The Secret Mandarin Read online

  ‘Well done,’ I said, holding up my milk in a toast. ‘I hope you discover something England cannot live without!’

  We tapped the cups together, though as he drank I could see a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. Robert had fought hard to scramble up the rough battlements of advancement. He had become everything his betters wanted—a hard worker, a respectable family man and a prudent and underpaid employee. Now he had thrown over the Royal Society and struck out for himself. A mission to a barbarian land would be both dangerous and difficult. It was daring. No wonder he couldn’t sleep.

  ‘If anything happens to me,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I worry that they will fall. They will go hungry. I could stay at the Society, of course, but then we will never have the money to move up. I want the children to marry well.’

  A few months ago I would have considered these words only proof of Robert’s desperate desire for his own advancement, but now, having Henry, I recognised the father in him. Besides, he showed more spirit that evening than I had seen in him in ten years.

  ‘No one could know more than you do. You have an eye for it—a feel for the plants that has brought you this far and will take you further. Strike out for yourself, I say, Robert. Jane will not be for starving if I know my sister. You are doing the right thing,’ I promised him.

  He took a hearty bite of his bread and jam.

  ‘They do have a fund at the East India Company,’ he murmured. ‘For widows.’

  We said no more.

  The following afternoon I took the atlas from the morning room and sat by the fire. The tea countries are hilly and lie away from the coast. Robert was set to travel far further than I. With my finger I traced the outline of Madagascar, the largest island in the Indian Ocean. Réunion lies to its east. My fingers followed the fine line of the coast. The map seemed too small to contain the vast, empty sea, the expanse of beach, the two miles to St Denis that I had been led on horseback, half dead. What lay for me in the maze of streets behind the tiny black dot that marked Calcutta and where was my sense of adventure that I so strongly resisted its allure? Unlike Robert I would not travel in unwelcoming territory. Bohea and Hwuy-chow were closed to white men. In India I would be welcomed with open arms.

  I stretched my hand across the open page, my thumb on London, my fingers lighting on Calcutta and Hong Kong, Robert’s landing point in China. We would be very distant. Weeks of sea between us. William did not love me any longer. He had dispatched me as easily as a lame horse or a hunting dog. Bought and paid for.

  That week, Jane ordered two trunks from Heal’s. We packed them together.

  ‘I did not expect to love Henry so much,’ I admitted.

  ‘You cannot have everything you want, Mary,’ she chided me.

  The truth was I had nothing I wanted. Neither William nor Henry nor my life on the stage—only a sense of doing what was expected. I had fought against that all my life.

  ‘Mother should have come with you to London,’ Jane said wistfully, as if that might have kept me in check.

  I giggled. Our mother loved a rogue. She probably would have encouraged me with William, if I had the measure of her.

  ‘It is not funny,’ Jane retorted. ‘You treat everything as if it doesn’t matter. It matters when you hurt people, Mary.’

  But as far as I could make out I had hurt no one but myself and I let the matter drop, instead lingering by the open window. I love the smell of the horses wafting up as they pass. You can only just catch it. The sound of hooves and the whiff of hide that reminds me always of the stables near our old house, where we grew up, Jane and I. She and the children were my only family now and there was a bond between us that I simply could not bear to break.

  ‘Do you remember Townsend Farm?’ I asked. ‘Father took me there once. He let me ride a pony. A white one.’

  Jane stiffened. She banged the lid of the trunk down. She thought we were better off without him. Mother had agreed. ‘We might have no man about the house but we can do for ourselves,’ she used to say. I missed my father though, for I had been his favourite. I was not quite eight and Jane perhaps only ten when he died. Why he had cared for me more, I have no idea. Nor why he had taken almost a dislike to my sister—for he had been fierce with her, though I could not remember much of it. The bonds between a family are strange indeed. Jane had sheltered me when many would have slammed the door in my face and yet she would not talk about him. If I mentioned our father she simply clammed up, drawing her protective armour around her. Saying nothing. Our children make us so vulnerable. Our parents too, I suppose.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Jane snapped. ‘I have to pack, Mary. I have to organise everything. There is no time for your dilly-dallying. Come along.’

