The Secret Mandarin (15 page)

When I waved Ling off on the third day, I had the overwhelming feeling that I had been lucky simply to have been able to help her. In London I doubt I would have ever reached out to such a person and it seemed to me that these months of watching and listening, second-guessing words and phrases, seeing so much that was new, had somehow changed me. Perhaps Robert had been right and at home, in England, I had been selfish, unaware of anyone except myself, and anything except my own immediate desires. I had been spoilt.

If our time at Ning-po was one of realisation for me, then it proved so for Robert too. On the evening of the day Ling made her way to Shanghae, Bertie and I were sitting in the long shadows of the fire after supper when suddenly there was a battering at the front door. We went into the hallway where we discovered that the commotion was caused by Robert’s early return from one of his forays. It was strange—at this hour the city gates were closed for the night and none should be admitted.

‘I climbed over,’ Robert explained. ‘One look at me,
and the sentinel fled.
“Gweiloh
!”‘ White devil. White ghost. He postured, imitating the man and drawing a mock sword.

Bertie offered a brandy. ‘You must have wanted to come back to Ning-po very much,’ he teased. ‘We have had adventures in your absence. Mary saved a soul, I think. Though it was not her own.’

Behind Bertie, Wang and Sing Hoo were unloading boxes in the courtyard. Robert’s journey had been fruitful. I caught sight of hydrangeas and chrysanthemums, some bamboo plants and numerous cuttings. It was not like Robert to forgo seeing these bedded down personally. Something was wrong.

‘Are you all right, Robert?’ I asked.

Robert lowered his eyes.

‘What happened?’

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘In a village. They had nothing.’

We had seen such villages often—muddy houses and a single, dirt track. There were smoke-filled cottages too poor to have a chimney and no livestock for miles. The people were jaundiced and thin. Robert always said that it was the Chinese with their peculiar diet and dirty habits that caused so much sickness. That it was unnecessary. We had passed on loftily, never giving a closer inspection. They were just poor people, that was all.

‘They thought I was a doctor. A medical missionary,’ he said. ‘They came—everyone came to be cured. Out of nowhere. In an instant. And I could not help. I think there were a hundred of them.’

It must have been dreadful to have that descend upon him. The limbless and the old. The blind and the dying. Boils to be lanced, crusted, gangrenous wounds, the sickening smell of putrid flesh and everyone expecting him to help.
Likely the only white men they had seen were the Church’s doctors.

‘The fools,’ Robert shouted, his hands shaking. ‘I gave them money. Much good it would do.’

Bertie laid his hand gently on Robert’s arm.

‘We cannot save everyone,’ he whispered. ‘We must pray for these poor and desperate people and for you, Robert, helpless in the face of their suffering.’ And he fell, there in the hallway, to his knees.

Afterwards we curled up by the fire once more, all of us silent. I noticed, I thought, a single tear on Robert’s cheek in the fire’s dim glow. I decided not to tell him about Ling. It seemed selfish, somehow, after what he had seen, for me to have helped when he could do nothing. Here, as at home, the poor were pox-ridden, dying and desperate. It was only that in China we had opened our eyes. Bertie put pine cones onto the fire and they crackled and filled the room with the scent of the forest. No one said as much as goodnight and I cannot remember what time it was when we finally retired to bed.

His brush with the unfortunates deeply affected Robert for some days. That such a misunderstanding could occur and that he had been powerless to take any action to prevent it weighed on his mind.

‘If I die inland,’ he mused, ‘no one will know for months at least. If they execute me, most likely no one will know at all.’

‘Ah, but when you return unexecuted and very alive,’ Bertie pointed out, ‘you will swell the Empire’s coffers and return to London a celebrity.’

He took a bronze
cash
from his pocket and flipped it.

‘Which shall it be?’ he asked.

‘I think you are both morbid,’ I declared.

Robert was doodling on my notepad. He had drawn a tall monument with angels mounted above a grave.

‘Lord, Robert,’ I said, ‘your finds will commemorate you better. Do you think it impossible now to procure what you have been sent for?’

‘No,’ Robert replied, adding the word ‘FORTUNE’ to the mausoleum in his sketch.

