‘Keep your temper.’ Another vigorous burst of powder.
‘Leave off!’ Angelica swats her hands about her head. ‘You will cover up all its colour.’ Angelica is protective of her heavy gold hair, for it was once the making of her. In her tenderest youth she found herself assistant and model to an Italian hairdresser, and (according to legend) it was from him that little fat Angelica learned not only the art of grooming but also the art of love.
The women are silent. At moments of impasse, they know better than to talk it out: they retreat resentfully back into their own heads, as pugilists to their corners. Mrs Frost shakes an armful of paper into the fire, and Angelica turns back to the fruit bowl, popping grapes off their stems one by one, gathering them into her fist. She licks their juice off the heel of her hand. The sunlight slanting through the window is warm on the down of her cheek. She is twenty-seven and still beautiful, which owes something to luck and something to circumstance and something to good sense. Her bright blue eyes and voluptuous smile are gifts of Nature; her body and mind are unmarked by the toils she might have known as a wife; her skin is clear, her grot fragrant, and her nose still whole thanks to the little pouches of sheep gut she keeps in her cabinet, tied with green ribbons and carefully rinsed after each use.
‘Dying was the best thing he could have done,’ she says to Mrs Frost, as a peace offering. ‘And just in time for the season.’
Her companion remains silent.
Angelica is not to be deterred. ‘I am entirely independent now.’
‘That is what troubles me.’ Mrs Frost is tight-lipped still but she advances again on Angelica’s hair.
‘What fun I shall have, indebted to nobody!’
‘Supported by nobody.’
‘Oh, Eliza.’ Angelica can feel her friend’s cool fingers upon her scalp; she pulls free and twists in the chair to look up into her face. ‘Three years I have seen nobody! No society, no parties, no fun. Kept, in a dull little parlour.’
‘He kept you very generously.’
‘And I am not ungrateful. But I made sacrifices, you know: that artist who put my picture in the Academy. He would have painted me a hundred times if the duke had not forbidden him. May I not now enjoy a little wildness?’
‘Hold still or I shall never be done.’
Angelica leans back in her chair. ‘I have been in more precarious positions than this. I have been all alone in the world since I was only fourteen.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Mrs Frost – before she was Mrs Frost – had swept the grates at Mrs Elizabeth Chappell’s celebrated Temple of Venus, while Angelica Neal – before she was Angelica Neal – danced naked.
‘Well, don’t it follow? If one man can settle on me, so will others. But now is the time to be out in society; I must place myself in the right circles; show my face everywhere until it is well known again, for really that is what is vital. None of the very great courtesans are especially beautiful, you know, or not many of them. I am beautiful, am I not?’
‘You are.’
‘Well, then,’ Angelica says. ‘I will be a success.’ She sinks her teeth into a peach and sits back to watch her reflection chew and swallow.
‘I only wonder—’
‘I do believe that men find me more attractive than ever,’ Angelica plunges on. ‘I need not be a mercenary, fawning over any body who will have me. I am in a position to make my own choice.’
‘But will you not—’
‘I think the blue ribbon for my hair.’
Outside on the street there is a great commotion. Bouncing along the cobbles comes a sky-blue landau emblazoned on each side with a bare-breasted golden sphinx. Angelica jumps up. ‘She is here! Take off your apron. No, put it back on. I won’t have you mistaken for one of the party.’ She flies to the window, divesting herself of her powdering robe’s smocky folds as she goes.
The sun is sinking, infusing the street below with a honeyish haze. In the landau, amongst a clutch of young ladies in white muslin, rides Mrs Chappell herself, the abbess of King’s Place. She is built like an armchair, more upholstered than clothed, her bolster of a bosom heaving beneath cream taffeta and gold frogging. When the landau comes to a halt she staggers to her feet, arms outspread and rings a-twinkle. Two negroes in sky-blue livery hop from the footplates to help her descend.
‘New servants again, poor dupes,’ says Angelica, watching them each taking an elbow while the girls heave at the swags adorning her vast rump. ‘They don’t know yet that she pays them half what they are worth.’ The landau is remarkable well sprung and Mrs Chappell lurches onto the cobbles in a flash of starched lace: several tiny dogs scamper forth; the girls spill after them; and all together they caper in the street, a festival of plumed tails and plumed hats as Mrs Chappell staggers in her footmen’s grip. ‘Canny of her, to employ those blacks so lately arrived from America that they mistake their own value. Imagine, Eliza! Delivered from bondage to her employ.’
These shining visitors to Dean Street do not go unmarked. A washerwoman with a bundle on her back hisses through her teeth, but her apprentice, hair scraped up under her cap, stands stock-still and stares. Four boys set up a whooping, and men raise their hats or lean on the handles of their barrows and grin. The girls dimple smugly, swishing their skirts this way and that, their fans in constant motion: they incline their necks and turn out the white skin of their forearms. Angelica hauls the window open and leans out, shading her eyes with one hand. ‘My dear Mrs Chappell!’ she calls, which sets the girls off fluttering ever more vigorously, and turns all heads up to the window. The sun blazes in Angelica’s hair. ‘How kind of you to visit me!’
‘Polly!’ barks Mrs Chappell. ‘Kitty! Elinor!’ and the girls stand to attention, fans waving, bright-eyed.
‘Eliza,’ hisses Angelica, ‘we must move this table.’ Mrs Frost starts heaping ribbons and jewels upon it.
‘A flying visit,’ calls Mrs Chappell, pressing her hand to her bosom with the effort of projection.
‘Come up, come up!’ cries Angelica, the attention of Dean Street pinned upon her. ‘Have a saucer of tea.’ She pulls back from the window. ‘Christ, Eliza! Have we any tea?’
Mrs Frost whips from her bosom a twist of pink paper. ‘We always have tea.’
‘Oh, you are an angel. A darling. What would I do without you?’ Angelica seizes one end of the table. Mrs Frost the other, and thusly they bear it between them, shuffling as if they were hobbled so as not to dislodge its slew of trinkets. The fruits in the bowl bounce and tremble, and the mirror rattles on its stand.
‘You know what she is come for,’ Angelica pants. ‘And are we in accord?’
‘I have made my opinion plain.’ Mrs Frost attempts primness, but she is trotting backwards while carrying a laden table, and must keep flicking glances over her shoulder to avoid reversing into the wall.