They depart with their arms linked. ‘I have missed your company, Jellie,’ whispers Bel. ‘Truly, although your tempers are hot and never what you claim them to be.’
She returns to her apartment to find a great pineapple waiting for her outside its door, with a card bearing the regards of Mr Such-and-Such who begs her forgiveness but … happened to observe this afternoon … extends this gift as a token of his warmest friendship … &c &c &c … but still no Mrs Frost. The living room is still in disarray, its curtains still drawn and its crockery still soiled and scattered; observing this, and feeling the sting of a double abandonment, Angelica comes close to weeping.
‘This is worrisome,’ she says aloud. ‘Perhaps she has been hurt. Or drugged. Perhaps she don’t realise I have need of her. Surely there is some way I might send for her.’ But they are so very rarely apart this eventuality has never arisen before, and besides, Angelica has never so much as wondered where her companion might go when she is not by her side. As an hour passes she begins to fret. ‘For I am to be seen at the theatre tonight,’ she laments, ‘and I cannot very well dress myself for that.’
She paces the room, wringing her hands, until the girls trading on the ground floor protest at her ill-use of the floorboards by banging up with a broom handle. Then she strips off her gauzy smock and her silk slip as smooth as skin, and lets them fall under her feet since there is nobody present to collect them up. She sets about lacing up her hefty court stays with much tugging and panting, but first they are skewed to one side and then to the other; then the tape snaps in her hand and she shrieks with rage.
There is a little tap on the door.
‘Eliza?’ she calls hopefully, but it is only Maria their maid, who sleeps in the scullery and eats their crusts. ‘Where is Mrs Frost?’ demands Angelica.
‘Sent me, mum.’
‘I see that. Did she tell you where she would be?’
‘Not my business.’
‘’Tis my business. You might tell me.’ Angelica presses a sixpence meaningfully into Maria’s hand, but after briefly inspecting it the girl pockets it and says not another word. ‘Christ almighty,’ says Angelica. ‘If I were your mother I’d have drowned you at birth. You had better lace me in, then. Wash your hands first – my word, at least wipe them – this silk costs more than your year’s wages.’
Since Maria is too stupid to help carry the table, they must prepare Angelica in the cramped dressing room. ‘Now smooth it in,’ says Angelica, opening the jar of pomade, ‘just a little at a time. Is that within your powers?’
But it is not. Maria is confounded by every item she comes across: she showers the room with hair powder and boxes Angelica’s ear with the bellows. Her attempts to heap and pin Angelica’s hair into place gives her the appearance of a haystack in a gale; she spears her thumb with a jewelled pin and blots the blood on Angelica’s best kid gloves.
‘This will not do!’ says Angelica. She feels the tears coming and chooses rage instead: ‘Useless, unhelpful girl!’ Maria upturns a bottle of rouge onto the rug. ‘I cannot bear this! Why, you are fit for nothing! I am better off by myself.’
‘Or with another assistant,’ says Mrs Frost, who stands in the doorway of the dressing room shaking out her shawl.
‘Oh, Eliza, Eliza, at last you are here. What am I to do?’ rattles Angelica. ‘Bel has arranged for me to go to the theatre, and I am a state! You must help me.’ By the sour look of her friend’s face, she is not yet forgiven, but I will let her have her temper, thinks Angelica, since it don’t inconvenience me.
‘Out,’ says Mrs Frost to Maria, who retreats at pace. ‘We can save this,’ she continues, and sets about tousling the powder through Angelica’s abused hair with quick deft hands. And she paints her friend’s face, and pins and hooks and stitches her into her layers of petticoats and skirts. She must stoop before the transformed Angelica to secure the jacket of her gaudy striped redingote; she grasps her at the waist and runs pin after pin through the silk and into her stays.
‘You came back,’ says Angelica, and Mrs Frost sticks her again, right above where her soft navel must be, until she feels the shaft of the pin come up hard against whalebone.
‘Did you think I would abandon you?’
‘Oh – not for ever. But –’ Angelica allows herself a laugh – ‘I thought you meant to hurt me a little.’
‘I would not do that.’ Mrs Frost is still terse.
‘You are a good friend. We may have our differences in opinion but—’
‘One more thing.’ Mrs Frost seizes the long ivory busk from the dressing table and rams it down Angelica’s front with such briskness that she staggers. ‘There. Now I am satisfied you are fit to be seen.’
Angelica sighs with pleasure at her reflection. ‘Ah, Eliza. My love. You know I cannot be grand without you.’
And this provokes a little smile.
When Angelica returns it is almost dawn, and her link-boy so tired that he can barely run before the chair, but trudges alongside it, taking the weight of his guttering torch in both hands and upon his shoulder, so that it sizzles and spits alarmingly close to the too-large wig that swivels about on his head and every now and then slides down over his eyes. At her door she is overcome by charity for the poor child, and gives him a shilling. I shall not account for that to Eliza, she thinks with a little triumph. How provoking she will find it, to have her books out of order by so small a sum.
The ground-floor rooms of her lodgings present as a mantua-maker’s, but down the passage a woman’s moans are audible, and the squeaking of a bedframe rises in rapidity and vigour. So somebody’s work is soon to be done, she thinks as she climbs the stairs, which idea she finds comforting, as if she were part of a great benevolent order. The whore’s day ends as the baker’s begins, and there is a time for every purpose under heaven.
This present moment’s purpose is reconciliation, and she goes direct to the dressing room, where Eliza Frost sleeps flat on her back with her toes turned up and her arms at her sides: her plain white smock, ruffled at the neck and wrists, does not detract from her resemblance to a corpse freshly laid out. She does not groan or grope about when awakened. Her eyes flick open in silence and she turns her face calmly to the door.
‘Good morning, slugabed,’ Angelica hisses. ‘Here I am, alone. Come and keep company with me.’
Mrs Frost follows her into the bedroom, and lights a candle while Angelica kicks her shoes under the wardrobe and sets about peeling her stockings off.
‘Ay, me, what a night, what a night. I was grateful you did me up so marvellous fine, for Mr Jennings’ box may be clearly viewed from all parts of the theatre. One might have believed that I was the sole entertainment.’ Mrs Frost helps her out of her striped gown while she chatters on. ‘In fact, there was one woman spent the whole evening staring at my hair and clothing, and in the third act she took out her pocketbook right there in the theatre and made a little note to herself. Imagine! It was almost too flattering. I was not moved to make any notes myself, for I believe there was not one woman there better presented than I.’
‘How was the play?’ asks Mrs Frost. ‘Did you take in even a line of it?’