  I had lost everything aboard the Regatta—love tokens, letters, my books and clothes. With William’s money in hand, such replacements as could be procured arrived daily now, packed with sachets of lavender and mothballs. A notebook wrapped in brown paper from Bond Street as a present from Jane. Ribbons, a shawl for the evening, a bible, two day dresses from King Street and an evening gown from Chandos Street—everything I would need. And in Jane and Robert’s room the other trunk, identical to mine but packed with a few clothes, a box of Robert’s favourite tobacco from Christy’s (‘No one mixes the same,’ he always blustered as he exhaled), some botanical books, a map, more books to read on the journey (all on the subject of the Chinese). And then items for sale—prints of London and of the Queen for the homesick abroad, copies of Punch and the London Illustrated News.

  Robert continued to be tired. I saw him mostly at dinner if he came home in time. He was working out his notice at the greenhouses in Chiswick, determined to leave everything in his care in perfect condition. Our only family outing was to a photographic studio in Chelsea ten days before we left. We took two hansom cabs and as the horses picked their way along the colourful West London streets I sat straight and eager with Henry asleep on my lap. I was delighted to see the city at last after being confined for so long.

  On the route there were market stalls and apothecary shops, rag-and-bone men and ladies out walking. Even the strong smell of hops from the brewery delighted me but the children scrunched up their noses and complained. Towards Chelsea my attention was drawn particularly by old posters for the plays at Drury Lane that had opened weeks before. The tall, dark lettering on thin paper captured me immediately—Othello and The Dragon’s Gift at the Theatre Royal. I wondered who was on the bill and if the parties were as much fun backstage as they used to be. Did the ladies still drink laudanum for their nerves and the gentlemen arrive with garden roses and boughs of bay? Helen followed my line of sight, seeing my eyes light a little, I suppose, on the thin, posted papers, and being a girl who was naturally curious, she leaned forward to read more easily and Jane, sitting next to her, pulled her daughter firmly back against the cushion as if out of harm’s way.

  At the studio Jane held Henry in her arms with Robert behind us, and the older children to one side. In the photograph none of us is smiling and Robert looks exhausted, the sepia only highlighting the bags beneath his eyes and the indents of his hollow cheeks. At least we would have a record of the last weeks we were together.

  ‘You will carry it with you, Father?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘All the way to China,’ Robert promised. ‘And when I return you will have grown beyond all recognition. You will be tall and speak Latin perfectly.’

  A mere five years before, we had had another photograph taken. John, their eldest boy, now away at school, was held by Jane while I had little Helen on my knee. All of us were in jovial spirits that day. I was playing Cleopatra at the Olympic and had not yet encountered William. The kohl around my eyes had been almost permanent that summer. The dark lines did not come off fully until weeks after. They lent me an air of mystery, a sense of the forbidden.

  In India the women wear kohl. They paint their skin with henna and scent themselves with moonflowers. The Hindus will not
eat animals. But there is gold cloth as fine as muslin and as many servants in each household as work a whole terrace in London. I studied Hindustani from a book. ‘Fetch this. Bring that.’ So I could give orders. But still I did not want to leave.

  In my last week, Jane and I engaged the nanny together. Harriet whistled as she worked, very pleased at this development, for it would greatly ease her workload. Jane’s too, I suppose, for though principally in the house for Henry, the girl would also undertake duties for Helen and Thomas. With William’s money in hand, Jane had placed a newspaper advertisement. She offered ten pounds a year plus board and we had over twenty enquiries.

  We interviewed the more eloquent applicants—a mixed bag of ages and experience. Jane was drawn towards the older women, the more prim the better. They came with references, of course, each woman from one wealthy family or another fallen on hard times and making her way as she could. For my part, I wanted laughter in the nursery and I took to asking, ‘What games do you play with your charges?’ The women Jane favoured invariably faltered at this. I despaired that we would come to an agreement and I had to concede that it was my sister, after all, who had to live with the successful candidate.

