Mrs Flowerday’s eyes do not leave the person of Angelica Hancock even as she dumbly shifts her baby from one breast to the other. The child, feeling the nipple tugged from his mouth, lets out a little whimper, and Angelica’s lips open a fraction. She looks at the little frill of his cap, and his ear so perfectly and miniaturely moulded, and the crease of fat that forms behind his frail little neck as he burrows at the breast. Even from across the room she can smell him: he is warm and dry, fragrant as if he has been baked, a malty and milky little child.
Sukie rises. She puts her hand in Angelica’s; she says, ‘Come, will you not sit with us? We have all been waiting for you,’ but Angelica stands erect and apart. She remains for one moment longer, her chin up, surveying her audience, before she is satisfied by her opinion of them and walks with slow certainty to her seat. Her skirts hiss about her. Nobody moves until she has finished shaking them into place, so that not one fold will be crushed beneath her. Then she leans on her elbow to inspect Mrs Flowerday’s son.
‘I did not know you had a child,’ she said. ‘Sukie, you did not tell me there would be a child.’ Despite herself she cannot stop staring at it, the way one stares when a man is thrown from his horse, or a litter of kittens is consumed by its mother: she would look away but she cannot.
‘My husband’s house – my house – is in Braintree,’ gabbles Mrs Flowerday, ‘and Mama attended me there, but my lying-in was so fiendish boring that as soon as I was fit to travel I brought Baby a-visiting.’ The queenly Mrs Hancock does not remark upon this, so she finishes lamely, ‘And here we shall stay some weeks more, I hope.’
‘She missed her mama,’ crows Mrs Crawford. ‘She is married so short a time, dear little girl, she cannot but miss her family.’
‘And Greenwich,’ says Mrs Flowerday, ‘for I had such society in Greenwich before I married, and my husband courted me there so prettily – I was the sensation of the season – and the countryside is rotten dull. Blasted dull.’
‘Now, Caro,’ warns Mrs Crawford, but her daughter begins to chatter again, explaining that Baby is in fact no trouble on long journeys, certainly no more than a lapdog – and in fact less trouble than a lapdog since he stays where he is put – he even seems to enjoy the rhythm of the carriage, bless his dear heart, and she must beg leave to recount an anecdote of a funny expression he once made, and to describe the extraordinary smallness of his toes, and to recount the many arguments she and Mr Flowerday engaged in while deciding if it were to be William Edward or Edward William. And all the while Angelica is staring at the back of his little capped head with awful fascination. Her heart feels small and dense, as if it were dough clenched tight in a fist. She meant her dress as a charm against fear and dismay, as it always was before: she wished to be once more Angelica Neal, who prospered and was gay, but although the gown is the same it seems the lady has altered.
Still, Angelica Hancock shares with Angelica Neal the knowledge that it is better always to be fierce than to be sad, just as it is always better to fight than to run. Therefore, when Mrs Flowerday stops to draw breath, Angelica interjects:
‘Do you not find it tedious?’
Poor Mrs Flowerday’s eyes widen. ‘Tedious! Why no! Why, I …! Perhaps when you have children of your own …’
‘Who says I have no children?’
‘If you did,’ says Mrs Flowerday with triumphant finality, ‘you would not say they were tedious.’
Mrs Flowerday, for all her talk, has sharp eyes. She is herself no stranger to the Tête-à-Tête section of Town and Country magazine: she is well acquainted with what affairs this splendid woman has left behind her. And she is not so very beautiful, for all that, she thinks to herself. She looks tired for a woman of such notorious leisure. She had hoped she might be coarser in her manners and speech, but Mrs Chappell’s training is thorough and deep-ingrained: Angelica cannot be faulted in any respect of taste, or conversation, or appearance, although Mrs Flowerday had not thought it quite usual to dress up so for tea. But things may well be different in town; Lord knows it is long enough since Mrs Flowerday herself has had the pleasure of going there.
Most of all, as her child’s muscular jaw grinds down upon her nipple, and she curls her toes in her shoes to keep from crying out with the pain of it, Caroline Flowerday is watching Angelica Hancock in order to ascertain whether this is a woman who might ever tempt a man like Mr Flowerday to forget his duties. Her lovely bosom, her translucent gown, the graceful way she moves her hands in speech and the musical prettiness of her voice: is this what he would spend his money on, if he had the opportunity? Is this the sort of woman he might keep in London (for how can she be sure he does not?), in rooms furnished from the Crawford dowry? Are the ties of desire as binding as the tie of a little shared child, and of the prosperous future promised therein?
‘Surprising,’ she says, ‘that you and Mr H. have none yet.’
Mrs Hancock is silent for a moment. ‘We have only been married half a year,’ she says.
‘Half a year! It did not take me nearly so long! But then you are a little older than me.’ The baby is drifting into sleep, the movement of his lips slackening to nothing. She looks down at him proudly, and nudges his cheek, which sets him off sucking energetically again, his eyelashes brushing his cheek. ‘Look at him go! The dear little pup.’ She looks up. ‘It was a fine wedding. We had a procession all across the heath, and all the children from hereabouts waved ribbon wands, and the horses had flowers plaited into their manes. I suppose yours was splendid.’
‘In my old parish church.’ Angelica remembers the cold flagstones of St Anne’s, the names of the dead carved deep on the floor of the chancel where they stepped. ‘We felt no need to make a spectacle of our feelings.’ She wore white kid gloves: even so she felt his hand tremble in hers. It is as slim a splinter of memory as any from her childhood; it feels nothing to do with the life she has now.
‘But how peculiar nothing has happened,’ says Mrs Flowerday. ‘We were not a minute alone before—’
‘Now then, children come when they come,’ says Mrs Crawford, but she has taken a practical and sociable interest in the bearing of children for close to thirty years, and sees the opportunity to dispense advice. ‘I suppose this is your first marriage,’ she says with matronly authority. ‘You would be surprised how many young brides are inexperienced in these matters.’
‘Mama,’ says Mrs Flowerday warningly. ‘Do you not recall our talk this morning?’
Even Sukie puts aside her anxiety and leans forward, rapt at the escalation of the conversation.
Angelica considers. Her face is serene and lovely, but it has a rigidity to it that only her niece sees. ‘That’s so, Mrs Crawford, no man but Mr Hancock ever called me his wife. But I cannot think that inexperience is to blame. I had more men than I can keep count of, you know. And the number of babies whose beginnings I was compelled to end – well, it cannot have done me any good.’ She does not drop her face. She almost smirks as Mrs Crawford sets down her tea bowl with hands so unsteady it dances on the saucer.
‘Ah,’ says the old lady, fumbling with her handkerchief, and, ‘Ahem.’ She takes a breath, and brightens. ‘But we are all ladies together now – surely it makes no odds to me what your past transgressions might be, since you are repentant now; and as I always say, let it be God’s concern how harshly He will come to judge you, for it is not mine.’
‘I had best warn you, I am a woman of great wickedness. I was a celebrated whore for ten years,’ says Angelica triumphantly.
But Mrs Crawford is dogged in her piety. ‘It’s remarked that I am uncommon in my liberality, but those are my principles.’ She clasps her hands, returning gratefully to her topic, for she is convinced she may yet discover a helpful insight into the Hancocks’ childlessness. ‘What of your husband’s history? At his age he was surely not a bachelor!’