The Secret Mandarin
Read The Secret Mandarin Online
Authors: Sara Sheridan
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary, #Historical Fiction, #Asian, #Chinese
The Secret Mandarin
is dedicated to
the memory of Daniel Lindley.
I do wish you were still around.
Indian Ocean, 1842
When the ship went down the other women were praying. The captain had ordered us stowed below decks, out of the way, while the crew battled the storm. I sat silently in the candlelit gloom, keeping my balance as best I could while the boat pitched violently. As the others mumbled on their knees, my heart was dancing along with my stomach in a strange, whirling tremor that brought me out in a sweat. We did not know what would happen and there was nothing any of us could do. It had been hours.
In the end it was sudden. The ship was noisy, the timbers creaking before they finally broke, the wind screaming. Outside, the scale of the weather was titanic and I remember thinking that we were so tiny, so vulnerable. The whole ship split open like the cracking of an egg—just one almighty crash and then the shrieks of terror, my own among them, quickly silenced by the rush of water.
There was no point fighting the storm. Besides, it happened so fast there was little opportunity but to move where the water threw us. Another world, it was completely silent under there—a relief after the long, noisy hours of terrifying anticipation. I became an observer, my panic quelled, as if this was only a strange dream that I was
swimming through. The currents rushed, all bubbles and smashed pieces of the ship, as the faces of the others loomed in and out of my line of vision, never close enough to reach out, to cling together. I surfaced once into a blinding torrent of tropical wind and rain and grabbed three long, desperate breaths before the waves crashed over me once more. The towering currents were impossible to scale. It seemed safer, somehow, under the surface.
‘Just swim upwards,’ I told myself. ‘Watch for the bubbles and swim upwards as much as you can.’
Such people were above our station. Jane, however, had decided. She was in possession of a novel, which she read
in secret. She hid it under the washstand. In my opinion, it had given her airs.
‘Then I shall be a lady,’ she said simply.
Now Jane was Mrs Fortune and I, well, I had failed.
‘The others?’ I said, still woozy. ‘
Les autres, monsieur
?’
My French did not extend very far. The man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head sadly.
‘
Où est ici
?’ I hazarded as the man lifted me up and placed me, floppy as a rag doll, on his horse.
‘
Ici c’est
Réunion,’ the man smiled.
My heart was in London. I had never wanted to leave. The whole journey had been forced upon me, after all.
A banishment. A casting out. I had hated every minute even before the sea reared up. Now it occurred to me, perhaps the storm was a sign.
‘
Allons nous à St Denis,
’ the old man said. ‘
Il y a un docteur.
’
I think my family were glad that I had died. It must have been a relief. Crystal clear, I can see Jane now, wringing her tiny hands while she reads out the news from the evening edition—the first they know of the storm. As her lips form the words she is all too aware that her tidy navy dress with the red buttons is inappropriate attire in the circumstances, and that she will have to unpack the mourning clothes she used when our mother died. She wonders if she will be expected to organise a memorial service or a monumental stone.
‘What is it one does,’ she thinks, ‘when there is no body to bury?’
Robert, her husband, in his dark jacket and carefully chosen cravat, is pacing the thin carpet of their Wedgwood-green drawing room, circling around her like a wiry, wily woodland predator as he listens to the article read out from the paper. It is five weeks after the ship went down and all they have are the scantiest of details—a dry little column about the ferocity of the storm and the notorious waters of the Indian Ocean—fifty souls on board, no survivors and no mention of me.
Even if you are at sea, the weather in England is unlikely to kill you. Drama on the high waters off the Cornish coast or in the North Sea is not unheard of, but fatalities are
very rare. Of course, there is plenty that will carry you off. The pox, the cutthroats fired up on gin who will burst your skin for a shilling, or the sheer poverty, the circular fortunes of the slums. If you have no money you can’t eat so the poor are thin, the unlucky starve and, for the most part, the likes of Jane, Robert and I don’t notice. But whatever filthy, threadbare, rat-infested, desperate horrors you might encounter in London, the weather all on its own is unlikely to take you, whatever Miss Austen might have her readers believe about the frailty of English women subjected to a summer rainstorm.
In the Indian Ocean it’s quite different. I can’t imagine Jane cried at the news of my demise. Her soft voice doesn’t waver as she reads the report aloud. My sister does not find it strange or tragic that I have been borne away by the sea. I imagine she thinks of it as the ‘sort of thing Mary
would
do.’ Always stoic, her dark eyes dart emotionless, like a tame bird. She copes uncomplainingly with everything and causes no fuss. I am the wild one.
She did cry, however, three weeks later, when I came back. I paused at the front door, wondering if I should have sent word from Portsmouth rather than simply a note from St Denis. The doctor had had good English. He made idle chatter as he inspected my bruises and cuts, pressing gently where the skin had swollen.
‘You will be marked for life,’ he pronounced, ‘but you will recover.’