  Our second but last interview was with a younger girl, new to the city. Her name was Charlotte. As soon as she opened her mouth and we heard her accent, it was as if a spell was being cast. Charlotte came from a little town not ten miles from where Jane and I were raised. Scarce seventeen and plain, there was a familiarity about her that we liked immediately. As a nursemaid she had looked after a family of two children outside London as well as having experience of her own, large family. ‘There are many at home. I am the eldest of eight,’ she grinned. She was well versed in poetry, I was glad to hear, and her favourite game was hide and seek. On Jane’s list of priorities, Charlotte’s manner was businesslike and respectful and although she had only one reference, it was excellent and, in addition, she was acquainted with many of the farming families we remembered from our childhood. After a fifteen-minute interview, Jane and I knew we had found someone who fulfilled our requirements and we offered her the job.

  Charlotte’s trunk arrived later that very afternoon and the children took to her immediately. Jane was quietly delighted at having another servant in the house.

  ‘You will call her Nanny Charlotte,’ she told Helen and Thomas, proudly.

  It seemed to me she might have added, ‘In the hearing of as many of the neighbours as possible’, for to have a third domestic servant in the house was a leap up the social ladder indeed, whatever circumstances had brought about the engagement in the first place. We ordered a uniform of course, and Jane wrote to William to inform him of what she had done. I had no heart to add a postscript of my own.

  ‘I will miss you horribly,’ I declared as Jane and I mended the last of the packing together, darning stockings and sewing buttons. The five months of the shipwreck was the longest we had ever been apart. ‘I know I will be lonely.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she chided me. ‘We will write every week. India will be wonderful. It is the perfect place for you, Mary.’

  My sister lifted the cotton shirt up to her nose as if it was a veil.

  ‘You will write to me of dusky beauties,’ she twitched the material. ‘And I will write of the children.’

  I noticed that she breathed in, smelling the shirt before she put it down. Perhaps the soap and starch reminded her of Robert. The way he smelt on Sundays, freshly pressed, freshly dressed. When she took his arm and they walked together along the crescent, to church. That was how my sister loved her husband—well turned out and in public.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he is getting on. Nurseries pay well for the exotic and this trip will bring in a good fee plus anything Robert can sell on top. God will bring him home again and keep him safe.’

  I had no fear for Robert. Nor for myself. After all, I had survived a shipwreck a thousand miles from London and still come home. I am of the view, however, that it was less God’s business and more blind luck. And no one could deny that we were of a lucky disposition, all of us.

  ‘He will be fine,’ I said. ‘Of course he will.’

  When the trunks were packed we had sherry in the drawing room. Robert was booked on the Braganza, due to set sail for China from Portsmouth on the same tide as I. Jane had arranged for us to travel to the port together. She was stoic, of course, but had placed vases of lilies in each room. The funereal scent pervaded the house and matched her hidden mood. Jane might be exasperated by me but we had been close all our lives. This time it was not only I who was leaving but her husband as well.

  Robert was late home from work that night. We did not wait for him. Cook sent up sandwiches and we ate them by the fire, toasting the cheese until it bubbled and spat. It made us thirsty and Jane had more sherry than usual.

  ‘He must have made you feel wonderful,’ she mused, drawing her hand down to smooth her navy skirts. ‘Did you like it? What William did to you?’

  I sipped my sherry and let it evaporate a little inside my mouth before I swallowed. Jane and I had never discussed our carnal desires and the truth was, William was not my first, though neither of my other lovers had inspired me to the heights that the ladies talked of in the dressing rooms. For myself, if anything, I missed being held. I like the strength of a man’s arms around me. I avoided my sister’s question entirely.

  ‘Do you like it, Jane?’

  Her eyes moved up to the shadows dancing on the ceiling.

  ‘I love my children,’ she said, ‘and it does not last long.’

  It is true that I had never seen Jane flush for Robert. They never seemed like lovers—did not lie in bed all morning or dally on the stairs. But this was a step beyond what I had imagined. It seemed so cold.

