thus they toast the coming child, he with his arm about Mrs Hancock’s waist, she blushing and pretty. Even Mrs Lippard smiles and laughs; the baby may be a mere tadpole, but it binds their union as nothing else might. There is no ousting Mrs Hancock now.
Bridget nips into the room, and tugging at Mr Hancock’s sleeve informs him that there is a gentleman for him at the door.
‘More visitors?’ says Mr Hancock. ‘What fun! Bring ’em in, bring ’em in!’ but when Bridget beckons him down into the hall, he finds it is only a messenger boy. ‘Are you wanting a reply?’ asks Mr Hancock.
‘No, sir, only to see you take receipt of the message. ’Tis important.’
‘I see. I see.’ Mr Hancock inspects the seal on the note: it is impressed, God be praised, with Captain Jones’s anchor signet. ‘Thank you. Will you have a drop of brandy?’
‘Thank you, sir. No, sir. I must away.’
Once the boy has gone, Mr Hancock gazes again upon the seal. News from my ship, he says to himself as the muted notes of the clavichord drift down the stairs, accompanied by the laughter and hum of his assembled new friends. Momentous, perhaps. As if I required any more moment in my life. He thinks of the fever with which he had demanded a new mermaid; the hectic bliss when news came that one had been found. And now? Why, it does not matter. I have everything I want; the addition of a wonder to my life will improve it not one whit.
And if it is bad news, therefore, if the creature is lost or proved a forgery, then it matters not one whit either. Even so, he is not quite easy, and goes upstairs to fetch his wife. She is standing by the clavichord, turning the pages for Sukie; when he enters the room she turns her face to him with an expression of gentle happiness.
‘What was it?’ she asks quietly, so as not to interrupt Sukie’s performance, but seeing the expression on her husband’s face she steps away from the instrument all the same, beckoning the dancing master to take her place.
‘A note. I have not opened it yet. I – I hoped perhaps you would. ’Tis from Captain Jones.’
Her eyes grow large. ‘He has returned?’
‘I do not know! Open it!’
She slides her finger under the seal, and unfolds the paper carefully. It is a damp and dirty sheet, its contents made out in the most ragged of scrawls. It reads as follows:
Mr Hancock,
Sir,
The good ship Unicorn has docked safely. I beg that you meet me at Greenland Dock tomorrow morning at seven o’clock to take receipt of its most cumbersome and unusual cargo.
Yours etc.,
Captain Tysoe Jones
P. S. –
SHE IS ALIVE.
In this quiet bubble, something is growing.
It doubles and doubles and doubles again, unseen, and moment on moment on moment it begins to wake up, becomes more of itself. Slowly it will start to extend itself, to stretch out like a taproot from a tight seed, or to swell like a tadpole, limbs knotted within its body, but although it is like these things it is certainly neither of these things. It is only itself.
If it thinks, it does not know it is thinking. If it feels, it does not know it is feeling. But it strives, without knowing it is striving: it surges towards life without knowing what life might be, and although it has no understanding of attainment, to attain is its sole instinct. It has no idea of age, but it conquers seconds and minutes and hours: it lives now, and now, and now; each moment bubbles into the next, and once gone is quite forgotten. It might be the oldest thing in the world, for all it knows. It might be the very newest.
This something sleeps in the dark, a secret even to itself. People who have never seen it might credit it with fingers, eyelashes, a voice, but how can they know? Who knows what it does in its small bubble, when it does not even know itself? They will suggest it has a moral code, a motive, a divine purpose, a soul worth stealing. They assume its rules might be the same as theirs. They are wrong.
It is a seed crammed with everything it will ever need; it beds down. It swims. It flies. Blind and deaf and dumb in its sensual world, it rides on tides of dreams. It knows, or does not know, the roil and churn of fluid all about it, and the thud and rush of some eternal comforting tide. What it knows is that it is part of something bigger.
What it knows, if it knows, is that something is about to happen. It is prepared at every moment for something to happen.
Something is about to happen.
NINE
Mr Hancock has never set an alarm in his life: dawn is such a logical time to awake that he does so without complaint or difficulty. This particular morning, his eyes snap open as the bells in St Nicholas’s spire sound the third of six chimes, and is in an instant as perfectly awake as if he had never been asleep.
‘Mermaid,’ he says in the dark, and sits up. He cannot see much, it being dark and the bed-curtains being half drawn, but he can feel Angelica, warm and sweaty, curled up next to him, and he pats what he supposes to be her shoulder. She squeaks like a kitten. ‘Your mermaid has arrived,’ he whispers. ‘Will you come and see her with me?’
‘There is no mermaid,’ she mumbles, rolling over onto her belly.
‘Wake up, Mrs Hancock.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I cannot persuade you?’
‘Go and satisfy yourself it is real. I’ll not make the journey for a silly toy.’
‘I suppose rest is of particular importance to you,’ he says, ‘in your happy condition.’ He opens the bed-curtains and eases himself out; she sprawls into the space he has left while he hops about with one foot in his breeches, as silently as he can manage. On the way out of the bedroom, he cracks his shin on the blanket chest and spits hoarse curses.
‘Shh!’ says Angelica.
‘Forgive me! Forgive me!’
He tiptoes downstairs as light as a ballerina. Bridget is coming from the kitchen, carrying a full coal scuttle.
‘Good morning,’ he says, bursting with contentment, but she squints and scowls blearily at him, and says nothing. The shutters at least are open, and the hall is all awash with spring sunshine. ‘A glorious day,’ he remarks, as the cat follows him out onto the street. ‘An important day. I am to be a father at last. And my ship has come in – the Unicorn – the most important of them all.’
The cat zigzags the road from gutter to gutter, her little snout close to the ground, her whiskers twitching. She is hungry.
‘You imagine this is of no consequence to you,’ said Mr Hancock, ‘but this business is what keeps you in bacon rinds.’