‘Oh, can you not! Well, that is just like you.’ And indeed, there is only one present in the room who has made a living of thrusting through disaster. ‘It may all be set right. We are neither of us dead, are we? And all our household fine in fortune and fettle.’ She rings more vigorously for the maid than she ever has hitherto in this house: ‘We shall need rolls and chocolate, to eat here, yes, here in this very dining room; I shall not hide away in my rooms any longer. Hurry, hurry!’
Then, still in her night attire, she sits by him at the broad polished table by the French windows to eat. Her sleeves are rolled up, and there are crumbs on her cheek, but she appears as composed as one of the old queens of legend preparing to do battle, and spreads her hands flat on the tabletop as if she stood over her campaign. ‘Your judgement in concealing the creature was very poor, I think; you should have told me at once. We must devise a plan by which to deal with this creature as firmly as possible.’
‘Can we not simply—’
‘No!’ she snaps. ‘We will do nothing simply. I outlaw simplicity, from this moment forth.’ Her muscles quiver. ‘I am going to check this creature. It will pay for what it has robbed me of.’ And indeed, in the face of its gusting despair she feels the most invigorating hatred; if it had been a tangible thing, a beast or a man, that had attacked her contentment so, she would have flung herself before it and fought with all the strength in her body. But there is no doing such a thing, and so she is frantic for action. How may the thing be controlled? How may she exert her will upon it? How is such a creature’s power diminished?
To the maid, she says, ‘Fetch me notepaper. I must write a plan.’
‘A plan for what?’ asks Mr Hancock.
She looks at him as if he were touched. ‘A real mermaid, sir, a true curiosity, and you meant to hide it away? There is no denying the veracity of this creature, whatever it is.’ She flicks her hair out of her face and looks up at him smiling imperiously. ‘I shall display it.’
‘Now, Mrs Hancock,’ he says, ‘I cannot think that is a good—’
She opens her eyes wide. ‘Oh, why ever not? I am mistress of it, am I not? It belongs to me.’
‘I acquired it—’
‘For me!’
‘For you, but certainly I had no idea—’
‘I cannot imagine what else you thought I would do with it.’ She reaches to him. ‘I shall parade it like the beast it is. Like a tiger with its teeth pulled out, or an elephant all addled in the head. Everybody can come to stare at it, and see how powerful it is, and yet how helpless, trapped in its horrid vat, and buried under the ground, with us its masters.’
He twists his face.
‘You are afraid of it,’ she says.
‘It is dangerous.’
‘Aye, I shan’t pretend not. But I am going to find a way to crush it.’ She bends over her paper and then looks up again, alight with pleasure. ‘And sir! Think what people will make of it! All those who cast me off! And I shall certainly invite our neighbours the Crawfords.’ She feels a sharp and savage delight when she considers Mrs Frost’s fright, Mrs Chappell’s confusion, Bel Fortescue’s quiet bafflement. They will be unsettled; they will be undone. ‘Oh, I will show them!’ She scrawls madly all the society names she can recall, the fine people of London and of Greenwich, and then indeed all the great ladies of the demi-monde, and the shipwrights of Deptford, and the niggling Crawfords and Flowerdays of Blackheath. ‘Well, they will see what I am made of. Here. Lists. Invitations. Send for an engraver – the best – a stationer, somebody who can design me a very very fine card.’
‘Must it be displayed? Is it not better to conceal it? It does awful harm.’
‘Just for one evening, sir – I’ve no intention of opening a menagerie. I only want people to see what I have got.’ She looks up into his face all beseeching. ‘Just one party? Very exclusive. Here we are in this great house; with our great fortune; well, the time has come for me to be a lady. Besides, I own the beast, and since it seems to have had no compunction about exerting its powers over us, I see no reason why I may not do as I please with it.’
Still he hesitates. ‘Do you really think …?’ he tries, but without conviction, and in fact partially to provoke her retort, which is swiftly forthcoming: ‘You have no say. ’Tis my mermaid; you are my husband; and you must merely stand by me. Oh, they will never believe it!’ Seeing her so much herself again strikes a thrill through him. ‘We must proceed quickly – very quickly – before every body leaves London. I’ll not wait for next season. Now, do I have your leave to spend as I see fit? You may be quite easy that there will be nothing to reproach in my decisions.’
‘I leave it to your judgement,’ he says, and she smiles as she has not smiled for a great long time, and settles down to her preparations.
TWENTY
Your company is desir’d
At the house of Mr and Mrs Jh Hancock
On Midsummer-Night 1786
To observe
A MERMAID
The invitation is printed on thick ivory card, and is more border than text. Angelica has had it decorated thickly with scallop shells, writhing dolphins and bare-breasted sea nymphs: the lines are so crisp and black, the ground so velvet soft, she cannot stop looking at it. It is simply the most perfect and precisely formed thing she ever saw. ‘I think I shall have one framed,’ she says.
Mr Hancock looks over her shoulder. ‘That is not what our mermaid looks like,’ he objects.
‘Oh, the picture is merely there as an assurance that the thing exists; it is for them to come here and see for themselves whether ’tis true to its portrait or not. Besides, how would you draw it? Get away, get away, leave this to me.’
‘How it will be made enticing I cannot think,’ he says to himself, and he leaves hurriedly, before he can think any more on it at all.
Angelica now comes to make use of her small retiring room, laying out a pile of cards on her desk and filling her inkwell for the first time. At first she only sits before them, regarding her own efficiency with great satisfaction; then she sets about her task.
The first card she writes is for Bel and she inks the title carefully, sorry that hers is not a more beautiful hand. She writes on its reverse:
Truly, dear, you must come. You will be astownded. I am sorry to have seen so little of you.
TWENTY-ONE
The former Mrs Fortescue has had a deep tiled bath built in the basement of her house at Chiswick, and here she may be found several mornings a week while she resides there; she would do it even more often if she could only shake off the suspicion that full-body immersion must present some risk to her health. There is at least no possibility of the water leaching poison through her pores, it being beautifully clean, and steaming, and steeped with sage and camomile and other herbs whose essence might very well be absorbed to her great benefit. It comes up almost to her shoulders; she propels herself with her feet on the bottom, and her shift puffs up with air and inflates about her chin. Her hair is bound up and covered, her face scrubbed clean as a little child’s: she is stripped, in short, of all possible identifiers, and unashamed to drift there quite as God made her, an arresting little person with her small full mouth and long-lashed eyes and stern dark brows. Of less pleasure to her, but surely no less as God made them, are her aching back, and feet, and breasts. The child quickening in her belly is cause for rejoicing, but her discomfort is not: if God had made her with gills she would stay in the bath all day.
In come her maids, all gowned and bewigged. ‘Are you ready?’