  ‘William,’ I said, ‘was a terrible lover. But I know it can be…’ I paused, ‘very satisfying.’

  My sister sighed. ‘Before I married Robert, Mother tried to warn me, but it is beyond imagination, is it not? She said that it was like rolling downhill. But that scarcely touches the truth and makes it sound pleasant. The whole business is just so animal. I think I will never get used to it. A gentleman becomes quite unlike himself. I am lucky I fall pregnant so quickly and can have done with it.’

  I was not sure what to say to that. Robert and Jane had been married a long time and they had only three children. If she had fallen pregnant quickly each time, they had perhaps only rolled down the hill on a handful of occasions in all the years.

  ‘He is doing so well,’ I commented, and topped up our glasses from the decanter.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she enthused. ‘God willing.’

  My poor darling.

  The day we left London it was raining. It rained all day. Jane rose early and saw to it herself that the children were breakfasted and dressed. By eight they were waiting to say goodbye, assembled uncomfortably in the morning room. These are awkward moments, I think, the moments of waiting, the time in between. Robert gave a short speech, advising them to be good, saying he was going away for everyone’s benefit and when he came back he would expect great things of them. Thomas’ lip quivered. Helen stared ahead, emotionless. I said nothing, only climbed up to the nursery where Henry was asleep and silently kissed his little head goodbye.

  ‘Look after him,’ I said to Nanny Charlotte.

  ‘He’s a lovely baby, Miss. Don’t you worry about him,’ her syrupy vowels soothed me.

  I gave her a shilling and stumbled back downstairs. I shouldn’t be leaving. I shouldn’t be leaving. But here I was, almost gone, my sister kissing my cheek, her hands shaking.

  ‘You can trust me with Henry,’ she whispered. ‘Never fear,’ and then she turned and kissed Robert smoothly—a mere peck to which he scarcely responded. It was difficult to go. I stood on the steps until Robert grasped my arm and guided me firmly to the kerb.

  When we mounted the carriage I could see the shades of self-doubt in my brother-in-law had hardened into righteo
usness. At the Society he had always been treated shabbily—a garden boy made good. Brave men have been broken that way. Douglas risked his life to bring fir trees from Canada and the seeds were left to rot in the Society’s offices. He died unrecognised for his achievements, an irascible old drunkard, half blind and mad. Robert was now privately commissioned.

  ‘On our way! On our way!’ he said gleefully as the carriage pulled off. It seemed he had no thought for those he left behind.

  Jane remained dry eyed. The last time I saw her was through the coach’s moving window. The children were bundled upstairs. She stood on the doorstep of her house alone. It felt to me as if too much was unsaid, that words would have helped her if only she had used them. Everyone dear to me was now in that white, stucco house on Gilston Road and all in Jane’s care. For the second time that year I waved goodbye as I watched the house recede. When the carriage turned left I saw my sister spin round and walk through the doorway, the sweep of her skirt slowing her haste. She slammed the black door quickly, almost before she was fully through. And we were gone.

  Chapter Two

  The road was muddy and it slowed us down. The hired carriage, uncomfortable to drive in at the best of times, bumped along the uneven surface. If I lost hold of it, the rug simply jolted off my knees.

  When I had first arrived in London I walked there. It was more than a hundred miles and took me a week. I left home with my mother’s blessing. I was fifteen by then and fired with visions of myself on stage, my name on billboards, fêted. I arrived with a shilling in pennies, a change of clothing and a fanatical light burning in my eyes that made me shine in any part I was offered. I bribed the scene-changers, forced my way into auditions and, once I had hijacked the part, stole the attention of the audience by fair means or foul—anything to act, to lose myself for a few brief hours on stage and bask in the limelight and the applause. My tactics worked. In my ten years in London I had managed everything I had hoped for—even two love affairs that had not inspired a single sentence in the scandal sheets and which, for a long time, saw me better provided for than most young actresses. Then I had met William. I hated being swept under the carpet like this. It was simply not in my nature.