It entered my mind that there might be nothing left of me for posterity. All Henry had was a photograph, and that was only if they let him keep it. Was he calling my sister ‘mother’ now? I did not mind, of course, if he was. At least he had her there.

‘I wonder what our children will think of us,’ I pondered.

Robert flushed, realising that if I had said this, Bertie must know my secret.

‘I am sorry. Mary has embarrassed you with her private business, Bertie. Our family disgrace.’

Bertie met Robert’s eye. He had great strength, Bertie. Great resources.

‘Oh, no,’ he said steadily. ‘God’s will is in everything, you see. I would never blush at the Lord’s design.’

And at that, Robert fell silent.

For the first time then I thought perhaps things had happened for the best. For some days after I did not consider myself reckless, wicked or unthinking. It was all part of the Lord’s design, after all. Any mistakes made were allowed. In fact, any mistakes made were for the best. I was absolved. I walked with a lighter step wherever I chose to go. I strolled at night in Bertie’s garden. The house was completely still, a single light flickering. I skipped between the fruit trees, shadows in the darkness. I slept late and when breakfast came I relished it. I had been forgiven. It felt as if I was meant to be in Ning-po, in Robert’s wake, bringing home distressed Chinese gentlewomen and dispatching them to nunneries further north. I was meant to live these days in the house of a Catholic missionary.

‘My life here is so very far from home,’ Bertie pondered over breakfast, ‘I think this place has healed me as much as it is healing you, Mary. We can really help here, you see.’

I squeezed his arm. I suspect that Bertie had ridden out a scandal of his own, though he never spoke of it. In fact, he revealed very little about himself and we knew him far less than we imagined as it turned out, for Bertie had a surprise for us up his long, embroidered, satin sleeves.

Mr Thom, our Consul, returned after some weeks and the news came to us upriver. Bertie had suggested a day trip to watch the fishermen. They had trained cormorants that were tethered to the boat and dived for fish at their master’s command. Of course, we wanted to see this for ourselves. To prevent the birds from guzzling the catch the fishermen tied their necks with a length of cord just tight enough to stop them swallowing. The cords were removed only briefly each evening when the clever creatures were fed with eels, by hand. Trained cormorants were worth many dollars and the fishermen were prosperous. Perhaps this was one reason why Bertie had organised the trip. In the nearby villages the children were plump and contented. The old were well dressed.

By negotiation at the river bank, Robert bought a pair of the cormorants for six dollars, and later, together with a tank of live eels for food, sent them to London as a curiosity. As it happened, the news reached us after several months that the eels had spilled out and to save the poor birds starving on the ocean the captain had slit their throats, so London never did see the wonders we had witnessed on the riverbank outside Ning-po.

Wang came towards us with the news we had been waiting for all these weeks.

‘Consul Mr Thom is returned to Ning-po,’ he announced.

‘Oh,’ said Bertie in a curious, mystified tone that seemed to imply that he would have somehow expected to know this before anyone else.

Robert meanwhile jumped to his feet enthusiastically. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘We must go back at once.’

He bundled Bertie and I into the small bark we had hired for the trip and then went back onto the riverbank to shout at the servants, who were dismantling our picnic. Bertie and I continued to nibble on the ham, which we had kept in hand. Robert meanwhile practically threw our oarsman into his place and jumped on board with such force that the little bark rocked perilously.

‘Lord, Robert. Is this man your true love?’ I teased.

‘Ning-po,’ Robert ordered the oarsman fiercely and then settled down without making any reply.

As we set off I was still licking my fingers clean.

Mr Thom was a tall, languid man with eyes that drooped slightly in the corners. Despite the weather he wore an English suit made of wool.

‘Ah, Bishop,’ he greeted Bertie warmly.

Bertie bowed low while both Robert and I gaped. Bishop? The truth of it is that had we known we never would have confided our secrets in Bertie.

‘Your Honour,’ Bertie greeted Mr Thom.

Robert recovered his senses more quickly than I did and shook hands with the Consul, while I was so shocked that I neglected to curtsey, surveying Bertie wide eyed instead.