Then he had them feed me bone marrow and a little brandy. Now, weeks later, the bruises were gone but there were scars that still ached. I was back in London after an uncomfortable voyage home on a trading ship. The city was my lifeblood and I was glad to be there, but my heart was pounding too, for I did not know what my family would make of my return. It had been five months since
I was here last and I had disgraced them. I reached out and let the knocker strike and then waited.
The maid opened up and revealed my nephew behind her in the hallway. He froze as soon as he saw me and I thought he looked rather like a photograph, a perfect picture of England. His little body was already taut and strong in the image of his father and his skin was so pale in his charcoal grey shorts that his knees seemed somehow luminous against the shiny, dark, wooden floorboards.
‘Aunt Mary!’ he shouted when he found he could once more speak. There was panic rising in his voice and his eyes were wide.
‘Now, now, Thomas,’ I said to comfort him, as I advanced into the house past the plump, open-mouthed serving girl and laid my hat on the satinwood table. The poor child backed away as if I was a spectre and I realised straight away that my note had not yet arrived. They had evidently been mourning me.
‘A good thing that I can swim, don’t you think?’ I said gently, smiling to make light of it.
Thomas was taking lessons at the new pool in Kensington. We had discussed the subject on many occasions and he had vouched that it was his ambition to dive into the deep end from the balcony. Now, far braver than taking a fifteen-foot drop, he put out his hand and touched my cheek.
‘There now,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever believe a bad review, Thomas. Let that be a lesson to you.’
By this time we had been too long without being announced and Jane appeared from the morning room to investigate. She was holding the baby. My baby. I think it was only there in the hallway that I realised how much I had missed him. He had grown in my absence and there was a rash on his cheek. I found I was smiling quite involuntarily as I stared at it. It was a relief to see that he looked
chubby and healthy, dressed in a little smock. They had kept their word. Jane hesitated at the sight of me and seemed to deflate—the black skirt of her mourning dress was huge and she too small within it.
‘He must be almost six months old now. He looks well,’ I smiled.
‘Mary,’ she mouthed.
I reached out to hold her in greeting and as I pulled back I saw there were tears in her eyes.
‘I was washed ashore,’ I whispered. ‘I wrote to you but I must have overtaken the letter…’ My voice trailed.
I put out my arms and she gave me the baby. I hugged him close. I never will understand how it is possible to so love a child—a child you cannot possibly know. A new baby. Heavens, a new baby can turn into anyone—a family disgrace or lord of the manor. How ever do you know if you will like him or not? Clutching onto my son, though, after all those months, finally I felt whole again. I felt like myself.
‘What have you called him?’ I asked, giving him my finger to grasp as I stared into his handsome blue eyes.
But the shock of seeing me again had been terrible and instead of replying, my sister folded over and landed on the carpet.
I loosened the stays of her bodice with my free hand. I swear she was as small as a child. My niece, Helen, came out of the morning room in a jumble of mahogany ringlets and black, lace-edged ribbons. I sent her to fetch water and told Thomas to bring a pillow for Jane’s head while the maid fanned my sister’s prostrate form with a copy of the morning paper.
‘I told Mother you couldn’t die,’ Helen said defiantly.
Carefully, I sprinkled water on my sister’s ashen cheeks. As she opened her eyes I couldn’t decide whether she was simply shocked that I was alive or dreading that I was home
again. When she sat up the pins in her hair had loosened and a strand fell down like a blackbird’s broken wing. It trembled in the wake of the maid’s vigorous attempts at fanning with the
London Times.
Jane waved her off to one side.
‘Stop that at once, Harriet,’ she directed. ‘And bring us some tea.’
Harriet had taken the children to the park. The day was bright if a little cold. My sister said nothing as she poured. After the initial exchange of information, there was, I suppose, little to say until the details had been digested. Jane bit her lip. She was thinking. I examined myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I looked respectable enough—my chestnut hair was piled into a bun and my hazel eyes shone bright and healthy. I had healed well. In fact I looked better nourished than my pale sister. I always thought Jane worked too hard and was thin as a waif, albeit a ladylike one.
After a few minutes the front door opened and crashed closed and I heard Robert storming across the hallway—a familiar pause as he removed his hat, coat and gloves. I caught Jane’s eye and a flicker of a smile crossed both our lips. As children and, truth to tell, sometimes even as adults, we used to play hide and seek. Until Jane was ten we could both fit in the cupboard in my mother’s kitchen—behind the loose piles of crockery. Now we said nothing and didn’t move an inch, only sat waiting on the plump pink sofas by the fire. There would be no games today.
‘Jane,’ he roared.
She did not call back to him, only raised an eyebrow and went to the door. I stared into the fire. There was anger in his voice already. It did not bode well. Right enough, Robert’s eyes were alight as he pushed into the room past his wife and stood on the carpet in front of me, staring.
‘After all your indiscretions! Mary, have you no shame?’
‘I was washed ashore,’ I started.
But he was not listening.
‘We have tried everything for you.’