Mr Thom laughed. ‘Ah, it is difficult to believe, I know, Miss Fortune. Our dear Bertie does not blow his own trumpet but he is the man in a crisis. Be it one of the soul or something merely in politics.’

Then Robert disappeared into the Consul’s study with some papers that he had promised to deliver by hand from
Chusan. That, it seems, was what we had been waiting for. Bertie and I remained in the drawing room.

‘Bishop Allan,’ I scolded him and he looked quite contrite, in fact. ‘You should have told us. Really, Bertie, you are the end!’

After that Robert started to address him as ‘Your Grace’, which caused Bertie no end of hilarity.

‘The one thing of which I am quite sure,’ he said, ‘is that the Lord sees me as a man. Not as a bishop. And that is quite good enough for me.’

During our stay in Ning-po Robert’s store of information had swelled. He heard tales of natives taunting monkeys so they would hurl tea leaves down the hills, saving them labour in time of harvest. He visited the Chinese bathing houses and came home with stories of steam rooms such as the Turks enjoy, of luxurious, private baths scented with menthol or rosemary, massage beds awash with towels, and gifts of tea and tobacco. He was invited, with Bertie, to dine at Dr Chang’s. It was a wonderful feast of thirty courses that they left after four hours, and allegedly only halfway through. But now the maps were in order. Supplies were secured and shipments dispatched. It was clear we were leaving.

Robert wrote three gardening columns, one after the other. On our last afternoon Robert and I planted some seedlings in Bertie’s garden. Robert chose strawberry plants as a gift to the Bishop. He had reared them secretly and now laid out the seedlings near the fruit trees. We had never seen strawberries or raspberries in China but Robert was sure there was no reason they would not flourish. We watered the plants carefully and left instructions with Bertie’s garden boy. Bertie, though delighted with the gift, declared he was saddened that it signalled the end of our stay. We were all sad, I think.

That night we dined at the Consulate. Mr Thom had
received packet post from a passing navy frigate and he offered Robert and I each a letter and a glass of sherry when we first came into his drawing room. The missives were from Jane. They had been forwarded from Hong Kong some weeks before. She must have written them at the same time we left for Amoy all those months ago. Robert pocketed his and accepted a drink, but I wanted to read what my sister had said immediately. To have news was simply too exciting!

‘May I?’ I asked. Mr Thom gestured me towards a side room and closed the door to allow me some privacy.

My Dear Mary,

I cannot say that I either understand or approve of what has happened. You are wilful and seem so bent upon harm that I find myself afraid of what you might do next. It is in your nature to struggle and not in mine. I must urge you now to do your best, my dearest sister. Where is the harm in settling? I am sure Hong Kong will provide a suitable husband and perhaps, who knows, another baby. I hope for no more for you than what has brought me the greatest happiness. I beg of you, my dear, do not vex Robert. He is busy with important business. Let him get on with what he must and do not steal him away with unnecessary drama. You do not realise, I know, the effect you have on people.

Henry is well. He thrives, in fact. He has made his first steps and is quite the terror! I will write at greater length but wish now only to get this to you. Please, Mary, do what is best for all of us and not you alone. Settle.

With love,

Your sister,

Jane.

It was a world away. I slipped silently back into Mr Thom’s drawing room. How could I write to her about saving a Chinese noblewoman or befriending a Catholic bishop? How could I tell her that I had developed an interest in Robert’s foolish plants? That I understood more of them now and that the different seed pods were not as tiresome as I had previously imagined. How could I tell her about Captain Landers and his smashed poop deck or the embarrassment of stars over the midnight straits? That I understood Cantonese now, like a native, and that the barbarian Chinese interested me greatly—I had even taken tea with the mandarins? I loved Henry with all my heart. It would be almost cruel of me to even go back now, I realised. The child did not know me at all and the older he got he would surely find my appearance more and more confusing even if I did turn up respectable and married. Things had changed so much. My sister had no idea.

After dinner, we returned home to sit on the terrace staring at the stars. Bertie had ordered red paper lanterns to be hung from the trees. The garden looked magical. Long shadows cast from the branches, the green lit up against the midnight sky, red cast down the tree trunks. It was balmy as we sipped our brandy.