Jane slipped back into her seat. She must have sent a message to the Gardens while I was talking to the children and dandling baby Henry on my knee. Robert never came home in the afternoon except in the middle of winter when it was dark early and his beloved plants could not be tended. I had often remarked to Jane that her husband treated his orchids with more care than his three children.
She used to shake her head. ‘Don’t be silly, Mary.’
I realised that we should have discussed this between ourselves before Robert returned. I also realised that Jane had decided not to.
‘You are reckless, Mary Penney,’ Robert snapped, the fury dripping from his lips. He ran a hand over his dark hair, in desperation, I expect. ‘The worst of it is that you are reckless not only for yourself but for all of us.’
He strode to the chair beside Jane’s and sat down. He was wiry but strong and his body was tense with anxiety. When he was angry he did not blink. Jane tried to calm her husband. I knew that she wanted me to stay, however shocking my return.
‘You do not feel it time enough then, Robert?’ she asked. ‘A few months?’
I hung my head. I could see the difficulty I brought them. They could have done far worse than send me away to start a new life. Many in their position would have.
‘I will go back to the theatre,’ I declared.
At that Robert jumped out of his chair with his cheap pocket watch bouncing against his peacock-green waistcoat.
‘And forsake us all?’ he raised his voice. ‘You go back to the stage and you will be dead to the children. It is enough, Mary.’
He meant it. And in that moment I knew that I’d never act again. Having the baby had changed me. It had changed everything. The day had come and gone when I would risk anything for a chance to play Rosalind. I had been foolish but still my blood rose and I could feel the colour in my cheeks. If I did not leave and could not go back to the stage then I would be a spinster—the children’s penniless, spinster aunt. I was unmarriageable to anyone in polite society for all my tiny waist, my smooth skin and indeed, my talent. Still, I did not want to leave. England was my home and I was sure all that awaited me abroad was a string of second-rate suitors. My choices were limited and I railed against all of them. As far as I was concerned, I had been happy before all of this in London. I wanted to be happy here again.
‘They die in Calicut,’ I said. ‘There is dysentery and worse.’
Jane sipped her tea silently. Between us we had scarcely caught a chill all our lives. When little Helen was only two she had a fever. Both Jane and I had been shocked. We had so little experience of sickness that we had to nurse her from a household manual, learning page by page. Penney women were small but strong. Our mother had been a full sixty years of age when she died.
‘You will not catch it,’ Jane said.
‘We will secure another passage,’ Robert added. ‘We will send you to India again.’
This, of course, would take some weeks and I resigned myself to the decision slowly. For a woman like me there are few options. I had, I realised, come back to London hoping for something that was no longer there—an insubstantial promise of love that I had trusted like a fool—a promise, that, despite everything, I could not believe was truly gone. I had hoped that a few months’ absence, might, at the least, allow me some shadow of the life I had before. I missed
my friends in Drury Lane—the bright-eyed actresses and their dowdy dressers, our plump and jolly regulars backstage who accompanied us on afternoon trips to Regent Street and Piccadilly, shopping in Dickins, Smith & Stevens or setting out to James Smith’s to buy umbrellas or fancy parasols. I missed the fun of sherry and shortcake in the early evening and the backstage parties later on, the lazy band tuning up in a side room and the whores plying their trade on our doorstep. If I had expected to return to any of that I was mistaken—in the event of wanting to keep my son respectable, that is. I was at my family’s disposal once more. It hurt. Still there were many women in a far worse position than I.
It’s so easy to fall. From my sister’s house in leafy Kensington, on Gilston Road, it is but a small drop to some damp room down by the river where you grow very thin and are used very harshly. I wanted no son of mine to dwindle to a stick. Too many children, half abandoned, live their lives hungry. Open your eyes and you’ll see them in the filthy, dark corners, angular and ravenous. Even their hair is thin. Their mothers, poor souls, have nothing to give as they disappear into the quicksand, penny whores if they’re as much as passingly pretty and washerwomen if they’re not. Most people of our acquaintance do not even notice the desperation of the thousands, but there are plenty who regularly pawn their clothes for a little bread and would sell their honour, their spirit and their children if they could, for a life less comfortable than a nobleman’s dog.
We were doing our best to salvage my mistake and, with a little stake money, India at least offered a decent chance for Henry (who, raised respectably with his cousins, would be free of my disgrace) and for me (since abroad I might still marry tolerably well).
I moved into my old room at the back of the house. Like a beating heart, in the background the city pulsed with vitality, but I might as well have been in Calcutta for all I could partake of it. I had nothing to do apart from spend time with the children for a few hours in the morning but I accepted that, for Henry’s sake.
‘He has your smile, Aunt Mary,’ Helen said.
‘I am not sure I am pleased by that,’ I told her. ‘Henry has no teeth yet.’
And this set us giggling. We drew pictures with coloured pencils and I kept Helen and Thomas amused with stories. I liked to hold Henry. I allowed myself to dote on him for hours until Harriet came to take him out in the perambulator after lunch.
